Chapter X. Brown Bread And Bonnyclabber.

Seraphin had not gone to the celebration. He remained at home on the plea of not feeling well. He was stretched upon a sofa, and his soul was engaged in a desperate conflict. What it was impossible for himself to look upon, had been viewed by his father with composure: the burlesque procession, the public derision of holy practices, the mockery of the Redeemer of the world, in whose place had been put a broken bottle on the symbol of salvation. He himself had been stunned by the spectacle; and his father? Was it his father? Again, his father had accompanied the brother and sister to the infamous celebration. Was not this a direct confirmation of his own suspicions? His father had become a fearful enigma to his soul! And what if, upon his return from the festival, the father were to come and insist upon the marriage with Louise, declaring her advanced notions to be an insufficient ground for renouncing a pet project? A wild storm was convulsing his interior. He could not bear it longer, he was driven forth. Snatching his straw hat, he rushed from the house, ran through the alleys and streets, out of the town, onward and still onward. The August sun was burning, and its heat, reflected from the road, was doubly intense. The perspiration was rolling in large drops down the glowing face of the young man, whom torturing thoughts still kept goading on. Holt’s whitewashed dwelling became visible on the summit of a knoll, and gleamed a friendly welcome as he came near it—a welcome which seemed opportune for one who hardly knew whither he was hastening. The walnut‐tree which could be seen from afar was casting an inviting shade over the table and bench that seemed to be confidingly leaning against its stem. A flock of chickens were taking a sand‐bath under the table, flapping their wings, ruffling their feathers, and wallowing in the dust. Seated on the sunny hillock, the cottage appeared quiet, almost lonesome but for a ringing sound which came from the adjoining field and was made by the sickle passing through the corn. A broad‐brimmed straw hat with a blue band could be noticed from the road moving on over the fallen grain, and presently Mechtild’s slender form rose into view as she pushed actively onward over the harvest field. Hasty steps resounded from the road. She raised her head, and her countenance first indicated surprise, then embarrassment. Whom did her eyes behold rushing wildly by, like a fugitive, but the generous rescuer of her family from the clutches of the usurer Shund. His hat was in his hand, his auburn locks were hanging down over his forehead, his face was aglow, his whole being seemed to be absorbed in a mad pursuit. To her quick eye his features revealed deep trouble and violent excitement. She was frightened, and the sickle fell from her hand. Not a day passed on which she would not think of this benefactor. Perhaps there was not a being on earth whom she admired and revered as much as she did him. All the pure and elevated sentiments of an innocent and blooming girl united to form a halo of affection round the head of Seraphin. At evening prayer when her father said, “Let us pray for our benefactor Seraphin,” her soul sent up a fervent petition to God, and she declared with joy that she was willing to sacrifice all for him. But behold this noble object of her admiration and affection suddenly presented before her in a state that excited the greatest uneasiness. With his head sunk and his eyes directed straight before him, he would have rushed past without noticing the sympathizing girl, when a greeting clear and sweet as the tone of a bell caused him to look up. He beheld Mechtild with her beautiful eyes fixed upon him in an expression of anxiety.

“Good‐morning, Mr. Seraphin,” she said again.

“Good‐morning,” he returned mechanically, and staring about vaguely. His bewilderment soon passed, however, and his gaze was riveted by the apparition.

She was standing on the other side of the ditch. The fear of some unknown calamity had given to her beautiful face an expression of tender solicitude, and whilst a smile struggled for possession of her lips her look indicated painful anxiety. Mechtild’s appearance soon directed the young man’s attention to his own excited manner. The dark shadow disappeared from his brow, he wiped the perspiration from his face, and began to feel the effect of his walk under the glowing heat of midsummer.

“Ah! why, here is the neat little white house, your pretty country home, Mechtild,” he said pleasantly. “If you had not been so kind as to wish me good‐morning, I should actually have passed by in an unpardonable fit of distraction.”

“I was almost afraid to say good‐morning, Mr. Seraphin, but—” She faltered and looked confused.

“But—what? You didn’t think anything was wrong?”

“No! But you were in such a hurry and looked so troubled, I got frightened,” she confessed with amiable uprightness. “I was afraid something had happened you.”

“I am thankful for your sympathy. Nothing has happened me, nor, I trust, will,” he replied, with a scarcely perceptible degree of defiance in his tone. “This is a charming situation. Corn‐fields on all sides, trees laden with fruit, the skirt of the woods in the background—and then this magnificent view! With your permission, I will take a moment’s rest in the shade of yon splendid walnut‐tree planted by your great‐grandfather.”

She joyfully nodded assent and stepped over the ditch. She shoved back the bolt of the gate. Together they entered the yard, which a hedge separated from the road. The cock crew a welcome to the stranger, and led his household from the sand‐bath into the sunshine near the barn.

“This is a cool, inviting little spot,” said the millionaire, as he pointed to the shade of the walnut‐tree. “No doubt you often sit here and read?”

“Yes, Mr. Seraphin; but the dirty chickens have scattered dust all over the bench and table. Wait a minute, you’ll get your clothes dusty.”

She hurried into the house. His eyes followed her receding form, his ears kept listening for her departing steps, he heard the opening and closing of doors: presently she reappeared, dusted the bench and table with a brush, and spread a white cloth over the table. Seraphin looked on with a smile.

“I do not wish to be troublesome, Mechtild!”

“It is no trouble, Mr. Seraphin! Sit down, now, and rest yourself. I am so sorry father and mother are not at home. They will be ever so glad to hear that you have honored us with a visit.”

“Is nobody at home?”

“Father is in town, and mother is at work with the children in the harvest field.”

“Are you not afraid to stay here by yourself?”

“What should I be afraid of? There are no ghosts in daytime,” she said with a bewitching archness; “and as for thieves, they never expect to find anything worth having at our house.”

She was standing on the other side of the table, looking at him with a beautiful smile.

“Won’t you have a seat on this bench?” said he, making room for her. “You need rest more than I do. You have been working, and I am merely an idle stroller. Do take a seat, Mechtild.”

“Thank you, Mr. Seraphin—I could not think of doing so! It would not be becoming,” she answered with some confusion.

“Why not becoming?”

“Because you are a gentleman, and I am only a poor girl.”

“Your objection on the score of propriety is not worth anything. Oblige me by doing what I ask of you.”

“I will do so, Mr. Seraphin, since you insist upon it, but after a while. I would like to offer you some refreshments beforehand, if you will allow me.”

“With pleasure,” he said, nodding assent.

A second time she hurried away to the house, whilst he kept listening to her footsteps. The extraordinary neatness and cleanliness which could be seen everywhere about the little homestead did not escape his observation. On all sides he fancied he saw the work of Mechtild. The purity of her spirit, which beamed so mildly from her eyes and was revealed in the beauty of her countenance and the grace of her person, seemed embodied in the very odor of roses wafted over from the neighboring flower garden. He was unconscious of the rapid growth within his bosom of a deep and tender feeling. This feeling was casting a warm glow, like softest sunshine, over all that he beheld. Not even the chickens looked to him like other fowls of their kind; they were ennobled by the reflection that they were objects of Mechtild’s care, that she fed them, that when they were still piping little pullets she had held them in her lap and caressed them. He abandoned himself completely to this sentiment; it carried him on like a smooth current; and he could not tell, did not suspect even, why so wonderful a reaction had in so short a time taken place in his interior. Beholding himself seated under the walnut‐tree surrounded only by evidences of honorable poverty and rural thrift, and yet feeling a degree of happiness and peace he had never known before, he fancied he was performing a part in some fairy tale which he was dreaming with his eyes open. And now the fairy appeared at the door having on a snowy‐white apron, and carrying a shallow basket from which could be seen, protruding above the rest of its contents, a milk jar. She set before him a pewter plate, bright as silver. Then she took out the jar and a cup, next she laid a knife and spoon for him, and finished her hospitable service with a huge loaf of bread.

“Don’t get dismayed at the bread, Mr. Seraphin! I am sorry I cannot set something better before you. But it is well baked and will not hurt you!”

