Chapter VII.

"This monarch, so great, so powerful, must die, must die, must die." "Praise be to him who liveth for ever."

During that whole summer there was a quiet but potent influence at work under Margaret Hamilton's superficial life; ever at work, yet silently, scarcely recognized by herself. The spark struck out by Mr. Southard in his anti-Catholic lecture was slowly kindling in the depths of her being.

There was not a thought of controversy in her mind. As she read, one doctrine after another appeared, and showed its harmony with some need of hers; or if not needed, it was not antagonistic, like the pleasant face of a stranger who may become a friend. Fortunately, no person and no book had said to her, You _must_ believe; and so awakened opposition. Or if the obligation had been insinuated, she had not perceived it. She felt that it was for her alone to say what she must believe, as long as she invited truth generously, and was ready to accept it when it appeared to her with a truthful face. Of course she was not one to make syllogisms at every step, and, being a woman, was not likely to think that necessary. She looked up to find one truth after another standing smiling and confident on the threshold of her heart, and as smilingly she bade them welcome. Reason gave up the reins to intuition, and light came without a cloud. She realized nothing, till, startled by some outside call that woke a many-voiced stir of hitherto silent guests, she opened her eyes, and found herself a Catholic.

The first emotion was one of incredulity; then followed delight, mingled with a fear which was merely the shadow cast by old bugbears that, looked at fearlessly in that new light, faded and fled like ghosts at dawning. Then all surprise faded away. She recognized her proper place. She was at home.

But how to tell Mr. Granger! For she must tell him without delay. It was not an easy task. If he had suspected, perhaps she could have spoken; but he never dreamed of the change in her. If the subject had been introduced, she must have spoken; but for some reason, the "papists" were allowed to rest unscathed in the family conversations. {312} It was the war; it was General Sinclair, sabre in hand, riding into battle as if it were a _féte_; it was the weather, a whole month of persistent and most illogical rain, pouring down through west winds, through dry moons, through red sunsets, through every sign that should bring clear skies, Taurus being clerk of the weather, they concluded; it was when they should go back to town--" Not till the trees should resume specie payment," was Mr. Granger's professional dictum; it was any and everything but theology. And so the weeks went past, and October came, and the story was not told. But he must know before they returned to town, for then she was to be baptized.

Her uneasiness did not escape Mr. Granger, and in some measure it communicated itself to him. He perceived that she wished to say something to him, yet was afraid to speak.

"After all," he thought, "why should I wait for her to begin? She is as timid, sometimes, as much of a baby, as my Dora. I dare say it is some foolish thing, only fit to laugh at. I must help her."

It was Sunday. Mr. Southard was in town, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis and Aurelia taking their farewell walk in the pine woods, for the family were to leave the seashore that week, and Dora was in the kitchen, hushing to sleep an interesting family of kittens. Miss Hamilton walked up and down the piazza, and Mr. Granger sat just inside one of the windows, looking at her. He saw that she occasionally glanced his way, and hesitated, and that with some suspense or fear her face had grown very pale.

He leaned on the sill, as she came past, and regarded her anxiously.

"You are not looking well," he said. "I hope that nothing troubles you."

She came to him immediately, eagerly; a faint smile just touching her lips, and fading again.

"I wanted to tell you; but I was afraid," she said, speaking like one out of breath.

"I am sorry that you are afraid of me. Have I ever given you reason to be?"

Margaret could not look at him, but leaned against a pillar near the window, and averted her face.

"I was afraid only because you might think--"

She stopped.

"My dear child, what a coward you are!" he exclaimed, half laughing. "You are worse than Dora. She had not such an air of terror when she broke my precious Palissy plate. Must I apply the thumbscrew?"

She turned toward him suddenly, and with a look stopped his raillery.

"Would you be much displeased, Mr. Granger, if I should be a Catholic?" she asked; then held her breath while she awaited his reply.

His first expression was one of utter astonishment.

"But you are not in earnest!" he said, after a moment. "This is only a fancy."

"Don't believe that!" said Margaret. "I am so firmly a Catholic that I would die for the faith. It has been growing in my mind a long time; and now the work is finished. I could not go back, even to please you, Mr. Granger. I must follow my convictions."

"Certainly," he said very quietly, looking down. "No one has a right to interfere with your convictions. Do you intend to become openly a Catholic, and leave your own church for that?"

"I do not know how to believe one thing and say another," she replied. "I am to be baptized as soon as I go in town."

{313}

She seemed abrupt, almost defiant; but it was only because she was weak.

Mr. Granger drew himself up slightly.

"Since your mind is so fully made up, and your arrangements perfected, there is, of course, no more to be said about the matter. I am surprised, since I have not been led to expect anything of the sort; but I have neither the right nor the desire to control your religious opinions. Fortunately, conscience is free in this country."

"But you are displeased!" she exclaimed tremulously; for every word had fallen like ice upon her heart.

"You cannot expect me to be pleased, since I am not a Catholic," was the reply.

Margaret sighed heavily under the first pressure of her cross. "You wish me to go away?"

He looked at her in astonishment. "Certainly not! When I say that I have no right or desire to interfere in your religion, I mean that I am not to persecute you or to make any difference with you on account of it. Nothing is to be changed unless you wish it."

She had expected him to ask some explanation; but not a word more did he say. He seemed to think that the subject was disposed of.

His silence wrung her heart like the veriest indifference; but he was not indifferent. He thought, "She has done all this without confiding in me, and tells me only when she must. It is not for me to question her. What I am to know she must communicate voluntarily."

She waited a moment, then turned slowly away, went in at the door, and up-stairs to her chamber.

When they met again, Mr. Granger tried to be quite as usual. He was even more scrupulously respectful than formerly. But she felt the chill of all that courtesy that had once been kindness. The next day she went in town, and was baptized. The sooner the better, she thought. But, if she had expected any delight or conscious change to follow the reception of the sacrament, she was disappointed. There was only that calm which follows the consciousness of being in the right way. The baptism was strictly private; no one present but the two necessary witnesses; and after it was over, she took the cars back to the country.

"Everything is peaceful," she thought, walking through the silent woods, now burning with autumn colors. "Everything is sweet," she added, as, coming in sight of the house, she saw little Dora running joyfully out to meet her.

"When you come back, I'm glad all over," said the child.

That evening Mr. Southard came home alone, and with a very grave face. "I have bad news for you," was his first greeting on entering the parlor.

Mrs. Lewis started up with a cry. Miss Hamilton sank back in her chair.

"General Sinclair is killed."

"Thank God!" exclaimed both ladies.

They thought that some accident had happened to Mr. Granger or Uncle Charles," explained Aurelia, seeing the minister's astonishment.

"Some people never know how to tell bad news!" cried Mrs. Lewis, her face still crimson with that first terrified leap of the heart. "Can't you see, Mr. Southard, that you ought to have begun by saying that our family were all well? Look at that girl! She is like a snow image. Oh! well, excuse me; but you did give me such a start. Now tell us the whole, please. I am very sorry."

{314}

Poor Mr. Southard took his scolding with the greatest humility, but was so disconcerted by it that he could hardly finish the recital.

Mr. Granger had received a telegram from Washington, and had gone on immediately to bring the remains of his cousin home for burial. He wished them to go into town, and have the house open for the funeral. General Sinclair's wife was ill in Montreal, and could not be present. Mr. Granger had telegraphed her before starting.

They went to town the next day, and hastened to put the house in order; and on the second day Mr. Granger arrived.

It was impossible to have a private funeral. Mr. Sinclair had a host of friends, his reputation was a brilliant one, and he had died in battle. Military companies offered their escort, and the public desired to honor the dead by some demonstration. Finally, Mr. Southard opened his church, and consented to preach the sermon.

One would have thought that some public benefactor had died. The church was crowded, and crowds lined the streets through which the procession passed. Many a great and good man has died, yet received no such ovation.

A military funeral is the sublime of mourning. We may not know whose memory is thus honored, whose silence thus lamented; but those wailing strains of music touch our heartstrings as the wind sweeps the windharp, and tears start at the obsequies of him whose name we never heard, whose face we never looked upon. Perhaps it is that requiem music mourns not that one man is dead, but that all men must die.

Mr. Southard had felt a temporary embarrassment as to the manner in which he should treat his subject. He could not hold the dead up as a model, for Mr. Sinclair had been an unbeliever and a man of the world. There was but one way, and that one was congenial to the speaker and welcome to the hearers. The man must be, as much as was possible, ignored in the cause.

From the moment when the minister rose in the pulpit, the spirit in which he would speak was plain to be seen. His mouth was stern, there was a steel-like flash in his eyes, and his voice was clear and ringing when he announced his text:

"_And he said to Zebee and Salmana: What manner of men were they whom you slew in Thabor? They answered: They were like thee, and one of them as the son of a king. He answered them: They were my brethren, the sons of my mother. As the Lord liveth, if you had saved them, I would not kill you. And he said to Jether his eldest son: Arise, and slay them_."

There was a pause of utter silence; then the minister extended his hands toward the open, flag-draped, flower-crowned coffin in front of the pulpit, and exclaimed, "One of them as the son of a king!"

Instantly every eye was turned on that white and silent face, and the princely form extended there, superbly beautiful as a marble god. It seemed regicide to kill such a man. After that look, scarcely one present revolted at the tone of the sermon, which echoed throughout the vengeful call, "Arise, and slay them!"

As the family sat that evening at home, trying to throw off the gloomy impressions of the day, and to talk quite as usual, the conversation, by some chance, turned on theology, and settled upon Catholicism. Mr. Granger, who had been sitting apart and silent, roused himself at that, and tried to introduce some other topic, but without success. Miss Hamilton was mute, feeling that her time had come. If only her friend were on her side, she would not have cared so much; but he was far from her. The coldness that had arisen between them at first had increased rather than diminished. Perhaps it was partly her own fault; but it hurt her none the less.

{315}

"The papists are certainly gaining ground in this country," Mr. Southard said. "We have hard work before us. They know how to appeal to the frivolous tastes of the times, as of old they appealed to the superstitious. Their music pleases opera-goers, and their ceremonies amuse the curious. Worse than that, their sophistries deceive the romantic and the credulous."

"Oh! live and let live," interposed Mr. Granger hastily. "There are a good many roads to heaven."

"The Son of God said that there was but one," replied the minister.

"If there is but one," Mr. Granger said, rising, "he is a bold man who will say that he is right, and all the others wrong."

"Are you a Catholic, Mr. Granger?" demanded Mr. Southard with some heat.

"No," was the reply; "but some who are dear to me are Catholic."

Margaret's heart gave a bound. She breathed an aspiration. Her time had come. She was sitting alone opposite them all, and they all looked at her as she leaned forward with a slight gesture that checked further speech.

"I am a Catholic, Mr. Southard," she said. "I was baptized this week."

The minister started up with an exclamation, the others stared in astonishment; but Mr. Granger took a step and placed himself at Margaret's side.

O generous heart! She did not look at him, but she began to tremble, as the snow-wreath trembles in the sun before it quite melts away.

"You cannot mean it!" Mr. Southard found voice to say.

O joy! She wasn't afraid of him now.

"I am quite in earnest," she replied.

He leaned against the table near him, too much excited to sit, too much overcome to stand unsupported.

"You mean that you are pleased with their ceremonies, that some of their doctrines are plausible, not that you accept them all, and pay allegiance to the pope of Rome. It cannot be!"

"I honor the pope as the head of the church, and I can listen to no teacher of religion whom he does not approve," was the reply.

"My God!" muttered the minister. He stood one moment looking at her as if he saw a spectre, then turned away with drooping head, and went toward the door, staggering so that he had to put his hand out for support. To that sincere but mistaken man it was as if he had seen the pit open, and one he loved drawn into it.

The others sat silent and embarrassed, till Aurelia, bursting into tears, started up and left the room.

Margaret glanced at Mrs. Lewis, and found that she had quite recovered from her surprise.

"The programme seems to be flourish of trumpet, and _exeunt omnes_," the lady said. "But I mean to stand my ground. I don't find you in the least frightful. You look to me precisely as you did an hour ago, only brighter perhaps. My only fear at this instant is lest we may have to tie you up to keep you out of a convent."

"I have no thought of a convent," said Margaret.

{316}

"Oh! well, I don't see but we can get along with everything else. There's fish on Fridays, and the necessity of holding one's tongue occasionally. I think we can manage. Mr. Lewis, can you shut your mouth sufficiently to give an opinion?"

Thus called upon, Mr. Lewis found voice. "What in the world did you want to go and turn Catholic for?" he demanded angrily. "Couldn't you like 'em well enough at a distance, as I do? That's just a woman's romantic, headlong way of doing things up to the handle. You've upset your own dish completely. Nobody will marry you now."

Miss Hamilton smiled. "That is a view of the matter which I never thought to take," she said.

"But you must think of that," Mr. Lewis persisted, perfectly in earnest.

"No, thank you; I won't," she replied, rising. "I thank you all"--with downcast eyes and a little tremor in her voice--"I thank you that you are not too angry with me for what I could not help. I could not have borne--" There words failed her.

She glanced at Mr. Granger as she went out, and caught one of those heartfelt smiles which lighted his face when he was thoroughly friendly and pleased.

There was little rest for her that night. Hour after hour she heard Mr. Southard's step pacing to and fro in his chamber beneath, not ceasing till near morning. But after she went to bed, Aurelia came softly in, and, bending, put her arms around Margaret, and kissed her.

"I am sorry if I made you feel bad by going away so," she said in a voice stifled by long weeping. "But you know I was so taken by surprise. Of course we are all the same friends as ever. Good-night, dear! Go to sleep, and don't worry about anything. Mr. Granger and aunt and uncle told me to say good-night to you for them."

"How good everybody is--God and everybody!" thought Margaret.

In the morning all appeared as usual, except that there was no Mr. Southard at the table. Luncheon-time came, and Mrs. James reported the minister to have locked his door and declined refreshment. When the dinner-bell rang, still Mr. Southard had not come down.

"If he doesn't come to dinner," Miss Hamilton thought, thoroughly vexed, "I will send him a note which will give him an appetite. This is sheer nonsense."

But as they entered the dining-room they heard his step on the stairs, and he followed them in.

Hearing him greet the others quite in his usual manner, Margaret glanced at him, and found him waiting to bow to her. He looked as if he had had a long illness.

"What! you desert your seat too?" he said, seeing her go toward the other end of the table.

"I thought you might be afraid to sit by me," she replied pettishly. Then, as he dropped his glance and colored faintly, she repented, and went back to her seat by him.

When they rose, he spoke to her aside. "May I see you in the library now, or at your convenience? I would gladly speak with you tonight."

"Now, if you please," she answered, thinking it best to have the interview over at once, since it was inevitable.

It would be worse than useless to repeat the minister's arguments. With more of patience and humility than she had expected, he asked for and listened to the story of her conversion. But his calmness deserted him more and more as he perceived how firmly grounded was her conviction, and how hard would be the task of reclaiming her.

{317}

Polemical discussions were always irritating, but not always convincing, she insisted. She could not trust herself to engage in them, even if she were capable. She did not want to be told that such a man had been wicked, that such an abuse had existed. When treason had found a place among the apostles, it might well taint some of their successors. It mattered not; her faith was not based on any individual. Let Mr. Southard take the doctrines of the church, as she had learned them, from the church itself, and then prove them false if he could. Let him take the books that had satisfied her, and answer their arguments, theologian to theologian. With her the contest would be unequal; but she would gladly listen to his refutation, she assured him.

"What books have you read?" he asked, resting his head on his hand, disconcerted to find that, instead of being opposed to an uninstructed young woman, he was to have arrayed against him the flower of Catholic theologians.

She named them, an imposing list, at the repetition of which a slow red crept up into the minister's cheeks. Apparently the young woman was not so uninstructed as he had thought.

"Mr. Southard," she concluded, "I have no desire but to know the truth. If you can convince me that I am wrong, I will renounce my errors as promptly as I adopted them. If you are thoroughly convinced that you are in the right way, then you ought to be fearless. But if it is too much trouble for you to study the subject, if I am not worth it, then let the matter drop."

"I will read the books, and go over their arguments with you," the minister said, looking at her keenly as if he suspected some hidden motive in her proposal.

"I am honest!" she said, hurt by his expression. "What have I to gain, if not heaven? What have I not to lose? I feel surely that our happy household will never again be the same that it has been."

"I must believe you sincere," he replied. "But I cannot imagine what should have set you, of all persons, on this track."

Miss Hamilton smiled as she rose. "It was you, sir. You should beware of the flattery of abuse."

The next morning after breakfast the minister found on his study table a pile of controversial works that the housekeeper had been instructed to leave there for him. Beside them lay a crucifix. He touched it, and it seemed to burn his fingers. He pushed it away, and it burned his heart.

"After all, it is the image of my crucified Redeemer," he said; and took it in his hand again. Looking at it a moment, his eyes filled with tears.

To Be Continued.

{318}

Good Old Saxon.

By An English Catholic.

During the last five years an admirable society, formed in London, and called the Early English Text Society, has been reproducing at a cheap rate a large number of curious and valuable works written in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Many of these existed in manuscript only, while others were out of print, and very difficult of attainment. They range over a variety of different subjects, and being beautifully printed, amply supplied with notes and glossaries, and each edited by an accomplished Anglo-Saxon scholar, they afford clergymen, antiquarians, and men of letters in general an excellent opportunity of becoming familiar with the earlier forms of the English language, and the best authors during a literary period hitherto regarded as obscure.

These publications synchronize with, and have partly grown out of, a movement which, though retrograde, has been really an improvement and an advance--a movement, namely, from Latinized to Saxon English. We may perhaps date its commencement from the time when Dr. Johnson was approaching his sixtieth year. He had, for a long time, been lending the weight of his great name to the practice of using very long words, and those chiefly of Latin origin. In doing this he had not merely followed a crowd of classical English writers, but had put himself at their head. The genius of the language was being lost, and when it seemed to be gaining strength, it was in reality growing weaker. Its original tendency had been toward words of one syllable, but under Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and a multitude of essayists and pamphleteers of the eighteenth century, it tended strongly toward the use of words of many syllables. Thus sound was frequently substituted for sense, and sentences, though they ran more smoothly, had in them far less fibre. An air of pedantry was thrown over expressions, when such a word as "tremulousness" was substituted for "quivering," and "exsiccation" for "drying." Mannerism was certainly the mildest epithet that could be applied to such changes, when they became frequent and systematic. An instance of the habit in question is often quoted from Johnson's Dictionary, where, in defining "net" and "network," he calls the first, "anything made with _interstitial vacuities_," and the second, "anything _reticulated_ or _decussated_, at equal distances, with _interstices_ between the _intersections_."

Yet Johnson himself had, in the grammar prefixed to his Dictionary, pointed out clearly how very monosyllabic English was originally, how "our ancestors were studious to form borrowed words, however long, into monosyllables;" how they cut off terminations, cropped the first syllable, rejected vowels in the middle, and weaker consonants, retaining the stronger, which seem "the bones of words." Thus, from "excrucio" they made "screw;" from "exscorio," "scour;" from "excortico," "scratch;" from "hospital," "spittle;" and the like. {319} By such processes, performed not according to rule, but by the unconscious working of national instincts, our forefathers produced a wonderful agreement between the sound of their words and the thing signified. _Squeak, crush, brawl, whirl, bustle, twine,_ are but a few among a multitude of instances which will occur to any one who gives attention to the subject. Wallis, indeed, a writer often quoted in the grammar referred to, establishes the fact of a great agreement subsisting between even the letters, in the native words of our language, and the thing signified; and his analysis of the meaning conveyed by sn, str, st, thr, wr, sw, cl, sp, and other combinations is highly ingenious and, on the whole, satisfactory. He comes to the conclusion that one of our monosyllable words "emphatically expresses what in other languages can scarce be explained but by compounds, or decompounds, or sometimes a tedious circumlocution."

But although Dr. Johnson, like Wallis, appreciated highly the Saxon origin and character of English, though he fully recognized the strength which it derives from its native sources as opposed to southern innovations, his own practice was eminently faulty, and sure, in the hands of his imitators, to degenerate into pedantry and stilts. It was well, therefore, that when his career was drawing to a close, an obscure but highly gifted boy in Bristol ransacked the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe's Church, and found, or pretended to have found, in its old chests, the poems of Rowley, who was said to have written in the time of Edward III. The poems were not without merit in themselves, but, when Chatterton had, amid the pangs of hunger, put an end to his short and weary existence, they attracted attention in consequence of the antiquated form in which they appeared. They were like the fossil remains of extinct animals, and spoke of a literary period little known at that time even to the best English scholars. They breathed the language and the spirit of Chaucer; and from the moment of their appearance may be traced the reaction in favor of Saxon phraseology which marks the literature of the present day. The boy-author saw by intuition what Dr. Wallis had reduced to rules. Perhaps he had never analyzed very closely his own reasons, nor traced attentively the process of nature in the formation of words, so as to produce in them an agreement between the sound and the thing signified; but his youthful ear was charmed with the native energy of what Byron called our "northern guttural," and he loved to imitate, in such lines as these, the rugged sweetness of the early English poets:

"The rodie welkin sheeneth to the eyne; In dasied mantles is the mountain dight, The neshe young cowslip bendeth with the dew."

In these lines, all the words are of the pure Saxon type; and the same may be said of almost every stanza in Chaucer's Tales.

"The flowrs of many divers hue Upon their stalkis gonin for to spread, And for to splay out their leavis ill brede, Again the sun, gold-burned in his sphere, That down to them y-cast his beamis clear.'

And again, as we read in "The Clerke's Tale:"

"And whanne sche com hom sche wolde brynge Wortis and other herbis tymes ofte, The which sche shred and seth for her lyvyng And made her bed ful hard, and nothing softe."

This, as regards language, is the mould in which the Tales are cast. The same Saxon stamp imprinted on the verse of Spenser, though the _Fairie Queen_ came two centuries after the _Canterbury Tales_. One stanza shall suffice as a specimen:

{320}

"Then came the jolly summer, being dight In a thin silken cassock coloured greene, That was unlyned all, to be more light; And on his head a girland well beseene He wore, from which as he had chauffed been The sweat did drop; and in his hand he bore A bow and shaftes; as he in forrest greene Had hunted late the libbard or the bore And now would bathe his limbs with labor heated sore."

The habits and tastes of Ben Jonson and of Milton were largely influenced by their classical studies. The best authors of ancient Greece and Rome filled their memories, and it was only natural that their writings should betray at every turn the sources from which they had been fed. Yet a multitude of passages might be cited from these poets in which the genuine ring of the early English rhymers only is heard. Thus Ben Jonson, in a favorite piece of advice to a reckless youth, says:

"Nor would I you should melt away yourself In flashing bravery; lest, while you affect To make a blaze of gentry to the world, A little puff of scorn extinguish it, And you be left like an unsavoury snuff Whose property is only to offend."

The last line has more than one word of Latin origin; but in Milton's _Mask of Comus_ we find long passages entirely free from the foreign element. Thus, Sabrina sings:

"By the rushy-fringed bank Where grows the willow and the osier dank, My sliding chariot stays, Thick set with agat, and the azure sheen Of turkis blue and em'rald green, That in the channel strays; Whilst from off the waters fleet Thus I set my printless feet O'er the cowslip's velvet head That bends not as I tread."

Now it must not be supposed that in calling attention to the Saxon character of English as opposed to, or distinct from, its Latin and Norman aspects, we are advocating any exclusive system. We rejoice in our language being a compound; and as some of the most exquisite perfumes are produced by distilling a variety of different flowers and leaves, so languages formed by the mixture of several races, and influenced by numerous changes and chances in the history of the people who speak them, are often, in their way, as vigorous and beautiful as any of more simple origin. This is especially the case with that tongue which, being our own, is dearer to us than all besides. But because it consists, and must ever consist, of various elements, there is no reason why we should be indifferent to the relative proportions in which these elements are mixed together; nor is it by any means superfluous to inquire whether the tendency of a compound language may not, at any particular period, be toward corruption and decay, and, at another time, toward health, consistency, majesty, melody, and strength.

We have assumed that Saxon is the basis of English, and that of late years there has been among English writers a tendency to reascend the stream to its source, to freshen and invigorate their diction by the use of native, as distinct from foreign words. We have mentioned Chatterton as being, perhaps unconsciously, a leader in this movement; and we would add that Burns also fostered the reviving taste for pure English; for, though he wrote in the Scottish dialect, that dialect had, and has still, a thousand points of contact with our language in the days of its youth. Though its peculiarities were of Gaelic rather than Saxon origin, yet they resembled old English in this, that they were marked by short words and many consonants. Hence Robert Burns's verse revolts instinctively from the many liquid syllables of the South, and is wild and ragged as the crags and glens which were his favorite haunts. So far as it influenced our literature, it recalled it from the smoother and less vigorous course of Latinized or Johnsonian English to the sharper, simpler, and clearer notes of less artificial times.

{321}

"Your critic-folk may cock their nose And say, How can _you_ e'er propose, _You_ who ken hardly verse frae prose, To mak a sang? But, by your leaves, my learned foes, Ye're may be wrang."

The touch and racy dialect of the _Border Minstrelsy_, which Walter Scott edited, Mr. Evans's _Collection of Old Ballads_, and Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, guided public taste into a direction opposed to the tame mediocrity of the imitators of Dryden and Pope. The ear and the mind alike were charmed by the exceeding simplicity of the style of these old ballads, and their almost exclusive use of monosyllables.

Here are a few notes from one of those Jacobite songs which resounded so freely among the Highlands when Prince Charles Edward came to recover the crown of his fathers. Walter Scott compares such ballads to the "grotesque carving on a Gothic niche:"

"It's nae the battle's deadly stoure Nor friends pruived fause that'll gar me cower, But the reckless hand o' povertie, Oh! that alane can daunton me!

"High was I born to kingly gear, But a cuif came in my cap to wear, But wi' my braid sword I'll let him see He's nae the man will daunton me."

The Lake school of poetry, being founded in a deep love of nature and a close scrutiny of her works, had a concurrent influence in restoring the liberal use of the older forms of speech. Writers like Charles Lamb, whose minds were richly stored with the treasures of Elizabethan lore, were sometimes accused of affectation in employing archaisms, but "the old words of the poet," as the author of "Summer Time in the Country" observes, "like the foreign accent of a sweet voice, give a charm to the tone, without in any large degree obscuring the sense." Indeed, if the most popular passages in Wordsworth, and in his great master Shakespeare, be examined, they will be found to answer on the whole to that ideal of English phraseology which is here formed--one, namely, in which the Saxon element largely predominates. Thus, almost at random, we quote from _The Midsummer Night's Dream:_

"What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here, So near the cradle of the fairy queen?"

And from Wordsworth's "Idle Shepherd Boys:"

"Beneath a rock, upon the grass, Two boys are sitting in the sun; Boys that have had no work to do, Or work that now is done. On pipes of sycamore they play The fragments of a Christmas hymn; Or with that plant which in our dale We call stag-horn or fox's tail, Their rusty hats they trim: And thus, as happy as the day, Those shepherds wear the time away."

Shakespeare's description of Queen Mab, in _Romeo and Juliet_, may also be pointed out as a signal example of pure Saxon English throughout; but it is too long and too familiar to our readers to be quoted here.

There are not wanting men of talent and research, who have remarked the change which has come over the national literature in its rebound toward Saxon diction, and who have recommended it very distinctly. Dean Swift, though in point of time he preceded the movement, held as a principle that no Saxon word should be allowed to fall into disuse. Dean Hoare has, in our own time, expressed his decided conviction that those speakers and writers impart most pleasure whose style is most Saxon in its character; and this remark applies, as he believes, especially to poetry. It is in accordance with the spirit of the age that we recoil from that "fine writing" which is generally mere declamation. {322} In proportion as we become practical, the racy style--pointed, suggestive, and curt--rises in value. By the exercise of thought and cultivation of science we become exact, and through plenty of business we become brief-spoken. Vague talking and writing is now at a discount, and persons express themselves with more substance and strength because they are trained in the love of truth, historic and scientific, and have contracted a hatred of shams of every kind. Directness of statement is what is now most valued in a writer, and such men as Dr. Newman among Catholics, and Carlyle and Emerson among non-Catholics, have contributed in an immense degree to promote reverence for this quality. Circumlocution and over-expansion are faults which no one will now tolerate, and this jealousy for the clear and ready conveyance of ideas has a great deal to do with recurrence to the pregnant monosyllables, the picture-words, the gnarled and knotted strength of Saxon English.

It is, however, to Tennyson, more than to any other modern writer, that the public owes the more frequent use of short and sinewy words already known to most readers, and the enrichment of the language by the revival of many words which had become obsolete. Enoch Arden, though a poem consisting of two thousand lines, contains scarcely a word that is not of Saxon origin. It is, as far as language is concerned, simplicity almost in excess. Thus, to take but one example, it is not till we reach the last word of the following passage that we are reminded of the partly Latin origin of our tongue:

"For in truth Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, Rough-reddened with a thousand winter-gales, Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down, Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp, And peacock-yewtree of the lonely hall, Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering."

In this passage all the words are in common use, but in other parts of the same volume, and, indeed, in all which the laureate has published, we perceive a strong tendency to antique and grotesque forms of speech, derived from long and devoted attachment to the old writers. If they were introduced by design, simply because they are archaisms, the artifice would be apparent, and the pedantry complete. But when they form a genuine part of the author's inner life of thought and memory, the case is different, and what would have been formal and stiff becomes natural and easy. They comport well with the idea one forms of a great thinker, and indicate a thorough mastery over the mother tongue. They might, no doubt, easily degenerate into affectation, but when employed with judgment and skill, they are like fossils in a well-arranged cabinet, or old china in a well-furnished room. Resembling, as they do, the tough, tortuous olive-tree, they are valuable signs of a people's mental vigor; for as surely as the "soft bastard Latin" of the Apennines indicates a population less martial than the Romans of old--as surely as the soft and sibilant Romaic tells of a race fallen from the higher walks of Grecian philosophy, history, science, and song--so surely would Latinized English be a sign that the people writing and speaking it, were falling away from the marked character of their forefathers, and contrasting with them as strongly as the silken senators whom Chatham denounced contrasted with the iron barons of the days of King John.

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Waiting.

Flame, rosy tapers, flame! Though flushing day Is mounting into heaven, it cannot shame The weakest rush-light burning in his name Who soon will say, "Peace to this house!" Consoling word, Which patient ones have heard, Then meekly sighed, "Now let thy servant, Lord, depart in peace!" And, granted swift release, Next moment died.

Flame, rosy tapers, flame! No garish day can shame Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!

Close, giddy honeysuckles, clambering free, Close your moist petals to the wandering bee. That with your cloistered dews you may adore My Lord, when he shall enter at the door. O blossoming sweet-brier! Now flushing like a seraph with desire To do him homage, send abroad Your aromatic breath, and thus entice, With innocent device, His quickening steps unto my poor abode. Calm lilies for his tabernacle sealed, O spicy hyacinths! now yield Your odors to the waiting air His welcome to prepare; Nor fear that by my haste Your perfumes you will waste; For each expectant sigh Is dearer, to the Holy One so nigh, Than all your honeyed nectaries exhale. Young rose and lilac pale, And every flow'ret fair, Incense the blissful air, And bid him, hail! {324} Flame, rosy tapers, flame! No garish day can shame Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name! Sing, lark and linnet, sing The graces of this King, Who, in such meek array, Will visit me to-day: Young swallows, twittering at my cottage eaves, Shy wrens, close-nested in the woodbine leaves, Blithe robins, chirping on the open gate, Upon his coming wait: Glad oriole, swinging with the linden bough, I do entreat you, now With gushing throat Repeat your most ecstatic note. Afar I hear, With instinct quick and clear, His step who bears, enshrined upon his breast, The God who soon within my own will rest. Angelic choirs Are touching their exultant lyres: Sing, lark and linnet, sing, And with your artless jubilations bring Their joy to earth; and you, melodious thrush, While my glad soul keeps hush, Attune your song My silent rapture to prolong.

Flame, rosy tapers, flame! No garish day can shame Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!

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From The Rivista Universale, Of Genoa.

The Supernatural.

By Cesar Cantu.

Petulant tyranny of science! It will not allow us to say that two and two are three; that there can be more than the sum of two right angles in a triangle; or that the radii of a circle are not equal. What arrogance thus to confine my liberty; to deny me leave to assert that there is an exact relation between the diameter and circumference of a circle; that the duplication of the cube is possible, the trisection of an angle, and perpetual motion! Why should not error have the same rights as truth? Reason is mistress of the world; unlimited mistress of herself. She can prove that yes is identical with no; that being and nothing are all one. Why tire ourselves with the science of ultimate reasons? We must regard the effects without ascending to the causes; we accept only what can be felt and seen. What is substance? What is cause? What are ideas? Let them pass; we hold only to phenomenon and effect.

All would not dare to express these assertions with such boldness, and yet they are necessary inferences from the current sophisms and phrases of a science which stains its tyranny by petulance and bald negations. _Experience! Experience!_ it cries daily, and proceeds to invent theories on the formation of the universe which will never meet the approval of experience; it repudiates every truth _a priori_, and yet establishes, _a priori_, that faith is contradictory to reason. In the name of free-will it demands the destruction of free-will; as if man were more free while seeking than after having found the truth; as if true liberty did not consist in willing what is right.

And nowadays a multiform war is waged against ancient belief by a contracted and intolerant science, and a system of retrogressive and egotistical politics. Arguments and buffoonery, decrees and violences, alternate, not only against the priests, but against Christ. Some disfigure dogmas, and then throw them to the fishes, or abandon them to the anger of a mob dressed in black waistcoats or in red caps. Some resuscitate ancient errors under modern phraseology, or excite the demon of curiosity. Some, faithful to the system of defamation and intimidation, libel as clericals or obscurantists those Christians who loved liberty when it was not a mere speculation, if they are unwilling to believe that the Italy of the future must deny the Italy of the past, to become strong. One party in the name of authority attacks its chief source. Some drag into the lists a conventional nationality and an exclusive patriotism, against the universality of faith and charity, and hurt the partial reasons of a state against ecumenical reason. Some fight in the garb of doctors, striving to apply the methods of observation to what is super-sensible, confounding the proximate with the first cause, and thus arriving at scientific scepticism, positivism, which repudiates ideas, or at a criticism which considers generations as succeeding each other without a connecting law--by mere evolution--without seeking what absolute truth corresponds to the successive rise of nations, or clearing up the future by the past--that which is going to happen with what is permanent. {326} And thus they whirl in a pantheism which either accepts no God but the human mind, or makes everything God except God himself; leaving him the splendor of his idea, the sovereignty of his name, but depriving him of the reality of his being and the consciousness of his life.

There are others who, with frivolous argumentation, produce excellent pillows for doubt, and refuse to examine, contenting themselves with repeating the affirmations of the most accredited organs of the press. Let us pass over those who flatter the animal instincts of nature by writings and images which Sodom would condemn, and proclaim the divine reign of the flesh, saying, with Heine, "The desire of all our institutions is the rehabilitation of matter. Let us seek good in matter; let us found a democracy of terrestrial gods, equal in happiness and holiness; let us have nectar and ambrosia; let us desire garments of purple, delights of perfumes and dances, comedies and children."

Hence comes the deplorable degradation of minds plunged not only in ignorance but in base adulations to slaves and to the slaves of slaves, to the rabble hailed by the people, to a debasement called progress, to a freedom which consists in robbing others of liberty.

II.

In such a state of affairs, what ought a priest or Christian to do who reserves to himself the right of not calling evil things good? Grow low-spirited, reproach the century, grow timorous of science, groan like Jeremias over the woe of Jerusalem, and await the rock which is to crush the clay-footed colossus? It looks like compelling Providence, when we refuse to co-operate with it in the conflict between good and evil, unless on conditions which suit our little egotism, or please our frivolous vanity. The timid compromise their character with strange conventions between truth and error, by shameful oscillation between liberty and despotism, resigning themselves to tyranny as a hypocrite may act toward an atheist.

Christ came to carry the sword, and the time has come when he who has one should draw and brandish it. Certainly, God will save his church. He alone will have the glory, but will man have the merit of it? Where silence is, there is death; and, outside of what directly touches revealed truth, discussion is useful, even when held with those who err; it teaches us, at least, how we are not to act or think, if nothing else.

Some say, "It is enough to preach morality. What have rigorous truths to do with good sentiments? the aspirations of the heart with the deductions of cold reason?"

Superficial questions! As if one should say, "What has the soul to do with the soul?" Do not ethics depend on dogma? do not our actions follow from metaphysical conditions? Every doctrine becomes an element of life or a principle of death for the soul. A sophist may, indeed, boast of a new code of ethics, or a new law; as if truth could be contingent and relative as well as universal, eternal, necessary, and, as such, not produced by man, who is mortal and limited. International associations, conspiring to assassinate Christian civilization, will soon respond with consequent acts to such inconsequences of literature.

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When the system of attack is changed, we must change the system of defence. Preaching can no longer be confined to mere prones, or exhortations to the good and inculcating the _fides carbonaria_; [Footnote 66] but we must gird on the sword of science and eloquence, and attack resolutely those who assail us resolutely. Truth can be saved only by victory; and in this case, as in war, _the best defence is an attack_.

[Footnote 66: The faith of the coal-heaver who believes without science.]

If errors fortify themselves in the newspapers, and come on in serried ranks, protected by gazettes, decrees, arts, and sciences, we must meet them with the same means, humble them with the truths rejected or distorted by the sophists, turn their own weapons against them; for error, which is a stumbling-block for the incautious, may become a ladder for the wise to ascend higher. Nowadays, when all the arguments of unbelief are allied in an invisible church which has fraternities, missionaries, sacrifices, and even martyrs, to assault the visible church in the name of progress, enlightenment, morality, reason, and the future, we must draw out all the reasons of belief in opposition. The manifestation of truth, even though it may not destroy error, weakens its power. It is not enough to show that our adversaries are wrong; we must be right ourselves. Let us not allow men to think that there are truths incompatible with faith, or outside of its dogmas; but that, notwithstanding exaggerations, absurdities, erroneous and culpable notions, those truths obtain from faith all their reality, vitality, and durability; and that he who looks well will see that every incontestable and positive progress comes from the organization of Christian society.

In this labor, can reason ask the aid of revelation? And why not? The rationalists might complain if we attempted to overwhelm the question with the weight of revealed authority; but when revelation is united to reason, the power of the latter is doubled. Mysteries are above reason, not contrary to it. Faith is only the most sublime effort of reason, which is persuaded to believe by arguments, convinced of its impotence without faith, as well as of its greatness with faith. Faith is a grace, because it is not sensible certainty. It springs from the desire of a pure heart and of a right mind that the harmonious structure of revelation should be true. Reason by itself cannot obtain the knowledge of a mystery, any more than it can comprehend a mystery when revelation makes it known. Reason, however, understands that a mystery is above it, but not opposed to it; and recognizes the necessity of the supernatural to explain even the mysteries of nature. In like manner, though we cannot look at the sun, yet by its light we see all things.

Some, seeing our adversaries use the sciences and politics against religion, work with the arts, speak with ability, begin to vituperate civilization, attack its acts and writings, deplore the times, deny the stupendous progress of the age--the fruit of so much study, fatigue, and genius.

This is not only an evil; it is a danger. Instead of repudiating natural truths, we must seek to reconcile them with the super-sensible, show ourselves just toward what is new, use it to rejuvenate the decrepit, and apply it to the branches which have lost vitality. The time will never come when all objections will be conquered. They will always arise with new forms and new phases. {328} Great thinkers give the word of command for new revolts against truth; it is therefore necessary for great theologians to combat them. Every Catholic is not fit to enter the list as a champion, but every Catholic ought to know why faith is necessary in general, and what he ought to believe in particular. The least that can be expected of him is not to be less ignorant than the curious, the learned, and the railers who, on every side, pick up arguments for not believing. And how few know their religion, not only among the common people, but even among the educated classes! The fault lies in the fact that, while we Catholics are so superior to our adversaries, we do not know how to use our advantage, because we know not in what this superiority consists. Otherwise, every educated person would find by himself as many new, ingenious, and brilliant proofs to defend the religion of his ancestors as others invent to destroy it--original, personal proofs, as light, perhaps, as the objections, but sufficient for the discussion of circles, to answer presumptuous contempt, false ideas, and false principles, which are published in seductive garb, with specious propositions, audacious negations, and intrepid affirmations, [Footnote 67] and which penetrate into politics, science, art, repugnant not only to logic, but even to the instincts of common sense.

[Footnote 67: See a golden work of the Princess Wittgenstein Iwanowska, _Simplicité des Colombes, Prudence des Serpents_, where she refutes the most common objections, and exhorts especially ladies to prudence and simplicity in controversy and conduct.]

But, moreover, who does not feel the deficiency in scientific and really practical education in that science which satisfies the reason, the heart, and faith.

The religious element should form a great part in education, and it would suffice to change the tone of controversy, from being sour, contemptuous, diffident, discourteous, provoking, and partial, the result of the usual impoliteness of journalists, to a courageous yet prudent, conscientious as well as learned, indulgent yet immovable, method; abandoning a phraseology which did not formerly shock men's feelings, those sarcasms which neither heal nor console, and remembering that our adversaries are probably men of high intelligence, in error precisely on this account; perhaps persons of right mind, unimpeachable morals, and even of delicate sensibility.

This is the arena of _conférences_. Fraysinnous began the work of uniting religion with science in the pulpit. Those of Wiseman did better at Rome. Then arose the famous names of Lacordaire, Ravignan, and now of Fathers Felix and Hyacinthe, [Footnote 68] and in Italy, Fathers Maggio, Fabri, Rossi, Giordano, and others. Among these must be named Alimonda, provost of the cathedral of Genoa, who gave a course of lectures, all depending on one proposition, and has just published them in four volumes, with the title _Man under the Law of the Supernatural_. Genoa, 1868.

[Footnote 68: At this time Father Hyacinthe is treating of "The Church under her most general aspect," in Notre Dame, at Paris. He treats of the providence of God.]

But four volumes cost more than a box of cigars! How much time it takes to read them! some will exclaim who have, perhaps, read _Les Miserables_ of Hugo, or _La Stella d'Italia;_ have a copy of Thiers; subscribe for four or five magazines, and who require a hundred or a hundred and fifty pages to be printed on a question of finance or railroads, but find that number too great where the discussion is about man's being, or his power of working, on the essence of God, the immortality of the soul, the necessity of virtue, and the necessity of religion to create it, the divinity of Christianity, or belief in its dogmas.

{329}

But those who do not merely aspire to cloud the human intellect, and repress sublime desires under the weight of self-interest, passion, and the tyranny of prejudice, and who exclaim, with Linnaeus, _"Oh! quam contemta res est homo nisi super humana se erexerit,"_ [Footnote 69] know that to follow great ideas becomes a nobler habit, as trivialities become common; and that essential truths, which are never out of place or time, are based on the same systematic method which seemed to deny them entirely.

[Footnote 69: "Oh! how contemptible a thing is man if he cannot arise above what is human!"]

III.

Scientific atheism asserts that "common sense is the test of belief in the supernatural," and that the greatness of every religious conception referable to this standard is counterbalanced by the greatness of scientific conceptions on nature and the universe. Whoever, then, does not belong to the party of those who presume to differ with the atheist, can easily perceive how unacceptable a treatise on the supernatural must be; since Alimonda began by demonstrating that it is true, and credible; and that it imports us not only in the next life but even in this to believe it. To desire to invent a mechanical theory of the universe, a material origin of human intelligence and liberty, originates the anarchical conception of giving the explanation of the cosmological whole by means of every special science. Büchner and Vogt modified the Cartesian ideas by teaching "that there is no force without matter, no matter without force; that matter thinks as well as moves; and that all things are but dynamic transformations of matter." Hence comes intelligent electricity, cogitating phosphorus; and Moleschott was invited to teach in our universities that "thought is a motion of cerebral matter, and conscience a material property." Rognero taught that "conscience dwells in the circulatory system." These doctrines have been preached in every revolutionary tavern with all that personal exaggeration which we always find in those who retail second-hand dogmas.

Well! granted these hypotheses, we still ask, What is this force? What is this primary motion? Where is the mover? Would an activity anterior to existence have ever created itself imperfect and subject to evil? Can the relation of necessary succession be confounded with the relation of causality? Does the metaphysical conception of cause remain indistinct from the conditions of existence? If the order of ideas be distinguished from the order of facts, everything leads us to a first cause, to the most real of realities, to the will of a supreme artificer which determined inert matter to motion rather than to rest.

