Chapter II.

The Weather-cross.

The next morning Richard was out with the early larks, and returned after a few hours in a peculiar frame of mind. As he was entering his room, he saw through the open door his father standing in the saloon. Herr Frank was carefully examining the arrangements, as the servants were carrying books into the adjoining room and placing them in a bookcase. Richard, as he passed, greeted his father briefly, contrary to his usual custom. At other times he used to exchange a few words with his father when he bid him good-morning, and he let no occasion pass of giving his opinion on any matter in which he knew his father took an interest.

The young man walked to the open window of his room, and gazed into the distance. He remained motionless for a time. He ran his fingers through his hair, and with a jerk of the head threw the brown locks back from his forehead. He walked restlessly back and forth, and acted like a man who tries in vain to escape from thoughts that force themselves upon him. At length he went to the piano, and beat an impetuous impromptu on the keys.

"Ei, Richard!" cried Herr Frank, whom the wild music had brought to his side. "Why, you rave! How possessed! One would think you had discovered a roaring cataract in the mountains, and wished to imitate its violence."

Richard glanced quickly at his father, and finished with a tender, plaintive melody.

"Come over here and look at the rooms."

Richard followed his father and examined carelessly the elegant rooms, and spoke a few cold words of commendation.

"And what do you say to this flora?" said Herr Frank pointing to a stepped framework on which bloomed the most beautiful and rare flowers.

"All very beautiful, father. The doctor will be much pleased, as he always is here."

"I wish and hope so. I have had the peacocks and turkeys sent away, because Klingenberg cannot endure their noise. The library here will always be his favorite object, and care has been taken with it. Here are the best books on all subjects, even theology and astronomy."

"Frankenhöhe is indeed cheerful as the heart of youth and quiet as a cloister," said Richard. "Your friend would indeed be ungrateful if this attention did not gratify him."

"I have also provided that excellent wine which he loves and enjoys as a healthful medicine. But, Richard, you know Klingenberg's peculiarities. You must not play as you did just now; you would drive the doctor from the house."

"Make yourself easy about that, father; I will play while he is on the mountain."

{642}

Richard took a book from the shelf, and glanced over it. Herr Frank left him, and he immediately replaced the book and returned to his own room. There he wrote in his diary:

"12th of May.--Man is too apt to be led by his inclination. And what is inclination? A feeling caused by external impressions, or superinduced by a disposition of the body. Inclination, therefore, is something inimical to intellectual life. A vine that threatens to overgrow and smother clear conviction. Never act from inclination, if you do not wish to be unfaithful to conviction and guilty of a weakness."

He went into the garden, where he talked to the gardener about trees and flowers.

"Are you acquainted in Salingen, John?"

"Certainly, sir. I was born there."

"Do strangers sometimes come there to stop and enjoy the beautiful neighborhood?"

"Oh! no, sir; there is no suitable hotel there--only plain taverns; and people of quality would not stop at them."

"Are there people of rank in Salingen?"

"Only farmers, sir. But---stay. The rich Siegwart appears to be such, and his children are brought up in that manner."

"Has Siegwart many children?"

"Four--two boys and two girls. One son is at college. The other takes care of the estate, and is at home. The oldest daughter has been at the convent for three years. She is now nineteen years old. The second is still a child."

Richard went further into the garden; he looked over at Salingen, and then at the mountains. His eye followed a path that went winding up the mountain like a golden thread and led to the top. Then his eye rested for a time on a particular spot in that yellow path. Richard remained taciturn and reserved the rest of the day. He sat in his room and tried to read, but the subject did not interest him. He often looked dreamily from the book. He finally arose, took his hat and cane, and was soon lost in the mountain. The next morning Richard went to the borders of the forest, and looked frequently over at Salingen as it lay in rural serenity before him. The pleasant hamlet excited his interest. He then turned to the right and pursued the yellow path which he had examined the day before, up the mountain. The birds sang in the bushes, and on the branches of the tallest oak perched the black-bird whose morning hymn echoed far and wide. The sweet notes of the nightingale joined in the general concert, and the shrill piping of the hawk struck in discordantly with the varied and beautiful song. Even unconscious nature displayed her beauties. The dew hung in great drops on the grass-blades and glittered like so many brilliants, and wild flowers loaded the air with sweet perfumes. Richard saw little of these beauties of spring. He ascended still higher. His mind seemed agitated and burdened. He had just turned a bend in the road when he saw a female figure approaching. His cheeks grew darker as his eyes rested on the approaching figure. He gazed in the distance, and a disdainful flush overspread his face. He approached her as he would approach an enemy whose power he had felt, and whom he wished to conciliate.

She was within fifty paces of him. Her blue dress fell in heavy folds about her person. The ribbons of her straw bonnet, that hung on her arm, fluttered in the breeze. In her left hand she held a bunch of flowers. On her right arm hung a silk mantle, which the mild air had rendered unnecessary. {643} Her full, glossy hair was partly in a silk net and partly plaited over the forehead and around the head, as is sometimes seen with children. Her countenance was exquisitely beautiful, and her light eyes now rested full and clear on the stranger who approached her. She looked at him with the easy, natural inquisitiveness of a child, surprised to meet such an elegant gentleman in this place.

Frank looked furtively at her, as though he feared the fascinating power of the vision that so lightly and gracefully passed him. He raised his hat stiffly and formally. This was necessary to meet the requirement of etiquette. Were it not, he would perhaps have passed her by without a salutation. She did not return his greeting with a stiff bow, but with a friendly "good-morning;" and this too in a voice whose sweetness, purity, and melody harmonized with the the beautiful echoes of the morning.

Frank moved on hastily for some distance. He was about to look back, but did not do so; and continued on his way, with contracted brows, till a turn in the road hid her from his view. Here he stopped and wiped the sweat from his forehead, His heart beat quickly, and he was agitated by strong emotions. He stood leaning on his cane and gazing into the shadows of the forest. He then continued thoughtfully, and ascended some hundred feet higher till he gained the top of the mountain. The tall trees ceased; a variegated copsewood crowned the summit, which formed a kind of platform. Human hands had levelled the ground, and on the moss that covered it grew modest little violets. Near the border of the platform stood a stone cross of rough material. Near this cross lay the fragments of another large rock, that might have been shattered by lightning years before. A few steps back of this, on two square blocks of stone, stood a statue of the Virgin and Child, of white stone very carefully wrought, but without much art. The Virgin had a crown of roses on her head. The Child held a little bunch of forget-me-nots in its hand, and as it held them out seemed to say, "Forget me not," Two heavy vases that could not be easily overturned by the wind, standing on the upper block, also contained flowers. All these flowers were quite fresh, as if they had just been placed there.

Richard examined these things, and wondered what they meant in this solitude of the mountain. The fresh flowers and the cleanliness of the statue, on which no dust or moss could be seen, indicated a careful keeper. He thought of the young woman whom he met. He had seen the same kind of flowers in her hand, and doubtless she was the devotee of the place.

Scarcely had his thoughts taken this direction when he turned away and walked to the border of the plot, and gazed at the country before him. He looked down toward Frankenhöhe, whose white chimneys appeared above the chestnut grove. He contemplated the plains with their luxuriant fields reflecting every shade of green--the strips of forests that lay like shadows in the sunny plain--numberless hamlets with church towers whose gilded crosses gleamed in the sun. He gazed in the distance where the mountain ranges vanished in the mist, and long he enjoyed the magnificence of the view. He was aroused from his dreamy contemplation by the sound of footsteps behind him.

{644}

An old man with a load of wood on his shoulders came up to the place. Breathing heavily, he threw down the wood and wiped the sweat from his face. He saw the stranger, and respectfully touched his cap as he sat down on the wood.

Frank went to him.

"You are from Salingen, I suppose," he began

"Yes, sir."

"It is very hard for an old man like you to carry such a load so far."

"It is indeed, but I am poor and must do it."

Frank looked at the patched clothes of the old man, his coarse shoes, his stockingless feet, and meagre body, and felt compassion for him.

"For us poor people the earth bears but thistles and thorns." After a pause, the old man continued, "We have to undergo many tribulations and difficulties, and sometimes we even suffer from hunger. But thus it is in the world. The good God will reward us in the next world for our sufferings in this."

These words sounded strangely to Richard. Raised as he was in the midst of wealth, and without contact with poverty, he had never found occasion to consider the lot of the poor; and now the resignation of the old man, and his hope in the future, seemed strange to him. He was astonished that religion could have such power--so great and strong--to comfort the poor in the miseries of a hopeless, comfortless life.

"But what if your hope in another world deceive you?"

The old man looked at him with astonishment.

"How can I be deceived? God is faithful. He keeps his promises."

"And what has he promised you?"

"Eternal happiness if I persevere, patient and just, to the end."

"I wonder at your strong faith!"

"It is my sole possession on earth. What would support us poor people, what would keep us from despair, if religion did not?"

Frank put his hand into his pocket.

"Here," said he, "perhaps this money will relieve your wants."

The old man looked at the bright thalers in his hand, and the tears trickled down his cheeks.

"This is too much, sir; I cannot receive six thalers from you."

"That is but a trifle for me; put it in your pocket, and say no more about it."

"May God reward and bless you a thousand times for it!"

"What does that cross indicate?"

"That is a weather cross, sir. We have a great deal of bad weather to fear. We have frequent storms here, in summer; they hang over the mountain and rage terribly. Every ravine becomes a torrent that dashes over the fields, hurling rocks and sand from the mountain. Our fields are desolated and destroyed. The people of Salingen placed that cross there against the weather. In spring the whole community come here in procession and pray God to protect them from the storms."

Richard reflected on this phenomenon; the confidence of these simple people in the protection of God, whose omnipotence must intervene between the remorseless elements and their victims, appeared to him as the highest degree of simplicity. But he kept his thoughts to himself, for he respected the religious sentiments of the old man, and would not hurt his feelings.

"And the Virgin, why is she there?"

"Ah! that is a wonderful story, sir," he answered, apparently wishing to evade an explanation.

"Which every one ought not to know?"

"Well--but perhaps the gentleman would laugh, and I would not like that!"

{645}

"Why do you think I would laugh at the story?"

"Because you are a gentleman of quality, and from the city, and such people do not believe any more in miracles."

This observation of rustic sincerity was not pleasing to Frank. It expressed the opinion that the higher classes ignore faith in the supernatural.

"If I promise you not to laugh, will you tell me the story?"

"I will; you were kind to me, and you can ask the story of me. About thirty years ago," began the old man after a pause, "there lived a wealthy farmer at Salingen whose name was Schenck. Schenck was young. He married a rich maiden and thereby increased his property. But Schenck had many great faults. He did not like to work and look after his fields. He let his servants do as they pleased, and his fields were, of course, badly worked and yielded no more than half a crop. Schenck sat always in the tavern, where he drank and played cards and dice. Almost every night he came home drunk. Then he would quarrel with his wife, who reproached him. He abused her, swore wickedly, and knocked everything about the room, and behaved very badly altogether. Schenck sank lower and lower, and became at last a great sot. His property was soon squandered. He sold one piece after another, and when he had no more property to sell, he took it into his head to sell himself to the devil for money. He went one night to a cross-road and called the devil, but the devil would not come; perhaps because Schenck belonged to him already, for the Scripture says, 'A drunkard cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.' At last a suit was brought against him, and the last of his property was sold, and he was driven from his home. This hurt Schenck very much, for he always had a certain kind of pride. He thought of the past times when he was rich and respected, and now he had lost all respect with his neighbors. He thought of his wife and his four children, whom he had made poor and miserable. All this drove him to despair. He determined to put an end to himself. He bought a rope and came up here one morning to hang himself. He tied the rope to an arm of the cross, and had his head in the noose, when all at once he remembered that he had not yet said his three "Hail! Marys." His mother who was dead had accustomed him, when a child, to say every day three "Hail! Marys." Schenck had never neglected this practice for a single day. Then he took his head out of the noose and said, 'Well, as I have said the "Hail! Marys" every day, I will say them also to-day, for the last time.' He knelt down before the cross and prayed. When he was done, he stood up to hang himself. But he had scarcely stood on his feet when he was snatched up by a whirlwind and carried through the air till he was over a vineyard, where he fell without hurting himself. As he stood up, an ugly man stood before him and said, 'This time you have escaped me, but the next time I will get you.' The ugly man had horses' hoofs in place of feet, and wore green clothes. He disappeared before Schenck's eyes. Schenck swears that this ugly man was the devil. He declares also that he has to thank the Mother of God, through whose intercession he escaped the claws of the devil. Schenck had that statue placed there in memory of his wonderful escape--and that is why the Mother of God is there."

{646}

"A wonderful story indeed!" said Richard. "Although I do not laugh at it, as you see, yet I must assure you that I do not believe the story."

"I thought so," answered the old man. "But you can ask Schenck himself. He is still living, and is now seventy. Since that day he has changed entirely. He drinks nothing but water. He never enters a tavern, but goes every day to church. From that time to this Schenck has been very industrious, and has saved a nice property."

"That the drunkard reformed is the most remarkable and best part of the story," said Frank. "Drunkards very seldom reform. But," continued he smiling, "the devil acted very stupidly in the affair. He should have known that his appearance would have made a deep impression on the man, and that he would not let himself be caught a second time."

"That is true," said the old man. "But I believe the devil was forced to appear and speak so."

"Forced? By whom?"

"By Him before whom the devils must believe and tremble. Schenck was to understand that God delivered him on account of his pious custom, and the devil had to tell him that this would not happen a second time."

"How prudent you are in your superstition!" said Frank.

"As the gentleman has been kind to me, it hurts me to hear him speak so."

"Now," said Richard quickly, "I would not hurt your feelings. One may be a good Christian without believing fables. And the flowers near the statue. Has Schenck placed them there too?"

"Oh! no--the Angel did that."

"The Angel. Who is that?" said Frank, surprised.

"The Angel of Salingen--Siegwart's angel."

"Ah! angel is Angela, is it not?"

"So she may be called. In Salingen they call her only Angel. And she is indeed as lovely, good, and beautiful as an angel. She has a heart for the poor, and she gives with an open hand and a smiling face that does one good. She is like her father, who gives me as many potatoes as I want, and seed for my little patch of ground."

"Why does Angela decorate this statue?"

"I do not know; perhaps she does it through devotion."

"The flowers are quite fresh; does she come here every day?"

"Every day during the month of May, and no longer."

"Why no longer?"

"I do not know the reason; she has done so for the last two years, since she came home from the convent, and she will do so this year."

"As Siegwart is so good to the poor, he must be rich."

"Very rich--you can see from his house. Do you see that fine building there next to the road? That is the residence of Herr Siegwart."

It was the same building that had arrested Richard's attention as he passed it some days before, and the sight of which had excited the ill-humor of his father. Richard returned by a shorter way to Frankenhöhe. He was serious and meditative. Arrived at home, he wrote in his diary:

"May 13th.--Well, I have seen her. She exhibits herself as the 'Angel of Salingen.' She is extremely beautiful. She is full of amiability and purity of character. And to-day she did not wear that detestable crinoline. But she will have other foibles in place of it. She will, in some things at least, yield to the superficial tendencies of her sex. Isabella was an ideal, until she descended from the height where my imagination, deceived by her charms, had placed her. The impression which Angela's appearance produced has rests on the same foundation--deception. A better acquaintance will soon discover this. Curious! I long to become better acquainted!

{647}

"Religion is not a disease or hallucination, as many think. It is a power. Religion teaches the poor to bear their hard lot with patience. It comforts and keeps them from despair. It directs their attention to an eternal reward, and this hope compensates them for all the afflictions and miseries of this life. Without religion, human society would fall to pieces."

A servant entered, and announced dinner.

"Ah Richard!" said Herr Frank good-humoredly. "Half an hour late for dinner, and had to be called! That is strange; I do not remember such a thing to have happened before. You are always as punctual as a repeater."

"I was in the mountain and had just returned."

"No excuse, my son. I am glad the neighborhood diverts you, and that you depart a little from your regularity. Now everything is in good order, as I desired, for my friend and deliverer. I have just received a letter from him. He will be here in two days. I shall be glad to see the good man again. If Frankenhöhe will only please him for a long time!"

"I have no doubt of that," said Richard. "The doctor will be received like a friend, treated like a king, and will live here like Adam and Eve in paradise."

"Everything will go on as formerly. I will be coming and going on account of business. You will, of course, remain uninterruptedly at Frankenhöhe. You are high in the doctor's esteem. You interest him very much. It is true you annoy him sometimes with your unlearned objections and bold assertions. But I have observed that even vexation, when it comes from you, is not disagreeable to him."

"But the poor should not annoy him with their sick," said Richard. "He never denies his services to the poor, as he never grants them to the rich. Indeed, I have sometimes observed that he tears himself from his books with the greatest reluctance, and it is not without an effort that he does it."

"But we cannot change it," said Herr Frank; "we cannot send the poor away without deeply offending Klingenberg. But I esteem him the more for his generosity."

After dinner the father and son went into the garden and talked of various matters; suddenly Richard stopped and pointing over to Salingen, said,

"I passed to-day that neat building that stands near the road. Who lives there?"

"There lives the noble and lordly Herr Siegwart," said Herr Frank derisively.

His tone surprised Richard. He was not accustomed to hear his father speak thus.

"Is Siegwart a noble?"

"Not in the strict sense. But he is the ruler of Salingen. He rules in that town as absolutely as princes formerly did in their kingdoms."

"What is the cause of his influence?"

"His wealth, in the first place; secondly, his charity; and lastly, his cunning."

"You are not favorable to him?"

"No, indeed! The Siegwart family is excessively ultramontane and clerical. You know I cannot endure these narrow prejudices and this obstinate adherence to any form of religion. Besides, I have a particular reason for disagreement with Siegwart, of which I need not now speak."

{648}

"Excessively ultramontane and clerical!" thought Richard, as he went to his room. "Angela is undoubtedly educated in this spirit. Stultifying confessionalism and religious narrow-mindedness have no doubt cast a deep shadow over the 'angel.' Now--patience; the deception will soon banish."

He took up Schlosser's History, and read a long time. But his eyes wandered from the page, and his thoughts soon followed.

The next morning at the same hour Richard went to the weather cross. He took the same road and again he met Angela; she had the same blue dress, the same straw hat on her arm, and flowers in her hand. She beheld him with the same clear eyes, with the same unconstrained manner--only, as he thought, more charming--as on the first day. He greeted her coolly and formally, as before. She thanked him with the same affability. Again the temptation came over him to look back at her; again he overcame it. When he came to the statue, he found fresh flowers in the vases. The child Jesus had fresh forget-me-nots in his hand, and the Mother had a crown of fresh roses on her head. On the upper stone lay a book, bound in blue satin and clasped with a silver clasp. When he took it up, he found beneath it a rosary made of an unknown material, and having a gold cross fastened at the end. He opened the book. The passage that had been last read was marked with a silk ribbon. It was as follows:

"My son, trust not thy present affection; it will be quickly changed into another. As long as thou livest thou art subject to change, even against thy will; so as to be sometimes joyful, at other times sad; now easy, now troubled; at one time devout, at another dry; sometimes fervent, at other times sluggish; one day heavy, another day lighter. But he that is wise and well instructed in spirit stands above all these changes, not minding what he feels in himself, nor on what side the wind of instability blows; but that the whole bent of his soul may advance toward its due and wished-for end; for thus he may continue one and the self-same without being shaken, by directing without ceasing, through all this variety of events, the single eye of his intention toward me. And by how much more pure the eye of the intention is, with so much greater constancy mayest thou pass through these divers storms.

"But in many the eye of pure intention is dark; for men quickly look toward something delightful that comes in their way. And it is rare to find one who is wholly free from all blemish of self-seeking."

Frank remembered having written about the same thoughts in his diary. But here they were conceived in another and deeper sense.

He read the title of the book. It was _The Following of Christ_.

He copied the title in his pocketbook. He then with a smile examined the rosary, for he was not without prejudice against this kind of prayer.

He had no doubt Angela had left these things here, and he thought it would be proper to return them to the owner. He came slowly down the mountain reading the book. It was clear to him that _The Following of Christ_ was a book full of very earnest and profound reflections. And he wondered how so young a woman could take any interest in such serious reading. He was convinced that all the ladies he knew would throw such a book aside with a sneer, because its contents condemned their lives and habits. Angela, then, must be of a different character from all the ladies he knew, and he was very desirous of knowing better this character of Angela.

In a short time he entered the gate and passed through the yard to the stately building where Herr Siegwart dwelt. He glanced hastily at the long out-buildings--the large barns; at the polished cleanliness of the paved court, the perfect order of everything, and finally at the ornamented mansion. {649} Then he looked at the old lindens that stood near the house, whose trunks were protected from injury by iron railings. In the tops of these trees lodged a lively family of sparrows, who were at present in hot contention, for they quarrelled and cried as loud and as long as did formerly the lords in the parliament of Frankfort. The beautiful garden, separated from the yard by a low wall covered with white boards, did not escape him. Frank entered, upon a broad and very clean path; as his feet touched the stone slabs, he heard, through the open door, a low growl, and then a man's voice saying, "Quiet, Hector."

Frank walked through the open door into a large room handsomely furnished, and odoriferous with a multitude of flowers in vases. A man in the prime of life sat on the sofa reading and smoking. He wore a light-brown overcoat, brown trousers, and low, thick boots. He had a fresh, florid complexion, red beard, blue eyes, and an expressive, agreeable countenance. When Frank entered he arose, laid aside the paper and cigar, and approached the visitor.

"I found these things on the mountain near the weather-cross." said Frank, after a more formal than affable bow. "As your daughter met me, I presume they belong to her. I thought it my duty to return them."

"These things certainly belong to my daughter," answered Herr Siegwart. "You are very kind, sir. You have placed us under obligations to you."

"I was passing this way," said Frank briefly.

"And whom have we the honor to thank?"

"I am Richard Frank."

Herr Siegwart bowed. Frank noticed a slight embarrassment in his countenance. He remembered the expressions his father had used in reference to the Siegwart family, and it was clear to him that a reciprocal ill feeling existed here. Siegwart soon resumed his friendly manner, and invited him with much formality to the sofa. Richard felt that he must accept the invitation at least for a few moments. Siegwart sat on a chair in front of him, and they talked of various unimportant matters. Frank admired the skill which enabled him to conduct, without interruption, so pleasant a conversation with a stranger.

While they were speaking, some house-swallows flew into the room. They fluttered about without fear, sat on the open door, and joined their cheerful twittering with the conversation of the men. Richard expressed his admiration, and said he had never seen anything like it.

"Our constant guests in summer," answered Siegwart. "They build their nests in the hall, and as they rise earlier than we do, an opening is left for them above the hall door, where they can go in and out undisturbed when the doors are closed. Angela is in their confidence, and on the best of terms with them. When rainy or cold days come during breeding time they suffer from want of food. Angela is then their procurator. I have often admired Angela's friendly intercourse with the swallows, who perch upon her shoulders and hands."

Richard looked indeed at the twittering swallows, but their friend Angela passed before his eyes, so beautiful indeed that he no longer heard what Siegwart was saying.

He arose; Siegwart accompanied him. As they passed through the yard, Frank observed the long row of stalls, and said, "You must have considerable stock?"

{650}

"Yes, somewhat. If you would like to see the property, I will show you around with pleasure."

"I regret that I cannot now avail myself of your kindness; I shall do so in a few days," answered Frank.

"Herr Frank," said Siegwart, "may the accident which has given us the pleasure of your agreeable visit, be the occasion of many visits in future. I know that as usual you will spend the month of May at Frankenhöhe. We are neighbors--this title, in my opinion, should indicate a friendly intercourse."

"Let it be understood, Herr Siegwart; I accept with pleasure your invitation."

On the way to Frankenhöhe Richard walked very slowly, and gazed into the distance before him. He thought of the swallows that perched on Angela's shoulders and hands. Their sweet notes still echoed in his soul.

The country-like quiet of Siegwart's house and the sweet peace that pervaded it were something new to him. He thought of the simple character of Siegwart, who, as his father said, was "ultramontane and clerical," and whom he had represented to himself as a dark, reserved man. He found nothing in the open, natural manner of the man to correspond with his preconceived opinion of him. Richard concluded that either Herr Siegwart was not an ultramontane, or the characteristics of the ultramontanes, as portrayed in the free-thinking newspapers of the day, were erroneous and false.

Buried in such thoughts, he reached Frankenhöhe. As he passed through the yard, he did not observe the carriage that stood there. But as he passed under the window, he heard a loud voice, and some books were thrown from the window and fell at his feet. He looked down in surprise at the books, whose beautiful binding was covered with sand. He now observed the coach, and smiled.

"Ah! the doctor is here," said he. "He has thrown these unwelcome guests out of the window. Just like him."

He took up the books and read the titles, _Vogt's Pictures from Animal Life, Vogt's Physiological Letters, Colbe's Sensualism._

He took the books to his room and began to read them. Herr Frank, with his joyful countenance, soon appeared.

"Klingenberg is here!" said he.

"I suspected as much already," said Richard. "I passed by just as he threw the books out of the window with his usual impetuosity."

"Do not let him see the books; the sight of them sets him wild."

"Klingenberg walks only in his own room. I wish to read these books; what enrages him with innocent paper?"

"I scarcely know, myself. He examined the library and was much pleased with some of the works. But suddenly he tore these books from their place and hurled them through the window."

"'I tolerate no bad company among these noble geniuses,' said he, pointing to the learned works.

"'Pardon me, honored friend,' said I, 'if, without my knowledge, some bad books were included. What kind of writings are these, doctor?"

"'Stupid materialistic trash,' said he.' If I had Vogt, Moleschott, Colbe, and Büchner here, I would throw them body and bones out of the window.'

"I was very much surprised at this declaration, so contrary to the doctor's kind disposition.'What kind of people are those you have named?' said I.

{651}

"'No people, my dear Frank,' said he.' They are animals, This Vogt and his fellows have excluded themselves from the pale of humanity, inasmuch as they have declared apes, oxen, and asses to be their equals.'"

"I am now very desirous to know these books," said Richard.

"Well, do not let our friend know your intention," urged Frank.

Richard dressed and went to greet the singular guest. He was sitting before a large folio. He arose at Richard's entrance and paternally reached him both hands.

Doctor Klingenberg was of a compact, strong build. He had unusually long arms, which he swung back and forth in walking. His features were sharp, but indicated a modest character. From beneath his bushy eyebrows there glistened two small eyes that did not give an agreeable expression to his countenance. This unfavorable expression was, however, only the shell of a warm heart.

The doctor was good-natured--hard on himself, but mild in his judgments of others. He had an insatiable desire for knowledge, and it impelled him to severe studies that robbed him of his hair and made him prematurely bald.

