Chapter I.

The Emperor's Feast

It is now over seventeen hundred years since late on an evening about the Ides of December, two men, with flowing palliums drawn closely about them, met near the statue of Janus, in the street of the same name in Rome.

"Ho! well met, Sisinnius. Coming from the baths, and, like myself, bound for the emperor's feast!"

"No, Aurelian, I've had a previous engagement to meet at my own house a man who is a celebrity in the city for his charity and skill in healing medicines. When my wife, Theodora, was so very ill last season, the old Grecian slave that nursed her said that, if permitted, she would seek Clement--that is his name--and told us of some wonderful cures he had wrought in her native country by an application of oil. I gladly accepted the offer. Clement, a venerable old man, effected Theodora's recovery. Since then he has been a frequent and welcome visitor at my house. If not too late, drop in when returning from the emperor's, and you will hear anecdotes of strange scenes and travels in many lands. Clement spends the evening with us."

"This, then, is what prevented your acceptance of Domitian's invitation?"

"Yes, and I assure you I look forward with more pleasure to an evening's conversation with my friend Clement than I would to the imperial festivities, although I understand no expense has been spared to make them surpass anything before witnessed, even the magnificence of Nero."

"Are you not afraid that your absence from the senatorial party will be noticed? Take care, lest, like the late Consul Clemens Domitilla, who scrupulously avoided those entertainments of the Saturnalia, you be suspected of a leaning toward the Jews. If so, your great popularity and worth would scarcely save you, as they did not save him, who was, moreover, cousin german of the emperor."

"Not I, Sisinnius! Afraid? Why, I am ready at any moment to sacrifice to the gods of my country and of my family. _I_ to acknowledge as the only son of the supreme Jupiter a Jew, of whom we know nothing save that he was nailed on a cross by the procurator Pilate! Poor Clemens Domitilla! So unaffected, so earnest, so honorable! May his manes enjoy elysium! It has been always a mystery to me how a man of his education, of his intelligence, of his high position and practical sense, could have been infected with this Christian leprosy. To deny the gods worshipped by his forefathers since the days of Romulus and Numa, and to adore in their stead this crucified Jew, of whom we are beginning to hear so much of late--it is inexplicable."

"It is part of the infatuation which clouds betimes the greatest intellects," said Aurelian; and then, lowering his voice, he added: "Pardon me for introducing a subject which you must not mention to your wife Theodora, nor to my affianced, Flavia?"

"I have no secrets from my wife, Aurelian, nor should you from your betrothed. No two men in Rome have more reason to trust a wife and an affianced than have you and I."

"There was a time, Sisinnius, when I thought as you. Would I had no cause to think otherwise now! What if _they_ are infected, as you express it, with this Christian leprosy, which led to the death of my betrothed's uncle, Clemens Domitilla?"

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"But you know," whispered Sisinnius, "there was another motive for Clemens' execution--_he_ was the most popular member of the imperial family. Domitian was jealous of his popularity and influence, as he is now jealous of this Jesus who is called King of the Jews, whose relatives he is seeking out in every quarter."

"Would not the same motive have force with regard to Clemens' niece--my betrothed, Flavia, if only a fair excuse could be found for the destruction of one so young, so fair, and so innocent? Would not you and I be involved in the ruin, if she and Theodora had the misfortune of leaning to Christianity?"

"By Jupiter, it is impossible," broke in Sisinnius. "My wife is a model, a very Lucretia in devotion to her lord, and attention to her household duties. The slaves are cheerful and obedient; the laborers set to work, stewarded and paid; the clients met and satisfied without long interviews with me. How one so young and gentle can manage to get through so much business and make our home so peaceful and happy is a wonder to me! I bless the gods for the treasure they have given me in her! When tired with the labors of office in the forum or in the senate, I am cheered by her welcoming smile on my return home. It is impossible that one of her business habits, so wrapt up in her husband and in her home, could have time or folly enough to trouble her head about this crucified Jew. Perhaps Flavia, who is rich, unoccupied, and, like all young people, romantic, may be silly enough to lend an ear to his sorcery. If so, the sooner you make her a wife, and give her business to attend to, the better."

"Was not Clemens Domitilla a sensible man, Sisinnius, most attentive to the duties of his consular office, and least likely to be led astray by a mere idea?"

"Undoubtedly he was considered a cool councillor, a practical commander, and the ablest statesman of our time."

"And yet he yielded himself up a captive to this new religion; nay, yielded up his life sooner than admit that Jesus was not the true God. You are still incredulous? I hope you may be right, and my suspicions unfounded, for both our sakes and the sakes of those we love like our own lives. But meet me at the third watch of the night of the 8th, before the Kalends of January, and I will promise you the means of sifting this matter to the bottom."

"Agreed. Don't forget to drop in at our place on your return from the emperor's banquet. You will meet Clement; and perhaps some one else, whose name I will not tell you lest I might have to consider myself indebted for your visit to the attraction of its owner. _Vale!_"

Leaving Sisinnius to ponder over what he had heard, we will follow Aurelian, as he wends his way to the palace of Domitian at the foot of the Esquiline. Aurelian was a young noble of high rank and vast wealth. The waxen images in his paternal atrium represented many who had sat on the curule chair; and brought his family history, stamped with the badge of nobility, back beyond the days of the Fabii and Cincinnatus. His Etrurian estates alone brought him in a yearly revenue, which in modern times would be considered fabulous by those not aware of the immense wealth of even private Roman citizens under the republic and the empire. His dress made known his rank to those who met him as he passed along the streets. The toga of whitest woollen cloth, the _latus clavus_, or broad purple stripe on his uncinctured outer tunic, and the golden "C" riveted on the upper leather of his short boots, were worn only by senators. Many stood to admire his tall figure, stately bearing, and rich dress; and some uttered words of praise. One remark fell upon his ears with ominous sound:

"Truly a Roman in birth and in appearance, and well worthy to be the mate of that beautiful creature, the niece of the late consul Domitilla!"

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"I saw the solitary raven flap his wings to-day on a tree in the vestibule of her palace."

Aurelian passed on quickly as if he had not heard these words. But he was influenced like most Romans by the superstition which from the gestures and flight of birds would trace the adverse or prosperous course of futurity. Once only did he pause, as a Greek clad in sable tunic carolled in broken Latin a ditty, the burden of which, as it may throw some light upon our story, we shall attempt to inadequately render:

"She loved her lord as her lord loved her; But him she will not love any more; To-night to the feast she will not stir, But she'll sup with the Christian called Theodore, She will sup with the Christian called Theodore, And her lover Aurelian she'll love no more; Another, another has got him before-- A Christian, a Christian whom she'll adore!"

"What now, slave! Again taking liberties with noble names! Do you want to publish me to the whole city, Zoilus?"

"I admit it. Zoilus is my cognomen, master. It was an ugly mishap, considering my poetical turn, that made me namesake of the man who maligned Homer and got burned for his criticism. What a pity they did not give me the cognomen Homerus or Virgilius. By the lyre of Orpheus! if they did, I would write an epos like the Iliad or the AEneid, of which you, Aurelian, would be the hero, and Flavia Domitilla the heroine. You would see into what hair-breadth 'scapes you would be brought to be rescued by the sharp end of my poetical stylus. The only thing to be regretted now is that you will, likely enough, be brought into scrapes and find no escapes from them."

"Be silent, slave! I have no time for your jokes," exclaimed the nobleman in an excited tone.

"All right, then," said the imperturbable slave, "as you have no time to receive, I cannot have time to communicate news that does not concern _me_."

"Excuse my hasty temper, good Zoilus! I am going to the emperor's feast, and I fear I am after the appointed hour. Take this," and he slipped into the other's hand a silver denarius, "it will help to buy a pallium to cover your unkempt tunic. What about Flavia?" he said in lower but more earnest tones.

The silver piece had worked its effect upon the slave's manner, who replied: "She will not go to the imperial feast. She dislikes the emperor, though she is his adopted child; and naturally, on account of her uncle's execution. Moreover, she will not partake of meats blessed in the name of Jupiter, the father of gods and men, nor of wine poured out in libation to Bacchus. I suspect she has lost her attachment to you, and is falling in love with one of those Christians whom she is never done admiring. Look to it, my noble master! For, from expressions she has let fall, my informant suspects she has already been espoused to this admirer."

"And she engaged to me by the emperor himself?"

"Even this, notwithstanding; she has given herself over to this Christian, whom she declares she adores."

"Zoilus! if you are deceiving me, by that oath held sacred in heaven and in hell, I swear--"

"Swear not, my lord, until you have put me to the proof: Have I not engaged to meet you on the night of the 8th of next kalends, to give you an opportunity of judging on the testimony of your own eyesight? Until then, farewell And the slave bounded away before Aurelian could say another word, and chanted as he went:

"She'll sup with the Christian called Theodore, And her lover Aurelian shell love no more; Another, another has got him before-- A Christian, a Christian, whom she'll adore, Adore, adore," etc.

Aurelian, though filled with bitter thoughts, paused to listen, and muttered as he heard the receding strain, which was now being chanted in doggerel Greek: "Well, we Romans are called masters of the world; but we shall yet be mastered by our slaves." There was great reason for the reflection. {389} For the slaves had now grown so numerous in Rome that the Senate feared to pass a law appointing them a distinctive dress, lest they should thereby come to the knowledge of their own strength. A law had been also proposed, though not passed in the legislative council, with the view of lessening their numbers by employing them in the public quarries and mines and other severe works, as the Jews had been long before employed as hewers of wood and drawers of water in the Egyptian bondage. Moreover, about this period writing and book-knowledge generally were, with very few exceptions, confined to the slaves in Rome. It was the sunset of the literature whose noon was lit up by luminaries such as Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and Sallust; and the few stray rays which yet lingered behind were either confined to the slave population of the city or, glancing over the Alps and the Pyrenees, rested upon favored spots in the ultramontane provinces.

As Aurelian thought over these and other matters he did not notice the places by which he passed, and soon found himself at the gate of the vestibule before the emperor's palace. He went through the massive bronze door into the atrium or hall. Here he waited while the slave, whose office it was, went to announce his arrival. His thoughts were diverted from the subjects which had engaged them to the magnificence of the scene around. The blue sky and brilliant stars above the _compluvium_, which was an open space through the roof of the atrium, were shut out and eclipsed by the many-colored lights attached to the marble pillars, white, black, and variegated, by which the slanting tiles of the roof were supported. Underneath the _impluvium_, which was an enclosed space corresponding and proportioned to the open one above, sent up interwoven ellipses of divers-colored waters through brazen tubes so arranged as to cast a rainbow-like halo over the whole place. Between the rows of pillars thus lighted up, receding in lofty and majestic file far as the eye could reach, and through the _fauces_, or corridors, formed by the chambers beyond them, there appeared the mellow glow of the lamps around the peristyle in the distance; while the sound of rushing waters fell agreeably on the ear. Nearer to him around the walls of the atrium Aurelian observed that the niches, where were deposited the images of the Emperor's friends and ancestors, were draped in veils of black, as if in mourning for his cousin the late consul Domitilla, but in reality because the family history did not afford many remarkable names beyond those of Vespasian and Titus.

While Aurelian was thus engaged in examining the splendor of the imperial residence, the slave who had gone to announce his arrival returned, and with him the "distributor of seats" in the royal _triclinium_. Led by the latter, Aurelian entered the _triclinium_, the Roman dining hall, which was decorated and lighted up in the same manner as the atrium. At the end of it, on an elevated platform of cedar wood, Domitian was seated on a throne of ivory inwrought and decorated with gold. The young noble made a low prostration on bended knees until permitted by touch of the golden sceptre to arise.

"Arise, Aurelian!" said the emperor. "To evidence our high consideration for you, we have delayed our guests ten strokes of the clepsydra. But be not distressed; we shall hear your explanations at another time. Where" (these words were added in an undertone) "have you left our fair cousin and child, Flavia? We expected her to accompany her accepted suitor and future husband."

"My sovereign lord and master! the most noble Flavia has been indisposed for some time, and regrets she cannot be present at the festivities this evening. Her friend the noble Theodora, wife of the Senator Sisinnius, has induced her, for change of air, to visit at their residence for some days, where she will have the advantage of meeting an old and experienced physician named Clement, who has travelled much in the East and thereby become acquainted with herbs and drugs that have acquired for him the repute of a mastery over bodily disease."

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"Clement, Clement!" repeated the emperor, striving to recollect himself; "I have heard of him somewhere before; but we shall talk of these things at a more fitting time;" and be waved his sceptre to the steward of the banquet.

Scarcely had the sceptre waved when the eastern side of the immense banquet hall was opened by some unseen agency, and an archway of vast proportions, without rent or flaw, was formed, through which the loose-robed slaves were seen driving a brazen elephant, on whose back was placed the huge abacus on which the banquet was served. This abacus, of solid silver, had admirable contrivances for the preservation of the warmth and flavor of every dish; and the whole repast "from the egg to the apple," including three courses, was served upon it. The number and nature of the dishes became at a glance known to the guests, for over each dish the silver or golden likeness of the fish, bird, or beast which supplied it was supported upon a very thin wire, so colored as to be invisible in lamplight. Here was the brazen image of the flamingo; there the golden plumage of the guinea-hen, the famous _Afra avis_, of the Romans, was outspread without any visible support in air. At another part the star-eyed tail of the peacock was extended fan-like, while a turtle and a sturgeon seemed to swim on either side of it. Every bird, fish, and beast held in repute by the Roman gourmands was represented floating or flying over this monster server. The slaves, who pushed it on golden rollers into the triclinium, danced as they advanced to the music of the flute, the harp, and other instruments. At the sound of a gong, struck by the head steward, "the distributor of seats" led the guests to the couches on which they were to recline. Having resigned their boots, or slippers, to the slaves appointed to receive them, they leaned back, supporting themselves on their left elbows on the soft couches covered with purple, embroidered with gold, and bearing the imperial arms. Many of the females preferred to sit, and for them suitable seats were provided. At another sound of the gong twenty slaves, in purple tunics and white aprons sustained on black cinctures, moved into the hall, with motions of head and foot and hands to suit the music, and removed the covers under which were placed the materials for the feast. The same movements took place before and after each of the courses. As soon as the covers for the second course were taken off, the _scissores_ or carvers cut the solid dishes and served the various meats according as the servants in waiting on the guests presented the plates. To show the extent of refined luxury to which the old Romans of the republic and empire carried things, it may be observed that the carvers so managed while cutting the dishes as to keep time with the knives to the music. In fact, the art of carving was a profession in Rome.

The writer of this hurriedly sketched tale may pause for a little here to assure the indulgent reader that he has made it a rule in the descriptions, in the substantial facts of the narrative, and in the lives of the leading characters to make imagination wholly the handmaid of truth. He is sure that in the scenes he endeavors to paint he is using the colors supplied him by pagan and Christian writers of the times. He might point specially to Polybius, Lampridius, and Plutarch as vouchers for his accuracy in describing a Roman banquet in the last ages of the republic and the first of the empire.

When the third course was over, the elephant and abacus were rolled with the same accompaniment of music and dance from the room. Then began the symposium, or drinking-feast. As the repositorium bearing the goblets and wines was introduced, the ceiling or the triclinium seemed suddenly as if by magic to disappear, and an immense stage with gorgeous scenery was lowered into the apartment. {391} As it quietly and slowly descended, the voices were heard singing as if from heaven:

"Strike the tympan, beat the drum! Down from heaven we come. Jupiter nodded--it must be so-- Down, down to earth below, To greet the God, Domitian!

"Domitian is Jove upon earth we know, Jupiter wills it-it must be so-- So, we'll beat our shields and our trumpets blow, We'll launch the spear and we'll draw the bow. And we'll dance 'mid the flying missiles, O! Before the God, Domitian!

"We'll play as we play on Olympus' height, Where Jupiter grasps the thunder's might And hurls to earth its lances bright, And sends from his throne the broad daylight-- We'll dance as we dance on Olympus' height, Before the God, Domitian!"

By the time these lines were ended the stage had taken a stationary position about six feet from the ground, so that every guest from his bench or couch could have a full view of the performance. The first thing that struck the eye was a group of figures, male and female, dressed in various styles to represent the immortals. Here was Apollo with his lyre and halo; there was Diana in her huntress garb. Mercury, with his wand and winged sandals, was flying over the helmeted head of Minerva; while Vulcan, with the red glow of the furnace on his face, was, with the assistance of the Cyclops' hammers, forging thunderbolts for Jove. In another part the rustic Pan, with his goat-ears and oaten pipe, was playing, while the naiads and fauns in cloud-like Ionic tunics kept dancing as they fled from the pursuing satyrs.

Suddenly the scenery is shifted and the stage is filled with narrow-pointed, straight and double-edged swords fixed perpendicularly with the blades upward; while a number of persons in close-fitting garments dance alternately on their feet and hands, in the execution of which they somersault over the sharp weapons. Again, they time with martial tread to the quick measure of the Pyrrhic dance, the accompaniment to which was the rattle of their flying spears on the bronze shields they bore. The scene is again changed. The lamps are suddenly put out; and a vast chamber with vaulted roof, through which a subterranean damp oozes, is dimly seen by the light of a muffled lamp, which only helps to make "the darkness visible." [Footnote 117]

[Footnote 117: Tillemont and other historians relate this substantially in the same way.]

Along the sides, which are draped in sable cloth, are ranged a number of coffins equal to the number of guests, each of whom reads his own name in fiery letters shining out upon one or other of them from the surrounding gloom; while demons, with snake-like locks and flame-like garments and black faces, ran in horrible frenzy about, shrieking out the names of the principal senators present. And a deep, sonorous voice, which seemed to rise out of the earth, pronounced the following:

"Hail, monarch of monarchs! whose mighty sway The nations and tribes of the earth obey, From the rising sun to the setting day!

"From the highest Alp to the island cove, Thy power is felt like the power of Jove When Olympus shakes at his frown above.

"The Celtic shout does not pierce the sky, The Parthian arrows pause as they fly, When thy name is heard 'mid the battle's cry.

"When heard from the height of Caucasian snow, The beard-like woods on its chin bend low, And the rivers cease down its cheeks to flow.

"When breathed abroad o'er the ocean waves, The sea-monsters sink to the rocky caves, Where, continents under, they scoop their graves.

"When uttered by spirits among the clouds, They gather like flocks into frightened crowds, And bind up the tempest in sable shrouds.

"The word of thy mouth is the simoom's breath, Thy sceptre's wave is the scythe of death Which sweeps all life to the domes beneath.

"Then how can aught mortal in earth or air, The might or the power of thy sceptre dare With the crown or a crucified Jew compare? Domitian, Domitian! Beware, beware!"

As the last verse was being chanted, the stage, the voice, and awful chamber began slowly to ascend, until the last words seemed to fall from the sky!

"Domitian! Domitian!! Beware! beware!!"

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A hushed terror pervaded the spectators. The cruel character of Domitian was well known. History records that he could spend whole days in killing flies with a bodkin; which gave occasion to the witty reply of Vibius Crispus, who, being asked, "Who is with the emperor?" said, "Not as much as a fly." It is well known that he had at times ordered the execution of his most intimate friends and most favored officers; nay, that he had left his banquet to witness the death-throes of those who had partaken it with him. Lately he had become more and more suspicious of everyone and everything. He had conceived a great jealousy of the family and descendants of David, one of whom he had heard was worshipped by his numerous family as Lord of lords and King of kings. So much did this fear influence him that he sent out orders to his civil and military officers in the East to have every descendant of David, every relative of the Redeemer, arrested and brought to Rome. In accordance with this order two grandsons of St. Jude, who were, according to Jewish custom, called "brothers," whereas they were in reality only cousins, of our Lord, were sent from Judea to Rome, and examined by the emperor. Having questioned them about their family and about the empire of their relative, who by his adherents was adored as God, he laid aside his fears of their rivalry for the throne and dismissed them ignominiously. [Footnote 118]

[Footnote 118: Eusebius, Hist. Eccles.]

They had told him they were only poor peasants living on the proceeds of a small farm near Jerusalem; and in proof they raised their hands and showed him the palms roughened and the nails dirty from toil. But though he had laid aside his fears of these friends of our Lord, he did not cease to dread the increasing number of true believers. Therefore, as if to be on an equal elevation, he had some time before the date of the incidents of our tale issued an edict by which he commanded all his subjects to address him as a god, and to offer divine worship to his statue! Many citizens who gave evidence of their appreciating the absurdity of this edict had been put to death under his own eyes.

We may imagine, then, the secret feelings of the guests after viewing the scene that had been presented on the stage. The pantomimic art, which in ancient Rome and Athens had reached a height of perfection and magnificence now unknown, had applied all its resources on the occasion to suit the imperial mood. During the recitation of the verses descriptive of his power over animate and inanimate nature--whether in air, in earth, or in the sea--he held his head and sceptre erect as if with the conscious dignity of the godhead. But when the allusion to an opponent, to "the crown of a crucified Jew," fell on his ears, his brow lowered, his face darkened and his eyes flamed. His excitement was increased by observing the impulsive movements of many present, especially of a young officer of the court who, as the same allusion was being made, laid his hand upon his sword and advanced a step to the stage, until drawn back by a lady of mild aspect and of retiring demeanor. The only person else besides the emperor who noticed the motions of the young officer was Aurelian, who had conceived a jealousy of him for some kind attentions paid to Flavia Domitilla. These attentions were easily accounted for; the officer, as was customary with young noblemen of wealth, had been out for some years in the suite of the proconsul of Judea, a relative of Flavia. This circumstance led to an acquaintance between them. But it was observed by every one except Aurelian that the young man studiously endeavored to avoid as much as politeness would allow the company of Flavia as well as of other ladies of the court. This was the more remarkable considering her youth, her beauty, and her connection with the imperial family.

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The other guests were too engrossed with their fears to observe what had not escaped the jealous eyes of Domitian and Aurelian. After an interval or suspense, to enjoy the effects produced by fear upon the guests, Domitian ordered them to continue the banquet--that the scene they had witnessed was the work of the pantomimes. This allayed their anxiety; but there was no zest remaining for enjoyment. Each one saw his own likeness in his neighbor's pallid face long after the stage had vanished. As soon as the usual formulas were gone through, they quickly and quietly took leave at an earlier hour than usual on such occasions, and left the emperor seated amid his magnificence.

Aurelian, having with the other guests left the palace at so early an hour, was glad to have so much time for visiting the house of Sisinnius. He had not seen Flavia Domitilla for nearly a month. She had been unwell; and, as often as he called, she sent word that she was not able to leave her room. He had called each day, and each day received the same answer. He was all anxiety for her health; for, her ways so artless, and yet so artful, had woven round his heart a network of loving thoughts and wishes for her welfare. She had been betrothed to him by the emperor, her cousin, guardian, and adopted father; and had avowed her attachment for him, and proved it by the affectionate kindness of her manner. But latterly he thought she had begun to treat him with coolness and to avoid his society. Jealousy suggested that her previously avowed affection had been diverted into another channel, to a different object. Could it be that after all his efforts to secure her love, after all her professions, she had withdrawn her affections and bestowed them on that young officer? Such were the thoughts that held longest possession of Aurelian's mind as he bent his steps toward the house of Sisinnius.

As soon as he touched the knocker, which was a ring grasped in a lion's mouth, the hall door was opened by Nereus, one of Flavia's most favored slaves. The little dog, the usual inmate of the Roman atrium, bounded in familiar gumbols about the purple band which bound the lower edge of his senatorial toga.

"Down, Hylax!" And he waved away the dog with the pallium he had just taken off to intrust to the servants until his departure. "I hope your mistress has recovered from her late indisposition?" said he, addressing Nereus, who, though humble and respectful in manner and language, seemed to have a dislike for Aurelian.

"Not quite recovered, my noble lord. The confinement at home was increasing the depression of spirits, under which she has been suffering since her uncle's death."

The door of an apartment off the atrium--not the triclinium, but a small _diaeta_, or parlor, where the family spent the winter evenings--opened and presented Sisinnius to view.

"Welcome, Aurelian! How so early from the feast? I heard that Apollonius of Tyana himself was brought from Corinth to aid in the entertainment; and I wonder to find you here before the sixth hour!"

"It is true, indeed, that Apollonius was in Rome some time ago. Either he or the infernal imps must have been there to-night!"

"You were highly amused, then?"

"Amused! Domitian's amusements are not likely to suit all tastes."

He laid aside his pallium and wide-leafed carpentum, and was arranging the folds of his toga, while Sisinnius in a whisper told him that Theodora, Flavia, and Clement were inside. After the usual salutations and courtesy he was introduced to the last named, whose venerable appearance impressed him deeply. The hand of time had polished the upper part of the stranger's head to a transparent whiteness through which the blue veins were visible, and had scattered the snows of some eighty years on the hairs, which, like a silver crown, encircled his neck and flowed down on his shoulders. His face was bronzed by long exposure to suns in many lands. {394} But there was about it an indescribable sweetness, and a charity beamed in his piercing eye sure to win the attention and good-will of all. He wore goat-skin sandals without stockings. The other parts of his dress, though indicative of citizenship and noble birth, were old and threadbare. The only ornament he wore was a plain gold ring, on which a cross was engraven.

Aurelian recognized in Clement the person who, some weeks before, when a physician was sought to attend one of the human [Footnote 119] victims in the capitol sacrificed to propitiate the god of war, presented himself and said: "I am not a physician by profession. But during a long life spent in foreign lands I have learned some secrets of the healing art. If permitted, I can relieve the pains of yonder victim." Leave was given; for according to the augurs it would be a bad omen if the victim expired before the conclusion of the sacrificial rite. Clement spoke in language which Aurelian did not understand, and raised his hand over the head of the sufferer, who, seeing it, brightened into smiles. He then took out a silver case from his side-pocket and rubbed its contents over parts of the wounded body; and immediately, before all present, the wounds inflicted by the fire were healed, and the victim was strong as ever. Recognizing now in the guest of Sisinnius the visitor of the capitol, Aurelian rejoiced to make his acquaintance. He rejoiced, too, on account of Flavia, whose health, dear to him as his own, would, no doubt, be soon restored by the skill of Clement.

[Footnote 119: Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities. _Vide Sacrificium_.]

"Come, Aurelian," said Sisinnius, "help yourself to some of those Calabrian pomegranates and to a cyathus of Falernian. You seem to want it sadly, for you look as pale as if you had seen the ghost of Nero. While you help yourself, tell us how you fared at the emperor's. Did he by way of disport order any of those Jews or Christians to be executed?" The Jews and Christians were during the first centuries considered the same by the pagans.

"No! But it might have come to that had the entertainment been prolonged!" And be related the incidents we have already laid before the reader. When he spoke of the effect produced on the emperor by the allusion to the "Crucified Jew," the eyes of Flavia and Theodora met and turned to the face of Clement. The latter seemed for a time lost to the thought of all about him. Tears glistened in his eyes, which were sad and thoughtful, while his white head was bent and his lips moved silently. Sisinnius was too wrapt in the description of the banquet, and Aurelian too much complimented by the silence in which they listened to him, to observe the old man. Otherwise, they, like the two women, would have easily construed the motion of his lips into the words: "Father, not my will, but thine, be done. But give wisdom and strength to thy servant."

"This bodes ill for the Christians," said Sisinnius when Aurelian had finished.

"I would not wonder to find a worse edict than that of Nero posted on brazen tablets in the Campus Martius in a few days. Domitian is under the impression that they in their private meetings are plotting against his life and throne. He has already ordered one of the most intimate and trusted friends of Jesus to be arrested at Ephesus and to be brought in chains to Rome," said Aurelian.

At this announcement Clement, who had been a quiet listener, started as if with sudden pain; then as suddenly recovering his composure, he asked: "Is it possible they could think of dragging the good old man across the sea in this wintry weather? The journey would kill him."

"It is not only possible, but it is a fact," said Aurelian.

"You know this good old man, then?" asked Sisinnius.

{395}

"Know him! Yes, good right have I to know him. There is not a country from the Pillars of Hercules or the Tin Islands of the North to the sunny steeps of Asia and syrtes of Africa, in which I have not been and met with many friends. Most of those I loved and labored with are gone"--he wiped away a tear--"but of all that remain there is none more worthy, none more venerated, none more dear to my heart and to the heart of one far greater than I, than John of Ephesus. He is the last of a generation now almost passed away--a generation of mighty workers--giants in their way--sent on earth to lay the foundations of an edifice, the stories of which are to be laid on age after age until they reach the sky. When he is gone, the last direct link between that generation and the present will be taken away. Already the work they commenced has fallen on frail and feeble shoulders." Here the speaker, who had forgotten his company in the warmth of his language, bent his head upon his breast, and again his lips moved silently. All present looked on wonderingly: there was something in the old man's appearance to excite their admiration.

Soon after, Clement rose to depart. Theodora and Sisinnius endeavored to induce him to remain. He had spent nights from time to time in their house, when the former had been sick; but now he was not to be moved.

"Young men!" he said as be rose, "we may or we may not meet again, No one can count on another day; it is better to arrange tonight what the morrow might not dawn upon." Theodora and Flavia bent their eyes inquiringly upon him: addressing them, he said: "To you I address the words often said to me by one I journeyed with for many years: 'Be always ready with lamps trimmed. The shadow of this world is passing away. The night is at hand; but remember there is a bright and lasting dawn beyond it.' Allow an old man, whose pilgrimage in this world will not be long, to invoke his blessing upon you all." He raised his outspread hands, and the ring with the engraven cross shone out as he solemnly said, "May my blessing and the blessing of the unknown God descend upon you. May he soon gather you all into that glorious edifice he has sent his workmen to build on earth, and there manifest to you the _admirable light_ and beauty of his countenance!" While he spoke, Flavia and Theodora bent their heads, as if some unseen influence was descending upon them; while Sisinnius and Aurelian attributed the manner of Clement to an eccentricities not previously noticed.