If, then, this motion endures with fixed laws; if, in so great a diversity of infinite bodies, I recognize a system according to which no one interferes with the other, but all agree in a supreme harmony of mode; if, for instance, the destruction of one of the celestial bodies would discompose the marvellous structure of the universe; if from the alteration of the orbit of a planet the man of science can conclude the existence of another, thousands of miles distant, it is not the holy fathers but Voltaire who will exclaim, "If the clock exists, there must necessarily be a clock-maker." It is impossible to kill a moral being, a universal sentiment, by arms, or books, or declamations.

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The Deity does not offer himself to sensation, observation, or experience; hence the sensists and perceptionists see in him but a hypothesis, and reject all theology and all metaphysics. They abuse the method of observation by applying it to what is not observable. No object of experiment can be God; nor can any perception reach him in this world, since he can only manifest himself to us ideally; that is to say, by the reflection of thought on itself, under the pure form of an idea; and an idea necessarily supposes an existence. Reason must come to God through the medium of the idea of God: whence an illustrious writer defending religious philosophy adopted the appropriate title of "IDEA OF GOD."

Nowadays, when the series of generations are brought to laugh and dance at the funeral of God and the evaporation of Christ, it is not superfluous to accumulate psychological and social proofs on the existence of a first necessary Cause, on its reality, and on its divine life reverberating in the great labor of creation; on those laws of phenomena which others call the ideas of nature, and we call the Creator. The word must be personified, and substantiated to express something real.

Among these laws I have always found that those regarding the origin of language had great influence on me and are of great help against the atheists. The more we study, the more we are convinced that the languages have a common source. How did man ever discover that ideas could be represented with sounds, or real thought by the medium of words, and then invent symbolical, phonetic, or alphabetic signs to represent both ideas and sounds? Or is the word only the means of expressing our thoughts, or the essential form of them, the indispensable condition necessary to our having them? Can sensation draw anything out of a word but a material sound? How is it that all the human races--Iranic, Semitic, Gallic, or Black--speak, and only men speak? How is it that although there is a common element in all languages, yet such diversity exists among certain groups? The more we study this indispensable complement of creation, this condition of our intellectual development, the more we are led to confess that there are mysteries in the human word as well as in the divine word; and all this reveals the name of God.

When we have proved the reality, we must investigate the essence of God. And here we meet the mystery of unity and trinity, which, considered in itself, explains being; considered outside of itself, explains beings. Because, if we repudiate a supernatural God, we must substitute another in his place--a being of reason and abstraction, or a material god, or a god of pleasure. But these insane hypotheses must be made to explain the existence of the universe. They are either the eternity of matter or emanatism. Life put into matter we know not how; born, we know not how, we have spontaneous productions, or transformations of species, as Lamarck and Darwin maintain; but the learned show that these theories are impossible both as to soul and body. And then no one of these naturalists explains the end of man, nor his most precious gift--liberty.

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The God of the Bible alone contains the true explanation of man and the universe. He who, spontaneously putting his omnipotence into activity without material elements, drew the world out of nothing; and this because he is good, and wills the good and the beautiful.

IV.

The most prodigious part of creation is man, destined for eternity; nor could there be in him a tendency without a scope, an end without a means, nor a merit without a recompense. The world is for his use, but he must not forget that eternity is his destiny. For the purpose of proving the material origin of the human intellect philosophers reject all who would give to life a distinct principle, isolated from organism, supposing that life, at least in its rudimental form, could spring from the bosom of organic liquids. Virchow praised the little cell, the only one of the anatomic elements which Milne-Edwards called organical, and which is a nucleus of various forms, surrounded by a protoplasm of organic matter without figure. From the cell are formed the embryos, which gradually become perfect and form animals, until the ape changes into man.

Finally, on interrogating life in its unity, in its harmonies, in its cause and end, in its full and substantial reality, we find that it does not contain in itself a causal unity which is sufficient for it; and the great modern physiologist Bernard says: "The problem of physiology does not consist in pointing out the physico-chemical laws which living beings have in common with inorganic bodies, but in discovering the vital laws which characterize them." By studying mental diseases, and perceiving that atrophy of a certain part of the brain will cause the loss of certain faculties, and that the injection of oxygenated blood will reawaken them, and with similar experiments, it has been attempted to prove the materiality of cogitation, and to show that the soul is a chimera. These are irrational materialistic interpretations of physiological facts, for the cause of the fact is confounded with the conditions of the phenomenon.

This same Virchow, who seemed to have discovered such a powerful argument against spiritualism in his theory of the cell, cannot explain with physics and optics alone the phenomena of vision; becomes confounded before the mystery of life, and declares: "Nothing is like life, but life itself. Nature is twofold. Organic nature is entirely distinct from inorganic. Although formed by the same substance, from atoms of the same nature, organic matter offers us a continued series of phenomena which differ in their nature from the inorganic world. Not because the latter represents dead nature--for nothing dies but what has lived; even inorganic nature possesses its activity, its eternally active labor--but this activity is not life except in a figurative sense." [Footnote 70]

[Footnote 70: "The Atom and the Individual," a discourse pronounced at Berlin in 1866.]

We do not think it superfluous to oppose these reflections, added to those of Alimonda, to the negations of the materialists, which have weight only because they have been often repeated; and we conclude with Alimonda that man is an inexplicable mystery if we do not accept the other mystery of original sin. Hence the conflict between reason and the passions; the inclination to evil and bloodthirstiness; the necessity of wars and prisons. {332} If we admit the intrinsic goodness of man, there is no guilt and there can be no chastisement; society can institute no tribunals, but only hospitals to cure diseases. This has been said in our age; and common sense rejected it. The primitive fall and successive activity show how man progresses indefinitely, according to nature, not according to socialistic utopias. This explains the inequality of the faculties and of labor, and hence of goods, of property, which otherwise would be a theft.

The whole of ancient society attests this degradation; but a Redeemer was promised; he was confusedly expected by all nations; he was clearly predicted by the prophets of Judea, in order to console mankind, that they might believe in him to come, hope in him, and love him by anticipation.

These promises, and the figures which personified them, are deposited in the Bible; that divine history which clears up the origin of humanity and the changes of civilization, and whose witnesses, though apparently contradictory, only make the thesis and the antithesis of a great synthesis, interpreted by an infallible authority. The unity of the human species asserted in that book has been proved by the sciences, even by paleontology, which some pretended to arm against the biblical affirmations; and while the frivolity of the last century thought it had mockingly dissipated truth, we have scientific progress proving the Bible to be wonderfully in accord with the least expected discoveries.

The continual intervention of Providence in the Bible is repugnant to human pride, which would be the centre and creator of all events; yet this providence it is which satisfies, at the same time, the wants of the human heart, gives a legal constitution to society, a sanction to human acts, without which we should only have cutthroats and the gallows.

V.

Thus far we nave presented man in relation to God; let us consider man in relation to Jesus Christ, a theme by far more important, as we can say with the psalmist: "_Convenerunt in unum adversus Dominum et adversus Christum ejus._" [Footnote 71] In this most corrupt world reparation was expected from humanity, but who could fulfil it but the incarnate Word? Greater than all the great ones of the earth, he established his providential kingdom, making it the social centre of men and centuries.

[Footnote 71: "They assembled together against the Lord and his Christ."]

Our first parents aspired to become gods, and their pride was transmitted to their posterity; but behold how God really unites himself to man!

Men felt a secret want of expiation, expressed by their sacrifices and mortifications; and Christ satisfied their desire by uniting in himself the two natures, and by fecundating with holy merits the sufferings of individuals and of nations.

Yet men wish to make a myth of him! And after the encyclopaedists have derided him, now they hypocritically try to crown him with human greatness and beauty, to rob him of his divinity! But how can you explain his influence on the most cultivated nations, lasting so many centuries, and through an incessant war from Simon Magus to Renan? Is not his immeasurable influence over the human race divine? With the light of his doctrine he created the life of intelligence and of conscience. His is no hidden and recondite word, but common and popular; not methodized into a philosophical system, equipped with proofs; not even robed in eloquence. {333} His scope is not to invent, but to _reveal_--that is, lift the veil which covered primitive truths, and excite to good. He is virtue personified, the model of men, with grace through which charity triumphs over egotism--_grace_, the most profound and most beautiful word in the dictionary of religion. But here human pride rebels, because Christ taught mysteries.

What, then, are mysteries but our ignorance, and the insufficiency of our reason? Thus the vulgar believe that the sun goes around the earth because the senses show it; thus a silly man would deny the existence of the imponderable fluids because he does not see or touch them, although he feels their effects. Three temples rise in the world: of nature, of reason, and of religion; and in all there are mysteries. There are mysteries in space, atoms, divisibility, forces, life, thought, the cell, sensation, idea, limits: in everything under the form which passes away there is a mystery which remains. If a miracle is humanly conceivable, it ought to be divinely possible.

If you exclude the idea of the supernatural, nothing is left but nature, with the character of necessity which reason denies it; with a series of monstrous and gratuitous affirmations which constitute pantheism.

But some will say, "Yes, there is a God distinct from nature; he is self-conscious and free, but he is immutable: while the supernatural represents him as changeable and arbitrary."

Thus reason those who, led by anthropomorphic illusions, subject the action of God to succession. The acts of man, who is ephemeral and localized, are necessarily successive; and because the results of divine activity are manifested to our eyes in time and space, they seem new and wonderful. But God is not limited by time or space; his act is one, eternal, immanent like his will; everything which proceeds from that act is the act itself, one, eternal, and immanent, and thus the differences between the natural and supernatural disappear.

To defend the idea of the supernatural is not, therefore, to attack science or smother intelligence; but to defend the idea of God, who is the hinge of all science. This, indeed, banishes the supernatural from its domain; but if every reality is not reducible to nature, it is impossible not to admit a higher principle of the laws which nature reveals, and of which nature is not the necessary principle. Christianity pronounces nothing on the science of nature, except that the supernatural is above natural laws; that there is a God, as St. Augustine says, "_pater luminum et evigilationis nostrae_." [Footnote 72] Is this a mystery? But is not everything which exists an incomprehensible manifestation of the supernatural? Is not the free-will of man an incomprehensible mystery?

[Footnote 72: "The Father of lights and of our awaking."]

But revealed mysteries, much more than dry theorems which restrain reason, are fruitful in meditation, humility, gratitude, and aspiration after a life of bliss: they are light to the intellect, motives for virtue; all have a comprehensible side; they have their wherefore; and this is sufficient for the happiness of individuals, and works efficaciously on the whole of society.

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Miracles, which are extraordinary to man, are natural to God, and he uses them to manifest Christ the Redeemer. But the diminishers of great things wish to make Christ a mountebank, or a magician working by natural means like the mesmerizers, in whom they believe rather than in Christ. They deny Christ and offer incense to Hegel, who said that "_the universe_ is a simple negation." Every religious, moral, or political doctrine must stand the test of actualization: the idea must be realized; the thought must become life; and the result is the criterion. But the greatest miracle of Jesus Christ was the establishment of the new kingdom of grace on the ruins of the kingdom of the world; to substitute the eternal edifice of the church for corrupt institutions; instead of proud science, to put the holy word of the apostolate; charity, generous even to martyrdom, in the place of brute force. Martyrdom! this is another word which shocks the free-thinkers who retail cheap heroes, and deafen us with hymns to the martyrs of fatherland, ennobling with this title assassins on the scaffold. Christ is a martyr for humanity; he is a God of order, wisdom, and charity.

But here they stop us again, and pretend that he aimed at an impossible perfection, and was a utopist; and as such, they reject him, although they are admirers of such dreamers as More or Giordano Bruno, Fourier or Saint-Simon.

But is it true that Christ's doctrine cannot be realized? There are precepts and counsels in it; and you, by confounding them, condemn Christianity, as if it commanded all to observe what is counselled only to a few exceptional existences called by God. To observe the counsels special virtue is required, and those monks who deserved so well even of society practised them. Rather than deride and destroy them, they diffused the evangelical counsels which they practised in their own lives--obedience, abstinence, purity; those virtues which would give that _facilitas imperii_--that self-control--which is so hard to keep; that virtue which is the order of love. Those monks peopled the Thebaid, lived in the poverty of St. Francis, in the austerities of St. Bruno, awaited death in caverns, and ate only herbs; others fled the world to pray for it, but the church never gave them pharisaical faces; life, soul, talents, imagination characterized them; the happiness of their existence was increased by the blessing of the church; feasts, music, and sacred rites abounded; social, domestic, and scientific life were nourished by Christian virtue and education; patriotism had its hymns if fortunate; audits, litanies, if unsuccessful; art and poetry became incorporated with worship; admiration for natural beauties was aroused; activity and prudence stimulated and eulogized, progress approved, and civilization encouraged.

Yet the rationalists would give the glory of this civil society of which we boast to man alone, while it is in fact the work of the supernatural gospel. In this we find light, virtue, harmony; that is, power, subjection, and agreement. The gospel establishes a respected and vigilant authority in face of a policy which traffics in opinions. Kings are bound by the same morality as the least subjects. Rulers swear to observe the law of God; that is, never to become tyrants. Power is exercised after the example set by God; and the head of the state is the first-born among brothers. Subjects are children who obey not _propter timorem sed propter conscientiam_--not from fear but for conscience' sake; an obedience to God rather than to men. Christianity asserted the true doctrine of equal rights with inequality of rank when it proclaimed that we are all brothers; it broke the chains of the slave; abolished hereditary enmity between nations, and all superiority save that of merit.

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To deny that these advantages are derived from Christianity would now be stupidity; but they say that while it formerly worked wonders, there is no longer any necessity for religion, the priest, or Christ: morality has become acclimated; necessary truths are acquired; and so man can progress with laws, tradition, and social organization.

Those who speak in this way do not comprehend the connection between metaphysical and practical truth; do not realize that the most common maxims which we drink in with our mother's milk would become gradually obscured by separation from their source; as the necessary sanction would be wanting to them.

Between the merely honest man and the Christian, there will always be the difference which exists between the bird that can only hop and the full-fledged bird which flies. Let us suppose, even, that the learned of the future will govern themselves better than the philosophers of antiquity; still it is only religion that can say to the multitude, "Hope always and never obtain." If there is no heaven, if gold and pleasure are the only aspirations, why not enjoy them? Let a revolutionist arise and promise them, he will obtain a hearing much more readily than the philosopher who can promise only a doubtful eternity. But then what will become of society? If you preach resignation to the poor without giving them hope, will not hope arise without resignation?

It was the gospel which humanly unfettered the child, woman, and the poor. By it alone were exposed children and orphans gathered together; it founded hospitals and pious retreats for every disease of the body and mind. Vincent of Paul, Girolamo Miani, Calasanctius, and a host of others never ceased in the church; and even the world blesses their name, blesses their work, that of the holy infancy, and that for the education of Chinese children, and for the redemption of captives among the Moors. Entire religious congregations have been founded to save children from death, from penury, and from ignorance; so that at the destruction of these religious orders, we ought to say, as Christ to the mothers of Jerusalem, "Weep not over me, but over your children." We should weep the more when we see their intellects and souls entrusted to state officials who fashion them to suit their masters.

And woman? From what base degradation and turpitude has she been raised by Christianity. But the state law wills that she should be thus addressed: "Thou hast been brought up to purity; to avoid every impure act and look; but henceforth I, the mayor, command thee to give thyself up to the man whom I, the mayor, designate as thy husband." On the other hand, the socialists wish to take her out of the domestic sanctuary to take part in business, in government, in war; she must become a woman of letters, a politician and a heroine. Ah! the heroism of woman consists in fulfilling her domestic duties, in the apostleship of doing good; let her have the heroism of faith and virtue, and she will save the world, as she helped so much to do in the person of Mary over eighteen centuries ago.

"Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God," said Christ; and his chief followers took care of the poor, instructed them, supplied their wants with alms; made them noble with blessings; and, since it is necessary to suffer, the poor were taught to bear their ills with the hope of immortal recompense. {336} But the strong-minded of this age fiercely scream about the rights of the poor; and yet rob spontaneous and virtuous charity of the means of supplying the wants of the poor. The necessity of official aid is created, and thus pride and rancor against the rich are excited, while suffering remains without consolation.

VI.

All these points have their objections and suitable answer well developed in our orator's work. Alimonda examines man in relation to the church and shows how human reason, while it strives to rebel against her, is obliged to bless her, even by the mouth of her most determined enemies, as happened to the prophet Balaam. This church was not established by the power of man or by progressive development; she was born beautiful and perfect, the same in the upper room at Jerusalem as in the Council of Trent; she underwent every species of hostility, violent and puerile, of kings and people, of rogues and editors, and yet always remained whole and alive.

While human institutions regulate man, the church aspires to the government of souls. Although she aimed at so much, she was listened to; she defined what good meant; restricted authority; gave the law of work; and was believed. Even the ancient churches by their very nature were spiritual societies; but they exercised no influence on consciences, little on men's conduct, less even than the schools of philosophy. Later heresies and schisms could not spread or establish themselves, except by force and war, or by allowing every one to be the judge of his own conscience and reason; that is, heresy did not pretend to direct souls. Our church has a perfect and unchangeable order for the government of conscience, an order which does not vary according to opinion. The latter will say with Thierry that the conquered are always right; with Cousin and Thiers, that it is the conqueror who is is always right. Which is one to believe? It will be said that the voice of the people is the voice of God, and that common sense ought to be the rule of our actions. Well, suppose it is; how can we interrogate it? Where is its decision? Where its organ? They will tell us to-day it is "universal suffrage." We shall not dwell on such nonsense: we merely inquire, must I ask its advice in reference to my private actions? I need for these safe, well expressed, and efficacious principles.

The church answers every question; and her answers are always the most generous, the most human, and the most kind to the weak. She has a mixed government--monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic; her aristocrats are poor fishermen. By this she is the type of modern governments which have the representative system. Rationalism wants to substitute revolution for this; takes away from the people the good conditions peculiar to them, acquired by them, legitimate and independent of governments; and makes atheism the lever with which to subvert politics. The apostles of rationalism adore liberty, provided they are her priests and sacrificators; create a new author of civilization--the rabble; oblige kings to divide their authority with the mob; the mob upsets its creatures; kings run away; good men hide; the owners of property, menaced by the dogma of plebeian avidity, oppose the bayonet to the knife of the rabble until these are overcome.

{337}

Precisely because the temporal mission of the church is great as the mistress and legislator of nations, precisely because she is authority, the impotent violently, and the powerful foolishly, attack her at a time when men want rights without duties, the husband as well as the citizen, the laborer as well as the legislator.

The church alone has saints; she is universal, perpetual, irreformable: characters which manifest her divine origin and divine actuation.

This divinity of the church is found in Catholicism, not in Protestantism. Catholicity alone has positive unity of faith, love, civilization; that is, light, sacrifice, virtue, which Protestantism lacks. All history and statistics, not systematically false or officially disfigured, which looks further than merely a few years, show that civilization does not progress so well with Protestantism. The Catholic Church had conquered the world and formed modern civilization before the unity of faith and charity was broken; and she would have done more had there been no rupture; and had not the religious wars impeded her power, menaced Europe with a new barbarism, subjected it again to the scourge of armies and conquests, which prevent us even yet from considering our age superior to the most deplorable of past centuries.

VII.

The Catholic Church established her primacy in Rome by three miracles, by conquering Rome when she was mistress of the whole world; by using Rome, her language, civilization, and legislation, to defend Christianity; and by perpetuating the primacy in Rome. Everything that exists has a reason for existence; resurrection is a proof of divinity. Christian Rome, though often driven to agony, has always revived. Exiled kings die in banishment, abandoned and despised; this is a daily spectacle to our age; the popes become more glorious with persecution; a pope in exile at Avignon or in a prison at Savona is as powerful as in the Quirinal palace. If the most powerful emperor, the most iron will of our century, like the acrobat who kicks away the ladder after using it to ascend, robbed the pope who assisted him to rise, insulted and imprisoned him, all Europe--Catholic, Protestant, and schismatic--took arms to restore the pontiff. Thrones crumble, dynasties disappear; but the old man always returns to his seat, from Avignon or Salerno, from Fontainebleau or from Gaeta.

Modern servility may grow indignant to see Henry V. at the feet of Gregory VII.; but it could not see Pius VI. kiss the hand of emperors, as Voltaire did with Catharine or with Frederic of Prussia; in vain will it hope to see Pius IX. at the feet of diplomatists or demagogues; but he will say with St. Augustine, _Leo victus est saeviendo; Agnus vicit patiendo_. [Footnote 73]

[Footnote 73: The lion was conquered by fury; the lamb triumphed by suffering.]

The church lives immortal, neither in nor above but with the state. Her relation with the state may be either of protection, limitation, or separation. Protected as in the beginning and as she was often under the ancient kings, the church would not be degraded. She had her autonomy in her laws, ordinances, and hierarchy; she was, not the slave or the flatterer of the power under which she lived.

She does not seek limitation or restrictions, but supports them without changing her nature. By degrees, as kings prevailed in modern society, and abridged the power of the people, of the lords and corporations, they became jealous of the authority of the church, restricted her action and obstructed her freedom. Powerful in armies, money, and slaves, kings imposed on the church; she became resigned, sacrificed some minor points in order to guard the chief ones in tact; but notwithstanding all the chains of concordats, she remained sovereign in her freedom.

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Separation from the state is like the separation between soul and body; hence the church is opposed to a state that is unchristian.

The church, destined to illuminate the world with her divine light, and not to govern it politically, is by nature conservative. She was so even when the Roman emperors oppressed her; when they went away from Rome, she respected them at Constantinople, until she found it necessary for her defence and for the cause of national freedom to withdraw herself and Italy from imperial control. When she absolved nations from their oaths of allegiance, it was in the name of morality, and not of a political or social idea; to preserve for God what belongs to him, and not to deny to Cesar what belongs to him. [Footnote 74]

[Footnote 74: By the recent work, _Religious and Civil History of the Popes_, of Wm. Audisio, published at Rome in 1868, many precious facts have been recalled to my mind. One is that Gregory XVI., while Portugal was divided between Don Pedro and Don Miguel, tried to settle the dispute by recalling the ecclesiastical tradition, to render civil obedience to him who governs in fact: _Qui actu ibidem summa rerum potiatur_. In this he wished to settle the dispute between the contending parties; for the church seeks _qua Christi sunt, qua, ad spiritualem aeternamque populorum felicitatem facilius conducant_, ("those things which are of Christ, which conduce to the spiritual and eternal happiness of peoples.") The other in which Pius VII., in the consistory of July 28th, 1817, authorized the oath of allegiance to be taken to the constitution and laws, because this oath did not oblige in reference to laws which kings might make in spiritual matters; laws which are null of themselves, for kings have no right to make them. This decision regarding France was repeated October 2d, 1818, in regard to Bavaria.]

Thus although we may find no constitution which abolishes slavery, no one will deny that it ceased through the influence of Christianity, which modified customs and habits, and these influenced the laws. Thus the time will come when all that is good in modern society will be assured to it; and then the influence of Christianity will be made manifest in purifying and consecrating all that came from its teachings, or from needs which it caused to be felt; so that the so-called liberals will see that it is not necessary to attack Christianity in order to defend the acquisitions of their age, nor will the faithful attack the age as an irreconcilable enemy. Does not everything happen by the will or permission of God? Are not all political changes and social transformations providential facts? If the Christian cannot praise them, he becomes resigned to them; he does not increase the evil by anger; he trusts in God, who can change the stones into children of Abraham; and we, separating ourselves from those whose patriotism consists in denouncing others as enemies of their country, say to the men of good-will of our day:

"O socii (neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum) O passi graviora, dabit Deus hic quoque finem." [Footnote 75] _AEneid_, lib. I.

[Footnote 75: "Companions! we have borne evils before this; ye who have suffered worse, remember that God will put an end even to these woes."]

How can you who have learned the watchwords of "Progress," and "Go-ahead," expect hasty "progress" at Rome, so slow in her motions?

Napoleon boasted that he had done in three hours what men formerly took three months to execute. Yes, he ran from Alexandria to Vienna, to Madrid, to Moscow, and--to St. Helena; while Rome remained at her post. Those who do not look superficially admit that she showed splendidly her wisdom in certain circumstances by not closing the way to future wisdom. In the modern exuberance of fungous intelligence, new systems easily sprout up, die in a few years; and the heroes of to-day become the objects of hatred to-morrow. {339} Rome, eternal guardian of truth, cannot make and unmake in haste, take up and lay down, like human societies; but she proceeds slowly and patiently, yet she advances.

Certainly the church will find a new field in which she can co-operate with the state to preserve for humanity, no longer the antique forms or the mere letter given by Catholics alone, but the Christian spirit; a new method of protecting Catholic truth in countries open to every people, and every worship; deprived of the help of force and decrees, she will have no other support but truth; and since this is greater and more secure in Catholicism, it will always succeed in propagating itself. Will not this be the object of the approaching Council? The General Council will not have to destroy what is irremovable, or what derives necessarily from eternal truth; but it will help us worldlings to separate, in principle, the substance from the form, the essence from the application.

Certainly the hate which inspires men in these times against true liberty, makes governments justify and praise every attack against the church, and deprive her of every right, even when they pretend to protect her.

Do these governments want to form national churches? This would be to go back in civilization, which progresses toward union; to deny catholicitv or the universality of the race; to give up souls as well as bodies to the power of kings, as before Christianity; to give the direction of consciences and the judgment of morals to the civil power, which should rule only bodies.

Some would tolerate Catholicity provided there be liberty of conscience and of worship; let there be no temporal power in the church; no religious corporations; and let the secular clergy be raised to the height, as they say, of the age.

What is meant by liberty of conscience has been sufficiently explained by the pamphleteers, and the popes have given solemn decisions on the subject. Conceive a society in which it would be unlawful to expel those who violate its laws or disturb its order! The church simply expels from the communion of prayers and sacrifice those who are obstinate in violating her dogmas. How! You insult our community; refuse to communicate in our rites; you will not accept the pardon which the church always offers you; and yet you pretend to force her to comfort your last moments with sacraments which you repel and deride even then; to force her to bless your corpse, and bury it in the holy ground where repose those with whom you refused to associate during life!

As to temporal goods or the right to possess them, and as for religious corporations--that is, the liberty of community life, of prayer, benevolence, of wearing a peculiar dress, and of worshipping according to your conscience--what could Alimonda say which had not been said by all the independent men of our century?

As to those who assert that the clergy are not educated up to the standard of modern civilization, we need only appeal to those who have any knowledge to see if the ecclesiastics do not rank high in every part of the encyclopedia; nor do we hesitate to say that the most educated man in every village is ordinarily the priest; the priest who is compelled to make a regular course of study, to pass repeated examinations, and assist at conferences.

{340} VII.

It is very strange that at a time when the love of show has become a mania; when kings, ministers, journalists, and myriads of ephemeral heroes are honored with canticles, poems, and ovations; when some button-holes have more decorations than our altars; when there is hardly a name to which pompous titles are not appended, it should be deemed necessary for the benefit of religion to abolish external worship in our churches. Is not our century especially vain of its investigations in matter? Is not the aspiration of the age after physical comfort? Why, then, try to restrict religion to the spiritual, to prevent the erection of temples which would please the senses of that double being--man?

When Constantinople, austerely interpreting the evangelical ordinances, attempted to destroy reverence for holy images, the church fought for the right to cultivate the fine arts; and sustained martyrdom and exile to maintain the privilege of guarding the fine arts in her sanctuaries. When the reform of the sixteenth century called the Catholic Church Babylon, because she asked Michael Angelo and Raphael to immortalize the grandeurs of Christianity, she resisted again--knowing how to distinguish the exceptional life of the voluntary anchorite from the social life of the merely honest man; exacting virtues from all her children, but virtues suitable to their state, to the mystic life of Mary and to the external life of Martha, to the viceroy Joseph and to the shoemaker Crispin.

The same church defends, to-day, love and art from the modern iconoclasts and spurious Puritans.

Discoursing about worship, our author begins by that of Mary, showing it to be a religious principle in accord with reason; a public fact, approved by history; a most tender affection, sanctioned by the heart. It is not long since the chief of the English ritualists, Doctor Pusey, made the most honorable admissions in reference to the Catholic dogmas and ceremonies, excepting, however, the reverence which Catholics have for the Mother of God. Archbishop Manning's [Footnote 76] reply is one of the most beautiful and rational apologies for this worship for which Italy is so remarkable. For all republics were consecrated to her; she was the chosen patroness of our chief cities; her likeness was impressed on our coins and seals; our first poets sang her praises, and their echoes have not yet died; our painters could find no higher or sweeter model; our architects competed in erecting grand temples to her honor; our musicians to compose canticles to her praise; great expeditions were undertaken in her name; colonies were consecrated to her, where now Italian power, but not Italian influence, has ceased. And it is Mary who will save our Italy from humiliations, and from that degradation which seems to be the only aspiration of her intolerant sons. [Footnote 77]

[Footnote 76: Probably a mistake for Dr. Newman.]

[Footnote 77: I may be permitted to refer the reader to the fifty-fourth chapter of my _Heretics of Italy_, in which the respect due to saints and to Mary is discussed.]

The intolerant repeat that laws, decrees, and social organization are sufficient to regulate civil society.

They are sufficient; but they require science to prepare them and virtue to apply them; both to be invoked from on high. The safety of one's country, the fulfilment of its aspirations, the triumph of justice, must come from heaven. Formerly the Italians marched to battle under the standard of the saints or of the cross; the heroes of Legnano, of Fornovo, and of Curzolari prostrated themselves in prayer before fighting; and the Italians of those times conquered and gave thanks to God for having given to them a beautiful, great, and prosperous country. But now we have popular tumults and the ravings of newspapers.

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Our strong-minded heroes consider it degrading to bow before the Author of all things. Yet, passing over all the wise men of antiquity, the most free nation in Europe opens its parliaments with prayer, and obeys the orders of the queen to fast in time of disaster, or feast in time of great success. The President of the United States, no matter what may be his creed, orders a day of thanksgiving to God, and he is obeyed. When the telegraph from America was able to carry a message to Europe on August 17th, 1858, the first words which leaped along the wire were, "Europe and America are united. Glory to God in the highest; peace on earth; to men, good-will." "What grander spectacle can there be than to see a whole people united in the duties imposed by its religion in celebrating great anniversaries? What heroic outbursts, how many noble sacrifices, were expressed in the monologues of holy days! What high thoughts and magnificent conceptions arose in the souls of philosophers and poets! How many generous resolutions were taken! When the observance of the Sunday was neglected, the last spark of poetic fire was extinguished in the souls of our poets. It has been truly said, without religion there is no poetry. We must add, without external worship and feast days there is no religion. In the country, where the people are more susceptible of the religious sentiment, the Sunday still keeps a part of its social influence. The sight of a rustic population united as one family by the voice of its pastor, and prostrated in silence and recollection before the invisible majesty of God, is touching and sublime; is a charm which goes to the heart."

Who speaks in this way? Proud hon. [sic] And Napoleon says, "Do you want something sublime? Recite your _Pater noster_."

The most sublime prayer is the mass--the culminating point of worship; the perennial expiation of perennial faults. From the mass Alimonda passes to confession; then to communion; and thence to the responsibility of present life. He exhorts all to _understand_ and _believe_. This is the creed of the Christian: _Credere et intelligere_.

VIII.

We have thus far followed the illustrious Alimonda, repeating or developing his arguments. Let us now examine his manner of treating the questions which he discusses.

The classic Greek orators had wonderful simplicity of style, in which the familiarity of their expressions ennobled their sentiments and gave force to their reasoning. The Eastern fathers followed in their footsteps. The Latins ornamented eloquence so as to make it a special art, assigning it a measured cadence, a peculiar intonation of voice, a system of position and gesture. Hence, the Latin fathers studied speech even to affectation, sought after rhetorical figures, yet always more attentive to the practical than to the abstract. The French formed themselves rather according to the Greek models; and the noble simplicity of Bossuet, Massilon, and Fénélon renders them still models for one who would discourse before a polished people.

The Italians, if you except some of the very earliest preachers, preferred to ornament their speeches and indulge in artificial figures. In the ages of bad taste, the worst display of metaphors disgraced the pulpit; whence the custom passed to the bar and parliament, where there have been and still are so many examples of unnatural oratory. {342} Hence, in so great an abundance of literature, we have no good preachers except Legneri. In modern times, the style of the pretentious Turchi has been changed to that of the academic Barbieri; but that style of preaching "whose father is the Gospel, and whose mother is the Bible," is rarely heard in our pulpits. Our very best eloquence, that of the pastorals and homilies of our bishops, is spoiled by too frequent citations, and is often devoid of that sentiment which comes from the heart and goes to it. We do not want to borrow the French style. It is a mistake to steal the language of another nation, either in writing or preaching. Peoples have different dispositions. It would not do to address the Carib in the same way as the Parisian, or the contemporaries of Godfrey as the subjects of Napoleon.

Our author, beside being familiar with the first propagators and defenders of Christianity, is highly educated in the classics, and has always ready phrases, hemistichs, and allusions which display his erudition. His method is prudent, his divisions logical, and the train of ideas well followed up; his language correct, and the clearness and marvellous beauty of his style show him to be a finished orator.

He draws an abundance of materials from the most diverse and recondite sources. He adduces the most recent discoveries of science regarding the essence of the sun, nebula, aerolites, and on the nature of matter. Without mentioning the biblical and legendary portions of his work, there are in it traces of every part of both ancient and modern history: Camoens and Napoleon, Abelard and Renan, Isnard and Jouffroy, Donoso Cortes and Cagliostro, Marie Antoinette and Madame de Swetchine, Ireland and Poland, the discourses of Napoleon III. and of Cavour. The author brings us through the byways of London to the prison of Thomas More, to the solitude of St. Helena, and to the lands where the missionaries are laboring. He quotes even the heroes of romance: "Renzo" and the "Unknown," Renato, Werter, St. Preux, the Elvira of George Sand, Wiseman's Fabiola, and Victor Hugo's Valjean. With the spoils of the Egyptians Alimonda builds a tabernacle to the living God. Who will censure him, since our Holy Father, in a brief of September 20th, 1867, approves his labor?

The nineteenth century can be saved only by means suitable to the nineteenth century; and Simon Stylites or Torquemada, the Crusaders or the Flagellants, would be as much out of place to-day as catapults or the theory of uncreated light. We must fight with modern weapons.

"Clypeos, Danaumque insignia nobis aptemus." [Footnote 78]

[Footnote 78: "We must use the weapons and dress of the Greeks." _AEneid_, lib. ii.]

We must study Catholicity in all its bearings, and reconcile divine and human traditions with modern exigencies; authority established on an immovable pedestal, with liberty which is always developing.

Courage! Let us arouse ourselves from lethargy, and not suffer a condition of affairs for which we are responsible. Let us remember, with Bacon, that prosperity was the boon of the Old Testament; adversity, of the New; persuaded, with Donoso Cortes, that "it is our duty, as Catholics, to struggle, and that we should thank God who has chosen us to fight for his church," let us display that energetic will which is so rare among good people. With charity and faith, by association and perseverance, we can conquer hatred and unbelief, the divisions of sects, and the onslaughts of error on the strongholds of Catholic truth.

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Two Months In Spain During The Late Revolution.

Seville, Fonda De Paris.

September 23, 1869.

The train leaves Cordova at six A.M., and we are delighted to be again on our journey. The route proves of little interest between Cordova and Seville; the Guadalquivir is first on one side of us and then on the other; the hills and mountains bound each side of the plain, where are olive groves, and peaceful flocks, and ploughmen, as if no revolution were occurring around them. At Almovar, (situated on a high hill,) we see the ruins of a Moorish castle where that half-Moor, Peter the Cruel, confined his sister-in-law, Doña Juana de Lara. Carmona is another town which has the same celebrity. Here he imprisoned many of his female favorites when tired of them. We grow very hungry in spite of these tragic histories, and our young gentleman buys a great melon _de Castile_, which, proving very delicious, we make a good breakfast _à l'espagnol;_ but are not sorry to see the towers of the Giralda, and soon after we enter Seville--the most charming of all Spanish towns; the city of Don Juan and Figaro; the gayest, the most celebrated for its beautiful women, its graceful men, its bull-fights, its gypsies, its tertulias, its fandangos, its cachuchas, its Murillos, its cathedral, (said to rival St. Peter's,) and its Alcazar, which is almost as wonderful as the Alhambra.

After dinner, we hasten to the cathedral through busy, crowded streets, by handsome shops; passing occasionally a pretty Sevillian whose black dress, bare arms and neck seen through the black lace mantilla, with the dainty pink rose peeping from beneath it, harmonize exactly with one's idea of the Spanish woman. And presently, upon a terrace ascended by several steps, we see before us this wonderful pile of buildings: the Giralda (Moorish tower) on one side; the Sagrario (the parish church) on the other; the chapter house, and offices facing the cathedral; and in the centre of all these the court of oranges! The cathedral is entered from this court by nine doors. We scarcely know how to describe this magnificent gothic building, which has affected us more than any we have ever seen. Coming upon us so immediately after the mosque of Cordova, (each of these a perfect specimen of its kind,) one sees in each the reflection of the different faiths they represent. The graceful, elegant mosque seems to appeal more to the senses, to speak of a faith which promises material joys, while the grand and majestic gothic cathedral carries one's heart to the heaven in which these lofty arches seem to be lost. In despair of being able to do justice to so high a theme, I must borrow from O'Shea's guide-book the following description of this building:

"The general style of the edifice is gothic of the best period of Spain, and though many of its parts belong to different styles, these form but accessory parts, and the main body remains strictly gothic. Indeed all the fine arts, and each in turn, at their acme of strength, have combined to produce their finest inspiration here. {344} The Moorish Giralda, the Gothic cathedral, the Greco-Roman exterior, produce variety, and repose the eye. Inside, its numerous paintings are by some of the greatest painters that ever breathed; the stained glass, amongst the finest known; the sculpture, beautiful; the jewellers' and silversmiths' work unrivalled in composition, execution, and value. The cathedral of Leon charms us by the chaste elegance of its airy structure, the purity of its harmonious lines; the fairy-worked cimborio of that at Burgos, its filagree spires, and pomp of ornamentation are certainly more striking; and at Toledo, we feel already humbled and crushed beneath the majesty and wealth displayed everywhere. But when we enter the cathedral of Seville, there is a sublimity in these sombre masses and clusters of spires whose proportions and details are somewhat lost and concealed in the mysterious shadows which pervade the whole, a grandeur which quickens the sense, and makes the heart throb within us, and we stand as lost among these lofty naves and countless gilt altars, shining dimly in the dark around us, the lights playing across them as the rays of the glorious Spanish sun stream through the painted windows. Vast proportions, unity of design, severity and sobriety of ornament, and that simplicity unalloyed by monotony which stamps all the works of real genius, render this one of the noblest piles ever raised to God by man, and preferred by many even to St. Peter's at Rome."

It is said that the canons and chapter resolved to make this church the wonder of the world; and with this view, sent for the most celebrated architects and artists of the world to adorn it, denying themselves almost the necessaries of life to accomplish the great work.

The pillars are one hundred and fifty feet high; the church, four hundred feet long, two hundred and ninety-one wide, with ninety-five windows and thirty-seven chapels; and nearly each one of these contains some pictures of Murillo, Cespedes, Campana, Roelas, or some Spanish painter of celebrity. We go from chapel to chapel, gazing upon these, lingering before the altar "Del Angel de la Guarda," where is Murillo's exquisite picture of the guardian angel with the young child by the hand (so often reproduced,) and lost in awe before his grand picture of St. Anthony of Padua, to whom the infant Jesus descends, amidst angels and flowers and sunbeams, into the arms ecstatically extended toward him. In a little chapel we come upon a lovely Virgin and Child, by Alonso Caño, called N. S. de Belem, (Bethlehem.)

But the sun declined, and we ascended the Giralda to see his last beams shine upon so much beauty. What a strange and charming scene! The forest of white houses painted with delicate blue and green; the flat roofs decorated with gardens; the four hundred and seventy-seven narrow streets, some hardly admitting two people abreast, through which toiled the patient mules bearing burdens of stones, mortar for building, wood, and vegetables; the one hundred ornamented squares and promenades; the orange gardens; the plaza de Toros; the cathedral just beneath us, with its hundreds of turrets; the Torre del Oro, (Tower of Gold,) so named from its yellow hue; the Lonja, (Exchange,) with its pink color; the grey Alcazar; the palace San Telmo by the Guadalquivir, which winds through the city and over the plain; and convents, and churches, and palaces; and, beyond all, the verdant plains and the blue mountains! As the sun sank, the convent bells rang the "Ave Maria."

"Blessed be the hour! The time, the chime, the spot."

Certainly we all "felt that moment in its fullest power"!

{345}

Thursday, 24. Our first visit to-day is to San Telmo--the royal palace given by Queen Isabella to her sister, the Duchess de Montpensier--on the banks of the Guadalquivir, with enchanting gardens, palms and citrons, and orange-trees; and within, all oriental in its style and decorations. Here are some lovely pictures--one of Murillo's most beautiful Virgins, several splendid Zurbarans, a Sebastian del Piombo, Holy Family, etc.

Next we visit the great tobacco manufactory, where 4000 women are employed making cigars. As all these were talking at once, we were glad soon to escape. And then the Alcazar, the wonderful Moorish palace, than which not even the Alhambra can be more beautiful--as it seems to us. We wander in delicious gardens --like those described in the _Arabian Nights_--and then enter the enchanted palace! Passing several courts, we find the great door of entrance sculptured and painted in arabesque. Here is a long hall, with exquisitely carved and painted roof, from which we pass into a square marble court, or patio, with double rows of marble columns and a fountain in the centre. From the four sides of this patio you enter by immense doors, carved and inlaid, into the apartments beyond. First, the Hall of the Ambassadors, which communicates with others through elegant arches profusely ornamented, supported by marble pillars of every color with gilded capitals. The walls and dome are ornamented with sentences from the Koran, in gilt letters upon grounds of blue and crimson. Every chamber has different decorations, all equally elegant.

Below, opening from the garden, we are shown some subterranean cells said to have been the prisons of Christian captives, and above these the luxurious baths of Maria de Padilla--the famous mistress of Peter the Cruel. It was the custom for the king and courtiers to sit by and see her bathe, and for the latter to pretend to sip the water of the bath. Seeing one of these fail in this gallant duty one day, the king asked why he omitted it. "Because, sire," (said the witty courtier,) "I am afraid to like the sauce so well that I shall covet the bird." Peter the Cruel lived much in this palace, and did much to embellish it through the Moorish artists whom he employed. Many of the Spanish kings lived there, and Charles V. was married in one of the upper rooms. These we did not see, and learned afterward that they were inhabited by "Fernan Caballero," one of the most popular writers of Spain--whose delightful books we learned later to admire. Fernan Caballero is the _nom de plume_ of this lady, who has had many misfortunes, and who by permission of the queen lives in the Alcazar, devoting her life to deeds of benevolence amongst the poor, whose traits and trials she records in many delightful works. It is a pity that out of France these books should be unknown. One of our party determines to take some of them to America, that they may be translated and bring to the knowledge of our people these charming scenes of Spanish home life so inimitably described.[Footnote 79]

[Footnote 79: One of "Fernan Caballero's" (Mrs. Fabre) books, _The Alvareda Family_, has already been translated here and published in _The Catholic World_ three years ago; and two others, _The Sea Gull_, and _The Castle and Cottage in Spain_, have appeared in an English dress in London, and _Lucia Garcia_ is already translated and will soon appear in this magazine.--ED. CATH. W.]

In the evening we go to a ball, to see the Andalusian dances in their proper costume. Boleros, and cachuchas, and seguidillas, and manchegas! Such graceful movements, such little feet in such dainty satin shoes!

{346}

Generally to the accompaniment of the guitar, with most peculiar and monotonous music, singing at the same time, clapping the hands, stamping the feet, and the dancer always with castanets. All the dances were peculiar, solos, often in couples, or three at a time, some of these coquettish--one, especially, danced by a man and a woman, he in hat and cloak, she with fan and mantilla. How she wielded this little "weapon"!--now hiding her face, now peeping from behind it, which he also did with his _manta_. By and by he takes off his hat and humbly lays it at her feet. She dances over it scornfully; without ever losing the step, he recovers it. She flies; he pursues, opening his manta entreatingly; she relents; again he throws down the hat; she stoops and gives it to him, and eventually they dance away with the manta covering both.

