Chapter VI.

"Chione in grief, and a prey to despair!"

It was the Christian bishop who spoke, and his interlocutor was Lotis.

"Even so, my lord. During her illness the report was that she was beset by the furies. When I saw her, it seemed as though the hand of some avenging god lay heavy on her. If, my lord, you Christians are adepts in magic, as many people believe I would ask you to disenthrall her from the influence under which she suffers, whatever it may be."

"And it is Chione who is this famous Leontium, who has made so great a sensation in the eastern cities?" continued Dionysius, as if not hearing the last speech of Lotis.

"It is so."

"From what I have heard, her eloquence is something unusual."

"I too have heard so; but for myself, I was never present at one of her instructions. I saw her alone, bowed down as it were beneath the weight of the truth she was carrying; but unable to speak the last word, that word which promised to be the key to all the rest, the solution of mystery, the harmonizer of ideas. That last word was not spoken at Nauplia; her pupils awaited it, but her tongue was as it were paralyzed. Some powerful influence seemed ever to prevent her from speaking it."

"Poor Chione!"

"My lord, may I venture to ask of you, do you believe, as some do, that Chione is in possession of a truth she dare not declare? that some divine hand is pressing down within her the word that is panting for expression? Is Chione bewitched?"

"She is suffering from a supernatural influence, that is certain."

"And can you deliver her? Why else did she send me to you?"

"If she so _will_, she may be delivered; but the supernatural Word she cannot speak has been offended; the sacrifice he demands is great; will she make it?"

"If in her power, I think she will. She is a mystery to me, as all life seems to be. What is that Word Chione has offended? how did she offend? what must she do to appease the divine wrath?"

"My child," said the old Areopagite solemnly, "truth is not a plaything wherewith to amuse the intellect, not a toy to while away a tedious hour with. Truth is the manifestation of the eternal harmonies, those harmonies which man has interfered with, into which he has introduced a discord, the discord of sin. The _humility_ of man, the recognition of sin, such a recognition as brings the voluntary humiliation of self, must precede his admission to the kingdom where those harmonies are restored. The vainglory of philosophy, the pride of science, however correct may be their surmises, are without _life_. {813} They can neither restore these harmonies, nor catch a glimpse of the glory of that eternal comprehensive Unity, in which all beauty, melody, and good reside; that eternal idea of which matter is the varied type. A type now deranged by man's act so hopelessly, that human power is utterly inadequate to its restoration."

"But the restorer comes; the expectation of nations points to this," said Lotis; "and that expectation is everywhere; in India as in Cathay, in Greece and among the barbarians."

"The deliverer is come already," said Dionysius.

"Then why is he not proclaimed? Is this the unspoken word that Chione might not utter? Why, if the deliverer is here, is he not announced?"

"Because, before the disorder of exterior things can be remedied, the _interior_ remedy must be applied to the soul. Exterior forms obey the interior impulse. Man is lord of matter, and man's disordered soul reflects itself upon the material subject to him. The disorder manifest throughout exterior creation will be remedied when the disordered spirit of man is healed. Therefore is it that, now that the restorer is come, he is not recognized; for he insists on the purification of the spirit, on the annihilation of selfishness, on the necessity of being reunited in spirit with the essential good as a precursor of other renovations. That done, exterior good follows as of course."

"Even as wealth follows industry, and health the practice of temperance," said Lotis.

"Natural virtue brings its results sometimes," said the venerable teacher, "when justice rules; but as matters stand now, the winner of wealth has often the least share. Oppression is one of the inevitable results of making self-love the centre of action instead of taking the justice of the eternal God for our guide. Man's soul was created in the image of God. Hence its affinity for beauty, its appreciation of lofty idea, its glowing enthusiasm at recital of heroic deeds: but man's will snapped the cord that bound it to the eternal will. Enamored of his own charms, he forgot the source of his beauty; proud of his mighty intellect, he has ceased to adore the God of all understanding; freeing himself from the shackles of duty, he cast away alike the nourishment of his beauty and the food of his towering intellect. Man's _will_ must be directed to DESIRE God ere he can regain good. Hence the work of the Redeemer is interior; it is the implanting of the Holy Spirit as the necessary step to the true redemption."

"Chione's philosophy resembles this in some degree," said Lotis.

Dionysius did not answer, Lotis resumed.

"Who is this _Word_ of whom Chione speaks?"

The answer came slowly, solemnly, deliberately, and it fell on the ear of Lotis, as if a divine power accompanied it:

"Jesus Christ."

"The Saviour anointed," whispered she to herself, as she translated the words: "The Saviour of men, anointed by God." There was evidently a revelation to her, conveyed by the words; one of those miraculous influences which, in the early days, "long ago," were so common among truth-seeking souls. Her reverie lasted long, and the good bishop did not interrupt her. He knew that the Holy Spirit was shedding his influence upon her. Suddenly she turned upon him with the question:

{814}

"And is Jesus Christ an inspired man, or is he God?"

"Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," answered the bishop.

Lotis replied not. The bishop continued in a very low voice:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men: and the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." (St. John i. 1-5.)

And Lotis fell on her knees, saying, "Lead me to him, to the Divine Word, to Jesus Christ, for I will have no other master."

"It is well, my child," said the good bishop, laying his hand solemnly on her head. "It is well. May he who has thus directed your choice give you the further grace to continue unto the end. But, Lotis, you must learn the price of redemption; you must know who the Master is you have chosen."

And the venerable bishop, in a few short but impressive words, traced the history of the world from Adam's fall, through the line of patriarchs, through the perversion of morals which called forth the deluge. He spoke of the call of Abraham, of the mission of Moses, of the succession of the prophets unto John the Baptist; and finally, of the advent of our Lord himself; of his coming to his own, and of his own receiving him not; of his life, miracles, and crucifixion; of his death, resurrection, and ascension; and finally, of the descent of the Holy Spirit.

Lotis listened and believed, and demanded to be washed from her sins, that she might understand. She, yet a neophyte, seemed to comprehend that sin forms the darkness which hinders the soul from contemplating God. "Wash me from my sins," she said, "that I may see the light."'

To Be Continued.

Affairs In Italy.

Though the disgraceful part which the Italian monarchy has played in the late invasion of Rome by marauding bands is now a matter of common notoriety, elaborate efforts are still being made by a majority of the Italian, and a certain portion of the European, press to deny the well-known facts of the case. These organs are, however, only following the illustrious example set to them by Victor Emmanuel and Count Menabrea, whose official declarations that the revolutionists had acted entirely without the authority and knowledge of the Italian government are certainly the most pitiful subterfuges to which the king and the premier of a great power could possibly have been reduced. Indeed, we can hardly conceive a more humiliating spectacle than that which the Italian government presents in solemnly assuring the world that it had not been secretly leagued with filibusters, while, to crown the disgrace of the spectacle, nobody believes a word of its denial. {815} But General Menabrea has attempted even more than this. In his answer to the invitation to the European Conference, dated November 19th, 1867, he had the assurance to state that Rome, not Italy, was the real cause of the present trouble. On another occasion he ventured upon a somewhat similar statement by saying that experience had taught Italy the impossibility of maintaining friendly relations with her neighbor on the Tiber! It is difficult to believe that any public man should care so little for his reputation for truth as to utter such reckless falsehoods. The whole history of the past eight years gives him the lie, for it proves clearly that every provocation has come from that Piedmont which is now styled Italy. Provocations by resort to the revolution, as in the seizure of the Legations in 1859, and again in that of the Marches and Umbria in 1860, when Viterbo, the capital of the patrimony, was also taken by force; provocations by resort to legislation, as in the breach of the concordats, in the civil marriages in an unchristian form, in the suppression of the spiritual orders, in the confiscation of the ecclesiastical property, in the violent measures adopted against the episcopate, and in the parliamentary resolutions about Rome; provocations by the personal speeches and acts of King Victor Emmanuel, whom neither the sense of his exalted station nor the traditions of his strictly orthodox dynasty have deterred from expressions which he will yet have cause to deplore when the fruits they are destined to bear become fully apparent; in a word, all the provocations have come from the side of Italy. All the evidences of moderation and conciliation (as was seen to the very last in the case of the bishoprics) have come from the side of the Holy Father; but they were always repaid with the blackest ingratitude. The piratical raid against the church state was merely the fit ending and the logical result of that long series of aggressive measures which furnishes the counts in the indictment against the Italian monarchy. We need not recapitulate the provocations that have for years preceded the invasion of Garibaldi's filibusters; for everybody will readily recall to mind the machinations to excite a spirit of discontent in the holy city and the surrounding districts; the aid and comfort extended to the self-styled Roman Revolutionary Committee, which has its seat at Florence; the libels against the person of the supreme pontiff and his sacred office, which have disgraced not only the press, but the floor of the two chambers; the encouragement afforded to every incendiary and fugitive from Roman justice, and the marked favor shown to all such characters by the authorities. Indeed, but for the agency which the Italian monarchy had in bringing about the invasion, that demonstration would never have become what it is, one of the most flagrant outrages known to the law of nations in modern days. In the midst of profound peace, without a shadow of an excuse or a pretext on the other side, Italy has not only tolerated, but sanctioned, the publication of the most indecent attacks on the head of the church. She has permitted the circulation of revolutionary manifestoes and appeals against a neighboring state, whose integrity the honor of the nation was pledged to respect and enforce. {816} She has suffered the raising of money and arms for avowedly hostile and unlawful purposes; the opening of recruiting stations in public places, and under the direct patronage of high officials; the discussion of general plans for the campaign; the concentration of armed bands along her frontiers, and that under the eyes of troops ostensibly stationed there to disperse and prevent all such gatherings. She has enacted a farce, as foolish as it was discreditable, in regard to the chief conspirator himself, and carried this so far as to order her navy to blockade a deserted rock, while he was held in reserve, to be turned loose when the loyalty of the pope's subjects and the incapacity of the minor chiefs threatened to defeat the whole enterprise. All these are well-authenticated facts, and have since been proved by the admissions made by the Italian press. Thus, for instance, the Florence _Diritto_, of November 25th, 1867, uses the following significant language: "All the world," says this popular organ of the Italian democracy, in an article sharply criticising the past policy of Ratazzi's cabinet, "will remember that the Garibaldian movement, _which was openly tolerated in its last phase by the government_, had given rise to the general belief that the authorities were aware of everything going on, and fully prepared to assume all the consequences. Public opinion and the public press, as they beheld the government borne along by the mighty popular torrent, unanimously approved of the supposed determination of the ministry, and rejoiced to think that such a patriotic and exalted object as the acquisition of Rome should at once have the support of Garibaldi's irregular action and the avowed sanction of the government. The whole nation fancied that the ministry had taken all the precautions necessary to attain its ends in one way or other, and in any case. .... It is therefore impossible for us to describe how bitter the disappointment was when France intervened at the most critical moment. Rome remained quiet, Prussia gave no sign of moving, and the Italian army proved entirely unprepared for the emergency." It is in the face of such admissions as these that King Victor Emmanuel has ventured to issue a manifesto denouncing the invasion of St. Peter's patrimony as having been undertaken without the authority and knowledge of his government, and that his prime minister has dared to say it was Rome, not Italy, which should be blamed for the renewed interference of France.

It is the perfidy and lawless ambition of the Italian monarchy which have brought the French back to Rome. If this be regarded as a misfortune--as, no doubt, in a certain sense it is, for a foreign occupation always gives rise to an abnormal condition, whose evils are great and whose effects often prove lasting--to whom does the guilt attach? Not to the Holy Father, not to the Romans, who have turned a deaf ear to the whispers of treason, although their temptation was not great when we take into account the present state and prospects of the monarchy! But there is no need for us to indulge in sinister prognostications. Even had the Italian forces stationed on the line, where they neither protected the papal territory nor indicated the good faith of their own government, really prevented the invasion, the crisis must have come sooner or later. It was unavoidable from the very nature of the relations between the two neighbors. But it is extraordinary that the party who is alone to blame for it should claim as a reward to be released from the obligations contracted by the September convention. {817} We cannot bring ourselves to believe for a moment that the recent outrage will result to the advantage of its authors and abettors. In the sense of the parliamentary resolutions passed at Turin and Florence, the solution of the Roman problem means nothing less than the destruction of the papal rights, and the spoliation and the oppression of the church. It will be well to bear this fact distinctly in mind. The new monarchy has unmistakably shown how it means to respect its most solemn obligations and the vested rights of others; and, above all, it has shown how it would like to treat the head of the church. And this Italy dares to demand that the gate of the papacy should be intrusted to her safe-keeping? Were it possible to obliterate the whole history of the last eight years from men's recollection, the occurrences of the last few months would alone suffice to warn Christendom against listening to such a proposition. The Roman Catholic community will hardly feel disposed to see Victor Emmanuel the intestate heir of Garibaldi at Rome, as it has seen him once before at Naples.

The Roman problem requires, no doubt, a solution, for the French are merely a momentary expedient. The subject is one that interests the whole world, and which demands a settlement that will not again expose the supreme pontiff to the danger of being besieged at the Vatican, as was his handful of defenders in the Bicoque Monte Rotondo, where they fought one against ten. We shall not even touch here upon the claims of the pope as a mere temporal ruler, and the most ancient on earth at that. Our religious sentiment rebels against dragging a question whose two component elements are indivisible into the narrow sphere of politics, and still more into the sphere of revolutionary politics which has made the nationality idea its god. The Catholic sentiment resents the base suggestion of peril to the independence of the church and its head. It cannot conceive a popedom like the one to which the Byzantine exarchs have been reduced. It wants no repetition of a Greek patriarchate among Greeks and Turks. This is a question which concerns the entire civilized Christian world, and not the Roman Catholic powers alone. The royal speech from the throne to the North German Diet contained a passage alluding to the important interests which Germany and Italy are supposed to hold in common, and the chances of Prussia's support in the case of a war with France about Rome have, no doubt, entered largely into the calculations of the Florence cabinet. But Prussia alone has over eight millions of Roman Catholic subjects, who will never consent to the total destruction of the foundation on which the independence of their church rests, and who will therefore oppose every attempt to rob the pope of his temporality. Such, at least, is the inference which we are warranted in drawing from the spirit displayed during the last month in Germany, and especially at the Mainz meeting, where two thousand leading Catholics from all parts of the country discussed the dangers of the church state. The following are the resolutions which were passed unanimously on that occasion:

{818}

"1. Divine Providence has made the successor of St. Peter the sovereign of the Roman church state, and raised him above all mere national interests, that he might be the subject of no political power, but manage the religious affairs of all Christian nations in perfect independence. This sovereign right, conferred by God and confirmed by more than ten centuries possession, is neither to be surrendered by the Catholic Church, nor to be taken away from it by diplomatic treaties or a revolutionary popular vote. The arbitrary and chimerical scheme to make Rome the capital of Italy can never be considered in comparison with the rights and interests of Catholic Christendom.

2. The assertion that the pope, as a priest, is unfit to be the head of a political government, and therefore unable to promote the temporal welfare of his subjects, is an untruth sufficiently refuted by the history of a thousand years. The maintenance and restoration of the pope's political authority in its original integrity is the only means to save Italy from the demoralization which threatens her from the secret societies and King Victor Emmanuel's policy. To have the Holy Father in her midst constitutes to-day, as it has during her whole Christian past, the highest honor, the true greatness, and the blessing of Italy.

3. It is the duty of princes, and of every sovereign power, to protect the independence of the head of the church to which their Catholic subjects belong; and the Catholics of all nations are entitled to demand that these obligations should be sacredly observed. A government which countenances the violation of the supreme pontiffs rights makes itself the accomplice of the revolution. To suffer the government of Victor Emmanuel to encourage with impunity or to undertake itself enterprises tending to imperil the security of the Roman church state, is to undermine all respect for the law of nations and the principles of justice.

4. Love gifts, raised by the free, unanimous, and untiring devotion of all Catholics, must supply the Holy Father with that assistance which is indispensable for the government of the church, as long as treachery and force withhold from him the enjoyment of the estates bestowed on him in the past for the advantage of all Christendom. For this purpose a general organization must be formed.

5. In view of the present crisis, the maintenance of the army which the Holy Father requires for the protection of his own person and that of his loyal subjects is a matter which profoundly concerns the whole Catholic world. It should be a question of honor for every nation to be represented among its ranks, and Germans could not dedicate their lives to a nobler cause."

