PART II.

LE PARTI.

“_Au revoir, à demain soir!_” said Berthe, kissing a fair-haired young girl, and conducting her to the door.

“What a sweet face! Whose is it?” inquired Madame de Beaucœur.

“Hélène de Karodel’s. Her character is sweeter still than her face. I have fallen quite in love with her,” said Berthe. And she related the story of their meeting at the _réunion de Monceau_, and the acquaintance that had followed.

“It is a fine old Breton name, and used to be a very wealthy one. How comes she to be earning her bread, poor child?”

“The old story,” said Berthe. “General de Karodel mismanaged his property, took to speculation by way of mending matters, and of course lost everything. He died, leaving a widow and three children to do the best they could with his pension, about a thousand francs a year. Hélène is the eldest, and what she earns pays for the education of the second sister.”

“But the rest of the family are well off. Why don’t they do something for them?” demanded Madame de Beaucœur.

“Rich relations are not given much to helping poor ones,” replied Berthe; “besides, these Karodels are as proud as Lucifer, and benefits are pills that a proud spirit finds it difficult to swallow; it takes a good deal of love to gild them.”

“Very true!” And dismissing Hélène de Karodel with a sigh, “_Chère amie_” said Madame de Beaucœur, “I am come to ask you to do me a service.”

Her presence indeed at so early an hour (it was not much past one) on Berthe’s “day” suggested something more important than an ordinary visit. A “day” is a thing that deserves to be noticed amongst the institutions of modern Paris life. Everybody has a day. Women in society have one from necessity, for the convenience of their visitors whose name is Legion. Women not in society have one because they like to be included amongst those with whom it is a necessity. The former speak of their day as “_mon jour_” and as a rule hate it, because it ties them down to stay one day in the week at home. The latter speak of it as “_mon jour de réception_,” and glory in it. For the former it is a mere episode, an occasion amongst many for toilette and gossip, mostly of the Grandhomme and Folibel kind, but often of a more serious character, sometimes even of conversation on such grave topics as politics, science, and theology. For the latter, it is a grand opportunity for dress, and dulness, and weary expectation. Madame, attired in state, sits on her sofa like patience on a monument, smiling, not on grief, but on hope--hope of visitors, who come like angels, few and far between. Woe be unto the false or foolish friend who, under any pretence of business, or kind inquiries, or lack of time, should pass by this day of days, and call on some insignificant day, when neither madame, nor the _salon_, nor the _valet-de-chambre_ is in toilette to receive him!

But it is not into one of these dreary Saharas that we have strayed. Berthe’s day is as busy as a fair. So great is the concourse of visitors that, although the reception begins officially at three, the rooms begin to fill soon after two, those who really want to speak to her alleging, as an excuse for forcing the _consigne_, that, when _la cour et la ville_ are there, it is a sheer impossibility to get a word with her.

“A service!” repeated Berthe. “I hope it is not too good to be true.”

“_Toujours charmante!_” Madame de Beaucœur took her hand and pressed it. “But the favor I am going to ask does not directly concern myself. You know Madame de Chassedot?”

“Slightly; I meet her here and there; we bow, but we don’t speak.”

“She has deputed me to speak for her to-day. Do you know her son at all?”

“A fair youth, tall and good-looking?”

“Precisely.”

“I think I danced with him at the Marine, the other night,” said Berthe reflectively.

“Then you know him at his best; he dances divinely; but I believe that is the only thing he excels in,” observed Madame de Beaucœur.

“He is very stupid?” said Berthe interrogatively.

“Not very. Simply stupid. But he is, as you know, good-looking, and, what is more to the purpose, of good family and very well off. He is heir to his uncle, and so will one day have two of the finest châteaux in France, each representing two millions of money. The paternal millions have grown thin since the old gentleman’s death, but the uncle’s will replenish them soon; he cannot last long, he is in bad health and seventy-six years of age. So the marquis is safe to be at the head of a very handsome fortune by the time he has settled down.”

“Meanwhile?” said Berthe, pretending not to see the drift of these preliminaries.

“Meanwhile, his mother is very anxious to marry him. She spoke confidentially to me about it, and begged me to look out for a wife for her. I promised I would do my best. Like all mothers-in-law, she wants perfection. Sixteen quarterings _en règle_, that is understood; equal fortune of course; but, although Edgar’s present and future fortune is nominally four millions, as he has compromised one million, she would count it as not existing, and only exact three millions with his wife. This is carrying on matters on a grand scale?” And Madame de Beaucœur waited for Berthe’s approval.

“How did he compromise the odd million?” inquired Berthe evasively.

“_Mais, mon Dieu!_ One must not examine too closely!” replied Madame de Beaucœur, smiling at the _naïveté_ of the question.

“And besides these?” said Berthe.

“The girl must be pretty, and well brought up. I must tell you, my dear,” continued the lady, with a sort of diffidence as if conscious that she was about to state some ludicrous or damaging fact, “that the mother-in-law is very pious, and she holds very much to having a daughter-in-law who is so also. Otherwise she is the best woman in the world, very intelligent, and will do all in her power to make her son’s wife happy.”

“And the son himself? You have not said much about him. How far does he pledge himself to the same end?”

“Ah! there is the difficulty!” said Madame de Beaucœur. “Unfortunately he won’t hear of being married at all. The moment his mother speaks of it, he either turns it off in a joke, or, if she insists, he gets into a tantrum, flies out of the house, and she doesn’t see him for a week. You can fancy how this complicates the matter for her, poor woman!”

“It certainly is a complication,” observed Berthe.

“And it makes it all the more incumbent on us to try and help her,” resumed the envoy. “So I have come to enlist your offices in her behalf. I promised her she might count on you, _chère amie_. Did I promise too much?”

“If you promised her that I would marry her son for her, _nolens volens_, you decidedly did,” answered Berthe, laughing ironically.

“Oh! I did not go that length,” protested Madame de Beaucœur, nettled, but laughing heartily to hide her pique. “I only said that you were more likely than any other woman in Paris to know the girl who united all these conditions, and that, if you knew her, you would give Madame de Chassedot an opportunity of meeting her.”

“And how about Madame Chassedot meeting her?” demanded Berthe perversely. “After all, the contracting powers must look each other in the face at least once before they are brought to swear eternal love and duty before Monsieur le Maire, and if this inconvenient young man flies out the room at the bare mention of such a catastrophe--dear madame, I have the highest opinion of your diplomatic powers, but, believe me, this enterprise is beyond their compass.”

“Leave that to his mother,” said Madame de Beaucœur. “She is equal to it. If you find the missing element, and give her a chance of managing it, the issue is certain.”

Berthe was going to reply when the door opened, and the Princess de M---- was announced. When the usual greeting had subsided, the three ladies entered on the foremost questions of the day, viz., the _salon_, the cholera, and the new comedy called _La Beauté du Diable_ that was setting all Paris by the ears.

The trio were not long alone. The rooms were filling rapidly, but the new-comers, instead of checking the conversation, enlivened it, every fresh arrival falling in with the current and propelling it.

“The Empress does not believe it to be contagious, and holds it of primary importance that the popular belief to the contrary should be practically repudiated,” said an old senator, who joined the circle while the cholera was on the _tapis_, “This was the chief motive of her visit to Amiens. I have just been to the Tuileries, and heard the account of it.”

“Racontez, monsieur, racontez!” exclaimed Berthe, recognizing his white hairs by making room for him on the sofa beside her.

“You honor me too highly, madame!” said the old courtier, bending to his knees before he assumed the place of distinction. “I should have at least run the gantlet with the plague to deserve to be so favored. You are aware,” he continued in a more serious tone, “that it was raging furiously at Amiens. The townspeople became so panic-stricken that the victims were deserted the moment they were seized. Every house was closed. No one walked abroad for fear of rubbing against some infected thing or person. Except the sisters of charity going in and out of the condemned houses and hospitals, there was hardly a soul to be seen in the streets. In fact, it threatened to be a second edition of the plague in Milan. The Empress, hearing all this, suddenly announced her intention of visiting the city. The Emperor strongly opposed the project, and her ladies seconded him, being very loth to run the risk of accompanying her majesty. The Empress, however, held her own against them all, like a Spaniard and a woman, said she would have no one run any risk on her account, and declared herself determined to go alone. Two of her ladies, to save their credit, thereupon volunteered to go with her. They started by the first train next day, and returned the same evening, not at all the worse for the journey.”

“I dare say,” remarked a young _crévé_, a furious Legitimist, who always spoke of the Emperor as _ce gaillard là_, and who would have as soon dined with his _concierge_ as at the Tuileries. “They made a tour in a close carriage round the town, and took precious care to keep clear of the dangerous quarters.”

“I have the word of her majesty to the contrary, monsieur. She visited the wards, inquired minutely into their organization, and spoke to several of the sufferers. The equerry who accompanied her told me that she held the hand of one poor fellow who was dying, and stooped down, putting her ear close to his lips to hear something he had to say about his little children: there were three of them, their mother had died that morning, and now they were going to be quite destitute. The Empress sent for them, embraced them in the presence of the father, and promised to take care of them. He expired soon after blessing her, as you may imagine.”

“She has a noble heart!” murmured Berthe, while a tear stood in her eye.

“Comédie, haute comédie!” sneered the _crévé de faubourg_.

“A stroke of policy, rather,” observed a Deputy du Centre, stroking his beard.

“A comedian’s policy!” said a Deputy de la Gauche; “but it is time and trouble lost, the people are no longer duped by that sort of charlatanism.”

“Say, rather, the people are tired of peace and prosperity, and want a change at any cost,” said the Princess de M----. “You are the most unmanageable people under the sun. The wonder is, how any one can be found willing to govern you.”

“That is quite true,” assented Berthe, whose politics, of no absolute color, leaned towards Imperialism, partly because it was the established order of things, and partly because the court was pleasant and its hospitalities magnificent. “We are an unruly nation; but whatever one thinks of the Empire, it is ungrateful and unjust not to give the Empress credit at least for good intentions in this visit to Amiens. It was an act of heroic charity and courage, and that there was as much wisdom as charity in it is proved by the fact that the pestilence has decreased sensibly from the very day of her visit.”

“O madame, madame!” protested the _crévé_ and the two deputies in chorus.

“The bulletins of the last week are there to prove it,” affirmed Berthe.

“Where were they fabricated?” demanded the Deputy de la Gauche. “Perhaps Monsieur de Taitout could tell us?” Monsieur de Taitout was Chef de Cabinet at the Ministry of the Interior.

“They were issued at Amiens by the medical men of the hospitals and by the Commission of Public Health, I presume,” replied the ministerial functionary with repellent _hauteur_.

“They had at least a roll of red ribbon apiece in return for their satisfactory bulletins!” pursued the Deputy de la Gauche, with supercilious irony.

“You are evidently well informed, monsieur,” replied the Chef de l’Intérieur, provoked by the persiflage; and darting a glance of peculiar meaning at the deputy, “We may infer that you are in the confidence of the Minister of Police?”

The deputy bit his lip and reddened, while a suppressed titter ran through the company. This suspicion of complicity with the police, which the established system of compression and its inevitable consequence, espionage, engendered too readily, was apt to fall sometimes on the most unlikely subjects; in the present instance, however, it was all the more mortifying because public rumor had paved the way for credulity by ascribing the violent antagonism of the Deputy de la Gauche to the fact of his having been disappointed in obtaining a prefecture under the existing government. But Berthe, though she disliked and mistrusted him, was annoyed that he should be made uncomfortable in her _salon_. She disapproved of the turn the conversation was taking, and by way of diverting it, without breaking off too precipitately from the subject under discussion, she said, addressing an academician who had just joined the circle:

“Is it not quite possible, admitting panic to be the first condition of contagion, that the presence of the Empress in the midst of the sick and the dying may have had such an effect on the _morale_ of the people as could sufficiently explain the immediate decrease in the number of deaths? Instruct us, Monsieur le Philosophe!”

“Madame, I come here to learn rather than to teach,” replied the man of science with the gallantry of his threescore years and ten; “but, since you do me the honor to ask my opinion, I confess that it has the good grace to agree with your own. The people were imbued with the belief that to breathe the infected atmosphere was to die. The Empress, of her own free impulse, came boldly into the midst of it, stood among the dying and the dead, breathed long draughts of contagion, and did not die. Therefore contagion is a fallacy, and panic, instead of killing, is forthwith killed.”

“Your therefore, monsieur, is admirable,” said the Princess de M----, tapping her parasol on the arm of her chair. “Now, let us have a truce of the plague, and talk of something else.”

“Yes,” said Berthe, “or else talking may raise a panic, and we shall all catch it. Have you been lately to the theatre, monsieur?”

“I went last night to see _La Beauté du Diable_,” replied the philosopher.

“Ah! And what did you think of it?”

“I think, madame--_que la France est bien malade_,” said the old man gravely.

“One need not be _un des quarante_ to find that out,” remarked the Deputy de la Gauche with a sneer.

“Is it so very bad?” inquired Berthe, turning a deaf ear to the uncivil commentary.

“It is so bad,” replied the academician, “that, if I had not seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I could not have believed that the French drama and the French public could have fallen so low. I asked myself whether I was in Paris or in Sodom. From first to last the piece is a tissue of license and blasphemy, for which I could find no parallel, even approximately, in the most ribald productions of ancient or modern literature.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Berthe, “you quite horrify me. Why, we had just arranged a _partie fine_ to go and see it!”

“Take an old man’s advice, madame--don’t go,” said the academician impressively.

“It all depends,” said the Princess de M----, twirling her parasol, and lolling back in the luxurious _fauteuil_, “if one is prepared to risk it. I am for my part!”

The philosopher bowed to the lady, but offered no comment.

“Why does the Censure permit such bad comedies to be played?” asked Madame de Beaucœur. “I thought the reason for its existence was the protection of the public morals?”

“Political morals rather, madame,” corrected the Deputy de la Gauche, with an air of mock solemnity, “and it is most conscientious in the discharge of that duty. An irreverent insinuation against the government suffices to bring down anathemas on a comedy or a drama from which no amount of talent can redeem it. My friend Henri ---- has just had a _chef-d’œuvre_, the result of a whole year’s labor, rejected on the plea that some odd passages, which cannot be removed without changing the whole plan, might be construed by sensitive Imperialists into a hit at the dynasty.”

“The judges would serve the dynasty better by exercising a little wholesome restraint over what may prove more fatal to it in the long run than even servile flattery,” observed the philosopher. “What think you, M. le Sénateur?”

“Que voulez-vous?” The senator shrugged his shoulders. “One must reckon with human nature; you cannot lock it in on every side. If you don’t leave a safety-valve to let off the superfluous steam, the ship will blow up.”

“Take care the valve does not turn out to be a leak, or the ship may sink!” replied the academician. “Our press and our literature are eating into the very marrow of the nation’s heart, and rotting it. The people are taught to scoff at everything--to make a jest of everything, human and divine. Nothing is sacred to the venal scribes who pander to the base passions of humanity, and prey upon its vices and its follies. When public morality has come to such a pass that one of the first writers of the day publicly vindicates the devil’s claim to our respect and pity as ‘an unsuccessful revolutionist,’ and when one of the last writes and prints such a sentence as, ‘I grant you the good God, but leave me the devil!’ and that the cynical blasphemy calls out no stronger comment than a laugh or a shrug--when, I say, we have come to this pitch of progress and civilization, it is time the ship’s hold were looked to.”

“I grant you they are dangerous symptoms,” assented the senator, shaking his head, and preparing a pinch from his enamelled snuff-box.

“A much more ominous symptom, to my mind, is that the nation is dreadfully _ennuyée_,” observed the Deputy du Centre, with a weighty emphasis on the adverb. “When France _ennuies_ herself, it is time to cry, Take care.”

“Who is to take care?” said the Princess de M----.

“The government, madame. We have had this one eighteen years now; three years beyond the lease usually granted to governments in France, and the people are thoroughly tired of it. Paris especially is _ennuyée_ of late.”

“Paris is always _ennuyée_ unless she has a war, or an exhibition, or some kind of a carnival, to keep her in good humor,” said Berthe; “but Paris is not France.”

“Pardon, madame, Paris c’est le monde!” replied M. du Centre, in melodramatic accent.

“Le monde, non,” retorted Madame de M----; “le demi-monde peut-être.”

There was a general laugh at this sortie of the princess, and before it subsided a group of new arrivals, amongst whom were the Snow-Storm and her mother, were ushered in, and broke up the controversy. Several of the company, some who had not spoken a word to Berthe, but had merely made _acte de présence_ in the crowd, withdrew. Madame de Beaucœur and the Princess de M---- remained on.

“_Quelle charmante jeune fille!_” said the former _sotto voce_ to the princess, as Madame de Galliac and her daughter sat down near them. “Who is she?”

“Mademoiselle de Galliac. She is the _partie_ of the season. _On dit_ gives her four millions.”

“Indeed!” And Madame de Beaucœur, on marriageable maids intent, pricked up her ears. “How odd I should not have met her before!”

“She has only lately arrived from Brittany. Our hostess patronizes her very zealously. I suppose she is looking out for a husband for her.”

Madame de Beaucœur made no reply, but committed the remark to her mental note-book. Why had Berthe not suggested this girl to her for Madame de Chassedot? It was the very thing she was looking for. Old name, four millions--one too many, but the inequality was on the right side--beauty, and of course good principles. Madame de Galliac was known to be an excellent woman. How could Berthe have been so disobliging or so thoughtless? Big with a mighty purpose, and unable to resist the need of communicating her ideas, Madame de Beaucœur turned to the Princess de M----, and in the strictest confidence opened her heart to her.

But Madame de M---- was a foreigner, and did not fall in sympathetically with French views on the subject of marriage, and was, moreover, given to call things bluntly by their names.

“A girl with her beauty and money will find plenty of willing purchasers,” she argued, “and I see no conceivable reason for expecting that she will let herself be forced on an unwilling one. There are husbands to be had at every price; she can bid for the best, and the best are already bidding for her.”

“Ah!” said Madame de Beaucœur, alarm mingling with curiosity in the interjection.

“Why, you don’t suppose a prize like that is likely to be twenty-four hours in the Paris market without having scores of the highest bidders fighting for it?”

“How mercenary men are! They are greatly changed since my young day!” Madame de Beaucœur was somewhere between five-and-thirty and forty; but she had been married from school at eighteen, and had heard nothing of sundry interviews between _notaires_ and mothers-in-law, etc., that had preceded the presentation of her _fiancé_ ten days before her marriage.

“Very likely, but in this particular case it strikes me the woman is the mercenary party. You say the young man won’t let himself be married, big dower or little one?” said Madame de M----, laughing, and speaking rather louder than was desirable in the presence of the marketable _dower_.

“Introduce me to Madame de Galliac,” said her companion, striking a _coup d’état_ on the spot.

The request was complied with, and the two ladies were soon absorbed in each other.

“What shall we do to amuse ourselves this week, _chère madame_? For Wednesday we have _La Beauté du Diable_ with a _diner fin au cabaret_, and a _petit souper_ at Tortoni’s; but what shall we do to kill the other three days?” demanded the princess, who had risen to go, and now pounced upon Berthe, who stood taking leave of some guests at the door.

“I haven’t an idea just at present; we will talk it over to-morrow night at Madame de Beaucœur’s. But you must not count on me for Wednesday,” said Berthe, “I have changed my mind about going.”

“What! You are going to play us false!” exclaimed the princess, her ugly but expressive features lighting up with irresistible humor, while her eyes shot out a cold, sardonic glance into Berthe’s. “That old _perruque_ has put you out of conceit with it? But, no! It’s too absurd, _ma chère_!”

“Absurd or not, I don’t intend to go,” said Berthe resolutely. “I’m not so brave as you are. I do not want to risk myself.”

“But all Paris will laugh at you. They will say you have turned _dévote_. For mercy’s sake, my child, do not make such a fool of yourself!”

“Paris may say what it likes,” answered Berthe, bridling up, while a blush of defiant pride suffused her cheek. “I despise its gossip, and, in short, I don’t mean to go.”

“Seriously?”

“Quite seriously.”

The princess lifted her shoulders slowly, and as slowly let them fall.

“Then there is no use in my proposing a little distraction that we were planning, in the shape of an escapade to the _Bal de l’Opéra_ on Saturday night? In dominos and masks, of course?”

“Thank you, I do not want to run the risk,” said Berthe, smiling.

“Adieu!” And Madame de M---- heaved a long sigh. “You will make a charming saint, but I fear I sha’n’t worship the saint as much as I loved----”

“The sinner,” added Berthe, laughing good-humoredly. “Oh! well, I’ve not donned the sackcloth and ashes, so you mustn’t denounce me yet. But don’t suppose,” she continued, seeing Madame de M----’s eyes fixed on her with a puzzled expression, “that I mean to reproach you for amusing yourself. Our positions are widely different. You have your husband to stand between you and evil tongues, and, again, you are not amongst your own people here. Honestly, would you go on at Berlin as you do in Paris?”

“Oh!” The princess threw up her parasol, caught it again, and, laughing out, said, “But Paris is a _cabaret_, where one does as one likes!” And with this exhaustive apology, she opened the door, and passed out.

Berthe went into the second _salon_, where some of the earlier visitors had gathered to leave room for new arrivals in the first, but she was hardly seated when the door was again opened, and François announced:

“Le Marquis de Chassedot!”

If he had announced Le Marquis de Carrabas, his mistress could not have been more astonished. Was it a trap that Madame de Beaucœur had laid for him? But, no, Mademoiselle de Galliac’s presence was quite fortuitous, and, moreover, Madame de Beaucœur did not know her, so she could not have had any scheme into which the heiress’ visit adjusted itself to-day.

“You were kind enough to permit me to pay my respects to you, madame,” said the young man, walking up to Berthe, with his hat in both hands, and blushing violently while he doubled himself in two before her. “I hope I am not indiscreet in availing myself so precipitately of the permission?”

Berthe smiled her gracious clemency on the indiscretion, and the gentleman, backing a few steps, carried his hat toward a group of politicians who were shaking hands in the window, and making appointments before separating.

“How extraordinary!” muttered Berthe, laughing to herself at the cool audacity of Monsieur de Chassedot. “I was kind enough to permit him! Perhaps he is under delusion, and mistakes somebody else’s permission for mine. Or perhaps it is a ruse of his mother’s to put him unawares in the way of the three millions?”

But Berthe was wrong. M. de Chassedot really had said something to her between the links of the “ladies’ chain” about placing himself at her feet, and, as she looked very smiling and gracious, he took the smiles for a permission. He had no view in asking it beyond that of being received in the _salon_ of the fashionable beauty, and he was encouraged in presenting himself there by the knowledge that he was sure not to meet his mother. It would be a free territory where he might flit about without being in perpetual dread of falling into some net which the maternal solicitude was constantly setting for him in the _salons_ of her devoted allies.

Madame de Beaucœur did not count amongst those redoubtable beligerents. When she called during the day at his mother’s house, he was never there, and, as the _habitués_ of the marquise’s Tuesday evenings were recruited chiefly amongst the old fogies and devotees of the faubourg, a class of her fellow-creatures whom Madame de Beaucœur carefully avoided, there was no chance of his meeting her there in the evening. It was this precisely that made her mediation so precious to Madame de Chassedot. Edgar was disarmed before her; he did not mistrust her, and when, reconnoitring the company in the adjoining room through the broad glass-panel that divided the _salon_, he spied her sitting near a very pretty girl, the discovery gave him no shock, and, when Madame de Beaucœur, catching his eye, nodded familiarly to him, he at once made his way toward her, and took up a position behind her chair.

“I should like to go very much,” Madame de Beaucœur said, continuing the conversation with Madame de Galliac, “but I have not been this year since the garden opened. One cannot go without a gentleman, and M. de Beaucœur is always so busy in the evening that he can never accompany me.”

“There are hundreds who would cross swords for the honor of replacing him, madame,” declared M. de Chassedot, stooping over her chair, and throwing all the _empressement_ into his voice and manner that her position as a married woman rendered legitimate.

“Then you shall have the honor without crossing swords for it,” replied the lady. “Come and fetch me to-morrow evening at eight o’clock; unless you are equal to undergoing a _diner de ménage_ with myself and M. de Beaucœur, and in that case come at half-past six.”

“Madame! Such kindness overwhelms me!”

Madame de Beaucœur said _au revoir_ to the heiress and her mother, kissed hand to Berthe in the inner _salon_, and, granting M. de Chassedot’s request to be allowed to see her to her carriage, they left the room together.

“Who is that young lady who was sitting beside you, madame?” he asked with some curiosity, when they were out of ear-shot on the staircase.

“Mademoiselle de Galliac. Did you never see her before?”

“Yes; but I did not know her name.”

“I ought to have presented you. How stupid of me! She is a nice girl to talk to.”

“_A l’honneur, madame!_ to-morrow evening!”

And the carriage rolled off, leaving M. de Chassedot bowing on the sidewalk.

Punctual to the minute, he presented himself in Madame de Beaucœur’s drawing-room as the clock was chiming the half-hour. Monsieur de Beaucœur had, of course, an appointment at the club, which to his infinite regret prevented his accompanying his wife to the Concert Musard, so he remained sipping his _café noir_, and they set out alone.

The gardens, though only beginning to fill, presented a brilliant, animated appearance. The central pavilion, its roof and pillars girded with light, glowed like the starry temple of an Arabian tale, while from within the orchestra sent forth its melodic stream, now tender and plaintive as the zephyr wooing the rose at midnight, now loud and valiant in the rhythmic dance; balls of light came glistening through the foliage, making the trees stand out in radiant illumination.

But, artistically mindful of the worth of contrast in scenic effect, the light distributed itself so as to leave certain parts of the garden in comparative shade. There, those who shrank from the dazzling glare of the centre could walk and enjoy the scene and the music without inconvenience.

“Why, there is Madame de Galliac, I declare! Let us go and meet her!” said Madame de Beaucœur in delighted surprise, and they walked on quickly. “What an unexpected pleasure, madame! I thought you were going to the opera to-night?”

“So we intended; but there was some mistake about the box; we only found it out at the last moment, and Henriette was so disappointed that, to comfort her, I proposed coming here for an hour,” exclaimed Madame de Galliac.

“Poor child! But I assure you the music here is no despicable compensation. Let us go round by the left; the breeze is blowing from that point,” said Madame Beaucœur, and, without taking the slightest notice of Monsieur de Chassedot, she turned to walked on with Madame de Galliac.

“Madame!” whispered the young man, touching her lightly on the arm, and by a sign intimating that she had left him standing out in the cold.

“Oh! how stupid I am! Allow me to introduce you: le Marquis de Chassedot--la Baronne de Galliac.”

“My daughter, monsieur,” said the latter, pointing to Henriette.

Everybody having bowed to everybody, the party moved on, the young people walking in front of the married women.

Monsieur de Chassedot, serenely unconscious of the cruel snare into which he had fallen, and finding Henriette a lively, unaffected girl, talked away pleasantly, confining himself of course to authorized insipidities, such as the music, the decoration of the gardens, the weather, etc., and making himself, as he could do when he liked, very agreeable.

“Is not that Madame de P----’s voice?” said Henriette, stopping abruptly, and bending her ear in the direction of the sound.

“I think it is. Let us walk on and see,” answered her mother, and they quickened their steps.

Now, though Madame de Beaucœur liked Berthe, and as a rule was delighted to meet her anywhere, on this particular occasion she was the last person in Paris she cared to meet. She could not avoid her, however, without awakening suspicions in the mind of Edgar de Chassedot which might prove fatal to her own benevolent designs on him. When Berthe saw the party, her surprise was great, and, though she said nothing, her face expressed it so naïvely that Henriette, being intelligent, noticed it, and bethought herself that there must be some stronger reason for it than the ostensible one of her mother’s meeting and walking round the garden with Madame de Beaucœur.

Berthe had four gentlemen in attendance on her: a tall, _distingué_-looking Austrian, who spoke to no one, but shot vinegar out of his eyes at a handsome young Breton on whose arm Berthe leant; a dark Englishman, who made up in vivacity what he lacked in height; and another Englishman, whose notablest idiosyncrasy was an eye-glass that seemed to be a fixture, so faithfully did it stick in the right eye of the wearer, morning, noon, and night. Over and above this guard of honor the beautiful widow was accompanied by Hélène de Karodel. She introduced the two girls, who walked on together, while the gentlemen and the three married women followed.

Hélène and Mademoiselle de Galliac had not proceeded far when Monsieur de Chassedot broke away from the elders, and joined them.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, addressing Hélène, “I have just made a discovery so agreeable that, before I venture to believe it, I must have your corroboration.”

“Indeed!” said Hélène, puzzled at the singular apostrophe. “_Couvrez-vous, monsieur_.” Edgar remained bare-headed awaiting her answer--“and let us know what this wonderful discovery is.”

“You are the daughter, I am told, of that brave soldier and true gentleman, Christian de Karodel?”

“You have been told the truth,” replied Hélène, her eye moistening with grateful emotion at hearing her father so designated.

“He was my mother’s first cousin, consequently I claim close friendship with you,” resumed the young man.

“And your name is--?”

“Edgar de Chassedot.”

“Ah! we are indeed cousins; but as your family seemed quite to have forgotten the fact, we had almost forgotten it ourselves,” replied Hélène coldly.

“It is not too late for us to remember it, I hope?” said Edgar, imperceptibly emphasizing the us, and throwing a persuasive deference into his tone that subdued Hélène.

“It is strange that you should care; but, since it is so, let us be cousins!” And she held out her hand to him.

Six weeks after this promenade in the Jardin Musard there was a _diner de contrat_ at Madame de Galliac’s. The _fiancé_ wore the full-dress uniform of a _chasseur d’Afrique_. His bronzed features attested long residence under Algerian skies, and the stars and medals on his breast bore witness that his days had not been wasted there in idle dalliance.

The plot against Monsieur de Chassedot’s liberty had collapsed, to the inexpressible vexation of his mother, who, together with the family lawyer and Madame de Galliac, had arranged all the essentials for his marriage with Henriette’s four millions; but, strange as it may seem, the consent of the young people themselves, when demanded as a final condition, was actually found wanting. It had come to the young lady’s ear that Monsieur de Chassedot was no party to the business, and that, if he let himself be persuaded into marrying her, it would be quite against his will. Mademoiselle de Galliac there and then declared that she would be forced upon no man, were he _Roi de France et de Navarre_. And so this most eligible union, for want of a bride and a bridegroom, fell through.

Madame de Beaucœur then called to mind a nephew of her husband’s who was serving in Africa. He was two millions short of the requisite figure, but he had ‘_de grandes espérances_’ and was moreover willing to be married, having positively written to his family stating this fact, and requesting them to look out for a wife for him. Photographs were exchanged, character and principles inquired into, and vouched for satisfactorily--Henriette made this a _sine quâ non_--and within one month from the day that his aunt opened negotiations with Madame de Galliac, Alexandre de Beaucœur arrived in Paris the affianced husband of Henriette de Galliac. They were presented to each other at a morning reception, and met next day at the _diner de contrat_. He took her in to dinner, Madame de Galliac whispering to him with an arch smile, as Henriette accepted his arm, “Now pay your addresses!”

The position was an embarrassing one. Monsieur de Beaucœur wished to avail himself of the opportunity to win his bride’s affections, but he was ill at ease, and, the more he strove to find something agreeable to say, the less he succeeded. When dessert was served, however, he took courage, and, bending over Henriette’s wineglass, he murmured timidly in a low tone:

“Mademoiselle, what color will you have your carriage?”

“Blue, monsieur,” the young lady replied in the same low tone.

He bowed, and they relapsed into silence.

This was all that passed between them till they swore before God and man to love each other until death did part them.

It may interest my readers, and it will no doubt surprise them, to hear that this prosaic marriage turned out a singularly happy one. The young man was a gentleman with a conscience and a heart. The girl was sensible, high-principled, and affectionate. They were both sound at heart, and they did their duty by each other. After all, the most romantic union can hardly embark with surer or fairer elements of happiness.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE LEGENDS OF OISIN, BARD OF ERIN.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

V.

OISIN’S VISION.

As dim through snowy flakes the dawn Peered o’er the moorlands frore, The old, snow-headed Bard, Oisin,[57] Sat by the convent door.

