CHAPTER IV.

THE OLD HOME.

Mrs. Charles Yorke was a native of Seaton; her maiden name, Arnold. Her mother had died while Amy was quite young, and in a few years the father married again. This marriage was an unfortunate one for the family; and not only the daughter but many of Mr. Arnold's friends had tried to dissuade him from it. Their chief argument was not that the person whom he proposed to marry was a vulgar woman whom his lost wife would not have received as an acquaintance, but that she was in every way unworthy of him, and would be a discreditable connection. They met the fate which usually awaits such interference. Truth itself never appears so true as varnished falsehood does. Mr. Arnold was flattered and duped; and the end of the affair was that Amy had the misery of seeing his deceiver walk triumphantly into her mother's sacred place. Nor was this all. In a moment of weakness, the father betrayed to his new wife the efforts that had been made to separate them, and she half-guessed, half-drew from him every name. From that moment her instinctive jealous dislike of her step-daughter was turned to hatred.

Had the young girl been wise, she would have known that her only proper course was to withdraw from the field; but she was inexperienced and passionate, and had no better adviser than her own heart. Had she been a Catholic, she could have found in the confessional the confidant and counsel she needed; but she was not. In Seaton there were no Catholics above the class of servants and day-laborers. She was left, therefore, completely to herself, and in the power of an unscrupulous and subtle tormentor. Miserable, indignant, and desperate, the young girl descended to the contest, and at every step she was defeated. She called on her father for protection; but he saw nothing of her trials, or was made to believe that she had herself provoked them. It was the old story of adroit deceit arrayed against impolitic sincerity. But, happily, the contest was not of long duration.

Amy was not a person to remain in a position so false and degrading. There came a time when, quite as much to her own surprise as to theirs, she had nothing more to say. But their surprise was that she contended no longer, hers that she had contended so long. The way was clear before her, and her plans were soon made. Her father had an unmarried cousin living in Boston, and this lady consented to receive her. Only on the day preceding her departure did she announce her intentions. The sufferings she had undergone were a sufficient excuse for her abruptness. She had become too much weakened and excited to bear any controversy upon the subject. Besides, the parting from her father, if prolonged, would have been unbearable. She must tear herself away.

He sat a moment with downcast eyes after she had communicated to him her design. His face expressed emotion. He seemed both pained and embarrassed, and quite at a loss what to say. In fact, his wife had proposed this very plan, and was anxious that Amy should go, and he had entertained the project. Therefore he could not express surprise. For the first time, perhaps, a feeling of shame overcame him. He was obliged to deceive! His pride, revolting at that shame, made him impatient. Unwilling to acknowledge himself in the wrong, he wished to appear injured.

"If you mean to deprive me of my only child, and would rather live with strangers than with your own father, I will not oppose you," he said. "But I think you might have shown some confidence in me, and told me your wishes before."

Amy's impulse had been, at the first sight of his emotion, to throw herself into his arms, and forgive him everything, or take upon herself all the blame. But at these words she recoiled. Her silence was better than any answer could have been.

"I don't blame you, child," her father resumed, blushing for the evasion he had practised. "It would be cruel of me to wish you to stay in a home where you cannot live in peace. I am grieved, Amy, but I can do nothing. What can a man do between women who disagree?"

"Find out which is wrong!" was the answer that rose to her lips, but she suppressed it. She had already exhausted words to him. She had poured out her pain, her love, her entreaties, and they had been to him as the idle wind. She had been wronged and insulted, and he would not see it. She turned away with a feeling of despair.

"At least, let us part as a father and daughter should," he said in a trembling voice.

She held out one hand to him, and with the other covered her face, unable to utter a word; then broke away, and shut herself into her chamber. There are times when entire reparation only is tolerable, and we demand full justice, or none.

So they parted, and never met again, though they corresponded regularly, and wrote kind if not confidential letters. The only sign the daughter ever had of any change of opinion in her father regarding the cause of their separation was when he requested her to send her letters to his office and not to the house. After that they both wrote more freely.

In her new home, Amy did not find all sunshine. Miss Clinton was old and notional, and had too great a fondness for thinking for others as well as herself. Consequently, when the young lady favored the addresses of a poor artist who had been employed to paint her portrait, there was an explosion. With her father's consent, Amy married Carl Owen, and her cousin discarded her. There was one year of happiness; then the young husband died, and left his wife with an infant son.

In her trouble, Mrs. Owen made the acquaintance of Mrs. Edith Yorke, who became to her a helpful friend; and in little more than a year she married that lady's eldest son, Charles. From that moment her happiness was assured. She found herself surrounded by thoroughly congenial society, and blest with the companionship of one who was to her father, husband, and brother, all she had ever lost or longed for. Mr. Yorke adopted her son as his own, and, so far from showing any jealousy of his predecessor, was the one to propose that the boy should retain his own father's name in addition to the one he adopted.

As daughters grew up around them, he appeared to forget that Carl was not his own son, at least so far as pride in him went. Probably he showed more fondness for his girls.

Mr. Arnold died shortly after his daughter's second marriage, and his wife followed him in a few years. By their death Mrs. Yorke became the owner of her old home. But she had no desire to revisit the scene of so much misery, and for years the house was left untenanted in the care of a keeper. Nor would they ever have gone there, probably, but for pecuniary losses which made them glad of any refuge.

Mr. Charles Yorke appreciated the value of money, and knew admirably well how to spend it; but the acuteness which can foresee and make bargains, and the unscrupulousness which is so often necessary to insure their success, he had not. Consequently, when in an evil hour he embarked his inherited wealth in speculation, it was nearly all swept away.

Creditors, knowing his probity, offered to wait.

"Why should I wait?" he asked. "Will my debts contract as the cold weather comes on? I prefer an immediate settlement."

Not displeased at his refusal to profit by their generosity, they hinted at a willingness to take a percentage on their claims.

"A percentage!" cried the debtor. "Am I a swindler? Am I a beggar? I shall pay a hundred per cent., and I recommend you in your future dealings with me to bear in mind that I am a gentleman and not an adventurer."

A very old-fashioned man was Mr. Charles Yorke, and a very hard man to pity.

Behold him, then, and his family _en route_ for their new home.

We have said that the two principal streets of the town of Seaton crossed each other at right angles, one running north and south along the river, the other running east and west across the river. These roads carried themselves very straightly before folks, but once out of town, forgot their company manners, and meandered as they chose, splintered into side-tracks, and wandered off in vagabond ways. But the south road, that passed by the Rowans', was the only one that came to nothing. The other three persisted till they each found a village or a city, twenty-five miles or so away. Half a mile from the village centre, on North Street, a very respectable-looking road started off eastward, ran across a field, and plunged into the forest that swept down over a long smooth rise from far-away regions of wildness. Following this road half a mile, one saw at the left a tumble-down stone wall across an opening, with two gates, painted black in imitation of iron, about fifteen rods apart. A little further on, it became visible that an avenue went from gate to gate, enclosing a deep half-circle of lawn, on which grew several fair enough elms and a really fine maple. After such preliminaries you expect a house; and there it is at the head of the avenue, a widespread building, with a cupola in the centre, a portico in front, and a wing at either side. It is elevated on a deep terrace, and has a background of woods, and woods at either hand, only a little removed.

To be consistent, this house should be of stone, or, at least, of brick; but it is neither. Still, it would not be right to call it a "shingle palace;" for its frame is a massive network of solid oaken beams, and it is strong enough to bear unmoved a shock that would set nine out of every ten modern city structures rattling down into their cellars. When Mrs. Yorke's grandfather built this house, in the year 1800, English ideas and feelings still prevailed in that region; and in building a house, a gentleman thought of his grandchildren, who might live in it. Now nobody builds with any reference to his descendants.

But Mr. Arnold's plans had proved larger than his purse. The park he meant to have had still remained three hundred acres of wild, unfenced land, the gardens never got beyond a few flowers, now choked with weeds, and the kitchen-garden, kept alive by Patrick Chester, Mrs. Yorke's keeper. As for the orchard, it never saw the light. Mrs. Yorke's father had done the place one good turn, for he had planted vines everywhere. Their graceful banners, in summer-time, draped the portico, the corners of the house, the dead oak-tree by the western wing, and swept here and there over rock, fence, or stump.

Back of the house, toward the right, was a huge barn and a granary; the eaves of both under-hung with a solid row of swallows' nests. On this bright April morning, the whole air was full of the twirl and twitter of these birds, and with the blue glancing of their wings some invisible crystalline ring seemed to have been let down from the heavens over and around the house, and they followed its outline in their flight. But the homely, bread-and-butter robins had no such mystical ways. They flew or hopped straight where they wanted to go, and what they wanted to get was plainly something to eat. One of them alighted on the threshold of the open front-door and looked curiously in. He saw a long hall, with a staircase on one side, and open doors to right and left and at the furthest end. All the wood-work, walls, and ceilings in sight were dingy, and rats and mice had assisted time in gnawing away; but the furniture was bright, and three fires visible through the three open doors were brighter still. Redbreast seemed to be much interested in these fires. Probably he was a bird from the city, and had never seen such large ones. Those in the front rooms were large enough, but that in the kitchen was something immense, and yet left room at one side of the fireplace for a person to sit and look up chimney, if so disposed.

"_Bon!_" says the bird, with a nod, hopping in, "the kitchen is the place to go to. As to those flowers and cherries on the floor, I am not to be cheated by them. They are not good to eat, but only to walk on. I am a bird of culture and society. I know how people live. I am not like that stupid chicken."

For a little yellow chicken, without a sign of tail, had followed the robin in, and was eagerly pecking at the spots in the carpet.

The bird of culture hopped along to the door at the back of the hail, and paused again to reconnoitre. Here a long, narrow corridor ran across, with doors opening into the front rooms, and one into the kitchen, and a second stairway at one end. Three more hops brought the bird to the threshold of the kitchen-door, where a third pause occurred, this one not without trepidation; for here in the great kitchen a woman stood at a table with a pan of potatoes before her. She had washed them, and was now engaged in partially paring them and cutting out any suspicious spots that might be visible on the surfaces. "It takes me to make new potatoes out of old ones!" she said to herself with an air of satisfaction, tossing the potato in in her hand into a pan of cold water.

This woman was large-framed and tall, and over forty years of age. She had a homely, sensible, pleasant, quick-tempered face, and the base of her nose was an hypothenuse. Her dark hair was drawn back and made into a smooth French twist, with a shell comb stuck in the top a little askew. It is hard to fasten one of those twists with the comb quite even, if it has much top to it. This comb had much top. The woman's face shone with washing; she wore a straightly-fitting calico gown and a white linen collar. The gown was newly done up and a little too stiff, and to keep it from soil she had doubled the skirt up in front and pinned it behind, and tied on a large apron. For further safeguard, the sleeves were turned up and pinned to the shoulder by the waistbands. At every movement she made these stiff clothes rattled.

This woman was Miss Betsey Bates. She had lived at Mr. Arnold's when Miss Amy was a young girl, had left when she left, and was now come back to live with her again.

"Just let your water bile," Betsey began, addressing an imaginary audience--"let your water bile, and throw in a handful of salt; then wash your potatoes clean; peel 'em all but a strip or two to hold together; cut out the spots, and let 'em lay awhile in cold water; when it's time to cook 'em, throw 'em into your biling water, and clap on your lid; then--"

Betsey stopped suddenly and looked over her shoulder to listen, but, hearing no carriage-wheels nor human steps, resumed her occupation. She did not perceive the two little bipeds on the threshold of the door, where they were listening to her soliloquy with great interest, though it was the chicken's steps that had attracted her attention. That silly creature, dissatisfied with his worsted banquet, had hopped along to the robin's side, where he now stood with a hungry crop, round eyes, and two or three colored threads sticking to his bill.

Betsey's thoughts took a new turn. "I must go and see to the fires, and put a good beach chunk on each one. There's a little chill in the air, and everybody wants a fire after a journey. It looks cheerful. I've got six fires going in this house. What do you think of that? To my idea, an open fire in a strange house is equal to a first cousin, sometimes better."

Here a step sounded outside the open window behind the table, and Pat Chester appeared, a stout, fine-looking, red-faced man, with mischievous eyes and an honest mouth. Curiously enough, the base of his nose also was an hypothenuse. Otherwise there was no resemblance between the two. Betsey used to say to him, "Pat, the ends of our noses were sawed off the wrong way."

"Who are you talking to?" asked Pat, stopping to look in and laugh.

"Your betters," was the retort.

"I don't envy 'em," said Pat, and went on about his business.

"And I must see to them clocks again," pursued Betsey. "The idea of having a clock in every room in the house! It takes me half of my time to set 'em forward and back. As to touching the pendulums of such clocks as them, you don't catch me. But I do abominate to see one mantelpiece a quarter past and another quarter of at the same time."

Here a little peck on the floor arrested Betsey's attention, and, stretching her neck, she saw the chicken, and instantly flew at it with a loud "shoo!" With its two bits of wings extended and its head advanced as far as possible, the little wretch fled through the hall, peeping with terror. But the robin flew up and escaped over Betsey's head. "Laud sakes!" she cried, holding on to her comb and her eyes, "who ever saw a chicken fly up like that?"

Wondering over this phenomenon, Betsey went up-stairs and replenished the fires in three chambers, and set some of the clocks forward and others back, then hurried down to perform the same duties below stairs. Just as she set the last hour-hand carefully at nine o'clock, Pat put his head in at the dining-room window. "It's time for 'em to be here," he said, "and I'm going down to the gate to watch. I'll give a whistle the minute they come in sight."

Immersed in her own thoughts, Betsey had jumped violently at sound of his voice. "I do believe you're possessed to go round poking your head in at windows, and scaring people out of their wits!" she cried, with a frightened laugh. "Here I came within an ace of upsetting this clock or going into the fire."

Pat laughed back--he and Betsey were always scolding and always laughing at each other--muttered something about skittish women, and walked off down the avenue to watch for the family.

"I believe everything is ready," Betsey said, looking round. She took off her apron, took down her skirt and sleeves, and gave herself a general crackling smoothing over. Then suddenly she assumed an amiable smile, looked straight before her, dropped a short courtesy, and said, "How do you do, Mrs. Yorke? I hope I see you well. How do you do, sir? How do you do, miss? I wonder if I had better go out to the door when they come, or stand in the entry, or stay in the kitchen. I declare to man I don't know what to do! How do you do, ma'am?" beginning her practising again, this time before the glass. "I hope I see you well. To think of my not being married at all, and her having grown-up children!" she said, staring through the window. "The last time I saw her, she was a pretty creature, as pale as a snow-drop. Poor thing! she had a hard time of it with that Jezebel. She never said anything to me, nor I to her; but many a time she has come to me when that woman has been up to her tricks, and held on to me, and gasped for breath. 'O my heart! my heart!' she'd say. 'Don't speak to me, Betsey, but hold me a minute!' It was awful to see her white face, and to feel her heart jump as if it would tear itself out. That was the way trouble always took hold of her."

She mused a moment longer, then broke off suddenly, and began anew her practice. "How do you do, ma'am? I hope I see you well."

Presently a loud, shrill whistle interrupted her. Betsey rushed excitedly into the kitchen, dashed her potatoes into the kettle, tied on a clean apron that stood out like cast-iron with starch, and hovered in the rear of the hall, to be ready for advance or retreat, as occasion might demand.

The old yellow coach came through the gate, up the muddy avenue, and drew up at the steps. The two gentlemen got out first, then the young ladies, and all stood around while Mrs. Yorke slowly alighted. She was very pale, but smiled kindly on them, then took her son's arm, and went up the steps. Mr. Yorke stopped to offer his hand to a little girl who still remained in the coach. "My sakes!" muttered Betsey. "If it isn't that Rowan young one!"

"Mother dear," said the son, "it is possible to make a very beautiful place of this."

She looked at him with a brightening smile. "You think so, Carl?" She had been anxiously watching what impression the sight of her old home would make on her family, and exaggerating its defects in her own imagination, as she fancied they were doing in theirs. Their silence so far had given her a pang, since she interpreted it to mean disappointment, when in truth it had meant solicitude for her. They thought that she would be agitated on coming again to her childhood's home after so long an absence. So she was; but her own peculiar memories gave precedence to that which concerned those dearest to her.

"Besides, mother," Owen continued, "this spot has a charm for me which no other could have, however beautiful: it is _yours_."

That word conveyed the first intimation Mrs. Yorke had ever received that her son felt his dependence on a stepfather. But the pain the knowledge caused her was instantly banished by the recollection that the cause of his uneasiness was now removed.

"My great-grandfather had ideas, though he did not carry them out," remarked Melicent. "If he had built his house of stone, it would have done very well. It is astonishing that he did not. But the earlier settlers in this country seemed to revel in wood, probably because it had been to them in the Old World a luxury. With heaps of stones at hand, they would persist in building their houses of logs."

At this point Betsey rushed out to welcome Mrs. Yorke. The sight of that pale face which seemed to be looking for her, and the slight, clinging form that used to cling to her, quite overcame her shyness.

"You dear creature, how glad I am to see you once more!" she cried out. And, seizing the lady by the shoulders, gave her a resounding kiss on the cheek.

"Please do not touch Mrs. Yorke's left arm. It gives her palpitation," said the son rather stiffly.

Young Mr. Owen had an invincible repugnance to personal familiarities, especially from inferiors.

"Dear Betsey, this is my son," the mother said proudly, looking at her manly young escort, as if to see him anew with a stranger's admiring eyes. "Carl has heard me speak of you many a time, my old friend!"

Betsey immediately dropped a solemn courtesy. "I hope I see you well, sir!" she said, remembering her manners.

"This must be Betsey Bates!" cried Miss Melicent, coming forward with great cordiality. "Mamma has spoken of you so often I knew you at once."

Miss Yorke did not say that she recognized Betsey by her nose, though that was the fact. The impression left on the woman's mind was of something highly complimentary, that some air expressive of honesty, faithfulness, and affection, or some subtile personal grace not universally acknowledged, had led to the recognition.

On the threshold of the door, Mrs. Yorke turned to receive her husband. She could not utter a word; but her face expressed what she would have said. In her look could be read that she placed in his hands all that was hers, regretting only that the gift was so small.

One saw then, too, that Mr. Yorke's sarcastic face was capable of great tenderness. As he met that mute welcome, a look of indulgent kindness softened his keen eyes, gave his scornful mouth a new shape, and lighted up his whole countenance. But he knew better than allow his wife to yield to any excitement of feeling.

"Yes, Amy!" he said cheerfully, "I think we shall make a very pleasant home here. Now come in and rest."

They went into the sitting-room at the left of the hall, and Mrs. Yorke was seated in an arm-chair there between the fire and the sunshine, and they all waited on her. Hester, kneeling by her mother, removed her gloves and overshoes, Clara took off her bonnet and shawl, and Melicent, after whispering a word to Betsey, went out with that factotum, and presently returned bearing a tin cup of coffee on which a froth of cream still floated.

"I've taken a cup, mamma," she said, "and I can recommend it. And breakfast will be ready in two minutes."

Owen Yorke, missing one of the company, went out, and found Edith standing forlorn in the portico, biting her quivering lips, and struggling to restrain the tears that threatened to overflow her eyes. For the first time in her life the child felt timid and disconcerted. She was among her own people, and they had forgotten her. At that moment she longed passionately for Dick Rowan, and would have flown to him had it been possible.

"Come, little Gypsy!" he said. "You're not going to run away, I hope? Did you think we had forgotten you? See! I have not."

Owen Yorke's face was very winning when he chose, and his voice could express a good deal of kindness. Edith looked at him steadily a moment, then took the hand he offered, and went into the house with him. As they entered, Mrs. Yorke rose to give the child an affectionate welcome to her new home, and the daughters gathered about her with those bright, profuse words which are so pleasant even when they mean so little.

A folding-door opened from the sitting-room into the dining-room, which occupied the front half of the west wing, and here a breakfast was set out that dismayed the eyes of those who were expected to partake of it. There was a fricassee which had cost the lives of three hens of family, and occasioned a serious squabble between Pat and Betsey; there was a vast platter of ham and eggs, and a pyramid of potatoes piled so high that the first time it was touched one rolled off on to the cloth. Poor Betsey had no conception of the Yorke ideal of a proper breakfast.

"The good creature has such a generous heart!" Mrs. Yorke said, checking with a glance the titter which her two younger daughters had not tried to restrain. "And I am sure that everything is delicious."

Taking a seat at the table, Edith recollected that a trial awaited her. It was Friday; and abstinence from meat on that day was the one point in her mother's religion which she knew and practised. Otherwise she was as ignorant of it as possible.

Owen Yorke, sitting opposite, watched her curiously, perceiving that something was the matter. He noticed the slight bracing of the muscles of her face and neck, and that she drew her breath in like one who is preparing for a plunge, and kept her eyes steadily fixed on Mr. Yorke. Edith's way was to look at what she feared.

"Some of the chicken, little niece?" her uncle asked pleasantly.

"No, sir, I do not eat meat on Friday. I am a Roman Catholic," the child answered with precision. And, having made the announcement thus fully, shut her mouth, and sat pale, with her eyes fixed on Mr. Yorke's face.

A smile flashed into Owen Yorke's eyes at this reply. "Little Spartan!" he thought.

Edith did not miss the slight contraction of the brows and the downward twitch of the corners of the mouth in the face she watched; but the signs of displeasure passed as quickly as they came. "Then I am afraid you will make a poor breakfast," Mr. Yorke said gently. "But I will do the best I can for you."

There was a momentary silence; then the talk went on as before. But the family were deeply annoyed. It seemed enough that they should have to take this little waif, with they knew not what low habits and associates, or what unruly fires of temper inherited from her mother, without having an alien religion brought into their midst. Catholicism as they had seen it abroad appealed to their æsthetic sense. It floated there in a higher atmosphere, adorned with all that wealth and culture could do. But at home they preferred to keep it where, as a rule, they found it--in the kitchen and the stable.

After they had returned to the sitting-room, Mr. Yorke called Edith to him. She went trembling; for, in spite of himself, her uncle's face wore a judicial look. The girls, who were just going up-stairs, lingered to hear what would be said, and Owen took his stand behind Mr. Yorke's chair, and looked at the child with an encouraging smile.

"Were the family you lived with Catholics, my dear?" the judge began.

"No, sir. Only Mr. Rowan was when he was a little boy."

"And Mr. Rowan wished to make a Catholic of you?" Mr. Yorke said, his lip beginning to curl.

The child lifted her head. "Mr. Rowan had nothing to say about me," she replied. "It was my mother."

A slight smile went round the circle. They quite approved of her reply.

"But you cannot recollect your mother?" Mr. Yorke continued.

"Oh! yes," Edith said with animation. "I remember how she looked, and what she said. She made me hold up my hands, and promise that I would be a Roman Catholic if I had to die for it. And that was the last word she ever said."

Mr. Yorke gave a short nod. To his mind the matter was settled. "_N'est ce pas?_" he said to his wife.

She bowed gravely. "There is no other way. It is impossible to ask her to break a promise so given. When she is older, she can choose for herself."

"Well, you hear, girls?" Mr. Yorke said, looking at his daughters. "Now take her, and make her feel at home."

Miss Yorke was dignified and inscrutable, Hester unmistakably cold, but Clara took her cousin's hand with the utmost cordiality, and was leading her from the room, when Edith stopped short, her eyes attracted by a cabinet portrait in oils that stood on a shelf near the door. This portrait represented a young man, with one of those ugly, beautiful faces which fascinate us, we know not why. Careless, profuse locks of golden brown clustered around his head, steady, agate-colored eyes followed the beholder wherever he went, and seemed at once defying him to escape and entreating him not to go, and the sunshine of a hidden smile softened the curves of the mouth and chin.

Edith's eyes sparkled, her face grew crimson, and she clasped her hands tightly on her breast.

"That is your father's portrait, my dear," Mrs. Yorke said, going to her. "Do you recognize it?"

The child restrained herself one moment, then she ran to the picture, clasped her arms around it, and kissed it over and over, weeping passionately. "It is mine! It is mine!" she cried out, when her aunt tried to soothe her.

"You are right, dear!" Mrs. Yorke said, much affected. "I am sure no one will object to your having the portrait. You may take it to your own chamber, if you wish."

Edith controlled herself, wiped her eyes, and put the picture down. "Dear Aunt Amy," she said, "you know I want it; but I won't take it unless you and Uncle Charles are quite willing."

It was touching, her first acknowledgment of kinship, and expression of trust and submission. They cordially assured her of their willingness, kissed her again in token of a closer adoption, and smiled after her as she went off with her father's portrait clasped to her heart.

Melicent and Hester still lingered. Melicent remembered faintly her Uncle Robert's marriage, and the disagreeable feeling in the family at that time. It had left on her mind a prejudice against "that Polish girl," and a shade of disfavor toward her daughter. But she said nothing.

"It will be so disagreeable having a Catholic in the family!" Hester complained.

"Hester, listen to me!" her father said severely. "I want no bigotry nor petty persecutions in my family. Your Cousin Edith has as good a right to her religion as you have to yours; and if either should find herself disagreeably situated, it is she, for she is alone. Don't forget this; and don't let there be anything offensive said, or hinted, or looked. I mean to be consistent, and allow others the same freedom which I claim myself. Now, let me hear no more of this."

Hester took refuge in tears. It was her sole argument. She was one of those soft creatures who require to be petted, and have a talent for being abused. Possibly, too, she was a little jealous of this new member of the family.

"Melicent, will you lead away this weeping nymph, and dry her tears?" the father said impatiently. "Common sense is too robust for her constitution."

The sisters went up-stairs, and Owen followed them presently, and climbed to the cupola. Leaning on the window-sill there, he looked off over the country. The horizon was a ring of low blue hills, with a grand amethyst glittering to tell where the sea lay. Through the centre of this vast circle glimmered the river, silver, and gold, and steel-blue, and the white houses of the town lay like a heap of lilies scattered on its banks. Everywhere else was forest.

Shadows of varying thought swept over the young man's face as he looked off, and drew freer breath from the distance. "Henceforth my shield must bear a martlet," he muttered. "But whither shall I fly?"

That was the problem he was studying. He had come to this place only to see his family settled, and collect his own thoughts after their sudden fall from prosperity; then he would go out into the world, and work his own way. It was not pleasant, the change from that life of noble leisure and lofty work which he had planned, to one where compulsory labor for mere bread must occupy the greater part of his time; but it was inevitable. And as he looked abroad now, and breathed the fresh air that came frolicking out of the northwest, and remembered how wide the world is and how many veins in it are unwrought, his young courage rose, and the plans he had been building up for that year crumbled and ceased to excite his regret.

Only a few months before their change of circumstances, his mother had been won to consent that he might visit Asia. He had meant to go north, south, east, and west, in that shabby, glorious old land, make himself for the nonce Tartar, Chinese, Indian, Persian, what not, and get a look at creation through the eyes of each. This young man's sympathies were by no means narrow. He had never been able to believe that God smiles with peculiar fondness on any particular continent, island, peninsula, or part of either, and is but a stepfather to the rest of the world. He was born with a hatred of barriers. He sympathized with Swift, who "hated all nations, professions, and communities, and gave all his love to individuals." Or, better than Swift, he had at least a theoretical love for mankind unfenced. He did not have to learn to love, that came naturally to him; he had to learn to hate. But he was a good hater. Take him all in all, Carl Owen Yorke was at twenty-one a noble, generous youth, of good mind and unstained reputation; and it was no proof of excessive vanity in him that he believed himself capable of taking any position he might strive for.

"My dear Minerva tells me that I have in me some of the elements of failure," he said. "I wonder what they are?"

This "dear Minerva" was Miss Alice Mills, Mr. Robert Yorke's deserted _fiancée_. She and Owen were very close friends. It was one of those friendships which sometimes grow up between a woman whose youth is past and a youth whose manhood has scarcely arrived. Such a friendship may effect incalculable good or incalculable harm, as the woman shall choose.

"Well," he concluded, not caring to puzzle over the riddle, "she will explain, I suppose, when she writes. And if anybody can get at the cube-root of the difficulty, she can."

Meantime, while the son was musing, and the daughters were selecting their chambers, and making up a toilet for Edith, Mr. Yorke had sent for Patrick Chester in the sitting-room, and was questioning him concerning Catholic affairs in Seaton. They did not seem to be in a flourishing condition.

There was no priest settled there, Patrick said; but one came over from B---- once in two months, and said Mass for them. They had no church yet, but a little chapel, what there was left of it.

"What do you mean by that?" his master asked.

"Why, sir, some of the Seaton rowdies got into the chapel, one night, not long ago, and smashed the windows, and broke up the tabernacle, and destroyed the pictures entirely. And they twisted off the crucifix, though it was of iron, two inches wide and half an inch thick. The devil must have helped the man that did it, savin' your presence, ma'am."

"Are they vandals here?" demanded Mr. Yorke.

"There are some fine folks in Seaton," said Pat, who did not know what vandals are. "But the rowdies have everything pretty much their own way."

"And is there no law in the town?" asked Mr. Yorke wrathfully.

"There's a good many lawyers," said Pat, scratching his head.

"You mean to say that there was no effort made to discover and punish the perpetrators of such an outrage?" exclaimed his master.

"Indeed there was not, sir!" Pat answered. "People knew pretty well who did the mischief, and that the fellow that broke off the crucifix was taken bleeding at the lungs just after; but nobody molested 'em. It wouldn't be well for the one who would lift his voice against the Seaton rowdies. Why, some of 'em belong to as wealthy families as there are in town. They began with a cast-iron band years ago, and everybody laughed at 'em. All the harm they did was to wake people out of sleep. Then they broke up a lecture. It was a Mr. Fowle from Boston, who was preaching about education. And then they did a little mischief here and there to people they didn't like, and now they are too strong to put down. And, indeed, sir, when it's against the Catholics they are, nobody wants to put 'em down."

Mr. Yorke glanced at his wife. She did not look up nor deny Patrick's charges. She was a little ashamed of the character of her native town in this respect; for at that time Seaton was notorious for its lawlessness, and was even proud of its reputation. No great harm had been done, they said. It was only the boys' fun. They were sorry, it is true, that a respectable lecturer should have been insulted; but that a Catholic chapel should be desecrated, that was nothing. They did not give it a second thought.

"Well, Patrick," Mr. Yorke resumed, "my niece, Miss Edith Yorke, is a Catholic, and I wish her to have proper instruction, and to attend to the services of her church when there is opportunity. Let me know the next time your priest comes here, and I will call to see him. Now you may go."

TO BE CONTINUED.

OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE.

The story and celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe are not so familiar to Catholics, or so well appreciated by others, as to render useless or uninteresting, especially in this month of Mary, an account of her veneration in Mexico. What this actually, veritably is, no writer, so far as we are aware, has yet undertaken to show--at least, from such literary evidences of popular conviction as best illustrate the subject. How anything supernatural could shine or blossom in a land of wars, robbers, Indians, is an old doubt, notwithstanding that revelations have taken place in countries which needed them less than did the once idolatrous Aztecs. Let us now endeavor to make clear what the true nature of the miracle of Guadalupe is; to exhibit its real veneration by means of testimonies borrowed from the worthiest Mexicans; and to prove that the faith of Guadalupe is not shallow, but long and well-established, widespread, and sincere.

Here follows a brief history of the renowned miracle of Tepeyac. In 1531, ten years after the conquest, the pious and simple Indian, Juan Diego, was on his way to the village of Guadalupe, near the city of Mexico, there to receive the instructions of some reverend fathers. Suddenly, at the hill of Tepeyac appeared to him the Blessed Virgin, who commanded her amazed client to go forthwith to the bishop, and make known that she wished a church to be built in her honor upon that spot. Next day the Blessed Virgin returned to hear the regret of Juan Diego that he could not obtain the ear of the bishop. "Go back," said the Holy Lady, "and announce that I, Mary, Mother of God, send thee." The Indian again sought his bishop, who this time required that he should bring some token of the presence and command of his patroness. On the 12th of December, Juan Diego again saw Our Lady, who ordered him to climb to the top of the barren rock of Tepeyac and there gather roses for her. To his great astonishment, he found the roses flourishing on the rock, and brought them to his patroness, who threw them into his tilma or apron, and said: "Go back to the bishop and show him these credentials." Again came the Indian before the bishop, and, opening his tilma to show the roses, lo! there appeared impressed upon it a marvellous image of the Blessed Virgin. The bishop was awestruck and overcome. The miraculous occurrence was made known and proved. Processions and Masses celebrated it, and its fame spread far and wide. A large new cathedral was erected on the hill of Guadalupe, and multitudes from all parts flocked thither. Specially noteworthy is the fact that the new shrine to Our Lady was erected in the place where once the Indians worshipped their goddess Totantzin, mother of other deities, and protectress of fruits and fields. The marvellous picture was found impressed upon the rudest cloth, that of a poor Indian's apron, the last upon which to attempt a painter's artifice--and hence the greater wonder, the artistic testimony regarding which is something formidable and wonderful in itself.

What is known in Mexico as the Day of Guadalupe is extraordinary as a popular manifestation. On the 12th of December every year, fifteen or twenty thousand Indians congregate in the village of that name to celebrate the anniversary of the Marvellous Apparition. The whole way to the famous suburb is crowded with cabs, riders, and pedestrians of the poorest sort, a great number of them bare-footed. All day there is an ever-moving multitude to and from the village, and, indeed, the majority of the inhabitants of the city of Mexico seem to be included in the parties, families, and caravans of strangely contrasted people that wend their way to the shrines on the hill. The most numerous class of pilgrims are the saddest and the most wretched--we mean the ill-clad, ill-featured, simple, devoted Indians. On them the luxuries of the rich, the passions of the fighters, the intrigues of politicians, have borne with ruinous effect. Drudging men and women; hewers of wood and drawers of water; bare-breasted peasants, with faces dusky and dusty, the same who any day may be seen on Mexican roads carrying burdens of all sorts strapped to their backs; children in plenty, bare, unkempt, untidy, and sometimes swaddled about their mothers' shoulders; numerous babes at the breast, half-nude--these are some of the features in a not overdrawn picture of the primitive poverty which assembles at Guadalupe, and, in fact, in every Mexican multitude whatsoever. Perhaps nowhere outside of Mexico and the race of Indians can such a problem of multitudinous poverty be seen. Its victims are those over whom the desert-storms of wars and feuds innumerable have passed, and, spite of all their wanderings as a race, they yet wear the guise and character of tribes who are still trying to find their way out of a wilderness or a barren waste. Let enthusiasts for self-willed liberty say what they will, wars of fifty years are anything but conservative of happiness, cleanliness, good morals, and that true liberty which should always accompany them. However fondly we cherish our ideals of freedom, we must yet bear in mind the wholesome, wholesale truth of history, that no actual liberty is reached by the dagger and guillotine, or by massacre, or is founded on bad blood or bad faith. Those who lately celebrated the execution of Louis XVI. and the intellectual system of murder established by Robespierre, and not totally disapproved by Mr. Carlyle, have good reason to be cautious as to how they offend this menacing truth.

A cathedral and four chapels are the principal structures of the picturesque hillside village of Guadalupe. By a winding ascent among steep, herbless rocks, tufted here and there with the thorny green slabs of the cactus, is reached at some distance from the cathedral the highest of the chapels, which contains the original imprint of the figure of Our Lady. Looking up to the chapel from the crowd at the cathedral may be seen a striking picture, not unlike what Northern travellers have been taught to fancy of the middle ages, but the elements of which are still abundant in the civilization of Europe. It is simply the curious crowd of pilgrims going up and down the hill, to and from the quaint old chapel, built perhaps centuries ago. The scene from the height itself is charming and impressive. The widespread valley of Mexico--including lakes, woods, villages, and a rich and substantial city, with towers and domes that take enchantment from distance--is all before the eye in one serene view of landscape. In the village there is a multitude like another Israel, sitting in the dust or standing near the pulquerias, or moving about near the church door. As Guadalupe is for the most part composed of adobe houses, and as its mass of humble visitors have little finery to distinguish their brown personages from the dust out of which man was originally created, the complexion of the general scene which they constitute can only be described as earth-like and earth-worn. Elsewhere than in a superficial glance at the poverty of Guadalupe we must seek for the meaning of its spectacle. Is this swarming, dull-colored scene but an animated fiction? No--it is the natural seeking the supernatural. And the supernatural--what is it? It is redemption and immortality, our Lord and Our Lady, the angels and saints.

The cathedral is a building of picturesque angles, but, except that it is spacious, as so many of the Mexican churches are, makes no particular boast of architecture. A copy of the marvellous tilma, over the altar, poetically represents Our Lady in a blue cloak covered with stars, and a robe said to be of crimson and gold, her hands clasped, and her foot on a crescent supported by a cherub. This is the substance of a description of it given by a traveller who had better opportunities for seeing it closely than had the present writer during the fiesta of Guadalupe in 1867. Whether the original picture is rude or not, from being impressed upon a blanket, he has not personal knowledge, though aware that it has been described as rude. Nevertheless, its idea and design are beautiful and tender. Everywhere in Mexico it is the favorite and, indeed, the most lovely presentment of Our Lady. Like a compassionate angel of the twilight, it looks out of many a shrine, and, among all the images for which the Mexican Church is noted, none is perhaps more essentially ideal, and, in that point of view, _real_. Where it appears wrought in a sculpture of 1686, by Francisco Alberto, on the side of San Agustin's at the capital, it is, though quaint, very admirable for its purity and gentleness. Time respects it, and the birds have built their nests near it. The various chapels in and about the city dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe are recognized by the star-mantled figure. The Baths of the Peñon, the cathedral at the Plaza, the suburb of Tacubaya, have each their pictorial witnesses of the faith of Guadalupe; and to say that its manifestation abounds in Mexico is but to state a fact of commonplace. Rich and poor venerate the tradition of the Marvellous Appearance, now for three centuries celebrated, and always, it seems, by multitudes.

What else is to be seen at Guadalupe besides its crowd and its altar is not worthy of extended remark. The organs of the cathedral are high and admirably carved; over the altar's porphyry columns are cherubim and seraphim, all too dazzling with paint and gold. Here, as in other places of Spanish worship, the figures of the crucifixion have been designed with a painful realism. Outside of the church a party of Indians, displaying gay feathers, danced in honor of the feast, as their sires must have done hundreds of years ago. Inside it was densely crowded with visitors or pilgrims, and far too uncomfortable at times to make possible the most accurate observation of its ornaments. But it may be well to repeat that the church is divided into three naves by eight columns, and is about two hundred feet long, one hundred and twenty feet broad, and one hundred high. The total cost of the building, and, we presume, its altars, is reckoned as high as $800,000, most of it, if not all, contributed by alms. The altar at which is placed the image of Our Lady is said to have cost $381,000, its tabernacle containing 3,257 marks of silver, and the gold frame of the sacred picture 4,050 castellanos. The church's ornaments are calculated to be worth more than $123,000. Two of its candlesticks alone weighed 2,213 castellanos in gold, and one lamp 750 marks of silver. To Cristobal de Aguirre, who, in 1660, built a hermitage on the summit of Tepeyac, we owe the foundation of the chapel there. It was not, however, until 1747 that Our Lady of Guadalupe was formally declared the patroness of the whole of Mexico.

Of the many celebrations of Mexico, none are altogether as significant as that of Guadalupe. It has become national, and, in a certain sense, religiously patriotic. Maximilian and Carlota, the writer was informed, washed the feet of the poor near the altar of Our Lady, according to a well-known religious custom. The best men and women of Mexico have venerated the Marvellous Appearance--which, however amusing it may be to those who are scarcely as radical in their belief in nature as conservative in their views of the supernatural, is but a circumstance to the older traditions which have entered into the mind of poetry and filled the heart of worship. What of the wonderful happenings to the great fathers of the church and the mediæval saints, all worshippers of unquestionable sublimation? Say what you please, doubt as you may, saints, angels, miracles, abide, and form the very testament of belief. There is not a Catholic in the world who does not believe in miracle, whose faith is not to unbelievers a standing miracle of belief in a miracle the most prodigious, the most portentous; and yet to him it has only become natural to believe in the supernatural. The Mexicans venerate what three centuries and uncounted millions have affirmed, whence it appears that their veneration is not a conceit or humbug, but at root a faith. How can this be more clearly illustrated than by quoting the following very interesting poem of Manuel Carpio, Mexico's favorite, if not best modern poet:

THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE.

The good Jehovah, dread, magnificent, Once chose a people whom he called his own. And out of Egypt in a wondrous way He brought them in a dark and troublous night, And Moses touched the Red Sea with a rod, And the waves parted, offering them a path. His people passed, but in the abyss remained Egyptian horse and rider who pursued. Marched on the flock of Jacob, and the Lord Spread over them his all-protecting wings, As the lone eagle shields her unfledged young. He gave them lands, and victories, and spoils-- Glad nation! which the Master of the heavens Loved as the very apple of his eye. But now this people, seeing themselves blessed By him whose slightest glance they not deserved, Erected perishable images In homage unto strange and pagan gods. The Lord in indignation said: "They wished To make their Maker jealous with vain gods. Bowing in dust the sacrilegious knee Before the dumb creation of their hands. Well, I will sting their hearts with jealousy, Showing myself to all unhappy lands Without employing vail or mystery." He said it, and his solemn word fulfilled, Convoking from the farthest ends of earth Nations barbarian and civilized-- The Gaul, the Scandinavian, Roman, Greek, And the neglected race of Mexico, Whom the Almighty Sovereign loved so well The holy truth he would reveal to them-- So that the hard hearts of his people should Be softened. Yet his mercy was not full: Down from the diamond heavens he bade descend The Virgin, who with mother's sorrowing care Nursed him in Bethlehem when he was a child.

Near to the tremulous Tezcoco lake Rises a bare and solitary hill. Where never cypress tall nor cedar grows, Nor whispering oak; nor cooling fountain laves The waste of herbless rocks and sterile sand-- A barren country 'tis, dry, dusty, sad, Where the vile worm scarce drags its length along.

Here is the place where Holy Mary comes Down from her home above the azure heavens To show herself to Juan, who, comfortless, Petitioned for relief from troubles sore. Sometimes it chances that a fragrant plant In the dense forest blooms unseen, unknown, Though bright its virginal buds and rare its flowers; So doth the modest daughter of the Lord Obscure the moon, the planets, and the stars Which all adorn her forehead and her feet, When lends she the poor Indian her grace In bounty wonderful to all his kind. She tenders him the waters and the dew, Prosperity of fruits and animals, A heart of sensible humility, And help unfailing in his future need. The Angel of America resumes Her radiant flight. With grateful ear he heard, Twice did he wondering kneel, and twice again He kissed the white feet of the holy maid.

But did not end God's providence benign: The Almighty wished to leave to Mexicans His Mother's likeness by his own great hand, In token of the love he had for us. He took the pencil, saying: "We will make In heaven's own image, as we moulded man. But what was Adam to my beauteous one?" So saying, drew he with serenest face The gentle likeness of the Mother-maid. He saw the image, and pronounced it good.

Since then, with the encircling love of heaven, A son she sees in every Mexican. Mildly the wandering incense she receives, Attending to his vow with human face; For her the teeming vapors yield their rain To the green valley and the mountain side, Where bend and wave the abundant harvest fields, And the green herbs that feed the lazy kine. She makes the purifying breezes pass, And on the restless and unsounded seas She stills the rigor of the hurricane. The frighted people see the approach of death When the broad earth upon its axis shakes, But the wild elements are put to sleep With but a smile from her mild countenance. And she has moved the adamantine heart Of avarice, who saw decrepit age Creep like an insect on the dusty earth, To ope his close-shut hand, and bless the poor. She maketh humbly kneel and kiss the ground No less the wise than simple. She the great, Dazzled by their own glory, doth advise That soon their gaudy pageant shall be o'er, And heaven's oblivion shall dissolve their fame.

How often has the timid, trembling maid Upon the verge of ruin sought thy help, Shutting her eyes to pleasure and to gold At thought of thee, O Maiden pure and meek! Centuries and ages will have vanished by, Within their currents bearing kings and men; Great monuments shall fall; the pyramids Of lonely Egypt moulder in decay; But time shall never place its fatal hand Upon the image of the Holy Maid, Nor on the pious love of Mexico.

Manuel Carpio, who wrote this, his first poetic composition, in 1831, when forty years of age, was a scholar and professor, and in 1824 a congressman. He made the Bible, we are told, his favorite study; and certainly it supplied him with the themes for his best poems. But he was not the only poet of Mexico who bore earnest witness to the faith of which we speak. Padre Manuel Sartorio, who wrote about the time of Iturbide, deprecates the idea of preferring a capricious doubt respecting "la Virgen de Guadalupe" to a constant belief founded in tradition. In the following lines the nature of his own belief is fully attested:

"Of Guadalupe, that fair image pictured Unto the venerating eye of Mexico; With stars and light adorned, the figure painted Of a most modest Maiden, full of grace; What image is it? Copy 'tis divine Of the Mother of God. * * * * * And what assures me this? My tender thought. Who the design conceived? The holiest love. Who then portrayed it? The eternal God."