"How healthy you look, Richard!" said he, contemplating the young man. "I am glad to see you have not been spoiled by the seething atmosphere of modern city life."

"You know, doctor, I have a natural antipathy to all swamps and morasses."

"That is right, Richard; preserve a healthy naturalness."

"We expected you this morning."

"And would go to the station to bring me. Why this ceremony? I am here, and I will enjoy for a few weeks the pure, bracing mountain air. Our arrangements will be as formerly--not so, my dear friend?"

"I am at your service."

"You have, of course, discovered some new points that afford fine views?"

"If not many, at least one--the weather cross," answered Frank. "A beautiful position. The hill stands out somewhat from the range. The whole plain lies before the ravished eyes. At the same time, there are things connected with _that_ place that are not without their influence on me. They refer to a custom of the ultramontanists that clashes with modern ideas; I will have an opportunity of seeing whether your opinion coincides with mine."

"Very well; since we have already an object for our next walk--and this is according to our old plan--tomorrow after dinner at three o'clock," and saying this he glanced wistfully at the old folio. Frank, smiling, observed the delicate hint and retired.

To Be Continued.

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Antiquities of New York.

It is as true of nations as it is of individuals that they "live more in the past and the future than in the present;" and when either are young and have a very limited past, their thoughts dwell most upon the future. This is one marked difference between the peoples of the old world and us on this continent. Our past is so small in comparison with theirs, that antiquarian societies, so common with them, are quite unknown among us, and it is not often that we throw our thoughts back.

Yet in that respect, as in others, we are daily improving, and we begin, now and then, to find something to think upon in the days of our forefathers.

These thoughts have arisen in our mind from having come across a book recently published by the State of New York: "Laws and Ordinances of New Netherlands, 1638-1674, compiled and translated from the original Dutch records in the office of the Secretary of State. Albany, N.Y. E.B. O'Callaghan." From that book a good deal can be learned of the manners and customs in our goodly city some two hundred years ago, that cannot fail to be interesting.

It was in 1621 that the States General of the United Netherlands incorporated a West India Company, with power to establish colonies in such parts of America as were not already occupied by other nations.

Under this authority, the company established a colony embracing the land from the present State of Maryland to the Connecticut River, and called NEW NETHERLAND.

The Amsterdam Chamber of the company exercised supreme government over this colony until 1664, when it was captured by the English, but recovered by the Dutch in 1673, but was finally ceded to the English.

It was in 1609 that Hendrik Hudson discovered the country, and in 1623 it was that the West India Company sent its first colony of families, who settled at what was then Fort Orange, now Albany, and settled a colony of families at New Amsterdam, now New York.

The colonial government, including legislative and executive powers, was administered by a director-general and council; and it is from the laws which they enacted that we can gather much knowledge of the manners and customs of our Dutch progenitors and from which we now proceed to make some extracts.

Slavery.

On the 7th of June, 1629, the West India Company granted what we would call a charter to all settlers in the new world, but which they called "freedoms and exemptions," to all patroons, masters, or private persons who would plant colonies in New Netherland.

They consisted of thirty-one articles; and among them was that which, if it may not be considered the origin, in this country, of that slavery which it took us some two hundred and fifty years to get rid of, was, by one of the articles, not only tolerated, but was actually established, with a covenant on the part of the home government to supply the settlers with slaves.

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Article XXX.

"The Company will use their endeavors to supply the colonists with as many Blacks as they conveniently can, on the conditions hereafter to be made, in such manner, however, that they shall not be bound to do it for a longer time than they shall think proper."

On the 19th of November, 1654, the Amsterdam board allowed the importation of negroes direct from Africa, by the ship Witte Paert, and on the 6th of August, 1655, the director-general and council of New Netherland imposed an _ad valorem_ duty of ten per cent on the exportation of any of the slaves brought in by that ship.

The Yankees.

The discord between the quiet, stolid Dutchmen of those days, and the restless "Yengees," of whom they had so much dread, soon began to show itself, and every once in a while we find a paper bomb-shell fired off at them, in the shape of a law, and hitting them in a tender spot, by forbidding trade.

Take this, the first instance:

"Ordinance Of the Director and Council of New Netherland, prohibiting the purchase of produce raised near Fort Hope.--Passed 3 April, 1642.

"Whereas our territory which we purchased, paid for, and took possession of, provided in the year 1633 with a Blockhouse, Garrison, and Cannon, on the Fresh River of _New Netherland_, a long time before any Christians were in the said river, hath now, for some years past, been forcibly usurped by some englishmen, and given the name of Hartford, notwithstanding we duly protested against them; who, moreover, treat our people most barbarously, beating them with clubs and mattocks even unto the shedding of blood; cut down our corn, sow the fields by night which our people ploughed by day; haul home by force the hay which was mowed by our people; cast our ploughs into the river, and forcibly impound our horses, cows, and hogs, so that no cruelty, insolence, nor violence remains which is not practised toward us, who yet have treated them with all moderation; Yea, even at great hazard, have redeemed and sent back home their Women, who were carried off by the Indians; And although we are commanded by the States-General, his Highness of Orange, and the Honorable West India Company to maintain our Limits and to assert our Right by every means, which We, also, have the power to do, yet rather have We chose patiently to suffer violence, and to prove by deeds that we are better Christians than they who go about there clothed with such outward show, until in its time the measure shall be entirely full.

"Therefore, our order and command provisionally is, & We do hereby Ordain that our Inhabitants of _New Netherland_ be most expressly forbidden from purchasing, either directly or indirectly, by the third or second shipment, or in any manner whatsoever, any produce which has been raised on our land near _Fort Hope_ on the Fresh River, on pain of arbitrary correction, until their rights are acknowledged, and the sellers of the produce which shall arrive from our _Fresh River_ of _New Netherland_ and from _New England_ shall first declare upon oath where the produce has been grown, whereof a certificate shall be given them, and thereupon every one shall be at liberty to buy and to sell."

And finally the quarrel went so far as to give rise to the following

"Ordinance

Of the Governor-General and Council of New Netherland further prohibiting the entertainment of Strangers, forbidding intercourse or correspondence with the people of New England.--Passed, 12 December, 1673.

"Whereas, it is found by experience that notwithstanding the previously published Ordinance and Edicts, many Strangers, yea enemies of this State, attempt to come within this government without having previously obtained any consent or passport, and have even presumed to show themselves within this city of _New Orange_; also that many Inhabitants of this Province, losing sight of and forgetting their Oath of Allegiance, presume still daily to correspond, and exchange letters with the Inhabitants of the neighboring colonies of _New England_ and other enemies of this State, whence nothing else can result but great prejudice and loss to this Province, and it is, accordingly, necessary that seasonable provision be made therein.

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"Therefore, the Governor-General of _New Netherland_, by and with the advice of his Council, reviewing the aforesaid Ordinances and Edicts enacted on that subject, have deemed it highly necessary strictly to order and command that all Strangers and others, of what nation or quality soever they may be, who have not as yet bound themselves by Oath and promise of fealty to the present Supreme government of this Province, and have not been received by it as good subjects, do within the space of four and twenty hours from the publication hereof depart from out this province of New Netherland, and further interdicting and forbidding any person, not being actually an inhabitant and subject of this government, from coming within this government without first having obtained due license and passport to that end, on pain and penalty that the contraveners shall not be considered other than open enemies and spies of this State, and consequently be arbitrarily punished as an example to others. And to the end that they may be the more easily discovered and found out, all Inhabitants of this Province are interdicted and forbidden from henceforth harboring or lodging any strangers over night in their houses or dwellings unless they have previously given due communication thereof to their officer or Magistrate before sun-down, under the penalty set forth in the former Edict.

"Furthermore, the Inhabitants of this Province are strictly interdicted and forbidden, from this day forward, from holding any correspondence with the neighboring Colonies of _New England_, and all others actual enemies of our State, much less afford them any supplies of any description, on pain of forfeiting the goods and double the value thereof, likewise from exchanging any letters, of what nature soever they may be, without having obtained previous special consent thereto. Therefore all messengers, skippers, travellers, together with all others whom these may in any wise concern, are most expressly forbidden to take charge of, much less to deliver, any letters coming from the enemy's places, or going thither, but immediately on their arrival to deliver them into the Secretary's office here in order to be duly examined, on pain of being fined One hundred guilders in Beaver, to be paid by the receiver as well as by the deliverer of each letter which contrary to the tenor hereof shall be exchanged or delivered."

Their Currency.

Gold and silver were scarce among them. The modern device of paper money had not then come in vogue, and so they had to use wampum--the Indians' currency or medium of exchange.

This was made from oyster-shells, and was worn by the natives as ornaments, and had no intrinsic value, but only a conventional one. And it seems to have been hard work to keep it up to its standard. Every body could make it that could catch oysters, and its plenty or scarcity causing a fluctuation of prices, gave them a great deal of trouble, especially when their old rock of offence, "the Yankees," began to manufacture it and buy away from them all they had to sell, for what was actually of no value.

So we find every once in a while "Ordinances" passed on the subject, which in their quaint and simple way show the state of things. Between April 18th, 1641, and December 28th, 1662, we find in this book twelve different ordinances on the subject; some of them fixing their value, some punishing frauds, some making them a legal tender, some declaring them merchandise, some providing that they shall be paid out by measure, some exempting them from import duty, and some providing for their depreciation.

The following extracts will afford an idea of their difficulties on the subject.

"Resolutions

Of the Director and Council of New Netherland respecting loose Wampum.--Passed, 30 November, 1647.

"_Resolved_ and concluded in Council at _Fort Amsterdam_, that, until further Order, the loose Wampum shall continue current and in circulation only that, in the mean while, all imperfect, broken, or unpierced beads can be picked out, which are declared Bullion, and shall, meantime, be received at the Company's counting-house as heretofore. Provided that the Company, or any one on its part, shall, in return, be at liberty to trade therewith among the Merchants or otter Inhabitants, or in larger parcels, as may be agreed upon and stipulated by any individual, or on behalf of the Company."

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"Ordinance Of the Director and Council of _New Netherland_ further regulating the currency.--Passed 14 September, 1650.

"The Director-General and Council of _New Netherland_, To all those who hear, see, or read these presents, Greeting. Whereas, on the daily complaints of the inhabitants, we experience that our previous Ordinance and Edict relative to the poor strung Wampum, published under date 30 May, A° 1650, for the accommodation and protection of the people, is not observed and obeyed according to our good intention and meaning; but that, on the contrary, such pay, even for small items, is rejected and refused by Shopkeepers, Brewers, Tapsters, Tradespeople, and Laboring men, to the great confusion and inconvenience of the Inhabitants in general, there being, at present, no other currency whereby the Inhabitants can procure from each other small articles of daily trade; for which wishing to provide as much as possible, for the relief and protection of the Inhabitants, the Director and Council do hereby Ordain and command that, in conformity to our previous Ordinance, the poor strung Wampum shall be current and accepted by every one without distinction and exception for small and daily necessary commodities required for housekeeping, as currency to the amount of Twelve guilders and under only, in poor strung wampum; of twelve to twenty-four guilders half and half, that is to say, half poor strung and half good strung Wampum; of twenty guilders to fifty guilders, one third poor strung and two thirds good strung wampum, and in larger sums according to the conditions agreed upon between Buyer and Seller, under a penalty of six guilders for the first time, to be forfeited on refusal by contraveneor hereof; for the second time nine guilders, and for the third time two pounds Flemish and stoppage of his trade and business, pursuant to our previous Edicts.

"Thus done and enacted in Council by the Director and Council, this 14 September, 1650, in _New Amsterdam_."

"Ordinance

Of the Director-General and Council of _New Netherland_ regulating the currency.--Passed 3 January, 1657.

"The Director-General and Council of New Netherland,

"To all those who see or hear these presents read, Greeting, make known.

"Whereas they, to their great regret, are by their own experience daily informed, and by the manifold complaints of Inhabitants and Strangers importuned, respecting the great, excessive and intolerable dearness of all sorts of necessary commodities and household supplies, the prices of which are enhanced from time to time, principally among other causes, in consequence of the high price of Beaver and other Peltries in this country beyond the value, which, by reason of the great abundance of Wampum, is advanced to ten, eleven and twelve guilders for one Beaver; And Wampum being, for want of Silver and Gold coin, as yet the most general and common currency between man and man, Buyer and Seller, domestic articles and daily necessaries are rated according to that price, and become dearer from time to time; the rather, as not only Merchants, but also, consequently, Shopkeepers, Tradesmen, Brewers, Bakers, Tapsters, and Grocers make a difference of 30, 40, to 50 per cent when they sell their wares for Wampum or for Beaver. This tends, then, so far to the serious damage, distress and loss of the common Mechanics, Brewers, Farmers and other good Inhabitants of this Province, that the Superior and inferior magistrates of this Province are blamed, abused and cursed by Strangers and Inhabitants, and the Country in general receives a bad name, while some greedy people do not hesitate to sell the most necessary eatables and drinkables, according to their insatiable avarice; viz., the can of Vinegar at 18 @ 20 stivers; the can of Oil at 4 @ 5 guilders; the can of French wine at 40 @ 45 stivers; the gill of Brandy at 15 stivers, and two quarts of home brewed Beer, far above its price, at 14@15 stivers, &c., which the greater number endeavor to excuse on the ground that they lose a great deal in the counting of the Wampum; that it is partly short and partly long; that they must give 11@12 and more guilders before they can convert the wampum into Beaver."

So that, at last, the home government took it up, and in 1659 they wrote to the council at New Amsterdam, among other things:

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"From this particular reduction of the Wampum a second general reduction must necessarily follow, if the depreciation thereof is to be prevented. This arises in consequence of the great importation of Wampum from New-England, which barters therewith and carries out of the country not only the best cargoes sent hence, but also a large quantity of beaver and other peltries, whereby the Company is defrauded of its revenues and the merchants here of good returns, while the Factors and inhabitants there remain with chests full of Wampum, which is a currency utterly valueless except among New Netherland Indians only," etc.

The rate of depreciation may be discovered from the fact that an ordinance passed in April, 1641, fixed it at 4 polished and 5 unpolished for one stiver, while another, passed in December, 1662, fixed it at 24 for one stiver; and that in 1650 it was fixed at 6 white and 3 black for one stiver, and twelve years afterward at 24 white and 12 black for one stiver--making what President Johnson would call a depreciation of 400 per cent in that short time.

Religion.

The government interfered very much in religious matters, seeming to aim not so much at protection against molestation as to produce conformity of opinion, by making the people view such things as the Director and Council did.

Between April, 1641, and November, 1673, fourteen ordinances were passed concerning Sunday. And between June, 1641, and November, 1673, there were sixteen ordinances as to religion.

As to Sunday, the laws were:

11 April, 1641.--"No person shall attempt to tap beer or any other strong drink during divine service, nor use any other measure than that which is in common use at Amsterdam."

This law was preceded by a recital:

"Whereas complaints have been made to us that some of the inhabitants here are in the habit of Tapping Beer during Divine Service, and of making use of small foreign Measures, which tends to the dishonor of religion and the ruin of this state."

13 May, 1647.--"None of the Brewers, Tapsters and Tavern-keepers shall on the rest day of the Lord by us called Sunday, before two of the clock when there is no sermon, or, otherwise, before four o'clock in the afternoon, set before, tap or give any people any Wine, Beer or strong liquors of any kind whatever, and under any pretext, be it what it may," etc.

That law has this preamble:

"Whereas we see and observe by experience, the great disorders in which some of our inhabitants indulge in drinking to excess, quarreling, fighting, and smiting, even on the Lord's day of rest, whereof, God help us! we have seen and heard sorrowful instances on last Sunday," etc.

10 March, 1648.--After reciting that the former edict is disobeyed, they say,

"The reason and cause why this our good Edict and well meant Ordinance is not obeyed according to the tenor and purport thereof, are that this sort of business and the profit easily accruing therefrom divert and lead many from their original and primitive calling, occupation and business, to resort to Tavern-keeping, so that nearly the just fourth of the city of New Amsterdam consists of Brandyshops, Tobacco or Beer-houses."

And they enact, among other things, that tapsters and tavern-keepers shall not

"sell nor furnish Beer or Liquor to any person, travellers and boarders alone excepted, on the Sunday, before three o'clock in the afternoon, when Divine Service is finished."

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29 April, 1648.--After complaining again of non-observance of former laws, they renew and amplify previous edicts, and declare that,

"having for the stricter observance thereof, with the preadvice of the Minister of the Gospel, deemed it expedient that a sermon shall be preached from the sacred Scriptures, and the usual prayers and thanksgivings offered from this time forward in the afternoon as well as the forenoon," etc., and forbid all tapping, fishing, hunting, and business during divine service.

26 October, 1656.--Repeating their complaints, they enact an ordinance against performing on Sunday any work, such as ploughing, mowing, building, etc., and, as they term it,

"much less any lower or unlawful exercise and amusement. Drunkenness, frequenting Taverns or Tippling-houses, Dancing, Playing ball, Cards, Trick-Track, Tennis, Cricket or Nine-pins, going on pleasure parties in a boat, car or wagon, _before, between or during Divine Service_," and forbidding the sale of liquor "_before, between or during the sermons_," etc.

12 June, 1657.--They forbid all persons, "of what nation or rank he may be," to entertain any company on Sunday or during divine service.

18 November, 1661.--They forbid all work on Sunday under "the penalty of £1 Flemish for the first time, double as much for the second time, and _four times double as much_ for the third time." (Silent as to the fourth time.)

And they forbid all entertainments in taverns, and any giving away or selling any liquor.

10 September, 1663.--The director-general and council of New Amsterdam passed an ordinance against which the burgomasters and schepens of New Amsterdam rebelled, and which they refused to enforce, for the reason that it was "too severe and too much in opposition to the Freedoms of Holland."

That law extended the former laws to the whole of Sunday from sunrise to sunset, and in addition prohibited any riding in cars or wagons, any roving in search of nuts or strawberries, and the "too unrestrained and excessive playing, shouting and screaming of children in the streets."

16 June, 1641.--They began by securing to all Englishmen who might settle with them "the free exercise of Religion."

16 November, 1644.--They granted to the town of Hempstead the power of using and exercising "the Reformed Religion with the Ecclesiastical discipline thereunto belonging."

10 October, 1645--They granted to the town of Flushing the "Liberty of Conscience according to the Custom and manner of Holland, without molestation or disturbance from any magistrate or any other Ecclesiastical minister."

19 December, 1645.--They made the same grant to Gravesend.

At a later day a change seems to have come over them, as witness the following:

"Ordinance

Of the Director and Council of New Netherland against Conventicles.--Passed 1 February, 1656.

"Whereas the Director and Council of _New Netherland_ are credibly informed and apprized that here and there within this Province not only are Conventicles and Meetings held, but also that some unqualified persons in such Meetings assume the ministerial office, the expounding and explanation of the Holy word of God, without being called or appointed thereto by ecclesiastical or civil authority, which is in direct contravention and opposition to the general Civil and Ecclesiastical order of our Fatherland; besides that many dangerous Heresies and Schisms are to be apprehended from such manner of meetings. Therefore, the Director General and Council aforesaid hereby absolutely and expressly forbid all such conventicles and meetings, whether public or private, differing from the customary and not only lawful but scripturally founded and ordained meetings of the Reformed Divine service, as this is observed and enforced according to the Synod of Dordrecht," etc.

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On 21 September, 1662, they enacted that "beside the Reformed worship and service, no conventicles or meetings shall be kept in the province, whether it be in houses, barnes, ships, barkes, nor in the woods nor fields."

In December, 1656, they enacted an ordinance containing this, among other things:

"Further, whenever, early in the morning or after supper in the evening, prayers shall be said, or God's word read, by any one thereunto commissioned, every person, of what quality soever he may be, shall repair to hear it with becoming reverence.

"No man shall raise or bring forward any question or argument on the subject of religion, on pain of being placed on bread and water three days in the ship's galley. And if any difficulties should arise out of the said disputes, the author thereof shall be arbitrarily punished."

They repeatedly passed ordinances requiring their officers to be of the reformed religion.

"Ordinance

Of the Director-General and Council of New Netherland prohibiting the bringing of Quakers and other Strollers into New Netherland.--Passed 17 May, 1663.

"The Director-General and Council of New Netherland, To all those who shall see or hear these Presents read, Greeting, make known.

"Whereas we daily find that many Vagabonds, Quakers and other Fugitives are, without the previous knowledge and consent of the Director General and Council, conveyed, brought and landed in this Government, and sojourn and remain in the respective Villages of this Province without those bringing them giving notice thereof, or such persons addressing themselves to the government and showing whence they come, as they ought to do, or that they have taken the oath of fidelity the same as other Inhabitants; the Director General and Council, therefore, do hereby Order and command all Skippers, Sloop Captains and others, whosoever they may be, not to convey or bring, much less to land, within this government, any such Vagabonds, Quakers and other Fugitives, whether Men or Women, unless they have first addressed themselves to the government, have given information thereof, and asked and obtained consent on pain of the importers forfeiting a fine of twenty pounds Flemish for every person, whether Man or Woman, whom they will have brought in and landed without the consent or previous Knowledge of the Director General and Council, and, in addition, be obliged immediately to depart out of this government with such persons."

17 March, 1664, they ordained that the schoolmasters shall appear in church with their scholars, on Wednesday before divine service, and be examined after service by the minister and elders, "as to what they have committed to memory of the Christian Commandments and Catechism, and what progress they have made."

On 1 October, 1673, 8 November, 1673, and 15 January, 1674, they passed ordinances that the sheriff and magistrates, or the schout and magistrates, each in his quality, take care that the reformed Christian religion be maintained in conformity to the Synod of Dordrecht, (or Synod of Dort,) without suffering or permitting any other sects attempting any thing contrary thereto, or suffering any attempt to be made against it by any other sectaries.

On 12 November, 1661, they passed a law imposing "a land tax at Esopus to defray the expense of building a Minister's House there."

On 13 February, 1657, the court of Breuckelen (Brooklyn) imposed an assessment on that town to pay "the Rev. Minister De J. Theodorus Polhemius fl 300," as a supplement of his promised salary and yearly allowance.

Miscellaneous.

A few more instances of the manner in which our staid and quiet Dutch progenitors managed their affairs will suffice for this paper, already long enough.

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_The Ferry_.--In an ordinance regulating the ferry at the Manhattans, passed 1 July, 1654, it was among other things enacted:

"Item. The Lessee shall be bound to accommodate the passengers on summer days only from 5 O'clock in the morning till 8 O'clock in the evening, provided the windmill [Footnote 167] hath not taken in its sail.

[Footnote 167: The windmill here spoken of stood on the old Battery, and seemed to serve as a barometer or indicator of bad weather to all the people.]

"Item. The Lessee shall receive ordinary Ferriage during the Winter from 7 O'clock in the morning to 5 O'clock in the evening; but he shall not be bound, except he please, to convey any one over in a tempest, or when the windmill hath lowered its sail in consequence of storm or otherwise."

_Wages_.--In 1653, the director and council of New Netherland passed an ordinance fixing the rate of wages to be paid to carpenters, masons, etc. But the directors at Amsterdam disapproved of it "as impracticable."

_Fast Driving_.--Here, now, is a law which would illy enough suit our times, and which shows us how queer were the times when such a regulation could exist.

"Ordinance

Of the Director and Council of New Netherland regulating the driving of Wagons, Carts, etc., in New Amsterdam.--Passed 27 June, 1652.

"The Director-General and Council of _New Netherland_, in order to prevent accidents, do hereby Ordain that no Wagons, Carts or Sleighs shall be run, rode or driven at a gallop within this city of _New Amsterdam;_ that the drivers and conductors of all Wagons, Carts and Sleighs within this city shall not sit or stand on them, but now henceforth within this City (the Broad Highway alone excepted) shall walk by the Wagons, Carts or Sleighs, and so take and lead the horses."

_Danger from Fire_s.--They passed quite a number of ordinances on this subject.

In January, 1648, they recite that the people do not keep their chimneys clean, whereby "greater damage is to be expected in future from fire, the rather as the houses here in New Amsterdam are, for the most part, built of wood, and thatched with reed, beside which the chimneys of some of the houses are of wood, which is most dangerous;" and they forbid any more wooden chimneys, but those already built may remain.

They appoint as fire wardens to see that the chimneys are kept clean, "from the Hon. Council, Commissary Adriaen D'Keyser; from the commonalty, Thomas Hall, Marten Crigier and George Wolsey."

On 28 September, 1648, they direct the fire wardens to visit every house, "and see that every one is keeping his chimney properly clean by sweeping."

And finally, on 15 December, 1657, they passed a law which complains, as usual, of the non-observance of former laws, and recites that "divers calamities and accidents have been caused, and are still to be apprehended, from fire; yea, a total ruin of this city, inasmuch as it daily begins to be compactly built," etc.;

And enact that "all thatched roofs and wooden chimneys, Hay ricks and hay stacks within this city shall be broken up, and removed within the time of four consecutive months," "to be promptly put in execution for every house, whether small or large, Hay rick, or hay stack, or wooden chimney, hen houses, or hog pens," etc.;

And then, after reciting that "whereas, in all well ordered Cities and Towns it is customary that Fire Buckets, Ladders, and Hooks be found provided about the corner the streets and in public houses," they authorize the burgomaster, "to send by the first opportunity to Fatherland for one hundred to 150 Leather Fire Buckets," etc.

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_Marriages_.--On 15 January, 1658, after reciting that "the Director General and Council not only are informed, but have even seen and remarked that some persons, after the proclamation and publication for the third time of their bans, or intention of marriage, do not proceed further with the solemnization of their marriage, as they ought, but postpone it from time to time, not only weeks, but some months, which is directly contrary to, and in contravention of, the good order and custom of our Fatherland:"

They enact that marriage must be solemnized within one month after the last publication, or appear in council and show cause:

And that "no man and woman shall be at liberty to keep house as married persons before and until they are lawfully married, on pain of forfeiting one hundred guilders, more or less, as their quality shall be found to warrant, and all such persons may be amerced anew therefor every month by the officer, according to the order and the custom of our Fatherland."

The Charms Of Nativity.

