Chapter III.

The government of Paula in her newly founded monastery was admirable, and she herself was the example of all virtues, as was also Eustochium. The fame of her rule spread throughout the East, and went back to Rome, where Marcella still lived and gloried in her friend.

The chief happiness of the recluses was to study the Scriptures, which they now read from beginning to end. Jerome read with them, explaining everything. His grotto was not far off, and he passed his nights there, by the light of a lamp, surrounded with manuscripts and assisted by others copying for him; for he was now growing old, and his failing eyesight no longer allowed of his enduring the fatigue of writing. He resumed the study of the eastern dialects in order the better to comprehend the original of the holy works, and, encouraged by Paula and Eustochium, resumed his work of translation, which was continued for nearly twenty years under their saintly influence.

At the end of three years Paula's monasteries, church, and hospital were all finished, with their surrounding walls, which in those times were so necessary a protection from the raids of the neighboring Arabs.

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The number of the recluses had increased, and Paula now divided them into three communities, each one having an abbess or mother at its head, after the plan of St. Pacomius.

During the week their vows of enclosure prevented all intercourse with the outer world. They all went on Sunday to the church at Bethlehem; for the holy sacrifice of the Mass was not offered up at their own chapel, St. Jerome never having deemed himself worthy to mount the steps of the altar, such was his profound humility; and Vincentius, the only priest they had beside, did not attempt to officiate where Jerome dared not.

Paula was the soul of her communities. Her austerities were as great as her charities, and these were without number. St. Jerome represents her like a devoted mother to each and all of her spiritual daughters, loving them all and studying their characters equally, in order to guide each one according to her individual nature and for the best. Intellectual activity was greatly encouraged among them by her, and she took care to furnish them with books and food for the mind. In this Jerome was of great assistance to her. His convent was the dwelling of science and letters as well as of asceticism. He had around him many men of vast erudition, who in taking care of their souls did not forswear the paths of learning, and in solitude pursued their studies. They also wrote books which were read with great avidity by Paula and her religious family. Jerome himself, in addition to his great works, composed many pious biographies, and among others the life of St. Epiphanius, at the particular request of Paula. The latter had now taught her daughters to copy the Psalms, which Jerome had translated at Rome by the order of Pope Damasus. This was a work of importance, as exactness was necessary in order to repair the harm done to the work by neglect of the original manuscripts. Copying thus became universal in all monasteries, owing to the impetus given to it by Paula, and to it we are indebted for the preservation of much that is of inestimable value to Christianity.

Paula now urged Jerome to revise all his various translations of the Holy Scriptures, and this prodigious work was concluded by him as early as the year 390. The book was dedicated to Paula and Eustochium. To Paula particularly, _palmam ferat qui meruit_, great praise is due for the holy influence she exercised for so many years over St. Jerome, to such a noble purpose, and which produced such fruits in the translation of the Bible called the Vulgate, still used in the church after the lapse of so many centuries.

All these pious labors gave great renown to Paula's monasteries, and she who had thought to hide herself from the world, saw the curious world appear at her gates, attracted by the beacon light of Bethlehem. Her buildings could scarcely contain the visitors who flocked to see her. St. Augustine himself had sent his beloved friend, Alypius, across the seas to witness these wonders and to see Jerome and Paula. Augustine afterward wrote to Jerome, thus beginning a friendship between these two great men, one of whom was just risen above the horizon of the church, while the other great luminary was on the decline, though spreading out his rays in all the splendor of the setting sun.

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But that which most astonished the pilgrims to Bethlehem was not Jerome nor any other inhabitant of this holy place, but Paula in the midst of her virgins. "What country," says St. Jerome, "does not send hither its pilgrims to see Paula, who eclipses us all in humility? She has attained that earthly glory from which she fled; for in flying from it she found it, because glory follows virtue as shadows follow the light."

Among all the visits paid to the recluses, none filled them with so much joy as that of the venerable Epiphanius, whose early lessons had had so much to do with the religious training of Paula. He, too, was delighted; he had seen nothing more perfect in the desert. The order, the prayerful and fervent nuns, the austere and laborious monks, the wonderful intellectual activity, amazed him. He remained some time with his friends at Bethlehem, praising God for what he saw.

About this time the discussions on Origenism began to trouble the church of Alexandria, and finally penetrated to Jerusalem and to Bethlehem. Jerome was estranged from Rufinus and Melanie, and others of his early friends, by differing with them on the subject of this celebrated heresy. Paula was afflicted at this, and foresaw clouds in the future which did not fail to burst on her own monasteries. The great doctrinal combats of the fourth century, in which the church was destined to come off victorious, Paula would gladly have avoided entirely, but in spite of herself she became involved in them. Her sorrow was great when she saw her monasteries as well as St. Jerome and herself excluded from the Holy Sepulchre because of their clinging to their old friend St. Epiphanius, who was the champion of orthodoxy and the great antagonist of Origenism, The ordination of a priest for the monasteries was the ostensible cause of their being put under the ban. This priest was Paulinianus, the brother of Jerome, and the validity of his ordination by Epiphanius was questioned by John, the Bishop of Jerusalem, on the ground of the youth of Paulinianus, but in reality because John, instigated by Rufinus, was profoundly irritated against Jerome and Epiphanius on account of his own leanings toward the doctrine of Origen. He forbade the entrance of the church of the Nativity or of the Holy Sepulchre to all who considered the ordination of Paulinianus canonical. This, of course, included the recluses of Bethlehem. Their dismay was great.

Epiphanius did not consider it derogatory to his dignity for him to bend his white head before the younger bishop and sue for clemency for others. He explained the great want of a priest at the monasteries, and the motives for the ordination of Paulinianus, and he begged John, for the sake of charity, to cease such persecution; and then the illustrious patriarch, on his knees, conjured him to abjure the false doctrines that had divided them.

But John would not yield, and talked only of the offence of the uncanonical ordination. Whereupon, Epiphanius thought it his duty to expose him, and demanded of the recluses that they should suspend all communion with the bishop of Jerusalem until the latter should renounce his errors.

Notwithstanding this moderation, the rancor of John burst upon them. All ecclesiastical functions were forbidden Jerome and Vincentius. Paula's catechumens were refused baptism, and his wrath went so far as to deny religious burial to the hermits as if they were excommunicated. Paula suffered inwardly from this warfare, so different from the quiet and repose she longed for. {673} Herself untouched by the arguments of the heretics, she became an object of envy. But the voice of calumny could not disturb the serenity of her mind, and by no word or sign did she ever show impatience or anger. She endeavored also to console St. Jerome for the wounds he had received. She loved to quote Scripture to him, to soothe his mind. It was in the Bible that she always found strength to endure every evil.

Finally, Bishop John, carrying his hatred to Jerome to its climax, passed a decree of banishment against him. Jerome, worn out by contention, wished to depart at once, but Paula said to him these touching words: "They hate us and would crush us, but let us return patience for hatred, humility for arrogance. Does not St. Paul bid us return good for evil? And when our conscience tells us that our sufferings do not proceed from sin, we are very certain that the afflictions of this world are only the assurance of eternal reward. Bear, then, with the trials that assail you and do not quit our beloved Bethlehem."

In this way Paula sustained and soothed the old monk by the delicacy and serenity of her own noble soul, which lived so high up in the love of God that the storms of this world passed by leaving her unharmed.

After a while Jerome was freed from this phase of persecution by the Metropolitan of Palestine, Cesarius, who was a prudent and wise man. These perils ended, Paula encouraged him to recommence his great labors on the Bible, and also to renew his correspondence with his friends, and to think no more of this painful episode, but to suffer the tempest without to rage and no longer disturb him. [sic]

We will turn away from these discussions, at which we have glanced but cursorily, though unavoidably, to rest our minds in the contemplation of virtue.

Jerome now wrote more of his most admirable letters, and Paula continued the even tenor and pious practices of her life. She received a visit from Fabiola, who came from Rome in search of that peace and solitude which she believed could be best found in Bethlehem. This visit gave great joy to the recluses; for Fabiola could tell them of all their friends in Rome, of Paulina and Pammachius, of Toxotius and his wife Laeta, and of the young Paula, called after her venerable grandmother. She brought them messages from Marcella and the Aventine. While Fabiola was with them, they resumed the habits of former years, and read the Holy Scriptures together, Jerome explaining it to them. The ardor of Fabiola was wonderful. After she had ended her visit and left Bethlehem, much was done by Rufinus and Melanie to estrange her from her old friends. But she could not be moved and had determined to settle near them.

At this time, however, dark rumors of invasion threw consternation among the quiet inhabitants of the monasteries. It was rumored that the Huns threatened Jerusalem. Other cities had already been besieged, and they were now before Antioch. Arabia, Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt were filled with terror. On all sides preparations for defence were being made, and the walls of Jerusalem, too long neglected, were now under repair.

To save her monasteries from insult, Paula meditated flight, and conducted her whole community to the sea-shore, ready to embark if the barbarians made their appearance. But the Huns having suddenly diverged in another direction, Paula brought back her followers to their beloved monasteries, and with a joyful heart once more took possession of them.

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These events decided Fabiola to return to Rome. When all the troubles had ceased, Jerome wrote to her: "You would not remain with us; you feared new alarms. So be it. You are now tranquil; but, notwithstanding your tranquillity, I venture to say that Babylon will often make you sigh for the fields of Bethlehem. We are now at peace, and from this manger, which has been restored to us, we once more hear the wail of the infant Christ, the echoes of which I send you across the seas."

Unfortunately, however, the peace and quiet did not last long. After three years the dispute with the Bishop of Jerusalem was renewed with great violence. But the bishop, Theophilus, having only declared himself against Origenism, John was finally brought to reason by him, and Jerome and Rufinus were reconciled in his presence, before the altar in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Peace now reigned in the monasteries on what appeared to be a surer foundation.

But other sorrows came pouring in. News arrived from Rome of the death of Paulina, when she was but thirty, and Pammachius was left a widower and without posterity.

His loss in the daughter of Paula was great, for theirs was an admirable and holy union; for Paulina loved her husband and would have endeavored not only to make him happy, but virtuous. The grief of Pammachius was overwhelming. He had now but one wish on earth, which was to do something for the good of Paulina's soul.

It was an ancient custom in Rome at the obsequies of persons of distinction to give alms in honor of the dead, and to perpetuate their memory. This was called the _funeraticium_. On the day fixed for that of Paulina the streets of Rome were thronged. Troops of the poor, the lame, and the maimed wended their way to the church in answer to the invitation of Pammachius. The gilded door of the great basilica was open before them, and Pammachius himself was there distributing on all sides abundant alms in the name of Paulina.

Who can describe the grief of Paula when the news reached Bethlehem of the death of Paulina? She was ill for days afterward, and Eustochium feared for her life. Jerome wrote to Pammachius on the sorrowful event. "Who can see," cried he, "without grief, this beauteous rose gathered before her time and faded away? Our precious pearl, our emerald, is broken."

Paula's only consolation was in the admirable conduct of Pammachius. "This death was prolific," said St. Jerome, "for it gave a new life to Pammachius." He had always been a good Christian, he now became a heroic one. He thought of heaven, where his faith made him see his beloved Paulina; the example of Paula and Eustochium, and of his holy friend Jerome, all combined to detach him from the things of earth. He felt inspired with the noble resolution to consecrate to God the remaining years of his life. He assumed the dress of a monk and passed his time in charities and prayer. The jewels of Paulina were converted into money and given to the poor, and also her dower and the house of the noble senator was thrown open to all who were in want. Fabiola generously seconded him in founding hospitals, and their combined resources enabled them to accomplish great charities in Rome.

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"Ordinary husbands," said St. Jerome, "show their affection and love by scattering roses and lilies and violets over a grave. Our Pammachius has covered the tomb of his departed wife with holy ashes, and with the perfume of charity. These are the aromatics with which he has embalmed Paulina." Such fruits were a great solace to Paula. When she heard that he had given away Paulina's dower to the poor, she exclaimed, "These are indeed the heirs that I would see my daughter have! Pammachius has not given me time even to express my wish; he has been beforehand with me!"

In the midst of her grief a ray of joy came from Rome, in the proposition from Toxotius and Laeta to send young Paula to her grandmother. They had determined that, in order to secure such holy training for their child, she should leave Rome and go to the East, where Paula and Eustochium would bring her up in the way of truth. Eustochium begged her of Laeta, and young Paula did eventually come to Bethlehem to join her aunt; but her venerable grandmother was no longer there to receive her.

The burden of years was now beginning to be felt by Paula. Sorrow and sadness pressed upon her, yet the ineffable beauty of her soul was greater than ever. St. Francis de Sales says of her that "she was like a beautiful and sweet violet, so sweet to see in the garden of the church." It is this exquisite and rare perfume which we must enjoy more in speaking of her in the years just before her death, when God seemed to touch her soul with a singularly soft and mellow light, like the evening of a fair day. She had been much disturbed by the renewal of the dissensions between St. Jerome and the Origenists. We have already said how she had grieved over the first encounter, seeing bishops against bishops, friends against friends, hermits against hermits. But the new struggles were still more painful to her: they had become personal, and, notwithstanding the reconciliation with Rufinus, he had attacked St. Jerome's character and writings, and the latter was obliged to defend himself. Paula had also witnessed another painful sight. After the council condemning Origen, the monks accused of sharing his erroneous opinions were driven away from the desert, and among them were many whom Paula had formerly known and venerated, and who were now homeless wanderers. The severity of the Patriarch of Alexandria against them grieved her deeply; and, the most bitter of all, her tears were those she shed for the throes of the church and for the evil passions of men. New sorrows came upon her also. She heard of the death of Fabiola, her old and dear friend. Then came the death of St. Epiphanius, who had been to Paula like a beloved father.

Toxotius, her only son, was now taken away. All her children but Eustochium were dead. What was left for Paula but suffering? Physical infirmities accumulated upon her the result of her austerities. Of these she would merely say, "When I am weak, then it is that I am strong;" and again, "We must resign ourselves to carrying our treasure in brittle vases, until the day comes when this miserable body shall be robed in immortality." She also loved to repeat these words: "If the sufferings of Christ abound in us, his consolations abound also. Sharers of his bodily agony, we will also be partakers of his glory."

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The things of earth could no longer touch her, for she had seen how passing they are and knew that they could not last. The longing for the heavenly country grew in proportion. She would say with the patriarchs of the desert, "We are but travellers on the earth." And when her sufferings increased, she murmured gently, "Oh! who will give me the wings of a dove, that I may fly to everlasting rest?"

She no longer belonged to the earth, she was almost in heaven. Her soul had reached such extraordinary perfection that she seemed already to see the glory and to hear the harmonies of heaven. Peace and joy were suffused throughout her being, rising above her sufferings. Her love of God grew greater, and death seemed to her not a separation from those she loved on earth, but an indissoluble union with God, in whom all joys are found again. "Who," says St. Jerome, "can tell without tears how Paula died?" He himself wrote immortal pages on the subject, which have consoled many a dying soul since.

When Sainte Chantal was on her death-bed, she asked to have read to her once more St. Jerome's account of the death of Paula, to which she listened with wonderful attention, repeating several times these words: "What are we? Nothing but atoms alongside of these grand nuns."

It was in the year A.D. 403 that Paula fell ill. When it became known that her life was in imminent danger, the whole monastery was in consternation.

Eustochium could not be comforted; she who had never quit her mother from childhood could not bear the thought of separation. Her love for her mother, which had always been so touching, shone now in all the ardor and strength of her nature. She would yield her place by the bedside to no one by day or by night. Every remedy was administered by her hands, and she would throw herself on her knees by the bed, and implore God to suffer them to die together and be laid in one tomb. But these tears and these prayers could not postpone the hour marked by God for the end. Her time had expired; Paula had suffered enough and wept enough. She should now see joy, and put on the robes of glory. It became evident that her strength was failing, and that she had but a few days left to live. She bore her sufferings with admirable patience and heavenly serenity. She was grateful for the care bestowed on her by Eustochium and the devoted daughters of the house, but her whole mind was given up to the thought of opening Paradise. Her lips were heard to murmur her favorite verses from Scripture.

The Bishop of Jerusalem and all the bishops of Palestine, together with a great number of religious, flocked to her bedside to witness this saintly death. The monastery was filled with them. But Paula, absorbed in God, saw them not, heard them not. Several asked her questions, but she did not answer. Jerome then approached and wished to know if she were troubled and why she did not speak. She answered in Greek, "Oh! no; I have neither trouble nor regret; I feel, on the contrary, great inward peace."

After these words she spoke no more, but her fingers ceased not to make the sign of the cross. At last, however, she opened her eyes with joy, as if she saw a celestial vision, and as if hearing the divine voice of the canticle, "Rise up, come to me, O my dove, my beloved, for winter is past and the rain has disappeared." She spoke as if in answer, for she continued, in low but joyful tones, the words of the sacred song: "Flowers have appeared on the earth, the time for gathering them has arrived." Then she added, "I think I see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living." With these words on her lips Paula expired. {677} She had lived to the age of fifty-six years eight months and twenty-one days; of which time, twenty-five years had been passed since her widowhood in religious life.

Her obsequies were a marvel. Before consigning her body to the tomb, it was carried to the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, which she loved and where she lay for three days with uncovered face, for the visitation and veneration of the faithful. Crowds flocked from all parts to do her honor, and bishops sought to take part in the funeral ceremonies and to show respect to the lamented deceased. Among the hermits of the desert, it was almost esteemed a sacrilege to stay away. John of Jerusalem himself officiated. But the most touching part of the spectacle was the long array of the poor, following in the procession, and weeping for their mother. Death had not altered the noble countenance of Paula; she was only pale, and looked as if sleeping. The people could not tear themselves away from this last view of her beloved features. She was finally interred under this same church, in a grotto, where her tomb may still be seen up to the present time. During the week following her burial, the crowd continued to linger about her tomb, singing psalms in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin or in Syriac.

All this time, the sorrow of Eustochium had been terrible to behold. Her very being was rent in twain. She could not be torn away from her mother's body up to the last, but would remain by her, tenderly kissing her eyes, throwing her arms around her, and beseeching to be buried in the tomb with her. This continued until the grave shut out the form of Paula from her for ever.

Jerome tried to console her, though himself bowed down by grief. Of all the souls he had directed, none were so lofty nor so intimately connected with his own as that of Paula. So crushed was he by this loss, that it was long before the world again heard his mighty voice.

He found some solace in composing two epitaphs in her honor, to be engraved, one at the entrance of the grotto where the grave lay, the other on the grave itself. The following is the translation of the inscription on the sepulchre of Paula:

"The daughter of the Scipios, of the Gracchi, the illustrious blood of Agamemnon, rests in this place. She bore the name of Paula. She was the mother of Eustochium. First in the senate of Roman matrons, she preferred the poverty of Christ and the humble fields of Bethlehem, to all the splendor of Rome."

In this epitaph, Paula's whole history is told. The other epitaph of St. Jerome, engraved on the entrance of the grotto, reproduces, in other terms, the same record of virtue, and, what is more, shows its sublime origin. It is in the following words:

"Seest thou that grotto cut in the rock? It is the tomb of Paula, now an inhabitant of the heavenly kingdom. She gave up her brother, her relations, Rome, her country, her wealth, her children, for the grotto of Bethlehem, where she is buried. It was there, O Christ! that your cradle was. It was there that the Magi came to make you their mystical offerings, O man God!"

Eustochium desired St. Jerome, besides these two epitaphs, to write a funeral eulogium on her mother. With a hand trembling with age and emotion, he performed this pious duty. We should here mention that most of the details we have endeavored to give in this short narrative, are taken from what is, perhaps, considered the most eloquent and touching of all his writings. {678} At the conclusion, he thus apostrophizes her:

"Farewell, O Paula! Sustain, by your prayers, the declining years of him who so revered you. United now by faith and good works with Christ, you will be more powerful above than you were here below. I have engraved your praise, O Paula! on the rock of your sepulchre, and to it I add these pages; for I wish to raise to you a monument more lasting than adamant, that all may learn that your memory was honored in Bethlehem, where your ashes repose."

Paula's good works died not with her. Her monasteries were continued piously and courageously by Eustochium, the worthy daughter of such a mother. With time, heresies arose to disturb the atmosphere anew; and the controversy of Pelagius aroused the latent powers of Jerome, and for some time absorbed him, to the detriment of his studies. But at the prayer of Eustochium, and in memory of Paula, he finally resumed his labors, and in the year 403 concluded his great work in the translation of the Bible, which is called the Vulgate, and was adopted by the church in the last universal council.

The Pelagians having set fire to the monasteries of Bethlehem, all the buildings erected by the pious care of Paula were burned to the ground. This act was odious to the whole world. It was admirable to see the serenity of Eustochium under this trial. She went to work, and, using for that purpose the noble dower brought to her by her niece Paula, who had come to her at Bethlehem, the monasteries were soon built up again, and filled with their former inhabitants. About this time, Alaric, King of the Huns, overran Rome with his barbarian hordes, and numberless Christian refugees from them came to the East in search of an asylum. Pammachius and Marcella were dead, but many of their friends were numbered among the exiles. Eustochium and Jerome received all who came with wide-open doors, and the hospitality of Paula still lived in her successors.