After Clement's departure, Aurelian approached Flavia to express his anxiety about her health. She was agitated. He saw that her face did not wear the sunshine welcome and the loving smile with which it heretofore brightened at his approach. She seemed sad, yet not unhappy, but anxious to avoid his presence and his look. Could the insinuations of Zoilus be true? Formerly when she went from home, or when she expected to meet him, she took trouble to heighten her great natural beauty of appearance and manner by artificial assistance. Her toilet table and attendants were models for the Roman ladies, who spent enormous sums on Asiatic cosmetics and Ionian female slaves to aid them in dressing. All seemed now changed with Flavia. Her dress was a mourning one of brown cloth, such as the wives of Roman shopkeepers might wear, drawn modestly about her from chin to feet, without a single ornament. Her hair was bound in no Persian head-dress, as was then the fashion with high-born dames; but was folded unpretendingly about her head, so as to conceal as much as possible the fair proportions of her full and polished forehead. Her dark eyes, usually so full of hearty affection, were not upturned as of old to his. He saw something was out of joint. Could it be the effect of sickness? If so, he would pour out all his fortune, melt down the silver and golden images of his ancestors, at Clement's feet, and beseech him to cure her. Or could it be that she had transferred her affections from himself to the young officer lately returned from Judea? Such were the thoughts flitting through the mind of Aurelian as he found himself alone with Flavia. Sisinnius had beckoned Theodora away.

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"Flavia!" he at length said, "in what have I offended? You appear distressed at my approach. Who can have a better right to that affection you always professed for me than I, who shall call you by a new endearing title on the next Kalends?"

"The next Kalends! You cannot be in earnest, Aurelian!" she said.

"Your guardian and adopted father, the emperor, has chosen that day for the fulfilment of the promise you have made me. It is a day to be for ever marked with Cretan chalk in my memory," he replied.

"But it cannot be! It is impossible!"

"Why not? How?" he asked.

"O Aurelian! you are too noble, too generous, you have been always too kind to me to force me to fulfil a promise which can never bring me aught but misery!"

"Misery? Why, have you not always professed the greatest confidence and love of me? Have I done anything to lose them? You admit I have not. How, then, can the fulfilment of your engagement make you miserable?"

"I shall never," she answered, "forget your kindness day after day to me, and I shall always love you as my brother. But any other relationship there cannot be!"

"I see it all plainly," he said. "You too have been infected by this new plague: you have withdrawn your affections to bestow them on another?"

"And suppose I have," said Flavia, grasping at another mode of calming his excitement. "You are too high in rank, too proud to accept the hand of one who cannot bestow her heart with it?"

"By Hercules! I know who this Christian enchanter is, and by the honor of a Roman knight--"

"Then, if you know him well, you cannot blame me for bestowing my affections on him. He is so beautiful, so noble, so glorious beyond the sons of men. His teeth are whiter than milk, and the words of his mouth are like the dripping of the honey-comb. He is encompassed with perpetual youth, and crowned with a comeliness which shall never fade. All these enduring qualities he promises to confer on me if I will love and serve him!"

"Love him then, infatuated girl! But serve him you never shall, if the sword and fortune of Aurelian can prevent it!"

"Aurelian, my brother! I will pray and ask him that you also may know him; for, if you did, you could not help loving and serving him."

"Do you wish to mock my misery," he bitterly asked, "now that you have blighted all on which my hopes of happiness rested? But, Flavia! remember I am not to be put off, if the power of Domitian can crush this Christian viper! Remember your uncle's fate!"

And turning be left the room.

TO BE CONTINUED.

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From The Dublin University Magazine.

The Libraries Of The Middle Ages And Their Contents.

Father Hardouin On The Classics.

The fourteenth century was doubtlessly an era of great literary activity with regard to transcribing and filling libraries with copies of the Latin Scriptures, of theological works in general, and of the classics. The learned and eccentric Jesuit, Father John Hardouin, fixed on it for the composition of all the supposed classic treasures of antiquity which we possess, except the works of Cicero, Pliny's Natural History, the Satires and Epistles of Horace, the Georgics and nine Eclogues of Virgil, the comedies of Plautus, the poems of Homer, and the history of Herodotus. All the rest were the brain-produce of the cloistered scholars of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially the latter, as being distinguished by the rage for collecting manuscripts and forming libraries. Not only were these supposed fruits of the classic pagan tree the growth of the Christian intellect of that late time, but the works of St. Augustin and his disciples were composed for them nine hundred years after their funerals.[Footnote 120]

[Footnote 120: John Hardouin, the son of a bookseller of Quimper, was born in 1646. He entered at an early age into the Society of Jesus. He soon distinguished himself by acute perception and a great memory, but still more by cherishing such paradoxes as the above. The AEneid, according to him, was the work of a Benedictine of the thirteenth century, and was an allegorical description of St. Peter's journey to Rome; and Horace's _Lalage_ was a type of the Christian religion. The antique metals were all modern inventions, each letter representing a word. "You are quite right, father," said an antiquary to him one day. "These letters found on so many metals, Con. Os., and supposed to stand for 'Constantinopli Obsignatum,' (stamped [sealed] at Constantinople,) are evidently intended to read, 'Cusi Omnes Nummi Officina Benedictina'--all moneys struck in the Benedictine Mint." He was a most firm believer in all the dogmas of revealed religion, but a thorough Pyrrhonist in human traditions. He classed Jansenism, Thomassin, Malebranche, Quesnel, Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal, Descartes, Le Grand, and Regis among the atheists. They were Cartesians, merely another name for unbelievers. His learning was most extensive and his works numerous. He died in Paris in 1729 at the age of 88.]

There was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a literary warfare between the Classicists and Romancists as real as that which sprung up in Paris before the three days of July, but much less noisy. We find among the 145 volumes bequeathed to the library of the church of Langres in 1365, by Jean de Saffres, about two dozen of romances whose titles deserve to be remembered. They were Renart, (Reynard the Fox,) Girart de Roussillon, Garin la Loherain, Aimeri de Narbonne, Raoul de Cambrai, Bueves de Barbastre,[Footnote 121] Jean dit le Lanson, Parise la Duchesse, Merlin, Courberau d'Oliferne, Gibert dit Desrée, les Sept Sages, les Machabées, Troie la Grant, (Troy the Great,) Florimont, la Rose, Beaudoux, (Sweet Beauty or Beautifully Sweet.) Clyges, Perceval le Gallois, Basin et Gombaud, Amadas, (Amadis, qu.,) Galaad, Lancelot, Tristan, (Sir Tristrem.)

[Footnote 121: A cherished manual of our youth was Wild Roses or Cottage Tales, published by Anne Lemoine in some court whose name has escaped our memory. One of the stories was "Barbastal, or the Magician of the Forest of Bloody Ash!" Was _Bueves de Barbastre_ the original of that terrible and interesting narrative?]

The Care Bestowed On The Libraries.

We may be certain that St. Benedict had not such books as these in his mind when he composed the following prayer of blessing on the works to be copied by his monks, a prayer which has been preserved in the Abbey of Fleuri-sur-Loire:

"O Lord, let the virtue of thy Holy Spirit descend on these books; let it purify them, bless them, sanctify them. Sweetly enlighten the hearts of those who read them, and impart their true sense to them. Grant us also to be faithful to the precepts emanating from thy light, in accomplishing them by good works, according to thy will"

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The same respect for good books is found in an the abbeys of the Benedictines. The very high value the religious communities set on rare works connected with their order, subjected the monks of the abbey of St. Denis to a cruel imposition in 1389. An imposter, such as some who have practised mighty deceptions in our times, a supple Greek named Paul Tagari, passing himself off for the patriarch of Constantinople, obtained thirty thousand crowns of gold from the king of Cyprus, on imparting the royal unction to his majesty, and a magnificent reception from the pope at Avignon, as he held out strong assurances of the return of the Greek schism to the faith. He announced to the simple monks of St. Denis the existence of some manuscripts from the hand of the very patron of their order, Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, who had heard the words of life from the lips of St. Paul himself, when he spoke to the news loving people of Athens on the hill of Mars. Two brothers set out on foot to Marseilles, and, deluded by the knave's representations, journeyed on from that to Rome. The Greek had got their money, but they got nothing by their long journey but the labor and expenses of performing it, and the chagrin of the disappointment.

The monks of Cluni were particular in the illustrating and the binding of their volumes. As a general rule the outsides of the volumes in the abbey libraries were not attractive. The Bernardine houses of Citeaux and Clairvaux affected the plainest style. We may here give an instance of the care taken of the precious volumes, by quoting the library rules of the canons regular: "The _armarius_ (literally, guardian of shelves or presses) should apply labels to the backs, catalogue the volumes, go over them twice or thrice in the year, see that they were not crowded, and that every volume was in its place." In case of a loan he was to record the borrower's address, the title of the volume, and the deposit received, which in all cases should be the registered value of the book. When the book was highly prized, he was not to give it out without the express sanction of the prior or abbot. He had charge of the parchment, the ink, the pens, the bodkins, and the penknives, and he kept an eye on the intern and extern copyists. The writers of funeral billets and of business letters were also under his control. He provided his indoor copiers with a quiet apartment where no one had right of ingress but the abbot, the prior, or the sub-prior. He examined the purity of the texts, the binding, the condition of the volumes. He kept the volumes in daily use, such as the Bibles, the accounts of the passion, the lives of the saints, and the homilies in a place accessible to all, regulated the readings during meal times, and corrected faults committed in reading or chanting, and arranged processions. Our Benedictine librarian had no sinecure.

The Rich Libraries Of the Begging Brothers.

The Dominicans were no less careful of their literary treasures. In a general chapter of the order, held at Saragossa in 1309, it was forbidden to every prior, sub-prior, or officer commissioned by them, to bestow, sell, lend, or pledge any book of which there was but one copy in the respective houses. Whoever was guilty of infraction was to be deprived of his faculties (official to wit) for three years. The theological works should not be sold out of the order. Whoever disobeyed should, till the restitution of the property, fast on bread and water one day in every week. A student was privileged, in cases of urgent necessity, to sell a book, the Bible and the great work of St. Thomas of Aquino excepted.

The English Richard de Bury before mentioned found the Dominicans the most keen-scented and zealous retrievers of rare treasures in bibliography.

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"When," said he, "they traverse seas and deserts, when they search the recesses of convents, they never forget me. What beast of chase can escape these keen hunters? What fish so small can wriggle out of their nets?"

He goes on, mentioning how they despatch to him sermons lately preached in Rome, discourses delivered at a Paris university, and adds:

"We are now about visiting their convents and their books. There in a profound poverty we shall discover untold of treasures. We shall find in their baskets and their wallets, along with such crumbs as men fling to the dogs, the unleavened bread of proposition, the bread of angels, the granaries of Joseph filled with wheat, all the riches of Egypt, all the sumptuous presents which the queen of Sheba offered to Solomon. Yes! having come into the vineyard at the eleventh hour, the friars-preachers have secured the richest vintage." (Victor le Clerc.)

These Begging Brothers, being a rich and numerous branch, secured the most valuable works everywhere. The Archbishop of Armagh having sent four theological students to complete their course at Oxford, they were obliged to return as they went, the Mendicant friars having bought up all the books: so that the poor Irishmen could neither borrow nor buy the Bible nor any theological work.

Divers presents were made from time to time to these lovers of books. In the end of a MS. of the Dominicans at Clermont, containing the pastoral of St. Gregory, and some tracts of St. Jerome and St. Isadore of Seville, is found the following note:

"The Seigneur Peter d'Andre, citizen of Clermont, licentiate in both laws, (LL.D.,) at first bishop of Noyon, then of Clermont, and finally of Cambrai, has given us this book and many others. Wherefore we bind ourselves to Celebrate his anniversary [Footnote 122] in perpetuity. You who read in this book, pray to God for him, for he has done us great kindnesses, and we owe much to him, as well as to his family. Let him who shall wickedly efface these words be Anathema! So be it! Dated on St. George's day, the 23d of the month of April, 1377."

[Footnote 122: That is, celebrate divine offices for the repose of soul.]

The Franciscans possessed poor libraries compared with those of the Dominicans. Indeed the accumulation of the profane writers seemed inconsistent with the spirit of the order. The following story was put in currency either to advance the views of the body or throw ridicule on their fear or neglect of classic literature. We incline to the first theory, and will give the outline of the little drama with as little irreverence as we can.

There were two Friars Minors in a convent at Marseilles, one the guardian of the library, the other the reader, and both attentive students of the rare old pagan classics. On the same night the summons came to both, and a monk of their order, but living in a distant province, had a vision at the moment of their departure which terrified him not a little. He saw them passing to judgment, preceded by two mules heavily laden with books, and it appeared to him that their patron, St. Francis, was commissioned to examine into their lives, and pass sentence. The awe-struck monk then heard the following questions and answers: "What use made you of these books?" "We read them." "Did you act as they recommended?" "By no means." "Then as it was through a principle of vanity and in contempt of your holy law of poverty you amassed so many volumes, and left neglected that which God ordained, you and your books shall!" ...... The poor monk awoke terrified beyond expression, and was confirmed in his utter neglect of Homer, Virgil, and Horace, and in his predilection for the study of the Bible and the early fathers.

The Sorbonne.

If the universities had heard the above narrative, it did not make much impression on them. They multiplied books--the university of Paris particularly; but this last was unprovided with a suitable lodgment for them as well as for itself, and was obliged to borrow accommodation for its assemblies from the establishment of the Mathurins, and for its sermons on great occasions, the pulpit of the Dominicans, corner of the Rue Saint Jacques. {400} It left to posterity only one library of importance, that of the Sorbonne. [Footnote 123]

[Footnote 123: This much spoken of institution was founded by Robert, a canon of Cambrai, born in the village of Sarbon, in the Ardennes, in 1201. He was much endeared to Louis IX, (St. Louis) by his learning and piety, and became his chaplain. He conceived the project of an institution in which clergymen supported by government might gratuitously instruct poor students in theology, and thus give great assistance to the university. St. Louis warmly approving his design, the institution was opened in 1252 with sixteen poor scholars selected from England, Gaul, Normandy, and Picardy, the four nations so called. Four German scholars were afterward affiliated. Each candidate for admission was obliged to maintain these propositions against all opponents one day from five A.M. to seven P.M. The institution continued to maintain its reputation for theological science down to the first revolution. It was reestablished, and still exists.]

Among the rare old collections of manuscripts, that of the Sorbonne deserves honorable mention. In 1290 it included 1017 volumes. About that time a heroic socius simply calling himself "John," seeing so many volumes never taken off the shelves nor opened, owing to the want of a catalogue, set to the work, and made out one to the best of his abilities, assorting the books into a few general classes. He arranged the works in each class by the authors' names, and after the title he copied a few words of the commencement--a very useful proceeding. Generally the books in the convents were only lent to the brothers or other inmates of the house, or to some one of the order; but in the Sorbonne library the volumes were freely lent to all applicants on depositing somewhat more than the value of the work in gold, silver, or some more valuable book, the rule being _Extraneo sub juramento_-to an extern--under oath, (to return the work.)

We find the lending system in full vigor with most of the libraries either gratis or at a very trifling charge. Besides the catalogues, they possessed at the Sorbonne a registry for the lending department. In this registry were not only marked the opening words of the first page, but also those of the third, sometimes those of the last leaf but one, in order that, if the borrower was rogue enough to return a volume different from the one borrowed, he might be easily detected. It is a matter worth attention, the low prices set on books in common use by ordinary folk or by students. Tullius de Officiis, de Senectute et de Amicitia was valued at decem sols--say five pence sterling. Allowing even for the high value of money at the time in relation to that of our day, the price seems out of all proportion with the materials of the book and the time bestowed on the writing. Baron Tauchnitz at this moment would make the poorest student pay about half a florin for it, notwithstanding the aid of movable type and steam presses.

Some of the works in this register were distinguished by the word _catenatus_, (chained to its place,) others by _deficit_. Among books in this category were most of the Libri in Gallico. These were called romances, whatever the subject. Thus we find Romancium de Rosa, Romancium quod incipit Miserere mei, (one of the Seven Penitential Psalms;) Romancium de decem praeceptis, sine rigmo, et dicitur Gallice, (romance of the Ten Commandments unrhymed and issued in the French language;) Le libre roiaus (roiaulx, royal) de Vices et Virtus (sic): Incipit Ce sont li X commandemens.

From the year 1321 they began to bestow or sell numbers of the less important works, for the library had outgrown the calculated proportions, and such things as the students' _cahiers_ (copy books) and old sermons only took up valuable space.

The learned Bishop of Durham bequeathed his valuable library to the university of Oxford in 1344; and actuated by the same good spirit, left directions that the books should be lent even as the works in the Sorbonne on receiving sufficient security.

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Unprincipled Book Borrowers.

Many were the deplorable losses of valuable books incurred by lending but yet the practice was productive of too many and too great benefits to be discontinued. No one in our days, except a true bibliomaniac or the keeper of a circulating library, can enter into the sore feelings of abbot or rector of a university when the invaluable MS. was either lost or returned damaged. Such a heart-scald was inflicted on Peter called Monoculus, (one-eyed,) abbot of Clairvaux, when a book lent to a neighboring abbot was returned as wet as if it had been placed under a water-pipe. Observe the rascality of the messenger! He came by night, made a great bustle, turned off the attention of the unsuspicious librarian, got another volume instead, and departed at a very early hour to escape a perquisition. This was in 1187. In the next century the Abbot Philip, with feelings soured by such instances of want of principle, would not lend the tracts of St. Augustin, humbly and earnestly demanded. No; there they were--too large to be carried away. "His dear brother was welcome to send an accredited writer to make a copy."

Proprietors of valuable books became so chary from sad experience, that unless the messenger who came to borrow was provided with a good steed, he would not be entrusted with the treasure. This supposes some distance to separate lender from borrower.

Saint Louis and Charles the Wise were liberal in bestowing and lending. Borrowers, as has been their custom since the days of Job, were found frequently false in their vows, and after the reign of poor Charles VI., _deficit_ was found in multiplied instances in the royal register after the names of works in request. So strong was the desire among lettered people to be the owners of valuable works that a certain learned monk was not considered above the temptation of what some lawyers have termed _conveyancing_. In a life of St. Bernard it is related that one day at Clairvaux he thus addressed three novices: "One of you will make his escape this night: let the others watch and not allow him to take away anything." Two fell asleep, the spirit of evil sitting very heavy on their eyelids. The third, who staid awake, saw about daybreak two giants enter, and place under the nostrils of one of the sleepers a roast fowl encircled by a serpent. Roused by the deluding smell, he got up, approached the library, forced open the door, and was about making off with some of the literary treasures. Being stopped by his fellow-students, he attempted to scale the wall, but being prevented and still remaining impenitent, he lost his reason, and continued in that state till be died.

In some of the old abbeys the place of the library is still to be found sunk in the thickness of the wall, as well as the desks of wood or stone before it, fixed there for the behoof of the copyists.

Fires aided the class of knavish borrowers in destroying the labors of the learned and their copiers. Twenty-two thousand volumes were reported as burned at Saint Vicent at Laon. The entire books of Livy were lost, if some people are to be trusted, at the Benedictine abbey of Malmesbury. A savant said he saw the Treatises on the Republic, by Cicero, in a certain convent in 1517, and when he inquired some time after for it, the reply was, that they had been _furto praerepti_, [Footnote 124] (thievishly abstracted.)

[Footnote 124: Cardinal de Mai was enabled to rescue a portion of the work. A copy of his edition was published in London in 1828, with a fac-simile of a page of the palimpsest exhibiting the ancient and modern letters.]

Besides strong locks and vigorous anathemas, chains were used to secure some of the most valued volumes from pilfering fingers. Some suspected books were even fastened to their shelves with stout nails, as tradition relates to have happened to Roger Bacon's works at the hands of his unscientific brethren, Lord Litton's Friar Bungay being probably the most active on the occasion. Under the treatment of the nails the book could not be read. A relic of the old custom has remained till now in some churches of Florence, where missals and rituals may be read under wire gratings, and even the leaves turned over.

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Unworthy Curators.

As a rule libraries in the possession of kings and lords were not as carefully watched as those in convents. A remarkable exception to conventual care is recorded by Boccaccio when relating a visit to the Benedictines of Mount Cassino. He found the door of the library left open, and the books covered by a thick coat of dust, grass growing on the windows, the volumes imperfect, the margins clipped, and everything denoting the greatest negligence. On inquiring the cause of the injury to the volumes, he learned that they erased the writing from the vellum to write psalters (the Seven Penitential Psalms) for young people on them, and clipped off the margins to receive short prayers. About the same time the French king's library was not better secured. It was near the falconry, and the new librarian Giles Malet, apprehensive that the "birds and other beasts" would take the liberty of coming in and injuring the volumes, the wire-worker got eighteen golden francs for applying wire screens to the windows.

At the same convent of Mount Cassino, Mabillon saw the remains of a manuscript of the tenth century, converted to covers. Montfaucon was informed by the archbishop of Rosano that one of his predecessors being rather annoyed by a succession of curious scholars to inspect some Greek documents in his possession, hid them in the earth to get rid of the annoyance. [Footnote 125]

[Footnote 125: The first of these two eminent scholars was born in the diocese of Rheims in 1632, and became a Benedictine monk at St. Maur, same diocese, at the age of 21. Being employed at Saint Denys to show the curiosities of the place, he fortunately broke a glass which had once belonged to Virgil! He received his _congé_ in consequence. His next employment was on the lives of the Saints of the Benedictine order, the Spicilegium, and when his brethren of St. Maur were editing the works of the fathers he was entrusted with those of St. Bernard. Being sent by Colbert into Germany to collect for the library archives of France, he made many valuable acquisitions. The celebrated abbot of La Trappe, De Rancé, having contended that many in a religious state should not distract their attention with literature, Mabillon was appointed to answer him, a duty which he performed with great effect, but in a very mild manner. Le Tellier presented him to Louis XIV., by whom he was graciously received. The learned Du Cange being consulted by a stranger on some abstruse points, sent him to Dom Mabillon. "You have applied to an ignorant person," said D. M. "Go to my master in erudition, M. de Cange." "Why!" said the other, "it was he who directed me to you." This modest and devout and learned man died in Paris in 1707 at the age of seventy-five. Among his chief works is that history of the Benedictine order, and a work on diplomacy.]

Notwithstanding the care shown in influential quarters by heads of religious houses, by kings, by universities, and even the threats of excommunication issued against all pilferers or destroyers of good books, many instances of cruel neglect such as those quoted occurred. The curators of the Sainte Chapelle of Bourges felt so little interest in their literary property that the library was converted into a fowl-house, and valuable works were discovered there by sorrowful visitors, lying open on the desks, it being hard to say whether they were worse treated by the feathered or the unfeathered two-legged animals. These negligences notwithstanding, the work of conserving and reproducing standard works in the classics, and others in the native tongue, went on vigorously, the brave laborers little aware of the mighty aid near at hand for lightening and abridging the labor of hands and pens, and even unable to conceive the possibility of the results of a few mechanical appliances to the rapid and almost infinite multiplication of literary works, a single copy of which required such close application, and such a length of time for its production.

If Saint Louis, when painfully increasing his library in the Sainte Chapelle, volume by volume, and at slow intervals, had been vouchsafed in one of his nightly visions the knowledge of the art and mystery of printing, and, while his whole being was filled with joy and admiration, suddenly awoke, and found all the steps of the process completely vanished from his memory, what anguish would have seized on him for a time, and with what disgust he would continue to witness the snail-like progress of a book, word by word, and line by line, till the writer reached the colophon. {403} However, the possibility of what we now look on as a commonplace privilege and convenience never disturbed the equanimity of the earnest laborers of the fourteenth century, and they performed their daily tasks with patient content, and frequently with enjoyment.

Lay Libraries and Popular Fictions.

The Bibliotheque Royal dates its origin from a collection in the Sainte Chapelle of Saint Louis's palace, made by the good king for his own special reading, as well as for that of his friends of good taste. Something was done by his successors, but the real history of the royal library begins with Charles V., surnamed the "Wise."

Old house-keeping accounts preserved till the great fire on 27th October, 1737, and then partially destroyed, have put it into the power of archaeologists to point out that particular tower of the Louvre called the Library Tower. There were two floors wainscotted with _boìs d'Irlande_--shillela oak, as we may suppose--vaulted with cypress wood, and all ornamented with bas-reliefs. The painted windows were furnished with brass wire and iron bars. There were _lutrines_, (choristers' desks,)' _pupitres tournants_, (desks revolving on pivots,) and some of these were brought from the palace. Thirty small chandeliers and a silver lamp were lighted when evening came, and thus the students were enabled to study at night.

From some of the household accounts of Charles V. still in preservation, we learn that this Irish oak, to the amount of four hundred and eighty pieces, was presented in 1364 to the Wise King, to be used in the building of his castle, the donor being the seneschal of Hainault. The chief part of the volumes in the library of the Louvre were in the French tongue.

Besides the pieces of native literature already mentioned, we may here quote the following as the established favorites:

Romances About Charlemagne And His Peers: Berte, Roland et Olivier, Roncevaux, Merlin, Gaidon, le Voyage à Jerusalem, Ferabras, Garin de Monglane, Dame Aye, Amis et Amile, Jordain de Blaives, Ogier le Danois, (Holger the Dane,) Beuve d'Aigremont, les Quartre Fils d'Aymon, Maugis, Aubri le Bourgoing, Gui de Nanteuil, Beuve de Hanstone, Basin, Carlon, Anseis de Carthage, Guillaume au Court Nez.

Tales Of The Round Table: La Mort d'Artus, le Saint Graal, Gauvain, l'Atre Perilleux, (Castle Perilous,) Glorion de Bretagne, Giron le Courtois (Sir Gawain, qu.) Meliadus, and those already mentioned.

Poems And Romances: Cleomedes, Blancandin, Gerart de Nevers, le Comte de Poitiers, Flore et Blanche-fleur, Gautier d'Aupais, Gui de Warwick, Meraugia, la Manckine, Robert le Diable.

Poems On Classic Subjects: Troie, Enéas, Narcissus, la Prise de Thèbes, (the Taking of Thebes,) le Siège d'Athènes, Ypomedon, Thesalus, Alexandre, Jules César, Vespasien.

Poems On Religious Traditions: les Machabées, la Passion, les Trois Maries, Barlaam et Josaphat, Lives of the Saints and Miracles.

Poems On Modern Subjects: Godefroi de Bouillon, le Voeu du Paon, (the Vow of the Peacock,) Songs, Fabliaux, collections of stories, such as the Dolopathos, allegorical compositions, as la Rose, le Renart, la Poire, l'Escoufle, instructive compositions like l'Image du Monde, le Livre de Charité, les Bestiaires, les Lapidaires, books of hunting, etc.

Many of these volumes were richly bound, and liberally paid for. The Duchess of Brabant, in 1369, paid to Maitre Jean six sheep for binding a French book. {404} In 1376, Godfrey Bloc (suitable name!) charged his patron, the Duke of Brabant, seven sheep and a half for binding Meliadus, and in 1383, twelve sheep for binding the Saint Graal, called in the bill by its other title, Joseph of Arimathea.

In the age of which we are treating Greek was little studied or known. The scholars were ignorant of the Greek historians, of the dramatic poets, even of Homer, of whom the poet Petrarch said, when his eyes first rested on a copy, "Your Homer is dumb to me, or rather I understand him not." Boccaccio, when young, attempted to translate him. Some Dominicans studied the language, but it was for the sake of their sermons, not to be able to peruse Homer, or even St. Chrysostom or St. Basil. The Greeks were schismatics, and everything coming from them was liable to a moral quarantine. The works of Aristotle and some others were accessible in Latin translations.

It is time to glance at the other subjects which, along with the classics and the romances in the native tongue, occupied the minds of the scholars of the fourteenth century, and filled the books they produced with such care and patience.

The Educational Cursus of the Fourteenth Century.

All the humanities of the day were included in the Trivium and the Quadrivium, the first comprising grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, and the second, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. This was apparently a strait circle for human intelligence to move in at freedom, but the prime masters in the intellectual craft endeavored to enlarge the various compartments to their widest extent. Thus into rhetoric crept poetry, epistolary correspondence, didactics, and translation. With dialectics came in philosophy entire. "Aristotle and his numerous interpreters," among whom were many saints, authorized free discussions on the highest abstractions of thought, on the natural sciences, on physiology and the curative art, on politics, and even on common law. Thus, without going out of the Trivium, see what a vast amount of facts were lugged in, analyzed, and discussed. In dialectics no subject was let drop till it was turned in every point of view, analyzed, and established in true or fancied relation to every other thing.

Grammar.

They were not at all scant--these earnest seekers--in grammatic manuals. They had their "Large Donatus," their "Small Donatus," and the commentary on Donatus by Remy of Anxerre; Priscian, entire and in abridgments; Bede's metres, and several modern works. Those not content with the mere enunciation of the old rules, would moralize them something in this style:

"'What is a prenomen?' [Footnote 126] _Man_ is thy nomen, _sinner_ is thy prenomen. So when you pray to God, make use only of thy prenomen, and say, 'O Heavenly Father, I invoke not thy name as man, but I implore thy pardon as sinner.'"

[Footnote 126: In Caius Julius Caesar, _Caius_ is the prenomen, corresponding to our Christian name, _Julius_ is the nomen or family name, _Caesar_ the adnomen, derived from some particular event or circumstance.]

Wonderful were the applications of even such simple things as the four (five) declensions. The first declension was from the obedience of God to the suggestion of the devil. Eve made this declension. The second is from the obedience of God to the obedience to the woman. This declension was made by Adam. The third declension is from Paradise to this world; the fourth from this world to hell.

Analogies of grammar and piety were often of a slight and whimsical tissue. Some of them might be classed with modern conundrums, thus. "Why is the preposition a theme of pleasure to the elect? Because _Illi praeponuntur damnandis._" "Why does an interjection resemble the sufferings of the damned? Because it is the expression of the soul by an unmeaning sound."

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Such was the tendency of the time for extracting moral conclusions, that Ovid's Metamorphoses served as an excellent text-book for the learned Dominican Thomas Walleis, for the enunciation of a series of moral axioms which the Epicurean poet of Augustus's court never dreamed of for a moment. Philippe de Vitri, friend to Petrarch, made a Latin prose version of the book, and educed Christian dogmas from the least austere of the tales.

