CHAPTER XXIV

“CELUI-LA FAIT LE CRIME A QUI LE CRIME SERT.”

Mr. Yorke was at the Seaton House when the Western mail-coach came in Saturday morning, but Father Rasle was not a passenger. The mail brought a letter from him to Edith, however, and her uncle took it home to her immediately. She read aloud to the family his thanks for their invitation, and his reasons for declining it. He would drive over in his own buggy, he wrote, and would probably reach Seaton before ten o’clock in the forenoon. Edith had better come to see him in the morning, as he would then be more at leisure.

“Why, he must be here now!” Edith exclaimed, and ran up-stairs to prepare herself for the visit.

If Mrs. Yorke and her daughters felt any sense of relief on learning 745 that they had escaped the danger which would have threatened them had the priest been their guest, they did not express that feeling. They were quite ready, in spite of the danger, to repeat the invitation. Mr. Yorke alone sincerely regretted Father Rasle’s decision. Even Edith, who knew nothing of the action of the town-meeting, perceived that the priest’s place was with his own people.

“I have seen the sheriff and Dr. Willis, this morning,” Mr. Yorke said, after his niece had left the room, “and they both agree in thinking that Father Rasle will not be molested for coming here to stay over one Sunday. They are probably right. The great objection is to his settling here. Besides, he comes so quietly, his being here will not be widely known. Half of his own people do not know that he is coming.”

The two gentlemen named by Mr. Yorke were among the few who secretly condemned the conduct of the town, but did not publicly avow their sentiments, possibly because they knew that such a proclamation would harm themselves without doing any good to Catholics. Aside from the risk of violence to person or property, the physician would be accused of bartering his principles for an increase of practice, the politician of intriguing for the Irish vote. That any one could speak a good word for the church or the Irish from a disinterested motive, was not for a moment admitted.

The day was overcast, threatening rain; but to Edith Yorke it was as though spring and sunshine were at the door; for Mother Church, long exiled, bent once more toward her bereaved children.

“What I do not tell him voluntarily, he will ask,” she said to herself, thinking of Father Rasle. “He will point out what has been wrong in me, and reprove me once for all, and have done with it; and the fault that is not mine, he will lift off my shoulders. It is very heavy!” she whispered tremulously, and for a little while could say no more.

Edith was not breaking under her burden, but she was bending wearily, and the constant weight of it had taken away all her elasticity, not of spirits alone, but of body. While making her last examen of conscience, she felt too weak to kneel, and sank into an arm-chair instead, dropping her head back against the cushion, and closing her eyes. So seen, the change in her face was startlingly evident. Her manner was always so fresh, and her eyes and teeth lighted up her smile so brilliantly, whether she spoke or listened, or only looked, that one could not see that she was pale and thin. But the face that lay against the chair-back was very pallid, and even the hands stretched out on the arms of the chair looked sick.

“There are six sins that I am sure of, besides all the doubtful ones,” she said presently, sitting up. “That takes all my right hand, and the forefinger of my left hand. And now it is time to go.”

The shortest way to the house where Father Rasle was to stop led through the wood-path that Edith and Dick had taken when he left her after his first visit to Seaton. She recollected that walk as she passed again through the forest, and murmured a tearful “Poor Dick! where are you now?”

The trees were not, as then, bright with a prodigal splendor of color, and steeped in mellow sunshine. The gold was tarnished, the reds looked dark and angry, and the lowering sky seemed to press on the branches. That silence which, in the glory of autumn, expresses 746 contentment with finished work and wishes fulfilled, seemed now to mean only suspense or endurance. No leaf came floating trustfully down to give its earth to earth, and free the imprisoned gold into its native air; no gray squirrel was discovered gathering its store of beech-nuts for the coming winter; no bird flitted about to take one more look at its summer haunts. All was silent and deserted.

“You poor old woods! I know just how to pity you,” Edith said, looking about. “But cheer up! These are the days in which Nature tells over the sorrowful mysteries in her long rosary. Your garments are rent away, and the thorns are on your head; but after all is ended, then comes the glorious mystery of the spring resurrection. There! now I have exhorted you, you may exhort me. If you have anything to say, please to say it!”

And then the woods answered: “Child, I know my rosary all by heart, for I have said it six thousand times--six thousand times, child, and yet man will not listen. I tell of resignation and hope, and still his ears are dull. I tell him that in obedience is wisdom, and in wisdom contentment, and he does not cease to rebel. That is a sorrowful mystery over which I grew sad many a time before the cross became the sign of salvation. My very birds are wiser than the children of men; my beasts less cruel. Do not blush, little one! It was your ignorance that spoke, and not presumption. No fairer flower has bloomed in my shadow than your loving thought. Cheer up! Hearts will find the way when heads cannot; for when true love is blind, then an angel leads it.”

“I thank you!” Edith said after having listened. “It is very true, our teachers have a hard time with us. There is you, Mother Nature, with your book full of pictures, to catch our eyes; and the church, speaking our own language, to catch our ears; and conscience, with its two words only, yes and no, to catch our thoughts, and we fight against you all. I am very, very blind! Will some good angel lead me?”

She came out into East Street, and stood a moment on the spot where she and Dick had stood to look at that exquisite bit of meadow. The violet mist that had hung over it, like a parting soul over its body, had long since dissolved, and the little incarnate song that had floated there, yellow-winged and feathered, had been loosed into the heavenly orchestra. Half-way down the hill, a footpath led off to the left of the street, passed a few back-doors of houses on High Street, and ended at the door of the house where Father Rasle was. She knew by the buggy standing in the yard that he had come. If it had not been there, the smiling face of the woman who stood in the door would have told the story.

The woman stepped out to make way, and Edith ran in through the narrow entry to the square room that was both kitchen and parlor.

“O father, father! A hundred thousand welcomes!” And then, between grief and gladness, her voice was stopped.

“Dear child!” he said affectionately. “So you needed me very much?”

Several women were in the room. Some of them had arrived before the priest came, nearly all of them had made their confession, but not one could persuade herself to go away while she was allowed to remain. They meant to stay till he should bid them go, and even then wait for a second telling. To see their beloved pastor, to hear him speak, to 747 repeat over and over their demonstrative welcome, was a happiness which they would fain prolong.

The host and hostess were in their best attire. They had given up all other occupation to the supreme one of entertaining their priest. Their faces shone with a proud delight, their poor house was scrupulously clean, and, though Father Rasle was known to be abstemious, they had gone to the extent of their means for his entertainment.

The priest talked jestingly to the women to cheer them. “What is it that you cry about? But you need not tell me, for I know. It is because you have had nothing but hard words and the absence of your priest to bear. You cry because you were not blown up in the schoolhouse, or did not have your heads broken in the church. Or perhaps you were in hopes that I should come, and find you all strung up to the branches of trees. That is the finest fruit that a tree can bear--a martyr. The Bread of Life grew on the tree of the cross. Courage! They have not done with you yet. Make a good communion to-morrow, and afterward keep yourselves free from sin, and then, when I come again. I may have the happiness of finding all your bodies hung to trees, and all your souls in Paradise.

“Now, you two who have not been to confession will confess at once. Then I want every one of you to go home. I have to talk to that little girl.”

“That little girl” seated herself in the midst of these poor women, who smilingly made room for her--they were not jealous of her--and all turned their faces away from Father Rasle, and sat silently looking into the fire while the confessions were finished. And at last Edith found herself free to tell all her story to the priest.

The Catholics of Seaton could not, if they would, have concealed from their enemies that Father Rasle had come. Their joyful faces would have betrayed the secret if their lips had remained silent. All who could do so laid their work aside, and gathered in knots in the lane, or visited each other’s houses, to talk the matter over. They smiled and nodded to each other in the street with a significance which every one understood. Poor souls! to the cruel eyes that watched them their pathetic and sacred delight was a crime; their silence, treachery.

Toward evening the scattering visitors who had taken their way during the day to the house under the hill became a steady stream. It looked as though every Catholic in Seaton was going to confession. It looked, too, as though every Protestant in Seaton was willing that they should, for no one molested them, and the town was perfectly quiet. Those who had been anxious ascribed this quietude to the weather, and congratulated themselves that the threatening rain prevented any gathering of their persecutors.

At nine o’clock the crowd around the house where the priest was began to thin off. The road by which they sought their homes that night was a _via sacra_; for, newly shriven, and moved to the depths of their hearts, they carried with them, every one, the memory of an earnest exhortation to humility and forgiveness, and resignation to the will of God. At half-past ten only three or four women were left in the house, and the rain was beginning to fall outside. The confessions were over, Mrs. Kent had set out a late supper for Father Rasle, since he would have to fast till noon of the next day, and he was standing 748 to say good-night to the last of his visitors, who even now seemed unwilling to leave him. While he spoke to them, some one was heard running toward the house, and the next minute a man burst into the room, breathless, and bespattered with mud.

“They are coming!” he gasped out. “Run for your life, father!”

In the midst of the outcry that rose from those present, Father Rasle stood fixed and silent. Perhaps he was startled at the sudden and unexpected announcement; perhaps his color had changed; but there was no other sign of excitement. He calmly questioned the man, and learned that a mob of fifty or more masked men were rapidly approaching the house.

“And they will kill you, father,” the messenger concluded. “They don’t put on masks and come at night to break windows. They can do that in broad daylight. For God’s sake, save yourself!”

“They shall take me where I am,” the priest said firmly. “It is the will of God. I will not resist, and I have nowhere to fly to.”

“Here is hot water. Put on more!” cried one of the women. We’ll scald them!” And instantly they took the boiling tea-kettle from the fire, and put cold water to heat.

“Run over to the lane, and rouse the people!” cried another. “They’ll kill everybody in the town in your defence, father, if you say the word.”

“My children, I command you to use no violence, and make no resistance,” the priest said with authority. “If the people rise, it will be to their own destruction. Pray! It is all that you can do.”

They fell on their knees, weeping loudly as they heard the muffled tramp of many feet outside. But one said, “The cellar! the cellar!” and Mr. Kent, catching the priest’s arm, almost forced him toward the cellar-door. It was a pitiful hiding-place; but Father Rasle had no time for any thought except that, if there were a chance of escape, it was his duty to take advantage of it.

Scarcely had he disappeared, before the outer door was thrust open, and the room was filled with men wearing crape masks. They came in silently and swiftly, and as swiftly their companions outside surrounded the house, and stationed themselves at each window to bar all egress.

It was not in the hearts of these poor people to utter no word of reproach to the perpetrators of such an outrage, even though the priest had commanded their silence. Mrs. Kent pointed to one man after another, calling him by name. “I know you under your mask!” she cried. “And the Almighty would find you if I didn’t.”

No one replied to her. The only one of the mob who spoke was he who seemed to be their leader. “Where is the priest?” he asked.

Of course no one told him.

The lower rooms and the attic were searched, and there remained but one place. The hearts of the Christians died within them as the leader of the mob took a candle from the table, and went toward the cellar-door. A girl who was near the door caught up a chair to defend the passage, but another took it from her, and pulled her down to her knees. The next moment Father Rasle was led out amid the sobs and prayers of his children. He was very pale, but perfectly calm, and, like his divine Master, he uttered not a word. But as the mob surrounded and led him away, he cast one glance on those who knelt and stretched their clasped hands toward him, and raised his hand in silent benediction. That he was being led to death, neither he nor 749 they doubted. And they had no reason to doubt it. What violence, short of murder, had these men any reason to fear to do in open daylight? And might they not well believe that even the murderer could escape if he had only the law against him? This was not true only of Seaton. Many a Catholic priest in the United States, at that time, owed the preservation of his life, not to a fear of the law, but to a fear of Catholic vengeance.

They did not take their victim through the lane which Edith had followed, but through a shorter one leading to High Street. The family living in the house at the corner of this street were well-bred people, and, though Protestants, friends to Father Rasle. He had been received in that house as a guest; and now, seeing a light in one of the rooms, the instinct of preservation rose, and forced a cry from him. “Save me!” he cried out, calling the man by name.

Those nearest immediately silenced him with threats. If he spoke again, they said, they would kill him on the spot.

His voice had not been heard, and the faint hope faded as quickly as it had risen.

They avoided the thickly-settled part of the town, and took their way down one of the back streets leading to the river. Half-way down they met a man on horseback, carrying a lantern. He held the light up, and asked whom they had there.

“No one,” they replied, making haste to conceal their prisoner. “We have no one with us.”

Not till too late did Father Rasle know that he had missed another chance of escape, and that it was the sheriff who had met them.

The mob, feeling now secure of their prey, could indulge in revilings. “So they persecuted Jesus of old,” said one, with a laugh.

“Will the Virgin save you?” asked another.

But enough. One does not repeat the talk of those through whose lips the arch-fiend speaks without disguise. They reviling, and he praying, disappeared in the darkness and the storm.

Edith Yorke had passed that evening in her own room. It had been her custom to keep the eve of her communions in retirement, and to-night she had more than ordinary food for reflection. It was almost eleven o’clock when she began to prepare herself for bed, but she still heard her aunt and Clara up downstairs. Mrs. Yorke had not been well, and, unwilling that her husband should lose his rest, had sent him upstairs to sleep, and kept Clara with her. Edith was just thinking that she had a mind to go down and see how her aunt was, when she heard the small gate of the avenue open, and shut again instantly, as if some one had run through.

Her window was partly raised. She threw it up, and stepped out on to the top of the portico. Her heart divined the danger at once. Already the messenger was half-way up the avenue, and, before she could see that it was a woman, she heard her panting breath and half-exhausted voice: “Help! They are killing Father Rasle!”

A faintness as of death swept over Edith. She would have spoken, but could only sink on her knees and lean over the railing. Mrs. Yorke, too, had heard the click of the gate, and had opened the sitting-room window, and Edith heard her voice and Clara’s. To them the woman told her story.

“Do not speak loudly,” Mrs. Yorke said. “Mr. Yorke and Edith must not 750 know. They can do no good, and would only make trouble. Clara, go and wake Patrick, and do it quietly. I tell you, my poor woman, my husband could do nothing, and I shall not allow him to be called.”

Edith grew strong the moment she knew the truth. The woman had left the house before Father Rasle did, and a rescue might still be possible. She opened her door noiselessly, stepped out, and closed it after her; then fled down the back-stairs, out through the back-door, and down the avenue to the upper gate. Reaching the road, she flew over it with winged feet. At North Street, instead of going down toward the centre of the town, she crossed to a lumber-road leading to the river. The bridge was far below, but one who dared could go over here on the boom that kept the logs. Edith dared, considering the peril not worth a thought. When some bugle-toned reveille of the soul wakes up our slumbering faith, then miracles become possible.

The bank was high on the eastern side, and the descent was by two immense timbers, or masts, chained together and chained to the shore at the upper end, and to the boom at the lower. The inclination was steep, and those who walked through the air on that slippery bridge stepped warily even by day, timing their steps to the heavy vibrations of the timber. But Edith ran fleetly down, and sprang on to the swaying boom ankle-deep in water. Lumber-mills above and below sent out their long lines of red light through the misty darkness, and the noise of their saws was like the grinding of teeth. The logs knocked against each other with a dull thump as the river flowed, and here and there little spaces of water glistened. To slip into one of those black holes was death. You miss the boom, and step on a log instead, and, unless you are a practised log-walker--possibly, too, if you are--the log rolls, you go under, and there is an end of you. You cannot scream when you are under water; you cannot rise to the surface, for the logs keep you down, or close together and crush you, and no one can see you.

The boom did not reach straight but zigzagged across the river, the lengths chained together, but not closely, and hidden under water. In those spaces, the logs, trying to get through, pushed their bobbing ends up, and tempted the foot. More than once Edith’s foot was in that trap, but she did not sink till just as she reached the western bank. Then, as she went down, she caught an overhanging sapling, and drew herself to land, wet to the waist.

Irish Lane did not reach so far up, by about a quarter of a mile, and there was no road, the way being pasture and ledge. As Edith reached the upper end of the lane, some one else came into it from the lower end, next the bridge, and she heard a woman’s voice lamenting. She did not stop for lamentation, but ran from house to house, bidding them come out and save Father Rasle.

They gathered immediately, asking questions all in confusion, knowing not which way to go, but ready to follow her lead. Had they no rifles nor pistols? No; why should they have them? An Irishman’s weapon was his fist and a cudgel, and whatever he could catch by the way.

An Irishman, indeed, usually goes into battle first, and arms himself afterward.

But the enthusiasm which Edith’s words had kindled the other messenger soon quenched. It was too late to save him, she said. He had been 751 carried away, they knew not whither. Of course he must be dead long before that time. And he had bid them farewell, and commanded them to use no violence--to do nothing but pray.

Edith heard no more. The hand that, in her earnestness, she had laid on some one’s arm, slipped off, and she dropped to the ground without a word.

It was more than half-past eleven o’clock, and raining quite hard, and the wind had begun to rise. Broken and dispirited, the Catholics went into their houses again, but not to sleep. In one of these houses Edith opened her eyes, and saw about twenty persons gathered, some bending over her, others praying, others walking about and wringing their hands. She got up. “I wish that you would all kneel down, and say the litany of our Lord Jesus,” she said. “I am going to find Father Rasle.”

It needed only that something should be proposed for them to do. The man of the house took his prayer-book, and they all knelt. Others came in and filled the room, frightened children cowering close to their elders, and watching the door, as if they expected to see a foe enter.

Edith went slowly out. One of the women had kindly put a shawl over her shoulders, but she was quite unconscious of the storm. The town clock was striking twelve, and as she stopped to count its strokes, the chorus of praying voices reached her through the open door:

“Jesus, King of Glory, have mercy on us! Jesus, the Sun of Justice, have mercy on us!”

“O Sun of Justice!” she repeated, and lifted her clasped hands.

She went on, but heard again, in a pause of the storm:

“Jesus, most patient, have mercy on us! Jesus, most obedient, have mercy on us!”

“Ah! yes, patience! It is not for us to invoke justice,” she thought.

“‘Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord! for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.’”

The road was heavy with mud, and in the darkness she scarcely could find her way. Only the occasional twinkle of a lighted window told where it did not lie. She went wearily, for the spirit that had sustained her while there was hope failed now, and the storm grew every minute worse. In another lull there came again, more faintly:

“Jesus, the good Shepherd, have mercy on us! Jesus, the true Light, have mercy on us!”

At that tender petition the tears started forth, and she walked on weeping. They were indeed as sheep among wolves. The blast almost swept her off her feet, and in some sudden current snatched the sound of prayer, and brought it to her once more, clearly as if it had been cried in her very ears:

“Jesus, the Strength of martyrs, have mercy on us!”

The wind went sighing off to right and left, and opened a pathway of calm before her, in which she walked firmly, wiping her tears away, and taking courage again.

At the entrance to the lane, near the bridge, she paused and looked back. All was darkness there, but out of the dakness came faintly, “Lamb of God--” It was all she heard, and it was all! It meant patience, humility, immolation, and final triumph.

The cottage where Father Rasle had been was all alight when Edith came in sight of it, and as she approached the door a man came out and almost ran against her.

“Where is he?” she asked. 752

“Why, Miss Edith!” exclaimed Patrick Chester.

She only repeated her question.

“He has come back,” Patrick answered, “and Dr. Willis is with him.”

“Will he die?” she whispered.

“No, Miss Edith; but he has been vilely used. He was out two hours in this storm. He found his way back more dead than alive. He has been tarred and feathered.”

She cried out in disgust: “The brutes! They were, then, too base for murder!”

“You may say that,” Patrick answered. “But now come home. You can’t see him, you know.”

But she would not go till she had heard his voice, and Patrick was obliged to go back to the entry with her. The entry was filled with men and women, all listening for any news that might reach them. The door was ajar into the kitchen, where two or three men were admitted. The priest was with the doctor in an inner room.

“You had better drink this,” they heard Dr. Willis say; and Father Rasle’s voice replied: “No, doctor. It is after twelve o’clock, and I must say Mass to-morrow.”

“But, if you do not take it, you may be very sick,” the doctor persisted.

“I cannot take it,” Father Rasle said again. “My people must not be disappointed.”

“Thank God, it is really he!” Edith exclaimed. “Come, Patrick, we will go home now.”

Mrs. Yorke, fearing to alarm her husband, had put out the lights, and Edith, seeing the house all dark, took no precaution to conceal herself in approaching it. The first notice she had, therefore, that any of the family were awake, was her aunt’s frightened voice calling from the open window of the sitting-room, “Is it Edith? Has Edith been out?”

“Yes, but I am safe back, auntie,” she made haste to say; “and everything is right.”

Clara, Melicent, and Betsey were there. No one in the house slept but Mr. Yorke and the two Pattens, and, since the worst was probably over, it was not so much matter now if they waked. So a large fire was kindled, and Edith’s dripping garments taken off, while Patrick told his story. Then she also told where she had been, and smiled at their terror.

“But to cross the river on the logs and boom!” her aunt cried. “Why, child, your escape is a miracle! If you had fallen in, you would surely have been drowned.”

“I could not have drowned tonight,” Edith answered. “If I had fallen in, I should have set the river on fire.”

TO BE CONTINUED.

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THE DUTIES OF THE RICH IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY. 753

NO. II.

POLITICAL DUTIES.

In order to discuss clearly and profitably the various duties of the rich in Christian society, it is necessary to distinguish and divide them into distinct classes, and under the classes to separate particular duties from each other. We shall make our division on the principle of proceeding from the most general, or those which relate to society in its most extensive sense, to those which are less general, relating to society in its more specific and determinate sense, and finally to those which are the most particular, relating to separate portions and members of society, to the family and to the individual.

Society, in the most extensive sense with which we are concerned in these essays, is political society as organized in our own republic by federal, state, and municipal constitutions and laws. We venture to assume that it may be called a Christian society. It is so, however, in a wider, more general, and less determinate sense than the church, or than a purely Catholic state. We call it a Christian society, in this sense, that its fundamental moral principles have been derived from the Christian law; that its organic life is an outcome from Christian civilization. It does not, however, exclude from itself those who are not Christians, provided they conform to its moral principles and to the laws founded upon them. A Catholic citizen has duties to a state which is pagan. He has duties to a state which professes to be Christian, but adopts a schismatical or heretical perversion of Christianity as the religion of the state. But he has many more duties, because he stands in a much closer and more honorable relation to a state which is based on the moral principles of Christianity, and not identified with any ecclesiastical form which is hostile to his conscience. All Catholic citizens of our republic have political duties, modified, multiplied, and intensified by the extent and quality of the rights which they possess, and the greatness of the interests which they have at stake in the welfare of the commonwealth. The wealthy class have in common with their fellow-citizens all these duties, and additional ones peculiar to themselves.

The general reasons which prove this last proposition apply with equal force to all who belong to the wealthy class, even though they do not profess to be, in any sense of the term, Christians. The first of these reasons is, that the rich have succeeded in great measure to the advantages formerly possessed by the class of nobles. Even in those countries where the noble class still subsists, it is chiefly as a wealthy and educated class, and by the personal superiority of individuals belonging to it in the professions of arms and statesmanship, that it wields actual power. Moreover, the wealthy _bourgeoisie_ has gained ground upon it and invaded its formerly exclusive sphere, winning for itself, as in England, for instance, a 754 place in the real aristocracy. In our own country, where hereditary rank does not exist, it has a clear field. It has no special rights in the political order, and is not, therefore, strictly and completely the successor of the noble class in our ancestral British constitution. Yet, by the very fact of being a wealthy class, it does possess, and ought to possess, a certain pre-eminence, influence, and real though indirect power in public affairs. Men of superior intellectual ability, men of learning and letters, those who fill the higher professional positions, and office-holders, belong to the same class; partly because their position in many instances gives them at least a moderate share of wealth, but chiefly because they have power by their very position, and are able to influence and direct the disposition of wealth even when they do not personally possess it. By this very fact, they have duties to the commonwealth--they are not mere private persons, but public persons. They are important and distinguished members of the community, and, as such, have a greater responsibility to society and the state than others. This will not be disputed as a general statement. We do not intend to go into a minute and detailed exposition of all the particulars which it includes and comprehends. We confine ourselves, for the present, to certain specific duties of those who are rich in the literal and technical sense. And what we have to say of them is, that they ought to fulfil the duties which were annexed to the privileges of the class to which they succeeded, in so far as they have inherited those privileges.

However grossly feudal barons may have in a multitude of instances abused their privileges and their powers, the Christian idea of their state was always that their privileges and powers were entrusted to them for the common good. Sound political philosophy and common sense accord with the higher teaching of Christianity. It would be, therefore, a great change for the worse, a miserable regression in civilization, if a mere moneyed aristocracy, possessing privileges without corresponding duties, took the place of an aristocracy of birth, obliged by its nobility to render the most important services to the state. A mere _caste_ existing for itself, having no end but the selfish exaltation and enjoyment of its members, with no purpose except to live in fine houses, wear fine clothes, drink choice wines, drive about in sumptuous equipages, and finally get buried in great pomp under stately monuments, would be the most anti-Christian, the most despicable, the most odious of constitutions--and would be _succeeded by Communism_.

The rich have political duties: they are bound to be a bulwark and a tower of strength to the state, an ornament to the commonwealth not only bright, but useful; as a quaint epitaph of the seventeenth century designates a certain eminent citizen, “_of Hartford Town the Silver Ornament_.” We presuppose in those men of wealth of whom we speak, as a matter of course, honesty and probity. Swindlers, gamblers, dishonest speculators, bribe-takers, and the whole set of vampires swollen with the blood of the state and of individuals, are excluded. It is those who have inherited or acquired their wealth honestly who are able to serve the state. It is not necessary to go more into detail regarding the ways and methods in which they can do so. We are content merely to indicate their ability and obligation to do it in general terms, and pass on to other topics.

One of these other topics relates to a duty of Catholic citizens which 755 is properly classed under the head of political duties, but which we do not consider precisely as a duty to the state as such, but as one which Catholics owe to themselves, to their own personal rights of conscience, and to religion. We call it, nevertheless, a political duty, because it has to be performed by them as citizens, and in the exercise of their political rights. This is the duty of guarding and defending their liberty of conscience against any encroachment which may be attempted by any political party, or any legislation contrary to the letter or spirit of our fundamental law. This duty, which is one of all Catholic citizens indiscriminately, devolves especially on those whose wealth, education, intellectual power, or social and political position gives them a special opportunity and ability to fulfil it. Such persons are the natural chiefs and leaders of the Catholic laity; they are in the front rank; and they are bound to give the example, encouragement, and direction to the great body which they need and justly look for.

What can be more base and cowardly than for those who have a higher place in society than their fellows, and who have ordinarily risen from the ranks of the poor, laboring class of our Catholic people, to desert or regard with apathy that sacred cause for which their ancestors suffered and died, and for the sake of which they have sought an asylum in this free country, where they have found success and prosperity? Here they have found that inestimable boon, liberty of conscience, freedom to profess and practise their religion, and to provide for their posterity the means of doing the same. They are bound to use all the power and influence which God has given them to preserve and perpetuate these rights, and to protect the more helpless classes of their fellow-Catholics, the poor, the orphans, the sick, the outcasts of society, in the enjoyment of their religious rights. This includes a great deal. First and foremost at the present moment is liberty of education. Besides this, there are the rights of religious instruction and sacraments for those who are in the army and navy, in hospitals, asylums, and prisons, and in those institutions where children are justly or unjustly placed by the civil authority as vagrants. In short, everywhere, where the state takes hold of the individual, or exercises a right of control over any lesser corporation which takes hold of him, in such a way that there is a chance for tyranny over his conscience, and the violation or abridgment of his religious rights and liberty in the interest of sectarianism or secularism, it is the duty of the most eminent Catholic laymen to become, together with their bishops and priests, the champions of the oppressed.

Does any one say that there is no need of vigilance or action, because there is no danger that our rights will be disregarded or infringed? We think he is in error. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” And as one proof that Catholics in this republic have need to exercise this vigilance, we will cite an example of the disastrous consequences which have followed from the neglect of it in another republic.

The Confederation of the Swiss Cantons established and guaranteed in the most solemn and explicit manner the liberty of religion for Catholics and Protestants alike. Nevertheless, the liberty of the Catholic Church has been taken away in the most flagrant manner, even in the Catholic Cantons, by tyrannical federal and cantonal 756 legislation. Fifty religious establishments were suppressed at one blow. Since that time,--that is, since 1848--religious houses and schools have been forcibly suppressed at Ascona, Lugano, Mendrisio, and Bellinzona, and the diocesan seminaries at Pollegio and Aargau. Nearly all the Catholic schools in most of the mixed cantons have been changed into mixed schools, and in Thurgau they have been all suppressed. No priest can be admitted to the exercise of his functions who has studied at any Jesuit college. The catechism of the bishop in whose diocese Aargau is situated, the Bible History of Schuster, and the Moral Theologies of Gury and Kenrick, have been interdicted by the civil authority. Prohibitions have been issued against missions, retreats, the publication of the Jubilee, and the devotions of the Month of Mary. In Aargau, no youth can embrace the ecclesiastical state without the leave of the cantonal assembly, before which august and holy tribunal he must pass two examinations. In the Catholic canton of Ticino, the cantonal assembly arrogates to itself the right of changing the destination of religious foundations, fixing and regulating the election, installation in benefices, and official functions of beneficiaries, erecting new parishes and abolishing existing ones. The _placet_ of the civil authority is requisite for all ecclesiastical decrees of the bishops and the Pope under penalty of fines varying from five to five thousand francs. In several cantons civil marriage is obligatory. In short, the Catholics of Switzerland are in an enslaved and insupportable condition, as is proved by a memorial of the whole body of the Swiss Episcopate, in which these and many other particulars are given.[158]

The profession of liberalism affords no guarantee to Catholics against the most flagrant and cruel oppression. Neither is there any security in the mere fact that the form of government is democratic or republican. Everywhere, as well in countries called Catholic as in those which are not, under republican as well as under monarchical constitutions, the price of liberty is unceasing vigilance and activity. Catholics must rely entirely on themselves, and not delegate the office of protecting them to any party or ruling power. This is necessary in the United States as well as in Switzerland. We do not ascribe to the majority of the non-Catholic citizens of our federal republic or of any state a disposition to abridge our liberty. But it is not the majority which really governs. Principles, maxims, arguments, watch-words, measures, are initiated by a few persons. Majorities are carried along by leaders, orators, writers for the press, they know not why, how, or toward what end. There is danger, therefore, though not from the American people, from the masters of state-craft, but from restless, revolutionary spirits, from violent sectarian leaders, from ambitious demagogues, from parties which may start up and be violently impelled by sudden excitements.

The conclusion of all this is, that the _élite_ of the Catholic laity are bound to understand the sound Catholic principles of public law and right which are involved in the relation of liberty of conscience and religion to the sovereignty of the state, under our American republican institutions. They are bound to instruct those who are uneducated in their rights and obligations as citizens. They are bound to set before the public the grounds and reasons of Catholic rights, 757 as based on the natural and divine law, and the American constitution. And they are bound to exclude unprincipled, ignorant demagogues from the leadership of the Catholic people by taking it themselves, and in that position opposing with all their might every political scheme for giving the state a usurped power over conscience and religion. Those who are incapable of doing anything else in this direction can at least aid by their wealth the Catholic press in diffusing true and just ideas, and advocating Catholic rights.

[158] See _Dublin Review_ for October, 1871.

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TRAVELS IN THE AIR.

About ninety years ago, on the memorable 21st of November, 1783, the Parisian world had a sensation which can never be repeated. On that day, men for the first time dared to trust themselves in a balloon, which was to be freed entirely from the earth, and take, as we may say, its chance as to the time and manner in which it was to return to it. One can easily imagine the intense excitement and admiration which must have filled the hearts of the spectators, and the feelings of triumph, though mingled, it must needs have been, with some apprehension, on the part of the occupants of the car, the Marquis d’Arlandes and M. Pilâtre de Rozier, when they for the first time, trusting themselves to the care of their new machine, invented only a few months previously, were carried by it into the unknown region of the clouds. Fortunately, this first free ascent was a success; if it had not been, who knows how long further experiments in aeronautics might have been postponed by prohibitory laws or by the fears of men, both of which would certainly have been quite justifiable? As it was, this first excursion served as a stimulus to other attempts, and the number which have been made since then is beyond all estimate. It is certain, however, that the immense majority of them have been every way as successful as this first one was, and many, of course, very much more so. The danger of balloon ascents is really very trifling; accidents occur hardly once in a hundred times, and very seldom, when they do occur, involve the loss of life. It is hardly more dangerous to travel by balloon than by railway or steamer, and certainly very much more agreeable.

If our reader desires a most convincing proof of this last statement, we cannot do better than to refer him to a book bearing the title which stands at the head of this article, and imported by Lippincott & Co. We must confess to having become somewhat enthusiastic on the subject of balloons since reading this book, and hardly think any one else who even looks at it can fail to have something of the same feeling. By a mere glance at it one is introduced to quite a new world, and to read it is the next best thing to going up above the clouds one’s self. It is illustrated by six beautiful chromo-lithographs, and has a hundred and twenty other illustrations.

Mr. Glaisher, the editor, is a thoroughly scientific man, possessed of 758 remarkable steadiness and coolness, as his name would imply, and as the accounts of his voyages sufficiently demonstrate. He is one of the best meteorologists in the world, and it is in the interests of science that his ascents have been made. But, together with the accounts of his own excursions, he gives others by three French gentlemen, also accomplished aeronauts, and whose enthusiasm on the subject almost equals our own, and practically perhaps surpasses it, for we find that M. Tissandier seems to have had no objection to starting from Calais when the wind was blowing straight out toward the German Ocean. These gentlemen, MM. Flammarion, De Fonvielle, and Tissandier, just named, often made long journeys, landing at a point quite remote from that of starting--a thing almost out of the question for Mr. Glaisher, for, as he pathetically remarks, “whatever part of England we start from, in one hour we may be over the sea.” His endeavor rather was, in the short time allotted him, to rush for the upper regions of the atmosphere, in order that he might there, as well as on the way up and down, make observations on temperature, electricity, magnetism, sound, solar radiation, the spectrum, ozone, direction of wind (for this, as before remarked, his opportunity was limited), actinic effects of the sun, density of the clouds, etc., and he consequently went up quite beleaguered with instruments, as the illustration “Mr. Glaisher in the car” clearly shows. The effects of great elevation on the human constitution naturally did not escape his attention, nor that of his companion and aeronaut, Mr. Coxwell; he says that, on one occasion, “at the height of three miles and a half, Mr. Coxwell said my face was of a glowing purple, and higher still, both our faces were blue. Truly a pleasing state of things!”

But three miles and a half was a small elevation for Mr. Glaisher. In several of his ascents, he rose to the height of about five miles, on one occasion meeting with dense clouds all the way up. Certainly such clouds are not common, except in “our old home”; but such a day as that must have been even an Englishman could hardly have called “fine.” His third ascent, on September 5, 1862, was the most interesting of all; in this he rose to the astonishing height of _seven miles_, or 37,000 feet. Probably our readers have generally been accustomed to see in their atlases, by the side of the enormous congeries of mountains which usually forms the frontispiece, a small picture of a balloon, with “highest point ever reached by man,” or words to that effect, appended to it, at the elevation of 23,000 feet; with a reference to the name of Gay-Lussac. But this ascent, made on September 15, 1804, is entirely insignificant now, compared with this stupendous one, to a point a mile and a half above the summit of the Himalaya Mountains, into regions where only one-quarter of the atmosphere lay above the aeronauts, and where it was rarefied about in the same proportion. If their faces were blue at four miles, what were they now?