“You baked it yourself, did you not?”

“Yes, Mr. Seraphin!”

He attacked the loaf resolutely. From the dimensions of the slice which he cut off, it was plain that both his appetite and his confidence in her skill were satisfactory. She raised the jar of bonnyclabber, which lurched out in jerks upon his plate, whilst he kept gayly stirring it with the spoon. Then she dipped a spoonful of rich cream out of the cup and poured it into the refreshing contents of the plate.

“Let me know when you want me to stop, Mr. Seraphin.” Mechtild poured spoonful after spoonful; he sat immovable, seemingly observing the spoon, but in reality watching her soft plump fingers, then her well‐shaped hand, next her exquisitely turned arm, and, when finally he raised his eyes to her face, they were met by a mischievous smile. The cup was empty, and all the cream was in his plate.

“May I go and fetch some more?” she asked.

“No, Mechtild, no! Why, this is a regular yellow sea!”

“You wouldn’t cry ‘enough!’ ”

“I forgot about it,” he replied, somewhat confused. “To atone for my forgetfulness, I will eat it all.”

“I hope you will relish it, Mr. Seraphin!”

“Thank you! Where is your plate?”

“I had my dinner before you came.”

“Well, then, at any rate you must not continue standing. Won’t you share this seat with me?”

She seated herself upon the bench, took off her hat, smoothed down her apron, and appeared happy at seeing him eating heartily.

“Don’t you find that dish refreshing, Mr. Seraphin?”

“You have done me a real act of charity,” he replied. “This bread is excellent. Who taught you how to make bread?”

“I learned from mother; but there isn’t much art in making that sort of bread, Mr. Seraphin. The food which people in the country eat does not require artistic preparation. It only needs good, pure material, so that it may give strength to labor.”

“I suppose you attend to the kitchen altogether, do you not?”

“Yes, Mr. Seraphin. That’s not very difficult, our meals are of the plainest kind. We have meat once a week, on Sundays. When the work is unusually hard, as in harvest time, we have meat oftener. We raise our own meat and cure it.”

“You have assumed household cares at quite an early age, Mechtild.”

“Early? I am seventeen now, and am the oldest. Mother has a great deal of trouble with the small ones, so the housework falls chiefly to my share. It does not require any great exertion, however, to do it. Plain and saving is our motto. Mother specially recommends four things: industry, cleanliness, order, and economy. She advises me not to neglect any one of these points when once I will have a household of my own.”

“Do you think you will soon set up a separate household?” asked he with some hesitation.

“Not for some time to come, Mr. Seraphin, yet it must be done one day. If my own inclination were consulted, I would prefer never to leave home. I should like things to continue as they are. But a separation must come. Death will pay us a visit as it has done to others, father and mother will pass away, and the course of events will sever us from one another.”

Her head sank, the brightness of her face became obscured beneath the shadow of these sombre thoughts, and, when she again looked up, there appeared in her eyes so touching and childlike a sadness that he felt pained to the soul. And yet this revelation of tenderness pleased him, for it made known to him a new phase of her amiable nature.

For a long time he continued conversing with the artless girl. Every word she uttered, no matter how trifling, had an interest for him. Besides her charming artlessness, he had frequent occasions to admire the wisdom of her language and her admirable delicacy. The setting sun had already cast a subdued crimson over the hilltops, hours had sped away, the chickens had gone to roost, still he remained riveted to the spot by Mechtild’s grace and loveliness.

“Father is just coming,” she said, pointing down the road. “How glad he will be to find you here!”

His head bent forward, Holt came wearily plodding up the road. His right hand was hidden in the pocket of his pantaloons, and his head was bowed, as if beneath a heavy weight. As Mechtild’s clear voice rang out, he raised his head, caught sight of his high‐hearted benefactor, and smiled in joyful surprise.

“Welcome, Mr. Seraphin; a thousand times welcome!” he cried from the other side of the road. “Why, this is an honor that I had not expected!”

He stood uncovered, holding his cap in the left hand, his right hand was still concealed. Mechtild at once noticed her father’s singular behavior, and her eye watched anxiously for the hidden hand.

“Your daughter has been so kind as to offer refreshments to a weary wanderer,” said Gerlach, “and it has been a great pleasure for me to sit awhile. We have been chatting for several hours under this glorious tree, and may be I am to blame for keeping her from her work.”

Holt’s honest face beamed with satisfaction. He entirely forgot about his secret, he drew his hand out of his pocket, Mechtild turned pale, and a sharp cry escaped her lips.

“For mercy’s sake, father!” And she pointed to the broken chain.

“What are you screaming for, foolish girl? Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Seraphin! this chain has got on my arm in an honorable cause. I will tell you the whole story; I know you will not inform on me.”

Seating himself on the bench, he related the adventures of the day.

The mock procession passed before Mechtild’s imagination with the vividness of reality. The narration transformed her. Her mildness was changed to noble anger. She had heard of the vicar of Christ being insulted, of holy things being scoffed at, of the Redeemer being derided by a horde of wretches. With her arms akimbo, she drew up her lithe and graceful form to its full height, and with flashing eyes looked at her father while he related what had befallen him. Seraphin could not help wondering at the transformation. Such a display of spirit he had not been prepared to witness in a girl so gentle and beautiful. When her father had ended his account, she seized his hand passionately, pressed it warmly between her own hands, and kissed the chain.

“Father, dear father,” she exclaimed in a burst of feeling, “I thank you from my heart for acting as you did! Those wretches were scoffing at our holy religion, but you behaved bravely in defence of the faith. For this they put chains on you, as the heathen did to S. Peter and S. Paul.”

Once more she kissed the chain, then, turning quickly, hastened across the yard to the house.

“Mechtild isn’t like the rest of us,” said Holt, smiling. “There’s a great deal of spirit in her. I have often noticed it. But I am not astonished at her being roused at the mock procession—I was roused myself. I declare, Mr. Seraphin, it is a shame, a crying shame, that persons are permitted to rail at doctrines and things which we revere as holy. One would almost believe Satan himself was in some people, they take so fanatical a delight in scoffing at a religion which is holy and enjoins nothing but what is good.”

“It is incontestable that infidelity hates and opposes God and religion,” replied Gerlach. “The boasted culture of those who find a pleasure in grossly wounding the most sacred feelings of their neighbors, is wicked and stupid.”

Mechtild returned with a file in her hand.

“Right, my child! I was just thinking of the file myself. Here, cut the catches of the lock.”

He laid his arm across the table. A few strokes of the file caused the lock and remnant of chain to fall from his wrist.

“We will keep this as a precious memento,” said she. “Only think, father, that wicked official ordered you to be manacled, and he is the representative of authority. How can one respect or even pray for authorities when they allow religion to be ridiculed?”

“Pray for your enemies,” answered the countryman gravely.

“I will do so because God commands me; but I shall never again be able to respect the official!”

Her anger had fled; she appeared again all light and loveliness. He did not fail to observe a searching look which she directed upon him, but its meaning became clear to him only when, as he was taking leave, she said in a tone of humility: “Pardon my vehemence, Mr. Seraphin! Don’t think me a bad girl.”

“There is nothing to be forgiven, Mechtild. You were indignant against godless wretches, and they who are not indignant against evil cannot themselves be good.”

“We are most heartily thankful for this visit,” spoke Holt. “I need not say that we will consider it a great happiness as often as you will be pleased to come.”

“Good‐night!” returned the young man, and he walked away.

Deeply immersed in his thoughts, Seraphin went back to town. What he was thinking about, his diary does not record. But the excitement under which he had rushed forth was gone—dispelled by the magic of a rural sorceress. He walked on quietly like a man who seems filled with confidence in his own future. The recent painful impressions seemed to his mind to lie far back in the past; their place was taken up by beautiful anticipations which, like the aurora, shed soft and pleasing light upon his path. He halted frequently in a dream‐like reverie to indulge the happiness with which his soul was flooded. The full moon, just peering over the hills, shed around him a mystic brightness that harmonized perfectly with the indefinable contentment of his heart, and seemed to be gazing quizzingly into the countenance of the young man, who almost feared to confess to himself that he had found an invaluable treasure.

