CHAPTER X.

A DESPAIRING CHAPTER.

After all, no person's story can be truly told without beginning at the creation of the world. Not that we would invoke Darwinian aid, or inquire into the family peculiarities of the sponge--"O philoprogenitive sponge!" Nor would we intimate that the soul is as passive to circumstances as a rudderless ship to wind and wave, but assert rather that it is like the steamer, the great struggling creature, with a will at heart. But circumstances are strong, even very old circumstances, and our ancestors have a word to say, not as to our final destination, but as to the road by which we shall reach it. Coarser natures get their bent after the manner commemorated by the Mohammedan legend: some Eblis of an ancestor spurned their clay with his foot when the angels had kneaded it, and the dent is long in filling out; but finer souls are strung like the wind-harp, and from the long line-gale of ghosts preceding them is stretched now and then a viewless finger, which sets vibrating some silent inherited chord. Is it a vanishing and perpetually recurring strain of a Gregorian chant, breaking awfully into the pauses of a godless life? Is it an airily riotous Bacchic wreathing the slow minims of a choral? Catch up the strain and repeat it as you will, all your life shall be a palimpsest with _Te Deum laudamus_ written largely over the fading errors; still the merit of good-will is not all your own. Or trip as your dutiful measure may, tangled in that wild song; the fault is not all yours. Many a Cassius may claim indulgence on the score of some rash inherited humor.

Does the reader perceive that we are trying to excuse somebody?

The truth is, Carl has disappointed us. We meant him to be an exquisite and heroic creation, perfect in every way; and we had a right to expect that our intentions would be realized; did not we make him ourself? But just as the clay model was finished, and we were complacently admiring it, into our _atelier_ stepped the grand antique mother, Nature. She came with a sound of scornful sweet laughter, which seemed to roll cloud-wise under her feet, and curl up around the strong and supple form, and wreathe the wide slope of her shoulders. "Look you," she said, and pointed her finger, a little shaken with merriment, "that is not the way _I_ make men. There are no muscles in those limbs, there is no sight under that brow, there is no live heart beating in that narrow chest. You have left no chance for a soul to get into your manikin." So saying, she stretched her finger yet further, and mockingly pushed it through the skull of our model; then disappeared, leaving all the air behind her tremulous with mirth.

Let us hurry over the present of this Carl with a hole in his head, out of which all his ideal perfections are escaping, but into which his true soul may some day enter. Outwardly he is studying law, inwardly he is studying chaos. What books Mr. Griffeth gave him to read, we know not; but we do know that the sentences were like smooth, strong fingers untying from him many of the restraints of his former education. With Theodore Parker, he could call the sacred Scriptures the "Hebrew mythology," and describe baptism as "being ecclesiastically sprinkled with water;" and having got so far--"What," said he, "is the use of Mr. Theodore Parker?" and so dropped him. The conversations Mr. Griffeth held with him we know little of, but may presume that they were not profitable. We only know that they were frequent. The two were constantly together, more constantly than suited Mr. Yorke, who lost faith in the minister. "He has no pity," he said. "He seems to have studied theology only to see how many sins he can commit without losing his soul." But this disapprobation of his step-father's had no effect on the young man, who was perfectly infatuated with his new friend. This quiet life of Carl's had produced a mental stagnation, from which arose all sorts of miasmata. He dimly knew them as such, but that did not prevent his breathing and poisoning himself with them. Perhaps he also suspected that Mr. Griffeth's wings would melt off if he were exposed to a strong and searching light; but the companionship was fascinating, and Carl fancied that he had found his like. It was not so; they were alike only as sharp six and flat seven are; they had identical moods; but Carl stooped to where his new friend rose.

One of the fine things the young man learned was the use of opium. "It makes you feel like a god while it lasts," says Mr. Griffeth, "puts you into a perfectly Olympian state. But I warn you," he added, with a tardy touch of conscience, "it does not last long, and from Olympia you sink to Hades."

"And then," says Carl, "you go about as Dante did, with your hands folded under your mantle, and people stand aside, and whisper about you. I will take the dark with the bright."

So saying, he measured out the drops, and drank them with the invocation: "Come, winged enchantment, and bear me wherever thou wilt."

Reader, didst thou ever see one dear to thee made tipsy with liquor? and dost thou remember the mingled pain, and pity, and contempt with which thou didst look on his abasement? A man, a king of the earth, a brother of saints, a friend of the Crucified, a child of the Most High, grovelling thus!

One comfort, nature, and not we, made this man fall so. O better comfort! he is earning mountain-loads of self-contempt, which shall one day be paid with interest.

Only a few other items have we to record at this time. The young ladies had made their proposed literary venture--Melicent with signal failure, Clara with partial success. Publishers had twenty-five different reasons, each better than the last, why a volume of European travels would not be at that particular time a fortunate venture, and were unanimously unable to say at what future period the prospect would be brighter. Miss Yorke was not entirely blind. She perceived that her book was a failure, and withdrew it. Whether she contemplated any other work, her family did not know. She maintained a profound silence on the subject. They suspected, however, that she was studying out a novel. Clara's first story, read with great applause to the family at home, was modestly offered to a respectable second-class magazine, and accepted, with a request for more. So Miss Clara occupies the proud position of being independent in the matter of pocket-money, and an occasional benefactor to the others.

Of more consequence to us is the fact that Father Rasle is now settled in Seaton, and building a church there. Something else is also being built in Seaton--a "Native American" society, alias Know-nothing. This society excited much attention and enthusiasm, especially in Mr. Griffeth's congregation, and among their friends. All the young men joined it. It seemed precisely to suit the genius of Seaton.

Against this party Mr. Charles Yorke fought with all his strength. It was contrary to the spirit of the constitution, he persisted; it had nothing in common with the Declaration of Independence. The views and aims of the party were narrow and bigoted, and their leaders were ignorant demagogues.

But all that he gained by his denunciations was unpopularity, and the party prospered yet more. It had not only the young and the infidel for active members; it had a sly encouragement from Mr. Griffeth, a cool approval from Doctor Martin, and an earnest help from the Rev. Mr. Conway, the gentleman whom we left in a soiled state half-way from Bragon to Seaton. He had preached the next Sunday with acceptance to his congregation, and was now settled among them. We may remark that he has not yet forgiven Mr. Griffeth the mistake about the pulpit, nor will he be convinced that it was a mistake. In consequence of this obduracy, the two ministers live in a state of feud, in which their congregations take part, to the slight disedification of old-fashioned people.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE SERIAL LITERATURE OF ENGLAND.

Considering the number of periodicals at present published in Great Britain, the extent of their aggregate circulation, and the range and variety of topics discussed in their pages, their effect on the public mind of that country for good or evil can scarcely be overestimated. A magazine holds a middle place between the legitimate literature of books and the ephemeral and generally ill-digested effusions of newspapers, and appeals, especially to the middle classes, as it were, in science, taste, and art. Business men who have not time to read long histories or elaborately compiled scientific works, and indolent ones who have not industry enough to do so, seek information or pleasure in perusing their periodicals, while the traveller as he is hurried along over the ocean or the railroad, and the overwrought student as he closes his ponderous folio or lays aside his pen, alike find recreation and relief in the lighter and more mirthful contributions which, judiciously dispersed, usually grace the pages of our monthly and semi-monthly press. Books, too, of late have accumulated to such a fearful extent that the bibliographer finds it impossible to read even a moiety of them to ascertain their value, and so is forced to form his opinion of them second-hand by accepting the _dicta_ of the industrious reviewer, whose decision, when judiciously and intelligently given, thus becomes of the utmost benefit to authors and readers.

Of late years the number and variety of English magazines have greatly increased, and we presume the patronage bestowed on them has kept pace with their growth. We would be glad to be in a position to say that, in liberality of spirit, fairness and originality, the improvement is equally apparent; but such is not the case, and in this respect forms a marked contrast to the progress which distinguishes a similar class of publications in this and some European countries. Propriety of expression and artistic construction of sentences, which have always characterized the composition of English writers, even of second or third order of ability, remain, but much of the force, mental grasp, and wide range of view, as well as profound and exact knowledge, which once distinguished their criticisms and essays, are wanting. We are aware that the generation of able men whose genius once illuminated the columns of _Blackwood_, _Fraser_, _Household Words_, etc., has passed away; but why have they left us no literary heirs, no worthy successors, to fill their places and wield their trenchant pens? Has the English mind deteriorated, or is it that English public taste has become so corrupted by the unwholesome sweets of the Trollopes, the Braddons, and like sensationalists, that it rejects the salutary food presented it by more serious and natural writers? We can hardly believe that this latter is the efficient cause; for before the era of Griffin, Dickens, Thackeray, Lever, and many other favorite authors, several of whose admirable novels and essays first reached the public through the magazines, the taste of the masses was even more vitiated by the romances of the last century, hundreds of which were sure to be found on the shelves of every circulating library in the country. Neither can we properly attribute this "dearth of fame" to a want of adequate pecuniary reward; for we are assured that encouragement in this respect is sufficiently ample, and, compared with that of a generation ago, might be called munificent. We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that there is an actual present deficiency of mentality among the majority of English writers--another indication, perhaps, of that decay of the Anglo-Saxon race, so-called, in England which has been so long and so pertinaciously asserted by her rivals. It is certainly true that the spirit of money-getting is more and more engrossing the attention of the people; and, while other and younger nations, like Russia, Germany, and the United States, are rapidly growing into immense proportions, both artistic and literary as well as politically, England, wrapped up mentally in her own self-conceit, as she is geographically shackled by the four seas, is sinking into comparative provincialism.

The tone and temper of her writers when treating foreign subjects, we submit, amply prove this, were all other evidence wanting. Their views of the affairs of other nations lack fairness, amplitude, and, not unfrequently, truthfulness, and always seem like those of men who look upon the broad outer world through the wrong end of a spy-glass. Can anything be more unjust than the following passage, which we find _en passant_ in an article on France in the May number of _Blackwood_?

"There is, however, one cause of hopelessness as regards France, and for the life of me I do not see how it is to be encountered. Here are the people who not only asserted that they were the politest and most civilized, but the bravest and boldest in Europe, now exhibiting themselves not only as utterly degraded and debased, but actually as destitute of courage as of morals."

Apart from the want of generosity exhibited by the writer above in thus ungraciously stigmatizing an unfortunate ally, his estimate of her condition is exceedingly unfair, and, as he professes in the article to have been a frequent visitor to her shores in bygone days, we must attribute his obliquity to something else than ignorance. In her recent struggle, France showed nothing like cowardice; but, on the contrary, her children, veterans and recruits, exhibited a courage and heroism worthy of her proudest days of military glory. Her signal and rapid overthrow was due to other causes than the want of bravery of her soldiers. Within the space of about two hundred days, her badly organized, poorly equipped, and generally indifferently commanded troops fought seventeen pitched battles and one hundred and sixty-five general engagements against three-quarters of a million of the best disciplined troops in Europe. Of the merits of the quarrel we have nothing to say, but we feel assured that the troops of Kaiser William would feel little complimented at being told that their splendid victories were gained over a demoralized and cowardly nation. As to France being destitute of morals, the contrary is the fact. It is true that Paris, like London and other large centres of population, contains much that is immoral and unholy; but Paris is no longer France, and those best acquainted with the whole country allege that religion was never more securely enthroned in the hearts of the people, nor her ministers so much respected, as at the present moment.

American questions are treated by our transatlantic contemporaries in a manner somewhat different. Occasionally they speak of us in impartial and even complimentary terms, but generally in a vein of lofty patronage, such as an indulgent and much-enduring father might be supposed to use to his erring but not altogether godless offspring. If we exhibit a leaning toward Russia, we are forthwith admonished to beware of encouraging despotism; if we recall our ancient friendship with France, we are likely to be reminded that with England we are the same in language, blood, and religion; but, if there is a treaty favorable to the "mother-country" to be concocted, or a European coalition adverse to the interests of our mother aforesaid apprehended, Shakespeare, Milton, and Newton are resurrected and become our joint inheritance, and Great Britain and the United States are instantly declared to be two, and the only two, "free governments in the universe" having a common interest and a common destiny. Occasionally this maternal surveillance is varied by an allusion to our social or topographical peculiarities, really ludicrous from its very absurdity, while it shows, with all this assumption of superiority, how very inaccurate is the knowledge of our kind relations. In a late article on the destruction of the ancient forests, a writer in the _Fortnightly Review_ gravely protests against "the further destruction of scenery unique in Great Britain, and, if represented in America at all, but imperfectly represented by the oak openings of Michigan." Now, if an American were to talk of the extensive prairies of Caermarthenshire or the picturesque mountains of Kent, his ignorance of the physical peculiarities of even those small subdivisions would be apt to evoke the severe censure of our London critics.

Again, in their reviews of American works, the English magazines, whether through design or from want of knowing better, usually fall into serious error in respect to the constituent elements of our population. They affect to regard the American mind simply as a mere emanation of that of England, weakened, it is true, by time and distance, but still worthy of some consideration. How such a patent fallacy can be tolerated in that country, our nearest European neighbor as we are her best customer, is incomprehensible. We have, it is true, generally adopted what was good in her civil polity at the time of the Revolution, and the majority of us speak her language as our native tongue; but we are no more English than we are German, Irish, French, or Spanish in our origin, temperament, habits of thought, or development of genius. We are all these combined, as well as something more which only the free spirit of a republic can call into being, and, if modesty would permit us, we could say with truthfulness that there is contained within that word "American" all the best elements of every European race. The latest instance of this self-deception we recently noticed in _Saint Paul's Magazine_, in what was otherwise a very excellent notice of Hawthorne's works.

But America has the advantage of the practical arguments of material prosperity and rapidly developing æsthetic tastes on her side, and is fast becoming indifferent to adverse criticism. With less fortunate countries, like Ireland, for instance, the case is altogether different. The English magazine writers, when at a loss for an illustration or "an awful example," never hesitate to draw on the history or pretended history of the sister kingdom for the required materials. We have before us some dozen periodicals published in London and Edinburgh, the majority of the articles in which are either on Irish topics or contain allusions to the affairs of that unfortunate and misgoverned people, and that, too, as it may be supposed, in no very partial or eulogistic terms. This unrelenting hostility to a weak nation, while it may do very well for placemen and land-agents who live by the griefs and afflictions of others, is unworthy the chivalrous spirit which should distinguish the true knight of the quill. We fear, however, that Burke's saying with regard to the chivalry of the middle ages is equally applicable to our own times, and that the free lances of the English metropolis, who will fight in any and every cause, are more in demand than the earnest searchers after truth and the honest correctors of public morals.

We argue this from two facts: It is not unusual for the same person to be employed in writing for two or more publications altogether opposed in aim and character; and, secondly, from the total absence of anything like religious sentiment in nearly the entire periodical press, if we except those published in the direct interests of Protestantism, and in those it degenerates into absolute bigotry. We do not say that all the magazines are positively immoral, but they certainly are negatively so, and in this respect probably more dangerous to the well-being of society. Take their method of treating some late publications which have been much spoken of, for example. We find that Darwin's elaborately nonsensical theory of the origin of the human race is handled with as much delicacy and seriousness as if the reviewers had grave doubts in their own minds as to whether their ancestors had or had not been monkeys, or at least as if they considered it an open question not yet definitely settled; while the blasphemies of Renan, instead of eliciting condemnation and reproof, are carefully and quietly reproduced and laid before the reader with a gentle caution against their novelty. Still, the prevailing tone of the English magazines can scarcely be said to be actively anti-Catholic or unchristian. It partakes more of paganism in a modified form, which, while not openly violating the laws of society, practically ignores the interference of Providence in the affairs of men, like the Universalist preacher whose highest eulogy, as pronounced by a friend, was that he was perfectly neutral in politics and religion. The short prose fiction sketches in which the English periodicals abound and which in artistic merit far excel ours, are based on the same inamiable sentimentalism--a sort of polite indifferentism, by which the heroes and heroines are made to walk through life unconscious that there is a Being to whom the fall of a sparrow is not unknown, and who directs the destiny of nations as well as individuals. Fiction, if not the best, is certainly a very effective medium of communicating correct ideas and pure morality to the young, and, while it should be read sparingly, cannot in this age be altogether dispensed with; and therefore it is that too much care cannot be taken to see that it is not only free from grossness, but that it is actively and primarily permeated by the spirit of religion. Where this is not observed, as we regret to find in the case of the English magazines, mere style of composition, felicity of diction, and power of description count for nothing. They are simply evidences of the perversion of the gifts of God, which ought always and in all places to be used for the greater glory and honor of the Giver.

MEMOIR OF FATHER JOHN DE BRÉBEUF, S.J.

Well acquainted as was Father Brébeuf, from long study and intelligent observation, with the character and customs of the Hurons, he knew thoroughly how to propitiate their favor and regain their respect. His manly and courageous bearing during the prevalence of the fever, and his undaunted coolness and fearlessness of death in the midst of the late persecution, had won for him the admiration of all the nobler spirits in the tribe. In December, 1637, he gave a grand banquet, to which were invited the chiefs and warriors of the country. He there addressed his assembled guests on the necessity of embracing the true faith. In January of the next year, the head chief of the Hurons, or Aondecho, as he was called, returned the compliment by giving a similar banquet, to which Father Brébeuf was invited; when he came to the banquet, the chief presented him to the assembly, not as a guest, but as the host of the occasion, addressing them thus:

"Not I, but Echon, assembled you; the object of the deliberation I know not; but be it what it may, it must, I am convinced, be of great moment Let all then hearken attentively." The ever-ready and zealous missionary then addressed the assembly on the same subject--the true faith. He followed this up with another banquet in February, where his address was followed by the evident but silent conviction of his hearers. At its close, the Aondecho arose, and exhorted his warriors and subjects to yield themselves to the counsels of the fathers. The deep guttural expression of approval, ho! ho! ho! resounded on all sides, and the grateful missionaries made their joyful thanksgiving by chanting the hymn of the Holy Ghost. Then, with one acclaim, the chiefs and warriors adopted Father Brébeuf into their tribe, and created him one of the chiefs of the land--a dignity which invested him with the power of summoning assemblies of the people in his own cabin.

In the spring of 1638, the fever began to disappear from the country. Now, too, the first Christian marriage was solemnized. The wife of Joseph Chiwattenwha had been baptized in March, and the two were united together in holy matrimony by Father Brébeuf on St. Joseph's Day. Peter Tsiwendaentaha united with them in approaching the holy communion.

The public duties of the mission occupied the entire time of Father Brébeuf. The abandonment of Ihonitiria, in consequence of the recent scourge, caused Fathers le Mercier, Ragueneau, Garnier, Jogues, Pijart, and Chatelain to remove that mission to Teananstayaé, the residence of Louis de Sainte Foi. But they felt great fears about that place, since its chief had shortly before instigated the warriors to canvass the murder of the missionaries at Ossossané. But Father Brébeuf, with characteristic courage and zeal, went to the village, and as a chief of the nation summoned a council of the chiefs and warriors. The mission was formally announced on the spot, and we shall soon see the fathers offering up the Holy Mass at Teananstayaé. The year before, an Iroquois prisoner had received baptism there from the hands of Father Brébeuf; and now nearly a hundred prisoners, condemned to death, were instructed and baptized by the missionaries on the eve of their execution. About this time an entire tribe, the Wenrohronons, abandoned by their allies, the Neutrals, came and threw themselves upon the hospitality of the Hurons. They were wasting away from the effects of the recent plague, and the fathers at Ossossané rushed to their relief. They nursed their sick, instructed and baptized their dying, many of whom expired with the waters of baptism fresh upon their brows. The Hurons themselves were moved in favor of a religion capable of producing such heroic examples; and on the 11th of November, St. Martin's Day, one entire family, and the heads of two others, were baptized in health. On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, others were converted and baptized, numbering in all thirty; so that at Christmas there was assembled, around that rude but holy altar in the wilderness, a sincere and fervent little congregation of Christians, adoring and offering their gifts to the infant Saviour.

The missionaries were now distributed in sets of four, consisting of three of the earlier and one of the recently arrived fathers, at the various points through the country where missions were located. Many new missions were opened, and the flying visits to villages whose missions had been broken up by the persecution were renewed. Among the new missions now opened was the one already alluded to at Teananstayaé, or St. Joseph's, whose commencement on New Year's Day was cheered with fifty baptisms. The indefatigable Brébeuf was its founder, and with him were associated Father Jogues, whose Indian name was Ondesson, and Father Ragueneau. The most perfect system, both as regards the internal regulation of the affairs of the mission-house and its inmates, and the external labors of the fathers, was introduced by Father Brébeuf, which enabled them to perform an almost incredible amount of missionary labor. Among the natives, an aged chief named Ondehorrea, who was now a Christian, was of great assistance to them in their labors. He had once repulsed the fathers from his bed of illness, and, having called in the sorcerers, he then rejected them, and recalled the fathers, who were at once at his side. He was soon sufficiently instructed to be baptized, and at the moment that the saving waters touched his forehead, he arose suddenly in perfect health, to the amazement of all. He ever afterwards showed his sincerity as a Christian, and his gratitude to the fathers, by remaining their constant friend and faithful assistant.

A curious affair now arose, which will convey to us some idea of the trials with which those devoted missionaries had to contend. A woman living in a little village near Ossossané, as she was passing along one night, saw the moon fall upon her head, and immediately change into a beautiful female, holding a child in her arms. The apparition declared herself to be the sovereign of that country and all the nations dwelling therein, and required that her sovereign power should be acknowledged by each nation's making a present or offering. The apparition designated the offering which each nation should bring, not omitting the French, who were required to present blue blankets. The woman was taken ill, and demanded that the order of the divinity should be complied with for her recovery. A council was accordingly held at Ossossané, to which the missionaries were invited. They attended, and were bold enough to oppose so wicked a homage to a false deity. But all was in vain, for the whole country was in a ferment of excitement. The most abominable orgies known to savage life were celebrated in honor of this new goddess, and men were hurrying in all directions to procure the required presents. Soon all the offerings were collected together, except the blue blankets of the French, and the missionaries were called upon to do homage in the manner required of them. They resolutely refused compliance with such a requisition, and, as may be well imagined, they immediately became the objects of general indignation. Amid threats and imprecations, and the glare of the uplifted tomahawk, those courageous priests refused to let a blanket go from their cabin, except upon condition of the immediate cessation of all that was going on, and the dismissal of the woman. These terms were rejected, the orgies were continued, and peril surrounded the fathers at every step; still they could not be induced to yield the points. Fortunately for the missionaries, however, the apparition paid the woman another visit, and released the French from the unholy tribute.

In September, 1639, new missionaries arrived. Unfortunately, an Indian in one of the canoes of their flotilla was infected with the small-pox, and that disease was thus introduced into the country. The malady began to spread with fearful rapidity, and, as usual, the origin of this evil, as of all others, was attributed to the missionaries. Persecution was at once renewed, the cross was violently dragged down from their houses, their cabins were invaded, their crucifixes torn from their persons, one of them was cruelly beaten, and all were threatened with death. So great was their peril at one time that they calmly prepared themselves for martyrdom. They were finally ordered peremptorily from the town. In the midst of these persecutions, the heart of Father Brébeuf was consoled with a vision: the Blessed Virgin, as the Mother of Sorrows, came to console her son and to confirm his courage; she appeared to him with her heart transfixed with swords. At once his resolution was taken; he remained at his post of danger and of care, and continued his missionary labors.

In consequence of these repeated persecutions, and the constant exposure of the fathers to the renewal of them by the malice of the medicine-men, it was determined to erect a missionary residence apart from the villages and their vicious population, which might prove a safe retreat for the fathers in time of trouble, and a convenient place for instructing the catechumens and others well disposed to receive the faith. During the years that Father Brébeuf was at Ossossané, displaying the most heroic zeal and disinterested charity, he had met with the blackest ingratitude from the persons whom he had fed by depriving himself of nourishment, and on one occasion he was ignominiously beaten in public. The other fathers had suffered similar indignities and maltreatment. While glorying, like the saints, in these sufferings for the sake of God and his church, he yet saw the necessity, for the sake of the mission, of a separate residence. It was this necessity that originated St. Mary's on the river Wye.

In the various missions whose establishments we have mentioned, there had been baptized up to the summer of 1640 about one thousand persons: of these two hundred and sixty were infants, and though some of them were restored to health, by means apparently miraculous, most of them went in baptismal purity to swell the ranks of the church triumphant in heaven. It was about this time that Father Brébeuf ceased to be superior of the mission, and was succeeded by Father Jerome Lalemant. The Jesuit, ever true to his institute, passed from command to obedience with the gladness and alacrity known only to the humble soldiers of the cross. His career as superior, arduous and glorious, was also abundant in fruit to the church. He was indeed the father of the Huron mission. Our eloquent Bancroft, in speaking of his and his companions' labors to introduce Christianity among the aborigines of our continent, says that St. Joseph's chapel, wherein, "in the gaze of thronging crowds, vespers and matins began to be chanted, and the sacred bread was consecrated by solemn Mass, amazed the hereditary guardians of the council-fires of the Huron tribes. Beautiful testimony of the equality of the human race! the sacred wafer, emblem of the divinity in man, all that the church offered to the princes and nobles of the European world, was shared with the humblest of the savage neophytes. The hunter, as he returned from his wild roamings, was taught to hope for eternal rest; the braves, as they came from war, were warned of the wrath that kindles against sinners a never-dying fire, fiercer far than the fires of the Mohawks; and the idlers of the Indian villages were told the exciting tale of the Saviour's death for their redemption."

Father Brébeuf, already the founder of so many missions, now starts out with unabated ardor to open others. Accompanied by Father Chaumonot, he advanced into the country of the Neutrals, naming the first town he entered "All Saints." He pushed onward to the Niagara, to the residence of Tsoharissen, the chief whom all the Neuter towns obeyed. Hither the calumnies of some hostile Hurons had preceded him, and represented Echon as the most terrible of sorcerers. The two missionaries were repulsed on all sides, and in their retreat from place to place were pursued by the arrows of their enemies. Still they persevered, and they succeeded in visiting eighteen towns, preached the Gospel in ten of them, and announced for the first time the words of truth to at least three thousand souls. During these labors, the keen eye of Brébeuf saw the importance to New France of an occupation of the Niagara by missions and trading posts; the travels of the missionaries would be greatly shortened, the warlike Iroquois restrained, the Hurons saved from a war of extermination, and the whole interior continent opened to European civilization and the faith of Christ. The plan of Father Brébeuf received little attention at court: a neglect which decided the fate of empires. We cannot determine precisely how far Father Brébeuf advanced into the country; only one town received the missionaries, which they called St. Michael's. They, however, approached as far into the Iroquois country as was possible; still Bancroft says it is uncertain that he ever stood upon the territory of our republic.

But the hostile Hurons, not contented with the furious persecution they had raised against the fathers in their own country, pursued them into their new mission. Two Huron deputies soon arrived, and proclaimed a tempting reward for such as would deliver the country from those devoted men. While the council was engaged in debating the question of his expulsion or death, Father Brébeuf was making his examen of conscience in the cabin where he lodged, and suddenly he beheld a fearful spectre: the figure held three darts, which were successively hurled against him and his companion, but were averted by an unseen hand. Presaging evil from the vision, the two fathers made their confessions to each other, and, thus prepared to die, they went to rest. They afterward learned from their post, who returned to the cabin late at night, that the session of the council was long and stormy; three times the young braves had insisted on butchering them on the spot, but were restrained by the sachems. But now, such was the state of the feeling aroused against them, that they could not advance a step in safety. Turned from every shelter, and encountering death at every step, they wandered as outcasts over the country. Believing that their longer continuance was only calculated to increase the savage hatred of the people against them, and retard the introduction of the faith, the fathers retreated to the Neuter town which they had named All Saints. Here they wintered and spent the time in instructing the people. In the spring, they advanced as far as Teotongniatou, or St. Williams, where a charitable woman gave them a shelter. While thus lingering, Father Brébeuf arranged his Huron dictionary to the Neuter dialect, in which he had made considerable progress in four months. No sooner had the ameliorating influences of spring rendered travelling just possible, even to such travellers as those who had been accustomed for years to brave every hardship, than Father Brébeuf and his companions started on one of the most extraordinary journeys on record. Already spent with fatigues and privations, and pursued by danger, Father Brébeuf had to remain six days in the woods, sleeping on the snow, and without a covering or shed over his head. The cold was so intense that the trees themselves did split with a noise like the crack of a rifle. A special Providence protected him, for he exhibited no evidence that he had been cold or exposed. Loaded with the provisions which he was compelled to carry, as there were no relays on the way, he travelled two days across a lake of ice; and while thus struggling onward, his heart and eyes lifted up to heaven, he fell upon the ice. His portly frame gave such violence to his fall that he was unable to rise from the ice. After a long time he was lifted up by one of his companions, and then found that his extremities were palsied, and he could not lift his feet from the ground. Besides, his collar-bone was broken. He bore the last in silence, as it was not apparent. This fact was only discovered two years later by the surgeon who attended him at Quebec. In vain his companions begged the privilege of drawing him the remaining thirty-six miles of the journey in a sled, and at other times to assist him on the way; he declined all their generous offers, and labored onward, scarcely able to drag one foot after the other. It was thus he crossed the level country, and when he came to the mountains, he crept up on his hands and feet, and allowed himself to slide down on the opposite side, retarding his too rapid descent with his bruised and aching hands. Thus he completed his journey, which for love of suffering, patience, and humility compares with some of the most heroic achievements recorded of the saints. His companions went forward on other labors, but Father Brébeuf, while waiting for the next flotilla bound for Quebec, determined to take what he styled his "repose"--a repose busily spent in making important arrangements for the missions, which his superior knowledge of everything relating to them enabled him alone to effect.

On the passage to Three Rivers, Father Brébeuf was accompanied by Sondatsaa, an exemplary catechumen, and a party chiefly Christians or catechumens. They arrived at Three Rivers after a narrow escape from the murderous blades of the Mohawks, who were lying in wait for them. Finding it impossible for Fathers Ragueneau and Menard to reach their missions in Huronia without a strong guard, Father Brébeuf proceeded with Father Ragueneau and Sondatsaa to Sillery, in order to obtain succor for them. Here, moved by the entreaties of all, and especially of Sondatsaa himself, and having completed his instruction, Father Brébeuf consented to baptize that zealous convert. The ceremony was performed at Sillery, on the 27th of June, with great pomp, and in the presence of a concourse of Indians. The Chevalier de Montmagny was godfather to the convert, who received the Christian name of Charles. He now returned, a Christian, to his own country, bearing in his little flotilla the two fathers destined for the Huron mission. While Father Brébeuf was dwelling at Sillery, the next flotilla of Hurons that came bore its usual freight of calumnies against Echon. They now accused him of being colleagued with the Iroquois for the destruction of the Hurons. This renewal of calumny checked, for a time, his success; but he continued his preparations and arrangements for the Neuter mission and his endeavors to convert his persecutors to the faith. He endeavored to persuade some of these Hurons to remain and winter with him, in order to receive instructions. Two of them, who were left behind in the chase, were induced to remain, and Father Brébeuf, after the usual instruction and probation, had the consolation of receiving these into the one fold of the One Shepherd. He also succeeded in gaining a number of other Huron converts. Father Nimont, struck with the happy results of his labors, resolved to detain him another winter at Sillery. It was during this summer that Father Jogues came to Sillery for supplies. Here these future martyrs met in the prosecution of their noble labors; but soon the unconquerable Brébeuf saw his saintly companion set forth on his perilous mission over the country infested by the Iroquois, to carry relief to the Huron missionaries. Himself was soon to follow.

In the spring of 1643, Father Brébeuf proceeded to Three Rivers, where he was cheered by tidings of Father Jogues. That holy missionary, in returning from Sillery to bring succor to his companions in Huronia, had fallen a captive into the hands of the fierce Iroquois, and his fate was the object of intense anxiety. Father Brébeuf now learned that he was still living. The bold and generous Brébeuf arranged with a Huron, who was going out, to wait for letters to Father Jogues at Fort Richelieu; the father, bearing the letters, penetrated as far as the fort, but the courage of the Huron messenger failed; he had passed and was afraid to return, and the Jesuit was compelled to retrace his steps without succeeding in conveying a word of comfort and encouragement to his captive brother. In the spring of 1644, Father Bressani also, in endeavoring to reach Huronia, fell into the hands of the Iroquois. But the Huron missionaries must be succored at every hazard, and Father Brébeuf was now chosen for this perilous enterprise. Setting out in the summer, with an escort of twenty soldiers given to him by the governor, he reached the Huron missions in safety on the 7th of September. The Huron mission had ever been the dearest object of Father Brébeuf's heart. Restored now to his chosen vineyard, he devoted himself to the task of converting those tribes with a zeal and an energy worthy of his former glorious career. Year after year he continued his heroic labors; and, though our pen cannot follow him, step by step, through the trials, sacrifices, and exertions which his seraphic love inspired him to encounter, they were recorded in minutest detail by angelic pens in heaven. Success crowned the efforts of Father Brébeuf and his companions. Persecution ceased, and the whole country was becoming conquered to the faith. In August, 1646, Father Gabriel Lalemant, full of zeal and courage, was joined with Father Brébeuf in the mission of St. Ignatius, which embraced the town of St. Louis and some smaller villages. By this time, the horrid superstitions of the country had given way to the pure and holy rites of Catholic worship, and the cross, so lately despised, feared, and hated, had now become the object of love and veneration. Father Bressani writes: "The faith had now made the conquest of the entire country." "We might say they were now ripe for heaven; that naught was needed but the reaping-hook of death to lay the harvest up in the safe garner-house of paradise." "Religion seemed at last the peaceful mistress of the land."

Allusion has several times been made to the visions from on high which were mercifully sent to warn Father Brébeuf of danger impending, or to sustain him under the extraordinary afflictions, persecutions, and sufferings which at times seemed to exceed even his remarkable powers of endurance. Some of these have already been described. To the Protestant and non-Catholic mind, these miraculous communications to the saints are but the imaginings of morbid and diseased intellects. Parkman, in his _Jesuits in North America_, relates the following visions of Father Brébeuf only to classify them as psychological phenomena: "It is," he says, "scarcely necessary to add that signs and voices from another world, visitations from hell and visions from heaven, were incidents of no rare occurrence in the lives of these ardent apostles. To Brébeuf, whose deep nature, like a furnace white-hot, glowed with the still intensity of his enthusiasm, they were especially frequent. Demons, in troops, appeared before him, sometimes in the guise of men, sometimes as bears, wolves, or wild-cats. He called on God, and the apparitions vanished. Death, like a skeleton, sometimes menaced him; and once, as he faced it with an unquailing eye, it fell powerless at his feet. A demon, in the form of a woman, assailed him with the temptation which beset St. Benedict among the rocks of Subiaco; but Brébeuf signed the cross, and the infernal siren melted into air. He saw the vision of a vast and gorgeous palace, and a miraculous voice assured him that such was to be the reward of those who dwelt in savage hovels for the cause of God. Angels appeared to him, and more than once St. Joseph and the Virgin were visibly present before his sight. Once, when he was among the Neutral nation, in the winter of 1640, he beheld the ominous apparition of a great cross slowly approaching from the quarter where lay the country of the Iroquois. He told the vision to his companions.

"'What was it like? how large was it?' they eagerly demanded.

"'Large enough,' replied the priest, 'to crucify us all.'

"To explain such phenomena is the province of psychology and not of history. Their occurrence is no matter of surprise, and it would be superfluous to doubt that they were recounted in good faith and with a full belief in their reality. In these enthusiasts we find striking examples of one of the morbid forces of human nature; yet, in candor, let us do honor to what was genuine in them--that principle of self-abnegation which is the life of true religion, and which is vital no less to the highest forms of heroism."

Bancroft, alluding to the same subject, and to the life, austerities, and self-sacrifice of Father Brébeuf, says: "The missionaries themselves possessed the weaknesses and the virtues of their order. For fifteen years enduring the infinite labors and perils of the Huron mission, and exhibiting, as it was said, 'an absolute pattern of every religious virtue,' Jean de Brébeuf, respecting even the nod of his distant superiors, bowed his mind and his judgment to obedience. Besides the assiduous fatigues of his office, each day, and sometimes twice in the day, he applied to himself the lash; beneath a bristling hair-shirt he wore an iron girdle, armed on all sides with projecting points; his fasts were frequent; almost always his pious vigils continued deep into the night. In vain did Asmodeus assume for him the forms of earthly beauty; his eye rested benignantly on visions of divine things. Once, imparadised in a trance, he beheld the Mother of him whose cross he bore, surrounded by a crowd of virgins, in the beatitudes of heaven. Once, as he himself has recorded, while engaged in penance, he saw Christ unfold his arms to embrace him with the utmost love, promising oblivion of his sins. Once, late at night, while praying in the silence, he had a vision of an infinite number of crosses, and, with mighty heart, he strove, again and again, to grasp them all. Often he saw the shapes of foul fiends, now appearing as madmen, now as raging beasts; and often he beheld the image of death, a bloodless form, by the side of the stake, struggling with bonds, and at last falling, as a harmless spectre, at his feet. Having vowed to seek out suffering for the greater glory of God, he renewed that vow every day, at the moment of tasting the sacred wafer; and as his cupidity for martyrdom grew into a passion, he exclaimed, 'What shall I render to thee, Jesus my Lord, for all thy benefits? I will accept thy cup, and invoke thy name: and in sight of the Eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, of the most holy Mother of Christ and St. Joseph, before angels, apostles, and martyrs, before St. Ignatius and Francis Xavier, he made a vow never to decline an opportunity of martyrdom, and never to receive the death-blow but with joy."

In the eye of Catholic faith, these visions and special revelations are but the fruits and blessings of a revealed and supernatural religion. While they do not fall to the lot of us ordinary Christians, nor are they necessary helps in the little we accomplish for God and his church, it is difficult to conceive how the saints and martyrs could have performed their sublime actions, or met their cruel and unjust deaths for God's sake with a smile--sacrifices so far above and even repugnant to our nature--without the aid of these supernatural supports. The dedication of himself to martyrdom, and the heroic courage and joy with which he met his appalling fate, could only be achieved in the bosom of a church believing in miracles, and presenting to her children the crown of martyrdom as the highest reward attainable by man. The visions of Father Brébeuf, like other miracles, depend wholly upon the evidence and circumstances by which they are supported to entitle them to belief. It was not his habit to disclose them; it was only when commanded by his superiors that he committed them to writing. They thus rest upon his solemn written words, and upon their perfect agreement in many instances with contemporaneous facts transpiring beyond his sight and knowledge. To suppose him to have been deluded would be to contradict every quality of mind and character so universally attributed to him by all Protestant historians.

Father Brébeuf's aspirations for the crown of martyrdom were prophetic of his appointed and glorious end. But to him all historians have attributed the most practical views in relation to the Indian missions, and the coolest and wisest manner of dealing with them. There was no mere sentimentality in his nature. He addressed his powerful energies and resources to the actual conversion of the Indians to Christianity, and we have seen how great were the results he achieved. But now, alas! a dark cloud was seen gathering over the happy Christian republic of the Hurons. Already, during the winter of 1649, the fierce Iroquois hordes, numbering upwards of one thousand, had secretly passed over a space of six hundred miles of Huron forests, and on the sixteenth of March they appeared suddenly before the town of St. Ignatius, while the chiefs and warriors were absent on the chase, and the old men, women, and children were buried in sleep. Strongly as the place was fortified, this overwhelming force carried it by storm, and murdered its unsuspecting inhabitants. Three only escaped, half-naked, from the slaughter, and gave the alarm to the village of St. Louis, where the fathers were then laboring. Here preparations were at once made to offer a gallant but unequal resistance. The women and children were sent over forty miles of ice and snow to seek a shelter in the cabins of the Petuns. The chiefs exhorted the fathers also to fly, since they could not go to the war. But Father Brébeuf, with all the heroism of his great soul, answered that there was something more necessary than fire and steel in such a crisis; it was to have recourse to God and the sacraments, which none could administer but they--that he and his companion, the gentle Lalemant, would abandon them only in death. The two fathers, says Father Bressani, "now hurried from place to place, exhorting all to prayer, administering the sacraments of penance and baptism to the sick and the catechumens, in a word, confirming all in our holy faith. The enemy in fact remained at the first fork only long enough to provide for the safe keeping of the prisoners and the safety of those left as a garrison to guard them. After this they marched, or rather rushed, directly upon St. Louis. Here none were now left but the old and sick, the missionaries, and about a hundred braves to defend the place. They held out for some time, and even repulsed the enemy at the first assault, with the loss of about thirty killed, but the number of the assailants being incomparably greater, they overcame all resistance, and, cutting down with their axes the palisades which defended the besieged, were soon in possession of the town. Then putting all to fire and steel, they consumed in their very town, in their very cabins, all the old, sick, and infirm who had been unable to save themselves by flight."

