Chapter XVII.

"To the memory of Francis, Twelfth Baron of Netterville, one of the Transplanted, and of Mary, the widow of his only son."

{748}

Nellie stooped to decipher the inscription, but it may be doubted if she saw aught save the stone upon which Hamish, in obedience to his master's dying orders, had engraved it, for her eyes were full of tears. A hurried journey to the west, another death-bed, and a few weeks more of tears and renewed sense of desolation had followed the events recorded in our last chapter, and then at last a holy calmness settled upon Nellie's soul--a calmness and a happiness which was all the more likely to endure that it was founded upon past sorrows bravely met and meekly borne, in a spirit of true and loving resignation to the will of Him who had laid them on her shoulders. From the day of her departure from Clare Island, the old lord had drooped like a plant deprived of sunshine, and he died on the very evening of her return, his hand in hers, smiling upon her and her brave husband, and leaving for only vengeance on his foes the inscription which heads this chapter, to be engraved upon his tombstone.

Nellie laid him to rest beside her mother; for through the kindness of Ormiston she had been enabled to carry out Mrs. Netterville's dying wishes, and to bear her remains to that western shore which she had so fondly and so vainly fancied was to be her daughter's future home. Ormiston had done yet more. He had obtained a reversal of the sentence of outlawry against Roger, coupled with the usual permission to "beat his drum," as it was called, for recruits to follow his banner into foreign lands, to fight in the armies of foreign kings. It was the evil policy of those evil times.

To rid Ireland of the Irish was the grand panacea for the woes of Ireland, the only one her rulers ever recognized, and of which, therefore, they availed themselves most largely, careless or unconscious of the fatal element of strength they were thus flinging to their foes. As a native chieftain and a well-tried soldier, Roger had a double claim upon his people, and short as had been the time allotted to him for the purpose, fifty men, of the same breed and mettle as the soldiers who fought at a later period against an English king until he cursed, in the bitterness of his heart, the laws which had deprived him of such subjects, had already obeyed his summons. They assembled under the temporary command of Hamish, near the tower, waiting the moment for embarkation, and the ship that was to convey them to their destination was riding at single anchor in the bay on that very morning when Nellie and her husband knelt for the last time beside her mother's grave. It was like a second parting with that mother. But with Roger at her side she could not feel altogether friendless or unhappy, and they prayed for a little time in silence, with a calm sense of sadness which had something of heavenly sweetness in it. At last it was time to go, and Roger laid a warning finger upon his young wife's shoulder. She did not say a word, but she bent down once more and kissed her mother's name upon the stone; then she gave her hand to Roger, and they left the churchyard together. While she had been lingering there, Henrietta had landed with Ormiston at the pier to bid her a last adieu. The quick eye of the English girl instantly perceived the goodly company of recruits assembled near the tower, and with a little smile of malicious triumph she pointed them out to her companion. Ormiston shook his head reprovingly. He was too thoroughly a soldier not to lament the policy which drafted large bodies of men into foreign armies, but he was full at that moment of his own concerns, and had little inclination to waste time in discussing the wisdom of his leaders. The truth was, Henrietta's reception of him on his arrival from Dublin the night before had disappointed him. {749} He had come in obedience to her own written orders, as conveyed to him by Nellie, and instead of the frank, loving meeting which his own frank and loving nature had anticipated, he had found her shy, cold, and, he was forced to confess to himself, almost unkind. At first he consoled himself by attributing this in a great measure to the presence of her father, before whom she always seemed naturally to assume the bearing of a spoiled and unruly child; but when at her own invitation he had rowed her that morning to Clare Island, and her manner, instead of softening, as he had hoped, grew even colder and more constrained than it had been before, he became seriously distressed, and unable to endure the suspense any longer, they had hardly landed from the boat ere he turned short round upon her, and said:

"Henrietta, before you move one step further, you must answer me this question--are we in future to be friends or foes?"

"Not foes! Oh! certainly, not foes!" Henrietta stammered, taken quite aback by the suddenness of the question. "Oh! certainly, not foes!"

"Because I cannot endure this uncertainty much longer," he went on as if he had not heard her. "I must have an answer, and that soon. I might, indeed, insist upon your own letter, but I will not. It was written under a sudden impulse, and the word that gives you to me for a wife must be said with a calm consciousness of its import. What shall that word be, Henrietta--yes or no?"

"Yes, if you will have me," she said, in a low voice, half-turning away her head as she did so.

"If! So long and so faithfully as I have loved you, and do you still talk of _if?_" he answered, almost reproachfully.

"There is an 'if,' however," said Henrietta; "and when you have heard me out, you will have to decide the question for yourself."

"Nay, the only 'if' for me is the 'if' that you really love me," he replied wistfully, and in a way which showed he felt by no means certain upon that score.

"That is the very thing," she answered, flushing scarlet. "Harry, dear Harry, remember that I have never had a mother's care, and promise to be still my friend, even if what I have got to tell you should alter all your other wishes in my regard."

"What can you have to say that could do that?" he asked impatiently. "For God's sake, Henrietta, say it out at once, whatever it may be!"

"It is not so very easy, perhaps," she said in a low voice. And then she added quickly: "They call me a woman grown, Harry, and yet in some few things I think that I am still almost a child."

"In a great _many_ things rather, I should say," he could not resist saying, with a smile.

That smile reassured her, and she went on quickly: "You know that it has never been a new thing to me to consider myself your wife, Harry. My father has treated me from childhood as your affianced bride, and we have played at being wedded in the nursery. You cannot be surprised, therefore, if in my feelings toward you there has been something of unquestioning security, which does not enter usually, I think, into the relations in which we stood toward each other. This kind of sisterly feeling--oh! do not look so cross, Harry," she cried, suddenly stopping short, "or I shall never be able to go on." "Do not talk of sisterly feeling, then," he answered moodily, "for _that_ I cannot bear."

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"I need not, for I do not feel in the least like a sister to you now," she answered, with a pretty _naïveté_, that made him almost depart from the attitude of cold seriousness in which he had elected to receive the confessions of his betrothed. He checked the impulse, however, and signed to her quietly to proceed.

"You know, for you were with us at the time," she accordingly went on, "how much I was charmed with this wild western land when my father first brought me hither. You know, too, of my indignation when I found that the real owner had been deprived of it in order to our possession. True, I had heard before of the law of transplantation enacted for the benefit of our army, but not until it stared me in the face as an act of private injustice, done for the enrichment of myself, did I thoroughly appreciate its iniquity. From that moment the very abomination of desolation seemed to me to rest upon this land, which I had once felt to be so beautiful. I grew angry and indignant with all the world--with my father chiefly, but with you also, Harry, because, though I acquitted you of all active share in the robbery, I yet felt that it was your character as a good officer, capable of holding it against the enemy, which had encouraged him to commit it. From dwelling upon the injustice, I went on almost unconsciously to question of its victim. At first, however, I only thought of him with a sort of contemptuous pity, as of a half-tamed savage wandering sadly among the hills which had once been his own. But one day I met him. You remember that evening when I returned home so late, that you and my father became alarmed and went out to seek me? I told you then that I had lost my way, but I did not tell you that it was the O'More who had helped me to regain it, and who, finding I was nervous at the lateness of the hour, had walked back with me nearly to the gates. He was a gentleman, there was no mistaking that; and there was something so foreign in his look and accent, that I never even dreamed of him as the owner of the Rath, until I asked him to come in and make the acquaintance of my father. Then--I can hardly tell you in what words, but I know that they were courteous, and that I felt them to be all the more cutting for that reason--he told me WHO he was. In my surprise and shame, I tried, I believe, to stammer out something like an apology for the wickedness of which he had been the victim; but he cut me short with a cold, quiet smile, pointed to the gate, which we had by this time almost reached, saluted, and so left me. Harry, from that moment, wild dreams began to float through my brain as to how I might restore him to his own. There was one way, and only one way, in which, as a woman, I could do it. Remember, I was not yet seventeen, dear Harry."

"I have need to be reminded of it," he answered bitterly, "when I am forced to listen to such things as you are saying now."

"And yet I loved you all the time, Harry; I did, indeed," she answered in a low, earnest voice. "I loved you, although I think I knew it not--should never, perhaps, have known it quite, if we had not at last quarrelled and parted, as I thought, for ever. In the first keen suffering which that parting caused me, my heart woke up all at once to a true knowledge of itself, and I felt that, dormant as my love for you had been, it had yet become so deeply rooted in my whole being that by no effort of my own will, (and you know that it is a pretty strong one, Harry,") she added with a faint smile--"by no effort of my own will could I have transferred it to another."

{751}

"Go on," said Harry, now smiling in his turn, for she had paused in a little maidenly confusion at this full and frank avowal of her sentiments in his regard--"go on, for I can listen to you with patience now, Ettie."

"I never dreamed again, Harry, of any other than yourself," she answered softly; "and When, the day after your departure, I went to Clare Island to warn him of a coming danger, (but not, I do assure you, with any other motive,) I saw at once that if he ever cared for any woman in the world, it was, or soon would be, Nellie Netterville. It did not grieve me that it was so, but I confess it wounded my woman's vanity a little, and for a moment I felt inclined to be angry with her. But I was ashamed of the pitiful feeling, and for the first time in my life, perhaps, I tried to conquer my evil passions. In this her sweet, quiet frankness greatly helped me, and her forgetfulness or forgiveness of the great injury I, or at all events, my father, had inflicted on her, made me blush for my own unkindness. If ever you take me for a wife, Harry, and that you find me a more manageable one than I have given you reason to expect, remember that you will owe it entirely to her example."

"Nay, nay! not entirely!" here interposed Harry, "for the sun shines in vain upon a barren soil."

"And now," continued Henrietta, regardless of the compliment, "can you forgive me, Harry? Believe me, you know all, I have told you the truth, and the whole truth. I would not deceive you in such a matter for the world."

"My love, I believe you, and I am more than satisfied," he answered in a tone of trustful tenderness which left no room for doubting in Henrietta's mind.

"And, Harry," she added pleadingly, "our home that we have left in England is as pleasant, if not so sublime, as this, and we can call it, at all events, honestly our own!"

"Some day, dear Ettie, we will go there; and should your father's death ever place these lands at our disposal, we will leave them to their rightful owner."

"O Harry! how could I doubt you?" she said remorsefully. "Can you ever forgive me for it?"

"Yes, if you will never doubt again," he answered with a bright smile. "But, hark! the bugle sounds, and yonder is Roger and his wife talking to old Norah at the tower-gate."

Henrietta looked in that direction, and she saw that Nellie was taking leave of the old woman, who had flung herself at her feet, and was sobbing bitterly. This much she could guess from the attitude and action of both parties; but she could not guess the infinite delicacy and feeling which Nellie contrived to put into that last farewell, nor yet the reverent admiration with which Roger watched his young wife, as, silencing her own deeper sorrows, she soothed the old woman's clamorous grief over the departure of her hereditary chieftain and his bride, "her beautiful, darling, young honey of a new mistress!"

Nellie was still occupied in this manner when the bugle once more sounded. The soldiers, who at the first summons had mustered together under the command of Hamish, instantly put themselves into motion, and, with flags flying and pipers playing, marched past the tower, saluting Roger as they did so, and coming down to the place of embarkation amid the wails of music which, martial and spirit-stirring in the beginning, had died gradually away into such wild, plaintive strains as best befitted the thoughts of men who were leaving their native land for ever. {752} Another moment, and Nellie threw herself into Henrietta's arms, and the two girls sobbed their farewells in silence. Then some one separated them almost by force, there was a short bustle of departure and a clashing of oars, and when Henrietta could see again through her blinding tears, Nellie had nearly reached the ship which was to convey her to her new home; while over the crested waves came the voices of the soldier-emigrants singing that farewell song which rang so often and so sadly in those days along the coasts of Ireland, that it has left, unhappily, many an echo _still_ to wake up thoughts of bitterness and distrust in the minds and memories of her living people.

Years afterward, when Henrietta was a happy wife and mother in her quiet English home, and her friends, thanks to her generosity and her husband's, were once more settled in that western land which was dearer to them than all the shining kingdoms of the earth, the music of that wild "Ha-till" would strike at times suddenly on the chord of memory, and she would weep again almost as bitterly as she had wept upon that late autumn morning when, floating over the waters of Clew Bay, came those voices to her ear, sadly singing:

"Mute in our grief, our fortunes broken. Land of Eire, [Footnote 221] farewell, farewell! Sad is that word--half-wept, half spoken-- Sad as the sound of the passing bell. Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more, Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore!

"Ever in dreams to see thee weep! Ever to hear thy wail of pain! Bitter as death, and as dark and deep. The grief that we carry across the main. Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more, Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore!

"Happy the dead who have died for thee! More happy the dead who died long ago! Who never in sleep had learned to see The grief and shame that have laid thee low. Ha-till, ha-till we return no more, Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore.

"Farewell! we have poured out our blood like rain, We asked for naught but a soldier's grave; Yet say not thou we have sought in vain. While foes confess that thy sons are brave. Ha-till, ha-till! we return no more, Eire, beloved, to thy winding shore."

[Footnote 221: The ancient name for Ireland.]

The End.

{753}

The Holy Shepherdess of Pibrac,

Canonized By Pope Pius IX. In 1867.

In the latter part of the sixteenth century, beneath the walls of Toulouse, bloomed, almost unseen and unknown, a little flower of the fields, whose delicate chalice emitted a perfume scarcely perceptible to mortal sense. It passed away, and seemed forgotten; but its odor still lingered where it had blossomed; and after a few years had gone, its dust was gathered into the sanctuary, that the holy place might be filled with the celestial fragrance.

Germaine Cousin was born at Pibrac, a village of nearly two hundred families in the environs of Toulouse, about the year 1579. The parish church was dependent on the great Priory of the Knights of Malta in that city. The chateau belonged to the Du Faur, Lords of Pibrac. The actual proprietor was Guy, famous at once as an orator, a poet, and a successful courtier. Once the proudest remembrance of the place was the visit of Catharine de Medicis and her daughter, Margaret of Navarre, who were magnificently entertained by the Lord of Pibrac. But now the visit of the two queens, and the fame and opulence of the great orator, are nearly forgotten; while the memory of our holy shepherdess has lived for nearly three centuries in the hearts of all the inhabitants of Pibrac. The chateau is a forsaken ruin; but the church has become a place of pilgrimage, because Germaine prayed beneath its arches, and there found a tomb.

Her father was a poor husbandman, to whom tradition gives the name of Lawrence. Her mother's name was Marie Laroche. From the first moment of her existence, she seemed destined to suffering and affliction. She was infirm from her birth, being unable to use her right hand, and afflicted with scrofula. While yet a child, she became motherless; and, as if these were not trials enough to accumulate at once upon the head of one so frail, her father did not long delay to fill the vacant place on his hearth. Absorbed in her own children, this second wife, instead of pitying the hapless orphan whom Providence had confided to her care, conceived an aversion for her. But the trials to which Germaine was subjected were proofs of the divine favor. To them she was indebted for the brilliancy of her virtues, especially humility and patience.

As soon as she was old enough, her step-mother, who could not endure her presence at home, sent her forth to guard the flocks. This was her occupation the remainder of her life. But even in the depths of her lonely life, our shepherdess created for herself a more profound solitude. She was never seen in the company of the young shepherds; their sports never attracted her; their jeers never disturbed her thoughtful serenity; she only spoke sometimes to girls of her own age, sweetly exhorting them to be mindful of God!

We know not from whom Germaine received her first religious instructions--what hand, friendly to misfortune, revealed to her the great truths of salvation. Doubtless, it was the curé of the parish; for holy church despises not the meanest of her children; and her sagacious eye is quick to discover the chosen of God. {754} But, whoever it was, he did but little, and there was little to be done. God himself perfected the religious training of his handmaiden. She early learned what must for ever remain unknown to those who do not recognize in him the fountain of all wisdom. Living amid the wonders of creation, she contemplated them with the intelligent eye of innocence. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God--see him in the brilliant stars, the burning sun, the unfathomable heavens, and the changing clouds--see him in the flowers and plants that cover the surface of the earth! Germaine learned from the open book of nature a wondrous lore; and her attuned ear caught and comprehended that mysterious, anthem of praise, which, floating through creation, is unheard by more sinful man. Her pure soul united in the eternal song: _Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino: laudate et superexaltate eum in saecula!_

Although Germaine was a poor infirm orphan, subjected to the heavy yoke of a severe step-mother, and exposed by her occupation to the inclemency of the weather, she bore all her trials with cheerfulness, never brooding over her sorrows. One of the characteristics of the saints which particularly distinguishes them from ordinary Christians, is, _the use made of the common occurrences of life_. They share in common with other men, and often in a greater degree, the trials common to humanity; but they are chastened, purified by them, and they look upon the afflictions of this life as a means of assimilating them to Him who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Even in the manifest ill treatment and injustice of the malignant and wicked, they disregard the channel, but accept the suffering, as a means of perfection.

The extent to which this principle is carried, is peculiarly Catholic; and, in reading the lives of our saints, we cannot but be struck by it. They never struggled against their trials, and therefore were cheerful under them; for the greater part of our wretchedness proceeds from struggling against the current of life. This is the key to the saying of Fénélon: _Non-resistance is a remedy for every ill._

The paternal roof was not for Germaine, as for most--even the most wretched--a refuge and a place of repose. And yet neither her poverty, nor sorrows, nor infirmities, could have rendered her insensible to that which surpasses all the other pleasures of life--the happiness of being loved. By a divine foresight, God has placed in the hearts of parents, by the side of that fount of love for their offspring, a well of singular tenderness for the unfortunate child, the black lamb of the flock. This peculiar love Germaine had not. She had not even the legitimate share of her father's heart. She was denied a place at the fireside; she was hardly allowed shelter in the house. Her step-mother, irritable and imperious, would send her away to some obscure corner. She was not permitted to approach the other children--those brothers and sisters whom she loved so tenderly, and whom she was always ready to serve without manifesting any envy on account of the preferences of which they were the object, and she the victim. The inflexible harshness of her step-mother obliged the infirm girl to seek a place of repose in the stable, or upon a heap of vine branches in an out-house.

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But Germaine knew too well the value of sufferings not to accept with joy these humiliations and this injustice. And, as if her cross were yet too light, she imposed upon herself additional austerities. During the greater part of her life, she denied herself all nourishment but bread and water.

So great a conformity to her poor, suffering, and persecuted Saviour, kindled in the heart of Germaine an ardent love for his adorable humanity. Notwithstanding her feebleness and other obstacles, she assisted every day at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Even the obligations of her calling could not keep her from church at that hour. Confiding in God, she left her flock in the pasture, and hastened to the foot of the altar. It is a misguided piety which induces us to neglect the duties of our state of life in order to satisfy our devotion; but with Germaine this was the result of prompt obedience to a special inspiration. She knew who would guard her sheep; while she, poor lamb of Christ's flock! went to refresh herself at the fountain of living water.

Even when her sheep were feeding close by the wood of Boucone, which skirted the fields of Pibrac, and abounded with wolves, at the sound of the church bell she would plant her crook or her distaff in the ground, and hasten to the feet of the divine Shepherd. At her return, she always found her sheep unharmed. Not one was ever devoured by the wolves, nor did they ever stray into the neighboring fields.

Long after St. Germaine's death, the peasants of the hamlet remembered the unearthly brightness of her face as, week after week, she approached the holy sacraments.

"A celestial brightness, a more ethereal beauty, Shone on her face and encircled her form when, after confession, Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her."

In the Holy Eucharist she found a compensation for every grief. That divine Spouse to whom she was pledged placed himself as a seal upon her heart, thereby strengthening it to endure the trials of life, and enriching it with such abundant grace that, while dwelling at large in the great temple of nature, her life gleamed before him, brightly, and purely, and constantly, like the undying lamp of the sanctuary!

Like all the saints, Germaine had a singular devotion to Mary--that devotion so dear to the Catholic heart, and which is considered by the fathers as a mark of predestination. The world does not realize how much it has owed to Mary during these eighteen hundred years; yet some, some of us know how dark and almost unbearable it would be with its sorrows, and cares, and privations, if over all were not diffused the beauty and softness, the sweet charm of virginity and love, from the divine face of Mary!

To Germaine, the Ave Maria was another salutation of the angel preluding the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost; and she murmured the sacred words with infinite tenderness, above all, at the hour when they are on every lip. As soon as she heard the Angelus bell, which has three times a day, for six centuries, intoned the Ave Maria between heaven and earth, it was remarked that, wherever she might be, she immediately fell upon her knees as if insensible to the incommodiousness of the place.

The Rosary was her only book; and to her this devotion was no vain repetition. "Love," says Lacordaire, "has but one word, and, in saying that for ever, it is never repeated."

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"Ever transformed to meet our needs. Oft as Devotion counts her beads, As if those beads had caught the light In her celestial girdle bright, But each with its own colors dight. Thus, whensoe'er that prayer is heard, Fresh thoughts are in each solemn word: An orb of light comes from the skies To kindle holy liturgies; It gathers and gives back their rays. Now turned to prayer, and now to praise."

The love of God insensibly leads to the love of one's neighbor. Germaine, when she could, used to draw around her the little children of the village, and endeavor to explain to them the truths of religion, and sweetly persuade them to love Jesus and Mary. This little school, held in the shade of a thicket of the lone fields, was a spectacle worthy of the admiration of angels, and is a proof of the unselfishness of real piety, even in the most lowly.

Although the piety of Germaine produced a profound impression in the village, yet the world is the same everywhere, and always conceives a secret aversion to piety. It cannot avoid censuring it in some way, however unobtrusive a piety it may be. Religion imposes esteem upon the world, and the world avenges itself by raillery. So the wits of Pibrac persecuted Germaine with mockery; they laughed at her simplicity, and called her a bigot.

But if God permits, for the perfection of the saints, that their virtue be turned into ridicule, he knows, when it pleaseth him, how to render them glorious in the eyes of the world.

In order to reach the village church, Germaine was obliged to pass the Courbet, a stream she generally crossed without difficulty in ordinary weather; but after heavy rains, it was too wide and deep to be passed on foot. One morning, as she was going to church, according to her custom, some peasants who saw her afar off stopped at a distance, and asked one another in a tone of mockery how she would pass the stream, now so swollen by the rain that the most vigorous man could hardly have stemmed the torrent. Dreaming of no obstacle, and perhaps not seeing any, Germaine approached as if none existed. ... O wonder of divine power and goodness! As of old the waters of the Red Sea opened for the passage of the children of Israel, so those of the Courbet divided before the humble daughter of Lawrence Cousin, and she passed through without wetting even the edge of her garments. At the sight of this miracle, afterward often repeated, the peasants looked at one another with fear; and from that time the boldest began to respect the simple maiden whom they had hitherto scoffed at.

After having thus glorified the faith of Germaine by dissipating the material obstacles to the performance of her duty, God wished also to glorify her charity to the poor.

If any one could believe himself exempted from the obligation of charity and alms-giving, it was certainly our shepherdess. She had no superfluities; she lacked even the necessaries of life. What was there, then, to retrench, in her life of extreme privation and severe penance? How economize the _reward_ of her labor, which consisted only of a little bread and water? But charity is ingenious; and, seeing only our suffering Lord in the person of the poor, Germaine often deprived herself of a part of the bread which was allowed for her nourishment, doubly glad to give it to the hungry, and increase the treasure of her privations. Such are the deeds of the saints which will one day reproach us with terrible power! What will the rich man say when he beholds, rising up to confront his hardness of heart, the alms of Lazarus!

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The pious liberality of Germaine made her an object of suspicion to her step-mother, who, not divining her resources, accused her of stealing bread from the house. One day she learned that Germaine, who had just gone with the flock, carried in her apron some pieces of bread. Furious, and armed with a cudgel, she immediately ran after her. Some of the other inhabitants of Pibrac happened to be on their way at this very moment to the house of Lawrence Cousin. Seeing this woman almost beside herself with passion, they divined her intentions, and hastened to protect Germaine from the ill treatment with which she was menaced. Overtaking the step-mother, they learned the cause of her anger. Finding Germaine, she seized her apron, and instead of bread, it was filled with bouquets of roses, although it was a season when those flowers were not in bloom. Thus God confounded the malice of her implacable enemy by renewing a miracle, likewise wrought in favor of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and other saints.

From this time, Germaine was regarded as a saint. Lawrence Cousin, conceiving more tender sentiments toward this pious child whom he had so little known, forbade his wife's annoying her any more, and wished to give her a place in his house with the other children. But Germaine, accustomed to suffering and loving privation, besought him to leave her in the obscure place which her step-mother had assigned her.

It was now that Germaine attained and proved the perfection of her humility. We must not consider it a trifling honor to have been esteemed at Pibrac; nor a small reward to have had a place at the fireside of Lawrence Cousin. Human nature is the same everywhere. There is no theatre too small for ambition. We know there are as many cabals for the first place in a village as for the chief place in an empire.

Perhaps it may not be entirely useless to speak of the exterior of the blessed Germaine. The manners and customs of the remote provinces of France retain so much of primitive simplicity, they change so little year after year, and the people in these localities have such a marked appearance, that we may form a reasonable idea of her person and habits.

She is represented in paintings and engravings as we see scores of shepherdesses in the south of France at this day--seated on a hillock in the fields, and surrounded by her flock. With a spindle in her hand, and under her arm the distaff laden with flax, she is spinning, after the primitive manner of that country. She is rather below the medium size, and is slight in form. She has the long head of the Toulousains, and their dark, Spanish complexion and eyes. The face, half hidden by the picturesque scarlet capuchon, is expressive of silence, _interior_ silence; and forcibly speaks of the deep, deep calm within. A pleasing sadness, or rather a subdued joy, veils her face. There is an introspective look about the eyes which shows that her spirit has passed the bounds of sense, and is concentrated in one mysterious thought--some dream of a heavenly world. Sitting alone, away from her kind, her thoughts were pure and holy and bright, like the fragrant flowers of her own green meadows. She must have seemed to the other peasants like some phantom of unearthly love, as she sat there enveloped in a divine ethereal atmosphere. {758} In the distance rise the towers of the church, and the antique château of the Lords of Pibrac, and between murmurs the Courbet. Over all, is the sunlight of her own bright clime.

Perhaps the miracle of the roses is the most popular representation of Saint Germaine, as something not quite so unearthly. There is no mystery about the look of the fierce step-mother, as with one hand she raises the cudgel over the head of the resigned-looking girl, and with the other grasps the apron from which tumble out the bright and fragrant flowers. The face of Germaine is somewhat sad, and her eyes are cast down in fear to the earth. Tremulous and mute she stands before her step-mother, for she is humble and sore afraid. There is a reflective charm about her of which she is wholly unconscious, for it emanates from that spiritual beauty visible only to the intelligences and bright ardors around the throne.

Saint Germaine died soon after the miracle of the roses. Almighty God, having sanctified her by humiliations and sufferings, withdrew her from this world when men, becoming more just, began to render her the honor her virtue merited. She terminated her obscure and hidden life by a similar death, but according to appearance this terrible moment, which confounds human arrogance, gave her no terror or pain.

One morning, Lawrence Cousin, not seeing her come out as usual, went to call her where she slept--under the stairs. She made no reply. He entered and found her upon her bed of vine-branches. She had fallen asleep while at prayer. God had called her to enjoy the reward of eternal life. She had ceased to suffer.

It was about the commencement of the summer of the year 1601 that Saint Germaine entered into the joy of her Lord. She was twenty-two years of age.

That same night two pious men were overtaken near Pibrac by the darkness of night, and obliged to await the return of day in a neighboring forest. All at once, in the middle of the night, the woods were flooded with a light more brilliant than the dawn, and a company of virgins, clothed in white garments and surrounded by a dazzling light, floated by on the darkness toward the house of Lawrence Cousin. Soon after they returned, but there was another in their midst--more radiant still--who had on her head a chaplet of fresh flowers. ...

People came in crowds to her funeral, wishing to honor her whom they had too long despised, whom too late they had known. This was the first testimony of public veneration. Her body was buried in the church in front of the pulpit. Forty-three years after, it was found entire and preserved from corruption. It had been embalmed with her virginal purity. In her hands were a taper and a garland of pinks and heads of grain. The flowers had scarcely faded. The grain was fresh as at the time of harvest.

The holy body was removed and finally placed in the sacristy, where people of all ranks, incited by the wonders wrought at her tomb, came to offer their homage.

In 1843, more than four hundred legally attested miracles had been wrought at her shrine, and so excited the faith of the people in her power before God, that the Archbishop of Toulouse, and nearly all the other prelates of France, petitioned the Holy See for her beatification. It had been desired before the French Revolution, but it was not attempted till the time of Gregory XVI.

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When the commissioners went to examine the condition of the remains of the venerable Germaine, a most extraordinary scene took place. The inhabitants of Pibrac, thinking that the beatification of their shepherdess might terminate in the loss of their holy treasure, came in a body to the door of the church. They received the commissioners with threats and even with stones, so it was only with difficulty an entrance could be effected into the church. The furious multitude followed, and the examination was made in the midst of a frightful tumult. "No! no!" was heard on all sides. "No beatification. St. Germaine cures us when we are sick; that is enough. She belongs to us. We wish to keep her."

The brief for the beatification of Germaine Cousin was issued by the order of his holiness Pius IX., on the 1st of July, 1853.

The Triduo which was held at Pibrac, in 1854, in honor of this event, manifested the joy and the faith of the people. Altars, lighted up by the bright sun of France, were erected in the fields once trod by the feet of Germaine, so that hundreds of Masses could be offered at once. The whole country around poured in. Toulouse seemed vacated. There were eighty thousand persons assembled around that shrine. On the first day there were fourteen thousand communicants. In the procession were eighteen hundred young ladies robed in white. They all held white lilies in one hand, and wax tapers in the other, and as they entered the church and passed the altar, they deposited their tapers on one side and their lilies on the other. Conspicuous in the procession were those who had been healed by the intervention of the holy shepherdess. Lights were in their hands, and they made an offering of gratitude at the altar.

The house in which the blessed Germaine had lived was endangered during those days of religious triumph. It was in a tolerable state of preservation, but every one seemed anxious to secure a portion of the walls that once sheltered her, and especially of the spot sanctified by the angel of death.

A resident in the south of France at the time of the beatification of Saint Germaine, as she was even then, with one accord, called in that country, I was forcibly impressed with the enthusiastic veneration and confidence with which she was regarded by all classes. Every week I heard of some new miracle at her tomb; so they soon ceased to excite wonder, and seemed to belong to the established order of events. There was scarcely an individual in my circle of acquaintance who had not been, at least once, to prostrate himself at her shrine, and there was a lively faith in her protection, which proved to me how strongly the spirit of the middle ages still animates the hearts of the faithful.

So popular a devotion was a novelty to me--a "_native American_"--but I could not long remain insensible to its influence. One misty October day found me likewise an humble pilgrim at the shrine of the holy shepherdess of Pibrac.

The very air of that antique chapel inspires devotion. A supernatural influence seemed to impregnate everything around me. I saw, too, that I was not the only one who felt this subtle influence penetrating to the very heart; for the faces of all the pilgrims, priests, religious, and laymen of every rank who are constantly arriving and departing, were indicative of a holy awe. Though I got there at a late hour, and it was raining, Masses were still being celebrated, and the church was full. It was no festival. It was so every day. Masses were said at every altar from early dawn till the latest canonical hour. {760} Prostrate groups from different parishes were always there, clustered in the nave, or gathered about the shrine; and here and there were lone pilgrims who, like me, had been brought from the ends of the earth. And around and over all were constellations of brightly burning tapers, emblematic of the prayer of faith, left there by the pilgrim as loth he slowly left the hallowed sanctuary.

The tomb of Saint Germaine is in a side chapel, protected by a grate. Her relics are covered with gold and silver and precious stones, _ex votes_, which gleam in the light of the votive candles around. Involuntarily there comes to the heart in this fitting place, and to the lips, the strain, _Exaltavit humiles!_

"Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick!" is the cry of every weary, sin-laden heart; above all here, where thou dost love to display thy goodness and thy power. The sacred heart of thy humanity, ever touched with feeling for our infirmities, is not hardened. It is still as tender and as compassionate as when thou didst weep over the grave at Bethany, and thy hand is as powerful. I believe that thou, who art honored in thy saints, dost heal here both soul and body of those who approach thee with faith and with love, especially with _love_. "Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much," was uttered centuries ago, but has been repeated times without number since, over penitent, loving souls. O power of love over the divine heart! It is only the cold, the feeble in faith, who have no power to draw from this inexhaustible well of compassion.

If every Catholic heart were, as it should be, a _chapelle ardente_, all aflame with the love of God, how soon would the spiritual infirmities of entire humanity be healed, and the wounds of Christ's bleeding body be bound up!

Reader! let the aspiration of divine love, indulgenced by our sovereign pontiff on the 7th of May, 1854, in honor of the beatification of Germaine Cousin, be often on our lips and in our hearts: "Jesu, Deus MEUS, AMO TE SUPER OMNIA!" Jesus, my God, I love thee above all things!

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From The Latin Of Prudentius.

An Elegy.

Aurelics Prudentius Clemens, the glory of the early Christian poets, was born in Spain in the year 348. He studied eloquence in his youth under a celebrated master. He was twice made governor of provinces and cities, raised to the highest rank, and placed at the court by the Emperor Theodosius I., next in dignity to his own person.

But in the vigor of his age, he quitted worldly honors and employments, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and thence returning to Spain, led a secluded life, consecrating his leisure to the composition of sacred poems. He is esteemed the most learned of the Christian poets, and, for the sweetness and elegance of his verses, has been compared to Horace.

Venient citò saecula, quum jam Socius calor ossa revisat, Animataque sanguine vivo Habitacula pristina gestet.

Quae pigra cadavera pridem Tumulis putrefacta jacebant, Volucres rapientur in auras, Animas comitata priores.

Quid turba superstes inepta Plangens ululamina miscet? Cur tam bene condita jura, Luctu dolor arguit amens?

Jam moesta quiesce querela, Lacrymas suspendite matres, Nullus sua pignora plangat: Mors haec reparatio vitae est.

Sic semina sicca virescunt Jam mortua, jamque sepulta, Quae reddita cespite ab imo Veteres meditantur aristas.

Nunc suscipe, terra, fovendum, Gremioque hunc concipe molli; Hominis tibi membra sequestro, Generosa et fragmina credo.

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Animae fuit haec domus olim Factoris ab ore create; Fervens habitavit in istis Sapientia, principe Christo.

Tu depositum tege corpus; Non immemor ille requiret Sua munera fictor et auctor, Propriique aenigmata vultûs.

Veniant modò tempora justa, Quum spem Deus impleat omnem; Reddas patefacta necesse est, Qualem tibi trado figuram.

Non si cariosa vetustas Dissolverit ossa favillis, Fueritque cinisculus arens, Minimi mensura pugilli;

Nee si vaga flamina, et aurae Vacuum per inane volantes Tulerint cum pulvere nervos, Hominem periisse licebit.

Translation.

The hour is speeding on amain When back into its olden form, Once more with ruddy life-blood warm, The spirit shall return again.

The freed soul soars aloft through space: So, dust with dust, aloft through air, This heavy clay swift gales shall bear From its sepulchral resting-place..

Why doth the crowd surviving fill The air with a lamenting vain? Why with such idle griefs arraign The justice of the Eternal will?

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Oh! end these pangs with murmurs rife, O mothers! cease your tears, your woe; Weep not for your dead children so, Death the renewal is of life.

The dead, dry seed lies hid from view, To burst forth to new glorious bloom; The former beauty to resume, The ancient harvest to renew.

O earth! in thy soft bosom keep, And quicken with new warmth this clay, This sacred frame to rest we lay. It smiles in thy embrace to sleep.

'Twas once the immortal spirit's cell. That breath breathed from the lips divine; Here was the living wisdom's shrine, Here deigned the Christ supreme to dwell.

Guard it beneath thy faithful sod, For He, one day, will re-demand From thee this labor of his hand. This breathing likeness of its God.

Oh! for the appointed hour to rend The grave! the hope God gives is sure: Safe, beauteous, through these gates obscure What now descendeth shall ascend.

Yes, though this frame divinely planned Be wasted by decay and rust, And naught left save a little dust. The filling of the smallest hand:

Though these strong sinews ashes be On wandering breezes wafted wide, Inviolate ever shall abide The mortal's immortality.

C. E. B.

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Translated From Der Katholik.

The Ancient Irish Church.

The history of the ancient Irish church, for many reasons, claims our respectful attention. In the time of the migration of the European races, this church had a great mission to accomplish among the Germanic tribes. When the Goths had overrun Spain, the Franks and Burgundians conquered Gaul, the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain, the Vandals spoiled Africa, and the Lombards gained strongholds in Italy; when the Alemanni and Sueves had penetrated into the valleys and claimed the mountains of ancient Helvetia; who was it in those stormy times that elevated the moral condition of those peoples, drew them out of the darkness of German paganism, or converted them from Arianism; regenerated them internally, civilized and incorporated them into the kingdom of God, after they had devastated the provinces of the Western empire, leaving ruins, deserts, confusion, and desolation behind them in their plundering march? It was the missionaries of the ancient Irish church that rescued Europe from the barbarism of that period. Evidently sent by God, those Irish missionaries founded new Christian colonies in different lands, hewed down the forests, civilized the deserts, founded churches, schools, and monasteries. As the Roman empire without the barbarians was nothing but an abyss of slavery and rottenness, so would the barbarians have been a wild chaos without the monks. The monks and barbarians combined produced a new world which we call Christendom.