In this day, when a spirit of restlessness seems to have seized upon the various peoples of the world, and operates to produce great movements from one locality to another, or from one country to another, we propose to devote some pages to the discussion of this interesting subject. The world may be said to be grossly material; for surely no land of flowering beauty, however rich in the wealth of nature's charms, can, to a sentimental and spiritual soul, be at all comparable to those heavenly flowers of love which bloom in the vicinage in which we were reared. In leaving a cold and bleak country even, we may go to one where nature has stamped her own warmth, as she is sure to do, on the hearts of her inhabitants; but those scenes to which we were earliest used are, by far, dearer to the sensitive soul, than others which, in distant lands, crop out more gorgeously; and the playmates, the associates of our hearts, our early lives, even though it may be in the very chill and frost of barren rocks and dreary plains, are far dearer to us than the welcome of strangers, let it be as warm and as sunny as genial and glowing hearts can make it. The stranger, with soul, in a strange land, has fully felt the truth of these remarks. These are considerations which should operate powerfully with us to bind us to our homes and our own communities. But the benefits of staying at home, or of enlarging the area of "civilization" and of settlement but slowly, are not confined, by any means, to our feelings. To prevent the loneliness which we naturally feel in a strange country is not the only object to be gained by migrating, when we migrate at all, slowly, and but little at a time, (say a few miles only,) and by making our habitations as permanent as possible. There are, perhaps, weightier considerations, even, which should govern in the matter than the loneliness and the estrangement which we must suffer for years, when we make distant removals.

Home is, in its full meaning, a most heavenly word. It is a word that is allied with every principle of our natures. It is the nursery in which our spirits are trained. It is the seat of our religion and the abode of our loves. There can be to us but one home, that is, in the full sense of the term. {661} And that home is a locality, a place, where, with the kindred ideas, elements, and social and spiritual partnerships of our earlier lives and beings, we can enjoy life pure and perfect as we at first received it. Any local or social estrangements from these pure elements of life, no matter how complete the surrounding appointments of comfort may seem to be which draw us away from them, do not constitute and make up the bulk of what, properly, is to the human spirit to be considered home.

The loss of home, then, by removal to a distance from those earlier scenes, localities, peoples, ideas, and customs of which we are a part, is a far greater loss to us, considered in the aggregate, than is at first apparent by any mere feelings of loneliness or estrangement which we may suffer in a strange community. Because, while these feelings undoubtedly indicate to us the part of our lives with which we have parted in leaving those scenes and associations of which we were a part, they do not always reflect back to us the painful vacuum which is created at home by our absence; and therefore, our feelings are not always an accurate measurement of the full injury done by the detaching of human elements from their proper places, to be thereafter located in strange and distant lands. And it may properly be said that the suffering of these feelings by those who have removed is not the greatest injury done by such removals. For, while feelings represent some of the injury done to us by such removals, they certainly do not represent all of it. The strongest powers of a man, naturally considered, are in the locality or in the society in which he was raised. He may, in distant communities, where social life is just taking root, or where, indeed, it has already taken root, be, to outward appearances, a more prominent person than at home, where he was raised. He may be called into public life oftener, and be made to assume offices of trust which at home he never would have assumed, and, perhaps, never could have assumed. But, after all, he is really not so important a personage in his new locality, and in his new offices, as he would have been at home in his natural offices. This statement may appear, to some minds, paradoxical. But it really is not so, examined by the light and the law of uses and of natural adaptations. We shall not go into any extended discussion, however, of this particular question, but we shall assume, at the outset, that the circle of "civilization" or of settlement, should be but slowly and gradually enlarged. There are a great many strong reasons for this plea of widening and enlarging the circle of "civilization" or of settlement. The same reasons which operate to show that no single individual can be as useful (in the scale of nature) in a community distant and remote from his birthplace, as he could in serving out his natural uses in his birthplace, will operate equally to show that such distant removals are not healthy for whole communities of people. Our border States, some of which are very far out from the centres of settlement, have been peopled by persons leaving the older and denser communities where they were born and raised, and repairing to these new "settlements." The effect of it has been, in many instances, to change the wheel of individual fortune, and to place some in high positions who, in their native communities, would never have reached those positions. But we shall argue that this result has not always been beneficial to the parties so elevated. {662} The natural growth of communities, that is, the growth by enlarging the circle of settlement but slowly and connectedly, is sustained by every healthy law of economy. Even in the gross matter of material wealth, the bulk of the people are better off in an old than in a new community. We venture the assertion that this remark will hold good even as between the outer border States of the West, and the inhabitants of those countries from whose populations these States have, in a large measure, been settled. But it will especially hold true as between the people of those outer border States and the people of a corresponding class of our older States.

But what is the moral exhibit? What do the facts here prove? They prove, incontestably, that the standard of law, of morals, of religion, and of society, in all the vast multitude of its meaning, is, in the "new settlements," incomparably below what it is in the old communities. These are grave proofs, and of importance enough, in our judgment, to settle a national policy against the building up of new communities at great distances from the old ones.

If it were physically possible to detach one half of the territory of an old state, and to send the detached portion, with its entire population, to some distant and remote country, and there locate it, even this huge mass of matter and of peoples would greatly suffer by the shock of the new situation. The earth has its affinities as well as people have theirs, and no considerable portion of the earth (that is, if such a thing were possible at all) could be detached from its proper place, where all of its connections are natural and healthy, and could be transported to another portion of the globe where the materials and the fashions of nature are not exactly of the same kind, without suffering by the change. How much more, then, will human beings, who are more subject to influences, suffer by a corresponding change? The laws of affinity and of sympathy must be preserved in the commonest things even; and if such a change as we have spoken of were possible in any considerable portion of the earth's surface, the peoples carried along with the detached portion would, for a time, have the same laws, the same customs, the same religions--would see the same scenery, and would, to some extent, breathe the same air to which they had all along been accustomed; but, in the course of time, they would find themselves laboring and struggling in full sympathy with the earth so detached for sympathy with the new objects and new external surroundings of the new situation, until a perceptible change would take place in their feelings, and in the very ardor of their religious worships.

We have put the case in this strong form to show what will be done by change. Change in one thing necessarily involves change in another thing. We cannot change our habitations and our abodes, without also changing all in us which is peculiar to locality and the law of locality; and in this alone there is a large volume of life. That society is always the best which holds the closest together, and in which the work of adaptation and assimilation has been carried on the longest between its members. The superior frame of English society, which is the growth of an old community, and the sturdy world of the English people, will demonstrate this. There is a certain morality in locality, too, and the morality developed by a particular locality is always the healthiest for its people. We do not, however, mean to say that the morality of locality is _sui generis_--that it is something which is peculiar to particular localities independent of the people of those localities. {663} This is an absurdity which we will not utter. But we merely mean to say that the morality of localities, or of the people of particular localities, is influenced, more or less, by the surrounding circumstances of locality. This remark will be strongly verified in the different social habits and moral sentiments of people whose occupation, from natural causes, differs; circumstances, for instance, of different situation, such as make some people nautical and seafaring, while others are agricultural and domestic. It is in this wise that locality may be said to have its morality, and that the peculiar phases of morality developed by the natural and unavoidable circumstances of situation are the best for the people of that locality. This is a proposition which we imagine no one will dispute. But there are very often carried into a particular locality certain phases of morality, or rather the want of it, which have no connection with the locality, and with which the genius of the locality has nothing to do. These are positive conditions of vice and immorality which may be engendered in any community.

Sensibilities are the most delicate and refined things conceivable. They are the result of the most delicate nurture of the feelings, the associations, and the relationships of life. The peculiar modes of association of a people--the peculiar frame and structure of their domestic relationships--has a great deal to do with the type and kind of their sensibilities. In a new country, where everything is rough, the sensibilities cannot be as nice and as refined as in an older community where they are nursed. Sensibilities, then, depend for their flexibility, and for the grain of their qualities, on the fineness--on the niceness--of the social food on which they have been fed. This is constantly being illustrated to us in the treatment of animals, even, which certainly have sensibilities of a certain kind.

Where the finer threads of society, then, are preserved, and where there are close-knit sympathies between the people, without too much of the rough work of a rough country to harden them and to dry up the fountains of the sensibilities, we may always there expect to find the flowers of love blooming in the greatest abundance. New countries, then, are not as favorable to the development of these feelings as older ones are, and the moral havoc in such countries is, usually, very great. But, apart from the rough circumstances of a new country, which have upon the feelings a hardening effect, the mental sensibilities are greatly influenced by scenery, and by the natural effect of air, temperature, etc. These refined elements are just as much a part of the mental food on which we feed as anything else is. All our ideas of comfort, of beauty, and of healthiness do not come from artificial surroundings and from the frame-work of society which we may have constructed. Mental emotions are excited in us by scenery; and that of the particular kind to which we have been used, though in reality it may, to some extent, be barren and bleak, is to us the most charming. The appearance of things in nature is indissolubly associated with our earlier lives, memories, incidents, occurrences, and sentiments; and so we, in the very nature of things, must love this earlier record better than any subsequent one which we may make. It necessarily follows that we love those peculiar features in nature the best which are the closest associated with our earlier experiences of life. {664} The analyzing spirit will detect, at a slight glance, even the minute and particular differences between the outward features of different localities. The eye of the student of nature will at once perceive the smallest shades of difference in the leaves of trees of the same class in different localities. To the sensitive mind the rain, even, of different localities will have a different spirit, and its falling will make a different impression upon the mind. We are a wonderfully constructed battery, and the effect of these manifold things in nature upon the organism cannot be estimated, or correctly judged of, by any but those who, by living in new and strange countries, have had full experience of it. The chemistry of the soul is more marvellous than that of flesh and matter, and the effect of scenery, of air, of the spirit of the air, and of all the vast and grand combinations of matter on the brain, and on the life principles of man, cannot be judged of until, to him, some foreign country has written its strange history on his organism, and he discovers that, though in reality he is the same individual, still he does not see nature through the same eyes through which he was wont to see it, and does not feel its refreshing spirit as he was wont to feel it. These are some of the sad mental impressions made by great changes from one distant locality to another. Could anything be more hurtful or injurious to the human spirit? Could anything be more obliterative of morality, than not to respect and act out, every day of our lives, its sacred lessons in close connection with those old school associations with which we linked life the fondest, and through which we enjoyed it the dearest? The early dawn as it came to us shaded by the hills and the forests common to the localities in which we were born and reared; our parting with the great companion of the day, influenced by the same surroundings; the familiar notes of the night-birds common to our localities; the peculiarities of the very gusts of wind there; the peculiar haze of the atmosphere; the methods in which the very trees droop their branches; these, these are all familiar scenes and things to us all, and are, we may say, the school-house associates of our earlier lives, when our spirits were first learning the great lessons of life--those lessons under which life in us was organized and under which it has spread its richest and its grandest panorama. Change these localities and these scenes, and we feel as though we had parted with dear friends whose association is necessary to our lives, and for years afterward, they form, in our minds, an ever present picture of their appearance. These familiar scenes are the old oaken trees, so to speak, under whose umbrageous bowers we learned our first lessons of virtue and of life; and we cannot give them up, and part from them, without also surrendering some of the sacred lessons which, in their midst and in their hallowed shadow, we learned. But, throughout, the parting with home, and going into new localities, makes a new era in our lives. The village boy, who is the object of charity, and who has no ties to bind him but those of the guardian public, feels it. He even feels, when he parts with the dear scenes of his nativity, almost as though he had taken leave of the very God, whom he had been taught to worship, and that he lay launched out upon a great wide ocean of uncertainties, there to hunt for another God, and other friends. How must it, then, be with those who are a part of the household and the inheritance of human affections? Mother, father, brothers and sisters are gathered for the sad parting. {665} Tears of deep grief fall thick and fast. There is, indeed, occasion for them. The heir of the possession, or the mate of fraternal friendship and love, is about to become a stranger. He is about to seek a home! (ah! sad word, in this connection,) it may be in the midst of olive-groves and of vineyards--away from the home of his inheritance, and the family are summoned to bemoan their loss. Years are to pass between him and them before they meet again, and when they do meet they are to each other strangers. This is indeed a sad picture. Can the growth and the building up of "a new country" compensate for it? I say not. I say that the planting of empire even, in the name and under the titles of the home government, it may be in some grandly tropical country, will not repay for these losses and for these sacrifices. Political grandeur is not the only object to be attained in this world. In fact, it is but an epitome of the grand and the beautiful objects of life. The comforts of home, and its solid connections, are worth more to us than all the offices in the world could be without them. And how few are there who nowadays appreciate and enjoy the comforts of home, even in their own natural communities, who are weighed down with the shackles and the plunder of office? How much more deplorable, then, the fate of the poor office-holder at a distance from his natural home, and those associates of his early life, found nowhere outside of home, which make life agreeable, and give to it its charms and its zest? His fate must indeed be pitiable and deplorable in the extreme. It is only, then, viewed generally, in the interests "of the public," (a most false "public interest,") that we heretofore have been enabled to find so much heroism in the spirit of venture and of distant emigration that the almost entire press of the country have lauded it, and have praised it "as a spirit of public enterprise;" which praise has done much toward exciting in the people of the world that restlessness and feverish spirit of excitement, which has led so many men and families to leave their natural attachments, and to seek location either in foreign and distant countries, or in States, at least, remote from those in which they were reared. These removals have always, when viewed in a moral and social light, been more productive of harm to the parties concerned than of good. Avoid them, in the future, would be our earnest advice to all good people. The best and greatest men of the world have invariably staid at home.

But are not the boundaries of civilization to be extended, may be asked? Most assuredly they are; but only slowly and by degrees, like waves as they spread and enlarge from a centre of disturbed waters. This is, undoubtedly, the true method of enlarging the area of settlement and of "civilization."

The parties immediately concerned are not alone the parties injured by distant removals. They affect, more or less, the world at large. The bad morals, engendered by innumerable people leaving their homes, where the sediments of society have settled to the bottom, and repairing to new and remote localities where there is no strongly constructed web of society, are not confined alone to the localities where the social connections are loose; but they spread like some terrible plague, and seize upon the minds of people of the denser and older communities. {666} A reciprocal interchange in morals is finally established between these remote and unlike communities, until the tone of the one is measurably improved, while that of the other is gradually reduced, and made worse by the interchange than it was before. These are some of the damaging effects of "new settlements," at a distance from the older ones. The law perfected is to be found only in the close and tight connections of society, with all of the social interests well defined, and with social rights so clear that one person will not interfere with those of another. This degree of social security and comfort is the perfection of the law; and no civilized government has any interest in upholding a system of "settlement" and of colonization which impairs the strength of the social structure.

Society has been built under the guardianship of the church, and any system either of "settlement," or of politics, which threatens the integrity of society, is against the interests of government, and equally against the interests of the Christian religion. Government is the secular means which we employ to enforce those wholesome moral inspirations of the church which have constructed society on sure foundations. Anything which attacks this wholesome system is at war with the Christian religion, and, consequently, against the higher civilization of the age. The sacred affinities and congenialities of home should not be disturbed, and society debauched, by a mania amongst the people for separations and removals. "Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder," applies also to the firm welding together of those whose lots he has made similar by nature, as it does to that holy matrimonial alliance by which a man takes to himself a consort and a mate, and by which a woman takes to herself a husband. That government is not truly and reliably built on the foundations of the Christian religion which disregards any of these sound maxims of social life, and which makes provision for scattering those members of society who are the most natural to each other, and which holds out to them the very strongest inducements to scatter and to form new associations. Such is certainly not a healthy law of society, and is in direct contravention of the great natural order. We must pay attention, in this as in all other things, to the associations made by nature. It is a monstrosity to suppose that there is not power enough in nature to adapt those to each other who were born together. It is a faith in this sort of power which associates people together in family groups, and which upholds the vast system of paternal and fraternal relations established throughout the world. If it were not for the belief in the perfect natural adaptation to each other of persons born of the same parents, we would not have so strong a system for rearing them together, and for imposing upon those who are responsible for their being so large a duty to keep them together whilst taking care of them. Nature, it is true, would suggest this duty, but society has strengthened it. It is the perfect fitness, naturalness, and adaptation of beings for each other, who were born together, which makes the family system strong, and which imposes upon parents the moral duty of keeping their offspring together while they take care of them; by which means the beautiful and sacred relations of brother and sister are established in something more than in the mere name. But we will not discuss a proposition which is so plain. It is not necessary for us to do it. The main feature which, in this connection, it is the most necessary for us to notice, is the necessity for some system by which violent separations between members of the same community and family may be avoided, and by which society may be strengthened in its foundations. {667} For, if these separations tend, as they most assuredly do, to the weakening of the family ties, it is necessary for us to take some strong measures in order to bind families more closely together; or else, the whole system of society, through these very means of neglect, will ultimately be disorganized, and will go to pieces. Indeed, we are rather verging on such a condition in this country now. We have what we call homes, it is true; but we now have really very little of the true family system. Nearly one half of the time of the younger members of the family--if not more--is not now spent, in the great majority of cases, under the paternal roof; and there is now in American society a perfect mania for being anywhere else except at home, and there may be said to be no family law. This is certainly a most deplorable state of things, and if pushed to further extremes, will ultimately disorganize society altogether. Whenever that may be done, government will then be impossible. So it behooves the public men of this country to look about for some remedy for this most distressing evil. Where can it be found? is the important inquiry of to-day. Our opinion is, that emigration, the restless spirit of movement, which our system of legislation has developed, is the fruitful source of the evil, and consequently, to correct it, we must change our migratory habits and policy. We have organized too many "territories," and have encouraged the building of too many railroads in far distant and remote regions from the centres of settlement, thereby causing our people to emigrate and to move about from one place to another. We have not sufficiently encouraged stability in the people. We have pursued a course of legislation which has made them restless, speculative, and venturesome. In this way we have not developed the real wealth which we might have developed had our people staid at home, and preserved their even, temperate avocations. But the material injury done by this system of removals has not been the principal evil of it by any means. Society has been unhinged by it. The strong attachments of home have been violently rent asunder, and by that means, our people have been compelled to look for their amusements, their enjoyments, and their entertainments, more in public than in private. This has had upon their dispositions, their habits, and their morals a most unbalancing effect, until now very little indeed is held by them to be any longer secured. These are the gigantic evils of the day with which we now have to battle, and the important question of the hour is, How are they to be met?

The question is much more easily asked than answered. A huge evil is upon us, however, and we must devise ways of ridding ourselves of it. Indeed, we do but develop the strength of the human, by devising means for the overthrow--the complete overthrow--of all of our evil conditions. No condition, then, however bad, may be supposed to be too gigantic for our efforts. Let us but keep steadily in view the great and important aims of life, and we certainly can make all else succumb to them. In working out the great problem of life, we must expect often to have to go back, and work it over again. We must often undo much of the work which we may suppose ourselves to have done, and must do it over again, in order to avoid errors and to correct mistakes. {668} It may be a hard task for us to perform; but nevertheless, we must do it. We know that there is a common error that in national affairs God is at the helm, and that we cannot steer wrong; that everything that has been done in the national "destiny" has been rightly done, and that God is certainly with us there in every step that we may take. This is certainly a most fatal error. God is no more with us in our national course than he is in our individual business, and in this we very often find it necessary to retrace our steps, and to correct errors. If we were to accept every individual misfortune, and every individual piece of bad management, as the direct work of God, and should make no effort to correct it, our private fortunes would be in a most deplorable condition. Without, then, being irreverent, we must recognize God in ourselves, in our national as well as in our individual matters, and must understand that good results are invariably the offspring of good motives and of good efforts, and that bad results are invariably the offspring of bad motives and bad efforts. We must understand this, and we must make results the guide and the criterion of divine will and divine favor. If results are good, we must suppose that God favors them; if they are bad, we must suppose that he disapproves them; and, as we honor him, we must set about correcting them. This, in my judgment, is the true criterion by which to judge of the divine will and the divine favor. Under this rule, then, we are at liberty, and we are expected to scrutinize every act of national conduct, and to see whether or not it is full of the seeds of good results; and if we find that it is not, then, at whatever cost to us the thing may have been done, to expunge it, and correct the error. This is sound national wisdom, as it would be sound individual wisdom. We have, then, already, too many railroads extending into far, remote regions of our country, distant from the centres of settlement, inviting our people to leave their homes and their families, and to emigrate in quest of fortune and of new honors. These invitations by our government are like so many snares set by the tempter to tempt us into sin and wickedness. I would say that all of the sacred interests of society would dictate to us the policy of abandoning the building of these roads, and equally to abandon the policy of organizing "new territories," to thereby tempt our people to hunt for new fields of "settlement." Let us make that strong which we already have. Let us refine and civilize as we go, and let us make but slow haste in extending the boundaries of our "settlements." This would seem, to our mind, to be the suggestion of wisdom. We must not conclude, either, that because money has been spent, and labor has been performed, that therefore we may not abandon altogether huge enterprises of "settlement" which have already been begun, and that our people now in remote "settlements" may not, in a great measure, return to their former homes. Such a course, undertaken on a large scale, might be productive of the best results, and perhaps, in the course of time, would be. But we must not anticipate too much. We must reach this proposition by degrees. We must, in a matter so grave as this, be, as in the process of settlement, slow. We must not proceed with it too fast.

The degrees of civilization are remote from each other. Indeed, government would be of but little use if it were not productive of the best results, where it is applied in the best spirit and under the soundest administration. {669} We cannot, from the very nature of the circumstances, expect these results for it in distant and remote regions from the centres of settlement, where the population is sparse, and where, on account of the formidable difficulties of a new country and new fields of labor, there is but little time on the part of the people to devote to social improvements. These are difficulties, certainly, to be considered, in estimating the scale of civilization of a people. We naturally look for a much healthier tone in an old community than we do in a new one. In an old community there is a much larger surface from which to choose an occupation, and the various interests of society are much better connected than they are in the new communities. These are important things to be considered by the adventurer after a home--if so paradoxical a thing is to be allowed as that a home may be found by adventure! In fact, the thing is impossible. Adventure can never make a home. A home is the product of continuing possession, and of careful culture. It is not necessarily a particular house, or a particular piece of land, which has been in the same hands for generations, which makes a home. But it is a continuous abiding of the same family and its members for several generations in the same neighborhood, the same locality, which makes, in the fullest sense, a home. They are then a part--incorporated as such by nature--of the community and of the locality in which they may chance to dwell. It is this, more than the continuous possession of a particular house or a particular piece of ground, which makes home. The woods, the streams, the outer walls of nature to which people have been accustomed, must have been the same, or similar and kindred ones, for at least several generations, in order to make for them a home. Where this has been the case, there nature is fully incorporated in those beings. There is not, then, in their own peculiar locality, a leaf, or a tree, or a flower, or a bird, that is not fully understood, and interiorly possessed by them. Through the manifold processes of nature, they, in this time, have made acquaintance with things in nature, and have become a much stronger part of the creation. Any traveller will tell us that, when he first begins to wander, things in nature at a distance from home appear strange to him, and that he never does become as well acquainted with them as he is with those corresponding things which he has left behind, that have been not only his, but also the familiar associates of his parents before him. This, we will venture to say, will be the testimony of all travellers. There is, in this testimony, a great lesson to be learned by us. It is the lesson that, if we want to be a part--absolutely a part--of creation, so as to have immediately under our control, at all times, a commanding sense and consciousness of our power in nature, and over it, as a part of it, we must stay where our organisms command the elements the best, and where, by long residence, they have become the strong masters of things in nature. This is certainly no new philosophy. If it has not been fully heretofore eliminated as a philosophy, in this form, it certainly has in other forms, just as substantial and far more practical. What are our feelings connected with our return to the earth but a confirmation of this doctrine? Every man who has a soul in him loves his own native soil; and when the solemn hour of dissolution approaches, he feels, as one of the last of his earthly hopes, that he would like to be gathered to the graves of his fathers, in the land of his and of their wanderings. {670} This is an event which is capable of testing the matter, and of proving the attractions which our earliest homes have for our spirits. When all nature is dissolving in us, we naturally look for support to those localities where life was organized in us, and which have fortified us the strongest with those forces on which we must rely the most to ward off dissolution. Thus our minds and our affections are naturally carried back to the land of our birth, in a way to make us love it above all other spots of earth, and in a way to cause us to desire it as our last resting-place. If these last trials do not show to the human spirit--drawing upon all of its resources for support--where its chief strength in nature lies, whether in the new home, or the old one, then perhaps our theory that we lose many of the essential elements of life by migrating, and by going to a great distance from the home of our nativity, may not, indeed, be a sound one. But we must take the case of the normal spirit to prove it. The moods of the spirit that has been debauched and made common; that has lost the love of its sanctuaries by dishonorable and aimless wanderings, are not a fair test of our philosophy. We must take some spirit who has gone into a distant land seeking fortune, with the love of home in his heart, and with the responsibilities of family upon him; and let the trial of dissolution come upon him, even after years of absence, and see if his last thoughts are not directed to the home of his childhood, and if the last appeals which he makes in his mind to nature to save him are not addressed to the genius, the localities, the scenes, the cherished associations, of his earlier home. This must be so. It is unavoidable. The cool stream from which we drank in our boyhood thirst often has power, when vividly called to mind, to abate the rage of some terrible fever; and the maternal hand, as we see it in imagination laid upon us, long years, even, after that hand has been stilled, has power to soothe us. Thus fancy makes medicine from the past, and the chosen spots of the spirit's earlier wanderings are the places to which she goes for her healing arts.

The maternal breast has attractions for us as long as we live. Its sorrows are our sorrows, and it is upon the same principle and by the same laws of correspondence that we love our earlier homes the best, and that they have over our morals a stronger control and a more salutary influence than any other society or community can have. In fact, a removal from our own community and our own home is too often looked upon as a license to do as we please, and is interpreted as a relaxing of the social traces in which we had been bound. It is not worth while, at present, to explore the philosophy of this fact, but it is a fact, and we therefore deal with it accordingly. We know that the white man is the representative of civilization, and that he carries with him a Christian inheritance wherever he goes. We know that in any situation in which he may be placed, he will strive to ally himself with his God. We know that he has fixed the cross of his worship upon many a bleak mountain of this land, and that he has planted the vineyard of peace in the remote regions of the wilderness. We know that he has established government, erected schools, built churches, and planted the seeds of society in far and distant regions from the centres of civilization. We know all this, and yet we know, or believe, that if this same potent mass of human beings, thus scattered and toiling separate and apart from each other, had held together under the strong covenants of a powerful society, and had advanced in a body to occupy and possess the land, holding together at every step, the rainbow of God's favor would have spanned over them in such luminous light that we of this continent would now have been a strong and powerful and united people, in the enjoyment of a civilization and in the possession of a purity of social life neither enjoyed nor possessed by any other people on the earth.