What contrasts the events of history present! While this relentless slaughter was at its height, and the worst passions of the fiercest of heathens were let loose, the scene of blood, fire, and death was relieved by the presence of Christian heroes the most gentle, merciful, and self-sacrificing. They stood in the breach to the last stroke of the enemy, encouraging the dying Christians to fortitude and hope, the wounded to patience, and the prisoners to courage and perseverance in the faith. The palisades of St. Louis finally were cut away. The infuriate Iroquois swept in, and the whole surviving garrison, warriors and priests, were all made prisoners together. The savages rejoiced especially at the capture of such a prisoner as Father Brébeuf, whom they immediately showed signs of torturing, when a generous Oneida chief, more magnanimous than the rest, purchased him from his captors for a large price in wampum. It seemed as though he was about to be deprived of his coveted crown; but no! the victors retracted their bargain, and Father Brébeuf was again seized by his enemies. He and Father Lalemant were stripped, bound fast, and cruelly beaten, and their nails were torn out. But lest some change in the tide of war should deprive them of their prisoners, the latter were all sent, closely bound and tightly secured, to St. Ignatius. Here, as they entered the town, they were beaten and bruised by the rabble with sticks and clubs. The large and conspicuous frame of Father Brébeuf attracted a double share of blows on his already bruised and lacerated head and body. In the midst of these cruelties, he was forgetful of himself, and anxious only that his Christian Hurons, who were now his fellow-prisoners, should be encouraged and consoled in their extreme danger. From the stake to which he had been tied, beholding them assembled for the torture, he lost sight completely of his own greater calamities and sufferings, and thus he addressed them: "My children, let us lift up our eyes to heaven in the worst of our torments; let us remember that God beholdeth all we suffer, and will soon be our reward exceeding great. Let us die in this faith, and hope from his goodness the accomplishment of his promises. I pity you more than myself, but support manfully the little torment that yet remains. It will end with our lives; the glory which follows will have no end." How great must have been his consolation when he heard their heroic answer, a convincing proof that Indians may be truly converted to Christianity, and possess the constancy to die in the faith. "'Tis well, Echon," they cried, "our souls will be in heaven, while our bodies suffer on earth; entreat God to show us mercy; we shall invoke him to our latest breath." Enraged at his exhortations and unflinching zeal, even in death, some Hurons adopted by the Iroquois rushed upon him and burned his flesh with a fire which they kindled near him, they cut off his hands, and while Father Lalemant's flesh was cut and punctured with awls and other sharp instruments, and hot irons placed under his armpits, they led him forth to torture and death before the eyes of Father Brébeuf, in order to add to the agonies of the latter. As Father Brébeuf continued to speak and to exhort his Christians, and to threaten the vengeance of heaven upon their persecutors, they cut off his lower lip and nose, and thrust a red-hot iron down his throat. Even after this, when he saw his superior, the gentle Lalemant, led out to death, he called out to him with a broken voice in the words of St. Paul, "We are made a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men." Throwing himself at Father Brébeuf's feet, Father Lalemant was ruthlessly torn away, and in a few moments he was enveloped in flames at the stake, and his gentle soul preceded that of the intrepid Brébeuf to heaven. Turning next upon Father Brébeuf, they threw a collar of red-hot axes around his neck, which seethed and burned their way into his flesh; he stood, in the midst of such agonies, erect and motionless, apparently insensible to pain, intent only on vindicating the faith he had so long and faithfully announced. His tormentors were awed by his constancy, which seemed to them a proof that he was more than man. But they again taxed their ingenuity for new tortures. An apostate Huron, who had been a convert of Father Brébeuf in the Huron mission, and had since been adopted by the Iroquois, was the first to signalize the zeal of the renegade. He proposed to pour hot water on the head of Father Brébeuf, in return for the quantities of cold water he had poured on the heads of others in baptism. The suggestion was received with fiendish joy, and soon the kettle was swung. While the water was boiling, they added fresh cruelties to their victim's sufferings. They crushed his mouth and jaw with huge stones, thrust heated iron and stones into his wounds, and with his own eyes he beheld them devour the slices of flesh which they cut from his legs and arms. Let us not cut short the appalling story; for surely, what a martyr bore a Christian may have courage to Three.'and bringing the scalding water from the caldron, they poured it over his bruised head and lacerated body amidst shouts and imprecations, and, as they did so, the high-priests of the occasion mockingly said to him: "We baptize you that you may be happy in heaven; for nobody can be saved without a good baptism." By this time Father Brébeuf's mouth and tongue could no longer articulate, but even yet by his erect posture, the struggling and brave expression of his almost expiring eye, and even by his half-formed words, he encouraged the Christian captives to perseverance, and endeavored to deter the savages from torturing them by threats of heaven's vengeance. Again cutting slices from his body and devouring them before his eyes, they told him that his flesh was good. Some of the renegade Hurons, more fiendish than even the Iroquois, again mocked him by saying: "You told us that the more one suffers on earth, the happier he is in heaven. We wish to make you happy; we torment you, because we love you; and you ought to thank us for it." They next scalped him, and even after this they poured the boiling water over his head, repeating the torture three times; they cut off his feet, and splitting open his stalworth and generous chest, they crowded around and drank with exultation the warm blood of the expiring hero. His eye, firm and expressive to the last, was now dimmed in death, and at last a chief tore out his noble and brave heart, cut it into a thousand pieces, and distributed it to the savage cannibals that crowded around to receive a share of so exalted and unconquerable a victim. Thus perished of earth, while crowned of heaven, the illustrious Brébeuf, "the founder of the Huron mission--its truest hero, its greatest martyr."

The Iroquois, now glutted with carnage, and apprehensive of the approach of a superior force, retired to their own country. The fathers from St. Mary's came to St. Ignatius to bestow the last honors upon the earthly remains of their martyred companions. It was with difficulty they discovered their burned and mangled bodies among the mass of slain the victorious Iroquois had left. Their precious remains were solemnly and sorrowfully carried to St. Mary's, and affectionately and religiously interred. A portion of Father Brébeuf's relics were subsequently carried to Quebec. A silver bust, containing the head of the martyr, was presented by his family to the Canadian mission, and is still reverently preserved by the convent of hospital nuns in that city. So great was his reputation for sanctity that it became a familiar and pious practice in Canada to invoke his intercession. There are well-attested cases recorded of the wonderful intervention of heaven in favor of those who invoked his aid as a saint in heaven.

Among the many virtues which adorned the life and character of Father Brébeuf may be particularly mentioned his ardent love of holy poverty and suffering, his purity of soul, his singleness of purpose, his profound obedience and humility, his zeal and courage, his love of prayer and penitential austerities, and his generous longing for the salvation of souls. "The character of Brébeuf," says Bancroft, "was firm beyond every trial: his virtue had been nursed in the familiar sight of death. Disciplined by twenty years' service in the wilderness work, he wept bitterly for the sufferings of his converts, but for himself he exulted in the prospect of martyrdom." "Thus," writes Mr. J. G. Shea in his _History of the Catholic Missions_, "about four o'clock in the afternoon, after three hours of frightful torture, expired John de Brébeuf, the real founder of the [Huron] mission, a man such as the Catholic Church alone can produce; as a missionary, unequalled for his zeal, ability, untiring exertion, and steady perseverance; as a servant of God, one whose virtues the Rota would pronounce heroic; patient in toil, hardship, suffering, and privation; a man of prayer, of deep and tender piety, of inflamed love of God, in whom and for whom he did and suffered all; as a martyr, one of the most glorious in our annals for the variety and atrocity of his torments." "He came of a noble race," says Parkman, "the same, it is said, from which sprang the English Earls of Arundel; but never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and his death was the astonishment of his murderers."

Praise has become exhausted on such a subject. Would that we might hope for some national good from the sublime lesson he has taught us! The red men are our brothers. The most precious blood of a God-man was poured out for them as for us; and God's martyrs have joyfully given their noble lives for their salvation. Might not a Christian nation, in its power and goodness, yea, in its justice, save at least the poor remnant of them from further slaughter; and say to the ever-ready and zealous missionaries of the Catholic Church: "Go, christianize and save our brothers; we will not slay them more; there is land enough for us and for them; we confide them to your heroic charity. We will protect you and them in the peace and good-will of the Gospel. Go, save our brothers"?

THE ANCIENT LAWS OF IRELAND.

Next to written and well-authenticated historical annals, the clearest insight that can be afforded us of the civilization, polity, and social condition of the nations of antiquity is derived from the study of ancient laws and customs, when their authenticity is guaranteed by existing contemporary authorities, and they bear in themselves the intrinsic evidence of adaptability to time, place, and circumstance, so easily recognized by the antiquarian and the philologist. Were it possible to conceive the total destruction of this republic with all its material monuments and historical literature, nothing being left for posterity but our books of law, the philosophical student a thousand years hence would be able to form a pretty correct and comprehensive idea of the state of society at present existing and of the nature of the institutions under which we have the good fortune to live. From the large number of statutes regulating the intercourse of man and man, he would deduce the fact that we were a commercial and ingenious people; from our laws relating to real estate, he would necessarily argue that its ownership was general and its transmission from one to another a matter of everyday occurrence; and from the few restrictions imposed on its possession or sale, that the facilities for its acquisition were comparatively easy and unrestricted; while from the care that has been taken by our national and local legislatures to guard the life, liberty, and prosperity of the citizen, he would naturally conclude that our right to the enjoyment of these inalienable rights formed the corner-stone of the edifice of our government.

In the same manner, we of this century, looking back to a country so old as Ireland, one of the most antique of the family of European nations, by examining the laws framed in the early days of her dawning civilization, can picture to ourselves, even without the aid of history, the genius of her inhabitants, and form comparatively accurate opinions of how much or how little intelligence and natural sense of justice and the "eternal fitness of things" were exhibited by them in their efforts to regulate and organize society. Strange to say, we are partly indebted for this opportunity to the English government, never very generous in its patronage of Irish interests, though of course the principal credit is due to that noble band of Irish scholars, formerly headed by the late lamented O'Curry, Petrie, and O'Donovan, who by their antiquarian lore, profound knowledge of their vernacular, and untiring industry, have reconstructed from the scattered and almost illegible manuscripts deposited in various libraries the body of the laws of ancient Ireland, and have presented them to the world in the language in which they were originally written, with the elaborate glosses of after-years, accompanied by an accurate English translation. This long-desired work bears the appropriate and principal title of _Senchus Mor_, or great law, and contains all the laws that were enforced in Ireland from the fifth to the seventeenth centuries, if we except a small portion of the island which was occupied by the Anglo-Norman colony from the invasion till the reign of James I. That it was admirably adapted to the wants and dispositions of the people, we can judge by the affection and tenacity with which the natives so long clung to it, in despite of all the efforts of the invaders to induce them by force or fraud to adopt that of the conquerors, and that it was more liberal and equitable than the harsh restrictions of the feudal system is proved from the alacrity of the Anglo-Norman lords who resided without the "pale" in conforming to it in preference to their own enactments.

Like most of her other blessings, Ireland owed the possession of this excellent and merciful code to the Catholic Church, for it was in the eighth or ninth year of the ministration of her great apostle and at his instance that it was framed as we at present find it, purified from all the grossness of paganism, and freed from the uncertainty and doubt which always attach to mere tradition. Up to his time, law in Ireland had been administered at the discretion of Brehons or judges, and, being preserved only in the poems of the bards and _ollamhs_ (professors), was deficient in those essential qualities of all human legislation, exactness and uniformity. That there were learned and wise lawgivers in Ireland before the introduction of Christianity, we know from history and from the introduction to and the text of the _Senchus_ itself, in which frequent mention is made of decisions and writings, but they were necessarily the exponents of that limited sense of justice which the human mind, unaided by religion, is capable of comprehending. The propagation of the faith in Europe created a complete and permanent revolution in the laws of each country successively visited with the light of the gospel, and while the darkness of paganism vanished before it, the municipal laws which upheld idolatry were either totally abrogated or modified so as to conform, as much as possible, to the benign spirit of the church. The immediate occasion of the revision of the Irish laws is stated to have been the deliberate murder of one of St. Patrick's servants by a relative of the reigning sovereign, but the real cause, no doubt, was the desire of the saint to root out of the judicature of the people all traces of paganism as effectually as he had erased it from their hearts.

Accordingly, by virtue of his high office, he summoned a convention of the learned men of the country, a few years after his arrival, and proceeded to execute his important reforms. His principal assistants, we are informed, were Laeghaire, monarch of all Ireland, Corc, and Dairi, two subordinate kings, whom we may suppose represented the temporal authority of the nation, and without whose countenance and support it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to enforce the new code; Rossa, Dubhtach, and Fergus, those poets and professors whose duty it had been to preserve and perpetuate the legal traditions of their race and the decisions of the Brehons; and two ecclesiastics, Saints Benen and Cairnech. The former of these bishops, afterward known by the name of Benignus, was one of St. Patrick's earliest and favorite converts, and eventually his successor in the primatial see of Armagh, and the latter, a Briton from Wales, was remarkable alike for his piety and extensive learning. Thus sustained by the civil arm, and assisted by the advice and knowledge of men well versed in the common and canon law, the saint, in addition to his other apostolic labors, succeeded in leaving to the people he loved so well a harmonious and Christian code, the spirit of which, like that of all his teachings, sank deep in the popular heart, and defied the efforts of time and the ruthlessness of man to eradicate it.

While this code remained the rule of guidance for the mass of the people, it was sacredly preserved by the Brehons, who, though not empowered to alter it in any respect, added elaborate commentaries explanatory of its general or obscure provisions; but when the country was divided into counties by the conquerors, and their system took the place of the national one, the manuscripts of the ancient laws were scattered through the country, in England and on the Continent, whither they were brought by the exiles.

As early as 1783, Edmund Burke, ever mindful of the fame of his native country, suggested the propriety of collecting and publishing in English or Latin those remarkable remnants of former greatness and wisdom, but it was not till the year 1852 that the English government, at the repeated solicitation of several distinguished and influential Irish gentlemen, consented to lend its aid to the great work, which from its very magnitude was beyond the ability of any individual or voluntary association to accomplish. In that year, at the special instance of Doctors Todd and Greaves, both eminent Protestant clergymen, a commission was issued appointing them and several other well-known scholars "to direct, superintend, and carry into effect the transcription and translation of the ancient laws of Ireland, and the preparation of the same for publication," etc., with power to employ proper persons to execute the work. The persons selected by the commissioners were Dr. O'Donovan and Professor O'Curry, both thoroughly qualified to perform so momentous and laborious a labor, and whose conscientious discharge of the duties so assigned them ended only at their much lamented deaths. With the patience and zeal of true antiquarians, they set about transcribing the various MSS. relating to the old laws, deciphering the half-obliterated characters of the earlier centuries, and rendering the peculiar phraseology of the Gaelic into modern English. They were succeeded by W. N. Hancock, LL.D., professor of jurisprudence in Queen's College, Belfast, and the Rev. Thaddeus O'Mahony, professor of Irish in the Dublin University, under whose auspices the two volumes already in print were prepared for publication, having first received the sanction and approval of the commission. With such endorsement, we do not wonder that, speaking of the authenticity of the _Senchus Mor_, O'Curry should have said in one of his admirable lectures on Irish history, "I believe it will show that the recorded account of this great revision of the body of the laws of Erin is as fully entitled to confidence as any other well-authenticated fact in ancient history."

The principal materials used by the distinguished translators are thus described in the preface to the first volume:

"I. A comparatively full copy among the manuscripts of Trinity College, Dublin. H. 3, 17.

"II. An extensive fragment of the first part, 432, of the Harleian manuscripts in the British Museum.

"III. A large fragment of the latter part among the manuscripts of Trinity College, Dublin, H. 2, 15.

"IV. A fragment among the manuscripts of Trinity College, Dublin, H. 3, 18."

Of the capacity of the gentlemen above-mentioned to faithfully transcribe and translate these valuable relics of past legislation there can be no doubt, nor of the genuineness and authenticity of the records themselves. They are not, of course, the originals as written in the fifth century, but are accurate copies, as far as they have been saved from destruction, made centuries ago by the Brehons and _ollamhs_, and handed down by them from father to son, for the Brehon order was hereditary, and from generation to generation, until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Besides this, by their peculiar wording and reference to contemporaneous events and opinions, they bear the undoubted impress of great antiquity, and of having been intended for the government of a primitive people, who had little or no intercourse with the outside world. We have thus before us for the first time a complete body of written fundamental laws, collected and perfected over fourteen hundred years ago by a segregated and peculiar race, occupying a remote part of Europe, the only part, in fact, of the civilized portion of that continent that never echoed to the tread of a Roman soldier, or bowed before the edicts of an imperial Cæsar. In reading over the laws of that unique and ancient people, so unlike all we know of the Roman and Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, we find, not without some regret, we must confess, that the halo of exalted virtue and unsullied purity with which the poetic fancy of subsequent historians and poets led them to surround their pagan ancestors, vanishes like the mists of a summer morning, but we discover also that the epithets, barbarous, ignorant, and unlettered, so freely bestowed on them by the venal scribes of the dominant race, rest on no foundation whatever save on the malice or deficiency of knowledge of the Anglo-Norman authors. In truth, the Irish of the pagan era seem to have had nearly all the virtues and failings of their posterity of to-day, the former being brought more actively into play under the influence of Christianity, and the latter repressed by the unlimited authority of the Catholic Church and the judicious regulations of the _Senchus_.

We find this more particularly the case in studying the laws regulating the domestic relations of the family, which, being the unit of which society is but an aggregate, is the most vital and important part of all human enactments. Ample provision is made for the mutual protection of husband and wife, and the reciprocal rights and duties of parent and child are clearly and minutely defined; but we observe with regret that much of this portion of the code is occupied with provisions for the distribution of property on the disagreement or separation of married people, and for other domestic infelicities of a more criminal nature. The prohibition of an offence in a statute does not necessarily imply the frequency of the commission of the crime itself; but so much pains are taken to point out the rights and disabilities of persons cohabiting without the sanction of lawful wedlock that the conviction is forced upon us that they were not by any means unnecessary. As an offset to this, however, we find that a lawful wife was treated with the greatest indulgence, being in many ways the equal of her husband, and in this respect the _Senchus_ presents a marked contrast to all the other European legislation of that time, by which woman was held little better than a slave, and generally at the mercy of her father or husband, even in some instances to the taking of her life. We feel certain that our strong-minded sisterhood who are so manfully battling for social and political equality will be gratified to learn that a portion of their principles, at least, were fully recognized fourteen centuries ago, and for their edification we quote the following passage from the expressed wisdom of our ancestors:

"In the connection of equal property, if with equal land and cattle and household stuff, and if their marriage state be equally free and lawful, the wife in this case is called the wife of equal rank. The contract made by either party is not a lawful contract without the consent of the other, except in cases of contracts tending equally to the welfare of both; such as the alliance of co-tillage with a lawful tribe when they (the couple) have not the means themselves of doing the work of ploughing; the taking of land; the collection of food; the gathering for the festivals; the buying of breeding-cattle; the collecting of house-furniture; the collecting of litters of pigs; the buying of stacks and other necessaries.... Each of the two parties has the power to give refection and feast according to their respective dignity."

In case of separation, adequate protection was thrown around the wife's rights of property. If her property were equal to that of her husband at the time of marriage, she took an equal moiety of the collective lands, goods, and chattels, and, in case of dairy produce and the proceeds of the loom, two-thirds. If the property had originally belonged wholly to the husband, the wife was entitled to one-third on her separation, and if it had been her own before marriage, to two-thirds. Whether these provisions extended to their mutual claims after death, we are not informed by the glossators, but it is not improbable that they were, thus creating estates not unlike the more modern _dower_ and _courtesy_ of the English law. This equality of married persons was still further extended in the right of each to the disposal or guardianship of their offspring, and in their authority to demand in return the assistance of their children in poverty or decrepitude.

The relations between parent and child were the subjects of careful and minute legislation. The father was obliged to see that his daughter was educated in a manner becoming her rank, and, when at a marriageable age, to procure her a husband of suitable means and family. In return, she was to give him one-third of her first marriage gift (_coibhche_), and a certain proportion of other gifts received after her nuptials. Should the father be dead, his son, succeeding him as heir, was also obliged to assume the same responsibility, and received from his sister a proper equivalent at her marriage. The mother's duty to her son was similar to that of the father to his daughter, he being required to assist her in her poverty or old age, and in conjunction with the daughter to provide, if necessary, for both his parents, an obligation imposed even on grandchildren. That the father should especially have care of the daughter and the mother of the son is something very contrary to the modern ideas of domestic discipline, but it doubtless, in a primitive state of society, had the advantage of equalizing the stronger and weaker elements of the family, giving to the woman the benefit of manly protection, and to the rougher masculine nature a gentler and more humanizing influence.

Fosterage, though not unknown in other countries, was so general in ancient and mediæval Ireland as to give it a character almost peculiar to that island.

It is known to have been of very ancient origin, and to have originated in the natural relations that existed between the sept or tribe and its chief, which was one of mutual rights and duties; for, observes the _Senchus_, "every head defends its members, if it be a goodly head, of good deeds, of good morals, exempt, affluent, capable. The body of every head is his tribe, for there is no body without a head. The head of every tribe, according to the people, should be the man of the tribe who is most experienced, the most noble, the most wealthy, the wisest, the most learned, the most truly popular, the most powerful to oppose, the most steadfast to sue for profits and be sued for losses." It will thus be easily understood, particularly by the citizens of a republic, that the authority of a chief, thus qualified, depended to a great extent on the affection and good-will of his constituents; and, in order to create more close relations between himself and them, it was customary for him to send his children at an early age to be nursed and trained by some family of his sept. The children thus placed under tutelage were regarded with equal, if not greater, affection by the foster-parents than their own. The existence of this custom may still be traced in Ireland, and well-authenticated instances of the most self-sacrificing devotion on the part of the natural child of the foster-parent to his foster-brother or sister form the theme of many of our best Irish stories and historical romances. The foster-parent for the time being stood in the place of the actual parent, and was obliged to feed, clothe, and educate the foster-child for a certain number of years, males till they had attained the age of seventeen, and females fourteen years, and the children were expected in return to compensate, succor, and in some cases support their foster-parents, as if they were their actual progenitors.

The statutes regulating fosterage occupy a large portion of the _Senchus_, so far as published, and affords us a fuller and more accurate knowledge of the social habits and condition of the Gaelic people in and before the fifth century than any other portion of the collection, or even all the histories of Ireland extant which profess to treat of that remote epoch. Fosterage, we are told, was of two sorts, for affection and compensation. When the latter, the fosterage price was regulated according to the rank of the chief, and varied from three cows in the case of the son of an _Og-Aire_, or lowest chief, to thirty cows for the son of a king. The services to be rendered for their payments, being food, raiment, and education, were proportioned to the amount, and seem to have been the subject of much elaborate legislation, not easily reconcilable to our modern notions. For instance, in the matter of food, Dr. O'Donovan renders a very ancient commentary on the first clause of the law of fosterage as follows:

"What are their victuals? They are all fed on stirabout; but the materials of which it is made, and the flavoring with it, vary according to the rank of the parents of the children. The children of the inferior grades are fed to bare sufficiency on stirabout made of oatmeal on buttermilk or water, and it is taken with stale (salt) butter. The sons of the chieftain grades are fed to satiety on stirabout made of barley-meal upon new milk, taken with fresh butter. The sons of kings are fed on stirabout made of wheaten meal upon new milk, taken with honey."

According to one authority, every foster-child should be provided with two suits of clothing, in color and quality according to the rank of his father--blay, yellow, black, and white colored clothes for the inferior grades, red, green, and brown for the sons of chieftains, and purple and blue for princes. According to another, the distinction of rank was indicated in the following manner:

"Satin and scarlet are for the son of the king of Erin, and silver on his scabbards, and brass rings on his hurling-sticks; and tin upon the scabbards of the sons of chieftains of the lower rank, and brass rings upon their hurling sticks.... And brooches of gold having crystal inserted in them with the sons of the king of Erin and of the king of a province, and brooches of silver with the sons of the king of a territory."

The course of instruction to be pursued by the foster-children was likewise regulated by the degree of the dignity of their parents. The sons of the "lower classes" were to be employed in "the herding of lambs, and calves, and kids, and pigs, and kiln-drying and combing, and wood-cutting," while the girls were expected to learn the use of the _quern_, or hand-mill for grinding grain, the useful household art of making bread, and winnowing corn, etc.; the young chieftains were to be taught horsemanship, shooting, swimming, and chess-playing, and their sisters, sewing, cutting-out, and embroidery. We have thus placed before us in all its simplicity, and upon the best authority, the modes of living prescribed for the youth of both sexes in Ireland at the time of its conversion to Christianity--a record valuable to the historian and the antiquarian, dissipating alike the poetic imaginings of too partial Celtic chroniclers and the voluntary misrepresentations of the Anglo-Norman writers. It may be objected that such limited views of education argued little for the civilization of the race who entertained them; but when we recall the condition of Western Europe at the time the _Senchus_ was composed, we may well be surprised at the sound sense and practical wisdom so often found in its pages. Nor must it be supposed that the labors of the child ended with the performance of the tasks thus assigned him. There existed another and correlative species of tutelage called literary fosterage, which is thus defined in the "law of social connections":

"The social connection that is considered between the foster-pupil and the literary foster-father is, that the latter is to instruct him without reserve, and to prepare him for his degree, and to chastise him without severity, and to feed and clothe him while he is learning his profession, unless he obtains it from another person, and from the school of Fenius Forsaidh onward this custom prevails; and the foster-pupil is to assist his tutor in poverty and to assist him in his old age, and the honor price of the degree for which he prepares him and all the gains of his art while he is learning it, and the first earnings of his art after leaving the house of his tutor, are to be given to the tutor."

In addition to this excellent and equitable plan of intellectual culture, we also find in the law of tenures that the sons of tenants holding church lands were entitled to receive instruction from the holders of the benefices, which, we may presume, were not necessarily altogether of a spiritual nature. We thus find that fosterage constituted one of the most important elements of society, and, though much condemned by subsequent and partial writers, contained within itself most of the duties and responsibilities which we now divide among corporations and individuals under different names. The importance which ancient Irish lawgivers seemed to attach to this crude but not altogether unsuccessful attempt to define the relations of parent and child, employer and employed, master and scholar--questions still raised in this enlightened age--is shown in the number of the statutory enactments originally made, and the elaborate and critical glosses afterward appended to them, the whole not unworthy the notice of the modern legislator.

The land tenure has always been a subject of doubt and difficulty in Ireland, and the laws of the _Senchus_ appear to us as little satisfactory and as hard to be understood as that recently passed in the British Parliament under the supervision of Mr. Gladstone. It seems to us, from the careful examination of the different statutes relating to it, that each chief held the whole of the land of his tribe in his own name, not, however, in his own right altogether, but partly as trustee of his tribe, and in this respect the Irish system differs materially from the feudal, which for centuries prevailed in all parts of Europe, except in the country of which we are writing. The tenants were divided into two classes, those who held by _saerrath_ or _daerrath_, terms for which we can find no equivalents in the English language. The first class received from their chief, upon taking the land, and without security, sufficient cattle to stock the same, for which they were obliged to return an annual rental in kind, or, at the chief's option, its value in personal service and labor, such as working on his _dun_ or _rath_, and following him in his wars. This species of tenure, except in the case of those who held immediately from the king, could at pleasure be turned into holding by _daerrath_, by which the tenant gave security for the stock received, and was exempt from personal and military service. The rents and their manner and time of payment varied according to circumstances, but always subject to the above restrictions, and were, of course, the exclusive property of the landlord or chief for the time being. The restrictions on the alienation of land, or rather of the good-will of it--for in fact the fee did not rest in the individual, but in the tribe as represented by its chief--were many and onerous, including forfeiture and other penalties, and were generally directed to the exclusion of members of neighboring or hostile tribes. The agrarian portion of the ancient code, in fact, while far superior in point of liberality to that of many of the then existing nations, resembled more the laws that govern our Indian reservations than those of any enlightened country of the present day. It was full of fatal and mischievous errors, and to its baleful operation have been ascribed many of the evils which centuries before and after the Anglo-Norman invasion afflicted Ireland. By jealously confining the occupancy of a certain district to one particular tribe or family, it engendered a feeling of faction, and what might be called parish patriotism, which unfortunately have outlived the cause that gave them birth, and, by persisting in considering the tribal land as indivisible, it destroyed that high sense of independence and spirit of enterprise which can only be felt and maintained by him who owns his own farm and calls no fellow-man master.

The laws relating to distress, or the form of collecting claims, such as debts, tributes, forfeitures, etc., are the least attractive and instructive portion of the work, and for dense obscurity and incomprehensibleness can only be compared to our own Code of procedure. We gather, however, from them that all civil claims and damages for injuries were collectable by a short process of the seizure of the goods and chattels of the defendant, and the retention of the same on the premises of the plaintiff, or, as in the case of cattle, in the public pound. After the expiration of a certain number of days, if the defendant did not replevin his property or disprove his opponent's claim, the goods became the absolute property of the creditor. With a humanity, however, which many suppose to be the growth of our century, the plaintiff should exhaust first the property upon the possession of which the subsistence of the defendant's family did not immediately depend, and even some articles of primary necessity were altogether exempt from seizure. Imprisonment for debt, however, partially existed, and, when the debtor had no goods and did not belong to the class of freemen, he was arrested and compelled to labor for the creditor until the demands of the latter were fully satisfied.

Such, in brief, is a _résumé_ of the laws contained in the two volumes of the _Senchus Mor_ already published, and which we hope soon to hear of occupying a position on the shelves of every library of reference in the country. Much yet remains of the ancient _Code of St. Patrick_[148] to be given to the world before the entire work is completed, and we are assured that this will be done at an early day, and in as scholarly a manner as the portion before us. We shall look eagerly for its appearance, not for its practical value as a legal study, but as a picture of a remote but interesting era and race, and as an additional evidence of how much the world owes to the Catholic Church even in the civil and political affairs of life. The science of true government has been a plant of slow but sure growth, and, while we enjoy so many of its fruits in our favored land, we must not forget that the seeds were planted with so much suffering and labor by the apostolic men who have gone to their rest centuries ago.

FOOTNOTE:

[148] The _Senchus Mor_ was sometimes known as _Cain Patraic_, or _Patrick's Law_.

THE STORY OF AN ALGERINE LOCKET.

I.

In the sunshine of a May morning stood an old gray house, with a porch draped in woodbine and sweetbrier. A mass of wisteria climbed to the very chimneys, and on the lawn a bed of red and golden tulips swayed with the soft breeze. A wren was building in an acacia and singing, while a young girl watched his work and sang also, trying with her fresh soprano voice to catch his melody.

The old house was the homestead of Holly Farm, and the young girl was Sybil Vaughan, the heroine of a very short story.

"Sybil looks charming in white," thought Miss Mildred, sitting at the window of the green parlor with her mending-basket beside her; "and the locket is quite becoming."

It was before the day when every one began to wear medallions, and the one that hung by a quaint twisted chain from Sybil's neck was a locket of rich enamel, brought to her from Algeria by a midshipman cousin, and quite unlike our gewgaw from the Palais Royal.

As we have said, Miss Mildred sat at the window of the green parlor, raising her eyes now and then from her work to watch her pretty niece, her adopted daughter. During the seventy years of her life, she had sat at that same window almost every morning since she was old enough to work a sampler, or to read a paper in the _Spectator_ or a chapter of _Evelina_ to her mother and younger sisters.

In her girlhood, Holly Farm had been a lonely place, remote from town and village. The trees, now rising luxuriantly around the house, were then, like her, in their youth, and revealed whatever might be passing in the lane below the lawn. At a period of life when young people gaze abroad in vague expectation of some wonderful arrival or event that shall alter the current of existence, Mildred Vaughan had turned longing eyes toward this lawn hour after hour, and she had thought her morning's watch well rewarded if the old doctor had trundled by in his high-topped chaise and nodded to her in friendly greeting.

With a capacity for painting that in these days of potichomania, decalcomania, and the rest would have passed for originality, if not genius, she had received one quarter's lessons in oil-painting, and by dint of studying a few beautiful family portraits had acquired a keenness of perception that made her hunger for the world of art. With an earnest love for books, she had been obliged to devote her time to the care of her younger brothers and sisters. And so, out of her monotonous life, she had brought into old age an exaggerated idea of the value of learning and luxury, with a belief in possibilities and a regret for what might have been generally supposed to belong exclusively to youth.

This sounds more melancholy than it really was. Miss Mildred had kept her ideal of happiness fresh and vivid, and that is in itself a source of keen enjoyment. And, being a devout and trusting soul, she had framed for herself a prayer out of the thwarted aspiration of her heart and mind: "I thank thee, Lord, that there are joys so beautiful on earth, and I thank thee that they are not for me. Thy will is dearer to me than the realization of any dream."

Every one loved to come to Miss Mildred for sympathy. She believed in the reality and the durability of their joy, in the depth and in the cause of their grief. She did not say to the mother who had lost her little baby, "He is saved from sorrow and sin." She did not say to the young widow, "You have had the best part of life; later come trial and vexation of spirit." She knew that in bereavement the balm often enters with the sting; that the stainless beauty of the thing we lose is our only earthly consolation for its loss.

A great change had come to Holly Farm since the time when the doctor's visit was an important event. The sweep of meadow-land west of the house now served as camping-ground for the --th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, in which young Henry Vaughan held a second lieutenancy. Drumming and fifing, the arrival of carriages full of gayly dressed people to visit the camp, the music of the regimental band on moonlight evenings, such was the course of daily life on green slopes which cattle and sheep had once possessed without dispute, nibbling the grass and drinking from the river in all contentment.

Indeed, Miss Mildred's standard of events had so naturally changed in that course of seventy years that, when the little white gate swung open, and a young man in uniform walked across the lawn, she merely said to herself: "That must be Captain Adair coming to see Harry. He walks better than any man I ever saw. The maid's hanging out clothes; I do hope Sybil will have sense enough to come and speak to him instead of letting him knock."

Sybil had the amount of sense requisite for the emergency. She led the way into the green parlor, and, leaving Captain Adair with her aunt, went to announce the arrival to her brother, who was trying on his new uniform, and blushed to be caught admiring the epaulettes before a mirror in the library. There was no need of apology. Sybil was in full sympathy with the occasion, and returned to the parlor feeling as proud of her brother's military outfit as he of the beauty of the sister leaning on his arm.

It was a pleasant meeting. Adair's frank and sympathetic manner had won its way through Miss Mildred's reserve; and his familiarity with the world and its ways secured him an easy victory over his young lieutenant. Sybil was less impressionable than the other two. Her manners were gentle and courteous to all, but it was not easy to penetrate her likes and dislikes, or to find out their cause. Just a trifle uninteresting, she was, poor Sybil, like many nicely poised young persons before they have enjoyed or suffered keenly. The very finish of her beauty, of her lovely manners, of her pleasant voice and accent, left nothing to be desired--no suggestion of anything beyond. But a soul so brave, so pure and honest as hers deserved to be developed, and the occasion for development came.

II.

ADAIR'S LETTERS TO HENRY ALLEYNE.

CAMP EVERETT, May, 1861.

I had an adventure yesterday that should have fallen to your lot, my dear Alleyne, not to that of a prosaic dog like me.

Hearing that my second lieutenant lived near the camp, and that he could not enter upon his duties for a day or two, I took it into my head to go and see what stuff he was made of, for, Alleyne, I am awfully interested in Company B, and in every creature connected with it. How could I ever have lived in that bore of a city, or slept within four walls, or used a silver fork! "Going off at half-cock, as usual," you say? Well, perhaps that is better than never going off at all. But to return to my story.

I went through a shady lane, leading from the camp to Vaughan's house. (Vaughan is the second lieutenant and owner of the camping-ground.) As I drew near the gate, I heard a woman's voice singing. A little further on came a gap in the trees, and I took a reconnoissance--such another I can never hope for during my military career. A low-spreading stone house, covered with vines, stood among fine old trees. Great bunches of blue blossoms draped the walls, and on the velvety lawn were clusters of brilliant flowers. Beneath a tree, honor bright, Alleyne, if ever angels do appear in white gowns with broad rose-colored sashes, it was an angel that stood beneath that tree, answering a bird with a voice as fresh, an expression as natural as his own. I stood there looking and listening--it was really very fascinating--until I suddenly remembered my errand. Then I pushed open the gate, and, walking across to the porch, lifted the bright brass knocker. But the rival of the wren, without letting me wait the coming of some creature of baser clay, came from among the trees, and asked if I wished to see Mr. Vaughan.

Now, I had wished to see Mr. Vaughan, and as it would not do to say on so short an acquaintance that my wishes were too completely satisfied by the vision before me to leave any want unfulfilled, I stoutly declared that I did wish to see Mr. Vaughan, and that I was Captain Adair.

And then she showed your too susceptible friend into a summer parlor, where the general effect was white and sea-green, and where there were hanging-baskets of flowers surrounded by vines and soft moss, and where an elderly lady in a lavender dress, with white lawn apron and kerchief, sat sewing, and where portraits of rosy-fingered dames and periwigged gentlemen gazed on us from the walls and read our destinies--mine must have been too plainly legible on my ingenuous countenance. And the old lady received me very courteously, and the maiden went to find her brother, and, when the brother came, he looked like his sister, and surely never before was lieutenant greeted by his superior officer with such ineffable tenderness. And we dined, so far as I could judge, off dishes of topaz and crystal, heaped high with ambrosia, and soon after dinner I returned to Camp Everett, and met the colonel going his rounds.

"You come from young Vaughan's, I see," he said. "What impression did he make upon you?"

"Charming, highly delightful, very promising," I replied, with a happy combination of diffidence and child-like openness of manner.

He gave me a look out of his shrewd old eyes. "So attractive a person will be an acquisition to the regiment," he remarked, and let me pass on to my tent.

I am half-asleep. Good-night!

ROBERT ADAIR.

CAMP EVERETT, June, 1861.

Things go on grandly at the camp, and between ourselves the colonel has just said that Company B is better disciplined than any other in the regiment--a compliment I'm very proud of, coming, as it does, from an old West Point martinet.

And now for the second part of my idyl. Every afternoon, Vaughan and I go up to his place and smoke awhile in the orchard. Then, by accident--it is wonderful, the unerring accuracy of accident at times--we appear at the east window of the green parlor, and there are Miss Vaughan and her niece, sewing or drawing, and sometimes Miss Sybil sings, to the accompaniment of a charming Pleyel piano, canzonets of Haydn in a style as fine, as pure, as exquisite as the composition. She--Sybil, I mean--has never danced a German or heard _Faust_! Duly shielded by the presence of aunt or brother, she is sometimes taken to hear the _Nozze di Figaro_ or to see _Hamlet_, or to some other unexceptionable afternoon entertainment. I smile sometimes to see her absolute ignorance of life, and wonder that, in a village not twenty miles distant from a city where the world runs riot, this being has sprung into womanhood, unconscious of the existence of anything less spotless than herself.

This guarded life has given to her manners a certain high breeding that would keep one at a distance but for her kind, frank nature. No one can venture to fancy himself distinguished above others.

Do you know what this makes me feel? That hitherto, and I am nearly twenty-five years old, I have looked at women with a coxcomb's eyes. Any day, any hour, I feel ready to throw myself on her mercy, but an instinct tells me that her love must be won by something better than professions. When I have suffered in the cause she loves well enough to give her only brother to defend it, then I will speak.

_Noblesse oblige_--I see that in a certain lofty sense this is the motto of her life, and it shall be mine. Do you remember what our dear old philosopher used to say in the scientific school? "The better you begin, the harder is the work before you." And when we asked what he meant, he only said, "Noblesse oblige." It is true, whether the _noblesse_ acts upon us in the form of intellectual strength or of spiritual gifts, or in the old material sense of inherited rank.

Except the hour spent at Vaughan's each day, and an occasional visit to my mother in town, I am wrapped up in the affairs of Company B. The life here is to me most fascinating. You would laugh to see me with a set of wooden soldiers before me on the little table in my tent, studying manœuvres, extricating my company from the most astounding and unheard-of perplexities. The progress of my lieutenants; the health, morals, and immorals of the company; the incapacity of our bugler to draw the faintest sound from his instrument--in short, everything that indicates growth or decay of discipline in Company B, seems to me a matter of national importance.

One word more about Miss Sybil Vaughan. My mother has seen her, and sympathizes with me. When she came to visit the camp, I took her to Vaughan's house to rest. As we left Holly Farm, she gave a sigh of relief, and said: "Robert, I feel as though I had stepped back half a century. When I was a girl, young ladies were like Miss Sybil Vaughan."

One more last word. In your letter you said, with an air of superior wisdom, plainly expressed in the tails of your letters: "You are in love."

Of course I am, and I should be a fool if I were not.

Your friend, ROBERT ADAIR.

III.

It was June still. The laburnum path was all aglow with blossoms, and the grape-walk, just beyond, made a shadowy retreat toward evening. Sybil was sitting there with her work lying on her lap. She had not sewed three stitches. Why had not Harry come as usual that afternoon to the east window to get his cup of black coffee? Why--O dear! there are so many whys in the case, and never an answer anywhere. Why was there an indefinite air of bustle in the camp as she looked down on it from her bower? Why was there an undefined sense of stir in everything?

She watched the sun drop nearer and nearer to the distant hills. The air was full of saffron light, and heavy with the perfume of flowers. Nature was so new and fresh in her June loveliness; and life was full of a promise of coming beauty, as it had never been before to Sybil in any other of her nineteen Junes. That sense of stir was in her own soul no less than in external nature.

There came the click of an iron heel upon the gravelled path. Sybil half-rose from the bench, and then sank back again. Adair stood before her. "We are ordered off," he said. "We go in an hour. I've but one moment to stay, for I promised Harry to leave him time to come and say good-by."

In the white, scared look on Sybil's face he read the right to speak.

But it had all been so hurried, she thought, when he was gone. Oh! for one of those minutes to return, that she might express to him a tenth part of the joy and pain, the hope and terror, that filled her heart. She could remember nothing clearly or in order, and yet she would have given all the other memories of her happy life to recall each word as it was spoken. He had asked her to give him something of her own, a ring, a glove, a ribbon, no matter what. And she had taken from her neck the medallion, and laid in it a little curl of her hair, and given it to him; and she had felt his hand upon her head, and heard him say, "God keep my sweet, innocent love!" And when she lifted her head he was gone, and she had told him nothing. It could not be a dream, for on her left hand was the ring he placed there--one that she had seen him wear, and thought too beautiful a jewel for a man to have, but now she felt so glad that he had worn it. He had said this was to be the guard of the wedding-ring that he would place there as soon as he could get a furlough to come home; and she had said--yes, thank God! she did remember saying that, at least--she had said that no one but himself should take off this ring or put another in its place; yes, thank God! she had said it.

Then Harry had come, too overjoyed at the news of her engagement to feel the pain of parting. That memory was full of turmoil; mixed, too, with self-reproach that all other emotion was so lost in her new joy or pain, whichever it might be called, that Harry's going gave her no uneasiness.

The sun dropped behind the hills; star after star pierced through the darkening blue. Stillness lay on the valley below, so lately full of tramping horses, and shouting men, and shifting lights.

At last she heard her aunt's voice calling her, and roused herself to go and tell her beautiful story, old as the human race, new as that very June evening. She wondered that Aunt Mildred understood it all so well. Short-sighted Sybil! it was you who were beginning to understand Miss Mildred.

One August day, when a sultry fog held the earth in bondage, and scarlet geraniums blazed like red pools among the wilted grass, Miss Mildred pushed open the little white gate, and, with that hurried step that in old age so poorly simulates speed, hastened across the lawn. She gave a quick glance into the two parlors which were vacant, and then went up-stairs, grasping nervously the low hand-rail. In the upper hall she stopped, and leaned against the balustrade to take breath, and courage, too. Then, opening the door of Sybil's room, she stopped on the threshold to see her lying on the floor with a newspaper crushed in her hand. A bulletin in the village post-office had told her all: "Found dead on the field, Captain Robert Adair, --th Regt. Mass. Vols." They lifted Sybil up and laid her on her bed. She did not "strive nor cry," but in that first grief it pleased God to measure her power of endurance.

It was not in victory that Adair had fallen, but in one of those engagements where, humanly speaking, life seems thrown away. But such thoughts should not disturb the mourners cradled in the providence of God. He chooses the time and the occasion, and what is lost in the current of human events he gathers up and cherishes.

