Chapter I.

"If all the members of my body should be changed into as many tongues, and should assume as many voices, I should still be unable to say enough of the virtues of the saintly and venerable Paula."

It is in these words of pious enthusiasm that St. Jerome, himself so holy a man, and accustomed to the guidance of so many noble souls, begins his biography of Paula, when, at the instance of her daughter, Eustochium, and to dry her tears, he undertook to record her mother's virtues.

Placing himself with awe in the presence of God and his angels, St. Jerome says: "I call to witness our Lord Jesus Christ and his saints, and the guardian angel of this incomparable woman, that what I say is simple truth, and that my words are unworthy of those virtues celebrated throughout the world, which have been the admiration of the church, and which the poor yet weep for. Noble by birth, more noble still by her holiness; powerful in her opulence, but more illustrious afterward in the poverty of Christ; of the race of the Scipios and of the Gracchi; heiress of Paulus Emilius, from whom she takes her name of Paula; direct descendant of that famous Martia Papyria, who was wife to the conqueror of Perseus, and mother of the second Scipio Africanus; she preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and the humble roof of a poor dwelling to the gilded palaces of her ancestors."

Paula was born in Rome, about the middle of the fourth century, the 5th of May, of the year 347, in the reign of Constantius, and of Constans, the sons of Constantine, seven years after the death of the latter prince. Julius was then Pope at Rome. Paula belonged, through her mother, Blesilla, to one of the most ancient and illustrious families of Rome; and it seemed as if Providence wished to unite all earthly distinctions in this child, for the purest blood of Greece mingled in her veins with the noblest blood of Rome. At this time nothing was more common than alliances between the Roman and Greek families, as is proved by the Greek names which we find in the Roman genealogies. The father of Paula, Rogatus, was a Greek, and claimed royal descent from the kings of Mycaenas; and Agamemnon himself is said to have been his direct ancestor.

St. Jerome gives no further detail of the family of Paula, excepting that he mentions casually that their possessions were vast, including very important estates in Greece near Actium, besides their domain in Italy. "If," says St. Jerome, "I take note of her opulence and wealth, it is not that I attach importance to these temporal advantages, but in order to show that the glory of Paula in my eyes was not in having possessed them, but in having laid them at the feet of Jesus Christ."

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A more real advantage of her birth was, that her noble family were Christians, although a portion of them still remained pagans. This intermingling of creeds must not surprise us; for the resistance to conversion was great, and throughout the fourth century it was a common thing to see worshippers of the true God and of Jupiter under the same roof.

Rome, in truth, presented then a great contrast. Christian Rome and pagan Rome stood face to face, and pagan Rome, as yet untouched by barbarians, still wore an imposing aspect. The Capitol still stood in pride, crowned with the statues and temples of the heathen gods. Opposite, on the Palatine, stood the ancient dwelling of the Caesars, with its marble porticoes; and at the foot of the two hills the old Forum surrounded with pagan temples. Further still, and separated from the Forum by the Sacred Way and the Amphitheatre of Flavius, rose the immense Colosseum; and at the other extremity the great circus and the aqueducts of Nero. On the borders of the Tiber was the mole of Adrian, the mausoleum of Augustus, with temples, theatres, baths, porticoes, etc., on every side; indeed, every monument of luxury and superstition, showing how deeply rooted paganism still was in the capital of the empire.

Nevertheless, by more than one sign it was easy to recognize that all this pagan grandeur was fast fading away before another power; and if polytheism still found strong support in old traditions and customs, institutions and monuments, it was the influence of the past, which was lessening every day. The future belonged to the church, and Christianity was daily gaining the upper hand. The pagan temples which were still standing were empty, the crowd now disdaining sacrifices. Silence and solitude reigned around the gods, while the new faith, spreading out its magnificence in broad daylight, covered Rome with superb basilicas. At the same time, Rome, deserted by the emperors for political reasons, which served the divine purpose, seemed given up to the majesty of pontifical rule; and the popes, brought out from the Catacombs and placed by Constantine in the imperial palace, already gave a foreshadowing to the world of the glory which should henceforth invest the Holy See.

At this time there sprang from the bosom of the church a soul who was destined to exercise a vast influence upon the religious orders throughout the universe.

The blood of the martyrs and early Christians had not been shed in vain. It was just at this epoch in the history of Christianity that Providence gave being to a child destined by her holiness to be one of the marvels of the age.

We have sufficient data to know what her education was and under what influences she grew up to womanhood. The old Roman spirit and the Christian spirit were both fitted to form a character of the highest order. Austere honor, severe self-respect, noble traditions of ancient customs, were early inculcated in the mind of Paula. She came of a race of whom St. Jerome said: "Remember that in your family a woman very rarely, if ever, contracts a second marriage." Besides the holy books which were her first studies, her reading was vast and extended, embracing both the literature of Greece and Rome. We shall see how in after-life this early culture developed in her the rich gifts of nature, establishing equilibrium between her intellect and her character.

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Paula was brought up by her mother with that ardent love for the practice of her religion, which in all its perfection belonged especially to the days when persecution made these observances most precious to the early Christians. She followed Blesilla to the basilicas and to all feasts of the church, and also to visit the tombs of the martyrs and to the Catacombs. This last devotion was peculiarly dear to the Christians of the fourth century. They sought to glorify those victorious soldiers. "See," cried St. Chrysostom, "the tomb of the martyrs! The emperor himself lays down his crown there, and bends the knee."

There was not, perhaps, a family of Christians in Rome, which did not have some loved member among the glorious dead lying in the long galleries of the Catacombs. Saint Jerome speaks of the pious attraction of these sanctified asylums in the great city of the martyrs.

In this atmosphere of love for the church, and of faith in Christ and in the divine origin of Christianity, young Paula grew up. It was in those days the custom for the daughters of noble houses in Rome to marry young; and when Paula was fifteen years of age, her parents gave her in marriage to a young Greek whose name was Toxotius.

He belonged, on his mother's side, to the ancient family of the Julians, which boasted, as we know, of going back to the time of AEneas:

"Julius, à magno dimissum nomen Iülo." _Virgil's AEneid._

Toxotius did not have the faith of his bride. These mixed marriages were not rare in those days; witness Monica and Patricius, the parents of St. Augustine.

Christianity had tolerated such marriages from the beginning, in the hope that the infidel husband might be won by the wife to her belief. When, robed in a white tunic of the finest wool, according to custom, her brow covered with the _flammcum_, Paula laid her trembling hand in that of Toxotius, who can tell with what holy emotion, what elevation of thought, what purity of feeling and of hope, her soul was filled! On the other hand, Toxotius does not seem to have been unworthy of his Christian bride, and the uncommon affection Paula bore him ever afterward, her inconsolable grief for his loss, all proves that their marriage was among those which the world calls happy. God blessed this union. Four daughters were successively born to them.

The eldest, called Blesilla after her grandmother, seemed gifted with a vivacious and most interesting character; her health was delicate, but her full, rich nature gave early promise of that rare beauty of mind and soul, which developed perfectly in after-years to the joy of Paula.

Paulina, the second, had also a fine nature, but the very opposite of Blesilla's. Her light was not like her sister's, a shining flame; but with less brilliancy of wit, and less vivacity of character, she possessed great good sense and solid judgment, giving promise of being as strong in character as her sister was brilliant.

As for the third of these young girls, called by the graceful name of Eustochium, borrowed from the Greek, and meaning _rectitude_ or _rule_, she was a gentle child, modest, reserved, timid. One would say she was like a flower hiding within herself her own perfume; but this perfume was sweet, and on a nearer view one could not avoid seeing in this young soul all the treasures which would one day flower and bloom. It is difficult to picture to ourselves Rufina. {383} She appears but once in the history of her mother, at the moment of the departure of Paula for the east, sad, bathed in tears, and yet silent and resigned; stamped, even in childhood, with that painful charm which belongs particularly to those beings not destined by providence to mature, but to fall away and die young.

Paula's married life was passed in the midst of all the magnificence which marked the decline and fall of the empire. She passed through the streets of Rome, as did the other patrician ladies, in a gilded litter, carried by slaves. She would have feared to put her dainty feet on the earth, or to touch the mud of the streets. The weight of a silk dress was almost too much for one so sensitive to carry; and had a ray of sunshine intruded into her litter, it would have seemed to her a _fire_.

"_Et solis calor incendium,_" etc., etc. _Epist. ad Pammachium_.

In those days she used rouge and cereum, like other women of her rank; she passed much of her time at the bath, which consumed so great a part of life in Rome; she spent the winter, according to usual custom, at Rome, and the summer in some villa in the country, passing her time most agreeably between her books and a chosen circle of friends.

In the midst of all this luxury, leading a life far removed from the virtues which she practised later, Paula was yet known and respected as a woman of great dignity of character and irreproachable conduct. And if, during these happy years, the young wife of Toxotius did not always sufficiently bear in mind the maxim of the apostle, which teaches us to use the things of this world, without giving them our affections inordinately; if she tasted too freely of its pleasures and dangerous vanities, in the trials which she was soon to encounter, there was compensation to be made for this self-indulgence, and, in her austere penance, a super-abundant expiation. Saint Jerome tells us that Paula had none of the barbaric arrogance common to the Roman women--that which made them purse-proud, cruel to their slaves, passionate, and impatient, which Juvenal describes so admirably in his imperishable satires. In Paula all these bad passions gave place to gentleness, softness, goodness. "This wealthy daughter of the Scipios," says St. Jerome, "was the gentlest and the most benevolent of women--to little children, to plebeians, and with her own slaves. She possessed that excelling goodness, without which noble birth and beauty are worthless, and which is especially characteristic of a lofty nature. This sweetness of mind, combined with her austere sense of honor, were the two features of her soul which, by their contrast, made her countenance most charming.

It is easy to conceive how such a woman performed the delicate social duties that devolved upon her. Her associations were of two kinds. She was intimate with all the celebrated women in the church, such as Manilla and Titiana; at the same time the pagan relations of Toxotius all loved her, and she received them frequently at her house, bearing in mind the duty of the Christian woman to let them see her religion in such a light as would lead them to respect and honor it. And so it was that, by her fireside, Paula was the happiest of wives and of mothers. Her young family grew up joyously around her, filling her with bright hopes for the future.

She had long wished to give her husband a son and heir. Her prayer was answered; and she gave birth to a son, her last child, who received the name of Toxotius, after his father.

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This is all that history tells us of the first phase in the life of Paula. We see her thus with every happiness at once, "the pride," says St. Jerome, "of her husband, of her family, and of all Rome."

We know no more of her life up to the age of thirty. The Paula of history, the saint whom God was to give as an example to souls, is not the woman of the world, nor the happy woman; she is the woman struck as if by lightning, blasted in her happiness; and from this trial rising up generously, and by a great flight soaring far above common virtues and the ordinary condition of pious souls, up to those heroic acts which only emanate from great sorrows. It would seem as if God had been pleased to accumulate upon her, for thirty years, all the felicity of earth--to adorn, as it were, this victim of his love, and to make us comprehend the better by the subsequent destruction of this, how vain is earthly happiness.

It is here that the historian takes hold of Paula, and that the veil is lifted from her. Now begins her true history, the history of her soul.

Paula was only thirty-one years of age when Toxotius died and she became a widow. The blow to her was terrible. In the first moments of her grief she was completely stunned and powerless. It was feared by her friends that she would not long survive the shock. Nothing could stop her tears. She could not be comforted. From day to day the void was growing deeper and deeper into her heart.

There is a decisive turning-point in the life of every one, on which the future depends. This moment had now come for Paula. Two ways lay open before her--the world on one side, God on the other. She determined, in her sorrow, to give up the world, to lead for ever afterward the life of a Christian widow, and to seek for consolation in this resolution.

After the first outburst of grief, when she came to herself, her decision was irrevocably made. Human things were never more to regain the hold they had had over her up till now. She understood what God wanted of her; namely, "to accept the sacrifice and change her whole life." So, as St. Francis de Sales tells us, "the heart of a widow who could not give herself all to God during the lifetime of her husband, flies in search of celestial perfumes, when he has been taken from her."

Paula was surrounded with many noble examples. Marcella lived in her palace on Mount Aventine, where she had gathered together a band of widows and virgins from amongst the noblest families of Rome, who gave great edification by their virtue and charity. How and for what purpose had Providence permitted this community to be formed, which gave such an impetus to the religious life? It is necessary that we should answer in some detail, for this is the key to the whole life of Paula.

The church, resting from the earlier persecutions, which inflamed zeal and devotion, was now in great peril from the growing influence of security and wealth, in spreading a pagan and Roman love of indolence and indifference. The empire was declining, and its moral fall was hastened by political troubles. The degenerate Romans consoled themselves for their abasement, by the melancholy enjoyments of luxury and vice. Luxury and debauchery were already creeping into the Christian lines, thus attacking the most vital parts of the church. False widows and virgins no longer scrupled to show light conduct beneath the veil. {385} There must be a remedy found equal to the evil. God failed not to bring succor to his church, and the spirit of holiness became all the more manifest in her faithful children, in proportion as the peril was great.

The reaction commenced in the east, with the great monastic foundations, which rose up in opposition to the world, performing prodigies in the way of austerities and moral improvement. At Rome, strange to say, the reform began where it was least to have been expected, namely, in the midst of the patricians. The signal was given by women. They threw themselves with ardor into the heroic path, and soon their husbands followed them. This regeneration was one of the most memorable in history, as well as in the annals of the church. It was started by St. Athanasius, who brought it with him from the east. Thrice exiled by Arian persecution, the great patriarch three times sought refuge in Rome. He had brought with him the revelation of the wonders realized by the fathers in the deserts of Egypt and on the banks of the Nile. His biography of the great Anthony took hold of every imagination, and gave new zeal to monastic life. Athanasius had passed seven years in the Theban deserts; he had known Anthony, Ricomius, and Hilarius, and told of the astounding graces of their supernatural life.

In one of these journeys of Athanasius to Rome, a noble Christian widow, named Albina, had the honor of receiving him as her guest. Albina had a daughter, Marcella, on whose noble soul the conversation of the great bishop made an extraordinary impression. Seated at his feet, the young girl drank in every word that fell from his lips. Some months after, out of deference to her mother's wishes, Marcella consented to marry; but when, at the end of seven months, she became a widow and was free, she made up her mind never to contract a second marriage, but to devote herself in Rome to the humble imitation of those virtues which Athanasius had taught her to venerate and admire. Nevertheless, her youth, her wit and great beauty drew around her many admirers. Amongst others was Cerealio, of high birth and large fortune. "I will be more her father than her husband," said he to Albina, who greatly desired the marriage, "I will leave her all my wealth, being already advanced in years." But Marcella was inflexible. "If I wished to marry again," said she to her mother, "I would marry a husband, and not an inheritance."

Cerealio was refused, and this discouraged all other suitors.

Marcella now gave up the world and made a desert of her magnificent palace. There she lived austerely, doing good works. She bid farewell to jewels, and even laid aside the seal ring always worn by the patrician women; and rising above their prejudice against the religious state, and particularly the coarse garb of the monks, she was the first who dared to assume the abased dress, and publicly imitated what St. Athanasius had taught her to believe good in the sight of God. The example soon became contagious, giving her many followers, who astonished Rome by their austerities and penances.

There was also at Rome, at this time, a young patrician lady whose name was Melanie. Suddenly, when only twenty-two, she lost her husband and two children, and laid them in one tomb on the same day. Accepting this dispensation of the divine will, Melanie resolved to devote her whole life to the shining virtues of which Marcella was so bright an example. {386} To increase her faith further, she started on a pious pilgrimage to the east, where Athanasius still lived. She saw him at Alexandria shortly before his death. After having visited the monasteries of Egypt and the Holy Land, Melanie was unwilling to return to Rome and its corruptions. She therefore founded for herself a monastery on the Mount of Olives, where she lived an austere and good life.

This example still further inflamed the souls of the Roman women, and numberless were those now in search of perfection; some remaining at home in their own houses, like the virgins and widows of the first centuries; others preferring to congregate together, and, without any fixed rule, make the trial of community life. The centre of all this movement was Marcella, who possessed in an extraordinary degree the power of attracting others to her. She was truly the standard-bearer of this noble band, of whose hearts grace had taken possession. The venerable Albina was like the revered ancestress of the little community formed on Mount Aventine. The most prominent of those who joined Marcella were Sophronia, Felicitas, and Marcellina. The latter was daughter of an ancient governor of the Gauls. Outside of Marcella's house, the names best known among those who had devoted themselves to a life of austerity and virtue, were Lea, a holy widow whom the church has canonized; the admirable Asella, and Fabiola, who was of the ancient family of Fabius. All this movement toward religious life was greatly encouraged by the pious pontiff who then filled St. Peter's chair. At the time Paula became a widow. Pope Damasus was nearly seventy-five years of age. He was one of the noblest of the early popes, and one of those who did most for Christianity and for the development of Christian piety. He had a sister named Irene, who, consecrating herself to God, died at the age of twenty, in honor of whom he composed a most touching epitaph.

Such was the group of souls and the array of virtue which Paula had around her, and which attracted her, when she became a widow, to seek a more perfect life.

In the words of St. Jerome, Marcella, like an incendiary, blew upon these lighted cinders and set them in a blaze. She found words to bid those eyes, so dimmed by tears, to turn to heaven; and she urged that bruised spirit to rise up and seek God. All this Marcella did with a sister's tenderness. Her solicitude extended to the children of her friend, and she begged that Eustochium, who already showed a predilection for the religious life, might be confided to her care. Paula acceded to this wish with joy, keeping with her Blesilla, Paulina, Rufina, and Toxotius. Then she began with ardor and faith the new life she had marked out for herself, and she soon outshone all others in virtue. There was a sudden and admirable expansion of greatness in her soul. With her this rupture with the world was but a higher flight toward God.

Her first step in advance was a new and great love of prayer; for so it is, that the more the heart is closed to earth, the more it opens to heaven. Her love of God and of celestial things grew stronger each day. She lived most austerely, practising every Christian mortification. All the habits of luxury of other days were thrown aside, and the very comforts of life diminished. She slept on the bare floor, and rivalled in abstinence and fast the ascetics of the desert. She often wept over the thought of the self-indulgence of her former worldly life. {387} These tears, together with those which she shed for her husband, Toxotius, flowed so constantly and so abundantly, that her eyes were injured, and her sight endangered. Paula was the pale one, pale with fasting and almost blinded by tears.

Paula's heart was inflamed with charity. She found in the poor another outlet of love for an ardent nature; and as she surpassed Marcella and all others in austerities, so she also surpassed them in charities. All her income was given in alms, and "never," says St. Jerome, "did a beggar come away from her empty-handed."

It was now two years since Paula had lived in this holy way, when great news reached the little community of Aventine. In 382, Pope Damasus called to Rome the Catholic bishops in council, and many venerable bishops were expected there from the east. The object of the council was to decide several questions of faith, as well as to put an end to the long pending schism of Antioch. A few bishops only answered the call of the Roman pontiff, the greater part excusing themselves in a letter which is celebrated in ecclesiastical history. Among those who came were Paulinus, one of the bishops of Antioch, and St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamina in the island of Cyprus.

It is easy to imagine the emotion produced among these recluses by the arrival in Rome of such personages as these holy bishops, who came from the mysterious east where the Catholic faith had been cradled. They had seen Jerusalem and the Holy Land; they knew the fathers of the desert, whose fame filled the world. What lessons of wisdom would they not be able to gather from such visitors!

Paula obtained from Pope Damasus the honor of having St. Epiphanius as her guest, and it was in her daily interviews with him, as well as with Paulinus, that the desire to see the east, which she was one day to realize, first sprung up in her mind.

History has preserved few details of this council of the year 382. The great work to be brought about by these eastern bishops at Rome was the new impetus which their presence was to give to religion among the Christians of Rome already in the way of life and truth. There came from the east, in company with the holy bishops, a man destined to exercise great influence over the future life of Paula and her friends. This man was St. Jerome. We must pause a moment and not pass by one who is perhaps the most striking, the most original, and the grandest figure of the fourth century. He stands alone in his strength--different from St. Hilarius of Poitiers, the profound theologian; from Ambrose, the sweet orator; from Augustine, the great philosopher, or Paulinus, the Christian poet. His features are marked and stern, his character is austere and ardent; the burning reflection from an eastern sky rests upon him; he is laden with the learning of the Christian and the pagan world; the indefatigable athlete of the church, he whose powerful voice moved the old world when they listened to his pathetic lament over the fall of Rome, and which moves us still when we read it now after the lapse of centuries!

Such was Jerome; yet is this picture incomplete, for we have not mentioned his special gift for the direction of souls. He was their guide, their father. He it was who began this divine guidance, entrusted afterward to St. Bernard, and by him to St. Francis de Sales, from St. Francis de Sales to Bossuet and Fénélon, and so on down to our own times. It is this special gift which gives him so prominent a part in the history of Paula.

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Pope Damasus wished to detain him in Rome after the departure of the bishops for the east, in order that Jerome should expound the holy Scriptures and give answers to those who came to Rome from all parts of the globe for explanations of the dogmas and discipline of the church. A great friendship had sprung up between the sovereign pontiff and St. Jerome. The study of the holy Scriptures bound their affections together. "I know of nothing better," wrote the holy father to him in one of his letters, "than our conversations about Scripture; that is to say, when I ask questions, and you answer; and I say like the prophet, that your voice is sweeter to my heart than honey to my lips."

After the departure of Epiphanius and Paulinus, Marcella and Paula sought for Jerome and entreated him to explain the Scriptures to them at Mount Aventine. The austere monk resisted them long, but at last yielded, and crowds came to hear him. He would read the text, and then make his comments. The listeners were captivated by his eloquence, and his language was peculiarly strong, clear, and forcible. His monk's attire, his cheeks, sunken by penance and browned by the eastern sun, and his deep voice, all combined to throw a strange spell over his hearers.