But apart from the influence of these eight millions of Roman Catholics in Prussia, no state which recognizes the binding force of its own civilizing mission, and claims to be governed by law, could take part in such a dangerous violation of international unity, whatever its political affinities and antecedents might otherwise happen to be. Germany may or may not have vast interests in common with the Italian nationality, and may even desire their realization. But the interests of religion rank far above those of Italian nationality, with which, as we have seen, the Roman question is constantly being confounded. The Italian monarchy, as at present constituted, can inspire little confidence and respect at home or abroad. Independent of all other considerations, it is difficult to perceive how any true friend of Italy, any patriot, could, even from a purely politico-national stand-point, approve of the Garibaldian raid, and the policy pursued by the Florence government in relation to it. What the new monarchy stands most in need of at present is something quite different from the Utopian completion of its unity. {819} If this object has not been reached already because Rome and its half a million of people are ruled by the pope, it will never be accomplished. The monarchy wants to strengthen itself internally, not to extend externally. A strong, able, and honest government, an efficient administration, a restored finance, a thorough system of public instruction, a development of its commerce, agriculture, and industry, and, above all, peace and harmony--these are the indispensable conditions to its future welfare, even to its existence. Nothing could therefore have been more fatal, even from the narrowest and most selfish point of view, than the breach of the September convention. It was, upon the whole, the most statesmanlike programme which the Italian government has yet adopted during its brief life, and should have been sacredly observed. Neither the treaty of alliance with Prussia, which gave Italy the chance to acquire Venetia, nor the peace of Vienna, which ratified that acquisition, could have exerted so far-reaching an influence on the domestic and foreign position of the country. The alliance with Prussia, it is true, contained the germs of advantages which might eventually have extended much beyond the settlement of the Venetian question and the abandonment of the Quadrilateral by the Austrians. But the fruition of these promises required time; for, as soon as Venetia was disposed of, it became evident that the connection between Italy and Prussia would have to remain long less intimate and important than the connection between Italy and France. As long as the latter power remained at Rome, the attention of the Italian statesmen would have to continue fixed rather on Paris than on Berlin. According to the intentions of its Italian framers, the convention of September 15th was to serve gradually to loosen the ties which bound Italy to France, and which began then already to be borne with impatience by the nation. By the evacuation of the Eternal City the Roman question was to be changed into an exclusively Italian question. But this project the conduct of the Italian monarchy, or, to speak more precisely, that of the statesmen who succeeded in office those who had devised the programme, has defeated, as we shall hereafter fully explain; and the result is, that the Roman problem has once more assumed a diplomatic, international phase, pending again between Florence and Paris.

The September convention has failed to put an end to these further pretexts for foreign interference in the domestic affairs of Italy, because its terms were never observed, and because its authors were not afforded a chance to carry their policy out. Nothing could have been more inauspicious than the fact that the statesmen who concluded the convention should have been driven from office on account of the Turin difficulties, at the very time when their measures had received the approbation of a large majority of the nation, and the sanction of the majority of the two chambers. The fall of the Minghetti ministry was an anomaly utterly contrary to all ideas of constitutional government. An important programme, which changed the entire policy of the country and committed it to a new one for the next future, had been accepted. It could never have been adopted without the sanction of the sovereign, nor without the approval of the country and its representatives in parliament. And yet those who had originated it and assumed all its responsibilities were compelled to resign power to men that accepted the legacy only because they could not help themselves, and whose views differed totally from those of their predecessors in office. {820} The Minghetti cabinet, which had to retire in consequence of the excitement caused among the people of Piedmont by the transfer of the national capital stipulated for in the September convention, was succeeded by the La Marmora, composed chiefly out of Piedmontese elements, although it repudiated all the principles of the Minghetti, while pretending to recognize the obligations resulting from the convention itself. It is easy to conceive the profound agitation produced by this change in the ranks of the moderate party, which had hitherto constituted the parliamentary majority. The most energetic element of this party had been the Piedmontese. Through its intimate relations with the reigning house, its long parliamentary experience, its business knowledge, its marked predominance in the administration and the army, the Piedmontese had always been the most trustworthy supporters of the moderate cause, the strongest bulwark against the incessant encroachments of radicalism. It was the majority of this element that now coalesced with the radicals for the purpose of fighting by their side against the late moderate leaders, whom they could not pardon for having severed the hegemony of Piedmont and Turin by the transfer of the capital to Florence. In addition to the desertion of the bulk of the Piedmontese, the remainder of the moderates split among themselves. Some refused to desert their fallen leaders; others, and especially such as had joined the new administration, while still content to adhere to a moderate policy and to accept the September convention as a part of it, yet thought they might safely venture to sacrifice the authors of the latter to the prejudices of Piedmont, and that without serious injury to the material features of the programme. This division between the supporters of the old cabinet, the so-called "Consorteria," and the new, became most conspicuous at the elections in the autumn of 1865, when the latter opposed, or permitted its followers to oppose, the candidates of the former, which resulted in large accessions to the radicals. The Ricasoli cabinet, formed in the spring of 1866, also hoped to strengthen itself by conciliating the radicals, while it continued to maintain the unfriendly attitude of its predecessors toward the Consorteria. But the result was, that the Ricasoli ministry failed to secure a majority when it dissolved parliament in February, 1867.

Is the steady decadence of the Italian monarchy due to the disintegration of the moderate party, or is this disintegration of the party of order merely a symptom of the general decline of the old country and the new kingdom? It will suffice to throw out these queries, and to contestate at the same time the circumstance that the influence of the government has diminished in the same ratio as that of the radicals has increased; that the confusion and disorder in all departments of the public service have kept pace with the financial embarrassment. Although every ministry called to office since 1864 has been more or less recruited from the _débris_ of the old moderate party, each succeeding administration has proved itself less capable of resisting the advances of the radicals and the Piedmontese opposition, and the last Ratazzi ministry was forced at the start to depend altogether on their support and forbearance. {821} These being the facts, it is only natural that the programme of the moderates in relation to the Roman and the ecclesiastical questions should have lost authority year after year, session after session, until it has finally become impracticable of execution. The non-intervention policy presupposed first of all a government strong and honest enough to enforce a pacific course toward the pope. But no such government has ever yet been known in Italy. The secret negotiations with Rome, conducted by the La Marmora and the Ricasoli cabinets, (through Vegezzi and Tonello,) related only to spiritual affairs; but even these were defeated by the machinations of the radicals in parliament and in the press. This party desires no dealings whatever with the papal government, neither in relation to temporal nor spiritual matters. It is an uncompromising opponent of Cavour's maxim, _Libero chiesa in libero stato_, which it considers the greatest misfortune that could befall the country. Between the radicals of Italy and the Church of Rome the war is one of life and death. They charge the papacy with having caused the division and subjugation of the peninsula. They hold up the whole institution as the mortal foe of every national aspiration for unity and independence. They say that only doctrinarians and disguised clericals can draw a line of demarcation between Rome's temporal and spiritual rule, and openly boast that it is their mission to complete at once the unity of Italy, and to free the world from papacy. These are the leading points in the radical programme, and they are, therefore, the exact opposite to those laid down in the September convention.

But, despite the disintegration of the moderate party, despite the feebleness of the consecutive ministries in office since 1864, a programme which substitutes the subjugation of the church for its freedom, the physical conquest of Rome for its moral, would perhaps have less rapidly gained ground, had not an entirely new factor entered into the relations between the Italian and the papal governments--between church and state; and this factor was the all-engrossing financial question. The radicals cunningly used it to hasten the solution of the Roman problem by advocating the confiscation of the ecclesiastical property, and they succeeded in persuading the moderates to countenance a policy which was felt to be an outrage to all justice. The latter, instead of acting in accordance with the principle of a free church in a free state, accepted the radical postulates. The influence of the radicals constantly grew, because they were perfectly united, decided, and logical on all questions relating to church and state, while, the moderates only reluctantly, and with the secret consciousness of their own inconsequence, assented to measures which endangered both the discipline and possessions of the church. A party which fights boldly under its own colors may be vanquished to-day, yet rally again to-morrow and conquer at last; but a party which is compelled to hide its colors and to hoist those of its foes resigns all hopes of resuming the contest after the first reverse. As far as the interests of the papacy are, therefore, concerned, there is very little difference between the radicals and the moderates of Italy. Both would like to obtain Rome, only that the latter differ in regard to the means. While the radicals would resort to brute force, the moderates would trust to cunning and plotting; for they know that the Roman question is not, like the Venetian, a mere question of national independence and unity, which can be solved permanently by war or revolution. {822} Their object is not simply the destruction of the worldly power of the pope and the annexation of the small strip of territory still left to him. The supreme pontiff has more than once lost his temporality; but his ascendency over the minds of men was rather strengthened than weakened by his adversity, and with the aid of his moral authority, his spiritual influence, he has every time regained what he had lost. To deprive him, once for all, of his worldly power, he must first be reduced to a condition which will not allow him to avail himself again of his moral authority as the head of the church, and it is to this end that the moderates have been working in various ways.

In relation to the proposed European congress we have nothing to say, except that it is an impossibility. As the pastoral letter of the Bishop of Orleans forcibly remarked, such a conference could only be composed of kings; for the fate of the supreme pontiff should never be left to the decision of a Gortschakoff or a Bismarck.

Since the above article was written, the debates in the Italian chambers have shown to us anew that the Holy Father can expect nothing from the monarchy. They have proved again that the Roman question is considered by them to be a mere political question, and this without the slightest reference to its religious and international features. Cavour once announced, with the approbation of parliament, that Italy _must_ have Rome; but General Menabrea knows full well the pressure under which the modern Machiavelli, the man of impromptu and chicane, was forced to resort to this expedient. Menabrea may, perhaps, never make common cause with Garibaldi as Ratazzi has done, not even for the sake of Rome; but he is equally destitute of moral principles. Italy, it appears, has not been rendered one whit the wiser or more honest by the deep humiliation which she has recently undergone; otherwise, she would not have the audacity to ask that the Catholic world should confide the fate of the church to a state which has for years persistently derided, oppressed, and plundered the church. Italy has too recently been leagued with one who never ceases to utter the vilest invectives and threats against the papacy, and she is quite ready to avail herself again of the next opportunity to outrage the law of nations by proclaiming the law of the revolution. Italy, even had she the wish, which she has not, would not have the power to protect the church, for she has unchained every element most hostile to it, and can now herself only exist by a chain of negations. To a state like this, to which nothing has been sacred since Charles Albert's revolt against Austria, in May, 1848, and which is so feeble internally, the Catholic world could never dream of intrusting its holiest and highest interests. Whole Europe would first have to take leave of its senses. It is not solely the Catholic powers which--unless, indeed, they aim, like Russia, at the total destruction of Catholicism--are profoundly concerned in this question. Every existing state has a vital interest in opposing this openly avowed scheme to unsettle all fundamental principles of equity and justice. Should the Italian doctrine triumph, as Menabrea dares to prophesy, the old feudal times, when might made right and brute force ruled supreme, would return on earth in this nineteenth century. The church state exists since eleven centuries, the Italian monarchy not yet as many years; the church state owes its rise to the consent of its populations, the Italian monarchy to a series of intrigues and violence, rendered successful through foreign support. {823} And now the Italian monarchy comes again, in the midst of peace, without cause or provocation, without the wish of those most deeply interested in the question, the Romans themselves, to declare once more, "Rome is mine!" Hers? how? Through those boasted moral means, which have turned out to be a band of filibusters, the accomplices of the banditti who selected the evening of the twenty-second day of October, 1867, for the purpose of inaugurating their heroic achievements with deeds of murder and arson? This is the policy--these are the principles--which General Menabrea, the putative father of the September convention and of a "moral solution" of the Roman question, has the unblushing hardihood to proclaim in the face of civilized and christianized Europe! What answer will the two hundred millions of Roman Catholics return?

The Love Of The Pardoned.

"He to whom less is forgiven, the same loveth less."

Disciple.

"Sweet Lord, 'Tis true thy love no measure knows; And yet thou must agree, A love within my bosom glows Thou canst not feel for me-- The love that springs in pardoned hearts With all the joy such love imparts. I long, but why I do not know, That thou, dear Lord, couldst love me so."

Master.

"My child, Thy brethren are my images. Wherefore I said to thee: Whate'er thou doest unto these Thou doest unto me. Shall I have joy if thou dispense Thy bounty on their need, And if thou pardonest their offence Feel not the loving deed? That which _thou_ doest is divine. Doubt not; _their_ love is also mine!"

{824}

What Doctor Marks died of.

Some one at our camp-fire had chanced to mention Dr. Marks, which called forth the comment that the doctor had died of heart-disease--been found dead in his bed.

Major Arnold lifted his dark, bright eyes from dreaming over the coals, and looked steadily at the last speaker. "Died of heart-disease?" he repeated, with a slightly sceptical inflection.

"Yes, sir!"--very positively.

The major looked into the fire again, and thoughtfully thridded his beard through his fingers, while he appeared to weigh the pros and cons of some impulse in his mind. The pros tilted the beam, and the major spoke. But he first drew his hand down across his eyes, and swept away, with that pass, the present scene of myriad tents, ghostly-white in the moonlight, or shining crimson in the light of scattered fires; of closely-crowding, shadow-haunted southern crags and forests that lifted themselves from our feet to the horizon, their black and ragged rim standing boldly out against a sky that was flooded with the mellow radiance of the full moon, all its stars and all its purple swamped in that silent and melancholy tide.

"Poor Anne Atherton!" I had not thought that our rough major could speak so softly. "I had been going to the door every day, for weeks, to ask how she was, hoping in spite of the doctors. But one morning, when I reached the steps, I saw a strip of crape tied round the bell-knob. No need of questions that day. Poor little Anne was gone!

"I call her little; but she was eighteen, and well-grown. It is only a fond way of intimating that she crept into all our hearts. People liked her for her honest beauty, her ready smile, and her cheerful voice. Anne was not one of your bilious-sublime sort, but a strong, sweet, sensible girl, with an apple-blossom complexion and a clear conscience. Her family were old friends of mine, and Anne was engaged and about to be married to my particular crony--John Sharon--one of the best fellows that ever trod shoe-leather. Poor John! My heart ached for him as I went down-town that day.

"There's a little Scottish poem that reminded me, the first time I read it, of John Sharon's loves and hates:

'Tweed said to Till, "What gars ye rin sae still?" Till said to Tweed, "Though ye rin wi' speed, And I rin slaw, Whar ye droon ae man, I droon twa."'

"The current of John's feelings was like the current of Till river.

"That evening I went up to the house with my arms full of white flowers. Minnie Atherton wanted me to go in to see her sister; but I hesitated. I had always disliked to look at a corpse, and I hated to lose from my mind the picture it held of that rosy-cheeked girl, and take in its place ever so fair an image of death.

"'She looks very peaceful,' Minnie said tearfully, seeing my unwillingness. 'And you may be able to comfort John. We can't get him away from her.'

{825}

"I never was much at comforting people. All that I know how to say to a crying woman is, 'Now, don't, my dear!' and to a crying man I couldn't utter a word. Since then I have marched up to a battery with less shaking of the nerves than I felt on that day when I went into the darkened room where Anne Atherton lay dead, and John Sharon sat looking at her. There were no tears in his eyes, there was no trembling in his lip or voice. He looked as though he had so long gazed upon and studied that face of hers that his own had learned the secret of its frozen calm. I could not tell which of the two was whiter.

"How beautiful she was! There was still a faint pink in her lips; but where that marvellous rich color had bloomed in the cheeks, and a fainter tint in the small ears and rounded chin, there was now only pure white. But that pallor revealed many an exquisite outline which had been unnoted when her color dazzled the eyes. Her head was turned aside, with one hand under the cheek, and her long, fair hair was put back from the face, and lay in shining ripples down her shoulders and back. She wore her bridal dress and veil, some filmy, frosty stuff, that looked as though it might melt, being so near the cluster of candles that burned at her head. There was no light in the room but from those candles.

"Minnie scattered my flowers over her sister's hair and dress. 'I am glad that you brought tuberoses,' she said, 'Anne always loved them.'

"A long, slow sigh heaved John Sharon's breast. He carefully took up one of the blossoms and looked it all over--the flower that Anne had loved! Then he laid it tenderly back again. Not all the blooms of earth could, for any other reason, have won a glance from him at that moment; but I know that he has a tuberose engraven as sharply upon his memory as you ever saw any white flower cut upon a tomb-stone.

"Presently Minnie left the room, glancing at me as she went. I ventured to lay my hand on John's shoulder. I know it, Arnold,' he said quietly. 'You would help me if you could. But there is no help on earth. Don't worry about me. I can't leave while she is above ground. There will be time enough, by and by, for rest.'

"'I have no word of consolation to offer,' I said.

"'But I have a thought that consoles me,' he replied, leaning forward with tender passion to lay his hand on hers; 'I have not altogether lost her. I shall meet her again, my darling! I shall meet her again!'

