Chapter III.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

On the following day, Richard went to the weather-cross. He did not meet Angela. She must have been unusually early; for the flowers had evidently just been placed before the statue.

He returned, gloomy, to the house and wrote in his diary:

"May 14th.--She did not meet me today, and probably will not meet me again. I should have left the book where it was; it might have awakened her gratitude; for I think she left it purposely, to give me an opportunity to make her acquaintance.

"How many young women would give more than a book to get acquainted with a wealthy party. The 'Angel' is very sensitive; but this sensibility pleases me, because it is true womanly delicacy.

"She will now avoid meeting me in this lonely road. But I will study her character in her father's house. I will see if she does not confirm my opinion of the women of our times. It was for this purpose alone that I accepted Siegwart's invitation. Angela must not play Isabella; no woman ever shall. Single and free from woman's yoke, I will go through the world."

He put aside the diary, and began reading Vogt's Physiological Letters_.

At three o'clock precisely, Richard with the punctual doctor left Frankenhöhe. They passed through the chestnut grove and through the vineyard toward Salingen. The doctor pushed on with long steps, his arms swinging back and forth. He was evidently pleased with the subject he had been reading. He had, on leaving the house, shaken Richard by the hand, and spoken a few friendly words, but not a syllable since. Richard knew his ways, and knew that it would take some time for him to thaw.

They were passing between Siegwart's house and Salingen when they beheld Angela, at a distance, coming toward them. She carried a little basket on her arm, and on her head she wore a straw hat with broad fluttering ribbons. Richard fixed his eyes attentively on her. This time, also, she did not wear hoops, but a dress of modest colors. He admired her light, graceful movement and charming figure. The blustering doctor moderated his steps and went slower the nearer he came to Angela, and considered her with surprise. Frank greeted her, touching his hat. She did not thank him, as before, with a friendly greeting, but by a scarcely perceptible inclination of the head; nor did she smile as before, but on this account seemed to him more charming and ethereal than ever. She only glanced at him, and he thought he observed a slight blush on her cheeks.

{757}

These particulars were engrossing the young man's attention when he heard the doctor say,

"Evidently the Angel of Salingen."

"Who?" said Richard in surprise.

"The Angel of Salingen," returned Klingenberg. "You are surprised at this appellation; is it not well-merited?"

"My surprise increases, doctor; for exaggeration is not your fashion."

"But she deserves acknowledgment. Let me explain. The maiden is the daughter of the proprietor Siegwart, and her name is Angela. She is a model of every virtue. She is, in the female world, what an image of the Virgin, by one of the old masters, would be among the hooped gentry of the present. As you are aware, I have been often called to the cabins of the sick poor, and there the quiet, unostentatious labors of this maiden have become known to me. Angela prepares suitable food for the sick, and generally takes it to them herself. The basket on her arm does service in this way. There are many poor persons who would not recover unless they had proper, nourishing food. To these Angela is a great benefactor. For this reason, she has a great influence over the minds of the sick, and the state of the mind greatly facilitates or impedes their recovery.

"I have often entered just after she had departed, and the beneficial influence of her presence could be still seen in the countenances of the poor. Her presence diffused resignation, peace, contentment, and a peculiar cheerfulness in the meanest and most wretched hovels of poverty, where she enters without hesitation. This is certainly a rare quality in so young a creature. She rejoices the hearts of the children by giving them clothes, sometimes made by herself, or pictures and the like. Her whole object appears to be to reconcile and make all happy. I have just seen her for the first time; her beauty is remarkable, and might well adorn an angel. The common people wish only to Germanize 'Angela' when they call her 'Angel.' But she is indeed an angel of heaven to the poor and needy."

Frank said nothing. He moved on in silence toward the weather-cross.

"I have accidentally discovered a singular custom of your 'angel,' doctor. There is at the weather-cross a Madonna of stone. Angela has imposed upon herself the singular task of adorning this Madonna, daily, with fresh flowers."

"You are a profane fellow, Richard. You should not speak in such a derisive tone of actions which are the out-flowings of pious sentiment."

"Every one has his hobby. What will not people do through ambition? I know ladies who torture a piano for half the night, in order to catch the tone of the prima-donna at the opera. I know women who undergo all possible privations to be able to wear as fine clothes, as costly furs, as others with whom they are in rivalry. This exhaustive night-singing, these deprivations, are submitted to through foolish vanity. Perhaps Angela is not less ambitious and vain than others of her sex. As she cannot dazzle these country folk with furs or toilette, she dazzles their religious sentiment by ostentatious piety."

"Radically false!" said the doctor. "Charity and virtue are recognized and honored not only in the country, but also in the cities. Why do not your coquettes strive for this approval? Because they want Angela's nobility of soul. {758} And again, why should Angela wish to gain the admiration of the peasants? She is the daughter of the wealthiest man in the neighborhood. If such was her object, she could gratify her ambition in a very different way."

"Then Angela is a riddle to me," returned Richard. "I cannot conceive the motives of her actions."

"Which are so natural! The maiden follows the impulses of her own noble nature, and these impulses are developed and directed by Christian culture, and convent education. Angela was a long time with the nuns, and only returned home two years ago. Here you have the very natural solution of the riddle."

"Are you acquainted with the Siegwart family?"

"No; what I know of Angela I learned from the people of Salingen."

They arrived at the platform. Klingenberg stood silent for some time admiring the landscape. The view did not seem to interest Richard. His eyes rested on Angela's home, whose white walls, surrounded by vineyards and corn-fields, glistened in the sun.

"It is worth while to come up here oftener," said Klingenberg.

"Angela's work," said Richard as he drew near the statue. The doctor paused a moment and examined the flowers.

"Do you observe Angela's fine taste in the arrangement of the colors?" said he. "And the forget-me-nots! What a deep religious meaning they have."

They returned by another way to Frankenhöhe.

"Angela's pious work," began Richard after a long pause, "reminds me of a religious custom against which modern civilization has thus far warred in vain. I mean the veneration of saints. You, as a Protestant, will smile at this custom, and I, as a Catholic, must deplore the tenacity with which my church clings to this obsolete remnant of heathen idolatry."

"Ah! this is the subject you alluded to yesterday," said the doctor. "I must, in fact, smile, my dear Richard! But I by no means smile at 'the tenacity with which your church clings to the obsolete remnants of heathen idolatry.' I smile at your queer idea of the veneration of the saints. I, as a reasonable man, esteem this veneration, and recognize its admirable and beneficial influence on human society."

This declaration increased Frank's surprise to the highest degree. He knew the clear mind of the doctor, and could not understand how it happened that he wished to defend a custom so antagonistic to modern thought.

"You find fault," continued Klingenberg, "with the custom of erecting statues to these holy men in the churches, the forest, the fields, the houses, and in the market?"

"Yes, I do object to that."

"If you had objected to the lazy Schiller at Mayence, or the robber's poet Schiller, as he raves at the theatre in Mannheim, or to the conqueror and destroyer of Germany, Gustavus Adolphus, whose statue is erected as an insult in a German city, then you would be right."

"Schiller-worship has its justification," retorted Frank. "They erect public monuments to the genial spirit of that man, to remind us of his services to poetry, his aspirations, and his German patriotism."

"It is praiseworthy to erect monuments to the poet. But do not talk of Schiller's patriotism, for he had none. But let that pass; it is not to the point. The question is, whether you consider it praiseworthy to erect monuments to deserving and exalted genius?"

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"Without the least hesitation, I say yes. But I see what you are driving at, doctor. I know the remorseless logic of your inferences. But you will not catch me in your vise this time. You wish to infer that the saints far surpassed Schiller in nobility and greatness of soul, and that honoring them, therefore, is more reasonable, and more justifiable, than honoring Schiller. I dispute the greatness of the so-called saints. They were men full of narrowness and rigorism. They despised the world and their friends. They carried this contempt to a wonderful extent--to a renunciation of all the enjoyments of life, to voluntary poverty and unconditional obedience. But all these are fruits that have grown on a stunted, morbid tree, and are in opposition to progress, to industry, and to the enlightened civilization of modern times. The dark ages might well honor such men, but our times cannot. Schiller, on the contrary, that genial man, taught us to love the pleasures of life. By his fine genius and his odes to pleasure, he frightened away all the spectres of these enthusiastic views of life. He preached a sound taste and a free, unconstrained enjoyment of the things of this beautiful earth. And for this reason precisely, because he inaugurated this new doctrine, does he deserve monuments in his honor."

"How does it happen then, my friend," said the doctor, in a cutting tone that was sometimes peculiar to him, "that you do not take advantage of the modern doctrine of unconstrained enjoyment? Why have you preserved fresh your youthful vigor, and not dissipated it at the market of sensual pleasures? Why is your mode of life so often a reproach to your dissolute friends? Why do you avoid the resorts of refined pleasures? Why are the coquettish, vitiated, hollow inclinations of a great part of the female sex so distasteful to you? Answer me!"

"These are peculiarities of my nature; individual opinions that have no claim to any weight."

"Peculiarities of your nature--very right; your noble nature, your pure feelings rebel against these moral acquisitions of progress. I begin with your noble nature. If I did not find this good, true self in you, I would waste no more words. But because you are what you are, I must convince you of the error of your views. Schiller, you say, and, with him, the modern spirit, raised the banner of unrestrained enjoyment, and this enjoyment rests on sensual pleasures, does it not?"

"Well--yes."

"I knew and know many who followed this banner--and you also know many. Of those whom I knew professionally, some ended their days in the hospital, of the most loathsome diseases. Some, unsatiated with the whole round of pleasures, drag on a miserable life, dead to all energy, and spiritless. They drank the full cup of pleasure, and with it unspeakable bitterness and disgust. Some ended in ignominy and shame--bankruptcy, despair, suicide. Such are the consequences of this modern dogma of unrestrained enjoyments."

"All these overstepped the proper bounds of pleasure," said Richard.

"The proper bounds? Stop!" cried the doctor. "No leaps, Richard! Think clearly and logically. Christianity also allows enjoyment, but--and here is the point--in certain limits. Your progress, on the contrary, proclaims freedom in moral principles, a disregard of all moral obligations, unrestricted enjoyment--and herein consists the danger and delusion. I ask, Are you in favor of restricted or unrestricted enjoyment?"

{760}

Frank hesitated. He felt already the thumbscrew of the irrepressible doctor, and feared the inferences he would draw from his admissions.

"Come!" urged Klingenberg, "decide."

"Sound reason declares for restricted enjoyment," said Frank decidedly.

"Good; there you leave the unlimited sphere which godless progress has given to the thoughts and inclinations of men. You admit the obligation of self control, and the restraint of the grosser emotions. But let us proceed; you speak of industry. The modern spirit of industry has invoked a demon--or, rather, the demoniac spirit of the times has taken possession of industry. The great capitalists have built thrones on their money-bags and tyrannize over those who have no money. They crush out the work-shop of the industrious and well-to-do tradesman, and compel him to be their slave. Go into the factories of Elfeld, or England; you can there see the slaves of this demon industry--miserable creatures, mentally and morally stunted, socially perishing; not only slaves, but mere wheels of the machines. This is what modern industry has made of those poor wretches, for whom, according to modern enlightenment, there is no higher destiny than to drag through life in slavery, to increase the money-bags of their tyrants. But the capitalists have perfect right, according to modern ideas; they only use the means at their command. The table of the ten commandments has been broken; the yoke of Christianity broken. Man is morally and religiously free; and from this false liberalism the tyranny of plutocracy and the slavery of the poor has been developed. Are you satisfied with the development, and the principles that made it possible?"

"No," said Frank decidedly. "I despise that miserable industrialism that values the product more than the man. My admissions are, how ever, far from justifying the exaggerated notions of the saints."

"Wait a bit!" cried Klingenberg hastily. "I have just indicated the cause of this wretched egotism, and also a consequence--namely, the power of great capitalists and manufacturers over an army of white slaves. But this is by no means all. This demon of industry has consequences that will ruin a great portion of mankind. Now mark what I say, Richard! The richness of the subject allows me only to indicate. The progressive development of industry brings forth products of which past ages were ignorant, because they were not necessary for life. The existence of these products creates a demand. The increased wants increase the outlay, which in most cases does not square with the income, and therefore the accounts of many close with a deficit. The consequences of this deficit for the happiness, and even for the morals of the family, I leave untouched. The increased products beget luxury and the desire for enjoyment; the ultimate consequences of which enervate the individual and society. Hence the phenomenon, in England, that the greater portion of the people in the manufacturing towns die before the age of fifteen, and that many are old men at thirty. Enervated and demoralized peoples make their existence impossible. They go to the wall. This is a historical fact. Ergo, modern industry separated from Christian civilization hastens the downfall of nations."

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"I cannot dispute the truth of your observations. But you have touched only the dark side of modern industry, without mentioning its benefits. If industry is a source of fictitious wants, it affords, on the other hand, cheap prices to the poor for the most necessary wants of life; for example, cheap materials for clothing."

"Very cheap, but also very poor material," answered Klingenberg. "In former times, clothing was dearer, but also better. They knew nothing of the rags of the present fabrication. And it may be asked whether that dearer material was not cheaper in the end for the poor. When this is taken into consideration, the new material has no advantage over the old. I will freely admit that the inventions of modern times do honor to human genius. I acknowledge the achievements of industry, as such. I admire the improvements of machinery, the great revolution caused by the use of steam, and thousands of other wonders of art. No sensible man will question the relative worth of all these. But all these are driven and commanded by a bad influence, and herein lies the injury. We must consider industrialism from this higher standpoint. What advantage is it to a people to be clothed in costly stuffs when they are enervated, demoralized, and perishing? Clothe a corpse as you will, a corpse it will be still. And besides, the greatest material good does not compensate the white factory-slaves for the loss of their liberty. The Lucullan age fell into decay, although they feasted on young nightingales, drank liquified pearls, and squandered millions for delicacies and luxuries. The life of nations does not consist in the external splendor of wealth, in easy comfort, or in unrestrained passions. Morality is the life of nations, and virtue their internal strength. But virtue, morality, and Christian sentiment are under the ban of modern civilization. If Christianity does not succeed in overcoming this demon spirit of the times, or at least confining it within narrow limits, it will and must drive the people to certain destruction. We find decayed peoples in the Christian era, but the church has always rescued and regenerated them. While the acquisitions of modern times--industrialism, enlightenment, humanitarianism, and whatever they may be called--are, on the one hand, of little advantage or of doubtful worth, they are, on the other hand, the graves of true prosperity, liberty, and morality. They are the cause of shameful terrorism and of degrading slavery, in the bonds of the passions and in the claws of plutocracy."

Frank made no reply.

For a while they walked on in silence.

"Let us," continued Klingenberg, "consider personally those men whose molten images stand before us. Schiller's was a noble nature, but Schiller wrote:

"'No more this fight of duty, hence no longer This giant strife will I! Canst quench these passions evermore the stronger? Then ask not virtue, what I must deny.

"'Albeit I have sworn, yea, sworn that never Shall yield my master will; Yet take thy wreath; to me 'tis lost for ever! Take back thy wreath, and let me sin my fill.'

Is this a noble and exalted way of thinking? Certainly not. Schiller would be virtuous if he could clothe himself in the lustre of virtue without sacrifice. The passionate impulses of the heart are stronger in him than the sense of duty. He gives way to his passions. He renounces virtue because he is too weak, too languid, too listless to encounter this giant strife bravely like a strong man. Such is the noble Schiller. In later years, when the fiery impulses of his heart had subsided, he roused himself to better efforts and nobler aims.

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"Consider the prince of poets, Goethe. How morally naked and poor he stands before us! Goethe's coarse insults to morality are well known. His better friend, Schiller, wrote of him to Koerner, 'His mind is not calm enough, because his domestic relations, which he is too weak to change, cause him great vexation.' Koerner answered,' Men cannot violate morality with impunity.' Six years later, the 'noble' Goethe was married to his 'mistress' at Weimar. Goethe's detestable political principles are well known. He did not possess a spark of patriotism. He composed hymns of victory to Napoleon, the tyrant, the destroyer and desolator of Germany. These are the heroes of modern sentiment, the advance guard of liberty, morality, and true manhood! And these heroes so far succeeded that the noble Arndt wrote of his time, 'We are base, cowardly, and stupid; too poor for love, too listless for anger, too imbecile for hate. Undertaking every thing, accomplishing nothing; willing every thing, without the power of doing any thing.' So far has this boasted freethinking created disrespect for revealed truth. So far this modern civilization, which idealizes the passions, leads to mockery of religion and lets loose the baser passions of man. If they cast these representatives of the times in bronze, they should stamp on the foreheads of their statues the words of Arndt:

"'We are base, cowardly, and stupid; too poor for love, too listless for anger, too imbecile for hate. Undertaking every thing, accomplishing nothing; willing every thing, without the power of doing any thing."'

"You are severe, doctor."

"I am not severe. It is the truth."

"How does it happen that a people so weak, feeble, and base could overthrow the power of the French in the world?"

"That was because the German people were not yet corrupted by that shallow, unreal, hollow twaddle of the educated classes about humanity. It was not the princes, not the nobility, who overthrew Napoleon. It was the German people who did it. When, in 1813, the Germans rose, in hamlet and city, they staked their property and lives for fatherland. But it was not the enlightened poets and professors, not modern sentimentality, that raised their hearts to this great sacrifice; not these who enkindled this enthusiasm for fatherland. It was the religious element that did it. The German warriors did not sing Goethe's hymns to Napoleon, nor the insipid model song of 'Luetzows wilder Jagd,' as they rushed into battle. They sang religious hymns, they prayed before the altars. They recognized, in the terrible judgment on Russia's ice-fields, the avenging hand of God. Trusting in God, and nerved by religious exaltation, they took up the sword that had been sharpened by the previous calamities of war. So the feeble philanthropists could effect nothing. It was only a religious, healthy, strong people could do that."

"But the saints, doctor! We have wandered from them."

"Not at all! We have thrown some light on inimical shadows; the light can now shine. The lives of the saints exhibit something wonderful and remarkable. I have studied them carefully. I have sought to know their aims and efforts. I discovered that they imitated the example of Christ, that they realized the exalted teachings of the Redeemer. You find fault with their contempt for the things of this world. But it is precisely in this that these men are great. {763} Their object was not the ephemeral, but the enduring. They considered life but as the entrance to the eternal destiny of man--in direct opposition to the spirit of the times, that dances about the golden calf. The saints did not value earthly goods for more than they were worth. They placed them after self-control and victory over our baser nature. Exact and punctual in all their duties, they were animated by an admirable spirit of charity for their fellow-men. And in this spirit they have frequently revived society. Consider the great founders of orders--St. Benedict, St. Dominic, St. Vincent de Paul! Party spirit, malice, and stupidity have done their worst to blacken, defame, and calumniate them. And yet, in a spirit of self-sacrifice, the sons of St. Benedict came among the German barbarians, to bring to them the ennobling doctrines of Christianity. It was the Benedictines who cleared the primeval forests, educated their wild denizens, and founded schools; who taught the barbarians handiwork and agriculture. Science and knowledge flourished in the cloisters. And to the monks alone we are indebted for the preservation of classic literature. What the monks did then they are doing now. They forsake home, break all ties, and enter the wilderness, there to be miserably cut off in the service of their exalted mission, or to die of poisonous fevers. Name me one of your modern heroes, whose mouths are full of civilization, humanity, enlightenment--name me one who is capable of such sacrifice. These prudent gentlemen remain at home with their gold-bags and their pleasures, and leave the stupid monk to die in the service of exalted charity. It is the hypocrisy and the falsehood of the modern spirit to exalt itself, and belittle true worth. And what did St. Vincent de Paul do? More than all the gold-bags together. St. Vincent, alone, solved the social problem of his time. He was, in his time, the preserver of society, or rather, Christianity through him. And to-day our gold-bags tremble before the apparition of the same social problem. Here high-sounding phrases and empty declamation do not avail. Deeds only are of value. But the inflated spirit of the times is not capable of noble action. It is not the modern state--not enlightened society, sunk in egotism and gold--that can save us. Christianity alone can do it. Social development will prove this."

"I do not dispute the services of the saints to humanity," said Frank. "But the question is, Whether society would be benefited if the fanatical, dark spirit of the middle ages prevailed, instead of the spirit of modern times?"

"The fanatical, dark spirit of the middle ages!" cried the doctor indignantly. "This is one of those fallacious phrases. The saints were not fanatical or dark. They were open, cheerful, natural, humble men. They did not go about with bowed necks and downcast eyes; but affable, free from hypocrisy, and dark, sullen demeanor, they passed through life. Many saints were poets. St. Francis sang his spiritual hymns to the accompaniment of the harp. St. Charles played billiards. The holy apostle, St. John, resting from his labors, amused himself in childish play with a bird. Such were these men; severe toward themselves, mild to others, uncompromising with the base and mean. They were all abstinent and simple, allowing themselves only the necessary enjoyments. They concealed from observation their severe mode of life, and smiled while their shoulders bled from the discipline. Pride, avarice, envy, voluptuouness, and all the bad passions, were strangers to them; not because they had not the inclinations to these passions, but because they restrained and overcame their lower nature.

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"I ask you, now, which men deserve our admiration--those who are governed by unbounded selfishness, who are slaves to their passions, who deny themselves no enjoyment, and who boast of their degrading licentiousness; or those who, by reason of a pure life, are strong in the government of their passions, and self-sacrificing in their charity for their fellowmen?"

"The preference cannot be doubtful," said Frank. "For the saints have accomplished the greatest, they have obtained the highest thing, self-control. But, doctor, I must condemn that saint-worship as it is practised now. Human greatness always remains human, and can make no claims to divine honor."

The doctor swung his arms violently. "What does this reproach amount to? Where are men deified? In the Catholic Church? I am a Protestant, but I know that your church condemns the deification of men."

"Doctor," said Frank, "my religious ignorance deserves this rebuke."

"I meant no rebuke. I would only give conclusions. Catholicism is precisely that power that combats with success against the deifying of men. You have in the course of your studies read the Roman classics. You know that divine worship was offered to the Roman emperors. So far did heathen flattery go, that the emperors were honored as the sons of the highest divinity--Jupiter. Apotheosis is a fruit of heathen growth; of old heathenism and of new heathenism. When Voltaire, that idol of modern heathen worship, was returning to Paris in 1778, he was in all earnestness promoted to the position of a deity. This remarkable play took place in the theatre. Voltaire himself went there. Modern fanaticism so far lost all shame that the people kissed the horse on which the philosopher rode to the theatre. Voltaire was scarcely able to press through the crowd of his worshippers. They touched his clothes--touched handkerchiefs to them--plucked hairs from his fur coat to preserve as relics. In the theatre they fell on their knees before him and kissed his feet. Thus that tendency that calls itself free and enlightened deified a man--Voltaire, the most trifling scoffer, the most unprincipled, basest man of Christendom.

"Let us consider an example of our times. Look at Garibaldi in London. That man permitted himself to be set up and worshipped. The saints would have turned away from this stupidity with loathing indignation. But this boundless veneration flattered the old pirate Garibaldi. He received 267,000 requests for locks of his hair, to be cased in gold and preserved as relics. Happily he had not much hair. He should have graciously given them his moustaches and whiskers."

Frank smiled. Klingenberg's pace increased, and his arms swung more briskly.

"Such is the man-worship of modern heathenism. This humanitarianism is ashamed of no absurdity, when it sinks to the worship of licentiousness and baseness personified."