Weeks passed away. Letters came--precious in their recognition of Adair's high integrity, his courage, his compassion; letters, too, from his mother, far away in her summer home, acknowledging Sybil as one with her in love and bereavement. But she lay, white and listless, on her bed, taking little notice of anything except in the expression of gratitude. Harder than anything else for her aunt to bear was the pathos of Sybil's resignation.

There came a soft afternoon, early in September, when for the first time Sybil's easy-chair was placed in the open air, under a striped awning that made an out-door room on the west side of Holly Farmhouse. Here she could be sheltered from the direct rays of the sun, and yet enjoy the trees and flowers.

Great velvet bees hid their heads buzzing in the freshly-opened cups of the day-lilies; a hummingbird dipped his dainty beak into the sweet-peas, and then flashed away to hide himself among the nasturtiums pouring in a golden stream over a broken tree-trunk on the lawn.

Amid the glow of nature, Sybil looked very wan and frail. She had begun to think a little now, and her thoughts ran thus: "I am resigned to God's will. I've not the shadow of a doubt that this is all right. I am more than willing to die; I am willing to live, if only there is a thread to hold by--a stone, a stick, a straw to begin to build my life upon. Other women have borne this and lived. I've seen them going about among their fellow-creatures, talking, smiling, laughing, when others talked, and smiled, and laughed. I have no more sensibility than they. What I have lost was perfect; but what they had lost was perfect, perhaps, to them. I don't rebel, but I am dying of pain. It goes on, and on, and on; if it would stop but for ten minutes and let me take breath, I think I could catch hold of something on earth and begin to live again. There's that dear Aunt Mildred coming through the hall. Now, I _will_ give her a free, happy smile, and lighten her burden if I cannot lighten my own."

Miss Mildred held in her two hands a great vase of spreading golden-rod, which she set down on the little garden-table. Just where she had placed it, against a background of dark-green leaves, it made so beautiful a picture that Sybil uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure. There was a delighted look on her aunt's sweet old face that made her think: "Here is something to hold on by; here is something to build on, if only I am generous enough to try."

Miss Mildred arranged the cushions in Sybil's chair, and then took her hand very gently.

"There is a man in the hall, dear, who brings you a little packet from Virginia. Can you see him?"

"Yes; at once, if you like. Please let him come out here. I can talk to him better in the open air."

He came--a shy, elderly man, whom Sybil remembered seeing once at the camp. He stood awkwardly, shifting his military hat from hand to hand, till she asked him to sit down near her, and said a few reassuring words. Then, seeing that he was struggling to conquer his emotion, she fixed her eyes on the vase of flowers, trying to keep down the impatience struggling within her.

"My name is Abel, lady," he said, at length. "May be you've heard the cap'n say as how I couldn't play the bugle, at the camp below there. The folks all said I couldn't learn, I was so old and dull; but he allus believed everybody was good for something, he did."

Sybil was leaning forward, breathless to hear more.

"I remember you," she said. "Oh! do go on. Tell me everything--every little thing about it all."

"Wall, you see, lady, my two boys they was all I had, and they jined the regiment, and I couldn't live without 'em; and I was hale and strong, and so I made bold for to jine, too. There was one place left in the regiment then--the bugler's place, in Company B--and I pled so hard, the cap'n he said I might try. And, lady, the plaguy thing used to seem to shut right up when I wanted to make it blow, and the men used to laugh at me, right out afore my boys. And Abner and John Henry they felt kind o' cheap, and they kept sayin' to me, 'Father,' they says, 'it makes us feel kind o' bad to hear you tryin' so hard and not learnin'; don't you think you'd better give it up?' And says I, 'No, boys,' says I, 'while there's breath in my body, I won't give it up till I've conquered that crittur.' And, lady, when the cap'n see me tryin' so hard and allus comin' to grief, what does he do but he takes hold himself, and he learns all them signals, and he teaches on 'em to me. And so I went to the war with my boys, and I nursed John Henry through a fever, and I kept Abner from fallin' into bad company; and, lady, if I could have saved the cap'n's life by givin' my skin inch by inch, I'd have done it; but I couldn't. So I just held his head against this old heart, and let him breathe his life away. And I laid him down on the sod as tender as if I'd been his mother."

"May God reward you! Did he suffer much?"

Tears, such as she had longed for, were pouring from her eyes.

"No, lady; he was gone before the surgeons came on to the field. He lay quite still, without a moan or sigh; and, now and then, he'd say a word to me. I was wounded, too, just below the knee. I dropped down about six feet off from him; and when the retreat came, and I saw as how I was left behind with the cap'n, didn't I praise the Lord!"

"What did he say to you?"

Abel took a little packet from his breast, and laid it in Sybil's hand. "He says to me, 'Abel,' says he, 'when you can get a furlough _honorable_,' says he--'for you mustn't go when the country needs you bad--you take this locket' (a-unhookin' it from his neck) 'to Miss Sybil Vaughan--her that lives in the stone farmhouse above our old camp at Holly Farm--and you tell her as how the poor thing tried to save my life; and she'll see it by the great dent in the gold made by a bullet. And you tell her as how she's to open it herself, and see what I put there. And you tell her '--I'm a Methodist, lady, but I'll tell you word for word what he said."

"Yes, word for word."

"'You tell her,' says he, 'how I pray that Christ and his Blessed Mother may be her comfort as they are mine; and tell her as how I've never let a thought enter my mind, since we parted, that she wouldn't have approved. And tell her,' says he, a-raisin' himself half-way up from the ground, 'you tell her I love her fond and true, and that we shall meet in heaven when she's done the work on earth she is so fit to do. And tell her to comfort my mother. Poor mother!' And then he put his arm round my neck, and kind o' stroked my cheek, and he says, soft and low, a few words, and all I heard was, 'Receive my soul,' and then I kissed him, and laid him down on the turf, and his face was like as I think it will be in heaven at the great day. And now I'm goin' to leave you, lady, 'cos I know as how you want to be alone. And, with your leave, I'll come again, and tell you how we loved him, and how we cried like babies round the ambulance that brought him to the camp; and how there was scarce anything left to send home to his mother, 'cos he used to give his things away to the sick boys--blankets, and money, and shirts, and all."

Then Abel took Sybil's delicate hand reverently on his broad, brown palm, and kissed it.

"Lady," he said, "you're the only thing ever I see that was fit to mate with him."

"You will come again," she said. "As you have no daughter, and there must be many things needed to make you comfortable during your convalescence, you will let me see to all that. And you will let me replace the many things you must have lost or worn out during these hard three months?"

She spoke beseechingly, looking up into his face like a child pleading for a toy.

"You shall just wind me round your finger like he did," said Abel. "I allus thought I'd got grit in me till I seen him, and then it seemed as though I hadn't no will but his'n."

* * * * *

Sybil was alone with the little packet. With trembling fingers she untied the string and removed the wrappings of paper. There lay the medallion with its twisted chain. She passionately kissed the battered enamel that had stood between him and death. Then she opened the locket. With the silky, yellow curl lay a little lock of dark-brown hair. She was touching it tenderly, wondering when he had placed it there for her consolation--whether just before the skirmish or soon after he left her--when a turn of the locket in the level rays of the sun showed two words scratched on the inner side with some rude instrument. She looked closer, and read: "Noblesse Oblige."

When Miss Mildred came to lead her into the house, there was a change in her face that filled the gentle lady's heart with gratitude. It was the look of courage that comes to those who recognize the claim of their high birth as the children of God.

THE SPIRIT OF CATHOLIC ASSOCIATIONS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE CIVILTA CATTOLICA.

I.

All societies have aims, more or less remote, which they aspire to realize. Catholic societies have an object which they also strive to accomplish. Theirs is the victory of the church over the modern Islamism, the enemy of all religion and civilization, commonly called the Revolution. This monster, once obtaining control of the state, fills nations with ruins, and in its proud ferocity ever threatens new disorders and fresh streams of blood. Catholic associations, in order to be victorious, must pass over the dead body of this powerful enemy. There is no other way. The enterprise is difficult, requires great courage, absolute generosity, and endurance capable of every trial. But they will win the day; they will yet sing the hymn of triumph; for they march to the battle and fight it in the proper spirit: that is, the Catholic spirit. The victory will be theirs; but only on conditions.

Reason proves it. The labor of a society must be proportioned to the end proposed, as the force must be adequate to the effect intended. It is impossible that an army can win a battle if the necessary discipline, obedience to officers, and courage be wanting. So with Catholic associations. Their object, being a religious one, a crusade which purposes to assure the triumph of Catholic doctrines and institutions, it is impossible for them to act with vigor, to bear the fatigue, stand the brunt of their adversaries' onslaught, conquer their errors, and subdue their forces, unless they are moved, animated, and fortified by the spirit which is peculiar to Catholic associations. If they march to the combat with inadequate forces or lax discipline, they will only become objects of derision to their enemies.

What is the spirit of Catholic societies? It is the spirit of faith. Sacred phalanxes of a religion whose foundation is faith; restorers of principles that are derived from faith; protectors of institutions based on faith--how can they do battle if their minds be not animated with the spirit of faith, if their deliberations be not inspired with it; if their works be not its visible effects? Yes; the spirit of faith is the peculiar spirit of Catholic associations; it is their essence, their qualifying property, and the secret power which impels the Catholic onward to the heroism of virtue. Give us Catholic associations animated by a spirit of living, fervid faith, and great acts will not be slow in production. Examples of it may be seen in the immense and sublime temples erected when the spirit of faith burned in the breasts of our forefathers, to whom it was only necessary to propose the plan in order to have it carried out; and in those chivalrous bands of knights who armed themselves against Mohammedan fury, and fell pierced by numberless wounds on the ground given them to defend, but never yielding an inch to the foe.

Catholic associations imbued by a spirit like this need not fear the power of their adversaries, nor heed their numbers. Faith in the conflict is the buckler which cannot be broken, the shield which cannot be pierced, the flag which counts as many victories as the battles fought under its folds. Let all the members of Catholic associations march to the contest clothed in this armor, and they will be invincible. St. Paul advised this to the Thessalonians and to the Ephesians. This also was the counsel of St. John.[149] What more do we want? Does not St. John tell us that faith and victory are synonymous terms? "_For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith._"[150]

II.

It must be remembered, however, that this spirit of faith must not be a blind spirit, or march to battle with uncertain steps. Associations actuated by such a spirit prosper slowly; without purpose, and consequently without success. The reason is plain, for it is certain that the more thoroughly influenced is a human mind by a motive, the more earnestly will it strive to obtain an object. It is, therefore, evident that the spirit of Catholic associations must be an enlightened spirit, thoroughly knowing what it wants. The Revolution--great mistress in the arts of hypocrisy, great employer of every species of argument in its favor through the license of the press, great seducer by the advantages which it proposes--if it does not always succeed in catching real Catholics in its net, at least sows such prejudices in the minds of some as will make them less hostile to its work or less earnest in the defence of Catholicism, which is another name for truth and justice. This is the first danger to be shunned by Catholic associations. The Catholic societies must not let themselves be seduced by the seductive monsters of the revolution. The quality and natural goodness of the tree is not known so well by its leaves as by its fruit. It is, therefore, necessary to go deeper than the mere extrinsic forms to penetrate the substance of the work done by the revolution. Oh! how many motives to spur on to action would Catholics find in such an investigation! A rapid glance will convince them of this fact.

Observe the religious order. Let the Catholic associate consider, in this regard, a country in which the revolution has made progress. He witnesses the most impious and most lamentable scenes; the church deprived or curtailed of liberty, insulted in her ministers, attacked by literary barbarians, by trammelling laws, or infamous writings; her destruction sworn, Christ impugned in his doctrines, derided in his sacraments, his divinity denied; God excluded from laws, banished from the school; men grouped in hostility to him, shouting, in full daylight under the banner of the free-thinkers, like a horde of savages, "There is no God!"

Pass to the social order. Here a new spectacle of grief is presented. Every effort is used to take away from the community its common belief and to plunge individuals into the vortex of incredulity; a black cloud of practical errors, moving over the nations, abolishing the restraint of conscience, rendering the populace the slaves of the vilest and most truculent passions; the basis of all authority, human and divine, sapped; the most powerful governments crumbling to dust, and threatening to fall a prey either to perpetual anarchy or brutal tyranny.

Consider the nature of the means employed. What a sad view! Perpetual conspiracies, shameless treasons, frauds and deceptions, lies and calumnies, unmitigated oppression and violence. Furnished with these weapons, the revolutionary bands war on God, on Christ, and on his church. The revolution, like a shameless woman, blushes not at its crimes, but glories in its success.

Consider the results. Every religious conviction blotted out, the principles of morality annihilated or obscured, authority destroyed, and consequently a society springing up composed of men without certainty in regard to their end, without any immutable law to restrain them, without any bond of affection to unite them. Hence, we have the unrestrained indulgence of the passions, egotism the universal law, force and cunning the only arms, and mutual demolition the consequence. The old French revolution proves it; the modern one of Paris confirms it. The revolutionary Guéroult himself attests it in stating that the Parisian insurrection "is disorder, destruction, self-abandonment, the putrid decomposition of a society without belief, without compass Or ideal."[151] The results of the revolution may be summed up in one phrase: it makes men beasts, and society bestial.

A Catholic association which considers these effects of the revolution in the light of faith, appreciating the means employed and the sad results, cannot act remissly. It is not possible; it must rise in the name of the rights of God, of Christ, of the church; in the name of that religious belief which is attempted to be taken from the people, and the principles of moral reason; it must rise full of shame for society, which tolerates such horrible abuses and crimes. It will rise to repair these defects with gladness. The spirit of faith, strengthened by the motives proposed, will spur it on in its efforts. The Catholic associations of Germany are undoubtedly energetic; so are those of Austria; but the secret of their force is found in the fact that the men who lead them are men of strong faith and of great prudence and intelligence. This is evident from their congresses, in their speeches and newspapers. Catholic associations in other lands would do well to imitate them.

III.

The motives just proposed are powerful, but their source is disagreeable. There are others more pleasant to consider. Among these latter is the nobility of the end proposed by Catholic associations. This is not, as has been calumniously stated, to revenge the defeat of a certain political order, or to satisfy natural restlessness. Catholic associations, vivified by the true spirit of faith, do not stoop so low. They aim at things far higher. The name which they bear, the rules which they profess to follow, the works already accomplished where they have been established, attest it. Their particular object is to drag men, made slaves by the revolution, out of the mire of incredulity and immorality into which false principles have plunged them. They strive to re-establish society on the true bases of truth and justice, to restore tranquillity to peoples disturbed by the passions of party and the fury of false teachers. They aim to reclaim for God the obedience which is his due, the honor which belongs to Christ, the rights taken from the church; to give true liberty--the liberty of the Gospel--to all; to draw men away from the carnal happiness proposed to them by the revolution; and to make them seek that beatitude which every rational Christian should desire. The revolution threatens everything--religion in society and among individuals; the Catholic associate declares himself their champion.

Such is the noble aim of Catholic associations; hence the nobleness of the conflict in which they are engaged. What is this conflict? It is the struggle of truth against error, of right against might, of civilization against barbarism, of duty to God, Christ, and his church against impiety, blasphemy, and injustice. The revolution means the renewal among men of the revolt of Lucifer and his angels; the Catholic associations are the faithful cohorts of God and his Christ. Their war-cry is that of St. Michael: _Quis ut Deus et Christus ejus?_ Who is like to God and his Christ?

This war-cry has been explicitly recommended in the New Testament. The words are given by St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and plainly referred to by St. Paul. "Whoever," says Christ, "confesses me in the midst of this sinful and adulterous race, whoever makes public profession of my doctrine, will be recognized by me before the angels, before the tribunal of my Father in heaven."[152] Does not the present generation publicly boast of making a divorce between itself and God and Christ? Giving loose rein to passion under the specious names of liberty of conscience and the preaching of licentious doctrines, modern society is plunging into the abyss of iniquity. Hence, the Catholic associates must rise courageously in the midst of this generation, confess Christ openly, publicly affirm his doctrines, and defend them in the face of his enemies. The Catholic associates must revive the praises of Christ; to them are his divine promises addressed, to them belong the irrevocable guarantees of being placed near the throne of his Father. Combating bravely and bearing themselves like true champions of the religion of Christ, their fate is not and cannot be doubtful.

Let the Catholic associations, therefore, advance courageously to the fight, bearing the banner of Christ against the standard of the revolution. Humanity, liberty, progress, light, are written on the adverse flag, but they are stolen words. In the mouths of the revolutionists they are lies. The flag of humanity is not that which destroys its rights, but that which defends them; nor of _liberty_, that which makes men slaves of their passions instead of freeing them; nor of _progress_, that which has no aim, but that which leads to something definite; nor of light, that which begets obscurity in the intellect, destroying its most obvious principles, but that which illuminates intelligence with divine revelation. This latter is the banner of Catholic associations, consequently it is the flag of humanity, of liberty, of progress, the standard of light.

IV.

The forces of Catholic associations must act in concert. It is not enough that their members be vigorous and animated with an ardent faith. There must be harmony of intelligence among them. Woe to the society whose members have different principles or contradictory plans! Like a machine whose wheels do not move harmoniously, ruin will result. There must be uniformity of principles and thorough harmony of intelligence if the Catholic associates hope to obtain great successes.

Harmony in generalities is easy; but not so in particulars. If you ask a Catholic assembly what it wants, all the members will reply, "The propagation and triumph of Catholic principles." But if you descend to particular enquiries, you may meet difficulties that close the way to success; disputes about fixed principles must therefore be eliminated from Catholic associations.

These associations are in the first place essentially laic, therefore it is not their business to decide questions of principle. Their aim is a practical one, namely, to annul the efforts of the revolution, to introduce the principles of Catholicity where they do not exist, and strengthen them where they do. It is not of their competence to determine them. They are called Catholic, therefore, in case of doubt, they must recur to the teaching church and accept her decisions. We repeat: the Catholic associations must keep within the bounds imposed by their very nature and title, and then there will be no collision of views, no wasting of precious time in useless disputes, no schisms and separations; but, with all the force of a strong faith, they will advance with dignity, security, and success in their undertakings.

In confirmation of this, we quote an apposite passage from the discourse pronounced by his eminence, Cardinal Schwarzenberg, in the general congress of the Catholic associations held at Prague in 1860. "The object of Catholic associations," says the eminent prelate, "is to take measures to introduce and assist the teaching, the principles, the precepts, and the desires of the church in the schools, in the life of the citizen and of the family, among merchants and men of business. Their duty is to support the teaching church by counsel and co-operation. Their duty is also to acknowledge with joyful mind the doctrines of the church, to follow them, defend and sustain them."

Who does not admit the great good performed by the Catholic associations of Germany in the course of the few years during which they have been established? And if we study the reason of their success, we shall find it in the undisturbed harmony of their views. The spirit of "liberal Catholicism" tried to influence them, but in vain. Their associates, mindful of their title and of their duty to the pastors of the church, and especially to the Roman Pontiff, obey his instructions without subtle distinctions and commentaries, and employ their talents properly in securing their prosperity.

An instance of their Catholic zeal is found in the letter sent to the Pope by the assembly held at Innsbrück preparatory to the general congress of the German Catholic societies in 1867. In that letter we read as follows: "On the 9th, 10th, and 11th of September, with the consent and approval of the most reverend Bishop of Brixen, the Catholics of Innsbrück, the capital of the Tyrol, will be gathered together in order to defend courageously their religion as far as God and their strength will allow; and, the errors and lies of vain men being rejected, such errors as your holiness has pointed out and condemned with fulness of authority in your encyclical letters, in order also to take salutary counsel required by the character of the times and circumstances, so as to promote the growth of Catholic life and charity, under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary. An immense war, as you, Holy Father, have expressed it, is waged against divine revelation, against the Catholic Church, against the apostolic see, against good morals and Christian charity, the queen of all the virtues. While this war rages, every Catholic becomes a soldier of Christ; _but we cannot carry on a good and just war if we do not cling with all the ardor of our soul to the apostolic see, fastened to that rock which God has placed in Rome; and if we are not helped and sustained by your supreme authority and your efficacious blessing; wherefore, we_ earnestly _desire from our very inmost hearts to venerate_, follow, and obey you, _the Vicar of Christ_, you, the chief pastor of the whole flock of the Lord, you, father of all the faithful. This is the unanimous feeling of all those who will be assembled in September at Innsbrück; this is the universal desire; and, all animated by this thought, God will defend the Christian doctrine and Christian charity."

Let these be the sentiments of all Catholic associations that may spring up; let this be their programme and the foundation of their constitution. The spirit of prompt submission to the teaching of the church should animate them. This is a simple consequence of the first element of Catholic life. Christ never said to any theologian, erudite man, learned historian, or particular society, "Be ye masters of the church, and let her hear you;" but he did say so to the bishops and to the pope in the person of the apostles and of Peter. Only one blinded by his own pride can deny this fundamental principle of the Catholic religion. The spirit of prompt obedience to lawful authority is the secret which alone will render Catholic societies capable of success.

But harmony of intelligence is not the only means by which Catholic associations can manifest their spirit. There must be unity of feeling and co-ordination of will, elements essential to every society.

V.

A Catholic association which possesses the spirit of submission to the teaching church, and possesses harmony of intelligence, is on the right road, and may hope to prosper in its undertakings. But how often does it happen that a serious impediment, an insurmountable barrier, stops the progress of a brave legion and disappoints the well-founded hopes of victory! Here is a danger which the best-intentioned Catholic association may encounter; an obstruction, an invincible barrier, which may arise from the unexpected disagreement of wills. Agreement of wills is essential as well as harmony of intelligence.

It is evident that, in order to maintain this agreement, we must remove the causes which might disturb it. There are two sources of discord; one arising from the internal relations of a society. The intellects may agree on the principles to be sustained, and the wills consent as to the end proposed; but the task is for the members to choose the same means and put them in practice. Here may arise the discord. Some project or design is proposed. It is debated. The dispute waxes warm. Hard words are interchanged. The majority, of course, carry the project; but the minority may disagree and refuse to co-operate in its execution. Hence disaffection, schisms, and secessions in the association. What is the root of all these troubles? It is, in one word, pride, the root of all schisms. One thinks himself more learned, of greater rank or of more experience than the others, therefore he will not be led by their judgment but by his own self-conceit. The trouble is small in the beginning, but it may produce disastrous results. What is the remedy? It is to bring to every discussion the true Catholic spirit of abnegation and of sacrifice. Whims and prejudices must be laid aside for the sake of harmony and the noble cause to be defended. Our God is a God of peace, not of commotion and disturbance. The best plan is not always that suggested by our weak judgment. Provided the plan of the majority be a good one, though it may not be the most perfect, still, for peace sake, let us adopt it, according to the advice of Xavier, that it is better to accept a unanimous plan, though not the best, rather than a perfect one which would cause dissensions among our brethren.

The second cause of dissensions may be in the external relations of the associates. This would be the more dangerous, because the occasion of it might be an apparent external good to be effected. The will of the bishop or of the pastor may not agree with the desire of the society. In a case of this kind, if the society should act in spite of the episcopal will or opposed to it publicly, a great scandal would happen in the diocese, and the society would fall to pieces. What is the remedy for such calamities? The associates must have filial reverence and obedience for the pastors of the church. Then all difficulties will cease. This is required by the very object of the association, which is to aid the bishops in religious matters; it is also required by the dignity of the bishops, since the Holy Ghost has called them to be rulers in the church. His holiness Pius IX. clearly teaches that this should be the bearing of Catholic societies toward their pastors, in his answer to the Catholics of Innsbrück.

Here we may quote what a bishop said in the general congress held to condemn the proceedings of the so-called German Catholic liberals. These gentlemen, under the appearance of doing good, had expressed their usual lamentations about the storms that threatened the church, the danger to her future freedom, unless the laity were allowed a greater influence in religious matters; to deny them this influence, as had been done so far, would be to render them inert and careless about church matters. Such were the complaints--complaints of the discontented son who is trying to deprive his mother of complete control of the house--subtle revolutionary complaints against the authority of the hierarchy. The Bishop of Brixen, answering them, said, "What kind of influence do laymen want in the church? To control dogma? They cannot. Discipline? They cannot. Influence of the laity is too vague a conception, and, besides, a useless one. In order that it should produce benefits, its limits should be determined, its conditions explained. But it is well known that the chief among them is faithful dependence on the teachings and authority of the church, since the words of the apostle suit individuals as well as the whole church: 'The just man lives by faith.' The life of the church requires nothing but what comes from faith. Hence, when the church finds a layman who manifests his faith in his words and actions, she honors him, salutes him with joy as a co-operator not having belied the words of the apostle of love: Let us be co-workers of truth, co-operators in propagating and strengthening it, and in assuring its triumph. In every age there have been many such men, like our modern Catholic associations, and for this reason we protect them, salute, esteem them; and the best proof of our love for them is that we have hastened to come to this solemn congress of lay associations, assembled to defend Catholic interests." Thus spoke the learned prelate. In conclusion, a Catholic society must not touch on dogmatic subjects, nor interfere in affairs pertaining to ecclesiastical discipline: it should observe proper respect and obedience toward its bishops, and then the bishops will aid, bless and sustain it.

VI.

The parts of a machine, in order to act in concert, must be united according to mechanical laws: so associations must obey the laws of order. They must have co-ordination of forces. In this consists the peculiar advantage of association. Each one has its constitution and by-laws. Let it observe them, adapting them to the wants and peculiarities of each nation. The difficulty is really not in enacting laws for it, but to keep them in vigor.

The associates must have the spirit of order. Then the execution of laws will be easy. Such a spirit will make each member mind his own position; each officer act in his own sphere without infringing on the rights of others. The object of the association being to act with united forces, this purpose cannot be effected by a disorderly mass of individuals, acknowledging no obedience to a local or general superior. Each particular society will become jealous of its neighbor, unless all agree to obey implicitly a central committee. Private utility and individuality must be sacrificed to the public good; jealousy, self-love, personal advantage, these three causes that tend to disrupt the co-ordination of the common forces, must be sacrificed to the common welfare, and to the end for which the association was established, as it is an elementary rule of order that the private must be sacrificed for the public good. For this reason we consider that society best in which the strictest bonds are maintained between the members and the centre or head. Does not union make strength? A necessary consequence is that the force is proportioned to the union. Baron Stillfried, a name dear to Catholics by reason of his fervid zeal for religion, rendering an account of what the Confraternity of the Archangel St. Michael, founded in Vienna in 1860, had done, confessed that, owing to dissensions among the members, and the consequent lack of union of forces, the results had been relatively few. On the contrary, who does not admire the wonderful success obtained by the Catholic _Casini_ of Austria in favor of the pontifical cause, owing to their unity of purpose and union of forces? They obliged the president of the council to receive their complaints; they obliged the chancellor of the empire to excuse himself; they moved all the Catholic populations to such a spirit of action in favor of religion, tied down by the iniquitous laws of the revolution, that all the journals of the secret societies bellowed and blasphemed like lunatics, fearing the destruction of their nefarious designs.

The multiplicity of Catholic interests gives rise to many associations differing according to the difference of their aims. Should this diversity have no common bond of union? By no means. Some have for object matters of essential importance, as, for instance, the freedom of the church, her right to educate, and the independence of her head. In regard to these subjects, all the associations should unite. Is it necessary to prove this? Is it not self-evident? Associations that would act differently would resemble those Chinese troops which neglected the defence of the most important posts, contenting themselves with guarding places of secondary importance.

Catholic societies are not bands of conspirators, they do not excite rebellions, nor use violence or deceit to gain their purpose. These arts are left to the revolutionists. Catholics need no weapons but truth and justice. They must be ready to die for both. But they must act legally, they must not violate the civil order. Consequently, they should never undertake a work without first being satisfied of its lawfulness.

In this way success is certain; for in modern civil society public opinion rules. If Catholic societies defend religion, who can object? For public opinion must admit their right to do so, provided they violate no laws of the state.

VII.

But although legality is required for Catholic associations, they must not be timid or cowardly. They must be brave and magnanimous. Christ teaches us to be magnanimous, for he gave his blood and life for the love of truth and justice; the martyrs in millions died for the same cause. We must imitate them. No difficulty or obstacle must balk the zeal of a Catholic association. No fatigue or danger or sacrifice must be too great for the Catholic associate. The soldier of Christ must conquer difficulties. The present conflict, said Monsignor de Ketteler, in the congress of the Catholic associations of Trèves, needs champions who, for the love of Christ, dare expose themselves to the attacks of newspapers and demagogues, to calumny and terms of contempt in parliament and from the rostrum. The Catholic spirit must be a self-sacrificing and a magnanimous one. Every associate must be a Catholic before being a politician, a Catholic before being a man of letters, a Catholic above all things. He must never be discouraged, but persevere with generous constancy, in spite of the attacks of enemies, or the seeming want of success of many of his efforts. Let the Catholic associates remember that they are fighting under the very eyes of God; and that their struggles, even though not always successful, are a manifestation of their faith before men which will be rewarded in heaven.

VIII.

We say this on the supposition that the combined forces of the association should produce no result. But this supposition is unfounded. Let the Catholic association remain constant in its enterprise, and it will make a new step to victory every day. It may fail in this or that particular measure, but the general cause will prosper. We know that the heads of the secret societies speak in this way, but they do so to deceive. We do not, for our words are founded on solid reasons.

The first is drawn from the nature of the two causes in conflict. The revolution is the cause of error and injustice; Catholicism is the cause of truth and justice, consequently the cause of Catholicism is conformable to the nature of man, formed for the true and the good, while the cause of the revolution is in contradiction with man's nature. How can any nature remain long in a state of contradiction with itself? Passion or ignorance may obscure for a time the human intelligence, but when the contradiction is felt and known, nature revolts against it with all its power, and frees itself. Now, as the associations in the interest of the Catholic faith are striving to enlighten our intellect with the light of truth, and to repress the force of passions by inculcating the love of virtue, the necessary effect of such labor must be that the cause of the revolution will daily lose ground as the light of truth, becoming more apparent, shows the falsity of certain principles. The more the Catholic associations combine in illuminating the human intelligence and correcting the dormant moral sense of society, the more will the Catholic cause hasten towards triumph.

Reason teaches this. But revelation offers other proofs, for it gives us the promises of Christ. These are expressed in those passages in which our Lord likens his doctrines to the little leaven which leavens the whole mass; and when he tells his apostles to trust in him, the conqueror of the world.[153] Let the Catholic associations, therefore, advance in their work with confidence. They have divine promises in their favor. The false and iniquitous doctrines of the revolution will fall to the ground. Its efforts will be in vain, its success only local or temporary; for the friends of truth and of human rights will finally conquer. The best instincts of human nature and the promises of faith are with them.

The Holy Ghost tells us by the pen of St. Paul that truth must conquer in the end, speaking of the saints "who triumphed over the powers of earth, closed the mouths of lions, were invincible in the combat, and conquered their enemies."[154] The children of the revolution, having a presentiment of their defeat by the new Catholic associations, have already cried To arms! and in a thousand ways manifested their fear. Yes, the victorious future belongs to the Catholic associations. Let them, therefore, arise with courage grounded on the principles of faith, strengthened by the noble motives of their enterprise. Harmony of intelligence, the spirit of submission to the church, agreement of wills, with the spirit of sacrifice, and of reverence for their pastors, will make them serried battalions, moving according to law, with magnanimity, constancy, and confidence in God, irresistible in their attacks. Let them fight on the battle-field of faith, and the world will soon know that the proud pomp of the revolution and its thousand war-cries are founded only on falsehood and deceit.

FOOTNOTES:

[149] 1 Thess. v. 8; Ephes. vi. 11, 17.

[150] 1 John v. 4.

[151] _Bien Public_, n. 82.

[152] Matt. x. 32, 33; Mark viii. 38; Luke xii. 8; Tim. ii. 12.

[153] John xvi. 33; Matt. xiii. 33; John xvii. 20-23.

[154] Heb. xi. 33, 34.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

BY HENRI LASSERRE.

PART NINTH.

I.

By reason of the events which we have narrated, M. Massy no longer felt at home in this part of the earth. The emperor did not fail to send him to the first prefecture which became vacant in the empire. By a remarkable coincidence, this prefecture proved to be that of Grenoble. Baron Massy left Our Lady of Lourdes only to meet Our Lady of La Salette.

Jacomet also left the department, and was appointed chief of police elsewhere. Re-established upon his chosen ground, he contributed with great sagacity to the detection of some dangerous criminals who had baffled the efforts of his predecessor and the active search of the police. The crime was a great robbery committed upon a railroad company, and amounting to several hundred thousand francs. This was the point of departure in his fortunes as a police agent, his true vocation. His remarkable ability, appreciated by his superiors, raised him to a higher place.

The _procureur impérial_, M. Dutour, was also speedily called to other functions. M. Lacadé still remained mayor, and his shadow will yet appear once or twice in the latter pages of our story.

II.

Although he had instituted the tribunal of examination towards the end of July, still, before permitting it to begin its work, Mgr. Laurence desired a more peaceful state of the public mind. "To wait," he thought, "will not compromise God's work, since he holds all time in his hands." The issue proved that he was right. For after the stormy discussions of the French press and the violent proceedings of Baron Massy, the grotto finally became free, and there was no longer fear of the scandal of seeing police agents arresting the episcopal commission on its way to the Massabielle rocks in order to fulfil its duty, and examine the traces of God's finger at the very place of the apparition.

On the 17th of November, the commission went to Lourdes. They examined the seer. "Bernadette," says the _procès-verbal_ of the secretary, "presented herself before us with great modesty, and, nevertheless, with remarkable confidence. She appeared calm and unembarrassed in the midst of the numerous assembly, in presence of distinguished ecclesiastics, whom she had never seen, but of whose mission she had been made aware."

She described the apparitions, the words of the Blessed Virgin, the order given by Mary to build a chapel in her honor, the sudden breaking out of the fountain, the name, "Immaculate Conception," which the vision had given to itself. She set forth all that was personal to herself in this supernatural drama with the grave certainty of a witness fully convinced, and the humble candor of a child. She answered every question, and left no obscurity in the mind of those who interrogated her, no longer in the name of man, as Jacomet had done, but in the name of the Catholic Church. Our readers are already aware of the substance of her testimony. We have, in former pages, narrated events in the order of their date. The commission visited the Massabielle rocks. It beheld the great volume of the miraculous fountain. It established, by the testimony of the neighboring inhabitants, that no spring existed there before the time when it broke forth in the presence of the multitudes under the hand of the ecstatic seer.

At Lourdes and in other places they made studious inquiry into the miraculous cures worked by the water of the grotto.

In this delicate task there were two parts, entirely distinct. Human testimony determined the facts themselves; but their natural or supernatural character depended, for the most part, on the verdict of medical science. The method followed by the tribunal was inspired by this twofold thought.

Throughout the dioceses of Lourdes, Auch, and Bayonne, the commission summoned before it the subjects of these singular cures. It cross-examined the minutest details of their sickness, and their sudden or gradual restoration to health. It brought in human science to put those technical questions of which theologians, perhaps, would not have thought. It summoned the relations, friends, neighbors, and other witnesses of the different phases of the event, to confirm evidence. Having once come to a certainty of all details, it submitted facts to the judgment of two eminent physicians admitted as colleagues. These physicians were Dr. Vergès, superintendent of the baths at Barèges, Fellow of the Medical Faculty of Montpellier, and Dr. Dozous, who had already, out of private interest, given his attention to several of these strange incidents. Each physician gave in his report his personal opinion regarding the nature of the cure, sometimes rejecting the miracle, and attributing the cessation of disease to certain natural causes; at other times declaring its utter inexplicability without the action of a supernatural power; and, lastly, sometimes not arriving at any conclusion, but remaining in doubt as to the true explanation. Thus prepared by the double knowledge of facts and the conclusion of science with respect to them, the commission deliberated, and finally pronounced its judgment to the bishop, and submitted the evidence.

The commission had not and could not have any preconceived opinions. Believing on principle in the supernatural, which is always to be met with in the history of the world, it knew, also, that nothing so tends to discredit the true miracles of God as false prodigies worked by men. Equally indisposed to deny or affirm anything prematurely, having no brief to sustain either for or against the miracle, it was confined strictly to the task of examination and sought only the truth. It appealed to every source of light and information, and acted in full view of the public.

It was as open to unbelievers as to those who believed. Resolved to discard remorselessly all that was vague or uncertain, and to accept only incontestable facts, it rejected every declaration based upon hearsay.

It imposed two conditions upon every witness: first, to testify only to what came under personal knowledge and observation; secondly, to state under oath the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

With such precautions and an organization so prudent and wise, it would have been impossible for a false miracle to deceive the judgment of the commission. It would have been impossible, in the face of the hostile criticism of those who were bent upon combating and overthrowing every error and even the least exaggeration, to sustain any doubtful assertion or the miraculous character of any doubtful fact.

If, then, true miracles, imperfectly proved, failed in obtaining the sanction of the commission, it is absolutely certain that no false prodigy could stand before its searching examination.

Whoever had the means of contesting any one of the miracles--not by vague and general theories, but by facts and personal knowledge--was thereby summoned to appear against it. Not to do so was to give up the case, and acknowledge that no formal or intelligible counter-evidence could be sustained. When passions run high in the ardor of a long struggle, parties do not let judgment go by default. To refuse the combat is to accept defeat.

III.

During several months, the episcopal commission visited the houses of those whom public notoriety designated as objects of the miraculous cures subjected to its examination. It established the truth of many miracles. Several of them have already found a place in our history. Two were quite recent. They had taken place shortly after the prefect had withdrawn his prohibition and the grotto had been reopened. One was at Nay, the other at Tartas. Although the recipients of these heavenly favors were mutually unacquainted, a mysterious bond seemed to connect both events. Let us relate them in order as we have personally studied them, and written down what we have heard under the impressions produced by the living testimony.

IV.

In the town of Nay, where young Henry Busquet had been miraculously cured a few months before, a certain widow, named Madeleine Rizan, was at the point of death. Her life had for twenty-four or twenty-five years been an unbroken series of pain and sorrow. Having been attacked by the cholera in 1832, her left side had remained almost entirely paralyzed. She was quite lame, and could only move a few steps inside her house, and that only by supporting herself against the walls or furniture. Two or three times a year, in warm weather, she was able to go to Mass at the parish church of Nay, not far from her dwelling. She was unable, without assistance, either to kneel or to rise. One of her hands was totally palsied. Her general health had suffered no less than her limbs from this terrible scourge. She frequently vomited blood, and her stomach was unable to bear solid food.

Beef-tea, soup, and coffee had, however, sufficed to keep up the flame of life, ever flickering and unable to warm her feeble body. She often suffered from icy chills. The poor woman was always cold. Even in the heats of July and August, she always wished to see fire in the grate, and to have her arm-chair wheeled close to the hearth.

For the last sixteen or eighteen months, her state had been much aggravated; the paralysis of the left side had become total. The same infirmity had begun to attack the right leg. Her paralyzed limbs were greatly swollen, as happens in the case of dropsy.

Madame Rizan left her chair to take to her bed. She could not move, such was her weakness, and they were obliged to turn her, from time to time, in her bed. She was almost an inert mass. Sensibility was gone as well as motion.

"Where are my legs?" she used to inquire, when any one came to move her. Her limbs were drawn together, and she lay continually on one side in the form of a Z.

Two physicians had successively attended her. Doctor Talamon had long since given her up as incurable, and, although he continued to visit her, it was only as a friend. He refused to prescribe any remedies, saying that drugs and medicines would prove fatal, or, at best, only enfeeble her system.

Doctor Subervielle, at the repeated instance of Madame Rizan, had prescribed some medicines, and, soon finding them utterly useless, had also given up all hope. Although her paralyzed limbs had become insensible, the sufferings which this unfortunate woman experienced from her stomach and head were terrible. Owing to her constantly cramped position, she was afflicted by two painful sores--one in the hollow of her chest, and the other on the back. On her side, in several places, her skin, chafed by the bed-clothes, exposed the flesh, naked and bleeding. Her death was at hand.

Madame Rizan had two children. Her daughter, Lubine, lived with and took care of her with the greatest devotion. Her son, Romain Rizan, had a situation in a business-house at Bordeaux.

When the last hope was gone, and Doctor Subervielle declared that she had only a few hours to live, they sent in haste for her son, Romain Rizan. He came, embraced his mother, and received her last blessing and farewell. Then, obliged to leave by a message peremptorily recalling him--torn by the cruel tyranny of business from his mother's death-bed--he left her with the bitter conviction that he should never see her more. The dying woman received extreme unction. Her agony went on amid excruciating sufferings.

"My God!" she often murmured, "I pray thee to end my torments. Grant me to be healed or to die."

She sent to ask the Sisters of the Cross, at Igon, where her own sister-in-law was superior, to make a novena to Our Lady for her cure or death. The sick woman also evinced a desire to drink some of the water of the grotto. One of her neighbors, Madame Nessans, who was going to Lourdes, promised to fetch some of the water when she returned. For some time past, she had been watched day and night. On Saturday, October 16, a violent crisis heralded the near approach of her last moment. She was continually spitting blood. A livid hue spread over her worn features; her eyes became glassy. She no longer spoke, except when forced by excessive pain.

"O my God! how I suffer! O Lord! would that I might die!"

"Her prayer will soon be granted," said Doctor Subervielle as he left her. "She will die to-night, or at least before the sun is fairly up. There is only a little oil left in the lamp!"

From time to time the door of her chamber opened. Friends, neighbors, and priests, the Abbé Dupont and the Abbé Sanareus, vicar of Nay, entered and softly inquired if she were still alive.

Her friend and consoler, the Abbé Dupont, could not restrain his tears as he left her. "Before morning she will be dead, and I shall see her again only in paradise," he said.

Night fell, and solitude gradually took possession of the house. Kneeling before a statue of the Blessed Virgin, Lubine prayed without any earthly hope. The silence was profound, and broken only by the difficult breathing of the invalid.

It was nearly midnight. "My daughter!" cried the dying woman.

Lubine arose and approached the bed.

"What do you wish, mother?" she asked, taking her hand. "My dear child," answered the dying mother, in a strange voice that seemed to come from a heavy dream, "go to our friend Madame Nessans, who was to have returned from Lourdes, this evening. Ask her for a glassful of the water from the grotto. This water will cure me. The Blessed Virgin wishes it."

"Dear mother," answered Lubine, "it is too late to go there. I cannot leave you alone. Besides, everybody is asleep at the house of Madame Nessans. But I will go early in the morning."

"Let us wait, then." The invalid relapsed into silence. The long night finally passed.

