CHAPTER X.

THE DYING PENITENT'S DISCLOSURE.

There were many sad hearts in the village of M----, outside of Michael Hennessy's home, on the day of his departure. The event cast a gloom over the whole village; for his bright, sunny face was a joy to many of its residents, and there seemed to be a ray of light stricken out when he departed.

His young companions could no longer enjoy the sports of the play-ground; but might be seen gathered in quiet groups discussing and lamenting the loss of their joyous comrade. None mourned for him more than Frank Blair; for his grief over the absence of a loved school-mate was increased by the part his father had taken in bringing it about. He saw the time approaching for his own departure, to take his place in the naval school, with a sullen apathy that alarmed his mother and aunt, and repeatedly expressed his indifference as to whether he should ever return to M----.

When Michael had been absent about two months, Joe Bundy returned to M---- from one of his frequent distant rambles; and soon after his return was taken very ill. The physician pronounced it a very malignant case of the small-pox, and had him removed to a building quite out of the village. He was so generally disliked that it was difficult to find any one to take care of him; but when Mrs. Hennessy heard of it, she offered to go if Mrs. Sullivan would look after her house; her oldest daughter, Jane, being old enough to get along with a little direction. She accordingly went, and found him much worse than she expected, and suffering intensely. As soon as he saw her, he became so violently agitated that she thought he was delirious, and the impression was confirmed by his pleading in the most moving terms for her forgiveness, and that she would send for the priest, when he had always been a Protestant. She tried to soothe him; but he only begged the more earnestly, and assured her that he was not delirious. So when the physician came, she requested him to send Mr. Hennessy for the priest.

Upon the arrival of the reverend father, the young man, to his great surprise, begged to be admitted into the Catholic Church.

The priest, having satisfied himself as to his dispositions, and imparted the necessary instruction, administered conditional baptism, and then heard his confession. At its close Joe repeated a portion to Mrs. Hennessy; and the fact was then disclosed to her that he had poisoned the dog and perjured himself to gratify his anger at Michael's scornful remark, and his spiteful feelings toward a boy who was so generally beloved.

The physician coming in soon after, the same information was conveyed to him; and he made no delay in communicating it to Mr. Hennessy, that he might act upon it at once.

The news flew like wild-fire through the village; and great were the rejoicings on every hand. The school-boys were frantic with joy; and the teacher announced that the day of Michael's return should be celebrated by a holiday of triumphant exultation and welcome to their returning friend.

Measures were instituted for Michael's immediate release; and the people could hardly await the necessary course of legal formalities.

Meantime poor Joe grew worse; and after improving those last few days of suffering by manifesting such penitence as the time and the circumstances would allow, and receiving from the priest those consolations which the church extends to penitent sinners, he died.

Upon examining his few effects, a roll of counterfeit bills was discovered; and it was conjectured that his last journey was made to procure them, as he had told Mrs. Hennessy that he supposed he took the small-pox on a recent visit to Canada.

When the papers were ready, Mr. Blair claimed the privilege of going after Michael. He reproached himself so bitterly for his own injustice that he could not do enough to manifest his regret.

A larger crowd was never assembled in the village than met at the depot in M---- on the evening of his arrival with his young companion. They were greeted with joyful cheers, repeated again and again; and Mr. Blair led Michael to his father, saying, "Let me congratulate you, Mr. Hennessy, on being able to claim such a son. During the short time he has been away, among strangers and under most unfavorable circumstances, he has established a character that any young man might envy; and it was truly touching to witness the grief of his unfortunate young companions at parting with him. The principal also passed the highest encomiums upon his conduct. Allow me also to express to this assemblage of my fellow-townsmen my sincere regret that I should have had any part in his unjust conviction, and allowed myself to be governed by prejudices, too common in our country, which I now lay aside for ever. There are good and bad people among natives and foreigners; and the man exhibits but little good sense who passes sweeping condemnations upon either."

The school-boys, with their teacher at the head, formed a procession to escort Michael to his father's house; and a happier circle was not to be found in Vermont than the one that knelt around Mr. Hennessy's family altar that night, to return fervent thanksgivings to heaven for having permitted the separated to be again and so speedily reunited!

TO BE CONTINUED.

TEN YEARS IN ROME.[174]

Rome, the city of the soul! Who is there that does not nowadays feel his thoughts turning almost involuntarily to the seven-hilled city? To her many ordinary claims on our minds, there has of late been added one of startling interest--the Œcumenical Council--which has not failed to excite the attention of the world. It is the daily theme of prayer and of hope for the devout child of the church. To the worldling, it is a theme of curiosity and idle speculation. To the enemies of the church, the council is a subject of alarm and of vague apprehensions. In Europe, where men curiously mix politics and religion, their opposition takes the hue of _odium politicum_; and journals, reviews, and pamphlets are filled with the most _outré_ accounts of what the writers assert has been done or will be done in the council, adverse to liberty, progress, and civilization. In America, where as yet men have not lost the habit of separating politics from religion, such effusions as these would be looked on as simply stupid, unreadable nonsense. Here, however, as also in England, the _odium theologicum_ retains its olden character and makes use of its olden weapons. It is worth while to note the apparently systematic efforts made to repeat old calumnies, and to coin new stories after the old pattern, and to force them on the public attention, on occasion of this universal interest, in the evident expectation that they will now be swallowed as credulously as they might have been fifty years ago. No greater tribute, we think, could be paid to the real advancement of the public mind than to say that this expectation has in very great measure proved vain. There are things and stories which nowadays most men instinctively feel to be too absurd for belief. Hence it is scarcely worth while to take up such stories for serious examination. They are simply to be put in a class together, and to be properly labelled, and to be ranked below the sensational tales in the _Ledger_. This is especially the case when they appear in organs specially devoted to the cause which such stories are intended to support.

Now and then, however, it may be allowed to dissect such a production, that the evidence of facts may occasionally confirm and strengthen the true instinct which we already possess. More especially is this allowable, when the story is peculiarly bold and prominent, and comes before the public through a channel in which we are not prepared to look for an exhibition of the old and unscrupulous hatred.

Such an instance has been presented in several articles in the _Galaxy_, a monthly periodical published in this city, and aiming to be a literary and instructive magazine "of value and interest."

Among the writers engaged for the pages of the _Galaxy_ is one who is represented as having been a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic, and who contributes a series of articles under the title, "Ten Years in Rome."

According to these articles, the writer is an Englishman, and was at one time a Catholic priest in Rome. He went to Rome in 1855-56, bearing letters of introduction, was received at once into the Propaganda College, increasing the number of Irish, Scotch, and English students in that college to _nine_, passed from there to the Vatican, to live "under the same roof with the pope," became assistant-librarian to the Congregation of the Index, and subsequently was the confidential and trusty secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea, whose private papers--or at least some of them--he claims still to possess. The _Galaxy_ does not give the name of this writer. But the daily papers informed us, some time ago, that a reverend gentleman of England delivered a lecture at the lecture-room of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, on Rome and its religion and society; and was qualified to do so, because he had been formerly "an official of the Roman court, secretary to the late Cardinal d'Andrea, and assistant librarian in the Index Expurgatorius." The lecturer was evidently the same individual as the writer for the _Galaxy_. The papers gave his name, which, we are sorry to say, smacks far more of the Green Island than of England.

Now, it so happened that we were in a position to test at once and fully the accuracy of these statements in regard to the past history of the lecturer and writer; and we reached the following results:

1. No young English youth or clergyman of that name ever was received into the College of the Propaganda at Rome. This is shown by the records of the college, and is corroborated by the assurances of the present rector, who, in 1855, had been for several years vice-rector, and has ever since been connected with the college, and also by the recollection of half a dozen Irish and American students, who were then in the college, and would have been his companions.

2. During the last twenty-five years there never was an officer of the Roman court, or an English or Irish ecclesiastic connected with it, in any way, of that name. The list of all such officers is regularly published every year. This name has never figured there. Officers of twenty years' standing in the Vatican have no recollection of him. An Englishman could scarcely have been entirely overlooked. And at least his brother Englishmen, who are officers of the court, would have known and remembered him.

3. During the same period, no person of that name has filled the office of librarian, or assistant-librarian, of the Index Expurgatorius, or of the Congregation of the Index. The officials of that congregation are all Dominicans; and the writer does not pretend that he ever joined that order. We may add the other insignificant fact, that no such library is known to exist at all, much less to be so large as to require the services not only of a librarian, but of one, perhaps of several, assistant-librarians.

4. The late Cardinal d'Andrea never had a secretary of that name. This is the assurance unanimously given us by the friends and intimate acquaintances of the cardinal, and by the members of his household, who had lived with him for twenty years. There can be no doubt on this fact. We may add one little item. Cardinal d'Andrea had no secretary. The _secretary_ of a cardinal is an ecclesiastic. When a layman is chosen to fill the place, he is called, not the _secretary_, but the _chancellor_ of the cardinal. Cardinal d'Andrea, from 1852, when he was made cardinal, down to his death, employed as _chancellor_ an estimable and well-educated gentleman, whom he had known well, and had been intimately associated with for years before, and who still lives in Rome.

5. Although, considering that forty or fifty thousand strangers visit Rome every year, it may be possible that the writer in _The Galaxy_ did, at some time or other, enter that city, yet we are pretty certain that he never spent any considerable time there--much less, ten years--as an ecclesiastic. We have made inquiries of a number of clergymen, Englishmen and Irishmen, resident in the Eternal City for thirty years, who from their positions must have heard of such a one, and could not have escaped becoming acquainted with him under some circumstances or other. One after another, they assured us that they had never met, and could not remember ever having heard of such, an ecclesiastic.

It is unfortunate that, in such striking and important matters of his own personal history, concerning which he ought to be perfectly well-informed, the memory of our lecturer and writer fails so entirely to agree with the recollection and knowledge of so many others. If this is the case here, what may we look for when he undertakes to remember what happened to others?

Our writer makes his bow to the readers of _The Galaxy_ in the number of December last, in the character of "_Secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea_," concerning whom he gives an article of nine pages, intended to be sensational and artistic. He opens thus:

"The church of San Giovanni in Laterano was filled with an unusually excited throng. The magnificent edifice, the pope's cathedral, as bishop of Rome, was draped for a funeral. The marble pillars," etc., etc.

To be sure, the description of the edifice which follows is rather misty, to one who knows it, and some things, we suspect, are introduced which no architect ever saw there. But then, "in the centre of the church," stands "the chief object of interest," "a gorgeous catafalque," "entirely covered with black velvet, very tastefully festooned with silver." "Escutcheons were placed at intervals, bearing the arms of the deceased. On the bier lay a cardinal's hat, a pastoral staff, and a mitre. Six gigantic candles of yellow wax were burning around it." The pope and the cardinals were to come to the funeral. As the cardinal-minister (Antonelli) "stepped from his carriage" in front of the church, "there was a deep hum" from the crowd. For they suspected him of having compassed the death of the only cardinal they honored, who was to be buried that day. "His face was very pale;" "he played nervously with the jewelled cross hanging from his neck." "He could read his doom in hundreds of scowling faces; the curses, not loud but deep, he well interpreted. As he ascended the steps of the church, a shrill voice cried out, 'Down with the assassin!'" "The French guards clinched their rifles," and "closed in" at a sign to their captain; and so Cardinal Antonelli entered the church. After praising the exquisite requiem mass of Mozart, with selections from Palestrina, and the perfect choir of voices, rendering any instrument superfluous, the writer places the pope at the head of the catafalque. "He was visibly moved." "There was a tremor in his clear, harmonious voice." "He whose requiem was being sung had been a friend and a counsellor." When at length the services were over, and the pope and the _cortége_ of cardinals had departed, "the people rushed into the church to render the only service they could to the departed; and strong men, unused to prayer, uttered their fervent _requiescat in pace!_"

"This was the funeral of Cardinal d'Andrea, Abbot of Santa Scolastica, statesman, politician, and patriot. It occurred on the 22d day of March 1865."

Now all this may be a very artistic method of introducing a story. The chief objection that we have to it is that the writer makes such a parade about the funeral of Cardinal d'Andrea. We think he rather overcharges the picture. Had it been any body else's funeral, we might possibly let it pass. But in the case of this cardinal, we object; for, to our own knowledge, on this 22d day of March, 1865, Cardinal d'Andrea was not lying dead on that bier in San Giovanni in Laterano, as described, but, on the contrary, was alive, if not perfectly well, in Sorrento, near Naples, whither he had gone over nine months before for his health. Nor did he die about this time; but he lived on, and wrote some letters from time to time, which were published in the papers, and one, if not several, pamphlets, which were very acceptable to editors in Italy and France, in quest of themes for their leading articles. As late as the autumn of 1867, the papers were discussing what step Cardinal d'Andrea would next take. And they chronicled his return to Rome in December, 1867. Yes, we decidedly object. We do not think that this writer, however extraordinary his powers of memory may be, has a right to bury Cardinal d'Andrea alive, to say nothing of bringing the venerable pontiff to grief, of frightening Cardinal Antonelli, of making the French guards clinch their rifles and go through a military manœuvre, and, last of all, of so terribly exciting a Roman crowd about the death of one who had not died at all.

Having commenced the performance by this _tour de force_ before his public, our "secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea," like a skilful actor as he is, jumps a somersault backward two years and a half, (carrying us to about September, 1862,) and undertakes to give us some inkling of how Cardinal d'Andrea and Cardinal Antonelli came to be opposed to each other. There was a plan entered into by several cardinals and monsignori to induce the pope to recommend Cardinal Antonelli to resign his office as Cardinal-Minister and Secretary of State. The "secretary" omits to inform us distinctly whether Cardinal d'Andrea was a party to the plan or not. But we are left to infer that he was. It failed. And ever after, Cardinal d'Andrea did not enjoy the confidence of the pope to the degree he had done before; and Cardinal Antonelli and his followers hated him. The _recollection_ of this intrigue, and its failure, is followed by an exposition of the political sentiments of the cardinal. "He became the leader of the liberal policy of Cavour, in Rome."

Now, here again we object. That a number of cardinals or monsignori should think that it would be well if a cardinal secretary of state, for the time being, should resign; and that affairs would be better managed, if another incumbent filled the place, is possible; perhaps, considering the variety of opinions among men, is not improbable. In the case of Cardinal Antonelli, the matter is complicated, perhaps we should say, simplified, by the fact that they would find very few indeed to agree with them. But that a number of cardinals and monsignori did really entertain such an opinion on the subject, and did, in September, 1862, or thereabouts, combine in an effort to oust Cardinal Antonelli, is vouched for, so far as we know, only by the recollections of our writer. The plan itself was not dreamed of in well-informed circles in Rome, and the bold and adroit measures by which Cardinal Antonelli is said to have foiled it failed to attract attention at the time, or to leave any trace afterward, either in the diplomatic records of Rome, or in the memory of any one else besides our writer. It is one other additional instance of the perversity of the world, which will not remember what he recalls so distinctly.

As to Cardinal d'Andrea, he had been, since 1860, Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, and was also Prefect of the Congregation of the Index. His health had begun to fail some time before the date we are examining, and within a few months afterward he was forced, much to the regret of the pope, to resign the latter office, and to restrict himself to the duties of his diocese and his private affairs, and could take but a light share in the work of a cardinal. To make him at that time a prime mover in the scheme, is as gratuitous as, under the circumstances, it is absurd.

The statement of his political principles is equally in contradiction with facts. Cardinal d'Andrea had all his life been a most strenuous and active supporter of the temporal power of the pope, and was not a man to change his position and his principles at the close of his life. He was as uncompromising, and a far more outspoken opponent of the policy of Cavour, than even Cardinal Antonelli himself, who, as befits his office and his character, never violates the reserved and strictly temperate expressions allowed by diplomatic courtesy. All that our writer "remembers" concerning Cardinal d'Andrea's connection with and influence over the Roman committee, is a pure effort of his memory, which, by the by, on this point has played him false. He remembers, "To his counsel it was due that no revolt occurred on the withdrawal of the French." Why, the French troops were withdrawn from Rome in December, 1866, to be sent back in October, 1867, on the occasion of Garibaldi's attempted invasion of the Papal States. How could Cardinal d'Andrea, who had died, as the secretary "remembers," and whose funeral obsequies had been so pompously celebrated in the cathedral church of San Giovanni di Laterano, on the 22d day of March, 1865, be alive to give counsel and use his influence with the Mazzinians and the party of action a year and nine months afterward? Has the writer's own memory proved traitor to him, and joined the crowd of contradictors?

In point of fact, Cardinal d'Andrea was not in Rome in December, 1866, nor for months before and for months afterward. He was at Naples, or its neighborhood, seeking to restore his shattered and sinking health.

Our secretary takes a second leap backward, and "endeavors to give a slight sketch of the Cardinal d'Andrea, necessarily imperfect as pen and ink sketches always are." The incompleteness we might readily excuse. But we cannot excuse its utter incorrectness in the details, an incorrectness so unnecessarily excessive that we can only explain it on the theory he is entirely guided by that wonderful memory, of the powers of which we have had such evidences. Especially is this seen when, leaving generalities aside, the writer ventures to make a precise and definite statement.

Thus, we are informed that, in his early life, the cardinal "had been bred for the army, and served in the Noble Guard for three years." Whereas the cardinal was not born in Rome or the Roman States at all, and never had any connection whatever with the Noble Guard or any other military corps. He was born in Naples. His father, the Marquis Giovanni d'Andrea, was treasurer of the kingdom of Naples. His elder brother, the present Marquis d'Andrea, is still living near Naples. Jerome d'Andrea, the future cardinal, at an early age showed an inclination for the church, and in due time went through the ordinary course of ecclesiastical studies. At its conclusion, he came to Rome, and entered the Accademia Ecclesiastica, a college for the higher and more thorough education of such ecclesiastics as wish to enter the _carriera_, as it is called, that is, who aspire to become ecclesiastical officials at Rome. There was nothing military about the cardinal. He simply had the dignified bearing and the polished manners of an Italian nobleman.

"He viewed the Jesuits as the foes of reform; his scheme was to destroy their influence in the public schools." "The mendicant orders met no favor with him." "He did approve of the dissolution of _their_ monasteries." This posthumous revelation of the cardinal's sentiments will undoubtedly astonish the Jesuits and the mendicant orders at Rome, if they ever hear of it, unless indeed they are foolish enough to trust their own memory of the words and acts of the cardinal in life, rather than the wonderful memory of this "secretary." The Jesuits will remember how often and regularly he would visit their father-general, or Father Perrone, or the more illustrious and learned members of their society; how fond he was of having some of them to visit him frequently; how he would invite their counsel and aid, and how he was careful to omit no proper occasion of publicly showing his friendship and esteem for them. The members of the mendicant orders will call to mind their perpetual intercourse with one who was always a kind father to them. As one of the cardinal's household expressed it to us, _Era sempre attorniato da lore--He always had these friars around him_. We fear that, with such cherished memories in their hearts, they will pay very little regard to the recollections of our "secretary."

But he becomes more precise in the details of the cardinal's daily life.

"The cardinal generally rose at six, and spent three hours in reading ere he said mass and breakfasted. He then received, and at twelve rode out, except when his presence was required by the pope. The afternoon was spent in a siesta until six. At half-past nine he retired."

What a sleepy-head this affectionate and reverential "secretary" would make the cardinal to be. Retire at half-past nine, and rise at six. Here we have eight hours for a good night's sleep; ample allowance, one would think. But no. Each day, after his noon-day drive, the afternoon until six is spent in a siesta; that is, at least four hours more given to sleep--twelve hours, on an average, out of every twenty-four! And this was the ordinary course of things, only interrupted when his presence was required by the pope! Was he in any way related to Rip Van Winkle, or is it the secretary who is dreaming? Certainly Cardinal d'Andrea bore all his life the reputation of being a remarkably wide-awake, clear-headed, and active business man.

We presume that he usually rose about six--a little later in winter, somewhat earlier in summer--such being the custom of Italians of his standing. By half-past eight, mass and breakfast were over; for business hours commence at nine, and the cardinal gave the forenoon to business, whether in the consistories or in the meetings of congregations or at his own residence, where secretaries, theologians, and other officials, and all interested parties, would see him. At half-past one, or at two, as business allowed, he dined. In summer, he took a siesta for half an hour or so. An hour or more was given to reciting his breviary and to private study. At four in winter and five in summer, if the weather allowed, he would drive out, and when outside the city might indulge in half an hour's active walk on foot. Reëntering his carriage, he reached home about sunset. Until nine, he received those who called on him, whether on business or as friends. Then came his supper, after which he loved to spend an hour or two in lively conversation on the topics of the day with his more intimate and esteemed friends. About eleven, he usually retired to rest; but, too frequently for his health, he would, if he had what he deemed important business on hand, stay up until one or two in the morning, studying or writing.

"In his meals he was sparing, attached to the French _cuisine_, and drank the light native vintage of Monte Fiascone.... He never went among French society. He gave the French no countenance, regarding them as witnesses of his country's serfdom."

What the writer means by this last phrase, or how the English and Germans visiting Rome are not as truly witnesses to things there as the French can be, we do not understand, and shall not stop to inquire. The important statements are before us. The cardinal was attached to the French _cuisine_ and avoided French _society_. Now, the truth was just the reverse on both these points. The cardinal was an excellent linguist and a well-read scholar. He delighted in the company of educated Frenchmen, ecclesiastics, laymen, and military, and was quite intimate with many of them. But as to his food, he remained a true Neapolitan to the day of his death, and stuck to macaroni, vermicelli, and pollenta, as an Englishman sticks to his roast beef and good mutton.

"The Cardinal d'Andrea was fond of theatricals; indeed, private representations were among the few enjoyments he had. He relished them amazingly."

When we repeated this statement to the member of the cardinal's household to whom we are indebted for our information on the preceding points, he turned on us a look of bewildered astonishment which we shall not soon forget. "_Poesie! poesie!_" he exclaimed. "_All an invention; all an invention._"

Even in his early life, when, as a layman, he could have frequented the theatre without any breach of decorum, he had avoided it. As a clergyman, of course he could not go without losing caste. It might have well happened that, in his travels in France, Switzerland, Germany, and various parts of Italy, he had at some time or other chanced to be a guest where courtesy called on him to be present at private theatricals held in the family. Of this our informant could not speak, for he had not always been with him on these journeys. But since he had been made cardinal he had been with him, and could not recall a single instance where the cardinal had attended such a private representation. In his own palace he could not have had them. His own character did not run in that line of amusement; and even if he had desired it, the size and form of the apartments would have rendered them impossible.

But such effusions of our "secretary's" poetic or inventive memory are of themselves too slight and trivial to merit a place in _The Galaxy_. There must be something of graver import to come. And in fact these things have only been the preliminaries for the grand events which are to be recorded of Cardinal d'Andrea; his escape from Rome by the active aid of this secretary; the espionage over his words and acts when he returned--an espionage which this secretary detected, though he could not foil it; the finding of the cardinal unexpectedly and mysteriously dead in his bed one morning; and finally, the saving of his important private papers, by this secretary, from the clutches of Cardinal Antonelli--papers which he has persistently guarded and still retains, and which hereafter, we may be allowed to conjecture, can serve to refresh and stimulate his wondrous powers of memory, if any stimulation be needed.

The scene opens some time during the course of those two years, to the beginning of which the first jump backward brought our writer. The plan to oust Cardinal Antonelli from office had been formed, as we were told, and failed; and Cardinal d'Andrea had lost somewhat of the pope's favor, and had incurred the bitter enmity of Cardinal Antonelli and of the Jesuits and ultramontanes. We may reasonably allow some months for so much. When time had brought things to this pass, "there was a party in the Piazza di Spagna, given by a Russian princess, at which the _élite_ of Roman society was assembled. Among the guests was Cardinal d'Andrea. Madame C----, the wife of Captain C----, of the French army, was, as usual, coquetting with the Cardinal di C----a, a prince of the most ancient of Roman houses, with one of the finest palaces in Rome." The secretary loiters to describe Captain C----, of the French army, and Madame C----, his young and handsome wife, and to tell his readers of her notorious intrigue with the above-named Cardinal Prince di C----a, of the ancient family and with the fine palace. "Four days after this party, Captain C---- appeared at his wife's apartments. He was cool and deliberate. He upbraided her in unmeasured terms. She bitterly resented.... His rage became terrible. Ere she could utter a prayer or a cry, he seized the miserable woman and shot her; then shot himself! The affair created some little sensation."

We should think it would, especially in peaceful, slow-going, decorous Rome. Even in New-York, or in London, or in Paris, such a tragedy, in which persons of that social standing were concerned, would have created quite a sensation.

The Prince di C----a, "of one of the most ancient of Roman houses, with one of the finest palaces in Rome," can of course be none other than the Prince _Colonna_. The Roman princes are few in number, and can easily be counted. No other has a surname to suit. The ancient family and the fine palace are earmarks also. He means _Colonna_. But then, many, many years have passed since there was a cardinal of that family. In fact, take the list of cardinals since 1850, and the only one whose name the designation C----a could fit is Cardinal Cuesta, a Spaniard, who at the date of this party, (somewhere, if we follow the "secretary," in the winter of 1862-63,) was an aged septuagenarian bishop, zealously ruling his diocese in Spain; moreover, he was not then a cardinal. He was made cardinal two years afterward. Furthermore, he resides not in Rome but in Spain, whence he was lately called to Rome for the present council. He obviously cannot be the man. And so the Cardinal Prince di C----a vanishes into thin air, like a poetic phantom, as he is.

Captain C----, of the French army, and his wife, Madame C----, seem disposed to follow him into empty space. No French officer then in Rome, and we have consulted several, can remember any French captain who killed his wife and then committed suicide. The police never got wind of the double tragedy. It escaped even the keen-scented newspaper itemizers. The "little sensation" is a feat of memory.

Decidedly our "secretary" is as unlucky at tragedies as he is at funerals, even though he assures us "the incidents of that reunion have fixed themselves very much on my memory, for it was the last time the Cardinal d'Andrea appeared at such assemblies." In fact, he proceeds to narrate how that very night, by his skilful planning, the cardinal was able to get out of Rome. This gives us, for the first time, we may say, in this article, the slightest soundings of truth. Cardinal d'Andrea did once leave Rome for Naples without the regular permission which was required for one in his position. We will speak further on of the motives and circumstances of that departure. Here we will only state the fact, that he left Rome on the 16th of June, 1864. The writer of this article was in Rome at the time, and, for peculiar reasons, no such tragedy as that "remembered" and the sensation it created could have escaped his knowledge. We may add that in Rome such parties are given in winter and never in summer. The strangers who visit Rome in winter, and leave after Easter, are in June in Switzerland or some other cool place. As for the _élite_ of Roman society, they are "out of town."

But let us leave facts aside, and enter on that dream-land, the incidents of which are so firmly fixed on the memory of our secretary. Hear him:

"The cardinal retired early, and, it being moonlight and very fine, resolved to send back the carriage and walk home. He walked in company with his secretary, a servant, as usual, attending at a little distance. He had passed into the Corso, when a man suddenly started out of the small and dark Via Fontanella di Borghese.... It was a celebrated politician, who dared not have open intercourse with any one for fear of compromising them, and he conveyed the unwelcome intelligence that the cardinal's life was in imminent danger.... Every moment was of importance. A plan was speedily devised. The Honorable Mr. K---- was leaving at two o'clock in his private carriage for Civita Vecchia, to catch the French steamer touching at Civita Vecchia at half-past twelve next day, on her way to Naples." The secretary disguised himself, and stealthily sought an interview at once with this Englishman bearing an American title, and briefly "told his errand." "The generous Englishman proposed that the cardinal should accompany him, disguised as a friend whose name appeared in his passport. The friend, on being consulted, agreed, and the secretary left, promising to be ready at a certain street with the cardinal, where the carriage was to take him up.... His eminence put on the beard and moustache our English friend had given us, and, with the aid of a large Inverness cape and white wide-awake, was splendidly disguised. It wanted two hours and a half of the time. The cardinal never lost his presence of mind, but was gloomy and foreboding. At last we called the valet, devoted to his master, and informed him of the plan. He was to pretend illness on the part of the cardinal. He listened carefully to his instructions, and exclaimed, 'Eminence, your shoes and stockings!' We looked down, and saw that the patent-leather, low, clerical shoes with gold buckles and the red silk stockings were very obvious betrayals of the rank of the disguised. No lay shoes and stockings were at hand, until the valet bethought him of his own. Hastily effecting the change, the cardinal passed out of the place alone, not suffering any one to accompany him." Whereby, we presume, he ran some risk of blundering as to the appointment, and moreover forced the zealous secretary to break his promise of being "ready at a certain street with the cardinal, where the carriage was to take him up." "The whole of the next day passed heavily, but no inquiries were made for his eminence. As his valet only waited on him, the other domestics easily believed that he was indisposed. Two days after, the secretary hastily scanned the _Giornale di Roma_, where he saw the departure of Mr. K---- announced, and that of his friend. The valet, poor fellow, though somewhat obese and awkward, executed an eccentric _pas seul_, in token of his satisfaction at the news, and then broke out into a fervent _Ave Maria_ for his master's safety. Four days elapsed, and a summons came to attend the consistory. Then it was announced that the cardinal had left for Naples."

Now, we confess to having enjoyed this passage of our "secretary's" _reminiscence_ more than any other. We think it his best effort. Still, it lacks some touches. He should not have omitted the matter of the exchange of the cardinal's knee-breeches for the valet's pantaloons. For obviously, if the cardinal put on the lay shoes and stockings of the valet, and retained his own knee-breeches, a space of ten inches at least on each leg would necessarily have been left bare and uncovered. Such an arrangement, however conducive to coolness, would have been a very remarkable feature of his costume, especially noticeable in contrast with the large Inverness cape which warmly enveloped the upper part of his person, and that in the month of June. Such an outfit would certainly attract every eye. Surely the cardinal and the valet must have then and there exchanged the knee-breeches of the one against the pantaloons of the other, regardless of how they fitted. Again, the "secretary" ought to have given us some inkling of how the valet felt and demeaned himself next morning when he appeared before his fellow-servants rigged out in the patent-leather, low, clerical shoes with gold buckles, the red silk stockings, and the knee-breeches of his master, instead of his own proper habiliments. Could not our secretary have adorned the _Galaxy_ with some of the brilliant things then said and done?

