CHAPTER VI.

BOADICEA.

Within a few weeks came a letter from Mrs. Rowan to Edith. It is not natural for people to write in their own way--that comes with education and practice; but this letter breathed the writer's very self. It radiated a timid distress. She had surprising news to tell. Instead of being in a tenement of her own, among plain people whom she would feel at ease with, she was installed as housekeeper in what seemed to her a very magnificent establishment. Mr. Williams, her employer, was an importing merchant, and his family consisted of a daughter, eighteen years of age, and an awful sister-in-law who lived in the next street, but visited his house at all hours of day or evening, superintending minutely his domestic arrangements. This gentleman knew Major Cleaveland well, and had for many years had business relations with Captain Cary. Indeed, it was their sailor friend who had procured the situation for her, and insisted on her taking it. She had refused as long as she could, but Dick himself joining against her, she had finally yielded. Mr. Williams was very kind. He had assured her that he did not want a city housekeeper, but some quiet, honest countrywoman to be in the house with his daughter, and see that the servants did not rob him.

At the conclusion of this letter, Mrs. Rowan added that Dick sent his respects, at which Edith's heart sank with disappointment. Where was the hearty affection, the eager remembrance she had looked for?

The child would have been less indignant had she known what pains Dick was really taking for her sake. He had searched out, and borrowed or bought all the printed correspondence of famous letter-writers that were to be had for love or money, and was studying them as models. He had also invested extravagantly in stationery, and was striving to bend his clear, clerkly penmanship to something more elegant and gentlemanlike. Even while she was accusing him of forgetfulness, he was carefully copying his tenth letter to her.

But still, Edith was not to blame, though she was mistaken. Affection has no right to be silent.

After a few days, however, came his farewell before sailing for the East. Over this note, Edith shed bitter tears, as much for the manner as for the matter of it. For Dick, with an eye to Mrs. Yorke as a reader, had composed a very dignified epistle after the manner of Doctor Johnson. Poor Dick! who could have written the most eloquent letter in the world, if he had poured his heart out freely and simply.

The child had scant time allowed her for mourning, for her studies began immediately. The family were all her teachers, and she began at once with music and languages. The common branches were taught indirectly. Geography she learned by looking out on the maps places mentioned in their reading or conversation. History she learned chiefly through biography. For arithmetic, some one gave her every day a problem to solve. She added up household expenses, measured land, laid out garden-beds, weighed and measured for cooking. Her study was all living: not a dead fact got into her mind. She read a great deal besides, travels, all that she could find relating to the sea, and poetry. As her mind became interested, she settled once more into harmony with herself, and her feelings grew quiet. The impression left by Dick's strange behavior after their parting faded away, and she remembered only his last fervent protestation: "I'll climb, Edith, I'll climb!" How it was to be, and what it really meant, she knew not; but the old faith in him came back. "What Dick said he'd do, he always did."

She associated him with all she read or heard of foreign lands and waters. He had sailed through phosphorescent seas by night, under wide-eyed stars, while the waves tossed in fire from his prow, and trailed in fire in his wake. He had lain in the warm southern ocean, where the tides are born, had held his breath during that pause when all the waters of the earth hang balanced, and swung his cap as he felt the first soft pulse of the infant tidal wave that was to grow till its rim should cast a wreath of foam on every shore from the North Pole to the South. Palms and the banyan-tree, pines almost huge enough to tip the earth over, each in turn had shaded his head. His venturesome feet had trod the desert and the jungle. Jews and Moslems had looked after him as he sauntered through their crowded bazaars--the bright-eyed, laughing sailor-boy! Norsemen had smiled as they saw his hair blown back and his face kindled by the tempest. It was always Dick to the fore of everything.

On one of those spring mornings, Carl, wandering through the woods, came out into the road in front of an old school-house that stood at the edge of the village. The door was open, and showed a crowd of children at their studies inside. On the green in front of the door lay a log, and on the log sat a deplorable-looking little man. He was neither young nor old, but seemed to be stranded on some bleak age which time had forgotten. His clothes were gentlemen's clothes cut down and patched. A hat that was too large for him reached from his forehead to his neck. It was not crushed, but it was shabby, and drooped sorrowfully in the brim. His hair was thin and long, and patted down. Tears rolled over his miserable face as he sat and looked in at the children saying their lessons in a long class. He did not cover his face in weeping, but lifted his eyebrows, wiped the tears occasionally, and continued to gaze.

Carl was one of the last persons in the world to intrude on another, or allow any intrusion on himself, but after a moment's hesitation he ventured to approach this pitiful little figure, and ask what ailed him.

The man showed no surprise on being addressed, but poured out his grief at once. His name was Joseph Patten, he was poor and had a large family, and was obliged to receive town help. As a condition of that help, he must give up one of his children to be bound out to work, or adopted into a family. The parents were allowed to choose which child they would part with, and "Joe," as he was called by everybody, was now trying to make up his mind. His story was told in a whimpering voice, and with many tears, and the listener was quite as much provoked to laugh as to weep.

"It isn't easy to part with your own flesh and blood, sir," said Joe. "There's Sally, my oldest girl, named for her marm. She helps about the house. My wife couldn't get along without Sally. The next one is Joseph. He's named for me; and I don't want to give up the child that's named for myself, sir. Then John, he's got the rickets, and is used to be fed and taken care of. You couldn't expect a man to send away a child that's got the rickets, and let him drop all his food before he gets it to his mouth. Then Betsey, she's named for my mother. How am I going to send away the child that's named for my own mother, when she's dead and gone, and let her live among strangers? Jane, she's homesick; she cries if she is out of her marm's sight a minute. She'd cry herself to death if she was to be carried off. Then there's Jackson, named for General Jackson. You don't suppose I could give away a child that's named for General Jackson! And George Washington, named for the father of his country. Why, I could do without any of 'em sooner than I could without George Washington. And Paul, he's named for the 'postle Paul. It would be a sin and a shame to give away a boy that's named for the 'postle Paul. And Polly, she's the baby. You can't give a baby away from its own mother."

There had been several other children who had died, chiefly from unwholesome little fevers, to which they seemed addicted.

Carl was unable to assist the man in his choice; but he comforted him somewhat by promising to visit his family soon, and left him weeping, and gazing through the door at his children.

That same afternoon Carl and Melicent went out to visit Joe Patten's family. It had occurred to the young woman that she might be able to train one of the pauper's boys for a house-servant, and thus benefit them and her own family at the same time.

The Pattens lived directly back of the Yorkes' place, about half a mile farther into the woods, and their house had no communication with the public ways save by a cart-road. Joe's sole income was derived from the sale of little snags of wood that he hauled into the village, and exchanged for groceries. In Seaton wood was a drug in the market. A man must cut his beech and maple into clear split logs, and season it well, if he expected to get two dollars a cord for it.

The walk through the woods was a pleasant one, for nature was stirring all alive about them. This nature was no Delilah of the tropics, and to one who loved a bold and gorgeous beauty it was poor. But for those who like to seek beauty in her shyer, hidden ways, it had a delicate and subtle charm. The profuse snowy bloom of wild-cherries showed in a cloud here and there against the red or salmon-colored flowers of maples and oaks. Silver birches glimmered through their shining foliage, like subsiding nymphs, and the tassels of the larch swung out their brown and gold. Violets blue and white opened thickly in wet places, sisterhoods of snowdrops stood with their drooping heads tenderly streaked with pink, little knubbles of land were covered thickly with old and young checkerberry--"ivry-leaves" the children called them, drops of gum oozed through the rough bark of spruce and hemlock, brooks rushed frothing past, and birds were returning to their nests or building new ones.

Soon they heard sounds of human life through the forest quiet, the loud voice of a scolding woman and a confused babel of children's voices.

Carl smiled mockingly. "A troop of dryads, probably," he remarked.

Suddenly they came out close to a small log-house that stood in an irregular clearing; and now the scolding and the babel were plain to be heard.

"I'll lick you like a sack if you don't bring some dry sticks to get supper with!" cried a woman's voice, and at the same instant a ragged little boy bounded from the door, helped, apparently, by some outward application, and ran for the woods, his bare feet seeming insensible to sticks and stones. Then, all at once, there was silence, and clusters of two-colored heads in the windows, and peeping from the door. The visitors had been discovered. As they approached the door, a large, wild-eyed Boadicea came to meet them, and invited them in with great ceremony and politeness. She had an unwholesome, putty-colored skin and black hair and eyes. In one corner sat Joe, with the baby in his arms, and his hat on his head. This he removed, half-rose, and performed a salution which was more a courtesy than a bow. But he uttered not a word. "In this house clearly,

'Madame d'Acier est le père,'"

thought Carl.

With a sweep of the arm she banished the children all into one corner of the room (the house contained but one room), brought two strip-bottomed chairs, from one of which her husband had meekly fled at her approach, and, dusting them off with her apron, invited her visitors to be seated.

"You must excuse the confusion reigning in my poor mansion," she said with great suavity, and a very good accent. "Children are always disorderly. Sarah!" raising her voice, "bring the besom and sweep up the embers."

Melicent turned a look of dismay on her brother, who was taken with a slight cough. Sarah, otherwise Sally, came bashfully out from behind her father, where she had been crouching on the floor, and swept up the hearth with a brush broom.

The poor woman, anxious to do all honor to her visitors, and, also, to show them that she was above her circumstances, knew no other way than by using the largest words she could think of. Her idea of polite conversation was to make it as little as possible like anything she was accustomed to.

Melicent stated her errand at once, and the mother, with many thanks, and lamentations on her misfortunes, called the little ones forward, and placed them at the lady's disposal. She stopped in her compliments to dart a threatening look toward the door, where the boy who had been "named for the 'postle Paul" stood with his burden of dry sticks. He dropped them instantly, and came forward, and his mother as instantly resumed her smiling face. She could change her expression with remarkable facility.

Melicent fancied this boy at once, and promptly concluded a bargain to give a week's trial to him and his eldest sister. They were to go to "the hall," as Mrs. Patten politely called it, the next day, and begin their training. They would work for their food and clothing, and perhaps, after a while, when she should think them worthy, they might receive wages.

This settled, Miss Yorke and her brother departed, followed by Mrs. Patten's compliments to the door, and stared after by all the children. Joe's only movement on their going was to perform another courtesy like that with which he had received them.

"Poor souls! they are delighted to have their children with us," said Melicent, when they were out of hearing. "But I hope the mother won't come to see them often. Betsey says she is half-crazy."

"I respect her for it!" Carl exclaimed. "You can see that she has some talent and ambition, and that she has read some, though she is absurdly ignorant of the ways of the world. With such a husband, such a troop of children, and such poverty, I repeat I respect her for being crazy. She can't have a person to speak to but her own family, immured in those forest solitudes, as she says."

Mrs. Patten looked after them as long as she could see them, her face glowing with pride. Then she went into her house, went to the fireplace, and withdrew a pair of iron tongs that lay with red-hot tips in the coals there. "There is no need of them now," she said exultingly.

These tongs had been kept red during the last week for the better reception of any town officer who should venture to come for one of her children. Mrs. Patten did not by any means propose to submit tamely. Then she turned tragically, and faced her husband with a look of withering contempt.

"I was meant to be such a lady as that!" she exclaimed, with a grand gesture of the arm in the direction where Melicent Yorke had disappeared. "And yet, I sacrificed my birthright--fool that I was!--to marry you, Joe Patten!"

Joe shrank, and hugged the baby up to him. "I know you did, Sally!" he said deprecatingly--"I know you did!"

"And you never knew enough to appreciate me!" she continued in a tragic tone.

"I know I never did," answered Joe in a trembling voice--"I know it, Sally."

"Learn to respect me, then!" she said, drawing herself up. "Call me Mrs. Patten!"

"Yes, I will, I do, I have," whimpered Joe. "I--"

"Hold your tongue!" commanded his wife. "Paul, bring me those chips." And she proceeded to get supper.

Poor Sally Patten was not nearly so cruel as she appeared. In truth, she had never laid the weight of her hand upon her husband. But, then, he was always afraid she would.

TO BE CONTINUED.

MEXICAN ART AND ITS MICHAEL ANGELO.

The society of Mexico has become a ruin in which it is necessary to search with some labor to discover monuments of literature and art. Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, though for her time an extraordinary woman, is unknown to the greater portion of the continent of whose letters she seems to have been the true morning star. Of Siguenza, mathematician, philosopher, historian, antiquary, and of Velasquez Cardenas, the astronomer and geometrician, the world knew little until Humboldt praised their remarkable talents. Not without a shrug of surprise, we imagine, did the readers of half a century ago accept his assurance that "M. Tolsa, professor of sculpture at Mexico, was even able to cast an equestrian statue of King Charles the Fourth; a work which, with the exception of the Marcus Aurelius at Rome, surpasses in beauty and purity of style everything which remains in this way in Europe." Miguel Cabrera, a greater artist than Tolsa, and the most vigorous imaginative genius which Mexico has produced, has yet to be adequately recognized in America. The art of our northern republic boasts the names of Trumbull, Stuart, Allston, Inman, Vanderlyn, Sully, Neagle, Hamilton, Rothermel, Church, Crawford, Powers, Akers, Greenough, Hosmer, and others; but we doubt if among all these can be found an artist as praiseworthy as was this Mexican Cabrera. Do we exaggerate? No; we are addressing a practical public, much in love with its own works and ways and ideals, and not too well disposed to imagine the difficulties of a Mexican artist one hundred and thirty years ago.

But, first, let us describe, so far as we may, the scene and circumstances of his artistic labors. Mexico, as compared with our northern cities, is a wonderfully old-fashioned capital. The walls of its houses have been built to last till doomsday, and its doors are like doors of castles. Many of its flat fronts boast stuccoed ornaments: all are painted with tints ranging from yellow to pink and pale blue--colors of art which, as applied in particular cases, are seldom at once tolerable to a foreign eye, but which find their reason in necessity as well as taste, and partly in the dull, unlovely character of the building material. This is often a kind of lava-stone or tezontle, a stone the volcano itself seems to have supplied for the purpose of resisting earthquake, and which defies the insidious action of Mexican damps. The churches are instances of colored architecture. La Profesa is yellowed; the cathedral's chapel is browned. San Domingo, San Agustin, and, in fact, all the Mexican churches are tinted more or less, the favorite hue being a mild and not offensive yellow, qualified by white plasters. One remembers gratefully that neutral tint which makes a long range of Mexican houses, with their balconies and tasteful awnings, quaint and elegant letterings of signs, and flags hung out at shop-doors, so picturesque, so pleasant, and so characteristic. The perspective of a Mexican street, especially toward the close of the day, enjoys a repose of many colors well blended with such lines of substantial houses as cannot but impress the eye of the musing stranger. Their architecture, so simple and massive, but so different from a certain wide-awake familiarity which is written upon the houses of the North, best assimilates in his view with some mood of twilight. Yet, seen at dawn or at dusk, or under the moon, the city of Mexico never loses its one decided charm of picturesqueness. It was this exceeding quality which doubtless delighted the eye of Humboldt when he praised Mexico as one of the finest of cities. He had, perhaps, beheld from its cathedral's steeple a most unique capital--a city set not on a hill, but in one of the dreamiest of valleys near one of the dreamiest and shallowest of lakes, with Popocatapetl and Ixtaccihuatl, snow-crowned and heaven-seeking, for monuments of its guardian valley.

In such a scene, Cabrera and his contemporary artists did their work. Their school was the church. What this church was in their day the splendid traditions of art found even now in its corridors and near its altars bear faithful witnesses. Something from their hands has gone into every community of Mexico, and, if war has spared one-half the relics of her art as it existed one hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, the republic is still fortunate in one respect. The cathedrals of Puebla and Mexico, and La Profesa, were perhaps the chief homes of that genius of painting which was manifested not merely in one, but in a number of Mexicans. Who are the artists of the exceedingly fine pictures which may be seen in the church at Puebla the stranger rarely ascertains. The tradition that Velasquez, the great pupil of Murillo, and Cabrera, the native Mexican, sowed the religion of the New World with their pencils some centuries ago, supplies him with the morsel of vague knowledge with which he reluctantly leaves a building full of rich and curious shrines. Mexico is to all appearances singularly deficient in a proper memory of her noblest painters. Go into one of the city's oldest churches, and your friendly guide, though he be a priest, may not be able to tell you who painted the saints on the walls and the heads of the apostles on the shrines. The information possessed outside of the church respecting its treasures of art has, under stress of various revolutions, dissipated into vague generalities. Three or four remarkable names are known, and a few famous pictures; but who can at once point out to us the masterpieces of any of the five or six painters whose works are worth remembering, or tell us near what shrines, outside of the capital itself, we are likely to find rare pictures? Nevertheless, art is almost the chief boast of Mexico, aside from its natural endowments, though, like so much else in a land subject to all manner of vicissitudes, the boast is to some extent shadowy and unsubstantial. In successive revolutions, it is conjectured, those true homes of fine art, the convents, have been despoiled, and the saints and angels of their galleries sent hither and thither, to be kept by natives or to be sold to foreigners as Joseph was sold by his brethren. Another spoliation, and perhaps a searching and sweeping one, is said to have taken place under the eye of the French during their mercenary intervention. How or by whom robbed and mutilated in the last half-century of wars, Mexican art is but the wreck of what it was. That so much of it still survives is a proof of its original abundance and vitality.

But, notwithstanding the whirlwinds of revolution, art in the country of Cabrera has retained a number of impregnable and indestructible asylums. Altar ornaments of gold or silver may have been stolen from the cathedral, but apparently no sacrilegious criminal has ever carried away its pictures. These treasures of the church are set fast in their places round the shrines, so closely and plentifully that, wherever they are most congregated, the altar-places seem walled and tiled with them. Not all of them are worthy of Cabrera or Xuarez or Ximenez, let alone Murillo and Velasquez; but all have their value as portions of a chapter in art the like of which is not to be seen elsewhere on the American continent. Confused and perplexed as the real beauties of many of these paintings are by the endless bedizenments of altars, it is impossible to ignore or conceal the richness, delicacy, and even tenderness which belong to their best specimens. The extravagance of gilding, the wilderness of carved flourishes, which the taste of the sixteenth century placed at the back of the altars, do not form the best repository for the subdued beauty which a noble picture acquires with age. The great back altar-wall of the cathedral is from floor to roof one mass of most ingenious carving and gilding, out of which what seem to be pious aborigines, associated with warriors and saints on the same background, blossom in paint and gold. Our modern and practical tastes do not easily give room to an ornamentation as loud and prodigal as figures in this great recess; but it is nevertheless a rare and meritorious work in its way. Other shrines display the same gilding in an inferior degree; and we must divest ourselves of some prejudice, artistic and otherwise, before we appreciate the merit of extreme elaboration in their ornaments, and discover, notwithstanding this lavish wealth of surrounding decoration, the modest worth of the best pictures of the church.

The cathedral is well constituted to be the ark and refuge of religious art. It is about 428 feet long and 200 wide, while its general height is almost 100, that of its towers being nearly 200 feet. These dimensions argue an interior vast enough to enclose three or four such churches as we may see on Broadway, without taking into account its large adjoining chapel. Its exterior is a congregation of heavy masses crowned by great bell-shaped towers, but wanting a grand unity and exaltation. Nevertheless, the charm of picturesqueness which belongs to so many solid monuments of the sixteenth century has rested upon this cathedral, in spite of its dinginess and heaviness; and a view of it under the magic of a moonlight which Italian skies could not more than rival is one of the finest of a series of Mexican lithographs. Gothic height, space, and freedom are the prime qualities of the cathedral's interior. Not less than twenty-two shrines are there visible in an extent of two aisles and twenty arches, the columns of which are each quintupled. The high porphyry columns, the range of the apostles, the burst of gilded glory, and the outspread angels over the principal altar are exceedingly impressive, notwithstanding an exuberance of colors. The choir, altogether the best architectural feature of the great building, rises rather toward the middle of the church, and up from the floor, in a high and luxurious growth of oaken carvings and embellishments. Inside is the assembly of the saints, finely panelled. Cherub and seraph are busy apparently with the superb organ-pipes, and make merry overhead with all the instruments of an orchestra, while impish faces beneath them seem to be out of temper. The nobleness of the choir as a work of art is, in great part, due to its gravity, though it is as ingenious, perhaps, as anything of the kind need be, without seeking comparison with the mightiest fancies of the Old World.