"The senseless aberrations of modern culture do not excuse saint worship. And you certainly do not wish to excuse it in that way. There is, however, a reasonable veneration of human greatness. Monuments are erected to great men. We behold them and are reminded of their genius, their services; and there it stops. It occurs to no reasonable man to venerate these men on his knees, as is done with the saints."

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"The bending of the knee, according to the teaching of your church, does not signify adoration, but only veneration," replied Klingenberg. "Before no Protestant in the world would I bend the knee; before St. Benedict and St. Vincent de Paul I would willingly, out of mere admiration and esteem for their greatness of soul and their purity of morals. If a Catholic kneels before a saint to ask his prayers, what is there offensive in that? It is an act of religious conviction. But I will not enter into the religious question. This you can learn better from your Catholic brethren--say from the Angel of Salingen, for example, who appears to have such veneration for the saints."

"You will not enter into the religious question; yet you defend saint-worship, which is something religious."

"I do not defend it on religious grounds, but from history, reason, and justice. History teaches that this veneration had, and still has, the greatest moral influence on human society. The spirit of veneration consists in imitating the example of the person venerated. Without this spirit, saint-worship is an idle ceremony. But that true veneration of the saints elevates and ennobles, you cannot deny. Let us take the queen of saints, Mary. What makes her worthy of veneration? Her obedience to the Most High, her humility, her strength of soul, her chastity. All these virtues shine out before the spiritual eyes of her worshippers as models and patterns of life. I know a lady, very beautiful, very wealthy; but she is also very humble, very pure, for she is a true worshipper of Mary. Would that our women would venerate Mary and choose her for a model! There would then be no coquettes, no immodest women, no enlightened viragoes. Now, as saint-worship is but taking the virtues of the saints as models for imitation, you must admit that veneration in this sense has the happiest consequences to human society."

"I admit it--to my great astonishment, I must admit it," said Richard.

"Let us take a near example," continued Klingenberg. "I told you of the singular qualities of Angela. As she passed, I beheld her with wonder. I must confess her beauty astonished me. But this astonishing beauty, it appears to me, is less in her charming features than in the purity, the maidenly dignity of her character. Perhaps she has to thank, for her excellence, that same correct taste which leads her to venerate Mary. Would not Angela make an amiable, modest, dutiful wife and devoted mother? Can you expect to find this wife, this mother among those given to fashions--among women filled with modern notions?"

While Klingenberg said this, a deep emotion passed over Richard's face. He did not answer the question, but let his head sink on his breast.

"Here is Frankenhöhe," said the doctor. "As you make no more objections, I suppose you agree with me. The saints are great, admirable men; therefore they deserve monuments. They are models of virtue and the greatest benefactors of mankind; therefore they deserve honor. '_Quod erat demonstrandum_.'"

"I only wonder, doctor, that you, a Protestant, can defend such views."

"You will allow Protestants to judge reasonably," replied Klingenberg. "My views are the result of careful study and impartial reflection."

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"I am also astonished--pardon my candor--that with such views you can remain a Protestant."

"There is a great difference between knowing and willing, my young friend. I consider conversion an act of great heroism, and also as a gift of the highest grace."

Richard wrote in his diary:

"If Angela should be what the doctor considers her! According to my notions, such a being exists only in the realm of the ideal. But if Angela yet realizes this ideal? I must be certain. I will visit Siegwart to-morrow."

To Be Continued.

From The German

The Flight Into Egypt.

Greenwood tent, new splendors wear, Let thy festal tree-tops glisten; Stag, come here to look and listen; For the world's joy draweth near! Flowers, unclose your lids, that clearer Light your dew-wet eyes may mirror. Blossom! blossom! On her bosom Lo! the mother bears the Child!

Glad-winged birds, from forest dim, Hither fly, where peace long-sought is; Sing melodious jubilates, With the blessèd cherubim. Morning airs, come quick! with tender Thrill breathe on the branches slender; Breathe and hover! Rough ways over Comes the mother with the Child!

Stag, birds, trees, and breezes blest, Triumph in harmonious numbers-- Fear not to disturb the slumbers Of the Babe upon her breast. Gently lull him with your voices, O'er whom all the world rejoices! Sing, adore him! Bend before him! Hail the mother with the Child!

{767}

Hon. Thomas Dongan, Governor of New York. [Footnote 187]

[Footnote 187: Authorities: O'Callaghan's _Documentary and Colonial Histories of New York_. Bancroft's _History of the United States_. Lingard's _History of England_. Bishop Bayley's _History of the Catholic Church in New York_. O'Callaghan's _Journal of the Legislature of New York_, especially a note thereto, by George H. Moore, Esq. Shea's _History of the Catholic Missions_. Campbell's _Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll_. DeCourcy and Shea's _Catholic Church in the United States_, etc.]

The student of Catholic history may be permitted to recall, with an honorable pride, the illustrious name and recount the eminent public services of Colonel Thomas Dongan, who, while the only Catholic, was one of the most able and accomplished, of the colonial governors of New York. His life and exploits are but little known, even among Catholics; and while his merits place him without a superior in the honored list of our governors, it yet remains, for the Catholic historian especially, to rescue his fame from obscurity, and to weave together, from scattered historical fragments, the story of a career at once brilliant and useful, checkered and romantic. As soldier, ruler, exile, nobleman, or Christian gentleman, he is equally entitled to a distinguished place among the remarkable men of his age. His position was a most difficult and delicate one--a Catholic ruler over Protestant subjects, at a time when religious rivalries and animosities formed the mainspring of public and private political action. It is no small achievement that, in so trying an office, he acquitted himself to the satisfaction of friend and foe; and that Protestant and Catholic historians unite in commending his wise and honorable course. As a patriot, he has won our national gratitude; for it is to his courage and address that we are indebted for the invaluable service of having extended the northern frontier of our republic to the great lakes. His devotion to civil and religious liberty places his name with that of Calvert, in the hearts of Catholics; while both should be hallowed together by all lovers of free government.

The subject of this memoir was descended from a noble and ancient Irish family, distinguished for an energy of character and enterprising spirit which he did not allow to expire with his ancestors. His father was Sir John Dongan, baronet, of Castletoun, in the county of Kildare, Ireland. He was also nephew to Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, who figured conspicuously in the reign of Charles II., as he did in that of James II. This Earl of Tyrconnel, uncle to Governor Dongan, was one of those against whom Titus Oates informed. He was made lieutenant-governor of Ireland, and afterward lord deputy, on the recall of Clarendon, by James II.; and he aimed at rendering Ireland independent of England, in the event of the Prince of Orange succeeding in his efforts to gain the throne. In furtherance of his patriotic designs, Earl Tyrconnel solicited of James permission to hold an Irish parliament; but that monarch, suspecting his purpose, rejected the measure.

Thomas Dongan was born in 1634; and, after being well-grounded in his religion, and in secular learning, was trained to the profession of a soldier. He entered the military service of France, and served as colonel of a French regiment, under Louis XIV.[Footnote 188]

[Footnote 188: We find his name rendered in French documents as _Colonel D'Unguent_.]

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His services there were so highly prized that it was with great difficulty and at considerable sacrifice that he was able to withdraw from it. In 1677-8, after the English parliament had forced Charles II. to break with Louis XIV., an order was issued commanding all British subjects in the service of France to return home. Colonel Dongan obeyed the order of his own sovereign; and he himself informs us that he was obliged to quit "that honorable and advantageous post, and resisted the temptations of greater preferment, then offered him, if he would continue there; for which reason the French king commanded him to quit France in forty-eight hours, and refused to pay him a debt of sixty-five thousand livres, then due him for recruits and arrears, upon an account stated by the intendant of Nancy." No subsequent efforts of Colonel Dongan succeeded in appeasing the French king's resentment, or in securing the payment of his claim.

On his return from the French service to England, he was appointed, by Charles II., a general officer in the English army, then destined for Flanders, and had an annual pension of £500 settled on him for life, in consideration of his losses in France. But it is regarded as quite certain that he did not go to Flanders under this appointment, to defend and support the English garrisons in that country, then menaced by the French; for, in the same year, he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Tangier, a position which he accepted, and continued to fill until the year 1680.

At this time, the American province of New York was under the proprietary government of James, Duke of York, whose deputy's administration of the affairs of the colony had produced great discontent among the people. His governor, Andros, had been recalled to answer the charges of the people; had returned to New York, acquitted by the duke, and resumed the imposition of the heavy system of taxation which had weighed so heavily on the citizens, and produced such discontent. But the resistance of the people, not stopping short even of calling in question the supreme authority of the duke, seconded by the remonstrances of William Penn, finally had the desired effect. Andros was recalled, and Colonel Dongan appointed to succeed him as governor of New York. His commission from the Duke of York, bearing date September 30th, 1682, contains the following appointing clause:

"And whereas, I have conceived a good opinion of the integrity, prudence, ability and fittness of Coll. Thomas Dongan, to be employed as my Lieutent there, I have therefore thought fitt to constitute and appoint him ye said Coll. Thos to be my Lt and Govr within ye lands, islands, places aforesaid (except the said East and West New Jersey) to performe & execute all and every the powers wch are by the said lettrs pattents granted unto me to be executed by me, my Deputy, Agent or Assignes."

The written instructions received by the new governor from the Duke of York, bearing date January 27th, 1683, direct him: First, to call together the council of the duke, consisting of Fredericke Phillipps, Stephen Courtland, and other eminent inhabitants, not exceeding ten councillors. Second, and most important of all, to issue warrants to the sheriffs of the counties for an election of a general assembly of all the freeholders of the province, to pass laws "for the good weale and government of the said Colony and its Dependencyes, and of all inhabitants thereof." {769} The assembly was not to exceed eighteen members, and was to assemble in the city of New York. Third, to give or withhold his assent to such laws as the general assembly might pass, as he might approve or disapprove of the same, etc. Fourth, the laws so passed to be permanent. Fifth, "And I doe hereby require and command you yt noe man's life, member, freehold, or goods, be taken away or harmed in any of the places undr yor government but by established and knowne laws not repugnant to, but as nigh as may be agreable to the laws of the kingdome of England." Sixth, to repress "drunkennesse and debauchery, swearing and blasphemy," and to appoint none to office who may be given to such vices; and to encourage commerce and merchants. Seventh, to exercise general discretionary powers, except that of declaring war, without the duke's consent. The eighth relates to assessment of the estates of persons capable of serving as jurors. Ninth, to establish courts of justice, and to sell the royal lands. Tenth, to pardon offences. Eleventh, to erect custom-houses and other public buildings. Twelfth, to organize the militia. Thirteenth, to settle the boundaries of the province. Fourteenth, to encourage planters, and to lay no tax on commerce, except according to established laws. Fifteenth, to purchase Indian lands. Sixteenth relates to the granting of a liberal charter to the city of New York. Seventeenth, to send reports, by every ship, of the progress of the colony, and to regulate internal trade; and eighteenth, to devote his life, time, etc., to the faithful discharge of his duties.

The admirable document of which the foregoing is a brief synopsis, containing as it does the general principles of all good government, was, no doubt, designed to meet the former evils complained of by the people of New York. That the influence of Colonel Dongan, during the eight months or so that he remained in England between his appointment and departure for New York, was wholesomely exerted in impressing a liberal and enlightened character upon the policy and instructions of the home government, cannot be doubted. No one was better fitted by experience, good judgment, and inclination, for such a task. The document itself, the most just and liberal that ever emanated from an English sovereign, goes far to vindicate the name and character of James II.

The new governor arrived at New York on the 25th of August, 1683, and entered upon the duties of his office--duties rendered more delicate and embarrassing by the excitement through which the community had just passed, the high and extravagant expectations built upon a new appointment, made with the view of remedying old complaints, and by the fact that he himself was a professed and zealous Catholic, while the community whose destinies he was commissioned to guide were almost without exception Protestants, and peculiarly inclined, at that time, to look with distrust and hatred upon all "Papists." That such was the case, we are told by all the historians of the state and city; but that, by his address, good government, and enlightened policy, Governor Dongan soon removed this difficulty, we have the same authority for asserting. Smith says of him, "He was a man of integrity, moderation, and genteel manners, and, though a professed papist, may be classed among the best of our governors;" and adds "that he surpassed all his predecessors in a due attention to our affairs with the Indians, by whom he was highly esteemed." {770} Valentine writes, that "he was a Roman Catholic in his religious tenets, which was the occasion of much remark on the part of the Protestant inhabitants of the colony. His personal character was in other respects not objectionable to the people, and he is described as a man of integrity, moderation, and genteel manners, and as being among the best of the governors who had been placed in charge of this province." And Booth also writes of him, "He was of the Roman Catholic faith, a fact which rendered him, at first, obnoxious to many; but his firm and judicious policy, his steadfast integrity, and his pleasing and courteous address, soon won the affections of the people, and made him one of the most popular of the royal governors." Colden, in his history of the Five Nations, calls him an "honest gentleman," and "an active and prudent governor."

The governor at once organized his council, which, as well from necessity as from prudent policy, was composed of gentlemen of the Dutch Reformed and English churches. Regarding his functions as purely civil, he did not, in the government of the colonists, who were Protestants, advance his views upon subjects not connected with civil government offensively before them, as they feared he would do. He might have induced over from the old country members of his own church to form his council; but neither duty nor prudence recommended this measure. Catholics, however, were no longer excluded from office, nor from the practice of their religion. The governor had a chapel, in which himself, his suite, his servants, and all the Catholics of the province, could attend divine service according to their own creed. A Jesuit father, who accompanied him from England, was his chaplain.

He proceeded at once, according to his instructions, to issue his warrants for the election of a general assembly. This was an auspicious beginning of his administration, as it was a concession from the Duke of York for which the people had long struggled. This illustrious body, consisting of the governor, ten councillors, and seventeen representatives elected by the people, assembled in the city of New York, on the 17th of October, 1683. As he was the first, so he was the most liberal and friendly royal governor, that presided over the popular legislatures of New York; and the contests between arbitrary power and popular rights, which distinguished the administration of future governors, down to the Revolution, did not have their origin under his administration. The first act of the general assembly was the framing of a charter of liberties--the first guaranty of popular government in the province; and Governor Dongan, as he was the first governor to sign the charter of civil and religious liberty in New York, was, not many years afterward, the first citizen persecuted for his religion after its adoption. This noble charter ordained,

"That supreme legislative power should for ever reside in the governor, council, and people, met in general assembly; that every freeholder and freeman might vote for representatives without restraint; that no freeman should suffer but by the judgment of his peers, and that all trials should be by a jury of twelve men; that no tax should be assessed, on any pretext whatever, but by the consent of the assembly; that no seaman or soldier should be quartered on the inhabitants against their will; that no martial law should exist; that no person, professing faith in God, by Jesus Christ, should, at any time, be in any way disquieted or questioned for any difference of opinion in matters of religion."

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It was provided that the general assemblies were to convene at least triennially; new police regulations were established; Sunday laws were enacted; tavern-keepers were prohibited from selling liquor except to travellers; children were prohibited from playing in the street, citizens from working, and Indians and negroes from assembling, on the Sabbath; twenty cartmen were licensed, on condition that they should repair the highways gratis, when called on by the mayor, and cart the dirt from the streets beyond the limits of the city. The inhabitants were required to sweep the dirt of the streets together every Saturday afternoon, preparatory to its removal by the cartmen. On the 8th of December, 1683, the city was divided into six wards, each of which was entitled to elect an alderman and councilman annually, to represent them in the government of the city. The appointment of the mayor was reserved to the governor and council, and was not made elective by the people until after the American Revolution.

In 1685, on the death of Charles, the Duke of York succeeded to the English crown, under the title of James II. Governor Dongan, by special orders from the home government, proclaimed King James throughout the province. Indian and French disturbances having ceased, all was now quiet along the northern frontier, and the governor, skilfully availing himself of the opportunity, caused the king's arms to be put upon all the Indian castles along the Great Lake, and they, he writes to Secretary Blathwayt, submitted willingly to the king's government. In 1686, Governor Dongan received a new commission, bearing date on the 10th of June of that year. This was a very different document from his first commission, and manifests the change in favor of arbitrary power which took place in the sentiments and policy of James on his accession to the throne. The general assembly was abolished and the legislative power was vested in the governor and council, subject to the approval of the king; they were also authorized to proclaim and enforce martial law, to impose taxes, etc. It has been erroneously stated by one of our historians that James, in this document, instructed Governor Dongan "to favor the introduction of the Roman Catholic religion into the province--a course of policy which the governor, himself a Catholic, was reluctant to adopt;" whereas, the only provision therein relating to religion is in these words:

"And wee doe, by these presents, will, require, and command you to take all possible care for the Discountenance of Vice and encouragement of Virtue and good-living, that by such example the Infidels may bee invited and desired to partake of the Christian Religion."

According to this commission, the general assembly was dissolved on the 6th of August, 1685, and no other was convened during the reign of James. Notwithstanding this radical change in the organic law of the province, the mild, liberal, and judicious administration of the governor caused the exercise of arbitrary power to be but lightly felt by the people.

In 1686, Governor Dongan signalized his administration by granting, in the name and by the authority of the king, the celebrated charter of the city of New York known as the _Dongan Charter_, bearing date the 22d of April of that year. This document constitutes to this day the basis and foundation of the municipal laws, rights, privileges, public property, and franchises of the city. It was confirmed and renewed by Governor Montgomery, on the 15th day of January, 1730, in the reign of George II. {772} This charter was granted on the petition of the mayor and common council of the city of New York, addressed "To the Right Honorable Colln. Dongan, Esqr., Lieutennant & Governor & Vice Admirall under his Royall Highness, James Duke of York and Albany, &c., of New York and Dependencyes in America." In this petition are recited the ancient privileges and incorporation of the city, and especially the fact that the whole island of Manhattan had been made a part of the corporation, and all the inhabitants thereof were subject to the government of the city; and praying a re-grant and confirmation of the same, and of all their ancient rights and privileges. The charter itself confirms all the ancient franchises and grants to the city, and confers many new ones upon it; it grants to the city the waste or unappropriated lands on the island, and concedes the right of local or municipal legislation, the ferries, markets, docks, etc., and covers thoroughly the whole ground of municipal government. It would seem, from an endorsement made on the petition in the office of the home government, by the secretary through whose hands it passed, that the new charter should be granted on the express condition that the old charter be surrendered; "otherwise, they may keep all their Old Priviledges by virtue of that, and take ye additions by this new one, without Subjecting their Officers, &c., to the approbation & Refusall, &c., of ye governors."

Among other public measures and acts of Governor Dongan may be mentioned, that he proposed to the home government the establishment of post-offices, or "post-houses," as they were called, all along the Atlantic coast within the English dominions, and the establishment of a mint. French Protestants, resorting to the colony for trade or business of any kind, were not to be molested. The fort was supported for one year at his private expense, during the insufficiency of the public revenue under Collector Santen. He obtained a release from the Ranseleers to the lands in Albany, and then granted a charter to that town; and he endeavored to bring about the union of New Jersey and Connecticut, under one and the same government with New York, as a measure of public safety and strength. In 1686, the governor's salary was raised from £400 to £600 per annum. The governor's residence was at the fort, and there was attached to the office the products or rents of a farm, called, at various times, the governor's, duke's, or king's farm, and of another smaller piece of land, called the queen's garden, which were subsequently granted to and remain to this day the property of the corporation of Trinity Church. It may also be mentioned, as an evidence of Governor Dongan's popularity, that there is to be found, in a list of the titles of acts passed by the general assembly in 1684, the following title, "A Bill for a present to the Governor."

We are told by the historians that "considerable improvements were made in the city in Governor Dongan's time." [Footnote 189]

[Footnote 189: Valentine.]

The city wall, erected in 1653, on the present line of Wall street, which derived its name from this circumstance, ran through the farm of Jan Jansen Damen; and from Broadway to Pearl street, the lands north of the wall were, in Governor Dongan's time, in possession of Damen's heirs, who were now induced to part with the same, so that the wall was removed and these valuable lots brought at once into the market, and were soon improved. {773} Afterward, Governor Dongan determined still further to enlarge the city, to demolish the old fortifications, which were in a state of decay, and to erect new defences further out. Wall street was laid out on the site of the old city wall. "The street was afterwards favored by the erection of the city hall on the site of the present custom-house, and of Trinity Church, facing its westerly extremity, and soon became one of principal streets of the city." In 1687, a new street was laid out between Whitehall street and Old Slip, and the corporation sold the lots on condition that the purchasers should build the street out toward the water and protect it against the washing of the tide. These improvements were not carried into effect until several years afterward. This is the present Water street. In the second year of Governor Dongan's administration, 1684, the vessels of New York consisted of three barques, three brigantines, twenty-six sloops, and forty-six open boats; facts which convey some notion of the commerce and prosperity of New York at that time.

Governor Dongan manifested great activity and energy in the conduct of public affairs. His report on the condition of the colony is a document replete with intelligence, vigor, and practical experience, and shows that no part of the colony, however remote, escaped his attention and care; and no branch of the public service was neglected by him. Mr. Santen, the collector of the port, became a defaulter to the amount of £3000, and was the occasion of great embarrassment and loss to Governor Dongan, who, however, on his part, acted promptly in the premises, by seizing the books of the delinquent official, causing him to be arrested and brought before the council for trial, and, on his proving refractory, sending him to England. While in England, the displaced collector preferred charges against Governor Dongan, who defended himself in that able and conclusive document, or report, on the condition of the colony, addressed to the lords of the home government, to which allusion has just been made. The following extract will show how characteristically he defended himself against one of Mr. Santen's charges:

"To the Tenth: Concerning my Covetousness, as hee is pleased to term it. Here, (if Mr. Santen speaks true, in saying I have been covetous,) it was in the management of this small Revenue to the best advantage, and had Mr. Santen been as just as I have been careful, the King had not been in debt, and I had more in my pocket than now I have."

This document also shows how active Governor Dongan was to secure the beaver and other Indian trade for the province; his zeal would not stop short of confining the French to the other side of the great lakes, and William Penn and his people south of a line drawn from a point on the Delaware "to the falls in the Susquehanna." [Footnote 190]

[Footnote 190: Wyalusing Falls, Bradford County, Pennsylvania.]

The report is also full of valuable suggestions on the future as well as the past and present government of the province, and contains valuable statistics relating to the courts of justice, the public revenues, trade and commerce, population, the Indians, shipping, agriculture, and every other public interest.

Governor Dongan distinguished his administration in an especial manner by his attention to the relations and interests of the province connected with the Indian tribes within and adjoining it; and he is admitted by historians to have surpassed all his predecessors in this department of public affairs, and to have been held in the greatest esteem by the Indians themselves. {774} While seeking their alliance, their trade, and their submission to his government, he ever treated them with frankness, generosity, and true friendship. The grateful savages always addressed him by the friendly name of "Corlear;" [Footnote 191] "and the name of 'Dongan, the white father,' was remembered in the Indian lodges long after it had grown indifferent to his countrymen at Manhattan." His master-stroke of Indian policy was in gaining the alliance of the Five Nations, securing their submission to the English government in preference to that of France, and carrying our northern frontier to the great lakes.

[Footnote 191: This was the name of one of the old Dutch inhabitants, who had conferred a great boon upon the Indians, and by his timely intervention saved a large number of them from a contemplated massacre in one of their wars. Whenever afterward they wished to address a person in terms of strong attachment and confidence, they called him "_Corlear_."]