Friday, 25.

We go again to the wonderful cathedral; examined many pictures which yesterday escaped us. In the chapter house is one of Murillo's "Conceptions," and eight charming heads (ovals) painted by him, in the same room. In the chapel of the kings lies the body of St. Ferdinand, and of Murillo; who asked to be buried at the foot of a picture (The Descent from the Cross) of which he was particularly fond, which is above the main altar.

Near the great entrance of the cathedral a stone in the pavement marks the spot where lies Fernando, the son of Christopher Columbus, with the motto upon it, "A Castilla y á Leon, mundo nuevo dió Colon." From his tomb we go to the great Columbine Library given by him to his country, containing some interesting MSS. of his father--one, a book of quotations containing extracts from the psalms and prophets, proving the existence of the new world. There are a series of portraits round the room, of Columbus, his son, St. Ferdinand, Cardinal Mendoza, and Cardinal Wiseman, (who was a native of Seville.) There is also preserved here the great two-edged sword of Ferdinand Gonsalves.

Some of our party go to visit the archbishop, in the hope to get permission to see the treasures of the church, which are very valuable; but the presence of the revolution obliges him to deny us this as well as the _entrée_ to the convent of St. Theresa, which is said to be exactly the same as when she founded it. It was here she underwent such great trouble and persecution, and where (finding she had but two or three coppers with which to begin a great foundation) she said to her nuns, "Never mind, two cents and Theresa are nothing; but two cents and God are everything."

And this interesting convent we could not see.[Footnote 80] Indeed, the time of our visit to Spain was inopportune for seeing the inside of religious houses. A former revolution having deprived them of their property, they have now the fear of being turned out of their convents.

[Footnote 80: For a full description of this convent see Lady Herbert's _Impressions of Spain_, just from the press of the Catholic Publication Society. This work also contains illustrations of cathedrals, churches, gardens, palaces, and other places described in these letters.--ED. CATH. W.]

While we wait in the church for the return of our friends, we enter into conversation with two of the little boys of the choir, whose beauty attracts us, begging them to describe the style in which they dance before the Blessed Sacrament on Corpus Christi, which is said to be a ceremony most solemn, grave, and impressive. These children evinced great curiosity about us, and when told that one of the party was "a convert," (had been a Protestant,) could not be made to comprehend what it meant; for they confound all Protestants with unbelievers. {347} "And did not know about our dear Lord!" said one little fellow with a look of sorrowful compassion, reminding one of the scene in one of Fernan Caballero's tales (_The Alvareda Family_) where the hero comes home from his travels and describes a country covered with snow so that people are sometimes buried under it.

We go to see the house in which Murillo lived and the spot where he was first buried--passing the house in which Cardinal Wiseman was born, upon which is a large tablet with a beautiful and appropriate inscription. In Murillo's house is an extensive gallery with many of his loveliest pictures, and some of the pictures of monks for which Zurbaran is so famous.

Here we see the Infant St. John with the Lamb, and the Infant Saviour, so often repeated by Murillo, apart and together an exquisite Ecce Homo; several Madonnas, and Saints.

On our way we are shown the shop where dwelt the original Figaro, and also the house of Don Juan!

The Casa de Pilatos, one of the residences of the Duke of Medina Coeli, next claims us--a curious old palace, built in the sixteenth century in imitation of Pilate's House in Jerusalem, which was visited at that time by the founder. The patio is fine, with a beautiful fountain, and double row of columns, (one above another,) with statues at the four corners. The marble staircase and halls--lined with azulejos, (colored porcelain tiles,) universally used in this country--are particularly handsome.

Next we go to the "Caridad," one of the most celebrated hospitals in the world, founded by a young nobleman of Seville in the seventeenth century, upon ground which belonged to a brotherhood whose duty it was to give consolation to those about to die on the scaffold. This young man (Don Miguel de Mañara) was distinguished for his profligacy, but also for his bravery, generosity, and his patronage of art. One of our friends told us some most interesting anecdotes connected with his conversion.

Returning from some orgies, one night, he saw a female figure upon a low balcony beckon him. Thinking to have an adventure, he sprang into the open window and found a dead body with a with lights about it alone in the room. Another time, returning at midnight through the streets, he saw a church lighted, and, wondering what could be going on at such an hour, entered. Before the altar was a bier upon which was extended a body covered with the mantle of the knights of the order to which he belonged, the priests about it singing the office for the dead. Asking whose funeral it was, he was answered, "That of Don Miguel Mañara," and going to the corpse and uncovering it, saw his own face. The morning found him stretched upon the pavement, the vision gone. But the impression remained, in which he recognized a call from God to a better life, which he soon after entered, giving his whole fortune to found this institution for the sick, the aged, and "incurables;" and here he lived and died an example of humility, piety, and penitence. Murillo and other eminent artists were also members of this confraternity, and a letter of the former is here shown in which he asks permission to join the brotherhood. To the friendship of Don Miguel for Murillo the hospital is indebted for some of the finest pictures in the world. In the church are two of his grandest and largest pictures, "Moses striking the Rock," called here the "Sed," (thirst,) and the "Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes," a Visitation, an Infant Saviour, and a St. John. {348} There are also several most remarkable pictures by Valdes Leal; one, "The Triumph of Time," in which the skeleton Death stands triumphantly above crowns and sceptres and "all there is of glory." Opposite to this is "The Dead Prelate," a picture made at the suggestion of Mañara. From the top of the picture a _pierced hand_ holds the scales, in one side of which a kingly crown, and jewels, and sceptre, weigh against the mystic "I. H. S." and a book, the Word of God. Below lies a dead prelate, in mitre and crosier, half eaten by the worms; on the other side, Don Miguel Mañara, wrapped in his knightly mantle, upon which also the worms run riot. On one of the scales is written "nor more;" upon the other, "nor less."

Murillo told the painter that he could never pass this picture without involuntarily "holding his nose." Under the pavement, near the door, lies the body of the founder; "the ashes of the worst man that ever lived," so he styles himself in his epitaph; and he requested that he might lie where the feet of every passer should walk over him. The sisters conduct us over the clean and airy wards. On the wall of the patio are these words, from the pen of Mañara himself, "This house will last as long as God shall be feared in it, and Jesus Christ be served in the persons of his poor. Whoever enters here must leave at the door both avarice and pride." And over his own cell is inscribed, "What is it we mean when we speak of death? It is being free from the body of sin, and from the yoke of our passions. Therefore, to live is a bitter death, and to die is a sweet life."

Another of the charming histories told us by the same lady was of St. Maria Coronel, whose body is preserved in the convent of St. Inez, which we could not be permitted to see. Peter the Cruel, because enamored of her great beauty, condemned her husband to death, but offered to save him if she would yield to his wishes. The husband was actually executed, and Maria fled to this convent, where the king pursued her. One night he entered her cell; and, seeing no other way to escape him, she seized the burning lamp, and emptied its boiling contents over her face. The poor lady lived the life of a saint, and died in this convent. Her body is as fresh as if she had died yesterday, and the marks of the oil upon her face as clearly visible as upon the day when the heroic deed was committed.

In the evening we walk in the crowded streets, and find splendid shops filled with lovely women, who go at this hour to walk or shop, never stirring out in the day. As late as eleven, when we came in, the streets and shops were yet filled with ladies.

Saturday, 26.

We spend the morning in the gallery, which is considered the finest in Spain, after that of Madrid. This is especially rich in Murillos, and has several Zurbarans, the Spanish Caravaggio so famous for his pictures of monks. Here is "The Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas," considered his masterpiece; and of Murillo there are about twenty-four of his greatest pictures: the "St. Thomas of Villanuova giving Alms," which was the painter's own favorite; the "St. Anthony of Padua kneeling before the Infant Saviour," who stands upon his book--the most perfect type of a child God; and the ecstasy, the fervor, the humility, in the pale, attenuated face of the monk brings the tears to one's eyes, you so feel with him. {349} Next this is a picture preferred to the other by most persons, "St. Felix of Cantalicia," with the infant Saviour in his arms, the blessed Mother leaning forward to receive him. The beauty of the Virgin Mother and the grace of her attitude is said by critics to be beyond all praise. Then comes a beautiful "Annunciation," a "St. Joseph with the child Jesus," "Saints Rufina and Justina," (the patrons of Seville,) "Saints Leandro and Buonaventura," several "Conceptions," and the exquisite "Virgin de la Sevilleta," (Virgin of the Napkin,) said to have been painted on a dinner napkin, and given as a present to the cook of the convent where Murillo worked. The "St. John Baptist in the Desert" should also be mentioned, as well as many others.

This evening we bid farewell to beautiful Seville, with all its delights, and set out for Cadiz.

Certainly it is the Spaniards, not the French, who are "the politest people in the world." The conductor opens the railway carriage with "Good evening, ladies. May I trouble you for your tickets?" concluding with "A happy night to you." In passing a street, the other day, a gentleman with whom we had crossed the mountains, and whose name we do not even know, rushes from his house to say, "Ladies, is anything wanting? Here is your house." Such is the pretty exaggerated Spanish phrase. Leaving Seville, we pass orange-groves and fields divided by aloe and cactus hedges, but the country is flat and uninteresting; and, except Lebrija, which has a tower, the rival of the Giralda, and Jerez, we see no towns of any size or interest till we near Cadiz. "Jerez de la Frontera" (the frontier town) has always been of importance; one of the earliest Phoenician colonies. Close to this took place the battle of the Guadelete, which opened Spain to the Moors. St. Ferdinand recovered it in 1251; but it was retaken, and again recovered by his son, Alonzo the Learned, in 1264, who granted to it many important privileges, peopling it with forty of his hidalgos--the source of the present Jerez nobility. It has an Alcazar of great interest--its Alameda--some fine old churches, and near it are the ruins of a fine old Carthusian convent upon the Guadelete, which the Moors called the River of Delight. Jerez is now celebrated for its wines; the sherry so prized in England and America, which occupies palaces rather than wine-cellars. These are called "bodegas," and sometimes hold ten thousand casks. As we near Cadiz we see Puerta San Maria, at the mouth of the Guadelete--a pretty town, looking upon the sea, with a suspension bridge looking most picturesque in the moonlight; then Puerto Real, San Fernando, Cadiz.

Cadiz, Fonda De Paris. Sunday, 27.

The guide takes us first to hear high mass in the new cathedral--a handsome building, entirely of white marble, within and without. Some good pictures, (copies of Murillo,) fine music, and the most devout of congregations. The loveliest of women, in modest black dresses, mantillas, and fans, sat or knelt upon the matting, which is spread upon the space between the high altar and the choir. No seats are provided. A few bring little black camp-stools. The bishop (who gave the benediction) is a most dignified and elegant-looking person; and the guide tells us he is much beloved and respected. Already the new order of things pulls down churches and banishes the Jesuits, as the first proof of that "liberty of worship" which is one of the most popular of the war cries. {350} Such bandit-looking fellows as we saw yesterday! Catalan soldiers, in red cap, short pantaloons with red stripe, half-gaiters, and a red blanket on the left shoulder, a leathern belt, with pistols and a great rifle.

The revolution spreads everywhere, "peacefully," as they say. We see a handbill posted, in which the queen is spoken of as "_Doña_ Isabella of Bourbon," to whom they wish "no harm."

Some Spanish ladies who had once lived in America, and are friends of ours, came to visit us. They are intensely loyal, as are all the women of Spain whom we encounter. From these we learn that, as in all revolutions, the dregs of the people come to the top, and are most conspicuous. It is only they make it who have nothing to lose, and all to gain. These "juntas," who now rule in each city under the provisional government, are composed of people of low birth and bad morals. Here they are taken from the low trades-people, who are noted drunkards and unbelievers. Into such hands are committed the destinies of this lovely city. Their first work has been to try and kill the Jesuits, who, with a hundred little boys under their care, had to defend themselves from these men and the rabble they encourage. And but for the officers of the fleet, who, with pistols in hand, thrust themselves between them, they must have been murdered. These officers took them on board the ships for safety, and some are yet secreted in the town, waiting an opportunity to escape. To-day our guide takes us to several curious old churches which were formerly convents, with pretty cloisters and marble courts. These, he says, are doomed by the junta to be torn down to build houses and theatres, thus destroying these beautiful old monuments of a past time in their blind fury against religion.

In the evening we change our hotel to the "Fonda de Cadiz," on the gay "plaza San Antonio." After dinner walk by the seashore on the walls. As we pass the streets, we enter several churches, where the people are hearing sermons, or saying prayers with the priests. Such picturesque groups!

To-night we see from our windows a procession carrying the Blessed Sacrament to the sick, from the parish church opposite. A carriage is always sent, and a long procession, bearing lights, precedes and follows. One of the ladies present tells us that last carnival, in the midst of the gayeties on this square, men and women, in every variety of ridiculous costume, were dancing to merry music, when suddenly the bell was heard preceding the Blessed Sacrament, which was being carried to a sick officer, living upon the square. In an instant every knee was bent of the motley throng, and the band struck up the Royal March in the most effective manner, and accompanied the procession to the house; returning, the fun recommenced. This lady says there was never anything witnessed more affecting. "And," added she, "this is the faith these revolutionists would take from us. Already they talk of introducing every religion, and they will build a mosque and a synagogue!"

Monday, 28. The morning is given to shopping, to see the lovely mantillas of every shape and style; fans of wonderful workmanship and exquisite painting on kid or silk; the beautiful figures in every variety of Spanish costumes, made in Malaga, of a particular kind of clay for which Spain is famous; the pretty mattings of Cadiz, etc. {351} In the evening we walk with our friends upon the "Alameda," a charming promenade by the seaside, where stately palm-trees wave above marble seats and columns. Entering the church of Mount Carmel we find it filled with people saying prayers and the rosary. To-night we are kept awake by the mob, who are marching with drums and ringing the church bells in honor of a victory over the queen's troops near Cordova.

Tuesday, 29. At eight o'clock we set out upon an excursion to Jerez, to visit the bodegas and taste the fine wines. Passing the salt-meadows we see the white pyramids of salt glistening in the sunlight, which had so puzzled us when we last saw them by moonlight. The bay of Cadiz is on one side, the broad ocean on the other, in the distance the mountains of the Sierra del Pinal. A friend joins us at Puerta Real, and takes us to one of the largest bodegas in Jerez, where are 10,000 casks of wine--each cask valued at $500! The proprietor (a gentleman of English or Irish descent) is most kind, shows us this extraordinary place, and gives us to taste of the finest wines--brown sherry and pale sherry, fifty years of age. But the most delicious of all are the sweet wines--which are also sherries--and are called "Pedro Ximenes" from the name of the person who first introduced this grape. These wines are rich and oily, (perfect "nectar,") and are made from the grape when almost as dry as raisins--twelve days from off the vine. In the midst of these oceans of fine wines, Mr. Graves (the proprietor) tells us he rarely tastes them, only occasionally taking a glass of the sweet wine.

Jerez is said to be the richest town in Spain, the richest of its size in the world. Beautiful plazas planted with palms, and fine old palaces. We visited an ornamental garden belonging to one of these wine princes, where were lakes, and streams, and grottoes, and bridges, and groves, and flowers of every variety, birds and fowls, and model cattle, etc. And then we saw San Miguel, one of the finest churches we have seen, (gothic interior,) of the fifteenth century, (1432,) elegantly ornamented. There is also a cathedral and another most interesting church, (St. Dionisius,) built by Alonzo the Learned in the thirteenth century, said to be a particularly fine specimen of the gothic moresque of that period. After a fine breakfast of the delicious Spanish ham, chocolate, cakes, and sherry, we return to Cadiz. Passing "Puerta San Maria," we see the Jesuit college, from which they have just been ejected, the broken trees, the trampled gardens telling their own story of violence. One of the gentlemen in the train tells us there were two hundred and fifty boys cared for here, and that the Jesuits fed five hundred poor each day with soup from the leavings of the table. The great building looked a picture of desolation.

To-night we have another ringing of bells and marching to the sound of the odious revolutionary hymn. One of the gentlemen of our party goes out to hear the speeches in the square. Some of the speakers propose to offer the crown to the father of the King of Portugal, (of the Catholic branch of that lucky _Coburg_ family who, possessing nothing, gain everything by marriage,) others are for the Duke of Montpensier. Some cry "Vive Napoleon." In fact, they are in great embarrassment--have caught the elephant and do not know what to do with him, like another nation we know of.

{352} Wednesday, 30.

To-day we hear that all Catalonia has "pronounced," and even Madrid, and that the rejoicings of last night were for the victory of "Alcolea," just won, over the queen's troops, in which, however, the liberals have lost three thousand men. These troops were commanded by Serrano, (Duke de Torres,) who owes everything to the queen's favor; and on the queen's side by the Marquis de Novaliches, "faithful found amongst the faithless." We hear of one of her officers (the young Count de Cheste) who has shut himself with his men in the fortress of Montjuich, at Barcelona, resolving to die rather than submit. One must admire such devotion, in whatever cause it is shown. "Loyalty! the most pure and beautiful feeling of the human breast. It is a love which exists without requiring the usual nourishment of return; a feeling void of every shade of egotism; that desires and requires nothing but the happiness of loving, that causes one joyfully to sacrifice life and property for the exalted object whose voice, perhaps, never reached his ear. This feeling, in its highest purity, is the very triumph of human capacity." Such is the true definition of "Loyalty," which, like "Liberty," is often profaned and constantly misunderstood. With our pretty Spanish friends we go to see a church called the "Cave," a church only for gentlemen, where they may go privately to their confession and devotions. The confessionals are unlike those used for women, for the men go in front and kneel face to face with the priest. It is a beautiful chapel, wonderfully rich in marbles and fine vestments and bassi-relievi, and below it is a gloomy chapel from whence the church derives its name. Over the altar is represented the crucifixion. It is dimly lighted through a dome, and the figures (large as life) seem to live. Here the men go for meditation, and for the Good Friday and other solemn festivals. At one end of the chapel is a carved chair, raised on a platform, upon which the priest sits to give his instructions, while a lamp is so arranged that the light falls only upon the speaker's face, leaving the rest of the chapel in darkness. The young priest who showed us the church had the face of an angel, so fair and young and holy; or, rather, such a face as is represented in a picture of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, the patron of youth.

As we wander from shop to shop one of our pretty friends meets one of the beaux of Cadiz, whose "loyalty" she suspects and whom she berates most violently for deserting his queen in her need, and helping to embarrass his country. The pretty way with which she shakes her fan at him, and gesticulates with her hands, the expressive eyes and play of feature, is altogether charming and _Andalusian_.

Late this evening, we hear particulars of the late battle. Novaliches fought against fearful odds--three thousand men to sixteen thousand. He was severely if not mortally wounded, and was carried off by his men to Portugal, the only way of retreat open to them. This defeat, we suppose, will put an end to the war.

Thursday, Oct. 1.

This is the feast of the Guardian Angel of Spain, so we hear mass where the devotion of the forty hours begins. As in Italy, two by two, kneeling and holding lights, the men of the congregation keep watch before the Blessed Sacrament during these forty hours, while hundreds of adorers continually coming and going attest the devotion of this pious people. {353} The Church of the Guardian Angel is near that belonging to the military hospital; and on the opposite side of the square is an asylum for widows, founded many years ago by a converted Moor--a most interesting institution. Widows of all ranks and conditions find shelter here when their necessities require it. Each one has her own chamber and sitting-room, and each one her little cooking apparatus separate. The court with its open corridors on every story, its pretty flowers, its fine promenade on the roof, makes it a very inviting abode; and, with the usual Spanish courtesy, the old widow who showed us about (the widow of an officer, who had been there these forty years) placed it at our "disposition." These poor women go out to walk, and to church when they wish, though there is also a chapel in the house.

We go next to see the "Albergo dei Poveri," a magnificent charity, founded and endowed by one man in memory of his mother, and dedicated to St. Helena. Here five hundred children of both sexes are taught weaving, sewing, washing, shoemaking, etc., and there is also an asylum for five hundred old men and old women. The school-rooms and dormitories are large and airy; the marble courts, where the children play, and the sewing-room, where a hundred girls sat at work, looked out upon the sea, and were deliciously cool and comfortable. The school-rooms were decorated with pictures of Bible history, and seemed to have all the modern inventions which make easy the way to learning. The sister told us how much they had been disturbed by this revolutionary movement. Her little orphan boys (who had been taught music with the view to enter the army as musicians) had been carried off at night to play the revolutionary hymn, kept out marching over the town till two o'clock in the morning, and then sent home foot-sore and with aching heads.

The most interesting thing of all was to see the old men at dinner--that helpless thing, an old man. Placed by the nice table, a man with snow-white apron served the soup, a sister gave round the meat, and then came a pudding. The bread was as white as is all the bread of Spain, (even the poorest people have bread of this very white flour,) and there seemed about a hundred of these men over sixty years of age. The rain drives us home, but by and by we go out again to buy some of the boots and shoes of Cadiz, which are the prettiest in the world and cover the prettiest of feet.

Feast Of The Guardian Angels.

Friday, Oct. 2.

We go to the lovely church of the Rosary for high mass. The decorations are very tasteful and beautiful, and hundreds of men and women, in their grave black garments, assist most devoutly; the men have benches on each side, the women sit or kneel upon a bit of matting before the altar.

From this we go to the "Capuchinos," where we see three of Murillo's finest pictures, the "Marriage of St. Catherine," over the altar, which he left unfinished and which is surrounded, in five compartments, by five pictures of Zurbaran, almost equal to the centre piece. There is here another "Conception," and that picture of pictures, "St. Francis receiving the Stigmata," which is certainly the most extraordinary of all the works of this great master. The face of the saint seems to come entirely out of its dark surroundings, and so do the wonderful hands. These all look like the living flesh, and move us as if they were so.

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This Capuchin convent, which Murillo loved to adorn, and in painting for which he lost his life, is now a hospital for lunatics--the monks all gone; the present Bishop of Cadiz was one [of] them. And to show the devotion of the common people to Murillo, they will not allow the bishop to move this picture of St. Francis to an opposite altar, where it would be in a better light and preserved from the smoke of the altar candles. "No; the place for which Murillo painted it must be the best place, and there it shall stay." In a chapel near by is a lovely picture of "Our Lady of the Rosary," which must be a copy of the one in the gallery of Madrid so celebrated. In this chapel and everywhere here we see statues or pictures of the "Martyrs of Cadiz," (Servando and Germano,) two young Roman soldiers who, becoming converts, died for the faith on a spot near the present city gates. It is said that on the occasion of the terrible earthquake which occurred here November 1st, 1755, when the sea rose and threatened to devour the city, two young men in strange garments appeared on the spot of their martyrdom and were seen by hundreds of the inhabitants to stay the waves, speaking to the people and bidding them pray to God. On another side of the city the Dominican priests bore the favorite statue of "Our Lady of the Rosary," with many prayers, to the waters' brink, and "the waves receded and there was a great calm."

On the third side, where Cadiz is most exposed to the sea, is a little church in which the priest was saying mass on the eventful morning. 'The people ran to him saying, "Behold! the sea is at the very door." He made haste to consume the consecrated Host, then seizing the crucifix and the banner of "Our Lady of Mercy," went out upon the door-step where the waves already licked his feet: "My Mother, let them not come further"--and they did not!

What is so remarkable in the accounts of this earthquake is, that there had been no storm to precede it, but on a soft sunshiny day came this terrible convulsion of the elements. We went to see this church, where is yet shown the crucifix and the banner which played so important a part on this occasion; and see the point to which the water rose, and an inscription on the wall of a house recording the event exactly as here related. Next we visit the church of San Lorenzo, and afterward that of the Scalzi, (barefoot friars,) where to-day was said the "last mass;" the "junta" having decreed that it be torn down to build a theatre. The work of destruction had already commenced. How the strong old walls resisted! A dozen carpenters were taking down the gilded altars and curiously carved "retablos," which, belonging to the days when Spain had her argosies from the new world laden with gold, were made to resist "all time." Four men with iron crowbars were striving to dislodge an angel suspended over an altar, which positively refused to come down; while below him, on the floor, stood saints and martyrs covered with dust and _débris_, hastily dislodged from the pedestals on which they had rested for centuries--a rueful group! No wonder the women wept, and eyed resentfully the malicious-looking revolutionists employed to order the work; while armed soldiers, with the hateful red ribbon on the arm, (the revolutionary mark,) kept off the populace, who strove to get in at the doors, by the market, to bid farewell to these ancient altars. {355} It had been the church of the market people, the cradle of some of popular saints, the scene of the "first communion," the "nuptial mass," the baptism of their children, the funeral mass for their dead. Great is the clamor outside! Old people kiss the walls, and the young gather bits of the broken altars, while sorrowful-looking priests are permitted to carry away the mutilated statues and gildings.

The convent of the Good Shepherd, opening into the church, is also to be torn down, and its unhappy inmates driven elsewhere to seek shelter. They are putting into the _same convent_ these, with Carmelites, Ursulines, and others; crowding together those who teach with those who save the Magdalens in strange and painful confusion. Such are some of the fruits of revolution! And this is the "liberty" which England and America seek for the Spaniard!

To-night we hear that the Marquis de Novaliches has died of lockjaw, his face having been dreadfully wounded by a ball. The Conte de la Cheste, who held Monjuich at Barcelona, has gone to join the queen, abandoning his "forlorn hope" at her request.

Saturday, October 3.

To-day we hear the high mass in the cathedral, and go to see the jewels in the sacristia. They have a remarkable "custodia," (the gift of an ancestor of the Calderon de la Barca,) set in pearls and emeralds of immense value; a superbly chased crucifix, the gift of Alonzo the Learned; a small but exquisitely worked tabernacle of gold with beautiful amethysts forming a cross, given by the same king. After the mass we go to buy some of the famous Cadiz gloves, and then drive on the ramparts to see the fine sea view. In the evening, to the church of the Carmel. As it is the eve of the feast of "Our Lady of the Rosary," the church of the Rosary is illuminated, and most of the houses throughout the city.

Sunday, Oct. 4.

In the church of the Rosary is a beautiful ceremony. The music is lovely; the wind instruments, in certain parts of the mass, most effective, and the whole one of the most solemn services at which we have assisted.

The sermon is delivered with such grace and unction that we could but realize the truth of that saying of Charles V., that Spanish is the language in which to speak to God! So grand, so sonorous! And there is something in the grave dignity of the Spanish priest which makes him seem the perfection of ecclesiastical character. We are all struck with the decorum of the people in the churches, the quiet and devotion; none of the running in and out and the familiarity with holy things which in Italy makes one see that the people regard the church as their father's house, in which they take liberties. Here, it is alone the house of God, as is seen in the reverential manner and careful costume. All wear black, and not even is a lace mantilla usual, but the Spanish mantilla of modest silk. The men are alike reverential, and nowhere have we seen so many men in church, particularly at night.

To-day we hear the good news that the government of the city is taken from the hands of the junta and given into the care of the former military governor of Cadiz, in conjunction with the admiral of the fleet. This is received with great favor by the people of moderate opinion of both sides, as putting a stop to extreme measures. They have countermanded the destruction of the two old churches, the Franciscan and the Scalzi; of the last-named they tell a most extraordinary story to-day. {356} Yesterday the destroyers had knocked down a portion of the thick old wall. This morning it was found rebuilt as if by invisible hands, with the same heavy masonry, as strong as before, and even the white plaster upon the outside dry and barely to be distinguished from the rest of the building. Everybody runs to look at it. The people cry "a miracle," and say that the Blessed Virgin, whose feast it is to-day, had _a hand in it_.

Monday, Oct. 5. We go for the last time to the shops, and to hear our last mass in San Antonio; for to-morrow we leave beautiful Cadiz and the dear friends who have made our stay so delightful. The political horizon to-day is a little clearer. In consequence of some outrages upon priests and churches one man has been banished to Ceuta, and large placards are upon the streets threatening with like punishment every one who insults a priest or injures a church. The banished man had harangued the mob, assuring them that a Dominican father in the convent of that order had some instruments of torture, formerly used in the Inquisition, and that he applied them to his penitents. The unthinking mob, guided by him, rushed to search the convent, broke the church windows, and not finding what was promised them, turned their fury upon the man who had deceived them.

In the war of 1835, when Saragossa began the work of burning the monasteries and murdering the monks, Cadiz gave her monks five hours to get away, and armed guards saved the monasteries. To be sure, the populace burned the libraries and furniture; but as Cadiz was then more moderate than her sister cities, she will not now be less kind than then. How impossible to believe, in looking out upon a city so smiling and so lovely, that evil passions should lurk in it anywhere!

To Be Continued.

The Approaching Council Of The Vatican.

The preparations for the approaching council continue to be made on a grand scale, and with the greatest diligence. From the _Chronicle of Matters relating to the future Council_, which is regularly published at the office of the _Civilta Cattolicà_, in Rome, we copy the list of the different commissions and their members which are preparing the matters to be discussed and decided upon by the bishops assembled in ecumenical council.

The supreme directive congregation is composed of the most eminent cardinals, Patrizi, de Reisach, Barnabo, Panebianco, Bizarri, Bilio, Caterini, and Capalti. To these are joined, as secretary, Mgr. Giannelli; and as consulters, Mgr. Tizzani, Mgr. Angelini, vicegerent of Rome, Mgr. Talbot, (an Englishman,) Don Melchior Galeotti, of the seminary of Palermo, F. Sanguineti, S. J., professor of canon law in the Roman College, Professor Feije, of the University of Louvain, and Professor Hefele, of Tübingen. {357} The commission of ceremonies is composed of prelates who have the general supervision of the grand functions which take place in the principal churches of Rome. The politico-ecclesiastical commission is composed of;

Cardinal de Reisach, president, Mgrs. Marini, del Parco a Theatine, Bartolini, Jacobini, Ferrari, Nussi, Gizzi, (a judge in one of the high courts,) Guardi, (vicar-general of the religious congregation of ministers of the sick,) Canon Kovaes, of Kolocza in Bohemia, Canon Molitor of Spire in Germany, the Abbé Chesnel, vicar-general of Quimper, Canon Moufang of Mayence, the Abbé Gibert, vicar-general of Moulins, and Mgr. Trinchieri, secretary.

The commission for eastern affairs is composed of

Cardinal Barnabo, president, Don John Simeoni, of the Propaganda, F. Bollig, S. J., professor of Sanscrit and Oriental languages in the Roman university and Roman college, F. Vercellone, (Barnabite religious; since deceased,) F. Theiner, of the Oratory, the Most Rev. Leonard Valerga, prefect of Carmelite missions in Syria, the Right Rev. Joseph David, a Syrian bishop, Canon Roncetti, professor in the Roman seminary, Don Joseph Piazza, Don Francis Rosi, F. Haneberg, abbot of St. Boniface and professor of theology in the university of Munich, F. Martinoff, S. J., Mgr. Howard, (an Englishman,) and Mgr. Cretoni, secretary.

The commission on the religious orders and congregations is composed of

Cardinal Bizarri, president, Mgrs. Marini, Svegliati, and Lucidi, F. Capelli, (Barnabite,) F. Bianchi,(Dominican,) F. Cipressa, (Minorite Franciscan,) F. Cretoni, (Augustinian,) F. Costa, (Jesuit,) Mgr. Guisasola, arch-priest of the cathedral of Seville, and Don Francis Stoppani, secretary.

The commission of dogmatic theology is composed of

Cardinal Bilio, president, Mgr. Cardoni, president of the ecclesiastical academy, F. Spada, (Dominican,) master of the sacred palace and professor of dogma in the Roman university, F. de Ferrari, (Dominican,) F., Perrone, S.J., Mgr. Schwetz, professor of theology in the university of Vienna, F. Mura, ex-general of the Servites, rector of the Roman university, F. Adrogna, definitor-general of the conventual Franciscans, Mgr. Jacquenet, curé of St. Jacques at Rheims, the Abbé Gay, vicar-general of Poitiers, F. Martinelli, (Augustinian,) professor of Scripture in the Roman university, Don Joseph Pecci, professor of philosophy in the same, F. Franzlin, S. J., professor of theology in the Roman college, F. Schrader, S.J., professor in the university of Vienna, Professor Petacci, of the Roman seminary, Professor Hettinger, of Wurtzburg, Professor Alzog, of Friburg, the Rev. Dr. Corcoran, of Charleston, S. C., Canon Labrador, professor of philosophy and theology at Cadiz, and Canon Santori, rector of the pontifical lyceum in the Roman seminary, secretary.

The commission of ecclesiastical discipline is composed of

Cardinal Caterini, president, Mgrs. Giannelli, Angelini, Svegliati, Simeoni, Nina, Nobili, Lucidi, de Angelis, professor of canon law in the Roman university, F. Tarquini, S.J., Canon Jacobini, Professor Hergenroether, of Wurtzburg, Professor Feije of Louvain, the Abbé Sauvé, of Laval, Canon Giese, of Munster, Professor Heuser, of Cologne, Professor de Torres, of Seville, and Mgr. Louis Jacobini, secretary.

Several other distinguished men have been added to these commissioners since this list was published. Dr. Newman was invited to assist, but declined on account of his infirm health. Dr. Döllinger was also invited.

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The sessions of the council will be held in one of the large chapels of St. Peter's Church, which is capable of containing several thousand persons. The principal architects of Rome are already engaged in preparing the proper accommodations, under the immediate supervision of the Holy Father himself. The altar of the council is at one end of the chapel, the throne of the sovereign pontiff at the opposite end. On the right and left of the throne are placed the seats of the cardinals, patriarchs, and ambassadors of sovereigns. The seats of the prelates are ranged in two semicircles, each tier being elevated above the one before it; the tribune of the orators is placed in the middle of the open space between, and there are also tribunes prepared for those who will be admitted as spectators of the public sessions.

A large and beautiful piece of black marble, which was found among the treasures of the Emperor Nero, at the recent exhumation, is to be made into an obelisk commemorative of the council, which will be erected near the spot where St. Peter was crucified. The base of the column is to be made of a number of small blocks of white marble, equal to the number of prelates assisting at the council, each one placing his own block, with his name and title engraved upon it.

The bishops alone are entitled to a seat in the council by divine right. Cardinals, abbots, and generals of religious orders are entitled to a seat also, by ecclesiastical law or privilege. The question of the right of bishops _in partibus infidelium_ to a seat is now under discussion, and we have not learned whether it has yet been decided or not.

This circumstance has given the Roman correspondent of the _New York Herald_a chance of furnishing a specimen of the ridiculous and reckless falsification of matters relating to the Catholic Church, by which the ordinary readers of newspapers are perpetually befooled and mystified. The doubt respecting the right of these bishops is represented as having been raised in order to keep out those who are not sufficiently subservient to the holy see, and the conclusion drawn--with the usual flippant impertinence of this class of writers--that Rome will admit none who are not prepared to carry out fully her own policy. The truth is, however, that these bishops _in partibus_--who are prelates holding merely titular sees which are in fact extinct or in the possession of schismatics, many of them having been decorated with the episcopal character by the pope only for the sake of honor--are precisely the men who have the least power of opposing the holy see and the greatest interest in procuring its favor. Some of them are vicars-apostolic governing missionary districts, others are coadjutors of diocesan bishops, others are prelates who have resigned their sees, and the remainder are prelates filling certain high offices in the Roman court. It is evident enough that if there were any reason to apprehend opposition to the pontifical authority from any portion of the hierarchy, it would be rather from the primates and metropolitans of old and powerful sees, who have been nominated by sovereigns, and who would have all their support and authority to sustain them. There is no reason, however, to apprehend that any collision will take place between the holy see and the hierarchy, who have never in the whole history of the church been more completely united than they are at present.

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The bishops take no theologians with them, and, besides the prelates themselves, only the theologians of the holy see and the representatives of the sovereigns will participate in the deliberations of the council.

In regard to the matters which will be proposed for the adjudication of this supreme tribunal, we find many conjectures, more or less plausible, both in Catholic and secular periodicals. We prefer to wait until the acts of the council are made known in an authentic manner, before speaking on this subject. We remark merely that there is not the slightest foundation for the rumors which are reported in certain newspapers respecting proposed changes in the established discipline of the church, regarding matters which have long ago been definitely settled.

The impression made upon the whole civilized world by the convocation of an ecumenical council is deep, universal, and continually increasing as the time for its assembling draws near. The infidel and red-republican party in Europe manifest a fear and dread which is certainly remarkable, and very encouraging to all friends of religion and order. The politicians of the old _régime_ of state supremacy over the church also manifest a terrible and perfectly well-founded alarm, lest the church should assert and regain her perfect liberty and independence, and condemn, without any hope of appeal, those maxims and opinions by which they have hitherto held a certain number of sincere Catholics in alliance with themselves.

The reception given by the emperor of Russia and the patriarch of Constantinople to the pope's invitation is too well known to need any fresh notice. Of course, the great body of the oriental prelates follow the dictation of these two potentates--a striking commentary upon the value and sincerity of the protest which they make against the tyranny of the Roman patriarch. There are not wanting, however, certain instances showing the impression which the pope's invitation has made upon the more sincere and conscientious members of these separated communions. The bishop of Trebizond, a man of venerable age, received the encyclical letter with marks of great respect, raising it to his forehead and pressing it to his bosom, exclaiming at the same time with emotion, "O Rome! O Rome! O St. Peter! O St. Peter!" He would not, however, declare any decisive intention either to attend the council or to absent himself. The bishop of Adrianople returned the letter, saying, "I wish first to reflect. I wish to decide for myself." Letters from the east testify that many of the Greek schismatics openly blame the patriarch and the bishops who have refused to attend the council, saying, that by this refusal they have shown that they are afraid to enter into discussion with the Latin bishops. It is believed that the Armenian bishops who were summoned by their patriarch, residing at Constantinople, to advise with him respecting the pope's invitation, were in favor of accepting it, from the fact that he afterward sent the encyclical to the patriarch of Esmiasin with the report of the doings of the synod. A strong unionist party has been formed among the Armenians, and one of their prelates, Mgr. Narses, has published a long letter advocating union with the Roman Church. The Ottoman government favors union as a means of weakening the influence of Russia, and has separated the Bulgarians, who number four millions, from the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople. It has also refused to recognize a prelate sent by the patriarch of Esmiasin to act as his nuncio at Constantinople for the purpose of counteracting the efforts of the unionist party, and has given a semi-official warning to one of the most violent _Russophilist_ journals. [Footnote 81]

[Footnote 81: Later news informs us that the Armenian patriarch of Constantinople has been forced to resign by the clamors raised against him, that the Greek patriarch had called an "ecumenical" council, and that the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria received the encyclical with great respect and many expressions of courtesy toward the prelate who was the bearer of it.]

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It is an interesting fact that the king of Birmah, when made acquainted with the desire of the Holy Father that sovereigns should place no obstacle in the way of the attendance of the bishops in their dominions at the council, exclaimed: "What! can there be any princes who would oppose such a just and holy desire? For my part, I not only promise to interpose no obstacle, but I engage to pay the travelling expenses of the bishops of my kingdom both going and returning." He has also announced the intention of sending by each of the bishops a jewelled cross as a present to the pope.

The Jansenist bishops of Holland, who are five or six in number, each one having two or three priests and about a thousand people under his jurisdiction, find themselves compelled, by their own professed principles, to submit themselves to the judgment of the council. They have appealed, ever since the condemnation of Jansenius, from the pope to an ecumenical council. Now they find an ecumenical council on the eve of assembling, before which they have full liberty to appear, and plead their case. They acknowledge the infallibility of the tribunal, and therefore can have no choice but to submit to its decision, which they openly profess their readiness to do, so that without doubt they will all be reconciled to the church.

Among Protestants we find everywhere a great excitement respecting the council, a full recognition of the immense importance of the crisis which it must inevitably bring upon Protestantism; in general, a disposition to rouse up for the defence of their losing cause, and oppose an obstinate renewal of their old protest to the admonition of their chief pastor to return to their allegiance, but occasionally a manifestation of a different sentiment--a disposition to listen, to hope for good results, and to welcome the thought of a possible reconciliation.

On the tenth day of last November, M. Guizot uttered the following words at a reunion of ecclesiastics and laymen, at Notre Dame de Dozulè, in Normandy:

"You priests have faith; it is faith which directs you; and even when you seem to act imprudently, success always justifies you in the end. ... It is thus that the Catholic Church sustains itself, happily for France and the world. ... The clergy dies not, the papacy does not fall. ... Pius IX. has exhibited an admirable wisdom in convoking this grand assembly, from which, perhaps, will issue the salvation of the world; for our societies are very sick; but, for great evils there are great remedies. [Footnote 82]

[Footnote 82: _Rev. du Monde Catholique_, for January 25th, p. 299.]

The German publicist, Wolfgang Menzel, in the number of his _Literary Leaves_ for last October, thus writes:

"We are far from wishing to blame a reunion of all good Christians, even though the same authority in Protestants who are truly Christian is not sufficiently recognized. Every tentative of reunion, however restricted it may be, must be hailed with joy."

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Reinhold Baumstark, in a pamphlet upon the pontifical letter, says:

"It is the Catholic Church which has directed and accomplished the education of humanity during the whole middle age. Since the Reformation, it has sustained without succumbing three centuries of violent struggles, and, if the eternal truth of God lives in it, we shall see the realization of the word of its founder, that _"there shall be one fold and one shepherd."_

In quite a different spirit writes Prof. Schenkel, of Heidelberg:

"It is impossible to deny that the Protestant church of Germany is at present running a very great danger. The different confessions are becoming daily more opposed to each other. Theological parties engage in mortal combats; the liberal party is combated by the servile party. The bond of peace is with deliberate purpose torn and broken and a large portion of the German people, witnesses of these disputes, fall into discouragement, distrust, and indifference. The ancient and malign enemy laughs at our folly, that, after having bitten one another, we shall finish by eating one another up. ... Let us say it, to our shame, we have no remedy to oppose to this evil. Interiorly divided, absorbed in party disputes, deprived of autonomy, the sport of political calculations, and politico-ecclesiastical experiments which are perpetually changing, torn by theological hatred, abandoned by the populations, thrust aside by all classes of citizens, our church resembles only too much a shipwrecked vessel which lets in water on every side. How can we face the violent tempest which is brewing, when we lack unity of direction, when we lack a head, are destitute of any solid interior or exterior organization, when we are consuming our forces in the continual wars of one confession against another?"

We are sorry, Professor Schenkel, that we really cannot tell you how you can do it. Perhaps Dr. Bellows, the American and Foreign Christian Union, or the _New York Observer_ might suggest something a little consoling or encouraging to the unfortunate gentleman.

The official replies made by various Protestant bodies in Europe are, as we might expect, a reiteration of their old protests against the Roman Church, and a declaration of their contentment with their present state. The most courteous and well-reasoned of these papers which we have seen is that of the Unitarian pastors who sit in the seat of Calvin at Geneva. It makes the issue between rationalism, liberalism, and humanitarian progress, on one side, and the supernatural revelation of doctrine and law, on the other, very distinctly--imputing, in the usual style, servility, formalism, tyranny, and obscurantism to the Catholic Church, and claiming for Protestantism the merit of protecting and promoting true liberty, intelligence, and happiness. There is more of the same kind in the number of the _Liberal Christian_ (February 6th) in which we have read this address. As statements of the position and opinions of the parties issuing them, these documents may pass. We are to expect that those who are challenged in the way they have been will reply in just such a manner. These are only the preliminaries of an earnest controversy which must be carried on for a long time before any result can be looked for.

Dr. Hedge, of Harvard University, has rendered himself supremely ridiculous by denying that St. Peter was bishop of Rome, or even visited Rome at any time; from which he concludes that the pope has no right to issue encyclicals as his successor. [Footnote 83]

[Footnote 83: See article on this point in the present number.]

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The _Liberal Christian_, with a kind of audacious valor, backs him up, and declares that "the whole claim of the bishop of Rome is an absurdity." Suppose it to be so to the superior and enlightened minds of this editor and his compeers; the assertion of it carries no weight, and can have no effect upon any other person's mind. Another Unitarian, the Rev. Samuel Johnson, of Massachusetts, says: "If I believed in his (Christ's) authority even as Matthew presents it, not to say Paul or John, I should regard the principles of the papacy as in substance right, whatsoever I might think of the conduct of its representatives." [Footnote 84] Considering the very great importance of the subject, the great learning and number of those who differ from our enlightened friends, and the curious circumstance that almost every person thinks that no opinion or sect but his own can uphold itself against the claims of Rome, would it not be in better taste to have patience a little longer, and speak with a little more moderation?