Even to an ordinary observer it is plain that the old cathedral is well endowed with pictures. The pure olive-faced Madonna, over the nearest and most popular altar, is said to be Murillo's; it may be Velasquez's. She is a mild, meek lady, with a boy in her lap, veritably human in feature. Out of the rich shade of a great old artist's mood cherubs seem to swarm upon them. In the fine gloom of Vespers, when only the face of the Madonna is seen, the religious mildness of this picture is especially venerable. Other altars have many curiosities, more or less associated with art. There is at one a Man of Sorrow, sitting and leaning in wretched plight; at another, a sallow and agonized Redeemer on the cross; and painted statues and crucifixes only less realistic and distressful than these are common throughout the church. The ghostly figure of what may be a dead saint is laid out in wax, as upon a bed, at one shrine, and elsewhere what seems to be a dead Redeemer is altared in a glass case. In the chapel the artistic character of the cathedral is repeated, save that its high altar-columns, its cross-bearing angel, its splendidly-rayed apotheosis of the Blessed Virgin, its statues of Moses and John the Baptist, have a more modern workmanship. The Madonna, in lady-like wax, with a crown upon her head, and holding daintily a babe in her arms, is the principal figure of one of the auxiliary shrines, though not the best specimen of an art in which Mexicans excel, and which, as represented in a black-robed figure of the Mother of Sorrows, is sometimes admirable and religiously effective. These instances, though but a few of the numberless curiosities of wood and wax amid which the painters have found their abiding home, will serve to illustrate the very mixed artistic complexion of the Mexican cathedral. The statues and paintings are of all sorts, colors, and styles. But the shadowy picture of a sad, nunlike face of Our Lady of Sorrows; the quaint-hooded countenance of the Blessed Virgin, apparently wrought in tapestry of the middle ages; or that of our Lord, after he had been scourged, plainly apprise us that the sincerity of art, first consecrated by the church, has become a part of its own consecration. These are sacred pictures, truly. Weary and wretched, his head bound with thorns, our Lord leans in agonized contemplation, while an apostle looks up to him in tears. The elements of this exquisite painting are gloom and pathos developed out of Murillo-like colors and shadows. Another painting, equally reverend, pursues the same theme and mood. To whose genius do we owe them? Perhaps to Velasquez, of whose works the church, it is said, possesses a noble number; perhaps to Cabrera. Who shall decide? One of the fathers or cathedraticos might tell us, but which father and which professor? The condition of topsy-turvy succeeding a revolution is not favorable to the pursuit or the memory of art; and, as we have hinted, the proper rediscovery of Mexican art must be a matter of unselfish and laborious search. Mexico does not, perhaps, even yet know its proper historian.

Yet some thing we do know of Cabrera. The fine head of St. Peter, pointed out to the writer by a padre of San Hypolito, is by him. One of three immense canvases in the sacristy of the cathedral is also his surprising handiwork. It is a pictorial homage to the Pope, wherein the successor of St. Peter, gray and grave, sits on the topmost seat of a ponderous car of triumph, which is pushed by giants of the faith led by heroes and saints. What seems to be the genius of history has a seat in the van, and disporting cherubs hover on flank and rear, while the aged Pope is being ministered to or counselled by a saint or apostle. This picture, perhaps the largest, though not necessarily the best, painted by Cabrera, is very remarkable for its vigor and variety of form. The other great canvases are by Xuarez and Ximenez, both Mexican painters of genius. One represents the victory of Michael celebrated by the angelic powers; the theme of the other appears to be the reception of the Holy Lady in heaven. Pictures of this extensive character are certainly calculated to display the energy of artists, but not always to develop the highest expression of religion. There can be no question of the vigor of these paintings, especially of Cabrera's; but probably we shall have to seek among smaller canvases and less complicated subjects the true masterpieces of Cabrera, Xuarez, and Ximenez. Some years ago they might have been found in the Convent of La Profesa or of St. Dominic, or, perhaps, in the Academy of San Carlos; but where are they now? That academy, once, doubtless, the finest of its kind in America, and still among the best, does contain, it is true, some master paintings by Xuarez, Rodriguez, Joachim, Ludovicus, bearing date after the close of the sixteenth century; but these do not give us assurance of being the best examples of what was done about Cabrera's time. The walls of San Carlos, we may remark in passing, contain a very large, melodramatic descent from the cross by Baltasar de Chaue, and a beautiful Shepherd Boy, by Ingies, whose simplicity recalls the fact that the Lute Player, one of the few genuine Murillos said to be in the country, is in the possession of a Mexican club.

But what of Cabrera? Alas! that the walls of San Carlos should tell us little or nothing; that the padre who guides us through La Profesa knows about as much! The poor muse of painting has been a good-for-nothing these many years, a wretched Cinderella sitting at a ruined hearthstone, or, rather, sweeping up the rubbish in the corridors of confiscated and despoiled convents. La Profesa, however, is an asylum of art. As it now stands, it is a fine old church, whose rigid and antiquated countenance many a praying Mexican woman knows for that of a mother. Nothing of its ample, simple, sturdy architecture has crumbled in the last two centuries. Its plateresco--the "frolic fancy" which sixteenth-century art put upon the front of churches, and of which the _façade_ of the cathedral presents an immense example, entangling cherubs and bewildering saints in the ingenuity of its small sculptures--still remains intact. The apostles are in their niches, and "Nuestro Señor" is invoked in a text cut on the outside walls. Not many years ago, La Profesa was not merely a church, but, as its name indicates, a house for religious women, and that, too, one of the richest and most extensive in Mexico. Many courts, many corridors and fountains, and some pleasant gardens, with eaves-haunting birds to remind one of St. Francis's gossips, the sparrows, were no doubt among the possessions of this convent as of other convents in the capital, from whose now deserted walks and cells one may hear the flow of fountains and the song of birds. But a few corridors of the many that belonged to the house have been left to the church out of a general ruin made necessary for the cutting of a wide street through what was once a vast building or number of buildings. These corridors and the church itself were in 1868 visited by the writer in company with a courteous young padre, but he could learn comparatively little of the unmistakable riches of art deposited there. Who painted the superb heads of the apostles framed in an altar near the sacristy? Cabrera or Velasquez? The padre did not know. As we entered the first of the wide, heavy stone corridors, two old men, looking like pensioners, were saying their prayers aloud before a shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We stood opposite a mammoth scene of the crucifixion, wherein Christ and the thieves are most painfully individualized on the gloom of Calvary. Age and neglect had seemingly eclipsed the larger portion of this canvas, and left no shade of the painter's identity in the mind of our student of the cloister. In another ill-lighted corridor were paintings by Cabrera, Xuarez, Ximenez, Joachim, Correa, Rodriguez, and some others, all Mexicans, it is said, and evidently men of decided gifts. Here was a picture by Xuarez of the Saviour in apparition among the apostles--a presentment in tenderest and most luminous colors of ethereal gentleness. The finest picture in the gallery, entitled St. Luke, might have been by a pupil of Murillo, but really the padre could not tell. Another corridor more neglected than the rest seemed to be a very charnel-room for art--a place for the rags and lumber of unhung, undusted, unrestored pictures. The distracted church has been a sorry sexton for its dead painters. After all, the best efforts are not certain of immunity from the outrages of time and ignorance. Well enough if the great unseen critic applauds.

Nowadays the common visitor to La Profesa searches not at all for Cabrera, but looks at a dome brilliantly painted with scenes from the life of the Saviour by the Spanish Mexican Clavel. Except the dome of Santa Teresa's by Cordero, there is perhaps nothing of the kind, at least in the three principal cities of Mexico, to compare with Clavel's work. Cordero, whose picture of Columbus at court received all the honors of an exhibition in the palace of Prince Poniatowski at Florence, and who has received high encomiums from his brother artists in Italy, is by some regarded the best of existing Mexican artists. Like the two Coras, who, with Tolsa, appear to be the most noted of the sculptors of Mexico, Cordero is a native of the country. To Jose Villegas Coras, who was born in 1713, the city of Puebla owes those statues of our Lord and Our Lady, which one of his admirers declares have a sublimity of expression and a grace in details not easy to find in the best schools of Europe. Jose Zocarias Coras, his nephew, was less an idealist, says his critic, but more faithful to nature, and is distinguished by his sculptures of the "Crucified," in which are exhibited a profound agony. The two statues which crown the towers of the cathedral are also the work of the younger Coras, who died in 1819, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. The work of these men was ill-requited, like so much else in Mexican life and industry. The writer is not able to speak of them upon personal or from a very common knowledge of their sculptures; but it is well to note them here as artists who are thought worthy of a place in that scarce and not too steady literature, Mexican biography. It may serve others who visit Mexico to know that, in the latest phase of art at the capital, Clavel, Rebull, Cordero, and the sculptor Islas, with some others, have distinguished themselves.

Let us now speak freely of Cabrera, the father and master of Mexican art--of him whose pictures are at once so numerous and so scarce, whose fame is so well-founded, yet of whose life so little is known. The first important fact in his biography is, that, like the greatest ruler which the country has produced, its greatest artist was an Indian--a Zapotec Indian, too, from the native country of Benito Juarez, Oaxoca. The next is that, under the patronage of the Archbishop Salinas, he painted those many admirable pieces which are the reproachful glory of his country. According to a modern Mexican writer, Señor Orozco, works of Cabrera may be found in the churches of Mexico and Puebla especially, and in the convents of San Domingo and La Profesa, but we have seen under what circumstances. His masterpieces, if we may credit the intelligent opinion reported by Señor Orozco, are contained in the sacristy of the church at Tasco, where a whole life of the Blessed Virgin is portrayed, the scene of the Nativity being distinguished by its light and freshness of color. The same writer assures us that Cabrera wrote a treatise on the celebrated picture given to the Indian Juan Diego during the Marvellous Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and in it he concurs with other painters of his day in affirming that the miraculous painting, which he had examined carefully in the light of art, is not the work of human hands. This is the judgment of an Indian artist respecting a wonderful revelation made to one of his race, and, however it may be viewed by those who discredit all supernaturalism of a later date than eighteen hundred years ago, gives the stamp of conviction to the faith of Guadalupe. What the opinion of Cabrera was worth in a question of art, what the artist himself should be worth in the estimation of mankind, is signified to us in the following extraordinary notice of his genius by Count Beltrani, an Italian traveller:

"Some pictures of Cabrera are called _American wonders_, and all are of eminent merit. The life of St. Dominic, painted by him in the cloister of the convent of that name; the life of St. Ignatius, and the history of the man degraded by mortal sin and regenerated by religion and virtue, in the cloister of La Profesa, present two galleries which in nothing yield to the cloister of Santa Maria la Nueva di Florencia, and the Campo Santo of Pisa. I hazard even saying that Cabrera alone, in these two cloisters, is worth all the artists joined who have painted the two magnificent Italian galleries. Cabrera possesses the outlines of Correggio, the animation of Domenichino, and the pathos of Murillo. His episodes--as the 'Angels,' etc.--are of rare beauty. In my conception, he is a great painter. He was, moreover, an architect and sculptor; in fine, the Michael Angelo of Mexico."

What say our American pilgrims to Italy of this report of an Italian pilgrim in America? Here, then, was an Indian Michael Angelo of whom few artists of the New World know anything whatever. We need not strain an objection that Count Beltrani's dictum may be an exaggeration, for there are not many travellers who care to praise Mexico, and very few to overpraise her--at least, in respect to art. The fact remains that the country which gave birth to Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, perhaps the most remarkable character in all American letters, also had for its native the greatest painter of the New World, and one of the most singularly meritorious in an age when great painters were numerous. In judging of Cabrera, we must fairly consider the time, the place, the elements in which he wrought; for schools, masters, models, emulation, royal encouragement, and proper recompense and fame were all denied to him, in a greater or less degree. Cloistered as a great artist must necessarily be at any time, he would have felt, perhaps, especially abandoned in far-off Mexico in the sixteenth century. That Cabrera did suffer this abandonment the facts of his life attest. Yet, to speak a literal truth, Cabrera has no biography. It is not known when he was born or when he died, and, says a Mexican writer, "we only know that he lived in the eighteenth century by the dates of his paintings." Alas! for fame; alas! for genius!--and this, too, in the eighteenth century! We know more of Shakespeare, more of Lopé, more of Sor Juana, more of Alarcon--he, too, was born in Mexico, yet we know his birthday--than of Cabrera, who could not have died more than a hundred and twenty-five years ago, and respecting whom it was said: "There is hardly a church of the republic which does not contain some work of his distinguished pencil." Alas! for work and worth! How much of all this may have perished or vanished beneath the storms of the last fifty miserable years of Mexican life, overridden by swaggering pronouncers, stolen by intervening robbers, the torch of genius extinguished in the dust raised by defiant nobodies. Yet Cabrera survives, as few artists can, a veritable wreck of matter. Happily for him, it may be, his only biography is in his works; and they are full of life, and of life better than his own, yet in some respects received into it--lives of saints, apostles, angels, the Blessed Virgin, and the Divine Redeemer. Let these speak for his life to men, and commend his work to the unseen Master.

"THE SERIOUS, TOO, HAVE THEIR 'VIVE LA BAGATELLE.'"

Gay world! You may write on my heart what you will If your laugh-shaken fingers but trace The dream, or the jest, with that fairylike quill That ciphers the wood-sorrel's vase!

Fair world! You may write on my heart what you will; But write it with pencil, not pen: You are fair, and have skill; but a hand fairer still Soon whitens the tablet again!

AUBREY DE VERE.

WHAT OUR MUNICIPAL LAW OWES TO THE CHURCH.

The wisdom and bravery of our forefathers having at length enabled them to sever the ties which had bound the original thirteen colonies to Great Britain, their experience, knowledge, and foresight were called into requisition to form a government for the new nation, and adopt a code of laws which, avoiding the complex and erroneous features of those of the Old-World countries, the necessary result of centuries of contradictory legislation, would confirm to the people their newly-acquired liberties, and guarantee to every citizen not only justice from the state, but, in their relations with each other, ample protection for life and liberty, property and reputation. As a foundation for this new system of jurisprudence, the statesmen of the Revolution selected the English code almost in its entirety, partly because the late colonists had been familiar with its workings on either side of the ocean, but mainly because they considered it, comparatively, at least, humane and liberal, and the most suitable for a free government. Many statutes and customs peculiar to monarchies were at the time necessarily omitted, and several enactments have since been passed by our national and local legislatures liberalizing ancient laws, as intended to keep pace with the rapid development of our industrial resources, which, from time to time, creates new and complicated relations between individuals. Still, to all intents and purposes, our body of laws is fundamentally identical with that of England in the last century, is founded on the same general principles, and has the same origin and history. Therefore, in speaking of the jurisprudence of our republic, we also speak of that of Great Britain, for whatever applies to one as a whole equally applies to the other.

Our municipal law, consisting of the common law (_lex non scripta_) and the statute law (_lex scripta_), springs from three distinct sources, each of which in its degree has materially contributed its share to the general stock which goes to make up our legal system, which, for completeness and enlightenment of spirit, may well challenge the admiration of mankind. These three sources are--the ancient common law of England, the civil law of the Roman Empire, and the canon law of the church. Though originating at distinct periods and places, and intended primarily to operate on diverse elements, the provisions of these three codes have in process of time become so interwoven, one with the other, in the body of the English law, that it is often difficult and sometimes impossible to discriminate between them.

The common law, in its general acceptation, is composed of the ancient customs of England, beyond which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, of reports of cases and decisions of judges thereon, and of the writings of persons learned in the law. Sir William Blackstone, the celebrated author of the _Commentaries on the Laws of England_, is by universal consent the greatest expounder of the common law. With the legal profession, his opinions have a force little less binding than that of a positive enactment, while his definitions, whether borrowed from his predecessors or his own creation, are accepted by the learned of all classes as the most comprehensive and satisfactory in the language on this branch of study. Unhappily for posterity, but more unfortunately for his own reputation, Blackstone lived and wrote in an age when it was the fashion to introduce into every department of English literature the most absurd calumnies against the church, and to advance the most preposterous claims in favor of the so-called Reformation. The wild fanaticism and lust of plunder with which that stupendous rebellion against God's authority was inaugurated had in a great measure subsided in the middle of the last century, and it behooved those of its advocates who attempted to look back into the past to justify present crimes by maligning their Catholic ancestors, or, when that could not be hazarded, by imputing the worst of motives for the best of actions. The great commentator, with all his perspicacity and legal acumen, was nor above resorting to this dishonest method of bolstering a sinking cause, and hence we find in his otherwise invaluable work that he loses no opportunity, in or out of season, to ignore the transcendent merits, misrepresent the conduct, and misconstrue the intentions of the ecclesiastics of the early and middle ages of the church, who, in their time, had done so much to reduce our laws into something like system, and make them conform in justice and equity as much as possible to those revealed by the Creator. Surrounded by the mists of doubt and dissent, the emanation of a hundred jarring creeds, he failed to see beyond the horizon of his own generation, or to perceive the reflux of that wave of heresy which, in the sixteenth century, submerged England, and threatened to inundate the whole of Europe. As an expounder of law, Blackstone still holds a position in the front rank of our jurists, but so warped are his views by the prejudices of the epoch in which he lived that, before the enlightened spirit of our time, he is gradually but surely losing his vantage-ground as an impartial authority, even on questions upon which he is really most reliable. Another defect in the writings of this able professor, but one of much lesser importance, is his constant tendency to exaggerate the merits of the Anglo-Saxon lawgivers, and to attribute to them the credit of originating many laws which were wholly unknown in England till many years after the conquest; but as we have the authority of Hallam for saying that his knowledge of ancient history was rather superficial, we may attribute this fault more to a deficiency of historical knowledge than to a wilful intention to deceive.

The civil law is founded principally on the ancient regal constitutions of Rome, on the laws of the twelve tables, the statutes of the senate and republic, the edicts of the prætors, the opinions of learned lawyers, and on imperial decrees. So numerous, however, had these various enactments become, and so contradictory in terms and penalties, that the study of them was the labor of a lifetime, altogether beyond the ability of the great mass of the governed to overcome. It was therefore found necessary in the reign of Theodosius, about A.D. 438, to codify them, and, by rejecting all superfluous matter, to greatly reduce their bulk. About a century later, under the Emperor Justinian, they were again submitted to a similar process, the Institutes being reduced to four books, and the Pandects, containing over two thousand cases and opinions, to fifty. To these were added a new code, being a continuation of that of Theodosius, the novels or decrees of that emperor and his successors, as well as those of Justinian himself. These taken together formed the _corpus juris civilis_ of the Eastern and Western Empires. It is in the new code and the novels that we first begin to perceive the influence of the church in civil legislation. From the time of the conversion of Constantine, the emperors, with one or two exceptions, were the fast friends, and, in matters spiritual, the obedient children of the pontiffs. The laws of pagan times, particularly those respecting distributive justice and the domestic relations, were utterly unsuited for the government of a Christian people, and, as the church was recognized as the sole arbiter of right and wrong in the abstract, it is natural to expect that the Christian emperors before and after Justinian not only conformed to the dicta of the church in their decrees and decisions, but frequently consulted their spiritual advisers on matters affecting conscience in their twofold capacity of legislators and judges. Justinian in particular appears to have borrowed many of his ideas of temporal law from the church, for we find him paraphrasing or adopting bodily many of the canons of the early councils.[59] Hence we easily perceive that much of the more modern portion of the _corpus juris civilis_, though bearing the impress of imperial authority, is in reality little more than a copy of the rules laid down previously for the spiritual and social guidance of the children of the church, and that those grand principles and delicate distinctions which are as true to-day as in the time of the apostles, and are as applicable to our advanced state of civilization as they were then, are simply the result of the infusion of the spirit of Christianity into the civil polity of a once pagan people. Thus we find the Institutes or Elements of Justinian commencing with the solemn invocation, "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ," and ending with the equally edifying aspiration, "Blessed be the majesty of God and our Lord Jesus Christ," and in harmony with this pious disposition we find among other laws relating to the rights of the church the following: "Those things which have been consecrated by the pontiffs in due form are esteemed sacred; such as churches, chapels, and all movable things, if they have been properly dedicated to the service of God, and we have forbidden by our constitution that these things should be either aliened or obligated unless for the redemption of captives."[60] A novel of Valentinian, in A.D. 452, in recognizing the right of bishops to try cases of only temporal concern where the parties were in orders, extends their jurisdiction over laics who have power to "oblige themselves to obey the sentence of the bishop," which sentence, if necessary, was to be enforced by the civil authorities.[61]

The church did not conform, either in her discipline or her doctrine, to the rules or underlying principles of the civil law, but on the contrary subjected that law to the most rigid examination and the most careful analysis, expurgating what was opposed to justice and retaining all that she found in consonance with divine truth; and as the Roman civil law was at that period a rule for all civilized nations, this may be considered her first great human gift to mankind, equal if not superior to her subsequent culture of the arts, sciences, and literature. Admitting, then, the harmony which existed between the Roman laws and the teachings of the church, we are not surprised to find that when, in the eleventh century, a copy of Justinian, discovered at Amalphi, Italy, was published, it was eagerly received by European nations, adopted in whole or in part by all Christendom, and that it to-day forms the main foundation of the jurisprudence of all enlightened peoples.[62]

About the time of the revival of the study of the Roman civil law, Gratian, an Italian monk, published in three volumes, arranged in titles and chapters after the manner of the Pandects, a collection of the decrees of the general councils of the church, a digest of the opinions of the fathers, and the decretals and bulls of the Holy See. Other collections had been previously made by ecclesiastics in Spain and elsewhere, but none were found to be complete or reliable. However, as Gratian's work was itself far from perfect, Pope Gregory IX. authorized Raymond de Pennafort, a learned divine, to compile a new collection, which was published by authority of his Holiness, A.D. 1234, under the title of _Decretalia Gregorii Noni_. It was divided into five books, and contained all that was worth preserving of Gratian, with the subsequent rescripts of the Popes, especially those of Alexander III., Innocent III., Honorius III., and Gregory IX. "In these books," says Hallam, "we find a regular and copious system of jurisprudence, derived in a great measure from the civil law, but with considerable deviation and possible improvement."[63] Boniface VIII., sixty years afterwards, published a sixth part, known as _Sextus Decretalium_, divided also into five books, in the nature of a supplement to the other five, of which it follows the arrangement, and is composed of decisions promulgated after the pontificate of Gregory IX. New constitutions were added by Clement V. and John XXII., under the titles respectively of _Clementine_ and _Extravagantes Johannis_, and a few rescripts of later pontiffs are included in a second supplement, arranged like the _Sextus_, and called _Extravantes Communes_. Up to the Council of Pisa, in A.D. 1409, these books constituted the whole of the canon law or _corpus juris canonici_, and though principally intended for the government of ecclesiastics, were often applied to temporal purposes, in law and equity, when neither the civil nor common law met the requirements of a disputed point. The study of the canons had been encouraged from the first in the colleges and schools of Europe, but, upon the publication in a systematical form in the eleventh century, it became universal, and with the Roman civil law constituted an essential branch of clerical education. At first the Canonists and Glossators, as the professors of civil law were called, formed separate but not antagonistic schools, but in the thirteenth century Lanfrancus, a professor of Bologna, united the study of both laws, a custom which has since been generally adopted.