In other lines on the same subject, Sartorio speaks of the Lady of Guadalupe as "the purest rose of the celestial field," and pays special respect to her image in the Portal of Flowers, of which there is a tradition, not vulgar, of having spoken (hay tradicion no vulgar de haber hablado) to the Venerable Padre Zapa, in order to instruct the Indians, as relates Cabrera, "Escudo de Armas de Mexico, numero 923." Who this Cabrera may be we are not aware, and cannot affirm that he is identical with the great painter Cabrera, whose belief in Our Lady of Guadalupe was so distinct and positive.

One other poet of Mexico we shall summon to give testimony. It is Fray Manuel Navarrete, who wrote a series of poems, well-known to his countrymen, called "Sad Moments." He was also the author of a number of tributes to the fame of Carlos IV. and Ferdinand VII., and seems to have possessed more influence, if not more merit as a poet, than Padre Sartorio. From a posthumous volume, bearing date of 1823, we take the following lines, the allusions of which sufficiently explain at what time they were written:

TO THE MOST HOLY VIRGIN UNDER THE INVOCATION OF GUADALUPE.

From her eternal palace, from the heavens, One day descended to America, When in its worst affliction, the great Mary, Its sorrows to maternally console. Behold in Tepeyac how watchfully She frustrates the designs of heresy, How she extinguishes the fire that flames From the far French unto the Indian soil! What matter, then, if proud Napoleon, With his infernal hosts the world appalling, Seeks to possess the land of Mexico? To arms, countrymen: war, war! For the sacred palladium of Guadalupe Protects our native land.

The deity of peace have painters skilled Portrayed with bounteous grace and elegance, Painting a virgin who with fair white hands An offering of tender blossoms bore. Thus were their pencils' finest excellences A promise and foreshadowing of this, The image of Our Lady, which in heaven Received its colors. Thus beheld it he, The fortunate Indian, at Tepeyac, That bare and desolate hill, a miracle, That unto day has been perpetuate. Now while the world's ablaze with lively war, Seems that affrighted peace has taken refuge Within the happy households of our land.

How sadly, how oddly, sounds in modern ears this felicitation of a poet that peace, which has left the greater part of the world, has taken refuge in Mexico! Evidently our Fray Navarrete did not foresee the results of the war begun by the clerical revolutionist Hidalgo. But whatever may have been the political bias of this religious writer, he retains the esteem of his countrymen as one of the fathers of their fragmentary literature.

Our last witness is Miguel Cabrera, the great Mexican painter, whose merits have with reason been compared by an Italian traveller, the Count Beltrami, to those of Correggio and Murillo. Altogether, as carver, architect, and painter, the New World has not produced the equal in art of this extraordinary man, who wrought almost without masters or models, without emulation or fitting aid and recompense, and whose worth has yet to be made well known to the continent which he honored. But our object now is to lend the weight of this preface to the following statement of the Mexican writer, Señor Orozco y Berra:

"Cabrera wrote a short treatise dedicated to his protector Sr. Salinas [Archbishop of Mexico] with the title of _The American Marvel, and Conjunction of Rare Marvels, observed with the direction of the Rules of the Art of Painting, in the Miraculous Image [prodigiosa imagen] of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico_. It is a small book in quarto, printed in 1756 by the press of the college of San Ildefonso, and containing thirty pages, with dedication, approbations, and license at the beginning, and the opinions of various painters at the end. The reason given for this writing was the invitation made by the abbot and council of the college to the best known painters of Mexico, in order that, after examining the painting on cloth of Our Lady of Guadalupe, they might declare if it could be the work of human hands. Cabrera was one of those who joined in the examination, and in his book he undertakes to show that _the Virgin is not painted in a manner artificial and human_."

STATISTICS OF PROTESTANTISM IN THE UNITED STATES.

Under the term _Protestantism_, it is intended to comprise all persons of any religious sect, denomination, or church in this country, except Catholics, Jews, and Chinese. So numerous are the divisions and subdivisions that our limits will permit us to present only the name of each, with perhaps a word as to its distinctive features, its numbers at different periods, and its average annual increase for a given period. The given period thus selected is the twenty-five years and upward preceding the year 1868; because the statistics of all the denominations which are accessible, are at present more complete up to that date than they have yet become up to any subsequent year, or even up to the present date. The statistics are taken entirely from Protestant sources, and chiefly from official documents published by the respective denominations. The final results are then brought together, and compared with the results presented by the Federal census of the population at different periods.

1. The name "Lutheran" was given to the first Protestant denomination, in order to designate the followers of Martin Luther. A part of the members of the denomination in this country have recently changed their name to "Evangelical Lutheran Church."

The statistics, chiefly official, of the denomination for a series of years have been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1823 175 900 40,000 1833 240 1,000 60,000 1841 418 1,371 145,408 1842 424 1,371 166,300 1850 663 1,604 163,000 1859 1,134 2,017 203,662 1862 1,419 2,672 284,000 1863 1,418 2,533 269,985 1864 1,543 2,765 292,723 1865 1,627 2,856 312,415 1866 1,644 2,915 323,825 1867 1,750 3,112 332,155 1868 1,792 3,182 350,088 1869 2,016 3,330 376,567 1870 2,211 3,537 392,721

The average annual increase during a series of years (ending always with 1867) has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 44 years 36 50 6,640 In 26 " 51 67 7,182 In 8 " 77 124 16,061

2. The German Reformed denomination made its appearance, soon after the Lutheran, in the German part of Switzerland, and sprang out of a dispute between Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Luther concerning the import of the words, "This is my body," "This is my blood."

The following table shows their growth in this country since 1820:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1820 68 389 14,400 1830 84 353 17,189 1840 123 416 17,760 1850 231 786 58,799 1860 391 1,045 92,684 1862 421 1,122 100,691 1864 460 1,134 107,394 1866 475 1,162 109,258 1867 491 1,152 110,408 1868 505 1,181 115,483 1869 521 -- 117,910

The average annual increase during a series of years has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 47 years 9 16 2,043 In 7 " 14 15 2,532

3. The "United Brethren in Christ" are the fruits of a "reformation" in the German Reformed denomination--a sort of Methodistical offshoot. The statements of their numbers are as follows:

Ministers. Societies. Members. 1842 500 1,800 65,000 1866 789 3,297 91,570 1867 837 3,445 98,983 1868 864 3,663 108,122

The average annual increase during twenty-five years has been as follows:

Ministers. Societies. Members. In 25 years 13 66 1,319

4. The "Moravians," or United Brethren, are a distinct denomination from the preceding one. As known in this country, they descended from a colony of dissenters, who were first gathered on his estate in Upper Alsatia, in 1772, by Count Zinzendorf.

Their numbers have been stated as follows:

Ministers. Members. 1842 24 6,000 1867 -- 6,655 1868 -- 6,768

Their annual average increase of communicants has been in twenty-five years 26.

5. The "Dutch Reformed Church," as it was known until 1867, when the name was changed to "Reformed Church in America," is a descendant of the Dutch Reformed Church of Holland.

The following table shows the growth of this denomination since 1820:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1820 71 105 9,023 1830 132 197 15,579 1840 230 245 23,782 1850 293 292 33,553 1860 387 370 50,427 1862 419 429 -- 1863 446 422 53,007 1865 436 427 54,286 1866 447 434 55,917 1867 461 444 57,846 1868 469 -- 59,508 1869 493 464 61,444

The average annual increase of the denomination at different periods has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 47 years 8½ 7 1,039 In 7 " 10 10 1,060

6. The Mennonites derive their name from Menno Simon, born in Friesland A.D. 1495. He was contemporary with Luther, Bucer, and Bullinger. He obtained a great number of followers. In 1683, the first of them came over to this country, others soon followed.

Their number has been estimated as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1843 235 260 30,000 1860 -- -- 35,000 1862 260 312 37,360 1867 -- -- 39,110

The average annual increase in members in twenty-four years has been 380.

7. The Reformed Mennonite Society was first organized in 1811. The members ascribe their origin to the corruptions of the Mennonites. The reform extended into several counties of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, but their doctrines are regarded as too rigid for general acceptance.

In 1860, their numbers were estimated at about 11,000.

The average annual increase has been about 200.

8. The denomination known as the "German Evangelical Association" first appeared in one of the Middle States, about the year 1800.

This denomination is now regarded as German Methodists, and their numbers have been as follows:

Ministers. Members. 1843 250 15,000 1859 -- 33,000 1862 -- 46,000 1863 386 47,388 1365 405 50,000 1866 473 54,875 1867 478 58,002

The average annual increase of the denomination in twenty-four years has been 1,791.

9. The "Christians," or "Christian Connection," profess not to owe their origin to the labors of any one man, like the other Protestant sects. They rose almost simultaneously in different and remote parts of this country, without knowledge of each other's movements.

The new organizations of this denomination held their twenty-third annual convention in June, 1868. The number of organizations was one hundred and sixty.

The numbers of the denomination have been stated as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1844 2,000 1,500 325,000 1866 3,000 5,000 500,000

The average annual increase of members has been as follows:

In 22 years 7,594 members.

The "Church of God," as it exists by that name in the United States, is a religious community, who profess to have come out from all human and unscriptural organizations, and to have fallen back upon original grounds, and who wish, therefore, to be known and called by no other distinctive name.

This denomination exists in Ohio and Pennsylvania and the Western States, and their numbers have been stated as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1843 83 125 10,000 1860 140 275 14,000 1866 -- 360 32,000

The average annual increase has been as follows:

Churches. Members. In 23 years 10 960

11. The denominations thus far noticed are chiefly of German origin. The next class contains those of Scottish origin. Among these the Presbyterian holds the first place in age and numbers. The first organization here was made in 1706, and known as the Presbytery of Philadelphia. Their first synod was convened September 17, 1718.

The first General Assembly met in 1789, and a more efficient and extensive development ensued. In 1810, a division arose, and the formation of the "Cumberland Presbyterian" organization. But the most extensive division took place in 1838, by which a body was organized and known as the "New School," while those who remained were designated as "Old School" Presbyterians. The split thus made has continued for thirty years, but is now ostensibly removed by measures of reunion.

The statistics of the "Old School" Presbyterians for the year 1863 first show the effect of the separation of the Southern portion during the war. The report of numbers has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1843 1,434 2,092 159,137 1850 1,860 2,512 200,830 1860 2,577 3,487 279,630 1861 2,767 3,684 300,874 1863 2,205 2,541 227,575 1865 2,201 2,629 232,450 1866 2,294 2,608 239,306 1867 2,302 2,622 246,330 1868 2,330 2,737 252,555 1869 2,381 2,740 258,903 1870[23] 4,234 -- 446,561

[23] Old and New School united.

The statistics of the Southern division are given as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1865 811 1,277 83,821 1867 850 1,309 80,532 1868 837 1,298 76,949 1870 840 1,469 82,014

The average annual increase of the denomination previous to the division caused by opposite views on political questions was as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 18 years 74 89 7,874

The average annual increase of the whole denomination (North and South) to 1868 has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 25 years 70 78 6,958

12. The division of the Presbyterian Church was entirely consummated in 1840, by the meeting of a General Assembly representing the seceders, or "New School."

Subsequently, the loss of the Southern churches by the "Old School" denomination, and the increase of the anti-slavery sentiment in the Northern portion, suggested a reunion with the "New School" soon after the outbreak of the recent war. At length, in 1868, one General Assembly met in Albany, while the other was in session in Harrisburg, Pa. A plan of union was mutually prepared, which, on being approved by the local presbyteries, went into effect in 1870.

The statistics of the "New School" Presbyterians have been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1839 1,171 1,286 100,850 1860 1,527 1,483 134,463 1861 1,558 -- 134,760 1862 1,555 1,466 135,454 1863 1,616 1,454 135,894 1865 1,694 1,479 143,645 1866 1,739 1,528 150,401 1867 1,870 1,560 161,538 1868 1,800 -- 168,932 1869 1,848 1,631 172,560

The average annual increase in twenty-eight years has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 28 years 24 10 2,167

13. The "General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church" is the title of a denomination which claims to be a direct descendant of the "Reformed Presbyterian Church" of Scotland.

The statements of the numbers of this denomination have been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1842 24 44 4,500 1861 56 -- 7,000 1862 56 91 -- 1866 -- -- 7,918 1867 66 91 8,324 1868 77 -- 8,487 1870 86 -- 8,577

The average annual increase in twenty-five years has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 25 years 1¾ 2 153

14. The "Synod of Reformed Presbyterians" was formed by certain persons who separated from the Reformed Presbyterians (General Synod), principally on the ground that they were of opinion that the constitution and government of the United States are essentially infidel and immoral. The separation took place in 1833.

The few statements relative to the numbers of this denomination have been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1861 59 78 6,650 1866 60 -- 6,000

The average annual decrease during the last half-dozen years has been 108.

15. Another division is the "Associate Presbyterian Church." This is located chiefly in the Middle and Western States. The members of the denomination claim to be a branch of the Church of Scotland.

In 1858, the Associate Reformed and the Associate churches reunited under the name of "United Presbyterian Church in North America."

The statistics of the Associate Presbyterian denomination after 1859 are merged in those of the United Presbyterians, and have been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1844 106 210 15,000 1861 444 669 57,567 1863 470 683 54,758 1864 513 698 57,691 1865 516 659 58,265 1866 539 686 58,988 1867 558 717 63,489 1868 541 735 65,612 1869 565 726 65,624 1870 553 729 66,805

The average annual increase of the denomination during the six years subsequent to the union, ending in 1867, has been as follows:

Ministers. Members. In 6 years 19 1,000

The statistics of the "Associate Synod of North America" above-mentioned have been as follows:

Ministers. Members. 1861 49 1,130 1867 11 778

16. Another order of Presbyterians in this country is known as the "Associate Reformed Church." Since 1822, the denomination has existed in three independent divisions, the Northern, the Western, and the Southern. These divisions are quite small in numbers, and their growth has been insignificant. They have been stated as follows:

The Associate Reformed Synod of New York in 1843 had 34 ministers and 43 congregations. In 1867, it had 16 ministers and 1,631 members.

The Associate Reformed Synod of the South in 1843 had 25 ministers and 40 congregations; and in 1867, estimated at 1,500 members.

The Associate Synod of North America in 1867 had 11 ministers and 778 members.

The Free Presbyterian Synod, consisting, in 1861, of 41 ministers and 4,000 members, had previously separated from the New School Presbyterian denomination, but was reunited and absorbed after the outbreak of the recent war.

17. The Independent Presbyterian Church in South and North Carolina consisted, in 1861, of 4 ministers and about 1,000 members.

18. Another denomination of Presbyterians remains to be noticed. It is called the "Cumberland Presbyterians" and first appeared in Kentucky in the year 1800. In 1829, there were four synods and the first General Assembly of the denomination was held. During the recent war the Southern churches were not reported in the Assembly, and there are no complete statistics of that period.

The numbers of the denomination have been stated as follows:

Synods. Presby. Min. Conversions. 1822 1 -- 46 2,718 1826 1 -- 80 3,305 1827 1 -- 114 4,006 1833 6 32 -- 5,977 1843 13 57 -- --

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1860 927 1,188 84,249 1867 1,000 estimated 100,000 1870 1,116 -- 87,727

The average annual increase in 55 years, from 1812 to 1867, has been 1,819.

19. Another large class of denominations is known by the name of "Baptists." They are divided into ten separate sects: Baptists; Free-Will Baptists; Seventh-Day Baptists; German Baptists or Brethren; German Seventh-Day Baptists; Free Communion Baptists; Old School Baptists; Six-Principle Baptists; River Brethren; Disciples of Christ, or Campbellites.

An estimate of the numbers of the regular Baptists at different periods, made by themselves, presents the following results:

Ministers. Churches. Communicants. 1842 6,000 9,000 750,000 1859 7,150 11,606 925,000 1862 -- -- 966,000 1863 7,952 12,551 1,039,400 1865 7,867 12,702 1,040,303 1866 -- 12,675 1,043,641 1868 8,346 12,955 1,094,806 1869 8,695 12,011 1,121,988 1870 8,787 -- 1,221,349

The average annual increase of the denomination during twenty-five years has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 25 years 94 158 13,796

20. The "Free-will Baptist Connection" made its first organized appearance in this country in 1780. In 1827, a General Conference was organized to represent the whole connection. The statements of their numbers have been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Communicants. 1842 898 1,057 54,000 1850 1,082 1,252 56,452 1859 947 1,170 56,600 1862 -- -- 58,055 1863 1,049 1,277 57,007 1865 -- -- 56,783 1866 1,063 1,264 56,288 1867 1,100 1,276 59,111 1868 1,161 1,279 61,244 1869 1,141 1,375 66,691

The average annual increase of the denomination during the last twenty-five years has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 25 years 8 9 204

21. The "Seventh-Day Baptists" are so-called because they differ from all other Protestant denominations in their views of the Sabbath. They have gradually spread in the Eastern, the Central, and some Northwestern and Southern States.

Little is known of their numbers, but they have been stated as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Communicants. 1842 40 50 6,000 1850 43 52 6,243 1858 50 56 6,736 1863 77 66 6,686 1865 -- -- 6,796 1866 73 68 7,014 1867 -- 68 7,038 1869 -- 75 7,129

The annual average increase of the denomination has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 25 years 1⅓ ¾ 41

22. There is a denomination of German Baptists which has assumed for itself the name of "Brethren," but they are commonly called "Dunkers" or "Tunkers" to distinguish them from the Mennonists. They have also been called "Tumblers" from the manner in which they perform baptism, which is by putting the person head forward under water (while kneeling), so as to resemble the motion of the body in the act of tumbling.

In 1843, their larger congregations contained from two to three hundred members; but little was then known among themselves of their numbers. Their subsequent statistics have been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1859 150 160 8,700 1862 -- -- 8,200 1863 100 200 20,000 1866 150 200 20,000 1867 -- -- 20,000

A membership of 20,000 has been stated for this denomination during the last half-dozen years without increase or diminution.

23. The "German Seventh-Day Baptists" first made their appearance in Germany in 1694. From these, after their organization in the United States, sprang the Seventh-Day branch. Their numbers in 1860 were estimated at:

Ministers. Members. 1860 187 1,800

24. A society designated as "Free-Communion Baptists" arose in 1858 in McDonough Co., Illinois, and organized a quarterly meeting conference. At the quarterly meeting in 1859, one preacher, four licentiates, a few small churches, and 104 members were reported.

25. The "Old School," or Anti-mission, Baptists were formerly a portion of the regular Baptists, above-mentioned. They are opposed to the academical or theological education of their ministers, and to Bible, missionary, and all other voluntary societies of like nature.

Their numbers have been stated as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1860 475 1,750 62,000 1862 -- -- 60,000 1863 850 1,800 60,000 1864 -- -- 63,000 1865 -- -- 60,000 1867 -- 1,800 105,000

The average annual increase of this denomination during seven years by these statements has been 6,143.

25. The denomination called "Six-Principle Baptists" originated in Rhode Island as early as 1665. They are distinguished from other Baptists by deducing their peculiarities from the first three verses of the sixth chapter of Hebrews.

Their numbers have been estimated as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1860 16 18 3,000

Recent statements put their numbers about the same, and there probably has been no important increase.

27. The "River Brethren" is an organization in Pennsylvania and other states, so-called to distinguish them from the German Baptists or Brethren above-mentioned.

Their meetings are generally held in dwelling-houses, or barns fitted up with seats; in other respects, they are similar to the German Brethren.

Their numbers have been stated as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1860 65 80 7,000

More recent statements make no important alteration in these numbers.

28. The "Disciples of Christ," or, as the denomination is often called, "Baptists," "Reformed Baptists," "Reformers," "Campbellites," etc., originated in the early part of the present century. The first advocates were Thomas and Alexander Campbell in Pennsylvania.

The statements of their numbers have been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1842 -- -- 200,000 1850 848 1,898 218,618 1863 1,500 1,800 300,000 1867 -- -- 300,000

The average annual increase, according to these statements, has been in twenty-one years, in members, 4,762.

29. The first appearance of the Puritans, since known as "Congregationalists," was in the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The first church formed upon Congregational principles was that established by Robert Browne in 1583. The denomination is the largest in New England, and exists in small bodies in a number of the states.

Their numbers are stated to be as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1742 1,150 1,300 160,000 1850 1,687 1,971 147,196 1858 1,922 2,369 230,093 1861 -- -- 259,119 1862 2,643 2,884 261,474 1863 2,594 2,729 253,200 1864 -- 2,856 268,015 1865 2,761 2,723 263,296 1866 2,919 2,780 267,453 1867 2,971 2,825 278,362 1868 -- 2,951 291,474 1869 -- 3,043 300,362

The average annual increase of this denomination during the last twenty-five years has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. In 25 years 73 61 4,734

30. The denomination of "Unitarians" arose in this country from a division of opinion among Congregationalists on the divinity of Christ. Their statistics contain no report of the membership. All who are respectable and orderly members of the society are admitted to the sacraments if they desire to be.

Their numbers for a series of years have been estimated at 30,000.

Ministers. Societies. Members. 1830 -- 193 -- 1840 -- 200 -- 1850 250 244 -- 1860 298 -- -- 1863 43 260 30,000 1864 326 250 -- 1867 370 300 --

The average annual increase has been estimated for a series of forty or more years at about one per cent., or 300.

31. The denomination of "Universalists" first made its appearance in England about 1750. In Gloucester, Massachusetts, the first Universalist society was formed in 1779. No statistics of the denomination contain the "membership" like those of other denominations, as to believe is to become a member. The active members have been estimated in 1850 at 60,000, although the population among which Universalism exists to the exclusion of other denominations may be ten times greater.

Ministers. Societies. Members. 1842 646 990 -- 1850 700 918 60,000 1859 724 913 -- 1865[24] 496 681 -- 1867 523 732 80,000 1868 588 792 -- 1869 520 844 --

[24] Incomplete.

Average annual increase in twenty years, 1,000.

32. The Protestant Episcopal Church is a well-known offshoot of the church established by the British Parliament in England.

Their numbers and growth have been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1859 2,030 2,111 135,767 1862 2,270 2,327 160,612 1863 1,772 1,617 111,093[25] 1864 1,895 1,741 143,854[25] 1865 2,467 2,322 154,118 1866 2,530 2,305 161,224 1867 2,600 2,370 178,102 1868 2,736 2,472 194,692 1869 2,762 2,512 200,000

[25] Southern States not reported.

The average annual increase during the last nine years has been as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 78 40 6,536

33. Another large class of denominations is embraced under the general term "Methodism." The first denomination, out of which all the others have sprung, was an offshoot of the Church of England, known in this country as the Protestant Episcopal Church.

The statistics of the denomination have been as follows:

Preachers. Members. 1773 10 1,160 1783 83 13,740 1793 269 67,643 1803 393 86,734 1813 700 214,307 1823 1,226 312,540 1833 2,400 599,736 1843 4,286 1,068,525 1850 3,716 629,660[26] 1859 6,502 971,498 1862 -- 942,906 1863 5,885 923,394 1864 -- 928,320 1865 6,121 925,285 1866 6,287 1,032,184[27] 1867 8,004 1,146,081 1868 8,481 1,255,115 1869 8,830 1,298,938

[26] Separation of South in 1845. [27] Centenary year.

The average annual increase since the separation of the South, and during seventeen years, has been 30,377. Since the close of the war conferences have been organized in eight of the Southern states, and 100,000 members gained from the church South.

34. A secession took place in 1830 from the Methodists, and the persons who composed it assumed the name of the "Methodist Protestant Church." Its statistics have been as follows:

Travelling preachers. Members. 1830 83 5,000 1842 -- 53,875 1850 740 64,219 1854 -- 70,018 1858 2,000 90,000

In 1866, a convention was held in Cincinnati to unite the Methodist Protestants, the Wesleyan Connection, the Free Methodists, the Primitive Methodists, and some independent Methodist congregations, under the name of the "Methodist Church." The union was joined by few save the Northern conferences of the Methodist Protestant body, who now compose the Methodist Church; the Southern conferences retain the original name of Methodist Protestant. Their numbers in 1867 were estimated at 50,000; in 1869, they were estimated at 72,000.

There has been no actual increase in those now indicated by this name in twenty-five years preceding 1868.

35. The "Methodist Church" is composed of the Northern conferences of the Methodist Protestant Church which, in attempting to form a union with others in 1866, caused a split among themselves. Their report, made in 1867, states as follows:

Ministers. Members. 1867 625 50,000 1869 624 49,030

This is strictly an increase of the Methodist Protestants, but appears under a new name. It is an average annual increase of 2,000.

36. Out of the original separation of the Methodist Protestants from the Methodist Episcopal another denomination sprang up, under the name of the "True Wesleyan Methodists."

The denomination has increased very slowly since its organization, as appears by the following statements:

Ministers. Members. 1843 300 20,000 1850 500 20,000 1860 565 21,000 1867 -- 25,000 1869 220 20,000

Average annual increase in twenty-five years, 200.

37. The African Methodist Episcopal Church owes its origin to the prejudice against the colored members and attendants of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In the early days of the latter, this prejudice was so deep that the colored persons were not unfrequently pulled from their knees while at prayer in the church, and ordered to the back seats.

This denomination has greatly increased by the addition of emancipated slaves. Its statistics are as follows:

Ministers. Members. 1842 -- 15,000 1860 -- 20,000 1864 -- 50,000 1865 405 50,000 1866 -- 70,000 1867 1,500 200,000 1869 1,500 200,000

The average annual increase in twenty-five years has been 7,500.

38. The operation of the same prejudice against color in New York gave rise to the "Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church." Its statistics show a large increase recently at the South, and are as follows:

Ministers. Members. 1842 -- 4,000 1860 -- 6,000 1864 -- 8,000 1866 -- 42,000 1867 300 60,000 1869 -- 164,000

The average annual increase of the denomination has been 2,008.

39. The "Methodist Episcopal Church, South," is the second largest body of Methodists in the United States. It arose from a division of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in accordance with resolutions of the General Conference in 1844.

The membership of this denomination has been reduced by the war, by the invasion of its territory by the Northern Methodist Episcopal, and by the African and Zion churches. Its statistics are as follows:

Ministers. Members. 1850 1,500 465,553 1860 2,408 699,164 1866 3,769 505,101 1867 3,952 535,040 1869 presents no important change.

The average annual increase in seventeen years has been 4,087.

40. The "Free Methodist Church" originated in 1859, and consisted of a few congregations in New York and other Northern states. Its statistics have been as follows:

Preachers. Members. 1864 66 3,555 1866 85 4,889 1868 94 6,000

The average annual increase in two years has been 617.

41. The "Western Primitive Methodist Church" held its twenty-second annual conference in New Diggings, Wisconsin, 1866. The subject of union with other non-episcopal bodies was favorably considered. Their numbers were in 1865 as follows: Preachers, 20; members, 2,000.

42. The "Independent Methodist Church" organized its first congregation in New York City in 1860. The third annual session of its conference was held in 1864, and a movement made toward union with other non-episcopal bodies.

43. The "Friends," or "Quakers," arose in England about 1647, under the preaching of Mr. George Fox. The numbers of this denomination are estimated at 100,000, comprised in eight yearly meetings.

44. A division took place during the first quarter of the present century among the Friends, under Mr. Elias Hicks. A distinct and independent association was made under his name. Their numbers are estimated at 40,000.

45. The "Shakers," or United Society of Believers, are a small denomination which first made its appearance in this country in 1776.

Their statistics have been as follows:

Preachers. Members. 1828 45 4,500 1860 -- 4,713

They are found in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Kentucky, Connecticut.

46. The "Adventists," or "Second Adventists," owe their rise in the United States to Mr. Wm. Miller, of Low Hampton, New York.

In 1859, they were estimated to comprise about 18,000 persons, and in 1867 about 30,000, exclusive of members of other denominations. Average annual increase in eight years, 1,500.

47. The "New Church," or "Swedenborgians," accept as their rule of faith and discipline the Holy Scriptures as interpreted by Mr. Emanuel Swedenborg.

Their numbers in the United States have been estimated as follows:

Ministers. Churches. Members. 1850 42 30 3,000 1862 57 49 5,000

Average annual increase in twelve years, 166.

48. Modern "Spiritualism" made its appearance in Western New York about twenty years ago. It came at first in the form of rappings, knockings, table-tippings, and other noisy demonstrations, for the purpose of attracting general attention. The believers held conventions and public meetings, but adopted no form or plan of organization. Great numbers in all denominations are supposed to approve more or less of their views; but the number of separate public adherents is estimated at 165,000.

49. The "Mormon Church," or "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," was first organized in the town of Manchester, New York, on April 6, 1830, by Mr. Joseph Smith, of Vermont. The fortunes of the church thus started have been variable in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, until persecution has compelled her to withdraw to the wilderness of Utah. Their number is stated to be 60,000. The average annual increase in twenty-five years, 2,000.

50. Four miles from Oneida, Madison County, New York, is located an organized community the members of which call themselves "Christian Perfectionists." It was started by Mr. John F. Noyes, a native of Brattleboro, Vermont.

They have now a community in Oneida, Wallingford, Conn., New Haven, Conn., and New York, which consisted of 255 members in 1867. This is an average annual increase of 10.

51. The "Catholic Apostolic Church," or "Irvingites," originated from the views of Mr. Edward Irving, preached in London in 1830.

There are about a half-dozen of these congregations in this country, estimated to contain 250 members.

A number of small nuclei of perhaps future denominations exists in different states, which it is unnecessary to mention.

A recapitulation of the preceding statistics presents the following results:

Church Average Members Annual in Increase 1867. in 25 y'rs.

1. Lutherans 332,155 7,182 2. German Reformed 110,408 3,431 3. United Brethren 97,983 1,319 4. Moravians 6,655 26 5. Dutch Reformed 57,846 1,261 6. Mennonites 39,110 380 7. Reformed Mennonites 11,000 200 8. Evangelical Association 58,002 1,791 9. Christian Connection 500,000 7,954 10. Church of God 32,000 960 11. O. S. Presbyterians 246,350 6,958 12. N. S. Presbyterians 161,538 2,167 13. Reformed Presbyterians (General Synod) 8,324 153 14. Synod of Reformed Presbyterians 6,000 -- 15. Associate and United Presbyterians 63,489 1,000 16. Associate Reformed Presbyterians 3,909 80 17. Free Presbyterians 1,000 -- 18. Cumberland Presbytr'ns. 100,000 1,819 19. Baptists 1,094,806 13,796 20. Free-Will Baptists 59,111 204 21. Seventh-Day Baptists 7,038 41 22. Dunkers 20,000 500 23. German Seventh-Day Baptists 1,800 30 24. Free-Commun. Baptists 104 -- 25. Anti-Mission Baptists 105,000 6,143 26. Six-Principle Baptists 3,000 -- 27. River Brethren 7,000 80 28. Disciples (Campbellites) 300,000 4,762 29. Congregationalists 278,362 4,734 30. Unitarians 30,000 300 31. Universalists 80,000 1,000 32. Protestant Episcopal 194,692 6,536 33. Methodist Episcopal 1,146,081 30,377 34. Methodist Protestant 50,000 -- 35. Methodist Church 50,000 2,000 36. True Wesleyan 25,000 200 37. African Methodist 200,000 7,500 38. Zion African Methodist 60,000 2,008 39. Methodist Epis. (South) 535,040 4,087 40. Free Methodist 4,880 617 41. Western Primitive Methodist 2,000 40 42. Independent Methodists 800 -- 43. Friends, or Quakers 100,000 1,000 44. Hicksites 40,000 400 45. Shakers 4,713 60 46. Adventists 30,000 1,500 47. Swedenborgians 5,000 186 48. Spiritualism 165,000 8,000 49. Mormon Church 60,000 2,000 50. Christian Perfectionists 255 10 51. Catholic Apost. Church 250 10 --------- ------- Total 6,396,110 134,802

Thus the whole number of members of Protestant churches in the United States in 1867 was 6,396,110. The average annual increase of this membership during the preceding twenty-five years has been 134,802.

The population of the United States according to the usual census and that of the Bureau of Statistics for 1867, has been as follows:

1840 17,069,453 1850 23,191,876 1860 31,443,322 1867 36,743,198 1870 incomplete officially.

The average annual increase in twenty-seven years has been 728,509.

If we deduct from the population of the United States in 1867 the number of persons who were members of Protestant churches, there will remain 30,347,088 persons in the United States in 1867 who were not members of Protestant churches, who made no public profession of faith in their doctrines, and who did not partake of their sacraments.

If we suppose the church-membership of Protestant denominations to increase at the same average annual rate during the next thirty-three years, until the year 1900, that increase will amount to 4,448,466. If this increase is added to the number of church-members in 1867, the membership of all the Protestant churches in the year 1900 will be 10,844,576.

If we suppose the population of the United States to increase in the same average annual rate during the next thirty-three years, until the year 1900, that increase will amount to 24,040,797. This amount added to the population of 1867 will make the population in 1900 reach the number 60,784,945, of whom 49,940,419 will not be members of any Protestant church, nor make a public profession of faith in their doctrines, nor partake of their sacraments.

It may be said that the average annual increase of Protestantism for twenty-five years subsequent to 1867 will be numerically greater than for the previous twenty-five years. So will also be numerically larger the average annual increase of the population for a like period, but the relative proportion of the denominations to the population would remain unchanged.

ON A GREAT PLAGIARIST.

Phœbus drew back with just disdain The wreath: the Delphic Temple frowned: The suppliant fled to Hermes' fane, That stood on lower, wealthier ground.

The Thief-God spake, with smile star-bright: "Go thou where luckier poets browse, The pastures of the Lord of Light, And do--what I did with his cows."[28]

AUBREY DE VERE.

FOOTNOTE:

[28] He stole, killed, and ate the whole of Apollo's herd, before he was a day old! See Homer's _Hymn to Mercury_.

MARY BENEDICTA.

We were at school together. We little dreamed, either of us, in those mischief-loving days of frolic and fun, that she was one day to be a saint, and that I would write her story.

Yet look well at the face. Is there not something like a promise of sainthood on the pure, white brow? And the eyes, blue-gray Irish eyes, with the long, dark lashes throwing a shadow underneath, "diamonds put in with dirty fingers," have they not a spiritual outlook that speaks to you with a promise--a revelation of some vision or growth of some beauty beyond what meets your gaze? Yet, though it seems so clear in the retrospect, this prophetic side of her beauty, I own it, never struck me then.

I am going to tell her story simply, with strict accuracy as to the traits of her character--the facts of her life and her death. I shall tell the bad with the good, neither striving to varnish her faults nor to heighten, by any dramatic coloring, the beautiful reality of her virtues. The story is one calculated, it seems to me, to be a light and a lesson to many. The very faults and follies, the strange beginning, so unlike the end, all taken as parts of a whole in the true experience of a soul, contain a teaching whose sole eloquence must be its truth and its simplicity.

I said we were at school together, but, though in the same convent, we were not in the same class. Mary (this was her real Christian name) was a few years older than I. Her career at this time was one of the wildest that ever a school-girl lived through. High-spirited, reckless, setting all rules at defiance, she was the torment of her mistresses and the delight of her companions. With the latter, her good-nature and good temper carried her serenely above all the little malices and jealousies that display themselves in that miniature world, a school; and, at the same time, her spirit of independence, while it was constantly getting her into "scrapes," was so redeemed by genuine abhorrence of everything approaching to meanness or deceit that it did not prevent her being a universal favorite with the nuns. One in particular, who from her rigorous disciplinarianism was the terror of us all, was even less proof than the others against the indomitable sweet temper and lovableness of her rebellious pupil. They were in a state of permanent warfare, but occasionally, after a hot skirmish carried on before the public, viz., the second class, Mother Benedicta would take the rebel aside, and try privately to coax her into a semblance of apology, or mayhap a promise of amendment. Sometimes she succeeded, for the refractory young lady was always more amenable to caresses than to threats, and was, besides, notwithstanding the war footing on which they stood, very fondly attached to Mother Benedicta, but she never pledged herself unconditionally. This was a great grievance with the mistress. She used to argue, and threaten, and plead by the hour, in order to induce Mary to give her "word of honor," as the phrase was amongst us, that she would observe such and such a prohibition, or obey such and such a rule--silence was the chronic _casus belli_--but all to no purpose.

"No, sister, I promise you to try; but I won't promise to do or not to do," she would answer, undefiantly, but quite resolutely.

It was a common thing for Mother Benedicta to say, after one of these conferences which ended, as usual, in the cautious, "I'll try, sister," that, if she could once get Mary to promise her outright to mend her ways, she would never take any more trouble about her. "If she pledged her word of honor to be a saint, I believe she would keep it," observed the nun, with a sigh.

I mention this little incident advisedly, for, though at the time we, in our wisdom, thought it must be pure perversity on the part of our mistress that made her so pursue Mary on the subject, considering that we were all in the habit of pledging our words of honor any given number of times a week with no particular result, I lived to see that in this individual instance she was guided by prophetic insight.

She never succeeded, however, in inducing Mary to commit herself during the four years that she was under her charge. It was war to the end; not to the bitter end, for the strife did not weaken, nay, it probably strengthened the enduring attachment that had sprung up between them. By way of sealing irrevocably and publicly this attachment on her side, Mary added the nun's name to her own, and even after she left school she continued to sign herself Mary Benedicta. When the time came round for frequenting the sacraments, it was the sure signal for a quarrel between the two belligerents. There was no plea or stratagem that Mary would not have recourse to in order to avoid going to confession. Yet withal she had a reputation in the school for piety--a queer, impulsive sort of piety peculiar to herself, that came by fits and starts. We had an unaccountable belief in the efficacy of her prayers, and in any difficulty she was one of those habitually appealed to to pray us out of it; not, indeed, that we were actuated by any precise view as to the spiritual quality of the prayers, only impressed vaguely by her general character, that whatever she did she put her heart in and did thoroughly. Mother Benedicta used to say that her devotion to the Blessed Sacrament would save her. But this devotion consisted, as far as we could see, in an enthusiastic love for Benediction; and as Mary was passionately fond of music, and confessed a weakness for effective ceremonial, Mother Benedicta herself occasionally had misgivings as to how much of the devotion went to the object of the ceremony and how much to its accessories, the lights, the music, and the incense. At any rate, once over, it exercised no apparent control over her life. The rules of the school she systematically ignored; the rule of silence she looked upon with special contempt as a bondage fit for fools, but unworthy of rational human beings. To the last day of her sojourn in the school, she practically illustrated the opinion that speech was of gold and silence of brass, and left it with the reputation of being the most indefatigable talker; the most unruly and untidy subject, but the sweetest nature that ever tried the patience and won the hearts of the community.

When she was about eighteen, her father sent her to the Sacré Cœur, in Paris, to complete her education, which, in spite of considerable expense on his part, and masters without end, was at this advanced period in a sadly retrograde state, the little she had learned at school in Ireland having been assiduously forgotten in the course of a year's anarchical holiday, when reading of every sort and even her favorite music were set aside for the more congenial pastimes of dancing, and skating, and flying across country after the hounds.

I was then living in Paris, and Mary was placed under my mother's wing. We went to see her on the _Jours de Parloir_, and she came to us on the _Jours de Sortie_. But it did not last long. As might have been expected, the sudden change from a life of excitement and constant out-door exercise to one of seclusion and sedentary habits proved too trying to her health, and after a few months the medical man of the convent declared that he was not prepared to accept the responsibility of taking charge of her, and strongly advised that she should be sent home.

We communicated this intelligence to her father, begging at the same time that before he came to remove her she might be allowed to spend a month with us. The request was granted and Mary came to stay with us.

That we might lose as little as possible of each other's company while we were together, she shared my room. We spent the mornings at home; I studying or taking my lessons, she reading, or lolling about the room, watching the clock, and longing for the master to go and set me free, that we might go out.

My mother, who only in a lesser degree shared my affection for Mary, and was anxious to make her visit as pleasant as possible, took her about to all the places best worth seeing in the city--the picture-galleries, the palaces, the museums, and the churches. The latter, though many of them, even as works of art, were amongst the most interesting monuments for a stranger, Mary seemed thoroughly indifferent to. When we entered one, instead of kneeling a moment before the sanctuary, as any Catholic does from mere force of habit and impulse, she would just make the necessary genuflexion, and, without waiting for us, hurry on round the building, examine the pictures and the stained glass, and then go out with as little delay as might be. This did not strike my mother, who was apt to remain all the time at her prayers, while I walked about doing the honors of the church to Mary; but it struck me, and it pained and puzzled me.

She was too innately honest to attempt the shadow of prevarication or _pose_ even in her attitude, and her haste in despatching the inspection of every church we entered was so undisguised that I saw she did not care whether I noticed it or not. Once, on coming out of the little church of St. Genevieve, one of the loveliest shrines ever raised to the worship of God by the genius of man, I said rather sharply to her, for she had beaten a more precipitate retreat than usual, and cut short my mother's devotions at the tomb of the saint:

"Mary," I said, "one really would think the devil was at your heels the moment you enter a church, you are in such a violent hurry to get out of it."

She laughed, not mockingly, with a sort of half-ashamed expression, and turning her pure, full eyes on me.

"I hate to stay anywhere under false appearances," she said, "and I always feel such a hypocrite kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament! I feel as if I would choke if I stay there over five minutes."

I felt shocked, and I suppose I looked it.

"Don't look at me as if I were possessed of the devil," she said, still laughing, though there was a touch of sadness, it struck me, in her voice and face. "I mean to be converted by-and-by, and mend my ways; but meantime let me have my fun, and, above all, don't preach to me!"

"I don't feel the least inclined," I replied.

"I suppose you think I'm gone beyond it. Well, you can pray for me. I'm not gone beyond the reach of that!"

This was the only serious conversation, if it deserves the name, that we had during the first week of her visit. She enjoyed herself thoroughly, throwing all the zest of her earnest nature into everything. The people and their odd French ways, the shops and their exquisite wares, the opera, the gay Bois with the brilliant throng of fashion that crowded round the lake every day at the hour of promenade--the novelty of the scene and the place altogether enchanted her, and there was something quite refreshing in the spirit of enjoyment she threw into it all.

One evening, after a long day of sight-seeing, we were invited by a friend of hers to dine at the _table d'hôte_ of the Louvre. It was the _grande nouveauté_ just then, and Mary was consequently wild to see it. We went, and during dinner the admiration excited by her beauty was so glaringly expressed by the persistent stare of every eye within range of her at the table that my mother was provoked at having brought her and exposed her to such an ordeal. But Mary herself was blissfully unconscious of the effect she was producing; indeed, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say she was unconscious of the cause. Certainly, no woman ever had less internal perception or outward complacency in her beauty than she had. This indifference amounted to a fault, for it pervaded her habits of dress, which were very untidy, and betokened a total disregard of personal appearance. The old fault that had been one of Mother Benedicta's standing grievances was as strong as ever, and it was all I could do to get her to put on her clothes straight, and to tie her bonnet under her chin instead of under her ear, when she came out with us.

But to return to the Louvre. It had been settled that after dinner we should walk across to the Palais Royal, and let Mary see the diamond shops illuminated, and all the other wonderful shops; but during dinner she overheard some one saying that the Emperor and Empress were to be at the Grand Opera that night. Her first impulse was to take a box and go there. But my mother objected that it was Saturday, the opera was never over before midnight, and consequently we could not be home and in bed before one o'clock on Sunday morning.

With evident disappointment, but, as usual, with the sweetest good temper, Mary gave way. Her friend then proposed that, before going to the Palais Royal, we should walk on to the Rue Lepelletier, and see the Emperor and Empress going in to the Opera. There was no difficulty in the way of this amendment, so it was adopted.

On coming out of the Louvre, however, we found, to our surprise and discomfiture, that the weather had been plotting against our little programme. The ground, which was frozen dry and hard when we drove down from the Champs Elysées less than two hours before, had become like polished glass under a heavy fall of sleet; the horses were already slipping about in a very uncomfortable way, and there was a decided disinclination on the part of pedestrians to trust themselves to cabs. Fate had decreed that Mary was not to see the Emperor on any terms that night. It would have been absurdly imprudent to venture on the macadam of the boulevards, and increase the risk of driving at all by waiting till the streets were so slippery that no horse could keep his footing on them. There was nothing for it but to go straight home, which we did, the horse snailing at a foot-pace all the way.

It was a memorable night this one of which I am chronicling a trivial recollection--trivial in itself, but weighty in its consequences.

It was the 14th of January, 1858.

We went to bed, and slept, no doubt, soundly. None the less soundly for the thundering crash that, before we lay down, had shaken the Rue Lepelletier from end to end, making the houses rock to their foundations, shattering to pieces every window from garret to cellar, and reverberating along the boulevards like the roar of a hundred cannon. The noise shook half Paris awake for that long night. The people, first merely terrified, then lashed to a frenzy of horror and of enthusiasm, rushed from their houses, and thronged the boulevards and the streets in the vicinity of the Opera. In the pitch darkness that followed simultaneously with the bursting of Orsini's bombs, it was impossible to know how many were murdered or how many wounded. There had been a great crowd of _curieux_ and strangers as usual waiting to see their majesties alight--the street was lined with them. Were they all murdered, blown to the four winds of heaven, in that explosion that was loud enough to have blown up half Paris? Of course, popular fear and fury exaggerated the number of the victims enormously, and the night resounded with the shrieks and lamentations of women, the plunging and moaning of horses, wounded or only frantic with terror, and the passionate cries of _Vive l'Empereur!_ intermingled with curses on the fiends who, to secure the murder of one man, had sacrificed the lives of hundreds.