His chin he propp’d on that clenched hand Of old in battles feared: And like a silver flood, far-kenned, To earth down streamed his beard.

That sun his eyes could see no more Their thin lids loved to feel: It rose; and on his cheek a tear Began to uncongeal.

Then slowly thus he spake: “Three times This thought has come to me, Patrick, that I am older thrice Than I am famed to be:

“For on the ruins of that house, Once stately to behold, Where feasted Fionn the King, there sighs A wood of alders old.

“And on my Oscar’s grave three elms Have risen; and mouldered three: And on my Father’s grave, the oak Is now a hollow tree.

“Patrick, of me they noised a tale, That down beneath a lake A hundred years I lived, unchanged, For a Faery Lady’s sake:

“They said that, home when I returned, The men I loved were dead; And that the whiteness fell that hour Like snow-storm on my head.

“A song of mine--a dream in youth, That tale, misdeemed for true: Far other dream was mine in age: A dream that no man knew.

“For though I sang of things loved well, I hid the things loved best: Patrick, to thee that later dream At last shall be confessed.

“On Gahbra’s field my Oscar fell: Last died my Father, Fionn: The wind went o’er their grassy mounds: I heard it, and lived on.

“I loved no more the lark by Lee Nor yet the battle-cry; And therefore in a dell, one day, I laid me down to die.

“The cold went on into my heart: Methought that I was dead: Yet I was ’ware that angels waved Their wings above my head.

“They said, ‘This man, for Erin’s sake, Shall tarry here an age, Till Christ to Erin comes--shall sleep In this still hermitage:

“‘That so, ere yet that great old time Is wholly gone and past, Her manlier with her saintlier day May blend in bridal fast.

“‘And since of deadly deeds he sang Above him we will sing The Death that saved: and we from him Will keep the gadfly’s wing.

“‘For him an age, for us an hour, Here, like a cradled child, Shall sleep the man whose hand was red, Whose heart was undefiled.’

“Patrick! That vision, was it truth? Or fancy’s mocking gleam? That I should tarry till He came-- ’Twas not, ’twas not a dream!

“And wondrous is mine age, I know; For whiter than the thorn Was this once-honored head before The men now white were born:

“And on my Oscar’s grave three elms Have risen: and mouldered three: And on my father’s grave, the oak Is now a hollow tree.”

Then said the monks, “His brain is hurt”: But Patrick said, “They lie! Thou God that lov’st thy gray-haired child, Would I for him might die!”

And Patrick cried, “Oisin! the thirst Of God is in thy breast! He who has dealt thy heart the wound Ere long will give it rest!”

FOOTNOTE:

[57] Pronounced _Oiseen_.

A JEWISH CONVERT: A REMINISCENCE OF VIENNA.

Among the pleasant capitals of Europe through which a long tour carried the writer of this sketch, one of the most brilliant is Vienna. It has many associations of genius to consecrate it; Mozart and Beethoven, not to mention many lesser princes of music, found there both home and appreciation; it has been the resort of elegance, the _rendezvous_ of talent, the paradise of diplomacy, even while graver ecclesiastical and historical events have centred in it. It has its old cathedral, which, though disfigured by some unfortunate internal bungling of the style of the Renaissance, nevertheless has not lost its impression of religious solemnity, heightened by the deep, narrow, and sombre choir with the wonderful windows of old stained glass. Inimitable and unapproachable even in its fragmentary state, this old glass is perhaps the most interesting thing in the old church of St. Stephen, if we except the stone pulpit, cunningly carved and placed in a recess of the exterior wall of the building, the pulpit from which, so runs Viennese tradition, the second Crusade was publicly preached. There is among the records of the foundations at St. Stephen’s one that sets forth the desire and prayer of the people, during a pestilence in the middle ages, that a Mass should be daily offered in that church for the cessation of the epidemic. Tradition says that a great wind arose, and the pestilence was stopped. The Mass, however, continues to be said daily, and it certainly is a remarkable fact that there is not one day in the year, summer or winter, wet or dry, when the wind does not blow in Vienna. The Austrian capital, however, has yet more interesting associations for us than are called up by the cathedral, and the many other monuments and chapels by which it is historically distinguished. In the Advent season of 1865, a young Jewish convert preached in the _Schotten-Kirche_ a short course of the most eloquent sermons it has ever been our privilege to hear in any language or any land whatever.

His name is Marie-Bernard Bauer, and his family, of Hungarian descent, is among the most influential and wealthy of those settled in Vienna. The Jews of that city have indisputably as large a share of the talent as of the riches of the country. The oldest brother of young Bauer is one of the greatest bankers in Austria. At an early age, the young Jew, fiery and enthusiastic, and already gifted with singular eloquence, threw himself into the ranks of the Revolution, and became one of its most ardent emissaries. At eighteen, he was entrusted with important missions and considered a rising Freemason. But during his travels he became acquainted with a young Frenchman, a zealous Catholic, whose influence and friendship laid the foundations of his conversion. He visited his friend’s mother, also, who by her example more even than her exhortations contributed to the work of grace begun in his soul by her son’s solicitations. Bauer wore, at the request of these two, a medal of the Immaculate Conception; and we need scarcely remind our Catholic friends of the part this blessed badge fulfilled in the conversion of another illustrious Jew, the Père Marie Ratisbonne, the founder of the _Dames de Sion_, who has since devoted his life to the instruction and conversion of Jewish girls at Jerusalem. After being fully instructed in the faith, Bauer required nothing but grace to believe. Being at Lyons with several worldly acquaintances, he happened to be standing on a prominent balcony, on the feast of Corpus Christi. The procession of the Blessed Sacrament was to pass below, and they, with cigars in their mouths and mockery in their hearts, were waiting for the pageant. No change came to the young Jew until the canopy under which the priest carried the Divine Host was close beneath the balcony. The change at that moment was lightning-like. Faith entered his heart, or rather--as he himself reluctantly admitted when pressed by his superiors at a later time to lay aside false humility and declare the works of God in his soul--a conviction so absolute that it distanced faith made itself felt throughout his whole being. The same _knowledge_, so to speak, returned to him many times since while consecrating at Mass, and he said that he could not _believe_ merely, in a matter of which he was so blissfully and unerrably _certain_. As Jesus passed, Bauer threw himself on his knees and professed himself a Christian. A very short time elapsed before he entered the novitiate of the Carmelite Friars. His mother, who was living in Paris, endeavored to see him, but was refused access to him by his superiors. Later on, when he had passed through the novitiate, he might have seen her, had it not been for the machinations of his family. For five years every friend and relation he had among his own race cruelly ignored him, and he was kept away even from his mother’s death-bed by their relentless sternness. His mother alone never ceased to love him, and had a picture painted of him in his monastic cowl. This portrait hung opposite her bed, and she died with her eyes fixed on it and her hands lovingly stretched out towards it. When after her death he was allowed by his family to visit her chamber, he saw a curtained picture at the foot of the bed, and, drawing the curtain aside, stood face to face with this touching proof of a mother’s undying love. After some time, his fame as a preacher spreading fast, his family received him once more into their circle, and, with strange inconsistency, now made almost an idol of him. During his novitiate, and according to a rule of his order, he used to preach in turn with his fellow-novices in the refectory during meals, at which time the generality of the young men in training for a religious Demosthenes would receive but scant attention from their companions. When Bauer’s turn came, the contrary, however, was observed: the food was untouched, and the young audience sat transfixed, hanging upon the words of their eloquent and gifted companion. From the first his health was delicate; the effort of preaching rendered it weaker day by day, till at length the zealous and impassioned speaker, whom his friends prophesied to be the future Lacordaire, was one day carried fainting from the pulpit, having broken a blood-vessel. A year in Spain and complete rest of mind and body did nothing more than just save his life, and the Holy Father, who was very much interested in the young convert, advised him to leave the Carmelite Order, for the austerity of whose rule his shattered health now rendered him unfit. This paternal advice--or, let us say, command--proved a great trial to the enthusiastic religious; but, bowing to the will of God, he accepted his altered life, and prepared to make it as fruitful in good works as his short monastic career had proved. Although his health precluded him from the exhausting work of preaching long Lenten stations or continued missions, yet, as often as suitable opportunities offered, he was to be found indefatigably working in the pulpit; and we leave it to those who have had the good fortune to hear him, to judge of the loss the Catholic world has sustained in one whose eloquence and fervid enthusiasm rivalled that of Lacordaire, and whose steadfast faith and unerring logic far distanced that of the unhappy Hyacinthe.

In 1865, having already preached before the Emperor of the French in Paris, and been greatly commended by the most distinguished people there, both French and foreigners, he was called to Vienna, where his family resides, and where all his former associates and co-religionists awaited him with the greatest curiosity and interest. The six lectures or discourses he gave in the _Schotten-Kirche_, opposite his brother’s residence, at which he was an honored and _fêted_ guest, were attended by crowds of his own Jewish friends, besides all the _élite_ of Viennese and foreign society. The impassioned tone of his voice, his closely knit arguments, the air of apostleship about his slight figure and pale, inspired face, the presence of his nearest and dearest relations, and, above all, his own position toward them, in the very centre of his youthful Revolutionary triumphs--all concurred in making this short station of Advent one of thrilling interest. At the end of each sermon, or _conférence_, as the French say (they were delivered in French, which is like a second mother-tongue to Marie-Bernard Bauer), he addressed a prayer to God, and, while the language of each succeeding discourse increased in sublimity, that of the concluding prayers seemed to take such flights of unparalleled grandeur that the audience could only kneel in motionless attention and unbroken silence for some minutes after the preacher had ceased to speak--the highest tribute, perhaps which an impressed people can offer to an orator. Marie-Bernard Bauer has since received the Roman title of Monsignore, and been appointed chaplain to the Emperor of the French. He accompanied the Empress Eugénie to the opening of the Suez Canal, and preached a magnificent sermon on the occasion, in presence of the assembled potentates. But whatever else he has done, whatever else he may be destined to do in the future, he will scarcely be able to surpass his admirable achievements of the Advent station of 1865, when he became, as it were, the champion and apologist of Christianity before one of those representative Jewish assemblies which contained within itself so much enlightenment, so much talent, and so much successful individuality.

At the time when he preached these sermons, of which we will now endeavor to give some idea, as far as a translation will allow, he was only thirty-six years of age, and his frail, delicate body made him seem even younger. The following is the third in order of the _Conférences_, and was preached on the 17th of December, 1865. The text is given entire, and the subject, as expressed in the published edition of these sermons, was:

CHRISTIANITY AS A HISTORICAL FACT.

I would fain hope, my brethren, that the two last _conférences_ have contributed, in some degree, to revivify in believing hearts both the energy of faith and the enthusiasm of virtue; that they have cast doubts in doubting hearts, upon the very uncertainty which creates doubt; that they have shed around hearts petrified, so to speak, in the darkness of fleshly bondage, some rays of the twilight which is the forerunner of the full light of God’s grace, and which manifests itself in such hearts through this question, solemnly and shrinkingly put: After all, might I not be in error? Might there not be, despite all, another life, a real responsibility, a moral law, supernatural duties, a judgment, a judge, a God, and this God the God of Christianity?

No matter to what level the Sun of Truth may have attained on the horizon of your inner life, you will allow me, nevertheless, to retrace, in a few short words, the doctrinal substance of the two previous discourses [_conférences_].

Man, such as we see him, is a fallen being; he is born with the taint of original sin, and if to this, which is the form of evil, he adds--and it is practically inevitable that he should--his own individual sins, which are evil’s natural outgrowth, he does but widen, at each moment of his existence, the abyss that parted him from God since the very hour of his birth, and which, thus ceaselessly widened, becomes such, at last, that nothing short of a miracle will suffice to bridge it over. Death then, suddenly intervening, cuts short all things here below, and hurls the man whose whole life has been spent without God into the chasm of the unknown. From a phase of being where all is transient, he is hurried to another where all is abiding, and from that instant the separation from God in which he has lived, and which before was transient in its turn, becomes abiding, and from temporal changes to eternal. Such are the conclusions of reason, which, leaning upon faith, point out to us in this eternal separation the fitting seal of an eternal woe.

It would not enter into my design toward the hearers which Providence, having gathered together before me, seems to have specially predestined to hear the words of eternal life from my unworthy lips--it would not, I say, enter into my design to show them these dark spiritual perspectives, without pointing out at the same time some vista of supernatural light, some promise and way of salvation, some hopes of life, nay, even life itself. No! God forbid that I should become as the treacherous guide who draws the lost wayfarer to the very edge of the precipice, and there leaves him to himself and to the terrors of the ravenous depths below. Yet, mark it well!--the mystery of life leads towards death, through paths that skirt a giddy abyss where no man’s self-possession is proof against danger; but there is, nevertheless, an infallible road that leads to life through and in spite of the manacles of death. It is called by a name with which my lips cannot become familiar, as with a common word indifferently bandied about in careless conversation--a name which I confess myself unable even to pronounce without feeling my whole being tremble with love and bow down in worship; a name which, when spoken from this pulpit for the first time, only a few days ago, produced an impression, or rather a mysterious shock, that neither you nor I have yet forgotten--the name of _Jesus Christ_.

It is of him I come to speak to you to-day. My Father! my Friend! my Master! abide with me, and, in order that I may be worthy to speak of thee, speak thou thyself through these my lips!

Among all questions put by man to his own intellect, whether they be historical, scientific, philosophical, social, or religious, there is none of more gigantic importance than this: Who and what is Jesus Christ? He and his works have been for two thousand years the most notable reality of the universe; they have been inextricably mingled with the course of history, with the family and state relations of man to man, with literature, with poetry, with politics; they have been the unseen link that binds together all social problems; they have been the mainspring of those mysteries that are convulsing the present century, and which are fraught to some minds with terror and threatenings, while to others they suggest hope and salvation. They have been, without the slightest exaggeration, all things to all men, and it follows, therefore, that according to the bent of man’s judgment on Jesus Christ and his works, so will man’s whole nature lean, his intellect with his thoughts, his heart with its feelings, his life with its acts and its shortcomings, his soul with its eternal aspirations.

This is indeed, and beyond all contradiction, the main question of life--that question which, solve it which way you will, cannot fail to produce two radically different types of men, and to open up before us two paths, as far apart from each other through the coming eternity as they are widely separated in the realms of time.

But why do I insist upon the awful importance of this problem? Do you not understand it yourselves? Nay, do you not even bear witness to it by your presence here at this moment? Why are you gathered here--men of the most varied, perhaps the most contradictory, beliefs? Why are you crowded around this pulpit in anxious silence, breathless and motionless, perhaps vaguely troubled in mind? Why but because there is not one amongst you to whom the sacred name of Jesus is wholly indifferent or wholly meaningless! If to some this holy name is the constant object of their highest adoration and of their tenderest, I would fain say the most impassioned, love, to others it is the object of their most agonizing doubts, the spiritual sphinx whose riddle baffles and tortures all ages. And further yet, while this name is to some the synonym of a smothered curse or of a hatred as open as it is relentless, it contains for all men a question of vital importance, I might even say a question of life and death. My brethren, it is of _him_, who is both so marvellously loved and so marvellously hated, of him whose figure meets us at every turn of the past or the present, of him whom the future cannot uncrown, that I purpose speaking to you to-day.

Every cause which has produced an effect may be considered either in this effect or in itself. Hence, there exist two methods of demonstration: the one beginning from the consideration of the effect, and tracing it up to the cause; the other starting from the study of the cause, and deducing its legitimate effect. We are now about to apply to the great cause and the great effect before us this twofold species of demonstration--this extrinsic and intrinsic touchstone used by our intellect in acquiring its noble treasure of proved facts and tried certainties in the domain of philosophy, metaphysics, history, natural sciences, and, in fact, of every branch of human knowledge. This cause is Christ, this effect Christianity, of which he is the founder; and, since it is natural to the human mind to consider first that which falls more immediately under its own observation, I shall begin by investigating the effect, namely, Christianity. This done, I shall appeal simply to your reason to connect the effect with its cause, and to discern through the beautiful proportions of the Christian system the inimitable stamp of its divine founder.

I.

Every doctrine which has become a fact, every fact which has won for itself a place in history, may be looked at in three ways: first, with regard to its extent in material space; secondly, as to its duration in time; thirdly, as to the depth to which it has reached in human nature. This division is no invention of mine; it is the same pointed out by the Apostle St. Paul when he wrote to the Ephesians, and endeavored to explain to them the length and breadth, the depth and divinity, of the Christian faith: _Ut possitis comprehendere cum omnibus sanctis quæ sit latitudo et longitudo, et sublimitas et profundum_ (Eph. iii. 18).

Now, as to its extent in material space, or, in other words, its territorial sway:

Open the map of the world, and scan the globe with attentive eye: a strange phenomenon will strike you. You will hardly discover one corner of earth where Christianity--and I use the word in this instance in its widest acceptation, excluding neither heresy nor schism, which, though unhappily rebellious, are nevertheless, in a certain sense, real members of the Christian household--where Christianity, therefore, has not penetrated, either in undisputed and irrevocable sway, as in Europe and America, or as a peaceful conqueror, sealing its hardly-won victories not in the blood of its enemies, but in its own. Following closely in the wake of new discoveries, it is for ever landing on new shores, making a home for itself among new populations, and winning new worshippers to bend beneath the ancient sway of the never-aging cross.

You might rise in contradiction to my statement, and remind me that the hour has not yet struck that will allow us, the soldiers of Jesus Christ, to intone the triumphant hosanna of final victory, since to this day there are many lands, many island-studded archipelagoes, many vast and populous continents, beyond the pale of our peaceful conquest, and since, after all, the standard of the cross is not yet securely reared in every clime.

I admit it; but what does this prove? That our task is not yet done? But who denies that? It is not done because time--which is our only limit--is likewise unended, nay, is perhaps only just beginning! For time is the array of all ages, and God alone, who created them, has reckoned their mysterious number. Yes, we confess it, our work is not done, and therefore we are ceaselessly and everywhere laboring; and therefore I myself, a humble but zealous worker, am laboring here at this moment. Those alone who will see the end of time will see the task completed. That which we have done during the twenty centuries that lie behind us is only an earnest of what we will do in future ages, God’s holy grace concurring.

What, my brethren! When we had no ships but frail canoes, and no compass but our untutored eyes; when we had no roads but eternal snows, virgin forests, and trackless deserts, vying with the wild beasts of the wilderness in barring our further progress; when we had no support but barefooted poverty and a pilgrim’s staff; no provision save precarious charity, and no guide save faith, hope undying, and--God; even then we succeeded in crossing rivers and seas, deserts and forests, mountain gorges and Alpine snows, that we might carry to the very confines of the world our living faith and the Word of our God. This ineffable Word has reached further than Alexander, who stopped at the Indus; further than Crassus, whom the Euphrates arrested; further even than Varus, who was stayed by the mighty Rhine--further than all conquerors, and further than all conquests. And can we believe that we have now set our foot on the fated threshold where the angel of evil would be permitted to say to the angel of virtue, as erst the latter was commanded to say it to his fallen brother, to Attila and the barbarian hordes, at the very gates of the Eternal City: “Usque huc venies, sed non ultra”--“Thus far shalt thou come, and no further”? Do not believe it, my brethren; for, on the contrary, it is but now that God’s reign is beginning, and as I believe, so I prophesy to you, with an irresistible and invincible conviction.

Forward, then, O human enterprise! Cleave the mountains, cut through the isthmuses, drain the morasses, and fill up the lakes; cast bridges over the waters, carry roads over the trackless country, build you mighty vessels, throw electric wires in the air, and gird the world with an iron girdle! Let your treaties of commerce and navigation be signed, and embassies sent to nations and kings whose names till yesterday were unknown in the civilized tongues of Europe! Know you what you are doing in thus knitting humanity together, and in connecting, with an energy unexampled in the whole history of the past, the orient and the occident, the pole and the equator? In one mighty embrace their hands are clasped, and they offer to each other, if we may so word it, that gigantic kiss of peace which, day by day, re-echoes more loudly in both hemispheres.

In all this, you are doing under the hand of God that which the war-steed does under the hand that guides him and the spur that urges him on. For, like unto the steed, who hardly knows whence he came, far less where his rapid steps are leading him and what is the burden that he bears--like unto him, thou Christ-blaspheming or God-forgetting age, thou boundest forward with maddening strength, carrying on thy broad shoulders with proud recklessness the rider whom thou scarcely knowest to the goal thou wottest not of. Every invention, every development of thy industry, far from cursing it, I bless it from the depths of my heart! Go forward and prosper! In a hundred years, thanks to thee, Truth will be sovereign of the world!

Christianity is the greatest geographical and territorial fact under the sun. It is so beyond all controversary, and if this fact, which I simply call a miracle, seems to you natural and easy of accomplishment, I only ask you this: try to spread and propagate over the universe, not a whole complicated system of metaphysics, but one single doctrine, whose mortal opponents, in the first instance, shall number every human passion which repulses it as treason against nature, and every heathen government which denounces it as treason against authority. But I will not ask even so much. Endeavor to persuade, not even one single nation, one city, one family, but _one man_, of the truth of a doctrine at once repulsive to his passions and hostile to his interests. I speak to you as a man whose life is devoted to this sublime and laborious mission of persuasion. And knowing as I do its wonderful consolations as well as the superhuman and apparently fruitless labor it often imposes, I tell you, my brethren, what you yourselves will tell me when the school of reality shall have taught it to you, that Christianity as it exists, spread over the whole earth by the godlike contagion of faith, is simply a fact so overwhelming that the language of men holds but one word fit to express its being--that one word, _miracle_.

There is, however, one thing more marvellous yet than mere propagation: it is duration, and a duration ever true to itself.

Condense the mystery of life into one short formula, capable at once of holding and adequately expressing it, and you will find none more comprehensive than this--_motion and change_. From the mass of inanimate being which, in the bowels of the earth and in the bosom of eternal night, is causing, by its agglomerations, its cohesions, and its fusions, a species of constant internal agitation, of blind and feverish restlessness as old as creation itself, up to the most dazzling pinnacles of life, where man figures under every name and in every relation conceivable among mortals, there exists the same law, there reigns the same spirit. In its name, by its authority, we see in private life one day swallowed up by the next, dethroned by its breathless and equally ephemeral successor, doomed beforehand to annihilation, while on the stage of public life events crowd each other out of time and of the memory of man, empires fall, dynasties grow up under the double shield of God’s grace and man’s enthusiasm, frontiers are widened and narrowed, whole nations migrate and spread, and even language itself, though but an outward sign of immaterial substances and metaphysical proportions in no way themselves subject to change, puts on divers forms, as if carried away by an irresistible impulse in the whirl of this universal frenzy. Yes, my brethren, motion is everywhere, and, in order that even death should not be permitted to fling its defiance permanently to life, this law penetrates even to the night and silence of the tomb, pierces the coffin, and installs between its four wooden walls the same unceasing restlessness which torments the great world. Worms, created to prey on man, riot with breathless agitation over the human corpse, and proclaim, by their ghastly activity in the abode of final destruction and in the very bosom of the crowning dread of earth, that life triumphs yet over death, and that the universal law of motion reigns in undisputed sway over that kingdom of darkness that owns no other created sovereignty.

And what is the result of this ceaseless motion? Nothing less than ceaseless change. Motion is a change of relations with the world and with one’s self. There is no motion but causes change, no change but presupposes motion. These terms are convertible, and so it is that I justify what I told you a few moments ago--that the concise formula of life is _motion and change_. It follows from this demonstration that nothing is so difficult of attainment as duration, and duration true to itself, which is to the sovereign law of _motion and change_ a permanent defiance and a marvellous contradiction.

Let us seek in the vast sepulchre of Time, where during so many ages countless men and things, countless doctrines and institutions, have lost themselves, and in which even the shattered wrecks of once noble ruins, spectres of the past and often unconscious prophets of the future, have been swallowed up--let us seek one man or one created thing that has not succumbed to this pitiless law. Let us seek diligently in the manuscripts of old, in the caverns of forgotten magic, in the tombs of buried sages! Or stay, my brethren, and seek not! For, like unto the alchemist of mediæval ages, we should seek and not find, for that which we seek is not.

But if you would see this tremendous miracle of a duration as invulnerable as it is abiding, lifting up its solitary existence in the midst of universal change and motion, do not gaze afar, but turn your eyes to that tabernacle crowned with the cross, the standard and badge of _Catholic_ Christianity. This, and this alone, abides where all else has been swept away by the ruthless and untiring breath which devours all that is, and ravenously awaits all that, as yet, is not. Christianity, and it alone, has lived true to itself, while all else around it was changing. Like unto God, the impassible and unchangeable, Christianity stands unmoved amidst the countless ruins with which you--men--strew the world. Christianity, with its old principles and its youthful aspect, leans on the rock of its own eternity, and gives the lie to the universal law with unassailable and ineffable calm. Yes, it defies you! It sees you pass, as the shore looks on the lapsing river, as the cliff looks on the ocean, as heaven looks upon earth, and as _God_ looks on _man_.

It is strange, is it not? It takes our breath away. But this is not all: it is scarcely the beginning. Listen! To bespread over the whole earth is much; to live where all decays is more; to abide ever true to one’s self when all things change is more still. My opponents, however--I will not say my enemies, for, thank God, I know of none--are perhaps saying to themselves at this moment: “But are there not other forms of religion bearing much the same marks, at least in a certain degree? Islamism holds a considerable territorial sway. The Buddhism of India has surely been in a certain sense true to itself from time immemorial.” I do not deny it, for truth needs no dissimulation. And it is precisely on this account, and because error has been permitted to bear in some respects a certain likeness to truth, that it was imperative, for the sake of those men of good-will whom this likeness might have deceived, that truth should possess, besides those notes which she shares with error, other marks so utterly inimitable that on their appearance there could not be but instant recognition of that truth whose counterfeits are as legion, but whose equal does not exist.

The touchstone by which to gauge the worth of any doctrine is neither this doctrine’s extent in space nor its duration in time, nor even its impassibility amid universal transmutations; that is much, but it is not all. What is of more importance than the limits of its influence or the length of its spiritual reign, is _the work it has done_. There is its secret proof, there its most personal revelation. It can give but what it has, and it can have but what it _is_; it can produce outwardly but what it inwardly possesses; if it be falsehood, then falsehood; if it be error, then error; if it be evil, then evil; if it be a half-truth, then half-truth; if it be human and natural virtue, then human and natural virtue; but if it be God, then _God himself_.

Christianity, considered from this point of view, to which we can give but a passing glance, will vindicate itself in our eyes as standing unrivalled on earth, even as God is unrivalled in heaven.

To make my meaning clear, let me present to your minds one preliminary observation.

Man often lives amid the wonders of creation without feeling the slightest curiosity in their regard, and this because a sublime spectacle, from being too constantly before his sight, becomes only a familiar part of the daily monotony of his life. We might almost say of him that, to the abiding miracle of the material universe, he opposes the miracle of abiding indifference. Now, the visible creation contains another, both visible and invisible, and which, though far more wonderful than the material one, yet draws from you, on account of its abidingness, only the careless notice of indifference. Inhabitants of a Christian land, members perhaps of a Christian family, citizens of a Christian community, children, in a word, of Christian civilization, you are living in the midst of a world of miracles which has lost the power to interest you because it fails to surprise you. It is my mission to-day to rouse you from this indifference, to dispel this mist, to show you things as they are.

Look at any Christian country, any Christian or civilized nation of to-day; the country which harbors us at present, if you will. Who were here eighteen, fifteen, fourteen centuries ago? Not even barbarians; savages! Who was it that came and saved you from yourselves? Who was it that drew you from the materialism in which you were plunged in the person of your forefathers, and in which numberless tribes are grovelling still to this day--nations whom Christ has not yet gathered in, and who horrify the sight of the boldest explorers? Who was it that drew you from your forests, built your cities, founded your families, traced your boundaries, inspired your laws, reared your churches, anointed your kings, and created those two centres of light around which for eighteen hundred years your history has grouped itself, and your private sympathies, your public enthusiasm, has revolved--the altar and the throne, fatherland and God? Who has reclaimed your fields, and made fruitful by the labor of the plough the glorious conquests of the sword? Who has preserved in the silence and solitude of the cloisters the scattered remnants of classical learning, and through the Scriptures and traditions has kept alive the plenitude of sacred lore? Who was it that created that incomparable marvel, of which I would fain speak with tears, rather than with words--the Christian _Family_?--the father, the patriarch, priest, and pontiff of home; the mother, the apostle of God; the Christian virgin, that holy wonder which earth proudly points out to heaven, as if defying even heaven’s angels to surpass it? Who is it that has created virtues without number within sacrifices without name, putting by the side of every woe the voluntary service which will minister to it, giving to every misfortune some heart that will beat for it, and to the most neglected grave a mourner to weep over it? Who is it that has freed the slaves of man to create the slaves of God--those slaves who can say with the humble exultation of a supernatural sacrifice, in the words of the Jew of Tarsus, now become the great Apostle St. Paul: “Ego vinctus pro Christo”--“I, the slave of Christ.” Who is it that has created the ideal of duty and honor which inspired the troubadour and the knight--the ideal of fidelity to the pledged word, of horror at injustice, of the sacred hatred of evil? Who is it that has given you all the goods man prizes, and which you enjoy in ungrateful forgetfulness, while cursing those who accumulated them for you during centuries of untold and weary toil, and even him who won them for your sake on the cross, in a sea of tears and of blood? Who gave you the great gift which this age counts as the kingliest boon of all--the gift whose magical name we fear, not because our lips were the first to pronounce and to honor it here below: _freedom_--the deliverer from sin and death, from the passions of hell, and from the hell of human passions? Who made you what you are, or what you ought to be--beings regenerated, civilized, free, glorious, sacred--in a word, _Christians_?

Who, my brethren? Jesus Christ, he who is there present in his tabernacle, he who listens to me, who sees you, and who will judge one day between my word and your souls, between me and you.

And henceforward, when a blasphemy against his Godhead seeks passage on your lips, be it in mockery or in malediction, remember the Caribbean savage and the Red Indian, think of what he is and of what you are, and do not forget that, were it not for Christ, you would be even as that poor savage. If your soul is not yet open to the fulness of faith, at least let it hold its peace if it respects itself.

Christianity in its breadth, its length, and its depth is the principal fact of the world. No sincere and deep intellect, when glancing at this comprehensive whole, can contemplate it without developing in itself a spontaneous doubt, without saying to itself, if it be unhappily far from belief, “Might this not be really the work of God?” But if the simple consideration of the effect, that is, of Christianity, can create this inevitable doubt, what shall we say of the cause which has produced it, and of the relations of the one to the other? What, indeed, save this, that, face to face with this cause, doubt is turned into certainty, and man is irresistibly impelled to cry out, in the full conviction of his soul, that _Jesus Christ is God indeed_.

II.

What, then, is the cause which has effected this mighty reality, as great as earth, as old as time, as marvellous as heaven, and whose name among us is Christianity? Nineteen hundred years ago, a little Child was borne in an obscure village of a poor country. His parents were poor and of no account; he himself lived a poor man, unknown and unnoticed, save in one or two instances plying during thirty years a lowly trade in a forgotten corner of the world. Of a sudden, however, he breaks silence: he preaches, all untaught as he seemed, a doctrine which earth had never before heard, and confirming it by signs earth had never before seen. Public attention is arrested: he becomes the hero of the hour, and parties spring up for and against him. Two years and a half go by in uneasy peace, but a day comes when his enemies get the upper hand, and denounce him to the civil tribunals of the country, whose cowardly justice, while declaring him to be innocent, yet allows popular prejudice and the threat of imperial displeasure to wrest from it an unwilling condemnation. The innovator is nailed to a gibbet, and his brief history, hardly three years old, seems for ever ended, and ended in what manner? By a sentence of capital punishment, and a memory left stained with ignominy by the hand of the public executioner.

Here, then, is the cause we seek: A Jew! a poor, unknown, untaught Jew! a Jew condemned to a shameful death by the justice of his country, and executed on the public road among other malefactors; a Jew, and, if we dare to say the word, a _felon_!