"I turned away and left them there hand in hand.

"When I went up the next morning I found John trembling with excitement. 'I have just restrained myself from taking Dr. Marks's life!' he said, his teeth fairly chattering. 'What do you think that the brute dared to propose to me? He wants to make a _post-mortem_ examination of Anne! That young form that the hand of man has never touched, to be cut up for the gratification of a mere professional curiosity! I told him to run for his life, or I would strangle him.'

"Telling this, John panted like a man out of breath.

"I tried to soothe him. 'These doctors get used to everything,' I said. 'Marks could have no idea how you feel about it.'

"He wrung his hands, still shivering with loathing of the thought that had been forced on him. 'I can't get over it!' he said. 'I am sorry that he was called in at the consultation. If I had known in season, he should not have come. {826} He is a coarse-grained fellow, who, for the sake of gratifying his curiosity about a disease, would outrage all the decencies of life. 'I believe, Arnold--' here John choked with the words he would have uttered.

"'My dear fellow, try to forget it,' I said. 'He has asked, and you have refused, and there's an end of the matter.'

"'I don't believe that it is ended,' John said, looking at me strangely.

"'You don't mean--' I began.

"But he lifted his hand as though he could not bear to have the thought put into words. 'I shall watch her grave every night for a week,' he said. 'Will you watch with me tonight, Arnold?'

"I promised, and we parted.

"Anne Atherton's case was a peculiar one. They had called it quick consumption, for want of a better name. She always persisted in saying that she had swallowed something sharp like a pin, and that it had entered her left lung; but of all her physicians, Doctor Marks was the only one who believed it possible that she might be right. On the strength of this half agreement he had proposed the examination.

"The South cemetery, just outside the city, used to be the paradise of body-snatchers. It was in a lonesome neighborhood, and two sides bordered on the open country. Many a grave in that cemetery had given up its dead to the dissecting-knife, while the bereaved ones at home little dreamed that its sacred rest had been disturbed. The Athertons had a lot there, and Anne was buried in it. We covered the new-made grave with evergreens, wreath linked in wreath, the whole sprinkled with white flowers--a pretty counterpane for the fair sleeper below.

"It was five minutes past nine in the evening when I vaulted over the stone wall, and walked down the central avenue. The Atherton lot was not far from the entrance, and instead of a high fence, with gate and lock like the others, it was surrounded only by a low rim of granite. As I approached, I saw the tall, white monument in the centre, and John Sharon leaning against it, and looking down on the wreath-covered mound at his feet. He started when he heard my step, and came to meet me, taking my hand in a strong, cold clasp.

"'We will sit here,' he said, leading me to a shady nook at the other side of the avenue.

"The place he had selected was a grove of Norway spruces which formed a half-circle, the open side facing the Atherton lot, and not more than two rods distant from it. Thoughtful for my comfort, though indifferent to his own, John had thrown a shawl over the horizontal slab of marble in the centre of this grave, and on that we seated ourselves. He had brought, too, a little flask of brandy, which he pressed into my hand, but would not taste of himself. It did not come amiss; for the season was the last of October, and the night chilly, though clear and calm.

"I asked John what he meant to do if the doctor should make his appearance.

"'I shall frighten him,' he said. 'I have my pistol here, and mean to fire it. I couldn't bear to have a fight over her grave.'

"We sat there and awaited in silence, John with his eyes fixed on the mound across the way. The last ray of the setting moon touched with a white lustre its wreaths, and every little ghost of a flower, then slipped up the shaft of marble near by, pointed with a luminous finger to the 'rest in peace,' engraven there, showed name after name, and date after date, stole up the cross at the top, lingered an instant on its summit, then melted into the air. {827} Following its flight with my glance, I saw that the sky was of a pale, transparent gray, with a few large stars in it. Clearly out against this background stood the roofs and spires of that sleeping city that breathed while it slept, and more clearly yet the monuments, and a fine tracery of the bare trees, branch, stem, and twig showing delicate as lace-work, of that nearer city which slept in awful, breathless silence, never stirring for sunrise nor sunset, never starting at any alarm, nor opening its eyes, let who would go by.

"The evening had been calm, but as it grew toward midnight a faint and fitful breeze came now and then, like a sigh, setting that net-work of branches in a shiver, and sweeping the dry leaves about with a low and mournful rustling. The place and time, the silence that was only broken by that weird and spirit-like wind, and yet more, the face of my companion, affected me strongly. John sat leaning slightly forward, his hands clasped on his knees, his gaze fixed on that grave he had come to watch, and as motionless as any stone about us. The frozen look of his face chilled me. I could not see nor hear that he breathed; and there was no movement of an eyelid even. I would have spoken to him if I had dared. I longed for some sound which would startle him out of that trance; but there he sat motionless, apparently lifeless.

"I took a swallow of brandy and tried to occupy my thoughts otherwise. I looked through the interstices of the trees near me and counted grave-stones. Close by were two old sunken graves with slate stones leaning awry at their heads, where lay, or had lain, grandfather and grandmother Sawyer--a later John Anderson and his wife, who had gone, hand in hand, up and down the hill, and now slept thegither at the foot. I say they had lain there; for, in the fifty odd years since their burial, it was most probable that their dust had left its place beneath those tumble-down slate stones and gone about other business, rising, may be, in grasses and flowers. Not much of the old couple left in their coffins, be sure. Perhaps the children had carried the last of them away in violets and mayweed, that very summer. Possibly the birds had pecked them up, in one shape or another.

"Would John Sharon never move?

"I turned and peered back to where a small white cross stood, looking like a child in its night-gown, with arms extended. I could fancy some dear little frightened thing coming to me in that lonely place, silent from fear, or only faintly whimpering, all of a tremor, poor babe! till I should reach and clasp it safe. The rustling of the leaves was its little bare feet in them, the sigh of air was its sobbing breath.

"I gave myself a shake. Well, to be sure! a white marble cross to mark where a child had been buried a year or two before. I remembered having seen, in June, a red-ripe strawberry on that grave, looking as though the little creature's mouth were put up through the sod to be kissed.

"I turned to John Sharon again. He had not stirred. I looked at the grave he watched, and wondered if, with that steadfast gaze, he could pierce the sod, as clairvoyants tell, and see Anne lying, cold and lovely, far below, with one hand under her cheek and the other on her breast, and her hair flowing down unbound, never again to float on any breeze, to toss with any light motion of hers, to be twisted about his fingers.

{828}

"I turned quickly to touch him, but, as I raised my hand, he started. A sough of air had arisen, faint but far-reaching; the leaves rustled and crept all about the many graves; and through that sound I heard a step.

"John's form came erect, as though stiffened by a galvanic shock, and he sharply turned his head aside to listen. For one moment there was silence again, then a sound of feet carefully treading down the avenue toward us. I heard the breath shiver through John's teeth, and saw him take something from his breast. Then two men came stealing across our view, their forms, as we sat low, defined against the sky. One was unknown to me, but the other was easy to recognize--Dr. Marks's large, athletic form loomed against the stars. Both men carried spades, and the doctor had a sack hanging over his arm. They went directly to the Atherton lot, and, after whispering together for a moment, the smaller man stooped to pull away the wreaths from the grave, and Dr. Marks set his spade to the earth and his foot to the spade.

"'We must make haste,' I heard him say. 'Our time is short.'

"His was shorter than he knew.

"Without looking directly at John, I had seen him come forward with his knee to the ground, and raise his hand level with his eyes, and I was aware of a flicker before his face, as of light on polished metal. There was a faint sound of the spade thrust through loose gravel, and, as he heard it,' John started, and cried out as if the thrust had been through his heart. At the same instant a flame leaped out from the gloom wherein we lurked, the silence cracked with a sharp report, and both men dropped their spades and ran.

"John started to his feet, hastened to the grave which he had saved from profanation, and, after having removed from it, with loving care, every sign of disturbance, threw himself upon it, and sobbed as though his heart would break."

The major paused, brushed his hand across his eyes, and gazed a moment longer into the coals, in which he had seemed to read that story. Then he looked up quickly, straightened himself, and became aware again of the southern night, the many tents, and the fire-lighted faces of soldiers listening toward him.

"I had my suspicions," he resumed, in a changed voice, "that John's shot was not so harmless as he had intended it to be; but I said nothing to him, and when he told me to go home, I went. When I reached the street, I saw two men walking slowly away, one supporting the other. The next day I heard that Dr. Marks was dead. Strangely enough, we were able to keep the knowledge from John. He never left the house, except at night, till after a week, when we joined our regiments; and since then he has had enough to think of and to do without inquiring after Dr. Marks's health.

"The doctor's family said he died of heart-disease; and I don't blame them for putting the best face they could on the affair. The hearts of most people, when they die, have something the matter with them--they are likely to stop."

{829}

Bartoleme Las Casas. [Footnote 76]

[Footnote 76: _The Life of Las Casas_, "_The Apostle of the Indies_." By Arthur Helps. London: Bell & Daldy. 1868. 12mo, pp. 292. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.]

Is The Charge In History Against Him Sustained?

Of all the great men of the Spanish race who ever visited the shores of the American continent, it may with truth be said that Bartoleme de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, was the greatest. His personal virtues, in which he surpassed others, were only equalled by the exalted purpose to which his long life was exclusively devoted. His career was beset with perils that would have appalled one who had not the courage and the constancy of a paladin; his toils, privations, and sufferings were without number. The insults, contumely, scorn, and malice to which he was daily, hourly exposed, not from a few only, but from all of his countrymen in the new world, were enough to crush the stoutest heart. He was, preeminently, the most hated, the most despised, the most universally unpopular being that crossed the broad Atlantic from Spain. Sometimes they denied him shelter; sometimes they refused him food; sometimes they threatened his safety, in premeditated assaults for his assassination; they fled from his presence at the altar as they would flee from a pestilence; and they compelled him often to become a fugitive in order to preserve his life.

Not only in America, but in Europe also, was he subjected to abuse and ridicule; but in Europe these were not universal. Public opinion was there divided. Those who had returned from the Western Indies, covered with renown and rolling in riches, who were celebrated in story, not only after the manner of knights-errant in romance, but in the very words, phrases, and language of romance--those who went forth from home, poor, needy, plebeian, and came back with untold wealth, to intermarry with the families of the highest grandees, to intermix their blood with the purest hidalgo, poured, forth their concentrated wrath upon his devoted head. But, on the other hand, courtiers all-powerful, prime ministers, and sovereigns received him with open arms, granted him prolonged audience, and commiserated his troubles, sympathizing deeply in his noble undertaking. In secret, however, they had often to regret their inability to render him the aid required for its success. With the clergy, and especially among the highest prelates, the confessors of royalty, the professors of the universities, the bishops, the archbishops, the primates, and cardinals, his return was greeted with the same satisfaction. From the lowly cloister to the imperial palace the same good wishes for him prevailed.

In the respectable classes of society at large, a singular reception awaited him. Although they venerate him as one among the best of mankind, they manifested their regard in the most opposite deportment. When he ascended the pulpit to discourse before the pious upon the unheard-of outrages, the fiendish wickedness, the appalling cruelties inflicted by Christians, and moreover, Christians who were their countrymen, upon simple, confiding, weak, inoffensive thousands and tens of thousands of Indians in the new world, the horror and abhorrence of congregations knew no bounds. {830} Their fears of Divine vengeance falling upon themselves rose in the same proportion, until they stood aghast lest a national calamity should come upon them, like unto that which swept away of old the cities of the plain. On the other hand, that portion of the public which is light-minded, full of levity, and for ever in search of novelty, encountered him elsewhere, on the plaza, in the college court, on the prado, where he walked under the trees, or at a posada where he dined; and they paused to listen to his talk, for he talked much and too often on the same theme--the rapacity and brutality of the cavaliers to the helpless, the innocent, the ignorant, defenceless aborigines--the adopted children of the holy father at Rome, the accepted wards confided to the tender keeping of the good Queen Isabella of blessed memory, to christianize and to civilize. While the monk poured forth an eloquent statement of their wrongs, the when, the where, and on what occasion, he named no names, in charity to the bad men; but his hearers made the proper application, well knowing the persons from common report; those millionaires just returned, whose mushroom bloom of dunghill beauty, outshone the roseate lustre of the ancient Guzmans and Colonas.

The successful adventurers to the Indies of the West had already received the popular and insulting nickname of the Cachopins of Laredo; they were of the same breed with the Indian nabobs of England in afterdays, and of the shoddy in our own. While, therefore, the single-minded monk, in the fervor of his eloquence, in the overflowing zeal for his cause, narrated what these people had done to the natives, his audience were learning how these men had made their money; and the more facts and indignation exhibited by the speaker, the more highly were they amused, the more heartily did they shake with silent laughter. The monk saw the scenes in the most serious light; they saw them in the most ludicrous aspect; for they were quietly in their mind contrasting the world-wide extent between Cachopin pretensions and Cachopin merit. And these, thought they, these baseborn and brutish fellows, who are receiving patents of nobility by the score, who aspire to quarter their crests upon the aristocratic escutcheon possessed by grandees of the first class, emblazoned with heraldic bears, eagles, lions, elephants, and leopards, borne, centuries before, upon banners of that chivalry who fought for Christendom at the cave of Covodonga, and for the preeminence of Spanish honor, courage, and courtesy over France at the rough vale of Roncesvalles--these are the fellows who wish to blend those proud emblematic animals with their new coats of arms, the tobacco leaf, the tomata, the roasting ear of Indian corn, the sweet potato, perhaps, the appropriate devices for the conquerors clubbed with a title taken from a miserable fish-town, in the meanest, poverty-stricken, peddler-producing province in the realm. [Footnote 77]

[Footnote 77: The Cachopin figured in the comedies, farces, romances, and lively pastorals of that age.

In the beautiful pastoral of the _Diana_, by Jorgé Montemayor, in a scene between Fabio, the page, and Felismena, who is disguised as a boy, Fabio says:

"I promise you on the faith of a hidalgo, (which I am, for my father is a Cachopin of Laredo,) that my master has better terms."--_See Book_ 2, p. 87; _the edition of_ 1542.

Don Quixote met the travellers on the road, and of course described the beauty of his Dulcinea, and when asked who she was--

"Her lineage, race, ancestry," answered the Don, "is not of the old Roman Curtius, nor the modern Colonas, nor the Moncadas of Catalonia, the Guerras of Aragon, nor Gusmans of Castile, but of Tobosa de la Mancha."

"And mine," said the traveller, "is of the Cachopins of Laredo."]

{831}

The great object which Las Casas desired to attain was, in its magnitude, commensurate with the mighty convulsions produced in the minds of his own nationality. It was not to protect or defend a parish, or a diocese, or a state from oppression, but to save from destruction a continent, a hemisphere of the habitable globe; it was to snatch and to shield millions of the natives in the Indies of the West from slavery to the white race; for, enslaved, the feeble Indian was sure to sink under the burdens imposed, most of them perishing within two months, and none of them surviving two years. If they went down to the grave in their ignorance and infidelity, their souls might be without the pale of salvation in their unregenerate state; if they were civilized, believed in Christ, and were baptized, what glory would redound to God, what treasure laid up in heaven for those aiding in their conversion, what myriads of communicants added to the church! Natural commiseration for their hard lot in this world, spiritual considerations for their fate in the next, along with reward held out to those who alleviated their distress now and prepared them for eternal happiness hereafter, were the exalted motives that prompted Las Casas to undertake the herculean task.

With such sublime intentions, his ardor was strengthened to undergo every toil and privation the body can suffer, to endure every agony, every indignity the spirit can receive. The measures he adopted for success, the means he employed to sustain them, the instruments he made use of, constitute the materials for his life. These were numerous, varied, dissimilar, and seemingly discordant. One was the simple being, almost in a state of nature in the rudest hut, living upon roots, sheltered by a frail canopy of leaves, clothed with a rabbit-skin or a yard of cotton, or without any covering at all, and possessed of an intellect just dawning into consciousness of its faculties, so that the common, almost universal opinion was that he did not as yet belong to the human species, but was born to live, to be worked, and to die like beasts of the field. On the other hand, Las Casas invoked the assistance of the most illustrious of the age, the refined and intellectual in the most powerful state in Europe. He impressed his thoughts upon the august Cesar, seated upon his imperial throne, who claimed legitimate succession in the divine line from the celestial deity.