[Footnote 84: _Radical_, January, 1869, p. 9.]

The _Christian Quarterly_, which is a ferocious young Campbellite periodical published at Cincinnati, thus addresses the Protestant community:

"Are you able to feel the sting in the following words of 'Pius, sovereign pontiff, ninth of the name, to all Protestants and non-Catholics?' In speaking of the multitudinous sects of the Protestant world, and of the restlessness, instability, and uncertainty that everywhere characterizes Protestantism, he says," etc. "The very fact that the Pope of Rome should, in the last half of the nineteenth century, have occasion to pen such a paragraph, ought to call the blush of shame to every Protestant cheek! Protestantism has been experimenting for three hundred years, and the pope of Rome has summed up the result! Let Protestantism try the force of its logic upon this papal dilemma!" [Footnote 85]

[Footnote 85: _C. Q._ Jan. 1869, pp. 52-3.]

We take the following item of news from the _London Tablet_:

"English Protestants And The Council.

"There are signs around us that a movement is beginning. The _Diplomatic Review_, a peculiar and certainly a remarkable journal, published the first Wednesday of every month, in London, contains a Protestant address to the pope, and notifies to its readers in town and country that it will lie for signature at its office till the end of the month. The purport of the address is to implore the pope to proclaim again, by his own authority or by that of the council, the observance of the laws of natural justice by Christian and civilized nations in their relations with the heathen and the uncivilized. In an article written in French this same journal says: 'We pronounce the words of the pope like texts, we draw our deduction from his maxims, and we see in the accomplishment of his work the only hope for the preservation of European society.' ... 'The strength of the pope is the law:' our duty is to announce explicitly this truth, Christianity must be preached anew.' In addition to this remarkable declaration, we have the public expression of the Rev. E. W. Urquhart, at a meeting of the 'English Church Union,' presided over by the Hon. and Rev. C. L. Courtenay, in South-Devonshire. He said that the separation of church and state is not far distant, and suggested that the Anglican party should seek reunion with the Church of Rome, and that representatives should be sent to the council, to stipulate the conditions of their submission to the see of Rome. This language may sound startling in the mouth of an Anglican clergyman; but we expect the courage of Mr. Urquhart's utterance will unloose many a tongue. Of course, the only stipulation that can be made is that of unqualified submission to the holy see. To a human and fallible authority you may bring conditions; to one that is divine and infallible, you can bring only faith and docility."

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The comments of the secular press upon the council, in many cases, would seem as if their authors were aiming to carry burlesque to its most farcical extreme. Their spirit is that of the mocking ridicule of Voltairian infidelity without its show of argument, together with the grossest materialism and the systematic disavowal of any principle higher than self-interest or political expediency. It is sufficiently absurd when such writers attempt to express, under the protection of their anonymous cloak, any opinions whatever in religious matters. Much more, when they offer their ludicrous advice to the prelates and theologians of the Catholic Church, and pretend to understand the true nature of Christianity and its mission upon earth better than the church herself. In itself the matter is only laughable, and of course the really intelligent and well-informed would only receive with a smile of derision the notion that any serious meaning or value could be ascribed to such lucubrations. But it becomes serious and lamentable when we reflect how small this class really is. The proofs are continually forced upon us of the fact, that a large proportion of those who are intelligent enough to make money, to keep the run of politics and the exchange, to dress well, and to make a show, really read nothing but the daily papers, look to them for their ideas of religion as well as every other topic, and are actually possessed by the grossest ignorance, and the most dense and stolid prejudice, in regard to everything relating to the Catholic Church and to all Catholic nations. Any convert to the Catholic Church, who mixes with ordinary men of business or with general society, will testify to the fact that they are frequently accosted with expressions of surprise that persons intelligent and reputable, such as they are, can possibly be Catholics, and with the assertion, as of a truism, that only the ignorant, the degraded, and the vicious, which with Americans is generally a synonym for poor people or foreigners, believe in the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Those who read the sectarian newspapers suffer themselves to be swept along by the lying current which runs through them, like the filthy stream of a sewer. We happen to have just read a description from a London paper of a visit to the sewers of that city which presents an apt and forcible illustration of what we are saying: "Under Farrington street west," says the writer, "the Fleet Ditch was running in two swift, black streams; almost below the footway upon each side, some three feet six inches deep, and with so strong a current that we were assured it would be impossible to save the life of any one who stepped or slipped into them. These foul streams recalled the ancient Styx and made one hold back with something like a shudder."

The following extract from the _Boston Traveller_ has just fallen into our hands in good time to serve as an instance in point:

"The New Light Of The Catholic Church.

"Mr. Editor: Sabbath evening, April 4th, Father I. T. Hecker, editor of the _Catholic World_, delivered a lecture in the Music Hall on 'The Religious Condition of the Country.' As it has been reported by the press, it would seem to be little more than a tissue of misrepresentations of New England in particular, and of Protestantism in general. It would be a sufficient reply to the exaggeration and conceit of the reverend padre to say, that if Protestantism had done nothing more than to enable him to rail for an hour and a half at the most cherished and sacred feelings of our people, its mission would not be in vain. And herein is its eminent superiority to that cast-iron system which holds the reviler of our faith. Can Catholicism do what Protestantism did on Sunday week? Will Rome, or any other Catholic city, permit a Protestant minister, placarded and advertised days in advance, in a public hall, to burlesque and hold up to contempt the Catholic faith? This lecturer knows that Rome is mean enough to forbid the exercise of Protestant worship to travellers, or visitors from Protestant lands sojourning temporarily within her walls. {364} And yet _he_ comes to the largest hall in the capital of New England and has the impudence to undertake to tell our people that they are adrift on two tides, one of which is to Rome and the other to infidelity. And if his statements are reliable, infidelity makes altogether the better stand. But we insist that he is either wilfully false or wilfully ignorant, or he would not have said that 'not one in ten of the people of New England accepts as fundamental, the truths which his forefathers held.'

"Father Hecker knows, if he knows anything, that the evangelical churches of New England hold for substance the same doctrines that their fathers held; and he knows, too, that there is not a doctrine held or advocated in any Protestant Church in Christendom which does not have its advocates in the bosom of the Catholic Church. He must be aware that biblical criticism has made sound progress within two hundred and fifty years; and we can hardly believe that even he would be narrow enough to deny that certain doctrines may be re-stated and re-explained without plunging into infidelity, least of all pushing for Rome.

"But as he has chosen to attack New England in particular, it is no more than fair, perhaps, that New England should have the privilege of being compared with the most favored Catholic countries. He certainly will not object to France, which has always been overwhelmingly Catholic, not one in ten of her population being Protestant. And yet scarcely fifty years have passed since the whole nation voted God out of existence, and deified reason in the person of a harlot. The Romish priests, he knows, were among the foremost in this carnival of infidelity and blood. Nor need he be told that the men of France, to-day, are infidels. Italy, too, the seat of this boasting church, is overshadowed, as Father Hecker knows, by a sneering, malignant infidelity. And Spain--blessed, so recently, with the most Catholic queen to whom the Pope sent the golden rose, which enjoyed for generations the blessings of the Inquisition, and for many years committed the entire education of her people into the hands of the Jesuits--what shall we say of her? The best thing we can say of her is, that she drove from her borders that nasty woman, and sent the Jesuits after her. And this is the fruit of Catholicism, and not of Protestantism.

"In only a single country where the Catholic Church has been supreme has the result been the Catholic faith--that country is Ireland. And if Father Hecker is willing to compare the Irish, who are the best fruits of the Catholic Church, with the people of New England, who are the best fruits of Protestantism, we are entirely content. But it is not a little singular that these best children of the Catholic Church should have immigrated to this country by the million, and are still coming, to improve their condition? And we think that Father Hecker himself will not deny that these favorite sons of Rome have wonderfully improved in intelligence, morals, and thrift in this infidel New England.

"But what would this reviling priest have? Would he make of New England another Ireland or Spain, another infidel France or Italy? What would he have us do? Blot out our public schools, take the Bible from the hands of our people, subject their consciences to the priests, establish the inquisition, raise up a generation of Christians like those of his church who hung the negroes to the lamp-posts in New York, and roll back this land into the old night of the middle ages, when Rome sat like a nightmare upon all the peoples of Christendom? Does this priest suppose that our people will swallow such stuff as was offered them at the Music Hall? The common school has not diffused general intelligence here for two hundred and fifty years, that our people should need to go to a Catholic schoolmaster to learn their own history, or the history of that church which has made an Ireland and a Spain. "PURITAN."

We do not expect that such a dense darkness of ignorance and prejudice as that which exists in the Protestant world will be immediately dispelled by the light which will radiate from the city of God through the council of bishops assembled about their august chief, the vicar of Jesus Christ. We have reason to expect a great number of conversions, among those who are already partially enlightened, as its immediate result, and the more zealous and successful prosecution of the work of bringing back all nations to the fold of truth and grace as its effect during a long period to come. {365} But, no doubt, the greater number of those who are thoroughly committed to the anti-Catholic cause will persevere to the last in their hostility, and retain for a long time a multitude of followers under their influence. It is useless to argue with such men in the hope of convincing or converting them. They will be forced, however, to meet the Catholic question fairly and squarely, and no longer be able to hide themselves behind vague platitudes and unmeaning generalities. They will be obliged, also, to give account of their own systems, whatever they may be, which they put forward as substitutes for the Catholic religion, and thus undergo the crucial tests of logic, history, and critical science. For ourselves, we cannot doubt for a moment that, as the ultimate result, everything like orthodox or positive Protestantism will be ground into dust between the two opposing forces of Catholicity and infidelity, leaving the great contest to be waged between these two. In regard to this last great issue we venture to make no prognostics. There are reasons both for fear and for hope; but the only course for us to pursue is to aim for as much good as possible, leaving the rest with God. That a crisis approaches in the conflict between the universal divine order and universal lawlessness, between the church and the world, that is, the wicked world or concrete mass of all false and wicked principles, the _mundus positus in malignos_, of which the apostle speaks; and that this crisis will be hastened and materially affected by the council, cannot be doubted. We desire to impress, therefore, upon all the really sincere and upright lovers of truth and Christianity, the importance of their paying careful attention to the doings of this council and of looking to correct sources for their information.

All Catholics must look forward to the council with sentiments of the most profound veneration and ardent expectation of the incalculable good which it will produce in the bosom of the church. An ecumenical council is the representative Catholic Church, the entire episcopate with its head and supreme bishop, the highest tribunal on earth, with plenary authority to define doctrines and enact laws, with the spiritual presence of Jesus Christ in the midst of it, and the plenitude of the Holy Spirit to enlighten and assist its deliberations and judgments; infallible in all its decrees respecting faith and morals, sovereign in all its enactments, with full power to bind all minds and consciences to an implicit and unreserved obedience in the name of God. The church is always infallible, and is perpetually teaching the faith and the rule of morals; the holy see is always invested with authority to decide controversies and make laws; and is competent to make even definitions of faith, to which the assent of the dispersed bishops gives the same force of concurrent judgment which their conciliar action possesses. Nevertheless, the pope with the episcopate assembled in ecumenical council can do more than when they are dispersed. The gift of active infallibility is in a higher and more intense exercise, because the common intellect and will of the church is prepared by common counsel and communion to receive a more abundant illumination and vivification of the Holy Spirit. It is by the councils, from that of Nice to that of Trent, that heretics have been condemned, and the clear, explicit definitions of the faith once delivered to the saints have been made. The council of the Vatican will possess the same infallible authority with that which met at Jerusalem under St. Peter, or that which at under the presidency of the legates of St. Sylvester, condemned the Arian heresy and defined the Son to be consubstantial with the Father. {366} This august tribunal will therefore have full power to terminate all controversies and differences among Catholics in regard to which it shall judge that the interests of the faith and the well-being of the church require a definite judgment to be made. The result will be both a more perfect concordance in doctrine and principles of action, regarding all the matters which will be decided, and a more perfect recognition of liberty in reference to all opinions which are left as open questions. That this will be a great gain no truly loyal Catholic can doubt. Another result to be expected is a more precise, definite, and uniform system of ecclesiastical law and administration, providing a more perfect adjustment of all the multiform relations of the church and her hierarchy. Those portions of the church which are in an apathetic and torpid state we may hope will be roused up; a multitude of sluggish and unfaithful Catholics become reanimated with the spirit of faith; and the unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity of the church--the immortality of her life, the divine authority of her teaching, the irresistible and universal power of that spirit which is in her--be manifested with a brightness which will make for ever glorious the close of the nineteenth century, whose opening was so very dark and inauspicious.

St. Mary's.

If there is one spot in our country to which the American Catholic turns with special interest, it is certainly to the landing-place of Lord Baltimore's colony in Maryland and the site of St. Mary's City. New Englanders are never weary of boasting of "our pilgrim forefathers," who landed on Plymouth Rock to obtain freedom to worship God according to their own peculiar notions. To have an ancestor who came over in the Mayflower is equivalent to a patent of nobility--it sets the fortunate individual above his fellows, and makes him a member of a caste truly Brahminical.

The Catholic can turn with far greater pride to those spiritual forefathers who, with no self-righteousness, sought in the new world not only liberty of conscience, but allowed it to others; who were so just in their dealings with the natives that they never took an inch of land without paying for it; and who, by their Christian kindness, won over so many of the Indians to genuine Christianity. We truly have reason to say,

"Ay, call it holy ground The soil where first they trod!"

I had always wished to visit this consecrated spot so dear to the Catholic heart, and embraced the first convenient opportunity of doing so. I rode down from Leonardtown during the pleasant Indian summer time. {367} My most vivid remembrance of the ride is of passing over a frequent succession of what my Aunt Pilcher used to call "sarvent-madams."--a sudden depression, as if be tween two logs, which unceremoniously pitched you forward in the carriage and then brought you up with a sudden jerk, thus forcing you to make an impromptu bow which gave point to the pleasant name of "sarvent-madams." This sort of exercise may be novel, but a continuation of it is not at all amusing, and I was glad when, after a ride of about twenty miles, we emerged from a woody path, crossed a stream, and found ourselves on the high plain where once stood the city of St. Mary. One is surprised--pained--to find not one stone left upon another of that settlement. When the seat of government was removed, nature resumed her sway and avenged herself for the ravages of man by obliterating most of his traces and reclothing the place with her own freshness and beauty. There are now a few dwellings belonging to the farmer who owns this historic site, a barnlike church belonging to the Episcopalians, said to have been built of the ruins of the old state-house, and a large brick building that stands dreary and treeless, looking like a factory, but which is really a seminary for young ladies, the monument erected by the Maryland legislature to commemorate the landing of the first colonists! It would be an excellent place for a convent of Carthusians; but to banish lively girls to this lonely region, lovely though it be, so far from any town, several miles from the post-office, and with no literary advantages, must have been the conception of some malicious and dyspeptic old bachelor. The young are rarely lovers of nature. Those whose souls have been chastened and weaned from the world alone find a balm therein. It is a great defect in the training of our youth that they are not made more observant of natural objects. Insects, vegetation, the very stones beneath the feet, are a source of unceasing pleasure to the heart in sympathy with nature in all her infinite variety. But this requires teachers who are capable of opening to youth the great treasure-house of nature. It is not always the most intellectual people who are the most fond of the country. Madame de Staël preferred living in the fourth story of a house on the Rue du Bac in Paris to a villa on the enchanted shores of Lake Geneva. And Dr. Johnson thought there was no view that equalled the high tide of human beings at Charing Cross.

This seminary is intended to educate the young ladies of prevailing religious sects of the country, each of which is represented by a teacher. I have understood that at times there have been serious conflicts between those who were for Paul and those who were for Apollos; but this is not at all surprising in a place where they must be driven to desperation for a little excitement. The only church near is the Episcopal, where the services are very intermittent indeed, which obliges the teachers to play the part of chaplain.

This uninviting church is in a yard full of old graves, shaded by clumps of hollies and gloomy cedars. There is a venerable old mulberry-tree in the midst, now quite decayed, but still putting forth a few leafy branches, said to have been planted (a twig from old England) by Leonard Calvert's own hands. There is a tradition that he was buried in this yard--perhaps near his tree, familiarly known as Lord Baltimore's tree--but there is nothing to indicate the precise spot. It is more probable that he was buried near the Catholic church, which was about a quarter of a mile farther down. {368} Relic lovers have nearly killed this venerable tree, by cutting out pieces for canes, crosses, etc. Passing through the grassy graveyard, and descending a steep bank, you come to a narrow line of sand, a miniature beach on the shore of St. Mary's River, the place where the colony landed. The water is as salt as the sea, and the broad river deep enough for the Dove and the Ark to anchor. A gentle ripple came up over the yellow sand and crystalline pebbles. The broad expanse of water lay like a lake, with undulating hills in the background all covered with woods in their gorgeous autumn foliage. The whole scene was as calm and peaceful as if these waters had never been disturbed by Indian canoe or white man's craft.

A quarter of a mile south of the seminary was a turnip-field, where once stood the church the colonists hastened to build. You would not imagine you stood on consecrated ground where holy rites were once performed. This was not the place where the holy sacrifice was first offered. Their first chapel was an Indian wigwam, which a friendly native gave up to Father White; for the colonists founded an Indian village here which owned the pacific rule of King Yaocomico, and established themselves in peace beside it. Opposite the place where the church stood, and east of it, are some traces of the lord proprietary's residence. The old cellar is nearly filled with rubbish, in which are found fragments of crockery and bricks--bricks brought from the old country. There were grand doings here once. Hilarity and merriment had their hours in that miniature court, amid those of grave deliberations. But, at last, Pallida Mors, "that at every door knocks," came in the train, and brought mourning to all the settlers; for here died Leonard Calvert. He was nursed in his last moments by his relatives Margaret and Mary Brent. He died on the 9th of June, 1647. The place of his burial is not known. In these days of woman's rights, it may not be amiss to recall the first woman in this country, perhaps, who asserted her claim to share the privileges of the stronger sex. Margaret Brent was appointed by Governor Calvert his sole administratrix, which is certainly a proof of her capacity for business. By virtue of this appointment she claimed to be the attorney of the lord proprietor. Her claims were admitted by the council. She then appeared in the general assembly, and claimed the right to vote as Lord Baltimore's representative. This was not permitted. She was a large land-owner, and displayed her energy in laying out her estates; and she quelled a mutiny among some Virginia soldiers who had served under Leonard Calvert. It is surprising the strong-minded women of this day have not brought forward this fine precedent, who has been ranked with the famous Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands. Let us hope, with all her fine abilities, that she retained her sweet womanly ways and that modesty which is the charm of her sex. I fancy she did, or she would never have subdued those early representatives of the gallant Virginia chivalry.

Close by the lord proprietary's place is a spot charming enough for Egeria. It is a spring of delicious water bubbling up from the rocks, that flows off in a streamlet, over tufts of the thickest and greenest moss. It is shaded by a dense clump of cedars and holly bushes---a fit haunt for the dryades and all the sylvan deities. The warm noontide air was fanned into this cool and leafy bower, where the birds still sang and insects floated, bringing with it a certain aroma from the crushed leaves of the wood. {369} From a distance came the measured cadence of some negro song, snatched up at the hour of noonday rest, which harmonized with the spot and the atmosphere. There is always an undertone of melancholy in the gayest songs of the colored race which lulls the heart, as sorrow underlies all gayety in the heart of man. It was a place to be alone with nature, poetry, God, and just the spot for an old hermit to set up his cell, and pass his days in sympathy with nature and in communion with nature's God.

With all its beauty, this plain of St. Mary's is full of melancholy, especially in the fall of the year. Haunted with memories, its loneliness is in such contrast with its past history that it touches the spring of regret. The autumn winds, the slight veil of haze that hangs over the landscape, are full of sadness. One seems to hear the wail of the forsaken lares whose altars have so long been levelled with the rest.

"In consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, The lares and lemures moan with midnight plaint."

The wailings of Jeremiah come to mind as we wander over the site of the city that was once full of people, but now sitteth solitary. "The city of thy sanctuary is become a desert, and the house of thy holiness and our glory, wherein thou wert praised, is laid desolate." Perhaps, after all, the melancholy was in my own heart; for the sky was clear, the earth smiling, and before us lay, glad and gleaming, the bright waters of the St. Mary's river,

"Like any fair lake that the breeze is upon, When it breaks into dimples and laughs in the sun."

There is this peculiarity about the river: its windings are so abrupt that from certain points there seems to be no outlet, and it has the appearance of a succession of lakelets; pellucid gems set at this autumn time in bosses enamelled with every shade of crimson and gold, which I loved to think a bright rosary strung by nature in honor of Our Lady.

Two or three miles from St. Mary's is Rose Croft, a charming old place at the very point between St. Inigoes Creek and St. Mary's River. In old colonial times it was the residence of the collector of the port of St. Mary's, and here lived the heroine of Kennedy's _Rob of the Bowl_. As I rode up to it, I half expected to see the fair Blanche peeping out of the window to see if the carriage did not contain the secretary.

The house is a low, broad one, with verandas and porches, and large, airy rooms, which look out upon a lovely water view. There is a good deal of wainscoting about it, and some carvings in the large parlor that witnessed the birthday festivities. The lady of the house told me that, in making some repairs, a few years ago, a ring and a pair of velvet slippers were found, perhaps once worn by Blanche. All around the yard grows spontaneously the passion flower, winding over every shrub and tree, and trailing along the ground. Everything was left very much to nature, and she had thrown over the grounds a certain sad grace of her own, which harmonized with the antiquity of the house, and the echo of past times that lingered in its rooms. A spruce garden and well-trimmed trees and shrubbery would have ill accorded with such a spot. And there was a certain melancholy in the large, sad eyes of the mistress of this charming place that spoke more of the past than of the present, as if she had imbibed something of its spirit.

{370}

On the point between the river and creek, opposite Rose Croft, is St. Inigoes manor-house, belonging to the Jesuit fathers. St. Inigo, or St. Ignatius, was considered, from the first, as one of the patrons of the colony. This house is built of brick brought from the old country, perhaps two hundred years ago or more. It has quite a foreign look, with its high pitched roof and dormer windows. I have seen similar houses in the valley of the Loire. At a distance it looks, as Kennedy says, like a chateau with its dependencies around it. There is a huge windmill at the very point, around which are washed up fine black sand and some spiral shells. On the gable of the southern porch of the mansion is the holy name of Jesus, in large black letters--the cognizance of the Jesuits. The yard is a garden of roses. They grow in bushes, cover the cottages, and climb the trees, blooming often as late as Christmas tide. And the whole place is like an aviary--a rendezvous of all the martins, wrens, whippoorwills, etc., of the country--the very place for poor Miss Flite, who would never have found names enough for them. There are martin-houses, dove-cotes, and trees full of the American mocking-birds. When the windows of the chapel are open in the morning, it is filled with their musical variations, and with the perfume of the roses and honeysuckles. That chapel always seemed to me a little corner of heaven itself, full of the divine presence of which one never wearies. I often betook myself to that sweet solitude. There were memories that haunted me, an image between me and God, which I sought there to consecrate to him. I loved to think the little lamp could be seen all night from the very Potomac and miles up the St. Mary's River; perhaps lighting up in some dark and sinful soul some sweet thought of him before whom it burned.

A religious air prevails at St. Inigoes. Everything is quiet and subdued, and favorable to meditation. The day commences with Mass in the chapel. The Angelus is rung three times a day, which every one kneels to say. Even Nimrod, the dog, howls while it is ringing, as if infected by devotion. And they told me his predecessor would pull at the bell till it sounded, if it was not rung at the moment. Such devotional dogs certainly deserve a place--if it is not profane to say so--among those fine little dogs whom Luther declared would be among our companions in heaven, whose every hair would be tipped with precious stones and whose collars be of diamonds.[Footnote 86]

[Footnote 86: See Audin's _Life of Luther_.]

Everything about the house is extremely tidy and well preserved, the garden trim, the walks swept, the whole house a temple of purity and cleanliness. One could sit for ever in that southern porch reading and dreaming life away. Thought would flow on for ever with that current whose waters are as changeable in their aspect as our own varied moods. When so many live merely for the body, why should not some live for the imagination and fancy? This is the very place for Mr. Skimpole, who had no idea of time, no idea of money; who only wished to live, to have a little sun and air, and float about like a butterfly from flower to flower; who loved to see the sun shine, hear the wind blow, watch the changing lights and shadows, and hear the birds sing. He asked of society only to feed him, to give him a landscape, music, papers, mutton, coffee, and to leave him at peace from the sordid realities of the world.

{371}

In the dining-room is a large oval table of solid oak which once belonged to the house of the lord proprietary. It is not misplaced in this hospitable house. Daniel Webster, when at Piney Point, used to sail over to St. Inigoes and sit at Leonard Calvert's table. And he taught the cook how to make a genuine New England chowder.

There is, hung up in one of the rooms, a picture of the famous Prince Hohenlohe which interested me. I could not account for its being there till I learned that Father Carberry, a former incumbent, was a brother to Mrs. Mattingly, of Washington, who so many years ago was miraculously cured by the prayers of the holy prince--an occurrence that caused a great excitement at the time.

The parish church is about a half a mile from the manor-house. On Sundays and other festivals you can see boats full of people sailing up the creek. Others come flocking in on horseback or in carriages. A graveyard surrounds the church, which is so hid among the trees that it is not perceived till you are close upon it. The yard is filled before service with the country-people, who fasten their horses around the enclosure, and stand talking in groups, or go wandering around among the grassy mounds, reminding you of the English country church-yards. Our northern churches are almost so exclusively filled up with foreigners that it seemed strange to worship in a congregation almost wholly American. A gallery was appropriated to the colored people, and it was crowded. They seemed quite devout and kept up a great rattling with their large rosaries. I noticed that the father, in preaching, was careful to make them feel that his sermon was addressed as particularly to them as to the others. I was especially interested to see the number that came filing down the aisle to receive holy communion. Sunday after Sunday it was the same, and I was always affected to see these "images of God carved in ebony," as old Fuller calls them, at the holy table to receive Him who is no respecter of persons. In talking with the father about their devotional tendencies, he told me there was one saintly old negro who walked fifteen miles every Sunday to worship the Word made flesh. What an example to the cold and lukewarm in cities who daily pass our churches with scarcely a thought of the Presence within! This little church is a substantial one of brick, with arched windows, but no pretension as to architecture. When the services were over, the ladies all followed the priest into the sacristy to pay their respects to him, and there is a pleasant exchange of greetings which is pleasing and family-like. And many of the men, too, stroll around the building to the rear door to take part in it.

Wandering off into the churchyard, I came upon a large cross around which were clustered the graves of several priests. There is a large monument to the memory of Father Carberry, a genial old priest renowned throughout the country for his hospitality. Among those buried here is Mr. Daniel Barber, of New Hampshire, who became a convert to the Catholic Church, together with his son's whole family, at a time when converts were more rare than at the present time. The son, Rev. Virgil Barber, who was an Episcopal minister, with his wife and five children, embraced the religious life. One of the latter took the white veil at Mount Benedict, near Boston, and was remarkable for her beauty and accomplishments. She made her profession in Quebec, where she died young. {372} I have heard a nun of that house tell, and with great feeling, of her descending every morning to the chapel before the rest of the community, even in the rigorous winter of that latitude, to make the Way of the Cross, that touching devotion to the suffering Saviour.

The grandfather, Mr. Daniel Barber, who was also a minister, only took deacons' orders in the church on account of his age. He loved to visit the old Catholic families of St. Mary's, but was ill pleased when he did not find the cross--the sign of our salvation--in the apartment. "Where's your sign?" he would abruptly ask. He rests in peace in this quiet country church-yard.

The father at St. Inigoes has to possess a variety of accomplishments not acquired in the theological seminary. Priest, farmer, horseman, and boatman must all be combined to form the fine specimen of muscular Christianity required in this extensive mission. The place is no sinecure.

Good Father Thomas, obliged to visit a sick person at the very head of St. Mary's River, invited me to accompany him, and I gladly did so. Two colored servants went to manage the sail, or to row if necessary. The boat was black as a gondola of Venice. Sailing over these waters, where passed the Dove and the Ark, reminded me of the Père Jean and the novice René on the St. Lawrence. The whole country was, as we set out, glorified by the setting sun. The long points of land around which the river wound were bathed on one side by a golden mist, and on the other in a faint lilac. Over the gorgeous woods hung a purple haze that faded every instant. The amber clouds grew crimson, and then faded away into grey. The father said his breviary, leaving me to my own reflections a part of the way. There was not a ripple on the broad sheet save the receding ones left by our boat. Now and then we would stop to drink in the beauty of the scene--the sky, the water which reflected it, the lights and shadows on the banks, the melancholy cry of the whippoorwill, and the gay sounds of the laborers just through with their day's work. As it grew darker, the deep coves were filled with mysterious shades; the ripples left behind seemed tipped with a phosphorescent light. We glided at last into a sheltered cove just as the moon came out, giving enchantment to the whole scene. In such bright waters bathed Diana when Actaeon beheld her and was punished for his presumption. One of us repeated the beautiful lines of Shelley:

"My soul is an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; And thine doth like an angel sit Beside the helm conducting it, Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. It seems to float ever, for ever Upon that many winding river, Between mountains, woods, abysses, A paradise of wildernesses! Till, like one in slumber bound, Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound."

A few days after, I sailed over to the Pavilion to take a boat for Washington.

{373}

A May Carol.

She hid her face from Joseph's blame, The Spirit's glory-shrouded bride. The Sword comes next; but first the Shame: Meekly she bore, and naught replied.

For mutual sympathies we live: The outraged heart forgives, but dies: To her, that wound was sanative, For life to her was sacrifice.

At us no random shaft is thrown When charged with crimes by us unwrought; For sins unchallenged, sins unknown, Too oft have stained us--act and thought.

In past or present she could find No sin to weep for; yet, no less, Deeplier that hour the sense was shrined, In her, of her own nothingness.

That hour foundations deeper yet God sank in her; that so more high Her greatness--spire and parapet-- Might rise, and nearer to the sky:

That, wholly overbuilt by grace, Nature might vanish, like some isle In great towers lost--the buried base Of some surpassing fortress pile.

Aubrey De Vere. -------

{374}

St. Peter, First Bishop of Rome.

The question of which we purpose to treat in this article is one of those that are sure to receive prominence whenever the claims of the Roman see are discussed with more than ordinary interest and warmth. Just now the "Anglo-Catholic" mind is exercised to find some way of establishing the existence of a one holy catholic and apostolic church, without admitting the supremacy of the bishop of Rome; besides, the approaching ecumenical council directs men's attention to the eternal city, and the high prerogatives of its pontiffs. Not unfrequently we meet with a broad denial that St. Peter ever was at Rome at all, or at least that he was ever bishop of Rome. This is not, indeed, the course pursued by the most learned or thoughtful amongst our opponents; they know history too well to stake their reputation for erudition or fairness on any such denial; but it is in favor with a lower or less instructed class of minds, and is adopted in text-books for theological seminaries, as well as in some popular works intended chiefly for the perusal of persons who, in all likelihood, may never have the opportunity, even should they have the inclination, of recurring to those more learned authorities by consulting whom the imposture would soon be detected. Thus it has come to pass that in popular works, lectures, magazine and newspaper articles, and the like, one frequently meets with the flippant assertion that it is very doubtful whether St. Peter ever was at Rome, that the place of his death is uncertain; all that we know for certain being that, shortly before his demise, he was in Babylon, whence he wrote his first letter. We shall endeavor to establish as a historical truth beyond all reasonable doubt, supported by evidence that must be admitted as sufficient by any unprejudiced critic, that St. Peter visited Rome, dwelt there, was first bishop of the Roman church, and there, together with St. Paul, laid down his life for his Master, in fulfilment of the latter's prophecy, "When thou wilt be old, thou wilt stretch forth thy hands, and another will gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not;" words which, as the inspired writer tells us, signified "by what death he should glorify God." [Footnote 87]

[Footnote 87: John xxi. 18.]

The question has been so fully discussed, that we may not hope to say anything that will be considered new; to the learned reader, indeed, we can but repeat a "thrice-told tale;" but, as the adversaries of the holy see do not disdain to furbish up the arms which have already been stricken from the hands of their predecessors, we shall be content to draw from the same arsenals whence our fathers drew the weapons that they knew how to wield so skilfully and successfully. All that we ask of the non-Catholic reader is, that he approach the question as a merely historical one, to be judged on the ordinary rules of historical evidence. All dogmatical preoccupations against the supremacy of the Roman pontiffs should be laid aside. {375} This is demanded by fairness and a sincere love of truth; besides, although we acknowledge that to establish St. Peter's Roman bishopric is, if not an indispensable, at least a very important, preliminary to the successful assertion of the Roman primacy, yet the ablest amongst Protestant theologians have thought that, even admitting the historical fact, they could successfully refute the dogma. Our inquiry, then, shall be purely historical, to be decided on purely historical grounds. At the beginning of this century, no one having any pretensions to historical learning attempted to deny that St. Peter had really lived and died at Rome. Such high names in the Anglican Church as Cave, Pearson, and Dodwell had given their unbiassed and positive testimony to the truth. Whiston had said: "That St. Peter was at Rome is so clear in Christian antiquity, that it is a shame for a Protestant to confess that any Protestant ever denied it." But, about this period, the rage for the new system of biblical interpretation raised doubts about the accepted meaning of the word _Babylon_ in the thirteenth verse of the fifth chapter of the first epistle of St. Peter, and the question whether the apostle ever was at Rome again came up for discussion. Very little new has been said, so that little remains to be confuted. We repeat, we have merely to sum up what has been well and conclusively said before. We have before us a work entitled _An Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, Historical and Doctrinal_, by Edward Harold Browne, lord bishop of Ely, in which [Footnote 88] the author endeavors to confute "the position of the Roman Church, that St. Peter was bishop of Rome."

[Footnote 88: Art. xxxvii. sec. II.]

As this work is used as a text-book in the New York Protestant Episcopal Seminary, and may, therefore, be supposed to furnish ideas and facts on church questions to the average Episcopalian clerical mind, we shall follow the author in his argument, and show how a plain tale can put down all his ingenious explanations and evasions.

The plain statement is as follows: The earliest and most reliable documents of Christian antiquity, with a clearness and unanimity that leave no room for doubt or cavil, state that St. Peter was at Rome, took a special care of the Roman Church, and died there. The bishops of Rome are always represented as his successors, not merely in that inheritance which has come down to all bishops from the apostles, but as his successors in his _Cathedra_, or episcopal chair. Our witnesses are numerous; their knowledge and fidelity are unimpeachable; their statements cannot be evaded or explained away; and thus the Roman bishopric of St. Peter is as undoubted a fact of ecclesiastical history as any other in the earlier ages. We shall give the proofs one by one, confining ourselves to the first three centuries.

St. Clement, who was certainly bishop of Rome, and who, according to Tertullian was ordained by Peter, in his epistle to the Corinthians--admitted as genuine by the best authorities--referring to the late persecution of the Roman Church under Nero, mentions among other troubles the recent martyrdom of SS. Peter and Paul, alleging them as noble examples of patience under tribulation. We have here a witness on the spot, who had seen the apostles, and been a special disciple of St. Peter.

We have next another apostolic father, St. Ignatius of Antioch, who suffered martyrdom about A.D. 107, and in a letter to the Romans speaks of SS. Peter and Paul as their special preceptors and masters: "I do not command you as Peter and Paul; I am a condemned man." {376} It is to be remarked that no one attempts to deny that St. Paul was at Rome, as one of his journeys thither is related in the last chapter of the Acts, and he speaks of himself as in that city; [Footnote 89] the union of St. Peter's name with his, as both commanding the Romans, shows that the former apostle had been with them in person as well as Paul.

[Footnote 89: 2 Tim. i. 17. This letter would seem to have been written not long before the apostle's death. See ch. iv. 6,7.]

Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, probably a disciple of St. John the Apostle, as quoted by Eusebius, says that St. Mark wrote his gospel from the preaching of St. Peter at Rome, [Footnote 90] and that the apostle wrote his first letter from the same place, calling it Babylon. [Footnote 91]

[Footnote 90: _Eus. Hist. Eccl._ lib. iii. c..39.]

[Footnote 91: _Ibid_. lib. iii. c. I.]

St. Dionysius of Corinth wrote a letter to the Roman Church under the pontificate of Soter, (A.D. 151-170,) which is also quoted by Eusebius, [Footnote 92] in which he says that SS. Peter and Paul, after planting the faith at Corinth, went into Italy, planted the faith amongst the Romans, and there sealed their testimony with their blood.

[Footnote 92: _Ibid_. lib. ii. c. 25.]

St. Irenaeus, (Bishop of Lyons A.D. 178,) a disciple of Polycarp, who was himself a hearer of the Apostle John, speaks of the Roman Church as "the greatest and most ancient church, known to all, founded and established at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul. [Footnote 93]

[Footnote 93: Lib. iii. _adv. Har._ c. iii.]

He adds: "The blessed apostles having founded and arranged the church, delivered its bishopric and administration to Linus. To him succeeded Anacletus, after him Clement, to him Evaristus, and to Evaristus, Alexander. The sixth from the apostles was Sixtus, after him Telesphorus, next Hyginus; then Pius, after whom came Anicetus. Soter succeeded Anicetus, and now the bishopric is held by Eleutherius, the twelfth from the apostles." This is an authentic list of the bishops of Rome from the apostles to the writer's time, placing the date of his work between A.D. 170 and 185, the fifteen years of the pontificate of Eleutherius.

Cajus, a priest of Rome under Zephyrinus, who governed the church during the first seventeen years of the third century, says, in a work quoted by Eusebius, [Footnote 94] but now lost: "I can show you the trophies of the apostles; for whether we go to the Vatican or the Ostian way, we shall meet with the trophies of the founders of this church." This is remarkable testimony to the accuracy of the tradition that prevails to this day of the places where the apostles were buried--St. Peter at the Vatican, St. Paul in the Ostian way, which now are marked by "trophies," greater in splendor and magnificence, but raised by the same spirit of reverence and love as those which this Roman priest pointed out in the third century.

[Footnote 94: _Ibid_. lib. ii. c. 15.]

Tertullian flourished about the same period, for he died A.D. 216. Speaking in his great work _On Prescriptions_ [Footnote 95] of apostolic churches, he says: "If you are near Italy, you have Rome, whence we also [the African Church] derive our origin. How happy is this church on which the apostles poured forth their whole doctrine with their blood; where Peter by his martyrdom is made like the Lord; where Paul is crowned with a wreath like that of John!" Again: "Let us see ... what the Romans proclaim in our ears, they to whom Peter and Paul left the Gospel sealed with their blood." [Footnote 96]

[Footnote 95: C. 36.]

[Footnote 96: Lib. iv. adv. _Marcion_.]

{377}

And speaking in the book _On Prescriptions_ of the origin of apostolic churches, he calls on heretics to "unfold the series of their bishops, coming down from the beginning in succession, so that the first bishop was appointed and preceded by any one of the apostles, or apostolic men in communion with the apostles. [Footnote 97] For in this way the apostolic churches exhibit their origin; ... as the Church of Rome relates that Clement was ordained by Peter." [Footnote 98] Clement of Alexandria (who died A.D. 222) states that St. Paul wrote his gospel at the request of the Romans, who wished to have a written record of what they had heard from St. Peter. [Footnote 99]

[Footnote 97: "Ut primus ille episcopus aliquem ex Apostolis habuerit auctorum et antecessorem." ]

[Footnote 98: Ch. 32.]

[Footnote 99: Eus. _Hist. Eccl_. lib. vi. c. 14. ]

Origen, (A.D. 185-255,) who visited Rome under the pontificate of Zephyrinus, says that St. Peter having preached to the Jews in Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Asia, toward the end of his life [Footnote 100] came to Rome, and was crucified with his head downward. [Footnote 101]

[Footnote 100: [Greek text]]

[Footnote 101: Quoted by Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl_. lib. iii. C. II.]

St. Cyprian, (Bishop of Carthage A.D. 248, put to death for the faith A.D. 258,) speaking of the irregular proceedings of some local schismatics who had appealed to Pope Cornelius, says: "They venture to set sail, and carry letters from schismatical and profane men to the _chair of Peter_, and to the principal church, whence sacerdotal unity has arisen." [Footnote 102] And in another letter he speaks of the election of Cornelius, "when the place of Fabian, that is, the place of Peter, and the rank of the priestly chair, was vacant." [Footnote 103] Even Bishop Hopkins, whom his friends cannot blame for too great facility in his concessions, admits that St. Cyprian acknowledged that St. Peter was bishop of Rome.

[Footnote 102: _Epist_. 59, ad _Cornel_.]

[Footnote 103: _Epist_. 52, ad Antonianum.]

We do not wish to go beyond the three hundred years immediately following the death of the apostle, and shall therefore omit here the clear and unmistakable statements of Optatus, Jerome, Epiphanius, Augustine, and others, closing with the account given by Eusebius of Caesarea, (bishop A.D. 315-340,) who is justly regarded as the father of ecclesiastical history, and of the greatest weight in historical matters. His accuracy and research are universally acknowledged, and his authority alone is generally regarded as conclusive. [Footnote 104] He says that Simon Magus went to Rome, and that "against this bane of mankind, the most merciful and kind Providence conducted to Rome Peter, the most courageous and the greatest among the apostles, who on account of his virtue was leader of all." [Footnote 105] He adds in his chronicle: "Having first founded the Church of Antioch, he goes to Rome, where, preaching the gospel, he continues twenty-five years bishop of the same city."

[Footnote 104: "In questions of critical investigation regarding the early church, no writer bears with him greater authority than that of the learned Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea. Removed only by two hundred years from the apostolic times, and being attached to the imperial court, and having at his command all the literary treasures of the Caesarean library, he ever displays a profound knowledge of the earlier Christian writers, and at the same time a truly refined critical acumen in discriminating between their genuine productions and those falsely assigned to them." --_Dublin Review_, June,1858, art. vii.]

[Footnote 105: _Hist. Eccl._ lib. ii. c. xiv.]

We have here a continuous series of witnesses, from those who had seen and conversed with the Apostle St. Peter to the date of the first work on ecclesiastical history now extant, all of whom clearly testify to the fact that he visited Rome, took special charge of the Roman Church, and there died a martyr, as our Lord had foretold he would die. After the apostolic writers, who, from the proximity of the events to their own time, could not be mistaken, the most important witnesses are Irenaeus and Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian. {378} The two former had visited Rome, and are competent witnesses of the tradition of the Roman Church, the most important of all in this matter; the two latter can testify to the same tradition, both because missionaries from Rome planted the faith in Africa, and because the constant intercourse, as well in ecclesiastical as in civil affairs, between the capital of the empire and Carthage, must necessarily have brought about a community of traditions between the two churches. The whole ancient church thus bears witness to what some Protestants now vainly affect to deny. Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Northern Africa, Gaul, Palestine, repeat what Clement, ordained by Peter, tells. The second century takes up the fact from those who had seen the apostles; the third learns it from the second, and the father of ecclesiastical history relates it as a matter beyond doubt, found by him in those ancient records, for the greater part since lost, the gist of which he has fortunately preserved to posterity. Scarcely any matter of fact--and this is a _mere_ matter of fact--connected with the early age of the church, leaving out those recorded in the sacred pages, is better attested.

To these written records we must add the expressive testimony of the catacombs. It is impossible to visit them without feeling that the Roman Christians looked on the apostles Peter and Paul as the founders of their local church. Eusebius was struck by the "monuments marked with the names of Peter and Paul," which he saw in the cemeteries at Rome, and these have been discovered, in modern times, by the indefatigable industry of Christian antiquarians; they are a living testimony to the fact that St. Peter, as well as St. Paul, labored in Rome. The illustrious Cardinal Borgia has traced the tradition in regard to the presence of St. Peter's body in the Vatican from the beginning of the third century, [Footnote 106] when, as we have seen, Cajus, a priest of Rome, in a work against heretics, [Footnote 107] spoke of the trophy of Peter in the Vatican, down to the days of Pope Urban VIII. And thus the most splendid monument Christianity has erected to the worship of the living God is also an authentic record of the fact that the chief of the apostles selected the city of Rome, in a special manner, as the scene of his labors, and there consummated his glorious career in the service of his Master. No wonder learned Protestants are ashamed to join with their more ignorant brethren. One learned German writer of this century says: "There is, perhaps, no event in ancient (church) history so clearly placed beyond doubt by the consenting testimony of ancient Christian writers as that of Peter having been at Rome." [Footnote 108] Another more forcibly, if possible, remarks: "Nothing but the polemics of faction have induced some Protestants, especially Spanheim, in imitation of some mediaeval opponents of the popes, to deny that Peter ever was at Rome." [Footnote 109]

[Footnote 106: In the work _Vaticana Confessio B. Petri._]

[Footnote 107: _The Montanists._]

[Footnote 108: Berthold, _Historisch-Krit. Inlet. in A. und N. T. apud_ Perrone.]