The Honorable Mr. K----, too, acted very strangely. He might have taken his rest like a sensible man that night, and have left Rome by the accommodation train starting at six A.M. next morning, reaching Civita Vecchia at nine; or he might have waited for the express train, starting at ten A.M., reaching Civita Vecchia at twelve, and making connection with the steamers, whether bound to Naples or to Leghorn or to Marseilles. But no. He must lose his night's rest, and start at two A.M. in a private carriage to travel fifty miles, and reach a French steamer touching at Civita Vecchia at half-past twelve.

But if our secretary, in his recollections, can spurn facts, it would be superfluous to ask him to respect mere probabilities.

The real method of the cardinal's departure from Rome and his journey to Naples was the following very prosaic one:

On the 16th of June, 1864, he drove in his own carriage from his own residence, the Palazzo Gabrielli, to the railway station in Rome, and took a ticket for Velletri, to which city he was accustomed to go, from time to time, to attend to the interests of the estate Girgenti, of which the family had requested him to become the administrator during the minority of the heirs. His valet alone accompanied him. The carriage was ordered to be at the station in the afternoon, as he might come back by the returning train. At Velletri, the cardinal was met by his man of business in that city, who had possibly made the necessary arrangements, and both proceeded in the same train to Isoletta, on the Neapolitan frontier. The cardinal continued on to Naples. The agent came back to Rome, found the carriage at the station, rode in it to the Palazzo Gabrielli, and informed the cardinal's chancellor and the household that the cardinal had gone to Naples for his health, and was not able to say when he would return.

This is the plain, matter-of-fact occurrence which the secretary's memory has changed into something like a chapter from one of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels sixty years ago.

We have already said that Cardinal d'Andrea took this step without the permission which, according to the rules of the Sacred College, he should have previously obtained. He had asked for that permission, and it had not been granted. When he publicly violated the rule on this point, the Italian enemies of the temporal power of the pope hoped that they had unexpectedly found a cardinal in such a position that they might, by degrees, make him their tool, and use him against Pius IX. Voices were heard hinting that it might be proper even to make him an anti-pope. The wiser ones among them saw from the beginning how absurd such hopes and plans were; for they knew the past history and the real character of the cardinal; and they rightly judged that whatever might be the motives of his present unexpected and most unusual proceeding, they must be personal. The step could not spring from any policy opposed to that of the court of Rome. They knew too well that he had always been a strenuous defender of the pope; they had often found him their active and energetic opponent. Later events proved to all that this judgment of theirs was correct.

We have spoken of the birth and early education of Girolamo d'Andrea, and his coming to Rome and entrance into the Accademia Ecclesiastica in that city. Soon after finishing his course of studies there with considerable reputation, he was made, in 1841, _ponente_, or judge, in an inferior ecclesiastical court, commencing thus his _carriera_ at the bottom, but with distinction. He was afterward (1843) made delegate, or governor, of the province of Viterbo; and three years later went as nuncio or ambassador to Lucerne in Switzerland, which office he filled at the time of the _Sonderbund_ war. Toward 1849, he returned to Rome, and was elevated to the very responsible position of Secretary of the Congregation of the Council. When Pius IX., after the public assassination of his prime-minister, Rossi, and the threats of violence to himself, escaped to Gaeta, Monsignor d'Andrea of course followed him. He was the prominent and most active man in reëstablishing the papal government in Umbria and the Marches and the patrimony. After two years of successful labor, he returned to Rome, to receive the thanks and the reward due to a delicate task zealously and satisfactorily accomplished. He was still Secretary of the Congregation of the Council, one of the highest posts he could hold, without being cardinal. On the 15th of March, he was made cardinal-priest, with the title of _Sant' Agnese fuori delle Mura_. He had thus, in eleven years, reached the highest step of the Roman _carriera_. All acknowledged, even those whom he had passed, that the cardinal's hat was, in this case, most fittingly bestowed on learning, talents, experience, and as the well-deserved reward of zealous and efficient services. The new cardinal was soon named Prefect of the Congregation of the Index and Abbate Commendatario of Santa Scolastica, which last title he retained to his death. In 1860, he became Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina; and, by the firm and wise administration of his diocese, was looked on as a model bishop. In 1862, his health began to fail. Slow fevers seemed to undermine his constitution, stronger in appearance than in reality. At times a racking cough and a copious expectoration harassed him, and he seemed sinking into consumption. Rallying from this, he would suffer excruciating pains in the intestines; and, at times, he was subject to fainting fits. Still he struggled against all this, and kept on at his work. His friends noticed that he gradually became more silent and despondent. They observed, too, another effect of this long-continued indisposition. He became inclined to take up fixed ideas, and, perhaps, crotchets, and to adhere to them the more tenaciously if opposed. He evidently was not, at all times, the man he had formerly been. Of course, it took time for all this to be suspected and reluctantly admitted.

In the spring of 1864, the cardinal took up the idea that his health would be restored if he went to Naples, his birth-place. He asked permission to do so.

Special circumstances made the request one to be considered very maturely. The government at Rome was in a critical and delicate position, which required it to avoid most carefully any step capable of a doubtful interpretation, or liable to be made a pretext for certain false charges then current against it. The ex-king of Naples was a refugee in Rome. Dethroned sovereigns generally seek and find an asylum there. His friends and adherents in Naples were busy concerting measures to get him back on his throne. The Italian government and the Italian papers charged the court with assenting to and aiding in these plans. Even France seemed to be growing cold, and to be manifesting those dispositions which, a few months after, culminated in the iniquitous convention with Victor Emmanuel for the withdrawal of the French troops from the duty of protecting Rome. All these things made the court of Rome trebly cautious to commit no mistake.

It was felt that for a Roman cardinal to go then to Naples, even under the pretext of ill-health, more especially a cardinal like Cardinal d'Andrea, whose family had been for several generations closely connected with the dethroned royal family, and whose personal antecedents had been those we have recited, would be too dangerous. No explanations, however sincere, no disavowals, however explicit, could silence the charges or avert the troubles that might follow. Hence the permission asked for was refused, the more readily as the idea was looked on as the cardinal's own fancy, and was not based upon the advice of physicians. The pope himself explained the matter to the cardinal, and offered him permission to go to Malta, to Spain, to Pau, in France, to Nice, in Savoy, or anywhere else that the physicians would advise, or he desire. But to Naples, under the circumstances, it would not do for him to go. The cardinal seemed to assent at the moment, and to acquiesce in the decision. But, some time after, he returned to the fixed idea, repeated his request, waited some weeks, and, not receiving any reply, started on the 16th of June, 1864, without permission, and, in the manner we have stated, went to Naples. At first, he spent several months, perhaps a year, at Sorrento, well known to all who visit southern Italy for their health. After some time, he moved to the city of Naples itself, and lived there until his return to Rome.

Concerning the cardinal's stay in Naples, our "secretary" remembers only two points: "He was located in ill-furnished lodgings on the Chiaja, at Naples, sorely distressed for money. More than this, his good name was suffering"--suffering, he means, in the opinion of the Mazzinians, the followers of the policy of Cavour and "the party of action." The Roman Committee seems to have been particularly exercised in reference to him.

Now as to the money matters. In Naples the cardinal kept a suite of apartments in the Hôtel Crocelles, one of the best in that city. Moreover, he also kept up his full establishment in the Palazzo Gabrielli, in Rome. He paid every body and every thing punctually; as, indeed, he might well do, considering the position of his family and his own private resources. If his health failed, his purse did not--which is more than can be said of most men, be they laymen, ecclesiastics, or even cardinals. When he died, his will gave legacies to friends and servants, and to religious and charitable purposes, and returned something to his family.

As to the second point, undoubtedly the cardinal's good name did suffer. The step he had taken was public; and the newspapers, after their style, had not failed to herald it over the world as something striking and important, from which, perhaps, vast results would follow. Catholics everywhere were pained that a cardinal should take so false a step, and place himself in a position apparently so equivocal; perhaps, too, some apprehended ulterior and more painful results. On the other hand, the Italianissimi waited, and cajoled him, and hoped. But when he had been away from Rome more than two years, and they found that they were not succeeding, as they desired, in making him their tool, they commenced to depreciate and ridicule him. This last point we rather think to his credit.

The mode of Cardinal d'Andrea's departure from Rome naturally set all Rome a-talking. His friends tried to explain and to excuse it in the mode we have stated. The excuse was probably felt to have some force. Anyhow, it was evident that the mode of his departure prevented the court of Rome from being compromised by his presence in Naples. Time and patience are held to be golden remedies at Rome. No official notice was taken of Cardinal d'Andrea's absence. True, friends and counsellors and his brother cardinals wrote to him privately, remonstrating with him and urgently advising him to return without delay. Had he listened to them, and returned within any reasonable time, we are satisfied no notice would have been taken of the affair, and the whole matter would have dropped into oblivion.

But when he had been away two years, it was felt that some official steps must be taken. Accordingly, the cardinal dean wrote him officially, rehearsing the law of the church about the residence of bishops, warning him that he had now been too long absent without permission, and inviting him to return. Thrice the monition was given, as required, and given without effect. The diocese of Sabina was consequently withdrawn from his charges and confided to an administrator _ad interim_, until other provisions should be made in regard to it. Still the cardinal declined or delayed to come. Other official letters warned him of possible further consequences, even to ejectment from his dignity as cardinal. His friends, also, renewed their private remonstrances and entreaties more urgently than ever. And, finally, on the evening of December 14th, 1867, Cardinal d'Andrea returned to Rome.

Three days later, he had an audience of the holy father, from which he returned to his palace in a very cheerful mood, and spoke to his attendants of the kindness of the pope, and declared that every thing had passed off most satisfactorily.

His long stay in Naples had not benefited his health. He still coughed, and still, at times, had severe crises of pain in the abdomen. But he was able in some measure to take up the ordinary work of a cardinal. The charge of the diocese was not restored to him; time was required for that. Rome is slow to act, and slow to undo what has been legally done.

After having fatigued our readers by this long stretch over humdrum realities, it may be well to seek a little relief in some more of the wondrous feats of the wondrous memory of "the secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea."

He does not remember that audience at all. Nay, he remembers that there was none. "Daily," after his return, the cardinal "expected a summons to the presence of the pope. Then he resolved to assert his right to an audience, and repaired to the Vatican. He was informed that all his communications to the pope were to pass through the hands of the cardinal secretary. To sue to his worst foe--this was the climax of bitterness. The high spirit of his eminence never recovered this indignity. The holy father was all this time informed that the cardinal had returned; but was recusant, and refused all overtures of reconciliation. After his last repulse, the cardinal made no further efforts; but it was easy to see that he suffered acutely."

All bosh! The "secretary" might have ascertained that the papers of the day announced the return of the cardinal to Rome and his audience; for the cardinal was then a notoriety. But he is strong on his powers of memory; or, perhaps, as he had killed the cardinal and buried him, as we saw, two years and nine months before this--in March, 1865--he now ran his eye over a file previous to that date; and, as the papers were published while the cardinal was at Sorrento, there was no mention then of an audience. But we are loth to believe the "secretary" has even that little regard for what others remember which would make him think it at all necessary to look even at a file of newspapers either for dates or facts.

But he gives us, in lieu, an exquisite production of his own memory.

"The cardinal's enemies," he tells us, "were far too wary to resort to open acts." They remained so quiet that all suspicion was lulled to rest, except in the cardinal and his secretary. "It is remarkable that we sometimes find an idea dart suddenly into the mind without cause or ramification."(!!) ... This was the case with the secretary, probably also with the cardinal. The idea took this shape: "The favorite mode of obtaining secret information in Rome is by eaves-dropping and espionage. This palace has been for two months at the bidding of those who knew the cardinal would return to it. They are anxious to know all he says and does; if possible, all he thinks. They will study the revelations of his countenance in moments of _abandon_. And if they have designs"--here the idea seemed going into extravagance. We decidedly agree with him; we even think the idea shows signs of _ramification_.

One _pièce_ of the cardinal's apartments was a breakfast-room, in which there hung a picture of St. Francis meditating. "I was reading in that room; and the twilight had deepened as I sat thinking over my book. As I looked up, by the faint red glow of the wood-fire, I fancied that picture--a St. Francis meditating--had a peculiar expression about the eyes. The rapt saint looks upward, ignoring mundane vanities; this looked downward and steadily at me. I felt inclined to cut it open; but dared not. After all, I imagined the gloom had deceived me."

Again, two days later, "I was sitting at breakfast with the cardinal, when he dropped his cup of chocolate, and, rising, went to the picture, and carefully examined it.... We looked at each other; and I felt the same idea pass through his mind.... I resolved to make him understand that I followed his thoughts. 'Do you think,' said I, 'that St. Francis in his meditations became sometimes a little _distrait_? that his eyes wandered from heaven, for example, to some worldly object, say, as to the quality of your eminence's breakfast, or became suddenly diverted by our conversation.' He looked steadily at me, then at the picture, which faced him as he sat, but was behind me. Then, after a moment, replied, 'It is a fatality.' I saw no more of him that day. I heard from the valet that he was anxious not to be disturbed."

Here we have espionage of the most wonderful kind caught _in flagranti delicto_. Is not the "secretary" afraid he has imparted a new and important lesson to the burglars of New York? Just think of the details! During the cardinal's absence, his enemies enter his apartments in the Palazzo Gabrielli freely, notwithstanding the establishment is kept up, and all the servants are there save the valet, who is away with his master. No eye sees them, no ear hears their stealthy footsteps nor any noise they make. No trace of their work is discovered. They go everywhere, they examine every thing, and make their preparations. What they did elsewhere we are not told. But they paid special attention to this breakfast-room, because the picture hung there. If the wall behind it were of thick masonry, they must have cut in it a niche deep enough and big enough to hold a man. That they should do this in an inhabited house without any one finding it out, is proof of their ability. But what if, as is most likely, the painting hung on a partition wall only six or eight inches thick, where could the man stand? What did they do in that case? We cannot imagine. We think the burglars would be nonplussed, and would turn for further instruction to the memory of our "secretary." Beyond this, they provided themselves with means of entrance and passage from room to room, and of exit, quite irrespective of ordinary doors and public stairways.

The cardinal returns to his palace, and these means are put in use. One spy, entering when or how no one knows, and mounting to his place in an equally mysterious manner, stands behind the picture of St. Francis meditating, which hangs on the wall of the breakfast-room. The canvas eyes of the picture have, of course, been cut out; and the spy fixes his own living eyes in their place, so that he can see all that is to be seen, as well as hear all that is to be heard. Ordinarily, we suppose, the eyes are kept turned toward heaven, ignoring mundane vanities, because such was the original position of the painted eyes in the picture. But fatigue and duty combined, from time to time, to call for a change of their position. The eyes looked down on the breakfast-table, (perhaps longingly; for even spies behind pictures may get hungry,) or gleamed with intelligence in response to witticisms of conversation, or unguarded and important revelations. Yet all was so artistically and naturally done that the secretary one day imagined the gloom had deceived him; and two days afterward, the cardinal, after a careful examination and after looking at it a second time attentively, exclaimed, "It is a fatality!"

Now, there is a mystery about this espionage which quite puzzles us, and which we should like to see explained. While the spy held his eyes thus glued to or inserted in the painting, where were his eyebrows? And what did he do with his nose?--his big Roman nose. For who can conceive a keen Roman spy without a large and penetrating Roman nose? How did he manage to keep that nose from coming in contact with the painted canvas--from pressing against it and causing a very prominent bulge, and even pushing the canvas away from the eyes? This is a point that merits elucidation.

Unfortunately the cardinal, it seems, at once left the room in which the "fatality" was, shut himself up, and would see no one. The "secretary" was as wanting in pluck on that occasion as he had been on another two days before. He felt inclined to cut the painting open to see what it was; but dared not. If he had had the presence of mind of a little boy ten years old, he would have ventured to draw the bottom of the painting a few inches out from the wall, and would have looked behind to discover the secret. Had he done so, our mystery would doubtless have been solved, and a very interesting question would have been answered. What a pity the idea did not assume this practical "ramification"!

In regard to the death of the cardinal the memory of the "secretary" is brief, but terribly explicit and pointed.

"Four days" after the fatality-scene, "I was informed that the cardinal desired me to spend the evening in his private apartments.... We had dined at five"--a change of hour; it used to be six. "His eminence had confined himself to his favorite and insipid Chablis, of which he drank one little flask," (Monte Fiascone has slipped from the secretary's memory;) "I to a more generous vintage of Burgundy. The subject of our conversation was exceedingly important. With the idea upon us like an incubus, we conversed in low tones; and ever and anon the cardinal rose and examined the outer door.... The conversation ended by my being intrusted with certain documents to place in safe keeping.... Knowing the importance of the documents, I hesitated to keep them in my possession. Sealing them in a packet, I put on a street dress and hastened to an English gentleman, who cheerfully undertook their keeping.... Cardinal Antonelli asked me for the papers I had received on that fatal night.... I rejoice to say--though strenuous exertions were made to obtain the papers--they were as persistently guarded; and I have them now."

Pretty well remembered for these papers. But how about the cardinal?

The secretary says that, on the morning after confiding the aforesaid sealed packet to the English gentleman, "I rose early and repaired to the palace. The valet had orders to wake his master at seven. It wanted but a few minutes. I retired to my own room. Scarcely a quarter of an hour had elapsed ere the valet rushed in, pale with affright, exclaiming, 'His eminence is dead!' I followed him quickly to the apartment, having alarmed the household. The disposition of the chamber was as ordinary. The cardinal's dress lay on a chair, as the valet had placed it. His breviary was open at vespers. The bed was the only thing disturbed. There were certain indications of a struggle, although very slight. The usually placid countenance of the cardinal was flushed and discolored. The two hands grasped the bed-clothes convulsively. A physician was hastily summoned, who pronounced life to have been extinct some hours. 'From what cause?' I asked. He whispered, 'They will probably say apoplexy.' For himself, the secretary has no doubt it was a murder perpetrated by the enemies of Cardinal d'Andrea."

These are the recollections of the _soi-disant_ secretary. They are well entitled in the whole and in the several details to stand with his precise recollections of the place and date of the funeral that followed in San Giovanni in Laterano, on the 22d day of March, 1865.

The papers announced that Cardinal d'Andrea died in Rome, on the 14th of May, 1868. For the details of his last hours, we are indebted to those members of his household who were with him and closed his eyes. It will be seen how different is the account they give from that of the writer who, if elsewhere he amused us, here fills us with astonishment at the boldness of his assertions, and sorrow for his motives.

On Thursday, May 14th, 1868, the cardinal, who had spent the forenoon in his usual occupations, dined in his usual health, or ill-health, at half-past one. After dinner he continued to transact business with his chancellor for a while, and then arranged to resume it on his return from the usual afternoon drive. He drove out from the Palazzo Gabrielli at about half-past four. His coachman drove, at the usual staid gait of a cardinal's carriage, by the Foro Trajano, on by the Colosseo and San Clemente, to St. John Lateran's, and out of the city gate near that church, along the Via Appia Nuova. When he had passed the first mile-stone from the gate, he was surprised by an order to return. He noticed that the cardinal, who was alone in the carriage, seemed to be suffering. He accordingly turned and retraced his steps at the same gentle gait. On the square of St. John's, he received a second order to go faster; and awhile after, before he reached the Colosseo, the cardinal ordered him to hurry. A fast trot brought them to the Palazzo Gabrielli by about half-past five. The chancellor was there, and assisted the servants to take the cardinal out of the carriage, and to assist him up to his chamber. He was suffering very much from a difficulty of breathing, and seemed otherwise in pain. It was a crisis such as he had had before, but it seemed more severe than usual. The cardinal sent word to the chancellor not to leave. He expected the spasm to pass away in a little while, and when it would be over, they might resume their work as arranged.

The chancellor waited until near seven, when, learning that the attack still continued, he entered the sickroom. He was not only the official, but a devoted and confidential intimate friend of nearly twenty years' standing. He found the cardinal suffering to a degree that filled him with alarm. A physician was sent for, but was absent from his residence. An assistant came and prescribed some remedies. By eight, the physician arrived, and took charge of the case, and did not leave the patient. About nine, he was asked if it were proper to administer the sacrament of extreme unction. He replied that, so far, he did not see sufficient danger to warrant it. Meanwhile the cardinal lay on his bed tossing restlessly in pain, and panting for breath, but joining in, as best he could, with the prayers for the sick, which had been begun, at his request, by his chaplain and the attendants between seven and eight o'clock. At ten, he asked to be placed in a large chair in his room. They bolstered him up in it. In half an hour he began to sink. The chaplain hastily administered the rites of the church, and by eleven, Cardinal d'Andrea was no more.

Thus, as is not unfrequently the case, death came somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly, even after years of ill-health.

An autopsy took place, as is customary, we believe, in Rome in the case of cardinals. It appeared that the immediate cause of his death was congestion of the lungs. The right lung was found to be nearly destroyed by tubercles. On one side of the brain a clot or indurated portion, seemingly of long standing, was discovered. In this lesion some of the cardinal's friends thought they found a physical cause of those disordered peculiarities of mind of which we spoke as having been manifested in his later years.

We may add that, after the official autopsy, the body lay in state in the Palazzo Gabrielli until Monday, May 18th. On the evening of that day, it was conveyed in procession to the neighboring parish church of St. John of the Florentines, near the Castel Sant' Angelo. In that church, on Tuesday, 19th May, 1868, the funeral obsequies of Cardinal d'Andrea were celebrated, the pope and the cardinals assisting, as required by the etiquette of the court when a cardinal dies in Rome.

By the cardinal's own directions, his mortal remains were interred at the church of Sant' Agnese fuori delle Mura, of which, as we said, he had been titular cardinal before becoming Bishop of Sabina.

We have thus followed this _soi-disant_ secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea all through his article. We have overlooked, for brevity's sake, many minor points. But we have seen fully enough to establish the character of the article. We have seen that he blunders as to the date of the cardinal's funeral by three years and two months. He has blundered as to the church where it was performed by at least a mile and a half. San Giovanni in Laterano and St. John of the Florentines are unlike in shape and in rank, and are nearly at opposite points of the city.

As to the private habits, the acts, and the opinions of the cardinal, he makes a series of blunders such as we might well look for in one who gives himself out as having been the confidential secretary of the late Cardinal d'Andrea, and yet whom no one remembers to have ever had any connection with the cardinal.

As to the charges of enmity, of espionage, and even of murder, and the tragedy of the French captain, and various other remarks and comments _en passant_ throughout the article, by no means to the honor of the ecclesiastical dignitaries at Rome, and of the tone and character of society there--are these things only spice to give a certain piquancy to the article? or is the whole article written merely as a vehicle to convey these charges to the attention of the readers?

We incline to the latter opinion. We are led to it by the clearer and more undisguised tenor of later articles by the same pen in the _Galaxy_. We may, hereafter, if we find time, pay our respects to one or more of those articles.

For the present, we will only say that if the proprietors of the _Galaxy_ have intended to bargain with a writer of fiction, they are getting the worth of their money in matter and quantity, if not in quality and style. If, however, they expected to secure a series of articles instructive because truthful, the case is decidedly the reverse.

FOOTNOTE:

[174] The _Galaxy_. December, 1869, to June, 1870.

HYMN OF ST. PAUL'S "CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE SOCIETY."

Not ours to ask thee, "What is truth?" For here it shines the light of light; And all may see it, age or youth, Who will but leave the outer night. 'Tis ours to tread, not seek, the way That "brightens to the perfect day."

But this we ask thee, dearest Lord-- Let faith, so precious, feed and grow; And make our lives the more accord With fear and love, the more we know. For thus, too, shall we point the way That "brightens to the perfect day."

Nor have we learnt it save to teach; It is for others we are wise. The humblest has a charge to preach Thy kingdom in a nation's eyes: A nation groping for the way That "brightens to the perfect day."

O thou, our patron, great St. Paul! Apostle of the West, to thee We boldly come and fondly call, As children at a father's knee: Come thou, and with us lead the way That "brightens to the perfect day"!

B. D. H.

LOTHAIR.[175]

Lothair is both a novel and a pamphlet. Two distinct currents of thought are apparent, running through the work, variously intertwined and blended, but from time to time asserting definite individuality. This phenomenon is explained by the two-fold character of the writer, who is a novelist and man of letters, and at the same time a man of the world and a statesman. The novel is written apparently to reassert his powers and demonstrate to the literary world that his genius is undimmed by age, perhaps also to indulge the exercise of a favorite and successful art, by which he has raised himself from an obscure position to one of influence and renown. The pamphlet is evidently intended for political effect; to throw discredit upon eminent persons, to disparage the value of conversions among the higher classes of society, and, through the thin veil of fiction, inflict all the damage possible upon the court of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church. It reveals the political character of its writer, his utter want of principle and consistency, and enables us to comprehend how he has overcome all the obstacles to his career, by great industry, acute intelligence, and absolute unscrupulousness in turning men and women, things and events, to his own personal advantage. As a novel it adds nothing to the established reputation of the author. It is rated at a high figure, commercially speaking, and will no doubt be a remunerative investment for its publishers.

It purports to be a picture of the habits, manners, and mode of life of people of the highest rank in England, with sketches of persons of diverse culture and foreign birth, to heighten the contrasts and bring out the lights and deepen the shadows. Natural scenery, stately dwellings, ancient trees, sunlight, flowers, music, and fresh air give life and animation to the varying scenes, and form the appropriate basis, background, and accompaniment for the living panorama. Lothair is a youth of pure blood and fair education, the heir of immense estates and a lofty title. He is good-looking, athletic, kind-hearted, shy, sensitive, and sentimental.

He has suffered the depression and discouragement of a sour Presbyterian system of education, from which he was happily rescued by the honest and determined efforts of one of his guardians, Cardinal Grandison.

He emerges just before he comes of age, and appears before us in the midst of an elegant family, in which, fortunately, all the daughters are married excepting one, who has great beauty and a remarkably fine voice. He immediately, as in duty bound, falls desperately in love, and in the most honorable manner possible confides the state of his feelings to the mother of the object of his affections, who is, by the way, a fine specimen of a thorough-bred English lady.

The mother wisely and tenderly counsels delay, and we would recommend her conduct in this interesting occasion to all the middle-aged ladies of our acquaintance when placed in a similar situation. Lothair accepts her decision, and in the mean time becomes more and more intimate with the cardinal, and forms the acquaintance of a Catholic family distantly connected, and becomes somewhat smitten with the real heroine of the tale, Clare Arundel. The objective point of the story now develops itself. A struggle for the rich and titled youth commences between the English Establishment and the Church. Political and mercenary motives are, with great impartiality, ascribed to both the contending powers. The combat between the rough and honest Scotch Presbyterian uncle and the accomplished and fascinating cardinal is wisely dropped.

No imagination could suggest the thought that one who had escaped from evangelicalism could ever return to it. It is, in the author's mind, simply a political squabble for the influence and vote of the future peer. His soul is of no account.

The conduct and development of this contest gives the right honorable romancer an opportunity to introduce the lords and ladies, the dukes and bishops, cardinals and monsignori, artists, wits, and men about town, with whom he delights to fill his pages. They all speak in character, and in the main with artistic consistency, and their conversation is certainly sprightly, often witty, sometimes wise, and never offensive on the score of taste and morality. It affords him the opportunity to flatter and praise, and at the same time exhibit a power of sarcasm and ridicule, the effective methods of his earlier writings, by which he climbed to his present position. He exhibits talents and a knowledge of life which would have made him equally successful in the role of banker, picture-merchant, diamond-broker, or even old clo'man. He gloats over the splendors which he describes; and beauty, rank, fashion, fine clothes, crystal, porcelain, pictures, jewels, "ropes of pearls," castles, palaces, parks, and gardens, are dwelt upon with the cherishing fondness of the gentlemen of keen eyes, hooked noses, and unctuous touch. Character, conduct, motives, principles, sentiments, affections, passions, and religion are mingled in admirable confusion, are estimated at the same value and weighed in the same balance.

There is for him as novelist or pamphleteer no principle but expediency, no rule of conduct but temporal advantage. He worships a golden calf. These be thy gods, O Israel! At a critical period, while our hero is wavering between his Anglican and Catholic mistress, and the cardinal is striving to acquire a wholesome influence over his somewhat unstable relative, while he is sailing on the summer sea of high life and elegant society, he goes to _Oxford to see his horses_. He has wisely left those useful animals at the university, while he is pursuing his studies of life and manners in London. At Oxford, he meets Colonel and Mrs. Campian, and is taken completely off his feet. Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, Corisande and Clare Arundel, the Establishment, and Catholicity disappear at once, and Madre Natura in the splendid physique of the divine Theodora, claims an unresisting captive and victim.

This is either an inspiration of a romancer's imagination or a study. If the latter, there is no hope for the right honorable author's salvation on the score of invincible ignorance.

Lothair basks in the splendor of Theodora's beauty, and surrenders his reason to the fascination of her false political principles. The lower or transient good is preferred to the higher, the permanent good. He chooses the lower, as did Lucifer and Adam, Judas and Luther, and multitudes have done and are doing. Naturally and artistically there is no way out of this scrape excepting through a catastrophe; religiously, excepting through penance. Theodora is the ideal of Greco-Roman heathenism, and the artist Phœbus is its high-priest. They are fine creations from an artistic point of view.

They enable the author to introduce some clever writing about art, and some speculations regarding the Aryan and Semitic races, evidently with the intention of associating revealed religion with the idea of superstition. The effect left upon the mind is something like that produced by a certain class of sermons which we read on Monday morning in the New-York _Herald_. The novelist is hurried on at this stage by the necessities of the pamphleteer. Political events succeed each other so rapidly that he was obliged to send Lothair as rapidly as possible to the field of battle (his heathen destiny) against the church.

With exceeding facility the money which was going to build a cathedral, to please a pious girl, is diverted to aid in blowing up St. Peter's, and Lothair finds himself as Captain Muriel, in the field, on the staff of one of his former acquaintances, Captain Bruges, the red republican general advancing against Rome. Theodora and Colonel Campian are also with him, the former disguised in male apparel, and acting as secretary to the general. We suppose her prayer uttered under the depressing intelligence of the embarkation of the French troops to assist the holy father, is an expression of the religion of nature. Why she should pray to God instead of Jupiter, we confess we do not see, unless in deference to the opinion of most of the author's readers. He might have fulfilled all the indications by quoting Pope, and at the same time complimented the memory of a poet who is getting rather out of date.

However, she hears the French have disembarked, and accordingly suspends her prayers and recovers her spirits. The impending catastrophe comes. The tragic is accomplished, and the divine Theodora is slain. Madre Natura and the secret societies are hurled against the rock of Peter, and shivered. Theodora is mortally wounded, and dying, impresses a chaste kiss upon the lips of Lothair, and exacts the promise never to conform to the Church of Rome.

