CHAPTER V.

REMINISCENCES OF THE PAST.

After an absence of over twenty years, we returned to the pleasant village in New England which had formerly exercised over us the charm that pertains to the magic name of HOME.

Seeking out one of the few old neighbors who were left, on the morning after our arrival, I was met with the surprised and joyful exclamation,

"Why, my dear Mrs. J----! can it be possible that this is your own self? I had no hopes of ever seeing you again in this world."

"It is indeed myself," I replied. "We have long been wanderers by 'field and flood;' but have at length returned to remain a short time among the scenes of other years. If you are at leisure, I want to settle down into my own cosy corner of the dear old sitting-room, just as if I had never been away, and ask you as many questions about village affairs and those of the olden time as you will want to answer."

"You could not furnish me with a greater pleasure, I assure you! But O my friend! what changes have taken place since you left! Very few of those who were with us then still remain. Many have died, some have gone 'West,' and some have found their way to San Francisco and other parts of California."

"Where are the W----s?" I inquired.

"They removed to another place some years ago, and their family is widely scattered; but they remain united in spirit, and steadfast in the faith."

"And the S----s?"

"Only three of them are living. One has gone to the far West, and the others have left this place. Little Kitty, after years of patient suffering, during which she never ceased to thank God for having permitted her to find in the holy Catholic Church 'the path over which so many saints and martyrs have passed to heaven'--as she expressed it--at length meekly and joyfully resigned her youthful spirit to her Maker; leaving the light of a beautiful example to shine around the lonely home, and console the bereaved family. Her grandmother, who embraced the faith soon after her granddaughter made profession of it, followed her to the other world in a few months, consoled by all the rites of the church, in which, though she entered its blessed inclosure late in life, she had in a 'short space,' by her good words and works, acquired the merit of many years. Then 'Aunt Laura' and Kitty's younger sister joined them, 'rejoicing in hope.' 'Aunt Ruby' survived them some years, and was often heard to wish, with a sigh, that she could be sure she was as well prepared to leave the world as her Catholic sister; but she never had the courage to brave the ill-opinion of her own little world of Congregationalism--over the modern innovations and delinquencies of which she never ceased to mourn--by following that sister into the only 'ark of safety.'"

"Ah!" I exclaimed; "how many changes indeed. Then I shall never see those dear friends whom I had so fondly hoped to meet again. And where is Mrs. L----, our energetic little knitter, who was so true to every impulse of divine grace and truth?"

"She has long slept in the village cemetery. 'Faithful unto death!' might well have been the inscription upon her grave. She passed through severe and bitter trials, and was made to feel that there are tortures as cruel as those of the rack or wheel, to a sensitive spirit, in the cold contempt and neglect of those who should have been her protectors, as they were her only earthly support. But she never wavered for a moment in her firm trust, or ceased to rejoice that she had been called to the profession of the true faith, which abundantly sustained her under all her griefs and sufferings."

"And dear, gentle Mrs. N----? I felt sure she would forsake the _ignis fatuus_ of Protestantism at last for 'the light of the star that guided the wise men' of old, though she was so long in making up her mind."

"She did so; and died rejoicing in its light, by the crib of Bethlehem!"

"Do Mrs. H---- and her daughter still live?"

"The daughter died some years ago, and was laid near little Kitty S----, whom she tenderly loved, and regarded as the chief instrument of her conversion. Her mother has removed to some distance; but is as fervently thankful to-day for the great gift of faith as she was on that memorable one when she first accepted it, and turned from old and dear associations to find the 'only home for the warm-hearted Methodist,' in the bosom of the Catholic Church."

"I heard, soon after I left, that the G----s became Catholics. Was it true?"

"Yes; and very faithful and fervent children of the church they were; illustrating the beauty of Catholic truths by the shining virtues of their lives. But, alas! of the whole family--father, mother, and five children--but one survives. They departed followed by the prayers and benedictions of the whole Catholic congregation, to whose service they had devoted their best efforts."

"Then there were the B----s, the K----s, and the C----s, who were deeply interested in Catholic truths when I left. Did they follow out their convictions?"

"No; they were 'almost persuaded' to cast in their lot with the happy band of converts; but the storm of obloquy and reproach which soon gathered around the devoted company--without in the least disturbing their peace--so appalled those outside, that they did not dare to follow the inspiration, or ever again to seek its aid. Some became Spiritualists, some Second Adventists, and those who remain nominally as they were before, have fallen into hopeless indifference to all religion, and intense worldliness; seeking in petty ambitions and trifling pursuits the comfort they are no longer able to find in the bosom of any sect. The glimmering of Catholic light which they accepted had served only to reveal to them the utter emptiness of Protestantism, when they steadfastly closed their eyes to any further illumination. While life remains there is hope; but such cases as these seem as nearly hopeless as any in this world can be."

We visited the cemetery, where reposed the mortal remains of so many friends who had been the theme of our conversation; and I found familiar names more numerous there than were familiar faces among the living. We also sought together the spacious church which had been erected during my absence, and which is a beautiful and enduring evidence of the active zeal of a congregation which is richer in holy memories, and in faith, hope, and charity, than in the goods of this world.

FOOTNOTE:

[34] A question that used to be urged as a test of fitness for membership, and an affirmative answer required. The custom has now become obsolete.

SONNET.

TO ITALY.

All-radiant region! would that thou wert free! Free 'mid thine Alpine realm of cloud and pine, Free 'mid the rich vales of thine Apennine, Free to the Adrian and the Tyrrhene Sea! God with a two-fold freedom franchise thee! Freedom from alien bonds, so often thine, Freedom from Gentile hopes--death-fires that shine O'er the foul grave of pagan liberty, With pagan empire side by side interred; Then round the fixed throne of their Roman sire Thy sister states should hang, a pleiad choir, With saintly beam unblunted and unblurred, A splendor to the Christian splendor clinging, A lyre star-strung, ever the "new song" singing!

AUBREY DE VERE.

IRELAND'S MISSION.

BY W. MAZIERE BRADY, D.D., AN IRISH PROTESTANT CLERGYMAN.

Few persons expected that the passing of Mr. Gladstone's disestablishment bill would have immediately introduced a golden age into Ireland. The leading promoters of that measure never regarded it as one which was final and complete; but rather as a necessary prelude to certain reconstructive measures more powerful and important than itself. The abolition of the ascendency of an alien church did not restore--and did not affect to restore--to the Catholic Church its ancient status and endowments. The attempt would be entirely vain to regather the _disjecta membra_ of the great body of Irish church temporalities long since dispersed and broken up by successive spoliations and alienations. The property dealt with by the recent legislation is but a small fraction of what once belonged to the Irish Church. Restitution, unhappily, is often impossible to the statesman. He may build up an edifice upon ruins, and create new empires out of revolutions. But he can no more give back to outraged nationalities their unsullied honor, or to plundered kingdoms their squandered treasures, than he can restore to those fallen from purity their virgin crown or reëndow criminals with a conscience void of offence and free from sear of guilt. And therefore the removal of the alien church led to no replacement of the old Catholic Church in the position vacated by its Protestant rival; but merely paved the way for the introduction of constructive measures upon the nature of which will depend the future, not of Ireland merely, but of the British empire. Amidst these constructive measures the statesman will not reckon any provisions for the maintenance or aggrandisement of the Catholic Church in Ireland. A church which withstood calamity and survived the loss of its possessions, and flourished under three hundred years of bitter persecution, may safely be left to itself. State patronage, in any extended form, might corrupt, but could not strengthen, Irish Catholicism. Catholics in many countries are beginning to feel that freedom of action and development is of far greater value than endowments to the church. In Ireland, Catholics have long since perceived and acknowledged that liberty--not the enervating influence of court favor--is the true bulwark of Catholic worship.

Legislators have, in fact, no occasion to take into their consideration the Irish Catholic Church, except in so far as its power and interests intermingle with the educational and other social and political problems which demand deep and impartial inquiry. Whoever examines, without prejudice or passion, the actual position of Ireland as an integral part of the British empire must confess that Ireland forms at this time, more than at any other, the cardinal point of English policy. Gibraltar was once the key to the Mediterranean and to political supremacy in Europe. Ireland is to England another Gibraltar, on whose rock British power must be either consolidated or riven. The Ireland of 1870 is rapidly entering on a new phase of existence, which is none the less worthy of the statesman's study because it is the result of causes altogether beyond his control. Ireland is no longer an island lying within a few hours' sail of the English navy, inhabited by men whose interests may be disposed of without reference to the wishes of any save the inhabitants of Great Britain. The people of Ireland are by no means confined within the territorial limits of that country. The Irish nation has two homes. The one is in Ireland, the other is in America. Misgovernment sent half Ireland into exile, and those exiles have prospered and multiplied to an extent far exceeding any known examples of similar transmigrations. But although there are two homes, there is but one nation of Irishmen. Five millions of men occupy Irish soil, but far more than twice five millions of Irishmen dwelling in foreign lands not only claim but exercise an ever-increasing influence on Irish politics. Some few among the ultra-conservative statesmen of England--and among them one no less distinguished than the great chief of the late Tory administration--looked with eyes of cruel satisfaction on the exodus which wiser men regarded with awe as a hemorrhage draining away the life-blood of their kingdom. The famine was to these bigoted men a God-gift, which swept off what they flippantly termed a superabundant population. Emigration was, in their eyes, a more tedious and costly process for the decimation of Irish Catholics. Protestants, belonging chiefly to the dominant and richer class, were in proportion to their numbers less exposed than Catholics to the severity of the famine and the necessity of expatriation. Famine and emigration, if only Providence would prolong and intensify their action, would alter--so they thought--the numerical proportions between Catholics and Protestants make Ireland a Protestant country and render the church establishment less anomalous. Let a few more years pass--so argued these reasoners--and instead of having to legislate for a Catholic, discontented, Ireland, over-populated and half-pauperized, we shall have to deal with one comparatively Protestant, which will be prosperous, happy, and loyal to the British crown. It is recorded of an English statesman that he once expressed a wish--in jest, no doubt--that Ireland were for an hour submerged in the Atlantic, that it might rise again stripped of its inhabitants, a fresh field for the importation of English Protestant colonists. The folly of wishing for either a flood or a famine to repair the defects of English legislation for Ireland, is now as apparent as the cruelty. Even though the island of Ireland were reduced to such a _tabula rasa_ as some bigots would desire, England must take into account the thousands and millions of Irishmen in various lands who constitute part of the Irish nation, and who think, plan, and pray for the happiness of their traditional fatherland. And fortunately for the interests of England, no less than of Ireland, a policy has of late been adopted by the leaders of the great liberal party which professes to deal with Catholic Ireland, not as with a venomous thing to be guarded against, kept down, and, if possible, crushed, but as a country to be tenderly regarded, carefully cherished, and legislated for with a view to the contentment and preservation of its Catholic people. The policy of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright, and the party of which they are now the recognized chiefs, is at present but partially developed, yet has already produced good fruits. Righteousness exalteth a nation, and England has risen immensely in the opinion of wise and good men in Europe and America by that great though tardy--the greater, perhaps, because so tardy--act of righteousness, namely, the abolition of an English Protestant church establishment for Irish Catholics. The sympathies of all honest men in every quarter of the globe are with the English government in its endeavor to stay the tide of Irish emigration, and retain Irishmen upon their native soil as contented occupiers and owners of farms. But admiration and sympathy are not the only rewards which England may reap by steadily following out the policy begun by Mr. Gladstone. The integrity of the British empire may be shown to depend upon the continued development of the principles which carried the Irish church bill of 1869 and introduced an Irish land bill in 1870. If it be too presumptuous to attempt to forecast a triumphant progress for those principles, it will yet be not wholly profitless to denote the perils and obstructions which beset the way.

The disturbances and outrages which in Ireland preceded and followed the passing of the disestablishment bill, were the natural result of the violent harangues uttered by the fanatic debaters of the Church Defence Association, many of whom announced to their excited auditors that the land bill of Mr. Gladstone would confiscate the property of Protestant land-owners in Ireland. The evil passions of men thus deceived into a belief that a wrong was intended not only to their church but to their lands, found vent not merely in hard words and cruel threats, but in merciless deeds. Some Protestant landlords withheld the accustomed local charitable contributions which, as owners of property, they had hitherto given to various institutions. Others issued notices of ejection against their tenants, and these attempted ejections produced--as capricious injustice is certain to do--ill-will and resistance. Outrages, even assassinations, occurred. But such offences against public order may be expected to cease when the causes of them are removed. Time will allay the heat of bygone party conflicts. Agrarian outrages will, if the land bill be good for any thing, occur as rarely in Ireland as in America. Industrious laborers will, it is to be hoped, find it easy to rent or purchase small holdings on which they may expend their toil, and in which they may invest their savings without fear of their being appropriated to the use of felonious landlords by means of notices to quit. It is when the excitement of the land and church questions shall have yielded to the pressure of other momentous questions, that the real danger will threaten the onward march of those principles which, in the opinion of many, can alone safely guide the mutual relations between England and Ireland. The education question will be a highly perilous one. If the liberal party put forward a scheme for compulsory, or secular, or sectarian education, which shall, on whatever pretext, either nominally or practically, tend to withdraw the education of Catholic children from the immediate control of the priests, the result will be disappointment and disaster. Free education, in the sense of an education independent of religion, has great charms in the eyes of English and Irish liberals. Some Catholics are inclined to favor any scheme which would place a superior system of secular instruction within the reach of the great bulk of the poorer and middle class, even though it should not provide for that religious training which is a characteristic of a strictly Catholic education. But the Catholic clergy of Ireland, to a man, and those members of Parliament who represent Irish Catholic constituencies, will give strenuous and effectual opposition to undenominational or secular education under its open guise, although they may prove unable to resist the employment, in a modified shape, of the principle which they regard as pernicious. It will be much to the advantage of Great Britain if the education of Catholics in England, as well as in Ireland, be made thoroughly Catholic. The vast, and in many respects admirable system of national education in Ireland, which, twenty or thirty years ago, was favorably regarded by very many of the Irish Catholic bishops and clergy, has long since been declared unsatisfactory by the Catholic hierarchy. The elementary national schools are now merely tolerated. The national model schools are loudly denounced. The national system aimed at giving to all children a combined secular instruction and at affording opportunities for separate religious instruction. The priest and the parson were invited to become joint patrons of schools. The board of education were to supply school-rooms, teachers, books, and requisites for a secular instruction in which all the pupils were to share. The ministers of various denominations were to supply, either personally or by deputy, a religious teaching to their respective pupils. Thus an hour or more was to be set apart for religious teaching. During that hour the Catholic children were to be taught the Catholic religion by the priest, or by one of the masters under the priest's direction, and the Protestant children were similarly to be taught the principles of Protestantism in another room by the parson, or by one of the teachers under his control. It was supposed that all ministers of religion would join in carrying out a system which thus provided for the general education of the poor, without interfering with the conscientious discharge of that part of the ministerial duty of clergymen which relates to the religious teaching of the young. The idea of instructing Catholic and Protestant children together and bringing them up in habits of mutual affection and esteem, was specious and captivating. Who could withhold his quota of aid toward realizing the prospect thus held out of future generations of educated Irishmen of various creeds, each respecting the religious principles of the others while strong in his own, and all loyal to the impartial government of the British crown? Yet, at its very outset, the clergy and bishops of the Protestant establishment held aloof from the national board. They refused any partnership with Catholic priests in the management of schools, and declared that their consciences would not permit them to consent to support a system which set limits to the free use of the holy Scriptures during secular instruction. In vain was it shown that in Protestant universities, colleges, and higher schools, nay, that in the very order for divine service according to the ritual of the establishment, a limit was actually set to the use of the holy Scriptures by the appointment of fixed times and places for the study and reading and exposition of the sacred word. In vain was it demonstrated that neither insult nor disparagement was intended by regulations which might be looked on as scarcely different from those which prevented a lecturer in mathematics from giving his class a dissertation upon Isaiah, and denied a clergyman of the establishment the privilege of interpolating his reading of the litany with a chapter from the Apocalypse. The establishment clergy, with a few notable exceptions, asserted it as their right and duty to use the Scriptures at all times in their schools, and declared it to be a sin to consent to suspend, even during the hours of combined secular instruction, their office of teachers of divine truth. By adopting this course they lost whatever claim to public estimation they might otherwise have had as helpers of education, and hastened, undoubtedly, the fall of their establishment. It has lately, through the publication of Archbishop Whately's biography by his daughter and of the journals of Mr. Senior, been fully disclosed that a desire for proselytism, although in his lifetime he publicly professed the contrary, was at the bottom of that able prelate's energetic support of the national system. The religious and moral teaching of the books used for combined secular instruction had, so argued Whately in private, a strong tendency to implant truths which must lead to the reception of Protestantism. Give free scope, so reasoned the archbishop, to the national system, and, although the priests may not perceive their danger, Ireland must cease to be a Catholic country. When publicly advocating the national system, Whately's language was, of course, far different. Then he maintained stoutly that the books were thoroughly impartial, he repudiated with affected loathing any dishonorable desire to make converts to Protestantism, and he professed the most scrupulous respect for the consciences of those who differed from him in religion. The posthumous publication of Whately's real sentiments--destructive as that publication is of much of his reputation, and especially of his character for straightforwardness--forms a valuable vindication, not merely of the behaviour of those more honest commissioners of education whose refusal to adopt the Whately tactics led to Whately's retirement from the board, but also of the conduct of the Catholic bishops and clergy who have found it necessary emphatically to demand a radical change in the system of national instruction so far as Catholics are concerned.

It is, however, for the interests of Protestantism and of Great Britain, as well as of Catholicism, that the education of Catholics should be carried on more perfectly in accord with the desires of the Catholic people. The principle of religious neutrality in education has been tried in Ireland, and found wanting. It has not resulted in bringing into the same school-rooms the young of various creeds, and educating them in mutual love. Three or four Protestants may be found in the same school with a hundred Catholics; or three or four Catholics may attend a school frequented by a hundred Protestants. But nowhere in Ireland is it possible to find a school where one half of the pupils are Protestants and the other half Catholics, or where the Protestant clergyman and the Catholic priest, as joint patrons, superintend their respective classes. It is true, indeed, that proselytism is discouraged by the rules of the board, and that no favor is shown to one denomination more than to another. But with all this endeavor after impartiality by its administrators, the system inflicts a serious wound upon Catholicity. The authority of the board is substituted for that of the Catholic Church. The national school teacher, when in training for his office, learns his duties from men of various religious denominations, who are not permitted, even were they desirous, to impart a devotional color to what they teach. The virtues must be commended on moral, not on religious grounds. Patriotism may take root in ignorance; for no book of Irish history is to be found in the list of Irish national school books. When the trained teacher is set over a school, he still regards himself as dependent upon the board which is his paymaster. Catholic teachers may, and sometimes do, hold opinions different from those of the priest, and even upon occasions refuse to carry out the priest's directions in the matter of religious teaching. The influence of the priest upon his flock is weakened by that very separation between secular and religious instruction which is the basis of the system of national education. Protestantism may flourish under the impartiality, neutrality, and secularization of education at which the originators of that system aimed; but Catholicism must inevitably become deteriorated.

It was in past years the almost universal belief of Protestant governments, that an Irish Catholic, in proportion as he ceased to be loyal to his spiritual, would advance in loyalty toward his temporal sovereign. Toleration was offered, even under Elizabeth and James, to Catholics who would abjure the spiritual supremacy of the pope. In modern times the same spirit of distrust shows itself in the endeavor, on the part of some Protestant statesmen, to offer to Catholics educational and other advantages upon conditions inconsistent with Catholic practices. Those greatly err who thus fancy that Great Britain will gain--either politically or religiously--by the undermining of the influence of the Catholic priesthood, or by leavening the education of Catholics with the spirit of secularization. The Irish Catholic may be taught to unlearn his faith, to neglect confession, and disobey the injunctions of his priest; but no one will say that thereby he becomes, necessarily, either a better Christian or a better subject to his sovereign. Such a one may, or may not, become a Protestant or an infidel. When the influence of the priest is weakened or destroyed, the Irish Catholic becomes an easy victim to those who teach disloyalty and rebellion. But his lapse into treason should be ascribed to the fact not of his being a Catholic, but of his being a bad one. No good Catholic who values the sacraments, and respects the precepts of his church, could possibly join the treasonable brotherhoods denounced by the Catholic priest from the altar, by the bishops in pastorals, and by the pope himself. There are, however, too many Irish Catholics whose obedience to their church is partial, or but nominal. Perhaps these men first learnt in Irish national schools the lesson that religion, like every thing else, has its appointed time and place; that Catholic devotion forms no indispensable portion of secular studies, and that priestly intervention in affairs not strictly religious is intrusive and impertinent. The want of a truly Catholic training in early life doubtless has led many an adult Catholic to hold that a priest out-steps the proper sphere of his office, when he cautions his flock against revolutionary excesses.

If misdirected and uncatholic teaching occasions many Irish Catholics to become rebels in thought if not in deed, their education has advanced and is advancing in another point, so as to render their treason more dangerous. Irishmen in former years were prompt to seize occasions for the overthrow of British rule, but lacked certain qualities requisite for permanent success. They seemed incapable, for any length of time, of combined action and resolution in the field or the cabinet. They carried into battle the dissensions and jealousies of their divided council-chambers. Brilliant displays of military valor served only to mark more distinctly the fatal effects of indecision and insubordination. Victory itself was often the prelude to that demoralization of forces which is the worst consequence of defeat. But now the Irish are swiftly learning to acquire those qualities of organization and self-government which will render their revolts more formidable and disastrous to England than hitherto they have proved. Irishmen have shown themselves in American campaigns not soldiers merely, but generals, and not merely skilful tacticians in handling masses of troops before the enemy, but also able organizers, clever in moulding and disciplining untrained materials into effective battalions. Habits of promptitude, self-control, and self-reliance belong to the Irish-American in perhaps even a higher degree than to the Anglo-Saxon. The number is rapidly increasing of Irishmen who, having acquired those habits in America, repair to Ireland and communicate them in some degree to their brethren at home. The peasantry of Ireland--already familiarized with trans-Atlantic ideas of independence and republicanism--are apt to become Americanized. Their sympathies are with the United States rather than with England. If war broke out between Great Britain and the States, no one doubts but that the first American army flung upon Irish shores would find Ireland one vast recruiting field, and that swarms of soldiers of Irish descent would fly from distant lands to Ireland to lend their aid in rendering it, throughout its length and breadth, a garrison impregnable to British attacks. And no one doubts but that England--even though eventually victorious by land and sea--would depart from such a conflict crippled in half her strength. Ireland, alienated irrevocably, would be to England like a paralyzed limb to the combatant, both a sign and a source of weakness. At no very distant period from the termination of such a war, Ireland would virtually become an American outpost, and would cease to be an integral part of Great Britain. Without Ireland to rely upon, England could scarcely be expected to maintain a position as a first-class power in the event of war among European nations. Mercenary troops might, indeed, for a time supply the want of Irish soldiers and sailors. But the nation which has to hire foreign troops to fight its battles is already in decay.

It is possible, however, that Ireland, instead of becoming the occasion of ruin and dismemberment to the British empire, may prove its mainstay and the bond of its integrity. If Ireland shall become prosperous and contented under the changed policy of England, if its population shall increase under prosperity, and if its nationality shall be recognized and fostered--then no combination of European foes, unaided by America, can hope to prevail against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. But why should America withhold her hand, when opportunity shall have presented itself for dealing a blow in repayment of old wrongs aggravated by recent disputes? France may demand the armed assistance of the States, whose existence as an independent government she so powerfully helped to create. He reads ill the face of nations who fails to perceive that the great body of Americans desire to see the pride of England humbled, and that they are treasuring up their wrath against the day of wrath. The native-born Americans are moved by the transmitted rancor of past injustice. Those of Irish and Catholic descent have the wrongs of Ireland and of the Catholic Church to avenge. All the traditions of faith and patriotism are now arrayed against England, and the influence of the Irish and Catholic population of the States is sufficient to decide the political action of Congress in the eventuality of the reasonableness of war with Great Britain becoming a subject for discussion. Yet the Irish and Catholic element in the American population might, under circumstances to be created by English policy, prove the means of restraining from an almost fratricidal contest the two great empires. Ireland may become so linked to England that any blow struck against England would equally harm Ireland. An enlightened legislation concerning the soil of Ireland may lead to the break-up of absentee landlordism, and substitute tens of thousands of owners and occupiers in place of the few hundred feudal proprietors who now exact rack-rents from an impoverished tenantry. The multiplication of resident working farm-owners may afford remunerative and permanent occupation to numerous agricultural laborers for whom there now offers only an intermittent and precarious employment. The agricultural prosperity of Ireland is a powerful bond of union with England, the nearest and best market for Irish produce. Another bond of union may be found in the grant of legislative independence, or such a modification of the present parliamentary system as may place the disposal of purely Irish interests in the hands of Irish representatives, satisfy the just desires of the patriotic, and leave no room for sentimental grievances to fester into international feuds. The Catholic religion, subjected to no disabilities in either kingdom, and overshadowed by no hostile establishment--for Englishmen themselves in a few years will remove their present church establishment in the interests of their church and of Protestantism--will form another tie between the countries. English Catholics have always been loyal to the British government. Irish Catholics may become just as loyal. Education may render the rough Irish laborers, who frequent the centres of English commerce and manufacture, as loyal as the most loyal in England, and a valuable counterpoise to the ultra-democratic semi-infidels who form the dangerous mobs of London, Liverpool, and other vast trading and industrial cities. And if the social and political interests of Catholic Irishmen and of Catholics in England become recognized as identical with those of English Protestants, then the union between Great Britain and Ireland will be completely consolidated, and the Irish party in America will have neither excuse nor opportunity for joining any other party which may desire, disregarding the welfare of Ireland, to inflict a wound upon Great Britain. On the contrary, the Irish and Catholic element in the States will be both able and willing to throw its effective influence into the scale upon the side of peace and good-will, whenever the differences between the cabinets of London and Washington demand settlement. Ireland will thus indirectly become the mediator between the contending empires--the arbiter to reconcile the angry parent and the aggrieved son. But Ireland, to be enabled to act this part, must be cherished as Irish and Catholic, with its nationality unimpaired and its faith untrammelled. And if the political interests of Great Britain shall be served by the flourishing condition of Irish Catholicism, the religious interests of Protestant England will not necessarily be damaged. Nay, it may prove an advantage to Protestantism to be brought upon equal terms into close and harmonious relations with the fervent faith of the Catholic Church, which nowhere appears to greater advantage than in Ireland. Rationalism and scepticism are on the increase in Great Britain and elsewhere, and will prove far more dangerous neighbors than the Church of Rome to the Church of England. Infidelity is an enemy against whom both would do well, if not to unite their strength, at least to direct their separate attacks. As rivals in opposing vice and unbelief, they may learn to respect each other, and, alas! have before them a field only too ample for their most vigorous exertions.

MARY.

Sweet name of Mary, name of names save One-- And that, my Queen, so wedded unto thine Our hearts hear both in either, and enshrine Instinctively the Mother with the Son-- The lisping child's new accent has begun, Heaven-taught, with thee; first-fervent happy youth Makes thee the watchword of its maiden truth; Repentant age the hope of the undone. To me, known late but timely, thou hast been The noon-day freshness of a wooded height; A vale of soothing waters; the delight Of fadeless verdure in a desert scene; And when, ere long, my day shall set serene, Be Hesper[35] to an eve without a night.

B. D. H.

FOOTNOTE:

[35] The evening star.

EMERSON'S PROSE WORKS.[36]

Mr. Emerson's literary reputation is established, and placed beyond the reach of criticism. No living writer surpasses him in his mastery of pure and classic English, or equals him in the exquisite delicacy and finish of his chiselled sentences, or the metallic ring of his style. It is only as a thinker and teacher that we can venture any inquiry into his merits; and as such we cannot suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by his oracular manner, nor by the apparent originality either of his views or his expressions.

Mr. Emerson has had a swarm both of admirers and of detractors. With many he is a philosopher and sage, almost a god; while with others he is regarded as an unintelligible mystic, babbling nonsense just fitted to captivate beardless young men and silly maidens with pretty curls, who constituted years ago the great body of his hearers and worshippers. We rank ourselves in neither class, though we regard him as no ordinary man, and as one of the deepest thinkers, as well as one of the first poets, of our country. We know him as a polished gentleman, a genial companion, and a warm-hearted friend, whose kindness does not pass over individuals and waste itself in a vague philanthropy. So much, at least, we can say of the man, and from former personal acquaintance as well as from the study of his writings.

Mr. Emerson is no theorist, and is rather of a practical than of a speculative turn of mind. What he has sought all his life, and perhaps is still seeking, is the real, the universal, and the permanent in the events of life and the objects of experience. The son of a Protestant minister, brought up in a Protestant community, and himself for some years a Protestant minister, he early learned that the real, the universal, and permanent are not to be found in Protestantism; and assuming that Protestantism, in some or all its forms, is the truest exponent of the Christian religion, he very naturally came to the conclusion that they are not to be found in Christianity. He saw that Protestantism is narrow, hollow, unreal, a sham, a humbug, and, ignorant of the Catholic Church and her teaching, he considered that she must have less of reality, be even more of a sham or humbug, than Protestantism itself. He passed then naturally to the conclusion that all pretensions to a supernaturally revealed religion are founded only in ignorance or craft, and rejected all of all religions, except what may be found in them that accords with the soul or the natural reason of all men. This may be gathered from his brief essay, entitled _Nature_, first published in 1836. We quote a few paragraphs from the introduction:

"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and a philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not a history of theirs?... The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works, and laws, and worship.

"Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of creation so far as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, To what end is nature?

"All science has one aim, to find a theory of nature. We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are deemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained, but inexplicable--as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex." (Vol. i. pp. 5, 6.)

These extracts give us the key to Mr. Emerson's thought, which runs through all his writings, whether in prose or poetry; though more fully mastered and better defined in his later productions, essays, and lectures, than it was in his earliest production from which we have quoted. In studying these volumes, we are convinced that what the writer is after is reality, of which this outward, visible universe, both as a whole and in all its parts, symbolizes. He seeks life, not death; the living present, not the corpse of the past. Under this visible world, its various and ever-varying phenomena, lies the real world, one, identical, universal, and immutable, which it copies, mimics, or symbolizes. He agrees with Plato that the real thing is in the methexis, not in the mimesis; that is, in the idea, not in the individual and the sensible, the variable and the perishable. He wants unity and catholicity, and the science that does not attain to them is no real science at all. But as the mimesis, in his language the hieroglyphic, copies or imitates the methexic, we can, by studying it, arrive at the methexic, the reality copied or imitated.

We do not pretend to understand Plato throughout, nor to reconcile him always with himself; but as far as we do understand him, the reality, what must be known in order to have real science, is the idea, and it is only by ideas that real science is attained. Ideas are, then, both the object and the medium of knowledge. As the medium of knowledge, the idea may be regarded as the image it impresses on the mimetic, or the individual and the sensible, as the seal on the wax. This image or impression is an exact _fac-simile_ of the idea as object. Hence by studying it we arrive at the exact knowledge of the idea, or what is real, invariable, universal, and permanent in the object we would know. The lower copies and reveals the next higher, and thus we may rise, step by step, from the lowest to the highest, to "the first good and the first fair," to the good, the beautiful, or Being that is being in itself. Thus is it in science. But the soul has two wings on which it soars to the empyrean, intelligence and love. The lowest form or stage of love is that of the sexes, a love of the senses only; but this lowest love symbolizes a higher or ideal love, rising stage by stage to the pure ideal, or the love of absolute beauty, the beautiful in itself, the love to which the sage aspires, and the only love in which he can rest or find repose.

We do not say that Mr. Emerson follows Plato in all respects; for he occasionally deviates from him, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse; but no one not tolerably well versed in the Platonic philosophy can understand him. In his two essays on Plato, in his second volume, he calls him the Philosopher, and asserts that all who talk philosophy talk Plato. He also maintains that Plato represented all the ages that went before him, possessed all the science of his contemporaries, and that none who have come after him have been able to add any thing new to what he taught. He includes Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism in Plato, who is far broader and more comprehensive than them all. Plato of all men born of woman stood nearest the truth of things, and in his intellectual and moral doctrines surpassed all who went before or have come after him.

We find many things in Plato that we like, and we entirely agree with him that the ideal is real; but we do not agree with Mr. Emerson, that nothing in science has been added to the Platonic doctrine. We think Aristotle made an important addition in his doctrine of entelechia; Leibnitz, in his definition of substance, making it a _vis activa_, and thus exploding the notion of passive or inert substances; and finally, Gioberti, by his doctrine of creation as a doctrine, or rather principle, of science. Plato had no conception of the creative act asserted by Moses in the first verse of _Genesis_. Plato never rose above the conception of the production of existences by way of formation, or the operation of the plastic force on a preëxisting and often intractable matter. He never conceived of the creation of existences from nothing by the sole energy or power of the creator. He held to the eternal existence of spirit and matter, and we owe to him principally the dualism and antagonism that have originated the false asceticism which many attribute to Christian teaching; but which Christianity rejects, as is evident from its doctrine of the Incarnation and that of the resurrection of the flesh. Gioberti has shown, as the writer thinks, that creation is no less a scientific principle than a Christian dogma. He has shown that the creative act is the nexus between being and existences, and that it enters as the copula into the _primum philosophicum_, without which there could be no human mind, and consequently no human science. There are various other instances we might adduce in which people talk very good sense, even profound philosophical and theological truth, and yet do not talk Plato. We hardly think Mr. Emerson himself will accept all the moral doctrines of Plato's Republic, especially those relating to marriage and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes; for Plato goes a little beyond what our free-lovers have as yet proposed.

Aristotle gives us, undoubtedly, a philosophy, such as it is, and a philosophy that enters largely into modern modes of thought and expression; but we can hardly say as much of Plato. He has profound thoughts, no doubt, and many glimpses of a high--if you will, the highest order of truth; but only when he avowedly follows tradition, and speaks according to the wisdom of the ancients. He seems to us to give us a method rather than a philosophy, and very little of our modern philosophical language is derived from him. Several of the Greek fathers, and St. Augustine among the Latins, incline to Platonism; but none of them, so far as we are acquainted with them, followed him throughout. The mediæval doctors, though not ignorant of Plato, almost without an exception prefer Aristotle. The revival of Platonism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries brought with it a revival of heathenism; and Plato has since been held in much higher esteem with the heterodox and makers of fanciful systems than with the orthodox and simple believers. We trace his influence in what the romancers call chivalry, which is of pagan origin, though some people are ill-informed enough to accredit it to the church; and we trace to his doctrine of love, so attractive to many writers not in other respects without merit, the modern babble about "the heart," the confusion of charity with philanthropy, and the immoral doctrines of free love, which strike at Christian marriage and the Christian family. The "heart," in the language of the Holy Scriptures, means the affections of the will, and the love they enjoin as the fulfilment of the law and the bond of perfection is charity, a supernatural virtue, in which both the will and the understanding are operative, not a simple, natural sentiment, or affection of the sensibility, or the love of the beautiful, and dependent on the imagination.

Mr. Emerson is right enough in making the sensible copy or imitate the intelligible, what there is true in Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences; but wrong in making the mimetic purely phenomenal, unreal, a mere sense-show. The mimetic, the mimesis, by which Plato means the individual and the sensible, the variable and the transitory, is not the only real, nor the highest real, as sensists and materialists hold; but is as real in its order and degree as the methexic or ideal. Hence, St. Thomas is able to maintain that the sensible species, or accidents, as he calls them, can subsist without their subject, or, as we would say, the sensible body without the intelligible body; and therefore, that the doctrine of transubstantiation involves no contradiction; for it is not pretended that the sensible body undergoes any change, or that the sensible body of our Lord is present in the blessed eucharist. So St. Augustine distinguishes the visible--the sensible--body and the spiritual--intelligible--body, and holds both to be real. The individual is as real as the species--the _socratitas_, in the language of the schoolmen, as the _humanitas_--for neither is possible without the other. The sort of idealism, as it is called, that resolves the individual into the species, or the sensible into the intelligible, and thus denies the external world, is as unphilosophical as the opposite doctrine, that resolves the species into the individual and the intelligible into the sensible. Even Plato, the supposed father of idealism, does not make the mimesis absolutely unreal. For, to say nothing of the preëxistent matter, the image, picture, which is the exact copy of its ideal prototype, is a real image, picture, or copy.

But Mr. Emerson, if he recognizes the methexis at all, either confounds it with real and necessary being, or makes it purely phenomenal, and therefore unreal, as distinguished from real and necessary being. Methexis is a Greek word, and means, etymologically and as used by Plato, participation. Plato's doctrine is, that all inferior existences exist by participation of the higher, through the medium of what he calls the plastic soul, whence the Demiourgos of the Gnostics. His error was in making the plastic soul instead of the creative act of God the medium of the participation. Still, Plato made it the participation of ideas or the ideal, and, in the last analysis, of Him who is being in himself. Hence, he made a distinction, if not the proper distinction, between the methexis and God, or being by participation and the absolute underived being, or being in itself.

Mr. Emerson recognizes no real participation, and either excludes the methexis or identifies it with God, or absolute being. He thus reduces the categories, as does Cousin, to being and phenomenon, or, in the only barbarism in language he permits himself, the ME--_le moi_--and the NOT ME--_le non moi_--the root-error, so to speak, of Fichte. He takes himself as the central force, and holds it to be the reality expressed in the NOT ME. The NOT ME being purely phenomenal, only the ME is real. By the ME he, of course, does not mean his own personality, but the reality which underlies and expresses itself in it. The absolute ICH, or ego, of Fichte is identical in all men, is the real man, the "one man," as Mr. Emerson says; and this "one man" is the reality, the being, the substance, the force of the whole phenomenal universe. There is, then, no methexis imitated, copied, or mimicked by the mimesis, or the individual and sensible universe. The mimesis copies not a participated or created intelligible, but, however it may be diversified by degrees, it copies directly God himself, the one real being and only substance of all things. If we regard ourselves as phenomenal, we are unreal, and therefore nothing; if as real, as substantive, as force, we do not participate, _mediante_ the creative act, of real being, but are identically it, or identical with it; which makes the author not only a pantheist, but a more unmitigated pantheist than Plato himself.

Neither Plato nor Mr. Emerson recognizes any causative force in the mimesis. Plato recognizes causative force only in ideas, though he concedes a power of resistance to the preëxistent matter, and finds in its intractableness the cause of evil; Mr. Emerson recognizes causative or productive force only in the absolute, and therefore denies the existence of second causes, as he does all distinction between first cause and final cause; which is the very essence of pantheism, which Gioberti rightly terms the "supreme sophism."