While this ghastly tumult was scaring sleep and silence from the city close to us, we slept on, all unconscious of the cup of trembling to which we had stretched out our hand, and which had been so mercifully snatched away from us.

It was only next morning, on going out to Mass, that the _concierge_ stopped us to tell the news of the attempt on the Emperor's life.

And we had been vexed and felt aggrieved with the rain that drove us home, and prevented our going to stand amongst those _curieux_ in the Rue Lepelletier!

Mary did not hear of it till we met at breakfast. I never shall forget the look of blank horror on her face as she listened to the account of what had happened on the very spot where we had been so bent on going.

Although this attack of Orsini's comes into my narrative simply as a datum, I cannot resist making a short digression toward it.

Most of my readers will remember the singular stoicism displayed by the Emperor at the moment of the explosion. One of the horses was killed under his carriage, which was violently shaken by the plunging of the terrified animals, and a splinter from one of the bombs, flashing through the window, grazed him on the temple. In the midst of the general panic and confusion of the scene, the equerry rushed forward, and, taking the Emperor by the arm, cried hurriedly:

"Come out, sire! Come out!"

"Let down the steps," observed his master with unruffled _sang froid_, and quietly waited till it was done before he moved.

He entered the Opera amidst deafening cheers, and sat out the representation as coolly, and to all appearances with as much attention, as if nothing had occurred to disturb him, now and then quietly drawing his handkerchief across the splinter-mark on his forehead, from which the blood was oozing slightly.

Next day a solemn Te Deum was celebrated at the Tuileries. The Empress wished the little prince, then a baby in arms, to be present at the thanksgiving for her own and his father's miraculous preservation. The child was carried into the Salle des Maréchaux, where the court and the Corps Diplomatique were assembled, and immediately put out his hands, clamoring for his father to take him. The Emperor took him in his arms, and the child, looking up at his face, noticed the red mark on the temple.

"Papa _bobo_!"[29] he lisped, and put up his little hand to touch it.

The hard, sphynx-like face struggled for a moment; but the child's touch had melted the strong man. He clasped him to his heart, and literally shook with sobs.

These details, which were probably never written before, were told to me by one who was present at the attempt the previous night, and at the Te Deum Mass next day.

That night, when we were alone, Mary and I talked over the diabolical crime that had within four and twenty hours shaken the whole country like an earthquake, and over the merciful interposition that had arrested us on our way to what might have been for us, as it was for many, a certain and horrible death. Mary, though she said little on this latter point, was evidently very deeply impressed, and what she did say carried in it a depth of religious emotion that revealed her to me in quite a new light.

It was agreed that she would go to confession next day, and that we were to begin a novena together in thanksgiving for our preservation.

"Mary," I said impulsively, after we had been silent a little while, "why have you such a dislike to go to the sacraments? I can't understand how, believing in them at all, you can be satisfied to approach them so seldom."

"It isn't dislike; it is _fear_," she answered. "It's precisely because I realize so _awfully_ the power and sanctity of the Blessed Sacrament that I keep away. I believe so intensely in it that, if I went often to holy communion, I should have to divorce from everything, to give up my whole life to preparation and thanksgiving. I know I should. And I don't want to do it. Not yet, at any rate," she added, half-unconsciously, as if speaking to herself.

I shall never forget the effect her words had on me, nor her face as she uttered them. The night was far spent. The emotions of the day, the long watch, and perhaps the flickering of our bedroom candle that was burning low, all conspired to give an unwonted pallor to her features that imbued them with an almost ethereal beauty. I always think of her now as she sat there, in her girlish white dressing-gown, her hands locked resting on her knees, her head thrown back, and her eyes looking up, so still, as if some far beyond were breaking on her gaze and holding it transfixed.

Nothing broke on mine. In my dull blindness I did not see that I was assisting at the beginning of a great mystery, a spectacle on which the gaze of angels was riveted--the wrestling of a soul with God: the soul resisting; the Creator pleading and pursuing.

She left us at the end of January to return home. We parted with many tears, and a promise to correspond often and pray for each other daily.

For a time we did correspond very regularly--for nearly a year. During this period her life was an unpausing whirl of dissipation. Balls, visits, operas, and concerts during the season in town were succeeded in the country by more balls, and hunting, and skating, and the usual round of amusements that make up a gay country life. Mary was everywhere the beauty of the place, the admired of all admirers. Strange to say, in spite of her acknowledged supremacy, she made no enemies. Perhaps it would have been stranger still if she had. Her sweet, artless manner and perfect unconsciousness of self went for at least as much in the admiration she excited as her beauty. If she danced every dance at every ball, it was never once for the pleasure of saying she did it, of triumphing over other girls, but for the genuine pleasure of the dance itself.

Her success was so gratuitous, so little the result of coquetry on her side, that, however much it might be envied, it was impossible to resent it.

I am not trying to make out a case for Mary, or to excuse, still less justify, the levity of the life she was leading at this time. My only aim is to convey a true idea of the spirit in which she was leading it--mere exuberance of spirits, the zest of youth in the gay opportunities that were showered upon her path. She was revelling like a butterfly in flowers and sunshine. The spirit of worldliness in its true and worst sense did not possess her; did not even touch her. Its cankerous breath had not blown upon her soul and blighted it; the worm had not eaten into her heart and hardened it. Both were still sound--only drunk; intoxicated with the wine of life. She went waltzing through flames, like a moth round a candle; like a child letting off rockets, and clapping hands with delight at the pretty blue blaze, without fear or thought of danger. There was no such thing as premeditated infidelity in her mind. She was not playing a deliberate game with God; bidding him wait till she was ready, till she was tired of the world and the world of her. No, she was utterly incapable of such a base and guilty calculation. She had simply forgotten that she had a soul to save. The still, small voice that had spoken to her in earlier days, especially on that night of the 15th of January, stirring the sleeping depths, and calling out momentary yearnings toward the higher life, had altogether ceased its pleadings. How could that mysterious whisper make itself heard in such a din and clangor of unholy music? There was no silent spot in her soul where it could enter and find a listener. But Mary did not think about it. She was inebriated with youth and joy, and had flung herself into the vortex, and raced round with it till her head reeled. On the surface, all was ripple and foam, rings running round and round; but the depths below were sleeping. The one, the visible hold that she retained on God at this time was her love for his poor. Her heart was always tender to suffering in every form, but to the poor especially. As an instance of this, I may mention her taking off her flannel petticoat, on a bitter winter's day, to give it to a poor creature whom she met shivering at the roadside, and then running nearly a mile home in the cold herself.

After about a year our correspondence slackened, and gradually broke down altogether. I heard from her once in six months, perhaps. The tone of her letters struck me as altered. I could not exactly say how, except that it had grown more serious. She said nothing of triumphs at archery meetings or of brushes carried off "at the death;" there seemed to be no such feats to chronicle. She talked of her family and of mine, very little of herself. Once only, in answer to a direct question as to what books she read, she told me that she was reading Father Faber, and that she read very little else. This was the only clue I gained to the nature of the change that had come over her.

At the expiration of about two years, a clergyman, who was an old friend of her family, and a frequent visitor at the house, came to Paris, and gave me a detailed account of the character and extent of the change.

The excitement into which she had launched on returning home, and which she had kept up with unflagging spirit, had, as might have been expected, told on her health, never very strong. A cough set in at the beginning of the winter which caused her family some alarm. She grew thin to emaciation, lost her appetite, and fell into a state of general ill-health. Change of air and complete rest were prescribed by the medical men. She was accordingly taken from one sea-side place to another, and condemned to a _régime_ of dulness and quiet. In a few months the system told favorably, and she was sufficiently recovered to return home.

But the monotony of an inactive life which was still enforced, after the mad-cap career she had been used to, wearied her unspeakably. For want of something better to do, she took to reading. Novels, of course. Fortunately for her, ten years ago young ladies had not taken to writing novels that honest men blush to review, and that too many young ladies do not blush to read. Mary did no worse than waste her time without active detriment to her mind. She read the new novels of the day, and, if she was not much the better, she was probably none the worse for it. But one day--a date to be written in gold--a friend, the same who gave me these particulars, made her a present of Father Faber's _All for Jesus_. The title promised very little entertainment; reluctantly enough, Mary turned over the pages and began to read. How long she read, I cannot tell. It might be true to say that she never left off. Others followed, all from the same pen, through uninterrupted days, and weeks, and months. She told me afterward that the burning words of those books--the first especially, and _The Creator and the Creature_--pursued her even in her dreams. She seemed to hear a voice crying after her unceasingly: "Arise, and follow!"

Suddenly, but irrevocably, the whole aspect of life was changed to her. She began to look back upon the near past, and wonder whether it was she herself who had so enjoyed those balls and gaieties, or whether she had not been mad, and imagined it, and was only now in her right mind. The most insuperable disgust succeeded to her love of worldly amusement. She cared for nothing but prayer and meditation, and the service of the poor and suffering. An ardent longing took possession of her to suffer for and with our Divine Master. Yielding to the impulse of her new-born fervor, she began to practise the most rigorous austerities, fasting much, sleeping little, and praying almost incessantly. This was done without the counsel or cognizance of any spiritual guide. She knew of no one to consult. Her life had been spiritually so neglected during the last two years that direction had had no part to play in it. There was nothing to direct. The current was setting in an opposite direction. The supernatural was out of sight.

Under cover of her health, which, though it was fairly recovered, still rendered quiet and great prudence desirable, Mary contrived to avoid all going out, and secretly laid down for herself a rule of life that she adhered to scrupulously.

But this could not go on long. As she grew in the ways of prayer, the spirit of God led her imperceptibly but inevitably into the sure and safe high-road of all pilgrims travelling toward the bourn of sanctity and aiming at a life of perfection.

The necessity of a spiritual director was gradually borne in upon her, as she said to me, while at the same time the difficulty of meeting with this treasure, whom St. Teresa bids us seek amongst ten thousand, grew more and more apparent and disheartening.

Her father, a man of the world and very little versed in the mysteries of the interior life, but a good practical Catholic nevertheless, saw the transformation that had taken place in his daughter, and knew not exactly whether to be glad or sorry. He acknowledged to her long after that the first recognition of it struck upon his heart like a death-knell. He felt it was the signal for a great sacrifice.

Mary opened her heart to him unreservedly, seeking more at his hands perhaps than any mere father in flesh and blood could give, asking him to point out to her the turning-point of the new road on which she had entered, and to help her to tread it. That it was to be a path of thorns in which she would need all the help that human love could gather to divine grace, she felt already convinced.

Her father, with the honesty of an upright heart, confessed himself inadequate to the solving of such a problem, and bravely proposed taking her to London to consult Father Faber.

Mary, in an ecstasy of gratitude, threw her arms round his neck, and declared it was what she had been longing for for months. Father Faber had been her guide so far; his written word had spoken to her like a voice from the holy mount, making all the dumb chords of her soul to vibrate. What would he not do for her if she could speak to him heart to heart, and hear the words of prayer-inspired wisdom from his own lips!

They set out in a few days for London; but they were not to get there. The promise that looked so near and so precious in its accomplishment was never to be fulfilled. They had no sooner reached Dublin than Mary fell ill. For some days she was in high fever; the medical men assured the panic-stricken father that there was no immediate cause for alarm; no remote cause even, as the case then stood; the patient was delicate, but her constitution was good, the nervous system sound, although shaken by the present attack, and apparently by previous mental anxiety. The attack itself they attributed to a chill which had fallen on the chest.

The event justified the opinion of the physicians. Mary recovered speedily. It was not judged advisable, however, to let her proceed to London. She relinquished the plan herself with a facility that surprised her father. He knew how ardently she had longed to see the spiritual guide who had already done so much for her, and he could not forbear asking why she took the disappointment so coolly.

"It's not a disappointment, father. God never disappoints. I don't know why, only I feel as if the longing were already satisfied; as if I were not to go so far to find what I'm looking for," she answered; and quietly set about preparing to go back home.

But they were still on the road of Damascus. On the way home, they rested at the house of a friend near the Monastery of Mount Melleray. I cannot be quite sure whether the monks were giving a retreat for seculars in the monastery, or whether it was being preached in the neighboring town. As well as I remember, it was the latter. Indeed, I doubt whether women would be admitted to assist at a retreat within the monastery, and, if not, this would be conclusive. But of one thing I am sure, the preacher was Father Paul, the superior of La Trappe. I don't know whether his eloquence, judged by the standard of human rhetoric, was anything very remarkable, but many witnesses go to prove on exhaustive evidence that it was of that kind whose property it is to save souls.

To Mary it came like a summons straight from heaven. She felt an imperative desire to speak to him at once in the confessional.

"I can give you no idea of the exquisite sense of peace and security that came over me the moment I knelt down at his feet," she said, in relating to me this stage of her vocation. "I felt certain that I had found the man who was to be my Father Faber."

And so she had.

All that passes between a director and his spiritual child is of so solemn and sacred a nature that, although many things which Mary confided to me concerning her intercourse with the saintly abbot of La Trappe might prove instructive and would certainly prove edifying to many interior souls, I do not feel justified in repeating them. If I were even not held back by this fear of indiscretion, I should shrink from relating these confidences, lest I should mar the beauty or convey a false interpretation of their meaning. While she was speaking, I understood her perfectly. While listening to the wonderful experiences of divine grace with what she had been favored, and which she recounted to me with the confiding simplicity of a child, her words were as clear and reflected her thoughts as luminously as a lake reflects the stars looking down into its crystal depths, making the mirror below a faithful repetition of the sky above. But when I tried to write down what she had said while it was quite fresh upon my mind, the effort baffled me. There was so little to write, and that little was so delicate, so mysteriously intangible, I seemed never to find the right word that had come so naturally, so expressively, to her. When she spoke of prayer especially, there was an eloquence, rising almost to sublimity, in her language that altogether defied my coarse translation, and seemed to dissolve like a rainbow under the process of dissection. The most elevated subjects she was at home with as if they had been her natural theme, the highest spirituality her natural element. The writings of St. Teresa and St. Bernard had grown familiar to her as her catechism, and she seemed to have caught the note of their inspired teaching with the mastery of sainthood. This was the more extraordinary to me that her intellect was by no means of a high order. Quite the contrary. Her taste, the whole bent of her nature, was the reverse of intellectual, and what intelligence she had was, as far as real culture went, almost unreclaimed. Her reading had been always of the most superficial, non-metaphysical kind; indeed, the aversion to what she called "hard reading" made her turn with perverse dislike from any book whose title threatened to be at all instructive. She had never taken a prize at school, partly because she was too lazy to try for it, but also because she had not brain enough to cope with the clever girls of her class. Mary was quite alive to her shortcomings in this line, indeed she exaggerated them, as she was prone to do most of her delinquencies, and always spoke of herself as "stupid." This she decidedly was not; but her intellectual powers were sufficiently below superiority to make her sudden awakening to the sublime language of mystical theology and her intuitive perception of its subtlest doctrines matter of great wonder to those who only measure man's progress in the science of the saints by the shallow gauge of human intellect.

"How do you contrive to understand those books, Mary?" I asked her once, after listening to her quoting St. Bernard _à l'appui_ of some remarks on the Prayer of Union that carried me miles out of my depth.

"I don't know," she replied with her sweet simplicity, quite unconscious of revealing any secrets of infused science to my wondering ears. "I used not to understand them the least; but by degrees the meaning of the words began to dawn on me, and the more I read, the better I understood. When I come to anything very difficult, I stop, and pray, and meditate till the meaning comes to me. It is often a surprise to myself, considering how stupid I am in everything else," she continued, laughing, "that I should understand spiritual books even as well as I do."

Those who have studied the ways of God with his saints will not share her surprise. In our own day, the venerable Curé d'Ars is among the most marvellous proofs of the manner in which he pours out his wisdom on those who are accounted and who account themselves fools, not worthy to pass muster amongst men. But I am anticipating.

Her meeting with Father Paul was the first goal in her new career, and from the moment Mary had reached it she felt secure of being led safely to the end.

Those intervening stages were none the less agitated by many interior trials; doubts as to the sincerity of her vocation; heart-sinkings as to her courage in bearing on under the cross that she had taken up; misgivings, above all, as to the direction in which that cross lay. While her life-boat was getting ready, filling its sails, and making out of port for the shoreless sea of detachment and universal sacrifice, she sat shivering; her hand on the helm; the deep waters heaving beneath her; the wind blowing bleak and cold; the near waves dashing up their spray into her face, and the breakers further out roaring and howling like angry floods. There were rocks ahead, and all round under those foaming billows; sad havoc had they made of many a brave little boat that had put out to sea from that same port where she was still tossing--home, with its sheltering love and care; piety enough to save any well-intentioned soul; good example to give and to take; good works to do in plenty, and the body not overridden by austerities against nature; not starved to despondency; not exasperated by hunger, and cold, and endless vigils, and prayer as endless. It was a goodly port and safe, this home of hers. See how the deep throws up its prey on every side! Wrecks and spars, the shattered remnants of bold vessels, and the lifeless bodies of the rash crew are everywhere strewn over the waters. "Take heed!" they cry to her as she counts the records one by one. "This is an awful sea, and bold must be the heart, and stout and iron-clad the boat that tempts the stormy bosom. We came, and perished. Would that we had never left the port!"

Mary never argued with the storm. She would fall at the feet of Him who was "sleeping below," and wake him with the loud cry of trembling faith, "Help me, Master, or I perish!" and the storm subsided.

But when the wind and the waves were hushed, there rose up in the calm a voice sweet and low, but more ruthlessly terrible to her courage than the threatening fury of ten thousand storms. She was her father's oldest and darling child; she had a brother, too, and sisters, all tenderly loved, and cousins and friends only less dear; she was a joy and a comfort to many. Must she go from them? Must she leave all this love and all the loveliness of life for ever?

Mary's vocation, notwithstanding its strongly marked supernatural character, was not proof against these cruel alternations of enthusiastic courage, and desolate heart-sinkings, and bewildering doubts. Nay, they were no doubt a necessary part of its perfection. It was needful that she should pass through the dark watch of Gethsemani before setting out to climb the rugged hill of Calvary.

All this history of her interior life she told me _viva voce_ when we met. In her letters, which were at this period very rare and always very uncommunicative, she said nothing whatever of these strifes and victories.

But her adversaries were not all within. A hard battle remained to be fought with her father. His opposition was active and relentless. He had at first tacitly acquiesced in her consecration to God in a religious life of some sort; but he believed, as every one else did, that to let her enter La Trappe would be to consign her to speedy and certain death; and when she announced to him that this was the order she had selected, and the one which drew her with the power of attraction, that she had struggled in vain to resist, he declared that nothing short of a written mandate from God would induce him to consent to such an act of suicide. In vain Mary pleaded that when God called a soul he provided all that was necessary to enable her to answer the call; that her health, formerly so delicate when she was leading a life of self-indulgence, was now completely restored; that she had never been so strong as since she had lived in almost continual abstinence (she did not eat meat on Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday); that the weakness of nature was no obstacle to the power of grace, and there are graces in the conventual life that seculars did not dream of, nor receive because they did not need them.

In answer to these plausible arguments, the incredulous father brought out the laws of nature, and reason and common sense, and the opinion of the medical men who had attended her in Dublin, and under whose care she had been more or less ever since. These men of natural science and human sympathies declared positively that it was neither more nor less than suicide to condemn herself to the rule of St. Bernard in the cloister, where want of animal food and warmth would infallibly kill her before the novitiate was out. They were prepared to risk their reputation on the issue of this certificate.

Mary's exhaustive answer to all this was that grace was always stronger than nature; that the supernatural element would overrule and sustain the human one. But she pleaded in vain. Her father was resolute. He even went so far as to insist on her returning to society and seeing more of the world before she was divorced from it irrevocably. This check was as severe as it was unexpected. Though her disgust to the vanities of her former life continued as strong as ever, while her longing for the perfect life grew every day more intense and more energizing, her humility made her tremble for her own weakness. Might not the strength that had borne her bravely so far break down under the attack of all her old tempters let loose on her at once? Her love of pleasure, that fatal enemy that now seemed dead, might it not rise up again with overmastering power, and, aided by the reaction prepared by her new life, seize her and hold her more successfully than ever? Yes, all this was only too possible. There was nothing for it but to brave her father, to defy his authority, and to save her soul in spite of him. She must run away from home.

Before, however, putting this wise determination into practice, it was necessary to consult Father Paul. His answer was what most of our readers will suspect:

"Obedience is your first duty. No blessing could come from such a violation of filial piety. Your father is a Christian. Do as he bids you; appeal to his love for your soul not to tax its strength unwisely; then trust your soul to God as a little child trusts to its mother. He sought you, and pursued you, and brought you home when you were flying from him. Is it likely he will forsake you now, when you are seeking after him with all your heart and making his will the one object of your life? Mistrust yourself, my child. Never mistrust God." Mary felt the wisdom of the advice, and submitted to it in a spirit of docility, of humble mistrust and brave trust, and made up her mind to go through the trial as an earnest of the sincerity of her desire to seek God's will, and accomplish it in whatever way he appointed.

She had so completely taken leave of the gay world for more than a year that her reappearance at a county ball caused quite a sensation.

Rumor and romance had put their heads together, and explained after their own fashion the motive of the change in her life and her total seclusion from society. Of course, it could only be some sentimental reason, disappointed affection, perhaps inadequate fortune or position on one side, and a hard-hearted father on the other, etc. Whispers of this idle gossip came to Mary's ears and amused her exceedingly. She could afford to laugh at it as there was not the smallest shadow of reality under the fiction.

Her father, whose parental weakness sheltered itself behind the doctors and common sense, did not exact undue sacrifices from her. He allowed her to continue her ascetic rule of life unmolested, to abstain from meat as usual, to go assiduously amongst the poor, and to devote as much time as she liked to prayer. There were two Masses daily in the village church, one at half-past six, another at half-past seven. He made a difficulty at first about her assisting at them. The church was nearly half an hour's walk from the house, and the cold morning or night air, as it really was, was likely to try her severely. But after a certain amount of arguing and coaxing Mary carried her point, and every morning long before daybreak sallied forth to the village. Her nurse, who was very pious and passionately attached to her, went with her. Not without hesitating, though. Every day as regularly as they set out Malone entered a protest.

"It's not natural, Miss Mary, to be gadding out by candle-light in this fashion, walking about the fields like a pair of ghosts. Indeed, darlin', it isn't."

The nurse was right. It certainly was not natural, and, if Mary had been so minded, she might have replied that it was not meant to be; it was supernatural. She contented herself, however, by deprecating the good soul's reproof and proposing to say the rosary, a proposal to which Malone invariably assented. So, waking up the larks with their matin prayer, the two would walk on briskly to church.

Once set an Irish nurse to pray, and she'll keep pace with any saint in the calendar. Malone was not behind with the best. The devout old soul, never loath to begin, when once on her knees and fairly wound up in devotion, would go on for ever, and, when the two Masses were over and it was time to go, Mary had generally to break her off in the full tide of a litany that Malone went on muttering all the way out of church and sometimes finished on the road home.

But if she was ready to help Mary in her praying feats, she highly disapproved of the fasting ones, as well as of the short rest that her young mistress imposed on herself. Mary confessed to me that sleep was at this period her greatest difficulty. She was by nature a great sleeper, and there was a time when early rising, even comparatively early, seemed to her the very climax of heroic mortification. By degrees she brought herself to rise at a given hour, which gradually, with the help of her angel guardian and a strong resolve, she advanced to five o'clock.

During this time of probation, her father took her constantly into society, to archery meetings, and regattas, and concerts, and balls, as the season went on. Mary did her part bravely and cheerfully. Sometimes a panic seized her that her old spirit of worldliness was coming back--coming back with seven devils to take his citadel by storm and hold it more firmly than ever. But she had only to fix her eyes steadily on the faithful beacon of the Light-house out at sea, and bend her ear to the Life-bell chiming its _Sursum Corda_ far above the moaning of the waves and winds, and her foolish fears gave way.

No one who saw her so bright and gracious, so gracefully pleased with everything and everybody, suspected the war that was agitating her spirit within. Her father wished her to take part in the dancing, otherwise he said her presence in the midst of it would be considered compulsory and her abstention be construed into censure or gloom. Mary acquiesced with regard to the square dances, but resolutely declined to waltz. Her father, satisfied with the concession, did not coerce her further.

So things went on for about a year. Father Paul meantime had had his share in the probationary action. He knew that his patient's health was not strong, and taking into due account her father's vehement and up to a certain point just representations on the physical impossibility of her bearing the rule of St. Bernard, he endeavored to attract her toward an active order, and used all his influence to induce her to try at any rate a less austere one before entering La Trappe. Animated by the purest and most ardent love for the soul whose precious destinies were placed under his guidance, he left nothing undone to prevent the possibility of mistake or ultimate regret in her choice. He urged her to go and see various other convents and make acquaintance with their mode of life. Seeing her great reluctance to do this, he had recourse to stratagem in order to compel her unconsciously to examine into the spirit and rule of several monastic houses that he held in high esteem. One in particular, a community of Benedictines, I think it was, he thought likely to prove attractive to her as uniting a great deal of prayer with active duties toward the poor, teaching, etc., and at the same time of less crucifying discipline than that of Citeaux. He gave her a commission for the superioress, with many excuses for troubling her, and begging that she would not undertake it if it interfered with any arrangement of her own or her father's just then.

Mary, never suspecting the trap that was laid for her, made a point of setting out to the convent at once. The superioress, previously enlightened by Father Paul, received her with more than kindness, and, after discussing the imaginary subject of the visit, invited her to visit the chapel, then the house, and finally, drawing her into confidential discourse, explained all about its spirit and manner of life.

Mary, in relating this circumstance to me, said that, though the superioress was one of the most attractive persons she ever met, and the convent beautiful in its appointments, rather than enter it she would have preferred spending the rest of her days in the dangers of the most worldly life. Everything but La Trappe was unutterably antagonistic to her. Yet, with the exception of Mount Melleray she had never seen even the outside walls of a Cistercian convent, and the fact of there not being one for women in Ireland added one obstacle more in the way of her entering La Trappe.

When Father Paul heard the result of this last _ruse_, he confessed the truth to her. Noways discouraged, nevertheless he persisted in saying that she was much better fitted for a life of mixed activity and contemplation than for a purely contemplative one, and he forbade her for a time to let her mind dwell on the latter as her ultimate vocation, to read any books that treated of it, even to pray specially that she might be led to it. To all these despotic commands Mary yielded a prompt, unquestioning obedience. She was with God like a child with a schoolmaster. Whatever lesson he set her, she set about learning it. Easy or difficult, pleasant or unpleasant, it was all one to her cheerful good-will. Why do we not all do like her? We are all children at school, but, instead of putting our minds to getting our lesson by heart, we spend the study-hour chafing at the hard words, dog-earing our book, and irreverently grumbling at the master who has set us the task. Sometimes we think in our conceit that it is too easy, that we should do better something difficult. When the bell rings, we go up without knowing a word of it, and stand sulky and disrespectful before the desk. We are chided, and turn back, and warned to do better to-morrow. And so we go on from year to year, from childhood to youth, from youth to age, never learning our lesson properly, but dodging, and missing, and beginning over and over again at the same point. Some of us go on being dunces to the end of our lives, when school breaks up, and we are called for and taken home--to the home where there are many mansions, but none assuredly for the drones who have spent their school-days in idleness and mutiny.

To Father Paul, the childlike submission and humility with which Mary met every effort to thwart her vocation were no doubt more conclusive proof of its solidity than the most marked supernatural favors would have been.

At last her gentle perseverance was rewarded, grace triumphed over her father's heart, and he expressed his willingness to give her up to God.

In the summer of 1861, we went to stay at Versailles, and it was there that I received from Mary the first definite announcement of her vocation. She wrote to me saying that, after long deliberation and much prayer and wise direction, she had decided on entering a convent of the Cistercian order. As there was no branch of it in Ireland, she was to come to France, and she begged me to make inquiries as to where the novitiate was, and to let her know with as little delay as possible. I will not dwell upon my own feelings on reading this letter. I had expected some such result, though, knowing the state of her health, it had not occurred to me she could have joined, however she might have wished it, so severe an order as that of the founder of Citeaux.

I had not the least idea where the novitiate in France was; and, as the few persons whom I was able to question at once on the subject seemed to know no more about it than I did myself, the hope flashed across my mind that there might not be a convent of Trappistines at all in France. But this was not of long duration.

We had on our arrival at Versailles made the acquaintance of a young girl whom I shall call Agnes. My mother was already acquainted with her parents and other members of the family; but Agnes had either been at school or absent visiting relations, so from one cause or another we had never met till now. She was seventeen years of age, a fair, fragile-looking girl, who reminded most people of Schaeffer's Marguerite.

Agnes had a younger sister at the Convent of La Sainte Enfance, not far from her father's residence, and she asked me one day to come and see this sister and a nun that she was very fond of. I went, and, being full of the thought of my sweet friend in Ireland, I immediately opened the subject of Citeaux with the pretty talkative little nun who came to the parlor with Agnes's sister.

"What a singular chance!" she exclaimed, when I had told as much of my story as was necessary. "Why, we have at this moment a community of Cistercian nuns in the house here! Their monastery is being repaired, and in the meantime we have permission from the bishop to harbor them. See," she went on, pointing to a row of windows whose closed _Persiennes_ were visible at an angle from where we sat, "that is where our mother has lodged them. You can speak to the prioress, if you like, but of course you cannot see her."

I was more struck by the strange coincidence than overjoyed at being so near the solution of my difficulty. I could not, however, but take advantage of the opportunity. Sister Madeleine, which was the little nun's name, ran off to ask "our mother's" permission for me to speak with their Cistercian sister, and in a few minutes returned with an affirmative.

I was led to the door of the community-room, and, through a little extempore grating cut through the panel and veiled on the inside, I held converse with the mother abbess.

A few words assured me that Sister Madeleine had been mistaken in supposing her guests to be the daughters of St. Bernard. They were Poor Clares--an order more rigorous, even, than the Trappistines; bare feet, except when standing on a stone pavement or in the open air, when the rule is to slip the feet into wooden sandals, are added to the fasting and perpetual silence of Citeaux. Of this latter the abbess could tell me nothing--nothing, at least, of its actual existence and branches in France, though she broke out into impulsive and loving praise of its spirit and its saintly founder, and the rich harvest of souls he and his children had reaped for our Lord.

Here, then, was another respite. It really seemed probable that, if, in a quarter so likely to be well informed on the point, there was no account to be had of a Trappistine convent, there could not be one in existence, and Mary, from sheer inability to enter La Trappe, might be driven to choose some less terrible rule.

Mary meantime had set other inquirers on the track of St. Bernard, and soon learned that the novitiate was at Lyons. The name of the monastery is _Notre Dame de toute Consolation_.

After some preliminary correspondence with the abbess, the day was fixed for her to leave Ireland and set out to her land of promise.

She came, of course, through Paris. It was three years since we had met. I found her greatly altered; her beauty not gone, but changed. She looked, however, in much better health than I had ever seen her. Her spirits were gone, but there had come in their place a serenity that radiated from her like sunshine. We went out together to do some commissions of hers and the better to escape interruption, for this was in all human probability to be our last meeting on earth, and we had much to say to each other.

We drove first to Notre Dame des Victoires, where, at her constantly recurring desire, I had been in the habit of putting her name down for the prayers of the confraternity, and we knelt once again side by side before the altar of our Blessed Lady.

From this we went to the Sacré Cœur, where Mary was anxious to see some of her old mistresses and ask their prayers. Perseverance in her vocation, and the accomplishment of God's will in her and by her, were the graces she was never weary asking for herself, and imploring others to ask for her. Her greediness for prayers was only equalled by her intense faith in their efficacy. She could not resist catering for them, and used to laugh herself at her own importunity on this point.

The sister who tended the gate gave us a cordial greeting; but, when she heard that Mary was on her way to La Trappe, her surprise was almost ludicrous. If her former pupil had said she was going to be a Mohammedan, it could not have called up more blank amazement than was depicted in the good sister's face on hearing her say that she was going to be a Trappistine.

The mistress of schools and another nun, who had been very kind to her during her short stay at the Sacred Heart, came to the parlor. I was not present at the interview, but Mary told me they were quite as much amazed as the _sœur portière_.

"It only shows what a character I left behind me," she said, laughing heartily as we walked arm in arm. "My turning out good for anything but mischief is a fact so miraculous that my best friends can hardly believe in it!"

It was during this long afternoon that she told me all the details of her vocation which I have already narrated. She seemed transcendently happy, and so lifted by grace above all the falterings of nature as to be quite unconscious that she was about to make any sacrifice. She was tenderly attached to her family, but the pangs of separation from them were momentarily suspended. Her soul had grown strong in detachment. It had grown to the hunger of divine love. Like the Israelites, she had gone out into the desert where the manna fell, and she had fed upon it till all other bread was tasteless to her.

When I expressed surprise at seeing her so completely lifted above human affections, and observed that it would save her so much anguish, she answered quickly, with a sudden look of pain:

"Oh! no it will save me none of the suffering. That will all come later, when the sacrifice is made. But I always seem to have supernatural strength given me as long as it remains to be done. I took leave of Father Paul and my dear old nurse, and all the friends that flocked to say good-by, almost without a tear. I felt it so little that I was disgusted with myself for being so heartless while they were all so tender and distressed; but when it was all over, and the carriage had driven out on the road, I thought my heart would burst. I didn't dare look back at the house, lest I should cry out to them to take me home. And I know this is how it will be to-morrow."

"And have you thought of the possibility of having to come home after all?" I asked.

"Yes, I have a great deal of it. It is possible my health may fail, or that I may have mistaken the will of God altogether in entering La Trappe," she answered, with a coolness that astonished me.

"What a trial that would be!" I exclaimed. "What a humiliation to come out, after making such a stand about entering!"

She laughed quite merrily.

"Humiliation! And what if it were! I don't care a straw if I go into ten convents, and come out of them one after another, so long as I find out the right one in the end. What does anything signify but finding out God's will!"

There was no mistaking the perfect sincerity of her words. It was as clear as sunlight--the one thing necessary, the one thing she cared one straw about, was finding out the will of God. Human respect or any petty human motive had simply gone beyond the range of her apprehension.

"And the silence, Mary?" I said, smiling, as the memory of her old school-day troubles came back on me. "How will you ever keep it? To me it would be the most appalling part of the discipline of La Trappe."

"Well, is it not odd?" she replied. "It is so little appalling to me that I quite long for it. Sometimes I keep repeating the words, 'Perpetual silence!' over and over to myself, as if they were a melody. It was it, I think, that decided me for La Trappe instead of Carmel, where the rule allows them to speak during recreation. It seems to me the hush of tongues must be such a help to union with God. Our tongues are so apt to scare away his presence from our souls."

We came home to dinner. While we were alone in the drawing-room, she asked me to play something to her. She had been passionately fond of the harp, and stood by me listening with evident pleasure, and when I was done began to draw out the chords with her finger.

"Does it not cost you the least little pang to give it up for ever--never to hear a note of music for the rest of your life, Mary?" I said.

"No, not now. I felt it in the beginning; but the only music that has a charm for me now is silence."

We parted, never to meet again, till we meet at the judgment-seat.

On her arrival at Lyons, the fatigue and emotions of the journey told on her. An agonizing pain in the spine to which she was subject after any undue exertion obliged her to remain at the hotel, lying down on the sofa nearly all day.

The following morning, her father took her to the monastery. Like Abraham, he conducted his child to the mount of sacrifice, and with his own hand laid the victim on the altar; but no angel came to snatch away the sacrificial knife and substitute a meaner offering for the holocaust. He left her at the inner gate of La Trappe.

She wrote to me some weeks after her entrance.

"I was less brave at parting with my beloved ones than I ought to have been," she said; "but, on account of the pain that kept me lying down in the midst of them nearly all the previous day, I had not been able to pray as much as usual, and so I had not got up strength enough for the trial-time. I seemed to have let go my hold on our Lord a little and to be leaning on them for courage; but, when I had been a few hours before the Blessed Sacrament, the pain calmed down, and I began to realize how happy I was. I am in great hopes that I have found the will of God."

One trifling incident which gave innocent delight to Mary I must not omit to mention.

She was asked on entering what name she wished to bear in religion, and on her replying that she had not thought of one and would rather the prioress chose for her, "Then we shall call you Mary Benedicta," said the mother. "The saint has no name-sake amongst us at present."

The only thing that disappointed her in the new life was the mildness of the rule and the short time it allotted for prayer!

It may interest my readers and help them to estimate the spirit of the novice to hear some details of the rule that struck her as too mild.

The Trappistines rise at 2 A.M. winter and summer, and proceed to choir, chanting the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin. Mass, meditation, the recital of the divine office, and household work, distributed to each according to her strength and aptitude and to the wants of the community, fill up the time till breakfast, which is at 8. The rule relents in favor of those who are unable to bear the long early fast, and they are allowed a small portion of dry bread some hours sooner. I think the novices as a rule are included in this dispensation. The second meal is at 2. The food is frugal but wholesome, good bread, vegetables, fish occasionally, and good, pure wine. Fire is an unknown luxury, except in the kitchen. The silence is perpetual, but the novices are allowed perfect freedom of converse with their mistress, and the professed nuns with the abbess. They converse occasionally during the day amongst each other by signs. They take open-air exercise, and perform manual labor out-of-doors, digging, etc. In-doors, they are constantly employed in embroidering and mounting vestments. Some of the most elaborately wrought benediction-veils, copes, chasubles, etc., used in the large churches throughout France, are worked by the Trappistines of Lyons.

They retire to rest at 8. Their clothing is of coarse wool, inside and outside.

Mary described the material life of La Trappe as in every sense delightful; the digging, pealing potatoes, and so forth, as most recreative and not at all fatiguing. After her first Lent, she wrote me that it had passed so quickly, she "hardly knew it had begun when Easter came."

Her only complaint was that it had been too easy, that the austerities, "which were at all times very mild," had not been more increased during the penitential season.

My third letter was on her receiving the holy habit.

"I wish you could see me in it," she said. "I felt rather odd at first, but I soon grew accustomed to it, and now it is so light and pleasant. I am so happy in my vocation I cannot help being almost sure that I have found the will of God."

This was the burden of her song for evermore: to find the will of God! And so in prayer and expectation she kept her watch upon the tower, her hands uplifted, her ears and her eyes straining night and day for every sign and symbol of that blessed manifestation. She kept her watch, faithful, ardent, never weary of watching, rising higher and higher in love, sinking lower and lower in humility. She had set her soul like a ladder against the sky, and the angels were for ever passing up and down the rungs, carrying up the incense of the prayer, which, as soon as it reached the throne of the Lamb, dissolved in graces, and sent the angels flying down earthward again.

The world went on; the wheel went round; pleasure and folly and sin kept up their whirl with unabating force. All things were the same as when Mary Benedicta, hearkening to the bell from the sanctuary, turned her back upon the vain delusion, and gave up the gauds of time for the imperishable treasures of eternity. Nothing was changed. Was it so indeed? To our eyes it was. We could not see what changes were to come of it. We could not see the work her sacrifice was doing, nor measure the magnitude of the glory it was bringing to God. Poor fools! it is always so with us. We see with the blind eyes of our body the things that are of the body. What do we see of the travail of humanity in God's creation? The darkness and the pain. Little else. We see a wicked man or a miserable man, and we are filled with horror or with pity. We think the world irretrievably darkened and saddened by the sin and the misery that we see, forgetting the counterpart that we do not see--the sanctity and the beauty born of repentance and compassion. We see the bad publican flaunting his evil ways in the face of heaven, brawling in the streets and the market-place; we do not see the good publican who goes up to the temple striking his breast, and standing afar off, and sobbing out the prayer that justifies. We forget that fifty such climbing up to heaven make less noise than one sinner tearing down to hell. So with pain. When sorrow crushes a man, turning his heart bitter and his wine sour, we find it hard to believe that so much gall can yield any honey, so much dark let in any light. We cannot see--oh! how it would startle us if we did--how many acts of kindness, how many thoughts and deeds of love, are evoked by the sight of his distress. They may not be addressed to him, and he may never know of them, though he has called them into life; they may all be spent upon other men, strangers perhaps, to whom he has brought comfort because of the kindliness his sorrow had stirred in many hearts. Some miser has been touched in hearing the tale of his distress, and straightway opened his purse to help the Lazarus at his own door. A selfish woman of the world has foregone some bauble of vanity and given the price to a charity to silence the twinge that pursued her after witnessing his patient courage in adversity. There is no end to the small change that one golden coin of love, one act of heroic faith, one chastened attitude of Christian sorrow, will send current through the world. It would be easier to number the stars than to count it all up. But the bright little silver pieces pass through our fingers unnoticed. We do not watch for them, neither do we hear them chime and ring as they drop all round us. We do not listen for them. We listen rather to the wailing and the hissing, hearkening not at all to the rustle of angels' wings floating above the din, nor to the sound of their crystal tears falling through the brine of human woe and lamentation.

One more virgin heart is given up to the Crucified--one more victory won over nature and the kingdom of this world. One more life is being lived away to God in the silence of the sanctuary. Who heeds it? Who sees the great things that are coming of it?--the graces obtained, the blessings granted, the temptations conquered, the miracle of compassion won for some life-long sinner, at whose death-bed, cut off from priest or sacrament, the midnight watcher before the tabernacle has been wrestling in spirit, miles away, with mountains and seas between them. Only when the seven seals are broken of the Book in which the secrets of many hearts are written shall these things be made manifest, and the wonders of sacrifice revealed.

Mary Benedicta was drawing to the close of her novitiate. So far her health had stood the test bravely. She had passed the winters without a cough, a thing that had not happened to her for years. The pain in her spine that had constantly annoyed her at home had entirely disappeared.

Every day convinced her more thoroughly that she had found her true vocation, and that she was "doing the will of God." Her profession was fixed for the month of December. She wrote to me a few lines, telling me of her approaching happiness, and begging me to get all the prayers I could for her. Her joy seemed too great for words. It was, indeed, the joy that passes human understanding. I did not hear from her again, nor of her, till one evening I received a letter from Ireland announcing to me her death.

Till within a few days of the date fixed for her vows, she had been to all appearance in perfect health. She followed the rule in its unmitigated rigor, never asking nor seemingly needing any dispensation. She attended choir during the seven hours' prayer, mental and vocal, every day. There were no premonitory symptoms of any kind to herald in the messenger that was at hand. Quite suddenly, one morning, at the first matins, she fainted away at her place in the choir. They carried her to the infirmary, and laid her on a bed. She recovered consciousness after a short time, but on attempting to rise fell back exhausted. The infirmarian, in great alarm, asked if she was suffering much. Mary smiled and shook her head. Presently she whispered a few words to the abbess, who had accompanied her from the choir, and never left her side for a moment. It was to ask that she might be allowed to pronounce her vows at once.

Was this, then, the summons? Yes. She was called for to go home. The joy-bells of heaven rang out a merry peal. The golden gates turned slowly on their hinges. The Bridegroom stood knocking at the door.

A messenger was dispatched in haste to the archbishop for permission to solemnize her profession at once. Monseigneur Bonald granted it, and sent at the same time a special apostolic benediction to the dying child of St. Bernard.

That afternoon Mary pronounced her vows in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and surrounded by the sisterhood, weeping and rejoicing.

An hour later, summoning her remaining strength for a last act of filial tenderness, she dictated a few lines of loving farewell to her father. Then she was silent, calm, and rapt in prayer. Her eyes never left the crucifix. The day past and the night. She was still waiting. At daybreak the Bridegroom entered, and she went home with him.

FOOTNOTE:

[29] A French child's word for _hurt_.

THE LORD CHANCELLORS OF IRELAND[30]

The most indefatigable student of the history of Ireland is, at some time or another, sure to become wearied of, if not positively disgusted at, the interminable series of foreign and domestic wars, base treachery, and wholesale massacre which unfortunately stain the annals of that unhappy country for nearly one thousand years; and were it not that the study of profane history is a duty imposed upon us not only as an essential part of our education, but as a source rich in the philosophy of human nature, there are few, we believe, even among the most enthusiastic lovers of their race or the most industrious of book-worms, who would patiently peruse the long and dreary record of persistent oppression and unfaltering but unavailing resistance.

The few centuries of pagan greatness preceding the arrival of St. Patrick, seen through the dim mist of antiquity, appear to have been periods of comparative national prosperity; and the earlier ages of Christianity in the island were not only in themselves resplendent with the effulgence of piety and learning which enshrouded the land and illumined far and near the then eclipsed nations of Europe, but were doubly brilliant by contrast with the darkness that subsequently followed the repeated incursions of the merciless northern Vikings, to whom war was a trade, and murder and rapine the highest of human pursuits.