The next step finds him severely wounded by a French _chassepot_, the guest of Lord St. Jerome in his palace in Rome, carefully attended by Sisters of Charity and Clare Arundel. Nature has perished and grace triumphs. The venom of the anti-Catholic novelist and the malice of the statesman of the establishment are now revealed in a popish plot, which is supposed to be hatched by Lothair's Roman Catholic friends, the prelates of Rome, and, by implication, the holy father.

The object of the conspiracy is to impose upon Lothair and the world that he was wounded while fighting for the defence of the holy see, instead of in the ranks of its determined enemies, and to convince him that the Blessed Virgin Mary personally appeared to rescue him from inevitable death. These pages enhance the claims of the work as one of fiction, but detract very much from its reputation as a specimen of art. The plan is thoroughly un-English, and incompatible with the characters of the actors as previously portrayed. It is by no means impossible for the Blessed Virgin or any saint or angel to appear, and we should be bound to believe the fact if vouched for on credible testimony.

It is, however, naturally, politically, and religiously impossible for priests, bishops, and prelates to combine to make any human being believe a lie, or to palm off a false miracle for any purpose whatsoever. We are charitably left in doubt as to who believed or who did not believe in the apparition, but we are treated to a conversation in which Cardinal Grandison endeavors to make Lothair believe a lie, and to abuse the enfeebled condition of his brain to reduce him to a condition of mental and moral imbecility.

Mr. Disraeli evidently expects no advantages from Catholic voters, or, perhaps, counts on the charity which he abuses.

These passages are the only dangerous ones in the book; they are skilfully contrived to crystallize wavering minds, especially of young men of high rank, into determined opposition to the holy see. They are intended to awaken sympathy for Lothair's helpless and almost hopeless captivity, and to call forth sentiments of satisfaction and pleasure at his adventurous escape. He does escape, and falls into the arms of high-priest Phœbus and two inferior divinities of Madre Natura. They have little power, however, the divine Theodora being dead; and our hero, growing _blasé_ if not wiser and better, subsides into an æsthetical but harmless admiration of external nature and Euphrosyne. Previously to his quitting Rome, the author invents a scene which is either a sop to spiritism, or an insult to his readers' intelligence.

The appearance of the Blessed Virgin, under any circumstances, is treated with derision; but Theodora, like the Witch of Endor, is summoned to interview Lothair in the Coliseum, and remind him of his fatal promise. Perhaps he only means to illustrate a phenomenon of an over-excited brain, whose circulation is enfeebled by a long illness and a severe wound. We are left purposely in doubt on this point, as on many others. This portion of the book contains vivid and beautiful sketches of camp-life and fighting on a small scale, of Rome and Italy, the Tyrrhenean Sea and classic isles. Under the auspices of the Phœbus and Euphrosyne, he is wafted in the yacht Pan to Syria and the Holy Land, and sinks into a pleasing and self-satisfied reverie on Mount Olivet.

The descriptions of Judea and Jerusalem, Calvary and Sion, Galilee and Jordan, Lebanon and Bashan, could be penned only by one who has the traditions of the Jew, the Roman, and the Christian. There is the mournful regret of the Jew, the proud remembrance of the Roman, and the weak and sickly sentimentality of a very doubtful sort of Christian. They want depth and pathos, and leave the mind disturbed and dissatisfied. They profane rather than hallow those sacred places which inspire terror or love in every human breast.

The habits of his English friends whom he meets in the Holy Land, who made excursions which they called pilgrimages, and feasted, made love, and hunted, express about the degree of sympathy which fashionable High-Church Anglicanism has with Calvary. The noble and gentle Syrian now appears to put the finishing touch to Lothair's religious experiences. He is a new figure in fiction, a specimen of oriental Turveydrop, and the patriarch of a new school of Israelitish evangelicalism. In the absence of authentic data, we should presume he had descended from a highly respectable family of Pharisees, which had, in process of time, intermarried with the Sadducees, and perhaps suffered some slight admixture with the heathen round about. He happily succeeds in removing all distinct and vivid religious impressions from the mind of Lothair, and prepares the way, after a final interview with his former Mazzinian general, who speaks in a cheerful and airy manner of his failure to blow up St. Peter's, and consoles Catholic readers with the assurance that the old imposture is still firmly seated, for his return to England, the arms of Lady Corisande, and the bosom of the church by law established. Here we leave him married to an heiress and laid up in lavender, to grow old, fat, and gouty.

While we may speak with some degree of complaisance of this novel as a work of art merely, and a picture of life and manners, in which it is far inferior to similar novels of Bulwer and several other contemporary writers of fiction, we are compelled to discuss this production in its political and moral significance in a very different spirit. Mr. Disraeli must have some powerful motive to induce him to attack the church and outrage the feelings of Catholics throughout the world while he himself has no settled and strong religious convictions of any kind. That motive must be the only one which would operate upon a mind like his--the desire to get back to power. He starts the "No-popery" hue and cry, and invents a most contemptible, shallow, and flimsy plot to influence what he supposes to be the radical hostility of the English people to the Church of Rome, and to throw contempt and discredit upon the conversion of Englishmen of rank, and especially that of the Marquis of Bute. We think he has not only committed a moral crime, but made a gross political blunder. We believe there is a profound sympathy throughout the world in the hearts of simply honest and good people with the holy father, and that if the question could be tested by vote to-day, Who is the best man living? Pius IX. would receive an overwhelming majority. While denouncing in the strongest terms the baseness of the attempt to impute fraud, chicanery, and political trickery to the policy and plans of the church, we have reason to thank the right honorable and learned author for the revelation he has made of the secret societies. He has had ample means of learning and understanding their operations, and his implied conclusion is, that the two great forces arrayed against each other in the modern world are the Roman Catholic Church and the secret societies, of whom Masonry is the mother. This is a conclusion which we accept. It is the everlasting antagonism between the church of Christ and the church of the devil. We hope the glimpse thus afforded will cause some of our clergy to reconsider the lenient opinions they sometimes express in regard to Masonry and its offshoots, and to recognize the supernatural wisdom that has directed the unwavering opposition which the church has manifested toward these works of darkness. As a whole, we do not think _Lothair_ will do much harm. It will provoke much conversation and discussion. It will be praised, ridiculed, admired, and contemned, and speedily sink into oblivion, to be read only by students of literature and those who seek for the light that works of fiction throw upon contemporary history. It reminds us of something which occurred a long time ago, and which cannot be offensive to the right honorable gentleman, who finds a pleasure in insulting cardinals and bishops, inasmuch as the chief personages in the transaction are prototypes of himself and his book. It is the story of Balaam and Balaam's ass. He has attempted to curse, and in fact he has blessed, and the ass which he is riding only speaks like a human being when it meets the angel in the Catholic girl Clare Arundel.

FOOTNOTE:

[175] _Lothair._ By the Right Honorable B. Disraeli. Pp. 218. D. Appleton & Co. 1870.

THE INVITATION HEEDED.[176]

The above is the title of one of the best and most effective controversial works which we have had the pleasure to read for some time. For those who believe in any historical Christianity, the argument contained in it is direct and unanswerable. We pray God it may have a wide circulation and reach the numerous friends of its gifted author, who thus seeks, as many converts have done before him, to show to those he loves the blessed lights which guided him to the home of truth and peace.

Mr. James Kent Stone is the son of the Rev. Dr. John S. Stone, a highly respected minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church, favorably known for many years in Brooklyn as the rector of Christ's church, and now, we believe, at the head of an Episcopalian seminary in Cambridge, Mass. He received his academical education at Harvard College, and afterward spent two years at one of the universities of Germany. Returning to this country in 1862, he was appointed professor of Latin in Kenyon College, Ohio, in which office he remained until 1867, when he was made president of the institution. He was ordained a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1866, and shortly after received the degree of D.D. from Racine College, Wisconsin.

In the year 1868, he was elected to the presidency of Hobart College, Geneva, New York, where he remained only one year. In September, 1869, he resigned his position and his ministry, to seek retirement and prepare for his reception into the Holy Catholic Church. The 8th of December, 1869, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, was the happy day of his entrance into the communion of Christ, in obedience to the call of its chief pastor.

In the prefatory chapter the author gives us some insight into the trials of his own mind. Accepting what he had taken for granted as the high Anglican position, he felt himself master of the Roman question. Anglicans were, in his mind, true Catholics, the _only_ true Catholics, and the Reformation was a return to primitive truth on the part of a favored few, who were to him the only witnesses of God upon earth. His intellect was too logical not to see that ritualism, with which he never allied himself, was inconsistent with any possible degree of Anglicanism.

"If the ritualists were right, the reformers were wrong. The great sin of schism could never have been justified by any such paltry differences as separate our 'advanced' friends from the great Roman communion. The only consistent course for men to take who believed in the sacrifice of the altar and in the invocation of saints was to go back, promptly and penitently, to the ancient church, which had proved its infallibility by being in the right after all."

In this position, to any unprejudiced eye, he stood upon an assumption of theology and history which it would seem that the slightest investigation should destroy. A church which begins by denying the faithfulness of Christ to his promises, and asserts for itself claims which render all antiquity a fable, ought not long to hold the love of an honest heart. It would be hard for any one to know what the English church really teaches; and if it teaches any thing, it certainly does so upon human authority, since infallibility is denied in itself, and in every other communion. When our eyes are once opened, we wonder we were so long deluded. The real reason why High-Churchmen do not become Catholics is, that they do not sincerely wish to know the truth, which calls to sacrifices and sad trials of the heart.

"If any man love father or mother more than me, he is not worthy of me." We believe that one earnest prayer for light, with a full determination to follow it at every cost without hesitation, would lead to the one home of truth every Anglican, and even every ritualist. But the misfortune is, that they will not offer any such prayer. The world of honor or affection in which they move is too dear to be renounced. Let us hear what Dr. Stone so feelingly tells of his own experience:

"Time went on; and I was not conscious of the smallest change in my theological opinions and sympathies; when all at once the ground upon which I had stood with such careless confidence, gave way. Like a treacherous island, it sank without warning from beneath my feet, and left me struggling in the wide waters. Thanks be to God that I was not left to perish in that cold and bitter flood, and that my feet so soon rested for ever on the eternal rock! How it came about--by what intellectual process my position had been undermined--by what unconscious steps my feet had been led to an unseen brink, I did not know. I was only aware of the sudden terror with which I found myself slipping and going, and the darkness which succeeded the swift plunge."

* * * * *

"I remembered how St. Augustine, 'one of the profoundest thinkers of antiquity,' even for four years after he had become a catechumen under St. Ambrose, was entangled in the meshes of his Manichæan heresy. I admitted instantly that I, too, _might be_ under a spell; that my case might be--I do not dare to say like that of the great saint and father, but that of the Donatists or the Gnostics; since I was certainly not more positive in my convictions than they, neither could I furnish myself with any satisfactory reason for believing that I was blessed with greater light. And then the hand of God drew back the veil of my heart; and I saw for the first time, and all at once, how utterly steeped I had been in prejudice, how from the beginning I had, without a question or suspicion, assumed the very point about which I ought reverently to have inquired with an impartial and a docile mind. I had studied the Roman controversy; so I thought--if in my short life I could fairly be said to have studied any thing; but _how_ had I studied it? Had there ever been a time when it was an _open question_ in my mind whether the claims of the Roman Church were valid? Had I begun by admitting that the pope might be right? Had it ever crossed my thoughts that the church in communion with the see of Peter might be indeed the one only Catholic Church of our Lord Jesus Christ? And had I ever resolved, with all my soul, as one standing on the threshold and in the awful light of eternity, to begin by tearing down every assumption and divesting myself of every prejudice, and _then_, wherever truth should lead the way, to follow--'leave all and follow'? Alas! never. I had studied simply to combat and refute. The suggestion that 'Romanism' might after all be identical with Christianity was preposterous. The papacy was the great apostasy, the mystery of iniquity; it was the master-piece of Satan, who had made his most successful attack upon the church of God by entering and corrupting it. The rise of the papal pretensions was matter of the plainest history; and every well-instructed child could point out how one fiction after another had been grafted into the creed of that apostate church, until now the simple faith of early days was scarce recognizable under the accumulated error of centuries. 'History'--who _wrote_ that history? 'Well-instructed child'--why, that was the very point at issue!

"I saw that I had been guilty of what Bossuet calls 'a calumny,' and what I now acknowledged to be an act of injustice, namely, of charging upon Catholics _inferences_ which I had myself drawn from their doctrines, but against which Catholics indignantly protest. I could not say with St. Augustine that 'I blushed with joy;' but with shame I blushed, 'at having so many years barked, not against the Catholic faith, but against the fictions of carnal imaginations. For so rash and impious had I been, that what I ought by inquiring to have learned, I had pronounced on, condemning.... I should have knocked and proposed the doubt, how it was to be believed, not insultingly opposed it as if believed.'

"This is the 'plunge' I spoke of. I used the word because it expressed, as well perhaps as any other, the terrifying rapidity which marked the steps of my intellectual crisis. Upon some men the discovery of a life-long error may break gradually; truth may be said to have its dawning; but to me it came with a shock. The rain descended and the floods came; my house fell; and great was the fall of it.

"Then followed a sense of blank desolateness. I was groping among ruins; and wherewith should I go to work to build again? I do not mean that I faltered. Thank God that he kept me true, and suffered me not to shrink from the sharp agony which I perceived was _possibly_ in store for me! To borrow words of the great father from whose experience I have already drawn, 'God gave me that mind, that I should prefer nothing to the discovery of truth, wish, think of, love naught besides.' But the task of reconstruction seemed almost helpless.

"And so I set my face forward with desperate earnestness; and in due time--it may seem, a very short time--I had not a trace of doubt left that I had all along been a vain enemy of the one, catholic, and apostolic church. Why _not_ in a short time? Why not in a month, or a week, or a day? Is it any reflection upon truth that she surrenders herself quickly to a soul whose every nerve is strained in her pursuit? Is it any argument against the church of God that it is easily identified? Surely, if there be a kingdom of heaven upon earth, it must be known by marks which cannot be mistaken. Yes! I knew it when I had found it. And I found it as in the parable, like a treasure hidden in a field--in the self-same field up and down which I had wandered for years, and where I had often trampled it under my feet. And when I had found it, I hid it, scarce daring to gaze at its splendor, and crying, as St. Augustine cried, 'Too late, alas! have I known thee, O ancient and eternal truth!' And then, for joy thereof, I went and sold all that I had, and bought that field."

The pages which follow this preface are a brief but cogent exposition of the convictions which forced themselves upon the mind of the author. He develops the argument which proved so availing in his own case, and which, it seems to us, should be satisfactory to any earnest inquirer. He commences by viewing the Catholic Church in its historical aspects, as the human eye beholds it, and without any necessary reference to its supernatural character. The attitude of the world toward it in the present and in every age is a proof of its greatness, for men neither fear nor attack an enemy which they despise. Its wonderful life, in spite of opposition which would long ago have destroyed any merely human organization, is so striking a fact that no honest mind can fail to feel its force.

But it is not only as a _living_ body, with a vitality unknown to any other society, that it impresses our intellects; in its wonderful life it has been the guardian of morals, and the author of every high virtue. Civilization owes its very existence to its creed and its fostering care. And while Protestantism, of only recent origin, has failed to accomplish any thing but destruction, there is no sign of decay or feebleness in the ancient and unchanging church.

In the second part of the work the author gives the reasons in full for this wonderful vitality, and shows how the "Word made flesh" is the source of life to that body which he fills, and which the Paraclete sent by him ever animates. The facts of Christianity are clearly drawn out, and the necessary notes of the church are tried by the appeal to holy Scripture and tradition. From the conclusion of this argument there is no escape, and it is well demonstrated that the religion of Christ stands or falls with the Catholic faith.

In the concluding portion of the book, Dr. Stone looks carefully at the essential features of that body which the incarnate God, as a master-builder, framed with one head, and all the needful constituents of a perfect organism. The office of St. Peter was not simply an ornamental appendage to the company of apostles, but an integral and essential part in the complex of visible Christianity. The church is Christianity in the concrete, and can no more exist without St. Peter than the human body can live without a head. And to that head all the functions of the body are subordinated. There is no fear of any unjust preponderance, or that any member of the body will lose its activity or honor; for the Holy Ghost lives in the body, and speaks through the mouth of its head. The functions of the primacy are displayed with beautiful clearness in this work, which without any unnecessary words refutes the arguments of objectors, and cuts to pieces their vain appeals to history or antiquity. We are much pleased to see how an honest mind, which had no reason to seek for Catholic truth except for its own sake, has been able to see how all the functions of the papacy are involved in the very constitution of the church.

The infallibility of the sovereign pontiff as "the father and the teacher of all Christians" is directly deduced from the position he holds in the ecclesiastical body, and the needs of his office. We earnestly commend this work to those who are searching for truth, and are willing to embrace it when it presents itself. While there is no new argument, there is great freshness in the manner in which it is conducted. There are very many who would not become Catholics even if Almighty God were to work miracles before their eyes. We say this advisedly and from sad experience. They are too attached to the circles in which they move; and even when divine light urges them keenly, they are willing to take the risk. So they compound with their consciences by assuming a great spiritual activity in their own spheres, and the noon of their day of grace passes away. They will never see again the freshness and life of the morning.

There are others who deal with truth as they would be ashamed to deal with any affair of human life. They ask that every difficulty, historical or theological, shall be removed from the vast field of controversy ere they will yield assent to a proposition they are forced to admit, which is the key of the whole position. To those who will not be guided by the light of faith, this is an unending task. They are worse than the Jews, who would not believe "unless they saw signs and wonders." The Catholic Church does not offer any more trials, to the understanding than did the meek and lowly Man of Sorrows in his sojourn upon earth. All difficulties cannot be removed at once, nor before the shadows of error have given way to the bright sun of truth. We cannot see perfectly in the night; yet there is really but one question to be asked and answered, Did Jesus Christ, my divine Redeemer, found the Catholic Church, and promise it perpetuity? If so, then I am bound to accept it as I find it; for I cannot make a church for myself, nor could he allow the communion which he formed and vivified to fall into error. If I will not accept this church, I may wander on the waste without a guide, for there is no such thing as Christianity for me.

Another thing which this book impresses upon us is very important, and it is a truth which we have had occasion to know from long acquaintance with Protestantism. There is only one way of dealing with those whom we believe to be in error, and that is by always maintaining with, consistency the principles of our creed. Any attempt to compromise with Protestants, as if there were not a diametrical opposition between truth and falsehood, will be disastrous to their conversion. Men will not give up the associations of years, renounce position and hopes, and even break family ties, unless they believe it necessary to their salvation. Nothing less than this motive can be held up to the wanderer who seeks in vain from his own intellect the lights that will guide him to a happy eternity. And any converts that come into the church from any lower motive are unfit for the graces of faith, and will never imbibe the spirit of a true Catholic. There is one God and one church, and this church is a necessity to all to whom its message of mercy comes. It can stand upon this ground alone as a divine organization, and here only can demand the obedience of mankind.

There are many souls sadly in need and without a religion, which is the first want of our nature. There are many who are trying to gain time against the Spirit of God by postponing the hour of sacrifice. There are those who, in hollow mockery of their highest aspirations, are playing with shadows, and deceiving themselves with counterfeits of the truth. We pray God that this book may fall into their hands, and be a messenger from on high, bidding them look well to foundations which are built on the sand, and can never abide the tempest of human passion, much less the storm of God's judgment.

FOOTNOTE:

[176] _The Invitation Heeded; or, Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity._ By James Kent Stone, late President of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, and of Hobart College, Geneva, New York; and S. T. D. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 340. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren street. 1870.

THE FIRST ŒCUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.

NUMBER SIX.

Holy-Week in Rome! How many Christian hearts have yearned for it, have looked forward to it in hope! How many recall it among the sweetest and most precious memories of the past! In this sacred city, and in this most solemn season, a spell is thrown around the faithful pilgrim; or rather, he is released in a great measure from the delusive spells of the world. Mind and heart, and, we might almost say, the body too, seem to live in a new world, in which the all-absorbing thought and affair is the grand mystery of what God has done in his infinite power and love to redeem this fallen race of man.

What emotions must fill the catholic heart as, after perhaps a long and weary journey, one is rapidly borne on by the train from Civita Vecchia, and knows at last that within one hour he will be in Rome. The yellow Tiber is flowing by the railway track, sluggishly and silently, on to the sea. At intervals, antique-looking barges, with high-peaked prows and high sterns, are floating down, heavily laden with boxes of statuary and of marbles, or of other works of art--it may be, of books or of baggage. A couple of oars suffice to keep the vessel in mid-channel, or to accelerate its motion. Perhaps, if the course of the sinuous river allows it, a huge lateen-sail on a heavy stump of a mast helps it onward. Perchance, too, a tiny steamer meets him, puffing its way downward; or the train overtakes another breasting the stream and towing up three or four barges, each larger than itself. The eye travels across the classic river, and roams over the rolling surface of the campagna, and takes notes of the many ruins that dot its surface, mostly relics of the mausoleums and massive tombs with which the Romans of old were wont to line their roads leading from the city, for miles and miles. At length Rome is at hand; across the Tiber you see the new St. Paul's _extra muros_, rising like a phœnix after the ruinous conflagration of 1823, and not yet entirely finished. The great apostle was buried here after his martyrdom. Here his body has ever been venerated. Some day, and soon, you may come hither, and in the splendor of that church look down into the confession to catch a glimpse of the interior of the underground crypt, and the sarcophagus within it, in which lie his mortal remains, and read the large letters on it, _Paullus Apostolus Martyr_, "Paul, the Apostle and Martyr." On the lofty summit of the front, plainly visible, is the gigantic statue of the apostle himself, bearing the emblematic sword--as if standing sentinel and guarding the approach to the Holy City, which he consecrated by his preaching and his death. Soon you are on the bridge over the stream, and all eyes are turned to the left, where above the city walls, now visible, and the roofs of houses, and the cupolas of many churches, you see for a moment or two the majestic dome of St. Peter's towering over all. The road runs around the walls of the city for some distance before entering, and St. Peter's is soon shut out from view, only to be replaced by the majestic front of St. John of Lateran's, near at hand. But on the other side, you see more clearly than before the campagna with its multitude of ruins, and the Sabine and Alban Mountains. In the clear atmosphere you can distinguish the vineyards and olive groves, and dark forests, and cities and towns and pleasant villas. Along the campagna, from the foot of these hills, there stretches for miles on miles, like a huge centipede, a long line of dark and jagged masonry, borne aloft on massive piers and arches. It is an old aqueduct, or, as your guide-book tells you, three aqueducts in one. You dash through one of those arches, and the panorama is changed. Other mountains in the distance, with other cities and towns, other ruins on the campagna--the ancient basilicas of St. Lawrence and St. Agnes near at hand. At length you pass through an archway of the wall into the city. St. John of Lateran's is again before you. Not distant is the church of Santa Croce; and St. Mary Major's, with its cupolas, its mediæval belfry, and its obelisk, is even nearer. The balmy breeze of the afternoon brings to your ear the sweet chime of its many bells. You are on the Quirinal hill, and can look over some portion of the city, with its belfries, and cupolas, its red-tiled roofs, and many-windowed houses. Near by are massive ruins. The excavations of the railway track have unearthed broken columns, frescoed walls of ancient rooms, and masses of travertino masonry, belonging to the walls which Servius Tullius, the fifth king of Rome, built around the city. Issuing from the depot to seek your hotel, you are at once before the ruins of the baths of Dioclesian, and the Cistercian Abbey, and the church of St. Mary degli Angioli. Your way leads by churches, palaces, ruins, obelisks, statues, and ever-gushing fountains, through a maze of narrow streets with sharp turns. You understand that these streets were not laid out, and the houses built on clear ground. The houses stand more or less on the foundations of older buildings that have perished, and follow, to a limited extent, the course of those foundations. As for the streets, they do as they can, under the circumstances, and seldom have the same breadth and direction for three hundred yards at a time. Every thing tells you of olden heathen Rome that has perished, and of a new Rome that has arisen in its place, not to be compared to its predecessor in size or in earthly magnificence, but infinitely superior in spiritual and moral grandeur.

Without an hour's unnecessary delay, you seek St. Peter's. A glance of wonder at the vastness and majesty of its approaches, of its front, and its portals, is all you will give now; for the heart is filled with a sense of that glory of which all this, great as it is, is but a figure. You pass through the vestibule, large as a magnificent cathedral, push aside the heavy curtain before the inner door, and you are within the grand basilica. The light is evenly diffused and soft, and comes through unseen windows. The temperature is pleasant. If outside you found the day cold and unpleasant, here the atmosphere seems warm and agreeable. If outside it was hot, here you feel it cool and refreshing. As you look at the vast expanse of the building, you wonder at the solitude. It seems almost vacant; although, if you could count them, there are hundreds moving about, or kneeling here and there in silent prayer, and scores are entering or going out. As you advance up the broad and lofty central nave, there come from a chapel on the left the rolling sounds of an organ, and the chorus of many voices, as canons are chanting the daily vespers in their own chapel. Further on, from the other side, you hear the murmuring of many voices. A long line of pilgrims, or the members of some confraternity, have come in procession to pray in St. Peter's; and as they kneel before the altar, perhaps a hundred devout men and women from the parish, or of those accidentally in the church, have gathered around them, and have knelt and join in their chanted hymns and prayers. On still you proceed, until you are beneath the lofty dome itself, and have approached the oval railing of marble which is united to the grand altar, and on which ever burn a hundred and forty-two lamps. You look over into the opening in the marble pavement, which is called the confession of St. Peter's, and you see below the floor of the ancient church, and immediately under the present high-altar stands the chief altar of that ancient church. Though you do not see it, you know that still deeper, and below that altar, is a small chamber in the earth, whose floor and sides and arched roof are all of large blocks of dressed stone--travertino--and that in that vaulted chamber stands the marble sarcophagus which contains the remains of St. Peter, the chief of the apostles, the founder and the first Bishop of Rome, who was crucified under Nero, in the year 67, on the hill near by, and whom pious Christian hands reverently buried in this very spot, ever since sacred to the followers of Christ. Then it was an obscure spot, outside the city, near certain brickyards on the Aurelian Way. Now it is covered by the grandest temple which the world ever saw, on which all that man can do or give of most precious is offered and consecrated to the service of religion and the glory of God.

A poor, humble, simple-minded fisherman on the Lake of Genesareth, in Galilee, whom men called Simon, was chosen by our Lord; his name was changed to Peter, a rock--for on that rock the church of Christ would be built; to him were given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and he was charged with the duty of confirming his brethren in the faith. At the command of his Lord, and in the power of the divine commission, he went forth to his work of zeal and of trials. Like his divine Master, poor, persecuted, crucified, he was the instrument of God for mighty things. Empires and kingdoms have perished; but the church still stands. Dynasties have succeeded dynasties, and have passed away like the shadows of clouds in spring; but the line of successors to St. Peter continues unbroken. The intellect and study, the passions, the violence, and the inconstancy of men have changed all things human, again and again, within eighteen centuries; but there remaineth _one Lord_, _one faith_, _one baptism_, one church of Christ, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. And here, to-day, you stand at the earthly centre of that spiritual kingdom, by the tomb of him to whom Christ gave promises which must ever stand true, though heaven and earth pass away. You can but kneel and pray with all the fervor of your heart, taking no account of others near you, nor of the passage of time. And when at length earnest prayer has brought calm and holy joy to your soul, you may rise and look up into the dome, rising four hundred feet above you, with mosaics of evangelists, and prophets, and angels, archangels, and all the grades of the celestial host, until in the summit, amid a blaze of light, the "Ancient of Days" looks down from heaven, in power and majesty, blessing the worshippers of earth, and bending forward to receive the prayers of all who come to this holy and consecrated temple to pour forth their supplications and entreat his mercy. You may examine the grandiose proportions of nave and transept and aisle, the mosaics, and marbles, and statues, and saints; you may go forth into the vast vestibule, guarded at one extremity by an equestrian statue of Constantine, and at the other by one of Charlemagne; you may linger, as you look again at the mighty square in front of the basilica, with its magnificent ever-flowing fountains, so typical of the waters of life, its colonnades stretching away hundreds of yards on either side, like arms put forth to embrace the multitudes of the children of men, and the lofty, needle-formed Egyptian obelisk in the centre, pointing toward heaven. On its summit is a bronze casket, containing a portion of the true cross on which the Saviour suffered death; and at the base is an inscription, brief in words, and here most sublime in its appositeness. Your heart takes in the full meaning as you read, _Christ reigns. Christ rules; Christ has conquered. May Christ defend us from every ill._

This is the spirit, the key-note, as it were, of Christian life in Rome. We might say, also, that it is the animating principle of her temporal existence. For, save as the centre of the Catholic Church and the see of Peter, Rome would quickly perish. On the hills of the campagna and on the slopes of the mountains around, may still be seen faint vestiges of cities and towns that were illustrious centuries before Rome was founded. They have utterly perished. Others of the same class seem to drag out a lingering existence, as obscure villages, of no importance, whose names no one mentions, and whose ancient history is known only to antiquarians. Many a desert, forest, or plain can show ruins to rival those of the seven hills. Florence, and many a modern city, can boast of galleries of the fine arts and museums to rival, if not to surpass, most of those in Rome. No, it is not for her antiquity, nor for her grand ruins of past ages, nor for her paintings and sculpture, her marbles and mosaics, that Rome stands unrivalled in the world. These are but accessories. Neither they nor any mere human gift can suffice to explain the mystery of her survival, despite so many convulsions and shocks, and her continued and prosperous existence, where all around her has sunk into decay and ruin. Were there no other source of life, these would soon fail her. The treasures of art and antiquity in her galleries, and museums, and public buildings would soon be shattered by spoliation or conquest, and she would be left desolate and stricken like her crumbling ruins. It is the moral power of Christianity which gives her a life and a strength beyond that of the sword. It is the presence of that pontiff who is the visible head of the church, and the centre of Catholic unity and of spiritual authority, which saves her from the fate of other cities. Her true source of life is her religious position. When, centuries ago, the popes, wearied out by the tumults of the people and the turbulence of the barons, withdrew for peace' sake, and abode for seventy years in Avignon, Rome dwindled down to be little better than a village of ten or fifteen thousand souls. The Romans spoke of that time as a Babylonian captivity. With the return of the pontiffs, prosperity was again restored. When, in the early part of the present century, Pius VII. was borne away and held captive for years in France, and Rome was annexed to the French empire, the population of the city quickly sank to one hundred and thirteen thousand, and was rapidly diminishing. When he returned, in 1814, it began to rise again, and to-day Rome has nearly double that population. Were the sovereign pontiff to be driven into exile to-morrow, as Garibaldi and Mazzini, and the _Italianissimi_ of Florence desire, Rome would again, and at once, enter on a downward career of misery and ruin. In twenty years she would lose all her treasures and half of her population. All this is clear to the Romans themselves; all the more clear from the fate which has overtaken those cities of the states of the church which were annexed to the kingdom of Italy eight or ten years ago. No wonder that, in 1867, neither the artful emissaries of Ratazzi nor the military parade of Garibaldi was able to gather recruits to their attempt, either from the country around or from the city itself. The Romans would shudder at the thought of a renewal of that attempt, as at a terrible calamity.