[Footnote 109: Gieseler, _Lehrbuch der Kirchengesch._ Ibid.]

A caviller may, indeed, say that all these witnesses prove, at most, that Peter was at Rome, not that he was bishop of Rome. And this is the point made by Bishop Browne, in the work to which we have referred.

"It is not to be doubted," he says, "that a tradition did exist in early times that St. Peter was bishop of Rome. But if that tradition be submitted, like others of the same kind, to the test of historical investigation, it will be found to rest on a very slender foundation. {379} In the first place, Scripture is silent about his having been at Rome--a remarkable silence, if his having been bishop there was a fact of such vital importance to the church as Roman divines have made it to be. Then, the first tradition of his having been at Rome at all does not appear for more than a century after his death. It is nearly two centuries after that event that we meet with anything like the opinion that the Roman bishops were his successors. It is three centuries before we find him spoken of as bishop of Rome. But when we reach three centuries and a half, we are told that he not only was bishop of Rome, but that he resided five and twenty years at Rome; a statement utterly irreconcilable with the history of the New Testament." [Footnote 110]

[Footnote 110: Loc. cit.]

There is, indeed, no good reason to doubt that St. Peter was at Rome; that he assisted St. Paul to order and establish the church there; that, in conjunction with Paul, he ordained one or more of its earliest bishops, and that there he suffered death for the sake of Christ. But there is no reason to believe that he was ever, in any proper or local sense, bishop of Rome." [Footnote 111]

[Footnote 111: _Ibid_.]

We leave aside for the present the alleged silence of the New Testament. In the first place, it is not true that "the first tradition of Peter's having been at Rome does not appear for more than a century after his death." Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Papias, Dionysius of Corinth, belong to this period, and all unmistakably testify to Peter's having been at Rome. Irenaeus may be fairly counted also, as he was sent from Lyons to Rome in A.D. 177. Of these, Bishop Browne mentions only Papias and Irenaeus. He quotes Papias's opinion about the word _Babylon_ in St. Peter's first Epistle, and tries to set it aside. But, whatever the exegetical value of the opinion, it is proof that Papias held it as an undoubted fact that St. Peter was at Rome; besides, he also states that Mark wrote his gospel at Rome, under the eye of Peter. Nor is it at all pertinent to say that Eusebius tells us that Papias was a narrow-minded man, and an enthusiast about the Apocalypse. Neither narrow-mindedness nor enthusiasm prevents men from being competent witnesses to simple facts, and the one about which we are now inquiring is a simple fact. The only question is--Could Papias have known for certain whether St. Peter was at Rome or not? He lived in the apostolic age, not half a century after the death of the apostle. This is a sufficient answer, and his views about either Babylon or the Apocalypse cannot impair its sufficiency. As to Irenaeus, our lord bishop quibbles in a way that is not handsome. He tries to break down his and other writers' testimony by alleging, first, that they disagree as to the first bishop of Rome after St. Peter; second, that they disagree about the _time_ St. Peter came to Rome.

We are almost ashamed to have to answer such quibbling. Neither disagreement at all touches the substantial part of the narrative. Neither is as great as our expounder of the articles, in his despair, tries to make it. Neither could ever have been alleged in ordinary controversy. All authors, save Tertullian, mention Linus as first bishop of Rome after Peter. The African father in reality says only that Clement was ordained by Peter; the context, however, would suggest that he supposed he was the immediate successor of the apostle. The truth appears to be that Linus, Cletus, and Clement were consecrated bishops by one or the other of the apostles. This was commonly done in the first age; only one person in every city possessed episcopal jurisdiction, but more clergymen than one were frequently invested with the episcopal order. This was done in the Roman Church. St. Peter was its first bishop; after his death, Linus, Cletus, Clement governed it in succession, all three having been ordained by the apostles. {380} There is nothing in this supposition at all at variance with what is known to have been the common practice of the first age, a practice which it is not ingenuous in the lord bishop of Ely to suppress. As to the discrepancy about the time of the apostle's coming to Rome, it is easily explained on the commonly received hypothesis that St. Peter twice visited Rome. Eusebius says that he went first under Claudius. He was obliged to leave Italy in consequence of that emperor's decree banishing thence the Jews. He returned thither, toward the end of his life, and there suffered martyrdom. But it is plain that such discrepancies cannot affect the substance, namely, that Peter was at Rome; indeed, they are intelligible only on the supposition that all the authors quoted held the main fact as certain. It is plain also that there is not the slightest foundation for the lord bishop's assertion that "at whatever time St. Peter came to Rome, there was some one else bishop of Rome then." The courage required for this assertion can be measured from another statement, just four lines above: "All (the early writers) agree in saying that the first bishop of the see was Linus." This is simply shameful. Put after "see" the words _after Peter_, and the quotation will be correct. But then what becomes of the bishop's argument? He says Linus was bishop of Rome when Peter went thither; and he also admits that "some (early writers) say that St. Paul, others that St. Peter and St. Paul, ordained him." These latter writers surely did not suppose that St. Peter ordained a man in Rome before he himself ever went to Rome. The bishop clearly does not stick at trifles. His chronology is also entirely at fault. He says that it "is three centuries (after St. Peter's death) before we find him spoken of as bishop of Rome." But St. Cyprian, whom even Bishop Hopkins admits spoke thus of the apostle, was put to death before the end of the second century from St. Peter's martyrdom. He sneers at the statement that St. Peter was five-and-twenty years bishop of Rome; yet he admits that it is based on the authority of that eminent and judicious critic, St. Jerome, who, from his high position under Pope Damasus, had abundant opportunity for an accurate examination of the then extant records. In reality, it is based on an earlier authority, the great historian Eusebius. It is plain that his polemic system is simply factious; he ignores some authorities, misconstrues others, miscalculates dates, and mistakes mere accessories for the principal fact; such a course is not only a crime against historical truth, it is also a blunder, for it can mislead only the unlearned or the unwary reader.

The writers of the first age do not, it is true, assert in so many words that St. Peter was bishop of Rome. The reason is obvious. Treating of other matters, their allusions are merely incidental, such as we might expect immediately after the death of SS. Peter and Paul, and relating chiefly to the fact of the apostle's connection with the Roman Church, or his martyrdom there. For these facts they are unanswerable authority. These are a necessary preliminary to the assertion of St. Peter's Roman bishopric. This fact is broadly stated as soon as we meet with the polemical development of the doctrine of apostolic succession. Tertullian, in the text we have quoted from the book _On Prescriptons_, where he accurately defines in what this succession consists, namely, that the first bishop was appointed and preceded by an apostle or an apostolic man, (_Apostolum ... habuerit auctorem et antecessorem,_) says that in the Roman Church Clement was ordained by Peter. {381} Tracing thus the succession in Rome from Peter, not from Paul, whose death in the imperial city he mentions, he shows that he knew Peter was the bishop of the see. St. Cyprian uses unmistakable language on the same subject, and Eusebius asserts positively that St. Peter was bishop of Rome. We might quote other catalogues, but, though of great authority, they are of a more recent date. But we shall give two more authorities which can be connected with the period to which we have confined ourselves. St. Jerome [Footnote 112] positively states that St. Peter held the episcopal chair (_cathedram sacerdotalem_) of Rome for twenty-five years. His historical knowledge and critical acumen give to his words the authority of a statement based on the very best records of the early age. No one can deny that in the latter half of the fourth century there were such records at Rome. St. Optatus of Millevi, in Africa, (A.D. 370,) in a controversial work against the Donatists, speaks of St. Peter's Roman bishopric as a matter of notoriety, which no one would dare deny. "You ought to know," says he to the Donatist leader, Parmenian, "and _you dare not deny_, that Peter established at Rome an episcopal chair, which he was the first to occupy, in order that through (communion with) this one chair all might preserve unity." [Footnote 113]

[Footnote 112: In Catal.]

[Footnote 113: Contr. Parmenianum.]

A statement made so positively, so unhesitatingly, so boldly, must have been founded on the very best historical evidence. And the nineteenth century must accept the judgment of competent writers of the fourth on such a subject. Unless, then, we wish to deny all authority to authentic record of the early age of the church, we must conclude, with the good leave of the lord bishop of Ely, that there is excellent reason to believe that St. Peter was bishop of Rome. Nor is there any force in the bishop's remark that all the apostles had the world for their diocese, and were not confined to any particular city. We do not, of course mean to say that St. Peter confined his preaching to Rome. He was apostle as well as head of the church. As apostle, he preached chiefly to the Jews. As head of the church, he chose for his episcopal see the capital of the world, in order that there might be no doubts about the legitimate heir of his great dignity. For this reason we find him in Rome among the Gentiles, though St. Paul had a special mission to them. Dr. Browne says Peter was St. Paul's _assistant_ at Rome; and this, in the face of the facts that every writer, from Clement down, puts him before the great vessel of election, and that St. Paul himself, as we shall see, speaks of his ministry to the Romans as one merely of mutual consolation, a tone he never adopted toward a church which he himself had founded. We have purposely left to the last the argument based on the alleged silence of the New Testament, because we wished to clear an historical question of all purely exegetical difficulties. We have established our thesis on indubitable evidence; we might rest here and simply say that, inasmuch as no one pretends that the New Testament contains the entire history of the apostles, its silence cannot affect the certainty of our proposition. This silence may puzzle the curious reader; it may be variously interpreted, according to the theological bent of the student; but it cannot disprove facts which are proved by historical authority. {382} Bishop Browne feels the force of this, and does not insist much on the silence of the New Testament. He merely remarks that this silence is strange, if St. Peter's Roman bishopric be as important as Roman divines make it out to be. Strictly speaking, we might let this pass, as we are not now concerned in establishing the supremacy of the Roman pontiffs, but merely treating the historical question, Who was first bishop of Rome? We may observe, however, that no believer in the doctrine of apostolical succession can consistently urge this silence. How does Dr. Browne trace _his_ succession in the office of bishop from the apostles? Is it from St. Peter? Then he has to meet the same objection about the silence of the New Testament on what, from his point of view, is a vital matter. Is it from St. Paul? But there is no scriptural evidence that St. Paul ever ordained a bishop in Rome, or anywhere in the west. Is it from any other apostle? The same remark holds good. No claim to apostolical succession can be established for any see in the western church unless on the evidence of tradition. This is virtually admitted by Dr. Browne himself.

Since, however, the silence of the New Testament is commonly urged as affording presumptive evidence that St. Peter never was at Rome, we shall examine all that Protestants have to say on the subject. The principal text--the only one having direct reference to the subject--is I Peter v. 13: "The church which is in Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you, and so doth Mark, my son." Nearly all ancient writers, commencing with Papias, say that this letter was written at Rome, which city St. Peter designates under the name of Babylon. Our Protestant opponents, of course, reject this interpretation. Now, we wish it to be understood that we do not allege this text to prove that St. Peter wrote from Rome. We admit that, taken in itself, apart from tradition, it is obscure, and can afford, at best, ground but for conjecture. But, having established beyond all doubt the fact that St. Peter was at Rome, we follow the interpretation of the respectable ancient writers whom we have quoted. When the letter was written, old Babylon of Assyria was in ruins, according to Strabo and Pliny; and the Jews, to whom St. Peter wrote, had been banished from Assyria, according to Josephus; and, though Seleucia was afterward called Babylon, it had not received the name at this early period. Some think that the Babylon referred to was in Egypt, the place now called Cairo. But it was then but a fort, or fortified village, (_castellum_,) and the Christian church of Egypt has always looked on Alexandria as its birthplace. St. Peter, moreover, warns the Christians of the approaching persecution, and exhorts them to be subject to the emperor and his subordinates. These allusions come very naturally from the pen of one writing at Rome, but are almost unintelligible if we suppose the writer in Babylon of Assyria, out of the Roman empire. The opinion that the letter was written at Rome, called Babylon by St. Peter for some reason which we can only conjecture, is based on excellent ancient authority, agrees with well-known facts of history, and with the internal evidence of the letter itself. Leaving aside its bearings on the main question we are discussing, it is by far the most probable view, and, in any other case, would be accepted without difficulty. [Footnote 114]

[Footnote 114: Occasionally the love of novelty induces some Catholic writer to differ from his brethren. This is the case with Hug, who holds that we cannot admit mystical names in the letters of the apostles, as there is no instance of their use, save in this disputed case. This is criticism based on internal evidence run mad. One would suppose that there was a perfect course of sacred epistolary literature in the New Testament, based on fixed rules, instead of a few detached letters, written by different authors at different times, without any communication or agreement with one another about literary style. There is nothing more fallacious than the interpretation of any of the letters of the apostles on mere internal evidence. Hug's remark at most shows that internal evidence does not afford any proof that St. Peter meant Rome, which no one will deny.]

{383}

Protestants, moreover, commonly allege the absence of any mention of St. Peter's voyage to Rome in the Acts of the Apostles, and the absence of any reference to him, either in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans or in those he wrote from Rome. The silence of the Acts is easily explained. After the council of Jerusalem, the writer relates only the missionary labors of St. Paul, so that we could not expect any mention of St. Peter's voyages. Dr. Browne infers from Acts xxviii. 22, that "the Jews of Rome had had no communication with any chief teacher among the Christians." This inference is not borne out by the text, "We desire to hear from thee what thou thinkest; or as concerning this sect, we know that it is everywhere opposed." The obvious meaning is that the Jews of Rome knowing that Paul was a Pharisee learned in the law, wished to hear what he had to say in favor of the new religion. They must have looked on St. Peter as a Galilean fisherman, who had no right to attempt to expound the law and the prophets. It is puerile for Dr. Browne to allege that they should have heard him with respect because he was the apostle of the circumcision; for, of what importance could this title be in their eyes, if they did not believe in Him who sent the apostles?

If St. Peter went to Rome in the reign of Claudius, he certainly was afterward absent from the city, as we find him after this period at the council of Jerusalem. His absence from Rome accounts for the fact that St. Paul does not salute him in his Epistle to the Romans, a straw at which some Protestant writers clutch with great avidity. The great respect with which St. Paul speaks of the Roman Church, whose faith, he says, was spoken of in the whole world, agrees with the supposition that St. Peter had already preached there. On these words, [Footnote 115] "For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, that ye may be strengthened; that is, I may be comforted together with you, by that which is common to us both, your faith and mine." Theodoret remarks as follows: "Because the great Peter had first given them the doctrine of the gospel, he said merely,'that ye may be strengthened.' I do not wish, he says, to bring a new doctrine to you, but to confirm that which you have received, and to water the trees which have already been planted." [Footnote 116]

[Footnote 115: Ch. i. 11, 12.]

[Footnote 116: In locum.]

The words certainly indicate that the faith had already been firmly established by some teacher of high rank, and are a very apposite commentary on Dr. Browne's reason why the Jews, some years afterward, were anxious to hear St. Paul. We cannot really understand what hallucination led him to quote these words to show that St. Paul writes much as "if no apostle had ever been amongst the Romans." But we admire his prudence in giving purely a reference, not the words of the text. His other reference to Rom. xv. 15-24 is even more unlucky. St. Paul therein says plainly that he generally preached, "not where Christ was named," lest he should build on another man's foundation. {384} "_For which cause_," he adds, "I have been much hindered from coming to you." Therefore some other apostle _had_ preached to the Romans. He even goes on to say that he hoped to be gratified in his desire of seeing them, _when on his way to Spain_, so that it is plain that he, though apostle of the Gentiles, considered there was no necessity for his making a journey to Rome on purpose to instruct the Roman Church. St. Paul, then, writes very much as if an apostle _had_ been with the Romans. Whatever else Dr. Browne does, he ought to quote Scripture fairly. St. Paul's allusions, obscure though they may be to us, were, of course, clear to those to whom they were written. No familiar letter can be fully understood without taking into account the facts which, being well known to those to whom he writes, the author merely alludes to in a passing way.

The letters which St. Paul wrote from Rome were all written during his first stay there, with the probable exception of the second to Timothy. Colossians iv. II, and 2 Timothy iv. 16, are quoted to show that St. Peter was not at Rome, else he would have stood by St. Paul. But the epistle to the Colossians was written during St. Paul's first imprisonment, when St. Peter, as we have seen, must have been absent, and in the second to Timothy he speaks expressly of his "first defence." Most writers think he refers to his first imprisonment. Others suppose him to speak of a preliminary hearing before Nero, during his second imprisonment. Admitting this interpretation, he cannot include St. Peter, who was his fellow-prisoner, in the list of those who had forsaken him. The words apply to persons at large, who had influence with the authorities, which they did not use.

We have thus fully examined all that Protestants allege concerning the silence of the New Testament. The candid reader will see that there is nothing in the sacred pages to contradict the historical facts we have established; the allusions of St. Paul to the instruction of the Romans in the faith by a teacher of high rank, and the interpretation of the word _Babylon_ in St. Peter's first letter, which has come down to us from the apostolic age, must be counted in their favor.

It is on historical evidence that the case must rest; and on it, as we have rehearsed it, we are satisfied to submit it to unprejudiced criticism. The testimony of the apostolic age, and the two immediately following, is conclusive; it cannot be explained away; much less can it be impeached. We must give up all belief in well-authenticated history, or else admit that St. Peter went to Rome, founded the church there, and was its first bishop, and there died a martyr of Christ.

"O Roma felix, quae duorum principum Es consecrata glorioso sanguine Horum cruore purpurata ceteras Excellis orbis una pulchritudines."

"O happy Rome! whom the great Apostles' blood For ever consecrates while ages flow: Thou, thus empurpled, art more beautiful Than all that doth appear most beautiful below."

Note By The Editor On The Chronology Of St. Peter's Life.

Eusebius says that St. Peter established his see at Antioch in the last year of Tiberius, who died March fifteenth, A.D. 37. It was probably, therefore, in the year 36; and St. Ignatius, the second successor of St. Peter in that see; St. John Chrysostom, who had been a priest there; Origen and St. Jerome, as well as Eusebius, state that he governed that church seven years; which probably means, not that his episcopate was just of that length, but, that seven calendar years were included (the first and the last partially) in it. {385} At any rate, this would make the establishment of his see in Rome in A.D. 42 or 43; and the day celebrated by the church is January 18th. Now, Eusebius, St. Jerome, Cassiodorus, and others say that SS. Peter and Paul were put to death in the fourteenth year of Nero, that is, in A.D. 67; and their martyrdom is celebrated on June 29th. This gives twenty-four and a half or twenty-five and a half years for St. Peter's Roman episcopate, or twenty-five years in the sense that the Antiochan was seven, if he came to Rome in 43; in which case he may even have established his see at Antioch in 37.

St. John Chrysostom says that St. Paul's life after his conversion was thirty-five years; which would make that event to have occurred in A.D. 32 or 33. He himself says (Gal. i.) that three years afterward he went to Jerusalem, and thence to Tarsus, as is also stated in Acts ix. From this place he was called to preach to the church at Antioch, as mentioned in Acts xi.; and this visit, which could not have much preceded the establishment of St. Peter's see there, may well have been in A.D. 35 or 36, agreeing with the chronology given above.

These dates do not agree with that commonly assigned for the crucifixion; but numerous evidences show that this occurred in the year 29. As late a date as A.D. 31 might, however, be allowed.

A Ruined Life.

It was the saddest, saddest face I ever saw.

She stood before the stove in my front office, on that dark December day, and the steam from her wet, heated garments almost concealed her from my sight. Yet the first glimpse I caught of her, through the partition door, excited my interest to an unusual degree; and, though I saw her not again for a half hour, that one glance fixed her features in my memory as indelibly as they are printed there to-day.

It was term time, and the second return-day of the term. For ten days my eyes and brain had both been crowded with all that varied detail of business which sessions aggregate upon the hands and conscience of a rising lawyer; and the musty retinue of _assumpsit, ejectment_, and _scire-facias_ had nearly vexed and worn out the little life I had at the beginning. But the criminal week, which was my peculiar sphere, was close at hand, and I looked to its exciting, riskful cases as a relief from the dull, dreary current of civil forms and practice.

The little room I dignified with the name of "_front office_" was filled, as far as seats went, with rough backwoodsmen, witnesses on behalf of a gentleman who occupied with me the snugly carpeted "_sanctum_" in the rear. While we discussed together the points of strength or weakness to be tested at the impending trial, the voices of the rude laborers reached us brokenly, and more than once words fell upon my ear which made me tremble for the sensibilities of the lonely woman who was with them. {386} They meant no harm, those bluff, hearty men. A tear from her drooping eyes would have unmanned them. But they were not well-bred, nor tender to the weakness of the other sex. My poor client, as she afterward became, stood while they sat, kept silence while they laughed and jeered each other. It was not their fault that they never minded her. They were not hypocrites, that's all.

At length I had the happiness to see the door close on the last of them, and, after arranging the maps and diagrams which would be needed on the morrow, I called to the stranger to come in. She obeyed, hesitatingly, and then, for the first time, I saw that she belonged to that most forlorn and pitiable of all the many classes who throng around our mining districts, the recent Irish emigrant. The very clothes she wore were the same with which she dressed herself in the green isle far away, and her voice and manner had not yet caught that flippancy and pertness which pass among the longer landed for tokens of American independence and equality. She was certainly very poor, or the rough, wintry winds would not have been permitted to toss her long, black hair in tangled masses around her shoulders, or drop their melting snowflakes on her uncovered head. My chivalric interest died without time to groan, and whatever thought of profit or romance in assisting her I might have had, at the first sight of her, perished at the same instant. But I saw poverty and sorrow, and I determined in my heart, before she told her errand, that my life of legal labor should embrace at least one act done thoroughly and for nothing.

Her story was a short one. Her husband and herself had lived in a neighboring village. Others of their own people dwelt around them, and among these was an old woman and her son. No difficulty, that she knew of, had ever risen between her family and theirs. But, a few days before, as her husband was gathering fuel by the roadside, these two had rushed out on him, and in cold blood murdered him. The son had fled, and the murderer's mother, with barred doors and windows, forbade the vicinage of friend or foe. The broken-hearted wife, urged on to take such vengeance as the law afforded, had come to me and asked my counsel and assistance.

It was of little use to question her. Like most of her peculiar class, her mind could entertain but one idea, and that, in some form or other, recurred in answer to every inquiry I could make. Satisfying myself, however, that a murder had really been committed, and taking down such names and dates as were necessary for the initial steps of prosecution, I sent her home, with the assurance that justice should be done her, and her dead husband's ghost avenged.

The warrant was issued, the arrest made, the indictment found, the trial finished. There was no doubt of guilt. The murder was committed in the broad light of day, and many eyes had seen it. The counsel for the defence had felt the untenability of his position before a tithe of the evidence was in, and slipped down from innocence to justifiability, until his last hope for the prisoner was in the allegation of insanity, late suggested and faintly urged. It was useless. The twelve inexorable men brought in their verdict of "wilful murder," and Bridget Davanagh was sentenced to be hanged by the neck till she was dead.

{387}

It has never been my custom to follow cases, on which the solemn judgment of the law has been pronounced, beyond those immediate consequences of that judgment which the connection between a lawyer and his client has compelled me to superintend. But there was something in this case which both attracted and disquieted me, and one day in vacation I found myself at the grated prison-door, seeking admission to the cell of the condemned. The old woman received me quietly. She seemed to have forgotten me, or, at least, how active a part I had taken in the proceedings which had ended in dooming her to a shameful death. She was taciturn and moody; and, the longer I remained, the more satisfied I became that her mind was now unsettled, if it had not been before. I went several times after that, and gradually, by kind words and the gift of such simple comforts as aged matrons most desire, I won her confidence so far that, in her faltering, disconnected way, she told me all that sad history of woe and wrong and suffering which had brought an untimely grave to Michael Herican, and a felon's fate to her. It was one of those tales of falsity and sorrow which we cannot hear too often, and whose moral none of us can learn too well.

The little village of Easky, in the County Sligo, was, when this present century was young, one of those lonesome, scanty-peopled hamlets whose very loneliness and isolation render them more dear and homelike to their few inhabitants. The waters of the Northern Ocean foamed about the rocks where its fisher-boats were moored. The feet of its rambling children trod the rough paths and crumpled the grey masses of the wild Slieve-Gamph hills. Thus hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, it was almost separated from the world. The white sails that now and then flitted across the far horizon, and the slow, lazy car that twice a month brought over his majesty's mail-bags from Dromore, were all that Easky ever had to tell it that there were nations and kingdoms on the earth, or that its own precipices on the one side, and its weed-strewn rocks upon the other, did not embrace the whole of human joys and sorrows.

In this solitary village the forefathers of Patrick Carrol had dwelt for immemorial years. So far back as tradition went they had been fishermen, and the last remaining scion now followed the ancestral calling. He was a sort of hero among his fellow-villagers. True, he was as poor as the poorest of them all, and had no personal boast save of his vigorous arms and honest heart. But his father, contrary to the custom of his race, had refused to lay his bones within an ocean bed, and had died fighting in the bloody streets of Killala. All victims of '98 were canonized by those rude freemen, and the mantle of honor fell from the father upon the children, and gave to Patrick Carrol a deserved and well-maintained pre-eminence. And so, when Bridget Deery became his wife, the whole hamlet agreed that the village favorite had found her proper husband, and, when the little Mary saw the light, the christening holiday was kept by every neighbor, old or young.

Four years of perfect happiness flew by. Death or misfortune came to other families, but not to theirs. The little hoarded wealth, hid away in the dark corner, grew yearly greater. Health and affection dwelt unremittingly upon the hearthstone, and the hearts of the father and mother were as full of gratitude as the heart of the child was of merriment and glee. But the four years had an end, and carried with them, into the trackless past, the sunshine of their lives. {388} One long, long summer day the wife sat among the rocks, watching for her husband's boat, and playing with the prattler at her side. The boat came not. The sun went down. The gathering clouds in the offing loomed up threateningly. The hoarse northwesters felt their way across the waters, and whistled in her ears, as she clasped the child to her bosom and hurried home out of the storm. As the gale strengthened with the darkness, she fell upon her knees, and all that wakeful night besought the Mother and the saints to keep her baby's father from the awful danger. In vain; for when the morning dawned, the waves washed up his oars and helm upon the beach, and an hour later his drowned corse was found beneath the broken crags of Anghris Head.

For the first few years after that fatal shock the widowed mother lived she knew not how. One by one the treasured silver pieces went, till destitution stared her in the face. The charity of her neighbors outdid their means, but even that could not keep her from actual suffering, and work for the lone woman there was absolutely none. What wonder was it, then, that, when the flowers had bloomed three times above the peaceful bed of Patrick Carrol, his widow, more for her child's sake than her own, consented to violate the sanctity of her broken heart, and become the wife of Bernard Davanagh?

Bernard was a bold, reckless, wilful man, and both the mother and the child soon felt the difference between the dead father and the living. As time passed on, and the boy Bernard was born, the passions of the man grew stronger, and cruel words, and still more cruel blows, became the daily portion of the helpless three. Oh! how often did the widow yearn to lie down with her children by her dead husband's side, in the drear churchyard, and be at peace for ever. But not _without_ them. No, not even to be united with the lost, could she have left them, and so they clung together, closer and closer, as the years rolled on--knowing little of life except its dark page of sorrow.

There never yet was a life without some ray of joy, and, even in the midnight darkness which hung around the childhood of Mary Carrol, there were faint gleams of happiness. Next door but one to their poor cot lived James Herican. He too was a fisherman, and, in better days, had been Patrick Carrol's most intimate and faithful friend. He had remained such to the widow and the fatherless, and, but for him, the family of Bernard Davanagh also might sometimes have perished from want and cold. He was the father of one child, the boy Michael, older by two years than Mary, and doubly endeared to his heart by the mother's early death. The gossips of Easky had wondered, in their simple way, why James Herican and Bridget Carrol did not marry, but the memory of his dead wife and his dead friend forbade the one ever to entertain the thought, and the poor widow was as far from wishing it as he. They were happier as they were; he, by his kindness and true Christian charity, laying up heavenly treasures, which, as the second husband of a second wife, he never could accumulate; she, keeping ever fresh and pure the one love of her maiden's heart, the one hope of reunion in the skies. What, and how different, the end had been, if they had married, the eye of the Eternal can alone discern.

{389}

The friendship of these parents descended to the children. In all their sports, their rambles, their labors, (for in that toiling hamlet even tender childhood labored,) Michael Herican and Mary Carrol were together. When her half-brother, eight years younger than herself, grew into boyhood, Michael was his champion against the impositions of larger boys, and taught him all those arts of wood and water craft which village youth so ardently aspire to, and so aptly learn. It could not happen otherwise than that these constantly recurring kindnesses should beget firm and fast affection, and knit together these young hearts in bonds difficult, if not impossible, to sunder.

It may have been the law of nature, it may have been the chastening of God, that Michael Herican and Mary Carrol should come, in later years, to love each other. It was simply fitting, to all human sight, that it should be so; and it was so. The father and the mother thanked God for it, day by day, and bestowed upon them such tokens of encouragement as the bashful lovers could comfortably receive. The boy Bernard, when he heard of it, (and there could be no secrets in Easky,) threw up his cap for joy, and the old village crones for once smiled on the prospects of a happiness they had never known. Only Davanagh appeared displeased, but his abuse of the poor girl had been so extreme for years that it could scarcely suffer any increase, and all the influence he exerted over her or them was by his ruthless fist and cursing tongue. This at last ceased; for ears less patient than her own received his stinging insults, and a blow, quicker than his drunken arm could parry, stretched him upon the ground to rise no more.

Mary Carrol reached her twentieth birthday. She was a frail, delicate girl, below the middle height, and with that beautiful but strange union of large blue eyes and pearly complexion with jet black hair and lashes which tells at once of the pure Irish blood. We should not have called her handsome; perhaps no one would, except those who loved her, and in whose sight no disfigurement or disease could have made her homely. But she was one of those superior natures which solitude and suffering must unite with Christian culture to produce; and the whole neighborhood, for this, and not for her beauty, claimed her as its favorite and charm. Michael had grown to be a stalwart man, half a head taller than his sire, and his fellows said that none among them promised better for diligence and success than he. His devotion to Mary Carrol knew no bounds, and she, in turn, cherished scarcely a thought apart from him. Her mother had rapidly grown old and broken. Grief, and that yearning for the dead which is stronger than any sorrow, had made her an aged woman long before her time, and the fond daughter, between her and the one hope of her young life, had no third wish or joy. Her only trouble was for her brother. The wild elements of his father's nature became more apparent in him every day, and, though he loved his mother and half-sister with an almost inhuman passionateness, they frequently found it impossible to restrain his turbulent and curbless will. The stern control of a seafaring life seemed to be their only chance of saving him, and so, at little more than twelve years old, he was torn away from home and friends and sent out on a coasting merchantman to be subdued. This parting nearly broke his mothers's heart, but her discipline of suffering had been borne too long and patiently for her to rebel now. It was only another drop to her full cup of bitterness, when, a few months later, news came, by word of mouth from a sailor in Dromore, that the merchantman had foundered in the stormy Irish Sea.

{390}

It would be beyond the power of human pen to describe how these lone women now clung to Michael Herican. His father went down to the grave in peace, and he had none but them, as they had none but him. Already the one looked on him as a husband and the other as a son. When a few more successful voyages were over, and when the humble necessaries, which even an Easky maid could not become a wife without providing, were completed, the benediction of the church was to fulfil the promise of their hearts, and give them irrevocably to each other in the sight of God and man.

It was an ill-starred day for Michael Herican and the Carrols when the Widow Moran and her daughter came to live in Easky. Pierre Moran, deceased, had been a small shopkeeper in Sligo, where he had amassed a little competence, and, now that he was dead, his widow returned to her native village to pass her remaining life among her former neighbors. There were few among them who had not known more or less about the reckless girl who ran away with the half-French half-Irish shopman, twenty years ago, and her name and memory was none of the best among those virtuous villagers. But she cared less for this because she had enough of filthy lucre to command exterior respect, and it was better, so she thought, to be highest among the lowly than to be low among the high. In coming to Easky she had had two ends in view: to queen it over her former associates, and to secure a steady and good husband for her daughter. Kitty Moran was like her mother, but without her mother's faults. She was a girl of dash and spirit, and with a pride as quick and a nature as impressible as her mother was emotionless. She was a thorough brunette, with a brunette's violence and passion, with a brunette's power to love and power to hate. In actual beauty no maiden of the neighborhood could vie with her, and she had just enough of city polish and refinement to give her an appearance of superiority to those around her. Between her and Mary Carrol the angels would not have hesitated in choosing--unless, indeed, they were those ancient sons of God who took wives from among the daughters of men because they saw that they were fair, and then, like men, they would have chosen wrongly.

It was not many days before the Widow Moran heard of Michael Herican, or many weeks before she had decided that he should be the husband of her child. True, she knew of his betrothal, for his name was rarely spoken unconnected with the name of Mary Carrol, but this made no difference. The pale-faced step-daughter of the drunken Davanagh was of no consequence to her, and to the right or wrong of her designs she never gave a thought. Whatever she wished, she determined to have. Whatever she determined to have, she set herself industriously to secure. So when she marketed, it was Michael's boat from which she purchased. When there was a message to send to Sligo, or packages from thence to be brought home to her, it was Michael's boat that carried it. When she had work to be done around her cottage, it waited until Michael had an idle day, and then he was hired to do it. Well skilled, as every woman is, in arts like these, she used her knowledge and her chances all too well.

{391}

It is but just to say that Kitty Moran had no share in her mother's wicked plans. She was young and gay. Michael Herican was the finest young man in the village. It was not disagreeable to her to watch him and to talk with him, as he worked by her directions in the little garden, or to sit beside him at their noontide meal. Unconsciously, she grew to miss him when he was away at sea, to have a welcome for him in her heart when he came home, to look for him with impatience when she knew that his vocation brought him back to her. Before she was aware of it, she loved him; and when she realized her love, she threw herself into it, as her one absorbing passion, without a dream of its results or a suspicion of her error. She would not, for an empire, have deliberately wronged the patient girl whom, by the stern law of contraries, she had already learned to cherish, but to her love there was no limit, no moderation. She could not help loving Michael Herican, and no more could she mete out or restrain her love. So, when it mastered her, it _was_ her master, and her reason and her conscience were whirled away before the rushing tide of passion like bubbles on the bosom of a cataract.

How Michael Herican came to love this new maiden not even he himself could tell. Rochefoucault says, "It is in man's power neither to love nor to refrain from loving." And false as this may be as a general law of life, there are cases in which it appears almost divinely true. It was so in his. He simply could not help it. When he compared the calm, deep, tried affection of the heart that had been his for years with the tumultuous outburst of this impetuous soul, his judgment taught him there ought to be no such comparison between them. He never had one doubt as to his duty. He fought nobly and manfully against the spell that seemed to be upon him. He would gladly have left Easky, and have stretched his voyages beyond the northern seas; but he could not leave Mary and her mother there alone. He thought of hastening his marriage, thereby to put an end to all possibility of faithlessness, (and this is what he should have done,) but he had no reason for it that he dared to give. It was a fearful trial for him, and would have bred despair in stronger hearts than his, if such there be. He became lax and careless in his business, harsh and moody in his intercourse with others. A few tattling croakers, here and there, wiser than the rest, laid the evil at the Widow Moran's door; but they could give no proof when asked for it, and the frowns and chidings of the neighborhood soon put them down.

In this way things went on for months. The day drew near when the wedding-feast should usher in a new life to the waiting pair. It was a drawing near of doom to him. The enchantment had not weakened by indulgence. The siren's song was as soft and seductive as when its first notes took possession of his soul. Feeling as he did toward Kathleen Moran, he would not marry Mary Carrol, although from his heart of hearts he could have sworn that his love for her had known no change or diminution. Nor did he dare to tell her that the fascinations of the stranger had enchained him; for he knew that he was all she had, and all she loved. But it could not go on thus always, and he knew it. Something must be done. Had it been the mere sacrifice of himself, he would not have hesitated for a moment. As little did he hesitate between marrying where he did not love supremely, and not marrying at all. {392} He had a conscience, and when his conscience decided between these, and told him that he must not marry Mary Carrol, it compelled him also to go to her and in plain words tell her so.

It almost killed her. The shock was so great, at the moment, mightily though she strove to command herself, that her life was in immediate danger. After a while she rallied again, a very ghost to what she had been, though little else before. Her mother bore the blow less calmly. She could not understand the powerlessness of the one to save himself, or the self-sacrifice of the other, which gave up her life's last greatest hope without a murmur. She felt the disappointment keenly, but the injury more. Dispositions, that through all her sorrows had never been apparent in her character, began to show themselves. She grew stem and vengeful in place of her old meekness and submission, and brooded over their cruel wrong until it became a second nature with her to impute to Michael Herican all her troubles, and curse him in her heart as the destroyer of her child.

Of course all Easky soon knew the grief that had come to Bridget Davanagh's household; and, not unnaturally, most of them sided with her in her condemnation of Michael Herican. They could not understand, they would not have believed, that he was under the dominion of a passion which he could neither escape nor resist. To them there was no fascination in the Widow Moran's daughter, and they loved the mother too little for them to suppose that any one could love the child. It was a hard lot for her, poor girl, to hear their cutting censures passed upon her as the cause of Mary Carrol's sufferings; for the people of that uncultivated neighborhood did not care to conceal their bitterness beneath soft-spoken words, and did not hesitate to tell her to her face all that they felt concerning her. Nor spared they Michael Herican. Old men and young greeted him now with looks askance and cold, instead of the warm welcomes which every hearth had had for him a month before. And every woman in Easky, except the few old crones who grudgingly had wished him well when all was well with him, went by him on the other side, and prayed the saints to deliver their young maidens from such faithless lovers as he.

Intolerable as all this was to him, and unjust as it would have been, even in their sight who did it, could they have known how he had fought against his destiny, it still had its inevitable effect upon him. As there was but one house in Easky where he met a cordial greeting, that house became his continual resort. As there was but one heart into which he could look and find responsive love, he sought his consolation in that heart alone. To Mary Carrol he would gladly have continued to be a friend and brother, but her mother would not suffer him to come inside the doors, and if the broken-hearted maiden could have received his kindnesses, they would have been to her a mockery worse than death. Thus Kathleen Moran's was sometimes the only voice he heard for days, her smile the only smile ever bestowed upon him, and she became, in time, as necessary to his existence as Eve to Adam. They were almost always together. He made longer voyages, and took longer rests; and, when on shore, rarely left the roof under which she dwelt. But he had no definite aim and purpose for which to earn, or to lay up his earnings. He never trusted himself to plan for, or look upon the future. {393} He never yet had dreamed of marrying Kitty Moran. The light had fallen out of his life as effectually as out of Mary Carrol's; and it would have seemed to him as bootless to have heaped together money as it would to her to have finished and arranged her bridal gear.

A year like this told terribly upon him. The indignation of the villagers did not abate with time, and more and more did Michael Herican become an outlaw. It was strange that an event which, in the swift whirl of our metropolitan career, we meet almost every day, should have made such an impression on the minds of sturdy men and women. But it was the first time, in the memory of man, that an Easky lover had proved faithless to an Easky maid, and these rude hearts were as honest in their hate as in their love. He bore it as long as he could, but he was only human; and when the Widow Moran, herself made most uncomfortable by the active hostility of her neighbors, determined to return to Sligo, he was only too willing to go with her. He sold the little cottage where his forefathers had lived and died for many generations, and bade farewell for ever to the home where he had known so many years of happiness, such months of weary suffering.

If Mary Carrol suffered less in conscience and in self-respect than Michael Herican, her suffering made far more fearful havoc with her bodily and mental health. The privations of her childhood had sown the seeds of premature decay; and, at her best and strongest, she was frail and weakly. The shock she had sustained when her life's hopes were shattered had partially unsettled her mind, and physical disease, now slowly developing, sank her into hopeless imbecility. She was not violent or peevish. She never needed any restraint, and, usually, but little care. She would sit all day in the sunlight, listening to the roaring of the sea, her hands folded in her lap, and her great blue eyes gazing out vacantly into the sky. She knew enough to keep herself from danger, and, at long intervals would go alone into the narrow street, and wander up and down, groping her way like a blind person, yet taking no notice of anything that passed around her. It was a sad sight, indeed, for any eyes to see, but, far more so to those who knew her history, and could repeat the story of the cruel wound she bore. There was not among them a heart that did not bleed for her, and scarce a hand that could not have been nerved to vengeance, if the blood of her destroyer could have put away her doom.

The old woman--God knows how old in sorrows!--became more firm and resolute as her daughter grew more helpless. She never wearied in doing all that a mother's heart could prompt, but it was gall and bitterness to her that Mary suffered so uncomplainingly. If she could once have heard her say one hateful word of Michael Herican, it would have satisfied her, but she never did. She learned that Michael had left his home, and had gone with the Morans, and she felt as if she were robbed of her prey. Not that she ever purposed ill to him, but she did wish it, and the scoffs and denunciations of his neighbors seemed to her so many weapons in her hands against him. Alas! for her that this should be the lot of Patrick Carrol's bride.

{394}

It might have been a half year since the widow and her victim left Easky, and the midsummer days had come. Mary Carrol had been so long an invalid, and, in her many wanderings, had been so singularly free from harm, that her absence from the cottage caused her mother no surprise or fear. The village children, as they met her rambling in the fields, would sometimes lead her home, and the seaward-going fishermen would often watch her footsteps on the beach with fond solicitude; but they became accustomed to it by and by, and let her have her way.

One cloudless day in July she had strayed out at early dawn while the dew was scarcely dry, and wandered off along the shore, beyond the furthest cottage. The matron of that house, as she went by, sent out her little boy to see that she came to no danger, but in a moment he returned to say that she was sitting on a broken rock out of the water's reach, and so for the time she was forgotten. The day wore on, and Bridget Davanagh grew lonely in her desolate home. A dread of coming evil fell upon her, and, though her cup already so ran over that she could hardly realize the possibility of further misfortune, she could not shake off the new shadow. Restless and uneasy, she started out to seek her child. She hurried past the village eastwardly along the sands. She peered into every crevice of the rocky coast that was large enough to hide a sea-gull's nest, and hunted behind every fallen fragment that might conceal the object of her quest. Slowly, for it was severest toil to her aged feet, she groped over one mile after another, until the lofty cap of Anghris Head rose up before her. She had never been so near it since that fearful day, long years ago, when she came out to see the mangled body of her young husband lying underneath its stormy crags. And now there came over her an impulse to go there once again; again to visit the place where the waves cast him in their murderous wrath; the place whither she event last to meet him when he last came home to her. So she climbed over the huge boulders, one by one, in the declining sunlight, till she stood directly underneath that ragged spire which Anghris lifts aloft above the waves, and there she saw the spot where her beloved had lain in his sad hour of death. There, too, she found her daughter, lying on the same rocky couch where her father lay before her, one arm beneath her head, her face turned up to heaven in the unbreaking slumber of the dead.

This same midsummer's day brought news, from Sligo to Easky, that Michael Herican had married Kitty Moran, and that the widow's heartless schemes had been accomplished.

The house of Bridget Davanagh was now desolate indeed. Her son lost for ever in the unknown waters. Her daughter sleeping in the village churchyard, bearing the burden of her cross no more. There was no cheer for her in the well-meant gossip of her neighbors. There was no comfort for her in the promise of a land, beyond this mortal, of perpetual rest. If her religious instincts and principles were still alive, they remained dumb and dormant. She could not read. She loved not company. Her few personal necessities rendered much bodily toil superfluous, and, when her work was done, she had no other occupation than to sit down and brood over her sorrows. The range of her thought was narrow. She had no future to look forward to. Her eyes were only on the past, and the past held for her but two figures--her murdered Mary and her Mary's murderer. It was in vain that the good parish priest sought to divert her mind and lead her to better things; for, though she said but little and that quietly, he could see, like all who now came intimately near her, that her faculties were clouded and her control over her will and imagination almost totally destroyed.