Germany also owes much to the missionaries of the ancient Irish church. In the olden time Ireland was called the "island of saints and sages;" as her people in our days receive from us the honorable title of "martyr-nation of the west," for their inflexible fidelity to their faith during three centuries of shameless and brutal persecution. "No one but God in heaven knows the number of the saints whose dust is mingled with Irish soil," wrote one of the oldest Irish writers, the biographer of St. Ailbe of Emly. We count, not by hundreds, but by thousands, the holy Irish bishops, abbots, priests, monks, and virgins. Even in the days of St. Patrick, and still more after his successful apostolate, Ireland was not only a great training-school for foreign missionaries, but a second Thebais, in which the exercises of the spiritual life were thoroughly practised, and where students could devote themselves in solitude to the study of philosophy and holy writ under the ablest professors. Pious men went from Britain, from the European continent, from France, and even from Rome, to the classic and holy "island of saints," to learn the doctrines of Christian perfection, literature, and theology, in the renowned monasteries of the land of Columba and Colombanus.

Even to this day Ireland is specially favored by God. There are no snakes in it or other venomous reptiles. The very dangerous portion of the animal kingdom is entirely excluded from its sacred ground; and all attempts to naturalize poisonous creatures there have been unsuccessful. The old Irish rhyme reads:

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"St. Patrick was a holy man, He was a saint so clever, He gave the snakes and toads his ban, And drove them out for ever."

Throughout Ireland there are great fields of wheat and grain of every description, and many lakes. The climate is mild, and snow so rare that cattle can graze in the fields all the year round. Rain showers are frequent, and give such fertility and verdure to the soil as no other land in Europe possesses, so that the island is known as "Green Erin," or the "Emerald isle." The plants, flowers, and trees of Ireland, in their shape, color, and material, remind one somewhat of Normandy in France, or of Asturia in northern Spain.

The _History of the Ancient Irish Church_ has been just presented to the public by an author who is in a better condition than most of his contemporaries to write such a work, which charms us more and more the more frequently we read it. We speak of the recent work of the Bishop of St. Gall, Dr. Charles John Greith, in which we recognize one of the greatest efforts of German historical literature. We cannot, therefore, refrain from imparting to our readers an epitome of the contents of this remarkable and highly interesting production. The right reverend author considers his work of four hundred and sixty-two pages as an "Introduction to the history of the Bishopric of St. Gall." He published the book on the commemoration and centenary of the consecration of the cathedral of St. Gall, August 17th and 18th, 1867, and dedicated his literary effort to the chapter and the clergy of his diocese. From early youth the distinguished author has been familiar with the legends and history of St. Gall, and studied them with love and veneration. Love for that great Irish missionary saint, whose worthy successor Dr. Greith is, inspired the work whose continuation we desire most earnestly. "St. Gall has left behind him a world-wide reputation as the apostle of the Swiss Alps. Centuries have not diminished his fame, which the gratitude of Christians sanctions."

Veneration for St. Gall has been spread far beyond the boundaries of Switzerland; from the foot of the Alps to Upper Burgundy and Alsace, even to the limits of the Vosges; then into Brisgau and the Black Forest, to the Suabian Alps, and thence into Nibelgau, and Algau. In all these regions, the monks of St. Gall imparted the blessings of religion and education. Full of admiration for the Christian zeal of St. Gall and his disciples, our author recalls the words spoken by Ermenreich of Reichenau, to Abbot Grimald of St. Gall, over a thousand years ago: "How could we ever forget the island of Ireland, from which the rays of Christian light and the sun of Christian faith have shone upon us!" Taking this expression for his motto, the right reverend writer gives us his magnificent _History of the Ancient Irish Church and its Connection with Rome, Gaul, and Germany_.

Divided into six books, the work describes in the two first the migrations of the barbarians and the fall of the Roman empire; then the heresies which swarmed in the church of the period; then the school of the island of Lerins, where St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, was instructed. The four last books are consecrated to St. Patrick and his apostleship in Ireland; to St. Columba, the apostle of Scotland; to St. Colombanus and his deeds in France, Flanders, and the north of Italy; and to St. Gall, the apostle of Germany. The sixth and last book treats of Christianity and its customs in the Irish church.

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The illustrious author made use of manuscripts as well as printed works in the compilations of his history. Many manuscripts were at his disposal in St. Gall itself. The original sources of ancient Irish history consist of different materials; genealogies which trace the origin of kings or saints and their relatives; annals which give the year of the death of saints, or of other distinguished characters; church calendars which give the day of the month on which the death of a saint occurred; and finally, the lives of the saints themselves. These biographies are copiously used. We cannot restrain our desire to quote what the author thinks of those sources of history. "Erudition is not sufficient for us to judge the biographies of the ancient saints; we must have sympathy with them in their zealous labor; and a spiritual relationship in their faith. Every age must be judged according to the ideas, and customs which prevail in it; and every saint according to the circumstances in which he lives." The poetic as well as the historical element, the legendary as well as the authentic, must be combined in forming a correct estimate of a saint's character.

Even in the early part of the middle ages, every cathedral church, large monastery, or distinguished hermitage, possessed its hagiographers, who wrote the lives of the saints of the place, either from authentic written documents, traditions, or from knowledge acquired as eye-witnesses. Since John Moschus published his collection of legends, extraordinary diligence in the criticism and sifting of the ancient biographies of the saints has been manifested in the church. The collection and critical works of the Bollandists, of Lurius, Mabillon, d'Achery, and others, keep their reputation undiminished to the present day. These writers display such a thoroughness in their researches, that the modern rationalists have been unable to find a flaw of any consequence in their criticism. The truthful historian must describe those apostles of religion and civilization among the Germans, such as they were, children of their century, representatives of its ideas, views, and manners. Following this method, he will not cast doubt on the purity of their motives, or try to lessen their merit in drawing entire nations of barbarians out of the darkness of paganism and immorality into the light of Christianity and virtue. The blind party spirit of our times recognizes no justice, and modern paganism is only satisfied when it can throw everything that is noble and holy out of history. The modern pagans tear with scorn the Holy Scriptures into shreds before our eyes, and subject to a lawless criticism the ablest records of ecclesiastical history, while they try to overturn every monument that might shelter the weary pilgrims of earth on their road to heaven.

II.

The most trustworthy documents regarding the first traces of Christianity in Ireland, inform us that up to the time of Pope Celestine I., (a.d. 422-432,) that country had not been converted. Up to the year of our Lord 432, no Christian missionary had trodden the soil of the island, or caused the light of faith to shine over the hills and through the valleys of green Erin. Palladius and Patrick were the first apostles, (A.D. 430.) It is true, several High-Church English writers have endeavored to prove the establishment of an Irish church prior to St. Patrick; but this theory is unsupported by any authentic documents. {767} Besides, the attempt of those writers was prompted by the partisan desire of proving an original separation in belief between Ireland and Rome. Nevertheless, it is not improbable that many non-commissioned Christians may have gone from Britain and Gaul into Ireland before the year 430, and formed small communities, or lived scattered among the heathens. "On the wings of every day commerce, the flower-seeds of Christian faith must have been borne to Erin from Britain and Gaul; as from the earliest times direct business relations were kept up between Nantes, other harbors of Armoric Gaul, and Ireland. To the north-west of Gaul also came the Irish rovers, under the guidance of some distinguished chieftain, in quest of plunder, and frequently carried off Christians into captivity. In this way St. Patrick, when a youth of sixteen years of age, was taken from the coast of Armorica by the pirates of King Niall, and with many thousand others detained in bondage, as he informs us himself in his writings," (p. 86.)

Besides the fact that there was no Irish church prior to St. Patrick, though there may have been individual Christians in the country, we must prove that the Christianity imported into Ireland was Roman, and that her apostles received their mission from the pope. Pope Celestine, in the year 431, sent Palladius, deacon or arch-deacon of the Roman church, as the first missionary. This apostolic man, who had long been casting his eyes toward Britain and the other western islands of Europe, had a double and very important task to execute in Ireland, namely, to strengthen the dispersed Catholics in the faith, and to evangelize the heathens. He landed in Hay-Garrchon, penetrated into the interior of the country, baptized many, built three churches in the province of Leinster; but, taken altogether, his mission was unsuccessful, and he met with much opposition. "But when Palladius understood that he could not do much good in Ireland, he wanted to return to Rome, and died on the voyage, in the territory of the Picts. Others say that he received the crown of martyrdom in Ireland."

What Palladius begun--but which God's providence willed to remain incomplete--Patrick accomplished in sixty years of apostolic labor. Him God chose as the instrument, and fitted him for this holy work. That he received his commission from Rome from the hands of Pope Celestine, A.D. 432, cannot be doubted; for the fact is confirmed by a crowd of witnesses, both Roman and Irish. We must, therefore, consider and reverence Patrick as the apostle of the Irish people.

All the early Irish annalists unanimously agree that his mission began in the year 432, and that he died in 493--an apostleship of sixty years! How great and glorious for him and for his people!

Patrick was born A.D. 387, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, in modern Picardy, and was of noble Roman origin. In his sixteenth year, in a marauding expedition of an Irish clan called Niall, he was carried prisoner to Armoric Gaul; thence to Ireland, and there sold to a pagan officer named Milcho, whose swine he herded for six years. After this, he escaped, and returned to his native land. Having fully determined to consecrate himself to the service of God, he went to Marmontiers, the monastery of St. Martin of Tours, to study there the principles of Christian science and perfection. {768} A few years after, he visited the happy island of Lerins, near Marseilles, at that time one of the most famous schools in Christendom, and met there, as fellow-students, the holy monks Honoratus, Hilary, Eucherius, Lupus, and others. An interior voice there told him that he should return to Ireland to preach the Gospel in that country; and he therefore travelled from Lerins to Rome, in order to represent to the holy see the darkness of heathenism which brooded over Ireland. But, as the apostolic see was not then in a condition to provide for the Irish mission, Patrick went back to Gaul, and remained with St. Germain of Auxerre, under whose guidance he made further progress in holiness and learning. Such was his life up to the year 429.

In this year he accompanied Bishop Germanus and Lupus to Britain, who were sent by the pope to root out Pelagianism in that country. Thus was Patrick prepared for his apostleship.

It was then he heard of the mission of Palladius, and its failure. (A.D. 431.) The holy Bishop Germanus cast his eyes on Patrick, who knew the Irish language, people, and country from personal observations. Did he not seem peculiarly fitted--sent, in fact, from heaven, to undertake the conversion of the Irish nation?

Patrick, therefore, with the priest Legetius as his companion, went to Rome, and received from Pope Celestine his blessing and the necessary authority to undertake the task of converting Ireland. It is hard to tell now whether he was consecrated bishop by Celestine before his departure, or by Bishop Amatorex, of Eboria, a city in north-western Gaul. He reached Ireland in the first year of Celestine III. A life of continual triumphs began for him. He was repulsed from the coast of Dublin: no matter; he sailed for Ulster, and landed at Strangford. He converts the chieftain Dicho and his whole house, and celebrates his first Mass in Ireland in a neighboring barn. At the royal city of Tara, he meets King Leoghaire, with all his clan; defends and explains Christianity in their presence, and gains a victory over the Druids. Dublach, a Druid and poet, is converted, and sings, for the future, only hymns in the honor of the true God. The daughters of the king, Ethana and Fethlimia, also bow to the yoke of the Gospel, and consecrate their virginity to God, and many other holy women follow their example. Thus, a happy beginning was made in the island.

Soon the converts number thousands. Everything succeeds; the conversion of the Irish people was effected without persecution or martyrs. Patrick frequented the national assemblies, and used the occasion to preach to the multitudes. He destroyed idolatry and idolatrous practices throughout the whole land, and built churches to the living God on places that had hitherto been dedicated to the worship of idols. Wherever he went, he baptized crowds of men, provided the new Christian communities with churches, made the most virtuous of his disciples priests and bishops, and appointed them to govern the faithful, and extend the reign of the Gospel.

Thus did he labor year after year, going about preaching, baptizing, and blessing, in Leinster, Ulster, Munster, and Connaught; and everywhere his astonishing activity and self sacrifice effected wonderful results. Everywhere the people were ready and docile for the reception of Christianity. Divine Providence wonderfully protected him from all danger.

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But when the whole island was converted to Christ, congregations formed, and churches erected in all parts of the country, St. Patrick thought of building a metropolitan cathedral for the primate of Ireland. He chose for this purpose the heights of Admarcha, or Armagh, near which stood the old royal fortress of Emania. After the building of his cathedral and the conversion of the Irish, St. Patrick passed the remaining years of his life partly at Armagh, partly at his favorite spot at Sabhul, where he began his missionary career. He assembled a few synods, wrote his _Confession_, as it is called, on the approach of death, and was attacked by his last illness at Sabhul. When he felt his end approaching, he collected his remaining strength, and endeavored to go to Armagh, which he had chosen as the place of his burial; but, warned by a voice from heaven, he returned to Sabhul, and died there eight days after, on the 17th of March, 493.

III.

Let us now glance at the disciples and followers of this great man. They followed up his work with such zeal and indefatigable activity that, at the end of the sixth century, Christianity was spread over all Ireland. We distinguish, in the Irish church, "Fathers of the First Order," and "Fathers of the Second Order." The holy men from Rome, Italy, Gaul, and especially from Wales or Cambria, who followed St. Patrick as their leader, and aided him in his labors, are the "Fathers of the First Order." Patrick brought with him from Rome, in the year 432, nine assistants; in the year 439, Secundinus, Auxilius, and Iserninus, were sent to him from Rome. The two former of these, together with Benignus, were present as bishops at the first synod of Armagh, in the year 456. Bishop Trianius, a Roman, another disciple of St. Patrick, imitated so exactly the life of the great apostle, that his food was nothing but the milk of one cow, which he took care of himself. The first mitred abbot of Sabhul was Dunnius; and the first bishop of Antrim was Leoman, Patrick's nephew. The oldest Irish bishops appointed by Patrick, were Patrick of Armagh, Fiech of Sletty, Mochua of Aendrun, Carbreus of Cubratham, and Maccarthen, of Aurghialla. Seven nephews of St. Patrick, who followed him from Cambria, are invoked in the Irish litanies as bishops. They are the sons of Tigriada, Brochad, Brochan, Mogenoch, Luman; and the sons of Darercha, Mel, Rioch, and Muna. When the heathen Anglo-Saxons conquered Britain in the year 450, and sought to destroy the old British church, many learned and pious men fled to Ireland, and joined Patrick. Thirty of them were made bishops, and devoted themselves to the special task of converting the neighboring islands. The most renowned of these Welsh missionaries are Carantoc, Mochta of Lugmagh, and Modonnoc, who introduced the rearing of bees into Ireland, where they had never been seen before. Three companions of St. Patrick--Essa, Bitmus, and Tesach--were expert bell-founders, and makers of church-vessels. The fact that Patrick was sent from Rome, that his first assistants were Romans, and that his co-laborers from Gaul and Britain were sons of the Roman church, completely destroys the Anglican hypothesis of an Irish church independent of Rome. {770} Even Albeus, who, on account of his services, was called the second Patrick, Declau, and Ihac, the apostles of the Mumons; Enna, or Enda, the founder of the great monastery of Aran; Condland, Bishop of Kildare, all disciples of St. Patrick, were educated and consecrated bishops in Rome. There also were Lugach, Colman, Meldan, Lugaidh, Cassan, and Ciaran, consecrated and afterward numbered among the earliest bishops and fathers of the Irish church.

From the time of St. Patrick, continual communication was kept up between Rome and Ireland by countless pilgrims, as many documents attest, (Greith, p. 142-156.) Patrick left his love and reverence for the Apostolic See of Peter as a precious legacy to his immediate disciples; and they, in turn, to their successors up to the present day. The frequent pilgrimages of Irish bishops, abbots, and monks, are facts so well proven, that the Anglican theory of a separate Irish church is shown to be a pure invention, no longer contended for as truth by any respectable historian.

Let us now pass to the fathers of the second order in the Irish church, and their illustrious foundations. The founders of those numerous Irish monasteries, which counted their inmates by hundreds and thousands, those men who were mostly brought up by the immediate successors of St. Patrick, belong to the "Second Order of Irish Fathers." Twelve of them, instructed by the renowned Abbot Finnian, at Clonard, are called the twelve apostles of Ireland. At their head stands Columba, the apostle of the Picts, shining among them like the sun among the stars. Their names are, Columba, of Iona, Corngall, of Bangor, Cormac, of Deormagh, Cainech, of Achedbo, Ciaran, of Clonmacnoise, Mobhi, of Clareinech, Brendan, of Clonfert, Brendan, of Birr, Fintan, Columba, of Tirgelass, Molua Fillan and Molasch, of Damhs-Inis. These holy men erected all over Ireland and in the adjacent isles churches and convents, which became centres of art, learning, and sanctity. The monastery of Clonard, founded in Meath by Abbot Finnian, contained during his lifetime three thousand monks. At Clonmacnoise, a monastery founded by St. Ciaran, in the middle of Ireland, agriculture was made a special study; and Monastereven on the Barrow, Monasterboyce in the valley of the Boyne, Dearmach, etc., were renowned institutions. These first and oldest Irish monasteries were not large, regularly-built houses, but composed of numbers of separate cells or huts, made of wicker-work, stalks, and rushes. The church or oratory stood in the midst of the huts, and was made of the same material. It was at a later period that the Roman architecture was introduced into Ireland; and then stone edifices took the place of the primitive structures. Special mention is always made in the Irish annals of the erection of a stone church, for the people preferred wooden buildings, and their preference shows itself up to the twelfth century. The stone churches were looked upon as the fruit of foreign architecture, as St. Bernard informs us in his life of St. Malachy. The Roman church gradually introduced into Ireland the fine arts and a higher order of architecture, as she had done at an earlier date in Gaul and Britain. Choral singing became usual. The church hymns took the place of the Druidical rhapsodies; and the muses of Inisfail forgot to sing of heroes, and learned to tune their harps to sing the praise of Christ and his saints.

The Irish missionaries reclaimed barren lands and made them fertile, ameliorated the condition of agriculture, spread commerce, and discovered new islands in the sea. Many of the Irish saints, at the period of which we are writing, were great navigators.

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Dr. Greith paints in glowing colors the life of St. Columba and his labors in Ireland, the Hebrides, and Scotland, as well as the discipline and rules of the Abbey of Hy, which was founded by him. We cannot enter into details, but refer the reader to Dr. Greith's book. Columba was born on the 7th of December, 521. In the first half of his life, Ireland was the scene of his zeal; the second half was spent among the Scots and Picts. In Ireland he founded Durrow, Derry, and Kells. He went with twelve disciples to Caledonia in the year 563. Christianity among the Scots had degenerated; and the Picts were still pagans. The king of the Picts, Brudrius, gave him the island of Iona or Hy, where his works began which God crowned with wonderful success. He soon became the beacon light for all the faithful priests and laity of Ireland and Caledonia. He visited Ireland to counsel his noble relatives, settle their disputes, or oversee the churches and monasteries which he had established, and travelled among the Picts preaching the Gospel, founding monasteries, and erecting churches which should consider Iona as their mother. He built thirty-two churches, to most of which monasteries were attached, in Scotland; and eighteen among the Picts, in the space of thirty-three years, (563-597.) Even during his lifetime he was so celebrated that, from all sides, princes, nobles, bishops, priests, monks, and the faithful of all classes ran to him for counsel in their difficulties, consolation in their distress, and help in their necessities. Columba fought against the superstition of the Picts, the cunning of their magicians, and the wickedness of lawless men. Princes' sons, whose fathers had lost their lives and crowns in battle, went to Iona to lay their grievances before Columba, and to each one according to his need, the saint gave consolation and hope. The common people brought their children to him, to ask him to decide their vocation. It was not an unusual spectacle to see kings and nobles lay aside the insignia of their greatness at Iona, and break their swords before its altars. Columba's prayers were very powerful. His blessing controlled the elements and the forces of nature. He seemed to rule nature as a lord. He had also the gift of prophecy. He died June 9th, A.D. 597. His departure from life was made known to many holy men in different parts of Ireland and Scotland at the same time, who declared that "Columba, the pillar of so many churches, had gone to-night to the bosom of his Redeemer." The isle of Iona was illuminated by a heavenly light, emanating from the countless angels who came down to take up the happy soul of the saint to the bosom of his God.

The Irish monasteries increased wonderfully during the sixth century. Finnian's monastery at Clonard, as already mentioned, contained 3000 monks; and that of Bangor and Birr had the same number; St. Molaissi had 1500 monks around him; Colombanus and Fechin had each 300; Carthach, 867; Gobban, 1000; Maidoc, Manchan, Natalis, and Ruadhan, each 150; Revin and Molua were each the head of several thousand. There was no common rule for all those convents, like that which St. Benedict wrote for the religious of his order, (A.D. 529.) Each monastery had its own laws. Columba had made no special rule for Hy or for his other monasteries. St. Colombanus was the first who collected and methodized the customs and traditions of Irish monastic life.

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A thorough investigation of the most ancient custom of the Celtic church, proves that it was in communion with the church of Rome. The trivial differences between the two churches regarded neither dogma, nor morality, nor the essentials of the Liturgy, of the Mass, or the Blessed Sacrament. The supremacy of the pope was recognized by all the Irish; and the celibacy of the clergy observed as in the other Western churches. In the ceremonies of the Mass, it is true, there were certain usages and forms observed not Roman, as was the case also in the churches of Spain and Gaul. The rites of baptism in the Irish church were simpler than those of the Roman. The difference mainly consisted in the style of the tonsure and in the time of celebrating the Easter festival. The Irish and Britons did not keep the reckoning of the Abbot Dionysius the Little, as he is styled, regarding Easter, and tenaciously clung to the old Roman calculation. Every departure from it seemed to them contrary to the traditions of their fathers. It was only in the year 716, and after hard and bitter fighting, that perfect union between Rome and Ireland was effected in this particular.

The history of the Irish, as well as of the British church, is of the greatest importance for Germans who want to know the origin of Christianity in their own land. But we shall develop this point in a second article.

European Prison Discipline.

I. -- Newgate.

We take pleasure in offering to American readers the following record of a visit to Newgate, as exhibiting the enlightened humanity shown in the treatment of public criminals in London. The guide whom we have selected as the interpreter of Newgate's mysteries is an imaginary personage. He expresses the impressions, thoughts, and comments of several persons, not the convictions of a single individual.

This way, sir, please. Yes, the passages _do_ seem gloomy, coming in out of the sunny street, crowded with free men hurrying to and fro on business. Here we are in the kitchen; you see the good allowance of meat and potatoes the prisoners have for dinner four times a week; the other three days they have a good strong soup instead of meat; morning and night a mess of oatmeal, and with each meal half a pound of bread. Yes, they are well fed; better here, many of them, than they would be outside. Just look over your shoulder, sir. Through that low iron door behind you the condemned prisoners pass out into the square to be hanged. Why through the kitchen? Can't say, sir. It has always been so and that's all, I suppose. Do they take it quietly for the most part? Why--sometimes they give us a little trouble, but--yes, generally they bear it pretty well, poor fellows!

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More narrow passages, with grated rooms like aviaries on each side. These are the apartments where the prisoners receive their friends, separated from them by two gratings several feet apart. It will remind you of the picture in _Old Curiosity Shop_, where Mrs. Nubbles and Barbara's mother go to see Kit in prison. A prisoner can receive a visit once in three months, write one letter, and receive one; but they are seldom here so long. Newgate is only a house of detention before trial, except for those condemned to death--a mere jail. Here we are in one of the great oblong halls with tiers of cells opening on to galleries. Up this iron staircase in the middle of the hall and across this little bridge, and we stand outside a cell door. In the American prisons you have seen, you say that the cells open on a corridor, with a grated door, and sometimes a grated window. Not so, here. The door is solid, with merely a small hole for purposes of _surveillance_, and a trap below it through which food, etc., may be passed. If the prisoner wants anything, he rings a bell, the action of which is curious. Fix your eye on the bell-spring outside. I pull the bell inside and a tin flap flies back, showing the number of the cell. Thus the officer knows what bell has rung, and the prisoner, having no power over the flap when it has once sprung back, cannot avoid discovery if he has rung merely in order to give trouble. The cell is sufficiently large, you see, and is lighted from the court-yard through that arched window near the ceiling. A nice little room enough, with the bedding stowed away on one of those shelves in the corner. On the shelf below is the prisoner's bowl with the spoon lying on it. Everything must be in its place. If the spoon were on the shelf, it would be out of place; it must lie on the reversed bowl. Resting against the wall is his plate, and on the lowest shelf are his books. Oh! yes, you may examine them--the same in all the cells, Bible, Prayer-Book, hymns, and psalms. [Footnote 222] The other volume comes from our library, and is changed every day, if necessary> At this little turn-up shelf the prisoner takes his meals, or reads by the small shade-lamp above it. In the corner is a nice copper basin with plenty of water. There are two apertures, one to admit warm air, the other for ventilation; every comfort provided for him, you see. Yes, we keep the prisoners entirely apart from each other, never two together, unless some one comes here for drunkenness, and has delirium tremens, and then we put two others with him for safety's sake. Now we'll go up to the next corridor; in the one below are the doctors' cells, where fresh prisoners are kept until they have passed through a sanitary examination.

[Footnote 222: Prisoners who do not belong to the Established Church can be visited by a priest or by a dissenting minister.]

Step into this cell, occupied, as you see, by a mere boy. There's his pile of oakum on the floor. Go on with your dinner, my man; no need to stop for us. As we go up higher, more light comes in from the courtyard; the upper cells are reserved for prisoners who are likely to be here some time. The next cell occupied too, you see, though we've not many prisoners here now, the trials being just over. Yes, sir, this man is trying to educate himself a little; has a dictionary on the shelf beside the library-book--a volume of travels this time. Now that we are in the corridor again, let me tell you that this same shock-headed young man is condemned to ten years of penal servitude and twenty lashes, for highway robbery with violence. The lashes are to be received before he leaves Newgate, but more on that subject presently.

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Here we are in the old part of Newgate. In your reading, no doubt you've come across the name of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry. It was in this same long, dark room that she used to assemble the prisoners, and read and pray with them. No, I have no means of judging of the durability of her conversions. It is easy to talk of converting criminals; but perhaps her chief merit lay in setting the example in England of a friendly and trusting intercourse with these poor wretches. Yes, it is strange to see the whipping-block in this room, but indeed, sir, corporal punishment has become an absolute necessity. It is never used to force prison discipline, but is administered in execution of a sentence, imposed by a magistrate for wanton violence. It is a curious fact that these brutes, who go about garroting inoffensive travellers, breaking jaws and skulls with their brass knuckles or dusters, as they call them, are the veriest cowards on earth when physical pain comes to themselves. In this very room they will cry like children, and beg to be forgiven, I don't feel half the pity for them that I do for the poor creatures going to be hanged. [Footnote 223] This iron door survived the fire in the Gordon riots, you see. Come through here, if you please, sir. This is another of the large rooms in old Newgate, where prisoners were kept before the solitary system came into vogue. The change is a most fortunate one for all concerned, I'm confident.

[Footnote 223: We are not fully convinced of the wisdom of introducing the whipping-block once more into the honorable company of penal inflictions in England. One of the most satisfactory cases of reformation we have known among persons guilty of grave crimes, was that of a "garroter." It is our strong impression that corporal punishment would have degraded him beyond all human hope of redemption. At least, great care should be taken to keep the use of this instrument of torture within the bounds of absolute necessity. Imprisonment may soften the heart; perhaps many persons have died well on the scaffold, who would have died impenitent under other circumstances; but however great may have been the number of spirits crushed by flogging in prisons, we venture to doubt whether there is a single instance on record of its having produced or aided reformation.]

I've no question that many a crime was hatched here among the men herded together in these cells. You can see for yourself what kind of talk there would be among them. Perhaps some footman was sent here for stealing his master's purse. What a chance for an old hand to get a little useful information in a friendly way: "Your master was an easy, comfortable kind of a man, was he? Well, them well-to-do city-men mostly is easy-tempered. Not partickerlerly well-to-do, an't he? Old family he belongs to, eh? What lots o' plate some o' them poor noblemen do have! Wonder myself that they don't sell it and get the good out on it, 'stead of hiding it away at the banker's? Don't keep it at the bankers! Pity the poor cuss as cleans it, then! Go to Brighton or Bath, of course, when the season's over; I thought as much; it takes poor folks to travel," etc., etc. And then, the first step after getting out of Newgate would be to make love to the maid-servant when the family was out of town. Very devoted he'd be, until some evening he'd think it "such a pity there were no oranges in the house, or something else to cool your mouth with; there was such a nice, respectable place round the corner; wouldn't she just step round there and choose something for herself?" And then, while the the poor girl was gone, the accomplices, well instructed as to the whereabouts of the plate, would ransack the safe at their leisure. You may depend upon it, sir, it was a good thing for society when the present discipline was adopted.

{775}

The little court-yard we are crossing now is one of those where the prisoners take their exercise. Oh! yes, sir; they all have regular times for exercise, and in these yards within the building there is no possibility of their making their escape. I am going to show one of our cells for solitary confinement. Let me turn up the gas in this small room. You see this door which I open, and again an inner door, which I open too. Step in, sir. Now, turn so that your eye may catch the gaslight outside. Here is a bedstead; you can feel it, if you don't see it. In this cell, pitch-dark and cut off from the rest of the prison so completely that no shouts or screams would be heard, unruly prisoners are confined for any period between one hour and three days, with only bread and water for food. There is ventilation and warmth here, as in the other cells. The doctor comes each morning to see that mind and body are sound. Only by sentence of a magistrate can the confinement be prolonged beyond three days. Yes, sir, it is an awful place; and then, too, the men look upon it as sheer lost time. We have soldiers in here sometimes, and they say that they can make up for three days on bread and water in the guard-house, by spending their whole pay in eating and drinking when they come out; but here it's just loss of rations, and nothing else. You'll hardly ever catch an old thief in here. "Oh! don't stop my grub, whatever you do," he'll say, and so he takes care to behave well enough to keep out of "solitary." The prisoners who mind it least are little ragamuffins, accustomed to creep into any dark hole, to curl themselves up and go to sleep. They are never afraid of anything. Decent boys, in prison on suspicion of forgery or whatever, are dreadfully scared. But you'll be glad to get out into the daylight again, I am thinking, sir.

I'll show you our chapel now. In that screened gallery the women sit, where they can see everything without being seen. There is divine service here every morning, as well as on Sundays. No, sir; I've no authority to show you the female side of the prison, which is quite distinct from ours, and has female warders, and a committee of lady visitors. The system of female keepers works perfectly well; but it would have been impracticable before we adopted separate cells, because the talk among the prisoners was such as no decent woman should hear. A wicked woman is a thousand times worse than a bad man, and less intelligent, too. You see, sir, a woman falls because she is either pretty, or silly, or unprotected. Now, bad men and boys are often the most intelligent of their class, and are selected as tools for that very reason, by older rogues than themselves. It is one of the terrible features of the case, that the country loses valuable servants in these quick-witted outlaws.

Here we come out upon the sloping passage, leading to the criminal courts--Birdcage-walk, the old thieves call it. Over-head we get the light through the open iron-work, you see. Under the flags are buried all those who have been hanged, and the initial letter of the name is scratched on the wall above the grave. That iron door at the end leads to the court-rooms. Yes, indeed, sir, some of the prisoners one learns to like best are those awaiting execution here, educated men sometimes. Oh! yes; I know the names that all these letters stand for. Muller lies there. No, he was not much of a man, any way. Here's Courvoisier, who murdered Lord Russell; he was my lord's valet. {776} Those five letters stand for five pirates. This one was a coachman, who murdered a female in the city, and burned the remains in his stable. Here's a man who killed his wife. Why, yes, sir; there are a good many in here for wife-murder; aggravating, I suppose, at times. That was an Italian, who killed another female in the city. This man hung his own child in the cellar. Oh! no, he was not insane; jealous of his wife, or something of the sort, I believe. There are a good many more here, but their cases were not so well known. Another court-yard to be crossed, sir, and here we are in one of the condemned cells. A good deal larger it is than the common cells, you see, with a bedstead, a good-sized table, and a long bench. From the time of his condemnation, the poor fellow is never left alone, night or day; two officers take turn and turn about in staying with him. Oh! certainly, sir, they talk with him; not about his case, of course, but of any book they have been reading, or of things outside the prison, and so on. The idea is not to let his mind dwell much on what is before him, and so spare him all the suffering we can.

You are right, sir; it would be absolutely impossible to dispense with capital punishment in this country. Murder is common enough now, but I am confident it would be much more frequent if the fear of death were withdrawn. Your professional thief _never_ commits murder. All rogues have an especial line of business. A house-breaker is never guilty of highway robbery; a highway-man never picks pockets; and they none of them commit murder. Now, sir, there is a deal of talk about the horrors of a public execution, and the bad effect such a sight must have on the people. Well, sir, I am of a different opinion. The people who come to a hanging are the very scum of London. Some gentlemen there are, too, I know, by the looks of the windows opposite; but the crowd is chiefly made up of the mere scum and dregs of London. I think, sir, it is a lesson to them, and a lesson they need badly. Sometimes we say to the little ragamuffins who get in here, "Did you ever go to a hanging?" "Yes, sir." "And what did you think of it?" "Why, I wasn't in a very good place, sir; I couldn't see much." "Well, don't you know that if you go on as you're going now, you may come to commit murder one of these days, and be hanged yourself?" "Oh! no, sir! I mustn't commit murder." He has learned that much, if he's not learned anything else. [Footnote 224]

[Footnote 224: We present this argument simply as a statement of one side of an oft-mooted question, but we are far from being convinced of its validity.]

I believe that if capital punishment were abolished, a thief, instead of leaving his pal (as the vulgar term is for accomplice) in a mask, to watch the man and wife while he searches for plate, would kill them both. He would know that he could only be transported for life, and if he killed the officers placed in charge over him, the law could only repeat the same sentence. Yes, sir; you are right; capital punishment is sometimes too severe a penalty, in proportion to the crime it punishes. It falls, now and then, on a man who has not led a bad life in general, but who is possessed by one passion--jealousy, or revenge, or whatever. There should be a clearer distinction of circumstances in pronouncing sentence. A man who sets out to do a thing, with a distinct determination to take life if he can in no other way accomplish his purpose, commits murder. {777} A man devoured by passion, and acting under its influence, should be judged less severely. And yet, sir, since the penalty of death is less designed as a punishment of criminals than as a defence of the public, even this distinction is very hard to make. We can only hope that our children will judge the matter more wisely than we do.

This room, sir, inclosed in glass, is the apartment where a prisoner meets his solicitor. The door is closed upon client and counsel, and the officer in attendance cannot hear their talk, or learn what points are to be used in the defence.

Here we are in the room where the prisoner is prepared for execution. I'll get the key, and unlock the closet where our irons are kept. This is the old style, sir, very cumbrous, as you see. Here are the identical irons Jack Sheppard wore. They would be so much too large for me, that I could slip my foot out at once; but in those days they wore pads around the ankle, so that the ring fitted close. When you read of Jack's breaking loose from his irons, it sounds very grand; but all he did was to unwind the pad from his ankle, and draw his foot out. These are the irons we use in travelling with convicts; here are common handcuffs, as you see; and here is the sort of harness worn by prisoners about to be executed. It pinions the arms firmly, and, at the last moment, fastens the legs together. Why, no, sir; I can't say that educated men bear it any better than ignorant ones. I've seen educated men most awfully frightened. I think it was death they feared, sir, not shame. When they are ready, they pass through this passage, and out through the iron door I showed you in the kitchen, on to the square. Step into this cabinet a moment, sir. On those shelves are casts taken after death from those who have been executed. There is Muller, there is Courvoisier, there is Marchand. The young fellow with negro features was only nineteen. He murdered his fellow-servant. Yes, the one next him looks like a negro too; you are probably right, sir. The one with the well-formed, dimpled chin little thought how his pleasure-loving youth would end. Surprisingly life-like they all are. Yes, these are the men who lie under the flags in the Birdcage-walk. This way, sir, for your hat and cane. Good day, sir. Astonishingly fine weather for the season.

II. Saint Lazare.

The ancient convent of Saint Lazare, in Paris, once the home of St. Vincent de Paul, is now a prison for women taken from the lowest depths of Parisian life. Their name is legion; their sufferings from sickness and neglect before arrest are unutterable. France has no law for such as they beyond the will of the prefect of police. What alleviation, you ask, has been found for this corrosive social evil? A more effective one than disbelievers in French virtue would anticipate. All females who come under the notice of the police for sanitary reasons or criminal matters, are sent to Saint Lazare, where, instead of jailers, there are fifty-five Sisters of Charity. [Footnote 225]

[Footnote 225: Or, more strictly speaking, fifty-five Sisters of Marie Joseph, the sisterhood devoted to prison discipline in France.]

How many of the miserable creatures are converted by intercourse with these noble and refined women, God only knows. The day of judgment will reveal the difference between real and apparent success. But a woman who has been first the plaything and then the scorn of society, must think more tenderly of God in Saint Lazare, than in any ordinary prison or workhouse.

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Two objections which may be made to the system of treatment adopted at Saint Lazare, I will try to answer before enumerating the very details which would probably suggest them.

In the first place, it may be urged that the prisoners are made so comfortable that imprisonment becomes a reward rather than a punishment, a bribe rather than a threat. Secondly, it may be with truth asserted that the wicked poor receive better care in such an establishment, than society gives to the virtuous poor who have never seen the inside of a jail.