The attention paid by our fourteenth century scholars to their Latin grammar, and their aptitude to convert it to as many uses as the Knave in the folk story did his pack of cards, ceases to excite much wonder when it is recollected that a practical grammar of the native language at the time was a complete desideratum. What a falling was that from the state of things when the Canterbury pilgrims may be supposed to have collected at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, and when the trouvères told and sung their lays. Every Chaucerian will recall at once the sweet nun, Madame Englentyne:

"That of hire smylyng was ful simple and coy; Hire grettest ooth was but by Seint Loy; Entuned (the service) in hire nose ful semyly. And Frensch she spak ful faire and fetyaly. After the scole of Strattford atte Bowe. For Frensch of Paris was to hire unknowe."

French must consequently have been taught with more or less attention to grammar rules long before the period with which this paper is occupied, and it is a case of comfort to archaeologists that a French grammar exists written by Gautier de Biblesworth in the thirteenth century, for the instruction of English natives in that language, and principally for Lady Dionysia de Monchensi, of the county of Kent, wife to Count Hugh de Vere. The author in his preface modestly announced it as "Le Tretys Ke (qui) Mounsire Gauter de Bibelesworth fist (fit) a ma Dame Dionysie de Mounchenay pur aprise de Language." [Footnote 127] Master Biblesworth, if that was his name, mixed his grammatical rules with educational precepts, beginning very properly at the birth of his pupil, and naming the different parts of the body, terms of agriculture, domestic economy, hunting, fishing, and gardening, and all conveyed in octosyllabic verse, with the slightest possible pretension to poetry.

[Footnote 127: "The treatise which Monsieur Walter de Blblesworth has composed for My Lady, Dionysie de Mounchenay, to learn the language," etc.]

That people with some pretensions to education took pride in speaking the "Frensch of Paris" with propriety long before the fourteenth century, is evinced by the boast of the Picard trouvère, Guernes, who recited his poem at the tomb of Saint Thomas of Canterbury in 1173:

"Mes languages est buens car en France ful nez." [Footnote 128]

[Footnote 128: "My language is good, for in France was I born." The reader will remark the Latin instead of the modern French form for the verb _was_.]

Quenes de Bethunes, a contemporary and authoress of several fine songs, excused herself for using provincial words, for "she was of Artois, not of Pontoise." A century later, the poets mention the request in which professors of French were among foreigners. They relate how "good Queen Bertha of the long feet spoke French like any lady of Paris"--more favored in this than Chaucer's good prioress. There was a humorous poem current among the people, in which _Dom. Barbarisme_ played a ludicrous part, and which would not have circulated among the laity if they had no notion of French grammar.

Domestic troubles and other causes, for whose introduction we have not space, had effected the destruction of grammatical treatises previous to 1400. About that date the translator of the psalter into the vulgar tongue thus bewailed the general ignorance:

"Et pour ceu que, nulz ne tient eu son parlier, ne rigle certenne, mesure, ne raison. Est langue romance si corrompue qu' à poinne li uns eutent l'aultres, et à poinne puet on trouveir à jour d'ieu personne qui saiche escrire, anteir,(_Chanter_,) ne prononcieir en une meisme semblant menieir, mais eseript, ante, et prononce, li uns en une guise, et li aultre eu une aultre." [Footnote 129]

[Footnote 129: And because no one observes in his speech either a certain rule, measure, or reason, the romance tongue is so corrupted that scarcely one understands another, and scarcely can a person be found to-day who knows how to write, sing, and pronounce in the same manner; but they write, sing, and pronounce--one in one way, another in a different way.]

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The strong predilection of churchmen and princes for the Latin tongue was one of the chief causes of the tardy amelioration of the French language and French grammar. In a council held in the palace in 1398, where the vulgar tongue was spoken, a learned ecclesiastic, by name Pierre Plaoul, excused his indifferent style of speaking by his want of familiarity with the tongue. Others spoke as bad or worse, but made no apology. It was as late as 1345 that the government thought it advisable to put forth in the language of the people laws respecting the tanners, curriers, and makers of baldrics and shoes in Paris, as they were ignorant of Latin.

The early composers of French grammars under the new order, instead of studying the spirit of the language as it was then spoken by educated people, subjected it to the rules of the Latin tongue as given by Donatus and others. Much time was lost and much linguistic error propagated by this arrangement. As time went on, and that attention which had been entirely given to a foreign tongue began to be shared with the language of the country, some philologists took to study its construction, and frame suitable rules for the government and concord of its chief parts; and by degrees the orthography and the syntax of the language became subject to laws which fitted its character.

Rhetoric.

Under the name rhetoric, as already mentioned, were joined to eloquence historic recitals, letter writing, didactic teaching, translations, and poetry. Few treatises on the art have survived. The Dominicans were fonder of practising than teaching it, and some who taught it correctly could not refrain from allegorizing on it in the style already alluded to. Under Molenier's management, three kings, Barbarisme, Solecisme [Footnote 130], and Allebolé, make war on three queens, Diction, Oration, and Sentence.

[Footnote 130: The Greek inhabitants of _Soli_ in Cillcia suffered "their parts of speech" to be affected for the worse by intercourse with the neighboring barbarians. So the fastidious Athenians began to designate all infractions of grammar as _solecisms_.]

They possess in common ten arrows--pleonasm, tautology, ellipse, tapinosis, (obscurity, qu.,) etc. Allebolé has thirteen daughters, Barbarisme fourteen, and Solecisme twenty-two, and the number of grandchildren is not small. If any reader desires to see how men of some talent can lose themselves in matters trifling and intricate at the same time, let him procure Molenier's treatise, or even that of the chronicler Chastellain, where he will find Dame Rhetoric accompanied by science, gravity, multiform riches, flowery memory, noble nature, precious possession, laudable deduction, old acquisition, etc.

The professors of rhetoric in the middle ages had sundry classic writers to fall back on, such as Quintilian, Aristotle, Cicero, etc. They had also the aid of Priscian, Donatus, and Isadore of Seville. Among the earliest specimens of eloquence assuming the garb of the vulgar tongue was the eulogium pronounced on the brave Bertrand du Gueselin by the bishop of Auxerre, Ferrie Cassinel, at the request of Charles VI. A poet of the century thus described its effects:

"Les princes fondolent en larmes, Des mots que l'evesque monstroit; Quar il disoit, 'Plorez gens d'armes Bertrant qui trestant vos amoit. On doit regreter les fex d'armes Qu'il fist au temps qu'il vivoit. Dieux ait pitie sur toutes ames; De la sienne quar bonne estoit.'" [Footnote 131]

[Footnote 131: "The princes melted in tears At the words which the bishop spoke; for he said, 'Weep, ye men of arms, Bertrand, who so much loved you. We should regret those feats of arms Which he performed in the time he lived. O God! have pity on all souls; and in _his_, for he was good.'"]

Four men of that era distinguished themselves by eloquence at the bar, and in addressing assemblies in the tumultuous days of the poor demented king. Jean Faure and Guillaume le Breul besides their speeches, left behind them valuable works on jurisprudence; and their learned contemporary, Yves de Kaermarten, acquired such a good name that he was promoted to the Calendar of Saints. {407} We are unable to quote any other gentleman of the bar whose sanctity attained the heroic degree. Renault d'Acie and Jean des Marès ventured among the political tempests of the day, and perished in their patriotic efforts.

Few instances of eloquence, ancient or modern, could surpass that of Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, if we can trust the chroniclers. Having been released from prison, and brought to Paris, 29th November, 1357, he ascended a platform near the Pre aux-cleres (the Clerk's Meadow) in the morning, and kept a considerable portion of his ten thousand auditors either crying at, or deeply sympathizing with, his pretended wrongs, till the dinner hour of the citizens had passed. He afterward scattered his poison among multitudes at the Greve and the Halles. His oration made to a deputation at St. Denis bears an annoying resemblance to some delivered not very long since in various American cities, by patriots of our own time:

"Gentlemen and friends," said he, "no ill luck can befall you which I will not freely share. But I strongly counsel you, while you govern Paris, to provide yourselves well with gold and silver. Confide in me. Send me here freely all that you can put together. I shall give you a good account of it, and will have at your service numerous men at arms, many comrades who shall defend you from your enemies."

The speeches of the wicked king were mostly prefaced by texts, but it is not rightly known whether this _argumentum ad crumenam_ was so garnished.

While some exhibited their eloquence in defending or accusing prisoners, and others spoke against king, or chiefs of obnoxious parties, some minstrels were still to be found chanting the old romances for ready money. In 1368, the municipal authorities of Valenciennes are found allowing Colart de Maubeuge, "xii gros, in value vi sols ix deniers, for playing on his instrument, and singing gests of arms." The ancient romances of Charlemagne, of King Arthur, and of the wars of Troy, were still in possession of the popular mind, but such poets as there were did not fail to seize on recent or passing events, and do their best to immortalize them, as well as perpetuate their own fame. The raising of the walls of New Ross, on the Barrow, was celebrated by a poet of the day in two hundred and nineteen verses, in which the patriotism of the citizens, and the clergy, and the ladies, was sung, not forgetting the beauty of the women of all degrees, whose delicate hands did not disdain to bring materials to the masons. "Yet in no part of the earth, where the minstrel had been, did he ever see such beauty."

"Kique la fu pur regarder Meint bele dame, y put veer Ke unke en terre ou jal esté, Tants belies ne vi in fossé."

The siege of Carlaverock by King Edward I., in 1300, where six hundred men defended the place against three thousand assailants, was sung by an eye-witness in octo-syllabic rhyme.

The Vow of the Heron, commencing the war between Edward III. and Philippe de Valois, was not neglected by the rhymers. Collins, trouvere of John of Hainault, Lord of Beaumont, in a poem of five hundred and sixty-six eight-syllable verses, lamented the fate of the brave old king of Bohemia, and his ostrich plume and the other victims of the battle of Creci, signalized by the minstrels of the era as in

"L'an mil iij.c.xl.vj., Que nos seigneurs furent occis En la bataille de Creci; Jhü Cris leur face mierci!" [Footnote 132]

[Footnote 132: "The year one thousand, three hundred, forty, and six, When our lords were slain In the battle of Creci; Jesus Christ show them mercy!"]

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The life and deeds of the Black Prince were commemorated by Chandos, the herald of Sir John Chandos, Constable of Aquitaine, in five thousand and forty-six verses, of the same measure as those others recorded. We quote a few lines of the courteous communications between the captive king and the chivalric prince.

"Li rois Johan lui ad dit, 'Beaux douis cosins pur Dieu mercit. Laissez; il n'apartient a moi, Car par la foi que jeo vous doi, Plus avez ei jour d'hul d'honour Qu'onques n'éust prince a un jour.' Dont dist il prince, 'Sire douls, Dieux l'ad fait et non mie nous. Si l'en devons remercier, Et de bon coer vers lui prier, Qu'll nous ottroier sa gloire, Et pardonner cesto victoire,'" etc. [Footnote 133]

[Footnote 133: "But King John to him said, 'Fair, sweet cousin, God-a-mercy, Let be; it belongs to me not, For, by the faith which I owe thee, More honor this day you've won Than ever did prince in any one day (of fight)' Then to him said the prince, Sweet sire, God has achieved it, not we ourselves, So to him we should give thanks, And with good heart thus pray to him, That he would give us his glory, And pardon this victory.'"]

The single-minded and patriotic Du Guesclin was not forgotten by the poetic chroniclers. Jean Cuvelier, in 1384, put his deeds in verse.

Judicious historians have not disdained to avail themselves of these productions of the rhymers. They have extracted those passages from them which were despised by the matter-of-fact chroniclers, but which had an air of probability, and were calculated to add picturesque and interesting features to the narrative.

It is highly probable that every ancient narrative poem which was not inspired by mere emulation of former poets had some foundation in fact. The mere invention of subjects, as well as their treatment, is a feature of comparatively modern times. The personages figured by _Reynard, Bruin, Isgrim_, and the other animals of the great beast-epic of the middle ages, once lived and acted some way in the spirit of their four-footed substitutes.

Toward the end of the century, the taste for the old rhymes, romances, and narratives began to veer round to more trivial and simple subjects, and to take more interest in the distinctions between the different classes of the shorter pieces of poetry. Prosody had been in process of cultivation for some time, and now the attention of such dilettanti as filled courts and the castles of the nobles was more strongly arrested upon feet, accents, lengths, measures, and number of lines in each piece, than in the deed recorded or sentiments expressed.

While Froissart was searching for material for his chronicle, in 1392, Eustache des Champs was instructing poetic students in the difference between _chansons, balades, virelais,_ and _rondeaux_. He was well entitled to do so, having himself composed 80 virelais, 171 rondeaux, 1,175 balades. These ballads he divided into _Leonines, Sonnantes, equivoques, retrogrades,_ etc., etc.; but in the next century his merits were forgotten in presence of Henri de Croy, who subdivided his ballads into _communes, balladantes, fatrisées_, and the rondeaux into simple, twin, and double. Then care should be taken not to mix the rhymes beaten, broken, re-linked, doubled tailed, etc., in form of amorous complaint. The combination denominated _ricquerac_, and that called _baguenaude_ we would explain but for the misfortune of being ignorant of their structure. The first, perhaps, was a disjointed affair, like some negro melody, the other, a perpetual hovering round the predominant idea, whatever it might be.

That was the golden age of bouts rimés, logogriphes, enigmas, chronographes, achrostiches, and fatfasies, (unmeaning combinations of words.) In Henri de Croy's great work, even the single fatrasies were distinguished from the double ones. The reign of these egregious morsels still lingers in some almanacs, people's penny periodicals, and even in the Paris Illustrated News, where the logogriph, consisting partly of letters and partly of pictured objects, keeps the subscribers in misery till next Saturday, when the solution appears.

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The taste of the public with regard to spectacles was not superior to that of the readers of the time for such trifles as have been just mentioned. In 1313, when the young princes, sons of Philip the Fair, received the order of knighthood, a grand mystery was exhibited to the people of Paris, where the Infant Saviour was presented smiling on his mother and eating an apple, surrounded by the three kings of Cologne, (the Magi,) the twelve apostles saying their paternosters, the souls of the blessed in paradise singing hymns in unison with ninety angels, and the reprobate in hell howling for the entertainment of about a hundred demons.

Of translations, which were also included under the head rhetoric, we have already spoken. As Latin was almost the only language from which the versions were made, the spirit of that language must have had considerable influence on future compositions in the vulgar tongue.

Dialectics.

In teaching and learning the dialectics, which embraced metaphysics, jurisprudence, political economy, and even claimed physics for its jurisdiction, the object seemed rather a victory in a war of words and ideas than discoveries of new truths or the establishment of old ones. Hair-splitting and sophistry flourished in all the contests. So useless and even criminal seemed this amazing waste of time to quiet-minded and earnest people, that a legend was current in the twelfth century of a dead scholar appearing to a comrade in a robe of hell all covered with sophisms. Another displayed himself wrapped round and oppressed with a heavy parchment all covered with closely written exercises in the _dialectique_. Both attributed their present sufferings to the sort of logic they had acquired in the Paris schools.

Irish students were as redoubtable in these witty duels in the Sorbonne and in Salamanca as Irish colonels and generals of later times in the armies of France and Spain and Austria. In metaphysics, the realists, with John Duns Scotus for leader, warred with the nominalists, using such arms as were supplied by substantial forms, quiddities, heccéites, polycarpéites, and other such chimeras, the result being nothing but obscurity of the understanding from these clashings in the dark. Sometimes the sharp-witted dialecticians intruded rashly on the domains of theology and morality, and were smartly pulled up, as in the case of the great interpreter of Aristotle, Nicolas d'Autrecourt, in 1348, for this ingenious proposition:

"A young man of good birth met with a sage who undertook to communicate the 'universal science' to him without delay, for a hundred crowns; but the young man had no other means to procure the money than by stealing it. Was he justified in this theft? Certainly; for we must do what is agreeable to God; but it was agreeable to God that this young man should get instruction, and he had no other means to get it than theft; ergo," etc.

A sharp condemnation by the Theological Faculty of Paris was all the honor awarded to Mr. Nicolas's plausible conclusion.

In physics and natural history, our philosophers of the middle ages were more prone to depend on Aristotle and Pliny, and later dreamy sages, than to resort to careful observation. Theory, not induction, was their darling mode of enlarging the domain of human knowledge, and no fact fitted comfortably in its place without being moralized. Far away in the realms of Prester John were to be found giants, pigmies, men with one eye in front and three behind, female warriors, griffins, licorns, and alerions, animals well adapted to point a moral.

The learned Pierre Bercheure, who translated Livy, informed his readers that the toad was mute in every country but France. _Moral_: The Frenchman, a babbler at home, is perforce mute when he goes abroad. The learned Bercheure either intended to hint that the Gaul too much neglected the study of foreign languages, or that, while vainglorious at home, he became meek and humble when he crossed the frontier.

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Still proceeding in this moral strain, Dr. Bercheure asked, "Why, in the territory of Orange, was utterance by sound denied to all toads, one only excepted?" No answer being received, he gave this explanation: The holy bishop, Florent, being much disturbed in his meditations by the disagreeable songs of the toads, ordered them to be silent. They obeyed on the moment, and the good bishop was so touched by their prompt attention to his command that he revoked his order. However, the stupid messenger who brought the news, instead of using the plural form of the verb--_cantate_--merely said _canta_, and thus only one of the community ever after could avail itself of the privilege: nasty Mercury! say we. These additions to Pliny could scarcely be called improvements in the science of natural history.

For a long time the healing art was nearly monopolized by the religious houses, but it was not so without an occasional scruple of conscience on the part of the chiefs in the various orders. They feared that their art might too much engross the attention of the practitioners. To moderate their mere scientific ardor, the following legend was sent abroad among them: There was a skilful medical man among the monks of Citeaux, whose time was so much taken up in provincial excursions that he was not found in the convent unless at the great festivals. As he was employed on one of the feasts of the Blessed Virgin, singing in choir with the rest, he was favored with a vision of his heavenly patroness distributing a spoonful of elixir to every one of the singers, himself alone excepted. He made a gesture of supplication not to be treated to such an unenviable distinction, but this reply reached the recesses of his understanding without any action of the senses: "Physician, thou hast no need for my elixir, for you do not deny to yourself any consolation." A radical change was wrought in the man, and on the next solemnity he was favored as the rest. Such was the rapture into which he was thrown, that for the future his healing excursions were as short and as few as possible.

There was no college of physicians at Paris nor Montpellier in the beginning of the twelfth century, but considerable progress was made in founding medical establishments during the next two hundred years. Some enthusiastic pill-taker thus expanded in commendation of the faculty of Paris in 1323:

"In this city, where there is no want or consolation or succor, the physicians appointed to look after our health and the cure of our maladies, and whom the sage orders us to honor as being created by the Most High for our needs, are so numerous that, when they pass through the streets to discharge their duty in their rich dresses and in their doctoral caps, those who have need of them have little trouble to get an interview. Oh! how we should love these good physicians, who, in the practice of their profession, philosophically conform themselves to the rules of science and long experience!"

We have seen a copy of the Medical Review, a brochure, in rhyme, issued in Dublin circa 1775, eulogizing by name the several physicians and surgeons who practised in our city at that period. It was written throughout in the spirit of the above extract, and, but for the evident good faith of the writer, would be supremely ludicrous.

All the old writers on the subject were not so complimentary to the faculty. Some of the members deserved what they got if they were of the sect of the impudent Arnaud de Villeneuve, some of whose counsels to his students took this shape: "You examine perhaps the ... of a patient without being anything the wiser for it, but say, 'There is an obstruction in the liver.' The patient may perhaps answer, 'But, master, it is in my head I feel the illness.' You answer without hesitation, 'It is from the liver it comes.' Always make use of the word obstruction. They don't know the meaning of it, and it's all for the best that they should not."

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But skilful or the reverse, the doctors of the fourteenth century found all their resources powerless to arrest the epidemic which about the middle of it swept across Europe. Its visitations were more appalling than those of cholera in our times. The physicians behaved as feeling and heroic men, and were swept off in thousands, while doing their duty by their patients. There was no writer found to introduce a series of licentious stories as sequel to a harrowing account of the scourge.

Among those who essayed to cure Charles VI. of his mental malady was Arnaud Guillem, who came in 1393 from Languedoc to Paris, bringing with him the volume Smagorad, which "Adam had received by way of consolation a century after the death of Abel." There is some doubt about his being put to death for failure; but two Augustine monks suffered in 1398, and four sorcerers in 1403, for the same liberty taken with sick majesty. It is probable that the heads stuck on spikes over palace gates for similar failures in our Household Stories had some foundation in pre-historic times. In one of his lucid intervals the poor king directed that once in the year the dead body of a criminal should be delivered to the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier, a proof that he set more value on the study of the human subject than the virtue of charms or other superstitious processes. Among medical treatises of the fourteenth century, some disfigured by the dreams of the astrologer, the alchymist, and the sorcerer, that of Gui de Chauliai stands pre-eminent for scientific attainment.

Arithmetic Geometry, Music, and Astronomy.

At first scholars were careful to avoid the title of mathematicians. Something magical and occult was attached to it, as in the old Roman times. Mathematician and felon were synonymous terms. Mere arithmetic was in better odor; it was useful in concocting the ordinary tables set in the beginning of prayer-books, and including the golden number, the epact, the dominical letter, etc.[Footnote 134] Calendars were carefully compiled all through the era in question. It has often puzzled us to know how calculations to any extent could be effected by the Xs and Vs and Is which denoted numbers previous to the eleventh century. Wretched was the pupil's lot (if such an incident ever took place) required to perform an operation in long division, in multiplication by tens of thousands, or to extract the cube root of a large number. Great are our obligations to the Arabians for the use of their system of notation.

[Footnote 134: These names mysterious to scholars of city and university, were household words with the masters of Hedge schools and their advanced pupils half a century ago.]

A household joke of the day throws light on the incapacity of the wives of small citizens to manage deep calculations. A few of the husbands drinking agree that he whose wife could not count up to four accurately should pay the reckoning. The calculation of Robin's wife was "One, two, three, seven, twelve, and fourteen." John's wife began at two. Tassin's wife tossed her head, and said she was not a baby, and would not count at all. We cannot find out which of the husbands paid the scot.

The geometry of the day chiefly confined itself to the measurement of land, but there were treatises on perspective, and portions of the Latin Euclid extant.

Charles the Wise was not without charts and maps of the world. Many such existed, but, as may be supposed, tolerably incorrect. The earth was supposed to consist of two hemispheres, glued, as it were, to each other, and the globe somehow maintained its place in the void like a suspended lamp.

In 1366, King Charles V., in order to prevail on Pope Urban V. not to remove to Rome, urged that Marseilles was in the centre of the civilized world. This would be rendered still more sensible by cutting off Greece from the general map. {412} "The schismatic Greeks cut themselves off from the spiritual world by their separation from the church: let their land be removed from the material world." It does not appear that this ingenious proposition was put in practice.

Of accounts of foreign parts there was no lack, and it must be said that the early books of travels and accounts of countries, if less strictly confined to facts than ours, were much more entertaining. A copy of Marco Polo's travels was presented in 1307 to Charles Count of Valois by John de Cepoy, son of the Venetian ambassador. John de Meun translated into French the Wonders of Ireland. They had also the Wonders of England, India, the World, etc.

Several works were composed in the fourteenth century on the subject of music, but chiefly in Latin and with reference to the established canons of sacred melody.

Astronomy had a hard strife with the impostor astrology, which had been so long in possession of the general intellect. However, some glimmerings of the true state of heavenly things had been gradually entering the minds of the astrologers themselves. The total eclipse of the moon on the night of the 15th of January, 1305, terrified the Parisians. It was mentioned as an _Eclipsis Lunae horribilis_. But an eclipse of the sun, 31st January, 1310, was predicted by the Faculty of Astronomy. Another in 1337 was treated of by John of Genoa, who, in 1332, had composed his canon of eclipses. Comets gave considerable disturbance to the public mind during this century. They predicted the death of Louis X., and the destruction of France, the plague, and all varieties of deceit, lies, hatred, and insubordination, etc. However, science was making a sure though slow progress, and toward the close of the century the learned were in possession of many astronomical facts unknown at the beginning. The comets made their fearful visits at these dates--March, 1315, July, 1337. April, 1338, 1340, 1346, 1360, 1368, 1378.

Several voyages and land journeys were performed during this century, and among the rest that by our own Sir John Mandeyille, some of whose discoveries were inferior to those of the truth-loving Lemuel Gulliver alone. The Holy Land possessed strong attractions for devout and cultivated souls. Of all these the most enthusiastic was the Tuscan Dominican, Riccoldo di Monte da Croce. Having gained the valley of Josaphat, he believed himself at the end of the world, and thus gave vent to his burning thoughts:

"We saw about the middle or the valley the tomb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and, considering it to be the place of the final Judgment, we passed between the Mount of Olives and Mount Cavalry, weeping, and trembling with fear, as if the Supreme Judge was already above our heads. In this sentiment of awe we thought within ourselves, and we said to each other--'It is from above this hill that the most Just of Judges will pronounce his decision. Here is the right hand, there is the left. We then selected, to the best of our judgment, our places on the right, and each sunk in the ground a stone to denote his own. I sunk mine, and I retain that spot for myself, and for all those who, after receiving from me the word of God, shall persevere in faith, in charity, and in the truth of the holy gospel, and we marked the stone in the presence of many of the faithful, who wept with us, and whom I call on as witnesses this day."

We have come to the end of our sketch of the progress of intelligence during a brief portion of its course, namely, that portion immediately preceding the epoch of the invention of the printing-press. The impediments in the way of scientific progress were great and humorous. Many weak spirits were discouraged, and did nothing; others, some few of whom we have particularized, wrought like giants, and thus benefited themselves and their kind. Among these benefits we do not reckon in chief the conveniences and luxuries which distinguish our existence from that of the Samoyeds or dog-ribbed Indians. The Mussulman, well to do, and spending the eleven twelfths of his time in mere indolence and indulgence of the senses, would be better off discharging the duties of porter or ferryman. {413} No, the chief advantages we derive from the advance of human knowledge is the easier and swifter communication between the scattered members of the great human family, the advance of education among the working classes, and the healthy occupation of so many active and energetic minds, which, without suitable work to do, would prey on themselves, and become a curse to their possessors.

Original.

Laudate Pueri Dominum. [Footnote 135]

[Footnote 135: Died at the Convent of the Visitation, Georgetown, D.C. on the 18th of April, .... a young girl thirteen years of age, who was received into the bosom of the Holy Church October 2d, 1866.]

"I will wash my hands among the Innocent, and so will I compass thy altar, O Lord!"

Oct. 2d. Feast Of The Holy Guardian Angels. Baptism

In snowy robe and spotless veil Stands the fair child at the altar rail. "Of Holy Church what askest thou?" "The FAITH," she murmured. Upon her brow The bright drops fell. An angel smiled In the face of God, all he said: "Thy Child!"

Dec. 8th. Feast Of The Immaculate Conception. First Communion.

In snowy robe and spotless veil Kneels the fair child at the altar rail. "Of Holy Chinch what cravest thou, On suppliant knee and with rev'rent brow?" "My Lord, my Hope, in whom I live." "'Tis thy Child!" said the angel. "Master, give!"

April 14th. Palm Sunday. Burial.

In snowy robe and spotless veil Lies the fair child at the altar rail. "Of Holy Church what askest thou, Palm-branch in hand, and with flower-crowned brow?" "In robe baptismal yet undefiled, MY LOVE!" Said the angel: "He waits thee, Child!"

{414}

Translated from Paris l'Union.

Christianity And Social Happiness.

It is the fate of illustrious men to reproduce the tendencies of the age in which they live--whether for good or evil. Thus, the study of characters, that the engraver of fame has impressed on the memory of humanity, leads frequently to a knowledge of the age to which they belonged, and from this knowledge much that is useful can be elicited.

A man has lived among us, whose noble character, generous aspirations, illusions even, or exaggerations, are reflected in his contemporaries. Lacordaire is France of the nineteenth century, and the thought that germinated in the soul of the celebrated Dominican, and until his time awaited its development, borne down by the weight of intellectual ruin which the school of Voltaire had amassed, this thought harmonizes so well with the genius of the day, and with its research, that it seems impossible not to recognize the ray of light destined to dissipate for ever the shadows of doubt and unbelief, which lead astray and weaken the life of our generation.

"I have attained to my catholic belief," writes Lacordaire, "through my social beliefs, and today nothing appears plainer to me than such a consequence. Society is necessary, therefore the Christian religion is divine; for it is the means of leading society to perfection by accepting man with all his weaknesses, and social order with its every condition."

Such words cannot be too deeply considered; and the truths that they express are in such close affinity with the tendencies of our time that it is easy and profitable to meditate upon them. We wish for the happiness of the masses, social prosperity, and the advancement of civilization; therefore, we wish for Christianity. Humanity is called upon to peaceably develop its strength, while releasing itself from the bonds of the monster called pauperism, with whom physical misery is only the clothing of moral. Therefore humanity is called upon to germinate in a reviving sun all Christian teachings.

Do you wish for facts? You are children of an age that acts only by experience. Well, then, light the torch of history, and, throwing its rays over the annals of the world, read the observations spread before your eyes, and compare the actual state of an ancient and modern people. In instructing and bringing man to a sense of his greatness and duty, who has raised and elevated social relations? Who has broken the chains of pagan slavery? Who has sown the seed of all intellectual and moral virtue in those vast regions that barbarian night had enveloped? Who, then, has given servants to weakness, to suffering, to the disinherited by fortune, to all those that grief had touched with an unpitying hand? Who has founded large schools, asylums of science and art; great centres from which have parted in radiating those who, by gigantic works, accomplished under the observation of astonished generations, have merited the appellation of the Cultivators of Europe? Who has done all these things, if not the church, that is to say, Christianity teaching, directing, and moralizing humanity?

Christianity, then, not only elevates man to a moral grandeur unknown to pagan nations, but through its influence society exists in a material prosperity to which Greece and Rome never attained. Profane history shows us a few privileged ones, satiated, we may say, with riches, but beneath and around them, we see only a servile mass vegetating in degrading misery. {415} What a difference, say we, with a modern wise economist, M. Perin, professor in the university or Louvain--what a difference in the riches of the sun between the Roman empire in its happiest time and contemporary Europe! What difference in products, in the multiplicity and rapidity of communication, in the cheapness of transportation, and in the extent of relations which to-day embrace the entire world!