He, too, soon discovered that he spoke to noble souls, and thus was his abiding interest awakened by his own delight in opening such treasures to those so capable of appreciating them.

Such was the ardor of Paula and her friends in studying the Scriptures, that Jerome was in admiration at their labor and perseverance; and it excited him to further efforts, and made him feel the necessity of undertaking a complete translation of the entire Bible, which, indeed, was the work of his life from that time afterward, without remission; being begun on Mount Aventine, among his favorite disciples, and only ending many years later, with his life. Jerome now undertook the spiritual direction of Paula, Marcella, Asella, and their friends. Many of his letters to them have been preserved, a monument of this wonderful direction. He wrote to them unceasingly, and what remains to us of this vast correspondence suffices to show the noble light in which he viewed Christian duty. Their moral elevation is marvellous, and when from theory he came to practice, he seemed to trample under foot all human weakness and to expect from these high-born and gently nurtured patricians the abstinence and fasting of the Anchorites of the Theban deserts.

This direction of St. Jerome wrought wonders in the soul of Paula. She daily grew in grace, and became a still more noble example of austerity, of prayer, of abundant charities, and good works, and of the fruitful study of the Scriptures.

"What shall I say of the worldly goods of this noble lady, almost entirely spent on the poor?" exclaims St. Jerome. "What shall I say of her universal charity, which made her love and succor beings she had never even seen? What sick person was not nursed by her? She sought the afflicted throughout the great city, and ever thought she had met with a loss if the sick or the hungry had already found assistance before hers."

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This is what the love of Christ brought about in imperial and corrupt Rome when, for the first time, such Christian heroism burst forth from the midst of the patricians, their admirable and pious daughter shedding new lustre upon those glorious old pagan families.

To Be Continued.

Bound With Paul.

The warden's wife followed her husband down the steps leading to the prison. "'_O caro Duca mio_,' is there an inscription over the door?" she asked; "for I have brought hope with me, and will not let it go."

Not having anything to say, the warden kept silent. He was used to his wife's fanciful ways of speaking, and liked to hear her pleasant voice, though her meaning might escape him. For education had emphasized the difference which nature had pronounced between these two--a difference which William Blake has defined in a word: the man looked _with_ his eyes, the woman looked _through_ hers.

Besides, the warden's attention was at the moment fully occupied. The prison-bell had rung the second time, and the convicts had finished their day's work. Mr. and Mrs. Raynor stood just within the great entrance of the prison, and watched the sluggish streams of crime that oozed from the doors of the different shops, joined in the yard, and crept toward them--an Acheron, in which human faces presently became visible; but faces bleached, unwholesome, and expressionless. Perhaps their souls had been scorched up in the baleful flames that had wafted these men hither, or mesmerized in the leaden to-and-fro of their lives. Or, more likely, retired to some secret recess of the brain, their restless wits might be working out new designs of evil. An occasional spark in some sidelong eye favored the latter guess.

"Now for explanation," the warden said, keeping a strict eye on the advancing line, yet aware of a hand stealing toward his arm. "Be careful, dear! my revolver is on that side. Your man will go into the furthest cell in the first ward. His name is Dougherty; his nationality, of course, a mystery. He was sentenced ten years for assault and highway robbery, and has now but two months to stay. Excepting this one affair, he has always borne a good name, and there couldn't be a better prisoner. He might have been pardoned out long ago if he had tried, but he never asks favors. When he came here, his only brother, a decent fellow, went to California. He couldn't stand the disgrace. But he writes once a month, a very good letter, too; and when the ten years shall be up, will come or send for his brother. They say that Dougherty behaved very well by him when he went away, and gave him all his, Dougherty's, money. I shouldn't wonder. The fellow has the strongest sense of duty I ever knew in a man. That's what is the matter with him now. He told the deputy yesterday that he should never go to chapel again. He had before been in doubt about it, he said; but when the chaplain praised Martin Luther, and called the church some ugly name or other, then he knew that it was a sin for him to listen. {390} I don't want to punish the man; but, of course, he must go to chapel. I can't make exceptions; and half a dozen of the worst rascals here have some way got wind of the affair, and have all at once experienced theology. That tall, heavy fellow, who murdered his mother and his brother, and then set fire to the house and burnt their bodies up, had his feelings badly hurt when the chaplain said something sarcastic of the pope's great toe. But Dougherty is honest, and if he will submit, I can easily bring the others down. If he should hold out, there will be trouble; for they will do for deviltry what he will do for conscience' sake. If you can talk him over, I shall be glad; but I haven't much hope of it. He is not a man likely to be influenced by a woman's soft words. He is granite."

The wife smiled saucily. "I have seen a silly little pink cloud make a granite boulder blush as though it had blood in it," she said.

At this moment the file of convicts reached the portal, and came winding through in the slow lock-step, separated noiselessly into detachments, a part moving toward the lower cells, the rest climbing the narrow flight of stairs leading to the upper tiers. The faces of the men caught an additional pallor from the cold, whitewashed stone of the prison, and a darker shade as, one by one, they disappeared into the cells, the doors clapping to in rapid succession behind them, like the leaves of a book run over in the fingers. In a few minutes the whole line had crumbled away, and there were visible but the three tiers of iron doors, each door with a hand thrust through the bars, and a dim face behind them. Mrs. Raynor glanced up the block to the last cell. The hand she saw there had a character of its own. The fingers were not half closed, listlessly waiting to be seen, but firm and straight, and the thumb was clasped tightly around the bar against which it rested--a dogged hand. "You think that the dungeon would have no effect?" she asked.

The warden repeated the word "dungeon" with a circumflex calculated to give the impression that the apartment in question was vaulted. "I doubt if even the strings will break him," he said. "You take a Catholic Irishman born in Ireland, and you can't hammer nor melt him into anything but a Catholic. He may lie as fast as a dog can trot, and steal your eye-teeth from under your eyes; but if you cut him into inch pieces, as long as he has a thumb and finger left, he will make the sign of the cross with them. You are losing courage, little woman."

"No!"

"Well, good luck to you! I'm going off."

The lady walked up the ward, nodding to the convicts who pressed eagerly for recognition, stopping to speak to those who had requests to make, and, pausing at a little distance from the upper cell, looked attentively at its occupant, herself unseen by him.

The warden had well compared this man to granite. He was tall, thick-set, as straight as a post, had the broad, combative Irish head, crowned with a luxuriance of dark-brown hair, and square jaws that promised a tenacious grip on whatever he might set his mental teeth in. But the face was honest, though hard, and the straight mouth did not look as though giving to lying or blasphemy, but had something solemn in its closing. The well-shaped nose was as notable for spirit as the mouth for firmness, and the blue-grey eyes were steady, not bright, and rather small. {391} Altogether, a man of whom one might say that, if he was not so good, he would not have been so bad.

This convict sat on a bench in the middle of his little whitewashed cell, and appeared to be lost in thought. But in his attitude there was none of that easy drooping which usually accompanies such abstraction. He sat perfectly upright and rigid, the only perceptible motion a quick one of the eyelids, the eyes fixed--locked, rather than lost in thought.

He rose immediately on seeing who his visitor was, bowed with a soldierly stiffness that was not without state, and waited for her to speak.

After a few pleasant inquiries, civilly answered, she told her errand. It was not so easy as she had expected; but she spoke kindly and earnestly, urging the necessity for discipline in such a place, and the unwillingness of the warden to inflict any punishment on him. "I have no doubt of your sincerity," she concluded, "though the others mean only mischief. But the decision must be the same in both cases."

He listened attentively to every word she said, then replied with quiet firmness, "I am sorry, ma'am, that there is going to be any trouble about it. But it would be a sin for me to go and hear Protestantism called the church of God, when it is no more a church than a barnacle is a ship."

"That is not the question," she persisted. "Admitting that what the chaplain says may be false, I still say that you ought to go. You are here in a state of servitude; you have no will of your own; your duty is obedience to the rules of the place; and the more difficult that duty, the more your merit. If you should listen with pleasure, or even with toleration, while your faith is attacked, that might be sin; but the listening unwillingly and with pain you can offer to God as a penance in expiation of the crime which obliges you to perform it. I am speaking now as a Catholic would. I believe that your priest would say the same."

She paused to note the effect of her words; but his face was unmoved.

"I have a dear friend who is a Catholic," she added. "For her sake I should be sorry to have you punished for such a cause."

This plea made no impression whatever. Plainly, the man was not soft-hearted, nor susceptible to flattery. He merely listened, and appeared to be gravely considering the subject.

"To yield would be humility; to refuse would be pride," she said. "You need not listen while in the chapel; you can think your own thoughts and say your own prayers."

As he still pondered, she again went over her argument, enlarging and dwelling on it till it reached his comprehension. He listened as before, but made no sign of approval nor dissent. Either from nature or habit, it seemed hard for the man to get his mouth open. But at length he spoke.

"You were right, ma'am, in telling me that my duty here is obedience," he said; "but you left out one condition--obedience in all that is not sin. If the warden should tell me to kill a man, it would not be my duty to obey. I do obey in all that is not sin. It would be a sin for me to go to chapel."

He spoke respectfully, but with decision; and the lady perceived that their argument had reached a knot which only the hand of authority could cut. She sighed, and abandoned her attempt.

{392}

Could she abandon it? Remembering the dungeon and the strings, her heart strengthened itself for one more effort. She had begun by marching straight up to the subject, challenging opposition; it might be better to approach circuitously. "Let me undermine him," she thought; and, turning away, as though leaving the captive to silence and loneliness again, let the sense of returning desolation catch him for an instant, then hesitated, and glanced backward. It was a good beginning; he was looking after her. The sight of a friendly face, the sound of a friendly voice, and liberty to speak, were unfrequent boons in that place, and too precious to be willingly relinquished,

"The days must seem long to you," she said.

She came nearer, and leaned against the door. "Yes, they are long; but I thank God for every one of them. My coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was getting to be drunkard, and this put a stop to it."

As he spoke, he lifted his face and looked out at the strip of sky visible through the window across the corridor, and his eyes began to kindle.

"Have you a family?" the lady asked.

He waited a moment before answering, seemed to break some link of thought that had a bright fracture, and his expression underwent a slight but decided change. A light in it that had been lofty softened to a light that was tender, as at her question he looked down again. "There's Larry," he said.

"And who is Larry?"

The convict stared with astonishment at her ignorance. And, indeed, Mrs. Raynor was the only person about the prison who had not heard the name of this Larry. "He is my step-brother, ma'am," he replied. "We had but the one father; but he had his own mother. When she died, there were two of us left, and I took the lad and brought him to this country. He was five years old then, and I was twenty. I was a stone-cutter, and thought to do better here; and, faith, one way I have, and another way I haven't. Shame never touched one of us at home."

"Who took care of the child?" Mrs. Raynor asked.

"Myself, ma'am. He ate and slept with me, and I took him on my arm as often as I put my hat on. He had his little chair on the table in my shop, or he played about at the end of a long string. For the lad was venturesome, and I never trusted him but with a tether."

"He must have been a great care," she said.

"Have you any children, ma'am?" the convict asked.

"No."

"I thought that," he said dryly; then smiled. "Larry was like a picture. He had red cheeks and black eyes, and his hair was like gold with a shadow on it. It used to take me half an hour every morning to make his curls, and they reached to his waist. Everybody noticed the child, and they'd turn to look after him in the street. One of the richest ladies in the city wanted to take him for her own, and me to promise never to see him again; and when she told what she would do for him, I thought that perhaps I ought to let him go. The lady coaxed him, and gave him picture-books and candy, and then asked him if he'd go and live with her; and faith, ma'am, my heart didn't get such a scalding when Mary asked her promise back, and said she liked Larry best, as it did when that child went to the lady's knee and said he would go and live with her. God forgive me, but I hated her that minute. Well, I told her that I would think about it, and let her know the next day. {393} That night I dreamed that she had him, and that I saw him far off at play, dressed in jewels, and his little frock like a fall of snow. I dreamed that I couldn't speak to him, and that set me crying; and I cried so that I waked myself up. I put my hand out for the child, but I couldn't find him. He was a restless little fellow, and had crawled down to the foot of the bed. For a minute I thought that the dream was true; and then I knew that I couldn't let him go. I waked him up, and asked him if he'd stay and live for ever with his brother John; and I was a happy man when he put his little arms round my neck and said yes, he would. And I made a promise to the child that night, while he was asleep in my arms, that, since I kept him back from being a rich man, whatever he might ask of me in all his life, if it was my heart's blood, he should have it! And, ma'am, I've kept my promise."

The tenderness with which he spoke of his brother invested the convict's manner with the softening grace which it so much needed, and grew upon his rough nature like a gentian upon its rock.

"This brother is in California?" Mrs. Raynor asked.

The convict dropped his eyes. "He and Mary went there when I came here," he said.

"Who is Mary?"

"Mary is Larry's wife," was the brief reply.

"You hear from them?"

"Oh! yes," he said eagerly. "They write to me every month. In his last letter Larry said that he was coming after me at the end of my term; but I sent him word not to. I can go alone, and he will send me the money."

The man seemed to have a jealous suspicion of her thought that he had been cruelly deserted. "I told them to go," he said with a touch of pride; "and I shall go and live with them when I get out of this. They wouldn't hear to my going anywhere else."

He broke off, glanced through the window, and said, as if involuntarily, "There's the west wind!" then drew back, rather ashamed when the lady looked to find what he meant. "You see, ma'am, we don't have much to think of here, and there's only the sight of stone and iron, and that bit of sky. Three years ago there wasn't a glimpse of green; but two years ago I began to catch a flit of leaves when the west wind blew. Last summer I could see a green tip of a bough all the time, and now in the high March wind I can see a bit of a twig."

"It is an elm-tree," the warden's wife said; "and the branches are longest on this side. I think they stretch out for you to see. You miss many a pleasant sight here, Dougherty."

"What I miss is nothing to what I have seen," he said quickly, his eyes beginning again to kindle.

"What do you mean?"

He gazed at her searchingly for a moment, as if to read whether she were worthy to hear; then he looked up at the sky.

Mrs. Raynor tried not to be impressed. "He is a thief, serving out his sentence in the State prison," she repeated mentally. "He is a poor, ignorant Irishman, who can scarcely spell his own name, and who reverences a polysyllable next to the priest."

"I will tell you," he said after a moment, his voice trembling slightly, not with weakness, but with fervor. "When I first came here, I had to pray all the time to keep myself from going crazy; but by and by I got reconciled. {394} You know we never have a priest here, and must find things out as well as we can for ourselves. All I wanted to know was whether God was angry with me. Sometimes I thought he was; but that might be a temptation of the devil. What I am going to tell you happened about six months ago, at nine o'clock in the evening. The night-watch was in, and had just gone round. He spoke to me, and I answered him. I was in bed, and I shut my eyes as soon as he went back to his place. Something made me open them again, and I saw on the wall of my cell here a little spot like moonlight. It grew larger while I looked, and the whole cell was full of the light of it; and it trembled like the flame of a candle in the wind. There didn't seem to be any wall here; it was all opened out. I pulled the blanket about me and went down to my knees on the stone floor. I don't know how long it was before two faces began to show in the midst of the light; and when they came, it was still. At first they were faint; but they grew brighter till they were as bright as I could bear. I couldn't tell whether it was the brightness in their faces or the thought in my heart, that brought the tears into my eyes. There was the Blessed Virgin with the Infant Jesus in her arms, and they both looking at me and smiling. And while they smiled, they faded away!"

"How probable that would sound if it were related as having happened in the year of our Lord 62, instead of 1862!" the lady thought, restraining a smile, awed by the perfect conviction of the speaker.

"Dougherty," she said, "a man like you ought not to be caught at highway robbery. How did it happen?"

Some swift emotion passed over his face; but whether of fear or anger she could not tell. The next moment he smiled grimly. "I know just how it happened, ma'am," he said; "for didn't the lawyers tell me? Oh! but they told the whole story so plain you'd have thought they did the deed themselves; and faith, they made me almost believe I did it. It is a very convincing way that the lawyers have about them. They made out that Mike Murray was at our house one night, and we all played cards and got drunk together; and when we were pretty high, that Larry and I went out with Mike to see him home; and that I sent Larry back, he being too drunk to go on; and that I waited upon Mike out to a piece of woods, and there I knocked him down and robbed him; and that he was picked up half-dead the next morning, and I was caught throwing the money away. They proved that I only did it because I was drunk, and that I never did a dishonest deed before; and so they sent me here for ten years. And the pity it was of poor Mike Murray! It would have brought tears to your eyes to hear that lawyer go on about him, as if Mike was his own father's son, and a saint to the bargain, instead of a dirty, drunken blackguard that Mary was mad to see in the house, and that beat his own wife with a stool, and kicked her down-stairs every morning; and that's the way she used to get down. She told our Mary that she was never without a sore spot on her head, and that when she got to the top of a flight of stairs, if it was in the church itself, she'd look behind for the kick that Mike always had for her. Indeed, ma'am, while the lawyer was talking, I didn't believe he meant the Mike Murray I knew at all, but a sweet, gentle creature with the same name, and that never took a sup of anything but milk. And that's the story of my coming here, ma'am," the convict concluded, giving a short laugh.

{395}

"You have had troubles enough," Mrs. Raynor said gently; "but now they are nearly over. Only two months longer, and you will be free. It won't hurt you to go to chapel for that short time."

"I shall not go," he replied.

She turned away at that, went into the deserted prison-yard, and stood there a moment recollecting a sermon she had heard not long before. "Why should we not now have a saint after the grand old way?" the speaker had asked.

"There is every reason why we should not!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Those _bizarre_, uncompromising virtues of the antique time would now scandalize the very elect. We must not offend against _les bienséances_, though all the saints should clap their hands. This poor Irishman is unquestionably a little wrong in his head, and will have to go to the dungeon. For you, Madge Raynor, you had best return to your _moutons_, and cease pulling at the skirts of the millennium. What a quixotic little body you are, to be sure!"

To the dungeon, accordingly, Dougherty was sent the next Sunday and after a few hours, the warden's wife went to see him.

A door of solid iron opened in the basement wall of the prison, and let the light into a stone vestibule that was otherwise perfectly dark. Opposite this entrance was what looked like an oven or furnace-door, about two feet square, and also of solid iron. Removing a padlock from the inner door, the guard opened it, and called Dougherty.

Mrs. Raynor started back as the foul air from the dungeon struck her face; for, though there was an aperture artfully contrived so as to admit a little air and exclude all light, it was not large enough to do more than keep the prisoner from actual suffocation.

"You are acting like a simpleton!" the lady exclaimed when the convict's pale face appeared at the opening. "Go to chapel next Sunday, and say your prayers under the parson's nose. I will give you beads that shall rattle like hail-stones."

"I thank you, ma'am!" the man replied in his provokingly quiet way; "but I can't go to chapel."

"You expect to enjoy staying here three days, with bread and water once a day, sitting and sleeping on bare stones, and breathing air that would sicken a dog?" she demanded angrily.

"That is nothing to what my Lord suffered for me," was the reply.

"You fancy yourself a martyr, and that the officers of the prison are children of the devil!" she said.

"I don't blame them," he answered. "They do what they think is right."

"Shut him up!" she exclaimed, turning away. "It's a pity we haven't a rack for the blockhead. He is pining for it."

Dougherty did not complain nor yield; but he was put to work again after three days, that being the longest time the rules allowed a man to be kept in the dungeon.

Mrs. Raynor was annoyed with herself for taking such an interest in this contumacious thief. Every day she protested that she would not worry about him, and every day she worried more and more. When Sunday came again, "I will not go near him," she said. "I will leave him to his fate. 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?'" and even while speaking, counted anxiously the last strokes of the prison-bell ringing for service. {396} At that moment the convicts were entering the chapel, all but the sick, and that troublesome _protégé_ of hers. "I won't go near him," she said in a very determined manner, and, five minutes after, was on her way up the prison-stairs.

Letting herself into the guardroom with a pass-key, she found but one man on guard; but the voices of others came through the open door of the hospital, and with them a long, agonized moan. Hurrying into the cell where the punishment called "the strings" was inflicted, Mrs. Raynor saw Dougherty hanging by his wrists to a chain run through a ring in the ceiling. His toes touched the floor and slightly relieved the otherwise intolerable strain on his shoulders and breast. One of the guards kept the chain up, while the deputy-warden stood by the convict and watched for the first sign of submission or of fainting.

The man groaned with pain, and drops of perspiration rolled down his face.

"Will you give up and go to chapel next Sunday?" asked the deputy.

"O God! strengthen me," cried the convict. "No, I will not go!"

Mrs. Raynor's pale face flushed as she heard this reply.

The moans became fainter.

"Now, give up like a man," the deputy said. "You've shown your grit, and that is enough."

"Lord, help me!" came in a broken cry.

"He's going; let him down," the deputy said.

"Dead?" cried the warden's wife, starting forward.

"No, madam; he has fainted."

They applied restoratives, and when his senses had returned, led him, reeling, out into the guardroom, and placed him in a chair by the open window.

"Did you ever read a history of the Spanish Inquisition, Mr. Deputy?" asked the warden's wife.

"Yes'm!" was the immediate reply. "This is just like it, isn't it?"

"Well, Dougherty, you will be content now, and go to chapel next Sunday, will you not?" asked the lady, touching the convict's sleeve.

He lifted his heavy eyes. He was still catching his breath like one who sobs. "I will die before I will go to hear the name of God and of his truth blasphemed!" he answered, speaking with difficulty.

"But if you should be again put up in the strings?"

He shivered, but replied without hesitation, "He that died upon the cross will strengthen me."

"The fellow is a fool!" muttered one of the guard.

"May God multiply such fools!" cried Mrs. Raynor, turning upon the speaker. Then to the convict, "I will urge you no more. I am not capable of judging for you, and you do not need help nor advice from me. Go your own way."

Dougherty's own way was to persist in his refusal to attend chapel; and since the officers had no choice but to punish him for his disobedience, it chanced that for the next four weeks he was put up in the strings every Sunday morning.