The account of this ascent is very exciting, and at the same time places Mr. Glaisher’s qualities as an observer in the most favorable light. In company with Mr. Coxwell, who was his pilot as usual, he left Wolverhampton at about one o’clock, and attained the height of five miles in about fifty minutes. Think of that, compared with the trouble of ascending an Alpine peak, where, after many hours of most 759 exhausting labor, one can only get three miles above the sea! And Mr. Glaisher, instead of having to strain every muscle in his body, was able to sit quiet, and calmly observe the barometer, thermometer, etc. The balloon was, however, revolving so rapidly that he failed in taking photographic views. Mr. Coxwell had more exhausting work in the management of the balloon, and was panting for breath when they were three miles high. For two miles more, however, Mr. Glaisher “took observations with comfort.” But, “about 1h. 52m., or later,” he made his last reading; after this he could not see the divisions of the instruments, and asked Mr. Coxwell to help read them. They probably were beginning to think it was time to see about coming down; but in order to do so, the valve-rope had to be pulled, and it was caught in the rigging above, owing to the rotatory motion of the balloon. The thermometer was about ten degrees below zero; Mr. Glaisher was fast becoming insensible, and Mr. Coxwell’s hands were almost useless from numbness. Still, something had to be done, for they were rising a thousand feet every minute; and accordingly, Mr. Coxwell climbed into the ring of the balloon, and pulled the rope with his teeth. He has the proud distinction of having been five or six feet higher above the earth than any other man, for of course they immediately began to descend. On coming back to the car, he found his companion quite insensible; after a few minutes, Mr. Glaisher came to himself, as they sank from that terrible elevation, to which it is probably impossible for man safely to ascend. But, like a thoroughly scientific man, as he is, he had observed his sensations to the last. First, his arms and legs gave out; and his neck became weak, so that his head fell over to one side; he shook himself, and noticed that he “had power over the muscles of his back, and considerably so over those of the neck.” This suddenly left him, however, and the sense of sight immediately afterward; as for hearing, he could not tell, as there was probably nothing to hear at that height. He fell back helpless, resting his shoulder on the edge of the car. The next words he heard were “temperature” and “observation”; it can hardly be supposed that these were the first words Mr. Coxwell employed to rouse him, though they were probably the best. Then “the instruments became dimly visible.” Immediately on recovering, he says: “I drew up my legs, which had been extended, and _took a pencil in my hand to begin observations_.” Is not this characteristic?

Perhaps it may not be clear how it can be proved that the height of seven miles was attained on this occasion. It is, of course, well known that the elevation of a balloon is determined, as that of a mountain-peak usually is, by the barometer; and this method is very accurate, though, if there be a rapid motion upward or downward, the barometer may lag a little. Still, it gives the absolute height, and also the rate of ascent or descent, with sufficient accuracy for all practical purposes. By this instrument Mr. Glaisher had found that, just before he became insensible, they were 29,000 feet high, and ascending at the rate of 1,000 feet a minute; when he recovered after the lapse of thirteen minutes, they were 26,000 feet high, and descending 2,000 feet a minute. These data are sufficient to determine the greatest height attained; but Mr. Coxwell also, on coming down from the ring, happened to glance at the aneroid barometer, and 760 afterward remembered pretty nearly the direction of its hand; its reading confirms the conclusion got by the other method. A minimum thermometer agreed in the same result. They landed safely at about twenty minutes to three, the whole excursion having taken only a little over an hour and a half. The illustration called “Mr. Glaisher insensible at the height of seven miles” is one of the most remarkable in the book, and most readers will probable turn to it repeatedly. It represents the supreme and critical moment; Mr. Coxwell is in the ring, and is just loosening the valve-rope. His hands, his companion tells us, were black when he came down; and Mr. Glaisher generally means what he says.

It is not every one who will care to compete with these gentlemen in making lofty ascents; and it is not probable that they had any merely ambitious motives in undertaking to soar so high. Mr. Glaisher’s enthusiasm for and interest in science are perfectly genuine; and his results, which are of course only hinted at in these popular accounts which he gives of his excursions, are very valuable. It is not likely that any one else could have accomplished so much as he did. Still, though they were not led on by ambition, their achievement on the occasion just mentioned is one which must discourage others who may be; for it would be very difficult and dangerous to attempt to do purposely what they did only as it were accidentally, and which they would not have done had they known its peril. There are, it is true, some remarkable effects, such as the blackening of the sky (as well as of the hands of the aeronauts), which cannot be so well attained at lower altitudes; but still, substantially the same can be enjoyed at heights of four or five miles, and really the most beautiful ones are presented as soon as we rise above the clouds. The effect seems to us, judging from the illustrations, to be especially magical when the canopy (or carpet, as it may more properly be called from our new point of view) is complete, so as to reach to the horizon, and shut out all view or idea of the earth completely. Many of the pictures illustrate this well. One would seem to lose all sense of height or of being in a dangerous position; the quiet sea of clouds beneath can never seem very distant, owing to the impossibility of judging of the real dimensions of its rolling waves; and these waves seem, by their apparent solidity yet softness, almost to invite a fall. And one seems to be entirely in a new state of existence; the change is more complete than could be obtained by travelling to the other side of the globe; and yet it can be realized in the space of five or ten minutes on any ordinary cloudy day. There above, with the dark-blue sky overhead, with the glorious bright sun in it lighting up the masses of white vapor below, far from all the dust, noise, and confusion of the lower sphere, what an exhilaration must the aeronaut feel, if indeed his eye is not entirely employed on the divisions of his barometer and the pages of his note-book! The idea of such a vision is almost enough to make one’s enthusiasm for ballooning equal that of M. de Fonvielle, who, however, was willing to put up even with lower elevations; for he says that in his younger days he “was ready to be shut up in a sky-rocket, provided that its projectile power were carefully calculated, and that it were provided with a parachute”! If the sky-rocket could only be sent above the clouds--but, on the whole, one would probably be calmer, enjoy the view more thoroughly, and take in 761 its various features better, in the car of our present beautiful and majestic, though somewhat unmanageable, vehicle.

And yet in all respects the balloon is not unmanageable. Its rise and fall can be regulated with great exactness; and by means of the pretty invention of the guide-rope, due to the celebrated English aeronaut, Mr. Green, its final fall to the earth, if a violent wind is not blowing, can be made very easy. This rope hangs down three or four hundred feet below the car, and as it touches the ground, and then coils up upon it, the weight and the descending power of the balloon are continually and gradually lessened. And by parting with gas or ballast, the ascent and descent can always be most carefully adjusted; so much so, indeed, that one has to be somewhat careful. Once M. Tissandier, on making a second ascent with no more ascending power at his disposal, was obliged to regret that he had not gone without his breakfast; the least little alteration of weight affects the equilibrium so much that the loss of a chicken-bone which he thoughtlessly once threw out, he says, “certainly caused us to rise from twenty to thirty yards.” One can certainly rise or fall without much difficulty; the only danger is that too much gas may escape after the ballast is exhausted, or when there is only a small supply on hand, and that the descent may be too rapid. Mr. Glaisher twice at least came down so hard as to break nearly all his instruments; but once this was in a manner intentional, for the wind had been drifting him out toward the sea, and on discovering through an opening in the clouds that it was almost directly under him, he had only the alternative of coming down with a rush or being drowned. On another occasion, M. de Fonvielle descended with a party in the _Giant_ balloon in a rapid and inevitable manner, owing to the escape of gas; but records, besides the breaking of the instruments, only that “one of the travellers had his face covered with blood, another was wounded by a thermometer, and a third complained of a pain in his leg.” One curious danger there is, however, about even a quiet descent which is worth noticing. The last-named gentleman had just made a very successful excursion without an aeronaut; and, on coming down, his grapnel had caught in a tree near the edge of a forest. The sequel shall be in his own words:

“At this moment, I was deceived by an optical illusion which might have had dangerous results, and I call the attention of my readers to it in case they may ever be tempted to undertake the management of an aerostat. Let them never get out of the car till it is fairly landed upon the soil. Let them be perfectly sure that no solution of continuity exists between the car and the earth before they think of stepping out of it, for their eyes, accustomed to the immense proportions of things above the clouds, have lost their power of appreciating dimensions. Objects appear so small on the earth’s surface during a descent that great trees look like mere blades of grass. At this moment I believed we had descended upon heath bushes, and we were at the top of the high trees. I had actually got one leg out of the car, and was preparing to leap down!”

If a strong wind is blowing, it is not so easy to descend. The horizontal motion of the balloon is beyond the control of gas or ballast. MM. de Fonvielle and Tissandier set out once in a high wind; they came down on a plain, were dragged across it, and over the tops of some trees, which broke and crashed as they passed; again they rushed over some ploughed ground, where they were finally rescued by 762 some peasants. What was their velocity during this remarkable trip? On consulting maps and watches, they found they had come forty-eight miles from Paris in thirty-five minutes, or the rate of eighty miles an hour; in the air, however, they probably travelled faster, and in the last five minutes of “dragging” not so fast.

But “dragging” is not the worst thing that can happen when there is a high wind. Let aeronauts beware how they attempt to anchor in such circumstances before coming tolerably near to the ground. The grapnel was once let out at the height of about sixty yards when they were skimming along with great velocity, and at first took no hold, but finally caught in the edge of a small pond. The wind, however, took revenge on the balloon, which now suddenly refused to obey its impulse:

“I was busily engaged,” says M. Tissandier, “in stowing away the loose bottles, that might have injured us seriously in case of bumping, when I heard a sharp cracking sound, and Duruof [their pilot] immediately cried out, ‘_The balloon has burst!_’ It was too true; the _Neptune’s_ side was torn open, and transformed suddenly into a bundle of shreds, flattening down upon the opposite half. Its appearance was now that of a disc surrounded with a fringe. We came to the ground immediately. The shock was awful. Duruof disappeared, I leaped into the hoop, which at that instant fell upon me, together with the remains of the balloon and all the contents of the car. All was darkness; I felt myself rolled along the ground, and wondered if I had lost my sight, or if we were buried in some hole or cavern. An instant of quiet ensued, and then the loud voice of Duruof was heard exclaiming: ‘Now come from under there, you fellows!’ We hastened to obey the voice of the commander, and found that the car had turned over upon us, and shut us up like mice in a trap!”

What next? They had fallen from a height of about two hundred feet, and yet were not much bruised: but the very wind that had caused their disaster helped them out of it; in fact, their balloon was transformed into a kind of gigantic kite, and let them down pretty easily.

But let us get up above the clouds again. That is the place really to enjoy life. Once there, one hardly thinks about coming down or its difficulties; the earth is out of sight, and almost out of mind. We are sailing along, perhaps at a quicker rate than that of an express train; but the motion is as imperceptible as that immensely more rapid one of the magnificent planetary projectile on which we are whirling through space. For the clouds are moving with us, and, though they are breaking up and changing their forms, we cannot see that they move as a mass. Occasionally, through a break, we may see the earth, or be saluted from it, as M. Flammarion once was to his great surprise, by cries of “A balloon! a balloon!” when he was quite unaware of there being any hole through which the balloon could be seen. Sounds, by the way, will go up much better than they will come down; the reason of this is the lesser density of the air above. Of course we feel no wind, for the wind is taking us with it: so that even the cold at any ordinary height and at any season usual for ballooning is not troublesome. Sometimes, indeed, it is warmer aloft than below; on the occasion of the eighty-mile-per-hour voyage, just mentioned, the thermometer was actually at eighty-two degrees at the height of a little over half a mile, while below it stood at fifty-five. The balloon is as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar; M. Flammarion assures us that he once filled a tumbler with water till it was brimming over, so that not another drop could be added; but not a drop was spilled 763 by the movement of their vehicle, though it was travelling with the speed of a locomotive, and alternately rising and falling to the extent of several hundred yards.

His account of a journey from Paris into Prussia, made in a beautiful moonlight summer night, gives a most delightful idea of this most agreeable of all modes of travelling. They left Paris about two hours before sunset, and had a fine afternoon sail. The weather was cloudy, and rain came on at half-past nine; but what of that? One is quite superior to rain in a balloon, or, if not, may easily become so. They throw out a little ballast, and rise above the rain-cloud. The cloud soon breaks away, finding that it cannot embarrass their movements, and the country beneath becomes visible. They see a bright light in a house, and hear the sound of dance music played by an orchestra. It is a ball. They cross the frontier at Rocroi. The lines of its fortifications are dimly seen in the moonlight. No examination of passports or luggage for them. (On another excursion, however, we are told, when they were sailing along near the ground, two gendarmes rode up in hot haste, calling out, “_Vos passe-ports, messieurs!_” but were dismissed with a polite request to step up and verify them, accompanied by a shower of ballast.) The moon comes out brightly as they enter Belgium. They sail over the Meuse, and M. Flammarion greets enthusiastically the home of his youth:

“Beautiful river, I welcome thee! Near thy banks, on the old mountain which overlooks thy fertile plain, I was born. Little did I think, whilst playing some childish game within sound of the murmur of thy ripple, that I should some day cross over thy stream suspended to this light, aerial globe! Thy peaceful waters flow towards the Rhine and the North Sea, into which they fall, and are lost for ever. Thus is it with our own brief existence, flowing towards the regions of cold and mystery, to vanish some day in that unknown ocean into which we must all descend.”

Certainly, it is a pity that he takes such a gloomy view of life.

The pilot, M. Godard, rouses him from his reverie.

“See, _mon ami_, how beautiful this is! Do not dream of days gone by. Are not those the lights of Namur, some six or eight leagues distant? And see, there is Huy, and beyond it again Liège! Here we are right over Belgium, and we may cross a corner of Holland, perhaps, before we enter Prussia!”

The Belgian blast-furnaces soon light up the landscape beneath them, and the noises of the workshops, mingled with the deep sound of the river, rise to their ears.

The dawn begins to break. In fact, through the whole night a faint gleam of twilight has been seen in the north; but now it begins to take effect on the clouds and air around them. The light increases.

“Although the air above is more or less veiled by light mists, we can distinguish the country before three o’clock as clearly as at mid-day. Our course follows the edge of some considerable forests situated on our right hand. These plains (are they plains?) have a very different aspect from those on French territory. In place of the regular patches of fields which lie upon the surface in parallel lines, the country here is composed of fields of every size and form, like the various provinces on a colored map; most of which are surrounded by hedges as they are in England.”

They are wafted along into Prussia. On the right, Luxemburg and Trèves are visible; on the left, Holland, even to the shore of the North Sea.

“The Rhine flows along with its silver ripple in the distance.... 764 All nature is silent, save from time to time the timid chirping of some little bird; when, suddenly, a vast golden streak of light breaks forth from the east, and caresses the highest clouds of the atmosphere, clothing them in rosy and golden tints.”

The illustration representing this sunrise is magnificent, as the sight must have been in the highest degree. What could be more inspiring than to be borne along amid the glorious clouds of morning toward the rising sun--the cheering influence of whose beams the balloon itself seems to feel, as, dried and expanded by their heat, it rises proudly into the sky--with the Rhine glistening before us, and the green plains and forests of Germany inviting us to continue our voyage?

They hear the sound of church-bells, and, soon after, that of cannon.

“From minute to minute the voice of this gracious apparatus of civilization and progress growled among the clouds. It was the artillery of Mülheim preparing itself for the next war.

“The ancient city of Cologne forms beneath us a regular semicircle soldered to the left bank of the Rhine. Unless one examined it attentively, it might be taken for a moderate-sized snail sticking to the thin branch of a tree.”

Poor M. Flammarion thought he was going to enjoy his sail some time longer, perhaps all day. But his inexorable aeronaut thought differently. There was very little ballast and no breakfast; it was probable that the wind would rise, and that they would come to grief. His word was law; so the valve-rope was pulled, the French flag run up, and down they came at Solingen, near Düsseldorf, 330 miles from Paris, which distance had been accomplished in twelve hours and a half. The good-natured Germans rushed up to help them; the greatest difficulty was to prevent them from smoking near the balloon.

This journey is a fair example of what balloon travelling may be in skilful hands. Of course it has its disadvantages. The principal one is obvious; that you can only go just where the wind will take you; but there is an advantage corresponding to this in the quietness and steadiness of the motion, and it is not at all improbable that, with the rapid advances which are being made continually in the science of meteorology, the laws of winds will be ascertained sufficiently to enable the aeronaut to find one which will carry him in the general direction in which he wants to go, on most occasions, by choosing a proper elevation. Certainly this can often be done, as in the case of M. Tissandier’s trip from Calais over the German Ocean. A lower breeze brought them back to land. The difficulty remaining is that of changing our elevation. On the present system, this requires a loss of gas or ballast, which cannot be kept up indefinitely. An ingenious plan has been proposed by Gen. Meusnier--to have a double balloon, one outside the other: the inner one is filled with gas, the space between the two with air; into the outer one more air is forced by an air-pump when we wish to descend, and allowed to escape when we wish to rise. The compressed air is itself heavier than the air surrounding, and the compressed gas in the inner balloon is also less buoyant than before. This is applying the principle of the bladder of the fish to aerostatics. The _Giant_ was constructed on this plan, but it does not appear that the practicability of using it in this way was ever tested.

“Still, notwithstanding the great utility and advantages of the balloon pure and simple, we certainly shall never be able to lay out our 765 course with it with all the accuracy that could be desired, and it is probable that we shall never be able to bring it down precisely at the point we wish to reach. To accomplish this, we must have something that will go against the wind; we must have something which takes hold on the air; we must, in short, be able to fly. It should be noticed, however, that a flying machine, when invented, will not necessarily supersede the balloon; it will have its advantages, and the balloon will have its own; probably, for mere pleasure travelling, the latter will always be preferable, or certainly would be except for the inconveniences attending its landing, especially when the wind is high.

It may be said, perhaps, as above, “a flying machine, when invented”; for it really seems as if some practical invention of this kind must before long be realized. It can hardly be doubted that the bird must be the model, to some extent, of its construction; and it would seem to be worth while to take instantaneous photographs of birds in flight, in order to discover what really are the positions which the wing successively assumes. The photographs of this kind, of men walking, which have been taken, told us a great deal which we did not know before about a movement which seems so very familiar and easy. It seems probable, with regard to flying, as M. Flammarion intimates, that the impulse is a very sudden one, at least during a part of the stroke; so that the thin resisting medium has, as it were, a certain kind of solidity and firmness.

Various machines for flying have been made, and a tolerable success attained. One is lately reported in Philadelphia. There seems to be no impossibility in taking up enough force, at least by the aid of balloon power, to give a considerable velocity in a calm to our air-ship; but it may as yet be doubted whether it would be able to contend against the ordinary velocity which winds have even a short distance above the surface of the earth. In Mr. Glaisher’s ascents, the wind was blowing, on the average, four times as fast above as below. This could generally be avoided by keeping near the ground.

But after all, what aspiring man really longs for is not to have a flying machine to carry him, but to have his own wings, and some power strong enough to move them. With the motive powers known at present, this seems to be beyond our reach; but who knows? Heat and motion are now understood to be convertible, and perhaps the sun’s rays may yet be found powerful enough to raise us into the air. But then--look out for clouds. The sun melted the wings of Icarus; the shade would melt ours.

Flying may yet be realized; and it is well enough to look forward to what may be in store in the future; but let us also not undervalue what we already have. The beauty of the form of the balloon necessarily implies a certain perfection in it, as the majesty of a full-rigged line-of-battle ship clearly shows a perfection which no actual results gained by cheese-box Monitors can ever gainsay. Our present air-ship is a noble product of human genius, and its resources are by no means yet exhausted.

Even a captive balloon is not a bad affair, and may be used for travelling purposes, though it may seem a contradiction to say so. A “captive” is simply one which is fastened by a rope so that it cannot ascend above a certain height. If fastened to a fixed object, it serves only as a means to take people up for a view or to make 766 scientific observations: but if attached to a moving body, it is a very pleasant vehicle to ride in, or could easily be made so. Our French aeronauts were once pulled in this way through the streets of a town, and at another time were towed for some distance at the height of five hundred feet by a number of their excitable countrymen. But it must be acknowledged that on the whole a captive is not so pleasant to ride in as a free balloon. Besides the feeling of exultation accompanying a free ascent, it also has the advantage of being really a great deal more comfortable. The captive, being restrained by the rope, feels the full force of whatever wind there is, and is moreover apt to be tipped over considerably when the breeze is strong. Nevertheless, going up in one is a tolerably popular amusement when the opportunity is offered, though hardly enough so to make it profitable for the proprietors. This is one of the miserable difficulties about the pursuit of science, that experiments cost something, and often it is very troublesome to raise the necessary funds. Free ascensions have, however, been common enough for a good deal more to have been accomplished in the way of experiment and observation than has usually been the case, and Mr. Glaisher’s example deserves to be generally followed. The balloon itself may do a good deal towards the investigation of the laws of the atmospheric currents, the knowledge of which would be so useful for its own guidance, as well as in answering questions concerning storms and climate. Mr. Glaisher, on January 12, 1864, met with a warm current of air from the southwest, more than half a mile in depth; and he considers that this may, perhaps, be an aerial Gulf Stream, and increase the warming effect which that celebrated current no doubt produces on the western and northern coasts of Europe.

But we must not dwell longer on his scientific results, or those of his friends on the other side of the Channel. In fact, it is time that we should come down from the clouds, and occupy ourselves with the affairs of this base and grovelling lower world. We should like to do it gradually, but, as is the case with the balloon itself, our descent must needs be accompanied by something of a shock. It is with difficulty that we can persuade ourselves to quit, even in imagination, those magnificent regions so near to us and yet practically so far away; which all of us could see even now in ten minutes if our balloon was ready--would that it were!--and which, if the art of flying progresses with due rapidity, we may yet see some time before we die.

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THE LEPER OF THE CITY OF AOSTA. 767

BY THE COUNT XAVIER DE MAISTRE.

“_Le Lépreux de la cité d’Aosta_ est une larme, mais une larme qui coule toujours!”--LAMARTINE.

“Ah! little think the gay, licentious proud Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround:-- Ah! little think they, while they dance along, How many pine!--how many drink the cup Of baleful grief!--how many shake With all the fiercer tortures of the mind!”--THOMSON.

The southern part of the city of Aosta is now nearly deserted, and appears to have been never very thickly peopled. Cultivated fields and meadows may be seen, hedged in on one side by the ancient bulwarks which the Romans raised as a wall, and on the other by garden fences. This solitary spot, however, affords wherewithal to interest the traveller. Near the gate of the city are the ruins of an old castle, in which, if popular tradition is to be relied on, Count René de Chalans, infuriated by jealousy, left his wife, the Princess Marie de Braganza, to die of hunger, in the fifteenth century. Hence the name of _Bramafan_, which signifies the _cry of hunger_, given to this castle by the people around. This tradition, which may be disputed, gives an interest to the ruins in the eyes of people of sensibility.

A hundred steps further on is a square tower, built of the marble that once covered the antique walls beside it. It is called the Hold of Terror, because it is commonly believed to be haunted. The ancient dames of Aosta can still remember seeing a tall woman robed in white, with a lamp in her hand, issue from the tower on dark nights.

About fifteen years ago, this tower was repaired by the order of the government, and surrounded by an enclosure, for the purpose of lodging a leper, through fear of contagion if left at large, and at the same time affording him every comfort his sad condition allowed. The Hospital of St. Maurice was ordered to supply his wants. It furnished him with some articles of furniture and the implements for cultivating a garden. Here he lived for a long time, left completely to himself, and never seeing any one, except the priest who came from time to time to administer the consolations of religion, and the man who, every week, brought him his provisions from the hospital.

During the war in the Alps in the year 1797, a soldier, who was in the city of Aosta, happened to pass by the leper’s garden. The gate was ajar, and he had the curiosity to enter. He saw a man in a simple garb, leaning against a tree, as if lost in profound meditation. At the sound of the officer’s steps, the recluse, without turning around or looking up, cried in a sad tone: “Who is there? and what do you wish?”

“Excuse a stranger,” replied the soldier, “whom the attractive appearance of your garden has induced to commit an indiscretion, but who by no means wishes to disturb you.” 768

“Do not come any nearer,” replied the inmate of the tower, motioning him back with his hand. “Come no nearer: you are in the presence of an unfortunate being afflicted with leprosy.”

“Whatever may be your misfortune,” replied the traveller, “I shall not go away. I have never shunned the unfortunate. But, if my presence annoys you, I am ready to withdraw.”

“You are welcome,” replied the leper, suddenly turning around. “Remain, if you have the courage after looking at me.”

The officer remained for some time motionless with astonishment at the frightful aspect of the unfortunate man so completely disfigured by leprosy.

“I willingly remain,” said he, “if you will accept the visit of a man led here by chance, but detained by a lively interest.”

“Interest!--I have never excited anything but pity.”

“I should be happy to offer you any consolation.”

“It is a great one to behold a human face and hear the sound of a human voice, for every one flies from me.”

“Allow me, then, to converse with you awhile and to visit your house.”

“Very willingly, if it can afford you any pleasure.” Saying which, the leper put on a large felt hat, the flattened brim of which covered his face. “Go to the south,” added he. “The few flowers I cultivate may please you. There are some rather rare. I have procured the seeds of every kind that grow among the Alps, and try to make them grow double and more beautiful by cultivation.”

“You have flowers which are indeed entirely new to me.”

“Look at this little rose-bush. It is a rose without thorns, which only grows on the higher Alps, but it is already losing its peculiarity, and putting forth thorns in proportion to its cultivation and growth.”

“It should be considered the emblem of ingratitude.”

“If any of these flowers please you, you can take them without any fear: you will incur no danger by gathering them. I sowed the seed. I take pleasure in watering them and looking at them, but I never touch them.”

“Why not?”

“I fear I might infect them, and should no longer dare give them to any one.”

“For whom do you raise them?”

“The people who bring me food from the hospital are not afraid to gather them. And sometimes children from the city stop before my garden-gate. I immediately ascend the tower, for fear of frightening or infecting them. They look up as they go away, and say with a smile: ‘Good-by, Leper,’ and that gives me a little pleasure.”

“You have succeeded in collecting quite a variety of plants; and you have vines yonder, and several kinds of fruit-trees.”

“The trees are still young. I set them out myself, as well as that grape-vine, which I have trained to the top of the old wall, you see: it is thick enough for me to walk on, and is my favorite resort.--Go up on these stones. I am the architect of this staircase. Hold on to the wall.”

“A charming nook! the very place for a hermit to meditate in!”

“It suits me, too. I can see the country around, the laborers in the fields, and all that is going on in the meadow, and no one can see me.” 769

“It is a delightfully quiet and secluded place. You are in the city, and yet might fancy yourself in a desert.”

“Forests and cliffs are not the only resorts of the solitary. The unfortunate are alone everywhere.”

“What succession of events brought you to this retreat? Are you a native of this country?”

“I was born on the sea-coast in the principality of Oneglia, and have only lived here fifteen years. As to my history, it is only one long succession of calamities.”

“Have you always lived alone?”

“I lost my parents in my infancy, and do not remember them. I had one sister who died two years ago. I never had a friend.”

“Poor man!”

“It was the will of God.”

“What is your name, pray?”

“Ah! my name is a terrible one! I call myself _The Leper_! No one in the wide world knows the name I derived from my family, or that which I received on the day of my baptism. I am _The Leper_, and this is the only title I have to human kindness. May it remain for ever unknown who I am!”

“Did the sister you lost live with you?”

“She remained five years with me in my present habitation. As unfortunate as I, she participated in my sorrows, and I endeavored to alleviate hers.”

“How do you employ yourself in such utter solitude?”

“The details of my lonely life would only be very monotonous to a man of the world who seeks happiness in the activity of social life.”

“Ah! you little know the world--it has never made me happy. I am often solitary from choice, and there may be more similarity in our ideas than you suppose. And yet, I acknowledge, perpetual solitude frightens me. I can hardly conceive it endurable.”

“‘The cell continually dwelt in groweth sweet,’ says _The Following of Christ_. I am beginning to realize the truth of these consoling words. Loneliness is also relieved by labor. A laborious man is never absolutely unhappy, as I know by experience. During the pleasant season, the cultivation of my flowers and vegetables is a sufficient occupation. In the winter I make baskets and mats. I try to make my clothes. I daily prepare my own food from the supplies brought me from the hospital, and prayer fills up the vacant hours. Thus the year passes, and, when gone, it seems short.”

“I should think it would seem a century.”

“Affliction and sorrow make the hours appear long, but the years always fly with the same rapidity. Besides, there is one enjoyment left in the lowest depths of misfortune which but few can understand, and may seem strange to you--that of living and breathing. In warm weather, I pass whole days motionless on the ramparts, enjoying the air and the beauties of nature: my thoughts are vague and fluctuating; sadness dwells in my heart without oppressing it; my eyes wander around the country, and linger on the rocks that surround us; all these objects are so imprinted on my memory that they form, as it were, a part of myself: each site is a friend I greet with pleasure every day.”

“I have often experienced something of this kind. When trouble depresses me, and I do not find in the hearts of others what my own craves, the aspect of nature and inanimate objects consoles me. I become attached to the very rocks and trees, and it seems to me that 770 all created things are friends whom God has given me.”

“You encourage me to explain, in my turn, what passes within me. I have a genuine affection for the objects that are, so to speak, my daily companions, and every night, before going to my tower, I come here to take leave of the glaciers of Ruitorts, the dense woods of Mont St. Bernard, and the fantastic peaks that overlook the valley of the Rhine. Though the power of God is as evident in the creation of an ant as in that of the whole universe, the grand spectacle of yonder mountains fills me with greater awe. I cannot look at those lofty elevations, covered with eternal glaciers, without being filled with solemn wonder. But in the vast landscape spread out before me, I have favorite views to which I turn with special pleasure. Among these is the hermitage you see yonder on the top of Mount Charvensod. Alone in the woods, near a deserted pasture, it catches the last rays of the setting sun. Though I have never been there, I feel a peculiar pleasure in looking at it. When the daylight is fading away, seated in my garden, I turn my eyes toward that lonely hermitage, to seek rest for my imagination. I have learned to look upon it as a kind of property. It seems as if I had some confused reminiscence of once living there in happier days which I cannot fully recall. I love especially to gaze at the distant mountains, which look like a cloud on the horizon. Distance, like the future, inspires me with hope. My overburdened heart imagines there may be a far-off land where, at some future time, I may at length taste the happiness for which I sigh, and which a secret instinct is constantly assuring me is possible.”

“With such an ardent soul as yours, you must have passed through many struggles in resigning yourself to your lot, instead of yielding to despair.”

“I should deceive you in allowing you to think I have always been resigned to my lot. I have not attained that self-abnegation to which some anchorites have arrived. The entire sacrifice of all human affection has not yet been accomplished. My life has been one continual combat, and the powerful influences of religion itself are not always able to repress the flights of my imagination. It often draws me, in spite of myself, into a whirlpool of vain desires, which tend toward a world I have no knowledge of, but strange visions of which are ever present to torment me.”

“If you could read my soul and learn my opinion of the world, all your desires and your regrets would instantly vanish.”

“Books have vainly taught me the perversity of mankind, and the misfortunes inseparable from humanity: my heart refuses to believe them. I am continually representing to myself circles of sincere and virtuous friends; suitable marriages full of the happiness resulting from health, youth, and fortune. I imagine them wandering together through groves greener and fresher than the trees above me, with a sun more dazzling than that which brightens my world, and their lot seems worthy of envy in proportion to the misery of mine. At the beginning of spring, when the wind from Piedmont blows through our valley, I feel its vivifying warmth penetrating me, and a thrill passes over me in spite of myself. I have an inexplicable desire, and a confused notion of a boundless happiness that I am capable of enjoying, but which is denied me. Then I fly from my cell, and wander in the fields, that I may breathe more freely. I avoid the very sight of the men whom 771 my heart longs to embrace, and from the top of the hill, concealed among the bushes like a wild beast, I gaze towards the city of Aosta. With envious eyes I see afar off its happy inhabitants, to whom I am scarcely known. I stretch forth my hands towards them, and, with groans, ask for my share of happiness. In my agony--shall I acknowledge it?--I have sometimes thrown my arms around the trees of the forest, imploring Almighty God to infuse life into them that I may have a friend! But the trees make no response, their coldness repels me, they have nothing in common with my throbbing heart, which is aflame. Overcome by fatigue, weary of life, I drag myself back again to my asylum, I lay my torments before God, and prayer restores somewhat of calmness to my soul.”

“So, poor, unfortunate man, you suffer at once all the ills of soul and body?”

“The latter are not the most severe!”

“Then you are sometimes freed from them?”

“Every month they increase and diminish with the moon. I generally suffer most at its first appearance. My disease then abates and seems to change its symptoms: my skin grows dry and white, and I feel nearly well. But my malady would be endurable but for the terrible wakefulness it produces.”

“What! does even sleep abandon you?”

“Ah! sir, the sleepless, sleepless nights! You have no idea how long and sad they are when I cannot get a moment’s sleep, and my mind dwells on my frightful situation--with no hope for the future. No! no one could realize it. My restlessness increases as the night advances, and, when nearly at an end, my nervousness is almost unendurable: my mind is confused. I experience an extraordinary sensation that never comes over me but at such sad moments. Sometimes it seems as if an irresistible power was drawing me down into a bottomless gulf: sometimes I see black clouds before my eyes, but while I am examining them they cross each other with the quickness of lightning, they grow larger as they approach, and then look like mountains ready to overwhelm me with their weight. At other times, I behold clouds issuing from the earth beneath me like swelling waves, which rise one above the other and threaten to engulf me; and, when I wish to rise in order to throw off these sensations, I feel chained down by some invisible force that renders me powerless. You will perhaps think these are dreams; but you are mistaken. I am really awake. I see all this again and again, and with a sensation of horror that surpasses all my other sufferings.”

“It is possible you are feverish during these long, sleepless nights, and this, perhaps, causes a kind of delirium.”

“You think this may be the result of fever? Ah! I wish it might be true. Until now I have feared these visions were symptoms of madness, and I acknowledge this greatly worried me. Would to God they were the effects of fever!”

“Your case inspires me with a lively interest. I acknowledge that I had never imagined anything like your situation. I suppose, however, it was less sad when your sister was living.”

“God alone knows what a loss her death was to me. But are you not afraid to come so near me? Sit down there on that rock, and I will conceal myself beneath the vines, so we can talk without seeing each 772 other.”

“Why so? No, you shall not leave me. Come nearer.” In saying these words the traveller involuntarily put out his hand to take the Leper’s, but the latter hastily withdrew his.

“Imprudent man! You were going to take hold of my hand!”

“Well, I would have pressed it heartily.”

“It would have been the first time such a happiness was granted me: my hand was never pressed by any one.”

“What! Have you never formed any ties, except the sister of whom you have spoken--never been loved by any of your own condition?”

“Happily for the human race, there is not another in my condition on the earth.”

“You make me shudder.”