But we must not wander away into such considerations. This theme, though most important to the Romans and often on their lips, is of too worldly a character. For this month, at least, we leave it aside, and join that immense crowd of strangers who have filled Rome, drawn hither to look on the council, and to unite in the solemn offices of Holy-Week, more solemn and imposing this year than perhaps ever before, on account of the vast number of bishops uniting in their celebration. Once, the German element used to stand prominent before all others, in the crowd of strangers that flocked to Rome for Holy-Week; afterward the English, and laterly the Americans, became conspicuous. This year, although they were probably as numerous as ever, they seemed to sink into the background before the vast number of French who filled the holy city, and who, almost without exception, had come in the spirit of earnest, fervent Catholics. They were fully as numerous and fully as demonstrative as at the centenary celebration in 1867. Their coming was announced by the ever-increasing numbers who, each day that a general congregation of the council was held, gathered at St. Peter's at half-past eight A.M., to see the bishops enter, or at one P.M., to see them come forth from the council hall.

In ordinary times, the pope and cardinals celebrate nearly all the offices of Holy-Week, not in St. Peter's, which is left to the canons and clergy of that basilica, but in the Sixtine chapel, which is the pope's court chapel, so to speak, within the Vatican palace. It is as large as a moderate American church. About one half is railed off as a sanctuary for the pontiff, and the cardinals and their attendants, and for the other clergymen who are required or are privileged to attend the services in this chapel. The remaining half, assigned to the laity, will hold four or five hundred seated or standing, as the case may be. The number desiring to enter is so great that often a seat can be obtained only by coming two or three hours before the time for commencing the services. This year, if the bishops were to be present, the whole chapel would have to be used as a sanctuary, and no room would remain for any of the laity. To avoid this embarrassment, and the consequent disappointment of thousands, it was settled that this year the papal services of Holy-Week should be celebrated, not in this Sixtine chapel, but in St. Peter's itself, where, besides all the bishops, ten thousand others might attend, and seem only a moderate-sized crowd grouped close to the sanctuary.

To St. Peter's, then, on Palm-Sunday morning, came the papal choir, and half a thousand bishops, archbishops, primates, and patriarchs, the cardinals with their attendants, and the holy father himself, for the blessing of the palms and the other services of the day. They were substantially the same as the services in ten thousand other churches of the Catholic world that day. But here, there were of course a splendor and magnificence that could be rivalled nowhere else. The palms to be blessed lay in masses regularly arranged near the throne of the pontiff. They seemed scarcely to differ from the branches of our southern palmetto. On many of them the long leaves were fancifully plaited, so as to represent a branch surrounded by roses, lilies, leaves, and crosses. The Catholic negroes that came to the United States from San Domingo years ago used to do something similar. There is an interesting story about these palms. On the tenth of September, 1586, Fontana, the architect and engineer of St. Peter's, was to lift to its present position in the middle of the square before St. Peter's, the immense unbroken mass of stone which formed an Egyptian obelisk that had been erected in the amphitheatre of Nero, and still stood not far off, its base buried in the earth that centuries had accumulated around it. It was a mighty, a perilous work, to transport this obelisk, three hundred yards, ever keeping it in its upright position, and at the end to lift it up and plant it on the lofty pedestal. Pope Sixtus V. and all Rome were there to look on. In default of steam-engines and hydraulic rams, not then invented, Fontana used a huge scaffolding, ropes, blocks and tackle, and windlasses, and hundreds of operatives. Any mistake or confusion as to orders or delay in executing them might overthrow the immense pillar, and prove disastrous to the work, and fatal perhaps to scores of lives. In view of the emergency, a kind of military law was proclaimed, whereby all lookers-on were to keep silence, under penalty of death. Fontana, standing aloft, gave his orders, the wheels were turned, the ropes tightened, the mighty mass slowly moved on, the pedestal was reached. The obelisk was lifted up. Hours rolled on, and still it rose gradually but truly. At length it stood within a few feet of its destined position. But it would go no farther. The ropes, bearing the strain of the weight for so many hours, had stretched, and some were threatening to snap. Fontana stood pale and speechless at the impending disaster, which he now saw no way of averting. Suddenly a clear, manly voice was heard from out of the crowd, "_Wet your ropes! wet your ropes!_" Fontana at once seized the happy thought. The ropes were wetted, swelled and contracted to their original state, and soon the huge obelisk stood upright and firm on the solid pedestal, and the daring work was crowned with complete success. Meanwhile, the officers had seized the man that cried out; he was brought before the pope, who thanked him and embraced him. He was asked who he was, and what reward he desired. His name was Bresca, a sailor from San Remo, near Nice. His family owned a palm-grove there, and the reward he asked was the privilege of supplying St. Peter's every year for ever with the palm-branches to be blessed and used on Palm-Sunday. It was granted. Nearly three centuries have passed, but the family of Bresca is still at San Remo, has still palm-groves, and every year there comes a small vessel from that port, laden with the palm-branches for St. Peter's. May it continue to come three hundred years hence!

The holy father, in that clear, sweet, and majestic voice, for which he is remarkable, chanted the prayers for the blessing of the palms. To the blessing succeeded the distribution. One after another, the cardinals gravely advanced, the long silk trains of their robes rustling on the carpet as they moved forward; each one received a palm-branch; the oriental patriarchs, the primates, and a number of the archbishops and bishops, as representatives of their brethren, followed after the cardinals, and received each his branch. Meanwhile the choir was singing the exquisite anthems, "Pueri Hebræorum," appointed for that occasion. It was a simple, yet a most effective and thrilling scene. The cardinals stood in their long line, the rich gold ornamentation of their chasubles shining brightly on the violet silk, on their heads the mitre or the red _calotte_ of their rank. Before each one stood his chaplain in dark purple, holding the decorated palm-branch, like a lance. In the middle, as the lines of Oriental and Latin prelates in their rich and varied robes approached the holy father, or retired, each one bearing his palm-branch, there was a perpetual changing and shifting and intermingling of colors, as in a kaleidoscope. Near the pope, stood the senator and other civil officers of Rome, in their mediæval mantles. The Swiss guard, in a military dress of broad stripes, red and yellow, or black and yellow, some of them wearing steel corselets and breastplates, and all wearing the plumed Tyrolean military hat; they stood motionless as statues, holding their bright halberds upright. The Noble Guard, in their rich uniform, stood here and there; and on both sides, line after line of bishops, robed in cappa magnas, formed a massive and imposing background. Add to all these, the religious orders, Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans of every family, Augustinians, Benedictines, Cistercians, Canons Regular, Theatines, Servites, Crociferi, and many others, each in the costume of his order or congregation, and all bearing branches of blessed palm. Add still the continuous chanting of those unrivalled voices and the indistinct bass murmur or rustling of the vast crowd. It was a scene which carried one away. You did not strive to catch every note of Palestrina's beautiful composition. It was enough to drink in the sound. You scarcely thought of reciting the words of a prayer--there are none assigned for the time of distribution specifically--you found it easier to indulge a train of devotional thought, and to unite with it something of pious admiration.

Next followed the procession in commemoration of the solemn entry of our Saviour into Jerusalem, five days before his Passion. Leaving the sanctuary, the long lines of singers, of the religious orders, of bishops and prelates, and of cardinals, and finally the pope with his attendants, passed down the nave of the church, out by one door into the vestibule, and, returning by another into the church, again came up the nave and entered the sanctuary. The strains of the "Gloria, Laus, et Honor," the hymn for that procession, always beautiful, and infinitely more so when sung to-day by this choir, swelled as the procession approached you, became fainter and sweeter as it passed on. You caught but a faint murmur of melody while they were in the vestibule, and the notes rose again as the procession entered the church and moved slowly onward to the sanctuary.

Then came the high mass, which an archbishop celebrated, by special permission, at the high-altar. Without such permission, no one save the holy father himself celebrates there. During this mass the entire history of the Passion of our Lord, as given in the Gospel of St. Matthew, is sung. On Good-Friday, the same history is sung, as given by St. John. Perhaps no portion of the chants of the church in use at the present day is as ancient and venerable as the mode in which the Passion is chanted. The old classic Greek style is preserved, and, fundamentally at least, the melody must be Grecian, although perhaps somewhat changed to suit our modern gamut. The ordinary mode is to distribute the whole among three singers, one of whom chants all the narrative or historical portion. Whenever the Saviour speaks, a second singer chants his words. A third singer comes in at the proper times to chant whatever is said by others. In the Sixtine chapel, and here in St. Peter's to-day, there is a slight change made, which from its appropriateness and effective character we cannot but look on as in part, at least, a return toward the original idea of such a chant. One singer, an exquisite tenor, took up the narrative portion in a _recitativo_, closing each sentence with the modulations with which many of our readers must be well acquainted. A baritone voice, one of the richest, smoothest, most majestic, and most plaintive and sympathetic we ever heard, chanted the Saviour's part. There was not in it a note that we had not heard before scores of times, but never as they were now chanted. One could, it seemed, listen to him for ever; when he closed one sentence, your eye ran along the page to mark the verse, at which you would hear him again. As he uttered the words, you drank them in, in their sense rather than in the music, realizing something of their pathos and majesty. It was as if in truth you stood near him in Gethsemane, before Annas, and Caiaphas, before Pilate; as if you walked with him along the sorrowful way, as if you stood so near the cross on Calvary that every word he spoke, every tone of his voice, entered your heart. Years cannot efface from our minds the memory of that wondrous chant. It seems still to ring in our ears. The portions usually assigned to a third singer are here distributed among several, who chant singly, or together, as the words are spoken by one, or by several, or by a multitude. Thus, a soprano and a contralto unite to sing the words of the two false witnesses. The mutual contradiction of the witnesses is indicated by the irregularity of the time, and the discords that are repeatedly introduced. When the crowd cries out, "_Away with him; crucify him; we will have no king but Cæsar_," the whole choir bursts forth. You hear the trembling shrill tones of age, the hissing words of irate manhood, the shrill trebles of excited women, the full incisive words of the priests, and the clamors of the unthinking rabble. When they cry, "_His blood be upon us and upon our children_," the voices, full at the beginning, grow tremulous and weaker as they proceed, and some are silent, as if reluctant to pronounce the terrible words of the imprecation. And when the soldiers, after scourging the Saviour, and putting on his head the crown of thorns, place the reed in his hands and kneel before him, saluting him, _Hail, King of the Jews_, the words are sung by three or four voices with a softness, a sweetness, and an earnestness which would make you think that, for the moment, and in spite of themselves, they felt the divine truth of the words they intended to utter in mockery.

In the entire cycle of music there is nothing so sublime and so touching as the Passion of our Lord, sung by the papal choir in St. Peter's.

On Tuesday, in Holy-Week, a general congregation of the council was held in the usual form. As we stated in our last number, the fathers voted on the entire draught, then before them, either _placet_, _placet juxta modum_, or _non placet_. We need add nothing to the account we then gave.

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons the bishops attended in St. Peter's at the office of the Tenebræ. On each occasion, twenty-five or thirty thousand persons about half-filled the church, to hear the lamentations, and, above all, the far-famed Misereres heretofore only to be heard in the Sixtine chapel.

The papal choir is composed of about twenty-five singers. Basses, baritones, contraltos, tenors, and sopranos, all chosen voices of the first quality, and all trained for years in the special style of singing of this choir, different from that of any other we ever heard, and in the peculiar traditions as to the precise style in which each of their principal pieces should be executed. They say themselves, that without this special training the mere notes of the score would by no means suffice to guide another choir, at least so as to produce the marvellous effects which they attain. They have in their repertory over forty Misereres, composed by their different _maestri_, or chiefs, during the last three centuries. Not more than four of these are placed by them in the first rank. On Wednesday, that by Baini was sung; on Thursday, that of Allegri, and on Friday, one by Mustafa, the present leader of the choir.

That of Allegri is acknowledged to be the best. He was born in Rome in 1560, and became a celebrated composer and singer. In 1629, he entered this choir, at the age of sixty-nine, and was its leader for twenty-three years, dying in 1652 at the ripe age of ninety-two. His Miserere is of such incontestable merit that it is always one of the three sung each year, and not unfrequently it has been sung twice in the same year.

Baini was born in Rome in 1775, entered the papal choir at about the age of thirty, became _maestro_ or leader in 1824, and died about twenty years ago. He was the most learned musical scholar of Italy in his day, and published a number of works. As a composer, he ranked very high. His Miserere is esteemed next to that of Allegri. There is a difference between them. The older composer was filled with a sense of the full meaning of the psalm as a whole, and varies the expression in each verse according to the sense of the entire verse. Baini, on the contrary, is disposed to dwell on the special sense of each word and minor phrase, bringing these points into higher relief than Allegri would. To many, on this account, his Miserere is more intelligible and more pleasing than the other. But a longer familiarity with both invariably reverses this decision.

Mustafa, the present _maestro_ of the papal choir, was likewise born in Rome, and entered the choir thirty years ago, as a soprano singer. On Baini's death, he succeeded to his post. No one in Italy has a more thorough and scientific knowledge of vocal music than he has; and his compositions are among the choicest _morceaux_ of the choir here. His Miserere has several advantages. It was written for the voices now in the choir, and its execution is directed by the composer himself. There is more of the modern style about it than we find in the other two. Hence it is always most pleasing, for style, and the precision and brilliancy with which it is sung.

But besides the artistic excellence which the few trained to analyze and examine such compositions can alone discover and discuss suitably, there is a something about these Misereres which all can feel, and which is far more religious in its character. Once enjoyed, it is never forgotten. As the long office of matins and lauds is slowly chanted, psalm succeeding psalm, and lamentation following lamentation, the lighted candles on the triangular candelabrum are all gradually extinguished, save one, and then, one by one, those on the altar. The shades of evening are coming on. The light of day has become almost a twilight, adding a mysterious indefiniteness to the immensity of the vast edifice. Only through the glory, or circular stained window in the apsis of the basilica, there comes in a golden light from the western sky. The cardinals and bishops are all kneeling in their places, the multitude of twenty-five thousand that have waited two hours for this moment are hushed to deadest silence. A wailing voice is heard--faint, sad, almost bursting into sobs--_Have mercy on me, O God!_ Another and another joins in the entreating cry. It swells and rises, sometimes in passionate, loud supplication, sometimes lowered to broken tones, scarce daring to hope, until an angel voice leads on, _According to thy great mercy_. Verse after verse the wailing, pleading prayer continues, in combinations of matchless voices, and in harmonious strains never heard or dreamed of before. The multitude listen, suppressing their breathing lest they may lose a single one of the silvery tones. Some are kneeling, others who have not room to kneel, in that closely packed crowd, stand with their heads sunk on their breasts. All are silent, yet many a moving lip tells you they are repeating the words with the singers, that they may more fully drink in the sense and the appropriateness of the music. When the last verse closes, there is a sigh, as if they waked from a trance and found themselves in this life again.

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday there were the usual services in St. Peter's, in the forenoon. On the first day, the bishops were required to attend in white copes and mitres. A cardinal sang high-mass, after which came the usual procession of the blessed sacrament, which is conveyed from the main altar to a repository prepared to receive it. This year the chapel of the canons was used for the purpose. Cross and candles and incense led the way. The canons and beneficiaries and other clergy of St. Peter's followed, each one bearing a lighted waxen candle, and responding to the chanted hymns of the choir. A certain number of archbishops and primates came next, and after them the cardinals, all likewise with their lighted tapers. The pontiff himself bore the blessed sacrament, under a rich canopy of gold cloth, upheld on eight staffs of silver gilt, borne by his attendants. Cardinals and clergy, Swiss Guard and Noble Guard, walked slowly on either side; the heads of religious orders followed, bearing their lights; and after them, not two and two, as the regular procession had walked, but more closely pressed together, came the hundreds of bishops. The church, at least the half of it toward the altar, was packed and jammed. Not without some effort had the Swiss and the lines of soldiers kept a small passage-way clear for the procession from the main altar to the chapel of the canons. As the sound of the well-known hymn, the "Pange lingua," was recognized, and the procession started, all who could knelt; those who had not room to do so bowed reverently until the pontiff had passed and had entered the chapel, and the amen of the closing prayer rang through the church.

At once there was a rushing to and fro of the thirty thousand people in the church, one half seeking to pass out to the square in front or to ascend to the broad summit of the colonnade on each side of it; for the pontiff would, in a few minutes, give the solemn pontifical blessing from the loggia or balcony over the main door of St. Peter's. The other half took the occasion to occupy the vacant space closer to the main altar, striving to secure the best positions, from which to witness, as well as they could, the ceremonies to follow in the sanctuary, after the blessing, and trusting that on Easter-Sunday they might be able to behold and to receive the blessing with grander ceremonial than to-day. The holy father and the cardinals came forth from the chapel, and, leaving for a time the basilica by a side-door, passed into the Vatican palace, and from thence to the vast hall immediately over the vestibule of St. Peter's. Borne in his curule chair, he advances to the loggia, or open balcony projecting in the middle toward the square, and looks out on the city, and on the thousands below, that kneel as he stands erect, and, raising both arms aloft toward heaven, calls down on them the blessing of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The solemn and sweet tones of that majestic voice ring through the square, and the words are heard distinctly by the multitudes. A cardinal reads and publishes the indulgence, and the pontiff and the cardinals retire.

Back into the church the mass of people come, a living torrent. In twenty minutes the cardinals and the bishops are again in the sanctuary, while the movement and rustling of the moving and struggling crowd fills the church with the sound as of a deep, continuous, and subdued bass note. At one side of the large sanctuary, which is about one hundred and thirty feet deep, and seventy-five feet broad, an ascent of eight or ten steps leads to a broad platform visible to all. On this platform attendants move about, preparing all that is necessary for the next portion of the ceremony, the _mandatum_, or washing of feet. Soon a line of thirteen figures, dressed as pilgrims in long white woollen robes reaching to the instep, ascend to the platform, and the attendants conduct them to the seats that are prepared. They are priests from abroad who have come to Rome and all eyes are turned to inspect them as they stand ranged in a line. One is an old man stooped with age, with large, piercing dark eyes, and heavy eyebrows, long aquiline nose and high cheek-bones, and ruddy cheeks. The olive tint of his skin looks darker by contrast with his ample flowing beard of patriarchal whiteness. He is from the east. Perhaps those two other younger ones, with full black beards, are from the east likewise. To judge by his almond eye, the long and regular features, and the darkish skin, another was an Egyptian. Of a fifth there could be no mistake. He was from Senegambia in Africa, and his surname was _Zamba_, or, as we call it in America, _Sambo_. His jet black skin, his negro features, the blue spectacles he wore, and his instinctive attitude of dignity made him the most conspicuous in the number. They entered, wearing tall white caps, in shape something like stove-pipe hats without any rim, and with a tuft on the summit; long white dresses of the shape you may see in the miniatures of illuminated manuscripts written a thousand years ago; and even, their stockings and shoes were white as their dress. As all were ready, the pontiff enters, and the choir intones the antiphon, "Mandatum novum"--"A new command I give you." Some preliminary prayers are chanted, and the pontiff, putting off the cope, but retaining his mitre, is girded with an apron, and ascends the platform. An attendant unlaces the shoe on the right foot of the first pilgrim, and lets down the stocking. Other attendants present the ewer of water and the towels; the pontiff, stooping down or kneeling, washes the instep, dries it with a towel, and kisses it. While the attendants raise the stocking and lace the shoe, the holy father gives to the pilgrim a large nosegay, which in former times contained a coin to aid him on his journey homeward. He did the same one by one to all of them. During this touching ceremony the choir continued to sing anthem after anthem; but few present did more than listen vaguely and enjoy the sound, so preoccupied, or rather so fascinated, all seemed to be by a ceremony so rarely used in the church, and so fully recalling our divine Saviour's act and instruction before the Last Supper. Few have ever seen it in church, save as to-day here in St. Peter's, on Holy-Thursday. It may be said to be carried out, too, on a larger scale and in a practical way, all these days in Rome. There is a large institution here called _La Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini_, where, during Holy-Week, thousands of poor pilgrims, who have come on foot, and reach Rome weary and foot-sore, are received, and supplied with two meals a day and beds for three days and nights. There is one department for the men, and another for the women and children. Each evening, after the conclusion of the services in the churches, they return to the institution. Cardinals, bishops, priests, and laymen in numbers, nobles and private individuals, are there, and wash their feet (thoroughly) and wait on them at the table. In the female department princesses, duchesses, and ladies of every degree and station, titled and untitled, are there to perform the same offices for the women and children. All these ladies belong to several charitable confraternities and associations in the city; and by one of their rules no one of them is allowed the privilege of uniting in this work in Holy-Week unless she has, during the past year, paid at least a stated number of charitable visits to the prisons and hospitals. We do not know whether the men have the same admirable rule.

After the washing of the feet in St. Peter's, the pope retired, and the pilgrims followed. The services in the church itself were over. But there was something else, which as many as could wished to see. The pope was to serve the pilgrims at table. In the large hall mentioned above as being situated over the vestibule of the church, and from which the pope went out to the loggia to give the blessing, a long table had been prepared and decorated. Soon the pilgrims entered and stood at their places; and the hall was filled with thousands of spectators. The pontiff came in, attended by three or four cardinals, his own attendants, and a number of bishops. He said the grace, and a monsignore read a portion of the Scriptures, and then continued to read a book of sermons. Meanwhile, the pope was passing to and fro, from one end of the table to the other, helping each one to soup, to fish, and to wine; and finally, giving them his special blessing, he retired. The services had commenced at nine A.M. It was now two P.M.

The holy oils were blessed, not in St. Peter's, but in St. John Lateran's; for St. Peter's is the cathedral of the pope as Pope and Bishop of the Catholic Church. St. John's is his cathedral as Bishop of Rome.

On Friday morning the offices in St. Peter's were precisely the same as in every other cathedral, differing only in the presence of the sovereign pontiff and the cardinals, and the large number of bishops, who attended robed in purple _cappa magna_. The "Improperia," sung while the pope, the cardinals, and the bishops approached to kneel and kiss the cross, is accounted the master-piece of Palestrina. It is unequalled in its expression of tenderness and of sorrowful reproach. Sung as it was by that unrivalled choir, on this day, when the church is desolate and stripped of all ornament, and the ministers at the altar are robed in sombre black; when burning lights and the smoke of incense are banished from the sanctuary; when one thing only is presented--the image of the crucified Redeemer; one theme only fills prayers, anthems, and hymns alike--the sorrows and death of our Lord on Calvary--its effect seemed overpowering. You thought not of the wondrous charm of the voices; you heeded not the antique melody or the skilful harmonies, as word after word, clearly and distinctly uttered, fell on your ear; the music but rendered more clear and emphatic their sense as it sunk into your heart. You felt that the reproaches of the loving and forgiving Saviour were addressed to you personally, and you bowed in sorrowful confusion as well as in adoration, while you saluted him in the words of early Christian worship, AGIOS O THEOS.

During the service, that portion of his Gospel in which St. John narrates the history of the Passion, was chanted in the same manner as had been the narration by St. Matthew on the preceding Sunday. Prepared as all were, by the services of the days past and by the sublime "Improperia" we had just heard, words cannot express the awe which came on them as they listened to this vivid recitation in music of that grand drama of Good-Friday on the summit of Calvary. It is on such occasions, and with singing like this, that one realizes what force and truth and majesty there is in perfect music, inspired and consecrated by religion.

On Saturday, the bishops were divided between St. Peter's and St. John's. In the latter church, besides the usual services, there were also the instruction of catechumens, the baptism of converts with the form for grown persons, and at the mass a grand ordination, at which tonsure, all the minor orders, subdeaconship, deaconship, and priesthood were conferred on those who had been examined and found worthy of the grades to which they aspired. In all, they were about sixty.

In St. Peter's, the services were only the usual ones of the church for this day--the blessing of the font, the chanting of the prophecies, the blessing of the paschal candle, and the solemn high-mass celebrated by a cardinal. The pope was present. One would have thought that, at his age, after the fatigues of the days past, and in view of the long functions of the morrow, it would be proper that he should have one day of quiet, or at least of comparative quiet. But Pius IX. never thinks of sparing himself. Many of the bishops were at St. John's. But those who were in St. Peter's heard the grand mass "of Pope Marcellus," as it is called, by Palestrina. This is the mass which was composed and sung in 1565, and which, it is said, won from the pope and cardinals the reversal of an absolute prohibition they had almost determined on, of all music and singing in church save the Gregorian chant, on account of the bad taste and abuses of musicians and singers, who introduced profane and worldly music even into the mass. No one who heard those grand religious choral strains could fail to see how solemnly, and fully, and appropriately they expressed in music the sublime character of the service. Such music does not distract; on the contrary, it fixes the thoughts, and soothes and guides the feelings into a channel of devotion. It would have been impossible for the cardinals, after listening to this exquisite mass, to arrive at a different conclusion.

From Thursday until Saturday, all the bells of Rome had been silent. There was a visible shade of sorrow on the city, a public grief, as it were, for the tragedy of Calvary. But in view of the joyous resurrection close at hand, this silence of sorrow is soon to pass away. It was near eleven A.M. when the high-mass commenced at St. Peter's. At the Gloria, a signal was given, and the gigantic Bourdon and the other bells of the basilica broke into a grand peal. The guns of St. Angelo answered, and, quick as sound could travel, all the thousand bells of all the steeples and belfrys of Rome, without exception, joined in the clamorous yet not unpleasant or unmusical chorus. The rooks, and ravens, and doves, and swallows flew to and fro, frightened from their nests, half-stunned, and utterly distracted. When the pealing chorus ended--and it lasted for a full half-hour--Rome had put off her sadness, and friends were exchanging the happy salutations of Easter.

In the afternoon an Armenian bishop celebrated high-mass, according to their rite, at four P.M. in one church, and, at the same hour, a Chaldean prelate celebrated high-mass, according to his rite, in another. In the earlier centuries, this mass of the resurrection was celebrated by all after midnight, on Saturday night. The Orientals have brought it forward to Saturday afternoon; the Latins have gradually advanced it to the forenoon. Sunday dawned, a bright, clear, pleasant, cloudless Italian spring day. At an early hour carriages of every kind were pouring in long lines over every bridge across the Tiber, and hurrying on to St. Peter's, and tens of thousands were making their way thither on foot. By nine o'clock, the sanctuary is filled with bishops robed in white copes and mitres, and with cardinals in richly adorned white chasubles. Soon the Swiss Guard take their places, and the Noble Guard appear in their richest uniform. Lines of Pontifical Zouaves and the Legion of Antibes, and other soldiers, keep a lane open up the middle of the church, through the immense crowd of, it was estimated, forty thousand persons, from the door of the sanctuary. One tribune on the south side of the sanctuary was filled with members of various royal families now in Rome, some on a visit, some staying here permanently. On the other side was a tribune for the diplomatic corps, which was filled with ambassadors, ministers resident and envoys, in their rich uniforms and covered with jewelled decorations.

A burst from the band of silver trumpets over the doorway of the church told us that the holy father was entering. Down the lane through the vast crowd might be seen the cross slowly advancing. Then was heard the voice of the choir of the canons, welcoming the pontiff to the basilica, and then aloft, higher than the mass that filled the church, he was seen slowly borne on in the curule chair, robed in a rich cope of white silk, heavy with gold embroidery and wearing the tiara. Slowly advancing, and giving his blessing to the multitudes on either side, he reached the chapel of the blessed sacrament, descended from the chair, and, with the cardinals accompanying him, and his other attendants, knelt for some moments in adoration. Then, rising, he ascended the chair again, and the procession pursued its way through the crowd, now more closely packed than ever, to the sanctuary. Here the pontiff descended again to his robing throne at the epistle side of the altar. The choir commence the chanting of the psalms of terce and sext. Meanwhile the pontiff was robed for mass, and the cardinals, the patriarchs, and primates, and a certain number of the archbishops and bishops, as representatives of their brethren, paid him the usual homage. This over, solemn high-mass commenced in the usual form. After incensing the altar at the Introit, he passed to his regular throne at the end of the sanctuary, just opposite the altar, and fully one hundred and twenty feet distant. There beside him stood a cardinal priest and two cardinal deacons; the senator of Rome, in his official robes and cloak of yellow and gold, with his pages of similar costume, the _conservatori_ of the city; and on the steps, around the throne, stood, or were seated, some twenty assistant bishops; on either side six lines of seats stretching down to the altar were occupied by the cardinals and by a great mass of prelates, Latin and Oriental, all in the richest vestments appropriate to this the greatest festival of the church.

Never was solemn high-mass celebrated with more splendor in St. Peter's than on this Easter-Sunday. To be privileged to assist at it amply repays many a one for all the time and all the fatigue of a journey to Rome. The holy father officiates with a fervor and intense devotion which lights up his countenance. The venerable Cardinal Patrizi, who stood by his side, was the very personification of sacerdotal dignity. The mitred prelates in their places, many of them gray-haired or bald, or bent with age and labors, seemed radiant with the holy joy of the occasion. The masters of ceremony and the attendants moved gravely and reverently, as their duties called them from one part of the sanctuary to another. Even the vast crowd of forty or fifty thousand that filled the church were penetrated with reverent awe, and sank almost into perfect stillness. Nothing was heard save the noble voice of the sovereign pontiff chanting the prayers, and the responding strains of the choir. Yet, in comparison with the music we had heard during the week, the Gloria and the Creed, super-excellent though they were, seemed in some measure to belong to the earth. After the subdeacon had sung the epistle in Latin, a Greek subdeacon, in the robes of his Greek rite, sung it in Greek; and similarly a Greek deacon followed the Latin deacon in chanting the Gospel. A musical antiquarian would have found in the peculiar modulations of their chant traces of the ancient eastern style of music, going back, perhaps, in those unchanging people to the days of Greek classic civilization. The most impressive moment in the mass was certainly the elevation. At a signal, you heard the voice of the officers giving the command, and the thud on the floor as the companies of soldiers simultaneously grounded arms, and every man sank on one knee. The Noble Guard, too, sank on one knee, uncovered their heads, and saluted with their bright swords. The Swiss Guard stood erect and presented arms. In the sanctuary, of course, all were kneeling. There was a sound like the rushing of a wind through a pine forest as the vast multitude strove to sink down too. And then came a dead silence over all. As the pontiff raised aloft the sacred host, turning toward every quarter of the church, there came, faint, and soft, and solemn at first, and gradually stronger and more emphatic, the thrilling tones of those silver trumpets placed over the doorway and out of sight. Their slow, majestic melody, and their rich accords, and the repeated and prolonged echoes of those notes of almost supernatural sweetness, from chapels and nave and dome, produced an effect that was marvellously impressive. As if fascinated by them, no one moved from his kneeling position, or even raised his head, until the last note of the strain and its receding echoes had died away, and the choir went on to intone the "Benedictus qui venit."