As he stopped before the Palais Greifmann, all the bright spirits that had hovered round about him on the way back from the little whitewashed cottage, fled. He awoke from his dream, and, ascending the stairs with a feeling of discomfort, he entered his apartment, where his father sat awaiting him.

“At last,” spoke Mr. Conrad, looking up from a book. “You have kept me waiting a long time, my son.”

“I was in need of a good long walk, father, to get over what I witnessed this morning. The country air has dispelled all those horrible impressions. There is only one thing more required to make me feel perfectly well, dear father, which is that you will not insist on my allying myself to people who are utterly opposed to my way of thinking and feeling.”

“I understand and approve of your request, Seraphin. The impressions made on me, too, are exceedingly disagreeable. The advancement of which this town boasts is stupid, immoral, detestable. How this state of society has come about, is inexplicable to me who live secluded in the country. Society is diseased, fatally diseased. Many of the new views professed are sheer superstition, and their morality is a mere cloak for their corruption and wickedness. All the powers of progress so‐called are actively at work to subvert all the safeguards of society. And what your diary reports of Louise, I have found fully confirmed. Though it cost the sacrifice of a long cherished plan, a son of mine shall never become the husband of a progressionist woman.”

“O father! how deeply do I thank you!” cried the youth, carried away by his feelings.

“I must decline being thanked, for I have not merited it,” spoke Mr. Conrad earnestly. “A father’s duty determines very clearly what my decision upon the matter of your marriage with Louise, ought to be. But I am under obligations to you, my son, which justice compels me to acknowledge. Your discernment and moral sense have prevented a great deal of discord and unhappiness in our family. Continue good and true, my Seraphin!”

He pressed his son to his bosom and imprinted a kiss on his forehead.

“To‐morrow we shall start for home by the first train. Fortunately your prudent behavior makes it easy for us to get away, and the final breaking off of this engagement I will myself arrange with Louise’s father.”

Seraphin Gerlach To The Author.

DEAR SIR: Two years ago, I took the liberty of sending you my diary, with the request that you would be pleased to publish such portions of its contents as might be useful, in the form of a tale illustrative of the times. I made the request because I consider it the duty of a writer who delineates the condition of society, to transmit to posterity a faithful picture of the present social status, and I am vain enough to believe that my jottings will be a modest contribution towards such a tableau.

The meagre account given by the diary of my intercourse with Mechtild, will probably have enabled you to perceive the germ of a pure and true relation likely to develop itself further. I shall add but a few items to complete the account of the diary, knowing that poets, painters, and artists have rigorously determined bounds, and that a twilight cannot be represented when the sun is at the zenith. I am emboldened to use this illustration because your unbounded admiration of pure womanhood is well known to me, and because the brightness of Mechtild’s character, were it further described, would no more be compatible with the sombre colorings in which a true picture of modern progress would have to be exhibited, than the noonday sun with the shadows of evening.

My memoranda concerning Mechtild, which, despite studied soberness, betrayed a considerable degree of admiration, made known to my parents, naturally enough, the secret of my heart. Hence it came that a quiet smile passed over my father’s face every time I commenced to speak of Mechtild. Holt’s manly deed at the mock procession had already gained for him my father’s esteem, and, as I spoke a great deal about Holt’s thoroughness as a cultivator, my father began to look upon him as a very desirable man to employ.

“We want an experienced man on the ‘green farm,’ ” said father, one day. “Offer the situation to Holt, and tell him to come to see me about it. I want to talk with him.”

“Give the good man my compliments,” said mother; “tell him I would be much pleased to become acquainted with Mechtild, who sympathized with you so kindly on that memorable day!”

I wrote without delay. Holt came, and so did Mechtild. But few moments were necessary to enable mother to detect the girl’s fine qualities. Father, too, was delightfully surprised at her modesty, the beauty of her form, and grace of her manner. He visited the farm accompanied by Holt. The cultivator’s extraordinary knowledge, his practical manner of viewing things, and the shrewdness of his counsels in regard to the improvement of worn‐ out land and the cultivation of poor soil, completely charmed my father. A contract containing very favorable conditions for Holt was entered into, and three weeks later the family took charge of the “green farm.”

Upon mother’s suggestion, Mechtild was sent to an educational institution, where she acquired in ten months’ time the learning and culture necessary for associating with cultivated people.

Father and mother had received her on her return like a daughter. This reception was given her not only in consideration of Holt’s skilful and faithful management of business, but also on account of Mechtild’s own splendid womanly character—perhaps, too, partly on account of my unbounded admiration for the rare girl.

“The girl is an ornament to her sex,” lauded my father. “Her polished manner and ease in company do not suffer one to suspect ever so remotely that she at any time plied the reaping‐hook, and came out of a stubblefield to regale a weary wanderer with brown bread and bonny‐clabber. I am quite in harmony with your secret wishes, my dear Seraphin! At the same time, I am of opinion that a step promising so much happiness ought not to be longer deferred. I think, then, you should ask the father for his daughter without delay, so that I may soon have the pleasure of giving you my blessing.”

From my father’s arms, into which I had thrown myself in thankfulness, I hastened away to the “green farm,” where Mechtild with maidenly blushes, and Holt in speechless astonishment, heard and granted my petition.

I am now four months married. I am the blest husband of a wife whose lovely qualities are daily showing themselves to greater advantage. Mechtild presides over Chateau Hallberg like an angel of peace. Towards my father and mother she conducts herself with filial reverence and never‐ceasing delicate attentions. Mother loves her unspeakably, and no access of ill humor in father can withstand her charming smile and prudent mirth. Concerning the banking‐house of Greifmann, I have only sad things to tell. Carl’s father had entered into very considerable speculations which failed and drove him into bankruptcy. Carl saw the blow coming, and saved himself in a disgraceful manner. There was a savings institution connected with the bank in which poor people and servants deposited the savings of their hard labor. Carl appropriated this fund and made off a short time before the failure of the house. Thousands of poor persons were robbed of the little sums which they were saving for old age, by denying themselves many even of the necessaries of life.

The maledictions and curses of these unfortunate people followed across the ocean the thief whose modern culture and progressive humanity did not hinder him from committing a crime which no Christian can be guilty of without losing his claim to the title. Carl, however, still continues to pass for a man of culture and humanity notwithstanding his deed. And why should he not, since without faith in the Deity moral obligations do not exist, and consequently every species of crime is allowable? The old gentleman Greifmann died shortly after his ruin; Louise lost her mind.

My father felt the misfortune of the Greifmanns deeply, without, however, regretting in the smallest degree the wise determination which their godless principles and actions had driven him to. Formerly he could never find time to take part in the elections. But now he is constantly speaking about the duty of every respectable man to oppose the infernal machinations and plans of would‐be progress. He intends at the next election to use all his influence for the election of conscientious deputies, so that the evil may be put an end to which consists in trying to undermine the foundations of society.

Accept, dear sir, the assurance of the esteem with which I have the honor to be

our most obedient servant,

SERAPHIN GERLACH.

CHATEAU HALLBERG, Jan. 4, 1872.

[Two chapters have been omitted in this translation of “The Progressionists.”—ED. C. W.]

F. James Marquette, S.J.

Among the names that have become immortalized in the history of our country, there are few more certainly destined for perpetual fame than those connected with the discovery and exploration of that mighty river which courses so boldly and majestically through this vast continent. Thus it is probable that there never will be a time when even children at school will not be familiar with such names as De Soto, Marquette, and La Salle.