The Five Nations were a confederacy of the five most powerful Indian tribes of the north: the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas. They were usually called, by the French, by the name of "Iroquois." Their confederation dates back beyond the limits of their history, as known to the white race; and both, like that of other nations in their origin, are only known to us through dim traditions and fabulous exaggerations. They were united when the French came to Canada; for we are told, that, "when Champlain arrived in Canada, he found them united in a war against the Adirondacks, or Algonquins; and, as he settled in the country of the latter, he accompanied them in one of their hostile incursions, and, by the assistance of the French, a body of the Five Nations was defeated." They long felt a resentment for this act of hostility, although they received missionaries from the French, and, in a great measure, embraced the Christian faith. On the arrival of the Dutch, a trade sprang up between the inhabitants of New Amsterdam and the Indians of the Five Nations; and the latter, by exchanging their furs for fire-arms, became more powerful and more terrible to their enemies. It does not seem that the Dutch government laid any claim to their country, or to their allegiance; though Governor Dongan, in his controversy with the French, claimed that his pretensions were based upon a Dutch title. Their form of government was federal, like our own. Each nation had its own separate government, for the regulation of their local and individual affairs, and a general government in all things relating to their common interests. They were the most powerful, the most permanent, and the most capable Indian organization in America. Like the Romans, they incorporated the nations they conquered into the confederacy, with equal rights; or, if this were impracticable, they destroyed their enemies entirely. Such was their power that they exacted tribute from neighboring tribes. In 1715, the Tuscaroras of North Carolina were aggregated to the original confederacy, which was thereafter known by the name of the Six Nations.

Governor Dongan soon perceived the importance of securing the friendship and alliance of these powerful and warlike tribes. The Dutch had made a treaty of peace with the Five Nations, which had never been openly broken; but as it was necessary to keep treaties with the Indians constantly renewed, in order to prevent them from being forgotten; and, as the Indians had considered themselves, on several occasions, slighted by the English governors, they had more than once invaded the territories of the latter. {775} The French in Canada, as the first Europeans who had visited their country, claimed it and the allegiance of the tribes. French missionaries, men of heroic self-sacrifice and profound piety, were among them, preaching the Gospel, receiving their confessions of faith, offering up the Christian sacrifice in their midst, and doing all in their power to improve their temporal and spiritual condition. It was natural, it was probably necessary, that these pious missionaries should bring their flocks in contact with their own government; and, while their mission and holy office among the Indians were utterly divested of all political or worldly motives, they could not avoid being powerful instruments, with the French government, in securing the advancement of French interests among those nations. Governor Dongan, on the other hand, had by his kindness and frankness completely gained their confidence, and was succeeding well in cementing the relations between himself and the Five Nations. He soon discovered the presence of the French missionaries in their midst an obstacle to this policy; and, at the same time, as a Catholic, he felt a profound interest in their religious enlightenment, and in their adherence to the church of which he was himself a devoted member. To avoid the conflict which might arise between the duty he owed, on the one hand, to his church and his conscience, and, on the other, to his king, he resolved on the plan of insisting upon his claim to the allegiance of the Five Nations, claiming the country to the great lakes, and upon the withdrawal of the French missionaries, and the substitution of English Jesuit missionaries in their place. Though receiving little encouragement from the home government in these measures, Governor Dongan carried them so far into effect as to secure the withdrawal of the French missionaries from three of the Five Nations, and to obtain the services of English Jesuits at New York, destined for the Indian missions, in the place of French priests. Father Harrison arrived in New York in 1685, and Father Gage arrived there in 1686. But, in consequence of their ignorance of the Indian language, they were compelled to remain in the city while studying it and preparing for the mission. War, too, soon rendered the field of their missionary zeal and labor inaccessible to them, and the sequel of events shows that it was neither their own nor the good fortune of the Indians that they should ever reach it. A Catholic writer [Footnote 192] thus alludes to Governor Dongan's position on this, to him, delicate subject:

"There can be no doubt that Governor Dongan, on coming among the New Yorkers, found that if the measures for converting the Indians were to proceed, the political interests of his own country required that English missionaries should take the place of the French Jesuits, some of whom were incorporated among the Five Nations. The historians of New York assert that no previous governor had made himself so well acquainted with Indian affairs, or conducted the intercourse between the settlers and Indians with so much ability and regard to the interests of the subjects of Great Britain; while, at the same time, he was held in high esteem by the Indians themselves. And it is mentioned, to his honor, by the same historians, who are unsparing in their condemnation of his religion, that he did not permit the identity of his faith with that of the Catholic missionaries of France to prevent him from opposing their residence among the Indian tribes in his province; their influence being calculated to promote the interests and policy of France, and weaken the authority of the English. But it was loyalty to his own government, and a just regard for the interests confided to him, and not indifference to the pious work of Christianizing the Indians, that induced Governor Dongan to oppose the missions of the French."

[Footnote 192: Campbell's _Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll_.]

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Another Catholic author [Footnote 193] thus writes on the same subject:

[Footnote 193: Shea's _Hist. Cath. Missions_.]

"The English colony of New York had now passed under the sway of Colonel Dongan, one of the most enterprising and active governors that ever controlled the destinies of any of the English provinces. His short but vigorous administration showed that he was not only thoroughly acquainted with the interests of England, but able to carry them out. A Catholic, who had served in the French armies, he was biassed neither by his religion nor his former services in the duties of the station now devolved upon him. ... Claiming for England all the country south of the great lakes, he it was who made them a boundary. His first step was to extend the power of New York over the five Iroquois cantons, and bind those warlike tribes to the English interest. His next, to recall the Caughnawagas to their ancient home, by promises of a new location on the plains of Saratoga, where a church should be built for them, and an English Jesuit stationed as their missionary. In this plan he found his efforts thwarted by the missionaries, who, French by birth and attachment, looked with suspicion on the growing English influence in the cantons, as fatal to the missions which had cost so much toil, and who relied little on Dongan's fair words, and subsequent promise to replace them by English members of their society."

The same author, in another work, expresses his confidence in the sincerity of Governor Dongan's intentions and promises, and points to the three English Jesuits brought to New York by him, as proof of both. [Footnote 194]

[Footnote 194: _New York Doc. Hist._ Letter of Mr. Shea, iii. 110.]

The French government of Canada was equally bent on reducing the Five Nations to subjection to the king of France. It required no serious pretexts to induce the French to carry their plans into effect by open war; and pretexts were not long wanting. The murder of a Seneca chief at Mackinaw; an attack by the Iroquois on a French post in Illinois; the seizure of a flotilla--fanned the embers of war into a flame, and the subjugation of the Five Nations seemed to be at hand. A large Canadian army was organized for this purpose. It is said by historians, and with probable truth, that the French king had remonstrated with James II. against Colonel Dongan's interference with the French missions, and that James had instructed his governor to desist from this policy; also, that James, on hearing of the designs of the Canadians on the Five Nations, supposing that these warlike and refractory tribes, either as subjects or enemies, would be always a thorn in the side of his province, while within its limits, ordered Colonel Dongan not to interfere with those designs. But Colonel Dongan entertained very different views on these subjects. Not only did he insist on replacing the French Jesuits with English members of the same society, but he also proposed, both to the home government and to the governors of Maryland and Virginia, that these two provinces should unite with New York in resisting the encroachments of the French. He also proposed to the home government a plan of emigration from Ireland to New York, and that one of his own nephews should be appointed to conduct and manage the enterprise. He wrote to the home government on this subject as follows:

"It will be very necessary to send over men to build those forts [the proposed forts along the northern frontier.] ... My lord, there are people enough in Ireland, who had pretences to estates there, and are of no advantage to the country, and may live here very happy. I do not doubt, if his majesty think fit to employ my nephew, he will bring over as many as the king will find convenient to send, who will be no charge to his majesty after they are landed."

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Governor Dongan, notwithstanding his instructions to the contrary, "was far too honorable to see his allies, (the Five Nations,) murdered in cold blood, in obedience to the will of his superiors." He sent his messengers to warn the Iroquois of the impending danger, and invited them to meet him at Albany, to renew the old treaty of peace, which had been long ago made between them and the Dutch, and which had almost faded from the memories of the chiefs.

Both met punctually at the appointed rendezvous; and Colonel Dongan made one of his most characteristic and effective speeches to them, in which he explained his claims upon them, demonstrated the hostility of the French and his own friendship for them, made promises of future aid, and proposed an alliance. The treaty here entered into "was long respected by both parties." The clouds of war now burst upon the Five Nations, but found them not unprepared. Two invasions of the French were repelled, and finally the invaders, weakened by sickness and unacquainted with the Indian modes of war, returned with scattered ranks to their own country, to await the terrible retaliation of an injured foe. The warriors of the Five Nations burst with fury on the Canadian settlements, "burning, ravaging, and slaying without mercy, until they had nearly exterminated the French from the territory. The war continued until, of all the French colonies, Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers alone remained, and the French dominion in America was almost annihilated; Governor Dongan remaining," says the historian, "a firm friend of the Indians during his administration, aiding them by his council, and doing them every good office in his power." [Footnote 195]

[Footnote 195: Booth's _History of the City of New York_.]

By his bold and independent course, so much at variance with the views of his royal master, Governor Dongan incurred the displeasure of James II., who suspended him from his functions, and about April, 1688, the governor resigned his office. The functions of the office of governor then devolved upon the deputy-governor, Nicholson. Smith, the historian, says of Dongan's removal from the office which he had graced so well, and in which he had done so much for the good of his king and his fellow-citizens, that "he fell into the king's displeasure through his zeal for the true interest of the province."

The voluminous correspondence between Governor Dongan and Mons. Denonville, governor of Canada, on the relations of the two rival English and French colonies, published in the _Colonial_ and _Documentary_ histories of New York, is replete with interest, as containing valuable information concerning the affairs of the day, and as fairly illustrating the character of our governor. Though frequently running into bitter personalities and irreconcilable conflict, the letters of these two officials were not devoid of personal courtesies and amenities. Thus, we see the French governor acting as a mediator with his sovereign in behalf of Governor Dongan, in order that he might recover his claim for services rendered in the French army; and we find Governor Dongan, at one time, regretting that distance prevented him from meeting and interchanging social civilities with his rival; and, at another, sending to the Canadian governor a present of oranges, which, he had heard, were a great rarity in Canada, and regretting that the messenger's want of "carriage" prevented him from sending more.

{778}

There was one point, however, upon which Governor Dongan was ever uncompromising; this was his determination to claim the great lakes as his boundary, and to submit to nothing short of this. He carried his point even in his own day; for the royal arms of England were emblazoned on the Indian castles along that border, English forts defended it, and the Five Nations recognized the king of England as their father. Though wars intervened, this boundary was afterward recognized, by solemn treaty, as the line dividing the English and French dominions in our day, the visitor to the great lakes, and the tourist at the falls of Niagara, sees the American flag floating where Governor Dongan planted its predecessor, the standard of our English ancestors. Then,

"Proudly hath it floated Through the battles of the sea, When the red-cross flag o'er smoke-wreaths played Like the lightning in its glee." _Hemans_.

Now,

"When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set her stars of glory there." _Drake_.

After his retirement from office, Governor Dongan spent his time in New York and on Staten Island, in both of which places he had acquired some property, but resided mostly on his estate on Staten Island. He was offered the commission of a major-general in the British army, and the command of a regiment in the service of James II., all of which he declined to accept.

From the time that James II. ascended the English throne, discontents began to arise among his Protestant subjects, on both sides of the ocean, at the transfer of power from the Protestants to the Catholics. The appointment of Governor Dongan, "a professed papist," was offensive at first to the people of the province of New York; but his upright administration, his devotion to the best interests of the colony, and his personal popularity, quelled all actual disturbance during his term of office. We have seen that, soon after his arrival, civil and religious liberty were guaranteed, and that he selected the council from members of the Dutch Reformed Church, in order to disarm all prejudices. He certainly was not disposed, however, to debar himself and his fellow-Catholic subjects from the enjoyment of that religious liberty which he had done so much to secure for others. He had been accompanied to New York, in 1683, by Father Thomas Harvey, S.J., who performed the divine services in the governor's chapel, in the fort, and attended to the spiritual wants of the governor, and of such Catholics as were in New York during his administration. Fathers Harrison and Gage were sent for, and arrived in New York afterward, with the view of superseding the French missionaries among the Indians. It does not appear that large numbers of Catholics emigrated to New York, during his administration, for his plan for encouraging emigration from Ireland was not carried into effect; yet it is reasonable to suppose that the number of Catholics increased somewhat under the favorable auspices of a Catholic governor. And, although Matthias Plowman, the successor to Mr. Santer, the late collector, was a Catholic, we do not find that Governor Dongan filled many of the public offices in his gift with Catholics. Mr. Nicholson, the deputy-governor, into whose hands Governor Dongan resigned his office, was not appointed by him, but was the deputy of Governor Andros, who had been appointed by the home government governor of New England and New York, and whose headquarters were at Boston; this Mr. Nicholson was said to have been "an adherent of the Catholic faith." Religious controversies ran high, however, during this period, and historians generally inform us that plots were formed by the Protestants, not only in England, under James, but also in the province of New York, under Governor Dongan. {779} This seems probable from the readiness with which the people on both sides of the Atlantic rose on their Catholic rulers as soon as the opportunity presented itself. This opportunity was afforded not long after Governor Dongan's retirement from office, in 1689, on the invasion of England by William Prince of Orange, and the abdication and flight of James II. from England.

The tone of public sentiment in New York in 1689 is thus described by Bishop Bayley, in his treatise on the _History of the Catholic Church on the Island of New York:_

"Smith, describing the disposition and temper of the inhabitants of the colony at the time, shows that, notwithstanding the personal popularity of the governor, the increase of Catholics was looked upon with a suspicious eye. 'A general disaffection,' he says,'to the government prevailed among the people. Papists began to settle in the colony under the smiles of the governor. The collector of the revenues and several principal officers threw off the mask, and openly avowed their attachment to the doctrines of Rome. A Latin school was set up, and the teacher strongly suspected for a Jesuit; in a word, the whole body of the people trembled for the Protestant cause.' The news of the revolution in England, and the subsequent proceedings under Leisler, probably caused such Catholics as were in a situation to get away, to withdraw at the same time with the governor. The documents connected with Leisler's usurpation of authority, as published by O'Callaghan in his _Documentary History of New York_, show how studiously he appealed to the religious prejudices of the people, in order to excite odium against the friends of the late governor, and establish his own claims. The 'security of the Protestant religion,' and the 'diabolical designs of the wicked and cruel papists,' are made to ring their changes through his various proclamations and letters. Depositions and affidavits were published, in which it was sworn that Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson had been several times seen assisting at mass; that the papists on Staten Island 'did threaten to cut the inhabitants' throats,' and to come and burn the city; 'that M. De La Prearie had arms in his house for fifty men; that eighty or a hundred men were coming from Boston and other places, that were hunted away, (no doubt, not for their goodness,) and that there were several of them Irish and papists; that a good part of the soldiers that were in the fort already were papists,' etc. Among other depositions, is one of Andries and Jan Meyer, in which they declare that, 'being delivered from a papist governor, Thomas Dongan, they thought that the deputy-governor in the Fort would defend and establish the true religion; but we found to the contrary. There was a cry that all the images erected by Col. Thomas Dongan in the fort would be broken down and taken away; but when we were working in the fort with others, it was commanded, after the departure of Sir Edmond Andros, by said Nicholson, to help the priest, John Smith,' (supposed to be a name assumed for the sake of safety by one of the Jesuit fathers of New York,) 'to remove, for which we were very glad; but it was soon done, because said removal was not far off, but in a better room in the fort; and ordered to make all things ready for said priest, according to his will, and perfectly, and to erect all things as he ordered, from that time,'" etc.

Mr. Graham says of the state of public feeling prevailing at this time in New York, that

"An outrageous dread of popery had invaded the minds of the lower classes of the people, and not only diminished real and substantial evils in their esteem, but nearly extinguished common sense in their understandings, and common justice in their sentiments."

Deputy-Governor Nicholson took possession of the government in August, 1688. On the 24th of that month, Governor Andros issued a proclamation for a general thanksgiving throughout the English provinces for the birth of a prince, the son of King James, and heir to the English throne. But by the next mail news of quite a different character arrived: the invasion of England by the Prince of Orange, the flocking of the people to his standard, the abdication and flight of King James, and the proclamation of William and Mary as king and queen of England. {780} Mr. Nicholson and his followers recognized the authority of William and Mary, and, claiming that the commissions issued under James II. still held good, proposed to exercised the functions of the public offices under them, until instructions should be received from the new government at home. They were supported by the more respectable and wealthy part of the citizens. But the popular party took the opposite ground, and contended that all the commissions were now invalid, and that the people should take the government into their own hands until the will of their present majesties should be heard from. They were led on by one Jacob Leisler, a successful merchant, but a bitter bigot and ambitious demagogue, and the leader of such as refused all social intercourse with Catholics. Leisler had been appointed as early as 1683, by Governor Dongan, commissioner of the Admiralty; but, while holding this office, he was deeply disaffected, and had previously gained some notoriety by his opposition to Rensselaer, an Episcopal minister and suspected papist, at Albany, who had been sent to the province by the Duke of York.

The revolution commenced in New York by the refusal of Leisler and others to pay revenue and taxes to Mr. Plowman, the collector, because he was a Catholic. The people of Long Island deposed their magistrates and elected new ones, and despatched a large body of militia to New York, "to seize the fort, and keep off popery, French invasion, and slavery." The public money, amounting to £773 12s., had been deposited, for safe keeping, in the fort which was garrisoned by a few soldiers commanded by a Catholic ensign. In order to secure this treasure, the popular party assembled on the 2d of June, 1689, and seized the fort. Leisler, who had refused to lead them to attack, on hearing of its seizure, went, with forty-seven men, to the fort, was welcomed by the citizens, and acknowledged as their leader. At a meeting of the people, a so-called "Committee of Safety" was appointed for the immediate government of the province, and Leisler was appointed to the chief command. Then followed the reign of terror described by Smith, Graham, and other historians. Catholics were hunted down in every direction, and many Protestants, suspected of being "papists" at heart, were treated in the same manner. Orders were issued for the arrest of Governor Dongan--who, since his retirement from office, had been quietly residing on his estate at Staten Island--and all other Catholics, who were compelled to fly for safety. Governor Dongan and other Catholics took shelter on board of a vessel in the harbor, where they remained for weeks, during the height of the excitement. He probably was obliged to keep himself concealed. He fled to Rhode Island, and soon afterward returned to Staten Island; his servants were arrested, his personal effects--charged, in the frenzy of the hour, to embrace a number of arms--were seized at his mill on Staten Island; and all who pretended to hold commissions under him were ordered to be arrested. So effectually were the Catholics driven from the province that, in 1696, seven years afterward, on a census of Catholics, taken by the mayor of the city by order of Governor Fletcher, only nine names were returned, namely, Major Anthony Brockholes, William Douglass, John Cooley, Christiane Lawrence, Thomas Howarding, John Cavalier, John Patte, John Fenny, and Philip Cunningham.

{781}

Whether Governor Dongan returned to England, and again came out to the province after the excitement had abated, or remained concealed in the province or neighborhood, seems not to be clear. It is certain, however, that he was in New York in 1791 [sic]. It need only be added here that the "Charter of Liberties," passed in 1683, under a Catholic governor, was, with all other laws passed by the late general assembly, repealed by the Protestant assembly of New York, in 1691, and a so-called "Bill of Rights" passed, which expressly deprived Catholics of all their political and religious _rights_. In 1697 this "Bill of Rights" was repealed by King William, "probably as being too liberal," says Bishop Bayley; and, in 1700, an act was passed which recited that "Whereas, divers Jesuits, priests, and popish missionaries have, of late, come, and for some time have had this province, and others of his majesty's adjacent colonies, who, by their wicked and subtle insinuations, industriously labored to debauch, seduce, and withdraw the Indians from their due obedience to his most sacred majesty, and to excite and stir them up to sedition, rebellion, and open hostility against his majesty's priest, etc., remaining in or coming into the province after November 1st, 1700, should be "deemed and accounted an incendiary and disturber of the public peace and safety, and an enemy of the true Christian religion, and shall be adjudged to suffer _perpetual imprisonment_," that, in case of escape and capture, they should suffer _death_, and that harborers of priests should pay a fine of two hundred pounds, and stand three days in the pillory. If it is alleged that the law of 1691 was the result of high party excitement and public alarm, what excuse, it may be asked, is to be alleged for the more illiberal and persecuting law of 1700? It is but justice to James II., to point to the "Charter of Liberties" of 1683, passed with his own approbation, and at his suggestion, and then to the laws of 1691 and 1700, passed under William and Mary, and remark that, though the revolution gave the colonies William and Mary in the place of James, it also gave penal and odious laws, and a deceptive "Bill of Rights," in exchange for a "Charter of Liberties" that gave what its title professed to confer. In Maryland, too, whose Catholic founders proclaimed civil and religious liberty as the basis of their commonwealth, the same scenes, on a more extended scale, were at the same time being enacted; the persecutors in New York were in intimate correspondence with their co-laborers in Maryland and New England.

In 1691, when Governor Dongan saw, from the passage of the "Bill of Rights," that Catholics were excluded from the benefits of government, and subjected to persecution, he returned to England.

While he was governor of New York, in 1685, his brother William, who had, in 1661, been created Baron Dongan and Viscount Claine in the Irish peerage, was advanced to the earldom of Limerick, with remainder, on the failure of direct issue, to Colonel Thomas Dongan. On the breaking out of the revolution and the flight of James II., William, Earl of Limerick, adhered to that monarch, and followed him into France; whereupon his estates were forfeited, and granted to the Earl of Athlone, an adherent of William. {782} This grant was confirmed by an act of the Irish parliament, but with a clause saving the right of Colonel Thomas Dongan. Colonel Dongan, on his return to England, made every effort to recover some portion of his brother's estates. His brother, the Earl of Limerick, died at St. Germain in 1698, whereupon Colonel Dongan was introduced to William III. as successor of the late Earl of Limerick, and the new earl did homage to the king for his earldom, and, according to the feudal custom, kissed the king's hand on succeeding to the rank. He was allowed by the government, about the same time, £2500, in tallies, in part payment for advances made by him for public purposes while governor of New York. His persevering efforts to recover the estates of his deceased brother so far finally succeeded as to induce the passage of an act of parliament for his relief, on the 25th of May, 1702. He subsequently offered himself for service in the American colonies, but it does not appear that he was ever in the service of the crown after his return to England. He died in London, on the 14th day of December, 1715, and was interred in the church-yard of St. Pancras, Middlesex. The inscription on his tombstone reads as follows:

"The Right Honble Thomas Dongan, Earl of Limerick. Died December 14th, aged eighty-one years, 1715. Requiescat in Pace. Amen."

In addition to the encomiums passed upon him both by Catholic and Protestant historians, the following, from De Courcy and Shea's _Catholic Church in the United States_, is here inserted:

"This able governor was not long enough in office to realize all his plans for the good of the colony, where he had expended, for the public good, most of his private fortune. In this, as in many other points, the Catholic Governor Dongan forms a striking contrast with the mass of colonial rulers, who sought their own profit at the expense of the countries submitted to them. To Dongan, too, New York is indebted for the convocation of the first legislative assembly, the colony having been, till then, ruled and governed at the good pleasure of the governor; and this readiness to admit the people to a share in the government is a fact which the enemies of James II. should not conceal in their estimate of that Catholic monarch."