Listen and weigh well that which you shall hear. You have seen the cause, you have seen the effect. Between the two rises the great question. How could such a cause produce such an effect? This we purpose to examine in a few words:

There are three explanations from which your choice may be made, and which pretend to connect a cause so radically powerless with an effect so immeasurably disproportionate. They are these: Either mankind has believed for two thousand years and actually believes in Christianity without sufficient reason, without adequate proof. In that case, humanity is mad, and for twenty centuries has been so, and I myself, who am speaking to you, am out of my senses.

Or else mankind believes with fully adequate proof, perfectly calculated to convince it, and yet what it believes is false. In that case, God has deceived us during twenty, forty, sixty centuries, since the beginning of the world. In that case, Providence is a mockery, and its sway over the universe has been from the very first hour of creation but one long mystification, one scornful derision of our human reason. Or again, if you cannot believe either that mankind has mistaken God, or that God has deceived mankind, there is but one hypothesis left, namely, that Jesus Christ is God!

In order that you may choose more deliberately between these three possibilities, it will be necessary to afford them fuller development. The first of these compels you to infer that mankind for the last two thousand years has been bereft of reason, and that at the present moment a considerable portion of it, myself included, is in a hopeless state of insanity.

This may seem to you an exaggerated proposition, got up simply to prop the weakness of an untenable argument, but it is nothing if not an absolute truth, most easy of demonstration. Let us suppose that to-morrow, the 18th of December of the year of grace 1865, there shall enter into this great capital, through one of its numerous gates and towards the dusk of evening, a poor and ragged beggar, the dust of his journey still upon him, and his ignorance of the language of the country painfully conspicuous. Let us suppose this man presenting himself before the populace, the magistracy, the priesthood, the army, and before the Emperor himself, and speaking to him thus: “Sire, a few years ago, your majesty was pleased to order the public execution, in a remote province of the Empire, of a Jew. This Jew was the Messiah, the Saviour, God himself! Therefore, O Cæsar! come down from your throne, bend your knee, be baptized, and confess your sins; for, mark it well, this crucified Jew is none other than your God.” What would you say, my brethren, to the man who should speak thus to-day? You would fitly account him a madman, and madder yet the people and the priesthood, the army and the monarch, who should believe in his wild words.

Well, then, this strange tale is a true one, it is a historical fact. One day, many ages ago, an old Jew, baptized by the name of Peter, entered, a beggar, ragged, and dust-begrimed, through one of the gates of the greatest capital of the mightiest empire of the world--ancient Rome.

In Rome, he actually preached the unheard-of sermon I have just quoted, and which, repeated in that form to-day, would cause only a burst of derision. Why did Rome not mock him? Why did the priesthood not hoot him? Why did Cæsar not scorn him? Why, on the contrary, did this beggar, with his rough staff and scrip, with his barbarous Latin sounding harshly on the ears of those who could yet remember the voice of Cicero on the rostrum--why did he shake the foundations of the mightiest empire of the world, and why, instead of provoking laughter, did the people pale and tremble before him in the Forum, the magistrates quail beneath their robes of office, the priesthood shrink affrighted to their doomed temples, and Nero, the emperor, forget to trust in his blood-stained purple? Why does the deserted Palatine look to-day upon the opposite hill of the Vatican, and behold there a dome whose summit may well be said to seek to scale the heavens--a dome that crowns a tomb, that of the beggar Peter, a tomb which, though but the fane of the dead, is nevertheless the centre of Europe and the world? For this tomb bears a throne at once the most ancient and the most sacred in Europe, the only one which represents an empire whose boundaries are the boundaries of the universe. And why all this? Only because Peter proved by signs and wonders, by _miracles_ wrought both in life and in death, that he spoke indeed in the name of him whom heaven and earth obeyed, because he was their Maker. Because he wrought these signs, his word was believed. And I am free to confess that, had the men of his time believed in him without such an irrefragable proof of his mission, they would have been madmen indeed, and we, who are now the heirs of their faith, would have been only the successors to their folly. For two thousand years, I repeat it, the history of mankind would have been a long dream of insanity, an act of stupendous folly, and, as a climax to this incalculable confusion, there would have sprung from this folly the most incomprehensible of contradictions--wisdom and glory, light and virtue, civilization and progress--in a word, that great wonder which holds all lesser marvels within itself, namely, Christianity.

If I mistake not, your common sense has already set aside this hypothesis as untenable. We admit it, you may say to me; to make mankind believe in the--humanly speaking--unbelievable, there must have been proofs capable of proving and making certain, so to speak, the very impossible itself. We must admit it, unless we accuse the whole world of madness. But if Peter and the apostles, and all the preachers of the Gospel, confirmed their teaching by signs that were accounted miracles, might this not be explained by a chain of fortuitious coincidences, happy accidents, seeming miracles, which are every day elucidated by the progress of investigation until they utterly disappear in the full light of science? A discussion of the nature and essence of the Gospel miracles would be utterly out of place at this moment. I will therefore confine myself to this: if the miracles which, among outward causes, are the principal explanation of the world’s conversion to Christianity, are false, then it is no longer mankind unconsciously duped and led away, but Heaven itself, the deceiver and seducer, whom we must indignantly accuse.

There is no alternative, my brethren: either madness on the part of earth, or crime on the part of heaven. Either man is bereft of reason, or God is no longer just. Either man unknowingly deceives himself, or God wilfully deceives him. Choose ye, therefore!

But in choosing, remember that he who accuses God of having deceived the world, or even of having permitted what is called chance to have so deceived it, blasphemes as much against mankind as against God, and commits such treason against humanity as can never be forgiven by it. To accuse God of having allowed evil to triumph in the plausible likeness of good, and to become, behind this mask, the goal, the light, the glory, the life, the very God of mankind, involves nothing less than the negation of Providence, and the abandonment of the world to the blind god of chance, the savage god of fate, the shadowy god of nothingness. Such an accusation confuses all creation, darkens the sun of understanding, casts history back into chaos, the human intellect into doubt, the human heart into despair. If Providence has betrayed mankind from its cradle, why should it not have betrayed me, individually, from my birth? At the slightest hint of such a doubt, what a fearful horizon looms up before me!

I have believed in him who has numbered every hair of my head; and I have been deceived.

I have believed in the prayer of the poor who ask for daily bread, and in the answer of him who gives it, and in whose sight even the sparrow is not forgotten; and I have been deceived! I have believed in the eloquence of tears shed at the feet and the heart of God; in the blessings of mothers registered in heaven; in the fruitfulness of suffering; in the merit of unknown virtue, and of virtue unknown to itself; in defeats that are glorious and success that is shameful; I have believed in all that showed forth God in man, and man in God! But--grief unspeakable!--I have been deceived, since there is no Providence, since for ages and ages an odious and inexplicable chance has ruled humanity, and forced it, humbled, mystified, levelled with the brute, miserably plunged in a stupid and inconceivable idolatry, to bend the knee to the very dust--before what? before whom? Before a man, a Jew--before a scourged and crucified Jew, whom it hearkens to as an oracle, invokes as a master, and worships as a god.

I have reached a limit beyond which I cannot go, and I stop a moment to ask you: Have we not seen enough of these impossibilities jostling one another, enough of absurdities crowding on our bewildered sight, and, as Scripture words it, of deep calling unto deep?

And yet, if you tear from the brow of Jesus Christ the crowning glory of the Godhead, you will be compelled to admit a thousand times more than this, and not only to admit it, but even to believe it fitting and most rational. You are therefore forced to choose between the human madness that believed in and deified an impostor, the guilty and merciless fraud practised by a God whose seal was thus solemnly set to the most appalling scandal ever witnessed by mankind, or the crowning dogma of the divinity of Jesus Christ, a dogma which alone reconciles and explains all mysteries. When you recross the threshold of this church, you must go forth believers, either in a miracle of folly, a miracle of treachery, or a miracle of mercy and love. Mankind must appear before you either as a regenerated, a deceived, or an idolatrous creation.

What will be your choice? Would to God that at the solemn moment of your decision I might come to each one of you, and on my knees beseech you, through the merits of that Precious Blood which, if you will not let it be your salvation, will most assuredly be your eternal condemnation, and the sign that will doom you to doubt in life, to agony in death, to despair in eternity--beseech you, I repeat it ere you have raised your voice in final decision, to free your soul from the interests that bind it, the human respect that fetters it, the sophisms that lead it astray--in a word, from all the passions of flesh and blood whose watchword is eternal hatred to the truth of God.

Then, and only then, in that freedom from all bondage, in the silence of your inmost hearts, make the choice that will lead you to life or to death.

But what words are these, my brethren? There will be no need of choosing then: the choice will be already made; for, as the sun swiftly reaches the last recess of the deepest cavern the moment the obstacle is removed which has hitherto resisted its light, so does Jesus Christ, the sun of the mind, the incarnate truth, flood with his radiance every soul whose own obstinate efforts do not close it against this blessed transfiguration. Open wide your hearts, my brethren, to this God of love and truth, who has vouchsafed to show himself to you in the brightness of such light and the majesty of such conviction.

And thou, Lord Jesus, who art the truth “_that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world_” (St. John i.), let it not come to pass that one soul out of this great assemblage should return this day from the foot of this pulpit to the common turmoil of the world without bearing within itself the ineffable wound of a dawning conviction. And if, O Lord! thou requirest unto this end the sacrifice of a human life, let this day be my last on earth, and this hour the last hour of my mortal pilgrimage.

AFFIRMATIONS.

“It is the child’s spirit that is to be loved and sympathized with, not his body; the body must be pampered as little as possible.”

“Principle must unite with purpose before it becomes practical.”

“Human nature must do as nature does--cling to the sustainer, and then it will be always producing new fruits.”

“We are none the better for reflecting upon our own ideas of heat, but if we would cease reflecting and let the heat warm us, the heat would itself realize what our reflected reflections never can.”

“There is a communion with God, with saints, and also with angels, and then with each other, but this is not in space and time, or with the space and time man.”

“That which Love requires for the everlasting food, the man of this world expends in heaping up rubbish.”

FLEURANGE.

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

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH PERMISSION.

PART FIRST.

THE OLD MANSION.

XII.

Clement remained a moment thoughtful and undecided. Before obeying his mother’s injunction, he felt the need of collecting his thoughts and regaining his self-control. Whatever strength of mind he might manifest, he was very young to experience such painful emotions as he had endured the past day. He crossed the passage of the stairs that led to Fleurange’s room, then passed on and went directly into the garden. Hitherto he had only thought of his parents. At least, he felt all that morning that, as soon as his father and mother knew everything, a great weight would be removed from his mind which would enable him to breathe quite freely. But the terrible revelation was made, and yet he was not relieved. He was still agitated, painfully agitated. Having passed the whole evening shut up in Wilhelm’s office, reckoning up the sad accounts, he felt the need of fresh air. It was the end of June. The weather was cloudy, and somewhat showery. He walked swiftly to the end of the garden, then returned slowly towards the house, and was about to go in search of the children and his cousin when he heard his name called close behind him:

“Clement!”

“Is it you, Gabrielle, here all alone?”

Fleurange was sitting on an obscure bench against the side of the house.

“Yes, I have been here an hour. You are going to tell me everything that has occurred, are you not, Clement? Remain here awhile and tell me. Do not conceal things from me any longer.”

“I do not intend to, Gabrielle, but do not detain me now. Come in, dear cousin. When the children are asleep, I will return and tell you.”

“The children are asleep, Clement, and have been for a long time. It is nearly ten o’clock. Poor little things, do you think they could keep awake till this time? After dinner I took them to the further end of the garden, that their lively prattle might not disturb the house. By eight o’clock they were tired out. I made them go up-stairs, and as soon as they fell asleep I came down to wait for you.”

Had her account been still longer, Clement would not have thought of interrupting her. He made no reply for a while, but at length said:

“Thank you, Gabrielle. You are--” He stopped. He felt an iron grasp at his throat, and feared he should sob like a child if he attempted to speak. With all his manly energy and precocious gravity, Clement’s young heart was passionately tender. And yet he had not been wanting in firmness throughout the day. Why, then, did it seem to abandon him so suddenly now? How happened it that, after considering, without shrinking, all the consequences of the resolution he was the first to make and propose--after manifesting no hesitation at the sight of his parents, and his brother and sister, he now felt terrified and almost overwhelmed at the thought of the sacrifice that had been made, and the great change about to occur in their lives? He hardly knew why himself, for he had not examined very minutely what was passing in his dreams. Clement was naturally inclined to reverie. He cared but little for the amusements of his age. His mind sought relaxation in secretly brooding over the inspirations of poetry. His friends knew he had a good memory and was familiar with a great number of poems, but they did not suspect he had a deep vein of poetry in his nature which ranked next to the influences of religion. This interior life was so completely veiled that the very eye of his mother scarcely penetrated it. Clement’s aptitude for history and the sciences, his turn for practical studies and a practical life, his skill in a thousand things of a material nature, served to conceal still more the other qualities of his mind. They depended on him to train a horse, settle an account, give a lesson in mathematics or history, plan an excursion, or make arrangements for a journey; but the idea of his wandering in imaginary or poetic regions, absorbed and lost in such waking dreams as are expressed in German by the word _Schwärmen_, and silently passing a part of his life in an interior world to which he never alluded, was little imagined, even by those who knew him best. And perhaps he himself, as we have said, had never thoroughly analyzed his own nature, for until to-day the actual and the imaginary had never come in conflict. But now all at once he felt there was in his ideal world a sanctuary, a palace, a throne, he must resign himself to see crumble away like the rest, and the courage he manifested at the material loss of wealth to its fullest extent seemed to forsake him now in view of the imaginary ruin of this enchanted domain!

Fleurange, seeing her cousin made no reply, waited quietly awhile, but at length she said, somewhat impatiently:

“Come, Clement, I pray you, keep me no longer in suspense. What are you afraid of? Am I a child? Am I not older than you? And did I not learn long ago the sad meaning of sorrow, suffering, and trial? Speak to me freely, then, and without fear. Nothing frightens me.”

Fleurange’s earnestness roused her cousin, and restored his calmness and self-control. Without any further hesitation, he seated himself beside her, and related the greater part of what he had told his mother some hours before. She thus learned in her turn the extent of the disaster which had befallen them--that all due reparation would be made, that the honor of her uncle’s house and name might remain intact, though his brother, Ludwig Dornthal, would be ruined--for ever ruined.

“And your good father and mother have consented to this renunciation of their rights?”

“Yes, and without any hesitation.”

“O dear and noble soul!” cried Fleurange, clasping her hands in her transport. “And it was you who proposed it?”

“Yes.”

“O Clement, my dear Clement! truly, I love you as I never loved you before!”

“Gabrielle,” said Clement in a low and trembling voice, “do not say that.”

“Why not?” said Fleurange. “I think so, and it is the truth.”

“Because--because, if they are often to be blamed who are wanting in honor and duty, there is nothing particularly praiseworthy in those who are faithful.”

“Nevertheless, my dear cousin, if I love you better than before, you must not be displeased, but I will not say so again if it offends you.”

There was a moment’s silence. Fleurange was lost in profound reverie. She soon resumed, in a grave tone: “Now I understand the state of affairs, I see our life is to assume an entirely new aspect.”

“Yes, entirely,” said Clement, with a dull anguish.

“This dear Old Mansion,” continued Fleurange, “must it be left?”

“Yes,” said Clement; “it will have to be sold, with all it contains, for the produce of this sale is all my father will have to begin life anew with.”

“Sell the house!” replied Fleurange thoughtfully. “Yes, I see it must be so; and afterwards we shall be separated.”

“And why must that be so?” cried Clement with sudden impetuosity. But he presently resumed in a different tone: “However, it would be very selfish in us to wish to retain you, now we have no longer anything to share with you but our poverty.”

“Clement,” said Fleurange hastily, “that is truly a rude and unjust speech, which I hardly merit--” She stopped an instant, then went on in a tone of emotion: “What! when poverty, misery, and hunger--yes, Clement, hunger!--were staring me in the face, your father bethought himself of me, he invited me here, received me into his house, conferred on me--not a happiness I had already experienced, but one hitherto unknown: he became my father, when mine was no more, and gave me a mother, brothers, and sisters whom I had never possessed. Life, youth, and joy had been meaningless words to me. I only comprehended them after I came under his roof, and now--now,” said she in broken accents, no longer able to restrain her tears, “it is his son--Ludwig Dornthal’s son--who tells me it is to escape the misfortunes of his family that I wish to leave them!”

“Gabrielle! Gabrielle!” said Clement in an agitated manner, “forgive me--have some pity on me. Stop, I beseech you; you will drive me mad, if you utter such reproaches at this time.”

Fleurange by degrees grew calm, and, forcing a smile, while great tears stood in her eyes, she soon resumed: “Poor Clement! I am, then, neither allowed to praise you nor blame you, this evening. Well, let us lay aside what relates merely to ourselves, or at least speak of it in a different manner. What I meant just now was that we could no longer remain idle. We must aid our dear parents all we can,” she continued in a softened tone, “and labor for them--”

“Labor!” said Clement. “_I_ must unquestionably; that is a matter of course; but you, Gabrielle--you! There is no reason in what you say.”

“And I also,” said Fleurange calmly. “And that is a point to be considered. I must not only cease to be a burden to your parents, but I must aid them. How happy that will make me! I thank Heaven for the very thought that I may now be able to do something for them to whom I owe everything. This hope relieves my very sadness.”

She rose and held out her hand. “Good-night, cousin. To-morrow I will tell you what inspiration I have received from my good angel during the night.”

He silently pressed her hand, and allowed her to leave him without a word.

The night was cloudy. If Clement caught any glimpses of his cousin’s features during their conversation, it was because, seated beside her, and even favored by the obscurity, he ventured to look at her more closely than he would have done elsewhere. Now, the stars rose only to disappear beneath the sombre clouds. He was no longer afraid of being seen. He remained where Fleurange left him, and, burying his face in his hands, gave vent at last to the tears that for two hours had been suffocating him--tears of sorrow, regret, and affection, which he must shed to keep his young heart from breaking.

But he soon surmounted this violent emotion, and rose up ashamed of his weakness. At that moment he heard a window open above his head. It was Fleurange, who soon appeared on the balcony. He could see her white dress and the regular outline of face against the light from her chamber. He saw her soft glance lost in the darkness. Then she folded her hands and bent down her head. She was praying, but not alone to-night. Clement, kneeling unperceived in the shade, prayed with her. He was in the very place where he heard her say to Felix: “Clement is my brother, and you are not.” He recalled the words now, and renewed in his heart the solemn promise to be for ever faithful to all the obligations they imposed.

XIII.

If the happy inmates of the Old Mansion had been told a month previous they only had a few weeks more to pass within its walls, they would have been greatly dismayed by the prediction, and asked how such a trial could be borne. But there is in life--even in the happiest life when it is ordered aright, that is, when its duties are daily considered and faithfully accomplished--there is, I say, in such a life a latent preparation for the most violent shocks of adversity, and, when they suddenly come, it is surprising to find that they who seemed to enjoy more than others the good things they possessed are the best able to resign themselves to their loss with firmness and serenity. And yet they are not insensible to the calamity. It falls on them with its full weight, but it comes alone, unaccompanied by the two scourges which generally follow in the train of a misfortune resulting from misconduct--trouble and confusion of mind.

Neither of these followed ruin into Ludwig Dornthal’s house. Externally the disaster was complete, but peace and order were maintained within. All their decisions--even the most painful--were made deliberately, and executed calmly and without delay. They did not dissemble the greatness of their sacrifice; they made no pretence to an insensibility they did not feel; but they quietly made their preparations--tears often blinding their eyes the while--like a brave and worthy crew wrecked by a tempest and forced to abandon their vessel.

It was thus they made all the arrangements for leaving their dear home and disposing of their library, paintings, and objects of _virtu_, which the professor had selected with so much care and pride, and were his only source of pleasure apart from the society of his family and friends. And from the latter also he was to be separated. When Ludwig Dornthal announced his intention of resuming the career he abandoned twenty years before, positions were offered him on all sides, especially in the city where he resided. But on account of the strict economy he must henceforth practise, as well as a secret repugnance to a different social position in a place where he had been so prosperous, he decided, after some hesitation, to leave Frankfort, and accept a modest situation offered him at the University of Heidelberg. He succeeded in purchasing a small house in that place at a low price--somewhat rustic, it is true, but situated without the city walls, on the banks of the Neckar, and surrounded by a garden. He could easily walk to the university every morning, and the perspective of the rural repose that awaited him at the end of the day would enable him to endure its labors more cheerfully. He therefore decided to take possession of it as speedily as possible, and all the necessary arrangements had to be made during the few weeks they were to remain in the Old Mansion before leaving it for ever.

Clement took charge of all the preliminaries of the somewhat extensive sale that was to take place. He wished to relieve his father from so sad a task, and perform the painful and fatiguing business without any assistance, but it was made much easier for him than he anticipated. Fleurange insisted on his accepting her aid. She set herself to work, silently going to and fro with her sleeves turned back, carrying the rare china carefully from one place to another with her small but efficient hands, and dusting, arranging, and numbering the books according to her cousin’s directions. Of course she greatly lightened his labors. In the evening they seated themselves in the library, now nearly stripped of its treasures, and wrote lists or inserted notes in the large registers concerning the precious manuscripts and books that were to be disposed of. It was, in short, a work that required the vigor and activity of youth, as well as much thought and assiduous labor. To say that, while performing this double task, they never found it tiresome, that no shade ever came over their brows, and that their eyes were never tearful while handling so many objects they were never to see again, would be false; it would be equally so to say that Clement, in spite of the fatigue, was greatly to be pitied during these days.

There came a time, long after, when, looking back on the past, it seemed to him that these hours passed in the light of Fleurange’s beautiful eyes, sometimes cast down as she bent over the large registers, and anon raised to ask a question or give him a friendly glance--it seemed to him, I say, that these vanished hours were among the most delightful of his life.

At length came the day their task would be completed, and, while they were working together for the last time, Fleurange raised her eyes. “Clement,” she said, “we are nearly done. I have been waiting for this moment to tell you something.”

Clement dropped his work at once, and looked up interrogatively.

“No, no; finish what you are doing, and I will tell you afterward.”

Clement soon finished. Fleurange closed the great book before her, and resumed: “Do you remember our conversation in the garden a fortnight ago?”

“I do, most assuredly.”

“Well, after leaving you that evening, I passed the night in reflection, and ended by writing to the best, and, indeed, the only gentleman-friend I have in the world out of this house.”

“Dr. Leblanc?” said Clement, aware, of course, of all the circumstances that preceded his cousin’s arrival.

“Yes, Dr. Leblanc. I wrote him all I had just learned. I made known the situation my uncle and his family would soon be in, and my desire, my ardent desire, not only to cease to be a burden, but to fulfil a daughter’s duty with regard to them. His own daughters have other duties, now they are married, but I have only this, and it is one so precious--so precious,” repeated Fleurange in the soft tone that sometimes made her simplest words penetrate to the depths of the listener’s heart, “that I shall consider my life happy and well-spent if I can consecrate it entirely to this duty!”

Clement bent down his head, and took up his pen as if to correct a mistake on the paper before him. She must not see the effect of her words on his countenance--no! she must not.

“Well,” said he presently, without looking up, “what did Dr. Leblanc say?”

“Here, Clement, read the letter I received from him two days ago.”

Clement took the letter, but, while reading it, he was all at once filled with a similar anguish to that he experienced after the conversation that night in the garden which Fleurange had just alluded to. He was obliged to make a violent effort to restrain his feelings, and not tear the letter in his hands into a thousand pieces. Fortunately he succeeded, for it would have been the most foolish act he ever committed. And there was really nothing in Dr. Leblanc’s letter to justify such a mad desire. It read as follows:

“MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND: I cannot tell you how much I am at once distressed and edified by the sad account you have given me. I have long known what kind of a man your uncle is. I now see there are but few to be compared with him, even among the best, and I never had a keener desire than to make his acquaintance. You know I have always hoped for this gratification. It will probably be afforded me sooner than I anticipated. And this leads me to the second part of your letter.

“I understand your wish, and would like to second it. Besides, I have not forgotten my promise to aid you in gaining a livelihood, should it ever be necessary. Poor child! I hoped never to be called upon to fulfil it, but, as things have come to that pass, I must tell you of a letter I received yesterday which, coinciding with yours, seems to be a providential indication. This letter is from the Princess Catharine Lamianoff, a Russian lady, who is one of my patients. She is now at Munich, and has sent for me to go there. I have already prescribed for her with success, and, from what she tells me of her state, I think my visit may be beneficial. I have therefore decided on the journey, and shall be absent a fortnight. I shall go by the way of Frankfort on purpose to see you. But, first, I must tell you what there is in the letter to interest you. The princess earnestly requests me to find a young lady, carefully educated and with good manners, to be her _demoiselle de compagnie_. She is an invalid and requires to be entertained, so the office would be a charitable as well as a lucrative one. We will talk all this over before another week. Meanwhile, rely always, as you have the right to do, on my sincere and affectionate devotedness. I say nothing about my sister, as she is writing you in a similar tone by the same mail.

“P.S.--The princess has been married twice, but is again a widow. She is very wealthy, and offers the young lady she commissions me to find one hundred and fifty louis a year.”

Clement remained silent for some time. “And you think of accepting such a proposal?” said he, at length, in a tone of irritation quite at variance with his usual manner. “What folly!”

“No, it is not folly,” replied Fleurange mildly. “If, after talking with Dr. Leblanc, I discover no reason for declining the situation, I cannot possibly see the folly of accepting it.”

“Gabrielle,” said Clement, without changing his tone, “you know the course you wish to take is insupportable to me! This _rôle_ belongs to me--me alone. It is my place to labor for my parents, my brother and sister, and for you. If you had the least regard for me, you would feel this is a favor you have no right to refuse me.”

“Come, Clement,” said Fleurange calmly, “let us talk it over in a reasonable manner. When everything is sold, and your parents are settled in their new home at Heidelberg, you are perfectly aware that your father’s small salary, even with what you can add to it, will barely enable them and Frida to live comfortably. You will remain at Frankfort, where, notwithstanding your youth, you have the choice of several situations. But Fritz--have you forgotten our calculations yesterday? Will you have sufficient means to send him to the excellent gymnasium you were so desirous he should enter, that he might be enabled to become independent in his turn? No, Clement, you know well you could not do it. Whereas,” she continued with animation, “if this good lady likes me, I can send all my salary, with the exception of a small part, to my dear brothers. This will ensure Fritz’s education, and my dear aunt will be freed from all anxiety about him as well as me. And do you not see, Clement, that I shall be a thousand times happier far away from you all, even though treated like a slave by this princess, than among you, useless, inactive, and adding by my presence to your difficulties, instead of aiding to diminish them?”

Clement, with his elbows resting on the table, and his face buried in his hands, did not answer a word.

“Come, come, dear Clement, put off that frown,” said Fleurange in a caressing tone, taking him softly by the hand. “We shall see each other, like school-children, during our vacations. From time to time we shall meet on the banks of the Neckar! That will always be our home, where we shall all gather around the hearth, as here, on great festivals.”

What reply could poor Clement make? What objection could he offer? Must he not for ever conceal all he had hoped in his vanished dreams to confess some day? Was he not now reduced to constant labor for subsistence? Had not his life henceforth a single aim that nothing must turn him from? And were it otherwise, did she not look upon him as a mere boy? Was he not destitute of every quality that could please her? And had he not always foreseen that his enchanting dreams would vanish at the very first breath of reality?

He took his cousin’s small hand in his, and, with his usual frank and cordial look, said: “You are right, Gabrielle, forgive me. I appear ungrateful, but I am not. May God reward you! You are an angel!”

And he added in a tone too low for her to hear: “An angel from whom I am more widely separated than from the angels in heaven!”

XIV.

From that day forth Clement displayed no more interest in his cousin’s project: at least, he never alluded to it, and the plan was discussed before him without his taking any part in the conversation.

Madame Dornthal, capable herself of the most generous devotedness, knew also how to accept it from others--a rarer gift, but perhaps not less noble. She thoroughly understood Fleurange’s disposition, and was unwilling at such a time to deprive a heart like hers of the most exquisite joy it can taste.

“Yes, dear child,” she said, folding her in her arms, “I accept the aid you offer me, and with gratitude. Thanks to you, I shall be relieved from all anxiety respecting two of my children, and, if Dr. Leblanc reassures me as to my Gabrielle, I shall let her follow the generous impulse of her heart.”

But Madame Dornthal kept to herself, or only communicated to her husband, another motive for her consent. Fleurange would thus be preserved from some of the privations of their new life. “She would continue to enjoy comforts we could no longer give her. She would be happier and more cheerful away from us, the poor child! than with us at such a time.”

“Yes,” replied the professor, “it would indeed be a pity to bury her youth in a cottage. I could not bear it. I have so often blessed God within a month for having assured the destiny of our dear daughters! And yet,” added poor Ludwig, sighing, “their young faces were so cheering around us!”

“We shall soon see them again, Ludwig. Hilda and Karl are awaiting our visit, and Clara will pass the winter near us, Julian having received a great number of orders from the vicinity of Heidelberg. O my dear Ludwig! as long as God leaves us these blessings, let us resign, not only without a murmur, but without regret, all he has taken from us!”

Those who are absorbed in the acquisition of wealth, and make it the special object of their lives, are no less liable to misfortune than others. Indeed, it may be said, they are more frequently overtaken by adversity. Would it not be well, then, for them to reflect a little beforehand on the means of singularly modifying the features of this stern visitant, and giving it the aspect it now wore in the Old Mansion? It is true, to do this they must begin by thinking of something higher than the mere acquisition of riches.

Dr. Leblanc arrived, as he promised, about ten days after his letter. His visit at the Old Mansion coincided with the last days its inmates were to pass within its walls, and this circumstance would have made him hesitate to come, had not the professor cordially encouraged him. They had long wished to know each other, for in their different spheres they were equally renowned, and Fleurange, under so many obligations to both, was a tie between them. The doctor was therefore received by M. Dornthal quite otherwise than as a stranger. The tendency of their minds, the nature of their studies, and even the prominent features of their character, were very dissimilar, but there was the same foundation to their nature, and they aimed at the same end by different means. They therefore soon discovered that, though their lives were drawing to a close without even having met before, they were born intimate friends.

How many unknown friends thus pass their whole lives without ever meeting, or even suspecting the sympathy that unites them! Who can tell how many ties of this kind will be discovered in heaven? And who knows but this discovery may be one of the sweetest surprises of another life, and, like all the joys we have a foretaste of here below, and perhaps more abundantly accorded to those who on earth were the most destitute?

The hospitable doors of the Old Mansion were closed, the library shelves bare, the panels stripped of the rich paintings that adorned them, and all was now humiliation and sacrifice where once reigned satisfaction and enjoyment, and yet Dr. Leblanc probably would not have felt so lively a sensation of respect and emotion had he visited the Dornthals for the first time during the days of their prosperity.

As to them, this new friend seemed to have always occupied the place he now took in their midst, and, in spite of the sadness of the present as well as of the future, Fleurange enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing them brought together for a few brief hours, and, though on the eve of leaving her friends, did not find the last days she spent among them the least happy.

Madame Dornthal gathered nothing from her conversations with Dr. Leblanc that was unfavorable to Fleurange’s project; but she learned that the Princess Catharine was only making a temporary visit at Munich on her way from a watering-place where she passed her summers and would soon leave for Florence, where she owned a palace which was her residence in winter.

After some correspondence, it was decided Fleurange should accept the princess’ offer, and go to Munich under the doctor’s care. She would thus have the double advantage of her old friend’s protection during the journey, and his presence during the first days of her new career among strangers.

While all this was being decided, the time passed sadly and rapidly away, and the last day they were to spend in the Old Mansion came--the last day their eyes would linger on the venerable walls which had witnessed all the happiness of the past, the garden with its velvet sward, the borders of flowers, and the wide alleys through the overshadowing trees, full of remembrances they would not another spring be able to retrace, or indeed any spring of their future lives.