The joyous bells at last announced the day. The morning Angelus as it rose carried up to the Virgin Mother the prayers of earth, and celebrated the eternal memory of her all-powerful maternity. Lubine hastened to Madame Nessans's, and soon returned with a bottle of water from the grotto.

"Here, mother! Drink! and may the Blessed Virgin come to your help!" Madame Rizan raised the glass to her lips, and swallowed a few mouthfuls.

"O my daughter! my daughter! It is life that I am drinking! Here is life in this water! Bathe my face with it! Bathe my arms! Bathe my whole body with it!"

Trembling and almost beside herself, Lubine moistened a piece of linen with the miraculous water, and bathed her mother's face.

"I feel that I am cured!" she cried in a voice now clear and strong. "I feel that I am cured!"

Lubine meanwhile bathed with the wet linen the paralyzed and swollen limbs of the invalid. Trembling with mingled joy and terror, she saw the enormous swelling disappear under the rapid movement of her hand, and the stretched and shining skin reassume its natural appearance.

Suddenly, completely, and without transition, health and life revived beneath her touch.

"It seems to me as if burning pimples were breaking out all over me." It was, doubtless, the principle of disease leaving for ever under the influence of a superhuman will. All this was over in a moment. In a couple of minutes the body of Madame Rizan, apparently in her agony, bathed by her daughter, recovered the fulness of strength.

"I am cured! perfectly cured!" cried the happy woman. "Oh! how good the Blessed Virgin is! Oh! how powerful she is!"

After the first burst of gratitude toward heaven, the material appetites of earth made themselves keenly felt.

"Lubine, dear Lubine, I am hungry. I must have something to eat!"

"Will you have some coffee, some wine, or some milk?" stammered her daughter, confused by the suddenness and astounding character of the miracle.

"I want to have meat and bread, my daughter. I have not tasted any for twenty-four years." There happened to be some cold meat and some wine near at hand; Madame Rizan partook of both. "And now," said she, "I want to get up."

"It is impossible, mother," said Lubine, hesitating to believe her eyes, and fancying, perhaps, that cures which come directly from God are subject, like other cures, to the degrees and dangers of convalescence. She feared to see the miracle vanish as suddenly as it had come.

Madame Rizan insisted and demanded her clothes. They had been for many months carefully folded and packed in the wardrobe never to be worn again. Lubine left the room to find them. Soon she re-entered. But as she crossed the threshold, she uttered a loud cry, and dropped the garment which she was bringing. Her mother had sprung out of bed, during her absence, and there she was, before the mantelpiece, where she kept a statue of the Blessed Virgin, with clasped hands returning thanks to her all-powerful deliverer.

Lubine, as frightened as if she had beheld one risen from the dead, was unable to help her mother to dress. The latter, however, put on her clothes in an instant without any assistance, and again knelt down before the sacred image.

It was about seven o'clock in the morning, and the people were going to the early Mass. Lubine's cry was heard in the street by the groups who were passing under the windows.

"Poor girl!" they said, "her mother is dead at last. It was impossible for her to survive the night." Several entered the house to console and support Lubine in this unspeakable affliction, among others two sisters of the Holy Cross.

"Ah! poor child, your good mother is dead! But you will certainly see her again in heaven!" They approached the young girl, whom they beheld leaning against the half-opened door, her face wearing a stupefied look. She could scarcely answer them.

"My mother is risen from the dead!" she answered, in a voice choked by strong emotion.

"She is raving," thought the sisters, as they passed by and entered the room, followed by some persons who had come up-stairs with them.

Lubine had spoken the truth. Madame Rizan had left her bed. There she was, dressed and prostrated before the image of Mary. She arose, and said: "I am cured! Let us all kneel down, and thank the Blessed Virgin."

The news of this extraordinary event spread like lightning through the city. All that day and the day after the house was full of people. The crowd, agitated and yet recollected, pressed to visit the room into which a ray of the all-powerful goodness of God had penetrated.

Everybody wished to see Madame Rizan, to touch the body restored to life, to convince his own eyes, and grave upon his memory the details of this supernatural drama.

Doctor Subervielle acknowledged, without hesitation, the supernatural and divine character of this cure.

At Bordeaux, meanwhile, Romain Rizan awaited in despair and anguish the fatal missive announcing his mother's death. It was a great shock to him when, one morning, the postman brought him a letter addressed in the well-known hand of Abbé Dupont.

"I have lost my poor mother!" he said to a friend who had just come to visit him. He burst into tears, and dared not break the seal.

"Take courage in your misfortune. Have faith!" said his friend.

Finally, he opened the letter. The first words which met his eyes were:

"Deo gratias! Alleluia!

"Rejoice, my dear friend. Your mother is cured--_completely cured_. The Blessed Virgin has restored her miraculously to health." The Abbé Dupont then went on to relate the divine manner in which Madame Rizan had found at the end of her agony life instead of death.

We may easily fancy the joy of the son and of his friend. The latter was employed in a printing-house at Bordeaux, where was published the _Messager Catholique_. "Give me that letter," said he to Romain. "The works of God ought to be made known, and Our Lady of Lourdes glorified."

Partly by force, and partly by entreaty, he obtained the letter. It was published a few days afterward in the _Messager Catholique_.

The happy son hastened to Nay at the earliest moment. As he arrived in the diligence, a woman was waiting to greet him. She ran swiftly to meet him, and, when he descended from the coach, threw herself into his arms, weeping with tenderness and joy. It was his mother.

A few years afterward, the author, while searching out the details of his history, went in person to verify the report of the episcopal commission. He visited Madame Rizan, whose perfect health and green old age excited his admiration. Although in her seventy-first year, she has none of the infirmities which that age usually brings. Of her illness and terrible sufferings there remains not a trace; and all who had formerly known her, and whose testimony we gathered, were yet stupefied at her extraordinary cure.[155] We wished to see Doctor Subervielle. He had been dead some years.

"But," we asked a clergyman of Nay, who acted as our guide, "the invalid was attended by another physician, Doctor Talamon, was she not?"

"He is a very distinguished man," replied our companion. "He was in the habit of visiting Madame Rizan, not professionally, but as a friend and neighbor. But after her miraculous cure he ceased his visits, and did not make his appearance for eight or ten months."

"Perhaps," we rejoined, "he wished to avoid being questioned on the subject, and being obliged to explain this extraordinary phenomenon, which would certainly have been out of accord with his principles of medical philosophy?"

"I do not know how that may have been."

"No matter; I want to see him."

We knocked at his door.

Doctor Talamon is a tall and handsome old man, with an expressive and intelligent countenance. A remarkable forehead, a crown of white locks, a glance which betokens positive adherence to opinions, a mouth varied in expression, and on which a sceptical smile often plays--these are the features which strike one who approaches him.

We stated the object of our visit.

"It is a long time," he answered, "since all that happened, and, at the distance of ten or twelve years, my memory supplies but a dim recollection of the matter about which you inquire; besides, I was not an eye-witness of it. I did not see Madame Rizan for several months, and, consequently, do not know by what conditions or agents, or with what degree of speed or slowness, her recovery was effected."

"But, doctor, did you not have curiosity enough to investigate such an extraordinary event, of which rumor must have instantly informed you, especially in this place?"

"The fact is," he answered, "I am an old physician. I know that the laws of nature are never reversed, and, to tell you the truth, I do not believe the least bit in miracles."

"Ah! doctor, you sin against the faith," cried the abbé who had accompanied me.

"And I, doctor, do not accuse you of sinning against faith, but I accuse you of sinning against the very principles of the science which you profess."

"How, pray, and in what?"

"Medicine is not a speculative, but an empirical science. Experience is its law. The observation of facts is its first and fundamental principle. If you had been told that Madame Rizan had cured herself by washing with a decoction from some plant recently discovered on yonder mountain, you would not have failed to ascertain the cure and to examine the plant, and put the discovery on record. It might have been as important as that of quinine in the last century. You would have done the same if the cure had been produced by some new sulphurous or alkaline substance. But, now, everybody is talking about a fountain of miraculous water, and you have never yet been to see it. Forgetting that you are a physician, that is to say, a humble observer of facts, you have refused to notice this, as did the scientific academies which rejected steam and proscribed quinine on some quack principles of their own. In medicine, when fact contradicts a principle, it means that the principle is wrong. Experience is the supreme judge. And here, doctor, allow me to say that, if you had not had some vague consciousness that what I am telling you is true, you would have rushed to find out the truth, and would have given yourself the pleasure of showing up the imposture of a miracle which was setting the whole neighborhood wild with excitement. But this would have exposed you to the danger of being forced to surrender; and you have acted like those party-slaves who will not listen to the arguments of their opponents. You have listened to your philosophical prejudices, and you have been false to the first law of medicine, which is to face the study of facts--no matter of what nature--in order to derive instruction from them. I speak freely, doctor, because I am aware of your great merits, and that your keen intellect is capable of hearing the truth. Many physicians have refused to certify to facts of this nature, for fear of having to brave the resentment of the faculty and the raillery of friends of their profession. With regard to yourself, doctor, although your philosophy may have deceived you, human respect has had nothing at all to do with your keeping aloof."

"Certainly not," he replied, "but, perhaps, if I had placed myself at the point of view which you have indicated, I might have done better by examining the matter."

V.

Long before the occurrences at Lourdes, at an epoch when Bernadette was not yet in the world, in 1843, during the month of April, an honorable family of Tartas in the Landes was in a state of great anxiety. The year before, Mlle. Adèle de Chariton had been married to M. Moreau de Sazenay, and now approached the term of her pregnancy. The crisis of a first maternity is always alarming. The medical men, summoned in haste on the preliminary symptoms, declared that the birth would be very difficult, and did not conceal their fear of some danger. No one is ignorant of the cruel anxiety of such a juncture. The most poignant anguish is not for the poor wife who is prostrated upon her bed of pain, and entirely absorbed in her physical sufferings. It is the husband whose heart is now the prey of indescribable tortures. They are of the age of vivid impressions; they have entered upon a new life, and begun to taste the joys of a union which God seems to have blessed; they have passed a few months full of anticipations of the future. The young couple have set them down, so to speak, side by side in a fairy pleasure-boat. The river of life has carried them softly on amid banks of flowers. Suddenly, without warning, the shadow of death rises before them. The heart of the husband, expanded with hope for the child so soon to be born, is crushed by terror for his wife, who may be about to perish. He hears her accents of pain. How will the crisis end? Is it to be in joy or bereavement? What is about to issue from that chamber? Will it be life or death? What must we send for--a cradle or a coffin? Or--horrible contrast--will both be necessary? Or, worse still, shall two coffins be necessary? Human science is silent, and hesitates to pronounce.

This anguish is frightful, but especially for those who do not seek from God their strength and consolation. But M. Moreau was a Christian. He knew that the thread of our existence is in the hands of a supreme Master, to whom we can always appeal from the doctors of science. When man has passed sentence, the King of heaven, as well as other sovereigns, holds the right of pardon.

"The Blessed Virgin will, perhaps, vouchsafe to hear me," thought the afflicted husband. He addressed himself with confidence to the Mother of Christ.

The danger which had appeared so threatening disappeared as a cloud upon the horizon. A little girl had just been born.

Assuredly there was nothing extraordinary about this deliverance. However alarming the danger might have appeared to M. Moreau himself, the physicians had never given up hope. The favorable issue of the crisis may have been something purely natural.

The heart of the husband and father, however, felt itself penetrated with gratitude to the Blessed Virgin. His was not one of those rebellious souls which demands freedom from all doubt in order to escape acknowledging a favor.

"What name are you going to give to your little girl?" he was asked.

"She shall be called Marie."

"Marie? Why, that is the commonest name in the whole country. The children of the laboring people, the servants, are all named Marie. Besides, Ma_r_ie Mo_r_eau is out of all euphony. The two _m_'s and two _r_'s would be intolerable!" A thousand reasons of equal validity were urged against him. There was a general protest.

M. Moreau was very accessible, and easily moved by others; but in this instance he resisted all counsel and entreaty; he braved all discontent, and his tenacity was really extraordinary. He did not allow himself to forget that, in his distress, he had invoked this sacred name, or that it belonged to the Queen of heaven.

"She shall be called Marie, and I wish her to take the Blessed Virgin for a patroness. And I tell you the truth, this name will some day bring her a blessing."

Everybody was astonished at this apparent obstinacy, but it remained unshaken as that of Zachary when he gave his son the name John. Vainly did they apply every means of attack; there was no getting by this inflexible will. The first-born of the family, therefore, took the name of Marie. The father, moreover, desired that she should be vowed for three years to dress in white, the color of the Blessed Virgin. This, too, was done.

More than sixteen years had now passed since this episode. A second daughter had been born, she was called Marthe. Mlle. Marie Moreau was being educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Bordeaux. About the commencement of January, 1858, she was attacked by a disease of the eyes, which shortly obliged her to give up her studies. She supposed at first that it was only a cold which would pass off as it had come; but her hopes were deceived, and her complaint assumed a most alarming character. The physician in attendance judged it necessary to consult a distinguished oculist of Bordeaux, M. Bermont. It was not a cold; it was amaurosis.

"Her case is a very serious one," said M. Bermont; "one of the eyes is entirely gone, and the other in a very dangerous condition."

The parents were immediately notified. Her mother hastened to Bordeaux, and brought back her daughter, in order that she might have at home that care, treatment, and perfect attention which the oculist had prescribed in order to save the eye which yet remained, and which was so gravely affected that it could perceive objects only as through a mist.

The medicines, baths, and all the prescriptions of science proved useless. Spring and autumn passed without any change for the better. Indeed, the deplorable condition of the invalid was daily aggravated. Total blindness was approaching. M. and Madame Moreau decided to take their child to Paris, in order to consult the great medical lights.

While engaged in hasty preparations for their journey, fearing lest it might be too slow to escape the danger which threatened their child, the postman brought them the weekly number of the _Messager Catholique_. It was about the first of November, and this number of the _Messager Catholique_ happened to be precisely the one which contained the letter of Abbé Dupont, and the story of the miraculous cure of Madame Rizan, of Nay, by means of water from the grotto.

M. Moreau opened it mechanically, and his glance fell upon that divine history. He turned pale as he read, hope began to awaken in the heart of the desolate father, and that soul, or rather that heart, was touched by a gleam of light.

"There," said he--"there is the door at which we must knock. It is evident," he added, with a simplicity whose actual words we delight to repeat, "that, if the Blessed Virgin has really appeared at Lourdes, she must be interested in working miraculous cures to prove the truth of her apparitions. And this is especially true at first before the event is not generally believed.... Let us be in a hurry, then, since in this case the first come are to be the first served. My dearest wife and daughter, we must address ourselves at once to Our Lady of Lourdes." Sixteen years had not worn out the faith of M. Moreau.

A novena was resolved upon, in which all the neighboring friends of the young girl were to be asked to join. By a providential circumstance, a priest of the city had in his possession a bottle of the water, so that the novena could be commenced at once.

The parents, in case of a cure, bound themselves to make a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and to devote their daughter for a year to the colors of white and blue, the colors of the Blessed Virgin, which she had already worn for three years during her infancy.

The novena commenced on Sunday evening, the 8th of November.

Must it be acknowledged? The invalid had but little faith. Her mother dared not hope. Her father alone had that tranquil faith which the kind powers of heaven never resist.

All said the prayers together in M. Moreau's room, before an image of the Blessed Virgin. The mother and her two daughters rose one after another to retire, but the father remained on his knees.

He thought he was alone, and his voice broke forth with a fervor which recalled his family, who have given us the account, and who never can forget that solemn moment without a tremor.

"Blessed Virgin!" said the father--"most blessed Virgin Mary! you must cure my child. Yes, indeed, you are _bound_ to do it. It is an obligation which you cannot refuse to acknowledge. Remember, O Mary! how, in spite of everybody and against everybody, I chose you for her patron. Remember what struggles I had to give her your sacred name. Can you, Holy Virgin, forget all this? Can you forget how I defended your glory and power against the vain reasons with which they surrounded me? Can you forget that I publicly placed this child under your protection, telling everybody and repeating that your name would some day bring a blessing upon her? Can you be unmindful of all this? Are you not bound in honor--now that I am in misfortune, now when I pray you for our child and yours--to come to our help and heal her malady? Are you going to allow her to become blind, after the faith I have shown in you? No! no! impossible! You will cure her."

Such were the sentiments which escaped in loud tones from the unhappy father, as he appealed to the Blessed Virgin, and, as it were, presenting a claim against her, demanded payment.

It was ten o'clock at night.

The young girl, before retiring, dipped a linen bandage in the water of Lourdes, and, placing it upon her eyes, tied it behind her head.

Her soul was agitated. Without having her father's faith, she said to herself that, after all, the Blessed Virgin was perfectly able to cure her, and that, perhaps, at the end of the novena she might recover her sight. Then doubt returned, and it seemed as if a miracle ought not to be worked for her. With all these thoughts revolving in her mind, she could hardly lie still, and it was very late before she fell asleep.

When morning came, as soon as she awoke, her first movement of hope and uneasy curiosity was to remove the bandage which covered her eyes. She uttered a loud cry.

The room about her was filled with the light of the rising day. She saw clearly, exactly, and distinctly. The diseased eye had recovered its health, and the eye which before was blind had been restored to sight.

"Marthe! Marthe!" she cried, "I see perfectly. I am cured!"

Little Marthe, who slept in the same room, sprang out of bed and ran to her sister. She saw her eyes, stripped of their bloody veil, black and brilliant, and sparkling with life and strength. The little girl's heart at once turned toward her father and mother, who had not yet shared in this joy.

"Papa! mamma!" she cried.

Marie beckoned her not to call them yet.

"Wait! wait!" said she, "until I have tried if I can read. Give me a book."

The child took one from the table. "There!" said she.

Marie opened the book, and read with perfect ease as freely as any one ever has read. The cure was complete, radical, absolute, and the Blessed Virgin had not left her work half-done.

The father and mother hastened to the room.

"Papa, mamma, I can see--I can read--I am cured!"

How can we describe the scene which followed? Our readers can understand it, each for himself, by entering into his own imagination. The door of the house had not yet been opened. The windows were closed, and their transparent panes admitted only the early light of morning. Who, then, could have entered to join this family in the happiness of this sudden blessing? And yet these Christians felt instinctively that they were not alone, and that a powerful being was invisibly in the midst of them. The father and mother, and little Marthe, fell on their knees; Marie, who had not yet arisen, clasped her hands; and from these four breasts, oppressed with gratitude and emotion, went forth, as a prayer of thanks, the holy name of the Mother of God: "O holy Virgin Mary! Our Lady of Lourdes!"

What their other words were, we know not; but what their sentiments must have been, any one can imagine by placing himself before this miraculous event, which, like a flash from the power of God, had turned the affliction of a family into joy and happiness.

Is it necessary to add that, shortly afterward, Mlle. Marie Moreau went with her parents to thank Our Lady of Lourdes in the place of her apparition? She left her colored dresses upon the altar, and went away happy and proud of wearing the colors of the Queen of virgins.

M. Moreau, whose faith had formerly been so strong, was wholly stupefied. "I thought," said he, "that such favors were only granted to the saints; how is it, then, that they descend upon miserable sinners like us?"

These facts were witnessed by the entire population of Tartas, who shared in the affliction of one of their most respected families. Everybody in the city saw and can testify that the malady, which had been considered desperate, was completely healed at the beginning of the novena. The superior of the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Bordeaux, the one hundred and fifty pupils who were school-mates of Mlle. Marie Moreau, the physicians of that institution, have established her serious condition before the events which we have related, and her total cure immediately afterward. She returned to Bordeaux, where she remained two years to complete her studies.

The oculist Bermont could not recover from his surprise at an event so entirely beyond his science. We have read his declaration certifying to the state of the invalid, and acknowledging the inability of medical treatment to produce such a cure, "which," he observes, "has persisted and still holds. As to the instantaneousness with which this cure has been wrought," he adds, "it is a fact which incomparably surpasses the power of medical science. In testimony of which I attach my signature. BERMONT."

This declaration, dated February 8th, 1859, is preserved at the bishop's residence at Tarbes, together with a great number of letters and testimonials from citizens of Tartas, among others that of the mayor of that city, M. Desbord.

Mlle. Marie continued to wear the colors of the Blessed Virgin up to the day of her marriage, which took place after she had finished her studies and left the Sacred Heart. On that day she went to Lourdes and laid aside her maiden attire to put on her bridal robes. She wished to give this dress of blue and white to another young girl, also beloved by the Blessed Virgin, Bernadette.

This was the only present which Bernadette ever accepted. She wore for several years, indeed until it was worn out, this dress which recalled the loving power of the divine apparition at the grotto.

Eleven years have since elapsed. The favor accorded by the Blessed Virgin has not been withdrawn. Mlle. Moreau has always had most excellent and perfect sight; never any relapse, never the slightest indisposition.

Excepting by suicide, ingratitude, or abuse of grace, that which God has restored can never die. _Resurgens jam non moritur._

Mlle. Marie Moreau is now called Madame d'Izaru de Villefort, and is the mother of three delightful children, who have the finest eyes in the world. Although they are boys, each bears in his baptismal name first the name of Mary.

VI.

Miraculous cures were counted by hundreds. It was impossible to verify them all. The episcopal commission submitted thirty of them to most rigorous scrutiny. The most severe strictness was shown in this examination, and nothing was admitted as supernatural, until it was absolutely impossible to call it anything else. All cures which had not been almost instantaneous, or which had been occupied by successive stages, all these were rejected; as also were all which had been obtained in conjunction with medical treatment, however unavailing the latter might have been. "Although the inefficacy of the remedies prescribed by science has been sufficiently demonstrated, we cannot in this case in an exclusive manner attribute the cure to a supernatural virtue in the water of the grotto which was used at the same time." So runs the report of the secretary of the commission.

Moreover, numerous spiritual favors, singular graces, unlooked-for conversions, had been reported to the commission. It is difficult to establish juridically events which have taken place in the closed recesses of the human soul and which escape the observation of all without. Although such facts, such changes, are often more wonderful than the restoration of a member or the healing of a physical disease, the commission judged rightly when it decided that it ought not to include them in the solemn and public inquiry with which it had been charged by the bishop.

In the report to his grace, the committee, by agreement with the physicians, divided the cures which had been examined into three categories, with all the carefully gathered details and _procès-verbaux_, signed by the persons cured and by numerous witnesses.

The first category included those cures which, despite their striking and astonishing appearance, were susceptible of a natural explanation. These were six in number; namely, those of Jeanne-Marie Arqué, the widow Crozat, Blaise Maumus, a child of the Lasbareilles of Gez, Jeanne Crassus, Arcizan-Avant, Jeanne Pomiès of Loubajac.

The second list comprised cures which the commission felt inclined to attribute a supernatural character. Of this number were Jean-Pierre Malou, Jeanne-Marie Dauber, wife of a certain Vendôme, Bernarde Soubies and Pauline Bordeaux of Lourdes, Jean-Marie Amaré of Beaucens, Marcelle Peyregue of Agos, Jeanne-Marie Massot Bordenave of Arras, Jeanne Gezma and Auguste Bordes of Pontacq. "The greater number of these facts," says the medical report, "possess all the conditions to cause them be admitted as supernatural. It will, perhaps, be found that in excluding them we have acted with too much reserve and scrupulousness.

"But far from complaining of this reproach, we shall congratulate ourselves upon it, since in these matters we are convinced that prudence demands severity."

Under such circumstances, a natural explanation, although in itself utterly improbable, seemed rigorously possible, and this was sufficient to prevent the examiners from declaring a miracle.

The third class contained cures which presented an undeniable and evident supernatural character, fifteen in number. Those of: Blaisette Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, Jeanne Grassus married to Crozat, Louis Bourriette, little Justin Bouhohorts, Fabian and Suzanne Baron of Lourdes, Madame Rizanand, Henry Busquet of Nay, Catherine Latapie of Loubajac, Madame Lanou of Bordères, Marianne Garrot and Denys Bouchet of Lamarque, Jean-Marie Tambourné of St. Justin, Mlle. Marie Moreau de Sazenay of Tartas, Paschaline Abbadie of Rabasteins, all these were incontestably miraculous.

"The maladies to which those favored by such sudden and startling cures were subject were of entirely different natures"--we quote from the report of the commission. "They possessed the greatest variety of character. Some were the subjects of external, others of internal pathology. Nevertheless, these various diseases were all cured by a single simple element, used either as a lotion or drink, or sometimes in both ways.

"In the natural and scientific order, furthermore, each remedy is used in a fixed and regular manner; it has its special virtue proper to a given malady, but is either inefficacious or hurtful in other cases.

"It is not, then, by any property inherent in its composition that the Massabielle water has been able to produce such numerous, diverse, and extraordinary cures, and to extinguish at once diseases of different and opposite characters. Furthermore, science has authoritatively declared, after analysis, that this water has no mineral or therapeutic qualities, and chemically does not differ from other pure waters. Medical science, having been consulted, after mature and conscientious examination, is not less decisive in its conclusions."

"In glancing at the general appearance of these cures," says the medical report, "one cannot fail to be struck by the ease, the promptitude, and instantaneous rapidity with which they spring from their producing cause; from the violation and overthrow of all therapeutic laws and methods which takes place in their accomplishment; from the contradictions offered by them to all the accepted axioms and cautions of science; from that kind of disdain which sports with the chronic nature and long resistance of the disease; from the concealed but real care with which all the circumstances are arranged and combined: everything, in short, shows that the cures wrought belong to an order apart from the habitual course of nature.

"Such phenomena surpass the limits of the human intellect. How, indeed, can it comprehend the opposition which exists:

"Between the simplicity of the means and the greatness of the result?

"Between the unity of the remedy and the variety of the diseases?

"Between the short time employed in the use of this remedy and the lengthy treatment indicated by science?

"Between the sudden efficacy of the former and the long-acknowledged inutility of the latter?

"Between the chronic nature of the diseases and the instantaneous character of the cure?

"There is in all this a contingent force, superior to any that spring from natural causes, and, consequently, foreign to the water of which it has made use to show forth its power?"

In view of so many carefully-collected and publicly-certified facts, so striking in their nature; in view, moreover, of the conscientious and thorough inquiry made by the commission, together with the formal and united declarations of medicine and chemistry, the bishop could no longer remain unconvinced.

Nevertheless, on account of that spirit of extreme prudence which we have before remarked, Monseigneur Laurence, before giving the solemn episcopal verdict in this matter, demanded a still further guaranty of these miraculous cures--the proof of time. He allowed three years to pass. A second examination was then made. The miraculous cures still held good. No one appeared to retract former testimony or to contest any of the facts. The works of him who rules over eternity had nothing to fear from the test of time.

After this overwhelming series of proofs and certainty, Monseigneur Laurence at length pronounced the judgment which all had been awaiting. We give below its general features.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTE:

[155] "All the circumstances connected with this fact," says the report of the physicians, "stamp it with a supernatural character. It is impossible to escape from this conviction, if one considers, on one hand, the chronic nature of the complaint which began in 1834; the force of its engendering cause, namely, the cholera; the permanence of some of its symptoms in a most important organ of life, the stomach; the fruitlessness of remedies applied by a competent physician, M. Subervielle, the gradual prostration of strength, followed inevitably by dyspepsia, and the enervation resulting from continual pain; and, on the other hand, if one will couple with these circumstances the effect produced by natural water, only once applied, and the instantaneous character of the result."

PÈRE JACQUES AND MADEMOISELLE ADRIENNE.

A SKETCH AFTER THE BLOCUS.

It was just five months since I had left it, the bright, proud Babylon, beautiful and brave and wicked, clothed in scarlet and feasting sumptuously. King Chanticleer, strutting on the Boulevards, was crowing loudly, and the myriad tribe of the Coq Gaulois, strutting up and down the city, crowed loud and shrill in responsive chorus--petits crévés, and petits mouchards, and petits gamins, and all that was _petit_ in that grand, foolish cityful of humanity. Bedlam was abroad, singing and crowing and barking itself rabid, and scaring away from Babylon all that was not bedlam. But there were many in Babylon who were not afraid of the bedlam, who believed that crowing would by-and-by translate itself into action, into those seeds of desperate daring that none but madmen can accomplish, and that, when the bugle sounded, these bragging, swaggering maniacs would shoulder the musket, and, rushing to the fore, save France or die for her. No one saved her, but many did rush to the fore, and die for her. They were not lunatics, though, at least not many of them. The lunatics showed, as they have often done before, that there was method in their madness. They cheered on the sane, phlegmatic brethren to death and glory, while they stayed prudently at home to keep up the spirits of the capital; they were the spirit and soul of the defence, the others were but the bone and muscle of it. What is a body without a soul? The frail arm of the flesh without the nerve and strength of the spirit? Pshaw! If it were not for the crowing of King Chanticleer, there would have been no siege at all; the whole concern would have collapsed in its cradle.

The story of that Blocus has yet to be written. Of its outward and visible story, many volumes, and scores of volumes, good and bad, true and false, have been already written. But the inward story, the arcana of the defence, the exposition of that huge, blundering machine that, with its springs and levers, and wheels within wheels, snapped and broke and collapsed in the driver's hand, all this is still untold. The great _Pourquoi?_ is still unanswered. History will solve the riddle some day, no doubt, as it solves most riddles, but before that time comes, other, grander problems of greater import to us will have been solved too, and we shall care but little for the true story of the Blocus.

"Yes, monsieur," said my concierge, when we met and talked over the events that had passed since the first of September, when I fled and left my goods and chattels to her care and the tender mercies of the Prussians and the Reds--"yes, monsieur, it is very wonderful that one doesn't hear of anybody having died of cold, though the winter was so terrible, and the fuel so scarce. It ran short almost from the beginning. We had nothing but green sticks that couldn't be persuaded to burn and do our best. I used to sit shivering in my bed, while the petiots tried to warm themselves skipping in the porte-cochère, or running up and down from the _cintième_ till their little legs were dead beat. O Mon Dieu! je me rapellerai de cette guerre en tous les sens, monsieur."

"Did many die from starvation," I asked--"many in this neighborhood that you knew?"

"Not one, monsieur! Not one of actual hunger, though my belief is, plenty of folks died of poison. The bread we ate was worse than the want of it. Such an abomination, made out of hay and bran and oats; why, monsieur, a chiffonier's dog wouldn't have touched it in Christian times. How it kept body and soul together for any of us is more than I can understand."

"And yet nobody died of want?" I repeated.

"Not that I heard of, monsieur; unless you count Père Jacques as dead from starvation. He disappeared one morning soon after he told Mlle. Adrienne, and nobody ever knew what became of him. They said in the quartier that he went over to the Prussians; but they said that of better men than Père Jacques, and besides, what would the Prussians do with a poor old _toqué_ like Père Jacques, I ask it of monsieur?"

I was going to say that I fully agreed with her, when we were both startled by a sudden uproar in the street round the corner. We rushed out simultaneously from the porte-cochère, where we were holding our confabulation, to see what was the matter. A crowd was collected in the middle of the Rue Billault, and was vociferously cheering somebody or something. As a matter of course, the assembly being French, there were counter-cheers; hisses and cries of "renégat! Vendu aux Prussiens! drôle," etc., intermingling with more friendly exclamations.

"Bon Dieu! ce n'est done pas fini! Is the war going to begin again? Are we going to have a revolution?" demanded my concierge, throwing up her hands to heaven and then wringing them in despair. "Will the petiots never be able to eat their panade and build their little mud-pies in peace! Oh! monsieur, monsieur, you are happy not to be a Frenchman!"

Without in the least degree demurring to this last proposition, I suggested that before giving up France as an utterly hopeless case, we would do well to see what the row was about; if indeed it were a row, for the cheering, as the crowd grew, seemed to rise predominant above the hissing. Already reassured, I advanced boldly toward the centre of disturbance, my concierge following, and keeping a tight grip of the skirts of my coat for greater security.

"Vive Mlle. Adrienne! Donne la patte Mlle. Adrienne! Vive le Père Jacques!" The cries, capped by peals of laughter which were suddenly drowned in the uproarious braying of a donkey, reverberated through the street and deafened us as we drew near.

With a shout of laughter, my concierge dropped my skirts, and clapping her hands:

"Comment!" she cried, "she is alive, then! He did not eat her! He did not sell her! Vive le Père Jacques! Vive Mlle. Adrienne!"

Those of my readers who have lived any time in the quartier of the Champs Elysées will recognize Mlle. Adrienne as an old friend, and rejoice to learn that, thanks to the intelligent devotion of Père Jacques, she did not share the fate of her asinine sisterhood, but has actually gone through the horrors of the siege of Paris and lived to tell the tale. Those who have not the pleasure of her acquaintance will perhaps be glad to make it, and to hear something of so remarkable a personage.

For years--I am afraid to say how many, but ten is certainly within the mark--Père Jacques's donkey has been a familiar object in the Rue Billault and the Rue de Berri, and that part of the Faubourg St. Honoré and the Champs Elysées which includes those streets. Why Père Jacques christened his ass Mlle. Adrienne nobody knows. Some say, out of vengeance against a certain blue-eyed Adrienne who won his heart and broke it; others say, only love for a faithful Adrienne who broke his heart by dying; but this is pure conjecture; Père Jacques himself is reticent on the subject, and, when questioned once by a curious, impertinent man, he refused to explain himself further than by remarking, "Que chacun avait son idée, et que son idée à lui, c'etait Mlle. Adrienne," and having said this he took a lump of sugar from his pocket and presented it affectionately to his _idée_, who munched it with evident satisfaction, and acknowledged her sense of the attention by a long and uproarious bray.

"Voyons, Mlle. Adrienne! Calmons-nous!" said Père Jacques in a tone of persuasive authority. "Calmons-nous, ma chérie!"--the braying grew louder and louder--"wilt thou be silent? Uplà, Mlle. Adrienne! Ah, les femmes, les femmes! Toujours bavardes! La-a-a-à, Mlle. Adrienne!"

This was the usual style of conversation between the two. Père Jacques presented lumps of sugar which were invariably recognized by a bray, or, more properly, a series of brays, such as no other donkey in France or Navarre but herself could send forth; and while it lasted Père Jacques kept up a running commentary of remonstrance.

"Voyons, Mlle. Adrienne! Sapristi, veux-tu te taire? A-t-on jamais vu! Lotte, veux-tu en fini-i-i-r!"

Though it was an old novelty in the quartier, it seemed never to have lost its savor, and as soon as Père Jacques and his little cart, full of apples, or oranges, or cauliflowers, as the case might be, were seen or heard at the further end of the street, the gamins left off marbles and pitch-and-toss to bully and chaff Père Jacques and greet his _idée_ with a jocular "Bonjour, Mlle. Adrienne." The tradesmen looked up from their weights and measures, laughing, as the pair went by.

When provisions began to run short during the Blocus, Père Jacques grew uneasy, not for himself, but for Mlle. Adrienne. Hard-hearted jesters advised him to fatten her up for the market; ass-flesh was delicate and rarer than horse-flesh, and fetched six francs a pound; it was no small matter to turn six francs in these famine times, when there were no more apples or cauliflowers to sell; Mlle. Adrienne was a burden now instead of a help to her master; the little cart stood idle in the corner; there was nothing to trundle, and it was breaking his heart to see her growing thin for want of rations, and to watch her spirits drooping for want of exercise and lumps of sugar. For more than a fortnight Père Jacques deprived himself of a morsel of the favorite dainty, and doled out his last demikilog to her with miserly economy, hoping always that the gates would be opened before she came to the last lump.

"Voyons, ma fille!" Père Jacques would say, as she munched a bit half the usual size of the now precious bonbon. "Cheer up, ma bouriquette! Be reasonable, Mlle. Adrienne, be reasonable, and bear thy trials like an ass, patiently and bravely, not like a man, grumbling and despairing. Paperlotte, Mlle. Adrienne! if it were not for thee I should be out on the ramparts, and send those coquins to the right-abouts myself. Les gredins! they are not content with drilling our soldiers and starving our citizens, but they must rob thee of thy bit of sugar, my pretty one. Mille tonnerres! if I had but their necks under my arm for one squeeze!"

And, entering into the grief and indignation of her master, Mlle. Adrienne would set up an agonized bray.

Thus comforting one another, the pair bore up through their trials. But at last came the days of eating mice and rats, and bread that a dog in good circumstances would have turned up its nose at a month ago, and then Père Jacques shook in his sabots. He dared not show himself abroad with Mlle. Adrienne, and not only that, but he lived in chronic terror of a raid being made on her at home. The mischievous urchins who had amused themselves at the expense of his paternal feelings in days of comparative plenty, gave him no peace or rest now that the wolf was really at the door. Requisitions were being made in private houses to see that no stores were hoarded up while the people outside were famishing. One rich family, who had prudently bought a couple of cows at the beginning of the Blocus, after vainly endeavoring to keep the fact a secret, and surrounding the precious beasts with as much mystery and care as ever Egyptian worshippers bestowed on the sacred Isis, were forced to give them up to the commonwealth. This caused a great sensation in the quartier. Père Jacques was the first to hear it, and the _gamins_ improved the opportunity by declaring to him that the republic had issued a decree that all asses were to be seized next day, all such as could not speak, they added facetiously, and there was to be a general slaughter of them, a _massacre des innocents_, the little brutes called it, at the abattoir of the Rue Valois. The fact of its being at the Rue Valois was a small mercy for which they reminded Père Jacques to be duly grateful, inasmuch as, it being close at hand, he might accompany Mlle. Adrienne to the place of execution, give her a parting kiss, and hear her last bray of adieu. At this cynical climax, Père Jacques started up in a rage, and seizing his stick, set to vigorously belaboring the diabolical young torturers, who took to their heels, yelling and screaming like frightened guinea-pigs, while Mlle. Adrienne, who stood ruminating in a corner of the room, opened a rattling volley of brays on the fugitives.

All that night Père Jacques lay awake in terror. Every whistle of the wind, every creak in the door, every stir and sound, set his heart thumping violently against his ribs; every moment he was expecting the dreaded domiciliary visit. What was he to do? Where was he to fly? How was he to cheat the brigands and save Mlle. Adrienne? The night wore out, and the dawn broke, and the raid was still unaccomplished. As soon as it was light, Père Jacques rose and dressed himself, and sat down on a wooden stool close by Mlle. Adrienne, and pondered. Since her life had been in jeopardy, he had removed her from her out-house in the court to his own private room on the ground-floor close by.

"Que me conseilles-tu, Mlle. Adrienne?" murmured the distracted parent, speaking in a low tone, impelled by the instinct that drives human beings to seek sympathy somewhere, from a cat or a dog if they have no fellow-creature to appeal to, Père Jacques had contracted a habit of talking out loud to his dumb companion when they were alone, and consulting her on any perplexing point. Suddenly a bright idea struck Père Jacques; he would go and consult Mère Richard.

Mère Richard lived in a neighboring court amidst a numerous family of birds of many species, bullfinches, canaries, and linnets. She had often suggested to Père Jacques to adopt a little songster by way of cheering his lonely den, and had once offered him a young German canary of her own bringing up.

"It's as good as a baby for tricks and company, and nothing so dear to keep," urged Mère Richard.

But Père Jacques had gratefully declined. "Mlle. Adrienne is company enough for me," he said, "and it might hurt her feelings if I took up with a bird now, thanks to you all the same, voisine."

To-day, as he neared the house, he looked in vain for the red and green cages that used to hang out au troisième on either side of Mère Richard's windows. The birds were gone. Where? Père Jacques felt a sympathetic thrill of horror, and with a heavy heart mounted the dark little stairs, no longer merry with the sound of chirping from the tidy little room au troisième. He refrained, through delicate consideration for Mère Richard's feelings, from asking questions, but, casting his eyes round the room, he beheld the empty cages ranged in a row behind the door.

But Mère Richard had a donkey. There was no comparison to be tolerated for a moment between it and Mlle. Adrienne, still their positions were identical, and Mère Richard, who was a wise woman, would help him in his present difficulty, and if she could not help him she would, at any rate, sympathize with him, which was the next best thing to helping him. But Mère Richard, to his surprise, had heard nothing of the impending raid on donkeys. When he explained to her how the case stood, instead of breaking out into lamentations, she burst into a chuckling laugh.

"Pas possible! Bouriquette good to be eaten, and the republic going to buy her, and pay me six francs a pound for her! Père Jaques, it's too good to be true," declared the unnatural old Harpagon.

Père Jacques was unable to contain his indignation. He vowed that rather than let her fall into the hands of the cannibals, he would destroy Mlle. Adrienne with his own hand; he would kill any man in the republic, from Favre to Gambetta, who dared to lay a finger on her; aye, that he would, if he were to swing for it the next hour!

"Père Jacques, you are an imbecile," observed Mère Richard, taking a pinch of snuff; "you remind me of a story my bonhomme used to tell of two camarades of his that he met on their way to be hanged; one of them didn't mind it, and walked on quietly, holding his tongue; but the other didn't like it at all, and kept howling and whining, and making a tapage de diable. At last the quiet one lost patience, and turning round on the other, 'Eh grand bétat,' he cried, 'si tu n'en veux pas, n'en dégoute pas les autres!'"

Père Jaques saw the point of the story, and, taking the hint, stood up to go.

"What did you do with the birds?" he demanded sternly, as he was leaving the room.

"Sold four of them for three francs apiece, and ate three of them, and uncommonly good they were," said the wretched woman, with unblushing heartlessness.

"Monster!" groaned Père Jacques, and hurried from her presence.

All that day he and Mlle. Adrienne stayed at home with their door and window barred and bolted; but night came, and the domiciliary visit was still a threat. Next day, however, the little door stood open as usual, and Père Jacques was to be seen hammering away at the dilapidated legs of a table that he was mending for a neighbor at the rate of twenty-five centimes a leg; but Mlle. Adrienne was not there. Had Père Jacques put an end to his agony by actually killing her, as he had threatened, and so saved her from the ignoble fate of the shambles? Or had he, haunted by the phantom of hunger which was now staring at him with its pale spectral eyes from the near background, yielded to the old man's love of life, and sold his friend to prolong it and escape himself from a ghastly death? Most people believed the latter alternative, but nobody knew for certain. When Mlle. Adrienne's name was mentioned, Père Jacques would frown, and give unmistakable signs of displeasure. If the subject was pressed, he would seize his stick, and, making a _moulinet_ over his head with it, prepare an expletive that the boldest never waited to receive. One day he was caught crying bitterly in his now solitary home, and muttering to himself between the sobs, "Ma pauvre fille! Mlle. Adrienne! Je le suivrai bientôt--ah les coquins, les brigands, les monstres!" This was looked upon as conclusive. The monsters in question could only be the Shylocks of the abattoir who had tempted him with blood-money for Mlle. Adrienne. When curiosity was thus far satisfied, the gamins ceased to worry Père Jacques; the lonely old man became an object of pity to everybody, even to the gamins themselves; when they met him now they touched their caps, with "Bonjour, Père Jacques!" and spared him the cruel jeer that had been their customary salutation of late: "Mlle. Adrienne à la casserole! Bon appétit, Père Jacques!"