The ultimate defeat of those barbarians in the early part of the eleventh century brought little or no cessation of misery to the afflicted people; for, with the death of the Conqueror, the illustrious King Brian, in the moment of victory, no man of sufficient statesmanship or military ability appeared who was capable of uniting the disorganized people under a general system of government, or of compelling the obedience of the disaffected and semi-independent chiefs. The evils of the preceding wars were numerous and grievous. The husbandman was impoverished, commerce had fled the sea-ports before the dreaded standard of the carrion Raven, learning had forsaken her wonted abodes for other climes and more peaceful scenes, and even the religious establishments which had escaped the destroyer no longer harbored those throngs of holy men and women formerly the glory and benefactors of the island. It was in this disintegrated and demoralized condition that the enterprising Anglo-Normans of the following century found the once warlike and learned Celtic people; and as the new-comers were hungry for land and not overscrupulous as to how it was to be obtained, the possession of the soil on one side, and its desperate but unorganized defence on the other, gave rise to those desultory conflicts, cruel reprisals, and horrible butcheries which only ended, after nearly five hundred years of strife, in the almost utter extirpation of the original owners.

Had the Norman invasion ended with Strongbow and Henry II., or had it been more general and successful, as in England, the evil would have been limited; but as every decade poured into Ireland its hordes of ambitious, subtle, and landless adventurers, who looked upon Ireland as the most fitting place to carve their way to fame and fortune, new wars of extermination were fomented, and the wounds that afflicted the country were kept constantly open. To facilitate the designs of the new-comers, the mass of the people were outlawed, and the punishment for killing a native, when inflicted, which was seldom, was a small pecuniary fine. The efforts of the "Reformers" to convert by force or fraud the ancient race and the bulk of the descendants of the original Anglo-Normans, who vied with each other in their attachment to the church, perpetuated even in a worse form the civil strife which had so long existed between the races, and terminated, at the surrender of Limerick, in the complete prostration of the nation. But it was only for a while. The extraordinary revival of the faith in Ireland, and its substantial triumphs in recent years, almost make us forget and forgive the persecutions of "the penal days," and not the least of these auspicious results is the appearance of the noble book before us, written by a distinguished gentleman of the legal profession of the ancient race and religion.

In his voluminous work, Mr. O'Flanagan, avoiding all matter foreign to his subject, and touching as lightly on wars and confiscations as possible, while relating succinctly and carefully the lives of the numerous lord chancellors of Ireland, necessarily gives us a history of English policy and legislation in that country in an entirely new form, and fills up in its historical and legal records a hiatus long recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. In ordinary histories, we see broadly depicted the effects of foreign invasion and domestic broils: in the _Lives_, we are permitted to have a view of the most secret workings of the viceregal government and of the managers of the so-called Irish Parliament; of the causes which governed British statesmen in their treatment of the sister kingdom, and the motive of every step taken by the dominant faction of the Pale, supported by the wealth and power of a great nation, to subdue a weak neighboring people, who, though few in numbers, isolated and disorganized, possessed a high degree of civilization and a vitality that rose superior to all defeat. The book has also this advantage, that, while it supplies the links that bind causes with effects and develops in a critical spirit the true philosophy of history, it neither shocks our sensibilities uselessly with the perpetual narration of mental and physical suffering, nor tires us with vain speculations on what might have been had circumstances been different. The author is content to accept the inevitable, and deals exclusively with the subject in hand.

The partial success of Strongbow in conjunction with the Leinster troops induced Henry II. to project a visit to Ireland, partly from a fear that his ambitious subject might be induced by the allurements of his newly acquired greatness to forget his pledge of fealty and allegiance, and partly in the hope that his presence with an armed retinue would so overawe the native princes that their entire submission would follow as a matter of course. He therefore landed at Waterford, in 1172, and after visiting Lismore, where a provincial synod was being held, entered Dublin on the 11th of November of that year. But though he remained in that city during the greater part of the winter, surrounded by all the pomp of mediæval royalty, his blandishments were only partly successful in winning any of the prominent chieftains to acknowledge his assumed title of Lord of Ireland. He rested long enough, however, to establish a form of provincial government for the guidance and protection of the Anglo-Normans, and such of the Irish of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Wexford, and of the surrounding counties as acknowledged his jurisdiction, and these became what was long afterwards known as the English Pale. The head of this system was the personal representative of the monarch, appointed and removed at his pleasure, and called at various times lord deputy, viceroy, chief governor, and lord-lieutenant, and in case of his absence or death a temporary successor was to be chosen by the principal nobles of the Pale, until his return or the appointment of his successor by the king. In the year 1219, during the reign of Henry III., the laws of England were extended to the Anglo-Norman colony, and a chancellor in the person of John de Worchely was appointed to assist the viceroy in the administration of the laws and public affairs.

The office of chancellor, or, as he was afterwards styled, lord high chancellor, was known to the Romans, and many of its peculiar duties and powers are directly derived from the civil law. In England, its establishment may be considered as contemporary with the Norman conquest, and from the first it assumed the highest importance in the state. "The office of chancellor or lord keeper," says Blackstone, "is created by the mere delivery of the great seal into his custody, whereby he becomes the first officer in the kingdom and takes precedence of every temporal peer. He is a privy counsellor by virtue of his office, and, according to Lord Ellismore, prolocutor of the House of Lords by prescription. To him belongs the appointment of all the justices of the peace throughout the kingdom. Being formerly, usually, an ecclesiastic presiding over the king's chapel, he became keeper of his conscience, visitor in his right of all hospitals and colleges of royal foundation, and patron of all his livings under the annual value of twenty pounds, etc. All this exclusive of his judicial capacity in the Court of Chancery, wherein, as in the Exchequer, is a common law court and a court of equity."[31] In Ireland, while the chancellor exercised the same functions within a more contracted sphere, his political power and duties were more directly and frequently felt. The viceroys, particularly those of the early periods, were generally soldiers expressly deputed to hold the conquests already gained, and to enlarge by force of arms the possessions of the Anglo-Norman adventurers. They were little skilled in the arts of government, and, from their short terms and frequent removals, knew little of and cared less for the people they were temporarily sent to govern.[32] The chancellors, on the contrary, were the reverse, being from the first up to the reign of Henry VIII., with a few exceptions, ecclesiastics, generally men well versed in law and letters, and having been usually at an early age selected from the inferior ranks of the English clergy and promoted to the highest positions in the church in Ireland, as a preliminary step to their appointment to the most important judicial and legislative office in the colony, they had every inducement to become familiar with its affairs and with the dispositions and influence of the people among whom their lot in life was cast. "Learned men were those chancellors," says O'Flanagan, "for the most part prelates of highly cultivated minds, attached to the land of their birth, while exercising important sway over the destinies of Ireland."

For the first two hundred years after the creation of the office of chancellor, very little can be gleaned by the author of the _Lives_, except the mere names, date of patents, and a few dry facts usually connected with well-known historical events. The destruction by fire of St. Mary's Abbey in Dublin, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and of the Castle of Trim, in both of which valuable public records were kept, accounts to some extent for this paucity of materials, while, as he says, "others were carried out of the country, and are met with in the State Paper Office, the Rolls Chapel, Record Office, and British Museum, in London; others are at Oxford. Several cities on the Continent possess valuable Irish documents, while many are stored in private houses, which the recent commission will no doubt render available"--a sad commentary upon the way in which everything relating to the history of the country has been neglected by that government which so frequently parades its paternal inclinations.

The want of judicial business during this period was amply compensated for by repeated but vain efforts to reconcile the different factions into which the colonists of the Pale were divided, and to prevent the followers of the rival houses of Ormond and Kildare from open warfare whenever the slightest provocation was offered by either side. While the power of England was expended in foreign wars or in the internecine struggles of the Roses, her grasp on the dominion of Ireland was becoming every day more relaxed, and it was only by the judicious pitting of one party against another, by alternate threats and bribes, that even the semblance of authority could be maintained at all times. Thus, in 1355, Edward III., writing to the Earl of Kildare, uses the following emphatic words:

"Although you know of these invasions, destructions, or dangers, and have been often urged to defend these marches jointly with others, you have neither sped thither nor sent that force of men which you were strongly bound to have done for the honor of an earl, and for the safety of those lordships, castles, lands, and tenements, which, given and granted to your grandfather by our grandfather, have thus descended to you. Since you neither endeavor to prevent the perils, ruin, and destruction threatening these parts, in consequence of your neglect, nor attend to the orders of ourselves or our council, we shall no longer be trifled with," etc.

This was strong language, but fully justified by the unsettled condition of affairs in and outside the Pale. Chancellor de Wickford, Archbishop of Dublin, who was appointed in 1375, found that his sacred calling and official dignity were no protection to him even in the vicinity of the capital, and was therefore allowed a guard of six men-at-arms and twelve archers, while the lord treasurer had the same number. Nor was this precaution taken against the Irish enemy alone, for we find that Thomas de Burel, Prior of Kilmainham, when chancellor, while holding a parley with De Bermingham at Kildare, was, with his attendant lords, taken prisoner. The lay noblemen were ransomed, but the prior was kept a prisoner only to be exchanged for one of the De Berminghams then confined in Dublin Castle. This family seem to have held the judicial officers somewhat in contempt, for we read at another time that Adam Veldom, Chief Chancery Clerk, was captured by them and the O'Connors, and obliged to pay ten pounds in silver for his release. When John Cotton, Dean of St. Patrick's, was appointed chancellor in 1379, and commenced his tour, accompanied by the viceroy, from Dublin to Cork, he was allowed for his personal retinue, independent of his servants and clerks, not very formidable opponents, it is to be presumed, "four men-at-arms armed at all points, and eight mounted archers," a circumstance which shows that the Irish and many of the Anglo-Irish of the country had very little reverence for the person of even an English chancellor.

In 1398, Dr. Thomas Cranley was sent over to Dublin as its archbishop and chancellor of the colony, and from his high position and known ability it was expected that he would not only remedy the disorders of the Pale, but bring back the great lords to a sense of their duty to the king, and devise measures for the collection of his revenues, which these noblemen did not seem inclined to pay with the alacrity befitting obedient subjects. After several years of fruitless endeavors to effect these objects, he was obliged to write to King Henry IV. for funds to support his son, who was then acting as viceroy. "With heavy hearts," says the chancellor, speaking for the privy council, "we testify anew to your highness that our lord, your son, is so destitute of money that he has not a penny in the world, nor can borrow a single penny, because all his jewels and his plate that he can spare of those that he must of necessity have, are pledged and be in pawn. All his soldiers have departed from him, and the people of his household are on the point of leaving him." And he further significantly adds, "For the more full declaring of these matters to your highness, three or two of us should have come to your high presence, but such is the danger on this side that not one of us dare depart from the person of our lord." This was indeed a sad condition for the son of the reigning monarch and his council to find themselves in, while the Talbots, Butlers, and Fitzgeralds were feasting on the fat of the land surrounded by thousands of their well-paid followers. Again, in 1435, when Archbishop Talbot was chancellor, the council through that prelate addressed a memorial to the king, in which the following remarkable passage occurs:

"First, that it please our sovereign lord graciously to consider how this land of Ireland is well-nigh destroyed and inhabited with his enemies and rebels, insomuch that there is not left in the northern parts of the counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare, that join together out of subjection of the said enemies and rebels, scarcely thirty miles in length and twenty miles in breadth, as a man may surely ride or go, in the said counties, to answer to the king's writs and to his commandments."

This extraordinary admission, made two hundred and sixty-six years after the landing of the Normans, would be almost incredible did it rest on less weighty authority. This was the time for the Irish people to have regained their freedom, and, had they had half as much of the spirit of nationality and organization as they possessed of valor and endurance, a decisive blow might easily have been struck that would have for ever ended the English power in their island. But the propitious moment was allowed to pass, and dearly did they pay in after-times for their supineness and folly.

The dissensions were not confined to the natives. The quarrels and bickerings of the nobles and officials of the Pale seemed to invite destruction. Rival parliaments were held; viceroys who were attached by policy or affection to the houses of York and Lancaster contended in the Castle of Dublin for the legitimacy of their respective factions; and even the Lord Chancellor Sherwood, Bishop of Meath, and the members of the privy council, whose office and duty it was to preserve the peace between all parties, were found the most turbulent; "the chancellor and chief-justice of the king's bench requiring the interposition of the king to keep them quiet, while the Irish so pressed upon the narrow limits of the English settlements that the statute requiring cities and boroughs to be represented by inhabitants of the same was obliged to be repealed upon the express ground that representatives could not be expected to encounter, on their journeys to parliament, the great perils incident from the king's Irish enemies and English rebels, for it is openly known how great and frequent mischiefs have been done on the ways both in the south, north, east, and west parts, by reason whereof they may not send proctors, knights, nor burgesses."[33] Such was the condition of Ireland in A.D. 1480, just three centuries after the advent of Henry II. to her shores.

One of the principal duties of the Irish lord chancellors, even to the very moment of its extinction, was the management of the Irish parliament. The body that for so many centuries bore that pretentious title, but which never spoke the voice of even a respectable minority of the people, is said to have owed its origin to the second Henry, though according to Whiteside, who follows the authority of Sir John Davies, no parliament was held in the country for one hundred and forty years after that king's visit.[34] Except in an antiquarian point of view, the matter is of little importance, as such gatherings in Ireland, even more so than those of England, could not at that time be called either representative or deliberative bodies, for their members were not chosen by even a moiety of the people, and they were mere instruments in the hands of the governing powers, who moulded them at will when they desired to impose new taxes or unjust laws on the people, ostensibly with their own sanction. From the days of Simon de Montfort to those of George IV., the English parliamentary system has been an ingeniously devised engine of general oppression under the garb of popular government.

Of the ancient parliaments, the most famous was that held at Kilkenny during the chancellorship of John Trowyk, Prior of St. John, in 1367, at which was passed the statute bearing the name of that beautiful city. Though the name only of the chancellor, who doubtless was the author _ex officio_, has come down to us, that delectable specimen of English legislation is doubtless destined to survive the changes of time, and expire only with the language itself. It prohibited marriage, gossipred, and fostering between the natives and the Anglo-Irish under penalty of treason, also selling to the former upon any condition horses, armor, or victuals, under a like penalty. All persons of either nationality living in the Pale were to use the English language, names, customs, dress, and manner of riding. No Irishman was to be admitted to holy orders, nor was any minstrel, story-teller, or rhymer to be harbored. English on the borders should hold no parley with their Irish neighbors, except by special permission, nor employ them in their domestic wars. Irish games were not to be indulged in, but should give place to those of the English, as being more "gentlemanlike sports." Any infraction of these provisions was to be punished with rigor, for, says the preamble to the act, "many of the English of Ireland, discarding the English tongue, manners, style of riding, laws, and usages, lived and governed themselves according to the mode, fashion, and language of the Irish enemies," etc., whereby the said "Irish enemies were exalted and raised up contrary to reason." This enactment is perhaps without a parallel in the history of semi-civilized legislation, if we except that passed at a parliament held at Trim in 1447, and for which we are indebted to no less a person than the Archbishop of Dublin, lord chancellor at that period. It enacts "that those who would be taken for Englishmen (that is, within the protection of law) should not wear a beard on the upper lip; that the said lip should be shaved once at least in every two weeks, and that offenders therein should be treated as Irish enemies." As no provision was inserted in the statute providing for the supply of razors, or mention made of the appointment of state barbers, we presume it soon became inoperative.

By such penal legislation it was weakly supposed the evils of the country could be cured most effectually, but, unfortunately for the lawmakers, it was easier to pass statutes than to enforce them. On the mass of the people they had no effect whatever, except, perhaps, to bind them faster to their ancient laws and customs, and he would have been a bold officer indeed who would have attempted to carry them out, even among the Anglo-Irish families outside of the Pale; for we find that, at a parliament held in Dublin in 1441, under the supervision of Archbishop Talbot, a strong request was made to the king to furnish troops for the defence of the colony, the privy council having some time previously represented "that the king should ordain that the Admiral of England should, in summer season, visit the coasts of Ireland to protect the merchants from the Scots, Bretons, and Spaniards, who came thither with their ships stuffed with men of war in great numbers, seizing the merchants of Ireland, Wales, and England, and holding them to ransom."[35]

The selfish but sagacious policy of Henry VII. had done so much to remedy the evils inflicted on England by the wars of the Roses that when his son, Henry VIII., ascended the throne in 1509, he found a united and contented people, a well-filled treasury, and a subservient parliament. The character of this notorious ruler is too well known to need comment, and the effects of his crimes are still perceptibly felt by the country that had the misfortune to have given him birth. His influence on Irish affairs, though more disastrous in its immediate results, has happily long since been obliterated. Dr. Rokeby, Bishop of Meath, and afterward Archbishop of Dublin, first appointed chancellor in 1498, was retained in his office by the new king. He is represented as a man of marked piety and learning, but he would have been unfitted to fill an office under the English crown had he allowed any scruples of conscience to stand between him and the behests of his royal master. What these were may be judged from a passage in a private letter from Henry to his viceroy. "Now," he writes, "at the beginning, political practices may do more good than exploits of war, till such time as the strength of the Irish enemy shall be enfeebled and diminished; as well by getting their captains from them, as by putting division among them, so that they join not together"[36]--an advice eminently suggestive, but by no means new, for the policy of arraying the Irish against each other had been practised long before with fatal effect. Rokeby held the great seal for twenty-one years, and his long term was marked by his successful efforts to reconcile the hostile Anglo-Irish factions, his negotiations with the native chiefs, for the purpose of inducing them to acknowledge the sovereignty of Henry, and the consequent extension of the functions of the courts over the greater part of the island. The success of the first and last of these measures was mainly due to the personal efforts of the lord chancellor, and the submission of the Irish party resulted from the loss of the battle of Knocktough, in 1504, and the favorable promises held out by the chancellor and viceroy, inducements, it is needless to say, which were never fulfilled. He was succeeded by the two St. Lawrences, father and son, of whom nothing notable is recorded, but that they were laymen and natives of the soil; and by Archbishop Ingle, who, however, held office for but one year.

The next ecclesiastical chancellor was Dr. Alan, commissioned in 1528. This distinguished official was remarkable not only for his great mental capacity, but as a not unfavorable sample of the English political churchmen of the era immediately preceding the so-called "Reformation"--men who, by their laxity of faith and worldly ambition, paved the way for the subsequent grand march of heresy and immorality. Born in England in 1476, he studied with credit both at Oxford and Cambridge, and at an early age entered the priesthood. His varied acquirements and experience of mankind gained him, in 1515, the degree of doctor of laws and the confidence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, then Lord Chancellor of England, by whom he was sent to Rome on a special mission. On his return, he was appointed chaplain to Cardinal Wolsey, and judge of his legantine court. In both capacities he appears to have given satisfaction, particularly in the latter, in which he materially assisted the ambitious cardinal in suppressing certain monasteries, and appropriating the revenues, it is more than suspected, to his own and his patron's use. For these services he was rewarded with the archbishopric of Dublin and the Irish chancellorship. His two great vices, avarice and the love of intrigue, became now fully developed. When not begging for increase of salary or emoluments, he was writing scandalous letters to his friends at the English court, complaining of the conduct of the viceroy, the unfortunate Earl of Kildare, and it was mainly through his instrumentality, supported by Wolsey, that that nobleman was called to England and committed to the Tower of London. His next step was to circulate a false report that the earl had been executed. This led, as he anticipated, to the rebellion of Kildare's son and deputy, better known as Silken Thomas, and a number of Irish chiefs with whom the Fitzgeralds were allied, and, upon its suppression, to the confiscation of vast estates in Leinster and Munster. But Alan did not live long enough to behold the result of his sanguinary policy. Alarmed at the storm he had raised, he endeavored to escape from the country, but the elements seem to have conspired against him, for he was cast ashore near Clontarf, and, on being discovered by some of Thomas's followers, he was put to death. He was succeeded as chancellor by Cromer, Archbishop of Armagh, who was, however, shortly after deprived of his office for his unflinching opposition to Henry's absurd pretensions of being considered "Head of the Church." It was of this prelate that Browne, the king's Archbishop of Dublin, wrote to Lord Henry Cromwell, in 1635, "that he had endeavored, almost to the hazard and danger of his temporal life, to procure the nobility and gentry of this nation to due obedience in owning his highness their supreme head, as well spiritual as temporal; and do find much oppugning therein, especially by his brother Armagh, who hath beene the main oppugner, and so hath withdrawn most of his suffragans and clergy within his see and diocese."[37]

Unable to coerce or cajole the Pope, Henry at length threw down the gauntlet to the Holy Father, and, emboldened doubtless by the ready submission of the English, resolved to enforce his new ideas of religion on the people of Ireland. The parliament of that country, pliant as ever, voted him king of Ireland and head of the church, and would as willingly have conferred on him any other title, no matter how far-fetched or absurd, had he desired it. Archbishop Browne, of Dublin, was a Christian after the king's own heart, and, in his way, as consistent and as zealous a reformer; and with the chancellor, Lord Trimblestown, at the laboring-oar, the task of converting the Irish to the new faith was considered quite easy. Here and there a stubborn recusant was anticipated, but were there not monasteries and nunneries enough to be confiscated, and lands and revenues to be given away, to satisfy those benighted adherents to the old faith? A grand tour of proselytism throughout the country was therefore projected, and the lord chancellor, the archbishop, and the other members of the privy council sallied out, accompanied by their men-at-arms, procurants, clerks, and retainers, to expound the Gospel according to King Henry, and to enforce their doctrines, if all else failed, by the carnal weapons of the lash and halter. They visited in succession Carlow, Kilkenny, Ross, Wexford, and Waterford, where they are mindful to acknowledge "they were well entertained." The archbishop on Sundays "preached the word of God, having very good audience, and published the king's injunctions and the king's translation of the _Pater Noster_, _Ave Maria_, the Articles of Faith, and the Ten Commandments in English," while on week-days the chancellor took his share of the good work; for, continues the report, "the day following we kept the sessions there (Waterford) both for the city and the shire, where was put to execution four felons, accompanied by another, a friar, whom, among the residue, we commanded to be hanged in his habit, and so to remain upon the gallows for a mirror to all his brethren to live truly."[38] This judicious mixture of preaching and hanging, the Lord's Prayer and the statute of Kilkenny, it was thought, would have a salutary effect on the souls and bodies of unbelievers, and was a fitting form of introducing the Reformation to the consideration of the Irish people.

The war on the faith of the nation having been thus openly and auspiciously inaugurated, we must henceforth look upon the chancellors of Ireland not only as the persistent defenders of the English interest in that country, but as the most dangerous because the most insidious and influential enemies of Catholicity.

Sir John Alan was appointed chancellor in 1539, and in the following year we find him at the head of a royal commission for the suppression of religious houses. The authority to the commissioners sets forth, with a mendacity never surpassed in a state paper, and rarely paralleled, even in the worst days of anti-Catholic persecution, the following pretexts for striking a deadly blow at the bulwarks of charity, religion, and learning:

"That from information of trustworthy persons, it being manifestly apparent that the monasteries, abbies, priories, and other places of religious or regulars in Ireland are, at present, in such a state that in them the praise of God and the welfare of man are next to nothing regarded, the regulars and others dwelling there being addicted, partly to their own superstitious ceremonies, partly to the pernicious worship of idols, and to the pestiferous doctrines of the Roman Pontiff, that unless an effectual remedy be promptly provided, not only the weak lower order, but the whole Irish people, may be speedily infected to their total destruction by the example of these persons. To prevent, therefore, the longer continuance of such religious men and nuns in so damnable a state, the king, having resolved to resume into his own hands all the monasteries and religious houses, for their better reformation, to remove from them the religious men and women, and cause them to return to some honest mode of living, and to true religion, directs the commissioners to signify this his intention to the heads of religious houses," etc.[39]

It is unnecessary to say that this measure of wholesale spoliation was promptly and thoroughly carried out. The thousand ruins that dot the island attest it, and the title-deeds of many a nobleman's broad acres bear date no earlier than this edict of the greatest monster that ever disgraced the British throne.

From this time forth, the lord chancellors found their best passport to royal favor in devising measures for the destruction of the popular faith. Being generally needy adventurers, with nothing but their legal knowledge and facile consciences to begin the world with, they neither loved the country nor respected the people, and their titles and wealth depended simply on their zeal for Protestantism. Of the hundreds of penal laws which disgrace the statute-book of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, every one of them owes its inception and enactment to one or another of those subtle-minded officials who, as the head of the lords, president of the privy council, and the dispenser of vast judicial and executive patronage, had a potent influence in all public affairs. They continued industriously to carry out the designs of Henry during the successive reigns of his worthy daughter Elizabeth, the Stuarts, William, Anne, and the House of Brunswick. Even when the fears of foreign invasion in 1760, and the noble resistance of the fathers of our republic some years later, had awakened the fears of the British authorities and induced them to relax somewhat the chains of the Catholics, the voice of the lord chancellors was still for war. Apart, however, from this spirit of intolerance which seemed to be naturally attached to the office, it must be confessed that from the days of Henry the great seal was held by many able lawyers and distinguished statesmen, some of whom were not unknown in the world of letters as authors and liberal patrons of learning and science. The names of Curwan, Loftus (who founded Trinity College University), Boyle, Porter, Butler, Cox, Broderick, Bowles, and many others, occupy honored positions in the legal annals of Great Britain and Ireland, and their lives, full of incident and variety, are fully and fairly placed before us by Mr. O'Flanagan.

The treaty of union in 1800, by which Ireland lost her parliament, and legislatively became a province, deprived the Irish chancellors of much of their original political power; though, strange as it may appear, this object was effected mainly through the exertions of Lord Clare, who at that time held the office. In this man's character, distinguished as it was for many private virtues, and for every public vice that it is possible to conceive, were united the good and bad qualities of all his predecessors, joined to a wonderful mental capacity which far surpassed them all. Born in Ireland, he was of English extraction and more than English in feeling, and, though of an exemplary Catholic stock, he was the son of an apostate clerical student, a most violent Protestant and a rancorous proscriptionist. A profound jurist and an upright judge in purely legal matters, his anti-Catholic prejudices seemed totally to have warped his judgment whenever the question of religion presented itself, and, though a steadfast friend in private of those who agreed with or did not care to differ from him, he never failed to carry into official life the hatreds and animosities engendered in political struggles or domestic intercourse. A powerful orator, full of strong legal points, logical propositions, and keen, and sometimes coarse, sarcasm, he ruled his party with a rod of iron, and, when persuasion and threats failed, he hesitated not to use bribes and cajolery. His mental energy was equal to any amount of labor, and his physical courage was beyond question, even in a country and age where bravery was ranked among the highest of virtues. Such was John Fitzgibbon, first Earl of Clare, born near Dublin in 1749, a man pre-eminently fitted by Providence to adorn his country and benefit mankind, but who perverted his great gifts and employed them with too much success in destroying that country's remnant of independence, and in devising new methods of persecution for his Catholic relatives and countrymen. He died in the plenitude of his power in 1802; his name when mentioned is reprobated by all good men in the nation he betrayed; his title, so ingloriously won, is extinct; and his bench in Chancery and his seat in the House of Lords are filled by one of that race and creed which he so cordially detested and so ruthlessly persecuted.[40] _Sic transit gloria mundi._

Mr. O'Flanagan brings down his _Lives_ to the time of George IV., but this latter portion of his valuable collection of biographies belongs more to the domain of law than of history. Indeed, the entire work is full of curious and interesting information which will be highly prized by the legal profession. What the late Lord Campbell has done so well for the English chancellors, the author has endeavored to do for those of Ireland, and with equal success, notwithstanding the scarcity of materials and the loose manner in which the Irish records have been kept. One of the most attractive features of this book is the total absence of passion or prejudice in the narrative of events and estimation of character; but every necessary circumstance is detailed in a plain, lucid, and intelligible style, and with something of judicial gravity and impartiality befitting so important a subject. As far as the author's own political predilections are concerned--and we suspect that they are by no means intensely national--the tone of the book may be said to be colorless, a peculiarity in modern biography which, while it may detract from its vivacity, will certainly add much weight to its value as an authority. We are promised a sequel to the chancellors, containing the lives of the lord chief-justices, which we hope will soon appear, for the more light that is shed on those darkened pages of Ireland's history, the better for the cause of truth, justice, and humanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] _The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and the Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland_, from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria. By J. Roderick O'Flanagan, M.R.I.A. Two vols. pp. 555, 621. London: Longmans Green & Co. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

[31] _Com. on the Laws of England, p. 429 et seq._

[32] Between 1172 and 1200, Ireland had no fewer than _seventeen_ chief governors. In the thirteenth century, they numbered _forty-six_; in the fourteenth, _ninety-three_; in the fifteenth, _eighty-five_; in the sixteenth, _seventy-six_; in the seventeenth, _seventy-nine_; and in the eighteenth, _ninety-four_.--_O'Flanagan_, vol. i. p. 293.

[33] O'Flanagan, vol. i. p. 130.

[34] _Life and Death of the Irish Parliament._ By the Right Hon. James Whiteside, C.J.

[35] Gilbert's _Viceroys of Ireland_.

[36] _State Papers, temp. Henry VIII._

[37] Ware's _Life of Browne_.

[38] _State Papers_, vol. iii. p. 108.

[39] Morrin's _Cal._ vol. i. p. 55.

[40] John O'Hagan, the present Lord High Chancellor of Ireland.

GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG'S GREAT HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.

The period of the German Minnesinger, dating from about the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the fourteenth century, witnessed probably the intensest and sincerest devotion to the worship of the Virgin Mary in the whole history of the Catholic Church. Intense and sincere pre-eminently, because so expressed in the vast number of paintings and poems in her glorification whereof we have record. That whole period, indeed, was one of fervent religious feeling, stimulated by the Crusades, and naturally choosing the Virgin for the chief object of worship, as the whole knightly spirit of that age was one of devotion to woman. The pure love--for Minne is _pure_ love--of woman has never, in the history of literature, been so exclusively made the topic of poetry as it was during that century of the Minnesinger; it is the absorbing theme of the almost two hundred poets of that time, of whom we have poems handed down to us, and its highest expression was attained in those poems that were addressed to the woman of all women, Mary, the mother of Jesus.

The German language in the thirteenth century had attained a development which fitted it pre-eminently for lyric poetry in all its branches. What it has since gained in other respects it has lost in sweet music of sound. Furthermore, the true laws of rhythm, metre, and verse for modern languages, as distinguished from the rules that governed classic poetry, had been discovered and fixed; rules and laws the knowledge whereof subsequently was lost, and which it gave Goethe so much trouble, as he tells us in his autobiography, to find again. The purity of rhyme has never since in German poetry attained the same degree of perfection, not even under the skilful hand of Rueckert and Platen, which the Minnesinger gave to it; and thus altogether those matters, which constitute the mechanism of poetry, were in fullest bloom.

Now this mechanism and the wonderful language which it operated upon being in the possession and under the full control of such men as were the poets of that day, the result could be only poems of perfect form, and yet at the same time naïve, earnest, intense, and enthusiastic in their character. For those poets were not--like those of our modern poets who have completest control of the mechanism of poetry, as Tennyson, Swinburne, etc.--poets of a cold, reflective bent of mind, but they were simple knights, with great enthusiasm in the cause of the Crusades and of ladies; at the same time gifted with a wondrous power of versification. A considerable number of them, some of the best, as Wolfram von Eschenbach, Ulrich von Lichtenstein, etc., could not even write and read, and had to dictate their poems to their Singerlein, or sing it to him--for these poets invented a melody for each of their poems--which Singerlein again transmitted it in the same manner until, in the course of time, these unwritten Minnelieder were, as much as possible, gathered together by the noble knight, Ruediger von Manasse, his son, and the Minnesinger, Johann Hadlaub, put into manuscript, and thus happily preserved for future generations.

The songs that these Minnesingers sang are of a threefold character: either in praise of the ladies, usually coupled with references to the seasons of the year; or of a didactic character; or, finally, in praise of the Virgin.

Their form is only twofold: either they are lays or songs proper. The song or Minnelied proper has invariably a triplicity of form in each stanza, that is, each stanza has three parts, whereof the first two correspond with each other exactly, whereas the third has an independent, though of course rhythmically connected, flow of its own. The lay, on the contrary, is of irregular construction, and permits the widest rhythmical liberties.

Of the many Minnelieder addressed to the Virgin we have presented to us examples of both kinds, lays and songs. Chief among them are a lay by Walther von der Vogelweide, and the _Great Hymn_ by Gottfried von Strassburg.

The latter is probably the finest of all the Minnelieder--worldly and sacred--of that period. Ranking next to these two there is, however, another poem to the Virgin, not to be classified strictly under the general title of Minnelieder, but still the production of a famous Minnesinger, and withal a poem of wondrous beauty, which for two centuries kept its hold upon the people. This is Konrad von Wuerzburg's _Golden Smithy_--a poem that is written in the metre of the narrative poem of that age, namely, in lines wherein every line ending in a masculine rhyme has four accentuations and every line ending in a female rhyme has three accentuations, the syllables not being counted--a metre that Coleridge has adopted in his poem _Christabel_.

In this _Golden Smithy_ the poet represents himself as a goldsmith, working all manner of precious stones and gold into a glorious ornament for the Queen of Heaven, by gathering into his poem all possible images and similes from the world of nature, from sacred and profane history and fable, and from all the virtues and graces of mankind. It is a poem of wonderful splendor, and has a great smoothness of diction. "If," says the poet in the opening of the poem, "in the depth of the smithy of my heart I could melt a poem out of gold and could enamel the gold with the glowing ruby of pure devotion, I would forge a transparent, shining, and sparkling praise of thy worth, thou glorious empress of heaven. Yet, though my speech should fly upward like a noble eagle, the wings of my words could not carry me beyond thy praise; marble and adamant shall be sooner penetrated by a straw, and the diamond by molten lead, than I attain the height of the praise that belongs to thee. Not until all the stars have been counted and the dust of the sun and the sand of the sea and the leaves of the trees, can thy praise be properly sung."

But even this poem is far surpassed in beauty every way by Gottfried von Strassburg's _Great Hymn_. Indeed, Konrad himself modestly confesses this in his _Golden Smithy_, when he regrets that he does not "sit upon the green clover bedewed with sweet speech, on which sat worthily Gottfried von Strassburg, who, as a most artistic smith, worked a golden poem, and praised and glorified the Holy Virgin in much better strain."

There is, indeed, a wondrous beauty in this hymn of Gottfried von Strassburg, a beauty much akin to that of his own Strassburg Cathedral, which was begun about the same time.

"It is," says Van der Hagen, "the very glorification of love (Minne) and of Minnesong; it is the heavenly bridal song, the mysterious Solomon's Song, which mirrors its miraculous object in a stream of deep and lovely images, linking them all together into an imperishable wreath; yet even here in its profundity and significance of an artistic and numerously-rhymed construction; always clear as crystal, smooth and graceful."

The poem separates into three parts: in the first whereof the poet exhorts all those who desire to listen to his song of God's great love to endeavor to gain it by unremitting exertion; and furthermore to pray for him, the poet, who has so little striven to attain it for himself. In the second part, the poet calls upon the heavens and Christ to bend down and listen to his truthful lays in praise of Christ's sweet mother. Then in the third part begins the praise of the Virgin, followed by that of her Son, and the poem reaches its supreme fervor when it breaks out finally in praise of God himself. Thence it gradually lowers its tone, and finally expires in a sigh.

I suppose it is impossible to give an adequate idea by translation of the melodious sound of words, the perfect rhythm, and the artistic gradation of effect which this poem has parts of the poem, and so selected as to give a general idea of both the manner and the matter of the poem. The selection opens with the first and ends with the last verses of the whole poem; but the whole itself being composed of ninety-four stanzas, it was necessary to take from in the original. I can say only that I have done my best in the following stanzas, selected from the various the intermediate ones only specimens. The imagery may often seem far-fetched, but it must be remembered that the men of that period likened God and the God-begotten unto everything on earth and in heaven, for the simple reason that they deemed it irreverent and impossible to characterize them by any single predicate or word.

Of the poet himself we know very little. His name indicates him to have been a citizen of Strassburg. His title Meister (master) shows that his station in life was that of a citizen and not of a noble or knight, their title being Herr. He was undoubtedly the foremost poet of his age, and--together with Wolfram von Eschenbach--was then and is still so considered. His greatest work is the narrative poem, _Tristan und Isolde_; but that he left unfinished. We have no other work of his handed down to us except three or four small Minnesongs.

HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.

Ye, who your life would glorify And float in bliss with God on high, There to dwell nigh His peace and love's salvation; Who fain would learn how to enroll All evils under your control, And rid your soul Of many a sore temptation: Give heed unto this song of love And follow its sweet story; Then will its passing sweetness prove Unto your hearts a peaceful dove, And upward move Your souls to realms of glory.

Ye, who would hear what you have ne'er Heard spoken, now incline your ear And listen here To what my tongue unfoldeth. Yea, list to the sweet praise and worth Of her who to God's child gave birth; Wherefore on earth God as in heaven her holdeth. E'en as the air when fresh bedewed Bears fruitful growth, so to man She bears an ever-fruitful mood: Never so chaste and sweet heart's blood, So true and good, Was born by mortal woman.

I speak of thee in my best strain: No mother e'er such child may gain, Or child attain So pure a mother ever. He chose what his own nature was; His glorious Godhead chose as case The purest vase Of flesh and bone's endeavor That woman ever to her heart 'Tween earth and heaven gave pressure. In thee lay hidden every part, That ever did from virtue start; Of bliss thou art The sweetest, chosen treasure.

Thou gem, thou gold, thou diamond-glow, Thou creamy milk, white ivory, oh! Thou honey-flow In heart and mouth dissolving; Of fruitful virtue a noble grove, The lovely bride of God above-- Thou sweet, sweet love, Thou hour with bliss revolving! Of chastity thou whitest snow, A grape of chaste and sure love, A clover-field of true love's glow, Of grace a bottomless ocean's flow: Yea more, I trow: A turtle-dove of pure love.

God thee hath clothed with raiments seven, On thy pure body, brought from heaven, Hath put them even When thou wast first created. The first dress Chastity is named, The second is as Virtue famed, The third is claimed And as sweet Courtesy rated. The fourth dress is Humility, The fifth is Mercy's beauty, The sixth one, Faith, clings close to thee, The seventh, humble Modesty, Keepeth thee free To follow simple duty.

To worship, Lady, thee doth teach Pray'r to drenched courage and numbed speech, Yea, and fires each Cold heart with heavenly rapture. To worship thee, O Lady! can Teach many an erring, sinful man, How from sin's ban His soul he still may capture. To worship thee is e'en a branch On which the soul's life bloometh; To worship thee makes bold and stanch The weakest soul on sin's hard bench; God it doth wrench From hell and in heaven roometh.

Then let both men and women proclaim, And what of mother's womb e'er came, Both wild and tame, The grace of thy devotion. Then praise thee now what living lives, Whatever heaven's dew receives, Runs, floats, or cleaves Through forest or through ocean. Then praise thee now the fair star-shine, The sun and the moon gold-glowing, Then praise thee the four elements thine; Yea, blessedness around thee twine, Thou cheering wine, Thou stream with grace o'erflowing.

Rejoice, then, Lady of the skies, Rejoice, thou God-love's paradise, Rejoice, thou prize Of sweetest roses growing! Rejoice, thou blessed maiden, then, Rejoice, that every race and clan, Woman and man, Pray to thy love o'erflowing. Rejoice, that thou with God dost show So many things in common: His yea thy yea, his no thy no; Endless ye mingle in one flow; Small and great, lo! He shares with thee, sweet woman.

Now have I praised the mother thine, O sweet, fair Christ and Lord of mine! That honor's shrine Wherein thou wast created. And loud I'll now praise thee, O Lord! Yea, did I not, 'twould check my word; Thy praise has soared, And with all things been mated. Seven hours each day thy praise shall now By me in pray'r be chanted; This well belongs to thee, I trow, For with all virtues thou dost glow; From all grief thou Relief to us hast granted.

Thou of so many pure hearts the hold, So many a pure maid's sweetheart bold, All thee enfold With love bright, loud, and yearning. Thou art caressed by many a mood, Caressed by many a heart's warm blood; Thou art so good, So truthful and love-burning. Caressed by all the stars that soar, By moon and sun, thou blessing! Caressed by the great elements four; Oh! ne'er caressed so was afore, Nor will be more, Sweetheart by love's caressing!

Yea, thou art named the God of grace, Without whose special power, no phase Of life in space Had ever gained existence. What runneth, climbeth, sneaketh, or striveth, What crawleth, twineth, flieth, or diveth, Yea, all that thriveth In earth and heaven's subsistence: Of all, the life to thee is known, Thou art their food and banner, The lives of all are held alone By thee, O Lord! and on thy throne; Thus is well known Thy grace in every manner.

God of thee speaking, God of thee saying, Teareth the heart its passions flaying, And stay waylaying The ever-watchful devil. God of thee speaking, God of thee saying, Much strength and comfort keeps displaying; And hearts thus staying, Are saved from every evil. God of thee speaking, God of thee saying, Is pleasure beyond all pleasure. It moves our hearts, thy grace surveying, To keep with love thy love repaying; O'er all things swaying Thus shines thy love's great treasure.

God of thee speaking repentance raises When they, who chant thy wondrous praises, Use lying phrases: So purely thy word gloweth. It suffers less a lying mood Than suffers waves the ocean's flood, So pure and good Its changeless current floweth. God of thee speaking doth attest Pure heart and chaste endeavor, It driveth the devil from our breast. Oh! well I know its soothing rest, It is the zest Of thy vast mercy's flavor.

Ah virtue pure, ah purest vase! Ah of chaste eyes thou mirror-glass! Ah diamond-case, With fruitful virtues glowing! Ah festive day to pleasure lent! Ah rapture without discontent! Ah sweet musk-scent! Ah flower gayly blooming! Ah heavenly kingdom where thou art! On earth, in hell, or heaven! Ah cunning o'er all cunning's art! Ah thou, that knoweth every part! Ah sweet Christ's heart! Ah sweetness without leaven!

Ah virtue there, ah virtue here! Ah virtue on many a dark and drear Path, far and near! Ah virtue e'er befriending! Ah thou self-conscious purity! Ah goodness, those that cling to thee So many be Their number has no ending. Ah father, mother thou, and son! Ah brother both and sister! Ah strong of faith as Jacob's son! Ah king of earth's and heaven's throne! Ah thou alone Our friend to-day as yester!

A WORD TO THE _INDEPENDENT_.

"A WORD TO FATHER HECKER.

"We address you, Reverend Dr. Hecker, in this public way because we recognize in you not only the ablest defender of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, but also the most progressive and enlightened leader of thought in that church. In the words we have to speak, we wish to speak not to Dr. Hecker, the antagonist of Protestantism, but to Father Hecker, a leader of Catholicism. We write in no polemical spirit. We have many things against the Church of Rome, and have spoken severely of Catholicism as you have of Protestantism. But we have also much veneration for many things in that church, and a very great admiration for some passages in its history. Enthusiastic as you are, sir, you cannot revere more sincerely than we the self-sacrificing benevolence of St. Francis of Assisi, the zeal of St. Francis Xavier, the piety of Fénelon and of Lacordaire, the eloquence of Bossuet and Massillon, or the courage of Pascal and Hyacinthe.

"We come to you for help. In all our great cities there are sections inhabited almost wholly by Roman Catholic people. It is a fact, as well known to you as it is to us, that Catholic sections of the cities abound in destitution, in ignorance, in vice, in crime. Children are here trained by all their surroundings to a life of wickedness. In many homes they learn profanity from the lips of their mothers, and they are familiar with drunkenness from their cradle, if they are so fortunate as to have one left not pawned to buy the means of drunkenness. We know how many honest and hard-working Catholics there are in these sections, and we know how many villanous non-Catholics there are. But you know as well as any one knows that the Catholic population furnishes vastly more than its proportion of paupers and criminals. The reform schools, the prisons, the alms-houses, are nearly full of Catholics. In the Catholic sections of the cities there are drinking-saloons, dog-pits, and brothels in abundance. The men who keep these places are, in undue proportion, Catholics. They receive extreme unction on their death-beds, and are buried in consecrated cemeteries with the rites of the church. We say these things not to wound your Catholic pride, nor to injure that church, but to ask one question: Cannot the Catholic Church herself do something to mitigate these evils?

"Protestants plant missions in some of these Catholic quarters. We are not sure that these missions are always conducted as they should be. Perhaps there may be too much of a spirit of proselytism in some of them; but, at any rate, there is a sincere desire to make men better. Drunkards have been reformed by these missions. Women of evil life have been reclaimed. Children have been taken from vile homes and taught the ways of virtue. Sunday-schools and reading-rooms have been established, and have contributed to the culture and elevation of adults and children.

"But you know, sir, how strong is the Catholic prejudice against Protestants. Broken windows, and sometimes broken heads, have testified to the appreciation the Catholic population has of such efforts on the part of Protestants. There are whole districts from which Protestants are practically excluded. For the worse the lives of these people are, the more combatively devoted are they to the Catholic Church. Of course, we believe that Protestantism is better than Roman Catholicism; but since the reaching of these people with Protestant missions is not possible, we come to you and ask you whether you, who have done so much for the enlightenment of the Catholic Church through its literature, will not lift up your powerful voice to plead with the church to use her almost unlimited influence for the regeneration of her people.