At the conclusion of the mass, the pope unrobed, put on his cope and tiara again, and retired in the same manner as he had entered. At once the vast mass of people began to pour forth from St. Peter's, to make their way to the front; for the pope would soon give his solemn benediction _urbi et orbi_--to Rome and to the world. We have already described the square before St. Peter's. It is about fifteen hundred feet long, and averages nearly four hundred feet in breadth. All during the mass it had been gradually filling up, and when now new torrents of men came pouring out of the church, the whole place became so packed that one standing on the lofty colonnade on the side of the Vatican and looking down on the square, perceived that only here and there even small portions of the ground remained visible, such was the closeness with which men and women stood packed together. Especially was this true on the vast esplanades more immediately before the church, and the broad steps leading up to it. Here were gathered all who wished to be as near as possible to the pope during the blessing, or to get a sight from this elevation of the vast basin of the square thoroughly packed with human beings. Nor was the multitude confined to the square alone; on the colonnades, on either hand, stood thousands and thousands, as in favored positions. Every window and balcony looking out on the square was thronged. Every roof had its group, and away down the two streets leading up the square from the bridge of St. Angelo the crowd appeared equally dense. A military man present, whose experience had qualified him to estimate large masses, judged that there were present at least one hundred and twenty thousand persons. Mingling among them, you heard every language of Europe, many of Asia, and, it was said, half a dozen from Africa. It was a representation of the world which the pontiff would bless. From all this multitude, standing in the bright sunlight, which a north wind rendered not disagreeable, came up a roar, as it were, of rushing waters, mingling the hum of so many voices with the blaring of an occasional military trumpet from the troops, and the neighing of horses.

Soon the regimental bands are heard to salute the approach of his holiness, invisible as yet to the crowd. A score of mitred prelates appear at the large Balcony of the Blessing. They look out in wonder and admiration at the scene below, and retire to allow another score to view it; a third group does the same. These are the bishops who have accompanied the pope from the sanctuary to the Vatican, and from the Vatican hither. Of the others, some are down on the square with the people, more are on the colonnades, in places reserved for them. After the bishops, the cardinals are seen to fill the balcony once or twice, and then the pontiff himself comes in view, borne forward on his curule chair. He is out on the loggia itself. Ordinarily, besides the ornamental drapery which we see decorating the columns and architrave and tympanum, and the railing in front, there projects overhead a large awning to screen him from the sun. But to-day the north wind does not allow it to stand. Fortunately, the weather hardly calls for it. He is scarcely inconvenienced by the rays of the sun as they are reflected from his rich gold-cloth mitre, studded with precious stones, and from the massive gold embroidery of his cope. The military music has ceased, and there is the silence of awe and of earnest expectation. Those that are near hear the tones of some one chanting the Confiteor beside the pontiff. Two bishops hold the large missal from which he chants the prayers in a clear, rotund, and musical voice. The people are kneeling, and twice is heard the response of united thousands--_Amen_. The book is laid aside. The pontiff rises and stands erect, looks up to heaven, and, with a majestic sweeping motion, opens wide his arms and invokes on all the blessing of heaven. His voice is given forth in its very fullest power, and even at the furthermost end of the square the kneeling crowd sign themselves with the sign of the cross as they distinctly hear the words: "_Benedictio Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, descendat super vos et maneat semper." May the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, descend upon you and abide with you for ever._ And there came up a swelling _Amen_. As the pontiff sank back on his chair, the kneeling crowd arose, and there burst forth from every portion of it a loud acclaim of _vivas_, of good wishes, of acclamations, that died away only as the pontiff retired from view, and as the cannon of St. Angelo commenced the national salute.

It was a ceremony fitted by its majesty and its magnificence to close the grand ceremonies of Easter-Week. Art cannot do justice to it. Painting, tied down by the laws of perspective, cannot portray what the eye sees on every side, and does not pretend to give the words of solemn prayer, of impressive benediction, and the outburst of acclamation which we heard. Words must fail to convey the emotions that filled thousands of hearts that day, at the sublime and moving spectacle. It was a sensible testimony of the holiness, the authority, and the unity of the church of Christ, a testimony to which not even an unbeliever, if present, could remain indifferent.

It took nearly two hours for that crowd to depart. The cardinals, royalty, the nobles, and many of the bishops in carriages, made their way, at a snail's pace, along the streets leading to the old Roman Elian Bridge across the Tiber, now known as the Bridge of St. Angelo. They could scarcely get on as fast as the foot passengers that filled the street on either side up to the very wheels of the single line of carriages allowed. Others, more in a hurry, went out by the Porta Angelica, so as to cross the Tiber at the Ponte Molle, two miles north of the city, and then reënter by the Porta del Popolo; and others again turned southward, following the streets along the river, and crossing it at the suspension bridge, or at some of the bridges lower down. And so, within two hours, all reached their homes without a single accident, without a single quarrel, without a single call for the interference of the police.

But it was for many of them only to return within a few hours. On Easter-Sunday evening occurs the grand illumination of the façade and dome of St. Peter's. As the shades of evening fell on the city, silvery lights began to mark the lofty cross, and to glow along the huge ribs of the mighty dome, and to map out the lines of the windows and doors, the columns, and cornices, and tympanums, and architectural ornaments and projections, to illuminate the clock-faces and the coats of arms above them, to sparkle along the minor domes, and to stretch away on either side in regular lines along each colonnade, diffusing everywhere a gentle light, and bringing into prominence, with a fairy-like witchery, all the lines of the pile before you. There are about five thousand two hundred of these lights. They are made of broad shallow plates of metal or earthenware, containing a certain amount of prepared tallow and a lighted wick, and surrounded by a cylinder of paper, colored and figured. From this lantern, as it may be called, the light comes diffused, subdued, and white; hence the Romans call this the _silver_ illumination. The square was filled, though by no means as in the morning, with crowds looking, wondering, and admiring. At a quarter past eight, the large bell of St. Peter's began to chime. As the very first stroke came to our ears, a tiny blaze was seen to dart up a guiding wire to the top of the lofty cross, and a clear bright flame burst forth, glowed on the summit; downward the tiny flame flew, lighting two others on each arm of the cross, and then downward lighting still others along the stem. Invisible hands caused other such little flames to flit rapidly hither and thither, like glow-moths, all along the dome, the front, and both colonnades around the square. Wherever they seemed to alight for an instant, there a bright flame sprung into existence. In just twenty-three seconds, and long before the clock had half struck the hour, eight hundred of those bright yellow flames had almost eclipsed the first ones, and the building stood forth in the _golden_ illumination. It was a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten. Whoever first conceived the idea of this instantaneous change of illumination was a poet in the truest sense of the word.

On Easter-Monday evening, the festive celebrations were continued by giving the _Girandola_, or exhibition of fireworks on Monte Pincio. On entering Rome from the north, by the Porta del Popolo, as before the days of the railways the great majority of travellers did, you find yourself at once in a large oval square, called the Piazza del Popolo, in the centre of which stands an ancient Egyptian obelisk, its base surrounded by modern Egyptian lions and fountains. On the south side, three streets radiate into the heart of the city. For a wonder, they are straight; you may look down the central one, the Corso, for full three quarters of a mile. Massive palatial buildings stand around this square; to the west there rises a line of lofty evergreen cypresses, near the Tiber. Through the interstices of their branches and dark foliage you may catch glimpses of St. Peter's. On the east rises the Pincian Hill, the _Mons Hortulanus_ of the olden Romans, then outside and to the north of the city, now within its walls, and forming its beautiful promenade. The hill is about one hundred and fifty feet high, and toward the square is quite steep. Broad carriage-ways, sweeping from right to left, in zigzag courses, give access from the square to the promenade above; and immense walls of masonry, with arches and porticos, and columns, rising in stories, back of and above each other, prevent any landslides, and give an architectural finish to the whole hill-face which the trees and exotic plants growing in the spaces between only embellish and do not mar.

For ten days before Easter-Monday, the public had been excluded from the promenade. As they passed through the square, they could see a lofty scaffolding in the process of erection on the brow of the hill, and other scaffolding interlacing with the architecture of its side. The opposite oval curve of the square was occupied by a line of covered galleries of wood erected for the occasion. On this Monday night, the air was balmy, the sky clear but moonless. At least twenty-five thousand spectators stood in the square. The Roman municipality had assigned the galleries to the bishops and some thousands of other invited guests. Four military bands whiled away the time of expectation with sweet music. At last the appointed hour struck on a neighboring church clock, and a rocket shot up into the air, the sound of its explosion was reëchoed from the mouth of a cannon; and the pyrotechnic display at once commenced. The art of pyrotechnics has been cultivated at Rome with more skill and good taste than in any other city of Europe. We might, indeed, expect this from a people trained as no other is to recognize and appreciate the beautiful and fitting in form and color. The grand features and characteristics of those displays were settled centuries ago. They say that Michael Angelo himself did much toward perfecting them. On each occasion some able artist gives the specialties to be introduced, always in subservience to those general principles. This year, the plan was given by the distinguished architect Vespiniani. At one time, the entire face of the hill and the scaffolding was ablaze with lines of variegated light, representing a vast mass of buildings with towers and cupola, and gigantic gateways, on which there streamed down from above continuous beams of still brighter and purer light. In the distance stood the figure of an apostle, and by him an angel with outstretched arm; and we understood that we were looking at the celestial Jerusalem, revealed in vision to the apostle in Patmos. We marked the gates of precious stones, perfectly represented by the various hues of fire, and the foundation stones bearing in letters of light the names of the apostles. Too soon it seemed to fade away, but only to be renewed with change of colors. For a while we might still study it. Again it faded, again was renewed with still another exquisite arrangement of colors, and then faded away into darkness. Then figure after figure burst out afterward, without any delay or tedious waiting. At one time, a gigantic volcano, amid the booming of cannon that caused the ground to tremble beneath the foot, belched forth thousands of burning rockets, which ascended in streaks of fire and burst over head, seeming to fill the sky with myriads and myriads of many-colored falling stars. At another, the whole hill-side stood before us as a group of majestic triumphal arches, decorated with immense wreaths of roses, lilies, dahlias, and bright-colored flowers. In a niche was seen the bust of the pontiff surrounded by a brilliant frame, and below we read the inscription, in which _Senatus Populusque Romarins_, the municipal authorities of the city, offered to Pius IX. their homage and congratulations on the near approach of the twenty-fifth year of his pontificate. All the minor devices of pyrotechnics, of course, abounded. When, after three quarters of an hour, the brilliant and almost continuous display seemed to be closed, a little fiery messenger started from the hill-side, on an invisible wire, to the summit of the obelisk in the centre of the square, and lighted a bright flame on its point. Soon lines of flame decorated its sides. From its base ten little messengers started out, not very far over the heads of the people, reaching as many pillars around the square, and lighting up simultaneously ten bright Bengal lights. It was as if day had come back to us. The lights on the pillars changed from white to purple and red, and other messengers, this time seemingly still nearer the heads, rushed madly back to the central obelisk and clothed that too in many-colored fire. At last, from obelisk and pillars alike shot up rocket after rocket, bursting loudly in the air, and for the last time casting their bright hues of white, and scarlet, and orange, and green, and purple on the hill-side, the palaces and hotels around, and on the crowd beneath in the square. All was over, and at an early hour the mighty mass was slowly moving like living torrents down the three streets leading from the square into the city. So great was the crowd that it was full half an hour before the careful police would allow the carriages, which filled the by-streets in the neighborhood, to enter those thoroughfares. Gorgeous and artistic as the spectacle was, it had not cost beyond a thousand dollars.

On Tuesday, the fathers were at work again. A general congregation was held, as usual. The last speeches were spoken, the last explanations were heard; the last touches were given to the _schema_, and the last vote was taken, and every thing was ready to declare and promulgate the _schema_, as a dogmatic constitution or decree of faith, in the next public session, which, it was announced, would be held on Low-Sunday.

The _Girandola_ on Monday night was the celebration of the municipal authorities. On Wednesday night, the people had theirs--a general illumination of the city. The proper day would have been April 12th, the anniversary of the pope's return from Gaeta, and also of his wondrous escape from all injury in an accident by the falling of a floor at St. Agnes, outside the walls, something like the late disastrous one in the capital at Richmond. Though many were injured, cardinals, priests, and laymen, none, we believed, were killed. But the chair in which the pontiff was seated came down with him through the breaking floor without even being overturned, and he was preserved from even the slightest shock. Since then, he ever keeps that day religiously sacred, and the Romans have fallen into the custom of celebrating it by a general illumination of the city. This year, as the day fell in Holy-Week, the celebration was put off until the 20th of April, Wednesday in Easter-Week.

Each householder illuminated his own building with lines of _lampioni_, as they call the plates of earthenware or metal, filled with tallow and a lighted wick, and surrounded by a cylindrical screen of colored paper, through which the light shines as a huge diamond. The wealthier ones affected some ornamental design in a profuser arrangement of such lights. Some used multitudinous cups of colored glass, holding oil, and a lighted taper swimming in it. In each parish, the inhabitants clubbed together to erect one or more special designs of superior artistic taste and brilliancy. The city was all aglow; nobody save the sick staid at home; the streets were filled with streams of people all moving in the same direction; for some one had, with happy thoughtfulness, got up an itinerary or route guide through the city, and all seemed to follow it. It took three hours to walk through the choice parts of the fairy scene, if you went on foot; and more, if you took a carriage. The lines of mellow light, faintly shining from windows and cornices along all the buildings, even the poorest, in the narrowest, and darkest, and crookedest streets of Rome, broken occasionally by a brighter burst from the doorway of some shop well illuminated in the interior; the blaze that rose from the lights more numerous and brighter in the squares, or shone from the fronts of wealthier and larger houses and palaces, from the arches of triumph, and from the temples of Gothic or classic style, constructed of wood and canvas, but to which painting and colored lights lent for the hour a fairy beauty like that of Aladdin's palace; every thing united to charm, to dazzle, and to bewilder the spectator. The pope had gone that afternoon as usual to St. Agnes, to be present at a Te Deum for his escape, and returned only after night-fall. As he reached the square of St. Peter's, a number of rockets shot up into the air, and burst into a thousand stars of every hue. It was a signal. Instantaneously the colonnades on either side and the front of the church were all lighted up with Bengal fires. The columns in front and the walls glowed in a white or golden light; the interior recesses were made mysterious in a rich purple. After a few moments, the tints were interchanged; the bright purple light was in front, and seemed to change the buff travertino into alabaster and precious marbles, and the trembling tints of white and light gold within imparted a supernatural beauty to the interior recesses. Change followed change, until the pope, amid the enthusiastic acclamations of the vast crowd, moved on, and at last disappeared in the rear of St. Peter's, to reach the grand gateway of the Vatican palace. The crowd too passed elsewhere, to wander along streets converted into arcades, roofed by lines of soft and many-colored lights; to admire the triumphal arches, where in niches the Saviour stood as "the way, the truth, and the life," attended by the Evangelists or the Blessed Virgin Mother, to whom David and Isaiah bore testimony; to look on the cross of jewelled light shining in the dark recesses of the front of the Pantheon, or to examine and criticise the temples of light at the Minerva, the Santi Apostoli, or Monticilorio; to rest themselves at times, listening to the music of the bands, which ever and anon they encountered; to look with delight on the illuminated steamers and barges on the river, bearing (for the nonce) the flags of every Christian nation, and to study the play of light reflected on the rippling surface of old Father Tiber; to wonder at the obelisks converted into columns of fire, or the grand stairway of Trinità di Monte, made a mountain of light, and a glorious grand stairway seeming to reach the heavens, or to watch the changing colors of Bengal fires, illuming the statues of old Neptune and his tritons and sea-horses, and the wild cavernous rocks and dashing waters of the exquisite fountain of Trevi; or, after all, to stroll through some square, where yellow gravelly walks led you between beds of green herbage, where tiny fountains were bubbling, where trees were laden with fruits of light, and where flowers filled the air with sweet perfumes. All Rome was in the streets, and in their orderly, calm, and dignified way enjoyed the scene hugely. Not a loud voice or an angry word was heard, not the slightest symptom of intoxication was seen. Everywhere the hum of pleasant talk of friends and family groups arose, made sparkling and brilliant to the ear, rather than interrupted, by the low but hearty and silvery laughs of men, of women, and of delighted children. The Romans were out, all in their best apparel; and not they alone, but thousands from the villages of the campagnas and the neighboring mountains, in their bright colors and quaint mediæval traditional costumes. All these were a study to the sixty thousand visitors then passing through the streets of Rome, not less interesting and instructive than the gorgeous illumination itself. Among those sixty thousand strangers there was but one decision--that nowhere else in Europe could there be an illumination so spontaneous, so general, so perfectly artistic, so exquisitely beautiful and grand as this was, and nowhere else could such a vast crowd walk these narrow streets for hours with such perfect order, such good humor, and such universal courtesy.

There were other celebrations during these two weeks, both ecclesiastical and social, but it will suffice to have spoken of the chief ones. The repositories or sepulchres of Holy-Thursday evening, the services of the three hours' agony in many churches about noon on Good-Friday, and the sermons and way of the cross in the ruins of the Colosseum, the scene of so many martyrdoms, on Good-Friday afternoon, would all deserve special mention; but we have not the space, and must pass on to the third public session of the Vatican Council.

This, as we have already stated, was fixed for Sunday, April 26th--Low-Sunday. At nine A.M., the cardinals, patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops, mitred abbots, and superiors of religious orders were in their places. The council hall had been restored to the original form in which we had seen it on the day of the opening. All the changes to fit it for the discussions of the general congregations were removed. The Noble Guard and the Knights of Malta were on duty as custodians of the assembly. Cardinal Bilio celebrated a pontifical high-mass, as had been done in each of the previous sessions. At its termination, the Gospel was enthroned on the altar. The holy father intoned the "Veni Creator Spiritus," and the choir and united assembly of prelates sung the strophes alternately to the conclusion of that sublime hymn. The pontiff chanted the opening prayers, and all knelt when the litany of the saints was intoned in the varied and well-known antique melodies of Gregorian chant. At the proper place, the pontiff chanted the special supplications for a blessing on the council, and the chanters and the assembly, and, in fact, thousands of the audience, joined in the swelling responses. The effect seemed even to surpass that which we described in our first article, giving an account of the opening of the council. Other prayers followed, prescribed by the ritual. At their conclusion, the special work of this session commenced.

According to the olden time ritual of councils, all in the hall, not belonging strictly to the council, should at this point be sent away, and the gates should be closed, that in their voting the fathers might be free from all outside influence, and each might speak his mind, unswayed by fear or favor. But if, in stormier times, when clamorous mobs might invade a council hall, such precautions were necessary, here, to-day, they are certainly unnecessary. There is no need to close the wide portals against these thousands and tens of thousands who have gathered to look with reverence and rapture on this venerable assembly. Let the doors then stand open to their widest extent, that all may see.

And it was a scene worth coming, as many had done, across oceans and mountains to look on. The pillars and walls of the noble hall were rich with appropriate paintings, with mosaics, and statuary, and marbles. At the furthest end, on his elevated seat, sat the venerated sovereign pontiff, bearing on his head a precious mitre, glittering with jewels, and wearing a cope rich with massive golden embroidery. On either hand sat the venerable cardinals, arrayed in white mitres, and wearing their richest robes of office. In front of them sat the patriarchs, mostly easterns, in the rich and bright-colored robes of their respective rites, and wearing tiaras radiant with brilliants and jewelry. Down either side of the hall ran the manifold lines of primates, archbishops, bishops, and other prelates, all in white mitres, and in copes of red lama; all save the oriental prelates, who wear many-colored copes and vestments, and rich tiaras, ever catching the eye of the spectator as they sat scattered here and there in that crowd, and excepting also the heads of religious orders, who wear each his appropriate dress of white, or of black, or of brown, or mingle these colors together. The contrast and play of various colors in all these vestments give a brilliancy to the whole scene, much beyond what the uniform white of the first two sessions had yielded.

But what mattered the color of their vestments, when one considered the venerable forms of the bishops themselves. They sat still, and almost as motionless as so many marble statues. Now and then some aged prelate, with bald head and snow-white locks, would lay aside for a few moments the heavy mitre, that perhaps was pressing his aged brows too heavily. All else seemed motionless. Their countenances, composed and thoughtful, told how thoroughly they, at least, were impressed with the importance and the solemnity of their work.

In the middle stood the altar, rich and simple, on which lay enthroned the open book of the Gospels. Near by stood the light and lofty pulpit of dark wood.

Into this pulpit now ascended Monsignor Valenziani, Bishop of Fabriano and Matelica, one of the assistant secretaries, and in a voice remarkable for its strength and distinctness, and not less so for its endurance, read with most appropriate emphasis, and with the musical intonations of a cultivated Italian voice, the entire _Dogmatic Constitution_, from the beginning to the end. It occupied just three quarters of an hour.

At the conclusion he asked, "Most eminent and most reverend fathers, do you approve of the canons and decrees contained in this constitution?"

He descended from the pulpit, and Monsignor Jacobini, another assistant secretary took his place, to call for the votes of the fathers, one by one.

"The Most Eminent Constantine Cardinal Patrizi, Bishop of Porto and Santa Rufina!"

The venerable cardinal arose in his place. We heard his answer, PLACET;--_I approve_. An usher standing near him repeated, _Placet_; a second one on the right hand side repeated, _Placet_; a third on the other side repeated aloud, _Placet_.

"The Most Eminent Aloysius Cardinal Amat, Bishop of Palestrina!" The aged cardinal rose slowly, and in a feeble voice replied, PLACET. And from the ushers again we heard echoing through the hall, _Placet! Placet! Placet!_

Thus there could be no mistake as to the vote, and not only the notaries but all who wished could keep a correct tally.

Cardinal after cardinal was thus called in order and voted; then the patriarchs, each one of whom, rising, declared his vote, and the ushers repeated it loudly. _Placet! Placet! Placet!_

Then on through the primates, the archbishops, and bishops, the mitred abbots, and the heads of religious orders, admitted to the right of suffrage. Where a vote was given, the three ushers invariably repeated it. Sometimes when a name was called the answer was given, ABEST--_he is absent_. In all, six hundred and sixty-seven votes were cast, all of them in approval, not a single one in the negative. Not a few of the bishops had obtained leave to go to their dioceses for the Holy-Week and the Easter festivities, and had not yet been able to return to the council. We knew of one who, after two weeks of hard work at home, had travelled all Saturday night, on the train, and had reached Rome only at nine A.M. Sunday morning. He had at once said mass privately in the nearest convenient chapel, and, without waiting for even the slightest refreshment, had hurried to St. Peter's, that he might take his place among his brethren and record his "_Placet_." The whole form of voting occupied about two hours. It was, in truth, a solemn and most impressive scene. There was a pause at the end, while the notaries counted up the votes, and declared the result. This done, the pope spoke aloud, "_The canons and decrees contained in this constitution, having been approved by all the fathers, without a single dissentient, we, with the approbation of this holy council, define them, as they have been read, and by our apostolic authority we confirm them_." It was the official sanction sealing their force and truth.

The pontiff paused for a moment, evidently struggling with the emotions of his heart, and then continued in an impromptu address in Latin, which we caught as follows:

"Most reverend brethren, you see how good and sweet it is to walk together in agreement in the house of the Lord. Walk thus ever; and as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on this day said to his apostles, PEACE, I, his unworthy vicar, say unto you in his name, PEACE. Peace, as you know, casteth but fear. Peace, as you know, closes our ears to words of evil. May that peace accompany you all the days of your life. May it console you and give you strength in death. May it be to you everlasting joy in heaven."

The bishops were moved, many of them to tears, by the dignity and the paternal affection with which the simple words came from his heart. He was himself deeply moved.

Other prayers were chanted. The pontifical blessing was given, and the pope intoned the Te Deum. The choir, the bishops, and the thousands of priests and laity in the church, who had looked on this solemn act of the church just executed, joined in with their whole heart and soul, and swelled the grand Ambrosian melody, making it roll throughout the church, and calling echoes from every chapel and arch, from nave and transept and dome. And with this concordant song of gratitude to God, the third session of the Vatican Council was appropriately closed.

The pontiff departed, accompanied by some of the cardinals, by the senator and _conservatori_ of Rome, the masters-at-arms of the council, and the attendants of his pontifical household. Soon the cardinals and prelates moved slowly from the council hall into the vast church, unrobed in a chapel set apart for the purpose, and wended their way homeward, and the third public session of the council was over.

We were able, in our last number, to present to our readers the original text, in Latin, of the constitution promulgated in this session, and also a correct translation of it in English. It will be seen on examining the subjects treated of, and by the absolute unanimity of the votes given, how far astray "our own correspondents" were, both as to the matters under discussion in the council, and as to the divisions which they imagined to exist among the fathers.

Since Low-Sunday, the general congregations have resumed their sittings, and the committees on matters of faith and on matters of discipline have been busily engaged. Matters from the latter committee have already been rediscussed, and some preliminary votes have been taken. It is understood that ere long the committee on matters of faith will report back to the general congregation another _schema_ on the church, in the course of which the question of the infallibility of the pope, of which so much has been written and said, will at last come formally before the council. Should this be the case, we may be sure the whole subject will be examined with the care and research which its importance requires, and which the dignity and the learning of the fathers demand. The result will be that decision to which the Holy Spirit of truth will guide them.

ROME, May 8, 1870.

NOTE.--We may add to this announcement of our correspondent, that the discussion of the _schema_ on infallibility was begun on the 10th of May, and is expected to be finished before the 29th of June.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

AN AMERICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY; INCLUDING STRICTURES ON THE MANAGEMENT OF THE FINANCES SINCE 1861. With a chart showing the fluctuations in the price of gold. By Francis Bowen, Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity in Harvard College. New York: Scribner & Co. 1870. 16mo, pp. 495.

We took up this book with an old prejudice against the author of some thirty years standing, as well as with an inveterate dislike to almost all works on political economy, which it has ever been our misfortune to read; but we have been pleased and instructed by it. Professor Bowen is not a philosopher; has not, properly speaking, a scientific mind; but he has great practical good sense, and a wide, and we should say a thorough, acquaintance with the facts of his subject, and the ability to set them forth in a clear and strong light. He is no system-monger, is wedded to no system of his own, and aims to look at facts as they are. It is a great merit of his book that it recognizes that each country should have its own political economy growing out of and adapted to its peculiar wants and circumstances. Free-trade or protection may be for the interest of one country and not for another, and no universal rule as to either can be laid down.

The author, a follower of John Locke in philosophy, is of course not good at definitions, and his definition of wealth is rather clumsy, but he contrives as he proceeds to tell us what it is. All wealth is the product of labor, and a man is wealthy just in proportion to his ability to purchase or command the labor of others. Hence the absurdity of those theorists who demand an equal division of property or an equality of wealth, as well as of the legislation that seeks to ameliorate the condition of the poor by making them rich, or furnishing them with facilities for becoming rich. If all were wealthy, all would be poor; for then no one would sell his labor; and if no one would sell his labor, no one could buy labor, and then every man would be reduced to the necessity of doing every thing for himself. All men have equal natural rights as men, and this is all the equality that is practicable or desirable.

The reader will find the professor has treated the question of banks with rare lucidity, as also that of paper money, and even money itself. But the portion of his work that most interests us is his strictures on the management of our national finances since 1861, and especially Mr. Secretary Chase's pet scheme of national banks. According to his showing, it would exceed the wit of man to invent and follow a more ruinous financial policy than that pursued by the national administration since the inauguration of the late Mr. Lincoln as President. He shows that the Northern States could have met and actually did pay enough during the civil war to meet all the expenses of the war without contracting a cent of debt, and consequently the two or three thousand millions of dollars' debt actually contracted was solely due to our national financiers. There never was any need of resorting to any thing more than temporary national loans if the government had had in the beginning the wisdom or the courage, or indeed the confidence in the people, to adopt the scale of taxation subsequently adopted. There never was any need of compelling the banks to suspend specie payments, or for it to issue legal-tender notes, but what was created by its own blunders. The people could have paid as they went for the war, and been richer at its close than at its beginning.

As if creating paper money for all purposes except customs dues, demeritizing gold and silver, depreciating the currency, and enormously inflating the prices of all commodities, was not enough, it must needs create the national banks, and make them a free gift of $300,000,000 of circulation, and that without the least relief to the government, but to its great embarrassment, still more inflating the currency, and running up gold to a premium of 285. Even since the war it continues its blunders, and does all in its power to increase the burdens of the people. It seems from the first to have proceeded on the principle of securing the support of the people by enabling individuals to amass huge fortunes at the public expense. Why, if it must have national banks, need it make them banks of circulation? Why not compel them to bank on its own legal tenders instead of their own notes, and thus save to itself the profits on $300,000,000 of circulation? It would have run no risk it does not now run; for the treasury is responsible for the redemption of the notes of the national banks, and the security it holds from them would be perfectly illusory in any monetary crisis. But we have no room to proceed. We, however, recommend this part of the work to the serious consideration of our national financiers. There are in political economy deeper problems than Professor Bowen has grasped; but upon the whole, he has given us the most sensible work on the subject that we are acquainted with.

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THE DAY SANCTIFIED. Being Meditations and Spiritual Readings for daily use. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1870. Pp. 318. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street, New York.