As we have before remarked, Sir William Blackstone would fain have us believe that every principle of English common law originated with, and was recognized by, the Anglo-Saxons from the remotest period of their history, but there is neither fact nor probable suspicion to sustain those unqualified statements of our partial commentator. The Romans, who held possession of Britain for more than four hundred years, may have left on the vanquished people of that country some impress of their laws, but the Britons themselves, soon after the departure of the legions, were driven to the mountains of Wales by the Angles and Saxons, and for centuries held no intercourse with the victorious intruders. These latter, the outpourings of the woods and swamps of the north, are represented by all reliable historians as the veriest barbarians, illiterate and idolatrous, and altogether incapable of conceiving or appreciating the broad principles of free government or the varied regulations which control the intercourse and commerce of man with man, such as we find in civilized society; much less those which affect the conduct of household relations, which, originating in the church, could only have been properly expounded by her ministers. The Danes, who subsequently invaded and for many years held possession of the larger portion of the island, were little less barbaric, nor can we trace to them any well-recognized custom or fundamental principle of our present laws. "In the barbarous specimens of legislation due to the era of Saxon and Danish rule," says a late able writer on this subject, "the few texts of Roman law which occur appear to us traceable through the Papal canons. How faint is the impression which even the Anglo-Saxon laws have left upon our system? We have still the local court and the local officers, and some of the rude democratic elements of judicial procedure and constitutional law have been nurtured into real civilized liberty, but happily for us, the harsh and partial regulations savoring of original Teutonic savageness which awarded the various penalties of crime have passed away, and the ancient absence of all expressed regulation in many most important points has been supplied by the legislation of more enlightened times and more cultivated men."[64] After the arrival of St. Augustine, towards the close of the sixth century, the gradual evangelization of the island of Britain necessitated the abolition of the heathen customs, the basis of the Anglo-Saxon legislation, such as it was, and the introduction of a new code of government. The primitive ignorance of the inhabitants and the subsequent decline of learning consequent on the repeated incursions of the Northmen, had the effect of limiting whatever knowledge was still possessed in the country to the ecclesiastics, who, amid the most adverse circumstances, and very often at the sacrifice of their lives, fed the torch of learning and kept its brilliancy undimmed when all around was darkness. They became not only the makers but the dispensers of the law, for, though surrounded on all sides by anarchy and ignorance, they had still the guidance of their canons and some acquaintance with the elaborate code of the empire. The clergy, admits Blackstone, "like the Druids, their predecessors, were proficient in the study of the law."

This marked and beneficial interference of the ministers of the church in the legislative and judicial affairs of newly converted nations not only arose out of political and social necessity, but may be considered as a logical sequence of the establishment of Christianity itself. "The arbitrative authority of ecclesiastical pastors," says Hallam, "if not coeval with Christianity, grew up very early in the church, and was natural and even necessary to an isolated and persecuted society, accustomed to feel a strong aversion to the imperial tribunals, and even to consider a recurrence to them as hardly consistent with their profession; the early Christians retained somewhat of a similar prejudice even after the establishment of their religion. The arbitration of their bishops still seemed a less objectionable mode of settling differences, and this arbitrative jurisdiction was powerfully supported by a law of Constantine which directed the civil magistrate to enforce the execution of episcopal awards."[65] Justinian went even further than his illustrious ancestors, for he not only gave the bishops in the first instance, without the consent of the parties, the power of trying temporal causes in which the defendant was an ecclesiastic, but the episcopal order was absolutely exempted by him from all secular jurisdiction.[66]

If such clerical intrusion into the province of the civil magistrate was not only tolerated but encouraged in the best and most Catholic days of the Western and Eastern empires, how much more salutary must it have been in its effects among the semi-civilized and turbulent Saxons and Northmen! Unfortunately, scarcely any record is left to us of the labors of the priesthood in this direction during those centuries which preceded the Norman conquest, for the compilations of Alfred and Edward the Confessor are irreparably lost; but here and there we catch a glimpse of their presence legislating or deciding causes. Thus, as early as A.D. 787, at a provincial council held at Calcluith, a place long obliterated from the map of England, it was solemnly enacted "that none but legitimate princes should be raised to the throne, and not such as were engendered in adultery or incest." "But it is to be remarked," says Hallam, "that, although this synod was strictly ecclesiastical, being summoned by the Pope's legate, yet the kings of Mercia and Northumberland, with many of their nobles, confirmed the canons by their signatures."[67] Another instance of clerical legislation is to be found in the canons of the Northumbrian clergy, and that one of peculiar interest to students of law and history, presenting, as it does, the first germ of that glory of English law not inaptly called the palladium of the subject's liberty--trial by jury.[68] "If a king's thane," says the canon, "deny this (the practice of heathen superstition), let twelve be appointed for him, and let him take twelve of his kindred or equals (_maga_) and twelve British strangers, and if he fail let him pay for his breach of law twelve half-marcs; if a landholder (or lesser thane) deny the charge, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken for him as for a royal thane, and if he fail let him pay for his breach of law six half-marks; if a ceorl deny it, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken for him as for the others, and if he fail let him pay twelve oræ for his breach at law."[69] This quasi-jury system appears to have been applied to other cases, for we learn from the history of Ramsey, published in Gales's _Scriptores_, that a controversy relating to some land between the monks and a certain nobleman was brought into the county court, when each party was heard in his own behalf, and after its commencement it was referred by the court to thirty-six thanes, equally chosen by both sides.[70]

The invasion and speedy conquest of Britain by the Normans not only overturned the Saxon dynasty, and reduced the people of that and the Danish race remaining in the country to a condition of absolute servitude, but introduced a new language and completely revolutionized the municipal laws of the entire nation. The sacrifice of human life incident to the conquest was small in comparison to the amount of misery, wretchedness, and degradation entailed on the vanquished for centuries afterwards by the conquerors-men gathered from every quarter of Europe, whose fortunes were at their swords' points, and whose fidelity and support were only to be purchased by the fruits of plunder and spoliation. Still, it must be admitted that the conquest had its advantages, and very great ones. From the departure of the Romans until the arrival of William, England proper cannot be said to have enjoyed any appreciable respite from foreign wars or domestic dissensions. The Britons, deprived of the powerful protection of the legions, were constantly harassed by their rapacious neighbors from the north side of the Tweed, and in trying to escape from them they fell into the clutches of their false allies, the Angles and Saxons, and narrowly escaped extermination. These latter were no sooner settled in the country than they established as many monarchies as they had chiefs, and, having for a time no foreign foe to contend against, readily turned their arms against each other on the slightest provocation. Weakened and distracted, they soon fell an easy prey to the piratical Northmen, who, under Canute and his successors, fastened on the fair lands of the middle and northern portions of the island and on the contiguous sea-ports a grip so tenacious that all the subsequent efforts of the Saxon monarchs could not unloosen it. This diversity of race and traditional forms of government naturally gave birth to laws and customs entirely at variance with each other in letter and spirit, and what was binding in one section was unknown or disregarded in another. The Normans, with the thoroughness of genuine conquerors, disregarded all such local distinctions, and reduced the entire native population to a level, thane and ceorl alike being made to endure the same burdens of servitude and compelled to obey implicitly the will of their new masters.

But the Normans were Christians, at least by profession, and boasted of a species of rude chivalry which prevented them from imitating the excesses of their pagan predecessors. While greedy enough for the secular lands of the defeated Saxons, they seldom interfered with churches or institutions of learning and charity; on the contrary, they were wise enough to protect the one and encourage the other in every manner possible consistent with their design of total subjection. They introduced generally the new system of feuds and a foreign hierarchy, it is true, but they did not deprive the people of the consolations of religion, and they gave to the country for the first time unity, the necessary precursor of rational freedom, and a national government with uniform laws, which, if born amid the clash of arms, rested its principal claims to support on the ways of peace.

The feudal system, though burdened with its aids, reliefs, seisin, wardship, and many other equally onerous conditions, was for that time the best and in fact the only proper form of government for England, and it is mainly to its uniform establishment by the conquerors, and to the judicious statesmanship of her great ecclesiastical lawyers, who subsequently gradually mitigated its harsher features, that the past and present greatness of that country is to be traced. The theory that the sovereign, representing the majesty of the nation, was the owner of all the lands of the kingdom, and that directly or indirectly all the occupiers of the soil were his tenants, holding by right of fealty and service, gave to the people what they so long wanted, a centre of unity and a common authority to which they could look for redress and protection. Besides, the system had become so general on the Continent, and had proved so admirable a machine for defence or aggression, that its adoption by the new Anglo-Norman kingdom had become a political necessity.

Though sadly behind many of her sister nations in the arts of government, England was not at the time of the conquest altogether deficient in the knowledge of civil or common law. On the contrary, she had many eminent professors of both. The monks of Croyland and Spaulding were distinguished as jurists, and Egelbert, Bishop of Chichester, is said, even by Norman authorities, to have been thoroughly acquainted not only with the canons and what was then known of the Roman civil law, but with "all the ancient laws and customs of the land."[71] The Normans, however, preferring to place their own countrymen in positions of trust and influence, invited from the Continent many learned bishops and professors, to whom they gave the charge of the principal sees and universities, and these, having been trained in the schools of Italy and France, soon substituted the study of the clearer and more equitable regulations of the lately-revived civil law for the illogical and conflicting customs of the natives. Thus the Pandects of Justinian were introduced into England by Vicarius, professor of canon law at Oxford, A.D. 1138, and he was succeeded by Accorso, a doctor of the civil law. Bishop Grosseteste wrote a treatise in favor of the study of Roman law, and Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, founded a professorship in Oxford to promote the same object. Of the latter prelate, it is said that he was accustomed to retain in his house "several learned persons famous for their knowledge of law, who spent the hours between prayers and dinner in lecturing, disputing, and debating causes."[72]

The conquerors of the Anglo-Saxons, though by no means deficient in the scholarship and accomplishments of that rude age, were too intent on retaining by force the possessions they had won by the strong arm, to cultivate the arts of peace, and, consequently, the framing of the laws, the judicial authority, and even the pleading of causes, necessarily devolved on the ecclesiastics. Hallam, a writer equally prejudiced with Blackstone, though a much better historian, is forced to admit that "the bishops acquired and retained much of their ascendency by a very respectable instrument of power--intellectual superiority. As they alone were acquainted with the art of writing, they were naturally entrusted with political correspondence and the making of the laws."[73] And it was well for the conqueror and conquered alike that it was so, for to them, and them alone, was given the skill and authority to restrain with one hand the ruthless oppressions of the lawless barons, and with the other to alleviate the sufferings of a down-trodden people. To the wisdom that proceeds from long communion with the works of great and good men they joined the authority of the church, which they failed not to call into requisition when persuasion and reasoning equally failed. To them we owe every successful effort that was made in the middle age of England's history, either against the tyranny of the crown or the injustice of the nobles. _Magna Charta_, that famous instrument, which, like our own constitution, is so frequently talked about and so little understood, issued from the fertile brain of Archbishop Langton, and was signed by every bishop and abbot in the land.[74] It was they who took up the serf, educated and ordained him, and made him not only the equal but in many cases the superior of his late master. They also regulated the alienation and descent of lands, and by their introduction of fines and recoveries, uses and trusts, and other forms of conveyance, not only abolished many of the worst evils of feudalism, but even, according to Blackstone, "laid the foundation of modern conveyancing." For many centuries they were the confidential advisers of kings, their trusted ambassadors abroad, and their names always appeared first in every writ summoning a council or parliament to legislate for the welfare of the realm, and the laws thus made were regularly dispensed in the county courts by the bishops and the civil magistrates sitting together with equal jurisdiction.

But it was in the court of chancery that the wisdom, clemency, and equity of the bishops of those days shone with the greatest brilliancy. This was a court of extraordinary jurisdiction, unknown in England before the conquest and unparalleled in contemporary nations. The chancellor and his assistants, almost without exception, up to the time of Wolsey, were ecclesiastics. Their decisions, resting upon conscience alone, though unsupported by express statute or even in contravention of its letter, had all the force of legal enactments, and formed, collectively, the basis of much of our modern remedial legislation, as well as an unerring rule for the guidance of our highest civil justices. The affairs of married persons, infants, idiots, corporations, bankrupts, testators and intestates, grantors and grantees of land, and of nearly every conceivable condition of life, are even at the present day within the special and almost exclusive jurisdiction of our courts of equity. In the words of a distinguished English lawyer, "It gives relief for and against infants, notwithstanding their minority, and for and against married women, notwithstanding their coverture. All frauds and deceits for which there is no redress at common law, all breaches of trust and confidence, and unavoidable casualties, by which obligors, mortgagors, and others may be held to incur penalties and forfeitures, are here remedied. This court also gives relief against the extremity of unreasonable engagements entered into without consideration, obliges creditors who are unreasonable to compound with an unfortunate debtor, and makes executors, etc., give security and pay interest for money which is to be long in their hands. The court may confirm the title to lands, though one has lost his writings, render conveyances which are defective through mistake or otherwise good and perfect. In chancery, copyholders may be relieved against the ill-usage of their lords, enclosures of land which is common may be decreed, and this court may also decree the disposition of money or lands given to charitable uses, oblige men to account with each other," etc.[75]

A system of laws like that of Chancery, so comprehensive and so equitable, defined and administered by a long succession of the most upright and enlightened men of the land, could not but have left a deep impression on the entire jurisprudence of the people who profited by its protection--an impression, indeed, that neither the mental obliquity of the fanatic nor the sophistry of the pedant has been able to obliterate. "So deep hath this canon law been rooted," says Lord Stairs, "that even where the Pope's authority is rejected, yet consideration must be had to these laws, not only as those by which the church benefices have been erected and ordered, but as likewise as containing many equitable and profitable provisions, which because of their weighty matter and their being once received may more fitly be retained than rejected."[76]

Had the prelates and priests of the Saxon and Norman periods done nothing for our law but what we find in the decisions of their equity courts, they would have conferred upon us an incalculable blessing, one equally calculated to liberalize the spirit of legislators, enlighten the understanding of jurists, and make government what it was designed to be, a shield for the weak and helpless, and a terror to the wicked and dishonest. But, as we have seen on the authority of writers conspicuous for their anti-Catholic bigotry, they did infinitely more. Statesmen as well as lawyers, they framed most of our best statutes as well as adjudicated upon them, and they originated or perfected every feature in our entire code which has stood the test of time, and enlarged civilization from trial by jury to the unqualified right of every man to dispose of his property as seems best to himself. They have thus placed us under obligations which we can only in part repay by transmitting their maxims unimpaired to our descendants, and by, at length, doing justice to their memories. And now, as we believe that the world is growing wiser as it is growing older, when time has healed many of the wounds inflicted during the great schismatic revolt of the sixteenth century, and, uninfluenced by passion or unawed by power, the scales of prejudice are falling from the eyes of those who through the fault of their fathers are aliens to the truth, it is not too much to hope that they will neither be ashamed nor afraid to acknowledge how much they are indebted to the church and her ministers for the generally admirable system of laws under which we live--laws which are at once our highest boast and best protection.

FOOTNOTES:

[59] _Vide 131, Nov. Justinian._

[60] Doctor Harris's translation, p. 49. London, 1814.

[61] Lib. ii. tit. 35.

[62] According to some authorities, a copy of the Pandects was discovered at Amalphi, in the middle of the twelfth century, and was first given to the world by two Italian lawyers. D'Israeli, in his _Curiosities of Literature_, says: "The original MS. of Justinian's Code was discovered by the Pisans accidentally when they took a city in Calabria. That vast code of laws had been in a manner unknown from the time of that Emperor. This curious book was brought to Pisa, and, when Pisa was taken by the Florentines, transferred to Florence, where it is still preserved." The Code, Pandects, and Institutes are still received as common law in Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Scotland in their entirety, and partly so in France, Spain, and Italy.

[63] _Middle Ages_, vol. ii. p. 201.

[64] _Encyclopædia Metropolitana._ London, 1846

[65] _Middle Ages_, vol. ii. p. 146.

[66] _Nov. Just. 123_, c. 21-23.

[67] _Middle Ages_, vol. ii. p. 149.

[68] Sir William Jones, a learned scholar and able jurist, was of opinion that the invention of trial by jury could be traced to the ancient Greeks, while Blackstone pretends that the credit of it is due to the Saxons who brought the custom with them to England; but Hallam and other superior authorities maintain that the canon quoted in the text is the first germ on record of this great distinguished feature of English common law, and that it was not till long after the advent of the Normans that it assumed its present systematic form.

[69] _Wilkins_, p. 100.

[70] P. 415.

[71] _Ingulph_, p. 36. Nicholl's _Lit. Anec._ vol. i. p. 28.

[72] Peter of Blois, _Epist._ vol. i. 3. Paris, 1519.

[73] _Middle Ages_, p. 150.

[74] The continued encroachments of the crown on the rights of the barons and their tenants led to an armed league against John I., the leading spirit of which was the intrepid Archbishop of Canterbury and the General, Robert Fitzwalter, who took the title of "Marshal of the Army of God and of Holy Church." The result was a timely concession of the king, which was granted in the form of a Great Charter. The importance of many of the liberal guarantees set forth in that instrument has departed with the special evils that gave rise to them, but many of a more general nature and such as related to cheap, speedy, and impartial justice, have become integral parts of the British Constitution. As to the document itself, D'Israeli relates the following curious circumstance: "Sir Thomas Cotton one day at his tailor's discovered that the man was holding in his hand, ready to cut up for measures, an original _magna charta_, with all its appendages of seals and signatures. He bought the curiosity for a trifle, and recovered in this manner what had been given over for lost. This anecdote is told by Colomies, who long resided and died in this country. An original _magna charta_ is preserved in the Cottonian Library; it exhibits marks of dilapidation, but whether from the invisible scythe of time or the humble scissors of a tailor I leave to archæological inquiry."

[75] _Enc. Brit._, art. "Law," p. 413.

[76] _Institutes_, b. 1, tit. 1, § 14.

TO THE CRUCIFIED.[77]

See how fond science, with unwearied gaze, Eyes on the sun's bright disk each fiery vent, And from his flaming crown each ray up-sent Searches, as miners, in their furnace-blaze--

Seek trace of gold. But who to thee doth raise His eyes the while? Who, with true heart intent, Scans thy sharp crown, thy bosom's yawning rent, And peers into its depths with love's amaze?

Let me, at least, come near the abysmal side, And reach out to the heart which throbs within. I am oppressed with woe and shame and sin; Oh! suffer me within that cleft to hide! There glows the fire which purifies each stain; There burns the love which bids me live again.

FOOTNOTE:

[77] Thoughts suggested by reading, in _Nature_, an account of the solar eclipse of December, 1870.

LAS ANIMAS[78]

_Don Fernan._ Uncle Romance, I am coming in, although it don't rain.

_Uncle Romance._ Welcome, Señor Don Fernan. Your worship comes to this, your house, like the sun, to illumine it. Has your worship any commands?

_Don F._ I am hungry for a story, Uncle Romance.

_Uncle R._ Story again! Señor, does your worship think that my yarns are like Don Crispin's titles, that were past counting? Your worship must excuse me; I'm in a bad way to-day; my memory is broken-winded, and my wits are heavier than bean-broth. But, not to disappoint your worship, I'll call my Chana.[79] Ch-a-a-a-na! Sebas-ti-a-a-na! What ails the woman? She is getting to be like the Marquis of Montegordo, who remained mute, blind, and deaf.[80] Ch-a-a-na!!

_Aunt Sebastiana._ What do you mean, man, by bawling like a cowherd? Oh! Señor Don Fernan is here. God be with you, señor! How is your worship?

_Don F._ Never better, Aunt Sebastiana; and you are well?

_Aunt S._ Ay! no, señor; I'm fallen away like a lime-kiln.

_Don F._ Why, what has been the matter with you?

_Uncle R._ The same that ailed the other one who was sunning herself:

"_Una vieja estaba al sol Y mirando al almanaque: En cuando en cuando decia, 'Ya va la luna menguante.'_"

"An old woman was sunning herself And studying the almanac: From time to time she said, 'The moon is waning already.'"

_Aunt S._ No, señor, it isn't that. God and his dear mother do not take away our flesh, but the child when he is born, and the mother when she dies; and my son--my own life--

_Uncle R._ There, Chana, don't mention Juan, the big hulk, with more ribs than a frigate.[81]

_Aunt S._ Don't believe it, señor; he just talks to hear himself, and don't know what he's saying. That boy of mine is more gentle and reasonable; he wouldn't say scat to the cat. He has served in the army six years, and has got his lights snuffed.[82]

_Uncle R._ His lights are those of midnight. He entered the uniform, but the uniform hasn't entered him.[83]

_Don F._ But what is the trouble, Aunt Sebastiana?

_Aunt S._ Señor, he can't get work.