We have used the Greek terms _methexis_ and _mimesis_ after Plato, as Gioberti has done in his posthumous works, but not precisely in Gioberti's sense. Gioberti identifies the methexis with the plastic soul asserted by Plato, and revived by old Ralph Cudworth, an Anglican divine of the seventeenth century; but though we make the methexis causative in the order of second causes, we do not make it productive of the mimesis. It means what are called genera and species; but even in the order of second causes, genera are generative or productive only as specificated, and species only as individualized. God must have created the genus specificated and the species individualized before either could be active or productive as second cause. The genus does not and cannot exist without specification, nor the species without individualization, any more than the individual can exist without the species, or the species without the genus. For instance, man is the species, according to the schoolmen, the genus is animal, the _differentia_ is reason, and hence man is defined a rational animal. But the genus animal, though necessary to its existence, cannot generate the species man, any more than it could have generated itself. The species can exist only as immediately individuated by the first cause, and hence the pretence of some scientists--more properly sciolists,--that new species are formed either by development or by natural selection, is simply absurd, as has been well shown by the Duke of Argyll. God creates the species as well as the genera; and it is fairly inferred from the Scriptures that he creates all things in their genera and species "after their kind." Furthermore, if God had not created the human species individualized in Adam, male and female, there could have been no men by natural generation, any more than if there had been no human species at all.

This, as we understand it, excludes alike the plastic soul of the Platonists and the Demiourgos of the Gnostics, and teaches that the mimesis is as directly created by God himself as the methexis. Mr. Emerson, indeed, uses neither of these Platonic terms, though if he had, he would, with his knowledge of the Christian doctrine of creation, have detected the error of Plato, and most likely have escaped his own. The term _methexis_--participation--excludes the old error that God generates the universe, which is rather favored by the terms genera and species. We use the term _mimesis_ because it serves to us to express the fact that the lower copies or imitates the higher, and therefore the doctrine of St. Thomas, that "Deus est similitudo rerum omnium," or that God is himself the type or model after which the universe is created, and which each and every existence in its own order and degree strives to copy or represent. The error of Plato is, that he makes the methexis an emanation rather than a creature, and the plastic power that produces the mimesis; the error of Mr. Emerson, as we view the matter, is, that he makes the mimetic purely phenomenal, therefore unreal, sinks it in the methexic, and the methexis itself in God, as the one only being or substance, the _natura naturans_ of Spinoza.

With Plato, the mimesis is the product of the methexic, but is itself passive, and the sooner the soul is emancipated from it the better; though what is the soul in his system of ideas we understand not. With Mr. Emerson, it is neither active nor passive, for it is purely phenomenal, therefore nothing. With us it is real, and, like all real existences, it is active, and is not a simple image or copy of the methexic or the ideal, but is in its order and degree a _vis activa_, and copies or imitates actively the divine type or the _idea exemplaris_ in the divine mind, after which it is created.

Mr. Emerson says, in the introduction to his essay on _Nature_, "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of nature and soul." But all activity is in the soul, and what is distinguishable from the soul is purely phenomenal, and, if we may take his essay on the _Over-soul_, not republished in these volumes, is but the soul's own projection of itself. The soul alone is active, productive, and it is myself, my own ego; not indeed in its personal limitations and feebleness, but in its absoluteness, as the absolute or impersonal _Ich_ of Fichte, and identically God, who is the great, the absolute I AM.

The error is obvious. It consists in the denial or in the overlooking of the fact that God creates substances, and that every substance is, as Leibnitz defines it, a force, a _vis activa_, acting always from its own centre outward. Whatever actually exists is active, and there is and can be no passivity in nature. Hence, Aristotle and the schoolmen after him call God, who is being and being in its plenitude, _actus purissimus_, or most pure act, in whom there are no possibilities to be actualized. Mr. Emerson errs in his first principles, in not recognizing the fact that God creates substances, and that every substance is an activity, therefore causative either _ad intra_ or _ad extra_, and that every created substance is causative in the order of second causes. What we maintain in opposition both to him and Plato is, that these created substances are at once methexic and mimetic in their activity.

It were an easy task to show that whatever errors there may be, or may be supposed to be, in Mr. Emerson's works grow out of the two fundamental errors we have indicated--the identification of soul, freed from its personal limitations, as in Adam, John, and Richard, with God, or the real being, substance, force, or activity, and the assumption that whatever is distinguishable from God is purely phenomenal, an apparition, a sense-show, a mere bubble on the surface of the ocean of being, as we pointed out in our comments on the proceedings of the Free Religionists, in the magazine for last November, and to which we beg leave to refer our readers.

Yet, though we have known Mr. Emerson personally ever since 1836, have held more than one conversation with him, listened to several courses of lectures from him, and read and even studied the greater part, if not all of his works, as they issued from the press, we must confess that, in reperusing them preparatory to writing this brief notice, we have been struck, as we never were before, with the depth and breadth of his thought, as well as with the singular force and beauty of his expression. We appreciate him much higher both as a thinker and as an observer, and we give him credit for a depth of feeling, an honesty of purpose, an earnest seeking after truth, we had not previously awarded him in so great a degree, either publicly or privately. We are also struck with his near approach to the truth as we are taught it. He seems to us to come as near to the truth as one can who is so unhappy as to miss it.

We regard it as Mr. Emerson's great misfortune, that his early Protestant training led him to regard the Catholic question as _res adjucata_, and to take Protestantism, in some one or all of its forms, as the truest and best exponent of Christianity. Protestantism is narrow, superficial, unintellectual, vague, indefinite, sectarian, and it was easy for a mind like his to pierce through its hollow pretensions, to discover its unspiritual character, its want of life, its formality, and its emptiness. It was not difficult to comprehend that it was only a dead corse, and a mutilated corse at that. The Christian mysteries it professed to retain, as it held them, were lifeless dogmas, with no practical bearing on life, and no reason in the world for believing them. Such a system, having no relation with the living and moving world, and no reason in the nature or constitution of things, could not satisfy a living and thinking man, in downright earnest for a truth at least as broad and as living as his own soul. It was too little, too insignificant, too _mesquine_, too much of a dead and putrefying body to satisfy either his intellect or his heart. If that is the true exponent of Christianity, and the most enlightened portion of mankind say it is, why shall I belie my own understanding, my own better nature, by professing to believe and reverence it? No; let me be a man, be true to myself, to my own reason and instincts, not a miserable time-server or a contemptible hypocrite.

If Mr. Emerson had not been led to regard the Catholic question as closed, except to the dwellers among tombs, and to the ignorant and superstitious, and had studied the church with half the diligence he has Plato, Mohammed, or Swedenborg, it is possible that he would have found in Christianity the life and truth, the reality, unity, and catholicity he has so long and so earnestly sought elsewhere and found not. Certain it is, that whatever affirmative truth he holds is held and taught by the church in its proper place, its real relations, and in its integrity. The church does not live in the past nor dwell only among tombs; she is an ever-present and ever-living church, and presents to us not a dead historical Christ, but the ever-living and ever-present Christ, as really and truly present to us as he was to the disciples and apostles with whom he conversed when he went about in Judea doing good, without having where to lay his head, and not more veiled from our sight now than he was then from theirs. Does she not hold the sublime mystery of the Real Presence, which, if an individual fact, is also a universal principle?

The Christian system, if we may so speak, is not an after-thought in creation, or something superinduced on the Creator's works. It has its ground and reason in the very constitution of things. All the mysteries taught or dogmas enjoined by the church are universal principles; they are truly catholic, the very principles according to which the universe, visible or invisible, is constructed, and not one of them can be denied without denying a first principle of life and of science. Mr. Emerson says, in a passage we have quoted, "All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature," and seems to concede that it has not yet succeeded in finding it. The church goes beyond even the aim of science, and gives, at least professes to give, not a theory of truth, but the truth itself; she is not a method, but that to which the true method leads. She is the body of Him who is "the way, the truth, and the life;" she gives us, not as the philosophers, her views of the truth, but the truth itself, in its reality, its unity, its integrity, its universality, its immutability. At least such is her profession; for the faith she teaches is the substance--hypostasis--of the things to be hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen--_substantia sperandarum, argumentum non apparentium_.

Such being her profession, made long before Protestantism was born, and continued to be made since with no stammering tongue or abatement of confidence, the pretence that judgment has gone against her is unfounded. Many have condemned her, as the Jewish Sanhedrim condemned our Lord, and called on the Roman Procurator to execute judgment against him; but she has no more staid condemned than he staid confined in the new tomb hewn from the rock in which his body was laid, and far more are they who admit her professions among the enlightened and civilized than they who deny them. No man has a right to be regarded as a philosopher or sage who has not at least thoroughly examined her titles, and made up his mind with a full knowledge of the cause.

In the Catholic Church we have found the real presence, and unity, and catholicity which we sought long and earnestly, and could find nowhere else, and which Mr. Emerson, after a still longer and equally earnest search, has not found at all. He looks not beyond nature, and nature is not catholic, universal, or the whole. It is not one, but manifold and variable. It cannot tell its origin, medium, or end. With all the light Mr. Emerson has derived from nature, or from nature and soul united, there is infinite darkness behind, infinite darkness before, and infinite darkness all around him. He says, "Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic of those inquiries he would put." Suppose it is so, what avail is that to him who has lost or never had the key to the hieroglyph? Knows he to interpret the hieroglyph in which the solution is concealed? Can he read the riddle of the sphinx? He has tried his hand at it in his poem of the Sphinx, and has only been able to answer that

"Each answer is a lie."

It avails us little to be told where the solution is, if we are not told what it is, or if only told that every solution is false as soon as told. Hear him; to man he says,

"Thou art the unanswered question; Couldst see thy proper eye, Alway it asketh, asketh; And each answer is a lie: So take thy quest through nature, It through a thousand natures ply; Ask on, thou clothed eternity; Time is the false reply."

The answer, if it means any thing, means that man is "a clothed eternity," whatever that may mean, eternally seeking an answer to the mystery of his own being, and each answer he can obtain is a lie; for only eternity can comprehend eternity and tell what it is. Whence has he learned that man, the man-child, is "a clothed eternity," and therefore God, who only is eternal?

Now, eternity is above time, and above the world of time, consequently above nature. Catholicity, by the very force of the term, must include all truth, and therefore the truth of the supernatural as well as of the natural. But Mr. Emerson denies the supernatural, and does not, of course, even profess to have any knowledge that transcends nature. How, then, can he pretend to have attained to catholic truth? He himself restricts nature to the external universe, which is phenomenal, and to soul, by which he means himself. But are there no phenomena without being or substance which appears or which shows itself in them? Is this being or substance the soul, or, in the barbarism he adopts, the ME? If so, the NOT-ME is only the phenomena of the ME, and of course identical with myself, as he implies in what he says of the "one man." Then in me, and emanating from me, are all men, and the whole of nature. How does he know this? Does he learn it from nature?

Of course, Mr. Emerson means not this, even if his various utterances imply it. He uses the word _creation_, and we suppose he intends, notwithstanding his systematic views, if such he has, contradict it, to use it in its proper sense. Then he must hold the universe, including, according to his division, nature and soul, has been created, and if created, it has a creator. The creator must be superior, above nature and soul, and therefore in the strictest sense of the word supernatural; and as reason is the highest faculty of the soul, the supernatural must also be supra-rational.

Does the creator create for a purpose, for an end? and if so, what is that end or purpose, and the medium or means of fulfilling it, whether on his part or on the part of the creature? Here, then, we have the assertion of a whole order of truth, very real and very important to be known, which transcends the truth Mr. Emerson professes to have, and which is not included in it. We say again, then, that he has not attained to catholicity, and we also say that, by the only method he admits, he cannot attain to it. How can he pretend to have attained to catholicity, and that he has already a truth more universal than Christianity reveals, when he must confess that without the knowledge of a supernatural and supra-rational truth he cannot explain his origin or end, or know the conditions of his existence, or the means of gaining his end?

Mr. Emerson says, as we have quoted him,

"Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy."

Alway it asketh, asketh, And each answer is a lie.

There is here a grand mistake. If he had said the Creator instead of creation, there would have been truth and great propriety in the author's assertion. Nature--and we mean by nature the whole created order--excites us to ask many very troublesome questions, which nature is quite incompetent to answer. The fact that nature is created, proves that she is, both as a whole and in all her parts, dependent, not independent, and therefore does not and cannot suffice for herself. Unable to suffice for herself, she cannot suffice for the science of herself; for science must be of that which is, not of that which is not.

Mr. Emerson, we presume, struck with the narrowness and inconsistencies of all the religions he had studied, and finding that they are all variable and transitory in their forms, yet thought that he also discovered something in them, or underlying them all, which is universal, invariable, and permanent, and which they are all honest efforts of the great soul to realize. He therefore came to the conclusion that the sage can accept none of these narrow, variable, and transitory forms, and yet can reject none of them as to the great, invariable, and underlying principles, which in fact is all they have that is real or profitable. To distinguish between the transient and permanent in religion was the common aim of the Boston movement from 1830 to 1841, when we ourselves began to turn our own mind, though very timidly and at a great distance, toward the church. Mr. Emerson, Miss Margaret Fuller, A. Bronson Alcott, and Mr. Theodore Parker regarded the permanent elements of all religions as the natural patrimony or products of human nature. The present writer differed from them, by ascribing their origin to supernatural revelation made to our first parents in the garden, universally diffused by the dispersion of the race, and transmitted to us by the traditions of all nations. Following out this view, the grace of God moving and assisting, we found our way to the Catholic Church, in which the form and the invariable and permanent principle, or rather, the form growing out of the principle, are inseparable, and are fitted by the divine hand to each other.

The others, falling back on a sort of transcendental illuminism, sunk into pure naturalism, where such of them as are still living, and a whole brood of young disciples who have sprung up since, remain, and, like the old Gnostics, suppose themselves spiritual men and women in possession of the secret of the universe. There was much life, mental activity, and honest purpose in the movement; but those who had the most influence in directing its course could not believe that any thing good could come out of Nazareth, and so turned their backs on the church. They thought they could find something deeper, broader, and more living than Christianity, and have lost not only the transient, but even the permanent in religion.

FOOTNOTE:

[36] _The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson_, New and revised edition. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1870. 2 vols. 16mo.

THE HOLY-WEEK OF 1869 IN HAVANA.

GOOD-FRIDAY. HOLY-SATURDAY. EASTER-SUNDAY.

GOOD-FRIDAY.

Sad indeed was the aspect of all things within the cathedral on Good-Friday morning. Black draperies covered the pulpit, reading-desks, and seats reserved for the authorities, and every one was attired in mourning. Instead of the rose-color and blue of Holy-Thursday, the ladies now wore black or violet silks and satins with jet ornaments.

All the personages of the preceding day were present, and the religious services were in nowise different from those of the Catholic Church in other lands, with the exception that, in the reading of the passion, at the words "_gave up the ghost_," all knelt, but did not kiss the ground, as is the custom in France.

During the adoration of the cross, in which the captain-general, apparently almost too ill to stand, and the other gentlemen took part, the choir sang the beautiful hymn _Pange lingua_, with its tender burden of _Crux fidelis_. Never did it sound to me more touching.

"Sing, O my tongue! the Victor's praise; For him the noblest trophy raise, The victory of his cross proclaim, His glory and his laurelled fame; Sing of his conquests, when he proved The Saviour of the souls he loved.

O faithful cross! thou stand'st alone; None like thee in our woods is grown, None can with thy rich growth compare, Or leaves like thine, or flowerets bear. Sweet wood, sweet nails, both sweet and fair, Sweet is the precious weight ye bear."

The adoration terminated, the procession was formed, exactly as on the day before, to bring back the Blessed Sacrament from the sepulchre. On reaching the foot of the steps, the captain-general delivered up to the bishop the key he had worn suspended from his neck since the preceding morning. As the procession returned, the noble strains of the _Vexilla regis_ resounded through the great church.

"The standard of our King unfurled Proclaims triumphant to the world The cross, where Life would suffer death To gain life with his dying breath!"

My heart beat faster as I listened to the glorious hymn!

The communion made, vespers were chanted in grave and mournful tones, and the service was concluded. As the bishop descended the nave to leave the cathedral, the little girls of the nuns' schools crowded around him to kiss his hand; and it was very pretty to see them clasp his fingers, and look up in his kind face with a confiding smile.

* * * * *

As it had been officially announced that the meditation on the seven words of Jesus on the cross, with the ceremony of the descent from the cross, to be followed by the procession of the interment, were to take place, as is usual every year, that afternoon in the church of _San Juan de Dios_, I determined to be present.

At three o'clock, accordingly, I stationed myself in a shady corner, not far from the principal entrance of _San Juan_, among a crowd of soldiers, volunteers, and colored people. All gazed at me inquisitively. I looked like a lady; but my somewhat Andalusian physiognomy, shaded by the black lace mantilla, put them out a little. I heard them at last decide that I was an _estranjera_, (stranger,) and consequently considered capable of, and permitted, any eccentricity, without derogating from my claim to respect. Twenty minutes passed away thus; a south wind was blowing, and great water-laden clouds were fast covering the sky; the heat was very oppressive, and soon heavy drops of rain began to fall, and every one rushed to shelter. I ran back to the cathedral, my nearest refuge. The _Tenebræ_ had just commenced, and I sat there and listened to the doleful lamentations of Jeremiah, and the wails of the holy women, mingling with the thunder-crashes and the noise of the pouring rain, which fell as it only falls within the tropics. It was a combination of sounds not easily to be forgotten.

At half-past four, the storm was over, and the sky clear and blue once more, so I determined to hasten to _San Juan_, and, though too late to hear the meditation, still witness the descent from the cross. To my surprise, on going to the door I found it impossible to leave the church; the whole place in front of the cathedral was knee-deep in water, and all the streets leading from it looked like swift-flowing rivers! Not until five o'clock did the water subside sufficiently to permit me to cross the street conducting to _San Juan_, where, however, I fortunately arrived in time for the ceremony I so much wished to see.

The high altar had been removed, and in its place, on an elevated platform, were erected three great crosses, the centre one bearing the image, large as life, of our Saviour, the other two those of the thieves crucified with him; the face of the repentant sinner was turned lovingly toward his Lord, that of the unrepentant looked away with a scowl.

The figure of the victim was fearfully natural--the pallor of death was on his blood-stained brow, the gash in his side, and his mangled hands and feet were livid. Two priests, mounted on ladders placed against the arms of the cross, were in the act of taking down the writing when I got near enough to see well. At the command of the preacher, who had just finished the meditation, and who directed them from the pulpit, they then proceeded to draw out the nail from the right hand; when loosened from the tree, the arm fell stiffly and as if dead; before the other was freed, long and wide linen bands were passed under both, and around the body, to sustain it and prevent it from falling forward. _Llorad lagrimas de sangre_--"Weep tears of blood," cried the preacher while this was being done amid the breathless silence of the spectators, "he died for you!" So solemnly, so tenderly did the priests perform their office, that it seemed no representation, but dreadful reality, and my cheeks grew cold, and my heart throbbed painfully when the pale, bruised body was gently lowered and borne to the bier waiting to receive it.

Yes, this cruel death He died for us; but, O true and loving women! one sweet and proud remembrance will be ours for all eternity--_our_ kiss betrayed him not, nor _our_ tongue denied--

"While even the apostle left him to his doom, _We_ lingered round his cross, and watched his tomb!"

The preacher now descended from the pulpit, and quitted the church in company with the other assistant priests; and the direction seemed to be left in the hands of a fraternity called _los Hermanos de la Soledad_--the Brethren of Solitude--a set of tall, fine-looking black men, many with thin lips and _almost_ Roman noses. They were dressed in robes of black glazed calico, with white lace tippets.

A quarter of an hour elapsed; the church remained crowded, but there were no signs of preparation for the procession. Presently a handsome, authoritative-mannered personage, evidently a Spaniard, entered hastily, and, pushing his way unceremoniously through the people, sought the members of the brotherhood, to whom he evidently gave some orders, and then went away. A great silence prevailed, and every one seemed to be waiting for something. I at last mustered up courage to ask a brother when the procession would commence.

_No hay procesion hasta el año que viene_--"There will be no procession until next year"--he answered in a very loud voice.

_Pero, señor, en el diario_--"But, sir, in the newspaper--" I began. "_No hay procesion hasta el año que viene_," he repeated louder still.

The women broke forth in murmurs; but not a man spoke, though compressed lips and scowling brows showed sufficiently what was passing within. I must not omit to remark that the congregation consisted almost entirely of colored creoles.

By dint of soft but firmly continued pushing, and a pleasant smile when the individual I elbowed looked grimly at me, I forced my way out of the disagreeable pack of volunteers and negroes, men and boys, that surrounded me, to the chancel, where I found a number of well-dressed and respectable-looking colored ladies seated on the platform. There the discontent was louder, and I understood distinctly that the disappointment was attributed more to the ill-will of their rulers than to the bad state of the weather. One woman, particularly, exclaimed angrily several times, and sufficiently loud to be heard by all in that end of the building, _Hay procesion para los Españoles, pero no para nosotros_--"There are processions for the Spaniards, but not for us."

However, there was nothing to be done but to submit; so a few persons went quietly away, and I at last succeeded in obtaining a close view of the bier. It was in the form of a sarcophagus with open sides, placed on a trestle concealed by black velvet drapery spotted with silver stars; the upper part very tastefully decorated with white and lilac flowers. The image lying within was covered with a cloth of silver tissue, the head and feet left bare. Close by stood another trestle, also covered with ornamented black velvet, and supporting a small platform, on which stood the figures of the Blessed Virgin, in deep grief, holding in her hand a very handsome lace pocket-handkerchief, and of St. John, with a profusion of fair ringlets, sustaining her in his arms. The bier, followed by the Virgin and St. John, carried by the members of the black _Hermandad_, escorted by soldiers and military music, and accompanied by a vast number of people, constitutes the "procession of the interment," which every Good-Friday (when permitted) leaves the old church of _San Juan de Dios_, passes through many streets of the city, and before the palace of the captain-general, and stops at the cathedral, into which it enters, and where the images are finally deposited with great solemnity. This year, as we have seen, the procession did not take place.

While examining with interest these curious remains of the piety of the first settlers in the island, I heard some one cry out, _No deja ninguno salir_--"Let no one go out"--and at the same moment saw some soldiers lifting up and looking under the velvet draperies as if searching for some one. Five very uncomfortable minutes followed; the door by which I had entered was blocked up with soldiers and volunteers, every one was frightfully silent--and I am not a heroine! At last the people were allowed to go out by one door, while the soldiers and volunteers slowly filled up the church by the other.

Exceedingly great was the relief I felt when I found myself safely seated in the cars, (which in consequence of the rain had been permitted to enter the city and station themselves in their usual place,) and on my way home, where I arrived very tired and almost disgusted with sight-seeing.

HOLY-SATURDAY.

At seven o'clock in the morning of the "_Sabado de Gloria_," the "Saturday of Glory," as the Spaniards beautifully and expressively call this great day, I was already established in my usual place in the nave of the cathedral, though the religious ceremonies were not to commence until eight. The attendance of the public generally was less than on Maundy-Thursday and Good-Friday, and none of the superior authorities of Havana, nor military and civil functionaries, were present.

The new fire was lighted and blessed precisely as is done with us, and the five grains of incense placed on the paschal candle; which, however, was not a tall, thick taper, as in other countries, but a veritable _pillar_ of wax, about a yard high and six inches in diameter; transmitting to us most probably an exact resemblance of that column of wax upon which the patriarch of Alexandria used to inscribe the paschal epoch and the movable feasts, and which in progress of time was employed as a torch during the paschal night, and at last came to be regarded as the symbol of the resuscitated Saviour, the true light of the world.

After reading the prophecies, the deacon, preceded by the holy cross and the paschal candle, and accompanied by the clergy and many of the faithful present, went in procession to bless the new water and the baptismal fonts. This ceremony also was performed exactly as it is with us. At its conclusion the deacon returned to the high altar, and after sprinkling it and the congregation with the newly-blessed water, the short mass of the day commenced.

Scarcely had the officiating priest begun to intone the _Gloria_, when the central door of the church burst open, letting in a flood of golden light; the cannon fired, the drums beat, the bells rang out, and the loud organ pealed forth a triumphant strain, while voices that seemed to come from heaven repeated high and clear, with delicious harmony, _Gloria in excelsis Deo!_

We all simultaneously fell on our knees; for myself, I can say that never in my life before had I experienced such rapturous emotion. Never before had I so perfectly realized the triumph of life over death! Never before, O my God! had I felt so deeply what it was to praise thee, to bless thee, to adore thee, to glorify thee with my whole heart. _Gloria in excelsis Deo!_

"God the Redeemer liveth! He who took Man's nature on him, and in human shroud Veiled his immortal glory! He is risen-- God the Redeemer liveth! And behold The gates of life and immortality Opened to all that breathe!"

The Alleluia was chanted in the same spirit of joy and exultation, and the services concluded.

* * * * *

Without the church all was now gayety and bustle. The streets were crowded as if by magic with vehicles of every description. The shops were all open; the sweetmeat and fruit-sellers at their posts, looking as if they had never been absent; the lottery-ticket venders in full cry. The horses and mules had their heads decorated with bows and rosettes and streamers of bright-colored ribbons, and their tails elegantly plaited and tied up to one side of their saddle or harness, with scarlet braid. Even the quiet, patient oxen sported a bit of finery, and wore flowers on the ponderous yoke that weighed down their gentle heads. Crowds of busy men hurried hither and thither; gayly-dressed ladies drove about in their stylish quitrins; loud talking and laughing was the order of the day among the colored population; a riff-raff of little blackies pervaded the city, happily _without_ the squibs, crackers, and fire-arms permitted them until this year, but quite sufficiently boisterous to be intolerable; while the church-bells kept ringing out, adding their clang to the noisy confusion, and _not_ with that merry musical chime we are accustomed to hear in England, the land of the scientific, well-trained bell-ringer. But, indeed, nowhere since I listened years ago to the bells of Saint Mary's in dear old smoky Manchester have I heard a regular triple bob-major!

EASTER-SUNDAY.

The sun was not yet up when I started for town on Easter morning. The procession of the resurrection--called, to distinguish it from other processions of the resurrection, _del encuentro_, "of the meeting"--was to commence at six o'clock, and I was determined that no tardiness on my part should prevent my seeing the whole of this singular relic of bygone ages. The transition from darkness to light is so wonderfully sudden, however, in these latitudes, that it was broad day when I reached the cathedral, which I found brilliantly illuminated with wax tapers, and hung with crimson damask draperies. Mass had just begun, and there was a considerable number of persons present, most of them ladies, as is always the case in the churches of Havana. How the sight of the men-crowded churches of the United States would astonish these Cubans, who seem to believe that religion is made for ignorant women and children, and that the less they profess to have, the more enlightened they appear! As if the really enlightened man were not he who most deeply feels the necessity of his Maker's care and love--the consolation of addressing him in prayer!

As soon as the service was ended, I hastened to the _Calle Empedrado_, the street leading directly from the cathedral to _San Juan_, and took up my station on the edge of the sidewalk, about half-way between the two churches. The balconies of the houses and the sides of the great barred, glassless windows were hung with red and yellow draperies; and gayly-dressed ladies and children, and crowds of colored people, with the inevitable volunteers, thronged the streets. While thus waiting, I was struck by the appearance of the dresses of the greater part of the colored creole women; nearly all wore red, white, and blue, the antagonistic colors to red and yellow. Their wearers, in all probability, intended by this show of their political opinions to revenge themselves upon the Spaniards for the loss of their much-loved procession on Good-Friday.

There was soon a murmur of expectation in the crowd around me, and presently there appeared coming toward us from _San Juan_ the image, large as life, of St. Mary Magdalen, dressed in a skirt of silver tinsel, and an open dress of blue satin, trimmed with silver lace. A profusion of long auburn ringlets flowed down each side of the smiling face, and a very elaborate gilded glory was affixed to the back of the head. The arms were slightly raised, and the hand held out. This figure stood on a small platform supported on the shoulders of four of the Brethren of Solitude, such tall men that the saint, as she advanced rapidly, her curls streaming out behind her, seemed to be running over the heads of the spectators. As she passed, all the men took off their hats respectfully. The bearers halted just in front of me, the Magdalen being supposed to look toward the sepulchre; after a few minutes' pause, she suddenly turned and ran back to the church of _San Juan_. In order, probably, to give a more natural appearance to the image, the men who carried it, and who evidently took extreme delight and pride in the duty, waddled as they ran, and so communicated a most ludicrous deportment to the saint. Every one laughed loud as they watched her roll from side to side, plunging forward from time to time, and then recovering herself with a jerk, her hair flopping up and down or streaming out on the air.

_Que bien corre, meneandose_--"How well she runs, shaking herself!"--was the admiring exclamation of several persons near me, and they laughed; yes, men, women, and children, black and white, roared with laughter, and yet, I verily believe, not one among them all laughed in derision, or felt the slightest sentiment of disrespect. "Perfect love casteth out fear," says the apostle; and it never entered into their heads that the good saint could be displeased because, like simple children, they laughed at so artless a representation of her. The grotesque movements excited their hilarity, and they were hilarious on the impulse of the moment, and without _arrière pensée_. The Latin race is sometimes remarkable for a child-like simplicity in its actions which too often is mistaken by colder temperaments for a lack of veneration and propriety.

In a little while the saint came running down the street again, saluted respectfully again by the merry crowd. A halt of five minutes, while she looked earnestly in the direction of the sepulchre, and then she turned and rushed back, more violently agitated than before, and amidst reiterated shouts of laughter, to _San Juan de Dios_, to tell the Blessed Virgin the good tidings that her Son was alive again.

And now the loud strains of martial music reached our ears, and we saw emerging from the square in front of the cathedral, and slowly advancing toward us, a high, handsome structure carried on the shoulders of a member of the black _Hermandad_. In the centre of it stood the image of the risen Saviour, crowned with a radiant glory; his right hand extended as if to welcome, his left grasping a white and gold banner, which displayed, when the breeze unfurled its folds, a blood-red cross. A little angel with outspread wings seemed to hover in front of the gorgeous fabric, as if to herald the coming Lord. A regiment of colored soldiers, wearing white drill uniforms with red facings, escorted this triumphal car, the band playing its gayest airs.

At the same moment the Holy Virgin, attired in gold-colored silk damask, with a magnificent halo around her head, appeared at the opposite end of the street coming to meet him. She was followed at a short distance by St. Mary Magdalen, now more subdued in manner. The Virgin's arms were raised as if about to clasp them around her beloved Son, and her face wore an expression of ecstatic joy.

The two processions met where I stood, and after a short pause, St. Mary Magdalen, who was the nearest to the church of _San Juan de Dios_, turned round and led the way thither, the Virgin turning also, and the two processions now forming but one. Slowly, but to the liveliest music, in which mingled the strains of Riesgo's hymn, the whole mass of us--for we spectators fell into the ranks--moved onward, every one looking glad and gay, and so we at last reached the old church, which was far too small to contain one half of us, and the images entered one after the other with all the assistants who could force their way in. We weaker vessels, left outside, seeing it hopeless to try to get in, soon dispersed. I have since learnt that no kind of religious ceremony took place; the images were simply set down, and after a while the church was cleared of the people and closed for an hour or two.

There are processions of the resurrection from a great number of churches perambulating the city every Easter-Sunday; but this one "of the Meeting," is by far the most curious and interesting. That of the church of the _Espiritu Santo_ is considered one of the prettiest, because of the children in fancy dresses that take part in it. This year, I was told, a great majority of them wore volunteer or _cantinera_ (canteen-women, or sutler) costumes, to the great disgust of Cuban mothers.

* * * * *

There was, of course, much festivity going on in the city and suburbs all that day. There were family meetings and the pleasant _retreta_ in the evening for some; the theatre and public balls for others; and, I am sorry to say, there was cock-fighting for that brutal minority which in all countries seems to seek its greatest enjoyment in the contemplation of bloody strife.

Yet, in sad truth, there had been strife enough in the streets of Havana during the past week to have contented the most sanguinary temper, and sorrow enough to have softened the hardest. Palm-Sunday had witnessed the farewell to all that was dear to them of two hundred and fifty unfortunate men; had witnessed, also, the wretched end of the two youths about to embark with the other prisoners, and the noble death of the courageous commissary of police, shot down while he sought to protect them from the vengeance of the volunteers, whom their mad bravadoes, as they were marched down to the ship, had infuriated. In the course of the week a colored man had been killed in the streets for seditious cries, and several others stabbed at night by unknown hands. And as if to keep up the constant anxiety and fear that overcast Havana like a lurid cloud, the Cubans by every possible covert insult, and only just avoiding the most terrible consequences, had shown their hatred of their Spanish rulers.

One trifling incident became a subject of interest and excitement that would have been absurd under any other circumstances than the present. On Good-Friday a _gorrion_ (sparrow) was found dead in the _Plaza de Armas_ by a volunteer. Some say, though others contradict the report, that the poor little bird had its eyes torn out, its heart transfixed with pins, and a paper attached to one of its feet containing the words, _Asi mueran todos los gorriones_--"May all sparrows die thus!" Now, it must be understood that _gorrion_ is another of the appellations bestowed on the Spaniards by the Cubans. A few sparrows having been brought from Europe to the island by some ship-captain, they prospered and multiplied in such a degree that they soon outnumbered and domineered over the _Bijirita_, a native bird somewhat smaller, but much resembling the sparrow in form, color, and habits. An analogy being imagined between the Spaniards and the new-comer--the name of _gorrion_ was given to all the natives of the peninsula of Spain, while the Cubans adopted that of _Bijirita_.

The little dead _gorrion_ found on Good-Friday was placed with much ceremony in a glass coffin, and laid in state in a room of one of the barracks, on a lofty catafalque, with velvet pall and lighted tapers and a guard of honor. Crowns of fresh flowers, and of red and yellow "everlastings," were suspended around and above the remains of the typical bird, and two exquisite nosegays, each more than three feet high, and as much in circumference, the gifts of the captain-general and of the _generala_ his wife, stood one at the head, the other at the foot of the mimic tomb. All the volunteers paid their respects with much ceremony to the little representative of their race, and so many people crowded to visit it on Holy-Saturday that it was at last determined to utilize public curiosity.

On Easter-Sunday every person who wished to see the _gorrion_ was obliged to pay ten cents, which were to go to the fund destined to aid the volunteers disabled in the present terrible struggle. On Easter morning the sum received amounted to three hundred and fifty-one dollars!

A great number of songs, sonnets, and odes were composed in honor of the poor little bird, and the manuscripts were tied by colored ribbons to the crowns suspended above it. They have since been collected and printed, and sold for the benefit of the same fund. Many of them were published in the _Diario de la Marina_, the official daily paper of Havana. The following are specimens of the effusions:

AL GORRION.

Gloria al Gorrion que aquì veis Inanimado y marchito, Ya jamas de su piquito El dulce canto oireis. Pero en cambio no olvideis Los que lo mireis con saña, Que si ya la muerte empaña Su mirada inteligente, De su raza prepotente Hay millones in España!

_La Compañia de Cazadores del 7^o Batallon._

TO THE SPARROW.

Glory to the Sparrow that you see here Lifeless and blighted, Never more from his little bill Will you hear a sweet song. But in exchange, do not forget, You who look at him with ill-will, That if indeed death has dimmed His intelligent glance, Of his most powerful race There are millions in Spain!

_The Company of Cazadores of the 7th Battalion._

Aqui reposa un Gorrion Que esta tarde se le entierra Y otros cien en pié de guerra La sirven de guarnicion, Bijiritas, en tropel Furiosas aleteais ¿Por ventura no observais Que estais ya mas muertas que el? Descansa en paz, oh gorrion, Y admite esta ofrenda fria De la cuarta compañia De este quinto batallon!

TRANSLATION.

Here rests a Sparrow, To be buried this afternoon, And a hundred more in warlike trim Serve him as a guard.

You crowds of Bijiritas Who beat your wings with fury, Do you not by chance remark That you are already more dead than he is?

Rest in peace, O sparrow! And accept this cold offering From the fourth company Of the fifth battalion.

The gorrion was buried, and Havana left once more without other thought than that which had occupied Spaniards and Cubans for the several months previous. It is said that in former days ships which approached the tropic of Cancer, knew when they were nearing the shores of Cuba by the sweet odor of flowers and honey borne to them on the breeze; now, alas! the beautiful island is recognized from afar rather by the light of her burning plantations--by the smell of gunpowder and of blood! To all who have lived in Havana and who have friends among both parties; to all who know and appreciate the proud sense of honor and unshrinking courage of the one, and the quick intelligence and high aspirations of the other, the present struggle must and does give the deepest pain.

But while they sympathize sincerely with those who sorrow, they believe that "behind a frowning providence God hides a smiling face," and that, the strife ended, Cuba will rise again from her ashes, purified and regenerated; for it is written that "they who sow in tears shall reap in joy"!

THORNS.

HOMAGE TO THE CROSS, GOOD-FRIDAY, 1870.

Here his head rested, Crimsoned with blood; Jesus' hard slumber-place, Pillow of wood!

Here his eye clouded; Dwell there, my gaze, Where the dear light of love Dyingly plays!

Here the nails rankled; There the lance tore, While strove the water-tide Vainly with gore!

Here the heart agonized, Hid from the glance; Pierced with ingratitude Worse than the lance!

Here his soul parted-- Break not, my heart! Oh! what a deadly hurt, Sinning, thou art.

Here the feet turn to thee; Press them, my lips! While a love-agony Through my heart creeps!

RICHARD STORRS WILLIS.

MARY STUART.

It is at once a remarkable fact and a striking exemplification of the vitality of poetic justice in history that, from among modern Scotch Puritans, from the spiritual descendants of John Knox, should have come three of the noblest and most effective modern vindications of Mary Stuart.

We refer to the work by Mr. Hosack noticed in our last number, to that which we make the subject of the present article,[37] and to the poem of Bothwell,[38] one of the finest in the entire range of English literature. Professor Aytoun's poem is accompanied by a body of historical notes, which are in themselves a model of legal argument and dialectic power, covering the entire period of the history of Mary Stuart in Scotland. And yet these three writers are very far from being looked upon by their countrymen as the holders of singular opinions. It may be news to many persons, but it is, nevertheless, the fact that they merely reflect the prevailing feeling in Scotland concerning its unfortunate queen of three centuries agone, murdered in an English prison. The sentiment of the great body of the Scotch people, gentle and simple, Puritan and Catholic, is to this day decidedly in her favor, and the superficial reader who, trusting to a superficial Froude, sneers at Mary Stuart, is safer from reproof in New York than in Edinburgh.

Mr. Caird's work, of which the second edition was published last year, appears to be made up of the material of a series of lectures delivered by him in some of the Scotch cities, and, like Mr. Hosack's work, is marked with evidences of great research, ability, and a thorough knowledge of the country, the people, and the times under discussion.