Clement, silent as he often was, but more agitated than usual, hastily collected the small number of books which were to form part of his luggage the following day. His cousin’s generous sacrifice enabled him to fulfil his wishes at once with regard to Fritz. This only left him the more completely alone--the care of the child would have added to the young man’s difficulties and become later a serious burden; but Clement loved his little brother, and had looked upon the necessity of keeping him with him as a consoling feature of his future life. This necessity no longer existed. Clement, left free, decided to make choice of the most laborious career offered him--the one least conformed to his tastes, but the best adapted to second his desire of aiding his parents.

Wilhelm Müller proposed he should enter a large commercial house where M. Heinrich Dornthal’s worthy and intelligent clerk himself had found a situation similar to that he recently occupied at the banker’s. Clement accepted it. He was at first to receive only a small salary, but it would be increased from year to year. “And later,” explained Wilhelm, “you may have your share in the profits of the house. You are young. Who knows, whatever you may say, that you will not some day become rich again, and as happy and prosperous as you were destined to be?”

Nothing in Clement’s heart responded to this encouraging prophecy, but he did not the less follow Müller’s advice. Moreover, he accepted the kind clerk’s offer of renting him a small chamber in the house he himself occupied.

“Poor Monsieur Clement,” he said, “what I offer you is only a garret, but it is under our roof, and you will feel you have friends around you. My wife is a good housekeeper, and will always be ready to render you a service. The little ones are good children also, though somewhat noisy, and will sometimes divert your sad thoughts.”

“It is all well enough,” said Clement. “Your offer suits me every way, and I thank you, Wilhelm, with all my heart.”

Thus matters were arranged between them.

Fleurange made her appearance in the library while Clement was diligently packing his books. She remained awhile, and learned by questioning him all that has just been related, not omitting the kind clerk’s offer to become his host as well as his colleague.

“Oh! so much the better,” cried Fleurange. “The Müllers are excellent people. I know Bertha, who is an amiable little woman. You can talk with her about me.”

Bertha’s name recalled Fleurange’s journey, which they discussed. This naturally led to her arrival on Christmas Eve, the Midnight Mass, the festival of the following day, and all the other happy days that succeeded.

All these reminiscences were too touching, too poignant, at such a time. Fleurange at last became unable to utter a word. She turned her face away, and started as if to leave the room. But she stopped at the threshold, and remained leaning against the garden window, which at that season was surrounded by honeysuckle. Clement followed, and both stood gazing at the thousand objects gilded by the brilliant rays of the setting sun. There was nothing wanting in the melancholy beauty of that evening hour, either in the sweetness of the air, the clearness of the sky, the perfume of the flowers, or anything that could in their eyes add an unusual charm to all they were about to leave for ever.

And she! how did she appear in the sight of him who feared he might never, after this hour, behold her again as she now stood beside him? What did he think of the effect of the golden lights upon her fair brow and on her black and silky hair?--on the pale azure of her eyes, now so smiling and soft, and again so grave and thoughtful, but in which tenderness was overruled by a will that would ever remain dominant?

We will not state what were his unuttered thoughts. The mingling of sweetness and energy which heightened the attraction Fleurange inspired he was equally gifted with, and what he ought to conceal within his own bosom he knew how to prevent his mouth from uttering or his eyes from ever betraying. He therefore remained near her, calm in appearance, while his heart was a prey to such grief as in youth changes the entire aspect of nature, and makes it almost unendurable to live.

“To-morrow!--to-morrow I shall no longer behold her,” he repeated to himself, with a sensation that one might have in sharpening the instrument of his execution, and the thought deprived him of enjoying the few hours that remained to him.

Fleurange, on her side, dwelt on the fatality that always separated her from those she loved. She recalled the day when the bare thought of ever leaving this spot caused such a painful contraction of the heart. And now, that prophetic anguish was justified!--the frightful dream had become a reality! Sad thoughts crowded on her mind. Another moment, and she would be unable to restrain them, all her firmness was about to give way in a flood of tears, when an effort of her will made her triumph over the emotion, or, at least, prevented her from manifesting it. Putting a stop to her long reverie, she raised her head, and turned toward her cousin:

“Here, Clement,” she said softly, drawing a small book from her pocket, “here is my Dante we have so often read in: keep it, dear friend, in memory of our favorite study, and do not forget our habit of daily reading a canto in it.”

“No, I shall never forget it. Thank you, Gabrielle: the gift is very precious. I shall always prize this little book.” He opened it: “But write my name on this blank leaf. Here is my pencil.”

She took the pencil and wrote: “_To Clement._”

“One word more,” said Clement in a supplicating tone. “Pray write also a word, a line, a stanza if you will, from our favorite poet.”

“What shall I write?” said she, turning over the leaves.

“There, that in the second canto,” said he, pointing it out. She wrote it immediately, and then read it over:

“To Clement.

“L’amico mio e non della Ventura.”[58]

“That is right,” said Clement. “Thank you.”

“That is a sad line: I should have chosen a different one.”

“It is appropriate to the present occasion. Now add your name.”

She was about to write it when he stopped her.

“Your real name,” said he. “Write your other name, to-night--the name that suits you so well--Fleurange!”

Fleurange smiled, and shook her head. “Oh! no,” she said. “I gave it up with regret, but I should not have thought of such a thing had I previously known you all. But I have been so happy since I have borne the name of Gabrielle--and you were the first to call me so, Clement--so happy that I no longer love the name associated with the sadness of the past, and, were I to hear any one call me Fleurange now, I should imagine it an ill omen.”

Clement made no reply, but, when she returned the book, he retained her hand a moment: “Gabrielle, one word more--perhaps my last before your departure. Listen to me. Wherever you may be, if you ever need a friend--a friend, do you understand?--that would value no sacrifice for your sake, do not forget that your brother is ready to aid you, not only willingly, but with a pleasure you have no idea of.”

Clement’s voice was grave and solemn, but at the same time agitated and tremulous, as he uttered these words. They were so in conformity with what Fleurange had reason to expect from him that they touched her, but excited no surprise.

“Yes, Clement,” she replied frankly, casting an affectionate glance toward him; “I promise to have recourse to you. I feel I have no better friend in the world than you, and doubt if I ever shall have.”

Were these words sweet or bitter? He hardly knew. The sadness that overwhelmed him it seemed impossible to increase, and equally impossible to alleviate. And yet!--she was still there--beside him--with an air of serenity and hope. There was not a single sentiment of her heart he did not share. She called him her friend, and there was no other she preferred to him. The moment, so full of anguish, was yet a happy one, and he regretted at a later day not having known how to profit more by it.

This was their last conversation in the Old Mansion. Clement preserved the little volume in which she had written the name of Gabrielle as a memento of this interview, and also a sprig of the honeysuckle that touched her forehead.

The remainder of the evening passed swiftly away. Soon after light the next morning came the farewell hour. The Dornthals left their beloved home without the hope of ever entering it again, and Fleurange once more left those she loved, to enter upon a new life that looked a thousand times gloomier and more uncertain than that which was before her when she left Paris. And Clement bade them all farewell, to endure as he could isolation, a laborious and uncongenial life, the privation of the affection and pleasures of his boyhood, and especially all the pain and love a young heart can endure.

PART SECOND.

THE TRIAL.

“Era già l’ora che volge il disio Ai naviganti e intenerisce il core, Lo di’ c’han detto a’ dolci amici addio!”--DANTE.

It was a beautiful night--brilliant, serene, and starry--a night the uprising moon would soon render as light as day. A fresh breeze from the land swelled the sails of a vessel just leaving Genoa, which, far from impeding its course, only gave it a bolder and more rapid flight over the waves. There were various groups of passengers on deck, some conversing in subdued tones quite in harmony with the mysterious hour of twilight, and others aloud as if it were mid-day. One was playing on a guitar, as an accompaniment to a somewhat remarkable voice, one of those airs everybody knows, sings, or hums as long as they are in the fashion. The music, in itself indifferent, did not seem so on the water and at such an hour. It harmonized with the feelings of those who were sailing over that azure sea, beneath that starry sky, and in sight of those charming shores which the boat scarcely lost sight of during its short sail from Genoa to Leghorn.

Apart from all these groups, and belonging to none of them, we again find Fleurange, who was sitting entirely alone. She had been here some minutes, attracting general attention from the first by the gracefulness of her form, which the cloak in which she was wrapped could not wholly conceal. The hood, half-covering her head, only added a picturesqueness to the striking beauty of her regular features. More than one of her fellow-travellers would gladly have drawn near the place where she was sitting, but, though she was alone and did not appear to be under any one’s protection, there was, in the simple dignity of her attitude, in her evident indifference to the sensation she produced, in her very want of timidity, which was not boldness, but resolution, and in her whole appearance, a something undefinable which intimidated the most lively admiration, and would have disconcerted insolence itself--a remark _en passant_ to those who regard familiarity as only a proof of the attraction they inspire. Therefore, in spite of some whispering, notwithstanding more than one look toward the charming face distinctly visible in the full light of the moon, now risen, Fleurange remained quietly in her corner, abandoned to her own meditations, undisturbed by any one, and without troubling herself in the least about those who surrounded her. Her thoughts were various and complex. A strange fate seemed to pursue her and constantly break the thread of her life, and every time it was broken she found the severance more painful. It was but recently she wept so bitterly at leaving Paris, and Dr. Leblanc, and the dear Mademoiselle Josephine. But the tears were much more bitter she shed at leaving the Old Mansion, and the loved circle where she had first known and tasted in all their fulness the sweet joys of family life.

After leaving Frankfort, Fleurange’s firmness, which had never faltered before, suddenly gave way to such a degree as to make Dr. Leblanc resolve to take her back to her friends if, after his short stay at Munich, he did not find her more resigned to her lot. But Fleurange was not a person to be easily subdued. Her natural strength of character soon asserted itself, and enabled her to persevere in the path she had chosen. Her resolution was strengthened by the very circumstances which would have discouraged many others. At their arrival at Munich, they found the Princess Catharine confined to her bed by a violent attack of her malady, and it was as nurse that Fleurange entered upon her duties. Her complaint, all the physicians declared, was not dangerous, but it was not the less painful, nor the easier to be relieved. That Dr. Leblanc was again successful in his treatment was partly owing to the sudden and lively fancy of his patient for the young companion he had brought her. To tell the truth, the doctor, knowing the princess, had foreseen this attraction, but he knew Fleurange was fully able to justify and sustain this first impression, and he sincerely hoped by bringing them together he had done something no less useful and beneficial for his wealthy patient than for his young _protégée_.

However this might be, nothing could have been better adapted to dispel the burden of grief that weighed on Fleurange’s heart than the immediate necessity of forgetting herself in active and assiduous care for another. It was rather a sad beginning to pass a succession of days and nights at the bedside of a sick stranger, but in the actual state of her mind it was the best thing she could have done. She possessed all the qualities that constitute an efficient nurse, and, to a degree that excited Dr. Leblanc’s surprise, firmness and promptitude, ease and gentleness in all her movements, vigor and skill, and seasonable attentions--nothing was wanting, and the result was--the never-failing effect of her beauty and grace, added to the sentiments of lively gratitude sick people generally feel for those who know how to relieve them. The princess did not cease thanking the doctor, and the latter, quite pleased with the result of his inspiration, left Fleurange not only without anxiety, but with the most favorable hopes as to her position.

Though scarcely able to travel, the Princess Catharine insisted on leaving Munich, and by easy stages she succeeded in reaching Genoa. Now she was on her way to Leghorn, and thence would go to Florence without delay, as she was eager to arrive at the palace which was her real home, having long been obliged by her health to absent herself from Russia, or at least to live there only during the brief portion of the year known as the pleasant season.

For the first time, almost, since she left her friends, Fleurange was now absolutely alone, and at liberty to indulge freely in her own reflections. She began by recalling the cherished memory of her distant friends, from whom she was every moment drifting away with frightful rapidity. It was the hour sung by the poet:

“The hour that wakens fond desire In men at sea, and melts their thoughtful heart, Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell”;

and Fleurange’s thoughts for a long time dwelt upon the recent events of her life, so rapid in their current as now to be numbered among the things for ever vanished--upon the happy family now scattered; the days--so few--in which she was permitted to be a member of it and finally, her present isolation, for, notwithstanding the kindness of the princess, she felt extremely isolated. By a singular exchange of _rôles_, it was she--the unprotected orphan, who now seemed to have become the support of her protectress; and the lady of rank--the rich princess, the poor woman spoiled by fortune--who seemed to seek aid and consolation from her. Fleurange’s kind heart found unexpected relief in these cares, the very success of which was ample reward. She felt her affection increase for the object of these attentions in proportion as she lavished them, but it was rather a feeling one has for a child or an inferior, than one it would have seemed natural to have for a person on whom she was dependent, and to whom she actually owed respect and obedience. She therefore felt solitary, and this loneliness was depressing. And yet in spite of herself--in spite of her melancholy (though this may seem contradictory)--an irresistible sensation of joy quickened the pulsations of her heart.

Who has not experienced this joy that has once seen the beautiful sky of Italy, and left it, and then beheld it again? Who has not greeted with transport the charming and sublime features of its glorious scenery as it appears anew on the horizon, as if beholding once more the face of a beloved friend? And who, after being long deprived of hearing the sweet accents of its musical language, has not heard them again with emotion? All these impressions must have been more deeply experienced in Fleurange’s case than in many others. And as the wind went down, and the moon ascended the clear sky, reflecting a train of light that grew brighter and brighter on the sea, like a pathway of diamonds leading to an enchanted abode, Fleurange, with her eyes fixed on the dazzling waters, felt for a moment transported with joy! All the sadness of the past as well as of the present vanished: she only realized the infinite pleasure of living, of being young, of being here under this sky, on this sea, near that coast whose odors were perceptible; and when she remembered that that coast was Italy, that she would be there in a few hours, a throng of poetic dreams and confused presentiments of happiness added their vague hopes to the secret joy with which she felt, as it were, intoxicated.

Dreams--half-understood dreams of youth--which are seldom realized, and which at a later day, according as the soul triumphs over or yields to the dangers of life, are transformed into divine and powerful aspirations, or into deceptive and fatal realities!

At this same hour, what was Clement dreaming of, seated at his garret window, and likewise gazing at the starry sky? Ah! if he could have followed her whose image filled his soul, he would now have been beside Fleurange as she was thus wafted away from him, lulled by her confused dreams. His reverie, too, was sad, but there was nothing vague or indefinite about it, and the manly tenderness of his look expressed firmness and resolution rather than softness. The future was clearly defined in his mind. Yes, though he was only twenty years old, he felt capable of cherishing a fond memory in his heart without ever being unfaithful to it. Yes, she should remain there, as in a sanctuary, and, after God, he would offer her the labors, the studies, the poetry, and the purity of his life! Every talent he had received should be cultivated, and bring forth all that was required on the part of the Giver. This motive should quicken his mental faculties, and refresh him after the exertions of the day; stimulate him to arduous labor--sacred in his eyes--which he would pursue with energy and constancy, for it was the source of his parents’ comfort and support, and the reliance of their old age. And if at length!--Perhaps some day!--But when the sudden revival of a forbidden hope gave him all at once a thrill, he repressed it. His judgment, his reason, a painful and invincible presentiment, had for a long time assured him this hope was vain. “_Garder l’amour en brisant l’espoir_” was his aim and _devise_--a task painful, difficult, and perhaps even impossible. But at this time such was his fancy and such his dream!

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTE:

[58] “A friend, not of my fortune, but myself.”

TENNYSON: ARTIST AND MORALIST.[59]

No English voice in the world of letters wakes the pulses of our age to the thrill of joy which greeted _Childe Harold_ and _Rob Roy_. Those monarchs of the popular heart left no successors; or if their mantle hung for a moment on the shoulders of another, it is now buried in the grave of Dickens. We have yet several novelists. We have many poets. But none has obtained universal appreciation; to none has been awarded with general consent the palm of paramount renown. Yet it will not be questioned that few living writers command a larger following, are remembered with more affection, and heard with greater eagerness than the author of “In Memoriam.”

There are few studies more delightful than the growth of a poet’s mind. In the case of Tennyson we witness the whole process of development. We have seen him in his timid beginnings and in his brilliant prime. More than forty years have passed since a slender volume of poems introduced a young graduate of Cambridge to the English-reading world. The modest offering fell upon a time which had garnered larger and riper fruit. There were giants in those days. Byron indeed was dead, but his fame, although it had passed its zenith, still shone the brightest in the firmament. Shelley had preceded him, but the reputation of that sweet singer and genuine artist was growing, and has not ceased to grow. The lovers of Campbell had not surrendered their faith that the _Pleasures of Hope_ and the story of _Gertrude of Wyoming_ were but a prelude to loftier strains. From the grave of _Adonaïs_ men’s eyes had turned with regret and wonder to the bold outline of _Hyperion_ and the rich shadows of _St. Agnes’ Eve_. Coleridge was a wreck, but the finger of his _Ancient Mariner_ pointed many a thoughtful gaze toward the untravelled country which fringes the visible world. The master-hand that had swept the chords of Scottish minstrelsy had not yet lost all its original vigor. And Wordsworth’s voice gave loud and clear the signal of poetic reform, and all who were ready to desert the out-worn moulds of classic thought and classic imagery had begun to close around his banner.

Into that circle of splendid names no youthful aspirant could win admittance without a challenge. More fortunate, however, than Keats, Tennyson secured through university friendships some indulgence from the reviews. A few were eager to crown him. It is now acknowledged that their unwinnowed praise discovered less of the judge than of the partisan. The conservative temper of Wilson was provoked by the cordial welcome accorded the new-comer in certain quarters to assume an attitude of repression that was, to say the least, ungenerous. A measured severity might have been amply justified. This first venture was indeed superior to those _Hours of Idleness_ which had drawn the sneer of the _Edinburgh Review_. But he would have been a bold prophet who in 1830 from “Claribel” and the “Mermaid” would have foretold the “Idylls of the King.”

Tennyson ripened slowly. His next volume was published two years later. It was enriched with the “Lady of Shalott,” the “Lotus-Eaters,” and the “Palace of Art,” but many of the poems were disfigured by his earlier mannerisms, and some discovered an affected mysticism and a hankering after novel expression that was not indicative of health or strength. The poet, too, had betrayed a sensitiveness to criticism that augured ill for the discipline of his powers. It was still an open question whether the great gifts which he unquestionably possessed would be burnished by patient labor, or after some idle brandishings rust in satisfied repose. Nor would he have been the first for whom victory too early and lightly won has twined the poppy with her laurel. A silence of ten years followed, and it seemed probable that another name must be added to those of Campbell and Coleridge on the roll of splendid disappointments.

But during this long interval he had not been idle. He had thought and he had suffered. He had learned much and discarded much. On a sudden, his treasury was opened, and the fruits of energy and discipline fell in glistening showers at the feet of a public which had almost forgotten him. The “Morte d’Arthur,” “Dora,” “Love and Duty,” “Ulysses,” “Locksley Hall,” appealed in divers tones to a charmed and astonished audience. By one sweep, and with no feeble hand, he had planted his standard in many and widely different fields. The bright forecast of his college friends was justified. He had sprung at a bound into the front rank of living poets.

We pass over the “Princess,” which added little to his reputation, and reach 1850, a cardinal point in his career. In that year it is just to say that “Lycidas” and “Adonaïs” were eclipsed by “In Memoriam.” This remarkable work, at once the noblest monody and most impressive of heart histories, interpreted the author’s life and consolidated his fame. “Maud” came next, and, morbid, incoherent, structureless as it is, would have severely tried a credit less firmly rooted. “Maud” indeed seems to owe its origin rather to the blind impulse of crude intemperate youth, or the promptings of some delirious fever, than the deliberate, healthful movement of the poet’s higher faculties. It marks the single break in the progress of his mind.

Not a few of Tennyson’s admirers had always affirmed the “Morte d’Arthur” to be the strongest of his works. That fragment was published in 1842, but it was not until 1859 that four kindred poems were drawn from that Arthurian romance which had early haunted his fancy and has chiefly employed the energies of his riper years. The “Idylls of the King” have had several successors, and the “Last Tournament” completes the cycle.

An effort has lately been made in certain quarters to depreciate Tennyson. We do not object to comparisons if they are fruitful in suggestion, and are instituted in a candid spirit. But perhaps analysis affords the surer test. We ourselves hold Tennyson to be the first of living English poets, and incline to rank him above Byron and beside Wordsworth. In the course of an attempt to indicate his place in literature, we shall quote wherever quotations may sustain or illustrate our ideas. We shall draw mainly from those works which exhibit a writer at his best. The height of mountain ranges is gauged by their loftiest peaks, and the merit of a public benefactor by his virtues, not his shortcomings. A poet is a public benefactor. Not his failures, but his masterpiece, should supply the materials of an honest judgment.

I.

_Vision_, in the old Roman conception, was the distinguishing faculty of the poet. And indeed _vates_, not _poeta_, marks the fundamental condition of his art. The _seer_ precedes the _maker_. It is not indispensable that he should see more than other men, but he will see more clearly. His perceptions are acute and nimble; his sensations are intense. The retina and ear-drum deliver with peculiar speed and precision their messages to his brain. His glance tracks the eagle in his circles, and numbers the hues of the western sky. He catches the whisper of fainting winds, and spells the cadence of the rippling stream. To him all outlines are sharp and crisp, every tint is vivid, every tone is clear. Senses exquisitely organized are the first essential of the poet.

Sensations are fraught with countless degrees of pleasure, with infinite shades of pain. Those objects whose ideas awaken a feeling of delight we call beautiful. To register the beautiful is an instinct of the poet. With a nice reference to the pleasure imparted, he discriminates forms, divides the chromatic scale, graduates the gamut of sound. In a word, his æsthetic judgment is wakeful and unerring. But the keenest joys of the mind are not begotten by beauty pure and simple. There is a fuller and sweeter satisfaction than that derived from kaleidoscope combinations of color, arabesques without significance, and _fantasias_ without text or theme. Wherever _design_ emerges, the notion of _fitness_ is born. The Greek found it in the human body. We can trace it in the flower and the star. When we contemplate those things of which design may be predicated, there is blended with the feeling of pleasure a perception of inward adaptation. The idea of perfection is married to the idea of beauty. The ideal is their offspring. Upon it the æsthetic judgment unaided dares not pronounce. The complex faculty, whose province is the ideal, is _taste_. It is the second requisite of the poet.

Most persons of culture and refinement have taste in some degree. They are no strangers to the pure delight evoked by a smiling landscape. In the human form they enjoy the beauty of outline and proportion, and recognize the nice adjustment of structure to a central aim. But their joys are transient. The flower fades; sunset yields to moonlight; autumn touches with her pencil the canvas of the spring; one graceful attitude melts into another; emotions course across the countenance like winds over standing wheat. The poet comes. His mission is to chain the fleeting, to fix the evanescent, to reproduce the past. He brings you a rose with the bloom on it; calls up the buried friend; stays the sinking sun on the edge of his western bed. His life is a long revolt against the law of change. Nor is he confined to imitation. His sphere transcends realities. He may play with nature, if he will not violate her. His memory is not a store-house only, but a crucible as well, where the phenomena of sense lie fused in a glowing golden mass. Through his brain float airy shapes surpassing and yet suggesting the grace of earthly forms; ideals strange and fantastic, yet bound by subtle ties of relationship to types of the actual world. His fancy is ever in labor. Incessant gestation, incessant parturition, engage her energies. Reproduction, creation, is a law of the poet’s being. It is this which vindicates his right to the noble name of _maker_.

Keen senses, a just taste, creative force, compose the common dowry of artists. But art is threefold--plastic, pictorial, poetic. To each species belongs a peculiar medium in which memories are embalmed and fancies embodied. The media are solids, colors, words. In language lie certain powers and certain limitations. The poet divines them. He produces a speaking picture, but he remembers that much of a picture cannot be spoken. He demonstrates that much also may be told that cannot be painted. On his canvas vivacity and intensity do duty for light and shade. Elaboration, suggestion, silence, are the elements of his perspective. He borrows from sculpture the significance of _isolation_, and the incisive lesson of the _group_. Images, metaphors, similes, are the poet’s graving-tools. He learns their latent capacities and their inherent flaws. He secures subtle effects by climax, antithesis, evolution. He plays the chemist with ideas, and presents them in every stage of development, now vaporous, now congealed. He weighs words, detects their finer applications, and fathoms the deeper meanings which are coiled about their roots. And, finally, he masters the mechanism of speech, the organic structure of sentences, the joints and vertebræ of his native tongue. One step remains, to seize the principles of metre, the secrets of rhythm and cæsura, the march and music of verse. His panoply is finished. He is a poet.

Let us apply some of these tests to Tennyson. And, first, his power of simple imitation. At first sight this seems no lofty triumph of the poet’s art. And yet how much it implies! To translate substance into the unsubstantial. To portray the visible and tangible in that which has neither color nor dimension. Above all, to transfuse through the spirit of man the spirit of nature. It behooves him who would compass this to purge the heart of emotion, abjure self-consciousness, and forget, like the Pythian priestess, his own identity. He is not to steep his landscape in sentiment of his own, nor ascribe to it a fictitious sympathy with human moods and passions. The outward beauty he contemplates must traverse his mental atmosphere, untinctured, unrefracted, like white light. We must catch in his work the soul of the scene, a spirit rising from it like an exhalation, not drenching it with alien dews. We find a happy instance of right treatment in this cool upland valley from “Œnone”:

“There lies a vale in Ida lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills; The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters slowly drawn. On either hand The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling thro’ the cloven ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea. Behind the valley topmost Gargarus Stands up and takes the morning; but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion’s columned citadel.”

Beside this place the rank luxuriance of a tropic island where “Enoch Arden,” shipwrecked, waited for a sail:

“The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns, And winding glades high up like ways to heaven, The slender coco’s drooping crown of plumes, The lightning flash of insect and of bird, The lustre of the long convolvuluses, That coiled around the stately stems and ran Even to the limits of the land, the glows And glories of the broad belt of the world-- All these he saw.”

Of pure imitative art Scott and Wordsworth are the great modern masters. Yet we shall all acknowledge that the passages quoted exhibit a rare excellence. It would be hard to match in Theocritus the breezy freshness of the “Brook.” As we listen, we lose ourselves, and seem to penetrate the joyous heart of nature. We too are in Arcadia. It is the morning of the world, and the infant god of some slender streamlet hums his naïve song to Pan, who lies along the sward:

“I wind about, and in, and out, With many a blossom sailing; And here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling.

* * * * *

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance Among my skimming swallows, I make the netted sunbeams dance Against my sandy shallows.”

We have dwelt at length on the sincerity with which Tennyson interprets nature. It is the stamp of the true poet. The dilettante, however cunning, cannot counterfeit it. He cannot keep himself out of the picture, but invests it with his own sentiment, and tricks it out in the whims and caprices of the hour. It is otherwise with Wordsworth. That high-priest of nature enters her presence reverently, with humble and candid heart. He puts off the vanities and weaknesses of man on the verge of her holy ground. From his lips her lessons fall with a simple earnestness, like oracles from the mouth of a child. Her truths he incarnates, but does not presume to clothe.

While it is false art to attribute to nature a conscious sympathy with man, it is true that she at times discovers an unconscious harmony with his moods. Our emotions are deepened by the accord. The happy are the happier for sunshine. The sad are saddest in the night and the rain. To aim at this mystic unison, to strike one note from feeling and from circumstance, is legitimate and delightful. Let us contrast an example of such treatment with the less truthful method to which we have referred. We ought always to study a theory in some felicitous expression of it, and therefore we take these graceful lines from Dr. Holmes. The stars and flowers touched by the woes of fallen man have conspired to watch and warn him. The flowers cannot bear the sight of human misery.

“Alas! each hour of daylight tells A tale of shame so crushing, That some turn white as sea-bleached shells, And some are always blushing.

“But when the patient stars look down On all their light discovers, The traitor’s smile, the murderer’s frown, The lips of lying lovers,

“They try to shut their saddening eyes, And in the vain endeavor We see them twinkling in the skies, And so they wink for ever.”

At the first glance this moves, and pleases; because the emotion of the moment veils the extravagant hyperbole. The writer is an artist, and makes us see, as it were, through tears. But the lines do not grow upon us like the truly beautiful. As we read them a second time, there comes over us a feeling of annoyance, almost of pain, that the flowers should be misinterpreted, the stars misconstrued. We tremble before nature’s shocks and storms, and cannot afford to darken her brightest bloom or trouble her sweet serenity. Look now at this figure of “Mariana,” weeping, forsaken, “in the moated grange!” There is no pathetic prelude, no preliminary appeal to human sympathies. A neglected garden and a lonely house. A reach of level waste, colorless, silent, cold. The desolation is contagious, and just as the heart is sinking into a state of depression and despair, the moan of the stricken girl falls quivering on the ear.

“With blackest moss the flower-plots Were thickly crusted, one and all; The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the peach to the garden wall. The broken sheds looked sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch: Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, ‘My life is dreary! He cometh not!’ she said; She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!’”

We are very far from saying that Tennyson is everywhere free from the pathetic fallacy. But his sins of the kind occur chiefly in some vein of sportive apologue, like the “Talking Oak,” or in the mouth of Maud’s morbid lover, half distraught by temper and wholly crazed by crime. And, indeed, if any could be pardoned for beholding in all things one image, it would be, no doubt, the lover. In the old myth, love guided the hand of art; but Pygmalion was a sculptor, not a landscape painter.

The portrayal of the human form is one of the painter’s triumphs, as it is the sole province of plastic art. Poetry, for the most part, evades a description of personal beauty, and is content with a suggestion. Yet there are two or three etchings in the “Palace of Art” which seem to us not unworthy of a place in that gallery of Philostratus which a poet’s hand repeopled:

“Or sweet Europa’s mantle blew unclasped, From off her shoulder backward borne; From one hand drooped a crocus, one hand grasped The mild bull’s golden horn.

“Or else flush’d Ganymede, his rosy thigh Half buried in the eagle’s down, Sole as a flying star shot through the sky Above the pillared town.”

These are mere outlines. But Tennyson has drawn one figure with almost pictorial finish and force. It is Aphrodite revealing herself to Paris on Mount Ida:

“Idalian Aphrodite, beautiful, Fresh as the foam, new bath’d in Paphian wells, With rosy, slender fingers, backward drew From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat And shoulder: from the violets her light foot Shone rosy white, and o’er her rounded form, Between the shadows of the vine-bunches, Floated the glowing sunlight as she moved.”

This is genuine _painting_. There is form and color in it, and, withal, the _spirit_ of beauty bathing the whole, untainted by the faintest suggestion of wanton love.

In the temple of outward nature poetry is only the acolyte of painting. But one shrine is more exclusively her own. She is mistress of the heart. Over that ocean no other wing sustains continuous flight. There are waves of impulse which canvas cannot reflect, and currents of emotion untraced by the limner’s skill. There are dainty joys and fears that mock his grasp, and gust of passion that confound his cunning. Pictorial art must read the soul in the face, and the face is at best a clouded mirror. From the poet we hide nothing. The growth of character, the drift of habit, the pressure of inherited tendencies, springs of motive, stings of appetite--he discerns and deciphers all. But he must not speak in riddles: he is bound to make his meaning clear. He owes a duty to the humblest. They look to him to lend thought a form, shadow a substance; to explain the strange by the familiar, and flood the whole with the mellow flight of fancy. The poet is, in a certain sense, what Sidney would make him, the right popular philosopher. On the success of Tennyson in this field there is some difference of opinion. The fervor of his sympathies within a certain range and the delicacy of his intuitions are unquestioned. His style is allowed to be rich in color, and often fraught with incisive force. Let us glance at some passages which depict the finer shades of feeling, or are conspicuous for felicitous expression. We will then look at the charges, so often brought against Tennyson, of obscurity and a want of dramatic power.

It is a fact of common experience that quite opposite emotions, wrought to intensity, reach a state of fusion. They move, as it were, in converging lines, and their vanishing point is pain; or rather, they have what physicists would call a common dew-point. Thus we hear of the luxury of sorrow and of love’s sweet smart. Coleridge has touched this psychic truth with extreme tenderness in “Genevieve.” He shows us the young girl rapt in a troubled wonder before the strange feeling that storms her gentle breast. Her heart flutters like a snared bird:

“Her bosom heaved, she stept aside; As conscious of my look she stept: Then suddenly, with timorous eye, She fled to me and wept.”