The days wore on, and the weeks, and the months. Paris, wan and pale and hunger-stricken, still held out. Winter had come, and thrown its icy pall upon the city, hiding her guilty front "under innocent snow;" the nights were long and cold, the dawn was desolate, the tepid noon brought no warmth to the perishing, fire-bound multitude. No sign of succor came to them from without. In vain they watched and waited, persecuting time with hope. The cannon kept up its sobbing recitative through the black silence of the night; through the white stillness of the day. Hunger gnawed into their vitals, till even hope, weary with disappointment, grew sick and died.

One morning, the neighbors noticed Père Jacques's door and window closed long after the hour when he was wont to be up and busy. They knocked, and, getting no answer, turned the handle of the door; it was neither locked nor barred, merely closed, as if the master were within; but he was not; the little room was tenantless, and almost entirely stripped; the mattress and the scanty store of bed-clothes were gone; the iron bedstead, a table, a stool, and two cane chairs, were the only sticks of furniture that remained; the shelves were bare of the bright pewter tankards and platters that used to adorn them; the gilt clock with its abortion of a Pegasus bestrid by a grenadier, which had been the glory of the chimney-piece, had disappeared. What did it all mean? Had the enemy made a raid on Père Jacques and his property during the night, and carried away the lot in a balloon? Great was the consternation, and greater still the gossip of the little community, when the mysterious event became known through the quartier. What had become of Père Jacques? Had he been kidnapped, or had he been murdered, or had he taken flight of his own accord, and whither, and why? Nothing transpired to throw any light on the mystery, and the gossips, tired of guessing, soon ceased to think about it, and, like many another nine days' wonder, Père Jacques's disappearance died a natural death.

A day came at last when the mitrailleuse hushed its hideous shriek, the cannon left off booming, the wild beasts of war were silent. Paris cried, "Merci!" and the gates were opened. The city, like a sick man healed of a palsy, rose up, and shook herself and rubbed her eyes, and ate plentifully after her long fast. Many came back from the outposts who were wept over as dead. There were strange meetings in many quartiers during those first days that followed the capitulation. But no one brought any news of Père Jacques. There were too many interests nearer and dearer to think of, and, in the universal excitement of shame and vengeance and rare flashes of joy, he and Mlle. Adrienne were forgotten as if they had never been. But when, on the day of my return to Paris, my conversation with my concierge was interrupted by the cheering of the crowd in the Rue Billault, and when the cause of the hubbub was made known, the fact that both Père Jacques and his _idée_ were well remembered and, as the newspapers put it, universally esteemed by a large circle of friends and admirers, was most emphatically attested. Nothing, indeed, could be more gratifying than the manner in which their resurrection was received. The pair looked very much the worse for their sojourn in the other world, wherever it was, to which they had emigrated. Mlle. Adrienne's appearance was particularly affecting. She was worn to skin and bone; and certainly, if Père Jacques, yielding to the pangs of hunger, had sacrificed his _idée_ to his life, and taken her to the shambles, she would not have fetched more than a brace of good rats, or, at best, some ten francs, from the inhuman butchers of the Rue Valois. She dragged her legs, and shook and stumbled as if the weight of her attenuated person were too much for them. Even her old enemies, the gamins, were moved to pity, while Père Jacques, laughing and crying and apostrophizing Mlle. Adrienne in his old familiar way, cheered her on to their old home. How she ever got there is as great a marvel as how she lived to be led there to-day; for, what between physical exhaustion and mental anxiety--for the crowd kept overpowering her with questions and caresses--and what between the well-meant but injudicious attentions of sundry little boys who kept stuffing unintermitting bits of straw and lumps of sugar into her mouth, it is little short of a miracle that she did not choke and expire on the macadam of the Rue Billault.

Many an ass has been lionized before, and many a one will be so again. It is a common enough sight in these days, but never did hero or heroine of the tribe bear herself more becomingly on the trying occasion than Mlle. Adrienne. As to Père Jacques, he bore himself as well as he could, trying hard to look dignified and unconscious, while in his inmost heart he was bursting with pride. While he and Mlle. Adrienne ambled on side by side, some facetious person remarked that Père Jacques looked quite beside himself. This, indeed, was a great day for him and his ass. Yet, notwithstanding that his heart was moved within him and softened towards all men--nay, towards all boys--he could not be induced to say a word as to where he had been, or what he had done, or how he and Mlle. Adrienne had fared in the wilderness, or what manner of wilderness it was, or anything that could furnish the remotest clue to their existence since the day when they had separately disappeared off the horizon of the Rue Billault. Provisions were still too dear, during the first fortnight after the capitulation, to allow of Père Jacques resuming his old trade of apples or cauliflowers; besides, Mademoiselle Adrienne wanted rest.

"Pauvre chérie! il faut qu'elle se remette un peu de la vache enragée," he remarked tenderly, when his friends condoled with him on her forced inactivity. He would not hear of hiring her out for work, as some of them proposed. Mère Richard came and offered a fabulous price for the loan of her for three days, with a view to a stroke of business at the railway station, where food was pouring in from London. Père Jacques shook his fist at the carnivorous old woman, and warned her never to show her unnatural old face in his house again, or it might be worse for her.

A PIE IX.

Le Verbe créateur en paraissant sur terre Erigea son église, auguste monument. Il appela Simon du fameux nom de Pierre Et de son édifice en fit le fondement:

Des volontés du Christ sacré dépositaire, Interprète et gardien du dernier Testament Pie inspiré d'en haut et par l'église entière En achève le dôme et le couronnement.

Pie obtient en ce jour (glorieux privilége!) De régner a l'égal du chef du saint collége.

Des droits de l'Eternal et de l'humanité Contre l'erreur du jour défenseur intrépide, Calme au sein des périls, d'une main sûre il guide La barque de Céphas au port de Vérité.

NEW YORK, June 17, 1871.

THE SECULAR NOT SUPREME.[156]

Dr. Bellows is the well-known pastor of All Souls' Church, and editor of the _Liberal Christian_ in this city, a distinguished Unitarian minister, with some religious instincts and respectable literary pretensions. As a student in college and the Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was full of promise, and a great favorite of the late Hon. Edward Everett, himself originally a Unitarian minister and pastor of Brattle Street Church, Boston. The Hon. E. P. Hurlbut was formerly one of the judges of the Supreme Court of this state, a lawyer by profession, with a passably clear head and a logical mind, who knows, if not the truth, at least what he means, and neither fears nor hesitates to say it. His pamphlet, as far as it goes, expresses, we doubt not, his honest thought, but his thought is the thought of a secularist, who admits no order above the secular, and holds that no religion not subordinate to and under the control of the civil power, should be tolerated. Both he and Dr. Bellows are from instinct and education hearty haters of the Catholic Church; but while he is content to war against her from the point of view of pure secularism or no-religion, that is, atheism, the reverend doctor seeks to clothe his hatred in a Christian garb and to war against Christ in the name of Christ.

Dr. Bellows, as a Liberal Christian, and though a Protestant hardly allowed by his more rigid Protestant countrymen to bear the Christian name, has a double battle to fight: one, against the Evangelical movement, at the head of which is Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court, to amend the constitution of the United States so as to make orthodox Protestantism the official religion of the republic, which would exclude him and his Unitarian, Universalist, and Quaker brethren; and the other, against the admission of the equal rights of Catholics with Protestants before the American state. Catholics greatly trouble him, and he hardly knows what to do with them. According to the letter of the constitution of the Union and of the several states, unless New Hampshire be an exception, they are American citizens, standing in all respects on a footing of perfect equality with any other class of citizens, and have as much right to take part in public affairs, and to seek to manage them in the interests of their religion, as Protestants have to take part in them in the interests of Protestantism; but this is very wrong, and against the spirit of the constitution; for the nation is a Protestant nation, the country was originally settled by and belongs to Protestantism, and Catholics ought to understand that they are really here only by sufferance, that they do not in reality stand in relation to public questions on a footing of equality with Protestants, and have really no right to exert any influence in regard to the public policy of the country not in accordance with the convictions of the Protestant majority. He tells us, in the discourse before us and more distinctly still in the columns of the _Liberal Christian_, not to aspire as citizens to equality with Protestants as if we had as much right to the government as they have, and warns us that if we do we shall be resisted even unto blood.

The occasion of his outpouring of wrath against Catholics is that they have protested against being taxed for the support of a system of sectarian or godless schools, to which they are forbidden in conscience to send their children, and have demanded as their right either that the tax be remitted, or that their proportion of the public schools be set off to them, to be, as to education and discipline, under Catholic control. Dr. Bellows allows that the Catholic demand is just, and that by making it a question at the polls they may finally obtain it; but this is not to his mind, for it would defeat the pet scheme of Protestants for preventing the growth of Catholicity in the country, by detaching, through the influence of the public schools, their children from the faith of their parents. Yet as long as any religion, even the reading of the Bible, is insisted on in the public schools, what solid argument can be urged against the demand of Catholics, or what is to prevent Catholic citizens from making it a political question and withholding their votes from the party that refuses to respect their rights of conscience and to do them justice? Dr. Bellows says that we cannot legally be prevented from doing so, but, if we do so, it will be the worse for us; for if we carry our religion to the polls the Protestant people will, as they should, rise up against us and overwhelm us by their immense majority, perhaps even exterminate us.

To prevent the possibility of collision, the reverend doctor proposes a complete divorce of church and state. He proposes to defeat the Evangelicals on the one hand, and the Catholics on the other, by separating totally religion and politics. Thus he says:

"It is the vast importance of keeping the political and the religious movements and action of the people apart, and in their own independent spheres, that makes wise citizens, alike on religious and on civil grounds, look with alarm and jealousy on any endeavors, on the part either of Protestants or Catholics, to secure any special attention or support, any partial or separate legislation or subsidies, from either the national or the state governments. I have already told you that Protestants, representing the great sects in this country, are now laboring, by movable conventions, to mould public opinion in a way to give finally a theological character to the constitution. In a much more pardonable spirit, because in accordance with their historical antecedents, their hereditary temper, and their ecclesiastical logic, the Roman Catholics in this country are, in many states, and every great city of the Union, using the tremendous power they possess as the make-weight of parties, to turn the public treasure in a strong current into their own channels, and thus secure an illegitimate support as a religious body. It is not too much to guess that more than half of the ecclesiastical wealth of the Roman Catholic Church in America, against the wishes and convictions of a Protestant country, has been voted to it in lands and grants by municipalities and legislatures trading for Irish votes. The Catholic Church thus has a factitious prosperity and progress. It is largely sustained by Protestants--not on grounds of charity and toleration, or from a sense of its usefulness (that were well privately done), but from low and unworthy political motives in both the great parties of the country. Now that Roman Catholics themselves should take advantage of their solidarity as a people and a church, and of the power of their priesthood, with all uninformed and some enlightened communicants, to turn the political will into a machine for grinding their ecclesiastical grist, is not unnatural, nor wholly unpardonable. But it is fearfully dangerous to them and to us. Their success--due to the sense of the Protestant strength which thinks it can afford to blink their machinations, or to the preoccupation of the public mind with the emulative business pursuits of the time, or to the confidence which the American people seem to feel in the final and secure divorce of church and state--their unchecked success encourages them to bolder and more bold demands, and accustoms the people to more careless and more perilous acquiescence in their claims. The principle of authority in religion, which has so many temperamental adherents in all countries; the inherent love of pomp and show in worship, strongest in the least educated; a natural weariness of sectarian divisions, commonest among lazy thinkers and stupid consciences--all these play into the hands of the Romanists, and they are making hay while the sun shines.

"There are no reviews, no newspapers in this country, so bold and unqualified; none so unscrupulous and so intensely zealous and partisan; none so fearless and outspoken as the Catholic journals. They profess to despise Protestant opposition; they deride the feeble tactics of other Christian sects; they are more ultramontane, more Roman, more Papal, than French, German, Austrian, Bavarian, Italian believers; they avow their purpose to make this a Roman Catholic country, and they hope to live on the Protestant enemy while they are converting him. They often put their religious faith above their political obligation, and, as bishops and priests, make it a duty to the church for their members to vote as Catholics rather than as American citizens. Not what favors the peace, prosperity, and union of the nation, but what favors their church, is the supreme question for them at every election; and American politicians, for their predatory purposes, have taught them this, and are their leaders in it.

"Now, as an American citizen, I say nothing against the equality of the rights of the Roman Catholics and the Protestants; both may lawfully strive, in their unpolitical spheres, for the mastery, and the law may not favor or disfavor either; nor can anything be done to prevent Roman Catholics from using their votes as Roman Catholics, if they please. It is against the spirit, but not against the letter of the constitution. At any rate, it cannot be helped; only, it may compel Protestants to form parties and vote as Protestants against Roman Catholic interests, which would be a deplorable necessity, and lead, sooner or later, through religious parties in politics, to religious wars. The way to avoid such a horrible possibility--alas, such a threatening probability for the next generation--is at once to look with the utmost carefulness and the utmost disfavor upon every effort on the part of either Protestants or Catholics to mix up sectarian or theological or religious questions with national and state and city politics.

"Every appeal of a sect, a denominational church, or sectarian charity of any description, to the general government, or state or city governments, for subsidies or favors, should be at once discountenanced and forbidden by public opinion, and made impossible by positive statute. The Protestant sects in this country should hasten to remove from their record any advantages whatsoever guaranteed to them by civil law to any partiality or sectarian distinction. The most important privilege they enjoy by law in most of the states is the right of keeping the Bible in the public schools. It is a privilege associated with the tenderest and most sacred symbol of the Protestant faith--the Bible. To exclude it from the public schools is to the religious affections of Protestants like Abraham's sacrifice of his only son. When it was first proposed, I felt horror-stricken, and instinctively opposed it; but I have thought long and anxiously upon the subject, and have, from pure logical necessity and consistency, been obliged to change--nay, reverse my opinion. Duty to the unsectarian character of our civil institutions demands that this exclusion should be made. It will not be any disclaimer of the importance of the Bible in the education of American youth, but only a concession that we cannot carry on the religious with the secular education of American children, at the public expense and in the public schools. So long as Protestant Christians insist, merely in the strength of their great majority, upon maintaining the Bible in the public schools, they justify Roman Catholics in demanding that the public money for education shall be distributed to sects in proportion to the number of children they educate. This goes far to break up the common-school system of this country, and, if carried out, must ultimately tend to dissolve the Union, which morally depends upon the community of feeling and the homogeneity of culture produced by an unsectarian system of common schools."--_Church and State_, pp. 16-19.

But this proposed remedy will prove worse than the disease. The state divorced from the church, wholly separated from religion, is separated from morality; and the state separated from morality, that is, from the moral order, from natural justice inseparable from religion, cannot stand, and ought not to stand, for it is incapable of performing a single one of its proper functions. The church, representing the spiritual, and therefore the superior, order, is by its own nature and constitution as independent of the state as the soul is of the body; and the state separated from the church, or from religion and morality, is like the body separated from the soul, dead, a putrid or putrefying corpse. Exclude your Protestant Bible and all direct and indirect religious instruction from your public schools, and you would not render them a whit less objectionable to us than they are now, for we object not less to purely secular schools than we do to sectarian schools. We hold that children should be trained up in the way they should go, so that when old they will not depart from it; and the way in which they should go is not the way of pure secularism, but the way enjoined by God our Maker through his church. God has in this life joined soul and body, the spiritual and the secular, together, and what God has joined together we dare not put asunder. There is only one of two things that can satisfy us: either cease to tax us for the support of the public schools, and leave the education of our children to us, or give us our proportion of the public schools in which to educate them in our own religion. We protest against the gross injustice of being taxed to educate the children of non-Catholics, and being obliged in addition to support schools for our own children at our own expense, or peril their souls.

We do not think Dr. Bellows is aware of what he demands when he demands the complete divorce of church and state, or the total separation of religion and politics. The state divorced from the church is a godless state, and politics totally separated from religion is simply political atheism, and political atheism is simply power without justice, force without law; for there is no law without God, the supreme and universal Lawgiver. Man has no original and underived legislative power, and one man has in and of himself no authority over another; for all men by the law of nature are equal, and have equal rights, and among equals no one has the right to govern. All governments based on political atheism, or the assumption that politics are independent of religion, rest on no foundation, are usurpations, tyrannies, without right, and can govern, if at all, only by might or sheer force. To declare the government divorced from religion is to declare it emancipated from the law of God, from all moral obligation, and free to do whatever it pleases. It has no duties, and under it there are and can be no rights; for rights and duties are in the moral order and inseparable from religion, since the law of God is the basis of all rights and duties, the foundation and guarantee of all morality. The state, divorced from religion, would be bound to recognize and protect no rights of God or man, not even those natural and inalienable rights of all men, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This is going further in the direction of absolutism than go the doctor's dear friends the Turks, whom he so warmly eulogizes in his letters from the East, for even they hold the sultan is bound by the Koran, and forbidden to do anything it prohibits.

Dr. Bellows, doubtless, has no intention of divorcing the state from morality, and does not see that his proposition implies it. He probably holds that morality is separable from religion, for with him religion is simply sentiment or opinion; but in this he falls into the common mistake of all Liberal Christians, and of many Protestants who regard Liberal Christians as no Christians at all. Morality and religion are inseparable, for morality is only the practical application in the several departments of life of the principles of religion. Without religion morality has no foundation, nothing on which to rest, is a baseless fabric, an unreality. Deny God, and you deny the moral law and the whole moral order, all right, all duty, all human accountability. The separation of all political questions from all religious questions, which the reverend doctor demands, is their separation from all moral questions, and is the emancipation of the state from all right and all duty, or the assertion of its unrestricted power to do whatever it pleases, in total disregard of all moral and religious considerations. Is this the doctrine of a Christian?

This surely is not the relation of church and state in America, and derives no support from the American order of thought. With us, the state is instituted chiefly for the protection of the natural rights of man, as we call them, but really the rights of God, since they are anterior to civil society, are superior to it, and not derived or derivable from it. These rights it is the duty of civil society to protect and defend. Any acts of the political sovereign, be that sovereign king or kaiser, nobility or people, contrary to these antecedent and superior rights are tyrannical and unjust, are violences, not laws, and the common-law courts will not enforce them, because contrary to the law of justice and forbidden by it. The American state disclaims all authority over the religion of its citizens, but at the same time acknowledges its obligation to respect in its own action, and to protect and defend from external violence, the religion which its citizens or any class of its citizens choose to adopt or adhere to for themselves. It by no means asserts its independence of religion or its right to treat it with indifference, but acknowledges its obligation to protect its citizens in the free and peaceable possession and enjoyment of the religion they prefer. It goes further, and affords religion the protection and assistance of the law in the possession and management of her temporalities, her churches and temples, lands and tenements, funds and revenues for the support of public worship, and various charitable or eleemosynary institutions. All the protection and assistance the benefit of which every Protestant denomination fully enjoys, and even the Catholic Church in principle, though not always in fact, would be denied, if the divorce Dr. Bellows demands were granted, and religion, having no rights politicians are bound to respect, would become the prey of lawless and godless power, and religious liberty would be utterly annihilated, as well as civil liberty itself, which depends on it.

The chief pretence with Dr. Bellows for urging the complete divorce of church and state, is that Catholics demand and receive subsidies from the state and city for their schools and several charitable institutions. Some such subsidies have been granted, we admit, but in far less proportion to Catholics than they to Protestants or non-Catholics. The public schools are supported at the public expense, by the school fund, and a public tax, of which Catholics pay their share, and these schools are simply sectarian or godless schools, for the sole benefit of non-Catholics. The subsidies conceded to a few of our schools do by no means place them on an equality with those of non-Catholics. We by no means receive our share of the subsidies conceded. The aids granted to our hospitals, orphan asylums, and reformatories are less liberal than those to similar non-Catholic institutions. So long as the state subsidizes any institutions of the sort, we claim to receive our proportion of them as our right. If the state grant none to non-Catholics, we shall demand none for ourselves. We demand equality, but we ask no special privileges or favors. The outcry of the sectarian and secular press against us on this score is wholly unauthorized, is cruel, false, and unjust. It is part and parcel of that general system of falsification by which it is hoped to inflame popular passion and prejudice against Catholics and their church.

Underlying the whole of the doctrine of this discourse is the assumption of the supremacy of the secular order, or that every American citizen is bound to subordinate his religion to his politics, or divest himself of it whenever he acts on a political question. This, which is assumed and partially disguised in Dr. Bellows, is openly and frankly asserted and boldly maintained in Judge Hurlbut's pamphlet. The judge talks much about theology, theocracy, etc., subjects of which he knows less than he supposes, and of course talks a great deal of nonsense, as unbelievers generally do; but he is quite clear and decided that the state should have the power to suppress any church or religious institution that is based on a theory or principle different from its own. The theory of the American government is democratic, and the government ought to have the power to suppress or exclude every church that is not democratically constituted. Religion should conform to politics, not politics to religion. The political law is above the religious, and, of course, man is above God. In order to be able to carry out this theory, the learned judge proposes an important amendment to the constitution of the United States, which shall on the one hand prohibit the several states from ever establishing any religion by law; and, on the other, shall authorize Congress to enact such laws as it may deem necessary to control or prevent the establishment or continuance of any foreign hierarchical power in this country founded on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican institutions. He says:

"The following amendment is proposed to Article I. of the amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The words in italics are proposed to be added to the present article:

"ART. I. _Neither_ Congress _nor any state_ shall make _any_ laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. _But Congress may enact such laws as it shall deem necessary to control or prevent the establishment or continuance of any foreign hierarchical power in this country founded on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican institutions._

"It is assumed that there is nothing in the constitution, as it stands, which forbids a _state_ from establishing a religion, and that no power is conferred on Congress by the constitution to forbid a foreign hierarchical establishment in the United States. If such a power be needed, then the proposed amendment is also necessary."--_Secular View_, p. 5.

This proposed amendment, like iniquity, lies unto itself, for while it prohibits Congress and the several states from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, it gives to Congress full power to control or prevent the establishment or the continuance--that is, to prohibit--the free exercise by Catholics of their religion, under the flimsy pretence that it is a foreign hierarchy founded on anti-republican principles. The hierarchy is an essential part of our religion, and any denial of its freedom is the denial of the free exercise of his religion to every Catholic, and of the very principle of religious liberty itself, which the constitution guarantees.

We of course deny that the Catholic hierarchy is a foreign hierarchy or anti-republican, for what is Catholic is universal, and what is universal is never and nowhere a foreigner; but yet, because its Supreme Pontiff does not reside personally in America, and its power does not emanate from the American people, Protestants, Jews, and infidels will hold that it is a foreign power, and anti-republican. The carnal Jews held the Hebrew religion to be a national religion, and because the promised Messiah came as a spiritual, not as a temporal and national prince, they rejected him. Infidels believe in no spiritual order, and consequently in no Catholic principle or authority; Protestants believe in no Catholic hierarchy, and hold that all authority in religious matters comes from God, not through the hierarchy, but through the faithful or the people, and hence their ministers are _called_, not _sent_. It would be useless, therefore, to undertake to prove to one or another of these three classes that the Catholic hierarchy is at home here, in America, as much so as at Rome, and, since it holds not from the people, that it is not founded on anti-republican or anti-democratic principles. The only arguments we could use to prove it lie in an order of thought with which they are not familiar, do not even recognize, and to be appreciated demand a spiritual apprehension which, though not above natural reason, is quite too high for such confirmed secularists as ex-Judge Hurlbut and his rationalistic brethren, who have lost all conception, not only of the supernatural order, but of the supersensible, the intelligible, the universal reality above individual or particular existences.

For Catholics there are two orders, the secular and the spiritual. The secular is bound by the limitations and conditions of time and place; the spiritual is above and independent of all such conditions and limitations, and is universal, always and everywhere the same. The Catholic hierarchy represents in the secular and visible world, in the affairs of individuals and nations, this spiritual order, on which the whole secular order depends, and which, therefore, is an alien nowhere and at home everywhere. The Catholic hierarchy is supernatural, not natural, and, therefore, no more a foreigner in one nation than in another. But it is only the Catholic that can see and understand this; it is too high and too intellectual for non-Catholics, whose minds are turned earthward, and have lost the habit of looking upward, and to recover it must be touched by the quickening and elevating power of grace. We must expect them, therefore, to vote the Catholic hierarchy to be in this country a foreign hierarchy, although it is nowhere national, and is no more foreign here than is God himself.

The Catholic hierarchy is not founded on democratic principles, we grant, but there is nothing in its principles or dogmas antagonistical to republican government, if government at all; but since it holds not from the people, nor in any sense depends on them for its authority, non-Catholics, who recognize no power above the people, will vote it anti-republican, undemocratic, antagonistical to the American system of government. It is of no use to try to persuade them to the contrary, or to allege that it is of the very essence and design of religion to assert the supremacy of an order which does not hold from the people, and is above them both individually and collectively, or to maintain in the direction and government of human affairs the supremacy of the law of God, which all men and nations, in both public and private matters, are bound to obey, and which none can disobey with impunity. They will only reply that this is repugnant to the democratic tendencies of the age, is contrary to the free and enlightened spirit of the nineteenth century, denies the original, absolute, and underived sovereignty of the people, and is manifestly a return to the theocratic principle which humanity rejects with horror. To an argument of this sort there, of course, is no available answer. The men who use it are impervious to logic or common sense, for they either believe in no God, or that God is altogether like one of themselves; therefore, in no respect above themselves.

It is very clear, then, if Judge Hurlbut's proposed amendment to the constitution were adopted, it would be interpreted as giving to Congress, as the Judge intends it should, the power to suppress, according to its discretion, the Catholic hierarchy, and, therefore, the Catholic Church in the United States, and that, too, notwithstanding the very amendment denies to Congress the power to prohibit to any one the free exercise of his religion! How true it is, as the Psalmist says, "Iniquity hath lied to itself." The enemies of the church, who are necessarily the enemies of God, and, therefore, of the truth, are not able to frame an argument or a law against the church that does not contradict or belie itself; yet are they, in their own estimation, the _enlightened_ portion of mankind, and Catholics are weak, besotted, grovelling in ignorance and superstition.

There is little doubt that the amendment proposed by Judge Hurlbut would, if adopted, effect the object the Evangelical sects are conspiring with Jews and infidels to effect, so far as human power can effect it--that is, the suppression of the Catholic Church in the United States, and it is a bolder, more direct, and honester way of coming at it than the fair-seeming but insidious amendment proposed by Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, and his Evangelical allies. It is now well understood by non-Catholic leaders that the growth of the church cannot be prevented or retarded by arguments drawn from Scripture or reason, for both Scripture and reason are found to be on her side, and dead against them. They see very clearly that if she is left free with "an open field and fair play," it is all over with her opponents. They must then contrive in some way, by some means or other, to suppress the religious freedom and equality now guaranteed by our constitution and laws, and bring the civil law or the physical power of the state to bear against the church and the freedom of Catholics. That it is a settled design on the part of the leading Protestant sects to do this--and that they are aided by Unitarians and Universalists, because they know that Protestant orthodoxy would soon go by the board if the Catholic Church were suppressed; by the Jews, because they hate Christianity, and know well that Christianity and the Catholic Church stand or fall together; and by unbelievers and secularists, because they would abolish all religion, and they feel that they cannot effect their purpose if the Catholic Church stands in their way--no one can seriously doubt. We include the Jews in this conspiracy, for we have before us the report of a remarkable discourse delivered lately in the Hebrew synagogue at Washington, D. C., by the Rabbi Lilienthal, of Cincinnati, entitled "First the State, then the Church," which is directed almost wholly against the Catholic Church. We make an extract from this discourse, longer than we can well afford room for, but our readers will thank us for it:

"Of all the questions which demand our serious consideration, none is of more importance than the one, 'Shall the state or the church rule supreme?' All over Europe, this question is mooted at present, and threatens to assume quite formidable proportions. There is but one empire across the ocean in which this problem, so far, has been definitely settled by virtue of autocratic might and power. It is Russia. When, in the seventeenth century, the Patriarch of Moscow had died, and the metropolitans and archbishops of the Greek Church met for the purpose of filling the vacancy, Peter the Great rushed with drawn sword into their meeting, and, throwing the same on the table, exclaimed, 'Here is your patriarch.' Since that time the Czar is emperor and pope at once; and, very significantly, the 'Holy Synod,' or the supreme ecclesiastical court of Russia, is presided over by a general, the representative of the Czar. And hence the Emperor Nicholas used to say: State and church are represented in me; and the motto ruling the Russian government was autocracy, Russian nationality, and the Greek Church.

"But everywhere else in Europe this question agitates the old continent. In Great Britain, Gladstone works for the enfranchisement of the church; the Thirty nine Articles, so renowned at Oxford and Cambridge, are going to be abolished, and High Churchmen and Dissenters prepare themselves for the final struggle. Italy, so long priest-ridden, has inscribed on her national banner the glorious words, 'Religious liberty,' and means to carry them out to the fullest extent, in spite of all anathemas and excommunications. Spain, though still timid and wavering, has adopted the same policy. Austria has thrown off her concordat, and inserted in her new constitution the same modern principle; and the German Empire has fully recognized the equality of all citizens, without difference of creed or denomination, before the courts and tribunals of resurrected and united Germany.

"But daily we hear of the demands of the clergy, made in the interests of their church. Since the last Œcumenical Council has proclaimed the new dogma of Papal infallibility, the bishops want to discharge all teachers and professors, both at the theological seminaries and universities, who are unwilling to subscribe to this new tenet of the Roman Church. The Archbishop of Gnesen and Posen even asked for the names of all those men who at the last election of members for the German Parliament did not vote for those men he had proposed as candidates. The government is now bound to interfere, but nobody can tell how this coming conflict between church and state will be decided.

"This is the aspect of the old continent. What is the prospect in America, in our glorious and God-blessed country? Of course, religious liberty, in the fullest sense of the word, is the supreme law of the land. It is the most precious gem in the diadem of our republic, it is warranted and secured by our constitution.

"The immortal signers of the Declaration of Independence; those modern prophets and apostles of humanity; those statesmen who thoroughly appreciated the bloody lessons of past history, knew but too well what they were doing when they entirely separated church and state, and ignored all sectarian sentiments in the inspired documents they bequeathed to their descendants. The denominational peace that heretofore characterized the mighty and unequalled growth of the young republic bears testimony to their wisdom, foresight, and statesmanship.

"But, alas! our horizon, too, begins to be clouded. The harmony that heretofore prevailed between the various churches and denominations begins to be disturbed. Then we had in the last two years the conventions at Pittsburg and Philadelphia. The men united there meant to insert God in our constitution, as we have him already on our coins, by the inscription, 'In God we trust.' They intend to christianize our country, against the clear and emphatic spirit and letter of the constitution. And I must leave it to the learned judge of the Supreme Court of the United States who presided over those meetings, to decide whether this future Christian country hereafter shall be a Catholic or a Protestant country.

"The Roman Catholic press and pulpit are not slow in answering this question. With praiseworthy frankness and manliness they declare the intentions of their church. Father Hecker says: 'In fifteen years we will take this country and build our institutions over the grave of Protestantism.... There is, ere long, to be a state religion in this country, and that state religion is to be Roman Catholic.' Bishop O'Connor, of Pittsburg, says: 'Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world.' The Archbishop of St. Louis says: 'If the Catholics ever gain, which they surely will, an immense numerical majority, religious freedom in this country will be at an end.' And the Pope speaks of the 'delirium of toleration, and asserts the right to punish criminals in the order of ideas.'

"This language is plain, unequivocal, and cannot be misinterpreted. Still, I am not an alarmist. I have too much faith in the sound common sense of the American people that they should barter away their political birthright for any theological or clerical controversy. They are too much addicted to the policy of 'a second sober thought,' that, after having first of all taught the human race the invaluable blessings of religious liberty, they should discard them just now, when the whole civilized world is imitating the glorious example set by our great and noble sires.

"But, 'vigilance being the price of liberty,' in the face of this assertion it is not only right, but an imperative duty, to enlighten ourselves on this all-important subject, so that we may take our choice, and perform our duties as true, loyal citizens and true, loyal Americans."

This is very much to the purpose, and if it shows that the rabbi is no friend of Protestant Christianity, it shows that his principal hostility is to the Catholic Church, as the body and support of Christianity. He exults, as well he may, over the falling away from the church of the old Catholic governments of Europe, for one of the chief instruments in effecting that apostasy has been precisely his Hebrew brethren, the great supporters of the anti-Catholic revolution of modern times; and his slanders on the Catholic Church are in the very spirit of the Evangelical Alliance, even to the false charges he brings against distinguished individual Catholics. The assertion that "Father Hecker says, 'In fifteen years we will take this country and build our institutions over the grave of Protestantism,'" as that other assertion, "There is or ought to be a state religion in this country, and that state religion is to be Roman Catholic,'" Father Hecker himself assures us, is false. He never did, nor with his views ever could, say anything of the sort. Bishop O'Connor, late of Pittsburg, never did and never could have said, "Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world." We happen to know that his views were and are very different; and if they were not, he is too shrewd to commit the blunder of saying anything like what is falsely attributed to him, or to disclose such an ulterior purpose. We may say as much of the sentiment attributed to the Archbishop of St. Louis. The archbishop never uttered or entertained it. Something like what is ascribed to him was said, many years ago, by Mr. Bakewell, in _The Shepherd of the Valley_, a paper published at St. Louis, but he was assailed by the Catholic press all over the country, and, if he did not retract it, at least endeavored to explain it away, and to show that he meant no such thing. The archbishop never said it, and was no more responsible for it than was the Rabbi Lilienthal himself. No Catholic prelate and no distinguished Catholic layman even has ever proposed any amendment to the constitution in regard to the relations of church and state in this country, or has expressed any wish to have the existing constitutional relations changed, or in any respect modified. The church is satisfied with them, and only asks that they be faithfully observed. She opposes the separation of church and state in the sense of releasing the state from all moral and religious obligations, for that would imply the subjection of the church to the state, and prove the grave of religious freedom and independence, which she always and everywhere asserts with all her energy against kings, emperors, nobilities, and peoples--against Jew, Pagan, Mussulman, schismatic, and heretic, and it is for this that they conspire against her and seek her destruction.

The rabbi says, "First the state, then the church," which is as absurd as to say, "First man, then God." The state represents simply a human authority, while the church, or the synagogue even, represents--the first for the Catholic, the second for the Jew--the sovereignty of God, or the divine authority in human affairs, and the rabbi in his doctrine is false alike to Moses and to Christ, and as little of an orthodox Jew as he is of a Christian believer. Yet he agrees perfectly with Judge Hurlbut and Dr. Bellows in asserting the supremacy of the state or secular order, and the subordination of the spiritual order. We do not know whether the rabbi means to approve or censure the assumption, by Peter the Great, of the headship of the Russian Church and his government of it by the sword; but Peter only acted on the principle, "First the state, then the church," and the slavery of the Russian Church to the state is only an inevitable consequence of that principle or maxim. The Russian Church, governed by the Holy Synod, itself governed by the Czar, presents a lively image of the abject position religion would be compelled to hold in every country if the doctrine of the total separation of church and state, and the independence and supremacy of the state, advocated by one or another of the three men we are criticising, were to prevail and to be embodied in the civil code.

But let this pass. It is clear that the rabbi, and therefore the Jews, so far as he represents them, are to be included in the great conspiracy against the liberty and equality of Catholics, or religious liberty recognized and guaranteed by the American states. Catholics are to be put down and their church suppressed by the strong arm of power. To prepare the American people for this proposed revolution in the American system, this suppression of religious liberty, a system of gross misrepresentation of Catholic faith and practice, of misstatements, calumnious charges, and downright lying respecting the church, is resorted to and persisted in as it was by the reformers in the sixteenth century. "Lie, lie stoutly," Voltaire said, though it was said long before him; "something will stick." We do not like to say this, but truth will not permit us to soften our statement or to use milder terms. There is nothing too harsh or too false for the anti-Catholic press and the anti-Catholic preachers and lecturers to say of our holy religion, and nothing can be more unlike the Catholic Church than their pretended representations of her--too unlike, indeed, even to be called caricatures, for they catch not one of her features. Even when the anti-Catholic writers and speakers tell facts about Catholics or in the history of the church, they so tell them as to distort the truth and to produce the effect of falsehood, or draw inferences from them wholly unwarranted. We must, then, be excused if we sometimes call the systematic misrepresentation of our religion, our church, and ourselves by its true and expressive name, even though it may seem harsh and impolite. The batteries they discharge against the church are not to be silenced by bouquets of roses.

The public has become too well informed as to Catholic doctrines and usages to permit the repetition, with much effect, of many of the old charges and calumnies. Only the very ignorant can be made to believe that the church is the Babylonian sorceress who makes the nations drunk with the wine of her fornications; that she is "the mystery of iniquity"; that the Pope is "the man of sin," or Antichrist; that our nunneries are brothels, and their vaults are filled with the skeletons of murdered infants, of which Luther discoursed to his friends with so much unction in his Tischreden over his pot of beer. These things are a little out of date, and do not gain the ready credence they once did. The age is all for liberty, for progress, for enlightenment; so the anti-Catholic tactics change to suit the times. James I. of England, as did the politicians of France opposed to the Ligue, charged the church with being hostile to monarchy and the divine right of kings. The charge now is that she is opposed to republicanism, and denies the divine right of the people, or, more strictly, of the demagogues. She is said to be a spiritual despotism, the foster-mother of ignorance and superstition, the enemy of science and of progress, of intelligence and liberty, individual and social, civil and religious. Her religious houses are dens of cruelty and tyranny, and if she is permitted to continue and spread her peculiar institutions over this country, American democracy will be destroyed, and American liberty be but a memory, etc., etc.

The cry is not now, the truth is in danger, the Gospel is in danger, religion is in danger, but the republic is in danger, democracy is in danger, liberty is in danger. The church, the moment she gets the power, will, it is argued, abolish our political system, establish a monarchy, abolish religious liberty, and cut the throats of all heretics and infidels, or send them to the stake to be consumed in a fire of green wood, as Calvin did Michael Servetus. And there are not wanting fools enough to believe it or dishonest men enough to pretend to believe it when they do not, though it is evident that the republic is likely to pass away, if things go on in the political world as they are now going, and be succeeded by anarchy or a military despotism long before the majority of the people will cease to war against the church as anti-democratic. But the point to be noted here is that all these charges assume the supremacy of the secular order, and allege not that the church is false, is not the church of God, but that she is hostile to democracy or democratic institutions; in other words, that she does not conform to popular opinion, for democracy is nothing but popular opinion erected into law. Now, as we do not believe that popular opinion, inconstant as the wind, is infallible, or that the secular order is supreme, we are not sure that it would be a fatal objection to the church even if what is alleged against her were well founded. The arguments against the church of this sort are drawn from too low a level to command any intelligent respect, and they are all based on a false assumption. Politics are not higher than religion; the state is not above the church; the secular order is not above the spiritual; and it is only atheism that can assert the contrary. To a terrible extent, the supremacy of the secular is the doctrine of our age and country; but Catholics hold it to be both false and dangerous, as incompatible with the liberty and independence of religion, with natural morality, and even with the existence of natural society, as it is with the sovereignty of God. It is the doctrine of the European revolutionists and communists, and is sapping the life and threatening the very existence of our American republicanism--has already reduced our government to be little else than an agency for promoting the private interests of business men, bankers, manufacturers, and railroad corporations. Our elections are becoming a wretched farce, for the monopolists govern the government, let what party may succeed at the polls. The State governments cannot control them, and the General Government just as little.

We will not so dishonor the church or insult religion as to undertake to refute these popular charges against her, and to prove that her authority is not incompatible with the existence and salutary working of republican government. The charges are addressed to ignorance and prejudice; we take higher ground, and maintain that civil society can no more dispense with the church, than the body with the soul. The secular is insufficient for itself, and needs the informing life and vigor of the spiritual. The political history of France since 1682, especially since 1789, proves it to all men who are capable of tracing effects to their causes. There is no form of government more in need of the church than the republican, founded on the modern doctrine of popular sovereignty, and the maxim, the majority must rule. The habit of regarding power as emanating from the mass, as derived from low to high, tends itself to debase the mind, to destroy that respect for law, and that reverence for authority, without which no government performs in a peaceable and orderly way its legitimate functions. The American people see nothing divine, nothing sacred and inviolable, in their government; they regard law as an emanation of their own will, as their own creation, and what creator can feel himself bound to reverence and obey his own creature? We need the church to consecrate the government, to give the law a spiritual sanction, to create in us habits of reverence, of submission, and docility, and to impress us with the conviction that civil obedience is a moral duty, and that we must be loyal to legitimate authority for conscience' sake. We need the church to teach us that in obeying the laws not repugnant to the divine law, we are obeying not men, which is slavery, but God, which is freedom, and the very principle of all freedom. We need her to create in us high and holy aspirations, to produce in us those high and disinterested virtues, without which civil government is impotent for good, and powerful only for evil. No man who believes not in the sovereignty of truth, in the supremacy of right, and feels it not his duty to obey it at all hazards, has the temper demanded in a republic, and only the church can create it.

A government built on interest, however enlightened, on sentiment, however charming, or public opinion, however just, is a house built on the sand. It rests on nothing fixed and permanent, is without stability or efficiency, and tends always to fall and bury the people in its ruins. We see this in our own political history. It would be difficult to find a government more corrupt than ours, that taxes the people more heavily, or that does less for the public good, the advantages we had at the start being taken into the account. The good that has been done, the great things accomplished, have been accomplished by the people in spite of the government, and our record as a nation can hardly put that of Prussia or Russia to shame.

We do not choose to dwell on this aspect of the case, although much more might be said. We love our country, have been bred to love republicanism, and have the success of the American experiment at heart. The evils which the liberals charge to the union of church and state, and hold the church responsible for, spring, as every impartial and intelligent student of history knows, not from the union but from the separation of church and state, and the unremitting efforts of the civil power to usurp the functions of the spiritual power, and to make the church the accomplice of its policy. The terrible struggles of the pope and emperor in the middle ages had this cause and no other. The pope simply sought to maintain against the emperor the freedom and independence of the church, the kingdom of God on earth, that is, true religious liberty. It is to the partial, in some countries the complete, triumph of the secular over the spiritual, that we must attribute the unsettled, disorderly, and revolutionary state of contemporary society throughout the civilized world, the hatred or contempt of authority both divine and human, the depression of religion, the decline of intellectual greatness, the substitution of opinion for faith, a sickly sentimentalism for a manly and robust piety, free-loveism or divorce _ad libitum_ for Christian marriage, and the general abasement of character.