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It may be supposed by some that this position assumes too much; but our own opinion is, that it may be brought almost down to a demonstration. Such a social wreck as follows the violent segregation of members of the same family or community, to form in new communities, must be followed by a corresponding civil prostration. But wild and incoherent ideas of government will be entertained, and the strength of the masses in such communities, or in old ones, either, that have been much affected by these separations, may, upon any wild and great excitement, although in reality springing but from trivial causes, be organized to overturn rather than to sustain a government. Without intending in the least to be sectional, or even to verge, in the slightest degree, on the brink of politics, we will venture to say that the history of events in this country within the last few years will sustain this position. Too much liberty--such as is usually enjoyed in new communities free from proper social restraints--confuses the reason. Law, as a centre of action, is the only safeguard of any people; and to be law, it must be firmly planted in constitutions beyond the reach of the passions of the populace. To maintain law as a centre, there must not be too many flying forces connected with it at a distance from those regular and steady communities which have developed it. For, unless the system of law is equally developed, and the structure of society (upon which the law is founded) is equally perfected in every part of a country where the central source of labor is equally controlled by law-givers from every part, we must expect a general deterioration of morals, corresponding to the mixture of good and bad elements which are the active forces of the lawmaking power. Too many "territories," and too many new States at a distance from the older communities, tend, in our judgment, to unsettle the morals of the country, and, through the morals, the laws, and ultimately through the laws, the government itself. We have divided our people into fractions too fast. It would have been better for our own, and for the interests of humanity, if we had held more firmly together in better connected and more contiguous communities. Our people would not then have had the same wild ideas about "law" that many of them have to-day, and the better united interests of the country would have made a more loving and united people.

Unity, in the affairs of men, is certainly a great desideratum. Immense geographical and social divisions between people usually produce a spirit of alienation, and, in many instances, of absolute hostility. Mere navigable streams of water and railroad connections cannot so connect a people at the distance of many hundreds of miles from each other as to make them but one people. The nearest possible approach that can be made to a close social and sympathetic connection between peoples who are separated from each other by so much space, is to bridge the space over by densely packed masses of human beings, and then we establish lines of mental and social sympathy which will make them but one people. This is the only method, aside from the bond of religious unity, by which a close and hearty cooperation can be secured between people even of one blood and living under the same laws. The human bridge connecting together remote parts of a country is the most complete.

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The true policy, then, is not to plant colonies or "settlements" at distances from the centres of settlement, and to bridge over, with human beings, the intervening space, by degrees. But on the contrary, for us to advance in a body, closely connected, and to carry, unbroken, our civilization with us as we go. There will then be no spasmodic disturbances of the law. The wild passions of the wild tribes who roam our borders will not then be incorporated (as is now too often the case) by our people, who go in fragmentary bodies to great distances from the solid settlements, and there make their dwellings amidst the rude timbers of nature. There would be, under this plan of settlement, an equipoise and a balance. It would be regular, steady, and not as now fragmentary. The arrangement of the State divisions--as a form of government--would not, in the least, be interfered with. We only propose that, instead of disjointed masses of human beings going off by themselves at great distances from the main settlements, people hold, as they go, more together as a body, and that we encourage wild schemes of emigration less. They have had upon our people, upon our laws, and upon society, a most disastrous and unsettling effect. The policy which we propose does not interfere with commerce or with healthy travel, but is only against the wild spirit of emigration which has seized upon the world, and which moves those not engaged in commerce to seek new homes.

The charms of nativity will be greatly increased by educating the mind to look upon our earlier homes as the theatres in which we are to act our parts in life. It will develop in us a more conformatory spirit in life, and will secure for us the measureless blessings of a compact and united society. A different training and a different practice are the fruitful sources of those wild idiosyncrasies in society which teach us that all men should be to us alike, and that there are no sacred fountains of the affections where the faith of the heart ever beams bright, and where the hallowed altars of love and confidence have established their holiest worship. In a word, the home-training, continuing through a life, and ending, for the most part, where begun, that is, under the genius of the same state laws, and amongst people of a kind, is indispensable to happiness, and to the natural enjoyment of life. It is equally, alas! indispensable to a full understanding of the genius of law and to the development of that conservative spirit in us which will teach us to value the blessings of social life far too much for us ever to interfere in their sacred enjoyment by other people. The man of home, then, as against the emigrant and the wanderer, is a man of peace, a man of law, a man of religion, and a man of society. He does not go with his rifle to destroy, nor with his individual will to make it the law of the surrounding country; but he is content to stay at home, and he accepts the developments of society there as he finds them, and labors conscientiously, when improvement is needed, to improve them; but always within the boundaries of those barriers which Christianity and conscience have set up as the landmarks of his labors. {673} If we would preserve our stability, then, as a people, and make our government and society what they ought to be, we must change our wandering habits, and must cultivate the flowers of home-love as the only sure guarantee of peace and happiness. We must not allow our wandering ambitions to stretch away into other domains; but we must put upon ourselves the bridle of wisdom, and must be content to people our fields at home with the laborers which we now offer to other lands, to other climes, and to other states. This policy will make us _truly_ great.

A Mother's Prayer.

The regent of a goodly realm, A sovereign wise and fair, Gazed fondly on her youthful son, And breathed her earnest prayer; The one wish of her loving heart, Her ceaseless, solemn thought, Sole boon her love had craved for him, The only prize she sought.

Was it new conquests? blood-bought gems To deck his kingly hand? Fair realms by cruel triumphs wed Unto his rightful land? Rich trappings? robes of royal state? A fawning courtier throng? Or minstrels' ringing lays, to pour The flatteries of song?

Nay, nay, no earthly leaven base, No worldly dross could cling Unto that pure, maternal prayer For France's youthful king. 'My precious son! more dear than life, More prized than aught on earth, In all this false and fleeting world My only gift of worth!

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"Oh! loved and treasured as thou art, Far rather would I weep Above the bier where thou wert laid In thy last, dreamless sleep, Than live to know this form of thine Held, foully shrined within, A tarnished gem, a soul defiled, By _e'en one mortal sin._."

Well answered was that mother's prayer: No foul, polluting taint E'er marred the white and shining soul Of France's royal saint. His pure baptismal robe of grace Unstained through life he wore; The lily sceptre of the just King Louis brightly bore.

O Christian matron! in thy heart This lesson fair enshrine; And let the blest, heroic prayer Of holy Blanche be thine. For what are all the gifts of earth, The charms of form and face, If the immortal soul hath lost Its bright, baptismal grace?

Ay! what avails the wealth of worlds, If, lured by syren vice, God's heir hath sold his birthright fair, His only "pearl of price"? In vain may proud ambition grasp Vast realms to tyrants given, If from his guilty hand hath passed The heritage of heaven.

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Two Months In Spain During The Late Revolution.

MADRID.

Monday, Oct. 19.

We visit the "Museo" to-day--the richest picture-gallery in the world. Ten Raphaels, forty-six Murillos, sixty-two Rubens, sixty-four Velasquez, forty-three Titians, etc. But even Raphael's "Perla," (that holy family called the Pearl,) even his "Spasmo de Silicia," (Christ falling beneath the cross,) even Guido's exquisite Magdalen and Spagnoletto's "Jacob's Dream," even these great pictures sink to nothingness beside Murillo's "Annunciation," his "Adoration of the Shepherds," "Eleazar at the Well," "The Martyrdom of St. Andrew," the "Divine Shepherd," the Infant Saviour giving St. John to drink from a shell, called "Los Niños de la Concha," the "Vision of St. Bernard," and those wonderful "Conceptions" which embody "all that is most sublime and ecstatic in devotion and in the representation of divine love."

The more one sees of Murillo, the more one is convinced that he is the greatest painter of the world. Others may have points of excellence superior to his; but his subjects are so full of piety and tenderness, so fascinating in coloring, and appeal so at once to the heart and the common sense of mankind, that they please at once the learned and the unlearned. The Spaniards say of him that he painted "Con leche y sangre," with milk and blood, so wonderful are his flesh tints.

The "Spasmo de Silicia" is so called from the convent for which it was painted, "St. Maria della Spasima," in Palermo. "The Virgin's Trance on the way to Calvary" is considered by some critics only second to the "Transfiguration."

The "Perla" is so named because Philip IV., beholding it for the first time, exclaimed, "This is the pearl of my pictures." It belonged to the Duke of Mantua, was bought by Charles I., and was sold with his other pictures by the "tasteless puritans and reformers."

Tuesday, Oct. 20.

Spend another hour in the "Museo," looking at the pictures of the Flemish and Dutch schools--fifty-three Teniers, twenty-two Van Eycks, fifty-four Breughels, twenty-three Snyders, ten Wouvermans, etc. A wonderful gallery, so rich in great masters.

We then go to see the "House of the Congress," which is handsomely decorated. The ministers' bench is here blue, while the others are red.

The library is small but very handsome. From this we go to the interesting artillery museum, and then to see the coach-houses and stables of the palace, begun by Charles III. and finished by Ferdinand VII. One felt more than ever sorry for the poor fugitive queen, at sight of all this majesty. Beautiful Arabian and Andalusian horses and mules, over a hundred carriages of every hue and shape, from the black, cumbrous thing in which poor Jeanne la Folle carried about the coffin of her handsome husband, to the beautiful modern carriage in which the lovely Infanta went so lately to her bridal! All had a personal sort of interest; but most touching of all was the sight of the little carriages and perambulators which bore evidence of having been long used by the royal children.

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The state carriages are very grand, many of them gifts from crowned heads: one from the first Napoleon; another from the present emperor to Queen Isabella; and a handsome plain English coach from Queen Victoria to her majesty. But even more than the carriages do the saddles and embroidered housings, the plumes, and harness, and trappings, and liveries, give one an idea of this splendor-loving court, especially those belonging to the days of Charles III. and Philip V. Above all these stood the crowned lion, with his feet on two worlds, significant of the greatness of Spain. And where is she, so lately the mistress of all this grandeur? The people told us that there had been thirteen thousand people dependent upon the queen's privy purse; that she had a school in the palace for all the children of her servants; and that there was no end to her generosity and kindness; and that, had she not been away, the revolution would never have occurred.

And just here we meet a long line of troops, horse, foot, and artillery, who proved to be the men who had fought so bravely for their queen at Alcolea, and at such fearful odds. The men of Novaliches!

And no man cried, "God bless them!" as they passed, weary and dispirited, through the streets; their enemies would not do them honor, and their friends dared not.

When we reached the hotel, General Prim was making a speech to a ragged, dirty mob, who were shouting for "Libertad." He told them it was his saint's day--that they need not work, he would give them money. So, after distributing some coppers, he got into a fine carriage and drove off. While we struggled to get in, one of our party heard some of the poor women exclaim softly, "Our poor queen!" and then the usual piteous exclamation, "Ay Dios mios!" "Ay Dios mios!"

Wednesday, Oct. 21.

Go this morning to "finish" the pictures in the Museo--if such a thing could be done--but the more one looks, the more one feels it impossible ever to finish with them.

The sculpture-gallery (gallery of Isabella II.) is very handsome, but contains only a few antiques of interest and a beautiful modern statue of St. John of God carrying a sick man out of his burning hospital. Next we go to the gallery of the Belli Arti, where, among other good pictures, are four of Murillo's, and first of these "St. Elizabeth of Hungary washing the Lepers," one of the greatest pictures in the world--by some considered Murillo's very best. It was painted for the "Caritad" of Seville, for which its subject made it peculiarly appropriate. The beautiful saint is the centre of a group of nine persons plainly dressed in black, an apron before her, the crown upon her head, and above and around a soft luminous halo seems to beam from her whole person. Her white hands are washing the head of a ragged boy who leans over the basin, and writhes with pain. A lovely young girl holds a pitcher, another the ointments, and an old woman with spectacles peers between them. In front of the picture, a beggar-man is taking off the dirty bandage from his leg, ready for his turn to be washed. On the other side, a withered old crone, with stick in hand, gazes eagerly on the saint, who speaks with her. A lame beggar on crutches is behind, and in the distance is the palace and a dinner-table upon the terrace, surrounded by beggars, upon whom the queen waits, showing her charity in another form. {677} An artist who was copying the picture made us remark the wonderful variety and harmony in the figure, the tender pity of the saint's expression, the natural and graceful grouping, and the soft light over all. Many critics find the sores too truly painted to be agreeable to look upon; but (as some Protestant traveller says of it) "her saint-like charity ennobles these horrors, on which her woman's eye dares not look; but her royal hand does not refuse to heal, and how gently! The service of love knows no degradation."

In another room are two semicircular pictures, taken also from Seville, (from the church of St. Maria de la Blanca,) representing the legend of the founding of the great church of St. Maria Maggiore in Rome, in the year 360.

The first picture represents the "Dream" of the Roman patrician and his wife, in which he sees the Blessed Virgin in the heavens, pointing out the spot where the church shall be built--upon which spot the snow will fall in August. In the companion picture, the founder and his wife are kneeling before the pope relating the vision, while in the dim distance is seen a procession advancing to the appointed place.

Coming from the Museo, we go to see the palace of the Duke of Medina Coeli, one of the richest nobles of Spain and one of the highest in rank. A regal establishment, with a greater air of comfort than prevails in most palaces. Gardens and picture-galleries, a theatre, suites of magnificent rooms--one in rose-colored satin, with walls hung in gray silk.

Thursday, Oct. 22.

Set out for Toledo; pass the palace of "Aranjuez," the St. Cloud of Spain, as la Grandja, built by Philip V., is its Versailles. We mistake our way, and are left on the plains of la Mancha in a miserable "posada," or rather a "venta," (the lower grade of inn,) where we remain all day with nothing visible save one of Don Quixote's windmills, which we are sorely tempted to battle with after the fashion of that redoubtable hero. How truly it has been said of this sterile-looking country, the "old Castile of la Mancha," by a witty traveller--" the country is brown, the man is brown, his jacket, his mantle, his wife, his _stew_, his mule, his house--all partake of the color of the saffron, which is profusely cultivated, and which enters into the composition of his food as well as his complexion."

At length we are cheered by the arrival of a lovely Spanish woman and her daughter, who are returning from their estate near by, and come, like ourselves, to wait the train for Madrid.

The daughter had been educated in the Sacré Coeur Convent near Madrid. Spoke French well. She told us in her lively way that, though these plains looked so brown and desert-like, they brought good crops and "put money in the pocket," and that back from the roads were fine plantations of olive and vine.

Saturday, Oct. 24.

Some Spanish friends come to show us some of the hospitals and other great charities of Madrid, which numbers forty in all. First, to the general hospital, attended by the Sisters of Charity--a city in itself, where are over eighteen hundred sick poor. It covers an immense extent of ground, and, like all Spanish hospitals, has shady courts, and gardens, and corridors running around the courts. All was clean and comfortable, the sisters tenderly feeding the sick children and old people, and reading or praying beside the beds.

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From this we go to the most interesting of all, called the "Maison de la Providence," supported by the ladies of rank in Madrid, and under the care of the French Sisters of Charity, who wear the familiar "cornette." Here, besides _enfants trouvés_ and orphans, they have (or had) six hundred poor children, taken out of the streets. Many of these are kept for the day, the parents seeking them at night: all of them are taught gratuitously. We were shown a room in which forty of the smallest (not one over two years) had been put to bed for the noonday sleep, perfect little cherubs, side by side, on the tiniest and whitest of beds, with fringed curtains above them. The sister opened the window-shutters to give us a look at this lovely picture; and the light woke many of them, who sat up rubbing their bright eyes, and looking with wonder at the strangers, but not one cried. In one corner were great basins and towels showing why the faces were so clean and rosy.

The sister then took us to the playground, where hundreds of little things, from the ages of three to six years, were playing; the boys on one side, the girls on the other; the sisters with them. We were invited to remain and see them go into school, that we might see the system of uniting instruction with amusement, which has been so successfully employed by these charitable teachers. At the sound of an instrument, (something like a castanet,) the little things fell into ranks, one behind the other, the hindmost holding on with both hands to the shoulders of the one who preceded him. In this way, and slowly keeping time with their little feet, they marched into the room, marching and countermarching with admirable precision. Three divisions of eight, headed by a "captain," (a well-drilled soldier,) form, and go to their seats; each captain helps to seat his division, and then counts to see if he has the correct number. The children then rise to say the Lord's Prayer, all in concert, slowly and reverently, preceding it with the "sign of the cross," made with, some, such tiny fingers! The sister next proceeds to give a lesson. Great black letters, on wooden blocks, (so large as to be seen by all,) are one by one laid in grooves upon an inclined plane, the children all (together) calling out the letter as it is placed, spelling the word, then reading (or rather, singing) the sentence. If the sister makes a mistake, a dozen little voices correct it. A child of six is next chosen to spell a sentence, and severe were the little critics when he misplaced a letter. Next came a lesson in Scripture history. A book of colored prints was opened here and there, and the stories were told by the children in their own pretty way, of Adam and Eve, David and Absalom, etc. We were presently shown the children old enough to be taught to work, little things of five and six years, knitting or sewing; and then a class making plain sewing; and then the larger orphan girls, working the finest needlework and embroidery.

And this is one of eight such institutions in Madrid! It is kept up by individual charity; and the fear is, that it must be curtailed if not closed on account of the revolution; the ladies who contributed most to it having been forced to leave with the queen's party, or having absented themselves from fear of getting into trouble. These high-born ladies have had also many schools in different parts of the city, where they taught the poor every Sunday, as in our Sunday-schools. The provisional government has stopped all these, on the pretext that they are "incendiary," as they have also that of the "Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul"!

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Our Spanish friends tell us of the closing, yesterday, of the "royal school," (founded many centuries ago by one of the kings of Spain, and supported from the privy purse of the reigning king or queen,) for the daughters of the nobility who have met with reverse of fortune, orphans and others of good birth but of no means. Yesterday these poor girls were turned out, homeless, houseless; and as they passed along, the brutal rabble insulted them with cries of, "Come out, you thieves; you have eaten our bread long enough; come out, and let us have place." To-day, we see them tearing down the building. And this is "progress!"

We hear that the carriage of the Duchess Medina Coeli has been assaulted to-day, the crown upon her carriage pelted, the glasses broken, with the cry of "Down with the aristocrats!"--that fatal cry, which (with many other bad things) they borrow from the French, and which was the signal to spill so much "good" blood.

Toledo.

October 25.

Only three hours' time (by rail) separate Toledo and Madrid, the old and new world of Spain! What a contrast between the two! Toledo towers like an eagle's nest on the steep rock, the "dark, melancholy" Tagus winding below, with walls and Moorish gates and steep crags, with Roman and Gothic and Arabic ruins, with glorious memories of the fierce and warlike Goths, and of its imperial renown under Charles V.; while the modern upstart, Madrid, has nothing of which to boast, save fine houses, and shops, bustle and traffic, noise and dirt, "progress" and revolution!

Toledo is said to have been a Phoenician or Grecian colony, then conquered by the all-absorbing Romans, 146 B.C., and the favorite resort of the Jews who fled from Jerusalem after its fall, and who became here rich and powerful, and exercised an important influence in the history of the country until expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492.

In the fifth century, the Goths conquered Spain and founded that splendid and powerful kingdom which, after three hundred years, ended with Roderick in 712, when the Moors, under Taric, overthrew the Goths in the battle of the Guadalete, and overran all Spain. In 1085, it was reconquered by Alonzo V., and Toledo was the seat of the court until removed by Philip II. to Madrid in 1560, and (for a few years) to Valladolid.

Our first duty is to the cathedral, considered by many persons to be the finest building in the world. It was commenced by St. Ferdinand in 1227, on the site of a mosque, which, in turn, had been built upon a church founded in 587 by St. Eugenius, the friend and disciple of St. Denis, who introduced Christianity into Spain. It employed one hundred and forty-nine of the greatest artists of the world two hundred and sixty-six years to complete and render it the masterpiece it now is. The cathedral of Seville is grander, higher, more impressive from its austere simplicity; but this, from its greater lightness, the mingling of the early Gothic with the later and more florid style, from the Moorish carvings on the white stone of which it is built, is more graceful and beautiful; and from the thousand memories of great men and great deeds with which it is associated, its royal tombs and statues, its Muzurabic chapel, its great relics, its grand treasures, is infinitely more interesting.

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We arrived in time to hear the high mass--the glorious organs, and fine voices, while the morning sunlight streamed through seven hundred and fifty stained windows and among eighty-eight colossal pillars. Picturesque groups knelt before the different shrines. We chose the chapel of St. Ildefonso, raised upon the spot where, according to the legend, he received the chasuble from the hands of the Blessed Virgin, which Murillo has made the subject of one of his finest pictures.

Near this chapel is the altar at which Ferdinand and Isabella heard mass after the conquest of Granada. The grand retablo of the main altar extends from the altar to the ceiling, and is considered a marvel of exquisite carving, representing the scenes in the passion of our Lord--the work of twenty-five artists, of whom John of Bologna was one.

On either side of this, (in niches,) are the tombs of Sancho the Brave, Alfonso VII., and Sancho the Wise, and, below these, that of the great Cardinal Mendoza. On each side of the altar are screens, of which the carvings in marble are exquisite, as are the seventy stalls of the choir, which are divided by jasper pillars. The two pulpits are of gilt metal resting on marble columns, and are of the finest workmanship. The chapels are exceedingly rich, especially that of Santiago, built by that worthless favorite of John II. of Castile, Don Alvaro de Luna, as the burial-place of his family. Upon his tomb was originally a statue which was contrived so as to rise and kneel at the time of the "elevation" during mass; but Queen Isabella, the wife of John II., (who was the means of bringing him to justice,) had it changed. He lies quietly enough now, with his sword between his legs, while kneeling figures of knights pray at each corner of the tomb.

The chapter-house contains portraits of all the archbishops of Toledo, many pictures, and a superb carved and inlaid ceiling of alerce wood. Here have been held all the important councils of Spain. There is a chapel filled with interesting relics, and the treasures of the church surpass those of all Spain in value. Among these is the cross which Cardinal Mendoza carried in procession at the surrender of Granada, and planted on the walls of the Alhambra; a custodia of gold and silver, weighing twenty-five arobas--about six hundred pounds--nine feet high, and covered with myriads of statuettes and exquisite ornaments. It was given by Queen Isabella, and made from the first gold sent by Columbus from America. There was one vestment covered with eighty-five thousand pearls; another with as great profusion of coral; a crown, and other ornaments of diamonds and other jewels; a missal, given by St. Louis; some silver plate carved by Benvenuto Cellini; and in the vestuario is the grandest display of vestments in the world. Those at St. Peter's are not so fine. Many of these were given by cardinals Mendoza and Ximenes, by Queen Isabella, and other sovereigns; and most of them many centuries old, yet preserving the brightness of the gold and silver work, and the colors of the embroidery. There were the chairs used by these great dignitaries, and the hangings used to adorn the church on the occasion of the thanksgiving for the victory of Lepanto.

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But above all this is the interest felt in the "Muzarabic Chapel," built by Cardinal Ximenes, (_Cisneros_, as they call him in Spanish,) to preserve the ancient liturgy of the Muzarabes, (Muzarabes--mixed Arabs,) who were the Goths who, after the conquest of Spain by the Moors, agreed to live under the Moslem rule, retaining the Christian worship. This is the oldest ritual in Spain, introduced here by the apostles of this country, St. Torquatus and his companions. It was at first, in most respects, similar to the Roman liturgy; but underwent many changes after the conquest of Spain by the Visi-Goths and Vandals, who were Arians, and brought with them to Spain their liturgy, which was Greco-Arian, written in Latin.

This Gothic liturgy was almost exclusively adopted in Spain, after the fourth council of Toledo in 633, when St. Isidore of Seville and other celebrated Spanish bishops of this period, to put a stop to the disorders in the churches, arranged the ritual and obliged all to follow it. Even after the introduction of the Gregorian liturgy, the Spaniards retained their own, and it was universal up to the eighth century, when the Moors conquered Spain. By those Goths who submitted to the Moors, and who were promised freedom of their religion, it was guarded with the utmost vigilance; and even after Spain was conquered by the free Spaniards, (who had meantime adopted the Gregorian rite,) the Muzarabes retained their own Gothic rite, and it was allowed to them in six parishes, just as it had existed during the six hundred years of Moorish domination.

But as the Muzarabic families disappeared or mingled with others, their venerable and ancient liturgy gradually disappeared; and but for cardinals Mendoza and Ximenes, it must have been lost entirely. The first formed the design which Ximenes carried out--gathered up all the manuscripts of their liturgy, had them revised by their own priests, and printed a great number of the missals, and built this chapel in his own cathedral, (called "ad Corpus Christi,") and founded a college of thirteen priests to serve it, confiding to the chapter of the cathedral the protection of this religious foundation. Other bishops followed his example, and in the sixteenth century a chapel was founded in Salamanca, and another in Valladolid; but the one in Toledo seems to be the only one now existing: here the mass is said every day at nine o'clock; but few attend it, and it has become a mere liturgic curiosity.

It commences with a prayer very little different from the Roman liturgy; then the same psalm "Judica me," the introit, the "Gloria in Excelsis," a lesson from the Old Testament, then the gradual and epistle. The prayers of the offertory are almost identical with those of the Roman liturgy; then follow prayers like the Greek and Milanese liturgies; then the preface. But the canon of the mass is different; the trisagion is followed immediately by the consecration, and the credo is said at the "elevation." The host is divided into two parts; the priest then divides one part into five, and the other into four small bits; places them upon the paten, upon which is engraved a cross composed of seven circles, so that seven pieces of the host are placed in the seven circles. He then places (on the right) at the side of the cross upon the paten, the other two parts; each of these nine parts has a name corresponding to a mystery in the life of Christ, and they form, placed upon the paten the following figures,

Incarnation, Passion, Nativity, Death, Circumcision, Resurrection, Epiphany, Ascension, Eternal Kingdom.

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After this division, follows the "Pater," a prayer for the afflicted, for prisoners, the sick and the dead. The priest then takes a particle of the host corresponding to the words, "Eternal Kingdom," and lets it fall into the chalice, pronouncing the appropriate words; then he blesses the people, and communicates; then the particle of the host corresponding to the word "Ascension," recites a prayer for the dead, says the "Domine, non sum dignus," and communicates with the particle of the host just mentioned, and so successively with all the others; empties the chalice, takes the ablutions, says the post-communion, the "Salva Regina," blesses the people, and leaves the altar.

Over the altar of the Muzarabic chapel is a picture of the taking of Oran, (in Africa,) which Ximenes conquered at his own risk and his own expense, and made a gift of it to the crown of Spain.

Opposite the cathedral is the archbishop's palace, where is a library open to the public, and adjoining this is the "Casa del Ayuntamiento," house of the municipality, built by Del Greco, a Greek who came to Toledo in 1577, where he became famous as painter and architect.

We now travel through the narrow, precipitous streets, visiting curious and beautiful architectural remains of the Gothic and Moorish times, found in public and private buildings, strange projecting door-posts, with cannon-ball ornaments; traverse the "Zocodover," the market square, which is most Moorish looking, with irregular windows and balconies, and is as well the fashionable promenade, and lounging place as place of traffic. Among the many churches, two are especially interesting in arabesque remains--St. Maria de la Blanca and El Transitu, built in 1326, which were once synagogues; the latter was afterward given by Queen Isabella to the order of Calatrava.