So in one of Tennyson’s “Idylls,” the eyes of the happy Enid are suffused with tears. It is hardly possible to read the lines without loving human nature:

“He turned his face, And kissed her climbing; and she cast her arms About him, and at once they rode away. And never yet, since high in Paradise, O’er the four rivers the first roses blew, Came purer pleasure unto mortal kind Than lived through her who in that perilous hour Put hand to hand beneath her husband’s heart And felt him hers again. She did not weep, But o’er her meek eyes came a happy mist, Like that which kept the heart of Eden green.”

Most persons have known those transient attachments which are born of “accident, blind contact, and the strong necessity of loving.” In the “Gardener’s Daughter” some one alludes in this playful fashion to the dethroned darling of his salad days:

“Oh! she To me myself, for some three careless moons, The summer pilot of an empty heart Unto the shores of nothing. Know you not Such touches are but embassies of love, To tamper with the feelings ere he found Empire for life?”

Few who have read the new “Maid’s Tragedy” have forgotten “Elaine.” There is no sweeter face in story. We trace a master’s hand in the passage where a passionate sympathy holds her from her sleep, and the deep lines of Lancelot’s countenance are mirrored in her white soul:

“As when a painter, poring on a face, Divinely through all hindrance finds the man Behind it, and so paints it that his face, The shape and color of a mind and life, Lives for his children ever at its best And fullest: so his face before her lived.”

Lancelot is always gracious to her, and grateful for her tender care, but he is moody and absent, and instinct tells her that his love can never be hers. She bears home a heavy heart:

“She murmured, ‘Vain! in vain! it cannot be; He will not love me! how, then, must I die?’ Then, as a little, helpless, innocent bird, That has but one plain passage of few notes, Will sing the simple passage o’er and o’er For all an April morning, till the ear Wearies to hear it; so the simple maid Went half the night repeating, ‘Must I die?’”

One more. A song of Tristram’s, rife with the graceful gayety that masks and half-redeems a faithless heart. It might have been made by Ronsard, and sung by Bussy d’Amboise. The husband of “Isolt of Brittany” and the lover of “Isolt of Britain” gives the _rationale_ of broken vows:

“Ay, ay, O ay, the winds that bend the brier! A star in heaven, a star within the mere. Ay, ay, O ay, a star was my desire; And one was far apart, and one was near! Ay, ay, O ay, the winds that bow the grass! And one was water, and one star was fire. And one will ever shine, and one will pass; Ay, ay, O ay, the winds that move the mere!”

The admirers of Byron and the poets of the Georgian era find Tennyson obscure. By obscurity they ought to mean a darkness born of confusion, the cloud of fallacy, the vagueness of incoherence. Crude thoughts, unfledged fancies, halting metaphors, are obscure. Poetasters are commonly dark, and it would be easy to show that Byron himself in his best work, the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_, is sometimes guilty of obscurity. And it must be admitted that some poems of Tennyson’s youth, and likewise “Maud,” are open to this objection. But if, as we believe, the charge is pointed at “In Memoriam,” “Love and Duty,” or the “Palace of Art,” then we deny its force. It may be that they who find enigmas in _Paradise Lost_ and “In Memoriam” mistake the source of their difficulties. We incline to depreciate what we fail to comprehend. We forget that deep waters are not necessarily turbid; that novelty is not obscurity. As we climb a mountain, we gain new views of the valley beneath, yet the novel landscape may be no less vivid than the old. There is, indeed, a dulness of the ear that detects no clue to the myriad threads of harmony. There is a myoptic disease which sees nothing but indistinctness beyond its narrow horizon. In such cases the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are mystified.

We have said that the poet owes a duty to the humblest. That duty is fulfilled when he has conjured his fancies into visible shapes, and given truth a concrete form. He is not called upon to find eyes for the blind, or learning for the ignorant. It is enough if at his banquet there is food for all stomachs. The poet owes a duty not to the humble only.

There are, for example, two methods by which poetry may illuminate history. It may invest personal character with the truth and vigor of life, and portray detached scenes in correct and brilliant colors. Or it may reveal to the imagination by exact and felicitous metaphor the sequence of events, the march of knowledge, the drift of opinion, and the “long result of time.” Thus Lucan poetized a narrative, Lucretius thinks in imagery. We recall no better illustration of the former treatment than the fine stanza from _Childe Harold_:

“When Athens’ armies fell at Syracuse, And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war, Redemption rose up in the Attic muse, Her voice their only ransom from afar. See as they chant the tragic hymn, the car Of the o’ermastered victor stops; the reins Fall from his hands; his idle scymitar Starts from its belt; he rends his captive’s chains, And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.”

The anecdote is a noble one, and has gained nobility in the telling. But anecdotes after all are not the marrow of history. Something may be learned from Montesquieu as well as from Marmontel. Two lines from “Locksley Hall” exhibit the other method of interpreting history. The lines aim at nothing less than at once to condense and illumine the most pregnant epoch of modern times, the eighteenth century. This looks certainly like a preposterous abuse of that definition assigned to the drama, “an abstract and brief chronicle of the time.” Let us recall for a moment the period of Louis Quinze. The feudal system has fallen. The flowers are withered, the chains remain. The nobles have become courtiers, municipal privilege has perished, the peasant is a slave. Dishonor on the throne, bankruptcy in the treasury, the poor starving, the rich corrupt. Oppression tightening his grasp, and knowledge learning to realize the woe and to divine the remedy. On one side, despair that has begun to think of vengeance; on the other, blind arrogance that does not dream of retribution. And now, is not the whole story told with almost terrible simplicity in the compass of these lines?

“Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher Glares at one that nods and blinks behind a slowly-dying fire.”

It may be said that Byron was well-read in history; but he held that only romantic characters and striking facts were fit subjects of poetic treatment. That is not our opinion. We believe Byron gave the best he had. Moreover, it is not true that poetry may borrow nothing from history but personal traits and isolated events. That narrow view of the poet’s province was corrected for English literature by the _Paradise Regained_. Poetry is no mendicant, to be put off with the stale scraps and shallow gossip of the servants’ hall. Her seat is at the high table, beside the masters of the house.

Tennyson, we are told, has no dramatic power. It is true that he has written no drama. Does it follow that he is wanting in dramatic power?

Derivation often tells us more of words than of men. A drama is something done, not told or sung; neither narrative nor ode, but something _done_. First, then, we must have _doers_; or, if you please, actors. Our actors must prove themselves alive, they must be impelled to move. The impelling force is _incident_. But detached scenes illustrative of character do not make a drama, incident is not _plot_. The action which develops character must at the same time tend toward a certain end, the catastrophe of the piece. A drama, then, in the strictest sense is this: a development of character in situations which excite to action in a particular direction.

Where the evolution of plot is subordinate to the portrayal of character, the drama is loose and inorganic, like many of Shakespeare’s plays. Where the elaboration of personal traits is merged in the accomplishment of the event, the drama leans toward the epic, like a tragedy of Æschylus. Perfect equimarch in the development of character and plot stamps the ideal drama. Dramatic power in this sense is one of the rarest of human gifts, and perhaps has been exerted nowhere but in the plays of Sophocles. The phrase has, in English criticism, a much narrower meaning, and points simply to the exhibition of character by action.

We acknowledge that those poems of Tennyson which preceded the “Idylls of the King” gave little evidence of dramatic talent. Like the works of Byron, they are for the most part lyrical, reflective. In them the “beings of the mind” are rather analyzed than animated. The poet interprets them. They do not speak for themselves. Even dramatic insight, which is another thing than dramatic power, seems at times to be wanting. Thus his “Ulysses” is a modern soul grappling with the framework of Homeric times. “Margaret,” “Madeleine,” “Isabel,” are lovely dreams, not lovely women. In the “Princess,” if anywhere, we should look for the development of character. But as the persons of the tale pass across the stage, we incline to suspect with the prince that they are but shadows, “and all the mind is clouded with a doubt.” Indeed, little Lillia, whose burst of pretty petulance suggests the theme, is by far the most lifelike figure.

But the judgment passed upon living poets is at best provisional, and subject to reversal on appeal. The writer of pastorals will perhaps produce an _Æneid_ in his riper years; “L’Allegro” and “Lycidas” may be succeeded by an epic. In the cluster of poems which embodies the Arthurian legends, there is much discrimination of character. The courtly flippancy of “Gawain” is distinguished from Tristram’s joyous levity. “Etarre” is vicious, “Vivien” is base. “Enid” is not a gentler being than “Elaine,” yet her meekness is finely contrasted with the latter’s emotional nature. In “Lancelot” we have a noble spirit in the toils of a great crime. In “Arthur,” the perfect equipose of _character_, illumined by a sublime resolve.

Nor are the foremost persons of the poems mere portraits. They are actors as well. They approach for the most part unheralded. Their temper and motives are self-betrayed, or hinted with a wise reserve. Their personal traits are evoked by incident or emphasized in dialogue. Here certainly is dramatic power of a certain kind. Not the highest which creates a drama--is it high enough for an epic? We incline to doubt. At least, it has produced none. We cannot allow that the “Idylls” which are grouped around the figure of the king constitute an epic poem.

The epic--we speak of the _Æneid_--is distinguished from the drama by this, that the development of character is subordinate to the evolution of plot, the actors are merged in the action. And as the drama may lean toward the epic, so the epic may lean toward history. That the poet unites in his own person the functions of scene-painter, machinist, and _chorēgus_, is only a difference of form.

Now, it is not so much grasp of character as _nexus_ of plot that we miss in the “Idylls.” Scott’s _Rokeby_ is an epic, yet Bertram Risingham is not more lifelike than “Lancelot.” But in _Rokeby_ the story grows; one event generates another, the catastrophe is inevitable. Episodes are admitted in the epic, but they must be natural growths, or at least successful grafts. For example, “Elaine” and “Guinevere” stand in true organic relation, but “Enid” and “Vivien” have nothing in common with the rest of the cycle but their social atmosphere and casual reference to familiar names. In the poet’s mind, no doubt, the old Arthurian romances have been fused into a kind of unity. They present to him a coherent picture; discover a central thought. It is the soul at war with flesh, aspiration foiled by appetite, the eagle stung by the serpent. But he has conveyed the idea by short and random strokes. We catch only glimpses of it, and are not permitted to watch the progressive development. In the “Idylls of the King” there is the matter of an epic, but not the form. We should prefer to place them in a class apart, which might include the _Faerie Queen_.

On the range, finish, and accuracy of Tennyson’s diction, we need not dwell. But no view of a poet’s artistic powers would be complete without a glance at his command of melody and rhythm. For sweetness and clearness of tone, the choral hymn in the “Lotus-Eaters,” and the “Bugle” and “Cradle” songs which beguile _entr’actes_ in the “Princess” are excelled by few English lyrics. In grasp of rhythm Tennyson yields to no recent poet, except Shelley. There is a striking instance of rhythmic effect in the “Palace of Sin.” A strain of music floats in upon the ear, deepens, swells, and at length bursts forth in an orchestral symphony.

Most of Tennyson’s later poems have been written in unrhymed pentameter, and his management of the verse suggests a comparison with his master. In dignity of movement, Milton has never been equalled by any English poet. It seems that no line but his could express the lost archangel, or embody that vision of imperial Rome where sonorous names load as with cloth of gold the march of the stately iambics. Yet nothing could stoop more awkwardly to the quiet talk and joys of the married pair in Eden. While Tennyson’s blank verse falls short of his model in majesty and serried force, we must allow it to be more flexible. We cannot imagine the little novice using the Miltonic line. Her gentle thoughts would have been drowned in the mighty current, whereas Tennyson’s tripping vocables deliver with easy grace her artless prattle.

We can only allude to those experiments in metre which amuse the leisure of an artist, although one of them deserves attention. It is an ode to Milton:

“O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies, O skilled to sing of time and eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages!”

Let the reader compare these lines with some familiar model of Alcaics like “Vides ut altâ,” and then ask himself whether _quantity_ has hitherto had fair play in English verse.

II.

What has art to do with morals? With what propriety shall a poet play the moralist? His purpose is distinct, his method is radically different, is his object ever identical? We know that it is not always so. In the face of outward nature the truthful artist is forbidden to read humanity. Hardly is Wordsworth suffered to discover here divinity. The Greek sculptor sought beauty, not goodness, in the daughters of men, and the lines that grew beneath his fingers breathe the harmony of grace, not the harmony of character. Does the application of these rigorous principles bound the sphere of genuine art? Do the good and the beautiful nowhere cohere and interfuse? They may--in the _ideal_. For what is beauty in things which disclose design but the reflex of perfection? And what is goodness but the perfection of the heart? In the scheme of ethics, vice is ugliness, error a discord, and weakness disproportion, character means equipoise, and virtue expresses harmony. But how shall art or ethics discern a moral symmetry, and crown a spiritual perfection, without a right conception of man’s nature, of his place and purpose, his relation to the universe and to God? So far as he portrays the heart, the poet must be a moralist. Within this domain the truest art will utter the purest morals.

It is a blessed law by which he who aims to please is constrained to edify. For reason is a disinherited prince, and the estate is too often squandered before he comes to his own. Pride rears the head against precept. The imagination flutters and beats her bars, until experience has clipped her wings. The ideal republic could ill afford to dispense with poets, for there is no lesson like the modest lesson of a lovely life. To our gaze perhaps the influence seems wholly lost, and yet may be only latent. This is sure, that virtue has still a foothold in the heart that keeps an altar to the beautiful. We know how many seeds of goodness, what germs of aspiration, are flung broadcast by the poet’s hand. Who will say that his random sowings may not stir in a genial hour, strike root in the depths of motive, and blossom in act and life? No thoughtful mind has failed to recognize the insight of Sidney’s words in his _Defence of Poesy_: “For even those hard-hearted evil men who think virtue a school name, and know no other good but _indulgere genio_, yet will be content to be delighted, which is all the good-fellow poet seems to promise, and so steal to see the form of goodness, which, seen, they cannot but love ere themselves be aware, as if they had taken a medicine of cherries.”

The ethical standard is sensitive to the influence of climate and of race. The Italian and the German recognize the same virtues, but write them in different scales referred to a national key-note. The growth of knowledge and the expansion of sympathy determine a deeper change. From the age of Pericles to the age of Napoleon, the ideal of character has undergone alterations which have penetrated the essence and affected the type. Of certain virtues which fired the heart of an Athenian, we have kept nothing but the names, and we have canonized others of which he had no conception. The attitude of the individual man toward nature and society is constantly shifting under the pressure of ideas. The wave of inquiry which rose in civic revolution has swept in widening circles over the whole surface of opinion, and now dashes on the primal verities which declare the origin and destiny of man. The mind is active, but the heart of the age is perplexed and sad. She ponders painfully the riddle of the painful earth. She is lost in the great forest, the new paths are uncertain, the old to her seem overgrown. She is troubled with a vague unrest, beset with dark misgivings, by results she loathes to accept, doubts which she longs to silence, and hopes she dare not forego. Her mood is too grave and earnest for blithe and heedless carol. She cannot pause to hear the idle singer of an empty day. The music which holds her ear must be attuned to serious sympathy, must echo her own self-questionings, and breathe her aspirations. She puts aside from her lip the cup of distilled water, and turns to the mineral spring that savors of the rugged earth.

De Musset is not more essentially a child of the age than Tennyson. Both inherited in rare perfection the exquisite sensibility and high tension of the nervous system which are developed by modern life. In both the violence of emotion is succeeded by prolonged depression. Their joy is often rapture, and their sorrow anguish, but the prevailing tone is a dreamy languor that betrays fatigue. Their intellects were plunged in the same bath of learning, and tempered in the furnace of the time. They unite in regretting the trustful past, and complain that they were born too late into a sick and decrepit world. They pace together the shore of life, and gaze with wistful eyes over the expanse of ocean. But here the parallel ends. Their roads diverge in youth. Each obeys a different impulse, and learns a different lesson. The one hears a growing harmony in the voices of science, and perceives an increasing purpose in the movement of mankind. The other bows the head in stupor before the howling storm. Tennyson has a kindly glance and a cheery word for his fellow-men, they are his brothers, his co-workers, ever reaping something new. De Musset loads the heart with a sense of utter misery, and paralyzes the will by the infusion of his self-contempt. He is half-indignant that his spirit should be still haunted by a sublime aspiration, and confesses almost with a groan:

“_Une immense espérance a traversé la terre._”[60]

It is in another mood that Tennyson hails the promise which he sees in the aspiration of the soul:

“What is it thou knowest, sweet voice? I cried, A hidden hope, the voice replied.”

There are few words more painful to read than the prayer in “L’Espoir en Dieu.” The passionate queries are wrung from a breaking heart. We offer a rude but passably close translation of two stanzas. The poet demands:

“Wherefore in a work divine So much of discord tarrieth? To what good end disease and sin? O God of justice! wherefore death?

“Wherefore suffer our unworth To dream, and to divine, a God? Doubt hath laid desolate the earth, Our view is too narrow or too broad.”

Compare the rooted faith and serene calm of the poem to “In Memoriam:”

“Thine are these orbs of light and shade, Thou madest life in man and brute, Thou madest death, and, lo, thy foot Is on the skull that thou hast made.

“Thou wilt not leave him in the dust, Thou madest man, he knows not why, He thinks he was not made to die, And thou hast made him, thou art just.”

Much, no doubt, of the peculiar spirit that pervades the work of either poet may be traced to the social atmosphere in which he moved. Much also is only to be explained by the history of his life. Behind the “In Memoriam,” an unselfish and ennobling sorrow weeps and prays above a cherished grave. “In Rolla,” remorse sobs bitterly amid the ruins of a wasted life. The song has betrayed the singer. The one is the laureate of hope: the other, a prophet of despair. Tennyson is a night-worn pilgrim whose kindling eye has caught the glimmer of a lovely dawn; De Musset, a tired swimmer whose drowning cry leaps toward us from the gates of death. The poetry of De Musset is a convex lens which draws to a fiery focus the doubts and longings of the time; Tennyson’s, a stained rose-window, that subdues the flaring sunlight to a mild and tender radiance.

While man’s moral nature is developed and determined by his attitude toward society and his Maker, it is also profoundly affected by his attitude toward women. The relative position of woman has been rather raised than lowered by the movement of modern thought. Much has been deciphered by speculation, and much dissected by science, but the deep significance of the female character remains intact. In the fine atmosphere which nourished the musings of Richter, two earthly forms move freely, the maiden and the wife. In the long process of comparative anatomy, the beautiful first reveals itself in the sweet instinct that binds a mother to her offspring. Then first does the fire of Prometheus fairly catch the clay. The noblest instinct and the noblest aspiration have one element in common--the abnegation of self. Perhaps the one is but a reflex of the other. It is certain that the highest art has done the fullest justice to women. Let us measure Byron and Tennyson by this standard. To Byron, woman was an exquisite instrument which responds in perfect tune to the master-touch of passion. To Tennyson, she is an embodied spirit, who inspires and tempers man while she seems to obey his impulse. It is a shallow criticism which would excuse Byron’s low conception by an unfortunate experience. If personal experience be narrow, why not look beyond it? If the feet stumble in the mire, the eyes may still be lifted. The fact is, an irresistible instinct compels a genuine artist to discern and to preach the truth. His life may prove a rebel, but his work will pay tribute to Cæsar.

The author of “Godiva,” of “Enid” and “Elaine” is eminently the poet of woman. It is especially worthy of remark that he should have maintained a distinct and lofty ideal throughout the Arthurian cycle. In the mediæval myths, the lineaments of the female character were sometimes clouded by the admixture of masculine traits. Through the Carlovingian romance that lives in Ariosto’s verse, there roves an unsexed and warlike virgin, whom the poet means us to admire; at whom we smile in secret. Tennyson has read woman’s nature with an insight too fine and delicate to place her in so false an attitude. There is no Bradamant in the “Idylls of the King.”

The unswerving justice of true genius finds consummate expression in the treatment of “Guinevere.” The wrong-doing of imperial beauty was a dangerous theme, and we may guess how it would have been handled by the author of “Parasina.” In the original legend the queen commanded sympathy, but she is now positively degraded by her preference for a meaner soul. It is Arthur’s doom, and no merit of hers, that he loves her still. There is little likelihood that a modern Francesca will borrow impulse or pretext from her story. It is amusing to find the lovers of Haidee and Gulnare scandalized by “Vivien.” If ever a vile nature was scorched and shrivelled by the flame of an honest wrath, that poem affords the spectacle. In wily Vivien, vice is neither condoned nor glozed, but simply stripped and gibbeted. The pure air which breathes throughout the “Idylls” is condensed in the lines of “Guinevere,” which declare the great purpose of the king. We may say with assurance that no other English poet, except Wordsworth, would have written them.

Tennyson has spoken words of comfort to many English hearts, and inspired with a noble purpose many English lives. His spirit has crossed the seas. To him and Wordsworth the youth of America owe much that they will not speedily forget. Other benefactors may receive some form of recompense, but how shall we repay a poet? It is not praise, but thanks we would offer Alfred Tennyson. Rare artist, and high teacher, sweet voice, pure heart, there are many who admire, and not a few who love him.

FOOTNOTES:

[59] _The Last Tournament._ Boston, 1871. J. R. Osgood & Co. _The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson, Poet-Laureate._ We have already printed in this magazine a review of Tennyson’s poems which aimed to indicate the Catholic aspects of his mind. The following article covers different ground.

[60] “A vast hope has passed over the earth.”

HOW THE CHURCH UNDERSTANDS AND UPHOLDS THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.

SECOND ARTICLE.

AGES OF THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH.

When the Christian religion had triumphed over idolatry, the principle of evil took refuge in heresy, and vigorously began a new attack upon the church. As women had once sealed their faith with their blood, so now they came eagerly forward to preach it by their learning. The centuries which produced the fathers of the church produced women also, to whom these great lights of the true faith were mainly indebted for their early education. The same circumstances also created women who, on the throne and in the council-chamber, governed turbulent nations and guided fierce passions, according to the rules of justice, honesty, and religion.

The mother of St. Gregory Nazianzen, Doctor of the Church, was Nonna, and is honored as a saint. Butler, in his _Lives of the Saints_, says: “She drew down the blessing of heaven upon her family by most bountiful and continual alms-deeds; ... yet, to satisfy the obligation of justice which she owed to her children, she, by her prudent economy, improved at the same time their patrimony.”

Here, therefore, in the fourth century, we find a woman commended for her practical knowledge of business and her skill in managing property. Ventura relates that, as soon as her son Gregory came into the world, she placed the Scriptures in his infant hands, and ever after inculcated in her teaching the greatest love and reverence for sacred learning. Nonna’s other children were both canonized, one of them, Gorgonia, having led the most exemplary life in the holy state of matrimony. (_La Donna Cattolica_, vol. i. pp. 431, 432.) St. Basil, who counted among his ancestry many martyrs of both sexes, was the son of St. Emelia, and the great-nephew of St. Macrina the Elder, of whom he says himself that he “counts it as one of the greatest benefits of Almighty God, and the truest of honors, to have been brought up by such a woman.” His elder sister, also named Macrina, was greatly instrumental in conducting his education. When after his death his brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa, went to visit their sister, and open his heart to her concerning their common sorrow, he found her dying, it is true, but so vigorous in mind that her discourse on the providence of God and the state of the soul after death was no less striking than comforting. He could hardly believe, says Ventura, that it was not a doctor of the church, a learned theologian, who was speaking to him; and so much did he treasure his sister’s words that he compiled his admirable _Treatise of the Soul_ and _The Resurrection_ chiefly from the matter furnished by her discourse. Macrina’s funeral was an ovation, and the bishop of the diocese held it an honor to be present thereat.

Olympias, the widow of Nembridius, the treasurer of the Emperor Theodosius the Great, flourished about the end of the fourth century, and was the friend and helper of St. John Chrysostom. His letters to her are part of his published works, and Nectarius, his predecessor in the Patriarchal chair of Constantinople, often consulted her on matters of ecclesiastical importance. When Chrysostom was persecuted and banished, she did not escape vexatious notice from heathen and heretical rulers; but through all, her fortitude would have done credit to the bravest man. The great patriarch charged her to continue, during his absence, “to serve the church with the same care and zeal” (Ventura, _Donna Cattolica_, p. 443), and elsewhere in his works says emphatically that “women, as well as men, can take part in any struggle for the cause of God and of the church.” (_Epistle 124, to the Italians._) In a letter to her, he says that her presence was _required_ at Constantinople to encourage the persecuted brethren, and in another he bids her exert all her resources to _save_ the Bishop Maruthas from the abyss (he having given signs of yielding to heresy). Further on, in the same letter, he gives her instructions, almost amounting to a diplomatic and official mission, with regard to the request of the King of the Goths for a bishop and missionary in place of Aubinus the Apostle, who had just died, after converting many thousand of these barbarians. When St. Chrysostom sent a messenger to the Pope St. Innocent, at the beginning of the persecutions at Constantinople, he gave him letters of recommendation to none but a few Roman ladies--Proba, Juliana, and Demetrias.

The influence of Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, upon her wayward son, is so well known that it is almost superfluous to dwell on it; and St. Jerome, eminently a learned saint, was scarcely less connected with holy and well-taught women. He himself tells us that it was especially his friend and spiritual daughter Paula who engaged him in the study of the Old and New Testaments, and who induced him to translate the former from the original Hebrew. Rohrbacher, in his _Ecclesiastical History_, corroborates this statement; and Capefigue, in his _Four First Ages of the Church_, says that “the pure society of women had imparted to Jerome a heartfelt exaltation, a deep enthusiasm for all purity and nobility in themselves.” We learn from Butler (_Lives of the Saints_) that Marcella, one of the many matrons under St. Jerome’s instruction in Rome, made great progress in the critical learning of the Holy Scriptures, and learned in a short time many things which had cost him abundance of labor (vol. ix.). Other women, of whom we shall speak hereafter, were collected under his guidance; almost all are now canonized saints, and were celebrated even in their own day for their skill and erudition. The great Paula was the most illustrious among them, and he tells us of her as also of five or six others that they were as well acquainted with Hebrew as with Latin and Greek. To the daughter-in-law of St. Paula, Jerome wrote a letter full of minute and seemingly trivial details, concerning the education of her little daughter, who afterwards became St. Paula the Younger. It is of such quaint interest, and so calculated to give a high idea of the importance attached by the great doctor of the church to the minutiæ of a little girl’s daily life, that we cannot resist the temptation of quoting a few extracts from it:

“Let her be brought up as Samuel was in the temple, and the Baptist in the desert, in utter ignorance of vanity and vice; ... let her never hear bad words nor learn profane songs; ... let her have an alphabet of little letters made of box or ivory, the names of all which she must know, that she may play with them, and that learning may be made a diversion. When a little older, let her form each letter in wax with her finger, guided by another’s hand; then let her be invited, by prizes and presents suited to her age, to join syllables together.... Let her have companions to learn with her, that she may be spurred on by emulation.... She is not to be scolded or browbeaten if slower, but to be encouraged that she may rejoice to surpass, and be sorry to see herself outstripped and behind others, not envying their progress, but rejoicing at it while she reproaches herself with her own backwardness. Great care is to be taken that she conceive no aversion to studies, lest their bitterness remain in after-years. A master must be found for her, a man both of virtue and learning: nor will a great scholar think it beneath him to teach her the first elements of letters.... That is not to be contemned without which nothing great can be acquired. The very sounds of letters and the first rudiments are very different in a learned and in an unskilful mouth. Care must be taken that she be not accustomed by fond nurses to pronounce half-words, as it would prejudice her speech. Great care is necessary that she never learn what she will have afterwards to unlearn. The eloquence of the Gracchi derived its perfection from the _mother’s_ elegance (of speech). No paint must ever touch her face or hair.” He is no less sensible and moderate in physical instructions than strict in things of the spiritual order. He says: “She should eat so as always to be hungry, and to be able to read or sing psalms immediately after meals. The immoderate long fasts of many displease me. I have learned by experience that the ass, much fatigued on the road, seeks rest at any cost. In a long journey, strength must be supported, lest, by running the first stage too fast, we should fall in the middle. In Lent, full scope is to be given to severe fasting.” He advises the young girl, when old enough, to read the works of St. Cyprian, the epistles of St. Athanasius, and the writings of St. Hilary. These are grave and abstruse studies, requiring much time and application, and as fully up to the standard of a modern _male_ education as any woman could desire. St. Jerome himself was living at Bethlehem when he wrote this letter, and while recommending her mother to send little Paula to St. Paula the Elder for her later education, he himself promises to instruct her, adding that “he should be more honored by teaching the spouse of Christ than the philosopher [Aristotle] was in being preceptor to the Macedonian King.” It was the elder Paula who built St. Jerome the monastery of Bethlehem, in which he spent a great part of his life. She governed a monastery of women not far from it. St. Jerome, in his panegyric of her life, addressed to her daughter Eustochium, expresses himself in the following unequivocal language: “Were all the members of my body to be changed into tongues, and each fibre to utter articulate and human sounds, even then I could not worthily celebrate the virtues of the holy and venerable Paula.” As soon as her husband’s death left her the free use of a magnificent fortune, she liberated all the numerous retinue of slaves that formed not only her household but her possessions. Hundreds of Christian masters and mistresses did the same, and treated their freed retainers as brethren and sisters in the faith, long before the philanthropy of modern times had begun to envelop in a halo of unusual heroism the sacrifice of slave property. From a noble Roman matron, placed by her birth in an assured position of great prominence, she became a voluntary exile and wanderer for the sake of planting the faith more firmly in the East. St. Jerome describes, in words full of sympathetic admiration, her pious visits to the Holy Places of Judea. She also made a pilgrimage to the home of monasticism, the Thebaïd and the Lybian desert. Humble as she was, fame followed and surrounded her. Pilgrims to Jerusalem counted her as one of the most consoling and admirable of the objects that claimed their devotion. Macarius, Arsenius, Serapion, famous lights of the church and patriarchs of the eremitical life, came from long distances and inaccessible solitudes to confer with her. At Jerusalem, she founded places of shelter and entertainment for the many pilgrims who flocked there; both at Rome and in the East, she was the mother and the idol of the poor, whose wants she relieved untiringly, and for whose sake she was often not only penniless, but in debt. Her last illness was like a royal levee, and bishops and patriarchs hastened to her bedside; her funeral, says Ventura, was almost a canonization. Bishops carried her body to its tomb, and for seven days sacred hymns and psalms echoed ceaselessly in the church of the Holy Grotto at Bethlehem, where the funeral service was performed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Capefigue calls her the “most remarkably erudite woman of her age,” and her instincts of faith and learning alike made her intuitively aware of the artifices of the heretic Palladius, whose well-concealed Origenism she unmasked and denounced in presence of St. Jerome, when the wolf would have put on sheep’s clothing and deceived her simple nuns. Paula’s daughters--Blesilla, the learned and accomplished widow; Eustochium, the celebrated virgin to whom many of St. Jerome’s works are addressed or dedicated; Paulina, the model wife to whose influence over her saintly husband the first hospitals in the West are due--and their sister-in-law, Læta, the happy mother of the younger St. Paula, are all canonized saints of the church, and each of them the just pride of their sex in the respective walks of life to which they were destined. Fabiola, another of St. Jerome’s scholars, was the foundress of the first hospital absolutely established in Rome.

The church has never been chary of tendering graceful homage to the influence and ability of woman, and perhaps no more singular or flattering proof of this can be found than the pictorial honor which, Ventura assures us (_Donna Cattolica_, vol. i. p. 466), was offered by St. Gregory the Great to St. Sylvia, his mother. She was represented as sitting by his side, robed in white, and crowned with the mitre worn by doctors of theology, while the left hand held an open Psalter, and the right was raised with two fingers extended, in the attitude of benediction.