"It shall not be done again," the warden said then. "He has but a fortnight longer to stay; and, rule or no rule, he shall do as he likes."

"Only a fortnight," he said to the convict, "then you will be a free man."

Dougherty's face brightened. "Yes, sir! And I long to set my feet on the turf again. A man doesn't know what green grass is, till he gets shut up in a place like this."

"Don't come here again," the officer said kindly. "Let what you have suffered teach you to resist temptation."

{397}

The convict looked at Mr. Raynor with a singular expression of surprise, not unmingled with a momentary indignation, and seemed about to speak, but checked himself.

"It is only to keep from drink," the warden went on. "I don't believe you would be dishonest when sober."

The convict dropped his eyes. "God knows all hearts," he said.

The next day Dougherty had a cold and a headache; the second day he was unable to go to work; the third day he had a settled fever. He was removed to the hospital, where the cells were larger, and, being next the outside wall, had light and air; a convict whose term had nearly expired was set to take care of him, and Mrs. Raynor visited him twice a day.

But the fever had got well fixed before the man gave up, and it found him good fuel. He burned like a solid beech log, with a slow, intense, unquenchable heat. His pale and sallow face became a dull crimson; his strong, full pulses beat fiercely in neck, wrists, and temples; and his restless eyes glowed with a brilliant lustre. Mrs. Raynor was sometimes startled, as she sat fanning and bathing his face, fancying that she had soothed him to sleep, to see those eyes open suddenly, and fix themselves on her with a searching gaze, or wander wildly about the cell. But he lay almost as motionless as the burning log would, locked in that fierce and silent struggle with disease. Nearly a fortnight passed, and there were but two days left of Dougherty's term of imprisonment; but there was no longer a hope that any freedom of man's giving would profit him. There was scarcely more than the embers of a man left of him; not enough, indeed, for a fever to prey upon. The flushes had become intermittent, like the last flickerings of a fire, and the parched and blackened mouth showed how he had been consumed inwardly.

It was May, and the sweet air and sunshine came in through two narrow windows and lightened and freshened the cell where the convict lay. Everything was clean and in order. The stone walls and floor were whitewashed; a prayer-book, crucifix, medicine, and glasses were carefully arranged on a little table between the windows; and there was a spotless cover on the narrow pallet that stood opposite. The door was wide open for a draught, and now and then one of the guard, approaching laboriously on tiptoe, would put his head into the cell, raise his eyebrows inquiringly at the convict-nurse who sat at the head of the bed, receive a nod in return, and retire with the same painful feint of making no noise. Neither of the two men was quite clear in his mind as to what he meant by this pantomime; but the result with both was a conviction that all was right. Presently, as the afternoon waned, there was the soft rustle of a woman's garments in the corridor, and a woman's unmistakable velvet footfall. At that sound the convict-nurse went lightly out; and Mrs. Raynor came in, and seated herself on the stool where he had sat, and slipped a bit of ice between the lips of the patient. He had been lying motionless and apparently asleep during the last hour; but as she touched him, he opened his eyes and fixed them upon her. "What does the doctor say, ma'am?" he asked in a tone so firm that one forgot it was but a whisper.

{398}

"I think that you will want to see the priest," she said gently. "I have sent for one, and he will come tomorrow."

A slight spasm passed over the sick man's face, his eyelids quivered, and his mouth contracted for an instant.

"It must come to us all sooner or later," she continued; "and it is well for us that He who knows best and does best is the one to choose."

He said not a word, but closed his eyes again; and she kept silence while he went through with his struggle, her own tears starting as she saw how the tears swelled under his eyelids, and the stern mouth quivered, and knew that he was tearing up the few simple hopes that had taken root in his heart: the setting his feet on the green grass again, the meeting his brother, the dream of a cheerful fireside where he should be welcome, the honest gains and generous gifts, the happy laughter, kind looks, and sorrows from which love and faith should draw the sting. Simple hopes; but they had struck deep, and every fibre of the man's heart quivered and bled at their uprooting.

Presently the watcher spoke softly: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord hath mercy on them that fear him!"

"May his will be done!" said the convict. "But, poor Larry!"

"You want me to write to him?"

"Yes ma'am!" he answered eagerly. "Tell him that I was comfortable here, and that I was willing to die; and be sure to tell him that coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me. Don't let him know anything about the punishment. Larry'd feel bad about that. Don't forget!" he urged, looking anxiously in the lady's face.

"I won't forget," she said.

He stopped a moment for breath; then resumed, "Tell him that my last words were, that he should remember his promises to me, and never taste liquor again. And tell him to be kind to Mary for my sake. You see, ma'am, I was fond of Mary; but of course she liked Larry best."

The lady blushed faintly, and laid her cool white hand on his fevered one. "Dougherty," she said, "nobody but God thanks us for true love. In this world a light love meets with most gratitude."

"Sometimes I've thought the same," the man said gravely. "Some are made to give, and some are made to take; but the Lord gives to all."

The next day a priest came and spent some time with the sick man. Mrs. Raynor went up for her afternoon visit, and found him still lingering there, looking gravely and intently at his penitent, who lay with an expression of perfect peace on his countenance.

"Poor man!" she sighed, glancing toward the bed.

The father looked up with a light flashing into his thoughtful eyes. "Poor man, madam?" he repeated. "Not so: that man is rich! It is for him to pity us."

She followed the priest out, and spoke to him in the corridor. "Dougherty's brother has come from California," she said. "He reached here this morning. It seems hard to keep him out, but I hate to disturb a man who is dying."

The priest frowned. "Keep the fellow out for to-day. I have just given this man the viaticum, and want him to be undisturbed. His confession has exhausted him, and he mustn't be made to talk much more. How does his brother appear?"

"Oh! he is frantic. He fainted when I first told him, and I could hear him crying out in the yard when I got up into the guard-room. I told him that he couldn't come in till he should have become quiet."

{399}

"What sort of fellow is he?" asked the priest coldly.

The lady hesitated. In spite of her pity, she did not fancy Larry; neither did she like the coldness the priest showed toward him. "He is a very handsome young man," she said presently, "and very well dressed."

The father shrugged his shoulders. "Oh! then he should be admitted without delay."

She must, of course, free herself from such an imputation. "He looks weak and faithless," she said; "but his grief is genuine; and his having come so far shows that he loves his brother."

"You might tell Dougherty tonight, and let Larry in to-morrow morning if he behaves himself."

Mrs. Raynor sat by her patient without speaking, till presently he looked at her and smiled faintly. "May the Lord reward you, ma'am!" he said fervently. "You've been a good friend to me."

"Here is a note from your brother," she said. "Shall I read it to you?"

He glanced eagerly at the folded paper in her hand--a note which, in the midst of his lamentations, Larry had written and entreated her to take up to his brother.

"Read it!" the sick man said, making an effort to turn toward her.

"Would you like very much to see your brother?" she asked.

Dougherty's face began to work. "O ma'am! has Larry come?" he asked tremulously.

"Yes; and presently he is to come in to see you. Of course, he feels very much grieved, you know. That must be. But when he shall see how resigned and happy you are, he will take comfort."

Seeing that he eagerly watched the paper in her hand, the lady unfolded and glanced over it. As she did so, her face underwent a change. "It cannot be!" she cried out; and, crushing the note, looked at the man who lay there dying before her.

He did not understand, was too weak and dull to think of anything but the letter. "Read it!" he said faintly.

She began breathlessly to read the blotted page: "My dear brother John, for God's sake don't die! I have come to take you back to California with me, and Mary and I will spend our lives in taking care of you. We will make up to you what you have suffered for me, going to prison for my crime."

The sick man started up with sudden energy and snatched the paper from the reader's hand. "The lad is wild!" he gasped. "He didn't know what he was writing!"

She tried to soothe him, to coax him to lie down; but he sat rigid with that terrible suspense, his haggard eyes fixed on hers, a deathly pallor in his face.

"You won't tell anybody what the foolish boy wrote!" he pleaded.

"It was your brother, then, who robbed the man?" she said.

He sank back, moaning, upon his pillow, "All for nothing!" he said despairingly. "I've given my heart's blood for nothing! O ma'am! have you the heart to spoil all I've been trying to do, and have just about finished?"

It was a hard promise to give, but she gave it. Without his permission, what she had learned should never be revealed.

"The poor lad wasn't to blame," the sick man said. "It was drink did it. Drink always made Larry crazy. When he got home that night, he didn't know what he'd been doing; but in the morning Mary found the money on him, and the stain of blood on his hand. I tried to throw the money away, and they saw me."

{400}

He paused, gasping for breath. He was making an effort beyond his strength.

"Tell me the rest to-morrow," Mrs. Raynor said, giving him a spoonful of cordial.

But he went on excitedly, clutching at the bed-clothes as he spoke. "It would have been the ruin of Larry if he had come here. He would never again have looked anybody in the face. Besides, Mary's heart was broke entirely. So when I was caught, I just bid Larry hold his peace. But I didn't tell any lie, ma'am. When they asked me in court if I was guilty or not guilty, I said 'not guilty;' and it was true."

She gave him the cordial again, wiped his forehead, and, noticing that his hands were cold, first lifted the blanket to cover them, then hesitated, looked at him more closely, finally laid it back.

He lay for a while silent and exhausted, then spoke again. "You promise?"

"I promise, Dougherty. Set your heart at rest. You are dying; did you know it?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

After a while he said faintly, "My time will be up to-morrow morning."

"Yes!"

Twilight faded into night. Mrs. Raynor went into the house for a while, then returned to sit by her patient, sending the nurse out. One and another came to the cell-door, looked in, spoke a word, then went away. The heavy doors clanged, there was a sound of rattling bars as the prison was closed for the night, then silence settled all over. The dying man lay perfectly quiet, breathing slowly, and responding now and then to the prayers read by his attendant. He felt no pain, and his mind was clear and calm. He had no complicated intellectual mechanism to confuse his ideas of right and wrong; there was no labyrinth of sophistry to entangle his faith, no flutter of imagination to start a latent fear. He had done what he could; and he held on to the promises with an iron grasp.

That lonely watcher almost feared for him. Might he not be presuming on an act of devotion which, after all, rose from a love that was entirely human?

"My friend," she said, "even the angels are not pure before God. Perhaps you loved your brother too well."

"If I had loved him less, he would have been lost," was the calm reply. "I haven't loved him well enough to sin for him."

"Do not be too sure," she said.

"I'm a poor, ignorant man; but I've done as well as I knew how; and he has promised. I never broke a promise to man nor woman; and do you think that the Almighty would do the thing that I would scorn to do?"

"Are you not afraid of presumption?"

"It would be presumption to doubt the word of God."

"Do not rely on your own strength," she urged.

"I have no strength but what he gives me," said the dying man.

While they talked, or prayed, or were silent, the stars wore slowly and brightly past the open windows of the cell, dropping down the west like golden sands in an hour-glass, and counting out the minutes of that ebbing life. Then the dim and humid crescent of the waning moon stole by in the early morning twilight; then the air grew alive with the golden glances of the dawn. {401} As the sun rose, the man called Dougherty, a convict no longer, lay dead on his prison pallet, his face white and calm, the dull eyes half open, as though the deserted body followed with a solemn gaze the flight of its emancipated tenant.

"Would you rather have been the angel loosing Peter, or Peter in chains? I would rather have been Peter!"

Translated From Le Conseiller Des Familles.

The Children's Graves In The Catacombs.

Childhood and the grave! Should these two words be placed together? Must flowers fall before bearing fruit, and children also die? This is what mothers think, and the church thinks as they do, because the church is a mother. In her view children do not die; they are born again, they are transfigured; and the grave in which cold death places them resembles the white bed, whereon, perhaps the day before, you saw them open their eyes to the sunlight. Do you recollect the ode in which a poet, at the time eminent, celebrated in beautiful verses the entrance of Louis XVII. into the heavenly palace to which his father had gone by the rough road of martyrdom? According to Catholic belief, all those little beings who die before making a name or obtaining a place in this world, are also young princes, heirs-apparent of a kingdom more beautiful than that of France, and who, like Louis XVII., fall asleep in a prison to awake upon a throne.

This is why the church has no prayers of grief at their burial. Assured of their happiness, she laments not, but gives praise. By the grace given at baptism, they are received into glory. She covers their remains with white drapery, which calls to mind the vestment which she put over them at the baptismal font. Instead of mourning, she invites the children of heaven to unite in praises, _Laudate, pueri!_ The Virgin, who was herself a mother, receives them at her altar, where the triumphant procession congratulates the Queen of angels that her empire is enriched by one more subject--_Ave, Regina caelorum! Ave, Domina angelorum!_ The funeral mass for little children is only a thanksgiving to God, who has reserved a favored space for those _blessed_ beings, _Venite, benedicti Patris_. Having read the gospel of our Lord, who blessed and caressed those to whom he promised the kingdom of heaven, the last prayer of the church which throws a little earth upon the body that is to rise again, is that we, adult sinners, may one day rejoice with them in the same kingdom. Read again this funeral service, and if you have a mourning mother among your friends and relatives, (who does not know one?) give her these consolations. She will believe that she hears the voice of God, who stopped the coffin of the widow's only son and restored him to her.

{402}

But these are, if I may speak thus, only the first caresses of religion of the remains of children; the honor which she accords to them is perpetuated in the worship with which she surrounds their graves.

Paganism took little care of the tombs of those who had not furnished to their country a citizen or a soldier. We know that they considered a child's life very unimportant. Virgil alone, among the poets, uttered a cry for the souls of young infants, whom he represents as being cut down before the eyes of their mothers. In those family sepulchres, called by the Romans _columbaria_, I found several little busts in marble, representing children, by the side of which were funeral urns, containing at the bottom several pinches of ashes. This was all that remained. Among the innumerable inscriptions which cover the walls of the immense gallery of the Vatican, I saw several epitaphs coldly stating that Junius Severianus had lived two years; that Octavius Liberalis died when he was five years four months and four days old; that Steteria Superba had departed life at the age of eighteen months. But there was no wish or hope of meeting them again, and no religious emblem to console the mourners.

Elysium did not exist for those shades without a name, as they were called, _sine nomine manes_, and their sepulchre closed without hope and without glory. The position of children in heathen times was revealed to me by an epitaph which I found at Antibes, the ancient Antipolis, to which the fashionable Romans came to enjoy the fine coast and a sunny sky. A stone detached from the ruins of a theatre, now almost entirely destroyed by the action of the weather and the sea, had the following inscription: "To the divine shades of Septentrion, a child of twelve years, who danced two days in the theatre and pleased the people"! [Footnote 83] They made the poor slave-boy contribute for two days to their delight; but he was overcome, and they applauded-- _saltavit et placuit_. See, then, what society made of this child--a plaything and a victim! Meditating upon this, I recalled to mind the time when another infant of twelve years of age glorified God in the temple at Jerusalem, and also when the Saviour took the hand of the dying girl and saying unto her, "Arise!" restored her to her father. I was obliged to leave these cursed ruins and enter for a moment into the temple of that God who, to save these little ones, took upon himself the form of a child--_Custodiens parvulos Dominus_.

[Footnote 83: "Diis Manibus pueri Septentrionis, annorum duodecim, qui biduo saltavit in theatro et placuit."]

II.

Jesus Christ was born, was an infant; and since that time a revolution in favor of children began, which is perceptible in the epitaphs upon their graves. The child becomes a king, almost a god. It is at least a soul called to heaven and expecting us; and what new regards surround it for the future in that lapidary style, which says so much in so few words.

I was at Avignon, and visiting the museum of that city, my attention was attracted to a grave-stone of one of the first Christian centuries. It contained the following words: "_Florentiola, pax tecum!_" Florentiola, peace be with thee!" By the side was the monogram of Christ, surrounded with glory. Who was this little Florentiola? The tender diminutive proved plainly that she was an infant, and a beloved one. The wish expressed and the sign of Christ the Redeemer gave evidence that she was also a Christian. {403} This little name brought to mind another inscription which I found somewhere in one of our cemeteries, upon the sepulchre of a young woman: "She bloomed, blossomed, and died." Of these three periods of life, Florentiola had passed through only the first; but the last words expressed the hope that, as she had given to this world the blossom, she would yield the fruit in another: "_Pax tecum!_"

But one must go to the catacombs in Rome, and read, in that great Christian city of death, the delicacies of the affections of earth, and the hopes of a resurrection, which are radiant upon the graves of little children. In the cemetery of St. Priscilla, I observed two epitaphs distinguished above all others by their brevity. One of them consists only of a single melancholy word, "_Libera_" that is to say, free. A dove flying away, carrying an olive-branch, explains the meaning, which to me appeared sublime.

This captive soul which had passed through the prison of earth was free at last! The church conveys a similar idea at the funeral obsequies of little children: "_Anima nostra, sicut passer, erepta est de laqueo venantium. Laqueus contritus est, et nos liberati sumus._" (Psalm cxxiii.) "Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken, and we are delivered."

The other one, which I remarked at the same place, containing only a word, was quite as beautiful and more Christian--"_Redempta_," redeemed. This was also expressive of liberty, but it was a freedom which had been acquired as the price of a ransom which was the blood of God: _Redempta!_

This last expression alludes to the grace given by baptism, which liberates the soul held in bondage by the demon. The children's epitaphs have it often, and prove that the church had conferred the sacraments upon them at the most tender age. You can find for instance, in the museum of the Lateran: "Paulina, neophyte of eight years; Candida, neophyte, twenty-one months old; Zozima, neophyte, five years, eight months, and thirteen days; Matronata Matrona, neophyte, one year, fifty-two days."

Upon a grave in the catacomb of Saint Calista, a Grecian inscription was found by the Canon Profili, consisting of the following words:

"Dionysius, newly illuminated, one year and four months." This title of enlightened was given only to those who came into possession of it by baptism. Saint Chrysostom mentions the enlightened in no other way.

This one, collected in the cemetery of the new road Salaria, and preserved at the Lateran, is more explicit:

"Florentius dedicates this inscription to his well-beloved son, Apronianus, who lived one year, nine months, five days. He was loved by his grand-mother, and seeing that he was nigh unto death, she asked the church to make him a Christian before he should leave the world." [Footnote 84]

[Footnote 84: "Florentius filio suo Aproniano fecit titulum benemerenti qui vixit annum et menses novem, dies quinque. Cum amatus fuisset à majore suâ et vidit hunc morti constitutum esse, petivit de ecclesiâ ut fidelis de seculo recessisset."]

Baptism, which was conferred upon the newly-born, was a great consolation to those who witnessed their departure from this world. "O Magus, innocent child!" said an inscription at the museum of the Lateran, "thou hast gone to live among the guiltless. How much more endurable is life! With what joy the church, thy other mother, received thee, when thou didst leave the world for her. We will suppress the murmurings of our hearts and restrain the tears from our eyes." [Footnote 85]

[Footnote 85: "Magus puer innocens, esse jam inter innocentes coepisti. Quàm staviles (stabilis) tivi (tibi) haec vita est! Quàm te laetum excipet (excepit) mater ecclesia edeoc (de hoc) mundo revertentem. Comprimatur pectorum gemitus, struatur (destruatur) fletus oculorum."]

{404}

Expressions of the most ingenious tenderness are shown in the last farewell to creatures of whom only smiles are known.

"Cyricus, dear soul, peace be with thee! He lived a year and sixty-two days!" [Footnote 86]

[Footnote 86: Cyricus, anima dulcis in pace, vixit annum i. dies lxii.]

"Here reposes our dear soul, named Quiriace, an innocent child, beautiful and good, who lived three years, three months, eight days." [Footnote 87]

[Footnote 87: Hic posita est anima dulcis, innoca sapiens et pulcra, nomine Quiriace, quae vixit annos iii. menses iii. dies viii.]

The word _soul_, in the Latin language, is a term of great tenderness. It signifies life as it is visible. But in the Christian language it has a more spiritual signification. As the poet says:

"Thou callest me thy life; call me thy soul! I wish a name more lasting than a day. Life is of little value, a breath extinguishes the flame; But the soul is immortal as our love."

Maternal affection creates, in Christianity, a name for children which becomes as the family name for those beings who pass from earth, having only glanced at its sorrows. The mother remembers that the Lord said, the angels of these little ones behold the face of the Father who is in heaven. This was enough to make so many angels of those innocent babes by an intentional confusion. This is hereafter to be their title: and where is now the afflicted mother who, at the death-bed of her son, has not seen, like the poet, the radiant face of the angel bending over and calling the child who resembles him? Primitive epigraphy goes to show the cause of this synonymy upon the graves of children.

"_Angelica, bene in pace_." "Angelica, child, be happy in peace," was one inscription of the Catacombs.

Upon another was written:

"Laurentius to his beloved son Severus, who lived four years, eight months, and five days, and was called by the angels on the 7th of January." [Footnote 88]

[Footnote 88: "Severo filio dulcissimo Laurentius pater benemerenti qui vixit annos iv. menses viii. dies v. accersitus ab angelis, vii. idus Januarii."]

One is pleased to recognize in these funereal places, the remembrances of school days, being the only ones that the departed youths have left in life. In several catacombs, near the Cubicula, where the faithful ones assembled for prayer, large halls can be seen, which have neither altar nor pictures, and no other embellishment than banks made in the turf, mostly terminated by one or two elevated seats. It is presumed that the antiquarians assembled children in school, and instructed them in the catechism. Near one of these halls can be read the following epitaph in the catacomb of Saint Priscilla:

"Obrimos to Palladios, his beloved cousin and schoolmate, as a remembrance."

In the catacomb of the new Via Salaria the school-teacher united with the mother to write an epitaph upon his pupil, whom he had adopted in his heart.

"With a holy and pure spirit, this grave has been made to Florentius, a child of thirteen years, by Coritus, his teacher, who loved him more than a son, and by Corda, his mother." [Footnote 89]

[Footnote 89: "In spiritu sancto bono, Florentio qui vixit annis xiii. Coritus magister qui plus amavit quam proprium filium, et Cordeus mater filio benemerenti fecerunt.']