“Pardon me, compassionate stranger! You know the unhappy love to speak of their misfortunes.”

“Go on, go on: you interest me. You said your sister lived with you, and aided you in bearing your sufferings.”

“She was the only tie that bound me to the rest of mankind! It pleased God to break it, and thus leave me isolated and alone in the midst of the world. Her soul was ripe for the heaven where she now is, and her example sustained me under the discouragement which has often overwhelmed me since her death. But we did not live in that delightful intimacy which I so often imagine, and which should bind together the unfortunate. The nature of our disease deprived us of this consolation. When we came together to pray, we avoided looking at one another, for fear the sad spectacle might disturb our meditations: our souls alone were united before God. After prayer, my sister generally retired to her cell or beneath the nut-trees at the end of the garden, and we lived almost constantly apart.”

“But why did you impose so cruel a restraint upon yourselves?”

“When my sister was attacked with the contagious disease to which all our family were victims, and came to share my asylum, we had never seen one another. Her fright was extreme when she beheld me for the first time. The fear of afflicting her, and still more of increasing her malady by approaching her, made me resolve on this sad kind of a life. The leprosy had only attacked her breast, and I had still some hopes of her being cured. You see the remains of a neglected trellis: it was then covered with a hop-vine that I trained with care, and divided the garden into two parts. On each side of this, I made a little path where we could walk and converse together without seeing or coming too near each other.”

“It would almost seem as if heaven wished to embitter the sad pleasures it still left you.”

“But at least I was not then alone. My sister’s presence gave some cheerfulness to my asylum. I could hear the sounds of her steps. When I returned, at dawn, to pray beneath these trees, the door of the tower would softly open, and my sister’s voice would imperceptibly mingle with mine. In the evening, when I watered my garden, she sometimes walked here at sunset, in the same place where we now are, and I could see her shadow pass and repass over my flowers. Even when I did not see her, there were everywhere traces of her presence. Sometimes it was only a withered flower in the path, or some branch of a shrub she had dropped, but now I am alone, there is neither movement 773 nor life around me, and the path that led to her favorite grove is already overgrown with grass. Without appearing to observe me, she was constantly studying what could afford me pleasure. When I returned to my chamber, I was sometimes surprised to find vases of fresh flowers, or some fine fruit she had taken care of herself. I did not dare render her similar services, and had even begged her never to enter my chamber, but who can place a limit to a sister’s affection? One incident alone will give you an idea of her love for me. I was walking rapidly up and down my cell one night, tormented with fearful sufferings. In the middle of the night, as I was sitting down a moment to rest, I heard a slight noise at the door. I approached--listened--imagine my astonishment! it was my sister who was praying on the outside of my door. She had heard my groans. She was afraid of annoying me, but wished to be at hand if I needed any assistance. I heard her repeating the _Miserere_ in a low tone. I knelt down by the door, and, without interrupting her, mentally followed her words. My eyes were full of tears: who would not have been touched by so much affection? When her prayer was ended, I said in a low tone: ‘Good-night, sister, good-night: go to bed, I feel a little better. May God bless and reward you for your piety!’ She retired in silence, and her prayer was surely answered, for I at last enjoyed several hours of quiet sleep.”

“How sad must have been the first days after your beloved sister’s death!”

“I remained for a long time in a kind of stupor that deprived me of the faculty of realizing the extent of my misfortune. When at length I came to myself, and was able to comprehend my situation, my reason almost left me. It was a season doubly sad for me, for it recalls the greatest of my misfortunes, and the crime that came near resulting from it.”

“Crime! I cannot believe you capable of one.”

“It is only too true, and, in giving you an account of that period of my life, I feel too sensibly I shall fall in your estimation; but I do not wish to appear better than I am, and perhaps you will pity while condemning me. The idea of voluntarily leaving this world had already occurred to me in several fits of melancholy, but the fear of God had hitherto made me repel the thought. The simplest circumstance, and apparently the least calculated to trouble me, came near causing my eternal loss. I had just experienced a new affliction. A little dog had been given us some years previous. My sister was fond of him, and after her death the poor animal was, I acknowledge, a real comfort to me. We were, I suppose, indebted to his ugliness for his making our house his refuge. He had been rejected by everybody else, but was a treasure in the asylum of a leper. In gratitude to God for the favor of such a friend, my sister called him _Miracle_, and his name--such a contrast to his ugliness--and his constant friskiness often dispelled our sorrows. In spite of my care, he sometimes got out, and it never occurred to me it might injure any one. But some of the inhabitants of the town became alarmed, thinking he might bring among them the germ of my disease. They sent a complaint to the commander, who ordered the dog to be killed immediately. Some soldiers followed by several civilians came here at once to execute this cruel order. They put a cord around his neck in my presence, and dragged him away. 774 I could not help looking at him once more as he was going out of the gate; his eyes were turned towards me, as if to beg the assistance which it was not in my power to give. They wished to drown him in the Doire, but the crowd waiting on the outside stoned him to death. I heard his cries, and took refuge in my tower more dead than alive; my trembling knees refused to support me; I threw myself on my bed in a state impossible to describe. My grief made me regard the just though severe order only as a cruelty as atrocious as it was needless, and, though I am now ashamed of the feeling that then excited me, I cannot yet think of it with coolness. I passed the whole day in the greatest agitation. I had been deprived of the only living thing I had, and this new blow reopened all the wounds of my heart.

“Such was my condition when, that same day, towards sunset, I came here, and seated myself on the very rock where you are now sitting. I had been meditating awhile on my sad lot, when I saw a newly-married couple appear yonder, near the two birches at the end of the hedge. They came along the foot-path through the meadow, and passed by me. The sweet peace that an assured happiness confers was imprinted on their handsome faces. They were walking slowly arm-in-arm. All at once they stopped; the young woman leaned her head upon her husband’s breast, who clasped her in his arms with joy. Shall I confess it? Envy for the first time penetrated my heart. Such a picture of happiness had never struck me before. I followed them with my eyes to the end of the meadow. They were nearly hidden by the trees when I heard a joyful cry. It came from the united families who were coming to meet them. Old men, women, and children surrounded them. I heard a confused murmur of joy. I saw among the trees the bright colors of their dresses, and the whole group seemed enveloped in a cloud of happiness. I could not endure the sight: the torments of hell seized hold of my heart. I turned away my eyes, and fled to my cell. O God! how frightfully lonely and gloomy it seemed. ‘It is here, then,’ I said to myself--‘I am to live for ever here. After dragging out a wretched existence, I must await the long-delayed end of my life! The Almighty has diffused happiness, and in torrents, among all living creatures, and I--I alone!--am without support, without friends, without a companion.--What a terrible destiny!’

“Full of these sad thoughts, I forgot there is one Being who is the Comforter. I was beside myself. ‘Why,’ I said to myself, ‘was I permitted to behold the light? Why has Nature been so cruel a step-mother to me?’ Like a disinherited child, I saw before me the rich patrimony of the human race, of my share of which heaven had defrauded me. ‘No, no,’ I cried in my fury, ‘there is no happiness for thee on earth. Cease, then, to live, poor wretch! Thou hast disgraced the earth long enough with thy presence: would it might swallow thee up and leave no trace of thy miserable existence!’ My fury continuing to increase, a mad desire to destroy myself took possession of my mind. I resolved at last to set fire to my dwelling, and allow myself to be burned up in it with everything else that might recall my memory. Excited and enraged, I went forth into the fields. I wandered for some time in the darkness around my dwelling. I gave vent to my overburdened heart in involuntary shrieks, and frightened myself in the 775 silence of the night. I reentered full of rage, crying: ‘Woe to thee, Leper! Woe to thee!’ And, as if everything conspired for my destruction, I heard the echo from the ruins of the Château de Bramafan repeating distinctly: ‘Woe to thee!’ I stopped, seized with horror, at the door of the tower, and a faint echo from the mountains repeated a long time after, ‘Woe to thee!’

“I took a lamp, and, resolved to set fire to my dwelling, went into the lowest room, carrying with me some twigs and dry branches. It was the room my sister occupied, and I had not entered it since her death. Her arm-chair was in the same spot where I moved it for the last time. I shivered with fear at the sight of her veil and some of her clothing scattered around. The last words she uttered before her departure came back to my mind: ‘I shall not forsake you when I die: remember, I shall always be with you in your sufferings.’ Placing the lamp on the table, I perceived the cord which held the cross she wore on her neck. She had placed it herself within her Bible. I drew back, filled with awe at the sight. The depths of the abyss into which I was about to plunge were at once revealed to my unsealed eyes. Trembling, I approached the sacred volume. ‘Here, here,’ I cried, ‘is the aid she promised me!’ Drawing the cross from the book, I found a sealed note which my dear sister had left for me. My tears, which grief had not hitherto allowed me to shed, now escaped in torrents: all my detestable projects vanished at once. I pressed the precious letter to my heart a long time before I could read it: then, falling on my knees to implore the divine mercy, I sobbingly read the words that will be for ever graven on my heart: ‘Brother, I shall soon leave you, but not forsake you. From heaven, which I hope to enter, I will watch over you, praying God to give you the courage to endure life with resignation till it pleases him to reunite us in another world. Then I shall be able to show you how much I loved you. Nothing will prevent me any longer from approaching you: nothing can separate us. I leave you the little cross I have worn all my life. It has often consoled me in my sorrows and been the only witness of my tears. Remember, when you look upon it, that my last prayer was that you might live and die a good Christian.’

“Cherished letter! it shall never leave me. I will carry it with me to the grave. It will open to me the gates of heaven which my crime would have closed for ever. When I had finished reading it, I felt faint, exhausted by all I had undergone. My sight grew dim, and, for some time, I lost both the remembrance of my misfortunes and the consciousness of existence. When I came to myself, the night was far advanced. In proportion to the clearness of my mind, I experienced a feeling of profound peace. All that had taken place the evening before seemed like a dream. My first impulse was to raise my eyes heavenward in thanksgiving for having been preserved from the greatest of misfortunes. The heavens had never appeared so serene and glorious: one star before my window outshone the rest. I gazed at it a long time with inexpressible delight, thanking God for granting me the pleasure of beholding it, and felt interiorly consoled at the thought that some of its rays were permitted to cheer the gloomy home of the Leper.

“I went up to my cell in a calmer frame. I spent the remainder of the night in reading the Book of Job, and the sublimity of his thoughts at 776 length entirely dispelled the gloomy ideas that had beset me. I never experienced such fearful moments during my sister’s life. To feel her near me made me at once calmer, and the very thought of the affection she had for me afforded me consolation, and inspired me with courage.

“Compassionate stranger! may God preserve you from ever being obliged to live alone! My sister and my companion is no more. But heaven will grant me the strength to endure life courageously; it will grant it, I trust, for I pray for it with all the earnestness of my heart.”

“How old was your sister when she died?”

“She was barely twenty-five, but her sufferings made her look much older. In spite of her fatal disease, which changed her features, she would have been handsome, had it not been for her frightful pallor, the result of a living death which made me groan whenever I looked at her.”

“She died quite young?”

“Her delicate and feeble constitution could not resist so many sufferings combined: for some time I had perceived her loss inevitable. Her lot was so sad that I could not desire her to live. Seeing her daily languishing and wasting away, I felt, with a fearful kind of joy, that the end of her sufferings was approaching. For a month she had been growing weaker; frequent swoons were constantly threatening her life. One evening (it was about the first of August) I saw her so weak that I was unwilling to leave her. She was in her arm-chair, not having been able to lie down for several days. I seated myself near her, and in the profound darkness we held our last conversation. I could not restrain my tears. A sad presentiment agitated me. ‘Why do you weep?’ she said. ‘Why distress yourself? I shall not forsake you when I die. I shall always be with you in your sufferings.’

“A few moments after, she expressed a desire to be carried out of the tower, that she might offer her prayers in the grove of nut-trees where she passed the greater part of the pleasant season. ‘I wish,’ she said, ‘to die looking at the heavens.’ But I did not imagine her end so near. I was about to take her in my arms, when she said, ‘Only support me. I am, perhaps, strong enough to walk.’ I led her slowly to the nut-trees. I made a cushion of the dry leaves she herself had gathered together, and, covering her head with a veil to screen her from the dampness of the night, I seated myself near her. But she desired to be left alone during her last meditation, and I went to a distance, but without losing sight of her. From time to time, I could see the flutter of her veil and her white hands raised to heaven. When I drew near the grove, she asked for some water. I carried her some in a cup. She wet her lips, but could not swallow. ‘I feel the end has come,’ said she, turning her head. ‘My thirst will soon be assuaged for ever. Support me, brother: aid me in crossing this gulf--so long desired, but so terrible. Support me, and say the prayers for the dying.’ These were her last words. I drew her head against my breast, and said the prayer for the departing soul: ‘Go forth from this world, my beloved sister, and leave thy mortal remains in my arms!’ I held her in this way for three hours, during the last throes of nature. At length, she quietly passed away, and her soul left the earth without a struggle.”

At the end of this account, the Leper covered his face with his hands. 777 Sympathy deprived the traveller of the power of speaking. After a moment’s silence, the Leper rose. “Stranger,” said he, “when grief or dejection comes over you, think of the Leper of the city of Aosta, and your visit will not have been a useless one.”

They walked towards the garden-gate. As the officer was about to go out, he put his glove on his right hand. “You have never pressed any one’s hand,” said he. “Do me the favor to press mine. It is the hand of a friend who is deeply interested in your lot.”

The Leper drew back some steps with a kind of terror, and, raising his eyes and hands towards heaven, he cried: “O God of goodness! pour down thy blessings on this compassionate man!”

“Grant me another favor, then,” resumed the traveller. “I am going away. We may not see each other again for a long time. Can we not write one another sometimes, with the necessary precautions? Such a correspondence might divert you, and it would afford me great pleasure.”

The Leper reflected for some time. At length he said, “Why should I cherish any delusion? I ought to have no other society but myself, no friend but God. We shall meet in his presence. Farewell, kind stranger, may you be happy! Farewell for ever!” The traveller went out--the Leper closed the door and drew the bolts.

----------

ON THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE HOLY FATHER.

FROM LA CIVILTA CATTOLICA.

Some fourteen months ago, a breach was made in the _Porta Pia_, and an entry effected into Rome in the name of Italy.

The machinations of those who effected that entry in order to subvert the authority of the Pope are still at work, and most assiduously, in endeavoring to convey the impression that this act of theirs now stands before the world simply as _an accomplished fact_, and as such is, if not approved, at least tolerated by those most interested in contesting it. Thus they endeavor to delude the world and lull to sleep the misgivings of Catholics; for in order to confirm and strengthen this impression there is scarcely a stratagem or subterfuge to which the government (itself the author of the fact) does not resort, through the journalism notoriously in its pay, not only throughout the Peninsula, but elsewhere.

This government, which sprang from _accomplished facts_ and _falsehoods_, hopes by means of these same _accomplished facts_ and _falsehoods_ to place on a firm foundation its sway in the _Campidoglio_, which now rests on a very insecure footing; therefore it endeavors to persuade the world, and especially Catholics, that the Supreme Pontiff, while in its hands and under the law of its Guarantees, is actually more at 778 liberty, more independent in action, and more useful to the church, than he was when he reigned as a sovereign prince and was _bona-fide_ ruler in his own state.

The absurdity of this claim is manifest; but what absurdity is there of which the government of the Subalpinists in Italy does not avail itself, in order to attach credit to itself, by means of the arts learned in the school of its great father and master, Bonaparte?

It is important, therefore, or rather we should say it is absolutely necessary, that an honest and Christian journalism should perseveringly oppose manifest truths to this interminable repetition of falsehoods, paid for by the Subalpine rulers, respecting the present condition of the Holy Father; and thus, by ventilating fraud, undeceive simple and credulous minds.

With this intention, we shall in few but veracious strokes of the pen describe the undisguised reality of the state in which the head of the church, the Supreme Pontiff, Pius IX., finds himself at the present moment in Rome, six months after the solemn publication of the laws of the _Guarantees_.

II.

We assert, then, that the Pope endures imprisonment in Rome at the hands of the Subalpinists, and that his captivity, instead of being mitigated, is every day aggravated. This is proved by the following facts:

1. He is in the hands of an _inimical power_, or, as he himself has defined it, he is _sub hostili dominatione constitutus_. Now, he who is in the hands of an enemy, however much that enemy may affect humanity and regard towards him, is beyond all contradiction his prisoner.

2. The Holy Father fell into the hands of this inimical power through sheer force. This is rendered evident by the formal declaration made by the Subalpine ministers before taking up arms against him, in which they affirmed that to invade or take Rome with bomb-shells and cannons would be an act contrary to the rights of nations, an act so iniquitous that it would be unworthy even of a barbarian government: yet in the very face of these declarations they did take Rome with the argument of bomb-shells and cannons, and with the same argument they continue to occupy it.

3. The Holy Father, being in the hands of an inimical power, which has dispossessed him by violence of all sovereignty, and substituted its own in lieu of his, is now by this same power subjected to every kind of ridicule in his double majesty as pontiff and as king: burlesque honors are proposed to him, which would by preference be offered to him publicly, in order to induce the idea that the Holy Father, by accepting them, is reconciled to the government, and has basely ceded to it the inalienable rights of God, of the church, and of the Catholic world. Moreover, the obligation resting on the Sovereign Pontiff of preserving his own dignity keeps him shut up in the Vatican: the outer doors of which are guarded _by a guard of honor_ formed of the self-same wretched soldiery who, led on by Subalpine leaders, made the breach in the _Porta Pia_, and struck to the earth his own sovereign banner in Rome.

4. Finally: The inimical power in whose hands the Holy Father now finds himself is, either from weakness or malice, incapable of protecting his august person from any kind of insult. So that, supposing it to be _morally_ possible for him without compromising his dignity to leave the cloisters of the Vatican, yet would a 779 _material_ obstacle present itself in the outrages and dangers, threatening life itself, to which he would be exposed amid the crowds of cut-throats, atheists, and the lowest rabble of every country, which this power has congregated together and maintains in Rome, to represent in that city the people of the plébiscite; that is, a people hostile to the Papacy and rebellious to its throne.

These are the principal facts which most clearly demonstrate the state of imprisonment into which the Sovereign Pontiff was thrown, by the events of the 20th September, 1870, in his own city of Rome: and we defy all the sophistry of all the journalists, politicians, and diplomatists of the government, seated as it is in the metropolis of the Catholic world, to deny it, without denying the light of the sun at mid-day.

Besides this, that the captivity of the Holy Father has been aggravated during these fourteen months is seen and felt by every one who is not under the influence of the Subalpinists, those men who have carried their effrontery to the length of placing the centre of their government in the city of Rome itself, and with one of their laws of _guaranty_ for the independence of the Pope have arrogated to themselves the right of imposing the future conditions of his existence in the Vatican, as if they were the rulers of the Holy See. Whoever considers the forces of moral and material hostility that these Subalpinists have accumulated in Rome against his prerogatives, cannot fail to perceive that the rights which in this city are most readily trodden under foot, are, after those of God, those of the Pope: and the person who is the most insulted therein is, after that of Christ, precisely the person of the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius IX., _decreed sovereign and inviolable_, by the law, as the person of the king himself.

From this it follows that the Holy Father is at the present moment the legal prisoner, in Rome, of the Subalpine government, since by the aforenamed laws, termed those of the Guarantees, not only has that government confirmed the violent spoliation of himself, but, in spite of the opinion of the world, has dared to justify the act by defining in those laws the limits of the liberty it intends to concede to him. This is neither more nor less than the usage commonly observed towards a prisoner of state or of war.

By this means, the present condition of the Pontiff in his own Rome is in truth that of the strictest imprisonment by the anti-Christian sect, headed by the government of the Subalpinists now lording it over Italy.

III.

Neither is the Holy Father, Pius IX., the prisoner of an inimical power solely on account of his civil prerogatives: it is his ecclesiastical jurisdiction that is aimed at more than anything else: while usurping the regal crown, it seeks equally to abolish the Papal tiara; and, if, after having barbarously dispossessed him of his kingdom, it does not also make a barbarous assault on the majesty of his Pontificate, this reserve arises only from the hindrance occasioned by very strong and extrinsic causes, and not from good-will or any other than a reprobate sentiment.

This profound enmity of the Subalpine rulers to the Pope as the supreme pastor of the Catholic Church is so well-known as to need no demonstration. Yet for superabundance of proof, we will say that it is 780 shown:

1. By all that has been previously done against Catholicity for twenty-two years past in Piedmont, and for half that time throughout the rest of Italy, by the faction to which these rulers belong--a faction whose politics are expressed by an obstinate war, sometimes of a Julianistic character, sometimes of that of a Nero--a war which attacks directly or indirectly the church itself, and all connected with it, and this in such a manner as to render it palpable that not even the Unity of Italy is desired for its own sake, but rather as a means by which to work the destruction of Catholicity and the overthrow of the Papacy.

2. It is shown by the special mandate which the Subalpine faction superintending the Masonic government of the Peninsula have received from the General Masonic Order--a mandate bidding them become the immediate (because proximate) instruments of the downfall of Papal Rome, the centre of the Catholic Church; and which then bids them proceed to the utter spoliation of the Sovereign Pontiff himself--two events which it hopes will lead (if that were possible) to the annihilation of Catholicity, that being the ultimate end of all the conspiracies of the order.

3. It is shown by the open confessions made in Rome, throughout Italy, and in all Europe, by journalists united by the bonds of faction to our Subalpine patrons; and even more by the discovery, lately made, that persecution is already well established in Rome against everything ecclesiastical or Catholic--whether in things or persons.

From these facts, it is demonstrated that the Holy Father is now the prisoner in Rome of a government which in his person hates above everything, and as far as it dare makes war against, his prerogatives as Pontiff, and as Head of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion. Pius IX. is in the hands of Turks embittered to the last degree. Against him and his tiara every tool is made use of, and with equal skill--whether it be cannons or sophistry, buffoonery or the judgment-hall, the pick-axe or calumny.

IV.

The war of Nero carried on against the Holy Father and the church is at the present moment tempered by the war of Julian. It was for this purpose that our Subalpinists devised the law of the Guarantees, behind which they know how to mask the ugliness of their rascalities, at least for a time. “Do you see?” they exclaim in every tone, and have had written in every language: “We have surrounded the Pope with so many _privileges_ that the like was never seen. Of what do you complain, O you insatiable Catholics? Have we not constituted the Pope _inviolable_ as is the king? What more would you have?”

We would have--simply that the Pope should be inviolable, because he is a king in earnest truth, and not a mere semblance of one. But to this question of to-day concerning the sovereign and personal inviolability of the Pope, facts are the best reply. These show that _practically_ he is as inviolable as the first article of the statute, and has been inviolable throughout the kingdom.

This privilege of inviolability implies that the person sovereignly inviolable can, in no manner whatsoever, be publicly insulted without the offenders being repressed by force and punished according to law.

Meantime, first, it is a notorious fact that every day the sheets 781 belonging to this faction, not excepting those of the government throughout the kingdom, and particularly in Rome, insult, hold up to derision, and vilify the inviolable person of the Pope: and that he is exposed to ridicule by means of most infamous caricatures; and all this with impunity. For it is notorious that newspapers are very rarely sequestrated on account of this continuous and general contravention of the laws of the Guarantees; and up to this period not a single sentence has been issued from the tribunals against the insulters of his Pontifical Majesty. On the other hand, the exchequer is most rigorous against any one suspected of insulting the royal majesty through the press; chiefly, however, against the Catholic journalists who defend the inviolable Pontiff. Thus (a fitting commentary), of ten law-suits against offenders by means of the press, eight are commonly to the prejudice of Catholics accused of offences against the king or of illicit voting. The inviolability of the Holy Father, therefore, practically resolves itself into the fact that every miscreant may insult him with impunity, while it is dangerous for an honest Catholic to defend him through the press.

It is a notorious fact, and of very frequent occurrence, that groups of ribald men, escaped from every Italian galley, stroll along the avenues, singing shameful verses, nay, even menacing ones, in regard to the Supreme Pontiff, and it is no rare thing for a rabble to provoke and utter cries of a character most outraging to his name and honor. And yet the police, ever ready to hinder similar outrages in regard to the king, become deaf or soften down the words when they hear the Holy Father vituperated in this fashion. No one has ever been arrested for such a crime, and no one has ever been cited before the tribunals. The inviolability of the Holy Father, we repeat it, consists practically in the freedom with which every vagabond is permitted publicly to insult him.

3. It is a notorious fact that large bands of these miscreants have often gathered together beneath the walls of the Papal palace to load the guard stationed inside with foul language, that guard being placed there by the consent of the laws of the Guarantees to the Pope. Yet here they hurl their blasphemies and imprecations against the sanctity of the Pope, in the very hearing of the _guard of honor_ placed there by the government, and these have never been known to discompose themselves on this account even to the extent of a gesture of disapprobation toward the rogues thus possessed by the devil. Yet woe to the wretch who should commit any such atrocity at the portals of the Quirinal, when inhabited by certain other inviolable persons in the kingdom of the Subalpinists! Therefore, once more: the inviolability of the Pontiff is practically converted into a tacit license for the lowest rabble to insult his person beneath the very portals and under the windows of the Vatican.

We might enumerate many other facts, equally well known, to demonstrate how little is the practical value of the sovereign inviolability decreed to the captive Pope; but let those already brought forward suffice. These being admitted, it will be understood that his Holiness, thanks to the distinguished privilege conferred on him by our Subalpine gentlemen, not only could not make his appearance in the streets of his own Rome without manifest risk of life, but he could not even descend to the basilica of the Vatican to perform a 782 sacred function, without exposing himself to contumely and insult by the very side of St. Peter’s tomb, and even on the altar itself. The occurrences of the 8th December, 1870, in the vestibule of the Pontifical residence; of the 10th March, 1871, within the Gesù; and of the 23rd, 24th, 25th August, close to the Lateran and the Church of Maria soprà Minerva, confirm what we assert.

This, then, in its veritable reality, is the present condition of Pope Pius IX. in Rome, after the oft-repeated promulgation of the law declaring him an inviolable sovereign like to the king.

Nor may the salaried apologists of our patrons treat these matters as a jest in order to exculpate themselves from so horrible an abomination. Facts are facts, while words are but breath. The most irrefutable facts prove that if our Holy Father were to show himself publicly in the Rome of to-day, uncivilized as it is by these Subalpine rulers, the treatment he would receive would be no other than such as is given alike to the clergy as to the most holy things, nay, to Christ himself, in the blessed sacrament of the altar.

Now, it cannot be denied, for the Roman journals attest it, citing days, time, places, names and surnames, that every day priests or religious, bishops or prelates, are attacked or ill-used in the most populous districts of Rome; that almost every day sacred images are stoned or profaned at the corners of the streets; and not unfrequently the adorable eucharist, when borne as a viaticum to the sick, is exposed to mockery in the public square, even by those who wear military badges; and all this occurs with the tacit consent of the officers charged with keeping order in the city, no one of whom has ever imprisoned a single person guilty of such misdeeds. And after that they would have us believe that Pope Pius IX. would be safe either in the city or in the Vatican from the outrages or even from the blow of these most civilized gentlemen who form the new Roman people!

Be silent, as long as we live, O whited sepulchres!--race fit only to patronize assassins!

V.

Moreover, the Holy Father, by the noble munificence of his jailers, is reduced to that degree of poverty that, were it not for the oblations of the faithful, he must either pine in misery or suffer the degradation of his majesty. The glorious conquerors of Rome have taken everything from him, excepting the Vatican. And if, up to this time, they have refrained from sacking this edifice, it is owing to that _veto_ of potentates which, as yet, has forbidden them access to it. Jugglers are in possession of the Quirinal; and they drew near to the public treasury of the Pontificate with the sword of guardianship. In one flash of lightning, the Pope saw himself deprived of everything. With a simple substitution of voters, the Pontifical estate is become the Subalpine estate--a magnificent example! since then magnificently imitated by the Commune of Paris!

Is is true that, in their law of the Guarantees, they have deigned to assign to him a species of civil list amounting to several millions of lire. But this was done for the sake of appearance alone; for well they knew that, in practice, this article would have precisely the same effect as that other article prescribing the famous inviolability. How in fact could these persons, who for five-and-twenty years have known the magnanimous firmness of character of Pius IX., 783 persuade themselves that he would lower his dignity to accept an obolus from their criminal and sacrilegious hands, in compensation for the kingdom they have taken from him? They understood beforehand that this would be impossible, because, even admitting that the Holy Father had been willing to admit their civil list, under the title of restitution, a thing not unlawful in itself if done without prejudice to his rights, they perceived only too clearly that he could not have done so in view of the malignant interpretations which would have followed the act, occasioning an immense scandal and clamor; as if the Pope by receiving a modicum of that property the whole of which belongs to him by right had conceded the rest, over which he has immemorial claims.

The matter, however, took such a shape that these brave gentlemen had an ample field in which to display large figures, and even to acquire the name of prodigality in offering round numbers to their victim. Yes, indeed, they were prodigals, like unto those who offered vinegar to the crucified Saviour.

God, ever adorable in his providence, has so disposed events that the hearts of Catholics throughout the world have been moved to compassionate their father in chains, and the gold of their filial charity has abounded so wonderfully in his hands, that he has been able to succor most plentifully those of his faithful servants who have fallen into straits for conscience’ sake, together with many indigent persons who have no other resource for a livelihood than the heart of the imprisoned Pontiff.

The glory of this munificence is due to God alone, and the merit of it is to be ascribed to the faith of good Christians. On the other hand, the infamy of having embittered the captivity of the Holy Father, by reducing him, with the Sacred College and his whole court, to a state of absolute want, if he would not wear the appearance of dishonor, this belongs exclusively to the Subalpine rulers, who at the foot of the Campidoglio are enjoying the spoils of the Pontificate, as the crucifiers on Mount Calvary enjoyed the spoils obtained by rending the garments of Christ.

VI.

The jailers, and the friends and servants of the jailers of the Holy Father, boast very much of the ample liberty he enjoys, which he can use during his imprisonment for the regulation of the church and for performing his office as Pope.

Let us examine a little in what this charming liberty consists. This at the very first glance resolves itself into the following very clear formula: The Pope is at liberty to do that--and that alone--which the inimical power whose prisoner he is permits him to do.

And, in point of fact, the Holy Father is under this power, which holds him in its hands, being _sub hostilem potestatem redactus_, as he himself lately expressed it again in the Encyclical of May 15, 1871, in which he formally repudiates the _Guarantees_ offered him in exchange for his principality. He who is under is _dependent_, and can do only that to which he who is above consents. Thus the liberty of the Pope is subject to the limits which the inimical power, his oppressor, pleases to impose on him. And this same law of the Guarantees is the proof of the fact, inasmuch as it contains only a concession of hypothetical privileges. But he who concedes accounts 784 himself superior to him to whom the concession is granted. Whence the true measure of the liberty of Pius IX. as Pope, is now simply the arbitrary will of Italian Masonry, governed by the Subalpinists. This is a certain fact as to matters in general.

With regard to particulars, the Holy Father uses such liberty as he owes to his own courage and diligence, and the inimical power, his jailer, cannot hinder him, though it would willingly do so, because a power stronger than itself, or certain human respects, forbid such opposition. As, for example, the Subalpine patrons would gladly hinder his Holiness from publishing bulls or encyclicals, in condemnation of their lofty enterprises against God, religion, and the Apostolic See. His Holiness, not being at liberty to publish them in Rome under their very nose, sends them out of Italy to be printed, and in this way publishes them.

Now, what can these very liberal gentlemen do in a case like this? Drag the Pope before the courts, and imprison him in the Castle of St. Angelo? Most willingly would they do this; but the rulers of Europe would oppose it. There is, then, no course left to them except to interdict the publication of them within the state by sequestrating the papers which reprint these acts of the Pope; and this they did with the Encyclical of November 1, 1870. If for others of later appearance they have shut their eyes and left them to their course, it has been because they have at last been obliged to pay some regard to public opinion, and have found their account in putting on a semblance of toleration.

In a similar manner, the Holy Father, finding that the Subalpine masters trumpeted forth loudly to the world that he was left at liberty in the creation of bishops throughout Italy, embraced the opportunity to exercise his right and to fulfil his duty. With prudence certainly, but yet with boldness, he addressed himself to the work. The matter was very displeasing to our gentlemen. But how were they to hinder it? They wanted to give the Christian world to understand that they are honorable men, not only in the modern sense of the word, but also somewhat in the ancient sense: they wanted to prove that they knew how to keep their word without being compelled by cannons so to do. So _for this time_ it does not appear that they will refuse entrance into their dioceses to the new pastors.

But thieves and loyalists as they are, they have taken advantage of this act of the Holy Father, turning it to their own interest by cowardly proclaiming in every direction that the Holy Father, by thus using the privileges comprised in the law of the Guarantees respecting the induction of bishops into their sees, has, _ipso facto_, _accepted_ their law, and thus retracted his refusal of the 15th of May, 1871, and thus (according to them) the conciliation between themselves and the Holy See is in good progress; and it will not be long before the august Pontiff will give up his kingly crown into the hands of John Lanza: and in this manner the Italy of the Subalpinists will enjoy the distinguished honor of having the supreme head of the church for the court-chaplain, and most humble servant of his ministers: an honor certainly due to their merits as against faith, morality, and Catholic worship.

This attempt at imposition is the more senseless in that it supposes that the Holy Father had no other right to nominate the bishops than as a state privilege; while the contrary is the case: the insertion of 785 the state in these nominations is merely a privilege granted by the Pope: and the fact that the Pope has not thus recognized the Subalpine gentlemen outside of their own territory proves that he, far from accepting their _Guarantees_, does not even recognize them as juridically masters of the district in which they compiled the documents.

But the senselessness of the attempted imposition serves to prove how determined they are to prevent the Holy Father from exercising any true liberty.

VII.

Excepting the above-named use of his liberty, which the Holy Father courageously exercises in spite of the useless repugnance of his jailers, he in everything else remains in all the bonds and perplexities with which they think fit to surround him. And thus:

1. Pius IX. is not at liberty to have a journal in Rome, in which he may contradict the infinite number of falsities which the inimical power, through its officious and official oracles, utters against his person, against his acts, those of his court, or those of the ministers of the Holy See.

Should he do so, the executive would subject him to all those rigorous measures and sequestrations to which all the Catholics sheets of Rome have been subjected which have endeavored to defend his honor or his cause.

2. Pius IX., as we have already pointed out, is no longer at liberty to publish his bulls, encyclicals, or allocutions in Rome: the fact being that the inimical power, in this same law of the Guarantees, has reserved to itself the faculty of judging them; and hence, either by way of legal or illegal confiscations, has full and absolute power to suppress their publication by main force. This obliges the head of the church to make public his acts regarding the universal government of Catholicism, by despatching them to be divulged outside the dominion of his jailers; as he has done up to this date, and will continue to do _donec transeat iniquitas_.