This volume consists of a series of meditations drawn from the Holy Scripture and modern spiritual writers. It is not, however, a book containing meditations for the entire year, as one would be led to imagine from its title. The number of meditations is only ninety. So it is supposed--and the plan is a good one--that the subjects will be selected according to each one's devotion. A word may very fitly be said in praise of the composition of these spiritual readings. They appear to be really addressed to the reader. Moreover, they contain no foolish exaggerations. These two merits are not unfrequently wanting in books of meditations. The present volume relates to the duties and doctrines of our holy faith. Another series is promised, which will contain suitable meditations for the ecclesiastical year, and the feasts of the Blessed Virgin and the saints.

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CÆSAR'S COMMENTARIES ON THE GALLIC WAR. With Notes, Dictionary, and Map. By Albert Harkness, LL.D., Professor in Brown University. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

This edition of Cæsar's _Commentaries_ is altogether the best we remember to have seen. Besides the advantage of a copious and accurate dictionary, the notes are ample without being extravagant. There is an introductory sketch of the great Roman's life, which is interesting, and the map of Gaul is excellent.

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REFLECTIONS AND PRAYERS FOR HOLY COMMUNION. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1869. Pp. 498. New York: For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street.

When Archbishop Manning says that "this volume is a valuable addition to our books of devotion," it needs no further recommendation. But, in addition to his opinion, it comes to us sanctioned by the approbation of the Archbishop of Lyons, and the Bishops of Aix, Nancy, and Redez. Still, we will not forbear to give it our mite of praise. The book abounds in beautiful methods of learning to love Jesus in his sacrament of love. Yet the meditations are not merely beautiful, they are also very practical. In our reading, we have never met so touching and so useful a thanksgiving, after communion, as the exercise which, in this volume, is called "The Hem of our Lord's Garment." If good use is made of the suggestions and reflections in these pages, they will certainly accomplish their author's intention of "gently drawing the soul entirely to our Lord."

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A TREATISE ON THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MARRIAGE. By Hugh Davey Evans, LL.D. With a Biographical Sketch of the Author, etc. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1870.

Dr. Evans was a friend of ours in days long gone by, and we used frequently to contribute articles to the magazine which he edited, one of which, entitled "Dissent and Semi-Dissent," has been incorrectly attributed to him by his biographer. We have always cherished a sentiment of respect for the quaint and learned old gentleman, whose portrait has been drawn in the brief biographical sketch prefixed to this volume with singular fidelity and accuracy. Dr. Evans was a regular old-fashioned High-Churchman, after the model of Hooker and Wilson, and consequently imbued with many soundly Catholic principles and sentiments, mixed up with many other incongruous English and Protestant prejudices. In the work before us, he has with masterly learning and ability defended the Christian doctrine of marriage in a manner which is in the greater number of essential respects sound and satisfactory. Unfortunately, having only his own individual judgment as his tribunal of last resort in defining Catholic doctrine, instead of councils and popes, he has sanctioned one most fatal error, the lawfulness of divorces _a vinculo_, and subsequent remarriage, in the case of adultery on the part of the wife. We are glad to see that his editor dissents from him in this respect, and has republished the admirable little treatise of Bishop Andrews sustaining the opposite side of the question. It is a wonder that any person can fail to see how utterly worthless is any pretended church authority which leaves such an essential matter as this open to dispute. We are glad to see works circulated among Protestants which advocate any sound principles on this subject, even though they are incomplete. They have much more influence than the works of Catholic authors; they form a "serviceable breakwater" to the inflowing tide of corruption, and prepare the way for the eventual triumph of the Catholic doctrine and law, which alone can save society from dissolution. The _Atlantic Monthly_, which is the favorite magazine of a very large class of the most highly cultivated minds in New England and in other portions of the United States, has descended to the lowest level of the free-love doctrine, and thus fixed on itself the seal of that condemnation which it has been earning for a long time past, as the most dangerous and corrupting of all our literary periodicals. We hope that it will be banished hereafter from every Catholic family, and receive no more commendatory notices from the Catholic press. We are glad to see the strong and manly refutation of its immoral nonsense given by _The Nation_, although its argument fails of the sanction which is alone sufficient to compel assent, and efficiently control legislation and public opinion in a matter where so severe a curb is placed on passion and liberty to follow the individual will. We are happy to welcome such sensible and valuable aid to the cause of social morality as that given by _The Nation_, but we must disown entirely another champion of monogamy, to wit, the Methodist preacher, Dr. Newman, as more dangerous than an open antagonist. We see that this conspicuous declaimer intends to maintain in a public discussion, to be held in the Mormon temple, the irreligious and scandalous thesis that the holy patriarchs of the old law who practised polygamy were adulterers and sinners against the divine law. This is quite consistent with Luther's immoral doctrine that men totally depraved and steeped in deadly sin can be friends of God through a legal fiction of imputed righteousness; but it is equally shocking to piety and common sense, and as completely subversive of Christianity as the superstitious imposture of Joe Smith. We predict an easy victory of Brigham Young over Dr. Newman. Dr. Evans, as corrected by his editor and Bishop Andrews, advocates the sound Christian doctrine of marriage, and the circulation of his work must therefore have a most beneficial influence.

* * * * *

CRIMINAL ABORTION; ITS EXTENT AND PREVENTION. Read before the Philadelphia County Medical Society, February 9th, 1870, by the retiring President, Andrew Nebinger, M.D. Published by order of the Society. Philadelphia: Collins. 1870.

This exhaustive essay, read before the Philadelphia County Medical Society, by its able president, Dr. Nebinger, will, we trust, have a great influence toward remedying the present loose domestic morals of our country. We suppose the _exposé_ here made had much weight with the Pennsylvania Legislature, which has recently passed a bill making it a penal offence for any one to advertise the vile nostrums which are now exposed for sale in our drug-stores with such unblushing effrontery.

Recent statistics, published by Dr. Storer and others, prove the fearful prevalence of the crime of fœticide among the native population; and the next census will no doubt show an absolute decrease of that class in the New England States. We hope when thus placed officially before the eyes of the Protestant clergy, they will awaken to the necessity of at least informing their congregations of the enormity of this sin; so that the plea of ignorance, now urged to extenuate their guilt, can no longer be used.

Physiology has definitely settled that vitality begins from the moment of conception. Theology pronounces the destruction of human life to be murder, and consequently the Catholic Church impresses in every possible way upon her children the fearful retribution that will be visited upon those who in any way tamper with the helpless unborn. We commend the paper to the careful perusal of our medical readers.

* * * * *

CONFERENCES OF THE REV. PERE LACORDAIRE. Delivered in the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, in Paris. Translated from the French by Henry Langdon. New York: P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street. 1870.

Mr. O'Shea deserves our thanks and those of the entire body of educated Catholics in the United States for his republication of this great work. F. Lacordaire was a genius, a great writer and a great orator; one of those shining and burning minds that enlighten and enkindle thousands of other minds during and after their earthly course. In the graces of writing and eloquence, he far surpassed that other popular preacher at Nôtre Dame who has proved to be but an _ignis fatuus_. In originality of thought, intellectual gifts, and sound learning, he was eminent among his compeers. Better than all, he was a holy man, a true monk, an imitator of the severe penance of the saints, and a devoted, obedient son of the Holy Roman Church.

His conferences are well adapted both to instruct the minds and to charm the imaginations of those who desire to find the solid substance of sound doctrine under the most graceful, brilliant, and attractive form. We recommend them especially to young men, and hope they will have a wide circulation.

The translation, however, we regret to say, though expressing the ideas of the author, is very defective in a literary point of view.

* * * * *

A NOBLE LADY. By Mrs. Augustus Craven. Translated, at the author's request, by Emily Bowles. London: Burns, Oates & Co. 1869. Pp. 148. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street, New York.

Both the author and translator of this volume are favorably known to our readers. Their reputation will be much increased by this pleasing biography. Our "Noble Lady" is Adelaide Capece Minutolo, an Italian of rank. Accomplished, refined, and devout, she is a perfect picture of the Christian lady. Her life presents nothing extraordinary. She did not become a nun. She never married. Yet she was very beautiful, and could have married suitably to her station. She preferred the love and companionship of a younger sister to the uncertainty of marriage and the keener joys and splendors of the world. Early in life these sisters mutually resolved to seek nothing further than to live together; nor did either ever feel a regret, or doubt the wisdom of their choice, till, at the end of eight and twenty years, death dissolved their union. It is only in Italy that religion, art, and literary pursuits have met together, inspired, as it were, by the most glorious scenery, and where man's soul and heart, the understanding and the eye, are completely satisfied. Perhaps it is only the daughters of Italy who unite great simplicity, wonderful sweetness, and charming tenderness to heroic courage and capacity for such studies as usually are interesting only to men. Such was the character of the Noble Lady. No person of refinement can read this book, without repeating the touching exclamation of a poor Neapolitan woman, who, while she was praying by her coffin, was heard to exclaim, "_Go, then, go to thy home, thou beautiful bit of Paradise!_"

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PILGRIMAGES IN THE PYRENEES AND LANDES. By Denys Shyne Lawlor, Esq. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1870.

It is indeed seldom than one will meet with a more charming and interesting book than this. It contains accounts of visits made by the author to various sanctuaries of the Blessed Virgin in that favored region in the south of France which she seems to love so much; the most recent proof of this being her apparition at the Grotto of Lourdes, to the description of which a considerable part of the work is devoted. The account is hardly if at all inferior, except in its necessary brevity, to that of M. Henri Lasserre on the same subject, and contains some additional events which have recently occurred, such as the cure of the celebrated Father Hermann. Besides the description and history of the sanctuaries, the lives of several of the saints which this region has produced are given, and an account of their shrines; among these is one of St. Vincent of Paul. The book would be well worth reading for the pictures which are given of the magnificent scenery of the Pyrenean valleys; and its appearance and type are so beautiful that they would make even indifferent matter attractive.

* * * * *

FELTER'S ARITHMETICS--NATURAL SERIES: FIRST LESSONS IN NUMBERS; PRIMARY ARITHMETIC; INTELLECTUAL ARITHMETIC; INTERMEDIATE ARITHMETIC; GRAMMAR-SCHOOL ARITHMETIC. By S. A. Felter, A.M. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

A sketch of the science of numbers through its various progressive stages to its present almost perfect development would be of much interest, but our limited space forbids us entering upon it. Of the many series now before the public, much can be said by way of commendation; we think, however, that Felter's, while in nowise inferior to the best, has some peculiar features which give it a decided superiority. Of these may be mentioned the very large number of examples given under each rule, and the test questions for examination which are found at the close of each section. These cannot fail to secure to the pupil a thorough understanding of his subject before he leaves it. We also note with pleasure the _entire_ absence of answers from the text-books intended for use by the pupils. A high-school arithmetic now in course of preparation will soon be added to the series, and will then form a curriculum of arithmetical instruction at once gradually progressive, and hence simple, thoroughly practical, and complete. The author has evidently a full knowledge of the needs of both pupil and teacher, and has admirably succeeded in supplying their respective deficiencies.

* * * * *

THE LIFE OF ST. STANISLAS KOSTKA. Edited by Edward Healy Thompson. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1870.

Mr. Thompson's lives of various saints are well written, both as regards their completeness and accuracy of detail and their literary style. This is much the best life of the lovely, angelic patron of novices we have ever read. Is it necessary to inform any Catholic reader of the exquisite beauty of the character and life of this noble Polish youth? We hope not. This volume presents a life-like portrait of it, which must rekindle the devotion already so widely-spread and fervent toward one who seems like a reproduction of the type of youthful sanctity which would have been seen in the sons of Adam, if their father had never sinned. Every father and mother ought to make it a point to have this book read by their children, that they may fall in love with virtue and piety, embodied in the winning, lovely form of Stanislas Kostka.

* * * * *

ALBUM OF THE FOURTEEN STATIONS OF THE CROSS IN ST. FRANCIS XAVIER'S CHURCH. New York: P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street.

These photographs of the stations are very well executed. They are gotten up, as we imagine, for private chapels and oratories. Indeed, they would be suitable for any room which is set apart for quiet reading or devout exercises. These pictures are somewhat larger than a _carte-de-visite_, and they are printed in such a way that they may be readily hung upon the wall.

* * * * *

FASCICULUS RERUM, etc. Auctore Henricus Formby. Londini: Burns, Oates, Socii Bibliopolæ.

This is an ably-written pamphlet, containing what appears to us a singularly happy and valuable suggestion. The author's intention is concisely expressed on his title-page, namely, that "the best arts of our modern civilization" be called into the service of God for once, (as they are daily done into that of Satan,) to furnish a "life of our Lord Jesus Christ" for all the nations of Christendom, a work which shall be for three chief ends: "first, as a symbol of the true unity of all peoples in the church; secondly, as a beautiful memorial of the Œcumenical Council of the Vatican; and thirdly, as a very sweet solace and ornament for the daily life of all Christians."

The arts in question are typography, engraving, and photography; the last to be used for furnishing views of the various spots and regions throughout Palestine hallowed by the steps of Jesus Christ; and this would necessitate a committee of competent men being sent to explore the Holy Land.

The expense of the entire undertaking is to be defrayed by public subscription and the patronage of the rich, and, of course, it is for the holy father to inaugurate and supervise the matter. Wherefore the author humbly submits his pamphlet to the consideration of the holy see and the council.

For ourselves, we repeat our belief that such a work as this projected life of Christ would indeed be an inestimable boon to Christendom. Father Formby's hopes appear to us not at all too sanguine; and he has our cordial wish that the holy see may be pleased to take up the work he so ably advocates.

* * * * *

MR. P. O'SHEA, New York, has in press the following books: _Attributes of Christ_, by Father Gasparini; _Lacordaire's Conferences on Jesus Christ_; _The Malediction_, a tale, by Madame A. K. De La Grange.

* * * * *

BOOKS RECEIVED.

MESSRS. J. MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: The Paradise of the Earth. 18mo, pp. 528. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. By Rev. S. Franco, S.J. Pp. 305.

P. F. CUNNINGHAM, Philadelphia: Hetty Homer. By Fannie Warner. Pp. 142. The Beverly Family. By Joseph R. Chandler. Pp. 166. Beech Bluff. By Fannie Warner. 12mo, pp. 332.

P. O'SHEA, New York: Knowledge and Love of Jesus Christ. Vol. iii. pp. 632.

KELLY, PIET & CO., Baltimore: History of the Foundation of the Order of the Visitation; and the Lives of Mlle. de la Fayette and several other members of the Order. 12mo, pp. 271.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XI., No. 65.--AUGUST, 1870.

MR. FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.[177]

SECOND ARTICLE.

In our first article[178] we referred in general terms to the fact that Mr. Froude had plunged into a great historical subject without the requisite knowledge or the necessary preparation. This judgment was presumed to be so well established by the concurrent testimony of the most opposite schools of criticism, both English and French, that it was not thought necessary to cite examples from his pages. In that notice we merely undertook to state the general results of criticism as to Mr. Froude's first six volumes, reserving particular examination for the latter half of the work, with special reference to his treatment of Mary Stuart.

Since, however, it has been said that we charge the historian with shortcomings, and give no instances in support, we will, before proceeding further, satisfy this objection. This could be most easily and profusely done by going into his treatment of questions of the contemporary history of foreign countries, or of general history preceding the sixteenth century, in both of which Mr. Froude is deplorably weak. But we prefer a more decisive test, one that leaves the historian without excuse, and will, therefore, not only confine it to English history, but to English history of the period of Elizabeth, with which, according to his late plaintive appeal to the _Pall Mall Gazette_, Mr. Froude has labored so diligently and is so entirely familiar.

And the test proposed illustrates not only his imperfect mastery of his own selected period of English history, but his total unconsciousness of the existence of one of the most peculiar laws of England in force for centuries before and after that period. A clever British reviewer, in expressing his surprise at our historian's multifarious ignorance concerning the civil and criminal jurisprudence of his country, says that it is difficult to believe that Mr. Froude has ever seen the face of an English justice; and the reproach is well merited. Nevertheless we do not look for the accuracy of a Lingard or a Macaulay in an imaginative writer like Mr. Froude, and might excuse numerous slips and blunders as to law pleadings and the forms of criminal trials--nay, even as to musty old statutes and conflicting legislative enactments, (as, for instance, when he puts on an air of critical severity (vol. ix. p. 38) as to the allowance of a delay of fifteen days in Bothwell's trial, claiming, in his defective knowledge of the Scotch law, that it should have been forty days;) but when we find his mind a total blank as to the very existence of one of the most peculiar and salient features of English law, we must insist that such ignorance in one who sets up for an English historian is far from creditable.

Here is the case. During the reign of Elizabeth, one Thomas Cobham, like unto many other good English Protestants, was "roving the seas, half-pirate, half knight-errant of the Reformation, doing battle on his own account with the enemies of the truth, wherever the service of God was likely to be repaid with plunder." (Froude, vol. viii. p. 459.) He took a Spanish vessel, (England and Spain being at peace,) with a cargo valued at eighty thousand ducats, killing many on board. After all resistance had ceased, he "sewed up the captain and the survivors of the crew in their own sails, and flung them overboard." Even in England this performance of Cobham was looked upon as somewhat irregular, and at the indignant requisition of Spain, he was tried in London for piracy. De Silva, the Spanish ambassador at the court of Elizabeth, wrote home an account of the trial. We now quote Mr. Froude, who being--as a learned English historian should be--perfectly familiar with the legal institutions of his country, and knowing full well that the punishment described by De Silva was never inflicted in England, is naturally shocked at the ignorance of this foreigner, and thus presents and comments upon his letter.

"Thomas Cobham," wrote De Silva, "being asked at the trial, according to the usual form in England, if he had any thing to say in arrest of judgment, and answering nothing, was condemned to be taken to the Tower, to be stripped naked to the skin, and then to be placed with his shoulders resting on a sharp stone, his legs and arms extended and on his stomach a gun, too heavy for him to bear, yet not large enough immediately to crush him. There he is to be left till he die. They will give him a few grains of corn to eat, and for drink the foulest water in the Tower." (Froude, vol. viii. p. 449, London ed. of 1863.)

It would not be easy to state the case in fewer words and more accurately than De Silva here puts it. Cobham was called upon to answer in the usual form, and "answering nothing" or "standing mute," "was condemned," etc. A definition of the offence and a description of its punishment by the well-known _peine forte et dure_ were thus clearly presented; but even then Mr. Froude fails to recognize an offence and its penalty, perfectly familiar to any student who has ever read Blackstone or Bailey's Law Dictionary, and makes this astounding comment on De Silva's letter:

"_Had any such sentence been pronounced, it would not have been left to be discovered in the letter of a stranger_; the ambassador may perhaps, in this instance, have been purposely deceived, and his demand for justice satisfied by a fiction of imaginary horror." (Froude, vol. viii. p. 449, London ed. 1863.)

This unfortunate performance of Mr. Froude was received by critics with mirthful surprise, and, as a consequence, although the passages we have cited may be found, as we have indicated, in the London edition of 1863, they need not be looked for in later editions. On the contrary, we now learn from Mr. Froude (Scribner edition of 1870, vol viii. p. 461) that "Cobham refused to plead to his indictment, and the dreadful sentence was passed upon him of the _peine forte et dure_;" and thereto is appended an erudite note for the instruction of persons supposed to be unacquainted with English law, explaining the matter, and citing Blackstone, "book iv. chap. 25."

Ah! learning is a beautiful thing!

But, possibly it may be suggested, this dreadful punishment was rarely inflicted, and that fact may serve to excuse Mr. Froude? Not at all. Other instances of the _peine forte et dure_ occurred in this very reign of Elizabeth, with whose history Mr. Froude is so very familiar. Here is one which inspires us with a feeling of compassion for the much-abused Spanish Inquisition, and proportionately increases our admiration of the "glorious Reformation."

Margaret Middleton, the wife of one Clitheroe, a rich citizen of York, was prosecuted for having harbored a priest in quality of a schoolmaster. At the bar (March 25th, 1586) she refused to plead guilty, because she knew that no sufficient proof could be brought against her; and she would not plead "not guilty," because she considered such a plea equivalent to a falsehood. The _peine forte et dure_ was immediately ordered.

"After she had prayed, Fawcet, the sheriff, commanded them to put off her apparel; when she, with the four women, requested him on their knees, that, for the honor of womanhood, this might be dispensed with. But they would not grant it. Then she requested them that the women might unapparel her, and that they would turn their faces from her during that time.

"The women took off her clothes, and put upon her the long linen habit. Then very quickly she laid her down upon the ground, her face covered with a handkerchief, and most part of her body with the habit. The _dure_ (door) was laid upon her; her hands she joined toward her face. Then the sheriff said, 'Naie, ye must have your hands bound.' Then two sergeants parted her hands, and bound them to two posts. After this they laid weight upon her, which, when she first felt she said, 'Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, have mercye upon mee,' which were the last words she was heard to speake. She was in dying about one quarter of an hour. A sharp stone, as much as a man's fist had been put under her back; upon her was laied to the quantitie of seven or eight hundred weight, which, breaking her ribbs, caused them to burst forth of the skinne."

This question of the _peine forte et dure_ naturally brings us to the consideration of a kindred subject most singularly treated in Mr. Froude's pages. If the constant use of

TORTURE AND THE RACK

had been a feature of Mary Stuart's reign, and not, as it was, the daily expedient of Elizabeth and Cecil, what bursts of indignant eloquence should we not have been favored with by our historian, and what admirable illustrations would it not have furnished him as to the brutalizing tendencies of Catholicity and the superior humanity and enlightenment of Protestantism? Nothing so clearly shows the government of Elizabeth to have been a despotism as her constant employment of torture. Every time she or Cecil sent a prisoner to the rack--and they sent hundreds--they trampled the laws of England under foot. These laws, it is true, sometimes authorized painful ordeals and severe punishments, but the rack never. Torture was never legally authorized in England. But the trickling blood, the agonized cries, the crackling bones, the "strained limbs and quivering muscles" (Froude vol. vi. p. 294) of martyred Catholics make these Tudor practices lovely in Mr. Froude's eyes, and he philosophically remarks, "The method of inquiry, however inconsonant with modern conceptions of justice, was adapted excellently for the outrooting of the truth." (Vol. vii. p. 293)

We can hardly believe that any other man of modern enlightenment could possibly entertain such opinions. They are simply amazing in their cold-blooded and crude ignorance. Torture is not only "inconsonant" with modern conceptions of justice, but also with ancient; for it is condemned even by the sages of the law which authorized it. If Mr. Froude had any knowledge of the civil law, he might have learned something of this matter from the Digests, (_Liber_ xviii. tit. 18.) The passage is too long to cite, but one sentence alone tells us in a few words of the fallacy, danger, and decaption of the use of torture: "Etenim res est fragilis et periculosa, et quæ veritatem fallat."

So much for ancient opinion. And modern justice has rejected the horrible thing, not only on the ground of morality, but because it has been demonstrated to be a promoter of perjury and the worst possible means of "outrooting" the truth.

To return: the case of Cobham is not the only one in which Mr. Froude has prudently profited by criticism, and hastened, in a new edition of his work, to repair his blunder. Even a slight comparison of his first with his last edition will show him to be under deep obligations to his critics, and it would be wise in him to seek to increase his debt of gratitude by fresh corrections.

THE CHATELAR STORY

is told by Mr. Froude in his characteristic way, and, while acquitting Mary Stuart of blame, "she had probably nothing worse to accuse herself of than thoughtlessness," (vol. vii. p. 506,) manages to leave a stain upon her character. He prefaces the story with the statement that "she was selfish in her politics and sensual in her passions." Serious historians generally use language with some reference to its value; but one epithet costs Mr. Froude no more effort than another, although there is not a shadow of pretext thus far in his own version of Mary's history to justify so foul an outrage as the use here of this word "sensual." We pass on. Chatelar was a young Huguenot gentleman, a nephew of the noble Bayard, gifted and highly accomplished. He had accompanied his patron D'Amville to Scotland, and returned with him to France. D'Amville was a suitor for Mary's hand, and, after some time, dispatched Chatelar to Scotland with missives for the queen. Randolph was present when Chatelar arrived, and describes D'Amville's letter as of "three whole sheets of paper." Yet Mr. Froude, perfectly aware of all this, writes,

"He went back to France, but he could not remain there. The moth was _recalled_ to the flame whose warmth was life and death to it."

The remainder is of a piece with this. Supernaturally penetrating in reading Mary Stuart's most hidden thoughts, Mr. Froude is blind to the vulgar envy of the parvenu Randolph, who, writing to Cecil, (Froude, vol. vii. p. 505, note,) has the mendacious impudence to speak of Chatelar as "so unworthy a creature and abject a varlet."

Of the rules that govern the admission of evidence in ordinary courts of law, Mr. Froude does not appear to have any knowledge, and at every page he manifests a total unconsciousness of the most rudimentary test to be applied to the testimony of a witness in or out of court. It is to see whether the witness has not some powerful motive to praise or to blame. Thus, when he desires to establish a high character for "the stainless Murray," he gives us the testimony of--his employers Elizabeth and Cecil! In telling us what Mary Stuart was, he most freely uses the hired pamphleteer Buchanan, although ashamed--as well he may be--to name his authority.[179] So also in the case before us, although the mean envy excited in Randolph by the accomplished and nobly-born young Frenchman is perfectly clear, Mr. Froude gives us the English envoy's dispatches as testimony not to be questioned.

MARY STUART AND JOHN KNOX.

An interview between the queen and Knox in December, 1562, in which Mr. Froude describes Knox's rudeness as "sound northern courtesy," (vol. vii. p. 543,) is passed over by him with commendable rapidity. And of yet another interview he says not a word.

Under the statute of 1560 proceedings were taken in 1563 against Mary in the west of Scotland for celebrating mass.

The wilds of Ayrshire, in later years the resort of persecuted Presbyterians, were the resort of persecuted Catholics. "On the bleak moorlands or beneath the shelter of some friendly roof," says Mr. Hosack,[180] "they worshipped in secret according to the faith of their fathers." Zealous reformers waited not for form of law to attack and disperse the "idolaters," when they found them thus engaged. Mary remonstrated with Knox against these lawless proceedings, and argued for freedom of worship, or, as Knox himself states it, "no to pitt haunds to punish ony man for using himsel in his religion as he pleases." But the Scotch reformer applauded the outrage, and even asserted that private individuals might even "slay with their own hands idolaters and enemies of the true religion," quoting Scripture to prove his assertions.[181] Shortly afterward forty-eight Catholics were arraigned before the high court of justiciary for celebrating mass, and punished by imprisonment.

At page 384 (vol. vii.) we are told by Mr. Froude that the Protestant mob drove the priest from the altar, (royal chapel,) "with broken head and bloody ears," and at page 418 that "the measure of virtue in the Scotch ministers was the audacity with which they would reproach the queen." "Maitland protested that theirs was not language for subjects to use to their sovereign," and there really appears to be something in the suggestion; but Mr. Froude is of the opinion that "essentially, after all, Knox was right," clinching it, with--"He suspected that Mary Stuart meant mischief to the reformation, and she did mean mischief." And this is the key to Mr. Froude's main argument throughout this history. Whoever and whatever favors the reformation is essentially good, whoever and whatever opposes it is essentially vile. And the end, (the reformation) justifies the means.

Far be it from us to gainsay the perfect propriety of an occasional supply of sacerdotal broken heads and bloody ears, if a Protestant mob sees fit to fancy such an amusement; or to question the measure of virtue in the Scotch ministers; or to approve of the absurd protest of Maitland; or, least of all, not swiftly to recognize that "essentially" Knox was right. Not we indeed! But then we really must be excused for venturing to suggest--merely to suggest, that, in the first place, if we assume such a line of argument, we deprive ourselves of weapons wherewith to assail the cruelties of such men as Alva and Philip of Spain. Surely, the right does not essentially go with the power to persecute! And in the second place--that this was rather rough treatment for a young and inexperienced girl, against whom thus far nothing has been shown. But here Mr. Froude meets us with "Harlot of Babylon," and we are again silenced.

Maitland absurdly hinted to Knox that if he had a grievance he should complain of it modestly, and was very properly hooted at by Knox in reply. And thereupon comes a fine passage from Mr. Froude, admirably exemplifying his psychological treatment of history. (Vol. vii. p. 419.)

"Could she but secure first the object on which her heart was fixed, she could indemnify herself afterward at her leisure. The preachers might rail, the fierce lords might conspire; a little danger gave piquancy to life, and the air-drawn crowns which floated before her imagination would pay for it all."

We do not know how this may affect other people, but "air-drawn crowns" did the business for us, and we proceed to make it the text for A LESSON IN HISTORICAL WRITING.

Mr. Froude may or may not have transferred the contempt and hatred of France of the sixteenth century, which throughout his book he loses no opportunity of manifesting, to France of the nineteenth century; but we venture to suggest to him that he may find in France models and principles of historical treatment which he might study with signal profit. Specially would we commend to his lection and serious perpension the following pithy passage from the very latest published volume of French history. We refer to Lanfrey's _Histoire de Napoleon I_. The author describes the meeting of Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit, and, referring to the absurd attempt made by some writers to explain the motives which actuated the French and Russian emperors at their private interview on the Niemen, makes this sensible reflection:

"Il est toujours dangereux et souvent puéril de vouloir interpréter les sentiments secrets des personnages historiques."[182] (Lanfrey, vol. iv. p. 403. Paris, 1870.) Mr. Froude's attention to this teaching would rapidly suppress "air-drawn crowns" and such like stage properties, so freely used by him for dramatic effect.

SOME OMISSIONS.

Mr. Froude appears to have no knowledge of the important proceedings at Mary's first Parliament, May, 1563, when the corpse of the late Earl of Huntly, kept for the purpose since the previous October, was brought in for attainder. Forfeiture was declared mainly for Murray's benefit, and at the same time the forfeitures of the Earl of Sutherland (the evidence against him being forgeries) and eleven barons of the house of Gordon were passed. In vain the Countesses of Huntly and Sutherland endeavored to petition the queen; they were, by Murray's intervention, denied access to her. Nor does our historian appear to have heard of the circumstances attending Murray's surreptitious procuring of the queen's signature to the death-warrant of young Huntly. It is a most interesting episode, but we have not room for it. Some three weeks later, we find a curious letter of Randolph to Cecil, which need not be sought for in Froude. It is important as showing the peculiar esteem in which Murray was held at the court of ---- Elizabeth. A packet addressed to Queen Mary had been stopped and opened by the English officials at Newcastle. Mary, not recognizing her position as the vassal of Elizabeth, complained of it to Randolph. Whereupon Randolph writes to Cecil, (June, 1563,) advising, "If any suspected letters be taken, not to open them, but to send them to my Lord of Moray, of whose services the Queen of England is _sure_." And good reason there was to be _sure_; for all the world, except Mr. Froude, knows that the "stainless," from first to last, was the bribed and pensioned agent of Elizabeth.