{405}

The glass paintings found at the same place are a finished representation of the education of young Christians in those days. On a chalice made of glass there is a child, whom the father and mother are teaching to read the Scriptures. Another one represents two little children, Pompeianus and Theodora, with their parents, under the trees. They are holding a copy of the Gospel, and Pompeianus points to the monogram of Christ which is erected in the midst of this Christian family. Their father is discoursing and explaining to them the precepts of their faith.

But once torn from the bosom of their family, who received children into the world of souls, which they entered astonished? The epitaphs recommend them to the saints in heaven to attend them on their entrance into paradise. The mother of Aurelius Gemellus, who died at the age of eight years, added to the inscription engraved upon his tombstone the following: "O Saint Basilla! we recommend to you the innocence of Gemellus!" [Footnote 90] In former times this was to be found in the cemetery of Saint Basilla, now of Saint Hermes.

[Footnote 90: "Commendo Basilla, innocentiam Gemelli."]

A similar prayer was addressed to this saint in the same catacomb, but for another child: "O Saint Basilla! we commend to thy care Crescentinus, and our daughter Crescentia, who lived ten months." [Footnote 91]

[Footnote 91: Domina Basilla, commendamus tibi Crescentinum et filiam nostram ... quae vixit menses x." ...]

More frequently it was to God they directed the loved soul, "Lord Jesus, remember our child," said a Grecian inscription reported by Northcote.

Is there not a remembrance of the stammering of a child in prayer, in the first pronunciation, and in the orthography of the last word of the epitaph on a little girl?

"Regina, bibas (vivas) in Domino Zezu!" "Regina, live in the Lord Jesus!"

If life is only a pilgrimage for us, is not this particularly true of those who have only passed a few days in this world? This idea has been rendered in the epitaph of a young Christian; and few have made so great an impression upon me as the following, simple and short as it is:

"_Peregrina, vixit annos viii., menses viii., dies x. Decessit de corpore_." "Peregrina lived eight years, eight months, ten days, then departed from the body."

Did this name of Peregrina, pilgrim, passenger, allude to her rapid voyage upon the earth, which she hastened to leave? I incline to this beautiful idea, which a similar inscription authorizes, not far from there, carved upon the tomb of a Christian: "Viator!"

Upon the grave-stones of children of the first centuries, it is not uncommon to see a white dove, carved upon an antique cup, drinking from the border. Those who repose beneath that stone had drunk of the cup of life, and taking a taste, not wishing more, had spread their wings and returned to heaven.

In that better land they become intercessors for their kindred on the earth. What family has not theirs? And who has not prayed to those young elect, yesterday our brothers and sons, to-day our defenders in that place from which they behold us and will prove their love for us? The following can be read in the Lateran Museum:

"Matronata matrona, intercede for thy parents! She lived one year, fifty-two days." [Footnote 92]

[Footnote 92: "Pete pro parentes tuos, Matronata Matrona, quae vixit an. i. di lii."]

{406}

And upon another stone:

"Anatolius has made this grave for his dear son, who lived seven years, seven months, twenty-two days. May the soul repose in happiness with God. Pray for thy sister!" [Footnote 93]

[Footnote 93: "Anatolius filio benemerenti fecit, qui vixit annis vii. mensis vii. diebus xxii. Spiritus tuus bene requiescat in Deo. Petas pro sorore tua."]

III.

I must confess that we have preserved little of the architectural simplicity in the inscriptions upon tombs. It is just to say that they are of a poor style, laden with lengthy common epitaphs, emphatic declamations, and warm protestations, contradicted by the neglected and solitary aspect of those almost forgotten places. I make an exception of the sepulchres of children. If you find in a cemetery a grave which is preserved with love, invested with crowns, and dressed with fresh flowers, you can recognize the place of a child. In all countries of the world, a delicate worship is devoted to the mortal remains of innocence. The Indian graves have become celebrated, since Chateaubriand described them so charmingly. Now that Christianity has been established in those parts of the globe, mothers no longer suspend the cradles of their sons upon branches of trees, but their funerals have retained much of the simple grace of the time of Chactas.

A missionary has written: "I had to attend the burial of a little child five or six months old. They brought it to the church, laying it upon a mat, with garlands of flowers for a winding-sheet. We should have thought that it was sleeping sweetly, and notwithstanding its color, I admired its angelic beauty. After the prayers, which the church addresses to the good God, they dropped it gently into the grave, as if it had been its cradle, without covering even the face. Flowers were given in the place of earth, to throw upon the body. All the assistants did likewise, and some commenced to weep. It was sad to see the earth close over this little body so sweetly adorned, and cover that young face which appeared to smile upon us. It was to become food for worms; but the beautiful soul was already in heaven with the angels. I then united with the heavenly spirits to sing praises to God at the happiness of his little creature. I hope that this child will not forget the young missionary who celebrated its deliverance from this world of misery." [Footnote 94]

[Footnote 94: Vie de M. l'Abbé Chopart, p. 188.]

This scene recalls to me a similar one which I witnessed in the village of Beauvoisis. I met in the street the funeral procession of a little girl who was being carried to the cemetery. In advance of the coffin, a child of ten years, concealed under a floating drapery, was carrying a basket of white flowers. Thus she walked, gathering and smiling, happy with her part, until their arrival at the sepulchre; then throwing her basket into the grave, she disappeared among the trees, delighted at having prepared this flowery bed for her playmate, who was to sleep there the long night of death.

Menander said in a celebrated verse, "He whom the gods love dies young." And Sophocles said before him, "It is good not to be born; but if once born, the second degree of happiness is to die young." The ancients considered it fortune to be delivered from mortal misery. What would they have said if those who left them had appeared upon the bosom of God in a beatitude and glory without end? _Bene in pace!_

{407}

Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople. [Footnote 95]

[Footnote 95: _Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople_. By Emeline Lott. 4th edition. 12mo, pp. 312. Richard Bentley. New Burlington Street, London. 1867.]

This volume has run through several editions in England within the last three years. It is destined from its popularity to run through as many more; but as yet, it has found no publisher on this side of the Atlantic, although its merits are well-established in British literature. Observing a new edition announced by Bentley, it reminds us that the neat, unpretending little work has not received any recognition from our republic, nor has any attention been called to it. In truth, the American public, deeply interested in travellers and travelling in the east, or in whatever comes from the press illustrating scriptural scenes and events, have strangely overlooked this production, which furnishes a better insight into oriental domestic life than any account published for many years.

Egypt is now what it was in the days of the crucifixion and of Julius Caesar; it is unchanged, it is unchangeable, in its social structure, as the pyramids in their architecture, or the sands of the desert in their external aspect. To understand the condition of the people now, is to understand their condition when the Israelites under the direction of Moses went out from among them. To enter the family circle in the valley of the Nile for the purpose of learning their present mode of life, is at once an introduction to all their progenitors who ever dwelt in the same region in the reign of the ancient Pharaohs. In order to see what a Roman city was in the first century, it is requisite to put aside the ashes from a submerged Pompeii, or to remove the superincumbent earth from a buried Herculaneum. But in Egypt, to comprehend what was the moral, social, intellectual, religious appearance of the country when Cleopatra sailed upon the river, all that need be done is to push aside the mat which serves for a door to the first mud hovel met with, or pass within the first portal where heavy hinges grate upon the ear an uncordial reception.

The same Egypt can be seen which Alexander of Macedon, Sesostris, and the shepherd-kings beheld. Egyptian institutions were never buried; or, if buried, their sepulchre is above ground. A living death is visible on all sides; it is a palsy that struck the land long before the dawn of history, and may remain as it now is, when the history of the present century has passed into oblivion. Although the Egyptian mind and morals will not die in their body, still no motion is in its limbs, no quickening vitality in its joints, no trembling in its nerves; the blood is stagnant; a black pool as destitute of national animation as the waters of the Dead Sea. Progress is a term never heard of near the habitation of the Sphinx; and the period of ruins has gone by. Everything seems running rapidly to demolition; but nothing is demolished; decay has in that mysterious soil a perennial existence, a species of recuperation, that renews itself like the integuments of neighboring snakes, lizards, and toads, which bury themselves in the same rich slime.

{408}

A book, therefore, on modern harem life in Egypt, is in one sense a hand-book for historians in their explorations after the vanities and household troubles of good King Solomon, when his domestic peace and quiet, his comfort and felicity, were invaded by many more spinsters than the Levitical law allowed to any one wise man. This dame Emeline is the very woman to aid them in their archaeological researches. Her volume furnishes important hints and information; and if on the title-page nine centuries before the Christian era were substituted for the date of publication, instead of nineteen centuries after it, the change would be so unimportant in a chronological point of view, that no annalist would be aware of the anachronism. It would look like a second edition of Herodotus, revised and improved, for the benefit of the ladies, and far surpassing in truth the first impression of that ancient Halicarnassian, full of his old gallinaceous and bovine stories.

Mrs. Lott, an English school-teacher, was engaged in London to proceed to Egypt in 1862-3, to take charge of the education of his highness the Grand Pasha Ibraim, five or six years old, the son of Ismail Pasha, the viceroy, and the grandson of the renowned and illustrious Ibraim. The lady in due time arrived at the port of Alexandria, consigned to the delicate consideration and tender mercies of the viceroy's agent, like any other bale of valuable and perishable drygoods. Her first glimpse of the land in the culinary and creature-comfortable line of development was not favorable. She next proceeded to the city of Cairo by rail, and was invited to the house of the vice-regal commercial partner, a German in lineage and language, but with principles and refinement somewhat neglected from want of proper planting and propagation in his youthful European culture. At the residence of this gentleman she was perpetually served with the same dishes at breakfast, noon, and dinner--boiled and roast mutton, stringy and dry, vermicelli soup, tomatoes stuffed with rice, chicory, spinach, and "the whole of the dishes were swimming in fat;" oranges and coffee followed after. Considering that the thermometer was raging above 100°, Fahrenheit, this oriental feed was rather oleaginous, and the lady longed for the wings of a dove to devour her provender elsewhere. So far she had learned one important lesson, and thus paints it. She says:

"I can endorse the veracity of the statement made by a contributor to _Once a Week_, who most naively and truthfully asserts that 'the land of Egypt is ruled over by twenty princes: one of whom is the viceroy, eighteen of the others are known as consuls-general of European nations; but the twentieth is the most powerful of all, and his name is Baksheesh, (gift, present, bribery.')"

To the high and mighty Prince Baksheesh, in duty bound we render all due homage; we bow our lowest salaam, and are pleased to make his acquaintance. He is not wholly unknown to fame in this hemisphere; for a popular superstition prevails in the rural districts that his majesty has many loyal subjects and followers in our own dearly beloved and dearly governed model republic. Prince Baksheesh is a power in our institutions, and a party to much of our legislation. The misfortune of the unprotected female was, that she did not propitiate the potentate; the superabundant fat would have been speedily withdrawn from the bill of fare.

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At last the day arrived for her to remove to the harem of the viceroy on the other side of the river; and she was destined to leave the hands of the agent in the same sort of consignment in which she had come into them, that is, amid bales, barrels, and boxes of merchandise. The dame, therefore, had no opportunity to take a look into the royal market-basket, to ascertain how Ismail Pasha provided for his little private family of three hundred females of different colors, ages, sizes,--and sexes of the feminine and neuter gender. Although the English governess has an eye for the ornamental and beautiful, it is nevertheless only one eye; the other throws its dark splendor upon the useful and substantial. Sometimes she endeavored to close both against sights which were neither the one nor the other. The truth of history, however, compels her to supply her readers with specimens of all these. She observes:

"The vice-regal standard, the everlasting crescent, floated at the stem and stern. On they rowed most vigorously, and in less than ten minutes I was landed at the stairs of the harem. The building is a very plain structure, the interior of which is painted like the trunks of the trees of the Dutch model village of Broeck. In appearance it resembles the letter E, and is a large pile, composed of five blocks of buildings. Proceeding to the one which faced the Nile, I entered the _harem_, ('sacred,') passed through a small door--the grating sound of whose huge hinges still seems to creak in my ears like the grinding of the barrel-organ of an itinerant Italian or Savoyard--which led into a court-yard, at that time lined, not with a corps of the Egyptian infantry, with their shrill brass bands playing opera airs, but with a group of hard-working Fellahs and Arabs, toiling away like laborers in the London docks, and rolling into the immense space hundreds of bales of soft Geneva velvets, the costliest Lyons silks, rich French satins, most elegant designed muslins, fast gaudy-colored Manchester prints, stout Irish poplins, the finest Irish linens, Brussels, Mechlin, Valenciennes, Honiton, and imitation laces, Nottingham hose, French silk stockings, French and Coventry ribbons, cases of the purest Schiedam, pipes of spirits of wine, huge cases of fashionable Parisian boots, shoes, and slippers, immense chests of _bon bons_ in magnificent fancy-worked cases, boxes and baskets, bales of _tombeki_, and the bright, golden-leaved tobacco of Istambol, (Constantinople;) Cashmere, Indian, French, and Paisley shawls of the most exquisite designs; baskets of pipe-bowls, cases of amber mouth-pieces, cigarette papers, and a whole host of miscellaneous packages too various to enumerate, of other commodities destined for the use of the inmates of that vast conservatory of beauty, all supplied by his highness's partners. For, be it known to you, gentle reader, that the Viceroy of Egypt may most appropriately be styled _par excellence_ the Sinbad of the age, the merchant-prince of the terrestrial globe.

"Here I was received by two eunuchs, one of whom was attired in a light drab uniform. ... I was then ushered through another door, the portals of which were guarded by a group of eunuchs, similarly attired, but whose uniforms were most costly embroidered. Their features were hideous and ferocious, their figures corpulent, and carriage haughty,

"They also salaamed me in the most oriental style. Thence, passing along a marble passage, I entered a large stone hall, which was supported by huge granite pillars which led me to the grand staircase, where I was received by the chief eunuch, who is called _kislar agaci_, 'the captain of the girls.'

"This giant spectre of a man ... advanced toward me, made his salaam, and ushered me, the _hated_, despised Giaour, into the noble marble hall of the harem, which was then for the first time polluted by the footsteps of the unbeliever. The scene around me was so singular and strange that I paused to contemplate it. The hall was of vast dimensions, supported by beautiful porphyry pillars, and the marble floor was covered with fine matting. I was now handed over to the lady superintendent of the slaves, a very wealthy woman, about twenty-four years of age, with fine dark-blue eyes, aquiline nose, large mouth, and of middle stature.

"She was attired in a colored muslin dress and trousers, over which she wore a quilted lavender-colored satin paletot. Her head was covered with a small blue gauze handkerchief tied round it, and in the centre of the forehead, tucked up under it, a lovely natural dark-red rose. She wore a beautiful large spray of diamonds arranged in the form of the flower 'forget-me-not,' which hung down like three tendrils below her ear on the left side. Large diamond drops were suspended from her ears, and her fingers were covered with numerous rings, the most brilliant of which were a large rose-pink diamond and a beautiful sapphire. {410} Her feet were encased in white cotton stockings, and patent-leather Parisian shoes. Her name was Anina: she had been formerly an Ikbal 'favorite.' ... The lady superintendent now took me by the hand, led me up two flights of stairs covered with thick, rich Brussels carpet of a most costly description, and as soft and brilliant in colors as the dewy moss of Virginia Water. The walls were plain. Then we passed through a suite of several rooms, elegantly carpeted, in all of which stood long divans; some of which were covered, with white, and others with yellow and crimson satin. Over the doorways hung white satin damask curtains, looped up with silk cords and tassels to correspond, with richly gilded cornices over each. ... Against the walls were fixed numerous silver chandeliers, each containing six wax candles, with frosted colored glass shades made in the form of tulips over them. On each side of the room large mirrors were fixed in the wall, each of which rested on a marble-topped console table supported by gilded legs. The only other articles of furniture that were scattered about the apartments were a dozen common English cane-bottom _Kursi_-chairs."

She is next conducted further on to some dormitories, where bedsteads are wanting, being an article of furniture unused by the Gypsies. Against the walls were piled up beds in heaps, covered over with a red silk coverlet. On the divan was placed a silver tray--both toilet-tables and wash-hand-stands being unheard-of comforts--containing the princesses' toilet requisites. In her general inspection the governess is led to the apartments of the Princess Epouse, the mother of the little boy for whom Mrs. Lott is engaged. This princess is dressed--but let dame Emeline describe the scene, as only a lady can do it:

"The Princess Epouse, attired in a dirty, crumpled, light-colored muslin dress and trousers, sat _à la Turque_, doubled up like a clasp-knife, without shoes or stockings, smoking a cigarette. ... Her feet were encased in _babouches_, 'slippers without heels.' ... In front of the divan, behind and on each side of me, stood a bevy of the ladies of the harem, assuredly not the types of Tom Moore's 'Peris of the East,' as described in such glowing colors in his far-famed _Lalla Rookh_, for I failed to discover the slightest trace of loveliness in any of them. On the contrary, most of their countenances were pale as ashes, exceedingly disagreeable, flat and globular in figure; in short, so rotund, that they gave me the idea of large full moons; nearly all were _passé_. Their photographs were as hideous and hag-like as the witches in the opening scene in Macbeth, which is not to be wondered at, as some of them had been the favorites of Ibrahim Pasha. ... Some wore white linen dresses and trousers. Their hair and finger-nails were dyed with _henna_. ... They had handsome gold watches ... suspended from their necks by thick, massive gold chains. Their fingers were covered with a profusion of diamond, emerald, and ruby rings; in their ears were ear-rings of various precious stones, all set in the old antique style of silver. ... Behind stood half-a-dozen of white slaves, chiefly Circassians."

The mother leaves a favorable impression on the mind of the governess, who, being finally dismissed from the interview, pursues her explorations and makes a great discovery neither complimentary to the princess nor cleanly, where water is abundant, but where ablutions seem to be abnormal; for it is written in her journal that

"Thence we passed along a stone passage which leads to her highness's bath-room. ... The marble bath is both long and wide, with taps for hot and cold water. The water actually boils into which their highnesses enter. This only occurs when they have visited the viceroy, and not daily, or even at any other time. The bath of the poets is a myth."

The governess at last reaches her own chamber, where she is destined to sleep and seclude herself in her leisure hours. The prospect at first is not inviting, nor does a second view afford more encouragement; an evident sense of disappointment, if not of dismay, is experienced; and thus she pours forth her vexation:

{411}

"On the right-hand side of the first room was the small bed-room which was assigned to me as my apartment. It was carpeted, having a divan covered with green and red striped worsted damask, which stood underneath the window, which commanded a fine _coup-d'ceil_ of the gardens attached to the palace of the viceroy's pavilion. The hangings of the double doors and windows were of the same material. The furniture consisted of a plain green painted iron bedstead, the bars of which had never been fastened, and pieces of wood, like the handles of brooms, and an iron bar, were placed across to support the two thin cotton mattresses laid upon it. There were neither pillows, bolsters, nor bed linen, but as substitutes were placed three thin flat cushions; not a blanket, but two old worn-out wadded coverlets lay upon the bed. Not the sign of a dressing-table or a chair of any description, and a total absence of all the appendages necessary for a lady's bed-room; not even--"

Well, well, Mrs. Lott, the "not even" was, in your civilized opinion, certainly very odd to be sure. But don't mind trifles; let it be forgotten; let us ramble elsewhere. You were saying just now something about four broad steps; go on; that's right.

"Four broad steps led down into the garden, close to a plain white marble-columned gate, on the top of which stood out in bold relief the statues of two huge life-sized lions. ... Here and there were scattered rose-trees, the brilliancy of whose variegated colors and the perfumes of their flowers were delightfully refreshing; geraniums of almost every hue; jessamines, whose large white and yellow blossoms were thrice the size of those of England, and a variety of indigenous and eastern plants, shrubs, and flowers, which were so thickly studded about that they rendered the view extremely picturesque, and perfumed the air, grateful to the senses. Verbena trees, as large as ordinary fruit-trees; other plants bearing large yellow flowers, as big as tea-cups, with most curious leaves; cactuses, and a complete galaxy of botanical curiosities, whose names the genius of a Paxton would be perhaps puzzled to disclose, ornamented those Elysian grounds."

This is only one sketch of only one spot in the many gorgeous and luxurious localities. Space forbids copying more; but the book states:

"Leaving these neglected scenes of amusement, we proceed along a path to the right, through a superb marble-paved hall, the ceiling of which is in fresco and gold. It is supported by twenty-eight plain pink-colored marble columns, surmounted by richly-gilded Indian wheat, the leaves of which hang down most gracefully, on each side of which, and also above ... are some very handsome lofty rooms, the ceilings of which are also in fresco, with superb gilded panels. ...

"The grounds of Frogmore, the Crystal Palace, St. Cloud, Versailles, the Duke of Devonshire's far-famed Chatsworth, and our national pride, Kensington Gardens and Windsor Home Park, exquisite, beautiful, and rural as they are ... all lack the brilliant display of exotics which thrive here in such luxuriance. The groves of orange-trees, the myrtle hedges, the beautiful sheets of water, the spotless marble kiosks, the artistic statuary, are all so masterly blended together with such exquisite taste, that these gardens ... completely outvie them."

The princesses were sometimes as highly adorned as the halls of marbles and frescoes, and as ornamental as the gardens of blooming exotics. On the festival of the Great Bairam, or on state occasions, when lady visitors made formal calls to compare complexions and cashmeres, their highnesses are spoken of with the highest delight:

"They wore the most costly silks, richest satins, and softest velvets; adorned themselves with the treasures of their jewel caskets, so that their persons were one blaze of precious stones. That crescent of females (for they always ranged themselves in the form of the Turkish symbol) was then a parterre of diamonds, amethysts, topazes, turquoises, chrysoberyls, sapphires, jaspers, opals, agates, emeralds, corals, rich carbuncles, and rubies. In short, the profusion of diamonds with which the latter adorned their persons from day to day became so sickening to me that my eyes were weary at the sight of those magnificent baubles, to which all women are so passionately attached."