"We are never tired of praising Catholic charities. But Catholic charities, like many Protestant ones, are only half-charities. Of what avail is it that you build a House of the Good Shepherd for abandoned women, if you do not also take means to mitigate the ignorance and the wickedness of the children who are quickly to supply the places of those whom you have recovered?

"We point you to no Protestant example. We know of none so good as that of the illustrious St. Charles Borromeo. If the great Cathedral of Milan were the rudest chapel in Europe, it would yet be one of the most glorious of temples. We need not point the application of his example to the present subject. If the Catholic Church in America had one ecclesiastic of ability who possessed half the zeal of the illustrious successor of St. Ambrose, this stain upon American Catholicism might soon be wiped away. We need not remind one so learned in church history as yourself of his toilsome labor in the cause of education, and of his endeavors, which ceased only with his life, to remove ignorance and vice from his diocese. In suggesting to you, whose parish has already so admirable a Sunday-school, the good that might be accomplished by a thoroughly organized Sunday-school system, we do not need to suggest that in Sunday-school work Catholics are not imitators of Protestants. We are proud to trace the history of Sunday-schools to St. Charles Borromeo.

"By helping to improve the moral, intellectual, and religious character of the lower class of American Catholics, you can do more than by all your eloquent arguments to make Protestants think well of the mother church. Americans are very practical, and a good chapter of present church history enacted before their eyes will have more weight with them than all the old church history your learning can dig from the folios of eighteen centuries."

We depart from our usual course to reprint the above rather, long article, which appeared some time ago in the _Independent_, one of the leading Protestant papers of the country, not because of its intrinsic merits or special untruthfulness, nor yet for its assumed knowledge of the views and duties of the reverend gentleman to whom it is so pointedly addressed, but because we consider this a fitting time and place to answer the invidious attacks which, under one guise or another, are so constantly being made on the church in America by those who are neither able to meet openly our arguments, nor to arrest covertly the astonishing progress which our holy religion is happily making in every part of this republic. These assaults sometimes take the form of wholesale and mendacious assertion and passionate appeal to blind prejudice and unreason; while sometimes, like the one before us, they assume the thin disguise of personal courtesy and general charity to all men. The former are perhaps the more manly, the latter have the merit of permitting us, without loss of self-respect, to reply to them. The object in either case is the same: a vain endeavor to stem the tide of Catholicity which, in a succession of great waves, as it were, is fast spreading over the land, and an attempt to make our faith an object of aversion to those of our countrymen not yet in the church, by associating it with all that is impoverished, illiterate, and immoral.

It is true, as the writer says, that the Americans are a practical people; but we are not by any means a very reflective people, and are very apt to judge hastily of others without sufficiently considering the various causes which underlie the surface of society, or the effects which may be produced on a people less fortunate than ourselves by ages of misrule and persecution. Knowing this national failing very well, the writer in the _Independent_ adroitly seeks to hold the Catholic Church responsible for the faults and vices of a certain class of nominal Catholics in our midst, when he is fully aware that these very vices, so far from being the growth of Catholic teaching, are not only in absolute contradiction to it, but are the direct and logical results of an elaborate system of penal legislation, designed to produce the very degradation of which he complains, and persistently carried out to its furthest limit by the leading Protestant power of Europe.

Take New York, for instance. Here the church is practically the growth of but half a century. There are some among us whose Catholic ancestors came to this country in the last or even in the seventeenth century; others who have sought refuge from the doubts and uncertainties of Protestantism in the peaceful bosom of mother church; but by far the greater number are immigrants of this century, and their children, who, glad to flee from famine and persecution with nothing but their lives and faith, have sought refuge on our shores from the tyranny of a hostile government, which the world has long recognized as both insincere, oppressive, and illiberal, but which, by virtue of its assumed leadership in the Protestant revolt called the Reformation, wantonly and tenaciously continued to persecute its subjects who dared to profess their devotion to the faith of their fathers. Any one, be he lawyer or laymen, who reads the penal acts of the parliaments of England, Scotland, and Ireland from the reign of Henry VIII. downward, must be satisfied that a more complete network of laws for the purpose of beggaring, degrading, and corrupting human nature has never been devised. Some of them, in fact, are almost preternatural in their ingenuity; and the wonder is how any class of people coming under their operation could, for any length of time, retain even the semblance of civilization. Everything that it was possible to take by legislation from the Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland was taken, every advantage arising from the possession of land or the acquisition of commercial wealth was denied them, and the avenues to honor and distinction were, and are partially so to this day, closed against them, generation after generation. That many of the descendants of these persecuted people who have come among us are uneducated is true, that they are generally poor is a fact patent to every one; but it ill becomes the _Independent_ to taunt them with their ignorance and their poverty, knowing, as it does, that it was Protestantism, of which it is the expounder and the eulogist, that has robbed them of their birthright, and striven, with some success, it seems, to plunge their souls in darkness. Is it fair or generous to hold these people up to public contumely because of the scars they have received in their unequalled struggle for the freedom of conscience and nationality; is it just or American to try to steal from those who seek an asylum on our soil that for which they have imperilled and lost all else--their faith, which is to them dearer than life itself? Or is it more in keeping with all our ideas of true manhood and republican liberty that while we extend one arm to shield the victim of oppression, the other should be stretched forth in reprobation of his plunderer and persecutor? If they have vices--and what people have not?--let a share of the blame at least be laid at the doors of those who designedly and continually debarred them from all means of enlightenment and every incentive to virtue, instead of being attributed to the influence of the church.

And yet, in view of the gloomy history of these people--a chapter in the annals of England which the best of her Protestant statesmen are endeavoring to efface from the popular memory--the writer in the _Independent_ appears to be surprised at what he calls Catholic prejudice against Protestant missions. No man, we are safe in saying, has less prejudice against his fellow-man than the American Catholic, in all the usual intercourse of life; but when a person under the garb of charity invades the sanctity of his home simply to abuse his religion, or waylays his children in the streets and inveigles them into mission-houses and Sunday-schools by the proffer of a loaf or a jacket, for the purpose of telling them that their fathers' faith is rank idolatry, is it not too much to expect that he will remain unmoved and uncomplaining? The writer should recollect that the class of so-called missionaries who infest the quarters of our poorer fellow-Catholics are not new to those people. They have seen their counterparts long ago in Bantry and Connemara, in the fertile valleys of Munster and on the bleak hills of Connaught, in the dark days of the great famine, when the tract distributer followed hard on the heels of the tithe-proctor and the bailiff, tendering a meal or a shilling as the price of apostasy. If heads are occasionally broken, they are not the heads of those who attend to their own affairs and let their neighbors attend to theirs, but of some intermeddling tract-scatterer, whose salary depends upon the number of copies he can force into the hands of Catholics without regard to their wishes or feelings. The provocation emanates from them, and they must take the consequences. If the law permits us to inflict summary chastisement on the burglar who enters our house to take our goods, shall we have no remedy against him who prowls about our doors to steal our children and abuse our faith?

If Protestant missions were properly conducted, they would have none of these difficulties to contend with. But are they properly conducted? The writer in the _Independent_ seems to have some doubts on this point. We have none. Whoever will take the trouble to attend the Bible-classes, prayer-meetings, day-schools, and Sunday-schools of the Howard Mission and its adjuncts, will be satisfied that they are nothing but ingeniously contrived machines for the purpose of proselytizing Catholic children. Abuse of Catholicity of the most unqualified and vulgar kind forms the staple of the instructions there from beginning to end. Even the material relief is diverted to this purpose. The poor half-starved lad, as he eats his food, swallows it down with a draught of no-popery cant, and the ragged little girl, as she dons some cast-off garment, has her young mind polluted by aspersions on the name of her whom Holy Writ declared should be called blessed by all nations. We have before us a periodical issued from the Howard Mission, under the superintendence of a Rev. W. C. Van Meter, which is as full of that canting, snivelling, anti-Catholic spirit as ever characterized the days of God-save-Barebones or of John Wesley's unlettered disciples. As a specimen of the veracity of this modern apostle to the Fourth Ward, and for the benefit of the _Independent_, which has some doubts as to whether Protestant missions are properly conducted, we extract the following prominent article from its pages:

"PROTESTANTISM _vs._ ROMANISM.--In the Protestant countries of Great Britain and Prussia, where 20 can read and write, there are but 13 in the Roman Catholic countries of France and Austria. In European countries, 1 in every 10 are in schools in the Protestant countries, and but 1 in 124 in the Roman Catholic. In six leading Protestant countries in Europe, 1 newspaper or magazine is published to every 315 inhabitants; while in six Roman Catholic there is but 1 to every 2,715. The value of what is produced a year by industry in Spain is $6 to each inhabitant; in France, $7½; Prussia, $8; and in Great Britain, $31. There are about a third more paupers in the Roman Catholic countries of Europe than in the Protestant, owing mainly to their numerous holidays and prevailing ignorance, idleness, and vice. Three times as many crimes are committed in Ireland as in Great Britain, though the population is but a third. There are six times as many homicides, four times as many assassinations, and from three to four times as many thefts in Ireland as in Scotland. In Catholic Austria, there are four times as many crimes committed as in the adjoining Protestant kingdom of Prussia."[41]

Now, we ask, is the man or men who penned and circulated this atrocious calumny likely to command the respect of any class of Catholics, learned or ignorant? He or they knew, or ought to have known, that it contains several deliberate falsehoods. Take, for example, the portion of the extract relating to Great Britain and Ireland. By referring to the report of "Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, August 31, 1868," we find that in England and Wales the average attendance at all the schools in the kingdom was 1,050,120, in Scotland 191,860, and in Ireland, at the model schools alone, 354,853, or nearly twice as many as in Scotland, and, in proportion to the population, one-seventh more than in England. From the official report of the statistics of crime in the same year (the latest published reports that have reached us), there were convicted of crime in England 15,003, in Scotland 2,490, and in Ireland 2,394. Of those sentenced in England, 21 were condemned to death, 18 to penal servitude for life, and 1,921 for a term of years. In Scotland, one was condemned to death, and 243 to penal servitude, while in Ireland none were condemned to death, and but 238 to penal servitude. We find also that in England alone 118,390 persons are reported as belonging to the criminal classes known to the authorities, and but 23,041 in Ireland; and while the former country has 20,000 houses of bad character, the latter has 5,876. The number of paupers in each of the three countries shows even a greater disparity. England in 1868 had, exclusive of vagrants, 1,039,549, or one in every twenty of the population; Scotland, 158,372, or one in every 19; and Ireland, 74,254, or one in every 80![42]

If it were not foreign to our present purpose, we could prove that the managers of the Protestant missions are equally untruthful in their invidious comparisons instituted between other countries,[43] but we have shown enough to convince any impartial person that they are not fit to be entrusted with the care of youth of any class, much less of Catholic children. If the supporters of the _Independent_ are sincere in their desire to benefit the destitute, the needy, and the vicious, let them first remove all suspicion of proselytism from their charities by appointing proper persons to administer them. If they have conscientious scruples against co-operating with the various Catholic charitable societies, who know the poor and are trusted by them, there are other ways of dispensing their bounty judiciously than by tampering with the poor people's faith, and their charity will then become a blessing to the giver as well as to the receiver. Then let them, above all things, advocate a fair and impartial distribution of the public school funds. It is well known that the Catholics as a body are far from being rich, and that while they are struggling hard to sustain their own schools, they are heavily taxed for the support of those to which they cannot consistently send their children, and from which, in many instances, the offspring of the rich alone receive any benefit. Can we not in this free democracy have laws regulating education at least as equitable as those of Austria and Prussia--countries which we are pleased to call despotic? Help us to the means to educate our children in our own way, as we have a right to do, and you will see how the stigma of ignorance and its consequences will be removed from the fair forehead of this great metropolis. We ask not charity, we simply want our fair share of that public money which is contributed by Catholic and Protestant alike for educational purposes, and the liberty to apply it with as much freedom from state interference as is enjoyed in the monarchies of Europe.

The writer in the _Independent_ assumes, with a coolness approaching impertinence, that the clergyman whom he addresses knows that the Catholic population "furnishes more, vastly more, than its proportion of paupers and criminals." He knows no such thing, nor does any right-minded man in the community know it. That there are many and grave crimes committed by nominal Catholics is, alas! too true, but that many such are perpetrated, to any appreciable extent, by the hundreds of thousands of practical Catholics in this city, no sane man believes. Poor and ignorant, if you will, without capital, business training, or mechanical skill, many thousands of our immigrants are from necessity obliged to make their homes in the purlieus of our great cities. Disappointed in their too sanguine expectation of fortune in the New World, some seek solace in intoxication, and in that condition commit acts of lawlessness which their better nature abhors. But much as the commission of crime in any shape is to be regretted and reprehended, it must be admitted that most of the offences are comparatively trivial in their nature and consequences, and few, even of the darkest, are the result of premeditated villany. In searching over the criminal records of our state and country, we seldom find a contrived infraction of the law by the class to which the writer so ungraciously alludes. A gigantic swindle, a scientific burglary, a nicely planned larceny, an adroit forgery, a diabolical seduction, or a deliberate and long-contemplated murder by poison or the knife, is seldom committed by that class, but by those who were reared in as much hostility to Catholicity as the writer of the _Independent_ himself. This higher grade of crime, this "bad pre-eminence," we might with some show of justice ascribe to the effects of the laxity of Protestant morals, but we have no desire to do so here; and with even much more truthfulness might we charge the sects who teach that marriage is merely a civil contract with the responsibility of those other vices which, striking at the very foundations of society and the sanctity of the family, are more lasting in their consequences and more demoralizing in their immediate effects, than all the others put together. The columns of this same virtuous _Independent_ have obtained an unenviable notoriety by spreading the most shameful and corrupting doctrines on this vital subject. But we have no wish to retort: the records of our divorce courts will prove that this class of criminals is made up almost exclusively of non-Catholics.

The writer in the _Independent_, throughout his appeal, assumes a tone of superior knowledge and a lofty contempt for details that might mislead some into the belief that the Catholic body of this city was an inert and helpless mass. He asks, "Will you not lift up your powerful voice to plead with the church to use her almost unlimited influence for the regeneration of her people?" Does the writer know, or has he attempted to ascertain, all that the church has done and is doing in this city, as in every other, for the "regeneration of her people"? If he does not, by what right does he assume that the voice of any one man or any number of men is required to _plead_ with the church to do her duty? If he be ignorant of his subject, then by what authority does he take upon himself the office of mediator between the church and the people? If he be not in ignorance, then his carefully worded sentences and smoothly turned compliments merely cover, without concealing, a tissue of base insinuations, beside which downright falsehood were rank flattery.

Let him look at what the church has done in New York in the past generation! Forty churches and chapels have been built, with a capacity, it is said, to seat fifty-six thousand persons, but really equal to the accommodation of five times that number, as in every church the divine service is offered up at least three times each Sunday, and all are attended beyond the greatest capacity of the building. To many of our churches is attached a free day-school for boys and girls, and invariably a Sunday-school--thronged weekly by the youth of both sexes, to listen to the instruction and counsel of competent teachers. Every parish has its St. Vincent de Paul Society, counting hundreds and in some cases thousands of members, whose aim it is to visit the sick, the afflicted, and the needy; and its temperance society, the strength of which may be judged by the long line of stalworth men we see parading our streets on festal occasions. Colleges, schools, and convents there are in great numbers for the teaching of the higher branches of education. Hospitals for the sick and afflicted, asylums for the blind, the orphan, the foundling, and the repentant sinner, a reformatory for erring youth, and a shelter for old age. Almost every conceivable want of weak humanity has its appropriate place of supply among our charitable institutions.

All this grand system of charities is, however, lost on the writer in the _Independent_. His special attention is directed to the "dense Catholic sections." Well, we will take the Fourth Ward, which is blessed with the Howard Mission and the beneficent supervision of Mr. Van Meter. St. James's Church is situated in this ward, and its parish embraces all the Protestant missions so-called, and most of their offshoots. Upon personal inquiry, we find that there is erected in this parish a magnificent and spacious school-house, at a cost of _one hundred and twenty thousand_ dollars, attended daily during week-days by upwards of _fourteen hundred_ boys and girls, taught by twenty-two teachers of both sexes. The tuition is entirely free, the expenses amounting to about twelve thousand dollars annually, being sustained by the voluntary contributions of the parishioners. The Sunday-schools of this church are attended by _twenty-five hundred_ children, about one-half of whom, being employed during the week, are unable to attend the day-schools. Then there is an industrial school, attended by between one and two hundred poor children, mostly half-orphans, who are provided with dinner every day, and to whom are given two entire suits of new clothing every year, on July 4th and Christmas Day. In addition to these there is a branch of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, numbering several hundred members, forty of whom are constantly on duty, visiting the sick, counselling the erring, helping the needy, and performing other works of charity. This society alone expends annually at least five thousand dollars. Besides, there are two temperance societies, numbering nearly _nine hundred men_, who not only discourage intemperance by their example, but seek by weekly meetings, lectures, and other popular attractions to win others to follow in their footsteps. Now, these are facts easily verified by any one who may wish to do so, and may be taken as a fair specimen of the gigantic efforts which the church is making in every parish in this city for the conservation of the morals and the education of her people. St. James's Parish may be said to contain the largest proportionate number of our poorer brethren, who, though heavily taxed as tenement holders and retail purchasers of all the necessaries of life, contributing of course their quota to the public school fund, can yet afford, out of their scanty and often precarious means, to educate and partly feed and clothe over _fifteen hundred children_. Can the _Independent_ show any similar effort on the part of any of the sects?

The writer in the _Independent_ says, "We come to you for help." What sort of help? If it is assistance to prop up the decaying Protestant missions which have so long been sources of discord and bad feeling among our Catholic fellow-citizens, profitable only to their employees, we respectfully decline: if he is in truth and all sincerity desirous to devote a part of his leisure time and means to improve the condition of his less fortunate fellow-beings in the denser populated portions of the city, we cannot advise him to do better than to consult the pastor of St. James's or of any of the churches in the lower wards, who will give him all the help required for the proper disposal of both. And, in conclusion, let us suggest to him that no amount of politeness will justify the violation of the commandment which says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

FOOTNOTES:

[41] _The Little Wanderer's Friend_, January, 1871.

[42] _Thom's Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland_, for 1870, pp. 713-721.

[43] See CATHOLIC WORLD for April, September, and October, 1869, and April, 1870.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF HENRI LASSERRE.

VI.

The press of Paris and of the provinces was beginning to discuss the events at Lourdes; and public attention far outside the region of the Pyrenees was gradually being attracted to the Grotto of Massabielle.

The measures of the prefect were loudly applauded by the infidel papers and as vehemently condemned by the Catholic ones. The latter, while maintaining a due reserve on the subject of the reality of the apparitions and miracles, held that a question of this nature should be decided by the ecclesiastical authorities, and not summarily settled according to the will of the prefect.

The innumerable cures which were taking place at the grotto, or even at distant places, continually drew an immense number of invalids and pilgrims to Lourdes. The Latour de Trie analysis, and the mineral properties claimed for the new spring by the official representative of science, added yet more to the reputation of the grotto, and made it attractive even to those who depended for their cure only on the unaided powers of nature. Also, the discussion, by exciting men's minds, added to the throng of the faithful there assembled another of the curious. All the means adopted by the unbelievers turned directly against the end which they had proposed to themselves.

By the irresistible course of events, then--a course fatal in the eyes of some, but providential in those of others--the crowd which the authorities had been trying to disperse was continually assuming larger and larger proportions. And it increased the more, because, as ill luck would have it, the material obstacles which the frosts of winter had produced had gradually disappeared. The month of May had returned; and the beautiful spring weather seemed to invite pilgrims to come to the grotto by all the flowery roads which traverse the woods, meadows, and vineyards in this region of lofty mountains, green hills, and shady valleys.

The provoked but powerless prefect watched the growth and spread of this peaceable and wonderful movement, which was bringing the Christian multitudes to kneel and drink at the foot of a desolate rock.

The measures already taken had, it is true, prevented the grotto from looking like an oratory, but, substantially, the state of things remained the same. From all sides people were coming to the scene of a miracle. Contrary to the hope of the free-thinkers, the fear of the faithful, and the expectations of all, absolutely no disturbance or breach of the peace occurred in this extraordinary concourse of men and women, old and young, believers and infidels, the curious and the indifferent. An invisible hand seemed to protect these crowds from mutual collision as they daily thronged by thousands to the miraculous fountain.

The magistracy, represented by M. Dutour, and the police, personified in M. Jacomet, looked at this strange phenomenon with astonishment. Was their irritation all the greater on his account? We cannot say; but for some dispositions extremely fond of authority, the spectacle of a multitude so wonderfully orderly and peaceable, is certainly anomalous and revolutionary, if not even insulting. When order preserves itself, all those functionaries whose only business is to preserve it feel a vague uneasiness. Being accustomed to have a hand in everything in the name of the law, to regulate, to command, to punish, to pardon, to see everything and everybody depend on their person and office, they feel out of place in the presence of a crowd which does not need their services, and which gives them no pretext for interfering, showing their importance, and restraining its movements. An order which excludes them is the worst of all disorders. If such a fatal example should be generally followed, the _procureurs impériaux_ would no longer have a sufficient reason for their existence, the commissaries of police would disappear, and even the prefectoral splendor would begin to wane.

Baron Massy had indeed been able to order the seizure of every object deposited at the grotto; but there was no law recognizing such deposits as criminal, and it was impossible to forbid or punish them. Hence, in spite of the spoliations of the prefect, the grotto was often brilliantly lighted by candles, and filled with flowers and votive offerings, and even with silver and gold coins contributed for the building of the chapel which the Blessed Virgin had required. The pious faithful wished in this way--though it were an ineffectual one--to show the Queen of Heaven their good-will, zeal, and love. "What matter is it if they do take the money? It will have been offered all the same. The candle will have given its light for a time in honor of our Mother, and the bouquet will for an instant have perfumed the sacred spot where her feet rested." Such were the thoughts of those Christian souls.

Jacomet and his agents continued to come and carry everything off. The commissary, much encouraged after having escaped the dangers of the 4th of May, had become very scornful and brutal in his proceedings, sometimes throwing the object seized into the Gave before the scandalized eyes of the faithful. Sometimes, however, he was obliged in spite of himself to leave a festal appearance at the holy place. This was when the ingenious piety of its visitors had strewn the Grotto with innumerable rose-leaves, and it was impossible for him to pick up the thousand remains of flowers which formed its brilliant and perfumed carpet.

The kneeling crowds continued meanwhile to pray, without making any reply to this provoking conduct, and let matters take their course; showing an extraordinary patience, such as God alone can give to an indignant multitude.

One evening, the report was spread that the emperor or his minister had asked for the prayers of Bernadette. M. Dutour raised a shout of triumph, and prepared to save the state. Three good women, who, as it seems, had made such a statement, were brought before the court, and the _procureur_ demanded that they should be treated according to all the rigor of the French law. Notwithstanding his indignant eloquence, the judges acquitted two and condemned the other only to a fine of five francs. The procureur, dissatisfied with this small amount, insisted upon his suit, and made a desperate appeal to the imperial court at Pau, which, smiling at his anger, not only confirmed the acquittal of the two, but also refused to sustain the very small judgment pronounced against the third culprit, and dismissed the charge altogether.

We mention this little occurrence, though an insignificant one in itself, to show how keenly the judges were upon the watch, and how carefully they searched for some offence, for some opportunity to be severe, since they employed their time in prosecuting poor simple women whose innocence was soon after declared by the imperial court.

The people still continued quiet, and afforded no pretext to the authorities for making an attack upon them in the name of the law.

One night, under cover of the darkness, unknown hands tore up the conduits of the miraculous spring, and covered its waters with heaps of stone, earth, and sand. Who had raised this vile monument against the work of God, what impious and cowardly hands had secretly committed such profanation, were not known. But when the day broke, and the sacrilege became known, a sullen indignation, as might have been foreseen, pervaded the multitudes who were collected at the place, and that day the people filled the streets and roads in agitation like that of the sea when it foams and roars under a violent wind. The police, magistracy, and _sergents-de-ville_ were on the watch, spying and listening, but they could not report a single lawless action or seditious word. The divine influence which maintained order among these enraged multitudes was evidently invincible.

But who, then, was the author of this outrage? The judges and police, in spite of their active and zealous endeavors, did not succeed in detecting him. Hence it happened that some evil-minded persons dared to suspect the police and judiciary themselves (though evidently with great injustice) of having tried by this means to produce some disorders, in order to have an occasion to proceed with rigor.

The municipal authority most earnestly exculpated itself from all connivance in the affair. That very evening, or the next day, the mayor gave orders to replace the conduits, and to clear the floor of the grotto of all the rubbish with which the fountain had been obstructed. The mayor's policy was to not assume personally any decided position, but to keep things as they were. He was ready to act, but always as a subordinate, upon the prefect's orders and responsibility.

Sometimes the people, fearing that they would not be able to control their feelings, took precautions against themselves. The association of stone-cutters, numbering some four or five hundred, had planned to make a great but peaceful demonstration at the grotto, and to go there in procession singing canticles in honor of their patron feast of the Ascension, which came that year on the 13th of May. But, feeling their hearts indignant and their hands unsteady under these proceedings of the authorities, they distrusted themselves, and gave up the idea. They contented themselves with relinquishing on that day in honor of our Lady of Lourdes the ball they were accustomed to give every year to conclude their festival.

"We intend," said they, "that no disturbance, even though unintentional, and no entertainment not approved by the church, shall occur to offend the eyes of the Holy Virgin who has deigned to visit us."

VII.

The prefect perceived all the time, more and more, that coercion of any ordinary kind was impossible for him on account of this surprising quietness, this peace as irritating as it was wonderful, which maintained itself without exterior force in these great collections of people. There was not even an accident to disturb it. He was therefore obliged either to retrace his steps in the course which he had thus far pursued, and to leave the people quite alone, or to come to open violence and persecution by finding some pretext for the imposition of arbitrary restraints upon them. It was necessary either to recede or to advance.

On the other hand, the variety and suddenness of the cures which had been worked seemed to many good people rather poorly explained by the therapeutic and mineral properties ascribed to the new spring. Doubts were raised as to the strict accuracy of the scientific decision which had been given by M. Latour de Trie. A chemist of the vicinity, M. Thomas Pugo, claimed that this water was in no way extraordinary, and had not of itself any healing properties whatsoever; and in this he was sustained by several other very capable professors in the province. Science was beginning to assert the entire incorrectness of the De Trie analysis; and the rumors to this effect had become so strong that the municipal council of Lourdes took cognizance of them. The mayor could not refuse to gratify the general desire to have a second analysis made of the water from the grotto. He, therefore, without consulting the prefect (which seemed to him useless on account of the conviction entertained by the latter of the accuracy of the results of M. Latour), procured from the municipal council a vote authorizing him to obtain a new and definitive analysis from Prof. Filhol, one of the principal chemists of our day. The council at the same time voted the funds required for the due compensation of the celebrated _savant_.

M. Filhol was a man of authority in modern science, and his decision would evidently not be open to appeal.

What would be the result of his analysis? The prefect was not chemist enough to tell; but we think we cannot be much mistaken in thinking that he must have been somewhat uneasy. The verdict of the eminent professor of chemistry of the faculty of Toulouse might, in fact, disturb the combinations and plans of M. Massy. Haste was becoming imperative, and on this ground especially it was necessary to fall back or press forward.

In the midst of such various passions and complicated calculations, people had not failed to subject Bernadette to some new trials as useless as the preceding ones.

She had been preparing to make her first communion, and made it on Corpus Christi, the 3d of June. This was the very day on which the municipal council of Lourdes requested M. Filhol to analyze the mysterious water. Almighty God, entering into the heart of this child, made also the analysis of a pure fount, and we may well believe that he must have admired and blessed, in this virginal soul, a most pure spring and a most transparent crystal.

Notwithstanding the retirement in which she preferred to hide herself, people continued to visit her. She was always the innocent and simple child whose portrait we have endeavored to present. She charmed all those who conversed with her by her candor and manifest good faith.

One day, a lady, after an interview with her, wished, in a moment of enthusiastic veneration easily conceivable by those who have seen Bernadette, to exchange her chaplet of precious stones for that of the child.

"Keep your own, madam," said she, showing her modest implement of prayer. "You see what mine is, and I had rather not change. It is poor, like myself, and agrees better with my poverty."

An ecclesiastic tried to make her accept some money; she refused. He insisted, only to be met by a refusal so formal that a longer resistance seemed useless. The priest, however, did not yet consider his case as lost.

"Take it," said he; "not for yourself, but for the poor, and then you will have the pleasure of giving an alms."

"Do you, then, make it yourself for my intention, M. l'Abbé, and that will do better than if I should make it myself," answered the child.

Poor Bernadette intended to serve God gratuitously, and to fulfil the mission with which she had been entrusted without leaving her honorable poverty. And yet she and the family were sometimes in want of bread.

At this time the salary of the prefect, Baron Massy, was raised to 25,000 francs. Jacomet also received a gratuity. The Minister of Public Worship, in a letter which was communicated to several functionaries, assured the prefect of his perfect satisfaction, and, while commending all that he had so far done, he urged him to take energetic measures, adding that, at all costs, the grotto and miracles of Lourdes must be put an end to.[44]

On this ground, as well as on all the others, it was necessary either to retreat or to advance.

But what could be done?

VIII.

The plan of the divine work was gradually being developed with its admirable and convincing logic. But at that time no one fully recognized the invisible hand of God directing all the events, manifest as it was, and M. Massy least of all. The midst of the _mêlée_ is not the best position from which to judge the order of battle. The unfortunate prefect, who had set out upon the wrong track, saw in what occurred only a provoking series of unpleasant incidents and an inexplicable fatality. If we remove God from certain questions, we are very likely to find in them something inexplicable.

The progress of events, slow but irresistible, was overthrowing successively all the theses of unbelief, and forcing this miserable human philosophy to beat a retreat and to abandon one by one all its intrenchments.

First, the apparitions had occurred. Free thought had at the outset denied them out-and-out, accusing the seer of being only a tool, and of having lent herself to carry out a deception. This thesis had not stood before the examination of the child, whose veracity was evident.

Unbelief, dislodged from this first position, fell back on the theory of hallucination or catalepsy. "She thinks she sees something; but she does not. It is all a mistake."

Providence meanwhile had brought together from the four winds its thousands and thousands of witnesses to the ecstatic states of the child, and in due time had given a solemn confirmation to the truth of Bernadette's story by producing a miraculous fountain before the astonished eyes of the assembled multitudes.

"There is no fountain," was then the word of unbelief. "It is an infiltration, a pool, a puddle; anything that you please, except a fountain."

But the more they publicly and solemnly denied it, the more did the stream increase, as if it had been a living being, until it acquired prodigious proportions. More than a hundred thousand litres (twenty-two thousand gallons) issued daily from this strange rock.

"It is an accident; it is a freak of chance," stammered the infidels, confounded and recoiling.

Next, events following their inevitable course, the most remarkable cures had immediately attested the miraculous nature of the fountain, and given a new and decisive proof of the divine reality of the all-powerful apparition whose mere gesture had brought forth this fountain of life under a mortal hand.

The first move of the philosophers was to deny the cures, as they had before denied Bernadette's sincerity and the existence of the fountain.

But suddenly these had become so numerous and indubitable that their opponents were obliged to take yet another step in retreat, and admit them.

"Well, granted; there are some cures certainly, but they are natural; the spring has some therapeutic ingredients," cried the unbelievers, holding in their hands some sort of a semblance of chemical analysis. And then instantaneous cures, absolutely unaccountable upon such a hypothesis, were multiplied; and at the same time, in various places, conscientious and skilful chemists declared distinctly that the Massabielle water had not any mineral properties, that it was common water, and that the official analysis of M. Latour de Trie was meant simply to please the prefect.

Driven in this way from all the intrenchments in which, after their successive defeats, they had taken refuge; pursued by the dazzling evidence of the fact; crushed by the weight of their own avowals; and not being able to take back these successive and compulsory avowals, publicly registered in their own newspapers, what remained for the philosophers and free-thinkers to do? Only to surrender humbly to truth. Only to bow the head, bend the knee, and believe; only to do that which the ripe grain does when its cells begin to fill.

"The same change has taken place," says Montaigne, "in the truly wise, as in the stalks of wheat, which rise up and hold up their heads erect and proud as long as they are empty, but, when they are full and distended with the ripe grain, begin to humble themselves, to bend toward the ground. So men, when they have tried and sounded all things, ... renounce their presumption and recognize their natural condition."

Perhaps the philosophers of Lourdes had not an intellect open or strong enough to receive and hold the good grain. Perhaps pride made them inflexible and rebellious to manifest evidence. At any rate, with the happy exception of some who were converted, that change did not come to them which has come to those who are truly wise, and they continued to keep the lofty and proud attitude of the empty stalks.

Not only did their attitude remain thus, but their impiety, after being disgracefully pursued from one quibble, sophism, or falsehood to another, and finally driven against the wall, suddenly unmasked itself and showed its real face. It passed, as we may say, from the domain of discussion and reasoning, which it had been trying to usurp, to that of intolerance and violence, which was its proper home.

Baron Massy, who was perfectly informed as to the state of public feeling, understood with his rare sagacity that, if he took arbitrary measures and resorted to persecution, he would have a considerable moral support in the exasperation of the unbelievers, who were defeated, humiliated, and furious.

He also had been defeated as yet in the contest similar to, if not exactly the same as, theirs, which he had been carrying on against the supernatural. All his efforts had come to nothing.

The supernatural, beginning at the base of a desolate rock and announced only by the voice of a child, had entered upon its course, overthrowing all obstacles, drawing the people with it, and gaining to itself on the way enthusiastic acclamations, prayers, and the cries of gratitude from the popular faith.

Once more, what remained to be done?

One course yet remained: to resist evidence, and to make an attack upon the multitude.

IX.

In the midst of all these turns of fortune, the question of the prefectoral stables had become more and more exciting, and greatly increased the prefect's exasperation. The month of June had come. The season at the watering-places was beginning, and would soon bring to the Pyrenees bathers and tourists from all parts of Europe, and show them the disturbance which the supernatural was making in the department governed by Baron Massy. The instructions of M. Rouland were becoming most urgent, and pointed to summary proceedings. On the 6th of June, M. Fould, the Minister of Finance, stopped at Tarbes on his way to his summer residence, and had a long interview with M. Massy. It was rumored that this conference related to the events at the grotto.

The act of drinking at a spring upon the common land of the town could not be considered as in itself an offence against the law. The first thing to be done by the opponents of superstition was therefore to find a pretext for so regarding it. Arbitrary proceedings have not in France the official right which they enjoy in Russia or Turkey, but need a cover of law.

The able prefect had an idea on this subject as ingenious as it was simple. The site of the Massabielle Cliffs belonging to the town of Lourdes, the mayor, as its administrator, could prohibit any one from visiting them, for or even without any reason whatever, in the same way as any private owner of land forbids at his pleasure the trespass of others upon it. Such a prohibition, publicly announced, would turn each visit to the grotto into a formal crime.

The plan of the baron hinged upon this idea; and, having hit upon it, he decided to act it out and play the despot.

Accordingly, on the following day, the mayor of Lourdes was instructed to issue the following order:

"The mayor of the town of Lourdes, _acting under the instructions addressed to him by the superior authorities_, and under the laws of the 14th and 22d of December, 1789, of the 16th and 24th of August, 1790, of the 19th and 22d of July, 1791, and of the 18th of July, 1837, on Municipal Administration;

"And considering that it is very desirable, _in the interest of religion_, to put an end to the _deplorable_ scenes now presented at the Grotto of Massabielle, at Lourdes, on the left bank of the Gave;

"Also, that _the care of the local public health devolves upon the mayor_, and that a great number, both of citizens and strangers, come to draw water from a spring in the aforesaid grotto, _the water of which is suspected on good grounds to contain mineral ingredients_, making it prudent, before permitting its use, to wait for a scientific analysis to determine the application which may be made of it in medicine; and,

"Also, that the _laws subject the working of mineral springs to a preliminary authorization by government_:

"Issues the following

DECREE.

"1. It is forbidden to draw water at the aforesaid spring.

"2. It is also forbidden to pass through the common land known as the bank of Massabielle.

"3. A barrier will be put up at the entrance to the grotto to prevent access; and

"Posts will be set bearing these words: 'It is forbidden to enter this property.'

"4. All transgressions of this decree will be prosecuted according to law.

"5. The Commissary of Police,

"The Gendarmerie,

"The Gardes Champêtres,

"And the authorities of the commune,

"Are entrusted with the execution of this decree.

"Signed in the mayor's office at Lourdes, on the 8th of June, 1858.

"The Mayor, A. LACADÉ.

"Approved:

"The Prefect, O. MASSY"

X.

It was not without some hesitation that M. Lacadé consented to sign and undertake to execute this decree. His character, somewhat wanting in decision and inclined to compromise, necessarily disinclined him to such a manifest act of hostility against the mysterious power which hovered invisibly over the events which had centred round the grotto at Lourdes. On the other hand, the mayor, as was very proper, enjoyed the exercise of his office, and perhaps had even a little undue fondness for it; and his alternative was either to become the instrument of the prefectoral violence or to resign the honors of the mayoralty. Although perhaps not really trying, the situation was certainly embarrassing for the chief-magistrate of Lourdes. M. Lacadé hoped, however, to conciliate all parties by requiring M. Massy, as a condition of his signature, to insert at the head of the decree, at the very outset, the words, "Acting under the instructions addressed to him by the superior authorities," as above.

"In this way," said the mayor to himself, "I assume no responsibility before the public or in my own eyes. I have not taken the initiative, but remain neutral. I do not command, but only obey. I do not give this order, but receive it. I am not the author of this decree, I only execute it. All the blame rests upon my immediate superior, the prefect."

Coming from a soldier in a regiment drawn up for battle, such reasoning would have been irreproachable.

Having reassured himself on this principle, M. Lacadé took measures for the execution of the prefectoral edict, having it published and put on the walls in all parts of the town. At the same time, under the protection of an armed force and the direction of Jacomet, barriers were put up around the Massabielle rocks, so that no one, except by breaking through or climbing over them, could reach the grotto and the miraculous fountain. Posts with notices, as prescribed by the decree, were also set up here and there at all points of entrance to the common land which surrounded the venerable spot. They prohibited trespass under pain of prosecution. Some _sergents-de-ville_ and _gardes_ kept watch day and night, being relieved hourly, to prepare _procès-verbaux_ against all who should pass these posts to kneel in the vicinity of the grotto.

XI.

There was at Lourdes a judge of the name of Duprat, who was as violently opposed to the supernatural as Jacomet, Massy, Dutour, and others of the constituted authorities. This judge, not being able under the circumstances to sentence the delinquents to anything more than a very small fine, contrived an indirect method to make the fine enormous and truly formidable for the poor people who came to pray before the grotto, and to beg from the Blessed Virgin, one the restoration of health, another the cure of a darling child, a third some spiritual favor or consolation under some great affliction.

M. Duprat then imposed upon each offender a fine of five francs. But, by a conception worthy of his genius, he united under a single sentence all who disregarded the prefectoral prohibition, either by forming a party together, or even, as it would seem, by visiting the grotto in the course of the same day; and he made each liable to the whole amount of the fine. Thus, if one or two hundred persons came in this way to the rocks of Massabielle, each one of them was responsible not only for himself, but also for the others, that is, to the extent of five hundred or a thousand francs. And as the individual and original fine was only five francs, the decision of this magistrate was without appeal, and there was no way to correct it. Judge Duprat was all-powerful, and it was thus that he used his power.

XII.

Such an outrageous interference in the important question which had for some months been pending on the banks of the Gave implied on the part of the authorities not only the denial of the supernatural in this particular case, but also that of its possibility. If this had been admitted for an instant, the measures of the administration would have been entirely different; they would have had for their object the examination, not the suppression, of the controversy.

One thing had been absolutely certain, namely, the cures; whether they had been brought about by the mineral qualities of the water, by the imagination of the patients, or by miraculous intervention, these cures were indubitable, and officially recognized by the infidels themselves, who, not being able to deny them, merely tried to explain them on some natural principle.

The faithful and perfectly trustworthy witnesses to the efficacy of the water in their own cases could be counted by hundreds. There was not a single one who reported that its effects had been prejudicial. Why, then, all these prohibitory measures, these barriers put up, this menacing armed force, these persecutions? And why, if such measures were proper, should not the principle be carried out further? Why not close every place of pilgrimage where a sick person has been restored to health, every church where any one has received an answer to prayer? This question was in every mouth.

"If Bernadette," said one, "without saying anything about visions and apparitions, had simply found a mineral spring possessing powerful healing virtues, what government would ever have forbidden sick people to drink of it? Nero himself would not have gone so far; in all countries, a reward would have been given to the child. But here the sick people kneel and pray, and these liveried subalterns, who crouch before their masters, do not like to have any one prostrate himself before God. This is the real reason. It is prayer which is persecuted."

"But shall we allow superstition?" said the free-thinkers.

"Is not the church able to take care of that and to guard the faithful against error? Let her act in her own province, and do not make an œcumenical council out of the prefecture, and an infallible pope out of a prefect or a minister. What disorder has been caused by these events? None whatever. What evil has occurred to justify your precautionary measures? Absolutely none. The mysterious fountain has only done good. Let the believing people go and drink of it, if they please. Leave them their liberty to believe, to pray, to be healed; the liberty to turn to God and to ask from heaven consolation in their grief. You who demand free thought, let prayer also be free."

But neither the anti-christian philosophy nor the pious prefect of Hautes Pyrenees would consent to notice this unanimous protest, and the severe measures were continued.

The intolerance of which the enemies of Christianity so unjustly accuse the Catholic Church is their own ruling passion. They are essentially tyrants and persecutors.

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTE:

[44] This letter of M. Rouland, the text of which, in spite of all our efforts, we have not been able to procure, was communicated to several persons, and all the correspondence before us mentions it, giving it in the same terms which we have just used.

THE SHAMROCK GONE WEST.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "ROMANCE OF THE CHARTER OAK."

About a generation ago, there might have been seen moving across the Wabash Valley, Indiana, one of those heavy-built wagons, with broad canvas tops, known in the West as prairie schooners. The wheels, which had not been greased since they left New Hampshire, were creaking dolefully, and the youth who urged on the jaded team declared that the sound reminded him of the frogs in his father's mill-pond. Attached to the rear of the wagon was a coop, containing a rooster and half a dozen hens, evidently suffering from their long confinement; while underneath the coop, swinging to and fro, as if keeping time to the music of the wheels, was a bucket.

Nat Putnam held the reins with a tight grip, his eyes were fixed straight in front of him, and his steeple crowned hat, which looked as if it might have been a legacy from one of his Puritan forefathers, was placed as far on the back of his head as possible, so as not to obstruct the view. He was perhaps twenty-one or two years of age; but it would have been rash to gauge his wisdom by the date of his birth. If ever there was a Yankee hard to outwit, it was our friend, and his mother had often declared that her boy could see through a stone wall. The very shape of his nose, which was not unlike an eagle's beak, warned you to be on your guard when you were making a trade with him; while his face, spotted all over with freckles, could readily assume every expression from highest glee to deepest melancholy; thus enabling him to fill whatever post in life might be most congenial, were it circus clown or ruling elder.

"Mr. Putnam, when are we going to halt?" inquired a female voice, which seemed to come from the interior of the wagon. Before the youth answered, the speaker had placed herself at his side and was gazing at him with a woeful look. Poor thing! well might she ask the question. Ever since he had picked her up in the State of New York, he had kept travelling on and on, until Mary O'Brien thought he was never going to stop. Her father, who had been with them the first week of the journey, had died, and Nat had only tarried long enough to bury the old man, and let the daughter say a few prayers over his grave.

"Don't find fault," he replied. "The spirit moves me to keep pushing West; the further I go, the better I feel. This everlasting woods must come to an end by-and-by, and when we reach the open country you'll not grumble."

"But I'm quite worn out," pursued Mary; "and my shamrock is tired too. If you'd only rest and make a home, and let me plant it! The jolting of the wagon and the want of sunlight is killing it. Poor shamrock!" Here she left the seat, but presently returned, carrying a box filled with earth, in which was a little three-leafed clover.

"See," she exclaimed, "how different it looks from a month ago. 'Tis drooping fast." As she spoke she gave the plant a kiss. Her companion glanced at her a moment, then with a smile of pity, "How old are you?" he asked.

"Eighteen."

"Humph! I guess you're out of your reckoning. If you were that old, you'd chuck that piece of grass away and take to something serious. There's my Bible, why don't you read a chapter now and then? 'Twould instruct you, and keep me from getting rusty--a thing I'd deeply regret, for I may take to exhorting if farming don't pay."

"Throw my shamrock out of the wagon! Why, Mr. Putnam, 'twas father's, and he brought it all the way from Tipperary. I'm going to keep it--as long as I live, I am. It may wither, but I'll never throw it away."