Like Mr. Hosack, Mr. Caird convicts the late English historian, Froude, of numerous disgraceful blunders, and several--well we can find no term properly to describe the performance but--palpable falsehoods. Mr. Caird does not undertake to write a full and connected history of Mary Stuart or of her reign in Scotland. He seeks mainly to unravel the mystery of the intrigues, plots, and conspirations by which that unfortunate queen was surrounded and pursued from the moment she set foot in her kingdom. And he does it successfully. In all history, there is no record of a band of greater villains than the nobles who surrounded Mary's throne, or of more devilish abettors than their English allies. The time is not far off when, in spite of falsified history, Mary Stuart must be held innocent of the crimes of which her very accusers themselves were alone guilty. Mr. Caird enters gracefully on his subject. Three centuries ago, a French fleet sailed up the Frith of Clyde, and cast anchor at Dumbarton. It took on board a little girl, six years of age--a merry creature who had not a care in the world--hoisted the flag of Scotland, and bore her away to the coast of France. There passed with her in the same ship a stripling of seventeen, her illegitimate brother, (afterward known as the Earl of Murray,) who, though incapable of inheritance, was brought up in the most intimate family intercourse with her; young enough to engage the sisterly affection of her warm heart, old enough to be already her trusted counsellor and guide. His life was to be a continued betrayal of her confidence. But whatever wild thoughts may have passed through his busy brain, neither of them could have dreamed in those early days of the frightful tragedies in which they were to become the chief actors. In the yet distant future he was to usurp her place and power, she to become his miserable prisoner; and it was all to end at last in his being shot down, without law, at the summit of his greatness, and in her being doomed to die, under the forms of law, on an English scaffold. Yet, though their hearts were light on this summer voyage, it was not without its dangers.

Twelve years later, a fleet sailed from sunny France, again bearing the same girl, now budding toward womanhood. It steered for the Frith of Forth. There is no laughter now. Her first great sorrow has come upon her early. She is deeply clothed in mourning--a widow at eighteen. Again an English fleet watched to intercept her. Again she escaped narrowly, losing one of her vessels. She has been queen of France. One blow has deprived her of a husband and a crown. She claims to be queen of England. That claim rests on strong grounds of law. It is to be the dream of her life, and she is never to realize it. She is the acknowledged queen of Scotland; but she lands on her native shore with sad forebodings and a heavy heart. No one has ever charged her with having misconducted herself before that time; yet such was the distracted state of her country, such the weakness of her authority, that she said before she set out on this voyage, "Perhaps it were better for me to die than to live."

Less than six busy years of troubled government and we see her again--on the Frith of Solway. She has been despoiled of her Scottish crown. She is flying for her life in a fishing-boat. "For ninety miles," she writes, "I rode across the country without lighting or drawing bridle; slept on the bare floor; no food but oatmeal; without the company of a female; not daring to travel except by stealth at night." And now the die is cast, and, in spite of many warnings, she this time throws herself on the generosity of England.

Then follow nineteen years of bitter captivity:

"Now blooms the lily by the bank, The primrose on the brae; The hawthorn's budding in the glen, And milk-white is the slae; The meanest hind in fair Scotland May rove their sweets amang; But I, the Queen o' a' Scotland, Maun lie in prison strang."

At last we see a long hall in the old castle of Fotheringay; a platform laid with black--the actors and spectators all clothed in black. There comes in, unsupported, to die, a lady of noble presence. She has been wickedly denied the aid of her spiritual comforter, and, alone with God, has administered to herself the last sacrament of her religion, without the blessing or counsel of a minister. Even her latest moments are disturbed by theological dispute. But she is calm, and resigned to God's will. She lays her head on the block. The executioner strikes and makes a ghastly wound. She does not even stir. He strikes again, but his work is incomplete; and with a third blow the life and sorrows of Mary Stuart are brought to an end.

It is one of the great problems of history, says Mr. Caird, whether these terrible calamities were brought upon her by her own wickedness or by the contrivance of others.

We have reason to believe that the child is now living who, as man or woman, will hear and see the last mention in history of _Good Queen Bess_.

Of all the humbugs of history, the reputation manufactured for Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, is at once the most insolent and the most disgusting. We do not care to give a personal opinion of this woman, and will accept, for the present, her character as mildly described by the historian Robertson, which is to the effect that she was an habitual and mean liar, a peevish, bad-tempered, vacillating, untrustworthy sovereign, whose parsimony, and variableness, and small economy would have ruined herself and her kingdom but for the fact that she had a great statesman by her, and that good luck continually picked her out of the imbroglios into which she had fallen. She was a vain, bad-tempered, irresolute, deceitful old woman. And this is as lenient a view of Elizabeth as could be taken of her with the historic lights possessed by Robertson.

But, compared with what we now know her to have been from the results of modern discoveries among official and state paper records, Robertson has here painted an angel of loveliness.

And just in proportion as Elizabeth has fallen on the historic page, Mary Stuart is elevated by every fresh discovery of original documentary evidence. She was, indeed, as Mr. Caird writes, a winning, gentle-hearted woman, and the correspondence of her own time, before men's hearts were hardened against her by passion, bears much testimony to her virtues.

Throckmorton, the English ambassador in France, even during her war with England, wrote of "her great wisdom for her years, her modesty, her judgment in the wise handling of herself and her matters." And another of the English ambassadors, who became one of her deadliest enemies, says of her only a few months before her grievous calamities were brought upon her, "There is one cheer and one countenance always on the queen." Even after she was imprisoned in Lochleven, Throckmorton wrote of her to Elizabeth, "The lords speak of the queen with respect and reverence." Lord Scrope said, "She has an eloquent tongue and a discreet head, stout courage, and a liberal heart." And Sir Francis Knollys reported of her, "She desireth much to hear of hardiness and valiancy, commending by name all approved hardy men of her country, although her enemies, and she concealeth no cowardness, even in her friends." Lethington wrote of her soon after her return to Scotland, "She doth declare a wisdom far exceeding her age."

After she was uncrowned, Murray and his council recorded of her, that "God had endowed her with many good and excellent gifts and virtues;" and he spoke of her in the same way in private.

The Earl of Shrewsbury, after having had the custody of the Queen of Scots during fifteen years of her imprisonment in England, was consulted by Elizabeth on the subject of a treaty for her liberation. She desired especially to know from him for her guidance, whether Mary's promises could be relied on if she were free. Shrewsbury's answer was, "I believe that if the Queen of Scots promises any thing, she will not break her word."

Her frequent and earnest pleadings with foreign powers for justice and mercy to her subjects cannot be read without interest and admiration. Her letters have been gathered from every corner of the earth, and every page of them marks the elegance and simplicity of her thoughts. If any man who has a prejudice against her will sit down and read that correspondence, in which she treats of all the incidents of life, he will rise from the perusal with a different notion, not of her mind only, but her heart. These are the records which we can read now, exactly as they dropped from her pen, untainted by the bitterness of party, as so little else which concerns her was permitted to be. And we can see her there as she disclosed herself to her most confidential friends, whether in the highest business of state or in the trivial affairs of daily life.

Mr. Caird's plan does not embrace a connected narrative of Mary's reign, and we regret that he has found it necessary to omit a narrative of the treacherous manner in which the destruction of the Earl of Huntly was brought about. On Mary's arrival in Scotland, every one was surprised that Mary should select for her chief state councillor her half-brother, the Lord James, instead of the Earl of Huntly. No one knew that Mary had been craftily persuaded by James that Huntly was not loyal. The plan of her brother was as wicked as it was deep. It was at once to deprive Mary of a loyal adviser and a powerful friend, and to raise his own fortunes on Huntly's ruin. It is curious to see how all this affair is ingeniously misrepresented by Mr. Froude in his so-called history. Yielding to James's solicitations, begun years before, Mary, after creating him Earl of Mar, created him Earl of Murray. But this latter title he did not wish to assert until he could obtain the lands appertaining to the title, which he had procured while living in ostensible friendship with the man he had doomed to ruin. The lands were in Huntly's possession, and Murray made up his mind to have them. "But Huntly," says Mr. Froude, "had refused to part with them." Who was Huntly? He was earl chancellor of the kingdom, a man aged fifty-two, a powerful Catholic nobleman, who could bring twenty thousand spears into the field. He had done good service for Mary's mother against the English. English gold had not stained his palm. He was a man marked for saying that he liked not the "manner of Henry VIII.'s wooing." He had wanted Mary to land at Aberdeen, was at the head of the loyal party on Mary's arrival, and had sought to warn her of her brother's craft and ambition. Mr. Froude thus describes him, (vol. vii. p. 454:)

"Of all the reactionary noblemen in Scotland the most powerful and dangerous[39] was notoriously the Earl of Huntly. It was Huntly who had proposed the landing at Aberdeen. In his own house the chief of the house of Gordon had never so much as affected to comply with the change of religion," etc.

What depravity! Would not change his religion, nor even have the decency _to affect to comply_! Positively an atrocious character! Nevertheless, so perfect is the command of a philosophical historian over his feelings that these dreadful facts are recorded without comment. It is evident that the lands of such a wretch as Huntly ought to be given to one so "God-fearing" as Murray. "A number of causes combined at this moment to draw attention to Huntly." But, all counted, the number is just two--one of them utterly frivolous, and the other, "he had refused to give up the lands." Mr. Froude is now candid, and tells us that Murray "resolved to anticipate attack, (none was dreamed of,) to carry the queen with him to visit the recusant lord in his own stronghold, and either to drive him into a premature rebellion or force him to submit to the existing government."

"Murray's reasons for such a step," continues Mr. Froude, "are intelligible." Perfectly. "It is less easy," he continues, "to understand why Mary Stuart consented to it." And then Mr. Froude proceeds to wonder over it with John Knox's guesses, and his own "if," "perhaps," and "may be." Less easy indeed! It is utterly impossible, unless one consents to look at Mary Stuart as she was--a young woman easily influenced through her affections, and with a sincere sisterly attachment for the man in whom she failed to recognize her worst enemy. Difficult indeed to understand the suicidal measure of ruining the most powerful Catholic nobleman in Scotland, and strengthening the hands of the most powerful Protestant leader. "Huntly's family," says Mr. Froude, "affirmed that the trouble which happened to the Gordons was for the sincere and loyal affection which they had to the queen's preservation," (vii. 456.) And they were right. We leave Mr. Froude to speculate on the malicious motive Mary Stuart must have had for thus lopping off her right hand. Murray now manages to draw the queen and her attendants over moor and mountain two hundred and fifty miles to Tarnway, within the lands of the earldom of Murray. She was entirely guided by him, and he used her authority to compass his personal ends and weaken her throne.

Alexander Gordon at first refused to open the gates of Inverness Castle to the queen, but complied the next day, on the order of Huntly. Murray had Gordon immediately hung, and his head set on the castle wall. Mr. Froude describes this brutal murder as "strangling a wolf-cub in the heart of the den," (vol. vii. p. 457,) all that Murray does being of course lovely. Mary was now surrounded by Murray and his friends, who poisoned her mind against the Huntlys with stories that the earl meant to force her into a marriage with his son, and had other designs against her person and royal authority; and Mary believed them. "Whereupon," writes Randolph to Cecil--for Murray had brought his English friend, Elizabeth's servant, along with him--"whereupon there was good pastime." Huntly yielded all that was demanded of him. His castles and houses were seized, plundered, stripped, and he was a ruined man. Lady Huntly spoke sad truth when, leading Murray's messenger into the chapel of the house, she said to him before the altar, "Good friend, you see here the envy that is borne unto my husband; would he have forsaken God and his religion, as those that are now about the queen, my husband would never have been put as he now is," (vol. vii. p. 458.) Mr. Froude reports this incident, and very properly spoils its effect by the statement that Lady Huntly was "reported by the Protestants to be a witch." Huntly was driven to take up arms. "Swift as lightning," says Mr. Froude, with yellow-cover tinge of phrase, "Murray was on his track." And now "swift as lightning"--sure sign of mischief meant--Mr. Froude moves on with his narrative, omitting essential facts, but not omitting a characteristic piece of handiwork. News came from the south that Bothwell had escaped out of Edinburgh Castle; "not," glides in our philosophic historian--"not, it was supposed, without the queen's knowledge," (vol. vii. p. 459.) After a wonderful victory of his two thousand men over Huntly's five hundred--a mere slaughter--Murray brought the queen certain letters of the Earl of Sutherland, found, he said, in the pockets of the dead Earl of Huntly, and showing treasonable correspondence. They were forgeries; but they answered his purpose. "Lord John, (Huntly's son,) after a full confession, was beheaded in the market-place at Aberdeen," (vol. vii. p. 459.) There was no confession but that which _Murray told the queen_ he made, and Mr. Froude forgets to tell us that Murray caused young Gordon's scaffold to be erected in front of the queen's lodging, and had her placed in a chair of state at an open window, deluding her with some specious reason as to the necessity of her presence.

When the noble young man was brought out to die, Mary burst into a flood of tears; and when the headsman did his work, she swooned and was borne off insensible. Here is Mr. Froude's short version of these facts: "Her brother read her a cruel lesson by compelling her to be present at the execution." Mr. Froude also forgets to tell us that Murray had six gentlemen of the house of Gordon hung at Aberdeen on the same day. But a few pages further on, he has the insolent coolness to tell us of a prize that Mary "trusted to have purchased with Huntly's blood"! (vol. vii. p. 463.) After all, you thus perceive that it was not Murray, but Mary, who wrought all this ruin.

THE RICCIO MURDER.

Mr. Caird presents with great force the result of modern discoveries in the State Paper Office touching the details of the Riccio conspiracy, and shows conclusively that Murray was its real head, and also the chief organ of communication between the conspirators and the English government. The previous knowledge of the intent to murder Riccio, and the probable danger to Mary's life, is brought home to Elizabeth. She could not have been accounted guiltless, even if she had remained passive, merely concealing from her royal sister the bloody tragedy which was being prepared for her with the knowledge of her agent in Scotland. This agent (Randolph) she supported vehemently, protected the assassins, negotiated and trafficked until she got them restored, supplied Murray with large sums of money immediately before and immediately after Riccio's death, and took the first opportunity to gratify her vindictiveness against Darnley by open insult.

In the conspiracy for the murder of Riccio, no one was more deeply implicated than Darnley. He had allowed himself to be flattered and tempted by Murray, Maitland, and the rest with the prospect of a royal crown. But while these crafty men used him in this way for their own ends, they had not the slightest idea of allowing him to be more than a puppet in their hands. The knowledge of Darnley's complicity in the murder had wrung Mary's heart; but after the first burst of grief, she saw clearly that he was the dupe and tool of others. Her respect for him could not be otherwise than shaken; but her affection preserved him from the punishment which he richly merited. And for his sake she spared his father (Lenox) also, whom she justly blamed most; but she never permitted _him_ to enter her presence again. Considering that she had released him from the consequences of treason only twelve months before, and that he had now repeated the offence under such aggravated circumstances, and had beguiled his son into the same evil course, bringing misery upon her household, her forbearance can be attributed only to surviving tenderness for her husband.

Mr. Caird places in a very clear light the development of the contempt and hatred of the conspirators for Darnley, which gradually hardened and intensified into the conspiracy to murder him; and as we watch its growth, it is sad to witness the suffering, sacrifices, and self-denial of a noble-hearted woman all wasted in vain, and upon a most unworthy object. And yet more sad is it when we see, in such falsifiers of history as Mr. Froude, the very clearest and highest proofs of womanly goodness and wifely devotion wrenched and perverted into evidence of crime and murder.

In connection with this subject, Mr. Caird draws attention to the record of the Scotch Privy Council--an account the more valuable because the very men composing the council attempted at a later period to cast discredit on the queen. Here is their testimony: "So far as things could come to their knowledge, the king (Darnley) had no ground of complaints; but, on the contrary, that he had reason to look upon himself as one of the most fortunate princes in Christendom, could he but know his own happiness." And they added, "That although they who did perpetrate the murder of her faithful servant had entered her chamber with his knowledge, having followed him close at the back, and had named him the chief of their enterprise, yet would she never accuse him thereof, but did always excuse him, and willed to appear as if she believed it not; and so far was she from ministering to him occasion of discontent, that, on the contrary, he had all the reason in the world to thank God for giving him so wise and virtuous a person as she had showed herself in all her actions."

There are few points in the history of this period on which writers are so thoroughly agreed as the utter worthlessness and incapacity of Darnley, and there are also few cases which so completely as that of Darnley exemplify the too common weakness of the superior woman for the inferior man who possesses her affection. Trafficking on her affection, and seeking to wring from her a consent to his demands, he came very tardily to what was by all supposed to be her dying-bed at Jedburg. His bearing shocked all beholders. It was at this time Mary made her will, the inventory attached to which is a modern discovery. She left Darnley twenty-five jewels of great value, and opposite one cherished ring wrote with her own hand, "It is the ring with which I was betrothed. I leave it to the king who gave it to me." And yet Mr. James Anthony Froude informs us that Mary was then planning this husband's murder!

The most admirable chapters of Mr. Caird's work are those which treat of

THE MURDER OF DARNLEY.

The author shows conclusively, from an array of original testimony which cannot be disputed, the precise nature, extent, and composition of the conspiracy to effect this assassination, and presents the whole question in an entirely new light.

As revealed by Mr. Caird, the conspiracy, by the time the moment was reached for execution, had trebled itself. That is to say, there were in the field on the eventful night of the murder, three separate and independent bands of assassins, one of which most certainly acted independently of the other two. Bothwell and his party, thrust forward to do the work by associates quite as guilty as he, but possessed of more brains, were, materially, innocent of Darnley's killing, although fully guilty in intent. They blew up the house at Kirk o' Field, supposing that Darnley went with it. There can now be but little doubt that when the explosion took place Darnley was already a dead man, smothered or _burked_ by a special band.

For some hours after the explosion, no trace of Darnley's body could be found; but as morning dawned, it was discovered in a garden eighty yards from the house. The attendant who slept in the room with him was lying dead at a short distance further away. Each had on a night-shirt. There was not a fracture, contusion, or livid mark, nor any trace of fire on their bodies, and the king's clothes were lying folded beside him. A fur pelisse, open as if dropped, was lying near him. Now, if we are to suppose that Darnley was blown up in the air, we must believe it possible that a human body could be thrown a distance of eighty yards without any marks of violence; that another body was thrown the same distance with the same results; and--stranger than all--that Darnley's fur pelisse and slippers were also blown uninjured to his side by the explosion, while five other inmates of the house were buried in the ruins.

ELIZABETH'S GUILTY KNOWLEDGE.

One fact of equal importance and interest is well established by modern investigation. It is the guilty knowledge, and actual or implied association of Queen Elizabeth of England in all the secret plots set on foot by the nobility of Scotland against Mary and her interests.

She was fully advised of the murder of Riccio three weeks before it took place, and Mr. Caird establishes, we think, conclusively, that she was quite as well advised concerning the Darnley murder.

Fourteen years after the occurrence, one of the first acts of King James, on his freedom from tutelage, was to commit the Earl of Morton to the Castle of Edinburgh, charged with the murder of Darnley.

Morton was one of the very few surviving conspirators. Bothwell was dead in exile; Maitland had poisoned himself, and Murray had been shot down in the streets of Linlithgow.

As soon as Queen Elizabeth heard of Morton's arrest, she made the most frantic efforts to prevent his trial. She endeavored to stir up insurrection in Scotland; she threatened war; she moved an army to the frontier; she sent back to Scotland as her ambassador, Randolph, so thoroughly familiar with all its murderous plots. Leicester, her lover, wrote to Randolph with a suggestion scantily veiled that the young king might follow his father--"He will not long tarry in that soil. Let the fate of his predecessor be his warning." And close on the heels of that, came official notice that Elizabeth would assist and maintain the Scots in protection of Morton. But James owed a debt to the memory of his murdered father, to the name of his captive mother, who was then pining in her English prison, and, in spite of Elizabeth's threats and violence, Morton was brought to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death. Mr. Caird cites and refers to a mass of dispatches connected with Elizabeth's movements in this Morton matter which we have never seen elsewhere alluded to, and adds Queen Elizabeth's violence before Morton's trial and execution was not more remarkable than her sudden attitude of acquiescence as soon as his mouth was shut. "Did he hold some terrible secret whose disclosure she feared?"

The murder of Darnley occurred on the 10th of February, 1567. A full fortnight before, Mary's ambassador in Paris wrote to her that he had received a hint from the Spanish ambassador that the queen should take heed to herself, for there was a plot on foot to her injury. The letter reached Mary twelve hours too late to be of any service as a warning. But even if she had received it, to whom could she have turned for aid or information? All the lords were in the plot, and she was surrounded by conspirators. The question is asked, Why did she not bring to justice the murderers of Darnley? Her situation was such that it was simply impossible for her to get at the knowledge of any fact dangerous to the conspirators. Denunciatory placards were issued in Edinburgh. But if shown, she would there find herself charged with being an accomplice with Bothwell and others in the murder. Knowing this to be an outrageous slander on herself, she would naturally conclude that it was equally so on them. And if herself innocent, Bothwell was the very last of her lords whom she could suspect of having cause of quarrel with the king. He was almost the only man who had supported Darnley, and it is certain he was not of those to whom Darnley had demonstrated antipathy. The wild scheme of ambition which Bothwell afterward pursued had probably not clearly developed itself even in his own mind till after Darnley's death. Dreams he may have had. But the scheme which he finally executed seems to have been the growth of opportunity.

After the murder, Mary shut herself up in a dark chamber, and kept it until her physicians compelled her to go to Seaton. A month after the murder, when Killigrew, the English ambassador, saw her, she was still in a dark chamber, and seemed in profound grief. Two such tragedies as had befallen her within a twelve-month were more than enough to shatter the nerves of any woman.

And now came a fresh warning from Paris that some new plot was in progress. The Spanish ambassador, by whom the warning of the Darnley murder had been given, said,

"Apprise her majesty that I am informed, by the same means as I was before, that there is still some notable enterprise in hand against her, whereof I wish her to beware in time."

No explanation was given, and the poor queen was of course bewildered. She had heart and nerve enough for her own risk; but she at once took precautions for the safety of her child, the heir to the crown. She at once placed him in charge of the Earl of Mar, and lodged him in the strong castle of Stirling. And this fact is more than answer to the assertion that Mary was at this time under the influence of Bothwell. If any such influence had existed, he would not have permitted the disposition that was made of the child. His first effort on coming to power was to get the young prince into his hands. The Earl of Mar justified Mary's confidence, and withstood the efforts not only of Bothwell, but of Murray, to get possession of the child.

Then came the distribution of the crown lands among the conspirators by the ratification of parliament.

This matter was at once the main cause of Darnley's murder and the bond of union among the murderers. On the evening of the adjournment of parliament, its members were entertained at a supper by Bothwell. After the feast, a bond was produced by Sir James Balfour, by which they bound themselves to sustain Bothwell's acquittal, recommended him as the fittest husband for the queen, and engaged to support him with their whole power, and to hold as enemies any who should presume to hinder the marriage. They all signed but one, the Earl of Eglinton. It was at this time that Bothwell began to manifest his intentions to Mary, and a letter of hers relates that he tried "if he might by humble suit purchase our good-will, but found our answer nothing correspondent to his desire." Mary then went to Stirling to visit her child. She probably wished, says Mr. Caird, by leaving Edinburgh at this juncture, to indicate to Bothwell that her rejection of his approaches was decisive; and he acted as if he thought so. His next step was that of a _desperate man_.

BOTHWELL CARRIES OFF THE QUEEN.

On her return from Stirling, three days later, he suddenly met her on the road with a large armed force, seized her, made her escort prisoners, and carried her off to his castle at Dunbar. He kept her there for eleven or twelve days. When she resisted his insolence, he produced the bond granted to him by the nobility, and she there found the signatures of every man from whom she could have expected help. Not one moved a finger in her defence. Huntly and Lethington, who were there with Bothwell, would not fail to remind her of the calamities which she had brought upon herself by opposing the policy of her nobles in her former marriage. Day after day she held out, but no help came. Sir James Melville, who had been taken prisoner with her, records that such violence was at last used that she no longer had a choice. Bothwell, in his dying confession, said that he accomplished his purpose "by the use of sweet waters." Morton's proclamations charged him with using violence to the queen, "and other more unleisum means." It seems not unlikely, therefore, that he employed some sweetened potion. Mary herself says that "in the end, when she saw no hope to be ridd of him, never man in Scotland ance making a mint for her deliverance, she was driven to the conclusion, from their hand-writes and silence, that he had won them all." He partly extorted and partly obtained her consent to marriage. Bothwell then conveyed the heart-broken queen, surrounded by a great force, to the Castle of Edinburgh. He next carried her before the judges, after lining the streets and crowding the courts and passages with his armed retainers. She there submitted to make a declaration that she "forgave him of all hatred conceived by her for taking and imprisoning her;" and also that she was now at liberty. The necessity for such a declaration implies previous coercion. Mr. Caird explains that, under the then existing law, Bothwell had committed an offence punishable with death if he had not obtained this declaration. A marriage was formally solemnized, and so little was her will consulted that it was in the Protestant form. Fettered by their bond, the nobles all looked on and lent no aid. One honest man there was, though, the Protestant minister Craig, who boldly told Bothwell that he objected to the marriage because he (Bothwell) had forced the queen. Called upon to proclaim the banns, Craig denounced it from the pulpit, and afterward publicly testified in the next general assembly that he was alone in opposing the marriage, and that "the best part of the realm did approve it, either by flattery or by their silence."

The SILVER CASKET LETTERS are treated by Mr. Caird as they must be by every fair-minded man. He says, "These letters, in truth, were as gross and clumsy fabrications as ever were put forward." His thorough analysis of the longest letter--a love-letter of fourteen quarto pages of print--is the most successful we have seen.

Mr. Caird closes his work with two scenes so effectively portrayed that our readers will thank us for transcribing them:

"After much earthly glory, and a long reign, the time came at last when the great Queen Elizabeth must die. Wealth, grandeur, power which none might question--all were hers. But a cold hand was on her heart. The shadow of death was creeping over her--slow, very slow, but deepening every hour. There was not one left who loved her, or whom she could love. Her most trusted servants trembled at her passions, and longed for a change. Hume tells us she rejected all consolation. She refused food. She threw herself on the floor. She remained sullen and immovable, feeding her thoughts on her afflictions, and declaring her existence an insufferable burden. Few words she uttered, and they were all expressive of some inward grief which she did not reveal; but sighs and groans were the chief vent of her despondency, which discovered her sorrows without assuaging them.

"Oh! the long and unutterable agony of such a time. What is there on earth that could bribe one to bear it willingly? How bitterly she must have realized the words addressed to her by Mary Stuart on the eve of her execution:

"'Think me not presumptuous, madam, that now, bidding farewell to this world, and preparing for a better, I remind you that you also must die and account to God for your stewardship as well as those who have been sent before you. Your sister and cousin, prisoner of wrong,'

MARIE R.

"Ten days and nights Queen Elizabeth lay thus upon the carpet; then her voice left her, her senses failed, and so she died."

Mary Stuart had gone long before, destroyed and done to death by this woman; sent to the scaffold in a land where she had been wrongfully kept a prisoner, to whose law she owed no allegiance, and by virtue of a law which was passed to compass her death. On her way to execution, she was met by her old servant, Andrew Melville. He threw himself on his knees before her, wringing his hands in uncontrollable agony.

"Woe is me," he cried, "that it should be my hard hap to carry back such tidings to Scotland!"

"Weep not, Melville, my good and faithful servant," she replied; "thou shouldst rather rejoice to see the end of the long troubles of Mary Stuart. This world is vanity, and full of sorrows. I am Catholic, thou Protestant; but as there is but one Christ, I charge thee in his name to bear witness that I die firm in my religion. Commend me to my dearest son. May God forgive them that have thirsted for my blood."

She then passed to the scaffold. She surveyed it, the block, the axe, the executioners, and spectators undauntedly as she advanced. She prayed to God to pardon her sins and forgive her enemies.

The two executioners knelt and prayed her forgiveness.

"I forgive you and all the world with all my heart; for I hope this death will give an end to all my troubles." She then knelt down and commended her spirit into God's hands, and the executioners did their work.

The sad tale is told. All the actors have been nearly three centuries in their graves; but their story shall stir the hearts of men till the world's end.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] _Mary Stuart. Her Guilt or Innocence. An Inquiry into the Secret History of her Times._ By Alexander McNeel Caird. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black. 1869.

[38] _Bothwell: A Poem in Six Parts._ By W. Edmonstoune Aytoun, D.C.L. Author of _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, _Bon Gaultier's Ballads_, etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

[39] Mr. Froude, by "reactionary," means that he was not a disciple of John Knox; by "dangerous," that he was a man who would defend his religion.

A BRIDEMAID'S STORY.

A bridemaid! I had become a necessity. A sense of such importance was novel to me. It was a pleasant awakening to a consciousness that I had attained womanhood. To have been a bride would not have filled me with such unmingled joy; for then I might have been thinking over the possibilities of the future. Now I had only to play my part in the bright and bewildering present.

That there had been bridemaids before my time, of the loftiest and of the lowliest degree, from the jewelled princess to the humble dairy-maid, rendered my position none the less novel and refreshing. Then, too, the circumstances of the case were not to be lightly passed over--I had been chosen from among so many whose claims to consideration were far above mine.

An imaginative child always seeks and finds some object in which to concentrate its thoughts and its loves; something real to serve as an embodiment of its ideal fancies. Hence, all the wealth of my fervent nature had centred on Marian Howard.

From earliest childhood I had watched and wondered at her rare and high-born beauty. Every feature in her face seemed to have a distinct and separate fascination, while every adornment of dress that could enhance her varied charms was brought into requisition. To look upon her was a feast of pleasure to my eyes.

The quiet dignity of her manner kept a distance between us, so that she was a sort of far-off idol, after all. In her company we never gave way to our outgushing school-girl nature. I sometimes thought she would be happier if she were only more like us, or if we should welcome her with a girl's free and fervent greeting. But who dared try the experiment?

As we grew older, our paths in life diverged. Soon after leaving school, Marian went to live and to love in a foreign land, while I returned to the quiet pleasures of a rural home.

Four years passed, and then the fine old house which had so long remained silent again showed signs of life. They had returned--the widowed aunt and her beautiful niece.

The preparations for the wedding were immediately commenced, and Marian repaid my early devotion by offering me the highest mark of her confidence and regard.

The old tenderness came rushing back when I again beheld her more stately and more beautiful than ever. She told me it would be a quiet wedding--only a few friends, and I her only bridemaid. My arrangements were soon completed, and I awaited anxiously the appointed time. Soon it was the day before the marriage. I went over to assist in the final preparations, and was to spend the night with Marian. The morrow would witness, in the case of my friend, the great event of a woman's life--to be given away in marriage. I say of a woman's life, because marriage can hardly have the same significance for men; they are not given away.

The distinguished stranger who was so soon to call Marian his wife was certainly unlike any of the men I had ever known; but I had known so few, and my knowledge of the world was so limited, that I did not feel competent to pass judgment on him. Then there were such method, such calmness and system about the man, about the unbending aunt, about Marian, and about the whole house, that I felt cold with a chilling sense of not being able to get warm again, though it was a lovely summer afternoon. More of nature and less of art, I thought, might have warmed the approaching festivities.

The evening shadows were falling. We had just finished arranging and rearranging the costly bridal gifts, when Marian was summoned to attend her aunt.

Among the other presents was that grand conception, Gustave Doré's _Wandering Jew_. This work of human genius seemed a strange companion for the rare articles of luxury that surrounded it.

I took up the book and went out upon the balcony. The softly-fading twilight, the subdued spirit of the house, the reflective turn my own mind had taken, prepared me for impressions of the awful and sublime.

It is said that "real genius always rises, and in rising it finds God." Surely the force and truth of this thought were here exemplified; for who could look upon these scenes, so truthful and intense, without a feeling of awe and reverence?

I was thus occupied, I know not how long, when suddenly Mr. Gaston recalled me to myself. "How absorbed you are, Miss Heartly! I have been watching you with much interest. Pray, has the book any bearing upon the coming events of to-morrow? Court beauties, I suppose," he continued carelessly, as he came toward me.

"Why!" said I, "you have returned early, Mr. Gaston. You cannot have taken that delightful drive Marian proposed to you?"

"No," he answered; "I have no inclination for solitude; but you ladies are so occupied with these time-killing nothings, these endless little arrangements so indispensable to your happiness, that we lonely mortals are entirely ignored and forgotten."

"I think, sir, that calamity seldom befalls you," I replied, thus adding, perhaps, to vanity already sufficiently great.

"But the book?" he continued, opening it listlessly. "Oh! the old fable in a new dress. It is strange how women cling to the marvellous and impossible. They seem to have but two absorbing ideas--love and religion. Extremes in either usually lead to the same pernicious result. I suppose an idol is a necessity to them, and it matters little in which they find it."

"I do not understand you," I replied. "Are you in jest, or are you seriously denouncing revealed religion?"

"Revealed religion!" he repeated. "Is it possible that, at this stage of the world's advancement, _you_ still cling to that antiquated idea of Christianity?"

The modern methods of fashioning a god to suit the impious desires of vain and conceited mortals was then unknown to me. I looked at the man with wonder and distrust. He read my confusion and hastened to explain himself.

"Religion," he said, "as you accept it, makes us cowards instead of men. My reason is _my_ religion; I acknowledge no other guide."

"Ah! then," I exclaimed, "how often must you stumble by the way." I turned to the most effective picture in the book. "Here is an instance of the vanity of human pride. Here we can see the end of man's boasted strength--the anguish of a lost soul hopelessly looking for repose and peace."

"An imposing fable," he replied, "wanting only a woman's faith to give it substance and reality."

I was rising to put an end to this unprofitable and distasteful conversation, when Marian joined us. My disturbed manner plainly annoyed her, and she evidently suspected its cause; for she addressed Mr. Gaston in German quite earnestly. Soon turning to me he said, "Pray, excuse me, Miss Heartly; I was not aware that you were a Catholic. I know your people feel most keenly what they profess. Of course you have already stamped me a condemned heretic."

"It is not for me to pass judgment on you," I replied; "and if I did, my opinion could be of very little value."

"Come, come!" said Marian, "this is a most unapt and gloomy subject for my marriage eve; and the sun, too, has gone down sullenly. I hope there is nothing prophetic in all this."

"What! growing serious now?" I said, as I drew her arm within mine, and we went to look for the fiftieth time at the final arrangements for the morrow's festivities.

I could not, however, throw off the feeling of uneasiness that my interview with Mr. Gaston had left. He had a way of cheapening one, so that, without knowing why, you fell immeasurably in your own estimation. This is never a comfortable condition to find one's self in, and it takes a good deal of nice logic to bring one back to one's normal state.

Perhaps it was the loftiness of his style that awed me; for he had a magnificent way of carelessly throwing the world behind him and walking forth in a sort of solitary dignity. "His manners are courtly," Marian's aunt said, and certainly they possessed all the cold stiffness that characterized her particular circle; still, I felt I had no real grounds for this feeling of distrust and aversion to Mr. Gaston, and I began to think it was rather ungenerous to hold him in so unfavorable a light. I could not shake off, however, an undefined dread of the approaching marriage. The apathy and indifference which had always been peculiar to my young friend did not forsake her even now, when apparently on the very threshold of happiness. I thought that intensity of feeling perhaps kept her thus silent, for overpowering happiness has this effect sometimes. The delusion was, however, speedily dispelled.

That night a sealed chapter in Marian's life was laid open to me, and I saw her as I had never seen or thought of her before.

After locking the chamber-door, she seated herself by my side, and said, "This is the first time in my life that I have known perfect freedom; I mean a liberty to do and say what I like with a feeling of security.

"You remember the 'Greek Slave.' Well, I am not unlike that delicate girl chained in the market-place. Every inclination of my heart has been chained down and locked, and my aunt has kept the key.

"I was an uncomplaining, passionless child. In my cradle I received my first lessons in self-control. As I grew older, I learned another lesson, too unnatural for even a thoughtful child like me to understand. I was not needed here; I was considered only as a desirable ornament for this great house. I might as well have been placed upon a pinnacle and petrified at once, for all the childhood that was allowed to take root within me.

"My aunt's domestic misfortunes had embittered her, and she had no children to soften the natural austerity of her soul. My mother, who was her only sister, had, contrary to my aunt's wishes, married where her heart inclined. This was never forgiven or forgotten until she lay dead, and I was a wailing infant at her side.

"My father soon afterward perished at sea, and my aunt took me to her home.

"She was not designedly cruel; but she knew nothing of a child's requirements. The freezing system seemed to her the most effectual method of crushing out a young, impulsive nature. There was danger I might become rebellious, and hence she required the utmost meekness and submission.

"As soon as I came to understand the power of beauty, I saw that it was to mine I owed food and raiment; for it fed the exhaustless vanity of my aunt, with whom display was then, and still is, the moving spring of her existence.

"I was a drawing-room child, kept for exhibition at stated intervals. The tiny jewels on my neck and arms were hateful to me. My embroidered robe was a costly thing. I had given a young life for it.

"I had a mortal fear of losing my beauty. Our gardener's daughter--a comely, cheerful-looking girl, whom I was always glad to see, for she made the morning brighter with her fresh young face--had caught that loathsome disease, the small-pox. When she recovered, the change that had come upon her so terrified me, that I was seized with a sensation as of coming danger. I shrank from the girl, as if she would be the cause of some future misery to me.

"She had a mother to whom she seemed infinitely more dear now than she had ever been. But I, a lonely waif, what would become of me if I should be transformed like her?

"It was not altogether for my own gratification that I desired to retain this beauty. It was not my own beauty. It belonged to my aunt, and was all I had to give her in return for what she gave me.

"I was not a child that saw angels in the skies, or that expected manna to come down from heaven to feed me.

"Artificial and unsatisfying as my life has always been, I have a clinging desire to remain with it.

"At times I have had a vaguely conceived notion of one day getting away from it and of being free; but the bending and breaking system has so subdued me that I might lose myself if left to the guidance of my own free-will.

"Marriage is a solemn thing. Would you like to change places with me to-night, Mary?"

I could not say yes, and I dared not say no; for I saw that she was losing courage, and beginning to hesitate about the important event so soon to transpire.

"That is a strange question, Marian dear," I replied. "To-morrow ought to be, and I hope will be, the happiest day of your life. Surely you must love this man when you have promised to be his wife?"

"Oh! yes," said she, "as well as I understand what it is to love. I sometimes tremble for fear I have not the qualities that make woman lovable and attractive. You forget how little I know of Edward Gaston.

"Our acquaintance began in a little German town, where he was stopping, for the purpose of establishing his claims to a disputed inheritance. He is an American by birth and education. He soon became a constant visitor with us. My aunt and he were on the best of terms. My own interest in him had never passed beyond the civilities of an ordinary acquaintance until he again joined us at Naples, where he lost no time in making known the state of his feelings.

"My aunt seemed to have had some previous knowledge of his preference; but its announcement was to me a complete surprise.