For fifty years was his time devoted to this cause, with varied hope of success and disaster; but before he lay down to die, much had been achieved, and with the encouragement that more could be accomplished in the future. The life of Las Casas is yet to be written. Those who have essayed it so far have only furnished a few facts, mixed with many errors. They have not attempted to combine the materials into general principles, and to analyze the incentives of those who were his enemies, or who were his friends, and thus reduce the conduct of all into a general consistency. Sympathizing with him in his exertions, they conclude that those who opposed him were all bad men, and those who encouraged him were all good men. But that is not the temper in which biography and history ought to be written. Facts or events are only one part of the work; the causes which preceded or influenced them should be investigated. Nothing should be left to ignorant conjecture, to idle inference or gratuitous suspicion. {832} All the surroundings must be explained. In writing his biography some insight into the learning of that period and into the state of science at the time should be gained, especially in the departments of history, of moral philosophy, of the civil law, of the canon law, and international jurisprudence. Not even the lighter literature, including the popular poetry, the drama, and romances, can with safety escape observation. Above all, being at the era of the revival of learning, along with the first improvements in the art of printing, the changes made in modern languages are to be noted. In these transformations, the significance of many words and phrases was often doubtful. Sometimes they had to be taken according to their old meaning; sometimes again in the new. When astrology was banished, its theory was discarded; but at least two thirds of its terms were retained: when alchemy suffered the same fate, its vocabulary, as well as its crucibles, retorts, and alembics, were transferred to the chemical laboratory: when the practice of medicine was relinquished, physicians took possession of its expressions for comments, and wrote out their prescriptions in many of its hieroglyphics. These mutations were progressing when Columbus was sailing due west in search of a route to the east. Whether words were to be interpreted according to science, or according to suppositions which had prevailed before science, was often a difficult question to solve.

Illustrations would indicate how far research must go to understand the times and transitions taking place. It is needless to add, that nothing of the kind has been noted; nor, from appearances, will it ever be thought of. His writings have been glanced at to elucidate some point controverted, and then hastily thrown aside. What was learned, moreover, was in a confused mass of facts and dates, which were difficult to comprehend, and more difficult to reduce to a consistent form. The consequence has been that, instead of a knowledge of the learning and science at the period when he lived, to enlarge the circle of their literary reputations, they have embarrassed some historical subjects, and well will it be for them if they have not endangered their laurels. It would seem that many who have treated of Las Casas, or even touched upon his character, have fallen into some mistake, error, or curious blunder. Nor is their number confined to writers of an inferior order; it embraces some names renowned in Europe and America for justly merited historical excellence. They learned a few facts; they guessed the rest; and their guessing, like all loose conjectures in general, leads to false conclusions, with the consequent danger therefrom.

Las Casas commenced his _History of the Indies_ in 1527. when he was in his fifty-third year; he concluded it in 1559, when he was in his eighty-fifth. He had in his possession some valuable documents obtained from Columbus; but beyond these he relied for the most part on his own knowledge of events, along with accredited rumors and reports in circulation. In his will he directs that the _Historia_ shall not be made public for forty years after his decease. But reasons exist for the belief that it was read by Philip the Second, in the Escorial; and it is certain Antonio de Herrera availed himself of its information before the year 1600, when he completed his _Description of the Indies of the West_. The _Historia_ by Las Casas still remains in manuscript in the Royal Academy of Madrid. {833} Herrera, being the chief royal chronicler of the Indies, and chronicler for Castile, was ordered by the supreme council of the Indies to prepare his _Description_. It is presented in the form of annals, where events are recorded in the year in which they transpired. Consequently the breaks are incessant in the regular sequence, to conform to chronological arrangement. But historical effect was not designed; historical accuracy in the statement of facts being all that was demanded.

To this end, Herrera consulted every book, in print or in manuscript, known to him, and had access to every official document in the archives of Simancas and Seville, to insure accuracy and verify every assertion. He does not often explain the policy or intentions of the government; because statecraft, in those days, enjoined the silence of Italian diplomacy and practised the secrecy of the Venetian Council of Ten. The royal purpose in what was done or ordered, was above the sphere of the annalist; the introduction of personal or private biography was below it. He took for his model and guide, through the intricate maze of voyages, discoveries, and adventures, the _Historia_ of Las Casas. He adopted that part only, however, which his duty required; he rejected that which was uncertain, untrue, or purely of personal interest. In rejecting, he did not discredit Las Casas, believing him to be of undoubted veracity, and in general very accurate. But Las Casas had unavoidably fallen into errors, from defect of memory, with advancing years, and from misinformation, or from facts misunderstood by the manner in which they reached him. That Herrera should improve upon him or defer to his accuracy as a historian is not singular, and expresses a high appreciation of his excellence. Nor can it be surprising, when called upon to pronounce, in his _Description_, between the statements of Las Casas and his enemies, Oviedo and Gomara, he should decide that Las Casas had good cause for much feeling against them. When the voluminous work of Herrera was printed, it was found to be a masterly production; nor has its authority been seriously questioned since. At the present day it stands as imputing perfect verity. It ranks with the _Annual Register_ and _National Almanac;_ it is of the same class of publications, but far more extensive in its design.

The imperfections of Las Casas in his _Historia_ and those portions not quoted by Herrera are the parts which first claim attention. In understanding his peculiar position toward those with whom he was thrown in contact, his inferences of the motives by which they were actuated cannot be implicitly relied on. He did not comprehend fully their situation; he could not account for their conduct, because explanations were not made which at a flash would have revealed the difficulties. In the absence of those he could not refrain from ascribing bad motives to some officials, such as Fonseca, Bishop of Burgos. Others he honored, because they were disinterested, pure, virtuous personages, with their sensibilities excited at the wrongs done to the aborigines, and who sympathized with him in his praiseworthy enterprise. Such, in his opinion, were Cesneros, Cardinal Ximenes, and Adrian, Cardinal de Tortosa. These prelates were in turn prime ministers, but their mode of receiving Las Casas was different. Ximenes was cold and austere in general, with his thoughts absorbed in affairs of state. {834} To Las Casas his deportment was not reserved; he was genial in his reception, and could read his traits at a glance; his feelings, too, were all on the same side, and it happened the interests of the crown were in accordance with his feelings. The cardinal, therefore, received him with unusual cordiality, and with much consideration; he listened to the facts communicated, to think them over, and to act upon them. He was thankful and considerate to Las Casas for the valuable information imparted, and sometimes relieved his poverty from his private purse. When the cardinal had learned all that Las Casas could tell about the condition of the Indies, he was graciously and quietly bowed out. For Ximenes had not the time nor inclination to hear more, which was sure to follow, if he could, with any decency, avoid the infliction.

Cardinal Adrian, subsequently Pope Adrian, was of a mild, quiet, disposition. He gave to Las Casas longer interviews, because he had more to learn, having recently come to Spain for the first time, from the Low Countries. Adrian therefore was more gracious still; but when Las Casas, in his nervous excitability, discoursed upon the never-ending theme of the injustice of Indian slavery, its sinfulness, its impolicy, its danger to the souls of persons in high places who tolerated it, and began on the Scriptures, the fathers, the decretals, the bulls, and the canon law, and the civil law, and the moral law, with interminable citations and iterations, the patience of even the meekest of cardinals would sometimes give way. For both Adrian and Cesneros understood these matters better than he did; and while assenting to the truth of what was uttered, they were not inclined to hear it so often and at such length repeated.

Ximenes, when not wishing to see him, time being too precious, turned him over to some dean or bishop; but Adrian, when desirous of more explanations, sent some friend among the Flemish counties to search for Las Casas, to converse with him, in order to acquire a thorough knowledge of the Indies, and of his opinions and plans. One day he met Señor De Bure by appointment, who felt an interest in the Indies. Las Casas was delighted to find the Flemish gentleman felt for the poor Indians, and forthwith his hopes rose that the government would do something. De Bure, in his eyes, was the very best of human beings. De Bure would listen to all that could be said, and soon took him to his uncle, De Laxao, who was the young sovereign's chamberlain, with inexpressible influence. De Bure was a buffer for Adrian, nothing more, to keep off Las Casas from that cardinal when he did not want to see him, but wished to be kept duly advised on Indian topics.

Fonseca was of a different mould; he was a man of business, rude, abrupt, with little delicacy in his manners to suppliants. He had a better acquaintance with the Indies; knew all about the condition of the natives; and if he had any sympathy for Las Casas, he did not permit it to be seen, nor for one moment would he countenance his proposals or listen to his plans. He deemed them as visionary as he had once viewed the scheme of Columbus to discover a new continent. He now was equally sure Las Casas could not civilize that continent when it was discovered. Consequently Las Casas loved Ximenes and Adrian, and heartily despised the Bishop of Burgos. {835} Every school-boy who ever read of Columbus or Cortez has learned what a very bad man was Fonseca, and all modern authors know what was in their school-books; but they know nothing more. Every life of Columbus, of Cortez, of Las Casas is written in the same vein. The Bishop of Burgos is abused in all of them. He treated the discoverer of America shamefully; he insulted the Protector of the Indians; he persecuted the conqueror of Mexico. These illustrious men denounced him, and their biographers are in sworn biographical fealty bound to denounce him also. Their heroes are never wrong; for what hero in biography or romance can ever be wrong? In the very nature of such compositions it is an utter impossibility. Fonseca was never in the right; for what opponent of their idols could have any reason or justice on his side?

Now, the best of reasons may be found for his policy to Columbus and Las Casas. They both wanted funds from the treasury when he was minister, and when no funds could be spared; for the nation was insolvent--a secret well known to him, but which it was all-important should not be known to the public. He would not give a ducat for any exploring voyage or prospective discovery, or for any expenses after a discovery was made. When Isabella begged and implored the cold minister to yield to her importunities for Columbus, he positively refused; nor could any entreaties induce him to relent. The queen, in consequence, had to pawn her jewels to equip the armada fitting out at Palos. Fonseca was not disgraced for his obstinacy; and although nothing of a courtier, he was too useful to be removed. Las Casas was served in the same way when Charles was anxious to aid him with funds. Fonseca was again as surly, and when at last the sovereign determined in council that, come what might, Las Casas should have aid, Fonseca washed his hands of the business, and soon after met him with a smile. This unexpected amiability Las Casas describes as evincing "some nobleness of nature." How many meritorious subjects, with honest claims on the treasury, were disappointed of a pittance thereby, is not considered. Knights who had spent their estates in prosecuting the wars against the Moors, who had grown old and poor in the royal service, who had fought for Christendom at Alhama, conquered at Malaga, and contributed to the siege and capture of Cordova, may have turned away heart-sick, in want of a maravedi, and only diminished the importunate, unsuccessful crowd besieging the doors of ministers, to swell the number of daily beggars at the hatch of some convent. In the novel of _Gil Bias_ a picture is presented of the neglect shown to meritorious subjects, whose necessities are no less imperative than their deeds were commendable. Captain Chinchilla is a sample of thousands. He had lost an eye at Naples, an arm in Lombardy, and a leg in the Low Countries; but his sovereign had not a ducat to spare. In such condition of the finances, a minister required a heart of stone to turn away from starving appeals for a bare pittance or the smallest pension. Fonseca could not be just; how much less could he be generous? A man who would endure this for the crown deserved much of the royal favor. For this was Fonseca invaluable; his nerve to save every real to the state was a quality much wanted.

But Hernando Cortez never besought the royal bounty; why, then, should Fonseca persecute him? It is said he exhibited uniform malignity against all great men; he persecuted Cortez. To this last instance a reason can be interposed. {836} For some cause Fonseca took part in the private quarrel between him and Velasquez, the Governor of Cuba. What was the minister's motive is merely conjecture; but if true, it is not worthy of consideration. Velasquez and Cortez were both villains; and a controversy between them arose about the division of the Mexican spoils. The governor furnished the funds for that expedition, and fitted out the ships on joint account. He complained that Cortez made no return of the profits, Fonseca took the side of Velasquez and aided him in his suit. It was difficult to determine who had the law in his favor; but the man who would cheat his patron and partner, as Cortez certainly did, who would torture to death an innocent prisoner and that prisoner a dethroned monarch, as Cortez in cold blood put Guatomotz to the torture, is not only a contemptible knave, but a hideous monster in human form.

Velasquez was another of the same breed; and if his infamy was less, the opportunity for the display of his propensities was wanting; his field was not so magnificent; but he cultivated to the utmost extent the smaller space which Cuba presented. Bad faith toward each other was the common practice among colonial chiefs. Velasquez owed his appointment to the judges of the Audiencia of Hispaniola, who fitted him out to do business for both in the same way that he in turn had commissioned and supplied Cortez, and as Cortez again nominated certain confidential friends to govern Mexico when he undertook his unfortunate expedition to Honduras. Of course these friends cheated Cortez, as he had cheated Governor Velasquez, and as the governor had cheated the judges of the Audiencia, and as the judges were perpetually defrauding their sovereign. Not one spark of honor or honesty was exhibited by any of them. They were rapacious, reckless, restrained by no law or teaching or sense of morality; while the temptation before their eyes was too splendid and overpowering to resist. The breach of a solemn promise was cheap as a dicer's oath; it was not even a venal offence; the torture of the Indians was not a crime; the burning alive at a slow fire of the royal Aztec was at best only an indiscretion. Thousands, including girls and boys, had been subjected to the same treatment, and for the same purpose, to wring the last ounce of gold-dust from the unhappy creatures.

The proceedings of Governor Velasquez, in Cuba, were not unlike the conduct of Cortez in Mexico. The governor enslaved, he tortured, he destroyed; and so did every cavalier who came in contact with the natives. The only gentlemen in the Antilles were the buccaneers, the British, Dutch, and French pirates. They, to be sure, in search of booty, cut the throats of the Spaniards whom they captured; but they were of too much principle to conceal the plunder from their companions or to divide unfairly. But the Castilians did not stop with cutting throats of innocent Indians; they despoiled each other. They had not the proverbial honor found among thieves. In such a delightful society, moral rectitude was not one of the cardinal virtues; and if Fonseca inclined to Velasquez while popular opinion is with Cortez, the discrepancy may be ascribed to the fact that popular opinion will in such cases decide in favor of him whose baseness is the greater, the more magnificent and successful. {837} Las Casas detested Cortez, and preferred the governor; but he complains of the unjust policy of Ferdinand to Columbus. It is probable Las Casas is mistaken again; he knew nothing of cabinet secrets. The character of the great navigator deservedly stands high, not only for the splendor of his discoveries, but for the purity of his life. His fame cannot be assailed with any truth or propriety; while on the other hand, history does not accord much credit to Ferdinand for his public or private worth. Yet it is impossible, in considering all the circumstances, to avoid the conclusion that the king was right, and had at least equity to sustain him, or rather to justify his counsellors, for it was a matter of state. It is true, the crown of Castile had entered into a formal contract with Columbus to confer upon him a high command over all the countries he should discover. The king now refused to make good this stipulation; he broke the contract, and proposed compensation by estates conferred in Castile. Columbus held the crown to the bond and refused all compromise. He had set his heart on becoming the man of greatest wealth in the world and to bestow it all to Christendom in a cruza for the recovery of the holy places from the infidel. A more sublime purpose could not be conceived; for at the time, Constantinople was captured, the islands for the most part in the Levant overrun, Italy in danger, a foothold gained in Sicily and Sardinia, France hastily sending troops to the frontiers of Austria, Hungary invaded, the Knights Templars of St. John far in advance at Rhodes under fire, and prayers daily offered up by the people in their churches at Amsterdam, imploring the Almighty to avert the Saracen from their gates; the crowning victory for the Christians was not gained for a half-century later at the Gulf of Lepanto.

This brilliant scheme of Columbus to roll back the tide of war, engrossed his leisure hours. For its accomplishment, he hoped to obtain riches from the new world; and when made governor of Hispaniola, was avaricious to amass a stupendous fortune. Among other measures he sent three hundred natives to Seville, to be sold as slaves. Queen Isabella, hearing of it, ordered that they be sent back, declaring no one had a right to enslave her vassals. Although incensed, she did not reprimand Columbus. He had enough of difficulties to contend with in his administration, without the further burden of her displeasure; for it was soon found out he evinced an incapacity to govern men in civil society. Successful he might be in ruling sailors on the forecastle; but that had not taught him how to govern men on shore. He exacted implicit obedience; he pursued his own plans without consultation; he compelled cavaliers to assist in manual labor. Worse than all, he was a foreigner, and it ended in a revolt with open war. A royal commissioner was sent out to institute an investigation, which terminated in Columbus being sent to Seville in chains. Isabella, at this indignity offered to her favorite admiral, ordered the irons to be removed, but would not consent, withal, to reinstate him in authority. After her death, he renewed his application, without a better result; the king refused to comply with the words of the royal contract. The promise had been made, but it was made for the state--for the public benefit--and the opinion of lawyers was, that it could be broken if it were for the common good not to carry out its provisions. A proper equivalent could be awarded for the damage done to the admiral. {838} This was the theory of rights then; it is still the theory and practice of all governments at the present time. But Columbus refused every offer in the nature of a recompense, which would have left him rich, and placed him on a level with the highest grandees in the realm. He nursed his wrongs in silence, languished in comparative poverty, and died of a broken heart.