3. Pius IX. in Rome is not at liberty to contradict publicly by telegraph the inventions concerning himself and his Pontifical acts which the inimical power, his jailer, diffuses through the world by this said telegraph; because the telegraph is under the express authority of said power, and the use of it can be denied or rendered difficult at its pleasure. Thus, last March the world received through the telegraph fabulous accounts of a consistory held by the Pope, of an allocution and other particular acts, all invented on the spur of the moment; and before the world can detect the disgraceful imposture, it may expect that for many days the falsehoods will be printed even in Catholic journals, because our Subalpine gentlemen have it in their power to mislead by means of the telegraph the Catholic community with any kind of misrepresentation concerning the words and deeds of the Pope, without the possibility of the Pope’s being able immediately to undeceive them. Whence the necessity that _no reliance at all_ should be placed on any telegram that the agency of the Subalpine government transmits from Rome respecting the words or affairs of the Supreme Pontiff.

4. Pius IX. in Rome is not at liberty to carry on a private correspondence securely with the bishops and faithful of the world by 786 means of letters or telegrams; because both mails and telegraphs belong to the inimical power which holds him captive. As an inimical power, precisely because it is inimical, believes itself licensed to take every precaution regarding its imprisoned _enemy_, so no one can ever feel certain that the secrecy of the letters interchanged has not been violated, or that the telegrams have not been altered or refused. All this is _a question of trust_. But meanwhile, setting aside the case of telegrams directed to the Pope, and refused by the telegraph officials, it is a fact that the Holy Father is obliged to keep his missives away from the mail-bags of Italy when he has any important correspondence to carry on, as also other persons are obliged to do when they wish to communicate with the Holy See. We repeat it: _it is a question of trust_: and how much those who now command in Rome may be trusted is attested by the honesty they have thus far exhibited.

5. Pius IX. in Rome and in the Vatican is not at liberty to receive every one who wishes to visit him, or whom it may be necessary he should see. All the approaches to the Pontifical palace are guarded by bailiffs of the inimical power. And these men, though they may often allow the goers and comers to be insulted by the rabble, never, however, omit to play the spy. This office they perform so well that certain journals written by those who are doubly linked with the police of the Subalpine gentry would be able to furnish, if needed, the daily list of all those admitted to the vestibule of the apostolic residence. It is clear from these circumstances that it depends solely on the arbitrary will of the inimical power to forbid any one the power of ingress, or, if it prefer, to expel the individual from the city, and thus save him the trouble of the journey to the Vatican.

In addition to these facts, the stonings, menaces, hootings, and similar acts of urbanity practised in the streets of Rome and in the neighborhood of St. Peter’s toward the numerous Catholic deputations which came this year to pay their homage to the august prisoner, by the rabble introduced through the breach of the _Porta Pia_--these attest how great is that beautiful liberty enjoyed by the Pope in receiving visitors, whether they come of their own accord or that he sends for them.

6. Pius IX. in Rome will not long be at liberty to regulate the religious institutions, and to employ them in the service of the churches, as is right and proper he should do; because the inimical power is already on the alert to deprive the Holy See of this strong spiritual garrison: it is abolishing the orders, and depriving them of their property. The superiors-general of these orders, which are immediately subject to the Pontiff, will in a short time have no bread to eat, no room to shelter them; they will wander homeless over the earth, and lose their subjects on all sides. In this way, one of the instruments of the Pontiff, most useful to him in the administration of the church, will be, as it were, broken in his hand, and in the city in which the Head of the Catholic Church has his seat the profession of the evangelical state will be prohibited; and the Pope will not be even able to give shelter to the various missionaries who are toiling in the cause of Christianity among the heathen of Asia and America, when they come to render an account of their newly founded missions; for in all Rome he will no longer have a religious house of 787 hospitality at his disposal.

We will not lengthen details in order to enumerate the various other particular modes of liberty which the Holy Father can no longer exercise in the fulfilment of his supreme office. The exposition we have already given suffices to prove that he has no liberty, save such as the author of his affliction permits, either from his own authority or from other causes; the permission being compulsory on the part of the enemy, and most unwillingly given. And this is the marvellous liberty now enjoyed by the Sovereign Pontiff, thanks to the Subalpinists, who have dethroned him and uncrowned him in Rome itself, out of love, as they say, for the holy church!

VIII.

Let us be just. Our Holy Father might be in a much worse condition than the present one. His jailers as yet do not do him all the wrong they would wish, but are not able to do him. This is true enough. They have not as yet assailed the Vatican, and dragged Pius IX. to the Fortress of Ancona, as they have done to the illustrious Cardinal Morichini, Bishop of Jesi; or to a convent of Turin, as they have done to the imperturbable Cardinal de Angelis. We repeat it: they would like to do this, but are not able; they would like to do this and worse, but the governments of Europe have absolutely forbidden them to set foot in the Vatican, or to lay hands on the Sovereign Pontiff. This and nothing else restrains them in the frenzy of their hatred from beheading him at once. This and nothing else constrains them to moderate the impetuosity of their hatred in carrying on their persecutions against the Papacy. Fear compels these little Neros to don the mantle of Julian; for, while under the eyes of two diplomatic bodies in Rome, they dare not carry their outrages on the Pope and his dignity beyond a certain limit.

From this we may infer that the only and _ultimate_ safeguard remaining at the present moment to the Holy Father in the Vatican is not the law called the law of the Guarantees, nor is it trust in the governors, but the corps of diplomatists who have received from their various governments instructions to maintain inviolate the asylum of the octogenarian Pontiff, and to protect his august person.

Were it not for this only and ultimate safeguard, Catholics throughout the world would now be weeping over their Father exiled from Rome, and perhaps as having already expired from the bullets or sword of the enemy.

IX.

But how long will this only and ultimate safeguard endure?--this protection which renders the life and person of the Holy Father secure in Rome?

As long as the Subalpinists hold the reins of government in Italy, there seems no reason to fear that the security will become less. These men know too well that, were they to lose Rome, they would lose everything; and the only mode of keeping possession of Rome a little longer is not to violate the Vatican. But on that day on which the Italian faction shall get tired of being led by these ten or twelve Piedmontese who form the perpetual Zodiac of the ministry; on that day when this faction is weary of seeing all the master-machinery of the state, the army, finance, bureaucracy, and diplomacy regulated by Piedmontese; on that day when it takes it into its head to render the government of this factious Italy _Italian_ in its manner of rebellion, 788 rather than provincial--on that day the danger will arise that even this said only and ultimate safeguard may lose its force. For in such a case, the mobocracy would come to the surface, and a scene of destruction would be inaugurated varying little from that carried out by the Commune of Paris.

The dilemma is this: either the Subalpinists or the Socialists must prove fatal to our poor Italy, prepared as it is for revolution. God alone knows what is to happen in the proximate future. But it is certain that the present condition of the Holy Father in Rome cannot endure much longer: it is certain that any agreement between him and his spoilers is utterly out of the question. It is also certain that Europe could not tolerate for a series of years that the Head of the Catholic Church should be held as a prisoner by the men who at the present day hold dominion throughout the Peninsula; and, finally, it is certain that in his own time God will interfere, and his intervention will not be to reward the persecutors of his Vicar on earth. These four certainties keep the world in suspense, and the authors and approvers of the transitory triumph of the _Porta Pia_ in uneasiness.

But in this extremity of affairs and in this intense trepidation of mind, what is the duty of Catholics?

Is it to wish for an agreement between the Pope and the inimical power which oppresses him?

This is but to assume the office of members of the faction, under the disguise of zealous Catholics. He only who hath his part in the leaven of the Pharisees can believe it possible for the successor of St. Peter to sacrifice the eternal rights of Christ to the interests of Belial.

Is it to recommend the Holy Father to abandon his own state and seek compensation in some Catholic country outside of Italy? This is the advice of the imprudent. The Holy Father has received from God the grace of office to determine what is the best for the Apostolic See and for the church. No one need trouble himself to give advice unasked. He has his natural counsellors, and above all he has the Spirit of the Lord, with whom he is in daily and fervent communion. If Pius IX. remains in Rome, notwithstanding the satanic tempest which howls so wildly and so furiously against him, it is a sign that he knows such to be the will of God, and therefore makes it his duty to remain. In the course of events, we shall see that, if the Pope has remained in Rome, it is because it was best that he should remain there.

The real duty of Catholics is, on the other hand (besides assiduous prayer, conformably to the example of the primitive Christians when St. Peter was _in vinculis_), to unite and so work as to hasten the liberation of our common Father.

The Italian factionists reproach us Catholics of Italy with being parricides because we implore from God and men this sighed-for liberation. But it seems to us that it is they who commit parricide who, having imprisoned the Pope after officially declaring such an act to be contrary to the laws of nations and more than barbarous, have brought injury and evil upon the country which we are ever praying God to diminish. As for the rest, we Italian Catholics do not understand how the independence, glory, and prosperity of our country can be made properly to consist in the spoliation and captivity of the Supreme Pontiff, and in being trod under foot by the Subalpinists.

We, imploring the liberation of our Holy Father, have not the remotest 789 idea that that liberation will cost any part of Italy its independence. The honor of calling foreigners into Italy, to subject it to personal advantage, and to pay for such power by presenting these foreigners with Italian provinces, nay, with the keys of Italy itself--we Catholics leave this to the idol of the Subalpinists, to their Cavour, and to their sheep of every color.

We Italian Catholics, we say it again, do not desire that the domination of our Father should bring with it any foreign domination, not even over a hand’s-breadth of Italian territory. The shameful traffic in people and in Italian territory could not be for us a means of liberating the Pope, as for the Subalpinists it has been a means of the so-called liberation of Italy. In this we are all agreed; we wish for the independence of justice, because justice alone ensures the happiness of nations.

But we Italian Catholics can of ourselves do little, because the dominant inimical power, being the enemy of the Pope, is naturally our enemy also, although we are the immense national majority. We are the deplorable victims of modern liberty, which wholly consists in the oppression of the many, who are honest but weak, beneath the feet of the few, who are crafty and strong. Besides this, very serious and insuperable difficulties of conscience oblige us to abstain from using the most powerful of legal arms which liberalism says it has left in the hands of that majority which is trodden under foot by the minority. So that, if we may from this take occasion to cherish more solid hopes that God will at length assist us in effecting means of safety, yet in actual combat we now find ourselves unequal to the contest.

This is not the case with the Catholics of the other countries of Europe. It is their peculiar privilege so to address themselves to the work that their governments may not only preserve and strengthen the only and ultimate safeguard of the life and person of the Holy Father in Rome; but that they may use their power for his liberation; that thus with his full liberty the true liberty of the people may again flourish--that liberty which is now enchained with Pius IX. in the Vatican.

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ELINOR’S TRIAL. 790

“I do think John Lloyd is very weak in giving in to his wife so much! To think now of his letting her send Elinor to a convent school! Such a risk for a Protestant! Ten chances to one that Elinor comes back a Papist. And then her _reasons_ are so absurd, that Protestant boarding-schools cultivate too much of folly and fashion, etc.! I have no patience with Elizabeth. If she were a Catholic herself, there might be some excuse for her wanting her daughter educated among them, but as she is a Protestant, I think Protestant schools might serve her purpose.”

Thus speaks Mrs. Robert Lennox of her husband’s sister. She is talking to her husband while they are going home from a fashionable church in New York. She is a stately, handsome lady, to whom her rich attire seems well adapted. Just now she appears displeased and somewhat more haughty than usual, but the face is refined and the bearing polished.

More gentle than his wife in the treatment of the question in hand is Mr. Lennox.

“Well, I cannot say Elizabeth is so very far out of the way. You know John’s means are very limited, and these convent schools are cheaper than ours. Besides, Elizabeth knows Elly cannot compete in dress and all the furbelows, as our Lizzie does. So she prefers not to have her exposed to the uncomfortableness of being the subject of derogatory comparisons. You know young folks are keenly sensitive on such points.”

“But, Robert, must such reasons weigh against the risk of perverting the girl’s faith, the undermining of her religion? Would you trust those sly, insinuating sisters with our daughter?”

Mr. Lennox smiles significantly as he replies: “I would not object to Lizzie’s receiving some of that peculiar, modest, quiet air which those sisters have and so often impart to their pupils. There is some nameless charm, I cannot describe it better than by saying it is the opposite of that which the young ladies of the present day cultivate for their deportment, and which seems to belong almost exclusively to this training.”

“Pshaw! Mere affectation of meekness. The girls are all the same at heart. Why should not they be? I tell you it isn’t worth the risk! Mark my words, you’ll see the effect on Elly’s religion.”

“Well, you know Elizabeth said that even that change of religion was better than the irreligion or isms of the day.”

“Now, Robert, it is just to oppose me that you so persistently uphold Elizabeth in this. Is it to be supposed that girls of sixteen are going to take to isms in Protestant schools or irreligion either? Why, they don’t know enough for that, at their age!”

“I do not dispute you. I only think that Elizabeth has preferred for Elly this risk rather than have her of John’s state of mind. And that is why John is so easy in the matter. Being of no faith himself, he prides himself on being also of no prejudice. ‘The greater the faith, the greater the bigotry,’ he says.”

“And I think you are just about as bad as John,” says the lady. “I 791 don’t believe you listened to the sermon at all to-day.”

This last charge passes unanswered, because they have arrived at their own door, where we leave them.

II.

Two years after this, the cousins, Lizzie Lennox and Elinor Lloyd, have returned from their respective schools: Lizzie from her fashionable seminary, where she has received every advantage that money could purchase, and where she has associated with the daughters of the wealthiest, if not the most refined, families in the land. And if wealth will not purchase the means and open the way for refinement, pray what will? Does it not free the path from the thorns of toil, give time and means for culture and for travel, and to surround ourselves with the ennobling influences of art? And, above all, does it not grant us the free indulgence of generous impulses? Do not all the mortal ills of flesh which bear upon the rich bear also on the poor, with more added to stand in the way of their refinement? It would seem so.

Lizzie Lennox has all these advantages of wealth in her case, but her cousin Elinor Lloyd is the daughter of a poor man. Poorer now than he was two years ago, when he let his prudent wife have her way in the choice of a convent school for her daughter. Elinor has been very happy with the sisters, to whom she has become sincerely attached. Their good example has not been lost upon her, but she denies indignantly that any under-handed means have been used to warp her religious feelings. They have simply and honestly acted out the dictates of their own faith, exacting from her only such general compliance as would be required in the schools of any denomination among Protestants. If her affections have been won, and her young heart drawn toward the religion of these gentle teachers, that was the risk her mother took when she sent her willingly among the Sisters of Charity.

The cousins are nearly of an age. Lizzie is named after her father’s sister, Mrs. Lloyd, and Elinor after her aunt, Mrs. Lennox.

These cousins are strikingly alike, and yet singularly unlike in their appearance. Their faces seem to have been cast in almost the same mould, so exactly does every feature correspond, but the coloring is so different that they present opposite types of beauty. For they are very beautiful. Lizzie is exceedingly fair, with light auburn hair and hazel eyes; the same reddish tint seeming to lurk in the eyes and lashes as in the hair, which peculiarity any close observer of faces may often see in this type. But Elinor’s eyes are a dark brown, and her hair is very dark. She is too fair and pale for a brunette, and her eyes are not black enough. Despite this difference in color, they are very like her cousin Lizzie’s light orbs in expression. It is as if a painter should take two sketches of the same face, and simply change his colors for the touching of them. Indeed, a cast of each might pass for the same person, so like are they, even to the carriage of the head, the turn of the throat, the curve of the shoulders. I am thus exact in my description, because out of this wonderful likeness and difference of face and form came Elinor’s trial. But now, at eighteen, Elinor’s face is softer and sweeter than that of her blonde cousin. This difference is seen as they are listening or talking, more than while their faces are in repose. Shall we say that it is the 792 result of training and education that Elinor seems the more refined and modest? Or is it only a matter of inheritance, or a trick of manner betokening nothing? I present them thus to the reader, who may guess somewhat of their respective characters, as they sit chatting their cousinly talk in Lizzie’s room. Lizzie is dressing to go out with Elinor, and talking while she proceeds with her toilet.

“But, Elly, where is the harm of flirting a little, so long as you do nothing serious, and never commit yourself?”

“I think you do commit yourself, Lizzie, when you put pen to paper to answer a stranger’s letter, and when you cannot tell whether he is true or false. More likely he is the latter, from the very fact of his trying to draw you on. How do you know how he may use your letter?”

“But I haven’t signed my name, only my own initials. I use E. L., not L. L. And you know I am known rather as Lizzie Lennox than Elizabeth Lennox. No one ever thinks of me as Elizabeth--I don’t seem to be that to myself. Now, you are either Elinor or Elly, but I am just Lizzie. So you see I can hide under my own honest initials.”

“Ah Lizzie! why hide at all? Give it up. I don’t like this kind of thing. I don’t believe the men who write to girls in this way care one bit for them, except to make them contribute to their own amusement, and feed their conceit. What good does it do when you don’t even see each other?”

“But we may, after, if we want to, you know.”

“I shouldn’t want to see him, Lizzie; I hope you will never meet.”

“Now, Elly, it is just being with those sisters that makes you talk so. Why, all the girls do so. It is only for fun, and the young men know we don’t mean wrong. I could say ‘Evil he who evil thinks,’ only I know you are not evil, only sisterified in this matter.”

“But, Lizzie, sisterified or not, you know I like fun as much as other girls, only I don’t think this _is_ fun: I think it isn’t just right. It is making yourself too cheap. I don’t like men well enough to do so much for their amusement. I may be peculiar, but I certainly hate a covert thing, and personals in the newspapers are very covert and very cowardly. Mamma says a respectable paper will not publish them. Besides, you dare not let your father and mother know this, dare you?”

“Oh! of course they would get a great scare, and think I was going to do something much worse than I mean. But that doesn’t prove I would do wrong.”

“No; but, Lizzie, don’t you hate to deceive them when they trust you so freely? Is this stranger to be trusted and they not?”

“Well, I don’t want to give pain to either papa or mamma; and so if they don’t know it, they will be spared all pain and fuss in the matter, and nobody hurt. Now I’m ready. Let’s go.” And the two leaving the house, the subject is dropped for the time.

* * * * *

Only one month has passed since the cousins have had this morning’s talk together, but it has brought a great change in their feelings and relations to each other.

First, Elinor has quietly but courageously avowed herself a Catholic. Alone and unsupported she has made the great step--alone she goes to Mass and Vespers--and without sympathy from her family she practises faithfully all the observances of her church. In all this, she has 793 shown her aunt Lennox a wise prophet, but that lady is no less indignant on that account. She enlarges upon her favorite text, and congratulates herself that she has taken no such risk for her own daughter’s falling into Popish pitfalls, and traps set for the young and innocent. Lizzie chooses to consider herself called upon to give up the intimacy and nearly all intercourse with her cousin. In this she is secretly governed by a sense of annoyance at Elinor’s persistent discountenancing of her clandestine correspondences, but she makes a show of setting herself against “Popish influences.”

The parents of Elinor have taken the matter with seeming indifference. She loses none of their love in consequence of the change in her faith, and they are sure she is quite as good a daughter as ever. But a greater trouble, if this is a trouble, now absorbs their minds. John Lloyd has failed in business and failed in health. He is a broken-down man. In this emergency, Elinor has determined to accept a situation as musical governess in a wealthy family. She has felt the tug at her heartstrings, no less from her wounded pride in the matter of her changed social position, than in the hard necessity to leave her home and parents. She is no saint, only a good, pure-minded girl, who is scrupulously conscientious in all things. She battles against a bitter feeling of almost envy toward the better luck and easier life of her cousin. She does not really wish Lizzie to be as poor as herself, and she is sure she would rather be herself than Lizzie, but she does wish her father and mother were in the same comfortable ease that her uncle and aunt enjoy. Her uncle is disposed to be very kind to her, but he is hampered by his wife and daughter in their bitter opposition to her. He has sent her a check to defray all necessary expenses in her wardrobe. So she goes to her new home so nicely clad that at least no air of shabbiness clings to her. Brave as she may be, this feminine sensitiveness to her appearance is very acute in her. Foolish vanity concerning dress she may not have, but, being young, she is only natural in liking to look well, to pass criticism which she cannot ignore at least creditably. If a young woman has not this much of feeling concerning her toilet, she is probably slovenly, or else she affects an eccentricity which is more disagreeable than a love for finery. Elinor is refined in her nature, and she is not strong-minded, so she likes the good opinion of others.

Elinor soon settles into the new and changed relations of her life, the more easily because her employer proves exceedingly kind. As her forte is music, she is of course, in the exercise of that accomplishment, brought into more constant contact and intercourse with the guests at the house than the mere instruction and supervision of her pupils would demand. Her seat at the piano calls to her the attention and brings upon her the criticism of many who otherwise might never notice her. And so it has happened that young Mr. Schuyler, the brother of her hostess, has more frequently than any other turned the leaves of her music, sang to her accompaniment, and gazed admiringly upon the pretty hands moving over the keys and upon the charming face turned to the pages before it. Mr. Schuyler is an agreeable young gentleman, good-looking enough, graceful enough, and flattering enough in his address to ladies to win their pleased recognition of his attentions. But buzzing in his admiration around 794 each sweet flower like the veriest male coquette of a bee, he is just unstable enough also to tantalize the fair recipients of his attentions. Elinor likes him, but with a little reserve. She is not of a distrustful nature, but she does not quite like Mr. Schuyler’s manner to her. He has been very unreserved in his admiration. He has attempted some sentimental love-making, but there has always been a sort of holding back--a non-committal manner, which has not seemed to her straightforward and manly. It has appeared to her that he has been attempting to gain her regard without making any actual avowal himself, and that he is trying to amuse himself or feed his own vanity at her expense. Yet she is so afraid of being unjust to him, knowing that her position in the family may make her unduly sensitive, that she strives against this feeling. He really is very kind in a great many little ways which she would be ashamed not to acknowledge, and she thinks, if she were not a governess for his sister, she might receive his attentions in a less cavilling spirit.

In the meantime, Mr. Schuyler studies Elinor from quite a different point of view from any she imagines. He has found by repeated experiment that he cannot make her understand or respond to various little devices which he has been in the habit of using to flirt with certain school-girls whom he has met often in his daily walks and rides. All these signals pass unnoticed upon the convent girl. But in fluttering thus around this innocent, cold light, the gay moth has got his wings singed. He does really love Elinor as much as such a nature is capable of loving. Just because she has _not_ responded to any of his advances, he has become more seriously interested in her. But just when an honorable feeling of choosing her from all others is dawning as a possibility on his mind, a wonderful discovery bursts upon him.

He has been amusing himself by conducting a correspondence with some unknown lady who has signed herself “E. L.” This incognita has at last yielded to an oft-urged request to send her picture, and a fine photograph of a beautiful girl has come to him. Whose face does he see? “By all that is astounding,” he says, “Miss Lloyd!” He cannot be mistaken. The very same. It is a Rembrandt shadow picture, by which he studies every line of the profile, while it shows also the contour of the full face. There is the dark hair waving from the same fair forehead. The eyes are the same dark orbs with the long lashes, only he has never seen just this bright, coquettish, laughing look in them before. It is wonderfully charming in the picture, but he really does not like it as well as the other thoughtful, intent gaze he has lately come to love so well.

“The demure little cheat!” he says. “Well, she is very versatile, it must be confessed. Who would have thought it? But stop. This may be a cheat. The whole thing is so unlike her. I do believe the writer has sent Miss Lloyd’s picture instead of her own. ‘E. L.’ L for Lloyd certainly, and I saw Elinor Lloyd written on her music, and, by Jove! I think it was the very writing. I’ll look again”--which he does, and finds it to be just the very same E and L; and no wonder, for Lizzie Lennox wrote it in other days, when she gave that music to her cousin.

Then he observes, what careless Lizzie has never once thought of, the name of the photographer, to whom he goes at once, and by no very adroit means discovers the name of the fair original. And here he is 795 again astonished. He finds he has the photograph of Miss Lizzie Lennox. “L. L.,” he says to himself, “and not E. L., after all,” and in his bewilderment it is actually some days before it occurs to him that Lizzie is the pet name for Elizabeth.

Now, having arrived thus far in his pursuit of information under difficulties, he is unable to decide whether she is Miss Lennox or Miss Lloyd. In this dilemma he questions his sister, Mrs. Wood, and determines that she can scarcely be any other than the Miss Lloyd she professes herself. So the false name has been given the photographer, he thinks; and he makes up his mind that Miss Lloyd, though unquestionably very charming, is about as profound a coquette as he is ever likely to meet.

And so believing, his manner toward Elinor takes on a new phase, which pleases her so little that it has the effect of making her more reserved than heretofore. She now avoids him as much as possible, and yet she is conscious of a sharp pain in thus being driven to an attitude of defence. She is young and frank, and would be light-hearted if in her true position. She has really liked Frederick Schuyler because she found him companionable in a house where all are either older or younger than herself except him. Their tastes are similar in many things, and of late he had seemed to her more honest. But now he treats her with a certain familiarity of look and tone which offends her nice sense of propriety. She cannot guess at the false position in which she is placed. She has been very reticent concerning herself and her relatives. True pride and dignity have made her forbear to allude to her wealthy relations, the Lennoxes, now that she is supporting herself. She does not wish to seem to make any claim for consideration outside of her own individual merits. This is not vanity, but proper self-respect; and this feeling is increased by the utter silence which Lizzie has preserved toward her. But as she withdraws from even the slight friendship which she had allowed to spring up between herself and Mr. Schuyler, she feels more lonely. Her religion separates her also from a closer confidence with Mrs. Wood, who goes to a fashionable Unitarian church.

But Frederick Schuyler does not give up his interest in this baffling coquette, for so he firmly believes Elinor to be. Does he not hold the proof? He has sent his own picture to E. L. at the usual address, and he firmly believes that Elinor Lloyd has that picture in her possession. He waits until he receives an acknowledgment from E. L.; and then he watches Elinor. He is prepared to see her betray her overwhelming confusion at discovering who her unknown correspondent is. What, then, is his amazement, his disappointment, at seeing no ripple of disturbance in her composed demeanor! He is exasperated at this assurance. He determines to shake her composure by direct means. The opportunity offers only too soon.

As the last music lesson for the day is finished and the pupil bounds from the room, Mr. Frederick Schuyler presents himself with a peculiar and, to Elinor, an offensive smile on his face.

“Miss Lloyd,” he says blandly, “do you not think it is time to drop this masking?”

Elinor looks at him with wondering and offended eyes. They are not the eyes of either the picture, or the soft brown ones he has known hitherto as hers. They flash up to him in angry brilliancy as she 796 replies:

“I do not understand you, sir!” So sure is he, and so amazed at this stubbornness, that he almost as indignantly replies:

“And I am sure I cannot understand you!”

“I do not desire that you should,” she retorts: “but I think it due to myself to demand why you presume to thus address me, Mr. Schuyler.”

The offended tone remains, but blended with it is a little faint touch of grieved feeling, which his nice ear detects.

“Can you pretend to still treat me as if you did not recognize me? Is my picture so unlike me that you do not know the original?”

“Your picture!” and such a world of wonderment is expressed in her voice that he thinks she ought to be on the stage for consummate acting.

“Perhaps you do not recognize this,” and he holds before her a picture so like herself that she is confounded. For the moment, she really does not see her cousin Lizzie as plainly as herself. The photograph, like one of those libellous stories which are true in detail, but false in implication, has given the reddish tint in Lizzie’s hair, brows, and lashes dark as her own, and there is the blonde cousin presented, the very counterpart of the brunette, one. The light hazel eyes are in the photograph, dark as Elinor’s own.

Elinor gazes speechless for a moment. Then she recognizes the dress of her cousin, and the expression _not_ her own which she knows so well. It all rushes upon her perception at once--the cruel mistake--Lizzie’s clandestine correspondence, of which she disapproved so much--the well-known resemblance between them--the picture more like herself than Lizzie--she sees it all, and she sees Mr. Schuyler’s triumph in her discomfiture. Guilty Lizzie would not look so guilty as innocent Elinor looks now.

“Checkmate!” says Mr. Schuyler. His tone stings her.

“Mr. Schuyler, this is not my picture. I never sat for it.”

“Miss Lloyd!”

“I repeat, sir! This is not my picture, and I wear no mask.”

“But you are ‘E. L.,’” he says, showing her his last missive with that signature, “and you acknowledge receiving one like this,” and he confronts her with a duplicate of his own picture.

“My name is Elinor Lloyd, and I have never written to you, and this is the first time I have seen either of these pictures,” she replies, glancing disdainfully at each of them.

“Do you know whose this is?” he asks.

At this point-blank question, Elinor bursts into tears. The cruelty of the position in which she finds herself is too much for her. She will not betray her cousin, and she knows that on her own denial alone, against overwhelming evidence, rests her defence of herself. And in tears, distressed beyond measure, she rushes from the room. Mr. Schuyler gives a long, low whistle. He is inclined to believe she has told him the truth, in spite of all he knows and has seen. For why does she wish to deny it? What girl who could do this thing would so spurn the accusation? Her proud assertion, “My name is Elinor Lloyd, and I have never written to you,” rings in his ears. He believes it, as we will all of us sometimes believe, apparently against reason. He knows that he wishes to believe in her truth, despite his vanity.

A little book lies near a roll of music on the piano, with her gloves and hat. He takes up this book and examines it, for no reason except 797 that it appears to belong to her. A copy of Dickens’ _Barnaby Rudge_, with a mark at the description of the Lord George Gordon Riots, and pencil marks on the margin. He turns idly to the fly-leaf, and sees written, “Elizabeth Lennox, from her brother Robert.” O cruel evidence! “Circumstance, that unspiritual god and miscreator,” again shows Elinor as a liar. What can he do now but doubt her word? Elinor meanwhile is pacing her room in a tumult of agitation. Her first impulse is to abandon her engagement with Mrs. Wood at once, and go to her parents. But poverty among other hard impositions forbids us acting on the dictates of pride, be it ever so honorable. Elinor shrinks from staying, but also shrinks from giving her reasons for leaving to her parents or to Mrs. Wood. To give false ones, covering her real one, never for one moment occurs to her. She feels keenly the cruelty, the injustice of the false position in which Lizzie’s folly has placed her. Yet she is too generous at heart to betray Lizzie even to her mother. She knows that when Lizzie told her of this “bit of fun” it was in confidence, and troublesome as the trust has proved, she will keep it until she is released. But she feels how hard it is to know how to act rightly, unaided, uncounselled. One refuge, however, she has--one counsellor who never betrays his trust, and who does not require her cousin’s name or identity. O blessed privilege of a Catholic! The safe, sure refuge of the confessional is Elinor’s. What better human guide and comforter than her pastor can she seek? No fears of a betrayed trust is here. So to him she goes, and from him she receives the needed strength to bear her heavy trial--for heavy trial it is on such a young heart, all the more so because she cannot suppose her silence has put a stop to this disgraceful affair. She has written to Lizzie explaining what has happened, and begging her to lift this weight from her, and at least free her from this blame. And Lizzie has indignantly replied that she will not interfere, and that she believes Elinor to be the betrayer of her name to Fred Schuyler, and moreover hints that it has been done to win him to herself.

This rouses Elinor to such a degree that she nearly forgets her counsel to “return good for evil.” Prayer and meditation, however, those best of medicines for disturbed souls, work their good effect for her, and she is able still to bear in silence, trusting that time will lift the stigma off her. So she shuns as best she can all intercourse with Mr. Schuyler.

And thus about three unhappy weeks pass. Mr. Schuyler gives up trying to enlist Elinor’s attention, and he leaves the last communication of E. L. unanswered. He receives no more of those interesting missives. Lizzie, thoroughly frightened, stops this amusement for herself.

But at last the Nemesis, circumstance, overtakes her--the circumstance of meeting Mr. Frederick Schuyler at a party. A very small circumstance apparently, but pregnant with much for three individuals. He sees her standing not far off from him, in all the blaze of gas-light and full dress. He has never seen Elinor at this advantage, but the perfect profile and the proud carriage of the head impress him at once. Yet those blonde locks and the light laughing eyes--these are neither like Elinor’s nor the picture. Lovely this face certainly is, but he remembers the darker one as pleasing him more. The remarkable 798 resemblance, however, has so startled him, that he actually trembles as he asks a friend who has been talking with her to tell him her name.

“Miss Lennox.”

“Do you know her first name?” he says, with forced composure.

“Oh! yes. Lizzie Lennox and I are old friends; let me introduce you.” And in the brief interval before he is presented, he only remembers that it is L. L. and not E. L., the lady of the photograph but not of the correspondence.

Lizzie passes this ordeal with a frightened, throbbing heart, but a polite, calm exterior, thankful to be very soon claimed for the next dance, and to leave Mr. Schuyler for the present at least. She is a foolish coquette, but not an evil-minded girl. Weak, vain, selfish, but not bad-hearted--she has really felt troubled by the mean way in which she has refused to clear her cousin of the suspicion which she has brought upon her, but her selfishness has prevailed in the matter. To protect herself has seemed to her of more consequence than to clear Elinor. And the possible consequence of her parents knowing all about this little escapade has not seemed to her at all pleasant to contemplate. And so she has been vacillating between the desire to do right and the fear of exposure ever since she has received Elinor’s letter. She is equally ignorant of how much she may be known to Mr. Schuyler, or how far she may be protected by her cousin’s magnanimity. She moreover finds Mr. Schuyler better than his photograph on inspection, as a handsome face generally is better than a photograph of it. Meanwhile, that gentleman has recollected that Elizabeth and Lizzie are the same name. He has been watching this airy, graceful dancer, and he has seen that she has been observing him. Elinor is absolved from all blame in his mind. The only shred of mystery left is the name in that book of hers. Lizzie, resting after her last round dance, sees him approach with both dread and pleasure. He wastes no time in prefatory remarks, but says, “Miss Lennox, are you related to a Miss Elinor Lloyd?”

Lizzie has the command of this situation better than Mr. Schuyler. She knows the full purport of the question, but being asked by Elinor in a letter to speak the truth while she can yet hide it, and by handsome Fred Schuyler looking into her eyes, and knowing her for the girl he has been flirting with, are two very different matters. Here she may make a virtue of necessity, and perhaps a conquest at the same time. Ah! if our good deeds are viewed by the light of our motives, how very much the virtue in them seems to pale.

Lizzie says with charming candor, “Oh! yes, she is my cousin; do you know her?”

“Yes, Miss Lennox, and I saw your name in a book she had--_Barnaby Rudge_--and it appeared to have been quite attentively read, from the marginal notes I saw.”

Lizzie shows a momentary astonishment. “Why, Mr. Schuyler, the only copy of Dickens’ _Barnaby Rudge_ I have is at home in the New Riverside set papa gave me only lately--since”--she pauses a little confused--“since I have seen Elly last. Besides, I don’t make notes on the margins of my books, and I am quite sure Elly would not in mine. I think it could not have been my name you saw.”

“Indeed, I saw it, ‘Elizabeth Lennox,’ and from your ‘brother Robert.’”

Lizzie laughs merrily, and she looks the very image of innocent fun as 799 she responds to this triumphant assertion.