"She was proud of her nice discrimination in the selection of her friends, and Mr. Gaston had come into our circle labelled and indorsed a gentleman.

"Her gracious consideration, however, of his offer, in no wise obscured her caution. Satisfied as to his worldly affairs, and well assured of his position at home, there was nothing wanting but my consent, which was really the most trifling part of the arrangement. I accepted this marriage engagement as I would have accepted any other condition so mapped out for me.

"Business of a pressing nature which could be delayed no longer, called Mr. Gaston to America, and I did not see him again until our return a month ago.

"You see how little I know of him. Can you wonder that I am constrained in his presence? Of course, every thing will be different when I come to know him better.

"But I have one cause of feverish anxiety. I am not above the petty subterfuges almost incidental to a life like mine. A desire to hide mistakes committed through childish ignorance made me unscrupulous, as any member of a household who is watched and suspected must naturally be. Habit may have made these little irregularities almost a second nature, but my blood recoils from a wilful and deliberate deception. I am afraid Edward is misled with regard to my aunt's pecuniary condition.

"This life of seeming affluence, which has become as necessary to her as the air she breathes, drains heavily on her slender resources. Such portion of her time as is not spent in her handsome carriage, or in drawing-room entertainments, is passed in a most frugal and even parsimonious mode of living, and it is only by an economy painful to contemplate that she has kept things floating thus far.

"I cannot acquaint Edward with my aunt's existing embarrassments. She is my only kinswoman; and misguided as she is, I have a tender affection for her. I hope to be able to offer her a home with us, when, as soon must be the case, the last act in this miserable farce shall have been played.

"Now, perhaps, you can understand why I thus passively submit to a marriage that I would turn from if I could. I cannot openly say to Mr. Gaston, 'I have no fortune, I hope you expect none;' even to covertly approach the subject would be to impugn his motives, and I certainly have no right to suspect him of harboring mercenary ones. Still, I wish he were acquainted with the truth; for the world, you know, looks upon me as sole heiress of my rich aunt.

"I have no knowledge of what passed between Edward and my aunt at Naples, when our marriage was agreed upon; but I have a constant dread least he may have been deceived. I once mentioned to him, in conversation, that he would claim a portionless bride; but he seemed to take no notice of what I said, and I fear he still thinks my aunt's circumstances to be in reality what they seem."

"In giving way," I replied, "to such groundless fears, dear Marian, you underrate your own worth. Think how many noble and honorable men would be proud to call you wife, and in giving you a life of happiness make amends for the past." Yet as I looked in the silver starlight upon that lovely face, which had so attracted me in my childhood, I could not but regret deeply and sadly that she was not of my faith; for then she might receive wiser counsel than I could give from one of those whom Christ in his mercy has ordained to be a guide and a staff to weak and wavering souls.

The wedding breakfast was all that even Marian's fastidious aunt could have desired. The few favored guests were of the most approved type. It would seem as if a judicious instructor had given each of them a select number of words, which they used with exemplary caution, and then retired to the contemplation of their own individual greatness.

As to Marian, the despondency of the night before had quite left her, and there was a high and noble resolve in her manner that made me truly happy to behold, while it calmed, if it did not entirely dispel, my own gloomy forebodings. The serene expression of her sweet face would have drawn me nearer to her, if that were possible.

How I loved her, as she stood before me, beautiful in the purity of her white robe, and infinitely more beautiful in the chastened security of her firm and lofty purpose--to be a true and honorable wife to Edward Gaston; to meet the conditions of her new life, whatever they might be, with a woman's trust and confidence, and better still, with a woman's hope in the never-failing reward of duty faithfully performed.

I could have been positively gay through desire to sustain Marian, and to let her know, without telling her in words, how thoroughly I appreciated and how heartily I approved her noble intentions, her courage and confidence; but as measured words and actions alone were allowed, I had to restrain myself. Still, the cooling process did not diminish my ardor, and when I got Marian all to myself, in her room, I kissed her so approvingly, and was so extravagant in the expression of all that I felt, that she folded me with loving tenderness to her breast, and kept me there so long that I felt with the quick beating of her warm heart she was giving me some of her own newly-found courage.

"Whatever happens to me, Mary dear, in the extremity of any darkness that may come upon me, I shall always know that you are true to me, that you are still my friend."

The tears that fell upon her hand as she gently raised my head, were my only answer, and she accepted them in the spirit in which they were shed.

In returning to my ordinary duties, I had much to reflect upon, much that made me still uneasy for Marian and her future, where so many doubts and fears seemed hanging on the will of one human being.

Vague rumors of Mr. Gaston had reached us, that he was a man wholly without fortune, drifting on the surface of events; darker things, too, were whispered with an indirectness which gave them an uncertain coloring. In my love for Marian, and in my fear for her, I could not credit these suspicions; yet my anxiety to again see her, and discover for myself the truth or fallacy of these reports, was intense. Indeed, my state of anxious doubt was becoming intolerable when I received a letter from Marian, telling me she was already tired of travelling, and would return soon to make a last visit to her old home before leaving for her future and distant one.

It was agreed that they should spend the day after their arrival with us. I was so happy and so occupied in preparing for their reception, that I had almost forgotten my previous anxiety in my present desire to have every thing ready and in perfect order.

The pleasure I felt in the prospect of having my darling with me so soon was dreadfully toned down by the consciousness of my own inability to satisfy her aunt's critical taste. I trembled as I thought of her scrutinizing glance; but I had a never-failing source of hope in my mother. Her good-natured hospitality was of such a melting kind that I dared hope that even the rigid aunt might thaw under it, which she really did, greatly to my relief and comfort.

The dinner passed off creditably. My tranquillity was now entirely restored, and I had time to devote to Marian.

Up to this moment I had viewed her through the medium of my excited condition; now I was calmed, and, so far as the affairs of the day went, contented.

Marian's manner was restless and uneasy. My perception was keenly alive to the slightest difference between what she did and said now and to what she did and said formerly. So solicitous was I, that I think the most trifling modulation in her voice had a significance for me.

Much as I had looked forward to this reunion, much as I had desired it, now that Marian was with me, I shrank from being alone with her. I think if we had been that summer evening even in the solitude of a mountain fastness, an intuitive delicacy would have kept both of us from speaking one word upon the only subject that filled our hearts.

My mother's humanizing influence was having its effect on the stately old lady. She was captured without knowing it. Mr. Gaston had gone out for a walk; so Marian and I were left alone. I tried to talk about her new home, and repeated some things Mr. Gaston had told me before the wedding.

"Edward has changed his mind," said Marian, "and has found it necessary to make some different arrangements; so I really cannot tell much about our home. It is very far away; don't you think so, Mary?" I saw that her feelings were beginning to get the upper hand, and I did not dare trust myself to reply. I turned from her immediately on the pretext of having forgotten some household duty. She strolled out to the garden in a spiritless way.

Every thing was revolving itself in my mind, and I was beginning to reproach myself; perhaps if I had encouraged her to speak, it might have lifted the load from her heart; another opportunity might not be permitted us; and yet, bowed down as the poor girl was, it would not have raised her in my esteem had she even with me disparaged her husband. To cover him with a wife's forbearance was now one of her hard but imperative duties, and I knew she would not shrink from it. This must be a check to our confidence, a bridge over which my kindliest sympathy must never pass.

Unmistakable evidences of a storm close at hand made me run to the arbor where I had last seen Marian. She was not there. While deliberating where I should next go, I heard Mr. Gaston's impatient tread. He stopped by a clump of trees near me, and in tones of suppressed anger commenced upbraiding his defenceless wife.

"What did you mean by suggesting such a thing as that?" he began; "have you any right to dispense hospitalities, to propose or consider them in that grand style of yours?"

"In expressing the wish," replied Marian, "that my aunt would be able to spend the winter with us, I had no intention of doing any thing beyond a natural act of gratitude; and I was not aware, Edward, that your feelings had so changed toward her. I am sure she has done nothing to merit your displeasure."

"Nothing to merit my displeasure? You are a most creditable disciple! She has made you like herself, truly. Is it nothing in your eyes that she has always lived a life of nicely-arranged deception? Your accomplished aunt has conducted a forlorn hope with a woman's tact, and the victims of her trickery are expected to bow to her superior sagacity. In a burst of universal sympathy you propose to take this wreck of decayed grandeur to my house. This was a part of the plot, I suppose."

"Edward," interrupted Marian, "how dare you speak in this way of my aunt, who has shown you so many marks of sincere regard? That she has not husbanded her resources, I grant; but that misfortune rests entirely with her, she is the only sufferer. She made you no promises, gave you no reason to expect a fortune with me; this I have learned since our marriage. Have no fear of the incumbrance. Dear as she is to me, I would rather let her beg from door to door than see her a recipient of your bounty!"

"Oh! you are proud now," he replied in a voice of withering scorn. "Take care," he continued; "you have not seen the end yet. Make yourself ready to depart. I want to leave this house instantly."

"Edward," she said, "however you choose to afflict me, whatever tortures you have in store for me, do not, I beseech you, subject me just yet to the pity of those I love, of those who love me. These people are my truest friends. I would not make them sharers of my misery. Spare me a little longer."

"Your fine speeches and these people are alike objects of indifference to me. Make yourself ready; I am going."

She made a movement to obey him; but turning round again, she said, "Edward"--the voice and tone I shall never forget; it was as if all she had ever valued in life had whispered a last farewell--"Edward, as I had hoped to give you a wife's unfailing duty, to be trustful, loving, and true; so I had hoped you would give me a husband's protection, and perhaps a husband's love."

"I am not fond of scenes," he interrupted; "your requirements are of so nice and delicate a nature that I would be quite incapable of gratifying them; so I shall not trouble myself to make the attempt; and for the future, spare yourself any unnecessary display of sentiment."

I could not have left the arbor without being seen. Marian passed by slowly, not to the house, but in an opposite direction, and Mr. Gaston started for the lower end of the garden. I caught a glimpse of him as he turned an angle of the walk. A wicked look had settled on his handsome face, as if dark spirits were urging him on.

A peal of thunder, prolonged and terrible, startled me. I ran to the house. The lightning was truly awful, and peal following peal of thunder made one shudder and long for human companionship. I had lost Marian in the gloom and darkness. She was not in the house; I did not see her in the garden. I went out into the storm in search of her.

I found her standing quite alone in sad and listless silence. Can it be, I thought, that death has no terrors for one so gifted and so young? She seemed imploring that doom which the most abject and miserable would flee from if they could. I knew then, as well as I knew afterward, that she would have welcomed death that night without one single regret.

"Marian, dear," I said, approaching her, "how can you remain alone, and exposed in this manner, when every thing about you is quaking with fear?"

"I do not heed the storm," she answered; "I like it, it is so wonderful."

"Come, come, darling! Why, the rain has drenched you," I replied, putting my arm about her and leading her to the house.

The storm had set in furiously. There was no leaving the house that night. I resolved that Marian should sleep with me; so I went to Mr. Gaston and told him I regretted our limited accommodations obliged me to offer him a temporary bed in the parlor.

When I told Marian of this arrangement, she seemed relieved. "I am glad to spend the night here and with you, Mary," she said. "All is so quiet and peaceful."

Quiet and peaceful! The greater storm in her own breast made her forget the contending elements without.

My aversion to Mr. Gaston was, I believe, heartily reciprocated, and he must have chafed at my influence over Marian. He took her away from her home, never to return, on the very next day. They sailed for Cuba shortly afterward.

The crisis Marian had feared for her aunt soon came, and she went, with the remnant of her fortune, to live in some western town.

Seven years had rolled by since all this, and Marian was fast passing into the shadows we like to call up when the world is hushed around us and, we are thinking--thinking.

I was married, and laughing children were crowding out these earlier remembrances.

An affection of the throat, from which my husband was suffering, rendered the best medical advice necessary. I accompanied him to New York, where I found--let me pause in telling it, to do reverence to the unseen hand that led me there--Marian.

In this lonely stranger how little do I behold of my childhood's earliest pride!

"From Clifton?" said the physician thoughtfully, after examining my husband's case. "I have a patient, a strange case; she is paralyzed, and her mental faculties are stunned. A Cuban family brought her here and placed her under my care. Her husband had committed a forgery, and had fled the country to escape arrest. She is an accomplished lady, I should judge. She was left in Havana quite poor and friendless. I have been led to speak to you about her because she is always writing two words--Mary and Clifton. The Spanish lady who brought her here knew nothing of her former history."

I was silent during this recital, and so white that the doctor offered me water. I thanked him, and expressed a wish to go to my friend immediately.

"I cannot return to the hospital this morning," he said; "but I will give you my card, which will admit you to the lady at once."

There I found her, a silent, faded figure, sitting still, and for all purposes of life quite dead.

I was awed as I stood before her. I sat down and took her poor, neglected hand in mine. She looked at me and made a feeble attempt to gather back her hair which had fallen in great disorder about her shoulders. I rose to do this for her. It was still glossy and beautiful as ever. I began to arrange it in the fashion she had worn it seven years before. She took my hand from her head, laid it in her lap, chafed it, then reverently raised it to her lips. I could restrain my tears no longer, and I hid my face in the folds of her faded dress. She turned me toward her and wiped the tears from my cheek.

"You are going home with me, Marian darling," I said; "to live always in our own old home."

"I know it," she whispered; "I have been waiting for you so long, so very long."

This was the first time she had spoken to me. The nurse had told me that she spoke occasionally, but always in an absent and incoherent manner.

Sea-bathing was recommended; but the doctor was of the opinion that her mind would never recover its original vigor.

I would like him to see her as she left me this morning, calm and beautiful, when the bell of the convent, where she is teaching German, summoned attendance.

My religion is no longer strange to her. She has accepted it as the crowning blessing of her life, and with a thankful spirit she speaks of the chastening hand that led her to this security and peace.

EXULTENT SION FILIÆ.

"Who is this that cometh from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning on the arm of her Beloved?"

CANTICLES viii. 5.

Who is this from the wilderness coming, From the desert so arid and bare, On her own most Beloved One leaning-- Who is this so chaste and so fair?

Yes, out of a wilderness coming, A desert of darkness and sin; Lo! the Bridegroom, the promised, the glorious, Lo! a Queen who is holy within!

See! her veil is thrown back from her features, Arrayed in the lustre of light, Like silver clean washed from the dross of the mine, Like a lily she dawns on the sight--

Like a lily whose fair leaves encompass her stalk, With an odor so piercing and sweet, That the world, overpowered, feels ashamed of its pride, And vanquished kneels down at her feet.

In the desert had tarried the Bridegroom of old Forty days, forty nights, in his love, Alone, while she who was dearest to him In grief like a silver-winged dove,

Hid away in the deep, secret clefts of the rock, Wailed his absence, and brooded so long, And pined for his countenance, pined for his voice To answer again to her song--

"Now winter is past, the rain over and gone;" The flowers, too, have their banners unfurled, While she waits for his promise; she knows he will come; And he comes--the Light of the world!

To lead back each wandering sheep to his fold, Who had waited so long in the porch; To bring back to the dim world his darling, his rose, His bride in her beauty, the church;

To open her gates that all may go in, Not a wanderer left out in the cold, The supper awaiting, the King's marriage feast, With its Host and its chalice of gold.

SOPHIA MAY ECKLEY.

MR. GLADSTONE AND THE IRISH FARMERS.

The long-expected bill for the settlement of the land question in Ireland was introduced into the British Parliament a short time ago by Mr. Gladstone in an explanatory speech of rare perspicuity and methodical statement. So fascinating, indeed, is the premier's eloquence, so candid his confessions of the injustice of English law as at present existing in Ireland, and of the baleful consequences which have flowed from its operations in the agricultural interests of the people of the sister island, that for the time we forget how far short are the measures he now proposes, in the form of an act of parliament, of the necessities of the case before him, and to which all his logic, rhetoric, and pathos form but the graceful prelude. Turning from the speech and carefully looking over the sixty-eight clauses of the proposed act, we are forcibly struck by the inadequacy of the proposed remedy for the terrible and manifold evils which have so long afflicted the tillers of Irish soil; and if, as Mr. Gladstone asserts, his object is not only to do justice to this long-oppressed people, but to silence for ever the clamors and pacify at once the almost chronic discontent of the country, it requires very little acumen to foresee that his scheme, even if not modified for the worse in its passage through either house, will be a failure, particularly as regards the latter results.

The head of the British cabinet, with all that ability and knowledge of public affairs which justly entitle him to be ranked foremost among living English statesmen, seems to have failed alike to comprehend the magnitude of the abuses he would correct and to appreciate the wishes and expectations of the great majority of the Irish people. Whether through that obliquity of mental vision which has always characterized English public men when attempting to deal with Irish grievances, or from a dread of failure if he attempted to inaugurate a more radical change in the present relations between landlord and tenant--and from a remark in his late speech, the latter cause would seem to be the most probable--he has been led into a course of policy which, while gaining him no allies in the opposition ranks, will undoubtedly lessen his influence with a large portion of the liberal party in both kingdoms. "By fixity of tenure," says Dr. Taylor, "is now clearly understood, in Ireland, that the right of the tenant to his land is to continue as long as the rent is paid, and that the rent is to be adjusted at fixed periods, according to the average price of produce;" a statement fully indorsed by the Irish press and reiterated by the people at their recent numerous public meetings. But the present bill contemplates no such thing, either in expression or by implication; and lest it might so be understood, the premier in his speech devoted much of his time to demonstrate the fallacy and danger of such doctrines.

"As I understand it," he says, "the thing itself amounts to this--that every occupier, as long as he pays the rent that he is now paying, or a rent to be fixed by a public tribunal of valuation, is to be assured, for himself and his heirs, an occupation of the land that he holds without limit of time, subject only to this condition, that with a variation in the value of produce--somewhat in the nature of the commutation of title act--the rent may vary somewhat slightly and at somewhat distant periods. The effect of that is that the landlord would become a pensioner and rent-charger upon his own estate. The legislature has a perfect right to reduce him to that condition, giving him proper compensation for any loss he may sustain in money; the state has a perfect right to deal with his social status, and to reduce him to that condition, if it thinks fit. But then it is bound not to think fit unless it can be shown that this is for the public good. Now, is it for the public good that the landlords of Ireland, in a body, should be reduced by an act of parliament to the condition, practically, of fund-holders, entitled to apply on a certain day from year to year for a certain sum of money, but entitled to nothing more? Are you prepared to denude them of their interest in the land? Are you prepared to absolve them from their duties with regard to the land? I for one confess that I am not; nor is that the sentiment of my colleagues."

Here then is the issue at once raised, and as Mr. Gladstone's views will receive the sanction of Parliament, we apprehend that the proposed act, no matter how impartially executed, will fail to satisfy the popular wants in Ireland. It cannot be denied that the great underlying principle of the tenant-right agitation is the conviction among the masses of the farmers and peasants of that country that the soil whereon they expend their labor, that others may reap the profits, was and is rightfully their own; that it was forcibly and treacherously wrested from their ancestors by a foreign and hostile faction, whose descendants now claim to possess it, and who wring from them the fruits of their toil, justly belonging to the cultivators and their families. They do not, however, desire a reconfiscation of this property; but they do demand a guarantee from the laws, under which they are content to live, that as long as they pay a fair rent they shall not be disturbed in their holdings. The question of leases for a term of years and compensation for improvements, though very important in itself, is merely secondary to fixity of tenure. That once guaranteed, in the Irish and not in Mr. Gladstone's sense, the impetus which would be given to the farming industry of the country would be so great that time and economy only would be required to establish a large class of small land _owners_ in fee, thus virtually undoing the spoliations of former days, and dividing up the large estates now devoted principally to pleasure or pasturage, and held by a few persons who neither reside in, know, or care for the nation from which they draw such exorbitant rents. The entire land of Ireland consists of nearly sixteen million acres of arable land, and five millions more susceptible of cultivation, owned absolutely by less than six thousand persons, thus giving to each proprietary an average of thirty-five hundred acres, independent of mountain, bog, and riparian lands, all more or less useful for the sustenance of human life. Then the majority of those owners, including the representatives of the very large estates almost without exception, are absentees who in the aggregate draw from the soil an annual revenue estimated at forty millions of dollars; not a tithe of it is ever returned to the country in any manner, except in the form of receipts. We find that the tenants from whom this large foreign tribute is exacted number over six hundred thousand heads of families, representing at least three and a half million of souls, only one in thirty of whom holds a lease of any sort, the remainder being entirely dependent politically and socially on the will of the landlord, or his agents and bailiffs. This anomalous state of affairs in a country supposed to be at least comparatively free is heightened by the fact that the views and aims of the landlord class and those of the tenantry, which ought to coincide on all matters affecting the national good, are decidedly the reverse of each other. As a whole, the religion, politics, and traditions of the owners of the soil have always placed them in opposition to their tenants and dependents; so firmly, indeed, that even the demands of patriotism and the allurements of pecuniary gain, powerful for most men, have failed to swerve the Irish landlord from his blind and bigoted purpose of repressing the laudable enterprise, and of ignoring the commonest rights, of the people from whom he derives his wealth and position. In countries like Belgium, Scotland, or Switzerland, where manufactures are encouraged and capital is abundant, this slavish relationship between landlord and tenant would be a secondary grievance; but in Ireland, which is essentially an agricultural country, the enormity of the evil cannot well be over-estimated. "About two thirds of the population of England," said the late W. Smith O'Brien, "are dependent on manufactures and commerce, directly or indirectly. In this country (Ireland) about nine tenths of the population are dependent on agriculture, directly or indirectly." "An ancient vassal," said Van Raumer, a distinguished German traveller, who some years ago visited Ireland, "is a lord compared with the present tenant at will, to whom the law affords no defence;" and a recent decision in chancery declares that "if a tenant holding from year to year makes permanent improvements in the lands which he holds, this raises no equity as against the landlord, though he may have looked on and not have given any warning to the tenant."

But we have a more recent authority on the condition of the Irish farmers of to-day in the person of the special commissioner of the _London Times_, who certainly cannot be accused of over-partiality in describing the condition of that much oppressed class. Writing from Mullingar under date September 14th, 1869, he says, "By far the largest portion of the country is still occupied by small farmers, who legally are merely tenants at will, though they have added much to the value of the soil by building, draining, fencing, and tillage, and though they have purchased their interests in numerous instances, and it is probable they will long maintain their ground, though the area they hold is being diminished. The existing law is not a rule of right to this body of men in their actual position; it exposes what in truth is their property, the benefits they have added to the land, to be confiscated by a summary process; it sets at naught the equitable right acquired by a transfer for value with the assent of the landlord." From Cork, after a month's further investigation, he again writes, "As for the landed system of the country as a whole, it is, in its broadest outlines, essentially the same as that which I have so often described, except that its vices are very prominent. Speaking generally, the same religious differences divide the owner and the occupier of the soil; the absenteeism is too prevalent; there is the same wide-spread insecurity of tenure; the law in the same way upholds the power of the landlord, and disregards the just claims of the tenant; there is the same creation of vast rights of property in the form of improvements, by the peasantry, unprotected by the least legal sanction, and liable, nay, exposed to confiscation; vague usage similarly is the only safeguard against frequent and intolerable injustice." Conceding to Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues the greatest honesty of intention in the introduction of the present bill, and aware of the powerful and not over-scrupulous opposition which any remedial measure advocated by them must encounter from the tory and landed classes, yet in view of such patent abuses as stated, as well as from the assurances of Mr. Bright and others--supposed to be in the confidence of the ministry, we had a right to expect a measure more general, emphatic, and sweeping in its reforms. Still, as the bill will be passed substantially as presented, with perhaps the addition of a few unimportant amendments likely to be offered by the Irish members, it is important to examine in detail its main features as far as they relate to what is defined in the preamble as "security of tenure."

The first subdivision of the bill provides for the loaning of public moneys to landlords and tenants on the following conditions: Where the landlord is willing to sell and the tenant to purchase a particular farm, then in his actual occupancy, at a price agreed upon between the parties, the government will advance the tenant the necessary funds; and when the landlord is only willing to part with his estate in bulk, the actual occupiers of four fifths, and any person or persons not occupiers joined with them, may become purchasers of the whole, and a similar advance will be made. In other words, the government takes the place of the selling landlord, pays him indirectly the price agreed upon, and reimburses itself by annual instalments from the tenant, now become the owner, until the entire purchase money is paid off. This seems favorable enough for the enterprising tenant, and to any other than Irish landlords would offer strong inducements to dispose of a portion, at least, of their unwieldy and often heavily encumbered estates, and would promote the multiplication of moderate sized and better cultivated farms; but as we are aware of the hostility of that unpatriotic class to every thing tending to the elevation of their tenantry to a position of comparative equality, we have little hope of the efficacy of this provision. Indeed, Mr. Gladstone seems also of this opinion; for in his late speech in allusion to the subject, he says, "I myself have not been one of those who have been disposed to take the most sanguine view of the extent to which a provision of that kind would operate." Purchasers of reclaimed land not occupied are to have the same privileges as occupiers of cultivated lands. The landlord likewise is to have his share of the public money for the purpose of reclaiming waste lands adjoining his estate, and in some instances, for paying off the compensation claims of his out-going tenant. All these loans, securities, repayments, and annuities are to be under the direction of the Irish Board of Works at Dublin.

The legal machinery for carrying these and subsequent clauses of the bill into effect will consist of two classes of courts. One of arbitration, consisting of appointees of the parties interested, whose decision shall have all the force of law, and from which there shall be no appeal. The other will be a regular court of law, with very extensive equity jurisdiction, composed, in the first instance, of a civil bill court, presided over by an assistant barrister of sessions; an appeal court, composed of two judges of assize, who may reserve important cases for trial before the court for land cess in Dublin. Taking into consideration the relative wealth and personal influence of the parties litigant, we might hope for a less expensive and complicated mode of procedure; but as the law's delays are still as proverbial on the other side of the Atlantic as on this, it is perhaps the least objectionable plan that could be devised. Much certainly will depend on the independence and humanity of the courts; for while they will be bound by the principles laid down in the bill, it is authorized--

"On hearing of any dispute between landlord and tenant in respect of compensation under this act, either party may make any claim, urge any objection to the claims of the other, or plead any set-off such party may see fit, and the court shall take into consideration any such claim, objection, or set-off, and also any such default or unreasonable conduct of either party as may appear to the court to affect any matter in dispute between the parties," etc., and give judgment on the equities of the same.

The bill then proceeds to secure and define the tenure of all holders of agricultural land, dividing them into four classes: holders by the custom of Ulster, by customs analogous to that of Ulster in the other provinces, tenants from year to year and at will, and lease-holders generally.

The custom of Ulster, derived strangely enough from the terms of James I.'s charter to the undertakers in 1613,[40] as well as from traditional usage, consists mainly of the right of the out-going tenant to compensation from his landlord for all permanent improvements he may have made on the land, or that he has actually paid for to his predecessor, whether with or without the consent of his landlord; or the tenant may elect to sell the same with his good-will of the farm to the best purchaser. This custom, covering about a moiety of the 3,400,000 acres of Ulster, is to be formally recognized as law only in that portion of the country, and in each individual case where it now actually exists. But when "the landlord has, by a deliberate and formal arrangement with an occupier, bought up the Ulster tenant right, it shall not be pleaded against him;" and where the tenant has so sold to the landlord or to the incoming tenant his right, he shall be debarred from all other compensation under the act. The value of this custom, though heretofore only partially recognized, will be perceived from the fact that, though Ulster is by no means the most fertile section, the average annual value of its lands is from four to four and a half dollars per acre greater than the other portions of the country. Why this custom, so manifestly beneficial to all classes, should only be made general in Ulster, but not throughout the island, it is difficult to determine.

There are also customs in other parts of the country which have become traditional, and are said to resemble somewhat that of Ulster; but to what extent they prevail, or of their exact nature, we are not informed. They are commonly supposed to include the right of compensation for improvements of a certain sort, and the sale of the good-will by the out-going tenant. These, however, are not regarded with the same degree of fairness; for they can only be pleaded when the landlord by his own act severs the relation between himself and tenant; and when pleaded, all arrears of rent or damages to the farm may be claimed as an off-set; they are forfeited by ejectment for non-payment of rent, or by sub-letting or subdividing the holding, and are extinguished by the acceptance of a lease of thirty-one years or upward. This is the first attempt we notice in the bill to induce the landlords to grant leases, and we regret to find that throughout its entire length, with the exception of one clause, there is nothing at all prohibitory in its provisions. What good reason can exist for the preservation of the custom of Ulster under a lease, while those of the other three sections are bartered away for that privilege? Is this not another evidence of the partiality of a reform which should be as comprehensive as the evils to be eradicated are wide-spread?

The most important part of the bill is that which relates to the yearly tenant and tenant at will; for it affects by far the largest and most defenceless class of Irish farmers. Out of six hundred thousand heads of families who derive their existence directly from the soil, five hundred and eighty thousand, or nearly ninety-seven per centum of the whole, are of this class, and are liable at any time to be thrown on the charity of the world by the edict of a landlord or his agent, deprived not only of their sole means of livelihood, but of whatever benefits they may have conferred on their little holdings by their hard labor and well-earned money. It is useless now to dwell on the horrible calamities which have resulted from the wholesale evictions of these unfortunate people, or on what famine, pestilence, death, and too frequently agrarian crime, have year after year flowed from the uncontrolled barbarities practised on them by Irish landlords, armed with the terrors of law. The wailings and maledictions of the homeless and expatriated have so long resounded through both hemispheres, that their very echoes have startled the ears of their persecutors into something like attention. "We have," says Mr. Gladstone from his place in the House of Commons, "simplified the law against him, [the tenant,] and made ejectment cheap and easy."[41] This large class, therefore, if not receiving that adequate protection to which they are justly entitled, will, under the operation of the proposed act, have their interests placed beyond jeopardy in such a manner as, compared with their present practical outlawry, will commend Mr. Gladstone to their gratitude. Having no custom to plead, and consequently very little probability of obtaining leases, the landlord can still eject them; but he must do so on a year's notice, duly stamped and dated from the previous gale day, and for proper cause, such as non-payment of rent or the refusal of the tenant to accept another holding equal in value to the one desired by the landlord. If the landlord acts without such cause, the tenant will be entitled to damages against him at the discretion of the court, exclusive of compensation for improvements and reclamation of land. The maximum measure of damages for wanton ejectment is set down in the bill as follows:

Holdings valued at £10 7 years' rent. " " £10 to £50 5 " " " " £50 to £100 3 " " " " £100 and upward 2 " "

In any case the tenant upon ejectment will be entitled to compensation for improvements, from which arrears of rent may be deducted. It is the wise and beneficent intent of the bill to place this helpless class under the special protection of the court, and make it the object of large equity jurisdiction conferred; and it even holds out a release to the landlord of these penalties, providing he gives to his yearly tenant a lease of at least twenty-one years' duration.

The regulation of the tenure of lease-holders generally is most judicious, and the only compulsory one in the bill. In future all leases shall be submitted to, and the terms, as regards rents and covenants, approved by, the court, before their validity will be recognized. Heretofore, Irish leases have been made exclusively for the benefit of one party, and the ingenuity of the lower grade of the legal profession seems to have been taxed to the utmost to devise restrictions on husbandry. We have copies of several of those instruments of recent execution before us, and they certainly smack more of the pre-_magna-charta_ era than of the present enlightened century. A petition presented to the House of Commons at its last session, from the inhabitants of the parish of Clonard, county of Meath, set forth that tenants there "are charged with a penalty of £5 for every tree, and every perch of hedge cut, injured, or destroyed;" they are to break no land without permission of the landlord, and even then only such land and in such manner as the landlord specified; a fine of £10 is exacted for "each acre or part of acre assigned, let, underlet, or let in con-acre or otherwise, or meadowed without formal written permission;" they are not to remove or cause to be removed any top-dressing, compost, or manure of any sort, nor any hay, straw, corn in the straw, holm, or fodder of any sort, nor any turnips, mangel-wurzel, or other green crop of any kind, under penalty of £5 per load or part of load; and the top-dressing, manure, etc., are to remain on the land at the termination of the tenancy, and are to be the property of the landlord. The Earl of Leitrim, a very large landed proprietor in the north, probably not considering the above restrictions sufficiently onerous, has had inserted in his numerous leases clauses whereby the tenants are required to preserve his fish and game; and without his permission in writing they are not to make any new roads, fences, or drains, nor to build up or alter houses or buildings, nor to grow two white grain crops in succession, nor to have beyond a certain maximum of tillage, nor to break up permanent grass-fields, nor to set potatoes where there has been grass the year before,[42] nor to cut turf, etc.; and to surrender their leases at _any time_ at six months' notice, or in case any of them be imprisoned by any civil or criminal process for a term exceeding fourteen days! But Edward Henry Cooper, who is supposed sometimes to honor Markie Castle with his presence, requires not only the observance of all the above conditions on the part of his serfs, but binds them to become informers and prosecutors in their _own names_ against any poachers who may be found in the leaseholds; and they are also to _procure evidence_ (how is not stated) against their neighbors who might kill a hare or spear a salmon on their premises. The farmers who have the happiness of living under this philanthropist are required "to submit all disputes and differences touching trespass or measuring to, and abide by the final award of"--Edward Henry Cooper or his agents; a very impartial tribunal, no doubt! The above extracts may be taken as specimens of the restrictions which surround even the most favored class of Irish farmers of the present day, and which, being made with all the forms of law, backed by the certainty of the strict enforcement of the penalties, must have a direct and ruinous tendency to check improvement and limit the scope of improved cultivation of lands.

The term improvements, so frequently met with in the bill, is defined to mean such as are suitable to the character of the holding and add to its letting value, such as buildings, reclaimed land, manures, and tillage, and the old rule of law, which presumed all improvements made by the landlord unless proved to the contrary, is reversed in favor of the tenant. No existing improvement will be paid for if not made within twenty years previous to the passage of the act, except permanent buildings and reclaimed land, nor where by the terms of a lease the holder agreed to make the improvements at his own expense. In the future no claim will be allowed for improvements made contrary to the terms of the letting, or for such as are not required for the due cultivation of the farm, nor when the landlord agrees to make them and does not neglect to do so, nor where the tenant, as part of the consideration of the lease, agrees to do them at his own charge. But whatever the tenant pays to the out-going tenant for compensation, with the sanction of his landlord, he shall be reimbursed on the termination of his tenancy.

Such, in brief, is an outline of the law under which the farmers of Ireland will have to live for some years to come. Although not all they demand and have a right to expect, it is nevertheless a great improvement on the present system, if system it may be called, under which they have so long tried to exist. Whatever is valuable in the local customs will be substantially preserved and legalized; the tenant will have some remote prospect of becoming a purchaser, and the tenant at will, a leaseholder. Compensation for improvements is guaranteed to every one capable of paying his rent, and the luxury of evictions, if not destroyed, is made an expensive one for landlords. We cannot expect that this measure, if passed in its best form, will wholly stop agitation in Ireland, but we trust and believe that it will largely conduce to the wealth and industry of her people.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] The said undertakers shall not devise or lease any part of their lands at will, but shall make certain estates for years, for life, in tail or in fee simple.--_Art._ 12th, _charter_ of A.D. 1613.

[41] "In the number of farms, from one to five acres, the decrease has been 24,147; from five to fifteen acres, 27,379; from fifteen to thirty acres, 4274; while of farms above thirty acres, the increase has been 3670. Seventy thousand occupiers with their families, numbering about three hundred thousand, were rooted out of the land. In Leinster, the decrease in the number of holdings not exceeding one acre, as compared with the decrease of 1847, was 3749; above one and not exceeding five, was 4026; of five and not exceeding fifteen, was 2546; of fifteen to thirty, 391; making a total of 10,617. In Munster, the decrease in the holdings under thirty acres is stated at 18,814; the increase over thirty acres, 1399. In Ulster, the decrease was 1502; the increase, 1134. In Connaught, where the labor of extermination was least, the clearance has been most extensive. There in particular the roots of holders of the soil were never planted deep beneath the surface, and consequently were exposed to every exterminator's hand. There were in 1847, 35,634 holders of from one to five acres. In the following year there were less by 9703; there were 76,707 holders of from five to fifteen acres, less in one year by 12,891; those of from fifteen to thirty acres were reduced by 2121; a total depopulation of 26,499 holders of land, exclusive of their families, was effected in Connaught in one year."--Captain Larcom's report for 1848, as quoted in Mitchel's _Last Conquest of Ireland_, (_Perhaps_.) Dublin, 1861.

[42] The productiveness of the land when properly tilled is _four_ times greater than when under pasture.

THE ASSOCIATION FOR BEFRIENDING CHILDREN.

A new association has entered the field of charitable labor in this city bearing the modest title at the head of this article. It has been organized and is recommended to the public by ladies whose names are a guarantee of its success. The sphere of its charitable work is among poor children of degraded parents. It is not known, except to the few practical workers among the poor, that there exists in New York a pauper class nearly if not quite as destitute and degraded as that which is found in the great capitals of Europe. There are persons here who are born in this lowest social stratum, and will never rise from it without help. Their lives begin, are passed, and end in what seems to be hopeless degradation. The portions of the city where this class of its population will be found are those bordering on the rivers, on either side, extending as far north as Fifty-ninth street. Children born in this class inherit the vices and diseases of their parents, as well as their poverty. They exhibit a precocity in debauchery which no one can appreciate who has not been brought into contact with them. They inhale with their first respiration a fetid atmosphere. They have an instinct for vice and crime. Many of them escape the penalties of the criminal code simply because they are so young that the law overlooks them. They come into the world with the child's instinct to look to its parent as the source of authority, and a model for imitation. This authority is, for the most part, exerted to compel the commission of offences, and the model is a finished example for the grossest sins. With such influences from without, coöperating with natural and inherited tendencies to vice, it is easy to see with what fearful rapidity the child will be driven along in evil courses. If education begins, as is claimed, with the first outcry of the infant, what a training is inaugurated here!