_Don F._ Oh! I'll give him work, if you'll tell me a story.

_Aunt S._ My man, here, would do it better. Your worship knows that he has the name of being such a good story-teller. He never wants for a tale.

_Don F._ That is true; but to-day he's not in a talking mood.

_Aunt S._ If I hadn't--

_Uncle R._ Come, come, woman, don't keep his worship in expectation, like a watch-dog. A story, and a good one; for you could talk if you were under water.

_Aunt S._ Would your worship like to hear about the _animas_?

_Don F._ Without delay. Let us hear about the _animas_.

_Aunt S._ There was once a poor woman who had a niece that she brought up as straight as a bolt. The girl was a good girl, but very timid and bashful. The dread of what might become of this child, if she should be taken away, was the poor old woman's greatest anxiety. Therefore, she prayed to God, night and day, to send her niece a kind husband.

The aunt did errands for the house of a gossip of hers that kept boarders. Among the guests of this house was a great nabob, who condescended to say that he would marry if he could find a girl modest, industrious, and clever. You may be sure that the old woman's ear was wide open. A few days afterwards, she told the nabob that he would find what he was looking for in her niece, who was a treasure, a grain of gold, and so clever that she painted even the birds of the air. The gentleman said that he would like to know her, and would go to see her the next day. The old woman ran home so fast that she never saw the path, and told her niece to tidy up the house, and to comb her hair, and dress herself, the next morning, with great care, for they were going to have company.

When the gentleman came, the next day, he asked the girl if she knew how to spin.

"Spin, is it?" answered the aunt.

"She takes the hanks down like glasses of water."

"What have you done, madam?" cried the niece when the gentleman had gone, after giving her three hanks of flax to spin for him. "What _have_ you done? And I don't know how to spin!"

"Go along," said the aunt, "go along, for a poor article that will sell well, _and don't set your foot down_,[84] but let it be as God will."

"Into what a thorn-brake you have put me, madam!" said the niece, crying.

"Well, see that you get out of it," answered the aunt; "but these three hanks must be spun, for your fortune depends upon them."

The poor girl went to her room in sore distress, and betook herself to imploring the blessed souls, for which she had great devotion.

While she prayed, three beautiful souls, clothed in white, appeared to her, and told her not to be troubled, for they would help her in return for the good she had done them by her prayers; and, taking each one a hank, they changed the flax into thread as fine as your hair in less time than would be worth one's while to name.

When the nabob came, the next day, he was astonished to see the result of so much diligence united with so much skill.

"Did I not tell your worship so!" exclaimed the old woman, beside herself with delight.

The gentleman asked the girl if she knew how to sew.

"And why shouldn't she?" answered the aunt with spirit. "Pieces of sewing are no more in her hands than cherries would be in the big snake's mouth."[85]

The gentleman then left her linen to make him three shirts, and, not to tire your worship, it happened just as it had the day before; and the same took place on the day after, when the nabob brought a satin waistcoat to be embroidered; except that, when, in answer to her many tears and great fervor, the souls appeared and said to the girl, "Don't be troubled, we are going to embroider this waistcoat for you," they added, "but it must be upon a condition."

"What condition?" inquired the girl anxiously.

"That you ask us to your wedding."

"Am I going to be married?" said the girl.

"Yes," answered the souls, "to that rich man."

And so it turned out, for, when the gentleman came, the next day, and saw his waistcoat so exquisitely wrought that it seemed as though hands of flesh could not have touched it, and so beautiful that to look at it fairly took away his eyesight, he told the aunt that he wanted to marry her niece.

The aunt was ready to dance for joy. Not so the niece, who said to her: "But, madam, what will become of me when my husband finds out that I don't know how to do anything?"

"Go along! _and don't make up your mind_," answered the aunt. "The blessed souls that have helped you in other straits are not going to desert you in this."

On the wedding-day, when the feasting was at its height, three old women entered the parlor. They were so beyond anything ugly that the nabob was struck dumb with horror.

The first had one arm very short, and the other so long that it dragged on the ground; the second was humped and crooked; and the eyes of the third stuck out like a crab's, and were redder than a tomato.

"Jesus, Maria!" said the astonished gentleman to his bride, "who are those three scarecrows?"

"They are three aunts of my father," she replied, "that I invited to my wedding."

The nabob, who was mannerly, went to speak to the aunts and find them seats.

"Tell me," he said to the first, "what makes one of your arms so short and the other so long?"

"My son," answered the old woman, "it was spinning so much that made them grow that way."

The nabob hurried to his wife and told her to burn her distaff and spindle, and to take care that she never let him see her spin.

He immediately asked the second old woman what made her so humpbacked and crooked.

"My son," she answered, "I grew so by working all the while at my broidery-frame."

With three strides the gentleman put himself beside his wife, and said to her: "Go this minute, and burn your broidery-frame, and take care that in the lifetime of God I do not catch you with another."

Then he went to the third old woman, and asked her what made her eyes look so red and as if they were going to burst?

"My son," she answered, giving them a frightful roll, "this comes of continual sewing, and of keeping my head bent over the work."

Before the words were out of her mouth, the nabob was at his wife's side: "Go," said he, "gather all your needles and thread, and throw them into the well, and bear in mind that the day I find you sewing, I will sue for a divorce. The sight of the halter on another's neck is warning enough for me."

_Aunt S._ And now, Señor Don Fernan, my story is ended; I hope that it has pleased you?

_Don F._ Ever so much, Aunt Sebastiana; but what I learn from it is, that the souls, notwithstanding that they are blessed, are very tricky.

_Aunt S._ Now, señor, and is your worship going to insist upon doctrine in a romance, as if it were an example? Why, stories are only to make us laugh, and grow better without precept or name of lesson. God will have a little of all.

_Don F._ True, Aunt Sebastiana; and what you express with your simple good sense is more wholesome than the critical reverence of the overstrict. But, uncle, I am not going without another to correspond with this, and it is your turn now. If, as I think you have told me that you were on other occasions, you are a devotee of San Tomas,[86] here are some Havanas as an offering to his saintship.

_Uncle R._ Not to disoblige your worship.

_Don F._ But I must have the story; I want it for a purpose.

_Uncle R._ By which your worship means to say that, without an _ochavo_, you can't make up the _real_.[87] Well, let me think. Since the talk is about _animas, animas_ it is. Their sodality in a certain place had for mayordomo a poor _bread-lost_[88] of a member, one of those who are always like the sheep that misses the mouthful.[89] He was without a cloak, and went with teeth chattering and limbs benumbed with cold. What does he do but go and order himself a cloak made, and, without so much as saying _chuz_ or _muz_,[90] or by your leave, sirs, take money from the funds of the _animas_ to pay for it. When it came home, he put it on, and went into the street as consequential and _high-stomached_ as those rich folks recently raised from the dust. But at every step he took, some one gave the cloak a jerk, and though he kept a sharp lookout he could not see who. The instant he drew it up on the left shoulder, down it slid from the right, causing him to keep a continual hitch, hitch. You would have thought he had a thorn in his foot.

As he went along, pestered and chap-fallen, trying to make out what it could mean, he met a gossip of his, who was mayordomo to the _Hermandad del Santísimo_.[91] This fellow was stalking loftily, filling the street with his air that said, _Get out of the way, I am coming_. After "How d'ye do?" this one asked the other, "What is the matter, comrade, that you seem so down at the mouth lately?"

"Matter enough!" answered he of the souls, pulling his cloak up on the right shoulder while it slipped off from the left. "Know that in the beginning of the winter I found myself in difficulties. I had sown a _pegujar_[92] without seeing the color of wheat. My wife brought me two boys, when, with the nine I had already, one would have been too many; the delivery cost her a long sickness, and me the eyes of my face. In few, I was just stuck to the wall like a star-lizard, and hungrier than an ex-minister. I had to borrow money of the souls to get this cloak; but what the seven ails it I don't know, for, whenever I put it on, it seems as though somebody was giving it a pull here and a jerk there. Two rudder-pins couldn't hold it fast to my shoulders."

"You did wrong, my friend," responded the steward of El Santísimo. "If, like me, you had taken a loan of a great powerful and _giving_ personage, you wouldn't have to go about as you do, chased and persecuted for the debt. If you borrow of miserable destitute wretches, what can you expect but that the poor things will try to get back their own when they need it so much?"

FOOTNOTES:

[78] "The Souls"--generally said of souls in purgatory.

[79] Diminutive for Sebastiana.

[80]

"El Marques de Montegordo Que se quedó mudo ciego y sordo."

Said of those who do not wish to speak, see, or hear.

[81] Very obstinate.

[82] _Tiene las luces espabiladas._ He has his lights snuffed, _i.e._, wits brightened--a common expression.

[83] _Ha entrado en la casaca pero la casaca no ha entrado en él._ Though he has put on soldier clothes, he hasn't gained wit by a soldier's experience.

[84] _Dejarse ir_, rule of rustic grammar, literally equivalent to "don't commit yourself."

[85] The _Tarasca_, or mammoth snake--an immense frame covered with canvas, and painted to resemble a snake--which is carried in front of the procession on the feast of Corpus Christi.

[86] Saint Thomas is the patron of smokers.

[87] A little more than a farthing, as if he had said, "Without the farthing, you can't make the fip."

[88] _Pan perdido._

[89] _Oveja que bala bocado pierde._ The sheep that baas misses a mouthful.

[90] Without saying _chuz_ or _muz_--without saying anything.

[91] Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament.

[92] Field hired of the town.

SAINT JOHN DWARF.

One day a hermit father in God, Planting in earth a pilgrim's rod, For holy obedience did pray Dwarf John to water it every day.

From the far river daily brought Silent John his water-pot; As 'twere a soul's task done for God, For three long years he watered the rod.

When lo! the dry wood forth did shoot, And bear of obedience flower and fruit! Water thy barren heart with tears, And the same shall happen in good three years.

HOW ROME LOOKED THREE CENTURIES AGO.[93]

Let us suppose a company of travellers through Italy--strangers from foreign climes, England, Germany, and France--reaching Rome at the period of the accession of Sixtus V. to the throne of St. Peter. Approaching the Eternal City by the road from the north, they find themselves before the Porta del Popolo.

Let us go in with them, and through their eyes see the Rome of that day.

On entering the gates, they pass into an open place of irregular shape. A large convent occupies nearly the entire eastern side, which, with the graceful _campanile_, or bell-tower, of Santa Maria del Popolo, and the high houses with wide portals between the Corso, the Ripetta, and the Babuino, are the only edifices visible. The obelisk is not yet placed there by Sixtus V., and the two little churches with their heavy cupolas, so well known to the modern tourist, and the other buildings now seen there--the work of Pius VII. and the architect Valadier--did not then exist. The Piazza del Popolo was then less symmetrical, but more picturesque. Wayfarers on horseback and on foot pass to and fro; muleteers arrive and depart, driving before them lines of mules and beasts of burden. In the centre of the place women are washing at a circular basin. Idlers follow and gaze at the strangers while they make their declaration to the _bargel_, or public authority, and submit their effects to the examination of the custom officials. These preliminaries through, our travellers may pass into the city by a street leading around the base of the Pincian Hill, by another going toward the Tiber, both of which have long ceased to exist, or by the well-known Corso. Some find their way to the then celebrated and already venerable hostelry,

THE BEAR,

widely known and greatly in vogue ever since the reign of Sixtus IV. Its peculiar octagon pillars fix the period of its construction. Strange to relate, this patriarch of hotels, which has seen four centuries and twenty generations of travellers pass over its head and through its halls, has continued in existence, and is still open as a tavern in Rome to this day. True, its guests are now no longer, as they were in the sixteenth century, such personages of distinction as foreign prelates, noted scholars, philosophers like Montaigne, and, soon afterward, the earliest known tourists. Its inmates and frequenters of the nineteenth century are now country traders, cattle dealers, and wagoners.

Others of our travellers who intend to make a longer stay in Rome seek out the houses in the neighborhood of the Pantheon or the Minerva, nearly all of which are let out to strangers in rooms or suites. These apartments are luxuriously fitted up and ornamented with the then famous Cordova leather hangings, and richly sculptured and gilded furniture. Everything is brilliant to the eye, but the nineteenth century tourist would have found fault with the lack of cleanliness and the stinted supply of fresh linen.

With yet others of these travellers, let us enter

THE CORSO,

the Via Lata of the ancient Romans. There is no sign of business on it at this early day. But few of the aristocracy have as yet transferred their residences here, but it already wears an air of life and animation, and is well filled at the hours of the promenade.

We pass along between vineyards and vegetable gardens. A single large edifice just completed strikes the stranger's attention. It is the magnificent Ruspoli palace, built by Rucellai, the Florentine banker, upon the designs of his countryman Ammanati.

Now we reach the Via Condotti, to-day well-known to every American who ever saw Rome. Let us turn into it to the left, and traverse it to the Piazza della Trinita (now Piazza di Spagna), whence we may scale the hill above and obtain a commanding view of the entire city.

In doing this, we pass through the then worst quarter of Rome, physically and morally, for the triangle formed by the Corso, the Via Condotti, and the Babuino was at once of the most evil repute and the most unhealthy in all Rome. In this quarter were sure to break out all the epidemics which at that period occasionally decimated the population of Rome. Seeking to mount

THE PINCIAN HILL,

the traveller of that day might have looked in vain for the broad flight of easy marble steps we now see there, and he ascended by a steep and narrow staircase. On reaching the summit, he found himself on the _collis hortulorum_ of the Romans, and saw it still covered with vineyards and tilled fields, and the comparatively modern innovation of the garden of the Villa Medici. The elegant world of Rome in 1585 had to content themselves with taking their promenade and their enjoyment of the evening air about the Porta del Popolo, and knew naught of the charming promenade, the delightful walks, the purer breeze, and the beautiful view which later generations enjoy on the hill above it.

The great painters of the succeeding age who came to Rome, the Carracci, the Domenichinos, the Guidos, and the Salvator Rosas, were the first to discover the attractions of the Pincian Hill, and, braving custom, lack of accommodation, the bad neighborhood, and the unhealthy contiguity of the quarter below, were the first to establish themselves upon it. This was the foundation of the modern Pincian settlement.

Some years ago, the writer of this article occupied apartments in the first house to the right on reaching the summit of the Pincian steps. The tradition of the house ran to the effect that these rooms had been occupied by Salvator Rosa; and if, as they say, he selected them for the sake of their view of the setting sun, he chose well, for all the sunsets of Rome may there be seen to the best advantage. As an American, however, views of the setting sun in Italy were not specially attractive to us, and we always regretted for Salvator Rosa's sake that he had never seen a transatlantic sunset, compared with which those at Naples and Rome are tame spectacles. The traditional "beauty of an Italian sunset" is one of the many English provincialisms we have adopted and believed in along with numerous other errors embalmed in the literature of England. But we forget that we are standing on the Pincian in 1585. All is silent and deserted around us, and Rome is spread out at our feet.

To the left are the salient points, the seven hills--for the Pincian was not one of them--the towers of the Capitol, the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars in the Farnese gardens on the Palatine, the belfry of Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline, the Quirinal, as yet without the imposing mass of the pontifical palace. The Rospigliosi palace was not yet built, but the villa of Cardinal Sforza is seen, the same afterward known as the Barberini palace. We turn our eyes upon the lower city--inhabited Rome--and with difficulty make out but three or four cupolas. On the other hand, we see a perfect forest of towers on every side, some of them of prodigious size. On the left bank of the Tiber, many of these towers have of late years disappeared, but the Trastevere, as might be expected, is still full of them--so full, indeed, that a distant view of that quarter presents the appearance of a comb turned teeth upward. At that period, these towers were the universal appendage of an aristocratic dwelling. San Gemiguiano near Sienna is the only city in all Italy which has preserved them to this day.

As our stranger of three hundred years ago looks over Rome and listens to the confused noises which meet his ear, he is struck with the rarity of the sound of bells and with the small number of churches discernible. The great Catholic reaction consequent on the Reformation had for fifty years moved souls, but had not yet begun to move the stones. It is the following era which is to imprint upon Rome the architectural marks of the church triumphant. Later in the day, when our strangers shall have descended into the city and entered the churches, they will be struck with the barrenness of their interiors, and with the absence of paintings. They are probably ignorant of the fact that in Italy, during the middle ages, there was but one altar in a church, that there alone Mass was celebrated, that the mosaics and frescoes came in with architectural innovation, and that only toward the end of the sixteenth century were altars and oil-paintings multiplied with the side chapels.

And yet this comparative quiet of the city was animation itself, compared with the sights and sounds discernible from the same point at the period when the popes returned to Rome from Avignon.

ROME IN 1400.

The residence of the Cæsars was covered with fields, vineyard, and pasture. The Pantheon, the Coliseum, some ruins, and detached columns alone arose over the surrounding waste as witnesses of former grandeur.

It was at this period that the Forum received the name of "The Cow Pasture" (Campo Vaccino). A remnant of life yet remained in the plain extending between the Tiber, the Pincian Hill, and the Capitoline, but the total population of Rome was reduced to 17,000 souls, the great majority of them huddled together and crowded in hovels clustered under the shadow of the baronial and aristocratic strongholds. High battlemented towers filled the city. Of the scores in the Trastevere, that of the Auguilara family exists to this day. On the Tiberine island arose the Frangipani towers, on the left bank those of the Orsini, from the Porta del Popolo to the Quirinal those of the Colonna, while the towers of the Mellini and the Sanguigni may still be seen on the site of the stadium of Domitian.

Of all the seven hills of Rome, one only had not fallen into the hands of the barons. The Capitoline was still held by the people. But commerce, industry, and the arts had all disappeared. Rome had long been cut off from connection with the active world, and when the work of material revival and rebuilding began, not only architects and sculptors, but stone masons and carpenters had to be brought in from Tuscany and Umbria.

AN ARCHITECTURAL RETROSPECT.

Under the pontificates of Sixtus IV. and his two successors, Pintelli, a pupil of Brunellesco, ornamented Rome with such monuments as San Pietro _in Montorio_, the façade of St. Peter, and the Sistine Chapel. He brought to his work the boldness and taste of his master, who had made profound study of the monuments of ancient Rome.

This was the period of the first _renaissance_, with its charms and imperfections, at once timid and capricious, imitating the models of antiquity in their details, but utterly mistaking the proportions which are the essential, while succeeding brilliantly in the accessories and ornaments borrowed from the ancients and used in profusion with some endeavor to adapt them to the ideas and needs of the period. The fundamental principle of architecture, which requires that the exterior should express or respond to the use for which the interior is destined, was unknown to Pintelli.

To break the monotony of the lines, the façade of any given building was, as it were, framed, decoration was freely used, and the object was to please the eye, no matter by what means. At that day, the architect was also the painter, and the majority of artists were both. The first _renaissance_ obtained its apogee toward the year 1500. In the nature of things it had then outlived its day, and a change became indispensable at the risk of degradation.

Fortunately Bramante was ready to answer the call. He was from Umbria, and Raphael was his nephew. He had studied in the north of Italy, where, amid plains devoid of stone, the architect was forced to use brick. Hence the novelty of combination introduced by him in Rome, whose inexhaustible stone quarries were such ancient monuments as the Coliseum. It is from the absence of heavy building-stone and the contrast of the German taste of the Longobards with the Byzantine style of Ravenna that the Lombard style is begotten. It brought with it precisely what the _renaissance_ most needed, namely, its exquisite sentiment of proportions, and it forms the transition between the two schools of the _renaissance_, the latter of which formed the golden era of architecture in Italy.

Its reign in Rome has left indelible traces. Its productions--and among them are the court of St. Damas, the Belvedere, the galleries of the Vatican, the Giraud palace--were the pride of the age. They taught the comprehension of proportions, the calculation of perspective, the culture of harmony of detail and _ensemble_, reformed false taste, and created an epoch in profane architecture. With increase of public security, even the Roman barons began to understand that the greatest beauty of the architectural art might be found elsewhere than in a high tower or a battlemented block-house. Even the _mezzo-ceto_, or middle class, began to contract a taste for something beyond the absolutely necessary, and sought to adorn even their modest habitations. A private dwelling-house built at this period and exclusively _bramantesque_ may still be seen in Rome on the _strada papale_, opposite the _Governo Vecchio_. It yet bears the date of its construction (1500) and the name of its builder.

After the death of Bramante appeared Raphael, Michael Angelo, Giulio Romano, and Balthasar Peruzzi, who, prodigal of their treasures of genius, created a golden age.

Romano's Villa Madama became the type of the country-seat; Peruzzi's Farnesina, that of the modern palace. Raphael, more as painter than as architect, composed the designs of the palace Vidoni. It was the great epoch of the culture of simplicity in grandeur, of disdain for the small and the superfluous, of faithful and noble expression of the idea conceived.

The models of antiquity were still followed, but they were transformed. The architect translated modern conceptions into the sonorous but dead and strange language of the old Romans. In interior ornamentation, however, the artist could give free rein to his inspirations, and throw off the trammels of the severe rules scrupulously followed as to the façade and the general composition of the design. Alas! it was here they planted the germs of degeneration and decay. Public taste--never a safe guide--seized upon and clung to these prodigalities of an exuberant and fantastic imagination supposed to be inexhaustible. At Florence, in his work on the chapel of the Medicis, Michael Angelo was the first to enter this flowery but treacherous path.