“Oh! that’s a good joke! My _brother_ Robert! Why, that’s papa! And the name is his sister’s. She is Elinor’s mother. Why didn’t she tell you! I hate such mysteries.” And she shoots such a glance as would once have been a challenge irresistible. He keeps up the badinage, but he is answering that question, “Why did she not tell you?” in a manner not flattering to Miss Lennox, but very much so to Miss Lloyd. The former young lady is not quite pleased with his abstracted manner. True, he dances with her, chats with her, compliments her, but she is not satisfied. She is wishing that this was the first intercourse she has had with Mr. Schuyler, and that he had nothing to remember of Lizzie Lennox, and no previous knowledge of her--she has an intuitive sense that she does not stand as well as her cousin in his estimation, and that her chance would have been better if she had never written to him. He, however, generously makes no allusion to that correspondence. He is ashamed of it for her, and heartily wishes it had never been. He is thinking how he can make his peace with her cousin, of whom he feels glad to think so well, when he is startled by the words.

“Elinor and I are not friends now as we were once--before she became a Catholic.”

“Miss Lloyd a Catholic!”

“Yes, Mr. Schuyler, did you not know that? All of the family are Protestants except her. Her mother was so very liberal as to allow her to be educated at a convent of those Sisters of Charity, and this is the result. I have never been intimate with her since.”

Mr. Schuyler is very uncomfortably astonished by this information. He has had pleasant thoughts of the possible consequence of his reconciliation with Elinor. She has so much risen in his estimation by this solution of the picture mystery and her generous, honorable forbearance toward Lizzie, that he is thinking how very pleasant it would be to pass his life with such a companion. She certainly has proved herself very trustworthy. But a Catholic! That changes the aspect of affairs. Does he want a wife of that faith? Would not the coquettish blonde beauty be more desirable? And yet he cannot say that the ways of Miss Lennox altogether please him. He has been willing to amuse himself by a clandestine correspondence with the unknown beauty, but the known writer of those entertaining epistles does not seem to him just the one to trust with his life’s chance of domestic bliss. The trust is not for just such as she. He really believes no harm of Lizzie, but he knows a worse man might think worse of her than she deserves. He wishes she were the Catholic and Elinor the Protestant. Why now, for the upholding of all his cherished beliefs and prejudices, could not the result of the two different systems of education have been reversed? Surely, he thinks, “Popery would, as a rule, have made such a girl as Lizzie rather than one like Elinor. After all,” he concludes, “the difference is in their own natures, and would have shown itself had they both had the same training,” and in this we cannot dispute him. But possibly, although Elinor might never have condescended to such a course, Lizzie might with better teaching have been saved from it also. The girl is not evil, only young, weak, vain, and she has needed just that which Elinor has had to sustain and strengthen her. Lizzie relies on herself, on her own crude knowledge 800 of the world, and on just as much advice as she chooses to accept. She never bares her conscience and her soul, as Elinor does, to any one. Therefore, she not only robs herself of the counsel of wiser heads, but she never brings upon herself that searching self-examination necessary to the seeing of herself rightly. Had she done that, had she been forced to look with this introverted gaze upon herself, she would have shrunk from placing herself in this doubtful position. She will remember this in after years with a sense of annoyance, if not of any deeper sentiment. And yet her present feeling toward Elinor is one of irritation. She knows that Elinor was right in her advice to her, and that she can look down upon her from a more exalted height. The fact that she has not taken airs of superiority on herself has not lessened Lizzie’s resentment. The feeling that she is on a lower moral plane than that of her Catholic, convent-educated cousin, is a sufficient grievance of itself, and admits to her unregulated mind of no extenuation in Elinor’s behalf.

It is not very easy for Mr. Schuyler to find an opportunity to explain to Elinor his enlightenment and change of views. She shuns him so sedulously that he begins to think he will have to tell her at the table, in the presence of the family, that he has met her cousin. True, he could do this without any indelicacy, but he has planned a little programme of a _tête-à-tête_, which he thinks more pleasant, to himself at least, than leaving her to draw her own conclusions from such meagre information as he can give her in the presence of others. Moreover, he does not wish to startle her before others by mentioning Lizzie’s name--a sore subject to her, he suspects. So he bides his time, although impatiently. If Elinor were like her cousin, he thinks he would not wait so long for opportunity to speak. His man’s nature is aroused by the necessity of pursuing.

But Mr. Schuyler has not made up his mind that he is willing to take a Catholic wife. He is at present only desirous of establishing the old pleasant, friendly footing between Elinor and himself--possibly a more tender one; but he will not yet commit himself. Not until he has seen how deeply rooted is her Catholicism--only an ism, it seems to him. He is getting impatient, however, at her continued indifference toward him. He sees that he must make his opportunity; and, being a young gentleman fertile in expedients, he resorts to waylaying her at the hour when her last music lesson is ended for the day.

Elinor’s face flushes and her brow contracts--a little indignant flash is in her brown eyes as he confronts her. She remembers the last scene between them at that hour by the piano, and it does not tend to soften her manner. Evidently he has got all the work to do, unhelped by her. So he starts off, as is his usual manner, with an abrupt introduction of the subject.

“Miss Lloyd, I owe you an apology for declaring that I had your picture in my possession. I know now whose picture it is.”

“You should have known it was not mine, sir, when I told you so,” and she blushes again at the thought of Lizzie’s being known. Even when the blame is lifted from herself, she does not rejoice in her cousin’s exposure.

“I did know it, Miss Lloyd; I did believe you, on my soul, against all the wonderful evidence of the remarkable likeness to you. I did believe that picture was not yours, or that at least you did not send me it, 801 or know of my having it. But how could I know that it was your mother’s name in your book?”

He stops confused. Elinor has never yet known of that added testimony against her. Had she known it, she would at once have told him it was her mother’s name. There was no reason for any mystery concerning that, it being no part of Lizzie’s confidences to her. If he had had that clue, perhaps he might have come to some imperfect glimpse of the truth. In answer to her wondering inquiry, “What book?” he says now humbly:

“You left a book you appeared to own on the piano. I took the liberty of looking at it, and read a name in it which I knew belonged to her whose picture I mistook for yours. Your cousin, Miss Lloyd, is very like and very unlike yourself. I met her a short time since at a party; and even seeing her before me, the original of that picture, I could scarcely believe it was those fair locks which the sun made so dark in her picture. I may certainly be excused for not remembering this trick of photography, especially when you two are in features so very similar.” He says this last pleadingly, because the displeased look is not gone from her face.

“Mr. Schuyler,” she says, “your mistake concerning that picture was more natural and more excusable than your supposing me the writer of that letter, or the giver of that picture. I think, whatever the evidence you may have supposed yourself to possess, my uniform bearing and manner toward you should have freed me from any such supposition on your part. I could not tell you whose picture you had, but I was free to tell you whose name was in my book.”

“But, Miss Lloyd, even if you had given me the chance to ask you, I could scarcely take upon myself the liberty of seeming to make you accountable to myself for any name written in your book. The very asking of that would have seemed an accusation.”

Elinor’s quick sense of justice sees this readily, and her brow clears. Hard as it has been against herself, she admits that it was an entanglement for him. So she says more graciously: “We will let it pass, Mr. Schuyler. I wish the whole matter for all parties could be disposed of as easily as I can pass out of it.” And she endeavors to leave him, with a provoking air of taking no further interest in him or his changed footing toward herself. He gently makes a motion of barring her way. She stands waiting to hear what he has further to say to her, but there is no evidence of any desire to remain.

“It is so long since we have spoken together in this friendly fashion, that I think you need not be in such haste to shorten our conversation.”

He says this in such a flattering way, implying that to talk with her is the one great delight for him, that her girl’s sense of pleasing and being pleased is quickened, but she only toys with the tassel of the curtain near which she is standing, and says nothing.

Again Mr. Frederick finds he has all the advances to make toward conversation, unaided by her.

“Miss Lennox tells me you were educated at a convent. Is that the reason you are so shy of me, or is it because I am a Protestant, Miss Lloyd?”

“My parents are Protestants, and all my relatives. It would be strange for me to be afraid of a Protestant.”

“And yet you can be of so very different a faith. May I ask, is it a 802 matter of conscience with you, or only one of taste?”

“I do not understand religion being a matter of only taste, Mr. Schuyler,” she says simply.

“Why, don’t you think it is taste, preference only for the gorgeous and ceremonial, which makes the Ritualists of St. Alban’s and St. Mary’s do as they do?”

“I cannot decide upon their motives, Mr. Schuyler. I only know that if my conscience were not in this, I should not separate myself in my faith from that of my family.” She says this with a firm bearing and a lofty look at him which abashes him. He begins to suspect that this young convert _will not_ swerve from her path from any regard for him. He has a full share of conceit, fed by his success with the girls of his acquaintance. He has won their smiles so readily heretofore, and he has pleased and flattered them so easily, that he is piqued at making no better impression now when he really tries.

Again Elinor moves to the door. He lets her pass with the words, “We are friends now, are we not?”

“Friends, oh! certainly,” she says, but her tone does not seem so delighted at this change in their relations as he thinks it should be.

The truth is, Elinor has thought much over Mr. Schuyler’s little flirtation with her cousin, and he has not come out from that inspection of his conduct with any great credit, in her way of looking at it. She thinks that although he may pass unscathed by such indulgence, it is not honorable in him to tempt one younger and weaker than himself into such practices. She thinks if Lizzie could find no one like him to entice her into this folly, she must perforce amuse herself in some other way. It seems to her that his motives were bad. And she suspects that if she would have lent herself to this sort of thing, he would have been just as ready to conduct an affair of the kind with herself. Her native good sense shows her this, and she is thankful for the different example and teaching which has hedged her in from ever giving a chance for such a thing. The amount of all this is, that the little inclination to like Mr. Fred Schuyler which she had once is now gone, she has no trust in him, and without, trust there can be no abiding love.

Therefore, when, some days after that gentleman overcomes his dislike of her religion so far as to absolutely offer his heart, hand, and fortune to her, this disdainful Catholic astonishes him with these words:

“I think, Mr. Schuyler, that these protestations are more due to my cousin Lizzie than to me. If you speak truth to me, you have spoken false to her. If it is truth to her, what am I to believe? Mr. Schuyler, ‘I must trust all in all,’ or not at all.”

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OWEN ON SPIRITISM.[159] 803

Mr. Owen, though he has since been a member of Congress, and an American minister at Naples, was formerly well known in this city as associated with Frances Wright in editing the _Free Enquirer_, as the author of an infamous work on moral physiology, and as an avowed atheist. He now claims to be a believer in the existence of God, and in the truth of the Christian religion; but his God has no freedom of action, being hedged in and bound hand and foot by the laws of nature, and his Christianity is a Christianity without Christ, and indistinguishable from unmitigated heathenism. How much he has gained by his conversion, through the intervention of the spirits, from atheism to demonism and gross superstition, it is not easy to say, though it is better to believe in the devil, if one does not mistake him for God, than it is to believe in nothing.

Mr. Owen makes, as do hundreds of others, a mistake in using the word _spiritualism_ for _spiritism_, and spiritual for spirital or spiritalistic. Spiritualism is appropriated to designate a system of philosophy opposed to sensism or materialism, and spiritual stands opposed to sensual or carnal, and is too holy a term to be applied to spirit-rapping, table-tipping, and other antics of the spirits. Mr. Owen is unhappy in naming his books. He holds that the universe is governed by inflexible, immutable, and imperishable physical laws; that all events or manifestations take place by the agency of these laws; that the future is only the continuation and development of the present; and that death is only the throwing off of one’s overcoat, and the life after death is the identical life, without any interruption, that we now live. We see not well how he can assert another world, or a debatable land between this world and the next. If all things and all events are produced by the agency of natural laws, and those laws are universal and unchangeable, we are unable to conceive any world above or beyond nature, or any world in any sense distinguishable from the present natural world. His books are therefore decidedly misnamed, and so named as to imply the existence of another world and a world after this, which cannot on his principles be true.

Mr. Owen’s first book was mainly intended to establish the fact and to show the character of the spirit-manifestations; in his last work, his design is to show that these manifestations take place by virtue of the physical law of the universe, that they are of the same nature and origin with the Christian miracles, inspiration, and revelation, and are simply supplementary to them, or designed to continue, augment, and develop them; and to show, especially to Protestants, that, if they mean to make theology a progressive science, and win the victory over their enemy the Catholic Church, they must call in the spirits to 804 their aid, and accept and profit by their inspirations and revelations.

This shows that the author leans to Protestantism, and seeks its triumph over Catholicity; or that he regards Protestantism as offering a more congenial soil for the seed he would sow than the old church with her hierarchy and infallibility. Certainly, he holds that, as it is, Protestantism is losing ground. In 1580 it held the vast majority of the people of Europe, but is now only a feeble minority. Even in this country, he says, if Catholics continue to increase for a third of a century to come in the same ratio that they have for the last three-fourths of a century, they will have a decided majority. As things now go, the whole world will become Catholic, and the only way to prevent it, he thinks, is to accept the aid of the spirits. We are not so sure that this aid would suffice, for Satan, their chief, has been the fast friend of Protestants ever since he persuaded Luther to give up private Masses, and has done his best for them, and it is difficult to see what more he can do for them than he has hitherto done.

Mr. Owen, since he holds the spirit-manifestations take place by a natural law, always operative, and always producing the same effects in the same or like favorable circumstances, of course cannot recognize in them anything miraculous or supernatural; and, as he holds the alleged Christian miracles, the wonderful things recorded in the Old and New Testaments, are of the same order, and produced by the same agency, he, while freely admitting them as facts, denies their miraculous or supernatural character. He thinks that the circumstances when these extraordinary events occurred were favorable to spirit-manifestations; the age was exceedingly ignorant, superstitious, and semi-barbarous, and needed new accessions of light and truth, and the spirits, through our Lord and his apostles as medium--God forgive us for repeating the blasphemy--made such revelations as that age most needed or could bear or assimilate. This age also needs further revelations of truth, especially to enable it to throw off the incubus of a fixed, permanent, non-progressive, infallible church, and secure an open field, and a final victory for the rational religion and progressive theology implied in the Protestant Reformation. So the spirits once more kindly come to our assistance, and reveal to us such further portions of truth as man is prepared for and especially needs. Very generous in them.

This is the doctrine, briefly and faithfully stated, of Mr. Owen’s _Debatable Land_, which he sets forth with a charming _naïveté_, and a self-complacency little short of the sublime. There is this to be said in his favor--the devil speaks better English through him than through the majority of the mediums he seems compelled to use; yet not much better sense. But what new light have the spirits shed over the great problems of life and death, time and eternity, good and evil, or what new revelations of truth have they made? Here is the author’s summary of their teaching:

“1. This is a world governed by a God of love and mercy, in which all things work together for good to those who reverently conform to his eternal laws.

“2. In strictness there is no death. Life continues from the life which now is into that which is to come, even as it continues from one day to another; the sleep which goes by the name of death being but a brief transition-slumber, from which, for the good, the awakening is immeasurably more glorious than is the dawn of earthly morning, the brightest that ever shone. In all 805 cases in which life is well-spent, the change which men are wont to call death is God’s last and best gift to his creatures here.

“3. The earth-phase of life is an essential preparation for the life which is to come. Its appropriate duties and callings cannot be neglected without injury to human welfare and development, both in this world and in the next. Even its enjoyments, temperately accepted, are fit preludes to the happiness of a higher state.

“4. The phase of life which follows the death-change is, in strictest sense, the supplement of that which precedes it. It has the same variety of avocations, duties, enjoyments, corresponding, in a measure, to those of earth, but far more elevated; and its denizens have the same variety of character and of intelligence; existing, too, as men do here, in a state of progress. Released from bodily earth-clog, their periscope is wider, their perceptions more acute, their spiritual knowledge much greater, their judgment clearer, their progress more rapid, than ours. Vastly wiser and more dispassionate than we, they are still, however, fallible; and they are governed by the same general laws of being, modified only by corporal _disenthralment_, to which they were _subjected_ here.

“5. Our state here determines our initial state there. The habitual promptings, the pervading impulses, the lifelong yearnings, in a word the moving spirit, or what Swedenborg calls the ‘ruling loves’ of man--these decide his condition on entering the next world: not the written articles of his creed, nor yet the incidental errors of his life.

“6. We do not, either by faith or works, _earn_ heaven, nor are we sentenced, on any day of wrath, to hell. In the next world we simply gravitate to the position for which, by life on earth, we have fitted ourselves; and we occupy that position _because_ we are fitted for it.

“7. There is no instantaneous change of character when we pass from the present phase of life. Our virtues, our vices; our intelligence, our ignorance; our aspirations, our grovellings; our habits, propensities, prejudices even--all pass over with us: modified, doubtless (_but to what extent we know not_), when the spiritual body emerges, divested of its fleshly encumbrance; yet essentially the same as when the death slumber came over us.

“8. The sufferings there, natural sequents of evil-doing and evil-thinking here, are as various in character and in degree as the enjoyments; but they are mental, not bodily. There is no escape from them, except only, as on earth, by the door of repentance. There as here, sorrow for sin committed and desire for an amended life are the in dispensable conditions-precedent of advancement to a better state of being.

“9. In the next world love ranks higher than what we call wisdom; being itself the highest wisdom. There deeds of benevolence far outweigh professions of faith. There simple goodness rates above intellectual power. There the humble are exalted. There the meek find their heritage. There the merciful obtain mercy. The better denizens of that world are charitable to frailty, and compassionate to sin far beyond the dwellers in this: they forgive the erring brethren they have left behind them, even to seventy times seven. There, is no respect of persons. There, too, self-righteousness is rebuked and pride brought low.

“10. A trustful, childlike spirit is the state of mind in which men are most receptive of beneficent spiritual impressions; and such a spirit is the best preparation for entrance into the next world.

“11. There have always existed intermundane laws, according to which men may occasionally obtain, under certain conditions, revealings from those who have passed to the next world before them. A certain proportion of human beings are more sensitive to spiritual perceptions and influences than their fellows; and it is usually in the presence, or through the medium, of one or more of these, that ultramundane intercourse occurs.

“12. When the conditions are favorable, and the sensitive through whom the manifestations come is highly gifted, these may supply important materials for thought and valuable rules of conduct. But spiritual phenomena sometimes do much more than this. In their highest phases they furnish proof, strong as that which Christ’s disciples enjoyed--proof addressed to the reason and tangible to the senses--of the reality of another life, better and happier than this, and of which our earthly pilgrimage is but the novitiate. They bring immortality to light under a blaze 806 of evidence which outshines, as the sun the stars, all traditional or historical testimonies. For surmise they give us conviction, and assured knowledge for wavering belief.

“13. The chief motives which induce spirits to communicate with men appear to be--a benevolent desire to convince us, past doubt or denial, that there _is_ a world to come; now and then, the attraction of unpleasant memories, such as murder or suicide; sometimes (in the worldly-minded) the earth-binding influence of cumber and trouble: but, far more frequently, the divine impulse of human affections, seeking the good of the loved ones it has left behind, and, at times, drawn down, perhaps, by their yearning cries.

“14. Under unfavorable or imperfect conditions, spiritual communications, how honestly reported soever, often prove vapid and valueless; and this chiefly happens when communications are too assiduously sought or continuously persisted in: brief volunteered messages being the most trustworthy. Imprudence, inexperience, supineness, or the idiosyncrasy of the recipient may occasionally result in arbitrary control by spirits of a low order; as men here sometimes yield to the infatuation exerted by evil associates. Or, again, there may be exerted by the inquirer, especially if dogmatic and self-willed, a dominating influence over the medium, so strong as to produce effects that might be readily mistaken for what has been called possession. As a general rule, however, any person of common intelligence and ordinary will can, in either case, cast off such mischievous control: or, if the weak or incautious give way, one who may not improperly be called an exorcist--if possessed of strong magnetic will, moved by benevolence, and it may be aided by prayer, can usually rid, or at least assist to rid, the sensitive from such abnormal influence.”--(_Debatable Land_, pp. 171-176.)

We have no intention of criticising this creed of the spirits as set forth by their learned medium. It is heathen, not Christian, and we have discovered in it nothing new, true or false. It denies the essential points of the Christian faith, and what few things it affirms that Christianity denies are affirmed on no trustworthy or sufficient authority. A man must have little knowledge of human nature, and have felt little of the needs, desires, and aspirations of the human soul, who can be satisfied with this spirits-creed. In it all is vague, indefinite, and as empty as the shades the heathen imagined to be wandering up and down on this side the Styx. But in it we find a statement that dispenses us from the necessity of examining and refuting it. In Article 4 we find it said: “Vastly wiser and more dispassionate than we, they [the spirits] are still, however, _fallible_.”

Whether the spirits are wiser and more dispassionate than we or not may be questioned; they do not seem to be so in the author’s illustrative narrations, and the fact that they have undergone no essential change by throwing off their overcoat of flesh, and living the same life they lived here, and are in the sphere for which they were fitted before entering the spirit-land, renders the matter somewhat doubtful, to say the least. But it is conceded that they are _fallible_. Who or what, then, vouches for the fact that they are not themselves deceived, or that they do not seek to deceive us? By acknowledging the fallibility of the spirits, Mr. Owen acknowledges that their testimony, in all cases, when we can have nothing else on which to rely, is perfectly worthless. We can bring it to no crucial test, and we have no vouchers either for their knowledge or their honesty. Even supposing them to be what they profess to be, which we by no means concede, it were sheer credulity to take their word for anything not otherwise verifiable.

Mr. Owen and all the spiritists tell us that the spirit-manifestations prove undeniably the immortality of the soul; but they prove nothing 807 of the sort. We need, in the first place, no ghost from hell to assure us that the immortality of the soul follows necessarily from the immateriality of the soul; for that is demonstrable from reason, and was generally believed by the heathen. What was not believed by the heathen, and is not provable by reason, is the Christian doctrine of the resurrection; and this, and supernatural life and immortality, the spirits do not even pretend to teach. Look through Mr. Owen’s statement of their teaching, and you will find no hint of the “resurrectionem carnis” or “vitam æternam” of the apostolic symbol. Are we to reject the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and the life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel--which is something far different from a simple continuation of the soul’s physical existence--a doctrine so necessary to virtue, and so dear and consoling to the afflicted, on the authority of fallible spirits, whose knowledge or veracity nothing vouches for, and who prove themselves not seldom to be lying spirits?

In the second place, what proof have we that those rapping or table-tipping spirits are the spirits of men and women once in the flesh? Mr. Owen undertakes to establish their identity, but he does not do it and cannot do it; for no proof in the case is possible except by a miracle, and miracles the author rejects, and declares the argument from them in all cases a _non-sequitur_. The spirit-manifestations of which the spiritists make so much, and in which they fancy they have a new inspiration and revelation, are nothing new in history, and are not more frequent now than they have been at various other epochs. They were more common amongst the polished pagan Greeks and Romans than they are in any real or nominally Christian nation now. They are nothing new or peculiar to our times. Tertullian speaks of them, the author of the _Clementine Recognitions_ was acquainted with them, and so was St. Augustine. The trance was one of the five faculties or states of the soul recognized by the Neo-Platonists, and was the principle of the Alexandrine theurgy. The church has in every age encountered them, been obliged to deal with them, and she has uniformly ascribed them to Satan and his angels. She has had from the first, and still has, her forms of exorcism against them, to cast them out, and relieve those who are troubled by them. Every day she in some locality even now exorcises them, compels them to acknowledge the power of the name of Jesus, and sends them back discomfited to hell.

The spiritists cannot say the doctrine of the church is impossible or prove that it is not true. It certainly is a possible hypothesis, if nothing more. Then spiritists cannot say that Satan does not personify the spirits of the departed, or that it is not Satan or some one of his angels that speaks in those pretending to be the spirit of Washington, of Jefferson, of Franklin, of Shakespeare, of Milton, of Byron, or of some near and dear deceased relative? You must prove that it is not so, before you can affirm the identity claimed. The great Tichborne case now before the English courts proves that it is no easy matter to establish one’s own identity even while in the flesh, and it must be much more difficult for a ghost, which is not even visible.

The spiritists admit that the spirits are fallible; that there are among them lying, malevolent spirits. A gentleman with whom we were well acquainted, a firm believer in the spirits, and himself a medium, holding frequent communications with them, assured us that he held 808 them to be evil spirits, and knew them to be lying spirits. “I asked them,” he said, “at an interview with them, if they could tell me where my sister then was. ‘Your sister,’ I was answered, ‘has some time since entered the spirit-world, and is now in the third circle.’ It was false: my sister was alive and well, and I knew it. I told them so, and that they lied; and they laughed at me: and then I asked whose spirit was speaking with me. I was answered, ‘Voltaire.’ ‘That is a lie, too, is it not?’ Another laugh, or chuckle rather. “I assure you,” said our friend, “one can place no confidence in what they say. In my intercourse with them, I have found them a pack of liars.”

This pretension of the spiritists that the spirits that manifest themselves through nervous, sickly, half-crazy mediums, or mediums confessedly in an abnormal or exceptional state, are really spirits who once lived in the flesh, is not sustainable; for they cannot be relied on, and nothing hinders us from holding them to be devils or evil demons, personating the spirits of deceased persons, as the church has always taught us. This, certainly, is very possible, and the character of the manifestations themselves favors such an interpretation; for only devils, and very silly devils too, dealing with very ignorant, superstitious, and credulous people, would mingle so much of the ludicrous and ridiculous in their manifestations, as the thumping, knocking, rollicking spirits, tipping over chairs and tables, and creating a sort of universal hubbub wherever they come. The spirits of the dead, if permitted at all to communicate with the living for any good purpose, we may well believe, would be permitted to do it more quietly, more gravely, and in a more open and direct way; it is only the devil or his subjects that would turn all their grave communications into ridicule by their antics or comic accompaniments. These considerations, added to the fact that the spirits communicate nothing not otherwise known or knowable, that is not demonstrably false, and that they tell us nothing very clear or definite about the condition of departed souls, nothing but what their consultors are predisposed to believe, convince us that, if they prove the existence of powers in some sense superhuman, they prove nothing for or against the reality of a life after this life. They leave the question of life and immortality, of good and evil, rewards and punishments, heaven and hell, where they were.

Mr. Owen places the spirit manifestations, and the Biblical miracles, and Christian inspiration and revelation, in the same category, attributes them all alike to the agency of the spirits, and thinks he has discovered a way in which one may accept the extraordinary events and doings recorded in the Old and New Testaments as historical facts, without being obliged to recognize them as miracles. This is absurd. The resemblance between the two classes of facts is far less than honest Fluellen’s resemblance of Harry of Monmouth to Alexander of Macedon, “There is a river in Macedon, so is there a river also in Wales.” The man who can detect any relation between the two classes of facts, but that of dissimilarity and contrast, is the very man to believe in the spirit-revelations, to mistake evil for good, darkness for light, and the devil for God. We find both classes of facts in the New Testament. The Christian miracles are all marked by an air of quiet power. There is no bluster, no rage, no foaming at the mouth, no fierceness of look or gesture, no falling, or rending, as in the 809 case of the demoniacs; and no rapping, no table-tipping, no antics, no stammering, no half-utterances, no convulsions, no disturbance, as in the case of the spirit-manifestations described by Mr. Owen in his books. In the one case, all is calm and serene, pure and holy; there is no effort, no straining, but a simple, normal exercise of power. Our Lord rebukes the winds and the waves, and there comes a great calm; he speaks, the leper is cleansed, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead live. What like this is there in Mr. Owen’s ghostly or ghastly narratives of trances, thundering noises, and haunted houses? Every one of his narratives shows, so far as it shows anything not explicable by simple psychical states and powers, the marks which the church has always regarded as signs of the presence of the devil. Some of the cases he describes are clearly cases of possession, and others are as clearly cases of obsession. Unhappily, Mr. Owen, who formerly believed in no God, now takes, knowingly or not, the devil to be God.

Mr. Owen has hardly improved on the heathen Celsus, who was refuted by Origen. Celsus charged the miracles of our Lord to magic. Mr. Owen ascribes them to necromancy, and regards the apostles and saints each as a person with a familiar spirit, or, in the language of the spiritists, a medium. The Jews also ascribed the miracles of our Lord to the agency of the devil, and charged that it was by Beelzebub, the prince of devils, that he did his wonderful works. But there is a striking difference between the Jews and Celsus and our late minister to Naples. They sought to prove the satanic origin of the miracles of our Lord as a reason for rejecting him and his teaching; he attempts to do it as a reason for believing him and reverencing his doctrine and character. But they lived in an age of darkness, superstition, and semi-barbarism, and he in an age of light, reason, and civilization, and the distance between him and them is the measure of the progress the world has made since their time--a mighty progress indeed, but a progress backward. The Bible tells us all the gods of the heathen were devils, and Mr. Owen agrees and takes the devil for God, and demon worship as true divine worship. What the Jews and Celsus falsely alleged against our Lord as an objection, he reasserts as a recommendation. He has discovered that evil is good.

The class of facts which the spiritists call spirit-manifestations are recognized in the Bible from beginning to end, but always as the works of the devil or evil spirits, always as works to be condemned and to be avoided; and any communication with those who do them is forbidden. Necromancers, or those who consult the spirits of the dead, are mentioned and condemned in the Book of Genesis. The Mosaic law ordained that a witch or a woman with a familiar spirit--that is, a medium, whether a rapping or a clear-seeing, a talking or a writing medium--should not be suffered to live. The church has always condemned everything of the sort, and requires a candidate for baptism to renounce the devil and his works, and expels the devil from him by her exorcisms, before receiving the postulant to her communion. And yet Mr. Owen would have us believe that the Bible and the church sanction his doctrine, that the Christian miracles and the spirit-manifestations are produced by one and the same agency! Verily, Mr. Owen throws a strong light on the origin of the great Gentile apostasy, and shows us how easily men who break from the unity of 810 divine tradition, and set up for themselves, can lose sight of God, and come step by step to worship the devil in his place. The thing seemed incredible, and we had some difficulty in taking the assertion of the Holy Scriptures literally, “All the gods of the gentiles are devils”; but since we see apostasy from the church running the same career, and actually inaugurating the worship of demons, actually exalting the devil above our Lord, the Mystery of Iniquity is explained, and the matter becomes plain and credible.

It is curious to see what has been the course of thought in the Protestant apostasy in regard to the class of facts in question. Having lost the power of exorcism with their loss of the true faith, the Protestant nations had no resource against the invasions of the spirits but to carry out the injunction of the Mosaic law, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch”--that is, a medium--“to live.” Hence we find their annals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries blackened with accounts of the trials and cruel punishments of persons suspected of witchcraft, sorcery, or dealings with the devil, especially in England, Scotland, and the Anglo-American colonies. Having no well-defined and certain criteria, as the church has, by which to determine the presence of Satan, many persons, no doubt, were put to death who were innocent of the offences of which they were accused. This produced a reaction in the public mind against the laws and against the execution of persons for witchcraft or dealing with the devil. This reaction was followed by a denial of witchcraft, or that the devil had anything to do with matters and things on earth, and a shower of ridicule fell on all who believed in anything of the sort. Then came the general doubt, and then the denial of the existence of the devil and all infernal spirits, save in human nature itself. Finally came the spirit-manifestations, in which Satan is no longer regarded as Satan, but is held to be divine, and worshipped as God, by thousands and millions.

We must be excused from entering into any elaborate refutation of Mr. Owen’s blasphemous attempt to bring the Christian miracles under the general law, as he regards it, of spirit-manifestations. He has proved the reality of no such law, and if he had, the spirit-manifestations themselves would prove nothing more than a gale of wind, a shower of rain, a flash of lightning, or the growth of a spire of grass. Could we prove the Christian miracles to be facts in the order of nature, or show them as taking place by a general law, and not by the immediate act of God, and therefore no miracles at all, we should deprive them of all their importance. The value of the facts is not in their being facts, but in their being miraculous facts, which none but God can work. The author does not understand this, but supposes that he has won a victory for Christianity when he has proved the miracles as facts, but at the same time that they are no miracles.

It is clear from his pages that the author does not know what Christians understand by a miracle. He cites St. Augustine to prove that a miracle is something that may take place by some law of nature to us unknown, but St. Augustine, in the passage he cites, is not speaking of miracles at all; he is speaking of portents, prodigies, or extraordinary events, which the ignorant, and the superstitious ascribe to a supernatural agency; but which may, after all, however wonderful, be produced by a natural cause, as in our days not a few 811 believe to be the case with the spirit-manifestations themselves, and no doubt is the case with most of the wonders the spiritists relate. The devil may work portents or prodigies, but not miracles, because he has no creative power, and can work only with materials created to his hand.

It is necessary also to distinguish between what is simply superhuman and what is supernatural. Whatever is creature is in the order of nature. Nature embraces the entire creation--whatever exists that is not God or distinguishable from him. Whether the created powers are above man or below him in the scale of existence, they are equally natural, and so is whatever they are capable, as second causes, of doing. The angels in heaven, the very highest as the lowest, are God’s creatures, distinguishable from him, and therefore included in nature. The same must be said of the devils in hell, or the ghosts, if the spirits of the departed, and hence whatever they do is within the natural order. The devil is superior, if you will, by nature to man--for man is made little lower than the angels, and the devil is an angel fallen; he may know many things beyond human intelligence, and do many things beyond the power of man; but what the devil does, is, if superhuman, not in any sense supernatural, but as natural as what man himself does. We agree with Mr. Owen, though not for the same reason, that there is nothing miraculous in the spirit-manifestations, even supposing them to be facts, and therefore are of no value in relation to the truth or falsehood of Christianity as a revelation of and by the supernatural.

God alone, and what he does immediately by his direct act and immediate act, is supernatural. God alone can work a miracle, which is a supernatural effect wrought without any natural medium, law, or agency, in or on nature, and is, as far as it goes, a manifestation of creative power.

Miracles do what portents, prodigies, spirit-rappings, etc., do not--they manifest the supernatural, or the existence of a real order above nature. They do not indeed directly prove the truth of the Christian mysteries, but they do accredit our Lord as a teacher sent from God. As Nicodemus said when he came by night to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that thou art come a teacher from God, for no man can do the miracles thou doest, unless God were with him,” God in the miracles accredits the teacher, and vouches for the truth of what he in whose favor they are wrought teaches. What our Lord teaches, then, is true. If he teaches that he is perfect God and perfect man in hypostatic union, then he is so, and then is to be believed, on his own word, whatever he teaches, for “it is impossible for God to lie.” The facts, then, are of no importance if not miracles. Hence the “natural-supernaturalism” of the _Sartor Resartus_ is not only a contradiction in terms, but utterly worthless, as are most of the admired utterances of its author, and aid us not in solving a single problem for which revelation is needed.

Deprive us of the prophecies under the Old Law and the miracles under the New, and we should be deprived of all means of proving Christianity as a supernatural religion, as supernaturally inspired and revealed, and should be reduced, as Mr. Owen is, to naked rationalism, or downright demonism. The prodigies of the devil do not carry us above nature. They are indeed Satan’s efforts to counterfeit genuine miracles, but at best they only give us the superhuman for the 812 supernatural. If the author could prove the Christian miracles are not miracles, though credible as facts, or if he could bring them into the category of the spirit-manifestations, he would in effect divest Christianity of its supernatural character, and render it all as worthless as any man-constructed system of ethics or philosophy. His Christianity, as set forth in his pages, has not a trace of the Christianity of Christ, and is as little worthy of being called Christian as the bald Unitarianism of Channing, or the Deism of Rousseau, Tom Paine, or Voltaire, or the Free Religion of Emerson, Higginson, and Julia Ward Howe.