There is another class of our population, not strictly a pauper class, but which is raised but little above it. The persons who compose it earn a scanty living by fitful labor, and are exposed to all the temptations which beset extreme poverty. They easily fall into vicious habits, squander their earnings, and their children are left without care, to subsist as best they may. These children, equally with those of the class still lower, are in need of every thing which a judicious charity can supply. The section of the city where more of these little outcasts, and their wretched parents, may be found than in any other of equal dimensions, is that bounded by Bank street on the south, Sixteenth or Seventeenth street on the north, the Ninth avenue and the river. Out of this section St. Bernard's parish has been carved, and it was here that, a few months ago, the small beginning was made from which the new organization has sprung. On the seventh day of September last, a few ladies met at St. Bernard's church, to open an industrial school for girls. Notice that the school would be commenced on that day had been given in the church on the Sunday preceding. No children came at the hour named, and the ladies, with one of the priests of the parish, went out into the lanes and alleys to compel them to come in. About twenty-five girls were gathered in the large upper room in the church edifice during the forenoon. They presented a pitiful spectacle of extreme poverty and degradation. They were clad in filthy rags, and, young as they were, the faces of many of them bore traces of a course of vice and crime in which sad progress had already been made. It was clear from this first day's experiment that there was an instant and urgent duty to be performed, in reaching and reclaiming children of this class. The ladies, therefore, resolved to hold the school on Tuesday and Friday mornings in each week, from ten to twelve o'clock. The large room in the church was placed at their disposal. On the second school-day, fifty girls attended, and the number soon reached one hundred. The character and magnitude of the work which these ladies had, almost unconsciously, undertaken began to dawn on them. The school had filled up with hardly any effort on their part. The children were in need of every thing. They must be clothed and fed. They must be gently led away from evil practices and taught the very alphabet of new and better lives. A few dollars were collected at once and materials for clothing purchased. Garments were cut out, and the children soon taught to assist in making them, and the articles were distributed as they were needed. This has been continued until every child who has attended the school has received a complete outfit, including a new pair of shoes. But the girls came hungry as well, and must be fed. At the close of the school on each day, a substantial meal was served; and on Thanksgiving and Christmas days, generous dinners were given to two hundred children, for which turkeys in abundance were provided. The first step in any efficient charitable work among the destitute is, of course, to provide for physical wants. We must begin with the body. "First the natural," and "afterward that which is spiritual," is the divine order. The soul is to be reached through the body, or rather, so closely united are the two, that they are both acted upon by the care bestowed upon either. The normal cravings of the body, when unsatisfied, become diseased and the fruitful source of vicious indulgences. The hunger which demands but cannot get proper food, will demand and get sustenance hurtful to body and soul. The little child who leaves a miserable shelter in the morning, cold and hungry, will spend the first penny bestowed in charity by a careless giver at a rum-hole made familiar by errands for liquor at the command of a drunken parent, where even a penny will buy what, for the moment, answers for both food and clothing. Little girls of twelve, and even younger, have come to this school in the morning whose only breakfast has been the liquor which they could buy for a cent, and who had already contracted intemperate habits.

With children of this class, then, the first step toward moral improvement is the self-respect which they put on with their first warm, clean dress, and the satisfaction which follows a meal of wholesome food. This first step, however, leads to the next, direct religious instruction; the "line upon line and precept upon precept" by which the child's soul is to be instructed and purified.

It is hardly necessary to say that these children are virtually heathen in the midst of a Christian civilization. They have received little or no religious instruction. They are the offspring of parents who, for the most part, are Catholics in name, but who have long since lost grace and abandoned the sacraments of the church. And yet they readily take religious impressions, and are not without those first Christian ideas which expand rapidly with patient teaching. It has been the practice at the school to spend a little time each morning in instructing the girls in the catechism; in repeating appropriate verses of Scripture, in committing simple hymns to memory and singing them in unison. The ladies who opened, and have conducted this school for the past six months, have not been discouraged because they have not already achieved magnificent results. They knew when they began that the salvation of these children, for this world and the next, was to be "worked out;" that moral improvement comes by "little and little;" that no sincere charitable effort is ever lost; that nothing can be lost but opportunities; and that even a cup of cold water given to one of these little ones will not fail, either of its reward or of its effect for good. So far from being discouraged, what has already been accomplished with limited means and in a casual way has far exceeded their expectations. The work has been growing under their hands from the start. The little company of ragged girls, who came reluctantly the first morning, has expanded into a school numbering one hundred and fifty, who are eager for the instruction offered to them. They manifest the utmost affection for their teachers. They show signs of improvement in every way. Many of them give unmistakable evidence of having commenced a new and useful career. One girl who was found wandering in the street on the first day was asked by one of the ladies if she ever went to mass; she said "No." "Why not?" said the lady. She replied with a bold stare, "Oh! I am a _bad_ girl." On being told by the lady that she did not believe she was so bad, the girl replied, her eyes filling with tears, "Well, I _would_ go if I had any thing to wear but these rags; but we've been awfully knocked about since father died, and mother says we're all going to hell, soul and body." This Maggie is now one of the best and brightest in the school, and an efficient assistant of the teachers. Others are emulating her example. In fact, so much has already been done, that the ladies who commenced are irresistibly committed to a more efficient prosecution of the work. They see in it possibilities for good which do not allow them to stop short of the more thorough organization which they have attempted in forming "The Association for Befriending Children." They feel that a necessity is laid upon them to make secure the good already attained, and that they would be recreant to their duty as Christians if they did not go on to the more perfect results plainly within their reach. The necessity of such an organized charity has been shown in the rough outline which has been given above of the destitution of these children. Notwithstanding all the charitable associations for children, under the names of "Industrial Schools," "Protectories," "Orphan Asylums," etc., there are at least twenty thousand children in the city outside of any such institution, whose necessities are even greater than those within them. In its circular the association says that it

"does not intend to relieve parents from their just responsibility for their children, simply because they are poor. The possession of children, and the duty of maintaining them, are conducive among many parents, contending with extreme poverty, to habits of industry and sobriety. But any one who knows even a little of the very degraded portion of our population, is aware that there are multitudes of children in this city utterly abandoned by their parents, and exposed to every form of vice, or rather who are actually being trained, by precept and example, in habits of debauchery. Such children the association desires to bring under the influence of daily instruction, to minister to their daily necessities, to educate them for useful employments."

Such, then, in brief, are the aims of this association.

The first step toward realizing them has already been taken. Aided by the liberality of a few gentlemen, the association has rented the building No. 316 West Fourteenth street, which is admirably adapted to the purposes of a home for those who may be received as inmates, for a longer or shorter term, combined with a day-school for others. There is room for fifty of these inmates, and for at least three hundred more day-scholars. The house is under the charge of a matron and assistants in every way fitted to care for, control, and teach the children, who find their highest reward in this opportunity to rescue and elevate these little girls. The new and most important feature of this charity is that it combines an asylum, a protectory, an industrial school, and common school in one institution. It encircles in its arms those who are so low that they are overlooked by all other charities. It finds, after all, that "the ninety and nine" have gone astray, and it seeks to bring them back to the fold. It completely removes from evil influences those who are most exposed, and shelters and fosters them till new habits are formed, and seeds of good are implanted and germinate. It gives to all food and clothing. It instructs all in the rudiments of knowledge. It gives the girls such industrial instruction as will enable them to enter on the various employments which society offers to their sex. Such a home-school the association plants in the midst of these utterly necessitous children. There should be one or more of them established in every parish in the city; and if the Christian liberality of Catholics be not found wanting, such a result will be accomplished. At present the association must be sustained in the immediate attempt which has been made. Responsibilities have been assumed which must be met by generous donations. Surely the ladies who are willing to give their best energies to this glorious work, as well as their portion of the money needed, will not appeal to the public in vain.

FRA BERNARDINO OCHINO.

The blessed Bernardine, the glory of Sienna and of the Franciscan order, had a sad counterpart in him who forms the subject of this sketch. Fra Bernardino Ochino, one of the conspicuous scandals of the sixteenth century, was a son of Domenico Tommassino, of Sienna. He received his surname from the Via del Oca, which contained the residence of his obscure parents. Having taken the habit of the Observantines, he left his convent to study medicine at Perugia. He there formed a friendship with Giulio de' Medici, afterwards Clement VII. Returning to his order, he received successive places of dignity; but whether dissatisfied with these, or really seeking a more perfect life, he again left it to embrace the austere rule of the Capuchins, then for the first time established in Sienna. Few details remain of this portion of the life of Ochino, and historians differ in explaining the motives of this change. Whatever they might have been, it is certain that his fame as a preacher was acquired shortly after his entrance in the Capuchin order. His reputation grew daily. The most exacting critics gave him unqualified praise. Sadoletus ranked him with the greatest orators of antiquity. The Bishop of Fossombrone addressed him the most flattering sonnets, and Charles V. was heard to exclaim that the spirit and unction of Fra Bernardino could melt the very stones. The over-fastidious Bembo had said of the preachers of his day, "Why should I go to listen to their sermons? One hears nothing but the subtle doctor disputing with the angelic, and, finally, Aristotle called in to settle the question."

Nevertheless, Ochino stood even the test of Bembo's criticism. For the latter wrote from Venice to the Marquis of Pescara, April 23d, 1536:

"I send inclosed to your illustrious lordship the letters of our reverend Fra Bernardino, whom I have heard with inexpressible pleasure during the too short period of this Lent."

To the parish priest he wrote:

"Do not neglect to force Fra Bernardino to eat meat. For, unless he suspend his Lenten abstinence, he cannot resist the fatigue of preaching."

This last remark of Bembo reveals to us something of Ochino's way of life at that time. He had, indeed, adopted those severe austerities which, according to the unanimous doctrine of the saints, though often the means of advancement in the supernatural life, yet, when undertaken or persevered in from an ill-advised spirit, generally lead to ruin, and become at once food and clothing for the most diabolical pride. The famous preacher travelled always on foot, bare-headed and unshod. He slept at night beneath the trees that grew on the wayside, or, if under the roof of some noble host, on the pavement of the guest's chamber. As he begged from door to door, in the crowded cities, the throng knelt, awed by his wan features and fiery eye, and the thin emaciated frame, which seemed barely to support the coarse brown habit of his order. At the tables of the nobility he did not vary the least detail of his penitential abstinence, eating from only one dish, and never even tasting wine.

When he preached, says a contemporary, the churches could not contain his hearers, and a great crowd followed him wherever he went. Nor was his preaching without fruit. The infamous Aretino either underwent or feigned a conversion, and wrote to the pope, at the instance of Ochino, begging pardon for his libels against the papal court. In the same letter, dated from Venice, April 21st, 1537, he says that Bembo "has sent a thousand souls to paradise by transferring from Sienna to this Catholic city Fra Bernardino, a religious as humble as he is virtuous."

While at Venice, Ochino procured a convent and installed there a community of Capuchins. In June, 1539, by invitation of the municipal assembly, he preached at Sienna. This he did again in the following year, with great success and fruit. It was on this occasion that he introduced the devotion of the Quarant' Ore. It appears, however, that instead of the blessed sacrament, the usual object of this devotion, Fra Bernardino exposed for veneration the crucifix. In a letter to the confraternity of St. Dominic, preparatory to the introduction of this pious practice, he writes:

"You are asked in charity to join with many others in accomplishing two very pious and holy works--the first of which consists in inviting and encouraging one another, with a holy love, to do penance with a true contrition, a sincere confession, and entire satisfaction, joining spiritual and corporal alms with fasts strictly kept and holy prayer, in order to meditate on the transformation of the soul in Christ, her well beloved; and, humbly prostrate at his sacred feet, to expose to him our particular spiritual wants and those of all our brethren, encouraging and aiding our soul, by good will, to clothe herself with those divine virtues, faith, hope, and charity."

The remainder of the letter sets forth in detail the arrangements for carrying out the public ceremonies of the Quarant Ore, all breathing the fragrance of Catholic piety. Yet it is more than probable that the first plague-spots had already become visible in his character. Boverio, the Capuchin annalist, still praises him, thus sketches this portion of our history, and says that Fra Bernardino was

"endowed with sagacity, good manners, and practical skill in management gained by a long and varied experience, gifted with a penetration and generosity of soul fit for the greatest enterprises, of an exterior so modest and retiring that every one recognized in him a rare stamp of virtue and sanctity; an admirable preacher, whose eloquence won souls, so that, by unanimous approval, in the third chapter of the entire order, he was elected general, in 1538. He governed the order with such good sense, prudence, and zeal for the observance of the rules, himself giving an example of every virtue, that his brethren applauded the choice of such a man. He visited all the convents, nearly always on foot. His exhortations to poverty, to observance of the rule, and other virtues were made with such admirable eloquence that the reputation which he had acquired both at home and abroad could not but increase; he enjoyed such great confidence with kings and princes that they employed him in the most difficult undertakings; the pope held him in the highest esteem; so much so, that it was necessary to have recourse to the pope in order to obtain him for preacher; the largest churches did not suffice to hold the throng of his hearers, so that temporary porticoes had to be erected, many even raising the tiles of the roof and climbing into the church to hear him. While preaching at Perugia, in 1540, he settled the most angry feuds. At Naples, having recommended from the pulpit some pious work, the alms collected amounted to five thousand sequins."

To this we may add that when three years, his term of office, had expired, Fra Bernardino was reëlected. Yet, despite all this fair appearance, things had not gone well in his heart. His passions, restrained from sensual outbreaks and left more free in other things, developed pride, and confidence in his own judgment, to the contempt of others. The desire of gaining souls yielded slowly and almost imperceptibly to the ambition of the orator. Moreover, he drew from the works of Luther that fatal tendency to find in Holy Writ a response to the dictates of private passion and prejudice. It is said that, while preaching at Naples, in the church of San Giovanni Maggiore, he had been incited by Valdes to insult Paul III., because the holy father had not decorated him with the purple. Certain it seems to be, that Valdes was intimately associated with the friar, and helped to fill his heart with ambition and his head with the doctrines of the Swiss and German heretics. The viceroy, Pedro de Toledo, being informed that he was teaching the Lutheran novelties, complained to the ecclesiastical authorities; but Ochino either fairly stood the test of inquiry, or concealed his real opinions under astute forms of speech. The latter is probably the case; for the Dominican Caracciolo, in his MS. life of Paul IV., says,

"Since he"--Ochino--"concealed within himself the venom of his doctrines under the appearance of an austere life, (a fair cloak,) and because he pretended to thunder against vice, the number of persons was small who could detect the cunning of the fox. Nevertheless there were some who discovered it; and among the first, as I have learned from my elders, could be cited our venerable fathers Don Gaetano and Don Giovanni; but they saw it more clearly in 1539, when Ochino, preaching in the pulpit of the cathedral, uttered many propositions against purgatory, indulgences, and the ecclesiastical laws about fasting, etc.; and, what is worse, the impious monk was accustomed to present as an interrogation that which St. Augustine has said in a simply negative form, as in the following passage: _Qui fecit te sine te, non salvabit te sine te?_--thus giving his audience to understand that faith alone suffices, and that God saves us without any good works on our part to coöperate with his; just the contrary of that which St. Augustine really teaches."

Caracciolo further narrates that systematic means were secretly taken to spread these doctrines of Ochino, and that clandestine meetings of those infected contributed to this end. Yet Fra Bernardino still kept his fair fame, and maintained perfectly his Catholic exterior; for the ensuing year witnessed the public devotions at Sienna to which we have before alluded. It was at Venice, in 1541, that he was for a time suspended from preaching. This was not due to any plain and palpable errors of doctrine. For, although accusations against him had been made by several persons, he had in a private interview relieved the nuncio's present suspicions, if not his forebodings of the future. The temporary prohibition to preach was caused by the distrust of the nuncio, which was greatly aggravated by an allusion on the part of Ochino to the arrest of Giulio Terenziano. The latter was a theologian of Milan, an avowed and contumacious preacher of heresy, whom the nuncio had silenced in the previous year. From the pulpit Ochino appealed to the Venetians against such an exercise of authority. He placed himself on the same footing with Terenziano, and cried, "What have we done, O Venetians? What plots have we arranged against you? O Bride and Queen of the Sea! if you cast into prison, if you send to the gallows, those who announce the truth to you, how shall that truth prevail?" Nevertheless, in three days the nuncio restored to him his faculties, owing to the pressure brought to bear by the friends and admirers of the monk.

After the close of Lent in 1542, Ochino gathered at Verona many of the Capuchins of the Venetian province, and taught them his errors with all that subtlety of argument and eloquence of persuasion which seems to have characterized both his private and public speaking.[43] He had now passed the zenith of his career and was fairly started on his downward course. The luxury which he had ordered Fra Angelo to use in rebuilding the convent at Sienna, was so openly against the letter and spirit of his rule that many devout persons looked for his speedy punishment. St. Cajetan Tiene had prevented him from preaching at Rome. Among the number of those greatly alarmed for his safety was Angela Negri de Gallarate, a friend of the Marquis del Vasto, the latter at this time an intimate friend and private correspondent of Ochino. This excellent lady, after hearing Fra Bernardino at Verona, where he commented on the epistles of St. Paul, predicted that he would fall into heresy. It soon became only too manifest. His disgust for prayer, his absence from the choir, his weariness in assisting at the sacred mysteries shocked his brethren, so long edified by his pious bearing and assiduity in these good works. Among others, Fra Agustino, of Sienna, gently reproved him, saying, "When you go to administer the sacrament without prayer, you remind me of a rider setting forth without stirrups; take care that you do not fall." Fra Bernardino, whose soul was withering for want of that celestial dew which falls only in the calm evening stillness of prayer, all worn and jaded as he was with earthly labors, and, alas! success, could only answer, that he did not cease praying who kept on doing good.

He was now engrossed with secular things, giving counsel in the affairs of princes; and so completely was his time occupied, that he requested the holy father to be relieved from the daily recitation of the divine office. At this same period he entered into friendly relations with the heretics, and eagerly read all their works.

The pope still had hopes of holding him back, invited him to Rome, and even dreamed of giving him the purple. This brought affairs to a crisis. Before accepting or rejecting the invitation, Ochino took council with his friends. Giberti, the holy Bishop of Verona, sent him to consult Cardinal Contarini, at Bologna. The latter was too ill to hold a long conversation, and Ochino left him immediately to seek Peter Martyr Vermigli, at Florence. This visit to Peter Martyr, who, already rotten to the core, was shortly to fall, convinced the Capuchin that his doctrines could not stand the censorship of Rome, and that, if he went there, he must be prepared to renounce them. This conviction and the urgent advice of Peter Martyr decided him to leave Italy immediately. On the 22d of August, 1542, he writes to the Marquis of Pescara, detailing his anxieties and the causes of his flight.

"I have learned," he writes, "that Farnese says I have been summoned to Rome for having preached heresy and scandalous things. The Theatine Puccio, and others whom I do not wish to name, have spoken so as to cause people to think that, if I had crucified Christ, they could not have made more noise about it."

Further on he shows consciousness of the sensation he is creating. "These men," he says, "tremble before a poor monk."

Flight being determined upon, he took refuge, first, with Catharine Cibo, Duchess of Camerino. Thence he fled to Ferrara.

Here he received letters of introduction to the principal heretics of Geneva. On his way across the Apennines he had taken with him Fra Mariano, a saintly lay-brother, of whose dove-like tenderness and simplicity sweet anecdotes are told, recalling the early memories of Assisi. Mariano, under the impression that they were going to preach to the heretics, agreed to lay aside the religious habit; but, on learning the fraud which Ochino had practised on him, sought to recall his unfortunate superior. The haughty orator was proof to the tears and entreaties of his humble brother, and the latter finally turned back alone, carrying the seal of the order, which the apostate had kept to the last.

Arrived at Geneva, Ochino was welcomed by the heretics as a great accession.

Calvin wrote to Melancthon, "We have here Fra Bernardino, the famous orator, whose departure has stirred Italy as it has never been moved before." Prayers for him, indeed, were offered throughout Italy. Among the Capuchins--who, it is said, came near being suppressed--great pains were taken to eradicate the evil germs sown by Ochino; and Fra Francesco, vicar of Milan, renouncing his heresies, expiated them by a severe penance. Cardinal Caraffa, who, a few years later became Paul IV., publicly lamented the apostasy of Ochino in most eloquent terms, contrasting the austere Capuchin with the unfrocked preacher, and calling on the erring son to return to his mother. He promised in this case, moreover, kind treatment from the pope, who had always shown great favor to Ochino.

In a letter from Geneva, in April, 1543, the apostate sought to justify his career and to explain his later course of action. This letter, addressed to Muzio, begins with that allusion to youthful enthusiasm, which has since become the threadbare apology of those who fling away the cowl. He describes his life among the Observantines in the words of the apostle, "I made great progress in the Jews' religion, above many of my equals in my own nation, being more zealous for the traditions of my fathers." (Galat. i. 14.) But very soon he was enlightened by the Lord to the following effect: "That it is Christ who has satisfied for the sins of his elect, and has merited for them paradise, and that he alone is their justification; that the vows pronounced in the religious orders are not only invalid but impious; and that the Roman Church, although of an exterior splendid to carnal eyes, is none the less an abomination in the sight of God." This, he would have us believe, took place before his entering the Capuchin order. This doctrine of the vanity of good works, of the sinfulness of monastic vows, his excuse for abandoning both, was rooted in his mind during those years of rugged asceticism, while he still preached prayer and penance, as we have seen at Sienna! A liar or a hypocrite? Perhaps neither. For the remainder of the letter is full of that fanatical declamation against Antichrist and the harlot of Babylon, and all that railing cant in which weak brains and over-excited imaginations have, ever since, found expression and relief. The magistrates of Sienna also received a pointed letter, in which Ochino set forth his doctrine on justification. The letter is in very much the same style as that to Muzio.

Poor, despised Carlstadt, when he saw his hopeful pupil upset (as he then supposed) the pope and cast the church to the winds, thought that surely Luther would not assume to himself infallible authority and supreme jurisdiction. In this he was mistaken, as he found to his cost. For men who aid in rebellion against lawful authority too often find themselves a prey to usurpers; and the Bible, torn from the anointed hands of its only rightful interpreter, became simply a slave; its sacred text an exordium for every fanatic and an accomplice to every scoundrel. The position which Ochino took was the same as that of all other heresiarchs, from him whom St. Polycarp addressed as "the first born of Satan," down to the very latest. He constantly applied to himself the language which only one apostle dared to use. Although he did not profess to have seen the third heaven, yet he did profess to be thoroughly competent to teach and determine the Christian revelation. Under these circumstances, it is not strange that he soon found himself in bad odor at Geneva, where an authority, equally respectable, and likewise acknowledging the right of private examination, nevertheless burned alive poor wretches who were so unfortunate as not to agree with it. After founding the Italian Church at Geneva, and there publishing several works, so outrageous in their character as to draw condemnation even from some Protestant historians, Ochino became embroiled with the Calvinists. The natural result of these quarrels was his excommunication and banishment by the latter. He fled with a woman to whom he had been sacrilegiously married. At Basle, he published his sermons. Thence he was called to preach at Augsburg, where he enjoyed great popularity and a salary, until the invasion of Charles V. compelled him to flee with Stancari of Mantua. Having met, at Strasburg, his old friend, Peter Martyr, who, meanwhile, had openly apostatized, he journeyed with him to England, and there preached to the Italian refugees. On the death of Edward VI., he returned to Switzerland, and was chosen pastor of the exiles of Locarno, who had obtained from the Senate the use of a church and their native language. But as at Geneva, so at Zurich, the right of private judgment involved not merely the right to believe as one might list, but also the right, if one were able, to force every body else to believe in like manner. Ochino was accused of anti-trinitarianism and also of sanctioning polygamy, and obliged to swear that he would live and die in the faith of--what? who? The Catholic Church, whose demand on the human intellect is at once a command to believe and a reason for believing, backed by the pledged word of Jesus Christ? No! Ochino had rejected her authority. He now swore to live and die in the teaching of Zwinglius. This oath, however, seemed to lose its force in a few days. For he shortly attacked what he had sworn to defend, and, in his _Laberinto_, denied almost every article of the Christian faith. Banished from Switzerland, he fled, in the dead of winter, with his four children, into Poland, where he soon afterward earned universal contempt, by publicly countenancing King Sigismund in a projected bigamy. Bullinger, whom Ochino had called the "pope of Zurich," says of him, "He is far advanced in the science of perdition, and an ungrateful wretch toward the senate and the ministers, full of malice and impiety." Beza also characterizes him as "_Bernardinum Ochinum, monachum magni nominis apud Italos, et auctorem ordinis Capucinorum, qui in fine se ostendit esse iniquum hypocritam_. Bernardino Ochino, a monk of great name among the Italians, founder of the Capuchins," (this a mistake,) "who finally showed himself to be a wicked hypocrite."

From these words of Beza, Boverio has sought to infer that the apostate finally repented and was restored to the Catholic communion. He has also introduced testimony to prove that Ochino was poniarded at Geneva, after professing the Catholic faith and confessing to a priest. But historians seem to favor the tradition recorded by Graziani, who says, "_Ochinus Polonia excessit, ac omnibus extorris ac profugus, cum in vili Moraviæ pago a vetere amico hospitio esset acceptus ibi senio fessus cum uxore ac duabus filiabus, filioque una peste interiit_. Ochino died in Poland a universal outcast, after having accepted the hospitality of an old friend, in an obscure village of Moravia. Here, worn out with age, he perished, together with his wife, two daughters and son, in one pestilence."

To rehearse the various opinions of Ochino would be a difficult and thankless task. Like most of the reformers, he taught the total depravity of human nature and human reason, and, in order to establish the motives of faith, appealed to private illumination, assuming for the disciple what he denied to the teacher.

Besides this miserable travesty of the Christian distinction between the natural and supernatural orders, there is in his doctrine scarcely one point of resemblance to the Catholic faith. Having cast away the ballast that had steadied his earlier years, the power which had carried him on such a brilliant course proved his ruin. His ignominious death did not excite enough pity to cause itself to be remembered. He disappeared a lonely and abandoned wreck.

FOOTNOTE:

[43] Among those who yielded to his fatal and seductive influence was Fra Bartolomeo Coni, guardian of the monastery of Verona, who afterward became a heretic.

OLD BOOKS.

I.

Let the world run after new books; commend me to the enduring fascination of old ones--not old only in authorship, but old in imprint, in form and comeliness, or perhaps _un_comeliness!

What value is there in gilded edges and Turkey leather, which must be handled so gingerly, compared with the sturdy calfskin, ribbed and bevelled, which has outlived generations of human calves? and what is tinted hot-press to the page grown yellow in the atmosphere of centuries? The quaintly spelt word, the ornamented initial which begins each chapter, and the more elaborate ornamentation of dedication and title-page--all so poor now as works of art, yet in their day masterpieces of handicraft--there is a spell in them! till from that olden time

... "a thousand fantasies, Begin to throng into my memory."

_Comus._

A heavy quarto lies here bearing impress on its exterior, _Workes of Lvcivs Annævs Seneca. Both Morall and Naturall. Translated by Thomas Lodge, D. of Physicke_; and within is a long Latin dedication to the _Illvstrissimo D. Thomæ Egertono, Domino de Ellismere, etc., etc. London, 1614_.

Not so very old either; but within that time what changes have passed over the world! How often has ambition or popular discontent, or perchance honest resistance, revolutionized nations, and swept away the boundaries of kingdoms! How often some power, seemingly inadequate to the effect, has changed the currents of human thought, and exalted or degraded not only individuals, but aggregate masses of humanity, as effectively as the earthquake convulses, and then depresses or upheaves the visible surface on which they dwell!

What changes also in the especial surroundings of this individual volume! What improvements in the petty affairs of domestic life, the little arrangements of the household; in the union of science and mechanical art to produce necessaries and superfluities; in refinements of sentiment and manners; in a better relation between rulers and the ruled; and, to sum up all, in a more just appreciation by each individual of what he owes to himself and to his fellow-creatures!

All through the wide extent of this past time history and legends stretch back their ramifications, like paths through some vast extended landscape. In some places clear and well defined, and easily followed; again, leading through tangle and uncertainty, and at more than one point brought to an abrupt termination, beyond which all vestige of a way is lost. We tread here in thought a space of time which has been passed over by millions and millions--that countless throng of the nameless whose steps have left no foot-print--and where to a few only has been accorded the privilege of marking, by deed or word, the spot whereon they stood. It is the buried city of the immaterial world--where is uncovered to us noble deeds, and lofty aspirations, and holy purposes; and in darker spots are wrecks of hopes, and hearts, and immortal souls, to which all the wealth gone down in ocean counts as nothing.

To retrace again and again these paths, so often indistinct and so often awakening an interest they fail to gratify; to remove with patient toil here the doubt and there the untruth which encumber them, and anon to clear away some obstacle and open to sight a new vista, has been at all periods the occupation and the richest intellectual enjoyment of some of the most gifted minds, who accepted their ample reward in the simple success of their labors. Even the more humble wanderer through the mazy labyrinth, whose limited scope it is only to gaze and wonder, finds a charm in such investigations widely different from any other mental pursuit. It is the charm of a common humanity--the recognition and acknowledgment of a chain, invisible and intangible, and in a measure undefinable, but too strong ever to be broken, which unites each to the other the whole human family. It is not religion--neither philosophy; for in many a land, despite the barbarous precepts of a so-called religion, and where philosophy was never heard of, it vibrates in the savage heart to the necessities of the stranger. Its first link is riveted in our common origin; and its mysterious existence widely and wisely asserts itself in the interest with which, for human creatures, is ever invested the affairs of human kind.

Furthermore, it is this great social bond which attracts us to the personages of fiction, and always precisely in proportion as they assimilate to real life; and since even the most successful creations of fancy can hardly fail to fall short, in some point, of realities, so truth itself, properly presented, will always possess attractions beyond any fiction.

But it is not in battle-fields and conquests, nor yet in the impassioned eloquence or astute wisdom of senates and council chambers, that we hold closest communion with the buried of long ago; it is in that homely every-day life which we are ourselves living; in the little pleasures, regrets, and loves; in the annoyances, successes, and failures; in the very mistakes and imprudences which made up the _ego ipse_ so like our own that we find companionship. How they return to life again in all these things! and we enter into their most private chambers--the doors are all open now--and read their most private thoughts. We know them better than did their contemporaries; and they suffer a wrong sometimes in this ruthless unveiling which our heart resents. Now, it is proper that truth should ultimately, even on earth, prevail; and that the traitorous soldier and unscrupulous courtier, after having lived their lives out in ill-gotten wealth and undeserved honor, should wear in history their true colors; that even a woman's misdeeds, when they touch public interest, should be brought to meet a public verdict; but then these little private endurances--the life-long struggle with poverty here, the unavailing concessions to unreasonable tyranny by home and hearth there, the martyrdom of life, as it may be called, which they so carefully guarded from sight--how it is all paraded now to the world, and passed from book to book!

And yet it takes all this to make up the entire truthful portrait. Indeed, so very far does it go to modify our opinions of them, that the judgments formed without it must be oftentimes very erroneous.

II.

Had our old book but a tongue, what tales it might tell of the life after life which has passed before it!

Since the date of its printing, 1614, twelve sovereigns have worn the English crown; for in that year James I. was upon the throne of his mother's enemy. Eleven years before, when a messenger was sent to him in Scotland with an announcement of the death of Elizabeth and his own accession, the tidings found him so poor that he was obliged to apply to the English secretary, Cecil, for money to pay his expenses to London. His wants multiplied rapidly. From his first stopping-place he sent a courier forward to demand the crown jewels for his wife; and a little further on another messenger was dispatched for coaches, horses, litters, and, "above all, a chamberlain much needed."

This journey of James was a very unique affair. Honors were scattered so lavishingly that knighthood was to be had for the asking; and a little pasquinade appeared in print, advertising itself--_A Help to Memorie in learning Names of English Nobility_.

"At Newark-upon-Trent (says Stow) was taken a cut-purse, a pilfering thief all gentleman outside, with good stores of gold about him, who confessed he had followed the court from Berwick; and the king, hearing of this gallant, did direct a warrant to have him hanged immediately."[44]

And so began at the very outset the spirit which said afterward, "Do I make the lords? Do I make the bishops? Then God's grace--I make what likes me of law and gospel!" So outspoke the king; who is described by those who went to meet him as "ill-favored in appearance, slovenly, dirty, and wearing always a wadded dagger-proof doublet."

These eleven years of his reign had been fruitful in troubles of all kinds. The death of his son Henry, and the alleged, but never proven schemes of Lady Arabella Stuart to gain the throne, made a portion of them; and all were aggravated by that spectre, conjured up by his reckless extravagance, and which haunted him to the last moment of his life--an empty purse. When his daughter Elizabeth was married to the Palatine of Bohemia, the fireworks alone of London cost seven thousand pounds; and when my Lord Hargrave accompanied the bride to the Rhine and brought back a bill of thirty thousand pounds, the king, having neither gold nor silver to pay with, gave him a grant _to coin base farthings in brass_.

King James, in a book which he wrote on _Sports_, advocates all active exercises, and one of his own greatest pleasures had always been hunting. When so engaged, every thing else was forgotten, and hence arose a grievance by no means trifling to his English subjects--he and his courtiers, his companions in the chase, not unfrequently quartered themselves in some district where game abounded, until the provisions of the locality were absolutely exhausted. There is a story told of him that, while hunting at Royston, his favorite hound Jowler was missed one day, and the next he reappeared with a paper fastened on his neck, upon which was written--

"Good Mister Jowler, I pray you speak to the king, for he hears you every day, (and he doth not so us,) that it will please his majesty to go back to London, for all our provision is spent." ... "however, (says the courtier,) from Royston he means to go to New-Market, and from thence to Thetford."[45]

How much further he might have been led to hunt, is unknown; for there Lord Hay, who loved hounds, and horns also, promised no more to importune his majesty, and his more sedate counsellors succeeded in getting him back to business. In the mean time, in the more weighty matters of politics and religion, where the ambitious nobles of two countries intrigued and plotted for power over a monarch easily imposed upon, discord and contention reigned, until in 1614 they seem to have reached their height.

And so stood the world, old book! into which thou wert launched. Guy Fawkes and his crew had been swept from the earth; but in the Tower of London this year lay a more noble company, accused of the same crime--treason. There was Earl Grey, and Lord Cobham, and Sir Walter Raleigh, besides some others. These three had been tried, convicted, sentenced to die, and taken to the scaffold; and at the last moment reprieved and committed to the Tower. At the last moment it was, and it came near being a minute too late; for James wrote his order in such haste that he forgot to sign it, and the messenger was called back; then when this one man on horseback reached the place of execution, the great crowd gathered there prevented his being seen or heard for a long time, and the axe was just ready for the fatal stroke. On what a chance hung three lives! But what availed their added years? Earl Grey is dying now in that Tower; and Lord Cobham, never very strong in intellect, has grown weaker still in captivity; and so, after a little time, he is suffered to wander out; and he goes to a miserable hovel in the Minories, and climbs a ladder to a loft, and lies down on straw--to die of very destitution.

Three years hence King James will want money even more than he does now; and he will call Sir Walter Raleigh from his cell, and place him at the head of a fleet; for Sir Walter--who has been to the new world in years long gone by--insinuates that _there_ gold is to be had for the digging. He fails to get it, though; and on his return to England, he is seized, and, with only the shadow of a just trial, executed; partly on the old sentence, but more to please the Spaniards, whom he came in conflict with abroad.

Another life is this year pining itself away in that Tower--the Lady Arabella Stuart; a woman descended from royalty, Henry VII., in the same degree as King James himself, and therefore to be feared. Many years ago charges of conspiracy against the government were brought against her, and she was placed in confinement. She contrived to escape, and with her husband, Lord Seymour, attempted to reach France. By some mischance they were separated in their flight; he reached the coast of Flanders in safety, but the little vessel in which she had embarked was pursued, overtaken, and the unhappy fugitive compelled to return. Love and hope bore her up bravely for a time; but she is sinking at last, and it is recorded that September 27th, 1615, she died there.

High above all this misery merry notes were heard; for in 1614, was a grand marriage and banqueting such as London had not seen--no, not even at the bridal of the king's own daughter. The story is sadder than any fiction, a "sad o'er true tale"--as follows:

Some years before this, the Lady Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, beautiful and accomplished, though still a mere child of thirteen years, was married to the Earl of Essex, a few years older. The ceremony was merely to secure the alliance; for the young countess returned to her home and her embroidery, and the earl to the university. Four years after, he went to claim the bride whose image had doubtless oftentimes stolen between him and his books; "but (says the chronicle) his joy was overcast: he found her cold and contemptuous, and altogether averse to him."

A change had come over the lady. She had met her evil genius in the unprincipled favorite of King James, the Lord Rochester, who on his side was vain of his conquest. At this point Lady Frances is an object of pity; for she was the victim of a usage of courts which makes and mars the most solemn of all contracts without the least regard to individual bias; a usage which is responsible for some of the blackest crimes of history; but, O woman! from thy first steps downward how rapid is the descent; wandering thoughts, folly--crime! Such was the story of Lady Frances. Pity changes to horror at her subsequent career, and the unscrupulous vindictiveness which she displayed toward all those who strove to arrest her course. Most conspicuous among such was Sir Thomas Overbury, the bosom friend of Lord Rochester himself. He had more than once aided their meetings, and--so said gossip--had even penned the epistles which won her; but he became alarmed at the length to which their ventures were carried; and when the next step proposed was a divorce from the Earl Essex, he gave Rochester much good advice and solemn warning that he withdrew his aid in future. This was reported to the countess, and his doom was sealed. She failed in several attempts to involve him in individual disputes, whereby, as she hoped, a duel might have closed his life; she failed in having him sent in a public capacity abroad; she succeeded, however, in having him implicated in disloyalty and committed to the Tower, when shortly after he suddenly died. A divorce was now sought on some trifling pretext; and as no remonstrance was offered by Earl Essex, it was soon obtained; and in order that she might not lose rank, King James created Rochester Earl of Somerset.

And now, with nothing to mar their felicities, London was ablaze with bonfires over their marriage celebration.

"The glorious days were seconded by as glorious nights, when masques and dances had a continual motion; the king affecting such high-flying festivities and banqueting as might wrap up his spirit and keep it from earthly things.... Upon the Wednesday following was another grand masque, got up by the gentlemen of Prince Charles's household; and this so far surpassed the other, that the king caused it to be acted again. Then, January 4th, the bride and bridegroom with a crowd of nobles were invited to a treat in the city, where my lord mayor and aldermen entertained them in scarlet gowns. After supper was a wassail, a play, and a dance.... At three in the morning, they returned to Whitehall. On Twelfth-day the gentlemen of Grey's Inn invited the bride and bridegroom to masque." (Roger Coke.)

A brilliant triumph, soon to meet with a dark reverse. Scarcely a year had passed, when a new candidate for the king's favor appeared in Villiers, afterward created Duke of Buckingham; and the weak monarch, readily attracted by a new face, was very soon anxious to rid himself of Somerset. Enemies of the still beautiful countess were not slow to avail themselves of the royal mood; nor was it difficult to find in her questionable career a pretext for suspicion. With consent of the king, they were conjointly accused of having caused the death of Sir Thomas Overbury by poison, and sent to the Tower. It is recorded that Earl Somerset was hunting with the king at Royston, and actually sitting beside him when the warrant was served; and when he appealed to his royal master to forbid the indignity, King James only answered,

"An' ye _must_ go, mon; for if Coke sent for _me_, I must go."

After the examination of some three hundred witnesses, Sir Edward Coke reported that the countess had used unlawful arts to separate herself from Earl Essex, and to win the love of Rochester, and that they had together plotted the death of Sir Thomas Overbury. Some of the inferior actors in the tragedy were condemned and executed; among them Mrs. Turner, who had in former years been governess to the countess, and who had once persuaded her to consult a wizard or fortune-teller--from whence came the charge of "unlawful arts." The unhappy principals were repeatedly questioned, and exhorted to confess; but with no avail. The countess at times made some admissions, but none which implicated the earl or seriously convicted herself; and we are fain to believe they arose rather from her unmitigated misery, and the harassing importunities of her judges, than from conscious guilt. They were at length restored to liberty--at least to the liberty of banishment from court; liberty to return to their country-seat and remain there; and there, a writer of that day tells us, "they lived in the same house many years without exchanging a word with each other."