The evils are very real, but the more perfect divorce of the state from the church would not cure or lessen, but only aggravate and intensify them; nay, would to all human foresight render them incurable. The state without religion or moral obligation is impotent to redress social evils or to elevate society, and Protestantism, which holds from the people, and depends for its very breath of life on popular opinion, is no less impotent than the state. Protestantism, having retained some elements of religion from the church, may, we readily concede, do something to retard the fall of a nation that accepts it, but when a Protestant nation has once fallen, become morally and politically corrupt, rotten to the core, it has no power to restore it; for it has no principle of life to infuse into it above and beyond that which it already has. Resting on human authority, holding from the nation or people, its life is only the national life itself; and, of course, when the national life grows weak, its own life grows weak, and when the national life is extinct, its own life becomes extinct with it. Cut off from the church of God, and therefore from Him who is "the way, the truth, and the life," it cannot draw new supplies of life from the Fountain of Life itself, with which to revive and reinvigorate the fallen nation.

This is wherefore there is no hope for our republic under Protestantism. There has been a sad falling-off in the virtue, the honesty, the integrity, the chastity, and public spirit of our people in the last fifty years. The old habits formed under Catholic discipline and influences are wearing out, if not worn out; intellectual culture may be more general, though even that may be questioned, but it is less generous, thorough, and profound; meeting-houses may be increased in greater proportion than the population itself, but theology is less studied--is less intellectual, less scientific, and is more superficial; and religion has less hold on the conscience, and less influence on life, public, private, or domestic; and we may say, generally, that in all save what belongs to the material order, our republic has a downward tendency. Now, since Protestantism has nothing more or higher than the republic, and no recuperative power, how, then, can it possibly arrest this downward tendency and turn it upward, and save the nation? Archimedes wanted something whereon to stand outside of the world in order to move it. This Protestantism has not, for it rests on the world, and has nothing above the world or outside of it, and in fact is only the world itself. To every one who understands the great law of mechanic force, which has its analogue in the great principle of moral or spiritual dynamics, it is clear that the hope of the republic is not and cannot be in Protestantism, and there is just as little in the civil order, for that, divorced from the church and without any moral obligation, is precisely that which needs saving. The union of the various Protestant sects in one organic body, if it were possible, would avail nothing; for the whole would be only the sum of the parts, and the parts having no supermundane life, the whole could have none.

Hence we say that whatever hope there is for our republic is in the growth and predominance of the Catholic Church in the minds and hearts of the American people; and there is a well-grounded hope for it only in the prospect that she may before it is too late become the church of the great majority. The church has what Archimedes wanted, and Protestantism has not--the whereon to stand outside and above the world. She lives a life which is not derived from the life of the world, and is in communion with the Source of life itself, whence she may be constantly drawing fresh supplies, and infusing into the nation a life above the national life in its best estate, and which, infused into the nation, becomes for it a recuperative energy, and enables it to arrest its downward tendency, and to ascend to a new and higher life. It is not without a reason, then, founded in the nature of things, that we tell our countrymen that Protestantism may ruin the republic, but cannot save it, any more than it can the soul of the individual; and that, instead of crying out against the church like madmen, as hostile to the republic, they should rather turn their eyes toward her as their only source of help, and learn that she can and will save the republic, if they will only allow her to do it.

Yet we urge not this as the motive for accepting the teaching of the church and submitting to her authority and discipline. Our Lord says to us, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you," but he does not bid us or permit us to seek the kingdom of God and his justice for the sake of "these things," or the _adjicienda_; he forbids us to be solicitous for them, since it is for them that the heathen are solicitous. The only motive for a man to become a Catholic, to believe what she teaches and to do what she commands, is that she is the kingdom of God on earth, and that it is only in so doing that he can possess "his justice," please God, or attain to eternal life. Christ did not come, as a temporal prince, to found--as the carnal Jews, misinterpreting the prophecies, expected--an earthly kingdom, or to create an earthly paradise; but he came as a spiritual prince to establish the reign of his Father on earth in all human affairs, and over all men and nations, and whatever temporal good is secured is not the end or reason of his kingdom, but is simply incidental to it. It is no reason why I should or should not be a Catholic because the church favors or does not favor one or another particular theory or constitution of civil government, but the fact that she does not favor a particular form of civil polity, if it be a fact, is sufficient reason why I should not favor it, for it proves that such form is repugnant to the sovereignty of God and the supremacy of his law. As a matter of fact, however, the church has never condemned any particular form of civil polity or erected one form or another into a Catholic dogma, and a man may be a monarchist, a republican, or a democrat, as he pleases, and at the same time be a good and irreproachable Catholic, if he hold the political power subordinate to the divine sovereignty.

The church is necessary to sustain a republican form of government, but it is also necessary to sustain any other form, as a wise, just, and efficient civil government. The error of those we are combating is not in that they are democrats or anti-democrats, but in holding that the state or secular order is sufficient for itself, can stand of itself without the aid of religion or the church, has no need of the spiritual, and has in fact the right to brush religion aside as an impertinent intermeddler whenever it comes in its way, or seeks to dictate or influence its policy. This is a gross error, condemned by all religion, all philosophy, and all experience. It is the old epicurean error that excludes the divine authority from the direction or control of human affairs, and in its delirium sings,

"Let the gods go to sleep up above us."

It is at bottom pure atheism, nothing more, nothing less. It is a pure absurdity. Can the creation stand without the creator? Can the contingent subsist without the necessary? Can the body live and perform its functions without the soul which is its principle of life; the dependent without that on which it depends? In the whole history of the world, you will not find an instance of a purely atheistical state, or a state held to be completely divorced from the spiritual order. There is no instance in all history of a state without some sort of religion, even an established religion, or religion which the state recognizes as its supreme law, and does its best or worst to enforce. We here, as well as in England, as well as at any time in any European country, have an established religion which the law protects and enforces on all its citizens, only it is a mutilated religion, a religion without dogmas, and called morality. If not so, whence is it the law punishes murder or arson, and forbids polygamy, or the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes? Even Jacobins erect their jacobinism into a religion, and make it obligatory on the state to persecute, to exterminate all who dare oppose it. Have we not seen it despoil the Holy See of its independence and possessions, confiscate the goods of the church, exile holy bishops from their sees and their country in Italy, and within a few weeks shoot down the Archbishop of Paris and a large number of priests and religious, suspend public worship, desecrate and plunder the churches, and banish all religion but their jacobinism from the schools? No state tolerates any religion hostile to its own established religion, and the most intolerant and cruel persecutors in the world are precisely those who clamor loudest for religious liberty.

There is no such thing as a complete divorce of church and state practicable in any country on earth. The only question is, Shall the state be informed and directed by the infallible and holy church of God, or by the synagogue of Satan? No man who is at all competent to pass a judgment on the question but agrees with the Syllabus in condemning not the distinction, but the separation of church and state; but the forms of the union of the two powers, whose harmonious action is necessary to the normal state of society, may vary according to circumstances. In countries where the state refuses to recognize frankly and fully the freedom and independence of the spiritual order, it may be necessary to regulate the relation of church and state by concordats; in others, where the state recognizes the independence of the spiritual order, and holds itself bound to protect the rights of the religion adopted by its citizens, as hitherto with us, no concordats are necessary, for the state does not claim any competence in spirituals. In this country the relation between the two powers has, with a few exceptions, been satisfactory, and the church has been free. But there is on foot a formidable conspiracy against her freedom, and it is beginning to be maintained pretty determinedly that the majority of the people, being Protestant, and the people being the state, have the right and the duty as the state to sustain Protestantism, and outlaw and suppress the church.

FOOTNOTE:

[156] 1. _Church and State in America._ A Discourse given at Washington, D. C., at the installation of Rev. Frederic Hinckley as Pastor of the Unitarian Church, January 25, 1871. By Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D. Washington, D. C.: Philp & Solomons. 1871. 8vo, pp. 22.

2. _A Secular View of Religion in the State, and of the Bible in the Public Schools._ By E. P. Hurlbut. Albany: Munsell. 1870. 8vo, pp. 55.

DRAMATIC MORALISTS IN SPANISH AMERICA.

The truth is slowly dawning, at least to curious minds, that the people of the southern half of our New World have tastes not dissimilar to our own. Indeed, they seek other arts than those of revolution, and, here and there, have other stages and actors than those which represent the _pronunciamiento_, with all its malicious bombast and insignificant "sound and fury." We can count poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, scientists in the ranks of the most distinguished men of our nearest sister republic. Cuba, too, rejoices in the genius of her philosophic scholar, Caballero de la Luz, and of her poets, Heredia and Gertrudiz de Avellañeda, with the same spirit which Mexico brings to her admiration of the scientific versatility of Siguenza, the quaint ideality of Sor Juana Inez, and the literary culture of Carpio and Pesado. Nevertheless, such facts as these have aided but little in forming the common estimate of Spanish-American peoples, who are to some of us scarcely more than a Bedouin rabble fighting problematic wild-beasts in the shape of pronouncers, and struggling through clouds of desert-dust and battle-smoke to the light of freedom. That great rude reserve of race, the Indians, without which the business of one-half the continent could not be carried on, seems to be swept out of our moral consideration as with a broom; yet we must think hopefully of a race which has produced an artist so extraordinary as Cabrera and a ruler so enduring and persistent as Juarez--hopefully, at all events, of their mere abilities, if mother church does not teach us to look with a shrewder and kindlier eye upon their moral capabilities. In more than one country of Spanish America we find Indians among presidents, judges, governors, congressmen, writers, artists; and this being the case, historically or actually, why should it be a matter of surprise that Spanish America, with whatever Old World culture she may possess in union with native aptitude, should have some claims upon our attention on the score of taste and intelligence? Part of these claims we propose to set forth.

The present writer has sat in the orderly theatres of Vera Cruz and Mexico, and seen performances substantially as good as those of our northern capitals. The _Zarzuelas_, or operettas, of Barbieri and Gatzambide were as pleasant in 1868-69 to their hearers in the southern republic as the French comic opera to New Yorkers, and nevertheless seemed decent and spirited; besides, the Mexicans had the good fortune to enjoy Gatzambide's personal direction of his _Zarzuelas_, and Gatzambide (now deceased) was one of the most popular musicians of Spain. Another celebrity the Mexicans honored in the person of José Valero, a gentlemanlike Spanish actor, whose superior in versatile genius as tragedian and comedian it would be difficult to find anywhere. Entertainments were plentiful in Moctezuma's city, though subsisting, so to speak, upon diminished rations. Round about all these flickering pleasures flowed the strange dark tide of Mexican life--its ragged multitude, its concealed miseries, its settled and common melancholy, not to be dissipated by any class of illusions, not to be shaken off in a day, or a year, or any brief term of years. Nevertheless, the misfortunes of a war-worn people found as tasteful and respectable a solace as their theatres could afford. Their scholars were even encouraged to revive and celebrate some ancient glories of the Mexican stage; and at the opening of a season they crowned the bust of one of the fathers of the Spanish drama, whom with reason they regard as among the greatest of the small band of very eminent Mexicans. This laurelled bust was but one of a number to be seen in the various theatres, in several instances perpetuating the memory of Mexico's own dramatic authors. On the occasion referred to, poems by well-known poets--and, among the rest, if the writer remembers correctly, an eloquent composition by the highly-esteemed blind poet, Juan Valle--preluded the revival of that celebrated comedy, _La Verdad Sospechosa_, or, The Truth Suspected.

JUAN RUIZ DE ALARCON.

The author of this play was Alarcon, that thoughtful writer who, on the Spanish stage, ranks with Lope, Calderon, Moreto, and Tirso. Strange as it may appear to those who doubt whether any good can come out of Mexico, he was born and bred in that mysterious country. What his countrymen do not know of their great artist, Cabrera, they are able to tell of their chief literary glory--namely, the place and date of his baptism. Documents found in the royal university of Mexico established the several facts that Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza was baptized in that city on the 2d day of October, 1572, and received the grade of licentiate or lawyer from the university. It was for some time asserted that he was born at Tasco (for whose church Cabrera is said to have painted extraordinary works); but Chalco, not far from the capital, has also laid claim to the honor of his birth. He is represented as short, ugly, and humpbacked. To improve his fortunes, he sought the literary life of Madrid, but his first efforts were deemed of little importance. By the year 1621 he had written eight acted comedies, of which _Las Paredes Oyen_ (The Walls Hear) is esteemed the best, as also one of the finest in any language. In spite of his physical imperfections his genius won him admirers, socially as well as otherwise. In 1628, he became clerk to the Council of the Indies, and held his office till his death in 1639; so that it seems our author was a contemporary of Shakespeare, Webster, Jonson, and other great lights of the English drama. His comedies are lauded as forming a system of practical philosophy, inasmuch as they give a delightful verification of the proverbial wisdom of his time, and preach capital sermons from common texts. "Luck and Labor," "The World's Favors," "No Evil that does not come for Good," "Before you Marry see what you are about," "The Truth made Suspicious," are the suggestive titles of some of his dramas, which appear to have lost nothing of their peculiar excellence by pointing morals. It was Alarcon who said:

To kill an enemy is argument Of fearing him; but to despise and spare him Is greater chastisement, for while he lives He is a witness of his own defeat. He that kills, victory abbreviates, And he that pardons makes it the more great, As meanwhile that the conquered lives The conqueror goes on conquering.

To give to comedy a conscience and a purpose is the distinguishing design of Alarcon; but, while the public of Madrid never failed to perceive the moral of his humor, they could yet heartily laugh at the wit of his dialogues and the genuine comicality of his situations. In his plays cool reason walked hand in hand with sentiment and pleasantry, as they do in some of the most admired comedies of our own stage. The delight with which the Mexicans witnessed _La Verdad Sospechosa_ proved that to Alarcon belonged not merely the ingenuity by which men are amused, but something of that magic by which their own wit and humor are excited. Alarcon could give logic to a whim, a fancy, or a passion. In the _Prueba de las Promesas_ his lover expostulates:

If Beauty's faithful lover I have been, Esteeming though despised; loving, abhorred; What law allows to thee, what text approves That thou shouldst hate me because I do love thee?

An apology for woman made by a servant in _Todo es Ventura_ (Luck is Everything) may be translated thus:

What is it that we most condemn in maids? Inconstancy of mind? We taught them so. The love of money? It's a thing in taste-- Or let that righteous fellow throw a stone Who is not guilty of the self-same fault. Of being easy? Well, what must they do, If no man perseveres and all get tired At the fourth day of trying? Of being hard? Why do we thus complain when we, too, all Run to extremes? If difficult our suit We hate it, and if easy we despise.

In _Ganar Amigos_ (To Gain Friends) Don Fernando has killed the brother of Don Fadrique, and seeks and obtains refuge with the latter, who, however, does not know him. Don Fadrique, though at length made aware of the truth, faithfully keeps the pledge he has given the slayer of his brother. Seeing this, Don Fernando gratefully exclaims:

The earth whereon thou stand'st shall be my altar.

_Fadrique._ Rise, sir; give me no thanks, as do I not This deed for you, but for my honor's self, For I have plighted unto you my word.

In the comedy of _Mudarse por Mejorarse_ (To Change for the Better; or, more literally, to Change in order to Better One's Self), a certain Don Garcia, who was to marry Doña Clara, falls in love with her niece Leonor; whence this dialogue:

_Leonor._ Is it, perchance, Don Garcia, The custom in Madrid to fall in love With niece and aunt at one and the same time?

_Garcia._ At least, if so divine a niece comes there As you, the custom is to leave the aunt.

_Leonor._ A bad one, then.

_Garcia._ It is not to be called Bad, if such matter be the occasion.

_Leonor._ How can a reason be for changefulness?

_Garcia._ One's self to better is the best of reasons.

_Leonor._ Well, there's a law of constancy: to what Doth it oblige, whereunto doth it reach, If it be right one beauty to forswear For a greater? Constancy's not to love Unchangeably the love more beautiful; To love the best what firmness do we need? He constant is who doth despise the more Happy occasion.

_Garcia._ I confess, sweet lady That's to be constant, but it's to be foolish.

_Leonor._ Then cannot you in one who'd be discreet Have confidence, as change is to be excused By gain of fairer subject?

_Garcia._ It is clear.

_Leonor._ Well, be it so; and for I think thee, sir, A man judicious, and thou leav'st my aunt To make thyself the better so by me, Pray do excuse me of thy love, since must I give thy suit resistance till I know If I've another and a fairer niece.

The discreet Leonor, compromised by the entangling suit of Don Garcia, is compelled to admit the attentions of a gallant and rich marquis, with whom at last she falls in love. The following passage explains the rest:

_Garcia._ How, cruel one, Hast changed so soon?

_Leonor._ Yes, for the better.

_Mencia_ (_aside_). She gave't him, then, with his own flower.

_Garcia._ Ungrateful, is not thy disdain enough Without the aggravation--making him, The marquis, better?

_Leonor._ Wilt deny the improvement? Although in blood thou'rt equal, yet between Little and ample fortune, and between Your worship and your lordship--?

_Garcia._ Yea, I grant: But what effect hast given thy words, Thy promise, tyrant, if thou hast all changed By taking better subject? Where's constancy If thou hast liked me only when thou couldst not _Better_ thyself? She only constant is Who doth despise the opportunity.

_Leonor._ I do confess to thee, Don Garcia, That's to be constant, but it's to be foolish.

Here is the "retort courteous" in its most charming humor. The gallant grace and wit of these dialogues are evidence of the original art with which Alarcon could make his comedy a study of life, and compel his auditors to think somewhat after they ceased to laugh. This is the function of eminent high comedy, though we may not ask that it shall elaborate a severe or intrusive moral, and though we admit its possession, as in Shakespeare, of the liveliest poetic qualities. Another passage, this time from the famous _Verdad Sospechosa_, wherein Don Beltran reprimands his son, Don Garcia, for the vice of habitual lying, will further elucidate the method of Alarcon:

_Beltran._ Are you a gentleman, Garcia?

_Garcia._ --I believe I am your son.

_Beltran._ --And is it, then, enough, To be my son to be a gentleman?

_Garcia._ I think so, sir.

_Beltran._ --What a mistaken thought! Consists in acting like a gentleman To be one. What gave birth to noble houses! The illustrious deeds of their first authors, sir. Without consideration of their births, the deeds Of humble men honored their heirs. 'Tis doing Good or ill makes gentleman or villain.

_Garcia._ That deeds give nobleness I'll not deny, But who will say birth does not also give it?

_Beltran._ Well, then, if honor can be gained by him Who was born without it, is't not certain that, Vice versa, he can lose it who was born With it?

_Garcia._ --'Tis true.

_Beltran._ --Then if you basely act, Although my son, no longer you will be A gentleman. So if your habits shame You here in town, an ancient crest will not Signify, nor noble ancestors serve. What is't report says to me? That your lies Are all the talk of Salamanca. Now, If't affronts noble or plebeian but To _tell_ him that he lies, what is't to lie Itself? If honorless I live the while On him who gave the lie I take not full Revenge--is your sword long enough or breast So stout that you esteem yourself all able To have revenge when all the city says You lie? Is't possible a man can have Such abject thoughts that unto vice he can Live subject without pleasure, without gain? A morbid pleasure have the sensual, The power of money draws the covetous; The taste of viands have the gluttonous; A purpose and a pastime hath the gambler; The homicide his hate, the thief his aim; Fame with ambition cheers the warrior; In short, doth every vice some pleasure give Or profit--but for lying, what remains But infamy and contempt?

Who could preach with more wit a brief sermon like this than Alarcon? It is no small honor to the dramatist born in Mexico that the great Corneille, who, if we may credit the biographers of Alarcon, partly translated and partly imitated _La Verdad Sospechosa_ in his famous _Menteur_, could avow that he would give two of his best plays to have invented the happy argument of the Spanish original. Molière and Voltaire were also among the admirers of the Spanish comedy, which Corneille at first judged to be the work of Lope de Vega. Of the general merits of Alarcon, the following estimate by his German critic, Schack, which we find in a Mexican notice of the dramatist, will doubtless suffice: "Happy in painting comic characters in order to chastise vice, as in the invention and development of heroes to make virtue adorable; rapid in action, sober in ornament; inferior to Lope in tender respect of feminine creations, to Moreto in liveliest comedy, to Firso in travesty, to Calderon in grandeur and stage effect, he excelled all of them in the variety and perfection of his figures, in the tact of managing them, in equality of style, in carefulness of versification, in correctness of language." To this large and discriminating praise we may add George Ticknor's comprehensive dictum: "On the whole, he is to be ranked with the very best Spanish dramatists during the best period of the National Theatre."

SOR JUANA INEZ DE LA CRUZ.

It would not be proper to dismiss from the list of Spanish-American dramatic writers Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, although the subjects to which this pious woman yielded her inventive imagination were mainly or wholly religious. She wrote, be it remembered, in that remarkable seventeenth century when a muse of religion walked through the scenes of the stage as well as through the gardens of the convent. Then were the patriarchs and apostles, the prophets and saints, the chief personages of a peculiar drama; and events and circumstances of the divine tragedy inspired such compositions as the Loas and Autos. It is upon one of these latter compositions that her merit as a dramatic writer rests; and we are glad to confirm in great part an opinion of her genius hitherto expressed by us, by here recalling the judgment of that eminent European critic of Spanish literature, Bouterwek, the more especially as our own Spanish scholar, Ticknor, seems to have inflicted such ungracious disparagement upon the subject of our notice: "Much as Inez de la Cruz was deficient in real cultivation," says Bouterwek, "her productions are eminently superior to the ordinary standard of female poetry.... The poems of Inez de la Cruz breathe a sort of masculine spirit. This poetic nun possessed more fancy and wit than sentimental enthusiasm, and whenever she began to invent her creations were on a bold and great scale. Her poems are of very unequal merit, and are all deficient in critical cultivation. But in facility of invention and versification Inez de la Cruz was _not inferior to Lope de Vega_; and yet she by no means courted literary fame.... In her dramatic works the vigor of her imagination is particularly conspicuous. The collection of her poems contains no comedies properly so-called, but it comprises a series of boldly conceived preludes (loas) full of allegorical invention, and it concludes with a long allegorical auto, which is _superior to any of the similar productions of Lope de Vega_. It is entitled _El Divino Narciso_, a name by which the author designates the heavenly bridegroom.... It would be impossible to give a brief and at the same time intelligible sketch of this extraordinary drama. With regard to composition, it is very unequal; in some respects offending by its bad taste, and in others charming by its boldness. Many of its scenes are so beautifully and romantically constructed that the reader is compelled to render homage to the genius of the poetess, while at the same time he cannot but regret the pitch of extravagance to which ideas really poetic are carried. There is one peculiarly fine scene, in which human nature, in the shape of a nymph, seeks her beloved, the real Narcissus, or the Christian Saviour." The pastoral passage, which in our notice of the writings of Sor Juana we laid before our readers, would seem to justify the best praises of our literary historian, Bouterwek. Ticknor, on the other hand, speaks of her as a remarkable woman, and not as a remarkable poetess; and, upon the whole, our thanks for the appreciative reburnishing of the ancient fame of an American genius--which, had it shone in Massachusetts three hundred years ago, would be deemed a very rare jewel among Northern scholars--are due rather to the European Bouterwek than the American Ticknor. The latter observes that she was born at Guipuzcoa; her Mexican biographer says at San Miguel de Nepantla, not far from the city of Mexico, one of whose convents she seems to have directed latterly. Time, place, the inferior standard of feminine culture, and the prevalence of a false poetic school, may account for Sor Juana's defects; for the rest, the issue (a large one) is between Bouterwek and Ticknor.

EDWARD GOROSTIZA.

After Alarcon, the principal lights of the actual Mexican stage are Gorostiza, Calderon, and Galvan; and, indeed, whatever original triumph that stage has enjoyed is almost if not quite limited to these few excellent though not glorious names. We cannot with propriety name that extraordinary woman, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, in the list of Mexico's dramatists, although, along with other poetry, she wrote some religious pieces in dramatic form. Nevertheless, the credit which remains to the literature of the country, after its few phenomenal names are omitted, is not inappreciable. Concerning Gorostiza, Madame Calderon de la Barca wrote: "Don José Eduardo Gorostiza, a native of Vera Cruz, is the son of a Spanish officer, and when very young went to Spain, where he was known politically as a liberal. He was distinguished as a writer of theatrical pieces, which have been and still are very popular. One of his pieces which we saw the other evening at the theatre--_Con Tigo Pan y Cebolla_ (With Thee, Bread and Onions)--is delightful." Let us add to Madame Calderon's brief notice that Gorostiza won the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the war against Napoleon; that in 1823, while an exile from Spain in London, he wrote for the _Edinburgh Review_; and that since then, as minister to England and to the United States, and as secretary of state and finance, he has been eminent in the politics of his native land. In 1836, he was made intendant-general of the army, and during the war between Mexico and the United States took an active and heroic part in the defence of Churubusco. His efforts as a director of the poor-house, as a friend of education, and as the founder of a house of correction, are also deemed worthy of record. He died in 1851, at the age of sixty-two.

The best known of Gorostiza's comedies are those called _The Intimate Friend_, _Last Year's Fashions_, _Don Dieguito_, and _Pardon for All_, the last being mentioned by his biographer as celebrated. In the play of _Don Dieguito_, which may serve as well as any other to exhibit the character of Gorostiza's plots, Don Anselmo, a rich uncle, sends his nephew and heir, Don Dieguito, to Madrid to complete his education. While there, Dieguito falls in love with Doña Adelaida, whose father, Don Cleto, is a lawyer. Don Anselmo goes to Madrid to attend the wedding of his nephew, but does not like the family of his son's _fiancée_, and, accordingly, he schemes to break off the match. The mother, Doña Maria, sees from a worldly point of view the great advantage of her daughter's marriage with Don Dieguito. But now Anselmo tells her that _he_ intends to marry, which excites her fear that his nephew will inherit nothing from him. She, therefore, proposes to her husband that Doña Adelaida shall marry the uncle, Anselmo, instead of the nephew, Dieguito. Don Simplicio, a friend of Don Cleto, endeavors to effect a general reconciliation of interests, and bring about the marriage of the young couple; but, finding that father and mother alike wish to break off the match, joins them in insulting the apparently hapless Dieguito. Don Anselmo at once perceives that his nephew has been fooled, and that the family of his betrothed would be glad to cast off Dieguito in order to capture his uncle's wealth. He concludes, therefore, to make his exit on the very day of the proposed marriage, taking with him his disenchanted nephew. When the day arrives, he announces that he has been ruined by the shipwreck of a vessel from Vera Cruz, and that he is compelled to return to his old business of selling pork, beans, chocolate, and sausages to make good his loss. Don Dieguito, though asked to return to his allegiance as a lover, declares that he is no fool, and prefers a wife who will not speculate at the expense of good faith, but will look after her children. As Don Anselmo has told the family of Doña Adelaida that his principal loss is in a cargo of chocolate, that spirited young lady vows she will not drink chocolate again; and the play ends in amusing recriminations.

FERNANDO CALDERON.

The next of our dramatists, Fernando Calderon, was born in 1809, and died at the age of thirty-six, having been a colonel, a state legislator, a magistrate, and the secretary of the government of Zacatecas, as well as an industrious writer. The most striking of his dramas are: _The Tourney_, _Anne Boleyn_, and _The Return of the Crusader_, which, says one of his admirers, are full of noble and chivalrous sentiments and spirited action. Calderon's talent was nothing if not dramatic; for even his lyrics, and especially his _Soldier of Liberty_, are characterized by a personal fire and animation. His plays, remarkable for warmth of sentiment, and his poems, chiefly lyrical, gained for him not only in Mexico, but in other Spanish-American republics, a degree of favor not often enjoyed by writers in the southern part of the New World. One of his most admired passages is the soliloquy of Isabella in _The Tourney_:

And this is life. Seeing the sable bier Profoundest cowardice the mortal moves, When is the tomb the sole asylum where True peace abides. Where is the life that knows Not weight of woe? For ever in torment, For ever in tears, so runs our human fate From infancy unto decrepit age. Child, man, and most unfortunate womankind, Pursue the magic and illusory shade Which they call happiness, yet never find. The gray-beard sad, complaining of his age, Youth would enjoy; but, imbecile, forgets The tortures that afflict his junior. Life is a fever, a remediless fever, It is a frenzy violent and mad. Alas! its pleasures pass us like a flash, Whence follows gloom of soul with rain of tears Yet ever springs desire and fervid hope To cheat our souls with what can never be. Care and vacuity, and ephemeral joy. These make themselves our poor reality. So fades our youth, and our declining life's A dismal light of undeception cast Upon the narrow confines of the tomb.... The black cloth ... and the coffin miserable ... Thus darkly flows the tide of life. Alas! My end draws near, for which my spirit hopes, As the wrecked sailor for a happy shore. O cause of all my mourning my heart's balm, Not thou, not even thou, wouldst me console: None grieve for one that is already dead. Albert! Albert! shalt thou o'er my grave Pour out thy tears until our patient souls Unite within the pure eternity.

With good reason is this thoughtful and feeling soliloquy prized by Calderon's countrymen, whose vicissitudes have taught them peculiar sympathy with the tristful mood to which he lends expression. The tone and style of the passage are tragic in a most dignified sense, and reflect much credit upon Mexican literature. A supplement to the views of mortality and eternity set forth in _The Tourney_ is contained in a fragment written by Calderon in 1825; and as it may interest a Northern public to know what a Mexican poet thinks of the future state, we extract from it these hopeful lines:

Cold and coward spirits Shun the thought of death With unbelieving fear, Vain-thinking that within the grave Have love and joy their end. Dullards! who believe not The eternity divine! The disembodied spirit Ascends to regions high Of freedom and of bliss, And love's sweet sentiment, A seed sown in our souls, Doubt not God's hand doth guard it And lead it up to him. The soul but breathes in love, Which is its essence and its food, And without love would die.

RODRIGUEZ GALVAN.

More praiseworthy, in some respects, than any of the modern poets of Mexico, is Rodriguez Galvan, the last of our trio of dramatists. He died in 1842, in his twenty-sixth year, after having without social advantages acquired a high reputation as a lyrical and dramatic writer. "At eleven years," says his biographer, "he was placed under the care of his uncle, in a book-store at the capital," and there his nightly studies made up for the impediments of his daily occupation, and "his happy disposition and love for work supplied the want of masters and fortune." An epical fragment entitled "The Fallen Angel," and his poems, "The Tomb," and "The Girandole," together with his dramas, "Muñoz" and "The Viceroy's Favorite," are mentioned as the most noted of his productions. A specimen of his dramatic style is the following piece of satire on the modern stage, from _El Angel de la Guarda_:

Let's think upon my comedy, and on Its plan. Hard, cruel hard, on all who are Romantic. Here's a coxcomb come from Rome Or Paris; next, an old man, ignorant, Foolish, his friend a most judicious fellow; A fine romantic maid who weeps and shrieks In Turkish; then, three hundred obscene gags To make the people laugh; a prudish dame Who speaks French badly. Here's the knot. And the conclusion? Why, a whistle from The second prompter. --Or, I will erect Like to a gallows a cadaverous drama Shock-full of hangings and adulteries, In which _the seven infants_ shall be shown The children of a king of Acapulco. This nauseous food I'll call a play-romance, And I'll divide it into four square parts, Which further I'll divide in five full acts, The scene in Aragon, the fifteenth century. My sources shall be dramas of Dumas And Hugo, the immoral ones of course. What does it matter? I translate them mine. A stupid fellow comes out and drinks in Half of a tub of poison--gives the rest Straight to his maid, because a vain old man Comes with a trumpet-tongue to blow and blow In his poor ears. The ignorant hind don't know For two hours whether he is dead or not, And in the place of calling upon God He makes a long discourse. This is the way They make our plays, and in this age of taste Calderon, Moreto, Alarcon, Lope, Are only mules; and in the theatre Their works shed slumber by the bucketful.

It would require, perhaps, an intimate knowledge of the Mexican stage as it was thirty years ago to appreciate the special application of these lines; but it is plain that the young dramatist conceived a genuine contempt for a bloodthirsty and iniquitous drama. What, then, must a writer of his promise and aspirations have felt regarding that more bitter melodrama acted all round him?--what must any poet with a tolerable amount of contemplative wisdom have thought of that political madness of which Mexico has been so long the victim? Certainly, it robbed them, as it robbed others, of peace and recompense; but war respects the stage even when it destroys better institutions, and it is probable that the dramatic culture of Mexico is as well preserved as any of which it can boast. To Galvan is ascribed the first effective production on the Mexican stage of Mexican subjects. Whether the following fable bears a more than ordinary social meaning, we cannot say; but it is an instance of the poet's lively manner:

THE SELFISH DOG.

With pike and lantern at sundown, A grim night-watchman of the town Follows a lean dog as he flees By order of the high police, Who persecute the dogs and tramps, And take up drinking, murdering scamps, But tolerate the robbers. Well, What matter? I've my tale to tell. The starveling, feeling insecure, Because a stranger, poor, demure, Said, "Feet, what do I want you for?" So, in a princely courtyard door, Without "Good-day!" or e'en explaining, "I must go in because it's raining," Or sending up his card at all, As etiquette requires on call, Or does not--really, I don't know-- He rudely entered. So I'd go Myself. But a cur thereabout Barked hard at him, "Get out! get out! This is a noble's palace, sir, A place not meet for starving cur." Our friend replies, "My fine-tailed brother, But for this night--" "No, no!" says t'other. "I am pursued!" "Then leave this ground." "I'm dying with hunger." "Wretched hound, How can a fine, superior person Live tail to tail with a base cur's son?" And insult after insult giving, He barks with fury past believing, This high-born, proud, patrician growler, And bullies the plebeian prowler. Well, the sad creature, turning tail, Escaped, for wonder, else would fail My story like a peacock shorn. Where now's my moral? Hark, nor scorn:

Soon after this a dog forlorn Lost himself in the chase, and met Some wolves whose teeth were sharply set, And quite prepared to munch and gobble him. All sorts of fearful fancies trouble him, When, in this plight, his eye sees plain in The kennel of the other canine. Lo, what an accident! But these Accidents pass for verities And mightily the public please. Now the patrician barks for aid, And t'other dog puts out his head, But, seeing 'tis the courtier, He shuts the door, that low-bred cur, And growls: "Stop there! didst ever see A dog of noble family With a poor cur keep company?" With this the hungry wolves arrive And eat the grandee dog alive.

Has the tale pleased you? No? And why? I've spent an hour and half to try, Hunting up rhymes--so scarce in Spanish. Some opulent fellow, proud and clannish Spelling through this little story (For reading's not a common glory Among the magnates of the day), Will, doubtless, furiously say: "See what sad insipidity!" But some poor dog in misery Will raise his head, perhaps, and sigh, "The simple fabulist don't lie." Now friend and critic both have I.

There is nothing in Galvan's story except his way of telling it, which is certainly vivacious; but we esteem it for some flashes of satirical meaning cast upon a state of society of whose animal life the "hungry dog" is so commonplace an object. Not, however, in his plays, which, if we may credit his Mexican critic, sometimes reveal a certain immaturity, did Galvan find his very happiest expression. He wrote the most touching and charming lyric which, after much search, we have been able to find in Mexican literature. It was, we are led to think, in 1842, when, as one of a "legation extraordinary" to South America, he sailed for Havana, there to die of fever, that he wrote the tender "Farewell to Mexico" which his countrymen love to repeat:

Upon the deck with longing I watch the lonely main, And on my fate I ponder And muse in doubt and pain To thee I yield my fortunes, O Holy Maid above! Adieu, my own dear country, Adieu, thou land of love!

Far in the western waters The red sun hides its light, And now at last 'tis buried Beneath the billows' might. The roaring sea announces The weary day's decline: Adieu, beloved country, Adieu, thou land of mine!

AVELLAÑEDA AND MILANES.

There is more of this excellent lyric, but we let it pass in order to bring to a moment's attention a few of the most distinguished Cuban and South American dramatic writers. We nowhere discern the evidence of a luxurious dramatic growth among our tropical contemporaries; but as, in the most advanced and varied circles of our own literature, the drama holds but an inferior modern regard, we cannot deem this fact as peculiarly indicative. Almost chief among the writers of Cuba is Doña Avellañeda, to whom we owe the novels of _Sab_, the _Baroness of Youx_, the American romance of _Guatimozin_, and the _Undine of the Blue Lake_. She wrote four dramas, one of which, her tragedy of _Alfonso Munio_, is said to have made her famous. For one of her poems she received a crown of gold laurels from the lyceum of Madrid, and her Catholic devotion was signally manifested by her poem of the _Cross_ and her Biblical drama of _Saul_. Surely, a most prolific, industrious, and vigorous writer was La Avellañeda, as her countrymen admiringly call her, notwithstanding her Isabellist attachments. To the name of Avellañeda let us add that of José Jacinto Milanes as among the ornaments of Cuban literature. His drama of _Conde Alarcos_, founded upon the celebrated Spanish tradition of the name, is noted by Ticknor for its passionate energy. Milanes seemed to delight in the themes and scenes of his own country; but his usefulness as a writer was cut short, we are informed, by a wasting infirmity.

SANSON, MAGARINOS, AND MARQUEZ.

Placido Sanson, Magarinos Cervantes, and Señor Marquez are among the most conspicuous South American dramatists we can now call to mind. Magarinos Cervantes was born in Montevideo in 1825, and, besides the novels of _Caramuru_ and _The Star of the South_, has written the dramas of _Vasco Nuñez_ and the _Two Passions_, besides the comedy of _Percances Matrimoniales_. He was one of the principal editors of an artistic and scientific cyclopædia printed in Madrid, and was once described as the youngest and most productive of well-known South American writers. Sanson, who was born in Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, 1815, has written ten or eleven dramas, among them _Abenhamet_ and _Herman Peraza_, and has been an exceedingly industrious editor and translator. Señor Marquez, who was noticed fifteen years ago as a young poet of Lima, but twenty-three years of age, yet of exceeding promise, was known as the author of a drama which derived its title from the beautiful legend of _The Flower of Abel_.

This flower of dramatic poetry, as its warm admirers regard it, contains a charming and even what we might call a religious moral. One of the best known of its Peruvian critics described it as among the most spiritual creations of the day; a defense of innocence and charity in a heroic combat against the worldly selfishness which devours us; and Markham, to whose good taste we are indebted for information respecting the ancient and modern literature of Peru, affirms that its plot is original and ingenious, and that it is full of good passages. Abel, the first victim of selfishness, is described as "the mysterious messenger of celestial compassion," an angel of innocence. The innocent daughter of a proud and aged veteran becomes the possessor of the angel's flower of Abel--in other words, the blossom of innocence. This the heavenly visitor presents to her in a vision, warning her never to lose nor abandon it, nor let it leave its place in her bosom. But, eventually, the fair girl loses the flower, and wanders far and wide over the world in search of it, passing through many dangers, for she is unprotected and very beautiful. At length, she reaches her mother's grave, and, wearied and imploring, falls at the feet of an image of the Blessed Virgin, in whose hands she once more beholds her lost Flower of Abel. Prostrate before the altar of the Queen of Heaven, the spirit of Elena abandons the body, and is conducted to the skies by Abel, who recovers the mysterious flower and the pure soul of the maiden.

Reflecting that our own American dramatic literature can claim not many successful writers, the portion of Spanish America, in respect to the dramatists we have described, cannot be deemed contemptible. We have much yet to learn of our sister republics, painful though their problem be to democratic thinkers; and we cannot look through a more necessary and suggestive medium than their literature to become acquainted with their moral capacities and possibilities.

ALBERTUS MAGNUS VINDICATED.

A most striking embellishment to the text of a literary article is a deep row of citations at the foot of the page. The effect may be likened to that of a broad trimming of lace to articles of dress. A lace of true point enhances the rich appearance of the costliest tissue, and a common stuff may be so set off by a Nottingham trimming as to attract the gaze of all who are passing. If unable to distinguish the true from the false, the gazer is astonished by the display.

Struck by the deep trimming of an article that appeared in a recent number of the _American Journal of the Medical Sciences_, we examined it thoroughly from the beginning to the end. After perusal, we laid it down with a warm recollection of the speech of the country member in the Wisconsin legislature, who, after listening to an eloquent oration filled with classical quotations, arose, and said: "Mr. Speaker, the honorable gentleman has roamed with Romulus, soaked with Socrates, ripped with Euripides, and canted with old Cantharides, but what has all that to do with the laws of Wisconsin?"

It would, however, be entirely out of place in us to call attention to this article, were it not for a most extraordinary sentence which it contains, and upon this we feel bound by many considerations, amongst which our reverence for truth and love of propriety, to make some observations. The sentence referred to is as follows:

"About the year 1240, at the solicitation of an inquisitive priest, Albertus Magnus, the Bishop of Ratisbon, wrote a very unepiscopal work on the _Secrets of Women_. It contains much prurient matter which will hardly bear translation, and yet was deemed worthy of a commentary by so devout an ecclesiastic as St. Thomas Aquinas."[157]

In this sentence, in which two great and good men are thus spoken of, we maintain that there are at least three glaring misstatements: the first, that the work _De Secretis Mulierum_ was written by the Bishop of Ratisbon, Albertus Magnus, about the year 1240; the second, that Albertus Magnus wrote the work--positive affirmation of that fact, as if there were no doubt of its authenticity; and the third, that St. Thomas Aquinas ever wrote a commentary on it.

_First Misstatement._--That the work was written about the year 1240, by Albertus Magnus, Bishop of Ratisbon, and therefore that it was the production of a bishop, although very unepiscopal in its nature. We premise a short sketch of his life, compiled from the Protestant Cave (_Historia Literaria_, Sæculum Scholasticum, §1260): Albertus, surnamed the Great, a German, was born in the year 1205. He studied at Padua. In the year 1221, he joined the Friar Preachers. He was considered the greatest theologian, philosopher, and mathematician of his day. He excelled especially in mathematics. In the year 1236, on the death of the general of the order, he governed the same for two years as vicar. He afterward became provincial of his order in Germany, fixing his residence at Cologne, where also he taught with great applause. In the beginning of the year 1260, he was appointed Bishop of Ratisbon by Alexander IV., and was obliged, against his will, to undertake that responsibility. He held the same for only three years, when, wearied out by its duties, he resigned the dignity, and returned to his beloved monastery of Cologne, where he spent his old age in the delights of study. He died in the year 1280. Such is the substance of Cave's biography. Although there is some doubt as to the date of his birth, all agree that he was made bishop in the year 1260, and that during that time he had enough to do in the affairs of his diocese. The work in question, written about the year 1240, cannot, therefore, be rightly styled unepiscopal. Besides, all the editions that attribute the work to Albertus say that it was written by him whilst stopping in Paris. Thus, in the notes added by some unknown author to the editions of 1601 and 1637 these words are found: "Ego Albertus morans Parisiis"--"I, Albert, staying in Paris." The first words of the text are, "Dilecto sibi," etc. As a bishop, we have no record of his ever having been in Paris, much less stopping there for a time. As a very old man, it is said that he made the journey once more from Cologne. After resigning his episcopate, he always lived and taught at Cologne. We may therefore, with justice, put down the word _unepiscopal_ as inaccurate.