Mr. Moore gives us the following particulars in his note, cited among the authorities to this article:

"This nobleman died without issue. His estates in America were settled chiefly on three nephews, John, Thomas, and Walter Dongan. Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Vaughan Dongan, of the third battalion of New Jersey Volunteers, who died of wounds received in an attack on the British posts on Staten Island, in August, 1777, was son of the last-mentioned gentleman. John Charlton Dongan, another collateral relative of the Earl of Limerick, represented Richmond County in the New York Assembly, from 1786 to 1789. Representatives of this ancient family are still to be found in New York."

[NOTE.--The above article is condensed from a forthcoming work of Mr. R. H. Clarke, to be entitled, _Lives of Eminent Catholics of the United States_.]

{783}

Beethoven.

His Warning.

Years passed on, and Beethoven continued to reside at Vienna with his two brothers, who had followed him thither, and took the charge of his domestic establishment, so as to leave him entirely at leisure for composition. His reputation had advanced gradually but surely, and he now stood high, if not highest, among living masters. The prediction was beginning to be accomplished.

It was a mild evening in the latter part of September, and a large company was assembled at the charming villa of the Baron Raimond von Wetzlar, situated near Schönbrunn. They had been invited to be present at a musical contest between the celebrated Wolff and Beethoven. The part of Wolff was espoused with great enthusiasm by the baron; that of Beethoven by the Prince de Lichnowsky, and, as in all such matters, partisans swarmed on either side. The popular talk among the music-loving Viennese was, everywhere, discussion of the merits of the rival candidates for fame.

Beethoven was walking in one of the avenues of the illuminated garden, accompanied by his pupil, Ferdinand Ries. The melancholy that marked the composer's temperament seemed, more than ever, to have the ascendency over him.

"I confess to you, Ferdinand," said he, apparently in continuation of some previous conversation, "I regret my engagement with Sonnleithner."

"And yet you have written the opera?"

"I have completed it, but not to my own satisfaction. And I shall object to its being produced first at Vienna."

"Why so? The Viennese are your friends."

"For that very reason I will not appeal to their judgment; I want an impartial one. I distrust my genius for the opera."

"How can that be possible?"

"It is my intimacy with Salieri that has inclined me that way; nature did not suggest it; I can never feel at home there. Ferdinand, I am self-upbraided, and should be, were the applause of a thousand spectators sounding in my ears."

"Nay," said the student, "the artist assumes too much who judges himself."

"But I have not judged myself."

"Who, then, has dared to insinuate a doubt of your success?"

Beethoven hesitated; his impressions, his convictions, would seem superstition to his companion, and he was not prepared to encounter either raillery or ridicule. Just then the host, with a party of the guests, met them, exclaiming that they had been everywhere sought; that the company was all assembled in the saloon, and every thing ready for the exhibition.

"You are bent on making a gladiator of me, dear baron," cried the composer, "in order that I may be mangled and torn to pieces, for the popular amusement, by your favorite Wolff."

{784}

"Heaven forbid I should prejudge either combatant!" cried Von Wetzlar. "The lists are open; the prize is not to be awarded by me."

"But your good wishes--your hopes--"

"Oh! as to that, I must frankly own I prefer the good old school to your new-fangled conceits and innovations. But come--the audience waits."

Each in turn, the two rivals played a piece composed by himself, accompanied by select performers. Then each improvised a short piece. The delight of the spectators was called forth in different ways. In the production of Wolff a sustained elevation, clearness, and brilliancy recalled the glories of Mozart's school, and moved the audience to repeated bursts of admiration. In that of Beethoven there was a startling boldness, an impetuous rush of emotions, a frequency of abrupt contrasts--and withal a certain wildness and mystery--that irresistibly enthralled the feelings, while it outraged, at the same time, their sense of musical propriety. There was little applause, but the deep silence, prolonged even after the notes had ceased, told how intensely all had been interested.

The victory remained undecided. There was a clamor of eager voices among the spectators; but no one could collect the suffrages, nor determine which was the successful champion in the contest. The Prince Lichnowsky, however, stood up, and boldly claimed it for his favorite.

"Nay," interrupted Beethoven, advancing, "my dear prince, there has been no contest." He offered his hand to his opponent. "We may still esteem each other, Wolff; we are not rivals. Our style is essentially different; I yield to you the palm of excellence in the qualities that distinguish you."

"You are right, my friend," cried Wolff; "henceforth let there be no more talk of championship between us. I will hold him for my enemy who ventures to compare me with you--you so superior in the path you have chosen. It is a higher path than mine--an original one; I follow contentedly in the course marked out by others."

"But our paths lead to the same goal," replied Beethoven. "We will speed each other with good wishes; and embrace cordially when we meet _there_ at last."

There was an unusual solemnity in the composer's last words, and it put an end to the discussion. All responded warmly to his sentiment. But amidst the general murmur of approbation, one voice was heard that seemed strangely to startle Beethoven. His face grew pale, then flushed deeply; and the next moment he pressed his way hastily through the crowd, and seized by the arm a retreating figure.

"You shall see me in Vienna," whispered the stranger in his ear.

"Yet a word with you. You shall not escape me thus."

"_Auf wiedersehen!_" And shaking off the grasp, the stranger disappeared.

No one had observed his entrance; the host knew him not, and though most of the company remarked the composer's singular emotion, none could inform him whither the unbidden guest had gone. Beethoven remained abstracted during the rest of the evening.

{785}

The opera of _Leonore_ was represented at Prague; it met with but indifferent success. At Vienna, however, it commanded unbounded applause. Several alterations had been made in it; the composer had written a new overture, and the _finale_ of the first act; he had suppressed a duo and trio of some importance, and made other improvements and retrenchments. Not small was his triumph at the favorable decision of the Viennese public. A new turn seemed to be given to his mind; he revolved thoughts of future conquests over the same portion of the realm of art; he no longer questioned his own spirit. It was a crisis in the artist's life, and might have resulted in his choice of a different career from that in which he has won undying fame.

Beethoven sat alone in his study; there was a light knock at the door. He replied with a careless "come in," without looking up from his work. He was engaged in revising the last scenes of his opera.

The visitor walked to the table and stood there a few minutes unobserved. Probably the artist mistook him for one of his brothers; but, on looking up, he started with indescribable surprise. The unknown friend of his youth stood beside him.

"So you have kept your word," said the composer, when he had recovered from his first astonishment; "and now, I pray you, sit down, and tell me with whom I have the honor of having formed acquaintance in so remarkable a manner."

"My name is of no importance, as it may or may not prove known to you," replied the stranger. "I am your good genius, if my counsel does you good; if not, I would prefer to take an obscure place among your disappointed friends."

There was a tone of grave rebuke in what his visitor said that perplexed and annoyed the artist. It struck him that there was affectation in this assumption of mystery, and he observed coldly,

"I shall not attempt, of course, to deprive you of your _incognito_; but if you assume it for the sake of effect, I would merely give you to understand that I am not prone to listen to anonymous advice."

"Oh! that you would listen," said the stranger, sorrowfully shaking his head, "to the pleadings of your better nature!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Beethoven, starting up.

"Ask your own heart. If that acquit you, I have nothing to say. I leave you, then, to the glories of your new career; to the popular applause--to your triumphs--to your remorse."

The composer was silent a few moments, and appeared agitated. At last he said, "I know not your reasons for this mystery; but whatever they may be, I will honor them. I entreat you to speak frankly. You do not approve my present undertaking?"

"Frankly, I do not. Your genius lies not this way," and he raised some of the leaves of the opera music.

"How know you that?" asked the artist, a little mortified. "You, perhaps, despise the opera?"

"I do not. I love it; I honor it; I honor the noble creations of those great masters who have excelled in it. But you, my friend, are beckoned to a higher and holier path."

"How know you that?" repeated Beethoven, and this time his voice faltered.

"Because I know you; because I know the aspirations of your genius; because I know the misgivings that pursue you in the midst of success; the self-reproach that you suffer to be stifled in the clamor of popular praise. Even now, in the midst of your triumph, you are haunted by the consciousness that you are not fulfilling the true mission of the artist."

His piercing words were winged with truth itself. Beethoven buried his face in his hands.

{786}

"Woe to you," cried the unknown, "if you suppress, till they are wholly dead, your once earnest longings after the pure and the good! Woe to you, if, charmed by the syren song of vanity, you close your ears against the cry of a despairing world! Woe to you, if you resign unfulfilled the trust God committed to your hands, to sustain the weak and faltering soul, to give it strength to bear the ills of life, strength to battle against evil, to face the last enemy!"

"You are right--you are right!" exclaimed Beethoven, clasping his hands.

"I once predicted your elevation, your world-wide fame," continued the stranger; "for I saw you sunk in despondency, and knew that your spirit must be aroused to bear up against trial. You now stand on the verge of a more dreadful abyss. You are in danger of making the gratification of your own pride, instead of the fulfilment of Heaven's will, the aim--the goal of your life's efforts."

"Oh! never," cried the artist, with you to guide me."

"We shall meet no more. I watched over you in boyhood; I have now come forth from retirement to give you my last warning; henceforth I shall observe your course in silence. And I shall not go unrewarded. I know too well the noble spirit that burns in your breast. You will--yes, you will fulfil your mission; your glory from this time shall rest on a basis of immortality. You shall be hailed the benefactor of humanity; and the spiritual joy you prepare for others shall return to you in full measure, pressed down and running over!"

The artist's kindling features showed that he responded to the enthusiasm of his visitor; but he answered not.

"And now, farewell. But remember, before you can accomplish this lofty mission, you must be baptized with a baptism of fire. The tones that are to agitate and stir up to revolution the powers of the human soul come not forth from an unruffled breast, but from the depths of a sorely wrung and tried spirit. You must steal the triple flame from heaven, and it will first consume the peace of your own being. Remember this--and droop not when the hour of trial comes! Farewell!"

The stranger crossed his hands over Beethoven's head, as if mentally invoking a blessing--folded him in his embrace, and departed. The artist made no effort to follow him. Deep and bitter were the thoughts that moved within him; and he remained leaning his head on the table, in silent revery, or walking the room with rapid and irregular steps, for many hours. At length the struggle was over; pale but composed, he took up the sheets of his opera and threw them carelessly into his desk. His next work, _Christ in the Mount of Olives_, attested the high and firm resolve of his mind, sustained by its self-reliance, and independent of popular applause or disapprobation. His great symphonies, which carried the fame of the composer to its highest point, displayed the same triumph of religious principle.

The Last Hours Of Beethoven.

Once more we find Beethoven, in the extreme decline of life. In one of the most obscure and narrow streets of Vienna, on the third floor of a gloomy-looking house, was now the abode of the gifted artist. For many weary and wasting years he had been the prey of a cruel malady, that defied the power of medicine for its cure, and had reduced him to a state of utter helplessness. {787} His ears had long been closed to the music that owed its birth to his genius; it was long since he had heard the sound of a human voice. In the melancholy solitude to which he now condemned himself, he received visits from but few of his friends, and those at rare intervals. Society seemed a burden to him. Yet he persisted in his labors, and continued to compose, notwithstanding his deafness, those undying works which commanded for him the homage of Europe.

Proofs of this feeling, and of the unforgotten affection of those who knew his worth, reached him in his retreat from time to time. Now it was a medal struck at Paris, and bearing his features; now it was a new piano, the gift of some amateurs in London; at another time, some honorary title decreed him by the authorities of Vienna, or a diploma of membership of some distinguished musical society. All these moved him not, for he had quite outlived his taste for the honors of man's bestowing. What could they--what could even the certainty that he had now immortal fame--do to soften the anguish of his malady, from which he looked alone to death as a relief?

"They wrong me who call me stern or misanthropic," said he to his brother, who came in March, 1827, to pay him a visit. "God knoweth how I love my fellow-men! Has not my life been theirs? Have I not struggled with temptation, trial, and suffering from my boyhood till now, for their sakes? And now if I no longer mingle among them, is it not because my cruel infirmity unfits me for their companionship? When my fearful doom of separation from the rest of the human race is forced on my heart, do I not writhe with terrible agony, and wish that my end were come? And why, brother, have I lived, to drag out so wretched an existence? Why have I not succumbed ere now?

"I will tell you, brother. A soft and gentle hand--it was that of art--held me back from the abyss. I could not quit the world before I had produced all--_had done all that I was appointed to do_. Has not such been the teaching of our holy church? I have learned through her precepts that patience is the handmaid of truth; I will go with her even to the footstool of the eternal."

The servant of the house entered and gave Beethoven a large sealed package directed to himself. He opened it; it contained a magnificent collection of the works of Handel, with a few lines stating that it was a dying bequest to the composer from the Count de N----. He it was who had been the unknown counsellor of Beethoven's youth and manhood; and the arrival of this posthumous present seemed to assure the artist that his own close of life was crowned with the approval of his friend. It was as if a _seal_ had been set on that approbation, and the friendship of two noble spirits. It seemed like the dismissal of Beethoven from further toil.

The old man stooped his face over the papers; tears fell upon them, and he breathed a silent prayer. After a few moments he arose, and said, somewhat wildly, "We have not walked to-day, Carl. Let us go forth. This confined air suffocates me."

The wind was howling violently without; the rain beat in gusts against the windows; it was a bitter night. The brother wrote on a slip of paper, and handed it to Beethoven.

{788}

"A storm? Well, I have walked in many a storm, and I like it better than the biting melancholy that preys upon me here in my solitary room. Oh! how I loved the storm once; my spirit danced with joy when the winds blew fiercely, and the tall trees rocked, and the sea lashed itself into a fury. It was all music to me. Alas! there is no music now so loud that I can hear it.

"Do you remember the last time I led the orchestra at Von ----'s? Ah! you were not there; but I heard--yes, by leaning my breast against the instrument. When some one asked me how I heard, I replied, '_J'etntends avec mes entraillies._'"

Disturbed by his nervous restlessness, the aged composer went to the window, and opened it with trembling hands. The wind blew aside his white locks, and cooled his feverish forehead.

"I have one fear," he said, turning to his brother and slightly shuddering, "that haunts me at times--the fear of poverty. Look at this meanly furnished room, that single lamp, my meagre fare; and yet all these cost money, and my little wealth is daily consumed. Think of the misery of an old man, helpless and deaf, without the means of subsistence!"

"Have you not your pension secure?"

"It depends upon the bounty of those who bestowed it; and the favor of princes is capricious. Then again, it was given on condition I remained in the territory of Austria, at the time the king of Westphalia offered me the place of chapel-master at Cassel. Alas! I cannot beat the restriction. I must travel, brother--I must leave this city."

"You-leave Vienna?" exclaimed his brother in utter amazement, looking at the feeble old man whose limbs could scarcely bear him from one street to another. Then, recollecting himself, he wrote down his question.

"Why? Because I am restless and unhappy. I have no peace, Carl! Is it not the chafing of the unchained spirit that pants to be free, and to wander through God's limitless universe? Alas! she is built up in a wall of clay, and not a sound can penetrate her gloomy dungeon."

Overcome by his feelings, the old man bowed his head on his brother's shoulder, and wept bitterly. Carl saw that the delirium that sometimes accompanied his paroxysms of illness had clouded his faculties.

The malady increased. The sufferer's eyes were glazed; he grasped his brother's hand with a tremulous pressure.

"Carl! Carl! I pardon you the evil you did me in childhood. Pray for me, brother!" cried the failing voice of the artist.

His brother supported him to the sofa and called for assistance. In an hour or two, his friend and spiritual adviser, summoned in haste, had administered the last rites of the church, and neighbors and friends had gathered around the dying man. He seemed gradually sinking into insensibility.

Suddenly he revived; a bright smile illumined his whole face; his sunken eyes sparkled.

"I shall _hear_ in heaven!" he murmured softly, and then sang in a low but distinct voice the lines from a hymn of his own:

"Brüder! über'm Sternenzelt, Muss ein lieber _Vater_ wohnen."

In the last faint tone of the music his gentle spirit passed away.

Thus died Beethoven, a true artist, a good and generous man, a devout Catholic. Simple, frank, loyal to his principles, his life was spent in working out what he conceived his duty; and though his task was wrought in privation, in solitude, and distress, though happiness was not his lot in this world, doth there not remain for him an eternal reward?

{789}

The Viennese gave him a magnificent funeral. More than thirty thousand persons attended. The first musicians of the city executed the celebrated funeral march composed by him, and placed in his heroic symphony; the most famous poets and artists were pall-bearers, or carried torches; Hummel, who had come from Weimar expressly to see him, placed a laurel crown upon his tomb. Prague, Berlin, and all the principal cities of Germany, paid honors to his memory, and solemnized with pomp the anniversary of his death. Such was the distinction heaped on the dust of him whose life had been one of suffering, and whose last years had been solitary, because he felt that his infirmities excluded him from human brotherhood.

The Assumption Of Our Lady.

If sin be captive, grace must find release; From curse of sin the innocent is free. Tomb prison is for sinners that decease; No tomb but throne to guiltless doth agree. Though thralls of sin lie lingering in the grave, Yet faultless corse with soul reward must have.

The dazzled eye doth dimmèd light require, And dying sights repose in shrouding shades; But eagles' eyes to brightest light aspire, And living looks delight in lofty glades. Faint-wingèd fowl by ground do faintly fly: Our princely eagle mounts unto the sky.

Gem to her worth, spouse to her love ascends; Prince to her throne, queen to her heavenly king; Whose court with solemn pomp on her attends, And choirs of saints with greeting notes do sing. Earth rendereth up her undeservèd prey: Heaven claims the right, and bears the prize away.

Southwell.

{790}

The Conversion of Rome. [Footnote 196]

[Footnote 196: 1. History of European Morals, from Augustus to Charlemagne. By W. E. H. Lecky. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1869. 2 vols. 8vo. 2. History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. By the same. From the London edition. New York: Appleton & Co., 1868. 2 vols. 8vo.]

Two irreconcilable systems of morals have disputed the empire of the earliest times. The one is founded on the fact that God creates man; the other on the assumption that man is himself God, or, at least, a god unto himself. The first system finds its principle in the fact stated in the first verse of Genesis, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth;" the second finds its principle in the assurance of Satan to Eve, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." The first system is that of the Biblical patriarchs, the synagogue, the Christian church, and all sound philosophy as well as of common sense--is the theological system, which places man in entire dependence on God as principle, medium, and end, and asserts as its basis in us, HUMILITY, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The other system is the gentile or pagan system, or that which prevailed with the Gentiles after their falling away from the patriarchal religion. It assumed, in its practical developments, two forms, the supremacy of the state and the supremacy of the individual; but in both was asserted the supremacy of man--or man as his own lawgiver, teacher, and master, his own beginning, middle, and end, and therefore, either individually or collectively, man's sufficiency for himself. Its principle or basis, then, is PRIDE.

Mr. Lecky adopts, as we have shown in our former article, the pagan, or, more properly, the satanic system of morals, at least as to its principle, though in some few particulars he gives the superiority to Christian morals, particulars in which Christians advanced further than had advanced the best pagan school before the conversion of Rome, but in the same direction, on the same principle, and from the same starting-point. He nowhere accepts the Christian or theological principle, and rejects everywhere, with scorn, Christian asceticism, which, according to him, is based on a false principle--that of appeasing the anger of a malevolent God. He accepts Christianity only so far as reducible to the pagan principle.

The only points in which Christian morals--for Christian dogmas, in his view, have no relation to morals, and are not to be counted--are a progress on pagan morals, are the assertion of the brotherhood of the race and the recognition of the emotional side of human nature. But even these two points, as he understands them, are not peculiar to Christianity. He shows that some of the later Stoics, at least, asserted the brotherhood of the race, or that nothing human is foreign to any one who is a man--that all good offices are due to all men; and whoever has studied Plato at all, knows that Platonism attached at least as much importance, and gave as large a scope to our emotional nature, as does Christianity. Christian morals have, then, really nothing peculiar, and are, in principle, no advance on paganism. The most that can be said is that Christianity gave to the brotherhood of the race more prominence than did paganism, and transformed the Platonic love, which was the love of the beautiful, into the love of humanity. {791} This being all, we may well ask, How was it that Christianity was able to gain the victory over the pagan philosophers, and to convert the city of Rome and the Roman empire?

Mr. Lecky adopts the modern doctrine of progress, and he endeavors to prove from the historical analysis of the several pagan schools of moral philosophy, that the pagan world was gradually approaching the Christian ideal, and that when Christianity appeared at Rome it had all but attained it, so that the change was but slight, and, there being a favorable conjuncture of external circumstances, the change was easily effected. The philosophers of the empire had advanced from primitive fetichism to a pure and sublime monotheism; the mingling of men of all nations and all religions in Rome, consequent on the extension of the empire over the whole civilized world, had liberalized the views, weakened the narrow exclusiveness of former times, and gone far towards the obliteration of the distinction of nations, castes, and classes, and thus had, in a measure, prepared the world for the reception of a universal religion, based on the doctrine of the fraternity of the race and love of humanity.

All this would be very well, if it were true; but it happens to be mainly false. The fact, as well as the idea of progress, in the moral order, is wholly foreign to the pagan world. No pagan nation ever exhibits the least sign of progress in the moral order, either under the relation of doctrine or that of practice. The history of every pagan people is the history of an almost continuous moral deterioration. The purest and best period, under a moral point of view, in the history of the Roman republic, was its earliest, and nothing can exceed the corruption of its morals and manners at its close. We may make the same remark of every non-Catholic nation in modern times. There is a far lower standard of morals reached or aimed at in Protestant nations to-day than was common at the epoch of the Reformation; and the moral corruption of our own country has increased in a greater ratio than have our wealth and numbers. We are hardly the same people that we were even thirty years ago; and the worst of it is, that the pagan system, whether under the ancient Greco-Roman form or under the modern Protestant form, has no recuperative energy, and the nation abandoned to it has no power of self-renovation. Pagan nations may advance, and no doubt, at times, have advanced, in the industrial order, in the mechanic arts, and in the fine arts, but in the moral, intellectual, and spiritual order, never.

Mr. Lecky confines his history almost entirely to the moral doctrines of the philosophers; but even in these he shows no moral melioration in the later from the earlier, no progress towards Christian morals. In relation to specific duties of man to man, and of the citizen to the state, the Christian has, indeed, little fault to find with the _De Officiis_ of Cicero; but we find even in him no approach to the Christian basis of morals. The Greeks never have any conception of either law or good, in the Christian sense. The [Greek text] was only a rule or principle of harmony; it had its reason in the [Greek text], or the beautiful, and could not bind the conscience. The Latins placed the end, or the reason and motive of the moral law, in the _honestum_, the proper, the decent, or decorous. The highest moral act was _virtus_, manliness, and consisted in bravery or courage. {792} The rule was, to be manly; the motive, self-respect. One must not be mean or cowardly, because it was unmanly, and would destroy one's self-respect. We have here pride, not humility; not the slightest approach to the Christian principle of morals, either to the rule or the motive of virtue as understood by the Christian church.

Yet Mr. Lecky tells us the moral doctrines of the philosophers were much superior to the practice of the people. He admits the people were far below the philosophers, and were very corrupt; but we see no evidence that he has any adequate conception of how corrupt they were. What the people were we can learn from the satirists, from the historians, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, especially from the _De Civitate Dei_ of St. Augustine, and the writings of the early Greek and Latin fathers. Our author acknowledges not only that the philosophers were superior to the people, but also that they were impotent to effect their moral elevation or any moral amelioration of their condition. Nothing more true. How, then, if Christianity was based on the pagan principle of morals, was in the same order with paganism, and differed from it only in certain details, or, as the schoolmen say, certain accidents--how explain the amelioration of morals and manners which uniformly followed whenever and wherever it was received?