What Mr. Owen regards as a highly important fact, and which he urges Protestants to accept as the means of triumphing over the Catholic Church, namely, that the Christian miracles and the spirit-manifestations are worthy of precisely the same respect and confidence in a Christian point of view, is far less important than he in his profound ignorance of Christianity imagines. How far he will be successful with Protestants we know not; but his success, we imagine, will be greatest among people of his own class, who, having no settled belief in any religion, who know little of the principles of Christianity, are, as all such people are, exceedingly credulous and superstitious. These people hover on the borders of Protestantism, have certain sympathies with the Reformation, but it would be hardly just to call them in the ordinary sense of the term Protestants. Yet Protestantism, being substantially a revival in principle of the ancient Gentile apostasy which led to the worship of the devil in the place of God before our Lord’s advent, there can be no doubt that Protestants are peculiarly exposed to Satanic invasions, and there is no certainty that they may not follow Mr. Owen back to the devil-worship from which Christianity rescued the nations that embraced it. But we have said enough for the present. Perhaps we may say more hereafter.

[159] 1. _The Debatable Land between this World and the Next._ With Illustrative Narratives. By Robert Dale Owen. New York: Carleton & Co. 1872. 16mo, pp. 542.

2. _Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World._ With Narrative Illustrations. By Robert Dale Owen. Philadelphia: Lippincott & Co. 1860. 16mo, pp. 528.

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THE ANNUNCIATION.

MARCH 27TH.

She kneels in prayer--a childlike, virgin form; What purity is mirrored in her eyes! Her dove-like glances, with devotion warm, Are raised in worship, to the midnight skies-- But look! a heavenly radiance bright has shone Around the virgin chosen of the Lord; In her rapt prayer she hears the angel’s tone, “Hail! full of grace! for lo! upon the word Of thy consent waits now the heavenly dove, Whose wings o’ershadowing thee shall lightly rest One moment on thy pure and humble breast, And make thee by that awful seal of love The mother of thy God!” She bows her head, While _fiat mihi_ in meek tones is said.

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FLEURANGE. 813

BY MRS. CRAVEN, AUTHOR OF “A SISTER’s STORY.”

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH PERMISSION.

PART FIRST.

THE OLD MANSION.

IV.

When daylight appeared, Fleurange awoke first, but in a few minutes, while she was admiring the child still sleeping in her arms, his large eyes opened in their turn. Their first expression was one of extreme surprise, somewhat mingled with fear, but Fleurange’s look and voice soon had a reassuring effect. His eyes grew smiling, his mouth half opened, his little arms stretched towards her and were soon clasped around her neck, and the acquaintance was made. During this time the pale and languid young mother was endeavoring to shake off a heaviness more difficult to overcome than sleep. She slightly blushed and murmured some words of excuse when she perceived her child in the arms of the beautiful stranger. But Fleurange protested with an accent of indubitable truth that the child did not trouble her in the least. She soon perceived she could be of some service to the poor convalescent. The children, aroused from a long night’s sleep, were now wholly awake. Every one knows that children awake, and, confined within a narrow space, soon arrive at a degree of turbulence whose only advantage is to produce lassitude and then sleep. During the first of these two phases, the poor mother made a vain and feeble effort to restrain them. After a few minutes she fell back, not only exhausted, but faint. Fleurange drew near, and began to improvise a pillow for her head out of the shawls scattered around. Then she opened the small basket Mademoiselle Josephine had given her, and took out a flask, the contents of which, poured on a handkerchief and applied to the sick woman’s pale face and temples, soon revived her.

“Thank you,” she said; “you have done me a great deal of good. I am feeble, that is all, but I did not suppose myself so much so.”

“Do not exert yourself,” replied Fleurange. “I will take care of the children.”

The mother smiled, and touched her head, showing by this gesture how fatiguing she found the noise she had not succeeded in quieting. At that very moment, the younger of the two children was standing on the seat, trying to reach the net, of painful memory, suspended like the sword of Damocles over the travellers’ heads, and which served as a receptacle for everything that could not be stowed away elsewhere. 814 The child was not climbing without a motive. His brother had already successfully preceded him, and found means of seizing, through the meshes of the net, a small hunting-horn, on which he was now executing a flourish. Why could not he also get his drum, almost within reach? If he could only stretch a little farther--and he looked at Fleurange with a supplicating air; but the latter, instead of heeding his mute appeal, laughingly laid hold of him and drew him on her lap; then skilfully bearing off the hunting-horn from the other, she promised to relate them the most charming of stories if they would be quiet. In an instant they were both leaning beside her, and then, in a low tone, she related one story after another, keeping them silent and attentive till the hour of sleep returned.

By the end of the second day the travellers had made great progress in their acquaintance. “How can I thank you sufficiently?” said the young mother. “How fortunate I was to meet you!”

“Do not thank me: your children have done me more good than I can return.”

This reply, of course, did not at all diminish the gratitude mingled with admiration with which she had inspired her companion, and as there is only a step from attraction to confidence, the latter soon related the whole story of her uneventful life to Fleurange. She had met with a severe fall three months before, and her life was despaired of; then her husband took her to Paris to consult Dr. Leblanc, who effected a cure. Fleurange’s eyes brightened. It was such a gratification to be able to talk about her dear old friends!

“He is so skilful and kind,” she said.

“Oh! yes, indeed! he is more than a physician: he is a benefactor, and yet I disobeyed him in starting so soon! He said I was still too feeble, which I denied; but I see he was right.”

“Why did you do so?”

“Because my poor Wilhelm is alone and impatiently awaiting me.”

“Your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Could he not have come for you?”

“No; he is M. Dornthal’s head clerk, and it is very difficult for him to leave his post.”

Fleurange’s heart gave a leap at this name. “Are you alluding to M. Ludwig Dornthal?” said she.

“No; to his brother, the rich banker.”

“And the other--the professor--do you know him?”

“I have never seen him, but Wilhelm is well acquainted with him, and is sometimes invited to the soirées he gives. They are not balls--they are not fond of dancing there--but réunions for conversation, reading, music, and looking at engravings. Wilhelm says they are all learned, the girls as well as the boys, and madame as much so as her husband.”

Fleurange slightly shuddered at this brief communication respecting her uncle’s family. She was very fond of study, still more so of the arts; she had a taste for reading she was often obliged to repress, but this word “learned” she did not find attractive.

“Learned!” she said to herself. “That means pedantic, grave, and tiresome. Well, I must make the best of it. Perhaps that does not prevent them from being good, which is the essential point, and I certainly should not aim at amusement in this short life.”

Another night--another long day now drawing to a close--when lights 815 more frequent and bright, and more numerous dwellings, announced the vicinity of a large city. As each moment brought them nearer their destination, the joy of the mother and her children became more expansive.

“He will be waiting for us, will he not?” said the elder of the children.

“Yes, yes, we shall see him as soon as the carriage stops, but that will not be for an hour.” Soon the cry was: “In half an hour, now!” and at last: “Here we are!”

Poor Fleurange listened to her travelling companions, and envied them the certainty of being greeted at their journey’s end by a dear and well-known face. Sadness and a fearful timidity came over her. At last, the carriage stopped. As at their departure, there was a great uproar, a variety of cries, and vacillating lights, which illuminated everything, but nothing distinctly. Fleurange sought in vain among all the persons who crowded around the carriage, for a face that might be her uncle’s. The door opened. A tall man with flowing hair and a long blonde beard presented himself. “Was it he?” No, the joyful cries of the children at once informed Fleurange it was their father.

“Bertha, Bertha!” he exclaimed, and, even before embracing his children, he pressed both her hands and looked anxiously in her face.

“You are very pale, dear Bertha.”

“It is only with joy, Wilhelm,” replied she, weeping. “I am cured, and I behold you once more!”

He then stretched out his arms to his children, but before leaving the carriage they both cried “Adieu! adieu!” in childlike tones and threw their arms around Fleurange’s neck.

“Wilhelm,” said his wife in a low tone, “thank this kind young lady, who has been an angel of goodness to them and to me on the way.”

He turned with a soft and grateful look toward Fleurange: “May God reward you, fair and gentle maiden,” said he, taking off his hat. Then he added hesitatingly:

“Doubtless some one is waiting for you here, and I cannot have the pleasure of rendering you any service?”

“I thank you,” said Fleurange quickly. “I am, indeed, expected by my relatives.” While speaking she anxiously cast her eyes around. No one seemed to be seeking her in the crowd of unknown faces that surrounded her. Was there any mistake? Had they forgotten her? What should she do?

Meanwhile her travelling companions left the carriage, and the happy group was already at a distance. She followed them with her eyes, her heart sinking within her. At that instant a small open carriage, drawn by a fine horse, drove swiftly up. In it was a youth of eighteen or nineteen years. He threw the reins to some one standing near and sprang out. Seeing him, Bertha’s husband took off his hat, and a cap is hastily raised in return, displaying an abundance of light hair of rather a warm shade. But the new-comer did not stop. He was in a great hurry and out of breath. He ran up to the diligence and said inquiringly:

“Mademoiselle Gabrielle!”

“That is my name,” said Fleurange, at first struck dumb at hearing herself so-called, and especially at the sight of him who had come to meet her.

“Very well,” said he, “let me help you descend.”

Fleurange silently prepared to obey, but after another glance at him as he held out a firm hand, she said: “There is no mistake, is there? It is my uncle, M. Ludwig Dornthal, who has sent for me?”

The only reply she received was an affirmative nod of the head; a 816 moment after, a concise order, promptly obeyed, brought down from the heights of the imperial the modest luggage belonging to Fleurange. In an instant it was fastened behind the light carriage which he afterward assisted her in entering, then, carefully and silently wrapping around her a large fur cloak which he had brought, he took his seat, and the horse set off, as he came, at a fast trot.

Fleurange at first felt giddy with the rapid motion of the carriage, but it soon became agreeable, contrasted with the heavy movements and violent jolting of the diligence. The weather was sharp, but the warm cloak that covered her prevented her from feeling it, and, thus protected, the keen air, so far from being unpleasant, gave her, on the contrary, an unaccustomed animation which was like a fresh infusion of youth and life. The sky above was sparkling with stars. It was one of those brilliant winter nights which we love to imagine like that which witnessed the coming of Christ, and saw angels hovering over the heights that surround Bethlehem, to convey the glad tidings to the shepherds, and sing on earth their divine hymn.

In about twenty minutes the horse slackened his pace a little, and the young coachman turned around and seemed to make some attempt at an explanation which Fleurange tried her best to comprehend, but the rattling over the pavements rendered this nearly impossible, and she only seized the words “My father” and “_Christ Kindchen!_” after which his head, turned around for an instant, resumed its former position, and the horse his usual pace.

But Fleurange gathered from this that the youth was one of M. Dornthal’s sons, and her uncle had not been able to meet her for some reason connected with the festival of the following day. Her first impression was that her cousin’s manners were rather abrupt, and his face somewhat peculiar, but on the whole he had shown himself very efficient and attentive. As for his skill in driving it was unrivalled, the reins could not have been in better hands.

After this short interruption, they kept on their way without slackening an instant, notwithstanding more than one turn through the winding streets, and at length arrived at a place planted with trees, where the carriage stopped before a flight of steps leading to an oaken door adorned with a massive brass knocker.

Some one was evidently watching for them, for the door instantly flew open. Fleurange caught the glimpse of a bright light and many forms! Her cousin hastened to aid her in alighting. Confused voices were audible, all having a cordial accent of welcome. A strong hand supported Fleurange as she ascended the six stone steps and entered the passage. A tall woman dressed in gray, and wearing a cap trimmed with flowers, approached and embraced her. “It is my turn now!” said a deep and sonorous voice, “for I am her uncle.” Fleurange raised her eyes toward a noble countenance which had too young a look to be crowned with such white hair, and her uncle embraced her, murmuring in a softened tone the name of Margaret. Beside him stood a lovely young girl, grave and blonde, while another, fair as her sister but younger, divested Fleurange of the heavy fur cloak and untied her bonnet. A boy of seven years ran out into the street to aid his brother, and a little girl of four or five clung to her mother’s skirts, looking curiously, but with delight, at the strange visitor.

Fleurange, dazzled by the lights, and confused by the very cordiality 817 of her reception, was incapable of uttering a word, but her large eyes, full of tears, were more expressive than any words, and the unusual brilliancy of her complexion, owing to the keen night air, and her long tresses falling over her shoulders when her bonnet was removed, gave her an unusually striking appearance which would have conciliated the most malevolent. How, then, must she have been regarded by those so ready to welcome her heartily?

They led her, triumphantly, as it were, into a spacious drawing-room which was still more dazzling. In the centre of the apartment stood a tree brilliantly illuminated and hung with toys, flowers, jewels, and fruit of all kinds. Two chandeliers added their light to that of the illuminated tree, under one of which half a dozen children were gathered around a table loaded with cakes. Several young ladies, as well as others who were older, were grouped here and there.

In short, Fleurange suddenly found herself, and for the first time in her life, in the midst of what seemed to her a very brilliant reunion, in which all the faces, even those of her hosts, were strange. The least timid would have been disconcerted, and Fleurange was completely abashed. The lady in gray with a cap trimmed with flowers, whom she supposed to be her aunt, took her by the hand, and hastily led her back into the passage, and thence into a small parlor lighted by a single lamp. In crossing the hall, they met Fleurange’s young guide.

“Is she ill? Does she need anything?” he asked in a kind and eager tone.

“Yes, she needs rest,” and with this reply Madame Dornthal shut the door in her son’s face.

Fleurange sat down and breathed more freely. Hitherto she had been unable not only to utter a word, but even to collect her thoughts. Now, thanks to the quiet room, she at once grew calm, and in a few minutes felt quite recovered. She was young and vigorous. She had scarcely felt the fatigue of the journey, and it was not in her nature to yield long to emotion and embarrassment, especially when in the depths of her heart she felt so happy! Had not a single glance, quick as a flash, sufficed to dissipate the burden which weighed on her heart, and to light it up with a transport of joy and hope? Her uncle’s voice, the words he murmured as he embraced her, “O Margaret, is it you?” gave her a thrill; then the soft glances of those fair young girls, the sight of the children gathered under the Christmas-tree, even the abrupt attentions of her young cousin--all gave her a delicious sensation of safety, an assurance of protection which in her moments of desolation she had desired more than joy or happiness.

She raised her head, and looked at her aunt, who stood silently regarding her. The latter was decidedly ugly--astonishingly so, yet even before she spoke or smiled there was an expression more desirable than beauty visibly imprinted on her face, otherwise devoid of all charm--an expression of intelligence and kindness.

“Remain here perfectly quiet, will you?” said Madame Dornthal, _tutoyant_ Fleurange as if she had known her from childhood.[160]

“There, look at the clock; a quarter of an hour will be sufficient. Do not try to talk, only listen to me. You are at home, you must 818 understand: remember that. No thanks are necessary. You are one of our children. We had five: now we have six. It was Clement, my oldest son, who went to meet you, because his father could not leave the children this evening. You saw Hilda and Clara at your arrival, as well as the two little ones, Fritz and Frida, who were also there to receive you. There is Gabrielle besides: that is all. Your uncle has mourned so much for his poor sister Margaret! Now he has found her again, it is a happy day for us all!”

Fleurange quietly wiped away her tears without replying. Just then some one knocked at the door.

“Who is there?”

“It is I.”

It was Clement with a cup of coffee, which, at her aunt’s injunction, Fleurange drank with docility.

“Will you now go up to your room for the night, or will you return to the drawing-room among the others?”

Fleurange replied without any hesitation: “I prefer to go back to the drawing-room and see them all, at once.”

A pleasant smile lighted up Madame Dornthal’s face. “I like you very much, Gabrielle, not because you are handsome, that has nothing to do with it; I should love you quite as much were it otherwise; but because there is so much simplicity about you--which is quite to my taste. Now, let me see: it is eleven o’clock, our friends are going to take their children home, and our youngest are going to bed. As to the rest of us, we shall presently go to the Midnight Mass, and not sup till our return. Make your own choice--to follow the children’s example, or go with us.”

“Oh! with you, with you!” cried Fleurange. “Pray, take me to church; I am neither feeble nor fatigued.”

“And yet you are fatigued,” replied Madame Dornthal, “only you do not yet feel it. But as it will do you no harm, you shall do as you wish. So save your strength, and do not return now to the drawing-room. You can remain here and wait for me.”

She left the room, and Fleurange remained where she was, happy to obey such kind orders without any resistance. Five minutes after, the door opened. It was Clement again, holding his little brother by the hand, and carrying his young sister in his arms.

“Fritz and Frida wish to bid you good-night,” he said. The little boy timidly approached. Fleurange immediately spoke to him in that language which all children understand, and which can only be learned and spoken by those who love them: he was speedily reassured. She then took Frida, and kissed her blue eyes, which, while looking at her with surprise, began to close. When she gave the child back to her brother, she was asleep, and he bore her away without awakening her, holding her with an ease that showed how accustomed he was to the care. His little brother followed him out of the room.

Half an hour of silent repose succeeded this interruption. It was more beneficial to Fleurange than sleep, which strong excitement kept her from feeling the need of. At the end of that time, Madame Dornthal reappeared with her two daughters. Clement and his father were waiting for them in the passage. They set off by starlight on foot, for the church was near. They were all silent and thoughtful, for the children’s festival had not made them forgetful of the solemnity of this great night.

In church, once more in church, Fleurange felt, as she knelt down, 819 that her overburdened heart could now find relief, and when solemn, harmonious, and accordant voices made the magnificent arches resound with unearthly chants, which seemed to be the spontaneous expression of universal prayer, the young girl bowed her head still lower: all the joy and gratitude of her heart overflowed in sweet tears and fervent prayers of thanksgiving. When Mass was over, one voice, which surpassed the rest--a voice sweet and manly--intoned beside her the Psalm _Laudate Dominum_. She involuntarily joined in the strain, and the two voices seemed for an instant to form but one.

When she turned around, she saw that this singer was her cousin, Clement Dornthal.

V.

When a friendly hand aids a shipwrecked traveller in reaching the shore, his first impulse is to express his boundless gratitude. Rest is sweet, even on the sand, to him who has just escaped the perils of the ocean; but if he finds no place of refuge on the shore, if his only hope of an asylum is the vague glimmer of some distant beacon, he is tempted to doubt his strength to reach the half-seen light, and if it will really prove a haven. Such had been the mixture of gratitude and apprehension the poor orphan felt the day she accepted from Mademoiselle Josephine the hospitality of the blue chamber, and it did not leave her the whole time of her stay in that first harbor of safety. But to-day, roused from her slumbers by the merry Christmas chimes, her first thought was: “Thank God, I have arrived at port”; and she rose from her spacious couch eager to begin her new life. She began the day by writing to Mademoiselle Josephine. Her old friend must be informed of her happiness before she could enter upon its enjoyment. It seemed only a debt of gratitude to share with her all her new and pleasing impressions. She also wrote to Madre Maddalena: she must without any delay link all the friends and joys of the past with her present happiness and truly transformed life.

Her aunt, in assuring her the previous evening she was among her own--that is, at home--seemed to have constituted her, as by magic, a child of the house. Everything around her was new and somewhat strange, but everything pleased her as if naturally conformed to her tastes; and yet the walls of her room, hung with sombre colors, the old press of carved wood, which easily contained her limited wardrobe, the high-backed chairs ranged around, the antique bureau in one corner, and in the other a great monumental stove, the spectral aspect of which alone was surprising--all this might easily have offended an eye accustomed to the smiling magnificence of Italy, but not an object in the house seemed capable of imparting any sad impressions. The word welcome appeared inscribed on every side, as on all faces, and in this sweet atmosphere she instinctively felt that the material comfort was only a type of the mental freedom much more necessary than the other to the happiness of life.

“You must not dress in black today, Gabrielle,” said her two fair cousins, as they entered her chamber for the third time since she rose an hour before, bearing a basket which contained garments similar to 820 their own.

“Why not?” said Fleurange, somewhat astonished.

“Do you not know that, in Germany, mourning is laid aside on great festivals?” replied Clara, the younger of the two. “You must dress like us to-day, as you will always do when the time for this sad mourning is over.”

The elder of the two sisters noticed that her cousin made no reply: she approached her and said affectionately:

“Excuse Clara if she has distressed you. She is so gay and happy herself, that she cannot comprehend misfortune and sadness.”

“I do not wish to remind her of them to-day,” said Fleurange, “and will do as she requests. But you, dear Hilda,” continued she--looking with admiration at her cousin’s golden locks and grave brow, which a queen’s diadem would have suited, or the aureola of a saint--“are you not as gay and happy as your sister?”

“Yes, as happy,” said Hilda, “but not as gay.”

After some explanations, Fleurange conformed to her cousins’ wishes. But when, before dinner, the beautiful Hilda, clothed in white, brought a garland like that she wore herself and wished to place it on her head, she objected: “As to this garland, Hilda, you must excuse me from wearing it.”

“Why so?”

“Because I have never worn any ornament of the kind: because, after all, I cannot and do not wish to forget I am a poor orphan, who should not dream of adorning herself, or mingling in the world.”

“But, Gabrielle, you must know we only adorn ourselves to celebrate at home the great annual festivals, and we never mingle in the world.”

“Never? But then, why wear flowers without any reason?”

“It is not without a reason. My father likes us to wear the flowers of the season at every feast. This poor wreath you have refused, Gabrielle, look at it: it is, like mine, of holly, reflecting the brightness of Christmas, with its shining leaves and berries red as coral. There, see if it is not becoming in your raven hair?” As she spoke, Hilda held the wreath over her cousin’s head: at that instant Clara appeared, and hesitation was no longer possible. She instantly took her sister’s place: the bright leaves and red berries were placed like a crown on Fleurange’s brow, who laughed and only made a feeble resistance, while the mirror reflected the forms of the three young girls--as graceful a picture as ever haunted an artist’s dreams.

“There,” cried Clara, “you are both beautiful--one fair as the day and the other brilliant as night. And I,” continued she, arranging her long curls, among which holly leaves were also twined--“let me see what I resemble myself.”

“A flower, a star, dear Clara: everything that is best worth gazing at by day or night,” said Fleurange affectionately.

She preferred the elder of the two sisters, but there was an irresistible grace about the other, whom she could not help caressing with her eyes and tones, as if she were a child.

“Ah! that is charming, poetic, and very applicable! Thank you, Cousin Gabrielle. I will presently ask our poet to divine my emblems. We shall see if he agrees with you.”

“If our poet is in a fit of abstraction, you must ask some one else who certainly will not be,” said Hilda.

Clara blushed. “Come, come!” said she, “let us talk no longer about 821 me, but go down. There is Frida coming for us. They have doubtless all arrived.” And taking her little sister by the hand, she ran off, scarcely touching the massive balustrade as she flew down the stairs.

“You did not tell me you were expecting visitors,” said Fleurange.

“Only some friends and relatives. Since my Uncle Heinrich lost his wife, he and his son have taken their Christmas dinner with us. The family formerly assembled at his house. You are going to make his acquaintance, and that of our fine cousin Felix. The rest are our friends, and will soon be yours.” Hilda paused. “You doubtless know that Hansfelt is my father’s friend, and was the companion of his youth?” she continued at length.

“Hansfelt!” exclaimed Fleurange. “What! Karl Hansfelt, the great poet?”

We have already remarked that Fleurange perfectly understood her mother’s native tongue. The poems of the person just mentioned were sufficiently celebrated at that time for her to be familiar with them, and even know some of them by heart.

“And he is your friend? And shall I see him?”

“Yes,” replied Hilda, “you will see him often. And you will also see,” she added, as if eager to change the subject, “a young artist who is beginnings be quite popular. His name is Julian Steinberg, and he is a friend of Overbeck’s. I will leave Clara to introduce him to you.” A significant smile accompanied the last words, and Fleurange, comprehending, or nearly so, the state of affairs, descended with her cousin into the large drawing-room, which, as well as the dining-room, was on the ground floor.

The house M. Ludwig Dornthal inhabited is probably no longer standing. Modern improvements have swept away, one by one, those old houses in all our cities to which time had given an aspect too much at variance with the tastes and requirements of a new generation. Even at the period in which our story opens--that is, in 1824--the house of which we are speaking already began to be pointed out as the _Old Mansion_--the name, _par excellence_, by which it was known in the city. But, as it was spacious and commodious, its situation quiet and retired, and it had a large garden which all the windows on one side overlooked, it was admirably adapted to the professor’s studious habits. The picturesque color it had acquired with age was also quite to his taste, and, above all, as it was here Ludwig Dornthal passed the first years of his married life, and where his children were born, nothing in the world would have induced him to leave it, and on this point they were all agreed. The Old Mansion was dear to those who inhabited it, as well as to all who frequented it, and every one, like Fleurange, uttered more or less fervently these words, which are always vainly repeated in this world when our faculties are all for an instant in a state of happy equilibrium: “It is good for us to be here: let us set up our tabernacle, and here remain.” This impression, it may be supposed, was not wholly owing to the exterior aspect of the Old Mansion. There was a harmony between it and its occupants; and, with various results, this effect is produced almost everywhere. Inanimate objects seem to imbibe and communicate something of the life that passes around them, and this language, though silent, is, to those who heed it, a source of genuine revelation.

When Fleurange entered the drawing-room, she perceived her Uncle 822 Ludwig was rather impatiently awaiting her, for the moment she appeared he advanced, and, taking her by the hand, led her to the other end of the apartment, where stood a gentleman whose features bore some resemblance to his own; but with so different an expression, that the likeness, which at first was apparent, grew less and less as the two brothers were better known.

“This is our sister Margaret’s daughter,” said Ludwig to the banker. “She is doubly your niece now, for I have adopted her as my child.”

M. Heinrich Dornthal bowed and cordially embraced the young girl, but he could not resist saying: “Another daughter, when you have three already, is a great addition.”

This cool and unpleasant remark disconcerted Fleurange, and she had not recovered from her painful sensation of embarrassment when a young man of rather a fine figure approached and offered her his arm. Fleurange looked at him with an air of astonishment. She had never been to a large dinner-party, and knew nothing of the usages common to all countries on such an occasion. She slightly retreated, and, opening her large eyes, said: “Who are you, monsieur, and where do you wish to conduct me?”

This question and movement caused a general smile around her, in which she saw her Uncle Ludwig join, and with that simplicity which was her greatest charm she began to laugh herself, and so innocently, that he who had involuntarily caused this little scene exclaimed half aloud: “This is truly the most charming piece of rusticity I ever met with;” and then, bowing to her with mock gravity, and an air at once gallant and bantering, he said:

“Mademoiselle, my name is Felix Dornthal: I have the honor of being your cousin, and I offer you my arm to conduct you to the dining-room; but I acknowledge there would have been more propriety in first making us acquainted with each other.”

Fleurange, blushing and smiling, accepted the arm offered her, and, once seated at table beside this new cousin, and freed from the embarrassment of this little incident, she looked around and began to enjoy her novel position.

Was it really her own self, who recently felt so isolated? She who had stood face to face with want and abandonment? Could she be the same person now, surrounded by numerous relatives, a member of a large family, feeling herself beloved by all, and loving all in return--yes, all, excepting the cousin seated beside her, who caused her involuntary confusion; and yet he had just said some words to her in Italian, pronounced with so pure an accent that she experienced a lively sensation of surprise and joy, for Italy was her native land--her own country almost, left only a few months previous for the first time. But her cousin’s words embodied a compliment to which she did not know how to reply, and when she raised her eyes toward him she met a look that disconcerted her still more. She therefore only uttered a few words in return, and then silently resumed her examination of the company, beginning with her Uncle Ludwig. As to him, she thought she had never seen a nobler and sweeter face. It was impossible not to be struck by the contrast in this respect between him and his wife, which must have been even more striking in their youth than now. While she was dwelling on this thought, she met her aunt’s eye resting on her for a moment, and saw her smile. That look 823 and smile seemed to answer her, and give a clue to the mystery, for they revealed the traits that constitute the indestructible bond of genuine sympathy. Beauty adds nothing to such characteristics, or at least only a charm the heart disregards, and which even the eye soon ceases to dwell on, for they who are capable of loving a soul soon love the form, whatever it may be, in which it is clothed.

The only one of the children who had not inherited the beauty of the Dornthals was Clement, who looked more like his mother than the rest. He had the same ugliness and the same smile, and yet, as he was tall, slender, active, and robust, his form, without being elegant, was not devoid of grace, and when his thick hair was thrown back, the shape of his forehead gave a marked character to his face, and his look was, in flashes, expressive, decided, and intelligent. It was astonishing, therefore, to find young Dornthal so apparently incapable of self-assertion: the more so because he possessed great aptitude for the arts and sciences, and as a student he stood in the highest rank. But it seemed to be an effort for him to converse, and he was so absolutely silent in the drawing-room that his friends habitually avoided speaking to him. Elsewhere it was different. His father found it difficult to conceal the secret preference he felt for his eldest son, and the affectionate pride with which he regarded him was manifest in his looks on all occasions, in spite of himself. And Clement’s mother showed a confidence in him almost strange, considering his youth, and often seemed more disposed to consult than direct him. As to his brothers and sisters, they idolized him and were constantly recurring to him; he had a remedy for every difficulty, a means for every end, and nothing exhausted his patience. In spite of this, as we have said, he scarcely attracted any attention in company. We can therefore understand why Fleurange, in continuing her inspection, did not stop long to consider her cousin, but, on the contrary, directed all her attention to a person at his side whose face was singularly remarkable. He was a man about fifty years old, perhaps older, for his bald head, gray beard, and pale face, marked by sickness, showed he was no longer young. But a something indefinable attracted attention, and induced people to inquire his name, and the name seemed so much in harmony with his countenance that, when known, it was not unusual to hear the exclamation: “So had I pictured him to myself.” Such, in fact, was that of Fleurange when, in reply to her question, her cousin Felix told her his name was Hansfelt.

“Karl Hansfelt!” she repeated for the second time; “is it he?--what! is that he?”

“Yes, my fair cousin, he himself,” replied Felix in a mocking tone. “In truth, I ought to consider myself fortunate in having at length found a subject of conversation that can interest you, but I did not think of being under obligations to old Hansfelt!”

“But is it not natural to regard a celebrated man with interest, and one so justly celebrated as he?” said she, turning her eyes once more toward her cousin. But she lowered them immediately, for the look fastened on her was more displeasing than any she had yet met--a look expressing at once impertinent admiration and entire want of kindness. She wished, nevertheless, to continue the conversation, and timidly said: “No one can deny that he is a poet whose name is familiar to 824 every one, and whose songs are in every memory.”

“As for me,” replied Felix Dornthal, “I am not fond of rhymsters; this one is particularly disagreeable to me; and his approaching departure does not at all afflict me.”

“Is he going away?” said Fleurange.

“Yes, it seems he has been offered a place at the court of ----, I hardly know what position, but one that will allow him to fully gratify his taste for old books, and at the same time--a thing by no means to be disdained, even by a poet--give him ample means of livelihood. He has suffered sweet violence, and in a short time we shall be deprived of the honor of receiving him within our walls--for ever deprived, it seems, for the kind prince, who is taking him away, insists on his not quitting his post.”

Fleurange made no reply: her glance had just fallen on her cousin Hilda, who was sufficiently near to hear the conversation, but not enough so to be able to take any part in it. She saw her suddenly stoop down to pick up a flower just fallen from her hand, and when she rose up there was a lively color in her face. This was a natural consequence of the movement she had just made, but what was less so was the paleness which gradually succeeded, and the trembling of her hand when she endeavored to raise a glass of water to her lips. Fleurange was observing this with a vague uneasiness, when her attention was suddenly called away by a question her Uncle Ludwig addressed to a young man seated at Clara’s side.

This question led to a reply which momentarily deprived Fleurange of the power of thinking of anything else.

“Steinberg,” the professor said, “look at my niece, and tell me if you can see the resemblance spoken of.”

The young artist turned toward Fleurange, and looked at her with an attention that, till now, had been exclusively absorbed by his fair neighbor. All at once he exclaimed: “Yes, certainly; I remember, and I see Count George was right. That is truly _Cordelia_ herself before us!”

Every eye was turned toward Fleurange, and it was her turn to blush. But why did she thus tremble from head to foot? What were the mingled remembrances, sweet and poignant, that were suddenly recalled by the name of _Cordelia_? Of course it was natural that she should be affected by hearing her father’s last work mentioned--that picture connected with so many painful associations. On the other hand, it was that same picture which enabled her uncle to find her, and now, appreciating more than ever the extent of this happiness, it was perhaps natural that the name of her unknown benefactor, suddenly pronounced in her presence, should inspire this lively and inexpressible emotion--but was this all?

However that might be, she remained the rest of the evening troubled and absorbed in the same thought. She had not, then, been deceived. It was really the stranger she had seen in the studio who now owned the picture, for he not only knew she served her father as a model, but said the likeness was perfect. And his name was Count George! Count? Then he was a man of high rank? What was his other name? Where did he reside? And was he still in this city?

Fleurange wished to give utterance to these questions, but an invincible embarrassment restrained her, and the evening passed without 825 being able to bring the conversation back to this subject. This curiosity aroused, but only imperfectly satisfied, left a kind of uneasiness which she reproached herself for as a fault and a want of gratitude, when, before falling asleep that night, she recalled all that had signalized the day when for the first time she celebrated in the midst of her own relatives the great and memorable festival of Christmas.

VI.

Four months had passed away, and spring had returned. It was now the eve of Clara’s marriage and Hansfelt’s departure, and these two events diversely preoccupied all who lived in the Old Mansion. Fleurange was leaning over her balcony, allowing her thoughts to wander at will, but this reverie was by no means melancholy. She felt very happy in spite of the ideas which vaguely crossed her mind at times, like phantoms she could not grasp. The vernal air caressed her cheeks, and the sun gaily lighted up the old furniture in her chamber. She looked complacently around, and gave herself Up to a sweet and overpowering sensation of comfort. All at once, without any apparent cause, without any particular reason for this new impression, a piercing and bitter thought replaced all these delicious reveries: “If I had to leave this place for ever, as I have left all the others!” she said to herself with sudden anguish, and for some moments she could not repress the fearful thought. She covered her eyes with her hand, and endeavored to shake off the kind of nightmare which had seized her. She was still in this attitude when she heard a voice under her balcony, the sound of which was more disagreeable to her than any other.

“If I were a poet,” said the voice, “or if I only knew some of their effusions, it would be a suitable time to quote Shakespeare:

‘Oh! that I were a glove upon that hand!’

and so forth. Prompt me, Clement: I know Italian well, but very little English.”

These words were addressed to her by her cousin Felix Dornthal, who was in the garden with Clement, and had stopped beneath her balcony. The latter had his head cast down, but Felix, as usual, gazed at her with the admiration he had displayed from the very, first day--which was the only disagreeable and annoying thing she had known beneath her uncle’s roof. But then, she seldom saw Felix. The company that assembled two or three times a month in the professor’s drawing-room was not much to the taste of his nephew, and if he had come oftener since Fleurange’s arrival, he seldom had an opportunity of conversing with her, for she avoided him with a care in proportion to the increasing aversion she felt for him. Felix had, nevertheless, all the advantage a fine figure and the manners of the world confer, with sufficient knowledge on various subjects to appear well-informed, and coolness and assurance enough to direct a conversation so as to shine in it. It might, therefore, seem surprising that he inspired such a degree of antipathy, especially when, for the first time in his life, he seriously endeavored to produce the contrary impression.