What a difference, again, in the financial resources of states, in their armies, in their material. What a difference and what superiority on the side of modern nations, not only in that which constitutes their individual happiness, but in that which makes the material power of nations and their true force. What superiority especially in the mass of wealth destined for the consumption of a people. Time, since the thirteenth century, has rolled on in the full power of Christian civilization, and has evidenced a period of prosperity which has had no equal in history. These are the facts. But science does not stop at facts. Its mission is to investigate by labor of which it only has the secret and the glorious trouble, the why as well as the end of things.

Science is the knowledge of objects of observation studied by their causes: cognitio rerum per causas. We ask of it, therefore, the reason of the marvellous power we have just proved in Christianity; and in order not to extend our investigations, we will content ourselves by seeking with it how material prosperity and the wealth of nations come from a religion which preaches the doctrine of renunciation.

The reason of the prosperity of nations truly Christian is, it seems to us, evident. We find them practising generally the virtues of which Christianity is the apostle and propagator. Economists will tell, you without capital, that is to say, without expenditure with the view of reproduction, there can be no social riches. But is this expenditure compatible with vice, that never has enough to satisfy its brutal appetites?

Virtue, then, is the source of social ease, and in it only the remedy for pauperism. "If you do not give a people virtue, the only serious guarantee of present expenditure and future capital, you can never entirely defend it against an invasion of misery. In vain you may accumulate well-being and ease around the domestic hearth; in vain make and increase capital from growing wealth, if you do not accumulate a capital conservative of all other, that of virtue." We are happy to quote these beautiful words, only a few days since fallen from the pulpit of Notre Dame.

Just now we pronounced the word renunciation. Well, it is necessary that all understand that Christian self-denial is a dispensing force, the results of which are incalculable. It elevates the poor man beyond discouragement, and preserves for him the energy with which he diminishes the privations of his family. To him it comes to destroy the individuality which absorbs the opulence of the rich. To him it leads the beneficent current of fortune, which flows from those who have toward those who have not. To him, at last, it brings riches in every way, since under its mild influence each one profits by its thousand sacrifices, although he individually may make none. Let us be permitted to borrow some lines from the beautiful book of M. Périn, De la Richesse dans les Sociétés Chrétiennes:

"Follow the course of ages," said this wise economist, "and you will ever find Christianity accomplish through the virtue of self-denial the work of each epoch, forcing humanity toward progress, and even saving it from the perils of success. Run through the society of to-day, and in every degree of civilization that a contemporary world presents us, in the same picture and at a single glance, and in the varied phases that pervade our different societies, you will find Christianity proportion its action to circumstances; you will find it endeavoring to impress all countries and races with the salutary impulse for progress by the power of self-denial, while it is ever the same in principle, and ever infinitely varied in its applications and fertile in its effects."

{416}

Self-denial! Yes, it is this which gives Christian souls that holy love of work which is the productive element of social riches. To make a sacrifice of one's repose to God, while bending under the yoke of painful labor, is the joy of the Scripture disciple. He wishes for such joy, he loves it, and it was to obtain it that the children of Saint Benedict have sown its seed in the uncultivated deserts of the old Europe or under the murderous sun of Africa.

At the time of its decay and corruption Rome, it is said, was at the same time lazy and servile. But, even in the days of its grandeur, can we believe that labor showed itself to the eyes of the Roman people transfigured by that aureole which gives it incomparable beauty, so grand that one loves it with a love which might seem folly if it were not supreme wisdom? Such a sentiment can only be born with the doctrine of renunciation and the thought of the Saviour. "To re-establish labor and the condition of the workman, it was necessary that Christ, making himself a laborer, should wield with his own royal and divine hands, in the workshop of Nazareth, the axe and the tools of the carpenter."

These words, which we borrow from a course of political economy, delivered with so much eloquence to the Faculté de Droit de Caen, by M. Alexandre Carel, finish by exemplifying how labor, and, by consequence, the wealth of society, owes so much to Christianity.

The limits of an article do not permit us to develop further the ideas necessary to understand all its power and truth. We can only resume them in saying:

To occupy one's self with social and political studies is to follow the impulse that our age impresses on intelligence. To find the condition necessary for the well-being of society, of which we form a part, would be from the point of view of contemporary aspirations one of the finest victories that the public mind could carry with it, one of the greatest satisfactions that the heart can obtain. Well! may our eyes open at last. Let us learn to see that, without neglecting secondary means, it is necessary, to attain the end desired, to christianize the people.

Christianity with its virtues, its doctrine of self-renunciation, its labor transfigured by freedom and love, behold the agent, and the only one capable of producing the prosperity with which we would wish to endow nations. Let us understand these things, and we shall march with success to the conquest of social happiness. But we shall do better still. Penetrating the harmonious connection that unites effects to causes, we shall ask of it the secret of the superhuman power that escapes from it by submission to the Scripture; and soon we can repeat again the conviction of Lacordaire: "Christianity is the means of leading society to its perfection, by accepting man with all his weaknesses, and social order with its even condition. Society is necessary; therefore the Christian religion is divine."

{417}

From The Lamp.

Visible Speech.

Mr. Alexander Melville Bell has recently brought under the notice of the Society of Arts his very remarkable system of Visible Speech or Universal Language, which is (says Chamber's Journal) intended to remove an absurdity which vitiates all ordinary alphabets and languages. This absurdity is the utter want of agreement between the appearance of a letter or word and the sound which it is intended to convey; between the visible form of the symbol and the sound and meaning of the thing symbolized; between (for instance) the shape of the letter C and the value of that letter in the alphabets which contain it. This is an old difficulty--how old, we do not know; but to understand the proposed remedy, it will be necessary to have a clear idea of the defect to which the remedy is to be applied.

Spoken language may, for aught we know, have had its origin in an attempt to imitate, by the organs of the voice, the different sounds which animate and inanimate nature presents. Man could thus recall to the minds of those around him those notions of absent objects and past actions with which the sounds are connected. The expression of abstract qualities by the same means would be a later object, and one more difficult of attainment. When the eye instead of the ear had to be appealed to, or the signs rendered visible instead of audible, the system of hieroglyphics would at once suggest itself, by marking on a tablet or paper, a piece of ground or a smooth surface of sand, a rude picture of the object intended. When we get beyond these preliminary stages, however, the difficulty rapidly increases. There is no visible picture by which we could convey the meaning of such sentiments as are called in English virtue, justice, fear, and the like, except by so elaborate a composition as it would require an artist to produce; nor could an audible symbol for each of these sentiments be framed. It would take a Max Müller to trace how the present complication gradually arose. That there _is_ a complication, anyone may see in a moment. What is there in the shape of the five letters forming the word table, in these particular combinations of curved and straight lines, to denote either the sound of the word or the movements of the mouth and other vocal organs which produce its utterance? Nothing whatever. Any other combination of straight and curved lines might be made familiar by common use, and substituted for our plain English word, with as little attention to any analogy between the visible symbol and the sound of the thing symbolized.

Numerous attempts have been made to devise some sort of alphabet in which the shapes of the letters should in some way be dependent on the movements of the vocal organs--not actual pictures of them, but analogies, more or less complete. Without going to earlier labors, we may adduce those of Professor Willis. Nearly forty years ago, he showed that the ordinary vowel sounds--_a, e, i, o, u_--are produced on regular acoustic principles; that "the different vowel sounds may be produced artificially, by throwing a current of air upon a reed in a pipe; and that, as the pipe is lengthened or shortened, the vowels are successively produced"--not in the order familiar to us, but in the order _i, e, a, o, u_, (and with the continental sounds, _i_ like _ee_, _e_ like _ay_, _a_ like _ah_, _u_ like _oo_.) {418} Eighty or ninety years ago, Mr. Kratzenstein contrived an apparatus for imitating the various vowel sounds. He adapted a vibrating reed to a set of pipes of peculiar forms. Soon afterward, Mr. Kempelen succeeded in producing the vowel sounds by adapting a reed to the bottom of a funnel-shaped cavity, and placing his hand in various positions within the funnel. He also contrived a hollow oval box, divided into two portions, so attached by a hinge as to resemble jaws; by opening and closing the jaws, he produced various vowel sounds; and by using jaws of different shapes, be produced imperfect imitations of the consonant sounds _l, m_, and _p_. By constructing an imitative mouth of a bell-shaped piece of caoutchouc, imitative nostrils of two tin tubes, and imitative lungs in the form of a rectangular wind-chest, he produced with more or less completeness the familiar sounds of _n, d, g, k, s, j, v, t_, and _r_. By combining these he produced the words _opera, astronomy,_ etc., and the sentences _Vous etes mon ami--Je vous aime de tout mon coeur_. By introducing various changes in some such apparatus as this, Professor Willis has developed many remarkable facts concerning the mode in which wind passes through the vocal organs during oral speech.

The useful work would be, however, not to imitate vocal sounds by means of mechanism, but to write them so that they should give more information as to their mode of production than our present alphabet affords. Such was the purport of the _Phonetic_ system, which had a life of great activity from ten to twenty years ago, but which has since fallen into comparative obscurity. Mr. Ellis and the Messrs. Pitman published very numerous works, either printed in the phonetic language itself, or intended to develop its principles. Bible Histories, the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount, Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, Macbeth, The Tempest--all were printed in the new form; and there were numerous works under such titles as Phonetic or Phonographic Alphabets. Almanacs, Journals, Miscellanies, Hymn-books, Note-books, Primers, Lesson-books, and the like. The intention was not so much to introduce new forms of letters, as new selections of existing letters to convey the proper sounds of words. There was an unfortunate publication, the Fonetik Nuz, which worked more harm than good to the system, seeing that it was made a butt for laughter and ridicule--more formidable to contend against than logical argument.

Mr. Bell contemplates something more than this. He has been known in Edinburgh for twenty years in connection with numerous works relating to reading, spelling, articulation, orthoëpy, elocution, the language of the passions, the relations between letters and sounds, logograms for shorthand, and the like. As a writer and teacher on these subjects, he had felt, with many other persons, how useful it would be if we could have a system of letters of universal application; letters which, when learned in connection with any one language, could be vocalized with uniformity in every other. There are two obstacles to the attainment of this end: first, that the association between the existing letters and sounds is merely arbitrary; and second, that international uniformity of association is impracticable, because the sounds of different languages, and their mutual relations, have not hitherto been ascertained with exactitude or completeness.

Mr. Bell, as he tells us, feeling that all attempted collations of existing alphabets have failed to yield the elements of a complete alphabet, tried in a new direction. Instead of going to languages to discover the elements of utterance, he went to the apparatus of speech itself, endeavoring to classify all the movements of tongue, teeth, lips, palate, etc., concerned in the pronunciation of vocal sounds. By this means, he hoped to obtain, from the physiological basis of speech, an organic scale of sounds which should include all varieties, known and unknown. {419} To transfer these sounds to paper, in the form of visible characters, a new alphabet was necessary. To have adopted letters from the Roman, Greek, or other alphabets, constructed on no common principle of symbolization, would have been to introduce complexity and confusion, and to create a conflict between old and new associations. He therefore discarded old letters and alphabets of every kind. He set himself the task of inventing a new scheme of symbols, each of which should form a definite part of a complete design; insomuch that, if the plan of the alphabet were communicated by diagrams, each letter would teach its own sound, by expressing to the reader's eye the exact position of the sound in the physiological circuit. Could this object be attained, not only would there be a universal alphabet; there would be a scheme of letters representative of sounds, and not, like ordinary alphabets, associated with sounds only by arbitrary conventions.

Mr. Bell believes that he has achieved this result, and his expositions before the Ethnological Society, the College of Preceptors, and the Society of Arts, have had for their object the presentation of various phases of the system. The fitness of the term _visible_ speech may, be urges, be shown by the analogy of an artist, who, wishing to depict a laughing face, draws the lines of the face as seen under the influence of mirth; be depicts, in fact, _visible_ laughter. Every passion and sentiment, emotion and feeling, has this kind of facial writing; and an idea of it might be expressed on paper by a picture of the muscular arrangements of the face, so that all persons seeing the symbols would have a common knowledge of their meaning. In forming any sound, we adjust the parts of the mouth to certain definite attitudes; and the sound is the necessary result of our putting the mouth in such a shape. If, then, we could represent the various positions of the mouth, we should have in those symbols a representation of the sounds which cannot but result from putting the mouth in the positions symbolized. Now, Mr. Bell claims to have applied this system of symbolization to every possible arrangement of the mouth: he claims that, whatever your language, and whether you speak a refined or a rustic dialect, he can show, in the forms of his new letters, the exact sounds you make use of. If this be so, a Chinaman may read English, or an Englishman Chinese, without any difficulty or uncertainty, after he has learned to form his mouth in accordance with the directions given him by the letters. Nearly all the existing alphabets contain vestiges of a similar relation between letters and sounds--a relation which has nearly disappeared during the changes which alphabetic characters have gradually undergone. Mr. Bell gave the following anecdote illustrating this relation: "Shortly before I left Edinburgh, in the early part of last year, an elderly lady called on me, accompanied by two young ladies, who were going out to India as missionaries. The elderly lady had been for upward of twenty years engaged in mission work, and she spoke the language of the district like a native. Nevertheless, she could not teach the English girls to pronounce some of the peculiar sounds which she had acquired by habit. They had been for some time under her instruction, but they could not catch the knack of certain characteristic elements. Having heard of 'Visible Speech,' the lady called to solicit my assistance. I know nothing of the language she pronounced before me. Some of the sounds I had never heard in linguistic combinations, though, of course, I am acquainted with them theoretically. I saw the young ladies for half an hour, but this proved long enough to give them the power of pronouncing the difficult sounds which, while they did not know precisely what to do, they could not articulate. Strangely enough, since I came to reside in London, I heard a clergyman and former missionary, speaking of these very girls, remark on the great success with which they pronounced the Canarese language before they left this country; and the speaker knew nothing of their previous difficulty, or how it had been overcome."

{420}

The system analyzes all sounds according to the mode in which they are produced. The number of sounds discriminated in various languages amounts to several times the number of letters in the English alphabet; and even in English, although there are only twenty-six letters, there are at least forty different sounds. The Church Missionary Society employ nearly two hundred different letters or symbols in their several printed books; and the list is even then imperfect as regards many of the languages.

Mr. Bell finds thirty symbols sufficient to denote all the two hundred varieties of vowel and consonant sounds. What kind of symbols they are, we do not know, (for a reason presently to be explained;) but he states that, while each elementary sound has its own single type to express it in printing, he requires only thirty actual types to express them as used in language. Each symbol has a name, which does not include the sound of the letter, but merely describes its form. The learner has thus at first only to recognize pictures. But the name of the symbol also expresses the arrangement of the mouth which produces the sound; so that, when the symbol is named, the organic formation of its sound is named at the same time. In order that thirty symbols may denote two hundred sounds, Mr. Bell has adopted certain modes of classification. All vowels receive a common generic symbol, all consonants another; vocality and whisper have their respective symbols; so have inspiration, retention, and expulsion of breath; so have the touching and the vibration of the several vocal organs; so have the lips, the palate, the pharynx, the glottis, and the different parts of the tongue; so has the breathing of sounds through the nostrils, or through nearly closed teeth. There are thirty of these generic meanings altogether, and they are combined to make up letters, every part of every letter having a meaning. The thirty symbols need not be represented mechanically by exactly thirty types; they may be embodied in a larger or smaller number, according to taste or convenience; such of the symbols as together represent simple elements of speech being properly combined in single types. "The highest possible advantages of the system," we are told, "would be secured by extending the number of types to about sixty. At present, I and my sons--as yet the only experts in the use of visible speech--write the alphabet in a form that would be cast on between forty and fifty types, which is but little more than the number in an ordinary English fount, including diphthongs and accented letters. This number does not require to be exceeded in order to print, with typographic simplicity, the myriad dialects of all nations."

Mr. Bell pointed out the prospective usefulness of his system in telegraphic communication. The symbols of speech may, in all their varieties, be transmitted by telegraph, through any country, without the necessity for a knowledge of the language adopted on the part of the signaller. He would only have to discriminate forms of letters; he may be totally ignorant of the value of a single letter, and yet may convey the telegram so as to be intelligible to the person to whom it is virtually addressed. It is known that the telegrams from India now reach London in a sadly mutilated and unintelligible state, owing to their passing through the hands of Turkish and Persian agents who do not know the English alphabet; an evil which, it is contended, would be removed by the adoption of the new system.

{421}

The mode in which Mr. Bell illustrated his method was curious and interesting. His son uttered a great variety of sounds--whispered consonants, vocal consonants, vowels, diphthongs, nasal vowels, interjections, inarticulate sounds, animal sounds, mechanical sounds--all of which are susceptible of being represented in printed or written symbols. Then, the son being out of the room, several gentlemen came forward and repeated short sentences to Mr. Bell, some in Arabic, some in Persian, some in Bengali, some in Negro patois, some in Gaelic, some in Lowland Scotch, some in Norfolk dialect; Mr. Bell wrote down the sounds as he heard them, without, except in one or two cases, knowing the purport of the words. The son was called in, and, looking attentively at the writing, repeated the sentences with an accuracy of sound and intonation which seemed to strike those who were best able to judge as being very remarkable.

There is something a little tantalizing in the present state of the subject. We know that there is _a_ system of symbols, but we do not know the symbols themselves. Mr. Bell states that, besides the members of his own family, only three persons have been made acquainted with the symbols, and the details of their formation--namely, Sir David Brewster, Professor de Morgan, and Mr. Ellis. He has not intended, and does not intend, to secure his system to himself by any kind of patent or copyright; and yet, if he made it fully public at once, he would lose any legitimate hold over it to which he is rightly entitled. He has submitted his plan to certain government departments, but has found that it is "nobody's business" to take up a subject which is not included in any definite sphere of duty. He has next endeavored to interest scientific societies in the matter, so far as to induce them to urge the trial of his plan by the government. He says: "I am willing to surrender my private rights in the invention _pro bono publico_, on the simple condition that the costs of so introducing the system may be undertaken at the public charge." Teachers there must be, because "the publication of the theory of the system and the scheme of symbols must necessarily be supplemented by oral teaching of the scales of sound, in order that the invention may be applied with uniformity." The reading of the paper gave rise to some discussion at the Society of Arts, not as to the value and merit of the system itself, but as to anything which the society can do in the matter. It is one rule of the society that no new invention shall be brought forward without a full explanation of the _modus operandi_ as well as of the leading principles; and in this case, the objection lay that the inventor declined to make public, unless under some government agreement, the actual secret of his method. Mr. Bell replied that, if even he were to write a sentence in view of the audience, it would add very little to their real knowledge of the subject; but he furthermore said he was ready to explain the details of the system to any committee whom the council of the society, or any other scientific body, may appoint. To us it appears that neither Mr. Bell nor the society is open to blame in the matter. He has the right to name the conditions under which he will make his system public; while they have the right to lay down rules for the governance of their own proceedings. The results actually produced struck the auditors generally with surprise; and there can be little doubt that the system will in some way or other, at all events, work itself into public notice.

{422}

Comparative Mortality of Great Capitals.

Our recent alarm at the appearance and progress of the cholera in London may have drawn the attention of many who had before been accustomed to pass them by with indifference, to those columns in the papers in which the reports of the Registrar-General on the state of the public health are from time to time recorded. But we are perhaps hardly yet sufficiently awake to the importance and interest of the statistics there contained, any more than to the value of the short and, at first sight, rather unintelligible tables which embody, day after day, the meteorological phenomenon collected in London from so many different points on our own coast and those of adjacent countries. These last statistics have an interest which does not yet belong to those which relate to the public health, in that they embrace reports from so many distinct places which can be compared together. We, of course, only publish our own statistics of health, disease, births, and deaths; and we have not yet seen our way to the information that might be gathered by a comparison of our own condition in these respects with that of others under similar circumstances. The interest and value of such a comparison is obvious enough; and some of the results which might be hoped from it, if it were systematically and scientifically made, may be guessed at by the perusal of a thin volume of less than two hundred pages, lately published in Paris by M. Vacher, [Footnote 136] which at first sight may seem not to promise very much except to professional readers, but from which we shall take the liberty of drawing a few facts which certainly seem worthy of the attention of the more general public.

[Footnote 136: Etude Médicale et Statistique sur la Mortalité à Paris, à Londres, à Vienne et à New-York en 1865. D'aprés les Documens officiels, avec une Carte Météorologique et Mortuaire. Par le docteur L. Vacher. Paris: F. Savy, 1866.]

Canning once said, in answer to some one who alleged "a well-known fact" against him, that there was but one thing more fallacious than a fact, and that was a figure. We must all be ready to allow that the results which we see embodied so neatly in a set of figures in statistical tables are, after all, but approaches to the truth; and they are not put forward as anything more. Still, there is often a wonderful accuracy about the average results given by statistical inquiries; and it is obvious that when the result of one calculation is confirmed by that of another independent of the former, or when one uniform result is given by a continued series of inquiries, or when there is a very decided preponderance on one side of a comparison, such as cannot be accounted for by chance, it would be absurd to refuse to assent to conclusions thus obtained. With this single preliminary remark, let us proceed to some of the facts collected for us by M. Vacher.

He begins by giving due credit to this country for having taken the lead in the publication of the kind of statistics with which he has to deal. The reports of the Registrar-General are all that he can desire. New York and Vienna have followed, more or less fully, the example set in London. It has also been copied in St. Petersburg, as far as the registration of deaths is concerned; and it is hoped that a weekly publication of the results will soon be made in that city. Paris joined the movement at the end of 1864 or the beginning of 1865. {423} There is, however, some difference of system. The chief point is, that in England the medical man who attends a sick person reports the cause of death; in Paris there are certain official physicians, _vérificateurs des décès_, and these, instead of the attending physician, assign the cause. The superiority of the English system seems to be acknowledged. M. Vacher's book is founded on the reports thus produced.

His first business is, of course, to settle approximately the population of the four capitals with whose statistics he deals--a matter of considerable difficulty, even with all the results of the census before him. He calculates the number of the inhabitants of Paris in 1865 at 1,863,000; those of London were 3,028,600; those of Vienna, 560,000; and those of New York, 1,025,000, (in 1864.) At the present rate of increase, Paris will double its population in 32 years, London in 40, Vienna in 44, and New York in 13½. On the other hand, this increase is not to be set down to the excess of births over deaths, which in London, in 20 years before 1861, was only 328,189--about a third of the actual increase, (35 per cent.) In a similar period, the births exceed the deaths in Paris by only 13 (and a fraction) per cent of the whole increase. Immigration has therefore the largest share in the increase of the population. A flow is continually setting in from the country to the town in the age in which we live, and it enriches the largest towns, and the capitals especially. New York, receiving annually so many immigrants from Europe, is, of course, beyond the others in its gains from this source. Paris has undergone great vicissitudes as to the number of its inhabitants. In 1762, the population seems to have been about 600,000. It fell off immensely during the Revolution; even in 1800 it was only 547,756. From 1790 to 1810 the number of deaths exceeded the number of births. Since that time the proportion has been reversed, except in years of great epidemics.

Of the four capitals with which M. Vacher deals, Vienna, the smallest, had the largest proportion of deaths in 1865. In Vienna the proportion was 1 to 31 of the inhabitants; in Paris, notwithstanding the ravages of the cholera in October--causing 6591 deaths (nearly an eighth of the whole)--it was 1 to 36; in New York, 1 to 40; in London, 1 to 41. In Paris, London, and New York, the death rate has diminished in its proportion to the population for some time past. In Paris, in the three decades of years from 1830 to 1860, it fell successively from 1 to 31, to 1 to 34, and then to 1 to 38. There has been the same improvement in the other two cities. In New York, fifteen years ago, the rate of deaths was 1 to 22--nearly twice as high as at present. We do not see any statement in M. Vacher's pages as to the case of Vienna. He attributes the improvement in Paris to some extent to the great public works and measures for securing the health of the population which have marked the second empire; but much more, it would seem, to the better management of the hospitals. In Paris and Vienna a much larger proportion of the inhabitants die in hospitals than in New York and London; and, as far as we are concerned, M. Vacher includes workhouses and asylums of all kinds under the general name of hospitals. He finds, on comparing some scanty statistics of the last century with the facts of the present, that in old times the number of deaths in hospitals was far greater in proportion to the cases admitted than now; and he thinks that, in Paris at least, this almost explains the improvement in the death-rate. In New York the same improvement may have had many causes, but it is remarkably coincident as to time with the magnificent changes made, at an immense cost, in the water supply of that city. From some meteorological tables compiled with great care by M. Vacher, we gather the rather surprising result that the variations of temperature during the year, which have considerable influence on the death-rate, are greatest at Vienna, (nearly 27°,) next at New York, (25°,) much lower in Paris (17°,) and lowest of all in London, (15°.)

{424}

One of the most interesting questions at the present time on this subject is that of the water supply. M. Vacher begins with a cordial tribute to the Romans on this head. The magnificent aqueducts by which the city of Rome was supplied date from the time of the early republic, though the emperors increased their number. At an early point of their history, therefore, the Romans were wise and liberal enough to dispense with the waters of the Tiber for drinking. They carried their system everywhere when they became the masters of the world; in France, in Spain, and in Italy many aqueducts can still be traced which were their work. We may be quite certain that if Britain were now a Roman province, the Thames water companies would never be allowed to supply water except for the streets, and great aqueducts would long since have brought us the pure water of Bala Lake or Windermere. Thanks to the popes, modern Rome though not so profusely supplied as in imperial times, is still very far in advance of all other cities in the world in this respect. [Footnote 137] M. Vacher reckons the water supply in ancient Rome as 1492 _litres_ a day for each inhabitant; in modern Rome it is 1040; in New York, 159; in Vienna. 134; [Footnote 138] in Paris, according to the new system, 109; in London, 132. But no city seems to have its _houses_ so well supplied as London; in Rome a great quantity of water is wasted, being left to run away from the fountains, while the houses are not conveniently provided with water. We suppose that our old friend the house-cistern, against which we have heard so many complaints lately, is not an essential feature in our system of house supply.

[Footnote 137: M. Vacher attributes the salubrity of Rome--for, considering its position, it enjoys remarkable salubrity--to the abundance and good quality of its water. Lancisi, who practiced there as a physician in the last century, accounts for the longevity of its inhabitants in the same way. At all events, remarks M. Vacher, "il est impossible de n'étre pas frappé de ce fait, que les historiens ne mentionnent pas un seul example de peste à Rome, et qu'au moyen age et dans les temps modernes elle a constainment échappé aux atteintes de la pests et du choléra, qui ont sévi à plusteurs reprises en Italie." But Rome has certainly been visited by the cholera more than once, and the rest of the statement is surely contrary to history.]

[Footnote 138: This statement is, however, an anticipation. The municipality of the Vienna has undertaken some immense works in order to improve the water supply, at a cost of 16,000,000 florins. The works are not yet completed: but M. Vacher gives the quantity of water for each inhabitant which they are expected to furnish. Hitherto the city has been supplied, it would seem, partly from the Danube, partly by wells. The new supply will be drawn from three different sources among the neighboring mountains.]

M. Vacher gives the following conclusions as to the sanitary effect of good and abundant water. He tells us that inorganic substances contained in water are comparatively innocuous to the health of those who drink it; on the other hand, great injury is caused by the presence of organic matter. The best water in Paris--that of the springs on the north--contains nine times as much of calcareous salts as the water of the Seine; but it is justly preferred for drinking purposes. On the other hand, M. Vacher quotes the testimony of M. Bouchut, a professor at the Ecole de Médecine, for the fact that he noticed the frequency of epidemic diarrhoea during the summer months in the Quartier de Sèvres and that it had been almost stopped in cases where the doctors had ordered the water of the Seine to be no longer used, and had substituted for it water from the artesian well of Grenelle. He adds his own experience at the Lycée Napoleon, which is supplied from the reservoir of the Pantheon, which receives its water from the Seine and the aqueduct d' Arcueil. He had known as many as fifteen students at once ill of diarrhoea, and the disease was stopped by the "alcoholization of all the water." [Footnote 139]

[Footnote 139: P, 106. M. Vacher here cites the Indian case quoted by Mr. Farre in is cholera report. The natives in India drink boiled water as a preventative against cholera; and it has been found that out of a great number in the family of a single proprietor in Calcutta, all of whom took this precaution, not a single person had been attacked even in the worst times of the prevalence of cholera. But Dr. Frank has disapproved at least the universality of this fact.]

As regards cholera, the proof is even more striking than that lately furnished in the case of London by the great and almost exclusive ravages of that disease in the eastern districts. {425} Mortality by cholera seems ordinarily, as M. Vacher tells us, to follow the laws of general mortality, that is, it prevails most in those districts which are ordinarily the most unhealthy. But the one element of good or bad water supply seems to be enough to counterbalance the influence of the other causes which affect the comparative mortality of districts. For instance, difference of elevation is supposed to be one of these causes. Mr. Farre tells us that the mortality of a district is in inverse proportion to the elevation: that in nineteen high districts the proportion of deaths by cholera was as 33 to 10,000; in the same number of low districts, as 100 to 10,000. This law, however, is not enough, nor is it free from exception. Sometimes places loftily situated are attacked and lower places are spared. The elevation of Montmartre is almost equal to that of Belleville; but Montmartre had last year 3.6 cholera cases to 1000, Belleville only 1.1. Again, a rich quarter has ordinarily immense advantages over a poor quarter. The mean mortality by cholera in the poorer _arrondissements_ of Paris was almost three times as great as that in the rich _arrondissements_. The reason is obvious: the poor work hard, have insufficient food, and are crowded together in discomfort and want; the rich are well fed, not overworked, well and healthily housed. Yet there was one _arrondissement_ of Paris, and that one of the very poorest, which in the three first visitations of cholera (1832, 1849, 1854) had actually the lowest proportion of deaths by cholera of all these districts. In 1865, it had barely more deaths than the very richest of all, that of the Opéra, which headed the list on that occasion as the most lightly visited. This _arrondissement_ was Belleville. Another cause of comparatively greater mortality is density of population; but here again we are met by the fact that this fortunate Belleville is very densely populated. The nature of the soil is another. M. Vacher mentions a number of departments in the centre of France which have never yet been attacked by cholera. They are those which consist of a huge granitic mass, like an island in the midst of the more recent formations around them. Nevertheless, though this will explain much, and though Belleville has an advantage in this respect over many of the _arrondissements_ of Paris, still it has the same geological formation as Montmartre, which had three times as many deaths (in proportion) from cholera. In short, there is no way left of accounting for its comparative exemption, except that which we have already mentioned, the superior character of the water consumed by its inhabitants. The argument certainly seems as complete as it can possibly be, and we know that it has been strongly confirmed by our own late experience. Let us hope that no time may be lost in acting on the lesson which we have received.