To the first objection I answer, that imprisonment is never easy for such women to bear, because the passions which bring them so low, love of excitement and vanity, find no food in a well-ordered prison; that the opposite system has been tested ever since the world was, and still the world overflows with impenitent sinners; that at least half the prisoners of Saint Lazare are wicked for want of precisely what they find there--judicious training; a decent dwelling-place, good example; and, last and best reason of all, that this system is the one most in accordance with the teaching and example of Christ.

And my answer to the second objection is this. Let us seek out the honest poor, provide them with decent lodging-houses at low prices, with practical education, useful and entertaining reading, innocent amusement, and, above all, with religious and moral instruction; but do not let us relax our efforts to reform sinners merely because we have shamefully neglected our duties toward saints. We may say truly that the respectable poor are hard to find, because their very virtues conceal them from the public eye. We have no such excuse where sinners are concerned; for they are festering in every jail, penitentiary, and almshouse in every city throughout the world. Justice, not charity, demands that society should provide decent asylums where its victims may hide their wretchedness.

But let us examine the discipline of Saint Lazare in detail, that the reader may judge for himself whether these objections have been satisfactorily disposed of.

The inmates are divided into three classes: 1st. Women who have been tried for crimes and condemned; 2d. _Filles publiques_, consigned to St. Lazare by the police for sanitary or other reasons; 3d. Young girls and children sent thither by their parents (_correction paternelle_) for safe keeping, or brought there by the police as vagrants.

The uniform is neat and inconspicuous, dark blue for one class of offenders, and maroon for the other; I think the children wear no uniform. The clothes-rooms are arranged very methodically, under-clothing and dresses being laid on shelves in orderly piles which would satisfy the most fastidious Yankee housekeeper. The common prison garments are comfortable and well made; but there is a higher grade of clothing for those who can afford to pay for it, who are there on "pistole," as the technical term is, taken from an old French coin. The same is to be said of food and lodging; comfortable accommodations being provided for all, while small luxuries can be purchased at a small expense. Tariffs are posted all over the prison, that the inmates may know the fixed prices of various articles, and not be subjected to dishonesty on the part of sub-officials. {779} The present writer, who endured the terrible ordeal imposed on all conscientious visitors, of tasting everything the various kitchens produced, can answer for the excellent quality of soup, coffee, bread, etc., etc. Having been allowed to content himself with visual proof in passing through the well-ordered pharmacies, he can only vouch for their neatness and apparent convenience.

The work-rooms are generally furnished with tiers of benches graduated nearly to the ceiling, so that one sister can superintend a roomful of work-women. The gentleman who accompanied me in my first visit showed me with some pride the comfortable straw seats. "The empress came here one day," he said, and asked the prisoners if they were in need of anything. They told her the wooden benches were uncomfortable, and her majesty ordered these seats to be made, where they can sit and sew all day without great fatigue. Yes, our empress is a good and charitable soul."

Many institutions send work to be done at Saint Lazare, and each prisoner receives a certain proportion of the proceeds of her labor, that she may have the wherewithal to begin an honest life when her term is out. Each day's earnings she writes down in her own little account-book, a dingy record of hopes, as it must be to some of them. The court-yards, where there is an hour's recreation twice a day, are large and cheerful. In the centre are large tanks where the women are allowed to wash small articles of clothing; an inestimable privilege, as any one knows who has seen prisoners trying to extemporize a laundry in their cells with a tin wash-basin. These courts are the favored haunts of sparrows who twitter as cheerfully within the old prison walls as under the eaves of good men's dwellings. A magpie was hopping about in the cloister with the air of an _habitué_, looking amazingly as if he were there on sentence.

There are a number of infirmaries, all tended by Sisters of Charity, and well supplied from a kitchen devoted to hospital diet. The patients are of the lowest class, their maladies the saddest that flesh is heir to. That such a hospital should have any attraction to the visitor is impossible; but remembering the hosts of such forlorn creatures who throng our jails and almshouses in America, I longed to transport wards and warders to the other side of the Atlantic and inaugurate a change in prison discipline for women. [Footnote 226]

[Footnote 226: In the February number of _The Catholic World_ appeared an article entitled _Paris Impious, and Religious Paris_, giving some interesting details concerning Saint Lazare.]

I had the good fortune to be accompanied by a gentleman associated for many years with prison reforms, and charged with high authority in the matter of prison discipline in Paris. He makes it his rule to visit the prisoners at all times and seasons, that he may detect any breach of discipline or lack of fidelity on the part of the superintendents. He is a man who under the wretched disguise of vice recognizes humanity, no matter how defiled; who looks rather to remove the causes of sin than to procure its punishment, and sees in every culprit a good man spoiled. Let no one suppose that I mean to advocate a feeble administration of justice. No; in a prison, over-indulgence means chaos; present weakness means future severity. At Saint Lazare steady, unswerving vigilance is observed, and silence enforced among the prisoners. Discipline being maintained evenly, not spasmodically, the prisoners can be allowed privileges very important to them. {780} Visitors are admitted twice a week to converse with the women through two gratings, as at Newgate, a sister standing in the narrow passage between. Recreation in the yards is taken in common, instead of separately. It is surprising to find how a prisoner clings to the privilege of seeing his fellow-creatures, even when there is no chance of communication. The peculiar pangs inflicted by the solitary system, when endured for a long time, can only be appreciated by those who have had confidential intercourse with prisoners.

The prisoners' chapel is very cheerful, and has a pretty sanctuary with stained-glass windows, and an altar beautifully cared for. One of the points most worthy of approval in Saint Lazare, is the attractive form under which religion is everywhere presented. In each dormitory, infirmary, and work room, is an oratory; or, at least, some image or picture suited to impress the souls of the prisoners.

One part of the establishment is full of tender associations to every Christian soul--the sisters' private chapel, whose sanctuary was once the cell of Saint Vincent de Paul. The stone floor in the recessed window where he used to pray is worn hollow with the pressure of his knees. Saint Lazare was frequented in those days by many pilgrims, and in his cell the saint sought refuge from distraction and dissipation of spirit. It is from kneeling-cushions such as his, that the prayers go up to heaven which work true reforms, which achieve immortal victories whose laurels are fresh centuries after the conqueror's soul glories in the presence of God. I have never stood in any cathedral with a soul more filled with veneration than in this little chapel of Saint Lazare, where Saint Vincent de Paul prayed; and where his children pray still, devoted to the work most repugnant to human nature, that of tending beings who remind us what we should all be but for the grace of God.

One infirmary is a lying-in hospital. The mothers can keep their young children at Saint Lazare, or send them away as they choose. In this infirmary shone forth the kindly spirit of my guide. "This always touches me," he said; "for I am a _père de famille_" and he went from baby to baby with gentle looks and womanly sweetness, a man stalwart of frame as a grenadier. And it touched me, too, though I am not _père de famille_, to see the lines of little cribs, and the poor, forlorn mothers tending their tiny waifs and strays.

There is one serious defect in the construction of Saint Lazare, making it in that respect unsuitable for a prison. There is but one large dormitory for the adult prisoners who are in good health. The others sleep, two, three, or even four in a large cell, and with no arrangements for _surveillance_ beyond a small aperture in the door, covered with glass. I remarked upon the imprudence of this arrangement, and was told that the danger was fully appreciated and deeply regretted. The French government is too generous in its treatment of public institutions to leave this evil long unremedied, I am confident.

Another defect in the regulations surprised me. There is no daily Mass in the public chapel of Saint Lazare, the prisoners hearing Mass on Sunday only. I had no opportunity of asking the reason of this omission, and will therefore refrain from making farther comment upon it. The third department in Saint Lazare is the most interesting, being the portion devoted to young girls and homeless children. {781} The sentence is for six months only, but can be renewed if found expedient. My guide called to him child after child, and talked with them as he might talk with his own children at home. One little thing cried bitterly. Her mother had turned her into the streets to shift for herself, and the police, finding her wandering about the city, had brought her to Saint Lazare. He held her little hand in his and patted it softly as he said all the comforting things he could think of; there was not much to be said, one must confess. I asked where she would be sent when the six months were out. "To some industrial establishment under the charge of Sisters of Charity," was the answer; "The empress sees to all such things."

The young people are kept entirely separate from the prisoners, in the new part of Saint Lazare. They have several hours' schooling, and have their working hours, in which they earn money for themselves and for the establishment, as the women do. Each child has an exquisitely neat cell to herself for the night, opening with a grating on to a corridor, so that the watching sister can exercise a strict _surveillance_.

Whenever I see the right thing done in the right way for public offenders, I think of the man who first turned my attention to the subject of prison discipline--Governor Andrew, as he will be to us all in Massachusetts, no matter who holds the state reins. Surely the sun has not often shone on any spirit more steadfast or more tender than his; surely, the days of chivalry produced no knightly courage more unblenching than his; surely, whatever blessings come to Massachusetts in her future career, her children will never forget how valiantly that brave man fought for judicious legislation, for a humane execution of the laws, and for the equal rights of Catholics and Protestants--will never forget John Albion Andrew!

Translated From Le Correspondant.

A Heroine Of Conjugal Love.

Marquise De La Fayette.

When, at the end of the year 1864, the children of Madame de Montagu, having overcome the natural scruples of filial modesty, consented to open to the public the treasure of noble examples and Christian virtues enclosed in the remembrances of their mother, _Le Correspondant_ was the first among the public organs to announce the lively interest felt in the recital. The success more than justified our predictions. There is no one who would not be edified by the perusal of the life of Madame de Montagu, and the book has already taken its place in our libraries.

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Since that publication, the Duchess of Ayen, around whom are grouped five daughters widely differing from each other, and each with a strongly marked individuality, has become in some sort the type of the Christian mother in modern society.

Indeed, maternal love was in truth the terrestrial passion of her heart, and would entirely have occupied it, had not the care of this dear flock borne with it higher duties, and rendered greater her accountability. The marvellous gift had been given her to form souls; to develop the budding good within them, and, while respecting the originality peculiar to each, to arm them with incomparable strength.

We need not return to what, four years ago, we have already published of the Christian discipline, the simple and retired life to which the Duchess of Ayen had accustomed her daughters, realizing in them her type of true womanhood, making the heart superior to destiny, neither dazzled by fortune or success, nor cast down by the ills of life. When the life of Madame de Montagu was first published, only in episode we recognized those of the noble daughters of the Duchess d'Ayen, reserved by Providence for the rudest trials, or destined for a bloody immolation. We speak of the Viscountess de Noailles, who with her mother and grandmother, the old Marchioness of Noailles, perished on the scaffold, and Madame de La Fayette, the voluntary prisoner of Olmutz, in truth one of the most touching heroines of conjugal love. In the life of their sister they are but secondary figures; but as it is permitted even among the saints of paradise to have a preference, we must confess that, in this beautiful group of heroic figures, our predilection has always been for the two eldest. It will be readily understood, then, with what respect and emotion we have opened the book, in which we would not only find the abridged recital of the actions of Madame de La Fayette, but could see her act, hear her speak herself of her dearly loved mother, listen to the passionate accents of her voice, and, indeed, almost feel the very beatings of her heart.

This volume, printed by Téchener with great typographical care, contains the life of the Duchess of Ayen, written by Madame de La Fayette, in the fortress of Olmutz, on the margin of a Buffon, with a little India-ink and a tooth-pick, and subject to the hateful inspection of the Austrian jailers. We could not find a more touching relic. Nowadays we mount distinguished autographs in gold; should this ever pass into public sale, would it not justify unheard-of extravagances? And we have now this life of Madame de La Fayette compiled by a daughter worthy of her, Madame de Lasteyrie, herself the representative of the virtue and charity of a race of which, according to an expression applied to an eminent royal family, all the daughters were chaste and the sons valiant. And to these two recitals we add another document, that we had the good fortune to publish in April, 1847, in which the good Abbé Carrichon, an ecclesiastic full of zeal, but timid in character, and who only by the grace of the holy ministry could rise to intrepidity, relates, in the most perfect good faith, the anguish he endured, when to his lot it fell to give to the three condemned ones the peace and consolation of last pardon. Those who may be astonished to find in a whole generation of the same family so many and such extraordinary virtues, may rest assured of its truth. Imagination has added nothing to the edifying recital of these beautiful lives. The original documents that we give to-day in their sublime nakedness, bear an accent of austere heroism and holy enthusiasm that strengthens the heart and penetrates it with the love of good; they vouch for our first publication. {783} In the rapid analysis we will try to make from these documents, we will present the most striking traits of the character and life of Madame de La Fayette. Adrienne de Noailles, second daughter of the Duchess of Ayen, was of ardent temperament, of deep sensibility, with a lively imagination and a mind well informed. She ever refused to adopt any idea imposed upon her, that could not be subject to a free discussion. She seized difficulties and penetrated to their depths. While still a child, she was troubled by doubts of her religion, even when, at the age of twelve, she was prepared for her first communion. She does not give us the nature of these doubts, but it is clearly seen they never interfered with the practice of piety; on the contrary, her thirst for truth increased her fervor. Her pious mother was not alarmed at this state of her soul; she divined the source, and waited with confidence for grace to dissipate the clouds. Only, she believed it best to defer the first communion of her daughter until, calm and reassured, she could enjoy her supreme happiness in all its plenitude. And she did not presume too much on the integrity of her daughter; never was more solid piety or firmer faith implanted in a heart of deeper conviction.

If we were to study anew the perfect model of a mother which the Duchess of Ayen presents in the portrait drawn of her by Madame de La Fayette, a portrait depicted, too, with a sincerity that does not fear to let us penetrate the shadows, and so prove its reality, we should dwell upon the profoundly Christian spirit that directed her in the choice of her sons-in-law. We there see her rising above all worldly considerations, seeking above all things in them the moral qualities which may assure the happiness of her daughters; for she did not look upon marriage, as is too often done, as a simple affair of interest, of fortune, or of vanity, but it was, in her eyes, the sacred tie in which love should bear the greater part. God, who united man and woman, and who said, "Man shall leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh," has he not made love the duty of Christian marriage? Under the old _régime_ and among the nobility, marriages were contracted early, and Mesdemoiselles de Noailles were scarcely twelve or thirteen years old when the first proposition for their hands were made for them to their mother. One of these candidates, the Marquis de La Fayette, was himself only fourteen years old. "His extreme youth, his isolated position, having lost all his near relations, an immense fortune suddenly acquired, which the Duchesse d'Ayen looked upon only as a temptation," all these considerations, which in a purely worldly view would have seduced many a mother, decided her at first to refuse him, notwithstanding the good opinion she entertained of his character. The Duke d'Ayen strongly insisted on an alliance which combined every advantage of rank and wealth, but the duchess for several months none the less persisted in her refusal; and it was only after a more attentive examination of the character of M. de Lafayette had reassured her of the future of her daughter, that, demanding a delay of two years, she finally gave her consent. The idea of the moment when she must resign her daughters into the keeping of another, filled her with apprehension; evidently, she desired for them a felicity that she had not enjoyed herself, that of entire conformity of tastes, thoughts, and character in the companions of their lives; and when the marriages were resolved upon, it is delightful to read in the recital of Madame de La Fayette the detail of touching cares with which this tender mother charged herself, to prepare these eldest daughters for their new stations--one to espouse the Viscount de Noailles, a cousin whom she had loved since her infancy, and the other to be united to M. de La Fayette.

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"'My heart attracted me to M. de La Fayette,' says with much simplicity the manuscript of the prisoner of Olmutz, 'and with a sentiment so profound, that our union has always been one of firmness and tenderness through all the vicissitudes of this life--through all the good and evil that have been our lot for twenty-four years.

"With what pleasure I discovered that, for more than a year, my mother had looked upon and loved him as her son! She detailed to me all the good she had known of him--what she thought of him herself, and I soon saw he possessed for her the filial charm that made the happiness of my life. She occupied herself in aiding my poor head, especially about this time so empty and so weak, to keep from going astray during such an important event. She taught me to ask, and she asked for me, the blessings of heaven on the state I was about to embrace.

"'I was then only fourteen and a half years old, and, having new duties to perform, my mother believed it her duty to reapply herself to the care of forming my sister and myself for our future destinies. The confidence with which we always conversed with her, gave her abundant opportunity. It was not the kind of confidence to which, I believe, mothers oftener pretend than obtain from their children--that inspired by a companion of one's own age--but the perfect and intimate trust which needs the direction and approval of a parent, and causes a pang of fear in any step, visit, or conversation, of which she may not approve. A confidence, in fine, which always returns to its support--to its guide, in whose light it would repose as well as in its tenderness; a guide who, if even one could not always approve its decisions, and might encounter its reproaches, would still be considered necessary, and to whom the idea of dissimulation would be insupportable.

"'Such was my feeling toward my mother, who often permitted me to argue with her.'"

The ceremony of the marriage accomplished, the husband of sixteen years set out for his regiment, and the young bride testified by her grief at this separation all the affection she experienced for him. He returned: the religious education of Madame de La Fayette was completed, she made her first communion with an entire faith and in the most humble dispositions, and soon after, on the 15th of December, 1775, she became a mother for the first time.

The faculty of loving knew no bounds in this youthful heart. Identified in all the tastes, aspirations, sentiments, and interests of him who had given her the right to say, in all sincerity, "I love you religiously, worldly, passionately," she adopted the political faith of her husband, and, without any personal afterthought, without weakness or hesitation, from her most tender age, valiantly accepted all the sacrifices and all the perils of the public life of a man whose political preoccupations governed him exclusively. He held the best part of her heart; but, immovable in her religious faith, Madame de La Fayette never sacrificed a principle nor a practice of piety to her conjugal idolatry. It is remarkable, also, that this ardor of passion for her husband never weakened the vivacity of her tenderness for her mother, her children, and her oldest sister, who, from the cradle, had been her dearest friend.

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Inasmuch as she was sufficient for every duty, so her soul was sufficient in all its affections. The war which broke out about this time between England and her American colonies, opened to the Marquis de La Fayette the brilliant arena that would give immortality to his name; but for his young companion began an existence full, at the same time, of anguish and delirious joy, of grief and devotion. The family of Noailles had strongly adopted philosophical ideas, and willingly followed the liberal views of the eighteenth century. The generous enthusiasm, however, which led M. de La Fayette to devote himself to the service of the American people vindicating their independence, was at first severely disapproved of and considered madness by the Duke d'Ayen and the Marshal de Noailles. The marquis was nineteen; he had been married three years, was already a father, and soon expected a second child. Madame de La Fayette and the Duchess d'Ayen alone understood the motives that determined the departure of M. de La Fayette; the former studied in every way to conceal the torture of her heart, preferring to be considered insensible, or too much of a child, to giving the appearance, by showing her grief, of wrong to the object of her worship.

Meanwhile, the great struggle, of which the new world was the theatre, and in which aristocratic England found herself at war with the principal democracy of modern society, held all Europe in suspense. The greatest interest was felt in France for the success of the Americans. While the French government, though understanding how matters stood, hesitated, nevertheless, to take an open part in the quarrel, public opinion declared itself still more favorably for the United States; the various incidents of the war were greedily sought after, each success of the insurgents excited enthusiasm, and soon all hearts beat in unison with that of Madame de La Fayette, for the success of the young hero who had so actively contributed to such glorious results.

We must transport ourselves to this time, recall its events, watch the fever of public opinion, to understand what must have been, after two years' absence, the first return of M. de La Fayette, and the intoxication of joy his wife experienced. He was not long in setting out again for the new world, and did not return from there finally until 1782, after the brilliant campaign of which his valor assured the success, and which terminated by the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. His return was unexpected, a surprise for the court as well as the city: the _memoirs_ and _memories_ of the Count de Segur furnished curious testimony to support what we have said. We read:

"All who lived in that day will still remember the enthusiasm occasioned by the return of M. de La Fayette, an enthusiasm of which the queen herself partook. They were celebrating, at the Hotel de Ville, a brilliant _fête_ on the occasion of the birth of an heir to the throne. The news came of the arrival of the conqueror of Cornwallis. Madame de La Fayette, who assisted at the _fête_, received a special mark of favor; the queen placed her in her own carriage, and drove to the Hotel de Noailles, where the marquis, her husband, had just alighted." [Footnote 227]

[Footnote 227: Tome i. p. 180.]

The excess of sentiment of Madame de La Fayette for her husband at this time, was such that she suffered intensely in his presence. She endeavored to conceal her passion for him, and trembled lest she might seem importunate, and weary him. Some years after, she confessed to M. de La Fayette this passionate attraction for him which she had so resisted; "but," she added gently, "you need not be dissatisfied with what is left."

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We, who have only known M. de La Fayette soured and old, and do not feel well disposed toward him, because, under the restoration, he shadowed his glory as liberator of two worlds by intrigues with secret societies; we find it difficult to imagine him so charming, "carrying away every heart." But it was even so; and, at the same time that popular favor rendered him so powerful among the multitude, the most beautiful, the proudest, the most brilliant ladies of the court, were madly in love with him.

But we are not writing a biography of M. de La Fayette, and it will be understood that, in an article on the saintly companion of his life, we would not wish any controversy on so illustrious a person, and for whom, with some reservation, we profess great and sincere respect. We will not speak, then, of the events of the revolution, in which he played so prominent a part, only inasmuch as our heroine was mingled with and took part in them.

The abolition of the slave-trade was one of the philanthropic preoccupations of M. de La Fayette. He bought a plantation at Cayenne, _la belle Gabrielle_, in order to give an example of a gradual enfranchisement of the slaves, and referred to the active charity of his wife the details of his enterprise. With this view, she kept up a correspondence with the priests of the seminary _du Saint-Esprit_, who had a house at Cayenne. If circumstances did not permit the realization of her hopes, at least she had the consolation of knowing that, thanks to the religious instruction given to the blacks on this plantation, they were guilty of less horrors than at any other point in the colonies.

We must recognize here, too, and to its eternal honor, that America has always been the portion of the globe where liberty of conscience, loudly proclaimed, has never ceased to be practised. It was not so in old Europe and in France before 1789, so the contrast presented by this free state of things, and the numerous vexations to which the different religions were exposed with us, could not but forcibly strike M. de La Fayette on his return. After a journey to Nimes, where he studied more closely the situation of the Protestants, he was able to present, with full knowledge of the case, a proposition to the Assembly of the Notables in 1787, demanding their restoration to the civil rights of which they had been despoiled.

I love to remember that an eminent Catholic clergyman, Mgr. Luzerne, Bishop of Langres, and later, Cardinal, warmly supported the proposition for this act of justice. Madame de La Fayette shared these sentiments, and received with lively interest the Protestant ministers whom the result of the affair attracted around her husband. A zealous child of the Catholic Church, she detested the persecutions that could only alienate her children, and which appeared to her so opposed to the spirit of Christianity.

After 1783, M. de La Fayette, whose family had increased considerably, and whose political importance had reached its height, left the hotel de Noailles, to establish himself in his own house, _rue de Bourbon_, now the _rue de Lille_. And there the ever-increasing wave of the revolutionary movement, that was never able to overcome the virtue and brightness of a king, the most estimable as a man of any who ever wore a crown, found our heroine. The high position of M. de La Fayette, deputy of the nobility, member of the Constitutional Assembly, and commander-in-chief of the Parisian National Guard, imposed obligations on him in which his wife never repudiated her part. She was seen to accept the successive demands of each of the districts of Paris, to the number of sixty; to preside at the blessing of flags and other patriotic demonstrations. The general kept open house, and did its honors in a manner to charm his numerous guests.

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"'But, says her daughter, Madame de Lasteyrie, initiated into her most secret thoughts, 'what she suffered in the depths of her own heart, only those who heard her speak, can tell. She saw my father at the head of a revolution of which it was impossible to foretell the end. Every evil, every disorder, was judged by her with a complete lack of illusion in her own cause; yet she was so sustained by the principles of her husband, and so convinced of the good he could do, and the evil he might avert, that she bore with incredible strength the continual dangers to which she was exposed. Never, said she to us, did I see him go out during this time, without thinking that I heard his last adieu. No one was more terrified than she by the dangers of those she loved; but in these times, she rose above herself, and in her devotion to my father, hoped he could prevent the increasing crime.'"

We may infer from these words the perpetual anguish of Madame de La Fayette during the three first years of the revolution. In the Duchesse d'Ayen she found a support full of sweetness and tenderness; who, though sharing none of the opinions of her son-in-law, believed firmly in the rectitude of his intentions. Her angelic sister, the Viscountess de Noailles, felt exactly as she did, loved equally a husband, young, handsome, brave, and charming, associated in the most advanced ideas of M. de La Fayette, and, like him, a member of the Assembly. The eldest daughter, too, of Madame de La Fayette, began at this time to be of much comfort to her; she had her make her first communion in 1790. It was, in the midst of the great political events of that epoch, the first concern of her maternal heart.

The civil constitution of the clergy was to be one of the most sensible tribulations of Madame de La Fayette. She considered she should, more particularly on account of her personal situation, declare her attachment for the Catholic Church; consequently she was present at the refusal of the oath which the curé of Saint Sulpice made from the pulpit, of whom she was a parishioner; she was constantly meeting there with persons most known by their opposition to the new principles, and with those then called the _aristocratie_. She took part assiduously in the offices, at first in the churches and afterward in the oratories where the persecuted clergy took refuge.

She continually received the nuns who fled to her for protection; or priests not under oath, whom she encouraged in the exercise of their functions, and the preservation of their religious liberty. She well knew that such conduct was hurtful to the popularity of her husband, of great importance to her to preserve, but no consideration could stop her in what she considered a duty.

M. de La Fayette never interfered with the conduct of his wife; he held as nobly to his principles of liberty of conscience in this respect as in all others. Aloud he disapproved of the oath extorted from the Catholic priests, opposed it wherever he could, and was at least successful in preventing the articles relative to this civil constitution of the clergy from being constitutional; on the contrary, they were even rejected from the class of ordinary laws that any new legislature might revise. For General La Fayette deluded himself that the constitution of 1791 was destined to last. But whatever his sentiments, that which made him respect the religious convictions of his wife, and oppose all his power to the persecution of the clergy, does great honor to his character. {788} As the priests under oath were habitually received by the commander of the National Guard at Paris, Madame de La Fayette never dissimulated before them her attachment to the ancient bishops; but she mingled in her expressions so much adroitness with her sincerity that she never wounded them. Only once she deviated from the rule of tolerance that she imposed on herself on her husband's account, and that was when the newly elected constitutional Bishop of Paris, came to dine officially with the general. She would not recognize by her presence the quality of his diocese, and dined out, although she knew by doing so it could not fail to be made a subject of remark.

Meanwhile, the ever-increasing revolutionary delirium multiplied disorders, paralyzed the efforts of the constitutional party, and rendered the part of M. de La Fayette more and more difficult. He was suspected on both sides, by the court and by the Jacobins, and was rapidly wearing out the remains of an expiring popularity in an already useless struggle.

The king, to escape the odious tyranny of which he was the victim, attempted to fly from Paris; we know the rest. Arrested at Varennes, brought back to the Tuileries, he and his family were placed in the closest confinement. The unhappy prince at last resigned himself to accept the constitution, the Constituent Assembly terminated its sittings, and was replaced by the Legislative Assembly, and General La Fayette, sincere in the illusion that the revolution was finished and the future secured, gave in his resignation as commander of the National Guard, and set out for Auvergne with his wife and children. Now in the destiny of Madame de La Fayette there came a short truce of happiness; the journey from Paris to Chavaniac was a series of ovations that popular enthusiasm spread, for the last time, before her idol. The Duchess d' Ayen and the Viscountess de Noailles came a little while to share this apparent and transitory calm; but the Duke d'Ayen had emigrated to Switzerland, and Madame de Montagu had taken refuge in England. The formation of three grand army corps had been decreed, in imminent danger of a foreign war; the command of the centre was confided to General La Fayette, who repaired to his camp in 1791.

The year 1792 saw the hideous journey of the 20th of June, soon after followed by the scenes more lamentable still, of the 10th of August.

At the news of the wicked attempt of the 20th of June, the General de La Fayette did not fear to address to the assembly, from Maubeuge, where were then his head-quarters, a letter in which he declaimed with indignation and vehemence against the Jacobins; and finally, quitting his camp, he hastened to Paris and appeared at the bar of the Assembly; there to brand energetically the violences committed at the Tuileries, and demand the punishment of the guilty. Was not this act of courage alone sufficient honor for a lifetime? But finally, seeing he had nothing to hope from the Assembly, he attempted to organize a resistance at Sedan in order to save Louis XVI. The triumphant Jacobins replied, on the 10th of August, by a decree of proscription to the refusal which M. de La Fayette made to recognize the fall of the king; a price was put upon his head, and, constrained in his turn to seek a refuge in a foreign land, the patriot of 1789 fell on the frontier into an Austrian post, was arrested with his aides-de-camp, conducted first to Namur, then to Wesel, and considered by the allied powers as an _enemy of universal peace_, whose liberty was incompatible with the surety of European governments.

{789}

The arbitrary detention of MM. de La Fayette, Latour Maubourg, and Bureaux de Pusy, remains one of the disgraces of the government of the Emperor Francis II., and he cannot be blamed enough for it; but in the condition of parties and in view of the renown of M. de La Fayette, had it not for him some great advantages? In our eyes, the five years of _carcere duro_ inflicted upon the hero of American liberty, completed his glory. Such were the sentiments of Madame de Staël when she wrote to congratulate him on his release: "Your misfortune has preserved your glory, and if your health can be restored, you will come out perfect from the tomb where your name has acquired a new lustre." But dating from this epoch, what was not the ineffable anguish of Madame de La Fayette? Informed of the arrest of her husband, she had but one thought--to release him or share his captivity. But she had two other duties to fulfil; to get her son out of France, and, if possible, to confide him to the friendship of General Washington, and to protect the interests of the creditors of General La Fayette by giving them the sequestrated estates for security, and in both she experienced great difficulty. Arrested at Chavaniac, where she was resting with her son, aged thirteen, her two daughters, and the aged aunt who had brought up M. de La Fayette, she obtained from Roland, then minister of the interior, permission not to be taken to Paris, but to remain at Chavaniac on parole. Encouraged by this testimony of humanity, and hoping to be delivered from an engagement that weighed so heavily on her, she smothered her natural pride and again addressed herself to Roland:

"'I can only attribute to a sentiment of kindness,' she wrote him, 'the change you have brought about in my situation. You spare me the dangers of too perilous a journey, and consent to give me my retreat for my prison. But any prison, be it what it may, is insupportable to me, since I have learned this morning from the gazette of M. Brissot, that my husband has been transferred from town to town by the enemies of France, and is being conducted to Spandau. Whatever repugnance I may feel to owe a service to those who have shown themselves the enemies and accusers of him whom I revere and love as he only is worthy of being loved, yet it is in all the sincerity of my heart that I vow eternal gratitude to him who, while relieving the administration from responsibility and giving me my freedom, will afford me the opportunity to rejoin my husband, if France is sufficiently free to allow me to travel without risk.

"On my knees, if necessary, I ask you this favor. Judge of my present state of mind. Noailles La Fayette."

A faithful friend bore this letter to Roland. He appeared deeply moved, and replied immediately:

"I have placed your touching appeal, my dear madam, before the committee. I must observe, however, that it would not appear to me prudent for a person of your name to travel in France, on account of the unfortunate impressions just now attached to it. But circumstances may change. Be assured if they do, I shall be the first to seize upon them for your advantage."

For three months the poor woman was without any news of the general, though she redoubled every effort to obtain it; she wrote to the Princess of Orange, to the Duke of Brunswick, to Klopstock, but all in vain. Toward the middle of June, there came to her, through the interposition of the United States minister, two letters from M. de La Fayette; they were dated from the dungeon of Magdebourg, and the inquietude they gave her concerning the health of her husband made her more than ever anxious to join him. {790} Governeur Morris, then American minister, proved her constant and faithful friend, and from him she accepted the loan of money of which she had need, to pay some debts and for the daily expenses of her family. At this time many of the wives of emigrants believed it necessary for their personal security, and preservation of their fortunes, to be divorced; Madame de La Fayette would never consent to save her life by such an act, and whenever she found it necessary to present a petition or make a demand, she took a pride in commencing all she wrote, "The wife of La Layette." In the midst of all these terrible agitations, the fervor of our heroine never decreased. She submitted with sweet resignation to the divine will, and associated in her exercises of piety the women of the village, who, like herself, were deprived of the holy sacrifice of the Mass, which was no longer celebrated. These innocent meetings were the subject of many denunciations; of _aristocracy_ they could not accuse her, but now it was _fanaticism_. At the end of the year 1795, after the complete defeat of the Girondins, the persecutions against the priests and the _ci-devant_ nobles were redoubled, and some of the effects of the general were exposed to sale. This courageous wife repaired to Brionde, where the auction took place. "Citizens," said she, to the district, "I feel myself obliged to protest before the sale about to take place, against the enormous injustice of applying the laws of emigration to him who now is the prisoner of the enemies of France. I demand of you certificate of my protestation."

The 12th of November, Madame de La Fayette was informed she would be arrested the next day; and truly she was carried off in the evening by a detachment of the National Guard, and incarcerated at Brionde. Her children remained at Chavaniac, but at the end of a few months the jailer was won over, and M. Frestel, preceptor of the young Georges, conducted them, one after the other, to their mother. ... It was in this prison of Brionde that the news reached her that Mesdames de Noailles and Madame d'Ayen, both arrested, had just been transferred to the Luxembourg; then in May, 1794, came the order to bring the Citoyenne La Fayette to Paris. She entered there the 19th Prairial, eve of the _fête_ of the Supreme Being, three days before the one when, according to Madame de Lasteyrie, "they built up terror upon terror." Placed at _la petite Force_, at the end of fifteen days she was transported to Plessis, where she found her cousin, the Duchess of Duras. The massacres of the revolutionary tribunal at this time were no less than sixty a day; everything seemed to announce to the prisoner that she was being led to certain death.

One of the buildings of Plessis served as a depot to the _Conciergerie_, and each morning saw twenty prisoners depart for the guillotine. "The idea that one may soon be of the number," wrote Madame de La Fayette, "gives firmness for such a spectacle." She made a will at Plessis, of which several passages are given; nothing could be more noble and beautiful. It begins in this way:

"Lord, thou hast been my strength and my hope in the extreme evils that are poured down upon me; thou art my God."

{791}

Fifty days were thus passed by the prisoner, when on the 10th Thermidor, a great tumult being heard in the street, it was supposed the populace were rushing to massacre all in prison; it was the announcement of the death of Robespierre.

The representatives, Bourdon de l'Oise and Legendre came soon after to visit the prison and assign the fate of each. All were set at liberty except Madame de La Fayette, on whom they were not willing to pronounce sentence until they sent for the decision of the committee. The unhappy woman was but little concerned at the prolongation of her captivity; for she had just learned that her mother, her grandmother, and her sister had perished on the 4th Thermidor. Her grief was overwhelming, but she never revolted, her prayers preserved her. "Now," she wrote to her children, "I find the sentiments of those I mourn, those, too, that I desire, and those that I pray God to put in my heart, and sometimes I obtain all at once." Notwithstanding the active solicitations of Mr. Monroe, the new minister from the United States, Madame de La Fayette was not liberated; Le Piessis was used for other purposes, so she was transferred to the Maison Delmas, rue Notre Dame des Champs; she remained there four months, and met there with the strangest people, for it was now the partisans of the reign of terror who peopled the prisons; but there, as everywhere, she gained the respect of all. Her physical sufferings were great during the rigorous winter of 1794 and 1795. Everything froze in her room, and she was peculiarly sensitive to cold. God granted her in her distress a precious consolation in the visits of the Abbé Carrichon. He gave her all the details she hungered after of the death of the three dear persons that he had accompanied to the scaffold, and with him she made a complete examination of all the faults of her life. On the 23d of January, 1795, the deliverance, so long retarded, of Madame de La Fayette was finally signed, and she was set at liberty.

Her first care on leaving prison was to hasten to Mr. Monroe and thank him for all he had done for her, and begged him to finish the good work by obtaining passports for herself and family. She had but one aim, to rejoin her husband in Germany with her daughters, and place her son in safety in America. The letter she wrote General Washington, in which she portrays with simplicity, firmness, and dignity the obligations she was under to M. Frestel for his devotion to her and her family, and begs for him the regard he deserves, is truly remarkable. As to her son, she expresses herself thus: "My wish is, that my son may lead a very retired life in America, and continue the studies that three years of misfortune have interrupted; and that being far away from scenes which might abase or too strongly irritate him, he may work to become an efficient citizen of the United States, of which the principles and sentiments are entirely in accordance with those of French citizens."

When the time came to part with her only son, the separation seemed cruel to her mother's heart; but she was firmly convinced she acted in this matter as her husband would have dictated. She found her strength in this thought. As we read of so many sacrifices, sufferings, and sorrows so valiantly supported, we find ourselves so associated in the sentiments of this incomparable person, that we wait with feverish anxiety the moment when she should rejoin her husband. The memoirs of Madame de Montagu give us the details of the touching reunion of Madame de La Fayette at Altona with her two sisters and her Aunt de Tessé; they will be found in the account of Madame de Lasteyrie. {792} The conversation with the Emperor of Austria is also there given. He granted her permission to shut herself up at Olmutz, and by opening heaven to her, he could scarcely have made her happier.