James Marquette was born in the city of Laon, near a small branch of the Oise, in the department of Aisne, France, in the year 1637. His family was the most ancient of that ancient city, and had, during many generations, filled high offices and rendered valuable services to their country, both in civil and military life. We have accounts of eminent services rendered to his sovereign by one of his ancestors as early as 1360. The usefulness and public spirit of the family, we may well suppose, did not expire with the distinguished subject of this memoir; for we find that, in the French army that aided our fathers in the achievement of American Independence, there were no less than three Marquettes who laid down their lives in the cause of liberty. His maternal name was no less distinguished in the annals of the church. On the side of his mother, Rose de la Salle, he was connected with the good and venerable John Baptist de la Salle, founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, so distinguished for their successful services in the cause of popular religious education. It was this pious mother that instilled into her illustrious son that tender and fervid devotion to the Blessed Virgin which so ravished his soul and adorned his whole life. In 1654, when but seventeen years old, he entered the Society of Jesus, in which the time of his novitiate, the terms of teaching and of his own theological studies, consumed twelve years. He had chosen for his model S. Francis Xavier, and in studying his patron’s life, and meditating on his virtues, the young priest conceived a holy longing to enter the field of missionary toil. He was enrolled in the province of Champagne; but, as this had no foreign missions, he caused himself to be transferred to the province of France. His cherished object was soon attained. In 1666, he was sent out to Canada, and arrived at Quebec on the 20th of September of that year.

F. Marquette was at first destined for the Montagnais mission, whose central station was at Tadousal, and on the 10th of October he started for Three Rivers, in order to study the Montagnais language, a key to many neighboring Indian tongues, under that celebrated philologist as well as renowned missionary, F. Gabriel Druilletes. His intervals of leisure were here employed in the offices of the holy ministry. F. Marquette was thus occupied till April, 1668, when his destination was changed, and he received orders to prepare for the mission on Lake Superior, known as the Ottawa mission. He accordingly returned to Quebec, and thence set out for Montreal on the 21st of April, with Brother Le Boesme and two other companions; and from the latter place he embarked on the Ottawa flotilla. He was accompanied by other missionaries on this toilsome and dangerous voyage up the Ottawa, through French River, to and across Lake Huron, and to the Sault St. Mary. This region had long before been dedicated to God by the erection of the cross by Fathers Jogues and Raymbault, and twenty years later, 1660, F. Ménard became the founder of the Ottawa mission; and when F. Marquette arrived in Canada, F. Allouez was then pushing his spiritual conquests beyond any points reached by his zealous predecessors. On the advent of F. Marquette to the shores of Lake Superior, it was found expedient to establish two missions, one of which should be located at the Sault St. Mary, and the other at Green Bay. Erecting his cabin at the foot of the rapids on the American side, F. Marquette opened his mission at the Sault, where he was joined the following year by F. Dablon, Superior of the Ottawa mission. These two zealous missionaries soon gathered a Christian flock around them, and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was now offered up in that wild region in “a sanctuary worthy of the faith.” “It is,” says Bancroft, “the oldest settlement begun by Europeans within the present limits of the commonwealth of Michigan.” So rich was the harvest which the enthusiastic and apostolical Marquette saw before him that he writes in one of his letters: “Two thousand souls were ready to embrace the faith, if the missionary were faithful to his task.” Yet knowing the uncertainty of the Indian character, he proceeded cautiously and prudently in his undertakings. Though his ardent hopes were not fully realized, the harvest was not a fruitless one; and Fathers Dablon and Marquette labored on with undaunted courage and undiminished zeal, instructing the people, baptizing such as were in danger of death, and laying the solid foundations of a future Christian commonwealth.

In August of 1669, F. Marquette was transferred from the Sault to Lapointe, to conduct the missions of the Holy Ghost among the Ottawas, and to fill the place recently occupied by F. Allouez, who had gone to Green Bay. After a perilous and exhausting navigation, amid snow and ice, of a month’s duration, he reached Lapointe in safety, and full of ardor for the work before him. A few extracts from the account of this mission, which F. Marquette gave to his superior in his letter of the following year, will be more acceptable to the reader than any synopsis we could prepare from it:

“Divine Providence having destined me to continue the mission of the Holy Ghost begun by Allouez, who had baptized the chiefs of the Kiskakonk, I arrived there on the thirteenth of September, and went to visit the Indians who were in the clearings, which are divided into five towns. The Hurons, to the number of about four or five hundred, almost all baptized, still preserve some little Christianity. A number of the chiefs assembled in council were at first well pleased to see me; but I explained that I did not yet know their language perfectly, and that no other missionary was coming, both because all had gone to the Iroquois, and because F. Allouez, who understood them perfectly, did not wish to return that winter, as they did not love the prayer enough. They acknowledged that it was a just punishment, and during the winter held talks about it, and resolved to amend, as they tell me.

“The nation of the Outaouaks Sinagaux is far from the kingdom of God, and being above all other nations addicted to lewdness, sacrifices, and juggleries. They ridicule the prayer, and will scarcely hear us speak of Christianity. They are proud and undeveloped, and I think that so little can be done with this tribe that I have not baptized healthy infants who seem likely to live, watching only for such as are sick. The Indians of the Kinouché tribe declare openly that it is not yet time. There are, however, two men among them formerly baptized. One, now rather old, is looked upon as a kind of miracle among the Indians, having always refused to marry, persisting in this resolution in spite of all that had been said. He has suffered much, even from his relatives, but he is as little affected by this as by the loss of all the goods which he brought last year from the settlement, not having even enough left to cover him. These are hard trials for Indians, who generally seek only to possess much in this world. The other, a new‐married young man, seems of another nature than the rest. The Indians, extremely attached to their reveries, had resolved that a certain number of young women should prostitute themselves, each to choose such partner as she liked. No one in these cases ever refused, as the lives of men are supposed to depend on it. This young Christian was called; on entering the cabin, he saw the orgies that were about to begin, and, feigning illness, immediately left, and, though they came to call him back, he refused to go. His confession was as prudent as it could be, and I wondered that an Indian could live so innocently, and so nobly profess himself a Christian. His mother and some of his sisters are also good Christians. The Ottawas, extremely superstitious in their feasts and juggleries, seem hardened to the instructions given them, yet they like to have their children baptized. God permitted a woman to die this winter in her sin; her illness had been concealed from me, and I heard it only by the report that she had asked a very improper dance for her cure. I immediately went to a cabin where all the chiefs were at a feast, and some Kiskakonk Christians among them. To these I exposed the impiety of the woman and her medicine men, and gave them proper instructions. I then spoke to all present, and God permitted that an old Ottawa rose to advise granting what I asked, as it made no matter, he said, if the woman did die. An old Christian then rose and told the nation that they must stop the licentiousness of their youth, and not permit Christian girls to take part in such dances. To satisfy the woman, some child’s play was substituted for the dance; but this did not prevent her dying before morning. The dangerous state of a sick man caused the medicine men to proclaim that the devil must be invoked by extraordinary superstitions. The Christians took no part. The actors were these jugglers and the sick man, who was passed over great fires lighted in every cabin. It was said that he did not feel the heat, although his body had been greased with oil for five or six days. Men, women, and children ran through the cabins, asking, as a riddle, to divine their thoughts, and the successful guesser was glad to give the object named. I prevented the abominable lewdness so common at the end of these diabolical rites. I do not think that they will recur, as the sick man died soon after.

“The nation of Kiskakous, which for three years refused to receive the Gospel preached them by F. Allouez, resolved in the fall of 1668 to obey God. This resolution was adopted in full council, and announced to that father, who spent four winter months instructing them. The chiefs of the nation became Christians, and, as F. Allouez was called to another mission, he gave it to my charge to cultivate, and I entered on it in September, 1669.

“All the Christians were then in the fields harvesting their Indian corn; they listened with pleasure when I told them that I came to Lapointe for their sake and that of the Hurons; that they never should be abandoned, but be beloved above all other nations; and that they and the French were one. I had the consolation of seeing their love for the prayer and their pride in being Christians. I baptized the new‐born infants, and instructed the chiefs whom I found well disposed. The head chief having allowed a dog to be hung on a pole near his cabin, which is a kind of sacrifice the Indians make to the sun, I told him that this was wrong, and he went and threw it down.