We pass over some interesting statements on the meteorological phenomena which were observed during the prevalence of the cholera last year in Paris. [Footnote 140]

[Footnote 140: M. Vacher here tells a story of his endeavor to make some ozonometrical observations in the Paris hospitals, which were prohibited by the Directeur de l'Assistance publique--an officer of whom M. Vacher is continually complaining on the ground that they would frighten the patients. He remarks that on one occasion when travelling in the pontifical states, some gendarmes found in his possession a psychrometer and an aneroid barometer, and thought they were weapons of destruction. He would have been arrested but for M. Matteucci, then Director of Police. He complains bitterly of the comparative want of enlightenment in the "administration" of his own country. But no hospital would have allowed his experiments.]

M. Vacher rather contradicts current opinion by some remarks he has made as to the relation of cholera to other diseases. Sydenham has remarked that when several epidemic diseases are rife during the same season, one of them usually absorbs to itself, as it were, the bulk of the mortality, diminishing the influence of the rest even below the ordinary level. Thus in the year of the great plague in London, just two centuries ago, the smallpox was fatal to only thirty-eight persons, its average being about eleven hundred. {426} However, the general fact is now questioned. In October last, though 4653 persons were carried off by cholera, the mortality by other diseases in Paris was greater than in any other month of the year. Yet October is usually one of the most healthy of all the months; and the epidemic maladies which ordinarily rage during the autumn--typhoid fever, small-pox, diphtheria, croup, whooping-cough, erysipelas, and puerperal fever--were prevalent to an extraordinary degree. It is curious also that there was an unusual number of children born dead.

The most destructive of all ordinary complaints is undoubtedly consumption. At Vienna it actually causes 25 per cent of the deaths, at Paris 16 per cent, at London nearly 12 per cent, at New York 14 per cent. It is more frequent in women than men; it is twice as destructive in poor quarters as in rich quarters; the age which suffers most from it is between 25 and 40. The difference between the sexes M. Vacher attributes to the more confined and retired life led by women. If observations in Paris are to be taken as enough to furnish a general conclusion, it would appear that more consumptive patients die in the spring than in the autumn. Here again a common opinion is overthrown. The most destructive months are March, April, and May: the least destructive are September, October, and November. We believe that in this country the fewest consumptive patients die in winter, and the most in summer. M. Vacher also attacks the notion that maritime climates are the best for consumptive cases. New York is situated on the sea, but it loses as many by consumption as London; and in the maritime counties of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, and Devonshire, the deaths by consumption are as 1 in 7 of the whole; while in the Midland counties of Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire, Worcestershire, and Oxfordshire, they are as 1 in 9. "Les phthisiques qu'on envoie à Nice et à Cannes, ou même sur les bords du Nil, sur la foi d'un passage de Celse, y meurent comme ceux qui restent sous le ciel natal. Ceux-la, seuls en reviennent guéris, chez qui le mal n'était pas sans ressources et qui auraient guéri partout ailleurs," (p. 129.) We must remember, however, that if such patients are sent to the seaside, and die there, they raise the death-rate there unfairly. M. Vacher insists that the guiding principle in selecting a place for the residence of a consumptive patient should be the absence of great variations in the temperature rather than the actual number of deaths by the disease. Consumption, he says, is unknown in Iceland; but that is not a reason for sending a consumptive patient to that island. As to New York, we have already quoted his observation as to the variableness of the temperature there, notwithstanding its maritime position.

Although we have already stated the results of a general comparison of the mortality in the four capitals--results very favorable to the salubrity of London--it may be interesting to our readers to learn the state of the case with regard to particular classes of disease. In most cases, of course, we have the list in actual numbers: our comparative immunity is only evident when the great excess of our population is considered. In zymotic diseases we have little more than a majority of a thousand over Paris; but then we must remember that in the year of which M. Vacher speaks between 5000 and 6000 persons in Paris died of cholera. This, therefore, would seem to be one of the classes of disease as to which we are really worst off. As to constitutional diseases, consumption, cancer, scrofula, gout, rheumatism, and others, Paris exceeds us in proportion; and it is the same with diseases of the nervous system. From diseases of the heart we lose between two and three times as many as the Parisians; this proportion, therefore, is greatly against us. On the other hand, in diseases of the digestive organs, Paris, notwithstanding its inferior population, exceeded London by a hundred deaths in the last year. {427} London, however, regains a sad preeminence when we come to diseases of the respiratory organs, asthma, bronchitis, influenza, and the like: Paris losing between 7000 and 8000 a year against our 12,500. It is in the commoner diseases that the worst features of London mortality in 1865 were found. Typhoid was nearly three times as fatal last year in London as in Paris; measles four times as fatal; scarlatina not far short of twenty times; whooping-cough more than thirteen times. As the population of London is to that of Paris as five to three, it is clear to how great an extent the balance was against us. It was probably an accident. These diseases prevail very generally for a time, and then retire: and we have lately been visited by a period of their prevalence.

We have hitherto spoken only of diseases; but M. Vacher's researches extend to the comparative frequency of deaths of other kinds. In suicides, New York has the best account to give, Paris the worst. To speak roughly, London has twice as many suicides as New York, Vienna twice as many as London, Paris more than twice as many as Vienna--in comparison, that is, with the total number of deaths of all kinds. The _actual_ numbers stand thus: Paris 716, London 267, Vienna 813, New York 36. For the last nine years there has been little change in the number in London; in New York it has diminished, in Paris it has increased, having more than doubled itself since 1839. The two years, 1848 and 1830, which were marked by revolutionary movements, were also marked by a diminution in the number of suicides. The relative proportion of suicides increases with age; that is, it is four times as frequent with people above 70 as with people between 20 and 30. Paris has for a long time been noted as a city in which there were more suicides than any other. More than eighty years ago, Mercier noted this, and attributed it to the rage for speculation. Other writers have since attempted to find a reason for it in the prevalence of democratic ideas. We suppose that both democratic ideas and speculation are not unknown in New York, yet that city (and indeed the State itself) is remarkably free from suicides, and a great number of those that occur are said to be of Europeans.

But if Paris bears the palm in self-slaughter, no city can vie with London in slaughter of another kind. Violent deaths are nearly three times as frequent in London as in Paris. As many as 2241 persons were slain in London last year; as many, that is, as would be enough for the number of the killed in a sanguinary battle: 328 were burnt, 405 were suffocated, (this probably includes children overlaid by their mothers,) 40 were poisoned, 767 disposed of by "fractures and contusions," 232 were killed by carriage accidents; leaving 469 to be laid to the account of other accidents. In the other three capitals the proportion of deaths by accidents to the whole number of deaths ranges from under one per cent to under two per cent; in London it is just three per cent. Finally, London had 132 murders to give an account of in 1865, Paris had 10, and New York only 5.

We are sorry that the last fact which we glean from M. Vacher's interesting tables must be one rather disparaging to the great Transatlantic city which we have last named. Disparaging, that is, positively rather than comparatively; and we fear that, if the statistics which we are now to quote do not reveal a terrible state of things in London also, it is because on this head our admirable system of registration has given M. Vacher no assistance at all. "Quant à la ville de Londres," he says, "il m'a été impossible d'arriver à connaitre le chiffre de ses _mort-nés_. Le Bulletin des Naissances et des Morts ne donne d'ailleurs aucun renseignement à ce sujet." He expresses his opinion that, if the numbers were given, London would have quite as bad a tale to tell as Paris or New York. But the figures in these cities are sufficiently startling. {428} In Paris the children "born dead" are to the whole number of deaths as one to ten; in New York as one to fifteen; in Vienna they are as one to twenty-three. Twenty years ago, the Préfet of the Seine addressed a circular to the _maires_ of Paris, in which he drew their attention to the great number of these children, and pointed out that it was natural to conclude that their deaths were too often the result of crime. In New York similar complaints have been made, and we are significantly told that full reports cannot be obtained on the subject. As to London, we find a large number of deaths, 1400 or 1500 a year, set down to "premature birth and debility." We fear it would be quite impossible to give an account of the number of births which are _prevented_--contrary to the laws of God and man alike. We need hardly do more than allude to the frightful increase of infanticide, on which Dr. Lankester has lately spoken so strongly. Mr. Humble's Essay on the subject in Mr. Orby Shipley's volume contains some very startling statistics. There are as many as 12,000 women in London to whom this crime may be imputed. "In other words," says Mr. Humble, "one in every thirty women (I presume, between fifteen and forty-five) is a murderess." We must hope that there is exaggeration about this; but if it were one in every thirty thousand, it would be bad enough--a state of things calling down the judgments of heaven on the land.

The Anglican writer to whom we have just alluded speaks with some apparent prejudice against the most obvious remedy for infanticide--the establishment of foundling hospitals, perfectly free. There may be some objections to these institutions, but we must confess that, in the face of the facts on which we are commenting, they seem to us rather like arguments against life-boats because they may encourage oversecurity in exposure to the dangers of the sea. If Mr. Humble will read, or read again, Dr. Burke Ryan's Essay on Infanticide, which gained the Fothergillian prize medal some time ago, and in which the fact seems to be proved that the crime is more common in England than anywhere else, he will perhaps see reason to conclude, from the French statistics there adduced, that foundling hospitals are more effectual in preventing this abominable evil than anything else that has ever been devised.

Miscellany.

_New Electric Machines_.--At the conversazione given by the president of the Royal Society at Burlington House, London, the display of newly constructed astronomical, optical, and other philosophical instruments afforded a gratifying proof of improvements in the mode of construction, and of increased skill on the part of the constructors. The large spectroscope, which is to be used in combination with Lord Rosse's monster telescope, was a triumph of workmanship and of philosophical adaptation of means to ends; and we may expect ere long to hear of important discoveries in spectroscopic phenomena. Mr. C. W. Siemens and Professor Wheatstone exhibited each one a remarkable electric machine of his own invention, which demonstrated in a surprising way the convertibility of mechanical force into electricity. In these machines, a bar of soft iron, wrapped lengthwise in copper wire, is made to rotate between two other bars of soft iron, which are fixed. The rotating bar is inoculated, so to speak, with a small touch of magnetism, and then being set spinning very rapidly, the small touch is generated into a stream of electricity, which passes off with a crackling noise, increasing or diminishing in proportion to the rotation. {429} In a laboratory, such a machine would be highly serviceable, as it could be used to generate large quantities of electricity very cheaply, and there is no doubt but that many other ways of turning it to account will be discovered. Mr. Siemens has already discovered one most important way, namely, the lighting-up of buoys and beacons at a distance from the shore, by sending a current of electricity to them through a submarine cable. That is the way in which he purposes to employ the electricity generated by his machine: his method has been approved by the Commissioners of Northern Light-houses, who intend to apply it to light the buoys and beacons that mark the most dangerous spots round the coast of Scotland. But of all wonderful electric machines, the one invented by Mr. H. Wilde of Manchester is the most wonderful. A machine which weighs about four and a half tons, including one ton of copper wire, and which requires an eight-horse steam-engine to keep its armature in rotation, must necessarily produce tremendous effects. It gives off electric fire in torrents: the light produced is intense, and is quite as useful to photographers as sunlight, with the advantage over the sun, that it can be used on dark days and at night. This light, as we hear, is already employed in manufacturing establishments, and is to be introduced into light-houses. A French company, who have purchased the right to use it in France, will try it first in the light-house on Cape Grisnez, whence, as is said, the light will radiate not only all across the Channel, but some distance into the southern counties of England. Besides the production of light, the new machine is applicable to important manufacturing purposes; the size of the machine being altered to suit special circumstances. A well-known firm at Birmingham are about to use it, instead of a galvanic battery, for the deposition of copper on articles required to be coated with that metal. In this case, the electricity of the machine is substituted for the acid and zinc of the battery, and will cost less. In another instance, the machine is to be used for the production of ozone in large quantities for employment in bleaching operations. Professor Tyndall exhibited the sensitive flame, on which he had given a lecture at the Royal Institution: or, to be more explicit, he made experiments to show the action of sound on flame. The results are remarkable. A tall flame, looking like an ordinary gas-flame, issuing from a circular orifice in an iron nipple, behaves in an extraordinary way when, by increased pressure, it is raised to fourteen or sixteen inches in length. If a shrill whistle be blown in any part of the room, it suddenly drops down to about half the length, and rises again immediately on cessation of the sound. A blow of a hammer on a board produces a similar effect; and still more so when the blow is on an anvil: the flame then jumps with surprising briskness, the reason being that the ring of the anvil combines those higher tones to which the flame is most sensitive. So tuning-forks, at the ordinary pitch, produce no effect; but if made to vibrate one thousand six hundred, or two thousand, or more times in a second, the flame responds energetically. In another experiment, a fiddle is played in presence of a flame twenty inches in length--the low notes produce no effect; but when the highest string is sounded, "the jet," to quote Professor Tyndall's own words, "instantly squats down to a tumultuous bushy flame, eight inches long." And the same effect is produced by strokes on a bell at twenty yards' distance: at every stroke the flame drops instantaneously. This last experiment is a good illustration of the rapidity with which sound is propagated through air, for there is no sensible interval between the bell-stroke and the shortening of the flame. Another flame, nearly twenty inches long, is yet more sensitive, for the rustle of a silk dress, a step on the floor, creaking of boots, dropping of a small coin, all make it drop down suddenly to eight inches, or become violently agitated. At twenty yards' distance, the rattle of a bunch of keys in the hand shortens the flame, and it is affected even by the fall of a piece of paper, or the plashing of a raindrop. To the vowel U, it makes no response; to O, it shakes; E makes it flutter strongly; and S breaks it up into a tumultuous mass. Many more instances might be given, but these will suffice to show that surprising effects are produced by sound. To the scientific inquirer they will be serviceable as fresh illustrations in the science of acoustics. _Chambers's Journal_.

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Original.

New Publications.

American Boys And Girls. Two Essays from the recently published volume, "American Leaves." By Samuel Osgood, Minister of the Church of the Messiah, New-York. Harpers. 1867.

These essays were reprinted, the author tells us, at the request of a lady, for general circulation, with the hope of doing some good to the rising generation, and those who have the charge of bringing them up. We hope they may do good, and they certainly will if they exercise any practical influence at all upon either parents or young people. Their literary merit is undeniable. The topics they touch upon are, however, so painfully momentous that it is impossible to dwell with mere critical enjoyment upon their readable qualities as essays to be amused with during a leisure hour. Their charm of style is only to be appreciated as a means of alluring attention to the very grave and alarming truths which they contain. The author touches with a light and delicate hand upon a very sore and diseased spot in our social system, and hints, in a manner which is intelligible to the instructed without being dangerous to the innocent, at evils which may well awaken the alarm of every one who is solicitous for the well-being of the family, the community, and the race. We are especially pleased with his very sound remarks upon the luxury, extravagance, and effeminacy which are exercising such a corrupting influence upon American society. We think, however, the doctor is more successful in pointing out the evils which exist than in proposing a remedy for them. The sacramental doctrine of matrimony, the Catholic law maintaining its absolute indissolubility, the sacrament of penance, and the authority of a church which is a supreme judge and lawgiver, executed by a priesthood who are independent of the opinions, caprices, and trammels of worldly society, are alone sufficient to reform the vitiated, or preserve the integrity of youth. It were as easy to catch the devil in a mouse-trap as to renovate society by any means which Unitarian Christianity has at its disposal.

The author's very irrelevant digression upon the Catholic doctrine of celibacy adds one more to the numberless instances in which respectable writers criticise rashly without understanding their subject. He says, (p. 109,) "We know very well that theorists of extreme classes, who have noted the decrease in the number of marriages in high life, are inclined to rejoice at it, and for opposite reasons: the one class because they think celibacy to be the higher condition." After several more passages, in which the language is very ambiguous, and may easily be understood as veiling a covert insinuation against the Catholic clergy and religious communities, the author concludes his remarks thus: "We believe that a true Christian wife has a purity that angels may not scorn and many a nun might covet, and that the man who keeps his marriage vows need not ask of any ghostly monk for lessons in manly virtue. The longer we live the more we reverence God's obvious law, and the less we admire the devices of men who forbid marriage, and so undertake to be wiser than God."

It is quite the reverse of truth that a Catholic moralist, whether "ghostly" or otherwise, approves of or recommends or rejoices in a general practice of celibacy among either the wealthy or the poorer classes. The Catholic clergy recommend and favor marriage for the generality of persons as by far the best and happiest state for them. The Catholic doctrine does not disparage the purity of Christian wives, or the virtue of married men who are faithful to their matrimonial obligations. The spectral gentleman, whose lessons the doctor politely declines in advance, would probably, if he had the chance to give one, pass over the evangelical counsels, and enlarge on the moral duty of representing things as they are. The Catholic Church does not "forbid marriage." She teaches that it is a sacrament. The Greek Church has corrupted it by permitting divorce; every Protestant Church has done the same; the civil law has laid its barbarous hand upon it to drag it from the protecting power of the church. The Roman Church alone has first raised it to its proper elevation and indissolubility, and afterward defended it by her uncompromising law from desecration. {431} We advise the doctor to turn his attention more undividedly to the work of rehabilitating marriage in the rights of which corrupt morals and legislation have deprived it, and not to distress himself with the fear lest the sacrament should be despised or neglected by Catholics.

Sermon On The Dignity And Value Of Labor. By the Rev. Joseph Fransioli, Pastor of St. Peter's Church, Brooklyn, L.I.

This is a first-class popular sermon; plain, practical, and encouraging. That Christianity has redeemed the masses in elevating and dignifying manual labor is plain enough to the student of history. That which was a curse in Adam is turned into a blessing in Christ. It is equally true that when men forget the Christian aim of life and suffer themselves to be guided, as too large a class of our modern society does, by heathen principles, labor becomes contemptible, poverty becomes a misfortune, and the wearing of patches and rags a crime. The preacher thus fitly characterizes labor: "Work is of divine origin. It is not a human invention, or a system adopted by civil society for its wants in the different classes; it is a divine institution, an obligation imposed by God's eternal wisdom upon all men without distinction whatsoever. It is a divine institution distributing labor in its various branches among all men, not creating, properly speaking, different classes. Work is leading men towards God, the centre of perfection. Work, then, ennobles man, and the true dignity and worthiness of a man is to be measured by the proportion of his work."

Again, he is justly severe upon the modern distinction of "low" and "respectable" classes in this false sense. "The father who carries the shovel on his shoulders to dig the foundation of your buildings; the son who, early in the morning, is seen walking, tools in hand; the washerwoman and the servant girl who clean your clothes and honestly and faithfully do the work of your houses, are not low. They discharge a noble task which their families appreciate and which God will reward. Do you know who belong to the very lowest classes of men and Christians? Those that speculate on the lives of the poor laborers by building monstrous tenement houses, where bad ventilation, poor light, scarcity of water, and dilapidated rooms lead the over-crowded and over-taxed inmates to misery and a premature death. Those that sue for divorces in the courts, ride in carriages, and display themselves in public with more than one wife, more than one family, more than one God; trampling on human and divine law. Those that spend their nights in gambling, their days in hypocritical schemes, who never balance their expenses with their revenues, and consume double the amount of their salaries, and leave their bills unpaid or shamefully defraud their employers. These and many others of the same stamp, whose number is countless; these swell the figures of the low classes." This is preaching which reasons "of judgment and justice," and tells the truth without fear or favor. It is a refreshing sermon, and lacks in nothing but in having been too hastily printed, being full of typographical errors.

Frithiof's Saga. From the Swedish of Esaias Tegnér, Bishop of Wexiö. By the Rev. William Lewery Blackley, M.A. First American edition, edited by Bayard Taylor: pp. 201, 12mo. New-York, Leypoldt & Holt. 1867.

Several translations of this beautiful poem have been made in English, each of which had its own peculiar merit. An accurately literal translation of a foreign book possesses the value of presenting to us just what the author says; but the manner of his speech, the true spirit which gives life and character to his work, must necessarily be wanting. Such was the translation of Tegnér's poem, by Prof. George Stephens, published at London in 1839. Prof. Longfellow was more successful in the poetic versions he gave in an article on the poet contributed by him to the North American Review of July, 1837. That of Mr. Blackley before us is not only a faithful translation, but is also English poetry, preserving in its style enough of the wild Scandinavian spirit to mark its origin. As a specimen we subjoin the following extract from "Frithiof at Sea." The hero is compelled to make a dangerous voyage by two kings, Helge and Halfdan, whose sister Ingeborg he is wooing contrary to their consent:

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"Now, King Helge stood In fury on the strand, And in embittered mood Adjured the storm-fiend's hand.

"Gloomy is the heaven growing, Through desert skies the thunders roar, In the deep the billows brewing Cream with foam the surface o'er. Lightnings cleave the storm-cloud, seeming Blood-red gashes in its side; And all the sea-birds, wildly screaming, Fly the terrors of the tide.

"Storm is coming, comrades; Its angry wings I hear Flapping in the distance, But fearless we may be. Sit tranquil in the grove, And fondly think on me, Lovely in thy sorrow, Beauteous Ingeborg.

"Now two storm-fiends came Against Ellida's side; One was wind-cold Ham, One was snowy Heyd.

"Loose set they the tempest's pinions, Down diving in ocean deep; Billows, from unseen dominions, To the god's abode they sweep. All the powers of frightful death, Astride upon the rapid wave, Rise from the foaming depths beneath, The bottomless, unfathomed grave.

"Fairer was our journey Beneath the shining moon, Over the mirrory ocean, To Balder's sacred grove. Warmer far than here Was Ingeborg's loving heart; Whiter than the sea-foam Heaved her gentle breast.

......

"Now ocean fierce battles: The wave-troughs deeper grow, The whistling cordage rattles, The planks creak loud below.

"But though higher waves appearing Seem like mountains to engage, Brave Ellida, never fearing, Mocks the angry ocean's rage. Like a meteor, flashing brightness, Darts she forth with dauntless breast, Bounding with a roebuck's lightness Over trough and over crest.

"Sweeter were the kisses Of Ingeborg in the grove, Than here to taste in tempest High-sprinkled, briny foam. Better the royal daughter Of Bele to embrace, Than here in anxious labor The tiller fast to hold.

"Whirling cold and fast, Snow-wreaths fill the sail; Over deck and mast Patters heavy hail.

"The very stern they see no more, So thick is darkness spread, As gloom and horror hovers o'er The chamber of the dead. Still, to sink the sailor, dashes Implacable each angry wave; Gray, as if bestrewn with ashes, Yawns the endless, awful grave."

The Swedish language is full of melody and of imitative harmony; as the author himself calls it:

"Language of honor and conquest, how manly thy accents, and noble! Ring'st like the smitten steel, and mov'st like the march of the planets."

It is, therefore, difficult of translation, and one who would attempt it must not only be well versed in that language, but must also possess a more than ordinary knowledge of English. Mr. Blackley has, we think, accomplished his task with no small degree of success.

Moore's Irish Melodies. With a Memoir of the poet. Illustrated by D. Maclise, R.A., and William Riches. Columbus, Ohio: Riches & Moore, Engravers, Printers, and Publishers.

The enterprising publishers of this work have certainly spared no pains in its profuse illustration, the engravings being of such a character as to occupy at least two thirds of the space in each page. The many admirers of the melodious verses of the great Irish poet will welcome this new and elegant edition of them.

A copy of the designs, if furnished by the pencil of Maclise, should alone be worth the price of the book. It is sold only by subscription.

Eug. Cummiskey, Philadelphia, announces for immediate publication the first series of his Juvenile Library, in twelve vols. The following are the titles of the volumes of the first series: The Great Tenabraka; Miss Touch-All; The Young Raiders; The Old Beggar; George, the Little Chimney-Sweep; The Lost Child; The Desert Island; Bethlehem; Pat, the Little Emigrant; Idleness; Negligence; The Little Gardeners. These tales will form a collection of stories for children. The price of the set is to be $5.40. He has also in press Barbarossa; an Historical Tale of the Twelfth Century, and The Vengeance of a Jew.

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The Catholic World

Vol. V., No. 28 July, 1867.

Original.

Catholic Congresses.

We do not hesitate to say that but few Catholics in this country are aware of one of the most important events in the modern history of the church in Europe, the meeting of the Catholic congresses.

Inaugurated by a council of twenty-six bishops at Würzburg, and a general convention of the clergy and laity at Mayence in 1848, the Catholic congresses became an accomplished fact, and since that time each succeeding year has recorded the meeting of one or more of these assemblies held in different cities of Belgium and Germany.

The renewal of Catholic life, the strengthening of Catholic principles, and the steady and sure return of the people of those countries to the faith, is, in a great measure, due to the influence which these reunions have exerted on the public mind. In the beginning they appear to have received their impetus chiefly from a desire to place the church, so long enslaved in Germany beneath the tyranny of Protestantism, trammelled by state interference, and so desperately attacked by the wide-spread infidelity of the day, upon a free and independent footing.

Feeling themselves strong enough to speak, they spoke and demanded the freedom of the church. An universal response was thus elicited, not only from the clergy, who are the ordinary mouth-pieces in matters of the welfare of the church, but there started up at once zealous and devoted laymen, who were competent to take part in the discussion of questions of interest to Catholic society. Expression stimulated thought, and the influence of these conventions soon permeated every class of society, awakening in all minds a desire to contribute something to the general stock of information and experience which these assemblies began to gather in, like so much latent force, wherewith to repel the attack of adversaries, and to advance the cause of truth and pure morality.

It was truly a Catholic project, and which none but Catholics could attempt without weakening the cause they would undertake by a certain manifestation of discordant and irreconcilable principles and the consequent loss of power. But Catholics may unite for mutual edification and enlightenment, joined as they are as brethren in a common faith, whose principles and aims are alike in every country and with all people, and be sure of reaping thereby solid fruits, and of adding new triumphs for religion.

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These general conventions in Germany culminated finally in the great Catholic congresses of Malines and Würzburg, the first of which opened at the former city in 1863. "This congress," says a writer, "exerted a magic influence; the drowsy were aroused from their lethargy, and the faint-hearted were inspired with confidence: they saw their strength and felt it. In that congress we see the beginning of a new epoch in the religious history of Belgium."

The great benefits arising from this movement were recognized and encouraged from the start by the Holy Father, in honor of whose approval the different associations took the name of "Piusvereine," a name still retained by those held in Switzerland. The first great congress of Malines was opened under the auspices of his eminence, Cardinal Sterckz, archbishop of that city, to which the Pope also sent an autograph letter containing his august sanction and words of benediction.

Everywhere and by all classes the most lively interest was shown in the work, and men of merit flocked to take part in the deliberations, members of the clergy, secular and regular, the nobility, statesmen, philosophers, editors, professors in every department of science, painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, builders, heads of pious and charitable societies; each and all vying with one another in bringing in the fruits of their learning and experience, that their brethren in the faith might be benefited by them, and the Catholic cause be strengthened and advanced by the results of their united efforts. The sentiments with which they were inspired may be gathered from the following extract of the reply sent by the congress of Malines to the Holy Father:

"It is true the trials of our times are great and grievous, and if they be, they at least should make us Catholics understand the necessity of organizing with more union and with greater energy than ever, to assure the liberty of the church and of all the works which she inspires. If associations are formed from one end of the world to the other for all the interests of life, and too often for the propagation of evil, we Catholics have the right, and are in duty bound, to associate ourselves together for the interests of the good and the true. This sacred right we intend to exercise with that perseverance and self denial which become the disciples of Christ.

"On every hand the enemies of our faith league together to shake the foundations of the church of God. We, devoted children of that church, will put together all our forces to defend it. We wish to strengthen the bonds of charity between us, fortify ourselves against the seductions of the age, enlighten and encourage one another--to seek, in fine, the means of comforting and consoling the little ones and the poor, whom our Lord Jesus Christ loved with such a tender love."

The report of the assembly records that the reading of this was received with unanimous and prolonged acclamations.

That the members of these congresses meant work in coming together is evident from the report of their proceedings. We have before us two large octavo volumes of 400 pages each, closely printed, which contain the accounts of only the congress of Malines, held in 1863. It gives the speeches, discussions, reports of committees, etc., at length, and is a record of immense and patient labor, of deep scientific research, and of earnest and devoted effort. Another volume of equal size is the published report of the department of religious music alone. In this as well as in other branches of art and science prizes have been offered of a notable value for original productions. We observe in a late report of the congress of Malines of 1866, that the prize offered for a mass, composed according to the rules adopted by a former congress, brought in seventy-six original compositions, of which the musical critics (of whose severity there can be little doubt) reported twenty-one as of first class, and twenty-six of medium merit. {435} The programme of the next congress in the same city, to be opened next September, offers among others a prize of 1000 francs for the design of a church. We hope that, among the many of our bishops and distinguished laymen who will visit Europe this summer, some will be able to find the time to be present at this great Catholic assembly, and examine its projects and working.

The clergy have from the start seconded these congresses with all their influence, and a very large number of them are regular and active members. Discourses were pronounced before them by several distinguished prelates, among whom we remark the names of Cardinal Wiseman and Bishop Dupanloup. Yet all the members meet upon a perfect equality. The title to membership is that of merit alone, and the guarantee that one has something positive to offer for the furtherance of the objects for which the congress is convened. No one appears as a general delegate of veto, or as a committee of one on objections; but each one comes well posted up in the department in which he is interested, well prepared with his documents, notes of experience, authorities, etc., and hence their deliberations are based upon solid matter and not upon visionary ideas or imaginary schemes. It is easy to see how these congresses have produced such practical results as the advanced state of Catholicity has shown in the last few years throughout Germany and Belgium. Art in its relations to religion and the church has been so well encouraged that the congress of 1864 saw over one hundred artists and archaeologists assembled in council. All that contributes to the propriety and majesty of the divine service in church decoration and furniture received special attention, and numerous works have been published in consequence.