Eustochium survived her mother only sixteen years. She expired without a struggle, like one falling asleep. No further details are given of her last moments. This was on the 28th day of September, A.D. 418. Her remains were laid by those of her mother, according to her wish. St. Jerome did not long survive her. Her death was his last great sorrow; and he died in the following year. He was too old now to resist the final dispersion of what he had called his _domestic church_. Marcella, Asella, Paula, Fabiola, Pammachius, Eustochium, had all ceased to live. Rome itself was gone, for, to a Roman heart like that of Jerome's, her captivity was her death.

He fell into a state of settled melancholy, his voice having become so weak and feeble that it was with difficulty he could be heard at all. It was soon impossible for him to be raised from his miserable couch, but by means of a cord suspended from the roof of his grotto; and in this position he would recite his prayers, or give his instructions to the monks for the management of the monastery. He died at the age of seventy-two years, after living thirty-four years at Bethlehem. His eyes rested, when he was dying, on young Paula, who was beside him. She who had been his spiritual child from her cradle, now performed the last sad offices for him. We have no details of his obsequies. According to his request, she placed his remains in the grotto not far from the venerable Paula, her grandmother, and Eustochium. United in life, they were so also in death. {679} Jerome's principal disciple, Eusebius of Cremona, now assumed the head of his convents, while young Paula continued to rule those of her grandmother's. We know nothing more. With the correspondence of Jerome died all traces of these communities, and night fell upon the East.

Glimpses Of Tuscany.

II.

The Boboli Gardens.

The high wall of our raised garden binds on the southern entrance to the Boboli: our white spirae droops down into it like a willow, so large and in such perfect bloom that strangers stop to sketch it as they pass. The good grand duke has gone since I last was here; the Sardinian bayonet is gleaming exactly where the Austrian sentinel stood. The Boboli has changed masters--not for the first time--and accepts the situation with the serenity of a veteran.

It is a bright Sunday morning. There is still time for a walk there before the Military Mass at Santo Spirito. Twelve years have not disturbed the placid sameness of this creature of the hill-side: the laurels are clipped just as evenly, the old busts and statues look at you, or at each other, just as archly or just as stolidly. It is all thoroughly man-made--intensely artificial. Every impulse of nature has been stifled in tree and shrub, until they no more dare to lean out of line than soldiers on parade. The very crocuses steal timidly through the grass, as if they were afraid of doing wrong.

"Grove nods to grove, each alley has its brother; One half the garden represents the other."

It looks human, every inch; the Lord is completely banished; his Spirit could not possibly walk in such a garden. And yet this creature of man seems clothed with imperishable bloom: this death of all nature seems able to outlive all other life. You cannot despise it, for it possesses the semblance of indestructibility-- unchangefulness in the midst of change. In the forests, dissolution and reproduction are palpably waging their unending warfare; even on the eternal Apennines, the snow comes and goes, the lights and shadows of the clouds are endlessly shifting. But in this miniature world monotony counterfeits the terrible fixity and relentlessness of fate. Nature is deprived of all free-will, and moves obedient to a fixed design.

It is difficult to say how far civilization, apart from religion, may go with advantage in remodelling the natural man. It is equally difficult to say how far art may safely encroach upon nature in reconstructing a landscape. Some of the grand elemental presentations disdain our interference. We have no control over the clouds, or the curves of the ocean, or the nocturnal radiance of the skies. {680} But the surface of the earth is an unfinished sketch, which the Creator has left us to humanize, in some small degree, after our fancy. We do not make even the smallest impression upon its planetary aspect; but, after centuries of toil, we succeed in partially changing its more immediate expression. We take the groundwork ready made, accept the laws as we find them, and then, inspired by the supreme longing after unrevealed beauty, which, in some shape or other, haunts every human soul, proceed to establish a little paradise of our own.

But above and beyond that last temporal Eden, there is still another--the one beyond the grave. I, who am an immortal spirit capable of sharing the celestial joy of angels, predestined for the beatific vision; I, whose hereafter should be passed amid perpetual light, and peace, and beauty; may I not have imaginings of better forms, of sweeter faces, of fairer prospects, of deeper skies, and even of diviner stars than those revealed to the senses? Did Raphael ever see a face that equalled hers of the San Sisto? Was there ever in the flesh a form to rival the Apollo of the Vatican? Is there any pattern in nature for Giotto's Campanile? Is there any voice in the woods or seas to suggest the melodies of Kreutzer or the harmonies of Beethoven? And may we not, then, poetize our landscapes too, and throw into the face of nature the expression of a human soul? But here is precisely the difficulty: the landscape has a soul of its own, which must not be murdered, even to make way for ours. The Grand Master has been at work before us; his works have wandered, of their own sweet will, into shapes and combinations that exhibit the grace beyond the reach of art. The mountains, the streams. the valleys, are full of these sweet surprises. The true artist can do little more than reproduce them, squared and framed, for parlor contemplation: the true gardener can do little more than display them to the best advantage.

It is more than likely, though, that, when the Boboli Gardens were laid out by the Medici, the artists employed had only to deal with unornamented slopes of olive orchards and arable land. The landscape was less to be remodelled than created. The surface under treatment was artistically as blank as uncolored canvas-- as meaningless as quarried marble. With this difference, however: that while the groundwork of the painter fades and wrinkles, while marble stains and shatters, while even the sculptured arches of great cathedrals crumble into dust, the living canvas on which the landscape gardener works is not only imperishable, but so charged with vitality that it gains instead of losing by duration; or, should a touch of decay at last appear, it is but in transition to new phases of beauty. One would think that, where human fancy is free to conceive a garden of delight, and human means sufficient to ransack the ages and spoil the climes for its embellishment, the result could not escape being a public and paramount attraction. I take this Boboli Garden as a sample of most public gardens or parks. Are they popularly, or even selectly, attractive? Are they ever thronged, except at stated hours, when people chiefly congregate to exhibit themselves and criticise each other? Was an artist, by any miracle, ever caught there more than once, save in the capacity of casual saunterer? Are they not startlingly unfrequented, in spite of their superb richness and beauty? {68l} However conducive these civic Edens to municipal health, have not the park police an almost exclusive monopoly of the fresh air and gravel? Do these magnets draw by dint of their intrinsic beauty? It may safely be questioned. And may not this failure be attributed to our vague, unpronounced repugnance to having nature out of harmony with itself and ourselves? Notwithstanding all the gilt and carmine of the new emblazonry, we keep asking the gay palimpsest to restore the lost features of our first friend.

The curse that fell on Adam also visited the earth from which he was taken. The heart of fallen man is full of yearning; the face of nature is full of sympathetic sadness; her voice is nearer a sigh than a song. More than half the year is clouded, more than half the hours belong to night, and over more than half the world goes the wail of the unresting seas. The vast _distances_ are everywhere softened or shaded into pensiveness; the very sunshine turns to blue and purple on the hills; it is only the small _near_ which presumes to be glad with the flash of a rivulet, the song of birds, or the glance of flowers. And, in these minor poems too, there is apt to lurk some sly suggestion of the unattained. Even where the universe is transfigured by the coming morn, and the world thrills with the joyous cry of reawakened life, the momentary exultation, the piercing delight of existence, are soon sobered by toil, or care, or thought; and, bright as the coming day may prove, the impression left on human hearts is that of promise unfulfilled. The poorest part of sunrise is the sun itself; the horns on the Rigi are silent as soon as the orb is fairly up.

It may not be overbold to affirm that some of these grander parks, such as the Bois de Boulogne, bear no mean resemblance to the first paradise itself. But our lot is changed since then; the primitive tradition of Deity incarnate has been fulfilled. Eden could no longer content us; we would not care to pass those Cherubim with the flaming sword, even if we dared. Between us and any possible paradise lies the grave. It is worse than mockery to expect the sorely laden Christian heart to find more than casual enjoyment in arbitrary walks, and endless beds of roses, and artificial fountains, and manufactured grottoes. Sorrow, passion, death, were encountered by God in descending to man; sorrow, passion, death, must be encountered by man in ascending to God. Spiritual felicity is less to be extracted from violets and roses than from sackcloth and ashes. Temporal happiness is not to be compassed by meandering through shaded avenues and even lawns, but by the sweat of the brow and the work of the hands; and in our respites from toil we like the wild, suggestive irregularities of nature better than a too glaring array of brightnesses with which we are seldom in complete accord. The post-Adamic garden needs depth and gloom and mystery as well as sunshine and flowers.

I do not mean to say that the Boboli is wholly glad; much of it is sad or saddening enough. That long, grim avenue of cypress would suit the valley of the shadow of death. Arnolfo's dark, mighty wall goes striding down the hill-side like a phantom. The Boboli was only _meant_ to be wholly glad. Though probably not designed by a Greek, it is nevertheless Grecian, or rather Athenian; for, in art, Athens is Greece. By an exceptional felicity and refinement of mental, moral, and physical organization, the Athenian realized in himself the most perfect development of natural civilization. {682} The dark, religious mysteries which tinge and sadden Hindu, Egyptian, and most Gentile life had little hold upon the Greek. Athens, in her prime, succeeded in escaping the pressure and responsibility of the hereafter. She aimed at making time a success independent of eternity. The real heaven of the Athenian and his disciples, in both classic peninsulas, was this world, not the next. Eternity was but the ghost of time, a vague prolongation of the present for better or worse in Elysium or Hades, the shadow projected by a vast material world as it moved through endless space. The poets of Greece dictated her popular theology; her sculptors carried beauty to the very borders of the beatitude, giving such glory to form that the inspired likeness is mistaken for the divine original. It is impossible to tell where the hero ends and the god begins. We have the deification of man in marble or fable, instead of the humanization of God in the flesh; or, in other words, the identity of religion and art. This pleasant way of being one with God, this graceful fulfilment of destiny, imparted a complacency to Athenian life which we cannot imitate.

"In every dark and awful place, Rude hill and haunted wood. This beautiful, bright people left A name of omen good.

"Unlike the children of romance, From out whose spirit deep The touch of gloom hath passed on glen. And mountain, lake, and steep; On Devil's Bridge and Raven's Tower, And love-lorn Maiden's Leap."

Grecian life, in its highest aspect, was an attempt to reproduce the perfections of a lost Eden; Christian life, in its highest aspect, is purification, self-denial, self-immolation, for a paradise which can never be reached in this world, and only in the next after life-long fear and trembling. And although we strive more or less successfully to substitute the joys of the spirit for those of the flesh, yet "Even we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body." (St. Paul. [Footnote 208]) After the knowledge of good and evil, our paradise must have no walls. The broad expanse of which each one of us may chance to be the centre, bounded by the horizon and vaulted by the sky--the whole visible landscape, with its fitful light and shade, its changing blight and bloom, its alternating sigh and song, whether subdued into use or wild as on the morning of the first Sabbath--this whole visible universe is the only garden in harmony with the vast aspiration, the ceaseless yearning of Christian life. Our opened eyes would weary of the walled Eden, as Rasselas wearied of the Happy Valley.

[Footnote 208: For the suggestion of this text of St. Paul the writer is indebted to a notice in the _Freeman's Journal_ of Father Ryan's beautiful lines, "_Why does your poetry sound like a sigh_."]

It is a pure and paramount joy to grapple with the rugged earth and bend it to your will; a joy to pierce the forest to your liking and smooth a bare expanse into velvet lawn: of mortal joys perhaps the purest and most enduring. But when all is done?--

Take your stand behind the Pitti Palace almost anywhere high up the hill, on the observatory itself, if you choose. All the wide valley of the Arno, with its circumference of cultured hills and woodless mountains, is before you. For thousands of years industrious generations have been at work on that fair panorama. Yellow villas are dotting all the heights; olive-trees are wrapping all the slopes in pale monotony; the vines are trailing everywhere in endless procession over mutilated mulberries; the long gray walls are solemnly parcelling out the small Tuscan farms. {683} All Florence is beneath you, with its domes and towers and spires, its streets and bridges, its memories and suggestions. The atmosphere is so transparent, the cultivation so perfect, that the area described by half the radius of vision seems to enclose only a vast kitchen-garden. But further on, the mist and haze are settling; the enchantment of distance is falling; Vallambrosa, gleaming on its mountain's breast, turns into some mysterious opal; the records traced by man through all those centuries are gradually erased by the quiet alchemy of nature, and the same eternal story reappears as vividly as if the superscription were but the shadow of a dream.

Turn to the Boboli at your feet. Do you wonder it is a failure--that Florence never goes there? They love their own little gardens dearly and the flowers in their windows; for these are but sweet thefts from nature to embellish home. But for these attempts to compress universal beauty into a given space, for this overprizing, overadorning of the _near_, only to be lost, or merged, or overlooked in the glory of the _far_, the Christian heart can have but little relish.

The bells of Santo Spirito are ringing; and I wonder, on my way there, if that cold white hand of Athens will ever quite relax its hold on Christian life.

Translated From Le Correspondant.

Anecdotical Memoirs By A Former Page Of The Emperor Nicholas.

One day, some months after my admission among the pages, as the classes were being dismissed, I heard a great noise. People were running to and fro, agitated and hurried; officers of the service, pages of the bedroom, inspectors, all seemed to be in a state of extraordinary excitement.

"Gentlemen, look out! look out! the emperor!" cried in an authoritative tone the head of our company, while his deep, sonorous voice reechoed throughout the dormitory, where, according to custom, we were all assembled before dinner.

At this name I was deeply moved. My mother and my companions had often, very often spoken to me of the emperor in recitals where legend mingled with reality, but I had not yet seen him face to face. The officer on duty arranged us in military order, each one standing near his own bed, and so we waited for him.

Soon the captain of the guard announced that the czar was coming up the great stairway. The dormitory, ordinarily so noisy, became perfectly still. There was a moment of solemn silence, religious in its perfect stillness. We hardly dared to breathe. The officer, with his helmet on, placed himself at the threshold. Suddenly, in the opening of the large doorway, appeared a man of tall stature, in the uniform of a general and in the midst of a _cortége_ of superior officers. {684} His countenance was severe, his whole exterior imposing. This was Nicholas I.

Since then I have seen, and closely, most of the sovereigns of Europe, and more than once have been admitted to the honor of direct conversation with them; but never have I beheld a figure more royal or more profoundly imprinted with supreme majesty; never have I since experienced the icy impression that this view of the czar produced upon me.

He walked straightforward in lordly style, his leaden eyes coldly fixed on those of each person to whom in turn he addressed himself, and gazing deeply into each face with a penetration that seemed to mark the very secrets of the soul. His step impressed you; his aspect intimidated; and his attitudes, so truly sovereign, added to a physiognomy so haughty, reflected the guiding sentiment of his life, his utter contempt for mankind, and his mystical faith in his own all-powerfulness. Of colossal height and admirably beautiful in face, his hard and penetrating eye subjugated you at once. Simply clad, even in peasant attire, he would have been recognized by his look and his imperial carriage, and surrounded even by twenty generals in full uniform, the cry would have resounded, "The emperor! it is he!"

He made the tour of the room, and, after speaking to several pages, came at last to where I stood. As he neared my bed, the director approached him and said:

"Sire, this is D----."

"Ah!" bowed the emperor, and turning toward me:

"How is your mother?"

"Well, sire."

"She is a good friend of mine. Are you satisfied with your present position?"

"Yes, sire."

"How long since he entered among the pages?" asked the czar of the director.

"About two months since, sire."

"And conducts himself well?"

"Very well."

"Bravo!"

Until now the conversation had been in French.

"And," resumed the emperor, but this time speaking Russian, "have you learned Russian?"

"Not yet, sire," I replied in French.

"What! here two months, and not yet a word! Why, that is outrageous. Can't you even say _no_ in Russian?"

"I ask pardon, your majesty; I do speak Russian with my comrades."

"Well, why then, stupid, if you can speak it with your comrades, do you answer me in French when I address you in Russian?"

"Because, if I express myself incorrectly to a simple page, I am not annoyed, whereas, with your majesty--"

"Very well, that will do."

I had heard he wished nothing badly done in his presence, and I knew too little Russian to dare venture it before his majesty.

"Did you hear that?" said the emperor; and turning toward General Philosophoff, "Here is one who will never be a fool," added he, and passed on.

Nicholas I., Paulowitch, the third son of the Emperor Paul III., had never dreamed of a crown. He believed himself destined for the pompous and useless life of a grand duke. Between him and the empire were two older brothers, both young and both intelligent.

However, since his earliest youth his character had shown itself self-willed, domineering, and tyrannical, in a manner the presage of his reign and harbinger of his politics. {685} There has been discovered among the books used in his education while he was quite a child, a volume of the _History of Russia_, by Karamsin, and on the margin of which are written in his own hand these remarkable words, "The Czar Ivan IV., the Terrible, was a severe but a just man, as one ought to be to govern a nation."

Such sentiments loudly expressed by Nicholas could not fail to alarm a people and court who still remembered the reign of his father, Paul I., only dead twenty-three years. The reign of this crowned fool had, notwithstanding its short duration, tired out even Russia itself--Russia, too, already so corrupted by the habit of despotism; and a revolution in the palace had at last put an end to the follies of this barbarian, this second Heliogabalus.

During the reign of Alexander I., the court and town spoke freely of the despot Paul. Nicholas, who neither could nor dared reinstate the memory of his father, and who considered it impolitic to permit a people to express themselves irreverently of a czar, forbade throughout his whole empire even the mention of a name so abhorred. The legend of his death he especially interdicted, and so long as the reign of Nicholas lasted, the memory of Paul I. remained in silence and obscurity.

While his brother Alexander I. governed the empire, Nicholas, who, as we have said, believing it impossible he should ever reign, kept himself in comparative obscurity, concentrated all his attention on the troops, each day passing them in review, and occupied himself only with the lot of the soldier and the amelioration of his condition. The marriage of the Grand Duke Constantine with the Princess of Lowicz brought him unexpectedly nearer the throne. At the death of the Emperor Alexander, and notwithstanding the unequal marriage of his brother, he was still uncertain of his approaching advancement. But when he learned, first by the will of Alexander, then by the letter of Constantine intrusted to the Senate, and finally from Constantine himself, his renunciation of the empire, he accepted the crown, and from the day he did so, faithful to his character, he understood how to reign fully and absolutely.

Firmly convinced that he represented celestial power on earth, sincerely persuaded that to his own people he was the mandatary of God, and held within himself divine prerogatives, he watched with an overshadowing jealousy the sacred deposit with which he believed himself charged, and any attempt against his authority appeared to him a sacrilege and proved him inexorable. The conviction that he never pardoned even the simple appearance of such a crime isolated him in the midst of his court and people, enveloped him in an atmosphere of gloom and terror, and placed him at a distance that added to his prestige and the respectful fear he inspired.

It is said that one evening, about two years after his death, one of his aides-de-camp, (in the midst of an animated conversation,) recognizing the portrait of the emperor in the drawing-room, suddenly left his place, and quickly turned its face to the wall. "During the life of the czar, I had such a terror of him," said he, "that I fear the copy, with its terrible eyes fixed upon me, may disconcert and embarrass me as greatly as did the model."

This very intentness of look was in truth the power of intimidation which the emperor possessed. Intending to win a confidence from any one or force a confession, he fastened on his victim his cold and immovable eyes. {686} The unfortunate was literally fascinated. He knew that a word or a gesture from the autocrat sufficed to annihilate him, and the least contraction of his brow froze the blood in his veins. Terror is the necessary auxiliary of every despotism, democratic or aristocratic, monarchical or republican.

Yet these jealous instincts, and this implacable firmness in punishment, were not solely due to the character of the Emperor Nicholas, but also to the sad experiences which signalized the commencement of his reign. Conspiracies against the new czar, revolts occasioned by the appearance of cholera, indeed all sorts of disorders, Nicholas had to suppress on his accession to the throne. From the very first he learned these bloody retaliations, and never pardoned.

The first conspirators of his reign, Pestel, Mouravieff-Apostol, and the poet Relieff, were condemned to be hung. The emperor signed the decree after the Russian formula, "_Byt po siemau_" (So be it.) They were then conducted to the place of execution. Relieff, a poet of the highest order, was the first one led to the scaffold. Just at the moment when the executioner, having passed the slip-knot, over his head, had raised him on his shoulders to launch him into eternity, the too weak cord broke, and he fell forward bruised and bleeding.

"They know not how to do anything in Russia," said he, raising himself without even turning pale, "not even to twist a rope."

As accidents of this kind--besides being very rare, were always considered occasions of pardon, they sent, therefore, to the Winter Palace to know the will of the emperor.

"Ah! the cord has broken?" said Nicholas.

"Yes, sire."

"Then he was almost dead? What impression has such close contact with eternity produced on the mind of the rebel?"

"He is a brave man, sire."

The czar frowned.

"What did he say?" asked he severely.

"Sire, he said, 'They know not how even to twist a rope in Russia.'"

"Well," replied Nicholas, "let them prove to him the contrary." And he went out.

A wealthy Polish lord, the Prince Roman Sanguszko, had been condemned, as a conspirator, to serve the rest of his life as a simple soldier, and to immediately join a regiment fighting in Caucasia. On the margin of the sentence, the emperor wrote in his own hand, "On foot!"