We see and admire these niches, windows, and ornaments, charming indeed to the eye, but which have no _raison d'être_. It was at a later period, under the pontificate of Paul III., that the painter of the "Last Judgment" and the sculptor of "Moses" revealed himself at Rome, as an architect stamped his work on the Farnese palace, and astonished the world by reconstructing St. Peter's. Soon this style gained the upper hand. Simplicity yielded to riches; logic to caprice; unrestricted liberty succeeded the voluntary curb which the great masters of the epoch had imposed upon themselves. Presently came pauses. Halts were made. As in all human affairs, action and reaction succeeded. Not so much in details as in _ensemble_, Vignoli in Rome, Palladio at Vicenza, and to a certain degree Scamazzi in Venice, brought back architecture to the sobriety of the commencement of the century.

But the death of Michael Angelo appeared to have completely demoralized the architects who survived. For thirty years he had reigned supreme. In him alone had the popes confidence; and upon architects employed by them, they imposed the obligation of following him. Piero Ligorio, architect of St. Peter, was dismissed because he manifested an intention to put aside Michael Angelo's plans. In thus officially guarding the manes of the dead master, they apparently hoped to transfer his genius to those who succeeded him. But it was a sad and fatal mistake.

The amount of building effected in Rome during the last third of the sixteenth century has never, probably, been exceeded. In examining the productions of that epoch, the struggle between the servile imitators of Buonarotti and the men of progress, desirous, but through lack of originality incapable, of emancipating themselves, is readily discerned. But let us leave this retrospect, descend the steps of the Pincian Hill, and, traversing the Piazza di Spagna and the Via Condotti, enter

THE CORSO AGAIN,

at the points where to-day's tourist sees the Via della Fontanella, by which he goes toward the bridge of St. Angelo, on his way to St. Peter's. Here our travellers of 1585, passing under the arch of Marcus Aurelius, which separated the Corso into two distinct parts, and was afterwards swept away by Alexander VII. to straighten and widen the thoroughfare, find themselves really in Rome. On either side are solidly built houses without windows or balconies, covered with frescoes, and so high that the sun reaches the pavement only at mid-day. Looking down the Corso, the traveller perceives at its extremity, above the _palazetto_ of St. Mark, the battlemented convent of _Ara Cœli_, and the tower of the Capitol. Leaving the Colonna place and the Antonine column to the right, our travellers soon reach the place and palace of St. Mark, with its immense battlemented façades, surmounted by a colossal tower built of stone almost entirely taken from the Coliseum. With the exception of some few modifications in the windows of the façade fronting on the Via del Gesú, and in the roof of the tower which formerly projected, this palace--now known as the Austrian--to-day appears to us as the traveller saw it three hundred years ago. Near by is the Church and Convent of the Apostles, where in after-years were shown the cells occupied by the two friars who became respectively Sixtus V. and Clement XIV. (Ganzanelli). When the monks of this convent called in a body upon Sixtus V. to felicitate him on his accession, the cook of the community went up alone to the pope at the close of the audience. "Holy Father," said he, "you doubtless remember the wretched repasts of which you partook when with us?" Sixtus replied that the expression "wretched repasts" perfectly described the meals in question. "Well," continued the cook, "the cause was the want of good water--give us water."

Sixtus declared that this was the only reasonable demand yet made of him, and immediately ordered the construction in the ancient court of a beautiful fountain, which, although much injured by time, yet exists.

Still progressing towards the Capitol, our travellers pass the _Gesú_. In the small house adjoining it Ignatius Loyola died, and St. Francis Borgia has but lately expired there. And now they ascend to the Capitol by the _cordonata_ of Michael Angelo. Looking still onward, they catch a glimpse of the Forum (_Campo Vaccino_), enlivened only by droves of browsing cattle and here and there a searcher of buried antique statues. Beyond the Arch of Titus all is silent solitude.

The modern, active, living

ROME OF THAT DAY

was within the triangle bounded by the Corso, the Tiber, and the Capitol. Our travellers turn their faces towards the St. Angelo Bridge, and approach it by long, narrow, and crooked streets, nearly corresponding with the Via Giulia and the Monserrato which we to-day traverse. This was the Faubourg St. Germain of the period, full of palaces, but stately and silent. The strangers find the activity, movement, display, and exuberant activity of Rome in the street now known as the _Banchi_, then lined with the residences of wealthy bankers, in the rich Spanish quarter beyond the Piazza Navona, in the _Tordinone_ and _Coronari_.

From the rising to the setting of the sun, throngs of people fill these badly paved thoroughfares, which are more thickly lined with palaces as they approach the bridge. Our strangers are impressed with the great crowd of people, and are of the opinion that it exceeds that of the Marais in Paris, and is second only to the throngs they saw in Venice. About the Pantheon and the Minerva are the houses already mentioned where travellers and visitors to Rome find furnished suites of apartments--the Fifth Avenue and St. Nicholas Hotels of the period. A few years later (1595), on beholding this, the Venetian ambassador writes that "Rome has reached the apogee of its grandeur and prosperity."

With difficulty a passage through the crowd is effected, and the task is rendered even dangerous by the large number of carriages in circulation.

In 1594, there were eight hundred and eighty-three private carriages in the city. They were almost an essential. The great St. Charles Borromeo said, "There are two things necessary in Rome--save your soul and keep a carriage." And a singular-looking carriage it was to our eyes. In shape resembling a cylinder open at both ends, with doors at either side, knocked and tossed about in a sort of basket on four clumsy wheels. The elegants and beaux of the day usually had an opening in the top of the vehicle through which, as they progressed, they admired fair ladies at their windows. "They make an astrolabe of their carriage," thundered a preacher in denunciation of the practice. The crowd increases as the St. Angelo Bridge is approached, and it equals the human pressure of the period of the jubilee as described by Dante:[94]

Come i Roman, per l'esercito molto, L'anno del giubbileo, su per lo ponte Hanno a passar la gente modo tolto;

Che dall' un late tutti hanno la fronte Verso 'l castello, e vanno a Santo Pietro; Dall' altra sponda vanno verso 'l monte (Giordano).

_Dante_, _Inferno_, ch. xviii.

No ladies are seen. They seldom go out, and then only in carriages. We find the modern Italians highly demonstrative. Their ancestors were more so, as our travellers noticed at every step. Men meeting acquaintances in the street exchanged profound bows. Friends embraced "with effusion." People threw themselves on their knees before those of whom they had favors to ask.

DINNERS AND BANQUETS

for invited guests were sumptuous and of long duration. The culinary art of that epoch--as we learn from a work of Bartholomew Scarpi, the _Grand Vatel_ of the sixteenth century and head cook of the saintly Paul V., whose personal meals cost sixty cents a day, but who, in state receptions, entertained magnificently--was something wonderful, according to our modern ideas. For grand dinners, there were four courses. The first consisted of preserved fruits and ornamented pastry, from which, on being opened, little birds flew out, making it literally a _vol au vent_. Then came the other courses composed of a multitude of the most diverse dishes, poultry with all the feathers on, capons cooked in bottles, meat, game, and fish, alternating with sweet dishes in confused pell-mell, utterly subversive of all our modern gastronomic ideas. Some dishes were prepared with rose-water, and substances the most heterogeneous and contradictory were mingled in the same preparations. The sublimity of the style was to effect the sharpest possible contrast of materials and odors.

The wines most in favor were the heady wines of Greece, the Malvoisy, and the great Neapolitan brands, the Lachrima and the _Mangiaguerra_, described as black in color, powerful, spirituous, and so thick that it could almost be cut. So, at least, reports the Venetian Bernardo Navagero, writing from Rome in 1558: "E possente e gagliardo, nero e tantospesso che si potria quasi tagliare."

Before the dessert, the cloth was removed, the guests washed their hands, and the table was covered with sweet dishes, highly perfumed, preserved eggs, and syrups.

Both before and after the repast, distinguished guests used what we would now call finger-bowls and mouth-glasses, demonstratively and even noisily. On arising from table, bouquets of flowers were distributed among the guests. From contemporaneous statements as to the cost of various entertainments of that period, we should judge that the Roman provision supply was much cheaper than we to-day find it in those marvels of modern architecture, the Washington and Fulton Markets. Thus, for instance, a wedding-supper, given by a Roman nobleman (Gottofredi), and which was at the time (1588) noted for its beauty as well as its extravagance, cost five hundred crowns, equivalent, allowing for the difference in specie values, to about nine hundred dollars of our money.

THE HORSE-RACES ON THE CORSO,[95]

during the carnival, are, of course, witnessed by our travellers. These races were formerly one of the traditional holiday amusements of the Piazza Navona, which is on the site of a Roman amphitheatre, and they were transferred to the Corso by Paul II. (1468). Seated in the small room of the corner of the Palazetto of St. Mark, whose windows command a view of the entire length of the Corso, this good-natured pontiff, who was fond of promoting the innocent amusement of his subjects, witnessed the running, and had the _barberi_ (little horses) stopped at that point. The poor governors of Rome have ever since borne and still bear the servitude of this tradition. Four hundred years have gone by since Paul II. sat at the window on the Corso, but to this day the Governor of Rome, clothed in the official robes, whose cut and fashion have not varied a line in all that time, must, in the very same room and at the very same window, witness the running and have the horses stopped at the same points. Under Gregory XIII. these races had somewhat degenerated. Buffaloes of the Campagna, as well as horses, were run, and races were even made for children and for Jews. Sixtus V. reformed all this and made new regulations, which, with slight modifications, are to this day in force.

LITERATURE AND THE THEATRE.

At the period of which we treat, there existed a decided taste for the drama--such as it then was--but it was a taste exercised under difficulties. During the carnival of 1588, permission was obtained, as a great favor, from Sixtus V. to allow representations by the Desiosi troupe, at that time the most celebrated in Italy. But the license was hampered with the following conditions:

_First._ The representations should take place in the daytime.

_Second._ No woman should appear on the stage.

_Third._ No spectator should be admitted with arms about his person.

Such a public edifice as a theatre was at that time unknown in Italy. True, many princes had halls constructed in their palaces for dramatic representations, and the Olympic Academy of Vicenza erected a building for the purpose, which was completed on the designs of Palladio.

As for the dramas represented, it is easy to understand their inferiority when we know that Guarini's _Pastor Fido_ gained a reputation not yet entirely lost, by reason not of its merit, but because of the inferiority of every dramatic production of the time.

The costumes, decorations, and _mise en scène_ formed the main attractions, but the plays themselves loudly proclaimed the decay of literature. They possessed neither originality, invention, nor poetry. When we contemplate our own elevated and purified stage of the present period, with its bouffe, Black Crook, blondes, and brigands, how profoundly should we not pity the benighted Italians of 1585!

About this time, the first edition of Tasso's _Jerusalem Delivered_ made its appearance. Issued without the author's consent, it was both defective and incorrect. In spite of the enmity of the Grand Duke Francis and, what was more to be feared, of the opposition of the Della Cruscan Academy, the _Jerusalem_ at once achieved an immense success--a success purely due to its beauty of diction. Contemporary criticisms of Italian poets whose names have since become immortal read strangely now. Tasso was sneered at, Ariosto's merit seriously contested, and Dante absolutely condemned.

"This poet," says Giuseppe Malatesta, a distinguished writer of that day, "has borrowed the wings of Icarus to remove himself as far as possible from the vulgar, and, by dint of searching for the sublime, he has fallen into an obscure sea of obscurities. He is both philosopher and theologian. Of the poet he has only the rhyme. To measure his hell, his purgatory, his paradise, one needs astrolabes. To understand them, one should constantly have at hand some theologian capable of commenting upon his text. He is crude and barbarous; he strives to be disgusting and obscure when it would really cost him less effort to be clear and elegant, resembling in this certain great personages who, possessed of an admirable calligraphy, nevertheless, through pure affectation, write as illegibly as possible."

FOOTNOTES:

[93] The materials for this article are found in the learned work of Gregorovius (_Geschichte der Stadt Rom_), the publication of which, commenced at Stuttgardt in 1859, is not yet fully completed; in Baron Hübner's _Life of Sixtus V._; Burckhardt's _Cicerone in Italy_; and Von Reumont's classical work on _Middle Ages Rome_.

[94]

Even as the Romans, for the mighty host, The year of jubilee, upon the bridge, Have chosen a mode to pass the people over.

For all upon one side towards the castle Their faces have and go into St. Peter's; On the other side they go towards the mountain.

_Longfellow's Translation_

[95] The reader will, of course, remember that these were races of horses without riders.

THE MOTHER OF PRINCE GALITZIN.[96]

In presenting our American Catholic readers with a notice of the _Life of the Princess Amelia Galitzin_, it would be sufficient apology to mention that this illustrious lady was the mother of the great religious pioneer of Pennsylvania--that worthy priest whose services in the cause of Catholicity in our country have endeared his name to the American church and have kept his memory still alive in the filial love born of a new generation whose fathers he evangelized.

But even if this apostle-prince had never landed on American shores; never sacrificed an opulent position and a brilliant career, to labor as a humble missionary in the wild western forests of Pennsylvania; never indelibly engraved his name, as he has done, on that soil, now teeming with industrial and religious life, there is that in the life of the princess, his mother, which would amply recommend it to our interested attention.

Her career was beyond the common run of lives. It was wonderful in its blending of the ordinary with the extraordinary. It is the story of a great, strong mind--a high-principled soul, entrammelled in circumstances commonplace, disadvantageous, and entirely beneath it, struggling for ascendency to its own level above them. A notice, then, of her life possesses a double interest for our readers--its own intrinsic interest, and that which it borrows from the foreshadowing of the great and useful life spent in our country, with which we have already been made acquainted, and of which, we are glad to learn, we are soon to have a more extended account.

The Princess Amelia Galitzin was born at Berlin, in August, 1748. Her father, the Count de Schmettau, a field-marshal of Prussia, was a Protestant. Her mother, the Baroness de Ruffert, was a Catholic. This difference in the religion of the parents led to the understanding that the children of the marriage should receive, according to their sex, a different religious education. Amelia, the only daughter, was destined, then, to be educated in the Catholic faith. For this purpose she was sent, at the early age of four years, to a Catholic boarding-school at Breslau.

It seems that at this establishment the religious as well as the secular training was sadly defective; for, at the end of nine years, the young countess left the _pensionnat_ with no instruction, little piety--even that little of a false kind--and with but one accomplishment, a proficiency in music, the result of the cultivation of a great natural talent. As for literary acquirements, she scarce could read or write. Another school was now selected for her, and this selection reveals the negligent character of her mother, who, from failing to use a wise discretion, or to exert that softening and moulding influence that mothers hold as a gift from nature, may be held accountable for the troubled darkness and painful wanderings of mind that afflicted her daughter in her curious after-career. At thirteen she was placed at a kind of day-college, in Berlin, directed by an atheist. Such a step would have been a dangerous experiment, even with a child of the most ordinary mind, whose impressions are easily effaceable, but with the self-reliant spirit and keen intellect that were destined to be developed in Amelia, it was more than dangerous, it was a ruinous trial. The results of her eighteen months' attendance at this school were not immediately apparent, at least they were but negatively so. At scarcely fifteen years of age, she left this atheist school to become a woman of the world, by making what is technically called her entrance into society. What that entailed on a member of a noble house, and in a gay capital like Berlin, especially the Berlin of the eighteenth century, we may well surmise. There was another feature in its society worth attention, beyond the stereotyped round of _lévées_, _soirées_, and midnight revels of high life. The great dark cloud of incredulity had just settled on sunny France. France then stood at the head of the western nations. A reflection of her brilliancy was found in surrounding societies. Imitation of her tastes, literary and material, was deemed no disgrace. Even her quick, dancing, musical language was ludicrously set, by fashion, to the rough, guttural tones of the Teutonic tongue--so great was her fascinating influence. No wonder, then, that the thick shadows of that dark cloud in which she had shrouded her faith should have fallen heavily around her. They fell on Prussia, and fell heaviest when Voltaire became the guest of Frederick. The fœtid, contagious atmosphere floated in on the society of her capital. To be rational was the rage, when rational meant incredulous. Statesmen became skilled in the new philosophy. Since the king had turned philosopher, grand ladies suddenly found themselves profoundly intellectual and controversial, and their drawing-rooms became like the _salons de Paris_--no longer the frivolous halls of pleasure, the depots for the lively gossip of the _niaiseries_ of life, but private school-rooms, inner circles in aid of the grand revolt of reason against God which had already begun throughout Europe.

In such society, then, did this young girl, fresh from an atheist school, find herself at the age of fifteen, with no arm of a Christian to do battle for her soul; neither the "shield of faith" nor "the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." But, happily, that society was not immediately to possess her young heart. An _ennui_--a nameless weariness--intensified by a morbid self-love, now settled on her mind. And it was in this trial that her defective instruction first began to tell against her. The only relic of its early impressions left her was a confused notion of the horrors of hell and the power of the devil, which now rose before her but to increase her misery. Beyond that, she believed in nothing, hoped for little in this life, and saw not the next. True, she accompanied her mother to Mass on Sunday, but to her it was as an idle show. She understood as little about the ceremonies as about the text of the delicately-bound French prayer-book she was obliged to hold in her hand. She could find nothing in what she knew or saw of religion to fill the void that caused the weariness of her heart. She determined to seek relief in reading. Her father's library was scant. So she sent rather a confiding request to the proprietor of a neighboring reading-room to supply a young lady who was anxious to improve herself with useful books. This gentleman's ideas of improvement and utility were somewhat singular, for he forthwith dispatched a large packet of sensational romances. With the same confiding spirit she accepted the selection, and novel after novel she fairly devoured, devoting night and day to her new occupation. That the frivolities of a gay society had no attractions for her as a resource in her extremity, that they could not "minister to her mind diseased," shows a soul of no ordinary mould, and shows, too, that it was not through the senses, but through the intellect, that its cravings were to be allayed. Comparative peace of mind returned, for she made her reading a very preoccupying labor by keeping a diary of its results and impressions. Music, always her favorite pastime, she now made her recreation.

She was just beginning to taste the sweets of living in a little peaceful, busy world within herself, when a young lady, who had been an intimate friend of hers, was admitted to a share in her occupations. This resulted in not only breaking her utter isolation from society, but in leading her to mingle in it once more. The calm of the previous months was not entirely undisturbed. At intervals the thoughts of her utter irreligiousness would conjure up again those appalling images of Satan and hell, and their recurrence became more frequent as she relented in her labors. But now in the gay drawing-room assemblies she met many ladies of her own rank who, professing to be Catholics, did not hesitate to express freely, in their brilliant conversations, the sentiments of incredulity which filled her own mind. In their example she found her self-justification. She believed it fashionable to think and act as other ladies, and so, dismissing what she now deemed her idle fancies, she permitted herself undisturbed to glide into the easy way of unbelief.

But an unseen mercy followed on her path, and soon again cast before her warning signs of her danger. Her fears of the supernatural grew again; and this time, in spite of every example, in spite of every effort to treat them as fancies that could be laughed away, they increased to such an extent that her health became endangered. Once more she formed a plan of escape from her terrors of mind and the weariness they entailed--this time an unaccountable and for her an unexpected one. She resolved to devote herself to meditation, that, as she said in her journal, "by force of thought she might raise herself to union with the Supreme Being," and thus neutralize the effects of the frightful pictures of eternal punishments which wearied her imagination. We cannot help seeing in this effort a noble struggle of a great mind, untutored in childhood, and left in early youth without guidance or encouraging support.

She immediately entered on her new project, and made great and persevering efforts; but she groped in the dark and made little progress in meditating. Yet these efforts were not wholly unavailing. She succeeded by her bare strength of thought in impressing deeply and thoroughly on her mind the dignity of a highly moral life, which led her to the conviction that everything gross or vile was utterly unworthy of the noble soul that dwelt within us.

What child of sixteen have we ever known or heard of whose young life presents a history of mind so curious and so wonderful? Few even of riper years have ever displayed a mere, bare natural power of soul at once so strong and so refined as that which led Amelia to so beautiful a conclusion.

Be that as it may, it was for her a saving result in the change that was now about to come over her position in life. It was arranged at this time, by her parents, that the young countess should join the court, in the capacity of lady robe-keeper to the wife of Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia, brother to Frederick II.

If we called the court society of that epoch gilded corruption, we believe we would be epitomizing the detailed chronicle of its character. Yet, armed with her high-souled conviction, Amelia glided untainted through its seductions and scandals, though her youth and beauty and the affectionate simplicity of her manners made her the object of much attention.

From the character of her mind we may well imagine that she had little relish for her new duties. To any one of a high order of intellect, and consequent intellectual aspirations, the mean, material duties of arranging a wardrobe, sorting dresses, seeing them set out in their respective turns, and changed with every changing fashion--in a word, being a mere waiting-maid to any one, no matter of what rank, must necessarily be irksome and distasteful. And though we will not draw the exaggerated sarcastic picture that Lord Macaulay gives of Frances Burney's life at the court of England, yet the fact that the young countess stole many an hour from her irksome post and still more wearying ceremonious court-pleasures to enjoy the instructive conversation of elderly men of known literary tastes and acquirements, gives us full ground for at least compassionating her in a position so evidently unbefitting her gifted and aspiring mind.

In her twentieth year she accompanied the princess on a summer trip to the waters at Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa. It was during their residence at the former place she first met and received the addresses of the Prince Dmitri Galitzin. The story of their love does not seem to possess anything above the ordinary interest, and even extended over a much shorter period than is usual before marriage. All we learn about it is, that the match seemed very advantageous in the eyes of her protectress the princess and her brother, General Count de Schmettau (her mother, long extremely delicate, having died during her residence at the court), and that the marriage ceremony was performed with great _éclat_ in August of the same year in which the proposal had been made and accepted.