"'We arrived,' wrote Madame de Lasteyrie, 'at Olmutz, the 1st of October, 1795, at eleven o'clock in the morning, in one of the covered carriages found at all the posts, our own having been broken on the way. I never shall forget the moment when the postillion showed us from afar the steeples of the town. The vivid emotion of my mother is ever present with me. She was almost suffocated by her tears; and when she had sufficiently recovered herself to speak, she blessed God in the words of the canticle of Tobias: "Thou art great, O Lord, for ever, and thy kingdom is unto all ages, for thou scourgest and thou savest," etc., etc. My father was not informed of our arrival; he had never received a letter from my mother. Three years of captivity, the last passed in complete solitude, inquietude concerning all the objects of his affection, and sufferings of every kind, had deeply undermined his health; the change in his countenance was frightful. My mother was struck by it; but nothing could diminish the intoxication of her joy, but the bitterness of her irreparable losses. My father, after the first moment of happiness in this sudden reunion, dared not ask her a question. He knew there had been a reign of terror in France, but he was ignorant of the victims. The day passed without his venturing to examine into her fears, and without my mother having the strength to explain herself. Only at night, when my sister and I were shut into the next room assigned to us, could she inform my father that she had lost on the scaffold her grandmother, her mother, and her sister.'"

Madame de La Fayette shared her husband's captivity twenty-seven months. She paid with her health--we may say with her life--the privilege of being reunited to him she loved, and proving to him her tenderness; but it was such great happiness to her that, whatever the severity that accompanied it, it seems not even at such a price to have been too dearly bought.

At last the success of the French arms opened the dungeon of Olmutz. The French plenipotentiaries, in signing the treaty of Campo Formio, exacted that the prisoners should be immediately set at liberty. The gates of the fortress were therefore opened to them, and the 16th of September, 1797, they set out for Hamburg. It was just five years and a half since their arrest.

Happy to owe his liberty solely to the triumph of the French army, M. de La Fayette addressed to General Bonaparte the expression of his gratitude and that of his companions in arms, in these terms:

"Hamburg, Oct. 6, 1797. "Citizen General: The prisoners of Olmutz, happy to owe their deliverance to your irresistible arms, have enjoyed in their captivity the thought that their liberty and life were attached to the triumphs of the republic and to your personal glory. To-day they enjoy the homage they would love to render to their liberator. It would, indeed, have been gratifying to us, Citizen General, to have offered in person the expression of these sentiments, and to have looked upon the theatre of so many victories, the army that won them, and the hero, who has placed our resurrection among the number of his miracles. But you know the journey to Hamburg has not been left to our choice. It is from the place where we have said good by to our jailers that we address our thanks to their conquerors. In the solitary retreat in the Danish territory of Holstein, where we will go to try and re-establish the health you have saved, we will join to our vows or patriotism for the republic the most lively interest in the illustrious general, to whom we are not only attached for the services he has rendered our country and in the cause of liberty, but for the particular obligations that we delight to owe him, and that the deepest gratitude has for ever engraven in our hearts. Salutation and respect. "Lafayette, Latour Maubourg, Bureaux de Pusy."

{793}

Among all the marks of sympathy showered upon the escaped victims of Austrian tyranny, none touched M. de La Fayette more deeply than one from Madame de Staël--full of respect and emotion. Mathieu de Montmorency added to it a few lines in which these words strike us: "The constant occupation of your misfortunes and your courage has outlived in me, and ever will, my alienation from all political activity; but I believe I should renew all my ancient enthusiasm to welcome one so constant in the cause of liberty."

Although the health of Madame de La Fayette was destroyed, she preserved her wonderful activity and force of character. It was she, the only one of her family, whose name was not on the list of the banished, who was able the first to enter France, and there regulate her affairs and the return of all her relations. It was she again who, after the 18th Brumaire, understood that General La Fayette should return immediately without waiting for any authority that might possibly have been refused him. Sure of the marvellous tact with which she judged her surroundings, he followed her advice without any other information. The news of his arrival in Paris was not pleasing to the first consul; he wanted the general to return to Holland and solicit his entrance, like every one else. Madame de La Fayette called upon him, was graciously received, exposed the peculiar position of her husband, and the favorable effect that his return could not fail to produce on all honest and patriotic men, and proved herself noble, skilful, and prudent. "I am delighted, madame," said the first consul to her, "to have made your acquaintance; you have great good sense, but you understand nothing of business." However, it was agreed to that M. de La Fayette might remain openly in Paris without asking permission. Madame de Lasteyrie, in her recital, in which the most noble sentiments are expressed so simply and happily, has given us a page that portrays the whole soul of her heroic mother.

"Retirement would still have been preferable to my father under the consular magistracy of Bonaparte; under the despotism of Napoleon, it was, through honor, enforced upon him. In either case, it fulfilled the wishes of my mother. After so much suffering and exhaustion, a retired life--perfect quietude would not have been necessary for her--in which in peace she could consecrate the affections of her soul to those dearest to her, was the only earthly happiness she sought. She felt too deeply, too passionately, I may say, the emotions of family life to desire others. Neither the grandeur of her former state, nor the _éclat_ even of her misfortunes, had excited in her that pride of imagination which cannot bear a simple existence. Her devotion rose above every trial, but the sentiments and easy duties of an obscure destiny sufficed for her heart. Love filled it entirely."

What can we add to this picture? Nothing, only to ask the perusal of the admirable letter of M. de La Fayette, which ends the volume. He there relates the long agony, the tender and charming delirium of the heavenly creature whose affections he possessed. To have seen him a practical Christian would have been the realization of her most cherished wish. "If I am going to another home, you must feel," she said to him once, "that I shall be occupied there with you. The sacrifice of my life would be very little, however much it may cost me to part with you, if it could assure your eternal happiness."

Another time, she said to him: "You are not a Christian?" As he did not reply, she said: "Ah! I know what you are, a fatalist." "You believe me proud," answered the general, "are you not a little so yourself?" "Oh! yes!" she cried, "with all my heart. I feel that I would give my life for that sect." {794} Another time, in this half delirium which led astray her ideas, but never her heart, she said: "This life is short, troubled; let us be reunited in God, and set out together for eternity." Her God and her husband were her thoughts to the last moment. She died on Christmas night, the 25th of December, 1807, pressing the cherished hand and saying, "I am yours for ever."

Those who wish to finish this picture of conjugal love, must do as we have done, seek in the memoirs of an illustrious contemporary the scene that completes it. In the _Memoires de M. Guizot_, in the year 1834, we read:

"Some months before M. de Talleyrand had retired from public affairs, another celebrated man, very different in character, and celebrated in other ways, had disappeared from all worldly scenes. No life had been more exclusively, more passionately political than that of M. de La Fayette; no man had more constantly placed his political sentiments and ideas above all other preoccupations and all other interests, and yet in his death he was completely estranged from them. Having been ill for three weeks, he approached his last hour; his children and family alone surrounded his bed. He spoke no more, and they supposed he could not see. His son George noticed that, with an uncertain hand, he sought something on his breast; he came to the assistance of his father and laid in his hand the medallion that M. de La Fayette always wore suspended from his neck. He pressed it to his lips, and expired."

This medallion contained the likeness and hair of Madame de La Fayette, his wife whom he had lost twenty-seven years before. Thus, already separated from the entire world, alone with the thought and image of the devoted companion of his life, he died. When his obsequies were spoken of, it was a recognized fact in the family, that M. de La Fayette wished to be buried in the little cemetery adjoining the convent of Picpus, by the side of Madame de La Fayette, in the midst of the victims of the revolution, for the most part, royalists, and of the aristocracy, whose relations had founded this pious establishment. This wish of the veteran of 1789 was scrupulously respected and carried out. An immense crowd, troops, national guards, people of all kinds accompanied the funeral procession through the avenues and streets of Paris. Arrived at the gate of the convent, the crowd was stopped; the interior enclosure could not admit more than two or three hundred persons; the family, the near relations, the principal authorities entered alone, walked silently through the convent into the modest garden, then penetrated the cemetery. There no political manifestation took place; no discourse was pronounced; religion and the intimate memories of the soul alone were present; politics had no place near the death-bed or the tomb of the man whose life it had filled and governed.

Léon Arbaud.

{795}

Translated From The Revue Du Monde Catholique.

Flaminia.

By Alexandre De Bar.

"So you really believe that the soul lives for ever?" said the Baron Frederic.

"Certainly I do," answered the Count Shrann.

"That is very strange," replied the first speaker, emptying at a single draught a tankard of beer whose size a German could alone look at without trembling.

"And you believe that those whom we have loved in this world we shall again love in the next, and they will remember us even as we shall remember them?"

"Certainly I do!" again replied the count.

"This is yet more strange," observed the baron; and then both of them continued to smoke on in silence. They seemed, indeed, so completely absorbed in the contemplation of the bluish clouds of smoke which they continued to puff forth so regularly into the already misty and thickened atmosphere, that one might reasonably have thought that the discussion would end there; but such was not the case.

Let us profit by this interval to make known to our readers who were the Count Shrann and the Baron Frederic. They were two old fellow-soldiers, of whom the recollection yet remains in the minds of those who knew them, as being the most perfect type of that warm and devoted friendship which is less rare than one thinks or than one will admit. They were two brave Germans, who had courageously held their places during the wars in the commencement of this century. They had fought side by side with all the ardor of their youth and patriotism, and had on many occasions saved each other's lives by their bravery. This community of dangers and obligations had yet further strengthened the links of a friendship commenced in their childhood; so that when the peace of 1815 gave to Europe, wearied out by war, a time of rest, our two friends placed their experience and capabilities at the service of their country, as they had already offered the tribute of their blood and courage, each taking on himself the tie and responsibility of married life. Both married on the same day the two daughters of a neighbor whom the war had ruined; and if their brides were little endowed with worldly possessions, at least they were rich in virtues, and that is a wealth which equals the former, although it be much less sought after, and, we may even add, more difficult to find.

Unfortunately these marriages so alike in happiness were far less so in their duration; for at the end of two years Gertrude, the wife of the Baron Frederic, died, leaving in the heart and life of her husband a void which nothing could fill. Many were the efforts made to console the poor baron, many were the mothers who lavished on him their sweetest smiles; many were the maidens who directed on him their chaste regards, and who pictured to themselves a brilliant future in which his name and fortune held a prominent place; but all was useless, for the baron remained quite insensible to these efforts and designs. {796} His friend, and even his sister-in-law, counselled him to seek in a new marriage that close and loving friendship which he was so well adapted to appreciate; but at length, seeing him so obstinately faithful to the memory of Gertrude, they feared to afflict him, and so ceased to press him on the subject, trusting all to time, which, nevertheless, rolled on without bringing any change to the baron's regrets and resolutions. His was one of those strongly organized minds where the impressions, lively as they are lasting, resist the stronger that they are unaccompanied by outward efforts. Hence was it that the baron supported, without giving way an instant, the blow which had struck him, and yet the wound in his heart remained as sensitive and as painful as on that day when with his own hands he placed his well-beloved Gertrude in her shroud. Old age came on, bringing with it its longing for rest, and then the two friends quitted their public life as they had entered it, side by side. The baron went to live with his brother, for thus he designated his friend; and only once every year left his castle to visit his own property and tenants, toward whom he showed a kindness without limit. Some of these tenants abused that kindness, and paid their rent year after year, with tears, excuses, and complaints, the worthy baron leaving them unmolested; and when his steward spoke to him of sending off the estate these families, he replied: "Better that this should happen to me, who have patience with them, than send them away to those who probably would have none." No sooner was he returned to the castle than he forgot all these things, and recommenced spoiling and fondling his nephews and nieces, of whom he had no small number; for the Count Shrann was a descendant of those ancient families who seemed to have presented the prolific virtue of the golden age; nor did the number of his nephews and nieces give any anxious thoughts to the baron, since often would he say to his friend:

"Why torment yourself so much about the future of your children? You will always have enough to settle them all in life; and besides, I myself, who have but cousins in I do not know what remote degree of affinity, I find it but just that these my nephews should inherit my property before them."

And then the count became silent, for he found the baron's answer quite natural, and such as he himself should have made, had their positions been reversed. Between these two men, so closely united by affection and so similar in heart and understanding, there was but one subject on which their point of view was diametrically opposed, and that was the one with which they were engaged at the opening of this chapter. Count Shrann, who had been brought up by a loving and pious mother, was a Catholic both in heart and soul; whilst the Baron Frederic had, on the contrary, lost both his parents at a very early age, and had been brought up by his uncle, who boasted of being the friend and the protector of the Encyclopedists; so that Frederic had been educated in that cold and barren school of materialism which Voltaire has the doubtful honor of having founded. Baron Frederic believed in nothing spiritual, a circumstance which caused great chagrin to his friend, whence it happened that on this, as on so many former occasions, the two friends, after the dinner-hour, had passed long hours in smoking and drinking huge tankards of beer, whilst making the same questions and the same answers on this, the one great subject of their difference in opinion and faith.

{797}

"So you believe that the soul lives for ever?" said the baron.

"Certainly I do," replied the count.

"It is very strange," answered the baron; and then both recommenced to smoke yet more vigorously than before. After a lapse of time during which two less serious men would have discussed three or four such subjects of conversation, the count recommenced: "What do you see so strange in my remark?"

"It is to see a mind such as yours give way to similar ideas and tales fit only, to say the best of it, to frighten children with."

"I, for my part, am yet more astonished to see a man so logical as yourself refuse to believe it; and how dare you treat as springing from weakness of mind that belief which you cannot deny fortifies the soul and places it above the blows of adversity?"

"The soul, the soul," replied the baron, "what is the soul? A name without a substance, and I do not know what of indefinable and vague. A something that we can neither see nor touch, and which eludes both the senses and the understanding. I, for my part, believe in nothing but that which I can see or touch."

"I would remind you, my dear friend, that there are a crowd of things in which you believe, without ever having seen them."

"It is because science explains those things, and I believe in her."

"Science! why, you are too clever not to admit of her inability to give you a full explanation of any one thing. Science proves that the fact exists, but she does not explain the first cause of its existence. She discovers the eternal laws which rule the universe, and it is by that means that she conducts the unprejudiced spirit from the discovery of things created to the knowledge of the Creator of all things; but the first causes of these same laws are utterly unknown to her."

"And what tells you that she will not yet discover them?"

"Never! For if the human understanding is immense, yet it is not infinite. We have seen many discoveries and marvels; our great-grandchildren will witness yet many more; but these will not be produced in any more developed sense than that which I just now indicated to you. The first causes will ever rest unknown to them as for us."

"But where are the proofs which prove the existence of the soul, and render it palpable to the eyes of the understanding?"

"The eyes of the heart, do they not equal those of the understanding?" quickly answered the count. "What! You feel within yourself a soul which thinks and which loves, which possesses in itself a longing for happiness, a thirst for truth, so utterly beyond the happiness and the truths of this world that it can only be a _souvenir_ or a revelation, from on high, of something purer and more perfect; you love the good and you spurn the evil, even to self-sacrifice; nay, more, you prefer death to the evil; you hear in the depths of your heart that powerful voice which cries to all humanity that the soul cannot die; and yet you ask for a proof of the existence of this soul, and of its immortality! Death is visible to us on every side. He menaces us; he presses upon us; all that is above, beneath, on each side of us, is dead or dying. {798} Man alone drives back before him that supreme law of final decay and oblivion; he whose life is comparatively much shorter than that of all other existences in this world, he alone hopes for an eternity which has no type here below, and which he could not even have conceived in himself, had it not been revealed to him. Surrounded by errors, he dreams the truth; wretched in this life, he dreams of a happiness without alloy; mortal, he dreams of immortality. Is not all this an infallible proof of his future destiny? God, who created man, would not he be both cruel and unjust had he given him all these profound aspirations toward a future state of happiness, only to plunge him finally in the abyss of eternal death? That secret voice speaks to you also, my friend; it resounds in the silence of your heart, and offers to you, as it does to others, its consoling hopes. Why do you not listen to it? When you saw before you, pale and discolored, destined to an inexorable decay, the body of her whom you so much loved; when the mouth that had so lately spoken to you, closed for ever; when those eyes, in which you had ever read their tenderness, became fixed, dull, and without expression; when that hand, which had but a moment before sought yours to press it for a last time, fell for ever powerless, equally insensible to the kisses with which you covered it, and to your tears, which rained on it--" Here the baron, without trying to hide his emotion, dried, with the back of his hand, the tears that this recollection of his beloved Gertrude caused him. The count continued: "That mouth, those eyes, that hand, they are the same; but where is the soul which animated them? Did you not then hear that interior voice which called with yet greater force, Thou shalt see her again? That body which the earth will hide to-morrow is but the form, and not the essence--the outward shape, but not the living spirit. A soul which you loved, and which rendered to thee an equal affection, animated that form, and rendered it palpable to your senses; that soul has fled, and the body falls back lifeless. The outward form rests here motionless and insensible, but the soul has remounted toward that celestial country where it shall await your coming, ready again to love you with an affection which shall have to suffer no second separation. And this is so true, my friend, that even whilst you deny this consciousness that the soul has of its future life and of its existence, you yourself obey that feeling; for you are faithful, not to the simple memory of Gertrude, but to Gertrude whom you feel to be still living, though far distant from you, and you desire to be able to say to her, when the moment of your meeting shall come: 'Thou seest that no other love has ever been mingled with thine in my heart; my own beloved one, thou didst wait for me, and I am come as full of thy recollection and of thy love as on that day when thou didst leave me.'"

Whilst the count was thus speaking, the baron had literally hidden himself in clouds of smoke, out of which came forth, by and by, a voice, trembling and changed by deep emotion, which answered:

"Ah! that I could believe as you do! In taking away from men these consoling thoughts, the materialists cried loudly that they were but working for the happiness of humanity yet wrapped in the shades of superstition; whilst, in truth, they were but plunging it into a gulf yet more profound and more implacable; for there is no real happiness possible where there exists a constant fear of losing that happiness. {799} I know very well that the error was much more pleasant than the truth, and that in place of the hope, perhaps false, but certainly full of consolation, to re-find our friends one day, they have left us but the terrible certainty of having for ever lost them, and that they leave us with the heavy burden of misery which is crushing human nature, after having broken the very support that aided man to bear its weight. Now that the evil is done, how remedy it? And if I do not believe, what must I do that I may believe?"

"Acknowledge humbly our utter helplessness; humble the pride of an imperfect reason, which is irritated by the thought that there is something above it; listen to our conscience which speaks within us; and then, meekly kneeling down before the God who has created the universe, repeat to him, with simplicity and faith, these words of the blind man in the gospel, who cried, 'Lord, that I may receive my sight!' God is not deaf to persevering prayer. Pray, therefore, and you shall see likewise."

"Certainly," said the baron, "if I saw, I should at once believe; but who ever saw a soul?"

"My great-grandfather did," answered the count.

"You are joking."

"Not at all. Adolphus Shrann, my great-grandfather, saw not only one soul, but even two!"

"He was dreaming, then."

"No, for he knew what he was going to see, and that thought alone was sufficient to keep him awake."

"Ah! then in that case somebody made a jest of him, and by some optical delusion caused him to believe that he had seen a veritable supernatural vision."

"No, I assure you it was not so," replied the count. "I am determined to relate the history to you in full, this evening; and," added he, with a voice changed by the ardent friendship that he felt for the baron, "I should esteem myself really happy if its recital could cause you to kneel down side by side with me before the altar of that God whom you are so worthy to know. It is but there that we are separated, and did you know all that my true friendship suffers in the thought that, after living these long years together, and after having shared all the trials and the pains of this life until our old age, notwithstanding this, I should yet be alone when the hour comes to receive the recompense. Ah! my dear Frederic, that single thought would suffice to empoison the joys of paradise."

Here the two friends warmly shook hands, and after having again replenished their tankards and their pipes, the count commenced the story that you are going to hear.

"You know," said the count, "that the Shrann family has always been cited as one of the most fruitful in all Germany."

"And you! you certainly have not derogated from the example of your ancestors," said the baron.

"Neither had the Count Franz, the same who was raised from the rank of baron to that of count by Ferdinand III., in 1645, since he was the father of fifteen children, eight boys and seven girls; and of these lads Adolphus, the seventh son, was the only one who remained to perpetuate the name and race, for the others gave their lives to defend their country and the empire. But if this numerous offspring was an honor to the family, it was also a great cause of anxiety to the count; it being a fact that though a numerous family be a source of fortune to a poor farmer, such is not the case with a poor nobleman; and it was no slight task to place advantageously all these children, so that they might worthily bear and uphold their family name. {800} Count Franz made, therefore, the most active endeavors to marry his daughters and to establish his sons; and he succeeded as well as he had hoped, since only one son remained at home, and that was Albert, the youngest child; nor did the future of this the last scion of his race much disturb the count, destined as he was, by him, from his very youth, to enter the church. But divine Providence often smiles at and overthrows our wisest calculations, and this is what occurred in Albert's case; for, notwithstanding the serious tendency given to his education, it was found that of the eight sons of the count this, the youngest, showed the greatest courage and taste for war. This martial spirit was the great despair of his tutor; for the lad left on the smallest pretext his studies and his books to play with an old rusty sword that he had found in one of the lumber-rooms of the castle, and with this he amused himself for hours, fencing against his desk or stool, and shouting all the war cries and songs that he had heard or read. When the vexed tutor complained of his pupil's conduct to the count, and of his little attention to his more serious studies, joined to his openly expressed contempt for them, the count answered, 'Bah! never mind; time will change all this, and you know that it is only natural that he should have imbibed a little of the family taste for war.' The seventh son, Adolphus, likewise distinguished himself by his recklessness of danger and by his great courage. This conformity of tastes, yet more than the similarity of their ages, had closely united these the two youngest brothers together; so that when the day came that the younger saw the elder leave home as a lieutenant in the army, to engage in that life of adventure and danger of which they had so often talked together, he was seized with a yet stronger repugnance to the future destined for him. The prospect of spending his days in the retirement of the cloister, instead of sharing with his brother the glorious achievements of a soldier's life, inspired him with not only a strong distaste for this future, but even with an aversion to all that then surrounded him. Albert fell into a great despair and lethargy; no longer did his tutor dread that rusty sword with which Albert had been wont to frighten him; not that his studies progressed any better for that; for although he read with pleasure the Iliad and the AEneid, he shrunk back with distaste from the study of theology, and when any observations were made to him on the subject, alleged that 'he should always know enough to cause him to die from _ennui_.' Not that the sentiment of religious feeling was dead within him, far from that; he was, on the contrary, animated with the liveliest and most sincere faith; nor was it that he felt an invincible repugnance to the obligations of the priesthood, for he was generous, sober, charitable, and patient, and therefore esteemed slightly the sacrifices that the ecclesiastical state requires. What he disliked and dreaded above all was a life of uniformity and of repose, such as seemed to him the life of a priest. This antipathy to the future for which he was destined grew from day to day, when, unable at last to fight any longer against his inclinations, he armed himself with all his resolution, and respectfully represented to his father his invincible dislike to becoming a priest, and asked of him the favor of being allowed to become a soldier. {801} Great was the discomfiture of the count on hearing this demand. What was he to do? he who had made all his arrangements in order that Albert might become a bishop; and here was this son who in place of bearing the mitre and pastoral staff, desired nothing less than to wield the sword and don the coat of mail.

"'It is very perplexing,' at last answered the count, after having scratched his ear several times; 'this idea of yours completely upsets all my plans; but rather than see you become a bad priest it shall be as you desire. Although,' again added he with a heavy sigh, 'it is very perplexing.'

"Albert, after having again explained to his father all the reasons for his repugnance to the life of a priest, continued, 'You see, my dear father, that it is not a taste for the pleasures of the world that drives me from the priesthood; it is only my dislike to the monotony of such a life that hinders me from embracing it. My vocation leads me to follow a career of danger and of change, and not one of ease and uniformity. But I think that there is a means of conciliating the ideas that your tenderness had suggested for me and my own tastes.'

"'I desire nothing better than that,' answered the count with visible chagrin, 'but how to do so, that is the question. I wish you to become a bishop, and you desire to become a captain; now, we are no longer in the days when bishops wore a suit of mail inside their robes.'

"'That is true, dear father; but you could place me in a position to become one day a knight-commander,' (here the count lifted up his head with an air of satisfaction.) 'The order of St. John of Jerusalem,' continued Albert, 'is a glorious order, assimilating to the church by its vows and its constitutions, and to the army by its obligations and labors. The Turks are now menacing Christendom; what more glorious use can one make of one's sword than to defend one's brothers in Jesus Christ, and to oppose one's self against the barbarity of the Mussulman, who already regards Europe as a wild beast does his prey? What more glorious destiny than to consecrate one's courage and one's life to force back even to the very sands of Asia those hordes of infidels whose domination, similar to a pestilential atmosphere, has brought ruin and death upon the fertile countries where it extends?

"'If, then, as I hope, you will consent to my desires, I shall find in that career the occasion to place in a yet higher rank the glorious name that you have given me; and thus both my ancestors and yourself shall have reason to be proud of their descendant."

"My worthy ancestor, on hearing this proposition, felt a similar satisfaction to that which a man would feel who, after being shut up in a chest during some hours, could at last stretch his limbs out again in liberty. Therefore was it that he seized eagerly a proposition which drew him out of a great difficulty; for between ourselves, be it said, the worthy man was more accustomed to fighting than to solving difficult questions. It was easy for the count to prove the sixteen quarters of nobility which the rules of the order required for the admission of Germans; moreover, he had several friends in the order whose influence he made use of; nothing, therefore, opposed itself to the realization of Albert's desires; and, in consequence, a few weeks after the above related conversation, he left Germany, and became page to Nicholas Coroner, then Grand Master of the order, and Governor of Malta. {802} In this position he did not fail to make himself very soon remarked by his dauntless courage and impetuous audacity. The requisite occasions did not fail him; each day the galleys of the order darted from their ports, as the eagle from his eyrie, and, powerful as the eagle, seized on some one of the innumerable Turkish pirates which were then ravaging the coasts of the Mediterranean, burning villages, and carrying off their wretched inhabitants to reduce them into a painful and degrading slavery. In this manner the order rendered the most important services to Europe, whilst the most adventurous spirit in it found means, in this incessant warfare, to satisfy his thirst for danger. Albert, ardent and indefatigable, scorning danger and braving Death, who seemed to shrink back before so much bravery and audacity, fought so often and so well, that scarcely was the time of his novitiate finished, than, by the general consent of his companions in arms, and the approbation of the grand master, he was created knight. In truth, it was impossible to show more valor and self-diffidence. This latter quality shows forth the more, that it was not an ordinary virtue in the order. Some years thus rolled on, during which the bravery of Albert had caused him to be known and remarked in all the commanderies of Europe; but the time was come when at length he should appear on a field more worthy of his talents.

"I will not here give you a recital of the events which brought the troops of Mohammed IV. under the walls of Vienna; since, in the first place, you recollect them as well as I do; and in the second place, it is too sad a thought for him who feels within him a soul truly German, to reflect that there was a day when German hearts beat with fear before the standards of Mohammed! At the time when the Hungarians, with a blindness that even their excess of patriotism does not excuse, called into the heart of Europe those born enemies of European civilization, Albert was in Germany. At the first news which reached him of the march of Mustapha on Vienna, he hurried to the commanderies that were nearest to him, and animating the zeal of the knights, united together without great difficulty a few of his companions, with whom he hastened on to that city. They reached Vienna on the very day that Leopold I. left it; and terrible was the consternation then reigning in that town, abandoned by those who ought to have been the first to face the danger and animate the courage of others by their example.

"The brave Count of Staremberg commanded the fortress which he did not dare hope to save, although he was determined to die in its defence. The aid that Albert brought was joyfully accepted by him; for he had but eight or ten thousand men to defend the city against the Turkish army, whose number was three hundred thousand; and besides this, the city was badly provisioned and insufficiently armed. Nevertheless, the defence was organized in the best manner possible; arms were distributed to all the citizens; and even the schoolboys were taught to carry arms, and perform the active service of the defence of the walls; whilst the entire population determined to suffer famine, and all the other horrors of a prolonged siege, rather than yield tamely to the enemy. These preparations made, they awaited the infidels; nor did they wait long; for in a few days after the departure of the emperor, the Turkish army encamped before Vienna, and opened its first trench. {803} Then began in earnest that terrible siege. Albert performed prodigies of valor; now directing a sortie, then driving back an assault, ever in the foremost rank, he, as it were, multiplied himself, going on every side; he foresaw and provided against all emergencies; his courage excited even the most timid, whilst his unchangeable calm reassured their fears. In the midst of all this peril, which seemed endless, he alone seemed at his ease; so much so, that the Count of Staremberg used to say, 'Oh! that I had only one hundred knights like him; for then, in place of resting here blocked up, like a rat in his hole, I would drive back, and follow up these three hundred thousand Turks to the very walls of Constantinople!' During all this time, notwithstanding the pressing demands of the Pope, Innocent IX., and in spite of the necessity which bound the other Christian nations to prevent Vienna's falling into the hands of the infidels, the aid so much needed was but slowly organized. Already had the siege lasted two months, and nothing had yet happened to relieve the despair of the wretched inhabitants, already weakened by famine. There seemed to them no alternative between a cruel and lingering death and a yet more painful slavery. Almost were they reduced to the last extremities. It was quite impossible to obtain provisions, and the ammunition was nearly exhausted, whilst many of the cannon had become useless for service; and yet no voice was heard that spoke of surrender. Soldiers and citizens, alike excited by the example and firmness of the chiefs, supported with courage and resignation all the horrors of a desperate defence. At last the signals and banners of King John Sobieski were seen from the walls as he came to their rescue, leading the combined forces of Europe. It was time! The King of Poland, notwithstanding the immense inferiority of his troops in point of numbers, hesitated not a moment to take the most favorable position for giving battle to the enemy. Mustapha, on his side, divided his troops into two divisions, the one destined to make a last and desperate assault upon the city, and to enter it by main force through the breaches already made in its walls; whilst the second division was to stop the passage of Sobieski, and to hinder him from giving any aid to the besieged. But the impetuosity of the attack of the Christians was such that the battle became but a rout on the side of the Mussulmans, as they fled before their pursuers on every side, and were as soon and as completely dispersed as is a wisp of straw before a hurricane. Vienna free, Europe breathed again, being once more delivered from the immediate fear of the crescent, whilst awaiting the day when the Mussulman should be for ever driven back to the arid sands from whence he came. This heroic defence spread a new lustre upon the arms and reputation of the order. But none of its knights had acquired a similar renown to that of Albert. The name of this young warrior was in every mouth, his souvenir in every heart, and he shared with John Sobieski the enthusiastic ovation made by the Viennese to their deliverers. The loudest acclamations of admiration and gratitude greeted him during the day that he accompanied the King of Poland, who, still covered with the blood of his enemies, went in solemn state to the cathedral of St. Stephen, there to assist at the Te Deum which was sung in thanksgiving to God for this miraculous delivery of the city from the Turks. {804} Mustapha, forced to make such a speedy retreat, had left in the possession of the Christians all his treasures, tents, and baggage. Among the spoil was found the standard of the Prophet. This, it was decided, should be offered to the pope as a gage and as a memorial of the victory, and it was Albert who was chosen to perform this honorable mission. His old father nearly died with joy on learning of the glorious renown of his son; and I leave you to guess if he did not praise himself in his heart for not having resisted the desires of Albert. The old count foresaw in the future his family giving a grand-master to the Order of St. John, and he trembled with happiness in thinking of the honor which would thus result to the Shrann race and name. In fact, one could hardly say where would have stopped the worldly honors of Albert, had not God reserved for him a yet more sweet and glorious recompense for his labors in his service."

At this point of his story, the count took a few minutes' repose, minutes that were fully employed, to judge by the manner in which he emptied the tankard that stood before him; and as the two friends did nothing without each other's aid or example, the baron hastened to imitate his friend; and when his tankard left his lips, there did not remain sufficient in it to satisfy the thirst of a wren. Then, grasping with a firm hand the immense jug of beer which awaited their good pleasure, he filled his own glass and passed the jug on to the count, who, with an equal dignity and silence, took his share. It is true that the baron paid but a slight attention to all these details of a family history that the count so complacently related to him; perhaps he was getting impatient for the appearance of the two souls that had been promised him; but he let no indication of his impatience escape him, and continued to smoke on with great tranquillity, puffing forth clouds of smoke which seemed timed to the cadenced sounds of an old clock that stood beside him, whose sculptured oak case would have delighted the taste of an antiquary. At length the count recommenced: "The Turks appeared to have abandoned their projects upon Germany, but the war yet continued with activity between themselves and the order and the Venetians on the shores of the Mediterranean. Notwithstanding the greatest sacrifices, and the most valiant efforts on the part of the Turks, Candia had fallen into the hands of the order; a new expedition was then resolved upon to lay siege to Coron, and Hector de La Tour de Maubourg, having been chosen as its commander, he made choice of Albert for his lieutenant.

"Upon one of the galleys that the pope had joined to the allied fleets of the Knights of St. John and of the Venetians, the young Giovanni Balbo, only heir to one of the most distinguished names in the republic of Venice, had been sent out by his father. This illustrious family had long been a friend to our house, and, in fact, we counted several alliances between the two families. When, therefore, Giovanni learnt that Albert was in the fleet, he made several attempts to become acquainted with him; and succeeded so well, that in a short time they became the greatest friends in the world.

"On this event, so slight in its appearance, nevertheless depended the destiny of Albert. You must have remarked, my friend, that it is the same with us all. The acts the most important in our lives, those which decide our future, and from which result our happiness or misery in this world, have always as their first commencement, some circumstance which is perfectly indifferent in itself, but the results of which have an influence on our entire destinies.

{805}

"One would say that divine Providence mocked our proud reason, in thus making use of events which at first sight seem so utterly unfitted to arrive at the end which it proposes to itself; and I might even add, that this impenetrable mystery would alone suffice to eyes less wilfully blinded than your own, to prove the existence of an unseen power that is unrestrained by human laws and prejudices. Does God owe to each one of us a miracle? Ought he to suspend for each individual man the eternal laws which govern the universe? Can we not believe in him unless we see the very rivers flow back to their sources? Does he not manifest himself to us at each instant of our lives, on each side of us and in us? Is not the admirable connection of events which exists in this world sufficient to make the certitude of his power and of his incessant action shine forth to the vision of the soul, as shines forth before the eyes of the body the brilliant multitude of planets that have each their appointed path in the wide space of heaven? The siege was terrible, and its success cost to the Order of Malta one and twenty of its bravest knights; Hector de la Tour de Maubourg was among the number of the dead, and Albert, who had flown to his side to protect him, had fallen covered with wounds, which caused his life to be despaired of. His youth, the strength of his constitution, and, above all, the tender care taken of him by his friend Giovanni, finally triumphed over the severity of his wounds, and as soon as he was sufficiently recovered to bear the fatigues of the voyage, Giovanni brought him to Venice to visit his family, who received him with the warmest hospitality. I have told you that Giovanni was the only heir of the Balbo family; this was but partly true, since there were two daughters, Flaminia, who had then attained her eighteenth year, and Antonia, who was but seventeen.