_Second Misstatement._--The positive affirmation of the fact that Albertus Magnus was the author of the work on the _Secrets of Women_. Admitting that our examination has not been as exhaustive as it might, owing to the want of facility in consulting many authorities we should have desired to, what we shall produce we hope will be sufficient to place beyond doubt this one fact, that, if the work is not wholly to be rejected as that of Albertus Magnus, it must at least be granted that it is very doubtful. Our opinion is that it is wholly supposititious. We have not found a single authority which does not admit that it is doubtful whether Albertus Magnus was the author of it; and the vast majority of critics and several intrinsic arguments prove that his name, as the famous one of the age, was affixed to it to give it notoriety. These propositions we will now substantiate by negative and positive arguments, some extrinsic and others intrinsic, drawn from the character of the author and of the writing in question.

All admit that the authenticity of the work is called in question. We have consulted at least eighteen distinct authorities in matters of bibliography, and have not found one making the positive affirmation of the fact; and some of our authorities, as, for instance, Cave and Fabricius, refer to every critic of note up to their time (Cave to no less than three hundred and seventy-two authors). Almost all positively deny that the work belongs to Albertus Magnus. Some make no mention of it at all when speaking of his life and labors. Others say in general that many writings have been ascribed to Albertus, in order to give them notoriety, which, however, must be rejected as supposititious. Thus, the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, art. "Albert," vol. i., p. 171, says: "A detailed list of Albert's works, the genuineness of many of which it is impossible to determine, is to be found in the _Scriptores Ord. Prædicatorum_ of Quétif and Echard." Moreri, in his grand _Dictionnaire Historique_, has nothing at all about the book, and yet he speaks at length of Albertus and his works. Appleton's _American Encyclopædia_ makes no mention of it; neither does Hallam, who would not have passed by such a book, for he speaks expressly of Albertus's influence on medical studies. The Regensburg _Universal Realen Encyclopedie_, edition 1850, art. "Albertus Magnus," says: "Sehr viele Schrifter wurden ihm später fälschlich beigelegt"--"Very many works were at a later period falsely ascribed to him."

These authorities are, however, purely negative. We shall now bring forward the positive proofs for the same fact: _a._ Critics. _b._ Brunet. _c._ Encyclopædias. _d._ Historians. _e._ Biographies. _f._ Editions.

_a._ _Critics._--It will be enough to bring forward Fabricius, Boyle, and Cave, all unexceptionable authorities. Fabricius, Lipsiensis Professor, _Bibliotheca Latina mediæ et infimæ ætatis_, after referring to all the subjects treated of in the twenty-one folio volumes of the Lyons edition, the only complete one ever published, speaks of the works which must be rejected, and among them he places "_Liber de Secretis Secretorum, sive de Secretis Mulierum, sæpe editus sed suppositus Alberto, qui plus simplici vice in eo citatur_"--"The book on the _Secret of Secrets_, or on the _Secrets of Women_, often published but fathered on Albertus, who is more than once quoted in it." Boyle certainly will not be accused of any partiality for the great Catholic doctors of scholasticism. In a long article on Albertus Magnus, he has these words: "I shall particularly mention some falsities that have been reported about him. It has been said that he delivered women, and it was taken very ill that a man of his profession should do the office of a midwife. The ground of this story is that there was a book under the name of Albertus Magnus, containing several instructions for midwives, and so much knowledge of their art that it seemed he could not have been so well skilled in that trade if he had not exercised it. But the apologists of Albertus maintained that he is not the author of that book, nor of that _De Secretis Mulierum_." He here refers to a note in which he explains as follows: "The book _De Secretis Mulierum_, wrongfully ascribed to Albertus, is the work of one of his disciples, who is called Henricus de Saxonia, with whose name it has been printed more than once. Here are Simler's words: '_Henricus de Saxonia, Alberti Magni discipuli, liber de Secretis Mulierum impressus Augustæ_,' A.D. 1498, per Antonium Surg.; and in the _Catalogue of Thuanus's Library_ you will find, '_Henrici de Saxonia, de Secretis Mulierum, de virtutibus herbarum, lapidum quorumdam animalium aliorumque_, 12mo, Francof., 1615.' It is plain that Albertus's name, more famous than that of Henry, gave occasion to that supposition." Thus far Boyle.

Cave in his _Historia Literaria_ makes no mention of the work as belonging to Albertus.

_b._ Brunet, the great authority on books and editions, in his _Manuel du Libraire_, says: "_De Secretis Mulierum_, opus 1478, in 4o, première édition de cet ouvrage, _mal-à-propos attribué_ à Albert-le-grand"--"_De Secretis Mulierum_, 1478, 4to, first edition of this work, wrongfully attributed to Albert the Great."

_c._ _Encyclopædias._--_Edinburgh Encyclopædia_, conducted by David Brewster, edition of 1832, art. "Albertus Magnus:" "The treatise _De Secretis Mulierum_, etc., generally ascribed to him, was written by one of his disciples, Henricus de Saxonia." _Penny Encyclopædia_, London, 1833: "There are also collections of supposed _secrets_ which have erroneously been published under his name; among others, one _De Secretis Mulierum et Naturæ_, printed at Amsterdam, in 1655, which is believed to have been written by one of his disciples." _Chambers's Encyclopædia_ rejects the work also as supposititious.

_d._ _Historians._--Natalis Alexander, _Hist. Ecc._, Sæculum XIII., on "Albertus Magnus," concludes his notice thus: "Liber _De Mirabilibus_ vanitate et superstitione refertus, Alberto Magno suppositus est, inquit Debrio, _Disquisitionum Magicarum_, cap. 3. Librum _De Secretis Mulierum_ nec ipsius est nec docti cujuspiam esse censuerunt Medici Lovanienses, ut refert Molanus in _Bibliotheca Sacra_"--"The book _De Mirabilibus_, filled with nonsense and superstition, has been falsely ascribed to Albertus Magnus, says Debrio in his work _Essays on Magic_, cap. 3. The Medical Faculty of the University of Louvain gave as their opinion that the book _De Secretis Mulierum_ is not his nor that of any learned man, as Molanus relates in his _Bibliotheca Sacra_."

Raynoldus, in his _Cronaca_, the great continuation of the _Annals of Baronius_, under the year 1260, paragraph 15th, says: "Hic vero lectorem diligenter monitum velim plura passim Alberti Magni nomine scripta circumferri, quæ ab ipso nunquam emanasse exploratum est; cum magica superstitione sint fœdata, sed ad conciliandum rei vel frivolæ vel scelestæ auctoritatem, piissimi et sapientis viri nomine subornati simplicibus obtruduntur"--"We wish here particularly to warn the reader that there are many writings extant attributed to Albertus Magnus, which, it is clear, never emanated from his pen; for they are filled with magical superstition; but to gain some authority for a trifling or wicked work, they are palmed off on the ignorant under the name of a most pious and learned man." Prof. Hefele, the German historian, in an article on Albertus Magnus in Wetzer and Welte's _Kirchen-Lexicon_, concludes thus: "Dem Albertus sind viele Bücher unterschoben worden, z. B. _De Alchymia_ und _De Secretis Mulierum_, u. dgl."--"Many books have been fathered on Albert, _e.g._ _De Alchymia_ and _De Secretis Mulierum_, etc." Cantri, the Italian historian, in his _Universal History_, expresses the same opinion in his chapter on the "Natural and Occult Sciences."

_e._ _Biographies._--Feller, in his _Biographie Universelle_, says: "Enfin, on a lui attribué de ridicules recueils des _Secrets_, auquels il n'a pas eu la moindre part. On y trouve même des indécences et des recherches aussi vaines que peu dignes d'une religeux"--"Finally, a ridiculous collection of _Secrets_ have been attributed to him, with which he had nothing to do. Even obscene things are found in this collection, and investigations as frivolous as they are unworthy of a religious." The French and German biographies consulted by us agree in this same opinion.

_f._ _Editions._--Dr. Atkinson, in his _Medical Biography_, mentions all the editions of the work from the first in 1478 to 1760. The first edition, 1478, is without the name of the place in which it was printed; and of it we have seen the judgment of Brunet. The editions of 1480 and 1481 are without the name of either printer or place. The edition of 1484, Augustæ, comes out with Henry of Saxony as its author. Those of 1488 and 1498 also. The earliest editions, therefore, cannot be quoted as making Albertus the author of the work. It was only the editions of 1600 and those which followed that ascribed the work to Albertus, and they were almost all printed in Germany or Holland. Does it not look as if party spirit had much to do with these editions? The only complete edition of the works of Albertus is that of the Rev. A. P. Peter Jammy, S.T.D., in twenty-one folio volumes, printed at Lyons, 1651. This edition contains no mention of the book.

In the authorities thus far quoted, we have studiously avoided bringing forward any but those which are universally admitted as standard. But even should the extrinsic testimony thus far given not have been all on our side, we think the intrinsic evidence would be quite sufficient to settle the question. To this point we will now briefly direct attention. These intrinsic arguments are drawn from the work itself and from the well-known character of Albertus Magnus. The book or document was written somewhere about the year 1240 or 1250, and was first printed in the year 1478. Its composition shows evidently that it was intended only for the person to whom it was directed; that it was merely a letter to a friend in answer to an obscure question proposed by him; in fine, that it was not a treatise intended for preservation, but merely a familiar correspondence on the part of the writer to satisfy, as far as he was able, the inquiries of his friend. Naudé, the critic, makes use of these two proofs to show that Albertus could not have written the work. First, Albertus did not name himself in the beginning of the work. He who commented upon it affirmed without any proof that Albertus was its author. The text begins with these words: "Delecto sibi in Christo socio et amico," etc.--"To his beloved companion and friend in Christ. In the notes added to the edition of 1601 and 1637 these words have been placed as a title: "Ego Albertus morans Parisiis"--"I, Albert, staying in Paris." The title has been affixed gratuitously and arbitrarily. The work is therefore anonymous. Second, Albertus could not have written it, for his own authority is often made use of. We must remember that the document in question was only a letter from one friend to another; and it certainly would be strange for a man to quote his own well-known works at any time, much less in a familiar correspondence. If he introduced them at all, it would be in some such form as this: "as you will find in my work on," etc. The author of this letter quotes Albertus's authority at least five times. We have verified the following in the edition of 1637, Argentorati: Page 49: "That this may be understood, we must note that there are four states of the moon, according to Albertus in his treatise _De Statu Solis et Lunæ_. Page 69, showing the impossibility of a universal deluge, the author says: "And we must know that these things are not imaginary, because Albertus, on the _Action and Effect of Lightning_, mentions," etc. Page 97, "For Albertus mentions just as," etc. Page 109, "As Albertus says in his book on," etc. We do not argue from the fact of the authority of Albertus being used to prove that he could not have been the author, but from the manner in which that authority is introduced. The reader will judge for himself if our inference be correct. But to us the convincing proof of the falsity of the work is to be drawn from the character of Albertus himself and the subject matter of the work. The testimony of antiquity has brought him down to us as venerable for his piety and goodness as he was illustrious for learning. He was truly a good man. He was really an exceedingly learned man. The work ascribed to him could have been written by neither a good man nor even a moderately well-educated man. There are principles laid down in it which contradict the first ideas of morality and inculcate unbridled license. And shall the well-known works on morality of the great doctor not be allowed to cry out in his defence? Shall we say that he has not only glaringly contradicted himself, but become the open advocate of immorality? When the illustrious Protestant critic Cave tells us that Albertus was considered the greatest theologian, philosopher, and mathematician of his day, he does but re-echo the voice of each past generation; and shall we say that he could have written the work in question, so full of nonsense and superstition, and contrasting so strongly with his other writings? Is not the opinion of the Medical Faculty of the University of Louvain more just when they maintain that the work _De Secretis Mulierum_ is neither that of Albertus nor indeed of any learned man at all? These few reflections should be enough to settle the matter. We could bring forward other and far more convincing reasons in vindication of this great doctor; but from what has been said, we think we are justified in placing the positive affirmation of the writer ascribing the work to Albertus Magnus as a glaring misstatement--as blot number two.

The third misstatement was that St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a commentary on it. We challenge the writer to bring a single authority to prove that fact. We never heard or saw anything about it before. None of the great standard critics ever hint at it; so, not to lose patience, we affirm that it is the most glaring misstatement made--blot number three, in almost as many lines.

The reader might here naturally ask, Where, then, did the writer obtain any information on which to base his so positive statements, so injurious to the characters of two justly celebrated benefactors of the human race? We have met with but one phrase which could have suggested the lines in question, and they are taken from a writer who should not be brought forward as authority in a matter of criticism; for the scurrilous, filthy, and flippant manner in which he speaks of authors and books renders him unworthy of an answer. This author is Dr. James Atkinson, who published a _Medical Biography_, one volume, A and B, London, 1834. After admitting that the authorship of the book _De Secretis Mulierum_ is a contested matter, he has these words: "It may be a question whether the editions (of which I have one in Gothic characters) of this _Libellus de Secretis Mulierum_ were not originally written by Albertus, and published with a commentary (which is annexed to it in my edition) by St. Thomas Aquinas (although usually 'non est inventus') or Henricus de Saxonia. Is it possible?" The character of the author Atkinson, as manifested in his work, and these words themselves, are a sufficient answer to any proof to be drawn from his authority. We must say candidly that these are the only words we could find even to suggest the remarkable lines we have quoted in the beginning of this article; and we conclude that we might have hoped for the sincerity of Atkinson in one who shows that, if he has tried to read much, he has read neither wisely nor well.

FOOTNOTE:

[157] The citation is from _Medical Bibliography_. By James Atkinson. London. 1854.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN COUNCILS.

From the Original Documents, to the close of the Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325. By Charles Joseph Hefele, D.D., Bishop of Rottenburg, formerly Professor of Theology in the University of Tübingen. Translated from the German, and edited by William R. Clark, M.A. Oxon., Prebendary of Wells and Vicar of Taunton. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 38 George Street. 1871. New York: The Catholic Publication House, 9 Warren Street.

The merits of Dr. Hefele's great but still unfinished work are well known and universally appreciated. Certain portions of it rise to the excellence of a masterpiece, and really exhibit a genius almost, if not quite, equal to that which is shown in the _Athanasius_ of Möhler and the _History of the Arians_ by Dr. Newman. We refer especially to the parts treating of the Arian and semi-Arian controversies, and of the history of the Council of Constance, with the other synods preceding and connected with it. We cannot, however, consider the work of Dr. Hefele as faultless. In our opinion, he has signally failed in his treatment of the celebrated cases of Liberius and Honorius. In the present volume there are, as it appears to us, two manifest errors in regard both to fact and doctrine. The first one is found in the statement that confirmation by a schismatical or heretical bishop is invalid, and was judged to be so by Pope Stephen and the bishops of his time. The second is the assertion that the baptism of the Paulianists was rejected because of the heresy professed by them, and not because they had vitiated the baptismal formula. It is strange that so learned a professor could not see that, if baptism in the name of the Trinity was made invalid by the fact that the Paulianists understood by the terms Father, Son, and Holy Ghost something different from the true, Catholic sense of the church, the baptism of the Arians, and of all sorts of Unitarians, would be made invalid by the same reason. Almost all German authors have a tone and an air as if everything has to be proved from the beginning anew, and this proof sharply criticised by an infidel professor in the next room. Dr. Hefele has this air about him whenever he writes about the constitutive principles of the Catholic Church, and only loses it when he has fairly plunged into his subject and become carried away by it. There is, moreover, a perceptible, though not very deep, tinge of what we may call ante-Vatican theology in the introduction, although one passage has been corrected by the author since the council. The learned and illustrious author was always animated by an orthodox and pious spirit, which he has manifested by a truly apostolic exercise of his episcopal authority in sustaining and enforcing the decisions of the Council of the Vatican. Notwithstanding the accidental defects of his great work, it is a monument not merely of ecclesiastical learning, but of sound Catholic doctrine, in which the supremacy of the Holy See, and the justice of its cause as against all heretics, schismatics, and rebels, are maintained with victorious logic and overwhelming evidence. Its critical character makes it especially valuable for those who are studying the history and constitution of the church, and we are, therefore, sincerely glad that one volume has been translated into English and published, and can only hope that the others may follow.

The translation has been made by a Protestant dignitary and published by a Protestant firm, as the title at the head of this notice has already informed our readers. This seems rather odd. We are glad to see a taste for works like this arising in the educated world, but can scarcely understand what could induce a Protestant, sincerely and firmly attached to his own doctrine, to promote their circulation. The author's motives are, however, his own affair, and the affair of his own ecclesiastical connection. We have only to criticise the manner in which he has done his work, and for that we are bound to accord him great praise. Most judiciously, and to our very great satisfaction, he has refrained from giving us his own opinions in prefaces or notes, and has left Bishop Hefele in the state in which he found him of pure, unadulterated text. The translation is undoubtedly substantially correct, and, so far as we have seen, exact and accurate in detail, while at the same time it is smooth, readable English. We have noticed only one mistranslation, and that is one which is wholly indefensible. This is the substitution of ROMAN CATHOLIC for CATHOLIC. We protest against this alteration of Bishop Hefele's language, and condemn it as contrary to literary honesty, and a real falsification of the text. The volume is admirably printed, and is for sale at The Catholic Publication House, and we most cordially recommend it to the attention of all students of ecclesiastical history who are unable to read the work in German or French.

THE PRIEST ON THE MISSION. A Course of Lectures on Missionary and Parochial Duties. By Frederick, Canon Oakeley, etc. London: Longmans & Co. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1871.

Whoever has the happiness of knowing Canon Oakeley will think he sees him and hears him talking when he reads this book. Canon Oakeley was well known many years ago as a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and one of the most distinguished of the brilliant band of converts from that university. As a Catholic priest, he has been one of the most laborious and successful among the parochial clergy of London. His long experience and eminently practical mind make him unusually well fitted for writing a work like the present. It is full of admirable directions and suggestions, among which those on preaching especially attracted our attention. Canon Oakeley's very remarkable merits as a writer are too well known to need our commendation. The style of the present volume is well worthy of the venerable author's best days, and makes the book delightful reading. We think it is one which even the most experienced pastors will find useful and interesting, and which will be found to be of the highest value to young clergymen and ecclesiastical students.

CATHOLIC HYMNS AND CANTICLES, TOGETHER WITH A COMPLETE SODALITY MANUAL. By Rev. Alfred Young. Sixth edition. New York: The Catholic Publication House. 1871.

Father Young's hymn-book, well known to many of our schools and confraternities for the past eight years, is now enlarged by the addition of twenty-four hymns to its first edition. The best thing we can say of the collection is that, of the one hundred and thirty-one hymns which it contains, not more than half a dozen are beyond the capacity or unsuited to the tastes of the youth for whom it was designed. The majority of the melodies are original, and not to be found in any other book of the kind. Every season and festival of the year is represented by a choice selection of appropriate hymns, and the present edition is enriched with the popular congregational hymns sung in the church of the Paulists during Lent, and at the meetings of their Rosary and Christian Doctrine Societies. We have no hesitation in saying that it is the most complete and satisfactory hymn-book for our schools and sodalities that has been issued in the English language.

AMERICAN RELIGION. By John Weiss. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1871.

Precisely what it was that Mr. Weiss proposed to himself in writing the series of essays which he dignifies by the title of "American Religion," we do not find it easy to say. He is one of those more unhappy admirers of Mr. Emerson who, in paying him the ready tribute of a more or less perfect imitation of the style of his speech and the manner of his thought, have so far beggared themselves as to leave their readers in doubt as to what their own thinking and their own statement might have been, had they in fact retained that individuality the rights of which it seems now only a part of their imitation to assert. Mr. Emerson's style, which is the fit expression of the character of his mind, and in its way perfection, has the unfortunate peculiarity of being so mannered that the least of his disciples can successfully, and apparently unconsciously, travesty it. Just what it was, therefore, that Mr. Weiss had in his mind concerning the new religion which he desires to see adapted to the supposed needs of America, we do not know; but through the fog in which his readers are perforce doomed to flounder, it seems as if he believes that the three thousand miles of sea-water which lie between his native land and the Old World were a sufficient layer of regeneration for those born on the hither side of it. The sense of sin, the need of an atonement, the efficacy of prayer, are effete ideas which have served their purpose in the past, but which an American citizen is better without. Why should Yankee Doodle, who, as all the world knows, is the latest and fullest expression of what Mr. Weiss likes to call the "Divine Immanence," bewail sins which are after all either purely imaginary or the result of a defective organization for which he is not to blame; or think himself in need of a mediator with an offended God, when the real truth is that he has only to step up to the nearest square inch of looking-glass to behold the Divinity in himself and settle all outlying accounts by word of mouth? Perhaps we do Mr. Weiss an injustice, and, in the twelve essays which form this volume, he may have embodied more and better ideas than the only one which a tolerably attentive reading has enabled us to gather from them. But to us his book seems likely to be as barren of suggestion to those who would willingly agree with him as it is to ourselves. Its prevailing cloudiness is here and there broken in upon by a sort of inane audacity of expression when he refers to our Lord and his miracles; but otherwise it offers an unbroken uniformity of platitude. It betrays, too, an amusing ignorance of all modes of thought alien to either the orthodoxy or the rationalism of New England, the provincialism of which is in very pretty keeping with the significant title which Mr. Weiss has chosen for his work.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XIII., No. 78.--SEPTEMBER, 1871.[158]

THE REFORMATION NOT CONSERVATIVE.[159]

Dr. Krauth is a man highly esteemed in his own denomination, and, though neither very original nor profound, is a man of more than ordinary ability and learning, well versed in Lutheran theology, and, we presume, a trustworthy representative of it as contained in the Lutheran symbolical books, and held by the more conservative members of the Lutheran Church--a church, or sect rather, of growing importance in our country, in consequence of the large migration hither from Germany and the north of Europe, and in some respects the most respectable of all the churches or sects born of the Protestant Reformation, or, rather, the Protestant revolt and rebellion against the church of God. Yet he will excuse us if we refuse to follow him step by step in his exposition of the Lutheran theology, for all that is true in it we have in the teaching of the Catholic Church, without the errors and falsehoods Luther mingled with it. It were a waste of time to study it, unless we were called upon to refute it in detail, which we are not.

That there is much that is true mingled with much more that is false in Lutheran theology, we do not dispute, and we readily admit that Dr. Krauth means to hold, and in his way does hold, most of the fundamental principles, if not dogmas, of Christianity; but this is no more than we might say of any other system of false theology, or of any heathen religion or superstition, ancient or modern, civilized or barbarous. There is no pagan religion, if we analyze it and trace it to its fountain, in which we cannot detect most, if not all, of the great primary truths of the Christian religion, or the great principles which underlie the dogmas and precepts of the Catholic Church, and which could have been obtained only from the revelation made by God himself to our first parents before their expulsion from the garden. Yet what avails the truth false religion conceals, mingled as it is with the errors that turn it into a lie? It serves, whether with the lettered and polished Greek and Roman or the rude, outlying barbarian, only as the basis of barbarous superstitions, cruel, licentious, and idolatrous rites, and moral abominations. The fundamental ideas or principles of civilized society are retained in the memory of the most barbarous nations and tribes, yet are they none the less barbarous for that. They lack order, subordination; neither their intelligence nor their will is disciplined and subjected to law; and their appetites and passions, unrestrained and untamed, introduce disorder into every department of life, and compel intelligence and will, reason itself, to enter their ignoble service, and as abject slaves to do their bidding. Civilization introduces the element of order, establishes the reign of law in the individual, in the family, in the state, in society, which is not possible without a religion true enough to enlighten the intellect, and powerful enough over conscience to restrain the passions within their proper bounds, and to bend the will to submission.

All Protestant sects hold much of truth, but, like the heathen religions, they hold it in disorder, out of its normal relations and connections, out of its unity and catholicity, and consequently no one of them is strong enough to recover the element of order, and re-establish and maintain the reign of law in any of the several departments of life, spiritual or secular; for the very essence of both consists in rejecting catholicity, the only source of order. We therefore make no account of the principles, truths, or even Catholic dogmas retained by the various Protestant churches or sects from Catholic tradition. Held as they are out of unity, out of their normal relations, and mingled with all sorts of errors and fancies, they lose their virtue, become the basis of false religion and false morality, pervert instead of enlightening reason, and mislead, weaken, and finally destroy conscience. They are insufficient to preserve faith and the worship of God, and naturally tend to revive in a lettered nation the polished heathenism of Greece and Rome. Their impotence is seen in the prevailing disorder in the whole Protestant world, and especially in the singular delusion of modern society, that the loss of Catholic truth, Catholic authority, of spirituality, is a progress in light, liberty, religion, and civilization--a delusion which counts the revolutions, the civil commotions, the wars between the people and the government, between class and class, and capital and labor, the insurrections and terrible social disorders of the last century and the present, only as so many evidences of the marvellous advance of the modern world in freedom, intelligence, religion, and Christian morals. Is not this the delusion that goeth before and leadeth to destruction?

Dr. Krauth has not advanced so far, or rather descended so low, as have some of his Protestant brethren. He has strong conservative instincts, and still retains a conviction that order is necessary, and that without religious faith and conscience order is not possible. He has a dim perception of the truth, that unless there is something in religion fixed, permanent, and authoritative, even religion cannot meet the exigencies of society or the needs of the soul; but, a child of the Reformation, and jealous of the honor of his parentage, he thinks it necessary to maintain that, if religion must be fixed and permanent, it must at the same time be progressive; authoritative, and yet subject to the faithful, who have the right to resist or alter it at will. Hence he tells us, page viii., "The church problem is to attain a Protestant Catholicity, or a Catholic Protestantism," and seeks to establish for Lutheranism the character of being a "conservative reformation." The learned doctor may be a very suitable professor of theology in a Lutheran theological seminary, or a proper professor of intellectual and moral philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, but he seems either not to have mastered the categories or to have forgotten them. Contradictory predicates cannot be affirmed of the same subject. The Lutheran Reformation and conservatism belong to different categories. That only can be a conservative reform of the church that is effected by the church herself or by her authority, and which leaves her authority and constitution intact, by no means the case with the Lutheran Reformation, which was a total subversion of the constitution of the church and the denial of her authority. In the sense of the author, conservative reformation implies a contradiction in terms.

Logicians, at least those we have had for masters, tell us that of contradictories one must be false. If there were ever two terms each the contradictory of the other, they are _Catholic_ and _Protestant_. One cannot be a Catholic without denying Protestantism, or a Protestant without denying Catholicity. "Protestant Catholicity" or "Catholic Protestantism" is as plainly a contradiction in terms as a square circle or a circular square. If Catholicity is true, Protestantism is false, for it is simply the denial of Catholicity; and if the Protestant denial of Catholicity is true or warranted, then is there nothing catholic, no catholicity, and consequently no catholic Protestantism. Dr. Krauth has, we doubt not, a truth floating before his mind's eye, but he fails to grasp it, or to consider to what it is applicable. "The history of Christianity," he says, page vii., "in common with all genuine history, moves under the influence of two generic ideas: the conservative, which desires to secure the present by fidelity to the results of the past; the progressive, which looks out in hope to a better future. Reformation is the great harmonizer of the true principles. Corresponding with conservatism, reformation, and progress, are the three generic types of Christianity; and under these _genera_ all the species are but shades, modifications, or combinations, as all hues arise from three primary colors. Conservatism without progress produces the Romish and Greek type of the church; progress without conservatism runs into revolution, radicalism, and sectarianism; reformation is antithetical to both--to passive persistence in wrong or passive endurance of it, and to revolution as a mode of relieving wrong." That is, reformation preserves its subject while correcting its aberrations, and effects its progress without its destruction, which, if the subject is corruptible and reformable, and the reform is effected by the proper authorities and by the proper means, is no doubt true; and in this case reformation would stand opposed alike to immobility and revolution or destruction.

But is the learned and able professor aware of what he does when he assumes that Christianity is corruptible and reformable, that it is or can be the subject either of corruption or of reformation? Intentionally or not, by so assuming, he places it in the category of human institutions, or natural productions, left to the action of the natural laws or of second causes, and withdraws it from the direct and immediate government and protection of God. Not otherwise could its history be subject to the laws that govern the movement of all genuine history, be either perfectible or corruptible, or ever stand in need of being reformed, or of intrinsically advancing. Christianity itself is a revelation from God, the expression of his eternal reason and will, and therefore his law, which like himself is perfect and unalterable. The terms the professor applies, can apply, then, only to men's views, theories, or judgments of Christianity, not to Christianity itself, either as a doctrine or an institution, either as the faith to be believed, or as the law to be obeyed--a fact which, in the judgment of some, Dr. Newman's theory of development overlooks Christianity embodied in the church is the kingdom of God on earth, founded immediately by the Incarnate Word to manifest the divine love and mercy in the redemption and salvation of souls, and to introduce and maintain the authority of God and the supremacy of his law in human affairs. It is not an abstraction, and did not come into the world as a "naked idea," as Guizot maintains, nor is it left to men's wisdom and virtue to embody it; but it came into the world embodied in an institution, concreted in the church, which the blessed apostle assures us is "the body of Christ," who is himself Christianity, since he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Neither as the end nor as the divine institution, neither as the law nor as the authority to keep, declare, and apply it, then is the church imperfect, therefore progressive or corruptible, and therefore reformable. This is the Catholic doctrine, which must be retained by Protestantism if Protestantism is to be Catholic.

The learned professor either overlooks or virtually denies the divine origin, character, and authority of the church, or else he supposes that the divine founder failed to adapt his means to his end, and left his work incomplete, imperfect, to be finished by men. From first to last, he treats the church not as the kingdom of God on earth, but as an institution formed by men to realize or embody their conceptions or views of his kingdom, its principles, laws, and authority. He thus makes it a human institution, subject to all the vicissitudes of time and space. As men can never embody in their institutions the entire kingdom of God, the church must be progressive; as whatever is defective may be corrupted by the errors and corruptions of the faithful, as what is subject to growth must also be subject to decay, the church may from time to time become corrupt, and men must be free, as she has need, to reform her. This manifestly supposes the church is not divine, but simply an attempt, as is every false religion of men, to realize or embody their variable conceptions of the divine. If this were not the professor's view, he could not talk of conservatism, progress, and reformation in connection with Christianity, nor the correspondence of these with "the three generic types of Christianity," for these terms are inapplicable to anything divine and perfect, and can be logically applied only to what is imperfect and human, to what is perfectible, corruptible, and reformable. As there is but one God, one Christ, the mediator of God and men, there can be but one Christianity, and that must be catholic, one and the same in all times and places. To suppose three generic types of Christianity is as absurd as to suppose three Christs or three Gods, generically distinguished one from another, that is--three Christs or three Gods of three different types or genera.

Supposing the professor understands at all the meaning of the scholastic terms he uses, it is clear that he understands by Christianity the history of which moves under the influence of two generic ideas--nothing divine, nothing fixed, permanent, and immutable, the law alike for intellect and will, but the views and theories or judgments which men form of the works of God, his word, his law, or his kingdom. Christianity resolved into these may, we concede, not improperly be arranged under the three heads of conservatism, progress, and reformation, but never Christianity as the truth to be believed and obeyed. We do not, however, blame the Lutheran professor for his mistake; for, assuming his position as a Protestant to be at all tenable, he could not avoid it, since Protestants have no other Christianity. They have only their _views_ or judgments of Christianity, not Christianity itself as the objective reality.

There is progress _by_ Christianity; and that is one great purpose for which it is instituted; but none _in_ Christianity, because it is divine and perfect from the beginning. There may be reformation in individuals, nations, and society, for these are all corruptible, but none of Christianity itself, either as the creed or as the body of Christ, for it is indefectible, above and independent of men and nations, and therefore neither corruptible nor reformable by them. Not being corruptible or capable of deterioration, the term conservative, however applicable it may be to states and empires in the natural order or to human institutions and laws subject to the natural laws, has no application to Christianity or the kingdom of Christ, which is supernatural, under the direct and immediate government and protection of God, an eternal and therefore an ever-present kingdom, universal and unalterable, and not subject to the natural laws of growth and decay. Dr. Krauth forgets the law of mechanics, that there is no motion without a mover at rest. The movable cannot originate motion, nor the progressive be the cause of progress, or corruption purify and reform itself. If Christianity or the church were itself movable, or in itself progressive, it could effect no progress in men or nations, individuals or society; and if it could ever become itself corrupt, it could be no principle of reform in the world, or in any department of life.

The office of Christianity is to maintain on earth amidst all the vicissitudes of this world the immutable divine order, to recover men from the effects of the fall, to elevate them above the world, above their natural powers, and to carry them forward, their will consenting and concurring, to a blissful and indissoluble union with God as their supreme good, as their last end or final cause. How could it fulfil this office and effect its divine purpose, if not itself free from all the changes, alterations, and accidents of time and space? Does not the learned professor of theology perceive that its very efficiency depends on its independence, immovableness, and immutability? Then the conceptions of conservatism, progress, and reformation cannot be applied to the church of God, any more than to God himself, and are applicable only to what is human connected with her. In applying these ideas to her, the professor, as every Protestant is obliged to do in principle at least, divests her of her divinity, of her supernatural origin and office, and places her in the natural and human order, and subjects her to the laws which govern the history of all men and nations deprived of the supernatural and remaining under the ordinary providence of God manifested through second causes. The professor's doctrine places Christianity in the same category with all pagan and false religions, and subjects it to the same laws to which they are subjected.

This being the case, Dr. Krauth, who is a genuine Lutheran, has no right to call Luther's Reformation a _conservative_ Reformation. It may or may not be conservative in relation to some other Protestant church or sect, but in relation to the church of God, or to Christianity as the word or the law of God, it is not conservative, but undeniably destructive; for it subverts the very idea and principle on which the church as the kingdom of God on earth is founded and sustained. The church on the principles of Luther's reformation is subject to the authority of men and nations, and, instead of teaching and governing them, is taught and governed by them, and instead of elevating and perfecting them, they perfect, corrupt, or reform it. This is manifestly a radical denial, a subversion of the church of God, of Christ's kingdom on earth if it means anything more than a temperance society or a social club. In this respect, the principle of the Lutheran reformation was the common principle of all the Protestant reformers, as we may see in the fact that Protestantism, under any or all of its multitudinous forms, wherever not restrained by influences foreign to itself, tends incessantly to eliminate the supernatural, and to run into pure rationalism or naturalism. How absurd, then, to talk of "_Protestant_ Catholicity, or of _Catholic_ Protestantism"! The two ideas are as mutually repellent as are Christ and Belial.

The church has, indeed, her human side, and on that side she may at times be corrupt and in need of reform, that is to say, the heavenly treasure is _received_ in earthen vessels, and those earthen vessels, though unable to corrupt or sully the divine treasure itself, may be unclean and impure themselves. Churchmen may become relaxed in their virtue and neglect to maintain sound doctrine and necessary discipline, and leave the people to suffer for the want of proper spiritual nourishment and care, even to fall into errors and vices more in accordance with the heathenism of their ancestors than with the faith and sanctity of the Christian. Moreover, in a world where all changes under the very eye of the spectator, and new forms of error and vice are constantly springing up, the disciplinary canons of the church, and those which regulate the relations of secular society with the spiritual, good and adequate when first enacted, may become insufficient or impracticable in view of the changes always going on in everything human, and fail to repress the growing evil of the times and to maintain the necessary discipline both of clerics and laics, and therefore need amending, or to be aided by new and additional canons. In this legislative and administrative office of the church, not in her dogmas, precepts, constitution, or authority, which, as expressing the eternal reason and will of God, are unalterable, reforms are not only permissible but often necessary. The councils, general, national, provincial, and diocesan, have always had for their only object to assist the Papacy in suppressing errors against faith in enforcing discipline, maintaining Christian morality, and promoting the purity and sanctity of the Christian community.

We do not deny that reforms of this sort were needed at the epoch of the Protestant revolt and rebellion, and the Holy Council of Trent was convoked and held for the very purpose of effecting such as were needed, as well as for the purpose of condemning the doctrinal errors of the reformers; but we cannot concede that they were more especially needed at that epoch, than they had been at almost any time previous, since the conversion of the barbarians that overthrew the Roman empire, and of their pagan brethren that remained in the old homesteads. Long, severe, and continuous had been the struggle of the church to tame, humanize, and christianize these fierce and indocile barbarians, especially those who remained beyond the frontiers of the empire, and to whom the Roman name never ceased to be hateful, as it is even to this day with the bulk of the northern Germanic races. The evils which for eight centuries had grown out of the intractable and rebellious spirit of these races in their old homes, and their perpetual tendency to relapse into the paganism of their ancestors, and which had so tried the faith and patience of the church, had been in a great measure overcome before the opening of the sixteenth century, and their morals and manners brought into close conformity with the Christian ideal. The church, through her supreme pontiffs and saintly bishops, zealous and hard-working priests and religious, had struggled successfully against them; and was even getting the better of the polished Greek and Roman heathenism, partially revived in the so-called Revival of Letters, or the Renaissance, and was pursuing, never more steadily or more successfully, her work of evangelization and civilization; and we can point to no period in her history since the conversion of Clovis, king of the Franks, the missionary labors of St. Columbanus and his colonies of Irish monks in Eastern Gaul and Italy, and of St. Boniface and his Anglo-Saxon companions and successors in central Germany and the Netherlands, when reforms were less necessary, or the bonds of discipline were less relaxed, than at the epoch of the rise of Protestantism.

But, granting that reforms of this sort were especially needed in the sixteenth century, who had the right, on conservative and orderly principles, to propose or to effect them? Certainly not private individuals on their own authority, except so far as it concerned their own personal faith and morals, but to the ecclesiastical authorities of the time, as we see in the Holy Council of Trent. Reforms, even if needed and proper in themselves, if attempted by unauthorized individuals on their own responsibility, and carried out without, and especially in opposition to, the supreme authority of the church, are irregular, disorderly, and unlawful. A reform attempted and effected in church or state by unauthorized persons, and especially against the constituted authorities of either, is unquestionably an attempt at revolution, if words have any meaning. Now, was Luther's reformation effected by the church herself, or by persons authorized by her to institute and carry it on? Was it done by the existing authorities of the church in accordance with her constitution and laws, or was it done in opposition to her positive prohibition, and in most cases by violence and armed force against her?

There is no question as to the fact. Luther had no authority or commission from the church to attempt and carry out the reforms or changes he declared to be necessary; and, in laboring to effect them, he proceeded not only without her authority, but against it, just as he does who conspires to overthrow the state or to subvert the constitution and laws of his country. Luther, then, was not a conservative reformer, but a decided revolutionist, a radical, a sectarian, a destructive, and Dr. Krauth counts too much on the ignorance or credulity of his readers in expecting them to accept Lutheranism as "conservative reformation." A conservative reformation, as distinguished from or opposed to revolution, is a legal, constitutional reformation, effected under the proper authorities and by constitutional and legal means. Dr. Krauth himself would despise us or laugh at us if we should concede that such was Luther's reformation. It was effected by persons unauthorized to reform the church, against her constitution and laws existing at the time, and to which they themselves owed strict fidelity and unreserved obedience. They were conspirators against lawful authority, against their spiritual sovereign, and their pretended reform was a revolt, a rebellion, and, as far as successful, a revolution. It is idle to deny it, or to attempt to defend Luther and his associates on legal and constitutional principles. The reform or movement he attempted was without and against law, against the constitution and canons of the church, and was condemned and prohibited by the supreme spiritual authority. This is undeniable, and Dr. Krauth knows it as well as we do, and yet he has the hardihood to call it a "conservative reformation"!

But the Protestant pretence is that Luther and his associates acted in obedience to a higher authority than that of popes and councils, and were justified in what they did by the written word of God and Christian antiquity. An appeal of this sort, on Protestant principles, from the decisions of a Protestant sect, might be entertained, but not on Catholic principles from the decision of the Catholic Church, for she is herself, at all times and places, the supreme authority for declaring the sense of the written as well as of the unwritten word, for declaring and applying the divine law, whether naturally or supernaturally promulgated, and for judging what is or is not according to Christian antiquity. Their appeal was irregular, revolutionary even, and absurd and not to be entertained for a moment. She authorized no appeal of the sort, and the appeal could have been only from her judgment to their own, which at the lowest is as high authority as theirs at the highest. Luther and his associates did not appeal to a higher law or authority against the popes and councils, but to a lower, as Döllinger has done in asking permission to appeal from the judgment of a general council, to that of a national or rather a provincial council. The appeal to Christian antiquity was equally unavailable, for it was only setting up their private judgment against the judgment of the supreme court. The church denied that she had departed from the primitive church, and her denial was sufficient to rebut their assertion. In no case, then, did they or could they appeal to or act on a higher law or authority than hers. They opposed and could oppose to her judgment, rendered by popes and councils, of the law or word of God, written or unwritten, or of Christian antiquity, only their own judgment, which at the best was no better than hers at the worst.

The simple fact is, there is no defence of the so-called Reformation on catholic, church, or conservative principles. It sought to reform the faith, and to change the very constitution of the church, and wherever it was successful, it proved to be the subversion of the church, and the destruction of her faith, her authority, and her worship. Dr. Krauth says that this was not originally intended by the reformers, and that they had in the beginning no clear views, or fixed and determined plan of reform, but were carried forward by the logic of their principles and events to lengths which they did not foresee, and from which they would at first have recoiled. But this only proves that they were no divinely illumined and God-commissioned reformers, that they knew not what manner of spirit they were of, that they took a leap in the dark, and followed a blind impulse. If the spirit they obeyed, or the principle to which they yielded, led them or pushed them step by step in the way of destruction, to the total denial of the authority of the church, or to transfer it from the pope and hierarchy to Cæsar or the laity, which we know was universally the fact, it is clear proof that the spirit or principle of the Reformation was radical, revolutionary, destructive, not conservative.