Catholic journalism received such an impetus that Belgium, small as it is, now boasts of fifty Catholic periodicals. In Europe they understand the importance of fostering and purifying this department of public instruction. A late German writer says: "Journalism is an important profession, whose members should be conscientious and honorable men. The journalist addresses his language to an audience far more numerous than the professors, and at present his influence is, so to say, unlimited; he reaches every part of educated society, and sways public opinion. He is called to be the standard-bearer of liberty and truth. He must, therefore, implant sound principles in the popular mind, and, standing above the reach of paltry prejudice, unite in himself a high degree of intelligence and true devotion to the eternal laws of the church. Without independence, dignity, and moral freedom he cannot do justice to the task imposed on him by God. _'Impavidum ferient ruinae.'_ In England, America, and Belgium, the press wields a powerful influence; it has become sovereign, and is necessary to the nation's life. Science feels that, unless it is diffused, it is powerless, and that the school-room is too narrow a field." The foundation of a great Catholic university for Germany is now under consideration, and a large sum is already subscribed toward it. In this respect Belgium is far in advance of its more populous and powerful neighbor. By persistent and united effort the university of Louvain was established, and it now numbers 800 more students than those of the three state universities put together. We cannot refrain from transcribing the following earnest words of the writer already quoted. Speaking of Germany, he says:

"We must found a new university, a purely Catholic and free institution, untrammelled by state dictation, and entirely under the direction of the church. To do this, the bishops, the nobles, and the clergy must use their best endeavors; but the professors, too, must do their share, and not look on with cool indifference, as is the case with most of them. ... There is neither truce nor rest for us until we are _not only equal, but superior_ to our opponents in every branch of science."

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The congress of Würzburg founded a "Society for the Publication of Catholic Pamphlets," and it was so well received that in two years' time the number of its subscribers amounted to 25,000. Few of its many projects proposed and discussed appear to have met with such an enthusiastic reception and inspired such lively interest as this. In passing, let us be permitted to hope that a similar society lately founded in the United States may meet with a like encouragement, and that our people will appreciate the necessity of supporting with all their energies this truly apostolic work.

It is not surprising that the attention of these congresses was turned in an especial manner to the subject of charity, both corporal and spiritual. It is the spirit of Catholic charity that prompted these reunions and gave to them both their life and fruit. Says the writer above quoted, on this subject:

"Charity is the culminating point of all activity, for what is religion but practical love of God and of our neighbor? Truth must not only be proved, but felt; science and art are the necessary fruits of true religion; science is not the light, but is to give testimony of the light. The object of art is the beautiful; of science, the true; and of charity, the good; but the beautiful, the true, and the good are the three highest categories--the indispensable conditions of intellectual activity--the connecting links between the intellect and God, who is the fountain head and prototype of all being, as well as the last end of human investigations and aspirations."

The deliberations of these congresses, therefore, embraced every form of charity, while they confined themselves to such branches of art and science as have more or less direct relation to religion. The report of the congress of Malines before us refers to discussions, resolutions, etc., upon a vast number of charitable projects, the titles of some of which we are tempted to lay before our readers, that they have some adequate idea of the herculean labors of these zealous assemblies.

Catholic Society for the Burial of the Poor; Society for the Propagation of the Faith; Establishment at London of a Seminary for Missions among the Heathen; Missions of Herzégovines in Turkey; Erection of a Catholic Church and Schools in St. Petersburg; Foundation of a Belgian Mission in China; Pilgrimages to Rome; Means of consolidating and developing Catholic Charitable Institutions; Extension of the Society of St. Vincent of Paul; Societies of St. Francis Xavier and St. John the Baptist for workmen; OEuvre of the Ladies of Mercy; OEuvre of Mothers of Families; Means of extending and propagating Instruction in Free Schools; Diffusion of Good Books; Foundation of Public Libraries; Schools for Deaf-Mutes; Foundation of a Chair, in the University of Louvain, of Industry and Mining; The Subject of the Marriage of Soldiers; Protectorates of Children; Protectorates of Students; do. of Apprentices; do. of Young Journeymen; Young Men's Societies in Ireland and elsewhere; Orphanages; Hospitals, etc., etc.

If so much in the matter of charity alone forms the subject of consideration at one of these congresses, our readers will naturally be led to suppose that a large number of persons must be brought together on these occasions. In this they are not mistaken, for at the congress at Würzburg, in 1864 the number of delegates amounted 7000. What a truly magnificent and inspiring spectacle must have been presented at the opening of this assembly, when those _seven thousand_ Catholic men, one in faith, and united in charity, full of zeal and whole souled devotion to the holy church, assisted in a body at the grand solemn mass of the Holy Ghost, and implored on bended knees the benediction of God upon their future labors!

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With this scene before our eyes, are not we Catholics of America tempted to envy them with a holy envy the glorious work in which they are engaged, and to wish that it was in our own land and for the good of our own people that all this was done? Is there one who glances at the titles we have given above of some of their labors, who does not see that we too need, even more than our brethren in Europe, to have all these subjects relating to the advancement of religion, the instruction of the people, and the comfort of the poor brought under consideration, the best means of their accomplishment discussed, the knowledge and experience of our best Catholic men, both clergy and laity, brought under contribution, unity and organization furthered, and, by combining our forces, strike a good blow for the glory of God and the good of our fellow-men? The laity think of nothing but of contributing their money when called upon to aid some good work, and our over-tasked clergy are left to devise, plan, superintend, and carry out every religious project under heaven.

Now, it cannot be denied that there are thousands of our laymen fully competent to co-operate with the clergy in every branch of religious science, art, and charity. If they would add their minds to their money, and put their own individual energies to the wheel, a power would at once be created in the church of the United States irresistible to its enemies, and a certain guarantee of the glory and triumph of our holy faith.

The want of such a congress has already been the subject of much serious reflection with many persons, whose position and duties oblige them to recognize the necessity of union and cooperation in carrying out the various good works in which they are engaged. If we are truly imbued with the spirit of our holy religion, we should not only be far from grudging the communication of our knowledge and experience to our brethren, but should rather burn to impart it, to make it profitable to the church at large; and we are convinced that in no other way could this be so effectually done as in a congress modelled upon those of Belgium and Germany.

The form of their congress is precisely that to which we are well accustomed here in organized assemblies. All projects are first referred to particular committees and put in proper shape to be presented before the whole congress, where they are quickly disposed of according to their merits. The statutes or rules under which they meet are of such a character as to produce perfect harmony in their discussions, and the subjects which are admitted as proper for deliberation and deserving of encouragement are just such as the good of religion demands attention to and united action upon at our hands.

Not a few of the first scientific men in the United States are Catholics. True science must necessarily be in harmony with the true religion. It has been the fashion of late to consider that they are in no way related to or dependent one upon the other.

The doctrine of Luther, that reason must be left out of account in religion, and that its judgments are not to be sought for nor relied upon in matters of faith, has resulted in turning scientific men out of the church.

Men will reason, will claim and use their reason as they should, by divine right; and if you divorce reason from religion, what wonder that they will accept the decision and look upon science as a department of human knowledge and belief over which religion has no control? The Catholic Church has never professed this degrading doctrine; on the contrary, she has stoutly condemned all propositions implying it in any sense; but still, Catholic men of science must associate with scientific infidels as scientific men; they must correspond, deliberate, examine, and discuss questions of vital importance with them, who make no hesitation in assuming premises and forming theories the conclusions of which are contradictory to faith. We are not here accusing our brethren, or casting suspicion upon their orthodoxy. {438} What we intend to imply is simply this, that for want of fraternal co-operation and mutual recognition and encouragement the false principle we have alluded to above is gradually gaining ascendency in the popular as well as in the scientific mind. Had we a "Catholic Academy" composed of the men who stand high in intellectual culture and scientific research, such an "academy" as the European congresses are now striving to found, we should be able to present a bold front in the arena of science, and compel attention to its true principles and to the fact of their consonance with the teachings of faith. Thus a right arm of power would be given to the church from a source which now practically ignores it. It has been our pleasure to meet in different cities of the Union with many men, devout Catholics, whose names would grace an academic roll of first class merit. Indeed, and we say it knowingly, in every profession--in philosophy, medicine, law, geology, as well as in the army and navy, Catholics rank with the foremost. What they need, and what the church needs on their account, we say again, is union, opportunity, and mutual acquaintance and support. It is impossible to estimate what influence a body of such men would exert, or with what respect for our holy religion they would inspire the American public.

Neither must it be forgotten that the church alone possesses an universal and complete system of Christian philosophy. For the want of this, Protestantism has in the main abandoned all attempts to reconcile the deductions of reason with the dogmas of revelation. Hence, its systems of dogmatic theology are extremely jejune and discordant. Let us bring this fact before the minds of the intellectual men of our age and country, and at once Protestantism as a reasonable system of religion must fall below their contempt.

But the institution of a Catholic academy must be consequent upon the foundation of a Catholic university. We have some good schools, where a more scholarly knowledge of the classics can be acquired than in professedly Protestant colleges, but they surpass us in all other branches of science and intellectual culture. And the reason is plain. Their professorial chairs are filled by men of superior attainments, whose services are secured by good salaries.

Their standard for graduation is, however, extremely low compared to that required by the European colleges and universities. Indeed, most of our Protestant and Catholic colleges, too, accord the diploma to all their students, irrespective of their merits. We ourselves have been called upon, by a graduate of one of the oldest and most respectable Protestant colleges in the country, to translate his diploma into English, that the old folks at home might know what it meant. We need to raise our own colleges to a higher standard than they now possess, and to offer to our men of talent the means of completing the imperfect education of an ordinary college course. To do this we must have an university whose requirements for matriculation shall demand a rigid examination, in which the candidate must come off thoroughly successful; whose chairs shall be filled with first-class professors, and which shall possess an ample endowment for its purposes.

This great work, which is the hope of all the scholars in the country, can only be carried out by united effort on the part of the episcopate and the wealthy laity, and a congress would be a most fitting opportunity for bringing the matter to a definitive and practical conclusion. Great men in council will do great things, and generous souls will be stimulated to emulate examples of heroic sacrifice. It is a word to the wise.

Of all the departments of public instruction, the press needs amongst us the improvement, encouragement, and sanction which a congress is calculated to give. {439} Think of Belgium, with only 5,000,000 inhabitants, supporting over _fifty_ Catholic periodicals, and possessing numerous societies for the publication of cheap religious books and pamphlets! Our Catholic population of the United States is at least equal in number to that of the whole of Belgium. Yet with all our numbers and means we have not one daily paper under Catholic supervision, a most important work, to the establishment of which one of the first efforts of a Catholic congress with us should be directed. Those who complain of our Catholic press, and make invidious comparisons between the literary merit of our periodicals and our neighbors', should remember that editors are professional men, and not to be obtained for the wages of a day laborer; and that a first-class periodical must have a first-class circulation. A congress of editors would tend to elevate the tone of the Catholic press, and its voice would stimulate all classes to greater effort in promoting a more generous diffusion of this kind of literature. An increased circulation would enable the conductors of our journals to pay for original contributions, and engage the services of first-class writers; an outlay which very few of them have now the means of making.

That the Catholic Publication Society, now successfully founded, needs the influence of a congress to extend its operations to the different cities and towns of the Union, is plain to be seen. There are hundreds of zealous persons of every condition of life who are waiting to be told what to do to advance its interests, who want to see some system of local organization proposed and sanctioned by some proper authority. Its friends wish to meet together, to know each other, and after due deliberation to frame fitting resolutions for action, which upon their return to their respective homes they may carry into effect.

This important project cannot be fully realized, and be fruitful, under God, in instructing and edifying thousands of souls unto salvation, unless a public and general interest be excited in its success, and with the active co-operation of the great charitable associations and pious confraternities now established amongst us.

There is also a pressing necessity for us to obtain fuller information, and come to a decision about the subject of church architecture, and all that relates to the exterior of divine worship. We are building cathedrals and churches in every style, and on principles which are as various as there are fancies and theories in the brains of architects. Immense sums of money are needed and collected for this purpose, and it is of the greatest moment that they be wisely expended.

The time has come when every church we erect should be an honor to us for its architectural beauty, its substantial character, and adaptability to our needs, and when the generous alms of the faithful should no longer be thrown away upon unsightly, badly planned, and worse built edifices, of which so many exist in our country, to the great discomfort of both priest and people, and monuments (happily not lasting ones) of the want of knowledge and experience of those who constructed them.

It becomes us, therefore, to encourage our Catholic architects who understand the meaning and use of a church. We cannot look for Protestants to care much for the requirements of the ritual in their designs, or to appreciate the necessity of insisting upon what the church insists. Their chief aim is to please their patrons, and carry out whatever is proposed to them. Few of our Protestant architects know any more about the proper interior disposition of a Catholic church than they do of a Moslem mosque.

See, again, how much we suffer from the wretched altar furniture and sacerdotal vestments imported for our use, and which our clergy are obliged to take and make a display in their sanctuaries of things belonging in style to every age of the church. {440} How often have we not seen a priest clothed in Roman vestments celebrating mass at a Gothic altar furnished with Byzantine crucifix and candlesticks, and a miscellaneous job lot of tawdry French artificial flowers, while the sacred precinct of the sanctuary would be furnished with carpet and chairs that smack of the drawing-room or the kitchen?

These evils existed and do exist in other countries besides our own, and we see that the congresses of Belgium have done a great deal to correct them by calling Catholic architects together in council, and offering prizes for designs of perfect churches built and furnished according to the Ritual, the Ceremoniale Episcoporum, the Missal, and the decrees of the Congregation of Rites.

The music of our churches, what shall we say of it? Are our city churches to be turned into fashionable concert-rooms where hired Protestant, Jewish, and infidel artists are to sing their _morceaux de l'opera_ for our edification? Are our country churches never to witness a high mass celebrated in them, and the people in those localities never to be convened for the Vesper service or comforted with the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament because there is no one to teach the children at least to sing a Tantum Ergo? Are our organists always to be irresponsible musicians, guided by no rubrics, ignorant of fast days and festivals, outraging every sense of propriety, and banishing all sentiment of piety and devotion by their ad libitum roulades and fantasias of the most degraded taste? If we must pay others to sing the praises of God for us, why not also engage others to do our praying likewise? Cannot we have, as other countries have, voluntary choirs? Why cannot all the people sing at proper times and seasons, and join in that part of worship which from its very nature is the best calculated to awaken the deepest emotions of the soul!

The question of the feasibility of voluntary choirs or of congregational singing is no longer wholly a doubtful one. We know of several churches in the country that have always had voluntary choirs, and we were present during the past Lent at the services of one of our city churches where the whole congregation joined with full voices in a popular Lenten service, and in the solemn recitation of the Way of the Cross, for which they were prepared at a single public rehearsal in the church.

The subject of church music, as we have already said, was one to which the Belgium congresses paid a great deal of attention. The March number of the Revue Generale of Brussels gives a most interesting report, by Canon Devroye, of the proceedings of the jury to whom were referred the adjudication of the prizes offered for an original popular mass, composed, as says the worthy canon, "according to the rules laid down by the church, and enforced by our general assembly;" and he observes in another place that they must "redouble their efforts to procure universal observation of the rules adopted by the congress, and which are also the rules of the church and of common sense." Let us hasten to imitate this example of zeal for the glory of God's house and for the decency and dignity of divine worship. If we have not many original composers, we have, at any rate, several good judges among our organists and directors of choirs. Their united opinion would have a powerful influence in bringing about, what we do not fear to say is greatly needed, a thorough reformation in our church music.

In works of charity we have done a great deal already--enough, it may be, to hide a multitude of sins; but charity is never content with what it has done, nor will the objects of its care ever be wanting. "The poor ye have always with you," said our Lord. They take his place in our midst, and by their helplessness and suffering soften our selfish hearts, and win from us those things in the inordinate love of which we are too apt to forget our true destiny. {441} Men may give themselves up with too great ardor to the pursuit of science and devotion to art, but charity has no dangerous limits which we may not overpass. What we do for the poor we do for God, and no one can do too much for him. Yet charity needs wisdom, demands thought, and profits by good counsel. So that we see men instinctively band themselves together in associations, that the ignorant, the suffering, the tempted, and the sinful may be more wisely aided, and more speedily comforted. The religious orders of charity have their own special rules and organization, and know how to do their work well. But there are many forms of suffering and of corporal and spiritual destitution which they cannot reach, or which their rule of life prevents them from attending to. Enterprises that can embrace these needy cases for charity in their scope must, therefore, be conducted more or less entirely by the laity. To be truly effective, these enterprises need rules and organization, as much as an order of Sisters of Charity or of Mercy; and organization demands cooperation, deliberation, and union. The glorious society of St. Vincent de Paul is one of these, and its works are manifest. Millions of God's beloved poor will rise up at the last day to praise these devoted children of the church and call them blessed. But they cannot do all that is to be done. There is great need, especially in our larger cities and towns, of patronages, protectorates, associations of young apprentices and workmen, and what are called in Europe "Catholic Circles," and with us "Young Men's Institutes," which enable our Catholic youth particularly to enjoy honest recreation and amusement in honest society, and at the same time improve their minds and refine their manners. Such institutes have been already founded among us by several zealous pastors with the most signal success. Our Sunday-schools also have been of late much improved by the establishment of Sunday-School Unions, which might be extended to every diocese in the country. To give a proper impetus to all these works of charity, to make their character and working known, and encourage their establishment throughout the country, would be one of the principal subjects to come up for consideration before a congress.

We have shown enough reasons, we think, why such an assembly should be convened. Many persons have the matter at heart; and we have perused with great pleasure some communications on the subject which show a thoughtful appreciation of its great importance. We trust that what we have written may help to encourage them and others to give expression to their sentiments, and thus prepare the public mind, so that the whole body of our clergy and intelligent laity may be ready to take an active part in it as soon as the proper authorities shall summon them to meet. A good proposal has been made, which merits consideration: that the meeting of a congress be made coincident with the assembling of the General Council of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which now does so much of the work of a congress in the matter of charity, and which brings together so many men of the right stamp from all portions of our vast country. This would enable the congress to profit by the fruits of their experience and influence in a department where none are more competent than they to give advice and aid.

Our holy religion is making such rapid advances that there is an urgent call upon every Catholic to bestir himself, and do all that lies in his power to aid and support the clergy in their herculean efforts to feed and comfort the flock of Christ. Converts are pouring in from all quarters, out of all classes of society. Many of them have been earnest laborers in their way in the cause of religion and of charity. Let them not find us idle, neither must we allow them to be idle. Their influence with their Protestant brethren is great, and we should give them the means of using it and bringing it to good account.

{442}

The charitable power in the church, and the devotion of the clergy to the spiritual good of the people, has in an especial manner been brought before the minds of the American public by the events of the late war. Prejudice is dying out on all sides, and we begin to find it easier to obtain a hearing from those who have hitherto considered it a duty to turn a deaf ear to our words of truth. Our hands are full of work, and if we are alive to our opportunity, we shall accomplish glorious things for God, and not fail of placing our divine faith, always so fruitful in good works, first in rank and the highest in esteem before all those fragmentary, defective, and inefficient forms of Christianity that have up to the present held sway over the minds and hearts of so large a portion of the American people, and kept them from the knowledge of that church which, as the church of God, is Catholic, perfect, and, therefore, alone able to do the work which humanity claims at the hands of religion.

Original.

Regret.

They say she says, "I have no heart." Could she have seen my tears, She'd know I keenly felt the smart That broke the loving tie of years.

They say she says, "I have no heart." 'Twere cruel thus to say, When I, to act the firmer part, Keep from her sight away.

They say she says, "I have no heart," When sight, with tears grows dim; To think that pride should keep apart Such friends as we have been.

They say she says, "I have no heart," For her, to whom my soul had grown So closely--that, even when apart, I felt no joy--because alone.

Again she says, "I have no heart," When oft she staid the swelling tear; As those who loved I saw depart, I felt they left a sister here.

How can she say, "I have no heart," When night and morn I ask in prayer That we may not be called apart, Till both breathe forth forgiveness here?

{443}

Impressions Of Spain.

By Lady Herbert.

Gibraltar And Cadiz.

The journey from Granada was, if possible, more wearying than before, for the constant heavy rains had reduced the roads to a perfect Slough of Despond, in which the wretched mules perpetually sank and fell, and were flogged up again in a way which, to a nature fond of animals, is the most insupportable of physical miseries. Is there a greater suffering than that of witnessing cruelty and wrong which you are powerless to redress? It was not till nearly eleven o'clock the following day that our travellers found themselves once more in their old quarters on the Alameda of Malaga. By the kindness of the superior of the hospital, the usual nine o'clock mass had been postponed till the arrival of the diligence: and very joyfully did one of the party afterwards take her old place at the refectory of the community, whose loving welcome made her forget that she was still in a strange land. The following three or four days were spent almost entirely in making preparations for their journey to Gibraltar, _via_ Ronda, that eagle's nest, perched on two separate rocks, divided by a rapid torrent, but united by a picturesque bridge, which crowns the range of mountains forming the limits of the kingdom of Granada. The accounts of the mountain-path were not encouraging; but to those who had ridden for four months through the Holy Land, no track, however rugged and precipitous, offered any terrors. But when the time came, to their intense disappointment, the road was found to be impassable on the Gibraltar side, owing to the tremendous torrents, which the heavy rains had swollen to a most unusual extent. Two officers had attempted to swim their horses over, but in so doing one of them was drowned; so that there seemed no alternative but to give up their pleasant riding expedition, and, with it, the sight of that gem of the whole country which had been one of their main objects in returning to Malaga. Comforting themselves, however, by the hope of going there later from Seville, our travellers took berths in the steamer Cadiz, bound for Gibraltar; and after a beautiful parting benediction at the little convent of the Nuns of the Assumption, they took leave of their many kind friends, and, at six o'clock, (accompanied by Madame de Q---- and her brother to the water's edge,) stepped on board the boat which was to convey them to their steamer. Their captain, however, proved faithless as to time; and it was not till morning that the cargo was all on board and the vessel under weigh for their destination. After a tedious and rough passage of nineteen hours, they rounded at last the Europa Point, and found themselves a few minutes later landing on the Water Port quay of the famous rock. Of all places in Spain, Gibraltar is the least interesting, except from the British and national point of view. Its houses, its people, its streets, its language, all are of a detestably mongrel character.

The weather, too, during our travellers' stay, was essentially British, incessant pouring rain and fog alternating with gales so tremendous that twenty vessels went ashore in one day. Nothing was to be seen from the windows of the Club-House Hotel but mist and spray, or heard but the boom of the distress gun from the wrecking ships, answered by the more cheering cannon of the port. {444} But there is a bright side to every picture: and one of the bright sides of Gibraltar is to be found in its kind and hospitable governor and his wife, who, nobly laying aside all indulgence in the life-long sorrow which family events have caused, devote themselves morning, noon, and night to the welfare and enjoyment of every one around them. Their hospitality is natural to their duties and position; but the kind consideration which ever anticipates the wishes of their guests, whether residents or, as our travellers were, birds of passage, here to-day and gone to-morrow, springs from a rarer and a purer source.

Another object of interest to some of our party was the charitable institutions of the place. The white "cornettes" of the Sisters of Charity are not seen as yet; but the sisters of the "Bon Secours" have supplied their place in nursing the sick and tending all the serious cases of every class in the garrison. Their value only became fully known at the late fearful outbreak of cholera, to which two of them fell victims: but they seemed rather encouraged than deterred by this fact. They live in a house half-way up the hill on the way to Europa Point, which contains a certain number of old and incurable people and a few orphan children. They visit also the sick poor in their homes, and in the Civil Hospital, which is divided, drolly enough, not into surgical and medical wards, but according to the _religion_ of the patients! one half being Catholic, the other Protestant, and small wards being reserved likewise for Jews and Moors. It is admirably managed, the patients are supplied with every necessary and well cared for by the kind-hearted superintendent, Dr. G----. The "Dames de Lorette" have a convent towards the Europa Point, where they board and educate between twenty and thirty young ladies. They have also a large day-school in the town for both rich and poor, the latter being below and the former above. The children seem well taught, and the poorer ones were remarkable for great neatness and cleanliness. The excellent and charming Catholic bishop, Dr. Scandella, vicar apostolic of Gibraltar, has built a college for boys on the ground adjoining his palace, above the convent, from whence the view is glorious; the gardens are very extensive. This college, which was immensely needed in Gibraltar, is rapidly filling with students, and is about to be affiliated to the London University. In the garden above, a chapel is being built to receive the Virgin of "Europa," whose image, broken and despoiled by the English in 1704, was carried over to Algeciras, and there concealed in the hermitage; but has now been given back by Don Eugenio Romero to the bishop, to be placed in this new and beautiful little sanctuary overlooking the Straits, where it will soon be once more exposed to the veneration of the faithful. The bishop has lately built another little church below the convent, dedicated to St. Joseph, but which, from some defect in the materials, has been a very expensive undertaking.

It was very pleasant to see the simple, hearty, manly devotion of the large body of Catholic soldiers in the garrison, among whom his influence has had the happiest effect in checking every kind of dissatisfaction and drunkenness. His personal influence has doubtless been greatly enhanced by his conduct during the cholera, when he devoted himself, with his clergy, to the sick and dying, taking regular turns with them in the administration of the Last Sacraments, and only claiming as his privilege that of being the one always called up in the night, so that the others might get some rest. He has two little rooms adjoining the church, where he remains during the day, and receives any one who needs his fatherly care.

The Protestant bishop of Gibraltar, a very kind and benevolent man, resides at Malta, and has a cathedral near the governor's house, lately beautified by convict labor, and said to be well attended. It is the only Protestant church in Spain.

{445}

Of the sights of Gibraltar it is needless to speak. Our travellers, in spite of the weather, which rarely condescended to smile upon them, visited almost everything: the North Fort, Spanish Lines, and Catalan Bay, one day; Europa Point, with the cool summer residence of the governor, (sadly in need of government repair,) and St. Michael's Cave, on the next; and last, not least, the galleries and heights. From the signal tower the view is unrivalled; and the aloes, prickly pear, and geranium, springing out of every cleft in the rock, up which the road is beautifully and skilfully engineered, add to the enjoyment of the ride. The gentlemen of the party hunted in the cork woods when the weather would allow of it; and the only "lion" unseen by them were the monkeys, who resolutely kept in their caves or on the African side of the water during their stay at Gibraltar. The garden of the governor's palace is very enjoyable, and contains one of those wonderful dragon-trees of which the bark is said to bleed when an incision is made. The white arums grow like a weed in this country, and form most beautiful bouquets when mixed with scarlet geranium and edged by their large, bright, shining green leaves.

The time of our travellers was, however, limited, especially as they wished to spend the Holy Week in Seville. So, after a ten days' stay, reluctantly giving up the kind offer of the port admiral to take them across to Africa, and contenting themselves with buying a few Tetuan pots from the Moors at Gibraltar, they took their passages on board the "London" steamer for Cadiz.

By permission of the governor, they were allowed to pass through the gates after gun-fire, and got to the mole; but there, from some mistake, no boat could be found to take them off to their vessel, and they had the pleasure of seeing it steam away out of the harbor without them, although their passages had been paid for, and, as they thought, secured. In despair, shut out of the town, where a state of siege, for fear of a surprise, is always rigorously maintained by the English garrison, they at last bribed a little boat to take them to a Spanish vessel, the "Allegri," likewise bound for Cadiz, and which was advertised to start an hour later. In getting on board of her, however, they found she was a wretched tub, heavily laden with paraffine, among other combustibles, and with no accommodation whatever for passengers. There was, however, no alternative but going in her or remaining all night tossing about the harbor in their cockle-shell of a boat; so they made up their minds to the least of the two evils, and a few minutes later saw them steaming rapidly out of the harbor toward Cadiz. The younger portion of the party found a cabin in which they could lie down: the elder lay on the cordage of the deck, and prayed for a cessation of the recent fearful storms, the captain having quietly informed them that in the event of its coming on to blow again he must throw all their luggage overboard as well as a good deal of his cargo, as he was already too heavily laden to be safe. However, the night was calm, though very cold, and the following morning saw them safely rounding the forts of Cadiz, and staring at its long, low shores. But then a new alarm seized them. The quarantine officers came on board with a horrible yellow flag, and talked big about the cholera having reappeared at Alexandria, and the consequent impossibility of their being able to produce a clean bill of health. The prospect of spending a week in that miserable vessel, or in the still more dismal lazaretto on the shore, was anything but agreeable to our travellers. However, on the assurance of the captain that the only vessel arrived from Egypt before they left Gibraltar had been instantly put into quarantine by the governor, they were at last allowed to land in peace, and found very comfortable rooms at Blanco's hotel, on the promenade, their windows and balconies looking on the sea. {446} In the absence of the bishop, who was gone to Tetuan, Canon L---- kindly offered his services to show them the curiosities of the town, and took them first to the Capuchin convent, now converted into a madhouse, in the church adjoining which are two very fine Murillos: one, "St. Francis receiving the Stigmata," which, for spirituality of expression, is really unrivalled; the other, "The Marriage of St. Catherine," which was his _last_ work, and is unfinished. The great painter fell from the scaffolding in 1682, and died very soon after, at Seville, in consequence of the internal injuries he had received. From this convent they proceeded to the cathedral, which is ugly enough, but where the organ and singing were admirable. The stalls in the choir, which are beautifully carved, were stolen from the Cartucha at Seville. There is a spacious crypt under the high altar, with a curious flat roof, unsupported by any arches or columns, but at present it is bare and empty. Their guide then took them to see the workhouse, or "Albergo dei Poveri," an enormous building, which is even more admirably managed than the one at Madrid. It contains upwards of a thousand inmates. The boys are all taught different trades, and the girls every kind of industrial and needle work. The dormitories and washing arrangements are excellent; and all the walls being lined, up to a certain height, with the invariable blue and white "azulejos," or glazed tiles, gives a clean, bright appearance to the whole. The dress of the children was also striking to English eyes, accustomed to the hideous workhouse livery at home. On Sundays they have a pretty and varied costume for both boys and girls, and their little tastes are considered in every way. They have a large and handsome church, and also a chapel for the children's daily prayers, which they themselves keep nice and pretty, and ornament with flowers from their gardens. The whole thing is like a "_home_" for these poor little orphans, and in painful contrast to the views which Protestant England takes of charity in her workhouses, where poverty seems invariably treated as a crime. The children are in a separate wing of the building--the girls above, the boys below. On the other side are the sick wards, and those for the old and incurable, where the same minute care for their comfort and pleasure is observed in every arrangement. Nor is there that horrible prison atmosphere, and that locking of doors as one passes through each ward, which jars so painfully on one's heart in going through an English workhouse. There are very few able bodied paupers; and those are employed in the work of the house and garden. There is a spacious "patio," or court, with an open colonnade of marble columns, running round the quadrangle, the centre of which is filled with orange-trees and flowers. This beautiful palace was founded and endowed by the private benevolence of one man, who dedicated it to St. Helena, in memory of his mother, and placed in it the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who have the entire care of the whole establishment. There are fifteen sisters, all Spaniards, but affiliated to the French ones, and with the portrait of N. T. H. Père Etienne in the place of honor in their "parloir" and refectory. The superior is a most remarkable woman, little and "contrefaite," but with a soul in her eyes which it is impossible to forget. The institution is now in the hands of the government, who have wisely not attempted to make any alterations in the administration. There are upward of fifty of these Sisters of Charity in Cadiz, they having the sole charge of the hospitals, schools, workhouses, etc.; and the admirable cleanliness, order, and comfort in each which is the result, must commend them to the intelligent approval of every visitor, even should he be unmoved by the evidence of that unpaid charity which, with its soft finger-touch, stamps all their works with the very essence of divine love.