St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, who was born and died in the fourth century, owed his early training of piety and solid learning to his mother, who was left a widow during his infancy, and to his elder sister Marcellina, to whom later on Christendom became indebted for the three admirable books he wrote on _The State of Virginity_. Another of his famous works is a treatise on _Widowhood_. In one of his books on _Virginity_ he meets the common though worn-out argument that virginity is a foe to the propagation of the human race. As this bears upon our general subject, though it be not immediately akin to it, we will stop to quote it. “Some complain,” he says, “that mankind will shortly fail if so many are consecrated virgins. I desire to know who ever wanted a wife and could not find one? The killing of an adulterer, the pursuing of waging war against a ravisher, are the consequences of marriage. The number of people is greatest where virginity is most esteemed. Inquire how many virgins are consecrated every year at Alexandria, all over the East, and in Africa, where there are more virgins than there are men in this country [Italy].” And Butler, in his _Life of St. Ambrose_, goes on to explain: “May not the French and Austrian Netherlands, full of numerous monasteries, yet covered with populous cities, be at present esteemed a proof of this remark? The populousness of China, where great numbers of new-born infants are daily exposed to perish, is a terrible proof that the voluntary virginity of some is no prejudice to the human race. Wars and the sea, not the number of virgins, are the destroyers of the human race, as St. Ambrose observes; though the state of virginity is not to be rashly engaged in, and marriage is not only holy, but the general state of mankind in the world.” Not only did St. Ambrose occupy his mind and pen with the concerns of holy and spotless women, but he did not think it beneath his dignity to write for those unhappy virgins who had fallen from their vows and thus been reft of their most precious heirloom. In the third book of his work on _Virginity_, he pays the following homage to Christian woman, such as she was in his age: “I have been a priest but three years,” he says, “and my experience has not been long enough to teach me what I have written. But what my own experience could not teach, the sight of your conduct has suggested. If, in this work, you find any flowers of thought, know that I have gathered them from your own lives. I do not so much give you precepts, as I draw examples from the behavior of living virgins, and set them before the eyes of the world. My discourse has only reproduced the image of your virtues. It is but the portrait of your own life, so grave and earnest, which you will see here, beaming with light as reflected from a mirror. If you find grace in these words, it is you who have inspired my mind with it. All that is good in this book belongs to you.” (Third book on _Virgins_.) What more graceful tribute, more appreciative homage, could man render to the opposite sex? Yet he who wrote this was a great and powerful bishop, a doctor of the church, a profoundly learned man, whose influence was spread through kingdoms, and whose advice was sought and followed by emperors. Here is yet another example of the distinguished part played by woman in affairs of the highest public importance. Capefigue, in his _Four First Ages of the Church_, says that in the churches of Rome might be seen the most noble matrons of the city, “who gave the first and greatest impulse to all Christian sentiments.” This was at the end of the fourth century, and the two Melanias were then foremost among the active and energetic women mentioned. The elder Melania, whose fortune was immense, and who was married early by her father, the Consul Marcellinus, became a widow after a few years of married life, and thereafter devoted herself to the church. She travelled to Egypt and Palestine in the interests of the persecuted Patriarch Athanasius, whom she protected and supported with all the moral influence and temporal means at her command. The zealous and open protectress of more than five thousand Christians, the harborer of priests and bishops driven from their sees and parishes during the Arian persecutions of the Emperor Valens, she was herself cast into prison by the Governor of Jerusalem, to whom she spoke thus boldly and fearlessly: “Do not think to despise me because I wear poor garments: I might wear the robes of a princess, did I choose to do so. Do not think to intimidate me by your threats, for I have sufficient influence to protect me against the slightest aggression on your part. I tell you this, and give you this advice, that you may not through ignorance commit any error that might lead you into danger.” The courageous woman was released, and continued her ministrations of mercy. Her granddaughter, St. Melania, married young to a noble Roman, the descendant of the great Publicola, and the son of the Prefect of Rome, was even a more prominent personage than the elder Melania. After the birth and death of two children, she and her husband renounced their high position, freed eight thousand slaves, and sold their immense possessions in several parts of the Roman Empire for the benefit of the poor. They then retired to a quiet country solitude in Campania, and with several associates began leading “the perfect life” which we have so often seen attempted in vain in this age by refined and earnest souls without the bosom of the church. Here, their chief occupation was the study and the propagation of the Scriptures and other solid works of learning and faith. The works of the fathers were foremost among the latter, and Ventura says with truth that we may well thank woman when we read these admirable treatises, for without her help, care, and zeal they would be considerably less in number than they are. The love of the Scriptures and of Biblical lore seems thus to have been a distinctive mark of the sex in the early days of the church.

Melania and her companions after a time left Italy, and settled in Africa near Hippo, and there became the most active allies of St. Augustine. They also journeyed through Spain, Palestine, and Asia Minor, always in the interests of the faith, founding monasteries and schools, and assisting the poor and the persecuted. After her husband’s death, Melania, having been wrecked on the coast of Sicily, and having found several thousand Christians in bondage to barbarian idolaters, she redeemed and freed them all. At one time she held a high post at court, and exerted herself successfully in favor of orthodoxy. When the Nestorian heresy was making great progress in Asia and Africa, she uncompromisingly combated it by her influence and social talents, by the persuasion of her manner and the force of her arguments, as Ribadeneira testifies in the sketch he wrote of her life. Ventura asserts that she confounded Pelagius himself, who by all manner of arts endeavored to win her to his side; and it is known that, when St. Augustine failed to convert Volusian, the Prefect of Rome, and uncle to Melania, this heroic woman, according to Baronius, undertook to convince him, and succeeded most triumphantly. Melania’s funeral at Jerusalem was the occasion of lavish homage to the power and influence of her sex; bishops and confessors were eager to show their respect and admiration, and the Christian world proved once more that “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”

Marcella, one of St. Jerome’s spiritual daughters, and whose funeral eulogy he wrote, was, according to this great saint’s own words, “the greatest glory of the city of Rome.” When Alaric and his Goths invaded Rome, her house was broken into, and herself cruelly beaten and disfigured. All her reply was, “My gold I have given to the poor: you will find nothing in my possession but the tunic I wear.” She collected many holy and learned women around her, and her house was the rallying point of all Christians. All good works received their impetus from her, and she was often consulted by bishops and priests on questions of Biblical learning, after St. Jerome, who had taught her the Scriptures, had left Rome. Although consecrated virgins of both sexes abounded in her time, as yet no distinct community under a recognized rule had been formed in Rome. She undertook to establish the monastic life in the capital of the empire, and was the first to reduce to order the elements of which such a community might be formed. With the advice of St. Athanasius, and some fugitive priests of Alexandria, who took refuge in Rome in 340, during the Arian persecution in the East, Marcella gave up a country-seat of hers for a monastery, and adopted for the future religious the rule of St. Pachomius. The men followed her example, and assembled in concert to found communities of their own. Rome vied with the Thebaïd for sanctity and learning, and this was the work of a woman. When, in the seventh century, St. Benedict, the reformer and patriarch of all religious orders in Europe, reduced monasticism in the West to the state in which we know it in our own days, he was only, says Ventura (_Donna Cattolica_, vol. i. p. 488), walking in the path which the heroic women of Christendom had hewn out before him in imitation of the hermits and anchorites of the East. But Marcella shines no less as a pillar of orthodoxy than as the institutrix of Western monachism. When the Origenists, through the aid of the cunning Rufinus and the intriguing Macarius, who disseminated skilfully veiled errors in Rome, began to attack the integrity of the Christian faith, Marcella left her solitude, and came to the capital to confront the heresiarchs. The following details are all vouched for by St. Jerome in the funeral eulogy addressed by him to her friend and scholar Principia: “The faith of the Roman people had been weakened on many points.... The new heresy had made many victims, even among priests and monks.... The Sovereign Pontiff himself, Siricius, who was as conspicuous for holy simplicity as for sanctity of life, and who judged of others by the candor of his own soul, seemed for a moment to have become the dupe of the hypocrisy of these new pharisees. The orthodoxy of the bishops Vincent, Eusebius, Paulinian, and Jerome had even been suspected, and, when they cried out that the wolf was in the fold, no one vouchsafed to listen to them. In this grave emergency, in presence of much coldness, indifference, and weakness on the part of _men_, God made use of the far-sightedness, the zeal, the courage of a _woman_ to keep the faith intact in Rome. Marcella, more eager to please God than men, resisted the Origenist heresy publicly, vigorously, and efficaciously. She it was who by the very testimony of those who had first been deceived by the new errors and then abjured them, convinced every one of the real nature of the heretical doctrine. She stimulated the zeal of the Sovereign Pastor by proving to him how many souls had already gone astray.... She was the first to point out to him the disguised impieties of the garbled translations of Origen’s book on _Principles_, which Rufinus had translated and altered, and was now selling everywhere. She often summoned the heretics to come and justify themselves in Rome, but they dared not answer, and preferred being condemned as absent and contumacious, rather than be publicly confounded by a woman. At last, when a general condemnation was pronounced upon their doctrines, it was chiefly the result of Marcella’s vigilance.” Here, therefore, is a woman exerting a guiding influence on the destinies of the church by her learning, subtleness, and eloquence. If the women of the early centuries achieved such successes with the natural weapons of their sex and position, why do our sisters of the present day desire a reorganization of society, and a new accession of hitherto unknown and unnatural weapons? Why indeed but because the order of society sanctioned and regulated by the church has been subverted by the Reformation; the holy charter of woman abolished; and elegant and veiled Islamism, or in some instances a coarse and degrading barbarianism, inculcated and forcibly brought into action concerning woman, and the sex gradually forced out of its legitimate orbit, with its capabilities dwarfed, its intellect narrowed, its talents sneered at, and its affections repressed? The broad river of woman’s influence, flowing so calmly and majestically through the centuries of the church’s undisturbed unity, has been dammed up by the Protestant tradition of the last three hundred years, till it has broken forth again as a turbulent torrent, devastating where it once fertilized, disturbing where once it conciliated. In its new form and its strange aggressiveness, it now horrifies mankind, where in early days, in its legitimate sphere, it guided the greatest statesmen, orators, and saints, and gravely helped them on the road to heaven, to science, and to happiness. But we are digressing, for we have undertaken to speak of facts, not to declaim about theories. We have much ground to travel over yet before we come to the end of the list of glorious women who have made the church, so to speak, their panegyrist, and the world their debtor. We have once before mentioned the Roman ladies, Proba, Juliana, and Demetrias, to whom St. Chrysostom recommended his envoys and their mission to Pope St. Innocent. Demetrias was the daughter of the Consul Olibrius and of St. Juliana; Proba was her grandmother on her father’s side. The two widows, having converted their husbands, consecrated their after-lives to the education of Demetrias. St. Augustine was their friend and counsellor, and wrote them letters that are among the most prominent of his works. One to Proba is on the efficacy and the nature of prayer; another to Juliana treats of the advantages and duties of widowhood. When Demetrias announced her intention of remaining a virgin, the holy joy of the family knew no bounds, and the day of her formally receiving the veil was a festival for all Rome. St. Jerome honored her with a discourse which has come down to us in the shape of a _Letter to Demetrias_, followed by a treatise on _Virginity_, and not only did he interrupt for this purpose the grave commentaries on the Scriptures in which he was engaged, but he also addressed to the parents of the virgin such congratulations as rang throughout Italy, and made the holy and happy trio the envy of every matron and maiden in the Christian world. (Ventura, _Donna Cattolica_, vol. i. p. 520.) The heresiarch Pelagius so little understood the importance of woman that he took the trouble to address to Demetrias a letter so long that it almost forms a book, which is still extant, and was intended to instil into her mind his insidious errors. St. Augustine, however, cautioned her against Pelagius, and bid her keep staunch to “the faith of Pope Innocent.”

There was one sphere which more than any other was christianized and influenced for good by women, and indeed could not have been otherwise sanctified--the sphere of the imperial court, both in Rome and in Constantinople. We have already seen empresses and relatives of the Cæsars becoming Christians and often martyrs, but it remained for the women of the fourth and fifth centuries to make the palace into a sanctuary and add the lustre of a heavenly crown to the majesty of an earthly sceptre. Constantine, under whose auspices Christianity first emerged from the Catacombs, was the gift of woman to the church. His mother Helena, his wife Fausta, and his mother-in-law Eutropia (the two latter being respectively the wife and daughter of Maximian-Herculeus) were zealous and devoted Christians, and to their influence are due the toleration and subsequently the favor with which the faith was treated by Constantine. Eusebius relates that Eutropia on her pilgrimage to the Holy Places found idols and sacrificial rites still flourishing near the famous oak of Mambre, where tradition places the scene of the visit of the three angels to Abraham. She wrote to her son-in-law in unconcealed indignation, and thus procured after a time the destruction of the shameful altars. Later on we find the emperor building a church on the identical spot. The progress of the Empress Helen through Palestine is as an ovation to the faith, and a record of churches built and monasteries founded in every Holy Place. She constantly besought her son’s aid and munificence in these undertakings, and extended the protection of his name to all Christian establishments in the East. We owe to her piety and energy the most solemn and the greatest of the memorials of the Passion, the Holy Cross on which our Lord suffered and died. It is likewise to her, a woman, that we owe one of the most beautiful of Christian churches, that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, as well as one of the most interesting basilicas of Rome, _Santa Croce in Gerusalemme_, where a portion of the august relic of the cross was deposited. Her charities were numberless, her foundations magnificent. She alleviated the condition of those who were condemned to the mines, and freed many from chains and slavery. The city of Drepanum in Bythinia, where St. Lucian the martyr had died for his God, she so beautified and endowed in his honor that after her death her son changed its name to Helenopolis. Even the fame of the local and municipal life of many cities can be traced to the influence and activity of woman, and further on we shall see how some of her sex have laid colleges, schools, and universities under eternal obligations. Constance, the daughter of Constantine, was the first convert of the imperial family, and exercised no little influence over her father. She assembled numbers of holy virgins, and consecrated herself with them in a state of virginity to the service of God and the poor. When Constantius, her brother, became emperor, and, favoring Arianism, called himself head of the church, while he exiled Pope Liberius, hundreds of the Roman ladies united in a deputation to protest against this illegal act. As long as the anti-Pope Felix remained in Rome, these same women utterly scorned his authority, and encouraged the people to refuse to hold communion with him. This firm attitude of the women of Rome had its reward, and Pope Liberius was at length recalled when the emperor perceived that the forced schism was likely to result in sedition against himself. Maximus, Emperor of the West, through the influence of his Christian wife, became the friend and protector of St. Martin of Tours; and Theodosius, the contemporary of St. Ambrose, was mainly guided in his wise and, upon the whole, salutary administration by his wife Placidia and his daughter Pulcheria. But his granddaughter, also named Pulcheria, and justly honored as a saint, was pre-eminently the glory of the Eastern Empire and the honor of her sex as well as of her order. Her reign was the triumph of the church, the golden age of justice, the realization of a Christian Utopia. When the tranquillity of the age was disturbed, it was through the decline of her influence and the triumph over her of her many enemies. When her father Arcadius died and left his throne to his son Theodosius, she was chosen not as regent, but as _Augusta_, or co-ruler and empress, with her brother, and moreover was entrusted with the care and responsibility of his education. The historian Rohrbacher, ever eager to extol the sex says of her: “It was a marvel, the equal of which has never been known either before or since, and which God wrought in those days for the glory of woman, whom his grace sanctified and his wisdom inspired--that a maiden of sixteen should govern successfully so vast an empire.” Pulcheria reduced the imperial household to a degree of order and decorum more resembling a college than a court; her brother’s masters were all chosen and approved by her, and the utmost respect was paid by her both to the laws and the prelates of the church. Alban Butler, in his _Lives of the Saints_, speaks of her and her reign in these terms: “The imperial council was, through her discernment, composed of the wisest, most virtuous, and most experienced persons in the empire: yet, in deliberations, all of them readily acknowledged the superiority of her judgment and penetration. Her resolutions were the result of the most mature consideration, and she took care herself that all orders should be executed with incredible expedition, though always in the name of her brother, to whom she gave the honor and credit of all she did. She was herself well skilled in Greek and Latin, in history and other useful branches of literature, and was, as every one must be who is endowed with greatness of soul and a just idea of the dignity of the human mind, the declared patroness of the sciences and of both the useful and polite arts. Far from making religion subservient to policy, all her views and projects were regulated by it, and by this the happiness of her government was complete. She prevented by her prudence all revolts which ambition, jealousy, or envy might stir up to disturb the tranquillity of the church or state; she cemented a firm peace with all neighboring powers, and abolished the wretched remains of idolatry in several parts. Never did virtue reign in the oriental empire with greater lustre, never was the state more happy or more flourishing, nor was its name ever more respected even among barbarians, than whilst the reins of the government were in the hands of Pulcheria.” Ventura is not less explicit in praise of this great woman. After mentioning the different studies embraced in the plan of education which Pulcheria had traced for her brother, he says: “In these arrangements, both the subject-matter which was to occupy the young prince’s attention, and the time he was to spend in each occupation, were so judiciously and admirably managed that such a plan of education seemed rather the work of an experienced philosopher than that of a young girl of sixteen.... Theodosius possessed neither a generous soul nor exalted intellect; in fact, his was a nature scarcely above mediocrity. Pulcheria, however, by her enlightened efforts, succeeded in producing unexpected results from so thankless a field of labor.” (_Donna Cattolica_, vol. ii. pp. 23, 24.) Exiled and disgraced by the machinations of her frivolous sister-in-law, the Empress Eudocia, and the ambitious Chrysaphius, one of the courtiers, she left Constantinople and retired into the country, no more downcast in adversity than she had been elated in prosperity. Eudocia and Chrysaphius, unable to draw St. Flavian, the Patriarch of Constantinople, into their conspiracy against the noble exile, became violent partisans of Eutyches and his new heresy. Between the years 447 and 450 of the Christian era, the condition of the empire was perfectly chaotic; the heresies of the Eutychians, the Nestorians, and the Monothelites disturbed the public peace; morality was forgotten; the court became an assembly of intriguers; Theodosius himself was no longer obeyed at home or respected abroad. St. Leo the Pope, scandalized and grieved at such excesses, wrote to the emperor, the clergy, and the people of Constantinople, but reserved his most remarkable mission for Pulcheria. He says, “If you had received my former letters, you would certainly have already remedied these evils, for you have never failed the Christian faith, nor the clergy her guardians,” and towards the end of his letter he adds: “In the name of the blessed apostle St. Peter, I constitute you my _special legate_ for the advancement of this matter before the emperor.” Referring to this magnificent elogium, the historian Rohrbacher remarks that, “when the Pope writes to the Emperor Theodosius, one would think he was addressing a woman; when, on the contrary, he writes to the ex-empress, one would imagine he was speaking to a _man_,” upon whose energy he could depend. In 450, the Emperor of the West, Valentinian, and his mother and wife, Placidia and Eudoxia, came to Rome, where the Pope entrusted them with the task of admonishing by letter the weak-minded Theodosius and his heretical followers. Thus was the power of woman and her influence in state affairs recognized and honored by the church from end to end of the Christian world. Pulcheria, urged by the entreaties of all these great and holy personages, boldly went to the court, reproached her brother, and by her firmness opened his eyes and restored peace, orthodoxy and morality in the distracted empire. Her brother’s death in 450 left her, by the universal consent of the people, once more ruler of the vast realm she had already so much benefited. Now again she evinced consummate wisdom in her choice of Marcian, the most renowned soldier and most talented statesman of the empire, to be her husband and fellow-ruler. Under condition of preserving her early vow of perpetual chastity, she admitted him to an entire participation of her life and counsels, and together, with a strong yet gentle hand, they upheld and protected the fathers of the Council of Chalcedon. After three years of a wise and virtuous reign, Pulcheria died, lamented by the thousands of the poor and destitute whom she had never ceased to relieve, and honored by the church as the “guardian of the faith, the peace-maker, the defender of orthodoxy,” as the Chalcedonian fathers expressed it. The historian Gibbon, whose testimony can hardly be deemed interested, has thus outlined the history of her reign: “Her piety did not prevent Pulcheria from indefatigably devoting her attention to the affairs of the state, and indeed this princess was the only descendant of Theodosius the Great who seems to have inherited any part of his high courage and noble genius. She had acquired the familiar use of the Greek and Latin tongues, which she spoke and wrote with ease and grace in her speeches and writings relative to public affairs. Prudence always dictated her resolves. Her execution was prompt and decisive. Managing without ostentation all the intricacies of the government, she discreetly attributed to the talents of the emperor the long tranquillity of his reign. During the last years of his life, Europe was suffering cruelly under the invasion and ravages of Attila, King of the Huns, while peace continued to reign in the vast provinces of Asia.” (_History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vol. vi. chapter xxxii.)

The holy Pope St. Gregory the Great did not owe less to the influence and friendship of woman than Pope St. Leo. Among his many and remarkable letters, those addressed to the Empress Constantina and the Princess Theoclissa, wife and sister of Maurice, Emperor of the East, are not the least admirable. The emperor being both imbecile and miserly, and of a nature utterly despicable, the only bulwark of orthodoxy against the heretics lay in the strenuous and continued efforts of these two women in favor of the church. When Phocus, a general of Maurice, freed the indignant empire from its supine and debased ruler, his wife the Empress Leontia took the place of the former princesses, and continued their work of protecting the faith of the Councils. In the West, where the Lombards were successfully laying the foundation of the future power they were destined to wield, it was chiefly to a woman that Gregory the Great looked to defend the interests of religion, and saw among these half-reclaimed barbarians the seeds of Christian chivalry. Theodolinda was his pupil and correspondent, and by her care the future King of the Lombards, Adoloaldus, was baptized and brought up a Christian. In the matter of the great expedition which resulted in the final conversion of England, the same Pope testifies by his letters that Bertha, the wife of King Ethelbert, and Brunehault, Queen of the Franks, were chiefly instrumental in aiding and countenancing St. Augustine in his mission. He says to Brunehault: “We are not ignorant of the help you have afforded our brother Augustine.... It must be a source of great rejoicing to you that no one has had a greater share in this work than yourself. For, if that nation [the Saxons] has had the blessing of hearing the Word of God and the preaching of the Gospel, it is to you, under God, that they owe it.”

The throne of Constantinople was to be honored yet by another sainted empress, the worthy successor of Pulcheria, and, like her, an able ally of the Pope and the orthodox patriarch of her own capital. Once more, through the vices and indifference of men, a heresy had arisen and flourished, the heresy of the Iconoclasts. Great persecution had been suffered by the faithful, during the reign of Leo, the husband of our heroine Irene, and the new heretics, had completely triumphed. At his death, his widow became regent for her young son. The clergy, the nobility, and especially the army, were arrayed on the side of the Iconoclasts. Irene was as prudent in action as she was zealous in heart. The persecutions against the followers of the Pope were first merely suspended, thought and speech were once more free, and gradually a reaction began to take place. The patriarchal see of Constantinople becoming vacant by the death of Paul, the finally repentant abettor of the unhappy heresy, it was Irene who proposed the election of Tarasius, the most popular, most pious, and most talented man among her subjects. He, too, was the product of a wise and holy woman’s training, and the name of his mother, Eucratia, is among the saints. Having thus paved the way, the empress wrote to Pope Adrian about the year 786, and begged him to assemble a general council to further the interests of religion and cement the peace of Christendom. The council, which was the second of Nicea, took place according to this suggestion, upon which the Pope, through his legates, formally congratulated the empress. The utmost success having attended the sittings of the council, and the faith having been triumphantly vindicated against the Iconoclasts and their errors, the empress sent to entreat the assembled fathers to hold one final and ceremonial sitting in Constantinople itself. She procured an efficient guard among the orthodox cohorts of the imperial army, and prepared an immense hall in the palace for the gathering of the council. Ventura describes the scene thus: “The Pope’s legates waived their right of precedence in favor of Irene, and the astonishing spectacle was seen of a woman, accompanied by a child twelve years old (her son), presiding over one of the most august assemblies of the church. The sitting was opened by a discourse by the empress, in which she spoke, both in her son’s name and in her own, with so much eloquence, warmth, and grace, that the greatest emotion was manifested throughout the assembly; tears of joy flowed from the eyes of all present, and the last words of Irene were followed by the most heartfelt acclamations.... The enthusiasm was at its height, when, in the assembly and also to the people without, the decree or definition of faith made by the council was read, and the empress claimed her right to be the first to sign it.... It must never be forgotten that this great council, as well as its consequences, which put an end to a great heresy and restored Catholicism in the East, was the thought and work of a woman, and that it was a woman-sovereign (_un empereur-femme_) who alone by her discreet and courageous zeal knew how to blot out and destroy the scandals caused by three men-sovereigns and even a great number of bishops themselves.” (_Donna Cattolica_, vol. ii. pp. 55, 56.)

Before the Empire of the East became totally degraded, another sovereign, another woman, lent it the glory of her reputation. The Iconoclasts, profiting by the treacherous support of succeeding emperors, again renewed their hostilities against orthodoxy, but were speedily checked once more by a brave Christian woman, the Empress Theodosia, widow of Theophilus, and of whom Rohrbacher says: “If in the West the temporal sovereigns were insignificant, in the East they were detestable. There was but one exception, and that was a woman, the Empress St. Theodosia. She began her reign after the death of her unworthy husband--whom she had succeeded, however, in converting on his death-bed--by threatening the heretical patriarch, Lecanomantes, with the condemnation of the coming council unless he consented to vacate his see and renounce his errors. He refused, and the council assembled within the walls of the imperial palace. The Iconoclast heresy was again solemnly denounced, and the previous Council of Nicea confirmed. For the countenance and protection afforded by her to the church, the empress only asked as a reward that the prelates should pray for the forgiveness of the sin of heresy which her husband had committed. Theodosia celebrated this new victory of the church with becoming solemnity, and instituted in its honor a festival, which is observed to this day under the name of the ‘festival of orthodoxy.’ When Methodius, the holy Patriarch of Constantinople, died, she replaced him by St. Ignatius, the friend of the Pope, St. Nicholas I. She made peace with the Bulgarians, whom the Pope was interested in converting to the faith, and seconded his efforts by procuring the conversion of the captive Bulgarian princess, sister to King Bogoris, whom she afterward freed and sent back to her brother. This princess became the Clotildis of her people, and, together with Formosus, the Pope’s legate, and St. Cyril, Theodosia’s envoy, effected the conversion of the whole Bulgarian nation in 861.”

Other Danubian tribes also owed their conversion to Theodosia; she sent missionaries to the Khazars and the Moravians, whose chief specially addressed himself to her for instruction. Her son Michael, when he came to the throne, renewed the horrors of the pagan empire of Caligula and Domitian, persecuted his mother and sisters, exiled and deposed the Patriarch Ignatius, and put the heretic Photius into his place. One of his captains, Basil, put a violent end to his infamous reign, and, though inexcusable in the eyes of the ecclesiastical law, yet redeemed his act by the utmost deference to Theodosia and devotion to religion. The empire breathed again, and Theodosia’s counsels procured another general assembly of the church at Constantinople, when Photius was condemned and the rightful patriarch reinstated in his authority. After the death of the empress, the heresy of Photius revived and spread, and, schism becoming more or less general, the empire began to degenerate, until its very name, the “Lower Empire,” became a synonym for all degradation and hopeless ruin. Ventura, who says truly that real sanctity is impossible in the bosom of voluntary schism, attributes the degeneracy of the Empire of the East to the want of strong and generous women, such as those whom we have briefly sketched in this article, and asserts that the very accumulation of evils which this scarcity of holy women has heaped upon the church during some of the darkest periods of her history, is in itself a proof of the paramount importance of woman in the work of the propagation and protection of true religion.

We are now close upon the mediæval times, when the glory of the sex shone forth again in the West, and counted as many champions as there were kingdoms to convert, universities to endow, courts to reform, and infidel powers to overthrow. The influence of woman began to be recognized in society as it had always been in the church; chivalry taught men to place the honor of woman next in their estimation to faith in God, and equal with loyalty to their king and patriotism to their country. We can find no more beautiful, no more _Catholic_, expression of this sovereignty of woman’s pure and ennobling influence, as consecrated by the church’s approbation, and guarded by all that is noblest and most generous in man, than the following extract from a modern poet, whose inspiration, like that of all true artists, is drawn perforce from the legends of Catholic antiquity. The poet of the Holy Grail is also the poet of woman; the legends of the deeds of the prowess of knights, whose names are perchance but myths as to actual history, but nevertheless are human types of the exalted ideal of the old Catholic days, are inevitably mingled with legends of the vows of holy chastity, and the pure and stainless lives of many of those renowned heroes of the field and tournament. Let the following serve as an introduction to our next article, which will treat chiefly of the great women of the Middle Ages:

“For when the Roman left us, and their law Relaxed its hold upon us, and the ways Were filled with rapine, here and there a deed Of prowess done redressed a random wrong. But I was first of all the kings who drew The knighthood-errant of this realm and all The realms together under me, their head, In that fair Order of my Table Round, A glorious company, the flower of men, To serve as model for the mighty world, And be the fair beginning of a time. I made them lay their hands in mine, and swear To reverence the king as if he were Their conscience and their conscience as their king, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad, redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her; for indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought, and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man. And all this throve.... I wedded thee, Believing, lo! _mine helpmate_, one to feel My purpose, and rejoicing in my joy.” _Tennyson_, _Idylls of the King._

DEVOTA.

Sweet image of the one I love, To whom your infant years were given (And still the faithful colors[61] prove A constancy not all in heaven):

To me a violet near a brink, Far-hidden from the beaten way, And where but rarest flowerets drink A freshness from the ripples’ play:

A lily in a vale of rest, And where the angels know a nook But one shy form has ever prest-- A poet with a poet’s book.

But poet’s book has never said What I, O lily, find in you: ’Twas never writ and never read, Though always old and always new.

And ah, that you must change and go-- The violet fade, the lily die! Let others joy to watch you grow; Let others smile: so will not I.

Yet smile I should. Is heaven a dream? In sooth, he needs to be forgiven Who matches with the things that seem A deathless flower, that blooms for heaven.

And while he mourns the onward years That sweep you from the things that seem, Let faith make sunshine on his tears: ’Tis heaven is real, and earth the dream.

FOOTNOTE:

[61] Children dedicated to the Blessed Virgin wear white and blue.

THE CARESSES OF PROVIDENCE.

FROM LA CIVILTA CATTOLICA.

Very recently, the Liberal Italian party, finding that their Catholic opponents were in no wise damaged by arguments drawn from a denial of God’s concern in human affairs, has changed its tactics, and proposes now to convert us clericals by appeals to our religious sensibilities. We are assaulted by a theological attack _ad hominem_, which they tell us is so conclusive that, if we do not acknowledge ourselves beaten, it is because we have lost our reason and renounced the faith.

“You believe,” say they, “in the providence of God. You recognize his hand in all the events of life, and you profess to bless and bow to the divine decrees. Well, then, Providence, you perceive, has smiled graciously on us and on our work--a work which you execrate and detest. Providence is plainly on our side. He declares himself for us and against you. Submit, then, to his decrees. Lay aside this idle expectation of the triumph of your cause, which is evidently opposed to the holy will of God. Accept accomplished facts. Reconcile yourselves with Italy, our glorious new kingdom, and cease, amid your noisy professions of religion, to rebel against the will of the Most High.”

Such in its naked substance is the argument to which the Liberals now exultingly resort; more especially since the breach of Porta Pia and the successful picking of the locks of the Quirinal. They hope in this way to convict us of apostasy from the faith, and (what they deem still more atrocious) of an unpardonable outrage against the laws of “the human understanding.”

“It seems incredible,” they go on to say, “that, after such positive proofs of a special protection vouchsafed by Providence to regenerate Italy, the clerical party should cling so stubbornly to the hope of a resuscitation of the past--a past which, were it not already irrevocably condemned by the logic of events, would be condemned by their own theory of an all-seeing and all-wise God.” This is the language in which the Jewish journal _L’Opinione_, after taking Roman ground at the close of the year just elapsed, expressed this very formidable argument. They had already uttered it some hundred times before. Many sheets of less importance had got up an industrious echo to this cry; and one in particular, a petty Florentine print, undertakes to celebrate the new year by magnifying “the caresses of Providence” bestowed upon the little darling angel, Italy, born, as everybody knows, of the wonderful shrewdness of the Italian people and their undying love of liberty--a liberty, by the way, which never fails to exemplify itself by a free and strenuous appropriation of a weaker neighbor’s earthly goods. Strange indeed it is that men, who never were known as professed believers in any other divinity than Mammon, should now, after having derided for years, and with every mark of blasphemous scorn, “the finger of God,” suddenly assume the office of apostles of a new idea of Christian Providence. Strange it is that only now, after the plunder of a city gained by battering down walls and picking locks with forged keys--that these men, we say, should chant the praises of the God they had defied, and defend his holy decrees against the “scandalous negations” of the Catholic Church. Strangest is it of all, that the prince of these extraordinary apostles should be no other than the so-called Jew proprietor of the _Opinione_--who is not even a Jew; for he has always shown that he believes as little of the Old Testament as he does of the New.