That conservative men among Protestants abhor the radicalism and sectarianism which the whole history of the Protestant world proves to be the natural and inevitable result of the principles and tendencies of the so-called Reformation, we are far from denying; but whatever of resistance is offered in the Protestant world to these results is due not to Protestantism itself, but either to Catholic reminiscences and the natural good sense of individuals, to the control of religious matters assumed by the civil government, which really has no authority in spirituals, or to the presence and constant teaching of the Catholic Church. "What is bred in the bones will out in the flesh." Everywhere the Protestant spirit, the Protestant tendency, is to remove farther and farther from Catholicity, to eliminate more and more of Catholic dogma, Catholic tradition, Catholic precepts, and to approach nearer and nearer to no-churchism, to the rejection of all authority in spiritual matters, and the reduction of the whole supernatural order to the natural. Faith in the Protestant mind is only a probable opinion, sometimes fanatically held indeed, and enforced by power, but none the less a mere opinion for that. The conception of religion as a divine institution, of the church as a living organism, as a teaching and governing body, as the kingdom of God, placed in the world as the medium of divine grace and of the divine government in human affairs, is really entertained by no class of Protestants, but disdainfully rejected by all as spiritual despotism, _Romish_ usurpation, or Popish superstition.

It is useless to say that this is a departure from or an abuse of the principle of the Protestant Reformation. It is no such thing; it is only the logical development of the radical and revolutionary principles which the reformers themselves avowed and acted on, and which carried them to lengths which, in the outset, they did not dream of, and from which Dr. Krauth says truly they would, had they foreseen them, have shrunk with horror. We do not find that Lutheranism, when left by the civil magistracy to itself, and suffered to follow unchecked its own inherent law, is any more conservative or less radical in its developments and tendency than Calvinism or Anglicanism, that prolific mother of sects, or any other form of Protestantism. Every revolution must run its course and reach its goal, unless checked or restrained by a power or influences foreign to itself, and really antagonistic to it. The reformers rejected the idea of the church as a kingdom or governing body, or as a divine institution for the instruction and government of men, and substituted for it, in imitation of the Arabian impostor, a book which, without the authority of the church to declare its sense, is a dead book, save as quickened by the intelligence or understanding of its readers. Their followers discovered in the course of time that the book in itself is immobile and voiceless, and has no practical authority for the understanding or the will, and they cast it off, some, like George Fox and his followers, for a pretended interior or spiritual illumination, the reality of which they can prove neither to themselves nor to others; but the larger part, for natural reason, history, erudition, and the judgment of learned or _soi-disant_ learned men. Their work has gone on till, with the more advanced party, all divine authority is rejected, and as man has and can have in his own right no authority over man, reason itself has given way, objective truth is denied, and truth and falsehood, right and wrong, it is gravely maintained, are only what each man for himself holds them to be. The utmost anarchy and confusion in the intellectual and moral world have been reached in individuals and sects said to have "advanced views."

Such have been the results of Dr. Krauth's "conservative reformation" in the spiritual order, in Christianity or the church. It introduced the revolutionary principle, the principle of individualism, of private judgment, and insubordination into the religious order, and, as a necessary consequence, it has introduced the same principle into the political and social order, which depends on religion, and cannot subsist without it. Hence, the great and damning charge against the church in our day is that by her unchangeableness, her immovable doctrines, her influence on the minds and hearts, and hold on the consciences of the faithful, she is the great supporter of law and order--despots and despotism, in the language of the liberal journals--and the chief obstacle to the enlightenment and progress of society, in the same language; but radicalism and revolution in ours. Hence, the whole movement party in our times, with which universal Protestantism sympathizes and is closely allied, is moved by hostility to the church, especially the Papacy. Hence, it and the Protestant journals of the Old World and the New are unable to restrain their rage at the declaration of the Papal supremacy and infallibility by the Council of the Vatican, or their exultation at the invasion of the States of the Church, their annexation to the Subalpine kingdom, and the spoliation of the Holy Father by the so-called King of Italy. Why do we see all this, but because the revolutionary principle, which the reformers asserted in the church, is identically the principle defended by the political radicals and revolutionists?

Having thrown off the law of God, rejected the authority of the church, and put the faithful in the place of the pope and hierarchy, what could hinder the movement party from applying the same subversive principle to the political and social order? The right to revolutionize the church, and to place the flock above the shepherd, involves the right to revolutionize the state, and the assertion of the right of the governed to resist and depose their governors at will, or at the dictation of self-styled political and social reformers. Protestantism has never favored liberty, as it claims, and which it is impotent either to found or to sustain; but its claims to be the founder and chief supporter of modern liberalism, which results naturally and necessarily from the fundamental principle of the reformers, that of the right of the people to resist and depose the prelates placed over them, cannot be contested. If no man is bound, against his own judgment and will, to obey the law of God, how can any one be bound in conscience to obey the law of the state? and if the people may subvert the constitution of the church, and trample on her divine authority, why may they not subvert the constitution of the republic, and trample under foot the human authority of the civil magistrate, whether he be called king or president? It is to Protestantism we owe the liberalistic doctrine of "the sacred right of insurrection," or of "revolution" assumed to be inherent in and persistent in every people, or any section of any people, and which justifies Mazzini and the secret societies in laboring to bring about in every state of Europe an internal conflict and bloody war between the people and their governments. It deserves the full credit of having asserted and acted on the principle, and we hold it responsible for the consequences of its subversive application; for it is only the application in the political and social order of the principle on which the reformers acted, and all Protestants act, in the religious order against the church of God.

The principle of revolution, asserted and acted on as a Christian principle by the reformers, has not been inoperative, or remained barren of results, on being transferred to modern political and civil society. If the reformation, by drawing off men's attention and affections from the spiritual order, and fixing them on the material order, has promoted a marvellous progress in mechanical inventions and the applications of science to the industrial and productive arts, it has at the same time undermined the whole political order, shaken every civil government to its foundation, and, in fact, revolutionized nearly every modern state. It has loosened the bonds of society, destroyed the Christian family, erected disobedience into a principle, a virtue even, and reduced authority to an empty name. It has taught the people to be discontented with their lot, filled them with an insane desire for change, made them greedy of novelties, and stirred them up to a chronic war with their rulers. Everywhere we meet the revolutionary spirit, and there is not a government in Europe that has any strong hold on the consciences of the governed, or that can sustain itself except by its army. Even Russia, where the people are most attached to their emperor, is covered over with a network of secret societies, which are so many conspiracies against government, laboring night and day to revolutionize the empire. Prussia, which has just succeeded in absorbing the greater part of Germany, and is flushed with her recent triumph over the French empire and the improvised French republic, may seem to be strong and stable; but she has the affections of the people in no part of Germany, which she has recently annexed or confederated under her headship, and the new empire is pervaded in all directions by the revolutionary spirit to which it owes its existence, and which may be strong enough to resist its power, and reduce the ill-compacted body to its original elements to-morrow.

We need not speak of Austria; she may become hereafter once more a power in Europe, but she is now nothing. Voltairianism, and the spirit generated by the Reformation, have prostrated her, and sunk her so low that no one deigns to do her reverence. In England the government itself seems penetrated with the revolutionary spirit, or at least believes that spirit is so strong in the people that it is unsafe to resist it, and that it is necessary to make large and continual concessions to it. It is a maxim with the liberals and most English and American statesmen, or politicians rather, for our age has no statesmen, that a government is strengthened by timely and large concessions to popular demands. The government is undoubtedly strengthened by just laws and wise administration, but in our times, when the old respect for authority has gone, and governments have little or no hold on consciences, there is no government existing strong enough to make concessions to popular demands, or to the clamors of the governed, without endangering its power, and even its existence. The Holy Father, Pius IX., in the beginning of his pontificate, tried the experiment, and was soon driven from his throne, and found safety only in flight and exile. Napoleon III. tried it in January of last year, was driven by his people into a war for which he was unprepared, met with disasters, was defeated and taken prisoner, declared deposed and his empire at an end by a Parisian mob, before the end of September of the same year. The policy of concession is a ruinous policy; one concession leads to the demand for another and a larger concession, and each concession strengthens the disaffected, and weakens the power of authority to resist. But England has adopted the policy, is fully committed to it, as she is to many false and ruinous maxims, and it will go hard but she yields to her democracy, and reaps in her own fields the fruits of the liberalism and revolutionism which she has, especially when under Whig influence, so industriously sown broadcast throughout Europe.

We need not speak of our own country. Everybody knows its intense devotion to popular sovereignty, its hatred of authority, and its warm sympathy--in words at least--with every insurrection or uprising of the people, or any portion of the people, to overthrow the established authority, whether in church or state, they can hear of, without any inquiry into the right or wrong of the case. The insurrection or revolutionary party, it is assumed, is always in the right. There is no more intensely Protestant people on the globe than the American, and none more deeply imbued with the revolutionary spirit, in which it is pretended our own institutions originated, and which nearly the whole American press mistake for the spirit of liberty, and cherish as the American spirit. What will come of it, time will not be slow in revealing.

But France, so long the leader of modern civilization, and which she has so long led in a false direction, shows better than any other nation the workings of the revolutionary spirit introduced by the Reformers. She, indeed, repelled, after some hesitation and a severe struggle, the Reformation in the religious order; but through the indomitable energy of the princely Guises and their brave Lorraine supporters, whom every French historian and publicist since takes delight in denouncing, she was retained in the communion of the church; but with Henry IV. the _parti politique_ came into power, and Protestantism was adopted and acted on in the political order. On more occasions than one, France became the diplomatic and even the armed defender of the Reformation against the Catholic sovereigns of Europe. She was the first Christian power to form an alliance with the Grand Turk, against whom Luther declared to be against the will of God for his followers to fight, even in defence of Christendom; she aided the Low Countries in their rebellion against Catholic Spain, Protestant Sweden, and Northern Germany in their effort to crush Catholic Austria, and protestantize all Germany; and saw, without an effort to save her, Catholic Poland struck from the list of nations. Twice has she with armed force dragged the Holy Father from his throne, and secularized and appropriated the States of the Church, and set the example which the Italian Liberals have but too faithfully followed. Rarely, if ever, has she since the sixteenth century, by her foreign policy, consulted the interests of the church any further than they happened to be coincident with her own. In an evil hour, she forgot the principles which made the glory of the French sovereigns, and on which Christendom was reconstructed after the downfall of the Roman Empire of the West, and severed her politics from her religion. At first asserting with the reformers and the Lutheran princes the independence of the secular order of the spiritual, afterwards the superiority of the secular power, and finally the sovereignty of the people or the governed in face of their governers, as the reformers asserted the sovereignty of the faithful in face of the pope and hierarchy, she made her world-famous revolution of 1789, inaugurated the mob, and has been weltering in anarchy and groaning under despotism ever since.

The accession of Henry IV., the beau ideal of a king with the French people, marks a compromise between Catholicity and Protestantism, by which it was tacitly agreed that France should in religion profess the Catholic faith and observe the Catholic worship, while in politics, both at home and abroad, she should be Protestant, and independent of the spiritual authority. It was hoped the compromise would secure her both worlds, but it has caused her to lose both, at least this world as every one may now see. It is worse than idle to attempt to deny the solidarity of the French revolution with Luther's rebellion; both rest on the same principle and tend to the same end; and it is the position and influence of France as the leader of the civilized world, that has given to the revolutionary principle its popularity, diffused it through all modern nations, and made it the _Weltgeist_, or spirit of the age. The socialistic insurrection in Paris, and which we fear is only "scotched, not killed," is only the logical development of '93, as '93 was of '89, and '89 of Luther's revolt against the church in the sixteenth century. Its success would be only the full realization in church and state, in religion and society, of what Dr. Krauth calls "the conservative reformation." The communists deny the right of property, indeed, but not more than did Protestants in despoiling the church and sacrilegiously confiscating the possessions of religious houses and the goods of the clergy. No more consistent and thoroughgoing Protestants has the world seen than these French socialists or communists, who treat property as theft and God as a despot.

We do not exult in the downfall of France, in which there are so many good Catholics and has always been so much to love and admire, any more than, had we lived then, we should have exulted in the downfall of the Roman Empire before the invasion of the barbarians. Like that downfall, it is the breaking up of Christendom, and leaves the Holy Father without a single Christian power to defend his rights or the liberty of the Holy See; but it deprives Protestantism of its most efficient supporter and its great popularizer, and all the more efficient because nominally Catholic. It is not Catholic but Protestant and liberal France that has fallen. The Bonapartes never represented Catholic France, but the principles of 1789--that is, the revolution which created them, and which they sought to use or retain as they judged expedient for their own interests. In the last Napoleon's defeat we see the defeat, we wish we could say the final defeat, of the revolution. Yet so terrible a disaster occurring so suddenly to so great a nation, we think must prove the turning-point in the life and tendencies of the nations of Europe, and pave the way for the reconstruction of Christendom on its old basis of the mutual concord and co-operation of the two powers. We think it must lead the nations to pause and reflect on the career civilization has for three centuries been running, and open their eyes to the folly and madness of attempting to found permanent political and social order, or authority and liberty, on the revolutionary principle of the Reformation or of 1789. We look for a powerful reaction at no distant date against the revolution in favor of the church and her divine authority. It is sometimes necessary to make men despair of the earth in order to turn their attention to heaven.

But to conclude: we have wished to show Dr. Krauth that the Reformation in any or all its phases, in its principle and in its effects, in church and state is decidedly revolutionary. He as a Protestant has not been able to see and set forth the truth; bound by his office and position to defend the Reformation, he has considered what it must have been if defensible, not what it actually was, and has given us his ideal of the Reformation, not the Reformation itself. If it does not, he reasons, maintain all Catholic principles and doctrines it is indefensible; but if it concedes that these principles and doctrines, were held in their purity and integrity in their unity and catholicity, by the church Luther warred against, what need was there of it? Our good doctor must then assume that they were not so held, that the church had erred both in faith and practice, and that the Reformation simply restored the faith, purified practice, re-established discipline, freed the mind from undue shackles, and opened the way for the free and orderly progress of the word. All very fine; only there does not happen to be a word of truth in it. Besides, if it were so, it would only prove that the church had failed, therefore that Christianity had failed, and that Christ was not equal to the work he undertook. If Christ is true, there must always be the true church somewhere, for she is indefectible as he is indefectible. If the church in communion with the See of Rome had become corrupt and false, as the reformers alleged, then some other existing body was the true church, and Luther and his associates, in order to be in the true church, should have ascertained and joined it--a thing which it is well known they did not do, for they joined no other church or organic body, but set furiously at work to pull down the old church which had hitherto sheltered them and to build a new one for themselves on its ruins.

We grant the Reformation should have been conservative in order to be defensible, but it was not so, it was radical and subversive. It rejected the Papacy, the hierarchy, the church herself as a visible institution, as a teaching and governing body, and asserted the liberty of the faithful to teach and govern their prelates and pastors. It is the common principle of all Protestant denominations that the church is constituted by the faithful, holds from them, and the pastor is called not sent. This, we need not say, is the subversion of all church authority, of the kingdom of God founded by our Lord himself, and ruling from above instead of from below. It reduces religion from law to opinion or personal conviction, without light or authority for conscience. This principle, applied to politics, is the subversion of the state, overthrows all government, and leaves every man free to do "what is right in his own eyes." It transfers power from the governors to the governed, and allows the government no powers not held from their assent, which is simply to make it no government at all. It has been so applied, and the effect is seen especially in France, which, since her revolution of '89, has had no settled government, but has alternated, as she alternates to-day, between the mob and the despot, anarchy and military despotism.

We so apply it, theoretically, in this country; and in the recent civil war the North was able to fight for the preservation of the Union only by pocketing for a time its principles and forswearing its logic. The logic was on the side of the South; the force was on the side of the North; on which side was the right or the wrong, it is not our province to decide. We will only add that we do not agree at all with journals that speak of the issues which led to the war as being decided by it. War may make it inexpedient to revive them, but the only issue it ever does or can decide is, on which side is, for the time, the superior force. We deny not the right of the people to resist the prince who makes himself a tyrant, if declared to be such and judicially deposed by the competent authority, but we do deny their right, for any cause whatever, to conspire against or to resist the legitimate government in the legal exercise of its constitutional powers. We recognize the sovereignty of the people in the sense that, if a case occurs in which they are without any government, they have the right, in concert with the spiritual power, to institute or reconstitute government in such way and in such form as they judge wisest and best; but we utterly deny that they remain sovereign, otherwise than in the government, when once they have constituted it, or that the government, when constituted, holds from them and is responsible to their will outside of the constitution; for that would make the government a mere agent of the people and revocable at their will, which is tantamount to no government at all. The doctrine of the demagogues and their journals we are not able to accept; it deprives the people collectively of all government, and leaves individuals and minorities no government to protect and defend them from the ungoverned will and passions of the majority for the time.

We accept and maintain loyally, and to the best of our ability, the constitution of our country as originally understood and intended, not indeed as the best constitution for every people, but because it is the best for us, and, above all, because it is for us the law. In itself considered, there is no necessary discord between it and Catholicity, but as it is interpreted by the liberal and sectarian journals, that are doing their best to revolutionize it, and is beginning to be interpreted by no small portion of the American people, or as interpreted by the Protestant principle, so widely diffused among us, and in the sense of European liberalism or Jacobinism, we do not accept it, or hold it to be any government at all, or as capable of performing any of the proper functions of government; and if it continues to be interpreted by the revolutionary principle of Protestantism, it is sure to fail--to lose itself either in the supremacy of the mob or in military despotism--and doom us, like unhappy France, to alternate between them, with the mob uppermost to-day, and the despot to-morrow. Protestantism, like the heathen barbarisms which Catholicity subdued, lacks the element of order, because it rejects authority, and is necessarily incompetent to maintain real liberty or civilized society. Hence it is we so often say, that if the American Republic is to be sustained and preserved at all, it must be by the rejection of the principle of the Reformation, and the acceptance of the Catholic principle by the American people. Protestantism can preserve neither liberty from running into license or lawlessness, nor authority from running into despotism.

If Dr. Krauth wants conservatism without immobility, and progress without revolution or radicalism, as it seems he does, he must cease to look for what he wants in the Lutheran, Calvinistic, Anglican, or any other Protestant reformation, and turn his thoughts and his hopes to that church which converted pagan Rome, christianized and civilized his own barbarian ancestors, founded the Christendom of the middle ages, and labored so assiduously, unweariedly, perseveringly, and successfully to save souls, and to advance civilization and the interests of human society, from the conversion of the pagan Franks in the fifth century down to the beginning of the sixteenth century, and which still survives and teaches and governs, in spite of all the effort of reformers, revolutionists, men, and devils to cover her with disgrace, to belie her character, and to sweep her from the face of the earth. She not only converted the pagan barbarians, but she recovered even the barbarian nations and tribes, as the Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians, that had fallen into the Arian heresy, which like all heresy is a compromise between Christianity and heathenism, and even reconverted the Alemanni, Frieslanders, and others who had once embraced the Gospel, but had subsequently returned to their idols and heathen superstitions. God is with her as of old, and lives, teaches, and governs in her as in the beginning; and she is as able to convert the heathen to-day, to reconvert the relapsed, and to recover the heretical, as she was in the days of St. Remi, St. Amand, St. Patrick, St. Austin, St. Columbanus, St. Willebrod, or St. Boniface. She is the kingdom of God, and like him she cannot grow old, decay, or die. Never had her Supreme Pontiff a stronger hold on the consciences, the love and affections of the faithful throughout the world, than he has at this moment, when despoiled of all his temporalities and abandoned by all earthly powers, nor ever were her pastors and prelates more submissive and devoted to their chief. Never did she more fully prove that she is under the protection of God, as his immaculate spouse, than now when held up to the scorn and derision of a heretical and unbelieving world. Dead she is not, but living.

Let our learned Lutheran professor remove the film from his eyes, and look at her in her simple grandeur, her unadorned majesty, and see how mean and contemptible, compared with her, are all the so-called churches, sects, and combinations arrayed against her, spitting blasphemy at her, and in their satanic malice trying to sully her purity or dim the glory that crowns her. Say what you will, Protestantism is a petty affair, and it is one of the mysteries of this life how a man of the learning, intelligence, apparent sincerity, and good sense of Dr. Krauth can write an octavo volume of eight hundred closely printed pages in defence of the Protestant Reformation.

FOOTNOTES:

[158] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[159] _The Conservative Reformation and its Theology; as Represented in the Augsburg Confession, and in the History and Literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church._ By Charles V. Krauth, D.D., Norton Professor of Theology in the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary, and Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871. 8vo, pp. 800.

GENZANO AND FRASCATI.

What is interesting to visitors in Rome, and indeed in all Italy, is not merely their stay in certain known localities, or their sight-seeing within a certain beaten track; it is also the casual observation of less famous and more intimate scenes, and the residence in less crowded and more attractive, because more peculiar, neighborhoods.

The curious festival, more carnivalesque than religious, that takes place every Sunday in August in the Piazza Narona, in Rome, and during which pedestrians and carriage-goers wade and splash through a shallow, artificial lake, produced by the regulated overflowing of the centre-fountain, is a sight unfamiliar to strangers and tourists, yet none the less a very characteristic sport, and interesting especially to such as view Rome chiefly in a historic and antiquarian light. Again, the "Ottobrate," a species of christianized bacchanalia, an innocent merry-making answering in some sort to our dear old familiar gathering of "Harvest Home," is a thing more often heard of than witnessed by flying visitors to the Eternal City. In October, also, the Holy Father visits different convents, and a few ladies not unfrequently procure the privilege, through "friends at court," of following in his train, and thus gaining admittance to strictly enclosed nunneries, and being present at touching little ceremonies performed very simply by the Pope himself in the poor, plain chapels of these voluntary prisoners of love. Sometimes he says a few words of encouragement and advice; sometimes he gives benediction while the untutored choir of nuns sing some simple hymn; sometimes he assembles the community, and gives them his solemn blessing. There are the "Celestines" (so-called from their blue veil beneath the black one), whose convent is in a retired street not far from St. John Lateran, and whose _enclosure_ does not necessitate a grating, but compels them to wear their veils down while speaking to strangers, and not to advance further than the threshold of the inner house-door, while their visitor stands without the line, yet face to face with them. There are the Dominicanesses, near the Piazza Trajana, at "San Domenico e Sisto," whose profession is impressively accompanied by the heart-stirring ceremony of prostration beneath a funeral pall, while the choir sing the solemn dirge of the _De Profundis_. When these nuns take the habit and first become novices, they are asked, at a certain part of the service, whether they choose the crown of thorns or the wreath of roses, both of which lie before them on a table. Of course there is but one answer, but, the ceremony over, the rose, or bridal wreath, replaces for the day the coronal of thorns. There is a convent of a very severe order, called the "_Sepolte-Vive_," or "buried alive," whose rule is almost inhumanly severe, and has never received absolute confirmation from the Holy See, but only toleration, or permission, for such as feel themselves drawn to such appalling austerities. They dig their own graves, and wear fetters on the wrist, and, when in fault, no matter how slight, a placard on their backs indicating their peculiar failing. When news is brought to the superioress of the death of a parent or relation of any one of the sisters, the bereaved one is not told of her loss, but it is announced that "one among us has lost a member of her family;" and Masses are offered for the departed without any further mention of him or her. Again, there is a Carmelite convent in Rome, I forget where, in which a miraculous crucifix has been preserved for about fifty years--a strange image, which seems instinct with life and expression, seems to speak to and look at you, fascinates the gaze, and stirs the least impressionable heart. It is not much spoken of even in Rome, that city where marvels are no longer marvels, and where miracles are more credible than business negotiations elsewhere; but it is enough that in one of these Papal October visits to convents, two persons of calm judgment, both English, both converts, and one the sister of an eloquent and gifted Anglican divine, saw it, and declared that there was something about it far beyond the common run of even skilfully carved and elaborately chiselled masterpieces.

To pass from convents to hospitals, the sight during the evenings of Holy Week at the "Trinità de Pellegrini" is something not less interesting than the oft-recounted glories of the Sistine Chapel and the thrilling rubrics of the Pontifical High Mass at St. Peter's shrine. Rome is still, in this century, a real centre of pilgrimage; and what could be a greater proof of the truth of the faith she teaches than this apparently incredible fact--this _anachronism_ in the eyes of our enlightened progressists? Men and women, chiefly from the rural and mountainous districts of Italy, but also from Hungary, and Germany, and faithful Poland, come begging their arduous way, in simple faith and fervent love, perfectly undisturbed by doubts they have never heard discussed, by the "spirit of the age" they have never dreamt of as being in antagonism with the spirit of the church, by the childish and wilful gropings after religious reconstruction which they, if they knew of them, would call madness, and pity as such. They come with their strange tattered costumes, all incrusted with dirt, and embroidered into perplexing patterns with accumulation of unheeded dust, and knock at the door of this gigantic hospital, where they find a real home and a ready welcome. Other men and women, chiefly of the higher classes, and, like the pilgrims, of divers nationalities, come to tend them and offer them literally the same services Abraham offered to the voyager-angels when they stopped, travel-stained and foot-sore, at the entrance of his tent. In an upper hall are laid tables laden with abundant and wholesome food, of which a portion is reserved by each wanderer for the morrow's breakfast, and the disposition of which, from personal observation, I know to be as follows: a small loaf of bread sliced in the middle, and meat and sauce crammed as tight as possible between the two halves thus making a substantial but somewhat ungainly sandwich. In a large room on the lower floor are placed benches against the wall, with a foot-board running along them, on which are rows of basins, with the necessary adjuncts of soap and towels. The washing of the pilgrims' feet is by no means a sinecure, or a graceful make-believe at biblical courtesies. It is a very real and slightly unpalatable business; but the grievance is far more the short time allowed to each person than the washing itself. The unfortunate feet of the weary pilgrims are more refreshed than thoroughly cleaned by one layer of soap; and it is to be wished that the time allotted could be sufficiently extended to allow the work to be well done, since it is attempted at all. The self-denial of those who undertake this most praiseworthy and mediæval charity must be enhanced by the fact that many tourists come to see this done, as a part of their Holy Week _programme_, and, being mostly curious and carping critics of English or American origin, their comments are more sarcastic than encouraging. Here are wildernesses of dormitories, into which the pilgrims file in slow procession after supper, singing litanies and hymns. Let any other country point to such a palace of Christian charity, to such a freely supported and admirably managed institution, and then it may have claim to talk of progressive civilization! But instead of this, what do we see but poor-laws, that treat God's poor as animals, and the state in which God himself chose to be born, and live, and die, as a crime and a moral shame. "Till when, O Lord, till when?"

On Christmas night, another beautiful scene takes place in the female prison, on the "Piazza di Termini," opposite the baths of Aurelian, between the railway station and the church of the Cistercians, "Santa Maria degli Loyoli." Yet there is nothing to describe, no gorgeous ritual, no impressive assemblage, no pageant to take the eye and divide the attention. Four whitewashed walls, an orderly throng of uniformly dressed women, a few hymns, in which the voices of the nuns, in whose charge the prisoners are, lead and predominate; a plain altar, an unpretending "Presepio," or representation of the stable of Bethlehem, and that is all. Well! what is there to say about this? No correspondent could fill a column with these details; yet they fill the heart of God, and make the heart of his sinless Mother glad, as she looks down on the repentant woman whose welfare is so dear to her in whom there is found no spot nor stain of guilt. And this is very different, no doubt, from the splendidly illuminated altar in _San Luigi de Francesi_, where the lighted tapers are pyramidally ranged in dazzling tiers of shining amber brightness, and where the fragrance of incense struggles hard not to be overpowered by the sweetness of the hot-house plants blooming in clusters around the steps and communion rails. Very different, too, from the artistic and elaborate "Presepio" at _Sant' Andrea della Valle_, where a veritable stage seems miraculously poised over the altar, and where all manner of wonderful details of Eastern scenery, somewhat mixed with prevailing Western conceptions and incongruities concerning the Orient, are displayed on a magnificent scale for the edification of the peasantry flocking into Rome from all sides. Very different, again, from the solemn ritual of "Santa Maria Maggiore" (though _that_ has been for many years discontinued, on account of the abuses of which it was the unhappy occasion), the ceremonies that renewed most vividly the scene of the angels' announcement, and the pastoral welcome, on the moon-brightened plains round the stable of Bethlehem, the splendor of decoration gathered about the precious relic of the rude crib, whose straw, still preserved in this church, is now more glorious by far than conqueror's coat-of-mail or emperor's robe of ermine. But what of this difference, after all? Earth's costliness of display is earthly still, earth's poverty and nakedness is almost divine, because, whenever earth became the scene of any of God's choicest wonders, it was always in a state of destitution, which he ordained beforehand as a mystical preparation. God fashioned Adam out of common clay, and Eve from a bare rib; his own birth was in a stable, cold and forlorn, his life in an obscure artisan's shop, littered with common dust, filled with coarse tools; his death was on a common gibbet, on a bare mountain. Common animals, domestic drudges, and beasts of burden surrounded him at the dawn of his being; common criminals, rough men, coarse-minded gazers, were around him in his last hour. The only time he rode in any state, it was upon an ass, not a fancy war-steed with trappings of oriental magnificence, not even a stately mule, such as became later on a recognized and legitimate bearer of great dignitaries. The first men who welcomed him on earth were shepherds; the last who spoke to him were fishermen. But it is hardly necessary to say more on a theme so well known and so much canvassed; yet it is not unappropriate to the frame of mind which this picture of the midnight Mass in the prison induces and fosters. And just as it would be good for any Christian country to be able to show a hospital as well managed as the Pilgrim's Home we have glanced at, so would it be even better could any one of the nations of Europe point to prisons where repentance is taught by the rule of the Gospel and not by the regulations of a board of magistrates, and where confinement for one species of offence is not turned into a school of graduation for worse offences still.

The reader will forgive this roundabout introduction to the two beautiful reminiscences of which this paper is the subject, for these are both among the class of events described at the beginning as less famous, but more attractive because more peculiar.

One of them is of a private and purely personal nature, the other of a public sort, but rarer than reminiscences of Rome usually are.

There is a village about twenty miles from Rome, and two beyond Albano, the name of which is Genzano, and belongs, I believe, to the Chigi family, as does Laricia with its wild woods of chestnuts. It is an ordinary hamlet, with its church standing on a height to which two side straggling streets lead up, and the front of which is pretty well hidden by the block of irregular houses that divide the road-ways. For many generations this village had been famous for its Corpus Christi procession, and the peculiar way in which the procession's track was more carpeted than strewn with flowers. Strangers used to flock to see the floral festival, and Hans Andersen, in his _Improvisatore_, once gave the most vivid and picturesque account of it. Perhaps every one has not read this description, and few in this country at least have seen the procession. In 1848, the custom was discontinued, owing to the unsettled state of the country, and the tendency of the Carbonari to make disturbances at any popular gathering or demonstration, especially of a religious kind. In 1864, things being somewhat more stable under the protection of French troops and the promise of non-intervention on the part of the King of Italy, the festival of the _Infiorata_, as it is called, was again announced, and all Rome hurried to see it.

It took place in the evening. No description can do it justice, especially as its beauty was enhanced by that most hopelessly indescribable of circumstances--the loveliness of a southern summer's day. Albano looked from its puny heights over the wide plain that stretches to Ostia and the sea, covered with dusky gray-green olive-yards; the blue hills, where the chestnuts grow and overshadow the ruddy wealth of wild mountain strawberries beneath, rose like cupolas in the evening sky, that was alive with summer lightnings; the bright red and blue costumes of the peasant women, with their little tents of spotless linen squarely poised upon their heads, and their massive chains of gold and coral vying with their wonderful sword-shaped hair-pins for quaintness and for richness, stood out in picturesque relief against the dark background of the common-looking dwellings; through the bustle and clatter of an Italian crowd, there could yet be discerned the hush and stillness so familiar to our Northern hearts, so congenial to our idea of Sabbaths and church festivals; the noise seemed a distant hum, the whole scene a vision; and over it all, the spirit of faith that made it what it was, not a mere idle show to awake idle people, but a living gathering of living and believing souls, offering nature's purest gifts in their virgin integrity to the God of love, to _Gesù Sacramentato_, as the Italians so ingeniously and touchingly say.

Both streets leading up to the church were paved with flowers, in thick layers, symmetrically portioned out with squares corresponding to the width of the houses on either side of the road. Patterns of great delicacy were produced by these flowers, scattered into petals as they were, and no leaves nor stems carelessly appearing anywhere. Here, on one large space, were pictured the arms of the Chigi family, there, the arms of the bishop of the diocese, further still, those of the Holy See. In the centre of one of the streets, the grand compartment was taken up by a colored representation of an altar with candles and a monstrance, and the white Host within. A little lower down was a tiny fountain, more like a squirt than anything else, concealed in a mound of soft flower-petals. Patterns of geometrical figures, of Persian carpets, of fanciful monograms, filled up the many squares, while all along the sides, and supported by stakes, ran a low festoon of box-wreaths, guarding the flower-carpet from the feet of the eager crowd.

From above, from the many balconies and terraces, and from the roofs of the tall, old-fashioned houses, the people look down and gaze upon this wonderful tapestry, more elaborate and incomparably more beautiful than the choicest produce of the looms of Genoa, and Lyons, and the _Gobelins_--more precious and more fair than the silken hangings woven of old by the hands of queens and sovereign princesses.

And this is all for an hour! In a few moments, the procession and the following multitude will have passed over the floral tapestry, and every trace of its beauty will be gone. But why not? Its beauty is consecrated, and, when it has ministered to the greater glory of God, its mission will be over.

Every one knows the incident in the life of Sir Walter Raleigh, when, walking across a muddy road with his imperious and capricious sovereign, Elizabeth of England, the gallant courtier's velvet cloak, costly though it was, was not deemed too rich for a woman's footstool, and doubtless the graceful homage was considered as very little beyond an absolute necessity of courtesy. And shall this display of rarest loveliness and natural treasures, called the "_Infiorata_," be thought of otherwise than as a cloak thrown beneath the weary feet of the pilgrim Saviour?

Our Lord walks through many lands, and the way of men's hearts is very rugged here, very treacherous there, very uneven everywhere. Let him pause here for a moment, as he rests his feet on the carpet or cloak spread for him, and let him find in a few faithful hearts a path ready prepared for him, as fragrant and as beautiful as this floral "via sacra."

The procession leaves the church by one of the two diverging roads, and returns by the other. It is a regular Italian procession, somewhat grotesque in our eyes, unaccustomed to some little peculiarities, such as winged angels represented by children in scanty robes of tinselled muslin, and golden paper kites flying from their shoulders, but on the whole it is edifying in its very artlessness. There are many monks, walking two-and-two, and bearing lighted tapers; children in companies and sodalities with gaudy banners and streamers, priests in black and white, and cross-bearers and thurifers, and, lastly, the swaying canopy under which is borne the Lord of nature. While each person in the procession winds his way among the flower patterns, and carefully spares the perfection of the design as much as possible, the priest, on the contrary, carries the Blessed Sacrament right over in the centre of the broad path, and the crowd pour after him in heaving masses, leaving the track behind them strewn with remnants of box and olive borders and blended heaps of crushed flower-petals.

And so the sacred pageant is over. The sky is getting cloudy, and thunder-drops of almost tropic rain are falling noisily to the earth; people hurry home, but long before Albano is reached the storm is already furious, and bursts over the darkening plain. Many are detained at the inns of the white village whose _gallerie_ of elm and ilex are so famous round Rome.

By the bye, these _gallerie_ lead from Albano to the neighboring village of Frascati, an archiepiscopal see, and once the retreat of the Cardinal of York, the last of the Stuarts. He himself, with his unfortunate brother, is buried in St. Peter's; but in the village church of which he was titular archbishop is a tablet to his memory, recounting his many virtues, and the love and veneration in which his flock ever held him.

Frascati is the scene of the second reminiscence I have once before spoken of; one more domestic and more intimate than the last, and very interesting as being the record of an unusual favor shown to a foreigner by the Holy Father, Pope Pius IX.

There are a great many villas around Frascati, and one of the prettiest as well as most historical is the Villa Falconieri, the whilom abode of Santa Juliana Falconieri, to whom a chapel is dedicated in the house. The grounds are, as in most Italian villas, very badly kept (according to Northern ideas), but in their wildness more beautiful than the trimmest garden of Old or New England. A winding, steep road, bordered with box, leads to the mansion, whose wide marble chambers re-echo the few footsteps they ever bear, and whose best preserved ornaments are some marble busts and old frescoes. To the front stretches a lawn dotted with Spanish chestnut-trees, and beyond lies an alley of hoary and gigantic cypresses that seem the enchanted genii of perpetual silence. There is a peculiar odor about cypress-trees which can never be forgotten by one who has been much among these groves of living columns; and it is a well-known fact that the charm inherent in a familiar odor is one of the strongest that exists. Not only in this alley, a mile long, leading up through a maze of thickets to the ruins of Tusculum, but also in a weird quadrangle planted round a stone-coped pond, do these trees stand in their stern and sad majesty. Here, again, is silence, reigning undisputed; the grand path is grassy with weeds; the little cones drop into it and are never swept away; the brown branches of the trees fall upon it in autumn, and remain there till they decay into the soil; the water is stagnant, and the artificial rock-work in the centre of the pond is neglected and overgrown with crops of worthless yet not unlovely weeds. A landscape gardener would form and draw out a new map of these _mismanaged_ acres; a painter would shout for joy at this picturesque frame for a historical love-scene, and would transfer the whole to his canvas, adding only, according to his fancy, the pale moon silvering the mysterious trees, or the setting sun, in its amethyst radiance, throwing golden arrows through the glorious openings of the cypress grove.

This villa of Santa Juliana Falconieri was once let, now many, many years ago, to an Englishman, a recent convert, and a well-known and zealous defender of his newly adopted faith. He was not unfrequently a guest at the neighboring monastery of _Camaldoli_, a beautiful hermitage embosomed in the woods, and where the white-robed monks follow a strict and ascetic rule, very different from the lives of hypocritical holiness that Protestants and _liberators_ would make us believe is the present type of monastic perfection. One day, when the temporary owner of the Villa Falconieri was dining at the Camaldolese convent, the Holy Father, whose summer residence is close by, at a little village called Castel Gandolfo, overlooking the classic Lake Nemi, came with his retinue to visit the monks. He also stayed to dinner, which in Italy and among religious is in the middle of the day, and, the visit over, he spontaneously proposed to his English friend to make another halt at his house. A message was sent down in haste to prepare the villa, and so few were the servants there that it was not before the cavalcade of the Pope was at the head of the cypress alley that the end nearest the house was swept and cleaned. The wife and little daughter were ready to welcome the Holy Father, as his host introduced him into the pretty, picturesque dwelling. A throne had been temporarily arranged at the further end of the drawing-room, and a square of gold-edged velvet placed at the feet. The "Noble Guard," part of the Pontifical retinue, took their places around the room, seemingly a living wall, and other ecclesiastical attendants grouped themselves in various corners. This was an honor seldom bestowed on any but Roman princes, and then very sparingly, so that it was all the more a distinguished mark of personal friendship on the part of the good and fatherly Pope toward his English child. Not long before, those three, the father and mother and little daughter, had knelt before the Pope, and the parents had resolved and promised to embrace outwardly the religion they inwardly believed; the child had unknowingly played with its father's sword, and prattled, as unconscious little ones do, in the midst of these grave events.

Now, the child was not forgotten either, and the Holy Father kept it near his throne, and bestowed especial attention upon it, even while he conversed with the steadfast and happy parents. By-and-by, the Noble Guard were dismissed, and bivouacked outside the house, under the chestnut-trees, till it was dark. Then lanterns were hung on the branches and on the tall gates, and a regular illumination took place. When the Pope left, torches were carried around him and his _cortége_, all through the woods that cover the ground between Frascati and Castel Gandolfo. A tablet was put up in the vestibule or _atrium_ of the villa, with the permission of the owner of the property, in commemoration of this signal honor conferred upon a stranger. These details are only a part of the many-sided recollections of this day, but, such as they are, they come from the lips of an eye-witness, and we are not conscious that they are in any degree exaggerated.

Nearly twelve years after this memorable visit, the villa was revisited by some of the persons who had been its temporary occupants during that occurrence, and it was found to be in exactly the same state as before; the dark cypress alley and the quadrangle, the chestnut-shaded lawn and deserted-looking house, showing no sign of the lapse of time. The former owner, however--a Cardinal Falconieri, I believe--was dead, and the property was disputed by two or three noble families. The chapel of Santa Juliana stood open to the terrace, accessible from the outside as well as from the narrow inner passage connecting it with the house; and on one side of its tiny walls was the picture of the saint's death-bed, representing the miraculous communion by way of viaticum, when the blessed sacrament sank into her breast because her sickness was of such a nature as to prevent her from receiving it into her mouth. Below the picture is a long explanation of this fact, and a sort of laudatory epitaph in the saint's honor.

The villa Aldobrandini occupies one of the most prominent positions in Frascati, and commands attention from its tiers of stone fountains, raised amphitheatre-like one over the other up the face of the hill, and arranged so as to let an artificial waterfall spring down the giant staircase.

Another notable building of this village is the white-walled Capuchin convent, a nest among the trees and rocks, where the little chapel is railed off by heavy gates from the poor vestibule, and where lived once a very good and eloquent monk, Padre Silvestro. He too, like the old cardinal, died within the years that followed the visit of the Pope to the Villa Falconieri, but his kindness to little children and his well-known powers of language alike cause him to live for ever in the heart and memory of those whose happiness it was to know him.

He always seemed to the writer the very type of Manzoni's renowned "Padre Cristofaro," one of the noblest creatures of that author's world-famed romance, _I Promessi Sposi_.

And with this mention of him and his quiet convent--which is now, perhaps, a desecrated stable or barrack--let us close this little sketch of a well-remembered and beloved spot, endeared to us by many happy hours spent among its hills and woods, and by the memory of one of God's best and purest creatures, one worthy of more gratitude, more love, and more appreciation than our poor heart was ever able to render her. To her, once our guide on earth, now our guardian, we trust, in heaven, do we dedicate these few mementoes of our happy companionship in a land whose beauty she always taught us to look upon as the chosen appanage of the Vicar of Christ, and the Jerusalem of the new law.

SONNET.

ST. FRANCIS AND ST. DOMINIC.

Francis and Dominic, the marvels twain Of those fair ages faith inspired and ruled, When Christendom, alike by darkness schooled And light, served God, and spurned the secular chain. Strong brother-saints of Italy and Spain, The nations, Christian once, whose love hath cooled, The sects pride-blind, the sophists sense-befooled, Your child-like, God-like lowliness disdain! But ye your task fulfilled! All love the one, Christ's lover, burning with seraphic fire; All light the other, from the cherub choir Missioned, a clouded world's re-risen sun; Warriors of God! for centuries three at bay Those crowned lusts ye kept that gore his church to-day.

AUBREY DE VERE.

ROME--Convent of St. Buonaventura.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.