"Well, well, as you like. But I repeat--why can't you read the Bible once in a while, instead of wasting your time playing with a lot of dried peas? Do they come from Tipperary, too?"

"Oh! these are my beads," she replied, taking her Rosary from her pocket; "and it's praying I am, when you see me slipping these little round things through my fingers."

"Praying! Then you must have prayed a heap. Are you in earnest?"

"I am."

"Well, can't your spirit be moved without using them peas, or beads as you call them? It seems to me they must bother you."

"I use 'em, sir, to keep count, or I mightn't say all the Hail Marys and Our Fathers." Here Nat started, and lifting his sandy eyebrows, "Aha!" he exclaimed. "So! Indeed! Then 'twas keeping a tally of your prayers? Well, now, there's something in that. I really didn't believe you were so 'cute. The devil couldn't say that you hadn't been square on your devotions when you'd kept a strict tally."

The girl smiled, then, bowing her head, seemed to be whispering something to the shamrock.

"Different from other gals!" thought Putnam, as he glanced at the pale face and long, raven hair, which without braid or ribbon flowed down until it rested on the bottom of the wagon. "Yes, different from other gals! Can't quite make her out. She ain't a child, yet seems like one. Keeping a tally of her prayers is the first sign of her being 'cute. But that's a beginning anyhow. I'll educate her little by little. Oh! if she'd only take to the Bible." Here he gave the reins a jerk, then asked Mary to read him a chapter from the Book of Proverbs.

"I can't read," she frankly replied.

"Can't read! Can't read! That I won't believe. Why, there's Jemima Hopkins, in Conway, where I come from, that not only reads, but has started on a lecturing tour; and she ain't--let me see; she was born the year of the comet--no she ain't a day over fourteen."

"Well, I'm not Jemima Hopkins."

"No, that you ain't; Jemima is a prodigy."

"And I'm a goose."

"But don't own it," said the youth. "Talk as little as possible, and then the world may not find it out. Why, I know a chap in Conway that passes for 'larned,' and all 'cause he has the toothache every time he's asked to make a speech. You see, he puts on a wise look, holds his tongue, and has so humbugged the folks that they call him Uncle Solomon."

"Well, I don't want to be taken for what I'm not," rejoined Mary, a tear trickling down her cheek.

"What ails you now?" exclaimed Nat. "Oh! how different you are from Jemima Hopkins!" The girl made no response, but sighed, "Father, father."

"The old man's underground," pursued the youth, in as soft a voice as he could assume. "Crying won't bring him back. Dry your eyes, and vow to smash to atoms every whiskey-bottle that ever comes within your reach. I suspect his constitution was undermined by habits of intemperance.

"Father didn't drink in Ireland," sobbed the girl. "'Twas at that horrid grog-shop in New York he got the habit."

"Pure fountain water," murmured Nat, rolling his eyes toward the heavens, "what a blessed thing thou art! Those who give thee up for alcohol make a poor swap." Then suddenly fixing his gaze on the young woman, "Mary," said he, "I never but once tasted liquor. 'Twas at a cattle show year afore last; and do you know what happened? I paid two hundred and fifty dollars for a horse that was foundered and kicked so bad I couldn't drive him home. Now that's something I'd never have done if my head had been clear; but 'twas a lesson--a good lesson, and I told Jemima Hopkins (who got wind of it--women find out everything) to make her first lecture on temperance."

The young woman, who seemed not to have been listening to this episode in his history, was now moaning piteously for her father, nor did she cease until her companion in an agitated tone bade her keep quiet. "Your lamentations," he said, "are horrible to listen to."

"Don't you love your father?" spoke Mary, gazing at him through her tears. "Wouldn't you cry if he were dead?"

"Cry if he were dead!" repeated the youth with a shudder. "Oh! why did you ask me that question? You're a strange being. Who gave you power to look into my heart? Do you know that I quarrelled with the old man, and left without saying good-by, and every mile I've travelled his last look has haunted me? 'I am near the grave,' he said, 'don't abandon me. Attend the mill, 'twill soon belong to you.' But I laughed in his face. 'The mill,' said I, 'is out of repair, and only fit to shelter rats and swallows; while the soil won't yield more than fourteen bushels of corn to the acre.' And then I turned my back on him."

"When he's dead, you'll be sorry for that," said the girl. "Write home and ask his forgiveness. Do, before it's too late."

"Home!" murmured the youth as he drove along. "Home!" Oh! what memories were awakened at the sound of that word which spoke in a thousand magic whispers! He was again a little boy seated on his father's knee, in the old house at the foot of Mount Kearsarge, listening to stories of the Revolution. The wind was howling--the snow coming in through the key-hole and under the door--a fearful night to be out. But what did he care about the tempest? He was safe on his father's knee.

"Mary," said Putnam, just as they reached the foot of a hill, "I'll take your advice, and write home the first chance I get. And I'll tell the old man that I'm sorry for the hard words I used. I'll ask him, too, to follow me-for I'm going to halt by-and-by; and I'll make him as comfortable as if he were in New Hampshire."

"Do," said the young woman; "'twill bring God's blessing on you."

Here he placed the reins in her hands, then, telling her that he was going to reconnoitre and find which was the best way to get over the hill, he left the wagon with a lighter heart than he had known in many a day.

A little climbing brought him to a spot where the ground was again level, but where the timber was thicker and the wagon would have hard work to get along; and he was wondering if the everlasting forest was never coming to an end, when he was startled by a rustling noise, and, looking round, saw a wild turkey dart off her nest, while at the same instant ever so many young ones, which appeared as if only just hatched, began scattering in every direction. "I'll catch this fellow," said Nat, running after the nearest bird, "and make him a present to Mary." But, young as it was, the little thing managed to reach a clump of hazel-bushes about thirty yards distant, into which, its pursuer dashed only a step behind, and in his excitement Nat kept straight on, nor did he stop until he found himself clear of the thicket. But there he came to a sudden halt, and for almost a minute stood as if rooted to the earth. Was the scene which had burst upon him a vision of paradise? The forest had ended, the hill sloped gently to the west, and before him like a boundless sea, fired by the rays of the setting sun, lay the prairie of Illinois. Then he shouted for Mary, who with impatient step hastened up the hill, wondering what was the matter, and who arrived just as he was beginning to sing _Old Hundred_. The glorious view brought tears of joy to her eyes, for she felt sure Nat had at length found a spot where he would be willing to settle down and make a home, and, clasping her hands, she likewise offered up a prayer of thanksgiving.

"Isn't this ahead of anything you ever dreamed of?" exclaimed the youth, when he had finished the hymn. "I've heerd Parson Job at camp-meeting trying to picture heaven; but, although I'd not have dared say it aloud, yet really I never felt as if I'd care a straw about such a place as he described--fellows with wings and harps skipping around, and singing hallelujahs for all eternity without ever getting out of breath. But here is a country I can imagine like the home of the blest."

"Heaven is more beautiful than this," rejoined his companion. "Yet 'tis a glorious country. Oh! settle here, do, and give my shamrock rest."

"As you say," continued Nat, patting her cheek, and at the same time piercing her through with his sharp gray eyes. "You're my 'Blessing.' I owe you more than I ever can pay. When you made me promise to write home and ask the old man's forgiveness, a load heavier than a millstone was taken off my heart. You ain't as larned as Jemima Hopkins, and you ain't 'cute--though keeping a tally of your prayers is something, and shows what you may become by proper education--but, ignorant as you are, there's still a great deal in you." Here he left her, and went back for the wagon, which, after not a little difficulty, he managed to bring across the hill; then, having chosen a spot near a spring of water, he unhitched the horses, while Mary let out the fowls, who clapped their wings as if they were mad; nor did the rooster stop crowing until the hens--anxious to make their nests--gathered round him, and forced him to hold his tongue and be serious.

As it was sunset, Putnam could do little more than reconnoitre the vicinity of the camping-ground, so, shouldering his rifle, he walked off, leaving the girl to prepare the evening meal.

But Mary had scarcely lit the fire when he came running back, and pointed out to her a figure on horseback, advancing along the prairie. "It may be an Indian," said he. "If he's peaceful, I'll read him a chapter in the Bible; if he's ugly, I'll shoot."

In about a quarter of an hour the stranger had approached near enough for them to discover that he was a person of their own race, with long, white hair, and a cross hanging at his side; so, throwing down the gun, Nat shouted welcome. The traveller, although astonished to hear a human voice, did not draw rein, but kept on up the hill, and in another moment the youth had grasped his hand and was giving it a hearty shake.

"So soon!" exclaimed the Jesuit missionary--for such was the character of the new-comer. "Already! Oh! you Americans are a great people. In a few years you will be across the continent."

"Well, I've fetched up here," said Putnam, grinning. "Not that the spirit didn't move me to push further West; but yonder gal--my 'Blessing,' as I call her--urged me to stop."

Here the priest glanced at Mary, then remarked:

"Your sister, I suppose, or wife?"

"I haven't any sister," replied the youth, "and ain't 'spliced' yet. She's a gal I picked up as I was coming through York State. Her father was with her, and I took him along too; but he died in a few days, and I buried him on the roadside, and as she had no home I told her she'd better stick to me. She's awful green, but for all that she has her good points, and has made me happier than I've been in a long time."

With this Nat beckoned to Mary, who, as soon as she discovered in whose presence she was standing, fell on her knees, while the missionary gave her his blessing.

That evening the youth, true to his promise, wrote an affectionate letter to his father, which the Jesuit assured him he would deliver with his own hand. "And I will bring you an answer," said the latter, "for I shall pass this way on my return to the mission, which I hope to reach before winter sets in."

The next morning, when Putnam awoke, he found that the priest had already departed.

"That," said the youth, "is a point in his favor. The early bird catches the worms. So, Mary, he was one of your preachers? First I ever saw."

"I hope you liked him," rejoined the girl.

"Well, his coming so handy to take my letter did bend me toward him; yet I don't think I ever could sit still under his preaching."

"And why not?"

"'Cause he's a papist. I've heerd enough about 'em."

To this the young woman made no response, but gazed sorrowfully at her companion a moment, then turned her eyes toward the West. The scene was enchanting. The breeze, which had risen with the dawn, was coming joyously over the prairie, brushing aside the mist, gathering up the perfume of ten thousand flowers, and touched Mary's lips like a breath from the Garden of Eden. And as it played with her raven hair, and brought the roses to her cheeks, Nat could not help thinking she was as fair as any lass he had ever met in New Hampshire.

"Yet she don't seem to know it," he said. "She's very green about her beauty." A herd of deer were feeding only a short distance away--in every direction the grouse dotted the plain--while circling round and round, in bold relief against the azure sky, was an eagle.

The whole of this day and the next, Putnam kept hard at work felling trees to build a log-house, while the girl remained near the wagon, plying her needle, watching her shamrock, which already showed signs of renewed life, and gathering the eggs, which the hens insisted on laying every hour, so as to make up for lost time.

At length, when he had cut down trees enough, he bade Mary follow him out on the plain, having first filled her apron with stakes--for what purpose she could not imagine.

"What on earth are you doing?" she exclaimed, after having walked by his side almost an hour.

"Can't you guess?" he said, halting abruptly. "Are you so green as all that?"

"Upon my word," replied the girl, "your conduct is distressing; yes, it frightens me to see you turning and twisting in every direction, driving these pieces of wood into the ground, and counting on your fingers. Oh! what'll become of me if you've gone mad?"

"Mad! Ha! Jemima Hopkins wouldn't have said that. Jemima--"

"Was born the year of the comet," interrupted his companion, laughing, "and I'm only a goose."

"Well, don't own it if you are; I'll educate you. And now here goes the first lesson." With this he lifted his forefinger, then shutting one eye, "You must know we won't be long in such a beautiful spot without company. My wagon-tracks will lead many to Illinois who wouldn't have stirred from the shadow of Mount Kearsarge if I hadn't set the example. Me-thinks even now I hear 'em cracking their whips and bidding good-by to the old folks in Conway. They'll come, too, from other parts of New Hampshire; ay, by the score and hundred they'll come. Now, such being the case, why not have a town laid out by the time they arrive? And right here where we stand shall be our mansion: 'cause, you perceive, it's a corner-lot. While yonder, on t'other corner--so as to be handy in case of rain--I'll get 'em to build the meeting-house; and oh! won't I be proud when it's finished! And what a fine rooster I'll put on the steeple!"

"No, put a cross," said the young woman, "or I'll not go inside of it."

"What! a cross, emblem of popery, on this virgin soil, where there's never been one seen, unless 'twas that which your preacher carried yesterday? No, indeed! I've heerd enough about popery."

"I'll pray God to enlighten you," said the girl, at the same time heaving a sigh.

"Well, the more light I get, the less I'll want a popish emblem on top of the meeting-house." Here Nat struck his forehead, then gazing at Mary with an expression of anger, "Have you come so far with me," he said, "to quarrel at last? Bah! you are a goose." With this he turned on his heel and walked off, muttering to himself and evidently very much excited.

Poor Mary did not open her lips again that day, but helped build the log-house with the greatest good-will. Nor did Putnam address her a single word. In fact, it was not until a week had gone by and the dwelling was almost finished that he so far recovered from his ill humor as to speak to her in a friendly way.

"Mary," said he, looking proudly up at the mud-plastered chimney, "this is a good beginning. The first house is always the hardest to erect; and you've worked like a beaver. Tell me, now, are you still of the same mind about the cross? Will you stay away from meeting unless I give up my point?"

"I will," replied the girl firmly. "I want a Catholic Church, or none at all."

"Is my 'Blessing' in earnest?"

"Yes, and praying hard that God may open your eyes to the truth."

"Open my eyes! Well, you're the first mortal ever insinuated that Nat Putnam wasn't wide-awake. But enough; there's a split between us nothing can mend. Alas!" Here he walked off to the hill muttering, "What a pity! what a pity! Ignorant as she is, there's yet something about her which goes to my heart. I love Mary O'Brien. I might even ask her to become my wife, if she hadn't such foolish notions about religion. But not content with making the sign of the cross afore every meal, she actually wants one put on top of the meeting-house. What an idea! A cross! A thing never seen on this virgin soil till that old preacher came along."

For more than an hour the youth wandered about the hillside, lamenting Mary's obstinacy and superstition, until at length he heard her blowing the horn for dinner.

"Let her blow," he said, "I'm in no humor to eat anything. I'll just lay down and take a nap." With this he threw himself on the ground, and was about settling his head on a comfortable spot, which seemed as if intended by nature for a pillow, when he gave a start and rose to his feet. "As I live," he cried, "this is a grave! And if there isn't a cross at one end of it!--and some thing carved upon the wood--what can it be?" Here he stooped, and, after brushing away a little moss which partly covered the knife-cuts, spelt out the words,

"May his soul rest in peace!"

"Well, now, this does beat all," he continued. "Who'd 'ave believed a cross had got to this place ahead of me? And there's something about the epitaph which makes me feel solemn. I wonder how long since these words were cut. Perhaps for years and years only the deer and eagles have gazed upon them. Perhaps since the day the corpse was buried, no lips but mine have spoken over this lonely grave, 'May his soul rest in peace!'"

For a few minutes the youth lingered by the mound, wrestling with himself--for he was conscious that a change was coming over him--then wended his way back to the cabin, resolved to be frank with Mary, and confess that a cross had got here before Nat Putnam.

He had arrived within a couple of paces of the door, which was half-open, when, hearing her speaking, he stopped. "She is praying," he said. "What a fine voice she has! Better than Jemima's." Then, softly advancing, he discovered her kneeling on the floor, her hands clasped, and her cheek wet with tears. In an earnest tone she was asking God to pardon her father his many sins of intemperance; then with equal fervor, she began to pray for the speedy return of the missionary, bringing Putnam a blessing and forgiveness from his aged parent.

At these words the youth trembled with emotion, and bursting into the room, "Mary, Mary," he cried, "I take back all I said. I laughed when you made the sign of the cross, and I called you ignorant. But you're more larned than Nat Putnam. Your prayer, a moment ago, stirred me up as I never was stirred at camp-meeting. It made me feel as when through the dark clouds I see blue sky peeping out. Praying for the dead! O God! if your preacher comes back and tells me father is dead, I can do one act of reparation--pray for his soul. And but for you, I'd not have written home; but for you, black remorse would have gone on eating deeper and deeper into my soul--and remorse is hell."

"Mr. Putnam," said the young woman, who, startled by his wild look, had risen to her feet, "my prayers have been heard."

"Yes, they have. I am a Catholic, and vow that our first meeting-house shall have a cross upon it. O my 'Blessing!' never can I be grateful enough to the Almighty for throwing you in my path!"

"It seemed an accident," pursued the girl, "yet it may indeed have been God's work. If it has proved for the good of your soul, it, perhaps, has saved mine. I cannot tell you how I was tempted when I lived in the city of New York. Why, one night, when I was out looking for father, somebody whispered in my ear that I might live in splendor if I chose. The tenement-house where we lodged seemed to hold as many people as there are in the whole of Tipperary. Father and I, with a score of others, slept in a damp room underground. Oh! when I think of those days, it is like a horrid dream."

"Well, why don't them people follow my tracks? There's land enough here, dear knows. Yes, let 'em all come; only they must leave whiskey behind. I want this to be a temperance settlement." Then, after a pause, "But, Mary, I wonder if amongst them I'd find another like you, my 'Blessing'?" With this, he rose, and was about to throw his arms round her neck, when he checked himself; then, after fumbling a moment in his pocket, went out to where her shamrock was blooming, and, close by it, he put in the ground a pumpkin-seed. Happy were the June days which followed. With what a light heart did Mary watch the youth at work!

"He's a strange being," she would say; "different from any I ever met in the Old Country. But, for all that, he is good; and when Father De Smet returns I'll have him baptized, and then there'll be no firmer Catholic than Nat Putnam."

And the young man--how shall we describe his feelings as, hour after hour, he follows the plough?

"I'm making a home," he would say, "for my 'Blessing.' How she leans upon me! If I were to die, what would become of her? She don't know enough to give lectures, like Miss Hopkins. Oh! if I could only mix her and Jemima together. Yet she's pretty handy at the needle, and since she's overhauled my things I ain't lost a button. And yet my suspenders, darn 'em, do give awful jerks once in a while."

One morning, while he was thus silently praising Mary's skill in the art of sewing, he stopped, gave a groan, then, letting go the handle of the plough, "Wrong!" he exclaimed. "There goes one! Rip! whew!" and, as he spoke, he grabbed a button out of the furrow. For more than a minute the youth examined it thoughtfully, turned it over and over, put it to his eye; then, with a grin, "No," he said, "Mary didn't sew this on; the thread sticking to it ain't the kind she uses. Ah! Jemima Hopkins! Jemima Hopkins! 'tis some of your work. Yes, I remember; 'twas just afore you started off lecturing, and when your head was full of big words. O Jemima Hopkins!"

And so the summer passed away. The corn came up magnificently, and when it was in all its glory, with the west wind shaking the tassels, Putnam would call Mary out to admire it. "It looks," he would say, "like a regiment of militia on parade." The pumpkin-seed which he had planted was now well above ground, and creeping slowly but steadily round and round the shamrock. Once the girl was tempted to pull the vine up, but, on reflection, it occurred to her that she had better not. And she was right; for under its broad leaves her little plant found shelter from the scorching rays of the sun; and when the thunder-storms burst over the prairie, the shamrock would have been crushed by the great rain-drops, which fell thicker and faster than ever she had known them fall in Ireland, but for the same kindly protector.

One evening, toward the middle of September, Nat came home from work at an earlier hour than usual. He appeared troubled; there was evidently something on his mind; and, when the girl asked what was the matter, he scratched his head, devoured her a moment with his sharp, gray eyes, then, turning on his heel, walked off to a log near the door. There he seated himself, and, after musing awhile, beckoned her to approach.

The young woman obeyed, not, however, without some misgiving. "Mr. Putnam," she thought, "has got tired of living so long in one place, and is anxious to move further west. Alas!"

In another moment she was seated near him and gazing anxiously in his face. He returned her look only for an instant, then coughed, and, rolling up his eyes, "'Tis a solemn thing to do," he murmured. "But I can't help it, and wouldn't if I could. I've felt it coming over me ever since the day she persuaded me to write home to father. Jemima Hopkins would grab at me like a sunfish at a worm in April if I gave her a chance; but this girl is so innocent-like that really I don't know how to begin. And then her very dependence on me, the solitude of this spot, makes her kind of sacred, and I dread lest even words of purest love might give her offence."

"Well, Mr. Putnam," said Mary, interrupting his soliloquy, "you're not going to move away? Don't make my shamrock travel any further. Speak! Oh! I feel so anxious."

At these words, Nat cleared his throat, cracked his knuckles, then, in a voice singularly agitated for one of his temperament, "Mary," he began, "I am never going to move from this spot. You are fond of it, and that's enough." At this unexpected announcement the girl clapped her hands. "But," he went on, "I am not contented; there is yet something wanting to make me perfectly happy."

"And, pray, what is it, sir? I know I am very green, but tell me if the fault be mine; tell me, and I promise to do all I can to please you."

"Well," he pursued, raising his hand and pointing at the pumpkin-vine which circled round the shamrock, "do you see yonder plant almost hiding, and at the same time protecting, the smaller one?"

"I do."

"Well, now, Mary, suppose you be the shamrock, and let me be the vine?"

As he spoke, he gazed earnestly at her. A faint blush crimsoned the girl's cheek. She seemed a little startled; and when she replied, "Yes, I will be your shamrock!" it was in a voice low and scarce above a whisper.

"Well done!" cried Nat, tossing his hat in the air. "Well done! As soon as the priest comes, we'll have the knot tied."

That very evening, the missionary arrived, bringing Putnam news from home, which, although sad indeed, was yet not unmingled with consolation. His father was dead, but the last words he had spoken were words of forgiveness to the youth who had abandoned him in his old age. The Jesuit remained at the log-house almost a fortnight, instructing the convert in the faith, and, before he departed, the latter had the happiness of serving a Mass offered for the repose of his father's soul.

"This never would have happened but for you, my 'Blessing,'" said Nat, pressing Mary's hand. "Those who will follow me to this enchanting spot may laugh at my becoming a Catholic, but 'twill be because they are ignorant. Your religion has in it something sublime; it reaches across the grave, and, by our prayers, gives us a hold upon those who have gone before us. Father! father!" Here his voice failed, and for a minute or two he wept. At length, mastering his grief, he turned to the priest and signified that he was ready for the marriage ceremony to begin. It was short; but while it lasted, a song-sparrow (the first the youth had heard since he arrived in Illinois) alighted upon the window-sill and piped a joyous carol. Often had he heard the bird at his home near the foot of Mount Kearsarge, and now its sweet notes fell on his ear like the voice of a spirit come all the way from the Saco Valley to wish him happiness on his wedding-day.

That evening, he took his wife and the priest to visit the mound on the hillside, and around it they knelt and offered a prayer for the unknown whose dust lay beneath.

As they sauntered back to the cabin, Putnam expressed a lively hope that all his friends in New Hampshire would emigrate to the West. "And when Jemima arrives," he said, closing one eye and looking at his wife with the other, "you'll see something worth seeing; for she's awful smart, and when we get arguing together it's diamond cut diamond. But I'll convert her; oh! I will."

"No doubt," rejoined Mrs. Putnam, "the discussion will be animated and interesting, for you have a clear head and a ready tongue, while Miss Hopkins was born the year of the comet; but believe me, husband dear, it is praying, not arguing, brings into the fold those who are out of it."

"That must be so," he continued, "for you never argued with me, and yet now I'm a Catholic. O happy day when Nat Putnam met Mary O'Brien! And while I will strive by every honest means to improve my worldly condition, I will remain true to the faith. Illinois is a wilderness now, but they're coming, Mary, they're coming; and, before your raven hair turns gray, a city will stand on this prairie; and opposite our corner-lot shall be a church with a cross upon it--a Catholic church. And 'twill be thanks to you, my 'Blessing;' yes, thanks to the shamrock gone West."

SAYINGS OF THE FATHERS OF THE DESERT.

An aged monk said to a brother who was tempted by evil spirits: When the evil spirits begin to talk to thee in thy heart, do not reply to them; but arise, pray, and do penance, saying: Son of God, have mercy on me. But the brother said to him: Behold, O father, I do meditate, and there is no compunction in my heart, because I do not understand the meaning of my words. And he replied: Yet do thou meditate; for I have heard that Abbot Pastor and other fathers have spoken this proverb: The charmer knows not the meaning of the words which he says, but the serpent hears, and knows the virtue of the charm, and is humbled and subjected to the enchanter. So also with us, even though we be ignorant of the meaning of what we say, yet the evil spirits, hearing, tremble and depart.

* * * * *

Abbot Pastor said: The beginning of evils is to distract the mind.

* * * * *

Abbot Elias said: I fear three things. One, when my soul shall depart from the body; the second, when I shall come before God; the third, when sentence shall be pronounced upon me.

* * * * *

Archbishop Theophilus, of holy memory, when he was about to die, said: Blessed art thou, Abbot Arsenius, because thou hast ever had this hour before thy eyes.

VESPERS.

[The term Vespers is derived from Vesper, the star that appears toward sunset, the time appointed by ancient usage for the recital of the Evening Song.--_Hierugia._]

Evening quiet overspreads the sky: Vesper rises clear and liquidly. Star of prayer! whose ray Brings spirit-whispers, Brings the saintly hour Of holy vespers.

Not a bell, perchance, of prayerful cry, Yet the pious foot comes mindfully! O'er the flinty street, Or daisied meadow, Glides, from near or far, The Christian shadow!

Evening quiet overspreads the soul: Restful rites the restless pulse control. Now the tuneful waves Of organ tremble; Now the tuneful prayers God's choir resemble!

Words of ancient plaint, flung long ago From a kingly harp's melodious throe; Words to her, who oped Of Christ the vision, Gabriel words--still serve Their music-mission!

Now the censer's aromatic breath Wreathes th' abode of One who smiles on death! Now the portals ope-- Ah! dread appearing! Christian, veil thy glance, A God revering!

--Changed to flesh and blood my daily food: Changed the bread and wine to flesh and blood! Yet, my God, forgive If reason falter: Faith, alone, sustains me At thine altar!

RICHARD STORRS WILLIS.

THE LEGEND OF SANTA RESTITUTA.

Ischia is one of the gems of the Bay of Naples, and fortunately one of the least known and least visited of the tourist-haunted island group.

The Monte Epomeo rises in its midst, a mass of tufa rock, perforated here and there by _fumarole_, that is, openings through which volcanic exhalations are constantly sending forth their thin blue threads of hazy smoke to mingle with the blue and hazy atmosphere that veils the whole island in a fairy and gossamer robe. Two or three villages are built upon the low girdle of sand that lies at the foot of the mountain; on one side of the island are ledges of rock where the vine grows, on the other is a projection, or rather a separate rock, on which is built a state-prison. Only one road passes through Ischia, and no wheels ever leave their marks there, save when a royal visitor brings a modern carriage with him. The inhabitants walk barefoot, and the strangers ride donkeys, or are carried in open sedan-chairs, called "portantine." The women lounge about at their cottage-doors, spindle in hand, their heads curiously bound up in silken handkerchiefs, and their ears weighed down by huge ear-rings. There is a wonderful and unspeakable charm hanging over the place; the beauties that elsewhere in Italy hardly surprise you, seem to hold you spell-bound here. The sea is now blue, now green, now purple, always of an intense color, and seemingly an inverted firmament, where the white fishing-smack sails stand for clouds, and the little silver-crested wavelets for stars. The air is very pure, yet warm and balmy, and, when the storm visits the island, even the lightning must make itself more softly beautiful than elsewhere, for it is often seen in rose and violet colored flashes, making the heavens like to a vault of opal. The myrtle grows on the mountain-side, and the oleander blooms lower down, the vines climb from the water's edge to the roofs of the few rustic hotels the island boasts, and among all these beauties are hidden springs of medicinal water and hot sea-sands, all of them much used by Italians chiefly in the shape of baths. The sand-bath is a hole within four shanty-like plank walls, and the patient has himself buried in it up to his neck for the time prescribed.

Of course, much is said to strangers concerning the beauty of the sunrise from the top of Epomeo. But, as usual, when you go to see the sun, you find him behind sulky curtains of gray-white clouds that roll like another sea between the blue unseen Mediterranean and the bright purple heaven above. Still, this, too, is beautiful, though coldly so, and very unlike the lovely western sunrise over the Atlantic. But the glory of Italy is in her sunsets, and toward evening sea and mountain, tufa rock and yellow sand, put on a marvellous robe, a veritable "coat of divers colors," and life seems to breathe and sigh in things that before seemed lifeless.

Ischia, like all Italian localities, has its patron saint; they call her _Santa Restituta_.

When persecution was raging in Egypt, in the third century, says the simple legend, the body of a young maiden, with a millstone tied round her neck, floated across the sea and rested in a creek on the south side of the island. The creek is called after the martyr to this day, and above it are rocks whose black mass literally overhangs and roofs in part of the bay. Just where her body rested, in a sandy, barren place, lilies grew up and continued to bloom; they are there now, and are very peculiar as well as very lovely, a sort of cross between the lily and the iris, with delicate pointed petals, five in number, and a tall smooth stem with very little verdure. Not only do these flowers grow nowhere else in the island or out of it, but they will not even grow in a land of their own sandy soil if transplanted with a quantity of it elsewhere. The millstone that was round the saint's neck is said to be embedded in a wall in the neighborhood of her church: there _is_ such a stone, whether the same or not no one can tell. Later on, a church was erected over the remains of the martyr, and she was chosen patroness of the island. A very curious Byzantine figure, gilt all over and nearly life-size, was made in wood and placed over the altar. In one hand, she was pictured as holding a book of the Gospels, and, in the other, a full-rigged vessel. When the south of Italy was invested by Saracen hordes, Ischia did not escape pillage, and of course, judging the most precious things to be in the church, as they always were in Catholic times, the marauders rushed to Santa Restituta's shrine, and attempted to carry off the golden statue, as they believed it to be. The statue, naturally, was a movable one, and used to be carried in procession on certain stated occasions. But now it remained rooted to the spot, and no effort of the stalwart infidels could move it a hair's-breadth from its pedestal. In rage and disappointment, one of them struck at it savagely with his scimetar, and a mark upon its knee still attests this outrage. The sacrilege was promptly punished, for the men themselves now found they were unable to move, and remained invisibly chained at the foot of the miraculous image. If they were released, the legend does not say; let us hope that they were freed by faith, and that conversion followed this strange sign. The statue remained immovable ever since, and another image was made to be carried in procession, with the addition of the miraculously riveted Saracens, in a small painted group on the same stand as the figure itself. Whether the legend be absolutely true or only partly so, whether fact and figure be mixed together, and things spiritual typified under tangible forms, it is not for us to decide, but the simple faith of the happy islanders is certainly to be admired, and even to be envied. They have yearly rejoicings, fireworks, processions, songs, and services, and a military parade of what national guards they can muster, to celebrate their saint's anniversary; they are proud of her, and point out her statue and tell her history to strangers with the same enthusiasm with which soldiers speak of a favorite general.

And, if my surmise be true, they have had her celebrated in art by no less a painter than Paul de la Roche, whose "Martyre" is well known all over Europe as one of the chastest, truest, and most reverent as well as most beautiful representations of martyrdom. He has painted a fair maiden in a white robe, and her hands tied with a cruel rope in front. The long, golden hair is gently moved, like a strange and new sea-weed, by the rippling water that flows over it; the cord cuts into the flesh of the white, delicate hand, and the water seems reverently eager to pour its coolness into the wounds and to stay the cruel fever in them; the face is that of an angel that is looking on the Father's countenance in highest heaven; a coronal of light rests, like a sun-touched cloud, just above her head, and in the dark background a large mass of overhanging rock, just like the rocks of Ischia, frown down upon the sea-green bay, and shadows of muffled, lurking figures are seen watching the floating wonder from above.

If the painter had not Santa Restituta in his mind, the coincidence, at least, is curious. Yet it is true that so many blessed saints died this death that he may have meant to portray a typical rather than an individual representation in this picture, which is one of his masterpieces.

There is another floating figure, with golden hair and folded hands, which is more familiar to most people than this one, and, though the comparison is strange, I cannot help introducing it here. I mean the figure of Tennyson's _Elaine_, whom Gustave Dore has made his own in his unapproachable illustration of the _Idyls of the King_, but whose history and especially whose death has been the source of many a painter's inspiration. I hardly know one more touching object in all modern poetry, save that more solemn and more dignified one that closes the idyl of _Guinevere_, and whose calm sublimity almost touches the divine. But though the analogy of the "Lily Maid of Astolat" borne down the river to the oriel-windowed palace of Arthur's Queen to that other lily maid, the virgin-martyr of Egypt, be brought to mind by the likeness in both cases of the floating waters and the unbound hair; yet here the analogy ends, for we see that as far as heaven is from earth, so far are these two beautiful figures removed one from the other. Both died for love, both died pure; but the love of the one was such as, once quenched in death, would never live again, for she would be "even as the angels;" while the love of the other not only did death not quench, but would make tenfold more ardent, as she would "follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth," and sing "the new canticle" no man could sing but those "who were purchased from the earth."

Tennyson's _Elaine_ is a figure of earth in earth's most sinless form and most innocent meaning, yet still earthly, still imperfect, still embodying the idea of man's natural weakness and inherent decay. Paul de la Roche's "Martyre," or Ischia's Santa Restituta, is a figure of heaven, an already glorified soul, who, having conquered the flesh, the world, and the devil, having offered her body to God "a living sacrifice," and having "put on immortality," has passed beyond our understanding and beyond our criticism into that region of bliss whose very dimmest ray would be unbearable glare to our eyes, and the full vision of which would bring a blessed and a painless death in its inevitable train.

It has been the fashion of our days to think lightly of legends and traditions of saints, to ridicule their so-called _inventors_, and pity their supposed _victims_. On the other hand, we see families clinging to certain versions of certain facts relative to their long descent and the doughty deeds of their world-famed forefathers; we see nations dwelling complacently on marvellous explanations concerning their origin, and proudly pointing to distant feats of knightly prowess performed by northern Viking and Frank or Vandal chief; we see tradition already growing up like irrepressible vines around the memory of great men buried perchance but yesterday, and even around the persons of living men to whom the wheel of fortune or the rarer gift of genius has given a temporary prominence; and is it strange that Catholics should love to repeat similar legends concerning _their_ forefathers, the founders of _their_ spiritual nation, _their_ forerunners in the kingdom of heaven? We, too, have in our faith a family pride, a national pride, and a pride born of personal friendship and attachment for some of God's living saints, his yet uncrowned champions. We are all one family, we all call to God "Abba," that is, Father; we are "the sons of God" and the "joint heirs with Christ." We cannot help rejoicing over the glory of one of our brethren or sisters; we cannot help being proud of their virtues and seeking to perpetuate and honor their memory. We are all one nation, too, for there is but one Head, one Lord, one Christ; and in the history of the saints we learn the history of the church, our state, our country, our kingdom. And among _our_ great men, whom no wheel of fortune but the divine decree of Providence has lifted to pre-eminence among us, and with whom, for the most part, holiness and humility take the place of genius--is it strange we should single out some of whom, having known them, we willingly speak and hear little details told, and treasure them up, and weave them into heart-poems for our children's children? So grows tradition, and a mind that has no place in it for tradition's evergreen vines to spread their beautiful network is but a misshapen likeness of the mind that God created in Adam, and endowed with sympathetic tenderness and appreciative discrimination.

Some among us have had the happiness to be brought into contact with men greatly favored by God. And who that had daily seen his humble, hidden convent-life, that sweet soul-poet and child-like priest, Frederick Faber, could fail to accumulate concerning him loving traditions, and what our descendants may hereafter call fond and vain legends? And who that had once heard the voice of Henry Newman, the leader of the school of thought of our days in the simple converse he loves best, or in the plain instructions to his school-children at catechism, could help treasuring up such a recollection as more precious by far than a token of royal friendship, or the memory of some unexampled intercourse with state minister or powerful diplomat? There are others who have lived or are living in the same cold, beliefless days as ourselves, and whose presence, either tangible through personal acquaintance or reflected through their sermons or their books, is a perpetual fragrance, which we seek ever to keep alive in the garden of our hearts by heaping up and stowing away in our minds all manner of details belonging to their useful and everyday lives.

Pius IX. and Montalembert, and the Curé d'Ars, and Father Ignatius Spencer, and the Père de Ravignan; Lacordaire and the convert Jew, Hermann, the musician and Carmelite who has but lately passed away, and will be remembered, let us trust, even as the Fra Angelico of the nineteenth century; Mother Seton and the Sœur Rosalie; Thomas Grant, the saintly Bishop of Southwark, who meekly laid down his burden in the City of the Catacombs when his Lord called him from the Council of the Vatican to the foot of the throne; and Henry Manning, and John Hughes, and others yet whose names are known only to a few friends on earth, but widely known among the hosts of heaven, sons of Benedict and daughters of Scholastica, all these are among the chosen ones whose names cannot but be speedily wreathed in legendary and traditional history. And even if it happens that some detail lovingly told comes to be exaggerated, and have accessories linked to it by earnest--if indiscreet--zeal, shall that be accounted as a crime and a malicious distortion of truth? An error of love can be surely forgiven by mothers who are proud of their battle-stained sons; by children who worship the mother that taught them, and the father who guided and corrected them; by soldiers who tell round the camp-fire of the iron men who led them to victory, or who bore with them and for them an equally glorious captivity and defeat; by sick men who do not forget the "Sister's" care; by all, in a word, who have a heart wherewith to be grateful, a mind wherewith to admire, a memory wherewith to give honor.

What is true of the saints of to-day is so, and was so from the beginning, of the saints of long ages ago. And if their history has come down to us woven of fact and legend both, it is thus only the more historical to us, for it tells us the history of the church's love for her glorified children, as well as the record of the real life of those children themselves. Santa Restituta has thus led us far from Ischia's scarcely known beauties and simple island shrine, but she now leads us back to her own sanctuary by the thought here suggested, that, even as many hidden saints walk among us now, so there are many hidden nooks of the earth, like her sea-girt home, where faith is still the daily bread of the people, and where an almost primeval innocence reigns under the protection of that happy, childlike ignorance which, according to modern civilization, is the root of all evil.

Hidden saints are like to these little inclosed gardens of faith; their hearts are valleys sequestered from the glare of the world's unbelief and the world's selfishness; their souls are as rock-bound creeks where lilies grow and wavelets ripple over golden sands; with them, too, the sunset of life is ever the most glorious hour, as it is with Ischia's myrtle-clad rocks and vine-crowned cottages.

Santa Restituta, pray for us, and, if we are not worthy to be of the number of the saints ourselves, suffer us to be the historians, the biographers, the poets of such saints as those who are known only by name in one remote corner of God's universe, or of such other saints of whom glimpses are now and then revealed to us by the very simplicity and utter unguardedness of their sweet and undefiled nature.

A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT OF A COLLEGE.

[We have received and publish the following letter with great pleasure, and it is to be hoped that others will take up the same subject, and express their views upon it. Perhaps we may even venture to suggest the project of a convention or congress of heads of colleges under the auspices of the prelates, in order to discuss and resolve on useful measures connected with Catholic education.]

DEAR MR. WORLD:

You have a talent for evoking thought. The excellent paper on higher education, which you published in your issue for March, has set me a-thinking; and as I hold you to be a wise counsellor, I hope you will allow me to communicate my poor thoughts to you. I want to talk to you about some of the difficulties of Catholic education in the United States.

By the way, the subject of your article was working at the same time in several minds. I read in the _Galaxy_ for March a long dissertation, full of idolatry for Germany, on higher education; and the students of St. John's College, Fordham, New York, celebrated Washington's birthday by a series of splendid speeches on the same theme. Would you, Mr. WORLD, feel complimented if I should exclaim, "Les beaux esprits se rencontrent"?

Well, then, in the matter of college education--for that is what I have been thinking on--as in a multitude of other matters, Catholics in this country owe eternal gratitude to their clergy. If we have any colleges at all, to whom do we owe them? To the zeal and self-sacrifice of our Christian Brothers, of our priests and our bishops. I think that all our colleges were established by churchmen, whether secular or regular. It were, perhaps, invidious to mention names--but we ought not to withhold a deserved and willing tribute of praise from the heroic men who gave us our colleges. We say heroic, for these men were truly such. Lengthy reflection is not necessary in order to justify the epithet. What a mountain of obstacles had to be cleared away to purchase the site of these colleges, to build them, to man them, to govern and carry them on! Education is a noble and fertile subject to speak about. It is an immense blessing to be really educated. But what an amount of toil and anxiety does not this delicious fruit cost those who seek to bestow it on our children! How many harassing days and nights have not the faithful superior, professors, and prefects of a college to spend in the exercise of their several functions! All the world knows that boys are not a very inviting material to work on. They are unreasoning, ungrateful, thoughtless, inconstant; often weak, lazy, perverse, and incorrigible. Many of them act in college as though they went there to torment everybody--or, at most, for the benefit of the officers, and not at all for their own good. Of course, if boys were merely to be taught lessons, much of the trouble connected with their education could be avoided. But Catholic colleges mast make moral men and Christians--and that, as we all know, is a difficult task, for the young heart is very wayward. Then, too, what heartburns with fathers and mothers and guardians! How little pecuniary compensation for the educator! Yet our clergy, be it said to their undying honor, have nobly braved, outfaced, all these privations and humiliations. They are doing so even at this day. Let them refuse to sacrifice their time, talents, health, and temporal weal, and we ask whether there is in the United States a single Catholic college which would not have to suspend operation to-morrow? We must remember that our colleges are not endowed. In a financial point of view, they depend almost entirely on the fees of their students. Commonly, too, they have more or less of standing debts, for which yearly interest must be paid. Were the presidents, professors, and prefects of such houses to exact fat salaries in return for their sublime abnegation, what, Catholic Americans, would be the fate of all your colleges? Do you often think of this when, amid the ease and luxury of your drawing-rooms and dinner-tables, you run down this college, sneer at that other, and wonder why a third does not do this, that, and the other thing in the shape of improvement? You have colleges because your clergy are willing to sacrifice their time and tastes, to submit to drudgery, to wear out their very lives, and live and die in poverty. All praise to you, Catholic priests and bishops, to you religious orders of these United States.

These remarks go to prove that our first difficulty in the walks of higher education is the slender means of our colleges.

In the next place, it appears to your unworthy correspondent that very little is done to put an end to this precarious and from-hand-to-mouth existence. What generosity does the laity show to our colleges? People contribute munificently to convents, asylums, churches, etc.; but how many make donations to colleges; how many found prizes, medals, or scholarships in them? Very few, at least so far as my knowledge goes. Colleges, like poor bears in winter, are supposed to live on their own fat. No one asks them whether they are in debt, in need of money, would not accept of a collection of books, minerals, philosophical apparatus, or anything of that kind. No one says: Wouldn't you allow me to build you a good gymnasium, an exhibition hall, give you an organ for your chapel, or transfer to you some of my shares in this or that lucrative business? No, dear colleges, be comforted. Live on as best you can. The result is that these institutions can never fully shake off their debt, they can make but little material improvement, or, if they attempt improvements, it must be at a snail's pace. Even graduates will forget the wants of Alma Mater, and despise her for her blameless penury, just as some gross-natured upstarts scorn their poor parents and friends. What a different spectacle we should soon witness in our colleges were gentlemen of means to show their zeal for education, and follow the wholesome example of Protestants by bestowing upon our seats of learning a portion of their wealth! Progress would then be possible, college bills could be lightened entirely or at least partially, gratuitous education might be granted to deserving young men. As things now stand, charity is out of the question for most of our colleges. We must endeavor to beget and promote in our people this enlightened and patriotic spirit toward our colleges.

Difficulty number three: Many persons take a narrow view of education. Some act upon what may be called the system of the three R's, that is readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmetic. They fancy their sons educated when they can read, write, and cast up accounts. Others may raise their eyes a little higher, but in the end, like the old Romans laughed at by Horace, they value education only in so far forth as it is a money-making machine. Few are broad-minded enough to see in education a development of the entire man, and, as a necessary inference, a slow and gradual process. In consequence of the errors afloat on this head, parents will not allow time sufficient for the education of their children. They force colleges to crowd an immense circle of studies into a short space. The consequences are not flattering. The mind cannot be thoroughly developed, and education degenerates into ill-digested instruction. Depth is lost. Your paper, which led me to think upon all these topics, speaks very sensibly about philosophy. But how, I ask, can anything like a deep, serious, thorough course of philosophy be taught in one year? Still, that is all our young men get, and that is all the generality of parents will concede. Look at our colleges--how many graduates of the first year return to study a second? Were it not better to give no degree until the close of the second year? The diploma once obtained, though it is only a cowardly sheep-skin, fills our young graduates with valor, and makes them fancy that they are fit to play roaring lion all the country over. Every college should devote at least two years of its course to the study of philosophy. Education without a sound philosophy must always be a mere broken shaft, a truncate cone, an abortion. We ought to organize a crusade for the welfare of philosophy in our colleges. I was right glad, Mr. WORLD, to hear you advocating the study of this crowning branch of education, and insisting, I think, upon sound scholasticism. Scholastic philosophy, that is the philosophy.