Such severity was in him a system. He sincerely believed in it as a necessity, and a part of the sanctity of absolute power. In Russia, especially, his knowledge of the character of his people fortified him in his belief, and he let no opportunity escape to declare his despotism.

Of all the heterogeneous elements that compose the immense empire of Russia, there is not one that ever seems likely to develop in the slightest degree the idea of liberalism; not a single nationality in which servilism is not innate, and to which the people themselves are not as much attached as the nations of the East to liberty. Hence it is that among the Russians, properly so-called, and who constitute the main portion of the population, we find the nobility infected with an inveterate sentiment of servile obsequiousness, and the people predisposed by temperament, and moulded by past experience, to the most abject submission. {687} They all have the same character as the great princes of Kieff, who, when under the yoke of the Tartars, went to receive the investiture of the Khan of the Horde d'Or; and who, after having held his stirrup and offered him a glass of _koumys_, [Footnote 209] were obliged to lick from the neck of his horse the milk that dropped from his moustaches. Do we need greater evidence of the servility of the Russian people than the reign of the crowned tiger, Ivan IV. the Terrible, a despot without parallel in history, whose subjects, more patient than the Romans under Caligula and Nero, not only were contented to bear with his follies and crimes, but actually supplicated him to resume the throne, after his voluntary abdication through disgust of others and himself? The reign, too, of Peter the Great, whose savage grandeur could not absolve him from cruelty, and even the possibility in the nineteenth century of such a despot as Nicholas I., what greater proofs do we require?

[Footnote 209: Camel's milk fermented.]

As to the half-savage nations of the northern limits of Russia and Siberia, with populations perhaps only yesterday awakened to anything like social life, their need is still, as with children, the master, and the ferule.

It is easy to understand, then, how a man armed like Nicholas with an iron will and immense authority, and comprehending perfectly the character of his people, should have conceived this superhuman idea of his own power. Never thwarted by the least resistance, only now and then by an occasional murmuring, we can need no better explanation of his apparently exaggerated despotism, of his inveterate faith in the sanctity of his domination, his conviction that in himself centred his whole empire, and the faculty, in fine, which he possessed in so great a degree, of entirely ignoring mankind.

One day, a short time before the Crimean war, at a grand military review at Krasnoe-Selo, the emperor, on horseback, presented his troops to the empress seated in her carriage. Suddenly appeared on the drill ground a cariole drawn by one horse, and out of which stepped a _feld jaguer_, (courier of the palace,) charged with two autographic letters from the King of Prussia to the emperor and empress. As the empress was the more easily approached, he handed her the first letter, and ran toward the emperor to present the second. But some steps from him he pauses, turns pale, and bursts into tears. The letter is lost.

Trembling from head to foot, he retraces his steps to try and find it, but the soldiers, the aides-de-camp, the horses, have already trodden it in the dust, and the precious envelope cannot be found.

"What ails that animal?" asked the emperor of one of his aides-de-camp.

"I do not know, sire."

"Well, go and ask him, and bring me his reply."

The aide-de-camp spurred his horse, and from the lips of the poor feld jaguer he learned that an autograph letter from the King of Prussia to the Emperor of Russia had been lost. He brought the czar the information.

The face of Nicholas clouded instantly; his expression was gloomy and severe.

"Take charge of this man yourself and without allowing him to communicate with any one, conduct him immediately to Siberia. Let him not be harshly treated, but let him never again appear in Europe."

The aide-de-camp, as well as the unhappy feld jaguer, were both to set out, without even changing their boots, for this journey of 2000 leagues. The aide-de-camp returned eight months afterward, and was recompensed by promotion from the emperor, but the poor courier was doubtless dying or dead in the neighborhood of Tobolsk, such faults as his having escaped an amnesty.

{688}

Such instances (I witnessed the one I am about to relate) were not rare in the life of Nicholas. One morning in the spring, when a freshet of the Neva had rendered its crossing extremely perilous, the emperor, on looking from the window of his Winter Palace, saw a large crowd watching, in evident stupefaction, a man directing himself, by leaps from one piece of ice to another, toward the opposite shore.

He called his attendant aide-de-camp.

"Look at that fool," said he. "What courage! Run and see what motive he has for so exposing his life."

The aide-de-camp learned the particulars and returned.

"Sire, he is a peasant who has bet he would cross the Neva for twenty-five roubles, and is trying to gain the reward."

"Give him twenty-fire lashes," replied Nicholas; "a man who risks his life in this miserable way would be capable of anything for money."

To a desperate caprice of the same kind is due the construction of the railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, called the Nicholas railroad. The emperor had in his court a certain general, Kleinmichel, a disagreeable person, exceedingly unpopular, and of equivocal fidelity, but who pleased by his reticence and promptness in executing orders. When the road was decided upon by a counsel of ministers, and its erection considered urgent, a map of Russia was brought to the czar, who was asked to look over the course designated by the different engineers and give his preference. Nicholas, without saying a word, took the map, marked a straight line from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and said to the stupefied engineers:

"This is the line of the railroad."

"But," they all cried, "impossible. Your majesty will find no one to undertake such a work. It would be to hide treasures in a desert."

"No one undertake it when I command it to be done!" said Nicholas. "We shall see."

And signalling Kleinmichel from a corner:

"Kleinmichel," said he, "you see this line?"

"Yes, sire."

"This is a new railroad I propose constructing in my empire."

"Sire, it is magnificent!"

"You think so? Will you charge yourself, then, with the execution of my orders?"

"With the greatest pleasure, sire, if your majesty orders it. But the funds, the funds?"

"Don't be troubled about them. Ask for all the money you want."

And turning to the engineers:

"You see," said Nicholas to them, "I can get along without you. I will build my own railroad."

And the construction of this road lasted ten years. It did not deviate an inch from the line marked out by the imperial finger; and leaving on one side, at about a distance of ten leagues, the villages of Novgorod, Twer, and a host of others equally rich and important, it traversed, in the midst of marshes and woods, nothing but immense solitudes; 706 kilometres of iron rail cost Russia 400,000,000 francs--a little more than half a million a kilometre--of which the devoted Kleinmichel, but that as a matter of course, took a good share. Nicholas, however, was right in saying nothing could resist him.

{689}

Some weeks after the inauguration of this railroad an ambassador arrived at St. Petersburg. According to custom and to pay him attention, everything was shown him in detail, all the objects of interest in the city. He expressed no surprise or admiration; his oriental gravity was proof against either.

"What could we show him that would astonish him?" asked the emperor of Menschikoff.

"Show him the accounts of Kleinmichel for the Nicholas railroad," replied the prince, laughing.

A few days later, General Kleinmichel, in presence of the emperor, was discussing with Menschikoff some question upon which they could not agree. The general proposed to the prince a wager.

"With pleasure," replied the latter, "and this shall be the stake, if your excellence permits it. He who loses shall be obliged--at the expense of the winner--to go to Moscow and return by the railroad your excellence has just finished."

"What joke is this?" asked the emperor.

"A very simple one, sire. The road is so constructed that one is very sure to break his neck on it; so, you see, we are playing for our lives."

The emperor laughed heartily at the joke, but Kleinmichel took care not to accept the bet.

These two instances prove that Nicholas knew how, now and then, to listen to a truth well said. He was too certain that none of his subjects dared fail him in the respect he required, so he could afford to listen to those who were bold and witty enough to approach him with the truth. Menschikoff, the same who commanded at Sebastopol, was one of these; better than any other, he always maintained before the czar his frank speech, and Nicholas, little accustomed to such frankness, loved him dearly, and frequently amused himself with his sallies.

General Kleinmichel was the aversion of Menschikoff. One day the latter entered the cabinet of Nicholas at the moment when the emperor was playing with one of his grand-children, the Grand Duke Michel, still quite an infant.

Astraddle on the shoulders of his grandfather, the little prince made the czar serve for his horse.

"See," cried Nicholas gayly, "see how this little imp treats me. I am growing thin under it. The little monkey is so heavy, I shall fall with fatigue."

"Zounds!" quickly replied Menschikoff, "little Michel (in German _Klein-michel_) ought not to be a very light load, if he carries about him all he has stolen."

Notwithstanding his jokes, which spared no one, Menschikoff delighted Nicholas, who could readily enough withdraw him from the chief command at Sebastopol, but would not deprive him of his friendship. This was of more ancient date, and founded on the two good qualities of courage and sincerity. Sometimes, but rarely, others approached the emperor as familiarly. The celebrated poet, Pouchkine, for example, dared to express himself in his presence with a frankness which, even in occidental Europe, and in a constitutional state, would pass for audacity.

In the palace of the Hermitage, where they were walking together, the emperor had led the poet into a gallery of pictures that contained the portraits of all the Romanoffs, from Michel Fedorovitch to the last reigning sovereign, and had ordered him to improvise some verses on each.

{690}

Pouchkine obeyed; but coming to the portrait of Nicholas, he was silent.

"Well, Pouchkine," said the emperor, "what have you to say of me?"

"Sire!"

"Some flattery, of course? I don't wish to hear it; so tell the truth."

"Your majesty permits me?"

"I order you. Believe in my imperial word, you shall not suffer."

"So be it, sire."

And he wrote the famous distich:

"Des pieds à la tête la toile est admirable; De la tête aux pieds le tzar est détestable." [Footnote 210]

[Footnote 210: "From feet to head the picture is admirable: From head to feet the czar is detestable."]

The emperor made no reply, but he asked Pouchkine for no more verses.

Notwithstanding his despotism, and the arbitrary acts that signalized his reign; notwithstanding the innumerable banishments into Siberia and Caucasia, it is seen the emperor could sometimes bear to hear the truth. The instinct of justice was born in him; despotism had smothered it, unfortunately, but his better nature frequently triumphed. Often the hereditary grand duke had, in this respect, to submit to severe reprimands. One day, in 1832, a year after the revolt of the Poles, whom Nicholas had handled with implacable rigor, the grand duke, in the presence of his father, had called them _accursed_. Rebuking publicly his son:

"Imperial Highness," said Nicholas, "your expressions are unseemly. If I chastise the Poles, it is because they have revolted against my authority; but to you they have done no harm, and you are destined to reign over them. You have no right to make any difference in your future subjects. Be assured, such sentiments make bad sovereigns."

The sentiment of gratitude was no more a stranger to the Emperor Nicholas than the spirit of justice. True, he guarded as faithfully the remembrance of injuries as of services, and if he never forgot those who had served or defended him, neither did he ever forgive those who had made the least attempt against his power. While the Troubetskois, the Mouravieffs, the Tchernicheffs, worked in the mines of Siberia, still there could be seen, at the end of his reign, several generals perfectly unqualified, yet provided with advantageous employments, without any great power, it is true, but well lodged, well fed, honored, and tranquil. If they committed any absurdity, and this frequently happened, he changed their places according to capacity, or sometimes secretly directed them in the exercise of their functions, never failing in his goodness toward them. These men, in the military revolt of 1826, had offered their swords to assist his growing power.

Strange character! Curious mixture of faults and good qualities, of littleness and grandeur; brutal and chivalrous, courageous even to temerity, and distrustful even to poltroonery; equitable and tyrannical, generous and cruel, at once the friend of ostentation and of simplicity! His palace was magnificent, his court splendid, the luxuriousness of his courtiers dazzling, while, in his own person, his habits and tastes, he affected an imposing austerity. His working cabinet was almost bare; he slept always on a camp bed. The oldness of his uniform, and of his military cloaks, was proverbial at St. Petersburg. Worn out, pieced in different places, they evidenced, by their shining neatness, how carefully they were preserved. At his repasts even, he drank no wine; he never smoked, and the odor of tobacco was so disagreeable to him that it was forbidden, not only in the Winter Palace, but in the streets of St. Petersburg. {691} Even the Grand Duke Alexander, the czar truly, and an inveterate smoker, was obliged to sit under the mantel-piece, to enjoy the luxury of a cigar in the imperial palace.

Loving beyond everything military discipline, and rigorous in his formulas, Nicholas, who for thirty years was accustomed to this refrain, "Master, thy slave is here to obey thee"--Nicholas could only comprehend order and uniformity. Reviews were his favorite passion; during his reign, he transformed his empire into a barrack. He passed his life in manoeuvres, exercises, and miniature wars. The soldiers adored him, although he was only eclipsed in the severity of military rule by the Grand Duke Michel. It is true, the latter pushed his worship of discipline to such an extent that the emperor himself was often amused at the expense of his younger brother. One day he met an officer with his clothes torn and covered with mud, and without helmet or sword. The officer, finding himself discovered, and knowing he was to blame, was terribly frightened, and nearly fell backward in making the military salute. Nicholas fixed a severe look upon the poor devil, which made him totter. But, suddenly changing his tone and countenance, he said gayly:

"Go, dress yourself; but take good care you don't meet my brother!"

Rising with the dawn, and at work from the earliest hour of the day, whether at his palace in winter or in the field in summer, he hardened himself, as well as others, to both cold and fatigue. An excellent rider, his horses were magnificent and marvellously cared for; he always mounted alone those that were reserved for him, and out of two or three hundred sent every year to his stables for his own use, he could scarcely find a dozen to suit him. In manoeuvres I have seen him twenty times, at the moment of the loudest cannonade and in the most frightful noise, jerk, in his impatience, his horse's bit until the jagged lips of the poor beast were streaming with blood. Sometimes this torture lasted several minutes; the sides of the beautiful animal whitened with foam; he trembled in agony, and yet never lost for a moment his statue-like immobility.

Such methods of proceeding, applied by Nicholas equally to everything that surrounded him, generals, servants, horses, and courtiers, were fortunately tempered in him by the sense of justice, of which I have already spoken, and especially by the fear of public opinion, not only in Russia, but in all Europe. He seemed ashamed of the despotism he practised, and strove to conceal it from the governments and people of the West. In proportion as he affected to despise their arms, so much the more did he respect their ideas.

We know that it is customary at the court of St. Petersburg to be presented to the emperor in full uniform. And even more, that there is no condition in life, however trifling, which has not its distinctive costume. It is related that one morning Lord ----, ambassador from England, arrived in his carriage at the gate of the Winter Palace, was recognized, and went up to the apartments of the emperor. He was in his great-coat. Seeing it, the chamberlain-in-waiting, who did not dare remark this infringement of the laws of etiquette in such an important person, immediately sent word to the chancellor of the empire. Count Nesselrode, and meanwhile retained the ambassador under various pretexts. {692} The count arrived in haste, and the morning toilet seemed to have the same effect on the chancellor as on the chamberlain.

"I am delighted to see you, my dear count," said Lord ---- to M. de Nesselrode. "I wanted to speak to his majesty on some very important business, but I have been detained here nearly an hour."

"Because we do not dare, my lord--"

"Do not dare--what?"

"We cannot introduce you to the emperor in such morning _négligé_."

"_Négligé!_" said he, throwing a rapid glance at his person, and aware of his reputation for elegance, and supposing he had been guilty of some impropriety in his toilet.

"In Russia, no one is admitted in similar costume to the presence of the sovereign."

"Would full uniform be necessary?" asked smilingly the reassured ambassador.

"Exactly, my lord."

"Oh! pardon me, then. I will go dress myself." And he left, shrugging his shoulders.

The emperor was furious when he heard of the adventure.

"Cursed fools!" he grumbled, "they represent me a barbarian!"

When, an hour afterward, the ambassador returned to the palace in official uniform, the emperor excused himself with great anxiety, blaming the narrow-mindedness of his servants, and declaring loudly that he did not occupy his brain with such trifles.

"When you wish, my lord," added he, giving him his hand, "to come and see me as you did to-day, do not be incommoded, I beg of you, by any such formula."

This fear of Western irony affected all his relations with Europeans. We know the flattering reception he gave the Marquis de Custine, Horace Vernet, and twenty other illustrious strangers. Those employed in his empire were as anxious to throw dust in the eyes of travellers as himself. Nothing could be more amusing than the arrival of a stranger at St. Petersburg, under the reign of Nicholas. As no one could remain in the city without a permit, all new-comers hastened to the police to have their cards presented them, and the scenes enacted were truly comical.

The following dialogue will give a good idea of them:

"You wish to live at St. Petersburg?"

"Yes, sir."

"How long?"

Each one then fixed the probable duration of his stay.

"Well, your permit will be given you."

Here a pause. The policeman gives the necessary order, then resumes the conversation.

"Well, what do you think of St. Petersburg?"

"It is an admirable city."

"Are not our theatres as fine as those of Paris?"

"Most assuredly."

"Is not the perspective from Newski a superb view?"

"Truly."

"Do they not tell idle stories of us in Paris, and are they any freer than we?"

"Prejudices these, nothing more. Travellers, like me, are here to rectify such errors. A proof that Russia is free, I can move about with perfect liberty."

"Have you seen the emperor?"

"Yesterday evening at the Théâtre Michel."

"Is he not a remarkably handsome man?"

"The handsomest I have ever seen."

{693}

"Sir, your permit must be ready by this time. Will you go and receive it, and prolong your stay in Russia as long as you please. You will see that you have judged our country correctly."

Notwithstanding all his efforts to conciliate European opinion, the Emperor Nicholas was not rewarded in his travels by any praise whatever. Once out of his own country, he quickly discovered he had deceived no one, and his despotism was in Europe the object of universal unpopularity.

From the Holy Father he received his first lesson: a lesson, however, both given and received with dignity.

It was well known that he had changed hundreds of Catholic into Greek churches, in all the western provinces of Russia and Poland.

Curious to visit Rome, he asked permission of Gregory XVI. to enter the holy city. The pope asked, in return, by what ceremonial he wished to be received.

"As a Catholic sovereign," replied the emperor.

Lodged at the Quirinal, he went the next day in Eastern style with a guard of Cossacks to visit the holy father, who received him standing at the head of the staircase of the Vatican. Nicholas knelt to receive the benediction of the venerable pontiff, who, after having given it to him, without being at all impressed with his Attila-like costume, said to him with a serenity almost angelic:

"My son, you persecute my sheep."

"I?" cried Nicholas in a disconcerted tone.

"Yes, you, my son. You are powerful. Do not use your strength to oppress the weak."

"Holy father, I have been slandered."

The conversation continued some time in the cabinet of the pope, and the emperor remained, during his stay in Rome, on terms of the most affectionate respect with Gregory XVI. He afterward sent him a magnificent altar of malachite, that may be admired at the church of St. Paul, outside the walls. An inscription, dictated by Nicholas to St. Peter at Rome, recalls his visit to the Capital of Christianity:--"Nicholas came here to pray to God for his mother, Russia."

In London, as is well known, he was received with great popular demonstrations. We need not relate here the tumultuous scenes to which he had to submit, and how his carriage was more than once covered with mud.

With a brutality unworthy a sovereign, and at times a delicacy astonishing in a man of such a character, the most contrary qualities and defects reproduced themselves in a hundred acts of his life. For instance, one night I saw him fisticuff a poor Jew in the face, and accompany the act with the most sonorous oaths, because in giving light to the postilions of the Berlin imperial, he had awakened him with a start, by throwing the light of his lantern into his face. Again, at Warsaw, where he went to receive the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria, he took Francis Joseph into his arms to force him to occupy the seat of honor in his carriage, which the young emperor was unwilling to accept: a courtesy, according to the Cossack, that would have exactly suited him.

Yet this man, so rude and so haughty, evidenced occasionally great delicacy of sentiment. One very cold day, returning from a review, where he had been almost frozen, he stopped at the house of a lady, whom he knew to be in ill health, and met the doctor in the waiting-room.

"How is Madame ----?" said he to the latter.

{694}

"Very poorly, sire. The cold of St. Petersburg is killing her."

"Ah! the cold is injuring her? Feel my hands. They are frozen, are they not?"

"Very cold, sire."

"Well, I will wait here until they are warm; I would not for the world increase her malady."

And the emperor waited in this sort of an antechamber, talking to the doctor, until his hands resumed their natural warmth.

So this character, which, at first sight, appeared all of a piece, was composed of contrasts the most dissonant. Nicholas bared his breast to the revolted regiments in 1826 and recalled them to duty by this single attitude; at the time of the cholera, alone amid a populace mad with terror and exasperated by famine, a gesture from him, a single word, could constrain the delirious multitude and throw them on their knees before him; in cases of fire, so frequent at St. Petersburg, and under the burning beams, a hundred times he uselessly risked his life; yet on another occasion, when the safety of an empire depended upon him, he resolutely refused to repair to Sebastopol.

His long reign was fatal to Russia. For nearly thirty years it accomplished nothing. During the lifetime of Nicholas, the wheel-work of the machine moved regularly under his powerful hand, the cogs upon which he impressed the movement never being completely paralyzed. But the evil, being hidden, was not the less deep or real. Under this show of factitious strength, the downfall was already visible, and the approaching disaster keenly felt. The army, upon which Nicholas concentrated all his attention and intelligence--the army, his strength, his hope, his pride, began to be disorganized under the influence of an administration without control. Alone, the will of the czar sustained the edifice, and his pride sustained his will. And this word pride embodies to my mind the character, the conduct, the whole politics, of the Emperor Nicholas. His ruling passion was pride, a pride incommensurable, a pride such as neither Louis XIV., Henry VIII., nor Solyman the Magnificent--these three crowned representatives of capital sins--could ever equal. The idea of humiliation would leave him smiling, so entirely he believed such an event impossible. It may be truly said that he never submitted, for the first repulse he had to suffer killed him.