{447}

The next day being Palm Sunday, our travellers went to service in the cathedral. It was very fine, but extremely fatiguing. There are no chairs or seats in Spanish churches. Every one kneels on the floor the whole time, not even rising for the Gospel or Creed. On one of the party attempting to stand up at the long Gospel of the Passion, she was somewhat indignantly pulled down again by her neighbors. During the sermon, the Spanish women have a peculiar way of sitting on their heels--a process which they learn from childhood, but which to strangers is an almost intolerable penance. Here, as everywhere in Spain, the hideous fashion of bonnets or hats was unknown, and the universal black mantilla, with its graceful folds and modest covering of the face, and the absence of all colors to distract attention in the house of God, made our English ladies sigh more eagerly than ever for a similar reverent and decent fashion to be adopted at home. On returning for the vesper service in the afternoon, a beautiful, and, to them, novel, custom was observed. At the singing of the "Vexilla Regis," the canons, in long black robes, knelt prostrate in a semicircle before the high altar, and were covered by a black flag with a red cross. This they saw repeated daily during the Passion Week services at Seville. In the evening there was a magnificent benediction and processional service round the cloisters of the church called "Delle Scalze." It was impossible to imagine anything more picturesque than the multitude kneeling in the open "patio," or court, shaded by orange-trees, and full of beautiful flowers, while round the arches swept the gorgeous procession carrying the Host, the choir and people singing alternate verses of the "Lauda Sion," the curling smoke of the incense reflecting prismatic colors in the bright sunshine, and the whole procession finally disappearing in the sombre, dark old church, of which the centre doors had been thrown wide open to receive it. One longed only for Roberts's paint-brush to depict the scene. Returning to their hotel, our party found the Alameda gay with holiday folk, and full of the ladies whose beauty and charm have been the pride of Cadiz for so many generations. Do not let our readers think it invidious if we venture on the opinion that their beautiful and becoming dress has a great deal to do with this, just as, in the East, every turbaned Turk or burnoused Arab would make a perfect picture. Dress your Oriental in one of Poole's best-fitting coats and trousers, and give him a chimney-pot hat, and where would be his beauty? In the same way, if--which good taste forefend--the Spanish ladies come to imagine that a bonnet stuck on the back of the head, and every color in the rainbow, is prettier than the flowing black robe and softly folded lace mantilla, shading modestly their bright dark eyes and hair, they will find, to their cost, that their charm has vanished for ever.

Nothing more remained to be seen or done in Cadiz but to purchase some of the beautiful mats which are its great industry, and which are made of a flat reed or "junco," growing in the neighborhood; and these the kind and, good-natured English consul undertook to forward to them, when ready, to England.

Seville.

Armed with sundry letters of introduction sent them from Madrid, our travellers started by early train for Seville, the amiable Canon L---- having given them a five o'clock mass before starting, in his interesting old circular church dedicated to S. Filippo Neri, he being one of the Oratorians. They passed by Xeres, famous for its sherry cellars, called "bodegas," supplying more wine to England than to all the rest of the world put together, and for its Carthusian convent, once remarkable for its Zurbaran pictures, the greater portion of which have now followed the sherry to the British Isles; then by Alcalà, noted for its delicious bread, with which it supplies the whole of Seville; for its Moorish castle and beautiful river Aira, the waters of which, after flowing round the walls of the little town, are carried by an aqueduct to Seville; and so on and on, through orange and olive groves, and wheat plains, and vineyards, till the train brought them by mid-day to the wonderful and beautiful city which had been the main object of their Spanish tour.

{448}

The saying is strictly true:

Quien no ha visto Sevilla, No ha visto maravilla.

Scarcely had they set foot in their comfortable hotel, the "Fonda de Londres," when an obliging aide-de-camp of the Spanish general came to tell them that, if they wanted to see the Alcazar, they must go with him at once, as the infanta, who had married the sister of the king's consort, was expected with his wife to occupy the palace that evening, when it would naturally be closed to visitors. Dusty, dirty, and hot as they were, therefore, they at once sallied forth with their kind cicerone and the English consul for this fairy palace of the Moors. Entering by the Plaza del Triunfo, under an arched gateway, where hangs, day and night, a lamp throwing its soft light on the beautiful little picture of the Virgin and Child, they came into a long court, in the midst of which are orange-trees and fountains, and this again led them by a side door into the inner court or "patio" of the palace.

Like the Alhambra, it is an exquisite succession of delicate columns, with beautifully carved capitals, walls, and balconies, which look as if worked in Mechlin lace; charmingly cool "patios," with marble floors and fountains; doors whose geometrical patterns defy the patience of the painter; horse-shoe arches, with edges fringed like guipure; fretted ceilings, the arabesques of which are painted in the most harmonious colors, and tipped with gold; lattices every one of which seems to tell of a romance of beauty and of love: such are these moresque creations, unrivalled in modern art, and before which our most beautiful nineteenth century palaces sink into coarse and commonplace buildings. They are the realization of the descriptions in the "Arabian Nights," and the exquisite delicacy of the work is not its sole charm. The _proportions_ of every room, of every staircase, of every door and window, are perfect: nothing offends the eye by being too short or too wide. In point of sound, also, they, as well as the Romans, knew the secret which our modern builders have lost; and in harmony of color, no "azulejos" of the present day can approach the beauty and brilliancy of the Moorish tints. Nor are historical romances wanting to enhance the interest of this wonderful place. In the bed-chamber of the king, Pedro the Cruel, are painted three dead heads, and thereon hangs a tale of savage justice. The king overheard three of his judges combining to give a false judgment in a certain case about which they had been bribed, and then quarrel about their respective shares of their ill gotten spoils. He suddenly appeared before them, and causing them to be instantly beheaded, placed their heads in the niches where now the paintings perpetuate the remembrance of the punishment. Less excusable was another tragedy enacted within these walls, in the assassination of the brother of king, who had been invited as a guest and came unsuspicious of treachery. A deep red stain of blood in the marble floor still marks the spot of the murder. Well may Spain's most popular modern poet, the Duque de Rivas, in his beautiful poem, exclaim:

"Ann en las losas se mira Una tenaz mancha oscura; ... Ni las edades la limpian! ... Sangre! sangre! Oh cielos! cuantos, Sin saber que lo es, la pisan!" [Footnote 141]

[Footnote 141: "One still sees on the pavement a dark spot--the lapse of ages has not effaced it! Blood! blood! O Heaven! how many tread it under foot without knowing it!"]

{449}

The gardens adjoining the palace are quaintly beautiful, the borders edged with myrtle and box, cut low and thick, with terraces and fountains, and kiosks, and, "surprises" of "jets d'eau," and arched walls festooned with beautiful hanging creepers, and a "luxe" of oriental vegetation. On one side are the white marble baths, cool and sombre, where the beautiful Maria de Padilla forgot the heat and glare of the Seville sun. It was the custom of the courtiers in her day to _drink_ the water in which the ladies had bathed. Pedro the Cruel reproached one of his knights for not complying with this custom. "Sire," he replied, "I should fear lest, having tasted the sauce, I should covet the bird!"

The Alcazar formerly extended far beyond its present limits; but the ruined towers by the water-side are all that now remain to mark the course of the old walls.

Our travellers could not resist one walk through the matchless cathedral on their way home; but reserved their real visit to that and to the Giralda till the following day. The kind Regente de la Audiencia and his wife, to whom they had brought letters of introduction, came to them in the evening, and arranged various expeditions for the ensuing week.

Early the next morning the Countess L---- de R---- came to fetch one of the party to the church of S. Felipe Neri, which, like all the churches of the Oratorians, is beautifully decorated, and most devout and reverent in its services. It is no easy matter to go on wheels in the streets of Seville. There are but two or three streets in which a carriage can go at all, or attempt to turn; and so to arrive at any given place, it is generally necessary to make the circuit of half the town. In addition to this, the so-called pavement, angular, pointed, and broken, shakes every bone in one's body. To reach their destination on this particular morning, our friends had to traverse the market place, and make an immense _détour_ through various squares, passing meanwhile by several very interesting churches; but it was all so much gain to the stranger.

After mass, one of the fathers, who spoke English, kindly showed them the treasures of his church, and amongst other things a beautiful silver-chased chapel behind the high altar, containing some exquisite bénitières, crucifixes, and relics. The wooden crucifixes of Spain, mostly carved by great men, such as Alonso Caño or Montanés, are quite wonderful in beauty and force of expression; but they are very difficult to obtain. They have a pretty custom in this church of offering two turtle doves in a pure white basket when a child is devoted to the Blessed Virgin, which are left on the altar, as in the old days of the Purification, and the white basket is afterward laid up in the chapel. After breakfast the whole party arrived at the cathedral. How describe this wonderful building! To say it is such and such a height, and such and such a width, that it has so many columns, and so many chapels, and so many doors, and so many windows. ... Why, Murray has done that far better than any one else! But to understand the cathedral at Seville, you must know it; you must feel it; you must live in it; you must see it at the moment of the setting sun, when the light streams in golden showers through those wonderful painted glass windows, (those _chefs d'oeuvre_ of Arnold of Flanders,) jewelling the curling smoke of the incense still hanging round the choir; or else go there in the dim twilight, when the aisles seem to lengthen out into infinite space, and the only bright spot is from the ever-burning silver lamps which hang before the tabernacle.

One of the party, certainly not given to admiration of either churches or Catholicity, exclaimed on leaving it: "It is a place where I could not help saying my prayers!" The good-natured Canon P---- showed them all the treasures and pictures. They are too numerous to describe in detail; but some leave an indelible impression. Among these is Murillo's wonderful St. Antony, in the baptistery; Alonso Caño's delicious little Virgin and Child, (called Nuestra Señora de Belem;) Morales's Dead Christ; {450} a very curious old Byzantine picture of the Virgin; and in the sacristy, the exquisite portraits by Murillo of St. Leander, archbishop of Seville, the great reformer of the Spanish liturgy, whose bones rest in a silver coffin in the Capilla Real, and of St. Isadore, his brother, who succeeded him in the see, called the "Excellent Doctor," and whose body rests at Leon. Here also is a wonderful "Descent from the Cross," by Campana, before which Murillo used to sit, and say "he waited till he was taken down;" and here, by his own particular wish, the great painter is buried. There is, besides, a fine portrait of St. Teresa; and round the handsome chapter-room are a whole series of beautiful oval portraits by Murillo, and also one of his best "Conceptions." Among the treasures is the cross made from the gold which Christopher Columbus brought home from America, and presented to the king; the keys of the town given up to Ferdinand by the Moorish king at the conquest of Seville; two beautiful ostensorios of the fifteenth century, covered with precious stones and magnificent pearls; beautiful Cinquecento reliquaries presented by different popes; finely illuminated missals in admirable preservation; an exquisitely carved ivory crucifix; wonderful vestments, heavy with embroidery and seed-pearls; the crown of King Ferdinand; and last, not least, a magnificent tabernacle altar-front, angels and candle-sticks, all in solid silver, beautiful in workmanship and design, used for Corpus Christi, and other solemn feasts of the Blessed Sacrament. One asks one's self very often: "How came all these treasures to escape the rapacity of the French spoilers?"

The Royal Chapel contains the body of St. Ferdinand, the pious conqueror of Seville, which town, as well as Cordova, he rescued from the hands of the Moors, after it had been in their possession five hundred and twenty-four years. This pious king, son to Alphonse, king of Leon, bore witness by his conduct to the truth of his words on going into battle: "Thou, O Lord! who searchest the hearts of men, knowest that I desire but thy glory, and not mine." To his saint-like mother, Berangera, he owed all the good and holy impressions of his life. He helped to build the cathedral of Toledo, of which he laid the first stone, and, in the midst of the splendors of the court, led a most ascetic and penitential life. Seville surrendered to him in 1249, after a siege of sixteen months, on which occasion the Moorish general exclaimed that "only a saint who, by his justice and piety, had won heaven over to his interest, could have taken so strong a city with so small an army." By the archbishop's permission, the body of the saint was exposed for our travellers. It is in a magnificent silver shrine; and the features still retain a remarkable resemblance to his portraits. His banner, crown, and sword were likewise shown to them, and the little ivory Virgin which he always fastened to the front of his saddle when going to battle. The cedar coffin still remains in which his body rested previous to its removal to this more gorgeous shrine. On the three days in the year when his body is exposed, the troops all attend the mass, and lower their arms and colors to the great Christian conqueror. A little staircase at the back of the tomb brings you down into a tiny crypt, where, arranged on shelves, are the coffins of the beautiful Maria Padilla, of Pedro the Cruel, and of their two sons: latterly, those of the children of the Duc and Duchesse de Montpensier have been added. Over the altar of the chapel above hangs a very curious wooden statue of the Virgin, given to St. Ferdinand by the good king Louis of France. King Ferdinand adorned her with a crown of emeralds and a stomacher of diamonds, belonging to his mother, on condition that they should never be removed from the image.

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The organs are among the wonders of this cathedral, with their thousands of pipes, placed horizontally, in a fan-like shape. The "retablo" at the back of the high altar is a marvel of wood-carving; and the hundreds of lamps which burn before the different shrines are all of pure and massive silver. One is tempted to ask: "Was it by men and women like ourselves that cathedrals such as this were planned and built and furnished?" The chapter who undertook it are said to have deprived themselves even of the necessaries of life to erect a basilica worthy of the name; and in this spirit of voluntary poverty and self-abnegation was it begun and completed. Never was there a moment when money was so plentiful in England as now, yet where will a cathedral be found built since the fifteenth century?

At the west end lies Fernando, son of the great Christopher Columbus, who himself died at Valladolid, and is said to rest in the Havana. The motto on the tomb is simple but touching:

A Castilla y á Leon, mundo nuevo dió Colon.

Over this stone, during holy week, is placed the "monumento," an enormous tabernacle, more than 100 feet high, which is erected to contain the sacred host on Holy Thursday: when lighted up, with the magnificent silver custodia, massive silver candlesticks, and a profusion of flowers and candles, it forms a "sepulchre" unequalled in the world for beauty and splendor.

Passing at last under the Moorish arch toward the north-east end of the cathedral, our travellers found themselves in a beautiful cloistered "patio," full of orange-trees in full blossom, with a magnificent fountain in the centre. In one corner is the old stone pulpit from which St. Vincent Ferrer, St. John of Avila, and other saints preached to the people: an inscription records the fact. Over the beautiful door which leads into the cathedral hang various curious emblems: a horn, a crocodile, a rod, and a bit, said to represent plenty, prudence, justice, and temperance. To the left is the staircase leading to the Columbine library, given by Fernando, and containing some very interesting MSS. of Christopher Columbus. One book is full of quotations, in his own handwriting, from the Psalms and the Prophets, proving the existence of the New World; another is a plan of the globe and of the zodiac drawn out by him. There is also a universal history, with copious notes, in the same bold, clear, fine handwriting; and a series of his letters to the king, written in Latin. Above the bookshelves are a succession of curious portraits, including those of Christopher Columbus and his son Fernando, which were given by Louis Philippe to the library; of Velasquez; of Cardinal Mendoza; of S. Fernando, by Murillo; and of our own Cardinal Wiseman, who, a native of Seville, is held in the greatest love and veneration here. A touching little account of his life and death has lately been published in Seville by the talented Spanish author, Don Leon Carbonero y Sol, with the appropriate heading, "Sicut vita finis ita." Our party were also shown the sword of Fernand Gonsalves, a fine two-edged blade, which did good service in rescuing Seville from the Moors.

Redescending the stairs, our travellers mounted the beautiful Moorish tower of the Giralda, built in the twelfth century by Abu Yusuf Yacub, who was also the constructor of the bridge of boats across the Guadalquiver. This tower forms the great feature in every view of Seville, and is matchless both from its rich yellow and red-brown color, its sunken Moorish decorations, and the extreme beauty of its proportions. It was originally 250 feet high, and built as a minaret, from whence the muezzin summoned the faithful to prayers in the mosque hard by; but Ferdinand Riaz added another 100 feet, and, fortunately, in perfect harmony with the original design. He girdled it with a motto from Proverbs xviii.: "Nomen Domini fortissima turris."

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The ascent is very easy, being by ramps sloping gently upward. The Giralda is under the special patronage of SS. Justina and Rufina, daughters of a potter in the town, who suffered martyrdom in 304 for refusing to sell their vessels for the use of the heathen sacrifices. Sta. Justina expired on the rack, while Sta. Rufina was strangled. The figure which crowns the tower is that of Faith, and is in bronze, and beautifully carved.

The bells are very fine in tone; but what repays one for the ascent is the view, not only over the whole town and neighborhood, but over the whole body of the huge cathedral, with its forest of pinnacles and its wonderfully constructed roof, which looks massive enough to outlast the world. The delicate Gothic balustrades are the home of a multitude of hawks, (the _Falco tinunculoides_,) who career round and round the beautiful tower, and are looked upon almost as sacred birds.

The thing which strikes one most in the look of the town from hence is the absence of streets. From their excessive narrowness, they are invisible at this great height, and the houses seem all massed together, without any means of egress or ingress. The view of the setting sun from this tower is a thing never to be forgotten; nor the effect of it lit up at night, when it seems to hang like a brilliant chandelier from the dark blue vault above.

Tired as our travellers were, they could not resist one short visit that afternoon to the Museum, and to that wonderful little room below, which contains a few pictures only, but those few unrivalled in the world.

Here, indeed, one sees what Murillo could do. The "St. Thomas of Villanueva," giving alms to the beggar, (called by the painter himself his _own_ picture;) the "St. Francis" embracing the crucified Saviour; the "St. Antony," with a lily in adoration before the infant Jesus; the "Nativity;" the "San Felix de Cantalicia," holding the infant Saviour in his arms, which the blessed Virgin is coming down to receive; the "SS. Rufina and Justina;" and last, not least, the Virgin, which earned him the title of "El Pintor de las Concepciones." Each and all are matchless in taste, in expression, in feeling; above all, in devotion. It is impossible to meditate on any one of these mysteries in our blessed Lord's life without the recollection of one of these pictures rising up instantly in one's mind, as the purest embodiment of the love, or the adoration, or the compunction, which such meditations are meant to call forth; they are in themselves a prayer.

In the evening one of the party went with the regent to call on the venerable cardinal archbishop, whose fine palace is exactly opposite the east front of the cathedral. It was very sad to wind up that fine staircase, and see him in that noble room, groping his way, holding on by the wall, for he is quite blind. It is hoped, however, that an operation for cataract, which is contemplated, may be successful. He was most kind, and gave the English stranger a place in the choir of the cathedral for the processional services of the holy week and Easter--a great favor, generally only accorded to royalty, and of which the lady did not fail to take advantage. M. Leon Carbonero y Sol, the author and clever editor of the "Crux," paid them a visit that evening. By his energy and perseverance this monthly periodical has been started at Seville, which is an event in this non-literary country; and he has written several works, both biographical and devotional, which deserve a wider reputation than they have yet obtained.

The following, day, being Wednesday in holy week, the whole party returned to the cathedral, to see the impressive and beautiful ceremony of the Rending of the White Veil, and the "Rocks being rent," at the moment when that passage is chanted in the Gospel of the Passion. The effect was very fine; and all the more from the sombre light of the cathedral, every window in which was shaded by black curtains, and every picture and image shrouded in black. [Footnote 142]

[Footnote 142: Faber says very beautifully: "Passion-tide veils the face of the crucifix, only that it may be more vivid in our hearts."]

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At vespers, the canons, as at Cadiz, knelt prostrate before the altar, and were covered with a black red-cross flag. At four o'clock our travellers went to the Audiencia, where the regent and his kind wife had given them all seats to see the processions. How are these to be described? They are certainly appreciated by the people themselves; but they are not suited to English taste, especially in the glare of a Seville sun: and unless representations of the terrible and awful events connected with our Lord's passion be depicted with the skill of a great artist, they become simply intensely painful. The thing which was touching and beautiful was the orderly arrangement of the processions themselves, and the way in which men of the highest rank, of royal blood, and of the noblest orders, did not hesitate to walk for hours through the dusty, crowded, burning streets for three successive days, with the sole motive of doing honor to their Lord, whose badge they wore.

The processions invariably ended by passing through the cathedral and stopping for some minutes in the open space between the high altar and the choir. The effect of the brilliant mass of light thrown by thousands of wax tapers, as the great unwieldy catafalque was borne through the profound darkness of the long aisles, was beautiful in the extreme; and representations which looked gaudy in the sunshine were mellowed and softened by the contrast with the night. The best were "The Sacred Infancy," the "Bearing of the Cross," and the "Descent from the Cross." In all, the figures were the size of life, and these three were beautifully and naturally designed. Less pleasing to English eyes, in spite of their wonderful splendor, were those of the blessed Virgin, decked out in gorgeous velvet robes, embroidered in gold, and covered with jewels, with lace pocket-handkerchiefs in the hand, and all the paraphernalia of a fine lady of the nineteenth century! It is contrary to our purer taste, which thinks of her as represented in one of Raphael's chaste and modest pictures, with the simple robe and headdress of her land and people; or else in the glistening white marble, chosen by our late beloved cardinal as the fittest material for a representation of her in his "Ex Voto," and which speaks of the spotless purity of her holy life. Leaving the house of the regent, the party made their way with difficulty through the dense crowd to the cathedral, where the Tenebrae began, followed by the Miserere, beautifully and touchingly sung, without any organ accompaniments, at the high altar. It was as if the priests were pleading for their people's sins before the throne of God. The next day was spent altogether in these solemn holy Thursday services. After early communion at the fine church of S. Maria Magdalena, thronged, like all the rest, with devout worshippers, our party went to high mass at the cathedral, after which the blessed sacrament, according to custom, was carried to the gigantic "monumento." or sepulchre, before mentioned, erected at the west door of the cathedral, and dazzling with light. Then came the "Cena" in the archbishop's palace, at which his blindness prevented his officiating; and then our travellers went round the town to visit the "sepulchres" in the different churches, one more beautiful than the other, and thronged with such kneeling crowds that going from one to the other was a matter of no small difficulty. The heat also increased the fatigue; and here, as at Palermo, no carriages are allowed from holy Thursday till Easter day: every one must perform these pious pilgrimages on foot. At half past two, they went back to the cathedral for the washing of the feet. An eloquent sermon followed, and then began the Tenebrae and the Miserere as before, with the entry of the processions between: the whole lasted till half-past eleven at night.

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Good Friday was as solemn as the same day is at Rome or at Jerusalem. The adoration of the cross in the cathedral was very fine: but women were not allowed to kiss it as in the Holy City. After that was over, some of the party, by the kind invitation of the Duc and Duchesse de Montpensier, went to their private chapel, at St. Elmo, for the "Tre Ore d'Agonic," being from twelve to three o'clock, or the hours when our Saviour hung upon the cross. It was a most striking and impressive service. The beautiful chapel was entirely hung with black, and pitch dark. On entering, it was impossible to see one's way among the kneeling figures on the floor, all, of course, in deep mourning. The sole light was very powerfully thrown on a most beautiful picture of the crucifixion, in which the figures were the size of life. The sermon, or rather meditation on the seven words of our Lord on the cross, was preached by the superior of the oratory of S. Felippo Neri, a man of great eloquence and personal holiness. It would be impossible to exaggerate the beauty and pathos of two of these meditations; the one on the charity of our blessed Lord, the other on his desolation. A long low sob burst from the hearts of his hearers at the conclusion of the latter. The wailing minor music between was equally beautiful and appropriate; it was as the lament of the angels over the lost, in spite of the tremendous sacrifice! At half-past three, the party returned to the cathedral, where the services lasted till nine in the evening, and then came home in the state of mind and feeling so wonderfully represented by De la Roche, in the last portion of his "Good Friday" picture. Beautifully does Faber exclaim: "The hearts of the saints, like sea-shells, murmur of the passion evermore."

The holy Saturday functions began soon after five the next morning, and were as admirably conducted as all the rest. Immense praise was due to the "maestro de ceremonias," who had arranged services so varied and so complicated with such perfect order and precision: and the conduct of the black-veiled kneeling multitude throughout was equally admirable; one and all seemed absorbed by the devotions of the time and season.

That evening, the Vigil of Easter was spent in the cathedral by some of our party in much the same manner as they had done on a preceding one in the Holy City two years before. The night was lovely. The moon was streaming through the cloisters on the orange-trees of the beautiful "patio," across which the Giralda threw a deep sharp shadow, the silver light catching the tips of the arches, and shining with almost startling brightness on the "Pietà" in the little wayside chapel at the south entrance of the court. All spoke of beauty, and of peace, and of rest, and of stillness, and of the majesty of God. Inside the church were groups of black or veiled figures, mostly women, (were not women the first at the sepulchre?) kneeling before the tabernacle, or by the little lamps burning here and there in the side chapels. Each heart was pouring forth its secret burden of sorrow or of sin into the sacred heart which had been so lately pierced to receive it. At two in the morning matins began, "Haec dies quam fecit Dominus;" and after matins a magnificent Te Deum, pealed forth by those gigantic organs, and sung by the whole strength of the choir and by the whole body of voices of the crowd, which by that time had filled every available kneeling space in the vast cathedral. Then came a procession; all the choristers in red cassocks, with white cottas and little gold diadems. High mass followed, and then low masses at all the side altars, with hundreds of communicants, and the Russian salutation of "Christ is risen!" on every tongue. It was "a night to be remembered," as indeed was all this holy week: and now people seemed too happy to speak; joy says short words and few ones. {455} Many have asked: "Is it equal to Jerusalem or Rome?" In point of services, "Yes;" in point of interest, "No;" for the presence of the Holy Father in the one place, and the vividness of recollection which the actual scenes of our blessed Lord's passion inspires in the other, must ever make the holy and eternal cities things apart and sacred from all besides. But nowhere else can "fonctions" be seen in such perfection or with such solemnity as at Seville. Everything is reverently and well done, and nothing has changed in the ceremonial for the last three hundred years.

A domestic sorrow had closed the palace of the Duc and Duchesse de Montpensier as far as their receptions were concerned; but they kindly gave our party permission to see both house and gardens, which well deserve a visit. The palace itself reminded them a little of the Duc d'Aumale's at Twickenham: not in point of architecture, but in its beautiful and interesting contents; in its choice collections of pictures, and books, and works of art, and in the general tone which pervaded the whole. There are two exquisite Murillos; a "St. Joseph" and a "Holy Family;" a "Divino Morales;" a "Pieta;" some beautiful "Zurbarans;" and some very clever and characteristic sketches by Goya. They have some curious historical portraits also, and some very pretty modern pictures. The rooms and passages abound in beautiful cabinets, rare china, sets of armor, African trappings, and oriental costumes. In the snug low rooms looking on the garden, and reminding one of Sion or of Chiswick, there are little fountains in the centre of each, combining oriental luxury and freshness with European comfort. The gardens are delicious. They contain a magnificent specimen of the "palma regis," and quantities of rare and beautiful shrubs; also an aviary of curious and scarce birds. You wander for ever through groves of orange, and palms, and aloes, and under trellises covered with luxuriant creepers and clustering roses, with a feeling of something like envy at the climate, which seems to produce everything with comparatively little trouble or culture. To be sure there is "le revers de la médaille," when the scorching July sun has burnt up all this lovely vegetation. But the spring in the garden of St. Elmo is a thing to dream about.

From this enjoyable palace our party went on to visit "Pilate's House," so called because built by Don Enrique de Ribera, of the exact proportions of the original, in commemoration of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1519. It is now the property of the Duque de Medina Sidonia. Passing into a cool "patio," you see a black cross, marking the first of the stations of a very famous Via Crucis, which begins here and ends at the Cruz del Campo outside the town. There is a pretty little chapel opening out of the "patio," ornamented with Alhambra work, as is all the rest of this lovely little moresque palace. It is a thorough bit of Damascus, with its wonderful arabesqued ceilings, and lace-like carvings on the walls and staircases, and cloistered "patios," and marble floors and fountains. Behind is a little garden full of palms, orange-trees, and roses in full flower, and, at the time our travellers saw it, carpeted with Neapolitan violets; quaint low hedges, as in the Alcazar gardens, divided the beds, and broken sculpture lay here and there.