“Having invited the Kiskakous to come and winter near the chapel, they left all the other tribes, to gather around us so as to be able to pray to God, be instructed, and have their children baptized. They all call themselves Christians; hence in all councils and important affairs I address them, and, when I wish to show them that I really wish what I ask, I need only address them as Christians; they told me even that they obeyed me for that reason. They have taken the upper hand, and control the three other tribes. It is a great consolation to a missionary to see such pliancy in savages, and to live in such peace with the Indians, spending the whole day in instructing them in our mysteries, and teaching them the prayers. Neither the rigor of the winter nor the state of the weather prevents their coming to the chapel; many never let a day pass, and I was thus busily employed from morning till night, preparing some for baptism, some for confession, disabusing others of their reveries. The old men told me that the young men had lost their senses, and that I must stop their excesses. I often spoke to them of their daughters, urging them to prevent their being visited at night. I knew almost all that passed in two tribes near us; but, though others were spoken of, I never heard anything against the Christian women, and when I spoke to the old men about their daughters, they told me that they prayed to God. I often inculcated this, knowing the importunities to which they are constantly exposed, and the courage they need to resist. They have learned to be modest, and the French who have seen them perceive how little they resemble the others from whom they are thus distinguished.

“After Easter, all the Indians dispersed to seek subsistence; they promised me that they would not forget the prayer, and earnestly begged that a father should come in the fall when they assemble again. This will be granted, and, if it please God to send some father, he will take my place, while I, to execute the orders of my father‐superior, will go and begin my Illinois mission.

“The Illinois are thirty days’ journey by land from Lapointe by a difficult road; they lie south‐southwest of it. On the way you pass the nation of the Ketchigamins, who live in more than twenty large cabins; they are inland, and seek to have intercourse with the French, from whom they hope to get axes, knives, and ironware. So much do they fear them that they unbound from the stake two Indian captives, who said, when about to be burned, that the Frenchman had declared that they wished peace all over the world. You pass then to the Miamiwek, and by great deserts reach the Illinois, who are assembled chiefly in two towns containing more than eight or nine thousand souls. These people are well enough disposed to receive Christianity. Since F. Allouez spoke to them at Lapointe to adore one God, they have begun to abandon their false worship; for they adored the sun and thunder. Those seen by me are apparently of good disposition, and they are not night‐ runners, like the other Indians. A man kills his wife if he finds her unfaithful. They are less prodigal in sacrifices, and promise me to embrace Christianity, and do all I require in their country. In this view, the Ottawas gave me a young man recently come from their country, who initiated me to some extent in their language during the leisure given me in the winter by the Indians at Lapointe. I could scarcely understand it, though there is something of the Algonquin in it; yet I hope, by the help of God’s grace, to understand and be understood if God by his goodness leads me to that country.

“No one must hope to escape crosses in our missions, and the best means to live happily is not to fear them, but, in the enjoyment of little crosses, hope for others still greater. The Illinois desire us, like Indians, to share their miseries and suffer all that can be imagined in barbarism. They are lost sheep, to be sought amid woods and thorns, especially when they call so piteously to be rescued from the jaws of the wolf. Such, really, can I call their entreaties to me this winter. They have actually gone this spring to notify the old men to come for me in the fall.

“The Illinois always come by land. They sow maize, which they have in great plenty; they have pumpkins as large as those of France, and plenty of roots and fruit. The chase is very abundant in wild cattle, bears, stags, turkeys, duck, bustard, wild pigeon, and cranes. They leave their towns at certain times every year to go to their hunting‐grounds together, so as to be better able to resist if attacked. They believe that I will spread peace everywhere if I go, and then only the young will go to hunt.

“When the Illinois come to Lapointe, they pass a large river almost a league wide. It runs north and south, and so far that the Illinois, who do not know what canoes are, have never yet heard of its mouth; they only know that there are very great nations below them, some of whom raise two crops of maize a year. East‐southeast of the country is a nation they call Chawawon, which came to visit them last summer. They wear beards, which shows intercourse with Europeans; they had come thirty days across land before reaching their country. This great river can hardly empty in Virginia, and we rather believe its mouth is in California. If the Indians, who promise to make me a canoe, do not fail to keep their word, we shall go into this river as soon as we can, with a Frenchman and this young man given me, who knows some of these languages, and has a readiness for learning others; we shall visit the nations which inhabit it, in order to open the way to so many of our fathers who have long awaited this happiness. This discovery will give us a complete knowledge of the southern or western sea.

“The Illinois are warriors; they make many slaves, whom they sell to the Ottawas for guns, powder, kettles, axes, and knives. They were formerly at war with the Nadouessi, but, having made peace some years since, I confirmed it, to facilitate their coming to Lapointe, where I am going to await them, in order to accompany them to their country.”

Much as he loved his children at Lapointe, and faithfully as he had served them, the voice of his superior had ordered him to this new, vaster, and more laborious field, which to his true Jesuit obedience was a task of love. The Illinois at once become dear to his heart as his future children; he studies their language, loses no opportunity of learning all about their country, its tribes and their customs, sends them presents of pious pictures and the loving messages of a father, welcomes every member of their nation who might visit Lapointe with open arms, and presses him to his heart, and devotes every moment of leisure afforded him from his labors to sedulous preparation for the contemplated mission of the Immaculate Conception. His intelligent mind fully comprehended the vast importance of the undertaking in its relations to the church and the civilized world, and conceived at once the bold and daring project of a thorough exploration of the great river around which so much mystery, intermingled with romantic fables and dim traditions, still hung. It is with equal truth and justice that Bancroft writes: “The purpose of discovering the Mississippi, of which the tales of the natives had published the magnificence, sprang from Marquette himself.”

It has already been stated that F. Marquette had sent some pious pictures to the Illinois, and by the same messenger to the Sioux, whom he expected to be embraced in his intended mission. The messenger who carried the father’s presents also bore his request for protection and a safe‐conduct to such European missionaries as might visit or pass through their country, and a message, “That the black‐gown wished to pass to the country of the Assinipoils and Kilistinons; that he was already among the Outagamis; and that he himself was going in the fall to the Illinois.”

Sad indeed must have been the feelings of the good father, when, early in the winter, the Sioux returned to him the pious pictures he had sent them, in which he saw an ominous forerunner of impending war. The Ottawas and Hurons had by their insolence aroused the indignation of the Sioux, and the latter had seized the tomahawk and prepared for the bloody and revengeful strife. His hopes of reaching the cabins of the Sioux by an overland route now vanished before the approaching storm. The Indians at Lapointe could not withstand the fierce onsets of the Dakotah war‐parties, and first the Ottawas, abandoning their village, launched their canoes upon the lake, and were soon gathered in Ekaentoulon Island. The Hurons remained alone at Lapointe, and F. Marquette remained in the midst of them to minister to their spiritual wants, share their dangers, and uphold their faith and courage. And when they too were forced to depart, the good father, ever true to his spiritual flock, was content to “turn his back on his beloved Illinois to accompany his Hurons in their wanderings and hardships.” The Hurons settled at Mackinaw, a bleak and desolate spot, but the abundance of fish the neighboring waters afforded was certain to secure the fugitives from starvation, while the very desolation of the scene seemed a protection from hostile bands. Scarcely had the Hurons thrown up their cabins on this dreary shore, when a rude sylvan chapel, surmounted by a cross, graced and cheered the scene, and became the cradle of religion at the mission of S. Ignatius. Such was the early origin of Michilimackinac. Beside the enclosure of cabins and chapel arose a palisade fort for defence. For several years F. Marquette labored in this remote and arduous station, cheered only by the consolations which spring from faith and by the bountiful harvests of souls he reaped.