This pride in him passed all bounds, and touched sometimes on the aberrations of a Schahabaham. One day, one of his aides-de-camp came to him very much excited, and throwing himself at his feet:

"Sire!" cried he, "I beg your majesty to grant me a favor."

"Speak."

"Permit me to fight a duel."

"Never!" replied the emperor.

Nicholas had a horror of duels. In his eyes, all blood was criminally shed in Russia that was not for the country or in his service, and he punished the guilty in this respect most severely.

"Sire, I am dishonored. It is necessary for me to fight."

"What do you say?"

"I have been struck in the face."

"Ah!" said the emperor, contracting his brows. "But no, I cannot permit a duel. You must come with me."

And taking him by the arm, he conducted him before the assembled court, and, in presence of all, kissed him on the offended cheek.

{695}

"Go, now," said he, "and resume your tranquillity; the affront is washed out."

During the war of the Crimea, and especially in the first part of it, Nicholas, very restless, waited every day for news from the south. Each one tried his best to conceal the bad turn affairs had taken; but after the battle of the Alma, the truth had to be confessed. A courier, Colonel A., was despatched to him in great haste. He received orders to repair immediately to the czar.

"Well! what news?" said the emperor to him brusquely, giving him scarcely time to enter or fulfil the accustomed formalities of etiquette.

"The battle has been fought, sire."

"Finish!" said the emperor, with an emotion that caused his usually firm voice to tremble.

"Alas!--"

"You say--?"

"Fortune has failed us."

"We are--?"

"We are beaten, sire."

The emperor arose from his seat.

"It is impossible," said he in a quick manner.

"The Russian army has taken flight."

"You lie!" cried Nicholas with a frightful explosion of anger.

"Sire--"

"You lie. My soldiers never fly."

"Sire, I have told you the truth."

"You lie, I say, you lie."

And his eye beaming with anger, his lips contracted, his hand raised, he threw himself on the military courier and tore off his epaulettes.

"Go! You are now only a soldier."

The unhappy colonel, pale with shame, smothering his rage and the tears that rose to his eyes, went out, his soul in despair. But hardly had he reached the staircase, when he heard the voice of the emperor begging his return. He retraced his steps, and Nicholas, running to meet him, embraced him ardently, begged pardon for his brutality, and offered for his acceptance the post of aide-de-camp.

"May your majesty hold me excused," replied the poor officer; "for, in taking off" my epaulettes, you have deprived me of my honor. I leave them in your hands with my dismissal."

"You are right," replied Nicholas. "It is not in my power to repair the offence of my hasty action. Ah! we are both unhappy, and I am vanquished. Yes, completely vanquished!"

And, walking up and down with an agitated step, the subdued lion in his cage, his heart bleeding with the wound given his pride:

"Go, leave my empire," continued he, turning to Colonel A----, "and pardon me. We must not meet again. Both of us would suffer too much in each other's presence."

The mortification attending the first reverses of his army before Sebastopol was a mortal blow to his health; yet, had not his stubborn pride brought about these reverses? Self-deceived thoroughly as to the real condition of his empire, the disastrous news of the Alma came upon him like a thunder-bolt. Some honest men, sent to the different stations, signalized the imperfect state of the fortifications of Sebastopol, the disorganization of the army, the deplorable condition of the roads. They informed the emperor that the soldiers, in their march toward the south, were dying by thousands for want of sufficient nourishment and necessary clothing. Thanks to the bad quality of the grass and hay, whole regiments were in a few days entirely dismounted. And now the alarming news spread with rapidity. {696} Each day brought fresh tidings of new embarrassments, new checks, and new misfortunes. Nicholas at last opened his eyes. He saw the colossus, with its feet of clay, tremble to its base; he felt his power crumble in his hands, his prestige fade and disappear. From the windows of Peterhoff, his loved summer residence, he could follow with his telescope the evolutions of the allied fleet. Turkey itself, hitherto so despicable in his eyes, was transformed into a redoubtable enemy. Now he began to think of the ravages that continued theft had made in his empire, the disorders in the finances, the corruption of public morals, and every one was doomed to punishments. By his order, judgments, condemnations, banishment to Caucasia and Siberia, were daily multiplied. It was too late; the gangrene had reached the wound.

Tears of grief and rage flowed with the consciousness of his impotence. He opened his eyes to the fall of Russia with each victorious flash of the allied cannons; and the edifice of terror that had taken him twenty years to build, he saw crumbling, stone by stone, and felt that the military quackery with which he had intimidated Europe had frightened no one. With the mocking pride of Titan, he bled at every pore. Repeated blows of this kind ended by undermining his constitution, till now so vigorous. Little by little he sank, bent his haughty head, and tottered, with slow and saddened step, to the grave.

It was February. Under a gray and cold sky, a penetrating, driving snow enveloped St. Petersburg in a whitened dust. The streets, the houses, the beards and furred great-coats of the passers-by, all were white. The great city resembled a giant asleep under the snow. An inexpressible sadness took possession of you, weighed down your whole being, and froze your very heart. You seemed to be at the pole itself.

On this day the emperor, an early riser as usual, came out of his bedroom and entered his cabinet, where were already assembled his general aide-de-camp, his other aides, the chamberlain, and gentlemen of the bed-chamber. Perceiving his general aide-de-camp, he called to him, and said:

"I am suffering. Send for Mandt."

"I will go myself, sire."

"Yes. I have a grand review at the end of the week, and must be there."

Mandt, his attendant physician, Prussian by birth, a man of science, and an excellent practitioner, hastened to the emperor, who, after having given his orders, had returned to his apartments.

"It will be nothing, gentlemen," said the doctor to us on leaving the imperial chamber; "only the emperor should abstain from going out, as the least imprudence may aggravate a malady which at present portends nothing serious."

The emperor remained two days in his room, and there was a sensible improvement in his condition. But his wasted figure, his dull eyes, and waxy color betrayed the existence of a hidden malady. The third day, the courier from the south brought him news--sad news, certainly, for it had been a long time since his couriers had anything happy to tell him. The next day was terribly cold, icy, heavy, impregnated with the boreal fog; yet this was the day of the review at which the czar wished to assist.

He threw a small military cloak over his uniform, and at the appointed hour left his cabinet, to mount his horse.

Mandt was waiting for him in the antechamber.

{697}

"Sire!" said the doctor to him in a supplicating voice, and trying to retain him.

"Oh! it is you, doctor. I am better, thank you."

"Yes, sire, better, but not well yet."

"Oh! indisposed merely,"

"No, sire, a serious malady. I come to beg your majesty not to go out."

"Impossible!"

"Sire, for pity's sake--"

"You are crazy, Mandt."

"Sire, you had better be resigned."

"You believe there is danger?"

"It is my duty to warn you of it."

"Well, Mandt, if you have done your duty in warning me, I will do mine by going out."

And the emperor, without listening to another word, pursued his way.

Mandt, stupefied for a moment, ran after him, and rejoined him in the court-yard, at the moment he mounted his horse.

"Sire," cried he, resuming his supplications, "deign to listen to me--"

"I have said it, Mandt. I thank you, but to insist would be useless."

"Sire, in this condition!"

"Well?"

"It is your death, sire."

"And then?"

"It is suicide."

"And who has permitted you, Mandt, to scrutinize my thoughts? Go, and insist no longer. I order you."

After the review, he returned to the palace, pale, trembling, icy cold.

"I am threatened with my malady," said he to his aide-de-camp.

"Shall I send for Mandt?"

"Useless; he has already warned me."

"He warned your majesty?"

"Yes; that I would kill myself."

The aide-de-camp turned pale.

"Ah sire! what do I hear?"

"To die, is it not the best thing I can do? Farewell, my old friend, I have need of rest. Let no one disturb me."

All night the imperial family, who had been apprised of his condition, the doctors, Mandt and Rasel, united in the anteroom, waited with anxiety--not daring to knock at the door of the emperor--for the moment he might call to them. Obedience, in this court, was so blindly servile that it imposed silence on the most natural and imperious sentiments. Toward two o'clock something was heard between a groan and a sigh. Mandt thought he might knock gently at the door of the imperial chamber.

"I have forbidden any one to disturb me," murmured the emperor, in a voice still feeble, but which retained an accent of authority.

That night was spent in mortal inquietude, in inexpressible anguish, and not until the next morning was the doctor informed by the valet de chambre that his august patient would like to see him.

"Well, Mandt, you were right. I believe I am a dead man."

These were the first words of Nicholas.

"O sire! I spoke as I did to dissuade your majesty from so great an imprudence."

"Let us see: look me in the face and tell me if there is yet hope."

"I believe so, sire."

"I tell you I am a dead man. I feel it. Go on, make use of your trade. Sound my lungs; I know that science will confirm my conviction."

Mandt, having accomplished the orders of the emperor, shook his head.

"Well?"

"Sire--"

"You are troubled, Mandt; your hand trembles. See, I have more courage than you. Come, let us have the sentence, and quickly, for I have to settle my affairs in this world, and I have a great many of them."

{698}

"Your majesty troubles yourself unnecessarily. No case is ever desperate, and with the grace of God--"

Nicholas gazed at his doctor fixedly in the eyes.

The latter looked down confusedly.

"You know, Mandt, I cannot be deceived easily. Let us have the truth now, and only the truth. Do you think that Nicholas does not know how to die?"

"Sire--"

"Well?"

"In forty-eight hours you will be dead or saved."

"Thank you, Mandt," said Nicholas in a voice of deep emotion. "Now good-by, and send me my family."

The doctor prepared to leave the room.

"Mandt!" called Nicholas, on seeing him direct his steps toward the door.

"Sire."

"Let us embrace each other, my good old friend. We will perhaps never meet again on earth. You have been an honest and faithful servant. I will recommend you to my son."

"What do you say, sire? Never see you again! I sincerely hope the contrary, and that my attentions--"

"Your attentions will be superfluous. There will be time for me only to see my ministers and my priest, and make my peace with God. Human science can do no more for me, and, indeed, I do not wish to try it."

"And now at the close, sire, I revolt," cried the doctor. "I have no right, and my duty forbids my thus abandoning you."

"Mandt, do you answer for my cure?"

The doctor hung his head, and could not reply.

"Farewell, then, my friend."

"Sire, if not, then, as your physician, permit me as a devoted servant to see you again. Who can tell? God is great! and for the destiny of the Russia which he protects, may work a miracle."

"And because I know that God protects Russia, so neither do I wish nor hope for my restoration to health. Mandt, let my family come now. I assure you the time will soon fail me."

Mandt wept. With tears in his eyes, he went out and related to the courtiers his conversation with the emperor. Strange contradiction! This man, whom I have tried to depict as so severe and haughty, was adored by all who approached him. Courtiers, soldiers, servants, burst into tears. Lost in the crowd with them, I mingled my complaints and prayers.

Then, after the empress and the grand hereditary duke, the imperial family, all in tears, entered the apartment of the emperor. The door closed upon them, and all that passed there, all that was said in this supreme grief, only God knew. Mandt, however, with a voice choked with emotion, continued his recital, and we listened to him with the keenest attention. How and by what indiscretion the news he had just given us was spread in the city, I cannot tell; but already, before the death of the czar, it was believed at St. Petersburg that Mandt had helped to poison him. From this to the pretended act itself there was but one step toward belief, and this was soon overcome; so the exasperation, true or false, against the honest doctor, knew no bounds, and they would have torn him to pieces in the streets. The name of Nicholas still inspired such terror that every one endeavored to give some public demonstration of grief as a claim on his benevolence in the event of his returning to life. Yet after his death these manifestations changed their character, and the contrast between such marks of affection and the epithets with which they loaded his memory when they were certain he really ceased to exist, was a lesson for kings to contemplate. {699} For the time, though, the anger of the people against the poor doctor was so blindly furious, that it is related of a thief, seized by the collar by a passerby, from whom he had tried to steal his watch, that in order to escape, he raised the cry, "Hist! hist! it's Mandt, comrades, it's Mandt!"

The interview between the emperor and his family lasted three hours, three long hours, during which expectation for us was changed into real anguish. By degrees retired, one by one, the children, the grand-children, and his brothers. The grand hereditary duke came out last, bathed in tears. An hour flew by, and not a sound was heard from the imperial chamber; no one dared enter. Mandt listened attentively, holding his breath. Suddenly a loud noise was heard in the corridors; a courier from Sebastopol arrived. As the whole court knew the impatience with which the emperor awaited the news from the Crimea, the aide-de-camp general on duty, thinking to please the emperor, knocked at his door.

"Do they still want me?" murmured the emperor; "tell them to let me rest."

"Sire, a courier from Sebastopol."

"Let him address himself to my son; this concerns me no longer."

Soon the primate, followed by the clergy, arrived to offer the last consolations of the church. Then the ministers were presented, the Count Orlof at their head. This lasted during the night. At ten o'clock, the emperor asked for the officers of his household. His face already bore the impress of death; a cadaverous paleness betrayed the progress of the decomposition that preceded the fatal moment; lying on his camp-bed, he addressed us some farewell words, which the first strokes of death-rattle interrupted, and took leave of us with a waive of his hand. None of us slept that night in the Winter Palace, none of us after that hour ever saw the emperor alive.

The next day, the 18th of February, at mid-day, the grand chamberlain of the palace was sent for by the physicians to the imperial bed. At half-past twelve o'clock, returning among us, "Nicholas Paulowitch is dead," said he.

We went out silent and sad.

The next day, on the walls of St. Petersburg could be read this inscription: "Russia, grateful to the Emperor Nicholas I. for the 18th of February, 1855."

{700}

Translated From The French Of The Pere Landriot-- Addressed To Women Of The World.

Household Duties.

"She giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.'

We finished the question, vulgar perhaps in one sense, yet so important in many others, of sleep: [Footnote 211] a benefit of divine Providence accorded us each day to repair our strength, renew our life, and provide for the weakness and precipitation of man; a time for repose and sage counsel.

[Footnote 211: See "_Early Rising_" in _The Catholic World_ for September, 1867.]

Sleep is a precious dictate, a solitary bath for body and soul, and a prudent counsellor and daily preacher to remind us of our approaching and last departure. But like all good things, sleep is subject to abuse, and then it produces effects entirely contrary to the will of the Creator: weakening, stupefying, and dulling the faculties, it becomes for humanity a living sepulchre. If the abuse of sleep coincides with the quality, that is to say, if the hours by nature destined to it are considerably changed--night turned into day, and day into night--the constitution is assuredly ruined, and an infirm old age prepared, a never-ceasing convalescence. Parties and midnight revels have killed more women than the most exaggerated mortifications and if religion commanded the sacrifice the world requires of its votaries, the recriminations against it would be unending. In a hygienic light, physical as well as moral, it is better to retire and rise early. Everything gains by it--health, business, and the facility and excellence of prayer. But we must not dissimulate; and the struggle with the pillow is, in its very sweetness, one of the most violent that can exercise man's courage; and to break these _chains of bed_, it is necessary to exercise an almost superhuman energy. The enemy is deceitful, dangerous in his caresses, and generally ends in persuading us; we think he is right; and, after all, it is a cruelty to martyrize ourselves. I have not wished, ladies, to conceal the difficulties; but I have pleaded my cause, which is also yours. To your wisdom and reason I submit it, and I trust to succeed at such a tribunal. If you wish to appeal, and present the cause before the tribunal of Idleness, listening to its numerous lawyers, in advance I may tell you the first judgment will be suspended. Well, I will consent to lose, but on one condition--that you will insert this explanation in the judgment: that the case was gained before Judge Reason; but that, in the supreme court of Indolence, Idleness, surrounded by his lawyers, revoked the decision.

Now for the end of our text: "_The strong woman giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens_."

Formerly, ladies, when families and societies were truly Christian, the domestics, according to the etymology of the word, were really a part of the house; for _domestic_ comes from the Latin word _domus_, which signifies house. In those days, a family formed a body; the father and mother were head, and the domestics themselves had their place in the organization of the family; they were only subordinate members, but they were a part of the body. {701} Therefore, they always lived in the house, passed their lives there; and when they were no longer able to work, they were cared for with paternal and filial affection; and when the hour of death came to them by length of time, they had fallen into decay as a branch dying on its trunk. The relations of benevolence and Christian charity united masters to servants; and while the latter accepted the place of inferiority, they felt themselves loved, and loving in return, a tie was formed stronger than massive gold--the tie of love. Saint Augustine speaks to us with much feeling of the nurse who cared for his mother's infancy, and who had even carried on her back the father of St. Monica, as young girls then carried little children: "_Sicut dorso grandiuscularum puellarum parvuli portari solent._" [Footnote 212]

[Footnote 212: _Confessions_, i. 9, c 8.]

"This remembrance," continued St. Augustine, "her old age, the excellence of her manners, assured her in a Christian house the veneration of her masters, who had committed to her the care of their daughters; her zeal responded to their confidence; and while she exercised a saintly firmness to correct them--to instruct, she was always guided by an admirable prudence."

Nowadays, ladies, things have changed. Such examples are rare; but without doubt, there are still honorable exceptions--servants who love their masters, and who make part of the family as true children of the house, serving with ease and gentleness, because they are guided principally by affection, and bearing the faults of their masters, who, in return, are patient with them, until household affairs glide on with a smoothness which, though sometimes very imperfect, is, after all, a small evil. Yes, we do still find Christian families where domesticity is thus understood; but alas! they become rarer every day! In our time, owing to a spirit of pride, independence and irreligion are spreading everywhere; good servants are hard to find, and perhaps also good masters; and as two fireplaces placed opposite each other are mutually overheated, so the bad qualities of the domestics increase those of the masters, and _vice versâ_. Servants have exaggerated pretensions; they will not bear the least reproof; everything wounds them; and on the other side, masters do not command in a Christian spirit. Thus, everywhere is heard a general concert of complaint and recrimination; masters accuse their servants, servants do as little as possible for their masters; and certain houses become like omnibuses, where the servants enter only to get out again at their convenience.

I have told you, ladies, that, if I had to preach to your husbands, I could add a kind of counterpart, not adverse to your interests, but to complete my instructions; but, addressing myself to you, my words must be limited to your duties. I would add here, also, that, if I had to preach to your servants, I would be obliged to give them advice very useful for your household organization; but they are absent; my instruction is to you; so I must leave in shadow all their shortcomings.

It appears to me your duties to them will be well accomplished if you enter into the spirit of this text: "She riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens." Look at the sun; it rises on the horizon, and, in shedding its beams, seems to distribute work to every creature, and, by way of recompense, prepares their nourishment in advance. Is it not he who, while lighting the world, invites the artisan to his shop, the laborer to his field, and the pilot to leave his port? {702} Is it not he who prepares the germs in the bosom of the earth--who warms them, and conducts them to that point of maturity that the statesman waits for as impatiently as the laborer? "Woman," says the Scripture, "should be the sun of her household." She should lighten and warm like the planet of the day. Her rays are emitted in indicating to each one his duties, in distributing the work in wise and suitable proportions, and, when all is justly ordered, superintending its execution. Then everything goes on admirably, because brightened by the spirit of regularity that guides the mistress of the house. Her glance, given to all around her, projects the light; and this light is the strongest and most insinuating of counsellors, as well as a gracious but severe monitor. A woman who presides well over her household need talk but little; her presence speaks for her, and the simple conviction that she has her eyes everywhere, and that the least detail is not unknown to her, prevents any irregularity. But see, on the contrary, a house where the mistress rises late, and sleeps morally the rest of the day. Everything is left to chance; disorder introduces itself everywhere, in heads as in business; a general pell-mell of ideas and objects--a confusion which recalls the primitive chaos. Madam sleeps late, the servants rise only a little earlier; during the day, madam dreams, occupies herself with her toilet, in matinees, and visits, and the house, given up to itself, becomes what it may. The children are almost abandoned, and work accumulates in the most delightful disorder.

Woman, the sun of her house, should not be satisfied to illuminate it; she should warm it also, and with her heart.

You ought, ladies, to watch your servants, demand an account of their proceedings in-doors and out, watch over them particularly in their connection with your children; for too often the heart and mind are lost by servants, and, were it permitted to reveal all the human heart can tell us in this respect, you would be seriously alarmed.

About twenty years ago, I had charge of a seminary. One day I received a visit from a very indignant father, who told me with bitterness that his child had been corrupted in our establishment. I knew to the contrary; but I had no defence to offer, so in silence I bore an unmerited reproach. Some time afterward I had permission to speak, when I was able to prove to him that it was in his own house that his child was lost, by keeping company with a servant.