My next difficulty shall be proposed in the form of a question: Could not our Catholic colleges come to an understanding, so as to have in all of them about the same programme and the same text-books? At present, there is a very great divergence on these points. For instance, what a multitude of grammars we have, and what wretched things for boys some of these grammars are! They lack method and logic, they dive too deep into philosophy, and are too learned and philosophical. Banish philosophy and philology to their proper spheres. When grammars of the dead languages were much more modest and unpretending, Latin and Greek were better known, better written, if not also better spoken. What I say of grammars applies with equal force to many other books now used in our colleges. A convention of our college authorities for the discussion of these topics might do as much good as many other conventions, if not far more.

Parents and guardians have a great share in the troubles experienced by colleges. Nowadays, boys decide almost everything with respect to their education. It is they who make choice of their college, determine whether they shall study, how long and what they shall study. All that parents seem to have to say or do in the matter is to obey their whimsical offspring. I can understand that there is no use in forcing a lad to study what he reasonably cannot learn; but I cannot see why the management of his education should be given over to him in fee-simple. This violation of the fourth commandment throws honest colleges into a dilemma. On the one hand, they would like to keep their students, and, on the other, they feel bound to make those students work. But the young lord of his destinies often does not wish to study, and, if he is urged to do so, he grows dissatisfied, says the officers are too cross, and leaves the institution. Should he not be urged, he will idle away his time, annoy everybody, learn nothing, and finally, by his ignorance and bad conduct, injure the reputation of his college. Parents, when they send their sons to college, should not forget that these sons are not immaculately perfect. They need a strong dose of discipline. They must be taught by word and deed that they have to study and to obey. The word of college authorities should weigh more in the balance than that of weak, lazy, and roystering young lads. If these ideas prevailed somewhat more than they do, and were acted up to, colleges would have an easier task to perform, their task would be better performed, and the education given to boys would be more vigorous. There is too much womanish fondness, too much indulgence, shown to boys in these days. We live in an age of feeling, of likes and dislikes. Energetic, self-controlling, strong manhood is on the wane. Magnificent men could be made out of our American boys. I love them dearly. Their character is full of fine traits. They are clever, generous, open, and manly. Why should they be emasculated by false kindness and compliance?

Once in college, let us subject these boys to solid and stiff examinations. Those who fail, if they are in the graduating class, should not graduate that year, no matter what great man or great woman may intercede, scold, or shed tears in their behalf. No _prædeterminatio physica_ should settle on the gentlemen of the graduating class. Because they happen to be in that class, their graduation must not become a fated necessity. No doubt, it is a very nice sight at the close of the year, on the annual commencement day, to behold a large number of young gentlemen receiving their diplomas. The heart of Alma Mater throbs with gladness at the beautiful spectacle. But it is a much nicer thing for Alma Mater to have to say that her diploma is deserved, and that she tells no lie to the public when she asserts that her graduate is _bonæ spei et rite probatus_. Then the diploma is a testimony to worth: it is an honor to possess it. If undergraduates miss their examination, put them down mercilessly into the class below that in which they fail. By this process you will lose a few boys, but you need not regret them. For, first, they were either idlers or stupid fellows. In the next place, you can raise the standard of your classes, you will make your pupils work seriously, get a good name for your college, and end by having more students. Sensible people will always send their children to institutions that insist upon hard study and rid themselves of idlers.

Another difficulty which I must notice regards the action, or rather inaction, of the state. It is a pity that our government, with all its fuss about education, does so little real honor to higher education. What is the necessity or emolument of a diploma from a college? I think that, without a diploma, I can occupy any position in the gift of the country, save perhaps that of officer in the regular army or navy. In one way, the state is too much of a busybody; in another, it does not fulfil its office in regard to education. But I do not wish to open the question, to-day, on the office of the state in education.

One of the gravest obstacles in the way of higher education arises, I think, from our colleges themselves. It is this: our colleges are too numerous. With the exception of some boys from Spanish America, we receive no pupils from other countries. At home, the number of Catholics who can afford a college education for their children is limited. Supposing, then, all our colleges patronized, it is impossible that any of them should reach a respectable figure in the number of its attending pupils. Besides, it must be no easy task to find competent professors and directors for so many colleges. If we had fewer colleges, each one would have a larger number of pupils, and be more fully provided with all that is necessary for education. Yet there appears to be a stronger desire to open new colleges than to perfect those actually in existence. Why do we thus weaken and scatter our forces? Why do we render success and large, grand centres of learning next to impossible? Grammar-schools, or schools in which boys are prepared for college, should be multiplied, but not colleges. Then our colleges would resemble a university more than they do to-day. It is a great plague for them to be obliged to do at once the work of the grammar-school and of the college properly so-called. They are burdened with a crowd of children, who are no companions for young men, and lessen the dignity of a college. And now, Mr. WORLD, let me end these remarks by asking: When shall we see each diocese in the Union possessing a _petit séminaire_? When shall we see arise in our midst a noble Catholic university?

Yours, etc.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ROME AND GENEVA. Translated from the French. With an introduction by M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. 8vo. Pamphlet. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co.

We always knew that the Archbishop of Baltimore is an able writer of the more solid kind of essays, but were not before aware how gracefully he can use his pen in description. In his preface to the pamphlet whose title is given above, he draws a very pretty and graphic picture of Geneva, the ancient headquarters of Calvin, and in right, though not in possession, the See of St. Francis of Sales. Some interesting, curious, and gratifying facts in connection with that city are mentioned by the archbishop. He tells us that half the population of the city and canton is Catholic, and of the other half only one-tenth is Calvinistic. John Calvin's house is a convent of Sisters of Charity. The gloomy heretiarch and his companions are unhonored and almost unknown in the city which was once called the Rome of Protestantism, but which is now a sort of temporary centre of Catholic activity in Europe, while the Holy City is desecrated by the rule of the Lombard usurper. The pamphlet itself is a letter addressed by a young law-student of Geneva to our old friend the eminent romance-writer, Merle d'Aubigné and one of his _confrêres_, both of whom, it appears, seized the occasion of the absence of the bishop at the Council to make a feeble assault on the church. It is a manly, sensible letter, more interesting as a specimen of what a young student can achieve in a polemical combat with veteran antagonists than from anything new or peculiar in its arguments. The youthful champion uses his sling and pebble with skill and dexterity, although he had not so hard a skull as that of Goliath of Gath to crack. Our young gentlemen who are training for professional life ought to be interested to see how he does it, and the noble, chivalrous spirit of faith and honor which is manifest in the letter is one we desire to see extended as much as possible among these generous youth who are able to do as much for the cause of truth.

THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS. An address delivered at Horticultural Hall, Boston, February 6, 1870. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

"Our true religious life begins when we discover that there is an inner light, not infallible, but invaluable, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Then we have something to steer by, and it is chiefly this, and not any anchor, that we need." These are the two opening sentences of the above lecture. If an "inner light, not infallible" is all that our author has "to steer by," we beg, for our part, not to enter on board the ship of which he is the captain. In this case, it is not the "inner light, not infallible" that is invaluable, but the anchor, unless one would foolishly expose himself to certain shipwreck.

If this be man's plight, then let him keep silence until he finds something that will give him certitude. For what else can an erring guide lead to than error? It is the blind leading the blind into the ditch.

Think, too, of the absurdity of the author's pretensions, with such a guide, to criticise all religions in order to give to the world "_the_ religion"!--"the religion of all ages!"

These free-religionists who talk so much about the value of reason have yet to learn its true value and the great dignity of the human soul. If the author's premise be true, it is an insult to our common sense to read his lecture.

THE HAPPINESS OF HEAVEN. By a Father of the Society of Jesus. 1 vol. 16mo, pp. 372. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1871.

We might perhaps appropriately designate this work as "The Popular Theology of Heaven:" _theology_, because it is strictly accurate in its dogmatic teaching; _popular_, because the whole subject, without being lowered, is brought within the sphere of the popular mind. We might call it also the "Spiritual Geography of Heaven," since it gives us such a knowledge as we can have at this distance of the promised land which we must hope one day to inhabit. We are told what is that beatific or happy-making vision of God which is the essential bliss of the elect; what is the light of glory by means of which the soul sees God; what are the occupations of heaven, the social joys of the blessed; the qualities and enjoyments of the glorified body and senses; the degrees of beatitude, yet the complete and satiating happiness of each individual, without envy or jealousy, without regret of the past or fear for the future. The book presents an elegant appearance, and is brought out in Messrs. Murphy & Co.'s best style.

DE DOMINI NOSTRI JESU CHRISTI DIVINITATE. 3 vols. Turin: Marietti. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1870.

To the many excellent volumes which Father Perrone has contributed during his long career to the theological library, he has now made in the work before us an addition in no way inferior to his previous writings. It is a work addressed to the learned alone, and in the language of the learned; but it is one which they will prize very highly, not only for its depth of theological lore, but also for its peculiar fitness to the present time. Its subject is the fundamental dogma of Christianity--now so much attacked and, we may add, outside of the Catholic Church so little believed--the Divinity of Jesus Christ, which it proves and defends against the infidels, the rationalists, and the mythics of our day.

In the first volume, we have the proofs drawn from the pages of the Old Testament; in the second, those furnished by the New Testament. The third volume establishes the Divinity of Christ on evidence drawn from the institution of the church, and, in particular, from the institution of the Roman Pontificate. The author demonstrates how the promises made by the Redeemer to his church, the characteristic marks by which he distinguished her, the gifts with which he enriched her, give evidence of a Divine Author and Founder. A most convincing argument springs from the Primacy conferred on St. Peter and his successors in the See of Rome, since God alone could have established and maintained throughout the ages and the nations of the earth so exalted a dignity, together with the prerogatives which befit its possessor.

Of all the works produced in our day on this important subject, Fr. Perrone's is without doubt the most satisfactory, because the most forcible, learned, and exhaustive.

THE SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE OF F. LOUIS LALLEMANT, S.J. Preceded by some Account of his Life. Translated from the French. Edited by F. W. Faber, D.D. New Edition. London: Burns, Oates & Co. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street, New York.

F. Lallemant was one of the brightest lights of the Society of Jesus, and occupies in French spiritual literature a place analogous to that of F. Alvarez in the Spanish. This book, of which a new edition has been lately published, is now well known in England and the United States through the translation which was brought out under the auspices of F. Faber. It ranks among the best of modern times, and even deserves to be classed with the works of the celebrated authors of past ages. The pietistic mystics among the Protestants, and even some Catholics, prepossessed by certain unfounded prejudices, have accused the Jesuits as the enemies of interior spiritual piety. There was never a more unfounded charge. The present work is one signal proof, among many others, that strict orthodoxy in doctrine, unswerving fidelity to the teaching of the Roman Church, and accurate theological science, so far from having quenched spirituality in the Society of Jesus, have only given it purity and illumination. The writings of the thoroughly orthodox masters of the spiritual life are, beyond all comparison, superior, in respect to their insight into the mysteries of faith and their knowledge of the higher paths of the ascent toward union with God, to any of those who have fancied themselves illuminated with a private and personal light of the Holy Spirit, which they have thought should supersede the infallible teaching of the church. F. Lallemant is specially remarkable for his skill and accuracy in pointing out the perfect harmony which must always exist between the genuine interior guidance of the Holy Spirit in the soul and the exterior, divinely-appointed, infallible guidance of authority to which it must always be subordinate. The _Spiritual Doctrine_ is orthodox and precise in its teaching without being dull or dry; fervent and spiritual without any tinge of vague or visionary enthusiasm; clear, judicious, and practical in its treatment of every topic; void of all wordy declamation and vapid sentimentalism; addressing the will and the heart through the intellect; clothing the thoughts and feeling of a saint in the style and language of a scholar. It is just the book for the more intellectual and educated class of readers, provided they have some desire for solid Christian virtue and piety.

THE ROMANCE OF THE CHARTER OAK. By William Seton. 2 vols. 12mo. New York: P. O'Shea. 1871.

To weave into a story interesting incidents of colonial life in the state of Connecticut, during the reign of James II. of England, is the intention of these two volumes. The delineation of that remarkable incident in Connecticut history, the seizing of the state charter from under the very eyes of the British authorities, and its secretion for many years in the famous Charter Oak, and the picture of the regicide Goffe living in perpetual fear of detection are well drawn.

The story in some respects shows a pen not yet perfectly at home in this kind of writing; but no one who takes an interest in our early colonial history can fail to find in reading these volumes both pleasure and much useful historical information.

FAMILIAR DISCOURSES TO THE YOUNG. Preceded by an Address to Parents. By a Catholic Priest. 1 vol. 18mo. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1871.

The reproduction, in America, of this work, originally written in Ireland, will prove to be a benefaction in many a homestead. This is the work of a man who thoroughly knows his subject. It is a book for the time, free alike from the doubtful stories of too many writings of the same kind and the tedious dryness that meets the youthful eye in most books of instruction. We wish a hearty God-speed to this valuable accession to our English Catholic literature. No Catholic family in the land should be without a copy of this book. It will be worth more than its weight in gold to those who read it; and to those who practise the lessons of wisdom it contains it will be their glory on earth and their crown in heaven.

It is a book that ought to be encouraged on missions and by all priests having charge of congregations.

THE COUNTESS OF GLOSSWOOD. A Tale. Translated from the French. 1 vol. 16mo. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1871.

We have here a touching but 'ower sad' tale of the life of a Scotch Covenanter who, being found in arms against his king Charles II., is condemned to death, but has his sentence changed by the interposition of a friend to a life of hard labor in the Cornish mines. His wife, the Countess of Glosswood, will not leave her husband, but with her infant daughter follows his hard fortune, all communication with the world outside of mining life being forbidden by his sentence. But the good God, in compensation for their desolate lives, sends them the priceless gift of faith, through the instrumentality of a Catholic priest, disguised as a miner that he may win souls for Christ, in times when to be known as a priest was to give one's self up to certain death. The countess had been taught to regard the Catholic Church with hatred and terror, and the agony of mind through which she must pass in learning to love what she had before hated is forcibly described; and the gentle way in which she is led step by step toward the light by the devoted priest cannot fail to give satisfaction to the earnest reader. The doctrine of indulgences was, of course, a terrible stumbling-block in her way, and Father Deymand's explanation is specially clear and convincing. The book comes to us in an attractive dress, with tinted paper and good type.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XIII., No. 75.--JUNE, 1871.[45]

SARDINIA AND THE HOLY FATHER.[46]

The volume giving the call and proceedings of the meeting held last January at the Academy of Music, in this city, in celebration of Italian unity, especially the occupation of Rome and the suppression of the Papal government, is handsomely printed, and does credit to the taste and skill of our New York book-makers; but it is a sad book, and almost makes one despair of civil society and natural morality. Nothing can be more sad and discouraging to all right-minded men than to see a large number of the most distinguished and influential men of a great nation-statesmen, politicians, judges, lawyers, officers of the army, ministers of religion, journalists, poets, philosophers, scholars, professors and presidents of colleges and universities--assisting, by their presence, addresses, letters, or comments, to applaud events notoriously brought about by fraud, craft, lying, calumny, and armed force, in contravention of every principle of international law and of public and private right. It is a sad thing for our republic when so many of its representative men, whose names are recorded in this volume, can endorse the fraud and violence by which the Sard king has effected what he calls the unity of Italy, and congratulate him on his successful sacrilege and spoliation in the Roman state; and the only consolation left us is that, with a solitary exception, no Catholic name appears on the list, and all the sympathizers are Protestants, and all, or nearly all, prominent adherents of the same dominant political party.

To the unity of Italy, under some circumstances, we might not seriously object. It is true, we hold small states are more favorable to the growth of intelligence, the development of elevated and strong personal character, to individual liberty, to social well-being, to the moral progress of the people, than huge centralized states or empires, which can be governed only despotically, and in which there is so great a distance between power and the people that personal and affectionate relations between the governors and the governed, and which do so much to soften the asperities of authority and to render obedience willing and cheerful, are, for the most part, impracticable. But if the several independent Italian states that have been absorbed by Sardinia to form the new kingdom of Italy had freely and of their own accord given their consent to the absorption, and no craft, fraud, violence, or disregard of public or private right had been resorted to in order to effect it, we might doubt its wisdom, but we could not object to it on the ground of international law or of natural justice. We, of course, defend the temporal sovereignty of the Pope; but if the Pope had, _motu proprio_, without coercion, the show or the threat of coercion, given his consent to the absorption of the Roman state in a united Italy, we should have nothing to say against it, for it would have been the act of the Roman state, no public or private right of justice or morality would have been violated, and no blow struck at the equal rights of independent states or nations, at the authority of the sovereign power of a state to govern it, or to the duty of obedience to it.

But it is well known that such is not the case either with the Holy Father or the several other Italian sovereigns that have been dispossessed and their states absorbed by Sardinia in order to effect Italian unity. In every case, the absorption was effected by violence and force, without and against the consent of the sovereign authority. The Pope refused his assent to the absorption of the ecclesiastical state, and said, to the demand to surrender it, "_Non possumus_." The Roman people, without the Pope, gave no assent--had no assent to give or to withhold; for, without the Pope, they were not a state or a sovereign people. It matters not whether plebiscitums can or cannot be alleged, for a plebiscitum, where there is a legitimate government, cannot be taken without its authority, especially not against its authority; for without its authority it would be a legal nullity, and against it it would be revolutionary and criminal. Nor would it help the matter for the absorbing state to invade with its armies the state to be absorbed, overthrow the legitimate government, take forcible possession of the territory, and then call upon the population to decide their future condition by a plebiscitum, so long as a legitimate claimant to the government remains living. This was the case in the Roman state and in the other independent Italian states that have been absorbed. As a plebiscitum before the conquest is treasonable and not permissible, after the conquest it is a mockery, for the fate of the state is decided, however the population may vote.

Let us look the facts in the face, and see by what deeds and on what principles the unity of Italy has been effected. Sardinia, aided by France and Prussia, made an unprovoked war on Austria, and wrested from her the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, and appropriated it to herself. Neither she nor her allies had any just cause of war against Austria, or even of offence, except that sire wanted to get possession of all Italy. France wanted the left branch of the Rhine for her boundary, and Prussia wanted to absorb the rest of Germany. There was no other reason for the war. The several independent Ducal states fell with Austria, with whom they were closely allied, and were invaded and taken possession of by the Sard king. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was invaded by Garibaldi and his filibusters, backed--covertly at first, openly at last--by the Sard government, conquered, because the Neapolitan king listened to the insidious advice and deceitful promises of Imperial France, said to have been given not to offer any serious resistance, taken possession of and appropriated as the highwayman appropriates the traveller's purse. The Æmilian provinces of the Roman state, prepared for insurrection by the secret societies and Sardinian emissaries, were invaded by the Sardinian forces and appropriated by the House of Savoy. Finally, the Roman state was invaded by the same Victor Emmanuel, with too strong a force for the Papal government to resist, its sovereign declared deposed, its government suppressed, and its territory and people annexed to the so-called kingdom of Italy.

This simple recital of facts tells the whole story. Sardinia, aided by the arms and diplomacy of France and Prussia, by the foreign policy of the Whigs and Radicals of Great Britain, the intrigues of the secret societies, the money and co-operation of the Protestant propaganda, the malcontents and malefactors of all the states of Italy, and adventurers and miscreants from all nations of the earth, has succeeded, without any right, without having received any offence or provocation, in the violation of every principle of international law and every precept of morality or natural justice, in absorbing every Italian state, and effecting the unification of the whole peninsula under her own royal house. These are the facts, stated in their simplest form, without passion and without exaggeration.

These facts, being public and notorious, must be as well known to those distinguished American sympathizers who addressed the meeting or wrote letters of approval to the committee that called it as they are to us. We dare not so insult the intelligence of such eminent men as to suppose, for a moment, that they did not know what they sympathized with, or that, in applauding the unity of Italy, they were ignorant of the craft, violence, and robbery that had been resorted to in order to effect it. What, then, must we and all right-minded men think of their own principles, of their religion, their politics, or their sense of justice? Does their Protestantism or their hatred of the Papacy justify, approve the violation of international law, the equal rights of sovereign states, the sacred rights of property, public and private, the principles of natural justice the basis of the state and of all legitimate authority, without which not even natural society itself can subsist? Does it authorize them to applaud unprovoked war and conquest, and public and private robbery? If so, how can they justify their Protestantism or their hatred of the Papacy? If they cannot assert either without denying all public and private right and trampling on all laws, human and divine, how can they regard either as defensible?

There is no mistaking the real character of the acts by which the sovereign states of Italy have been suppressed by Sardinia and her allies, and the present unification of Italy effected; and it only adds to their atrocity that it was done in part by exciting the populations, or a portion of them, to insurrection and rebellion against their respective sovereigns. There is nothing meaner or more unjustifiable than for one sovereign to tamper with the fidelity of the subjects of another, especially in time of profound peace between the two states. If persisted in, it is a justifiable cause of war. International law, or the law of nations, makes all sovereign states equal in their rights, without regard to the form of government, size, race, language, or geographical position; and the law of ethics, at least, requires each sovereign state to respect, and to cause its subjects to respect, the authority of every other sovereign state over its own subjects, as it requires every other to respect its authority over its subjects. The rule is, no doubt, often violated, but it is none the less sacred and binding on that account. It is equally wrong for the citizens of one state to attempt to seduce the citizens of another state from their allegiance. International law, national law, municipal law, as well as the moral law, know nothing of the doctrine, so eloquently preached by the ex-Governor of Hungary, of "the solidarity of peoples."

Hon. Richard H. Dana, Jr., an able lawyer, reputed to be well versed in the law of nations, and who affects, in his elaborate letter to the committee, to argue the question as it affects Catholics with fairness and candor, appears to have some doubts whether the invasion of the Roman state by the Sardinian troops, the deposition and virtual imprisonment of its sovereign in his own palace, and the annexation of its territory and inhabitants to the dominion of the House of Savoy, is really a violation of international law; but he evidently, besides arguing the question on a collateral issue, takes a juridical instead of an ethical view of international law, and considers it only so far as it enters into the national jurisprudence, and is enforcible by the nation through its own courts on its own citizens. Yet he cannot be ignorant that there are violations of international law which cannot be taken cognizance of by the national jurisprudence, and which may be, and often are, justifiable causes of war. The basis of international law is the law of justice, or _droit naturel_, as it is the basis of all natural ethics. There may be treaty or conventional agreements between nations, which must be considered whenever the case comes up juridically, or the law is to be juridically enforced, but these cannot abrogate or modify the law of justice, the _jus gentium_ of the Roman jurists, which is the principle and foundation of all law. Acts in contravention of justice, St. Augustine and St. Thomas after him tell us, are violences rather than laws, and are nullities. International law applies justice to the mutual relations of sovereign states, precisely as ethics does to the relations of individuals. It declares all sovereign states equal in their rights, the territory of each to be sacred and inviolable, and that no one is permitted to do to another what it would not have another to do to it. The rule is plain and practicable, and under it Mr. Dana's doubts ought to vanish. For one sovereign state to invade with its armies another, suppress its government, and absorb its territory and population, without any provocation or any offence given, but merely because it wants it to complete and round off its own territory, as Sardinia has done to the Roman or ecclesiastical state, is too manifestly a violation of international law to leave any doubt on any mind that does not hold the principle of all law to be that might makes right.[47]

No doubt certain untenable theories of popular sovereignty and certain alleged plebiscitums have had something to do with blinding the eyes of our American sympathizers to the atrocity of the acts they applaud. But plebiscitums cannot be pleaded when taken without the order or assent of the sovereign authority, if there is a sovereign authority, as we have already said. In the case of every Italian state absorbed, there was a sovereign authority, and the plebiscitum taken was not by its order or assent, but against its positive prohibition. It is idle to say that the people of these several states gave their consent to be absorbed, for except as the state, represented by its sovereign authority, there is no people with a consent either to give or to withhold. The people, no doubt, are sovereign in the constitution and government, but not otherwise, for otherwise they have no existence. A people or population of a given territory wholly disorganized, without constitution or laws, and deprived of all government, must necessarily, for simple preservation, reorganize and reconstitute government by conventions or plebiscitums as best they can; but when they have reconstituted government or the state, their sovereignty merges in it. The people of the United States and of the several states can amend the constitution, but only constitutionally, through the government. The notion which has latterly gained some vogue, that there persists always a sovereign people back of the government and constitution, or organic people, competent to alter, change, modify, or overturn the existing government at will, is purely revolutionary, fatal to all stable government, to all political authority, to the peace and order of society, and to all security for liberty, either public or private. We see the effects of it in the present deplorable condition of France.

The resolutions reported by the committee and adopted by the meeting, and which Dr. Thompson in his address tells us "are constructed on a philosophical order of thought," attempt to place "the temporal power of the Pope within the category of all earthly human governments, and bound by the same conditions and subject to the same fortunes." This may be successfully disputed. The Roman or ecclesiastical state was a donation to the Holy See or the Church of Rome. Gifts to the church are gifts to God, and when made are the property, under him, of the spirituality, which by no laws, heathen, Jewish, or Christian, can be deprived of their possession or use without sacrilege. They are sacred to religious uses, and can no longer, without the consent of the spirituality, be diverted to temporal uses, without adding sacrilege to robbery. Whoso attacks the spirituality attacks God. The property or sovereignty of the Roman state vests, then, in the Holy See--hence it is always called and officially recognized as the state of the church--and not in the Pope personally; but in him only _ex officio_ as its incumbent, as trustee, or administrator. Hence the Pope denied his right to surrender it, and answered the Minister of Sardinia, _Non possumus_. The temporal power of the Pope is therefore not within the category of all earthly human governments, but is the property of the spirituality. Victor Emmanuel, in despoiling the Pope, has despoiled the Holy See, the spirituality, usurped church property, property given to God, and sacred to the religious uses. The deed which our eminent jurists and Protestant divines sympathize with and applaud, strikes a blow at the spirituality, at the sacredness of all church property, of Protestant churches as well as of Catholic churches--at the sacredness of all eleemosynary gifts, and asserts the right of power when strong enough to divert them from the purposes of the donors. These Protestant ministers assert in principle that their own churches may be despoiled of their revenues and funds without sacrilege, without injustice, by any power that is able to do it. They defend the right of any one who chooses to divert from the purpose of the donors all donations and investments to found and support hospitals, orphan asylums, retreats for the aged and destitute, asylums for idiots, deaf-mutes, the blind, the insane, public libraries, schools, colleges, seminaries, and academies, peace societies, tract societies, home and foreign missionary societies, and Bible societies; they not only defend the right of the state in which they are placed to confiscate at its pleasure all funds, revenues, and investments of the sort, but the right of any foreign state to invade the territory in time of peace, take possession of them by armed force, as public property, and to divert them to any purpose it sees proper. Did the learned divines, the eminent jurists, who approve the resolutions ever hear of the speech of Daniel Webster and the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the famous Dartmouth College case? Or are they so intent on crushing the Papacy that they are quite willing to cut their own throats?

But the fact of the donation to the Holy See is denied. Be it so. Certain it is that the Roman state never belonged to the Sard kingdom; that the church has always claimed it, had her claim allowed by every state in the world, has possessed the sovereignty, not always without disturbance, for a thousand years without an adverse claimant; and that is sufficient to give her a valid title by prescription against all the world, even if she have no other, which we do not admit--an older and better title than that of any secular sovereign in Europe to his estates. Every sovereign or sovereign state in Europe is estopped by previous acknowledgment, and the absence of any adverse claimant with the shadow of a right, from pleading the invalidity of the title of the Holy See. The Roman state is therefore ecclesiastical, not secular.

Whether Père Lacordaire ever said, as Dr. Thompson asserts, that "in no event could the people be donated," or not, we are not authentically informed; but if he did, he said a very foolish and a very untrue thing. The people cannot be donated as slaves, nor could any of their rights of property or any of their private or public rights be donated. Every feudal lawyer knows that. The donation, grant, or cession could be and was only the right of government and eminent domain, or the right the grantor possessed; but that could be ceded as Louisiana was ceded by France, Florida by Spain, and California by Mexico, to the United States. In the cessions made to the Holy See, no right of the people to govern themselves or to choose their own sovereign was ceded, for the people ceded had had no such right, and never had had it. The sovereign who had the right of governing them ceded his own right to the church, but no right possessed or ever possessed by the people or inhabitants of the territory. International law knows no people apart from the sovereign or government. The right of self-government is the right of each nation or political people to govern itself without the dictation or interference of any foreign power, and is only another term for national independence. What was Pepin's or Charlemagne's, either could cede without ceding any right or possession of the people. So of the donations or cessions of that noble woman, the protectress of St. Gregory VII., the Countess Matilda. If Père Lacordaire ever said what he is reported to have said, he must have forgotten the law to which he was originally bred, and spoken rather as a red republican than as a Catholic theologian, statesman, or jurist.

But waiving the fact that the sovereignty of the Roman state has a spiritual character by being vested in the Holy See, and granting, not conceding, that it is in "the category of all earthly sovereignties," its right is no less perfect and inviolable, and the invasion and spoliation of the Roman state by Sardinia, as of the other Italian states, are no less indefensible and unjustifiable on any principle of international law or of Christian or even of heathen ethics; for one independent state has no right to invade, despoil, and appropriate or absorb another that gives it no just cause of war. Nor is the act any more defensible, as we have already shown, if done in response to the invitation of a portion, even a majority, of the inhabitants, if in opposition to the will of the legitimate authority. Such invitation would partake of the nature of rebellion, be treasonable, and no people has the right to rebel against their sovereign, or to commit treason. Men who talk of "the sacred right of insurrection," either know not what they say, or are the enemies alike of order and liberty. The people have, we deny not, the right to withdraw their allegiance from the tyrant who tramples on the rights of God and of man, but never till a competent authority has decided that he is a tyrant and has forfeited his right to reign, which a Parisian or a Roman mob certainly is not. How long is it since these same gentlemen who are congratulating Victor Emmanuel were urging the government, leading its armies, or fighting in the ranks, to put down what they termed a rebellion in their own country, and condemning treason as a crime?

But the Romans and other Italians are of the same race, and speak the same language, we are told. That they are of the same race is questionable; but, suppose it, and that they speak the same language. They are no more of the same race and speak no more the same language, than the people of the United States and the people of Great Britain; have we, on that ground, the right to invade Great Britain, dethrone Queen Victoria, suppress the Imperial Parliament, to annex politically the British Empire to the United States, and to bring the British people under Congress and President Grant?

But as Italy is geographically one, it ought, we are told again, to be politically one. The United States, Canada, and Mexico, including Central America and British Columbia, are geographically one; but will any of the honorable or reverend gentlemen who addressed the meeting, or wrote letters to the committee that called it, contend that we have, therefore, the right unprovoked, and simply because it would be convenient to have them politically a part of our republic, to invade them with our armies, suppress their present governments, and annex them to the Union?

"Rome is the ancient capital of Italy, and the Italian government wishes to recover it, and needs its prestige for the present kingdom of Italy." But in no known period of history has Rome ever belonged to Italy; Italy for ages belonged to Rome, and was governed from and by it. Never in its whole history was Rome the capital of an Italian state, or the seat of an Italian government. She was not the capital of any state; she was herself the state as long as the Roman Empire lasted, and as such governed Italy and the world. The empire was not Roman because Rome was its capital city, but because Rome was the sovereign state itself, and all political power or political rights emanated, or were held to emanate, from her; and hence the empire was Roman, and the people were called Romans, not Italians. If you talk of restoration, let it be complete--recognize Rome as the sovereign state, and the rest of the world be held as subject provinces. Italy was never the state while Rome governed, nor has the name Italy at all times had the same geographical sense. Sometimes it meant Sicily, sometimes the southern, other times the northern, part of the peninsula--sometimes the heel or the foot, and sometimes the leg, of the boot.

It might or it might not be desirable for the pretended kingdom of Italy to have Rome for its capital, or the seat of its government, though we think Florence in this mercantile age would be far more suitable. But suppose it. Yet these Protestant ministers must know that there is a divine command that forbids one to covet what is one's neighbor's. Achab, king of Israel, wanted Naboth's vineyard, and was much troubled in spirit that Naboth would not consent to part with it either for love or money. His queen, the liberal-minded Jezebel, rebuked him for his dejection, and, fearing to use his power as king of Israel, took measures in his name that Naboth should be stoned to death, and the vineyard delivered to Achab. It was all very simple and easily done; but we read that vengeance overtook the king, fell heavily on him, his household, and his false prophets; that Jezebel fled from the Avenger, was overtaken and slain, and "the dogs came and licked up her blood." There is such a reality as justice, though our American sympathizers with the liberal and enlightened Jezebel seem to have forgotten it.

Dr. Stevens, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, rejoices at the spoliation of the Pope, the absorption of the Roman state, and the unification of Italy, because "Italy is thus opened to liberal ideas, and Rome itself unlocked to the advancing civilization and intelligence of the nineteenth century." Which advancing civilization and intelligence are aptly illustrated, we presume, by the recent Franco-Prussian war, the communistic insurrection in Paris, the prostration of France, the nation that has advanced farthest in liberal ideas and nineteenth-century civilization. We have here on a fly-sheet a specimen of the liberal ideas to which Italy is opened, and of the sort of civilization and intelligence to which Rome is unlocked. We extract it for the benefit of Bishop Stevens and his brethren:

"Religions said to be revealed," these free-thinkers tells us, "have always been the worst enemy of mankind, because by making truth, which is the patrimony of all, the privilege of the few, they resist the progressive development of science and liberty, which can alone solve the gravest social problems that have tormented entire generations for ages.

"Priests have invented supernatural beings, made themselves mediators between them and men, and go preaching always a faith that substitutes authority for reason, slavery for liberty, the brute for the man.

"But the darkness is radiated, and progress beats down the idols and breaks the chains with which the priesthood has bound the human conscience. Furiously has raged the war between dogma and the postulates of science, liberty and tyranny, science and error.

"The voice of justice, so long silenced in blood by kings and priests conspiring together, comes forth omnipotent from the secret cells of the Inquisition, from the ashes of the funeral pile, from every stone sanctified by the blood of the apostles of truth. People believed the reign of evil would last for ever, but the day is white, a spark has kindled a conflagration. Rome of the priests becomes Rome of the people, the Holy City a human city. She no longer lends herself to a hypocritical faith, which, by substituting the form for the substance, excites the hatred of people against people solely because the one worships a God in the synagogue and the other in the pagoda.

"The association of free-thinkers is established here most opportunely to give the finishing stroke to the crumbling edifice of the priesthood, founded in the ignorance of the many by the astuteness of the few. Truth proved by science is our creed; respect for our own rights in respecting the rights of others, our morality.

"It is necessary to look boldly in the face the monster which for ages has made the earth a battle-field, to defy him openly and in the light of day. We shall therefore be true to the programme of civilization, in the name of which the _world has applauded the liberation of Rome_ from the Pope, and we call upon all who love the moral independence of the family, prostituted and enslaved by the priest, upon all who wish a country great and respected, upon all who believe in human perfectibility, to unite with us under the banner of science and justice.

"To Rome is reserved a great glory--that of initiating the third and most splendid epoch of human civilization.

"Free Rome ought to repair the damage done to the world by sacerdotal Rome. She can do it, and she must do it. Let the true friends of liberty be associated, and descend to no compromise, no bargain with the most terrible enemy the human race has ever had."[48]

This programme of the Association of Free-thinkers in Rome is not an inapt commentary on the letter of the Bishop of Pennsylvania, and is a hearty response to the sympathy and encouragement given them in their work of destruction by the great and respectable New York meeting. It at least tells our American sympathizers how their friends in Rome understand their applause of the deposition of the Pope from his temporal sovereignty and the unity of Italy. Are they pleased with the response given them?

There may be a difference between the free-thinkers and their American friends; but the chief difference apparently is, that the free-thinkers are logical and have the courage of their principles, know what they mean and say it frankly, without reticence or circumlocution, while their American sympathizers have a hazy perception of their own principles, do not see very clearly whither they lead, and are afraid to push them to their last logical consequences. They have not fully mastered the principles on which they act; only half-know their own meaning; and the half they do know they would express and not express. Yet they are great men and learned men, but hampered by their Protestantism, which admits no clear or logical statement, except so far as it coincides with the free-thinkers in regarding the Papacy as a monster, which must, in the interests of civilization and liberty, be got rid of. Yet we can discover no substantial difference in principle between them. The deeds and events they applaud have no justification or excuse, save in the atrocious principles set forth by the free-thinkers. We are willing to believe these distinguished gentlemen try to persuade themselves, as they would fain persuade us, that it is possible to war against the Papacy without warring against revealed religion or Christian morals, as did the reformers in the sixteenth century; but these Roman free-thinkers know better, and tell them that they cannot do it. They understand perfectly well that Christianity as a revelation and an authoritative religion and the Papacy stand or fall together; and it is because they would get rid of all religions that claim to be revealed or to have authority in matters of conscience, that they seek to overthrow the Papacy. They attack the temporal sovereignty of the Pope only as a means of attacking more effectually his spiritual sovereignty; and they wish to get rid of his spiritual sovereignty only because they wish to rid themselves of the spiritual order, of the law of God, nay, of God himself, and feel themselves free to live for this world alone, and bend all their energies to the production, amassing, and enjoying the goods of time and sense. It is not the Pope personally, or his temporal government as such, that they call the worst enemy of mankind, or the "monster that for ages has made the earth a field of blood," but revealed religion, but faith, but the supernatural order, but the law of God, the spiritual order, which the Pope officially represents, and always and everywhere asserts, and which his temporal power aids him to assert more freely and independently. They recognize no medium between the Papacy and no-religion. They disdain all compromise, admit no _via media_, neither the Anglican _via media_ between "Romanism" and dissent, nor the Protestant _via media_ between the Papacy and infidelity. They war not against Protestantism, though they despise it as a miserable compromise, neither one thing nor another; they even regard it with favor as a useful and an efficient ally in their anti-religious war.

The free-thinkers in Rome and elsewhere present the real and true issue between the Papacy and its enemies, and give the real meaning of the atrocious deeds which have effected the deposition of the Pope, the absorption of the state of the church, and the unity of Italy under the House of Savoy. They present it, too, without disguise, in its utter nakedness, so that the most stolid cannot mistake it; precisely as we ourselves have uniformly presented it. The issue is "the Papacy or no-religion," and the meaning of the deeds and events the New York meeting applauded is, "Down with the Papacy as the means of putting down religion and emancipating the human conscience from the law of God!" How does the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, and his brother Protestant Episcopal bishops among the sympathizers with Italian unity, like the meaning or the issue, when presented truly and honestly, and they are forced to look it squarely in the face? What does Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, think of it? He is the president of an evangelical--perhaps we should say fanatical--association, whose object is to procure an amendment to the preamble of the Constitution of the United States, so that the republic shall be made to profess, officially, belief in God, in Christ, and the supernatural inspiration of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. What says he to the assertion that "religions said to be revealed have always been the worst enemy of mankind"? Yet his name appears among the sympathizers with Italian unity. Do these gentlemen know what crimes and atrocities they applaud, and what is the cause with which they express their sympathy? Or, like the old Jews who crucified the Lord of Life between two thieves, are they ignorant of what they do?

These Roman free-thinkers only give us the programme of the secret societies, who have their network spread over all Europe, and even over this country; of the Mazzinis and Garibaldis, of the Red Republicans and Communists, who have instituted a new Reign of Terror in Paris, who are filling the prisons of that city while we are writing (April 7) with the friends of order, with priests and religious, plundering the churches, entering and robbing convents and nunneries, and insulting and maltreating their peaceful and holy inmates, banishing religion from the schools, suppressing the public worship of God, and drenching the streets in the blood of the purest and noblest of the land, all in the name of the people, of liberty, equality, and fraternity--the programme, in fact, of the whole revolutionary, radical, or so-called liberal party throughout the world. The realization of civil liberty, the advancement of science, the promotion of society, truth, and justice, are--unless, perhaps, with here and there an individual--a mere pretext to dupe simple and confiding people, and gain their support. The leaders and knowing ones are not duped; they understand what they want, and that is the total abolition of all revealed religion, of all belief in the spiritual order, or the universal, eternal, and immutable principles of right and justice, and the complete emancipation of the human intellect from all faith in the supernatural, and of conscience from all the law not self-imposed.

Are our American sympathizers with Victor Emmanuel in his war on the Pope, with the unity of Italy, and the revolutionary party throughout Europe, and with which the Protestant missionaries on the Continent in Catholic nations are in intimate alliance, really dupes, and do they really fancy, if the Papacy were gone, the movement they applaud could be arrested before it had reached the programme of the Association of Free-thinkers in Rome? We can hardly believe it. Europe was reorganized, after the fall of the Roman Empire, by the Papacy, and consequently on a Christian basis--the independence of the spiritual order, and the freedom of religion from secular control or intermeddling, the rights of conscience, and the supremacy of truth and justice in the mutual relations of individuals and of nations. No doubt the Christian ideal was far from being practically realized in the conduct of men or nations; there were relics of heathen barbarism to be subdued, old superstitions to be rooted out, and fierce passions to be quelled. The Philistines still dwelt in the land. In reorganized Europe there was no lack of great crimes and great criminals, followed often by grand penances and grand expiations; society in practice was far from perfect, and the good work that the church was carrying on was often interrupted, retarded, or destroyed by barbarian and heathen invasions of the Normans from the North, the Huns from the East, and the Saracens from the South.

But the work was renewed as soon as the violence ceased. Under the inspiration and direction of the Papacy and the zealous and persevering labors of the bishops and their clergy, and the monastic orders of either sex, assisted not unfrequently by kings and emperors, secular princes and nobles, the Christian faith became the acknowledged faith of all ranks and classes, individuals and nations. Gradually the old heathen superstitions were rooted out, the barbarisms were softened if not wholly subdued, just and humane laws were enacted, the rights of individuals and of nations were defined and declared sacred and inviolable, schools were multiplied, colleges established, universities founded, intelligence diffused, and society was advancing, if slowly yet surely, towards the Christian ideal. If men or nations violated the immutable principles of justice and right, they at least recognized them and their duty to conform to them in their conduct; if the law was disobeyed, it was not denied or so altered as to sanction men's vices or crimes; if marriage was sometimes violated, its sacredness and indissolubility were held to be the law, and nobody sought to conform it to the interests of lust or lawless passion; if a feudal baron wrongfully invaded the territory of his brother baron, or oppressed his people, it was acknowledged to be wrong; in a word, if the conduct of men or nations was bad, it was in violation of the principles which they held to be right--of the law which they owned themselves bound to obey. The conscience was not perverted, nor ethics and legislation made to conform to a perverted conscience.

But in the sixteenth century, bold, base, and disorderly men rose not only in acts of disobedience to the Pope, which had been no rare thing, but in principle and doctrine against the Papacy; declared it a usurpation, hostile to the independence of sovereigns and the Bible; denounced the Papal Church as the mystery of Babylon, and the Pope as the man of sin. The sovereigns listened to them, and the people of several nations believed and trusted them, cast off the Papacy, and interrupted the progress in manners and morals, in society and civilization, which had been going on from the sixth century to the sixteenth under the auspices of the Popes. The reformers, as they are called, no doubt really believed that they could cast off the Papacy and retain the church, Christianity, revealed religion, in even greater purity and efficiency. Yet the experiment, it must be conceded, has not succeeded. The church, as an authoritative body, has been lost with the loss of the Papacy. The Bible, for the want of a competent and authoritative interpreter, has ceased to be authority for faith, and has been made to sanction the most various and contradictory opinions. Faith itself has been resolved into a variable opinion, and the law of God explained so as to suit each man's own taste and inclination. Religion is no longer the recognition and assertion of the supremacy of the spiritual order, the rights of God, and the homage due to our Maker, Redeemer, and Saviour; nothing eternal and immutable is acknowledged, and truth and justice, it is even contended, should vary from age to age, from people to people, and from individual to individual.

The state itself, which in several anti-Papal nations has undertaken to supply the place of the Papacy, has everywhere failed, and must fail, because, there being no spiritual authority above it to declare for it the law of God, or to place before it a fixed, irreversible, and infallible ideal, it has no support but in opinion, and necessarily becomes dependent on the people; and, however slowly or reluctantly, it is obliged to conform to their ever-varying opinions, passions, prejudices, ignorance, and false conscience. It may retard by acts of gross tyranny or by the exercise of despotic power the popular tendency for a time, but in proportion as it attempts it, it saps the foundations of its own authority, and prepares its own overthrow or subversion. If in the modern non-Catholic world there has been a marked progress in scientific inventions as applied to the mechanical and industrial arts, there has been an equally marked deterioration in men's principles and character. If there is in our times less distance between men's principles and practice than in mediæval times, it is not because their practice is more Christian, more just or elevated, for in fact it is far less so, but because they have lowered their ideal, and brought their principles down to the level of their practice. Having no authority for a fixed and determined creed, they assert as a principle none is necessary, nay, that any creed imposed by authority, and which one is not free to interpret according to one's own private judgments, tastes, or inclination, is hostile to the growth of intelligence, the advance of science, and the progress of civilization. The tendency in all Protestant sects, stronger in some, weaker in others, is to make light of dogmatic faith, and to resolve religion and morality into the sentiments and affections of our emotional nature. Whatever is authoritative or imposes a restraint on our sentiments, affections, passions, inclinations, fancies, whims, or caprices, is voted tyrannical and oppressive, an outrage on man's natural freedom, hostile to civilization, and not to be tolerated by a free people, who, knowing, dare maintain their rights.