Though longing to proceed on his mission to the Illinois, as all his letters so earnestly manifest, F. Marquette found ample work both for his mind and hands in arranging matters at Lapointe, so that his departure should cause as little damage as possible to that mission, to which he had been so faithful and devoted, and which he was now about to confide to the care of another, and in making the necessary preparations for his departure; for his time seemed now near at hand. The dreary days of winter were enlivened by recounting the projected plans of the coming spring, and in gathering all the information within his reach concerning the Mississippi and the nations inhabiting its banks. Most of the actual knowledge then possessed on the subject was derived from the accounts and relations of the Jesuit missionaries of the Northwest, and from the reports of the Canadian traders among the Indians. His inquiries of the more northern tribes were eagerly answered by startling fables of various hues and contradictory generalities, but nothing definite could be learned from them as to the course of the great river, its direction or outlet, or of the natives along its course. All was conjecture and theory. As early as 1639 the Sieur Nicolet, who was the interpreter of the French colony of New France, had penetrated westward to the furthest grounds of the Algonquins, and had encountered the Winnebagoes, “a people called so because they came from a distant sea, but whom the French erroneously called Puents.” And we learn from F. Vimont that “the Sieur Nicolet, who had penetrated furthest into those distant countries, avers that, had he sailed three days more on a great river which flows from that lake (Green Bay), he would have found the sea.” And although the Indians called the Mississippi itself “the sea,” and the Sieur Nicolet may have fallen into the same error, in either case it seems quite certain that he was the first to reach the waters of that river. In 1641, Fathers Isaac Jogues and Charles Raymbaut carried their missionary labors to the Sault St. Mary, and received distinct accounts of the Sioux, and of the great river on whose banks they lived. In 1658, after F. Garreau had suffered martyrdom on the St. Lawrence on his way to renew the Western missions destroyed by the recent Iroquois war, De Groseilles and another Frenchman penetrated to Lake Superior, and passed the winter on its shores. They visited the Sioux, learned with greater clearness and particularity of the course of the great river on whose banks they stood. Their annalist writes: “It was a beautiful river, large, broad, and deep, which would bear comparison, they say, with the St. Lawrence.” The missionaries of the Saguenay had also “heard of the Winnipegouek, and their bay whence three seas could be reached.” And war parties of the Iroquois told the missionaries of New York of their wars with the Ontoagannha, “whose towns lay on a beautiful river (Ohio), which leads to the great lake, as they called the sea, where they traded with Europeans who pray to God as we (the French) do, and have rosaries and bells to call men to prayer.”(225) F. Ménard, the founder of the Ottawa mission, also heard, in 1660, of the Mississippi and the nations on its banks, and was only prevented from visiting them by meeting with a martyr’s death while prosecuting his work. F. Allouez, his successor, also writes of the great river, “which empties, as far as I can conjecture, into the sea of Virginia,” and was the first to reveal to Europeans its Indian name; for, in speaking of one of its tribes, he says: “They live on a great river called Messipi.” At the time that F. Dablon was appointed Superior of the Ottawa missions, and F. Marquette appointed to establish the intended Illinois mission, and the exploration of the river was about to be undertaken, the latter, as already stated, was for some time engaged in gathering information concerning its course and outlet. Three principal conjectures prevailed at this time: first, that it ran towards the southwest, and entered the Gulf of California; second, that it flowed into the Gulf of Mexico; third, that it took a more easterly direction, and discharged itself into the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere on the coast of Virginia. To F. Marquette belonged the glory of solving the problem, and thus of opening the interior of the continent to Christianity and civilization.

The war which was raging in the country rendered it impossible for the missionaries of themselves to undertake the opening of the long‐desired mission of the Illinois, and they had accordingly applied for assistance to the French government to further this great enterprise. F. Marquette, as we have seen from his letters, remained ever ready at a moment’s notice from his superiors to advance into this dangerous field. He was not deterred by a consciousness of his own declining health, already enfeebled by labors and exposures, nor by the hostile character of the nations through whose country he would have to pass, nor by the danger of a cruel death at the hands of the fierce Dakotah. This last only made the prospect more enticing to one whose highest ambition was to win the glorious crown of martyrdom in opening the way for his brother Jesuits to follow in the battle of the faith. The same flotilla that carried his letter to F. Dablon to Quebec in the summer of 1672, on its return conveyed to him the joyous news that the petition of the missionaries had found favor with the government; that the Sieur Jolliet was designated to undertake the exploration of the Mississippi; and that F. Marquette was chosen the missionary of the expedition. It was the Blessed Virgin whom, F. Marquette says, “I had always invoked, since my coming to the Ottawa country, in order to obtain of God the favor of being able to visit the nations on the Mississippi River.” It was on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the same Blessed Virgin Mary that he received the glorious tidings that the realization of his hopes and prayers was at hand. He bestowed upon the great river the name of the Immaculate Conception, which, however, as well as its earlier Spanish name of River of the Holy Ghost, has since yielded to its original Indian appellation.

The exploring party, consisting of “the meek, single‐hearted, unpretending, illustrious Marquette, with Jolliet for his associate, five Frenchmen for his companions, and two Algonquins as guides, lifting their canoes on their backs, and walking across the narrow portage that divides the Fox River from the Wisconsin,” set out upon their glorious expedition. Mr. J. G. Shea, to whom we are so much indebted for his researches into this interesting part of the history of our country, describes the voyage in the following graphic and eloquent manner:

“In the spring they embarked at Mackinaw in two frail bark canoes; each with his paddle in hand, and full of hope, they soon plied them merrily over the crystal waters of the lake. All was new to Marquette, and he describes as he went along the Menonomies, Green Bay, and Maskoutens, which he reached on the 7th of June, 1673. He had now attained the limit of former discoveries; the new world was before them; they looked back a last adieu to the waters which, great as the distance was, connected them with Quebec and their countrymen; they knelt on the shore to offer, by a new devotion, their lives, their honor, and their undertakings to their beloved Mother, the Virgin Mary Immaculate; then, launching on the broad Wisconsin, sailed slowly down its current, amid its vine‐clad isles and its countless sand‐bars. No sound broke the stillness, no human form appeared, and at last, after sailing seven days, on the 17th of June they happily glided into the great river. Joy that could find no utterance in words filled the grateful heart of Marquette.

“The broad river of the Conception, as he named it, now lay before them, stretching away hundreds of miles to an unknown sea. Soon all was new; mountain and forest had glided away; the islands, with their groves of cottonwood, became more frequent, and moose and deer browzed on the plains; strange animals were seen traversing the river, and monstrous fish appeared in its waters. But they proceeded on their way amid this solitude, frightful by its utter absence of man. Descending still further, they came to the land of the bison, or pisikiou, which, with the turkey, became sole tenants of the wilderness; all other game had disappeared. At last, on the 25th of June, they descried footprints on the shore. They now took heart again, and Jolliet and the missionary, leaving their five men in the canoes, followed a little beaten path to discover who the tribe might be. They travelled on in silence almost to the cabin‐doors, when they halted, and with a loud halloa proclaimed their coming. Three villages lay before them; the first, roused by the cry, poured forth its motley group, which halted at the sight of the new‐comers and the well‐known dress of the missionary. Old men came slowly on, step by measured step, bearing aloft the all‐mysterious calumet. All was silence; they stood at last before the two Europeans, and Marquette asked, ‘Who are you?’ ‘We are Illinois,’ was the answer, which dispelled all anxiety from the explorers, and sent a thrill to the heart of Marquette; the Illinois missionary was at last amid the children of that tribe which he had so long, so tenderly yearned to see.

“After friendly greetings at this town of Pewaria, and the neighboring one of Moing‐wena, they returned to their canoes, escorted by the wondering tribe, who gave their hardy visitants a calumet, the safeguard of the West. With renewed courage and lighter hearts, they sailed in, and, passing a high rock with strange and monstrous forms depicted on its rugged surface, heard in the distance the roaring of a mighty cataract, and soon beheld Pekitanoui, or the Muddy River, as the Algonquins call the Missouri, rushing like some untamed monster into the calm and clear Mississippi, and hurrying in with its muddy waters the trees which it had rooted up in its impetuous course. Already had the missionaries heard of the river running to the western sea, to be reached by the branches of the Mississippi, and Marquette, now better informed, fondly hoped to reach it one day by the Missouri. But now their course lay south, and, passing a dangerous eddy, the demon of the Western Indians, they reached the Waboukigou, or Ohio, the river of the Shawnees, and, still holding on their way, came to the warm land of the cane, and the country which the mosquitoes might call their own. While enveloped in their sails as a shelter from them, they came upon a tribe who invited them to the shore. They were wild wanderers, for they had guns bought of Catholic Europeans at the East.