Next to the cathedral in interest is the church of St. Juan de los Reyes, (St. John of the Kings,) St. John being the special patron of the kings of Spain. This was built by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1496, in thanksgiving for the victory of Toro, where they defeated the king of Portugal, who had set up a rival to the throne of Castile, in the person of Jeanne Beltranea, the natural daughter of Jeanne of Portugal, wife of Henry II., the elder brother of Isabella. Upon the outside walls of this church hang the chains taken off the Christians found in captivity in Granada. The interior has been much changed; but there still remain the high tribunes used by the royal family, and much of the curious and elaborate carving, whose richness was once past all description. The cloisters of the adjoining convent of Franciscans, now in ruins, were once one of the most splendid specimens of florid Gothic art in the world. The fine pointed arches and delicate arabesque carvings are now half covered by passion-vine and ivy, and the pretty garden is a desert wild. In this convent the great Cardinal Ximenes made his novitiate as a Franciscan monk, from which retirement he was called, by Cardinal Mendoza, to be the confessor of Queen Isabella; and this wonderful woman, who had the discernment to know and choose men who could aid her in her great designs, when Mendoza died, named as successor to the "great cardinal" the poor monk Francis Ximenes, who became at one time bishop of Toledo, primate of Spain, and grand chancellor of Castile; and though, in this position, the first personage of the court, and the greatest grandee of the kingdom, he still retained the simple habits of the Franciscan; and it was necessary to have an order from the pope to induce him to assume the appendages belonging to his rank. {683} Indeed, it is said that under his robes of silk and velvet he wore the "cilice" and the coarse brown habit of his order; and after his death was found the little box with the needles and thread with which the great primate of Spain mended his own garments. He concluded the treaties which made Spain at this time the greatest power of the world; and it is wonderful how this man, already old--for he was sixty when he assumed the primacy--how he could at once attend to the various and multiplied duties of which he is said never to have neglected anything. He lived in the age of great men, of Mendoza, (el gran cardinal,) of Gonzales de Cordova, (el gran capitan,) of Christopher Columbus, and many others, and took part in all the great events of this great age. Immediately upon the invention of printing, he had printed the celebrated polyglot Bible of Alcala, which cost him 500,000 francs of our money, and was in itself enough to immortalize him. He founded universities, built colleges, endowed professorships and scholarships, and built convents and schools for the education of poor children. Raumer, in his _History of Europe_, says of him, "His sagacity and his activity were equal to his sanctity. Embracing all the branches of administration, nourishing the grandest plans and projects, he neglected for these neither piety nor science. As a warrior, he commanded in 1509 the crusade which made a descent in Africa, and conquered Oran. He founded, upon principles which do honor to his intelligence, the university of Alcala, and directed the printing of the celebrated Bible to which this city gives its name. He is the only man admired by his contemporaries as a politician, a warrior, and a saint at the same time."

From the esplanade in front of the church of St. Juan de los Reyes is a fine view. The great manufactory of the "Toledo blades" lies below upon the wild and melancholy Tagus, which winds through the plain; beyond are the mountains. The bridge of St. Martin spans the Tagus on one side, with its Moorish towers at either end. The tower of Cambron, one of the great Moorish towers, is in front, in which is a lovely statue of St. Leocadia, and near the bridge of St. Martin, on the city side, is the site of the palace of the Gothic kings. Here are some arches of a ruin called "Los Vaños de Florinda"--she who was the daughter of the apostate Don Julian, and with whose unhappy fate is involved that of the last of the Gothic kings.

The Alcazar, which overlooks the whole city, was a Moorish palace, then a fortress, with additions made by Alonzo VI., in 1085. Improved by Don Alvarado de Luna, and then by Charles V. in 1548, and by Philip II.'s great architect, Herara, there only remains the great patio, with its fine columns and the magnificent staircase for which Philip sent directions from England. Burned in the war of the succession, it was repaired by Cardinal Lorenzana, a munificent patron of arts, and whose whole life was devoted to good works, who made it a silk factory for poor girls. The French injured it again in 1809, and it has been a ruin until now, when some repairs seem to be going on by order of the queen.

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The esplanade in front commands a fine view. Just below is the military college, formerly the great hospital of Santa Cruz, founded by Cardinal Mendoza. On a height near are the ruins of the castle of Cervantes, not the author Cervantes, but one which belonged to the Knights Templars. We pass through the Puerta del Sol, one of the great Moorish gates, follow the steep and winding way by the remains of an old Roman bridge and fortress, cross the bridge of Alcantara, and so--leave Toledo.

All For The Faith.

There is a mystery, an evangel, in suffering; and this fiery evangel, God's message to our immortality, prepares and perfects the soul for the long hereafter.

In a humble room sat Sir Ralph de Mohun and the Lady Beatrice. The soft sunlight of Provence was fading, and athwart the rose leaves the dying flush rested on this fairest type of girlish loveliness. Absorbed in her rosary, she sat at the open window; while, bending near, Sir Ralph watched the gorgeous heavens, gazing with no thought of the surroundings, and thinking--thinking as we so often do in the hours that fate allows us for decision.

Glimpses of his proud English home stole upon the old man's vision; of the shadowy oak-lined halls and stately corridors where, as a boy, he had looked with childish pride upon portraits of a brave line that had passed their own childhood there; the cross of the old chapel glittered in his dreams, for beneath it the mother of his children slept. But now, homeless and an alien, he would never again see the white cliffs of the land his heart loved best.

The battle of the Boyne had crushed the lingering hopes of the Cavaliers who had forsaken home and kindred to follow the last Stuart king. If James had only possessed average tact, he might have retained the affection of his subjects; but strong-willed without discrimination, zealous without wisdom, his whole reign was a succession of errors which could not but alienate the middle classes, all ways practical and struggling against the encroachments of the aristocracy. Nobly did the Cavaliers rally to the rescue of this last Catholic king, when, forsaken even by those of his blood, he stood alone, held at bay by the same subjects who had sworn him fealty. All through the darkness of his mistaken flight, through the changeful, disastrous campaign, and, so trying to their haughty spirit, even unto the court of Louis, where sneering courtiers dared to greet them with slights and contumely, they neither swerved nor varied. All this had tested their loyalty, tried their faith; yet they neither changed nor forsook him: and of this band none had suffered more than gallant Sir Ralph de Mohun.

A very pleasant life was that of the Catholic gentry in England; they hunted, they were jovial at their meetings, but devout in the chapel; and no class of the English subjects were more orderly and refined. But when the old crown rested on other than the brow of a Stuart, they left the broad moors and sunny downs, and fled with the monarch who represented not only their government, but their faith, in old England.

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Stripped of the wealth that had given him comfort, despoiled of all that makes a man's position a blessing, the brave knight steadily, defiantly met an adverse fate. "_Noblesse oblige!_" spoke in every phase of his stormy life; he would suffer, ay, die, as a gentleman, with no murmur to the world of the sorrow and strife within. But an uncontrolled, unsubdued feeling warred with the iron resolve which supported him, and this was his devotion to the last bairn left him by his fair Scottish wife.

Twenty summers had deepened her girlhood into that rare womanhood, refined through suffering, strengthened by discipline; and the sweet eyes shone with a softer light, a more earnest loveliness, as they gazed from under the long, dark lashes; while the gentle, low voice owned a subdued tone, very different from the lightsome carol that had gladdened bluff Sir Ralph at the gay meet in old Suffolk. But times were different now, and the table was becoming scantier, while the silver grew very low; and the soldier who had rallied the dragoons at the Boyne, had stood unmoved when advancing squadrons of the English, his own blood in the front ranks, swept on to attack him, felt his eyes dim as he watched his frail, last blossom, and knew that soon she would be in a strange land all alone.

The afternoon faded into night, and the scanty fire could not warm the chill and bare chamber in which the old man lay. He was dozing in the great arm-chair, and Beatrice was crouched on a low cushion near, when softly the door opened. Was the young girl dreaming, as with her large eyes larger still, she rose instinctively, rose as though swayed by an unseen spirit, and walked out upon the terrace?

"Beatrice, I have risked life, almost honor for this."

"Philip Stratherne, life belongs to honor, and honor should never be risked."

The speech cost her an effort, for her voice was faint and very low.

"I have come to offer peace and comfort, my darling, and--dare I whisper the story which you used to listen to, under the elms at home?"

"Sir Philip Stratherne, you forget the past; you will not remember the blood that lies between us."

"My darling! my darling! we have no past save what you gave to me. Life belongs to honor, your own sweet voice has told me, and we are commanded to 'love without dissimulation;' therefore the logic of courts and battle-fields shall claim no power here."

"Philip! Philip!" was all the maiden could find speech to answer, uttered in a tone meant to be reproachful.

Two years of sorrow had passed since the fatal battle of the Boyne, and the heart of the maiden was very sore, very lonely, very hungry for the one love that made her life.

"Beatrice!" called from the room, and she entered.

"Come and sing to me, little one; for I have been dreaming sad dreams of the old home." And so she sat on her cushion at his feet, and sang in her soft alto:

"It was a' for our rightful king, We left fair Scotia's strand; It was a' for our rightful king, We e'er saw Irish land, We e'er saw Irish land!

"The sodger frae the war returns, The sailor frae the main; But I hae' parted frae my love, Never to meet again, Never to meet again.

"When day is done, and night is come, And a' things wrapt in sleep; I think o' one who's far away, The lee lang night, an' weep, The lee lang night, an' weep."

"Will Sir Ralph Mohun welcome the son of an old friend?"

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The old man turned hastily, and Philip Stratherne stood before him.

"The time was, Sir Philip, when I should have grasped your hand with all the feeling which my love for the boy inspired. Now, you are under the roof of what is left me, and therefore I am silent."

There was a stately courtesy in all this which embarrassed and wounded the young man.

"This, certainly, is not my former welcome; but the times have changed the manners, Sir Ralph, and we must accept the change."

"True, Sir Philip. There is little that I can offer you now; yet methinks there is a seat for you."

The young man hesitated, and then sat down.

"I have not learned diplomacy on battle-fields, Sir Ralph, therefore I will without preamble tell you what is heavy on my heart. First, to be selfishly eager, I have come to ask you for what you promised years ago--your daughter. Sir Ralph de Mohun, you were once young, and blood coursed as fiery then as now. Can you find it in your heart to separate us? Then, secondly, your old friends at court offer entire restitution and pardon, if you will accept the new _régime_, with England's faith."

"If I have been true to my country, then must I still be true to my God! Philip Stratherne, if I had not loved you from your boyhood, the words that would come to my lips would tell you what my heart wills to speak to _all_ who have proved false! For the rest, my daughter has the Mohun blood, and she knows what her church teaches."

And Beatrice sat silent, crushed as a lily powerless from the storm. She knew her duty, she felt her love. Reason--honor told her that even love could not span the chasm through which the blood of her gallant brothers flowed. They, too, had followed the fortunes of the Stuart king, and one lay dead before the bastions of Londonderry, while another gave up his young life with the war-shout on his fearless lips, in the van of his father's regiment at Newtown-butler.

It was Philip Stratherne who led the detachment of Enniskillen horse that rode down the mere handful of Irish dragoons, inspired by Guy Mohun's ringing cry; and Sir Ralph had listened to Philip Stratherne's voice, as, clear and steady, it rallied the Enniskilleners to the charge that had snatched that last son from him. Not only for the Stuart had he yielded his glorious life, but for the cross, for the faith, in the defence of which centuries had borne brave testimony for the Mohuns, not only in bonnie England, but on every battle-field in Christendom.

A stern self-control subdued the old man; but the girl, the woman was suffering; honor commanded, duty pleaded, but a wilder, stronger, stormier feeling fought within her now. The color crimsoned the fair face, and the sweet eyes turned, rested for one moment on the young man with all the girl's tenderness, all the woman's passion--a mute appeal, a dying cry for help; then with the delicate hands clasped tightly over her breast, as though to keep down the heart's mad struggling, she spoke so low that the words seemed almost inarticulate, yet to the man listening with such painful eagerness each sound knelled the death which knows no "resurgam!" Only the simple words came faltering forth, came sobbing as the wind soughs the prelude to destruction, ere the lightning scathes its fiery death; and so in this whisper he heard,

"Were I a false Mohun, I could not be a true Stratherne."

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Then without a word she left them; and when the old man sought her, he found her lying as one dead before her crucifix. Tenderly he raised her, and from his lips sounded the prayer:

"May the Lord receive the sacrifice from thy hands, to the praise and glory of his name, and to the benefit both of us and of his holy church."

"Amen!" whispered a low voice, and the soft eyes unclosed all dim with tears.

No murmur escaped her lips, no regret was ever spoken, but fairer and frailer in her rare loveliness, the old man trembled as he watched her, and he cried in the bitterness of his agony,

"Save me, O God! for the waters are come in even unto my soul."

It was Holy-week, the most solemn of the Lenten season, and Beatrice Mohun knelt in the old cathedral during the impressive _Tenebrae_, and as the fourteen candles were extinguished, and the solemn _Miserere_ rose, from the depths of her heart came the prayer:

"Let not the tempest of water drown me, nor the deep swallow me up."

And the pervading gloom corresponded with her own spirit; her life owned no brightness, and the one tie left her seemed fast wearing away. Trouble had weakened the iron constitution of Sir Ralph; for more exhausting than mere physical pain is the ceaseless care that preys upon the vitals, claiming life as its tribute.

He felt that he could buy back ease and comfort for his darling, and he knew that for him earth held but a very few years; but to obtain all this, he must barter his honor, yield his creed, and the old blood still owned the fierceness of a changeless fidelity. No Mohun had ever swerved, not even in the dark days of the last Tudor, nor after, when his graceless daughter held the sceptre. And now, though bereft of home, with his gallant sons lying far from their kindred, his fair young daughter life-wrecked, his own existence a burden, when even starvation mocked them, the loyal spirit knew no change; but staunchly by the old faith, true to the weak king, the brave knight still fought his adverse destiny.

And Beatrice came back through the darkness, and leaned against the couch on which her father lay.

"Come to me, little one; for I fear that you are not as strong as in the days when wild Bess bore you to the hunt. Have you any regrets for the past, my darling?"

"Duty gives us discipline, papa, and it would not be right to question Providence."

"Bravely spoken, my daughter; you nerve a courage which was growing too human to be strong. But you grieve at the choice which has kept you the slave of an old man's caprice?"

"O papa!" and a low quick sob stopped her; then with more control she quietly said, "You forget that it was not only to be with you, but to remain firm and loyal to holy church; and papa, I often think that earth is only the high road to a better world; therefore I only pray that the end may be very near."

"Little one, bring the light nearer--let me look upon your face; hold it nearer, darling. Ah God! this is the dimness which brings my warning. Quick, daughter mine, send for Father Paolo. Now, O God! my eyes, darkened with the mist of death, fix their last dying looks on thy crucified image. Merciful Jesus, have mercy on me!"

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Father Paolo did come, and in the gray dawn of Good-Friday the old knight lay dying.

"Kyrie Eleison!" said the clear voice of the holy father, and, clasping closer the blessed crucifix, the old man's voice was steady as he responded, "Christe eleison!" And alone in her agony the young girl knelt.

A clattering of hoofs sounded in the court-yard, and a quick step, that startled her even then, broke the solemn stillness.

"In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum," prayed the priest.

"Domine Jesu Christe, suscipe spiritum meum," in clear, earnest tones rung out the old man's voice; then the door was flung open, and Philip Stratherne entered.

"Not too late, thank God! Hold her not away from me. Say now that you die William's subject, and all your own shall be hers."

The closing eyes opened, the old strength came back to them, and a sweet smile illumed his face, as the words came,

"Maria, mater gratis, mater misericordiae, tu me ab hoste protege, et in hora mortis suscipe!" And with a long low sigh the spirit passed away to God.

With a sob that rent her heart in twain, Beatrice threw herself beside her father.

"My darling, come with me; the last obstacle has passed away, and God has given you as my legacy."

She made no answer. The solemn monotone of the priest alone was heard, "Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei."

But to all this the man was deaf; he only saw the prostrate girl, and listened to her sobs of agony.

"My waif has drifted to her haven, and I will guard her with my life."

His strong arms were around her, and the voice that thrilled her soul was sounding in her ears. How could she send him from her? "Ah! God help me!" she cried.

"Et ne nos inducas in tentationem," came in deep, sonorous tones from the priest.

"Sed libera nos a malo," sounded the response.

And further, "Domine, exaudi orationem meam!"

"Et clamor meus ad te veniat!" and Beatrice fainted with these words upon her lips.

"Son, leave her to us," urged the priest, but he would not go till she opened her sweet eyes.

"Daughter!"--and she caught the hand of Father Paolo, as in the desperation of agonized despair. A shadow darkened Philip Stratherne's brow.

"The cursed priest again!" he muttered between his closed teeth. "Tell me when I may see you again, Beatrice, free from these fearful surroundings."

"The Monday of Easter-week," was all she replied, and he left her.

And when the Monday dawned, bright with the carol of birds, he sought her; but the old chateau by the valley was silent, the shutters barred, and the flowers drooping and dead. An aged woman came hobbling to him, who said, with the tears dimming her old eyes, "Ah! the sweet bird has flown, master, and St. Ursula guards her from behind the bars."

"God of heaven, save me! Here is gold if you will prove this false."

"Keep your gold for charity, master; for the truth is strong; and our holy Mother keeps her safe from all evil."

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Wild with the horror of losing her, he strode across the valley to the convent near. The angelus was sounding, and over the hills, up the broad river, the holy prayer-call echoed, for the Easter season rejoiced the earth; her _jubilate_ for the blessed link connecting the God-man with humanity.

Blade, and leaf, and blossom gloried in the new life, and the spring sun spread over the natural world the same light with which the resurrection gladdened the soul; but to all this was the young man blind and deaf and dumb--for surging and beating within his heart was the stormy, o'er-mastering human feeling. He only knew that the woman to whom he bent the knee in this mad, idolatrous love was lost to him, he only felt that fate had snatched her from him for ever! The sister started, as his deathly face presented itself. With scarcely human utterance, he asked for the Lady Beatrice, and after a few moments, the messenger returned, and a folded paper was put in his hand. He read:

"The Lord keepeth thee from all evil: may the Lord keep thy soul!"

And she, with her intenser passion, clinging steadily, loving unselfishly, as only a woman can, gave him up; yielded her costly tribute to the faith which taught her that loyalty to God demands, if need be, all that life and love can give. Then, faint and weary, bruised and suffering, yet staunch and true to her faith as she was, the holy church opened its arms to her, comforting the broken spirit, healing the bleeding heart, and blessing her with the precious benediction that brings its calm to those who seek the life that dieth not. In deeds of unselfish love and sacrifice, she passed her days; all the strength within her clinging to the cross, all the human passion purified, glorified into the worship of the Lamb whose blood had made her whiter than snow. And safe in her haven, the dove of peace rested upon her heart; for the "fellowship of the Holy Ghost" had sanctified her: and thus, when her summers were yet in their flush, she passed away to God.

But he forgot her in the years that came after, and found happiness in the fair English Protestant, whose children heired the broad lands of the brave Mohuns. Verily man's love is fleeting, but in God is eternal life; and while we pay our tribute to one who was so strong in resisting, we pray that all who are thus tempted may likewise prove ready to yield all for the faith.

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The Struggle Between Letter And Spirit In The Jewish Church. Conference Preached In The Cathedral Of Notre Dame, In Paris, By R. Pere Hyacinthe, January 3, 1869.

Littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat.

"The letter killeth; but the spirit giveth life."

[It is due to R. P. Hyacinthe to say that the following translation is made from a short-hand report, published in the _Semaine Religieuse de Paris_. In style, in development of ideas, the _compte rendu_ is incomplete. But to us who cannot listen to the great Carmelite's eloquence, in the nave of Notre Dame, even an outline of this conference, so full of fresh and healthy thought, will be acceptable.--TRANS.]

Rev. P. Hyacinthe takes this text from St. Paul, at once as the basis and the summary of his entire conference. On previous occasions he had pointed out two elements in the Jewish Church, opposed to each other yet equally essential to the aims of that church; the one exclusive, securing the preservation of the sacred deposit of revelation; the other universal, insuring the diffusion of this deposit throughout the whole human race. These two elements he now calls, in the language of the apostle, _letter_ and _spirit_. According to the letter, the Bible--that is to say, the Old Testament, is exclusive; according to the spirit, it is universal. The internal struggle of these two elements forms the history of Judaism, thoughtfully viewed. Their startling rupture during the life of Jesus Christ introduced the Christian era, inaugurated the Catholic Church. As sons of that holy and infallible church, we need not fear the triumph of the letter; but as members of a church composed of and governed by imperfect men and sinners, we should not disregard the struggles of the letter for predominance. Let us, then, review the profitable history of these combats between letter and spirit in the bosom of Judaism, considering successively the representatives of the letter and the representatives of the spirit in the Jewish Church.

I. The Representatives Of The Letter.

These were the kings and priests. The kings represented the letter in the political order; the priests, in the religious order.

I. David prophesied, "He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. And all kings of the earth shall adore him; all nations shall serve him." And discerning in the far-off radiance that one among his sons whom he called the Anointed, the Christ _par excellence_, he said, or let the Lord say by his lips: "Sit thou at my right hand until I make thy enemies thy footstool. With thee is the principality in the day of thy strength: in the brightness of the saints: from the womb before the day star I begot thee."

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In the throne of the son of David, the God-engendered, two royalties were united: a temporal royalty, created to reign over the house of Jacob, confined within the narrow limits of its own blood, _regnabit in domo Jacob_; and a royalty destined to extend throughout all humanity, within the wide boundary of the faith of Abraham, _regnabit in aeternumn_.

The danger lay in confounding these two royalties, in absorbing the celestial in the terrestrial royalty--an error so frequent in similar unions. To this danger succumbed the synagogue.

In a national church, or in a religious nation, no peril is more imminent, none more fatal, than the confusion of religious and political forms. [Footnote 168] Already great while remaining human, for such it is in character and origin, political thought becomes still greater in ascending to the heavenly spheres of morality and religion. But religion shrinks in dimensions, abdicating its true position, revolting against human instinct, and wounding the attributes of Divine Majesty, when it assumes political forms, adopting the ideas, the habits, the paltry interests of politics.

[Footnote 168: Lest those who may be unacquainted with previous conferences of Père Hyacinthe should interpret this passage as referring to the temporal power, we subjoin a quotation from a conference delivered by him in Notre Dame in the year 1867. Speaking of the complications caused by placing political power and religious power in the same hands, R. P. Hyacinthe says: "Nowhere under the sun of the Catholic world do I find this dreadful confusion. If you bid me look toward Rome, it is not the confusion, it is the exceptional alliance of the two powers that I hail in that place, itself exceptional as a miracle. Beneficent alliance, knot of the liberty of conscience, never to be united, because it unites there what it must separate elsewhere, never were you more fearfully necessary to us than now! You have received the testimony of French blood, shed by those who have been called mercenaries while they are simply heroes! You are defended by the eloquent words, the national words of our orators, by the energetic and loyal declarations of our government."

In a conference preached at Rome during the Lent of 1868, R. P. Hyacinthe compares those who urge the church to throw aside the temporal power, and lead a purely supernatural existence, to Satan tempting Christ to cast himself from the pinnacle of the temple, that angels may bear him up.]

Such, however, was the kingdom which kings, and the partisans of kings, persistently dreamed of giving to humanity. For one single instant, under David, that prophetic ideal foreseen and pictured by the prophet king shone with unblemished purity, soon to be veiled under the worldly, (we will speak in plain terms,) under the pagan ideal of Solomon.

Solomon was a great king, especially at the outset of his career. He was always great, even in his errors and crimes. But intoxicated with the science of nature, which he possessed, says the inspired text, from the cedar growing on the summit of Lebanon to the hyssop piercing the cracks of the walls, Solomon, not content with knowledge leading to God, wished to possess all the riches and the loves of earth. He built him palaces bearing little resemblance to the palm-tree beneath which Deborah administered justice, or to the tents where David camped with his soldiers; palaces so sumptuous that the queen of Sheba came from the depths of Arabia to admire them. He had harems filled with women, chiefly foreigners and idolaters; seven hundred sultanas and three hundred concubines! Then letting this inebriation mount, I will not say from heart, but from sense to brain, he fell down with his women at the feet of all their idols, venerating, under poetic symbols, that great nature which is the work of God and so easily takes the place of God.

Such was the spectacle presented by Jerusalem under the successor of David--a hideous spectacle, but made less repulsive in the days of Solomon by a glory he had no power to bequeath to his heirs in Judah and to his Israelitish emulators. He left them only his pride, his sensuality, his idolatry; and when the two inimical yet analogous monarchies succumbed at last beneath the blows of powerful neighbors, of those northern conquerors whose favors they had so often solicited, and whose arms they had so often braved, they left behind them, in the history of the holy nation, a long track of mire and blood.

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Such was the royalty of Judea, such the royalty of Israel; promised to the world under the name of the kingdom of God!

So perverted were the Jews by their kings--or, to speak more justly, for we must not misjudge these kings, so perverted were they by national pride, that they could not throw aside this gross ideal, but contemplated still, under the profaned name of the kingdom of God, the domination of races with the sword and with a rod of iron. When the true Messiah, Jesus, came to them, they misunderstood him, chiefly because he rejected this low and narrow royalty, proclaiming the true principle of the kingdom of God--a spiritual kingdom which should be in the world, but not of the world; _regnum meum non est de hoc mundo;_ a spiritual kingdom which comes to bear witness of the truth, _ego in hoc natus sum et ad hoc veni in mundum, ut testimonium perhibeam veritati._ They preferred, before him, the seditious Barabbas, who had fought in the streets of Jerusalem, shedding blood to deliver them from the Romans. They preferred, before him, all the false Messiahs, all the impotent and treacherous Christs, who closed their mad career by precipitating the ruin of the nation, the city, and the temple they had pretended to save.