{412}

But weary as were her British eyes, still she gazed in rapture when the darling gems were on exhibition; moreover, in the journal the impressions were faithfully recorded. On another occasion, when some princesses were coming,

"The Princess Epouse, the mother of my prince, was attired in a rich, blue-figured silk robe, trimmed with white lace and silver thread, with a long train; full trousers of the same material, high-heeled embroidered satin shoes to match the dress. On her head she had a small white crape handkerchief, elegantly embroidered with blue silk and silver, and round it placed a tiara of May blossoms in diamonds. She wore a necklace to correspond, having large sapphire drops hanging down the neck. Her arms were ornamented with three bracelets, composed of diamonds and sapphires, and an amulet entirely of sapphires of almost priceless value. ... At times my eyes, when looking at the Peris arrayed in all their gems, have become as dim as if I had been fixing them on the noonday sun."

What young lady of an enterprising turn of mind would not be willing, after reading these glowing descriptions, to pack up her Saratoga trunks, to engage the Adams Express Company, and to charter the Cunard line of steamers, to aid her on to a glorious future near the base of the pyramids? Certainly not one of the ambitious and strong-minded. But they need not ask the English governess to go with them. She has been there; she will respectfully decline going again--not she, as Shakespeare's other old lady in Henry the VIII. exclaims, "not for all the mud in Egypt." For another part of the story remains to be told; another side of the picture to be presented; and dame Emeline tells it truthfully, she paints it lifelike; the rose is beautiful, but beware the serpent under it.

Mrs. Lott is apparently a gentlewoman, refined, accomplished, intellectual, with an appreciation of the difference between civilized society and barbarism. But in the vice-regal harem, education was not to be found; ignorance was universal, superstition reigned supreme. None could read, or write, or sketch, or converse on a rational subject. No one could sing or perform on a musical instrument; none cared for to-morrow or for a hereafter. Their daily routine had all the monotony of the desert with its burning sands, destitute of variety in incident or shade of change; it was equally unproductive and utterly worthless. They had nothing to expect with pleasing anticipation; they had nothing to remember with delight. Physically, morally, mentally they were unclean and debased. Their passions, when aroused, were ungovernable; their greatest joy was revenge upon a rival; and their revenge was deadly, by suffocation or submersion, poison or the bow-string. Their amusements were all sensual; their weary hours of listless idleness were passed in indulgence of some enervating vice alike deleterious to health, comfort, and color.

The servants were steeped in only a lower depth of dirt and depravity. The princesses had the power of life and death over them, and it was a power often exercised; they would put them to the torture for a trivial fault, the breaking of a plate or the falling of a cup; and cheeks and arms seamed with parallel rows of the red-hot iron, attested how often and how unmercifully cruel had been their punishment. The food of the menials was not prepared for them, nor given to them; but they purloined by stealth from the dishes on their way to the princesses' apartments; and after their repast was ended, the refuse of chicken and pigeon bones, of mutton, of soup, of rice, of vegetables, and the rinds of fruit were tossed into a basket in one loathing mess, mixed up, around which the servants flocked like carrion birds, and, squatting on the floor, inserted ravenously their reeking hands to pick out disgusting morsels with their dripping, unwashed fingers.

{413}

The laundry did not require much water; for the volume informs us,

"Those who performed the duties of washerwomen were occupied daily in their avocation, except on the Sabbath, (Fridays.) But that was not very laborious work, since neither bed, table, nor chamber linen are used. Thus they were engaged until twelve, when their highnesses partook of their breakfast separately. It was served up on a large green-lackered tray, _minus_ table-cloth, knives and forks, but with a large ivory tablespoon, having a handsome coral handle, the evident emblem of their rank as princesses. It was placed upon the _soofra_, a low kind of stool, covered with a handsome silk cloth. The repast occupied about twenty minutes. Then pipes, in which are placed small pills of opium, or more often cigarettes and coffee, were handed to them, and each princess retired to her own apartment. Thus they became confirmed opium-smokers, which produced a kind of intoxication." ...

Their common indulgence in opium, with a profuse supply of European wines and Schiedam gin, produced its natural results, and is thus depicted:

"Oftentimes after the princesses had been indulging too freely in that habit to which they had became slaves, their countenances would assume most hideous aspects; their eyes glared, their eyebrows were knit closely together; no one dared to approach them. In fact, they had all the appearance of mad creatures, while at other times they were gay and cheerful.

"They only combed their hair (which was full of vermin) once a week, on Thursdays, the eve of their Sabbath, (Friday, _Djouma_;) when it was well combed with a large small-tooth comb; and pardon me, but 'murder will out,' the members of the vermin family which were removed from it were legion. It was afterward well brushed with a hard hair-brush, well damped with strong perfumed water. Their highnesses never wore stockings in the morning, nor did they change any of their attire till afternoon."

When the summer heats set in, the harem was transferred to the coast at Alexandria, to inhale the fresh breezes from the sea. The preparation for flight was attended with some rich scenes and ludicrous exhibitions. But their transit on the railroad, boxed up like pigs or poultry on a cattle-train, is indescribable in a decent print. The prelude to the trip will bear repeating; it is an amusing contrast with the festal robes on the day of the Great Bairam; the cutaneous sensation it excites is the penalty to pay for the knowledge imparted; the company is right regal.

"As soon as orders had been given to the grand eunuch to hasten the departure of the vice-regal family to Alexandria, ... there was bustle all day long. One morning when I returned from the gardens, ... I entered the grand pasha's reception-room; ... there were their highnesses, the princesses, squatted on the carpet amidst a whole pile of trunks. They were all attired in filthy, dirty, crumpled muslins, shoeless and stockingless; their trousers were tucked up above their knees, the sleeves of their paletots pinned up above their elbows, their hair hanging loose above their shoulders, as rough as a badger's back, totally uncombed, without nets or handkerchiefs, but, pardon me, literally swarming with vermin! No Russian peasants could possibly have been more infested with live animals. In short, their _tout ensemble_ was even more untidy than that of washerwomen at their tubs; nay, almost akin to Billingsgate fisherwomen _at home_; for their conversation in their own vernacular was equally as low. They all swore in Arabic at the slaves most lustily, banged them about right and left with any missile, whether light or heavy, which came within their reach."

At last the governess lost her health. The food was too unsuitable for a Christian woman, and the atmosphere, redolent of the overpowering rich perfumes of the gardens mingled with sickening, stupefying opium smell and smoke, along with other odors, almost intolerable. After visiting Constantinople with the harem, she threw up her engagement and returned to England.

This abasement of woman is not to be wondered at; for wherever the Christian idea of marriage is lost or subverted, woman becomes the mere object of passion, and degradation is sure to follow.

{414}

Translated From Etudes Religieuses, Etc., Par Des Peres De La Compagnie De Jesus.

The Flight Of Spiders.

A Paper Read Before The French Academy Of Science, March, 1867.

About fifteen years ago, I was sitting in an arbor of my garden, reading, when a little spider fell on my book, whence I could not tell, and commenced to run over the very line I was reading. I blew hard to chase him away, but he would not go. He lifted himself strangely up, and I cannot explain how, but he lodged on a sprig of verdure just above my head. "Well," said I, "for a little animal like that, this is a wonderful feat! How has he accomplished it?" To satisfy myself, I took him up again, balanced him on my book, and, after assuring myself that he had no invisible thread to aid him, I blew again, and again the little fellow did the very same thing. With redoubled curiosity, I tried him once more, and, to see better, I sat down in the bright sunlight. Again I balanced him on the book, looked at him as closely as possible, and, when I felt assured no precaution could have escaped me, I blew once more. ... Resuming the same inclined position, the spider as quick as lightning darted the finest possible thread out of him, raised himself in the air, and disappeared.

I confess I was stupefied. Never had I imagined these little animals could fly without wings; so I consulted several works on zoology, but I was astonished to find there was no mention made of the flight of spiders, nor of the ejaculatory movement of which I had witnessed so curious an example. [Footnote 96]

[Footnote 96: In M. Eugène Simon's _Natural History of Spiders_, the most recent work of the kind, he says, speaking of the manner in which _l'épéire diadème_ constructs its web: "Several authors suppose that the spider darts its thread like an arrow, others imagine it throws it upward in the air while flying as a fly would; but neither of these explanations rests on observation, and they are, after all, simple hypotheses." Then, describing his own observation as to how a spider acts to make fast its great threads, he says, "It seems to take a horizontal position, and moves contrary to the wind." M. Simon's work gives us nothing else to lead us to suppose he has observed the wonders spoken of.--Tr.]

So there was a new question presented to me, and my vocation to study the habits of these little animals--which hitherto had given me no concern--decided for me. I immediately lost all repugnance, all distaste, and threw away all the unjust precautions of which the spider is too often the object, and of which I was as culpable as any one else. And from that time I welcomed its appearance; was most happy to meet with it, looked for it, indeed, and studied its habits almost with _furor_. And I can say that, thanks to this hearty preoccupation, which never left me, I found every opportunity to follow my inclination, and knew where to find spiders in all sorts of unheard-of places.

Such are the singular effects of curiosity once excited, and still another proof that, in order to study nature well, we need only a mysterious glimpse of the unknown to redouble all our energies to explain it thoroughly.

And as in this study, trifling as it may appear, I seem to have met with facts not known hitherto, but which deserve to be understood, I here resume the principal ones: those that treat of the flying of spiders; of the habitation of some species in the air; and of the gossamer or air threads--a singular phenomenon, for a long time discussed in vain, but which I believe I have definitively solved. {415} I only ask the naturalists to judge one fairly, not by theory, but by facts. And I am persuaded, if they will take the pains to verify what I advance, they will find me exact; and, if they begin doubtingly, I hope, after they have read my observations, they will conclude as others to whom I have communicated them. Mocking and incredulous at first, they have ended by believing their own eyes, and testifying to the evidence presented to them. May my labor prove useful, and, above all, contribute to the glory of the great God, whose just title is, _Magnus in magnis, maximus in minimis_.

I.

Threads Thrown Out By Spiders.

The first thing that I perceived, and that put me on the track of the rest, was, as I have just said, that the greater part of _aranéides_, especially certain varieties of _thomises lycoses_, etc., besides the thread that they always draw with them, have the power of darting one or more of extraordinary length, and of which they make use to accomplish distances, to fasten their webs from one point to another, and even, as we shall see further on, to raise themselves in the air and there to seek their prey. The spider always points his abdomen to the side where he wishes to go. The thread shoots like an arrow, fastens itself by the end to the place destined, and the spider passes as under a suspended bridge. If this thread is cut, it is immediately replaced by another; and the ejaculation is so prompt, so rapid, the thread so straight, so tenuous, so brilliant, that it might be taken, if I may so express myself, for the jet of an imperceptible ray of light. To perceive this clearly, the spider must be held on a level with the eyes, which should be shaded, and examined with one's back to the sun.

The best time for such an observation is in the morning or evening, when the sun is low in the horizon and the temperature is mild; for without this latter condition the torpid spider is more inclined to creep along the earth than to throw out new threads.

Sometimes, to excite them, they may be held by their ordinary thread and gently shaken or blown upon--just a few puffs of breath--which they detest.

I have thus been able to scan closely, while watching their development, this instantaneous jet of thread, which could not be less than five or six yards long, that is, fifteen hundred or two thousand times the length of the spider. What a tremendous apparatus must be necessary to these little animals for so rapid an ejaculation, and one so disproportioned to their size! And especially if we consider that this thread, inasmuch as it adheres to the animal, has not the appearance of an independent organ, but seems solely to obey its will. Thus I have seen spiders, who seemed to miss the end desired with the first stroke, continue to hold the thread in the same direction, and actually _palpitate_, if I may so say, while striving to make it adhere.

But a truly interesting sight, and one obtained at a very trifling expense, is that which the _thomises bufo_ offer, described by Walckenaer, in the first volume of his _History of Insects_, page 506. In truth, these araneides do not only throw out one thread, but an entire bundle of them, and are seemingly guided by the smaller threads, just as a peacock unfolds by degrees his splendid plumage.

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And even in one's own room this sight may be enjoyed. It is only necessary to collect these _thomises_ and keep them in separate boxes, and nourish them in winter with one fly or so a month. Then take the boxes out, put them on a table in a very warm room, and sit a little in the shade and watch them. Very soon from each box will appear a multitude of threads, of extreme freshness and fineness, which the spider throws into the air with inexhaustible profusion. At certain seasons of the year we can enjoy this spectacle again, and at even less expense.

II.

Flight Of Spiders.

Another property not less remarkable that these araneides possess (_thomises bufo, lycoces voraces_, etc.) is that of flying; that is to say, of elevating themselves in the air, there sustaining themselves, and travelling about horizontally and vertically, with or without a thread; in a word, acting exactly as if in their own element. This fact I have witnessed a thousand times, and it has been certified to by a great number of people, who, at first incredulous, and alarmed for the laws of gravitation, were compelled to confess the reiterated testimony of their own eyes.

I had some pupils under my charge, and to them this study became a continued source of amusement. During their recreation, they found suitable spiders for me, and, when they brought them to me, I rested them on my fingers and made them mount upward in the air; and invariably, after having watched them for some moments, they were entirely lost to sight. But when I made the discovery--of which I will speak later--of the general migration which some species make yearly toward certain regions of the atmosphere, I had no longer any trouble to enjoy this performance to my heart's content.

The flight of spiders is sometimes very rapid, particularly when they start. They often escape from one's hands while they are carefully watched. This happened to me one day with a _voracious lycose_ that I had for a long time importuned without success. Just as I was going to give him up as entirely stupefied, he suddenly escaped from me by a lateral movement, so rapid that for a moment I lost sight of him; but, when I found him a moment afterward, he was suspended quietly in the air. I also remarked that he set out without throwing any thread, and this was not the only time I made the same observation. I was experimenting one day with some amateurs in the interior court of the college where I live, and, having started a _lycose_, we saw him occupy himself at first with the neighboring galleries, running up and down for about twenty yards, about a tenth of a yard from the arch, against which he knocked himself from time to time, and groped about to look for a passage; not finding one, he threw himself back into the court, raised perpendicularly, and disappeared toward the clouds. His thread, if he had one, could not have been longer than a tenth of a yard. Ordinarily, however, before they ascend, they throw out a thread which they follow for a short time; then, arriving at a certain height, they break it, in order to navigate more easily. If any is left before them, they wind it rapidly with their feet, throw it aside, and form those pretty little crowns of white silk in form of _cracknels_, that we often see flying in the air in time of gossamers. Again, they balance themselves quietly with a thread which rises perpendicularly above them, and gives them the appearance of floating.

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But a peculiarity still more remarkable in the flight of spiders is the attitude that they take in flying. They generally swim _backward_, that is to say, the back turned from the earth, the feet folded on the corselet, and perfectly immovable. How can such a flight be explained, for they are already heavier than the air? Plunged into alcohol, they sink quickly; but in the air they seem to possess an ease, a liberty, a facility of transport, so admirable that I have never been able to see in them the slightest motion, nor even an apparent increase of weight. Does not this fact present an interesting question for the skilful to contemplate?

III.

How Long They Can Remain In The Atmosphere?

At this portion of my history I have to relate facts the most curious and unexpected; and, unfortunately for me, more true than probable. I acknowledge I was loath to publish them, or assume concerning them any responsibility. But I was firmly convinced, and therefore hoped to be believed, especially by this generation of fearless naturalists, who are astonished at nothing in nature, and who, having often been surprised in the relation of almost incredible marvels, must certainly make allowances for a few more in another quarter.

Let us look at, for instance, the wonderful things related of the _argyronete_, or aquatic spider. [Footnote 97]

[Footnote 97: The _argyronete_ is a spider that lives in the water where she constructs a charming little edifice that appears surrounded with a silky mortar. The down that covers her contains a certain quantity of air for respiration. This gives her in swimming the appearance of a ball of quicksilver, from which we have her name.]

I could not tell anything more unlikely, so I will only exact for the atmosphere a companion to what the Père de Lignac discovered in the last century for the water. Yes, I pretend there are spiders that live in the air as well as those living in water, and that every year, from the earliest days of spring, there is, unknown to us, a general migration of spiders toward the atmosphere, where they pass their best season, form their nets, chase their prey, and only return to earth in the first fogs of autumn to find their quarters for the winter. I add, also, that this ascent and descent give rise to the curious phenomenon, still so badly explained, of the gossamer. And as it was to the study of this phenomenon that I owe my knowledge of the rest, may I be permitted here, by way of demonstration, to relate briefly the path I have followed and the proofs which have led to the conviction I express?

Attracted, as I was, by all that concerns spiders, I could not remain indifferent to a fact so important and interesting as the periodical apparition of those threads which in spring and autumn we see flying about in long white skeins, clinging to trees, to hedges, and to the vestments of the passers-by, carpeting the country in a few hours with more silk, and finer and whiter, than could be spun in a year by all the reels in the world. Admirable netting, glistening in the light of the setting sun, and reflecting the sweetest, softest tints of gold, vermilion, and emerald, and receiving the pretty and poetical name of "_fils de la Vierge_." Was there not between this phenomenon and my preceding observations a secret tie, some mysterious relation? I seemed to foresee it, and, setting to work immediately, rejected from the very beginning the usual explanation of this phenomenon.

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How, indeed, can we admit these floating gossamers as merely the refuge webs of spiders, torn by the violence of the wind from the trees and forests and carried capriciously through the air? Will not the slightest observation convince us that they never appear but in the calmest moments, on days foggy in the morning, but afterward beautiful, and not preceding a storm; never in summer, often in the spring and autumn, and sometimes even in winter? If the winds carry them, why do they not appear in summer? Are violent winds and spider-webs both wanting? And who has ever seen one of these webs carried by a hurricane, especially in quantity sufficient to produce such a phenomenon? For the fall of gossamers sometimes lasts for almost entire days, and in certain countries during the middle of the day the fields are covered with them. Add, too, that violent winds are generally local, while this phenomenon is universal, and so periodical that in the same climates it appears at the same epochs, and, when one knows what produces it, it is easy to predict the time and day of the apparition.

Discontented, then, on this point with books and their explanations, I turn completely to the side of nature, and present all I observed.

From the first appearance of these threads in autumn, I was struck with the immense multitudes of new spiders met with everywhere, and which I had not seen during the summer. Little brown _lycoses_ filled the air, so that it seemed as if it had rained them. If one walked in the fields, the meadows, the gardens, on the borders of the woods, among heaps of dried leaves, scattered all through the forest everywhere, could be seen myriads of these little brown spiders, jumping up and flying before me in every direction, and exactly such as I had already recognized as such excellent swimmers. After having passed the winter in the earth, in the holes of worms that they completed with a little silk, they reappeared after the cold in great numbers, to disappear again entirely in the first bright days of spring, and as if by enchantment. If one is seen again during the summer, we may be sure it is some female retarded by laying her eggs, and dragging laboriously her cocoon after her. Now, what has become of the others?

For several months I could not satisfy myself on this point, when, on the 21 St of October, 1856, in the enclosure of the little seminary of Iseure, near Moulins, I came to a positive decision, I was observing the fall of a large quantity of gossamers, which were falling on that day in large white flakes, when I perceived close to me in the air one of those little black spiders descending gradually, and as if she were jumping. She held by an invisible thread to a large flake, which came down slowly about seven or eight yards above her; but, keeping outside of it, she hung by the end of the long thread, like an aeronaut underneath his balloon. My attention once attracted, I noticed so great a number that I was astonished I had not taken care sooner; for there was scarcely a flake underneath which there were not one or two, and this sometimes even before the flake itself was visible. [Footnote 98]

[Footnote 98: There is an observation which confirms my own. We read in _Darwin's Journal_, page 159: "Mr. Darwin saw a large number of gossamers on the ship Beagle, when she was about 60 miles from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. It was the first of November, and these gossamers were carried by a very light breeze, and on each were found an immense number of little spiders, similar in appearance, about the twelfth of an inch in length, and in color a deep brown. The smallest were a deeper shade than the others. None were found on the white tufts, but all on threads." _Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage of his Majesty's Ship, the Beagle,_ 1845.]

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Each one was separated by a slender thread, and followed the motion of its balloon. If they met a tree or a bush, they landed upon it; if not, coming close to the earth, they ran along and were lost in the verdure. If I approached them too quickly or made a noise, they remounted rapidly by their threads and went to disembark somewhere else.

I also examined some of the flakes. They were all shining white mats, appearing as if they had been washed. Several contained wings and feet of flies, fragments of the case of little coleoptera, and other remnants of their aerial festivities.

This encounter was for me a revelation. I knew where the spiders, whom I had seen disappear so brusquely, took refuge, and, however rash my judgment may appear, I felt assured I had solved an interesting problem.

But to establish seriously and give to science an opinion so new and original as that the atmosphere may be peopled with spiders, I soon felt that more proof was necessary in order to sit down calmly under my personal conviction. So I concluded I should not be doing too much if I added to the verification of their descent that of their ascension, and could surprise them in this new migration. I waited, therefore, impatiently for the spring.

But that spring, and for five or six that followed it, great was my disappointment; for, though I perceived several isolated ascensions, yet nothing in the proportion I had imagined or that could justify my hypothesis. I began then to doubt seriously my success, when an incident occurred that relieved my embarrassment, and proved how trifling sometimes are the causes which lift the veil from nature. I was looking straight upward, but sitting close to the earth, and so as to be able as much as possible to exclude the sun from my eyes. And here, by the way, a fact is made palpable, by no means microscopic, but which has escaped so long not merely the observation of the crowd of vulgar observers, but of those even who are wide awake and study carefully; namely, that it is not necessary to carry one's nose always in the air, if I may so express myself, to examine closely, to investigate, or to render a faithful account of phenomena.