If, as the author holds, Christianity was really only a development of the more advanced thought of the pagan empire, why did it not begin with the philosophers, the representatives of that advanced thought? Yet nothing is more certain than that it did not begin with them. The philosophers were the first to resist it, and the last to hold out against it. It spread at first among the people, chiefly among the slaves--that is, among those who knew the least of philosophy, who were least under the influence of the philosophers, and whose morals it is confessed the philosophers did not and could not elevate. This of itself refutes the pretence that Christianity was an offshoot of heathen philosophy. If it had been, and its power lay in the fact that the empire in its progress was prepared for it, its first converts should have been from the ranks of the more advanced classes. But the reverse was the fact. "You see your calling, brethren," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, "that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the wise; and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the strong; and the mean things of the world, and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, and things that are not, that he might destroy the things that are; that no flesh should glory in his sight." [Footnote 197] So said the great teacher of the Gentiles, as if anticipating the objection of modern rationalists. Evidently, then, the pretended preparation of the Roman empire for Christianity must count for nothing, for Christianity gained its first establishments among those whom that preparation, even if it had been made, had not reached.

[Footnote 197: Cor. i. 26.]

We cannot follow step by step the author in the special chapter which he devotes to the conversion of Rome, and the triumph of Christianity in the empire. We have already indicated the grounds on which he explains the marvellous fact. {793} He denies all agency of miracles, will recognize no supernatural aid, and aims to explain it on natural principles or by natural causes alone. Thus far he has certainly failed; but let us try him on his own ground. We grant that the breaking down of the hundred nationalities and fusing so many distinct tribes and races into one people, under one supreme political authority, did in some sense prepare the way for the introduction of a universal religion. But it must be remembered that the fusion was not complete, and that the work of amalgamating and Romanizing the several nations placed by conquest under the authority of Rome was only commenced, when Christianity was first preached in the capital of the empire. Each conquered nation retained as yet its own distinctive religion, and to a great extent its own distinctive civilization. Gaul, Spain, and the East were Roman provinces, but not thoroughly Romanized, and it was not till after Christianity had gained a footing in the empire that provincials out of Italy were admitted to the rights and privileges of Roman citizenship. The law recognized the religion of the state, but it tolerated for every conquered nation its own national religion. There was as yet nothing in the political, social, or religious order of the empire to suggest a universal religion, or that opened the way for the introduction of a catholic as distinguished from a national religion. All the religions recognized and tolerated were national religions. Christianity was always catholic, for all nations, not for any particular nation alone. If, then, at a subsequent period, the boasted universality of the empire favored the diffusion of Christianity, it did not favor its introduction in the beginning. In all other respects there was, as we read history, no evangelical preparation in Rome or the Roman empire. The progress, if progress it may be called, of the Gentiles, had been away from the primitive religion reasserted by Christianity, and in a direction from, not towards, the great doctrines and principles of the Gospel. What of primitive tradition they had retained had become so corrupted, perverted, or travestied as to be hardly recognizable. They had changed, even with the philosophers, the true basis of morals, and the corrupt morals of the people were only the practical development of the principles adopted by even the best of the Gentile philosophers, as rationalism is only the development of principles adopted by the reformers, who detested it, and asserted exclusive supernaturalism. Even the monotheism of some pagan philosophers was not the Christian doctrine of one God, any more than simple theism--the softened name for deism--or even theophilanthropy is Christianity. The Christian God is not only one, but he is the creator of the world, of all things visible and invisible, the moral governor of the universe, and the remunerator of all who seek him. The God of Plato, or of any of the other philosophers, is no creative God, and the immortality of the soul that Plato and his master Socrates defended had hardly any analogy with the life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel. The Stoics, whom the author places in the front rank of pagan moralists, did not regard God as the creator of the world, and those among them who held that the soul survives the body, believed not in the resurrection of the flesh, nor in future rewards and punishments. Their motive to virtue was their own self-respect, and their study was to prove themselves independent of the flesh and its seductions, indifferent to pleasure or pain, serene and unalterable, through self-discipline, whatever the vicissitudes of life. {794} The philosophers adopted the morality of pride, and aimed to live and act not as men dependent on their Creator, but as independent gods, while the people were sunk in the grossest ignorance and moral corruption, and subject to the most base and abominable superstitions. Such was the pagan empire when Christianity was first preached at Rome, only much worse than we venture to depict it.

Now, to this Roman world, rotten to the core, the Christian preachers proclaimed a religion which arraigned its corruption, which contradicted its cherished ideas on every point, and substituted meekness for cruelty, and humility for pride, as the principle of morals. They had against them all the old superstitions and national religions of the empire, the religion of the state, associated with all its victories, supported by the whole power of the government, and by the habits, usages, traditions, and the whole political, military, social, and religious life of the Roman people. They could not move without stepping on something held sacred, or open their mouths without offending some god or some religious usage; for the national religion was interwoven with the simplest and most ordinary usages of private and social life. If a pagan sneezed, no Christian could be civil enough to say, "Jupiter help you," for that would recognize a false god. Yet the Christian missionaries did succeed in converting Rome and making it the capital of the Christian world, as it was, when they entered it, the capital of the heathen world. You tell me this mighty change was effected, circumstances favoring, by natural and human means! _Credat Judaeus Appelles, non ego_.

The cause of the success, after the preparation named, which turns out to have been no preparation at all, were, according to the author, principally the zeal, the enthusiasm, and the intolerance or exclusiveness of the Christians, the doctrines of the brotherhood of the race and of a future life, and their appeals to the emotional side of human nature. He does not think the conversion of Rome any thing remarkable. The philosophers had failed to regenerate society in the moral order, the old religions had lost their hold on men's convictions, the old superstitions were losing their terrors, and men felt and sighed for something better than any thing they had. In fact, minds were unsettled, and were ready for something new. This description, not very applicable to Rome at the period in question, is not inapplicable to the Protestant world at the present time. Protestants are no longer satisfied with the results, either dogmatic or moral, of the Reformation, and the thinking portion of them wish for something better than any thing they have; yet not, therefore, can we conclude that they can easily, or by any purely human means, be converted to the Catholic Church; for they have--with individual exceptions, indeed--not lost their confidence in the underlying principle of the Reformation, or opened their minds or hearts to the acknowledgment of the principle, either of Catholic dogma or of Catholic morals. It is not so much that they do not know or misconceive that principle, but they have a deep-rooted repugnance to it, detest it, abhor it, and cannot even hear it named with patience. So was it with the pagan Romans. The whole pagan world was based on a principle which the Christian preacher could not speak without contradicting. {795} The Christian ideal was not only above, but antagonistic to the pagan ideal, and, consequently, the more zealous the Christian missionary, the more offensive he would prove himself. His intolerance or exclusiveness might help him whose faith was strong, yet little heeded in practice; but when faith itself was not only wanting but indignantly rejected, it could only excite anger or derision.

The apostle had no _point d'appui_ in the pagan traditions, and it was only rarely that he could find any thing in heathen authors, poets, or philosophers that he could press into his service. The pagan, no doubt, had natural reason, but it was so darkened by spiritual ignorance, so warped by superstition, and so abnormally developed by false principles, that it was almost impossible to find in it anything on which an argument for the truth could be based. The Gospel was not in the pagan order of thought, and the Christian apologists had to support it by appealing to a line of tradition which the Gentiles had not, or had only as corrupted, perverted, or travestied. The only traditions they could appeal to were those of the Hebrews, and they found it necessary, in some sort, to convert the pagans to Judaism, before they could convince them of the truth of the Gospel. This was any thing but easy to be done; for the Gentiles despised the Jews and their traditions, and the Jews themselves were the most bitter enemies of the Christians, had crucified the founder of Christianity, and rejected the Christian interpretation of their Scriptures.

The doctrine of the brotherhood of the race taught by the church was something more than was taught by the philosophers, in fact, another doctrine; and, though it had something consoling to the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, yet these are precisely the classes with whom old traditions linger the longest, and prejudices are the most inveterate and hardest to be overcome. They are the classes the most opposed to innovations, in the moral or spiritual order. The Protestant reformers proved this, and the peasantry were the last to accept the new gospel they preached, and rarely accepted it at all but through the influence or compulsion of their princes and nobles. We see, also, now, in Protestant countries, that, the peasantry having become Protestant, are far more difficult to convert than persons by birth or education belonging to the upper classes. Yet, it was precisely among the lower classes, or rather the slave class, that the Christian missionary had his greatest success; though the emancipation and equality he preached were spiritual only, not physical or social.

The doctrine of future life the church taught was coupled with two other doctrines hard for pagans to receive. The mere continuance of the spirit after the death of the body was, in some form, no doubt, held by the whole pagan world, a few sceptics excepted; but the resurrection of the body, or that what had once ceased to live would live again, was a thing wholly foreign to the pagan mind. Plato never, to my recollection, once hints it, and could not with his general principles. He held the union of the soul with the body to be a fall, a degradation from its previous state, the loss of its liberty; regarded the body as the enemy of the soul, as its dungeon, and looked upon death as its liberation, as a restoration to its original freedom and joy in the bosom of the divinity. The pagans had, as far as I can discover, no belief in future rewards and punishment in the Christian sense. {796} They believed in malevolent gods, who, if they failed to appease their wrath before dying, would torture them after death in Tartarus; but the idea that a God of love would doom the wicked to hell, as a punishment for their moral offences or sins, was as hard for them to believe as it is for Mr. Lecky himself. Yet Christianity taught it, and brought the whole empire to believe it. Christianity, while it delivered the pagans from the false terrors of superstition, replaced them by what to the pagan mind seemed even a still greater terror.

In what the author says of appeals to the emotional side of our nature, he shows that he has studied paganism with more care and less prejudice than he has Christianity. The emotions, as such, have for the Christian no moral or religious value. The love the Gospel requires is not an emotional love, and Christian morals have little to do with the moral sentiment which Adam Smith asserted, or the benevolence which Hucheson held to be the principle of morality. There is no approach to the Christian principle in the fine-spun sentiment of Bernardine Saint-Pierre, Madame de Staël, or Chateaubriand. Sentimentalism, in any form, is wholly foreign to Christian morals and to Christian piety, and neither has probably a worse or a more dangerous enemy than the sentimentalism so rife in modern society, and which finds its way even into the writings of some Catholics. The sentiment of benevolence may be a _mobile_, but it is never the _motive_ of Christian virtue. No doubt, one of the great causes of the success of Christianity was the inexhaustible charity of the early Christians, their love for one another, their respect for and tenderness to the poor, the forsaken, the oppressed, the afflicted, the suffering. But that charity had not its origin in our emotional nature, and though it may be attended by sentiment, is itself by no means a sentiment; for its reason and motive was the love of God, especially of God who had assumed our nature, and made himself man for man's sake, and died on the cross for man's redemption. The Christian sees God in every fellow-man who needs his assistance, or to whose wants he can minister. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." The Christian finds his Lord, the Beloved of his soul, wherever he finds one for whom Christ died, to whom he can be of service.

This charity, this love, may be mimicked by the sentiment of benevolence, but it does not grow out of it, is not that sentiment developed or intensified; it depends on the great central mystery of Christianity, that of "the Word made flesh," and can never be found where faith in the Incarnation is wanting, and faith is, always and everywhere, an intellectual act, not a sentimental affection. If it were a natural sentiment or emotion, why was it to be found among Christians alone? The heathen had all of nature that Christians have; they even recognized the natural brotherhood of the race, as does the author; how happens it, then, if Christianity is only a development of heathenism, and Christian charity is only a natural sentiment, that you find no trace of it in the pagan world? There is no effect without a cause, and there must have been something operating with Christians that was not to be found in paganism, and which is not included even in nature.

The pagans, like modern Protestants, worshipped success, and regarded success as a mark of the approbation of the gods. Misfortune, ill-luck, failure was a proof of the divine displeasure. Cromwell and his Roundheads interpreted uniformly their victories over the royalists as an indisputable proof of the divine approval of their course. {797} It never occurred to them that the Almighty might be using them to chastise the royalists for their abuse of his favors, or to execute vengeance on a party that had offended him, and that, when he had accomplished his purpose with them, he would break them as a potter's vessel, and cast them away. The heathen looked upon the poor, the needy, the enslaved, the infirm, the helpless, and the suffering, as under the malediction of the gods, and refused to offer them any aid or consolation. They left the poor to struggle and starve. They did not do even so much for them as to shut them up in prisons called poor-houses. They looked with haughty contempt on the poor and needy, and if they sometimes threw them a crust, it was from pride, not charity, without the least kindly sympathies with them. As with modern non-Catholics, poverty, with them, was regarded and treated as a misfortune or as a crime.

Yet the Christians looked upon the poor with love and respect. Poverty, in their eyes, was no misfortune, no crime, but really a blessing, as bringing them nearer to God, and giving to the Christian more abundant in this world's goods an opportunity to do good, and lay up treasures in heaven. The Christian counts what he gives to the poor and needy as so much treasure saved, and placed beyond the reach of thieves and robbers, or any of the vicissitudes of fortune. Whence this difference between the pagan and the Christian, we might say, between the Catholic and non-Catholic? It cannot come from the simple recognition of the natural brotherhood of the race, for the natural ties of race and of kindred fail to call forth a love so strong, so enduring, so self-forgetting as Christian charity. Indeed, Christian charity is decidedly above the forces of nature. The brotherhood that gives rise to it is not the brotherhood in Adam, but the closer brotherhood in Christ; not in generation, but in regeneration. Give, then, as large a part as you will to Christian charity, in the conversion of Rome, you still have offered no proof that the conversion was effected by natural causes, for that charity itself is supernatural, and not in the order of natural causes.

Mr. Lecky wholly fails to adduce any natural causes adequate to the explanation of the conversion of Rome and the triumph of Christianity over paganism. He cannot do it, for this one sufficient reason, that paganism was impotent to reform itself, and yet it had all the natural causes working for it that Christianity had. The Christians had no more of nature than had the pagans, while all the natural advantages, power, wealth, institutions, human learning and science, the laws, habits, customs, and usages of the entire nation, or aggregation of nations, were against them. How, then, not only do by nature what the same nature in paganism could not do, or by nature alone triumph over nature clothed with so many advantages, and presenting so many obstacles? Why should nature be stronger, and so much stronger, in Christians than in Pagans, that a few illiterate fishermen from the lake of Genesareth, belonging by race to the despised nation of the Jews, could change not only the belief, but the moral life of the whole Roman people? Clearly, the Christians could not succeed without a power which paganism had not, and therefore not without a power that nature does not and cannot furnish.

{798}

The author denies the supernatural, and seeks to combat the argument we use by showing that several eastern superstitions, especially the worship of Isis, were introduced into Rome about the same time with Christianity, and gained no little currency, in spite of the imperial edicts against them. This is true, but there was no radical difference between those eastern superstitions and the state religion, and they demanded and effected no change of morals or manners. They were all in the order of the national religion, were based on the same principle, only they were a little more sensual and corrupt. Their temporary success required no other basis than Roman paganism itself furnished. And the edicts against their mysteries and orgies were seldom executed. It needs no supernatural principle to account for the rapid rise and spread of Methodism in a Protestant community, for it is itself only a form of Protestantism. But Christianity was not, and is not, in any sense, a form or development of paganism; in almost every particular, it is its direct contradictory. It was based on a totally different principle, and held entirely different maxims of life. A worshipper of Bacchus or Isis could without difficulty conform to the national or state religion, and comply with all its requirements. The Christian could conform in nothing, and comply with no pagan requirements. He could take no part in the national festivities, the national games, amusements, or rejoicings, for these were all dedicated to idols. There is no analogy in the case.

Mr. Lecky denies that the conversion of Rome was a miracle, and that it was effected on the evidence of miracles. He admits that miracles are possible, though he confounds miracles with prodigies, and says there is five times more proof in the case of many miracles than would be required to prove an ordinary historical fact; but he rejects miracles, not for the want of proof, nor because science has disproved them, but because the more intelligent portion of mankind have gradually dropped them, and ceased to believe in them, as they have dropped the belief in fairies, dwarfs, etc. The enlightened portion of mankind, it must be understood, are those who think like Mr. Lecky, and profess a Christianity without Christ, moral obligation without God the creator, and hold effects are producible without causes. We confess that we are not of their number, and probably shall never be an enlightened man in their sense. We believe in miracles, and that miracles had not a little to do with the introduction and establishment of Christianity. As the author admits them to be possible, and that many are sustained by far greater proof than is needed to prove ordinary historical events, we hope that it will be allowed, that, in believing them, we are not necessarily involved in total darkness. But we have no space, at present, to enter upon the general question of miracles--a question that can not be properly treated without treating the whole question of the natural and the supernatural.

The author tells us that the early Christians at Rome rarely appealed, if at all, to miracles as proofs either of their doctrines or their mission. Yet that they sometimes did would seem pretty certain from the pains the pagans took to break the force of the Christian miracles by ascribing them to magic, or by setting up analogous or counter miracles of their own. Certain it is, however, that they appealed to the supernatural, and adduced not only the miracle of the resurrection of our Lord, which entered into the very staple of their preaching, and was one of the bases of their faith, but to that standing miracle of prophecy, and of a supernatural providence--the Jewish, people. {799} The very religion they preached was supernatural, from beginning to end, and they labored to prove the necessity of faith in Christ, who was crucified, who rose from the dead, and is Lord of heaven and earth. There is no particular miracle or prophecy adduced to prove this that cannot, indeed, be cavilled at; but the Hebrew traditions and the faith of the Jewish people could not be set aside. Here was a whole nation whose entire life through many thousand years had been based on a prophecy, a promise of the Messiah. This prophecy, frequently renewed, and borne witness to by the national organization, the religious institutions, sacrifices, and offerings, and the entire national and moral life through centuries, is a most stupendous miracle. When you take this in connection with the traditions preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures, which go back to the creation of the world--developing one uniform system of thought, one uniform doctrine, one uniform faith, free from all superstition; one uniform plan of divine providence, and throwing a marvellous light on the origin, duty, and end of man--you find a supernatural fact which is irresistible, and sufficient of itself to convince any unprejudiced mind that Christianity is the fulfilment of the promises made to Adam after his expulsion from the Garden, to the patriarchs, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to the Jewish people.

We have no space here to develop this argument, but it is the argument that had great weight with ourselves personally, and, by the grace of God, was the chief argument that brought us to believe in the truth of Christianity, and in the church as the fulfilment of the synagogue. The apostles and early apologists continually, in one form or another, appeal to this standing miracle, this long-continued manifestation of the supernatural, as the basis of their proof of Christianity. They adduced older traditions than any the pagans could pretend to, and set forth a faith that had continued from the first man, which had once been the faith of all mankind, and from which the Gentiles had fallen away, and been plunged, in consequence, into the darkness of unbelief, and subjected to all the terrors of the vilest, most corrupt, and abominable superstitions. They labored to show that the Gentiles, in the pride of their hearts, had forsaken the God that made them, creator of heaven and earth, and all things therein, visible or invisible, for Satan, for demons, and for gods made with their own hands, or fashioned by their own lusts and evil imaginations. They pursued, indeed, the same line of argument that Catholics pursue against Protestants, only modified by the fact that the Protestant falling away, so clearly foretold by St. Paul in his Epistles, is more recent, less complete, and Protestants have not yet sunk so low as had the Gentiles of the Roman empire.

But it was not enough to establish the truth of Christianity in the Roman mind. Christian morals are above the strength of nature alone; yet the pagans were not only induced to give up their own principle of morals, and to accept as true the Christian principle, but they gave up their old practices, and yielded a practical obedience to the Christian law. Those same Romans changed their manner of life, and attained to the very summits of Christian sanctity. The philosophers gave many noble precepts, preserved from a purer tradition than their own, but they had no power to get them practised, and our author himself says they had no influence on the people; yet they enjoined nothing above the forces of nature. {800} The Christians came, taught the people a morality impracticable to nature even in its integrity, and yet what they taught was actually practised even by women, children, and slaves. How was this? It was not possible without supernatural aid, or the infusion of grace which elevates the soul above the level of nature, enabling it at once to act from a supernatural principle, and from a supernatural motive. All who have attempted the practise of Christian perfection by the strength of nature alone, have sadly failed. Take the charitable institutions, societies for relieving the poor, providing for the aged and infirm, protecting the fatherless and widows, for restoring the fallen, and reforming the vicious or criminal, established by non-Catholics--they are all comparative, if not absolute failures. Though modelled after institutions of the church, and supported at lavish expense, none of them succeed. They lack some essential element which is efficacious in Catholic institutions, and that element is undoubtedly supernatural grace, for that is all Catholics have that they have not in far greater abundance. They have humanity, natural benevolence, learning, ability, and ample wealth--why do they not succeed? Because they lack supernatural charity, and the blessing of God that always accompanies it. No other reasons can be assigned.

Mr. Lecky thinks the persecutions by the state, which the early Christians had to endure, or that the spread of Christianity in spite of them, are not worth anything in the argument. In the first place, he pretends that the persecutions were not very severe, and were for the most part confined to particular localities, and rarely became general in the empire; they were of brief duration, and came only at distant intervals, and the number of martyrs could not have been great. In the second place, the persecutions rather helped the persecuted religion, as persecution usually does. Rome, in reality, was tolerant, and most of the pagan emperors were averse to harsh measures, and connived at the growth of the new religion, which they regarded as one of the innumerable superstitions hatched in the East, and which must soon pass away.

Rome tolerated for conquered nations their national religion, or worship, but no religion except the state religion for Romans. The national gods recognized by the senate, and whose images were allowed to stand by the side of the Roman gods, might be worshipped; but no Roman citizen was allowed to desert the state religion, and nowhere in the empire was any religion tolerated that was not the national worship of some people subject or tributary to Rome. Now, Christianity was no national religion, and was hostile to the state religion, and utterly irreconcilable with it; for it there was no toleration; it was prohibited by the laws of the empire as well as by the edicts of the emperors. The Christians might at first be overlooked as too insignificant to excite hostility, or they might have been regarded, since they were chiefly Jews, as a Jewish sect; they might also, as they were a quiet, peaceable people, obeying the laws when not repugnant to the law of God, performing all their moral, social, and civil duties, and never mingling in the affairs of state, have been connived at for a time. But they had no legal protection, and if complained of and brought before the tribunals, and proved to be Christians, they had no alternative but to conform to the national religion or suffer death, often in the most excruciating forms; for the Romans were adepts in cruelty, and took delight in watching the writhings and sufferings of their victims. {801} Even Trajan, while he prohibited the search for them, ordered, if accused and convicted of being Christians, that they should be put to death. Such being the law, the prefect or governor of a province could at any time, without any imperial edict, put the law in force against the Christians, if so disposed; and that they did so in all the provinces of the empire, frequently and with unsparing severity, we know from history. The Christians were safe at no time and nowhere in the empire, and it is probable that the number of victims of the ten general persecutions were by far the smaller number of those who suffered for the faith prior to the accession of Constantine. We place no confidence in the calculations of Gibbon or our author, and we have found no reason for believing that the Christian historians, or the fathers, exaggerated the number of those who received the crown of martyrdom.