Watch, then, your children, ladies, by watching your servants. Watch their going out and coming in, their bearing and their company; watch their words and actions. But, I beg of you, watch with kindness, for the light of your supervision should be warm with Christian affection. Love your servants, and always remember that they are human--the image of God, and that they have been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. As much as possible, speak to them with kindness, and, if an occasional impatience escapes you, endeavor to repair it by sincere benevolence. That your watchfulness may not engender suspicion and restlessness, do not appear a spy on their actions. We often make people good by believing them so, and bad by accusing them of qualities they do not possess; or, at least, we freeze their hearts, and permanently harden them. Avoid everything which appears like ill-humor, meanness, or caprice. {703} To-day madam is in a good humor, and all goes well; the servants may be as merry, and make as many mistakes as they please; nobody notices them. To-morrow the moon reddens in its first quarter: woe to the inhabitants of the house! woe to the servants! Madam's coffee is cold, yet it bears its ordinary temperature; the soup is too salty, yet the usual quantity was put into it. The room is full of smoke, it was the servant's fault, and yet the poor creature made neither the wind nor the chimney. A racket in the kitchen; madam's voice is heard from the cellar to the garret-- from the court-yard to the neighboring houses. Nothing renders authority more ridiculous than such conduct. The servants are tired out; they lose every sentiment of affection and confidence, because they see no regard is shown them; that they are considered inferior beings, entitled to no respect; and that, even on days when caprice is not predominant, they only encounter airs of silent pride and haughtiness.

Without doubt, ladies, there is a just medium to be preserved. Many servants are unreasonable, and take advantage of favors accorded them; are exacting and indiscreet; they require masters without faults, and are completely blinded to their own. "Treat them as friends," said an ancient philosopher, "and they lack submission; keep them at a distance, and they resent your conduct and hate you." [Footnote 213]

[Footnote 213: Confucius, _Entr. Philos_. c. 17.]

The middle course of wisdom is therefore hard to find; but it is so in all worldly affairs, yet it is necessary to resolve it. The heart of a Christian woman appears to me best adapted for this work of conciliation; she can preserve her authority by demonstrating a wise firmness, recalling the words of Fenelon: "The less reason you find in men, the more fear requisite to restrain them." [Footnote 214] The strong woman must be able to cope with such difficult minds, often so pretentious and ridiculous in their exactions, and put them in their place when wisdom and occasion demand it. But, in her ordinary conduct, let her remember that she commands her brethren, for whom our Lord died; that love and gentleness are the best, the most Christian roads to persuasion, and that severity should always be reserved for circumstances where reason and charity fail.

[Footnote 214: _De l'Education des Filles_, c. 12.]

Fenelon says again that, in certain houses, "servants are considered no better than horses--of natures like theirs--human beasts of burden for their masters." [Footnote 215] Nothing can be more opposed to sentiments of faith and reason; servants are brothers, to be loved and treated as such; they owe you their service and fidelity, and if they fail, recall them to duty prudently, with a charitable compassion and firmness that does not exclude affection. A single word will often dispel a cloud and dissipate increasing shadows, and give you, in return, the deep and solid friendship of your servants. Is this not far better than forced relations, coldness and constraint that freeze the heart and poison innumerable lives? The fable itself teaches us a lesson in telling us that the friendship of the ant is not to be despised.

[Footnote 215: _Ibid_.]

"The strong woman giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens." The spirit of God neglects no detail, because in life everything is important. Let your servants work; nothing is better for them; but do not traffic with either their food or duties. {704} Treat them a little like the children of the house; you will not only interest your charity, but your service will gain by it. Do not calculate with an avaricious hand what may do them good and alleviate their lot. You will gain on one side what you lose on the other; and besides, is not the true affection of a devoted heart worth more than a piece of gold? It is not only food and material comforts you must assure your servants. How I love to see the Christian woman enlarge her maternal heart and reserve in it not only a place for her children, but for all the people of her household! Yes, she must have a mother's affection for all, and let the least one understand that he has part in the warmth of her soul and the fireside of her heart. Thus she realizes the comparison that I always love to repeat, because she is truly great in her splendor and simplicity, and, in proportion as she is examined, new aspects are discovered; then the strong woman is the sun of her household: _sicut sol oriens_.

The planet of day sheds its light on the clouds, the high mountains, and the gilded palaces, but he never omits the little valley flower or the blade of grass that claims his warmth. He does not give it so abundantly as to the oaks of the mountain, but it is always the same light, and suffices for their life and happiness. Thus the strong woman pours her intimate affections on her family and her true friends, but her soul has still a reserve for her servants. She gives them less than her husband and children, but it is all from the same source, and bears with it for them the same unction.

After such a distribution of work, of care and affection, do not expect to find no faults in your servants. To these servants, I would say: Bear with the faults of your masters and mistresses; the best of them are imperfect, and for you the true way to modify their defects is to reply only by patience and an immovable docility; sweetness and patience do much more than anger and violent recrimination, as various elastic substances are, we know, among the best agents to arrest the impetuous movement of the cannon-ball. To you, ladies, I say: Bear with the faults of your servants, as they are never wanting. With two such sureties, with the certainty of patience on the part of the servants, and in return on that of the masters, you will be sure to pacifically organize the interior of your households. If the tether of patience is short at one end, you can stretch it at the other; and such is the admirable teaching of Christianity, wherever the relations of mankind exist, it establishes reciprocal duties on so firm and solid a foundation that, if one is lacking, the other becomes more strong to resist it. Thus it preaches to the husband love and respect; to the wife, love, respect, and submission; to masters, benevolence; to servants, deference and patience; but in such a way that, if the first are faithless to their duties, the fidelity of the second will more than repair the defect. Nature evidently holds another language; if our neighbor fails in his obligations, we believe ourselves freed from ours, and this spirit of free exchange in point of bad proceedings is not, perhaps, one of the least causes of our perturbations in the family and society.

"There are some faults," says Fenelon, "that enter into the marrow of the bones." "Then," said the Archbishop of Cambrai, "if you wish to correct such in your servant, he is not wrong to resist correction, but you are foolish to undertake it." [Footnote 216]

[Footnote 216: _Lettres Spirituelles_, 193, t. 1. p. 554, éd. Didiot.]

{705}

You have a horse that is one-eyed, you would wish him to see clearly with both eyes; it is you who are entirely blind. Alas ladies! in this world we are all slightly one-eyed, therefore we must bear with each other.

You have a servant who does not always display the judgment you require of him; tell me, why do you employ him in any delicate business? He has made a blunder, but were you not the first cause of it? You have another who never sees more than a few steps before him; you cannot expect better of him, he is short-sighted. You are angry because he cannot see leagues off; you are the unreasonable one. Another one is lame, and him you would have walk straight; do you not see that you exact the impossible? I tell you, ladies, that poor human nature is full of weaknesses, and having once perceived certain infirmities in your neighbor, keep them in remembrance, and don't demand a reform in what cannot be corrected. "Bear ye one another's burdens," said Saint Paul; it is the rule of true wisdom, of peace and domestic happiness: "_Alter alterius onera portate_." [Footnote 217]

[Footnote 217: Galat. vi. 2.]

But, you say, he is thick-headed, I cannot put up with him. Alas! thick heads we meet with everywhere. Have you not yourselves sometimes the same complaint? Besides, don't be so hard to please in servants; you may end by finding none at all. You have one who pouts, another who is violent; you may have one impertinent, another pettish; choose between them. The best course, believe me, is to put up with the evil, provided it is bearable. This world and all it contains is only one grand misery; accept your share of it; murmuring and changing those who surround you will do no good.

Well and good, I hear you say. You have just spoken of those who keep many servants; I am more modest; a nurse, or at most a cook, constitutes my household. In this case, if you will permit me, I will find you an establishment where the retainers are numerous and very difficult to govern. The fathers of the church teach us that the human soul, in its organization, is a house complete in itself. We find in it intelligence, the soul properly called, the imagination, and the senses. Intelligence is the husband, the soul the wife; and imagination, with its numerous caprices, represents an establishment of troublesome servants; while the five senses may portray five grooms at the carriage-ways opening into the street. To listen to such a world as this, and make it agree, is no easy matter. Intelligence wishes one thing, the soul another; the husband and wife are just ready to quarrel. Then imagination comes in with its thousand phantoms, its fantastical noises, its clatter by night and by day: can you not believe your household in good condition to exercise your patience? Then the porters of this castle, the eyes, the ears, without considering the nerves--a sort of busy battalion which makes more noise than all the rest. What an interior! what confusion! what a tower of Babel! Ladies, I will repeat here the words of Scripture: "Rise early to give work and a portion" to this establishment of servants; put them in order from the first dawn of day. Clear up your imagination; it needs more time and care than a disordered head of hair. See how your ideas fly hither and thither; how the mad one of this dwelling sings and grows impertinent; how she reasons, how she scolds, and how absurd she is. Intelligence would restore her reason; useless to try! time lost! {706} She cries louder, and becomes longer and more violently nonsensical. She makes so much noise that it could be called, according to Saint Gregory, the multiplied voices of several servants, whose tongues are perfectly sharpened: "_Cogitationum se clamor, velut garrula ancillarum turba, multiplicat_." [Footnote 218]

[Footnote 218: _Moral_, i. I, c. 30, t 1. p. 546, éd, Migné.]

Here is a beautiful household to organize every morning. You complain of having no work for it. I have just found you some. Bring peace into the midst of this distraction; substitute harmony for confusion, and so adjust this harmony that it shall last undisturbed until evening, and I will give you a brevet, a certificate, as an excellent mistress of a house. Formerly, the poor human head was not subject to such distraction; and why? Because it was subject to God; and from thence all the powers of man, mind, heart, will, imagination, senses, all were submitted to the head of the house, because this head himself was obedient to God. Since the primitive revolt, all has been upset in man; and our poor nature has become like a house where all dispute, husband, wife, and servants, that is, mind, heart, imagination. There is a simple way to re-establish peace, not quite complete, but at least tolerable, for this would bring back God into the house: let God be head, the commander of all; let the thought of him preside everywhere, and soon order will be entirely restored. In the morning especially, I know nothing that can pacify us interiorly and calm all around us better than a look toward heaven, a thought of love directed on high, and bringing, in return, the peace of God. In the morning, if the head aches, rest it at the foot of the cross; if the heart suffers, place it on the heart of our Lord; if the imagination is feverish, calm it with a drop of the blood of Jesus Christ; and if the whole being is in ebullition, ask God to send it refreshment in the dew of heaven! Be faithful to these recommendations, ladies, and you may repose the length of the day under your vine and your fig-tree; that is, you will enjoy the intimate happiness that God has promised his friends, and which is one of the sweetest recompenses of virtue: "_Et sedit unusquisque sub vite suâ, et ficulneâ, suâ, et non erat qui eos terreret_." [Footnote 219]

[Footnote 219: I Mach. xiv. 12.]

{707}

A Sister's Story. [Footnote 220]

[Footnote 220: _A Sister's Story_. By Mrs. Augustus Craven. Translated from the French by Emily Bowles. 8vo, pp. 539. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.]

We do not usually go to France for pictures of domestic life; yet, when we do find a cultivated French family penetrated with the home instincts which are so much more common on the opposite side of the channel, and lavishing upon the members of their own household an affection elevated and sanctified by true piety, there is a charm about the scene which is apt to be wanting in our own more commonplace experience. The charm, to be sure, often asserts itself too boldly; for the Frenchman has a keen relish for sentiment, and in nine cases out of ten the rapture with which love fills his heart is only half of it inspired by the object of his passion, while the other half is an unconscious admiration of the delicacy of his own feelings. He makes a romance out of love for his father and mother, and his affection for his sweetheart is an extravagant poem. Still, unless you analyze it too closely, which there is no need of your doing at all, the poem is almost always beautiful and delicate, and sometimes possesses the true poetical aroma. _A Sister's Story_ is a romance of love, trial, happiness, and death. Nobody but a French woman could have written it; yet the sentiment is not what is commonly called "Frenchy," because it is etherealized by a genuine Christian refinement, and because, moreover, it is a true history.

The Count de la Ferronnays, who was French ambassador at St. Petersburg in 1819, and afterward at Rome, had a large family of children, one of whom, Pauline, married an English gentleman, and is the author of this book. Another, Albert, is the hero. They all loved one another with a rare and touching tenderness, and loved God, too, with a simple and unaffected devotion. The revolution of 1830 deprived the Count of his diplomatic appointment, despoiled him of most of his fortune, and, as he was a stanch adherent of the Bourbons, left him without hope of a future career in the service of the state. The family seem, however, to have accepted their reverses cheerfully, and to have made little change in their way of life, except by practising a stricter economy than they had been used to. They passed most of their time in Italy, mingling with people of rank and distinction, or travelling in search of health, as one or another of them showed symptoms of approaching disease. Albert was a young man of handsome appearance, and, we should judge, of no mean accomplishments. He was warm-hearted, remarkably sensitive, somewhat of a dreamer, romantic, poetical, and pure in heart. The life of a man of society he sanctified with the piety of a recluse. The revolution which cut short his father's public career destroyed also the young man's prospects in life, and left him, just entering manhood, without fixed occupation, and without much hope of obtaining employment suitable to his rank and tastes. This enforced idleness, coupled with the delicacy of his constitution, already perhaps undermined by the pulmonary disease which was so soon to carry him off, predisposed him to a melancholy reflectiveness which, though corrected by his devout aspirations, was nevertheless morbid. {708} The feminine delicacy of his nature was developed by close intimacy with his sisters, and his religious elevation was doubtless heightened by his frequent intercourse with Montalembert, whose sentiments he fully shared, though he was unable to join in his labors, with M. Rio, whom he accompanied to various parts of Italy, with the Abbé Gerbet, and with other distinguished Catholics of that brilliant day.

Among the acquaintances of the Count's family in Rome was the Countess d'Alopeus, widow of the celebrated Russian plenipotentiary at Berlin, and afterward wife of Prince Lapoukhyn. She had a daughter, Alexandrine, a beautiful and amiable girl, apparently, like Albert, of a pensive turn of mind, and, though a Lutheran, (her mother being a German,) of a strongly religious disposition. Albert fell in love with her the first time they met, and from that time love and religion filled up all the rest of his short life. It was but a little while before Alexandrine learned to return the tender sentiment. The intimacy ripened fast; but there were many difficulties in the way of marriage, and it was only after two years, marked by severe trials, that they were at last united in 1834. Ten days afterward Albert burst a blood-vessel, and from that time until his death, in 1836, their happiness was clouded by the gradual approach of the untimely fate which they could hardly help foreseeing. The picture which Mrs. Craven, with the help of the journals and letters of this dear young couple, has drawn of their courtship, their love, their few hours of happiness, and their admirable married life, with all its consolations and all its sufferings, is full of the most delicious beauty. It could not have been so natural, had it not been drawn from the life; it would not have been so exquisite, had not the artist been herself a poet.

By the side of her husband's dying bed, Alexandrine was received into the Catholic Church. She appears to have possessed a stronger though not a more lovely character than Albert, and in her widowhood its magnificence was fully developed. During the twelve years she survived her husband, she learned to the full the great lessons of self-abnegation, humility, and detachment from all worldly things. Even in the first days of her sorrow, God rewarded her with a strength which surprised all who knew her; and this was succeeded after a while by a completeness of resignation and a spiritual joy which were no less than saint-like. "We shall see," writes Mrs. Craven, in beginning the narrative of these final years, "by what efforts of resignation, by what self-surrender, she obtained peace, and entered upon that other period of her life which she speaks of in her story, and of which she once said, 'Even before old age and death, faith gave me rest!' This rest, which went beyond resignation, even beyond peace, which Alexandrine had soon recovered; a rest which marked the latter part of her life by a joyousness unknown to her young days, she did not attain till she had gone through many fresh sorrows. It was God's will that she should outlive most of those who had proved her firmest friends and most tender comforters in her widowhood. Almost at one time she lost her own brother, my father, Eugénie, and Olga," (Albert's sisters, to whom she was deeply attached.) "It may be that this was allowed that, when after such repeated blows she was still able to say she was happy, no one might mistake the source whence that happiness sprang." {709} She gave herself up to the service of the poor and suffering, and in order to make herself more like the objects of her charity, whom she loved so tenderly, she used to deprive herself of all the little every-day luxuries and conveniences which belonged to her station, and in which naturally she took a particular delight. She made trial of a conventual life, but that was clearly not the path in which God wished her to walk, and her director bade her leave it. During the latter part of her life she resided principally with Albert's mother, in Paris. Here is a picture of her occupations at that time:

"To meet the deficiency in her resources, she gradually restricted her own expenditure to the narrowest compass, and deprived herself of everything short of absolute necessaries. One day I happened to look into her wardrobe, and was dismayed at its scantiness. When we, any of us, made this kind of discovery, she blushed and smiled, made the best excuses she could find in return for our scoldings, and then went on just the same, giving away all she possessed, and finding every day new occasions for these acts of self-spoliation. She had, of course, long ago sold or given away all her jewels and trinkets, but, if she ever happened to find among her things an article of the smallest value, it was immediately disposed of for the benefit of the poor. For instance, one day she took out of its frame a beautiful miniature of Princess Lapoukhyn at the age of twenty, and sold the gold and enamel frame, defending herself by saying that it was the only thing of value she still possessed, and did not in the least enhance the value of her mother's charming likeness. Two black gowns, and a barely sufficient amount of linen, constituted her whole wardrobe, so that she had reduced herself, as far as was possible in her position of life, to a state of actual poverty. Her long errands were almost always performed on foot, and at dinner-time she came home often covered with dirt and wet to the skin. One day, when she was visiting some Sisters of Charity in a distant part of Paris, one of them looked at her from head to foot, and then begged an alms for a poor woman much in need of a pair of shoes. Alexandrine instantly produced her purse and gave the required amount, with which the sister went away, and in a quarter of an hour returned, laughing, and bringing with her a pair of shoes, which she insisted on Madame Albert's putting on instead of those she was wearing, which were certainly in the worst possible condition. On her return from these distant excursions, she usually put on her evening dress and came down to Madame de Mun's drawing-room, where she found my mother, who also had often been engaged in similar charitable duties. During that winter I often joined this little circle, now so thinned by death, and so soon to break up altogether. For one brief moment I would fain pause and look back in thought to that well-remembered room and its long table, at which my mother and Madame de Mun were wont to sit, with Eugénie's children playing at their feet; and at the place near the lamp, where Alexandrine was to be seen every evening, with her head bending over her work; her brown hair divided into two long plaits, a way of wearing it which particularly became her, though it was certainly not chosen on that account. She did not, however, profess to be free from all thought about her appearance; on the contrary, she was always accusing herself of still caring for admiration; and when once she heard that somebody who had accidentally spoken to her had said she was pretty, she exclaimed with half-jesting indignation: 'I really believe that, if I were in my last agony, that would please me still!' Very pretty certainly she looked on those evenings, in her simple black dress; always calm and serene, and brightening up whenever the great interests and objects of life were the subjects of conversation. Otherwise she remained silent, occupying herself with her embroidery, or else, taking her little book of extracts, so full of beautiful thoughts, from her pocket, she read them over and added new ones from her favorite books.

......

"Time never hung heavy on Alexandrine's hands. After such trials and sufferings, she could say as Madame Swetchine did: 'that life was lovely and happy; and ever, as it went on, fairer, happier, and more interesting.' The melancholy which was natural to her character in youth, and which the radiant happiness that for a moment filled up her life had not been able to overcome--that melancholy which was the sign perhaps of some kind of softness of soul, and which so many deaths and such floods of tears could naturally have increased--had been completely put down and overcome by the love of God and the poor. {710} One day as I saw her moving about her room which she had made so bare, with an air of the greatest gayety, we both of us suddenly recalled the terrible days of the past, when her grief had been full of gloom, and then she said, what was very striking to any one who knew how deep was her unutterable love to the very last, 'Yes, that is all true; those were cruel and dreadful days; but now, by God's grace, _I mourn for my Albert gayly_.'"

Subsequently she was admitted, as a lodger, to the convent of St. Thomas of Villanova, in Paris, and there she died with the peacefulness and holy joy which she had merited by her life. By what austerities she had prepared for and probably hastened her end, we may judge from this incident:

"One morning at Mass in the convent chapel, a lady happened to hear her cough, and noticing her pale looks and poor apparel, she went to one of the sisters, and told her that there was a lady in the church who was probably too poor to provide herself with necessaries, and that she should be very happy to supply her with milk daily, if she had not the means to purchase it. This kind soul was quite ashamed when the sister told her the poor lady was Madame Albert de la Ferronnays; but Alexandrine, much amused, laughed exceedingly at the mistake, and did not treat herself better than before."

One loving hand which has traced this beautiful story whose outlines we have thus roughly reproduced, has illustrated it with many touching reminiscences of the other members of the charming family circle, of which Albert and Alexandrine are the central figures. There is an exquisite pathos in every page, and

"The tender grace of a day that is dead"

is delineated with an unaffected delicacy which must move every heart. Miss Bowles, we should add, has proved herself an admirable translator, so good a one that her version reads like an original.

Translated From The French.

Breton Legend Of St. Christopher.

As every one knows, St. Christopher had very broad shoulders; so in former times he was ferryman for the river of Scorff. One bright day, our Lord arrived at the bank of the river with his twelve apostles. Christopher made haste to take them in his arms, and was delighted to pay them every possible respect.

"Well," said our Lord, "what are your wages?"

"Ask for Paradise," whispered St. Peter.

"Let me alone, I have my own ideas. If, my Lord, you desire to bestow a favor on me, promise that every object I wish for shall be obliged to enter my sack."