Take as an apt illustration the question of marriage, the basis of the family, as the family is the basis of society. In the Papal Church marriage is a sacrament, holy and absolutely indissoluble save by death, and the severest struggles the Popes engaged in with kings and emperors were to compel them to maintain its sanctity. The so-called reformers rejected its sacramental character, and made it a civil contract, and dissoluble. At first, divorces were restricted to a single cause, that of adultery, and the guilty party was forbidden to marry again; but at the pressure of public opinion other causes were added, till now, in several states, divorce may be obtained for almost any cause, or no cause at all, and both parties be at liberty to marry again if they choose. There are, here and elsewhere, associations of women that contend that Christian marriage is a masculine institution for enslaving women, though it binds both man and woman in one and the same bond, and that seek to abolish the marriage bond altogether, make marriage provisional for so long a time as the mutual love of the parties may last, and dissoluble at the will or caprice of either party. No religious or legal sanction is needed in its formation or for its dissolution. Men and women should be under no restraint either before or after marriage, but should be free to couple and uncouple as inclination dictates, and leave the children, if any are suffered to be born, to the care of--we say not whom or what. Say we not, then, truly, that without the Papacy we lose the church; without the church, we lose revealed religion; and without revealed religion, we lose not only the supernatural order, but the moral order, even natural right and justice, and go inevitably to the conclusions reached by the free-thinkers in Rome. One of the greatest logicians of modern times, the late M. Proudhon, has said: "One who admits the existence even of God is logically bound to admit the whole Catholic Church, its Pope, its bishops and priests, its dogmas, and its entire cultus; and we must get rid of God before we can get rid of despotism and assert liberty."

Let our American sympathizers with Victor Emmanuel and the unity of Italy look at modern society as it is, and they can hardly fail to see that everything is unsettled, unmoored, and floating; that men's minds are everywhere shaken, agitated by doubt and uncertainty; that no principle, no institution, is too venerable or too sacred to be attacked, no truth is too well established to be questioned, and no government or authority too legitimate or too beneficent to be conspired against. Order there is none, liberty there is none; it is sought, but not yet obtained. Everywhere revolution, disorder--disorder in the state, disorder in society, disorder in the family, disorder in the individual, body and soul, thoughts and affections; and just in proportion as the Papacy is rejected or its influence ceases to be felt, the world intellectually and morally, individually and socially, lapses into chaos.

We describe tendencies, and readily admit that the whole non-Catholic world has not as yet followed out these tendencies to their last term; in most Protestant sects there are undoubtedly those who assert and honestly defend revealed religion, and to some extent Christian doctrines and morals; but, from their Catholic reminiscences and from the reflected influence of the Papacy still in the world by their side declaring the truth, the right, the just, for individuals and nations, and denouncing whatever is opposed to them, not from Protestant principles or by virtue of their Protestant tendencies; and just in proportion as the external influence of the Papacy has declined and men believed it becoming old and decrepit, has the Protestant world been more true to its innate tendencies, developed more logically its principles, cast off more entirely all dogmatic faith, resolved religion into a sentiment or emotion, and rushed into rationalism, free religion, and the total rejection of Christian faith or Christian morals, and justified its dereliction from God on principle and at the command of what it calls science--as if without God there could be any science, or anybody to cultivate it. The Protestant world has no principle of its own that opposes this result, or that when logically carried out does not lead surely and inevitably to it. The principles held by Protestants that oppose it and retain many of them from actually reaching it are borrowed from the Papacy, and if the Papacy should fall they would fall with it.

Now we ask, and we ask in all seriousness, the learned jurists, the distinguished statesmen, the able editors, the eminent Protestant divines, poets, and philosophers, who took part in or approved the great sympathy meeting, where but in the Papacy are we to look for the nucleus or the principle of European reorganization, for the spirit that will move over the weltering chaos and bid light spring from the darkness, and order from the confusion? We know they look anywhere but to the Papacy; to the Parisian Commune, to Kaiser William and Prince Bismarck, to Victor Emmanuel, to Mazzini, and to Garibaldi--that is, to the total abolition of the Papacy and the Catholic Church. But in this are they not like the physician who prescribes, as a cure to the man already drunk, drinking more and more deeply? Are they not like those infatuated Jews--we are writing on Good Friday--who demanded of Pilate the release, not of Jesus in whom no fault was found, but of Barabbas, who was a robber! Can Barabbas help them? Will he help re-establish the reign of law, and teach men to respect the rights of property, the rights of sovereigns, and the duties of subjects?

We say not that the Pope can reorganize Europe, for we know not the secret designs of Providence. Nations that have once been enlightened and tasted the good word of God, and have fallen away, lapsed into infidelity, and made a mock of Christ crucified, cannot easily, if at all, be renewed unto repentance and recover the faith they have knowingly and wilfully cast from them. There is not another Christ to be crucified for them. We have no assurance that these apostate European nations are ever to be reorganized; to be saved from the chaos into which they are now weltering; but if they are, we know this, that it can be only by the power and grace of God, communicated to them through the Papacy. There is no other source of help. Kings and Kaisers cannot do it, for it is all they can do to keep their own heads on their shoulders; the mob cannot do it, for it can only make "confusion worse confounded;" the popularly constituted state, like our own republic, cannot do it, for a popular state, a state that rests on the popular will, can only follow popular opinions, and reflect the ignorance, the passions, the fickleness, the selfishness, and the basenesses of the people; science and philosophy cannot do it, for they are themselves disorganized, in a chaotic state, uncertain whether man differs from the brute, whether he has a soul, or is only a congeries of matter, and whether he is or is not developed from the monkey or the tadpole; atheism cannot do it, for it has no positive principle, is the negation of all principle, and effective only for destruction; Protestantism cannot do it, for it is itself chaos, the original source of the evil, and contains as its own no principle or organite from which a new organization can be developed. We repeat, then, if there is any hope, it is in the Papacy, which rests on a basis outside of the world, and speaks with divine authority; and the first step to reorganization must be the re-establishment of the Holy Father in the full possession of his rights. Whether there is faith enough left on earth to demand and effect his restoration, remains to be seen.

Certain it is, let men say what they will, the Pope is the only sovereign power on earth at this moment that stands as the defender of the rights of independent governments, of international law, the equality of sovereign states without regard to size, race, language, or geographical position--the sole champion of those great, eternal, and immutable principles of justice on which depend alike public liberty and individual freedom, the sanctity and inviolability of the family, the peace and order and the very existence of society. If the kings and rulers of this world are with him, or dare utter a feeble whisper to encourage and sustain him, the people are opposed, or cold or indifferent, and pass him by, wagging their heads, saying in a mocking tone, "He trusted in heaven, and let heaven save him."

It were little short of profanity to indicate the contrast between his sublime attitude and the abject and servile attitude of these distinguished countrymen of ours. They but prove themselves slaves to the spirit of the age, and only reflect popular ignorance and passion, and follow the multitude to worship at the shrine of Success, and to trample on the wronged and outraged. He dares arraign the fierce and satanic spirit of the age, to face the enraged multitude, to defy popular opinion or popular passion, to proclaim the truth it condemns, to defend the right it tramples under foot, and uphold the scorned and rejected rights of God, and the inviolability of conscience. It were an insult to truth and justice, to moral greatness and nobility, to dwell on the contrast. His attitude is that of his Master when he trod the wine-press alone, and of the people none were with him. It is grand, it is sublime, beyond the power of mortal man, unless assisted with strength from above. No man, it seems to us, can contemplate his attitude, firm and inflexible, calm and serene, without being filled, if he have any nobility or generosity of soul, or any sense of moral heroism or true manliness in him, with admiration and awe, or feeling that his very attitude proves that he is in the right, and that God is with him. Let our American sympathizers with his traducers and persecutors behold him whom they calumniate, and, if they are men, blush and hang their heads. Shame and confusion should cover their faces!

FOOTNOTES:

[45] 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.

[46] 1. _The Unity of Italy._ The American Celebration of the Unity of Italy, at the Academy of Music, New York, Jan. 12, 1871; with the Addresses, Letters, and Comments of the Press. New York: Putnam & Sons. 1871. Imp. 8vo, pp. 197.

2. _Programma Associazione dei Libri Pensatori in Roma._ _La Commissione._ Roma, Febbraio, 1871. Fly-sheet.

[47] The question, Mr. Dana really argues, is, whether Catholics in other than the Roman state have, under the law of nations, a right to insist that by virtue of their donations, or what the law treats as eleemosynary gifts, they shall continue to be vested in the Holy See? The answer must be founded on the acknowledged principle of law, that all gifts of the sort must be invested and appropriated according to the will of the donors; and in the interest of all Catholics in the Holy See, as the mistress and mother of all the churches, Catholics throughout the world have an ethical right that their gifts shall be invested and appropriated to the purposes for which they are given; but we doubt if their right can be juridically asserted, under international law, in the courts of the usurping state, or of any other state, since the state of the church is suppressed. But there can be no doubt, from the relation of all Catholics to the Holy See, the invasion of her rights and despoiling her of possessions, whether absolute or only fiduciary, gives to all Catholic powers the right of war against the invader and despoiler. At the order of the Holy Father, Catholics throughout the world would have the right, even without the license of their temporal sovereigns, to arm for the recovery and restoration to the Holy See of the possessions or trusts of which she may be despoiled, because these possessions and trusts belong to the spirituality, and the Holy Father has plenary authority in spirituals, and is the spiritual sovereign, not the temporal sovereign, of all Catholics. If Italian Catholics had understood that the Roman state belonged to the Holy See, and therefore to the spirituality, they would have understood that no order of their king could bind them to obey him in despoiling the Roman state, or in entering it against the order of the Pope, for in spirituals the spiritual sovereign overrides the temporal sovereign.

[48] Le religioni dette rivelate sono state sempre il più grande nemico della umanità, poichè facendo del vero, patrimonio di tutti, il privilegio di pochi, si opposero allo sviluppo progressivo della scienza e della libertà, le sole capaci di risolvere i più gravi problemi sociali, attorno a cui da secoli si agitano intere generazioni.

Il sacerdote ha inventato degli esseri sopran-naturali, e fattosi mediatore fra questi e gli uomini va predicando ancora uda fede, che sostituisce l'autorità alla ragione, la schiavitù alla libertà, il bruto all'uomo.

Però la tenebra si è diradata, ed il progresso abbatte gl'idoli e svincola l'umana coscienza dalle catene, di cui i sacerdoti l'aveano cinta.

Accanita ferve la lotta fra il dogma ed i postulati della scienza, tra la libertà e la tirannide, fra la scienza e l'errore.

La voce della giustizia, fatta tacere nel sangue da re e preti assieme congiurati, è risorta onnipotente dai penetrali della inquisizione, dalle ceneri dei roghi, da ogni pietra sanctificata dal sangue degli apostoli della verità. Si credeva durasse eterno il regno del male, però l'alba è diventata giorno, la favilla si è fatta incendio. Ora Roma del prete diviene Roma del popolo, la città santa città umana. Non più si presti fede a credenze ipocrite, che sostituendo la forma alla sostanza suscitarono odi tra popoli e popoli, sol perchè gli uni adoravano un dio nella sinagoga e gli altri nella pagoda.

L'associazione dei liberi pensatori si stabilisce qui opportunamente per dare l'ultimo colpo al crollante edificio sacerdotale, fondato nella ignoranza dei molti e per l'astuzia dei pochi. Le verità provate dalla scienza costituiscono la nostra sola fede, il rispetto al diritto proprio nel rispettare il diritto altrui, la nostra morale.

E d'uopo guardare arditamente in faccia quel mostro secolare, che della terra ha fatto un campo di battaglia, sfidarlo all'aperto ed alla luce del giorno. Saremo così fedeli al programma della civiltà, in nome della quale il mondo ha applaudito alla liberazione di Roma dal Papa.

Noi facciamo appello a quanti amano davvero l'indipendenza morale della famiglia, prostituita e fatta schiava dal prete--a quanti vogliono una patria grande e rispettata--a quanti credono alla umana perfettibilità--uniamoci tutti sotto la bandiera della scienza e della giustizia.

A Roma è riservata una gran gloria--quella d'iniziare la terza e più splendida epoca dell'incivilimento umano.

Roma libera deve riparare ai danni arrecati al mondo dalla Roma sacerdotale. Essa può far lo, essa deve farlo. I veri amici della libertà si associino, e non iscendano a patti sol nemico più terribile che abbia avuto l'umana famiglia.

ROMA, Febbraio, 1871. LA COMMISSIONE.

FLOWERS.

I.

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen With the wild flock that never needs a fold, Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean--

Is a pleasure accorded to few only of the dwellers upon earth; seldom indeed to the few who could best appreciate the privilege. A large portion of the sum total of human existence is spent in cities. Outside of these, the wants of life, best supplied by the co-operation of numbers, gather people together in towns and villages. Travelling is generally such only as may be needful in the exercise of trades and professions, with a view to their ultimate end, the accumulation of wealth; or such as exhausted energies demand to fit them for further toil. The invalid, it is true, seeks to revive his failing powers in far-away balmy climates and delicious scenes--and there is a love for his birthplace in the heart of many a wanderer which leads him back time after time to the old homestead, and invests it with countless charms, although bleak and barren its surroundings may be--but to how few individuals it is given, in the fulness of their health and mental faculties, to rove abroad at will through the beauties and sublimities of creation--to look on her rolling oceans and broad lakes; her foaming cataracts and stupendous mountains; on the luxuriant loveliness of the torrid zone, and the icy wonders of the north!

Yet such things always make part of the expectancies, the bright anticipations of youth--the day-dreams, crushed down at last by hard realities. For to generation after generation the story of life is strangely the same. Its general events unfold themselves in a succession marked for each one with singular uniformity; a uniformity, indeed, so susceptible of calculation that on it are based many of its most extended speculations.

Pecuniary interests generally push their claims first and most boldly, because least to be evaded. Then come the petty edicts of an artificial social existence, which command and receive submission before their presence is even suspected, and though their power be neither recognized nor acknowledged. Gradually the turning kaleidoscope of time shows more sombre colors; the path to be trodden is made visible--the mind bends itself to the narrow way--earthly happiness seeks its realization in a circumscribed sphere--and so, one by one, the winged thoughts lower their circle of flight, and the dreamer ceases to dream.

But the love of nature is implanted too deeply in the heart of man to be ever entirely eradicated; and the sentiment finds for itself an expression coextensive with its existence in the universal love of flowers. They have a charm for the eye and soul welling from a deeper source than those graceful forms and brilliant colors, for they are a portion of the great universe. They are a link, and an important one, and the one most exquisitely fashioned, in the mighty chain which holds beside them not only the everlasting hills, but

"Planets, suns, and adamantine spheres."

Year after year they return to us with a beauty which never palls, to make us wiser, and better, and happier; and as punctually they meet from each true heart a greeting fitly due to their fairy manifestations of the same boundless Power which called forth those mightier, sublimer forms of matter so often placed beyond our reach.

Flowers, when mention is made of them in the Old Testament, are consecrated (so to say) by the most lofty associations; they typify virtue--happiness--the Deity himself. When the inspired writer would fain depict in language level to our humble capacity pleasures of which we can have not the most distant idea--the pleasures of man's first terrestrial paradise--he calls it a garden; as the word best embodying to us happiness sinless and complete; and the Deity in the same sacred volume prompted

"The flower of the field, and the lily of the valley," (Cant. ii.)

as the most appropriate figures of his own divine holiness. Flowers with lamps of fine gold made part of the decorations of Solomon's temple. The Scriptures were originally written in the land of bold imagery and under a burning sun, where herbage and water constitute wealth; consequently, we find throughout its pages rich pastures and flowing streams suggested themselves as emblems of rewards not only in this world, but of those beyond the grave. Again, the brief span of life, and the uncertainty of all earthly possessions, are imaged by the fading flower and the withered grass; and the prophets in their denunciations of the wicked constantly compare them, in the desolation of utter abandonment, to a garden without water.

Asia has always been the especial land of flowers; from the rose-gardens which Semiramis[49] planted at the foot of Mount Bajistanos, 800 B.C., to the fragrant gardens now to be seen in almost every oriental city. The fame of these rose-gardens extended so far that Alexander the Great, on his Eastern expedition, turned a long way from his course to visit them. The city which Solomon founded, Tadmor in the wilderness (Palmyra), about midway between the Orontes and Euphrates, was celebrated, and indeed derived its name, from the abundance of a magnificent species of palm-tree which grew there. This tree (the _Borassus_ of Lin.) yields a liquor seducing and pernicious, and in taste resembling weak champagne.[50] The ruins of this city and its surroundings are described by travellers as exceedingly imposing. The city of Susa (in Scripture, Susan), in a district lying on the Persian Gulf, was in ancient days the residence of the Persian kings; their summers being spent at Ecbatana, in the cool mountainous district of Media. The name Susa signifies a lily, and is said to have been given on account of the great quantity and beauty of these flowers which grew in its vicinity. The fertility of the land of Bashan is mentioned in Scripture, and its oaks are coupled with the cedars of Lebanon. Media also is mentioned by old writers; and Carmania, north of the Persian Gulf, boasted of vines bearing clusters more than two feet long.

China in modern times calls herself the flowery kingdom, but she is not the only one; in many other parts roses are extensively cultivated for the purpose of distilling from them the ottar (_attah-gul_) of commerce; and the landscape is often converted for a hundred acres into one great rose-garden. It has been estimated that one-half of all the varieties of roses scattered over our gardens were originally brought from Asia; and perhaps, counting the fields planted there for distillation, it may be said that one-half of all in actual bloom adorn that quarter of the globe. Yet the simple wild roses of Asia, like our own wild roses, are very inconspicuous little flowers; it is only under the skilful hand of the florist that each one of those many varieties develops its own peculiar beauties, and we obtain the cultivated roses of the garden. The Afghan province of Turkistan is, in some parts, at the present day famous for its roses. _Balkh_, the modern capital, is so exceedingly hot that each spring the inhabitants in a body leave it for the little village of Mezar; and Mezar boasts of the most beautiful roses in the world--a fragrant red rose which they name _gul-i-surkh_. This peculiar variety grows on the pretended tomb of Ali (whose real monument is at Nedjef). They say that these roses will flourish in no soil but that of Mezar--an experiment (they say) which has been repeatedly tried and failed. Mr. Vambéry, who was there in 1864, says, "They are certainly more lovely and fragrant than any I ever saw."

Mr. Vambéry was sent in 1863, by the Hungarian Academy, on a scientific mission to Central Asia. At Teheran he assumed the dress of a dervish and the name of Hadji Rechid, and in this character he joined a company of twenty-four pilgrims, "ragged and dirty," who were on their return from Mecca to their far-away home in the northeast. They never penetrated his disguise--and with them he traversed an extent of country never before visited by a European. They travelled mostly by night, to avoid the excessive heat. Of course much natural landscape was lost, but we are struck with the abundance of flowers and gardens along this route. One which he mentions is not fascinating, but that was an exception; before leaving Teheran, he visited two European friends near there, and found "Count G---- in a small silk tent in a garden like a caldron; the heat was awful! Mr. Alison was more comfortable in his pleasant garden at Guhalek."

When the pilgrims resumed their journey at Teheran, such as were rich enough hired a camel for two, as partners. Mr. Vambéry soon loaned his animal to a "dirty friend," and joined the pedestrians, who, like true believers--followers of the Prophet--buried all care in one word, _kismet_.[51] As they tramped on (he says), "When their enthusiasm had been sufficiently stimulated by reminiscences of the gardens of Mergolan, Namengan, and Kholand, all began with one accord to sing a telkin (hymn), in which I joined by screaming as loud as I was able Allah ya Allah!"

The gardens at Tabersi, a place where they rested, were very beautiful, also there were "abundance of oranges and lemons, tinted yellow and red with their dark-green leaves." From scenes of luxuriant vegetation they passed into the desert of Turkistan, which extended on all sides, far as eye could reach, like a vast sea of sand, on one side slightly undulating in little hills, like waves in a storm, on the other side level as a calm lake. Not a bird in the air, nor a crawling thing on the earth; "traces of nothing but departed life in the bleaching bones of man or beast who had perished there!" But mark how rapid the transition once more to beauty and fertility! On emerging from this desolation and reaching the frontier of Bokara, they had only proceeded half an hour through a country resplendent with gardens and cultivated fields when the little village of Kakemir lay before them.

Bokara (the city) is at this day the Rome of Islam. There is a small garden not far from it whose fame is widely extended; for in it stands the tomb of Baha-ed-din, the national saint of Turkistan, second in sanctity only to Mahomet. Pilgrimages are made to this tomb and garden from the most remote parts of China; and the people of Bokara go every week. About three hundred asses ply for hire between the garden and the city. It is considered a miraculous devotion in these animals that, while they go thither with the greatest alacrity, only the most determined cudgelling can turn them homeward--but then, asses may have rural proclivities.

Samarcand is the most beautiful city in Turkistan; magnificent in her splendid gardens, and in the tale of past glory told in her ruins. Two of the lofty domes which greet the eye of the stranger as he approaches are associated with Timour--the one is his mosque, the other his tomb, where the warlike Tartar rests among flowers. If we can picture the many lofty edifices with their imposing domes, and then suppose the whole intermixed with closely planted gardens, we shall have a faint idea of the loveliness in the first view of Samarcand. The way from Samarcand to Karshi, south, lies for the last two miles entirely through gardens.[52]

In Karshi is a large garden called Kalenterkhane--literally, beggar's house; but we would rather translate it pilgrim's house. The words are somewhat synonymous there, where the most saintly pilgrims to the tomb of the Prophet subsist on alms. But this is a lovely garden on the bank of the river, with walks and beds of flowers; and here the _beau monde_ of Karshi are to be seen daily from about two o'clock until past sunset. In different parts of the place the Samovins (gigantic Russian tea-kettles) are constantly occupied in furnishing their customers, gathered around them in circles two and three deep, with the national beverage, tea.

We have a slight glimpse of tropical flowers in a greenhouse, but nothing of their native beauty and abundance; for what a poor representative of its class is that dwarfed and solitary specimen, faded in color and deficient in the perfume of a hot climate! Then how can imagination fill out the entire landscape--when vines and trees cluster together, and twist their dark leaves and a thousand such blossoms into one sweet mass? Then the nard grass; and the spicy chandan, which old books say once covered the mountains of Malaya; and the groves of catalpa--not the catalpa of our latitude, but that which opens under an Indian sky, which the bee seeks before all other blossoms! The morning-glory (Ipomea) here has no fragrance, but one which grows wild in Southern Asia gives out a perfume like cloves.

One thing we remark in Asia is the quantity of flowers cultivated in cities, even the largest and most densely populated; in those of China especially, flowers are a household necessity. In most other lands--certainly in ours--they are associated with life in the country, or, at least, they are the pleasant privilege of the little village. Flowers in a city are luxuries only within reach of the wealthy. A bouquet bought in the market-place is a rare excess of floral expenditure, and it must needs be trimmed and watered until the last leaf withers. The dweller in a labyrinth of brick walls is happy if he can, one time in a year, escape to grass and gardens, and refresh memory that such things exist; but in Asiatic cities flowers are a part of life. A modern traveller says:

"After an interesting passage up the river to Canton, the stranger enters the suburbs of the city. Here he is surprised to see the number of flowers and flowering-plants which everywhere meet his eyes ... every house-window and courtyard is filled with them."

The home of Ponqua-qua, a retired Chinese merchant and mandarin, was crowded with flowers and sweet shrubs. Besides a greenhouse of choice plants, and the customary garden, his banqueting-hall opened on a grove of orange-trees and camellias, all covered with singing-birds. In years long past, the same tastes prevailed. Sir John Chardon, who was in Persia in 1686, dwells on delicious city gardens of "roses, lilies, and peach-trees." And further back still, in A.D. 1086, lived Atoz, a celebrated Chinese statesman and writer. In a description of his villa and grounds, he enumerates hedges of roses and pomegranate-trees--banks of odoriferous flowers--bamboo groves with gravel walks, willows and cedars, with the added treasure of a library of 5,000 volumes.[53]

* * * * *

In almost all pagan countries some certain flowers, either real or imaginary, receive a sort of veneration from being associated with supernatural and invisible things. Oftentimes the plant so honored is a tree, as the _Soma_ of the Hindoos (the Persian _Homa_), which was "the first tree planted by Ahura-marda by the fountain of life. He who drinks of its juice can never die." In the Hindoo _Mahabharet_, the mountain Mandar, the occasional abode of the deities, is covered with a "twining creeper;" and India boasts a vine well befitting to deck the home of the gods! It is the Bengal _banisteria_ of Linnæus, the most gigantic of all climbers. Its blossoms are pale pink shaded with red and yellow--so beautiful and so fragrant that it has gained the native name "delight of the woods." Another mountain, Meroo--a spot "beyond man's comprehension"--is adorned with trees and celestial plants of rare virtue.

The _Pelása_ (Butea frondosa) is held in great veneration; it gave name to the plain Plássey, or more properly Pelássey. It is named in the _Vedas_, in the laws of Menu, and in Sanscrit poems. Few plants (says Sir W. Jones) are considered more venerable and holy. There was a famous grove of it once at Crishnanagar.

The oriental _Nauclea_ gives an odor like wine from its gold-colored blossoms, hence it was called Halipriga, or beloved of Halin, the Bacchus of India.

The _ash-tree_ is very conspicuous in the fables of the _Edda_, and, as some part of the Scandinavian creed is said to have been carried thither from Asia, we may speak of it here. In the fifth fable of the prose _Edda_, the first man was named Aske (ash-tree), and the first woman Emla (elm-tree). We ask, Why these two especial trees? But see further--they were created by the sons of Bore from two pieces of wood found floating in the waves--and, behold, a sensible reason!

An _ash-tree_ is in the palace of the gods; it typifies the universe. Its ramifications are countless--penetrating all things--and under its branches the gods hold council. But this ash-tree in various shapes is almost the only green leaf in Scandinavian mythology. Whatever else Sigge (Odin) carried thither from Asia, he left behind the countless (and some beautiful) flower legends. Or did they die in the icy north--and in their place spring up that machinery of blood and fierce passions which made Valhalla not the flower-clad mountain of oriental climes, but a battle-ground, where life was renewed only to be again pleasurably extinguished, and where boar's meat and mead was joy sufficient?

* * * * *

Flowers seem literally to pervade almost all oriental literature, ancient and modern. They inspire kings to lay aside care and enact the poet. In the middle of the last century, one of the Chinese emperors, Kienlong, distinguished himself by a long poem, in which he painted the beauties of nature and his admiration of them. He was contemporary with Frederick the Great, who also, as his French friend sneeringly informs us, always travelled with a quire of foolscap in his pocket. On which of the monarchs the muses smiled most kindly, no Chinese critic is here to tell. See-ma-kung, a Chinese statesman, wrote a book called the _Garden_--and very many similar might be named.[54]

What can express the softer emotions of the soul as well as flowers? The oriental lover can find no sweeter name for the object of his passion than "My rosebud!" Her form is the young palm-tree, her brow the white jasmine, her curling locks sweet hyacinths; her grace is the cypress; she is a fawn among aromatic shrubs!

"Roses and lilies are like the bright cheeks of beautiful maidens, In whose ears the pearls hang like drops of dew!"

Listen to a song from the Schar-Namah of Fedusi, one of the most celebrated Persian poets. In the original, the lines rhyme in couplets; this is only an extract. One can scarce think of the maiden as walking the earth. Surely she must have reclined on some rose, or floated round some lily!

"The air is perfumed with musk, and the waters of the brooks, are they not the essence of roses? This jasmine bending under the weight of its flowers, this thicket of roses shedding its perfume, seem like the divinities of the garden. Wherever Menisched, the daughter of Afrariab, appears, we find men happy. It is she who makes the garden as brilliant as the sun; the daughter of an august monarch, is she not a new star? She is the brilliant star that rises over the rose and jasmine. Peerless beauty! her features are veiled, but the elegance of her figure rivals the cypress. Her breath spreads the perfume of amber around her; upon her cheek reposes the rose. How languishing are her eyes! Her lips have stolen their color from the wine, but their odor is like the essence of roses."--_Translated from Sismonde de Sismondi._

Nor is it only love which levies this tribute on flowers. We subjoin an extract from Mesihi, another poet whose fame is world-wide: Mesihi the irresistible!--who paints in many a lyric, with graphic touch, the fascinations of beauty, and in the concluding verse of one of them (with happy self-complacency) thus soliloquizes:

"Thou art a nightingale with a sweet voice, O Mesihi! when thou walkest with the damsels Whose cheeks are like roses!"

In the following subject, flowers would be expected, but in the long poem of which this is only a part they are truly--the whole:

ODE TO SPRING.

Thou hearest the song of the nightingale, that the vernal season approaches. The spring has spread a bower of joy in every grove; where the almond-tree sheds its silver blossoms.

Be cheerful; be full of mirth; For the spring soon passes away, it will not last.

The groves and hills are again adorned with all sorts of flowers. A pavilion of roses as a seat of pleasure is raised in the garden; who knows which of us will live when the fair season ends?

Be cheerful; etc., etc.

Again the dew glitters on the leaves of the lily like the water of a bright scymitar. The dew-drops fall through the air on the garden of roses; listen to me if thou wouldst be delighted.

Be cheerful; etc., etc.

The time is past when the plants were sick, and the rosebud hung its head on its bosom. The season comes in which mountains and steeps are covered with tulips.

Be cheerful; etc., etc.

Each morning the clouds shed gems over the rose gardens. The breath of the gale is Tartarian musk. Be not neglectful of duty through too great love of the world.

Be cheerful; etc., etc.

_Mesihi, trans. by Sir W. Jones._

Flowers are beautiful--but such a profusion of them in print is not congenial to our northern tastes, despite other testimony in the enthusiasm of some oriental scholars. Of course, for those who are so happy as to read the originals there is a charm which is lost in translation--but there is good reason why we fail to sympathize. Hemmed in by cold and snow half the year, thought, passion, and deep feelings seek expression through channels not made of things visible; and their tides are not the less deep and strong because less demonstrative. The passionate and imaginative literature of the East is the outpourings of the soul under circumstances widely different from those under which similar effusions here (and some of the most impassioned and eloquent, too) have been penned. Each calls forth different tropes and figures--and if it is difficult for the one side to stir up imagination to untiring flights through rose-gardens, equally would the poet of Negaristan find it impossible to picture the charms of his mistress, and die of love or despair, before a coal-fire in the lamp-light.

Who can hear of roses without calling up an image of the nightingale, or, in Eastern phrase, the Bulbul? The mutual loves of the two (for roses can love there) have made the theme of tales and songs without number. Whether the story is fact or fiction--whether the bird really pours forth its most thrilling notes in the atmosphere of that perfume, may be a disputed point with "outside barbarians," but with native writers the belief is fully accepted. Here, again, the repetition is wearisome; and here, again, it is pleasant to blame--not our lack of imagination, but our peculiar surroundings; for, alas! our vault empyrean is colorless or cloudy; the melodious Bulbul a thing to dream of; and the song, generally, only a prosaic translation!

The southwestern part of Asia is the land of spices, frankincense, and myrrh. It is also the land of sweet flowers, although few modern travellers say much about them. One reason, perhaps, is that the extreme heat obliges the stranger to rest most of the day, and night is for stars, not flowers.

But who ever associates flowers with Arabia? Is it the prolonged and baleful influence of that little wood-cut map which monopolized a whole page in infantile geography--the map which presents Arabia arrayed in dots, which we were then and there informed meant desert? Or is it the omnipresent muffled figures, camels, and tents which typify Arabia in all books devoted to juveniles? Whatever the cause, Arabia and Arabians always come to mind sandy and wandering.

Not so the Arabia which Niebuhr traversed in the last part of the last century, with most ample opportunities for information.

Arabia, he writes, enjoys almost constant verdure. It is true, most of the trees shed their leaves, and annual plants wither and are reproduced; but the interval between the fall of old leaves and the reappearance of others is so short that it is scarcely observable.[55]

Here are found most of the plants of two zones. On the high lands, those of Europe and Northern or rather Middle Asia; on the plains, those of India and Africa, not precisely identical with those of Europe, but a different species or variety. Delicious and abundant also are all kinds of tropical fruits; and so plentiful the melons that they serve as food for their camels. From Arabia were also first brought many of those plants which we cultivate as curiosities rather than for beauty--the _cactus_ tribe. One of the most remarkable has its stem expanded to a globular form, about the size of a man's head; this rests on the earth, and from it proceed branches bearing flowers. In seeking for the most showy flowers, we must turn to their forest trees. Their forests are not very extensive, and such as they have are rarely seen by strangers, being quite distant from the usual course of travel. But the majestic height of the trees, covered with bright-colored and fragrant blossoms, are in marked contrast to our own forest trees, whose flowers, generally, can scarcely be distinguished from the leaves. One kind, the _keura_, is so very fragrant that a small blossom will perfume an entire apartment. Among small sweet plants is the _panicratum_, something like the sea-daffodil, of the purest white; an _hibiscus_, of the most brilliant red; and the _moscharia_, which gives from leaves and flowers the perfume of musk. But a catalogue of their names alone would exceed our limits.

"With these glorious blossoms," says Mr. Niebuhr, "the peasantry retain the ancient custom of crowning themselves on certain days of joy and festivity."

There is poetry in this custom. "It is said that this nation alone has produced more poets than all others united" (_Sismondi_). Arabia shares more than flowers with the rest of Asia; she, too, joins to them poetry. Her people have the same fertile imagination, aversion to the restraints of cities, love of freedom and of nature, quick feelings and ardent passions, which make the true poet. The day is past--even so long past that they have forgotten it--when all this found expression in compositions, which we read now, and marvel at their rich inventions and glowing imagery; but, nevertheless, they are poets still! A distinguished French author writes:

"Through the whole extent of the Mohammedan dominions, in Turkey, Persia, and even to the extremity of India, a numerous class of Arabs, both men and women, find a livelihood in reciting these tales to crowds who delight to forget their annoyances in the pleasing dreams of imagination. In the coffee-houses of the Levant, one of these men will gather a silent crowd around him, whom he will excite, by his tale, to terror or pity; but more frequently he will picture to his audience those brilliant and fantastic visions which are the patrimony of Eastern imaginations. The public squares of cities abound with these story-tellers, who fill up, too, the dull hours of the seraglio. Physicians recommend them often to their patients, to soothe pain or induce sleep; and those accustomed to the sick modulate their voices and soften their tones as slumber steals over the sufferer."

Seven of the most remarkable old Arabian poems, written in gold, are hung in the Caaba, or Temple, at Mecca; and the authors show themselves not in the least degree behind other orientals in heaping up flowers and metaphors.

Flowers were once held, in Arabia, of high importance in science. Next to the sciences of mathematics, they valued that of medicine; and many volumes were written on their medical plants. Somewhere about the year 941, Aben-al-Beïther made a botanical tour over Europe and Asia, and a part of Africa, and, on his return, published a volume _On the Virtues of Plants_. Still earlier than this, in 775, Al-Mansour, the second prince of the Abassides, invited a Greek physician to his court, and obtained through him translations of many learned Greek works on medicinal plants. Such are flowers in Asia.

It is no wonder that, where nature has lavished her choicest productions, and all classes delight in cultivating them, flowers have increased _ad infinitum_. No wonder their brilliant hues inspired a native poet to sing:

"A rainbow has descended on the garden." _Mesihi._

II.

The little colony who passed from Asia to Egypt and first peopled that portion of the Mediterranean shore, in that time so long past--time without a date--must have carried with them many of their native plants; for several found indigenous only in India are found cultivated there. Among others is the Nymphæ nelumbo, the Lotus. This bore in India a sacred character; the Hindoo fable taught that the little god of love, their Cupid, was first seen floating down the Ganges on a lotus leaf. In very many ways this flower is interwoven with the Hindoo creed, or introduced in their literature--as in the following. It is part of a sublime _Hymn to Narayena_, in which that great Invisible is thus addressed:

"Omniscient spirit! whose all-ruling power Bids from each sense bright emanations beam, Glows in the rainbow, sparkles in the stream, Smiles in the bud, and glistens in the flower That crowns each vernal bower!"

--and the radiant being, dazzling and beautiful, who springs to life and typifies the material universe,

"Heavenly pensive on the lotus lay, That blossomed at his touch, and shed a golden ray."[56]

In Egypt, when carried thither, it naturally retained a sort of sacred character. It is represented in their paintings and sculptures more frequently than any other plant; in scenes of festivity and processions, where it is twined with other flowers into wreaths and chaplets; and also in sacred scenes. Mr. Wilkinson describes a painting found at Thebes, in which is represented the final judgment of a human being:

"Osiris is seated on a throne, as judge of the dead. He is attended by Isis and Nepthys, and before him are the four Genii of Amenti, standing on a _Lotus_. Horus introduces the deceased whose actions have been weighed in the scales of Truth."

Lotus buds have been often found in the old tombs. It was also introduced into their architecture. The most favorite capital for a column was a full-blown water-plant, supposed to be the papyrus, with a bud of the same, or a lotus bud. A large variety of it called Lotomelia is cultivated there still in gardens.

Within the last few years, some information has been gathered relating to the domestic life of the early Egyptians, which was previously only conjecture. To use the words of Sir J. G. Wilkinson: "It has been drawn from a comparison of the paintings, sculptures, and monuments still existing, with the accounts of ancient authors."

On fragments of stone in different degrees of preservation, taken from the ruins of temples, tombs, and dead cities, are found representations of those who once stood here, surrounded by all the wealth and glory, the luxuries and magnificence of which this is the wreck. Cut in lines which time has not all effaced, or traced in colors which centuries have scarcely dimmed, we see here master and slave, kings, priests, and people, in all the occupations of ordinary life--a half-obliterated record of the pursuits, customs, habits, and tastes of a nation so remote that their place in the past cannot be even conjectured. We only know, from unmistakable evidence, that they came originally from Asia, and lived thus in the land of Egypt. Looking at these fragments of their skilful workmanship, thought goes back to an era almost fabulous! For who can call up even in fancy that period, when the Nile ran through its primitive landscape, and no foot of man had pressed its shore! When no cities stood in that fertile valley, and the first stone of the first pyramid was not yet laid! What a space of time must have elapsed between the first landing and the accomplishment of all these mighty labors! There is a mist over it all, gathered through uncounted centuries; and although science and research have thrown some light, it is not much more than the flickering torch with which one walks at midnight; a little is revealed near at hand, but all beyond is darkness.

Nevertheless, so much of interest is connected with Egypt that the least added knowledge is of value; for not only is it mentioned by the most ancient profane writers as mysterious in antiquity even to them, but it is the land of the Old Testament. Mounds of ruins, great in height and extent, on a branch of the Nile, yet mark the place of _Tanis_,[57] the _Zoan_ of Scripture, where, according to the Psalmist, Moses wrought those miracles which ended in the exodus of the Jews. On paintings found at Thebæ, the _No-Ammon_ of Scripture, are representations of slaves engaged in making bricks, with taskmasters superintending them; and although these may not be Jews, for brick-making was a universal menial occupation, it carries us back to the days when "bricks without straw" were demanded. The departure of the Israelites from bondage, B.C. 1491, was in the reign of Thotmes III., the Pharaoh of Scripture, which records his destruction in that day, when,

"Pharaoh went in on horseback with his chariots and horsemen into the sea; and the Lord brought back upon them the waters of the sea, ... neither did so much as one of them remain, ... and they (the Israelites) saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore."

It is remarkable that a drawing found at Thebes represents his son Amenoph, who succeeded him, as coming to the throne a mere child, under the guidance of his mother. But we digress too far.

Among other things learned by patient research, we perceive the admiration of the early Egyptians for flowers, and the care with which they cultivated them. "Flowers are represented on their dresses, chairs, boxes, boats, on everything susceptible of ornamentation; and flowers and leaves are painted on the linen found preserved in the tombs" (_Wilkinson_).

Pliny, in enumerating the flowers of ancient Egypt, says the myrtle is the most odoriferous; the reason, doubtless, for its being so often placed, as now found, about the dead. At present it is only cultivated in gardens. The other plants Pliny names as indigenous are the violet, rose, myosotis, clematis, chrysanthemum, and indeed nearly the whole catalogue of a modern garden. Figures on their paintings are decked with crowns and garlands of anemone, acacia, convolvulus, and some others. In the old tombs are found date-trees, sycamores, and the tamarisk.

There is a design at Thebes which represents the funeral procession of one evidently of rank. There are cars covered with palm branches, then female mourners, other personages, and next a coffin on a sledge decked with flowers.

In another very extensive and elaborate painting a similar procession is represented as crossing the _lake of the dead_, and going from thence to the tombs. The first boat contains coffins decked with flowers; in another is a high-priest, who offers incense before a table of offerings; another boat contains female mourners, others male mourners, and others chairs, boxes, etc.

"Gardens are frequently represented in the tombs of Thebes and other parts of Egypt, many of which are remarkable for their extent." (_Wilkinson._)

To better understand an ancient Egyptian garden, we will first look at their dwellings. In some few cities where the size and something like a plan can be distinguished, the streets are seen, some of them wide, but more very narrow. Their houses, garden-walls, public places, all but the temples, were of brick. The plan of the houses was similar to what now prevails in warm climates; the principal apartments were ranged round a courtyard, with chambers above them. In this court were a few trees, some boxes of flowering-plants, and a reservoir of water. Their houses were generally three stories in height.

"Besides these town-houses, the wealthy Egyptians had extensive villas, containing spacious gardens, watered by canals communicating with the Nile. They had also tanks of water in different parts of this garden, which served for ornament, and also for irrigation when the Nile was low. On these the master of the place amused himself and friends by excursions in a pleasure-boat."

Such a scene is represented in an old painting. The company are seated in the boat under a canopy; while slaves, or at least menials, walk along the bank and drag it after them, in a way similar to our canal navigation.

"So fond were the Egyptians of trees and flowers, and of gracing their gardens with all the profusion that could be obtained, that they exacted a tribute of rare productions from the nations tributary to them; foreigners from distant countries are represented as bearing plants, among other presents, to the Egyptian kings."[58]

To ancient Egypt we are doubtless indebted for the invention of artificial flowers, now so prominent in female attire. They were made there first from the papyrus, the plant of which paper was made. Some old writer relates that, when Agesilaus was in Egypt, he was so charmed with a kind of crowns and chaplets which he saw in use there, formed to resemble flowers, that he carried many of them home with him to Sparta. They were perhaps imitated in Greece and became universal, yet retained the name of the inventors; for Pliny says:

"Sic coronis e floribus receptis paulo mox sabiere quæ vocantur Ægyptiæ, ac deinde hibernæ, quum terra flores negat, ramento e comibus tincto."--_Plin._ xxi. 3.

Everything that pictures the domestic life of this people has such great interest that it is difficult to avoid digression. Every record of it expresses wealth and their peculiar tastes. Walls are profusely covered with various designs, doors are stuccoed to imitate costly wood, and their carved chairs have furnished symmetrical copies to modern art. Interspersed with these things, we have these traces of their flowers and gardens--a story of their rural pleasures in that day of glory, when they built the pyramids--that day which has no date! The hieroglyphics carved in stone, on which they doubtless securely relied for fame and a name to the end of time, yet cover the walls still standing of their superb temples; they are traced on tombs--on urns--on the rocks which surround cities--on the sarcophagi of the dead, even on the very linen which envelopes them--but they speak in a lost language! We comprehend only one brief epitaph--that a numerous and opulent people have entirely disappeared.

In the middle ages, Egypt was still noted for flowers and valuable aromatic shrubs and herbs. Cyrene in the north part was remarkable for the beauty of its adjacent country, which even then, says a writer, bore traces of having been in former times a perfect flower-garden.

In the time of Julius Cæsar, roses must have received particular attention and extensive cultivation, for we read that a ship-load of the most fragrant was sent as a gift to Cæsar. He received them, however, with the graceless remark that he could show finer ones in Rome.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] _Diod._ ii. 13

[50] Sir W. Jones.

[51] "It is a sin to think of the future."

[52] Mr. Vambéry's _Central Asia_.

[53] _Olivier de Sèvres._ Introduction to edition of 1804

[54] See translation by Sir W. Jones. London edition, 13 vols.

[55] Niebuhr's _Arabia_, vol. ii.

[56] Translation of Sir W. Jones.

[57] Anthon's _Anc. and Mediæval_, p. 735.

[58] See illus. Lond. ed. of Sir T. G. Wilkinson's _Anc. Egyp._

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.