It is a great mistake to suppose that paganism had lost its hold on the Roman mind till long after the Christians had become a numerous body in the empire. There were, no doubt, individuals who treated all religions with indifference, but never had the pagan superstitions a stronger hold on the mass of the people, especially in Rome and the western provinces, than during the first two centuries of our era. The republic had been transformed into the empire, and the government was never stronger, or the worship of the state more intolerant, more fervent, or more energetically supported by the government. The work of Romanizing the various conquered nations was effected under the emperors, and the signs of decline and dissolution of the empire did not appear till near the close of the third century. The Roman state and paganism seemed to be indissolubly linked together--so closely that the pagans attributed to the rise and progress of Christianity the decline and downfall of both. Certain it is, that paganism lost its hold on the people or the state only in proportion to the progress of Christianity; and the abandonment of the heathen gods and the desertion of the heathen temples were due to the preaching of the Gospel, not a fact which preceded and prepared the way for it. Converts are seldom made from the irreligious and indifferent classes, who are the last, in any age, to be reached or affected by truth and piety.

The fact is, that paganism fought valiantly to the last, and Christianity had to meet and grapple with it in its full force, and when supported by the strongest and most effective government that ever existed, still in the prime and vigor of its life. The struggle was harder and longer continued than is commonly supposed, and by no means ended with Constantine. Paganism reascended the throne--in principle, at least--under Constantius, the son, and avowedly under Julian, the nephew of the first Christian emperor. Every pagan statesman saw, from the first, that there was an irrepressible antagonism between Christianity and paganism, and that the former could not prevail without destroying the latter, and, of course, the religion of the state, and apparently not without destroying the state with it. The intelligent and patriotic portion of the Roman people must have regarded the spread of Christianity very much as the Protestant leaders regard the spread of Catholicity in our own country. They looked upon it as a foreign religion, and anti-Roman. {802} It rejected the gods of Rome, to whom the city was indebted for her victories and the empire of the world. We may be sure, then, that the whole force of the state, the whole force of the pagan worship, backed by the passions and fanaticism of the people, whether of the city or the provinces, was exerted to crush out the new and offensive worship; and, whether the numbers of martyrs were a few more or a few less, the victory obtained by Christianity against such fearful odds is not explicable without the assumption of supernatural aid--especially when that victory carried with it a complete change of morals and manners, and the practice in not a few who underwent it of a heroic sanctity, or virtues which are confessedly above our natural strength.

No false or merely natural religion could have survived, far less have vanquished, such opposition as Christianity encountered at every point. The very fact that it thrived, in spite of the fearful persecution to which it was subjected, is a proof of its truth and divinity. We grant the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church, but persecution fails only when it meets truth, when it meets God as the resisting force. We know the strength of superstition and the tenacity of fanaticism; but we deny that persecution has ever increased or multiplied the adherents or aided the growth of a false religion. There is no example of it in history. It is only the truth that does not succumb; and even they who profess the truth, when they have lost the practice of it, have yielded to the spirit of the world, and have ceased to be faithful to God, fail to stand before persecution, as was seen in the almost entire extinction of Catholics in the European nations that accepted the Protestant Reformation. The inefficacy of persecution to extinguish the doctrine persecuted is a commonplace of liberalism; but history proves the contrary, and hence the fact that Christianity, instead of being extinguished by the heathen persecution, spread under it, and even gained power by it, is no mean proof of its truth and its supernatural support.

The author obtains his adverse conclusion by substituting for the Christianity to which Rome was actually converted, and which actually triumphed in the empire, a Christianity of his own manufacture, a rationalistic Christianity, which has nothing to do with Christ Jesus, and him crucified; a Christianity despoiled of its mysteries, its doctrinal teachings, its distinctive moral precepts, and reduced to a simple moral philosophy. It is with him a theory, a school; not a fact, not a law, not an authority, not a living organism, nor of an order essentially different from paganism. His Christianity has its starting point in paganism, and only marks a particular stage in the general progress of the race. He does not see that it and paganism start from entirely different principles, and come down through separate and hostile lines, or that they have different ancestors. He does not understand that Christianity, if a development at all, is not the development of paganism, but of the patriarchal and Jewish religion, which placed the principle of duty in man's relation to God as his creator and final cause, not in the assumption of man's own divinity or godship. Hence he finds no need of supernatural aid to secure its triumph.

The author, placing Christianity in the same line with paganism, supposes that he accounts sufficiently for the conversion of Rome by the assumption that the Christians placed a stronger emphasis on certain doctrines held by the pagan philosophers, and were actuated by a greater zeal and enthusiasm than were those philosophers themselves. {803} Yet he does not show the origin of the greater zeal, nor its character; and he entirely misapprehends the enthusiasm of the early Christians. They were, in no received sense of the word, enthusiasts, nor were they, in his sense of the word, even zealots. They in no sense corresponded to the character given them in _The Last Days of Pompeii_. They were neither enthusiasts nor fanatics; and their zeal, springing from true charity, was never obtrusive nor annoying. We find in the earlier and later sects enthusiasts, fanatics, and zealots, who are excessively offensive, and yet are able to carry away the simple, the ignorant, and the undisciplined; but we never find them among the early orthodox Christians, any more than you do among Catholics at the present day. The early Christians did not "creep into houses and lead away silly women," nor assault people in the streets or market-place, and seek to cram Christianity down their throats, whether they would or not, but were singularly sober, quiet, orderly, and regular in their proceedings, as Catholics have always been, compelling not people to hear them against their will, and instructing in the faith only those who manifested a desire to be instructed. The author entirely mistakes both the Christian order of thought and the character of the early Christians who suffered from and finally triumphed over the pagan empire.

Translated From The French.

Paganina.

I.

Master Aloysius Swibert was an organist in a small Austrian town; but from afar his perfect knowledge of harmony, and freshness and delicacy of inspiration, were known and praised; and many a stranger artist, having heard him, wondered that he did not seek renown and even glory in larger cities, and saw with astonishment how his art and his simple friendships contented and ornamented a life requiring nothing more.

He gave his time to the study of the great masters, a study full of pure enjoyment, but laborious and difficult, and, with a singular simplicity of character, he never approached them without the greatest reserve and respect.

Obstinately he worked, allowing himself but little respite to indulge the flights of his fancy, or the inspiration which, now and then, came to him so luminously, so brightly that the brave artist cried out his thanks in ecstasy, in the fulness of his joy.

His musical thoughts are all in a tiny volume. No long fantasies--half pages mostly--sometimes only lines, short and excellent and original; blessed originality, not coarse or confusing, but healthy and true--the daughter and messenger of inspiration!

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II.

Thus rolled the weeks, returning ever the Sunday so ardently desired; for to Master Swibert each Sunday was an event. He thought of the one passed, and looked forward to the coming one; all were equally dear. From the Saturday evening previous, all things sang to him his feast-day songs, and the next morning, collected and serious, in his best clothes, he sought his church and his organ.

He had his own ideas, considered extreme by some, on the ministry of the musician in the services of the church, on the respect due the place and the instrument. His heart beat when he approached the organ, and he played, following his conscience, sometimes well, sometimes better, never seeking success--on the contrary, dreading it.

His work accomplished, he walked with his sister, serious and happy. The people loved to see them pass, and, from the doors of their houses, saluted them amicably. In return, they gave each a pleasant smile, and rejoiced that men and things should wear their holiday robes, their Sunday colors. If the trees were green and the weather fine, their happiness was complete. It made the good man sad, though, if men or children worked, or even planned their occupations. "Poor creatures!" he said, "is not even Sunday for them?" And his heart beat as he spoke. But when he met whole families enjoying themselves, the fathers important, the mothers busy and happy, and the children gay and prattling, he entered his lodging so happily, kissed his sister, and awaited his friends.

III.

He had but two--that is too many--and these could only remember having passed one Sunday evening away from Master Swibert. On their arrival, there were three just men under the same roof--one more than is necessary in order that our Lord may be in the midst of them.

They supped, and the organist's sister, twelve years younger than he, a fresh and graceful girl, waited on his guests, and offered them some nice white cakes, prepared the day before. Each one paid her his heartfelt compliments, while, smiling and silent, with pleasure she received them.

After supper, Master Swibert seated himself at his piano and played for his friends his studies of the past week. The music was mingled with conversation, and art and philosophy beguiled the hours. Seated around a good-sized pot of beer, with consciences at ease, with active bodies and cheerful spirits, these companions pursued endless conversations in all that interested their honest hearts until, as night closed round them, their souls were elevated and they spoke of heaven. There seemed to be a marvellous contact between their natures and all that is spiritual.

Such was Master Swibert's interior on Sunday evenings. Could chance have led thither some growing youth, all ardor and enthusiasm, and had he essayed the eternal temptations of love and glory, his answer would have been a smile. There they had no place. The three friends were happy.

IV.

But in this world every thing passes, happiness especially. The day came when Master Swibert had to part from all he loved--his quiet habits, his home, and his country.

He was tall, and looked strong and healthy; yet his friends were disquieted about him, for he seemed restless, like a tree which outwardly appears vigorous, but at heart decayed and liable to fall with the first rough wind. His physicians gave a reason for their uneasiness, and ordered him south.

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The organist and his sister set out one day, hurrying their adieus as people who run away. When they were at the foot of the Alps in Italy, they stopped at a sunny little town, a day's journey from Milan, which we will call Arèse. Master Swibert was then forty-four.

How this man, who, till now, had lived more like a priest than a man of the world, could be led by his passions to marry an Italian and a singer, is difficult to explain. Besides, it is superfluous to look for a reason for any unreasonable act. Perhaps the good old sun was the cause, laughing behind the trees at the follies of which he makes us guilty.

But the girl was pretty, reputed good, and dedicated to her parents every moment her vanity did not require. So the organist married her.

V.

They say love lives by contrasts; the god of such a union should have been well fed. But his life was short, for, after a few months only, he died. Perhaps of a fit of indigestion.

The Italian did not like the retired and exclusive life demanded of her, and the German could not accept the free behavior of his wife. He could not believe in the purity of a soul that sought vulgar homage and common admiration.

He was wrong to judge her by the ideas of his own country. His name there had been so honorably borne that, if it was for the singer too heavy a burden, death only could release her. This death took place under peculiar circumstances.

Paganini was just then being heard at Milan, and exercising that singular fascination that made his artistic personality the most characteristic of our time.

This age, which believes in no thing, accords him a legend, and, in truth, his power with the instrument he used was surprising and unequalled.

The fascination he possessed by his eccentric and well-executed performances is well known; how, for instance, he only appeared in a demi-obscurity, in some romantic scene; or, in some fit of inspiration, broke rudely the three strings of his instrument, and performed on the remaining one his most astonishing variations.

Whether it was skill, or a want of genius, no matter; the effect produced was marvellous. On the wife of Master Swibert the result was astonishing. Her child was born before its time, and in one of the side-scenes of the theatre of La Scala.

Its life seemed so feebly assured that it was baptized immediately with the name of Rose Marie; but Paganini, flattered by the adventure, insisting upon being godfather on the occasion, the little one was only known by the name of Paganina.

Thus was born the singular artist whose history we relate. We know the exterior facts, the accidents, we may say, of her life. Popular imagination has made of them an interesting legend; but these facts were produced by interior emotions little understood, and would be perfectly unintelligible could we not trace in her the two tendencies, the two natures, which she inherited from her parents.

Master Swibert arrived in time to say adieu to his wife, who did not survive her confinement. Then, as a miser with his treasure, he carried off his daughter. The child was feeble, but the organist felt within himself such an intensity of paternal love that he could not doubt she would live; "for," said he, "the vital forces of a creature are not wholly in itself, but in the love of its parents."

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The sister of Master Swibert had married and left him. Therefore alone with his daughter, he entered an unoccupied house, where their new lives should develop themselves.

VI.

Happy the children born of Christian parents! They alone understand the integrity of affection that addresses itself to the soul, the delicacy of love which envelops the infant, from the bosom of its mother, conducting it through every danger, and, even in spite of maternal instinct, to the port of safety.

The organist could put in practice no personal theories of education. He thought a father and mother (he was both) have but one thing to do--to love and love on, to watch on their knees near the cradle of their child, to observe attentively the movements of the soul in its dawning light, to direct it on high, always on high, guard it from all that is impure, (triviality, even, he considered so;) and so, in fine, enforce the impressions of a saintly and ideal character, before even the child has consciousness of its perceptions.

Give your imagination to the interior of a family where such sentiments prevail; one sees marvellous things, that no painter can paint in colors true enough to render public. O pure and holy family joys! If we hesitate to describe you, it is from respect. We know with what discretion we should touch on holy things, and we hardly dare to make ourselves understood, to those who are fathers, by sketching the scenes of these first years of childhood between Master Swibert and his daughter.

VII.

Night has come; the child is going to sleep. Her father, pursuing his studies, is seated at the piano near the little being who has all his heart, and is now his inspiration; the waves of harmony go out into the night, white apparitions encircle the cradle, graze the earth, and fly away. The child sleeps.

Attentive and listening, her angel looks at her, opening slightly its wings to better protect her, and throwing over her closed eye-lids the bluish and transparent veil. The little face smiles sweetly.

In the morning she awakes, her soul filled with the joys of the night. She hears the birds sing, and the bright morning sun with heavenly rays gilds the cover of her little bed. She watches it play on her white curtains and turns toward her father, her eyes filled with tears, a weight on her heart. "Why do you weep, my daughter?" "Because, my father, I love you dearly, and I am too happy."

Yes, well may we discuss the joys of childhood. To sing them, poets lose their breath; to paint them, exhaust the colors of their palettes; and heap image upon image as their heated fancies may suggest, yet what have they done? Nothing. Yet the subject is worth their study. And how is it that there are so many who have known these joys in all their purity, who in their manhood gaze on into the future, and so seldom look to that past which made them so happy? Would they not, at times, give worlds to be again that little child at its mother's knee?

VIII.

Paganina was nearly seven years old, when she found a companion; the organist's sister died, leaving her only child to the care of her brother.

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The little boy, named André, seemed to be of a gentle and even weak character. He was the same age as his cousin, but never was presented a more perfect contrast.

Paganina had not yet acquired that marvellous beauty that afterward became so celebrated, but something there was about her very strange and very attractive.

She was reticent and retiring, nonchalant in gesture and careless in behavior. Her face was always sad, an indescribable, almost ferocious _ennui_ seeming completely to overpower her. But if some recital, some sudden expression touched her imagination, or music entranced her, her deep black eyes threw out a violet flame, and even sparkled. But that was all. The calm of an affected, scornful carelessness returned immediately.

Restlessness is the common host of the domestic hearth.

Master Swibert trembled to see the worldly and theatrical genius of the mother develop in the child; he knew well that, in a nature strong and deep as hers, such tastes would make terrible ravages. And the development of each successive year was not calculated to dispel his fears.

Everything in the child alarmed him, from her habitual concentration to her fits of passionate tenderness--the outburst of the moment, volcano-like, a jet of brilliant flame which sparkles and goes out.

IX.

Master Swibert could boast in his dying hours of never having deserted the child for an hour even. After having devoted the early hours of the day to her and her cousin's education, he superintended and guided their recreations--an important part, in good hands, of the training of a child.

He had the habit of taking every day a long walk. The route they loved best he called the German road. It was that by which the organist had come to Italy. The sight of it revived his memories, and flattered the melancholy love he gave his country.

On the way, the children listened to the stories of the good musician, who so willingly related them. They spoke of Germany; for on this chapter Master Swibert never tired. He led his little auditors into the world of ballads and legends, and we can readily imagine the pretty curiosity and happy astonishment which, at their age, he awakened. Their favorite legend was that of the great emperor Barbarossa, who slept so many centuries in an obscure grotto, leaning on a table of stone into which his beard had grown. These stories were better than our nurses tell; for the organist related them, not to impose on the credulity of his youthful auditory, but to extract the poetry they contained; and this he did wonderfully. Poetry never did harm to any one.

But the children loved, even better than the legends, the recitals suitable for them from the German poets. The story of Mignon delighted them. What could be told them sufficed; and they loved the little girl who had no other language than song, who took the face of an angel and aspired to heaven, where she went without scarcely having lived on earth.

Their imagination was inflamed. They longed to see the country of their dreams. Sometimes, at the turn of the road, they began to run, in the unavowed hope of seeing, at last, what was behind the mountain; but, the circuit passed, and only a long road, apparently without end, presenting itself, the poor little things cried with disappointment. {808} Their father, ready to weep with them, took them in his arms to control them, and told them for the hundredth time one of his pretty ballads.

X.

The route into Germany is through a beautiful country. After traversing a plain for some distance, one enters into a deep gorge in the mountain and then begins to ascend.

This gorge gives passage to a torrent, dry in summer, but, becoming furious during the rains of autumn, uproots trees, carries away bridges, and, undermining the stones at their base, lowers, each year, the level of the neighboring elevations. The route accommodates itself poorly to this terrible neighbor, and follows it as far off as possible. Around on the left shore, it turns quickly at a certain height, and crosses the torrent over a very high bridge. There, continuing to ascend, it makes a circuit over a plain of moderate extent, while a narrow and badly constructed road, bordering the sides of the ravine, leaves it to descend to the magnificent residence which, from time immemorial, belongs to the family of the Ligonieri. It is called the Château Sarrasin.

A view unequalled presents itself from this elevation. Below it, on the first ladder of the heights, is seen the black mass of the chateau, so near that one can almost penetrate into the interior of the edifice; and beyond, the plain, displaying under the silvery net-work of its water-courses the richness of its vegetation; and finally, on the left, the wooded slopes of the mountain, crowned with glaciers, and developing into a gigantic hemicycle. When the dazzled eye is at rest, or gazing afar, it ever returns to the Chateau Sarrasin; and worthy is it of the closest regard.

Its name indicates its antiquated pretensions; but it has no uniformity of style; each age has given it a stone, and from the labor of centuries has resulted a whole of a character grand and majestic.

Proudly encamped on a perpendicular rock, accessible only on one side, it commands the plain and defies the mountain with its black and menacing tower, that seems to have been placed there to protect the other less hardy constructions.

From the road, the traveller raises his eyes to this eagle's nest; he contemplates with pleasure the terraces which shelve below, suspending over the precipice their flowering groves and massive oaks, and, naturally, he demands its history. Yet this history was not always to be praised. The chronicle credits those who inhabited it in past ages with a series of adventures more curious than moral, and enough to fill a book of legends.

The Ligonieri have followed the progress of civilization. In our day, they respect the laws, and even make themselves respected. They serve the state in the highest ranks of the administration, the army, and diplomacy. Yet it would seem that, after all, the devil has not lost much; for they tell wild stories of the castle's being fatal to conjugal love, of its reigning queens ever suffering in silence the affronts of some rival under its cursed roof. Popular recitals represent them isolated, lifting to heaven their innocent hands, and mingling their prayers with the noise of orgies and the songs of feasts. The favorites of the Chateau Sarrasin belonged mostly to the theatre, and among them was she who reigned a certain evening when the scene took place I am going to relate.

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XI.

This evening, then, the organist and his two children had arrived on the elevation that commands the residence of the Ligonieri, and were looking about them. There was a _fête_ at the Château Sarrasin.

The grand _salon_ of the ground floor was illuminated, and crowded with a brilliant assembly of guests. Long waves of light came from the windows and doors, and showed the crowd pressing around every opening, and in the shadows revealed groups seated attentively at cards.

All heads were turned toward one point; all looks were in the same direction, and attached themselves to a woman standing in the centre of the light, and surrounded by a chorus and a numerous orchestra.

This woman was clothed in green, and wore a crown of ivy, the ornament of the old bacchantes. A green diamond threw its lustrous rays from her impure forehead. She sang--not the songs that carry tired souls into the regions of the ideal, and make them forget for a moment the sadness of earth; but guilty joys and culpable pleasures were her theme. The metallic voice sang in response to her chorus; and, becoming more and more excited, the quick, passionate notes mounted into a demoniacal laugh. How sad, how true it is, that the human soul, once beyond the bounds of purity, rejoices in and receives new excitement from the delirium of blasphemy.

XII.

Attracted by the light, Paganina advanced toward the precipice. The passionate music had turned her brain. Her growing agitation became extreme, and she betrayed it in gestures and ardent words. When Master Swibert called her, she refused to obey.

Understanding at last, her father rose, pale as a corpse.

"Unfortunate child!" he cried, "thy bad angel is approaching thee. Now comes the hour when I regret thy birth. God grant that I may not be punished for having shown thee the spectacle of evil thou comprehendest so quickly."

The child advances, her father follows, and she begins to run. Wildly through the midst of the rocks she risks her life at every step. Her father, breathless, pursues her, frightened, and covered with a cold perspiration. His eyes, grown large already with fear, see his daughter precipitated into an endless abyss; and discover, also, in the future another abyss still more shadowed and more horrible, where, perhaps, will be lost the deeply-loved soul of his child.

The guests of the Château Sarrasin heard two cries mingle with the joyousness of their _féte_. The organist seized his child just at the moment when, from the edge of the precipice, she would have plunged into eternity.

He had saved her life, but not regained her soul. That evening, the child separated herself from him in a spirit of revolt which almost broke his heart to witness.

XIII.

Master Swibert slept but little, and badly. When he awoke, he wondered how he had been able to omit to Paganina his usual good-night. His eyes fell instinctively on the door where, every morning, she came, half-clothed, to salute him. The sun's rays gilded the sill, and the good father's heart beat, thinking how happy he would be if at that moment she would appear. He said, "She is coming;" but she came not.

{810}

The organist walked up and down his room, interrupting, from time to time, his monotonous promenade, to listen, in hopes of hearing a word, a creaking, a fluttering of a robe. He heard nothing but the uncertain step of André, wandering sad and lonely in the parts of the house least occupied.

The hours passed. The organist still waited, his suffering becoming anguish. Sometimes he felt he must call out, "My child! my child!" Already he opened his arms to receive her; but his sense of duty prevailed, and he waited for her.

The night again returned, and Paganina had shown no signs of life. A bitter sadness, drop by drop, was accumulating in the heart of her unfortunate father. The most mournful thoughts took possession of him. He dreamed of his approaching death, and saw his child alone, abandoned to interior and exterior enemies, and in his weakness he reproached himself for having brought her into this world.

Already more than half the night had gone. Overwhelmed with sorrow, exhausted, he threw himself into an arm-chair, wondering if he could bear to suffer more, when Paganina entered noiselessly, on tiptoe, lest she should awaken her father, whom she believed asleep. She approached him gently, knelt by his side, and, taking one of his hands, covered it with silent tears.

What a change for our poor organist! An immense joy overflowed his heart, and spread over his whole being in delicious emotion. He forgot all past suffering and future inquietude. He lost all consciousness of the present but the knowledge that his daughter was there, pressed to his heart, and palpitating midst her sobs.

He leaned over, and two tears, the first shed by this austere man, fell on the young bowed head--her baptism of peace and pardon. Grief, repentance, the love of the child, obscured for a time, now manifested themselves violently. She hung convulsively on the neck of her father, and begged his pardon. They exchanged kisses, stifled cries, and little words of tenderness, that are the first elements of that pure and passionate, delicate and violent language of the domestic hearth, so little capable of description.

XIV.

The stars sparkled peacefully in a cloudless sky. The breath of the night, with its penetrating odors, came noiselessly, and mingled the white hair of the father with the black curls of the child. It refreshed their burning foreheads.

Peace has descended into their souls. Now and then a sob from Paganina is the only witness of the past storm.

Master Swibert, with his head inclined, speaks in a low voice. He says:

"My daughter, my tenderness for you knows no bounds. Trust to me. Arrived at the summit of life, I, whose head is whitening toward eternity, will tell you that, in this world, the only happiness given man is in the affections of his family. You cannot tell, before being a mother, what paternal affection is, and still less will you understand mine. I was ignorant of it myself until yesterday."