On looking upward--as an ascension only takes place on very beautiful days, succeeding generally to bad weather--spiders cannot be distinguished from the multitude of other insects which fill the air. But if, on a beautiful day, mild, calm, and brilliant in sunlight, succeeding as nearly as possible to a rain warm with the south wind, at about nine or ten o'clock in the morning, a post is chosen on an eminence of a meadow or an avenue, and there, as near the ground as may be, and crouching low, the observer will look horizontally, he will perceive a series of fire-works, formed of innumerable threads launched from every direction and inclined toward the sky. This is the prelude. Soon the spiders detach themselves and mount slowly by their threads. The most conspicuous are the _thomises bufo_, because they are the largest, and because they only ascend with an entire bundle of threads, which gives them the appearance of small comets.

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Thus have I decided

1st. That there is not only one ascension every year, but several, at least partial ones; that they do not always take place in spring, but often in the autumn, and sometimes even in the winter; and in general, from the descent which has taken place in the beginning of autumn until the definitive ascension in the spring, there are but few favorable days of which the spiders do not profit to make an aerial journey, or at least to throw out a large number of threads. Thus, in the Beaujolais, where I have lived for several years, there were partial ascensions on the 1st, the 19th, and the 28th of November, 1864; the 21st, the 23d, and especially the 25th of October, the 9th of November, and the 6th of December, 1865. In 1866, the 18th and the 30th of January, the 3d of February, the 3d, 14th, and 31st of October, and the 17th of December. In 1867, the 10th of February, ... the last, however, less considerable than might have been predicted by the beauty of the day. The day previous was so mild, though cloudy, that many of the spiders may have embarked _incognito_. Many, also, may not have judged it _a propos_ to fly away, for a great number still remained on the ground. I forgot to observe the temperature of all the days I have noted. The director of the Normal School of Villefranche having had the kindness to show me the meteorological register which he had kept with great care, I was able to prove that in calm weather only ten or twelve degrees of heat were necessary to induce them to mount upward. The least exposed begin; then immediately the others, so soon as the heat reaches them; but after three or four o'clock in the afternoon no more ascensions are perceived, unless they are provoked; and this does not always succeed,

2d. Before taking their flight, they generally cling to some elevated object that they meet with easily, such as shrubs, bushes, props of vines, or blades of grass escaped from the scythe. To these they affix their threads and warm themselves well in the sun before commencing their excursion. This is the happy moment for amateurs to make their observations, for there is scarcely a blade of grass that does not contain one or more; and, if the branches of young trees are suddenly struck with a slight blow, a great number are detached, suspended at the end of their threads; and very often rare specimens are thus found not discoverable elsewhere.

IV.

To What Height Do They Raise Themselves in the Atmosphere?

On this point I have not been able to make any direct observation. Perhaps I have dreamed of offering objections to the concourse of intrepid human navigators who undertake such perilous excursions in the air, and for my interest in the study I have found two excellent reasons. The first, that it would be well for them to know that, if they have not had rivals, they have had precursors, who, for 6000 years, have executed silently and noiselessly what they have claimed for themselves by every effort of puffs and publicity. The second, and a still more serious objection and that I believe will truly interest the future in this young industry, is that if the argyronete and its bell has given to science the instrument with which the divers explore the depths of the sea, why may not the study of aerial spiders furnish for aeronauts--these divers in air--the complete apparatus which they require to raise themselves to any height, direct their movements, and maintain themselves at will? Have not these little animals resolved this problem for centuries? Yet the present state of aerostation does not afford ground sufficient for comparison.

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We are, therefore, reduced to conjecture; and, if I may be permitted to express mine, this is what I think:

I believe that spiders rise to the same height where on the fine days of summer one can see the swallows and martins hover, almost lost to sight, in pursuit of gnats that people these regions of the atmosphere. I found this belief on the webs of spiders seen falling in autumn, that seem to come at least from nearly such heights. They begin to be seen at a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards, and there is no great temerity in affirming that they have already traversed a good part of their course. An observation made in 1864, if conclusive, would tend to make remoter still the habitation of spiders; for the fog that determined the fall that year was a _high_ fog, that is to say, one of those uniform mists that hide the sky for several days together, and seem to extend to a great height. But, I repeat, this is all conjecture. One good observation would have been worth far more.'

V.

Conjectures On The Mode Of Building Of Spiders In The Air.

Perhaps here I should stop, and, having stated facts, leave to others their explanation. How do spiders sustain themselves in the air? How can they so long brave the winds, the rains, the storms; arrange their webs in emptiness and without apparent means of support? Prudence counsels me to avoid these questions, but my _rôle_ of simple observer permits them. However, in waiting for better things, I decide still to hazard some conjectures, were it only to prove that a fact once admitted, it would not be absolutely impossible for the wisest to explain it.

The first idea that came to me was that these spider-webs raise themselves in the air as the kites of children, and, made fast to the tops of trees and edifices by long threads, they are sustained by their own lightness. This idea was suggested to me by a sight I was witness to one day at the Seminary of Vals, near Le Puy. From a corner where I was in shadow, I perceived distinctly on each high ridge of the roof, lightened by the rays of the sun, long threads which rose perpendicularly in the air, like large cords, balancing themselves slowly right and left, without ever going out of a certain field of oscillation. But I soon gave up this idea. How admit, in truth, that on two or three threads, and without any other means of support, spiders could weave their true webs? Would not some of these aerial constructions tumble down every day, ruined by their own weight? while it is acknowledged they only fall in autumn, and always together.

I therefore rather incline to believe that the spiders are sustained in the air by the distention of an interior vesicle, analogous to that of fish, and that they ejaculate by their threads, which are numerous, and pierced with an infinity of little tubes, large bundles of threads, by which are taken the insects that serve for their prey; that they resist the winds as fish do the tossing of the sea, and their threads, being glutinous, are not dampened by the rain; and also being excellent conductors of caloric, as is proved by the abundant drops of dew which they pearl near the earth, on the hedges, etc.; and if after a calm night they are touched by an autumn fog, these heavy and moistened threads weaken and fall one over the other, and form the silky flakes that are seen from ten to eleven o'clock in the morning, flying about in cloudy days with the spiders who inhabited them during the summer. {422} This, hoping for better, is the explanation I hazard, and I submit it with the rest to the appreciation of competent men. If only these pages attract attention to a merited subject, and provoke numerous observations, which alone can ever fully elucidate it, the author will be more than repaid for the few researches he has presented in this article.

Translated From The "Revue Du Monde Catholique."

John Tauler.

By Ernest Hello.

History has an astonishing memory. She records the day and hour of battles with exact fidelity. She knows a thousand things. She has recently discovered, if I do not mistake, the name of Julian the Apostate's cook. She remembers everything of little importance. The names of celebrated mistresses who have amused or poisoned renowned personages, are transmitted from age to age. Erudition has been making strides during the last hundred years, as if she had seven-leagued boots. To deserve the admiration and gratitude of mankind, however, she should not have degraded herself, but taken a higher sphere in her progress. Her memory indicates greatness of genius; but she is like calumny, she increases in size as she advances through the centuries. In her labors, researches, and exploits, she has been mostly busied with soldiers, and frequently forgotten God and man. She could not think of everything at once; the hidden history of humanity is yet to be written; the greatest events of the world are secret to this very day; and those who reflect on them are men of a special caste.

If there were question of the battle of Marathon, or of Antony and Cleopatra, our contemporaries would be found well instructed; but do they know John Tauler, the German Tauler, of the Dominican or preaching order?

Master Tauler was a great preacher--powerful and popular. One day he gave a learned discourse, in which he taught the way of perfection, with all his characteristic assurance. To become perfect, he enumerated twenty-four conditions, which he developed before an attentive and brilliant audience. After the sermon, a layman, one of the poorest and most ignorant of his hearers, came to him. History, by one of those distractions so usual for her to have, when there is question of God, has forgotten the name of this individual. This simple layman said to Tauler:

"Master, the letter kills, and the spirit gives life; but you are a Pharisee."

Doctor Tauler: "My son, I am now old, and no one has ever spoken to me in this manner."

The Layman: "You think I speak too bluntly to you; but it is your own fault; and I can prove that what I say to you is true."

Doctor Tauler: "You will do me a favor, for I have never loved the Pharisees."

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Then the layman, probing into the doctor's mental condition, showed him that he was held captive by the mere letter of the evangelical law, and devoid of its spirit.

"You are a Pharisee," proceeded the layman, "but not a hypocritical Pharisee. You are not on the road to hell, but on that which leads to purgatory."

Doctor Tauler embraced the man, and said to him: "I feel at this moment as the Samaritan woman must have felt at the well; you have revealed to me all my faults, my son; you have told all that was most secret in my soul. Who, then, has told you? It is God; I am convinced it must be so. I entreat you, my son, by the death of our Lord, to be my spiritual father, and I, a poor sinner, will become your son."

The Layman: "Dear master, if you speak thus contrary to order and reason, I shall not remain with you any longer, but straightway return to my own house."

Doctor Tauler: "Oh! no. I beg you, in the name of God, to stay with me, and I promise not to speak thus again."

The docility of Tauler is sublime and touching. His great good will, which broke the pride of science, led him into the paths of spiritual contemplation.

"Tell me, I conjure you, in the name of God," said Tauler, "how you have succeeded in arriving at the contemplative state?"

The Layman: "You ask me a very odd question. I confess to you frankly that, if I should recount or write all the wonderful things which God has been doing to me, a poor sinner, for twelve years, there would be no book large enough to contain them."

The layman then recounted how he had been deceived in his spiritual life; how, influenced by Satan, he had practised imprudent austerities, which would have injured both his body and soul; and how, warned by God, he had returned to the paths of wisdom.

Both Tauler and the layman were then lifted up to the regions of contemplation. The unknown monitor then said: "If the God whom we worship could be comprehended by reason, he would not be worthy of our service."

But before his great illumination, Tauler suffered during two years frightful temptations. Abandoned, poor, suffering, that man of iron was shaken like a reed. The layman comes to his assistance, and sustains in his time of misery him whom he had crushed in his period of pride.

"For the first time," said the layman, "God has touched your superior faculties."

At the end of two years, the doctor again ascended the pulpit. The crowd which came to hear him was large. Tauler cast his eyes over the expectant multitude, then drew his cowl over his eyes and prayed.

The crowd awaited him; but he spoke not a word. Tears filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. Tauler wept bitterly.

What a scene! The audience become impatient. Some one asks Tauler if he will preach. Tauler continues weeping. He wept and wept; and the multitude, anxious to hear his inferior oratory, and incapable of appreciating the higher eloquence of tears, could not comprehend the doctor's conduct. At last Tauler dismissed the assembly; for his sobs choked his utterance. He asked pardon of the people for having kept them uselessly waiting; and they went home. "Now," said some of them, "we see that he has become a fool."

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But after five days' silence, Tauler preached before the friars of the convent, and he was sublime. One of the friars went to the pulpit and addressed the congregation as follows: "I am requested to make known to you that Doctor Tauler will preach here to-morrow; but if he acts as he did last time, remember not to blame me." "How will he succeed?" said one to another. "I do not know," was the answer; "God knows."

This time Tauler could control his voice, and _silence_ was his theme. He had built his eyrie in silence, as an eagle on the summit of a cliff. His language, worked out in silence, seemed to long after it; to return to its home, and die away in the high sombre clouds of complete solitude. Silence is the doctrine of Tauler; his secret, his food, his substance and his slumber. Absolutely free from all oratorical finery, his sermons go right to the mark, without respect for conventionality or the cant of ordinary discourses. He utters what he wishes to express; praises solitude, and returns into it. This is the reason why his external word takes nothing away from his interior recollection. His words do not betray his soul. Silence is the guardian angel of strength.

It was doubtless this profound doctrine of silence which gave to the eloquence of Tauler an extraordinary virtue. This man, who seemed to come out of a tomb, appeared with a thunderbolt in his hand. Fifty men, after the sermon, remained in the church as if transfixed by an invisible hand. Thirty-eight of them were able to move during the half-hour which followed; but the twelve others could not stir. Tauler said to the unknown layman, his adviser: "What shall we do with these people, my son?" The layman went from one to the other and touched them, but they were as immovable as rocks.

Tauler was frightened at the paralysis which he had caused. "Are they dead or alive?" said he to his friend. "What do you think?" "If they are dead," replied the layman, "it is your fault, and that of the Spouse of souls."

This fact, which is historical, seems like a legend.

This picture would be magnificent, if an artist should sketch it. The place where Tauler had just preached was a cemetery, and the twelve men who were lying on the ground in ecstasy resembled those who slumbered in death beneath. The orator, walking with his friend through the audience, who had become almost his victims; feeling the pulse and the face of his hearers, to detect in them after the sermon, as after a battle, some sign of life; passing through the ranks of the vanquished and healing the wounded, must have seemed something superhuman. At last the friend of Tauler found that the thunderstruck hearers breathed still, "Master," said he, "those men still live. Request the nuns of the convent to take them away from here; for this cold floor will injure them." One of the nuns, who was a listener to the fearful discourse, had to be carried to her bed, where she lay motionless.

The biography of John Tauler, which serves as prologue to his sermons, says nothing of his exterior life; but dwells specially on his unhistorical and legendary character. Those who wrote about him have not deigned even to inquire in what century he lived. This strange man has dispensed history from its ordinary inquiries, as if eternity had been the sole theatre of his terrestrial existence.

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His friends are as strange as himself. The astonishing layman, who tells his name to nobody, and gives us no means of discovering it, was not the doctor's only teacher. Another of his instructors was a beggar, just as extraordinary.

Tauler, according to Surius, petitioned God during eight years for a master capable of teaching him the truth. One day when his desire was more than usually strong, he heard a voice saying to him, "Go to the door of the church. Thou wilt find there the man whom thou seekest." He obeyed, and met at the appointed spot a beggar, whose feet were soiled with mud, and whose rags were not worth three half-pence. They began a dialogue, of which the following is a portion:

Doctor Tauler. "_Good_ day, my friend."

The Beggar. "I do not remember ever to have had a _bad_ day in my life."

Tauler. "May God grant thee prosperity."

The Beggar. "I know not what adversity is."

Tauler. "Well, may God make thee happy!"

The Beggar. "I have never been unhappy."

Urged for an explanation, the mendicant affirms that, "by means of silence, he had arrived at perfect union with God; never being able to find pleasure in anything less than God."

Tauler. "Whence comest thou?"

The Beggar. "From God."

Tauler. "Where hast thou found God?"

The Beggar. "Where I have left all creatures."

Tauler. "Where is God?"

The Beggar. "In men of good will."

Tauler. "Who art thou?"

The Beggar. "I am a king."

Tauler. "Where is thy kingdom?"

The Beggar. "In my soul."

We need often recall to our minds, in reading Tauler's life, that he was really a man of flesh and bone, an historical personage. Surius, Fathers Echard and Touron, have written his real life circumstantially. He was born in 1294. He was an Alsatian. He lived at Cologne, and died probably at Strasburg. We cannot fix the date of his death. It happened May 17th, 1361, says Father Alexander. Father Echard places it in the year 1379. Another historian, M. Sponde, puts it in 1355.

Let us now speak of his doctrine.

II.

The doctrine of Doctor Tauler is the practice of divine union. This union, transcending human thoughts and hopes, is the secret of his life and the leading principle of his work. His sermons are full of instruction regarding this union.

His _Institutions_ also teach it. Some writers hostile to Tauler pretend to have found in his writings the foreshadowing of quietism. This mistake can be refuted in three ways: by the works of Tauler, which always affirm human activity to the most contemplative soul, thus clearly separating the doctrine of the quietists from that of the German thinker. Secondly, Bossuet, whom no one will suspect of any leaning toward quietism, says of Tauler: "He is one of the most solid and exact of the mystical theologians." Thirdly, Tauler himself predicted quietism in a remarkable monograph, blaming strongly all that Molinos, Madame de Guyon, and Fenelon afterward asserted.

A close study of the Alsatian doctor shows that he always gives to both internal and external activity all the reality and all the rights which they possess.

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"If any one," says he, "ascends to such a height of contemplation as Saints Peter and Paul reached; and he perceives that a sick beggar needs his help to warm his soup, or for any other service, it would be much better for him to leave the repose of contemplation, and aid the poor man, instead of remaining in the sweetness of contemplative life." (_Institutions_, p. 195.)

Here is the plain truth and no illusion. And elsewhere he writes: "Men should not pay so much attention to what they do, as to what they are in themselves; for if the core of their heart be good, their acts will be so also without difficulty; and if their conscience be just and right, their works cannot be otherwise. Many make sanctity [to] consist in action; but action is not the chief element in it. Holiness must be judged in its principle as well as in its acts. In other words, we must be interiorly saints before we can perform exterior holy actions. No matter how good may be our works, they do not sanctify us as works. It is we, on the contrary, who make them meritorious, in virtue of inner sanctity which is their producing principle. It is in the bottom of the soul that we find the essence of a just man." (_Institutions_, p. 156.)

Here is the truth again. Collate those two passages, after having studied them separately, and you will find that they throw complete light on the nature and value of human acts.

The almost continual ecstatic state in which Tauler lived, never made him forget his smallest duties.

It has been often remarked that grace adapts itself to the natural qualities of the individual whom it sanctifies. This is as true of nations as of individuals. In Italy, asceticism has the color of the sun. Italian ascetics shout, burn with ardor, and seem full of exaggerated transports to the nations of cooler blood. The landscape of Italian asceticism presents you a burning sky, an ocean of fire, and a scorching earth. Sadness is generally wanting. In Spain, the hue is more sombre. The same ardor is there; but ardor tempered with jealousy. There is interior disquietude in Spanish mysticism, and even adoration in it examines itself as if suspicious of its truth. In Germany, profound gravity and stern austerity lead the soul into a horrible place. In Italy, images come crowding together, and divine love, instead of rejecting them, embraces them. The soul of the Italian saint holds garlands of flowers in his hands, offering them joyously to the blessed sacrament. Familiarity and adoration unite, like the two species of electricity before the thunder-clap. Familiarity, wedded to adoration, appeared in St. Francis of Assisi. The greatness of that strange man, who saw brothers and sisters in everything, and conversed with water, fire, the birds, and his monks, in the same tone and spirit, is not immediately manifest to superficial minds. Plain good nature veils his wonderful character. In Germany, those images which poetry presents to love are accepted with great precaution. Adoration is sober in thought and expression; and aspires to something sublime, whose form and name are intangible. German adoration is philosophical, meditative, broad, comprehensive, austere, silent, wrapped up in herself, and self-sufficing. She borrows only what is strictly necessary from persons and things. The world is a servant which she employs only with regret. She holds aloof from all creatures, and her words sound like concession. She says to no one, "My brother," or "My sister." If she had a brother. he would be silence. Her sister would be the mist which surrounds God.

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Tauler is one of the most majestic representatives of Teutonic asceticism.

A disciple of St. Dionysius the Areopagite and of that layman of whom we have written, in the wake of those two great characters he follows, with eye and wing of eagle, into the region of translucent darkness. He does not flutter there, he _soars_; or, if he flies, his motion is so high and rapid, that it seems like the active repose of a sublime and fruitful immobility.

Tauler seems to desire obscurity. The remarkable effects of his preaching on his audience are less like thunder pealing in his language, than like the awful presence of the sacred cloud where the thunder is reposing.

Every man is a universe in himself. Unity and variety are the two terms of the antinomy, without which there is no life. But perfection consists in equilibrium between those terms. Such perfection is very rare. In general the antinomy of life is replaced by the contradictory, which is death. Man is divided between good and evil, always attempting an impossible reconciliation between them. Contradiction is a dead force which tries to serve two masters. An antinomy is a living force which, having chosen a master, and obeying but him, desires to serve him in a thousand different ways always useful. Nothing better displays the unity of a landscape than the variety of colors which it presents to the eye at the same time. The lights and shades, the undulations of the soil, and the accidents of sun, clouds, villages, forests, and spires, all are harmonized in the eye of the spectator; and the more numerous, varied, and unexpected are the details, the more does he experience delight and a certain dilation of mind and heart in the contemplation of their unity. If he takes away some of the circumstances, he mars the effect of the whole; for he cannot even destroy a shadow without diminishing the sunshine. What is true of a landscape is also true of a book or a man. But Tauler lost the balance between unity and variety, for he gave all to one and nothing to the other. Few individuals, even among the greatest saints, have been so ardent in the sentiment, love, pursuit, and conquest of unity. He seeks after it incessantly, and it haunts him. He never seems to look at the road he is travelling. He fixes his eyes solely on the goal ever present to his soul. He turns neither to the right nor the left. He knows not whether there be flowers or thorns on the borders of his pathway. Do not ask him to imitate St. Antony of Padua, and preach to the fishes of the streams. He minds neither fishes nor birds. He seems to regard creation as a stranger, of whom he had heard tell long ago, but whose remembrance is now but faintly glimmering in his mind.

His love of unity, his call to unity, his transports for it, always take the same shape, the same key and accent; and produce in the end a certain monotony, which is not a question of doctrine, but an affair of nature and temperament.

Tauler somewhere relates the history of a hermit, from whom a troublesome visitor begged something that was lying in the cell. The hermit went in to find the required object, but forgot at the threshold what was wanted, for the image of external things could not remain in his head. He went out, therefore, and asked the visitor what he sought. The visitor repeated his petition. {428} The hermit re-entered his cell, but again forgot the request; and was at last obliged to say to his guest: "Enter and find yourself what you seek, for I cannot keep the image of what you ask for sufficiently long stamped on my brain to do what you desire."

Tauler, in narrating this story, unintentionally describes his own character. In every one of his sermons, he chooses a text and a subject. This was required by circumstances and by his audience. But the moment he enters the cell of his contemplation, he forgets text and everything else, and mounts into the realms of sublimity where he loses himself in that supreme unity after which his heart is always aspiring. The moment he begins to fly, he forgets the course he must take. With one stroke of her wings, his intellect finds her love, and then soars in her natural element, with plumes unruffled. Far above modes and forms of earth, she stretches out her broad wings in the cerulean vault of her beloved repose. If any should then ask him about some ordinary detail, he would certainly answer like the recluse above mentioned: "Enter yourself, and find what you are inquiring after. I cannot keep the image of material or minor things long enough in my mind to fulfil your request."