"Nothing could be more unlike than these two sisters, Flaminia and Antonia. Although both were in looks and in character equally charming, Heaven had gifted them with very dissimilar talents and tastes. Nevertheless, this did not impede the existence of an intimate friendship between these two natures so diametrically opposed; and, later in their lives, it proved no hinderance to a complete confidence. It is thanks to this confidence--that arose between them one day by reason of an imperious necessity of mutual aid and sympathy--that I can now describe the more intimate particularities of this history. Antonia, as you may judge from the portrait of her hanging in the room, was one of that sort of beauties that seem to overflow with vigor and life. Her complexion slightly brunette; her eyes of a deep black, ever glistening under her well-arched eye-brows, notwithstanding the depth of her eye-lashes; her mouth ever smiling, with its full and firmly designed lips; her perfectly chiselled nose, whose nostrils dilated at every instant; and, above all, the extreme vivacity of her face, where was portrayed, as in a mirror, every emotion that agitated her, even the most fugitive; all in her appearance indicated one of those vigorous natures that have need of real physical exertion. An over-rich development of physical forces impedes the flight of the imagination. Thus, Antonia was always remarked for the vivacity of her impressions, for the impetuosity of her sentiments, and for the sallies of her quick and brilliant spirit. {806} But that world of reverie, peopled with vague and indefinable forms; that world illumined by a supernatural light, where we catch the glimpses of a happiness unknown here below; that world which is created by the soul and colored by the imagination, was to her quite unknown. Whilst her sister delighted in all this, and listened with her whole heart to those harmonious voices which spoke to her of a coming happiness penetrating and sweet as the joys of heaven, Antonia was bounding like a young fawn among the trees of their garden, or, mounted on a spirited horse, rapidly ascended the paths of the mountains that surrounded the town. The same impetuosity was to be remarked in her sympathies and antipathies; she could not moderate her expression of them, nor did she even seek to impose upon herself a useless constraint on this subject. On the other hand, Flaminia seemed already to bear in her entire appearance the impress of those sorrows that she was destined to suffer. Her look, so sweet and sad even in its smile, was half veiled with her eyelids, and gave to her face an indefinable expression of melancholy. That expression could be again found in her delicately shaped mouth, and even in her movements full of languor and grace. Whilst Antonia, lively and petulant, employed by every outward effort the too abundant forces of her life and youth, Flaminia seemed to place hers in reserve for the terrible moment of need. She concentrated in the depths of her soul all her impressions; nor could she give to herself a reason for so doing. She had the consciousness of her exquisite sensibility, and protected it, under the shield of indifference and affected calm, against all contact that could have wounded it. But under this apparent indolence an attentive eye could have easily recognized the marks of an ardent soul and of a strong nervous organization. A sudden flame would at moments lighten up those glances usually veiled in indifference, the soft and musical voice took an accent of enthusiasm, and her whole expression changed, being animated by the power of an emotion that she no longer restrained, and whose vibrations were the more violent, because her soul, far from pouring itself on all that surrounded her, as did Antonia's, was one of those that at a given hour in life is destined to concentrate all its force on a single thought and on an only affection. Outwardly cold and impassible, her excessive sensibility showed itself by scarcely perceptible signs; but later in life, happy to find at her side a heart filled with similar ideas, all this ice melted. Is there not in us, at the moment when life commences, that is to say, at the epoch when the soul awakes from the long slumber of infancy, a vague presentiment of our future destinies? For the same reason that we have so often seen the bravest soldiers tremble on the morning of a battle, feeling beforehand that death will call them during the day, is there not likewise in us a voice which warns us of the trials that we shall have later in our lives to endure? The birds have a presentiment of the coming storm, even when the atmosphere is yet full of splendor; the very insects that crawl upon the ground foresee in the autumn the rigors of the approaching winter, and envelop their eggs with a double covering of silk; and why should man be less favored than the birds or insects? Why should he be the only creature that is delivered up, as it were, with his hands and feet bound, to the rigors of the future? {807} It is possible that Flaminia obeyed that sentiment of moral modesty that causes us to hide from all eyes our better qualities--those secret riches of our hearts, that we may lavish them without stint upon the hidden object that we have chosen. She knew herself to be incapable of half-loving any object, and she felt that her heart was a fragile instrument; that, if touched by a skilful hand, it would render harmonious sounds, but that it would infallibly break under a rude or awkward touch; and she wished to preserve it from such a fate. None of those surrounding her suspected the power of this instrument; on the contrary, her great outward calmness passed for the evident indication of a certain coldness of heart, whilst the expansive nature of her sister was considered as the sign of an extreme sensibility. Flaminia was much grieved at being thus misunderstood, and very often, in the silence of the night, bitter tears flowed from her eyes; very often the ivory crucifix which hung at the head of her couch, saw opening before it that soul so full of purity and love, that came to seek, at that inexhaustible source, a present consolation and a future strength. Sometimes she fancied that she heard in herself the distant mutterings of the heart's tempest; then she prayed with ardor, almost feverishly, as she listened to the murmur within her of those mysterious voices which warned her of a near peril, and told her to spread around her those riches of affection full of loving ardor, that then devoured her, and that one day would consume her. In these moments of instinctive alarm, she drew herself yet closer to God, hiding herself under the shadow of his protecting hand, ever lifted up over those who with faith invoke it; and then she felt herself reassured. At such moments as these was it that she felt herself to be so completely alone, notwithstanding the parental tenderness that surrounded her, and she suffered by this loneliness. In truth, Flaminia was right--she was alone; for though both the Prince and Princess Balbo cherished their daughter, yet time seemed to have passed on for her alone, and not for them. The child had merged into the young girl; the _naïve_ graces of the infant had given place to the more opened charms of youth, yet they had remarked nothing of all this. They dreamt not even that parental affection ought to be modelled after the child of whom it is the object, and ought to transform itself and grow with that child. They did not understand that the protecting tenderness accorded to the infant who shelters himself under it as does a bird in its nest, becomes insufficient for the heart that time has developed, and that has need of leaning upon sentiments less protecting and more friendly. One of the most dangerous shoals in the difficult task of educating children, is doubtless that of noticing the first moments when the child whom we have held until then under our hand, and caused, as it were, to live of our own life, lays aside the trammels of infancy, and seeks to fly with his own wings. It is then that we ought to know how so to modify our affection that we may inspire that freedom and that confidence in ourselves that will protect this second period of life, as a salutary fear protects the first.

"Now for the development of these sentiments, so fragile and delicate, we must seize the instant when the child commences to become a man, when he first feels awakening in him thoughts and sensations that are his own, and not simply the echo or reflection of our own. {808} It is at that moment, and then only, that we can ever arouse such confidence. If we allow this fleeting and critical period of his existence to escape us, never can we hope to recall it; and however powerful may be his sense of filial affection, the child will never again show us that confidence that we have repulsed; we shall have left his young heart, just awakening to the dawn of life, in an isolation that is always painful, and oftentimes dangerous, since it lends to the already strong voice of the passions the charms of solitude and mystery. Unhappily--and this is almost always through an ill-advised tenderness--we too often close our eyes to this transformation; habit blinds us, and the child escapes from our control. Such had been the case with Flaminia. Her mother was one of the most virtuous and excellent of women; the prince, as I have already told you, adored his children; but both of them, as well as Giovanni, who was fifteen years older than the eldest of his sisters, regarded these two lovely girls but as the two children who so lately had charmed them by their _naïveté_ and grace. This situation, in which the two sisters shared, should have sooner given rise to a confidence equal to their friendship; but besides that their difference of tastes often separated them, no exterior event had yet happened to show them the power of their mutual affection and the community of ideas that ought to be its consequence. Thus Flaminia lived alone and gave herself up without reserve to the sweet charm of vague reverie; she listened with a deep joy to those mysterious aspirations that spoke to her of happiness, nor could she assign any form to these thoughts, that, all uncertain as they were, yet threw her into a delicious trouble. She sought solitude, and spent long hours sitting at the balcony of her window, her forehead leaning on her long white hands, while her eyes filled with tears that had no sorrow as their source, as she regarded the deep and large purple shadows which the setting sun cast on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Although she was unconscious of the meaning of these frequent reveries, and would have been unable to explain the reason of that melancholy, so full of mingled pain and pleasure, into which she loved to plunge herself, yet she hid most carefully from every eye the state of her mind, dreading above all things lest any one should suspect the happiness she felt in yielding to its charm. At the moment when providence was about to bring together Albert and Flaminia, he also found himself in some such a state of mind as that which I have just portrayed. A glorious renown had at first seemed to him the only thing in this world worthy of envy; but that idol so ardently followed had been, little by little, despoiled of its brilliant _prestige_; the nearer he approached it, the more faint and dim became the aureole of splendor with which he had believed it surrounded; and when he at last saw himself in full possession of his desire, when the renown of his name had resounded to the most distant commanderies of his order, which regarded him as its firmest support and most assured hope; then he saw with affright that a glorious name is insufficient in itself, and that it must be regarded in a Christian life, or at least in connection with some one who is dear to us, and whose heart would rejoice and sympathize with our glory. When Albert at last understood the truth, he felt himself sad and unhappy; for be looked vainly around him--he was alone! {809} An immense void then made itself felt in his soul--a void that even his glory was unable to hide from him, and which friendship was powerless to fill. Like Flaminia, he felt himself isolated on the earth; but while her solitude was sweetened by a hope as vague as her thoughts and desires, that of Albert was a bottomless abyss, full of discouragement and despair.

"The profound darkness of night then fell upon his soul, an obscurity similar to those sombre and cold nights in winter, when the eye sees not a single star piercing the sky covered with clouds; and when the sad heart hears but the moans of the wind that bends the tops of the bare trees as it passes over them, mingled with the boding cry of the birds of prey which slowly wheel around in the thick and misty atmosphere. A lassitude had fallen on him similar to that which a traveller feels at the sight of a straight and monotonous road which extends as far as the eye can reach in a dry and burning plain. Seeing nothing around him that seemed worthy either a desire or an effort, he allowed himself to be carried slowly on by time toward the common end; nor did he hasten that course by his vows; for even whilst he firmly believed in the joys of eternity, he felt not his soul drawn toward them. If he had run forward to meet death, it was through his natural intrepidity; for he felt in its presence but the same desolating indifference that he had shown at the moment of his recovery to life. Such were the secret sentiments of Albert and Flaminia when their mutual destiny placed them for the first time in presence of each other in the ancient _salon_ of the Palace Balbo. We are both of us, my dear Frederic, so far distant from the time when our hearts first experienced these impressions of affection, that there now remains to us but a very slight recollection."

"You are deceived," interrupted the baron; "from the day when for the first time I saw my poor Gertrude, until that when I placed her in her tomb, I have forgotten nothing of all that has passed between us. There is not an hour of that much-regretted time which is not present in my memory; not an incident, however slight it may have been, that I cannot recall in even its slightest details!"

"You can the more easily understand, then," continued the count, "how it was that these two souls united themselves so closely the one to the other, that there soon existed between them but a single life, a single taste, and a single thought; and how it was that they both preserved, even until their very last moment, the most absolute certainty of their mutual affection, without ever having interchanged a single word on the subject. Scarcely had they been but a few days together, when already Albert had penetrated into all the thoughts of Flaminia. He read in her heart as in an open book; he divined all its secrets; that soul which to all others was closed, he saw opening, and breathed all its perfumes< foresaw all its destinies! Was it, then, in a few commonplace conversations that he had gained so complete an insight into that heart habitually closed? No; he had not judged Flaminia by any acquaintance that he had gained of her character by her words or actions; he had only looked upon her, and instantly, by intuition, he had understood her; and this was so true, that there were moments when it might have been said that he saw her think. On her side, Flaminia saw the soul of Albert by that same light which I should call supernatural, did I not consider it as one of the eternal laws instituted by the Creator. {810} She knew him to be loyal and generous, and she saw his unchangeable goodness and patience; not because he had had any occasion of showing them before her, but because a lively and penetrating light thus showed him to her. All that Albert felt found in her an echo; the mirror does not more faithfully produce the image than did her soul his slightest sensations. By his side she felt happy, because she felt herself understood and loved. A new existence then opened for her; movement and activity succeeded to her vague reveries and habitual indolence; new horizons showed themselves each day to her soul. Nature became more beautiful, the flowers more sweet, the sun more brilliant; it seemed to her that her eyes had been shut until then, and that they now opened for the first time. At the same time that a new affection acquired over her soul a stronger influence than her affection for her family had yet exercised on her, even these became more lively and more complete. Nevertheless, it was no longer at that source whence she had so long drawn her sensations and ideas that she now went to seek them: all came to her from Albert, or had reference to him. She saw by his eyes and thought by his ideas; her tastes, her desires, were nothing else than the tastes and desires of Albert. Were he present, she seemed to live with delight; in his absence it seemed to her that her life lost its intensity, and all became sad and indifferent to her; he was the soul that gave life to all. In a word, he had become a part of herself, an indispensable condition for the perfection of her being and existence. I have no need to tell you that she did not render to herself so exact an account of the state of her soul as that which I have just sketched to you. She had, in truth, the consciousness of the change that was taking place in her, but the reasons of this change remained enveloped in a profound obscurity that her spirit could not penetrate; she obeyed her feelings of tenderness without being able to analyze them. And yet the more she felt that Albert alone filled her heart and thought, the more she instinctively enveloped herself exteriorly, with regard to him, in her mantle of ordinary indifference. But when hazard left her alone with Albert, then a sudden transformation took place in her. All that indifference melted away, as do the last snows of springtime under the heat of the sun. She delivered herself up unrestrainedly to the generous enthusiasm of her loving nature, her expression became more gentle, her voice more tender, and her heart beat faster in her bosom, which rose and fell agitated by an emotion so delicious and powerful that it resembled even grief; for in our weak nature, joy and suffering have a very near resemblance."

Concluded In Next Number.

{811}

John Sterling.

Whatever importance may attach to the life and writings of John Sterling, is due to the fact of his having been a representative man. Without being supremely original, without anything wonderful in his career, he has been made the subject of a memoir by two eminent men, Archdeacon Hare and Thomas Carlyle. The one represents Anglican belief, which is partial infidelity, and the other nineteenth-century belief, which is infidelity, pure and simple; and both the one and the other have drawn the portrait of their friend and hero in colors of their own mind. Archdeacon Hare has traced with regret the lapse of Sterling into unbelief, while Carlyle has seen in that very lapse a rise into transcendental faith of the highest order. Neither of them has neglected, but, on the contrary, both keenly appreciated Sterling's literary labors and merits; and both would concur in pointing him out as a type of that new creation of thinkers and supposed philosophers in whom doubt and trust are ever contending for the mastery--who are ever seeking, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth--a mongrel breed, sprung from an unnatural union between scepticism and Christianity.

John Sterling was born at Kaimes Castle, in the Isle of Bute, on the 20th of July, 1806. His father rented a small farm attached to the Castle, and the first four years of Johnny's life were spent on a wild-wooded, rocky coast, among headlands, storms, and thundering breakers. Nature gave him a good schooling; for, when he left the Isle of Bute, it was for the well-grassed, many-brooked village of Llanblethian, in the Vale of Glamorgan. Five years more passed in that pleasant spot, and time never effaced the lovely images it imprinted on Sterling's mind. Every line and hue, he said, were more deeply and accurately fixed in his memory than those of any scene he had since beheld. Beautifully and with deep feeling did he retrace the impressions they made on his childish fancy, in an article written in the _Literary Chronicle_ in his twenty-second year. He had not seen the spot since he was eight years old, yet he described the old ruin of St. Quentin's Castle, the orchard of his home, the school where he used to read the well-thumbed _History of Greece_ by Oliver Goldsmith, and the garden-sports of himself and his playmates, with as much distinctness as if they had been _souvenirs_ of the previous spring. Very precious are such recollections, for one personal experience is worth a hundred facts learnt from books.

When Napoleon returned from Elba, in 1815, little Sterling was in the midst of French school-boys, at Passy, shouting, _Vive l'Empereur_. His father had become a writer in the _Times_, under the name of _Vetus_, and was in hopes of being appointed one of its foreign correspondents. The Hundred Days which convulsed Europe drove the Sterlings from France; and fortune, who tries literary aspirants with her ficklest moods, shifted the father from Russell Square and Queen Square, to Blackfriars Road and the Grove, at Blackheath. At last he rode at anchor, and was permanently connected with the _Times_. {812} John was sent to Dr. Burney's school, at Greenwich, and afterward came under the tuition of Dr. Waite, at Blackheath, and of Dr. Trollope, the master of Christ's Hospital. He was twelve years old when his younger brother, Edward, died. It was an early age to become familiar with death. John felt the loss as if he had been a Catholic. God or nature, one knows not which, taught him the communion of saints. "Edward is near me now," he used to say to himself. "Edward is watching me. He knows what I am doing and thinking. He is sad for my faults. I must, I will strive to do what he would approve." Very active was his mind at this period. His keen eye observed everything; his soul was winged. He read the entire _Edinburgh Review_ through, from the beginning, and cart-loads of books from circulating libraries, "wading," as Carlyle says, "like Ulysses toward his palace, through infinite dung." No advantages of education were denied him. At the University of Glasgow he was tutored by Mr. Jacobson, since Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford and Bishop of Chester; and in 1824, when he was in his nineteenth year, he removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, where another man of eminence, Julius, afterward Archdeacon Hare, became his tutor and his lasting friend. He was in all respects worthy of such friendship. A youth who, with a delicate frame, could stand waist-deep in the river, to aid in passing buckets to and fro, when the buildings of King's Court were on fire, must have had a singular disregard of self, and readiness for all moral enterprise. "Somebody must be in it," he said, when his tutor remonstrated with him. "Why not I, as well as another?" Friendships were the best gift Sterling received from Cambridge. The classical knowledge he acquired there was not very exact, nor did he submit to any strict discipline. In the Union he was "the master-bowman," and out of such comrades as Charles Buller, Richard Milnes, John Kemble, Richard Trench, and Frederic Maurice, he made of the two last dear and intimate friends. He and Frederic Maurice, indeed, married two sisters; and to him and Coleridge he owed chiefly the formation of his opinions and character. The latter was at that time beginning to found a school of thought, and the former, Frederic Maurice, is now, and has long been, a recognized leader of the Broad Church party, in the Anglican communion.

If ever there was a moonstruck prophet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one. As a poet, he was a star; as a divine, an _ignis fatuus_. He subjected faith to reason, coquetted with infidelity, embraced Germanism, and discoursed by the hour on the church and the _Logos_ in language all musical and shining, but conveying no meaning whatever to any one of his hearers. [Footnote 228]

[Footnote 228: Carlyle's _Life of Sterling_, p. 73.]

Your reason (_Vernunft_) bound you to accept a multitude of facts and principles which your understanding (_Verstand_) rejected. With a good understanding only you might be an unbeliever, but reason would exalt you into a Christian. Everything depended on this distinction, and if you could not comprehend it, (which nobody could,) so much the worse for you. Yet English society was fast being ensnared by such theosophic nonsense and hazy "Kantean transcendentalism." The clear dogmas of traditional faith and the simplicity of Scripture, likewise, were being observed in a cloud of jargon. {813} Dr. Pusey in his youth was sliding into German subtleties; Isaac Taylor was watering Christianity down into human philosophy; Dr. Arnold was pleading for an Erastian church comprising all sects and denominations; Dr. Hampden's terminology was effacing the time-hallowed language of the schools; Coleridge, with his drunken imagination, and Milman, with his rationalistic solution of Scripture miracles, were paving the way for Strauss and Renan; and if it had not been for the Oxford revival of primitive tradition and patristic lore, the English mind would have wandered away into the bleak desert of infidelity without one oasis--one guiding path by which to return to the fresh pasture of truth and peace.

Sterling, unfortunately, was not brought under this happier influence. The seed sown in him by Coleridge and his compeers produced, as we shall see, its natural fruit, and made him a forerunner of that worship of humanity which is now to so large an extent superseding the worship of Christ. After spending a year in Trinity College, Cambridge, he migrated to Trinity Hall, and in 1827, quitted the university altogether. He had to seek a profession, and knew not what to choose. He tried a private secretaryship, and ended, of course, with literature--the profession of all clever men who have none. For that, and especially for periodical literature, he was best fitted, for his thoughts were quick and brilliant, "beautifullest sheet-lightning not to be condensed into thunderbolts," deriving their momentum from swift strokes, not from metallic weight.

The copyright of the _Athenaeum_ being for sale, Sterling and his gifted friends thought it would make a fine opening for them. He wrote much in it in the years 1828 and 1829, together with Maurice, who was editor. His "_Shades of the Dead_," "Alexander the Great," "Joan of Arc," "Wycliffe," "Columbus," "Gustavus Adolphus," "Milton," and "Burns," are full of thought, color, and enthusiasm, but they produce a saddening effect. They are "a beautiful mirage in the dry wilderness; but you cannot quench your thirst there!" Sterling knew not the stand-point from which alone the characters of past times can be duly appreciated. He describes Joan of Arc as "perhaps the most wonderful, exquisite, and complete personage in all the history of the world," yet he maintains that "her persuasion of the outward appearance of divine agency was caused by a _diseased_ excitability of the fancy." As if to hear a voice from heaven "to assist her in governing herself," to see an angel, and receive visits from the departed, implied of necessity a diseased imagination! He sees in Wycliffe a Gospel hero almost as full of "immortal wisdom" as Coleridge, his "Christian Plato," He couples him with Erigena, who "questioned transubstantiation--the master-sorcery," and Berengarius, who "opposed the same monstrous doctrine." But he tells us in praise of these new lights, what may well be regarded as dispraise, that "they encouraged themselves to cast away the belief of all that Luther afterward rejected by the simple study of the Bible, _unaided by general knowledge, and without the guidance of sufficient interpreters_." Such is the fatal admission of one of whom his friend and biographer, Archdeacon Hare, writes that "the most striking and precious quality in his writings is the deep sympathy _with the errors and faults, and even with the sins, of mankind_." Here, then, is another admission--an admission, not of the disciple, but of the master, that while Sterling combated that Catholic religion which is from first to last the worship of Christ, he was already exhibiting the most decided symptom of Positivism, or the worship of Humanity. {814} He dwells, again, with delight on the goodness and greatness of Columbus; he assures us that he was a diligent student of the Bible, had a childlike simplicity of faith in the truths of religion; was, in his own belief, the chosen minister of providence, watched over by saints and angels, pointed in his path across the waters by the mother of the Lord, and holding in his hand the cross as the only ensign of triumph; and yet, with strange perversity, he comes to the conclusion that the mind of this fearless discoverer was "in many respects dark and weak," and that his faith, though nobler than that of the multitude around him, was "not the purest Christianity." Sterling himself, in short, held a purer creed, (if he could only have defined it,) and we shall see presently to what it led.

When his mind first came into Coleridge's plastic hands, it was simply chaotic as regards religion. Instructed by the oracle of Highgate, he engrafted a belief in Christianity, such as it was, on his original "piety of heart," (as Carlyle calls it,) and his "religion, which was as good as altogether ethnic." In this new phase of mental hallucination, his sceptical zeal against what he deemed superstition abated, and his radicalism, toning down, lost some of its wildest features. In this frame he wrote and published a novel called _Arthur Coningsby_. It was then his only book, and it brought him little satisfaction. The babe was still-born, and had it lived, the father, as it seems, would have had little love for his own offspring. Coleridge's moonshine glittered on his pages, but its outlooks into futurity were confused and sad. It was "gilded vacuity," opulent misery. The hero is himself--a youth plunging into life without any fixed principle to guide him; full of democratic, utilitarian, and heathenish theories; he suffers shipwreck--the shipwreck of the mind; and then by the hand of some semi-Christian quack, like dreamy Coleridge, is guided into a port which is no harbor, and a church where there is no anchorage. Such was _Arthur Coningsby_. But to Carlyle Sterling never mentioned the name of the novel, nor would hear it spoken of in his presence.

During the years in which it was planned, written, and published, from 1829 to 1832, Sterling wooed and won Susannah Barton, a kindly and true-hearted wife, to share his pleasures and trials; made an intimate friend of General Torrijos, a Spanish exile; and was silly enough to aid him and a little band of democrats (including an Irishman named Boyd, who had more money than wits) to purchase a ship in the Thames, arms and stores, for the purpose of invading Spain and proclaiming a republic! Sterling himself was to have taken part in the mad expedition; but Cupid, as usual, was stronger than Mars; and Susannah, who was not yet Mrs. Sterling, prevailed on her lover to lay his armor aside. Of course, the Spanish envoy got tidings of the plot; and the ship, with its crew and cargo, was seized in the king's name when dropping down the river. Coleridge's moonshine, it seems, was not strong enough yet to dispel the dark frowns of democracy.

In 1830, the marriage contract was sealed; but alas! in this fallen world the glad moment of our realized hopes is almost always dashed with some strange and unexpected sorrow. Sterling's health failed, and his lungs, menaced by consumption, asked for a warmer climate. {815} The year 1831 found him in the island of St. Vincent in the midst of tropic vegetation, tornadoes, and slaves as yet unworthy of freedom. One hurricane, fiercer than its fellows, stripped the roof from the house where Sterling lived, and whirled about the cottages of the negroes as if they had been chaff. Meanwhile, in December, 1831, Torrijos, the deluded democrat general, reaches Spain, runs ashore at Fuengirola with fifty-five desperadoes like himself, seizes a farm, barricades it, is surrounded, surrenders, is haled with his comrades to Malaga, and with them all, the rich Irishman included, is swiftly fusiladed. "I hear the sound of that musketry," wrote Sterling; "it is as if the bullets were tearing my own brain." No wonder, for to his brain the folly of a wild enterprise was mainly due.

Repentance came; religion was his study; and prayer, earnest prayer for guidance, arose from his lips as he sat under the dates and palms, and gazed on the mirror of summer seas. Such prayer had been answered more fully if teachers such as Coleridge, with his gift of words, and Edward Irving, with his gift of tongues, had not already imbued him with a multitude of truths which were half untruths, and untruths which were half truths. He believed himself to be "in possession of the blessings of Christ's redemption;" and though he scarcely as yet knew the elements of Christianity, he began to think of teaching it. It is always the way with pious Protestant youths. They have vocations to preach before they are schooled; and what ought to be taken for presumption is hailed by their friends as the most signal proof of grace. So Sterling, wearied of West India life, formed a vague scheme of anti-slavery philanthropy, and turned his face toward Europe and his thoughts toward the ministry of the Established Church.

It was in June, 1833, and on the banks of the Rhine, that the unripe aspirant for holy orders met his old friend and tutor, the Rev. Julius Hare. That worthy gentleman encouraged a desire he should rather have checked, and Sterling was not long in arriving at a determination to become Mr. Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux in Sussex, and wear, at least, the surplice and stole, though he had no hood or academical degree to adorn himself withal. So on Trinity Sunday of the following year, he came out of Chichester Cathedral a raw deacon, and established himself with his family in a modest mansion in a quiet, leafy lane of Hurstmonceaux. Very diligent was Sterling in his pastoral duties; but the fervor of his zeal soon cooled. In September he began to have misgivings, and in February following he had quitted the path he had prematurely chosen. The reason assigned was loss of health; but Carlyle guessed shrewdly, and with too much truth, that Sterling was disappointed even to despair by the church whose garment he had spasmodically caught by the hem. The virtue he expected did not go forth from it, and the glimmer of truth which reached him came through a dense cloud of confused writings. The very names of these betokened chaos, and the twilight that struggled through them was sufficient neither to cheer nor to guide. Many pages of Archdeacon Hare's memoir are filled with extracts from Sterling's letters, and accounts of his favorite studies at this period. They form a labyrinth none can thread, where he wanders to and fro without landmarks, bourn, light, or hope. The more he reads the Old Testament, the less can he believe in its miracles; and having no guide who speaks with authority, he applies for satisfaction in vain to one charlatan after another as confused, fanciful, and blind as himself. {816} Fancy a system of theology taught by Tholuck, Schiller, and Olshausen; by Schleiermacher, Mackintosh, and Milman, by the Koran and Kant, by Jonathan Edwards, Coleridge, and Maurice! Such were Sterling's instructors, and it is not to be wondered at that they created more doubts than they removed, and that under their influence he discarded all faith in a hierarchy, a church, and a Bible written by plenary inspiration. Christianity, he thought, could only become true by changing with the times; and if any existing society or church was to be the nucleus of a new system, it could only be by the sloughing off of much that was old. How utterly deplorable would be the condition of the human race if left to the teaching of such philosophers and divines. After two thousand years of Christian schooling, it would know nothing more than ancient Greece and Rome of God and of its own destinies. All revelation must be doubted of anew in order that anything may be believed, and the _improved_ Christianity to be given in these last days to the world would owe all its changes and improvements to men as feeble and fallible as ourselves. Better, far better, had it been for you, John Sterling, to be instructed by a simple parish priest bred among the mountains, and ministering in that church which is the pillar and ground of the truth, than be handed over as you were by Coleridge, Maurice, and Hare, to Strauss, Mill, and Carlyle--from unbelief in the bud to unbelief in full, gaudy, flaunting blossom.

We cannot discover anything imposing in Sterling's talents. Even in secular learning he was a reed shaken by the wind. His essays and poems want definite view and bold outline. It is a grand thing to see both sides of a question, but it is a pitiful thing to say as much for one side as for another. The want of first principles makes all Sterling's pages dreamy and pointless. He has no point to steer from, no harbor to steer to; he is always toiling against wind and tide, making no way, and accounting it triumphant success only not to be shipwrecked. Had he confined his criticisms to matters of taste, he might have been endured, but he _will_ be piercing the clouds without any ballast to steady or rudder to guide his balloon.

In February, 1835, Sterling first became personally acquainted with that extraordinary writer, Thomas Carlyle. He met him in his natural element, the society of brilliant free-thinkers. He was side by side with John Stuart Mill at the India House, and then at Sterling's father's with the Crawfords and other _literati_, with whom unbelief was wisdom. His writings, and particularly _Sartor Resartus_, made a great impression on Sterling, though he saw the strange and extravagant defects of its style, and labored hard to convince the author of his own belief in a "personal God." But the poison did its work. The strong inward unrest, the Titanic heaving of Teufelsdröckh's spirit communicated itself to Sterling's, and whirled it away still further from central peace. Carlyle could only stimulate the intellect, and fill it with exuberant images. He had heard without regret of Sterling's abandonment of democracy, and he saw with greater satisfaction his defection from parochial work. He regarded the pen as his vocation, and the greatest instrument for good in the world. Not that Sterling broke outwardly with the church, or declared himself a renegade. {817} On the contrary, he now and then performed service for a friend at Bayswater, but it became more and more evident that his faith in Christianity was partial and unsound. His mind was not in the highest degree devotional, nor had he that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom.

His knowledge of German writers hitherto was confined to semi-sceptics and self-appointed evangelists, Neander and the like. Carlyle introduced him to higher souls, if literary merit constitutes height. He brought him to the feet of Goethe, Richter, Schiller, and Lessing, and with these he tried to satisfy the void which an imperfect religion had been unable to fill. Mr. Dunn, an amiable Irish clergyman, became one of their chosen circle, and we learn from Sterling himself that _his_ theology was compounded of the Greek fathers, mystics and ethical philosophers, and that its main defect was an insufficient apprehension of the reality and depth of sin. The very word sin is considered objectionable in the school of Carlyle and Mill, because it, is the correlative of grace. Sterling's friends seemed fated to be the enemies of his soul. He had another named Edgeworth, a nephew of Miss Edgeworth the novelist. He was well read in Plato and Kant, yet even less of a believer than they. "He entertained not creeds, but the Platonic or Kantean _ghosts_ of creeds." So says Carlyle, of whom Sterling bears witness, that "_his_ fundamental position is the good of evil, and the idleness of wishing to jump off one's own shadow."

Deplorable health again, in 1836, drove Sterling to a sunnier clime. He was always dodging and jerking about "to escape the scythe of Death." At Bordeaux his feeble frame revived, and he delved in the mines of literature for fine gold. The theological fever in his mind had abated. Such is Carlyle's account--and the health of pure reason returned, or almost returned. He had done with theology, rubrics, church articles, and "the enormous ever-repeated thrashing of the straw." But did he find the grain? If theology is chaff, where shall we look for wheat? Will the heart of mankind accept literature as the _summum bonum_, the guide of life, the antidote of sin, sorrow, and death? Yet for it Carlyle and Sterling bid farewell to Christianity, and cry: "Adieu, ye threshing-floors of rotten straw, with bleared tallow-light for sun; to you adieu!" _The Sexton's Daughter_ was a poem which indicated Sterling's gradual renunciation of those fragments of Christianity which still clung to him. He even began to think of attacking revelation, on the principle of folly rushing in where angels fear to tread. The Christian religion, he believed, would be really indebted to him for meddling with its foundations, and he should be "doing good to theology," by writing what would for ever exclude him from ministering even in the Church of England. His letters at this period are full of distressing jumble, which Archdeacon Hare records as Christian with a certain unction, and Carlyle, more sagacious, claims as antichristian with a chuckle of delight.

A _sickly_ shadow of the parish church still hung over Sterling's compositions, according to the latter biographer, and he gives an amusing description of the parson-like way in which his friend read aloud the _Sexton's Daughter_ at Blackheath, and gave painful effect to its maudlin morality. It was "a dreary pulpit, or even conventicle manner; that flattest moaning hoo-hoo of predetermined pathos, with a kind of rocking canter introduced by way of intonation, each stanza the exact fellow of the other, and the dull swing of the rocking-horse, duly in each."

{818}

The invalid poet had returned from Bordeaux, but he did not remain long at Blackheath. Again he crossed the waters in cheerful quest of balmier air, and the manifold bliss of health. Daily he rode among the rocky slopes and redundant foliage of Madeira, writing to Carlyle often for recreation, and reading Goethe's Life and Works with fear and delight. He called him "the most splendid of anachronisms," and spoke of his life as "thoroughly, nay, intensely pagan, in an age when it is men's duty to be Christian. In truth," he adds, "I am afraid of him, I enjoy and admire him so much, and feel I could so easily be tempted to go along with him." Thus all things conduced to lead Sterling's mind down the steep. Lyell's _Geology_ opened a new flutter (not line) of thought, and bewildered him with the view it presented of "the abysmal extent of time."

From Professor Wilson, alias Christopher North, the presiding spirit of Blackwood, Sterling received great encouragement--perhaps more than he deserved. But ingenious madness is all that the public requires in the magazines of some countries. _Laudari a Laudato_ is always a rare delight. Had Carlyle been editor, his criticisms on Sterling's Tales and Poems would have been more severe, yea, and more just than Wilson's--he of the _Isle of Palms_. Thus he says of _The Onyx Ring_: "There wants maturing, wants purifying of clear from unclear; properly there wants patience and steady depth. The basis is wild and loose; and in the details, lucent often with fine color, and dipt in beautiful sunshine, there are several things misseen, untrue, which is the worst species of mispainting." This it was that blurred and marred all poor Sterling's productions; everything was _misseen_, and therefore mispainted. In one particular he was to be praised and envied--he saw things on the sunny side. In spite of sickness, he was cheerful, and buoyancy of spirit kept him afloat on a sea where many would have sunk. John Stuart Mill was now editing _The London and Westminster Review_, and Sterling was sufficiently vague and unsound to be thought a valuable contributor. In that _Review_ he discoursed of Montaigne, Simonides, and Carlyle, while in the _Quarterly_ of 1842, he criticised Tennyson. Of these critiques the best is that on Simonides, for the subject was best fitted to Sterling's taste and powers. He was a better judge of Greek poetry and Greek character than of writers like Montaigne, Carlyle, and Tennyson, who have lived in Christian times, and must be judged by Christian rules. He could hardly wander wide of his theme while dealing with the bright wine, luscious fruit, honey, and crystal founts of Ceos, while gathering up the costly fragments of its gifted bard, and rendering in English the chaste and delicately chiselled verses of him who has "not left a single line inspired by love."

But the case was altered when Sterling tried to appreciate Montaigne, The task was above him. He was neither a believer nor an unbeliever, but partly both. He could neither wholly praise nor wholly blame Montaigne's scepticism. He had an instinctive leaning toward the writer who adopted _Que sçay-je?_ as his motto, and followed the natural religion of Sébonde. He honored one whose writings were condemned at Rome, and thought, for that very reason, they must have some good in them. {819} He admired an essayist who sat loose to the received opinions and belief of his time, chose Plutarch for his favorite author, (as Rousseau and Madame Roland did after him,) and "of all men seemed most thoroughly to have revered and loved the saint, prophet, and martyr of pagan wisdom, Socrates."

Perhaps Socrates would not be in such good odor with the sceptics of our day, if he too had not been in some sense an unbeliever. Perhaps it is in his _protesting_ character that they chiefly admire him, and trace in him some resemblance to the sage of Wittemburg. They admire him, and set him up as a model, because he was a witness against the established and popular religion of his country. Yet it may be that Socrates had really more faith than they have, and with all the disadvantages of paganism, made, if we may so speak, a better deist than nineteenth-century sceptics. Perhaps his mind was clearer, after all, than Montaigne's, or than Sterling's, who wrote of Montaigne that, "in the bewilderment of his misunderstanding at the immensity and seeming contradictions of the universe, perhaps he even hoped that _one day or other_ the puzzle of existence would find its solution in _the accompanying puzzle of revelation_."

We have not time, in this place, to follow Sterling's review of his friend Carlyle's works. Suffice it to say, what we believe to be the fact, that he discovered Carlyle's intellectual stature to be high because the literary world had already recognized it as such; but he did not discover the extent of Tennyson's powers because the literary world had not yet recognized them. This is not very complimentary to Sterling's critiques or penetration--but dreamy and indistinct beauty is all that he ever reaches, and his _exposé_ of Carlyle's philosophy is as hazy and unsatisfactory as his appreciation of Tennyson is hesitating and imperfect.

After founding the Sterling Club, our hero once more turned his face toward the sweet south. In company with his friend. Dr. Calvert, he crossed the Alps, and wandered from city to city through the garden of Europe, till he reached, in the winter of 1838-9, the city without a rival. Perhaps Sterling was apt to let other people reflect for him. If he had set his own thoughts originally to work, he could hardly have failed to detect in the metropolis of Christendom something more than he pretended to find. A philosophic mind, even of a minor order, could not allow itself to dwell on Rome, the Holy See, and the pontifical line, without finding in them matter for the greatest consideration and most searching inquiry. Whence the mighty, the enduring influence of these on mankind and mankind's history, if there lie not at their root, principles which escape the glance of superficial observers? Whether divine, human, or diabolical, they must deserve philosophical research, were it only for the magnitude of their results. Yet Sterling is bold enough to affirm that "one loses all tendency to idealize the metropolis and system of the hierarchy into anything higher than a piece of showy stage-declamation, at bottom thoroughly mean and prosaic." Again he tells us that "The modern Rome, pope and all inclusive, are a shabby attempt at something adequate to fill the place of the old commonwealth." So warped was his judgment that St. Peter's itself found little favor in his eyes. His artistic notes are as unsound as his religious ones. Prejudice jaundiced all. "I have seen the pope," he says, "in all his pomp at St. Peter's; and he looked to me a mere lie in livery." {820} But to him perhaps St. Peter on his cross would not have appeared truth in undress. He derived, it is to be feared, little good from his visit to the tombs of the apostles. To him they were tombs indeed--vaults, charnel-houses, painted sepulchres. Mrs. Sterling's premature confinement recalled him to England, and in the summer of 1839 he was housed at Clifton, and enjoying the noxious friendship of an amiable deist, Mr. Frank Newman, brother of the great convert to Catholicism of the same name. He, too, had once professed Anglican Christianity, but he resigned his fellowship at Oxford, and openly combated the divinity of the Holy Ghost.