The child standing, her little feet united, pressed her head against the heart of her father.

The organist continued: "The angel of a woman never leaves the domestic hearth. If she lives in the world, her angel has forsaken her. A woman's crown is formed in shadow and silence; the gaze and admiration of a crowd will wither it. Your soul I love, my daughter; and our mutual love must never end. Do you understand me? Never! provided our souls rise together toward the abode of infinite love."

{811}

The child listens attentively; divining, by a sort of intuition, the sense of these teachings, engraving themselves, in letters of fire, on her heart; and which she will understand, each day, more and more.

Little by little, lulled by the whispering of her father; refreshed, as if bathed in such admirable tenderness, she fell asleep. Her father held her in his arms, and, raising his eyes, he prayed.

Day has come. The aurora awakes in its humid splendor, and throws its first rays over the mountain violets. The bells of the town dance into the air their clear and joyous notes.

"My father," said Paganina in a low voice, and without opening her eyes, "what do those bells say? Their ringing sound makes me tremble with joy."

"My daughter, they celebrate, as they may, the day of the Ascension, when Christ ascended into heaven."

"To heaven! my father;" and she added, in so weak a voice that he could scarcely hear her, "It seems that I am there now--that I repose in your arms."

The organist looked at his daughter, whose closed eyes seemed to enjoy interior contemplation; while his pale face expressed his delight. He raised her; held her up, as if to offer her to God; then laid her quietly on her little bed, and let her sleep.

XV.

From that day, the organist possessed perfect control over his daughter. If she seemed disposed to escape from his influence, he recalled the night of the Ascension, and that sufficed. Paganina was still a little girl; but soon she would cease to be one. Her future beauty was crystallizing. The features could be seen; but they had not yet blended into their after harmony. There was something surprising about her.

Morally, the incomprehensible little creature was all dissonance and violent contrasts, promising to be equally powerful for good or evil, as she should be led by superior or inferior influences.

The distinctive character of her nature, habitually concentrated and sometimes impetuous to excess, was her passion for every thing beautiful. Music exercised an extraordinary influence over her. It was, properly speaking, her language; and she understood in it what others could not. Already she spoke in it wonderfully.

Her father taught her his instrument; and she gave herself with love to the study. However, it was easy to see that the demon of song would make her his; so Master Swibert hesitated to give her a master, restrained by his personal ideas on the subject. He had his theory, which appeared singular, no doubt, and he revealed it to his daughter, saying, "Too perfect an instrument is a snare for a musician; for when he has at his service an organ of this kind, he forgets too often to raise it to the ideal, and gives it to matter. Where are those who can disengage themselves from matter to arrive at an idea? Where are those who know that the beauty of the body is the shadow of the beauty of the soul? To pursue exclusively the first is to lose both.

"Look at the immortal composers of my country, whose genius will radiate unto the last of posterity. The shrill notes of the piano are the most common expression of their glorious thoughts. The musicians of this nation find voices neither pure nor powerful enough to express their pitiful imaginations. When I see such anxiety for the sign, I esteem poorly the thing signified, and I think that its beauty is, above all, material.

{812}

"I love the human voice. What an admirable instrument! But I tremble to see how it is used to express the passions of earth and the enchantments of pleasure. It is dangerous to possess it. I warn you of your danger, my daughter."

I have already said that this theory was singular. The word appears weak, perhaps; but it came from Germany.

However, it had no influence on the destiny of Paganina; for, having finished his reasoning, her father gave her a master. Happily, logic alone does not govern the world.

The little one then learned to sing. Her success in this study was rapid, and passed all foresight. Sometimes Master Swibert was confounded when he heard her, and trembled before this power which had come from himself.

XVI.

The moment came when André was to be submitted to the proof of a public education. His uncle considered such a course necessary to make him a man. It was decided that he should receive at the conservatory of Naples the classic traditions of Italian art. The organist and his daughter wished to accompany him to his destination.

They travelled by short stages. Master Swibert proposing, according to his habit, an elevated result, communicated to his children the riches of his erudition. They stopped wherever they could hope to gather some fruit, curious to visit every place of which they knew the history, and he desirous to give them a living knowledge which would be for ever impressed upon them.

His studies and affections induced him to neglect the mere vestiges of antiquity to seek with greater love the souvenirs of Christianity and the relics of the saints. We know if they abound on this illustrious earth.

Every day, then, the travellers turned a new leaf of the book which they had lisped from their childhood. The history of the martyrs particularly seized upon the imagination of Paganina. She never tired of listening to it on the very places they had sanctified by such sublime acts as the world rarely knows.

We may scoff at or disdain the wonders of interior sanctity, but indifference is arrested by the heroism of martyrdom.

The martyrs wear the double crown of divine and human glory. After their God, they are the vanquishers of death. Inspired courage burns on their faces; and when are added to their ranks the grace and beauty of woman and child, why refuse to their memory the homage of love and admiration, if even not to be Christian is considered worthy of worldly honor.

Paganina had the intelligence of greatness; she loved courage and true nobility. The recitals of her father drew tears from her eyes; and in traversing the arenas made memorable by some bloody triumph, she felt within her every inspiration to celebrate them. Here she was true to her Italian nature; but she spoke with an elevation of accent and depth of emotion which are the privileges of northern nations.

One evening she was at the Colosseum. She felt an enthusiasm within her, an inspiration unaccountable, and pictured in life-colors the crowd of excited people, watching and crying out to the poor Christian martyrs struggling and dying, in the brightness of a supernatural light. She entirely forgot herself.

{813}

Something like a hymn breathed from her oppressed heart; eloquence overflowed from her lips. The passers-by were attracted toward her, and her father listened overcome and astonished. While she appeared transfigured, standing in the light of the setting sun, which seemed to throw around her the bloody purple of which she chanted, a ray of the glory of her ancestors rested on the forehead of this grandchild of the martyrs.

That evening, her father, in taking her home again, said to her, "Go on, my little one; many have passed for eloquent who had not your inspiration; many have sought for poetry, and great they were; but they have not found the fruit your tiny hands have gathered. Mignon sang: you sing and speak; and if you use your power for good, Mignon may not compare with you."

Excuse the blindness of a father, if you please.

XVII.

When the time came for the children to part, André was overcome in a manner which seemed incompatible with his nature, so ordinarily tranquil. The father and daughter returned alone, and lived afterward with no other company than themselves. They felt no need to seek their diversion among their neighbors. The simple ties of friendship or convenience to them were unnecessary, and the organist preserved with the outside world only the acquaintance that strict politeness demanded.

Paganina's affection increased daily. A profound sentiment without display, and only recognizable by certain mute signs that might have escaped an indifferent eye. Her father, however, could not be deceived.

So these two beings were never separated. They worked together; the organist conducted his daughter into the highest regions of music, and was astonished, in teaching her, to discover horizons hitherto unknown. Paganina made wonderful progress.

Those who find in art their happiness in this world, and seek the depths of those mysterious tongues of which so many speak and know nothing--those alone can form an idea of the happy moments passed in their solitude.

At times these two souls rose together, mounted even to the pure heights where, to those who attain to them, is given a supernatural felicity.

To these joys Paganina aspired with an immoderate ardor; but in attaining them she experienced a reaction of extreme sadness. This disquieted her father; so, in the language of parable which he liked to use, and which sometimes proved more original than gracious, he said, "My daughter, my daughter, drink with precaution; at the bottom of the purest streams are hidden the most dangerous reptiles. Be prudent, or you will swallow the leech. There is only one fountain to quench your thirst, and where, with your impetuous humor, you may drink with safety: it is that which gushes toward eternal life."

To Be Continued.

{814}

[Transcriber's note: This discussion is impressive, considering that quantum theory and the internal structure of the atom appears many decades in the future.]

Translated From The Etudes Religieuses.

Recent Scientific Discoveries.

By Fr. Carbonelle.

The hypothesis of an ethereal medium everywhere diffused, is still, in spite of some vague objections urged against it, universally received, and the most recent theories and researches have not suggested its abandonment or modification in any important respect. On the contrary, they point to its more exact establishment, and to its application to large classes of phenomena in which, until lately, it was hardly supposed to be involved. There is no longer any branch of natural philosophy which can dispense with it; and in the theory of heat as a mode of motion, which will soon be the basis of a new system of physics more full and clear than the previous one, the motion must probably be explained by the principle of ethereal undulations or vibrations.

These vibrations show themselves by three different effects, namely, heat, chemical action, and color. The first two were for a long time neglected, but the third offered quite a large field, in which many very beautiful discoveries were made. It was known, for instance, that the oscillations were made with prodigious rapidity. Thus, the red of the spectrum is produced by vibrations repeated four hundred and eighty-three trillions of times in a second; while for the violet, more than seven hundred and eight trillions are required. Between these limits all the visible rays are contained, and, taken successively, they produce all the shades of the spectrum, and, by their combination, all possible colors. But as there are vibrations in the air too rapid or too slow to give the sense of sound to the ear, so there are, in the ether, slower than the red, or quicker than the violet, and hence invisible. The first have been detected by their calorific, the second by their chemical effects. The spectrum has thus been considerably extended at both ends, and we cannot be sure that its true limits have even yet been found.

These facts have been known for some time, and are found in all treatises on physics. We only speak of them in order to explain better the theories proposed by modern science to explain the three effects of ethereal radiation.

The hypothesis of three essentially different kinds of rays has now been abandoned. The solar beam, for example, which causes six hundred and thirty trillion vibrations a second, has the three properties of producing in the eye the sensation of blue, of heating Melloni's thermo-electric pile, and of decomposing the chloride of silver used in photography; but it does not appear that three different rays vibrating with this velocity are sent to us, each the cause of a separate effect. Notwithstanding the most careful experiments, no one of these properties has ever been diminished in a ray without diminishing the rest in the same proportion. Of course, these properties are differently proportioned in the different rays of the spectrum; but in two rays from the same part, and hence having the same velocity of vibration, these properties always consist in the same relative intensity. {815} At the red end of the spectrum, the heating power predominates; at the other extremity, the chemical; in the middle, the luminous. The reason of this seems to be merely the difference of vibratory velocities; and we shall see that this will suffice to account for it.

Let us first explain how we conceive the production of the phenomena of chemical action and of heat. For clearness, we must advert to a theory familiar to all, according to which ponderable matter is composed of excessively small volumes, called atoms, which, though perhaps theoretically divisible, are never divided by any physical or chemical action. In the constitution of bodies, these atoms are supposed to be grouped in some manner, each group forming what is called a molecule. These, unlike the atoms, are decomposed in chemical changes, though not in physical ones, by which we understand such as evaporation, melting, crystallization, heating, magnetizing, electrifying, etc., unless these happen to affect the chemical constitution as well as the physical condition of the substance. All these do not alter the arrangement of the atoms in the molecule, but only the position or distance of the molecules with regard to each other. A collection of molecules may be called a particle; physical action then alters the constitution of the particle as chemical does that of the molecule. It may be remarked that our senses give us no direct evidence of the existence of molecules, much less of that of atoms, and they are supposed to be so extremely small that it will probably never be possible to detect them in this way.

In the application of this chemical theory to that of light, a new hypothesis is made, namely, that the ethereal fluid, whether itself continuous or composed of separate elements, penetrates all the interstices between the atoms of a molecule, as well as those between the molecules. The motions of this fluid, and of the matter which it penetrates, are communicated to each other, according to laws not yet ascertained, but of which we already have some glimpses. Thus, in treating of the effects of the ethereal vibrations on ponderable bodies, great importance is probably due to what is called _isochronism_, or equality of times; that is, the agreement of the rapidity of vibration of the ether with that of which the matter is susceptible; for in all known communications of vibratory movements, this isochronism plays a very notable part. If, for example, we place upon the same stand two clocks, having pendulums of the same length, and consequently swinging in the same time, and start one of them, the slight impulses communicated by this to the other will finally set the latter also in motion. If, on the other hand, the pendulums are not isochronous, no such effect will be produced. In the same way, a stretched cord will vibrate if one of the sounds of which it is capable is produced near by; but it will not be affected by other notes, even though much louder--showing that isochronism is more important than intensity. Another illustration of the same thing struck me forcibly some ten years ago. I had ascended with some photographic apparatus to the top of an old square tower, very high and massive, to take some views. The tower belonged to a church, the bells of which were rung several times while I was there. The great bell, though of a very considerable size, shook the building very slightly; it hardly caused any tremor in the image of the landscape. {816} But a second and much smaller bell could not be rung without giving to the tower, after two or three minutes, a strong swaying movement like that of a tree shaken by the wind. This was owing to the isochronism between the oscillations of the tower and of the small bell, which more than compensated for the difference of mass.

We have here an explanation of the physical and chemical phenomena produced by the ethereal rays. A few vibrations of this medium, probably, would produce no perceptible effect on a mass of matter; but these movements are repeated hundreds of trillions of times in a second, and however feeble their influence at first, isochronism may finally give it great power. Let us consider, first, the molecules, which have some connection between them, as yet unknown, but probably only allowing a certain set of vibratory velocities, (as a cord will only vibrate so as to produce a definite series of musical notes.) If, then, these are isochronous with those of the surrounding ether, the movement of the latter will be communicated to the molecules; or, according to the new theory of heat, the body will be warmed. These movements may even become so violent as to permanently modify the manner of union of the molecules--that is, to change the state of the body from solid to liquid or gaseous; and, by this change of state, the molecules may become insensible to the vibrations which previously affected them; for the set which they can now perform may have been entirely altered. The phenomena of heat are then well accounted for by this theory. To explain similarly the chemical ones, we have only to suppose ethereal vibrations, such that the movement affects the atoms separately, instead of the whole molecule, so that, after they have been sufficiently prolonged, the connection between the atoms will be destroyed. According to this, the chemical action of light should always be one of decomposition; it is so undoubtedly in most cases, and in the rest, where a combination is produced--as, for instance, in the formation of chlorhydric acid by the action of the violet rays on a mixture of chlorine and hydrogen--we shall adduce hereafter some facts which explain them, and show that even here the real action of the rays is a decomposing one. It may be remarked that the introduction of these ethereal vibrations, whose dimensions and velocities are well known, into the region, still so mysterious, of atoms and of molecules, promises to lead to results long unhoped for. If, for example, the theory above stated is correct, it would appear that the union of the atoms is such that their necessary time of oscillation is shorter than that of the molecules; since the red rays, which have the greatest heating power, vibrate more slowly than the violet, which are the most active chemically, as stated some distance back.

The luminous action of the rays is no doubt the most important for us, but also the most difficult to study; we have, however, something to say about it, for real progress has lately been made in this department. In the first place, since we are speaking of sensations, it is necessary to notice that this subject has two very different parts, one of which belongs to natural science, and the other to psychology. We shall here speak only of the first, that is, of three classes of phenomena which are produced at the exterior extremities of the nervous fibres, on the line of the fibres, and in the brain respectively. {817} It has been said, in a previous paper, that each of these requires a certain time, and the experimental results as to these times were there given. But this is all, or almost all, the knowledge, unfortunately, which we yet have as to what takes place in the brain. The conjecture has been made that the different kinds of sensations are due to different modifications of the cerebral extremities of the various nerves; or that at the interior extremity of the optic nerve, a different action occurs from that at the nerve of hearing, which seems probable, since there are good reasons for believing that the action of the main body of the nerve itself is precisely the same for all the sensations. In more than one way, our nervous system would then resemble the telegraph. All the wires are traversed by similar currents, but the registering apparatus is different in each. In one, the dispatch is read off upon a dial; in another, it is printed on a moving band; in a third, a facsimile is given of it, etc. The sending is also accomplished by different means; but in all cases the same agent, the electric current, is employed.

Since we are treating of the sensation of sight only in connection with the external vibrations, we need here only discuss the first of the three classes of phenomena mentioned above, those which correspond to the transmission of the dispatch. In explaining this, we shall follow the celebrated professor of Heidelberg, M. Helmholtz.

The use of the spectroscope, and the analysis of light as now made in physics, chemistry, and astronomy, might induce the idea that color is an intrinsic property of the rays, depending entirely upon the length of the undulation in each, and inseparably connected with it; but this is not the case. Color is an organic phenomenon, only produced in the living animal; and, in one sense, is very independent of the length of the wave, since it can even exist without the presence of any luminous ray. Its laws are admirably exhibited in a figure called Newton's circle. This circle has been modified by recent experiments, and has received three enlargements, which make it a sort of triangle with rounded corners; but it is very well to preserve its name, for, as yet, the claims of Newton in optics have not been contested in any "_Commercium epistolicum_." Let us briefly describe this figure. The red, green, and blue of the spectrum occupy the three corners respectively. Passing round the circumference, we go from red to green through yellow, from green to blue through greenish blue, and from blue to red through violet and purple. If we draw a straight line from any point of the circumference to the centre, we find the same color on all points of the line, but more and more diluted, so that the centre itself is perfectly white. This figure contains all possible shades of color, and has the following remarkable property, established by experiment. If we wish to know what color will be produced by the mixture of any others, we have only to mark upon this figure the points where the several colors are found, and place weights there proportional to the intensities in which the different colors are to be used in the combination; at the centre of gravity of these weights, that is, at the point on which the circle (supposed itself to be without weight) would balance when thus loaded, we shall find the resulting shade. This point does not need to be found by experiment, being more easily calculated mathematically.

{818}

Now it is evident from this that color is a mere matter of sensation; for it is obvious that the same centre of gravity can be obtained by an infinity of arrangements of the original colors, notwithstanding the diversity of their wave-lengths; and it will also be found that these various mixed rays, though having precisely the same color--that of the centre of gravity--will differ entirely in their other properties. They act variously upon the thermometer and on the sensitive photographic plate, and give different tinges to colored objects which they illumine. But upon the retina the action of all is the same. How is this result to be explained? We will answer without stating the proofs, which the limits of this article would forbid.

From what has been said, it will be seen that all colors can be produced by the mixture of the three fundamental or primary ones, red, green, and blue, which were placed at the three rounded corners of Newton's circle. It will also be supposed that, as in the theory of Thomas Young, nervous fibres of three kinds are found at every point of the retina. When these are excited in any way, whether by the vibrations of the ether, by lateral pressure on the ball of the eye, by a feeble electric current, or by any other means, they transmit the excitement to the brain; but the red fibres, (so to speak,) if they should act alone, would only produce, however they were irritated, the uniform sensation of a red such as we hardly ever actually see, more _saturated_ than the ordinary red, and which would be found in our figure at the extreme summit of the rounded corner. The two other kinds of fibres would, of course, act similarly, producing colors more pure than are usually seen; since, in our usual sensations, the three are always mixed, each predominating in its turn; and this is the case even in the spectrum itself. The effect of the pure colors in the latter may, however, be heightened as follows: Let us fix our eyes, for instance, for a few moments on the blue-green. This is the complementary of the red. The fatigue will produce a momentary insensibility in the fibres corresponding to the blue and green, and, turning the eyes to the red part of the spectrum, the slight admixture of these colors there present will fail to excite sensibly the corresponding nerves, so that the red will be seen for a few seconds in great purity. But to return. The stimulus of the first set of fibres, though found more or less in all parts of the spectrum, will predominate at the red end, where the vibrations are slowest; that of the second set in the middle, where the green is found; that of the third, at the blue extremity. Why these inequalities? Why, also, do the dark rays, preceding the red and following the violet, fail to act on the retina? No certain reason can be assigned, but there are two very plausible ones: first, the media which the rays have to traverse in the eye before reaching the nerves have, like all other transparent bodies, the power of absorbing the vibrations, not all uniformly, but some in preference to others. This elective absorption would destroy or diminish the effect of the rays on the nervous fibres. The second reason, as will readily be surmised, is the want of isochronism between the vibrations of the rays and those of the nervous fibres.

In confirmation of this theory, a remarkable anatomical fact, noticed among many birds and reptiles, may be cited. These actually have in the retina three kinds of fibres: the first terminated by a small, oily red drop, the second by a yellow one, while the third have no perceptible appendage. {819} Evidently, the red rays will arrive most purely at the first, the central rays of the spectrum at the second, while the blue and violet ones will act freely only on the third. It must be granted that no such thing has been observed in man and the other mammalia; but something similar may be found in the singular pathological phenomenon to which the chemist Dalton has given his name. Daltonism is most frequently an inability to perceive red. For eyes thus affected, the chromatic triangle or circle just mentioned is considerably simplified; but sad mistakes are the consequence. "All the differences of color," says Helmholtz, "appear to them as mixtures of blue and green, which last they call yellow." This disorder would be, according to the above theory, a paralysis of the first, or red fibres. The simplicity of this explanation is certainly in favor of the theory which gives it. But we had determined not to bring up arguments. Let us, then, pass on; remarking, however, one respect in which the eye, otherwise so superior to the rest of the senses, is inferior to the ear. Sounds, though combined to any extent in harmonies or discords, can readily be separated by an experienced ear. The eye, on the other hand, only sees the result of mixed colors; it needs instruments to rival the ear; and it is only by means of the prism that it can separate and classify the various vibrations which reach it.

But, provided with this prism, or _spectroscope_, it has lately done wonders. It has discovered and measured a whole world of new phenomena, which, according to the theory just developed, must be attributed to reciprocal exchanges of movement between the ether and the ponderable molecules. The light given by these has disclosed to us many secrets of chemistry, and especially of astronomy.

Before specifying the most recent of these discoveries, we will profit by what has already been said to explain very briefly the fundamental principles of spectral analysis. Transparent bodies, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, exercise upon the rays an absorption which is called elective, because some undulations are allowed to pass, while others are stopped, according to their velocities; and one of the effects of this absorption is the color of such bodies. This is to be explained by the principle of isochronism. Those vibrations which, for want of it, cannot be imparted to the surrounding matter, pass freely; the others are absorbed. But it is remarkable that gases and vapors only absorb a small number of them, while solids and liquids retain a great many. Thus, supposing that we have obtained, in any way, a continuous spectrum--that is, one with no breaks--containing all the known rays, not only the visible ones between the red and violet, but also the rest outside of these limits, a liquid or solid body intercepting this light will entirely destroy, or considerably weaken, large portions of this spectrum; whereas a gas or vapor generally will only efface a few small ones, whose absence is detected in the luminous part of the spectrum by the dark, transverse lines which have been so long known in that of the sun. This is certainly quite extraordinary, since it would suggest the inference that in gaseous bodies, the molecules, though less condensed, or further from each other, than in solids or liquids, have a much smaller range of possible vibrations. Besides this, the researches of Mr. Frankland on flames have lately shown that, even in gases, this range increases as the density augments. These results must undoubtedly be considered as strange; but what, after all, do we know of the connection of the elements of matter? {820} Without dwelling further on this point, we will mention the most important fact learned by these experiments: that this elective absorption is a complete test of the chemical composition of gases. In given conditions of temperature and pressure, each gas is perfectly distinguished from all others by the special absorption which it exercises upon the luminous rays. The principle by which chemical analysis is performed spectroscopically is thus evident. To find if any particular gas is to be found on the path of the ray, it is only necessary to develop the latter into a spectrum, and to see, by the position of the particular dark lines produced in it, if the absorption due to this gas has been effected.