"I will do it," said our Lord, "but on condition that you never ask for money, and only for those things of which you have need."

So, for a long time, things went well; the sack filled only with bread, fruits, beans, and other vegetables; and often it was emptied for the benefit of the poor. But alas! who can say they may not enter into temptation? One morning Christopher was passing through the street of a neighboring town, when he stopped before the shop of a money-changer. {711} He did wrong, for all those heaps of money excited his curiosity and gave him very bad thoughts.

"See," said the wicked broker to him, "what you can do with all this money! You can rebuild the huts of the poor, and make life for them so happy and desirable. Don't you wish it was all yours?"

Christopher had a moment of weakness, and the money jumped into his bag. But don't be severe: Christopher was not yet the saint he afterward became, only a mere mortal man. So this first failing led to others, and while it must be confessed he was very generous to the poor, he loved his own good cheer and did not hesitate to enjoy it. So one day, as he was reposing on the grass after an unusually good dinner, the devil passed that way, and began to bully him and crack some of his disagreeable jokes. Christopher was not remarkably patient, his fists were itching for a fight, so in a moment he was on his feet and pitched into the devil right royally. As the forces were pretty equal, the battle lasted two days, and the end could not be foreseen. The thick grass disappeared from under their feet, and from afar the noise of the blows resounded like two hammers falling and refalling one upon the other. They would have been at it yet if Christopher had not happily thought of his sack. "Ah cursed devil! by the virtue of our Lord thou shalt enter my sack." So in he popped, and Christopher was not slow to draw the cords tight and swing him over his shoulders, while he wondered at the same time how in the world he would ever get rid of him. A forge appeared as he walked, and two brawny men were beating the red fire with tremendous blows. This gave him an idea; so he addressed himself to the smiths, and said: "I have got a wicked animal in my bag; I could not pretend to tell you all the villanous tricks he has played in his life; so, if you will forge him until he is about as thick as a sixpenny piece, I will give you a crown." They consented; and, notwithstanding the cries and somersaults of the devil, they hammered and beat him the whole night long. When the day dawned, a weak voice cried out, "Christopher, Christopher, I give up; what shall I do to get out of this?"

"Swear obedience to me for ever, and never trouble me again."

"I swear it."

"Very well; get out with you, and I will not say _Au revoir_."

From this moment, Christopher entirely changed his life, only occupied himself in good works, and, when he grew too feeble to be ferryman for the river Scorff, he retired into the little hermitage, upon the ruins of which is built the chapel still to be seen. There he lived in prayer and penitence, and was visited by many pilgrims, who were attracted by his great reputation of sanctity. However, when after his death he presented himself to St. Peter, who, we know, holds the keys of Paradise, he was refused admittance, because the latter said he had formerly rejected his advice, and he feared to let him in.

The poor Christopher, very sad, and looking rather snubbed, wandered about, and in his distraction took the stairs that led to hell. He descended an unheard-of number of steps, and finally arrived at a door, where was a very good-looking young man, who courteously invited him to enter; but Satan happened to pass by, and, seeing him, cried out nervously: "No, no! not in here; I know him well. Send him away, he is entirely too cunning for me!"

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So Christopher could do nothing but remount to the entrance of Paradise, where he could at least listen outside to the delicious strains of heavenly harmony issuing from within, and he felt more and more desirous to be admitted. He paused and thought; then, putting his ear as close as possible, "My Lord St. Peter," said he, "what admirable harmony you have in there! If you would only set the door ajar, I might at least hear and enjoy it."

St. Peter was kind-hearted, so he did as he was asked; and instantly St. Christopher threw in his sack, and sprang in after it. "At home, at last," said he, "and you can't turn me out." St. Peter conceded he was right, so he has since remained in heaven, and we must acknowledge he well deserved so comfortable an abode.

[Supplement to the article on "The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City" in our July number.]

The Sanitary And Moral Condition Of New York City.

The letter which is published below is an evidence that our July correspondent's observations on the neglected condition of a great number of children in New York struck a telling blow in the right direction, and has called forth one response of the right kind, which, we trust, will not be the only one. A number of our good friends have shown themselves to be somewhat hurt by the remarks made in the article alluded to, on the efforts of certain Protestant institutions among the vagrant children of this city. The article was not written for the purpose of showing what the small number of zealous Catholics--who are alive to the duty and necessity of rescuing this unfortunate class of our own children--are doing, but of working up the whole Catholic community to an active co-operation with these pioneers of charity, in undertaking that which they are not doing, and cannot do, while they are so feebly sustained. One principal motive for doing this is, the fact that sectarian philanthropists are forestalling us in the work we ought to have attended to long ago, and drawing away from the fold of the church the lambs we have neglected to take care of. Every one knows, none better than the leaders of every Protestant sect themselves, that they have no more determined adversaries than we are in their aggressions on the Catholic religion. At the same time, we do not feel called upon to deny them all humane and philanthropic motives, or to denounce them as actuated by mere hatred against the Catholic religion. They do an irreparable mischief to the unfortunate children whom they draw away from the fold of the church; yet, we are willing to believe they do it ignorantly, and with an intention of doing them good. {713} So far as their efforts among the young unbaptized heathen of New York are concerned, they can undoubtedly effect something in reclaiming them from the wretched condition in which they are. We desire to confine them to that sphere, and wish them a fair field to compete with us in, and to show what they are able to accomplish. We hope, as the result of all philanthropic efforts for the relief of the degraded classes made by all kinds of institutions, and by individuals of all kinds of theoretical opinions, that the superiority of the Catholic Church, and its necessity to our moral and social well-being, will be demonstrated. We must demonstrate it, however, by action, and not by mere argument. We must show practically that we are able to master and subdue the elements of vice and misery that rage over the turbulent sea of this vast population. In a former volume of our magazine, we did full justice to the work which the Catholic Church has accomplished, and is still carrying on among our own people in this city, in an article entitled "Religion in New York." The article in our last number may appear to have too much overlooked the statistics there given respecting the care of Catholic children. The statement of the whole number of children in the city was inadvertently cited from Dr. Harris as being the number of vagrants, although the correct number (40,000) was given in several other places. Another quotation from a Protestant source, which was cited for the purpose of showing the small proportion of children in Protestant Sunday-schools, contains a statement that 125,000 children are without instruction, which also inadvertently passed uncorrected. The 60,000 children in Catholic Sunday-schools, and, we suppose, also the Jewish children, as well as those who are privately taught at home, ought to have been deducted. There are said to be 95,000 children in Protestant Sunday-schools. The whole number of children is estimated at 200,000. There is, then, a vague neutral ground between vagrancy and the Sunday-school domain, occupied by some thousands, more or less--how many, we cannot correctly estimate. We are immediately concerned only with Catholic children. It is not possible to figure up precisely the numbers, every day increasing, of these children, in every stage of neglected moral and religious education down to the most complete vagrancy. We know, however, that they are to be counted by thousands, and would be sufficient by themselves to people a respectable Southern or Western diocese. We know that comparatively nothing is doing to reclaim them; and as for any further practical remarks as to what ought to be done, we give place for the present to the writer of the letter which follows, who is sorry for these poor children one thousand dollars. We trust that her good example will be followed by others, and shall be happy to receive in trust whatever may be contributed toward the establishment of an institution such as she recommends, and of which the Sisters of Charity are ready to assume the charge whenever the requisite funds are provided.--Ed. C. W.

"Rev. and Dear Father Hecker: "The article in The Catholic World, for July, on 'The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City,' has excited in my mind the greatest interest, and, I may add, self-condemnation.

"It is true I knew the facts mentioned there before, but never were they so fully brought home to me as in reading that article. I could say nothing but '_Mea culpa, mea culpa_.'

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Yes, through my fault, and the fault of every Catholic, these many thousands of little children are left uncared for; except, indeed, by those who have been more zealous to spread error, uncertainty, and darkness than we to give them the true bread of life. Are we indeed the children of the church? Have we ever listened to these words of our Saviour, 'Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto these my little ones, ye have not done it unto me'? God forgive us, and grant that every Catholic, in reading that article, may be moved to a true contrition.

"Why cannot the several hundred thousand Catholics in our great city establish a Central Mission House for these little neglected ones of the flock? For, of these forty thousand vagrant and uncared-for children, we cannot doubt that far more than one half have inherited the Catholic faith. The burden of supporting this great work of charity should not be borne by one parish or section of the city, and that the least able to bear it; but every parish should feel as if this house demanded its own especial care. And not only every parish in New York City, but throughout the arch-diocese and the whole country; for, as the poverty of the Old World finds its first refuge in our city, so the charity of the New World should be concentrated here to meet it.

"Father Farrelly is doing a noble work. God bless him for it! And as to the Reformatory established by Dr. Ives, only God can know the good it has already done and is yet to do. Catholics are not accustomed to speak much of what they do, but we who have done little or nothing cannot shelter ourselves behind those who, alone and single-handed as it were, have tried to meet this torrent of poverty and crime. As an act of reparation on my part for past neglect, I place in your hands a check for one thousand dollars, ($1000,) as a beginning of this noble work. The Sisters of Charity or Mercy will surely be ready to take charge of such a house, for where will they find so true a work of charity or mercy?

"I beg of you, reverend father, to publish this in your magazine; for I do not doubt that God has touched other hearts, and that this little beginning, when known, will grow like a grain of mustard-seed, and become a great and noble work.

"Yours, etc., ......"

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New Publications

Problems of the Age: With Studies in St. Augustine on Kindred Topics. By the Rev. Augustine F. Hewit, of the Congregation of St. Paul. New York: Catholic Publication House. 1868.

This volume, being chiefly a republication of some of our own articles, cannot, of course, receive from us an independent and impartial criticism. We can only state its scope and design, leaving it to other critics to judge of its merits. The topics which it discusses relate to the dialectic unity of the natural and supernatural in the universal order of truth and being. It is intended to meet the intellectual difficulties of those who cannot see this dialectic unity, and who, therefore, apprehend a contradiction between the natural and the supernatural, or, at least, a chasm between the two, which makes it impossible to explain their relation to each other on rational principles. It is more especially adapted to that class of persons who are rather perplexed by an apparent contradiction between reason and faith, than to those who are either positive infidels or positive sceptics. There are many such persons, predisposed to admit a spiritual philosophy and the truth of Christianity, but still in a state of doubt respecting both philosophical and revealed truths. The reason of this is, because the current philosophy of Protestantism is shallow and sophistical, and the current theology of Protestantism irrational. It is necessary, therefore, to present a sound philosophy as a cure for intellectual scepticism, and a sound rational theology as a cure for religious doubt. _The Problems of the Age_ is a contribution to this work. It is neither a system of philosophy nor of theology, but rather a clue to find both the one and the other. It proposes to the man bewildered in the labyrinth of scepticism a path which will lead him out into the open day of certitude, and leaves it to him to try the path or himself, and ascertain by his own examination whether it be the right one. Protestantism first destroyed theology, and then philosophy. Rationalism has tried to reconstruct both; but, having only the _débris_ to use as a material, and no formula to work by, has failed signally. The author of the volume before us has endeavored to derive a formula from the works of the best Catholic philosophers and theologians which gives the principles of construction, to present an outline of the plan according to which all true builders always have been working, and always must work, in the rearing of that temple whose porch is science and whose sanctuary is faith. The first principles of reason and the first principles of faith are presupposed as given. The existence and the attributes of God are briefly demonstrated from the first principles of reason, as the basis of faith in revealed truths. The connection between rational knowledge and supernatural faith is exhibited, and the point of transition from one to the other designated. The principal mysteries of revelation are then taken up, and their dialectic relation to the great truths of natural theology, respecting God as the first and final cause of the creation, is pointed out. As the perversions of Calvinism represent some of these mysterious doctrines in such a way that they are irreconcilable with natural theology, a considerable space is devoted to the clearing away of these misconceptions. The principal philosophical difficulties in the way of apprehending certain doctrines are also noticed, and a solution given. The topics most thoroughly treated are those which relate to the supernatural destiny of man, his primitive condition, the fall, original sin, and the final consummation of all things, including the redemption of the human race through the Incarnation.

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_The Studies in St. Augustine_ is a subsidiary essay intended to refute the allegation that the Calvinistic doctrines have been justly deduced from his writings and the authoritative teaching of the church in his time. In doing this, the evidence is clearly presented of the fact that several of the chief distinctive doctrines of the Catholic Church were held by the whole church at the time when the great doctor flourished. It is also shown that modern Catholic theology, although far more precise and definite in many points than the ancient theology could be, is the only true and legitimate offspring and development of its principles. The drift of the whole book in both its parts is to present a clear conception of what the Catholic doctrine is, and to show that this conception is in harmony with the rational principles on which a spiritual and theistic philosophy must base itself. It is adapted, therefore, to stimulate thought and awaken an appetite for truth, much more than to satisfy the mind. Those who are influenced by its arguments must desire a more thorough exposition both of the principles of reason and of those of faith, in order to perceive more clearly the objective truth, both of philosophy and of revelation, unless they are already well-informed on both points. The first branch of science has been handled in the most satisfactory and thorough manner in the philosophical articles of Dr. Brownson's _Review_. There are also some able articles on the same topics to be found in _The Catholic World_. It is much to be regretted that these articles are not to be had in a separate volume, so as to be easily accessible, and that there is no complete treatise on philosophy, which is sufficient to meet the wants of our day, written in the English language. The second branch of science, which embraces the evidence of the positive truth of revelation, has been more extensively cultivated. The shortest and most satisfactory way to a conclusion on that point is, to take up at once the proof of the divine institution and authority of the Catholic Church. Two things only are necessary to be proved: First, there is a God; second, God reveals his truth and law through the Catholic Church. It ought not to require a very long time, or a very difficult process, to establish these two truths in any mind not prepossessed by error and prejudice. Those who are unfortunately so prepossessed have no other choice but to work their way out the best way they can, and every one who lends them a helping hand does a great service to his fellow-men.

----

Parochial and Plain Sermons. By John Henry Newman, B.D., formerly Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford. In eight volumes. Vol. I. New edition. Rivingtons, London, Oxford, and Cambridge. For sale at The Catholic Publication House, New York. 1868.

Truly Anglicanism is a unique phenomenon, or, rather, congeries of phenomena, and of its phases there is no end. Its newspapers in this country are rather remarkable for virulent hostility to the Catholic Church, and offensive language about Catholic persons and things. Only the other day, the Hartford _Churchman_, which professes to be decent, gave currency to the shameless report that the late unfortunate Cardinal d'Andrea was poisoned. The language used about Dr. Newman has been frequently vituperative and insolent in the extreme. The English High Churchmen are usually far more gentlemanly than their American _confrères_, and their tone and language are often far more decorous when they speak of Catholic affairs. Even in England, however, as well as in this country, a smattering of Catholicism very frequently produces an increase of animosity and bitterness against the Catholic Church. The more nearly some approach her, the more they become inflamed, like comets approaching the sun, and the attraction is suddenly turned into a repulsive force, which drives them back into the dreariness of space. There are some, however, in England, among those who cling to the Established Church, whose spirit is kind and loving toward those whom they would fain regard as their fellow-Catholics, even though these are converts from Anglicanism. A remarkable proof that the number of these is considerable is found in the fact that a new edition of Dr. Newman's _Sermons_ is announced by the Rivingtons, and that the first volume has already issued from the press, with a preface by the Rev. W. J. Copeland, rector of Farnham. {717} The typographical execution of the volume is extremely beautiful. The preface is sad and tender, like the hymn of a captive Israelite in Babylon. Dr. Newman has, we believe, consented to this republication. We remember well the delight and instruction we received from these _Sermons_ when they were first republished in this country, and the pleasure we experienced in visiting, a few months ago, the church of St. Mary the Virgin, at Oxford, where they were preached. We are not able to say whether they contain anything un-Catholic or not; if so, it cannot be sufficient to be in any way dangerous, or to detract from their generally Catholic doctrine and spirit. The editor says that their author is not to be considered as reasserting all their sentiments, and that he would undoubtedly wish some parts of them altered or omitted. They are models of the most perfect English style, and, as such, of great value to Catholic preachers. Their circulation among Protestants to as great an extent as possible is something most devoutly to be wished, and likely to do an extraordinary amount of good. No doubt the Protestant clergy here, whatever may be the case in England, will discourage their being read; yet the younger clergy of all denominations will undoubtedly read them themselves, and will not be able to hinder great numbers of the most cultivated among the laity from doing the same. They are wonderful compositions, the like of which our language does not contain; and those who are not already familiar with them will deprive themselves of a very great pleasure if they do not avail themselves of the opportunity of becoming so. We feel extremely obliged to the editor and publishers for sending out this new and beautiful edition, and we hope its influence may be to draw the hearts of our Protestant friends and brethren nearer to us. We are extremely anxious that the violent and hostile controversy between us should cease, and that we might have the opportunity of discussing with them, in a calm and quiet way, the points of difference which separate them from ourselves. While their tone and manner are so discourteous and unfair, this is impossible; and we hope they may learn a lesson from Mr. Copeland, and others among themselves who are of like spirit with him, as well as from the _ci-devant_ Vicar of St. Mary's, who is revived once more in his surplice and hood, to preach again among his former people, as the prophet of the ten lost tribes.

Appleton's Short Trip to Europe. (1868.) Principally devoted to England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Italy; with Glimpses of Spain, Short Routes in the East, etc.; and a Collection of Travellers' Phrases in French and German. By Henry Morford, Author of "Over Sea," "Paris in '67," etc., etc. New York: Appletons.

This is a very pretty, convenient, and useful hand-book for travellers, full of useful advice and valuable directions, which we can cordially recommend to every person about to make a tour to Europe for the first time, as the best book of the kind we are acquainted with. There are some allusions and remarks scattered through the book which seem intended to enliven it and give it a flavor of humor, and which will doubtless please a certain number of its readers. Others, however, may perhaps think they detract from the general good taste evinced by the author, when he confines himself to a more quiet and simple style of giving information.

Sidney Smith's coarse pun on the name of St. Peter, and the author's own very dull attempt at wit in regard to the relics of the martyrs in the church of St. Ursula, at Cologne, will not render the book any the more agreeable to Catholic tourists, and we should think not to any persons of refined taste. The allusions made occasionally to the supposed vicious propensities of a certain class of tourists are still more objectionable. They are like whispering behind the hand, or exchanging nods and winks, in good company. {718} The guidebooks of Paris are models of the most perfect taste and elegance in style, and so are those of Baedeker, for the continent, with the exception of an occasional falsehood or sneer about something Catholic. In our judgment, these are the proper models to imitate.

We cannot omit remarking, while we are on the subject of guide-books, that it would be a work of great service to Catholic tourists, if some competent person would prepare a guide-book for their use, with reference to all the places and objects specially interesting to them as connected with their religion and its history.

Rhymes of the Poets. By Felix Ago. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co. 1868.

A very amusing satirical essay upon "allowable rhymes," selected from the verses of a large number of poets.

----

Lake George: Its Scenes and Characteristics, with Glimpses of the Olden Times; to which is added some account of Ticonderoga; with a description of the route to Schroon Lake and the Adirondacks. With Illustrations. By B. F. De Costa, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 196. New York: A. D. F. Randolph. 1868.

This is an excellent little book for tourists to Lake George and the surrounding country. The first white man who saw Lake George was the Jesuit missionary, Father Jogues, who, having arrived at that beautiful lake on the eve of the festival of Corpus Christi, called it "The Lake of the Blessed Sacrament," a name it retained until changed by the English to its present one. The author takes pains to correct the many misstatements of other writers with regard to historical events which occurred in the vicinity of the lake. The account of the defeat of the English by Montcalm, 1757, is given; and the reported connivance of that general in the massacre of the English troops after their surrender is disposed of as one of the "wild exaggerations of the day." Yet it is only a few years ago that a distinguished general, while on a visit to the lake, reiterated, in a speech to his admirers, the terrible cruelty of the French in allowing the captives to be massacred in cold blood, and asserted that it was one of the customs of that barbarous age, and therefore was not prevented by Montcalm. Mr. De Costa says, with reference to this reported massacre: "That class of writers who furnish what may be called apocrypha of history, have delighted in wild exaggerations of this event. Drawing their material from the crudest sensation accounts of the day, they have not hesitated to record as facts the most improbable fancies. It is to be regretted that these accounts have crept into so many of our popular school histories, in one of which, now extensively used, we are informed that, when Montcalm went away, he left the dead bodies of one hundred women shockingly mangled and weltering in their blood. The account is based upon a supposed letter of Putnam's that was never written, and is of the same authority as that favorite but now exploded story of the school-boy, which relates Putnam's descent into the wolfs den." He also truly says that "national enmity has had much to do with these misrepresentations of Montcalm, who was every way a noble and humane man, as well as the ablest general of his day in all North America." Religious animosity had its share in it, too, and no small share either. The French were Catholics; the English, Protestants; and it was only in perfect keeping with the English literature of the day to paint everything done by the French Catholics in the darkest colors possible. But this calumny cannot stand the tests of the critic of to-day, and we are glad to see a little hand-book like this, which must become popular with the tourist of the Northern lakes, stamp the fictions which have crept into history as they deserve, and give its readers the truth.

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The work is printed on good paper, and illustrated with wood-cuts of the most noted places referred to in its pages.