“Thus, after all had been friendly, and encouraged by this second meeting, they plied their oars anew, and, amid groves of cottonwood on either side, descended to the 33d degree, when, for the first time, a hostile reception was promised by the excited Metchigameas. Too few to resist, their only hope on earth was the mysterious calumet, and in heaven the protection of Mary, to whom they sent up fervent prayers. At last the storm subsided, and they were received in peace; their language formed an obstacle, but an interpreter was found, and after explaining the object of their coming, and announcing the great truths of Christianity, they embarked for Akamsea, a village thirty miles below on the eastern shore.

“Here they were well received, and learned that the mouth of the river was but ten days’ sail from this village; but they heard, too, of nations there trading with Europeans, and of wars between the tribes, and the two explorers spent a night in consultation. The Mississippi, they now saw, emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, between Florida and Tampico, two Spanish points; they might, by proceeding, fall into their hands. Thus far only Marquette traced the map, and he put down the names of other tribes of which they heard. Of these, in the Atotchasi, Matora, and Papihaka, we recognize Arkansas tribes; and the Akoroas and Tanikwas, Pawnees and Omahas, Kansas and Apiches, are well known in after‐days.

“They accordingly set out from Akensea, on the 17th of July, to return. Passing the Missouri again, they entered the Illinois, and, meeting the friendly Kaskaskias at its upper portage, were led by them in a kind of triumph to Lake Michigan; for Marquette had promised to return and instruct them in the faith. Sailing along the lake, they crossed the outer peninsula of Green Bay, and reached the mission of S. Francis Xavier just four months after their departure from it.

“Thus had the missionaries achieved their long‐projected work. The triumph of the age was thus completed in the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi, which threw open to France the richest, most fertile and accessible territory of the New World. Marquette, whose health had been severely tried in this voyage, remained at St. Francis to recruit his strength before resuming his wonted missionary labors; for he sought no laurels, he aspired to no tinsel praise.

“The distance passed over by F. Marquette on this great expedition, in his little bark canoe, was two thousand seven hundred and sixty‐seven miles. The feelings with which he regarded an enterprise having so grave a bearing on the future history and development of mankind may be appreciated from the following closing passage of the ninth section of his _Voyages and Discoveries_:

“ ‘Had all this voyage caused but the salvation of a single soul, I should deem all my fatigue well repaid. And this I have reason to think; for, when I was returning, I passed by the Indians at Peoria. I was three days announcing the faith in all their cabins, after which, as we were embarking, they brought me to the water’s edge a dying child, which I baptized a little before it expired, by an admirable Providence, for the salvation of that innocent soul.’ ”

F. Marquette prepared a narrative of his voyage down the Mississippi (from which the foregoing quotation is taken), and a map of that river; and on his return transmitted copies to his superior, by the Ottawa flotilla of that year. It is also probable that Frontenac, the Governor of New France, as he had promised, sent a copy of them to the French government. The loss of Jolliet’s narrative and map gave an inestimable value to those of Marquette. Yet the French government did not publish them, probably in consequence of the discontinuance of the publication of the Jesuit _Relations_ about this time; and thus the great interests involved in the discovery were neglected. Fortunately, F. Marquette’s narrative fell into the hands of Thevenot, who had just published a collection of travels, and such was his appreciation of it that he issued a new volume, entitled _Recueil de Voyages_, in 1681, containing the narrative and map of the Mississippi.(226) Mr. Sparks, in his life of F. Marquette, speaks thus of the narrative:

“It is written in a terse, simple, and unpretending style. The author relates what occurs, and describes what he sees, without embellishment or display. He writes as a scholar and as a man of careful observation and practical sense. There is no tendency to exaggerate, nor any attempt to magnify the difficulties he had to encounter, or the importance of his discovery. In every point of view, this tract is one of the most interesting of those which illustrate the early history of America.”

Having reached Green Bay, the exhausted voyager sank down under the effects of his recent travels and exposures. His disease was so obstinate and protracted that he suffered during the entire winter, though with patience and resignation, and did not recover before the end of the following summer. Having received from his superior the necessary orders for the establishment of the Illinois mission, he started on the 25th of October, 1674, for Kaskaskia. He was accompanied and assisted by two faithful and devoted Frenchmen, and by a number of Pottawattomies and Illinois Indians. They coasted along the mouth of Fox River, and then, advancing up as far as the small bay breaking into the peninsula, they reached the portage leading to the lake. As the canoes proceeded along the lake shore, the missionary walked upon the beach, returning to the canoes whenever the beach was broken by a river or stream; and their provisions were obtained from the abundant yield of the chase. On the 23d of November, the courageous missionary found his malady returning, but pushed on, amid cold and snow, until, on the 4th of December, he reached the Chicago River, which was closed with ice. Here again the unpropitious elements and his own infirmities compelled him to stop and spend the winter. But his time was not idly spent during this detention, for his missionary zeal found occupation in the spiritual care of his Indian companions, whom he instructed as well as he could, and sent them forward on their journey. His faithful Frenchmen remained now alone with him; but at a distance of fifty miles was an Illinois village, where there were two Frenchmen, traders and trappers; and these, hearing of the forlorn condition of the missionary, arranged that one of them should go and visit him. They had prepared a cabin for him, and the Indians, alarmed for his safety, were also anxious to send some of their tribe to convey their father and his effects to their village. Touched by their attentions, he sent them every assurance of his visiting them, intimating, however, the uncertainty of his doing so in the spring, in consequence of his continued illness. These messages only added to the alarm of the Indians, and the sachems assembled and sent a deputation to the black‐gown. The presents they bore were three sacks of corn, dried meat, and pumpkins, and twelve beaver skins. The objects of their visits were, first, to make him a mat to sit on; second, to ask him for powder; third, supply him with food; fourth, to get some merchandise. The good father made answer in characteristic terms, as follows: “First, that I came to instruct them by speaking of the prayer; second, that I would not give them powder, as we endeavor to make peace everywhere, and because I did not wish them to begin a war against the Miamis; third, that we did not fear famine; fourth, that I would encourage the French to bring them merchandise, and that they must make reparation to the traders there for the beads taken from them while the surgeon was with me.” Presenting them with some axes, knives, and trinkets, he dismissed them with a promise to make every effort to visit them in a few days. Bidding their good father to “take heart,” and beseeching him to “stay and die in their country,” the deputation “returned to their winter camps.”