{395}

How long she might have lived thus without becoming fully crazed was, fortunately, never tested. A letter came to her one evening, bearing a foreign post-mark, and dotted over with the many colored stamps which tell of journeys upon sea and land. It was the first letter she had ever received. No relative or friend, no acquaintance except Michael Herican, has she out of Easky, and she was sorely puzzled, as she broke the seal and turned the pages up and down and sideways, in the useless attempt to tell from whence it came. She called in a passing school-child to decipher it, and, as he blundered through its weary lines, she sat with her face buried in her hands, rocking her body ceaselessly to and fro. He reached the end and read the signature of "Bernard Davanagh." The widow's boy still lived. She lifted her worn face out of her hands and the tears chased each other down her cheeks. They eased her throbbing brain, and she bade the child go over it again, for of its first reading she had scarcely heard a word except the name. And now she learned that he was in America. He had been left sick on shore, at the last voyage of his ill-fated vessel, and escaped alive. Since then he had been tossed on every sea which bears a name, till, tired of the toil and danger, he had settled in the far-off mining regions of the western continent. He now sent for her and Mary to come out to him, enclosing money and passage certificates for each, and saying that in two month's time he hoped to have them both with him in his new home. It was a long time before the old woman could comprehend the message; but, when she once really understood that Bernard was alive, she would have started on the instant to reach her boy. Her idea of the distance was, that America lay somewhere out beyond Dromore, as far, perhaps, as that was from Easky, and it was with difficulty that the neighbors, who came flocking in when the news went flitting up and down the street, could control her. Those who stayed with her through the night, and those who went back homeward, had settled it, however, before morning dawned, that, though the journey might be fearful and the chances few, it was better she should go and perish by the way, than stay at home to grieve, and craze, and die.

There was not much preparation. Her cottage sold, her furniture distributed among her friends, the other passage-paper given to a woman in Dromore, who eagerly grasped the chance of going out to seek her husband, and Bridget Davanagh left Easky and its graves for ever. The emigrant best knows the weariness and hardship of a steerage passage in a crowded ship, and this old and worn-out woman endured them as a thousand others, old and feeble, have done since then and before. But the long voyage had an end some time, and, in a day after the ship was moored at New York wharves, the mother had found her son. He had a cabin built and furnished, deep in the wild gorge of a mountain, out of whose sides the glittering anthracite was torn by hundreds of tons a day; and here he took her to live and care for him. Not a face around her that she ever saw before; the dialect of their language so differing from her own that she could only here and there make out a word; Bernard himself grown up into a tall, stout, burly man, black with dust and reeking with soot and oil, she longed almost fiercely for her home by the green sea, and wished herself back again a score of times a day. {396} When her homesickness wore off, as it slowly did, and she formed new acquaintances, and grew familiar with the scenes around her; above all, when she began to realize the comforts which the new world gave beyond the old--she became reconciled to her strange life, and seemed almost herself again. Only when, now and then, her spite and hatred to the name of Herican broke out again did her mind reel with its fury; otherwise, she was more like Bridget Davanagh in her early days of second widowhood than she had been for years.

Meanwhile, of Michael Herican. He had married Kitty Moran, as the Easky story said. It was, on his part, an act of sheer despair. Not that he did not love her. His passion had grown stronger and more absorbing every hour, and she well returned it. But it was no calm conclusion of his judgment that led him to unite his life with hers. It was more like the suicide of a felon who sees his fate before him, but would rather die by his own free act, to-day, than anticipate inevitable death to-morrow. When the Widow Moran "went to her own place," her fortune fell to them. He opened a little store, and, for a while, life, cheered by business, seemed more bearable; but misfortune followed him and, by one loss and another, both his credit and his stock were sacrificed. Honest to the last farthing, he stripped himself of everything to pay his debts, and turned himself and his young wife, to whom privation had ever been a stranger, into the streets--to work, or beg, or starve. Then, for a time, he went to sea; but the lone hours of watchful idleness upon the deep gave him too many opportunities for recollection, and he could not endure it. As a common hireling he worked about the docks, and earned by this chance toil a meagre pittance for the bare necessities of life. But he could not settle permanently to anything. Of good abilities, with strong arms and a willing heart, it was this mental burden only which unmanned him, and this pursued him everywhere and always, like an avenging ghost. Then he began to wander. From Sligo they went to Ballina, and thence to Galway, and thence to Dublin, living awhile in each, but evermore a restless, wavering, aimless man. His poor wife suffered fearfully. Deprived of all the comforts she had ever known, and cut down sometimes to a mere apology for food and clothing, she rued the day when she was born; but she never blamed her husband. Through all, she clung to him faithfully; and when she found herself, at last, in the lowest portion of the capital, and living among those whose touch in other days would have been infection, however else she murmured, it was never against him. They stayed in Dublin for a year and more. A child was born there, but it soon died from exposure and insufficient food, and this made the mother's heart uneasy, and she longed to move. A berth fell in his way on board a homeward-bound Canadian timber-ship, and he agreed to go. He also paid the passage of his wife with labor, and, in due time, their weary feet were standing on the shores of a new world, ready for other journeys and, perhaps, better paths.

{397}

But it did not so eventuate. He was the same man still, though under other skies. There was a doom upon him. His family grew on his hands and opened in his heart new chambers of affection, but they could give no ballast to his brain. He could not anchor anywhere. The weird ship that sails up and down antarctic seas in an eternal voyage is no more harborless than was he. He fought the forests, axe in hand, and smote down many pillars of the olden fane. He toiled on board the river-craft that drift to and fro upon the broad St. Lawrence. He was a stevedore in Quebec, a laborer in Montreal. So he worked on from one town to another, fretting away his own existence, wearing out the health and strength of his devoted wife, until he reached the "States," and, by some mysterious fatality, came into the very village where Bernard Davanagh and his mother lived. Here he found work congenial to his tastes. The dark gloom of the long tunnels underground, the ghastly lamps, and, more than all, the exciting danger of the labor, kept his mind on the stretch and drowned his memory more effectually than it had ever been before. He did not know the nearness of Mary Carrol's mother. He would as soon have dreamed of meeting his dead children in the street as her, and his work late and early kept him out of sight, so that they did not hear of him.

But it happened on one Sunday morning, as he went to Mass in the great town, two miles away, that he heard the name of "Bernard" called by some one in the throng. He looked anxiously around him, and had no difficulty in recognizing, in the features of the man addressed, the son of the detested Bernard Davanagh of his youth. Had he not known the contrary, he might have thought it that very father stepped out of his grave. The recognition was not mutual, but the unquiet heart of Michael Herican reeked little of the sacrifice that day, for thinking where this new phase of his life would end. He feared no bodily injury. He had not lost his animal courage by his sufferings. But he felt like Orestes at the banquet, when he dispels with wine the knowledge of the ever-present furies, and then suddenly beholds the gorgon face pressed closely up to his. He saw in this an omen that, go where he would, the wrongs of Mary Carrol must live on outside him, as they did within.

How Bridget Davanagh and her son became aware that Michael Herican and his family were near them, it is of little consequence to know. When they did find it out, however, it was an evil greater in its results to them than to their enemy. Bernard had warmly espoused his mother's hatred, and added to it the natural fierceness of his own disposition. The discovery of her child's betrayer, and an occasional glimpse of him as he went by, revived all the old woman's vengefulness, and aggravated it beyond control. If Kathleen Herican had known all this, sick of her wandering life as she might be, she would not have stayed near them for a single hour. But she did not know it. Bernard and Bridget she had never seen in Easky, and Michael never told her they were here. Thus she, at least, lived on unconsciously, while vengeance sharpened its relentless sword for retribution, and hung it by an ever-weakening hair over the head of him she loved most of all.

Up to the morning of the fatal day no word or sign had passed between Michael Herican and either of the Davanaghs. But, as he went by to his work that morning, they both stood in their cabin door. The old woman could not resist the impulse to curse him as he passed her, and Bernard was as ready with his malison as she. {398} Michael turned up the path that led toward them, and tried to speak in friendliness, but they would not hear him. At last, exasperated by their violence and abuse, he told the mother she was mad--mad as her daughter had been before her. It was a cruel word for him to speak, cruel for them to hear; but he did not mean it. It smote upon him as he hurried off to his work, and the image of the dead Mary came back and upbraided him many times that day. He left his work early, and went home. There was a strange look in his eye which made the timid heart of Kathleen beat faster when she saw it, and he was more than usually kind and tender to her and his child. His half-eaten supper over, he took his woodman's basket, and went out to gather fagots for the morning's fire. On his way home with others who had been on the like errand, as he came opposite the Davanagh cottage, the mother and the son came out and rushed upon him. One struck him with a stone, and felled him to the earth. The other smote him with an axe, and cleft his skull. It was all over in an instant. Not a word was said. The horror-stricken neighbors stood aghast a moment. When they came to their senses, Bernard Davanagh was climbing up the mountain on the further side of the ravine, and Bridget Davanagh, with bolted doors, kept ward in her devoted house alone.

They would have lifted Michael Herican from the roadside where he lay, but he was dead. The red blood oozed out of the gaping wound. It trickled on in narrow streamlets down the path. It clotted on the feet of men and women who came to gaze upon the mangled corpse. It stained the hands, and face, and garments of his wife and baby as they lay sobbing and shrieking on his pulseless breast. It dried up in the purple sunlight of the dying day, and soaked away into the dust and ashes of the trampled street.

I have little else to tell. The circumstances of the story, as I heard them, piece by piece, left on my mind an impression which would not let me stand by and do nothing. I was satisfied that, if not absolutely crazed, the murderess had acted in a moment of exceeding passion, no doubt resulting from the rankling words her victim spoke to her on the morning of that day; and, in her unsettled state of mind, the ordinary presumptions of the law, that passion cannot last, were not reliable. It seemed unjust, to me, that she should suffer the highest penalty known to our law, when probably her guilt was actually less than that of hundreds whom a few years in the state prison give their due. I therefore drew up a petition which the presiding judge and nearly all of the convicting jury signed, praying a commutation of her sentence to imprisonment for life. The prayer was granted, and Bridget Davanagh lives and will die an inmate of the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania.

{399}

The Philosophy Of Immigration.

It is strange that while so many of the most enlightened minds of the country are engaged in the investigation of the mysteries of social and physical sciences, so few, if any, appear to give the least attention to the phenomenon of American immigration; a study which is equal in importance to any that can come within the purview of the economist, and of much more practical value to us, nationally, than most of the developments of nature, considered in her material aspect.

The researches of geologists and astronomers often supply us with curious and pleasing discoveries, and the laws which regulate commerce and labor, manufactures and capital, are doubtless well worth the attention of intelligent public men; but not more so than the habits, qualifications, and destiny of the millions of foreigners who of late years have made their homes among us, and who are still annually coming in myriads to our shores.

It may safely be said that neither ancient nor modern history presents a parallel to this American immigration. The emigration from the plains of Shinar was a dispersion of one people over the surface of the globe, a disintegration of a nation into several fragments, each particle the nucleus of a separate and independent race, speaking a peculiar tongue, and destined to establish distinct laws and forms of religion. Ours is the convergence of many peoples to one common centre, silently arraying themselves under a uniform system of public polity, yielding up their own political predilections, and to a certain extent their creeds and language, and destined eventually to profess one faith and speak one language. Subsequent migrations in the old world offer points as strikingly dissimilar as the first great exodus. Those were nothing else than succeeding waves of population borne from one portion of the earth to the other, generally preceded and heralded by fire and sword, and ending in the subjugation and spoliation of the inhabitants of that country over which they swept with irresistible violence. Our immigrants, on the contrary, come to us in detail, peaceably to enjoy the benefits of our laws and to respect our institutions, with no thought of conquest but such as may be suggested by our yet untilled fields of the west and our comparatively undeveloped mineral treasures.

Viewed in this light, our knowledge of the past gives no rules of guidance in our relations with this new and very important element of our population, and it becomes the duty of every patriot jealous of the welfare and reputation of his land to draw lessons of wisdom from every-day, experience, in order to help direct this perennial flood of life into the most proper and useful channels. A country's true wealth lies primarily in its population; the product of its soil is its surest and most permanent concomitant. To give a helping hand and a word of cheer and advice to those future citizens and parents of citizens is the common duty of humanity and patriotism; to protect them until sufficiently domiciled to be able to protect themselves, is the absolute duty of our legislators.

{400}

The city of New York, being the centre of the commerce of the country, is necessarily the objective point of European emigration, though many of our neighboring seaports receive their proportionate share of the precious human freight. It will be scarcely credited that in the space of twenty-one years, ending with 1867, there arrived at this city alone no less than _three million eight hundred and thirty-two thousand four hundred and four_ immigrants, or a number almost equal in amount to the entire white population of the country at the time of the Revolution. [Footnote 117] Those arrivals included natives of every country in Europe, China, Turkey, Arabia, East and West Indies, South America, Mexico, and the lower British Provinces. Emigrants from Ireland and Germany were of course largely in excess of all others. Until 1861, these two countries were nearly equally represented, the numbers from them for fourteen years previously being respectively 1,107,034 and 979,575, or nearly four fifths of the whole arrivals. Since that year the German element has largely preponderated, and is now equal to one half the entire immigration. England, Scotland, France, and Switzerland follow next in rotation, the northern countries of Europe supplying a respectable number in proportion to their sparse population, and the southern countries, like Spain and Portugal, comparatively few.

[Footnote 117: We are indebted to Bernard Casserly, Esq., the efficient General Superintendent under the Commissioners of Emigration, for the following official report of arrivals at Castle Garden:

1847, 129,062 1848, 189,176 1849, 220,791 1850, 212,603 1851, 289,601 1852, 300,992 1853, 284,945 1854, 319,223 1855, 136,233 1856, 142,342 1857, 183,773 1858, 78,589 1859, 79,322 1860, 105,162 1861, 65,539 1862, 76,306 1863, 167,844 1864, 182,396 1865, 196,352 1866, 233,418 1867, 242,730

Total, 3,832,404]

It were beyond the scope of this article to enter into an extended inquiry as to the cause of this unequal abandonment of nationality on the part of our new denizens. The misgovernment of Ireland, which culminated in the terrible famine of 1846-7-8, and the natural affinity of the people of that country for the advantages afforded by free governments, will easily account for the immensity of their numbers who have sought political and social independence in this republic; while the low rewards of labor and the heavy burdens of taxation experienced by the German in his own home, form powerful incentives in his economical mind to change his condition and abandon the fatherland of which he is so justly proud. The same reasons, to a lesser extent perhaps, operate on Englishmen and Scotchmen, with the additional one of the rapid growth of our infant manufactures requiring the experience of the workmen of Leeds, Birmingham, and Glasgow. Spain and Portugal, the pioneers of immigration in former ages, though now not essentially an emigrant people, as a general rule prefer Central and South America, where their languages are spoken and their religion universally established; while France, of all European countries the least disposed to colonization, has, on account of political troubles, sent us many of her best mechanics, and Italy some of her finest artists.

With the influx of such vast unorganized masses of strangers, representing all conditions, ages, and degrees, into one port, and considering the unusual trials and dangers of a long sea-voyage, it is not to be wondered at that a great amount of sickness and distress should be developed; but we are glad to know that all that private benevolence and judicious legislation could do has been done for the unfortunate. {401} Refuges for the destitute and hospitals for the sick have been established in this neighborhood. Employment for the idle, food for the hungry, and transportation for the penniless have been provided by the Commissioners of Emigration with a free and even profuse liberality. Nearly thirty _per centum_of the total arrivals, each year, have been thus benefited without any cost whatever to the state, the money required being derived from a fund created mainly by a small commutation-tax on each emigrant passenger. Though this fund, as we have said, is especially intended for the protection and support of immigrants, a portion of it has necessarily been expended in the erection or purchase of valuable buildings, requisite for the purposes of the commission, all of which will revert to the state when no longer required for their original objects.[Footnote 118]

[Footnote 118: This property, besides some on Staten Island, consists of one hundred and eight acres of land with water rights, etc., on Ward's Island, in the East River, upon which the commissioners have built very spacious and substantial structures, such as five hospitals capable of accommodating eight hundred patients; four houses of refuge for destitute males and females; a nursery, lunatic asylum, and two chapels, besides a number of residences for the officers of these institutions, out-offices, etc.--_See Commissioners' Report_, 1868.]

But this is not the only direct pecuniary advantage which we derive from immigration. In 1856 it was ascertained that the average cash means of every person landing at Castle Garden was about sixty-eight dollars, a sum which, considering the improved condition of those who have since arrived, must amount to much more _per capita_, still, taking the standard of that year, we find that in twenty-one years over three hundred and twenty millions of dollars have been brought to the country and put into direct circulation. Its effect on our shipping interest will be appreciated when we learn that during 1867 there were engaged in the passenger business alone, at this port, two hundred and forty-five sailing vessels and four hundred and four steamships, requiring large investments of capital and employing thousands of men.

It would be impossible to estimate the indirect stimulus given to the general interests of the Union by the acquisition of so much skilled labor and brawny muscle. We can see its developments, however, in the rapid rise of our towns and cities, the superior condition of arts and manufactures, and the extraordinary increase of our agricultural productions. Coming from so many lands, each heretofore celebrated for some peculiar excellence, the European artisan, while he does not necessarily excel his American fellow-workmen in the aggregate, contributes his special knowledge to the general stock of industrial information. The Swede brings his knowledge of metallurgy, the Englishman of woolens, the Italian of silk; the German, of grape culture, and the Frenchman, of those finer fabrics and arts of design for which his country has been so long famous. When the ancient Grecian sculptor designed to make a representation of the human form in all its perfection, he selected, it is said, six beautiful living models, copying from each some member more perfect than the rest, and thus, by the combination of several excellences, modelled a perfect and harmonious whole, in which were combined grace, beauty, and harmony. So the republic, availing itself of the genius and skill which every country sends us so superabundantly, may attain that general superiority in the arts of peace which was formerly divided among many nations.

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The destination of this flood of knowledge and strength forms not the least interesting phase of this subject. From the data before us, we find that the State of New York retains about forty-four per cent; the Western States receive over twenty five; the Middle States, eleven; the New England States, eight; the Pacific slope, two, and the Southern States a little less than two per cent, the residue being scattered among various portions of the continent outside of our jurisdiction. The comparatively small number who have sought homes in the South may be accounted for partly by the occurrence of our late civil war, but principally by the peculiar organization of labor in that section before the abolition of slavery. In [the] future we may expect a much greater percentage of people, particularly from Southern Europe, to assist in developing the almost inexhaustible wealth of such states as Georgia and Tennessee. It is to be regretted that no record has been kept of the nationalities and occupations of those who so instinctively choose their favorite sections of our country; but our own everyday experience, and the laws of labor and climate, enable us to form a sufficiently accurate general opinion. Irishmen, though not adverse to agricultural pursuits, generally prefer large cities and towns, like those of New England, where skilled labor is least required in the production of fabrics. The Germans, on the contrary, though quite numerous in New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, avoid New England, and prefer farming in the Western States, in some of which they already form a majority of the rural population. Englishmen are to be met with either in the Eastern factories or in the Atlantic cities, keeping up a business connection with their countrymen at home. Frenchmen find a market for their superior mechanical skill amid the luxury of large cities, and are seldom tillers of the soil, while a Welsh miner (if he do[es] not find his way to Salt Lake) goes as naturally to Pennsylvania, and the slate quarries of New York and Vermont, as the Swede and Norwegian do to the northern parts of Michigan and Wisconsin. The mode of emigration may have something to do with these selections. The continental nations, particularly the Germans, understand migration better than their insular neighbors, always leaving home in families and groups, and settling down in small colonies where, as in all new countries, union is strength; but the inhabitants of Ireland and the other islands of the United Kingdom too frequently emigrate, one member of a family at a time, without system or organization, to the great disruption of those ties of relationship which are always a bond of unity and a source of comfort, amid the hardships attendant on great changes of habitation.

Considering the various manners, habits, and opinions of so many nationalities, some of them, if not repugnant, at least strange to the native-born of America, the power of absorption possessed by the people of the United States is astonishing. Columbia, taking to her ample bosom the fiery Celt and the phlegmatic Teuton, the self-asserting Briton and the _débonnaire_ Gaul, smiles complacently at their peculiarities, or, remembering the good qualities which underlie such eccentricities, waits patiently for time and example to cure them; and we venture to assert that the German feels himself as free to indulge in his national games and festivals in New York or Buffalo as if he were in Vienna or Berlin, and the Irishman can dance as lively and attend a wake or a wedding with as light a heart, and as free from hindrance as if he had never left his own green isle. {403} In justice, also, to the immigrant, it must be said that, once settled in America, he gives to its government his hearty and unqualified allegiance, notwithstanding the occasional spasmodic attempts of a despicable few to subject him to ridicule and social ostracism. How many instances do we find of worthy men who, having gained a competency here, acting upon that natural and beautiful love of native land, return to the homes of their childhood to end their days, but who almost invariably return to us and the scenes of their manhood's toils and triumphs!

There are two other sources of accession to our population, independent of that of acquisition of territory, which are worthy of notice. The first, of present importance, is the passage of our borders by natives of Lower Canada, and which, though now more than usually remarkable, has been going on quietly but steadily for at least a hundred years. [Footnote 119]

[Footnote 119: Five hundred French Canadians took passage at Montreal, C. E., for the United States, in one week, during March, 1869.]

The French Canadians are a decidedly _unique_ people. Originally from Normandy, early deprived of the protection of France, and practically cut off from their fellow-countrymen by the cessation of emigration, they have still retained all the primitive simplicity, keenness, and hardiness of their ancestors. Increasing in numbers with extraordinary rapidity, they have tenaciously adhered to their faith, language, and manners of life, in face of the opposition of a dominant and intolerant master. They have not only, so far, held their own against English laws and customs; but, despite the increase of British colonists among them, they have nearly, if not altogether, kept pace in numbers with the English-speaking inhabitants of the two Canadas. They have likewise constantly shot forth numerous hardy offshoots which have taken root and flourished in the far west. Detroit, La Salle, Dubuque, St. Louis, St. Paul, Sault Ste. Marie, and many other western centres of wealth and population, were first selected and settled by those enterprising followers of Jacques Cartier and the missionary fathers, and their names are still honored in those places. Many of the later immigrants from Canada find employment in our seaboard cities, but the majority either still seek the northwest, as being more congenial in climate, and offering more opportunities for that spirit of adventure which distinguishes the race, or go directly to California, where so many of the French people have already settled.

The Chinese immigration to the Pacific coast is one of the most unaccountable events in the history of that section of our country, and one which may well attract serious public attention. Those people, remarkable for centuries for their ingenuity and industry, as well as for their exclusiveness and dislike to foreigners, have at last crossed the Rubicon that confined them within the limits of the Celestial empire, and when we reflect that that empire contains within itself nearly half the population of the world, we can readily suppose that a few millions, more or less, transplanted to the new world would not very perceptibly diminish its influence or strength. The Chinamen are represented as quiet and docile, economical in their way of living, and working for small wages, and as being eminently adapted for the building of railroads, and the development of the mineral wealth with which nature has so lavishly enriched the territory on both slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and, being as yet only a moiety of the population, are easily controlled. But, should the tide of Asiatic emigration commence to flow freely eastward, the gravest fears are entertained by many that it would lead either to the systematic oppression or even partial enslavement of the Chinese themselves, or to the deterioration of the Caucasians of that beautiful region, soon destined to become the garden of America.

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Taking into account, however, the great adaptability of all classes of immigrants in this country to the condition of affairs by which they find themselves surrounded, the fears of even a Chinese invasion appear groundless. Every day and year bring with them large accessions of energetic and healthy minds to the ranks of the native-born Americans--some the children of the sons of the soil; others, of adopted citizens; but all American in spirit and purpose, no matter what their parentage. Even this uniformity extends to their _physique_, and it has been remarked by visitors to our shores that the native-born boy or girl, however dissimilar the peculiar physical traits of their progenitors, presents strong points of resemblance in figure and face to each other. Something of this may be accounted for by food and climate, training and association, but much more by the fact of the admixture of races constantly going forward. The heavy features of the northern European are more or less elongated and brightened into thoughtful cheerfulness in his American child, while the angularity and pugnacity supposed to be characteristic of the Celtic countenance are reduced to finer lines of grace and repose in their cis-Atlantic descendants.

Taking American character as it stood at the beginning of this century, we cannot deny our admiration of its essential features, though many of its details were susceptible of improvement. Our stateliness had a tendency to what is now generally called Puritanism, and our simplicity was apt to degenerate into parsimoniousness. Our ancestors wanted a little more breadth of view, a little leaven of the poetry of life to mix with its stern realities, and a great deal more love for innocent amusements, and taste for the fine arts, which make man feel more kindly to his fellow, and raise him so high above irrational animals. Immigration has done much for us in this way, and we have done something for ourselves. If we have extended to the strangers within our gates hospitality, protection, and the rewards of labor, they have paid us with the sculpture of Italy, the music of Germany, the melodies of Ireland, and the fashions of France. It has not only done this, but it has reproduced and naturalized the love for them, and made them "racy of the soil." But what is of more importance than all, it has efficiently helped the spread of true religious faith over this portion of the continent. True, there were Catholics and very good ones here, even in colonial times; but they were few in number, and so scattered over the country that they were in constant danger either of losing their faith for want of spiritual ministration or were powerless to assert their proper position before the opposing sects. We have now not only numbers, but the influence that flows from numbers, and generously and judiciously has our immigrant population used the power inherent in it. During the late civil strife which so afflicted our country, and endangered the Union, citizens by adoption vied with citizens by birth in defence of our institutions, and in their contributions to works of piety, charity, and education they have been so profuse that to others the results of their charities seem little short of miraculous. {405} Even those who have come among us of a different creed, or no creed at all, have here a better opportunity of learning the truth than they have had in their own countries. Unfettered by statecraft or sectional laws, the Catholic priesthood have a field of labor in America such as the whole of Europe cannot present, and an audience composed of as many races as the sons of Adam represent. Realizing the great things done by our immigrants, and what may yet be expected from them, we hope to see their protection and welfare occupy a portion, at least, of the attention of our national and state authorities. But it is not enough that the law has so completely thrown its protecting shield over them. Individual charity can do much to supply the deficiencies which every general law presents. In the city of New York, especially, where a great deal has already been done by the commissioners to whose especial care the immigrants are entrusted by law, much remains still to be performed, in view of the hundreds of thousands of strangers who may annually be expected among us, for the next decade, at least.

Vigil.

I.

Mournful night is dark around me, Hushed the world's conflicting din; All is still and all is tranquil-- But this restless heart within!

II.

Wakeful still I press my pillow, Watch the stars that float above, Think of _One_ for me who suffered; Think, and weep for grief and love!

III.

Flow, ye tears, though in your streaming Oft yon stars of his grow dim! Sweet the tender grief _he_ wakens, Blest the tears that flow for him!'

Richard Storrs Willis.

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The Geography of Roses.

Wherever man has found a dwelling-place, bounteous nature has conferred on him not only the necessaries of life, but a share also of its pleasures. From "sultry India to the pole," the useful and the beautiful are met with side by side. The bright poppy and the blue cornflower rise with the wheat-ear in the same broad field; the sweet-smelling amaryllis and the delicate iris unfold their variegated petals among the thick stalks of the African maize, while the marsh-rose and the water-lily float on the surface of the waters that inundate the rice-grounds of Egypt and India.

It is evident that nature regards these fair blossoms as indispensable to man's happiness as those other more substantial gifts are to his comfort and existence; and so, with lavish hand, she scatters them on the mountain and in the valley, amidst plains of burning sand, or half-buried in snow and ice.

"Floral apostles! that in dewy splendor Weep without woe, and blush without a crime, Oh! may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender, Your law sublime.

"Not useless are ye, flowers! though made for pleasure. Blooming o'er field and wave, by day and night, From every source your sanction bids me treasure Harmless delight.

"Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoary For such a world of thought could furnish scope? Each fading calyx a _memento mori_, Yet fount of hope."

The rose, fairest of the floral train, has been said by some botanists to take its birth in Asia. "The east, the cradle of the first man," writes a French author, "is also the native place of the rose; the flowery hillsides near the chain of the frowning Caucasus were the first spots on earth adorned with this charming shrub." We do not incline to this opinion, for the researches of science have proved that the lovely flower is found in every clime, from the arctic circle to the torrid zone, and that under every sun it seems to be endowed with some different grace. The same species is sometimes met with over a whole continent; another is unknown beyond the limits of a certain province; while another again never leaves the mountain or dale where it first shed its sweetness on the air. Thus Pollin's rose (_rosa Pollinaria_) is never found but at the foot of Monte Baldo in Italy, nor the Lyon rose (_rosa Lyonii_) out of the State of Tennessee; while the field-rose (_rosa arvensis_) trails its long branches and clusters of white flowers all over Europe, and the dog-rose (_rosa canina_) displays its pale pink petals and scarlet hips, not only throughout Europe, but also in northern Asia and a part of America.

So numerous, indeed, are the varieties of this favorite of nature, that we will not attempt to describe all that are peculiar to each country; we will confine our attention to those only most remarkable for their beauty, and most easy of culture.

First on the list of American roses, and far away among the eternal ice that covers the almost desert regions which lie between the seventieth and seventy-fifth degrees of north latitude, blooms _rosa blanda_, the charming _soft-colored_ rose, which as soon as the sun has melted the snow in the valleys opens its large corolla, always solitary on its graceful stem, to the warm breathings from the south. {407} We can picture to ourselves the delight of the stunted, amphibious Greenlander, when, the long months of the fierce winter past, he suddenly meets the expanding blossom. He smiles as he remembers how his young wife mourned last year over the death of the flowers, and he plucks the first rose of Greenland's short summer to carry back to her as a proof that she must ever hope and trust.

"Why must the flowers die? Prisoned they lie In the cold tomb, heedless of tears and rain. O doubting heart! They only sleep below The soft white ermine snow: While winter winds shall blow, To breathe and smile on you again!"

_Rosa blanda's_ nearest neighbor is the pretty _rosa rap_ of Hudson's Bay, whose slender, graceful branches are laden in the early summer with corymbs of pale pink double flowers. Nature herself has doubled _rosa rapa's_ sweet corolla, as if she had foreseen that the wandering tribes of Esquimaux who inhabit those inclement shores would have too much to do in their never-ending struggle to pick up a precarious existence ever to busy themselves with the culture of the cold, unyielding soil.

_Rosa blanda_ and _rosa rapa_ are still at home in Labrador and Newfoundland, but with them two remarkable varieties--the ash-leaved rose, (_rosa fraxinifolia_,) with small red heart-shaped petals, and the lustrous rose, (_rosa nitida_,) which shelters its brilliant red cup-like flower and fruit beneath the scraggy trees that grow sparsely along the coast. The lustrous rose is a great favorite with the young Esquimaux maidens, who dress their black hair with its shining cups, and wear bunches of it, "embowered in its own green leaves," in the bosom of their seal-skin robes.

The United States possess a great number of different roses. At the foot of almost every rocky acclivity we meet the rose with diffuse branches, (_rosa diffusa_,) whose pink flowers, growing in couples on their stem, appear at the beginning of the summer. On the slopes of the Pennsylvanian hills blooms the small-flowered rose, (_rosa parviflora_,) an elegant little species bearing double flowers of the most delicate pink; it may fairly vie in beauty with all other American roses. In most of the Middle States, on the verge of the "mossy forests, by the bee-bird haunted," we find the straight-stemmed rose, (_rosa stricta_,) with light red petals, and the brier-leaved rose, (_rosa rubifolia_,) with small, pale red flowers, growing generally in clusters of three.

The silken rose (_rosa setigera_) opens its great red petals, shaped like an inverted heart, beneath the "cloistered boughs" of South Carolina's woods, and in Georgia the magnificent smooth-leaved rose, (_rosa loevigata_,) known in its native wilds as the Cherokee rose, climbs to the very summit of the great forest trees, then swings itself off in festoons of large white flowers glancing like stars amidst their glossy, dark green leaves.

When we leave the hills and woodlands, we find the marshes of the Carolinas gay with the _rosa evratina_, the _rosa Carolina_, and the _rosa lucida_, the resplendent rose, whose corymbs of brilliant red flowers overtop the reeds among which they love to blossom; while, nearer to the setting sun, we see the pink petals of Wood's rose (_rosa Woodsii_) reflected in the waters of the great Missouri.

The last American rose we shall note in this slight sketch is the rose of Montezuma, (_rosa Montezumae_,) a solitary, sweet-scented, pale red flower with defenceless branches. It was discovered by Humboldt and Bonpland on the elevated peaks of the Cerro Ventoso, in Mexico, and is perhaps the very rose of which the unhappy Guatimozin thought when writhing on his bed of burning charcoal.

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These are some of the species yet known to belong peculiarly to the western hemisphere; but it is highly probable that many others remain still to be discovered. When we remember the prodigality with which nature lavishes her gifts, we cannot believe that while France alone possesses twenty-four varieties of roses, all described by De Candolle in his _Flore Française_, the great American continent owns but fifteen.

We will commence our European rose search in that most unpromising of all spots, Iceland; there, where volcanic fire and polar ice seem to dispute possession of the unhappy soil. So scarce is every kind of vegetation in this rude clime, that the miserable inhabitants are frequently compelled to feed their cows, sheep, and horses on dried fish. And yet even here, growing from the fissures of the barren rocks, a solitary cup-shaped rose opens its pale petals to the transient sunbeams of summer. This hardy little plant is, as its name, _rosa spinosissima_, indicates, covered all over with prickles. Its cream-colored flowers, numerous and solitary, are sometimes tinged with pink on the outside, and its fruit, at first red, becomes perfectly black when ripe.

In Lapland, too, a country almost as disinherited by nature as Iceland, the pretty little May rose (_rosa maïalis_) expands its bright red corolla even before the tardy sun has melted away all the snow that has covered it during nine long months. A little later on, in the full blush of the short summer, "when the pine has a fringe of softer green," the Lapp maidens gather the blood-red flowers of the _rosa rubella_ among the stunted trees whose parasitical mosses and lichens afford a scanty nourishment to the flocks of reindeer, sole riches of the land.

The May rose is also found in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, together with the cinnamon rose (_rosa cinnamomea_,) and several other species.

England claims ten indigenous roses, many of them, however, exceedingly difficult to distinguish from each other. The most common is the dog-rose or Eglantine, found in every hedge and thicket, and very precious to rose-cultivators, its elegant, straight, vigorous stems being admirable for receiving grafts. The light pink corolla is slightly perfumed. In olden times the scarlet fruit was made into conserve, and highly esteemed in tarts, but it seems now to be abandoned to the birds. The _rosa arvensis_, a small shrub with long trailing branches and white flowers, and the burnet-leaved rose, which resembles the _rosa spinosissima_ of Iceland, are also very frequently met. But the pride of the southern counties is the _rosa rubiginosa_, the true sweet-briar, with deep pink petals and leaves of the most delicious fragrance; a flower that seems to belong as peculiarly to the soft English spring as the primrose and violet, and like them to be emblematic of the English girl, delicate in her beauty, modest and retiring in her garb and manners, and diffusing around her an atmosphere of gentle sweetness. Such, at least, was the English girl five-and-twenty years ago; it is said that hoops and boots and croquet have produced strange changes. Alas! that simplicity and modesty and sweetness should ever go out of fashion.

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In the Scotch fir-woods is found the rose with rolled petals, (_rosa involuta_.) The large flowers are red and white, and the remarkably sombre leaves when rubbed between the fingers give forth a strong smell of turpentine, an odor the plant has probably acquired from the resinous trees that shelter it. All the rugged mountains of Scotland possess their roses; the _rosa sabini_, with clustering flowers, and the villous or hairy rose, (_rosa villosa_,) with white or deep red, are the most worthy of notice.

It is only in the environs of Belfast that we encounter the Irish rose, (_rosa hibernica_,) a species somewhat resembling both the _spinosissima_ and the _canina_. The other roses of beautiful Ireland are identical with those of England.

The fields and forests of France have been richly endowed with nature's favorite flower. Our now well-known friend _canina_ flourishes there also in every hedge and by every wood-side, together with a pretty white rose, (_rosa alba_,) which has been very successfully cultivated in gardens. The smiling hill-sides around Dijon are gay with the lovely little crimson double flowers of the rose of Champagne, (_rosa parviflora;_) and, in the south, the yellow rose (_rosa eglantaria_) and its varieties surpass all others in the richness of their coloring; their petals sometimes gleaming with the brightest gold, sometimes deepening into a brilliant orange red, sometimes reproducing both hues in vivid flecks and streaks. The woods of Auvergne are bedecked with the small red solitary corollas of the cinnamon rose, (_rosa cinnamomea_,) so called from the color of its stalks; and in the department of the eastern Pyrenees the musk-rose blooms spontaneously in magnificent corymbs. This exquisitely scented species is also extensively cultivated for its aromatic essential oil; one of its kindred is the nutmeg rose, a pretty flower that smells of the spice.

The Province rose, so often remarkable for its variegated petals of white, crimson, and pink, is a variety of the rose of France, (_rosa gallica_,) a species that has given horticulturists a great number of beautiful offshoots.

Crossing the Pyrenean mountains, we again meet with the musk-rose, but this time in close companionship with the rose of Spain, (_rosa hispanica_,) whose bright red petals expand in the month of May.

In the Balearic Islands the climbing branches of the evergreen rose (_rosa semper-virens_,) are seen constantly arrayed in lustrous green leaves mingled with innumerable white perfumed flowers. This beautiful rose is also found in other parts of the south of Europe, and in Barbary.

We have already mentioned Polin's rose, a sweet Italian blossom which never strays from the foot of Monte Baldo, in the neighborhood of Verona. Its large crimson corollas open in handsome clusters.

Sicily and Greece possess the gluey rose, (_rosa glutinosa,_) a small, red, solitary flower, with glandular, viscous leaflets.

Germany is poorer in native roses than any other part of Europe; nevertheless nowhere do the blossoms of the field-rose display such beauty, unless, indeed, among the mountains of Switzerland. Nowhere else are they so large, so deeply tinted, and _double_. Germany also gives birth to the curious turbinated rose, (_rosa turbinata_,) whose double corolla rests on a top-shaped ovary.

The whole chain of the Alps abounds with roses. The field-rose, and the ruby-red Alpine rose, (_rosa alpina_,) an elegant shrub which has contributed many esteemed varieties to our gardens, bloom in admirable luxuriance in every forest glade and mountain dingle; while the red-leaved rose, (_rosa rubrifolia_,) with red stalks and dark red petals, stands out in the summer landscape, a charming contrast to the green foliage of the surrounding trees.

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The leaves of another species growing among the pines and firs of these elevated regions, the rose with prickly leaflets, (_rosa spinulifolia_,) emit when rubbed the same odor of turpentine that we have already noticed in the _rosa involuta_of Scotland. It is singular to observe that the only two roses we know with this smell are both natives of pine-covered mountains.

The east has for ages been esteemed the home of flowers; almost as soon as we can lisp, we are taught that

"In eastern lands they talk with flowers, And they tell in a garland their loves and cares; Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers On its leaves a mystic language bears."

And in joyous youth who has not dreamed of that "bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream," so sweetly sung by the Irish bard? The very name of India reminds one of Nourmahal and of that most enchanting of all feasts, "the feast of roses."

It will then scarcely surprise any one to be told that Asia, the birthplace of the great human family, is also the birthplace of more varieties of roses than all the other parts of the world put together. Thirty-nine species have been discovered indigenous to this favored portion of the globe, fifteen of which belong to the Chinese empire.

One of the prettiest of these fifteen is the Lawrence rose, (_rosa Lawrenceana_,) a fairy-like bush, six inches high, with flowers not much larger than a silver dime, blooming all the year round. By the side of this pigmy tree, which we must not forget to observe is remarkable for the symmetry of its proportions, is often found the many-flowered rose, (_rosa multiflora_,) whose flexible branches, rising sometimes to the height of sixteen feet, are covered in the early summer with magnificent clusters of pale pink double flowers.

Among the many double Chinese roses, the small-leaved one (_rosa microphylla_) is highly prized and most assiduously cultivated in its native land. Its delicate foliage and pale pink very double flowers are well known also to the rose-fanciers of the United States. Another beautiful variety, the _rosa Banksiae_, climbs the rocky fells of China, hiding their rugged barrenness with a living curtain of verdure, enamelled with multitudes of little drooping flowers of a yellowish white, which exhale the sweet odor of violets.

Cochin-China, with these same species, lays claim to two others that we must notice; the very thorny rose, (_rosa spinosissima_,) with scentless flesh-colored petals, and the white rose, (_rosa alba_,) which we also find indigenous in France, Lombardy, and other parts of Europe. Japan, besides the roses of China, possesses the _rosa rugosa_, the only one peculiar to the clime.

Passing on to Hindostan, we may believe that the tiger which prowls along the burning shores of the Bay of Bengal ofttimes crouches under the boughs blooming with the lovely white corollas of the many-bracted rose (_rosa involucrata_) to make his deadly spring, and that the crocodiles of the Ganges find secure hiding-places to lie in wait for their prey, beneath the ever-succeeding red blossoms and never-fading luxuriant foliage of the _rosa semperflorens_. How often, all the world over, are sweetest things but lurking-places for pain and death!

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Among the hills of the peninsula we meet the large-leaved rose, (_rosa macrophylla_,) the tips of whose white petals are each stained with a small bright red spot; and on the margin of the sunny lakes of cool Cashmere, the milk-white flowers of Lyell's rose, (_rosa Lyellii_,) a beautiful species that has been successfully acclimatized in France.

In the gardens of Kandahar, Samarcand, and Ispahan the rose _tree_ (_rosa arborea_) is cultivated; a real tree, with wide-spreading branches, covered in the spring with snowy flowers of the richest perfume, making fragrant the surrounding hill and dales. In Persia we also find the barberry-leaved rose, (_rosa berberifolia_,) a singular variety which displays a star-like yellow corolla marked in the centre with a deep crimson stain. So unlike is this flower to all others of the family that one feels almost inclined to deny its claim to any relationship with the queen of flowers. Science, however, has decided that the _rosa berberifolia_ is a true rose.

Further on to the west, beneath "the sultry blue of Syria's heaven," we encounter the lovely corymbs of the damask rose, (_rosa damascena_,) with crimson velvet or variegated petals and gold-colored stamens. It is said that the valiant knights who accompanied the French king Saint Louis to the Crusades brought back with them to France this beautiful flower, an ever-living witness of their prowess in the Holy Land. It is as beloved by the honey-bees of Europe as its wilder sisters on the sweet banks of Jordan have ever been by the blossom-rifling rovers of Palestine.

As the rose-seeker wanders forth from Syria toward the north he is arrested for a moment by the vivid yellow double flowers of the _rosa sulfurea_, but has scarcely time to admire them, graceful though they be, before he catches sight of the loveliest and most fragrant of all roses, the _rosa centifolia_, the hundred-leaved rose, the rose of the nightingale, the rose of the poet!

"Rose! what dost thou here? Bridal, royal rose! How, 'midst grief and fear, Canst thou thus disclose That fervid hue of love which to thy heart-leaf glows?

"Smilest thou, gorgeous flower? Oh! within the spells Of thy beauty's power Something dimly dwells At variance with a world of sorrows and farewells.

"All the soul forth-flowing In that rich perfume, All the proud life glowing In that radiant bloom, Have they no place but _here_, beneath th' o'ershadowing tomb?

"Crown'st thou but the daughters Of our tearful race? Heaven's own purest waters Well might wear the trace Of thy consummate form, melting to softer grace.

"Will that clime enfold thee With immortal air? Shall we not behold thee Bright and deathless there? In spirit-lustre clothed, transcendently more fair!"

The valleys of Circassia and Georgia are the birthplace of this most beautiful of flowers, of whose exquisite form, color, and perfume even Mrs. Hemans's rapturous verses can give no idea.

The fierce rose (_rosa ferox_) is sometimes found mingling its great red flowers with those of _rosa centifolia_, and the pulverulent rose (_rosa pulverulenta_) dwells near them on the declivities of the Peak of Manzana.

As we hasten on through the dreary steppes of Russian Asia, we meet the sad-looking yellowish rose, dismal in aspect as the land it lives in, and more remarkable for its great pulpy hip than for its flower. A little nearer to the north, the handsome, large-flowered rose (_rosa grandiflora_) expands its elegant corolla in the form of an antique vase, and on the plains lying at the foot of the Ural mountains the reddish rose, (_rosa rubella_,) with petals sometimes rich and deep in color, but more often faint and faded-looking, gladdens for a moment the heart-sore Polish exile as he wends his weary way to his living grave, faint and faded-looking as the flower that reminds him of his distant home.