Sympathy and antipathy are in part instinctive and uncontrollable, and sometimes they are wholly inexplicable. They are both experienced without always knowing the cause, and sometimes, later, they are 826 transformed and modified to such a degree as to efface the first impulse they inspired. Perhaps it would not be impossible to prove that upright souls are less rarely deceived in this respect than others. However it may be, and independent of this instinctive repulsion, the antipathy Fleurange felt was owing, among other good reasons, to the constant irony which was so strong an ingredient in Felix’s nature, as to wither every feeling of kindly impulse or flow of reason around him. Goodness found no attraction in his nature, and those who conversed with him almost ceased to believe in it themselves. He had not discernment enough to see that Fleurange was one of those persons who may be wounded by a compliment as well as by an insult, and more than one flash of her large eyes was necessary to make him comprehend it. And when he suddenly stopped, his silence excited anxiety to know the cause of his sudden preoccupation and what sombre cloud enwrapped him. Some insinuated with a nod of the head that M. Heinrich Dornthal’s only son should yield with more reserve to his love for play, and his father had repeatedly remonstrated with him on this point. But as, apart from his whims and irregularities, Felix had a remarkable capacity for commercial affairs, the banker was blindly indulgent to him, and often remarked that being “perfectly satisfied, and sure of his son in matters of _serious_ import (meaning thereby his aptitude for business), he did not trouble himself much about the rest, and only patiently awaited the epoch when the marriage of his choice would lead him back to a more regular life.”

It should be added that, for several months, the health of the head of the Dornthal family had, without his acknowledging it, been seriously declining. The greater part of the business formerly done by himself was now transacted by his son, and his confidence, or his weakness, in this respect, increased to a degree unsuspected by any but him who was its object. The banker occasionally felt, with a return of his former cautiousness, some anxiety on this point, but Felix knew how to reassure him by a few words, and he now felt only one desire, which grew stronger and stronger--to see his son married, and settled down to a life of greater conformity with the importance of the affairs he could transact so skilfully, and to which he had only to give his undivided attention. He could have wished him to choose one of his two cousins, but Felix did not find them to his taste, and often declared that it would not be within the walls of the Old Mansion he should find her to whom he would sacrifice his independence. But after Fleurange entered them he suddenly changed his tone, and his ill-concealed admiration now directed toward her all the banker’s matrimonial hopes respecting his son.

We left Felix beneath his cousin’s balcony, his riding-whip in hand: “Away with poetry, which is not in my line,” he soon said, “and deign to listen, fair cousin, to the petition I am about to address you in humble prose.”

Fleurange, still leaning on the balcony, replied: “I am listening.”

“See what a lovely spring day! My horse stands yonder: will you not have yours saddled, and allow me to ride in your company?”

Fleurange drew herself up with an air of surprise, and shook her head without otherwise answering.

“No?” said Felix.

“No, certainly not. How could you think of such a thing? And what claim 827 have you to become my mentor?”

“Your mentor!” repeated Felix with a frown. “I am your cousin, that is all. Clement often has the honor of accompanying you in this way, and I should have a share in his privileges.”

“You are mistaken,” said Fleurange tranquilly: “Clement is my brother, and you are not.”

The smile habitual to Felix--a smile at once impertinent and satirical, hovered on his lips:

“Assuredly not,” he said; “that is a title I am by no means ambitious of, and am far from claiming of you.”

Fleurange blushed, and made no reply, but, at a sign from her cousins who were in the room, she almost immediately left the balcony and went down into the garden.

Clement remained motionless during the preceding dialogue, with his head bent down, making flourishes on the sand with the stick in his hand.

“Her brother!” repeated Felix in a mocking tone, as soon as Fleurange disappeared. “Well, I have no reason to be offended. She looks upon you as a boy, that is quite clear. It is for you to complain, if this does not suit you.”

“It does suit me, on the contrary;” said Clement in a decided tone. “I accept the title she gives me, and I know, when occasion requires it, how to fulfil the obligations it imposes, and when to claim my rights.”

“Rights! What rights?”

“The right, certainly, of protecting her! You see, boy as I am, she has conferred it on me. It is one which I will never surrender, and would quite willingly maintain against you, Felix, if necessary.”

“What source of inspiration have you drawn from to-day, my fine scholar? You are not generally so fluent. Indeed, if you were only a few years older, I should imagine the large gray eyes of our fair, disdainful cousin had fascinated you in your turn.”

Clement did not look up; he neither blushed nor was vexed.

“Felix,” said he, “I am only nineteen years old, it is true, and you are ten years older; but I have one advantage which the younger does not generally possess: you do not know me. But I,” continued he, looking him full in the face, “as you are aware, I know you well.”

At these words a black look came over Felix’s face, he bit his lips, and would perhaps have made some angry reply had not the three girls appeared at the end of the alley. At the sight of them Felix abruptly turned around, and, leaping on his horse, galloped off, slightly waving his hand to Julian Steinberg, whom he met at the garden gate.

Fleurange and her two cousins approached to meet Clara’s betrothed. “I am late,” said he to Clara, “but you must not think it is my fault. I have been detained by an unexpected meeting. Count George is here.”

“Count George de Walden?” said Clement, “the same one who visited the gallery about a year ago?”

“The very one,” replied Julian; “and it was he who showed us the beautiful Cordelia that resembles you so much, mademoiselle,” he added, turning to Fleurange.

“And the source of our good luck in finding her,” said Hilda.

“But, since he has seen you, Gabrielle,” said Clara, “you must know him.”

Fleurange, strangely surprised, moved, and confused, nevertheless replied in a tolerably calm tone: “I did not know who purchased the picture until I came here.”

“But,” persisted Clara, “you saw him, however?” 828

“Yes, once, but without speaking to him.”

“In that case, you must remember him, for Julian pretends his face is the most remarkable one he ever saw.”

“Yes, his features are not only fine,” said Julian, “but there is in his physiognomy and his whole appearance something--something--”

“Striking and noble,” said Clement.

“Yes, that is true.”

“Assuredly,” replied Julian; “but that is not all. There is something extraordinary about him--how shall I express it? heroic--yes, that is the word, he looks like a hero.”

“Of romance?” said Clara.

“No, of history: if I had to paint a celebrated soldier, or the leader of some famous exploit, I should choose him for the original.”

“And then, he is a great lover of art,” said Clement.

“Yes,” responded Julian, “he seems, indeed, gifted in every way.”

“And is he going to remain here?” said Clara.

“Unfortunately he will not, for in that case he would be at our wedding, but he is obliged to go to St. Petersburg without any delay.”

“What! is he a Russian?” said Clara.

“No, not wholly.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean he is a Livonian or a native of Courland, I do not know exactly which. But he is one of the emperor’s subjects, and cannot trifle with his orders, which obliged him to leave Florence suddenly, where he was, and now forces him to keep swiftly on his way.”

The conversation took another turn, of which Fleurange did not hear a word. As soon as she had an excuse for leaving her cousins, she returned to her chamber, where she took a small note-book from her pocket, and carefully inscribed therein the name of Count George de Walden.

[160] The use of the second person singular, indicative of familiarity in most European languages, has not been retained in this translation.

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THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. AGNES.

“Sancta Agnes! ora pro nobis.”

Calm she stood, An ivory statue, yet instinct with life, So stately was that gently breathing form Of grace and dignity so perfect, yet With all youth’s pliant softness.

On her brow, White as the ocean pearl when first the waves Complaining cast their treasure on the shore, Was stamped the seal of that creating hand Whose spirit dwelt within that temple rare, Her holy virgin heart; and from her eyes, Soul-lit, beamed forth the splendor and the depth Of that informing mind whose lights they were, Until you heeded not their violet hues, Their lashes long, or nobly arching brows. 829 Her flossy hair was colored like the sun, Her cheeks were opal-tinted, like the hues Of rosy sunset mingled with the pure Soft paly whiteness of the maiden moon. Her mouth was a pomegranate-flower, with all Its crimson sweetness, and her rounded chin, Love’s finger touching, had impressed therein A lovely dimple, thus completing well The virgin beauty of that angel face.

A young and princely Roman knight drew near, And bent upon the noble maid his glance, Wherein the fire of earthly passion blazed, Yet tempered by a tear of pity born. “Agnes! my Agnes!” in a suppliant voice He spake; “Oh! dost thou shun my clasping arms, And rather choose this grim and ghastly death, To dower with all thy charms? Oh! let me place Upon that fairest hand this spousal ring, Pledge of our future nuptials; then shall all This dark and bloody pageantry of death, The axe, the block, the gloomy lictors, all Pass from thy sight for ever. Agnes! speak!”

The virgin answered not nor seemed to hear, Her eyes in raptured trance raised to the skies, Till from her parted lips in angel tones Low murmuring music broke: “O thou my Lord! Jesus! my Spouse! my All! my only Love! Am I not thine alone? upon my brow Hast thou not left thy signet? on this hand Hast thou not placed thy ring, the golden ring, Of our divine espousals heavenly pledge? Come, O my Love! I long to view thy face, Come, take thine Agnes to thine own embrace; For ever with the Lord!” The thrilling tones Lapsed into silence. On the lictors all, She smiled--a heavenly smile; and then she knelt, Bowing her gentle head upon the block, Her golden tresses, parted for the blow, Swept the dry sand so soon to drink her blood.

An instant, and the dazzling gleam of steel Flashed through the air; it fell, and rose again-- All--all was o’er; e’en then the virgin bride Stood on the sea of glass before her Lord. The martyred virgin bride, crowned by his hand With palms of triumph, and the lilies white, Meet emblems of her purity and faith.

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CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM. 830

NO. XIII.

THE COSMOS IN TIME AND SPACE--CONTINUED.

In the preceding article, we have seen that, in consequence of the sacramental extension of the Theanthropos in time and space, substantial creation in its highest and noblest element, which is personality, has received its last initial and inchoative perfection of being, by the union of human persons with the Theanthropos by means of his substantial and sacramental presence, and through that union the elevation to a higher similitude of and communication with the three persons of the infinite. Now, this last complement of the cosmos, this union of the Theanthropos, with human persons, through his sacramental extension in time and space, constitutes the Catholic Church, which may be defined to be:

_The Theanthropos present in the cosmos through the sacraments, and through them incorporating into himself human persons in time and space, raising them to a higher similitude of and communication with the three personalities of the infinite, and thus not only realizing the highest initial perfection of the cosmos, but also unfolding and developing that initial perfection, and bringing it to its ultimate completion in palingenesia._

The Theanthropos, therefore, has placed himself in the very centre of the cosmos by his sacramental and substantial presence, as became his great office and prerogative of mediator. By those moments of his sacramental presence to which he has only attached his infinite energy and power, he disposes and fits human persons for the real incorporation into himself in the following manner: By the sacramental moment of order, through the moral instrument in whom this moment is realized, he propounds and explains his doctrine, the _gnosis_ respecting God, and the cosmos which he came to reveal to men. By the sacramental moment of regeneration, he infuses into human persons the term of the supernatural order in its essence and faculties, and thus raises them to a higher state of being, and to a closer communication with the Trinity, but all this in an initial and inchoative state. By the sacramental moment, called confirmation, he brings that essence and its faculties to a definite and determinate growth. When human persons are thus fitted and prepared, he by his substantial presence incorporates them into himself, and enables their supernatural being to live and develop itself by being put in real, actual communication with all the proper objects of its faculties. Thus, the cosmos of personalities, perfected in its initial supernatural state, can act and develop itself--the Theanthropos himself, through his moral agents, organically constituted, governing and directing its action to the safest and speediest acquirement of its last perfection.

From this metaphysical idea of the church, derived and resulting from 831 its very essence, it follows:

First, That, next to the Theanthropos, the Catholic Church is the end of all the exterior works of the infinite. The supreme end of the exterior works was the highest possible communication of the infinite to the finite. This was primarily realized in the hypostatic union which bound all created natures to the infinite, and is realized next in the union of all personalities with the Theanthropos, and through him with the Trinity. Now, the very essence of the Catholic Church consists in this union. Consequently, as such it is the _last supreme imperative_ law of the cosmos. The last, because with it closes the cycle of the creative act, and begins the cycle of the return of the terms to their principle and cause. Supreme, because no higher initial perfection of the cosmos can be realized after supposing its existence. Imperative, because it is a necessary complement of the plan of the cosmos.

Hence, without the Catholic Church the cosmos of personalities would have no aim or object. It would stand alone, and unconnected with the other parts of the cosmos, the particular end of each personality could never be attained, and the whole would present a confused mass of elements, without order, harmony, or completion.

It follows, in the second place, that the Catholic Church is fashioned after the hypostatic moment, and is its most lively representation. For as that moment implies the bringing together of a human and divine element, finite and infinite, absolute and relative, necessary and contingent, independent and subject, visible and invisible, in the unity of one divine personality, so the Catholic Church is the result of a double element, one human, the other divine; one visible, the other invisible; one finite, the other infinite; one necessary, the other contingent; one immutable, the other variable; the one independent and authoritative, the other subject and dependent, in the union of the Theanthropos with the sacramental element. This union of the Theanthropos with the sacramental element, both moral and physical, is, as we have said, the very essence of the Catholic Church, and which endows it with that double series of attributes and perfections, one belonging to God, the other essentially belonging to the finite, but which are brought together in one being in force of that union; and all the difficulties brought against the church hinge upon that very thing--the sacramental union of all the divine attributes of the Theanthropos with the finite attributes of the sacramental element. All those who object to all or some of the Theanthropic attributes of the church object to the possibility and existence of that union.

But that union, as the last supreme imperative law of the cosmos, is such a strict consequence of the plan, is so connected and linked with all the other moments of God’s action _ad extra_, depends so entirely upon the identical principle which originates the others, that once we deny it we are obliged to yield up all the other truths, and take refuge in nihilism, and proclaim the death of our intelligence. For once we admit the impossibility of the union of the attributes or substance of the Theanthropos with the sacramental element, on the plea that the attributes of each are opposite and contradictory, for the self-same reason we must admit the impossibility of the union of the Word of God with the human nature, and sweep the hypostatic moment clean away; because, if it is impossible to bring together opposite 832 attributes in one sacramental being, it is much more impossible, so to speak, to bring not only attributes but two natures quite opposite together, into one subsistence and personality, and entirely exchange attribution and names, and call man God, and God man, and attribute exclusively divine acts to human nature, and _vice versa_. But, having denied the hypostatic moment in consequence of that pretended impossibility, we cannot logically stop here. We must generalize the question, and deny all possible union between the finite and the infinite. For what can there be more opposite and more contradictory than these terms, absolute and relative, necessary and contingent, immense and limited, eternal and successive, immutable and changeable, universal and particular, self-existing and made, infinite and finite? And could they possibly be brought together into any kind of union? Nay, we must go further, and deny the very coexistence of both terms, because one certainly seems to exclude the other--the universal being, for instance, including all possible being, must necessarily imply the impossibility of the coexistence of any particular, circumscribed, limited being. Arrived at this, we must conclude that all finite things which come under our observation, not being able to coexist with the universal being, must be only modifications and developments of that same, and throw ourselves into pantheism. But once pantheism is admitted, we must, to be logical, suppose the existence of a universal something impelled by an interior instinct of nature to unfold and develop itself by a succession of efforts, one more distinct, marked, and perfect than the other. Now, taking this substance at one determinate stage of development, and going backward, from a more perfect development to one less perfect, and from this to one still less perfect, we must necessarily arrive at the most indeterminate, indefinite, abstract _something_, at the idea-being of Hegel--that is, at nihilism.

Nihilism is consequently the logical product of the denial of the union of the infinite attributes of the Theanthropos with the sacramental element, the very essence of the Catholic Church. _The Catholic Church, therefore--or nihilism._

And we beg the reader to observe that this logical conclusion which we have drawn is simply the history of the errors of the last three hundred years, and consequently our conclusions receive all the support which the gradual unfolding of error for three hundred years is able to afford.

The impossibility of the union of the infinite attributes and substantial presence of the Theanthropos in the sacramental element was proclaimed in the sixteenth century by Protestantism, when on one side it denied the authority and infallibility of the church, and consequently denied the union of these Theanthropic attributes with the moral instrument, the hierarchy, and on the other side denied the real presence, and thus refused to allow a union of the substance of the Theanthropos with the sacramental elements of bread and wine. It did not then see the full meaning of its denial, but yet established the principle of the impossibility of the union of the Theanthropos in action or substance with the sacramental elements. Deism followed, and, making the Protestant principle its own, added a logical application to it, and asked: How can the uncreated, infinite, and absolute being be united to a nature created, finite, and relative? or, in other words: How could the finite and the infinite be united so 833 as to form the God-man? And then, like Protestantism, in reference to sacramental union, not being able to conceive that possibility, deism denied the hypostatic moment. But the question did not stop here. Pantheism followed, and, being gifted with as much logical acumen as deism, generalized the question, and asked: How can the finite coexist with the infinite, which comprehends all? And not being able to see the possibility of such coexistence, it refused all existence to the finite, and admitted the identity of all things and the unity of substance, allowing the finite no other existence but one ephemeral and phenomenal. This was the pantheism of Spinoza and others. But Hegel, with more acumen than all the rest, saw clearly that it was impossible to admit an _infinite_ substance subject to modification and development, unless it was supposed to be, previously to any development, altogether abstract, and shorn of all determination and concreteness, among which determinations must be ranked existence also; because development implies limit, definiteness, determination, circumscription; hence, that primitive something could not be supposed infinite, except it was shorn of everything, even existence. Consequently, he proclaimed nihilism as the principle of all things. And nihilism, and along with it the death of the intelligence, we repeat, must be admitted, or the Catholic Church--all truth or no truth.

We conclude: Deny the Catholic Church, or the union of the attributes and substance of the Theanthropos with the sacramental elements, because those opposite things cannot be brought together, and you must deny the union between human nature and the eternal Word for the same reason. Deny the hypostatic moment, and you must deny every kind of union between the finite and the infinite for the same identical reason, and you must deny the very coexistence of the finite and the infinite, and throw yourself into pantheism.

We defy any one to find a flaw in the logical connection of these conclusions, or to prove that we have misstated the genesis and development of error for the last three hundred years.

From the essence of the Catholic Church, it follows that she is necessarily divided into two moments--the active moment, and the passive moment.

The first is the Theanthropos acting through his moral instruments, proposing and expounding to all human persons, in time and space, the _gnosis_ of the whole cosmos, in its cause, term, effect, and destiny, actualizing through the same moral instruments all the other sacramental moments in human persons, and through the same moral instruments governing and directing the whole elevated cosmos. This moment is called in theological language _ecclesia docens_, or teaching church. The second are all human persons to whom the doctrine is taught, and who are the recipients of all the sacraments and the subjects of the government of the church. This moment is called _ecclesia audiens_, or hearing church.

The first is essentially active, the other passive; the one communicates, the other receives--though some members, in different relations, belong to the one or the other.

Though in demonstrating the essence of the Catholic Church, as we flatter ourselves, quite in a novel aspect, we have at the same time demonstrated all the Theanthropic attributes belonging to and resulting from that essence, yet, for the sake of those who cannot see all the 834 consequences included in a general principle, we shall dilate at some length upon all the essential attributes of the church, and those characteristic marks which constitute her what she is, and point her out from any other body pretending to the same name.

The first attribute, which evidently emanates from the essence of the church, is its externation, and capacity of coming under the observation of men. For, if the essence of the church consists in being the Theanthropos, incorporating his power, as well as his substantial presence, in physical as well as personal instruments, and through them incorporating all human persons unto himself, who can fail to perceive that church must be visible, outward, able to come under the observation of men, in that double relation of sacramental extension of Christ and of having men as objects of incorporation with him?

An invisible church would imply a denial of any sacramental agency, and would be absolutely unfit for men, who are _incarnate_ spirits. Hence, those sects which hold that the saints alone belong to the church have not the least idea of its essence. Holiness being altogether a spiritual and invisible quality, the saints could not know each other, nor, consequently, hold any communication with each other; the sinners could not find out where the saints are to be heard of; and therefore there could not be any possibility of discovering the church or any moral obligation of joining it.

The next attribute essentially belonging to the church is its _permanence_, in theological language called indefectibility, which implies not only duration in time and space, but also _immutability_ in all its essential elements, attributes, and rights. The church must continue to be, as long as the cosmos lasts, whole and entire in all time and space, in the perfect enjoyment of all its attributes, characteristic marks, and rights.

The reason of this attribute is so evident and palpable that we are at a loss to understand how it could enter men’s minds that the church could and did fail or change in its essential elements. When Protestantism, to cloak over its rebellion in breaking loose from allegiance to the church of the living God, alleged as reason that it had failed and changed in its essential elements--when Protestantism repeats daily the same assertion, it exposed and exposes itself to an absurdity at which the merest tyro in logic would laugh. It is one of the first axioms of ontology that the essences of things are immutable and eternal: immutable, inasmuch as they can never change; eternal, inasmuch as they must be conceived as possible from eternity, whether they have any subjective existence or not. Essences are like number. Add to it, or subtract from it, and you can never have the same number; likewise add to the essence of a thing, or subtract from it, and you may have another thing, but never the same essence.

Now, what is the essence of the church? It consists in the Theanthropos incorporating his infinite power and his substantial presence in physical and personal instruments, and through them uniting to himself human persons, elevating them to a supernatural state, and enabling them to develop and unfold their supernatural faculties until they arrive at their ultimate perfection, and all this in time and space.

Now, how can we suppose the church to fail when its very essence is founded on the union of the Theanthropos with the sacraments? The only 835 possible failure we can suppose is if the presence of the Theanthropos were to be withdrawn from the sacraments; and this could happen either because the Theanthropos may be supposed powerless to continue that presence or unwilling; in both cases, the divinity of the Theanthropos is denied; because the first would argue want of power, the second a senseless change. Protestantism would do much better to deny at once the divinity of its founder, instead of admitting the failure of the church he founded. It would be by far more honest and logical. We can respect error when it is logical and consistent, but we must despise obstinate nonsense and absurdity. The same attribute is claimed by the end of the church--which is, to communicate to human persons in time and space the term of the supernatural moment. As long, then, as there are men on earth, so long must the church continue to possess invariable and unchangeable those elements with which it was endowed by its divine founder. Should it fail or change, how could men after the failure be incorporated into the Theanthropos? Should it fail or change, how could men believe in the possibility of their attaining their end? Should it fail once and at one period only, men would no longer possess any means of knowing when, and how, and where it might not fail again, and therefore they could not but look upon the whole thing with utter contempt.

The next attribute is infallibility.

Certainty objectively considered is the impossibility of error in a given case. Infallibility also, considered in itself, is the impossibility of error in every case within the sphere to which that infallibility extends. This attribute is essentially necessary to the church, but before we enter upon its vindication we will say a word about its nature, the subject in whom it resides, the object it embraces, and the mode of exercising it. The nature of the infallibility claimed by the church does not consist in a new inspiration: because inspiration implies an interior revelation of an idea not previously revealed or known. Now, this does not occur, and is not necessary, in order that the church may fulfil its office. The revelation of the whole _gnosis_ respecting God, the cosmos, and their mutual relations in time and in eternity, was made by the Theanthropos in the beginning. The church carries it in her mind, heart, and life, as she traverses centuries and generations. But as all the particular principles constituting that _gnosis_ are not all distinctly and explicitly formulated and set in human language, so it becomes the office of the church from time to time to formulate one of those principles. In this she is assisted by the Theanthropos in such a manner that she may infallibly express her mind in the new formula she utters. Again, an error may arise against the revealed gnosis she carries in her mind. Then it is her office to proclaim what her mind is upon the subject, and condemn whatever may be contrary to it. Again, she is assisted by the Theanthropos in such a manner as to effect both these things infallibly. Infallibility in the present case, therefore, may be defined a permanent assistance of the Theanthropos preserving the church from falling into error in the exercise of her office.

The object of this attribute is limited to these three:

1. She is infallible in teaching and defining all theoretical doctrines contained in the revelation, be it written or not, but handed down socially from the beginning.

2. In all doctrines having reference to morality. 836

3. In the choice and determination of the external means of embodying that doctrine, theoretical or practical; whether the external means which embodies the doctrine be used by the church, or, used by others, must be judged by the church.

This last object of infallibility is so absolutely necessary that without it the other two would become nugatory and fictitious. If, in propounding a doctrine, the church could err in fixing upon such objective expressions of language as would infallibly exhibit her mind, men could never be assured whether the church had expressed herself correctly or not, and could never, consequently, be certain of her meaning. Likewise, if the church could err in teaching whether such and such expression of language, intended to embody a doctrine, contains an error or a truth, men would be left in doubt whether to embrace or reject it, and could never, in embracing it, be absolutely certain whether they were holding a revealed doctrine or a falsehood.

From this it follows that: First, the church is not infallible in things belonging exclusively to natural sciences, and in no way connected with revelation; second, she is not infallible in reference to historical facts, and much less in reference to personal facts, unless these are connected with dogma. The subjects in whom this attribute resides are the following:

1. The Supreme Pontiff, the head of the hierarchy, who, independent of the rest, enjoys this attribute, in reference to all the objects above explained. Because, by the interior organism of the church, as we shall see, he is made the source of all authority in teaching and governing.

2. The hierarchy, together with the Supreme Pontiff, either assembled in council or agreeing through other means of communication.

We almost blush to have to remark that this, infallibility, centred in the Pope or bishops, does not render them personally impeccable. The two things are as distant as the poles, and can only be brought together and confounded in minds who, according to the expression of Dante, have lost the light of the intellect, and live in a darkness which is little short of death.

The modes of exercising this attribute are three:

She is infallible as teacher, as witness, and as judge.

As teacher: when she proclaims and expounds to the faithful the revelation of the Theanthropos.

As witness: when she affirms what belongs or does not belong to that revelation.

As judge: when she pronounces final judgment on controversies and disputes which arise in relation to revealed doctrines.

Having thus given a brief idea of all that belongs to the subject of infallibility, it seems to us that no one who has understood the nature and essence of the church, and the object for which it was established, can fail to perceive not only the entire reasonableness, but also the absolute necessity of such a doctrine.

We have said that the church in its active element is nothing less than the Theanthropos himself, communicating the term of the supernatural moment, which includes teaching, through the agency of secondary agents, both physical and personal. The church, therefore, under the aspect from which we are now regarding her, is the Theanthropos teaching his revelation, expounding his revelation, affirming and witnessing to his revelation, declaring what agrees with it, and what is contradictory to it, through the agency of the 837 Supreme Pontiff, or of the Pontiff and the rest of the hierarchy. And can anything be more reasonable than the assertion that she is infallible? Protestantism has boasted, and boasts yet, of having emancipated reason, of having brought it to the highest possible degree of culture and development. But when will Protestantism begin to exercise its vaunted reason?

Is it reasonable to suppose that the Theanthropos, the God made man, the infallible wisdom of God, the very intelligibility of the Father, who established the church, that is, united himself, either as to action or substance, with a sacramental element, be it material or personal, in order, among other things, to teach all men in time and space what was absolutely necessary for them to know to attain their ultimate perfection--is it reasonable to suppose, we say, that the Theanthropos should, through his personal agents, teach anything but absolute truth?

Deny the divinity of the Theanthropos, deny that the Theanthropos ever did or could unite his activity with personal agents, deny the essence of the church, and then you would be logical, then you would be consistent, then we could understand you. But to admit that the Theanthropos _is_ God, to admit that he _did_ unite his infinite and divine activity to the sacramental element, to admit that he did so on purpose to teach all men in time and space, and then to affirm that the church is not and cannot be infallible--that is, that the Theanthropos cannot teach infallibly through his personal agents--is such a logic as only the highly cultivated reason of Protestantism can understand. It is above the reach of that reason which is satisfied with a moderate share of culture and refinement, and cannot claim to soar so high.

We beg the reader to reflect for an instant on this single question: Is it the Theanthropos, or is it not, who teaches through the agency of his personal instruments? To this simple question, a simple answer should be given. Say you answer, It is not. Then you deny that the Theanthropos united his infinite energy to a sacramental element. Then you deny the essence of the church, and, in denying that, you must deny every other union between the infinite and the finite, as we have demonstrated. If you say it _is_ the Theanthropos who teaches through the agency of his personal instruments, then what can be more logical or more consistent than to say that he teaches infallibly? What is there more reasonable than to say that a God-man should know what is truth, and should express his mind so, should embody it in an external means so, as to represent that mind infallibly?

Then, why so much opposition against this plainest attribute of the church? Why so much obloquy, so much sneering, except that the so boasted Protestant reason is nothing but a vile, unmanly prejudice, except that those who boast so much of exercising their reason resemble those innocent and unconscious animals of which Dante speaks:

“As _sheep_, that step forth from their fold, by one Or pairs, or three, at once; meanwhile, the rest Stand fearfully, bending the eye and nose To ground, _and what the foremost does that do The others, gathering round her if she stops, Simple and quiet, nor the cause discern_”? --_Cary’s Translation._

The next attribute of the church is authority. This, like the rest, flows from her very essence. That essence consists in being the sacramental extension of Christ incorporating unto himself all human 838 persons in time and space, communicating to them the term of the supernatural moment in its essence and faculties, and aiding them to develop those faculties, and to bring them to their ultimate completion. The church, therefore, as sacramental--that is, outward and sensible extension of the Theanthropos intended for men--is a visible, outward society of human persons with the Theanthropos. Now, what does a visible society require? That the external relations of the associates should be determined and governed by the authority legitimately constituted in the society. For, if those relations were not determined and directed by proper authority in a visible society, it is evident that no order could be expected, and that all the members could not form one moral body, by a proper external communication. The church, therefore, as a visible society, must have authority to determine all the external relations of the members, and to govern and direct them.

This authority or power of establishing the external polity in the church is, of course, essentially residing in the Theanthropos, who communicates it whole and entire to the Supreme Pontiff, and through him to the whole hierarchy and the rest of the active church.

Having vindicated the essential attributes of the church, we think it necessary to dilate at some length upon the interior constitution, the internal organism of the same, in order to exhibit a fuller and more adequate idea of this masterpiece of the infinite. And in order to do it thoroughly, we must give a cursory glance at its eternal type, the supreme exemplar of everything--the Trinity. The reader will remember that the genesis of God’s life takes place as follows: There is in the infinite essence and nature a first subsistence, unborn, unbegotten, which terminates in the first person. This is the supreme, active principle of the second, and both are the active principle of the third. In this third termination closes the cycle of infinite life. The production of the second person is brought about by intellectual generation. For the primary unbegotten activity, being infinitely intelligent, can scan with his glance the whole depth, breadth, height, and length of his infinite nature. Now, to intelligence means to produce an intellectual image of the object which is understood. Consequently, the primary unbegotten principle, by intelligencing himself, produces an intellectual image, absolutely equal to himself, the act of intelligencing being infinite, and also distinct from him, inasmuch as they are opposed as principle and term. The first contemplates himself in his substantial image, and is attracted toward himself and his image. The second contemplates himself in his principle, and is attracted toward himself and his principle. This common, mutual attraction or love, being also infinite, is consequently substantial, and results in a third termination of the infinite essence.

From this brief explanation of the genesis of God’s life, it follows:

1st. That the infinite, though one in nature, has three distinct terminations or persons.

2d. That, though these three persons are absolutely equal, because possessed of the same identical nature, we find in them a necessary subjection of order founded on the law of origin and production, the second being originated by the first, and being in this respect subject to him; the third being originated by both, and under this respect being subject to both.

3d. The three persons, possessing the same identical nature and 839 substance, possess, consequently, all the perfections and attributes flowing from the substance in the same identical manner. Hence they possess in common all the metaphysical attributes of the substance, such as infinity, eternity, immensity, immutability; all the intellectual attributes, such as truth, wisdom, etc.; all the moral attributes of the substance, such as goodness, etc.

4th. As nature is the radical principle of action and life, it follows that, as the three persons possess the same nature, they possess one identical action and life. But as the termination is the immediate principle of action, and the three persons have a distinct termination, their one identical action receives the impress of the distinct termination of each.

5th. Finally, the essence being identical in all the three persons, and the second and third being originated by an immanent action, and all being essentially relative to each other, it follows that they all live in each other by a common indwelling.

Now, the interior constitution, the internal organism, of the church must be modelled, both in its active and passive moments, after this supreme type of everything; always granting the necessary distance of proportion intervening between the infinite and the finite. For, if the whole cosmos is and must be fashioned after that supreme pattern, how much more must the church, which is the inchoative and initial perfection of the whole cosmos, the cosmos of personalities! Consequently, we must find in its interior organism all the laws of the genesis of God’s life--laws which in the whole cosmos are reflected in those of _unity_, _variety_, _hierarchy_, _communion_.

And, first, as to the active moment of the church. As in the infinite we find one nature and essence, the abyss of all perfections, the _Being_, so in the active church we must find one nature and essence, the reflex of the essence of God. And that one nature consists in the fulness of the priesthood of the Theanthropos, communicated to the whole active church in the sacrament of order, and in the fulness of his authority.

As in the infinite the divine nature is possessed in common by a multiplicity of persons, the three terminations constituting the Trinity, so in the active church the priesthood of Christ and his authority must be possessed in common by a multiplicity of persons, some possessing it in its fulness, some partially, because distinction in the finite is by gradation, and cannot be by perfect equality, but all having the same identical priesthood as to its nature.

As in the Trinity, we find the law of hierarchy absolutely necessary in organic and living beings, which hierarchy consists in this, that the three divine persons, though absolutely equal as to nature, are distinct as to personality--a distinction which arises from opposition of origin. Now, this opposition of origin necessarily gives rise to a hierarchical superiority of order; the Father as such being necessarily superior in order to the Son, and the Son as such inferior to him; both as the aspirants of the third person necessarily superior to him, and _vice versa_.

Now, this hierarchical law must be found also in the church, and we must find a superiority of one over the other, not merely of order, but of gradation; the finite, as we have said, not being distinct except by gradation of being. Hence, we find the Theanthropos to have established three distinct elements constituting the hierarchy, and 840 organically brought together. The first, a primary principle of authority from whom all receive, and he receives from none--the Supreme Pontiff, his own vicar on earth, the visible head of the church. The second, who receive from the first in measure and limit--the episcopate, who receive from the Supreme Pontiff their authority and its extent. The third, also, receive from both in a more limited manner--the priesthood.[161]

As in the Trinity the divine nature, being the radical principle of action and life, and the termination, the proximate principle, there is one common action and life, but the same bearing the impress of the constituent of each person; so in the church the authority being the same as to nature, the Pontiff, the episcopate, and the priesthood have one common life and action radically, but each one displaying it according to the degree resulting from his dignity--the Pontiff in its fulness, the episcopate within the range of their dioceses, the priesthood within the limits appointed by the episcopate--the second as holding it from the first, the third from both.

The reader can see by the theory we have just explained, and which cannot be gainsaid, how the late definition of the infallibility of the Supreme Pontiff is in accordance with and flows from the principles we have laid down. The Pontiff in the church of Christ is the first and primary visible principle of all authority, as in the interior of infinite life the eternal Father is the first primary principle of authority over the Son and the Spirit, as we have explained above.