Almost immediately after her marriage she had to set out with her husband for the court of St. Petersburg, of which he was an attaché. Her sojourn, however, in the Russian capital was very brief, for soon after his arrival the prince was sent as ambassador to the Hague, in Holland. Five years previously he had filled the same post at Paris, where he became the intimate friend of Voltaire and Helvetius. For the latter he paid the expenses of the publication of his famously infamous work, _De l'Esprit_. He himself seems to have been quite a _littérateur_. He contributed, while in Paris, to the _Journal des Savants_, and published two or three works of a scientific and political character. But to return.

A new life now opened for Amelia at the Hague. She became the star of the brilliant society that daily filled the halls of the palace of the Prince Ambassador of Russia; she lived in courtly splendor, and received the flattery of homage that queens might have coveted.

She had now resided two years in Holland, and had given birth to two children, a daughter and a son. It may be naturally expected that now the duties of a mother would bring her life and her mind to the level of ordinary interest. Not so. The routine duties of her station had all along been tasteless to her. The constant round of pleasures which engaged her, the flatteries she received, in which meaner minds would have loved to live and revel, had for her no soothing or beguiling influence; not even the total change of existence and occupation which married life induces wrought any change upon her spirit. An aching void was still within her heart, and, seeing nothing around her with which to fill it, she began to pine away. At length a strong inclination seized her, one of those yearnings for some one project which swallows all our thoughts and to which all else must yield; we may call it a humor precisely in Ben Jonson's sense:

"When some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man that it doth draw All his effects, his spirits, and his powers In their confluxions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humor."

This humor was nothing less than entire abandonment of the world and its cares. Notwithstanding the obligations of her married life or those of her position in society, she determined to retire to some solitary spot, and there engage her mind in hard study of difficult and dry subjects.

Alarmed for her health, and probably deriving little comfort from such a moody consort, her husband consented to her retiring to live in a small country villa a few miles from the Hague. She engaged a distinguished professor of the city, named Hemsterhuys, to give her lessons in Greek, with a view to following under his guidance, too, a course of Greek philosophy.

Strange to say, the moment she entered with ardor on this uninviting task, her mind became completely calmed, and she felt a peace and contentment which for years she had not known.

Besides the seeking of her own peace of mind, the resting the weariness of her heart, she had another object in view--to prepare herself to be doubly the mother of her children by imparting to them herself a thorough education. In the six years that she toiled in this seclusion, this was the great sustaining motive of her labors.

When the children grew to the years of discretion, she relented in her harder studies to devote herself with no less assiduity to their early instruction. Everything was made subservient to that end. Even the recreations requisite for herself, and the amusements necessary for them, the pleasure excursions away from home, all were designed to open and mature their young minds.

But in these respects Holland had but poor resources. One quickly wearies of its changeless lowlands. It can boast of no wild scenery which grows new at every gaze and invites repeated visits, and it has few places of any peculiarly instructive interest. It was this consideration that determined the princess to remove to the more picturesque and favored land of Switzerland, where her husband owned a country-house near Geneva.

Her preparations for this change of residence were nearly completed, when news reached her of the projects of the Abbé de Furstenberg for a reform in the method of public instruction.

This Abbé de Furstenberg was one of the most remarkable men of that day in Germany.

Of noble birth, he received a thorough civil and ecclesiastical education, and at the age of thirty-five found himself chief administrator, spiritual and temporal, of the principality of Münster, under the prince-bishop. His administration was attended with most marked success, and had brought the little state to an unequalled degree of prosperity, not only religious and political, but even commercial and military. His latest labor was his educational reform regarding the method of teaching. To mature this scheme, he had studied, consulted, and travelled much during seven years. When, at length, he published the result of his researches, it was received far and near with much applause, whose echoes had now reached the Princess Amelia in Holland on the eve of her departure for Switzerland. She at once indefinitely deferred this journey, and resolved to lose no time in making the acquaintance of this accomplished ecclesiastic, in order to master under his own guidance the details of this new method of instruction. For this purpose, in the May of the year 1779, she set out for Münster, intending to pay only a short visit. She remained nineteen days, and, though the greater part of the time was spent in the company of the learned abbé, she found it impossible in so short a space to take in the result of his experience. This, and probably a certain charm which his great conversational powers exercised over her, made her determine to return again, and, with the permission of her husband, remain a whole year in Münster before setting out for Switzerland. Consequently, in the same year, she took leave of her husband and her old preceptor Hemsterhuys, purposing not to return to the Hague, but to pursue her Swiss project after her year's sojourn at Münster. But this programme was never to be carried out. Any one who has ever felt the influence of our affections on our plans and schemes--how plastic they are beneath them, how readily they yield in their direction--will easily divine the cause of this. In fact, so strong had grown this intellectual friendship between the princess and the Abbé de Furstenberg that every idea of going to Switzerland yielded before it; so much so that, before the end of the year, she had purchased a house in Münster, and engaged a country-château for the summer months of every year.

All this time she had kept up a frequent correspondence with her husband and her old professor, and she had made them promise to come and spend as long a time as they could spare every summer at her country-seat.

She was yet in the unchristian portion of her life. In her conversation and communications with Hemsterhuys, she had worked out a complete scheme of natural virtue and happiness, which she embodied in a work entitled _Simon; or, The Faculties of the Soul_. While we must admit that this is a curious specimen of a mere human, religionless view of a virtuous and happy life, yet we cannot allow that it could have been drawn up had not some faint remembrances of early Christian teaching still lingered in the mind of the authoress; much less can we grant that it could have been realized in any life without the sustaining aid of divine grace. Even if it were practicable, its practicability would, from its very character, be necessarily limited to a few rarely gifted minds; consequently, lacking the generalizing principles of the truly Christian code, which makes a life of Christian virtue accessible to all, the lowly and the great, the rude and the wise alike, it is assuredly a failure.

She now applied herself with great assiduity to her children's education. Not content with imparting the mere rudimentary portion, she aimed at giving them a higher and more thorough course of instruction than most of our graduating colleges can boast. It was a bold task for a woman, but the order of her day at Münster shows us how little its difficulty could bend the will or weary the mind of one who could unswervingly follow the regulations it contained.

The household rose early every morning. Some hours were devoted to study before breakfast, and soon after the lessons of the day began. To these she gave six hours daily. With the exception of classic literature and German history, for which she engaged the services of the two distinguished professors, Kistermaker and Speiskman, she gave unaided all the other lessons.

She had competent persons to superintend the studies of the young prince and his sister while she was engaged in her own, but she reserved the teaching exclusively to herself. She very often spent entire nights in preparation for the morrow's instruction. After the labors of the day, she always devoted the evenings to conversation. It was then she received the visits of Furstenberg and a number of his literary friends, among whom was the Abbé Overberg, with whom she was afterwards to be so intimately related. Her old friend Hemsterhuys sometimes made one of the party, and he was the only one of her guests at that time who was not a Catholic.

This was the beginning, the nucleus of that brilliant literary circle which, a little later, became so famous throughout Germany.

Invitations to the literary _soirées_ of the princess soon began to be coveted as no common honor. The most distinguished Protestant authors and _savants_ sought introduction to that Catholic society, and even infidels who did not openly scoff at religion were soon found among its members. It would have been a sight of curious interest, standing aside unseen in that drawing-room on any evening of their reunions, to watch that strangely mingled crowd. The Princess Amelia is evidently the ruling spirit, and the marks of respect and homage which her distinguished visitors pay her on their arrival tell plainly that her presence is not the least among the attractions of that pleasant assembly. Scattered through the room are men of the most varied minds and opposite views. There were many there who had already acquired literary notoriety of no mean degree. There were many more, the history of whose minds would have been the story of the anxious doubts and bold speculations of unbelief which swayed society in the waning of the eighteenth century.

In the charm of that literary circle, Jacobi found rest from his restless scepticism. There Hamann could quiet his troubled mind. The cold infidelity of Claude thawed in the presence of venerable ecclesiastics and before the influence of their dignity and learning. Even Goethe himself confessed that the pleasantest hours of his life were passed in the society of the Princess Galitzin. During three years, these reunions were a literary celebrity.

Though the princess had not allowed her mind to be tainted by the impious philosophy of her time, and had formed, with the assistance of Hemsterhuys, a better philosophical system of her own, founded on the idea of the divinity, yet in all her views she was completely rationalistic, rejecting all positive religion. And she had to confess, too, the defectiveness of her system in its practical bearing on her life; for at this time she complained feelingly, in one of her letters, that instead of growing better, according to her idea of virtue and happiness, she was daily growing worse.

In the spring of 1783, she fell dangerously ill. Furstenberg took this first opportunity to persuade her to taste of the consolations of religion, and to try the virtue of the sacraments of the church. But, though he actually sent her a confessor, she declined his services, alleging that she had not sufficient faith, promising, however, at the same time, that, if her life were spared, she would turn her thoughts seriously to the subject of religion. It was spared, and she kept her promise; but it was a long time before her reflections took any definite shape or had any practical result. This was undoubtedly owing to a want of direction, and we cannot divine why, among so many distinguished clerical friends, one was not found to do her this kindly office. Yet so it was, and, most likely, the fault was all her own.

The time had now come when her children were of an age to receive religious instruction; and, this being a part of the self-imposed task of their education, she determined not to shrink from it. But what to teach them, when she herself knew nothing, was a most perplexing question. Hitherto her own researches only plunged her into a restless uncertainty of soul which betrayed itself even in her sleep. Her conscience would not allow her to impart to her children her own unbelief, nor yet permit her to instruct them in a religion of whose truth she herself was not convinced. She relieved herself from this perplexity by deciding not so much to instruct them in any religion as to give them a history of religion in general, abstaining from any comments that might betray her own incredulity, or be an obstacle to the choice she intended they should subsequently make for themselves.

To fit herself for this task, she commenced the study of the Bible. This was the turning-point in her destiny; she held in her hands, at length, what was designed to be for her the instrument of divine grace. Long years ago, when a child, at the Breslau boarding-school, it had been remarked that, when nothing else could curb her proud and self-willed nature, an appeal to her affections never failed of its effect. That tenderness of her young heart was to be her salvation.

She opened the sacred text to seek there only dry historic facts, which she was to note down and relate to her children. For aught that concerned herself, the study was undertaken with a careless, incredulous disinterestedness. But as she went on and on through the sacred volume, and the sublime character of the Almighty was unfolded before her in all the beauty and tendernesses of his mercies, and shining in all the brightness of his wisdom, her soul was moved, her heart was deeply touched; she bowed down before the omnipotent Creator, and, for the first time, felt herself a creature. She read on still; she came to the Gospel, that record breathing love--compassionate, prodigal love--on every page, and before its charm her heart melted, her pride of intellect faded away, her life came before her as a useless dream, and her tears flowed fast upon the sacred page; for now she not only felt what it was to be a creature, but had realized what it was to be _saved_.

Her work now became a labor of love. She not only taught her children, but she instructed herself. With her usual intrepidity of intellect, she was soon acquainted with every mystery of our holy religion, and with every duty of the Catholic life. From the knowledge to the fulfilment of her duty was always with Amelia an easy step; consequently, she began immediately to prepare herself for a general confession. After a long and serious examination of her whole life, she at length made it, on the feast of St. Augustine, 1786, and, a few days later, approached the holy communion, for the first time, with feelings of deep and tender devotion.

From this moment, a complete change was wrought in her whole manner. Her habitual melancholy gave way to a cheering serenity, which was as consoling as it was agreeable and charming to all around her. Her children and her many friends were greatly struck with the visible effects which divine grace had so evidently produced in her soul.

She now wished, for her more rapid advancement in perfection, to place her conscience entirely under the direction of the saintly Abbé Overberg. She was not content to have him merely as her confessor, but she wished to enter on the same relations--to have the same intimate friendship with him--as existed between St. Vincent de Paul and Mme. de Gondi, St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa. Though she had written to him several times on the subject of her direction, yet she never dared fully to propose her project to him, lest he might reject her request altogether. However, she took courage at last, and, to her great joy, she was not disappointed.

This holy priest took up his residence in her palace in 1789, and remained there, in the capacity of chaplain, even after her death.

In the following year, Hemsterhuys, her old friend and preceptor, died; and in this year, also, the young Prince Dmitri, having finished an education which would have fitted him for any position or profession in life, took leave of his mother, to commence, in accordance with the fashion, his post-educational travels. For what particular reason he turned his steps toward the New World does not appear. It was during the voyage that he resolved to embrace and profess the Catholic faith. But Providence had designed for him more than a visit to the United States; his life and his labors in our country have made the name of Galitzin a familiar and much-loved word to American Catholics.

In 1803, the husband of the princess died suddenly at Brunswick. This loss she felt most keenly. He had ever been to her a good and indulgent husband, yielding, with even an abundance of good nature, to all her plans, and never interfering with the various projects of her life. We may suppose, too, that her grief was deepened as his unexpected death suddenly blighted all her hopes for his conversion.

But sore trials of another kind yet awaited her. The property of the prince, which, by the marriage contract, should have reverted to her in trust for her children, was seized by his relatives. Penury threatened her for a time, but her appeal was, at length, heard by the Emperor Alexander, and the property was restored.

Meanwhile, she began to suffer from a painful malady which produced hypochondria. The patient, plaintless manner in which she bore her pains; above all, the calm of mind which she preserved in that terrible physical malady which poisons every pleasure and clouds every brightness of life, shows what a high state of perfection she had already attained. Religion was now her solace and her succor. By the perfection of her resignation to the divine will, she not only succeeded in concealing from her friends her painful state, by joining cheerfully in every conversation and pastime; but she cheered the melancholy and depression of others without once evincing that she herself was a victim to its living martyrdom.

With equal fortitude, she was bearing at the same time yet a harder trial. It is always wounding enough to our feelings to have our actions misappreciated, our whole conduct misunderstood, by persons merely indifferent to us. But what is there harder to endure in life than to be misunderstood by those to whom we were once tenderly devoted, to whom we were bound in the closest friendship of intimacy, and to bear their consequent coldness and slights, and sometimes cruel wrongs? Yet this pang was added to the other trials of Princess Amelia. But her great charity checked every human feeling. She was never heard to complain of any neglect, or even the annoying treatment of false friends, and she never sought to soothe the sorrow of her tender heart by any human consolations. In a letter regarding the Abbé de Furstenberg, she described beautifully the rule of charity she followed in this sorest of her trials. Whenever the memory of her slighted friendship would send a pang through her soul, her love of God was her first resource; then she resolved never to intensify the sorrow of the moment by indulging in any dreams of the imagination with regard to an irremediable past, or in any speculations whatever on the subject which would strengthen her sorrow or tend to an uncharitable feeling.

Thus, in these purifying trials, were passed the last years of her life; and when, at length, the gold of her merits was made pure enough in the crucible to be moulded into her crown of glory, she rested from her sorrows.

In 1806, she died the death of the holy, and, at her own request, she was buried beneath the chapel of her country-house at Angelmodde, near Münster.

Were we right in saying that her life displays the struggle of a great soul for its own level above disadvantageous circumstances? She struggled above the sad defects of early training, then above the commonplace routine of ordinary lives in the world, and finally above the clouds of infidelity and ignorance of divine things, to the bright, clear atmosphere of the faith, where the love of her ardent heart was sated, and her yearning aspirations found their lasting rest.

It may be, too, that we now have an easier clue to the wonderful character of the Apostle of Western Pennsylvania since we have become better acquainted with the _mother of Prince Galitzin_.

FOOTNOTE:

[96] _Particularités de la Vie de la Princesse Amelie Galitzin._ Par Theod. Katerkamp Münster. 1828.

_La Princesse Galitzin et les Amis._ Schücking: Cologne. 1840.

EGBERT STANWAY.

If Germany was the cradle of the Reformation, England can claim to have been its nurse, and to have fostered in it many phases even at present unknown to the land of its originators. In its last-born and perhaps most dangerous outgrowth, Ritualism, we see the English spirit that was already timidly visible long before, now fully flowering in delusive self-existence, uniting in this novel combination the cherished independence of Rome, that Englishmen are taught instinctively to regard as the only palladium of national freedom, and those æsthetic aspirations which come down to them, we venture to think, as instinctively, from their forefathers of "Merrie England" and the "Island of Saints."

But if there are in the English character great capabilities for evolving unthought-of theories out of stern dogmatic codes, there is also a strange power of assimilation by which it can engraft upon itself the alien modes of thought of other lands, and yet infuse into them something that is not their own--something that renders them unspeakably more attractive and, withal, more hopelessly earnest.

Such a power was most likely to have been encouraged and developed in Egbert Stanway by his almost foreign education and most sensitive and contemplative nature. The love of German philosophy and German literature had descended to him from his father, who had been a disciple and a friend of Goethe, and who had early sent him to the university at Heidelberg, where the boy still was at his father's death. The weird old city, with its castle overlooking the rushing Neckar, and its antique houses enshrined by woods of chestnut, was the earliest home he could remember, and as, during his holidays from the school where he had been preparing for university initiation, he had never left Germany, it was almost as a foreigner and a stranger that he visited Stanway Hall to attend his father's funeral.

The evening he arrived, the gloom of the old house, and the long shadows creeping round it, the hooting owl in the dark fir plantations, and the grim and spreading cedars nearly touching the hall-door, everything he saw, in fact, seemed to make a most painful impression on his sensitive mind. The old servants crowded round him in affectionate and mournful welcome, for they remembered the little fair-haired child that used to prattle so merrily through the house many years ago, and they thought they saw in his face the same expression that had melted their hearts within them as they had gazed on the child's dead mother the night he was born. One of his guardians, a cousin of his father's, a kind, grave man, with grizzling hair and soldier-like bearing, came and took his hand in silence, and led him to the low, wide dining-room where the coffin lay under its heavy velvet pall. There, in the gloom that the few tall candles near the bier could hardly brighten, he told the son how his father had fallen from his horse while returning at night from a distant farm where he had been to see the sick tenant, and relieve him from the rent that was due and which his family could not meet. Egbert's face glowed as he lifted it from the coffin against which he had been resting his forehead, and as he said in faltering accents:

"So like him! I am glad he died like that."

The words were simple, but the old soldier could not refrain from the tears that his own narrative had not yet forced from him. The child's comment unlocked his heart, and after a few moments' silence he said:

"My boy, you will try to live like him, and try to do your duty like him. You know you will soon have power in your hands: use it as he did. In a few years you will be your own master; even now you are master of this house and this estate. Never forget the responsibilities you will have. Always be kind to your servants, and just to your tenants, and charitable to the poor. Be loved as your father was, so that, when you die, you may be regretted as he is."

Egbert pressed his guardian's hand in silence, and presently knelt down by the coffin. There was a wreath of cypress on it, and he broke off a little twig and hid it in his bosom. His lips seemed to move--was he praying, or thinking half aloud? The old man's hand was on his shoulder, and he felt its pressure weighing him down. When he stood up again, he said nothing, only motioned his guardian to the door, and followed him. There were a few relations, mostly men, gathered before the fire in the drawing-room, and as the boy came in there was a general welcome of silent sympathy, and then a pause. Some few spoke in whispers, but the gloom was too deep to be broken. There seemed in the dead man's son more dignity and manliness than is usual, even under such circumstances, in one so young, and there was deference and surprise as well as pity in the looks that were bent on the boy of sixteen, to whom nearly all were strangers, and to whom his own home and his own household were themselves but new and strange associations.

As night came on, every one disappeared noiselessly from the room, Egbert himself having left it at an earlier hour. He had gone out into the summer moonlight to roam through the grounds he scarcely remembered, and to be alone with his own thoughts that would not let him sleep. The tall formal evergreens that skirted the broad terrace threw their shadows across the many flights of ornamental steps leading to the flower-garden; the scent of the heliotrope and mignonnette in the borders was wafted on the cool breeze that came from the sedge-encircled pond where the water-fowl played and hid in the rushes; the smooth-stemmed beeches stood like columns of silver in the moonlight, supporting their vaulted arches of interlacing leaves; the rooks cawed solemnly from their restless homes as the soft wind blew the branches backward and forward across the mossy mound; squirrels made cracking noises as they chattered in careless gaiety on the slender twigs of the spruce-fir; and hares and rabbits scudded away with terror-impelled swiftness as they heard human footfalls on the dewy grass.

The tall church-spire seemed to speak when the bell tolled out the hours through the night, and Egbert gazed longingly toward it, not as one who answers a well-known voice, but rather as one who strives painfully to guess the meaning of words he would gladly understand and yet cannot fathom.

"Oh!" he thought, "my father knows now all _I_ wish to know; but he cannot come and tell me, and I shall have to live on, perhaps as long as he did, and never know what I seek, and never find the satisfaction and peace I look for. If _I_ too could die, and know all at once!"

He thought, too, of the ceremony that would take place in that church to-morrow, and of the cold, damp vault his father's body would be laid in. And so great was the horror of this to his mind that the beauty of the night turned to hideousness for him, and its wooing sounds were changed into ghoul-like beckoning. Tears would not come to relieve his heart, and he felt as if an icy grasp were upon him, crushing out his young life, his father, he could only think of as he was, mute and helpless, not as he once had been, a true guide and monitor; his home, where was it? his duty, to what dreary fields of thankless labor might it not carry him? his friends, who were they? friends of yesterday? friends of the family, perhaps, but that was conventional friendship to him--or friends to him as the young landlord, but that was interested friendship!