Tauler is continually citing Saint Dionysius the Areopagite. In fact, these two great men are at home in the same latitudes. The sermons of Tauler are to the works of the Areopagite what a treatise of applied mathematics is to one on theoretical mathematics. Tauler, like St. Dionysius, dwells in the interior of the soul, that secret and deep abode, the name of which he is ever seeking without finding, and which he ends by calling ineffable as God himself.

"It is in this recess of the soul," he preaches, "that the divine word speaks. This is why it is written, 'In the midst of silence, a secret word was spoken to me.' Concentrate then, if thou canst, all thy powers; forget all those images with which thou hast filled thy soul. The more thou forgettest creatures, the more thou wilt become fit and ready to receive that mysterious word. Oh! if thou couldst of a sudden become ignorant of all things, even of thy own life, like St. Paul, when he said, 'Was I in the body or out of the body? I know not, God knows it.'" ... "Natural animation was suspended in him, and for this reason his body lost none of its powers during the three days which he passed without eating or drinking. The same happened to Moses when he fasted forty days on the mountain, without suffering from such long abstinence, finding himself as strong at the end as at the beginning."

The desire of Tauler that his hearers should become _Christian children_, ignorant or forgetful of everything in sublime ecstasy, shows plainly the nature of his charity. He wished for them absolute perfection, contemplative and active, transfiguration, transport, exactness, total accomplishment of truth, and the plenitude of all heavenly things. The atmosphere in which he lived favored his hopes and helped the efficacy of his teaching. He declares that in the monastery when a soul is suddenly called to some interior consideration, it can leave the choir in the midst of the exercises, and plunge itself unseen into the abyss of meditation to which God draws it. He also affirms that when friars pass several days in ecstasy, they have no reason to be disturbed at any irregularity of theirs which may result from such an accident, provided they obey the rule again, when they become masters of themselves. {429} Thus the prodigious transports of true asceticism are ever strengthening; while those of false mysticism enervate the soul. Hence it is that Tauler, though he is always speaking of ravishments, never loses the character of force, and of that austerity which is the sign of God and the test of true contemplation.

"Where then does God act without a medium? In the depths, in the essence of the soul? I cannot explain; for the faculties cannot apprehend a being without an image. They cannot, for instance, conceive a horse under the species of a man. It is precisely because all images come from without to the soul, that the mystery is hidden from it; and this is a great blessing. _Ignorance plunges the soul into admiration_. She seeks to comprehend what is taking place in her; she feels that there is something; but she knows not what it is. The moment we know the cause of anything, it has no longer any charm for us. We leave it to run after some other object; always thirsting for knowledge, and never finding the rest which we seek. This knowledge, full of ignorance and obscurity, fixes our attention on the divine operations within us. 'The mysterious and hidden word' of which Solomon writes, is working in our minds." (_Sermons_.)

Many men of genius, from the beginning of the world, have studied the human soul, and many are illustrious for the profundity of their psychological researches. Yet compared to the great mystical writers, those philosophers are mere children. Merely human psychology skims over the surface of the soul, only analyzing its relations to the interior world. They are ignorant of the phenomena which take place in the secret recesses of the mind. The great light, the incarnate Word, alone can throw its rays into those abysses. It is remarkable that those who study the soul for curiosity, merely to find out, and consecrate their life to such investigations, discover very little. While those who care nothing for simple science, but who act virtuously, obey and glorify the Lord, see all things properly. Instead of aiding vision to peer into the soul's _penetralia_, curiosity dims the light. _Simplicity_ is the best torch in those catacombs. _Simplicity_, commissioned by God, penetrates into the abysses of the soul, with the audacity of a child sent by its father.

The interior and extraordinary efforts by which Tauler rose to the height of contemplation, gave him, though he knew it not, an astounding knowledge of the resistance which man makes to man and to God; of our combats, defeats, and victories; and of those artifices by which we veil from ourselves our true situation during the battle. The rounds by which the soul ascends are counted, and yet the ladder of perfection has no summit.

The gospel, so merciful to sinners, vents all its wrath on the Scribes and Pharisees. All its charity is for external enemies; all its severity for interior enemies. Jesus Christ used the whip once in his life to show men in what direction his indignation was turned. We have Magdalen and the woman taken in adultery on the one hand; the money-changers of the Temple, the Scribes and Pharisees on the other. _There is a line of fire separating sinners from the accursed_. All Catholic doctrine, all ascetical tradition, is but the echo of Christ's mercy and Christ's anger. Tauler teaches like all the great doctors, in this respect.

He reprobates exterior practices which are devoid of charity, as the works of hell, most hateful to the Holy Spirit. The fixedness of his ideas gives a singular solemnity to his repetitions. On every page his hatred of works done without interior life shows itself. {430} Such works are his abomination. In all his meditations, prayers, experiences, and contemplations, he condemns them. "This doctrine," says he, "ought to be attentively meditated by those who torment and mortify their poor flesh, plucking out the bad roots which lie hidden around the core of man's heart. My brother, what has thy body done that thou shouldst scourge it in that fashion? Those men are fools who act as if they wanted to beat their heads against the wall. Extirpate thy vices and thy bad habits, instead of tormenting thyself as thou dost." ... "There are men in the cloister and in solitude whose soul and heart are always distracted by a multiplicity of external things. There are men, on the contrary, who in public places, in the midst of a market, and surrounded by countless distractions, know so well how to keep their heart and senses recollected, that nothing can trouble their interior peace or injure their soul. These deserve the name of religious far more than the former." (_Sermons_.)

Tauler goes farther. When those men who place God in external acts remain apparently virtuous, "the Lord," says he, "turns away from them. But when, in his mercy, he allows them to fall into grievous exterior faults, then he returns to them and offers them forgiveness." Tauler is always in the sky. He never stays long on earth. "God," says he, "can unite himself to the soul simply, immediately, _and without image_. He acts in the soul by an immediate operation; he operates in the depths of the mind where no image ever penetrates, and which are accessible only to him. But no creature can do this. God, the Father, begets his Son in the soul, not by means of an image, but by a process similar to the eternal generation. Do you want to know how divine generation takes place? God the Father knows himself, and comprehends himself perfectly. He sees down to the very source of his being; and contemplates himself, not by aid of an image, but in his own essence. Thus he engenders his Son in the unity of divine nature. In this manner also the Father produces him in the essence of the soul, and unites himself to her." (_Sermons_.)

All the discourses of Tauler end by a refrain. The chorus of his song is ever divine unity. Tauler is hardly a man; he is a voice speaking in the wilderness, calling men to descend into the depths of their souls. All his doctrine may be resumed in this word, to which we must give its etymological signification: _Adieu, à Dieu_. [Footnote 99]

[Footnote 99: The point of these words is untranslatable. The sense is _adieu_ to creatures; and turn to God--_à Dieu!_--[Translator's Note.]]

New Publications.

History of Civilization in the Fifth Century. Translated, by permission, from the French of A. Frederick Ozanam, late Professor of Foreign Literature to the Faculty of Letters at Paris. By Ashley C. Glyn, B.A., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. London: W. H. Allen & Co. For sale by The Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street, New York.

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A work like this furnishes the best antidote to the poison contained in the writings of such sophists and falsifiers of history as Buckle and Draper. It substitutes genuine philosophy and history for the base metal of counterfeiters. It exhibits truthfully what Christianity--that is, the Catholic Church, which is concrete, real Christianity--has done in creating the civilization whose benefits we are now enjoying. The translator's preface furnishes so interesting a sketch of M. Ozanam's life and literary career, that we are sure of giving a great gratification to our readers by transferring the greater portion of it to our pages.

"A few words may be said as to the career of the author, Frederic Ozanam, whose name has not yet become widely known in this country. He was born August 23d, 1813, at Milan, where his father, who had fallen into poverty, was residing and studying medicine. His mother, whose maiden name had been Marie Nantas, was daughter to a rich Lyonnese merchant, and it was to that city that his parents returned in 1816. The father obtained there a considerable reputation as a doctor, and died from the effects of an accident in 1837. His son pursued his studies at Paris with great success, and was destined for the bar. He took a prominent place in the thoughtful and religious party among the students, and his published letters show how he became identified with the movement set on foot by Lacordaire and others. He was especially distinguished, however, by the foundation of an association of benevolence, called the Society of St. Vincent of Paul, which from its small beginnings in Paris spread over France, and has at the present time its conferences, composed of laymen, in all the larger towns of Europe. M. Ozanam showed, even during his student life, a leaning toward literary pursuits, and a distaste for the profession of the bar, to which he was destined; but he joined the bar of Lyons, obtained some success as an advocate, and was chosen in 1839 as the first occupant of the professional chair of Commercial Law, which had just been established in that city. The courses of lectures given by him were well attended, the lectures themselves were eloquent and learned, and M. Ozanam seems to have preferred inculcating the science of jurisprudence to practising in the courts. But in the course of the following year, 1840, he obtained an appointment which was still more suitable to his talent, the Professorship of Foreign Literature at Paris, and which gave him a perfect opportunity for the cultivation of his favorite pursuit, the philosophy of history. Shortly after his appointment, M. Ozanam married, and the remaining years of his life were spent in the duties of his calling; in travelling, partly for the sake of health and pleasure, partly to gain information which might be woven into his lectures; and in visits to his many friends, chiefly those who had taken an active part with him in upholding the interests of religion in France. He never entered upon active political life, though he offered himself upon a requisition of his fellow-townsmen as representative of Lyons in the National Assembly of 1848. In politics M. Ozanam was a decided liberal, in religion a fervent Catholic. His letters show a great dislike of any alliance between the church and absolutism, and a conviction that religion and an enlightened democracy might flourish together. He wrote in the _Correspondant_, which embodied the newer ideas, and was frequently animadverted upon by the _Univers_, which represented the more conservative party in church and state. His more important works were developed from lectures delivered at the Sorbonne; and his scheme was to embrace the history of civilization from the fall of the Roman Empire to the time of Dante. But failing health, although much was completed, did not allow him entirely to achieve the great object which he had originally conceived when a mere boy; and the touching words in which he expressed his resignation to an early death, when his already brilliant life promised an increase of success, and his cup of domestic happiness was entirely full, may be found among his published writings. M. Ozanam seems to have continued his literary labors as long as rapidly increasing weakness would permit, but after a stay in Italy, which did not avail to restore his broken health, he reached his native country only to die, September 8th, 1853, in the fortieth year of his age, and the heyday of a bright and useful career. He was lamented by troops of friends, old and young, rich and poor--the latter indeed being under especial obligations to his memory. His friend, M. Ampère, became his literary executor, and undertook the task of giving his complete works to the public, for which end a subscription was quickly raised among those who had known and respected him at Lyons and elsewhere. From the lectures which he had completed and revised, from reports of others, and his own manuscript notes, an edition of his complete works was formed in nine volumes, comprising _La Civilisation au Cinquième Siècle, Etudes Germaniques, Les Poëtes Franciscains, Dante et la Philosophie Catholique au Treizième Sièle_, and _Mélanges_, to which were added two volumes of his letters.

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"The work which has now been translated forms the first two volumes of the above series, and was intended by the author as the opening of the grand historical treatise which he had designed. As it was delivered originally in the shape of lectures, and preserves that form in the French edition, it has been necessary, in order to preserve the continuity of the historical narrative, to alter the constructions occasionally, and to pass over a sentence here and there which refers solely to the audience of students to which the lectures were originally addressed."

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The Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library. First series of 12 volumes, pp. 144 each. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street. 1868.

This is the initial set of a New Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library, now in preparation by the Catholic Publication Society. It contains 12 handsome volumes, put up in a neat paper box. The titles of the volumes in this, the first series, are as follows: _Madeleine, the Rosière;_ _The Crusade of the Children;_ _Tales of the Affections;_ _Adventures of Travel;_ _Truth and Trust;_ _Select Popular Tales;_ _The Rivals;_ _The Battle of Lepanto and The Relief of Vienna;_ _Scenes and Incidents at Sea;_ _The School-Boys and The Boy and the Man;_ _Beautiful Little Rose;_ and _Florestine, or Unexpected Joy_. From the above list it will be seen that the set comprises fiction, history, and adventures. This set of books has been selected with an eye to give our Catholic youth useful as well as entertaining reading. The illustrations are good, but might be better--however, they are a great improvement on the class of illustrations heretofore printed in our Catholic books. The type, paper, and binding are excellent. We hope these books will be extensively used as premiums in our schools, as well as find a place in every Catholic library in the country.

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Assemblee Generale Des Catholiques en Belgique. 27 Sept., 1867. Bruxelles: Devaux.

This large volume of 900 royal octavo pages, which has been just received from M. Ducpetiaux, of Brussels, is a complete record of the transactions of the late Catholic Congress of Malines. Among other things it contains the complete report of F. Hecker on the state of Catholicity in the United States, correctly translated into French. It is truly surprising to see what an immense amount of business can be transacted in one week, when all are intent upon doing the work in hand, and nothing else. Some of our legislators might learn a valuable lesson in this regard from this volume. The noisy and vulgar writers for the newspapers, and the other clamorous declaimers in speech and print, who are constantly repeating their hoarse outcry of ignorance and superstition against the Catholics of Europe, would be completely silenced and put to shame, if that were a possible thing, if the records of the Congress of Malines could be placed in the hands of all their intelligent readers. We may safely challenge the world to produce another similar volume, bearing so clear an impress of intelligence, good taste, patriotism, philanthropy, and religious zeal as this. Give us only a sufficient quantity of Catholicity like this, and we will renovate the earth.

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Received from Kelly & Piet, Baltimore:

_The Ghost_; a comedy in three acts. Taken from the French. Pp. 50. Price, 50 cents.

_The Banquet of Theodulus; or, The Reunion of the Different Christian Communions._ By the late Baron de Starck. New edition. Pp.204. Price, $1.

From H. M'Grath, Philadelphia: _White's Confutation of the Church of Englandism, and Correct Exposition of the Catholic Faith_. Translated from the Latin by E. W. O'Mahony. 1 vol., pp. 342. New Edition. Price, $1.25.

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"The Catholic Publication Society" has in press, and will soon publish, the second series of the new _Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library_, and a new edition of _Moehler's Symbolism; Problems of the Age, Nellie Netterville_, and _A Sister's Story_ are now being printed, and will be ready in a short time.

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THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

Vol. VII., No. 40.--July, 1868.

A Plea For Liberty Of Conscience.

Foreseeing that we shall be obliged, in this present article, to present some very unpalatable truths to a portion of our readers, we assure them in the outset that we do not wish unnecessarily to revive unpleasant recollections.

Facts are facts, however, history is history, and truth is truth; and so long as we do not cherish a malevolent spirit, or seek to embitter and envenom the minds of our fellow-men against each other, there is no reason why we should not have liberty to speak plainly, even about very ugly and very discreditable things. On the present occasion, we use this liberty in defence of the weak and defenceless against tyranny and oppression, in defence of the rights of conscience and religious freedom in the case of a considerable number of persons grossly disregarded and violated. The right which we undertake to defend is the right to embrace, profess, and practise the Catholic religion; and the wrong which we wish to contend against is the system of domestic and social tyranny by which this right is impeded. It may appear to some a very curious statement, yet we venture to make it boldly, that in every part of the world where the English race is dominant, Catholics have been engaged, ever since the era of Protestant ascendency, in a struggle for liberty of conscience against spiritual tyranny, either political, social, or both combined. We do not propose to go back to the period of penal laws, civil disabilities, and legal persecution in Great Britain and America, just at present. This is a chapter in history already tolerably well elucidated and likely to be still further commented upon in the future. We will let it pass, however, for the present, and confine our view to a more recent period, during which, theoretically speaking, in England Catholics have enjoyed full toleration, and in the United States equal liberty with other citizens.

Notwithstanding this theoretical liberty. Catholics have been exposed, as every one knows, to outbreaks of popular violence, in which their blood has been shed, their churches and other property burned and destroyed, and their religion made the object of denunciation, vituperation, and ridicule in a wholesale manner. {434} The primary cause of this state of things is to be found in the representation which Protestant preachers and writers have made of the Catholic religion. On this head we will content ourselves with quoting the language of a Protestant clergyman, the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, of Williamsburg, L. I., which we have just seen in a report of one of his sermons published in the _Brooklyn Times_ for March 17th, 1868:

"The duty of considering the question now submitted to us has required me to stand before shelves filled with volumes of antipapal literature, and to glance from page to page of its contents. The character of much of that literature is a shame and a scandal to the cause in which it is uttered. It is full of evil and uncharitable talk against Romanists and their clergy, and deformed with bad temper and bad logic and reckless assertion." A few sentences further on he designates a certain class of writers against the Catholic religion as the "scurrilous crew of antipopery-mongers, who make a trade of the prejudices and passions of the American public, feeding them with vituperation and invective."

This description applies to a class of writers in England and Ireland equally as well as to the class designated among ourselves. We pass over all that the general body of the Catholic clergy and people have had to suffer from the general prejudice against them created and excited by the calumnies and invectives of these writers and declaimers against their religion. We fix our attention upon one point only, what those persons have had and still have to suffer from this prejudice who have become Catholics from conviction and choice, or who have wished to do so, and would have done so, had they not been deterred by the violent opposition they have encountered.

In England, a little stream of reconversion began to set back to the ancient church during the cruel and despotic reign of Elizabeth, which continued to run during several succeeding reigns, but at last was either totally or almost dried up. Its source received a new supply through the influence of the French clergy who were refugees in England, and at length the current began to flow more fully and strongly than ever. Within the last twenty-five years the movement of return to Catholic unity has been steadily progressing, until it has become so considerable as to attract universal attention, and awaken general anxiety concerning its probable results. In the United States, a few rare and isolated instances of conversion occurred from time to time during the early part of the present century, which have become much more numerous within the past twenty-five years, from various causes which we need not specify. At present, there are probably fifty thousand converts within the fold of the Catholic Church of this Republic, a great many more who would gladly become Catholics if there were no sacrifices to be made in order to do so, and an indefinite number of persons who are more or less favorably predisposed toward the Catholic religion or partially convinced of its truth. From the first day on which these strayed children of the holy Mother Church began to retrace their steps to her blessed fold to the present moment, there has been essentially the same story to tell of the disregard and violation of that liberty of conscience and right of religious freedom which Protestants have been so loudly proclaiming ever since they have had existence. {435} In the earlier period of this disastrous epoch, some have suffered a literal martyrdom, and all along, down to the present time, many others have endured a moral martyrdom which is perhaps harder to bear as well as more lingering in its agony. Very many have needed a virtue and constancy truly heroic or bordering on the heroic, in order to nerve themselves to the sacrifices and to push through the opposition which they have been forced to encounter as the condition of becoming members of the Catholic Church and following the voice of their reason and conscience.

Those whose memory goes back over the last twenty or twenty-five years, can recall the storm of indignation and obloquy evoked by the first remarkable conversions which took place as the sequel of the Catholicizing movement originating at Oxford. As a general rule, the converts in England, even though belonging to the highest classes in society, including the nobility, and well known for their exemplary moral character, found themselves ostracized from the circles in which they had been wont to move, shunned by their most intimate friends, in many instances excluded from intercourse wholly or in great measure with the members of their own families. Some persons of high rank were obliged to go abroad, in order to find the society of persons of their own class which they needed for themselves and their families. It was the same in our own country. A convert to the Catholic Church found himself treated as an individual who had abjured Christianity, engaged in a conspiracy against his country and the human race, or as if he had been detected in perjury or forging notes. Every one was speculating upon the motives and cause of his strange conduct, as they have been recently, in England upon the Rev. Mr. Speke's sudden disappearance and mysterious rambles. Insanity was the most frequent and the most charitable reason assigned for an act generally considered as utterly unreasonable and disreputable. Some were excluded from the bosoms of their own families; some were disinherited by those whose heirs of blood they would have been; and others, who were helpless, dependent persons, were thrown upon the world by near and rich relations, who had hitherto supported them, and would gladly have continued to do so had they consented to smother their consciences. Some have been thrown out of business and employment, reduced to straits in order to gain a living, or even to extreme poverty and suffering. We do not allude now to those Protestant clergymen with families who have resigned their benefices in the Church of England, or given up their salaried offices in the Protestant Churches of the United States. The sacrifices made by these individuals, although very great, were unavoidably necessary, and cannot be attributed to any injustice or illiberality in the Protestant community. But we refer to those cases where persons have been deserted and abandoned by those on whose previous good-will, patronage, or custom they had been dependent for the means of gaining their living, for no other reason than the simple fact of their becoming Catholics. We may add to these more serious matters the infinitude of petty grievances and annoyances to which many persons are subjected by their relatives and friends. Their religion is attacked and ridiculed, without regard to the proprieties of polite intercourse, as if a Catholic were out of the category of persons whose convictions and sentiments are entitled to respect. {436} Obstacles are placed in the way of their fulfilling the duties of their religion. Their children are enticed to eat meat on days of abstinence, to attend Protestant churches, to read anticatholic books, to shun the society of Catholics, without regard to the conscience of the child or the authority of the parent. Every possible influence is brought to bear upon them to make them feel that their religion places them at a social disadvantage, and that Protestantism is more genteel and respectable. In short, if we try to imagine the state of things which converts to Christianity had to struggle with in Rome and the gentile world after the laws had ceased to persecute, but before the Christian religion had ceased to be a despised and unpopular religion, we shall have a very good counterpart of the present condition of Catholic converts in England and the United States.