At Clifton Sterling became familiar with Strauss; we do not mean Strauss in person, but in his still more dangerous _Life of Christ_. Here was, indeed, a "lie in livery," yet Sterling pronounced it "exceedingly clever and clear-headed, with more of insight, and less of destructive rage than he expected." It would work, he said, deep and far, and it was well for partisans on one side and the other to have a book of which they could say, "This is our Creed and Code--or, rather, Anti-Creed and Anti-Code." Alas! John Sterling, are you come to this? The "lie in livery" whom you saw in Rome would have taught you better. He bid you adore him whom Strauss denies, and hold fast to him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

There is little to be said of Sterling's poetry, and that little such as his ghost might not like to hear. It never caught the public ear, and if it had caught, could not have charmed it. He had not the slightest taste for music, nor any tune in him. His verses were merely rhymed, and barely rhythmical _speeches_, not _songs_. "The thoughts were not much above the sound, and the latter was as unmusical as a drum. Carlyle strongly advised him to stick to prose, and declared that his "poetry" had "a monstrous rub-a-dub, instead of a tune." Whether in prose or verse, haze, insufficiency, and failure marked all he attempted. At Falmouth, as at Clifton, he moved in a luminous atmosphere of intellects gone astray. While there he published _The Election_, a poem in eleven books, which describes in heroic verse the contest between Frank Vane and Peter Mogg for an English borough. There were graceful touches here and there; but the pages wanted that originality which is the only passport to permanent success. The _Election_ was followed by _Strafford_ and _Coeur de Lion_, but the one subject was _too_ dramatic, and the other one _too_ epic, for Sterling's muse.

In 1842, he was listening to rhapsodists reciting Ariosto on the mole at Naples, or boating round the promontory of Sorrento. His spoiled and purposeless existence was drawing near its close. A painful sense of its uselessness forced itself frequently on his mind. His life, he wrote, had ceased to be a chain, and fell into a heap of broken links. Versatility in his father became irresolution in him. That father, Edward Sterling, possessed an improvising faculty without parallel, and had a fair field for its display in the pages of the _Times_. There, conjurer-like, he set forth "three hundred and sixty-five opinions in the year upon every subject." There, day after day, he hit the essential _animus_ of the great Babylon with extraordinary precision. There he performed to admiration his marvellous somersaults, not only without shame, but with the ease and daring of one who is always right. {821} There he appeared as Whig or Tory, Peelite or Anti-Peelite, not as the whim took him, but as it took the blatant public for whom he wrote. There "Captain Whirlwind," as Carlyle used to call him, let loose his winds, and, securely anonymous, looked forth from his cave on the seething seas and thundering surges which he rolled on the shore. The son could not but reflect in a degree the father's face. Hence, in John Sterling we find, to his misfortune, great and habitual uncertainty. "Christianity," he wrote, not long before his death, "is a great comfort and blessing to me, although I am _quite unable to believe all its original documents_." What kind of Christianity was this which comforted him, and whence did it derive its evidences? The same inconsistency and vagueness appears in his remark--and it was one of his latest--that he had gained but little good from what he had heard or read of theology, but derived the greatest comfort from the words, "Thy will be done." As if these words did not involve the whole circle of theology, as the egg contains the chicken, and the acorn the oak.

In the beginning of 1843, Sterling broke a blood-vessel; his mother also became seriously ill; and his father's mansion at Knightsbridge, "built on the high table-land of sunshine and success," was filled at once with bitterness and gloom. Very affectionate and pious were Sterling's letters to his mother; nor can it be said that death came to either of them unawares. They saw the grim shadow approach, and awaited his stroke with such fortitude as their sense of religion gave them. "Dear mother," wrote Sterling, "there is surely something uniting us that cannot perish, I seem so sure of a love which shall last and reunite us, that even the remembrance, painful as that is, of all my own follies and ill tempers cannot shake this faith. When I think of you, and know how you feel toward me, and have felt for every moment of almost forty years, it would be too dark to believe that we shall never meet again."

On Good Friday, 1843, Sterling's wife had borne him another child, and, with her infant, was doing well. The post arrived on the Tuesday following, and Sterling left her for a moment to read the tidings brought of his mother. He returned soon with a forced calm on his face, but to announce his mother's death. Alas! another bereavement, still more desolating, was at hand. In two hours more his beloved wife also was numbered with the dead. His two best friends were cut down by a single blow; to him they died in one day--almost in one hour. A mother's love is unique: there is nothing like it in the world; a wife's love is all that imagination can picture of earthly affection; and to Sterling they were now both things of the past. Alone, alone he must pursue his pilgrimage, haunted by the perpetual remembrance of joys never to return. "My children," he cried, "require me tenfold now. What I shall do, is all confusion and darkness."

It is in such seasons of bereavement especially that the Catholic realizes his church as the mourner's solace and the outcast's home. But Sterling, unhappily, was debarred from this best and sweetest consolation. Friends he had in abundance, but they were almost all errant meteors like himself, and stars shining in mist. By the death of his mother he became rich, when riches could no longer purchase increase of joy. He took a house at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, and there strove to live for his children and in a sphere of poetry. {822} But his lyre had few listeners; and it would be but loss of time to criticise at length what is now forgotten. Now and then he went up to town, and even entertained friends in his father's desolate dwelling at Knightsbridge. It was like "dining in a ruin in the crypt of a mausoleum." His silent sadness was manifest to all through the bright mask he sometimes wore. "I am going on quietly here, rather than happily," he wrote from Ventnor to Mr. Frank Newman; "sometimes quite helpless, not from distinct illness, but from sad thoughts and a ghastly dreaminess. The heart is gone out of my life." That life was fast ebbing away, and he knew it; he was drifting into the vast ocean of eternity, and he watched without regret the receding shore. A certain piety sustained him. "God is great," he would exclaim with Moslem fervor, "God is great." His heart yearned especially toward Carlyle, and the Maurices were constantly at his side. Infidelity and semi-Christianity, in death as in life, were his presiding genii. He clasped the Bible in his feeble hand, though he believed it but in part. He prayed to be forgiven; he thanked the all-wise One; but it was long since he had begun "to deem himself the opponent, the antagonist of everything that is," and antagonism is a frame of mind little conducive to peace and joy. A few days before his death he wrote to Carlyle: "I tread the common road into _the great darkness_, without any thought of fear, and with very much of hope. Certainty, indeed, I have none. ... Toward me it is more true than toward England, that no man has been and done like you. Heaven bless you! If I can lend a hand when THERE, that will not be wanting." To this same friend, four days before his death, he addressed some stanzas which Carlyle has not published, but says they were written as if in starfire and immortal tears." His eyes were closed on this world on the 18th of September, 1844. He sleeps in the burying-ground of Bonchurch, and is embalmed in the memory of his friends.

His natural virtues were of the highest order; his life was correct, his temper uncomplaining, his soul transparent, and his imagination lively. Standing, as he did, midway between belief and unbelief, he conciliated the esteem and friendship of believers and unbelievers, if Archdeacon Hare and Mr. Maurice are to be reckoned among the former. The archdeacon, indeed, goes far in the excuses he makes for Sterling, saying, "Such men we honor, although they fall; nay, _we honor them the more because they fall;_" a sentiment so extravagant that the most liberal Catholic will condemn it without hesitation.

Every life has its moral; and that of Sterling's is certainly no exception to the rule. He is a type of educated England in the present day--half-Christian, half-infidel. Nature and cultivation had given him all that was requisite to make him a useful member of society, and to cheer his dying hours with the retrospect of an existence applied to the happiest and highest ends. But one thing was wanting in him, a steady purpose and a clear view of the means by which it was to be obtained. If he had been fortunate enough to know, enjoy, and exemplify the Catholic religion, it would have supplied him with a definite scope, and have laid down a rule of faith and obedience by which to compass his ends; it would have collected all his scattered forces, given edge to his arguments, sober color to his imagination, satisfaction to his yearnings, rest to his disquiet, comfort to his sadness. {823} It would have enabled him to realize with all the certitude of faith facts which by the light of nature he could not credit, and truths which he could not comprehend. It would have taught him with authority things which his teachers propounded in doubt, asserted feebly, or distinctly denied. It would have saved him from a wasted existence, from the shallow theology of Archdeacon Hare and his "Guesses at Truth," from the puzzle-headed metaphysics of Coleridge, the wild utterances of Edward Irving, the Arian tendencies of Maurice and Dean Stanley, the supercilious incredulity of Carlyle, the proud unbelief of Francis Newman, and the efforts, intentional or unintentional, of them all to bring about an unnatural and odious alliance between infidelity and Christian faith. They have labored hard to establish a school, and in England the results of their toil is unhappily everywhere apparent. Unbelief is wearing a Christian mask; and often has the language of Christ on its lips. Ministers of religion scatter doubts in evangelical terms, and scoffers mimic the tones and language of honest disciples. Atheists and Deists do homage to the son of Mary, and speak respectfully of saints, doctors, and popes. Protestant divines apologize for sincere unbelievers, and quote with approval the writings of the apostles of doubt. Conciliation and compromise are loudly called for on both sides, and hatred of all law and dogma is extolled as charitable and wise. The proposal of marriage between Christianity and Infidelity is openly published; and the Catholic Church alone solemnly and persistently forbids the banns.

Saint Columba.

Columba, gentlest of all names! Bequest Of a strong Celtic mother to a child Who, unto life's meridian, kept the wild, Impassioned grandeur of his race; his guest The patriot bard; while innocence oppressed Flew, with the instinct of souls undefiled, To his great heart, who, to the guileless mild. Called heaven's swift curse upon the lifted crest Of lawless power. And still the generous mind Pores, kindling, o'er heroic legends quaint, In which grave history dips her brush to paint That nature fierce and tender; but combined With grace celestial, till the man we find Crowned with th' eternal glories of the saint.

{824}

Gheel.

A Colony Of The Insane, Living In Families And At Liberty.

The Belgian Kempen Land is a vast stretch of sandy plains in the provinces of Anvers, Brabant, and Limburg. Its chief parish, Gheel, has a population of some 12,000, about one fifteenth of which are lunatics in family treatment, and many of them occupied in the usual routine of domestic, field, and garden work. This custom has prevailed there for a thousand years. In the seventh century, a chapel was built and dedicated to Saint Martin, the apostle of the Gauls. Some cells of pious hermits surrounded it and formed the principal nucleus of Gheel. Here the young daughter of a pagan king of Ireland sought a refuge from his incestuous love, accompanied by Gerrebert, the priest who had converted herself and her mother to Christianity. Her father, discovering her traces, pursued her, caused Gerrebert to be put to death, and his servants refusing to execute his sanguinary orders against his daughter, he cut off her head with his own hands, thus avenging, by the most horrible crime, the defeat of his guilty passion. Certain lunatics who witnessed this terrible martyrdom, and others whom piety led to the grave of the victims, as the legend runs, were cured. Gratitude and faith attributed the merit of these cures to the holy young virgin, henceforth honored as the patroness of the insane. Attracted by hopes of a miracle, other families brought their afflicted to the foot of the memorial cross and double bier. The visitors, on their departure, confided their patients to the charity of the residents. This custom became an institution. Little by little, a village was formed here, animated by work as well as prayer, and which became, at last, an important burgh. A large and beautiful church, built in honor of Saint Dymphna, replaced Saint Martin's chapel, early in the twelfth century, and was consecrated on its completion in 1340, by the Bishop of Cambrai. The popular devotion there was approved by a brief of Pope Eugene IV., in 1400. A vicariate composed of nine priests and a director was instituted in 1538, and in 1562 changed into a chapter consisting of nine canons and a deacon.

From these times up to our own day, a current of pilgrimage has been sustained by the malady and by faith.

This fountain of prayer in the desert, these pious cares solicited and granted, have become a source of industry and liberty for the insane, and of prosperity for the district. This is readily explained. The barren soil of the Kempen renders it difficult to live there, hospitality was more onerous there than elsewhere, and economy as well as religious charity counselled the host to have but one board with his guest. To keep him apart would have been losing the time of those occupied in taking care of him. Left at liberty, he would naturally accompany them to the fields, and there, before the soil which solicited arms, another step of progress was accomplished. So, without any constraint, by the attractions of social labor and of gentle influences, many of the insane became useful members of the family. {825} The first inspirations of religion, reenforced by considerations of economy, came to be organized in a secular practice of humble virtues by the habit of affectionate cares. Thus, in the rude middle ages, the Gheel folk, without the light of science, but in that of a religious faith made fruitful by the heart and sustained by their interest, practised a treatment of insanity based on the liberty of movement, on rural and domestic industry, and on the sympathy of an adoptive family, far from all that might recall a sinister past.

The arbitrary discipline founded on geometrical and military ideas in modern times has not spared Gheel; yet, whatever abuses ten centuries had introduced and habit protected there, as well as its good services, were ascertained by a most thorough inquest. The new regulations for Gheel in 1851-'52-'57 and '58 secure, as far as written laws can go, the well-being of the insane.

The insane are admitted at Gheel without distinction as to nation, religion, age, sex, or fortune. Every one is welcomed with sincere sympathy, and receives the same hygienic and medical care, though nothing prevents the rich from enjoying their fortune, or whatever, in the way of luxuries, their relatives may provide for them. One English gentleman, for instance, consumes in festive entertainments the income of a large estate. Of late years, the Belgian administration has excluded from Gheel certain dangerous forms of lunacy, such as homicidal and incendiary monomanias, and those who are constantly bent upon escaping from any place to which they may have been taken, or whose affections are of such a nature as to disturb public decency. It does not appear, however, that this recent transfer of 250 patients had been called for by any disasters. It was rather a concession to administrative routine, and Mr. Parigot, the inspector at that time, regrets that the colony should thus have lost a class of patients the control of whom best attested its moral power. Both the patients and their guardians felt aggrieved by this arbitrary measure.

No distinctive dress is worn by the insane; their garments are such as are worn by the country folk in general, so that nothing calls public attention to them, nor reminds them of their peculiar situation.

Liberty under all its forms is the good genius which has inspired, protects, and preserves this colony: especially the liberty to come and go, to sleep or get up, to work or to rest, to read or write or talk at pleasure, to receive one's friends or correspond with them without any restriction. The supreme science of government consists in not contradicting the insane, but humoring their innocent fantasies, or imposing nothing by force, but obtaining all by persuasion. Unless some evident and particular inconvenience prevents it, they enter public places, smoke a pipe at the _café_, play a hand of cards, read the papers, or drink a glass of beer with the neighbors. The tavern-keepers are not allowed to sell wine or distilled liquors.

If liberty, equality, and fraternity are not _political_ terms there, they are the realities of common life. The lunatic is a man, and is treated as such by the same right as all his brothers in God.

You would never hear at Gheel such a complaint as this, by a poor lunatic confined in an asylum, where, indeed, he was the subject of intelligent and devoted cares:

{826}

"They call us _patients_, to control and to oppress us, but they do not allow us the indulgence of sick folk! Often after a restless night, I would like to sleep in the morning. But no: the hour has come, the bell rings, we must rise whether we will or not. I am not, then, a patient any longer!"

At Gheel, no bell strikes the limit between sleep and waking. Pleasure, the example of activity, and appetite, are stimuli sufficient to counteract sluggishness. Sleep is never disturbed, unless by order of the physician on some particular occasion. Often, says Dr. Parigot, I have asked on entering, "Where is Mr.----?" The answer would be, "Doctor, our _heerke_ is still abed; his breakfast is waiting him there by the fire;" and this at ten or eleven o'clock.

It may be asked whether the frequency of accidents and of escapes does not counterpoise the advantages of so much liberty.

No! accidents are neither common nor serious. Quarrels and spats are easily appeased; they occur very seldom, which is due, in part, to the tendency of the insane to keep apart rather than to associate with each other. This tendency is not contravened at Gheel, as at asylums, where the annoyance of forced association exasperates susceptible characters and irritable nervous systems.

"I am really mad, then, for them to condemn me to live with these people!" cried a monomaniac in despair. Enter almost any hall of an asylum where the insane assemble to warm themselves: you will be heart-struck by the sinister expression of this feeling in persons most of whom are as sensible as yourself to manias which are not their own, and whose punishment consists in finding themselves everywhere and always with the insane. These men and women are overwhelmed with _ennui_. The room in which they pass the night does not belong to them, and this warmed gallery, that yard, that garden, are for them but walled cages. You may read upon their faces the aggravation thus occasioned, while the chances of their cure diminish daily.

Now, turn to the lunatic at Gheel, who enjoys the free air, and feels a property in his chamber, in his books, his tools, his plants, his stones and various collections. He adorns his domicile after his own fashion; his inscriptions or designs appear upon the walls. He is busy in acting his dream; he roams in the woods and fields; he fishes in the streams, or spreads snares for birds, or labors at his will. Another writes all day in the sand of the streets the story of his thoughts-- hieroglyphics to which he alone has the key. A third relieves his inward agitation by external movement; all day innocently busy, he returns tranquillized to his lodgings at night The rest are at work with their hosts, or at sport with the children, their friends and peers.

That melancholy which engenders the disgust of life, may often be calmed by a change so complete in one's whole existence, while the predisposition to it is not aggravated by the despair of incarceration. Dispersion in families distinct and often isolated, counteracts the danger of contagious imitation.

In the course of half a century, only two acts of personal violence are on record.

The enjoyment of their personal liberty sufficiently explains why so few try to escape from Gheel. Most of the patients have found there a deliverance from previous constraint; yet, to provide against all casualties, the administration, as soon as advised of the disappearance of a patient from his guardian's premises, sets in movement an effective police corps. {827} Before this was instituted, the spontaneous intervention of the neighbors sufficed; for it was understood, for many leagues round, that any individual whose demeanor awakened suspicions of his sanity, should be conducted to Gheel as to his legal residence. The restorer of a runaway was also entitled to mileage for his trouble. When it is known that a certain lunatic is beset with the idea of escaping, which may take possession of the insane like any other, it is customary, after obtaining a permit therefor from the physician in charge, to fasten two rings or bracelets, covered with sheep-skin, upon the legs, with a covered chain, about a foot in length, connecting them. By this means the lunatic, without being confined, has his movements obstructed, while attention is directed to him. How preferable this is to the mortal _ennui_, to the sullen despair of confinement in an asylum! What matters it to the patient that his limbs are free, if before him is the barrier of bolts and bars--of massive doors, and impassable walls!

The _morale_ of the insane cannot be otherwise than favorably affected by association with persons who protect him with solicitude, while they appeal to his good sense and good will, admitting him on a footing of equality to their hearths, their tables, and their work: such a welcome banishes from his mind the idea of humiliation and oppression, which everywhere else is connected with that of sequestration. Instead of being a pariah shaken off by society, he now belongs to humanity; his dignity as a man is safe, for it is respected in its chief privilege--liberty.

In the name of this liberty, he is trusted--he is constituted, in a measure, the arbiter of his own lot. If he do[es] not abuse it, supervision of him is relaxed. If his freedom be sometimes limited, the least remaining gleam of reason suffices to render him conscious that the restrictions imposed are not hostile in their spirit, but are simply precautions which he may disarm by a rational conduct.

Such sentiments sustain or awaken within him the life of the soul; they influence his manners and bearing. He does not lose the habit of society, and if he one day return home, it may be without shame or embarrassment; his absence will have been a journey, and not a humiliating sequestration.

Translated from political into psychologic language, liberty is spontaneity; and if we analyze it more profoundly, we find this term applicable to those actions only which employ the limbs, the senses, and the intellectual faculties as ministers of our inmost affections of will. For all spontaneous action, the head, the hands, and the heart are in union--the conflict between the spirit and the flesh is reconciled.

This supreme harmony implies the unison of man with himself, with his fellow-creatures, and with his spirit-fountain life. Express it as you will, its conception is the basis of the Christian therapeutics of insanity. All must be obtained of the lunatic by gentleness, and not by intimidation or violence; nothing ought to oppress the individuality of the patient. The mission of the guardians is to render inoffensive, amiable, and useful, a person imperfectly conscious of his acts. It is by one of the noblest powers of the spirit that they say to him virtually, Be free, and understand the sympathies that animate us. Alexander of Macedon accepted the beverage of his physician Philip before mentioning that Philip had been accused of intending to poison him. {828} Now the insane are, in the immense majority of cases, no more guilty of ill intentions than the Acarnanian doctor, and our Alexanders of Belgium are poor peasants.

These Gheelois have faith in their providential mission, faith in the ancient miracles which have predestined their country to the cure of insanity, faith in their own power. Esquirol one day expressed to a peasant of this place his apprehensions about paroxysms of mania. The countryman laughed at his fears, and said: "You do not understand these folks; I am not strong, and yet the most furious of them is nothing for me." This is the way they all talk. The sentiment of an unlimited and privileged power is insinuated from childhood into the soul of the Gheelois by example and tradition. This power grows with his muscular force and experience; it imposes upon the insane, who feels himself feeble and disarmed before a master, and usually submits without resistance. Any desired help can be had, moreover, at a moment's warning, from the neighbors. The exigencies of family life with the insane invite the inhabitants of Gheel to respect their inoffensive fantasies, and to study in all its aspects the difficult art of directing their erring wills, of redressing their false ideas when they threaten mischief, of taking advantage of a lingering sentiment of sociality or a last gleam of reason, to secure themselves against violence and surprises. On the other hand, as they can have recourse to material constraint only in accidental cases, as they can reckon but exceptionally on the intelligent obedience of patients, it is especially by the evolution of sympathies, those quick rays of the soul which usually survive the intellect, and are often extinguished only with life, that the Gheelois have understood the tactics of social government. That women should excel in this diplomacy is not surprising. On them devolves the most delicate and important part of a system based on managing by gentleness the most whimsical characters. Simple, ignorant, laborious, without the vanities of fashionable life, but kind by nature, religious by education, and guided by her heart, the woman of Gheel accomplishes marvels of devotion and sagacity. By her cares, which no disgust repels, she is the visible Providence of the poor madman. By her ingenious expedients, she averts stormy crises, and never shows herself afraid. Without title or costume, she is a true sister of charity. To maintain her power over her fantastic subjects, she studies their intimate thoughts, observes their least gestures, divines their secret projects, and learns to read souls the most dissembling. To subdue the most savage, the young girl does not shrink from the manoeuvres of an innocent coquetry. At other times, it is the imperious magnetism of the look, of the attitude, of the voice, that lays its spell upon the spirit and dissipates fury. It is not rare to see maniacs of herculean frame obeying little women bowed and emaciated by age, and whose only arms are a few words spoken with authority. The husbands and fathers are not backward in these arts of management. Besides their innate turn for it, the peace of their household and their interests lead them to it. All idleness is a loss, and the boarder losing his time and making others lose theirs, if he remained a non-value, would soon become a burden. Compulsion to labor is out of the question. It is necessary to humor the lunatic, to entice him by rendering the work attractive. Is he restive? {829} They are patient. Is he awkward? They make fun of his blunders without humiliating him; he will do better next time. As soon as he succeeds a little, he is flattered and encouraged; he soon comes to like the job. Gradually he is tamed and trained. Behold him, then, an active and a useful member of the family, proud of himself, a friend and child of the house, rising at the same hour as his companions and sharing their toils. Fallen as he may be from man's estate, does he not still afford greater capacities of sociability than those of wild beasts? To succeed in the education of the insane, the inhabitants of Gheel have displayed a persevering and intelligent energy, the power of which is enhanced by the natural sympathy of man for man. Much charity in the heart, gentleness upon the lips, friendly actions, _reasoning_ even, at an opportune moment, exert a sovereign empire over characters whose susceptibility is exalted by disease. Patience is the first of virtues necessary in this community, and it has always risen to the height of the aberrations it has had to meet. No eccentricity provokes either surprise or anger. For twenty years Daniel Peter has been boarding with a Gheelois. This maniac covers the walls of his chamber with the most original caricatures; never does he mingle with the members of the family; he likes only one of the children, Joseph; but he loves him to the point of abdicating his own personality. He nicknames all around him, persons and beasts, even the matron, whom he calls the "tambour major." When she asks him through the door whether he wishes to eat, he replies: Joseph would like it; or else, Joseph will have none. The only way of getting anything from him is to compare him with some tall object, calling him a tree, a mast, a tower, etc. On Sunday only he will eat no meat, and takes flight at sight of a woman or of a horse. Notwithstanding all these whims, he is beloved by all the family, and remains inoffensive, because he is well treated. He returns to his lodgings regularly every evening after having wandered in the woods and over the heath. From this exchange of kind offices, which is the general tone, the most solid attachments spring. "You must have seen the afflicted family of _der Phleger_ around the sick-bed of _die Phlegling_, you must have witnessed the touching scenes when the latter goes forth cured from the establishment, in order to get a clear idea of the means which constitute the basis of the treatment and the proper employment of which assure the success of the colony. These testimonies of gratitude and of mutual affection, these tears of happiness and of regret, these promises to see each other again, are the sincerest homage that can be rendered to the solicitude of the guardians." [Footnote 229]

[Footnote 229: _Bulckeus_. Report of 1856, pp. 34, 33.] [Transcriber's note: This line is blurred.]

Nothing better proves how deeply these feelings have penetrated, not merely into individual souls, but into the blood and race, than the conduct of the children of Gheel toward the insane. Elsewhere generally, and even at Horenthals, in the neighborhood, we have seen the unfortunate persecuted and derided. Childhood, especially, is without pity for them. Nothing like this at Gheel. There the _Zott_ is, even for children, an amusing companion, without wickedness, often a comrade of their games, sometimes a protector. It seems that between beings who have not yet quite attained their reason, and those who have lost it, some alliance is formed. Dr. Parigot relates his first visit as inspector to a farm near Gheel. {830} "It was a cold, snowy spell in the winter. The family were pressing round the hearth beneath the vast chimney-place, and the best seat was occupied by a lunatic. The unexpected appearance of a stranger on the threshold of this poor house, troubled the quiet inhabitants a little. The frightened children took refuge, with little cries, between the legs of the maniac. This poor man's affection for the children was vividly depicted in his countenance, as he protected them with a gesture. This affection was, perhaps, the only tie that attached him to society, but this tie of love protected himself, by deserving the regard of his hosts." We have been gently touched by seeing in the streets of Gheel an old man bearing two children in his arms, while two others followed his steps. The intellectual focus was extinct, or projected but a feeble and vacillating light, but the affectional focus still revealed by its glow the moral grandeur of man even in his saddest miseries.

A woman of Gheel was in company with a maniac, when suddenly he was seized with a paroxysm of excitement. The danger was great, her presence of mind was still greater. She took the young child that she was bearing in her arms, and whom the madman loved, placed it in his arms, and availed herself of this diversion to slip out by the door; then, concealed behind the window, she followed with eye and heart the movements of the lunatic. Marvellous calculation! the child had at once and completely calmed the madman, who, having caressed him and set him upon the floor, was now playing with him. A few minutes afterward, the mother could reenter, the crisis was passed. No one at Gheel blamed this conduct in the mother, who had estimated justly the fascination of infancy.

When the equality of age invites to friendship, this becomes very lively between the children of the house and the insane. There is one family which boards a young lunatic, who is also deaf and dumb. She has become a cherished sister for the daughters of her host. When they are at work together, enter and announce that you come to take the afflicted child back to the hospital. Instantly a cry of terror, followed by the precipitate flight of these girls, carrying their friend along with them, will teach you how lively is the alarm of their tenderness.

A woman of beautiful and noble countenance, and superior education, had been found insane at Brussels, without any information concerning her. From her own imperfect answers, it seems she was a native of Mauritius, where her father had been a man of note in the French revolution. Entrusted to a family of farmers at Gheel, they welcomed her with a delicate deference for her probable antecedents. During twenty years, they served a little table apart for her, with more elegance than their own; yet they received on her account only the pittance allowed for paupers. One day when Mr. Parigot mentioned this, they answered him, "It is enough, doctor; we love our little lady, and we wish to keep her here. No one could pay us for what we are doing; but we have no children, and this is our society."

A father on his death-bed had recommended to his daughter a poor lunatic, who had witnessed her birth, and who had amused her when little. When she married, she brought him in dower to her husband by the terms of the contract. Heaven blessed her generosity. The lunatic lived to be nearly a hundred years old. During this period, their house had to be rebuilt; but the spouses made a sacrifice of its symmetry and convenience, so as to leave untouched the cell of this old man which had become endeared to him by a long abode.

{831}

The relatives of patients are often too poor to offer presents. One day Dr. Parigot was visiting a young epileptic. As he had always found him well cared for, and knew that his friends came to see him every year, he ventured to ask the mistress of the house what she received on his account. She smiled and replied: "Our Joseph's relations are poor like me, and make their journey afoot. I keep them here a week, and they return afoot, but I give them a rye loaf and bacon to eat on the road. These are our presents." The exercise of these pious and delicate virtues has formed in the heart of the Gheel folk a sentiment of corporate honor and of mutual responsibility, which withstands individual perversions as well as the conflicts of social life. The whole community is interested in the fate of these unfortunates. Every one there might affirm concerning the insane, the _humani nihil a me alienum puto_.

The household that has no lunatic seems to lack something, and looks out for a favorable occasion to supply this want. The reciprocal supervision of the inhabitants prescribes moderation and justice to all. If woman presides in the household, and man out of doors, the eye of the community, watching over both, protects the weak in the course of daily life, as in the struggles which a paroxysm sometimes necessitates. Denounced by the cries of the victim, any arbitrary violence would be promptly reported to the physicians and to the administration. If official defenders were absent, the public voice would suffice, and it could not be silenced. Any suspicion of improper conduct is readily cleared up by the interchange of visits in the neighborhood, and thus a protection is established permanent, universal, invisible, sanctioned by custom and superior to all administrative patronage or written rule.

A population thus reared in the practice of sincere devotion to a special humanitary office, by immemorial tradition, by interest, by personal and communal honor, and by religious faith, may well bear comparison with the most zealous servants of any public or private asylum. The brothers or sisters of charity, who are but casually guardians of a certain infirmity the more difficult of treatment, because it attacks the soul as well as the body, can hardly possess those hereditary faculties and the thousand expedients which from infancy upward germ in the child and develop in a family and locality, devoted to the treatment of insanity. How much more unequal is the comparison with simple mercenaries! Heaven forbid we should ignore the abnegation of self, so often evinced in the most obscure services, or the unprovided aptitudes which neither danger nor disgust discourage. Yet it cannot be denied that the insane generally persist in regarding all overseers as jailers and complacent tools of the injustice of families or of society. At Gheel, on the contrary, the most susceptible patients can see around them only hosts who take in boarders, and among whom they often find friends and companions. Before all disinterested judgment, what is elsewhere the competition of business here assumes the character of a social and medical mission, while a closer analysis discerns, in this creation of a lively faith sustained at once by charity and interest, a fortunate equilibrium of the springs of human action. The twofold motive of honor and interest acts in effect like a spring regulated by a counterpoise.

{832}

Is the guardian distinguished for his sagacity and fidelity in the discharge of his assumed cares? He will be kept upon the list and recommended to families by the administration. He will have the opportunity of selection, and may exercise it so as either to gratify his sympathies or to advance his interests.

In the sphere of a true rural life, are freely developed those affinities which re-ally man with the beast and bird, and this first degree in the scale of affections is far from being without influence on the state of certain patients. Some are interested in the cattle which they tend, in the horses, the dogs, or the birds, of which they make companions. One lunatic at Gheel is constantly thinking of birds; no one is more ingenious than he in catching them. Once caged, he never leaves them, he takes them from his cell into the family apartment, or, while they disport in the sunshine, their vigilant master mounts guard to protect them from their enemy the cat. Is it doubtful that these child-like enjoyments dissipate many sorrows, or that they aid to re-establish the harmony of the soul with the body? Deprive this man of the society of his birds, indubitably his condition will be aggravated. Whether as predisposing or exciting causes, wounded pride and vanity and passional isolation amid the pressure of crowds underlie many forms of insanity. In assembling under his protection the group of inferior animals, every man may innocently satisfy sentiments which are ruffled and disappointed among his own species. Spiritual space is enlarged about him, and the heart is amused by the play of passions similar to his own in organisms so different as to render impossible the collisions of rivalry.

To this first appeasement of internal agitation by all the voices of nature, labor comes to add its powerful revulsion. Its benefits are now so universally known and proclaimed that, wherever space permits, it is becoming one of the bases of treatment. At Bicêtre, the neighboring farm of Saint Anne is in great part cultivated by a squad of lunatics chosen among those who most readily accept the discipline of command and corporeal exercise. Work is at Gheel the easy law of every day and every dwelling, allowing for the antipathy which certain lunatics evince toward every occupation, and for incapacity by certain kinds of illness. But industry at Gheel has this precious distinction, that there the insane works among persons of sane mind, whose speech and actions bring him back to reason, whereas elsewhere he is surrounded with his companions in misfortune, whom he finds the same in the fields as at the asylum. Instead of being sequestrated in fantastic and unnatural society, he continues to live in the real bosom of a social family whose children are reared by his side, he hears rational conversations and witnesses amusing scenes. Does he desire to take part in these? He is obliged to the act of intelligent reflection. Occasions naturally supervene when the lunatic, butting against inflexible reality, is led to recognize the bewilderment of his ideas.

The family compassionates his real or imaginary troubles, and the latter are not the least afflictive. The lunatic is very sensible of such kindness; for among many of them, the memories of childhood, of friendship, or of neighborhood, are preserved quite vivacious amid the ruins of the intellect. The death of a parent or friend will often draw warm tears. {833} The unfortunate is consoled by showing interest in him. When this sympathetic indulgence can no longer be asked of the natural family, where hope for it elsewhere than in the adoptive family? Less discomposed by its tenderness, the latter more easily obtains the obedience of the lunatic, who even through his darkened reason, fails not to perceive that he has neither the right nor the means of imposing his caprices on strangers.

One fact constantly occurs at Gheel upon the arrival of raving maniacs. After a few days passed in their guardian's house they can scarcely be recognized. Coming with the strait-jacket or in bonds, they are appeased as soon, almost, as these are taken off. Must this change be attributed to the new sphere that environs them, to the regard that is extended to them, or to the new current of impressions and ideas that traverses their own folly? These influences, severally useful, are strengthened by their association. Through them, what remains sound in the mind is aided by good tendencies; what there is morbid, is restrained. At Gheel is perpetually renewed the phenomenon which occasioned so much surprise at Bicêtre, at Charenton, and in all the hospitals of Europe, when intrepid humanity broke their chains and whips, considered, until then, the only possible instruments for controlling the insane. It now remains for science to confess that every closed establishment is in itself a chain, the last but the heaviest that remains to be suppressed.

The lunatic taken to an asylum is, from the first, assailed with painful impressions, bunches of large keys, massive doors, bolts, bars, cells, yards, walls, guardians, uniforms, regulations, bells, all the appearances and all the realities of a prison. At Gheel, welcomed with alacrity by the family to which his abode secures a pension, he feels himself at his ease. This first welcome exerts over the insane soul the most auspicious influence; for one who comes from a hospital, it is a true emancipation. By daily repetition, this contentment soon becomes an energetic preference. When of late years certain councils of the Belgium hospitals decided on withdrawing their insane from Gheel, to transfer them to a rival establishment for the sake of some trivial economy, it occasioned the most touching scenes. Guardians and lunatics embraced each other weeping, and several of the latter hid themselves to escape from this transfer. Force had to be employed with others. Besides breaking in upon their affections and their habits, they knew they were passing from liberty to confinement! When questioned on this subject, their feelings clearly appear. A foreign physician visiting Gheel with me, one day asked a lunatic who had spent some time in one of the lock-up establishments, which system he preferred. "You may answer that for yourself," he replied reservedly; but a long and silent look beaming with joy was the expressive interpretation of these words. This attachment to Gheel and to the guardian's family often survives the cure. Guardians have often been known to keep gratuitously, wards restored to their right minds, but who had lost their families or their relations with the world. Not seldom is a friendly correspondence kept up all their lives, while living far apart. Annual pilgrimages from Brussels to Gheel renew ties formed during the malady.

{834}

There seems to be no possible doubt that life for the insane is more benign at Gheel than in the immense majority of asylums. Patients sent there in the initial period of insanity, frequently experience a change for the better, and many recover their reason. Some cures have been effected at Gheel, after two or three years of abortive treatment elsewhere. Maniacs, much agitated, in whom the spring of life preserves its energy, are cured sooner than the quiet ones, who often become imbecile. Monomaniacs, especially religious monomaniacs, are seldom cured. They are more fortunate with intermittent forms of insanity, and such are the patients preferred by the Gheelois, as most helpful in their work. Cures are more frequent on the farms, where the insane labor, than in the village, where they are less occupied. It seems to be ascertained that the number of cures has diminished with the falling off in devotion, and this result is no surprise to science, which, without intervening in the religious question, accounts faith among the most powerful therapeutic agents. Among the patients classed as curable, the proportion of cures has averaged between fifty and sixty-five per cent. Unfortunately, about three fifths of the patients sent to Gheel are desperate cases, on whom all the resources of art have been vainly exhausted elsewhere; for Gheel makes no flourish of trumpets, and only of late years has possessed even an infirmary, or a corps of physicians. Its simple hygiene of liberty, and the family life of poor peasants, is not calculated to exert the _prestige_ of those sadly magnificent palaces in which the insane are confined by thousands, and where pretentious science so unwisely snubs nature. Certain medical administrators have even pretended that Gheel was only fit for the incurable. Formerly, they came in search of miracles; now, they seek a last abode here. It should be remarked, moreover, that hospitals, where the keeping of the insane is a burden, are inclined to dismiss them as cured on the earliest signs of real improvement; while at Gheel, where their keeping is a source of profit, and where the patient is often more comfortable than at home, nothing hastens his departure, which is authorized only after mature examination by the physician of the section and the general inspector. The chances are greater here than elsewhere, that the patient's dismissal corresponds to a solid cure.