Las Casas never forgot this treatment of the great admiral, his warm personal friend; he distrusted princes ever after. He fell into the error common to most men soliciting court favor, that whatever was done to promote his wishes was done from personal considerations to him, through his individual exertions and influence, and not out of any regard for the welfare of the Indians. On the contrary, the welfare of the Indians was all that recommended him to the attention of the cardinals, or to royal notice, and invested him with importance. The policy of the crown was to save the aborigines from destruction. It might be a selfish policy, but it surely was, at the same time, enlightened and correct in every point of view. But every colonial official, every special agent, every Spaniard was thwarting the governmental plan, to promote their own interests and their private emolument. The proceeds of the plantations, of the mines, of the pearl fisheries, were in great demand at fabulous values, while the labor of the Indians enslaved was cheap and abundant; therefore, they were made slaves in the very face of the royal prohibition.

It is true these slaves sickened and died within a short period, but plenty more were forthcoming at a low rate; and thus the desolation went on. The crown had resolved to check the atrocity; but how could it be accomplished? The clergy were not implicated in the guilt, but they were incapable of assisting at first, or advising. The most of them, moreover, believed at one time that the natives were not human. The Dominicans, who arrived out about 1510, thought otherwise; and they, in turn, under the guidance of Las Casas, infused their opinion into the other brethren. His discussion before the young emperor with Quevedo, Bishop of Darien, was to settle their status; for Quevedo contended they were not intellectual beings. Many doubts prevailed also among the clergy, and it was the universal belief of the laity, according to Remisal, until, in 1537, Paul III. issued his famous bull declaring they were human and free, capable of instruction and salvation. The crown had great difficulties in the matter, and the ministers were much perplexed in learning what to do; but the imperial troubles were not disclosed to Las Casas, for the troubles were diplomatic secrets which to none could be divulged. Their confidence in his veracity, sincerity, and disinterestedness, was unbounded; he was the only one they could trust for a correct account. He was successively created Protector of the Indians, chaplain to the emperor, and Bishop of Chiapa. While the sovereigns appreciated him, esteemed him, heard every word he had to say bearing upon the subject, he mixed it up so often with so many extraneous remarks, observations, and quotations, that they must now and then have considered him an intolerable bore. With this comprehension of the principles maintained by the Castilian cabinet, a clue is discovered to guide through the mazes and intricacies of Indian politics. Emergencies sometimes compelled deviations or exceptions for the moment; but when the necessity passed away, the policy was immediately restored.

{839}

It is now time to turn to the new work of Mr. Arthur Helps. To those who have read a page about Las Casas, this book can excite only feelings of disappointment and regret. The public expected some improvement at least on preceding biographies, which was certainly a very moderate expectation; but it has not been gratified. The volume is written with the design to expatiate on the great virtues of the bishop, to eulogize his actions, to excuse his errors, to defend his fame. But the memory of Las Casas needs no aid of this kind in panegyric or palliation. His deeds have passed into history, and by its calm, enlightened, disinterested verdict he must stand or fall. So far he has not been favored with a dispassionate hearing, nor by any means with an enlightened public. A prejudice has prevailed against him, from one cause among his countrymen, from another source abroad; and Mr. Helps, without intending to do him harm, would strengthen the prevailing impression abroad by his publication, if it were generally read, but which is doubtful. On the second page, in stating "the character of Las Casas," he writes:

"The utmost that friends or enemies, I imagine, could with the slightest truth allege against him was an over-fervent temperament. If we had to arrange the faculties of great men, we should generally, according to our easy-working fancies, combine two characters to make our men of. And in this case we should not be sorry, if it might have been so, to have had a little of the wary nature of such a man as King Ferdinand the Second intermixed with the nobler elements of Las Casas. Considering, however, what great things Las Casas strove after and how much he accomplished, it is ungracious to dwell more than is needful upon any defect or superfluity of his character. If it can be proved he was on any occasion too impetuous in word or deed, it was in a cause that might have driven any man charged with it beyond all bounds of prudence in the expression of his indignation."

It will be perceived, on perusal that, wherever the bishop has been charged with any fault, imperfection, failure, or inconsistency, this author readily admits it, and then proceeds to offer extenuating circumstances, or to petition for mercy for his hero, on the plea that he had good intentions or had done important services. When, again, the author has some bright spot to dwell upon in his career, it is presented in a questionable shape, which deprives it of all lustre, leaving the suspicion on the mind of readers that the bishop is a much overrated man. Mr. Helps furnishes no new facts, he explains none that are old, he states very few correctly. About dates the author is most commonly in error when given; but for the most part he does not deign to notice them, which in this case is a blessing; for he seems as indifferent to their importance as if he were writing a novel or a love-letter. In the composition, he has had recourse to two works only--the _History of the Indies_, by Las Casas himself, and the _History of Guatemala and Chiapa_, by Remesal.

The _Historia_, by the bishop, is not the most important of his many productions, nor are the selections from Remesal made with much discrimination. _The Conversion of the Indians in Verapaz, or the Land of War_, is interesting; but Mr. Helps in his account does not leave much of its glory to Las Casas, while Las Casas was for ever boasting, with truth, of that achievement as his first success, and claiming it justly as peculiarly his own. In the same _History of Guatemala_ it is narrated how Las Casas refused to visit the viceroy in Mexico, because he had ordered the hand of a priest to be cut off at Antequera. Mr. Helps translates it, the priest's head at Antequera; probably he does not know that Antequera is the ancient Spanish name for the modern city of Oaxaca.

{840}

With this slender stock of material the book was written; and in consequence, whenever a doubt arose about a fact, or a further reason was required for some elucidation, it will be seen, on every page, that writing history was made easy by guessing, or moral observations, of which some specimens are selected:

"I do not know what transaction he alludes to." "I hardly see him without prophetic vision." "It moves our pity to think." "Probably being somewhat tired." "Perhaps not wishing to alarm." "I think with Las Casas." "There is no doubt." "I have scarcely a doubt." "If the writer of this narrative may be permitted to fancy himself." "I conceive for a single day." "I fancy him sitting." "It may be doubted, however." "As it appears to me." "I suspect the wisest amongst us would." "I cannot but attribute." "We may very well imagine." "A young man, as I conjecture." "Probably on that account." "To me it seems." "Always I imagine." "We must not suppose." "And so I think."

And so will every reader think. Mr. Arthur Helps has essayed to write history before. _The Spanish Conquest in America_ stands to his literary credit. But he has a way peculiar to himself in the gestation and parturition of his historical offspring. He explains, in the preface to the third volume of his _Spanish Conquest_, his obstetrical mode of doing this thing. It is thus accounted for:

"In issuing this third volume, I take this opportunity of making a statement, which perhaps it would have been well to have made before.

"The reader will observe that there is scarcely any allusion in this work to the kindred works of modern writers on the same subject. This is not from any want of respect for the able historians who have written upon the discovery or the conquest of America. I felt, however, from the first, that my object in investigating this portion of history was different from theirs, and I wished to keep my mind clear from the influence which these eminent persons might have exercised upon it. ... Moreover, while admitting fully the advantages to be derived from the study of these modern writers, I thought it was better upon the whole to have a work composed from independent sources, which would convey the impression that the original documents had made upon the author's mind."

With this explanation, nothing more remains to observe. If he has founded a school in this method, or if his original plan upon which to write history will die out with him, is yet to be seen. The _Spanish Conquest_, by Mr. Arthur Helps, is in thick, solid, heavy form, and in volumes no less than four. Insatiate Arthur! would not one suffice? His moral reflections and his axioms have one merit, if the number of ages in which they have been in common use can make them venerable. From the Pyramids centuries may look down upon some of them.

In the _Life of Las Casas_, the author in the preface informs the world that--

"There are few men to whom, up to the present time, the words which Shakespeare makes Mark Antony say of Caesar, would more apply than to Las Casas:

'The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones.'

At one inauspicious moment of his life he advised a course which has ever since been the one blot upon his well-earned fame, and too often has this advice been the only thing, which, when the name of Las Casas has been mentioned, has occurred to men's minds respecting him. He certainly did advise that negroes should be brought to the New World. I think, however, I have amply shown in the _Spanish Conquest_, he was not the first to give this advice."

This is the way Mr. Helps enters the lists to be his champion. We do not know where the evils of Las Casas live on--when the ossification of the good with his bones supervened. {841} Instead of quoting Shakespeare, a few lines written by the great British statesman, George Canning, for the Anti-Jacobin, in his ode to the "New Morality." would be more applicable to Mr. Helps himself:

"Give me th' avowed, erect, the manly foe, Bold I can meet, perchance avert his blow; But of all plagues, good heavens! thy wrath can send, Save, save, oh! save me from the candid friend."

The memory of Las Casas has suffered greatly from many of those unthinking, unsearching plagues, who are ever ready to confess what "it is due to candor to state," etc. A dozen at least might be counted of names high in the roll of literature: Llorente, Washington Irving, Mr. Prescott, are among the number. The time has come to explode this bubble about his want of fixed principles. All are pleased to admit he was a good man, leading a virtuous life, with a noble purpose in view; but that he was inconsistent in recommending negro slavery, while advocating the emancipation of the Indians. Now, if one be in his right mind, and yet inconsistent in opinions or conduct, he cannot be virtuous in principle or practice. The expressions are incongruous. How can he be accounted virtuous, if at times he is vicious? How can he be received as good, when he has advised what is bad? Rectitude is wanting. In public life an inconsistent man is dangerous; because he destroys order and promotes disorder; he creates distrust in the absence of integrity in purpose. In private life no dependence can be reposed in him; he is not respected, and if the infirmity be great, his friends send him to an asylum for the insane.

Navarete thus states the charge against Las Casas:

"It is this expedient of Las Casas which has drawn down severe censure upon his memory. He has been charged with gross inconsistency, and even with having originated the inhuman traffic in the new world. This last is a grievous charge; but historical facts and dates remove the original sin from his door, and prove that the practice existed in the colonies, and was authorized by royal decree long before he took part in the question." [Footnote 78]

[Footnote 78: Navarete, _Viages and Descubriamentos_. Tom. iii. p. 418.]

This charge was first made against the bishop by Dr. Robertson, in his History of America, in 1777. The doctor therein contrasts him with Cardinal Ximenes, Prime Minister of Spain, observing:

"Cardinal Ximenes, when solicited to encourage this commerce, peremptorily rejected the proposition, because he perceived the iniquity of reducing one race of men to slavery, while he was consulting about the means of restoring liberty to another. (_Herrera Dec_. ii. _lib_. ii. _cap_. 8.) But Las Casas, from the inconsistency natural to men who hurry with headlong impetuosity toward a favorite point, was incapable of making the distinction." (_Herrera Dec. lib_. ii. _cap_. 20.)

If Ximenes had been living when this exalted morality was accorded to him, his astonishment would have been great; he claimed no morality of that kind.

In turning to Herrera, at the eighth chapter, referred to by Dr. Robertson, it will be found the doctor has drawn upon his imagination for the paragraph on Ximenes. The cardinal was not thinking about morality, but about money. Herrera states it thus:

"At the same time it was ordered that negro slaves should not pass to the Indies; which order was understood at once; for, as they went out, in the scarcity of Indians, and as it was known that one negro did the work of four, whereby a great demand had arisen for them, it appeared to the Cardinal Ximenes, that he might place some tax on their exportation, from whence would result a benefit to the treasury."

{842}

But Herrera, in the twentieth chapter, does, with truth, connect Las Casas with the recommending of negro slaves. Every line of this passage must be carefully noted, in order to understand what follows. It is in these words:

"The licentiate Bartoleme de Las Casas ... turned to another expedient, advocating that the Castilians, living in the Indies, might import negroes; for with them on the plantations and in the mines, the Indians would be much alleviated; and that it be advised to carry out a large number of workmen, with certain privileges accorded to them. Adrian, Cardinal of Tortosa, heard these suggestions with much pleasure. ... And in order to know better the number of slaves required for the four islands, Hispaniola, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, an opinion was asked from the Royal House of Trade at Seville, and they responding four thousand, persons were not wanting, who, to gain favor, informed the Governor de la Bresa, a Flemish gentleman of the council of the king, and his major-domo. De Bresa begged the monopoly of it; the king granted it, and De Bresa sold it to the Genoese for 25,000 ducats, on condition that the king would not bestow another monopoly for eight years. The grant was very injurious to the settlers of these islands, and for the Indians, for whose alleviation it had been ordered. Because when the traffic was free, as has been stated, every Castilian carried out slaves. But as the Genoese sold the privilege for each one for a large sum, few purchased, and thus this benefit ceased."

Searches were made in Herrera to prove that the traffic did not commence with Las Casas' advice. This fact was easily established; but it did not meet the issue. The question was, did Las Casas, in 1517, recommend the importation of negroes? and the fact was made out. Several points were rendered clear, and made so from the bishop's own _History of the Indies_; that he recommended the measure hastily; that it was an unfortunate recommendation; that his remorse was great for it; that he hoped God would forgive him, for he had done it in ignorance. Those who never examined further, infer that the criminality of the slave-trade was deemed as sinful at that time in the first half of the sixteenth as it is now in the last half of the nineteenth century. Hence the mistakes among modern historians.

When the investigation would appear to be concluded, and Las Casas condemned out of his own writings, the difficulty in the case in reality only commences. The rubbish surrounding it is removed; nothing more. What did Las Casas admit? Surely not the charge that he was inconsistent; for two centuries elapsed before the charge was made; but he accuses himself for having given the advice hastily; that it eventuated unfortunately, (but not to him;) that he gave it ignorantly; that he hoped to be forgiven. To present the case in its opposite aspect: if the advice had proved beneficial instead of injurious to the Indians, he would not have suffered remorse. He had given the advice without reflecting, without examination, consequently in ignorance; for if he had reflected for one moment, he would have foreseen what consequences would follow, and which proved disastrous to the natives.

But, while presented in this light, it is somewhat weakened by the accompanying words of Las Casas. Mr. Ticknor, in his excellent _History of Spanish Literature_, explains the remorse from another view. He concludes that the bishop, in giving the advice, was ignorant of the fact that the African negroes were captured in unjust war; and when he learns they were made slaves, as the Indians were enslaved, his soul was filled with horror for the sin he had committed in recommending the importation. Some of the words of Las Casas will bear out this hypothesis--on the first impression it would appear conclusive; but, unfortunately, other expressions must be explained, so as to give effect to every line. {843} Besides this, why should the bishop feel remorse for what was done ignorantly, when engaged in the holy work to promote the salvation of souls? Las Casas was too well versed in casuistry to deem himself criminal under these circumstances. Moreover, the bishop, when in the exercise of his sacred duties in his diocese of Chiapa, wrote out a rescript for his clergy, dated in November, 1546, wherein he charges them not to confess Christians holding Indian slaves, but does not include negro slaves. This, to be sure, might have been an oversight, were it not for a few lines written further down, where he cautions his clergy to guard well the holy sacrament of marriage as well among the negroes as the Indians. The document will be found in full in Remesal. From this it appears Las Casas, thirty years later, had not discovered that negroes were on the same footing with the Indians, being then seventy-two years old.

In his _Historia_, one hundred and first chapter, he writes of himself:

"This advice--that license be given to bring negro slaves to these countries--the Clerigo Casas first gave, not understanding the injustice with which the Portuguese take them and enslave them, which, from what happened from it, he would not have given for all he had in the world; for he always held it unjust and tyrannical making them slaves; for the same right as in them as in the Indians."

The translation of Mr. Helps is not followed; because he does not translate some of the words at all; and, in one instance, gives to a verb a wrong expression, inconsistent with the sentence and with a subsequent paragraph. The line, "After he had apprehended the nature of the thing," is no more to be found in the passage than in the Psalms. In the one hundred and twenty-eighth chapter of the _Historia_, Las Casas again refers to the subject, and states why, on the representation of the planters that they would free their Indians if permission were given to them to import negroes, he consented to recommend the measure to the crown. He next alludes to the bad consequences flowing from the _monopoly_, and concludes thus:

"Of this advice, which the clerigo gave, not a little did he afterward repent, judging himself guilty from his haste, (_inadvertenti;_) and because he saw, as it turned out to be, as unjust, the capture of the negroes as of the Indians. There was no other remedy than what he advised--to bring negroes in order to free the Indians, although he might suppose they were just captures, although he was not certain that his ignorance and good intention would excuse him in the divine wisdom."