King James seems to have devoted no small portion of his time to advancing the interests of Cupid--if love it could be called, where love there was none. Sir Edward Coke had himself an only daughter, whom the king assigned to Viscount Purbeck, brother of the Duke of Buckingham. The wife of Coke, Lady Hatton, was a very Xantippe; and the eloquence of the great jurist, which could sway multitudes, and check or change the course of political events, was totally powerless within the walls of his own castle. Lady Hatton wisely opposed this match, to which her daughter was averse; but in this case the king as well as Sir Edward had decided, and for once she was obliged to yield; "the king doing the matter (says an old writer) as if the safety of the nation depended on its completion." Lady Hatton had one retaliation within her reach, and she took it; she gave orders that at the wedding "neither Sir Edward Coke nor any of his servants be admitted."[46]

How fared at last the hapless Lady Purbeck, the heiress of thousands and thousands? She had the misery to see the husband _not_ of her choice become in a short time hopelessly insane; while his brother, under pretence of looking after his affairs, left her, at times, almost penniless. Her letters to this unprincipled miscreant, written oftentimes under bodily as well as mental suffering, are truly touching. In one of them she says,

"Think not to send me again to my mother. I will beg my bread in the streets, to all your dishonors, rather than more trouble my friends." (Letter in the Caballa.)

Such were the tales of wretchedness within the precincts of a court.

III.

The career of King James and his son after the insolent and unscrupulous Buckingham appeared to lead or drive them, as the case might be, seems scarcely the actual history of sane men. When the downfall of Somerset left him supreme master, he seems to have taken possession of both king and palace. He soon sent for his kindred from all parts of the country; and their arrival is thus described:

"... the old countess, his mother, providing a place for them to learn to carry themselves in a court-like garb. He desired to match them with wives and husbands, inasmuch as his very female kindred were enough to stock a plantation. So that King James, who in former times so hated women, had his lodgings replenished with them; ... little children did run up and down the king's lodgings like little rabbits; ... for the kindred had all the houses about Whitehall, like bulwarks and flankers to a citadel." (Weldon.) #/

The most amusing event--or rather the most amusing absurdity in the annals of that period, or one might say of any other period--was the expedition of Prince Charles to Spain, in 1623, to bring home a wife.

Lord Bristol was at the court of Philip IV., negotiating a marriage between the infanta, his sister, and Prince Charles, and endeavoring to secure for him her magnificent dower; when Buckingham, thinking he was gaining too much credit by his labors, felt desirous of going himself to the spot and taking a part in the matter.

How was this to be accomplished? His wits never failed him. He approached Charles with a general lamentation over royal marriages, where the parties meet first at the altar--too late to retreat--and suggested to him the advantages and romance of presenting himself in person to the infanta, and bringing her home a bride. Charles was charmed with the quixotic notion, and they adjourned to the palace to obtain the king's consent. He at first flatly refused; then consented. The next day he fell into a passion of tears, and prayed to be released from his promise; for he feared the dangers of the journey, and the false reports and suspicions it might give rise to among his subjects. Charles was persuasive, the duke indignant and insolent, and once more the king told them to go. In the words of a historian--

... "So he said he would send Sir Francis Cottington and Endymion Porter with them; and he called Cottington in and told him that baby Charles and Stenie (as he always called them) had a mind to go to Spain and bring the infanta; and Cottington being pressed to speak of it, said it was both unsafe and unwise; whereupon the king wept again, and said, 'I told you so! I told you so!' Then Buckingham abused them all."

After another storm of words, it was decided that they should go in disguise, with only these two attendants. Their incognito was very poorly carried out; for at Gravesend they were suspected by giving gold coin, and at Canterbury they would have been arrested, had not Buckingham taken off his false wig and privately made himself known to the mayor. Finally they reached Dover, where they found Cottington, who had gone on before, in readiness with a vessel, and they set sail for the French coast.

In Paris, a Scottish nobleman who had somehow received intimation of their being there, called late one night on the English ambassador, and asked if he had seen the prince. "What prince?" "Prince Charles," was the reply; but it was too incredible for belief. Yet while in Paris, although not considering it worth their while to visit the British ambassador, they contrived to gain admission, without being recognized, to a court dancing-party, where Charles saw for the first time the fascinating Princess Henrietta.[47]

The consternation in England when their departure, so unbefitting royalty, was discovered, can scarcely be imagined. The king ordered prayers to be offered for their safe return; but no allusion made to their destination. A gentleman of that day, named Meade, writing to a friend, tells this story:

"The Bishop of London, you know, gave orders, as from the king, that they pray for the safe return of the prince to us; and no more. An honest, plain preacher here prayed 'that God would return our noble prince to us, and no more!' thinking it all a piece of the prayer."

Meanwhile these two knights-errant, or, as the king said, "sweet boys and dear venturous knights, worthy to be put in a new romanzo,"[48] continued their journey. At last, at the close of an evening in March, two mules stopped at the house of my Lord Bristol in Madrid, and the riders alighted. _Mr. Thomas Smith_ went in first with a portmanteau under his arm--then _Mr. John Smith_ was called in; and before the amazed diplomatist stood the heir to the British crown and the Marquis of Buckingham. He stared as if he had seen two ghosts; but he presently took Prince Charles to a bed-chamber, and dispatched a courier to inform his father of his safe arrival.

The Spanish court took the matter in its most chivalrous light, as the impulse of a lover; although rather puzzled how to arrange a reception in a case which certainly had no precedent. The Spanish people were enthusiastic. The infanta blushed charmingly at such unheard-of homage, and began to study English. King James sent over a troop of courtiers for a retinue, who proved a rough set--"jeering at the cookery and the religion, and making themselves odious."[49] The Spanish prime minister was soon disgusted with Buckingham, and would have been still more so if he could have understood all his swearing words--"which fortunately he cannot, (says a contemporary,) because they are done in English."

The letters which passed between this precious couple and the king at home are amusing. A want of money was his majesty's normal condition; and the pitiless way in which they seemed to ignore it, by making constant requisitions on his purse, is surprising and amusing effrontery. Prince Charles writes,

"I confess you have sent me more jewels than I'd have use for but here, seeing so many. Some that you have appointed me to give the infanta, in Stenie's opinion and mine are not fit for her. I pray your majesty send more for my own wearing." #/

Then Buckingham defines more precisely their necessities.

"Though your baby himself hath sent word what needs he hath, yet will I give my poor and saucy opinion what will be fittest to send. Sire, he hath neither chain, or hat-band; and pray you consider how rich they are here, and since your chiefest jewel is here, your son, I pray you let loose these after him. First, your best hat-band of the Portugal diamond, and the rest of the pendants to make up a necklace to give his mistress. Also the best rope of pearls, with a rich chain or two for himself, and some other jewels, not to deserve that name, that will serve for presents and save your purse. They never had so great occasion to get out of their boxes as now."

King James found consolation in believing that they would soon return with the infanta and her dower; so he strove his best to supply them, and touched on smaller matters. He besought baby Charles and Stenie not to forget their dancing, though they

"should whistle or sing, one for the other, for the lack of better music; ... but you must be as sparing as you can in your spending, for your officers are put to the height of their speed.... I pray you, my baby, take care of being hurt if you run at tilt." (Letters in Ellis Collec.)

Difficult as it was for the king to satisfy their pecuniary demands, and desirous though he was to act on Prince Charles's frequent suggestion, to "consult no counsel, but leave all to Stenie and me," he received from them some proposals which rather exceeded his powers of acceptance; one of which was nothing less than that, to please Spain, he should acknowledge the pope's spiritual supremacy![50] Probably at this point some little vision of the people of England flitted over him; for he replied that he had made a great many concessions already, and added--

"Now, I cannot change my religion as a man changes his shirt at tennis."

The end of their expedition, and of the negotiations with Spain, are well known. After meeting the most honorable hospitality, they raised objections which they never intended to have removed, and made promises which they never meant to fulfil; and returned home without the infanta, and without her dower, to reject with insult the Spanish alliance and lay the blame on Spain.

King James died like any common mortal, in the most literal acceptation of the phrase. The same slight cold passing into mortal sickness, the household called up in alarm at day-dawn, the same hugging on to the dear old life. The countess, mother of Buckingham, "ran with a draught and a posset;" he took the draught and applied the posset, but it was too late--and the prince, as Charles I., succeeded him.

Charles had married the sister of the French king, the Princess Henrietta, whose dancing had captivated his youthful fancy on his way to Spain; but some little discord and confusion had crept into the music and dancing of their English home. He had promised religious freedom for herself and her household. Her retinue was very numerous, and, with different religious creeds and widely different social habits, it is not surprising that year by year a sort of estrangement seemed to grow up between them. His majesty ascribed this to foreign influence; and he resolved to rule his own household, and in that very expressive phrase--_make a clean sweep_.

"One fine afternoon the king went unannounced to the queen's side of the house, and finding some Frenchmen dancing and curvetting in her presence, took her hand and led her to his own lodgings; ... then my Lord Conway called forth the French bishop and others, and told them the king's pleasure was that all her majesty's servants of that nation, men and women, old and young, with three or four exceptions, should depart the kingdom. The bishop stood on, that he could not go unless the king his master commanded; but he was told the king his master had nothing to do in England.... The women howled and wept as if they were going to execution; but it did no good, they were thrust out and the doors locked."[51]

Buckingham was charged with their transportation and shipping at Dover; and his master wrote--

"Stick not long in disputing with them, Stenie; but drive them away like wild beasts--and the devil go with them."

But an ambassador was dispatched to the French court with explanations.

The civil wars which desolated the kingdom under Charles I., and stained the soil of England with English blood, are familiar to all. Buckingham fell by the knife of an assassin. Whether sadly unwise or fearfully criminal, the king expiated his mistakes with his life. He was seized and imprisoned; and after a trial condemned and executed. His queen, Henrietta, with her children, all except one, were in France for safety. His little daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, was in England, and at his request was conducted to him the last evening of his life. Then, says Whitlock,

"it was sad to see him--he took the princess in his arms and kissed her, and gave her two diamonds; and there was great weeping."

There is preserved, in several collections of old poetry, a long and pathetic elegy, written by King Charles at Carisbrook Castle, where he was imprisoned; it is entitled, _An Imploration to the King of Kings_, and he sadly says therein--

"The fiercest furies that do daily tread Upon my grief, my gray, discrowned head, Are those that owe my bounty for their bread.

But sacred Saviour! with thy words I woo Thee to forgive, and not be bitter to Such as thou knowest do not know what they do."

The _Commonwealth of England_, whose first grand state seal dated 1648, came virtually to its end at the death of its founder in 1658; and a few years later Charles II. was called from exile to the throne of his fathers.

He is called the _merrie_ monarch; but very far from _merrie_ was the nation under his rule--dissensions and discontent pervaded it in every direction. The truth is, that the prominence given in brief histories to this epithet, the madcap frolics of his court, the witty and unprincipled nobles, and the uncommon array of female beauty which made up the surroundings of his own indolence and love of pleasure, lead to a sort of general idea that all England was one grand carousal. A nearer view changes the scene. The religious contests between conformists and non-conformists, which began in 1662 and lasted some twenty-six years--the fruitful harvest planted in preceding years of anarchy and fanaticism--present pictures of persecution and suffering such as enter only into religious warfare; and which, perhaps, it is most charity to refer to the importance which the opposing parties attach to their subject. During these twenty-six years it is computed that the penalties which were inflicted amounted to between twelve and fourteen millions sterling, and the sufferers for conscience' sake numbered 60,000. Homeless, and hungry, and penniless, they wandered about or were immured in jails; and contemporary writers (Defoe, Penn) assert that from 5000 to 8000 perished "like sheep, in those noisome pest-houses." Surely that was not the day of _merrie_ old England, beyond the precincts of the court.

Charles was succeeded by his brother, James II., who was soon deposed, and William, Prince of Orange, who had married his daughter Mary, was invited to the throne. Next to these came another daughter of James, Queen Anne; and with her expired the line of the Stuarts. The dark fortunes of Mary Stuart rested in some form on all her descendants.

IV.

In what quiet library, in what lordly mansion, was this old book safely stored away through all these changing scenes of pageantry and splendor, of riot and bloodshed? Who was he that first received it, new and comely, from the hands of _William Stanly, printer_, (who is saved to fame in a little corner of the title-page,) and what name is this, written on the margin in ink, embrowned now and almost obliterated, which evidently was once intended to establish ownership? The dedication to my Lord of Ellismere bespeaks for it a place with the noble and learned; who among them found time then to seek

"how to liue wel and how to die wel, from our Seneca--whose diuine sentences, wholesom counsailes, serious exclamations against vices, in being but a heathen, may make us ashamed being Christians." (Translator's preface.)

What statesman, by lamplight perhaps, when the toils of the day were over, turned these very pages, and drew a rule for his steps from the maxims of the Roman? Hadst thou but a tongue, old book, what tales thou mightest tell! Where wert thou when that pestilence, the plague, swept from London 100,000 of its inhabitants? or where when its career was checked by that other horror, the great conflagration? when the bells from a hundred steeples tolled their own requiem, and the number of houses in London was diminished by 13,000.

One hundred years had passed over it when George I. ascended the English throne; then came Georges II., III., and IV., King William and Queen Victoria. Under the two first, no small portion of the troubles, both at home and with foreign nations, were traceable to the plots and intrigues of the last solitary scion of the house of Stuart; and with George III. a new war boomed over the Atlantic. At last it was finished; and at the somewhat mature age of two hundred and fifty-six years, but still in good condition, our time-honored volume has crossed the ocean to find a new home under the stripes and stars. One more exponent, in its silent eloquence, of that

"Vitæ summa brevis"

which the Roman poet warns us is not to be counted on.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] Letters in Sir Henry Ellis's Collec.

[45] Letter of Lascelles to Earl Shrewsbury.

[46] Stratford.

[47] Wotton Reliq. (Sir Henry Wotton, once secretary to Raleigh.)

[48] Ellis Collec.

[49] Howell.

[50] Hardwicke State Papers.

[51] Letter of John Porry in Ellis Col.

THE VATICAN COUNCIL.

NUMBER FOUR.

Another month of the Vatican Council has passed by without any public session. There has not been a general congregation since February 22d, when the twenty-ninth was held. This absence of grand public ceremonials has driven some of the newspaper correspondents to turn elsewhere in search of sensational items. We are no longer inundated, and at times amused, by column after column of newspaper accounts narrating speeches and events in the council that had scarcely any existence, except in the fertile imaginations of the writers. The outward calm in Rome has produced its effect in no small extent in the newspaper world.

This calm, however, is by no means the calm of inaction. Quite the contrary. At no time were the fathers so assiduously engaged in the deep study of the matters before them, or more earnestly occupied with their conciliar labors.

We stated in our last number that they were then engaged in the discussion of the subjects of discipline, on which several _schemata_, or draughts, had been drawn up by preparatory committees of theologians, in anticipation of the council. The discussion was continued, on February 19th, with six speakers, on the 21st with seven speakers, and was closed on the 22d with seven other speakers, when the fourth _schema_, or draught, on discipline, was referred, as the preceding ones had been, to the appropriate committee or _deputation_ on matters of discipline.

Thus, within two months, since the congregation of December 28th, when the discussion began, one _schema_ on faith and four on discipline had come up before the bishops; and there had been in all one hundred and forty-five speeches delivered on them. The experience of those two months had made several points very clear:

First, the _schemata_, or draughts, as prepared by the theologians, did not prove as acceptable to the bishops as perhaps their authors had expected. On the contrary, the bishops subjected them to a very searching examination and discussion, criticising and weighing every point and every expression; and seemed disposed, in measure, to recast some of them entirely.

Secondly, the mode in which this examination had so far been conducted might, it was thought, be improved, both in its thoroughness and in the length of time it occupied. So far, all the prelates who wished had spoken one after another. The sittings of the congregations usually lasted from nine A.M. to one P.M., and became a great trial of the physical endurance of many of these aged men. The prelates could not refrain from asking each other, What progress are we making? How long will this series of speeches last?

Again, many of the speakers, unwilling to occupy the attention of the congregation too long, strove to condense what they wished to say, and sometimes omitted much that might have thrown additional light on the subject, or would be material for the support of their views. Yet how could this be avoided without extending the discussion beyond the limits of endurance.

Still more, many prelates, whose mature and experienced judgments would have been most valuable, would not speak; some, because they were unwilling to increase the already large number of speakers; others, because their organs of speech were too feeble to assure their being heard throughout a hall which held over a thousand persons in by no means crowded seats.

These points had gradually made themselves manifest, and, as we intimated in our last article, the question had been raised, how these difficulties could be met. Some suggested a division of the prelates into a number of sections, in each and all of which the discussions might go on at the same time. But, after much consideration, another method was resolved on, and was announced in the congregation of the 22d of February as the one to be followed in the examination and discussion of the next _schema_, or draught, to be taken up by the council.

The main points of these additional regulations are the following: When a _schema_ comes before the council for examination, instead of the _vivâ voce_ discussion, which according to the first system would take place in the congregations, before sending it to the proper committee, if necessary, the cardinals presiding shall fix and announce a suitable time, within which any and every one of the fathers, who desires to do so, may commit his views on it to writing, and shall send in the same to the secretary of the council. Any amendments, additions, and corrections which he may wish to make must be fully and clearly written out. The secretary must, at the end of the appointed time, transmit to the appropriate committee, or _deputation_ of bishops, all the remarks on the _schema_. The _schema_ will be examined and remodelled, if necessary, by the committee, under the light of these written statements, precisely as would be done if the members had before them the full report of speeches made in the former style before the congregation. The reformed _schema_ is again presented to the congregation, and with it a summary exposition of the substance of the remarks and of the amendments proposed. "When the _schema_, together with the aforesaid summary, has been distributed to the fathers of the council, the said presidents shall appoint a day for its discussion in general congregation." In parliamentary usage, this corresponds to having the discussion, not on the first, but on the second reading of a bill.

This discussion must proceed in the strict order of topics, first generally; that is, on the _schema_ wholly or in part, as it may have been brought before the congregation; then on the several portions of it, one by one. The speakers who wish to take part in the discussion must, in giving in their names as before, state also whether they intend to speak on the _schema_ as a whole, or on some special parts of it, and which ones. The form of amendment, should a speaker propose one, must be handed in, in writing, at the conclusion of his speech. Of course, the speakers must keep to the point in debate. If any one wanders from it, he will be called to order. The members of the reporting committee or deputation will, moreover, be free to speak in reply, during the debate, as they judge it advisable.

The last four of these by-laws are the following:

XI. "If the discussion be unreasonably protracted, after the subject has been sufficiently debated, the cardinals presiding, on the written request of at least ten bishops, shall be at liberty to put the question to the fathers whether the discussion shall continue. The fathers shall vote by rising or retaining their seats; and if a majority of the fathers present so decide, they shall close the discussion.

XII. "When the discussion on one part of a _schema_ is closed, and before proceeding to another, the presiding cardinals shall take the votes of the general congregation, first on the amendments proposed during the discussion itself, and then on the whole context of the part under consideration.

XIII. "The votes, both as to the amendments and as to the context of such part, will be given by the fathers in the following mode: First, the cardinals presiding shall require those who assent to the amendment or text to rise; then, by a second call, shall require those who dissent to rise in their turn; and after the votes have been counted, the decision of the majority of the fathers will be recorded.

XIV. "When all the several parts of a _schema_ have been voted on in this mode, the cardinals presiding shall take the judgment of the fathers on the entire _schema_ under examination as a whole. These votes shall be given _vivâ voce_, by the words, PLACET or NON PLACET. But those who think it necessary to add any condition shall give their votes in writing."

It is already evident that the first provision of these by-laws or regulations is attaining its purpose. At the congregation of February 22d, when they went into force, a certain portion of a new _schema_, or draught, on matters of faith, was announced as the next matter regularly coming up for examination, and the space of ten days was assigned within which the fathers might write out their criticisms, and propose any emendations or amendments to it, and send such written opinions to the secretary. There was no limit to hamper the bishops in the fullest expression of their sentiments. They might write briefly, or at as great length as they deemed proper. Moreover, in writing, they would naturally be more exact and careful than perhaps they could be in speeches often made extempore. There would also be less liability of being misunderstood. Moreover, many more could and probably would write than would have spoken. It is said over one hundred and fifty did so write on this first occasion; so that, in reality, as much was done in those ten days as under the old system would have occupied two months. The second portion, touching the debate before the congregation, will of course be effective and satisfactory. And it is confidently hoped that the third portion, as to the mode of closing the debate and taking the vote, will, when the time comes for testing it, be found equally satisfactory.

In our previous numbers we have avoided falling into the very error of the correspondents which we have repeatedly blamed; we have not pretended to have succeeded in getting a glimpse behind the curtain which veils the council, and so to have qualified ourselves to speak without reserve of the matters treated by the fathers in their private debates. Even had circumstances brought some knowledge of this to us, it would be under obligations which would effectually prevent our touching on it in these articles. But we can be under no such obligation in regard to questions which, if we are correctly informed, have not come, at least up to the present time, before the congregations of the council. There is one such question which excites universal attention, perhaps we should rather say universal talk, outside the council--the infallibility of the pope. It has become in Europe the question of the day. Books have been written on it, pamphlets discussing it are issued every week, and England, France, Germany, and Spain have been deluged with newspaper articles upholding it or attacking it--articles written with every possible shade of learning and of ignorance, and in every degree of temper, from the best to the worst. The articles are what might be expected when the writers are of every class, from erudite theologians down to penny-a-liners, and when, if some are good and sincere Catholics, many are by no means such. Protestants have written on it, some in favor of the doctrine (!), most of them against it. The bitterest and most unfair articles, however, have been and are those written by the political opponents of the church; though how this precise question can come into politics, any more than the existence of religion, the divinity of the Saviour, the infallibility of the church, or any other point of doctrine, we cannot see. But in Europe, if religion does not go into politics, politics, or at least politicians and political writers, have no scruples in going into religious matters. In fact, the most advanced party of "_progress, and enlightenment, and liberty_" proclaim that there should be no religion at all, that it narrows the intellect by hampering freedom of thought, and enslaves man by forbidding him to do much that he desires; and as they think mankind should, on the contrary, be free from all its trammels; and as they hold it to be their special mission to effect this liberation, they systematically omit no occasion of attacking religion. For them, one point is as good as another; the infallibility of the pope will do as well as the discovery that a crazy nun, subject to furious mania, was confined in a room so small that the sides of it only measured twenty feet one way and twenty-three the other, and so low that one had to stand on a step to reach the window. Any thing will serve this class of writers. And, unfortunately for religious news, much of what appears in the press of Europe, and must gradually be infused, in part at least, into the press in the United States, is from such pens, and is imbued or is tinged with their spirit.

We would not do justice to Rome and the council if we omitted to mention a very interesting event with which the council is connected, if only as the occasion. We mean the Roman Exposition of Arts, as applied to religious purposes. It was opened by the pope three weeks ago.

The traveller arriving in Rome by the railway cannot fail to be struck with wonder at the view which opens before him the instant he steps out of the door of the central station. Just across the square, huge dark masses of rough masonry rise before him. Some are only twenty or thirty feet high, and their tops are covered with the herbage or bushes that grow on the soil, wafted thither by the winds of centuries. Others are still higher, and are connected by walls equally old, some broken, some nearly entire. Here and there immense arches of masonry, a hundred feet high in the air, still span the space from pier to pier, and bear a fringe of green herbage. Every thing tells you of the immensity of the building, or group of buildings which men erected here in ages long gone by. But even still, as you see, portions of these walls and arches are used. Not every pier is a mere isolated ruin; not under every arch can you look and see through it a broad expanse of blue Italian sky. Modern walls are joined to these piers; the ancient walls too are turned to account; irregular roofs, some high, some low, come against them. Here, through the high openings in the original wall, men are busy taking in or delivering bundles of hay from the store-house they have constructed. There, through doorways and windows of more modern shape, you see that another portion is made to serve as barracks for soldiers. Other buildings stretch away northward and westward, schools, orphanages, and a reformatory, as you see by their various inscriptions. But though of more recent date, they have not lost all connection with the ruins; for the ground all along shows traces of the original constructions in the fragments of broken columns and in patches of the ancient masonry, which between and beyond them continues ever and anon to rise in outlying masses. But in the centre, where the strong masonry rises higher than elsewhere and is best preserved, there spreads a wide roof surmounted by crosses at the gables. To the eastward, the ruins seem to die away in a long and not very high line of buildings, evidently cared for and inhabited. The walls are covered with plaster, and the windows are glazed, and protected by shutters. Over the ridge of the roof you may see the lofty summits of some cedars that are growing in a court-yard or garden within.

These are the mighty remnants of the Baths of Diocletian, commenced by that emperor in the year 302. Built at the period when Rome was at the zenith of her wealth and luxury, it far exceeded all other buildings of its class in the seven-hilled city, both in vastness and in grandeur. It was undertaken in a time of the most cruel persecution of the church, and the Christians who were condemned to imprisonment and hard labor, because they would not deny their Lord, were brought here day after day from many a prison, and fettered like convicts, and were made to labor in erecting this pile devoted to pride, and luxury, and debauchery. Many an account of the martyr Christians of that age tells of old and young men and women, condemned for their faith, and sent to die here a lingering death of martyrdom. Many a soul passed from this spot straight to heaven. For who hath greater love than he who giveth his life for his friend? Many a prayer of Christian faith, of holy resignation, of ardent hope of a better life, was here uttered day after day, and hour after hour, all the years the work lasted. The antiquarian still finds here and there the bricks which believing hands marked with a cross, the outward expression of the prayer of their hearts, offering their labors and sufferings, endured for his sake, to Him who for their sakes labored and suffered on the cross. It is estimated that more than forty thousand Christians toiled at the work. It was in these ruins, if we mistake not, that was found one of the marble tablets inscribed with an encomium of Diocletian, for having purged the world of that vile and hateful superstition called Christianity.

In this vast pile of buildings, thirteen hundred feet from east to west, and twelve hundred from north to south, there were halls, court-yards surrounded by ample porticoes, pools for swimmers, thousands of baths, libraries, galleries of painting and sculpture, portions set aside for philosophic discussion, other portions for gymnastic exercises and games, and every thing that Roman luxury or Roman debauchery called for, and Roman wealth could provide.

The first dismantling and partial destruction of the buildings seems to have occurred when Alaric sacked Rome. Yet even a century later portions of them were still used for the original purpose as baths.

It is needless to say how they suffered still more, by alternate violence and neglect, for many centuries afterward. Often it was occupied by soldiers as a stronghold, and it suffered at their hands, as by alterations here and there they strove to make the place more defensible. Often it was assailed and taken, and then suffered still more, as whatever could be was toppled over in anger. And when the soldiers left it quiet, rain and winds and storms continued the work of destruction. In the sixteenth century all this property was owned by Saint Charles Borromeo. He gave it to the pope, Pius IV., who determined to construct a church, if possible, in the midst of these ruins, and so put them under the guardianship of that very religion which gave so many martyrs toward their construction. The pontiff committed the task to Michael Angelo, who executed it in a manner which won an admiration next to that gained by his great work at St. Peter's.

Amid the ruins there stood a vast hall, three hundred and twenty-five feet long and sixty feet broad. Its massive walls were perfect, and the vast arch of masonry that covered it, at the height of over one hundred feet, though weakened by the exposure of centuries, still stood unbroken. The Caldarium stood near by on one side, and the old natatio, or swimming room, joined it on the other. Both still preserved their vaulted roofs. Michael Angelo united them, and, preserving the walls and the massive monolith columns of red Egyptian granite, which were all standing, skilfully produced a noble church in the form of a Greek cross, which is known as St. Mary of the Angels. One loves to pass an hour in that vast, quiet, and attractive church, under the olden arch, now protected from the weather by an additional tiled roof, viewing the exquisite statues of saints, and the masterpieces of painting, the originals, some of them, of the mosaics over the altars of St. Peter's, or listening to the Cistercian monks who serve the church as they slowly and reverently chant the divine office at their stated hours of day and night.

On the eastern side, toward the Pretorian Camp, war had done its most destructive work. Here Michael Angelo found the ruins so entirely beaten down that most of the space had been devoted to gardens, though encumbered indeed by sundry picturesque mounds of masonry. Here, using the materials at hand so far as they would serve, he erected a monastery for the Cistercians, a plain quadrangular building, inclosing an open space about four hundred feet square. To each side of this the building presents a portico, or arcade, which thus forms a cloister, supported by twenty-five columns of travertine. No work of that great architect and artist exceeds this cloister in its simplicity, and the exquisite beauty of form and proportion in all its parts. In the centre of the yard is a majestic, ever-flowing fountain, throwing its stream of water aloft. This falls into an ample marble reservoir beneath, whose waters ripple and sparkle in the sunlight as the gold-fish are darting to and fro into the shade of water-lilies or out to court the beams of the sun. By this basin the architect planted with his own hand four young cedars, which throve apace. Three of them are still standing, historic trees. Two are strong and vigorous, though three centuries old; a third is in the decrepitude of old age, shattered and broken by the winds, but still bravely struggling to the last to raise its topmost branches upward toward heaven. The fourth perished some years ago, and has been replaced by another, younger one, which a good Cistercian, they say, obtained by securing in time and carefully nursing a young shoot of the old tree itself.

Around the cloister are the cells of the brethren. They seem to have a curious fancy of fastening placards on their doors. You can see half a dozen of them of different sizes. On some doors the sheet of paper is apparently fresh and clean, and is still securely fastened by four tacks, or by wafers under the corners. On other doors some of the tacks have fallen out, or the wafers have lost their hold, and the paper hangs dangling by a single corner. The winds have blown it until it is torn. The rain has moistened and caused it to curl. The upper portion hangs loosely over, half hiding the writing on it. You approach and stretch out your hand to lift it up, that you may read what a Cistercian had placarded on the door of his cell. It is all a delusion! There is no paper! Some painter, quitting the world, retreated to this community. In its quietude and silence, and in its penitential life, he found again peace and tranquillity of soul, and the gayety of his youth came back to him. He took a boyish pleasure in playing this clever artistic practical joke on the strangers whom curiosity, or other motives, from time to time, brought to look at the interior of a Carthusian monastery. He died peacefully and piously years ago, but the brethren have not ceased to enjoy the joke he perpetrated.

What a practical lesson of the power with which God rules the world! In this spot where a cruel and sanguinary emperor persecuted and martyred Christians by the thousands, and boasted that he had exterminated the Christian church, the ruins of his vast work owe their preservation to the sacred power of a Christian church. Where luxury, and the pride of the world, and every form of sensuality were wont to seek their gratification, now meek and humble white-robed Cistercians who have renounced the world and its pomps and sins, and are vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience, work and study in silence, fast austerely, and make the hours of day and the hours of night holy by prayer and chanting of psalms. The heathen empire of Rome has passed away, but the church it tried to destroy lives in perpetual youth. Rome has lost her heathen power of ruling with the sword the bodies of men from the Pillars of Hercules. But through that very Christianity Rome has received and wields a far higher power than the sword could give. She guides the consciences and minds of men, not only through the provinces of her olden temporal empire, but beyond their limit, in lands where the eagle of a Roman legion was never raised, and in countries of whose existence the Roman emperors never dreamed. To the thoughtful mind the Cistercian monastery and the noble church of St. Mary of the Angels but typify the glory of Christian Rome, built amid the ruins of her olden heathen power.

The proposal, made originally by whom we know not, of opening an exposition of religious art at Rome during the sittings of the council, was immediately taken up with enthusiasm. His Holiness assigned the garden of this noble cloister as the best adapted site to be found in Rome, except at a large expense. The Cistercians withdrew temporarily to other buildings close by, and gave up their own beautiful place to architects and workmen. The cloister, or broad open arcade, which runs round the square garden was chosen to form the outer gallery or halls, altogether about twelve hundred feet long by twenty broad. Within this outer gallery, and just touching each side in the middle, is a series of sixteen rooms, all of the same size, and of the same irregular, or rather rhomboidal, shape, forming, as it were, a broad polygon of sixteen sides. Within this polygon is the central portion of the garden, still unoccupied, with its gravelled walks, its green sward, its rose-trees and flowering plants, its ever-gushing fountain, the ample basin receiving the water, the glistening gold-fish, and the majestic cedars of Michael Angelo. The arcade has, of course, its own covering. The sixteen rooms of the polygon are roofed with glass, to let in the flood of light, and a few feet below the glass is another roofing, or awning, to soften its intensity and to mitigate the heat of the direct rays of the sun. Large openings in the partition walls allow free passage from room to room, all around the polygon; and where it touches the arcade or outer halls, other doors allow you to pass to them, or by opposite doors you may pass out to walk in the garden.

The exposition was opened on the 17th of February by the pope himself, in the presence of the commission for the exposition, a number of cardinals, some three hundred of the bishops, and a large concourse of clergy and laity. He made an impromptu discourse, touching chiefly on the true progress which art has made under the inspiration of religion and the patronage of the church, and in illustration referred to some of those unrivalled works of religious painting and sculpture which are found in Rome.

Nothing could be more appropriate to the assembling of so many bishops and priests and pious laymen in Rome, drawn by the council, than this exposition. Go when you will, you will find many of all these classes spending hours in studying a collection of religious works of every kind, such as most of them have never seen. In size and extent this exposition cannot, of course, compare with those vast ones of London and Paris. They sought and received objects of every kind. This admits nothing that is not devoted to, or in some way connected with, religion. It would correspond, therefore, with one section of the Paris Exposition of 1867. Considered in this light, it does not, as a whole, fall below it; in several respects it is superior.

We have not the space now to enter into a detail of the many and multifarious objects offered for examination. Every art seems represented. For what is there that cannot be made to give glory to God? Still, we may glance at a few of the chief groups.

The exterior arcade is chiefly devoted to sculpture and paintings. Of the former there are here and elsewhere in the exhibition over two hundred and fifty pieces, in marble, in plaster, or metal, or wood. I do not count the hundreds of sweet little things in terra cotta, nor the many objects in ivory. Tadolini, Benzoni, Pettrich, and a hundred other artists from Rome, and other parts of Italy, Germany, and France, have sent the work of their chisels. As a whole, this group of subjects stands far higher in point of good art than was looked for. Some of the statues are of a high order. We may instance a group of heroic size by Tadolini, representing the Archangel Michael overcoming Lucifer, after the painting by Guido, and two life-size Madonnas by Pettrich, all of which, we understand, will be forwarded to the United States. There is in one of the French rooms a plaster copy of the statue of the holy Vianney, curate of the village of Ars, near Lyons, in France, who died a few years ago in the odor of sanctity, and who, the Catholics of France are confident, will in due time be canonized. He is robed in soutane, surplice, and stole, and is kneeling in prayer, his face turned upward toward heaven. I do not speak of the style and execution, which are good; but of the face, which attracts every one. It is said to be a perfect likeness. Thin, gaunt, with features sharp and exaggerated by the lack of flesh, rather ugly than otherwise, there is an expression of simplicity, of piety, of kindness, of earnestness, which makes it far more than beautiful, a face that grows in sweetness as you look on it. And yet study the individual features, forehead, eyebrows, nose, mouth, chin, cheek-bones, the chief lines and wrinkles. They are precisely the same as on the repulsive face of Voltaire! What different expressions were given to the same features by the calm piety, the love of God and our neighbor, the spiritual peace dwelling in the soul of the saintly priest, and the pride, and envy, and passions, and the bitter, hopeless or despairing unbelief of the apostle of evil.

As we examine these statues, so good in their execution and so truly religious in their type, one cannot but feel a regret that in the United States we are such strangers to the use of them in our churches and chapels and oratories. Here and there are found, indeed, casts in plaster of Paris, sometimes in _papier-maché_. But how few real works of merit in materials and in style! If the clergy who are at work building our churches, and some of the laymen who are seconding them in this work, could only see those statues of our Lord on the cross, or bearing the cross and sinking under its weight, or healing the blind, or blessing little children; or those sweet ones of the Mother and Divine Child, in various positions; or of the Blessed Virgin, of St. Joseph, of Saint Cecilia, Saint Agnes, and of so many other saints and groups representing religious subjects; surely among them, in marble, in iron, bronzed, silvered, gilt, or illuminated with polychrome, and such a variety in size and in cost, they would understand the void in our churches, and would each do his part to supply it.

Especially would this be the case with the stations of the way of the cross. No devotion is more tender and consoling, and at the same time none more strengthening to true piety and the practice of virtue, than this pilgrimage of faith, in which we accompany our Lord, and, as it were, stand by his side, during the several scenes of his sufferings down to his death on the cross and his burial. No devotion is more popular, because none better suited to the faithful of every condition and class. Would it not be well if the engravings of those different scenes, so often found--we had almost said, disfiguring the walls of our churches, could give way to some of those basso-relievos and alto-relievos of France, of Italy, and of Germany, such as we see here? The love of the beautiful and striking is innate in man. Even the child feels it; and in manhood, use and education but develop and increase the satisfaction it gives. While we smiled, we could not but sympathize in some measure with the Italian sculptor who, on his dying-bed, pushed away a crucifix which a pious attendant wished to place in his hands. "Not that, not that! it makes me angry," he said; "it is horrid! Give me the other one; it is well made. That will excite devotion." Let children be taught, in a way they will love, to think often, to know, to realize, even from their tenderest years, what the loving and merciful Saviour suffered for man. Lessons well learned at that tender and innocent age seldom fade from the mind and heart in after years. And no way of teaching that lesson is more effectual than the one we indicate.

There are more than five hundred paintings in the exposition. Of these perhaps two hundred are by the old masters, and have been placed here by their owners.

These embrace paintings by the divine Raffaele, as the Italians call him, Domenichino, Annibale Carracci, Correggio, Maratta, Carlo Dolce, Salvator Rosa, Murillo, Leonardo da Vinci, Guido Reni, Rubens, Vandyke, Ribeyra, Del Sarto, and a host of other old masters, Italian, German, Flemish, and Spanish, whom we need not name. There we may gaze with rapture on the excellence of art inspired by religious thought. It is a fact not to be overlooked or forgotten, in these days of irreligion, that the best paintings which the best artists ever painted were all produced when they brought their powers to represent a religious subject. In painting, and in other things too, he works best who works in the spirit of religion and the fear of God.