Democracy in the United States: What it has Done, What it is Doing, and What it will Do. By Ransom H. Gillett, formerly Member of Congress from St. Lawrence County, N.Y.; more recently Registrar and Solicitor of the United States Treasury Department, and Solicitor for the United States in the Court of Claims, etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1868.

This is what, we suppose, will be termed, in the language of the market, a _seasonable_ book, it being brought out just in time for, and adapted to, the political campaign upon which the country has now fully entered. It aims to give a succinct but complete history of the Democratic party, of its measures and its leading men, from its beginning down to the present time. We are not ourselves politicians enough to judge how faithfully or reliably this has been done. The volume--a compact one of some four hundred pages--is brought out in the Messrs. Appleton's excellent style of book publishing, and will, of course, have an extensive sale.

Histoire De France. Par V. Duruy. Nouvelle Edition, illustrée d'un grand nombre de gravures et de cartes geographiques. Paris: Hachette. (New York: Christern. 2 vols. 12mo.)

This is a part of a course of compendious universal history prepared by a number of learned writers, under the direction of M. Duruy. It is a clear and succinct history of France from the earliest epoch to the year 1815, with an appendix containing a summary of events from 1815 to 1866. The history of France is of the greatest interest and importance, and but little known among us, especially in its Catholic aspects. This book is, therefore, one of the most useful text-books for the instruction of classes studying the French language, which can be studied; and most invaluable also for others, who are able to read French, and who desire to have a brief but complete exposition of French history.

Besides its numerous and valuable maps, it contains more than 300 remarkably well-executed and artistic woodcuts, which add very much to its value and interest. The study of the French language and literature has been too much neglected in our American colleges and higher schools. Every person of liberal education ought to read and speak the French language. We recommend this book to the attention of teachers, parents, and all persons occupied with the study of French, and also to intelligent tourists, to whom it will prove an invaluable companion on a visit to _La Belle France_.

O'Shea's Popular Juvenile Library. First series. 12 vols. Beautifully illustrated. New York: P. O'Shea. 1868.

The titles of the volumes in this series are as follows:

The Inquisitive Boy and the Little Ragman; The Picture and the Country Cousins; Augusta and Christmas Eve; The Young Guests, and other stories; The Page, and other stories; The Young Artist; The Gray Woman of Scharfenstein, and other stories; The Young Painter; Tailor and Fiddler; Sobieski's Achievements; Hedwig of Poland; The Young Countess.

These tales are taken principally from the German and French, and are unexceptional in matter.

The Catholic Crusoe. Adventures of Owen Evans, Esq., Surgeon's Mate, set ashore with five companions on a desolate island in the Caribbean Sea, 1739. Given from the Original MSS., by Rev. W. H. Anderdon, M.A. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 12mo, pp. 519.

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A notice of Dr. Anderdon's very entertaining story appeared in _The Catholic World_ for December, 1867. The reprint before us is very well got up, but lacks an interesting feature of the original edition, namely, its maps and illustrations.

The Queen's Daughter; or, The Orphan of La Granja. By the author of _Grace Morton_, etc. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. Pp. 108.

A pleasant tale for young folk, neatly bound, and, in general typographical execution, a very decided improvement on its predecessor, _Elinor Johnstone_.

The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, with a Memoir of his Life. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1868.

So far as the paper and binding are concerned, this edition of Campbell is beautifully got up; but we cannot say as much for the type, which is the very reverse of beautiful.

A Popular Treatise on the Art of House Painting, Plain and Decorative. By John W. Masury. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

A very useful book, on an important subject, for those who would preserve their houses, and have them tastefully and, at the same time, economically painted. The mechanical portion of the work is executed in the Messrs. Appleton's best style.

Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna. By Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1868.

This is an American edition of Dr. Northcote's work, the English edition of which we noticed in our July number. It is brought out in very handsome style, and reflects credit on the taste of the publisher.

Announcements.--"The Catholic Publication Society" has in press, or in preparation, the following new works:

1. Symbolism. By Adam Moehler. This will be ready about August 1st. 2. Second Series of Illustrated Sunday-School Library. Ready about September 1st, twelve vols., for titles of which see advertisement on second page of cover. 3. Memorials of those who suffered for the Catholic Faith in Ireland, in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries. Collected and edited from the original authorities, by Myles O'Rielly. B.A., LL.D. This will be one of the most important books relative to Ireland ever published in this country. It will be ready about September 1st. 4. Cradle Lands--Egypt, Palestine, etc. Illustrated. By Lady Herbert. Ready November 15. 5. Love; or, Self-Sacrifice. By Lady Herbert. 6. Life of Father Ravigan, S.J. 7. Third Series of Illustrated Sunday-School Library.

Books Received.

From P. Donahoe, Boston. Plain Talk about the Protestantism of To-day. From the French of Mgr. Segur. 1 vol. 32mo, pp. 253. Price, 60 cents.

From J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia. Alleghania; or, Praises of American Heroes. By Christopher Laomedon Pindar.

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The Catholic World.

Vol. VII., No. 42.--September, 1868.

The Veneration Of Saints And Holy Images.

The veneration paid to saints by Catholics with the formal approbation or tacit sanction of the supreme authority in the church is, together with the use made of their images and that of Christ in religious worship, under the same sanction, the one feature of the Catholic system most obnoxious to Protestants. They do not hesitate ordinarily to qualify it as idolatry, that is, as a rendering of the worship due to God alone to creatures, both living and inanimate, similar to that which the heathen system of polytheism ascribes to its numerous divinities and their images.

We propose to discuss this matter briefly, not with the intention of proving that the Catholic doctrine and practice are truly a genuine outgrowth of the Christian religion by extrinsic evidence, but of showing their intrinsic harmony with Christian first principles, and refuting the objections derived from these first principles against them. As the subject naturally divides itself into two distinct parts, already clearly indicated in our opening paragraph, we shall confine our remarks at present to the first part of it, or that relating to the veneration of saints.

The preliminary charge of idolatry, or a direct contradiction to the monotheistic doctrine of natural and revealed theology, is perfectly groundless, and, however it may be modified and diminished, there is not an atom of truth in it upon which any objection to the Catholic doctrine can be based.

Idolatry, or the worship of the creature instead of the creator, originates in ignorance or denial of the true conception of the one living and true God. God is not worshipped, because he is not known or believed in. By necessary consequence, something which is not God is conceived as highest, best, most excellent, most powerful, without reference or relation to God as the author and sovereign of all that has any existence. The pantheist is an idolater of all nature, but especially of himself. Even Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were not free from idolatrous principles, although probably free from all sin in the matter, since they ascribed to the universe a certain amount of being not caused by the intelligence and will of God as creator. {722} Neither are our modern rationalists free from the same error, since they withhold from God the homage of their reason, and give it to themselves as to persons possessing intelligence which is independent of God. Wilful and obstinate heretics are all likewise in the same category; for, by rejecting a part of what God has revealed, they, by implication, profess to be superior to God in intelligence, and substitute an idol of their own vain imagination in lieu of that eternal truth which is identical with the essence of God. Idolaters, in the strict sense of the word, or polytheists, such as the ancient Greeks and Romans were, paid a formal worship to their gods, as superior beings having a supreme and irresponsible control over nature and over men. It was a worship which was a substitute for that originally given to the true God, totally contrary to it, and an insuperable barrier to the spread of monotheism as a religion. These false divinities were, therefore, the rivals of the true God, and filled the place in the religious worship of the heathen which was filled by him in the worship established by divine revelation from the creation of mankind. It is evident, from the very statement of what idolatry is in itself, that a veneration paid to any creature, which is proportionate to the degree of excellence which it has received from the creator, is not idolatrous, and cannot detract from the supreme veneration which is due to God as the sovereign lord of the universe. Those who condemn the religious honor paid to created natures by the Catholic Church cannot therefore lay down an _a priori_ principle from which to demonstrate in advance that this honor is necessarily idolatrous, unless they previously demonstrate that the excellence ascribed to these natures is such that God cannot communicate it to a creature. The worship paid to the sacred humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ is that which is apparently the most obnoxious to the charge of idolatry of any other species of relative worship which the church has decreed to be due to any created nature. Our chief controversy is, therefore, with Jews, Mohammedans, Unitarians, and others who claim to be pure theists and who deny the incarnation. What we affirm against these is, that they cannot demonstrate the impossibility of the incarnation. They cannot demonstrate the impossibility of a hypostatic union between the human nature and the divine nature, by virtue of which the personality of the human nature is divine, and the human nature is the nature of God, and thus worthy of relative adoration. Therefore, they cannot argue that the divinity of Jesus Christ has not been revealed, and that divine worship is not due to him by the law of God, because God cannot reveal such a doctrine or command such a worship without contradicting the essential truth of his nature. Suppose that evidence is given sufficient in itself to authenticate the revelation of the mystery of the incarnation, and at once it becomes evident that divine worship is due to Jesus Christ as God incarnate, precisely because worship is due to God. The question is then only debatable on the point whether this revelation has been made or not. If it could be proved that it has not, and that Jesus Christ is a created and finite person, it would follow that the worship paid to him by all orthodox Christians is idolatrous. {723} It would be idolatrous to worship any man who should pretend to be God incarnate when he is not, or who should be erroneously believed by his disciples to be a divine person, without any reference to the question whether any such incarnation can be or has been decreed by the wisdom of God. We are not attempting to prove the truth of the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ, or to prove directly that the worship we pay to him is not idolatrous. Everything, we admit, depends on proving it. If it cannot be proved, Christianity is a superstition, and must be classed with Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism. For the proof of the truth and reality of the incarnation, we must refer the reader elsewhere. We are intent on showing that no elevation of created nature which is possible is in any way incompatible with the supreme dignity and sovereignty of God, and, consequently, no honor due to such an elevated nature incompatible with the supreme worship due to the divine majesty. We are also intent on showing that it is principally the fact of the incarnation on which the whole question hinges, and the worship paid to Christ against which the objections of so-called theists to saint-worship are levelled. The incarnation is the principle of saint-worship. All orthodox Protestants are accused of idolatrous saint-worship by Unitarians, Jews, Mohammedans, and all pure theists. It is true that the orthodox do not regard Jesus Christ as a mere saint, but all others regard him as being, at the highest, only the greatest among the saints. All Protestants who are orthodox on the incarnation, and conformed in belief to the doctrine of their own confessions and great divines, believe that the holy humanity of Jesus Christ is entitled to divine worship. They are obliged to worship not only the divine nature of Jesus Christ, but also his human nature, his soul and body. Yet, the human nature of Christ is a created and finite substance, not possessing a single divine attribute. How, then, can it receive the worship due to God alone? Evidently it cannot receive such a worship as terminating in itself, or as absolute. It is impossible for the intellect to make the judgment that the substance of the body and of the soul of Jesus Christ is the infinite, self-existing being whom we call God, and from whom all things derive existence. Why, then, is the humanity of Jesus Christ to be worshipped? Because of the divine person to whom it belongs. The soul and the body of Jesus Christ are the soul and body of the Son of God. The same person who is God is also man, and his humanity is inseparable from his person. It is, therefore, on account of and in relation to his divine person that his human nature is adored with the worship of latria. If our Lord should condescend to come upon the earth again, we are persuaded that every sincere Protestant who believes in his divinity would gladly prostrate himself at his feet to pay him supreme adoration, and, if he were able to look upon his face, would feel that he was gazing upon the very countenance of God, and that the eyes of the Lord of heaven and earth were fixed upon him. If there are any whose mind or feelings revolt from the worship of the Son of God in his human body and through the medium of his visible form, let them admit at once that they are no believers in the incarnation, that they have abandoned the doctrine of the ancient Protestant confessions and are really Unitarians. Those who fully admit the Catholic doctrine that the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ is to be adored must range themselves at once on our side and prepare to defend our common cause. They must defend themselves and us against the charge of idolatry. {724} They cannot do it without laying down the principle that, when a created nature is elevated to a special union with the divine nature, and made to participate with it in dignity, it is worthy of a proportionate religious veneration. The more orthodox Unitarians cannot deny this principle without condemning themselves. They give a veneration at least equal to that which Catholics call the worship of hyperdulia to Jesus Christ; and as they do not acknowledge in him any dignity differing in kind, but only one differing in degree, from that of angels, prophets, martyrs, confessors, and other saints, they cannot consistently deny the propriety of giving a lesser veneration, or worship of dulia, to the saints. Episcopalians and other Protestants dedicate days and churches in honor of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, which are acts of very high religious veneration. Only those who refuse all religious veneration either to Jesus Christ or to any created nature, because they deny any supernatural elevation of created nature into a mysterious union with the divine nature, have any pretext or appearance of consistency in their charge of idolatry against Catholic saint-worship. Yet it is precisely the trinitarian Protestants who are loudest and most violent in repeating this charge. So far as rationalists and Unitarians are concerned, it is not of much utility to discuss the question of the veneration of the Virgin and of the saints directly. The preliminary question of the incarnation has first to be settled. It is the divine worship we pay to Jesus Christ which is their great stone of stumbling and rock of offence. We leave them aside, therefore, to pursue the one direct line of argument on which we started, namely, that the veneration of saints flows logically out of the worship of the sacred humanity of Christ; and is rooted in the doctrine of the incarnation.

Orthodox Protestants are bound to pay divine worship, or the adoration of latria, to the soul and body of Jesus Christ; a worship which would be idolatry if the humanity of Christ were not united to the divine nature in one personality, so that the worship of Christ as man is necessarily referred to his divine person and terminates upon it. For the same reason, they are bound to pay an inferior veneration, or worship of dulia, to the saints, because they also are united to the divine nature through the incarnation and in Christ, as his co-heirs and brethren, the participators of his glory. They are not united with the divine nature in one personality, therefore they cannot receive divine worship. But they are in a lesser mode made "partakers of the divine nature," as the Scripture explicitly declares, and, therefore, deserve a veneration commensurate with their degree of union, which is ultimately referred to God, who is "worshipped in his saints." To compare the veneration of the saints of God with the Greek polytheism is simply absurd. It is connected with and springs out of the doctrine of pure monotheism and the worship paid to the one true God. It does not, in the slightest degree, supplant this doctrine or worship, confuse the idea of God, or interfere with the recognition of his sole and absolute sovereignty. It presents necessarily, and by its very essence, the saints as the creatures, the servants, the courtiers, ministers, and favored friends of God, intercessors and advocates for men before his throne. {725} It presents, therefore, necessarily, God as their creator, sovereign, and as the source and fountain of all their sanctity, beatitude, and glory, the author and giver of all the blessings asked for through their intercession. The perpetual presence of the true idea of God preserves the idea of the hierarchy of creatures from all corruption or perversion, and keeps continually before the mind their relation and subordination to the supreme and absolute Lord of the universe.

In the same way, the presence of the true idea of the incarnation prevents the idea of the mediation of the saints between God and man from being corrupted. It is impossible for the Blessed Virgin or any other saint to take the place in the Catholic idea which belongs to Jesus Christ as the Redeemer and Saviour of mankind, the Mediator between God and man. It is clearly understood and vividly realized that Jesus Christ is the medium of union between God and man through the hypostatic union of human nature with the divine nature in his person. His expiation of sin derives its infinite value from the divinity of his person. His merits derive their infinite value also from his divinity. He is the source and fountain of grace and mercy, because he is God and possesses life in himself. He is the sacrifice perpetually offered in the divine eucharist, the perennial source of life from which the soul is fed in the holy communion. The mediation of the saints is derived from him, subordinate to and dependent on his mediation. The Blessed Virgin and the saints are honored on account of their relation to him, and are invoked as his agents and ministers in dispensing grace. It is impossible, therefore, to attribute to them any separate merit or independent power; and, so far from the devotion to Our Lady or the saints impeding the view of Christ, it only brings him into bolder relief, and by contrast and comparison enhances the conception of his infinite elevation, as their and our creator and sovereign, above all creatures even the most exalted. Dr. Johnson with his usual strong good sense, saw this, and with his usual manly honesty avowed it, as every one knows who has read his Life by Boswell. Intelligent Protestants ought to be ashamed of themselves for perpetually reiterating the stupid charge against the Catholic Church, that she substitutes the Virgin and the saints as objects of worship in the place of God, or as objects of confidence in the place of our Saviour Christ. The only excuse for those who make this assertion is invincible ignorance, an excuse not very creditable to men who profess to be theologians. It may avail for those who have grown too old to make any new studies or receive any new ideas, and for those whose intelligence and learning are so circumscribed that they cannot become acquainted with or understand the arguments of Catholic theologians. But for those who have the obligation and the opportunity to study and understand these grave questions, but yet persist, either through culpable ignorance or wilful dishonesty, in misrepresenting Catholic doctrine, there can be no excuse. In spite of our desire to stretch charity to its utmost limits, we cannot help thinking that they are afraid to meet the question openly and fairly, afraid to investigate, and afraid to discuss the issue between us on its real merits. They apprehend, more or less vaguely or distinctly, that they cannot maintain their ground if they state the Catholic doctrines fairly and argue against them as they really are. Their instinct of self-preservation teaches them that their only safety consists in the smoke which they create by their incessant fusillade of misrepresentation, and which hides the true aspect of the field from their deluded followers.

{726}

We leave this part of our subject with a reiteration of what we have already affirmed and proved. The attempt to prove _a priori_ from the idea of God, or from the idea of the incarnation and mediation of the Word made man, that the religious veneration of the saints is incompatible with the supreme worship due to God, and the supreme confidence we are bound to repose in the merits and grace of the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ, is perfectly futile. The only real question is one of evidence: whether the Catholic Church can furnish evidence of her divine authority to teach that the Blessed Virgin and the saints have received a subordinate office of mediation, and are to be honored and invoked by a special and formal _cultus_. If the evidence which is proposed can be refuted, the worship of the saints may be qualified as a vain observance, a superstition, a useless addition to Christianity. But it can never, with any reason, be denominated idolatry; because it distinctly limits itself to that veneration which is simply commensurate with a merely created and derived dignity, leaving intact and perfect the supreme worship of God. It can never be denominated a substitution of many saviours and mediators in place of the one Saviour and Mediator Jesus Christ; because it leaves the doctrine of his mediation intact and perfect. That this evidence can be demolished by sound historical learning, scientific exegesis of the Scriptures, or solid theological arguments, we have no fear. We do not think our antagonists have much hope of doing it. They have already said all that can be said on their side, and only damaged their own cause by it. They cannot get rid of the universal testimony of all ages and countries to the Catholic doctrine, without resorting to principles which subvert their own foundation and leave them to sink down into the pit that has swallowed up Rénan and Colenso. These topics have been exhaustively handled by numerous and able Catholic writers, to whom we refer those readers who wish to investigate them. We turn now to the second part of our subject, which relates to the honor paid to the sacred images of Christ and the saints.

Anticatholic writers are so illogical, careless, and confused in their arguments against Catholic doctrines and practices, and use so much rhetoric, directed merely _ad captandum vulgus_, especially when they take up this, which is one of their favorite themes, that it is very difficult to follow and refute them in a clear and methodical manner. They deal very much in assertions and vituperative expressions, in misrepresentations, ridicule, and low attempts at wit, in unmeaning laudations of themselves as the only enlightened and spiritual persons in the world, and wholesale depreciation of Catholics, especially the simple and pious peasantry and common people of Catholic countries. We suppose that the substance of their objections against the veneration of images, extracted and reduced to a clear and precise statement, would be something like this: The use made of images in religious worship by Catholics is idolatrous, because it either is actually an adoration of images as gods in place of the true God, or, if not, leads to and encourages such a worship, and bears the outward appearance of being identical with it. It is, therefore, to be condemned, as intrinsically dangerous in itself, and therefore prohibited under the old law, and as in many cases among the uneducated grossly superstitious and heathenish. {727} It is, therefore, on a par with the idolatry of the Greeks and Romans, and other pagan nations, which is so severely denounced in the Holy Scriptures, and so unmercifully ridiculed by the early Christian writers; although enlightened Catholics, like enlightened pagans, may be free from the grossness of the vulgar superstition.