It appears from the passage in Herrera, quoted above, that the advice was bad; for a monoply of the traffic in negroes was granted to De Bresa, who sold his speculation to the Genoese, and they raised the price so high that the planters could not purchase Africans nor import Christian-born negroes from Spain as formerly. In consequence, the trade in Indian slaves, who were cheaper, increased, to the chagrin of Las Casas for his inconsiderate suggestion. His heedless conduct, in his own eyes, at last appeared sinful. In some part of it he had displeased God; for the Deity permitted the Indian servitude to go on, which, in the mind of Las Casas, he would not have permitted had not he incurred, in some way, the divine displeasure. Was it his precipitancy of action in the measure? was it advising the importation of Africans, some of whom might have been captured in an unjust war, which incensed the Deity? Las Casas could not determine, and hence his confusion of mind and forgetfulness of the incidents in writing the _Historia_. Whatever view, however, may be taken of it, or which preferred, it is certain that, under no aspect, can the charge of inconsistency made by Dr. Robertson, and stated by Navarete, be sustained.

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Washington Irving's note on Las Casas, in the appendix to his _Columbus_, evinces much commendable research, and a collection of all the facts he could find. But unfortunately, he had not studied the career of the bishop; he did not pursue his examination deep enough; he also overlooked some evidence before his eyes in Herrera. When Mr. Irving had finished his search and noted the evidence, he stated confusedly what he had collected, without discriminating between inferences and facts; sometimes treating facts as inferences or excuses in the biographies of Ximenes; sometimes treating the inferences in Robertson and Quintana as facts. He entered upon the examination impressed with the conviction that Las Casas had been inconsistent; that the moral conscience of that age was against slavery as much as it is now. He comes to no conclusion, and leaves the charge against the bishop in the same condition he approached it.

Mr. Prescott, in his excellent _History of the Conquest of Mexico_, in a note on Las Casas, copies only from Quintana, and thereby copies also, many of the mistakes of that celebrated Spanish author. The singular spectacle, therefore, among the curiosities of literature is presented in Mr. Prescott's _Conquest_, a work of sterling value, for its accuracy resting always upon respectable authorities, wherein a note is seen abounding in errors. Mr. Prescott is also a believer in the inconsistency of the bishop, and that the moral sense at that time was against slavery.

Mr. Ticknor, too, in his _History of Spanish Literature_, a history renowned and properly admired everywhere, with all his respect for the bishop, is not without his little literary imperfections. It is evident he is not familiar with the events, and their surroundings in the life of Las Casas. He places the famous controversy of the bishop with Sepulveda in 1519. But in that year was the well-known debate of Las Casas with Quevedo, the Bishop of Darien, in the presence of the youthful sovereign. Sepulveda was then a young man of twenty-six years. But Mr. Ticknor wanders in good company, one of the most eminent of England, the celebrated Sir James Mackintosh, who, in his _Progress of Ethical Philosophy_, states Sepulveda met Las Casas in argument in 1542. That, however, was the year of the famous assembly convoked by imperial order, at Barcelona and Molino del Rey, to take into consideration the bishop's _Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies._ Both of these able historians are wrong about the date of the Sepulveda discussion: even Mr. Helps knows better; it was in 1550. Mr. Ticknor further reports that the _Brief Account_ was written for the emperor and dedicated to the prince, afterward Philip the Second. It would have been more proper to write that the _Brief Account_ was written for the emperor, and ten years after printed and dedicated to the prince, then in England, the Prince Consort with Queen Mary.

The state of public opinion, in regard to slavery at that period, requires a few words in explanation in order to leave no uncertainty in the law, or stain on the crown, on the church, or civilization. It differed much from the present, because the condition of society was in many respects not analogous. Slavery was not then considered immoral; but was actually, in its practice, indicative of progress, in ameliorating the calamities of war and the fate of captives by land and sea. {845} Every war undertaken by a civilized nation, and declared in the usual forms, with the solemn religious ceremonies, was held to be a just war. It was an appeal to the God of armies, as an umpire or judge; it was the ordeal by battle. When a victory was won, it was held by the victors a divine decision in their favor; the vanquished were deemed criminals before high heaven; and as a punishment they were put to death. When the prisoners were too numerous for a general massacre, they were led captive to colonize some vacant territory, and to work for their masters. These victims did not feel grateful to their enemies for their clemency; but poured forth their thanks to Providence for his mercy. Their offspring continued in slavery; for the sins of the father were visited on the children to the third and fourth generations, for ever. Even in the course of time, when they intermixed in blood, language, and religion with the descendants of their conquerors, they were often held to servitude. This was the theory and the practice under it; but subject to many exceptions. Exchange of prisoners was sometimes effected; some were ransomed; some were released. At the date of the discovery of America, Spain had been at war with the Saracen for seven centuries; it was not only a just war, but a holy crusade. When captures were made on either side, slaughter ensued without compunction; but not invariably. Both armies and navies were acting on religious conviction; but both were better civilized, the infidel being deemed the more refined of the two. It is true, the old and young, the infirm and diseased, who were poor, were slain or pitched overboard; while the rich and the strong were held for slaves or for ransom. When a parent learned that his child or relation was spared, only enslaved, he felt the joy with which an American mother on the border hears the news that her little girl has not been scalped by the Camanches when captured.

In Europe, therefore, slavery was deemed a mitigation of the horrors of war: an evil inflicted by the hand of Providence, but a lesser evil. No one spoke or wrote against the institution; whoever had dared would have been considered not much better than a brute. Perhaps a few Moslem fanatics desired more Christian blood-letting; perhaps a few Christian fanatics wished a little more of the fluid from the arteries of Moors. Yet in no period of the world's history was it held just to retain slaves not captured in a just war. In Jerusalem, they were returned to the neighboring nations when acquired in private piratical forays. This was the Hebrew law. The law of Moses forbade man-stealing, mentioned in Isaiah, and repeated by Saint Paul in Timothy; but man-stealing meant no more than any other stealing of movable property.

In Athens, the same morality was recognized. Aristotle laid it down in his "Politics" that barbarians could not be held in servitude unless taken in a just war. Rome borrowed her international code from Greece, as she borrowed everything else intellectual. On the revival of learning in the west, the Roman civil law was introduced through the continent of Europe. The justice of war, the property acquired under it, the moral power to enslave, when, where, and in what cases, was elaborately taught at the universities. Its principles were as well understood in the canon law as in the civil law; teachers in ethical philosophy also expounded the doctrine which prevailed in every tribunal or judicature. They all agreed in their premises and maxims; they only differed in their application, as their minds were clear or obtuse.

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The rules for the interpretation of laws were the same in the courts of civil or ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The presumption of law was that, as slavery of the foreign infidel existed in Spain, every infidel of a foreign nation was a slave. If one claimed his freedom, the burden of proof lay upon him to prove he was free. When negroes from Africa were brought by Portuguese slave-traders to the Seville market, the presumption arose that these creatures were of that condition. If one of them could show that he was not a slave, that he was not captured in war, but stolen from his tribe, he was adjudged a free man. It had always been known that men were stolen and sold; but every slave claiming to be free had to prove it. The public did not inquire into the fact when they purchased; they did not send to Senegambia. It is well known that mule-stealing is as common in Kentucky as sheep-stealing in the State of New York. Yet no one in the city, purchasing either kind of animal in the open market, will hesitate to buy mules or mutton from a regular drover or butcher. Who could wait, when taking his seat at breakfast, until his conscience was appeased to find out first whether the veal cutlet before him was not cut from a stolen calf? No one, high or low, in Spain, had any misgiving in the traffic of slaves, either in importing them to Andalucia or in exporting them to Jamaica.

But the natives of the Western Indies stood on a different footing, and when their question was first presented by Queen Isabella to the universities of Valladolid and Salamanca for a just opinion, whether the Indians could be enslaved, the professors unanimously decided they could not. The doctors of theology, versed in the canon law, maintained the aborigines of the western hemisphere were conceded to the crown by the bull of Alexander VI. granting the sovereignty of America to the kingdom of Castile and Leon, and the inhabitants, as wards to civilize and make Christians in express terms to be found in the pontifical document; that the sovereign had accepted it on these conditions. To break the promise was to betray the trust. On the other hand, the civil jurists held the Indians were vassals of the crown acquired in peaceful discovery and not reduced by war. Therefore they were never captured, and consequently could never be enslaved.

The crown agreed with the lawyers on the question of title by which the Indies of the West were held. The crown also recognized the stipulations in the bull to civilize and christianize the Indians. Consequently, it was resolved that just war could not be undertaken against them; but the government placed over them should be a missionary government; with a political polity, at the same time, for colonists only, from Castile. Hence, the innumerable mission establishments in America and the comparatively insignificant civil institutions for the Europeans; hence, also, the double aspect of formation in the vice-royalty-- the dual government under one head.

The royal officials sent out had no jurisdiction over the Indians, except the viceroy; the religious missionaries had no charge over the Spaniards. As the natives greatly outnumbered the Castilians, the institutions, in a short time, inclined more to the ecclesiastical than to the civil or political; and the religious element continues predominant to the present day. {847} Presidents still govern in fact, although not in the same form as the old viceroys; and as the viceroys represented the king in temporal and spiritual matters, the republican presidents endeavor to imitate, in the plenitude of their power, both the sovereign and the pontiff.

Las Casas understood the law as laid down by the civil jurists, and as understood also by the theologians. Sometimes he defended the Indians under the civil code; sometimes under the canon law. In one way he appealed to his countrymen's sense of justice; in another, to their conscience. In general his arguments were based on the bull of Alexander, contending that the natives were placed in charge of the sovereigns by the head of the church for a religious purpose. Llorente considers this course the weaker side to take, because the pope has no prerogative to grant kingdoms, and principalities, and discoveries at pleasure; yet he excuses Las Casas, because this assumption of the pope's was generally recognized in that age. But the excellent biographer overlooks the words in the petition from Isabella to Alexander, desiring the sovereignty. A saving clause will be found in it, which intimates: "Distinguished lawyers are of opinion that the confirmation or donation from the pontificate is not requisite to hold possession justly of the new world." In that it will be perceived a reservation is inserted against the very power to grant that which it was requested to be granted.

The bishop was aware of this, but still preferred to appeal to the conscience of the conquerors and colonists; to portray the wickedness in enslaving, where their religious convictions might be touched, rather than rely upon the law of the case where every secular law was continually broken, and where even divine law was not much better respected. His policy was correct; its good effects ultimately were manifest, and at last eminently successful.

At this time died Hernando Cortez, the conqueror and scourge of Mexico. When his will was opened, one item directed, as Mr. Prescott translates:

"It has long been a question whether one can conscientiously hold property in Indian slaves. Since this point has not yet been determined, I enjoin it on my son Martin and his heirs, that they spare no pains to come to an exact knowledge of the truth, as a matter which deeply touches the conscience of each of them no less than mine.'

The historian, in a note on the same page, gives this extract in the original, where it reads differently, thus:

"Item, concerning the native slaves in New Spain, aforesaid; those of war as well as of purchase, there have been, and are many doubts," etc.

The term, "by purchase," refers to those natives who were slaves before the arrival of the Spaniards, and sold to him. Mr. Prescott does not perceive the point for which Las Casas was contending, and which touched the conqueror on his death-bed with all his mighty crimes fresh on his soul at the last moment, whether Indians, although taken in war, could be enslaved. On the next page Mr. Prescott remarks: "Las Casas and the Dominicans of the former age, the abolitionists of their day, thundered out their uncompromising invectives against the system, on the broad ground of natural equity and the rights of man." This is a mistake; Las Casas and other Dominicans always held up the bull of Alexander VI., as our abolitionists pointed to the National Declaration of Independence. {848} The glamour perpetually before the eyes of modern biographers about the natural equity and the rights of man prevailing in the sixteenth century has misled them into many errors.

Cortez had no scruples on the subject of his negro slaves! He does not provide for them. His man, Estevan, had the honor of introducing the small-pox to this continent, at Vera Cruz. Many of the race, both African and Spanish-born, were brought to the Indies before 1500; but soon after their arrival, proving refractory, they rebelled against the masters in what was called the Maroon war. Others ran away to the mountains, enticing the simple natives with them, where the negro lived in oriental leisure and luxury, in his harem, who worked for him, and provided for all his wants. In 1502, Governor Ovando recommended that further importation be prohibited; because they escaped, and would not work for the planters. The clergy joined in the recommendation, because the negroes took the Indians with them, whereby the Indian could not be instructed in religion.

In 1506, Ovando's recommendation was adopted; but in part only. The introduction of negroes from Africa was prohibited, while the colonists were permitted to bring over Christian negroes born in Spain. The king gave a special license for a few Africans to work in the mines, where they would not come in contact with the natives. Mr. Bancroft, in the fifth chapter of his _History of the United States_, is quite indignant at the royal hypocrisy; he, too, has the disease of natural equity and rights of man in the cerebellum. This historian observes:

"The Spanish government attempted to disguise the crime by prohibiting the introduction of slaves who had been born in Moorish families. ... But the idle pretence was soon abandoned. ... King Ferdinand himself (1510) sent fifty slaves to labor in the mines."

The same chapter fifth is full of precious reading to those who are curious to learn how facts sometimes may be interpreted, and history made up.

These are the reasons why Cardinal Ximenes was opposed to the trade, as explained by his biographers; and these, also, for the repugnance of Las Casas to it, as stated several times in his works. But the cardinal determined to raise revenue from the traffic; he thereupon, in 1516, stopped the trade until he could arrange the duties to be levied. For this stoppage, Dr. Robertson fired off an eulogium, which was not applicable. Washington Irving eagerly sought out the chapter in Herrera, referred to by the doctor, and was duly disgusted on finding that Ximenes was not thinking about sublime moral sentiments, but about money. The biographer of Columbus was much perplexed; he could only console himself for the discrepancy by remarking that, "Cardinal Ximenes in fact, though a wise and upright statesman, was not troubled with scruples of conscience on the question of natural rights." How a cardinal can be an upright man without an invariable delicacy of conscience, wherewith to decide justly at all times, surpasses common comprehension. The excuse for Ximenes is about equal to the compliment for John Smith, if it were said that the ubiquitous John is an exemplary member of society when he is sober.

On second thoughts, Mr. Helps, after all, may be entitled to higher rank, by comparison with other authors, than on first impression is accorded to him. {849} His home is in a hemisphere where historical questions, purely American, are receding more and more from public consideration; while most of the other gentlemen belong to this side of the Atlantic, where such subjects are rising in the horizon, and claiming greater attention. If facts, then, of the first magnitude are Overlooked in the new world, how many more will be overlooked in the old? If they do these things in the green tree at Boston, what shall be done by a Dryasdust in London?

Space does not permit an examination of other faults of less gravity attributed to Las Casas. It is said that, when he wrote his _Brief Account_, he exaggerated in over-stating the immense extent of the destruction among the aborigines; that his excited feelings and tender sensibilities had led him astray by the unparalleled atrocities perpetrated in his presence. But on the contrary, it was the magnitude of these atrocities which excited his feelings and shocked his sensibilities. Every word in the _Brief Account_ can be maintained; furthermore, it will be found his statement in that tale of horror is not only true, but falls short of all the truth. Foreign nations, jealous and dreading the greatness of Spain, eagerly translated and published the _Account_. It soon appeared in print in English, in French, in Dutch, and Latin; it would have also been presented in German, if a German literature had been in existence: Caricature pictures embellished the pages, depicting scenes in the many modes of torture practised upon the Indians, upon the simple, innocent, confiding, naked men and women, upon little boys and girls, scarce beyond infancy.

These unheard-of crimes sent a thrill throughout Christendom, and set a stigma for cruelty on the Castilian name. The Spanish people, proverbial for their honesty, humanity, and integrity, acting with little wisdom, denied the correctness of the account; consequently, they were required to make good their denial. This being impossible, the nation took vengeance on the memory of Las Casas, when in his grave. But the conduct was foolish; the nation was no more responsible for the outrage on the natives, than it is responsible for a gang of desperadoes and outlaws in the mountain, who let loose their bull-dogs on kids and lambs in the Sierra Morena. Consequently, the name of Las Casas was held up to national execration, wherever was spoken the beautiful idiom of Castile. The learned looked upon his virtuous exertions with cold suspicion; literature became tinctured with it; the church, catching the tone of public opinion in the Iberian peninsula, withheld her recognition and recompense; thus ignoring perhaps her greatest ornament and benefactor in modern times. In the course of years, his name passed almost into oblivion in Spain when the asperity died out. But among the officials in Spanish America, hatred to him was imperishable. So far down, even in 1811, the Consulado of the City of Mexico denounced him as a "most illustrious Spanish declaimer, who wished to make himself renowned at the expense of the true national glory; and if he followed it some time, he gained at last the merited odium of posterity and the contempt of all honest and right-minded foreigners." At the same moment, nearly thirty millions of the native population, the descendants of those whom he was mainly instrumental in saving from slavery and consequent destruction, sent forth daily their grateful hymns in praise of his virtues, and in their orisons besought the heavenly grace to grant sweet repose to his imperishable soul.