But--

“To what infamies untold Hast thou man’s nature not controlled, Thou execrable greed of gold!”

Solid or not, this _argumentum ad hominem_ has for a certain class of minds an air of great plausibility. At all events, it might be well to look into it a little; for we may thereby throw some light upon several important truths which nowadays need special illumination. We let in the argument, therefore, as the new Jewish and infidel philosophers present it; and we propose to give them, in a nutshell, the proper answer to it. They will then understand why Catholics not only refuse to surrender to this showing, but, on the contrary, see in it reason to stand firm to their first faith, and to cherish unceasing hopes of the speedy triumph of their cause.

Yes, gentlemen, we Catholics believe, with all our heart and soul, in the holy providence of God. In this Providence we recognize the origin and order of all created things. We make it indeed our glory that we bless and humbly worship its adorable decrees. We confess, therefore, without reserve, that what you choose to call its “loving caresses” are really yours by divine appointment; and the very decree which to you is the source of so much joy, and to us of so much mourning, we adore as the undoubted manifestation of his most holy will. All this we freely admit as truth, as unquestionable, unanswerable truth. But while, in these explicit terms, we confess this Catholic verity, we deny, in equally explicit terms, that what you choose to call “caresses” are in any sense _such to you_, or that the palpable proofs of that “special protection” of which you make so vain a boast are proofs of anything but the very opposite; nay, so false is it, that the caresses you claim are marks of divine approval, that the very assertion is a blasphemy most insulting to the sovereign providence of God. To prove these propositions is an easy thing to any one who knows his catechism; and the understanding of them easier still to any one who believes as well as knows. To him who either does not know his Christian primer, or, knowing it, will not believe, they may seem incapable of either proof or comprehension. Should such a case present itself, the fault is certainly not ours. A poet tells us that:

“Of winds the sailor ever loves to speak, Of arms the soldier, and the boor of swine; The astronomer, of planet, moon, and stars; Of palaces and piers, the architect; The juggling necromancer prates of ghosts, And the old harper of his well thrummed strains.”

If so, why is it that this Jew, instead of sticking like a worthy Hebrew to his stock-list, takes to teaching us the Christian catechism? And why is it that this worshipper of Voltaire, instead of chanting hymns to Venus, reads us a lecture on what he knows about the purposes of God? _Sutor ne ultra crepidam._

Nevertheless, we proceed to explain the propositions advanced above.

Catholics acknowledge that every event, be it favorable or unfavorable to their prayers, is consistent with the providence of God. To Providence they refer evil as well as good, with this difference, that good and unblamable evil they ascribe to the decrees of his sovereign direction, but blamable evil they ascribe to his permissive decree. In a word, they believe and confess that God wills _positively_ all that comes to pass without taint of moral evil, and wills _negatively_ (that is, he does not preclude) what comes to pass so tainted by cause of man’s abuse of his free-will. They nevertheless hold and profess that whatever evil he permits, that also is ordained to good; so that nothing enters into those most just and wise decrees that does not aim effectively at the final design of the creation and redemption of mankind; which design in this life is the church militant, and, in the next, the church triumphant, the central point of his extrinsic glorification.

The reason, then, that Catholics hold and profess that God does not and cannot decree, otherwise than _permissively_, moral evil--that is, disobedience, injustice, or briefly sin--is that he neither participates nor can participate in evil of this nature which is essentially opposed to his infinite sanctity. He would, in fact, participate therein if he willed it positively and not merely negatively; whereas, permitting it only, he in no wise participates, though he allows man, whom he had created free, to make an evil use of the gift of liberty. He does not hinder him, because neither is he so obliged, nor can the divine hindrance of human freedom be exacted by the nature of man left free. With all this, God is in no wise the less able to secure for himself, always and in every case and from every human being, the external glory which he reserved to himself when he created man. Because, he who shall not glorify in heaven an infinite mercy granted to the good use of the free-will, shall glorify in hell an infinite justice merited by the abuse of this same free-will. Hence the Almighty will not be shorn of the least shadow of that glory, for which, among other things, he drew man out of the abyss of nothingness.

Catholics, moreover, believe and confess that the effects of moral evil are invariably directed by Almighty God to the good of mankind. They serve to punish in order to amend, or else to exercise in order to confirm. St. Augustine remarks, with his usual perspicacity, that the life of a bad man is often prolonged not only to afford an opportunity for his amendment, but to serve as an occasion of sanctification to the good. _Ne putetis gratis esse malos in hoc mundo, et nihil boni de eis agere Deum. Omnis malus aut ideo vivit ut corrigatur, aut ideo vivit ut per illum bonus exerceatur._[62]

Hence it is that Catholics, in all emergencies, even in the most calamitous, nay, even in those caused by the worst iniquities of unscrupulous men, do not fail to adore the goodness and justice of Almighty God, and to acknowledge the inscrutable dispositions of his most holy will. But they never think of imputing to him the sins and transgressions of the wicked. These he neither wills nor is he capable of willing them. He permits them only as subserving his mercy or his justice.

It follows, then, that, in order to decide whether the easy successes of certain definite transactions are successes due to divine approbation, and palpable proofs of his gracious protection, or whether rather they are not facilities that Providence permits for the punishment of the wicked and for the chastening of the virtuously minded, it is essential to see first whether these definite acts are right or wrong, meritorious or sinful; that is, conformable or unconformable to the law of eternal justice, and to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, certain it is that in those transactions which the enemies of Christ regard as sanctioned by the manifest “caresses” of Almighty God, Catholic Christians see nothing but acts of iniquity and sin; and accordingly, while they accept them as permitted by God for reasons and results full of justice and mercy, they nevertheless esteem it the height of blasphemy to look upon such outrages, however successful for the moment, as “caresses” bestowed by Providence upon the very men who at other times deny his existence or treat his word with open scorn and contempt.

We have thus, as briefly and as lucidly as we could, and with the Christian catechism for our guide, explained to these Jews who are no Jews, and to these philosophers who are no philosophers, the sense of the propositions we affirm.

Perhaps they will now require of us to prove that the acts referred to are acts of iniquity and sin. This is very much like asking us to prove that the sun is shining, when it is evidently blazing at mid-day. We let pass that the highest authority on earth has pronounced, again and again, that the acts are simply acts most sinful and sacrilegious. We let pass that the concurrent testimony of all minds endowed with natural rectitude of judgment (not excluding Protestants nor Israelites nor Turks) has confirmed and reconfirmed the condemnations spoken already by Pope, by church, and by the entire Catholic world. It is enough that the authors and prime movers of these outrages proclaimed and stamped them as dishonorable and base before they perpetrated them, and even in the very act of their perpetration. Can these apostolic gentlemen, now so anxious for the conversion of the Catholic Church, be ignorant, for instance, that two of the Subalpine ministry, Visconti-Venosta and Lanza, declared the invasion of Rome and the usurpation of the Papal power acts of barbarism destitute of every semblance of right? And are they not aware that they so avouched just one short month before both invasion and usurpation were consummated by burglary and breach?

Who can hope, then, to persuade a Catholic that these successful shells, pick-locks, and jimmies have not been instruments of the most iniquitous wrong-doing, seeing that these two men, in the face of heaven and earth, averred its baseness themselves only a few weeks before the formal consummation of the act? Perhaps, too, our converters have never heard how their _divine_ Camillo Cavour said one day to their other _divine_ Massimo d’Azeglio, who has recorded it _ad perpetuam rei memoriam_: “If what we are doing for Italy, you and I had done for ourselves, what a precious pair of big _balossi_ we should have been!” The _Opinione_ knows too well the sense of the Subalpine word _balosso_ that we should put it into good Italian. The editor and his pharisaical colleagues have learned, no doubt, the lovely dialect of the northern masters they have chosen for Italy and for themselves. They can teach us, we dare say, the full force of this fine word _balosso_; that it means all that is contained in the words scamp, scoundrel, robber, rascal, villain, ruffian, knave. Can Catholics, then, be easily persuaded that the _facts accomplished_ by Azeglio and Cavour for the regeneration of Italy have been free from sin and iniquity, seeing that these two _divines_ have stigmatized them as the acts of men bad enough to be _balossi_? For be it observed that Azeglio himself admits that what is criminal in private life is no less criminal in public;[63] showing (though we are losing time in the attempt to throw light upon the sun) that our apostolic friends, in order to justify the _accomplished facts_ resorted to for Italy’s new birth, have been obliged to invent a modern social law the converse of the ancient one ordained by God himself.

If this be admitted, what can prove more incontestably that the acts complained of were acts of sin and iniquity; sin being any act contrary to God’s commands, and iniquity an act opposed to the justice he enjoins?

But Catholics may go further, and say to the apostles of our conversion that not only are the means used for the _regeneration_ of Italy sinful and iniquitous, but that the _end_ itself aimed at by the ringleaders of this pretended regeneration is absolutely antichristian and diabolical, being nothing less than the demolition of the Catholic Church and the annihilation of the kingdom of God among men. Of course, the _end_ is simply absurd, and rendered impossible by the excess of its absurdity. But nevertheless, though it cannot exist as a thing attainable, it does exist as a thing conceivable, and as such inspires the mad career of Masonry, which pursues it with satanic rage and open ostentation as the main objective point of the machinations of the sect.

Mazzini, to whom the _regenerators_ are indebted for their grand _idea_, aimed as far ago as 1834 at the abolition of the temporal power, without regard to cost. His argument was that the downfall of this power carried with it, as a necessary consequence, the emancipation of the human race from the thraldom of the spiritual power. “The Vicars of Christ” he called “Vicars of the Spirit of Evil, to be exterminated, never to be restored.”[64] Visconti-Venosta, a member of the present Italian cabinet, wrote to Mazzini, in 1851, that the rallying-cry of the _regeneration_ should be, “Down with the Monarchy, down with the Papacy.”[65]

Ferrari, the philosopher of the movement, proclaimed in 1853 that the end it proposed was the stamping out of Pope and Emperor, of Christ and Cæsar; the four tyrannies that Machiavelli had delivered over to Italian hate.[66]

To make this matter short, though we might go on for ever, the more rabid partisans of the _regeneration_ do not blush to say that the essential end of the great Italian movement is the emancipation of human consciences from the authority of the church, by laying prostrate the colossus against whom Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII. ineffectually strove. They aim, in a word, at the radical destruction of the entire Catholic Church; to which end, nationality, unity, political liberty itself, were always to be regarded as nothing more than the means.[67]

These preliminaries being understood, our free-thinking friends ought to see that their argument, derived from what they call “providential protection” to their sacrilegious acts, strikes the Catholic mind as a shocking blasphemy, because it makes our blessed Lord an accomplice in detestable transactions, and an instigator to the worst of crimes--a deliberate plotter, in short, of the ruin of that church which is the masterpiece of his wisdom, and the object of his infinite love. We have no objections to their saying that the anger of God has unchained their barbarous allies, and for a time has left them free to do their worst against the children of the church. They may say all this, and Catholics will assent and even approve--not the _animus_, but the words. They will exclaim with St. Jerome of old, when the barbarians of that day were making havoc of the things of God: _Peccatis nostris barbari fortes sunt_[68]--“In our sins the barbarians are strong.” But let them not venture to say that Almighty God, because he allows them a fatal facility of blasphemous impiety, protects and even caresses this impiety. For religious men will answer them: Yes, he protects and caresses you, as he protected and caressed the crucifiers of his only-begotten Son.

And here we entreat the Israelitish editor of the _Opinione_ to pay strict attention to what we have to say, inasmuch as it concerns him in his nationality; since he is an Israelite by nature and nation, and Italian only by the place of his accidental birth.

The synagogue, sustained by the coalition of Pharisees and Sadducees, undertook to regenerate Judea by taking the life of Jesus, Son of God, true God and true Man. The great sin of Jesus Christ in the eyes of the synagogue was similar to that of the church of Jesus in the eyes of the Masonic Order. He was the Son of God and the Word of Truth, as the church is his spouse and the organ of the truth.

But there stood many obstacles in the way of compassing his death. First, there needed a lawful sanction, and there was none. Secondly, it was necessary to take him captive, a very dangerous undertaking, for he was always surrounded by throngs of devoted followers and friends. Thirdly, it was necessary to keep the people in good humor, or, as Jesus was their principal benefactor, they might rebel against this public execution. Fourthly, it was necessary to ascertain that the Romans, who had cognizance of capital cases in Palestine, would connive at his trial for life and at his sentence to death. Fifthly, they had to risk the display of his miraculous power, for his miracles surpassed all that had ever been seen in Israel. It must be admitted that these difficulties were very formidable. Yet what happened? _Everything was made easy._ The sanction of law was found in a tissue of lies and political misindictments, successful beyond all expectation. His capture proved the easiest imaginable, through the unexpected treachery of one of his own disciples, who sold him for a bauble. The populace was led with wonderful facility not only not to rise to his rescue, but in a solemn _plébiscite_ to save the robber Barabbas at his expense, and to sentence him to an ignominious death. The Romans made some show, through Pilate, in his defence; but after five times declaring him innocent of every charge, condemned him to the cross, following the will of the synagogue to the last; and finally Jesus, though challenged with insult to the exercise of his supernatural powers, abstained mysteriously from their use, and did nothing to withdraw himself from torture or death. Could any greater facility of consummation be imagined than was here shown in the _accomplishment_ of this tremendous deicidal _act_? But will our Israelitish apostle have the heart to undertake to win over Italian Catholics to the belief that the wonderful _success_ of the crucifixion (permitted, as it undeniably was) is to be construed as a caress bestowed by Providence upon a corrupt and apostate synagogue, and as a palpable and unmistakable proof of his protection of the bloody and treacherous council that sentenced him to death?

Between the Jewish sacrilege directed against the adorable Person of the Incarnate Word, and the Italian sacrilege against the Vicar of that Word, there is but this distinction: that the Person aimed at in the former was God present in his human nature, and the Person aimed at in the latter was God present in his church.

In the days of Pontius Pilate and Caiphas, the Jews slew the material body of our Blessed Lord: the latter-day Jews, in these days of Lanza and Visconti-Venosta, would, if they could, slay the Spiritual Body of the same Jesus Christ. And do you dare, wretched Pharisees, to ask of us Catholic believers to recognize in the facilities that have attended until now this monstrous sacrilege of yours, this second deicidal act, the smiles of an approving Providence, and the marks of a divine protection accorded to the prompt success of your heaven-defying crime?

The capital error of the gross and impious sophism now the subject of our comment, consists evidently in the assumption that easy and unexpected success (in operations ordinarily of a very arduous character) is a sure note of the divine approval, even when the accomplished facts are manifest breaches of the Decalogue.

A proposition of this sort, if it had the least value, would serve to sanction any atrocity, however monstrous, provided it were only successfully and rapidly achieved.

Such wretches as Passatori, Ninco Nanchi, Carusi, and Troppmann ought in this view to be regarded as protected and caressed by Divine Providence. Every prosperous villain would only have to quote to his judges the argument of the _Opinione_ to conciliate their approbation, and to obtain from them not only an acquittal, but an honorable testimonial in high praise of these favorites of heaven.

True it is, however, that a striking and brilliant success dazzles the judgment of men without faith, or of men with faith as sensual as their flesh.

We Catholics, on the contrary, are rich in the possession of a divine promise which keeps us cheerful and buoyant with hope in the face of what seems like the final triumph of the wicked. And this is more especially true when we have to deal with those who plot against the church and its visible Head, _adversus Dominum, et adversus Christum ejus_. Nobody that we know of has set this promise in a truer light than P. Paul Segneri, and we take the liberty to transcribe here for our readers two or three passages of his, which are just so much gold to the purpose we have in view.

“‘The prosperity of fools,’ says Solomon, ‘shall destroy them.’ He does not say ‘destroys them,’ but ‘shall destroy them.’ Why so? Because the prosperity of the wicked does not always produce immediately its disastrous effects. Sometimes the reverse comes after long delay. Wait patiently. You will see the end of what seems to begin so well. Have you never read in the Book of Job how that the Almighty takes pleasure in defeating the machinations of the impious? He brings their counsellors to a foolish end.” Not to a bad beginning. No; all seems prosperous at first. It is the end that is disastrous. He lets them raise aloft their mighty tower of Babel. But afterwards, in the confusion of their pride, they disperse and are gone. He lets them build up the beautiful towers of Siloe; but these fall, and the builders are buried beneath the ruins. For want of this reflection, many men wonder at the prosperity of the wicked. Even the prophets themselves address God sometimes with tender reproaches. They almost accuse him, I might say. We are apt to look too much at the beginning of things, and not, like holy David, at the end. _Donec intelligam in novissimis eorum._ As much as to say, they are so taken up with gazing upon the comely golden head of their tall Babylonian colossus, that they have not thought of lowering their eyes to see its brittle legs of clay. Now hear me, and witness the establishment of the truth. If ever since the birth of Christ there was a race of men who rose by unscrupulous arts to enormous wealth and power, it was doubtless the Greek emperors, tyrants as they may well be called. Now answer me, Have there ever existed empires which have furnished subjects for tragedy more truly horrible than theirs?

“Nicephorus succeeded at first by the employment of dishonest means to usurp the imperial power, driving away the right inheritress, Irene. What then? Crushed by a series of misfortunes, he began to look upon himself as a modern Pharaoh, hardened by defeats. Finally, vanquished and slain by the Bulgarians, his enemies made a drinking-cup of his skull, and out of joy or derision used it as such in the diversions of the camp. Stauratius by illegitimate alliances, and Leo the Armenian by repeated high-handed rebellions, succeeded in establishing themselves in the height of power. How long was it before these two men died under the blows of the assassin, the former in war, and the latter at the altar he had profaned? Michael the Stammerer was so fortunate as to step, in his famous conspiracy, from the dungeon to the throne; demanding there the worship of his subjects, the chain still on his neck and the fetters on his feet. Intoxicated by his success, he compelled a holy virgin to share his bed. All Sclavonia revolted, his entire army deserted him; nor yet repenting, he was literally devoured by a malady the most disgusting. Theophilus was successful in suppressing, for reasons of state, the veneration of sacred images; but almost immediately after, on being shamefully defeated by the Saracens, died of rage and intense mortification. Michael III., regarded as another Nero on account of his licentiousness and cruelty, succeeded so far as to put his mother and guardians out of the way, in order to reign without opposition or control. He ended his ‘prosperous’ career by kindling against himself the hatred of his subjects, and encountered rebellion after rebellion, in the last of which, in the midst of a drunken debauch, he paid the forfeit of his life. Alexander attained a sort of success in plundering the holy altars, and in appropriating the gold thus obtained to his own private use; but very soon thereafter he was seized with a sudden madness, and he had not held out a year when he ended his life in a fearful vomiting of blood. What shall I say of Romanus I.? He too was successful to all appearance; for, by a stratagem of wonderful adroitness, he expelled the legitimate possessor from the patriarchal see of Constantinople, and placed in it a mere child, his own son. The year following he himself was driven from the imperial throne by another son, and banished to a lonely isle for life. So also fared it with Romanus II. Impelled by the lust of dominion, he took the life of his own father by poison. His own life was taken very shortly after, and by the self-same means. Michael Paphlagonius, by infamous devices, carried his point of usurping the throne. Seized suddenly with demoniacal obsession, he could obtain no repose. Exorcisms and almsgivings were tried in vain. He died as he lived, with his agony unrelieved. Michael Calaphates was ‘successful’ in driving the empress into exile, that he might reign alone; but the people rose against him at once, stoned him, deprived him of sight, and dragged him through the city streets more dead than alive. Diogenes and Andronicus, two usurpers who had ‘succeeded’ in their treason, one by a courtesan’s vile aid, the other by the arm of an assassin, came to the same lamentable end.

“Now answer me! Can you look upon as truly successful the wicked arts which brought these bad men to power? Speak out! Would you be willing to enjoy their ‘prosperity’ if with it you had to accept its reverse? Is there any one so stupid as to envy their short-lived ‘good luck’? Rest assured that such has ever been the fate of those who attain for a time their unhallowed ends by iniquitous means. ‘The prosperity of fools will destroy them.’ Doubt it not, my friends. The prosperity of fools will most assuredly destroy them. It is hardly worth while to labor longer in the proof. All writings, all ages, all powers, attest in unison this truth, that ‘Justice exalteth a nation’; and this other, that ‘Injustice leadeth a nation to misery and ruin.’ These are the words of one who was the wisest among men; and elsewhere he says, ‘Man shall not be strengthened by wickedness’; and, again, ‘The unjust shall be caught in their own snares’; and then, again, ‘They who sow iniquity shall reap destruction.’”

Thus, by examples drawn from the annals of the Byzantines (a race dear to our modern liberals), the eloquent Segneri points out the end which, according to Holy Writ, awaits the criminal successes of the wicked. If he had chosen to embrace a wider range of history, he might have compiled an endless catalogue of examples the most frightful; commencing with the dreadful success of the crucifixion of our ever blessed Lord, of which the sequel was as dreadful a retribution. The synagogue nailed the Messiah to the cross, under the pretext that otherwise the Romans would come and occupy Jerusalem. And _precisely because_ they did this wicked thing, the Romans took Jerusalem and levelled it to the ground. So that the very success of the Jews, which, execrable as it was, the _Opinione_ would have adored as a protecting caress bestowed by Providence upon Sion, ended simply in bringing upon the guilty city a horrible siege and irremediable ruin.

We content ourselves, for our part, in citing the Roman Cæsars, who, in the first three centuries, renewed ten different times, and with all the incidents of success, the bloody persecution of the followers of Christ. All of these, without a single exception, came to a wretched end. When the fourth century arrived to witness the triumph of Christianity, the descendants of the persecuting emperors were found extinct by foul or violent deaths; the series closing with Maximin breathing his last amid the agonies of poison and the blasphemous howlings of despair, and with Candidianus (the adulterous son of Galerius, adopted by Valeria, Maximin’s wife) murdered by Licinius along with another brother, a sister in tender age, and finally Valeria herself. It thus appears that the massacre of the Christians, which our modern Caiphases would have celebrated as an edifying “divine caress,” had this one effect after all, viz., to bring around the lasting triumph of the persecuted cause. It was the children of the slaughtered ones who were victorious in the end; the progeny of the slaughterers died suffocated in the blood which their guilty fathers had shed.

We might easily continue these examples, and recount, for instance, the end to which a career of successful iniquity at last conducted Julian the Apostate, the idol and exemplar of our Italian regenerators. We might enlarge on the fates of Astolphus and Desiderius, whose “patriotism” they so much admire. We might with still more force bring out contemporary cases, the case of Cavour, for example, withdrawn suddenly away by an ominous death in the flower of life from the hosannas of the people he had misled; the case of Farini, Cavour’s right-hand man, struck also in life’s prime by a shocking frenzy which urged him to acts incredibly revolting, and soon after to a most painful death; the case of Fanti, the plunderer of Umbria, who, before he could die, was tortured for a year with all the agonies of death; the case of Persano, the bombarder of Ancona, who, after making shipwreck on the sea of Lissa of his rank and reputation, avenged himself of fortune by publishing the infamies of the successful revolution. And to these we might add the cases of Pinelli, of Valerio, of La Farina, and of a hundred others equally conclusive. We might even quote examples among the living; of a certain _regenerator_, who, in spite of his impious successes, roams incessantly from place to place seeking a rest he cannot find--condemned, it would seem, to endure the torments of Caina, Antenora, and Ptolomea in Dante’s ninth circle of hell, and to realize in himself the fate described by Alberigo:

“This boon the sufferer hath, if boon it be-- Ofttimes to know the pangs of parting breath, Ere Atropos shuts down the shears of death.”

To be brief, we shall confine ourselves to the two most distinguished and most successful persecutors of popes--Frederick II., a mediæval emperor of Germany, and Napoleon the First, a French emperor of the modern sort. Both of these men, in the studied outrages they inflicted, the one upon Gregory IX. and Innocent IV., the other on Pius VII., were encouraged by such marvellous successes that our Israelitish proselytizer would have had them canonized as the very Benjamins of Providence. Suffice it to say that Frederick II. had his political Cæsarism preached into right divine by the most learned jurists of his day, just as Napoleon I. made the most powerful monarchy of Europe kneel down and adore his bloodier Cæsarism of the sword. Both the one and the other returning from their triumphs, carried fortune, to all appearance, chained for ever to their cars. The more they raged against Christ’s Vicar, the more their victory seemed complete. The greater the number of excommunications they incurred, the easier seemed to be their subsequent encroachments. It was after the last papal censure that Frederick gained the adhesion of several powerful barons in Rome. It was after the Pope’s worst imprisonment that Napoleon won his greatest battles, making them the subjects of the most vainglorious boasts, that he had thus received from the God of armies special marks of approbation--“caresses,” as the _Opinione_ calls them, when bestowed upon the enemies of the church.

Yet where did they end, these lucky sacrileges, this prodigious and prolonged prosperity of crime? Both these men outlived their glittering fortunes. The false magnificence and grandeur for which they had thrown away their souls, turned to ashes in their grasp.

King Henry, Frederick’s eldest son, dies in prison, leaving a son who was struck dead by a blow from an unknown hand. Enzio, his bastard offspring, created by him King of Sardinia, after twenty-five years of imprisonment in a cage of iron dies a miserable death. Ezzelino, his son-in-law closes with a horrible end a life, if possible, of greater horror. His great champion, Thaddeus of Suessa, is slain with every accompaniment of contempt. Pier delle Vigne, his evil genius, has his eyes thrust out, and commits suicide in his despair. Frederick himself, after surviving all these horrors, is strangled by Manfredi, another of his base-born sons, who, after bathing his gory hands in the blood of Conrad, Frederick’s lawful son, is himself stretched dead on the field of a dishonorable strife. To close this interminable tragedy, Corradino, the last scion of the hated tyrant, ends on a felon’s scaffold his seventeen short years of life. With this unfortunate youth the dynasty of Frederick is closed. The empire passes over into other hands, and Rodolph of Hapsburg reigns, the first of a better line.

The fall of Napoleon I. is still remembered as an event of recent date. Elated with his continual victories, he invaded Russia with the most formidable army the world ever saw. Warned that he had the fate of the excommunicated to encounter, he asked in scorn whether his soldiers would drop their muskets at the sight of a Papal Bull. Forced to retreat after a show of vain success, famine and frost decimated his ranks, and his soldiers’ frozen fingers refused to hold the interdicted arms. Unable to contend against fast-increasing numbers, he found himself by a strange fatality compelled to renounce the crown in the very palace at Fontainebleau which he had turned into a prison for the Pope. The Holy Father had quitted it to resume the throne. The fallen emperor left it to accept in Elba an asylum which he begged as a shelter in his friendless old age. Leaving his place of refuge, in a mad attempt to resuscitate his fortunes, he incurred at Waterloo a ruin the most disastrous ever known. Stripped of every resource, he was dragged to a prison-cell on a miserable island, scarcely noticeable in its vast expanse of sea. From this inhospitable rock, he was permitted to contemplate the plenary restoration of the mysterious Papal power, and simultaneously the downfall of all the thrones he had presented to his brothers and next of kin. After spending, in desolate captivity, the five years he had decreed of prison to the blameless Pius VII., he gave up his tortured soul to meet the just displeasure of his God. What more striking confirmation can we ask of the truth of those awful words, “They who sow injustice” sooner or later “shall reap its bitter fruits”?

It would not do to pass without notice the still living and speaking case of Napoleon III. Who but he has been the foremost leader of the _regenerators_ of unhappy Italy? The Gog and Magog of our Italian pharisees! And are not these the men who fell down and worshipped the divine prosperity of their master’s eighteen years of empire? Have they not claimed it as a miracle of God’s favor, a long and lasting “caress” of Providence, the possible failure of which it would be impious to suspect? Have they not sung and celebrated, time and again, the famous victory of Solferino as a prodigy sent from heaven to show that the Almighty took the side of Italy, and had declared against the Pope?

Well, now, what has become of this epopee of miraculous prosperity, this note of ruin to Catholic Christianity, to the claims of the Holy See, and (as justly we might say) to the repose and peace of Europe? It came to naught in Sedan, in a military defeat and a dynastic misfortune the most appalling that ever was known or written of in the world.

And it _so_ came to naught precisely because of the “success” at Solferino. That victory of Napoleon’s, chanted so loudly and so often by the pious Jew editor of the _Opinione_ as an unmistakable revelation of God’s decision in favor of Bonaparte and his new Italy--that victory (when the hour of Sedan had come) was plainly seen as the manifest cause of his every subsequent reverse. Who can help perceiving now that, had not Austria lost the battle of Solferino, won by France that Italy might be “made,” Austria would not have lost the battle at Sadowa, achieved by Prussia that Germany might be “made”? And had not Austria lost at Sadowa, is it not plain that Napoleon would never have been dragged down into the horrible catastrophe of Sedan? In this catastrophe we find the meaning of the “approving smile” at Solferino. The “caress,” we are told, was intended for the third Napoleon. For whom, then, was intended the crushing dispensation at Sedan?

Will our kind converters to the new reading of the ways of Providence reflect maturely on this matter? All genuine Christian gentlemen, all admitted men of honor (except a few who were misled), regarded the war of 1859, so well characterized by the victory of Solferino, as iniquitous in its motives and as anti-Christian in its scope. It was looked upon by all as a _magnum latrocinium_, a godless scheme of robbery; but it had what its perpetrators called “a great success.” Eleven years roll by, and what do we see?

Napoleon III., at first so splendidly victorious by the force of an act of larceny that dispossessed four princes and displaced the Pope, is caught at last like a weasel in a trap, dethroned in his turn, driven off in scorn, steeped to the lips in indelible disgrace; all his marshals and generals, without a solitary exception, ignominiously humbled, soundly beaten, and detained in durance vile by a logical rebound from their first Italian success; all his army, four hundred thousand strong, lately invincible, now led into exile or captivity, to shiver with cold or to wince under the epithets of scorn. Victorious France, in retribution for her “new idea” of _nationality_, and to set the good example, yields up the costly tribute of _two_ of her wealthiest provinces; just the number she had stolen from Italy, on the strength of the “new idea,” as her due for allowing Piedmont to absorb the entire peninsula within her ravenous maw.

How is it possible not to recognize, in this unprecedented drama, the real lesson of divine retaliation, the exclusive right of Providence to repay--to exact eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and life for life, when such extremity is required? Who will hesitate to say with the poet:

“The sword of God is strict, and cuts amain. But still in stated measure, time, and place, Till all things find their equal own again.”

And in this most memorable reverse of Napoleon III., we invite our apostolic interpreters of Providence to note a special fact. The fallen emperor not only lives to realize the forfeiture of all his fame, differing herein from those who die before the loss, but has to endure the bitterness of witnessing the demolition of all the proud creations of his reign. He had raised France to the pinnacle of earthly greatness, had just crowned, as he himself phrased it, the glorious edifice his genius had successfully constructed. France is now dismembered, dilapidated, a mass of melancholy ruin; reduced to chaos militarily, morally, politically, and to a great extent materially, if this last trait be deemed of much account.