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Despite the cold breath of the frozen ocean, the acicular rose (_rosa acicularis_) lives and thrives on its shores, and regularly opens its pale-red solitary blossoms at the first call of the short-lived Siberian summer. The icy breezes of the frigid zone may have done much, however, toward developing the ill-natured tendency to long, needle-like thorns to which this rose owes its uncouth name.

Omitting ten or twelve other varieties, we will conclude the list of the indigenous roses of Asia with the rose of Kamtschatka, (_rosa Kamtschatica_,) a beautiful solitary flower of a pinkish white color, and bearing some resemblance to the _rosa rugosa_ of Japan.

The roses of Africa are still to be discovered; its vast unexplored regions perhaps contain many as beautiful as those we possess, but at present we are only acquainted with four or five species, one of which, the dog-rose, so common all over Europe, is a native of Egypt. Among the mountains of Abyssinia blooms a pretty red variety with evergreen foliage, and on the borders of that "wild expanse of lifeless sand," the great Sahara in Egypt, and on the plains of Tunis and of Morocco, the corymbs of the white musk-rose (_rosa moschata_) perfume the ambient air. This charming flower is also indigenous to the Island of Madeira.

We have thus taken a bird's-eye view of the rose's _habitat_, passing over much of interesting, much of curious that has been written about the favorite flower. We might go on and mention the singular and marvellous virtues attributed to it by the ancients; we might (were we learned) learnedly discourse on the Island of Rhodes, whose coins are found bearing the effigy of the rose; of the rose-noble, and the old English fashion of wearing a rose behind the ear; we might describe the gardens of Ghazipour and the whole process of extracting the delicious attar of roses; we might hint at the mysterious influence the scented blossom appears to exercise over some strangely organized individuals, who seem capable "of dying of a rose, in aromatic pain;" but we prefer to conclude here our sketch of the geography of roses.

Unlearned and superficial as we well know it is, it may show some pleasant meanings to the young lover of flowers, and awaken his curiosity to examine for himself the floral treasures that bloom in every field, garden, and grove. Such a study will do more toward filling his heart with a spirit of love and peace, and elevating his mind above purely material cares, than any other pursuit; for

"Where does the Wisdom and the Power divine In a more bright and sweet reflection shine?"

"From nature up to nature's God" is the natural result of all scientific investigations which are carried on with a real capacity of observation and a sincere love of truth. Feeling and thought, purified and sanctified by constant intercourse with the high objects of life, with the enduring things of nature, fail not to recognize the "Wisdom and the Spirit of the universe" in his works.

"Were I, O God! in churchless lands remaining, Far from all voice of teachers or divines, My soul would find, in flowers of thy ordaining, Priests, sermons, shrines!"

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Spanish Life and Character. [Footnote 120]

[Footnote 120: _Impressions of Spain_. By Lady Herbert. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1869.

_Letters from Spain_. By William Cullen Bryant. 12mo. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

_Voyage en Espagne_. Par M. Eugène Poitou. 8vo, pp. 483. Tours: A. Mame et Fila. 1869.]

Lady Herbert strikes the key-note of her narrative of Spanish travel about the middle of the book. "Catholicism in Spain," she remarks, "is not merely the religion of the people: _it is their life_." Precisely because she feels this life, and, despite her English common sense, sympathizes with the Spanish people in their strong religious sentiment, she describes them with a rare fidelity, and gives us, if not a highly colored, a very vivid picture. No traveller who is not a Catholic can paint Spain as she is. Mr. Bryant looked at the people with a kindly eye; but he did not understand them. From him, as well as from the common run of English and American tourists, we get mere surface sketches--pleasant enough to read, perhaps, but that is all. Protestant travellers see no more of the popular life and character than if they sailed over the country in a balloon. They find the diligences marvels of antiquated discomfort; the railways, miracles of unpunctuality and slowness; travel, a hardship which there is little attempt to alleviate. They find that in Spain no Spaniard is ever in a hurry, and no stranger is allowed to be so either. If they are kept shivering at a roadside station three or four hours in the midst of the night, waiting for some lumbering railway train, on a seatless, unsheltered platform, they get no commiseration from the surly officials but an exhortation to "paciencia." If government is bad and robbers are bold, the Spaniard goes on sipping his sugared water and repeats, "Paciencia, paciencia!" If the country is two or three generations behind the rest of Europe in all the appliances of material comfort, why, "_Paciencia, paciencia!_" That is the great panacea for all the ills of human life. These peculiarities, the wretchedness and extravagant charges of all the hotels, and the horrors of the Spanish _cuisine_, fill most of the travellers' journals. But Lady Herbert found a plenty of religious beauty underneath this dilapidated exterior. God and the church are so near to the people's hearts that the mixture of religion with the language and business of every day shocks a stranger at first as something irreverent. Pious traditions are familiar to every Spaniard from his cradle. They come up every hour of the day. They color every man's conversation, they affect, more or less intimately, everybody's conduct; nay, it is difficult sometimes to separate them from the Spaniard's faith, for he clings to a pious legend almost as stoutly as he holds to an article of the creed. The peasant woman plants rosemary in her garden, because there is a story that when our Lord was an infant the Blessed Virgin hung out his clothes upon a rosemary bush to dry. Red roses get their color from a drop of the Saviour's blood which fell on them from the cross. A swallow tried to pluck the thorns from the head of the crucified Christ, and therefore no Spaniard will shoot a swallow. {414} The owl was present when our Lord expired, and since then has ceased to sing, his only cry being "_Crux, crux!_" Half the dogs in Spain are called Melampo, because that was the name of the dog of the shepherds who came to Bethlehem. Protestants may laugh at the credulity which listens to such legends, but to our minds there is the simplicity of real piety in the national belief, and we cannot think that God will be angry with the people if they believe a little too much in his honor. Protestants may sneer at the public reverence which is paid to sacred things, and call it a gross mark of superstition to show as much respect to the Blessed Sacrament as to a governor or a general in the army; but we confess our sympathies are with Lady Herbert when she describes the sentinels at San Sebastian presenting arms as he passes before the chapel door, or the shopkeeper who interrupts a bargain to rush out into the street and kneel down before the Viatacum, exclaiming "_Sua maesta viene!_" What a sweet flavor of real piety there is in the popular term for alms, "_la bolsa de Dios_," "God's purse!"--a purse, by the way, which is never empty. Beggars are treated with a tenderness that is felt for them nowhere else but in Ireland. The poor peasant may have little or nothing to give; but if he refuses, he begs pardon for doing so. There is no city without its charity hospitals, marvels of cleanliness, comfort, and order. There is hardly a town without its asylum, where religious mea or women tend the unfortunate, shelter the destitute, feed the hungry, and rear the orphan and the foundling. Convents have been depopulated and monastic orders banished throughout the kingdom, but the more active brotherhoods and sisterhoods are spared, and are doing magnificent work. The deserted convents, magnificent in their decay, speak eloquently of the zeal and piety of the people, whose greatest fault it is as a nation that they have trusted too much to weak and unworthy rulers. Every one of these religious monuments is the scene of some holy legend, and most of them are hallowed by incidents in the lives of saints, of whom Spain has been the birthplace and home of so many hundreds. Lady Herbert tells a significant story which shows how closely religion is bound up with the thoughts of the people. She was visiting the ancient palace of Toledo, when a peasant woman, sitting by the gate, asked the guide if the strange lady was an Englishwoman, "because she walked so fast." On being answered in the affirmative, she exclaimed, "Oh! what a pity. I liked her face, and yet she is an infidel!" The guide pointed to a little crucifix which hung from a rosary at Lady Herbert's side, whereat the peasant sprang from her seat and kissed both the cross and the visitor.

Spanish courtesy even has a religious flavor. Ask a Spaniard to point out the road, and nothing will do but he must go with you on your way, and pray God's blessing on your head when he leaves you. No matter how poor he may be, you must not offer money for such services; he will be either grieved or indignant, at what seems to him an insult. There is piety also in the Spanish reverence for age. If an old man passes the peasant's door at meal-time, he is offered a place at the table, and begged to ask a blessing on the repast.

There is, in fine, a lovable and engaging side to Spanish character from which we cannot but expect a great and beneficial influence upon the national destinies. Faith has its rewards even in this life, and we cannot believe that a nation which adhered so firmly to religion will be overthrown without some very grave offence of its own. {415} The reverential tendency of Spanish character has no doubt overpassed, in political affairs, its legitimate barriers, and loyalty has done some mischief as well as good. Respect for legitimate authority has not always been distinguished from a fanatical devotion to the persons of bad or incompetent rulers. There is a great deal of truth, albeit much falsehood likewise, in Mr. Buckle's explanation of the causes of Spanish greatness and Spanish decay. Give the kingdom a great sovereign, like Charles V., and with an obedient and devoted people the nation may be raised to the pinnacle of greatness and prosperity. But no people which has not been taught to depend upon itself can long keep in the van. Greatness is not inherited with titles and possessions; weak rulers are sure to come sooner or later, and then the country finds that it leans upon a broken reed. Spain discovers now that she has suffered her kings to monopolize the responsibilities which ought to have been divided among the whole people, and their duties have not been fulfilled. The nation has slept a sleep of centuries in the comfortable confidence that government would take care of everything, do all the thinking, make all the needed improvements, and educate the country as a father educates his children. It seems to have been forgotten that this was a task which only those mighty geniuses who appear once in a century are strong enough to perform. An indolent, weak, and careless ruler under the Spanish system allows his people to lag behind in the struggle for national preëminence; a bad ruler plunges them into misery and disgrace. Spain has suffered terribly from both these afflictions; we do not believe, however, that her case is desperate. While there is much in the present condition of the kingdom to fill all thoughtful men with alarm, there is promise in the awakened activity of national life, and in the very spirit of revolution which is driving the liberal party into such lamentable excesses. It is dirty work to clean up the dust of three or four centuries. Great political changes are almost always accompanied by disorder; but when the uproar subsides, and new parties crystallize out of the fragments of the present tumult, when the people feel that to be great and prosperous they must use their own power, and cease to be fed with a spoon, we believe that there is so much faith and piety at the bottom of the Spanish heart, and so much real nobleness in the national character, that a brighter destiny will be within their reach than has beamed upon them since the days of Charles and Philip.

We have wandered far away from the volume with which we began our remarks, and left ourselves little room to praise Lady Herbert's narrative as it deserves to be praised. We shall content ourselves here with citing a description of a man who has occupied a prominent place in the recent history of Spain. We mean Father Claret, the queen's confessor:

"One only visit was paid, which will ever remain in the memory of the lady who had the privilege. It was to Monsignor Claret, the confessor of the queen and Archbishop of Cuba, a man as remarkable for his great personal holiness and ascetic life as for the unjust accusations of which he is continually the object. On one occasion, these unfavorable reports having reached his ears, and being only anxious to retire into the obscurity which his humility makes him love so well, he went to Rome to implore for a release from his present post; but it was refused him. {416} Returning through France, he happened to travel with certain gentlemen, residents in Madrid, but unknown to him, as he was to them, who began to speak of all the evils, real or imaginary, which reigned in the Spanish court, the whole of which they unhesitatingly attributed to Monsignor Claret, very much in the spirit of the old ballad against Sir Robert Peel:

'Who filled the butchers' shops with big blue flies?'

He listened without a word, never attempting either excuse or justification, or betraying his identity. Struck with his saint-like manner and appearance, and likewise very much charmed with his conversation during the couple of days' journey together, the strangers begged at parting to know his name, expressing an earnest hope of an increased acquaintance at Madrid. He gave them his card with a smile! Let us hope they will be less hasty and more charitable in their judgments, for the future. Monsignor Claret's room in Madrid is a fair type of himself. Simple even to severity in its fittings, with no furniture but his books, and some photographs of the queen and her children, it contains one only priceless object, and that is a wooden crucifix, of the very finest Spanish workmanship, which attracted at once the attention of his visitor. 'Yes, it is very beautiful,' he replied in answer to her words of admiration; 'and I like it because it expresses so wonderfully _victory over suffering_. Crucifixes generally represent only the painful and human, not the triumphant and divine view of the redemption. Here, he is truly victor over death and hell.'

"Contrary to the generally received idea, he never meddles in politics, and occupies himself entirely in devotional and literary works. One of his books, _Camino recto y seguro para llegar al Cielo_, would rank with Thomas a Kempis's _Imitation_ in suggestive and practical devotion. He keeps a perpetual fast; and, when compelled by his position to dine at the palace, still keeps to his meagre fare of 'garbanzos,' or the like. He has a great gift of preaching; and when he accompanies the queen in any of her royal progresses, is generally met at each town when they arrive by earnest petitions to preach, which he does instantly, without rest or apparent preparation, sometimes delivering four or five sermons in one day. In truth, he is always 'prepared,' by a hidden life of perpetual prayer and realization of the unseen."

For the rest, it is only necessary to add a word upon the admirable manner in which the American publishers have presented Lady Herbert's book to their patrons. It is beautifully printed upon thick, rich paper, and illustrated with excellent wood-cuts, and will easily bear comparison with the choice productions of the secular press, as a book for the parlor table and for holiday presents as well as for the library.

From The German Of Baron Stolberg.

Filial Affection As Taught And Practised By The Chinese.

"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be long-lived in the land which the Lord thy God will give thee."

In a remarkable work, entitled _Mémoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences, les arts, les moeurs, les usages, etc., etc., des Chinois_, written by two natives of China who had spent their early years in Europe, and had there added the sciences of the west to the learning of the east, and hallowed their knowledge with "the love of Christ which surpasseth all knowledge," the greater part of a quarto volume is devoted to the "Teachings of the Chinese concerning filial affection."

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What follows is taken from _Li-ki_, a very ancient Chinese work, written long before the time of the great Confucius. Confucius was born in the year of the world 3452, before Christ 551, in the twenty-eighth year of the lifetime of Cyrus.

"Be ever penetrated by religion and your exterior will bespeak a man whose regard is directed inward upon his soul; and your words will be the language of one who controls his passions." ...

"Religion alone can render indissoluble the ties that attach the subject to his prince, the inferior to the superior, the son to the father, the younger brother to the elder."

"A son filled with filial affection hears the voice of his father and mother, even when they are not speaking with him, and he sees them even when he is not in their presence."

"At the first call of a father, all should be forsaken in order to go to him."

"Mourning for parents should continue three years."

"A son had murdered his father in the kingdom of Tochu. The authorities reported the crime to King Ting-kong. He rose from his mat; sighed, Alas! the fault is mine! I know not how to govern! He issued an edict for the future. Such a murderer must be instantly put to death; the house must be razed, and the governor must abstain from wine during a month."

"The peace of the realm depends on the filial affection entertained for parents and the respect shown to elder brothers."

The following are extracts from a canonical book of the Chinese entitled _Hiao-king_, the last work of Confucius, written 480 years before the birth of Christ, during the time of Xerxes.

"Filial affection is the root of all virtues, and the fountain head of all teaching."

"Whosoever loves his parents can hate nobody; whosoever honors them can despise nobody. If a ruler evinces unlimited respect and affection to his parents, the virtue and wisdom of his people will be increased twofold. Even barbarians will submit to his decrees."

"If thou entertainest toward thy father the love thou hast for thy mother, and the respect thou hast for thy ruler, thou wilt serve thy ruler with filial affection."

"O immensity of filial affection! how wonderful thou art! What the revolutions of the planets are for the citadel of heaven, what fertility is for the fields of the earth, that, filial affection is for nations. Heaven and earth never deceive. Let nations follow their example, and the harmony of the world will be as indefectible as the light of heaven, and as the productions of the earth!"

"A prince who causes himself to be loved, and who improves the morals of men, is the father and mother of nations! How perfect must be the virtue which guides nations to that which is greatest of all, whilst they are following the inclinations of their hearts!"

The emperors of China have been giving examples of filial affection from time immemorial. It is an ordinance of the ancients that the new sovereign shall, during the first three years, make no changes in the administration of his father. The emperors of China, the mightiest potentates of the earth, show the most profound reverence to their mothers before the eyes of the whole people.

The great Emperor Kang-hi published, in 1689 of our chronology, a large work, in one hundred volumes, on filial affection. In the preface, written by himself, he says, amongst other things:

"In order to show how the filial affection of an emperor should be constituted, it is here shown to what tenderness for his people, interest in the public good, solicitude for health, contentment, and the happiness of his parents bind him. Everything in life is filial affection, for everything refers to respect and love."

What a beauty and depth of meaning in these words!

Together with filial affection this comprises the corresponding love of parents for their children, and the reciprocal duties of both. From these are also deduced the reciprocal obligations of rulers and subjects.

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All is ultimately referred to God.

"Who is to be feared, who is to be served, and who is to be regarded as the Father and the Mother of all men."

China is the only empire in which public censors of the acts of the emperor are appointed. Their number, which originally was seven, has been increased to forty. Their office is to warn the emperor when he has transgressed or neglected his duty, and to admonish him. In a work composed by the Emperor Kang-hi, and published in 1733, several instances of these admonitions and remonstrances are mentioned:

"It is the cry of all ages, O Sovereign! that it is the most imperative duty of the son to revere his parents!"

After explaining how one must prove himself concerning the fulfilment of this duty, and describing various evidences by which to judge, the sage continues:

"Such, O Sovereign! is the nature of genuine filial affection, of the filial affection of great souls, of the kind of filial affection that makes the world pleasant, gains all hearts, and secures the favor of heaven. ... Thy subject, O Sovereign! has heard that a good ruler attributes to himself whatever disturbs good order in the realm; that he is made sad by the smallest misdemeanors of his subjects, and that he devotes the best days of his life to the sole object of obviating whatever might interfere with the public weal."

This remonstrance was presented in the year 1064, of our chronology, to the Emperor Ing-tsong by the Censor See-ma-kuang, one of the greatest statesmen China has ever had, who was at the same time a historian, a philosopher, and a poet. The people loved him so that after his death the entire realm was disposed to go in mourning. Another censor very boldly reprimanded the Emperor Kuang-tsong, because in a journey to his country chateau he had passed by the villa of his mother without calling to see her.

At a later period this censor upbraided the same emperor in terms of the deepest sorrow for not accompanying his mother's funeral and wearing mourning in her memory, notwithstanding that all the magnates of the empire had been plunged into the most profound grief by the death of that excellent woman. The censor accused him of having feigned indisposition on that occasion, whilst it was generally known that he was engaged in his customary pastimes.

Another emperor was reproached with a noble intrepidity, for having weakly permitted a favorite daughter to squander a part of the revenues of the state in embellishing her country residence and gardens.

The Emperor Kang-hi, one of the wisest and greatest rulers the world has ever seen, practised filial piety in a most perfect manner toward his grandmother and mother during their lifetime and after their death. When appointing one of his sons heir to the throne--a right accorded him by the constitution--he declared that he was guided in his choice by the wisdom of the two empresses, his mother and his grandmother.

When his grandmother was sick, this emperor wrote to one of the grandees of the realm, Hing-pu, who was probably minister of justice:

"My cares do not quit me, whether by day or by night. I have no relish for food or sleep; my only consolation lies in raising my thoughts to Tien, (Heaven, or the God of Heaven.) With tearful eyes I have prostrated myself on the ground, and buried myself in meditation on the manner of most surely obtaining his holy assistance; and it appeared to me that the preservation of men, the objects of his love, would be the surest means of obtaining, from his infinite goodness and mercy, the prolongation of a life that we would all be willing to purchase with our own."

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Hereupon he reprieved all criminals not excluded from the favor by the laws of the state. He concluded with these words:

"I pray Tien that he may be pleased to bless my wish."

He walked in solemn procession, accompanied by the nobles, and offered sacrifices for the empress. As her condition grew more alarming, he spent day and night at her bedside, where he slept upon a mat, in order to be always near to attend to her wants. To the remonstrances of his court and the requests of the invalid herself, he replied by answering them that he could not control his grief, and could find consolation only in nursing his beloved grandmother, who had nursed him in youth with so much wisdom and tenderness.

Many a reader may consider this intense and openly acknowledged sentiment of filial devotion as exaggerated; in China, men thought differently. And the man of whom it is related was one of the greatest princes that ever lived, a great _savant_, a philosopher upon a throne, an undaunted hero, and during the whole of his long reign the father of his country, the admiration and joy of his numerous people. When he was besought by the princes of the royal house and by the nobles of the realm to permit the sixtieth anniversary of his birthday to be solemnly commemorated, he replied:

"I have never had any taste for and have never found any pleasure in grand festivities and entertainments. Yet I feel reluctant to refuse what the love of the princes and nobles requests from me. But as these festivities would fall upon the days whereon my much revered father and mother died, their memory is too vividly present in my heart to suffer me to allow them to be converted into days of rejoicing."

At the Chinese court it is customary for the emperor, on New Year's day, to go in company with the princes and nobles to the palace of his mother. A master of ceremonies called a mandarin of Lizu, walks in front and reverently prays that it may be her serene pleasure to ascend her throne, in order that the emperor may throw himself at her feet. She then takes her place upon the throne. The emperor enters the hall and remains standing with his arms hanging down and his sleeves pulled over his hands--a mark of reverence amongst this people. The imperial retinue remain below in the ante-chamber. The musicians sound some thrilling notes, whereupon the mandarin cries in a loud voice, "Upon your knees!" The emperor and retinue fall upon their knees. "To the floor!" The emperor bows his head to the floor, as also the entire court. "Arise!" And all rise up together. After performing three prostrations in this manner, the mandarin again approaches the throne of the empress and reaches her a written request from the emperor to be pleased to return to her apartment.

During the ceremony the sound of the bell from the great tower announces to all the inhabitants of Pekin that the emperor of China, "the ruler of the thousand kingdoms," as they style him, is paying homage to humanity.

When the empress has returned to her apartment, the ringing of the bell ceases, and then the emperor receives the felicitations of the court in his own palace.

The idea of the relation between parents and children is, in fact, the soul of the constitution of China, a constitution that has continued unchanged for more than three thousand years. Through this idea the chains of despotism, so galling in other countries of the east, are rendered tolerable; by it a powerful influence is exercised over the rulers of the mightiest empire of the earth, so that most of them, even in modern times, devote themselves to their exalted duties with the greatest care, and look upon the empire not as their own possession, but as a trust committed to them as vicegerents of heaven. {420} This idea is so deeply rooted that even the victorious Tartars were forced to respect it and adopt it as their principle of government, as we are shown by the example mentioned of the great Kang-hi.

We subjoin some selections from a number of Chinese moral proverbs relating to this subject,

"Filial affection produces the same sentiment, the same solicitude, under every clime. The barbarian, compelled by want to wander through wildernesses, learns more easily from his own heart what a son owes to his father and mother than sages learn it from their books."

"The most invincible army is that in which fathers are most mindful of their children, sons of their parents, brothers of their brothers."

"The filial piety of the ruler is the inheritance of the aged, of widows, and of orphans."

"Whosoever raises the staff of his father with reverence, does not strike the father's hand. Whosoever yawns at the old man's oft-repeated tales, will hardly weep at his death."

"All virtues are threatened when filial affection is sinned against."

"A good son never looks upon an enterprise as successful until it has received the approbation of his father."

"Rocks are converted into diamonds where father and son have but one heart; harmony between the elder and younger brothers changes the earth into gold."

"Subjects revere their parents in the person of the emperor; the emperor must revere his parents in the person of those of his subjects. The love of princes for their parents guarantees to them the love of their subjects."

"The Emperor Gin-tsong was counselled by his minister to declare war. What, replied the emperor, am I to answer fathers and mothers when they ask their sons of me? and to the widow who mourns her husband? and to fatherless orphans? and to so many disconsolate families? I would willingly sacrifice a province to save the life of one of my own children; all my subjects are my children."

"Whosoever cuts down the trees planted by his father, will sell the house that was built by him."

"It is not the threats, nor the reproaches, nor the violence of a father that are dreaded by a dutiful son. He fears his silence. A father is silent either because he has ceased to love or because he believes that he is no longer loved."

"The one who first shed tears was an unhappy father."

"Much to be pitied is the son who is displeasing to his parents; but the unhappiest of all is he who does not love them."

"A good son is a good brother, a good husband, a good father, a good cousin, a good friend, a good neighbor, a good citizen. A wicked son is simply--a wicked son."

"Reverence and tenderness are the wings of filial affection."

"When brothers will not come to an agreement before the sentence of the judge, public morals have already deteriorated. If father and son go before the mandarin that he may decide between them, the state is in danger. If children plot against the life of their parents, and brothers against that of each other, all is lost."

This tender reverence for parents instils into the Chinese a similar regard for aged persons, for authorities, and for national customs. Their empire has been in existence for almost four thousand years!

The contrary disposition, which denies to old age its becoming deference, which impels youth to contemn the experience of the past, and to wish, in its immaturity of judgment, to pass sentence upon all subjects, destroys social relations and undermines and ultimately ruins empires. It robs youth of its true grace; destroys the modesty and thirst for knowledge of the young man as well as the blushing diffidence of the maiden; defrauds age of its dignity; renders customs and laws altogether powerless.

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_Quid leges, sine moribus Vanae, proficiunt._

said Horace.

The young man trifles with the gaudy display of ever-changing fashion, a pest of our country from which the more serious east never languished. His philosophy is of the fashion as well as his clothes; and though, at present, he considers them as the very best, he is nevertheless ready to change them both and decry them as unsuitable, reserving the liberty, however, of resuming them as soon as the wand of the enchantress Fashion will have given the sign.

The religion of Jesus Christ confers a pure dignity upon the worthiest and most tender relations of nature. It teaches us to revere a father in the Being of all beings, to love him tenderly whose eternal Son did not disdain to become our brother, to become the Spouse of his church. It sanctifies every relation of nature, every relation of society. But in attempting to picture to ourselves a state of the world in which the great majority would be doing homage to the religion of Jesus Christ, not merely in words, but in spirit and in deed, a feeling of sadness takes possession of the soul like to that which might come upon a prisoner, highly gifted with musical genius, while reading with the eye the harmonies of Handel and Gluck, when his ear was denied the rapture of hearing their enchanting melodies.

New Publications.

Daily Meditations, by his Eminence, the late Cardinal Wiseman. Vol. I. Dublin, James Duffy, 1869. For sale at the Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau Street.

There is a peculiar charm about all the writings of Cardinal Wiseman. It is the touch of genius, and of a great genius, whose loss the world mourns. The present volume, now published for the first time, comprises a series of meditations useful for all classes of devout persons, but more especially designed for the clergy and students in our ecclesiastical seminaries. They were written, as the Most Rev. Archbishop of Westminster informs us in a short preface, when the cardinal entered upon his first responsible office as rector of the English college in Rome. The subjects for the first six months of the year are taken from and arranged under a certain number of heads, generally repeated each week. These are,

"The End of Man," "Last Things," "Mystery of our Saviour's Life," "Personal Duties," "The Passion," "Sin." "Means of Sanctification," "Self-Examination," "The Decalogue," "The Blessed Eucharist," "The Blessed Virgin."

Each meditation consists of two or three reflections, and closes with an affective prayer. "Preparations" are given, after the method of St. Ignatius, before the meditations upon the mysteries of our Lord's life. As a book of meditations, or for spiritual reading, we could earnestly commend it to the laity, who will find the greater part of it eminently suitable for these purposes, while to the clergy it will be especially acceptable, furnishing, as it does, subjects sufficiently amplified to aid them in the ready preparation of a sermon or pious conference. We have few works in good English of this kind, and the reading of authors whose style is remarkable for purity and vigor cannot fail of improving the style of a speaker. The works of the great cardinal need no praise from us on these points, and we are sure that it is only necessary to call attention to a new work from his master hand to ensure its rapid sale.

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We cannot refrain from transcribing one of the many beautiful affective prayers. The meditation is on the crowning with thorns.

"Jesus, King and Lord of my heart and soul, what crown shall I give thee to acknowledge thee as such? Alas! gold and silver in my poverty I have none: my gold hath been long since turned into dross, and my silver been alloyed. I have no roses like thy martyrs, who returned thee blood for blood; nor lilies, like thy virgins, who loved thee with an unsullied heart. My soul is barren, my heart is unfruitful, and I have placed thee to reign, as the Jewish kings of old, over a heap of ruins. Long since despoiled and ravaged by the enemy, every flower hath been ploughed up, and every green plant burned with fire, and thorns alone and brambles spring up there. Of these, then, alone can I make thee a crown, my dear and sovereign Jesus. Wilt thou accept it? I will pluck up my unruly affections, that they may no more have roots, and, weaving them together into a wreath, will lay them as a sacrifice at thy feet. I will gather the thorns of sincere repentance which there each day arise and prick my heart with a sharp but wholesome smart, and with these will I make a crown for thy head, if thou wilt vouchsafe to wear it. Or, rather, thou shalt take it from my hand, only to place it with thine around my heart, that it may daily and hourly be pricked with compunction. And may the thorns of thy crown be to my soul so many goads of love, to hasten it forward in its career toward thee."

False Definitions Of Faith, And The True Definition. By Rev. L. W. Bacon. Reprinted from the _New Englander_ for April, 1869.

Mr. Bacon defines faith to be trusting one's self for salvation to Jesus Christ. "The act of faith--of intrusting one's self for salvation to the Lord Jesus Christ--includes, not as a remote consequence, but in itself, repentance, obedience, holiness, and _whatever things beside_ are demanded in the Scriptures as conditions of salvation." Dropping all dispute about terminology, we will take faith as defined by Mr. Bacon, and prove that it is inconceivable with out the act of intellectual assent to divine revelation, which the church requires. Jesus Christ must be accredited as the Messiah by God the Father in such a way as to give rational, credible evidence to the intellect, before a man can reasonably or conscientiously trust himself to him for salvation. When he is convinced that Christ is the Saviour, and trusts himself to him, he must receive from him certain and infallible instruction as to the method of repenting and obtaining pardon, as to the nature and extent of the obedience and holiness required, and as to _whatever things beside_ are demanded as conditions of salvation. If his Master teaches him certain doctrines, and requires his assent, he must give it as a part of his obedience. If he prescribes sacraments and communion with one certain visible church as a condition of salvation, he must obey. The question with Mr. Bacon is, therefore, not respecting the indispensable obligation of believing what God has revealed respecting the way of salvation, but respecting the medium through which that revelation is communicated, and the actual subject-matter of its contents. Mr. Bacon very reasonably revolts at the tyranny of imposing mere human and probable opinions derived from private judgment on the Scriptures as necessary to be believed for salvation. He has an independent spirit and an active mind which will not suffer him to acquiesce tamely in the dominion which certain great names and traditional formulas have hitherto held among the orthodox Protestants. He thinks for himself and expresses his thoughts in a bold and manly way. In the _brochure_ which he has reprinted from the _New Englander_, the defects of the old-fashioned Puritan theology respecting justification are pointed out with distinctness, and a far better and more reasonable view presented, which includes the moral element in the disposition of the soul for receiving grace, thus rejecting the most fundamental and destructive of all the errors of Luther.

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The Relations And Reciprocal Obligations Between The Medical Profession And The Educated And Cultivated Classes. An Oration delivered before the Alumni Association of the Medical Department of the University of the City of New York, Feb. 23d, 1869. By Henry S. Hewit, M.D. Published by order of the Association.

This pamphlet contains a great deal of matter within a very short compass. It shows the relation of medicine to philosophy and intellectual culture, refutes the wretched materialism by which the profession has been too much infected, castigates with merciless severity that charlatanism by which some ignorant pretenders practise on the credulity of the public, and that criminal malpractice by which others more skilful, but equally without conscience, prostitute their science to complicity with licentiousness and child-murder. A higher standard of education in medical science, a more liberal preparatory culture, and a distinction in medical degrees are advocated. These are matters of the deepest moment to society, in which Catholics have especial reasons to be interested. The physician is next to the priest, and, in his sphere, very like the priest in the responsibilities of his office, his power of doing good or evil, and in the necessity of resorting to him under which all men are placed in those dangerous and painful crises of life where he alone can give effectual help. According to Catholic theology, no one can pretend to practise medicine or surgery, without grievous sin, who has not received a competent education, and who does not follow what, according to the judgment of learned and skilful men, are truly scientific methods. Ignorance, carelessness, rash empiricism, or violation of the laws of morality as laid down by the church, are all grievous sins. They are followed by the most fatal consequences to those who become their victims, causing even the loss of life and the privation of baptism, which involves the loss of eternal life, on a vast scale. It is of the utmost consequence that we should have a body of Catholic physicians whose scientific culture is the highest possible, and whose professional code of morals is strictly in conformity with the moral theology of the church. If we are ever so happy as to possess a a Catholic university, it is to be hoped that Dr. Hewit's suggestions in regard to medical education may be carried out. The author has rendered a great service to the profession and to the cause of morals and religion by the publication of this able and high-toned oration, and we trust it may receive a wide circulation, and exert an equally wide influence. Dr. Hewit served with great distinction as chief of medical staff to Generals C. F. Smith, Grant, and Schofield during the late war, and contributed some valuable papers to the medical journals. We are indebted to him for some of the best literary notices which have appeared in our columns, and the present oration not only shows scientific culture and sound principles, but also a capacity for producing literary composition of many varied and rare excellences, combining terse and close logical reasoning with a vivid play of the imagination. The closing sentence is remarkably beautiful, and speaks of the adventurous life which the author led during his military career.

"The sun has crossed the meridian, and tends toward the western horizon; the tops of the distant mountains are bathed in purple light, and the black shadows at their base _begin to creep in a stealthy and hound-like manner over the plain; _a rising murmur in the branches of the forest warns us to lift up again our burdens, and take our respective roads."

We should like to see a volume from the pen that wrote this sentence, in which the descriptive power of the author would have full scope, and another in which the sound principles of philosophy and morals contained in the oration in an aphoristic form would be fully developed.

Glimpses Of Pleasant Homes; Or, Stories For The Young. By the authoress of _Mother McAuley_. Illustrated. 1 vol. 12mo, vellum cloth. Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau Street. 1869.

No one can read a sentence of the preface to this volume without becoming deeply interested in the book itself. {424} Every line tells us that the author has something important to say, and that her whole soul is in the work of educating the moral faculties of children simultaneously with their physical and mental powers. Her aim is to enlist all heads of families in the work, by making their homes pleasant refuges from the troubles of busy life, in which their few leisure hours may be spent in "fitting all those under their charge for the duties of this earth, without unfitting them for heaven."

The responsibility of forming and directing the tastes of children is often thrown upon the school-teacher; and, while the father builds gorgeous business palaces for the benefit of his family, their future welfare is perilled and their whole life embittered by the system of education "which assumes the obligations of priest and parent, and is gradually driving filial piety from the face of the earth."

This book contains not only good examples of the practical working of kindness and love, but points out the manner in which the parents make many blunders in the management of young and boisterous children. Some regard their mechanical toys as causes of trouble, and wish their children would play outside, "and keep their noise, dust, and confusion out of sight and hearing of their seniors." Experience among families where such is the fact has taught the author to depict with truth the results:

"These parents who should have aided in developing and cultivating the tastes of their children, may possibly find, ere long, that there are no tastes to be developed save those acquired in the streets, where habits have been formed which it is now all but impossible to root out. Their children have, as the phrase is, got beyond them; not because, as is often falsely asserted, juvenile human nature is different now from what it was in other ages, or because its lot happens to be cast in the United States of America, but because parents have not done their part to multiply and strengthen the sweet and powerful ties that could and should bind their children indissolubly to them."

To warn parents against this evil, to cause them to be kind to their children, and to bind the child more closely to its home, the author has written these _Glimpses of Pleasant Homes_, in which mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters are made to speak and act in so natural a manner that every reader will be forced to love them.

In those happy homes, we find boys full of life and fun, but always eager to listen to interesting and useful instruction; girls who are not dolls, made to act and speak by machine; and fathers and mothers whose example will force every parent to give a little thought to the manner in which they treat their offspring. The story of little Frank will be long remembered by those who read it, and all will like the manly little fellow, who gravely says:

"'I should rather be whatever it is right to be,' returned the boy. 'The Catholics have the Blessed Virgin, and I think they must be right, for every one knows the Lord would not let his own mother stay in the wrong place. I asked Mr. Griffin was she a Calvinist or a Unitarian, and he said no, that she was a Catholic. Now, I want to be of her church, and I don't see why I cannot receive the sacraments as well as Tommy and Bernard. Please, mamma, allow me, and I'll be ever so good and steady.'" And immediately after tells us that John Griffin is a first-rate fellow, because "he gives me lots of fruit, and tells me pleasant stories about birds and angels."

Every story in this book will amuse the young, interest the old, and instruct all in the secret ways of showing kindness to those with whom they may come in contact. Kindness is the author's watchword; every line bears witness to her love of her fellow-beings; she fulfils her mission of kindness in a delightfully pleasant manner, and few will finish reading _The Glimpses_ without wishing for many more such pictures, and hoping that the author may enjoy a little of that happiness on this earth, which she so lavishly bestows on her readers.

Black Forest. Village Stories by Berthold Auerbach. Translated by Charles Goepp. New York: Leypoldt & Holt.

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This volume is a collection of stories from the German, filled with quaint illustrations of peasant life in the Black Forest. The representations are well drawn and life-like; but the tales, with two or three exceptions, fail to interest, except as illustrations of strange phases of human life, and odd customs retained from age to age by people who seldom left their own hamlets, or heard from the outer world.

Each story carries through some of the characters introduced before, so that there is an intimate connection between them all. In general, they have no special moral teaching, but there are two notable exceptions, in the story of "Ivo, the Gentleman," and "The Lauterbacher."

The first of these, "Ivo the Gentleman", professes to give the life of a Catholic family, and the story of a student in his preparation for the priesthood. We cannot fail to be interested in the home-life of the collegian, and anxiously watch the development of doubts and difficulties in his path; but there is a coldness and hardness in the analyzation of his perplexities and his religious footsteps that lead one to feel that there is little vitality in the creed of the author.

In the story of "The Lauterbacher," there are many striking thoughts brought out with such charming familiarity as to make one wonder why they have never before seen them on paper. The moral of this tale is clear and good. Now and then, however, one meets with a touch of the mystical transcendentalism with which many of the works of this author abound; but we find in this volume less of these fancies than in anything we have seen from his pen.

The stories are interspersed with grotesque wood-cuts as illustrations, with a sprinkling of fantastic rhymes, which remind us forcibly of our childhood's first introduction to the muses through the whimsical measures of Mother Goose's Melodies.

Biographical Sketches. By Harriet Martineau. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1869.

No one at all familiar with the mental characteristics and proclivities of Harriet Martineau could expect from her pen a more liberal view of the characters which she has here attempted to delineate than the volume before us actually presents. The ordinary reader, ignorant of or not fully appreciating the standpoint from which the authoress judges the dispositions and achievements of mankind will, however, experience a feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction. The tone of many of her sketches is depreciatory. The time-honored maxim, "_Nil de mortuis_," etc., is rigidly ignored, and the shadows in the lives of the personages she notices are brought into striking contrast with the sunlight of their virtues and accomplishments. We remark this especially in regard to those whose work in the world was of a religious or charitable nature. It grates upon our inward reverence for men, whose toil and self-sacrifice have resulted even in a transient benefit to mankind, to be told that they were mere creatures of an ephemeral occasion, or the unconscious agents of political aspirants; that the seed which they sowed had no root, and the plant has withered away. It seems like an aspersion on the moral capabilities of the human race when those men who reach the highest ranks of ecclesiastical and religious preferment are represented as untrue to their convictions, and recreant to the principles confided to their propagating and protecting care. Miss Martineau does good morals and large charity no service, by showing that their outward exercise may coexist with hypocrisy, tergiversation, and sordid self-seeking. Nor is it absolute justice to the dead that, having during life received from her no admonition to correct their faults, they should at last, when such correction has become impossible, be held up to posterity as being, after all, but frail and failing specimens of human kind.

With this exception, we have found the work before us worthy of the encomiums bestowed upon it by the press both of this country and England. It is a handbook to read and remember, to take up with interest and lay down with pleasure, and, after the first reading, to consult, from time to time, as a gallery of portraits painted from subjects of unusual eminence by a skilful hand.

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The Free-masons. What they are--What they do--What they are aiming at. From the French of Mgr. Sègur, author of _Plain Talk_. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1869.

The best notice we can give of this book is to reproduce an extract from the translator's preface:

"This short treatise, written, not by the archbishop of Paris, as carelessly stated by some newspapers, but by Mgr. de Sègur, the author of the work lately translated and published under the title of _Plain Talk_, was composed to unveil and show Free-Masonry _as it is in the old world_. Its strictures, therefore, are not wholly applicable to Freemasonry as it is in the United States. Yet Masons here may read it with profit to themselves; and those who are not Masons, but might be tempted to join some lodge, will, it is hoped, abandon the idea if they read this book. Even here, Free-Masonry is a secret society, and to become a member of it, one must take at least an oath, and swear by the name of God to do so and so. Now, God's command is, 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.' And surely it is taken in vain by American Free-Masons, because they take it without any sufficient and justifiable cause. For, apart from other ends of their society, and especially that of affording members a chance never to want what assistance they may need in case of a momentary difficulty in their affairs or loss of means or health, the main object seems to be to meet at times, in order to spend an afternoon in a merry way, and to partake of banquets provided for the occasion. But where is the necessity to bind one's self by an oath, to gather now and then round a bountifully supplied table, or even to be charitable, and, for such purposes, to be a member of a _secret_ society? We have many benevolent societies; there is no secret about them, no oath to be taken by those who wish to be members of them. Their object is to carry out the principles of Christian charity; to that they bind themselves simply by a promise, as also to contribute so much for the purposes of the society. There are other objections to joining Free-Masonry, even here; but this is not the place to discuss that subject."

The Dublin Review, for April, 1869. London, Brown, Oates & Co.

Dr. Ward On American Orthodoxy.

The _Dublin Review_ for April closes a notice of F. Weninger's late book on _Papal Infallibility_ with the following sentence: "In the United States, no less than in these islands, a higher and more orthodox type of Catholic doctrine seems rapidly gaining the ascendant. To God be the praise!" This implies that hitherto a low and unorthodox type of doctrine has had the ascendant among us--an insinuation not very complimentary to our hierarchy, clergy, professors of theology, and Catholic writers. We deny the charge emphatically, and affirm positively that no type of doctrine, whatever, is now gaining the ascendant over any different one which has formerly had the ascendant. The maxims of that set of court canonists, who maintain the superiority of the episcopate in council over the pope, and deny the superiority of the pope over a general council, have never prevailed or been advocated in this country. The dogmatic decrees of the holy see have always been received here as binding on the interior assent to the full extent to which the holy see intends to impose them; and as for filial obedience to the pontifical authority in matters of discipline, Gregory XVI. expressed the true state of the case when he said that he was nowhere so completely pope as in the United States. The encyclical of Pius IX. was received without a whimper of opposition, and our college of bishops, in their steadfast loyalty to the holy father, amid his struggles with the assailants of his temporal authority, have represented the universal sentiment of their clergy and laity. The spirit of the theology which has always been taught in our seminaries, and prevalent among our clergy, may be seen in the works of that great prelate, one of the glories of both Ireland and the United States, the late Archbishop Kenrick. {427} A large number of our bishops and leading clergymen have been thoroughly educated and received the doctor's cap at Rome, and we are sure that they have never come into collision with any body of their brethren holding contrary opinions, or found it necessary to make any imputation on their orthodoxy. We esteem highly the great services which Dr. Ward has rendered to religion, and the many noble qualities of mind and heart which he has exhibited from the beginning of his Oxford career to the present moment. We think, however, that the impetuosity of his zeal needs a little curbing, and that if he were somewhat more sparing of reproofs and admonition to his brethren and fathers in the church, which savor more of the novice-master than the editor, his review would be much more useful, as well as more generally acceptable. We know that our opinion on this point is shared by some of our most distinguished prelates, who are as thoroughly Roman in their theology as Dr. Ward can profess to be, and we think there are few on this side the water who would dissent from it.

Church Embroidery, Ancient And Modern, Practically Illustrated. By Anastasia Dolby, Late Embroideress to the Queen.

Church Vestments; Their Origin, Use, And Ornament. By the same. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau St., New-York.