Break, then, vase of Jewish nationality! formed so lovingly by God through the hand of Moses; royal and sacerdotal vessel, break! since thou wilt have it so. Thou wert formed to keep the treasures of religious life for all humanity; thou didst close upon thyself in jealous egotism; break! and let thy shivered atoms, scattered through the world, spread abroad the balm which shall intoxicate all nations. "The vase was shattered," says Holy Writ, "and the whole house was filled with the odor." _Et domus impleta est ex odore unguenti._

What kings effected in the political order, priests accomplished in the religious order. Indeed, fatal as is the mistake of confounding religious with political forms, still more lamentable is the error of identifying, within the very heart of religion, accidental and accessory forms with essential forms. Every religion--above all, the true religion, the Christian religion--going back to Moses, Abraham, Adam, is not merely a religious idea, a religious sentiment, as it pleases contemporary rationalism to call it. It is a fact, and therefore has positive forms; it is a living fact, and therefore has a determined organism. But, placed amid time and space, the fact of religion must consider the varying conditions of space, the changing conditions of time. Its organism must discharge its functions amid dissimilar or even contradictory surroundings. Therefore, side by side with substantial, permanent forms, we find variable, accessory forms, clothing the first, so to speak, according to the exigencies of races and centuries. By trying to confound religion with accessory forms peculiar to certain countries or races, we should isolate it from the great current of humanity in the present. By trying to bind it to worn-out forms, we should isolate it from the great current of humanity in the future. We should misinterpret St. Paul's words to the ancient synagogue: "_Quod autem antiquatur et senescit, prope interitum est_." No worse service could be rendered to religious unity. On this shoal the Jewish priesthood stranded.

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I would speak respectfully of that priesthood. Last Sunday we inhaled the perfume of its censers, we listened to the harmony of its canticles. The rod of Aaron had not blossomed in his hands in vain, and in the ancient tabernacle we almost adored the body of Christ Jesus prefigured in the manner, the word of Christ Jesus prepared in the decalogue. But however respectable in origin and essence the Levitical priesthood, it no longer merits respect, corrupted as it now is; or, at least, corrupted as are most of its members. This corruption bears a special name, pharisaism.

Is pharisaism hypocrisy? No. Whatever the dictionary may say, in the biblical sense pharisaism is not hypocrisy, unless in that subtle form, at once most innocent and most fatal, that unconscious hypocrisy which believes itself sincere. Jesus often said, "Pharisees, hypocrites," _pharisaei, hypocriae_; but he explained this expression by another, "Blind guides," _pharisaee caece_. And the great apostle Paul, himself a pharisee, reared, as he says, at the feet of the pharisee Gamaliel, bears witness in a striking manner to their sincere zeal for God, _habent zelum Dei_, but not according to knowledge, _sed non secundum scientiam_.

Pharisaism, thoughtfully considered, is religious blindness, the blindness of priestly depositaries of the letter, who think they guard it best by explaining it least; blindness bearing on all points of the sacred deposit--blindness in dogma, predominance of formula over truth; blindness in morals, predominance of external works over interior justice; blindness in worship, predominance of external rites over religious feeling. Blindness in dogma. They taught the truth. "The scribes and pharisees sit on the chair of Moses," said Christ; "all, therefore, whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not."

There is no revealed idea enlightening and vivifying the world that has not words to contain it: _lucerna verbum tuum, domine_. But when speech compresses itself, when it encloses the idea as in a jealously narrow prison, obscuring and choking it, that is pharisaism. That is what the apostle Paul called guarding the word, but keeping it captive in iniquity. That is what forced from the meek lips of our Saviour Jesus the terrible anathema _Vae vobis!_ "Wo to you who have taken the key of knowledge, and will not enter, and all those who would try to enter, you prevent."

In morals, it is exterior works, it is a multiplicity of human practices, resting like a despicably tyrannical load upon the conscience, making it forget, in unhealthy dreams, that it is an honest man's conscience, a Christian conscience. The pharisees said to Jesus Christ, "Why do thy disciples transgress the traditions of the ancients? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread." And our Saviour replied, "Why do you trample under foot the commandments of God, to keep the commandments of men?" Rites are essential to worship, as formula is essential to dogma--wo to him who tears the formula of biblical revelation, or the formula of the definitions of the church; and, since works are essential to morality, wo to him who sleeps in a dead and sterile faith, without works.

Worship! but worship is the expansion of the religious soul; it is the heart's emotion rising odorous and harmonious to God. It is action working from within outward; it is, also, the not less legitimate reaction from without inward. Rites elevate religious feeling, and arouse inspiration in heart and conscience.

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But when there is no religious feeling, when heart and conscience bend beneath the weight of exterior practices; "Yea, verily," said Jesus Christ again, (for the gospels are full of these things; the gospels are the eternal reprobation of pharisaism,) yea, verily, the prophet Isaias spoke truly when he said, "This people honoreth me with their lips, and with their hands, but their heart is far from me."

This is the yoke of which St. Peter said, "You would impose it on the head of nations; neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear it." This is the smothered and exhausted breath with which they thought to renew the world. This is not the Judaism of Moses, but the decrepit Judaism of the scribes and pharisees. When the entire world, by the eloquent lips of Greece and Rome, asked of the East salvation; when, by the sudden stir of barbarians quivering in the depths of Germany and Scythia, the world demanded light and civilization, this was offered to them! Judaism became the more inadmissible as the world had more need of it. Pharisaism, in its blind fanaticism, stood before the gates of the kingdom of heaven to prevent generations from entering.

Away! men of the letter; away! enemies of humanity. _Adversantur omnibus hominibus_, says St. Paul. And thou, Jesus, arise, my Saviour and God!--thou who wert moved by wrath twice only in thy life! Jesus felt no anger against poor sinners. He sat at their table; and when the woman taken in adultery fell at his feet, burning with shame and weeping with remorse, he raised her up, thinking only of absolving her: "Go in peace, and sin no more." He felt no anger against heretics and schismatics. He sat by Jacob's well, beside the woman of Samaria, announcing to her, with the salvation which comes from the Jews, _quia salus ex Judaeis est_, worship in spirit and in truth. But Jesus was moved with wrath on two occasions: once, scourge in hand, against those who sold the things of God in the temple, and again, with malediction on his lips, against those who perverted the things of God in the law.

Arise, then, meek Lamb! arise in thy pacific wrath against the enemies of all men, and against the true enemies of God's kingdom! Arise and drive them from the temple! Thus did the synagogue perish, and the Christian Church come to life.

II. The Representatives Of The Spirit.

I have said (and you already knew it) that we have nothing to fear from the triumphs of the _letter_. Yet we cannot overlook the struggles and temptations, not only of every priesthood, but of all pious persons; the temptation of the faithful, as well as of priests, to allow the letter to predominate over the spirit. Let us glorify God because we are born in a holy and infallible church, which Jesus Christ protects, and will protect until the consummation of his work, in the course of ages, against the ignorance of our minds and the weakness of our wills.

But what voice strikes my ear? These are no longer the coarse tones of earthly domination, nor of carnal legislation. Nor yet is it a Christian voice, the voice of Christ speaking to us a moment ago; but, though anterior to Christ, how like to him it sounds:

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"Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear to the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrha," saith the voice; and yet it is speaking to the church of Sion. "To what purpose do you offer me the multitude of your victims, saith the Lord? I am full; I desire not holocausts of rams, and fat of fatlings, and blood of calves, and lambs, and buck-goats. Offer sacrifice no more in vain: incense is an abomination to me. The new moons, and the sabbaths, and other festivals, I will not abide; your assemblies are wicked. My soul hateth your new moons, and your solemnities: they are become troublesome to me; I am weary of bearing them. And when you stretch forth your hands, I will turn away my eyes from you: and when you multiply prayer, I will not hear: for your hands are full of blood.

"Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices from my eyes: cease to do perversely, learn to do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless, defend the widow. And then come and accuse me, saith the Lord: if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool."

This is the voice of Mosaic spirituality in all its energy and light. How different from the pharisaism we were speaking of just now; from the letter, smothering beneath its murderous weight reason, conscience, and heart! How like the gospel, the law of Christ, with its two commandments: an insatiable hunger, an inextinguishable thirst after righteousness, and a heart ever open to mercy! Ah! I feel that this is no local law, no national organization, no restricted or temporary code. It is the law of all people and of all ages. It needs but the breath of St. Paul to bear it from one end of the world to the other.

But the voice of the Spirit still speaks--no longer, now, of the carnal law, but of the earthly _kingdom:_

"And in the last days, the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills: and all nations shall flow into it, _fluent ad eum omnes gentes_. And many people shall go, and say: Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall come forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, _quia de Sion exibit lex et verbum Domini de Jerusalem._ Come, let us break our swords and make ploughshares; let us shatter our lances and turn them into sickles, for the anointed of the Lord will reign in justice and peace; all idols shall be broken, _et idola penitus conterentur_, and in those days the Eternal shall alone be great."

Such was the future _disfigured_ by kings and the successors of kings. Understand it well; this is not oppression, but deliverance! It belongs to the letter to impose itself by force; this is its necessity; it has no other way, if this can be called a way. To the spirit belongs the appeal summoning us to the liberty of man and the liberty of God. _Ubi spiritus, ibi libertas_. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Therefore, I do not see in the Messiah's hands a sword besmeared and gory. I see nations rise up spontaneously, like a sea shuddering to its deepest abysses. _Fluent ad eum omnes gentes;_ this is not servitude; it is deliverance. This is not the reign of the Messiah victor; but it is the reign of the Messiah liberator.

But you ask me whose is this voice preaching a spiritual kingdom to priests, a divine royalty to kings and nations? The voice shall interpret itself; it shall tell its origin and mission.

Here Père Hyacinthe relates the famous vision in which Isaiah receives his mission after a seraph has purified his lips with a burning coal. This is prophecy.

And were not prophets and saints; necessary to the Jewish Church, as they are necessary to the Catholic Church? The two beggars in the dream of Innocent III. upholding the crumbling Lateran basilica, as if symbolizing the decadence of the hierarchical church in the middle ages; those two mendicants, Dominic de Guzman and Francis of Assisi, what were they but prophets of the New Testament, sprung not from the hereditary tradition of ages, but from the living kiss of Jehovah? {696} Yes, we need saints, we need prophets--that is to say, men of love, martyrs; men of vision who read not only according to the letter but according to the spirit, who see God in the vision of their reason enlightened by faith; in the ecstasy of their conscience elevated by grace. "I have seen the Lord with my eyes"--_Oculis meis vidi Dominum_. We need men who speak to him face to face like Moses, and, above all, men who love him heart to heart, and pass through the struggles of days and ages, struggles only to be fully understood by contemplating them in the final future. _Vidit ultima, et consolatus est lugentes in Sion._ Such men were the prophets.

They were _seers_. They saw the future. They did not look only upon the present, so accurately fitted to the measure of narrow minds and hearts. They did not return with cowardly tears toward the past, never to be born again. It was for Gentiles, for pagan antiquity, to dream of a golden age for ever lost. The prophets, gazing into the future, saw the golden age of Eden reappear, under a form more full and lasting, at the gates of heaven, yet still upon the earth.

The prophets believed in the future because they believed in God. They believed in progress; they were in all antiquity the only men of progress. Antiquity did not believe in it, not even knowing its name. But the prophets believed in the most incredible and the most necessary of all progress, moral and religious progress. They believed in it despite the fall, or rather because of the fall and of the redemption. To them evil did not lie in radical vice, essential to our nature, or in the inflexible decree of destiny; it was in the liberty of man, and must find its remedy in the liberty of God. If God had allowed the starting-point of man to recoil, be cause of sin, into the abyss, it was in order to raise, through the redemption; his goal to the very heavens. From the summits to which their faith lifted them, they saw salvation spread from individuals to nations, from nations to the human race, from the human race to all nature.

Such was progress to the prophets; such the future universal Sion they hailed in the future? Isaiah prophesied it in the existence and in the relative prosperity of Jerusalem. Jeremiah mingled it with tears shed over the smoking ruins of his beloved city. Ezechiel in the bosom of captivity pictured Sion, no longer Jewish, but humanitarian, where all nations were to find their place. He engraved upon the pediment of the gates this immortal device, "The Lord is there;" _Dominus ibidem_.

II. This was what the prophets, men of faith in vision and men of vision in faith, believed and respected. This was the object of their love, for they were men of understanding, and also men of heart.

I do not love Utopians, I do not love thought which dwells exclusively in the future, feeding on sterile and chimerical dreams. I love men of the future who are also men of the present; contemplatives, but workers too. The prophets were workers. They did not love the future in the future, but in the present where it germinates. They did not love humanity in humanity--too abstract if it be an idea, too vast if it embrace all individuals; they loved humanity in their nation; they loved the typical Jerusalem of their vision in their terrestrial Jerusalem of their existence.

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I love to follow them in their writings; to see them rise up in the face of every national fact, every religious fact of that gross people--rise up to meet every evil deed with anathema, to consecrate in the Lord's name every moral or religious act tending toward true progress. I love to see them go down into the deep ravines, to the borders of the torrent of Cedron, where the Messiah was to drink before lifting up his head; climb the abrupt acclivity to the citadel, to the temple where Jesus was to teach; traverse the public squares where ever and anon the wind from the desert, as if to mock their hopes, caught up the dust beneath the burning sun and flung it in their faces.

Now, in the ravine, in the citadel, and in the temple of Sion, in the streets possessed by the whirlwind, everywhere in that city environed with their love and their devotion, they saw that Sion which was to grow up in its bosom and embrace the world. They loved the future; they loved humanity in God; they loved them in the house of Abraham and in the church of Jesus Christ.

In the presence of these great examples, let me say to you of the love of country all that I have said of domestic love. We no longer know, or rather we no longer rightly know, what it is to love country and people; to see and love, in them, the city of humanity, the city of Jesus Christ, the city of time and eternity.

III. Men of vision and of love, the prophets were also men of combat, and, when necessary, martyrs, soldiers, and victims. No man passes without effort that Red Sea which separates present and future. The prophets crossed it bearing with them on their vigorous shoulders the ark of God and the ark of mankind. But what combats and struggles!--struggles majestic as their visions and their love. They shrunk from them in their infirm human nature; they dreaded these struggles. They knew that the word of God ends by slaying those who hear it: "I have slain them, saith the Lord, in the word of my mouth." "Ah Lord God!" cried Jeremiah, "behold I cannot speak, for I am a child;" and the Lord answered, "Say not, I am a child; for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee: and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak. Behold, I have given my words in thy mouth. Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations, and over kingdoms, to root up and to pull down, and to waste and to destroy, and to build and to plant. For, behold, I have made thee this day a fortified city, and a pillar of iron, and a wall of brass, over all the land, to the kings of Judea, to the princes thereof, and to the priests and to the people of the land. And they shall fight against thee and shall not prevail, for I am with thee to deliver thee."

And to Ezechiel, colleague and successor of Jeremiah, God ever spoke the language of struggle: "Fear not; I send thee to an apostate people that hath revolted from me, _ad gentem apostatricem;_ but I have made thy face stronger than their faces, and thy forehead harder than their foreheads; I have made thy face like an adamant and like flint. I will set thee up like a wall of iron and like a city of brass, for I will be with thee."

Thus did the prophets struggle for that Sion which fought against them, repudiating them. They never forsook it, they always loved and always served it.

We are about to part for another year. Let me entreat you now to unite yourselves with me in a consecration to that kingdom of God, to that church whose courts we have traversed. Christianity is not of today nor of yesterday. It belongs not merely to the historical period of Jesus Christ and his apostles. {698} It comes from David, from Abraham, it comes to us from Adam, our father, our king, our pontiff. In this unique religion, this church changeable in form, immovable in foundation, friends, brothers--let me use words which come from my heart--let us consecrate ourselves, following the example of the prophets, to the love and service of God's kingdom. The kingdom of God is for ever established in Christianity, in the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church. But, as I said just now, this church must ever pass from form to form--_de forme en forme_-from brightness to brightness--_transformamur claritate in claritatem_--until her pacific empire shall cover the whole earth, until with humanity she shall attain the age of the perfect man in Christ Jesus.

Do we not wish to work for this kingdom? What are we to do if not that? What are the works of our public and private life if they do not relate finally to the kingdom of truth, justice, charity, to all which constitutes Christianity, to the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church? I do not ask you to love her as she does not wish to be loved--to love her as a sect is loved, as the gross Jews loved the synagogue, with a heart and mind restricted to the letter. I do not ask you to love our grand Catholic Church by glorifying the infirmities of her life, which are your infirmities and mine; or by condemning all the truths professed and all the virtues practised outside of her by men who are often her sons without knowing it. No; let us have no sectarian love! I ask you to love the church with the heart of the church herself; with a heart commensurate only with the heart of Jesus Christ, _dilatamini et vos_. "You are not straitened in us," said St. Paul to the Corinthians; "but in your own bowels you are straitened. But having the same recompense, (I speak as to my own children,) be you also enlarged." _Dilatamini et vos_.

Before leaving you, let me tell you the secret of my youth. Let me speak to you of the day of my priestly consecration, when in this nave, less crowded then than it is to-day, stretched upon that icy pavement, filled with burning palpitations, I was sustained, I was inebriated with one thought--the conviction that I had but one love and one service, the kingdom of God and humanity.

Yes, let us love the church in every man, and every man in the church! What matters condition? Rich or poor, ignorant or learned, _omnibus debitor sum_, I am every man's debtor, says St. Paul. What matters country? Whether Frenchman or foreigner, Greek or barbarian, _omnibus debitor sum_, I answer with St. Paul. I am the debtor of barbarism as of civilization. In a certain sense, what matters even religion, if we would love a man?

Ah! if he is not a son of the Catholic Church in the body, by external union, he is so, perhaps--he is, I hope, in the soul, by invisible union. If he is a son of the Catholic Church neither according to the body nor in the spirit, nor in the letter, he is so at least by preparation in the design of God. If the water of baptism is not on his brow, I grieve to know it; but I see there the blood of Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ died for all, opening wide his arms to all the world upon the cross! The world belongs to Jesus Christ, therefore the world belongs to the church, if not in act, at least in power. Let me, then, love all men; and you, too, love all men with me--not only in person, not only in their narrow earthly individuality, but in the great Christian community, in the great divine community which summons each and all.

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When Moses, founder of the Jewish church, died on the mountain within sight of the land of promise, the Hebrew text says that he died in the kiss of Jehovah. Before dying let us learn to live in the kiss of Jehovah, which is also the kiss of all humanity. O holy Church! thou art more than man and thou art more than God--than God alone in heaven, than man alone on earth. O holy Church! thou art the kiss of God to man, the kiss of man to God; the embrace of all men, all races, all ages, in the flame of universal and eternal love. "He who abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him."

A Sketch Of Leo X. And His Age.

In the annals of literature and art, the name of Florence peers above that of any other Italian city, Rome excepted. Here were the poets who tuned the Italian language and made it the most musical of modern idioms; here was the illustrious astronomer, who was not the discoverer of a planet, but the revealer of the whole celestial machinery; and here, too, were the artist and politician who were not only the first sculptors and statesmen of their time, but the inventors of the very art and craft in which they excelled. Every day the pilgrim scholar arrives at her gates and requests to be shown the monuments of her great men, and every day genius worships at the shrine of genius.

At the time of which we write, the middle ages had seen their palmiest days, when a Charlemagne courteously entertained ambassadors from the Mussulmans of Florence and the Caliphs of Bagdad, and when the flower of chivalry, headed by a valiant Philip, a lion-hearted Richard, and a sainted Louis, rushed to the plains of the east to battle with the Moslem foe; they had presided over the erection of those great Gothic piles whose sublime architecture towered to the clouds, and had beheld the pontiffs of Rome issuing orders for the foundation of universities not only in Italy, but on the very outskirts of the civilized world; [Footnote 169] and finally they had seen the laborious and prolific genius of the schoolmen multiplying inventions and discoveries, fathoming the profound depths of theological science, and disserting on those great metaphysical problems, which, like so many apples of discord, have caused endless dissension and controversy among modern philosophers. [Footnote 170]

[Footnote 169: Gibbon tells us in a foot-note to his _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ that, "at the end of the fifteenth century, there were about fifty universities in Europe." Though this is indeed a glorious tribute, considering from whom it came, paid to the mediaeval ages, we are, however, more inclined to believe with the _New American Cyclopaedia_ that, "before the year 1500, there were over sixty-four universities in Europe."]

[Footnote 170: Mackintosh says, "Scarcely any metaphysical controversy agitated among recent philosophers was unknown to the schoolmen." (_Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy_.)]

But before these great medieval ages had reached their terminus, they again shone forth with brilliant splendor. That, indeed, was a glorious epoch in the world's history, when the most important invention recorded in the annals of mankind came forth from the brain of Guttenberg; when the stormy Atlantic was first ploughed by adventurous keels, and new worlds discovered; when letters, philosophy, and the fine arts were cultivated in such schools as the Medicean palaces, and were patronized by such men as Cosmo and Lorenzo de' Medici.

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Under the enlightened patronage of these princely merchants, Florence became the Athens of Italy, and one of the favorite retreats of the muses. Her public halls were crowded with youths eager to listen to an eloquent hellenist, expatiating upon the beauties of Homer; her poets sang in the idiom of the great Mantuan; her philosophers were smitten with love for the divine Plato; and her scholars were so well read in antiquity, that students from every country came thither, to slake their thirst at what was then considered the fountain-head of ancient lore. The gardens of the Medici recalled the groves of the Academies in which the Athenian philosopher descanted upon human and divine things, and the shady porches of the Lyceum, in which the Stagirite perambulated whilst delivering his sublime lessons.

A great bustle might have been observed in these gardens on the 11th of December, 1475; artists and humanists were vieing with one another in congratulating Lorenzo the Magnificent on the birth of his second son, who, in memory of his paternal uncle, was christened Giovanni. Lorenzo was proud of his little Benjamin, and he listened with complacency to those who admired his keen, restless eye, his pure and noble forehead, his flowing hair and snowy neck. In contemplating the sweet expression of his countenance, the poet declared that he would revive classic literature; and the Neoplatonician predicted a bright era for philosophy; whilst a fugitive Hellene read in the Greek profile of the infant happy days for his dispersed countrymen; and an old sage, endowed with Simeon-like prophecy, exclaimed, "My soul, praise the Lord! Giovanni shall be the honor of the sanctuary."

The education of the young child's heart and the embellishment of his mind were, for his enlightened parents, objects of supreme importance. The former duty necessarily devolved upon themselves; and how well they succeeded was best shown by the mild and placable temper, polished manners, and kind and affable disposition of their little favorite; the latter they entrusted to scholars whose names even then were running through the schools of Europe, especially to Politiano, one of the best classical writers of the _renaissance_, and the preceptor of a pleiad of illustrious men. Naturally docile, well endowed with parts, in constant intercourse with men of rank and talent, Giovanni acquired a dignity of deportment, a facility of conversation, and a fund of knowledge, much beyond his years. At sixteen, he had completed the curriculum of Pisa, was graduated doctor and invested with the insignia of the cardinalate, and thus entitled to take his seat among the princes of the church. These precocious acquirements and early preferments ought to have ripened into days of serenity; but no, they were more like the calm that precedes the storm. Brought up in the school of prosperity, he was to acquire his last finish amidst the rude trials of adversity. Before attaining the highest dignity that can adorn the brow of man, he was destined to experience the instability of human affairs and the fickleness of men. The death of his father, and the demise of his munificent protector, Innocent VIII., inflicted deep wounds on his sensitive heart. {701} In the mean time, a terrific storm was gathering in Florence. The inhabitants of this metropolis, exasperated at the seemingly unpatriotic conduct of Piero de' Medici, his elder brother, expelled from within their walls even the last scion of their noblest family; something like the ungrateful Athenians, who ostracized the very man on whom they had conferred the title of just. To cheer the dreary hours of exile, no less than to enrich his mind with useful knowledge, the expatriated cardinal resolved upon visiting the principal cities of Europe. Even here, difficulties and disquietudes unforeseen lurked in the background of the smiling ideal that he had formed of his itinerary. The suspicious authorities of Ulm and Rouen arrested the little caravan, and ordered him and his companions to confinement; the foaming billows deterred him from proceeding to England, and thus deprived him of the pleasure of visiting the land of Bede and of King Alfred. On his return, he was cast by a storm on the Genoese coast, and, thinking it advisable to relinquish his voyage, proceeded by land to Savona, where he met the celebrated Cardinal Della Rovere--a remarkable coincidence, if we consider that Della Rovere, Giulio de' Medici, and he himself were afterward raised to the dignity of the tiara. Notwithstanding all the afflictions that poured in on him, the future pontiff invariably preserved that equanimity of mind and amenity of manners which were the prominent features in his character. Better and brighter days were now about to dawn. The premature death of Piero, partially disarmed the hostility of the Florentines, and they finally threw open their gates to the illustrious representative of the time-honored family of the Medici. A year had hardly elapsed after his restoration before Rome was plunged into mourning by the death of that wary and energetic pontiff, Julius II. The conclave assembled immediately after the obsequies, and Cardinal de' Medici was called by the unanimous vote to the see of St. Peter. Giovanni de' Medici was now Leo X., and the choice of that name, as Erasmus spiritually remarks, was not without its significance. If Leo I. saved the eternal city from the ravages of the "scourge of God;" if Leo IV. again repelled from her walls the barbaric bands of Saracens, Leo X. was to make her the capital city of the republic of letters, as she was already the starry centre of the Christian world.

Italy had already taken the lead in the restoration of ancient learning, and supplied the fire from which the other nations lighted their torches. [Footnote 171] As may easily be fancied, the elevation to the pontificate of the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent spontaneously awoke the most sanguine expectations of the artists and literati. In their fervor, they imagined that genius, worth, and talent could not remain unnoticed or unremunerated. "Under these impressions," says a Protestant writer, [Footnote 172]

[Footnote 171: Hallam, _Literature of Europe_, vol. i. ch. i.]

[Footnote 172: Roscoe, _Life and Pontificate of Leo_, vol. i. p. 306.]

"Rome became, at once, the general resort of those who possessed or had pretensions to superior learning, industry, or ability. They all took it for granted that the supreme pontiff had no other objects of attention than to listen to their productions and to reward their labors." That their hopes were to be realized, was evident to all from the very first act of the new pontiff's administration, the selection as apostolic secretaries of Bembo and Sadoleti, two scholars who resume in themselves the intellectual life of the time--Sadoleti, a profound philosopher and the best exegete of his age; and Bembo, who emulated Virgil and Cicero with equal success, and recalled in his writings the elegance of Petrarch and Boccaccio. [Footnote 173]

[Footnote 173: Bettinelli. It is to Bembo that we are indebted for the restoration of the long-lost art of abbreviated or shorthand writing.]

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A new era in literature and art was about to dawn; its first bright rays were for Italy, that "land of taste and sensibility." With a pontiff who could say, "I have always loved accomplished scholars and _belles-lettres_; this love was born with me, and age has but increased it; for literature is the ornament and glory of the church; and I have always remarked that it knits its cultivators more firmly to the dogmas of our faith;" with such a pontiff, the intellectual movement that then pervaded Italian society was nobly sustained and enlivened, until at last the golden age again reappeared on earth. All sorts of encouragements, such as honorary employments, lucrative offices, pecuniary gratuities, and even ecclesiastical preferments, were lavished upon talent and genius. Every latent energy luxuriantly budded forth and blossomed in the genial sunshine of such munificence.