The larger number of the paintings are of later date, many of them by living artists. To our eye, certainly not trained to criticism, many of them appear worthy of high praise. But we believe the general verdict is not so favorable to them as to the statuary. Still, we must remember that here they have to compete side by side with those old paintings of the highest order. The contrast between their freshly laid colors and the colors of older paintings, toned down by age, if not somewhat faded, is so strong and striking that this very difference, often no real difference on the part of the painters, is set down as a defect to be censured. The portrait of the pope, by our American artist Healy, is undoubtedly the best likeness of the Holy Father in the exposition.

What we said of the statuary we may repeat with equal reason of religious paintings. How easy it would be to adorn our churches and chapels with these books of the eye, one glance at which often teaches more than a sermon. The artists at home capable of producing a religious painting worthy of being placed in a church are few, perhaps might be counted on one's fingers. European painters capable of giving an original ask such prices for their work as generally to put them as far beyond our means as if they were to be painted at home. Even at that, their conception and treatment of a subject will scarcely stand comparison with approved works of the best masters who have already treated the same subjects. But there is a large class of painters here who devote themselves to copying and reproducing those old paintings, on every scale as to size. The execution of many of them is good, and the prices for which the artists are willing to work seem very low. It is wonderful how much painting, and good painting, five hundred dollars well laid out in Rome will obtain. Several of our clerical friends, who have visited Rome this winter, carry back with them evidences of this fact.

Next to the paintings should come the stained glass, which is superb, and is offered at a price which seems really astonishing--about five dollars a square foot for the richest kind, with life-size figures.

The large windows, from several competing manufacturers, are so mounted that the light shines through them, and you can examine at full leisure and carefully the wondrous effects of united brilliancy and softness in these works of peculiarly Christian art. The art of painting on glass, which many, up to a recent period, thought entirely lost, has revived in this century, and seems fast approaching the perfection which it attained in the middle ages. There is one marked difference observable between the old windows and some of the work here. The ancients displayed their skill in combining together thousands of minute pieces of glass of different colors, so as to make up a picture in its proper colors and its lights and shadows. The modern artists have attempted the task of producing the picture on a single large sheet of glass. This would free it from the single defect almost unavoidable in this work--the stiffness of the figures. But the earlier attempts presented such variation in the perfections of the several colors used as to be failures, in point of that brilliancy and play of light which constitute the charm of this work. The source of the defect was to be found in the laws of nature, on which every work, and this work directly, depends. The general mode of procedure in which glass is colored is this: The subject is painted on the surface of a sheet of glass with metallic paints. The glass is placed in an oven and slowly and carefully raised to that point of heat at which it grows soft. The particles of metal constituting the colors sink into the glass and become portions of its substance. The difficulty was found to spring from the great difference in the rate and manner in which the colors would sink into the softened substance. What would give some colors perfectly, would leave others imperfect; and continuing the work until these were perfect, would often destroy the first. But patient study and careful work have overcome these difficulties to a degree which we did not expect. There are full-size figures here in stained glass rivalling those of the middle ages in brilliancy, and possessing the freedom of a painting on canvas.

The perfection of the Gobelins tapestry is almost incredible. A large canvas, twenty-five feet by ten, presents the Assumption by Titian, and near it is a life-size figure of our Lord in the tomb. It is a sermon but to look on the cold, rigid body of him who bore our transgressions. There are specimens of photography, some showing life-size figures, of oleography, lithography, chromo-lithography, engravings on copper, for which Rome cannot be excelled, on steel, and on wood. In many of these branches France and Germany rival, if they do not surpass Italy. But Rome stands unrivalled in mosaics, of which there are here exquisite specimens.

In architecture, we find plans of churches and colleges, very full and clear, but not striking; designs for the interior of chapels and sanctuaries, of a far higher order of art, several miniatures of churches; a fac-simile in white marble of the front of St. Peter's, and another in wood, on the scale of about one inch to ten feet, showing the entire exterior of the church front and dome in all its details, the colonnades, fountains, and square before it, and so constructed that it can be opened in several ways, in order to give an equally correct and minute view of the interior with all its ornamentation. You may recognize every painting and statue in the basilica. It took years of patient labor to make this model, and it is said to have been sold to an Italian prince for twenty thousand dollars. What a pity such a work should be shut up in some palace in the city where every one can go to the real St. Peter's. It should rather be sent to distant countries, where thousands, who will never go to Rome, might be able to obtain from it a far clearer conception than any books can give of the form and splendor of this great temple, which is deservedly the pride and the glory of the Christian world.

In music, there are organs with the latest and best improvements, harmoniums, Alexandre organs of various powers and many stops, and chimes and church-bells hung on a new patent system, by which a mere boy can swing easily and ring loudly a bell of nearly a ton weight. As for texts of church music, you may turn over the parchment leaves of huge folio graduals and antiphonaries, in which the good old monks of past ages wrote the Gregorian notes and the words so large and so clear as to be easily read in the choir, even at the distance of ten feet. There are later ones printed nearly as large, and collections of modern church music from Italy, Germany, and from France.

Ecclesiastical vestments abound in the exposition. Rome, Milan, and other cities of Italy are represented by the most celebrated of their manufacturers. France has sent a multitude from Paris, Lyons, Grenoble, Montpellier, Nismes, and elsewhere. Others have come from Germany and from Spain. Here are copes and chasubles, dalmatics, antipendiums, and veils, of the richest material and exquisite workmanship. You can examine the ample yet light and pliable vestments of Italy, the rich and stiffer ones of France, the narrow and scantier form of Austria, and the heavier ones from Spain, that ought never to wear out. In the matter of vestments you are taught a lesson of history. For here, carefully preserved in large glass wardrobes, are shown the vestments used six hundred and eight hundred years ago, if not a thousand years ago, in St. Peter's, in St. Mary Major's, in St. John Lateran's, and in the cathedral of Anagni.

The emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, as it was called, which sprung into existence in the ninth century, and died in the convulsions of Europe consequent on the French revolution, were bound to come, if circumstances allowed it, to Rome, to receive their royal consecration in St. Peter's at the hands of the pope. On such occasions, the emperor was admitted for that time into the sanctuary, wore a deacon's dalmatic, and chanted a gospel. Here you may look at the identical dalmatic which they wore a thousand years ago. It is of silk, and the figures which decorate it were worked with the needle, in gold thread. Near by are copes, and chasubles, and mitres faded and worn; which still give evidence of the art and care in making them, the richness of the materials used, and of the skill of the embroidery and painting which decorated them. What will the modern chasubles and copes around us, now so fresh and splendid, look like in A.D. 2500?

Church vessels of every class are equally abundant. Chalices, pixes, cruets, censers, incense-cups, crosses, crucifixes, ostensories, croziers, every thing that can be thought of, are here, often in their richest forms. There are chapelles for priests, and chapelles for bishops. Altar candlesticks and candelabra of every size and graceful form tempt you. Perhaps the most interesting in a scientific and also a pecuniary view, is the large collection of all those vessels made of bronze aluminium, of a light gold color, and not liable to tarnish. The weight is light, and the prices low.

There are altars of marble, of cast-iron, of bronze gilt, and of wood colored and illuminated, the last-named truly beautiful, and they would well replace some of those far more costly constructions sometimes to be met in our churches.

Altars lead us to candelabra, candlesticks, and chandeliers; and here they are displayed in every size, from an immense chandelier to be suspended in a church, of metal gilt, ornamented with angels and religious emblems, and bearing sixty-five lights, down to the tasteful bongie, or tiny candlestick which an acolyth holds in his hand when he attends a bishop at the altar. Altar candlesticks and candelabra seem a specialty with the French artists. The graceful curve of the outlines, the appropriateness and suggestiveness of the decoration, and the ease with which all these pieces may be combined to produce on the altar a whole simple and tasteful, or rich and splendid, can scarcely be conceived. They bring to their work the spirit of the children of Israel in the desert, offering their gold and jewels to Moses for the ornamentation of the tabernacle of the Most High. Man can never do too much to testify his homage and his loving obedience to God.

In Christian bibliography the chief Catholic publishers have done well. The polyglott press of the Propaganda exhibits many of its late publications; among others an accurate _fac-simile_ of the Codex Vaticanus of the Scriptures, and a volume containing the Lord's Prayer in two hundred and fifty languages, in the proper characters of each language, where it has any. The volume presents one hundred and eighty different forms of type. Salviucci, of Rome; Pustet, of Ratisbon; Dessain, of Malines, and many others exhibit well printed and richly bound copies of their chief publications. Vecco & Co., of Turin, show the eighteen volumes they have already printed of the new edition of the _Magnum Bullarium_. Victor Palmé, of Paris, displays an enormous line of folio volumes, the _Acta Sanctorum_ of the great Bollandists, the republication of which he has just finished in fifty-eight volumes. To this he adds his edition of the _Ideologia_, by the professors of Salamanca, his _Gallia Christiana_, his edition of _Annales Baronii_, and the introductory volume of a new edition of the _Collectio Maxima Conciliorum_, which he has just commenced.

It was sad not to find the veteran Migne here, and to think of that sad conflagration which consumed the work of a lifetime. He had undertaken, and after fifty years of steady persevering labor, was finishing the greatest bibliographical achievement of the publishers of this century. The twelve or thirteen hundred large volumes he had published in his collection, embracing all the fathers, Greek and Latin, ample courses of Scripture, theology, and canon law, encyclopædias, history, theologians, preachers, etc., would have presented the largest and most imposing array of volumes--almost a complete theological library in itself. Great as was his loss, that to the clergy was greater.

We mention last a collection which every visitor to the exposition hurries to see first, as most deserving of his attention, the collection of articles which the Holy Father himself directed should be sent here from the Sixtine Chapel: 1. The famous tiara presented to him by the Queen of Spain. The three crowns on it are of brilliants and pearls, the roses are rubies and emeralds, the ball on the summit is of rubies, and the cross above of diamonds. As a work of art, it is considered a _chef-d'œuvre_ of grace and elegance, and does honor to the artists of Spain. 2. A chalice of gold covered with brilliants and diamonds. These diamonds and brilliants were a present from Mehemet Ali. 3. A large golden ostensory, of Byzantine style, the rays of which are studded with brilliants, from the same donor. 4. A large processional cross of gold, the staff of silver gilt. The cross is of an elegantly flowering Gothic form, and is adorned with precious stones and enamel. It was made to order in France, and is a present from the Marquis of Bute. Chalices, mitres, vestments, cruets, an ancient MS. missal, exquisitely illuminated and richly bound, with many other objects, make up a large list of articles which His Holiness has sent to give additional interest to the exposition. Others have acted in the same spirit; and certainly, if the number, the richness, and the exquisite taste and elegance of the articles displayed can effect it, the exposition is a success. The attendance has been pretty fair, and as the governmental outlay has been but small, may prove remunerative. The exhibitors will certainly succeed in introducing their works to the religious world far more generally than they could have ordinarily looked for. And the visitors seem all satisfied that each repeated visit to the exposition is a renewed and increased pleasure. We may perhaps endeavor next month to be able to write more at length of the more prominent articles in the exposition, with reference to the needs of our American churches.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

AN ESSAY IN AID OF A GRAMMAR OF ASSENT. By John Henry Newman, D.D. 1 vol. 12mo. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1870.

It would be quite impossible without exceeding proper limits to give any thing more than an incomplete sketch of the plan of this able work; it must, of course, be read in full to be appreciated.

At the outset three states of mind are distinguished, assent, inference, and doubt, corresponding to the external actions of assertion, conclusion, and interrogation, though not necessarily accompanying them. The subject of the essay is, as its name implies, principally the first of these; doubt being merely alluded to, and inference treated in its relation to assent, and only that species being considered at length which is not strictly demonstrative. The various modes in which assent exists, and in which it is formed, are the first objects of examination.

The division made here of assent, and which recurs throughout the work, is into real and notional, the former relating to propositions whose terms, in the words of the author, "stand for things external to us, unit and individual," the latter "for what is abstract, general, and non-existing;" and this last is distinguished under the names of profession, credence, opinion, presumption, and speculation, which terms are necessarily used in senses somewhat different from those ordinarily attached to them.

The strength of real assents in comparison to notional ones is shown, and the difference in this point of view between assent and inference; the latter being clearest in purely abstract matters. Not but that assent is always unconditional or absolute; still, its material, when real, is so much more vividly apprehended that the assent elicited is much more energetic and operative. Thus also when notional assents become real, as they may in consequence of some special circumstances, their hold upon the mind and control upon action is much increased.

This subject is illustrated by a discussion of religious assents, with special reference to the being of God, and to the Holy Trinity; it is shown that the former truth, and the constituent parts of the latter, can be, and usually are, the objects of real assent, though the latter in its completeness or unity can only be notionally apprehended; and though the definition of the Divine Being may give only a notional idea. The implicit assent which unlearned Christians give to all the definitions of the church is also explained.

The absolute and unconditional character of assent is next treated, and it is shown that it has this character even when given without good grounds, or when those grounds are forgotten; and that it is not necessarily conceded to convincing proofs, and may disappear while the inference which led to it still remains. Without this character the act is not assent at all, or at least is only that notional form of it called by the author opinion, which he defines as assent to the probable truth of a proposition. The possibility and continual occurrence of full assent without intuition or demonstration is defended against those who, though really they have no doubt about some theoretically uncertain matters, yet "think it a duty to remind us that, since the full etiquette of logical requirements has not been satisfied, we must believe those truths at our peril."

The distinction is drawn between simple or unconscious assent and the conscious, reflex, or complex assent, as the author calls it, which, when the thing believed is true, has the name of certitude, and is irreversible or indefectible. In simple assent we do not give any place, or in any way incline mentally to the opposite belief, though we may examine the grounds of our own for various reasons; but when we are certain, we explicitly refuse to admit any thing opposed to it. The occurrence of false or supposed certitudes does not suffice to prove the non-existence of real ones; and certitude is not to be confounded with infallibility, which is a faculty applicable "to all possible propositions in a given subject matter," while certitude is "directed to this or that particular proposition."

The next part is the discussion of the act of inference. In its most perfect or formal state it can be used without limitation only upon abstractions; it "comes short of proof in concrete matters, because it has not a full command over the objects to which it relates, but merely assumes its premises." Hence, even when what we do assume is true, as shown in an earlier part of the work, processes of inference in concrete matters may easily end in mysteries. In many cases it cannot profitably be used, owing to the labor required for taking account of all the circumstances, as well as the real difference of the first principles from which our syllogisms proceed. We are, therefore, obliged to resort to informal inference, in which arguments and probabilities are estimated in the mass, and have a different force to different individuals, according to the character in them of what Dr. Newman calls the illative sense. He concludes by treating of the exercise of this combining and directing faculty in its application to religious inferences, both in natural and revealed religion, and shows that by means of it we may fairly arrive at certitude regarding Christianity, and that such a method is at least as likely to succeed as more formal demonstrations. The lawfulness and reasonableness of assent in religious matters, as well as in others, without such demonstrations, may be regarded as one of the main objects of the work, though by no means its only one.

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DE L'UNITÉ DANS L'ENSEIGNEMENT DE LA PHILOSOPHIE AU SEIN DES ECOLES CATHOLIQUES D'APRÈS LES RECENTES DECISIONS DES CONGREGATIONS ROMAINES. Par le P. H. Ramière, S.J. Paris, 1862.

F. Ramière is well known as the head of the admirable confraternity of "The Apostleship of Prayer," and the author of a number of excellent works on spiritual subjects, and also on the great religious questions of the day. We have recently been indebted to him for some extremely able essays in defence of the rights of the Holy See, for which he has received the eulogium of the Holy Father himself. The work whose title is given above has been sent to us by the reverend father himself, we presume on account of the article translated, with some preliminary observations of our own, from F. Vercellone, on the ideology of St. Augustine, which appeared in a recent number; and we beg to thank him for his kindness. We had not before had the pleasure of reading it, although it has been eight years published. We have read it with attention, and, we are happy to say, with much satisfaction. The learning and logical force of the author command our respect, and his calmness, candor, impartiality, and truly Christian charity win our esteem, throughout the whole course of his argument. The argument is divided into three parts. In the first part, the author sustains the possibility and the great importance of unity in philosophical instruction, and lays down the conditions by which it can be obtained. In all that he says under this head we fully and cordially concur with him. In the second part, he discusses traditionalism; and here again we find ourselves in perfect agreement with all his positions. In the third part, he attacks the grand difficulty of the origin of rational cognition, and, of course, discusses the vexed question of ontologism. It would be a futile effort to attempt a critical appreciation of this part of F. Ramière's work in a brief critical notice, and we will not attempt it. An opinion on these very grave and much controverted topics, in order to be worth attention, must be supported by elaborate arguments, and based on deep and patient study of all the principal authors, ancient and modern, whose works are the great sources of philosophical knowledge. We agree perfectly with F. Ramière, that thorough discussion, carried on in the spirit of moderation, directed by a pure love of truth, and regulated by obedience to the authority of the church, is the only road by which we can attain to that degree of unity in philosophical doctrines which prevails among all truly orthodox theologians in respect to dogmatic and moral theology. We desire to see this discussion go on, and hope for a good result from it; and as a necessary preparation, we cannot too earnestly insist on the necessity of a more thorough study of scholastic philosophy than has been common among those who have written on these subjects in the English language. Both in theology and philosophy, we hold it as certain that we must follow the great fathers and doctors of the church as our guides and masters, or go astray and lose our labor. The essential truths of philosophy must be contained in that system which the church authorizes, and in which she trains up her clergy.

As we understand them, there is no difference between F. Vercellone and F. Ramière on this point. We are not authorized to speak for Dr. Brownson, who is the great philosophical writer among American Catholics; but we think he would agree with us fully in this judgment; and that the passage in a contrary sense, quoted by F. Ramière, is to be regarded as one of those _obiter dicta_ which his mature, deliberate wisdom would not ratify. We cheerfully acknowledge that the doctrine which F. Ramière so lucidly exposes as the Thomistic doctrine of the origin of cognition is sufficient as a basis of rational certitude and natural theology, and we are perfectly agreed with him that this is the main point to be secured. As for the profound and difficult, and therefore intensely interesting and attractive, questions which relate to the nature of the intellectual light itself, and the objective truth seen by its aid, it does not seem to us that they have yet been as thoroughly discussed as they need to be, in order to bring the various schools into a closer agreement. This is certainly so as respects philosophy in the English language, which is yet in its cradle, and we think it is true universally. Of course, the great question to be settled at the outset is, how far the boundary of philosophical doctrine, as rendered certain by the consent of the great doctors, intrinsic evidence, and the decisions of the supreme ecclesiastical authority, extends; and where opinion begins. The true understanding of the famous decisions of 1861 is absolutely necessary to this end, so far as ideology is concerned; and F. Ramière has given an explanation of their sense and intention which perfectly agrees with that of F. Vercellone in a supplement to the article which we translated. It is, namely, the intuition of the essence of God, and created things in that essence, as the natural, intellectual light of reason, which we are forbidden to affirm.

Are we, therefore, required, as an only alternative, to adopt the Peripatetic philosophy as taught by the Thomists? It would seem that this has not yet been sufficiently proved. The works of Gerdil, Vercellone, and others, who profess to find in Plato, St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure, St. Anselm, and other great authors, a philosophical wisdom which supplies a want not fully satisfied by St. Thomas, have not yet been marked by any note of disapprobation. It is true that F. Ramière tells us that Gerdil changed his opinions in his later years. But F. Vercellone denies this, on the authority of Cardinal Lambruschini. F. Ramière is extremely tolerant of opinions differing from his own, where he thinks he has only a greater probability on his side. He does not censure the following of these great authors, or discourage the study of them; but he thinks they are misunderstood, and that a better study of them would result in making us all Peripatetics and Thomists. Let us by all means, then, especially those who have youth, strength, and leisure, study the old masters of philosophy more deeply than we have done, and truth and unity will be the gainers. F. Ramière protests strongly, however, against the high esteem which some Catholic writers have expressed for Gioberti. As it happens that one of our correspondents has done the same in the present number, we feel bound to assure F. Ramière, and our readers generally, that we detest, as much as any one can, the rebellious conduct of Gioberti toward the sovereign pontiff, that we have no sympathy with his hatred of the Jesuits, and condemn every thing in his works which the Holy See intended to censure when they were placed on the Index. Nevertheless, as F. Perrone has had the generosity to place his name on the list of illustrious Catholic writers, we do not think it improper to give him credit for the genius he undoubtedly possessed, or the true and elevated teachings which his works may contain. Even if the worst things said against him be true, there is no reason why we should not make use of every thing good in his works, as we do in those of Tertullian, Photius, and the Port Royal divines.

In conclusion, we recommend and applaud F. Ramière's essay as a specimen of that kind of discussion which he so strongly advocates, with the most ardent sympathy in his desire that sound philosophy may go hand in hand with theology, to deliver the world from the destructive influence of scepticism, sophistry, and every species of error.

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GUYOT'S GEOGRAPHICAL SERIES. By Professor Arnold Guyot. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

Since Humboldt gave his scientific facts to the world, and Ritter generalized upon them, the study of geography has been converted from an exercise of the memory upon unrelated facts to a science whose laws of mutual dependence of cause and effect hold good in common with other physical sciences. But it has remained for the American mind to generalize the later scientific discoveries of Maury, Hugh Miller, Livingstone, Kane, and others, and, adding them to former achievements, give the results in the modern school geographies. The very number of these text-books presented by aspiring authors and publishers to the public is an encouraging symptom to the lover of improvement in knowledge, though sadly annoying to the practical teacher, who is so frequently urged to change the text-books in the hands of his pupils.

The series before us is evidently the result of the profoundest research united to a practical knowledge of the best manner of presenting facts to young minds. None but an enthusiast in physical science, a good expounder of original ideas, and a polished English scholar could have given so complete a series of text-books to our schools and teachers. The language in which the facts are presented is one of the chief recommendations of the books; for nothing more certainly impresses itself upon the youthful mind than the language of the text-books used in schools, affecting the habits of thought and expression in all after-life. With a view also to the varied peoples among whom these books would be adopted, and in answer to the demands of the age and period, a world-wide and catholic spirit seemed to animate the author when treating the subject of the governments and religions of different sections and political divisions. Facts, as generally understood, are fairly stated. Opinions based upon those facts judiciously withheld. Some improvements might be made in the execution of the maps, and also in the text of the primary book, the style of which is weak and careless compared with the rest of the series. But the illustrations, and print, and style of getting up are equal, if not superior, to any books of the kind published.

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STATUTES OF THE SECOND SYNOD OF THE DIOCESE OF ALBANY. 1869. Troy: Scribner & Co. Received from P. J. Dooley, 182 River street, Troy.

We have read this beautifully printed document with great pleasure, and we will cite several of the statutes, which have in our opinion a special importance, giving, however, only their import in our own language, without quoting _verbatim_ the Latin text, which is easily accessible to those who are interested in ecclesiastical matters.

1. Confessors and pastors are commanded to teach their spiritual children the evil and danger of attending the sermons and religious exercises of sectarians, and not to permit it under any pretext.

2. The faithful, especially heads of families, are admonished to exclude non-Catholic versions of the Bible, and all kinds of noxious books and papers, from their houses, and to make use of good and Catholic books and periodicals.

3. All who are concerned in the publication of books relating to religion and the divine worship are admonished not to venture to publish any thing without the license of the ordinary. The desire is also expressed that clergymen will not publish any thing whatever without the previous consent of the bishop. It is announced that several members of the episcopal council will be designated as censors of books. In the recent bull of Pope Pius IX., abrogating all previous laws inflicting the censure of excommunication reserved to the pope, and promulgating anew the causes of incurring this censure, the authors and publishers of books _de rebus sacris_, who put forth such books without the permission of the ordinary, are declared to incur the censure of excommunication _latæ sententiæ_. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that regulations should be made and published in every diocese, prescribing to authors and publishers the conditions under which the ordinary permits the publication of books _de rebus sacris_, and the Bishop of Albany has given an excellent example, which we hope will be universally followed.

4. The faithful are to be seasonably exhorted to sustain the sovereign pontiff in maintaining his temporal authority by their contributions.

5. Pastors are earnestly exhorted to use earnest efforts to extirpate the vice of intemperance, which is the cause of such immense scandals.

6. The necessity of sustaining Catholic schools, and the dangers of theatrical exhibitions, immodest dances, and festive amusements or exhibitions intended for the benefit of pious causes, such as picnics, fairs, and excursions, are noticed.

7. Priests will be subjected to an annual examination _in scriptis_, before theological examiners, during the first five years after their ordination.

8. The faithful are to be sedulously warned and exhorted not to contract mixed marriages.

These are only a few of the great number of excellent statutes, entirely in accordance with the decrees of general councils, the plenary and provincial councils of the United States, and the decrees of the Apostolic See, enacted by this admirable synod, which is indeed worthy of the best days of the church.

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THE SUN. By Anedee Guillemin. From the French, by A. L. Phipson, Ph.D. With fifty-eight illustrations.

WONDERS OF GLASS-MAKING IN ALL AGES. By A. Sanzay. Illustrated with sixty-three engravings on wood.

THE SUBLIME IN NATURE; compiled from the descriptions of travellers and celebrated writers. By Ferdinand de Lanoye; with large additions. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870.

The above are the titles of three beautiful volumes, the latest additions to the "Illustrated Library of Wonders," now being published by Messrs. Scribner. These little books must prove highly interesting, especially to the young, and are very well adapted for premiums. The illustrations are well executed, and give additional value to the books.

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NATURAL HISTORY OF ANIMALS. By Sanborn Tenney and Alby A. Tenney. Illustrated by five hundred wood engravings, chiefly of North American animals. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870.

A very useful book, well adapted to aid parents and teachers in interesting the young in the delightful and important study of natural history.

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DIALOGUES FROM DICKENS. For School and Home Amusement. Arranged by W. Eliot Fette, A.M. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

The dialogues contained in this volume have been selected for the most part, and we think very judiciously, with a view to thorough, unalloyed amusement. There are, doubtless, other portions of Dickens's works no less characteristic, full of tenderness and pathos, over which we fain would linger, and to which we gladly return again and again; these, however, we prefer to peruse alone, and at leisure. But for an evening's entertainment in company, commend us to the good fellowship the compiler has here selected for us--the Wellers, Dick Swiveller, Bob Sawyer, Mark Tapley, Sairey Gamp, etc., etc.

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BOOKS RECEIVED.

From PATRICK DONOHUE, Boston: The Charlestown Convent; its Destruction by a Mob, on the night of August 11th, 1834; with a history of the excitement before the burning, and the strange and exaggerated reports relating thereto; the feeling of regret and indignation afterward; the proceedings of meetings, and expressions of the contemporary press. Also, the Trials of the Rioters, the testimony, and the speeches of counsel; with a review of the incidents, and sketches and record of the principal actors; and a contemporary appendix. Compiled from authentic sources. Pamphlet: Price, 30 cents.

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CORRIGENDA.

In our last number, the English translation of the _Stabat Mater_ was ascribed to our unknown correspondent, G. J. G., at whose request it was published. A note since received from the same correspondent informs us that G. J. G. is not the author, as we inferred incorrectly from his previous communication, but some other person unknown to him.

Two errors were also inadvertently passed over in the article in reply to _The New Englander_. The first was the omission of Baden and Bavaria from the table at the top of page 112. The populations of these countries in millions are, respectively, Protestant, 0.47; and 1.23; Catholic, 0.93 and 3.18, and their rates 16.2 and 22.5, as given in the previous tables. The addition of these would increase the Catholic average more than the Protestant; but the second error, namely, a wrong placing of the decimal point in the product for Sweden and Norway, when corrected, more than compensates for this, making the true result of this table--

Protestant 9.5 Catholic 7.9

The sums of the Catholic and Protestant populations in the above cases, as in others also, do not exactly equal the totals elsewhere given, on account of the difference of date between the latest censuses available, as well as the existence of other religious bodies.

A review of _Janus_, which we had expected to publish in our last number, but which was delayed by the illness of the writer, will be given in our next. We are also expecting to receive soon the English translation of Dr. Hergenroether's _Anti-Janus_, by Mr. Robertson.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XI., No. 63.--JUNE, 1870.

MR. FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.[52]

If we accept general encomium and popular demand as criteria of excellence, it is evident that Mr. Froude must be the first historian of the period. That, with a vivid pen, he possesses a style at once clear and graphic; that his fulness of knowledge and skill in description are exceptional; that his phrase is brilliant, his analysis keen, and that with ease and spirit, grace and energy, pictorial and passionate power, he combines consummate art in imagery and diction, we have been told so often and by so many writers that it would seem churlish not to accord him very high merit. Then, too, Mr. Froude is very much in earnest. Whatever he does he does with all his might, and in his enthusiasm often fairly carries his reader along with him.

But, in common with those who seek, not literary excitement, but the facts of history, we go at once to the vital question, Is the work truthful? Is it impartial? If not, its author's gifts are perverted, his attainments abused, and their fruits, so bright and attractive to the eye, are filled with ashes.

Impartial! Difficult indeed, is the attainment of that admirable equilibrium of judgment which secures perfect fairness of decision, and whose essential condition precedent is the thorough elimination of personal preference and party prejudice. And here is the serious obstacle in writing a history of England; for there are few, very few, of the great historical questions of the sixteenth century that have not left to us living men of to-day a large legacy of hopes, doubts, and prejudices--nowhere so full of vitality as in England, and in countries of English tongue. Not that we mean to limit such a difficulty to one nation or to one period; for it is not certain that we free ourselves from the spell of prejudice by taking refuge in a more remote age. It might be thought that, in proportion as we go back toward antiquity, leaving behind us to-day's interests, the historian's impartiality would become perfect. And yet, there are few writers of whom even this is true. Reverting historically to the cradle of Christianity, it cannot be asserted of Gibbon.

Nor can it be said even of modern historians of nations long extinct, in common with which one might suppose the people of this century had not a single prejudice. Take, for instance, all the English historians of ancient Greece, whose works (that of Grote being an honorable exception) are so many political pamphlets arguing for oligarchy against democracy, elevating Sparta at the sacrifice of Athens, and thrusting at a modern republic through the greatest of the Hellenic commonwealths. If Merivale is thought to treat Roman history with impartiality, the same cannot be said of many modern European writers, who, disguising modern politics in the ancient toga and helmet, cannot discuss the Roman imperial period without attacking the Cæsars of Paris, St. Petersburg, and Berlin.

The great religious questions which agitated England in the sixteenth century are not dead. They still live, and for the Anglican, the Puritan, and the Catholic have all the deep interest of a family history. It might, therefore, be unreasonable to demand from Mr. Froude a greater degree of dispassionate inquiry and calm treatment of subjects that were "burning questions" in the days of Henry and Elizabeth, than we find in Milman and Gillies, when they discuss the political life of Athens and Lacedæmon. So far from exacting it, we should be disposed to be most liberal in the allowance of even a strongly expressed bias. But after granting all this, and even more, we might yet not unreasonably demand a system which is not a paradox, a show at least of fairness, and a due regard for the proprieties of historical treatment.

Mr. Froude's first four volumes present the history of half the reign of Henry VIII., a prince "chosen by Providence to conduct the Reformation," and abolish the iniquities of the papal system.

The historical Tudor king known of all men before the advent of Mr. Froude with his modern appliances of hero-worship and muscular Christianity, "melted so completely" in our new historian's hands that his despotism, persecution, diplomatic assassinations, confiscations, divorces, legalized murders, bloody vagrancy laws, tyranny over conscience, and the blasphemous assumption of spiritual supremacy are made to appear as the praiseworthy measures of an ascetic monarch striving to regenerate his country and save the world.

There was such a sublimity of impudence in a paradox presented with so much apparently sincere vehemence that most readers were struck with dumb astonishment. A fascinated few declared the deodorized infamy perfectly pure. Some, pleased with pretty writing, were delighted with poetic passages about "daisies," and "destiny," "wild spirits" and "August suns" that "shone in autumn." Many liked its novelty, some admired its daring, and some there were who looked upon the thing as an enormous joke. All these formed the great body of readers.

Others there were, though, who declined to accept results which were violations of morality, and verdicts against evidence obtained by systematic vilification of some of the best, and the elevation of some of the worst men who ever lived, and by a blind idolatry incapable of discerning flaw or stain in the unworthy object of its worship; who saw Mr. Froude's multifarious ignorance of matters essential for a historian to know, and his total want of that judicial quality of mind, without which no one, even though possessed of all knowledge, can ever be an historian. They resolved that such an historical system as this was a nuisance to be abated, and that the new and unworthy man-worship should be put an end to. Accordingly the idol was smashed;[53] and in the process, the idol's historian left so badly damaged as to render his future availability highly problematical.

The Scotch treatment was of instant efficacy; for we find Mr. Froude coming to his work on the fifth volume in chastened frame of mind and an evidently corrected demeanor. He narrates the reigns of Mary and Edward VI. with style and tone subdued, and in what musicians designate as _tempo moderato_.

With the seventh volume we reach the accession of Queen Elizabeth. We opened it with some curiosity; for it was understood from Mr. Froude, at the outset of his historical career, that he intended to present Elizabeth as "a great nature destined to remould the world," and that he was prepared to visit with something like astonishment and unknown pangs all who should dare question the immaculate purity of her virtue. It is not improbable that the contemplation of the strewn and broken fragments of the paternal idol materially modified this purpose--a change on which Mr. Froude must more than once have fervently congratulated himself as he gradually penetrated deeper into the treasures of the State paper collections, and stared with stiffened jaw at the astounding revelations of Simancas.

We need not wonder that the historian altered his programme; and that instead of going on to the "death of Elizabeth," to record the horrors of that most horrible of death-bed scenes, he should close his work with the wreck of the Spanish Armada.

The researches of our American historian, Motley, were terribly damaging to Elizabeth; and in the preparation of his seventh volume, Mr. Froude comes upon discoveries so fatal to her that he is evidently glad to drop his showy narrative and fill his pages with letters of the Spanish ambassador, who gives simple but wonderfully vivid pictures of scenes at the English court.

Future historians will doubtless take heed how they associate with the reputation of the sovereign any glory they may claim for England under Elizabeth, remembering that she was ready to marry Leicester notwithstanding her strong suspicion, too probably assurance, of his crime, (Amy Robsart's murder,) and that in the language of one of Mr. Froude's English critics, "She was thus in the eye of heaven, which judges by the intent and not the act, nearer than Englishmen would like to believe to the guilt of an adulteress and a murderess."

But Mr. Froude plucks up courage, and, true to his first love, while appearing to handle Elizabeth with cruel condemnation, treats her with real kindness.

We have all heard of Alcibiades and his dog, and of what befell that animal. Mr. Froude assumes an air of stern severity for those faults of Elizabeth for which concealment is out of the question--her mean parsimony, her insincerity, her cruelty, her matchless mendacity--while industriously concealing or artistically draping her more repulsive offences.

But we have not started out to treat Mr. Froude's work as a whole. A chorus of repudiation from the most opposite schools of criticism has so effectually covered his attempted apotheosis of a bad man with ridicule and contempt that no further remark need be made on that subject. As to Elizabeth, the less said the better, if we are friendly to her memory.

Careful perusal of Mr. Froude's first six volumes will convince any competent judge that he is not a historian, but, as yet, only in training to become one. He plunged into a great historical subject without the requisite knowledge or the necessary preparation. In his earlier volumes his very defective knowledge of all history before the sixteenth century led him into the most grotesque blunders--errors in general and in details, in geography, jurisprudence, titles, offices, and military affairs. So far from meriting the compliment paid him, of accurate knowledge, acquired in the "course of his devious theological career," of the tenets and peculiar observances of the leading religious sects, it is precisely in such matters that he seriously fails in accuracy.

With a half-grasp of his material, Mr. Froude totally fails to make it up into an interesting consecutive narrative. He lacks, too, the all-important power of generalization, and, as has been aptly remarked, handles a microscope skilfully, but is apparently unable to see through a telescope. Heroic and muscular, his over haste to produce some startling result came near wrecking him in the morning of his career.

While his work was in course of publication, our historian wrote from Simancas a sensational article for _Fraser's Magazine_, in which he announced some astounding historical discoveries, which only a few weeks later he was only too glad to recall. The trouble was that he had totally misunderstood the Spanish documents on which his discovery was grounded.

Along with his apparent incapacity for sound and impartial judgment, there is an evident inability in Mr. Froude to distinguish the relative value of different state papers, and the most striking proof that he is still in his apprenticeship as a writer of history, is his indiscriminate acceptance of written authorities of a certain class. Historical results long since settled by the unanimous testimony of Camden, Carte, and Lingard, the three great English historians of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries respectively, are thrust aside by Mr. Froude and made to give way to some MS. of doubtful value or questionable authenticity. The term "original document" magically invests every writing falling into his hands with all the attributes of truth. When he finds a paper three hundred years old, he gives it speech and sets it up as an oracle. Nor can the simile be arrested here; for, treating his oracle with the tyrannic familiarity of a heathen priest, the paper Mumbo Jumbo must speak as ordered, or else be sadly cuffed. It is a puerile idea to imagine that when the historian has found a mass of original historical papers, his labor of investigation is ended, and he has but to transcribe, to put his personages on the stage, let them act and declaim as these writings relate, and thus place before the reader the truthful portrait of bygone times. Far from it. It is at this point that his work really begins. He must ascertain by comparison, by sifting of evidence, by many precautions, who lies and who speaks truth. In matters of Elizabethan diplomacy, for instance, the truth floats not on the surface. A royal dispatch gives orders, but it does not give motives. And even if the motives are stated, is it certain they are truly stated? A minister is explicit as to what he wishes done; but he does not say why he wants it done, nor what results he looks for. Cases numberless will suggest themselves as to the difficulties of such documents. Very few of these difficulties have any terrors for Mr. Froude. Commencing his investigation with his theory perfected, it is with him a mere choice of papers. Swift is the fate of facts not suiting his theory. So much the worse for them, if they are not what he would have them to be; they are cast forth into outer darkness.

Mr. Froude has fine perceptive and imaginative faculties--admirable gifts for literature, but not for history. Precious, if history depended on fiction, not on fact. Invaluable, if historic truth were subjective. Above all price, where the literary artist has the privilege of evolving from the inner depths of his own consciousness the virtues or the vices wherewith it suits him to endow his characters. But alas! otherwise utterly fatal, because historic truth is eminently objective.

It is well said that to be a good historical student, a man should not find it in him to desire that any historical fact should be otherwise than it is. Now, we cannot consent to a lower standard in logic and morality for the historian than for the student; and thus testing Mr. Froude, it is not pleasant to contemplate his sentence when judged by stern votaries of truth. For we have a well-grounded belief that not only is it possible for Mr. Froude to desire an historical fact to be otherwise than it is, but that he is capable of carrying that desire into effect. It is idle to talk of the judicial quality of an historian who scarcely puts on a semblance of impartiality.