But this is not all. Bodies sufficiently heated become luminous. According to the theory, this means that the molecules of matter, in their turn, communicate their vibrations to the ether; and here again we should find the influence of isochronism. The ether, it is true, is susceptible of vibrations of any velocity within certain very wide limits; but the molecules can give it none which are not isochronous with their own. Let us see what will result. Evidently, that the light which is emitted will, when developed into a spectrum, be concentrated in brilliant lines at those points where the velocities of undulation are the same as those of which the gas is capable; and, further, these lines should also evidently be in the same places, as the dark lines which this gas produces, as explained above, in a continuous spectrum, by absorption. This actually takes place in most cases, but some exceptions must be expected; because variations of temperature and pressure change the mutual connections of the gaseous molecules, and hence should also change the velocities of their oscillations. Thus, it is often found that the same gases change their systems of brilliant lines as their temperature or pressure changes; and Mr. Frankland has even obtained gases giving continuous spectra, sometimes attaining this result by pressure alone. The influence of heat also explains why solid or liquid bodies, when incandescent, give continuous spectra; while, at a low temperature, their interposition produces an elective absorption. For it is known that transparent solids or liquids become opaque when heated sufficiently to shine; the reason apparently being that, like the ether, they are capable of vibrations of any degree of rapidity within the usual limits, and hence allow no ethereal ones--or, in other words, no light--to pass through them, but absorb them all. Most flames or incandescent vapors, on the contrary, do not entirely lose their transparency. This property is of inestimable value in our investigations of nature.

Gases, by the combination of their elective absorption with their equally elective emission, produce results which at first sight might appear singular, but which can now readily be explained. Suppose that a flame is situated on the path of some rays which, without this interposition, would give a brilliant continuous spectrum. This flame only absorbs the ray having vibrations isochronous with its own; on the other hand, it emits rays similar to those which it absorbs. The resulting spectrum will vary according to the relative intensity of the emitted and absorbed rays. If these two intensities are equal, the spectrum will remain continuous; but if the absorption predominates, there will be dark lines in it; if the emission, brilliant ones. {821} Similar phenomena of reversal have been often met with in the recent examinations of different parts of the sun.

The principles just explained have been known for several years, and were sufficient for astronomy as long as it restricted its investigations to the chemical analysis of the atmospheres of the heavenly bodies. But it was soon perceived that much greater use could be made of the spectroscope. Information is now beginning to be acquired by means of it which had previously appeared to be unattainable, regarding, for instance, the rapidity of the motion of stars the distance of which is still unknown; the great movements which are continually taking place in the great masses of gas in the solar photosphere, and the pressure of these masses at different depths; and it is even hoped that a direct determination of their temperature may be made. Let us speak first of the observations of stellar velocities. Their possibility may easily be shown by means of an acoustic phenomenon which the reader must frequently have noticed. Let us suppose two trains of cars to be moving rapidly in opposite directions, and that one of them whistles as it passes the other. If we are seated in the latter, we shall perceive that the pitch of the whistle suddenly falls as it passes us. The reason is manifest. A certain time is necessary for the sound to reach us; and while the train is approaching, this time is sensibly shorter for each succeeding vibration, so that the interval between the vibrations is apparently diminished, and the note is higher than it would be were the trains at rest. On the other hand, as the whistle recedes after passing, its pitch is lowered for a similar reason. Of course, no such effect is produced by that of our own train, which always remains at the same distance from us. By the amount of flattening of the sound, it is quite possible to calculate the velocity of the train, as compared with that of sound. [Footnote 198]

[Footnote 198: Suppose the sum of the velocities of the trains to be one-ninth of that of sound, and that the whistle is, at a given moment, 1140 feet (which is about the distance travelled by sound in a second) from our ear. The vibrations emitted at this instant will reach us in one second; and all those emitted in the nine seconds required for the train to arrive will be condensed into the remaining eight. Their frequency will then be nine-eighths of what it would be without the motion. It will be diminished in nearly the same ratio after the passage; since the vibration emitted nine seconds afterward will require an additional second to reach us; thus, the frequency will now be nine-tenths of what it would be without the motion, or four-fifths of what it was before meeting; corresponding to a flattening of two whole musical tones. This would require a relative velocity of 127 feet a second, or 87 miles an hour; which gives the rule, that, for every half-tone of flattening, the sum of the velocities, or the velocity of the moving train, if we are at rest, is 22 miles an hour.]

It is very easy to apply what has just been said of the waves of sound to those of light. The motion of the sonorous body displaces its sounds on the acoustic scale; in the same way, the motion of the luminous body will displace its light on the optic, placing any particular line, dark or brilliant, in the spectrum nearer to the violet or rapid end, if the body is approaching; and nearer to the red, if it is receding. And we are not obliged to wait till the change has taken place in the character of the motion, as in the case of the train, since we can always obtain lines similar to those thus displaced, and having the same velocity of vibration, from some terrestrial substance, relatively at rest, and put the two side by side in the same field; and by this means we obtain at once the difference between the apparent number of vibrations in a second of the ray from the moving body, and the real number, and thus the velocity of the moving object. This observation has the advantage of being independent of the distance of the objects observed, being as accurate for the most distant stars as for the nearest. {822} We may notice, in passing, also a singular consequence. If the motion were rapid enough, it would change the colors of objects; and, since outside the visible spectrum there are dark rays, it would even be possible for a luminous body to become invisible, by the mere effect of movement away from or to us. But the prodigious velocity of light places such a result among mere metaphysical possibilities. Indeed, it was thought, for a time, that the effect of motion on the spectral lines would never be perceptible. The first trials only gave negative results, either because the bodies observed were moving too slowly, or because the instruments used were not sensitive enough. This is no longer the case, as we shall soon see.

To conclude this explanation of principles, it only remains to say a few words on the spectroscopic observations of temperature and pressure. But here we shall indeed be obliged to be brief; since Messrs. Frankland and Lockyer, who have undertaken investigations on these important points, have not yet finished their labors; and what they have as yet communicated to the Royal Society of London, and the Academy of Sciences of Paris, is not sufficiently detailed. In 1864, Messrs. Plücker and Hittorf discovered that variations in temperature of some of the chemical elements, such as hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, and selenium, caused sudden changes in their spectra. At a certain degree of heat, their former lines instantly disappeared and were succeeded by new ones. This is evidently somewhat analogous to what takes place in a sonorous pipe when it is blown more forcibly. At first, the sound only becomes louder, then its pitch is suddenly raised. But here we know the relation of the new note to the old one; but the connection between the successive spectra has not yet been ascertained. As regards pressure, Messrs. Frankland and Lockyer inform us that one of the lines of hydrogen increases in breadth with increased compression of the gas. We have also already said that under very high pressures the gases have not only shown broader bright lines, but even continuous spectra. (It will be remembered that the usual spectrum given by a luminous gas consists of isolated bright lines.) Father Secchi, whose attention has lately been turned to composite rather than to simple substances, has observed, among other things, that the spectrum of benzine vapor is gradually modified with a gradual increase of density.

Let us pass to the recent applications which astronomers have made of these various principles. The eclipse of the 18th of August, 1868, and the beautiful discovery of M. Janssen, have naturally turned their attention to the sun, and some most interesting discoveries have been made. To study its various portions, an image of it is first produced in the focus of a large telescope, which image is afterward enlarged by a lens similar to those used for the objectives of microscopes; and its different parts are successively placed upon the slit of the spectroscope. (The slit is the small aperture of that shape through which the light enters before falling upon the analyzing prism.) This slit thus receives light from only a part of the sun's disc; for the light diffused in our atmosphere and falling upon it, although coming indeed from all parts of the sun, is too feeble to interfere with the observations. Suppose, then, that our eye is at the spectroscope, and that the slit is receiving rays from the centre of the sun. {823} The movement of the heavens will bring all the points of the solar radius successively upon it, from the centre to the edge; and if the slit is placed perpendicular to this radius, it will come out, of course, tangent to the edge. Under these conditions, and if the atmosphere is steady, the phenomena will be as follows.

As long as we are upon the disc, we shall see nothing but the usual solar spectrum with its colors and its numerous dark lines. The region from which this light comes is called the photosphere; and its spectrum would be continuous were not its light absorbed by the interposed vapors of a great many substances. These vapors produce the dark lines; but where are they? It was for a long time supposed that they formed an immense atmosphere round the sun, only visible during total eclipses under the form of a brilliant aureola. This hypothesis seems now to have been abandoned, for reasons which will soon be given. It is generally thought that these absorbing vapors form the atmosphere in which the luminous clouds float, or, at least, that they are in immediate contact with the photosphere.

Secondly, when we have nearly arrived at the edge, the spectrum is covered with a number of bright lines. According to Messrs. Frankland and Lockyer, these probably indicate a very thin gaseous covering of the photosphere, the elective emission of which has no effect for want of sufficient thickness, except upon the borders of the sun, where it is seen very obliquely. Upon the rest of the surface it only acts by its elective absorption, and perhaps may be the only cause of the dark lines. This conjecture certainly agrees with the principles just developed.

Thirdly, at the moment of passing off the disc, the lines all disappear, and the spectrum becomes continuous. Father Secchi, who informs us of this fact, naturally ascribes it to a particular layer enveloping the photosphere. He adds that this layer is very thin, so that tremulousness in the air suffices to prevent its observation, on account of the mixture of lights. It is not found on the whole circumference of the disc; but we shall give an explanation of this. He supposes that it is the seat of the elective absorption which produces the dark lines; but how can this be reconciled with the continuity of the spectrum which it emits?

This spectrum soon disappears, and some brilliant lines take its place, particularly a red, a yellow, a green, and a violet one. At this moment the slit is illumined by the famous rose-colored layer, now called the _chromosphere_, upon which rest the protuberances, formerly so mysterious, seen in total eclipses. We cannot see it in the ordinary way, on account of the atmospheric light; but it comes out in the spectroscope, its light being concentrated in a few bright lines, while that of our atmosphere is spread out in a long spectrum, and consequently much weakened. It has been found that the mean thickness of this gaseous envelope of the sun is more than 5000 kilometres, (3107 miles,) or about four tenths of the earth's diameter, and that its contour is very variable; it is often agitated like the waves of a stormy sea, while in some places it sometimes has a very uniform level. It is now regarded as forming the outer limit or coating of the sun. The only reason which formerly supported the belief in a gaseous atmosphere outside of it, the elective absorption of which gave the dark lines of the solar spectrum, was the phenomenon of the aureola, already mentioned. But the thin layer discovered by F. Secchi will probably account for this; and there are, on the other hand, very strong reasons for rejecting the idea of such a vast exterior envelope. {824} One is the appearance, mentioned above, of the numerous bright lines which Messrs. Frankland and Lockyer attribute to a thin, gaseous coating of the photosphere. The light of these ought seemingly to be absorbed by a thick atmosphere, and the lines reversed to dark ones. Besides, these same observers consider that the change of breadth of the lines shows that the pressure is insignificant at the summit of the chromosphere, and that even at the base it is less than that of our own air. Lastly, no traces have been found of the bright-line spectrum which this envelope ought itself to give in the vicinity of the disc.

To return to the chromosphere: of what gases is it formed? It certainly is principally composed of hydrogen, perhaps in many parts entirely so. When a series of electric sparks is passed through a tube containing pure hydrogen at a very low pressure, the tube is illumined with a light of the same color as that of the protuberances. If this light is examined with the spectroscope, it shows a fine spectrum with a number of brilliant and very fine lines, among which four are conspicuous, broader and brighter than the others. The first is red, the second green, the third and fourth are violet; but this fourth is much the faintest, and even the third is not so bright as the other two. The first is called C, the second F, because their positions exactly correspond to those of the two dark lines thus designated by Fraunhofer in the solar spectrum. The third is very near the dark line G of the sun, which is produced by the vapor of iron. Now, the two first are always found among the lines of the chromosphere; the third also is often visible; and M. Rayet has recently seen the fourth. Hydrogen, then, exists in this layer; for though its other lines are not seen, this may easily be ascribed to their faintness. But there is one line of the chromosphere which is still unexplained, the yellow one between C and F. It would at first seem to be the well-known double line of sodium, called D, which is so frequently met with in spectroscopic experiments; but it is certain that it is somewhat more refrangible than this; and it is not yet known to what substance it is due; it may, perhaps, also belong to hydrogen, under a different pressure or temperature from any under which it has been observed here.

It has been said that the outline of the chromosphere is generally very irregular. Immense columns rise from it, the celebrated protuberances, the height of which is sometimes as much as eleven diameters of the earth, (or 85,000 miles.) It must, therefore, be subject to great agitation, to which the spectroscope bears witness. Mr. Lockyer has observed several times that foreign substances were projected into it; for example, magnesium into one protuberance as far as the sixth part of its height; barium and sodium, and probably other bodies also, were seen, but at smaller elevations. We now understand the breaks in the thin layer detected by F. Secchi; it is probably torn by the upward movement of various substances toward the protuberances. It is, in fact, wanting near the bright spots on the sun, called faculae, and it is now known that these faculae are always covered by protuberances.

Near these bright spots are also usually found the dark spots which have been observed for more than two centuries. Some discoveries have just been made regarding these which are perhaps the most interesting of any yet made in the sun. {825} Every one knows that they are composed of two distinct parts--the nucleus, which appears black in a telescope, but which is really quite bright, since it gives a spectrum of its own; and the penumbra, which surrounds this nucleus. The latter consists of portions of the photosphere, drawn out in the form of threads toward the centre of the nucleus; these threads sometimes unite with each other and form bridges, as it were, over the dark space. All the spectral observations confirm the idea previously entertained, that these spots are really cavities in the photosphere; also they indicate that these cavities are filled with absorbing vapors, whose high degree of pressure is manifest by the broadening of their lines. Mr. Lockyer has seen in them sodium, barium, and magnesium; F. Secchi, calcium, iron, and sodium. Above these spots the hydrogen of the chromosphere appears in quantities sufficient for its elective emission to destroy the black lines produced by its absorption upon other parts of the disc, and even sometimes to change them into bright ones. But there are many other peculiarities in the spectra of the spots; and F. Secchi, in examining them, has hit upon an idea which seems to us very suggestive. It was already known by observations of their frequency and size, that the sun is a slightly variable star, with a period of ten and one third years. We now find a new resemblance between it and the other variable stars. It may be remembered that the Roman astronomer has lately divided the stars into four classes, according to the general character of their spectra. He has just compared the different portions of the sun with these four groups, and finds that if its surface was all like the nuclei of the spots, it would have to be put in the class whose type is Betelgeux, all of which are more or less variable; that the penumbras are like Arcturus, and the general surface of the photosphere like Pollux. He has also concluded, from the presence of many of the dark lines in the nuclei, that the vapor of water exists in these regions of the sun; and the appearance of others not yet named has caused him to suspect the presence of many other compound bodies. Up to this time, hardly any thing but the simple substances has been looked for, as the heat of the sun would seem to be so great as to separate all the composite ones; but this temperature probably is not so high in the spots. It became, therefore, of interest to examine the faint red stars which form his fourth group; and in doing so, F. Secchi has obtained the surprising result that the vapor of a compound substance, namely, benzine, gives, when incandescent, a spectrum having bright lines exactly corresponding to the dark ones of one of the stars of this group. This star, then, appears to have an atmosphere of benzine.

Finally, the spectroscope has demonstrated the movement of at least one star. Mr. Huggins has found that the hydrogen lines in the spectrum of Sirius do not exactly coincide with those of this gas when at rest, but are displaced toward the violet; this observation was confirmed at Rome. It would follow from this that Sirius is rapidly approaching us. This is the only observation of this description which seems yet to be well established. But may it not be possible to make others, and even elsewhere than among the stars? The chromosphere is, as we know, the scene of very rapid movements; and may not these be visible by the displacement of the spectral lines? {826} The following remark of Mr. Lockyer, in one of his communications to the Royal Society, would induce us to hope for this: "In the protuberance of which we are speaking, the line F was strangely displaced. It seemed that some disturbing cause altered the refrangibility of this line of hydrogen _under certain conditions and pressures_." But is it really to pressure that this displacement is due, when we know that rapid movement produces this effect, which has never been known to follow from pressure? But let us hasten to acknowledge that, in a subsequent communication of the same author, we find a sentence much more to the point, and which only needs to be a little more developed to answer our question. Mr. Lockyer is here speaking of movements in the vapors which fill the cavities of the spots. "The changes of refrangibility," says he, "of the rays in question show that the absorbing matter is rising and falling relatively to the luminous matter, and that these movements can be determined with great precision." Let us hope that this will be verified by observation, and that exact measures will show the fertility of such a promising theoretical principle. [Footnote 199]

[Footnote 199: The rapidity of some of these movements has been said to be about one hundred miles a second.]

The length of this bulletin is beginning to alarm us; but since it should include all the last scientific developments concerning the subject of ethereal vibrations, a word must be added on some curious experiments of Mr. Tyndall. The chemical action of these vibrations had hardly been examined hitherto, except in the nutrition of plants, in the formation of chlorhydric acid, and in the transformation of various substances, principally used in photography. The successor of Faraday has recently studied their effects upon vapors, and has applied the curious results of his investigations to some as yet unexplained facts of meteorology and astronomy. Passing a cylindrical beam of light down a long glass tube full of the vapor which he wished to examine, he found that the vapor soon ceased to be completely transparent. An incipient cloud, as he calls it, soon appeared, so thin that it could only be seen by the light of the beam producing it, but became invisible in the full light of day. Some vapors undoubtedly will not produce it; but the experiment succeeds perfectly with many different ones, especially with nitrite of amyle, bisulphide of carbon, benzine, etc. The following explanation of this phenomenon seems quite probable. The vibrations of the ethereal medium, or at least some of them, are communicated to the _atoms_ of which the composite _molecules_ of the vapor are formed. Owing to isochronism, the movement becomes strong enough to break up the molecule, the atoms of which are formed into new combinations, which are better able to resist the action of light. If the new substance cannot remain under the given pressure and temperature in the gaseous state, it will be precipitated in liquid particles, which are at first extremely small, but gradually increase in size, so as to intercept the light and become visible. If the vapor employed satisfies these conditions, the experiment ought to succeed. The chemical analysis of the products has, we believe, in some cases confirmed this explanation; we will now confirm it by some facts of another kind.

In Mr. Tyndall's experiments, the vapor examined was never unmixed; when it was put into the tube, some other gas was also introduced, usually atmospheric air; but other gases were also employed. With hydrogen, a remarkable effect was produced. On account of its small density, it failed to sustain the liquid particles, and they slowly settled in the bottom of the tube. {827} By a suitable diminution of the pressure of these mixtures of gas and vapor, the chemical action of the rays could be retarded at pleasure. The "incipient cloud" could then be seen to form gradually; and whatever was the character of the vapor used, the cloud had always at first a magnificent blue color. Continuing the experiment, the brilliancy of the cloud increased, but its blue tinge diminished, until it became as white as those usually formed. The natural explanation of this change is found in the gradual growth of the liquid particles.

The cloud was not usually formed all along the course of the rays. After having traversed a certain thickness of vapor, the rays, though seeming as bright as ever, lost their chemical power. This result might easily be predicted by the theory. Only a few of these rays had the proper length of wave to act by isochronism upon the atoms of the vapor. These would be absorbed shortly after entering; and the others, though vastly more numerous and escaping absorption, would produce no chemical effect. It was even probable that, by passing the light at the outset through a small thickness of the liquid, the vapor of which was contained in the tube, all its active rays could be taken out; and experiment confirmed this conclusion. It is to be regretted that the light was not examined with the prism before being employed; the wave-length of the active rays would then have been known. It is no doubt very probable that they are toward the violet extremity, either among the visible rays or beyond. But the colored glasses, which the English physicist interposed, only partially resolve the question. The prism would undoubtedly have shown that the wave-length of the active rays varies with the substance exposed to them.

Some vapors taken alone are almost insensible, while their mixture is immediately affected by the passage of the rays. Such is the case of that of nitrite of butyle with chlorhydric acid. This is very easily explained theoretically. The disturbance communicated to the atoms by the ethereal vibrations, though very decided, may be insufficient to break up the molecules. But if another cause, though itself insufficient alone, comes to its assistance, the atoms may be separated. Such another cause is that which chemists have long known as _affinity_, the manifestations of which are very numerous; but which has not yet been submitted to a precise analysis. In the case just mentioned, the affinity of the elements of the nitrite of butyle for those of the chlorhydric acid conspires with the vibrations to destroy the molecules of the two substances and form a new one, which is precipitated. The phenomenon is like that observed in the growth of plants. Light alone is not sufficient to decompose the carbonic acid of the air; neither are the leaves when in the dark. But when the sun's rays fall upon them, the carbonic acid is decomposed, its oxygen uniting with the atmosphere and its carbon with the plant. It is now easy to justify what was said in the beginning as to the formation of chlorhydric acid by the action of the rays on a mixture of chlorine and hydrogen. It is only necessary that the molecules of these gases, or, at least, of one of them, should be composed of several atoms. Affinity alone could only break the union of these very slowly; but the light would shake them apart, and enable the affinity to act immediately.

{828}

So far Mr. Tyndall's experiments agree perfectly with the theory; they confirm it, but they do not extend it. He has, however, made others, which seem to disclose new points in the theory of exchange of movements between the ether and ponderable matter. It might no longer be the atoms or the molecules which would have to be considered in respect to the ethereal vibrations, but even the particles, if sufficiently small. In fact, these particles reflect the rays not absorbed, according to entirely new laws. In the first place, although belonging to colorless liquids, they reflect the blue rays much better than the others. This is true of all the vapors tried, without exception. This elective reflection only holds when their dimensions are small, since it disappears as the size of the particles increases. This is quite a new fact, and, it must be acknowledged, as yet quite unexplained. Secondly, they polarize light according to laws which must also be called new, being entirely different from those given by theory and experiment for polarization by reflection. In one respect these laws are not new; for they have been long observed in atmospheric polarization; but this has always been one of the knotty points of the undulatory theory. Evidently, Mr. Tyndall's experiments do not clear it up entirely; but they have made an important advance in that direction, by showing to what physical circumstance this polarization is probably due. It would appear, that is, that in the higher regions of our atmosphere there are vapors which, instead of condensing in particles large enough to form ordinary clouds, are precipitated like those used by Mr. Tyndall, and fill the air with extremely small particles and with incipient clouds. This hypothesis is certainly very probable. It accounts at once for the blueness of the sky, and for its polarization of light.

Here is, then, a problem for theorists, in a better condition than previously. We hope to return to it shortly, in a subsequent bulletin. In conclusion, let us point out a new application of these experiments to the physical theory of comets. Mr. Tyndall considers the cometary matter to be a vapor on which the sun's rays act physically and chemically. These two actions would be somewhat contrary to each other; for the first would tend to evaporate the liquid particles and expand the vapor, while the second would precipitate this vapor in the form of incipient cloud. As the comet approaches solar action, forming an immense volume, of which the visible part will be only a small fraction, the head being the most condensed portion. If, now, we suppose the head to absorb the heating rays more abundantly than the remaining ones, in the cool shadow behind it the chemical action may prevail, and form an incipient cloud, which will be the tail of the comet. Elsewhere, the calorific action will predominate, and the vapor will remain invisible. Such is substantially the new theory of comets. It certainly satisfies the general conditions of the problem, and especially it explains very naturally the enormously rapid movements observed in the tails of these bodies. But will what is still undetermined in it enable it to be accommodated to the numerous facts already observed, and hereafter to be so? Here, also, it may be regretted that the spectroscope was not employed by the English physicist. The spectra of the incipient clouds might have been compared with those of comets' tails; and would have given an excellent test of the theory. Perhaps, however, he has reserved this part of his researches for a future publication.

{829}

St. Oren's Priory. Or, Extracts From The Note-book Of An American In A French Monastery.

"Pour chercher mieux." --Device of Queen Christina of Sweden.