In default of complete restoration, the conditions of life at Gheel determine in the insane a general amelioration which constitutes the gentlest manner of being compatible with mental derangement. The morbid state, reduced to its simplest expression, excludes neither physical comfort nor a certain order of moral enjoyments, some of which are delicate even to refinement. The subversive tendencies are attenuated, if not quite annulled. A young lady, confined for a year in a large asylum, used to break up there everything that she could lay her hands upon, and the severest restraints had to be forced on her. At Gheel, free among the peasants, she breaks up only little bits of wood. Unable to overcome entirely the fatal impulse that besets her, still she understands that she is in a family which deserves consideration, since, far from oppressing her, they allow her to obey her instinctive needs of active movement. The young lunatic does her hosts as little harm as she can, and this trait admirably exhibits the influence of Gheel, which mitigates when it cannot cure, and obtains, better than any other system, the state of passive "innocence."

{835}

This innocence rises occasionally to a sympathetic and rational benevolence. Among the old lunatics there are, generally, compatriots or acquaintances of the new-comers. The former become the interpreters of their companions in misfortune; they initiate them into the kind of life led at Gheel; they advise them how to manage, point out to them what the place presents of interest, and thus assist in naturalizing them. If liberty is the first principle of the colonial system, labor is the second. Although every lunatic is free to abstain from it, and no physical discipline or coercive measure is brought to bear on him, a few sympathetic words and example frequently suffice to wean the insane from idleness. From half to two thirds of the whole number are usefully occupied. The household cares are shared by women, by the aged and the infirm, along with the children and servants of the family. Most of the artisans, such as tailors, shoe-makers, cabinet-makers, blacksmiths, bakers, curriers, etc., find a place in the local industry. Some work on their own account, and are patronized in proportion to their skill. There used to be at Gheel an excellent cabinet-maker, very intelligent, and who earned a good deal of money in the exercise of his trade. A Dutchman, he had served in the French army, was made prisoner in Russia, then incorporated among the Cossacks of the Don. In 1815, being in Belgium, he deserted, or rather resumed his liberty and nationality, and married at Brussels, where he fell into hallucinations which occasioned his transportation to Gheel. He lived twenty-five years there, practising his art with success, and talked very rationally about matters in general, only he affirmed that the devil every night entered his body by the heels, and lodged somewhere in it, which led him to conclude all his discourses by asking for a probe to hunt the evil spirit. Care is taken to place every lunatic in a family so situated in village or country, as to employ his or her industrial capacities to the best advantage. The furious maniacs are most in request by the peasants, a preference easily explained. Fury attests the energy of the organism; the internal force, physical or moral, is disordered but abundant. In their periods of calm, madmen of this class are vigorous laborers; whereas no profit can be made of an idiot or a paralytic. On a sudden and violent paroxysm of acute mania, the farmer's family, aided by the passengers and neighbors, soon obtain control of it. Quieted again, the lunatic resumes his work, and this work, which profits the farmer, ameliorates by an energetic and continuous diversion the state of the patient, rendering his paroxysms less frequent.

Although the importance of working is now very generally understood, few asylums are provided with adequate grounds, workshops, and implements for employing their patients to advantage; hence this progress is still a rare exception, and even when it exists, its benefit is much diminished by the vexatious constraint of its discipline resembling penitentiary labor. In most of the rich establishments life passes in oppressive idleness, leaving the patient all day long to his dreams, without procuring him that muscular fatigue so propitious to sleep at night. It is enough to drive a sane man mad.

As for mental occupation with books, games, spectacles, and social assemblies, they tend to excite instead of reducing the circulation of the brain, and are often opposed to the desired equilibrium of the organism. {836} In the Russian hospitals, the military organization of labor becomes but a tribute of passive obedience to absolute authority, and ceases to effect energetic revulsion from the bewilderment of the mind. So needlework affords to women a kind of instinctive or mechanical activity of the fingers, which leaves the imagination vagabond. Such labors, prolonged for many hours, are so much the more objectionable from their sedentary nature, which rather favors than averts glandular obstructions and correlative disturbance in the circulatory and nervous systems.

The mode of life of the small farmer, considered as a whole, combines natural interests with varied occupations and movements requiring skill and strength in moderate degree, observation and attention. Above all, man feels himself here a direct coagent with the elemental forces, a shareholder in the commonwealth of the universe, alternately obeying and commanding, utilizing and enjoying the play of solar and planetary forces. It is true that all have not equally the intellectual consciousness of their participation in this great drama, nor the intimate satisfaction and dignity that accrue from it; yet none can be alien to its penetrating virtues, they sustain the meanest hind and the most oppressed slave; much more, the free, the voluntary, and amateur collaborator. The aspects of nature wear the color of the spirit; they are sanative in proportion as man becomes the mirror, the guide, and the instrument of her powers. In the prisoner, at best their suggestions cherish painful aspirations. For the free laborer alone are they pregnant with infinite sweetness.

The arts, and especially music, contribute to the social life of Gheel, and repeat for many a tormented spirit the experience of David with Saul. [Footnote 230]

[Footnote 230: I Kings xvi. 23.]

A lunatic, surnamed Colbert the Great, a skilful violinist, founded the harmony or choral society, and his name is still honored in the memory of all the Gheelois. His portrait adorns the hall where the society holds its meetings, and this homage attests the cordial fraternity, devoid of prejudices and of false shame, which characterizes the Gheel folk. In their concerts, at patriotic or religious festivals, the parts are distributed to the musicians according to the irrespective talents; if they play or sing well, nothing more is required. To improve natural gifts, there is a singing-school for the insane. Müller, a distinguished German composer and chief of the harmony club, is the director designated by the public voice, who solicits the honor of forming, among the insane, pupils who shall assist him in his concerts.

Several of the insane are members of the choir of Saint Dymphna. Many of them piously mingle in the processions. They are often seen in this church imploring on their knees the grace of heaven. Only those whose illusion it is to believe themselves gods or kings, do not kneel, but otherwise behave themselves with decency and respect. Here, as elsewhere, individuals subject to aberrations of reason, still undergo the influence of the prevailing tone and manner of deportment, and give in their turn good examples. They are generally much attached to the faith of their childhood. In health or in sickness, and at the approach of death, they are admitted to the sacraments of the church whenever their condition is not such as to exclude moral conscience. These acts raise the poor lunatic in his self-respect, and in the eyes of the population they are a medicine of the soul.

{837}

Toward the close of the eighteenth century, when the rigors previously enforced against the insane were relaxed, a king was the first to experience the benefits of an opposite system. George III. was treated by Willis on the conditions of personal liberty, out-door amusements, and the family life. The sons of Willis, faithful to their father's lessons, continued to receive at Greatford, lunatics boarded in private families, but at prices which limited this privilege to the wealthy. Gheel, without splendid palaces, gardens, and parks, which delight visitors, but make little impression on those who are used to them, accords to the poorest the treatment of George III., and with the precious addition of work.

In France, Pinel was the promoter and persevering apostle of the reform first inaugurated at Bicêtre, then extended to the Salpétrière and Charenton. Aiming to raise to the dignity of patients those hapless victims who had previously been treated as criminals or as wild beasts, beaten and chained, he realized half his programme in making them simple prisoners, watched and cared for with intelligence. His successes were propagated throughout Europe, and all public or private asylums abandoned the system of direct violence or constraint, to give, in the measure of their resources in grounds and buildings, a larger part to liberty of action and to labor. The so-called "_non-restraint_" system of England merely substitutes for active cruelties dark cells padded with mattresses. Some asylums endeavor to utilize the influence of the director's family circle, but only at Gheel are the common rights of man accorded to the insane. Benevolent sentiments toward the insane have been cherished in Mohammedan countries; regular and methodical labor with a view to economy is common to many establishments; excursions and amusements are organized by a few: but nowhere so effectively as at Gheel have liberty, sympathy, and labor been combined in the common interest of the insane and of their keepers. These, with the sedative influence of a mild, moist climate on the temperament, and the consolations of religion for the soul, have almost divested insanity of its dangers, and authorize emancipation from those chains of stone which elsewhere weigh no less than chains of iron on the unhappy victims of fear and distrust.

This humble parish addresses to every conscience a lesson eloquent in its simplicity of tender devotion toward our brothers the most fallen, and whom the world disdains and repulses. It shows how charity may precede and complete science.

{838}

Life's Charity.

And the great sea closed over that wild struggle, and the wreck went down with its precious freight of immortality!

There was a single cry that came from the white lips, one glance from the tearless, appealing eyes.

"All ready!" sounded a rough voice from the long-boat.

"For my child!" she called out to me, above the awful din and tumult. And I could only clench the rosary with its precious crucifix in my bosom, and spring into the already crowded boat. I missed and fell, and, grasping an oar, fought the angry sea for life.

I vaguely recollect a fearful shriek, as the steamer turned and settled; and when she sank, the strong current drew in the last of the boats, the boat in which _she_ had taken refuge. I closed my eyes, but in my ear rang the agony, the wild despair of that cry, "My God! my God!" I suppose I fainted; for I only remember opening my eyes on the deck of a small vessel, which was scudding under bare poles before a perfect hurricane. Weeks passed by, and in a quiet English village, on the soft, balmy south coast, I lay trying to regain the strength which brain fever had quite exhausted.

My kind English nurse told me that through it all I grasped the rosary, and her heart was touched by my devotion to the crucifix. This recalled that fearful autumn morning, when, amid the dimness of the fog, the _Arctic_ went down to her burial.

Reverently I kissed the crucifix, and murmured my _Credo_; from the very depths of my soul went upward, "I believe in God!" Then, as I clasped the cross, I felt it move; but I went through my prayers, and I suppose that the pressure of my hands caused the spring to move, and a closely folded paper fell upon my breast. The crucifix was large and hollow. I carefully unfolded the delicate paper, and a shudder passed over me as the vision of that pale woman, struggling amid the breakers, arose from memory's gloaming. The very first words that met my eye were, "I believe in God! and," she wrote, "I will follow his guidance. Far from those that are dearest to me, I have buried my husband where his fathers rest; and now, my child's voice calls me from my home across the Atlantic. I dreamed last night of a fog, a dense mist, that hung like a curtain; of a fearful crash, and a vision of anguish that seems too real for dreaming; but my child's voice is echoing in my heart, and may God speed my wanderings! A sorrow as of coming woe oppresses me; but I believe in God! and his mercy will save me.

"My little daughter, Marguerite Cecil, is with her guardian, Henry Alan, No. 86 East ---- street, New York. May the everlasting Arms forever enfold her! Ruth Cecil."

Poor lamb! my heart whispered, the one idol, and so desolate! Well, the spring found me on my journey to the busy metropolis; and wending my way to East ---- street, I found the most elfish little fairy that fate had ever set drifting on life's ocean all alone. A bonnie wee thing was Madge Cecil; so frail that her tenure here seemed too slight for holding; yet from the wonderful gray eyes came flashes that gave promise of a splendid future. {839} Golden hair courted the sunbeams, and, flecked with light, wrapped around the most graceful contour that twelve summers had ever shone upon. She knew of her mother's death, for her deep mourning dress contrasted almost painfully with the delicate whiteness of her complexion. And when I drew her upon my knee and put the rosary in her hand, she threw her arms around me, and sobbed as though her heart would break. I really trembled as I listened, for a storm of passionate agony was convulsing a frame which had little to offer in combat. "Mamma! mamma!" she sobbed out, and she clasped me closer. "Will God take me home to her? O mamma! come back!"

My heart ached for the child, whose grief seemed agonizing her very soul, so I tried to quiet her, and told her of the brighter home where, with the holy Mother of God, her own mother would be singing hallelujahs. I told her that this earth was only a brief journeying-place which led to the sweet haven of eternal love, the land where farewells could never bring a cloud, nor partings cast a shadow. Then the large gray eyes looked trustingly up into my face, and with her arms around me, I felt the love of my heart go out toward her with a strength and purity I had never known before.

Soon after this, her guardian placed her at Madame Cathaire's large boarding-school, and "Uncle Hal," as she now called me, was always her chosen confidant and friend.

Years passed, and I watched her beautiful girlhood unfold. She had rare talents, a quick intellect, and intense appreciation of the beautiful; indeed, a purer spirit seldom lived in this mortal tenement. Yet, with her enthusiastic, impulsive nature, she possessed a quiet strength of control that caused visions of the old martyrs to rise; for I felt that she, too, could wrestle with passion, and, with God's grace, subdue all sin.

And thus time sped on, and each passing season left its impress only to mature and render more perfect the succeeding; and her eighteenth birthday found her the realization of spiritual loveliness. The exquisite golden curls of her childhood fell in irregular waves from the low Grecian brow, and the sweet, earnest eyes always recalled those of Guido's angel, bearing the branch of lilies, in his beautiful picture of "The Annunciation." She was living with her guardian, and her great wealth attracted many in a city where gold is "the winning card."

There was a charming freshness and _naïveté_ in the young girl, and at times almost a religious light gleamed from the depths of her large gray eyes.

Her guardian's nephew, Henry Elsdon, had just returned from Europe, and I watched him as he dallied, at first carelessly, among the crowd that gathered around her.

I did not fancy the young man, and there was an indescribable barrier which rose up always when I tried to like him. He was what the world would call handsome and _distingué_, but the droop of the lower lip, the heavy jaw, and narrow forehead truly told of the fierce animal nature within. Madge was very lovely in this first season, and it was plainly apparent that he entirely failed to impress her; indeed, at times her coldness toward him was marked.

On returning from vespers, one mild May evening, she asked me to accompany her on her Sunday visits. Of course, I went, for who could refuse her? Down the dark streets we wandered, till we arrived at an old brick house that, a hundred years ago, may possibly have been in its prime. {840} She tapped at the dingy door, and, like an angel of light, her presence seemed to brighten the room. A sick woman lay stretched on a miserable pallet, and a racking cough shook her weak frame; but a smile of happiness illumined the pinched features, and her voice was tender as it thanked Madge for her gentle deeds of love.

A woman's kindliness is nevermore beautifully displayed than in a sick chamber; and my heart did homage to the young girl, as she knelt by the sick woman's bed, murmuring, in low, comforting tones, the prayer:

"Visit, we beseech thee, O Lord! this habitation, and drive far from it all the snares of the enemy. May thy holy angels dwell herein, to preserve her in peace; and may thy holy benedictions always remain with her, through Christ our Lord. Amen."

Her face was radiant, and her upturned eyes were holy with inspiration. Just then a shadow darkened the doorway, and I looked, to meet the eyes of one perfectly absorbed in the scene before him. My startled movement recalled Madge, and a soft color deepened in her cheeks as she seemed to feel the observation of the stranger.

"O Miss Cecil! here is Mr. Grey, who has been as kind as yourself. This is Miss Cecil, Mr. Grey." And then he advanced, and the fading sunlight fell upon a splendid specimen of manhood. Six feet of magnificently proportioned height, and a head which Vandyke would have gloried in; steel-gray, flashing eyes, a brow upon which intellect and will were marked, and a complexion which the suns of Southern Europe had darkened into olive.

"Pardon me. Miss Cecil, but the likeness is perfect, and the name so familiar. Was your mother Ruth Anderson?"

Tears streamed from her eyes as she half-whispered, "Yes!" She could never speak calmly of her mother, for her love seemed only to strengthen as years made the loss more keenly felt. In an instant he was by her side, and, with the tender but perfectly respectful manner--the manner so acceptable to a woman--he told her how eagerly he had sought for this child of his old and esteemed friend. He had gone abroad with her mother, and remained in Europe till within a few months. He had read of the fearful doom of the _Arctic_, and vainly tried to trace the child.

"I need not tell you, Madge, how very glad I am to see you, and, before long, I shall hope to be a very good friend."

And they did meet very often. Madge spent the summer at Newport, and Mr. Grey's cottage was near her guardian's lovely home. I suppose there is truth in the old and familiar theory of elective affinities; for the strength of his nature seemed to absorb her gentle, loving trust, and her impulsive, passionate heart was entirely swayed by his steady, strong affection; in truth, each chord felt the echo from his. And so, in the autumn, I was not surprised when she pointed to a magnificent _solitaire_ diamond on the forefinger of her left hand, and told me that she had promised to be the wife of Newton Grey.

They had returned to New York, and Madge and Mr. Grey were looking over a portfolio of engravings at the further end of the library, while I sat smoking in front of the bright coal-fire, dreaming day-dreams, as the smoke curled and floated away, when suddenly the door opened and Henry Elsdon came in. I shall never forget the look that, only for one single moment, darkened his features; only for an instant his face looked thus, and then, with a quick, soft step, he crossed the library, and _suavely_ joined the circle around the engravings. {841} I could see that Newton Grey would never stoop to suspect him; but Madge recoiled from him, for there was not the slightest affinity between such natures.

"Uncle Hal," she told me one morning, "I always feel that I ought to cross myself when Henry Elsdon comes near me, that I may pray to be saved from some impending evil."

And my lamb was right, for truly a wolf did prey near for her destruction.

Business called me to the South, and I left New York to breathe the balmier air of Charleston. It was a delicious winter, that soft season in the sunny South. Violets in the gardens in December, and the scarlet winter roses and sweet mignonette brightening the lovely villa--like houses on the battery.

I was slowly descending the stone steps that led from the beautiful cathedral, while the last echoes of the bishop's gentle voice yet rang in my ears, when a letter was put into my hands by my friend Colonel Everett. I did not open it then, but strolled down Broad street, to the Mills House, and in my pleasant room I sat down to enjoy Madge Cecil's confidence. Imagine my horror as I read:

"Come to me, dear Uncle Hal, for God alone can strengthen me in this fearful sorrow. I cannot understand, but yesterday Mr. Grey left me after a short visit, and to-day they tell me that he is dead. I hear low whisperings of a terrible sin, of which Henry Elsdon is guilty. For my dead mother's sake, come and aid your desolate Madge."

I left that evening, and on Saturday held my darling in my arms. Then the whole story in its fearful detail was repeated. Henry Elsdon had wished to marry my ward, but she had refused him, some time before her engagement with Newton Grey. Elsdon's pride was piqued, and he determined to be revenged. Then began a system of deceit that was Machiavelian; for with subtle skill he won Grey's friendship, till at last, in one unguarded moment, he dared to speak lightly of Madge. In an instant Grey rose, his face white with a terrible calm:

"I am in my own rooms, Mr. Elsdon, therefore you are safe; but you must feel that each word that you have uttered shall be retracted, else there can be but one settlement."

"And, by God! there shall be but one settlement!" And Elsdon's face glared with hate.

And so in the code that teaches murder--cold, passionless, brutal murder--they sought refuge; and Newton Grey fell, pierced through the temples.

Sorrows seem truly convoyed on this ocean of life, this sea of wild unrest; for in a few months Mr. Alan lost his fortune, and, of course, my ward's wealth was also engulfed in the great whirlpool of ruin.

A strange suspicion clouded my heart, and with an intuition of the truth, I felt that I could single out the demon who had spread destruction in this home.

But with the suavity of deceit, he subtly turned aside the tide of censure, so justly his due, and the world even forgave him for the duel; for strange travestied stories floated through the city. Who gave them to the public? I felt, I knew that Henry Elsdon had only added to the infamy which weighed upon his soul; but as yet the avenger had not struck, the race of hell had not been accomplished! ...

It was the exciting winter of '60 -- December, 1860! South Carolina had torn herself from her sisters, and Washington was in a ferment. Crowds congregated at the hotels to watch the opening of a season fraught with destiny. {842} Men with reckless, evil passions increased the excitement; for cognac burned and whiskey infuriated, and the whole mass of humanity seemed consumed by the one madness, mutual hate!

It was the evening of the 27th of December. The telegraph had spread the news of Anderson's evacuation of Fort Moultrie, and the agitation was culminating in effort. There is a season when enthusiasm pulses, till the wild madness intoxicates all feeling; then some sudden crowding on of events drives the fierce current into action, and the mighty mass heaves and surges with one will, one heart, for the conflict; and so it was to night. I stood on the corner of Pennsylvania avenue and Seventh street, watching the changing faces which the gas-light flared upon, when a woman's voice in wild terror startled me. "In the name of the cross, forbear!" she cried. And I turned to see a face pale with fear and horror. In an instant I was beside her; she held the cross of her rosary toward the man who had dared, not only to insult a woman, but one of God's ministering angels, those pure spirits of comfort, the Sisters of Mercy.

I struck the brute from her, but not without recognizing the features, even though inflamed and distorted by liquor. She almost fainted in my arms, but I placed her in my sister's carriage, just then passing, and ordered it to drive to the address which she gave.

What there was in the tones of that woman's voice I could not explain to myself; but a sad chord vibrated till the echoes waked in my heart feelings that I thought were sleeping quietly in a jealously guarded grave of the past. ...

Four years had gone by since that night, and the war that shook this continent had closed; ended were the years that had brought their holocaust, the proof of the calibre of the men who had died on the field of honor.

Grant's triumphant legions garrisoned the Confederate capital, and I was appointed surgeon in charge of ---- Hospital, where the sick and wounded of both armies were tended by the Sisters of Mercy.

The intense heat of those early summer days I can never forget, and the poor fellows in blue and gray tossed from side to side on the narrow cots in the fever wards. It was my night in ---- Hospital, for I was appointed to relieve Dr. ----, and I observed a "sister" bending over a patient whose white face and faint voice told me that his hours were numbered.

"Sister Mary," said the feeble tones, "will you bathe my temples? they burn and throb as fiercely as my own heart. Sister, can a vile wretch ask you to stand near when he is dying? Sister, you who are pure and holy, tell me if God will pardon me?"

"He came to save sinners!" I heard the low voice whisper. And she smoothed back the tangled masses of dark, waving hair, and tenderly soothed the poor fevered brow on which the dews of death were gathering. "Stay near me, sister. Let me hold your hand, while I listen to your voice, that recalls one in the long ago. O God! look down in mercy!"

And she whispered sweet words of comfort that calmed the unrest of sin and shame.

"Sister, if I could give all the years that I have wasted, if I would toil and struggle and pray for pardon, would Christ have mercy upon one whose years are heavily weighted with sin?"

"Repent, and ye shall be saved."

{843}

"Ah God! I do repent, and if a thousand years of suffering could atone for all, I would not shrink from a single pang. Sister," and he turned and held her hand closer, and gazed long and anxiously into her half-averted face. "My God! can it be?" But she turned further into the shadowy twilight, and her face was almost hidden. "Sister, I must tell you, because there is something in your tone and look, though I cannot see you well, that brings her back to me; so be patient for a little while and do not leave me yet. In the long ago I loved, and she whom I worshipped gave me no return. I think that circumstances might have moulded her differently, though my selfish passions taught me then to care for little, save what contributed to my own gratification. Well, I watched her love for another, and the devil influenced me; he stole away my truth, my love, my honor! I was mad with jealousy, I was wild with disappointed love, and I swore to be revenged. Therefore the schemes I laid, the deceit I practised; ay, I bided well my time. I stole the friendship of her lover, and poured my poison into his ears; but his noble nature shamed me, his trust could not be shaken; then--ah! how well I remember the evening--I spoke of her as my heart never believed; I lied, wickedly, maliciously lied, upon her! Then his knightly spirit rose, and he fell by my hand! I had begun; the poison was maddening; I could not stop, even though murder barred my path; so I counselled her guardian as to investments, and in one mad moment her fortune crashed with his.

"Still I tracked her on her mission of mercy to Washington; I dogged her steps when she left the couch of the sick woman whose death agonies she had soothed; I stood near the door of the wretched hovel, listening to the sweet tones of her voice that is haunting me to-night; and--I hardly knew what I was doing, I only felt that there was yet something undone which might humble her, might place her at my mercy; hell's fires raged in my heart--and, may God forgive me, but I spoke words to her which no man should utter and live. But she escaped me, and was torn from my grasp, while her pallid face grew whiter still as she spoke in terror, 'In the name of the cross, forbear!'

"Since that evening, I have never seen her face; but, sister, to-night all her saintly purity comes back to shame me, and I feel that the flames of hell would be less fiery if I could hear her say, 'I forgive you!'" There was a brief pause; the twilight of June shadowed the whitewashed wards, and the young moon shed a soft light over the starry heavens; but was it a message that flashed from Our Lady's crown, that lit the pallet over which the sister leaned? Ay, the face of Guido's angel, the angel of the lilies, shone over the dying man, as the sweet voice whispered, "Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you."

"Her voice!" he cried. And a sudden strength seemed to possess him; for, seizing her hand, he pushed back the black bonnet, and whispered, "Madge Cecil, dare I pray for your pardon?"

"And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Amen." And she gave him her crucifix, which he pressed to his lips.

"Then let me die in your faith; for, if its doctrines teach you even to forgive me, then through the prayers of your church will God grant mercy to my soul." He fainted in her arms, and she summoned me.

"Dr. ----, take care of him till my return."

{844}

I had heard it all, but she failed to recognize me. Grief had whitened my hair, and an iron-gray beard covered my face; and I preferred that she should not know me yet Soon I saw her return with Father Baker. My cordial had revived Elsdon, and in faint voice he repeated his wish.

"Let me be received, father, into the communion of the Holy Catholic Church, and pray God to have mercy on my soul."

The time was short, and no precious moment of it was to be lost. The good priest proceeded at once to his work of preparing the poor man for death. His penitence seemed sincere and profound, and his desire for the sacraments of the church most earnest. They were at once administered to him; and on his fervently expressed wish that the holy viaticum might be permitted to him, it was brought.

A snowy linen cloth was spread on the table by his bed, and two candles placed beside the crucifix. Solemnly we gathered near, for we felt that his life was fast fleeting. I have never seen nor realized more of the agony of contrition than when he slowly repeated after the priest, suffering at each word most intensely, "Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me!" At last he grew calmer. A quiet peace rested on his pale face, and after receiving the most holy communion, he murmured faintly, "Jesus, have mercy on me! Holy Mary, pray for me!" and folding the crucifix to his heart, he closed his eyes and we thought he slept. A deathlike stillness reigned, broken only by the solemn tones of the priest's voice: "Into thy hands we commend his spirit, which has been created and redeemed by thee!"

And in that pentecostal hour, when the storm of her life wailed its wild requiem in her heart, a holy calm, as a message from God, glorified her exquisite face, for the Comforter had sealed her with the expiation--the working out of life's great charity-- "Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."

The Rights Of Catholic Women.

By A Lady.

[We took occasion, some months ago, to sketch a number of the charitable works of Paris, in the hope of stirring the emulation of some of our leisured, zealous, and wealthy fellow-citizens to undertake something of the kind in this densely crowded city. The correspondent whose communication is given below, and whose contributions have often graced our pages, has felt her soul stirring with the same impulse in visiting Catholic Europe. Her earnest words came appropriately after the letter we published last month respecting a Refuge or Central Mission-House for vagabond children. There lies an open field where hundreds may work without jostling each other; and we hope this iron may be hammered while it is hot into a practical shape, and not merely serve as a poker to a useless fire of sentimental philanthropy. There is nothing like reducing the abstract to the concrete, sentiment to work, resolution to definite action.

{845}

We venture to suggest something else, also, to those of our fair readers who may be awakened to a desire of claiming their woman's rights by the appeal of their gifted countrywoman. It is practical, and yet not so difficult, as sending checks for one thousand dollars, or searching the streets for vagrant children. A society exists in Paris for making and embroidering vestments and other ornaments for the altars of poor churches and missions. Why not inaugurate the same work among the ladies of New York, for the benefit, first, of small country churches and chapels in our own diocese, and secondarily of similar churches elsewhere? We cannot rival Paris by a sudden _coup de main_ or accomplish everything in a day. But it is possible to make a beginning with one necessary work of charity after another, and to bring them gradually to the colossal dimensions which want and misery and vice have attained without any effort.--Ed. C. W.]

In _The Atlantic Monthly_ of April and May, 1868, appeared a generous and high-toned article, entitled "Our Roman Catholic Brethren," in which the author, appreciating the fact that no one can lose ground by treating with justice those who differ from him in opinion, frankly recognized the noble struggles of our priesthood and the success with which they have been crowned.

One assertion in this article we shall venture to comment upon, making this the occasion for a few suggestions to the Catholic women of the United States, whose right to share the labors of Catholic men is inalienable and incontestable, being founded upon the unvarying teaching of the church.

The author, in speaking of a missionary bishop whom he had known and respected as an "absolute gentleman," an "exquisite human being," in whom all the frailties springing from self-love had been consumed, leaving the "whole man kind, serene, urbane, and utterly sincere," concludes thus: "_A Catholic priest, indeed, would be much to blame if he failed to attain a high degree of serenity, moral refinement, and paternal dignity;_" because, be it understood, he has neither family cares nor business anxieties to harass him.

Most assuredly true, so far as concerns priests in a Catholic country, where the ranks of the priesthood are full; perhaps true in a purely missionary country, where the priest, in his intervals of repose, communes with his only companions, God and nature; absolutely untrue when applied to a parish priest in the United States, drained of his spiritual riches all day, and often half the night, and for relaxation thrown sometimes upon the companionship of his inferiors. It is no uncommon thing to see a noble priest, at the very centre and core of life, when powers should be ripe, strength unbroken, hope and nerves unshaken, break down, crushed under the weight of work which should have been divided between several persons, leaving to each one work enough to occupy a man of average capacity, time for study, and time for the recuperation of his spiritual powers by prayer and meditation.

Now, where is the remedy for this? Not in a sufficient number of clergymen, because we cannot hope for such a blessing for many years to come. Not in a diminution of labor, thank God, for the domain of the church is constantly widening, and souls are clamoring more and more eagerly for the privileges of religion. {846} The assistance must come from the laity, not working each one after a fashion of his or her own, but in a systematic manner, doing the work recommended by the parish priest in the way most agreeable to him.

That the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul contains all the elements necessary for providing Catholic men with missionary work, we are well aware; therefore we address ourselves exclusively to Catholic women.

Early in February of the present year, on a radiant Roman day, the remains of Saint Ignatius, bishop and martyr, were brought in triumph to the Colosseum from their resting-place in San Clemente. There, where, 1758 years before, the cry had gone up from 80,000 spectators, "Ignatius to the lions!" the Litany of the Saints arose to heaven; there, where wild beasts had snarled over their consecrated prey, canonized bones lay on a gorgeous bier, surrounded by cardinals, bishops, priests, and religious, gathering about them in veneration. One, at least, of those who watched the scene from the crumbling galleries, asked herself eagerly if God has ceased to call upon his children for sacrifices, as he called upon the early Christians; and conviction answered. No; that, though martyrdom has a mysterious value in the eyes of the church, she tenderly loves those who patiently endure the pangs of "that incurable malady which we call life."

And the Christian passing through the catacombs of Rome to-day, pausing in silent awe beside the tombs of martyred virgins, mothers, children, and pontiffs, draws in with every breath the same glorious assurance which gave them strength to suffer--the assurance that God would have us serve him with every nerve and fibre of our being. He claims from the nineteenth century, as he claimed from the first, not, indeed, its blood, but its energies, its faith, its charity. He summons every soul capable of the sacrifice of self to a life in the catacombs, to a holy, interior solitude, where his inspirations can be distinctly heard, where the buzz and hum of the world are inaudible. And as, after the celebration of the sacred mysteries, the early Christians were dismissed, and sent back to the performance of their ordinary avocations, invigorated and renewed; so God releases such souls after communing with them, and sends them forth to work for him, setting upon them three signs to distinguish them from other laborers--peace, simplicity, and perseverance.

In the early ages the laity suffered martyrdom with the clergy. In our own day, the laity should share the labor of the clergy. We are not summoned to bear witness to God in one mighty confession of faith sealed with our blood; but we are bound to show our fidelity to him by lives of unremitting devotion, to lighten the burdens weighing on the priesthood, to do our utmost to leave them leisure for the direction of souls, and for those works of supererogation which are the very heart and pulses of a life consecrated to God.

There are four things which we do not wish to recommend to Catholic women; namely, neglect of domestic duties, overexertion on the part of invalids, indiscreet activity in recent converts, the undertaking of difficult enterprises by those who are not gifted with executive faculty.

Home is the training-school of souls, and a mother's chief duty is to her husband and children. The physically weak serve God by renunciation and sacrifice, hardest and noblest of all apostleships. Converts, generally speaking, should show their families, by tact, affection, fidelity to home duties, that conversion has only knit them more closely to old friends and to natural claims; and this is seldom consistent with much exterior activity soon after conversion. It is very rarely advisable to undertake any work of importance without the advice of a judicious confessor; a just appreciation of one's personal strength and weakness is too rare a gift to be relied upon as a right.

{847}

It is our misfortune in the United States that the number of communities is very small in proportion to the work to be done; but though a clergyman would rather receive assistance from religious than from any one else, he would gratefully accept the aid of women of the world, provided they were possessed of judgment, tact, and perseverance.

To take up a charitable enterprise from love of excitement and lay it aside just as one's assistance had become valuable, would not be a proceeding modelled on the actions of the early Christians.

To make one's way into a public institution to patients or prisoners in a manner at variance with the regulations of the establishment, would not tend to advance the cause of religion.

To foster the whims of the poor and excite in them false wants, would add to their sufferings, not lessen them.

All these mistakes may easily be made by well-meaning persons who have not prudence. With fidelity, modesty, and common sense, it is impossible to make serious blunders, and it is possible to do a great deal of good without the sacrifice of much time or comfort.

Those who have health and leisure can work for the church; those who are too busy or too ill to undertake missionary labor can pray for the church. All who have an hour to spend or an ave and pater to recite, or an ache or a pain to offer to Almighty God, can do their share of the blessed work.

Without questioning the fact that the highest of all vocations is the call to a religious life--conceding the point that the work done by women has been usually better done by religious than by women of the world--we think there is a tendency to deny, to that obligation resting upon us all to do the work God marked out for us, the name of _vocation_, unless it leads us to a life in the community or to marriage. We venture to predict that an important share is to be taken in the work of the church in this country by women who have neither a vocation to join a religious order nor to marry.

There is a correspondence between the various vocations of religious orders and those of persons living in the world. Let us read over the golden record, and decide which path we are called to follow. There are the working orders, Sisters of Charity, of Mercy, of the Good Shepherd; the teaching orders, Ursulines, Sisters of the Visitation, Ladies of the Sacred Heart, and that sweetest of orders, the Sisters of Notre Dame, whose fame is hidden behind humility and obedience; and the contemplative orders, on whose prayers hang the fruit of thousands of energetic enterprises.

Most of the prisons, work-houses, and hospitals in the United States need the influence of judicious women. As such institutions are almost exclusively filled with poor people, and as more than half our poor people are Catholics, more than half the inmates of asylums, penitentiaries, etc., are Catholics; it is, then, a matter of justice that Catholic prisoners, patients, and paupers should be under Catholic influences. {848} Obedience to discipline is a principle most strongly inculcated by the church, and no consistent servant of the church will infringe the smallest regulation in any institution to which he has admission. When this truth is fully recognized, Catholic ladies will be allowed to visit freely all the public establishments in the Union. Let those who wish to do work corresponding to that of the working orders use all available opportunities for alleviating the sufferings and ameliorating the condition of the lower classes.

There are hosts of children who must learn the catechism; not after a parrot-like fashion, such as any ignorant person can teach it to them, but in a vital manner, so that the truth shall be set in their souls like a jewel, to be transmitted to future generations as a precious heritage. Every well-disposed and intelligent Catholic child can be sent forth from his course of instruction in the Sunday-school with the fervent determination to be a missionary in his own little sphere. Those who emulate the labors of the teaching orders have not far to seek for their work.

The Catholic literature of France, Germany, and Italy should be in general circulation in America, through the medium of good translations. Women are especially fitted to be translators. Their impressionable and adaptive minds make it easy for them to understand an author's thought and adopt his style. Let those who would follow in the footsteps of the contemplatives of earlier ages, whose leisure hours were given to writing for the benefit of religion, study critically their mother tongue and one other modern language, and thus unlock some of the treasures of foreign literature to those less gifted than themselves.

But enough, and more than enough for the present. We have sought to arouse a sense of the importance of the work to be done, not to explain the best method of accomplishing it. We have tried to show Catholic women what are their rights, leaving it to God to awaken in them a noble ambition to claim and appropriate those rights.

The Last Gasp Of The Anti-catholic Faction.

Protestantism and the Protestant denominations may be considered under two aspects. Under one aspect, the former is an imperfect Christianity, and the latter are societies professing each a certain form of this Christianity. As such we respect them, recognize the Christian and evangelical truths they retain, honor the virtue and goodness which are found among their adherents, and freely admit their great utility in many important particulars. We have no desire to wage a fierce polemical war upon them, but rather desire to discuss with them in a fraternal spirit the differences between us, the causes which keep us in separation, and the means of reconciliation and reunion.

Under the other aspect, the one is a denial of the first principles of Christianity, and the others are aggregations under the control of party-leaders whose principal object is the destruction of the church of Christ with its dogmas and discipline. {849} Although particular denominations do not avow a hostile intent toward all dogma and discipline, each one professing to maintain whatever it has selected as its constitutive principle out of the entire Christian system, yet the general sum and result of their combined efforts against the Catholic Church tends to the utter demolition of Christianity. This active, anti-Catholic Protestantism in our own day and country is principally confined to a comparatively small fraction of nominal Protestants. It is a wheel within a wheel, an _imperium in imperio_, a ring, a faction, very impotent, but extremely turbulent. The deadly quarrels of its component members with each other interfere materially with their unity of action against their common enemy. Now and then, however, a common sentiment seems to awaken in them that they had better postpone their private disputes until they have compassed by their united energies the fall of Babylon. Such a phenomenon has appeared quite recently in the ecclesiastical heavens. The newspapers of the principal sects have resounded with a call for united efforts on the part of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Unitarians, etc., against the progress of the Catholic Church in the United States. Dr. Bellows, who is as restless as if he were pursued by the Eumenides, and who seems to get into a more uncomfortable frame of mind every day as he prosecutes his travels, sends over a loud call showing the necessity of doing something to preserve that Protestantism which it has been the business of his life to overwhelm with ridicule and contempt. The liberal papers, false to their reiterated protestations of hatred against orthodox Protestantism and sympathy with Catholics, re-echo the sound, which is taken up by one and another of the lowing presses in turn, until each one _quid lachrymabile mugit_. Dear friends, what is the matter? If you will permit the citation of a somewhat trite classical passage, permit us to ask, _Tantaene animis coelestibus irae?_ We have been much at a loss to divine the immediate exciting cause of such a sudden aggravation of symptoms in our domestic "sick man." We think, however, that we have at last discovered that we are the innocent cause ourselves, through a few little harmless tracts, which were intended as a poultice, but have proved, we suppose on account of the extreme irritability of the patient's skin, a violent blister. We made the discovery by reading the following circular, which we publish cheerfully, in order to promote as much as possible that free and lively discussion which our excellent friends at the Bible House desire:

(Private.)