He had decorated the palaces of St. Cloud and the Tuileries with munificence more than Asiatic. They are stripped to the bare walls. He rose, on the wings of the _plébiscite_, from obscurity to a throne. The _plébiscite_ is now an obsolete absurdity. The treaty of Paris, which crowned the triumphs of the East; the Chinese victories and ovations at Canton and Palikao; the Mexican Empire, the fruit of so much toil and treasure, the price of the good name and fame of France; the Prague conventions, intended to defeat the growth of Prussia into a vast and consolidated Germany--of all these magnificent enterprises not a trace. In short, the countless dazzling exploits of the prosperous reign of the third Napoleon have vanished for ever like so many dissolving views. One work, one only work survives--the Subalpine government of Italy, to lick which hideous monster into shape the unhappy monarch threw recklessly away his honor and his crown. We might pursue this train of thought to its logical conclusion, but we refrain. Too strict an application of the laws of logic might bring us into conflict with other laws which we prefer not to provoke. But we may perhaps venture to request our pious friends of the “Regeneration” to undertake the argument themselves--an argument which runs on almost of itself, being one of the kind which dialecticians call reasoning from analogy. Let them look to it well, and say if there be not better ground to be anxious about the life of their _Italy_ than there is to be solicitous about converting Catholics to the modern dogma, that the voice of an accomplished fact is no less than the voice of God; that the lucky consummation of a crime is itself the signal of the divine applause. Let them reflect that not a fact, which ceases afterwards to be a fact, can come into being or go out of it, without, at least, the permissive sanction of Almighty God. Let them pause and consider that the series of events, opened by Providence in 1859, is not absolutely or finally closed. Let them ever bear in mind that, when least it is expected, Providence may complete the line of this analogy by dissolving into nothingness the only remnant left of all the Napoleonic creations. The world and the ages will then believe that not a single one of the supposed marks of the divine “caress,” claimed by Italy’s _regenerators_, was really a mark of favor; but simply one of the many illustrations of the way in which the scorner is caught in the midst of his devices: _In insidiis suis capientur iniqui_.

In what we have advanced, we have, as seems to us, fairly and fully refuted the boastful syllogism of our adversaries. We shall conclude by exhorting them to lay aside all hope of converting Catholics by a show of blasphemous successes or an appeal to the longest impunity of crime. Go on, gentlemen! Enjoy your fortune! Vaunt as loudly as you will the triumphs you have secured over us, over the church, over the rights of the Holy See. Do all this, and welcome. But when you come to tell us that Providence is “caressing your cause,” and ask our adhesion to this impiety, we warn you to desist. Satan himself would not dare to give utterance to such an insult, or even to harbor such a thought. Providence has allowed you, in the abuse of your own free-will, a certain measure of easy success; as he allowed it to the synagogue, to the Cæsars, to Julian the Apostate, to Desiderius, and to all such of your predecessors as were permitted for a time to triumph over Christ and his commandments. And this he has allowed to you, not as to his loved ones, but as to his persecutors, that you may be the rod of his justice against the sins of the world. He will make this to yourselves, if you repent not, a snare and a delusion; to the church, an assurance of greater exaltation; and to all of us, a call to better service and obedience. We as Catholics know that we must bow beneath your blows. We bear the pain of them in peace, because faith teaches us that even scourges are wielded by God, and that his hand is to be kissed as much when it strikes as when it strengthens. For this reason we can accept you as you are. And yet we see in you no higher mark than that of our flagellators and the exercisers of our patience; but be warned in time. God makes use of his scourges, and then destroys them. We have made this plain to you by innumerable examples. Beware! for the prosperous days of God’s scourges end invariably in misfortune and disaster. Beware, for the good times of the enemies of Jesus Christ and his church have ever been as pitfalls with a covering of roses; yokes of iron masked by a drapery of flowers. On the contrary, from her greatest tribulations the church has ever issued brighter, lovelier, and more radiant than before. She numbers as many victories as battles, as many prisoners as foes. All the promises of God are for her and against you, and all history attests that of these promises not a syllable has failed. The church is our mother; her cause is our own. We have, therefore, no fear for the result. You may scorn us, you may strip us, you may deny us the protection of the laws. You may tear us limb from limb during the brief occasion of your power. But conquer us, no! In all eternity, you cannot. God has ordered it that we shall be _your victors_. Rallying close to the Vicar of the King of heaven, and faithful to the call of his immortal Spouse, we shall announce to you, with front uplifted, that we have conquered you; or (if that better pleases you) that Christ has conquered you through us. Laugh to your hearts’ content at this faith of ours. All your predecessors have done as much. Yet who triumphed in the end? So certain are we of the victory that we scarce dare hasten it by our desires. The thought of the bolts of divine wrath impending over you appalls us, and we abstain, out of pity for you, from asking what Dante, on a like occasion, prayed for in these words:

“O God! when wilt thou give me to be blest To see thy vengeance, which, long hid, made sweet The sacred anger garnered in thy breast?” _Purg._, c. xx.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] In Psalm liv.

[63] See _Diary of C. Pisano_, fourth part, p. 125.

[64] _Ai giovani Italiani_, p. 15.

[65] See _L’Unità Italiana di Milano_, April 14, 1863.

[66] See _The Republican Federation of the Peoples_.

[67] See _Il Diritto_, July 31 and August 11, 1863.

[68] Epist. i. ad Eliod.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LITTLE PIERRE, THE PEDLAR OF ALSACE; or, The Reward of Filial Piety. Translated from the French by J. M. C. With 27 illustrations. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 236. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1872.

The French can write charming stories, as every one knows. _Little Pierre_ is one of the best we have seen in a long time--such a one as enchants a child, and makes him or her unwilling to lay it aside for supper or bed. It leads one through the romantic scenes of Alsace and the country of the Rhine, has plenty of stirring adventures, and, what is best of all, ends in a capital and satisfactory manner: Pierre and his little sister happily married, the old lady comfortable, Pierre a well-to-do merchant at Niederbronn. The illustrations, twenty-seven in all, which have been recut from the originals for the American edition, are uncommonly well executed. Little Pierre is destined to become an intimate friend of our young folks, to say nothing of Christine and Lolotte. Perhaps the most comical scene in the book is where Little Pierre is put by Madame Frank in the top of a Christmas-tree, with the name of little Cecile pinned on his breast. The most touching scene is the finding of little Lolotte in the wood, with her eyes bandaged and her hands tied. We advise our young readers not to rest until they get possession of this pretty book.

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THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, from the Days of Wolsey to the Death of Cranmer. Papal and Anti-Papal Notables. By S. H. Burke, author of “The Monastic Houses of England.” 2 vols. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.

This is a work which fairly answers its title, and we have in its two handsome duodecimo volumes sketches and descriptions so graphic of the men and women of the English Reformation as to place them most vividly before us.

Beginning with the unlovely correspondence of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn, and recounting many interesting details of the divorce question, the narrative passes on to a review of the leading incidents and the principal personages of the reign of Henry. The political murders of Sir Thomas More and of Bishop Fisher, the death of Queen Katharine, and the fall of Anne Boleyn, are described with fresh details of interest drawn from newly opened sources of historic information.

On the subject of “Clerical Reformers and their Spouses,” there is a very readable chapter, and, with a full disquisition upon the “Religious Institutions of Old England,” we have startling statements concerning the character of the “Monastic Inquisitors” under that arch-villain, Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s Secretary of State, as will open the eyes of such as are unaware of the depth of infamy fathomed by the scoundrels who stole or wasted the wealth of England’s grand mediæval charities and robbed the poor and the sick of their sole heritage of succor and consolation. At the sight of the suffering entailed by the destruction of the monasteries, those glorious asylums of religion, charity, and learning, even as enthusiastic a panegyrist of the Reformation as Froude cannot help exclaiming: “To the universities, the Reformation had brought with it desolation. _To the people of England it had brought misery and want. The once open hand was closed._ ... The prisons were crowded.... Monks and nuns pointed with bitter effect to the fruits of _the new belief, which had been crimsoned in the blood of thousands of the English peasants_.”

The second volume gives us the principal events and personages of the end of the reign of Henry VIII. and of the reigns of Edward VI. and of Mary Tudor; and effective use is made not only of authentic documentary evidence which has come to light within the past seven years, but also of the important, because impartial, testimony of distinguished Protestant writers, such as Hook, Maitland, Brewer, Blunt, and Stephenson. We commend the work as one of exceeding interest.

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THE LIFE OF MARIE-EUSTELLE HARPAIN, the Sempstress of St. Pallais, called “The Angel of the Eucharist.” Second edition. London: Burns, Oates, & Co.; New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.

This is one of the most interesting lives which we have read. The lives of the saints always should be interesting, but often the methodical and dry way in which they are, as we may say, constructed, has a discouraging effect upon the reader greater than that which the heroic virtues of their subjects can produce. This is not the case with this memoir of one whom we may be allowed to call a saint, though she has not yet been recognized as such by the church, always prudent, and especially so with regard to canonizations. Marie-Eustelle died in 1842, at the age of 28, and belongs entirely to this nineteenth century, which is so ignorant of its true glories. Her life is quite imitable in most respects, as well as admirable, which is an additional reason for reading a book that is so very readable.

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THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. With twenty-one Illustrations, from original designs by D. Mosler, H. Warren, and J. H. Powell, engraved by Holman and Bale. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

The Rev. Mr. Formby, whose zeal, learning, and taste have so enriched the library of Catholic books for the young, gives here a popular work on the Parables, which will be wonderfully attractive. The Parables are all given in full, with fine illustrations to fix them on the mind, and explanations of their spiritual sense, drawn from the holy fathers. These beautiful lessons of our Lord cannot be too deeply impressed on minds to serve as subjects of meditation, and, well understood, they will prove sources of many graces. Outside the church, they remain to most “mere parables, not unfrequently indeed admired, and even quoted, beautiful in their way as anecdotes, but without in the least disclosing their true meaning.”

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THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH; or, The Seven Pillars of the House of Wisdom. A Brief Explanation of the Catholic Doctrine of the Seven Sacraments, in connection with their corresponding types in the Old Testament. Illustrated with sixteen original designs by J. Powell, engraved on wood by the brothers Dalziel. By the Rev. Henry Formby, Priest of the Diocese of Birmingham. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

Another of Mr. Formby’s charming books, “not meant as a book of piety alone, but rather intended as a book of general popular knowledge.” He saw clearly the want of our time. “The whole tone and spirit of modern civilization is built upon the denial that there either is or can be anything superior to itself, or, indeed, anything that is not of its own order of things in the world.” “The young mind cannot be too soon made aware of the contradiction between the world and our Lord, and cannot be too soon and too effectually brought up to love and abide by all that our divine Lord has taught, and made firmly to disregard and despise all that is contrary to it in the world’s doctrine, from the knowledge that our Lord is greater than the world.”

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THE SCHOOL KEEPSAKE, AND MONITOR FOR AFTER LIFE. By Rev. H. Formby. With illustrations. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

This perfectly beautiful little gift for the young leaving school is one so attractive in itself that it cannot fail to be kept; so sound, so clear, so distinct in its matter, that it cannot but be such a help as will gladden the guardian angel watching over the child as it steps from the school into the busy world.

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THE DEVOTION OF THE SEVEN DOLORS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. Translated by the Rev. Henry Formby. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

A devotion approved by the highest authority, commended by the example of saints, and one full of consolation and piety, is here presented in a form that will give it currency among many who had overlooked it. No one can sorrow with Mary over the sorrows of Jesus without a return on self, and a sense of what our sins, the cause of all, demand on our part.

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SCHOOL SONGS, to which music is adapted. Complete volume containing--Part I., The Junior School Song-Book; Part II., The Senior School Song-Book. Edited by the Rev. Henry Formby. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

Amid the abundance of bad books, it is delightful to find a miniature volume like this of 200 pages, containing hymns, nursery rhymes, ballads, and minor poems suited to the young selected with care. The young must laugh and play; they will sing hymns sometimes, touching ballads sometimes, nonsense sometimes; give them all this to sing, but keep them from the immoral and low, slangy songs that even our music stores are now flooding the land with. We hope this little collection will sell by the thousand. It is cheap and it is good.

* * * * *

WILD FLOWERS OF WISCONSIN. By B. J. Dorward. Edited by his son. Milwaukee: Catholic News Co.

The productions of our author, under the signature of “Porte Crayon,”[69] have long been favorites of the Western public. The late Dr. J. V. Huntington, a poet and critic of no ordinary ability, sought him out and secured his contributions to the St. Louis _Leader_. His poems are characterized by a beautiful simplicity and spontaneity, genuine sentiment, and native good sense. Other poets may exhibit the delicate touch of the artist in elaborate and polished images, but the efforts of writers like the present must be the inspiration of the moment, and the less forethought they show, the more are they enhanced in value. To change the figure, the wild flowers lose their hues and fragrance if subjected to hot-house processes. The former excite our admiration, the latter elicit our sympathy, and perhaps live longer in the memory by those “touches of nature which make the whole world kin.”

We bespeak a welcome to these flowers of song on the part of those who love poetry in its native simplicity, who set a proper estimate on all that is gentle, pure, and kind in the sentiments of our common nature, noble and sublime in our common faith, and would cultivate an indigenous literature worthy of the name.

Among many gems of thought and feeling, we can only particularize: “To a Bird in Church,” “By the Rivulet,” “To the Memory of Dr. J. V. Huntington,” “St. Mary’s of the Pines,” “The Datura,” and “A Soldier’s Funeral.”

* * * * *

A SISTER’S STORY. By Mrs. Augustus Craven. Translated from the French, by Emily Bowles. Fourth American edition. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 539. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

It is with pleasure that we announce the appearance of a fourth American edition of this exquisite and charming book, whose reputation and circulation have become world-wide. Even the publications most hostile to our holy religion have been compelled to eulogize it, although evidently feeling very uneasy about its great and increasing popularity among non-Catholic readers. The great discovery of a forgery in one part of the history which the _New Englander_ fancied itself to have made, is known to a great part of the reading public. This supposed _forgery_ was a profession of faith by the subject of the story, differing in form from one given in a French edition (14th of Didier, Paris), which the _New Englander_ rather hastily concluded to be the genuine and authentic form which Mrs. Craven had published. The _New Englander_ did not, however, express any suspicion that this forgery had been perpetrated by the American editors--on the contrary, disclaimed any such suspicion. Refinement of language, cautiousness in making infamous charges against persons of high character, and similar marks which denote gentlemanly and conscientious principles in a literary man, are, however, unhappily too rare among the conductors of the “Moral Spouting Horns” of the American press. Following those instincts by which they are usually impelled, and imitating a long series of precedents furnished by those who have been their precursors in their honorable trade, several of these papers, the _Independent_ leading off, accused the American editors and publisher of the work with having forged a “profession of faith” to suit themselves. Says the _Independent_ of Jan. 15:

“The creed of this good Catholic was not half papistical enough to suit these American editors; so they have introduced into it not only what she did believe, but what, in their judgment, she ought to have believed. We desire to call the attention of THE CATHOLIC WORLD and the _Tablet_ to this translation. It is possible there may be some explanation of what seems to be an astonishing piece of literary knavery. If there be, we should be glad to hear of it.”

To this the publisher, in the “Literary Bulletin” of THE CATHOLIC WORLD for April, replied that--

“The Catholic Publication Society’s edition is printed exactly, word for word, from the first London edition, published by the respectable house of Bentley, in three volumes. If any deviation from the French was made, ‘The Catholic Publication Society’ did not make it, but followed the London edition in good faith, knowing the high source from which it emanated. But as the writer in the _New Englander_ quotes from the _fourteenth French edition_, how does he know that the alteration may not have been made in that or previous French editions? We have written to the translator [Miss Bowles] in reference to this matter.”

But this did not seem to satisfy the _Independent_, for in its issue of April 4 it reiterates its accusation of forgery as follows:

“Let us ask once more (this makes three times) what our Catholic neighbor thinks of that forgery in one of the books of ‘The Catholic Publication Society’ which was exposed in the January number of the _New Englander_. We have looked in vain in the columns of the _Tablet_ for a denunciation of this pious fraud, and our diligent questioning has failed to elicit from that usually fair journal any reply.”

The Chicago _Advance_ is another paper that took particular pleasure in re-echoing the “forgery”; but, unlike the _Independent_, it notices the denial put forth in the “Bulletin” of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and says:

“THE WORLD at last notices the forged prayer in the ‘Sister’s Story,’ brought to light by the _New Englander_, but affirms that ‘The Catholic Publication Society’ reprinted it verbatim from Bentley’s London edition; and rather improbably suggests that the alteration may have been made in one of the later French editions of the original. Meanwhile, the editor says that the translator [Miss Bowles] has been written to about it. We want THE WORLD to be sure to publish her reply.”

To which we reply: Here is the letter.

“5A DAVIES ST., BERKELEY SQ., LONDON, W., March 18th, 1872.

“SIR: The ‘Profession of Faith’ in the first edition (3 vols.) of _A Sister’s Story_ was the correct one, given me by Mrs. Craven herself. I think she said it was incorrectly given in Didier’s editions, having been copied from those commonly used. She was very particular in writing it out herself for _A Sister’s Story_. Mr. Bentley published the one vol. edition in a singular manner, without referring to me at all, and I never knew why he had shortened the ‘Profession.’ I have never compared the editions, but possibly there are other mistakes.

“Your obed’t serv’t, “EMILY BOWLES.”

We do not think it necessary to add anything to the above. The newspapers which have published remarks similar to those we have quoted cannot make any apology which will entitle them to notice on our part, and we take leave of them until we are compelled to refute some new libel.

Mr. P. DONAHOE announces for early publication: _Six Weeks Abroad, in Ireland, England, and Belgium_, by Father Haskins; _Sketches of the Establishment of the Church in New England_, by Father Fitton; _Catholic Glories of the Nineteenth Century: The Old God_, translated from the German; _Conversion of the Teutonic Race_, by Mrs. Hope, as well as several others.

“The Catholic Publication Society” announce for early publication, in addition to the books already announced, Canon Oakeley’s two books, namely, _Ceremonial of the Mass_ and _Catholic Worship_. Also, _Aunt Margaret’s Little Neighbors; or, Chats about the Rosary_.

FOOTNOTE:

[69] This _nom de plume_, chosen without the knowledge of any other appropriation of the name, was quite significant in the case of the writer, as he at one time took portraits in crayon, though he has since restricted himself to altar pieces in oil.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XV., No. 87.--JUNE, 1872.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by Rev. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

DUTIES OF THE RICH IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY.

NO. V.

PRIVATE DUTIES.

That part of our subject which is included under the title of the present article is the most difficult, complicated, and extensive of the several divisions under which we have classed the various and weighty duties of the rich. A volume of the most carefully prepared sermons, or a copious moral treatise, from the hand of a master of spiritual and moral science, could alone do justice to the demands of such a theme. The question to be answered, and it is one which harasses many a heart and conscience, is, How shall one live and govern his household amid the abundance of temporal goods, so as to make his state in life subserve the great end to which a Christian must direct all his thoughts and actions? The solution of this problem is theoretically and practically difficult. The language of Jesus Christ and the apostles in respect to the difficulty is startling, and even terrifying. Our Lord said: “_How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God_.” The efforts which some critics have made to soften and diminish this fearful declaration of Christ by changing “camel” into “cable,” or making the “needle’s eye” to be a gate of the city, so-called, are frivolous and futile. The figure is that of a laden camel before the eye of a small needle, through which his driver is essaying to make him pass. And its force consists precisely in the utter and extravagant absurdity of the image which it presents to the mind. It is intended to represent that which is violently contrary to the laws of nature, and, therefore, impossible. And it is this impossibility which is taken to illustrate the difficulty of a rich man entering the kingdom of God. What follows elucidates and completes the idea which our Lord intended to present before the minds of all his followers. His astounded listeners exclaimed, “Who then can be saved?” To whom he replied: “_The things that are impossible with men are possible with God_.”[70] The power of God, some philosophers tell us, can compress the substance of a camel into such small dimensions that it can pass through the eye of a needle. By that almighty power, and that alone, Christ teaches, can a rich man with his substance pass through the narrow gate of the kingdom of God.

St. James addresses to the rich the following terrible invective: “Go to now, ye rich men, WEEP AND HOWL for your miseries that shall come upon you.”[71] Similar passages might be multiplied, and the comments and applications of the successors of the apostles, in a similar strain, have filled the pages of the fathers and doctors of the church, and resounded from the chair of truth, from the days of the apostles to our own. Great numbers of the rich have been impelled by the force of these alarming declarations to seek for perfection and salvation by following the counsel which our Lord gave to the rich young man. Let those who have the opportunity and the vocation to do the same imitate their example; we will not dissuade them, and let parents and others beware of dissuading, much more hindering, any who are dependent on them from obeying such a divine call. This is one of the duties of the rich, which we will specify here in passing, that we may not be obliged to recur to it hereafter--to give their best and dearest, their sons and daughters, the most gifted, the most gracious, the most loved, as Jephte gave his daughter, a sacrifice to God and the church, whenever the Lord honors them by the demand. But it is not our purpose to persuade any to follow the evangelical counsels. We are speaking of the way of keeping God’s commandments in a state of riches in the world. There must be a way of living a perfect life; and gaining heaven, not merely “so as by fire,” but with the abundant merit which wins a bright crown--in spite of the possession of riches, and even by means of those riches. Wealth is not an evil, but the abuse of wealth. Temporal goods are not in themselves an obstacle to perfection and salvation, but the sins and vices which are caused by attachment to them, and the self-indulgence for which they afford the facility. The possession of wealth increases a person’s responsibilities and dangers, but at the same time augments his power of doing good and acquiring merit. Human nature, left to itself, ordinarily swells up, through the possession of either material or intellectual riches, to such a huge bulk of pride, avarice, and sensuality, that it is like a laden camel, or, as we may say, like an elephant with a tower full of armed men on its back; and in this condition, submission to the law of Christ is like passing through the eye of a fine cambric needle. But God, with whom those things are possible which are impossible to men, has not left human nature to itself. Through the Incarnation and the cross, through regenerating and sanctifying grace, through the aids of the Holy Spirit, Catholic faith, the sacraments, the examples of the saints, Catholic principles and education, the ennobling, purifying power of religion--human nature can be kept, in the state of abundance and prosperity, as well as in that of poverty and adversity, from the contamination of worldliness and iniquity. Even more, it can glorify its state, and turn it to the best and highest use, by the practice of the most exalted Christian virtues. The proof of this may be seen in the fact that this has been done in many thousands of instances, and is being done now in every part of Christendom.

The principles upon which Christian sanctity in the great, the noble, and the wealthy is based, are all summed up by the Apostle St. James in this short sentence: “Let the brother of low condition glory in his exaltation, _but the rich in his being low_,”[72] which is more literally translated, “_in his humility_.” Humility entitles the rich man to claim all the special blessings which are so frequently and emphatically promised in the New Testament to the poor. It is poverty of spirit, or interior detachment from temporal goods for the love of God, and not mere exterior poverty, which fits a person for the kingdom of God. The poor and lowly, if they are possessed of Catholic faith, have so little of that which makes the present life brilliant and attractive that they are forced by a happy kind of necessity to find everything in the church and their religion. They find their nobility in their baptism, their glory in the sign of the cross and their Catholic profession, their treasure in the blessed sacrament, their palace with its picture gallery and service of gold and silver in the church, their royal audiences at the ever open court of the King and Queen of heaven, their gala-days and spectacles in the festivals and processions and ceremonies of the ecclesiastical year, their ideal vision of coming happiness in heaven. They are “rich in faith,” and “glory in their exaltation” as the “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.” The rich must do voluntarily what the poor do from necessity. They must quit the position in their own esteem which human pride loves so dearly to take, of superiority over others on account of accidental and temporal advantages, and come down to the common level at the foot of the cross, where pride of rank and power, pride of intellect, and pride of wealth are alike annihilated, to make way for a true and lasting exaltation in the Son of God.

Here, then, is the first duty of the rich--to adopt inwardly, profess openly, and act out consistently the same principles of Catholic faith which are common to all Christians, and to place their glory, their treasure, their heart’s affection, their end in life, their hope of happiness, not in the transitory things of this life, but in the kingdom of God; “_because as the flower of the grass they shall fade away_.”

These transitory things, however, do last for a little while, and, although worthless as a final end and object to live for, are necessary and valuable as means. Private interpretation of the Scripture might deduce from it that Christ intended to do away with all power, rank, human science, art, commerce, wealth, and civil or social polity, with marriage and the family even, and thus extinguish this present world and this life to make way for the next. This is not the interpretation of the church or the way of Catholic practice. All these worldly, transitory things are retained and made use of, notwithstanding that “the figure of this world passeth away.” The rich man who is resolved to be a perfect Christian needs, therefore, to know not only what esteem he is to place on wealth and other temporal things in reference to the real and final good, but how practically to use them for the attainment of the same, and for helping his dependents and others to attain it. The more we go into detail in regard to this matter, the more difficult it becomes to draw lines and lay down practical rules. A sound and well-directed conscience must at last be the guide of each one, and it is a sufficient though not strictly infallible guide to those who are instructed in good general principles.

One general principle which may be useful as a rule for application to a great many particular cases is this: Those indulgences which gratify the more refined and intellectual tastes may be more freely made use of than those which gratify the senses. Another principle, closely allied to this, is the following: Whatever has an honorable or useful end is allowable; whatever merely gratifies a selfish passion must be condemned and avoided. To apply these principles as rules in certain important particular cases, let us begin with the rich man’s house. The first fault and folly to be avoided is extravagance. He ought not to embarrass his estate and prejudice the interests of his family by spending more money on his houses and the decoration of his grounds than he can afford. If he does, his motive is ostentation, or some other inordinate passion, and therefore worthy of condemnation. That there has been a vast amount of extravagance in this respect in our country within the past thirty years is obvious to every one. The outside show of our towns and cities indicates an amount of wealth certainly four times greater than really exists. A man who is governed by Christian principles, with which common sense and sound reason always coincide in so far as they are competent to judge of what is right, will, of course, avoid all extravagance. More than this, he will not take the lead in splendor and magnificence of buildings and furniture, even if he has wealth enough to do so without extravagance. On the contrary, he will choose to be rather behind than before his compeers in this respect. We are not speaking now of princes and magnates, but of private citizens. There is no fitness, especially in a republic, in making private residences palaces. It is proper to provide for all the conveniences of domestic life. Moreover, architectural beauty in the construction of houses, and taste and elegance in their furniture, give decorum to life, and innocent and refining pleasure to those who behold them, and a means of living to a large class of persons who are especially fitted for a kind of work which demands artistic taste and skill. We cannot draw the line precisely where mere useless and luxurious pomp, show, and splendor begin. We can only say that a man thoroughly imbued with Christian principles and sentiments will be very anxious and careful to keep on the safe side of it, so far as he is able to do so. But whatever degree of costliness and splendor may be suitable or permissible in the residence of any Catholic gentleman, whether he be a plain, private citizen in our democratic republic, or a nobleman, prince, or monarch elsewhere, everything should be made to conform not to a pagan, but a Christian and Catholic, ideal. All that is even bordering on heathen voluptuousness should be rigidly excluded. Works of Catholic art should adorn the walls even of the most public and splendid apartments. Every private room should have its crucifix, its Madonna, its vase of holy water, its prie-dieu, and books of prayer and devotion. An oratory, fitted up with the utmost elegance and costliness that is suitable to the circumstances, should be the shrine and chief ornament of the house. The library and other receptacles for books should be pure of all that is tainted and corrupting, and filled up with everything which Catholic literature can furnish, both in English and in the other languages which the members of the highly distinguished circle we have the honor of addressing are supposed to know. In a word, the elegancies and ornaments of life should be made to minister to intellectual cultivation, to the education of the higher and more refined tastes of the soul; and these should be made all subservient to that which is highest of all--the culture and improvement of the _spirit_ in the knowledge and love of the Supreme Truth and the Infinite Beauty.

Just at the moment of writing down these thoughts, we have come across a beautiful sketch of the family of Count Stolberg, in the pages of a German periodical. It is so appropriate as an illustration that we will postpone any further continuation of our subject, and finish the present article with a translation of the sketch alluded to.[73]

“It is singular (writes Count Stolberg) that I cannot remember ever to have heard in the house of my parents such words as money, competency, economy, expense, saving. At that time luxury had not yet become the fashion; and, even if it had been, the house of our parents was like an island. We lived separate from others, although scarcely adverting to the fact that our life was so retired. There was just as little said about making ourselves comfortable as about money and fashion. The modern luxury in chairs and sofas with all its ingenious contrivances was altogether unknown to us. All the articles of furniture, our dress, and the table were good and befitting our rank; but we might have said about all these things what Cyrus said at the table of Astyages about the customs of the Persians: ‘I do not know whether at that time all people remained longer children, or whether we ourselves only remained so.’ Count Stolberg’s father died in the year 1765, and the last anxious wish of his heart was that ‘his children might walk in the way of the Lord.’ How much, writes the count, this desire occupied the hearts of both my father and my mother! I can still hear my mother say that she envied no one so much as the mother of the seven Macchabees; that she was the most fortunate of mothers. It was her solitary wish, prayer, and effort that she might one day be able to say, ‘Lord, here are we, and the children whom thou hast given us’--it was the soul of her entire plan of education.

“At the father’s death, the countess gave his Bible to the young Count Frederic, and wrote in it the following words: ‘This Bible, which your blessed father used on the very day of his death, consoling himself with the words, “Thou hearest, O Lord! the longing of those who cry to thee, their heart is sure that thou dost give ear to them,” must prove a great blessing to you, and continually stimulate you to love the Word of God, to venerate it, to make it the rule of your life, as he did, and to seek consolation in it to the end of your life. For this, may the Triune God give you his grace and benediction!’

“The mother’s testament to her children, which was found after her death, in 1773, in her writing-desk, was as follows: ‘Dear children, cling to the Saviour, to his merits, to his faithful heart; and do not love the world or what is in the world. For all is passing, and but mere dust of the earth. Nothing can last with us through life and in death but the blood of Jesus, the grace of God, communion and friendship with him. Seek for this; do not rest until you possess it; and then hold it fast; this will help you through until we are with him; oh! let not one, not one remain behind. I will always watch over you, and will hasten to meet you with open arms when you come after me. Watch and pray!’

“We can understand without difficulty from this how Count Stolberg could say, ‘Christ, the Saviour of the world, was the guiding star of my youth. Our parents desired nothing more earnestly than that we should seek him, love him, and confess him before the whole world. I have always regarded that as my highest duty, which necessarily led me into the Catholic Church.’”

In this sketch of Count Stolberg’s parents and early home, we see the old-fashioned simplicity and piety of the best sort of the ancient Lutheran nobility of Germany. There is a sombre and austere character in the picture, partly belonging to the national temperament, but chiefly due to that shadow of sadness which Protestantism in its more earnest phase casts over the practice of virtue and religion. The count himself, as is well known to all, while preserving all that was good and truly Christian in the principles and habits given him by his early education, cast aside its sectarian prejudices and errors to embrace the Catholic religion. In him, as the model of a perfect Christian gentleman and scholar, to quote again the language of the writer in _Der Katholik_,

“was gloriously fulfilled the wish expressed by Lavater (a Protestant) in a letter to the count. ‘Become an honor to the Catholic Church! Practise virtues which are impossible to a non-Catholic! Do deeds which will prove that your change had a great end, and that you have not failed to gain it. You have saints, I do not deny it: we have none, at least none like yours. Be to all Catholics and non-Catholics a shining example of that virtue which is the most worthy of imitation and of Christian holiness.’”

We have been tempted into a digression which will, we trust, not be ungrateful to our readers, and find that we have not been able to bring our series of short articles to a close in the present number, as we had hoped to do. We must therefore resume the same subject after another month, and we trust that our gentle readers, upon their summer excursions, will find time and inclination to listen to one more brief moral instruction.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] St. Luke xviii. 24, etc.

[71] St. James v. 1.

[72] St. James i. 9, 10.

[73] From _Der Katholik_, for January, 1872.

ON THE TROUBADOURS OF PROVENCE.

True hearts, that beat so fast, but now are still, The gracious days will never come again Ye loved and sang; your tender accents will Linger no more on the warm lips of men! Alas! your speech lies with ye in the grave! Yet where Montpellier’s skies their balm impart, And Barcelona wooes the southern wave, The student cons your pages when his heart Hungers for solace. Take it in kind part, Count it not loss, dear hearts, but loyalty, If I like him, though with a ruder hand, Am fain to cull your flowers too sweet to die, To waft their fragrance to a distant land, And bid them blossom ’neath a colder sky.

THE HOUSE OF YORKE.