These two elegant volumes furnish a complete and practical description of every kind of ecclesiastical vestment, from the Roman collar to the Fanon, which, as Miss Dolby informs us, "appertains only to the vesture of the sovereign pontiff." The authoress is a "Ritualist," and, as will be seen, of the highest order of that formidable sect of the English Church, as by law established. Her books are full of costly engravings, the volume on church embroidery being adorned with a fine illuminated frontispiece--an antependium and frontal for high festivals--and the one on church vestments, with one representing a _Pontifical High Mass_, in which the deacon is a little out of place for such a mass, according to the rite as celebrated by the "Roman obedience," but which, we presume, is strictly in accordance with the "Anglican obedience." We smile at the pretty piece of assumption, but forgive Miss Dolby from our hearts, for we have derived the greatest pleasure and benefit from the use of her valuable books. Although the volumes are costly, yet the information they contain would be considered cheap at treble the price by those who are interested in furnishing the holy sanctuary with all things appertaining thereto, in good taste. The authoress is a practical workwoman, and not only tells us _what_ to do, but also, what is of the highest moment to many of us, _how_ to do it.

The Ark Of The Covenant; or, a Series of Short Discourses upon the Joys, Sorrows, Glories, and Virtues of the Ever Blessed Mother of God. By Rev. T. S. Preston. New York: Robt. Coddington.

This is a new edition of a work already, we are sure, widely known and much admired. It is prepared by the reverend author to suit the beautiful devotion of the month of May, and we do not hesitate to say that it is the best one for that purpose yet written. It is truly refreshing to meet with a book like this, when one has had a surfeit (as who has not) of the many namby pamby _Months of Mary_, from whose pages we have been expected to cull flowers of piety for our spiritual enjoyment of the sweet season dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.

The General; Or, Twelve Nights In The Hunter's Camp. A Narrative of Real Life. Illustrated by G. G. White. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

This is an account of the doings of the D---- Club, on one of its annual excursions. It is interspersed with stories told round the camp-fire, by "the general," of his own adventures in the west, when it was still the home of the Indian, and immigrants and land-surveyors were slowly finding their way through the forests and over the prairies.

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The club were encamped near Swan Lake, two miles east of the Mississippi, and for twelve days gave themselves up to all the pleasure and excitement of hunting and fishing. They had a good time, and one almost envies them the fresh, pure air, the freedom, the invigorating sport, and enjoyment of nature. The author thinks that "more tents and less hotels in vacation would make our professional men more vigorous. Moosehead and the Adirondacks are better recuperators than Saratoga, Cape May, and the Rhine; and fishing-rods and fowling-pieces are among the very best gymnastic apparatus for a college." Summer is coming, and the advice could be tried. The adventures of the general, and of the hunters at Swan Lake, would while away most pleasantly the hours of a warm summer afternoon on the Adirondacks or Lake George.

Reminiscences Of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. A Social and Artistic Biography. By Elise Polko. Translated from the German by Lady Wallace. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1869.

A woman's book in every page and line, charming for its simplicity and pleasant gossip. Madame Polko was a friend and enthusiastic admirer of the great musician. All that he ever did, said, or wrote she tells us with an air of pride and earnestness only equalled by the _naïve_ recital of all baby's wonderful pranks and precocious intelligence peculiar to young mothers.

These reminiscences will do to beguile a dreamy summer hour, when the mind needs relaxation, and is not able to bear anything heavier than the innocent prattle of children, and the soothing sound of the seaside waves.

Ferncliffe. 1 vol. 12mo. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1869.

_Ferncliffe_ is an interesting tale of "English country life." The author has been fortunate enough to give us scenes and characters which appear in all respects very natural, and therefore are exceedingly interesting. It is seldom we find a book containing so many characters, each possessing some peculiarity, and all kept in that complete subordination to the principal one which is so necessary to the full development of the plot.

The book is neatly printed on fine paper, and is a credit to the enterprising publisher who, we are glad to see, is accepting the "situation," and making his books in conformity with the improvements of the age in style and manner of getting up. We wish all our publishers would do the same; for it is high time that Catholic books appeared in as good a dress as non-Catholic books.

Salt-water Dick. By May Mannering. Boston: Lee & Shepard. Pp. 230. 1869.

The Ark Of Elm Island. By Rev. Elijah Kellogg. Boston: Lee & Shepard. Pp. 288. 1869.

In these volumes we have, in addition to the usual amount of amusing incident and startling adventure inseparable from sea voyages, a very full and interesting description of life at the Chincha Islands, the great guano depot; pleasant glimpses into Lima, Rio Janeiro, and Havana; graphic details of encounters with sea-lions, etc.; a dreadful storm in the Gulf of Mexico, with a wonderful escape from shipwreck by literally "pouring oil on the troubled waters," the whole agreeably diversified with numerous facts in natural history.

Combining amusement with instruction, books such as these have a great fascination for boys, and may, in most cases, be safely recommended.

Dotty Dimple Stories. Dotty Dimple At School. By Sophie May, Author of _Little Prudy Stories_. Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

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This story is one of a series, although quite complete in itself. They are all admirably written; for children's stories, they are almost perfect. They teach important lessons without making the children feel that they are taught them, or giving them an inclination to skip over those parts. If the little folks get hold of these books, they will be certain to read them, and ever afterward count Miss Dotty Dimple and dear little Prudy among their very best friends. Such a pen only needs to be guided by Catholic faith to make it perfect for children. We do not say this with any want of appreciation of what it is already, for its moral lessons are beautifully given; but what might they not be, enlightened by the truth, the holiness, and the beauty of Catholic faith!

Alice's Adventures In Wonder Land. By Lewis Carroll. With forty-two Illustrations by John Tenniel. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 49 Washington Street. 1869.

These adventures are most wonderful, even for Wonderland. One cannot help regretting that children should be entertained in this way instead of by some probable or possible adventures. They are well written, and the illustrations are excellent.

Juliette; Or, Now And Forever. By Mrs. Madeline Leslie. Boston: Lee & Shepard. Pp.416. 1869.

A religious tale, strictly Protestant, plentifully besprinkled with scriptural texts, allusions, etc., which will, no doubt, prove deeply interesting to those for whose special delectation it is intended.

_The Catholic Publication Society_ have purchased all the stereotype plates and book stock of Messrs. Lucas Brothers, Baltimore. Some of these books have been out of print for some years, or have not been kept constantly before the public. The society will soon issue new editions of all of them.

Messrs. Murphy & Co., Baltimore, have just issued an edition of Milner's _End of Controversy_, in paper covers, which is sold for seventy five cents a copy.

Mr. P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, will soon publish _Catholic Doctrine, as defined by the Council of Trent_, expounded in a series of conferences delivered in Geneva during the Jubilee of 1851, by Rev. Father Nampon, of the Society of Jesus; proposed as a means of reuniting all Christians. It will make an octavo volume of some 600 or 700 pages.

From Roberts Brothers, Boston:

Handy-volume Series. Realities of Irish Life.

Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. By Louisa M. Alcott. 2 Vols. Illustrated.

Foreign Literary Notes.

The Abbé Sire, Superior of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, some time since undertook to procure the translation of the bull "_Ineffabilis_" into all the written languages of the world. In this vast enterprise he has made great progress, and more than a year ago his zeal received the honoring recognition of the holy father in a letter addressed to him, beginning: "Hinc gratissimum nobis accidit, Dilecte Fili, consilium a Te susceptum curandi, ut Apostoliae Nostrae de dogmatica Immaculati ejusdem Dei Genitricis Conceptus Definitione Litterae e latino idiomate in omnes converteretur linguas."

Catholic Ireland has made a handsome contribution to M. Sire's work in a volume published in Dublin, containing the Bull and its translation into the French, Latin, and Irish languages. The Irish translation is by the Rev. Patrick J. Bourke, President of St. Jarlath's College, Tuam, where, alone in all Ireland, under the auspices, and, we may say, the national enthusiasm of the Rt. Rev. Dr. McHale, the language of Ireland is taught, and endeavored to be preserved. We say endeavored; for it seems that, excepting among the hills of Connaught, the mother tongue of the Celtic race has died, or is rapidly dying out in the green island. Dr. Bourke's volume, published in Dublin, is a fine specimen of typography.

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We believe, although we have never seen any announcement of it, that Dr. Bourke is also the editor of the _Keltic Journal and Indicator_, a semi-monthly commenced at Manchester, (England,) in January last. Why it is called Keltic, instead of Gaelic or Irish, we do not know, nor can we understand why it should be published in England rather than in Ireland. Two other Gaelic races, the Welsh, and the Bretons of France, have periodicals in their native dialect; the latter, the Feiz he Breiz, and the former, several.

The dying out of the Irish language on the lips of a million of people who speak it, may be attributed mainly to two causes--emigration, and the indifference of its own race.

There is still another difficulty. Its pronunciation no longer accords with its received orthography, and, as written, it is encumbered with a quantity of unpronounced letters. If the language is to continue to exist as a written one, a radical reform similar to that effected by the Tcheks in the Bohemian dialect at the end of the last century is absolutely necessary. Meantime, Dr. Bourke is entitled to great praise for his unceasing efforts in the cause of Ireland's national literature.

The publishing house of Adrien Le Clerc (Paris) announces an important work in press. It is _L'Histoire des Conciles_, in ten volumes 8vo, (large,) of 640 pages each. The first volume appeared on the 31st of January. It is a translation, by the Abbés Goschler and Delarc, from the German of Dr. Ch. Jos. Hefele, Professor of Theology at the University of Tübingen. The Messrs. Clarke, of Edinburgh, have announced an English translation of the same work from the German.

----

_The Femall Glory, or the Life and Death of our Blessed Lady, the Holy Virgin Mary, God's owne immaculate Mother, etc. etc._ By Anthony Stafford, Gent. London, 1635. Reprinted in 1869. An exact typographical reproduction of the original, in all its quaintness of ancient characters and antiquity of English, preceded by the apology of the author (Stafford) and an essay on the cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Edited by the Rev. Orby Shipley.

Independently of its intrinsic merit, this work has always attracted great attention, from the fact that it was written by a member of the English (Episcopal) Church, and approved by prelates of that denomination as distinguished as Laud and Juxon.

As a matter of course, such a book was found to be "egregiously scandalous" by the Puritans, who looked upon it as nothing short of a device of papacy. And Henry Burton, minister of Friday street, London, in a sermon, _For God and the King_, denounced "several extravagant and popish passages therein, and advised the people to be aware of it." This was the beginning of a controversial war concerning the "Femall Glory" that made it one of the most notable works of the day. That a papist should have written such a book might have passed without comment, but that a noble Stafford of Northamptonshire, a graduate of Oriel College Oxford, and a staunch Church of England man, should have done this thing was an irremissible sin in Puritanic eyes.

Stafford was distinguished as a man of letters, and wrote various other works, most of them with quaint titles, according to the taste of that day; as,

_Niobe dissolved into a Nilus: or his Age drowned in her own tears._ 1611.

_Heavenly Dogge: a Life and Death of that Great Cynick Diogenes; whom Laertius styled Canis Caelestis, the Heavenly Dogge_. 1615.

The attacks of Burton and others brought out _A Short Apology, or Vindication of a book entitled Femall Glory, etc._, which is republished in the fourth edition of 1869.

_The Femall Glory _ is a book of genuine English growth, entirely free from imitation or adaptation of foreign words, and, beyond mere sketches of the most meagre character, the only full life of the Blessed Virgin. {431} It is valuable, in a controversial point of view, as contrasting, the clear and distinct acknowledgment of the dignity and sanctity of the mother of God, as recognized by English Protestants of that, with the Episcopal Low Church views of the present day. Citations might be made from such men as Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Bull, Bishop Pearson, Archdeacon Frank, and Archbishop Bramhall, to show this conclusively. Not the smallest charm about the book is the odor of its quaint seventeenth century tone of thought and expression. Thus, in the preface "To the Feminine Reader" she is told, "You are here presented, by an extreme honourer of your Sexe, with a Mirrour of Femall Perfection. ... By this, you cannot curle your haires, fill up your wrinckles, and so alter your Looks, that Nature, who made you, knowes you no more, but utterly forgets her owne Workmanship. By this, you cannot lay spots on your faces; but take them out of your Soules, you may." Then there is "The Ghyrlond of the Blessed Virgin Marie."

"There are five letters in this blessed Name, Which, chang'd, a five-fold Mysterie designe; The M, the Myrtle, A, the Almonds clame, R, Rose, I, Ivy, E, sweet Eglantine."

That such a book should not find favor in the eyes of the London _Athenaeum_, is not surprising. The author of _Spiritual Wives_ and the recognizer of the Pope Joan fable as veritable history could scarcely be expected to recognize merit in such a work as the _Femall Glory_.

_A Slavonian Version of the Bible_ is now in preparation at Rome. The original Slavonian text was the work of St. Cyril and St. Methodus, apostles to the Slavonians in the ninth century. In the lapse of years, the original text has been seriously tampered with by so-called emendators and incompetent copyists, so that it is now very difficult to determine several important questions concerning it. Was the translation made from the Latin, the Greek, or the Hebrew? What class of manuscripts were used by these apostles? Which of the Slavonian dialects was the vehicle of the translation? And, finally, was the original version written in glagolitic or cyrillic characters?

_The Staple of Biographical Notices_ of Pope Sixtus V., is usually made up of a series of stories, to the effect that he was the son of ignorant parents and himself a swineherd; that he rose by his talents to the dignity of cardinal, and that, feigning extreme illness to the point of appearing to be on the verge of the grave from debility and disease, was no sooner elected to the papacy than he threw away his crutches and declared himself perfectly restored to health.

These stories have found such favor with compilers of historical books that they have been carefully preserved in spite of their want of confirmation by contemporary historians. M. A. I. Dumesnil has lately written a life of Felix Peretti, Pope Sixtus V., in which he shows that his origin was not low, and that he was allied to the best families, short of nobility, of his province. The stories of his illness, simulated feebleness, and affected use of crutches, he pronounces to be all fabulous, and quotes Tempesti, one of the historians of the conclave which elected Sixtus, thus: "In electing Montalto pope, still vigorous of years, since he had reached only sixty-four and enjoyed a robust and vigorous constitution, it was felt certain that he would live long enough to bury Farnese and his partisans." M. Dumesnil does not appear to have added anything by research or discovery to the materials already known to be in existence, but has simply used the matter furnished by Tempesti, Guerra, Fontana, and other Italian historians, with skill and judgment. He bears testimony to the extraordinary talent, judgment, and energy of the great pontiff, whose reign of less than five years was, unfortunately, too short to complete the extensive reforms commenced by him in the temporal government of his territory. Sixtus V. was remarkable for his energy in the suppression of abuses, order and economy in the public finances, and unbending severity toward criminals, encouragement of industry, an enlightened fondness for the arts, as shown by numerous monuments and his patronage of the great architect, Fontana, and an inflexible determination to raise the holy see from any dependence upon foreign princes.

{432}

There is another _Life of Sixus_ in preparation by Baron Hübner, formerly Austrian Ambassador to France, in which he promises numerous documents, French, Spanish, and English, never yet published.

[Six paragraphs have been moved, three paragraphs toward the end, from this location according to the notice on page 711-2.]

_Concilium Seleuciae et Ctesiphonti_, habitum anno 410. Textum Syriacum edidit latine vertit notisque instruxit, T. J. Lamy. Lovanii, 1868.

From ancient Syrian literature, so rich in works relative to the church, its history, its discipline, and its dogmas, the Abbé Lamy, Professor at the University of Louvain, has here selected one of its most precious monuments for translation and comment. Not less remarkable for the charm of their antique simplicity of language than their fulness of doctrine, these few pages alone would almost suffice to establish the complete symbolism of the church. "Confitemur etiam"--thus testify the fathers of the Council of Seleucia--"Spiritum vivum et sanctum, Paracletum vivum, QUI EX PATRE ET FILIO in una Trinitate, in una essentia, in una voluntate, amplectentes fidem trecentorum decem et octo Episcoporum, quae definita fuit in urbe Nicea. Haec est confessio nostra et fides nostra, quam accepimus a Sanctis Patribus Nostris.

[The following six paragraphs have been moved to this location according to the notice on page 711-2.]

It will be remembered that in the fifth century the Priscillianists, in those countries infected with the Arian heresy, took unfair advantage of the special mention made by the Council of Constantinople of the first person of the Trinity and of the omitted mention of the Son, to maintain that the Son was not consubstantial with the Father.

Then followed the express insertion of the word FILIOQUE by decree of a general council.

The history of the Greek schism turns upon this point, and students of church history will find high interest and solid instruction in tracing the reasons and circumstances connected with the fact that, although this addition of _filioque_ really made no change in the doctrine of the church, although in the ninth century the western churches used it, and yet Pope Leo III. insisted on the use in Rome of the form adopted by the fathers of Constantinople, and although between the Greek and the Latin churches there was no divergence on this doctrinal point, nevertheless it was not until after the consummation of the schism of Photius and of Michael Cerularius that the Greeks began to pretend that they had never professed this dogma.

Then follows the treatment of this question by the councils of fourth Lateran, (1215,) third Lyons, (1274,) and that of Florence, (1439.)

Of course it will be seen that the importance of the action of the Council of Seleucia lies in the fact that it was composed of forty bishops, of whom one, at least, was a member of the first ecumenical council of Constantinople, and that it was called at the instigation and through the initiative of the Greek Church herself.

So that, as the lawyers say, it does not lie in the mouth of the Greek Church, at the present day, to say that it is simply opposing a Latin innovation.

In almost immediate connection with what we here remark on the Rev. Mr. Lamy's book, we may mention that the _Jacobi Episcopi Edessem Epistola ad Georgium Episcopum Sarugensem de Orthographia Syriaca_, so well known, at least by reputation, to oriental scholars, has at last been published at Leipsic. Assemanni and Michaelis frequently urged its printing, and Cardinal Wiseman, who took a strong and appreciative interest in the work, speaks of it at length in the first volume of his _Horae Syriacae_, (Rome, 1828.)

Monsignor Giuliani, of Verona, has published a work on public libraries, in which he shows that the libraries of Italy possess a greater number of volumes than the libraries of any other nation in the world. The Italian libraries number 6,000,000 of volumes; France, 4,389,000; Austria, 2,400,000; Prussia, 2,040,000, Great Britain, 1,774,493; Bavaria, 1,268,000; Russia, 882,090; Belgium, 509,100. Collections of books are much scattered in Italy. Paris has one third of all the library books in France, and most of the European capitals are rich in almost as great a proportion. This is not the case in Italy. Milan has only 250,000 volumes in the Brera library, and 155,000 in the Ambrosian.

{433}

The Catholic World.

Vol. IX., No. 52.--July, 1869.

Columbus At Salamanca.

"----e di te solo Basti ai posteri tuoi ch'alquanto accume: Che quel poco darà lunga memoria Di poema dignissima e d'istoria." [Footnote 121] _Gierusalemme Liberata_, TASSO.

[Footnote 121: "Thy single name will pour diviner light O'er history's pages; and thy fame inspire Bards, who are yet unborn, with more celestial fire." Tasso's _Jerusalem Delivered_. ]

Some three years since, a large historical painting was exhibited at the gallery of the Artists' Fund Association in the city of New York. Its subject, as announced, was "Columbus before the Council of Salamanca." The picture was said to be a work of merit, and attracted much attention. It represented the great discoverer standing in the large hall of a convent, surrounded by monks and ecclesiastics, foremost among whom are three Dominican friars, who, having apparently worked themselves into a paroxysm of anger, face Columbus with gestures of violent denunciation. Grave, dignified, and majestic stands the great Genoese discoverer among them, apparently the only reasonable being in that assemblage of ignorance and bigotry, whose victim he is evidently about to become. The pictorial lesson sought to be conveyed was, clearly, that here was another Galileo business, a second _e pur si muove_ sensation, a repetition of the favorite amusement of all churchmen, which every one knows to be the persecution of discoverers and the crushing out of knowledge. And the warrant for all this misrepresentation was said to be found in the pages of Washington Irving's _History of Columbus_.

Now, a perusal of those pages shows that, although Mr. Irving committed a grave historical blunder in describing a "council of Salamanca" that had no existence, he nevertheless expressly excepts from any charge of ignorance and intolerance that may be implied from his language these very Dominican monks who, in Mr. Kauffman's historical picture, are made the foremost and most violent in their denunciation of Columbus.

"When Columbus," says Irving, "began to state the grounds of his belief, the friars of St. Stephen's (Dominicans) _alone paid attention to him_, that convent being more learned in the sciences than the rest of the university. The others appear to have intrenched themselves behind one dogged proposition."

{434}

In the entire range of English art and literature so firmly have some of the most offensive forms of anti-Catholic prejudice become rooted, that, whenever any prominent historical character or incident comes in contact with the Catholic Church the occasion is seized, right or wrong, with or without authority, and often in the very teeth of history, to exemplify some phase of what people are pleased to call popish ignorance and persecution. Under the dark pall of bigotry that has so long overshadowed the genius of English literature, events which, in honest truth, should and do redound to the honor of the Catholic Church and its hierarchy as protectors of knowledge and promoters of noble enterprises have been, by a species of literary legerdemain, wrested into so many evidences of their intolerance.

More than any country, England has furnished astounding and repulsive proofs of the truth of Count De Maistre's assertion that "History is a vast conspiracy against truth." With uplifted hands, dripping with the blood of the innocent, she accuses other nations of murder. With a statute-book black with intolerance and suppression of knowledge, she talks complacently of the rights of conscience and the blessings of education.

In a lecture on Daniel O'Connell, delivered in Brooklyn on the fifth of March last, the distinguished orator, Wendell Phillips, of Boston, with all his eloquence, appeared almost at a loss fittingly to qualify, by description and illustration, the frightful tyranny of Protestant England against Catholic Ireland, as exemplified in the diabolical ingenuity of the means by which she sought to "stamp out" Irish nationality and annihilate Catholicity. And, Mr. Phillips might have added, she was as consistently bigoted at home as in Ireland. Here, the poor hedge schoolmaster if a Catholic, who taught a child its a b c, was, for the first offence, subject to banishment, and for the second, _to be hanged as a felon_. There, when the University of Oxford was asked to confer the honorary degree of A.M. on Alban Francis, a learned Benedictine, he was rudely thrust back, solely for the reason that he was a Catholic. And yet the same university had shortly before conferred the same degree on--a Mohammedan! The old distich is very trite, but on that occasion it was very true:

"Turk, Jew, or atheist may enter here, But not a papist."

It is a memorable fact that Sir Isaac Newton particularly distinguished himself by active participation in this piece of bigotry. He actually suspended the preparation for the press of his _Principia_, and lent all the influence of his position and his great name in order that an Englishman, distinguished for his virtues and his learning, might not, because he was a Catholic, receive the cheap recognition of the honorary degree of a Protestant university. And Newton's English biographer coolly states that "it was this circumstance, perhaps, as much as the personal merit of Newton, that induced the university to select him, the following year, to serve as their representative in parliament."

But space fails us to dwell on this subject, and we desire merely to note the fact that, so thoroughly has a spirit of intolerant anti-Catholicity permeated English literature, that its expression, in some shape, is constantly found at the points of the pens of many who are personally unconscious of any such inspiration. {435} The spirit we refer to so thoroughly pervades every department of literature--history, biography, travels, poetry, philosophy--that from youth to old age it is unconsciously infiltrated into the mental processes of every one who uses the English language as a means of acquiring or communicating knowledge. Even as we write, an instance of this presents itself. Here is a passage from the editorial columns of a leading daily, published in Brooklyn, the third city of the Union:

"----the church so long deemed the enemy of human freedom and intellectual progress, which imprisoned Galileo, and _tried to thwart Columbus_ in putting the girdle of her ancient faith around the world!"

And yet the article from which this extract is made is evidently written in a spirit that its author honestly supposes to be one of entire freedom from religious prejudice. The church tried to thwart Columbus! That is the main idea of the passage quoted, as it was also the inspiration of the Kauffman painting. Such ideas and such inspiration are the result of general prejudice and a foregone conclusion.

Of course we are aware of the accommodating pliability of the term "the church," as used by writers who have anything disagreeable or false to say of Catholicity. "The church" is, by turns, a council, the pope, the cardinals, the inquisition, a bishop or two, a knot of priests, sometimes only one, a king, a viceroy, a barefooted friar, a dying nun, or even a simple layman. It is really difficult and discouraging to deal with people who either cannot or will not abide by some standard of meaning for words whose proper acceptance is well defined and recognized.

In the case of Columbus these misrepresentations are the more remarkable for the reason that there is no history of the discovery of America, no biography of Columbus, how ever imperfect, however prejudiced it may be, from whose perusal the student can arise with any other conviction than that Columbus, so far from being thwarted, was, on the contrary, enabled to succeed in obtaining from Spain the means to fit out his expedition only, wholly, and solely by reason of the encouragement and aid he received from friars, priests, bishops, and cardinals!

From the moment he set foot on Spanish soil until he sailed from Palos the generous sympathy and brave advocacy of churchmen never forsook him. Never for a moment did they waver in their appreciation of his noble nature, his sincere piety, and the merit of his enterprise. From the Dominicans cloistered in St. Stephens to Luis de St. Angel, high treasurer at the royal court; from the saintly hermit of La Rabida to the grand Cardinal Mendoza, ("a man of sound judgment, quick intellect, eloquent and able," says Washington Irving,) in all are found the same generous enthusiasm and unwavering boldness in their support of the strange sailor's enterprise.

And now, should Mr. Kauffman, or any other artist, desirous of painting a great picture without pandering to a taste as false in art as in history, desire to select a striking incident from the history of Columbus, we beg leave to suggest that, without flying in the face of truth, he may find it among the following historical incidents:

First. Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, in appearance lofty and venerable, of generous and gentle deportment, pleading the cause of Columbus before the queen.

Second. The friar Diego de Deza aiding Columbus in sore necessity from his own scant purse.

{436}

Third. Juan Perez, prior of the convent of La Rabida, remonstrating with Columbus against abandoning his great enterprise and quitting Spain.

Fourth. The same prior saddling a mule at midnight to confront the dangers of mountain passes, and an enemy's country, in order to intercede for Columbus with the queen at Santa Fé.

Fifth. The same noble monk pleading the cause of Columbus before the queen with such chivalrous enthusiasm that "Isabella never heard the proposition urged with such honest zeal and impassioned eloquence."

Sixth. Another noble ecclesiastic, Luis de St. Angel, who, rivalling Isabella's magnanimity, met the queen's noble offer to pledge her crown jewels to raise the necessary funds for Columbus's expedition with the assurance that she need not, for he would advance the money.

But to return to the "council of Salamanca." The word council presents the idea of a solemn ecclesiastical assemblage: not a committee, not a board, not a junto; but something grand, elevated in dignity and large in numbers. When you say "council," every one, instinctively, imagines a crowd of mitres and episcopal croziers.

With that "fatal facility" which is the bane of historical composition Irving has given us an entire chapter of nine pages describing this famous "council," its debates, and its proceedings, and from this chapter has gradually, although--we must in justice to Mr. Irving say--unwarrantably, grown up a story that, by dint of thirty years' repetition, has almost acquired the dignity of an historical fact. That Prescott should have followed Irving is not surprising. That Lamartine should have disdained reference to historical sources and spoken of Spain of the fifteenth century with that wonderful _sans gêne_ that improvises both form and substance, that writes an apotheosis of Robespierre and calls it a history of the Girondins, in which there is, of course, a florid description of "the last banquet," (which never took place,) is still less surprising. But that a Spaniard and a serious historian, Don Modesto Lafuente, should have written an important page in the history of his country on the word of an entire stranger is astounding.

The whole of chapter third and part of chapter fourth of Irving's _Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus_ are devoted to "the council." Irving represents Ferdinand "determined to take the opinion of the most learned men in the kingdom, and be guided by their decision." Ferdinand de Talavera, "one of the most erudite men of Spain and high in the royal confidence," was commanded to consult the most learned astronomers, etc. After they had informed themselves fully on the subject, they were to consult together and make a report to the sovereign of their collective opinion. After a long disquisition on the condition of learning and science at that time, Irving goes on to say: "Such was the period when a council of clerical sages was convened in the collegiate convent of St. Stephen to investigate the new theory of Columbus. It was composed of professors of astronomy, geography, mathematics and other branches of science, together with various dignitaries of the church and learned friars. ... Among the number who were convinced by the reasoning and warmed by the eloquence of Columbus was Diego de Deza, a worthy and learned friar of the order of St. Dominick. He obtained for Columbus a dispassionate if not an unprejudiced hearing." {437} Irving speaks of the assembled body as "this learned junto," and says that occasional conferences took place, but without producing any decision.

"Talavera, to whom the matter was specially entrusted, had too little esteem for it, and was too much occupied to press it to a conclusion, and thus the inquiry experienced continual procrastination and neglect."

So far the third chapter of Irving. It is a remarkable fact that, for all the important statements concerning the "council," Irving cites but one authority, Remesal, referring to book ii. chapter 27, and book xi. chapter 7. In an endeavor to verify these citations we find that book ii. has but twenty-two chapters, and the passage referred to in book xi. chapter 7 is not there, but in book ii. chapter 7. But it is more than singular that Irving should refer to Remesal at all on that subject. Remesal was a learned Dominican monk and his work is a _History of the Provinces of Chiapa and Guatemala_, (America.) His book was completed in 1609, and first published in 1619. Personally, he was separated from the events at Salamanca by a space of one hundred and twenty years. He was not writing the history of Spain in 1487, and what he says concerning Salamanca is merely incidental, unquestionably correct though it be. Thus, he states that, with the aid of the Dominicans, Columbus brought over the most learned men of the university, and among the numerous claims to greatness of the convent of St. Stephen was that of having been the principal cause of the discovery of the Indies. [Footnote 122]

[Footnote 122: "Y con el favor des los Religiosos reduxo a su opinion los mayores Letrados de la escuela. ... Entre las muchas grundezas ... una es aver sido la principal ocasion del descubrimiento de las Indias."]

To return to Irving. He relates in chapter 4 that the "consultations of the board (first it was the council, then "this learned junto") at Salamanca were interrupted by the Spanish campaign against Malaga, before that learned body could come to a decision, and for a long time Columbus was kept in suspense, vainly awaiting the report that was to decide the fate of his application." It thus appears that the opinion of the council was not sufficiently adverse to Columbus to report at once and unfavorably of his project. Then followed the spring campaign of 1487, the siege of Malaga, August, 1487. "In the spring of 1489," says Irving, "Columbus was summoned to attend a conference of learned men to be held at the city of Seville."

But if a fresh conference is to decide, what then was the value of the Salamanca council by whose decision, as Mr. Irving informed us a few pages back, King Ferdinand had resolved to be guided?

"In 1490, Ferdinand and Isabella entered Seville in triumph. Spring and summer wore away. At court was Fernando de Talavera, _the procrastinating arbiter of the pretensions of Columbus_." So then the arbiter was Talavera, not the council, which, so far from condemning, have not yet, at the end of four years, given any decision concerning the affair of Columbus.

The higher we remount with the authorities toward the epoch of "the council" the less do we find concerning it and concerning Salamanca. The chroniclers of their Catholic majesties, Hernando del Pulgar, Galindez, Carvajal, and others, make no mention of it, and Peter Martyr, Lucio Siculo, Gonzalez de Oviedo, Lopez de Gomara, and Sohs are equally silent on the subject.

{438}

It must be borne in mind, with regard to Columbus, that historical certainty begins really with the siege of Granada, in 1492. Everything preceding that epoch is traditional, often vague and uncertain, and seldom supported by documentary evidence. A council at Salamranca held by royal order would have been authorized by special edict or decree. There was none. Neither was there any regular delegation to the university, no commission officially installed, no interrogatories, nor registers, nor records, followed by a definitive decree. The college and convent of St. Stephen (Dominican) was only one college of the many at Salamanca constituting the university. If such a council as Irving describes had ever been held there, reference to recorded proceedings, and a final decision in its archives, or in those of St. Stephen, could long since have been made.

The truth is that the only authority for any statements concerning a committee of cosmographers is a passage in the life of the grand admiral, written by his son Fernando Columbus. As already remarked, the nearer we approach the period of the pretended "council" the less we hear about it. Herrera, whose sagacity, impartiality, and fidelity are universally recognized, thus relates the matter of the cosmographers, but not once does he mention "council" or "Salamanca." He says (1st Dec. book i, chap. vii.) "that Columbus's suit was so home pressed (y tanto se porfiò en ello) that their Catholic majesties, giving some attention to the affair, referred it to father Ferdinand de Talavera. He (Talavera) held a meeting of cosmographers who debated about it, (qui confirieron en ello,) but there being few then of that profession in Castile, and those none of the best in the world, and besides Columbus would not altogether explain himself, lest he should be served as he had been in Portugal, [Footnote 123] they came to a resolution nothing answerable to what he had expected."

[Footnote 123: During his negotiation at Lisbon with the king of Portugal, Columbus was requested to furnish for the consideration of the royal council a detailed plan of his proposed voyage, with charts and documents according to which he intended to shape his course. As soon as these were obtained, a well-manned vessel, under command of an able captain, was despatched with orders to sail west on the Atlantic according to the instructions of Columbus. Some few days out from the Cape Verd Islands, the crew became discouraged, and the vessel returned. The secret of its mission soon transpired, and Columbus, outraged at the treachery, left Portugal in disgust.]

Herrera follows Ferdinand Columbus very closely; adopting, in many passages, his very words. Fernando makes no mention of Salamanca, says expressly that the cosmographers were called altogether by Talavera, and that Columbus held back his most important proofs lest what had happened him in Portugal might also happen him in Spain, (nè lo ammiraglio si volea lasciar tanto intendere che gli avenisse quel, che in Portogallo gli avvenne et gli urbassero la beniditione.)

Fernando Columbus was a man of learning and ability, and his history is of great value. Unfortunately, the work, as he wrote it, is lost. It was, of course, in the Spanish language. It is said that a son of his brother Diego took the MS. to Genoa, where it was translated into Italian. The version now used in Spain is retranslated from the Italian, and abounds in errors. There is a very good copy of the Italian edition (Venice, 1685) in the Astor library.

Munoz, the Spanish national historian who followed Herrera and precedes Navarette, was a scholar of great merits, talents, and liberal acquisitions. He was indefatigable in research, and being royal historiographer had free access to all the records of Spain. He says that Talavera was commissioned to examine the enterprise with cosmographers, and give their opinion. {439} As the court happened that winter to be at Salamanca, they met there. It is to be regretted that no record exists of the conferences that took place in the Dominican convent of St. Stephen, from which to form an opinion of the condition of mathematics and astronomy in the university so famous in the fifteenth century. _It is clear, nevertheless, that Columbus established his propositions, produced his proofs, and met every objection_. [Footnote 124]

[Footnote 124: Talavera á quien los reyes encargaron la comision de juntar à los sujetis habiles in cosmografia, para examinar la empresa, y dar su pareceo. Formose la junta en Salamanca, quizá per el invierno estando alli la corte. Es lastima quo no hayan quidado documentis de las disputas que se tuvieron en el convento de los dominicanos de San Esteban para formar juicio del estado de las matematicas y astronomia en aquella universidad famosa en el siglo XV. Coustu que Colon sentaban sus proposisciones, exponfa sus fundamentos, y satisfaciá a' las dificultades.]

Munoz (_Historia del Nuevo Mundo_, pp. 57, 58, 59) continues: "Los dominicanos poner entre sus glorias el haber hospedado en San Esteban al descubridor de las Indias, dadole de comer y otros auxilios para seguir sus pretensiones; y sobra todo el haber estado por su opinion en equellas disputas, y atraido á su partido los primeros hombres de la escuela. En lo qual attribuyen la principal parte á Fray Diego Deza. ... cuyo autoridad. ... contribuyó mucho para los creditos y acceptacion de la empresa." [Footnote 125]

[Footnote 125: The Dominicans are justly proud of the hospitality extended by them in their convents to the discoverer of America, entertaining him, and providing him with all things necessary to pursue his projects; and still more of having declared for him in the argument, drawing over to his side the first men of the university. In all which the great merit is due to Diego de Deza, whose influence contributed greatly to the appreciation and adoption of the enterprise.]

Only a few years since, in 1858, Don Domingo Doncel y Ordar, of Salamanca, published a memoir in which he refutes the statements of Irving.

A conference of cosmographers doubtless was held, but it was not of the nature described by Irving and those who copy him, nor was it a "council" with which the university of Salamanca had any official connection whatever.

The archives, documents, and registers of the university have been searched with the most thorough diligence, and not a trace of the council is on record. The registers in particular, admirably kept and carefully preserved, were commenced in 1464 and record incidents almost insignificant in interest, but make no mention of such a meeting or council as Irving speaks of. In this connection it is matter of surprise that such writers as Rosselly De Lorgues and Cadoret should still be chasing the phantom of this Salamanca council. The latter says that its decree was rendered five years after its first meeting, and De Lorgues supposes it probable that its records may yet be found in the archives of Simancas. If there had been any decision against Columbus by a body at all approaching the dignity and importance of the university of Salamanca, he would have immediately quitted Spain, never to return. But we find him leaving Salamanca strong in the support of its first scholars, of the entire body of Dominicans, and of the papal nuncio.

That King Ferdinand should have directed Talavera to take the opinion of cosmographers is perfectly natural. This temporizing and shuffling treatment of Columbus would lead him to do anything that would gain time and put Columbus off. Even Isabella was evidently desirous of procrastinating until a successful termination of the siege of Granada should enable them to act in the matter.

Reference to a committee or a board for the sake of delay indefinite is not an invention of the nineteenth century. It is as old as, if not older than, the period of Columbus. {440} That Columbus should, as his son Fernando relates, have hesitated to explain himself fully, was natural, and indeed inevitable. And with that hesitation there must have been a shade of disdain in his manner. It looks very much as though he had reserved his best, most cogent reasons for the private ear of his special friends the Dominicans, who were enthusiastically the advocates of his enterprise.

We see Columbus leaving Salamanca not cast down and defeated, but serene and with all the courage of confirmed conviction. The noble Diego de Deza conducts him to the presence of Ferdinand and Isabella, and we soon afterward hear the hum of preparation at Palos.

The latest historian of Columbus, Mr. Arthur Helps, separated from Washington Irving by a period of some forty years, is credited with ability, and great industry and research. He certainly has the advantage of extensive and successful discoveries of documents concerning Columbus made in Spain within that period. It would be but reasonable, therefore, to look for the throwing of much additional light and interesting details on so capital an incident as "the council of Salamanca." Here is the account given of it by Mr. Helps in his _Life of Columbus_, published since the commencement of the present year:

"Amid the clang of arms and the bustle of warlike preparation, Columbus was not likely to obtain more than a slight and superficial attention to a matter which must have seemed remote and uncertain.

"Indeed, when it is considered that the most pressing internal affairs of kingdoms are neglected by the wisest rulers in times of war, it is wonderful that he succeeded in obtaining any audience at all. However, he was fortunate enough to find at once a friend in the treasurer of the household, Alonzo de Quintilla, a man who, like himself, took delight in great things, and who obtained a hearing for him from the Spanish monarchs. Ferdinand and Isabella did not dismiss him abruptly. On the contrary, it is said they listened kindly; and the conference ended _by their referring the business to the queen's confessor, Fra Hernando de Talavera_, who was afterwards archbishop of Granada. This important functionary summoned a junta of cosmographers (not a promising assemblage!) to consult about the affair, and this junta was convened at Salamanca in the summer of the year 1487.

"Here was a step gained; the cosmographers were to consider his scheme, and not merely to consider whether it was worth taking into consideration. But it was impossible for the jury to be unprejudiced. All inventors, to a certain extent, insult their contemporaries by accusing them of stupidity and ignorance. And the cosmographical pedants, accustomed to beaten tracks, resented the heresy by which this adventurer was attempting to overthrow the belief of centuries. They thought that so many persons, wise in nautical matters, as had preceded the Genoese mariner, never could have overlooked such an idea as this which had presented itself to his mind. Moreover, as the learning of the middle ages resided for the most part in the cloister, the members of the junta were principally clerical, and combined to crush Columbus with theological objections. ... Las Casas displays his usual acuteness when he says that the great difficulty of Columbus was not that of teaching, but that of unteaching; not of promulgating his own theory, but of eradicating the erroneous convictions of the judges before whom he had to plead his cause. In fine, the junta decided that the project was 'vain and impossible, and that it did not belong to the majesty of such great princes to determine anything upon such weak grounds of information.'"

Slender material, all this, for another Kauffman painting! Here is our council sunk to a junta--a junta of cosmographers--not an assemblage of theologians to decide what the church thought about the project, but a junta of men supposed to know something of geography and the conformation of the globe! The "theological objections" referred to by Mr. Helps were precisely the opportunity of Columbus's greatest triumph in giving him occasion to reveal himself to friends and enemies in a capacity never suspected to exist in him. {441} Among the many traditions in Spain concerning "l'almirante" [Footnote 126] --traditions supported by his own writings and the testimony of such men as Las Casas--none are so well established as those that recount the eloquent inspiration of Columbus in citing or commenting the Scriptures. His perfect familiarity with them was not more admirable than his majesty of manner in declaiming their grandest passages.

[Footnote 126: Humboldt says that whenever a Spaniard mentions _L'Almirante_, he refers to but one, namely, Columbus. Just as the Mexicans, when they speak of El Marchese, mean Cortes, and the Florentines, when they name _Il Segretario_, mean Macchiavelli.]

Luther, as we learn from that remarkable book, _D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation, discovered_, unexpectedly discovered, to his great joy and surprise, a Bible chained to a window in the conventual library! Could not some modern D'Aubigné inform us how it was that an obscure Italian sailor could have happened upon a Bible in such countries as Italy, Portugal, and Spain, could have been permitted to read it--more than all that, could have had the temerity to quote it to the very face of monks, and priests, and, worse still, show them that he knew as much about it as they did? We commend the subject to the D'Aubigné editors.

In saying that, in our belief, the life of Columbus has yet to be written, we express no new opinion.

In this connection it is well remarked by the Marquis De Belloy, that the best history of Christopher Columbus would be the collection of his own writings accompanied by commentaries. Literary and bibliographical research and labor in Spain have succeeded in collecting nearly everything that Columbus wrote from the year 1492 up to the period of his death, and their publication is needed to show this truly grand character in his true light. Were Columbus simply a man of genius, an ordinary history would suffice to recount his life. But his soul was as great as his genius, and such a soul is its own best revelation. Next to the accomplishments of his great project, the discovery of a new world beyond the ocean, a world he distinctly saw, his dominant thought was--with the wealth that must necessarily be obtained from it--to reconquer and deliver from pagan hands the sepulchre of our Saviour!

Profane history and modern impiety instinctively smile at such simplicity. Mr. Rosselly De Lorgues is one of the very few who have rendered justice to the religious phase of the character of the great mariner, and he shows that in Columbus constancy, perseverance, bravery, and honor were not more marked than elevated Catholic piety.

To conclude with Salamanca, there is no more searching, truthful, and eloquent commentary on its results than the language of Columbus himself, for he has recorded it. We quote from Navarette (Madrid edition) vol. 1. p. xcii.:

"Diego de Deza"--the Dominican monk--"was his (Columbus's) special protector with Ferdinand and Isabella, and mainly contributed to the success of his enterprise; referring to this, Columbus himself said that from his coming into Castile that prelate (Deza) had protected him, had striven for his honor, and to him was it due that their majesties possessed the Indies." [Footnote 127]

[Footnote 127: "Por lo cual decia el mismo Colon que _desde_ que vino á Castilla le habia favorecido aquel prelado y deseado su honora, y que el fue causa que SS. AA. tuviesen las Indias."]

For this passage Navarette quotes Remesal, _Historia di Chiapa e Guatemala_. A very characteristic performance in Navarette! It was impossible for him to avoid referring to what Columbus had said, and he weakens the force of it by not crediting it at once and directly to the proper authority, Las Casas--citing Las Casas's own words.

{442}

For Remesal expressly says that he takes it from Las Casas, (lib. i. al medio del cap. 29:) "Y assi (dize) en carta escrita de su mano de Christobal Colon vide que dezia al Rey: Que el suso dicho Maestro del Principe, Arcobispo de Sevilla D.F. _Diego Deza avia fido causa que los Reyes abrassen las Indias_."

It is one thing to be told that Remesal uses the language cited by Navarette, and quite another thing to learn from Las Casas that he had seen _a letter written by Columbus himself, in which he told the king of Spain that their majesties owed their possession of the Indies to the Dominican monk Diego de Deza_.

Nothing, however, need surprise us from a historian who undertook the desperate task of extenuating the notorious injustice of Ferdinand toward Columbus. In its execution Navarette has needlessly and shamefully outraged the truth of history and the memory of the Great Discoverer.

Daybreak.