One of the great treasures of Seville had yet been unvisited by our party, and that was the Lonja, formerly the Exchange, a noble work of Herrera's. It stands between the cathedral and the Alcazar, and is built in the shape of a great quadrangle, each side being about two hundred feet wide. Ascending the fine marble staircase, they came to the long "sala" containing the famous "Indian Archives," that is, all the letters and papers concerning the discovery of South America. {456} There are thousands of MS. letters, beautifully arranged and docketed; and among them the autographs of Fernando Cortes, Pizarro, Magellan, Americo Vespuzio, (who could not write his own name, and signed with a mark,) Fra Bartolomeo de las Cazas, and many others. There is also the original bull of the pope, granting the new South American discoveries to the Spaniards; and another, defining the rights between the Spaniards and the Portuguese in the matter of the conquered lands. The librarian, a very intelligent and good-natured personage, also showed them a curious list, sent home and signed by Fernando Cortes, of the silks, painted calabashes, feathers, and costumes presented by him to the king; and a quantity of autograph letters of Charles V., Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Philip IV. Fernando Cortes died at Castilleja, on December 3, 1547, and the following day his body was transported to the family vault of the Duque de Medina Sidonia, in the monastery of San Isidoro del Campo. The Duc de Montpensier has purchased the house, and made a collection of everything belonging to the great discoverer, including his books, his letters, various objects of natural history, and some very curious portraits, not only of Cortes himself, but of Christopher Columbus, Pizarro, Magellan, the Marques del Valle, (of the Sicilian family of Monteleone,) Bernal Diaz, Velasquez, of the historian of the conquest of Mexico, Don Antonio Solis, and many others.

In the afternoon, the Marques de P---- called for our travellers to take them to the university, and to introduce them to the rector and to the librarian, whose name was the well-deserved one of Don José Bueno, a most clever and agreeable man, whose pure Castilian accent made his Spanish perfectly intelligible to his English visitors. He very good-naturedly undertook to show them all the most interesting MSS. himself, together with some beautiful missals, rare first editions of various classical works, and some very clever etchings of Goya's of bull-fights and ladies--the latter of doubtful propriety. In the church belonging to the university are some fine pictures by Roelas and Alonso Cafio, some beautiful carvings by Montanés, and several very fine monuments. In the rector's own room is a magnificent "St. Jerome," by Lucas Kranach, the finest work of that artist that exists. There are 1,200 students in this university, which rivals that of Salamanca in importance.

Taking leave of the kind librarian, the Marques de P---- went on to show them a private collection of pictures belonging to the Marques Cessera. Amidst a quantity of rubbish were a magnificent "Crucifixion," by Alonso Caño; a Crucifix, painted on wood, by Murillo, for an infirmary, and concealed by a Franciscan during the French occupation in 1812; a Zurbaran, with his own signature in the corner; and, above all, a "Christ bound with the Crown of Thorns," by Murillo, which is the gem of the whole collection, and perfectly beautiful both in coloring and expression.

Coming home, they went to see the house to which Murillo was taken after his accident at Cadiz, and where he finally died; also the site of his original burial, before his body was removed to the cathedral where it now rests.

But one of the principal charms of our travellers' residence in Seville has not yet been mentioned; and that was their acquaintance, through the kind Bishop of Antinoe, with Fernan Caballero. She may be called the Lady Georgiana Fullerton of Spain, in the sense of refinement of taste and catholicity of feeling. But her works are less what are commonly called novels than pictures of home life in Spain, like Hans Andersen's "Improvisatore," or Tourgeneff's "Scènes de la Vie en Russie."

This charming lady, by birth a German on the father's side, and by marriage connected with all the "bluest blood" in Spain, lives in apartments given her by the queen in the palace of the Alcazar. {457} Great trials and sorrows have not dimmed the fire of her genius or extinguished one spark of the loving charity which extends itself to all that suffer. Her tenderness toward animals, unfortunately a rare virtue in Spain, is one of her marked characteristics. She has lately been striving to establish a society in Seville for the prevention of cruelty to animals, after the model of the London one, and often told one of our party that she never left her home without praying that she might not see or hear any ill-usage to God's creatures. She is no longer young, but still preserves traces of a beauty which in former years made her the admiration of the court. Her playfulness and wit, always tempered by a kind thoughtfulness for the feelings of others, and her agreeableness in conversation, seem only to have increased with lengthened experience of people and things. Nothing was pleasanter than to sit in the corner of her little drawing-room, or, still better, in her tiny study, and hear her pour out anecdote after anecdote of Spanish life and Spanish peculiarities, especially among the poor. But if one wished to excite her, one had but to touch on questions regarding her faith and the so-called "progress" of her country. Then all her Andalusian blood would be roused, and she would declaim for hours in no measured terms against the spoliation of the monasteries, those centres of education and civilization in the villages and outlying districts; against the introduction of schools without religion, and colleges without faith; and the propagation of infidel opinions through the current literature of the day.

Previous acquaintance with the people had already made some of our travellers aware of the justice of many of her remarks. Catholicism in Spain is not merely the religion of the people; _it is their life_. It is so mixed up with their common expressions and daily habits, that, at first, there seems to a stranger almost an irreverence in their ways. It is not till you get thoroughly at home, both with them and their language, that you begin to perceive that holy familiarity, if one may so speak, with our divine Lord and his Mother which impregnates their lives and colors all their actions. Theirs is a world of traditions, which familiarity from the cradle have turned into faith, and for that faith they are ready to die. Ask a Spanish peasant why she plants rosemary in her garden. She will directly tell you that it was on a rosemary-bush that the blessed Virgin hung our Saviour's clothes out to dry as a baby. Why will a Spaniard never shoot a swallow? Because it was a swallow that tried to pluck the thorns out of the crown of Christ as he hung on the cross. Why does the owl no longer sing? Because he was by when our Saviour expired, and since then his only cry is "Crux! crux!" Why are dogs so often called Melampo in Spain? Because it was the name of the dog of the shepherds who worshipped at the manger at Bethlehem. What is the origin of the red rose? A drop of the Saviour's blood fell on the white roses growing at the foot of the cross and so on, for ever! Call it folly, superstition--what you will. You will never eradicate it from the heart of the people, for it is as their flesh and blood, and their whole habits of thought, manners, and customs run in the same groove. They have, like the Italians, a wonderful talent for "improvising" both stories and songs; but the same beautiful thread of tender piety runs through the whole.

One day, Fernan Caballero told them, an old beggar was sitting on the steps of the Alcazar: two or three children, tired of play, came and sat by him, and asked him, child-like, for "a story." He answered as follows: "There was once a hermit, who lived in a cave near the sea. He was a very good and charitable man, and he heard that in a village on the mountain above there was a very bad fever, and that no one would go and nurse the people for fear of infection. {458} So up he toiled, day after day, to tend the sick, and look after their wants. At last he began to get tired, and to think it would be far better if he were to move his hermitage up the hill, and save himself the daily toil. As he walked up one day, turning this idea over in his mind, he heard some one behind him saying: 'One, two, three.' He looked round, and saw no one. He walked on, and again heard: 'Four, five, six, seven.' Turning short round this time, he beheld one in white and glistening raiment, who gently spoke as follows: 'I am your guardian angel, and am _counting the steps which you take for Christ's poor_.'"

The children understood the drift of it as well as you or I, reader! and this is a sample of their daily talk. Their reverence for age is also a striking and touching characteristic. The poorest beggar is addressed by them as "tio" or "tia," answering to our "daddy" or "granny;" and should one pass their cottage as they are sitting down to their daily meal, they always rise and offer him a place, and ask him to say grace for them, "echar la benedicion." They are, indeed, a most lovable race, and their very pride increases one's respect for them. Often in their travels did one of the party lose her way, either in going to some distant church in the early morning, or in visiting the sick; and often was she obliged to have recourse to her bad Spanish to be put in the right road. An invariable courtesy, and generally an insistence on accompanying her home, was the result. But if any money or fee were offered for the service, the indignant refusal, or, still worse, the _hurt_ look which the veriest child would put on at what it considered the height of insult and unkindness, very soon cured her of renewing the attempt.

Another touching trait in their character is their intense reverence for the blessed sacrament. In the great ceremonies of the church, or when it is passing down the street to a sick person, the same veneration is shown. One day, one of the English ladies was buying some photographs in a shop, and the tradesman was explaining to her the different prices and sizes of each, when, all of a sudden, he stopped short, exclaiming: "Sua Maestà viene!" and leaving the astonished lady at the counter, rushed out of his shop-door. She, thinking it was the royalties, who were then at the Alcazar, went out too to look, when, to her pleasure and surprise, she saw the shopman and all the rest of the world, gentle and simple, kneeling reverently in the mud before the messenger of the Great King, who was bearing the host to a dying man. On the day when it is carried processionally to the hospitals, (one of which is the first Sunday after Easter,) every window and balcony is "parata," or hung with red, as in Italy at the passage of the Holy Father; every one throws flowers and bouquets on the baldachino, and that to such an extent that the choir-boys are forced to carry great clothes-baskets to receive them: the people declare that the very horses kneel! The feast of Corpus Christi was unfortunately not witnessed by our travellers. Calderon, in his Autos Sacramentales, speaking of it, says:

"Que en el gran dia de Dios, Quien no está loco, no es cuerdo!"

Here is indeed "a voice from the land of faith." The choir on the occasion dance before the host a dance so solemn, so suggestive, and so peculiar, that no one who has witnessed it can speak of it without emotion. Fernan Caballero talked much also of the great purity of morals among the peasantry. Infanticide, that curse of England, is _absolutely unknown in Spain_; whether from the number of foundling hospitals, or from what other reasons, we leave it to the political economists to discover. A well-known Spanish writer describes the women as having "Corazones delectos, minas de amores," and being "puros y santos modelos de esposas y de madres." (Exceptional hearts, mines of love, and being pure and holy models of wives and mothers.) {459} They are also wonderfully cleanly, both in their houses and their persons. There are never any bad smells in the streets or lodgings. Fleas abound from the great heat; but no other vermin is to be met with either in the inns or beds, or in visiting among the sick poor, in all of which they form a marked contrast to the Italian peasantry, and, I fear we must add, to the English!

Their courtesy toward one another is also widely different from the ordinary gruff, boorish intercourse of our own poor people; and the very refusal to a beggar, "Perdone, Usted, por Dios, hermano!" [Footnote 143] speaks of the same gentle consideration for the feelings of their neighbors which characterizes the race, and emanates from that divine charity which dwells not only on their lips, but in their hearts. One peculiarity in their conversation has not yet been alluded to, and that is their passion for proverbs. They cannot frame a sentence without one, and they are mostly such as illustrate the kindly, trustful, pious nature the people. "_Haz lo bien, y no mira á quien._" (Do good, and don't look to whom.) "_Quien no es agradecido, no es bien nacido._" (He who is not courteous is not well born.) "_Cosa cumplida solo en la otra vida_." (The end of all things is only seen in the future life.) And so on _ad infinitum_.

[Footnote 143: "Forgive me, for the love of God, brother!"]

No description of Seville would be complete without mention of the "patio," so important a feature in every Andalusian house; and no words can be so good for the purpose as those of Fernan Caballero, which we translate almost literally from her "Familia de Alvareda:"

"The house was spacious and scrupulously clean; on each side of the door was a bench of stone. In the porch hung a little lamp before the image of our Lord, in a niche over the entrance, according to the Catholic custom of placing all things under holy protection. In the middle was the 'patio,' a necessity to the Andalusian; and in the centre of this spacious court, an enormous orange-tree raised its leafy head from its robust and clean trunk. For an infinity of generations had this beautiful tree been a source of delight to the family. The women made tonic concoctions of its leaves, the daughters adorned themselves with its flowers, the boys cooled their blood with its fruits, the birds made their home in its boughs. The rooms opened out of the 'patio,' and borrowed their light from thence. This 'patio' was the centre of all-- the 'home,' the place of gathering when the day's work was over. The orange-tree loaded the air with its heavy perfume, and the waters of the fountain fell in soft showers on the marble basin, fringed with the delicate maiden hair fern; and the father, leaning against the tree, smoked his 'cigarro de papel;' and the mother sat at her work; while the little ones played at her feet, the eldest resting his head on a big dog stretched at full length on the cool marble slabs. All was still, and peaceful, and beautiful."

{460}

From Once a Week.

Sir Ralph De Blanc-Minster.

The Vow.

Hush! 'tis a tale of the elder time, Caught from an old barbaric rhyme, How the fierce Sir Ralph of the haughty hand Harnessed him for our Saviour's land!

"Time trieth troth!" thus the lady said, "And a warrior must rest in Bertha's bed; Three years let the severing seas divide, And strike thou for Christ and thy trusting bride!"

So he buckled on the beamy blade, That Gaspar of Spanish Leon made, Whose hilted cross is the awful sign: It must burn for the Lord and his tarnished shrine!

The Adieu.

"Now a long farewell! tall Stratton tower, Dark Bude! thy fatal sea: And God thee speed, in hall and bower, My manor of Bien-aimè!

"Thou, too, farewell! my chosen bride, Thou rose of Rou-tor land: Though all on earth were false beside, I trust thy plighted hand.

"Dark seas may swell, and tempests lower, And surging billows foam; The cresset of thy bridal bower Shall guide the wanderer home!

"On! for the cross! in Jesu's land, When Syrian armies flee, One thought shall thrill my lifted hand, I strike for God and thee!"

{461}

The Battle.

Hark! how the brattling trumpets blare! Lo! the red banners flaunt the air! And see! his good sword girded on, The stern Sir Ralph to the war is gone!

Hurrah! for the Syrian dastards flee: Charge! charge! ye western chivalry! Sweet is the strife for God's renown, The Cross is up and the Crescent down!

The weary warrior seeks his tent: For the good Sir Ralph is pale and spent; Five wounds he reaped in the field of fame, Five in his blessèd Master's name.

The solemn leech looks sad and grim, As he binds and soothes each gory limb; And the girded priest must chant and pray, Lest the soul unhouseled pass away.

The Treachery.

A sound of horsehoofs on the sand! And ha! a page from Cornish land. "Tidings," he said, as he bent the knee; "Tidings, my lord, from Bien-aimè.

"The owl shrieked thrice from the warder's tower: The crown-rose withered in her bower: Thy good gray foal, at evening fed. Lay in the sunrise stark and dead!"

"Dark omens three!" the sick man cried; "Say on the woe thy looks betide." "Master! at bold Sir Rupert's call, Thy Lady Bertha fled the hall!"

The Scroll.

"Bring me," he said, "that scribe of fame, Symeon el Siddekah his name; With parchment skin, and pen in hand, I would devise my Cornish land!

"Seven goodly manors, fair and wide, Stretch from the sea to Tamar-side, And Bien-aimè, my hall and bower, Nestles beneath tall Stratton tower!

{462}

"All these I render to my God! By seal and signet, knife and sod: I give and grant to church and poor, In franc almoign for evermore!

"Choose ye seven men among the just, And bid them hold my lands in trust, On Michael's morn and Mary's day To deal the dole and watch and pray!

"Then bear me, coldly, o'er the deep, 'Mid my own people I would sleep: Their hearts shall melt, their prayers will breathe, Where he who loved them rests beneath.

"Mould me in stone, as here I lie, My face upturned to Syria's sky; Carve ye this good sword at my side, And write the legend, 'True and tried!'

"Let mass be said, and requiem sung; And that sweet chime I loved be rung: Those sounds along the northern wall Shall thrill me like a trumpet-call!"

Thus said he and at set of sun The bold crusader's race was run. Seek ye his ruined hall and bower? Then stand beneath tall Stratton tower!

The Mort-main.

Now the demon watched for the warrior's soul 'Mid the din of war where blood-streams roll; He had waited long on the dabbled sand Ere the priest had cleansed the gory hand.

Then as he heard the stately dole Wherewith Sir Ralph had soothed his soul, The unclean spirit turned away With a baffled glare of grim dismay.

But when he caught those words of trust, That sevenfold choice among the just, "Ho! ho!" cried the fiend, with a mock at heaven, "I have lost but one I shall win the seven!"

{463}

Original.

Guettée's Papacy Schismatic. [Footnote 144]

[Footnote 144: The Papacy: Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations with the Eastern Churches. By the Abbé-Guettée, D.D. Translated from the French, and prefaced by an original biographical notice of the author, with an Introduction by A. Cleveland Coxe, Bishop of Western New York. New York: Carleton. 1867, pp.383.]

This volume purports to be the translation of a late French work entitled, "The Papacy Schismatic; or, Rome in her Relations with the Eastern Church--_La Papauté Schismatique; ou Rome dans ses Rapports avec I'Eglise Orientate_." Why the translator or editor has changed the title we know not, unless it has been done to disguise the real character of the work, and induce Catholics to buy it under the impression that it is written by a learned divine of their own communion.

Whether equal liberty has been taken with the text throughout we are unable to say, for we have not had the patience to compare the translation with the original, except in a very few instances; but there is in the whole get up of the English work a lack of honesty and frank dealing. On the title-page we are promised an Introduction by the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Western New York, but in the book itself we find only the "Editor's Preface" of a few pages. Even this preface lacks frankness, and seems intended to deceive. "The author of this work," writes the editor, "is not a Protestant. He is a French divine reared in the communion of Rome, and devoted to her cause in purpose of heart and life." This gives the impression that the author is still a member, and a devoted member, of the communion of Rome, which is not the case. "But his great learning having led him to conclusions contrary to those of the Jesuits, he fell under the ban;" that is, we suppose, was interdicted. This carries on the same deception, making believe that he was interdicted because he rejected some of the conclusions of the Jesuits, while he remained substantially orthodox and obedient to the church, a thing which could not have happened, unless he had impugned the Catholic faith, the authority, or discipline of the church in communion with the apostolic See of Rome.

We read on: "Proscribed by the papacy, ... he accepts at last the logical consequences of his position, ... receiving the communion in both kinds at the hand of the Greeks in the church of the Russian Embassy at Paris." Why not have said simply: The author of this work was reared in the communion of Rome, but, falling under censure for opinions emitted in his writings, he left that communion, or was cut off from it, and has now been received into the Russian Church, or the communion of the non-united Greeks, and has written this book to prove that the communion, that has received him is not, and the one in which he was reared is, schismatic? That would have told the simple truth; but we forget, the editor is a poet, and accustomed to deal in fiction.

The editor, who has a rare genius for embellishing the truth, tells us that "the biographical notice prefixed to the work ... gives assurance of the author's ability to treat the subject of the papacy with the most intimate knowledge of its practical character." It does no such thing, but, on the contrary, proves that he never was devoted in purpose and life to the communion of Rome, and that even from his boyhood he assumed an attitude of real though covert hostility to the papacy. His first work was a history of the church in France, the plan of which was conceived and formed while he was in the seminary, and that work is hardly less unfavorable to the papacy than the one before us. {464} Its spirit is anti-Roman, anti-papal, full of venom against the popes, and he appears to have carried on his war against the papacy under the guise of Gallicanism, till even his Gallican bishop could tolerate him no longer, and forbade him to say mass.

His biographer gives a fuller insight into his character, perhaps, than he intended. "From a very early age," he says, "his mind seems to have revolted against the wearisome routine" of instruction prescribed for seminarians, "and, in its ardent desire for knowledge and its rapid acquisition, worked out of the prescribed limits ... and read and studied in secret." That is, in plain English, he was impatient of direction in his studies, revolted against making the necessary preparation to read and study with advantage, rejected the prescribed course of studies, and followed his own taste or inclination in broaching questions that he lacked the previous knowledge and mental and spiritual discipline to broach with safety. There are questions in great variety and of great importance which it is very necessary to study, but only in their place, and after that very routine of studies prescribed by the seminary has been successfully pursued. Most of the errors into which men fall arise from the attempt to solve questions without the necessary preparatory knowledge and discipline. The studies and discipline of the college and the seminary may seem to impatient and inexperienced youth wearisome and unnecessary, but they are prescribed by wisdom and experience, and he who has never submitted to them or had their advantage feels the want of them through his whole life, to whatever degree of eminence he may have risen without them. It is a great loss to any one not to have borne the yoke in his youth.

It is clear from M. Guettée's biography that he never studied the papal question as a friend to the papacy, and therefore he is no better able to treat it than if he had been brought up in Anglicanism or in the bosom of the Greek schism. He is not a man who has once firmly believed in the primacy of the Holy See, and by his study and great learning found himself reluctantly forced to reject it; but is one who, having fallen under the papal censure, tries to vindicate himself by proving that the pope who condemned him has no jurisdiction, and never received from God any authority to judge him. He is no unsuspected witness, is no impartial judge, for he judges in his own cause. His condemnation preceded his change of communion.

The editor speaks of the great learning of the author, and says "he writes with science and precision, and with the pen of a man of genius." It may be so, but we have not discovered it. His book we have found very dull, and it has required all the effort we are capable of to read it through. To our understanding it is lacking in both science and precision. It is a book of details which are attached to no principles, and its arguments rest wholly on loose and inaccurate statements or bold assumptions. A work more deficient in real logic, or more glaringly sophistical, it has seldom been our hard fortune to meet with. As for learning, we certainly are not learned ourselves, but the author has told us nothing that we did not know before, and nothing more than may be found in any one of our Catholic treatises on the authority of the see of Peter and the Roman pontiff. All his objections to the papacy worth noticing may be found with their answers in The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, by the lamented Francis Patrick Kenrick, late archbishop of Baltimore, a work of modest pretensions, but of a real merit difficult to exaggerate.

Though M. Guettée's book is far from bewildering us by its learning or overwhelming us by its logic, we yet find it no easy matter to compress an adequate reply to it within any reasonable compass. {465} It is not a scientific work. The author lays down no principles which he labors to establish and develop, but dwells on details, detached statements, assertions, and criticisms, which cannot be replied to separately without extending the reply some two or three times the length of the work itself, for an objection can be made in far fewer words than it takes to refute it. The author writes without method, and seems never to have dreamed of classifying his proofs, and arranging all he has to say under appropriate heads. Indeed, he has no principles, and he adduces no proofs; he only comments on the proofs of the papacy urged by our theologians, and endeavors to prove that they do not mean what we say they do, or that they may be understood in a different sense. Hence, taking these up one after another, he is constantly saying the same things over and over again, with most tiresome repetition, which require an equally tiresome repetition in reply. Had the author taken the time, if he had the ability, to reduce his objections to order, and to their real value, a few pages would have sufficed both to state and to refute them. As it is, we can only do the best we can within the limited space at our command.

The author professes to write from the point of view of a non-united Greek, who has little quarrel with Rome, save on the single question of the papacy. He concedes in some sense the primacy of Peter, and that the bishop of Rome is the first bishop of the church, nay, that by ecclesiastical right he has the primacy of jurisdiction, though not universal jurisdiction; but denies that the Roman pontiff has the sovereignty of the universal church by _divine right_. He says his study of the subject has brought him to these conclusions:

"1. The bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries possess the authority of divine right that he has since sought to exercise;

2. The pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of divine right over the whole church was the real cause of the division," or schism between the East and the West. (P. 31.)

These very propositions in the original, to say nothing of the translation, show great lack of precision in the writer. He would have better expressed his own meaning if he had said: The bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries hold by divine right the authority he has since claimed, and the pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of the whole church by divine right has been the real cause of the schism. We shall soon object to this word _sovereignty_, but for the moment let it pass.

These two propositions the author undertakes to prove, and he attempts to prove them by showing or asserting that the proofs which our theologians allege from the Holy Scriptures, the fathers, and the councils, do not prove the primacy claimed by the bishop of Rome. This, if done, would be to the purpose if the question turned on admitting the claims of the Roman pontiff, but by no means when the question turns on rejecting these claims and ousting the pope from his possession. The author must go further. It is not enough to show that our evidences of title are insufficient; he must disprove the title itself, either by proving that no such title ever issued, or that it vests in an adverse claimant. This, as we shall see, he utterly fails to do. He sets up, properly speaking, no adverse claimant, and fails to prove that no such title ever issued.

It suffices us, in reply, to plead possession. The pope is, and long has been, in possession by the acknowledgment of both East and West, and it is for the author to show reasons why he should be ousted, and, if those reasons do not necessarily invalidate his possessions, the pope is not obliged to show his titles. All he need reply is, _Olim possideo_.

That the pope is in possession of all he claims is evident not only from the fact that he has from the earliest times exercised the primacy of jurisdiction claimed for him, but from the council of Florence held in 1439. {466} "We define," say the fathers of the council, "that the holy apostolic see and the Roman pontiff hold the primacy in all the world, and that the Roman pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles and true vicar of Christ, and head of the whole church, the father and teacher of all Christians, and that to him is given in blessed Peter, by our Lord Jesus Christ, full power to feed, direct, and govern the universal church; _et ipsi B. Petro pascendi, regendi, et gubernandi plenam potestatem traditam esse._"

This definition was made by the universal church, for it was subscribed by the bishops of both the East and the West, and among the bishops of the East that accepted it were the patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria, and the metropolitans of Russia, with those of Nicaea, Trebizond, Lacedaemon, and Mytilene. We know very well that the non-united Greeks reject this council, although the Eastern Church was more fully represented in it than the Western Church was in that at Nicaea, the first of Constantinople, Ephesus, or Chalcedon; but it is for the non united Greeks to prove that, in rejecting it and refusing obedience to its decrees, they are not schismatic. At any rate, the council is sufficient to prove that the pope is in possession by the judgment of both East and West, and to throw the burden of proof on those who deny the papal authority and assert that the papacy is schismatic.

Before producing his proofs, the author examines the Holy Scriptures to ascertain "whether the pretensions of the bishop of Rome to a universal sovereignty of the church have, as is alleged, any ground in the word of God." (P. 31.) The translation here is inexact; it should be: "Whether the pretensions, etc., to _the_ universal sovereignty of the church have, as is alleged, _their_ foundation in the word of God." The author himself would have expressed himself better if he had written "the sovereignty of the universal church," instead of "universal sovereignty of the church." But the author mistakes the real question he has to consider. The real question for him is not whether the primacy we assert for the Roman pontiff has its ground in the written word, but whether anything in the written word denies or contradicts it. The primacy may exist as a fact, and yet no record of it be made in the Scriptures. The constitution of the church is older than any portion of the New Testament, and it is very conceivable that, as the church must know her own constitution, it was not thought necessary to give an account of it in the written word. The church holds the written word, but does not hold from it or under it, but from the direct and immediate appointment of Jesus Christ himself, and is inconceivable without her constitution.

The author makes another mistake, in using the word _sovereignty_ instead of _primacy_. Roman theologians assert the primacy, but not, in the ecclesiastical order, the _sovereignty_ of the Roman pontiff. Sovereignty is a political, not an ecclesiastical term; it is, moreover, exclusive, and it is not pretended that there is no authority in the church by divine right but that of the Roman pontiff. It is not pretended that bishops are simply his vicars or deputies. In feudal times there may have been writers who regarded him as suzerain, but we know of none that held him to be sovereign. He is indeed by some writers, chiefly French, called _sovereign_ pontiff, but only in the sense of _supreme_ pontiff, Pontifex maximus, or summus pontifex, to indicate that he is the highest but not the exclusive authority in the church. The council of Florence, on which we plant ourselves, defines him to be primate, not sovereign, and ascribes to him plenary authority to feed, direct, and govern the whole church, but does not exclude other and subordinate pontiffs, who, though they receive their sees from him, yet within them govern by a divine right no less immediate than his. The real and only sovereign of the church, in the proper sense of the term, is Jesus Christ himself. {467} The pope is his vicar, and as much bound by his law as the humblest Christian. He is not above the law, nor is he its source, but is its chief minister and supreme judge, and his legislative power is restricted to such rescripts, edicts, or canons as he judges necessary to its proper administration. The sovereign makes the law, and the difference, therefore, between the power of the sovereign and that claimed for the Roman pontiff is very obvious and very great. Could the author, then, prove from the written word that the pope or the Holy See is not the universal sovereign of the church, he would prove nothing to his purpose. Yet this, as we shall see, is all he does prove.

The author pretends, p. 32, that the papal authority, sovereignty he means, is condemned by the word of God. The assertion, understanding the papal authority as defined by the council of Florence, is to his purpose, if he proves it. What, then, are his proofs? The Roman theologians, that is, Catholic theologians, say the church is founded on Peter, and cite in proof the words of our Lord, St. Matt. xvi. 18: "I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." But this does not prove that Peter is the rock on which the church is founded. The church is not founded on Peter, or, if on Peter, in no other sense than it is on him and the other apostles. The rock on which the church is built is Jesus Christ, who is the only foundation of the church. St. Paul says, 1 Cor. iii. 11: "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ himself."

That Jesus Christ is the sole foundation of the church in the primary and absolute sense, nobody denies or questions, and we have asserted it in asserting that he is the real and only sovereign of the church; but this does not exclude Peter from being its foundation in a secondary and vicarial sense, the only sense asserted by the most thorough-going papists, as is evident from what St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, ii. 20, as cited by the author: "You are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being himself the chief cornerstone." The principal, primary, absolute foundation is Christ, but the prophets and apostles are also the foundation on which the church, the mystic temple, is built. The author says, same page: "The prophets and apostles form the first layers of this mystic edifice. The faithful are raised on these _foundations_, and form the edifice itself; finally, Jesus Christ is the principal stone, the corner-stone, which gives solidity to the monument." This is very true, and we maintain, as well as he, that there is "no other foundation" in the primary sense, "no other principal corner-stone than Jesus Christ;" but he himself asserts, as does St. Paul, other "foundation" in a secondary sense. So, though our Lord is the principal or first foundation in the sense in which God is the first cause of all creatures and their acts, yet nothing hinders Peter from being a secondary foundation, as creatures may be and are what philosophers terms second causes.

But in this secondary sense, "all the apostles are the foundation, and the church is no more founded on Peter than on the rest of the apostles." Not founded on Peter to the exclusion of the other apostles certainly, but not founded on Peter as the prince of the apostles, or chief of the apostolic college, does not appear, and it is never pretended that Peter excludes the other apostles. Our Lord gave, indeed, to Peter alone the keys of the kingdom of heaven, thereby constituting him his steward or the chief of his household; but he gave to all authority to teach all nations all things whatsoever he had commanded them, the same power of binding and loosing that he had given to Peter, and promised to be with them as well as with him all days to the consummation of the world. There is in this nothing that excludes or denies the primacy claimed for Peter, or that implies that our Lord, as the author says, merely "gave to Peter an important ministry in his church."

{468}

The author labors to refute the argument drawn in favor of the primacy of Peter from the command of our Lord to Peter to "confirm his brethren," and the thrice repeated command to "feed his sheep;" but as we are not now seeking to prove the primacy, but simply repelling the arguments adduced against it, we pass it over. He attempts to construct an argument against the primacy of Peter from the words of our Lord to his disciples, St. Matt,