The trials and difficulties of those who are on the way to the Catholic Church are even greater than those which have to be encountered afterward. Not to speak of the interior trials which are necessarily involved in the process of conversion, even for those who are perfectly free and independent, or even placed under influences which facilitate the transition to Catholicity, there are exterior difficulties in the case of most persons of the gravest and most distressing nature. Besides the opposition of relatives and friends, in the shape of argument, entreaty, expostulation, sorrowful disapprobation, which is the more painful and the harder to be overcome the more kind and affectionate it is in manner and spirit, the dread of wounding and grieving those who are dearest and most respected, disappointing their hopes and incurring their displeasure, there is often to be encountered the might of spiritual tyranny, the violence of a parent's or husband's despotic will, and, in short, a _persecution_ worse to be borne than would be a summary trial and execution. Unhappily, these trials are often too great for the courage of those who have received the inward vocation to the Catholic faith, and who are required to undergo so much if they would follow it. Some are afraid of losing caste, some of being turned out of doors, some of losing their livelihood; others are afraid of encountering the anger and reproaches of their friends, or the scorn and calumny of the world, or the loss of popularity. There are those who are deterred by their dainty and fastidious dislike of mingling with the poor, and who cannot bring themselves to go to a church which is humble or mean in its appearance, to receive the sacraments from a priest of unpolished exterior. But these last have themselves only to blame, although we may commiserate their weakness, and lay the chief blame of it on the false maxims prevalent in the community at large.

It would be easy to cite numerous instances in illustration of all that we have just said upon this subject, from personal knowledge or the testimony of others; and if it were possible for the complete history of the conversions to the Catholic Church which have occurred during the last quarter of a century to be written and published, it would be, for the most part, only an extensive commentary upon the statements we have made. Even then the saddest part of the story must remain untold, unless all those who have been deterred from obeying the voice of conscience could be induced to publish their confessions to the world, and those who have died in perplexity and distress for the want of those sacraments which their own cowardice or the refusal of their friends prevented them from receiving, could come back from the grave to add their testimony to that of the living.

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The writer of these pages was acquainted with a gentleman of eminent position in the world, who was for a long time a Catholic at heart, and who on his death-bed desired to see a priest with whom he was intimately acquainted, that he might receive the last sacraments from his hands. This priest, who was a man of the greatest dignity of character and universally venerated in the community, called at the house several times, was politely received, but never permitted to see the dying man. When the poor old man perceived his last hour drawing near, he called his faithful Irish nurse to his bedside, as the only true friend to whom he could open his grief, and confided to her the sorrow that was darkening his dying moments. He told her that he desired to see a priest, to make his confession and to receive the last sacraments, but that his request was denied, so that he had given up all hope of his salvation, and believed himself doomed to die in despair. The good girl comforted and soothed him, assured him that he need not distrust the mercy of God, and explained to him that in his case a perfect contrition for his sins would suffice for their full remission. He begged of her to teach him how to make the acts of faith, hope, charity, and contrition, to recite prayers by his side, and to help him to prepare for death. She did so, and through her holy ministrations his soul was tranquillized, so that he died in peace.

The writer was once sent for by a man of unusual intelligence and plain, respectable standing, who was in reduced circumstances, and dying of a slow consumption. He learned from the lips of this man that he had been for some time perfectly convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion, and was satisfied that it was his duty to be received into the church. Nevertheless, it was impossible to persuade him to act on his convictions, because he was sure that the assistance of certain societies, upon which his family depended, would be withdrawn. He hoped to recover, and promised that, if he did, he would profess his faith openly; but we never heard anything more from him, and have never heard the conclusion of his sad history.

It is but a few months since a young widow lady, a convert, was turned out of house and home, not very far from our own city, after the decease of her father, with whom she had been residing, by her own brother, for the sole reason that he did not wish to live in the same house with a papist. We will not multiply instances; but they will rise up in abundance before the memories of many who will read these pages; and if a recording angel could take down what will be remembered, thought, and felt by all whose eyes will peruse these lines, they would be transformed from a brief and tame summary into a whole volume of living and pathetic interest far surpassing the most thrilling tales of fiction; Tears will be shed, sad memories will throng upon many minds, many hearts will ache, we are assured, over the words we are writing in perfect calmness and composure, and without any direct intention of awakening emotion. Some will think of trials past, some of trials present, and others will recall to mind their own weakness and timidity in the hour when they were tried and found wanting. {438} There are many others, however, and will be many more hereafter, to whom this plea for the liberty of conscience will be, as we cordially trust, not merely a subject of personal interest, but also a practical help in surmounting their difficulties. We allude to those who are now turning or who will hereafter turn their faces wistfully toward the Catholic Church, but have first to overcome the obstacles we have described above before they can enter its portal. For this class of persons we have the most profound sentiment of pity and sympathy. The rich and independent, the able-minded and able-bodied, who can take care of themselves, men who can assert their own rights, and those generous youths to whom a glorious career is open in the priesthood, do not claim our sympathy, for they do not need it. But we pity the helpless and dependent; those who struggle with poverty and live on the bounty of others, delicate, gentle women, and all the weak, feeble children of God who would fain follow their conscience if they were let alone and not interfered with, but who shrink back appalled when it is a question of nerving themselves to meet opposition and push their way through trials. It seems to us that there is something hard and cruel beyond all other forms of tyranny in that usurped, unjust despotism which is exercised over these tender consciences. What can be a more odious or flagrant violation of all right and justice than to attempt to crush a conscience by force, to quell it by threats, to wear it out by opposition, to stifle it by fear, or to lure it by selfish, temporal interests? All will answer this question alike, and admit, at least in theory, the wrong that lies in the attempt of any person to violate the rights of any other person's conscience. The only point really open to discussion is, What constitutes a violation of just and rightful liberty of conscience? The question respecting the right or expediency of enforcing obedience to the dictates of conscience and the fulfilment of certain moral obligations is quite a different one, though closely related to the antecedent question. We cannot, in arguing with non-Catholics on these points, assume the truth of Catholic principles, or urge any consideration which necessarily presupposes the Catholic religion to be the true one. Of course, in the last analysis, we must come back upon the fundamental principle that the law of God is supreme and must be obeyed at all hazards, let come what will. No matter what human laws, what private interests, what dreadful penalties, may stand in the way, God must be obeyed, conscience must be followed, duty must be done. The authority of the state must be braved, human affections must be disregarded, life must be sacrificed, when loyalty to the truth and to the will of God requires it. Those who reject the authority of the Catholic Church, however, do not admit that the Catholic law is the law of God; and we must therefore either make our sole issue with them on this precise point of the truth of the Catholic doctrine, which is the same thing as a declaration of perpetual war, or we must find some middle term common to both, upon which the peace of social relations can be settled and the mutual rights and liberties of conscience be secured. We are obliged, therefore, to waive all claim of right and liberty to practise the Catholic religion, which is based on its positive truth, so far as this argument is concerned, and to present only such claims as a fair-minded person, whether Protestant, Jew, or infidel, may admit as just and reasonable, without changing in the least his own particular opinions. {439} It is not to be expected that all our arguments will be equally applicable to every class of persons, whatever their religious opinions may be; but we will endeavor to furnish at least one or two for each of the principal classes into which the non-Catholic community is divided. If some of our Catholic readers are offended by our seeming to take a tone too apologetic and defensive, we beg them to remember that the early Christian apologists were not ashamed to do the like. They vindicated the Christians of their own time from such accusations as worshipping an ass's head and drinking the blood of infants. It is painful and humiliating to be obliged to vindicate ourselves from gross calumnies; but it is an act of charity toward those who are deceived by these calumnies, and still more toward these helpless and defenceless persons who must suffer from them.

We begin on the lowest possible ground by affirming that a person in becoming a Catholic commits no offence against the laws of morality or against the civil and social laws commonly recognized among non-Catholics. There is no treason against society, no offence against domestic rights, no repudiation of any moral duties or obligations, nothing to make a person a bad citizen, a bad neighbor, a bad husband, wife, or child. There is no disobedience against any lawful external authority which has any right to inflict any penalties affecting a person's social or civil rights. There is no reason, therefore, why a person who embraces the Catholic religion should be treated by his acquaintances or society in general as a criminal, and made to suffer in his social and domestic relations. In our heterogeneous society, everything is tolerated which is not _contra bonos mores_. That which strikes at the order and peace of the natural relations binding us together in society cannot be tolerated even on the pretext of liberty of conscience or opinion. Therefore, Mormonism has no rights under our laws, and ought not to be tolerated, and Mohammedanism could not be tolerated. If the Catholic Church were really what it has been represented to be by many, it could not claim liberty or even toleration in non-Catholic states. But it is not what its enemies have represented it to be. A person who becomes a consistent Catholic will be a good citizen and respect the laws. He will be faithful to his social and domestic duties, and strictly observant of all moral obligations. It is not the spirit of the Catholic religion to introduce discord or trouble into families or societies, or to interfere with any just and lawful rights. The only annoyance which can arise will be the annoyance which persons wishing to violate the natural laws will meet with from the conscientious observance of morality by the Catholic party. Suppose a Catholic lady wishes to go to Mass, to confession, to devote a part of her time to meditation or charitable works? Does that necessarily interfere with the perfect fulfilment of all her duties toward her family and society? Is it any greater liberty than that which women generally expect to be conceded to them, and which they take at any rate, whether it is granted with a good or a bad grace? Let the question be decided by the actual conduct of those who have become Catholics in their relations with others who are not of their faith, and we are not afraid of the judgment which candid and fair judges will render. Certainly, then, they ought to enjoy the same liberty which is conceded to those who profess any other form of religion not contrary to the received standard of good morals, and to those who profess none at all. {440} Those who profess the latitudinarian opinion that all religions are alike, and who claim unbounded liberty of opinion for all, ought to be the first to give to Catholics the full benefit of this privilege.

With those who are more strongly attached to their own form of religion and hold it to be the only true one, the case is somewhat more difficult. Such persons may say that a person brought up in what they call the true, Evangelical, reformed faith, or in the pure, apostolical, Protestant Episcopal Church, especially if he has been a communicant, and most of all if he has been a minister, is an apostate from his faith as a Christian, a renouncer of his baptism, and therefore a criminal before God and the church, if he, to use their language, becomes a Romanist. Let it be so. When argument and persuasion have been tried and have failed, let the church pronounce her spiritual censures on the disobedient member. We cannot complain of that. Let him be canonically deposed if he is a minister. We cannot complain of that, either. But is there any reason why our Evangelical or High-Church friends should think it necessary or expedient to proceed any further? Suppose they do regard the person in question as a delinquent and as an unfortunate dupe of error and delusion. Will our Evangelical friends affirm the principle that none but the elect are entitled to the rights and privileges arising out of natural and social relations? Will our High-Church friends affirm the same, substituting for the elect, consistent members of their own communion? If not, we cannot see why they may not allow Catholics the same indulgence which they concede to sinners, heretics, and infidels. We put them the plain question, whether they have any right to interfere with the conscience and the religion of another, or to use any kind of coercion or persecution against any one, whatever may be the relation in which he stands toward them. Some of them may perhaps deny that a well-instructed member of that which they deem to be the true church can become a Catholic conscientiously and sincerely. But suppose it is so. Where is the authority to compel him to fulfil his conscientious obligations of a purely spiritual nature? We are not now speaking of young children who have not attained to years of full discretion, over whom parents certainly have an authority which must be respected. But, apart from this exception, what authority can be claimed for enforcing any religious obligation by any other means than an appeal to the conscience itself? If there are any who really think there is a right of excommunication in their church which extends so far as to exclude a person from his privileges as a member of society, and to reduce him to the state of one who is _vitandus_, or an outcast to be shunned by all, we only desire that they will act out their doctrine impartially and universally. Is it not, at least, _inexpedient_ to appeal to it in the present state of society, while no kind of disability is contracted by those who profess the principles of Bishop Colenso or Herbert Spencer?

The case may be supposed of persons, influenced by no ill feeling at all, who would desire to withdraw from all intimacy with relatives or acquaintances who have joined the Catholic Church, on the ground that their conversation and influence may be dangerous to young persons in the family. Such a motive as this we can respect, for we can and must respect fidelity to conscience, even when it is an erroneous conscience which is followed. {441} Moreover, no one is bound to keep up any intimate relations which transcend the bounds of ordinary courtesy with any persons outside the immediate family circle, unless it is agreeable to himself to do so. But what is to be said of those who, on a plea of conscience, sunder the closest bonds of nature, or threaten to do so? We can easily understand that a Jew, a Puritan, an old-fashioned Lutheran, a Presbyterian, or an English Churchman might be so thoroughly absorbed in his religion, and so intense in his attachment to it, that the conversion of a wife or child to the Catholic Church would be a far worse blow to his affections, and a more blighting disappointment to his hopes, than would be the sudden death of either one, however tenderly loved. An intelligent Jewish gentleman once told the writer of this article that he was deterred from receiving Christian baptism by the fear of causing the death of his aged father; and this is not an unusual instance either among the descendants of the ancient Pharisees or the adherents of the "straitest sects" of Protestant Christians. In such cases, where no softening of the temper and no modification of the mental condition takes place, there is no room for argument. The word of our Lord must be fulfilled--that he came not to bring peace, but a sword. One who has to choose between submission to the will of another and the disruption of the most sacred human ties, must choose the latter when the former involves the violation of a certain and known law of God. There is, therefore, no other course open to a Catholic in such a case except the one of professing and practising the Catholic religion openly, without regard to consequences. If they are excluded from their homes and abandoned by their friends, they must try to bear it patiently. We would scorn to appeal to the mere sentiment of human pity or to the maxims of indifferentism, in arguing with any man who should say that his religious principles require him to banish a wife, a son, or a daughter out of his house. It is our opinion, however, that in most instances, after persons have had time for cool reflection, they will not deliberately affirm that their religious principles do require these harsh measures. No one will pretend that they require or authorize any kind of tyrannical or vexatious persecution, or an abandonment of those who have a natural claim to protection to poverty and suffering. We are disposed to think that prejudice, passion, wounded pride, and similar causes have a great deal to do with the line of conduct alluded to. And one good reason for thinking so is the fact that so many firm and consistent Protestants, and even bishops or other clergymen of standing, have acted differently, and have treated Catholic converts even of their own families with kindness and courtesy. We have supposed hitherto that we were arguing with a person who would not admit that a convert from the religion he himself professes can be sincere and conscientious. It is impossible, however, to sustain such a position on any ground which the majority of intelligent non-Catholics will admit to be reasonable; for it can be sustained only by one of three arguments. First, that the illumination of the Holy Spirit gives to the individual reason an infallible certainty of the truth of some one form of anticatholic belief. Or, second, that some such form is at least made morally certain by rational evidence of such a kind as to exclude all probability that the Catholic religion may be true. {442} Or, third, that some certain and unerring authority, to which one is bound to submit his private judgment, exists in one of the several communions calling itself the true church of God. The first argument cannot be brought into the forum of discussion, because there is no certain, external test by which it can be proved that such an illumination exists, or by whom among various claimants it is possessed. The second is refuted by the simple fact that so many intelligent and learned persons are convinced by the Catholic arguments. The third is refuted by the fact that no one of the churches claims infallibility. High-Churchmen claim a teaching authority for their communion, but it is not claimed by their church itself in any such sense as to exclude the right and duty of testing its claims and doctrines by private judgment on the Scriptures. Those who make the claim of authority in behalf of this church do not pretend that it is more than a portion of the universal church, and therefore, by the very claim they put forth, directly suggest and provoke an examination of the question what the universal church really teaches. The most learned and eminent theologians among them distinctly assert that the doctrines of the Church of England must be interpreted in conformity with the teaching of the Catholic Church. Will any reasonable person, then, pretend that one may not examine all the evidence that can be adduced to prove what that teaching is; or that he may not conscientiously and sincerely adopt the conclusion that this teaching is really identical with the doctrine of the Roman Church? We may cite here the judgment of Dr. Johnson, who was a staunch Episcopalian, upon this point. Boswell relates it in these words: "Sir William Scott informs me that he heard Johnson say, 'A man who is converted from Protestantism to popery may be sincere. He parts with nothing: he is only superadding to what he already had. But a convert from popery to Protestantism gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as anything he retains; there is so much _laceration of mind_ in such a conversion that it can hardly be sincere and lasting.'" [Footnote 100]

[Footnote 100: Boswell's _Johnson_. Edit, Bait., Bond, 1856, p. 168]

In truth, every form of dogmatic and positive Protestantism presents its lines of fracture from the great mass of Christendom so conspicuously to the eye, that it is absurd to pretend that its relation to that mass is not a thing to be examined and judged of by every one who is capable of judging for himself, that is, by every one who is responsible to his conscience and to God for his belief upon those doctrines affirmed by the Catholic Church and denied by his own detached body. An old-fashioned, strict Israelite can make a far more plausible claim for authority over the conscience in behalf of the synagogue, than any Protestant can make for his church. The Jewish hierarchy had once authority from God, and has only been superseded by the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ. We cannot argue with him, therefore, that a Jew who renounces Judaism violates no obligation of conscience toward a lawful authority, except by adducing the evidence that Jesus is the Messias foretold by the prophets. Upon his own premises he must regard such a person as an apostate and a rebel. The only reason which could have any weight with him, why he should continue to show the same kindness to a member of his family who had been baptized as before, would be, that it is better to leave such a case to the judgment of God, and refrain from an exercise of severity which could do no good, but rather aggravate the difficulty. {443} The majority of Jews at present are, however, rationalists. They place the essence of religion in mere Theism and natural morality, regarding the peculiarities of Judaism as accidentals. On their own ground, therefore, they can have no excuse for obtruding any claim of Judaism over the reason, conscience, or private judgment of any of their number. Take away a divinely appointed, infallible authority, and in all matters of purely religious belief and practice each individual is in possession of full liberty, for the right use of which he is responsible only to God. Moreover, in matters of positive, dogmatic doctrine, the majority of non-Catholics acknowledge that only probability is attainable. Logic and good sense have brought them to this conclusion as contained in the premises with which they started. But in questions of probability and matters of opinion, persons of equal sincerity and conscientiousness may differ. We are certain that this will be admitted as an axiom by our non-Catholic readers. But if this be so, those who profess to be convinced of the truth of Catholic doctrines ought to be regarded as sincere and conscientious, which we think most of our non-Catholic friends will also admit. Every one must see, then, how contrary to every right and honorable principle it is to attempt to act on the minds of those who desire to become Catholics by any other means than argument and persuasion. How dangerous, how unjust, how mean it is to strive to terrify or wheedle them into a forced acquiescence in the will of others through human and worldly motives! It would be almost an insult to our readers to argue this point gravely. Those who follow the principles of Demas in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and are in favor of religion only when she walks in silver slippers, will not publicly avow and defend any such base maxims, or maintain seriously that their great objection to the Catholic religion is, that it is not sufficiently genteel. Even the _New York Herald_ flouts scornfully the religion of velvet cushions, which makes the elect to consist solely of the _élite_ of society.

But at last we come at what is the real _gravamen_ of the complaint against Catholics on the part of those who are disposed to be fair and kindly. It is not that we hold certain doctrines as opinions, or adopt certain modes of worship as suited to our taste. This could be allowed without difficulty as our undoubted right, provided we would admit that the Catholic Church is only the best and most perfect among several forms of religion. But we maintain its exclusive truth and legitimacy, and proclaim it to be the only way of salvation. It is unpleasant for one to have his wife, or children, or near friends, look upon him as a person excluded from communion with them in spiritual things and out of the way of salvation. Very true! But what does this prove? It proves that the ideal of society is only actualized in religious unity. It makes no difference what your ideal is, whether it is something purely natural, or, under some form, supernatural. There must be unity either in some negative or some positive form. That is, there must be something to give those who are closely connected on the earth the same idea of the tendency and end of this earthly life, and of the future life which is to succeed it. Yet we find that society is not in this ideal state among us. It is impossible for Catholics to sacrifice their convictions and violate the dictates of their conscience, for the sake of a unity which they believe to be chimerical. {444} We believe that it is only the Catholic religion which can bring society to its ideal perfection, and therefore we shall, for this reason, as well as for higher ones, do all in our power to make it universal. Probably our Evangelical friends await the millennium, and other classes of the religious community await the universal triumph of some kind of church of the future, while the sceptics look for a millennium of science and common sense. Meanwhile, it is probable that some time must elapse before any such epoch shall arrive, and we must live together in all manner of political and social relations. It is only by a jealous regard for the personal religious liberty of every individual that we can live together in peace and harmony. Is it not, then, better that, if we cannot immediately heal all the wounds of society, we should at least alleviate them as much as possible, awaiting a more radical cure at a future time?

We have already, in a former article, expressed our views upon this point sufficiently, so that we need not dwell upon it any longer at present. Happily, these are the views which are practically carried out in a great number of cases, and are gaining ground more and more. The state of things we have described is becoming ameliorated even in England, but much more in our own country. If the just, honorable, and rational temper of the best class of non-Catholic Americans toward the Catholic religion and its members were universal, and all persons disposed to become Catholics were treated with the same delicate respect for their liberty of conscience which some have experienced, there would be no occasion for this reclamation in behalf of that liberty. Those of our readers who can class themselves under this category may understand, therefore, that with them we have no controversy; but are combating an enemy as hostile to their own domestic and social peace and well-being as to our own.

Benediction.

"We go so far, and with so much trouble, to obtain the blessings of certain holy persons, and of the holy father the pope; yet here is the Lord of saints, and the God of whom Pius IX. is only the vicegerent, and we cannot intermit our socialities or forego our ease to receive his blessing!" E. A. S.

The Invitation.

The balmy May is breathing on the air, The rich, red sun sinks slowly down the west. Come forth, dear soul, and be an honored guest: One doth invite thee to his house all fair; One great and good, this eve, doth wait thee there. Nay, nay, not that dear friend whose hand hath prest So oft thy own; not any ruler blest. Of happiest clime: a nobler friendship share. Ah! no; no poet doth such kindness move; No wise, nor good, nor grand, nor holy, whom The race reveres: a better friend would prove His love; a greater asks thee to his home. Within the tabernacle of his love, The Lord of heaven awaits thee: wilt thou come?

{445}

Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.