The academies of literary men philosophized on the banks of the Tiber or in the cool recesses of a fragrant villa. The lovers of the arts, the votaries of the muses, and the cultivators of polite literature sat side by side at the sumptuous banquets frequently given in the Vatican. At these grand entertainments all topics were convivially canvassed, and fancy soared aloft to delight the guests by her sublime improvisations. Popular favorites, like the poet of Arezzo and the "celestial" Accolte, read their productions in public halls to admiring multitudes; while the best scholars of the age, yielding to the invitation of Leo, filled the professorships of the great universities. Italy was then, in the beautiful words of Audin, "the promised land of the intellect;" [Footnote 174] and Rome the centre of learning and the nursery of great men. No wonder, then, that the snow-capped Alps presented but a feeble barrier to the transalpine scholar, and that every day some new Hannibal descended their craggy flanks and pushed forward to the seven-hilled city, to pay a courteous visit to the accomplished pontiff, and gratify a long-entertained desire of conversing with the celebrities of the age. The whole world thus recognized that

"The fount at which the panting mind assuages Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill, Flows from th' eternal source of Rome's imperial hill." [Footnote 175]

[Footnote 174: _Vie de Luther_, vol. i. p. 179.]

[Footnote 175: Byron, _Childe Harold_, Canto III.]

Since the days of Petrarch, the Italian muse had all but hushed her lovely strains; her lyre was silent and unstrung. Politiano came, swept its music-breathing chords, and sent its sweet notes on the wings of the zephyrs throughout the Italian peninsula. All listened with rapture to the enchanting strains of the Tuscan siren, and, after a moment of hesitation, prepared their pens to write on every theme and to illustrate every department of science and letters. The classic models of heroic poetry, fresh from the Aldine presses or half consumed by the dust of ages, were taken down from their shelves and studied with passionate ardor. The children of song were delighted with the epic muse, and were now hard at work at their great poems. {703} Mozarello elaborates his _Porsenna_; Querno, the archpoet, cadences the twenty thousand verses of his _Alexias_; Vida, like Horace of old, draws up the rules of the metrical art, and sings his _Christiad_ in verses of Augustan purity and elegance; Ariosto, the Homer of Ferrara, condenses into his _Orlando Furioso_ a vein of poetry so remarkable for its grace and energy as to leave it doubtful whether the palm of superiority should be awarded to him, or to the author of the _Jerusalem Delivered_. [Footnote 176] The terrible eventualities of tragedy and the more pleasing casualties of comedy were brought upon the stage by Trissino, Ruccellai, and Bibbiena; the protean burlesque assumed its most humorous forms under Berni's magic pen, and the shafts of satire were keenly pointed by Aretino, whose virulent epigrams drew upon him such an amount of physical retaliation that a contemporary writer calls him "the loadstone of clubs and daggers." [Footnote 177]

[Footnote 176: Laharpe. _Cours de Littérature_, vol. i. p. 435.]

[Footnote 177: See Addison, _Spectator_, No. 23.]

Guicciardini wrote the history of his country with the elegant diction of the great historians of Rome; Giovio's periods were so flowing as to make Leo X. declare that next to Livy he had not met with a more eloquent writer. The _Prince_ of Macchiavelli enjoys a world-wide reputation, and his _History of Florence_ is so remarkable for the beauty of its style, that it is said to have had more influence on Italian prose than any other work, except the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio. Besides these reigning stars, there was a host of other literary celebrities who shed a brilliant lustre on Leo's golden reign. There was Fracastoro, who, at the early age of nineteen, had won the highest academic degree of the Paduan university, and was nominated to the professorship of logic; Navagero, whose aversion to an affected taste was so intense that he annually consigned to the flames a copy of Martial; Aleandro, who was only twenty-four when the celebrated Manuzio dedicated to him his edition of the _Iliad_, alleging as a reason for conferring this honor on a person so young, that his acquirements were beyond those of any other person with whom he was acquainted, and it is well known that the Venetian typographer was the friend and correspondent of almost all the literary characters of the day; Augurelli, whom a contemporary historian calls the most learned and elegant preceptor of his time; Castiglione, who was called by Charles V. the most accomplished gentleman of the age; Leonardo da Vinci, who, long before the philosopher of Verulam, proclaimed experiment the base of the physical sciences, and, before the astronomer of Thorne, taught the annual motion of the earth; and Calcagnini, who wrote an elaborate work to defend this startling thesis. The correction of the calendar was investigated by Dulciati, and even hieroglyphics found an expounder in the encyclopedic Valeriaro, who wrote no less than fifty-eight books on that abstruse subject. Literature, indeed, was a universal hobby; it was the royal road to distinction in an age when the love of the well-turned period and the mellifluous sonnet was epidemic. The lady cultivators of polite letters were numerous, and not only accomplished proficients but formidable rivals. The sonnets of Veronica Gambara rank among the best; Vittoria Colonna, in lively description and genuine poetry, excelled all her contemporaries with the sole exception of the inimitable Ariosto; and Laura Battifera is represented as the rival of Sappho.

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Notwithstanding this general enthusiasm for the amenities of literature, great attention was bestowed upon the more arid study of languages. Already the Latin muse had come to dwell again beneath the beautiful sky of Ausonia; and the humanists, fleeing from the savage fury of the triumphant Ottomans, sang, in the gardens of Florence and on the banks of the Tiber, the fall of Troy and the adventures of Ulysses. Leo X. was not only a Latin scholar, he was also a refined hellenist. Moreover, he knew what vast treasures of patristic lore are contained in the Greek fathers, and hence, as a lover of sacred and profane literature, he lavished his treasures on the revival of that beautiful tongue. A little colony, fresh from the Morea, was installed in a magnificent mansion on the Esquilian hill, and a Greek seminary was opened to impart to the Italians the true pronunciation and the very genius of the Homeric idiom. The famous Lascaris, at the invitation of Leo X., relinquished his position at the French court, in order to direct the studies of his young countrymen and superintend the editions of the Greek classics that were issued from the Roman press. The Hebrew was taught at Rome by Guidacerio, who published a grammar of that language and dedicated it to Leo X.; the Syriac and Chaldaic were taught at Bologna by Ambrozio, a regular canon of the Lateran, who at fifteen could converse in Greek and Latin with as much ease and fluency as any of his contemporaries, and who subsequently mastered eighteen languages. A useful and authentic lexicon was first given to the learned world by Varino. A new Latin version of the Bible from the Hebrew having been announced by Pagnini, Leo X. requested an interview with the author, and was so well pleased with his competency as well as with the elegance and accuracy of the work, that he defrayed all the expenses of transcription and publication. Erasmus, who corresponded with Leo, and, more than any one else, knew his great desire to promote biblical studies, inscribed to him his _New Testament_ in Greek and Latin with corrections and annotations. Giustiniani commenced, in 1516, a new edition of the Bible in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic. If to this we add that the famous Cardinal Ximenes dedicated to Leo X. his herculean work, the Complutensian Polyglot, we shall have some idea of the efforts made in the beginning of the sixteenth century toward the promotion of scriptural and philological studies. [Footnote 178]

[Footnote 178: It may here be remarked, in passing, that, before the Reformation, the Bible was translated into not only the classic and oriental languages, but also the vernacular of every nation of Europe. For particulars, see Cantu, _Histoire Universelle_, vol. xv. p. 12.]

It has been said that a genuine love of literature invariably evinces its existence by an insatiable thirst for books, "those souls of ages past." This love Leo X. possessed to an eminent degree; he was a second Nicholas V. At his request and under his patronage, sterling bibliophiles set out from Rome to overrun the world in quest of manuscripts. The monasteries of Britain and Germany and the ruins of the Byzantine libraries were diligently searched; ample pecuniary remuneration was everywhere offered for unpublished works; and as kings and princes encouraged this hunt after books, it may easily be fancied that volumes teemed in from every quarter. The Vatican was made the recipient of these literary treasures; and, thanks to the zeal of the popes, it now possesses the most valuable collection of manuscripts in the world.

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Leo X. was not only a man of letters, he was also well versed in antiquities. Prior to his elevation to the pontificate, his greatest delight was to shut himself up in his library or museum, and there pore over his hoarded treasures. This antiquarian taste he inherited from his illustrious ancestors, whose collections were famous throughout all Italy. One day, while he was yet a cardinal, a statue of Lucretia was exhumed; his joy was supreme, and in the heat of his enthusiasm, he strung his lyre and commemorated the happy event in beautiful iambics. On another occasion, a piece of sculpture, representing the ship of AEsculapius, was, owing to his exertions, discovered in the Tiber. This was considered by his omen-liking friends as an augury of his future dignity. The discovery of the famous group known as the Laocoön was an epoch in Rome. That evening, the bells were rung to announce the event; the poets, among whom was Sadoleti, lucubrated all night, preparing their hymns, sonnets, and canzoni, to welcome the reappearance of the masterpiece. Next morning, all Rome was on foot, and the public works were suspended while the antique statue, festooned with flowers and verdure, was carried processionally to the capitol, amidst the sound of vocal and instrumental harmony. Such was the joy of the Roman artists on the discovery of a relic of ancient art.

The twin arts painting and sculpture shared largely in the munificence of the pontiff. Bramarte, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, the princes of modern art, were the worthy emulators of Phidias and Apelles. In immortalizing their names and that of their patron, they immortalized their age and their country. At their call, genius again returned to earth, and exhibited, in the chiselled marble and on the glowing canvas, such animated representations as filled the eye with wonder and stirred the deep foundations of the heart. Bramarte planned and commenced St. Peter's, which, in the estimation of the sceptic Gibbon, is the most glorious structure that has ever been applied to religion; for

"Majesty, Power, glory, strength, and beauty, all are aisled In the eternal ark of worship undefiled."

Michael Angelo, whose very fragments have educated eminent artists, continuing the noble structure, placed the pride of Roman architecture in the clouds, and drew the design of the Last Judgment, which connoisseurs pronounce a miracle of genius. Raphael covered the Vatican with his inimitable frescoes and sketched his Transfiguration, which was hailed by the Roman people as the type of the beautiful, a paragon of art, and the masterpiece of painting. The profound Da Vinci painted the Last Supper and thus afforded Christian families a neat ornament for their refectories and a piece of artistic finish for their drawing-rooms. Sansovino's productions, according to the historian of the arts, were among the finest specimens of the plastic art, and Romano's were worthy of his "divine" master.

Such was the flourishing state of the arts and the great impulse given to all branches of learning just before the memorable epoch when the fetters of the human intellect were, forsooth, burst asunder by the great Saxon hero, the unfrocked monk of Wittemberg, against whom Leo X. hurled the bolt of excommunication. If this grand impetus was not followed up, if the pen was forgotten for the sword, and the altars of Apollo were deserted for those of the homicide Mars; if the era of the reformation "was truly a barbarous era," [Footnote 179] it most certainly was not owing to incapacity on the part of the Roman pontiffs, since sectarians themselves proclaim them "in general superior to the age in which they lived," [Footnote 180] while historians of the depth of Neander are struck with admiration to find the popes "ever attentive to the moral and religious wants of their people;" [Footnote 181] but it must be attributed to the immediate effects of the so-called Reformation, that spirit of blind fanaticism which was equalled only by the wholesale brigandage and all-destroying vandalism of the sainted evangelicals.

[Footnote 179: Schlegel, _Philosophy of History_.]

[Footnote 180: Roscoe, _Life and Pontificate of Leo X_.]

[Footnote 181: Neander, _General History of the Christian Religion and Church_.]

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A kind dispensation of Providence it was, that saved Leo X. the sight of the harrowing scenes that Europe then presented. He had already occupied the throne of St. Peter eight years, eight months, and nineteen days, during all which time he had faithfully guarded the interests of the church against royal encroachments, and the liberty of his dominions against foreign aggression; he had presided over the last seven sessions of the oecumenical council of Lateran, and conferred on an English monarch the title of _Defensor fidei;_ and now, in the forty-seventh year of his age, cruel death takes him from the affection of his subjects, the love of his cardinals, and the veneration of men of letters. Sad was the day when it was told that Leo X. was no more. Artists and humanists dropped a tear for their friend and benefactor; the sculptor and the painter commemorated their deceased Maecenas in the virgin marble and on the glowing canvas, while the historian wrote the annals of his reign and the poet embalmed his memory in immortal verse. Rome erected his monument, and posterity, admiring the virtues of the Christian, reverencing the eminent qualities of the pontiff, and idolizing the protector of letters and art, has called the age in which he lived the golden age of Leo the Tenth.

Translated From The Spanish.

Little Flowers Of Spain.

By Fernan Caballero.

"Humble flowers of religious poetry, and derivations of popular expressions and proverbs," is the title given by the authoress to the article headed "Cosas (humildes) de España" --_Humble Things of Spain_.

If there exists an individual who has read all that we have written--and the case, though not probable, is nevertheless not impossible--he must have noticed that our zeal, our labor, and our specialty is to find out origins and causes, draw inferences and conclusions, and trace things to their why and wherefore. We are really apprehensive lest in this branch we may become too notable.

Our system is the same that is followed nowadays by writers of history. Let it be understood that we do not meddle with such weighty subjects, nor venture into profound depths, and that our employment of the aforesaid modern system is solely in questions of the humble schools. Our information is all obtained from popular traditions, romances, and beliefs. The data which it is our delight to place in relief, all the world has handled as the Indians did gold before their conquerors gave it value; as future generations will give value to the things of which we treat when they lament their loss.

{707}

Our explorations in these rich mines have been rewarded. We have ascertained that the first tree that God planted was the white poplar; therefore the white poplar is the most ancient of trees--the vegetable Adam. We have learned that the serpent went straight, erect, and proud of his triumph in Paradise, until the flight into Egypt, when, encountering the Holy Family, he attempted to bite the child Jesus, and the indignant St. Joseph prevented him with these words, "Fall, proud one, and never rise again!" From that good day to this he has crawled. We have learned, moreover, that snakes and toads are permitted to exist solely for the purpose of absorbing the poisons of the earth. We have found out that the evergreen trees are endowed with their privileges of life and beauty in recompense for having given shelter and shade to the Mother and Child whenever they stopped to rest in their flight from the sword of Herod; that the rosemary enjoys its fragrance and always blossoms on Friday, the day of Our Lord's Passion, because the Blessed Virgin, when she washed the little garments of the babe, used to hang them to dry upon its branches; also, that for this very reason it has the gift of attracting peace and good-hap to the dwellings that are perfumed with it on Holy-night. That everybody has sympathy, affection, and even reverence for the swallows, because compassionately and with such sweet charity they pulled out the thorns that were piercing the temples of the divine Martyr. That the red-owl, which, grieved and appalled, witnessed the cruel crucifixion of the God-man, has done nothing ever since but repeat the melancholy cry "Cruz! Cruz!" That the rose of Jericho, which was white before, owes its purple hue to a drop of the wounded Saviour's blood that fell into its cup. That on Mount Calvary, and all along the way of agony, the gentle plants and fresh herbs wilted and died when our Lord passed by bearing his cross, and that these places were presently covered with briers. That the lightning loses its power to hurt in the whole circumference that is reached by the sound of praying. That at High Mass on Ascension-day, at the moment of the elevation, the leaves of the trees incline upon each other, forming crosses, in token of devotion and reverence. When newborn infants smile, in dreams or waking, we know that it is to angels, visible only to them. A murmur in the ears is the noise made by the falling of a leaf from the tree of life. When silence settles all at once upon several persons forming a company, it is not, as the wise ones say, because "the carriage is running upon sand," but because an angel has passed over them, and the air that is moved by his wings communicates to their souls the silence of respect, though their comprehension fails to divine the cause. Likewise, we have ascertained that the tarantula was a woman extravagantly fond of the dance, and so inconsiderate that when, on one occasion, she was dancing, and His Divine Majesty [Footnote 182] passed by, she did not stop, but continued her diversion with the most frightful irreverence. For this she was changed into a spider with the figure of a guitar delineated upon its back, and possessed of a venom that causes those who are bitten by it to dance and dance until, fainting and exhausted, they fall down in a swoon.

[Footnote 182: The Blessed Sacrament.]

In effect, we have learned many other things: some of them we have already written; the rest we mean to write; that is to say, "If the rope does not break, all will go on as usual."

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But, among these things, there is one which we are going to communicate immediately, for fear lest we die of cholera, and it descend with us into the tomb; for it barely survives at present, and with it would perish its remembrance.

In times when faith filled hearts to overflowing, offerings and _ex-votos_ were brought by thousands to the house of God. Now that we are enlightened, we have other uses for our gold, our rare objects, and fine arts; for, as the poet says,

"En el sigh diez y nueve Nadie á tener fé se atreve, Y no huy que en milagros cred." [Footnote 183]

[Footnote 183: In the nineteenth century, no one dares to have faith and there is no one who believes in miracles.]

It is well--or, better said, it is ill.

The first ostrich eggs procured by the Spaniards, in their voyages to Africa, were regarded as marvels, and deposited, either as offerings or _ex-votos_, in the churches, where, bound and tied with gay ribbons, they hung before the altars and were looked upon as ornaments of great value. And even now, before modest altars in humble villages are sometimes seen these enormous eggs; presenting with their worn and faded decorations the appearance of porcelain melons. By whom were they brought? where were they found? who hung them here? are questions that assault the mind of the beholder, and send his thoughts and fancy into the vast field of conjectures impossible to verify, but all sweet, romantic, and holy.

The imagination of the Spanish people is an _instinct_. They cannot see a material object without attaching to it an ideal. Out of the fervor of their own heart they made a symbol of this.

The belief adapted to the ostrich egg, hung in front of the altar, is one that will be sagely qualified by sanctimonious devotees of literal truth as superstitious and fanatical. We offer it to the Protestant missionaries who favor us with their propaganda, as a killing weapon against the benighted and malignant papists.

It is said that the mother-bird cannot hatch these eggs, which appear to be of marble, because it is impossible for her to cover them, and because there is not heat enough in her body to warm them through; but that she has in her look such fire, kindled by her great desire to free her offspring, that by keeping her eyes continuedly and without distraction fixed upon the eggs, the ardor and concentration of her love penetrates the hard shell and delivers her little ones. And they hung these eggs before the places where the holy sacrifice of the mass is offered, to teach us to keep our eyes fixed upon the altar with equal desire, equal love, and exclusive attention and devotion. O poets! if you would fulfil your mission, which is to move the heart, learn less in palaces, and more from the people who feel and believe.

Among sayings and proverbs that have been accepted everywhere without having to show their parentage, is the well-known expression, _Ahi me las den todas:_ May I get them all there.

One of the creditors of a certain dishonest fellow, that owed all the world and paid nobody, laid his complaint before the judge, who sent an alguacil to suggest to the debtor the necessity of paying at once.

For response to the intimation, the debtor gave the alguacil, who was a very dignified man, a slap on his face. The latter, returning to the tribunal, addressed the magistrate thus: "Sir, when I go to notify an individual on the part of your worship, whom do I represent?" "Me," answered the judge. "Well, sir," proceeded the alguacil, touching his cheek, "to this cheek of your worship they have given a slap." "May I get them all there," replied the judge.

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Here is the etymology of another saying, _Quien no te conozea te compre:_ Let some one buy you that don't know you. Three poor students came to a village where there was a fair. "What shall we do to amuse ourselves?" asked one as they were passing a garden in which an ass was drawing water from a well. "I have already hit upon a way," answered another of the three. "Put me into the machine, and you take the ass to the fair and sell him." As it was said, so it was done. When his companions had gone, the student that had remained in the place of the ass stood still. "Arre!" [Footnote 184] shouted the gardener, who was at work not far off.

[Footnote 184: Geho!]

The improvised ass neither started nor shook his bell, and the gardener mounted to the machine, in which, to his great consternation, he found his ass changed into a student. "What is this?" he cried. "My master," said the student, "some ill-natured witches transformed me into an ass, but I have fulfilled the term of my enchantment and returned to my original shape."

The poor gardener was disconsolate, but what could be done? He unharnessed the student, and, bidding him go with God-speed, set out sorrowfully for the fair to buy another beast. The very first that presented itself was his own, which had been bought by a company of gipsies. The moment he cast his eyes upon it, he took to his heels, exclaiming, "Let some one buy you that don't know you."

_Yo te cono cí ciruelo_--I knew you when you were a plum-tree--is a common saying. The people of a certain village bought a plum-tree of a gardener, for the purpose of having it converted into an effigy of St. Peter. When the image was finished and set up in the church, the gardener went to see it, and, observing the somewhat lavish coloring and gilding of its drapery, exclaimed:

"Gloriosisimo San Pedro, Yo te cono cí ciruelo, Y de tu fruta comi; Los misagros que tu hagas Que me me los cuelgan á mi!"

"Most glorious Saint Peter! I knew you when you were a plum-tree, and ate of your fruit; the miracles you do, let them hang upon me."

_Ya saco raja_--He has got a share--is often said, and we trace it to Estremadura, where the live-oak groves are divided into rajas; _raja_ being the name of an extension yielding acorns enough to feed a given number of hogs. When the _rajas_ are public property, they are distributed at a trifling rent to the poorer householders, who are, as will be supposed, very anxious to have them. But to obtain one is difficult, for the _ayuntamientos_, or town councils, generally give them to their _protégés_ and hangers-on; and, from this circumstance, "He has got a hog-pasture," has come to be said of any person that by skill, cunning, audacity, or good luck succeeds in obtaining an advantage difficult to get, or of which the getting depends upon some one else.

_El que tiene capa escapa_--He that wears a cloak escapes--dates from the giving way of the new bridge at Puerto Santa Maria, under the weight of the great crowd that had collected upon it. To prevent thefts and disturbances, Captain-General O'Kelly issued an order to the effect that no person wearing a cloak should be allowed to cross the bridge. In consequence of this order, no one wearing a cloak fell into the river.

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It is usual to indicate that a person is poor by saying, _El esta á la cuarta pregunta_--He is at the fourth question. This assertion is derived from the interrogation of witnesses for the defence in suits when, among other circumstances, that of poverty is wished to be proved. This extreme being comprehended in the fourth question, as follows: "Does the witness know, of his own knowledge, that the party he represents is poor, and possesses neither landed property nor income; so that he has absolutely no means of support except the product of his own labor?"

The Pearl And The Poison.

From The French.

Chanced it, where along the strand Softly foaming broke the sea, Lay an oyster on the sand 'Mid her neighbors merrily: And her shelly doors, ablaze With the sapphire's thousand rays, She had opened to the sigh Of the zephyrs flitting by. Fell into her bosom there Just a single drop of rain-- Just a rain-drop dull and plain: When, behold! a jewel rare-- A sudden pearl exceeding fair!

Chanced it on the heath hard by That a viper, lurking dread, Uttered then her hissing cry-- To the zephyr raised her head: When upon her dart accurst Fell a rain-drop like the first: Just a drop of poison more To recruit her venom's store.

With twofold nature are our hearts endued, Nor open less to evil than to good: Responding kindly to the tiller's care, The soil becomes what skilful hands prepare. Dear parents, take you heed. If yours the will To guard your children's sacred innocence, Be timely care and foresight the defence; And drop by drop instil Into their little spirits thoughts of good, To be their daily food. If you are wise, through years to come A pearl of a child will make you blest: If not, you'll cherish in your home A very poison to your rest.

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Foreign Literary Notes.

The testimony of so distinguished an authority as M. E. Littré, of the French Institute, is now added to that of Digby, Maitland, Montalembert, and so many others, to show that the middle ages were not "barbarous." M. Littré, as is well known, is very far from being a Catholic; but, treating the subject with his great erudition from a purely historical point of view, he shows, in his _Etudes sur les Barbares et le Moyen Age_, that, after the frightful degeneration of the Roman world--a degeneration aggravated and precipitated by the violent immixtion of barbarous peoples--the period of the middle ages was an era of renovation in institutions, in letters, and in morals; a renovation, slow, it is true, but certain and continuous; a renovation entirely due to Catholicity, revivifying by powerful and fecund impulsion the antique foundation formed by pagan society, and augmenting it by all that Christianity possesses superior to paganism. On this beneficial and constantly civilizing influence of the church, which formed the moral unity of a world whose material unity had disappeared, re-educating people fallen into infancy, rescuing letters by her schools, clearing the forests by her monks, founding social and political institutions worthy of the name, and the like of which the Roman empire had never seen--for the reason that all its conceptions of man and of liberty were false, and it could never raise itself to the idea of a spiritual power that was independent of the lay power--on all these points, so worthy the attention of the historian, there are, particularly in the first two chapters, some admirable pages. M. Littré speaks with admiration of the spread of monachism in the west, and distinctly recognizes the many great blessings that followed in its train. He (p. 3) reproaches Gibbon with having ignored the importance of the religious fact of Christianity. And yet his "naturalism" has led him astray from the conclusion to which the invincible logic of his own presentation of facts must bring him.

----

A valuable addition to biblical criticism is, unquestionably, the lately published _Saint Paul's Epistle to the Philippians_. A revised text, with introduction, notes, and dissertations. By J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., Hulsean Professor of Divinity, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. London, Macmillan. 8vo, 337 pp. This book forms the second volume of an exegetical work that is to embrace all the epistles of St. Paul. Galatians has already been published. The present volume is particularly valuable for its introduction of the results of the latest archeological and historical research. The commentaries on Seneca and the doctrines of the Stoics are interesting, as also the remarks on the [Greek text] in verse 13 of first chapter.

----

A distinguished priest of the Oratory, H. de Valroger, has recently published an able and learned disquisition on biblical chronology. He terminates it thus: "No more than the Bible has the church laid down a dogmatic system of precise dates strictly connected and confining the primitive history of the world and of man within narrow and inflexible limits. No more than the Bible does the church deprive astronomers, geologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, or chronologists of the liberty of ascertaining scientifically the period of time elapsed since the creation of the world and of man, or since the deluge, which terminated the first of the reign of humanity."

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In the Foreign Literary Notes of our number for June, we noticed an important publication by the Abbé Lamy on the Council of Seleuciae, a translation from one of the numerous productions of early Syrian literature, so rich in works relative to the church, its history, its discipline, and its dogmas. And, in this connection, it may be proper here to note a typographical transposition seriously interfering with a correct reading of the notice in question, namely, the six paragraphs of the first column of p. 432 that precede "Concilium Seleuciae et Ctesiphonti," etc., should follow the second paragraph on the second column of the same page.