From the Pontiff all must receive authority, and he can receive from none, as the Father in the internal organism of the infinite communicates and receives from none. Consequently, the Supreme Pontiff being the first, primary, supreme, visible principle of authority in the church of Christ, is the first, primary, supreme, visible teacher--the office of teaching being essentially included in the fulness of authority communicated to him by Christ.

And as the office of teaching in the church of Christ would be of no avail except it were endowed with the attribute of infallibility, it follows that the Supreme Pontiff is the first, primary, supreme, _infallible_ teacher in the church of Christ. He must teach all, and can be taught by none. He teaches by himself the whole universal church, and none has and can have any authority for disputing, objecting to, and gainsaying his teaching.

We cannot perceive how any persons holding the supremacy and independence of his authority could ever have reconciled with their logic the dependence of his authority with reference to teaching.

We come to the interior organism of the passive church, to which the active church also belongs in different relation, and we find in it also a reflex of the Trinity.

For as in the infinite there is one nature common to all, communicated by the first person to the second, and by both to the third, so in the passive church we find the same nature, the term of the supernatural moment, consisting in a higher similitude of and communication with the Trinity; this term communicated by the active church; primarily by the episcopate, and secondarily by the priesthood. 841

As in the Trinity, the nature being the same, the three persons partake of all the attributes flowing from the nature, likewise, and with due proportion in the church, the nature of the supernatural moment being the same, all the members partake of the same attributes and faculties flowing from that nature; hence they have one common supernatural intelligence, one common supernatural will.

As the Trinity, the nature being the radical principle of action, and the personality the proximate, all have the same action, but each acts according to the constituent of his personality; so in the church, the term of the supernatural moment, constituting its nature, being the same, all have the same supernatural action and life; but personally, some members belonging to the active church, and some to the passive, it follows that those who belong to the first display that life in that relation, and those who belong to the second display it in the second relation.

As in the Trinity we find an indwelling of all the persons in each other, and a living perpetual communication founded on the identity of nature and on the relation of personalities; so in the church of Christ we find a perpetual communication of its members with each other, founded on the identity of nature, the term of the supernatural moment, and on the relation of personalities, all members of the passive church communicating with and living, as it were, in the active church, because proceeding from it.

We see, therefore, what is the interior organism of the church. As to the active church, the fulness of the priesthood of the Theanthropos is given to the whole active church. The organism is constituted and established by authority. The fulness of his authority is communicated to one, the Supreme Pontiff, the visible head of the church. From him, and from him alone, all others must receive authority. And hence the unity of the whole active church, unity of authority, of action and life, and the proper hierarchical order. The passive church is established upon the bestowal of the supernatural nature and faculties and acts. The two are brought together by the community of the same supernatural nature, faculties, and acts; and, by the dependence of origin, the second proceeding and being originated by the first. Both have one common life and action, but hierarchically exercised, the passive being governed and directed by the one which originates it, and thus exhibiting a most perfect image of the Trinity.

We have only been commenting upon those words of the Theanthropos: “Holy Father, keep these in thy name whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we also are.” Here we have the necessity of the church being modelled after the Trinity, the archetype of everything.

“As thou hast sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.” The common nature of the active church, the mission and authority of the Theanthropos.

“And not for these only do I pray, but for all those who, through their words, shall believe in me.” The continuation of that authority.

“Sanctify them in truth.” The common nature of the passive church, the term of the supernatural moment.

“That they may be one, as thou Father in me and I in thee, that they may be one in us.” The completion of the inchoative society, brought about by the supernatural element of union, and by the incorporation 842 with the Theanthropos.

To complete the theory of the church, we have now to point out the characteristic marks which distinguish it from any counterfeit institution of men. These marks are four: unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity.

_Unity._ What is the church, viewed in its essence, attributes, and interior organism? It is the Theanthropos annexing his infinite energy and his substantial presence to a sacramental element, both physical and personal, and through them first elevating human persons to a supernatural being, with its essence and faculties of supernatural intelligence and supernatural will in an incipient and inchoative state; secondly, through his sacramental, personal element proposing and expounding his _gnosis_ to their supernatural intelligence; by a second sacramental moment elevating this supernatural essence and faculties to a determinate and definite growth: by the sacramental moment of his presence incorporating all elevated persons unto himself, and thus putting them in immediate contact with himself, and through him with the Trinity on one side and with all the cosmos in nature and personality on the other side, and thus affording their supernatural faculties proper objects on which they may feed, expand, be developed, and arrive at their ultimate perfection. Finally, by the personal sacramental element governing and directing all their exterior relations and communication to one social final end; and all this not in any particular spot or period of time, but in all space and in all time. From this it is evident that the church of Christ is _one_ in force of the unity of the Theanthropos with the sacramental element; _one_ in consequence of the interior unity of organism, both of the active and passive church; _one_ in consequence of the unity of the supernatural being and faculties, the end of the church; _one_ in force of the unity of the object of the supernatural intelligence; _one_ in consequence of the unity of the object of the supernatural will--God and his cosmos, in their relations to each other; _one_ in consequence of the real communion and intercourse between the members of the church; _one_, finally, in consequence of the oneness of the visible government of the church, all emanating from one invisible and one visible head.

The second distinctive mark of the church must be holiness. For the end of the church is to impart to human persons in time and space the term of the supernatural moment, together with its faculties, and especially the faculty and habit of supernatural intelligence and supernatural will or charity, in which, as we have demonstrated in the tenth article, the very essence of holiness consists. If the church, therefore, were deprived of this distinctive mark, she would fail in that very object for which she was instituted.

But it is to be remarked that not any degree of holiness would be sufficient to constitute a distinctive mark of the church, but a certain fulness of it is required in some of its members, for a twofold reason.

Like every moment of God’s exterior action, she is subject to the law of variety by hierarchy. This involves the necessity of the church ranging between the lowest degree of sanctity to the very pinnacle of sublimest and loftiest exhibition of it; otherwise, those two laws could not be realized.

Secondly, an ordinary degree of holiness can easily be counterfeited. But none could for any length of time or any extension of space assume a sanctity which soars far above the ordinary and common level, and 843 which exhibits itself as such. _Nemo personam diu fert_ could be applied in this case more than in any other.

The next distinctive mark is _catholicity_ or _universality_. She is such not only because she contains all truth; not only because she embraces all the moments of God’s action, as the finishing stroke of them all; but because she is intended for all time and all space.

Finally, the last mark is _apostolicity_. The first members of the hierarchy chosen by the Theanthropos to communicate as moral instruments the term of the sublimative moment, with the power and authority to transmit to others that very same dignity of being moral instruments, were the _apostles_. Therefore, that church alone can be the church of the Theanthropos which to this day and for ever can show that her own hierarchy are the legitimate successors of the apostles, by an uninterrupted communication. For we have said that the essence of the church is to be the Theanthropos acting in time and space, through the agency of the hierarchy and other sacraments. Now, suppose a hierarchy who cannot claim or make good their claim to be the legitimate successors of the first ones who composed it, who could not claim any communication or union with them, how could we suppose them to be those very instruments in whom and through whom the Theanthropos lives and acts?

Before we draw the consequence which follows from all we have said concerning the church, it is necessary to recapitulate in a few words all we have written in these articles.

We set out with the question of the infinite, and after refuting the pantheistic idea of the infinite, and showing that pantheism in its solution of the problem destroys it, we gave the Catholic idea of the infinite. Here another problem sprang up--multiplicity in the infinite. No being can be conceived endowed with pure, unalloyed unity. It must be multiple, under pain of being inconceivable. What is the multiplicity which can be admitted in the infinite? We demonstrated that the pantheistic solution which says that infinite becomes multiple by a necessary interior development, destroys both terms, the unity and the multiplicity. We proceeded to lay down the Catholic answer to the problem, and explained, as far as lay in our power, the mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity. The question next in order was the finite. And we showed the finite to be the effect of an absolutely free act of infinite power, free both to its creation at all and also with regard to the amount of perfection to be created; though we admitted and proved that it was befitting on the part of the Creator to effect the best possible manifestation of himself. Here we found ourselves in face of a duality which claimed reconciliation. How could the finite and the infinite be united together, so as to preserve whole and entire the two respective natures, and at the same time to effect the best possible manifestation of the infinite? We answered by laying down the Catholic dogma of the hypostatic union, which raised the finite to a hypostatic or personal union with the infinite, and elevated finite natures to the highest possible dignity. But as the hypostatic moment raised to a personal union only nature, and left out personality, another duality arose: how to unite human persons with the Theanthropos, and through him with God, and make them partakers as far as possible of the dignity and elevation of the nature 844 hypostatically united to the _Word_. The sublimative moment answered the question. This moment, medium between the Theanthropos and substantial creation, by bestowing upon human persons a higher nature and faculties, enabled them to unite in close contact with the Theanthropos and through him with the Trinity. But what was the medium chosen to transmit the term of the sublimative moment to human persons in time and space? The Theanthropos himself, the essential mediator between God and the cosmos; and to that effect he united his infinite energy and his substantial presence to personal and physical instruments, and through them imparted to human persons in time and space the term of the sublimative moment; and thus the cycle of the procession of the cosmos from the infinite was perfected in its being and faculties, to begin a movement of return to the same infinite as its supreme end. The sacramental extension of the Theanthropos in time and space we have demonstrated to be the Catholic Church, and from its essence we have drawn her essential attributes of visibility, indefectibility, infallibility, and authority, and also its intrinsic marks of unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity.

After this necessarily imperfect sketch of all our articles, we submit to the reader this necessary consequence--_the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church of God_.

First, because it is in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church alone that the life of the intelligence is possible. We have shown throughout our articles that in every question which the human mind raises, there is no possible alternative--either embrace the Catholic solution, so coherent with reason; or the pantheistic solution, and the death of the intelligence. Now, when we speak of the Catholic solution, we mean of the solution which is given by the church whose head is the Bishop of Rome, for no other pretended Catholic Church gives all the true solutions.

Second, because it is the Roman Catholic Church alone which knows her own essence and attributes. All others are more or less ignorant of the essence and attributes necessary to the church of the Theanthropos.

Thirdly, it is to the Roman Catholic Church alone to which the essence, attributes, and marks which we have shown _à priori_ to belong necessarily to the Church of Christ apply. Consequently, the Roman Catholic Church is the real cosmos of God in its perfection of being and faculties, and men have no possible alternative but to join it, to submit to its authority, under pain of the death of the intelligence, of being a creature out of joint with the whole system of God’s works, of being in the impossibility of attaining their last end in palingenesia. The Roman Catholic Church or pantheism--all truth or no truth--death or life here and hereafter.

[161] We have said _authority_ and not sacerdotal character, because as to that there is no difference between the Supreme Pontiff and the episcopate, but only between the episcopate and the priesthood.

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THE LAST DAYS OF OISIN, THE BARD. 845

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

III.

OISIN’S YOUTH.

“Patrick! thy priests do ill to jeer, Not me, but Oscar’s self, and Fionn: Wise are they; but the dead are dear: This deed is not well done.

“Who dares to say the King lies bound By angel hosts in bonds abhorred? Had these lain bound, great Fionn had found And freed them with his sword!

“Had Fionn but heard thine Eve lament The apple stol’n--the curse on men-- For _eric_ apples he had sent, Shiploads threescore and ten!

“Likewise that serpent slain had he! Fionn ever said this way was best, To kill the bad that killed should be, And be loving to the rest.

“Patrick, a pact with thee I make: Because my warriors they deride, With thee to heaven my father take, And leave they priests outside!

“Patrick, this other boon I crave, That I to thee in heaven may sing Full loud the glories of the brave, And Fionn, my sire and king!”--

“Oisin, in heaven the praises swell 846 To God alone from Soul and Saint:--” “Then, Patrick, I their deeds will tell In a little whisper faint!

“Who says that Fionn his sentence waits In some dark realm, the thrall of sin? Fionn would have burst that kingdom’s gates, Or ruled himself therein!”

“Old man, for once thy chiefs forget” (Thus oft the Saint his rage beguiled): “Sing us thine own bright youth, while yet A stripling, or a child.”

“O Patrick, glad that time and dear! It wrought no greatness, gained no gain, Not less those things that thou wouldst hear Thou shalt not seek in vain.

“My mother was a princess, turned By magic to a milk-white doe:-- Such tale, a wondering child, I learned: True was it? Who can know?’

“I know but this, that, yet a boy, I raced beside her like the wind: We heard the hunter’s horn with joy And left the pack behind.

“A strength was mine that knew no bound, A witless strength that nothing planned: When came the destined hour, I found Some great deed in my hand.

“Forth from a cave I stept at Beigh: O’er ivied cliffs the loose clouds rushed:-- With them I raced, and reached ere they The loud seas sandhill-hushed.

“By Brandon’s cliff an eagle brown O’erhung our wave-borne coracle: I hurled at him my lance, and down Like falling stars he fell.

“On that green shore of Ardrakese 847 An untamed horse I made my slave, And forced him far o’er heaving seas, And reinless rode the wave.

“Methinks my brow I might have laid Against a bull’s, and there and then Backward have pushed him up the glade, And down the rocky glen!

“So ran my youth through dark and bright, In deeds half jest. Their time is gone: The glorious works of thoughtful might For Oscar were, and Fionn.

“When met the hosts in mirth I fought: My war-fields still with revel rang: My sword with such a god was fraught That, while it smote, it sang.

“My spear, unbidden, to my hand Leaped, hawk-wise, for the battle’s sake: Forth launched, it flashed along the land With music in its wake.

“A shield I bore so charged and stored With rage and yearnings for the fight, When foes drew near it shook, and roared Like breakers in the night:

“Then only when the iron feast Of war its hungry heart had stilled, It murmured, like a whispering priest Or frothing pail new-filled.”

“Say, knew’st thou never fear or awe?” Thus Patrick, and the Bard replied: “Yea, once: for once a man I saw Who--not in battle--died.

“I sang the things I loved--the fight-- The chance inspired that all decides-- That pause of death, when Fate and Flight Drag back the battle tides:

“The swords that blent their lightnings blue-- 848 The midnight march--the city’s sack-- The advancing ridge of spears that threw The levelled sunrise back.

“And yet my harp could still the storm, Redeem the babe from magic blight, Restore to human heart and form The unhappy spell-bound knight.

“And some could hear a sobbing hind Among my chords; and some would swear They heard that kiss of branch and wind That lulled the wild-deer’s lair!

“I sang not lies: where base men thronged, I sat not, neither harped for gold: My song no generous foeman wronged, No woman’s secret told.

“I sang among the sea-side flocks When sunset flushed the bowery spray, Or when the white moon scaled the rocks And glared upon the bay.

“My stately music I rehearsed On shadowing cliffs, when, far below, In rolled the moon-necked wave, and burst, And changed black shores to snow.

“But now I tread a darker brink: Far down, unfriendlier waters moan: And now of vanished times I think; Now of that bourn unknown.

“I strike my harp; I make good cheer; Yet scarce myself can catch its sound: I see but shadows bending near When feasters press around.

“Say, Patrick of the mystic lore, Shall I, when this old head lies low, My Oscar see, and Fionn, once more, And run beside that Doe?”

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LETTER OF MONSEIGNEUR DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS, TO M. GAMBETTA. 849

FROM L’UNIVERS.

Sir: After having read the speech which you have recently delivered at St. Quentin, I waited a few days to see if some one would come forward and do justice to the words you uttered. But since they have been allowed to pass without protest from any one, I will, albeit I have not much taste for it, say what I have to say about them.

Your speech treats both of politics and religion, and you deal with these two great matters as if you were bound very shortly to become their lord and master. I shall not say much about your politics, although their threatening character adds to the already grave anxiety with which our poor country is burdened; but, as a bishop, I have a right to call you to account for the war which you declare against the church and against religion.

For war, indeed, it may be called, and accompanied with such accusations and such outrageous insults, that, if your words were true, we should deserve to be driven not only out of the school-house, as you demand, but out of the church itself.

I must admit to have been at first misled by the apparent moderation of your words. Taking interest, as I do, in conversions when they are sincere, I asked myself, while reading your discourse, in which you appeared to me so calm, so insinuating, and so circumspect, though at the same time so devoid of modesty--I asked myself if the time had come when the National Assembly was about to present the spectacle of a reconciliation of parties in the presence of the image of an ideal republic. What abundance of honey flowed from your lips! Even at times, how much toleration in your maxims!

In this statement, this programme, this message, the manifesto, or by whatever name it should be called, which you addressed to your assembled guests at St. Quentin, you proceed in this wise:

You call for “a strong and stable government, that will vigilantly protect the interests of _all_, and be able to _regenerate the morals_ of the French family.” On this point, sir, we certainly all agree. This government, you go on to say, will pacify souls, bring the social classes closer to one another, and will restore to France her rank in Europe. This is also very fine. But let us see further.

To bring about this end, you appeal even to the disabused voters of the _plébiscite_; even to the legitimists, who, by their wealth and education, are to be the _ornament of the state_; even to the conservative men, who are to be as a bridle of restraint on a policy which your friends are to urge forward.

And what is to be this policy? The _policy of labor_, very different from the policy of conquest, the triumph of the _idea of justice_ in the fulfilment of social duties. I cannot forbear remarking here that these expressions, _policy of labor_, _idea of justice_, are in daily 850 use by the _Internationale_, and not in a sense particularly intended to tranquillize society. But let us go on.

But this form of government, this policy, how is its establishment to be brought about? Why, by universal suffrage, that foremost of rights, that sole and sovereign tribunal, that army of peace. And how is universal suffrage to be persuaded and drawn to the desired end? By giving to public opinion, through _democratic intermingling_, proofs of the _morality_, the _political value_, and the _adaptation_ for _business_ of the republican party; by demonstrating that the _republican government is the most liberal of all forms of government_, etc.

Really, sir, all this must have appeared admirable to your audience, and, if your republic is of that sort, many of our most upright conservatives will tell you: Let us clasp hands, for that is the very republic which the National Assembly, acting with and through M. Thiers, is endeavoring to realize at the cost of so much self-denial, disinterestedness, and honesty.

But let us be frank.

You have no right to claim that your republic answers this description. Your sweetness is purely oratorical and Platonic; for two sentences of your address reveal you and show who you are.

“No one,” you say, “must ever give his opinion except as a means of adding to the general good; and each one must convert his mind into, as it were, a memorandum tablet for himself, in which he puts down, with a view of obtaining them, the institutions which the people have a right to expect from the democratic republic.”

If a priest had uttered these words, which seem more befitting the lips of an Italian than of a Frenchman, he would be charged with hypocrisy and mental reservation. It would be said that he is playing saint; that he is concealing his game by not revealing his innermost thoughts. But everything is forbidden to the cleric, while to the radical any and everything is allowed. This everybody knows. I confine myself to merely quoting this first sentence, without further dwelling on its merits; and I pass on to a second one, which gives me a right, not only to suspect you, as in the case of the former one, but to make a direct attack on you; its tenor is as follows:

“What I have done in the past is the true pledge of what I will do in the future, toward definitively establishing the republic.”

It is here, sir, that I must challenge you.

In the first place, I have to express my amazement that, having to account to your country, under so grave a responsibility, and for misdeeds for which you might have been rendered far more seriously liable, you can be so ready to accuse others and to glorify yourself, that you go so far as to dare to say: “What I have done in the past is the true pledge of what I will do in the future.”

What have you done in the past?

You were a young lawyer, and were turned all of a sudden, and in consequence of a tumultuous lawsuit, into a political character. The audacity of your revolutionary opinions enabled you to become a candidate for the Corps Législatif, and in the next place to take your seat as a deputy by the side of your friends Blanqui, Raspail, and Rochefort.

On the 4th September, you seized upon the governing power, and, without consulting with your colleagues, you assigned to yourself the Ministry of the Interior. Did you, as soon as you got into the 851 ministry, extend to all good citizens those arms which you seem now to be opening so widely? Not at all. In the Hôtel de Ville,[162] you installed such men as Etienne Arago, Ferry, and Rochefort; in the _mairie_, such characters as Delescluze, Mottu, Bonvalet, Clémenceau; in the _préfectures_, such as Duportal, Engelhard, and Jacobins of all sorts. You filled these places with your friends--your friends only, and these of the most excitable kind. Afterward, when your colleagues, in order to get rid of you, were so signally weak as to give you the entire realm to operate upon, when, through a fortunate contingency, you had suddenly entrusted to you that magnificent part which, to a heroic and truly patriotic heart, would have been unsurpassable, what did you do? You sought rather to force the republic--your republic--on the country than to save France. It is well for you to talk about universal suffrage. You have treated it as naught. By a first decree, you broke up the _conseils-généraux_, and did not re-establish them. By a second decree, you adjourned the elections. By a third decree, you abridged the legal qualifications for election. What have you, sole ruler everywhere obeyed, done with the treasure, the men, and the blood of her children which the nation lavished upon you? Was it not a republican who called your fatal rule the _dictatorship of incompetency_?

Though only three months in power, you had become almost a greater burden upon us than the late Imperial Government; and when you assert that the National Assembly has completed its work, which was to put an end to the war, you forget that the Assembly had received from France not one mandate only, but three. The Assembly had, and has still, given it the charge to rid our country of the Prussians, of demagoguism, and of yourself.

After the dreadful catastrophes in which the Empire sank to ruin, do you know, sir, what proved to be France’s greatest misfortune?

It was that just then, in that so terrible a crisis, you stood the absolute master of France. I make no reference to the two aged men who were at Tours with you. It was from you, a lawyer, that our generals received their orders; it was you who dictated plans for campaigns; it was you who scattered our forces, and blindly hurled our armies right and left, multiplying your lying bulletins, and at the same time and to the same extent as our reverses.--But I must turn away my thoughts from those disasters, as also from the remembrance of those poor soldiers, without clothes, without shoes, without food, without ammunition! How great an organizer, my dear sir, you proved yourself to be! How fortunate you turned out to have been in the selection of your contractors for supplies!

Nevertheless, the nation, ever generous, might have measurably accepted, as an offset to this, your personal activity, and your efforts, although unsuccessful; it had given you credit for having withdrawn yourself momentarily; but you reappeared too quickly, only a short time before the day when the Commune of Paris was putting forward your friends, your lieutenants, your teachers, or your disciples, such as Delescluze and Millière, Rigault and Ranc, Cavalier and Mottu, all those fellows who have made themselves as ignominious 852 and ridiculous as possible, some of whom are still around you; in fine, all that party which you have never, even to the extent of a single word, disavowed, and the members of which you called upon to give evidence of their morality, their political worth, and their aptitude for the business of government! That evidence has been given, and really, sir, you rely too much on the frivolity, the folly, or the credulity of the public. You preach to it about a debonair republic, but that public has not forgotten the grotesque, ruinous republic, accompanied with bloodshed, which during six months was fastened on France.

You have avoided with prudent care to call your republic _social_ as well as _democratic_; and why? In order to enjoy the happiness of a fleeting hour of dictatorship, I suppose it is worth your while to run the risk of more calamities. Alas! unfortunate land, fated to be thus perpetually the dupe and the victim of most guilty ambition!

No, in spite of all that you may say or leave unsaid, your promises are contradicted by our memories. We need, in order to be persuaded, something else than sonorous words. It is true that, in one point only, you depart from the vague style of your programme. You declare that you seek, above all things, to lay the foundation of the future of democracy on a reform, to wit, in education; and with this idea, you proclaim that you and your friends are alone capable, alone worthy, to bring up youth. You seek to turn out _just_, _free_, strong-minded and able men. This is very fine. But how? By means of a national education given after a _truly modern_ and _truly democratic_ manner.

And here you dare to affirm that the church and preceding governments have done nothing for public instruction, that they view every person who knows how to read as an enemy, and you claim to reform the world with your schools.

Allow me to reply that in this matter you are taking advantage of ignorance instead of combating it. For it argues a singular reliance on the ignorance of an audience to attempt to make it swallow at one and the same time, and in the same sentence, calumny and nonsense.

The governments that have ruled France for the past sixty years have in that period established more than 50,000 schools, and have trebled the appropriations for primary instruction.

As to the church, she is founded on two things: a book, the Gospel, and a divine command, to wit: _Ite et docete_, Go and teach. This sentence, which has become commonplace, “_Ignorance is the source of all evils_,” was uttered by a pope, and he added besides, “_particularly among the working-classes_.” These were the words of Benedict XIV., uttered more than a century before you were born.

The calumny is consequently shown to be dull-witted, and the nonsense still more so. It would seem that you also, M. Gambetta, hope, by means of schools, to stamp your effigy on future generations, just as if they were coin. But men versed in the subject know, and experience shows, that such a design is absurd, and may become a horrid tyranny. The instruction, whether primary or secondary, even with as much as you can add to it of the higher sciences, such as algebra, chemistry, etc., will not produce morals; and the parties who flatter the teachers expect, after all, much more from their influence on voters than from their action on their scholars.

Would you like to know what above all things, exerts an influence on 853 the family and on society? It is education, whether it be moral or immoral, religious or atheistic. And do you know why I mistrust your reform? Because it will be neither a moral nor a religious one.

In sober truth, what sort of tuition is a _really modern_, a _really democratic_, one? Is there such a thing as modern geometry? a democratic grammar? moral teachings of recent growth, and a geography not yet published? All these big words are but windy oratory, empty and obscure, which affords no meaning to the mind when it attempts to analyze it.

Nevertheless, after having thrown off these sentences to your hearers, you go on and recite the mottoes of the party, the watchword of the day. It is a pity that you left out tithes and forced service under feudal law. You say tuition is to be _free of cost_--that is equivalent to adding thirty millions to our budget of expenditure; but what does that signify? You have managed to spend a large sum besides. The poor will pay for the rich; but the lower classes will delude themselves with the belief that they are not paying at all, and that they are indebted to you for the benefaction. Tuition is besides to be _compulsory_. Well, let it be so, if you can devise some adequate sanction for the contemplated enactments, a reliable protection for the liberty of families, and, in particular, a reliable guarantee for the teachers, so that you can feel sure enough of them to venture, without practising the most abominable of all tyranny, to compel parents to entrust to them, what they prize most in this world, their children. But then, minor details do not stop you. To conclude, the tuition is to be by _laymen_--and now the cat is let out of the bag.

It is an easy matter to attack and calumniate absent priests, religious who make no defence. To do so is neither fair nor generous, but much popularity is to be got in that way in your party, and the hard flings at the church will offset the sweetness displayed toward other persons. So let us strike hard on this spot. The church is henceforward to be separated from the state--that is not enough, the church is besides to be separated from the school, and the school from all religion.

You have said, sir, that your republic would be a liberal one. If you accordingly begin by excluding from the common right to teach an entire class of citizens and of women, solely because their religious belief is not the same as yours, do not call yourself liberal, and do not charge the church with being intolerant, or else be logically consistent, and separate the _state from the school_. For the state, in this connection, means the budget; that is to say, the moneys which are got of all of us by taxation. You cannot, without being tyrannical, compel families to send their children to the school of the state. Lay aside these high-sounding phrases, and call things by their right names. By the church you mean _us_. By the state you mean yourself. To deprive us and our doctrines of our money, in order to bestow it on yourself and your doctrines--that is what is called separating the church from the state. But I feel pretty easy as to the choice families will make when I learn from you what the programme of this teaching is to be.

The programme is this: “It is an extensive and varied one, so that, instead of mutilated learning, man will have dealt out to him _entire truth_, so that _nothing which the human mind can grasp_ will 854 be concealed from him.” _De omni re scibili!_ Well, that is wonderful indeed! No doubt you will have the power to create minds capable of taking in this encyclopædia! You are equal to so many undertakings! So that which you have in view, gratuitous, compulsory, lay tuition, integral besides for every one and complete to an impossible degree--this is the formula of socialism, and is also the formula of absurdity.

“In the schools,” you add, “children will be taught scientific _truth_ in its rigor and _its majestic simplicity_,” and by this process “you will have reared citizens _whose principles will rest on the same bases on which our entire society is founded_.”

What do you mean by these big words? What are these _principles_? what are these _bases_? Whether it be that _those principles rest on these bases_, or that these bases are fast to those principles, how much of this will you teach to children from the ages of seven to eleven years? I call upon you to give me plainly the text of the _programme of science_ which our worthy village teachers, who are to seek to instil into children of from seven to eleven years the sense of duty and sacrifice, will have to substitute for the Ten Commandments of God, and for the sublime and popular Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What is it, pray, sir, that renders you so ungrateful towards the voters of Paris or of Lyons, who nearly all have been educated by the Brothers, so severe on the priests, who perhaps have done something for your early education, and so unjust towards the church?

It is my duty to insist on this point, and to protest against your calumnies.

What! though the clergy of France have devoted themselves, as they have done, to the service of our soldiers and our prisoners, and though when, only four months ago, our chaplains and our Brothers of the Christian Schools had served and died on the battle-fields, and though all our female religious have devoted themselves to the care of our ambulances, you have the heart to come and tell us that we are no longer French! And it is immediately after the massacre of the hostages that you repeat these calumnies, and represent us as constituting for modern society “the greatest peril.” Such are your very words, and you hold us up anew to the blind fury of our enemies.

And you direct your calumnies not against us alone, but, besides, against the Pope. Ah! I admit, the horrors, treachery, meanness, and falsehood by which he has been surrounded during the past twenty-five years have not brought him to look with favor on the charms of that sham liberty which you promise him, and he may well fail to admire that Garibaldi for whose sake you, perhaps, sacrificed our army of the East. But in the Encyclical which your hearers have never read, the Pope has not condemned the various forms of government as they exist in the laws of various nations. He has condemned liberty unrestrained, rights without countervailing duties, and societies that know not God. As to the family and property, sir, is it becoming _your_ friends to style themselves their virtuous defenders?

But what is singular in this pell-mell gathering of confused and incoherent ideas, is your alleged motive for denying to French priests the right to teach which belongs to them in common with all their fellow-countrymen: “When you have appealed to the energies of men reared by such teachers, when you seek to arouse in them ideas of 855 sacrifice, of devotedness, of patriotism, you will find that you have to deal with an emasculated, debilitated class of men.” And the reason you assign for the emasculation and debilitation of this class reared under our care is still more singular: it is because _we teach them to believe in Providence_, and because teachers that believe in Providence _are only fit to emasculate and debilitate the human race_. At this point, sir, you set “the doctrine which accustoms the mind to the idea of a Providence” in opposition to “revolution, which teaches the authority and responsibility of the will of man and free agency.” But, sir, these things are not incompatible with one another. Both are taught by Christian doctrine, and, by setting them in opposition as you do, you show that you neither understand yourself nor the matters of which you are treating.

But you, who do not believe in Providence, and who are consequently neither emasculated nor debilitated, do you know of any other belief that can better teach mankind to bear with life and brave death? You have this year ordered many men to rush to destruction. Would you have dared to recommend our soldiers to go forth to meet death, mocking God? And do you believe that the souls of the Pontifical Zouaves, and of the Breton _francs-tireurs_, were enervated by their faith in Providence?

But be cautious. In order that your reasoning be consistent, a belief in Providence appertains not to priests alone, but to whoever professes the Christian faith; consequently, if priests are to be banished from the schools because they teach that emasculating dogma, then all Christians must be kept out as well, and henceforward you must exact from every teacher and every professor not to believe in Providence.

Avow, sir, that seldom have calumnies and absurdities been mixed up together with greater facility than you have done in these words of yours.

Nevertheless, you manage to go on still further, and you attempt to create a division between the _higher clergy_, whom you traduce, and those whom you call the lower clergy, whom you flatter, by endeavoring to excite them to envy. You labor in vain, sir; and, besides, I do not recognize any lower clergy as such. The rank of the priesthood is the highest to which we can attain; no bishop, not even the Pope himself, has a sacerdotal character different from that of the most humble priest. All ecclesiastical dignities are, in one sense, beneath the title of priest, which leads to the highest offices and dignities of the church. So that, in this regard, it may be said that no institution is so democratic as the church. Sprung from the people as we nearly all of us are, educated together and fed together on the words of him who died for the people, we will suffer ourselves to be neither divided nor deceived.

Our fraternity is of the right sort. Our God is the true God, and you are without any. Be sincere, sir: come out of this mere talk, and answer me plainly and without oratorical precaution, whether, yes or no, _the free thought_ in which you are a believer, and _human science, which, according to you, has nothing to equal it_, recognize the existence of a personal and living God? Candor leaves you no alternative but to reply. Either dare to declare to your friends that you do believe, or dare to proclaim to our land that you do not believe, in God.

If indeed your sham science denies God, I pity you, sir; but you must 856 admit that it hardly becomes you to talk about religion, and to endeavor to beguile and divide priests who have consecrated their lives to him. You assert that, if they dared to disclose their convictions, they would own themselves democrats. Do you know what our village priests would tell you if they were to make disclosures to you? They would inform you that in every hamlet is to be found a handful of petty rhetoricians, tavern orators, fellows who lead municipal councils, who drive away the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Charity, and do their best to deprive the curate of the small pittance without which he cannot subsist, who forbid teachers to take children to Mass, refuse to have churches repaired that need it most, recommend mutual-guarantee-association marriages and burials, and know no better way of serving a republic than by hating priests and by persevering in a low and silly infidelity. Now, in every village these very rhetoricians are your friends.

It is with their assistance that you contemplate establishing that education, “national and truly modern,” in which, in order to teach children “their duties as citizens, to excite in them ideas of sacrifice, of devotion to country, to make out of them an unemasculated race,” you will have not only to avoid speaking to them of God and of _Providence_, but besides to combat and root out of their minds the idea of _Providence_, and, in fine, to force upon French youth a _teaching without religion_, and a moral instruction without God.

Well, would you have me tell you what such education will turn out for you? Instead of rearing men, it will give us monsters, and a learned barbarism, armed with abundant means of destruction, barbarism in the heart and in manner--in a word, just what we have witnessed during the reign of the Commune; young men and girls from eighteen to twenty-three years old ruling Paris and destroying it by incendiarism; and, lo, it is after having witnessed such scenes of horror and the lessons which they teach, that you have nevertheless ventured to deliver the address to which I am replying, and your audience went so far as to applaud your words!

In my view, this latter fact is an indication of the disorder in which at this very moment we still are. No, the end of France’s afflictions is not yet!

But I have said enough, sir. I have sought, as the only reply to your harangue, to put facts in opposition to words. I have sought, while replying to you, to defend the church; and I think I have at the same time defended public peace. In theory, as against this or that government, neither my faith, my reason, nor my patriotism would raise great objections, were it not that I have seen your party at work, and that my sight is still filled with those sombre scenes, and my memory with the recollection of your deeds. In vain do you try to cover them over with clever words and honeyed insinuations. My knowledge of the preacher spoils the effect of the sermon on me. And my recollection of the whilom dictator puts me on my guard against the impressiveness of the candidate who is aspiring not to establish liberty, as he pretends, but to destroy religion and to get into power. You are not an apostle, you are a pretender. _The republic is I!_--that is your programme and the sole object of your discourse. Well! depend upon it, France has a republican government now, the need of a change to another, even though accompanied with the advantage of having you for its 857 president, is not at all felt.

Please accept, sir, with the expression of my regret to be compelled to thus combat you, that of the sentiments of respect which, as your colleague, I have the honor to offer you.