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Well does he deserve their gratitude. At the beginning, Las Casas was a missionary unto the missions; he taught the clergy first that the natives were intellectual beings like themselves; he organized the movement for the extirpation of slavery; he instructed them how to appeal to the conscience of the dying man holding fellow-men in bondage; he ordered them to refuse the sacraments to the strong, who approached the holy altar; he reported the plan for the missionary government to the sovereigns in Spain; he organized it in America; and originated the method by which the docile creatures were collected into communities or pueblos, far removed from the white race; he laid down the rules for the hours of labor and repose, for their instruction and for their civilization. He instituted the regulations for the guidance of the priests, and instilled into them the duty of watching over their flock at all times, in all places; to shield them from oppression; to alleviate their distress in sickness; to soothe them in affliction; to counsel them when in health; to be their guide, comforter, and friend. Nor has one of his teachings been changed or set aside. They remain to this day in full vigor in every pueblo, from the furthest confines of California to the most remote mission of Paraguay. When he passed away from earth, at the extreme age of ninety-two, the spirit with which his zeal was animated, was caught up by the priesthood who sat at his feet to listen to his inspired words. The germ he planted in their bosom grew with their growth, strengthened with their strength. A world was redeemed, and an humble monk from Seville, a truly God-fearing man, Bartoleme Las Casas, was their redeemer.

The time has gone by when the European mind can do him justice. Colonial affairs of the Western continent have no longer an interest in that quarter. His native land has thrown him off. It is only in America the greatness of his achievement can be portrayed, the lustre of his fame renewed. Nor can this pleasing task be accomplished in Spanish America, where as yet a provincial literature prevails. It must come, if come at all, from out of our own republic. More than one half of the immense, wide-spreading territory of the United States once belonged to Spain; and Spanish missionary institutions, laws, customs, and manners underlie the Anglo-Saxon historical, legislative, and judicial superstructure of a later period. Jurists are now in search, groping in the dark, for the clue to that seemingly inextricable labyrinth of civilization on which Spanish-American history is founded, and from whence contemporaneous laws and customs are derived, in order to elucidate intricate principles daily arising in the adjudication of titles to lands.

The highest court approaches the deciding of such cases with some trepidation and more distrust, lest they misapprehend a Spanish colonial law or do not understand the reason for the enactment of the law; or because, also, a contract may be misinterpreted from misinformation of local institutions and local phrases, that throw their atmosphere around expressed stipulations in legal documents. They now feel the necessity for an exposition dating back to the commencement of Castilian occupancy on this continent and the institution of missions. In vain have they sought for that source of knowledge, for that corner-stone upon which to construct the true theory over again of viceregal domination. {851} At last they will turn to the works of Las Casas, to master their contents; and when understood, they will lay their hand on what remains of his noble intellect, and exclaim, "Thou art the man." Then will be unfolded the mysteries of the Spanish colonial double codes, and advocates will expound them with the courage and confidence with which they expatiate upon the common law of England.

It was as idle to look among various races of peaceful aborigines, for the founder of their civilization, clothed in the garb of a warrior, wearing a sword at his side, as to expect to encounter the great protector and first chief magistrate of a mighty military nation under the cowl of a monk. Las Casas was to the Spanish domain west of the Mississippi river what Washington was to our English territory east of it; and as resort is constantly had to the writings of the great general, to understand the principles of government in one portion of the republic, reference must be made to the essays of the great missionary to explain the ideas and objects for which the other was inhabited. American jurisprudence will be the channel through which a proper estimate of Las Casas will be attained. Then shall his works be placed in the alcoves of libraries along with the documentary legacies of Washington, of Jefferson, of Hamilton, and Adams; and chapels will be erected to enshrine his relics in marbles, in malachite and lazuli, in gems and in gold. For it will then be established that Bartoleme Las Casas in America gained and preserved more souls to the church, than in Europe the heresy of Luther ever lost.

Sayings Of The Fathers Of The Desert.

There were two brothers of great sanctity, living in the same congregation, who, by their merits, saw in each other the grace of God. Now, it chanced that one of them went out on the sixth feria, apart from the rest of the congregation, and saw a person eating at an early hour. "Dost eat at this hour on the sixth feria?" said he. The next day Mass was celebrated as usual, and when the other brother looked at him, and saw that the grace which had been given him was gone, he was sad. And when they had entered his cell, he said: "What hast thou done, brother, for I no longer see the grace of God in thee as heretofore?" "I remember to have done nothing bad either in thought or in deed," was the answer. "Have you spoken to any one in an uncharitable manner?" asked the brother. Then recollecting himself, he replied: "Yes. Yesterday I saw some one eating at an early hour, and asked him whether he ate so early on the sixth feria. This, then, is my fault. But come, work with me for two weeks, and let us pray God to forgive me." They did so, and after two weeks' time he beheld God's grace again descending upon his brother, and, giving thanks to God, who alone is good, they were full of consolation.

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New Publications.

The Friendships Of Women. By William Rounseville Alger. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1868.

Mr. Alger has certainly given us a charming volume, and one which is distinguished for its freedom from the weak sentimentality and doubtful moral tone that one fears to find in publications of our day, whose aim it is to treat of the passions of the human heart. He has chosen the noblest and purest examples in history to illustrate his subject, and the incidents of life are selected with good taste and judgment. The Catholic Church refines and elevates every genuine sentiment of the heart, and we should, therefore, naturally look for the most shining examples of friendship among those of her children who have instanced in their lives her divine power of purification and exaltation of the soul. The best examples in this volume are such--St. Monica, and her great son, St. Augustine; St. Scholastica and her brother, St. Benedict; St. Jerome and St. Paula; St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clara; St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane Frances de Chantal; St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross; Sir Thomas More and his daughter, Margaret Roper; Eugénie de Guérin and her brother Maurice; Madame Swetchine and Father Lacordaire. In several places Mr. Alger recognizes this fact, and acknowledges that the Catholic faith tends to foster pure and exalted friendships. Noticing some very remarkable intimate friendships which sprung up between certain holy priests and their female penitents, he adds: "Unquestionably there have been very numerous friendships, worthy of notice, between clergymen and devout women in the Protestant sects. But they are different from those in the Catholic communion, which has, in this respect, great advantages. In the Protestant establishment all are on a free equality, and the religion is an element fused into the life. With the Catholics, the overwhelming authority of the church invests the priests with godlike attributes, while celibacy detaches their hearts from the home and family, leaving them ready for other calls. The laity are placed in a passive attitude, except as to faith and affection, which are more active for the restrictions applied elsewhere: and religion is pursued and practised as an art by itself. The church ritual, by its dramatic contents and movements, peerless in its pathetic, imaginative power, intensifies and cleanses the passions of those who appreciatively celebrate or witness it, and who are naturally attracted together, as, in blended devotional emotions and aims, they cultivate that supernatural act whose infinite interests make all earthly concerns appear dwarfed and pale. The instances already cited of the friendships thus originating, suffice to indicate the wealth in this kind of experience which must remain for ever unknown to the public."

The fact is plain, although Mr. Alger makes sorry work in attempting to philosophize upon it. A month's experience in the confessional, if that were possible for him, would teach him with whom "religion is an element fused into the life," and that the faith of a Catholic is not a matter of sentiment only, and it might reveal to him, also, the secret of that holy friendship of which, in truth, the world outside knows nothing. It certainly does surprise us that, from his close perusal of the lives of these friends in God, he has failed to discover it. We can tell him, however, the reason why he has not found the secret of their affection, for we read it plainly on every page of his book. He fails to recognize the reality of the supernatural, and therefore has no appreciation of any friendship which is not wholly human in its foundation and motive. This is the fault we have to find with modern non-Catholic literature, and which renders it so cold and sterile. {853} We are not the ones to carp at human love and human friendship. Both are of God, and blessed by him. The doctrines of Calvinism, which has darkened the spiritual life of those who have been nourished under its influence, and which stigmatizes the nature of man, with all its aspirations, as of the devil, devilish, is alone responsible for the degradation of the heart's affections, and that dearth of human friendship of which the author complains in his introduction, and the desire to reestablish which appears to have moved him to the composition of this work. The revolt against the doctrine of total depravity has resulted in pure naturalism and transcendentalism. Hence, human reason is deified together with the instincts. Reason is the highest, for there is nothing above it; and "act out thy instincts," is the holiest, for they are divine.

May not this inordinate cultivation of the passions, and their unbridled gratification, which is the burden of the sensational literature of our day, be a reaction from the unnatural restraints of puritanism? The actual state of things we leave our author to give in his own words. "The proportionate number of examples of virtuous love, completing itself in marriage, will probably diminish, and the relative examples of defeated or of unlawful love increase, until we reach some new phase of civilization, with better harmonized social arrangements-- arrangements both more economical and more truthful. In the mean time, everything which tends to inflame the exclusive passion of love, to stimulate thought upon it, or to magnify its imagined importance, contributes so much to enhance the misery of its withholding or loss, and thus to augment an evil already lamentably extensive and severe." Why does not Mr. Alger ask himself the reason of this increasing immorality, and the diminution of the number of marriages? He says, again, "There never were so many morally baffled, uneasy, and complaining women on the earth as now." And why? His answer confirms what we have before said. "_Because never before did the capacities of intelligence and affection so greatly exceed their gratification_." Mr. Alger sees no other heaven than this earth, no "better part" than marriage; is blind to the supernatural end of man; fails to appreciate the examples of divine friendships he cites, and has no remedy to offer for the evils he deplores, but the stimulation of another human sentiment, purer in its conception, and less liable to abuse than the more ardent passion of love, and the establishment and cultivation of "woman's rights," to replace (we cannot help thinking it) the convent and its supernatural life of divine love; and substituting personal friendships for that charity which embraces the whole race. For, he says: "Now, the most healthful, effective antidote for the evils of an extravagant passion, is to call into action neutralizing or supplementary passions; to balance the excess of one power by stimulating weaker powers, and fixing attention on them; to assuage disappointments in one direction by securing gratification in another." And, again: "The good wife and mother fills a beautiful and sublime office--the fittest and the happiest office she can fulfil. If her domestic cares occupy and satisfy her faculties, it is a fortunate adjustment; and it is right that her husband should relieve her of the duty of providing for her subsistence. But what shall be said of those millions of women who are not wives and mothers; who have no adequate domestic life, no genial, private occupation or support? Multitudes of women have too much self-respect to be desirous of being supported in idleness by men, too much genius and ambition to be content with spending their lives in trifles; and too much devotedness not to burn to be doing their share in the relief of humanity, the work and progress of the world. If these were but all happy wives and mothers, that might be best. But denied that function, and being what they are, why should not all the provinces of public labor and usefulness which they are capable of occupying, be freely opened to them! What else is it save prejudice that applauds a woman dancing a ballet or performing an opera, but shrinks with disgust from one delivering an oration, preaching a sermon, or casting a vote? {854} Why is it less womanly to prescribe as a physician than to tend as a nurse? If a woman have a calling to medicine, divinity, law, literature, art, instruction, trade, or honorable handicraft, it is hard to see any reason why she should not have a fair chance of pursuing it."

Mr. Alger, however, catches some faint glimpses of the truth to which we have alluded, and we wish that he would ponder well the full meaning of his own language, when speaking of the friendship of Madame Swetchine and Father Lacordaire--a friendship which appears to have been a subject of intense interest to him, and to have awakened his unqualified admiration. "No one who has not read their correspondence, reaching richly through a whole generation, can easily imagine the services rendered by this gifted and saintly woman to this holy and powerful man. Community of faith, of loyalty, of nobleness, joined them. It was in looking to heaven together that their souls grew united. Drawn by the same attractions, and held by one sovereign allegiance, such souls need no vows, nor lean on any foreign support. _The divinity of truth and good is their bond._" What is this "divinity of truth and good"? Is it God, the living, personal God, who redeems, inspires, regenerates, sanctifies, and glorifies humanity, or is it not? What is the character of the life born of this communion in God? Are such friendships possible outside of revealed religion? We think not, and we regret that a mind of such culture as our author has shown his to be, should not see that he has been forced to go outside of the bounds of his own theory to find the realization of his ideal.

The final chapter of his work, "On the present needs and duties of women," is not so foreign to the title of the volume as one might be tempted to believe on a cursory reading. Mr. Alger finds, as he says in his introduction, that the position of woman in society is descending. He looks for some "new phase of civilization" to bring her back to a position of honor and usefulness equivalent to that which she is so rapidly losing. He blames Christianity and its traditions for making woman the weaker vessel, and reducing her to subjection under the rule of man, as the head of the divine institution of the family. It seems to us that this relative position of the man and the woman is established by pretty high authority.

"To the woman, also, he said, I will multiply thy sorrows and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, _and thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee._" This, however, Mr. Alger conveniently rejects as a legend. But does he forget that the Christian church emancipated woman, and redeemed her from that degraded condition, into which, for want of the regenerating influence of the supernatural life of that church, she is once again descending? We are not surprised to see Mr. Alger throwing all revelation aside, denying original sin and its consequences. But let him beware. He will drag humanity back into the state of barbarism, or drown it in the sink of heathen licentiousness. This modern spirit of materialism, this throwing off the yoke of divine authority, is the result of the old temptation, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good from evil," and we are present witnesses to the curse that is falling upon those who give ear to the tempter. Men and women forget God, and there is a fearful resuscitation of the basest forms of heathen immorality among them. Will Mr. Alger tell us to what principle (either of civilization or of religion) he attributes the dying out of the non-Catholic native American stock in New England, and what new phase of civilization will prevent its total extinction?

Mr. Alger would regenerate the millions of women whose aimless life he deplores, by making woman equal in all the duties of life to the man. No matter what the whole world has said before, no matter what superstitious revelations have said, no matter if the teaching of the Bible distinctly shows the contrary, no matter if the Christian church affirms by the mouth of St. Paul, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence; for Adam was first formed, then Eve." {855} "We are led," says our author, "by teachings of philosophy and science which we cannot resist," to differ with the traditions of the whole world and the Christian church, and as for the Apostle, "his logic limps;" for, "did priority of creation confer authority to govern, then man should obey the lower animals." (!)

Mr. Alger has a theory, and endeavors to illustrate it, and draw the logical conclusions. We fear that those conclusions will harmonize but ill with the experience of the human race, and will be found sadly wanting in their adaptability to its needs.

An Illustrated History Of Ireland. With ten first-class full-page Engravings of Historical Scenes, designed by Henry Doyle, and engraved by George Hanlon and George Pearson; together with upwards of 100 woodcuts by eminent artists, illustrating the Antiquities, Scenery, and Sites of Remarkable Events. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. xiv., 581. London: Longman & Co.; New York: Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau Street.

We extend a most cordial welcome to this "Popular Illustrated History of Ireland." It is precisely such a manual of that deeply interesting and suggestive history, as should be in the hands of every man or woman who claims connection with the ancient race of the Gael, or who wishes to obtain a correct knowledge of that people. Such a manual could only have been produced in our generation. Thirty or forty years ago, it were an impossibility. Little was then known of the genuine materials of the history of Ireland; of the vast body of annals, which Eugene O'Curry deliberately affirmed, some twelve years since, must form the basis of any really intelligible version of the story of "ancient Erinn;" of the Genealogies and Pedigrees, the Historic Tales, the Law Books, the Topographical Poems, and of the whole mass of miscellaneous historical literature, which the national historian must avail himself of, before he can give us anything more than a dry and meagre outline; before he can bring out in full relief, the pregnant record of the colonization, conversion, invasions, persecutions, wars, struggles, triumphs and reverses; sufferings and sorrows of Innisfail; before he can supply those lights and shades, all those minute circumstances, "which explain not only historical events, but those equally or even more important descriptions, in which the habits and manners, the social ideas and cultivation, the very life of the actors in those events are" depicted for our instruction as well as entertainment. It is true there were then as now accessible scores, even hundreds of so-called "Histories of Ireland," from Dermod O'Connor's rude and ruthless translation of the _Foras Feasa Ar Eirinn_ of Dr. Geoffrey Keating, down through the ponderous volumes of Leland, and Warner, and O'Halloran, and Plowden, and Ledwich, and Musgrave, to the crude compilations of Taaffe, and Gordon, and Crawford, and Commerford, and Lawless; to the more polished and pretentious, but not practically more useful, rather more pernicious epitome of Thomas Moore. There were Ogygias, Itineraries, Collectanea, Chronicles of Eri, and such pedantic rubbish, in heaps on the shelves of public libraries, in old book-stores, in the closets and chests of fossilized book-worms. All of those pseudo-histories served rather to discourage than advance the study of the real history of Ireland; to bring into disrepute, rather than to exalt, the Irish name, and race, and nation, and the glorious church founded by the great apostle of the faith.