KNOX AND THE COUNCIL.

"The Queen of Scots," says Mr. Froude, "had quarrelled again with Knox, whom she attempted to provide with lodgings in the castle; the lords had interfered, and anger and disappointment had made her ill." (Vol. vii. p. 549.)

Here again Mary seems to fall away from the high standard of "consummate actress;" but, on the other hand, Mr. Froude is fully up to his own standard of consummate historian; for the passage is clever, even for him. Here is what it all means: Cranston and Armstrong, two members of Knox's congregation who were afterward among the murderers of Riccio, had been arrested and thrown into prison for raising a riot in the chapel royal at Holyrood, to prevent service there. And why should they not? A Catholic queen had no rights which her Protestant subjects were bound to respect. Knox thereupon sent a circular throughout Scotland convening his brethren to meet in Edinburgh on a certain day--in other words, to excite tumult and inaugurate civil war. Let Randolph, Mr. Froude's favorite authority, tell the rest.

Randolph to Cecil, Dec. 21, 1563:

"The lords had assembled to take order with John Knox and his faction, who intended, by a mutinous assembly made by his letter before, to have rescued two of their brethren from course of law for using an outrage," etc.

Murray and Maitland sent for Knox and remonstrated with him. But Knox showed no respect for either of them. Nothing came of the interview, and they had him summoned before the queen and her privy council. Seriously ill as she was, she attended. Now compare these facts with Mr. Froude's statement above, (vol. vii. p. 549,) and see if it is possible to crowd into three lines more misrepresentation and malevolence. Note _quarrelled_. Mary knew nothing of the affair until after the action of the lords and the attempt of Murray and Maitland to persuade Knox. Mr. Froude says Mary attempted to imprison him, and the lords interfered. "Anger and disappointment made her ill." Now, this Knox affair occurred while Randolph was waiting to have audience of Mary, but was delayed on account of her illness. To return to the council. Knox's seditious letter was produced. He boldly avowed it, and significantly observed, referring to certain reported practices of Murray and Maitland, that "no forgeries had been interpolated in the spaces he had left blank." A week after this event, Randolph describes Mary as still sick, although compelled to confer with her council.

MARY'S MARRIAGE.

All this time Mary has been waiting Elizabeth's good pleasure as to whom she shall marry. Elizabeth finally decided to bestow upon her Scottish sister her own lover Leicester, who "was, perhaps, the most worthless of her subjects; but in the loving eyes of his mistress he was the knight _sans peur et sans reproche_; and she took a melancholy pride in offering her sister her choicest jewel." (Vol. viii. p. 74.) But Mr. Froude spoils the "melancholy pride" at the next page by telling us that Elizabeth "was so capable of falsehood that her own expressions would have been an insufficient guarantee for her sincerity."

Murray's opposition to Mary's marriage with Darnley was bitter. His ascendency in her councils had culminated in his proposition to have himself legitimated, and that the queen should lease the crown to him and Argyll. Mary's marriage to any one would end all such hopes, and Darnley, moreover, was personally obnoxious to Murray because he had been heard to say, looking at a map of Scotland, that Murray had "too much for a subject." Elizabeth's instructions precisely tallied with Murray's inclinations and interest. He withdrew from court, and would not attend the convention at Perth.

PLOT TO IMPRISON MARY.

And now comes the plot of Murray and his friends to seize Darnley and his father, (Lennox,) deliver them to Elizabeth's agents or slay them if they made resistance, and imprison the queen at Lochleven. In a note at page 178, vol. viii., Mr. Froude, with a sweet and touching melancholy, says, "A sad and singular horoscope had already been cast for Darnley." The magician of this horoscope was Randolph, who fears that "Darnley can have no long life amongst this people." Certainly not, if Mr. Randolph understands himself; for his letters of that period are full of the details of a plot to stir up an insurrection in Scotland, place Murray at the head of it, kill Darnley and his father, and imprison the queen at Lochleven. Elizabeth sent Murray £7000 for the nerve of the insurrection, and her letters to Bedford instructing him to furnish Murray with money and soldiers are in existence. The programme was at last carried out eighteen months later, when Darnley was killed and Mary a prisoner.

On the 30th of June, 1565, at ten in the morning, the queen, with a small retinue, was to ride from Perth to Callendar house, to be present at the baptism of a child of her friends Lord and Lady Livingstone. Murray's party were to take her prisoner at this time. The Earls of Rothes and Argyll, and the Duke of Chatelherault were to be stationed at three different points on her route with an overpowering force. Murray was to wait at Lochleven, which he had just provisioned and provided with artillery. As usual, he managed to have the overt act done by others.

All these arrangements were made in concert with Randolph and Cecil, and were so apparently perfect that success was considered certain. So sure was Cecil of it that an entry in his private diary of July 7th, runs, "that there was a rumor that the Scottish Queen should have been taken."

During the night of the 29th, a warning was conveyed to Mary of the plot. Instead of waiting until ten, the hour fixed for her departure, she was in the saddle at five in the morning, and safe at Callendar by eleven. It is very singular, but Mr. Froude seems never to have heard of this exciting ride, while the "stainless" Murray was keeping bootless watch and ward at Lochleven. We regret it exceedingly, if for no other reason than the loss of an animated picture in Mr. Froude's best style, running somewhat thus:

"Bright shone the sun. The queen, with incredible animosity, was mounted on a swift courser galloping by the side of young Darnley, and then away--away--past the Parenwell, past Lochleven, through Kinross, past Castle Campbell, across the north Ferry and over the Firth, fast as their horses could speed; seven in all--Mary, her three ladies, Darnley, Lennox, Atholl, and Ruthven. In five hours the hospitable gates of Livingstone had closed behind them, and Mary Stuart was safe." (See vol. viii. p. 270.)

Of this plot of Murray, here is the clever record made by Mr. Froude:

"A hint was given him that Darnley and Riccio had formed a plan to kill him. He withdrew to his mother's castle at Lochleven, and published the occasion of his disobedience. Mary Stuart replied with a counter-charge that the Earl of Murray had proposed to take her prisoner and carry Darnley off to England." (Vol. viii. p. 180.)

Upon this, Mr. Froude's cool comment is, "Both stories were probably true"! Yes, with the difference that the proof against Murray was overwhelming; for Mr. Froude admits that "Murray's offer to Randolph was sufficient evidence against himself," whereas there was none against Darnley. At page 182, Mr. Froude makes Mary "return from Perth to Edinburgh." This renders it quite clear that he has never heard of her hurried ride to Callendar.

QUESTION OF TOLERATION.

Randolph strangely finds fault with Mary for her toleration in religious matters. "Her will to continue papistry, and _her desire to have all men live as they list_, so offendeth the godly men's consciences, that it is continually feared that these matters will break out to some great mischief." And lo! the mischief did break out. The Assembly of the Kirk presented, under the singular garb of a "supplication," a remonstrance to the queen, in which they declared that "the practice of idolatry" could not be tolerated in the sovereign any more than in the subject, and that the "papistical and blasphemous mass" should be wholly abolished. To whom the queen:

"Where it was desired that the mass should be suppressed and abolished, as well in her majesty's own person and family as amongst her subjects, her highness did answer for herself, that she was noways persuaded that there was any impiety in the mass, and trusted her subjects would not press her to act against her conscience; for, not to dissemble, but to deal plainly with them, she neither might nor would forsake the religion wherein she had been educated and brought up, believing the same to be the true religion, and grounded on the word of God. Her loving subjects should know that she, neither in times past, nor yet in time coming, did intend to force the conscience of any person, but to permit every one to serve God in such manner as they are persuaded to be the best, that they likewise would not urge her to any thing that stood not with the quietness of her mind."

"Nothing," remarks Mr. Hosack, "could exceed the savage rudeness of the language of the assembly; nothing could exceed the dignity and moderation of the queen's reply." _Of all this, in Mr. Froude's pages, not one word!_ Indeed he at all times religiously keeps out of sight all Mary says or writes, admitting rarely a few words under prudent censorship and liberal expurgation. Sweetly comparing the assembly to "the children of Israel on their entrance into Canaan," he dissimulates their savage rudeness, and adds, almost pensively, that Murray, though he was present, "no longer raised his voice in opposition." Randolph fully confirms what Throckmorton reported four years before--that she neither desired to change her own religion nor to interfere with that of her subjects. Mary told Knox the same thing when she routed him, by his own admission, in profane history, and his own citations from the Old Testament. Where she obtained her familiarity with the Scriptures we cannot imagine, if Mr. Froude tells the truth about her "French education." "A Catholic sovereign sincerely pleading to a Protestant assembly for liberty of conscience, might have been a lesson to the bigotry of mankind," (vol. viii. p. 182;) "but," adds Mr. Froude, "Mary Stuart was not sincere." When Mr. Froude says Mary Stuart is intolerant, we show him, by a standard universally recognized, her words and actions, all always consistent with each other and with themselves, that she was eminently tolerant and liberal. But when he gives us his personal and unsupported opinion that "she was not sincere," he passes beyond the bounds of historical argument into a realm where we cannot follow him.

Still greater than Mr. Froude's difficulty of quoting Mary at all, is his difficulty of quoting her correctly when he pretends to. Randolph comes to Mary with a dictatorial message from Elizabeth, that she shall not take up arms against the lords in insurrection. Mr. Froude calls it a request that she would do no injury to the Protestant lords, who were her good subjects. Mary replied, according to Froude, (vol. viii. p. 188,) "that Elizabeth might call them 'good subjects;' she had found them bad subjects, and as such she meant to treat them." Mary really said,

"For those whom your mistress calls 'my _best_ subjects,' I cannot esteem them so, nor so do they deserve to be accounted of that that they will not obey my commands; and therefore my good sister ought not to be offended if I do that against them as they deserve."

The truth is, Mary's unvarying, queenly dignity and womanly gentleness in all she speaks and writes is a source of profound unhappiness to Mr. Froude, refuting as it does his theory of her character. Consequently it is his aim to vulgarize it down to a standard in vogue elsewhere.

Mr. Froude is most felicitous when he disguises Mary, as he frequently does, with Elizabeth's tortuous drapery. Thus:

"Open and straightforward conduct did not suit the complexion of Mary Stuart's genius; she breathed more freely, and she used her abilities with better effect, in the uncertain twilight of conspiracy."

"Uncertain twilight" is pretty. But where were Mary's conspiracies? Had she Randolphs at Elizabeth's court, and Drurys on the border, plotting, intriguing, and bribing English noblemen? Had she two thirds of Elizabeth's council of state pensioned as paid spies? Had she salaried officials to pick up or invent English court scandal for her amusement? Truly it is refreshing to turn from Mary's twilight conspiracies to the honest and noble transactions of Elizabeth, Cecil, and Randolph. But of the malicious gossip of Elizabeth's spies one might not so much complain, if Mr. Froude had the fairness to give their reports without his embroidery of rhetoric and imagination. Thus, when Randolph writes, "There is a _silly story_ afloat that the queen _sometimes_ carries a pistol," Mr. Froude considers himself authorized by Randolph to say, "She carried pistols in hand and pistols at her saddle-bow;" and, as usual, reading her thoughts, goes on to tell us that "her one peculiar hope was to destroy her brother, against whom she bore an especial and unexplained animosity." The personal intimacy between Randolph and Murray more than sufficiently explains the source of the information given in Randolph's letter of Oct. 13th. (Vol. viii. p. 196.) Mr. Froude has a moment of weakness when he says that the intimacy between the queen and Riccio was so confidential as to provoke calumny. That any thing said of Mary Stuart could possibly be calumny is an admission for Mr. Froude only less amazing than that "she was warm and true in her friendships." The queen's indignation against Murray is sufficiently accounted for by the existence of the calumnies, and the fact that Murray's treasons sent him at this time a fugitive to his mistress Elizabeth. A few pages further on, we have Mary riding "in steel bonnet and corselet, with a dagg at her saddle-bow," (vol. viii. p. 213,) for which Mr. Froude quotes Randolph. But Randolph wrote, "_If what I have heard be true_, she rode," etc., questionable hearsay where Mary Stuart is concerned, answering Mr. Froude's purpose somewhat better than fact.

Through Randolph, Elizabeth announced to Mary that one of the conditions on which she would consent to the Darnley marriage was, that "she must conform to the religion established by law." Upon this, the singular comment is, "It is interesting to observe how the current of the reformation had swept Elizabeth forward in spite of herself." (Vol. viii. p. 187.) Mary's answer was, she "would make no merchandise of her conscience."

MURRAY'S INSURRECTION.

At page 198, vol. viii., after the armed rebellion of Murray and his friends, popularly known in Scotland as "The Runabout Raid," we have Mary

"breathing nothing but anger and defiance. The affection of a sister for a brother was curdled into a hatred the more malignant because it was more unnatural. Her whole passion was concentrated on Murray."

It must be clear to every one how reprehensible Mary was for showing any feeling at all in defence of her crown, her liberty, and her life, and with Mr. Froude's premises and logic, Murray gave a signal proof of affection for his sister in arraying himself against her legitimate authority as the head of an insurrection. Mr. Froude can see, in the just indignation of the queen against domestic traitors in league, with a foreign power, nothing but the violence of a vengeful fury. His anxiety to possess his readers of the same view has brought him into a serious difficulty, which has been exposed by M. Wiesener in his _Marie Stuart_. At p. 211, vol. viii., Mr. Froude quotes a letter of Randolph to Cecil of Oct. 5th, "in Rolls House," by which he means Record Office, to show that Mary "was deaf to advice as she had been to menace," and "she said _she would have no peace till she had Murray's or Chatelherault's head_." This letter appears to be visible to nobody but Mr. Froude; and we have the authority of Mr. Joseph Stevenson, who is more at home among the MSS. of the Record Office than Mr. Froude, and who, when he uses them, has the merit of citing them in their integrity, for stating that this letter of the 5th October, referred to by Mr. Froude, _is not in the Record Office_.[183] But there is a letter there from Randolph to Cecil of the 4th October, in which Randolph represents Mary

"not only uncertain as to what she should do, but inclined to clement measures, and so undecided as to hope that matters could be arranged"!

This does not sound like "deaf to advice," and Mr. Froude can arrange this little difficulty with the dates and Mr. Stevenson at his leisure. Meantime, we all anxiously wait to hear from Mr. Froude where he found his authority for stating that Mary said she would have no peace till she had Murray's or Chatelherault's head.

At page 205, vol. viii. the account given by Mauvissière of his interview with Mary is travestied by Mr. Froude. Mauvissière counselled her to make peace with the insurgents. Mary saw through the device; for it was the counsel of Catherine de' Medici, whose enmity to Mary was only surpassed by that of Elizabeth; and, although without advisers--for Murray was in rebellion, Morton had withdrawn himself, and Maitland was suspected--she rejected it instantly.

It is amusing to observe how the loyal attachment of the citizens and merchants of Edinburgh to Mary annoys Mr. Froude. During Mary's absence, the rebels swept into the city with a large force; but, notwithstanding the appeal of the kirk, the "_Calvinist shop-keepers_," as Mr. Froude witheringly styles them, would not lift a finger to aid them. We call it amusing, because Mr. Froude everywhere so undisguisedly manifests his strong personal sympathy that, as an historian, he becomes simply absurd.

Mary marched against the rebels with eighteen thousand men. As she approached, they fled into England, and the rebellion was over.

"The Queen of Scots, following in hot pursuit, glared across the frontier at her escaping prey." (Vol. viii. p. 214.) The amount of precise information in Mr. Froude's exclusive possession concerning the expression of Mary Stuart's eyes as something wonderful. Here her eyes "glare;" elsewhere, (vol. viii. p. 365,) there is an "odd glitter in her eyes," while at p. 161, they are "flashing pride and defiance."

It is this imaginative power and talent for pictorial embellishment which lend to Mr. Froude's work such peculiar attraction for the general reader. And to give expression to this natural appreciation, such testimonials as the following are seriously produced as evidences of the merit of the work.

"What a wonderful history it is!" says Mrs. Mulock Craik; "and wonderful indeed is it, with its vivid pictures of scenes and persons long passed away; its broad charity, its tender human sympathy, its ever present dignity, its outbursts of truest pathos."

All this is in keeping with the eternal fitness of things. This excellent lady, a somewhat successful writer of novels, really means what she says, and expresses herself in all sincerity. Her admiration is genuine. It is that of a pupil for her master, and she ingenuously admires one who has attained excellence in his art. We have not the slightest doubt that many will say with her, "What a wonderful history it is!"

FOOTNOTES:

[177] _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.

[178] See CATHOLIC WORLD for June, 1870.

[179] In all his volumes Mr. Froude cites Buchanan by name but once.

[180] _Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers._ By John Hosack, Barrister at Law. Edinburgh. 1869.

[181] He had previously denounced his sovereign from the pulpit as an incorrigible idolatress and an enemy whose death would be a public blessing. Randolph writes to Cecil February, 1564, "They pray that God will either turn her heart or send her a short life;" adding, "of what charity or spirit this proceedeth, I leave to be discussed by the great divines." And yet we must not hastily condemn Knox, although a man fifty-eight years of age, of indiscriminate sourness and severity to all young women. He was at that very time paying his addresses to a girl of sixteen.

[182] "The attempt to make one's self the interpreter of the secret sentiments of historical personages is always dangerous and frequently ridiculous."

[183] See "Calendar of the State Papers relating to Scotland, preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office. 2 vols. quarto. London, 1858."

Copy in Astor Library. This calendar gives the date and abstract of the contents of each document. There is no record of any letter of Randolph to Cecil of Oct. 5th, 1565, but there is one of Oct. 4th.

IN THE GREENWOOD.

"Then the wyld thorowe the woodes went On every syde shear; Grea-hondes thorowe the greves glent For to kyll thear dear."

I.

For three consecutive mornings of a certain month of May not far distant, Blanch and I had opened our diaries to write, "Wind E. N. E."

Every body knows what that means in Boston. It means chill and grayness and drizzle; it means melancholy-shining sidewalks and puddles _à surprise_ just where the foot is most confidingly planted; it means water dripping over gutters, flowing frothily from spouts, and squishing from shoes of poor folks at every step they take; it means draggled skirts, and cross looks, and influenza, and bronchitis, and a disposition to believe in the total depravity of inanimate things.

Yes; but also it means an effervescence of spirit in those rare souls, like incarnate sunshine, kindred in some sort of "Epictetus, a slave, maimed in body, an Irus in poverty, and favored by the immortals."

But--three whole days of drizzle!

On the first day, Blanch and I glanced approvingly skyward, and said, "A fine rain!" then went about that inevitable clearing out of drawers and closets and reading of old letters, which a rainy day suggests to the feminine mind.

On the second morning, we donned water-proofs and over-shoes, and boldly sallied forth, coming in later breathless, glowing, drenched, and with our hair curled up into kinks. Then, subsiding a little, we drew down the crimson curtains, lighted a fire, lighted the gas, and, shutting ourselves into that rosy cloister, read till we were sleepy.

But sometimes water looks a great deal wetter than it does at other times; and on the third morning it looked very wet indeed. The damp, easterly gloom entered between our eyelids and penetrated to our souls. We struck our colors. Like the Sybarite who got a pain in his back from seeing some men at work in the field, we shivered in sympathy with every passing wretch.

That prince of blunderers, Sir Boyle Roche, used to say that the best way to avoid danger is to meet it plumb. Acting on that principle, Blanch and I took each a chair and a window, and, seating ourselves, stared silently in the face of the enemy.

After an hour or so, I began to feel the benefit of the baronet's prescription.

"Blanch," said I, brightening, "let's go on a lark down to Maine, to the northern part of Hancock County, to a place I know."

Blanch turned her small, white face toward me, gave me a reproachful glance out of her pale-blue eyes, then drew her shawl closer about her throat, and resumed her gaze in the face of out-doors.

I waited a moment, then pursued, "Rain in town and rain in the country are two reigns, as the histories say. Lilies shrugging up their white shoulders, and roses shaking their pink faces to get rid of the drops; trees lucent green jewels in every leaf; birds laughing and scolding at the same time, casting bright little jokes from leafy covert to covert; brooks foaming through their channels like champagne out of bottles--"

"Never compare a greater thing to a less," interrupted Blanch, severe and rhetorical.

"So you think rain-water is better than champagne?" I asked.

"No matter. Go on with your poetics."

"At this time the apple-trees are pink clouds of incense, and the cherry-trees are white clouds of incense, the maples are on fire; there are fresh light-green sprouts on the dark-green spruces; the flaky boughs of the cedars have put forth pale, spicy buds; and the silver birches glimmer under hovering mists of green. Deer are stealing out of the woods to browse in the openings, and gray rabbits hop across the long, still road, (there is but one road.) The May-flowers are about gone; but dandelions, "spring's largess," are everywhere. Here and there is a clearing, over which the surrounding wildness has thrown a gentle savagery, like lichen over rocks. The people (there are two) live in a log house. They never get a newspaper till it is weeks old, perhaps not so soon, and they know nothing of fashion. If we should appear to them now with our skirts slinking in at the ankles, and puffing out at the waist, with chignons on our heads and hats on our noses, they would run into the house and button the doors. Every thing there is peaceful. Rumors of oppression, fraud, and war reach them not. I should not be surprised if that were one of the places where they still vote for General Jackson. Their most frequent visitors are bears, and wolves, and snappish little yellow foxes. In short, you have no idea how delightful the place is."

"I am not like the Queen of Sheba," says Blanch. "Though the half had not been told me, my imagination would have out-built and out-hung and out-shone Solomon in all his glory. Who are these people?"

"Mr. Thomas and Mrs. Sally Smith. Sally lived with my mother as help when I was a little girl. On my tenth birthday, she gave me my first smelling-bottle, purple glass with a silver-washed screw-top. The season was July, and the day very warm. After holding my precious present in my hand awhile, I opened it, and, in the innocence of my heart, took a deliberate snuff. The result beggars description. When I became capable of thought, I believed that the top of my head had been blown off. You remember in the _Arabian Nights_ the bottle out of which, when it was unstopped, a demon escaped? Well, that was the same bottle. Sally used to boil molasses candy for me; and she has braided my hair and boxed my ears many a time. But mother didn't allow her to box my ears. Thomas lived in our town, and tried to support himself and make a fortune by keeping a market, but with slight success. He was always behindhand, and never got the dinner home till the cook was at the point of distraction. They called him the late Mr. Smith. By and by he and Sally got married, after a courtship something like that of Barkis and Pegotty, and went into the woods to live. My mother made and gave Sally her wedding-cake, one large loaf and four smaller ones. The large one would have been larger if my brother Dick and I hadn't got at it before it was baked and ate ever so much. Did you ever eat raw cake? It is real good. I paid Sally a visit long ago, and she made me promise to come again."

"I dare say it is all moon-shine," said Blanch, rising. "But, here goes."

"Where to?" I exclaimed.

"To pack my trunks for a visit to Sally Smith," answered Blanch from the doorway.

"But I was in fun."

"And I am in earnest."

"And perhaps the facts are not so fair as the fancies."

"So much the worse for the facts."

With which quotation the young woman disappeared.

Resistance was useless. Blanch is one of those gentle, yielding creatures who always have their own way. And I love to be tyrannized over. I followed her up-stairs, repeating ruefully,

"Since then I never dared to be As funny as I can."

Catch me being poetic again!

That very evening a letter was mailed to Sally Smith, announcing our coming; and in less than a week we started, lingering over the first part of our journey, that due preparation might be made for our entertainment. The last day and a half were to be an allegro movement.

The drive from Bucksport to Ellsworth was delightful; not the beginning of it, where twelve persons were crowded into a nine-passenger coach; where Blanch, looking like a wilted flower, sat wedged between two large, determined women; where my neighbor was a restless man who was constantly trying to get something out of the coat-pocket next me; and an aesthetic man, who insisted on looking past my nose at the prospect; and a tobacco-chewing man, as his breath in my face fully testified: all this was not delightful. But after we had entreated the driver, and been assisted to a perch on the coach-roof, then it was glorious.

Then we got airy tosses instead of dislocating jolts; saw the road unwind, turn by turn, from the woods; saw how the grating brake was put to the wheel while we crept over the brow of a steep pitch, then let go while we spun down the lower part and flew over the level.

The afternoon sun was behind us, and gilded the hills; but the hollows were full of transparent dusk with the crowding, overhanging woods. As we came up out of them, our horses strained forward to trample on a giant shadow-coach, with four shadow-horses, a shadow-driver, and two fly-away shadow-women in advance of every thing else.

Presently the boughs ceased to catch at our veils, the woods thinned and withdrew, houses appeared and multiplied, and we came out on to a long steep hill dipping to a river, whence another long steep hill rose at the other side. And built up and down, and to right and left, was a pretty town with all its white houses rose-red in the sunset. Well might it blush under our faithful eyes!

"Blanch," I said, "behold a town where, sixteen years ago, a Catholic priest almost won the crown of martyrdom. On the hill opposite, toward the south, stood the Catholic church that was burned, and the Catholic school-house that was blown up with gunpowder. There is the cottage where the priest lived. One August evening, when the sky was like a topaz with sunset, and the new moon was out, he baptized me there, and a little while after they broke his windows with stones. Further up the hill is the house from which, one rainy Saturday night, a mob of masked men dragged him. Ah well! that story is yet to be told."

II.

HE AND SHE.

The next morning early, we started on our last day's journey, and were driven through a rough country, the road dwindling till it seemed likely to imitate that avenue which narrowed till it turned into a squirrel-track and ran up a tree. At five o'clock, we stopped at a farm-house, which was also post-office; and there we got a man to take us to our journey's end.

"May be you'll take this letter with you," the postmaster said. "It's for Miss Smith."

_Mrs._ is never heard in that region.

I took that letter, and gazed at it a moment in wrathful silence. There was my annunciatory epistle written to Sally Smith more than a fortnight before!

"Allah il Allah!" sighed Blanch resignedly when I held up the letter to her view.

The road over which we now drove was streaked with grass that tempted the lowered nose of our Rozinante, and graceful clusters of buttercups brushed the slow spokes of our wheels. The forest primeval shut down, solid and precipitous, at our left, and at our right the scrubby spruces clambered and straggled over the ledges with the appearance of having just stopped to look at us; and in a little while we saw through their tops a log house that stood at the head of a rocky lane. A thin wreath of smoke curled from the stone chimney, curtains of spotless whiteness showed inside the tiny hinged windows, and a luxuriant hopvine draped all the wall next us. Not a rod back from the house, and drawn darkly against the sunset sky, was a picture very like Doré's bringing of the ark to Bethsames. A group of cattle stood there motionless, two low-bending spruce-trees unfurled their plumy branches over a square rock, and, as motionless as either, stood a tall, gaunt woman staring fixedly at us.

"Goodness gracious!" cried Blanch sharply, "the child will shoot us!"

Following her glance, I espied a tow-headed urchin of ten, may be, whom our coming had petrified in the act of getting through the bars at the foot of the lane. Against the lower bar rested his rifle, the muzzle looking us directly in the eye.

I seized upon him and changed his aim.

"Your name is Larkin," I said accusingly.

"Yes, ma'am!" he answered in a trembling voice.

"What are you here for?"

"Ma'am sent me to borrow Miss Smith's darn'-needle," he whimpered.

"You have come four miles through the woods to borrow a darning-needle?" I demanded.

"Yes, ma'am!" he answered, eagerly pointing to a huge needle with a blue yarn which was sewed into his blue drilling shirt-front.

"Is Mrs. Sally Smith alive?" I asked solemnly.

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Does she live in this house?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Does any one else live here?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Who?"

"Mr. Smith."

"Well, set your rifle down here in the corner of the fence, and look out how you aim it another time. There! now take this letter and carry it up to Mrs. Smith, and give her my compliments, and say that we would like a reply at her earliest convenience. We may be addressed at the foot of the lane, sitting on our trunks."

As I released his arm, he shot wildly up the lane, and tumbled headlong in at the weather-porch that guarded the northern door.

In a few minutes, a woman's head appeared and took an observation, while her two hands were visible smoothing her hair and rapidly adjusting an apron. Then the whole long figure emerged. At first she walked warily, stopping once or twice as though about to turn back; then she gave a long look, and hurried down the lane, a broad smile breaking out, token of recognition. Her voice reached me first, "Well, I do declare, I'm tickled most to death to see you!"

With the last words came a mighty grip of the hands, and Sally looked at me with eyes overflowing with tears and gladness.

Most exquisite and dignified reader, didst thou ever think, when raising to thy lips the cut-glass goblet of iced water, poured from a silver pitcher filled at a faucet supplied through a leaden pipe that in its turn is fed by miles of underground aqueduct, that thou wouldst like rather to slake thy thirst at some natural spring bubbling over mossy stones and prostrate grasses? For once or twice, may be? If so, all hail! for thou art not quite a mummy. Underneath thy social swathings still beats a faint echo of the bounding pulse of some free-born ancestor, a sheik of the desert, a dusky forest-chief, a patriarch of the tents. Trampled on, thou wilt not turn to dust, but to fire; and the papyrus is unfinished on which shall be written the story of thy life.

There have been times, too, in which thou hast thought that not only thy drink was far-fetched and no sweeter for the fetching, but that the smiles, the welcomes, the fare-wells, the friendships were all stale and unrefreshing. Thou hast longed for the generous love, which, while it will bear nothing from thee, will bear all things for thee; for the honest hate that carries its blade in sight, and lurks not in sly and sanctimonious speech and downcast eyes; for the noble tongue that knows not how to tell the spirit of a lie and save the letter.

Here now before me were all these. Refreshing, _n'est ce pas?_ and very delightful--for a time.

Blanch and I were whirled into the house in the midst of a tornado of welcomes, apologies, regrets, wonderings, and questions innumerable. But as we were whisked through the kitchen, I had time to see all the old landmarks; the great stone fire-place, with a mantel-piece nearly out of reach, the bed, with its bright patch-work quilt, the broom of cedar-boughs behind the door, the strip-bottom chairs, the large blocks to eke out with when more seats were needed, the rough walls, the immaculate neatness.

There were two rooms in the house, and we were suffered to sit only when we had reached the second. This was glorious with pictorial newspapers pasted over the log walls, with a Job's patience quilt on the bed, with two painted wooden chairs, and a chintz-covered divan, a rag mat on the floor, two brass candlesticks on the mantel-piece, a looking-glass six inches long, and a gay picture of a yellow-haired, praying Samuel, dressed in a blue night-gown, and kneeling on a red cushion.