{712}

This work of the Abbé Lamy is one out of many recent publications showing the great attention lately given to the monuments of early Syrian literature by theologians of Europe. Especially in Germany is the activity great in this new field. It has long been known that a serious chronological break existed in this literature, covering a period of nearly three hundred years, stretching from the translation of the Scriptures to the classical period of Syrian patristic literature.

Only of late years has this void been partially filled by the important work of Cureton, (W.,) entitled, _Ancient Syriac Documents relative to the earliest Establishment of Christianity in Edessa_. With a preface by W. Wright. London: Williams & Norgate. 1864. This work of Cureton was preceded by his _Spicilegium Syriacum_, containing remains of Bardesan, Meliton, Ambrose, and Mara bar Serapion. London: Francis & Rivington. 1855.

In connection with these may be mentioned Cardinal Wiseman's _Horae Syriacae_, Rome, 1828; Pohlmann, _S. Ephraemi Syri Commentariorum in S. Scripturum;_ Lamy, _Diss. de Syrorum fide et disciplina in re eucharistica; S. Ephraemi Syri Rabulae, Balaei aliorumque opera selecta_. Oxford, Clarendon. 1865.

----

An interesting historical controversy has for some time been going on between M. Cretineau Joly, of Paris, and the Rev. Father Theiner, Prefect of the Archives of the Vatican, concerning the authenticity of the memoirs of Cardinal Consalvi, published by M. Cretineau Joly, in 1864. Father Theiner, in his History of the Concordat, throws serious doubts upon the genuineness of these memoirs. On the other hand, M. Joly, in his lately published _Bonaparte, the Concordat of 1801, and the Cardinal Consalvti_, defends his position, and declares that he translated with the most conscientious exactitude the memoirs in question, "such as they were confided to me at Rome, such as I now possess them in MSS. at Paris, such as any one is free to test by examination."

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_Logicae, Metaphysicae, Ethicae Institutiones quas tradebat Franciscus Battaglinius, Sacerdos, Philosophiae Lector_. Bologna, typogr. Felsinea. 1869. 1 vol. in 8vo, 712 pp. This work is a collection of the lectures delivered at the Seminary of Bologna, by Professor Battaglini. The spirit of the learned professor's philosophy is, as he himself states, _secundum divi Thomae doctrinas_. No slight task, certainly, to bring the "Angelic Doctor" within the grasp of the young theological student.

The work has attracted the attention of many of the French clergy, and is highly approved by them.

----

There appears to be serious danger that the French people are in a way soon to know all about the Bible. Besides the numerous copies of the sacred Scriptures already in existence in France, the publisher Lethielleux now has in press the first volume of a new edition of the entire Bible, which will give the Latin text of the Vulgate, with the French translation, and a full body of commentaries--theological, moral, philological, and historical, edited so as to include the results of the best works in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere, with a special introduction for each book, by the Abbé Drach, D.D., and the Abbé Bayle, Professor of the Faculty of Aix.

----

The mantle of Mai and of Mezzofanti has fallen upon Cardinal Pitra, recently appointed to the important position of librarian of the Vatican. The office could not be filled by one more erudite and worthy of it in every respect, and his holiness could hardly have made a better choice. Cardinal Pitra is well known as the author of several learned works in theological and canonical science. Like a true Benedictine, his life has been devoted to study and scientific

{713}

A succession of articles lately given in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, by M. d'Haussonville, [Footnote 185] has thrown fresh light on the long and interesting struggle between Pope Pius VII. and Napoleon; between moral and physical force, between the inspiration of heaven and the inspiration of the world. M. d'Haussonville, by the publication of numerous documents until now unpublished, and by the letters and despatches of Napoleon the First, lately given to the world by the present imperial government, has added a new interest to the sad story of the captivity of the holy father, and the negotiations at Savona.

[Footnote 185: Lately elected a member of the French Academy.]

The dignity, firmness, and elevated piety of the noble pontiff stand out in more striking relief from their necessary comparison with the rude and merciless tyranny of his oppressor, and have wrung the strongest expression of admiration from sources the most unexpected. In an article entitled, "The Papacy and the French Empire," the _Edinburgh Review_ (October, 1868) says:

"The meek resistance of Pius VII. to the overwhelming force which had crushed every independent power on the continent of Europe, was therefore a protest worthy of the sacred character of the head of the Latin Church in favor of the dignity and liberty of man; and, by the justice of Heaven, the victim survived the conqueror, the feeble endured, the mighty one perished."

----

Great activity prevails throughout Europe in the search for and publication of documents, long buried in libraries and private collections of MSS., which are calculated to throw light upon the history and workings of the so-called Reformation. And this activity is probably greatest in Switzerland, where every canton, separately or with an adjoining canton, has its historical society in active and industrious operation. German and French, Catholic and Protestant, vie with each other in their praiseworthy efforts to rescue from decay and ruin old parchments, chronicles, protocols, and letters, that are calculated to throw any light on the events of past centuries. In this direction works the Protestant Berner in the _Helvetia Sacra_, and the _Pius Verein_ promises great results in a collection of which the first volume has lately appeared, entitled, _Archiv für die Schweizerische Reformnationsgeschichte. Herausgegeben auf Veranstaltung des Schweizerischen Piusvereins_. Erster Band. Solothurn. 8vo, 856 pp. The central committee of this society consists of Count Scherer Beccard, of Lucerne, and Prebendary Fiala and Professor Barmwart, both of Solothurn. The volume announced contains chronicles, monographs, and extracts from the archives of Lucerne, the mere enumeration of which would be too much for our space.

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The old Benedictine abbey of La Cava, in Italy, has long been known to possess in its archives a mass of documents and MSS. said to contain treasures of diplomatic and archaeological erudition. They cover the period from Pepin le Bref to Charles V. Father Morcaldi, one of the most distinguished savants of Italy, has undertaken their classification and publication. They will fill, when printed, eight or ten folio volumes, and require from five to seven years for publication.

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A recent number of the _Literarischer Handweiser_, edited at Münster by Dr. Franz Hülskamp and Dr. Herrmann Rump, contains an article on Catholic journalism in the United States. Here is an extract:

"Since the cessation of the well-known Quarterly, edited by Dr. Brownson, American Catholics possess but one really first-class periodical, namely, _The Catholic World_, founded some four years since, and published at New York, in handsomely printed monthly numbers. This monthly, founded by Father Hecker, of the Congregation of the Paulists, a zealous convert, distinguished for his effective dialectic and polemic ability, is one of the most welcome manifestations in the field of North American periodical literature. Already, during the short period of its existence, it has gained numberless friends, and bears favorable comparison with the best productions of the European press. The influence and writings of Father Hecker and his collaborators are sufficient warrant that _The Catholic World_ has an important future before it in the field of defence and polemics, and that it will most probably be for many the guide to the bosom of the church."

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{714}

Among new English books announced is _Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Accusers; embracing a Narrative of Events from the Death of James V., in 1552, until the close of the Conference at Westminster, in 1569_. By John Hosack, Barrister in Law. The work is to contain the "Book of Articles" produced against Queen Mary at Westminster, which, it is said, has never hitherto been printed, and will be published by Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.

If this work be in Mary's defence, it is not the first one--to their credit be it said--produced by the Protestants of Scotland. We confess to some surprise that some one of the many English Catholic writers, with their peculiar facilities for reference to authorities, have not taken up and exposed the scandalous malice of Mr. Froude's attack on the memory of the unfortunate queen. His desperate attempt to advocate the genuineness of the silver casket letters, bold and ingenious though it be, is nevertheless a failure, and its unfairness and sophistry should be exposed.

New Publications.

Life Of Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan, O.S.D., Foundress of the English Congregation of St. Catherine of Sienna, of the Third Order of St. Dominic. By her religious children. With a preface by the Right Rev. Dr. Ullathorne. New York: The Catholic Publication House, 126 Nassau street. 1869.

All who are interested in the extraordinary, not to say miraculous, revival of the Catholic faith in English-speaking countries, will hail with delight the appearance of this book. It is a simple and evidently a truthful narrative of the life of one of those providential personages who, in all great movements, stand out as beacon lights to mark their progress. Margaret Mary Hallahan was born in London in 1802, of Irish parents, who had fallen from a respectable position in life to honorable poverty. She was their only child, and became a complete orphan at the age of nine years. Her education had been provided for, as well as circumstances would permit, by her kind-hearted father, in the schools established in London by the Abbé Carron, a refugee priest of the French revolution. Slender, indeed, were the prospects of a poor Catholic orphan girl in the capital of a country so full of bigotry as was England in 1811. Having spent a short time in the orphan asylum at Somerstown, she was placed under the care of a Madame Caulier, whose harsh discipline was hardly compensated by occasional acts of kindness. In her twentieth year, she was introduced by this lady to the family of Doctor Morgan, once physician to George III. Being then an invalid, he was attended by Margaret during the last six months of his life; and after his death she became the bosom friend of his daughter, Mrs. Thompson, whom she served, rather as a sister than as a domestic, for twenty years. Five years of this time were spent in England and fifteen in Belgium. In the latter country she became a member of the Third Order of St. Dominic, on the feast of St. Catherine of Sienna, in the year 1835.

On her return to England, in 1842, she took charge of the Catholic schools of Coventry, where Father Ullathorne, of the Benedictine order, was pastor. Her days were spent in the education of young children, and her evenings in the instruction, religious and secular, of the poor factory girls of the place. {715} In a short time, there was a visible improvement in the Catholic community of Coventry; and Sister Margaret had the happiness of beholding a religious procession, the first of the kind seen in England since the change of religion, at the head of which was borne her own image of the Blessed Virgin, the only treasure she had carried with her from Belgium. A few pious companions, having united with Sister Margaret in the performance of good works, she and three others, by the advice of Father Ullathorne, and with the authorization of the general of the Dominican order, received the habit of the Third Order of St. Dominic, with a view to living in community, on the 11th of June, 1844. On the 8th of December, 1845, they made their religious profession. Soon after this, Father Ullathorne was appointed by the holy see vicar apostolic of the western district; and, having established his residence at Bristol, it was deemed advisable for the young community, of which he was the father and protector, to remove to Clifton, near his episcopal city. This was in 1848; and when, in 1850, the Catholic hierarchy was reestablished in England, Bishop Ullathorne, now transferred to Birmingham, founded the second convent of the Dominican Sisters at Stow. This became the general novitiate of the order in England, and here were established by Mother Margaret her boarding and free schools, her orphanage, and hospital for incurables. In 1858, she went to Rome to obtain of the holy see the canonical erection of her community into a congregation governed by a provincial prioress. Her request was granted by a brief given in 1859, by which she was named provincial prioress, which office she retained until her death, in 1868. Here we may be allowed to quote the words of her friend, Bishop Ullathorne, in his preface to her life:

"And now behold this lonely and poor woman, made ripe in spiritual wisdom and in human experience, returning, a stranger and unknown, to the land of her birth. Yet God has already prepared a way for her, and she begins a spiritual work which slowly rises under her hands, from humble beginnings, into the highest character, and surrounds itself with numerous institutions of mercy and charity. Foundress of a congregation of the ancient Dominican order, she trained a hundred religious women, founded five convents, built three churches, established a hospital for incurables, three orphanages, schools for all classes, including a number for the poor; and, what is more, left her own spirit in its full vigor to animate her children, whose work is only in its commencement."

The history of her life will amply repay perusal. It is a continual exemplification of her great maxim, _All for God_. The most prominent feature in her administration of the affairs of her order was, that she never allowed external employments, undertaken for the benefit of her neighbor, to encroach in the least upon the hours assigned for prayer and meditation. Her zeal in decorating altars, and in providing all things necessary for the decency of divine worship, knew no bounds.

We heartily recommend the life of Mother Margaret Mary to all our readers.

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Die Jenseitige Welt. Eine Schrift Über Fegefeuer, Hölle Und Himmel. Von P. Leo Keel, Capitular des Stiftes Maria Einsiedeln. Einsiedeln, New York, and Cincinnati: Benziger. 1869.

The first two books of this work are out, and we anxiously expect the third, on Heaven, a topic on which it is very difficult to write anything worth reading, and on which very little has been written in our modern languages. German books are generally better than others, and a work which merits the praise of German critics is sure to be solid. The present work is highly esteemed in Germany, and we have examined the part which treats of purgatory sufficiently to convince us that the author has written something far superior in learning, and vigor of thought, to the ordinary treatises on religious doctrines which are to be met with. To those clergymen who are Germans, or who read the language, we can recommend this book as well worth its price. It is printed in the neatest and most attractive style.

{716}

Warwick; or, the Lost Nationalities of America: A Novel. By Mansfield Tracy Walworth. New York: Carleton. 1869.

This novel is a remarkable production, exhibiting vivid imagination, extensive and curious research, descriptive power of a high order, chivalrous sentiments, and a lofty moral ideal, in the author. Its principal scenes, events, and characters belong to an ideal world entirely beyond the possibilities of real and actual life, with an intermingling of some minor sketches drawn from nature which show the author's power to depict the real if he pleases to do so. It seems to us that the serious arguments which are interspersed through the book, and the curious speculations respecting the original inhabitants of America, which are not without at least historical and scientific plausibility, would be presented with far greater effect if they were detached from a plot which is too absorbing to leave the mind leisure to give them due attention. The moral effect intended to be produced by the story itself would be also greater if the characters were more real, the events more natural and probable, and the scenes drawn more from real life. The great praise, so seldom deserved, must be given to the author, that he inculcates high moral and religious principles in an eloquent and attractive manner, and will therefore undoubtedly exercise a refining and elevating influence over the mind of many a young reader who would reject graver lessons. Highly-wrought works of fiction have become a necessity to a large class of readers, and here is one which will give their imagination a wild ride on a racer over a safe road. The young and accomplished author of _Warwick_, will, we trust, follow up his literary career, and produce other and maturer fruits of his genius, which will add more renown to the illustrious name he bears.

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The Life Of John Banim, the Irish novelist, author of _Damon and Pythias_, etc., and one of the writers of _Tales by the O'Hara Family_. With extracts from his correspondence, general and literary. By Patrick Joseph Murray. Also selections from his poems. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1869.

The Ghost-hunter And His Family. By the O'Hara Family. New York: D. & J. Sadlier& Co. 1869.

John Banim was born in the city of Kilkenny, on the 3d day of April, 1798. His parents were in humble life, but, through industry and economy, were enabled to bestow upon their son the inestimable advantage of a good literary education, while their precepts and example united to secure for him a thorough Christian training. His genius for novel writing manifested itself at an early age. While in his sixth year, his ready fancy gave birth to a story of no little merit.

"He was not sufficiently tall to write conveniently at a table, even when seated, and having placed the paper upon his bedroom floor, he lay down beside it and commenced the construction of his plot. During three months he devoted nearly all his hours of play to the completion of his task; and when at length he had concluded, the writing was so execrable that he alone could decipher it. In this dilemma he obtained the assistance of his brother Michael, and of a school-fellow; they acted as amanuenses, relieving each other when weary of writing from John's dictation. When the tale was fully transcribed, it was stitched in a blue cover, and John determined that it should be printed. But here the important question of expense arose to mind, and, after long deliberation, the youthful author thought of resorting to a subscription publication. Accordingly the manuscript was shown to several of his father's friends, and, in the course of a week, the subscribers amounted to thirty, at a payment of one shilling each. Disappointment was again the lot of our little genius; for in all Kilkenny he could not induce a printer to undertake the issuing of his story. This was a heavy blow to his hopes; but honorable even as a child, he no sooner found that he could not publish the tale than he waited upon his subscribers for the purpose of restoring to them their shillings. {717} All received him kindly and refused the money, telling him that they were quite satisfied with reading the manuscript."

In this little incident of his boyhood, the salient features of the character of John Banim, the man and the author, are easily discernible. His extreme facility of conception, his hurrying energy of execution, his confidence in the merits of his productions, his indomitable persistence in commanding public attention, his patience and courage under defeat and disappointment, and his scrupulous honesty of purpose, which controlled alike his writings and his business relations, are all contained and foreshadowed in the circumstances of this almost infantile enterprise. Maturer years darkened the shadows, deepened the lines, heightened the lights of Banim's character; but such as he was, when he ran home from his school-mates in their hours of play, "to see that 'Farrell the Robber' had not stolen his mother," such also was he, till, in his last hours, he begged of his brother,

"That I would stand by while his grave was digging, and that, when his body was lowered to its last resting place, I should be certain the side of his coffin was in close contact with that of his beloved parent."

Of the literary life and achievements of Banim, of his privations and discouragements, of his physical sufferings, and his premature decay and death, the pages of Mr. Murray's book contain a tolerably full description. It is to be regretted, however, that the task did not fall into the hands of Michael Banim, his brother and co-laborer in the O'Hara Tales. The work before us is too evidently the accomplishment of "an outsider"--of one who draws his information from letters, from books, from the accounts and descriptions of others, and not of one who "knew his man," and delineates the results of his own personal sight and hearing. John Banim was a man whose biographer should have been his most intimate and dearest friend, whose choicest qualities those who knew him most thoroughly could alone adequately value, and whom a distant public can be taught fully to appreciate only by a writer who himself has learned the lesson through long and close association.

Of the works of Banim, (one of the best of which we have also just received,) it is needless for us to make particular mention. They are worthy to be classed among the standard fictions of the century, whether for their rhetorical or dramatic power, and are almost wholly free from the loose sensationalism which disgraces the pages of so many modern tales. We have found them to inculcate virtue and industry, to do honor to purity and devotion, to abound in filial affection and religious fidelity to duty; and there is no half-heartedness in our wish that they, and such as they, may supplant, at least among Catholic readers, the noisome volumes which come swarming faster and faster both from the American and English press.

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Problematic Characters: A Novel. By Freidrich Spielhagen. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1869.

It seems unnecessary, to say the least, to translate from the German pictures of life like those contained in this romance, since there are innumerable English and American novels, filled with the same sensuous details, and teeming with shameless descriptions of illicit love. In all the family life introduced to our notice in the course of this thick volume, the only married pairs that are described as living comfortably together are objects of ridicule, while men who make love to their neighbors' wives, and the married women who respond to these advances, are made to appear exceedingly interesting and lovely, and their wicked words and deeds justified on the ground, so popular in these days, _incompatibility_ in the conjugal relations.

As might be expected from such immoral teaching, utter infidelity follows in its wake.

{718}

Responsibility to God or man is ignored throughout these pages, though much is said about the great eternal laws of nature, which seems to mean, according to this author, unbelief in the God of revelation; since the only persons who profess to have any faith in the life beyond are proved arrant hypocrites, and excite only our disgust by their assumed piety.

Such reading should be condemned without qualification, although the style may be, as in this volume, graceful and polished, the language vigorous, often piquant, the descriptions of natural beauties glowing with light and warmth, social questions discussed with equanimity and calmness--but the trail of the serpent is over them all. We unhesitatingly pronounce this a dangerous book--not _problematically_, only, but positively bad reading.

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Walter Savage Landor. A Biography. By John Forster. 8vo, pp. 693. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co.

Mr. Forster has led us to expect so much from him, by his excellent biography of Goldsmith and other works, that we are not only disappointed but a great deal surprised by the defects of the present bulky volume. Landor's life was a tempting theme to one who knew it so well as Mr. Forster. Stretching far beyond the ordinary limit of human longevity, crowded not perhaps with very stirring incidents, yet with figures of deep historical and literary interest, and curious for its extraordinary manifestations of a strong character, it was a subject of which an accomplished writer might have made one of the best biographies in the language. Mr. Forster has committed a grave fault, however, in being too diffuse, and, valuable as his book must be to the student of Landor's history and times, it certainly cannot be called very interesting. What with the prolixity of the narrative, and the prolonged summaries and analyses of Landor's writings, the reader is too often tempted to close the book from utter weariness. Yet there is a remarkable attraction in the life of that violent, wrongheaded, wonderful old man of genius, who left so many enthusiastic friends, though, it has been truly said, nobody could possibly live with him, and who has enriched English literature with poetry worthy of the classic ages of Greece, and prose among the purest and most eloquent in the language, though there is probably no other author of equal pretensions of whom the mass of readers are so completely ignorant. For this reason, Mr. Forster's biography, cumbrous as it is, deserves an extensive circulation, and it contains so much merit, that we hope he may be induced to bring it into better shape.

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Wandering Recollections Of A Somewhat Busy Life: An Autobiography. By John Neal. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1869.

If the Messrs. Roberts had desired to issue a book "_for the season_," they could hardly have selected one more appropriate than this pleasant autobiography of John Neal. Like the life of its author and subject, it is full of variety, "everything by starts, and nothing long," and runs as naturally from the piling up of bricks and mortar in the resurrection of Portland from the ashes of 1866, to the traditions and incidents of two centuries ago, as Mr. Neal himself seemed to slip from shop-keeping into authorship, and from peddling into law.

It is a book that one can take up anywhere, and find somewhat of amusement and instruction; and can lay down anywhere without fearing to lose the train of thought or the thread of narrative. There is method enough in it to entitle it to be called an autobiography; there is also a complete justification of the title which its author has appropriated to it. It is the pleasant chat of an old man of seventy-three, over events and personages into contact with whom extensive travel and a long life have brought him; a "_potpourri_" of the memories and observations of two continents and of over three-score years. Its publishers have done for it in print and paper what the matter and the manner of the work deserved; and if it finds its way into the portmanteau of the summer tourists whether by mountain-side or sea-side, it will hardly fail to be read, and so put to good use otherwise perhaps wasted hours.

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{719}

Sogarth Aroon; Or, The Irish Priest. A Lecture. By M. O'Connor, S.J. Baltimore: Murphy & Co. 1869.

The author of this lecture was once the bishop of Pittsburg, a prelate hardly second to any member of the American hierarchy in learning and all the highest qualities of a bishop; and, as all know, he resigned his dignity to become a simple Father in the Society of Jesus, where, in spite of his broken health, he has ever since been zealously laboring for the salvation of souls. Father O'Connor has always been remarkable for his intense devotion to his native country and to the best interests of Irishmen. More than once, his learned and powerful pen and voice have been employed in their cause. In this lecture he has once again given a just and glowing tribute to the Irish priesthood. There are some, both here and in Ireland, who are fearing lest the tie which has bound the Irish people to their priests should be weakened by the efforts of demagogues seeking political influence, and by other causes of like nature. We trust this may never be the case; but it behooves all who love the Irish people truly to imitate Father O'Connor, and do everything in their power to strengthen this tie, and keep alive the spirit of Catholic faith in the bosoms of the children of the Martyr Church of Ireland. We recommend this lecture to general circulation both here and in Ireland, as an antidote to the poison which some traitors to their race and their religion are seeking to disseminate.

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Young Christian's Library, containing the lives of more than eighty eminent saints and servants of God. 12 vols. Philadelphia: Henry McGrath. 1869.

This miniature library should be found in every Catholic household. While necessarily abbreviated, "The Lives" it contains are by no means mutilated condensations, and can be read, not alone with much spiritual benefit, but with real pleasure, in so admirable a manner has the editor performed his allotted task. Hence, although specially designed for youth, we have no hesitation in recommending it to persons advanced in years as an excellent substitute for the Rev. Alban Butler's more elaborate work, from which they are severally abridged. The series is very beautifully got up, and reflects great credit on the taste and liberality of the publisher.

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Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia For 1868.

This well-known annual sustains its reputation as a valuable repertory of contemporaneous history. One great merit it has, is the careful manner in which authentic documents are reproduced _in extenso_. In regard to Catholic matters, it is, as usual, guardedly respectful, evidently intending to be impartial to every body. This is, of course, attempting the impossible, and it is easy to see which way the drift and current of the work do run. We say this in order that the younger and more inexperienced Catholic students may understand that works of this kind, proceeding from non-Catholic sources, are only to be used as lexicons and books of reference, but never to be trusted as guides or authorities for forming their opinions.

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The Habermeister. Translated from the German of H. Schmid. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. Price, $1.50.

In this novel we have a vivid picture of German peasant life. The plot rests upon the assumption of unlawful authority, in the name of an ancient custom, the necessity of which has long since disappeared; and the catastrophe is brought about by the use made of it by infamous persons. The characters are well delineated. The rag-picker's ride and the grave scene will be found to exhibit to advantage the talents of an author whose greatest success lies in his description of men. The denouement is satisfactory, although brought about by slightly distorting the truth in regard to the convent reception-room. But the changes in the butcher's character were impossible, if we regard terror as the cause, for terror brings only degradation.

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{720}

The Irish Brigade, And Its Campaigns: with some account of the Corcoran Legion, and sketches of the principal officers. By Capt. D. P. Conyngham, A.D.C. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. Pp. 559. 1869.

In this, the second edition of Captain Conyngham's well-known work, the publisher has left nothing to be desired, but has given us a book which, with its clear type, good paper, handsome and substantial binding, will compare not unfavorably with any recent issue of the press.

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THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY will have ready, in a few days, a new edition of _St. Liguori's Way of Salvation_, and a new edition of the Douay Bible, 12mo, printed on fine paper. Also an 8vo edition, on superfine paper, illustrated.

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THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY is now printing a cheap edition of Challoner's _Catholic Christian Instructed_, 24mo, to be done up in strong paper covers, and sold at 20 cents per copy, or _ten dollars_ for _one hundred copies_. This will enable clergymen and others to distribute this valuable book among non-Catholics. The Society will also print a cheap 12mo edition (large type) of the some book, which will be sold at a low price. At the same time, cheap editions will be issued of _The Poor Man's Catechism_, (two editions,) _Poor Man's Controversy_, Bossuet's _Exposition_. Gallitzin's _Defence of Catholic Principles_, and Gallitzin's _Letters on the Bible_. Also cheap editions, bound, of _The Following of Christ_ are in press. These, with several other new editions of valuable books, will be printed during the fall. The new edition of Bishop Bayley's _History of the Church on New York Island_ will be enriched by several new notes, and portraits on steel of Bishops Concannon, Connolly, Dubois, and Archbishop Hughes.

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Messrs. John Murphy & Co., Baltimore, will soon publish _The Life of the Very Rev. Frederick W. Faber, D.D._

Mr. Patrick Donahoe, Boston, has in press a _Life of Christopher Columbus_, translated from the French.

D. & J. Sadlier & Co. are preparing for publication _Ten Working Designs for Catholic Churches_. The work is highly recommended by several archbishops and bishops.

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Books Received.

From Leypoldt & Holt, New York: Stretton. A Novel. By Henry Kingsley. With illustrations. Pp. 250. 1869.

From Lee & Shepard, Boston: Credo; an American Woman in Europe. Patty Gray's Journey from Boston to Baltimore.

From Benziger Bros., New York and Cincinnati: Cantarium Romanum. Pars Prima. Ordinariun Missae.

{721}

The Catholic World.

Vol. IX., No. 54. September, 1869.

Daybreak.