American and Foreign Christian Union, 27 Bible House, New York, June 17, 1868.

Mr. Editor:

Dear Sir: We are desirous of employing, in your journal, the pen of one of your ablest contributors, in the fair and thorough discussion of the recent publications and pretensions of the Roman Catholic Church.

You have doubtless seen some of the popular tracts of the "Catholic Publication Society." They have been circulated in all parts of the country with great assiduity. They are very ingenious and plausible, and very fallacious. It is matter of common interest to all who love evangelical truth that these fallacies should be promptly and effectively exposed.

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We have a proposition to make which seems to us to be for the mutual advantage both of your enterprise and of ours. If you will send us the address of that one of your contributors or collaborators whose papers on this subject will be most acceptable to you and your readers, we will make proposals to him for contributions to your journal, we supplying him with a copy of the series of popular tracts of the "Catholic Publication Society," and such other documents as he may need, and paying for his literary labor at a generous rate of compensation.

If you shall succeed in introducing us to writers on the Roman Catholic controversy who are learned, accurate, and courteous, and at the same time lively and effective in their popular style, we shall hope to continue and renew an arrangement which must be for the advantage of all the parties to it, and of the great cause of Christian truth.

Yours respectfully, J. Romeyn Berry, H. C. Riley, Leonard W. Bacon, E. F. Hatfield, Samuel I. Prime,

_Committee on Publications of the "American and Foreign Christian Union_."

Naturally, we have been on the alert ever since receiving this interesting circular, expecting a rare treat from the articles to be furnished by the learned, courteous, lively, and well-paid contributors to the press who must have jumped at once at this handsome offer. We have not yet gathered in a very ample collection of choice _morçeaux_ as the result of our study of the anti-Catholic press. We have obtained, however, a few gleanings which may be indications of an abundant harvest yet to come. Here is one from _The Episcopalian_, which no reader of that paper will expect to find either accurate, courteous, or lively, but which, as communicating a piece of rare and recondite information, may fitly prove a sample of the "learned" style:

"It has been suggested--and, we think, not without some reason--that the origin of ritualism in the Protestant Episcopal Church may be traced to the Roman Catholic Church itself; in other words, that the Roman Church, with the view of proselyting the Episcopal Church, has sent among us secret emissaries, of the Jesuit stamp, who, while pretending to be Episcopalians, are really Romanists, and whose mission it is to introduce one Romish novelty after another, until the congregations in which they are introduced are gradually but surely drawn into the communion of the Romish Church.

"To those who have studied the far-seeing policy of the Roman Church, and its secret workings for ages past, this suggestion will not seem strange or far-fetched. That equally subtle means for proselyting have been used by that church in times past no one can doubt who has read its history; and what has been done can be done--or, at least, tried--again.

"Freese. "Trenton, N.J., June, 1868."

The following, from _The Brooklyn Union_, if not learned or lively, is at least in a high degree "accurate and courteous," being a most respectful remonstrance against the audacity of Catholics in presuming to be so numerous, and to lay the corner-stone of a cathedral in open day on Sunday:

"He that Rules the City Rules the Country.--The Pope of Rome well knows this axiom. The Jesuits know it. The politician knows it. They all _act_ upon it. Cities are chosen as their centres of organization. From these centres their power radiates through every town and village and hamlet and district of our land. In a government like our own, this is particularly true. The pulsations of life and power of our larger cities, both in religion and politics, indicate the condition, in these respects, of our whole country. Hence the favored policy of the Papal hierarchy of inducing its subjects, when emigrating to the United States, to settle within the limits or easy access of our cities. Statistics show that the foreign Papal immigration, East, West, North, and South, settle chiefly within or about our cities. {851} No one with his eyes open has failed to see this with respect to New York, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Buffalo. The _foreign_ population of these cities _rule_ them. They present a majority of thirty thousand in New York. What may be their exact proportions in our other populous cities, the writer has at present no means of ascertaining. But from the number, the grandeur, and the costliness of their cathedrals and educational institutions in other cities--in such as Chicago and St. Louis--we should judge that their number is greater in proportion to their population than it is in New York. This statement has reference to the Papists. For the _infidel_ proportion who come to our shores from Europe, and who have been driven to infidelity by the tyranny and wickedness of Papacy, have no sympathy with that system in propagating its means of worship. All their sympathies are with our free institutions. Their licentiousness and disregard of the Christian Sabbath are the fruit of their infidelity. Even for this the Papal Church is responsible before God. But the Papacy, in its _spirit_ and in its _policy_ and in its _designs_, is opposed to our republican government. It is the sworn inveterate enemy to every principle and policy which favors republicanism. No bishop, no priest, and no member of the Papal Church ever has been or ever can be a loyal subject of a free government. Every pretence or profession or act which they avow to the contrary is the necessary outgrowth of wilful deception, hypocrisy, and falsehood. Among the _masses_ of her members an oath of loyalty may be the result of ignorance; and it may be permitted to remain of binding authority so long as it does not conflict with their first and paramount obligations with their church. But with the bishops, the priests, and the Jesuitical hordes of their hierarchy, an oath of loyalty or of testimony is of no value as a test of truthfulness. Nay, it is often taken as a means of deception, to accomplish some concealed purpose. Their fundamental doctrines of _mental reservation_ and _universal subordination_ to Rome necessarily exclude from their virtues that of true patriotism. That this hierarchy has for some years past been collecting, arranging, and concentrating the elements of her strength in and around the cities of the United States, is evident to any one who has watched its progress. Her power is abundantly manifest in the influence which she has exerted in the legislation of our cities and our states, in the appointments of many of our highest offices of trust and power, in the disposition and distribution of our public charities, and in the control of our popular system of education; and that the time has come, in their judgment, when she can, with safety to herself, openly assert her power, can be seen in the popular tracts, now numbering some thirty-one, of her religious press, in the public discussions of her periodicals, in her politico-religious organizations, as well as in her open and defiant Sabbath parades, and other desecrations of that blessed day. Let her have full scope to her power and freedom _as a church, in a legitimate way_. Let her seek to build up her cause as a system of religion, the same as Protestant churches in our country. But let her not attempt to ride rough-shod upon the rights of Protestants by her noisy parades, with drum and fife and boisterous shouts in front of our churches upon the Sabbath--by her insolent and brutal outrages upon unoffending Protestants when peaceably pursuing their avocations. Let her no longer refuse to listen to the respectful remonstrances of American citizens against such encroachments. Public religious services and the administration of the Lord's Supper in some of our churches were almost entirely prevented by the noise and confusion of the Papal parade on a late Sabbath. This nuisance has been _repeated_ in New York and Brooklyn in opposition to the respectful but earnest petition of Protestant laymen and clergy. On these occasions, several of our largest streets were piled up with city passenger-cars, that were forced to stop running on account of the procession. And what was all this confusion, all this violation of law and order, upon the Christian Sabbath for? Why, simply that a single Papal congregation might lay the corner-stone of the church of the 'Immaculate Conception.' Hundreds of quiet and orderly churches must be interrupted in their worship, the rights of large corporations must be trampled under foot, and the stillness of the Sabbath be invaded by the drum and fife and shout of a _drunken rabble_, for the sake of a single Papal congregation! Such occasions are not without a purpose. They afford the priesthood a fine opportunity of testing the strength of numbers, of trying the patience of the Protestant community, of gradually corrupting their respect for the Christian Sabbath, and of intimidating politicians with a show of power. Their design is a _political_ one. There is no religion about it. Her power is broken upon the 'Seven Hills' of Italy, and she is trying now to re-establish it in the metropolis of America. But who dare array himself against her avowed determination to subordinate all things to her purpose? {852} What politician, what party, or what partisan newspaper dare oppose the _political_ system of Papal hierarchy? It remains for the Protestant clergy of our evangelical denominations to take up the cause of religious liberty. No one will dare to speak out if they remain silent. The eyes of all are toward them. They must take the lead in the conflict with 'the man of sin.' God has thrown the responsibility upon them. They can, if they will, sway both the religious and political destinies of our nation. Let no one talk about the danger or the fanaticism of introducing politics into our pulpits. The days of such cowardly conservatism are past. Let politicians as well as Papists, at whose feet the former bow, be made to feel that patriotism is a Christian virtue, and that its sacred fire is kept alive and pure only in the breasts of those who swear by an open Bible and a free conscience. If our Protestant ministers will do their duty, the masses of our people will see the danger which threatens us. They will unite their strength in a successful issue with the powers of darkness, and our politicians, seeing the strength of such a combination, will withhold their sympathy and patronage from a system which, in the garb of _religion_, aims its death-blow at the very root of our civil liberty. C."

The following is a specimen of the "lively and effective" style:

Catholicism.

A Reply To J. G. Parton's Article In The Atlantic Monthly.

This little treatise is respectfully presented to J. G. Parton and all our Catholic brethren, by their brother and friend, Charles W. Gilbert.

"And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying. _All power_ is given unto me in heaven and in earth."--Matthew xxviii. 18.

"This is the _stone_ which was set at naught of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there _salvation_ in any other: for there is _none_ other name under heaven given among men, _whereby we must be saved_."--Acts iv. 11, 12.

"It behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted."--Hebrews ii. 17, 18.

Galesburg, June 22, 1868. Mr. J. G. Parton: Dear Sir: I flatter myself you will excuse me for the liberty I have taken in addressing you this letter. It has been called for by reading a communication in _The Atlantic Monthly_, in April last, respecting our Catholic brethren.

I have neither time nor space to write half I want to, only to mention a few points: And first, you say there is a difference between Catholics and Protestants in the mode of praying; you say a Protestant hides his face in his hands, but Catholics do not, though they kneel, but the body is upright. Dear sir, do you not know the reason? Our Catholic brethren worship images, which God has forbidden. Turn to the second commandment: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath," etc. "Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work," etc. Take your Bible and read all the commandments.

Dear sir, can you find one of our Roman Catholic brethren that keeps the commandments? Turn to the First Epistle general of John, second chapter, fourth verse, "He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a _liar_, and the truth is not in him."

You speak of their communion. Do they drink the _wine_ and eat the bread, as Christ has commanded? No, no! A little wafer is put on the tongue. Please turn to the seventeenth chapter of Revelation, fourth verse.

The next topic is the Catholic Sabbath-school. Sir, what is a Sabbath-school _without_ the _Bible_ to direct us how to teach little children the way of life and salvation? Do you not know that the priests do not allow the Bible to be read in a Sabbath-school nor in a day-school? This is the reason they will not send their children to the Protestant schools.

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What said St. Paul to Timothy? "And that from a _child_ thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are _able_ to make thee wise unto salvation through _faith_ which is in Christ Jesus."--2 Timothy iii. 15, We read also, in the sixteenth verse, "_All_ Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

What said Jesus? "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have _eternal life_: and they are they which testify of me."--John v. 39.

You say the children in the Sabbath-school sing to the Virgin Mary the following stanza, "O Mary! Mother," etc. Dear sir, who is this Mother Mary? Let Christ answer. Turn to Matthew xii. 50: "For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." Read also in Mark iii. 35; also Luke viii, 21.

You quote the prayer that the superintendent uttered, in Latin. How _edifying_ that must have been to the children, especially when he used the word _immaculate_ Host! Could the children have understood that word, they would have blushed.

You give us a glowing description of the different cathedrals, and how they are occupied. Now, my dear sir, let me tell you, the best prayer-meeting that I ever enjoyed was in a _log-cabin_. Read St. John iv. 23, 24. Jesus told the woman of Samaria that the hour had now come "when the _true_ worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." Christ told the woman of Samaria she need not go up into the mountains nor to Jerusalem to worship the Father, but anywhere, in the log-cabin or in your house, if you worship God in spirit.

The next topic is, you say: "Our Catholic brethren are very candid, and are as truly and entirely convinced of the truth of their religion as any Protestant."

I am now almost seventy-three years of age, and have labored among our Catholic brethren more than forty years. I have seen many of them _happily converted, born again_; as Christ told Nicodemus, told him repeatedly, "Except a man be born again, he could not enter heaven."--John iii. Yes, I have seen them _put off_ the old man with all his deeds and put on Christ; yes, his very _countenance_ was changed; yes, he will not visit the Dutch gardens or saloons on the Sabbath. Said a _converted_ Roman Catholic lady to me, the other day: "I have _perfect peace_ now. When I belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, I was in constant misery."

Said a converted Catholic man, aged sixty-six years: "I never took any comfort before." I asked him if he was ready to die. He said, "_Yes_." I asked him how he knew. Putting his hand on his breast, he said, "_Spirit tell me so_." So Christ says his Spirit shall enlighten every man that cometh into the world.

In all my conversation with our Catholic brethren, I have never found the first one that could say with St. Paul: "I long to be absent from the body that I might be present with the Lord, that I might be clothed upon with another body like unto his."

Our Catholic brethren are taught that there is a _purgatory_. I wonder if St. Paul had to go there first. I have often asked our Catholic brethren where the _penitent_ thief went to, that was crucified with Christ, when Christ said to him, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise."

If there is a purgatory where we have to go to atone for our sins, Christ must have suffered in vain, though he cried on the cross, "It is finished."

I have seen Catholics die in despair. I had one in my employ as a sailor on the North River. He caught a severe cold; it ran him into a quick consumption. I asked him if he would like to have me read the Bible to him. He said, No; he said the priest had forbidden him to read the Bible or hear it read. As he was failing very fast, I went in again and asked him if he wished me to read to him in the Bible. He said, No, but wished I would go and call the priest. I did so, and after the priest went away, I went into his room and asked him if he was happy. He answered, No, and cried bitterly, and said, "_I am going to hell! I am going to hell!_" and died in a few minutes.

You next speak of young men that were studying for the ministry; you say they study Latin, Greek, and theology. Dear sir, what is theology? If I understand it, it is a Science of God. How can they study theology without the Bible, the word of God? They are not allowed the Bible, so a converted Roman Catholic priest published to the world, at least he said that there was not more than _one_ in twenty that ever saw a Bible.

You say the Catholic Church is getting very _rich_, I do not doubt it. Oh! how I pity the poor Catholic brethren. See how they _toil_ and _work_ to support the priest and the nunneries, and to _build_ meeting-houses to please the eye and charm the weak minded. And what do they get _for all this_? Let echo answer. Look at our poor-houses. Every winter thousands have to go to our poor-houses to be taken care of by our Protestant churches. Here in our city many would have perished this last winter, had not our poor-master fed them.

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You next give us a history of a wonderful miracle that was performed in Washington in 1824. Dear sir, do you think any Protestant with one eye, and that half-open, can be made to believe _such nonsense_? If _you_ wish to see miracles wrought in the nineteenth century, just give the _Bible_ to our Catholic brethren, then you may see greater _miracles performed_ than you speak of; for to see a man that is _dead in sin_ changed to a _spiritual_ man, made _alive_ in Christ, is a miracle.

Our Catholic brethren are taught that their church was the _first church_. Let me inform you that there was no Roman Catholic church on the earth for three hundred years after the death of the apostles. Permit me to quote a few passages from the word of God. 2 Thessalonians ii. 3, 4: "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a _falling away first_, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." Could an angel from heaven portray the character of the pope in any plainer language?

I Timothy iv. 1-5: "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the _latter_ times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain _from meats_, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer."

Paul speaks of visiting the churches; that is to say, little bands of Christians. We read in the Acts of the Apostles xv. 3: "And being brought on our way by the church;" that is to say, a few Christians. Read, also, xvi. 5: "Likewise _greet_ the church that is in their house," etc.

You will now turn to Revelation xiii. 16-18: "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, _free_ and _bond_, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads." Now, every true Catholic receives the sign of the cross in his forehead every Ash-Wednesday; every priest, when he is ordained for the ministry, receives the mark of the cross in his right hand.

A converted Roman Catholic priest, going through one of the streets in a Southern city, picked up the thirteenth chapter of Revelation, and, reading it, he was convinced that he was one of those that had received the mark in his right hand, and was led by the _Spirit_ to see his error and was _happily_ converted, and became a Baptist minister.

Give the Bible to all our Roman Catholic priests and brethren in America, and in less than _five_ years there would not be a Roman Catholic church in existence. Rev. Mr. Hyacinthe, a Roman Catholic priest, in Paris, France, has come out in _favor_ of reading the Bible. He is now preaching in the Notre Dame cathedral to audiences of _three thousand_. He presses upon the people, in the most eloquent words, the study of the Bible.

The news from Italy is very interesting. Thousands of our Catholic brethren are inquiring and receiving the Bible, that they may learn the way to Christ. In less than five years there cannot be found a Roman Catholic in all that vast kingdom, except in Rome, where the Catholic religion has to be protected by an army. That is a curious religion that has to be protected by the SWORD. Shame! shame!

That great city is soon to be destroyed, according to God's word. See Revelation xiv. 20: "And the wine-press was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the wine-press, even unto the horses' bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs. "You are aware, I suppose, that the pope claims two hundred miles square around Rome. The above number of furlongs make just that number of miles. Let Bonaparte send ALL his armies to Rome, and he could not _prevent this prophecy from being_ fulfilled when the time comes.

Dear sir, you have a great deal to say about our Catholic brethren exercising _greet_ faith. Paul says, "Faith without works is dead." What are the works that God requires? Let me tell you. It is not only to clothe the naked and feed the hungry; but it is to go out into the _highways and hedges_, and invite the sinner, the wayward--yes, the poor drunkard--to become _reconciled_ to God; to put off the _old_ man with all his deeds, and put on the new man which is after Christ. Did you ever learn of one of our Catholic brethren doing the like?

You speak of children being _confirmed_. What does that mean? Why, made _Christians_. Dear sir, who can _change_ the heart of a child or a man? No one but God. What saith the Bible, speaking of those that were Christ's? "Which were _born_, not of _blood_, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."--John i. 13.

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You tell us that in this easy and pleasant way our Catholic brethren join the church. Dear sir, does joining a church make a man Christ-like? Christ says: "If ye have my spirit, ye are mine; if ye have not my spirit, ye are none of mine."--Romans viii. 9. Read the whole chapter; it contains the whole plan of salvation.

Our Catholic brethren are taught that the Virgin Mary was _born_ immaculate! What blasphemy! And also that the church is _infallible_! When Christ asked Peter and the disciples, "Whom say ye that I am?" Peter answered and said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Upon this acknowledgment or confession of Peter, that Christ was the son of the living God, Christ said, "I will _build my church_"--not upon Peter, as the pope claims.

You say our Catholic brethren are not ashamed to be found praying. Please turn to the sixth chapter of Matthew, and read the sixth verse, which is as follows: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in _secret_; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."

You say the superintendent of the Catholic Sabbath-school you visited told you that he had visited many of the Protestant Sabbath-schools and had copied after them. I wonder where he found a Protestant Sabbath-school _without the Bible_!

You say that the Catholics expect to rule in this country, and that all Protestant children will be in their Sabbath-schools. Let me say, "Let God be true, but every man a liar."--Romans iii. 4. St. Paul has prophesied that the time shall soon come when the Sword of the Spirit SHALL destroy the _Man of Sin_.

There are thousands of our Catholic brethren in America that are sick of the Catholic religion, and will soon leave it. When I was engaged in teaching a Sabbath-school of Catholic children, a father and mother called on me and wanted to put their children in my school. I said, "Your priest will not allow you to do so." They said they did not care anything about their priest; they had been brought up in _ignorance_; they did not want their children brought up so.

You cannot tell us of a Sabbath-school in all Italy, or in any other country where the Roman Catholics rule, except those that have been established by Protestants.

You tell us about Roman Catholic benevolent societies. Where, oh! where is there an asylum for the blind and deaf and dumb, that they may learn to read the word of God, and get a knowledge of our Saviour Christ Jesus, and learn the way to heaven? You cannot show one in any Catholic country.

Permit me to give you another graphic picture from the Bible, giving a picture of the priests' dresses. Please turn to Revelation xvii. 4, 5; "And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a _golden_ cup in her hand," etc.

Now, all this I have seen in the great cathedral in Montreal. I have seen our Catholic priests and brethren _bowing down_ to graven images for several minutes.

Mr. J. G. Parton, dear sir, I sincerely pray that you will, after reading this communication, repent, (not do penance,) and turn to the Lord, and not be under the necessity of calling upon the rocks and mountains to fall on you and hide you from the face of the Lamb. (Revelation vi. 16.) Do read, also, verse 17: "For the great day of his _wrath_ is come; and who shall be able to stand?" Do read this communication carefully, and pray that it may be blessed to your salvation.

No more at present, and I remain your friend in Christ, Charles W. Gilbert.

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New Publications.

The Vickers and Purcell Controversy. Respectfully presented to all the lovers of truth. By John B. Purcell, Archbishop of Cincinnati, Printed for the benefit of Mt. St. Mary's Seminary of the West. Benziger Brothers, Printers to the Holy Apostolic See, Cincinnati and New York. 1868.

The gentleman calling himself the Rev. Thomas Vickers, Minister of the First Congregational Society of Cincinnati, is a living contradiction in terms. According to the statement in the volume before us, he believes in no personal God, declares "the Christ" to be "a theological fiction," and the Bible "a crutch." What there is "reverend" about Mr. Vickers, what sense there is in his claiming the title of minister, or what appropriateness in his professing to belong to a Congregational Society, we are at a loss to divine. What greater absurdity of nomenclature can there be, than calling a pantheistic lecturer against Christianity and Theism by the name of a Congregational minister? Of what use is a church, or a minister, on his principles, or, rather, denial of principles? Nevertheless, in this very absurd and unnecessary character of minister, Mr. Vickers appeared at the laying of the corner-stone of a new temple of German infidelity, denominated, with a ludicrous disregard of common sense, St. John's Church, and made a speech, which occasioned the controversy contained in the little volume under notice. In this speech, Mr. Vickers welcomed and blessed the undertaking of the society of German infidels calling themselves St. John's Church, in the name of the Anglo-American portion of the population of Cincinnati. At the same time, he gave utterance to the most contemptuous scorn of everything which the professedly Christian part of that population holds as sacred and divine in religion. This was, to say the least of it, a piece of cool impertinence on the part of the young gentleman in question. Mr. Vickers, we believe, passed a few years in Germany, studying what he calls "science;" and he appears to have returned with a strong impression on his own mind that he is destined to enlighten the benighted believers in the Christian revelation in Cincinnati with the rays of this German luminary. He is not the first to engage in this experiment. It has been tried before, and we recommend to the attention of the illuminati of Cincinnati the following description of its result, from the pen of Dr. Hedge, of Harvard University. It is extracted from an article in the _Christian Examiner:_

"Some thirty years ago, a club was formed of young men, mostly preachers of the Unitarian connection, with a sprinkling of elect ladies--all fired with the hope of a new era in philosophy and religion, which seemed to them about to dawn upon the world. There was something in the air--a boding of some great revolution--some new avatar of the Spirit, at whose birth these expectants were called to assist

'Of old things, all are over old: Of old things, none are good enough: We'll show that we can help to frame A world of other stuff.'

"For myself, though I hugely enjoyed the sessions, and shared many of the ideas which ruled the conclave, and the ferment they engendered, I had no belief in ecclesiastical revolutions to be accomplished with set purpose; and I seemed to discern a power and meaning in the old, which the more impassioned would not allow. I had even then made up my mind, that the method of revolution in theology, is not discussion, but development. My historical conscience, then as since, balanced my neology, and kept me ecclesiastically conservative, though intellectually radical. There haunted me that verse in Goethe's bright song, 'The General Confession,' as applicable to ecclesiastical incendiarism as it is to political:

'Came a man would fain renew me, Made a botch and missed his shot. Shoulder shrugging, prospects gloomy: He was called a patriot.

'And I cursed the senseless drizzle, Kept my proper goal in view: Blockhead! when it burns, let sizzle; When all's burned, then build anew.'

Others judged differently; they saw in every case of dissent, and in every new dissentient, the harbinger of the New Jerusalem. 'The present church rattles ominously,' they said; 'it must vanish presently, and we shall have a real one.' There have been some vanishings since then. {857} Ah me! how much has vanished! Of that goodly company, what heroes and heroines have vanished from the earth! Thrones have toppled, dynasties have crumbled, institutions that seemed fast-rooted in the everlasting hills have withered away. But the church that was present then, and was judged moribund by transcendental zeal, and rattled so ominously in transcendental ears, is present still.

"It was finally resolved to start a journal that should represent the ideas which had mainly influenced the association already tending to dissolution. How to procure the requisite funds was a question of some difficulty, seeing how hardly philosophic and commercial speculation conspire. An appeal was made. Would Mammon have the goodness to aid an enterprise whose spirit rebuked his methods and imperilled his assets? The prudent God disclaimed the imputed verdure; and the organ of American Transcendentalism, with no pecuniary basis, committed to the chance and gratuitous efforts and editing of friends, if intellectually and spiritually prosperous, had no statistical success. It struggled, through four years, with all the difficulties of eleemosynary journalism; and then, significantly enough, with a word concerning the 'Millennial Church,' sighed its last breath, and gave up the ghost. I prize the four volumes among the choicest treasures of my library. They contain some of Emerson's, of Theodore Parker's, of Margaret Fuller's, of Thoreau's best things; not to speak of writers less absolute and less famous.

"Meanwhile the association, if so it could be termed, had gradually dissolved. Some of the members turned papists--I should say, sought refuge in the bosom of the Catholic Church. A few of the preachers pursued their calling, and perhaps have contributed somewhat to liberalize and enlarge the theology of their day. Some have slipped their moorings on this bank and shoal of time. One sank beneath the wave, whose queenly soul had no peer among the women of this land. Of one

'A strange and distant mould Wraps the mortal relics cold.'

Finally, a fragment of this strangely compounded body lodged in a neighboring town, and became the nucleus of an agricultural enterprise in which the harvest truly was _not_ plenteous, and the competent laborers few; and of which, the root being rottenness, the blossoms soon went up as dust."

Mr. Vickers may thank the Archbishop of Cincinnati for having given his very boyish lucubrations a little momentary notoriety, which they never could have acquired by their own merit. They are crude, ill-mannered, replete with commonplace, effete, and senseless vituperations of all that is venerable in Catholicity and Christianity, and betray an ignorance of the subjects treated of which makes them unworthy of any serious attention. The point which the discussion chiefly turns upon is "freedom of thought." If Mr. Vickers is a disciple of the German pantheistic school, as we suppose him to be, he is not in a condition to maintain that there is any such thing as thought or freedom. We intend to give abundant proof of this assertion, in a series of articles, to be published in our Magazine, on Pantheism, in which we shall show, to the satisfaction of any person capable of metaphysical reasoning, that pantheism destroys the possibility of thought, in the true sense of the word, as the intellection of real, objective truth. Pantheism destroys, also, all possibility of freedom by reducing all phenomena to a fatal, invincible necessity. A pantheist is bound to accept all the persecutions of the middle ages, all the definitions of the church, and the encyclical of the pope, as manifestations of God. Our godlike friends are too much like the wife of the Connecticut corporal, who replied to the query of her innocent offspring, "O ma! are we all corporals now?" with the haughty rejoinder, "No, indeed! only _your pa and I_." Mr. Vickers and the members of the free-thinking _coterie_ are not the only participators in the universal deity. If Mr. Vickers's brilliant exposition of the doctrine of the immaculate conception was a divine inspiration, Archbishop Purcell was equally moved by divine inspiration to the paternal castigation which he administers to his young and somewhat forward fellow-celestial. In fact, Mr. Vickers, the archbishop, the book containing their controversy, _The Catholic World_, ourselves, our readers, St. Thomas, Torquemada, Luther, Heidelberg University, and the Jesuits, are all one thing, or one nothing; a _Seyn_, or a _Werden_, or a _Nichtseyn_; all bubbles on the fathomless ocean of infinite--nonsense. {858} It is a wonder that Mr. Vickers lays so much to heart, and makes such a serious business out of that which has no reality. A nephew of the great German philosopher, Hegel, who was also a favorite pupil of Feuerbach, and who is now a devout Catholic, told us, some time ago, that he asked Feuerbach why philosophy was making no progress, but seemed to be at a stand-still. The latter replied, that they had already proved by philosophy the nothingness of everything, and it was, therefore, useless to push philosophy any further, adding, that it was time to go back to common sense. Such is the end of that lawless, intellectual activity which Mr. Vickers calls "free thought." It is like a head of steam that bursts its boiler, and is then dispersed in the circumambient atmosphere.

Memoirs and Letters of Jennie C. White--Del Bal. By her mother, Rhoda E. White, 1 vol. royal 8vo, pp. 363. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1868.

We must presage our notice of this interesting book, by saying we have a dislike to memoirs written by fond and partial friends. Lives of the saints we love to read, but our digestion was early impaired by the memoirs of good children (who all died young) with which we were fed for Sunday food, and we have latterly been in the bad habit of turning away from a book labelled, _Memoirs of_, etc.

However, we read Jennie's life with interest; and it is a beautiful story, giving to the reader a delightful insight into a truly Catholic family, where the breath of piety permeates the daily walk of every member, mingling with and heightening the light-hearted pleasures peculiar to the seasons of childhood and youth. The tale of her courtship and marriage is told with a sweet and winning grace, which charms us by its naturalness. Quite unlike the prevailing spirit and sentiment of "Young America" is the history of the prompt obedience to the mandate of parental authority, in giving up their engagement. The accepted lover, a resident of Santiago, New Granada, had promised his aged father not to forsake his own country, and Jennie's father could not give his consent to the taking of his first-born to that far-off foreign land. After a struggle, they parted with aching hearts, released from their engagement; but the influence of the true woman in the mother reunited that broken bond.

Contrary to the fate of many American girls who go to foreign homes, Jennie's marriage was an exceedingly happy one. The secret is very plain--they were both earnest Catholics. Oneness in faith, and earnest-heartedness in that faith, are the best securities for happiness in married life. The sight of this happy young creature, leaving so fond a circle of friends, and such a home as Jennie left behind in New York, to go to a comparatively unknown land--a country distracted by revolutions, with churches closed and priests exiled--gives us a glowing picture of the self-sacrificing spirit of true love. Her journeys by land and by sea, before she reached her destination, were perilous indeed; and we could not but ask, Yankee-like, why such a refined and cultivated and intelligent people as those among whom her lot was cast should never have provided some more comfortable way of reaching their country. She was the first American lady there, and attracted much attention and admiration by her brave, active spirit, as well as by her large Catholic heart. Her letters to her home friends are lovely from their childlike simplicity and truthfulness; giving us glimpses of many homesick heartaches, even when she was decking herself for the dance. Sometimes there appears a little excess in her efforts to be gay, when she writes, "I danced every piece but one till five in the morning." Mrs. Del Bal went to New Granada at a time when the so-called "Liberals," under Mosquera, were in the ascendant, proclaiming a pretended religious liberty, of which some of the first acts were the disbanding of all religious communities, turning the sisters upon the world, shutting up the churches, banishing the priests, unless they took an oath whereby they would cease to be Catholics; in fact, Mosquera made himself pope. Professing to establish a government in which there should be no connection between church and state, the government framed this article for the twenty-third of their Constitution:

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"In order to sustain the national sovereignty and to maintain public peace and security, the national government, and in some cases the state government, shall exercise the right of supreme inspection over all religious worships, as the law shall determine."

This is a law of liberty very like those the English Catholics enjoyed under Queen Elizabeth.

Mrs. Del Bal exerted herself to give the press at the North the true state of the case with regard to this matter, since the public papers have loudly lauded Mosquera and his government. How far she succeeded in influencing minds that swallow eagerly anything called "liberal," we are not told. Our friend Jennie was loyal to her heart's core, and never ceased to call herself and her husband American citizens; and her thorough celebration of the "glorious Fourth" was a complete success. American thrift and industry carried her through what would have been impossible to a New Granadian.

But it is Jennie's almost superhuman efforts to revive the faith in the land of her adoption which excite our wonder and admiration, even more than the tender breathings of her woman's heart, separated for ever from the earliest loved. She had everything to struggle against in her work; "deplorable ignorance among the lower classes, and the falling away from faith and duty in the educated;" and this in a land once hallowed by the daily sacrifice. Well might she call the country "God forsaken," when those who should have cared for the sheep became themselves grievous wolves devouring God's heritage. The secret of the country's desolation we may read in this sentence:

"It is a well-known fact to Protestant travellers and a wound in the heart of the Catholic world, that the Catholic priesthood in this part of the world and in the West India Islands, scandalize the faithful. Why are they permitted to remain in the church? is asked often by Protestant and Catholic. Because they are sustained by a government which will not acknowledge papal authority; and if the archbishop were to remove them to-morrow, if need be, they would be reinstated by the bayonet. Hence these scandals."

But we turn from this sad picture to our young friend. Working with all the ardor of a soul given to God, filled with the love of Christ, her prayers and labors brought forth abundant and immediate fruits; but not till that day when the Great Master shall make up his jewels will it be known how many were brought back to faith and duty by her efforts. The missionary spirit pervaded all her life, and we may believe that love for souls, in part, led her to give her consent to so sad and final a parting from her early home; for she laid her plans for these poor, neglected people before she left her father's roof. She found some pious, devoted women in Santiago, (where are they not found?) and she gave them work to do. Everything prospered in her hands: Sunday-schools, altar societies, associations of the Sacred Heart; and at last, through her instrumentality, the laws were repealed that closed the churches, the _Te Deum_ was sung, the sanctuary lamp was relighted, and 'la nina Jennie' was acknowledged, by the grateful people, as a public blessing God sent.

It is extremely touching to mark how, amid the constant terror of revolution, the wearing care of churches, hospitals, Sunday-schools, altar societies, plantations, and housekeeping, with a retinue of easy-going, lazy servants, she turns to entertain a dear friend with tales of her beloved parents, recalling the happy and united life at home, and then runs to console these absent ones by telling them, in her letters, with the artlessness of a child, that her husband must be good, since she is so happy with him, away from all she loved before! Only four years was she permitted to cheer the heart of her fond husband--only four years to lead the life of a devoted missionary in that desolate vineyard. The snapping of the chain by death that bound that household; the departure of her noble father--we may well believe-- coming upon a heart filled with care for the souls about her, lying in worse than heathen darkness, hastened her own death.

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As we close the volume, we can not mourn for her nor for her dear family; it is a blessed privilege to have such a friend in heaven.

"Life is only bright when it proceedeth Toward a truer, deeper life above: Human love is sweetest when it leadeth To a more divine and perfect love."

No, we mourn for Santiago, and pray our dear Lord to compassionate a country so piteously torn by revolutions, and abandoned by those who should be first to hear the cry that comes over the land to all Catholics, "Send us priests who have an apostolic spirit, good judgment, and tact!"

The publisher's portion of the work is well done. It is well printed on fine paper, and the binding is in keeping with the rest of the book. It is, in fact, the handsomest book Mr. Donahoe ever published, and we are glad to see so great an improvement in his book-making.

The Woman Blessed by all Generations; or, Mary the Object of Veneration, Confidence, and Imitation to all Christians. By the Rev. Raphael Melia, D.D. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1868. For sale at The Catholic Publication House, New York.

Dr. Melia is an Italian priest, residing in London; a man of solid learning, great zeal for the conversion of Protestants, and possessing a competent knowledge of the English language. His work is a comprehensive treatise on the dignity and office of the Blessed Virgin, and the reasons for the veneration and invocation of Mary practised in the church; to which is added a devotional treatise on the imitation of her virtues. The author goes thoroughly into the arguments from Scripture, tradition, reason, theology, and antiquities. His style is lively, popular, and somewhat diffuse, so that his learning is brought to the level of the understanding of ordinary readers, and his arguments made plain by ample and minute explanations. The book is also illustrated by _fac-similes_ from ancient works of art. It is a treasury of knowledge on the charming and delightful subject of which it treats, and both Catholics and Protestants who wish to gain thorough, solid information respecting the Catholic devotion to Mary, with ease and pleasure to themselves, will find this book to be the very one they are in need of. The author is entitled to the thanks of all English-speaking Catholics for this labor of love, and we trust that his excellent work may be the means of increasing and diffusing, both in England and America, that solid and fervent devotion to the Blessed Mother of God which is both the poetry and an integral part of the practical piety of our religion.

We have just received from Messrs. Murphy & Co., Baltimore, _The Acts and Decrees of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore_. _The Catholic World_, for August, contained an elaborate article on this work, written from an advance copy kindly furnished by Mr. Murphy. It is unnecessary to say anything more with regard to its contents, except to reiterate what was then said as to its external appearance. It is a handsome volume, finely printed on good paper, and bound in various styles and in the best manner known to the art of binding, and is a credit to the publisher. It is for sale at the Catholic Publication House, New York.