To a learned and faithful, though almost forgotten representative of the venerable priesthood of Ireland belongs the high honor of having produced, in the language of the stranger, the first truly original work of an historical nature, an able, erudite, and inspiring history of the most devoutly cherished inheritance of the race, the ancient church of his native land; and this, too, within the memory of men yet living, and not far past the prime of life. We allude to the _Ecclesiastical History of Ireland,_ of the Rev. Dr. John Lanigan, which was issued in four volumes octavo, from a Dublin press, in the year 1822. {856} It commenced with the introduction of Christianity into Ireland, and closed with the era of the Anglo-Norman invasion. Half a life-time was given to the preparation of the book, the accomplished author of which "spared no pains in the collection and collation of such documents as materially" bore on the subject, and such as were in his time accessible in the British Islands, and on the continent. His aim was "to exhibit a faithful picture of the doctrine and practice of the ancient Irish Church, and to show its connection, at all times, with the universal church of Christ." This he did as far as it was then in the power of a great and zealous scholar to do. But he felt, and his contemporaries were by him taught to appreciate, the want of a familiar and critical knowledge of the immense stores of Celtic lore, the full magnitude and importance of which it has since taken more than the average of a generation of unprecedentedly diligent research, and of unsurpassed ability, to ascertain and make clear.

Soon after the publication of the really great work of Dr. Lanigan--now altogether out of print--the famous Ordnance Survey of Ireland was fairly entered upon. In its prosecution, some of the most profoundly learned men of the country were employed, under the superintendence of Colonel Thomas A. Larcom and Dr. George Petrie. It was in connection with this great national undertaking that the knowledge and skill of the lamented scholars, Dr. John O' Donovan and Professor Eugene O'Curry, were first utilized for the public good. Thenceforward, with and without the aid of government, these great men pushed earnestly, enthusiastically onward, in their investigations into the extant materials of their country's history; rescuing from oblivion and decay priceless memorials of the past, in every form and shape, in Ireland and elsewhere whither they were called upon to exert themselves; and classifying, systematizing, translating, editing, annotating, and publishing, with unremitting industry, and with marvellous power and tact, until they ceased from their labors for ever, and passed hence to their reward. Great, indeed irreparable, was the loss which the history and literature of Ireland sustained in their deaths.

Without the impetus given to the investigation of the past of Ireland by the great, single-handed enterprise of the Rev. Dr. Lanigan, it is questionable whether the progress that was made in the succeeding thirty years could possibly have been achieved in the interest of the historical literature of the nation. Without the help of O'Donovan and O'Curry and Petrie, the race could not have had placed within its reach so vitally important a portion of that literature as has been given to the public in a thoroughly scholarly form and style, within the past twenty-eight years, by the Irish Archaeological, Celtic, Ossianic, and kindred archaeological societies, by Messrs. Hodges & Smith, by Mr. James Duffy, of Dublin, and through various other agencies. Without the advantages resulting from their labors, we could not have had the many very able works on general and special topics of national historical interest which, within our own recollection, have proceeded from the pens of truly national writers. Without the vast stores of information acquired by O'Donovan and O'Curry themselves, while prosecuting their fruitful studies and researches, even the _Irish Grammar_ and the magnificent version of the _Annals of Ireland_ of the former, and the celebrated _Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History,_ the crowning work of the latter, could not have been produced in our day and generation. And it is saying no more than is frankly avowed by the vigorous writer of the _Popular Illustrated History of Ireland_, that, without the benefit of the light that has been thrown upon bygone times in Ireland, since Dr. Lanigan published his _Ecclesiastical History_, this latest and best of the modern histories of Ireland could not have been prepared for publication, and issued in such an appropriate style.

The work before us, for a copy of which we are indebted to "The Catholic Publication Society," makes a handsome octavo volume of over 600 pages, divided into 36 chapters, prefaced by an admirably written and very timely disquisition on the Irish land and church questions, the most vital questions of reform in Ireland in our time; and supplemented by a very full index. {857} It is illustrated by ten full-page historical engravings, from designs by Mr. Henry Doyle, a worthy son of the noble Irish Catholic artist, Richard Doyle, who refused to prostitute his genius in the interests of the assailants of his church through the columns of the London _Punch_; and by over one hundred very beautiful sketches on wood of the scenery, antiquities, sites of remarkable events, etc. etc. The illustrations, woodcuts and all, are in the very best style of the art which they represent. Mr. Doyle's contributions of themselves would form an attractive collection. The emblematic title-page, suggestive of all that is grand and noble in the period of the independence of the nation, is an exquisite picture. Of rare merit, likewise, are most of the other designs furnished by Mr. Doyle. The Emigrant's Farewell, opposite page 571, is a truthful, characteristic, and painfully suggestive sketch.

The narrative itself is as fine a specimen of comprehensive analysis and condensation as we have any knowledge of. It faithfully reflects the present advanced state of historical research in and relating to the country. It embodies all the ascertained facts of the history of Ireland. The character of its early inhabitants; their social, civil, and religious habits and customs; their martial, legal, literary, and--noblest, most glorious, most enduring of all--their missionary triumphs; all are accurately, though succinctly, portrayed. The tragic eras of the history of the nation, from the Invasion to the achievement of Catholic Emancipation--more than 650 years--are also limned in vivid colors. No available source of information has been unheeded by the writer, who seems to have not merely read, but studied earnestly, every published work of value or interest, down to the very latest publication, bearing directly or indirectly on the subject, not even excepting the driest and most abstruse of the several society tracts and monograms of the archaeologists. The sketches of early Celtic literature are worthy of even O'Donovan or O'Curry, brief, precise, and satisfactory. The book is trustworthy in all its peculiarities, eminently so in its text and notes, which are presented in a clear, unaffected, but most interesting style, and with a conscientiousness which is not obtrusive, but which is recognizable in every line of the writer.

We have been so interested in the details of the history, and so delighted by the more purely narrative parts, that we find we have marked for citation several peculiarly striking passages, for which we have no room. One passage which we give will serve as the meetest conclusion to our notice of the work; as well as to indicate the spirit of the history, and illustrate the flowing, artless, and pathetic style of the writer. In treating of the extant memorials of St. Patrick, it is thus beautifully remarked:

"One prayer uttered by St. Patrick has been singularly fulfilled. 'May my Lord grant,' he exclaims, 'that I may never lose his people, which he has acquired in the ends of the earth.' From hill and dale, from camp and cottage, from plebeian and noble, there rang out a grand 'Amen.' The strain was caught by Secundinus and Benignus, by Columba and Columbanus, by Brigid and Brendan. It floated away from Lindisfarne and Iona to Iceland and Tarentum. It was heard on the sunny banks of the Rhine, at Antwerp and Cologne, in Oxford, in Pavia, and in Paris. And still the old echo is breathing its holy prayer by the priest who toils in cold and storm to the 'station' on the mountain-side, far from his humble home. By the confessor who spends hour after hour, in the heat of summer and the cold of winter, absolving the penitent children of Patrick. By the monk in his cloister. By noble and true-hearted men, faithful through centuries of persecution. And loudly and nobly, though it be but faint to human ears, is that echo uttered also by the aged woman who lies down by the wayside to die in the famine years, because she prefers the bread of heaven to the bread of earth, and the faith taught by Patrick to the tempter's gold. By the emigrant, who with broken heart bids a long farewell to the dear island home, to the old father, to the gray-haired mother, because his adherence to his faith tends not to further his temporal interests, and he must starve or go beyond the sea for bread. Thus, ever and ever, that echo is gushing up into the ear of God, and never will it cease until it shall have merged into the eternal alleluia which the often-martyred and ever faithful children of the saint shall shout with him in rapturous voice before the Eternal Throne."

{858}

Legends Of The Wars In Ireland. By Robert Dwyer Joyce, M.D. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 352. Boston: James Campbell. 1868.

This handsome little volume is, we believe, the first contribution of Dr. Joyce to Irish-American literature since his arrival in this country. We have read several of his sketches, years ago, in the Irish periodicals, and one of them, the "Building of Mourne," appeared in one of the first numbers of this magazine.

The stories Dr. Joyce has collated in this volume are told in an easy, racy style, and make pleasant reading for a winter's evening. They please us better than the majority of the sketches and stories about Ireland which have frequently appeared here and in England, as they are, with a few exceptions, free from that exaggeration of plot and detail which take away the moral effect of too many of the so-called legends. The book contains the following stories: A Batch of Legends; The Master of Lisfinry; The Fair Maid of Killarney; An Eye for an Eye; The Rose of Drimmagh; The House of Lisbloom; The White Knight's Present; The First and Last Lords of Firmoy, The Chase from the Hostel; The Whitethorn Tree; The White Lady of Basna; The Bridal Ring; The Little Battle of Bottle Hill.

Verses On Various Occasions. By John Henry Newman, D.D. London: Burns, Gates & Co. For sale at the Catholic Publication House.

Dr. Newman has conferred a long-expected favor upon many friends in the collection and publication of his poems under the present form. Those who have known and honored his course will appreciate the thoughtfulness which prompted him to subjoin the dates of their composition, as also the names of places where they were written. To such also those poems will, of course, be of the greater interest, which are, in fact, the sighs of his troubled heart as God led him step by step toward the church. These were composed between 1830 and 1833, and make up a large part of the volume. In the _Apologia_ we get an insight into the trials of his mind, as he faithfully held fast to truth, and fought for it, even against his own, for conscience' sake. Here we look into his heart, and witness the communion of his spirit with God. Dr. Newman had many to doubt the sincerity of his course, the purity of his motives, and the singleness of his purpose. Who can read these spoken thoughts, spoken rather to God than to man, and doubt him still? We cannot refrain from transcribing one already well known, which is remarkable for the expression it conveys of the deep emotions of his soul at a time when his mind was torn with anxious doubt concerning the truth of Anglicanism. He felt, as most converts feel in their journey to the Home of Faith and Truth, that they are on the way to a promised land, led by the cloud of desolation that God raises in the desert, and yet know not where that Home is nor of what sort or fashioning it may be. The poem we allude to is entitled,

"THE PILLAR OF THE CLOUD.

"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home-- Lead thou me on! Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene--one step enough for me.

"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou Shouldst lead me on, I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead thou me on! I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.

"So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone: And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile."

We think some one has said--and if not, we say it ourselves--that the next difficult thing to writing a book is to give it a name. What every one has not failed to notice, who is conversant with the sermons of Dr. Newman, we find equally true of these poems, the felicity of his choice of titles. {859} It is the touch of genius; and we venture to assert that Dr. Newman excels in this all living writers. There is no evidence that these "Verses" were written or are published now for poetic fame, and yet no one can help but accord to them the praise due to poetry of a high order of merit; revealing at the same time, as they do, what a great deal of true poetry does not and need not necessarily show, the mind of the scholar and of the master of language. The volume closes with the remarkable poem entitled, "The Dream of Gerontius," which our readers have already enjoyed from the pages of _The Catholic World_.

The Blessed Eucharist Our Greatest Treasure. By Michael Müller, Priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.

This work is written in plain and unaffected style to promote the noblest, best, and most useful of objects, the devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar. Catholics are taught and believe this great mystery of love; but many, though they believe, do not seem to realize sufficiently what it is they believe. They have not thought much upon it. They have, not penetrated its depths. Their knowledge is superficial, and their devotion consequently is cold. And this for many reasons is particularly the case in this country. Here we have immense congregations and few priests, and they loaded down with the building of churches, and a variety of work which has been already done in other countries. The people often are either out of reach of the church, or struggling for the means of living, and therefore have grown careless, and failed to receive the instruction which they require. Hence there is need, and great need, of all the means of instruction which can be brought to bear, and good books on the grand doctrines of religion are calculated to do an incalculable amount of good. This book of Father Müller's is intended to supply much needed instruction on the Blessed Sacrament, and we hope it will receive an extensive circulation. In reading it, we are reminded of the _Visits to the Blessed Sacrament_ by Saint Alphonsus, which have been so acceptable and useful throughout the whole church, and we do not doubt many souls will derive great edification and pleasure from its perusal.

The Cromwellian Settlement Of Ireland. By John P. Prendergast, Esq. With three maps. 1 vol. pp. 228. New York: P. M. Haverty. 1868.

This is the most thorough _exposé_ of the wholesale plunder and robbery of the unfortunate Irish by the English soldiers under Cromwell yet published. It quotes the documents by the authority of which the land was taken from its rightful owners, and parcelled out to the jail-birds of the "protector."

Mr. Prendergast is a Dublin lawyer. He was in the circuit in the counties of Wicklow, Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny, and Tipperary for ten years, when he received a commission to make pedigree researches in the latter county. His search for documents relating to Ireland was not confined to that country alone. He visited England, and examined the extensive Irish documents in the libraries there. But, he tells us, it was in the castle of Dublin he found the most important ones. These, along with extracts from others, found elsewhere, make up his book. It is full of historical materials on the confiscation of Ireland, never before published, which make it an important work to be studied by every student in Irish history. It throws a flood of light on the manner in which the Irish were robbed, exiled, murdered, and for no other purpose but to get their property for the invaders. It tells a sad and sickening story of wrong and outrage, unknown in the history of any other country in Europe, much of which has been kept hidden, because the guilty parties did not wish such things should see the light. But truth, like murder, will out, and Mr. Prendergast, who, it is well to observe, is not a Catholic, has done a good service to the cause of truth, in the volume before us.

{860}

Manual Of Physical Exercises. By William Wood. With one hundred and twenty-five illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1867.

That physical education is absolutely necessary to a full and perfect development of the intellectual faculties, is now universally conceded. In this connection, therefore, we have but to add that the manual now before us gives, in simple phrase, aided by, numerous appropriate illustrations, a vast amount of information by which our health may be preserved, our strength increased, our mental powers as a consequence improved, and therefore, not only our individual comfort promoted, but our general usefulness as members of the body politic very materially enhanced.

Lives Of The Queens Of England, From The Norman Conquest. By Agnes Strickland, author of _Lives of the Queens of England_. Abridged by the author. Revised and edited by Caroline G. Parker. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1867.

This excellent abridgment presents us with a series of pen-portraits, strikingly and impartially depicted, of the Queens of England, from Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror, to the present queen-regnant, Victoria. While giving, in a modified form, the more delicate facts of their history, it carefully retains all that is essential to a complete knowledge of their lives, public and domestic, their political triumphs and reverses, their private joys and sorrows.

Home Fairy Tales. By Jean Macé. Translated by Mary L. Booth. With Engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1868.

In its illustrations, binding, and typographical excellence, this volume ranks first amongst the many which, during the holiday season just passed, have attracted the favorable regard of the rising generation. But, while cheerfully according this meed of praise to the Messrs. Harper, and no less acknowledging the merit of Miss Booth's translation, a vivid remembrance of what best pleased ourselves, in days gone by, compels us to add, that these tales, unlike many others we might enumerate, will never become household words with children. Fairy tales intended, as these evidently are, to convey a moral, may be likened to sugar-coated pills. The fault with these tales is, that the coating, so to speak, is too thin, and, consequently, the unpalatable though sanative globule too easily detected.

The Lovers' Dictionary. A Poetical Treasury of Lovers' Thoughts, Fancies, Addresses, and Dilemmas, indexed with ten thousand references, as a Dictionary of Compliments, and Guide to the Study of the Tender Science. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1867.

Of this anonymous volume, if the author's judgment and good taste had equalled his industry, mere mention on our part would suffice. But even a cursory examination compels us to add that, while it contains many beautiful poems and elegant extracts, we found very many indifferent, not a few objectionable from a want of appositeness, and some that should not have been inserted.

Should the author compile another volume, intended for the impressible of both sexes, we heartily wish him, in consideration of his zeal, "a little more taste," the more fully to carry out his good intentions.

"The Catholic Publication Society" has the following books in press, and will publish them as follows: March 10, _The Diary of a Sister of Mercy_; April 1, _In the Snow; or, Tales of Mount St. Bernard_, by Rev. Dr. Anderdon; April 20, _Nellie Netterville; or, A Tale of the Times of Cromwell_, by Miss Caddell; May 10, _Problems of the Age_.