And then came back a rush of Heidelberg memories, of the reckless young companions of his scarce-begun career, of the kind old professor, Herr Lebnach, and of his child-daughter Christina, of rambles among the chestnut woods, when the band had done playing in the castle gardens, and of two or three darker and more solemn rambles when he had gone to follow a dead comrade to his self-made grave.

The chill morning dew roused him at last, just when a faint-breaking light was to be seen over the fir-planted hill behind the house, and he went in and threw himself, all dressed, on his bed in the dim haunted-looking room he remembered as his nursery in days so long past that he could remember nothing else of them. The sun rose and gilded the many-hued flower-garden, and lighted red fires in the diamond-paned windows on the east side of the house, and sent long arrows of light into the tapestried and wainscoted chambers where the guests slept; it took the church-steeple by storm, and poured in floods of molten gold through the stained-glass windows of chancel and clerestory; it flashed through the dark beech grove, and blinded the uneasy rooks whom it roused to a new and jangling chorus; it threw rosy sparks across the pond, on the margin of which floated the water-lily and nestled the forget-me-not; and, lastly, it penetrated the sombre curtains of the darkened dining-room, and, braving death on his throne, threw a coronal of light on the very cypress wreath on the bier. And had it not a royal right, nay, a God-given mission, so to do? For the morning of the resurrection is ever near, and each morning's sun is its fit representative and the forerunner of its joy.

The same consoling ray that would not leave the dead alone in death's own shadow shone on the boy's fair curls as he bent, half in sorrow, half in slumber, over the hidden coffin. Soon, very soon, that coffin would not be there in the dear sunshine. It would be away in the darksome earth, in a lonely vault, with no one save the bats to make any moan over it, and, if ever the sun's darts made their way to it through low, grated air-holes or widening cracks in the stone, they would be pale and spectral themselves, like torches in a deadly atmosphere, like phantom lights over the quaking bog.

The hours wore on, and the time came for the funeral. Again there was a gathering together of friends and relatives, and a marshalling of tenants and servants, a whispering among the awed assemblage, and the boy asked once to have the pall lifted and the lid removed. In silence it was done, and in silence Egbert Stanway came near, and laid his right hand on his father's cold, calm forehead. His lips seemed to move, and a deeper expression of mingled sorrow and resolution settled upon his features; and thus, without a tear, he took leave of the best friend and best lover he had ever had on earth. He seemed much quieter after this, and the funeral procession now started on its way to the church, Egbert walking next the coffin as chief mourner.

The next day, he was far on his road to Heidelberg.

* * * * *

Four years passed by. Egbert Stanway was high in honors at the university, renowned among the reading set as an indefatigable scholar, beloved by his favorite professor, Herr Lebnach, and his no longer child-daughter, courted by all the best men, and respected by all the worst, in the old city of Heidelberg. Having resolutely set his face against duelling and all kinds of brawls, and even against all innocent-seeming meetings that, nevertheless, were likely to end in brawls, he had yet not acquired the unenviable notoriety of a misanthrope, and, though many called him proud, still none called him churlish. Herr Lebnach used often to gather a few real friends about him, and there was generally some musical banquet provided for his delicate and discriminating guests.

His room was one of those that are dreamt of, but seldom seen, homely and artistic at once, quaint and suggestive as one of the mysterious dens of those sages whom modern times have called sorcerers and tamperers with arts forbidden. There stood on one side a great oak book-case, massive and plain, filled with huge folios, and smaller books laid carelessly across their dust-covered edges, old tomes that looked black enough for magic, though they might contain nothing more than medical lore and visionaries' dreams; over the carved mantelpiece, where a dark stove hid itself in the wide space it could not fill, was an array of pipes, meerschaum silver-mounted, and rare wood cunningly wrought; pipes of tarnished Eastern splendor, and calumets of Indian workmanship; a real old spinning-wheel, where Gretchen might have sat as she sang of her demon-lover Faustus, stood in one corner, and a collection of antique armor hung on all the spaces on the wall that were not occupied by medical portraits and angel-crowded tryptichs in twisted golden frames. Here, in one oak-carved case, was Venetian ruby glass and old Dresden ware, and there, on the quaint low tables, lay illuminated missals of the thirteenth century, alongside of dainty woman's embroidery-frames, and the last new pamphlet on the last new philosophical incomprehensibility. Then, as the dim light of the lamp flashed when some motion was made near the long table by the stove, there appeared on the other side of the room a great organ, with golden pipes and carved case--a world within a world, the kingdom of music enshrined within the surrounding kingdom of science and of literature. The treble manual, with its tiers of smooth white notes sheathing the melodies a moment's touch might set free, shone under the golden arbor of the spreading pipes, and beneath the dark carved garlands of oak-leaves and hanging fruit and sporting beasts, that seemed only as petrified embodiments of the thoughts that had once been living and breathing in those keys.

A girl sat by the organ, her hair seeming to have caught the golden reflection of the music-laden pipes, and her slender fingers the litheness of those easily-moulded keys. Beside her was a large basket, where balls of wool mingled with half-finished garments of domestic mystery, while in her own hands she held a piece of knitting. A kitten played at her feet, and now and then tangled the long thread that fell from her work. Egbert Stanway sat quite close, one hand resting on the organ-notes, reading aloud by the dark light of one little candle in the fixed organ candlestick.

A few men began to drop in, but the reading was not interrupted, for the room was large, and the professor was sitting not far from the door. Some came in with rolls of white music; some with instruments tenderly imprisoned in warmly-lined cases; some, again, with their hands unoccupied, but their large pockets bursting with the treasures of meerschaum and tobacco; some thoughtful, student-like, long-haired; some gay and rubicund, as if dinner were but a late and cherished memory; some young and uneasily conscious of the stranger by the organ. Presently one came in who was neither student nor professor, but long-haired and quaint-looking nevertheless, with iron-gray locks, straight and wiry, strongly-marked features, tall, spare figure, and almost kingly demeanor, so mixed was it of haughtiness and courtesy.

Christina rose and signed to her companion to close the book. She went forward, and said a few words of blushing welcome to the royal stranger, and then turned to Egbert, saying:

"_Mein herr_, this is my father's young friend who was so anxious to know you."

He put out his hand with kind eagerness, and, as he did so, Egbert noticed the long, slender, nervous fingers, like iron sheathed in age-tinted ivory.

"I am very glad to see you, Herr Stanway," he said, "and very glad to see you here, for I have no better friend than Christina's father."

The girl fell back as he spoke, and passed through the room, speaking, now and then, to the bearded guests, who all smiled at her like the Flemish saints in the old pictures of the Maiden-mother and her mystic court; and made her way to an inner apartment where a grand piano occupied most of the space, and round the walls of which were many brackets with bronze and marble busts of sages and poets, philosophers and musicians, gleaming out, ghost like, against the heavy crimson draperies that fell round window and doorway.

The stranger was still talking to Egbert in German when the sounds of tuning instruments in the next room drew his attention. He took the young man's arm, and hurried in, casting a glance over the sheets of music scattered on the piano. A flush of pleasure and surprise came over his countenance; they were headed, "Overture--St. Elizabeth." Egbert looked across to Christina, but she was busying herself with a refractory violoncello-case, whose huge fastenings would not open, and whether or no she saw the maestro's puzzled air remained a mystery both to the young man and to his companion, whose glance had followed his own, as if half-guessing what it meant.

Herr Lebnach struck his friend on the shoulder as he approached the wondering musician.

"You must forgive my boldness," he said; "in fact, I can only call it smuggling. I got a copy from a pupil of yours--one whose enthusiasm was stronger than his sense of obedience; but, of course, this is all among friends-it shall go no further. Indeed, if you wish it, I will burn the manuscript after the performance."

"No, no, dear friend," returned the composer; "it will be publicly performed and given to the world in a month or two, and I am glad you should have the first-fruits."

The amateur orchestra was in a state of nervous delight at these words, and as the maestro took the baton in his hand there was a hush that said far more than words could have embodied. Christina and her father and Egbert sat aloof near the doorway, and a few others gathered in silent groups round the room. The music came forth, at last, like the rush of an elfin cavalcade out of darksome caverns and cloven rocks of unimagined depth, wild and weird, like the cry of the storm-tossed sea-gulls among the reverberating crags of foam-washed granite. It was the music of delirium, the music of madness, the music of despair. It was the voice of a soul that had lost its way in a labyrinth of dreams so fantastic that they had thrown a spell over its returning footsteps, and so made it for ever an enchanted exile among their mazy paths. It was unintelligible, yet full of meaning; unapproachable, yet full of allurement; impregnable, yet full of sympathy. Later on, in great cities, and before critical audiences, it was held to be the music of a maniac, while it lacked the charm or the interest of Shakespeare's maniac-heroes and their too-faithful rhapsodies; and even now, though the performance was a labor of love, it was not without difficulty that many phrases were interpreted.

Christina seemed to think more of the composer than of his work, and more of his pleasure in seeing his music appreciated than of his actual skill in composition. Indeed, her father and Egbert shared her feelings, as was apparent from their careful watching of the conductor's face rather than of the performers' bows. But when the long piece was over, and every one started forward to congratulate and be congratulated, there was a general appearance of satisfaction at having mastered something that was no little difficulty, and offered such a grateful and acceptable homage to one whose heart seemed to value it so highly. Soon there was a hush again, and Christina glided to the piano, where the maestro was now sitting.

"You will not refuse to reward us now, will you?" she said.

A smile and a soft chord were the speedy answer; and now the piano spoke and wailed, pleaded and wept, as the strong, supple fingers swept its astonished keys. It seemed as if there were within it an imprisoned and hitherto dumb spirit, whose voice was now unshrouded and allowed full power over the hearts of those who had scarcely before suspected its hidden existence. Far different from the tempestuous overture was this soft and swift blending of chords in garlands of sweet sound. Flowers were dropping around the feet of the artist; clouds of faintly-suggested and dream-like fancies were fanning the air around his head; a spell, as of Eastern languor, was slowly deadening the senses of the listeners to any other sound save that of the marvellous melody the piano was sighing forth, when, with a wild toss of the head and a sudden bending forward of the body, the maestro changed the key, and burst into a half-triumphant, half-defiant pæan--a chant of patriotic and maddened enthusiasm--which soon merged into the last movement of his impromptu and the last appeal of every Christian to the God that made him; a solemn, dirge-like hymn, full of unspoken sadness, full of expressed confidence, a lifting up of the soul above everything of earth, a consecration, a supplication, a thanksgiving, and a sacrifice.

Never before had Egbert heard anything like that prayer; never after was he destined to hear it again.

Christina drew a long sigh, as if such beauty were too heavenly to be gazed upon without pain, and turning to the young man:

"I am glad," she said, "I cannot play the piano. One could not dare to touch the instrument after that, unless it were to destroy it!"

"You are right," he answered slowly and musingly; "but where can he have learnt the things he puts into his music?"

"In his prayers, Herr Stanway."

A dark shade of melancholy passed over Egbert's face; there was pain at the implied rebuke, and a vague sorrow, as for something lost, in that fugitive expression, but the music chased it away as the violins were tuning up again for Beethoven's "Septet."

So the evening wore away, and chorus and concerted piece followed fast upon one another, till the musicians were so excited they could hardly speak. The maestro conducted all through, and as he shook his hair like a mane about his eyes and swayed to and fro in the intensity of his enthusiasm, Egbert whispered to Christina:

"He is the magician of music, is he not?"

When all was over, and some of the guests had left in singing groups that would probably serenade the town for the rest of the night, the great artist called the young Englishman, and asked him to show him the way home.

"I am somewhat of a stranger here, my friend, and there is no one whose company I would more gladly ask under the pretence of wanting a guide home."

As soon as they were out of the house, he turned suddenly on his companion, and, lingering so as to stay for a few moments in the full moonlight, he said:

"And so you are the betrothed of my old friend's daughter?"

A start and a blush that he could not repress were Egbert's first answers to this abrupt but not unkind question, yet the old man saw that his arrow had perhaps overshot the mark.

"Is it not so?" he said again, but doubtfully now.

"No, _mein herr_," replied Egbert, with slow and sorrowful composure; "and I fear it never will be."

"You fear, dear friend? Therefore you hope?"

"I _have_ hoped, but I see now how useless it must ever be for me to think of her except as a friend."

"Can I do anything for you that _her_ own favor could not do?"

"I have never asked her for anything, and I never shall, and it suffices that she knows as well as I do what the reason of my silence is."

"Then she does know that you love her?"

"She knows it as the angels do--if there be angels!"

"If! What do you mean?"

"Only this, that, if there are angels, they are not more remote from me than she is."

"You speak in riddles. I have no wish to force your confidence, my friend; but I have known that child from her cradle, and I cannot help being interested in anything concerning her."

"O _mein herr_! I have nothing to conceal; you misunderstand me. She is a Catholic; that is why she is so far from me."

"And you are a Protestant? But so is her father."

"No, I am not a Protestant, though I am English."

"Ah! perhaps you have no settled outward form of religion?"

"That is it. But, if I _were_ Protestant, she would not marry me."

"In a few years, dear young friend, you may think differently. I was very like you once, only far worse; yet, you see, I too am a Catholic now."

The young man shook his head in silence. They had journeyed through the dark winding streets very near to the maestro's temporary home, and the old artist turned now solemnly and affectionately to his companion, putting his hand on his shoulder:

"Herr Stanway," he said, "I may never see you again, and you must forgive an old man for speaking so plainly to you; but I cannot bear to leave Heidelberg, where your friends and mine have made me so happy, without trying to do something towards _your_ happiness, and, I am sure, towards _hers_. Do not, for Heaven's sake, give way to those foolish and yet wrecking tendencies of the young men of your day. Stand by religion, for I tell you by experience she is the best philosopher, as well as the best comforter; she is the only friend for the student, as well as for the priest; and, above all, she is the only guardian for the home, and the only giver of true peace. Remember that as an old man's advice, and, if you trust to the word of one who has run the round of all pleasures without finding true ones till very late, you will save yourself the long struggle of experience that wears the body and sears the mind, and leaves you in your old age but a shattered wreck to carry back to the feet of him who sent you forth a perfect man. Will you remember this, dear young friend?"

"I will try to do so," Egbert answered slowly, with intense but hopeless yearning to be able to do so. He kissed the hand of the old man whose words seemed to him but a mortal record of that other one written in notes of fire on the awakened instrument at Christina's home, and the artist took him in his arms and embraced him as a son. They parted, the one to go to his peaceful rest, the other to turn for consolation and for calm to the wild woods above the castle, whence through vistas could be seen the silver-flashing river, with here and there its dark semblances of reversed houses, and spires, and turrets. "My father! my father!" thought the young man, "why can you not tell me what you know--why can you not assure me of all I long to believe, yet cannot? _She_ has often said that the dead are all of her faith when they reach God's throne, and that they believe in it even more firmly, if possible, than those of her creed do on earth--because to them evidence has been given. Perhaps to some the evidence is eternal fire--if that exist! But surely, he who made this earth so fair, he who gave us this solemn night-beauty to enjoy, and a mind fitted to admire it, he cannot have meant to bind us to cruel, unyielding formulas. If one heart feels its love go out to him in one way, and another in a different way, why should not both be as welcome to him as is the varied beauty of the many different-tinted and different-scented flowers? Who has been to God's feet and learned his secrets, and come back to tell us with certainty that he loathes one heart's worship, and accepts another's? Not till I have such an assurance will I, or can I, if I would, go to Christina, and say, 'I am a Catholic.'"

And so the specious and seemingly religious poison worked on and cankered his heart, notwithstanding the solemn warning of his new-found friend, whose voice, he should have known it, was near akin to that of the spirit-witness he was but now invoking.

The night was very lovely, and reminded him of that one preceding his father's funeral, when already wandering dreams of a self-revealed faith were turning him away from the belief in a just and personal God. The Church of England Catechism, which he had learnt by heart as a child, the teachings of a zealous Episcopalian clergyman who had prepared him for confirmation in Germany itself, rushed back upon his memory as he looked on the symbolic beauty of the dying night; but in the dawn that already stirred the birdlings in their nests and shot pale darts of virgin light across the purple-blue heaven, he could see no emblem of truer life coming to his soul nor any sign of silent joy offering itself to his weary heart. And yet the dawn was shining into a little flower-scented chamber, and striking a sweeter perfume from the silent prayer of its occupant than it could draw even from the fragrant blossoms of the golden lime and the starry pendent clusters of flowering chestnut gathered in the large earthen vases near the window.

That prayer was for Egbert, but he could not feel it yet.

* * * * *

Night again, summer again, but a year has passed, and the German student is now an English landlord. To-morrow he will assume the duties of his new position; to-day he received the first-fruits of its honors.

The customary rejoicings attendant on a "coming of age" in Old England had been duly gone through; there had been banqueting in the hall, and feasting in the dining-room; healths had been drunk and speeches had been made, and every one was supposed to be in a superlative state of happiness. Probably every one was--that is, according to their kind, and to their capability of enjoyment. Egbert alone seemed thoughtful and preoccupied; his assembled relations thought him reserved and cold; some said a foreign education could be no good to an Englishman, and he would never be popular in the country; others thought he would marry abroad, some said he would turn Roman Catholic, and the sporting squires wondered whether he would ride and would subscribe to the hunt.

Contrary to the expectation of the marriageable young ladies of the neighborhood, there was no ball included in the programme of the birthday _fêtes_, and the guests who were not staying at the house all left towards dark, lighted on their way by the last explosions of the fantastic fireworks that had been introduced as a _finale_ to the rejoicings. After dinner, Egbert and his guardian, the one we alluded to in the beginning of this tale, sauntered out on the terrace, talking in a desultory way about the little incidents of the day.

"You gave us so little time, my dear boy," he said presently, "to make your acquaintance over again, considering the time you have been abroad, that I feel almost as a stranger to you."

"I should not like ever to be a stranger to _you_," replied Egbert; "but I own I felt a shrinking from coming here at all, much more upon such an occasion, and to meet such people."

"You have grown fastidious, I am afraid."

"I have led a very quiet life for the last few years, and I feel much older than I am, and quite different from all the young people, both men and girls, I have met to-day; and, to tell you the truth, I felt shy, so I delayed coming to the last moment. But if _you_ will stay when the house is quiet again, I am sure we shall understand each other."

"With all my heart, my dear fellow; your father was my earliest friend, and I should like his son to be as my own."

"I am glad you are alone in the world, Charles, if you will allow me that cousinly freedom; for I own I should have been scared at a bevy of ladies, and probably committed some dreadful solecism, and have got myself ostracized for ever."

"Well, well; it will all come in time, no doubt; and now tell me all about your life at Heidelberg."

Could Charles Beran have looked back at that life, and known what was called back to existence by his careless question, perhaps he might have asked it less carelessly, and been less astonished at the effect it produced. His cousin grew pale.

"My dear boy," he added hurriedly, "if there is any painful recollection I have stirred up without knowing it, pray forgive me."

"No," answered Egbert slowly, "I have no _painful_ recollection in all my life, not even my father's death (Beran looked at him anxiously); for nothing has happened to me without making me sadder and wiser, that is, teaching me more and more that I know nothing."

His companion did not answer. Egbert was getting beyond him, but he pressed his hand to show him that, whatever he might mean, he had one to sympathize with, even if he could not share, his sorrow. Egbert understood the wistful, loving sign of the old man whose happy disposition most fortunately kept him ignorant of the paths of gloom through which he himself was passing, and went on to tell him, in general terms, of his outward life and habits at Heidelberg. He made no concealment of his intimacy with the family of his old professor, but simply and truthfully said that, on account of her religion, Christina, he felt sure, could never be his wife.

"Perhaps," interrupted the old man, "it is better so, and Providence meant you to marry an English wife, and think more of your property and your own country."

Egbert smiled at this innocent pressing of Providence into the upholding of a mere actional prejudice; and said, unconsciously using the endearing phraseology of his adopted language:

"I knew you would think so, dear friend; but do you fancy that, coming from the feet of an angel, one would be likely to rush into the arms of a child of earth?"

"My dear fellow, you have grown _too_ German by far! Excuse me, but this will never do for England, you know."

"I am afraid England will not do for me," Egbert replied, laughing; "that is, if England is to mean Englishmen and Englishwomen.

"Oh! you will think differently when you have mixed with them a little; we really must try and cure you."

"Well, you can try, if you like. Perhaps we had better go in and begin with the assembled company around that piano," said the young man, as he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to a white-robed girl attitudinizing before a splendid instrument, which, I think, could it have spoken, would have begged to be delivered from the attacks of unmusical school-girls on the matrimonial lookout.

But every one was tired now, even school-girls and croquet-playing young gentlemen--and heir-huntresses, and heiress-hunters, and diggers after coronets, and the various other pliers of unhallowed trades--so Egbert was soon left to himself again, which with him always meant a long night-ramble in the whispering woods.