In matters of state, Mr. Froude is a pamphleteer; in personal questions he is an advocate. He holds a brief for Henry. He holds a brief against Mary Stuart. He is the most effective of advocates, for he fairly throws himself into his case. He is the friend or the enemy of all the personages in his history. Their failure and their success affect his spirits and his style. He rejoices with them or weeps with them. There are some whose misfortunes uniformly make him sad. There are others over whose calamities he becomes radiant. He has no unerring standard of justice, no ethical principle which estimates actions as they are in themselves, and not in the light of sympathy or repulsion.

It must be admitted, nevertheless, that Mr. Froude makes up an attractive-looking page. Foot-notes and citations in quantity, imposing capitals and inverted commas, like little flags gayly flying, all combine to give it a typographical vivacity truly charming. Great as are his rhetorical resources, he does not despise the cunning devices of print. Quotation-marks are usually supposed to convey to the reader the conventional assurance that they include the precise words of the text. But Mr. Froude's system is not so commonplace. He inserts therein language of his own, and in all these cases his use of authorities is not only dangerous but deceptive. He has a way of placing some of the actual words of a document in his narrative in such a manner as totally to pervert their sense. The historian who truthfully condenses a page into a paragraph saves labor for the reader; but Mr. Froude has a trick of giving long passages in quotation-marks without sign of alteration or omission, which we may or may not discover from a note to be "abridged."

Other objectionable manipulations of Mr. Froude are the joining together of two distinct passages of a document, and entirely changing their original sense; the connection of two phrases from two different authorities and connecting them as one; and the tacking of irresponsible or anonymous authorities to one that is responsible, concealing the first, and avowing the last.

Then his texts, and the rapid boldness with which he disposes of them; cutting, trimming, clipping, provided only that he produce an animated dialogue or picturesque effect which may cause the reader to exclaim, "How beautifully Mr. Froude writes!" "What a painter!" "His book is as interesting as a novel!" And so it is; for the excellent reason that it is written precisely as novels are written, and mainly depends for its interest upon the study of motives. A superior novelist brings characters before us in startling naturalness--his treatment, of course, being subjective, not objective; arbitrary, not historical. Mr. Froude, with his great skill in depicting individual character and particular events, follows the novel-writer's method, and may be said to be the originator of what we may designate as the "psychological school" of history. This power gives him an immense advantage over all other historians.

While they are burning the midnight lamp in the endeavor to detect the springs of action by the study of every thing that can throw light upon the action itself, he has only to look through the window which, like unto other novelists, he has constructed in the bosom of every one of his characters, to show us their most secret thoughts and aspirations. One may open any of Mr. Froude's volumes at random and find an exemplification of what is here stated. Here is one:

"It was not thus that Mary Stuart had hoped to meet her brother. His head sent home from the border, or himself brought back a living prisoner, with the dungeon, the scaffold, and the bloody axe--these were the images which a few weeks or days before she had associated with the next appearance of her father's son. Her feelings had undergone no change; she hated him with the hate of hell; but the more deep-set passion paled for the moment before a thirst for revenge." (Vol. viii. p. 267.)

Here are depicted the tumultuous workings of a wicked heart; its hopes, fears, passions--nay, even the very images that float before the mind's eye. And this Mr. Froude asks us to accept for history--ascertained fact.

Our historian takes unprecedented liberties with texts and citations. Now he totally ignores what a given person says on an important occasion. Now he puts a speech of his own into the mouth of the same character. Passages cited from certain documents cannot be found there, and other documents referred to have no existence. In a word, Mr. Froude trifles with his readers and plays with his authorities, as some people play with cards.

There are not many passages of Mr. Froude's work free from some one of these serious objections. To specify them would require at least as much matter as he uses; for he offends as often in suppression as in assertion. Nevertheless, to the extent of our limited space we will point out a few, and as Mr. Froude's early volumes have been so amply commented upon, we will confine our examination to the latter half of the work, with special reference to his treatment of

MARY STUART.

Most historians begin at the beginning. But our latest historical school has resources heretofore unknown, and quietly anticipates that ordinary point of departure. Mary Stuart is formally brought on to Mr. Froude's historical stage in the middle of the seventh volume, and the reader might be supposed to take up her story without a single preconceived opinion. Doubtless, the average reader does so take it up, unsuspicious of the fact that his judgment is already fettered and led captive. In volume iv. p. 208, Mary of Guise is described as lifting her baby out of the cradle, in order that Sir Ralph Sadlier "might admire its health and loveliness."

"Alas! for the child," says Mr. Froude; "born in sorrow and nurtured in treachery! It grew to be Mary Stuart; and Sir Ralph Sadlier lived to sit on the commission which investigated the murder of Darnley."

There is nothing very startling in this. The reader's mind absorbs the statement, and goes on. In the next volume, (vol. v. p. 57,) while deeply interested in the military operations of the Duke of Somerset, we are told _en passant_:

"Thursday he again advanced over the ground where, fourteen years later, Mary Stuart, the object of his enterprise, practiced archery with Bothwell ten days after her husband's murder."

Consummately artistic!

The reader has not yet reached Mary Stuart; her history is not yet commenced; he supposes his mind, as regards her, to be a mere blank page, and yet our historian has already contrived to inscribe upon the blank page two facts, namely, she was the murderess of Darnley, and she was guilty of adultery with Bothwell. No evidence has been offered, no argument presented. With graceful and almost careless _disinvoltura_, Mr. Froude has merely alluded to two incidents, one of which is a fable, and lo! the case against Mary Stuart is complete. For these are the two great accusations upon which the entire controversy hinges, a controversy that has raged for three centuries. Very clever! Very clever indeed!

Give but slight attention to Mr. Froude's system and you will find that his treatment of the historical characters he dislikes is after the recipe of Figaro: "Calomniez, calomniez, il en reste toujours quelque chose;" and that under the sentimentality of his "summer seas," "pleasant mountain breezes," "murmuring streams," "autumnal suns," patriotic longings, and pious reveries, there is a vein of persistent and industrious cunning much resembling that of Mr. Harold Skimpole, who is a perfect child in all matters concerning money, who knows nothing of its value, who "loves to see the sunshine, loves to hear the wind blow; loves to watch the changing lights and shadows; loves to hear the birds, those choristers in nature's great cathedral"--but, meantime, keeps a sharp look-out for the main chance.

Indirection and insinuation are effective weapons never out of Mr. Froude's hands. In an allusion or remark, dropped apparently in the most careless manner, he will, as we see, lay the foundation of a system of attack one or two volumes off and many years in historical advance of his objective point. In like manner, at page 272, vol. i., we are told "three years later, when the stake recommenced its hateful activity under the auspices of Sir Thomas More's fanaticism." Thus the way is prepared for the accusation of personal cruelty, which Mr. Froude strives, in vol. ii., to lay at More's door. More's greatness and beautiful elevation of character are evidently unpleasant subjects for our historian, and he grudgingly yields him a credit which he seeks to sweep away in the charge of religious persecution, specifying four particular cases: those of Philipps, Field, Bilney, and Bainham.

These cases have been taken up _seriatim_ by a competent critic, (the reader curious to see them may consult the appendix to the October number _Edinburgh Review_ 1858,) who demonstrates that Mr. Froude's pretended authorities do _not_ tell the story he undertakes to put in their mouth, and that he is guilty of such perversions as are exceedingly damaging to his reputation.

In introducing Mary Stuart, Mr. Froude vouchsafes no information whatever concerning her mind, manners, disposition, or education. It is certainly desirable to know something of the early years and mental development of a character destined to fill so prominent a part in the great events of the period, and to become one of the most interesting personages in history. She is thus presented: "She was not yet nineteen years old; but mind and body had matured amidst the scenes in which she passed her girlhood." (Vol. vii. p. 268.) This is at once a very remarkable statement and a mild specimen of Mr. Froude's command of ambiguous language. Very close and philosophical observers have, we think, already noticed the phenomenon indicated; and although it might not at once occur to every one that young girls usually mature amidst the scenes of their girlhood, yet it was hardly worth the effort of a philosophic historian to give us information so trite. But we suspect Mr. Froude of a deeper meaning, namely, that mind and body were then--at eighteen years--matured, and had attained their full growth. It means that, or it is mere twaddle.

Thus, we are to understand that Mary Stuart, at the tender age of eighteen, was abnormal and monstrous.

Mr. Froude drives his entering wedge so noiselessly that you are scarce aware of it, and in the development of the story he strains all his faculties to paint the Queen of Scots, not only as the worst and most abandoned of women, but as absolutely destitute of human semblance in her superhuman wickedness. That such is the effect of his portraiture, is well expressed by an English critic--a friend of Mr. Froude, but not of Mary: "A being so earthly, sensual, and devilish seems almost beyond the proportions of human nature." (London _Times_, September 26th, 1866.)

Mr. Froude then gives us a portrait of the young Scottish queen, in which he says, "In the deeper and nobler emotions she had neither share nor sympathy;" and herein, Mr. Froude explains, "lay the difference between the Queen of Scots and Elizabeth." Again we must regret that our author has told us nothing of Mary Stuart's youth, so that we might judge this matter for ourselves. Her life in France was by no means devoid of interest. She was admired and beloved by all. She had reigned there as queen, and young as she was, her opinions were respected in high councils.

Throckmorton, a clever and experienced diplomatist, was near Mary in France, for many years, and, with the fullest means of information, advised Elizabeth day by day concerning her. She is the subject of scores of his dispatches, with none of which, however, are we favored by Mr. Froude. Throckmorton thus announces to Cecil Mary's condition after the death of King Francis:

"He departed to God, leaving as heavy and dolorous a wife as of good right she had reason to be, who, by long watching with him during his sickness, and by painful diligence about him, especially the issue thereof, is not in the best time of her body, but without danger."

But Mr. Froude, who is ready to reveal for our entertainment the inmost thoughts of this "dolorous wife," enlightens us with the sole information that "Mary was speculating before the body was cold on her next choice." Throckmorton, all unconscious of the annoyance he must give a nineteenth century historian, again writes to Cecil:

"Since her husband's death she hath shown, and so continueth, that she is of great wisdom for her years, modesty, and also of great judgment in the wise handling herself and her matters, which, increasing in her with her years, cannot but turn to her commendation, reputation, honor, and great profit to her country."

He continues:

"I see her behavior to be such, and her wisdom and queenly modesty so great, in that she thinketh herself not too wise, but is content to be ruled by good counsel and wise men."

As a general rule, Mr. Froude is not economical of "birth, parentage, and education" essays. Yet, while managing to bestow them on very secondary personages, he has none for Mary Stuart. Latimer and John Knox are favored in this respect, and even to the bastard son of Henry VIII.--"the young Marcellus," as Mr. Froude proudly calls him--are devoted nearly three full pages of gushing enthusiasm concerning his youthful dispositions and early studies. He was, alas! "illegitimate, unfortunately;" "_but_ of beauty and noble promise." (Vol. i. 364-6.)

Soon we see the resources of the psychological school. Mr. Froude informs us (vol. vii. p. 369) that Mary was going to Scotland "to use her charms as a spell;" "to weave the fibres of a conspiracy;" to "hide her purpose until the moment came," and "with a purpose as fixed as the stars to trample down the reformation."

Had it been possible for Mr. Froude to produce one word of testimony from France concerning Mary Stuart's youth that was not of respect, praise, and admiration, from friend or foe, he surely would not have failed to cite it.

In this dilemma, he quotes Randolph, (vol. vii. p. 369,) to show "her craft and deceit;" adding, "Such was Mary Stuart when, on the 14th of August, she embarked for Scotland."

But Randolph at that time had never seen Mary Stuart, and the date of his letter cited by Mr. Froude is _October_ 27th. Under these circumstances it becomes interesting to know what Randolph's opinion of Mary really was before she left France. Randolph writes to Cecil, _August_ 9th, referring to Mary's preparations for departure, "That will be a stout adventure for a sick, _crazed_ woman."

Even for a sea voyage, Mr. Froude continues to prefer a microscope to a telescope. The consequence is, that out of an escort of Mary's three uncles, all her ladies, including the four Marys, more than a hundred French noblemen, the Mareschal d'Amville, Brantôme the historian, and other distinguished men, a doctor of theology, two physicians, and all her household retinue, he can discern no one but Chatelar, who was, as a retainer of d'Amville, in that nobleman's suite. And so we read, "With adieu, belle France, sentimental verses, and a passionate Chatelar sighing at her feet in melodious music, she sailed away over the summer seas." Which we must in candor admit to be a sweetly pretty passage. But in the next paragraph Mr. Froude puts away sentimentality, means business, and throws a bright light on a previous line: "Elizabeth could feel like a man an unselfish interest in a great cause." Here is the paragraph, it is admirable in every respect.

"The English fleet was on her track. There was no command to arrest her; yet there was the thought that 'she might be met withal;' and if the admiral had sent her ship with its freight to the bottom of the North Sea, 'being done unknown,' Elizabeth, and perhaps Catharine de' Medicis as well, 'would have found it afterward well done.'" (Vol. vii. p. 370.)

Of course, it would have been "well done;" because "in the deeper and nobler emotions Mary had neither share nor sympathy;" whereas Elizabeth and Catharine de' Medicis had.

The undisputed record of Mary's arrival in Edinburgh is, that her surpassing beauty and charm of address, arising not so much from her courtly training as her kindly heart, created a profound impression on a people who already reverenced in her the daughter of a popular king, and of one of the noblest and best of women.

Mr. Froude thus renders this record: "The dreaded harlot of Babylon seemed only a graceful and innocent girl." (Vol. vii. p. 374.) In common fairness, Mr. Froude should have given some adequate idea of the condition of the country this inexperienced young queen was called to rule. This he fails to do. It was such that the ablest sovereign, with full supply of money and of soldiers--and Mary Stuart had neither--would have found its successful government almost impossible. The power of the feudal aristocracy had declined in Europe everywhere but in Scotland; and everywhere but in Scotland royal power had been increased. For centuries the Scottish kings had striven to break down the power of the nobles, which overshadowed that of the crown. One of the results of this struggle is quaintly recorded in the opening entry of Birrel's _Diurnal of Occurrents_:

"_There has been in this realm of Scotland one hundred and five kings, of whilk there was slaine fyftie-six._"

Another result was greater aristocratic power and increased anarchy. The Scotch feudal nobles had never known what it was to be under the rule of law, and there was as yet no middle class to aid the sovereign. Among their recognized practices and privileges were private war and armed conspiracy; and the established means of ridding themselves of personal or public enemies was assassination. In all history we find few bands of worse men than those who surrounded the throne of Mary Stuart. Cruelty, treachery, and cunning were their leading characteristics. Some of them were Protestants in their own peculiar way, and, as John Knox says, referring to the disposition of the church lands, "for their own commoditie."

Personally, they are thus described by Burton, the latest historian of Scotland, a bitter opponent of Mary Stuart:

"Their dress was that of the camp or stable; they were dirty in person, and abrupt and disrespectful in manner, carrying on their disputes, and even fighting out their fierce quarrels, in the presence of royalty."

In view of the picturesque statement that Mary Stuart went to Scotland with a "resolution as fixed as the stars to trample down the Reformation," her first public acts are of great interest. Mr. Froude states them so imperfectly (vol. vii. p. 374) that they make but slight impression. The friends of her mother and the Catholic nobles expected to be called into her councils. Instead of them, she selected the Lord James (her half-brother) and Maitland as her chief ministers, with a large majority of Protestant lords in her council. She threw herself upon the loyalty of her people, and issued a proclamation forbidding any attempt to interfere with the Protestant religion which she found established in her realm. She did not plead, as Mr. Froude states, that she might have her own service in the royal chapel, but claimed it as a right expressly guaranteed. "The Lord Lindsay might croak out texts that the idolater should die the death." (Vol. vii. p. 375.)

That was a truly energetic "croak"! Listen to it, (not in Froude.) When service in the queen's chapel was about to begin, Lindsay, clad in full armor and brandishing his sword, rushed forward shouting, "The idolater priest shall die the death!" The almoner fortunately, for himself, heard the "croak," took refuge, and after the service was protected to his home by two lords; "and then," says Knox, "the godly departed with great grief of heart."

The interview between Queen Mary and John Knox is narrated by Mr. Froude in such a manner as to tone down the coarseness of Knox's conduct, and lessen the brilliancy of the dialectic victory of the young Scotch girl over the old priest and minister. She first inquired about his _Blast against the Regiment of Women_, in which he declares--

"This monstriferous empire of women, among all the enormities that do this day abound upon the face of the whole earth, is most detestable and damnable. Even men subject to the counsel or empire of their wives are unworthy of all public office."

Mr. Froude describes Knox as saying, "Daniel and St. Paul." He ought to know that a Scotch Puritan could not have said _Saint_ Paul. Macaulay never makes such mistakes. "Daniel and St. Paul were not of the religion of Nebuchadnezzar and Nero." (Vol. vii. p. 376.) Incorrect. Knox having first modestly likened himself unto Plato, thus states his own language:

"I shall be alse weall content to lyve under your grace as Paull was to lyve under Nero." It is hard to say which is greater, the man's vanity in comparing himself to St. Paul, or his intolerable insolence in likening, to her face, the young queen to the bloodiest of all Roman tyrants. William Cobbett, a writer of sturdy and unadulterated English, in referring to some such performance as this on the part of Knox, calls him "the Ruffian of the Reformation." We strongly suspect, though, that Knox did not use language so gratuitously offensive. His account of the interview was written years afterward. He was self-complacent and boastful, and in other places says that he caused the queen to weep so bitterly that a page could scarce get her enough handkerchiefs to dry her eyes. Before Mary, Knox claimed that Daniel and his fellows, although subjects to Nebuchadnezzar and to Darius, would not yet be of the religion of the one nor the other. Mary was ready with her answer, and retorted, "Yea; but none of these men raised the sword against their princes." Mr. Froude, of course, reports this reply in such a manner as to spoil it; adding, "But Knox answered merely that 'God had not given them the power.'" Not so; for Knox strove by logical play, which he himself records, to show that resistance and non-compliance were one and the same thing. "Throughout the whole dialogue," says Burton, "he does not yield the faintest shred of liberty of conscience." But Mary kept him to his text, repeating, "But yet they resisted not with the sword." And then, this young woman, who, Mr. Froude assures us, came to Scotland with "spells to weave conspiracies," "to control herself and to hide her purpose," blunderingly tells Knox that she believed "the Church of Rome was the true church of God."

One would think it no very difficult task for a man of age and experience to see through an impulsive girl of nineteen, whose face mirrored her soul. And yet, Mr. Froude informs us triumphantly, three separate times, that "Knox had looked Mary through and through." In this connection we have one of our historian's best efforts, to which we ask special attention.

"Knox had labored to save Murray from the spell which his sister had flung over him; but Murray had only been angry at his interference, and, 'they spake not familiarly for more than a year and a half.'" (Vol. vii. p. 542.)[54]

Pray notice the cause of this estrangement. Mr. Froude is very explicit here. Look at it. This innocent Murray is under a spell. All heart himself, he saw no guile in his sister. But Knox warned him against the sorceress, _and that was the cause of the coolness between them_. On this point there can be no mistake, and we now propose to place John Knox on the stand and with his eyes to look Mr. Froude "through and through." In the parliament of 1563, Murray had the "Act of Oblivion" passed, in which he managed to reserve for himself and his friends the power to say who should or should not profit by its provisions. With this act he was dangerous to all who opposed him, and was consequently all-powerful. Under these circumstances, John Knox pressed Murray, now that he had the power, to establish the religion, namely, pass in a constitutional manner the informal act of 1560, and legalize the confession of faith as the doctrine of the Church of Scotland.

Now call the witness, John Knox:

"But the erledom of Murray needed confirmation, and many things were to be ratified that concerned the help of friends and servants--and the matter fell so hote betwix the Erle of Murray and John Knox, that familiarlie after that time they spack nott together more than a year and a half."[55]

Thus, if we may believe Knox himself, it was Murray's preference for his own "singular commoditie" over the interests of the kirk of God which caused that "they spake not familiarly together for more than a year and a half." Of "spell" and "enchantress" no word. We refrain from comment.

One remark as to the "spell" Mary had flung over Murray. Even from Mr. Froude's pages may be wrung the unwilling admission that "the stainless Murray" was neither more nor less than the paid and pensioned spy of Elizabeth. Here is another dispatch of Throckmorton, (Elizabeth's ambassador at Paris,) _not_ referred to by Mr. Froude:

"The Lord James came to my lodgings _secretly unto me_, and declared unto me at good length all that had passed between the queen, his sister, and him, and between the Cardinal Lorraine and him, the circumstances whereof he will declare to your majesty particularly when he cometh to your presence."

This business call of Lord James was made during Mary's preparations to leave France for Scotland. He followed it up with a confidential visit of some days to Elizabeth, who allowed him not to depart empty-handed. Unsuspicious of his treachery, Mary heaped honors and riches upon him, made him her first lord of council, and created him successively Earl of Mar and Earl of Murray. And we are asked by Mr. Froude to believe that over such a personage as this "spells" might be successfully flung by the victim of his treachery.

THE MURDER OF RICCIO.

The introduction of Riccio by Mr. Froude (vol. viii. p. 120) is a good specimen of his best art. There is an accusation in every line, an insinuation in every word; yet when he is through, the reader is left in total ignorance of the Italian's real position. Mr. Froude calls him Ritzio, which is a piece of affectation. The name has heretofore been written Rizzio and Riccio. Ritzio, to the English eye, it is true, very nearly represents the Italian pronunciation of Rizzio. The man's name was Riccio, as is well determined by one letter of his, and two of his brother Joseph, all still in existence and perfectly accessible to Mr. Froude.

His age, variously stated from thirty to forty, is never put at less than thirty. Mr. Froude gives no figure, and calls him "the youth;" by which you may, if you choose, understand eighteen or twenty. His real employment is concealed, and at p. 247, vol. viii., he is called "a wandering musician." Riccio was a man of solid acquirements, able and accomplished. He succeeded to the post formerly held by Raulet--that of secretary for the queen's French correspondence--and was thoroughly versed in the languages as well as in the troubled politics of the day. He was, moreover, devotedly loyal, and inspired Mary with entire confidence in his integrity. Sir Walter Scott (_History of Scotland_) says that a person like him, "skilled in languages and in business," was essential to the queen, and adds, "No such agent was likely to be found in Scotland, unless she had chosen a Catholic priest, which would have given more offence to her Protestant subjects," etc.

"The queen," says Knox, "usit him for secretary in things that appertainit to her secret affairs in France and elsewhere."

"That he was old, deformed, and strikingly ugly, has been generally accepted by historians," says Burton.

Having, it appears, no access to these three Scotch historians, Mr. Froude is thrown on his own resources and evolves, "He became a favorite of Mary--he was an accomplished musician; he soothed her hours of solitude with love-songs," etc., etc.

In his statement of the circumstances of the plot for the murder, Mr. Froude dwells complacently on every injurious insinuation against Mary Stuart. Referring to a calumnious invention, falsely attributed to Darnley, (vol. viii. p. 248,) he is of opinion that "Darnley's word was not a good one; he was capable of inventing such a story;" that "Mary's treatment of him went, it is likely, no further than coldness or contempt;" but nevertheless he strives to convey the worst impression against her. If Mr. Froude has a "vivid pen," he also has a light one. He glides delicately over the character of the conspiracy to kill Riccio, and manages to veil the real motives. Riccio was assassinated on the ninth of March. Nearly a month previous, on the thirteenth of February, Randolph writes to Leicester, for Elizabeth's eye, (the letter need not be sought for in Froude,)

"I know that there are practices in hand, contrived between father and son, (Lennox and Darnley,) to come to the crown against her (Mary Stuart's) will. I know that if that take effect which is intended, David, (Riccio,) with the consent of the king, shall have his throat cut within these ten days. Many things grievouser and worse than these are brought to my ears; _yea, of things intended against her own person_, which, because I think better to keep secret than to write to Mr. Secretary, I speak of them but now to your lordship."

And yet all this was but a part of the conspiracy.

Randolph is an authority against whom objection from Mr. Froude is impossible. Nevertheless, he ignores this letter and many others fully confirming it, (vol. viii. p. 254,) thrusts out of sight the real motives, which were political, and industriously works up notorious inventions aimed at Mary Stuart's character.

Looking at it as a mere work of art, and without reference to the facts, the murder scene is admirably described by Mr. Froude. (Vol. viii. p. 257, _et seq._) One serious drawback is his insatiable desire for embellishment. For the mere purpose of description none is needed. The subject is full to overflowing of the finest dramatic material. The result of Mr. Froude's narration is very remarkable. He skilfully manages to centre the reader's sympathy and admiration on the assassin Ruthven, and, with device of phrase and glamour of type, places the sufferer and victim of an infamous brutality in the light of a woman who is merely undergoing some well-merited chastisement. The whole scene as pictured rests on the testimony of the leading assassin, (Ruthven,) from a London _editio expurgata_; for Chalmers shows (vol. ii. p. 352) that the account given by Ruthven and Morton, dated April 30th, is the revised and corrected copy of what they sent to Cecil on the 2d of April, asking him to make such changes as he saw fit before circulating it in Scotland and England. Their note of April 2d still exists; but Mr. Froude does not allude to it. Thus we have the story from the chief murderer, corrected by Cecil and embellished by Mr. Froude, who, while admitting that "the recollection of a person who had just been concerned in so tremendous a scene was not likely to be very exact," (vol. viii. p. 261,) nevertheless adopts the version of that person in preference to all others. Why not exercise the most rudimentary prudence and plainest judgment by controlling Ruthven's recital by that of another?--for there are several. And if, after all, we must perforce have Ruthven's, why not give it as it is, sparing us such inventions as "turning on Darnley as on a snake," and "could she have trampled him into dust upon the spot, she would have done it." Mr. Froude is all himself here. "Catching sight of the empty scabbard at his side, she asked him where his dagger was. He said he did not know. '_It will be known hereafter; it shall be dear blood to some of you if David's be spilt._'" This is a specimen of able workmanship. According to Keith, Mary's answer was, "It will be known hereafter." According to Ellis, Mary had _previously_ said to Ruthven, "It shall be dear blood to some of you if David's be spilt." Now, let the reader observe that Mr. Froude takes these two phrases, found in two different authors, addressed separately to two different persons, reverses the order in which they are spoken, and puts them into one sentence, which he makes Mary address to Darnley! Do you see why so much industry and ingenuity should be exerted? _Because in this form the phrase is a threat of murder_; and thus the foundation is laid broad and deep in the reader's mind for the belief that from that moment Mary has a design upon Darnley's life.[56]

One thing Mr. Froude does state correctly. We mean Mary's words when told that Riccio was dead. In her fright, anguish, and horror she ejaculated, "Poor David! good and faithful servant! May God have mercy on your soul!" To those who know the human heart, this involuntary description of the precise place poor David occupied in Mary's esteem is more than answer to Mr. Froude's indecent note at page 261, and his malevolent insinuations on all his pages. Mary struggled to the window to speak to armed citizens who had flocked to her assistance. "Sit down!" cried one of the ruffian lords to her. "If you stir, you shall be cut into collops, and flung over the walls." A prisoner in the hands of these brutal assassins, after the unspeakable outrages to which she had been subjected, Mr. Froude yet has the admirable art of placing her before his readers in the light of a wicked woman deprived of her liberty for her own good. When night came, Ruthven called Darnley away, and the queen was left to her rest in the scene of the late tragedy; and, adds Mr. Froude with beautiful equanimity, "The ladies of her court were forbidden to enter, and Mary Stuart was locked alone into her room, amidst the traces of the fray, to seek such repose as she could find." This is true, and in that blood-stained place she passed the night alone.

"They had caged their bird," goes festively on our historian; but they "knew little of the temper which they had undertaken to control." ("Undertaken to control" is here positively delicious!) "Behind that grace of form there lay a nature like a panther's, merciless and beautiful." (Vol. viii. 265.) We have seen a panther's skin admired, but we never before heard that the animal had a beautiful nature. Such are the reflections suggested to Mr. Froude's sympathetic mind by the horrible scenes he has just described.[57] One instinctively trembles for those lambs, the lords, with such a "panther" near them. All this time Mr. Froude takes no further notice of Mary's physical condition than to treat the necessary results, which, almost miraculously, were not fatal, as "trick and policy." (Vol. viii. 266.) The queen was then in the sixth month of her pregnancy, and the possible consequences of the horrible tragedy thus thrust suddenly before her eyes were not unforeseen. The conspirators in their bonds had _expressly provided for the contingency of her death_. When Mary escapes from the band of assassins, Mr. Froude would have been utterly inconsolable but for the fact that her midnight ride gives him (vol. viii. p. 270) the opportunity of executing (_tempo agitato_) a spirited fantasia on his historic lyre in his description of the gallop of the fleeing cavalcade.[58] It sounds like a faint echo of Bürger's _Lenore_. Then he gives credit without stint to Mary's iron fortitude and intellectual address. He is entirely too liberal in this regard. Instead of riding "away, away, past Seton," she stopped there for refreshments and the escort of two hundred armed cavaliers under Lord Seton, who was advised of her coming. Then, too, the letter she "_wrote with her own hand_, fierce, dauntless, and haughty," to Elizabeth, and which Mr. Froude so minutely describes--"The strokes thick, and slightly uneven from excitement, but strong, firm, and without sign of trembling!" This insanity for the picturesque and romantic would wreck a far better historian. The prosaic fact is, that although, as Mr. Froude states, the letter may be seen in the Rolls House, _Mary Stuart did not write it_. It was written by an amanuensis, the salutation and signature alone being in her hand. This question was the subject of some controversy, during the past year, in Paris and London, and Mr. Wiesener, a distinguished French historical writer, requested Messrs. Joseph Stevenson and A. Crosby, of the Record Office, to examine the letter and give their opinion. Their reply was, "The body of the document is most certainly not in Mary's handwriting." But, after all, there was no occasion for controversy, and still less for Mr. Froude's blunder. If he had ever read the letter, he would have seen that Mary wrote, "Nous pensions vous écrire cette lettre de notre propre main afin de vous faire mieux comprendre, etc. _Mais de fait nous sommes si fatiguée et_ si mal à l'aise, tant pour avoir couru vingt milles en cinq heures de nuit etc., que _nous ne sommes pas en état de le faire_ comme nous l'aurions souhaité." It was her intention to have written this letter with her own hand, but on account of fatigue and illness could not as she would have desired. "Twenty miles in two hours," says Mr. Froude. Twenty miles in five hours, modestly writes Mary Stuart. Fortunately, we have been warned by Mr. Froude against testimony from that "suspected source!"

We close, for the present, with one specimen (not by any means the worst) of Mr. Froude's historical handicraft, which exemplifies his peculiar system of citation. He professes to give the substance of a letter of Mary Stuart published in Labanoff. (Vol. vii. p. 300.) Here is the letter, side by side with Mr. Froude's version of it. We select this out of numerous cases, for the reason that Labanoff is here more readily accessible than other authorities treated in like manner by Mr. Froude.

* * * * *

MR. FROUDE'S STATEMENT

_of the contents of a letter of April 4th, 1566, from Mary Stuart to Queen Elizabeth_. (See vol. viii. p. 282.)

"In an autograph letter of passionate gratitude, Mary Stuart placed herself, as it were, under her sister's protection; she told her that, in tracing the history of the late conspiracy, she had found that the lords had intended to imprison her for life; and if England or France came to her assistance, they had meant to kill her. She implored Elizabeth _to shut her ears to the calumnies which they would spread against her, and with engaging frankness she begged that the past might be forgotten_; she had experienced too deeply the ingratitude of those by whom she was surrounded _to allow herself to be tempted any more into dangerous enterprises_; for her own part, she was _resolved never to give offence to her good sister again; nothing should be wanting_ to restore the happy relations which had once existed between them; and should she recover safely from her confinement, she hoped that in the summer Elizabeth would make a progress to the north, and that at last she might have an opportunity of thanking her in person for her kindness and _forbearance_.

"This letter was sent by the hands of a certain Thornton, a confidential agent of Mary Stuart, who had been employed on messages to Rome. 'A very evil and naughty person, whom I pray you not to believe,' was Bedford's credential for him in a letter of the 1st of April to Cecil. He was on his way to Rome again on this present occasion.

"The public in Scotland supposed that he was sent to consult the pope on the possibility of divorcing Darnley, and it is remarkable that the Queen of Scots at the close of her own letter desired Elizabeth to give credit to him on some _secret_ matter which he would communicate to her. She perhaps hoped that Elizabeth would now assist her in the dissolution of a marriage which she had been so anxious to prevent."

TRANSLATION OF THE ORIGINAL LETTER.

"EDINBURGH, April 4, 1566."

[The opening paragraph of formal compliment acknowledges reception of Elizabeth's "favorable dispatch" by Melville.]

"When Melville arrived, he found me but lately escaped from the hands of the greatest traitors on earth, in the manner in which the bearer will communicate, with a true account of their most secret plot, which was, that even in case the escaped lords and other nobles, aided by you or by any other prince, undertook to rescue me, they would cut me in pieces and throw me over the wall. Judge for yourself the cruel undertakings of subjects against her who can sincerely boast that she never did them harm. Since then, however, our good subjects have counselled with us, ready to offer their lives in support of justice; and we have, therefore, returned to this city to chastise some of its people guilty of this great crime.

"Meantime, we remain in this castle, as our messenger will more fully give you to understand.

"_Above all other things_, I would especially pray you carefully to see that your agents on the Border comply with your good intentions toward me, and, abiding by our treaty of peace, expel those who have sought my life from their territory, where the leaders in this noted act are as well received as if your intention were the worst possible, (_la pire du monde_,) and the very reverse of what I know it to be.

"I have also heard that the Count (Earl) of Morton is with you. I beg of you to arrest and send him to me, or at least compel him to return to Scotland, by depriving him of safeguard in England. Doubtless he will not fail to make false statements to excuse himself; statements which you will find neither true nor probable. I ask of you, my good sister, to oblige me in all these matters, with the assurance that I have experienced so much ingratitude from my own people that _I_ shall never offend by a similar fault. And to fully affirm our original friendship, I would ask of you in any event (_quoique Dieu m'envoie_) to add the favor of standing as godmother for my child. I moreover hope that, if I should recover by the month of July, and you should make your progress as near to my territory as I am informed you will, to go, if agreeable, and thank you myself, which above all things I desire to do. (Then follow apologies for bad writing, for which, she says, her condition must excuse her, the usual compliments in closing a letter, and wishes for Elizabeth's health and prosperity.)

"Postscript. I beseech your kindness in a matter I have charged the bearer to ask you for me; and furthermore, I will soon write you specially, (_et au reste je vous depécherai bientôt exprès_,) to thank you and to know your intention, if it pleases you, to send me some other minister, whom I may receive as resident, who would be more desirous of promoting our friendship than Randal[59] has been found to be."

* * * * *

We leave the reader to form his own estimate of this method of writing history. Instead of a letter of "passionate gratitude," written spontaneously, as insinuated, it turns out to be the answer to a dispatch (whether written or verbal, it matters not) transmitted by Elizabeth through Melville. Mary's attitude and language are dignified and independent, and the missive, so far from having any prayer for forbearance in its tone, is plainly one of complaint and warning to Elizabeth, couched, it is true, in terms of politeness. The main subject, "above all other things," is the hospitable reception accorded to Riccio's murderers in England, and Elizabeth is delicately but emphatically reminded of her duty and of the violation of it by her border agents. The passages of Mr. Froude's version marked in italics _have no existence_ in Mary's letter, and are of his own invention. Mary Stuart says that she has experienced so much ingratitude from her own (people) that _she_ would never offend any one by similarly sinning. (_J'ai tant eprouvé l'ingratitude des miens que je n'offenserai jamais de semblable péché._) Mr. Froude makes of this that she had experienced too deeply the ingratitude, etc., "to _allow herself to be tempted anymore into dangerous enterprises_."

What dangerous enterprises? The murder of Riccio? Was she guilty of that too? Was it her midnight escape? Mr. Froude alone has the secret! And then the postscript? Randolph had not only offended, but deeply injured her, and she wishes Elizabeth to understand that he must not be sent back to Scotland.

It is found "remarkable" that Mary, in her postscript, desires Elizabeth to receive communication of some verbal matter (_not secret_, as Mr. Froude states) from the messenger. But the same request occurs twice in the body of the letter. Mr. Froude is, of course, accurately informed as to the hidden meaning of the postscript, and settles the matter with what "public opinion supposed," and his usual "perhaps."

This is also an invention of Mr. Froude. He supposes the supposition! Then, too, his "evil and naughty person" is uncalled for; for we know that it was Bedford's business, as it is Mr. Froude's calling, to judge any messenger of Mary Stuart to be "evil and naughty." In all this, the intelligent reader will see that, as at page 261, vol. viii., Mr. Froude lays the foundation of a plan of revenge by Mary against Darnley, so he here strives to fasten upon her the resolution of obtaining a divorce, all going to make cumulative evidence to be used when we come to the Darnley murder. "Deep, sir, deep!"

But there is a more serious aspect to this matter. For three centuries this Mary Stuart question has been a vexed one among historians, and the never-ending theme of acrimonious controversy. What prospect is there of reaching any solution if the subject continues to be treated as we find it in the work before us?

So far from settling any question in dispute, or even solving any of the numerous secondary problems underlying the main issue, Mr. Froude, by his violent partisanship, tortured citation, paltering with the sense while tampering with the text of authorities, attribution of false motives and a scandalous wealth of abusive epithets, greatly grieves the most judicious of those who condemn Mary Stuart, inspires with renewed confidence those who believe that she was a woman more sinned against than sinning, and begets the conviction that the cause must be bad indeed which needs such handling.

FOOTNOTES:

[52] _History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth._ By James Anthony Froude, late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. 12 vols. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

[53] See _Edinburgh Review_ for January and October, 1858.

[54] Mr. Froude's reference for this citation is Knox's _History of the Reformation_, which is somewhat too general. The reader is advised to look for it in vol. ii. p. 382.

[55] We regret that we have not room for the short discourse Knox made to Murray on the occasion of their parting.

[56] The reader may see at p. 376, vol. viii., where he tells of the murder of Darnley, how effectually Mr. Froude cites his own invention as an historical fact: "So at last came Sunday, eleven months exactly from the day of Ritzio's murder; and Mary Stuart's words, that she would never rest until that dark business was revenged, were about to be fulfilled."

[57] His style is never so sparkling with bright enjoyment as when recounting some insult or outrage to Mary Stuart.

[58] "The moon was clear and full." "The queen with incredible animosity was mounted _en croup_ behind Sir Arthur Erskine, upon a beautiful English double gelding," "the king on a courser of Naples;" and "then away, away--past Restalriug, past Arthur's Seat, across the bridge and across the field of Musselburgh, past Seton, past Prestonpans, fast as their horses could speed;" "six in all--their majesties, Erskine, Traquair, and a chamberer of the queen." "In two hours the heavy gates of Dunbar had closed behind them, and Mary Stuart was safe."

[59] His name was Randall--not Randolph, as he was, and is, usually called.

DION AND THE SIBYLS.

A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.

BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.