A full discussion of the subject would require us to go into the question of the nature of image-worship among the heathen nations. This has been done already by Bishop England, who has handled the whole matter with great learning and ability in his "Letters to the _Gospel Messenger_." It has also been briefly but satisfactorily treated in an article on "Is it Honest?" in a former number of this magazine. We may assert it as a certain and established fact, that the heathen priests and other intelligent advocates of polytheism held the opinion, so far as they were sincere believers in their own system, that the divinities whom they worshipped were in some way bound to their images, and acted through them as the soul acts through the body. They did not, of course, worship the metal or wood of which the images were composed; but they did worship the images themselves, as being animated statues informed by a divine virtue, and really containing the persons they represented. Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and others, and persons who were imbued with the principles of the more sound and monotheistic philosophy, were not idolaters in the strict and gross sense. They regarded the divinities of the popular mythology as only a sort of genii, and probably considered their images as only representations intended to impress the senses and keep alive the belief and devotion of the people. But the doctrine of polytheism was not the doctrine of the sounder and higher philosophy. The system was idolatrous, both in its substitution of imaginary beings for the one, true God, and also in its offering of the worship due to God to images as containing their imaginary divinities. It is necessary to take into account, in estimating the idolatrous character of this heathen worship, not only that it terminated upon objects which were not divine as the ultimate end of the homage given, without reference to the supreme creator and lord, but also that these objects were unreal and imaginary beings. It was not, therefore, merely an undue exaltation of the creature, but a substitution of mere creations of the imagination in lieu of the true God. It was, therefore, not only polytheism, or a denial of the unity of God, and a division of the deity among many beings possessing divine attributes, but _idol_-worship, that is, the worship of nonentities in place of the real, infinite Being. The image represented nothing real. It was worshipped as related to an imaginary divinity, supposed to reside in it and to communicate to it a certain divine quality. There being no such person really existing, the image was a mere idol; and the worship had no real object to terminate upon except the material of which it was composed. A man who cherishes and honors the picture of his wife has a real and legitimate object upon which the affections and emotions awakened by the picture may terminate; but an artist who falls in love with a picture painted after an imaginary ideal in his own mind loves a mere painted form, an idol, and is, therefore, guilty of an absurd form of picture-worship. {728} If this love takes the place of the love of God in his soul and leads him to place his supreme good in this imaginary being, he is an idolater. The heathen had nothing in their idols but lumps of wood, stone, or metal, fashioned to represent some imaginary being. They were therefore open to all the ridicule and scorn of the prophets and other servants of the true God, for shaping to themselves gods which were the mere creations of their own art and skill. The condemnation of idols in the Holy Scripture falls, therefore, not chiefly upon the mere use of images as representing the object of worship, but upon the making and honoring of images representing beings who, if they existed, would not be entitled to the worship they received, and who, in point of fact, had no real existence. Idolatry is also called in the Scripture demon-worship, because, as we understand it, the demons by means of it seduced men away from the worship of God, and also because, by possessing the images of the false gods, speaking through the oracles, and inciting to the commission of a multitude of crimes in connection with idolatry, they reduced the heathen into servitude to themselves.

The prohibition of images to be used in the worship sanctioned by the divine law was a precept of discipline enacted for a special reason. The reason was the same which lay at the foundation of that economy by which the trinity of persons in the Godhead, the incarnation of the Son in human form, the hierarchy of angels, the glory of the Mother of God, the exaltation of the saints to a deific union, were at first obscurely revealed, and only gradually disclosed to the clear knowledge and belief of the generality of the faithful. It was necessary to establish first the doctrine of the divine unity and spirituality, then the Trinity and Incarnation, so firmly in the faith of the people of God, that it could not be disturbed by anything similar to the corrupt worshipping of created things, before it was safe to allow the glorification of all creation and all nature, which is the consequence of the Incarnation, to be fully manifested. The Trinity and Incarnation were but dimly revealed, and only explicitly known by the _élite_ of the faithful, in order that the attention of the childish, imperfect minds of those who lived in those early ages, surrounded by a brilliant and seductive polytheism, might be fixed principally on the unity and spirituality of the divine nature. It was the special mission of the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations to preserve and hand down the doctrine of the one, true God. There would have been a danger in distinctly revealing the Trinity before the time, that the dogma would have been corrupted and perverted by a false conception of the plurality of persons in the divine being, as of a plurality of beings. The Incarnation would have been perverted also into anthropomorphism, or the conception of the divine nature as identical with human nature. Too distinct a knowledge of the angelic hierarchy would have dazzled the minds of a people predisposed and continually tempted to idolatry, and would have withdrawn them from the contemplation and worship of God. Sculpture and painting would have affected their senses and imagination too powerfully, and would have fostered the disposition to conceive of the divine nature as divided among many deities, and resembling material, created objects. It was necessary that Christ should come and manifest himself to men in his true character, and that he should establish an infallible church, competent to teach and define the Trinity and Incarnation in their relation to the divine unity, to condemn all errors, and to direct the development of theology with unerring certitude, before the grand and abstruse mysteries of faith could be safely exposed to the gaze of the multitude. {729} Our Lord himself proceeded with great caution in these matters, and so did the apostles and their successors. The trinity in unity and the person of Christ had first to be proposed and to be sunk indelibly into the mind of the church, before the Blessed Virgin and the saints could be brought prominently forward; and religion had first to be imbued with spirituality and pure, robust morality, before the splendor of worship and the riches of the fine arts, and all the subsidiary means of impressing the senses and the imagination, could receive their due development. Nevertheless, that the unity of revelation might be manifest and the continuity of development be kept unbroken, everything which was destined to bloom forth in its season in full splendor upon this grand plant of God whose branches are destined to overshadow the world, existed in germ and bud from the very beginning. It would lead us too far to follow up this thought. Orthodox Protestants will admit it in regard to the principal mysteries of Catholic faith. The text of Scripture shows plainly that ceremonial, architecture, and music, in a word, all that was not liable to lose its symbolic character too easily in the minds of the people, were profusely employed in the religion of the old law. Philosophy, poetry, science, and literature were kept in abeyance to a great extent, and yet given sufficiently for intellectual culture in the inspired writings. And, notwithstanding the restriction placed on sculpture and painting, yet images were to a certain extent made use of, by the divine commandment, for symbolic purposes in the sanctuary and in the temple. This is their true and legitimate use, and they are to be classed with other symbols, emblems, or exterior signs and representations to the senses of persons and things in the supersensible and celestial world. Sacraments, holy places, holy things, temples, altars, vestments, ceremonies, images, all belong to the same order, and find their reason and principle in the Incarnation. The Incarnation is the highest consecration and elevation of material substance and form. The body of Christ is hypostatically united to the divine nature and made the true, living image of the Godhead, as the Second Council of Nice teaches, the medium by which God is manifested in the sensible and visible order. Through Christ the whole material universe is sanctified and united with God as its final cause. The fanciful theosophies and mythologies of the heathen world were only abortive efforts to express this truth. Mr. Gladstone has recently given utterance to this idea in very beautiful language, so far as Greek polytheism is concerned, in his review of _Ecce Homo_. Heathen art was similarly a perverted foreshadowing of Catholic art, copied after the ideal, not of redeemed and glorified but of fallen nature, not of heaven but of hell, which is but a dark counterpart of heaven.

Modern Protestants will generally admit the lawfulness and utility of sculpture and painting, considered as the outward expression of the Christian ideal of beauty, the representation of persons, scenes, places worthy of respect, means of improving the senses and imagination with religious ideas. {730} They are not like their ancestors, who defaced sanctuaries, rifled the tombs of the saints, burned relics, broke stained-glass windows, destroyed sculptures and paintings, and, with barbarous vandalism, did what they could to efface the glorious monuments of the ages of faith. The remnants of these sacred relics of antiquity which they have now in their possession they preserve with jealous care. They even make use of sculpture and painting to perpetuate their own heretical tradition, as well as to set forth what they have retained that is truly Christian. They adorn their churches with works of art, and erect monuments and statues to their own chiefs and leaders, as, for instance, the monument to the English pseudo-martyrs at Oxford, and the statue of Luther recently unveiled with so much pomp and ceremony at Worms. They are, therefore, precluded from making objection to the use of sculptured or painted images of Christ and the saints in general, and are restricted to objections against certain uses of these images in religious rites or worship, and certain acts of respect and veneration which are exhibited toward them. We will, therefore, proceed to show that this use of images is precisely identical in principle with that use of them to which Protestants do not object, and in conformity with the natural and necessary laws of the human mind, which even the most violent iconoclasts cannot break.

The human mind is forced to use images as its media; and, although it is not necessary to have these images sculptured or painted, it is by reason of the aforesaid necessity of using images of some kind that man instinctively seeks in sculpture and painting a suitable outward form and expression of his intellectual images, and finds so much pleasure in beholding these intellectual images expressed in works of art by others.

The human intellect is incapable of contemplating the divine essence immediately. It forms an intellectual conception or image which represents God to itself, but which is most imperfect and inadequate. Any one who should believe that God really is like the conception or imagination he is able to form of him, would commit as great an absurdity as one who should believe that he is like a venerable old man with a long white beard. Not only is the conception or intellectual image of God formed by the mind always inadequate, but it is often false in certain respects. Aristotle's conception of God was essentially a false one; so is that of the Deists, of the Calvinists, and of those Universalists who deny his retributive justice. Even the highest contemplatives, as they themselves positively affirm, although they speak of a certain purely spiritual and imageless view of God, never contemplate God so directly that they can dispense with every intellectual species or image as a medium, and intend only by imageless contemplation to designate a degree of subtility in their intellectual operations which renders them pure and spiritual by comparison with those of grosser minds. Probably most persons of uncultivated intellects represent God to their imagination under some majestic and venerable human form, and think of him as seated on a throne, in a superb palace, with his ministering angels, also clothed in corporeal forms, attending upon him. Those whose clear intellectual conceptions enable them to rid themselves of every image borrowed from the human figure in thinking of God, will still find that their minds make use of certain emblems, figures, or images of the divine attributes, such as light, the sea, the atmosphere. {731} Much more will they find themselves compelled to transfer to their conception of the divine intelligence and volition the analogy of their own manner of thought, of their sentiments and affections. In the same manner, when a person thinks of Jesus Christ, meditates on his life, death, and glorified state in heaven, he will form to himself images which represent his ideal conception, images so much the more distinct as they reflect the humanity of Christ with which we are far more immediately united than we are with the divine nature, and which we are therefore able to represent more exactly and vividly to our imagination. Are we to say, then, that every person worships the image of God or of Jesus Christ which his intellect has formed, and becomes thereby an idolater? Certainly not. His reason and faith assure him of the existence of God and Christ as objectively real, distinct from his own mental conception, and surpassing all his apprehensions. His intention in worship is directed to God as he really is, and is true worship, although the intellectual media which the soul is obliged to make use of are imperfect and inadequate.

The case is no way altered if the sculptured or painted image of Christ is made use of, instead of or together with the intellectual image. The crucifix is only a permanent image affecting the exterior senses, as the intellectual representation is a transient image affecting the interior senses. Coleridge says that a picture is "an intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing." The same may be said of a statue, though a statue is more of a thing than a painting is. The material substance employed by the artist is merely the substratum of the form, which is something ideal, as language is merely the medium of thought. In painting or sculpture of real merit, the higher and more perfect conceptions of men who possess the artistic gift are transferred to the minds of those whose ideal conceptions are of an inferior order, or who, at least, are not able to give their conceptions an outward and permanent expression. The artist who makes a statue or painting of our Lord intends to represent him according to the ideal which he has in his own mind. His object is to bring the ideal conception of Christ vividly and distinctly before the imagination of the beholder. The more completely he succeeds in producing the desired effect, the more perfect will be the identification of the image with the object it represents in the imagination of the beholder; that is, the image, the more completely it is an image, the less does it attract attention to its own separate reality, and the more does it fix the attention of the mind on the object it represents. A person whose mind is susceptible to the influence of art, looking at a masterpiece of painting or sculpture, forgets that it is only a representation, and seems to himself to be looking at the reality. His imagination transports him to the scene of crucifixion, and he is spell-bound as he gazes on the face of the dying Christ. The same emotions arise in his mind that would arise if he were actually gazing upon the crucifixion itself. If he is a Christian, he will spontaneously elicit acts of worship toward the Son of God dying on the cross. These interior acts will manifest themselves by exterior signs, by the respectful posture, the silence, the reverential expression of countenance, the moistened eye, which betray the workings of the soul within to any attentive observer. Suppose that he kneels down and offers a prayer, that he kisses the feet of the image of Christ, that he exclaims aloud, "My Lord and my God!" is that idolatry? {732} Is he worshipping a picture or a statue? If he is, then all the merely interior and mental acts of a person who is affected by a statue or picture of Christ are equally idolatrous. If the sculptured or painted image of Christ is really substituted for Christ himself, and receives as a reality, distinct in itself, any homage or affection which it terminates as an ultimate object, then all admirers of works of art are guilty of the same species of absurdity, commit the same unreasonable act, in a lesser degree, which culminates, in the case supposed, in the supreme folly of adoring marble, ivory, canvas, and paint. That class of persons who go into raptures over works of art, therefore, have nothing to say against the Catholic use of the crucifix which is not contradicted by their own practice and avowed sentiments. If the devout sentiments awakened by a crucifix or a painting of the crucifixion are legitimate for once and for the space of half an hour, they are legitimate at all times. If it is lawful to go to a picture-gallery in order to see a masterpiece, it is lawful to buy it, to hang it in an oratory, to visit it every day, and to make a regular and constant use of it, as a means of exciting devotion. If the inward sentiments it awakens are lawful, so is their outward expression; and if this outward expression is in itself lawful, it may be prescribed as a law by the ritual of the church. The same principle that justifies the making of a crucifix, and the looking upon it with emotion, justifies the church in placing it above the altar, bowing or genuflecting before it, incensing it, exposing it on Good Friday to veneration, and chanting the words: "Ecce lignum crucis, _venite adoremus_."

The crucifix, considered as a material object, is merely treated with the same respect which is shown to a Bible, an altar-cloth, a chalice, or any other object devoted to sacred uses. As a representation, it is not distinguished from the object which it represents, and the acts of interior or exterior veneration which terminate upon it are merely relative, and are referred altogether to Jesus Christ. They are like the kiss which a man imprints upon his wife's picture, or the uncovering of the head when a procession passes the statue of Washington. There is only one question, therefore, in regard to the veneration given to the crucifix, and that is, Does the object or person represented, that is, our Lord Jesus Christ, deserve the worship of latria, or divine worship, which we pay to him, and which we signify by these exterior marks of respect toward his image? The same is the case with the images of the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The veneration paid to them has no respect to the material of which they are composed, but passes to their prototypes, that is, the persons represented. The only question, therefore, is, Do these prototypes deserve the honor we intend to pay them? If they do, it is right to signify this honor by marks of respect to their images, such as bowing, offering incense, burning lights, decorating the shrines in which they are placed with flowers, and kneeling before them to offer prayers.

We have already shown that those who have the mere devotion of taste and imagination toward statues and pictures act in a manner precisely analogous, and pass through the same mental process which is exhibited by the Catholic in the respect which he pays to the sacred images of Christ and the saints. {733} The only difference is, that the latter makes use of his imagination in the service of a real and practical faith and piety. His devotion is not a mere intellectual or sentimental devotion, but a spiritual exercise. It is, therefore, less dependent on the artistic merit and excellence of the representation than the merely sentimental excitement of the votary of art. A rude crucifix or a simple image of the Blessed Virgin is sufficient for the only purpose for which the devout Catholic makes use of them, as a help to fix the senses and attention, a sort of step-ladder by which he may raise his mind to the contemplation of Christ and his blessed mother. Many other circumstances give value to sacred objects besides their intrinsic worth. Their history, their antiquity, the associations connected with them, the traditions of past ages which cluster about them, often give them a sacredness far beyond the charm of symmetry and beauty. Of the two, we should much prefer to have Bernini's exquisite statue, over which the Rev. Mr. Bacon goes into raptures which betray his refined love of art, destroyed, rather than the venerable statue of St. Peter, which, with manners the reverse of exquisite and refined, he calls "a grimy idol." Even persons of the most exquisite taste often love an old house, old portraits, old articles of furniture, and many other old things, intrinsically ugly and valueless, far more than any similar objects which are new, costly, and fabricated in the highest style of art. For the same reason, certain objects of devotion, which are devoid of all artistic excellence, may be very dear and venerable to Catholics of the most cultivated taste. Much more, then, it is natural that rude and unsightly statues or pictures should be objects of devotion to Catholics of uncultivated taste. Protestants make a great mistake in judging of the sentiments of the common people in Catholic countries. They attribute to superstition what is really to be ascribed only to uncultivated taste. The sentiments which are awakened by masterpieces of art they can understand; but they cannot understand that ordinary and even grotesque images are masterpieces of art and models of beauty to the rude and childish mind of the multitude. To their prejudiced and distorted fancy, these images appear like idols, and the devotion of the people toward them like a stupid idol-worship. They do not appreciate the fact that they are to these simple people what _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of religious art are to them--a vivid representation, in outward form, of their own highest ideal. The susceptibility of these untutored minds to those emotions which are awakened through the senses is far greater than that of the more educated, though it is not so chastened. This is especially the case with the southern races. Poetry, music, painting, everything which appeals to the imagination, finds a ready response in their ardent temperament. It is, therefore, a proof of the highest wisdom in the church that she has taken advantage of all these means of impressing religious ideas upon the minds of all classes of men in every stage of intellectual development. There are some whose devotion takes a more purely intellectual form, and who elevate their minds to God and heaven more easily by interior recollection and meditation than by any exercise of the imagination or any outward aids. A few prefer the solitude of a cell or a cave to Cologne Cathedral, and an hour's abstracted contemplation to all the pageantry of St. Peter's. {734} Such are permitted and encouraged to follow the bent of their own inclination and the leading of the divine Spirit. The mass of men, however, even of the educated and cultivated, need the help of the exterior world to give them the images and emblems of divine and spiritual things without which they cannot fix their attention or awaken their emotions. The quality and quantity of the helps and instruments with which they worship God vary indefinitely. The devotion of those whose state is a kind of intellectual childhood, or in whose temperament imagination and passion predominate, will necessarily be more sensuous than that of more cultivated minds or races of a more cool and sedate temperament. It is the same principle, however, which pervades and regulates all; the spirit is one, though the form varies. The true mystic, who is absorbed in the contemplation of the divine nature, does not deny to the sacred humanity of Christ, to the Blessed Virgin, the saints, or to any holy things, their worth and excellence, although he does not fix his attention upon them so frequently and so directly as others. The great saints and theologians of the church never despise the devotions of the people or accuse them of superstition. The distinction between the intelligent few and the superstitious many in the Catholic Church, is one which the most highly educated and spiritually minded Catholics disdain and repudiate as a dishonor to themselves. It is made by sciolists, who are unable to answer the arguments of our theologians or to deny the sanctity of our saints, and who seek to evade in this way the overwhelming force of the evidence for the truth of our religion. The veneration of saints and the use of images in religious worship, they say, though it does not prevent the _élite_ of Catholics from offering a supreme and pure worship to God and looking up to Jesus Christ as their only Saviour, leads the multitude to superstition and idolatry. We are better judges of the fact than they are. They know next to nothing of the practical working of our religion, or of the ideas and state of mind of our people. We know these things. We have, at least, as much abhorrence of idolatry as they have, and as much zeal for the enlightenment and spiritual welfare of the multitude. We know that there is no taint of superstition or idolatry in the devotion of our people. The Catholic Church keeps the ideas of God and Christ vividly before the minds of her children; they realize them in a manner of which those who are out of the church have no conception. The accusation of withdrawing from God and our Lord that which is due to them--to divide and scatter it among inferior beings--comes with a very bad grace from Protestants. What have they done to reclaim mankind from polytheism and to spread the worship of the true God? They have done nothing, except to cripple the efforts of the Catholic priesthood by sowing dissension in Christendom and giving the scandal of disunion to infidels. They have bred anew the old heresies against the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ which had become extinct, together with the more monstrous error of pantheism. We, the Catholic priesthood, have conquered the ancient heathenism, have planted everywhere Christianity, have established on an immovable foundation the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ, together with the worship of his adorable name.

{735}

We are now carrying on the work of converting the heathen, and of defending theism and Christianity against the hosts of enemies raised up against them by the revolt of the sixteenth century. If Christianity is to gain in the future new and more glorious triumphs over the false religions of the world, it will be through our labors and our blood that she will win her victories. Not only do the defence and advancement of the supernatural order rest on us; we are obliged also to defend nature, reason, the arts, the poetry and romance of life, from a gloomy Puritanism, a hopeless scepticism, a desolating materialism, which would sweep away all spiritual philosophy, all sound science, all gayety and charm in life, all joyousness in religion, all ideality and heroism in the sphere of human existence. It is against a universal iconoclasm we have to contend--an iconoclasm which seeks to throw down and deface the image of celestial truth and beauty, to break the painted windows through which the light of heaven streams in upon this earthly temple, to efface those angelic and saintly forms with the Madonna who is the queen of the whole bright multitude, to overthrow the cross, and finally to drag down the sacred humanity of Christ, together with the deity that dwells in it and is worshipped through it, leaving mankind without a temple, an altar, a Saviour, or a God. We have learned the nature of the warfare we are engaged in too well from the conflicts of eighteen centuries, to be deceived or misled. We know that an attack on the smallest portion of the edifice of the Catholic Church means its total subversion, and that, consequently, it is just as necessary to resist it as if it were avowedly aimed at the foundation. We know that we cannot and must not yield up the smallest fragment of Catholic truth for any plausible end whatever. Although, therefore, the veneration of saints and holy images is not among the most necessary and fundamental parts of the Catholic religion, yet, as the principle from which it proceeds is an integral portion of Catholic doctrine, we shall always maintain it with the same fidelity as we do the primary truths of the Creed, the Unity and Trinity of the Godhead, the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The images of Christ, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the saints, will always remain above our altars and on the walls of our churches; the Salve Regina and Litanies of the Saints will never cease to be chanted in our solemn services; and we shall continue to adore the Incarnate Word in his sacred humanity with the worship of latria until the end of the world.

{736}

Nellie Netterville; Or, One Of The Transplanted.