The English beauty of his own unknown possessions was new to him; it was also sad, for it was associated with the memory of his father's funeral; but, because of its very sadness, it was the less new, the more familiar. Across the flower-garden, across the terraced lawn dotted with rare trees from Rocky Mountain gorges and California valleys, across the network of gravel paths, he walked thoughtfully over to where an old ruin stood, with its mantle of ivy, shrouding crumbled wall and broken buttress, climbing over scutcheon and carven doorway, and flinging its tendrils like falling lace across the tall mullioned windows. This gray ruin had been a house once, but now it was disused and had fallen into decay. Opposite, only parted from it by a shrubbery, was the church where Egbert's father was buried, and to the left stretched a wide and long quadrangle with walls of coral-berried yew, and hedges of trailing rose and honeysuckle within, enclosing a tract of wild, rank grass, and little, nestling, creeping flowers hidden among the tall tufts. In the centre stood a sun-dial, lichened over in brown and yellow patches, catching the moonbeams now, as if it were a solitary tombstone in a desecrated graveyard. The long shadows from church and ruin stretched themselves across the lonely enclosure; the sweetbrier gave forth soft perfume that carried on its breath some remembrance of the Heidelberg limes and chestnuts; falling twigs made a ghost-like rustling in the tall trees beyond, and the voice of the night seemed to say to the young man's heart, "Peace is nigh."

Egbert wandered on till he came to the sun-dial; he leaned upon it and looked around. His thoughts were deep and sad, but something within him seemed changed--he himself knew not what. "Is it my father's spirit calling me, or Christina's heart sending me some heavenly message? Is it that I am going to die, or to live and know God?" Such were the flitting thoughts that sped like restless wanderers through his mind, and all night through, as he walked backward and forward in the yew quadrangle, and then by the edge of the beech-shadowed pond, these same thoughts pursued him, and shaped themselves to his fancy into the whispering of the ever-quivering leaves and the trembling of the unrestful grass.

It was dawn again before he left the grounds, and he had scarcely been asleep a few hours when a hasty message came to him that a poor woman from the village was asking for him in great distress, and was sure he would not refuse to see her. It seemed that she came to say her little girl was taken suddenly ill, and the doctor thought she would not live. Egbert had specially noticed this little one, and played with her during the preceding day, when the school-children were enjoying their share of the day's delight; and, without the slightest hesitation, he followed the poor mother to her cottage, where he found a whole nest of children; some old enough to look sorry and frightened, some hardly able to do aught else than crow and laugh and give trouble to the elder ones. Up-stairs in a poor little garret lay the sick child, rocked on the knees of its eldest sister, and looking very pinched and white and mournful. A Catholic priest was in the room, and there were a few rude prints and a crucifix on the walls. The little one was very silent, but the mother said it had asked piteously for the "pretty gentleman" to bring it some flowers. Egbert took its hand and stroked its small, thin face. The child was not pretty, but it had that patient, confiding look that always stirs the heart, that prematurely yet unconsciously sad expression that is a thousand times more winning and more touching than beauty. For this very reason had Egbert noticed it the day before, and asked its name and age with an interest that made all its companions jealous.

As he bent down to it, it said something he could not make out, and turning to the mother for explanation, "She says, sir," answered the poor woman, "would you please say a prayer?" The young man reddened and looked at the priest. Again the child spoke. The priest said to Egbert: "She has a fancy for it. Will you not say an Our Father for her?"

He had chosen a prayer on which there could be no controversy, he thought, and was surprised when Egbert, instead of the Lord's Prayer, began a beautiful and impromptu supplication. For some time he went on, and the child listened bewildered; but as he stretched his hand towards her, and drew her head upon his arm, she said with a soft, childish accent, as if recovering from an unintelligible surprise: "No; say the Hail Mary."

The priest saw his head suddenly droop, and his fair hair touch the child's darker locks; his voice sank, and sobs came instead of words; then there was silence.

"Say the Hail Mary," said the child.

Egbert never raised his head, but in a broken voice he said the prayer as the little one directed, and the Our Father directly after. But the priest noticed that he said it as Catholics do, omitting the superadded words of the Protestant liturgy.

A few moments after, the child's father came in; he had been sent for from his work.

It was not long before God counted another angel in his train, and the mother one treasure less upon earth.

Egbert left the cottage with the priest, promising to send flowers for the little one's coffin, and to return to see it one more in the evening.

He was silent for some minutes, his companion watching him in appreciative sympathy, half-guessing the truth, and giving thanks to God for his double accession to his church in one and the same hour. At last the young man said:

"Mr. Carey, you were surprised I knew your prayers?"

"I own I was, Mr. Stanway, but I was happy to see you did."

"I know more than them, and I always thought that, could I make any form of faith my own, it would be yours."

"And what you saw this morning has, I think, induced you to do so?"

"I will tell you the truth, Mr. Carey. Up to this morning I could not bring myself to any tangible belief; at this moment, thank God, I think I may venture to say I am a Catholic."

"My dear Mr. Stanway, this is indeed happy news. And see the instrument God has chosen for your conversion!"

"I have only one more question to ask you. I have studied the Catholic faith a long time; I may say I have loved it long, and, now that I feel it to be the faith of my understanding as well as of my heart, may I not be received at once?"

"Of course, if you will only come to my house, and we will have a few moments' conversation. I have no doubt you can be made one of us before to-night."

The priest's house was a humble little cottage beyond the village green, and it had indeed needed all the Oxford scholar's taste to make its evangelical poverty the type rather of voluntary detachment than of necessary want.

Here, in a modest little room, whose only ornaments were two or three Düsseldorf prints and a book-case of theological and controversial books uniformly bound, Egbert and Carey sat down for a short time, that a few questions might satisfy the latter's judgment as to the propriety of at once receiving the new convert. He rose at last, and pointed to a temporary confessional that stood in one corner. Egbert was soon prepared, and every ceremony was rapidly performed. The priest could not help noticing the look of perfect peace that seemed to be the expression of the young man's predominant frame of mind. As he was still fasting, Egbert pleaded hard to be allowed to receive communion directly after baptism, and, after a moment's hesitation, the request was granted. He then paid another visit to the poor cottage where God had wrought this marvellous change in him, and reverently kissed the tiny white forehead of the little angel who had gone before him. And from that hour, there was not one in the village that would not have died for the "dear, kind gentleman that never said one hard word to a poor man." That day was remembered long years after, when the children of the girl he had seen nursing her little sick sister followed his own honored remains to their last earthly abode, and when another and a less kind master had come to reign over Stanway Hall.

Meanwhile, in the great dining-room where the guests were assembled for breakfast, conjectures were rife about the absent host, and laughing questions were put about his idleness on his too-romantic morning wanderings, until Mr. Beran, who also came in rather late, dispelled the whole mystery by an explanation consisting of one word, itself a mystery to many there present--business; and a courteous apology from Egbert, who hoped his friends would consider Mr. Beran as his delegate for the house. A few portly matrons and unmusical school-girls looked rather black at this substitution; but against fate what avails impatience? and against Beran, what availed black looks?

But when at luncheon Egbert did not appear, and when at dinner he came in with a saddened, grave demeanor, the discontented ones thought it really was time to throw up the game and go to other and more tempting hunting-grounds. So the party broke up the next day, and Egbert and his Cousin Charles were free again. The old man was soon made acquainted with what had taken place, and two days after both he and the young lord of the hall followed the little child's funeral to the Catholic cemetery.

But Egbert's heart was not yet satisfied. Heidelberg's memories were with him night and day, and it was not many weeks before he started for his German home with his new English friend as companion. He had not cared to trust his precious news to the slender certainty of foreign posts. He wanted to see the very first glimmering of the expression he knew it would call forth on one ever-dreamt-of face, and the journey was to him a ceaseless preparation for a joy that would come suddenly after all.

Leaving Beran at the "Golden Kranz-Hof," he walked through the darkling streets, past the silent _platz_, up to the old house he knew and loved so well. He never rang, for the door was open, and the next moment he stood in the organ-room. It was empty--so was the next apartment. A fear came over him, and he covered his face with his hands.

Presently the door opened, and Herr Lebnach came in, looking aged and haggard. There was no surprise on his face as he saw his pupil and friend. "I knew thou wouldst come," he said simply.

"Is she--" began Egbert, fearing to shape his dread in words.

"No; come to her. She has asked for thee. Didst thou not get my letter?"

"Letter! No, I came of my own accord."

"God be thanked! she will be _so_ happy!"

And this was his welcome! this the home he had been journeying to! Christina was lying in a small iron bed by the window, a vase of golden-lime blossoms on the table near her, and a prayer-book beside it. Her hands were clasped carelessly on her knees, and her head propped up very high with pillows. Egbert took her white, cold fingers in his, and knelt down by the bed. She only said his name--it was the first time she had ever done so.

"Christina," he said at length, "I came to tell you something. Your faith is mine now."

A faint cry, and a pale, momentary flush, and then a long look in silence.

"My God, I thank thee! My prayer is answered!" So she spoke after a few minutes.

"And I came to ask you something also," continued Egbert. "Do you love me as I always hoped you did?"

"Egbert," she answered solemnly, "I loved you from the first time I saw you; but, when I found you did not love and know the dear God, I offered my life to him for your conversion, and he has answered me."

Egbert told her briefly the circumstances that had occurred. A few days passed, and one evening, when the red sunset was firing the casement, and her father, her lover, and Charles Beran, were around her, she suddenly said, taking the two former by the hand:

"God is calling me--do not forget me. Your blessing, dearest father! O Egbert!"

And so died Egbert's first and only love.

Strangers often asked, when they came to see the beautiful Catholic Church adjoining Stanway Hall why it was dedicated to the virgin martyr St. Christina.

THE SCEPTICISM OF THE AGE.

The strong current of scepticism which set in during the eighteenth century extends into the nineteenth. Among the lower strata of society, among the dwellings of the poor--long the last refuge of religion--and especially among the factories and workshops, this scepticism has made various inroads on the ancient foundations of faith. By the sulphurous glare of the ominous flashes which momentarily relieve the clouded European horizon, we often catch glimpses of the horrors that are steadily accumulating in the lowest social depths. A powerful Christian current, whose volume has as usual increased with persecution, runs evidently by the side of this scepticism, but the latter, nevertheless, preponderates, and it is therefore not surprising that the barometric mean of our civilization should be such a low one.

The frivolous scepticism of the Voltairean school, now almost extinct in the French army, still survives among a majority of the political and military leaders of the other Latin nations, as, for instance, in Spain and Piedmont. For this reason the noble Spanish people, in spite of their hereditary virtues and high spirit, are still accursed with mediocre party leaders, while statesmen like the pious and chivalrous Valdegamas are only too rare. In Piedmont, unbelief, leagued with Italian cunning and rapacity, has during the last years borne blossoms which may well make us blush for our boasted civilization. "The proclamation of Cialdini and Pinelli" (one of which calls the Pope a clerical vampire and vicegerent of Satan), observed Nicotera, speaking in the National Assembly of the conduct of these generals in Naples and Sicily, "would disgrace a Gengis-Khan and an Attila!" "Such acts," exclaimed Aversano, alluding to the same subject in the Italian Parliament, "must disgrace the whole nation in the eyes of the world!" "It is literally true," said Lapena, President of the Assizes at Santa Maria, "that in this second half of the nineteenth century a horde of cannibals exists in our beautiful Italy!"

Other nations may perhaps thank God with the Pharisee in Scripture that they are not like the Italians. But if they have not gone to the length of fusillading defenceless priests (the case of Gennaro d'Orso, _Gazette du Midi_, February 1, 1861)--if they have never trodden under foot the crucifix--if their mercenaries have never raised blasphemous hands against the consecrated Host (_Giornale di Roma_, January 24, 1861)--in short, if other European nations have not yet been guilty of such atrocities as the Italians, very few have much cause to pride themselves upon their godliness and piety. Even in Germany, the fanaticism of infidelity has brought men close to the boundary-line which divides a false civilization from barbarism, and in some cases this line has already been crossed. At Mannheim the cry, "Kill the priests, and throw them into the Rhine!" was raised in 1865. In many parts of Southern Germany, the members of certain religious orders have been grossly ill-treated by an ignorant and brutal populace. "It is but too true," says the Archbishop of Freiburg, in his pastoral of May 7, 1868, "that the servants of the church are often exposed to insult and violence."

Ascending from the levels of ordinary life into the higher regions of civilization, science, and art, we discover that the scepticism of the last century has made more progress among our philosophers and poets. It is especially among the former that this scepticism seems to have gained ground, for materialism ranks lower in the scale of intelligence than the deification of the human mind. This return to the atomic theory of Epicurus is calculated rather to stupefy than to enlighten, for Humboldt remarks that a multiplicity of elementary principles is not to be met with even among the savages. Materialism is utterly incapable of elevating the heart, and destroys therefore a branch of civilization quite as essential as intellectual culture itself. Where all this tends to, how it brutalizes man and degrades him below the animal, how it obliterates every distinction between good and evil, how it robs our accountability of all meaning, how it makes the savage state with its attendant ignorance and barbarism our normal condition, has been forcibly pointed out in Haeffner's admirable treatise on _The Results of Materialism_. "The materialist," says Haeffner, "virtually tells man: You are wrong to set yourself in aristocratic pride over the other brutes; you are wrong to claim descent from a nobler race than the myriads of worms and grains of sand that lie at your feet; you are wrong to build your dwelling above the stalls of the animals: descend, therefore, from your grand height, and embrace the cattle in the fields, greet the trees and grasses as equals, and extend your hand in fellowship to the dust whose kindred you are."

As in modern philosophy, so the scepticism of the preceding century is equally manifest in modern poetry. "No department of human activity," observes a profound thinker of the present day, "is so feeble and occupies so low a moral standpoint as poetry, through which all the demoralization of the eighteenth century has been transmitted." It is a sort of confessional, from which we publish to the world our own effeminacy and degradation--not to regret and repent, but to defend and make parade of them. What we feel ashamed to say in simple prose, we proclaim boldly and complacently in rhyme. If a poet soars now and then to virtue, it is generally only virtue in the ancient heathen sense. Hence it comes that, when a political storm impends in the sultry atmosphere of the Old World, the night-birds and owls of anarchy fill the air with their cries. In times of peace they luxuriate in our modern political economism with the law of demand and supply, by whose agency human labor has been reduced to a mere commodity. In literature they preach the evangel of materialism under the flimsy guise of so-called popularized science, and even the school has been perverted into an institution whose sole object seems to be to supply labor for the white slave mart.

Those who desire to behold the fruits which spring from this unchristian culture of material interests should go to England for an illustration. Though the Anglican sect is the state religion, infidelity has made nowhere greater progress than in that country. Its principal church, St. Paul's, London, gives no evidences of Christianity. The interior does not address itself like Paul to the Areopagus, but like the Areopagus to Paul, for it inculcates an unadulterated heathenism. The first monument that arrests the attention of the visitor is dedicated to the pagan Fama, who consoles Britannia for the loss of her heroic sons. The next monument belongs to the heathen goddess of Victory, who crowns a Pasenby; while a Minerva calls the attention of budding warriors to La Marchand's death at Salamanca. Then come a Neptune with open arms, Egyptian sphinxes, the East India Company seal. When the principal religious edifice of a nation is thus turned into a heathen temple, the people themselves must become heathenized, and this we find to be so here. In Liverpool 40, in Manchester 51, in Lambeth 61, in Sheffield 62 per cent. profess no religion at all. So says the London _Times_ of May 4, 1860. In the city of London thousands and tens of thousands know no more of Christianity than the veriest pagans. In the parish of St. Clement Danes, on the Strand, the rector discovered an irreligiousness incredible to believe (_Quarterly Review_, April, 1861). For generations hundreds and thousands of coal miners have lived in utter ignorance of such a book as the Bible. In answer to the question whether he had ever heard of Jesus Christ, one of them replied: "No, for I have never worked in any of his mines." Innumerable facts attest that civilization retrogrades in a ratio with this deplorable religious ignorance. "Among all the states of Europe," remarked Fox in the House of Commons (Feb. 26, 1850), "England is the one where education has been most neglected." The justice of this observation is fully sustained by the report presented in May of the same year by the board of school trustees of Lancashire: "Nearly half the people of this great nation," say they, "can neither read nor write, and a large part of the remainder possesses only the most indispensable education." Out of 11,782 children, 5,805 could barely spell, and only 2,026 could read with fluency. Out of 14,000 teachers, male and female, 7,000 were found grossly incompetent for their positions. Among the troops sent to the Crimea, no more than one soldier in every five was able to write a letter home.

A glance at a few statistics will clearly show that moral deterioration keeps even pace with the intellectual. From 1810 to 1837, the number of criminals has annually increased, in certain districts, from 89 to 3,117; from 1836 to 1843, the average number of persons arrested each year in the manufacturing districts of York and Lancaster increased over 100 per cent., and the number of murderers 89 per cent.; from 1846 to 1850, the number of criminals in the Dorset district increased from 726 to 1,300, giving, in a population of 115,000 souls, 1 criminal to every 60 individuals. In London, the number of persons arrested in 1856 amounted to 73,260, whence it appears that about 1 inhabitant in every 40 passes through the hands of the police. Of the 200,000 criminal offences tried each year before the English tribunals, one-tenth part are committed by children, and 50,000 by persons less than twenty years of age. In London alone, 17,000 minors are yearly tried, which is 1 inhabitant in every 175; whereas the ratio for Paris is only 1 inhabitant in every 400. Mayhew computes that £42,000 are stolen during the year in the metropolis; and the London _Examiner_ lately deplored that there should be less danger in crossing the great desert than in passing through some of the more remote suburbs of London at night. The story of a Professor Fagin, who gave private lessons in stealing, has often been regarded as a canard; but we read, in the _Morning Chronicle_, an advertisement in which one Professor Harris announces a similar course of instruction, and even promises his pupils to take them, for practice, to the theatres and other places of public resort. Among these startling fruits of British civilization must be included the 28 cases of polygamy which occurred in London in a single twelvemonth; the 12,770 illegitimate children born, during 1856, in the workhouses alone; the children market, held openly in a London street every Wednesday and Thursday, between the hours of six and seven, where parents exhibit their offspring for sale, or hire them out for infamous purposes. Such being the condition of an overwhelming majority of the people, it is no longer difficult to credit the existence of the new race which is now said to be growing up in England--a race whose civilization Dr. Shaw contrasts, rather disparagingly, with that of the African and the Indian. "After a careful investigation," says Dr. Shaw, "I have been forced to arrive at the conclusion that, while the moral, physical, intellectual, and educational status of the lowest English classes is about on the same level with that of the savage, they rank even below him in morals and customs."

And what has England, politically considered, done for the cause of civilization since cotton achieved its great triumph over corn? As one of the great powers of the Christian world, she has virtually abdicated. For national right and justice, for really oppressed nationalities, she has long ceased to upraise her voice or her arm. It is only when some Manchester cotton-lord suffers an injury in his pocket that her fleets threaten a bombardment. She is an asylum for the refuse of all nations, and freely permits the torch of the incendiary to be cast into the dwellings of her neighbors. Her literature, philosophy, religion, as well as her industry, trade, and diplomacy, are intended to hand the nations completely over to materialism. Wherever England's policy predominates, there virtue and simplicity, happiness and peace, disappear from the earth, and out of the ruins rises an arrogant and inordinate craving for the goods of this world. British influence has destroyed Portugal, weakened Spain, distracted Italy, and impaired the moral prestige of France. Her religious apathy encourages a degrading heathenism. Britain's political economy has inaugurated in Europe not only a serfdom of labor, but a serfdom of mind. The Scotchman, Ferguson, predicted that thought would become a trade, and Lasalle remarks that it has already become one in the hands of most English scholars. And these are the results of our much-vaunted civilization!

The pernicious example set by England in philosophy, poetry, and letters has unfortunately found but too many imitators on the Continent of Europe and elsewhere. Our literature is at present in the same condition in which it was in the days of Sophists and Greek decadence. When God desires to punish a civilized people--remarked some years ago an eloquent French pulpit orator--he visits them with such a swarm of unbelieving scholars as the clouds of locusts which he inflicted upon ancient Egypt. Men of perverse heads and corrupted hearts generate, in centuries which are called enlightened, a darkness upon which the goddess Genius of Knowledge sheds uncertain flashes, resembling the lightning which relieves the evening sky on the approach of a storm: The Sophists of ancient Greece were such heralds of impending wrath and desolation, and this class of men closely resemble the majority of our modern literati. If we compare the atheistic, material tendencies of a Protagoras, Antiphon, or Œnopides with our present progressive science; if we recall the time when Prodikus or Critias, in their efforts to destroy the religion of Greece, represented it as an invention of selfishness or of the ancient lawgivers; if Hippias offered himself to lecture on every conceivable subject, just as prominent writers now undertake to discuss all topics; if the latter again cloak their designs under the same phraseology; in short, when all this is once more re-enacted, then the parallel between that age and our own will be found almost perfect. The same class of scholars flourished in both eras; in both they claimed to be the high-priests of truth, although they are no more entitled to this honor than those whom Lucian describes leading the Syrian goddess on asses about the land. We live, in fact, in the days of a declining civilization, and nothing but a speedy return to the cardinal principles of Christianity can save us from relapsing into barbarism.

MATER CHRISTI.

Mother of Christ--then mother of us all: Mother of God made man, of man made God:[97] The thornless garden, the immaculate sod, Whence sprang the Adam that reversed the fall. Mother of Christ the Body Mystical; Of us the members, as of him the Head: Of him our life, the first-born from the dead;[98] Of us baptized into his burial.[99] Yes, Mother, we were truly born of thee On Calvary's second Eden--thou its Eve: Thy dolors were our birth-pangs by the tree Whereon the second Adam died to live-- To live in us, thy promised seed to be, Who then his death-wound to the snake didst give.

FOOTNOTES:

[97] "God became man that man might become God."--_St. Augustine._

[98] Col. i. 18.

[99] Rom. vi. 4.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF HENRI LASSERRE.