Sally was so delightedly flustered by our coming that, as she said, she did not know whether she was on her head or her heels, a doubt which so sensibly affected her movements that she was every moment making little inconsequent rushes where she had no need to go, and repeating the same things over and over.

Presently she sat still with a start, and listened to a heavy step that came through the porch and into the kitchen.

"Sh-h-h! There he comes!" she whispered.

In fact, I had already caught a glimpse through the chimney-back of a man in his shirt-sleeves, who hung up a tattered straw hat, and took down from its nail a tin washbasin with a long handle, like a skillet.

"Sally!" he called out, splashing a dipperful of water into the basin.

"Whot?" returned Sally, with a facetious nod at me.

"Who's been here this afternoon? I see wagon-tracks down in the road."

"Boarders!" says Sally, with another nod and wink.

"Boarders? What for?" came in a tone of amazement; and through a chink in the rock chimney I could see his wet face turned, listening for her answer, and his dripping hands suspended.

"To get boarded," replied Sally succinctly.

Such an astounding announcement required immediate explanation, and Mr. Smith was coming in a dripping state to demand one, when his wife jumped up to intercept him.

"Guess who's come!" she said, stopping him in the entry.

"Who?" he asked in a stentorian whisper.

"Mary!" says dear Sally, with a little burst of gladness that brought tears to my eyes.

"Mary who?"--with the same preposterous feint of secrecy.

"Why, bobolink Mary, you great goose!"

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Mr. Smith, and as he spoke, his face, with wide-open eyes and mouth, appeared over Sally's shoulder, then disappeared instantly at sight of Blanch. Nor would our host permit me to come to him, nor make himself visible again till he had gone through a tremendous scrubbing and brushing, all of which was perfectly audible to us. Then he came in, sleek and shining, and gave us a hearty though embarrassed welcome, bowing before Blanch with a movement like the shutting up of a pocket-knife, and greatly confused on finding himself obliged to take her small hand.

I am bound to say that Blanch behaved exquisitely. She could not help being dainty and delicate; but she showed herself so unaffectedly delighted with every thing and every body that her daintiness was not remembered against her. Besides, she had the good taste not to try to imitate their rough ways, but remained simply herself.

Sally disappeared presently, and in a surprisingly short space of time returned to tell us, with a very red face, that supper was ready.

There was a momentary cloud of doubt over Blanch's face; but I went unfearing, and the event justified my confidence. The coarsest of delf, to be sure, and a cotton cloth, and steel forks, and a tin coffee-pot. But whatever could be polished shone like the sun, and whatever could be white was like snow. As to the supper, it was worthy of the pen of Mr. Secretary Pepys. The traditional delicacies of a country table are taken for granted; but the coffee was a glorious work of supererogation, and delicious enough to be handed about in the paradise of Mohammedans. Besides this, Sally, with a recollection of one of my mother's pretty ways, had laid a sprig of fragrant sweet-brier beside each plate, and with mine a drowsy dandelion just shutting its golden rays.

"You must excuse me for giving you deer meat," said our hostess with great humility; "I haven't any other kind on hand to-day; but to-morrow--"

She stopped short in the act of setting the dish on the table, unspeakably mortified by the incredulous stare with which Blanch regarded her.

"If you don't like it--" she began stammering.

We immediately explained that Blanch was simply astonished at an apology being offered with venison, whereat Sally grew radiant.

Mr. Smith did not appear at the table. He insisted that he had been to supper, but abstained from mentioning the day on which he last partook of that meal. Indeed, during all the time Blanch and I were in that house we never saw the master of it eat one mouthful.

"He never will sit down with folks," Sally whispered privately to me as we left the table.

When Sally said "he," pure and simple, she always meant her husband. She had a dim consciousness that there were other, nebulous masculines in the world; but to her mind Mr. Thomas Smith was the bright particular HE.

At eight o'clock we went to bed by the pure, pale twilight of June, and sank up to our eyes in feathers.

"Oh!" cried Blanch, "I'm going through to China!"

"Never mind!" I said encouragingly, "to-morrow we will put this absurd puff-ball underneath, and promote the straw-bed."

"Straw!" exclaimed a voice from the depths.

"Yes! pretty, yellow, shining straws, such as you suck mint-juleps through. Well, don't get excited! Straws such as your brother Tom sucks mint-juleps through. Good-night, honey!"

I heard her whisper a prayer. Then we dropped asleep peacefully; while with steadfast eyes of holy fire our angels kept watch and ward.

III.

BIPEDS WITH FEATHERS.

The next morning the unaccustomed stillness woke us early; and there was a long, golden beam of sunlight stretched across the bare floor. The hop-leaves hanging over the eastern window were translucent, and more gold than green, and all round their edges hung radiant drops of dew, slowly gathering and falling.

Blanch smiled, but said nothing, scarcely spoke a word to God, even, I think, but knelt and let her prayer exhale from her, like dew from the morning earth.

The kitchen was all in order when we went out. It was shaded, exquisitely clean, swept through by a soft draught, and finely perfumed by the new cedar broom which Thomas had made that morning. In the fire-place lay a heap of hard-wood coals in a solid glow, but the heat of them all went up chimney. The table was set for two, and breakfast ready all but cooking the eggs. Sally held a bowl of these in her hand, while, outside, the hens were making loud affidavit to their freshness.

After breakfast, Blanch put on a little scarlet sack, took her parasol, and went out to reconnoitre. Sally and I staid in the house and talked over old times, while she washed the dishes and I wiped them. Old times, even the happiest, are sad to recall, and we soon fell into silence. In that pause, Sally wrung out her dish-cloth, gave it a scientific shake that made it snap like a whip-lash, and hung it up on two nails to dry. Then she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

"Land sakes!" she exclaimed, "what's that?" and rushed out doors, catching the broom on her way. I followed with the shovel, for "that" was a scream which unmistakably came from Blanch.

There was neither savage nor wild beast in sight, nor was Blanch visible; but there was a great commotion in the poultry-yard, and a large turkey-gobbler of a military appearance was strutting about in full feather and declaiming in some foreign language. It sounded like low Dutch. What he said seemed to make a great impression on the hens and geese, for they looked awe-struck.

Presently we espied Blanch at the very top of one of the highest board fences that ever was built, clinging for dear life.

"I don't know how I ever got here," she said piteously. "The last recollection I have is of that horrid creature ruffling himself all up and coming at me. Then I came right up. And that's all I know. But I can't get down again."

I got a little ladder and helped Blanch down from her dangerous perch, while Sally kept the turkey-gobbler at bay, standing, broom in hand, in that position called in heraldry rampant-regardant.

"He doesn't like scarlet very well," she remarked. "It isn't his favorite color."

Then we went to see Mrs. Partington, a large gray hen, which was that morning taking her first airing with a new brood. She had been set on goose-eggs, which had, naturally, hatched out goslings; but she did not know it.

"Now," said Sally, "if you want to see an astonished hen, come along."

There was a duck-pond near, and some instinct in the goslings led them that way. Mrs. Partington yielded, like a fond, indulgent mother, and clucked along full of _naïve_ consequence and good-nature. But at a little distance from the margin she paused, called her brood about her, and began to talk to them in a gray, comfortable, complacent voice. I suppose she was telling them how dangerous water is. They listened first with one side of their heads, then with the other, and two of them winked at each other, and made little irresistible shies toward the pond. They looked like green eggs on two sticks. The hen left off her lecture, clucked loudly, spread her wings, and ran after them. But the next instant a shriek broke from her bill; for, as every body knows, of course, the goslings all plunged headlong into the pond.

Poor Mrs. Partington was, indeed, an astonished hen. She was more: she was a transfixed hen. She stood gazing at them in horror, evidently expecting to see every one of them keel over and go to the bottom. But no; the little voyagers floated about quite at their ease, striking out with their tiny paddles, their downy backs and absurd little heads shedding the water beautifully.

"She must know now that they are goslings," said Blanch.

"Goslings? Not she!" answered Sally. "Ten to one she thinks that she is a goose. No, that hen will go down to the platter without finding out that she has been cheated."

We had a busy day. We went to see the frame-house that Mr. Smith had begun to raise, and Sally's dairy in the cellar of it; we promoted our straw-bed, filled our fireplace with pine boughs, thus cutting off the view through the chimney-back; unpacked our trunks and set up our graven images; and, when sunset was near, went out into the woods at the foot of Spruce Mountain to get a pail of water from a little Johannisberger of a spring there. The mountain was between us and the sunset, and the woods were in shadow; but up over the lofty tree-tops the red and golden lights floated past, and every little pool, among its treasures of reflected foliage, airy nest of bird, and bending flower, held warmly its bit of azure sky, and crimson or golden cloud. Presently we came to where, at the foot of a spruce-tree, our spring lay like a fire-opal, with that one spark down among its haunting shadows. A cool green darkness fell into it from the overhanging boughs, velvet mosses growing close rimmed it with a brighter emerald, gray of trunk, branch, and twig melted into it, milky little flowers nodded over at their milky little twins below, and in the midst burned that live coal of the sunset. When we plunged our tin pail into this spring, it was as though we were going to dip up jewels. But instantly we touched the water, it whitened all over with a silvery-rippled mail, the colors disappeared, and we brought up only crystal clearness. The next moment, though, the throbbing waters subsided, and the many-tinted enchantment stole tremulously back again.

When we went to bed that night, a shower was prowling about the horizon, and over on Spruce Mountain the wolves were howling back defiance to the thunders.

What a lovely, savage week it was that followed! Somewhere in it was dissolved a Sunday; but we were scarcely aware of it, there was so little to mark the day.

In that week we learned one fact that was new to us, and that was the profound melancholy that reigns in the woods. Looking back, we could recollect that the impression had always, though unconsciously, been the same. Is it that in the forest Pan alone is the chosen god? and that there is still mourned that day when

"The parting genius was with sighing rent."

Or is the sadness because He who once came down to walk among the trees, and call through the dews, comes no more?

Whatever may be the reason, melancholy is enthroned in the forest.

IV.

A DIAMOND-WASHING.

On one of those days, Blanch and I, after a severe dispute on the subject with Sally, did a washing. Sally said we shouldn't; but wash we would, and wash we did.

We rose at early white dawn, kilted up our wrappers, shouldered our clothes-bag, took soap, matches, and kindlings, and started. A path led us past the new frame-house and a grove beyond it to the wash-room. This was a noble apartment about forty rods long by thirty wide, and was walled in by cedar and pine columns with the branches and foliage left on, a great improvement on Solomon's building. The cornice was delicately traced against a pale-blue ceiling frescoed with silver, the most beautiful ceiling I have ever seen. The carpet was a green velvet pile, thickly diapered with small gold-colored and white flowers in an irregular pattern, and beaded all over with crystals. Near the door by which we entered was one of the most charming imitations of rustic scenery to be found at home or abroad. A huge granite boulder, broken and hollowed roughly, had a thread of sparkling water bubbling up through a rift in it, and overflowing its basin in a rivulet. Near this stood two forked poles with a large copper kettle suspended from a cross-pole. Underneath the kettle were the ashes of more than one fire. Countless birds flew about, singing as well as if they had been sent to Paris. On the whole, it was a picture which would have drawn a crowd at any exhibition.

Wood was there, covered from the dew with green boughs. We placed our kindlings, lighted them with a match scraped inside Blanch's slipper, and soon a blue column of smoke was rising straight into the morning air, and the flames were growing. Then we filled the great kettle with water from the fountain of Arethusa, and, as soon as it was warm, began to wash. For one hour there was nothing but silence and scrubbing; then a loud war-whoop through Sally's hands announced that breakfast was ready. By that time our clothes were all washed and bubbling in the boiler. Looking about then, we saw that every cedar pillar had a golden capital; cloth of gold was spread here and there in long stretches, and the frescoes had changed their shape, and, instead of silver, were rosy and golden.

Poor Sally, looking at us ruefully when we went in, asked to see our hands. They were worth looking at, all the skin being off the backs of them, and the insides puckered up into the most curious and complex wrinkles. We ate with glorious appetites, though, had another engagement with Sally, who wanted us to lie down to rest, and have our hands bandaged, and went back to find our clothes wabbling clumsily, but quite to our satisfaction. We upset our tubs and rinsed them, then set them up and filled with cold water again. Next we took each a clothes-stick, fished something from the kettle with it, ran with it boiling hot at the stick's end, and soused it into one of the tubs. We had to run a good many times, probably a mile in all. We squeezed the clothes out of this pickle, called by the initiated "boiled suds;" refilled our tubs, and performed that last operation "of rinsing," which took the puckered insides quite out of our hands, leaving them almost innocent of cuticle.

"My dear," said Blanch, as we spread our washing out on the green, "every woman on earth ought to do one washing. It would do their souls good, though it should temporarily damage their bodies. My laundress is a new being to me from this day. I mean to double her wages."

"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, and held up the bleeding forefinger of her left hand. "My ring! I have lost it; it is washed away."

The poor child looked distressed, and no wonder; for the missing cluster was a _souvenir_.

We set ourselves to search, but in vain. On each side of our grassy bench, three tubs of water had been spilt, and had wandered in devious ways, and to some distance. We sawed our sore fingers on the notched edges of the grass-blades, to no purpose.

"It was careless of you, Blanch," I said austerely. "You should have recollected that the ring was loose--"

A twinkle appeared in Blanch's eyes, if not on her finger. I followed the direction of her significant glance, and behold! where the lambent _solitaire_ had burned on my hand, was an aching void!

"My angel," said Blanch sweetly, "did you ever hear of diamond-washings?"

V.

A MISS IS AS GOOD AS A MILE.

When Sunday came round a second time, we were aware of it. Every day had been to us like a crystal brimming cup overflowing to quench the day's thirst; but looking out into this Sunday, we saw only a golden emptiness.

Tears hung on Blanch's long eyelashes. "Think of all the blessed open church-doors," she said. "It makes me homesick. I want to go to mass. Even a fiddling, frescoed, full-dress mass would be better than none."

I quoted my friend, Sir Boyle Roche, "'Can a man be like a bird, in two places at once?' Besides, little one, if you were in town, it is not unlikely that you might stay at home all day because your new hat was not becoming, or because of the hot sun, or the east wind, or the mud, or the dust."

The dear child blushed. "But then one likes to know that one can go," she said meekly.

Sally and her husband were going five miles to meeting that day. They started early; and we watched them go soberly off in single file till the trees hid first the large brim of Sally's preposterous bonnet, then the crown of Mr. Smith's antique hat. Then we went in and prepared a little altar, with a statuette of the Virgin, a crucifix, candles and flowers, and, lifting up our hearts in that wild solitude, assisted at some far-away mass. There was no interruption, only a group of deer stood without, at the distance of a stone's throw, as motionless as gray marble statues, and watched us with soft, intent eyes. After we had got through and were sitting silently, the candles still burning, some Roman Catholic hummingbirds dashed in and sucked the honey out of the wild roses we had given our Lady, but left a sweet thought instead. When the buzz of their wings was gone, we heard robins and a bobolink outside, and a chorus of little twitterers singing a Laudate. "Amen!" said Blanch. The unclouded sunlight steeped the surrounding forest in sultry splendor, and clouds of perfume rose, like incense, from pine, and fir, and hemlock, from thousands of little blossoms, from plots of red and white clover, heavy with honey, from censers of anemones, and, threading all these sweets of sound, perfume, and sight together, was the bubbling voice of a brook murmuring Paters and Aves over its pebbles.

Blanch smiled, and repeated softly:

"The waters all over the earth rejoice In many a hushed and silvery voice; 'In Jordan we covered Him, foot and crown, While the dove of the Spirit came fluttering down.

"'We steadied his keel at the crowded beach, When the multitude gathered to hear him teach; The feet of our Master we smoothly bore, And he walked the sea as a paven floor.

"'When the tempest lashed each foamy crest, At his 'Peace, be still!' we sank to rest. And we laughed into wine, when he came to see The marriage in Cana of Galilee.'

"The stars that fade in the growing day Have each a tremulous word to say; 'We sang, we sang, as we hung above The lowly cradle of Infinite Love.'

"The low winds whisper, 'We fanned in his hair The flame of an unseen aureole there.' And the lily, pallid with rapture, cries, 'I blanched in the light of his fervent eyes!'

"Voices of earth and air unite, Voices of day and voices of night, Flinging their memories into the way Of the coming in of the dear Lord's day.

"O Christ! we join with them to bless Thy name in love and thankfulness; And cry as we kneel before thy throne, We are all thine own! we are all thine own!"

When Sally and Mr. Smith came home that afternoon, they were accompanied by a tall, stiff, severe man in black, at the first sight of whom Blanch and I got our hats for a walk. It was Elder Samson, come up to convert the idolaters. We knew well what hydra-headed discourse he had prepared to devour our patience, our charity, our civility even. Discretion was the better part of valor, we concluded, and fled, leaving, alas! the statuette of our Lady, with the candles burning beside her, and the wild roses clinging about and kissing her feet. If we had but known! But we did not then, nor till long afterward. When we came back, every thing was, apparently, as we had left it. But, when Sally came to town in the fall, she told how, the moment the elder saw our graven image, he flew into a holy rage, flung it, roses and all, out the window, and would have flung the candles after it, if she had not rescued them by main force. The result was an illustration of the church militant, in which rather high words passed between Sally and the elder. Mr. Smith, feebly interposing to take the part of his clerical visitor, was routed utterly.

But meantime, in happy unconsciousness, Blanch and I walked down the road, and down and down the road, a mile, and another mile, and again a mile, through the green and flowery solitude, flecked and flickering with sunlight and shadow, the silence only softly stirred by a multitudinous rustling of leaves. Now and then we saw a deer by the road-side; and far away in the woods the foxes snarled and barked.

Our walk ended on a long log that bridged a brook, and there we stood and looked up to see the waters come down to us. Presently, instead of their flowing down, we seemed to float up. We were going up to the cradle of this dancing stream, to some enchanted land where the baby rivulet first saw the sun. We were going back, also, to our own childhood, floating up and up to careless days, leaving the heavy years behind.

When we came back from that far-away country, a little sea-sick with our journey, I turned to see Blanch looking at me with great attention.

"My dear," she said, "you are the most absurd figure I recollect to have seen in the whole course of my life. If it were not deplorable that human taste should be so perverted, I should find you ludicrous."

"So you have found it out," I replied, highly edified. "I have been thinking the same of you this week past. Of course any one with eyes can see that Sally in her straight gown and big apron, with her hair in a pug, is better dressed than we."

Blanch had brought Mr. Smith's pistol with her. She always took it when we went into the woods; for she considered herself a pretty good shot. She had at home a pasteboard target full of little holes, the best one about six inches from the centre, all made by shots fired by her at a distance of twenty feet.

She felt safer to take the pistol, she said; for if any animal were to attack us, she could be sure to wound if not to kill it. "No animal," she argued very sensibly, "could be dangerous at a distance of twenty feet or more. And if he should come within that, I could not fail hitting pretty near his head or heart. You see, I missed only six inches in the shooting-gallery, and a bear or a wolf would be much larger than my target."

When you want to convince others, always speak as though your proposition is unquestionable. Every body knows that the majority of persons in the majority of cases find it troublesome to think for themselves, and that if you are positive enough, you can make them believe any thing. If Blanch had been a shade less logical and decided, I might have submitted that a pasteboard target does not pounce upon you and hug you to death, or tear you into inch pieces while you are taking aim, and that with a wild live creature to glare back with two great threatening eyes into her one blue eye looking at him, like a murderous violet, over the pistol-barrel, her nerves might be shaken to the extent of another six inches from the mark. But her air was one of such perfect conviction that my subjunctive case expired without a sigh.

The tree-tops were still full of sunshine when we started to go home, but the road was shaded. Blanch seemed a little uneasy.

"I believe we'd be awful good to eat," she said apprehensively. Even in speaking, she stopped short, I stopped, we stopped all two, as the French say. Directly in front of us and not far away, sitting with an air of deliberation in the middle of the road, was a large, clumsy, shaggy beast that looked at us with an inexplicable expression. I had never had the pleasure of an introduction to this animal, but none was needed. I had seen his portrait on the outside of hair-oil bottles. The resemblance was striking.

Blanch turned very red, and raised her pistol.

"Shall I fire?" asked the little heroine in a stage-whisper.

"Fire!"

Her hand was trembling like a leaf in the wind; but she took beautiful aim, and I am bound to confess that her pasteboard target could not have received the attention with more unmoved tranquillity. The pistol went hard, though, and the pull she had to give the trigger brought the muzzle down, so that instead of the shot striking within six inches of the bear's heart or brain, it struck up a little puff of dust, and took off the devoted head of a buttercup about five feet from us.

"Have I hit him?" she asked breathlessly, opening her eyes. She had shut them very tight on firing.

She had not hit him; but he took the hint, and got himself clumsily out of the way. I thought he acted as though his feelings were hurt.

I have forgotten whether we ran. I am inclined to think that we did not. But we were not long in getting home, and then the elder was gone.

VI.

HOMESICK.

A pathetic little incident happened that week, which suggested many thoughts to us. Passing by a cleared space in the woods one afternoon, Mr. Smith saw a deer family quietly grazing there. Plentiful as these creatures were in that region, they never suffered a near approach; but this group looked at the intruder peacefully and showed no sign of alarm.

Is there on earth an animal more fierce and cruel than man in deed if not in intention? This man did not deliberately mean to perpetrate a fiendish act; but no otherwise could what he did be characterized. He did not want the venison, the skins, the graceful antlers; but he fancied it rather a fine thing to have that bounding target still for a moment. His rifle was over his shoulder; he lowered it, and took aim at the stag's stately front. There was a report; the creature gave one leap into the air, then fell, shot through the forehead.

Not even then did the others fly. While he loaded his rifle again, they bent over their prostrate companion, touching him, moved by what mute, incredulous grief, who can say? The marksman gleefully took aim again, and the doe fell with a bullet through her heart, and sobbed her life away. When Mr. Smith saw the young one put its head down to the mother's, for the first time some compunction touched his coarse, unsympathetic soul. But he had gone too far to retreat, and in a few minutes the fawn lay dead beside its mother.

Sally reproached her husband passionately when he told her the story of his wonderful feat.

"If dumb creatures were like men," she said, "the wild beasts would get up a mob to-night, and come here and lynch us; and not be to blame either!"

Blanch and I left Mr. Smith meekly taking his castigation, and went out to see his victims.

They lay where they had fallen, on the greensward, poor creatures! a sad blot upon the peaceful scene, their innocent, happy lives quite ebbed away. We stood by them a little while in the sunny silence, and it seemed as though every thing living shrank from us. We had never before been out without seeing some form of that wild animal life with which the woods were teeming. But now there was no sound of skittish steps evading us, no glimpse of shadowy figures among the trees. All was silent and dead.

We went to the road-side, and, seating ourselves on the moss under an aspen-tree, mourned silently. And thinking of the slaughtered deer, I thought of the first death in Eden; and from that, of the first sin in the world; and from that, of all the sin and sorrow that is in the world; and from that, of Him who came to restore us to the true Eden, the city of real peace, and how he stays here unseen, and watches lest we kill or are killed; and then I thought, "The nearer one keeps to the place where he is, the better."

Blanch half reclined, leaning on her elbow, and her face looked like a pale flame in the flickering shadow of the tree above us. She stretched her hand and touched tenderly a lovely spray of partridge-berry that trailed over the moss, but did not break it. Then she looked up.

"Minnie," she said, "I'm homesick."

"So am I."

"When will we start?"

"To-morrow."

THE "ADAM" OF ANDREINI.

Voltaire, in his life of Milton, mentioned the fact that in his youth the poet witnessed at Milan the representation of a drama entitled, _Adam; or, Original Sin_, written by "a certain Gio. Battista Andreini," a Florentine, and dedicated to Marie de' Medici, Queen of France. The French writer stated that Milton must have taken with him to England a copy of the work. His account was repeated by other biographers of the great English poet, some of whom alluded to the Italian poem as "a farce." In consequence of their unfavorable judgment, the impression has prevailed that Milton was not indebted to Andreini for the conception of his _Paradise Lost_, but that the grandeur and sublimity of the invention belong solely to him. Andreini's work fell into oblivion soon after its production, and has remained unappreciated even by the author's countrymen; so that it is not surprising that the honors due the Catholic poet have not been rendered by English or American critics or readers.

The mystery, tragedy, or sacred drama of _Adam_, composed by Andreini, was represented at Milan early in the seventeenth century, and was received with such enthusiasm that the author was invited to the French court by Queen Mary, and was there loaded with honors. A splendid edition of his work, dedicated to the queen, illustrated with plates and a portrait of the author, was issued at Milan in 1617. Such a reception shows the estimation in which his production was held at the time. Defects which did not interfere with the grandeur of the original design impaired its popularity afterward. The author was numbered among the _Seicentisti_, and belonged to a school noted for its departure from simplicity; for false refinements and extravagant conceits. Under the influence of such writers as Marini, Lappi, Redi, etc., in an age of pedantry, poetry was removed from nature, and dragged from her proper sphere. But though Andreini lived amidst the prevalence of a corrupt taste, and his _style_ was in some degree tainted, it could not have been expected that any succeeding school, however correct, should trample under foot the _substance_ of his work, and slight its sublimity of conception, to which a more enlightened age should have done justice. Such justice, nevertheless, has been denied him.

After it had been forgotten more than two hundred years, a tardy acknowledgment of Andreini's merit was paid by a few Italian critics, and a small, unadorned edition of his work was again published at Lucano; but in such an unattractive form that it seems to have awakened little attention. A few copies of the first edition were sold as a great literary curiosity. One, purchased at a large price, affords us an opportunity of examining the claim so long buried in obscurity, and to see how much the author of _Paradise Lost_ has really borrowed.

It is well known that Milton's first idea, in treating the subject, was to write a tragedy; and that he had actually composed some scenes before he finally resolved to transfer his pencil to a vaster canvas. The difference between the epic and dramatic form gave a great advantage to the English poet. All the ornaments of description, in which _Paradise Lost_ is so rich, were denied to Andreini, since they could not be admitted into dialogue. That Milton saw and profited by Andreini's tragedy, can be proved not only by external testimony, but by evidence contained in almost every page of his work. We must look to the conception and to the expression of thought, in drawing the comparison between the two, which will conclusively show Andreini to be in truth the precursor of Milton, the original author of the design elaborated in _Paradise Lost_. We will give an analysis of the drama, with extracts faithfully translated, rendering the literal sense of the original.[184]

The scene of the tragedy is in the terrestrial paradise. The interlocutors are the Eternal Father, Michael and a chorus of angels, Adam and Eve, Lucifer, the Prince of Hell, Satan, Beelzebub, the Seven Deadly Sins, besides various allegorical personages, such as the World and the Flesh, Hunger, Fatigue, Despair, Death, and Vainglory, with a chorus of infernal messengers and spirits of the elements. The author's own summary will give the most accurate idea of the piece. A chorus of angels in the prologue sing the glory of the eternal God, calling upon the new creation to praise him. The future advent of the Incarnate Word is dimly predicted. The Almighty is completing his vast work by the formation of man; the new being is welcomed in strains of jubilee and rejoicing by the shining choir about him, and the scene proceeds with solemnity and magnificence, in language elevated and sublime. The ecstasy of the newly created at the glory revealed to his senses by the celestial train who "cleave heaven with their wings of gold," and his devout aspirations of love and homage toward his Creator, are admirably expressed. Adam adores the ineffable mysteries of the Trinity and the coming Incarnation. The verse throughout this scene is in lyrical measures adapted to the subject, and to the emotions uttered.

Adam falls into sleep, and Eve is created and named "woman" by the eternal Father. A resemblance may be discovered by the curious between the ascent of the heavenly train from Eden, after the blessing is pronounced and the work completed, and a similar description in the seventh book of _Paradise Lost_. Adam then points out to Eve the wonders of the new world, rehearses the divine command and prohibition, and inspires her with love for the beneficent Being who gave them all:

"_Adam._ Lo! the deep azure of yon heaven, where oft That bright and wandering star, Herald of radiance yet afar, Shall dart its welcome ray To ope the richer glories of the day. Then the majestic sun, To fill the earth with joy, O'er her glad face shall fling his golden light; Till weary of his reign, The pure and silvery moon, With all her starry train, Shall come to grace the festal pomp of night Lo! where above all other elements The subtle flame ascends, outshining all: Lo! where the soft transparent air uplifts Bright-plumaged birds, with notes of melody Measuring the happy hours! Lo! the vast bosom of propitious earth, With opening flowers, with glowing fruit adorned, And her green tresses that the crown sustain Upon her mountain summits, and her sceptre Of towering trees. Behold! the azure field Of ocean's empire! where 'mid humid sands, And his deep valleys, and the myriad hosts Of his mute tribes, and treasures of fair pearls, And purple gems, his billows roll and plough. Bearing to heaven his proud and stormy head, Crowned with the garlands rifled from the deep-- Glory and wonder all! Of One they speak. Their great Creator!"

In the second scene, Lucifer rises from the abyss; and at the first glance we recognize the conception which is one of the chief glories of _Paradise Lost_. The apostate of this piece, like Milton's Satan, is a majestic being, stem, defying, and dreadless, even in despair. Pride, indomitable pride, is still his master passion; in the midst of his blood-chilling irony and impiety, we lose not the awe inspired by a mighty nature, still mighty and commanding, though perverted to evil; nor forget that his "faded splendor wan" is but

"the excess Of glory obscured."

In a bold and haughty strain, well befitting the "lost archangel," "vaunting aloud, though racked with deep despair," he gives vent to the envy and hatred of his rebellious spirit:

"From mine abode of gloom Who calls me to behold this hateful light? What wonders, strange and new, Hast thou prepared, O God! to blast my sight? Art thou, Creator, weary of thy heaven, That thou hast made on earth A paradise so fair? Or why hast thou placed here Beings of flesh that God's own semblance wear? Say, condescending Architect! who fram'dst Such work from clay, what destiny awaits This naked, helpless man, lone habitant Of caves and woods? Perchance he hopes one day to tread the stars! Heaven is impoverished:[185] I alone the cause. The exulting cause of that vast ruin! Add Yet star to star; let suns and moons increase; Toil yet, Creator, to adorn thy skies; To make them bright and glorious as of old; To prove at length how vain and scorned thy toil! I--I alone--supplied that light which sent A thousand splendors to the farthest heaven, To which these lights are shadows, or reflect With faint and feeble gleam my greater glory. Yet reck I not, whate'er these things may be, Or this new being: stern, unyielding still, My aim, my purpose, is hostility Implacable 'gainst man, and heaven, and God!"