The ensuing winter months, though marked by every bodily suffering and privation, were replete with religious consolation. His whole time was spent in prayer. Admonished by his disease that his last end could not be far off, he offered his remaining days entirely to God. He lost sight of the sufferings of his body in the overflow of heavenly consolations with which his soul was ravished. Still the recollection that he had been appointed missionary of the Illinois, and the duty this seemed to impose upon him of laboring for the conversion of those noble but benighted souls, filled his heart with the desire of visiting them, if it should be the will of God, and the establishment of the Illinois mission became the absorbing thought of his mind and the burden of the prayers which he addressed to the throne of heaven. His sufferings he bore not only with patience, but with joy; if he prayed for their cessation, it was only with the view that he might thus be enabled to encounter the new sufferings, labors, and hardships of his mission, and that he might devote his remaining days to the salvation of his beloved Illinois. To obtain this privilege from heaven, he induced his companions to unite with him in a novena of prayers in honor of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Some time after Christmas, 1675, his Patroness in heaven obtained the desired boon of health for her devoted client; for he soon began to recover from his disease, and, though still feeble, was enabled by the 29th of March, when the snow and ice began to melt, and the inundations compelled them to move, to set out for Kaskaskia, in the Upper Illinois. He arrived at that Illinois town on the 8th of April, but his journal was discontinued from the 6th of April, and we have no record of his movements from that time. He was received by his children as an angel from heaven, for they scarcely supposed he had escaped alive the rigors of the winter. It was Monday in Holy Week, and the good man immediately commenced his work. He visited the chiefs and ancients of the town, and gave them and the crowds who assembled in the cabins he visited the first necessary instructions in the Gospel. So great were the throngs that assembled to hear him preach that the narrow accommodations of the cabins could not hold them. On Maundy Thursday he called a general assembly of the people in the open field, a beautiful prairie near the town, which was decorated after the fashion of the country, and spread with mats and bear skins. He formed a little rustic altar by suspending some pieces of Indian taffety on cords, to which were attached, so as to be seen on all four sides, four large pictures of the Blessed Virgin, under whose invocation the mission was placed. The assembly was immense; composed of five hundred chiefs and ancients seated in a circle around the missionary, and around these stood fifteen hundred young men. Besides these, great numbers of women and children attended. He addressed his congregation with ten words or presents, according to the Indian fashion, associating each word or present, which represented some great truth or mystery, with one of the ten beads on the belt of the prayer which he held in his hand. He explained the object of his visit to them, preached Christ crucified—for it was the eve of Good Friday—and explained to them the principal mysteries of the Christian religion. The Holy Mass was then celebrated for the first time in this new mission. On each of the following days he continued his instructions, and on Easter Sunday he celebrated the great Feast of the Resurrection, offering up Mass for the second time. He took possession of the land in the name of his risen Lord, and bestowed upon the mission the name of the Immaculate Virgin Mary.

His former malady now returned with renewed violence. His strength was wasting away. To remain would accomplish no good for his children, for he was unable to discharge the duties of the missionary, and no alternative was left but to make an effort to reach his former mission, Mackinaw, where he hoped to die in the midst of his fellow‐members of the Society of Jesus. He was the more willing now to seek rest in the bosom of his Redeemer and in the Society of his Blessed Mother in Heaven, because he had performed his promise, the mission of the Illinois had been founded, his words had been lovingly received by his people, the good seed had been sown in their hearts, the Holy Sacrifice had been offered up in their presence and for their salvation, and future missionaries might now advance to cultivate the field and reap the harvest he had prepared. His docile Indians, with the devotion of children, begged him to return to them as soon as his health should permit. He repeatedly promised them that he or some other missionary would come to continue the good work amongst them. The people followed him on his journey, escorted him thirty leagues on his way with great pomp, showing him every mark of friendship and affection, and many contended among themselves for the honor of carrying the scanty baggage he possessed. Taking the way of the St. Joseph’s River and the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, along which he had yet to travel over a hundred leagues through an unknown route, his strength soon began to fail entirely. He could no longer help himself; his two faithful French companions had to lift him in and out of his canoe when they landed at night; and so exhausted had he become under his wasting disease that they had to handle and carry him like a child. In the midst of his sufferings and the hardships of such a journey in his enfeebled health, his characteristic equanimity, joy, and gentleness never for a moment left him. He could even forget his own sufferings to console his companions. He encouraged them to sustain the fatigues of the way, assuring them that God would protect and defend them. His native mirthfulness was even in this extreme crisis conspicuous in his conversations. He now calmly saw the approach of death, and joyfully and heroically welcome it as the reward of his toils and sacrifices. He had some time before prepared a meditation on death, to serve him in these last hours of his life, which he now used with great consolation. He said his office to his last day. His devotions frequently assumed the shape of colloquies with his merciful Lord, with his Holy Mother, with his angel guardian, and with all heaven. He repeatedly pronounced with fervor the sublime words, “I believe that my Redeemer liveth”; and again, “Mary, Mother of grace, Mother of God, remember me.” Perceiving a river on whose banks loomed up a prominent eminence, he ordered his companions to stop, that he might die and be buried there. He pointed out the spot on this eminence in which he desired them to inter his remains. This river, until recent years, bore his name. His companions still desired to press forward, in the hope of reaching Mackinaw; but they were driven back by the wind, and, entering the River Marquette by its former channel, they erected a bark cabin, under which Marquette, like his great model, S. Francis Xavier, was stretched upon the shore, and, like him, sighed only to be dissolved and to be with Christ. So cheerfully did he realize his approaching dissolution that he gave all the necessary directions to his companions touching his burial. He had a week before blessed some water, which he instructed them how to use on the occasion, how to arrange his hands, feet, and head, with what religious ceremonies to bury him, even telling them that they should take his little altar bell, and ring it as they carried him to the grave. On the eve of his death, he told them with a countenance radiant with joy that the morrow would be his last day on earth. Still mindful of his sacred ministry, and anxious to be doing good, he administered the sacrament of penance to his two companions for the last time. He thanked them for their charity to him during this arduous and eventful voyage, begged their pardon for the trouble he had given them, and directed them to ask pardon for him and in his name of all the Fathers and Brothers of the Society of Jesus in the Ottawa country; he also gave them a paper in which he had written all his faults since his last confession, which he begged them to give to his superior, that he might pray the more earnestly for him. He promised not to forget them in heaven. Ever mindful of others in this trying moment, and overflowing with charity for his neighbor, he insisted upon his companions taking some rest, leaving him to commune with heaven, assuring them that his hour was not yet at hand, and that he would call them in due time. This he did; summoning them to his side, just as his agony was approaching. Hastening to him, they fell melting into tears at his feet. He embraced them for the last time, called for the holy water he had blessed and his reliquary, and, taking his crucifix from around his neck, and handing it to one of them, he requested him to hold it up before him, so that he could behold it every moment he had yet to live. Clasping his hands, and fixing his eyes affectionately on the image of his expiring Saviour, he pronounced aloud his profession of faith, and thanked God for the favor he enjoyed in dying a Jesuit, a missionary of the cross, and, above all, in dying in a miserable cabin, amid forests, and destitute of all human consolation and assistance. He then communed secretly for some time with his Creator, but his devotion from time to time found vent in the ejaculations, “Sustinuit anima mea in verba ejus,” and “Mater Dei, memento mei.” These were his last words before he was taken with the agony of death. His companions frequently pronounced the names of Jesus and Mary, as he had previously requested them to do, and, when they saw he was about to expire, they called out “Jesus, Maria,” whereupon he repeated those enrapturing names several times with distinctness, and then suddenly, as if his Saviour and Mother had appeared to him, he raised his eyes above the crucifix, gazing with a countenance lit up with pleasure at those blissful apparitions. He expired as peacefully and gently as a child sinking into its evening slumber.

“Thus he died, the great apostle, Far away in regions West; By the Lake of the Algonquins Peacefully his ashes rest; But his spirit still regards us From his home among the blest.”

The devoted companions of the illustrious missionary, happy, in the midst of their bereavement, in the privilege of witnessing one of the most heroic and saintly deaths recorded in the history of our race, carried out every injunction of their departed father, and added every act that love and veneration could suggest, and that their impoverished condition in the wilderness could afford. They laid out his remains as he had directed, rang the little altar bell as they carried him with profound respect to the mound of earth selected by himself, interred him there, and raised a large cross to mark the sacred spot.

The surviving companions of the deceased now prepared to embark. One of them had been ill for some time, suffering with such depression of spirits and feebleness of body that he could neither eat nor sleep. Just before embarking he knelt at the grave of his saintly friend, and begged him to intercede for him in heaven as he had promised, and, taking some earth from the breast of the departed, and placing it upon his own breast, it is related that he felt his sadness and bodily infirmity immediately depart, and he resumed his voyage in health and gladness. Many are the pious traditions of miraculous results attributed to the sanctity of F. Marquette; many of them are still handed down among the Western missionaries, and some of them have found a place in the pages of serious history.

The remains of the saintly Jesuit were, two years afterwards, disinterred by his own flock, the Kiskakons, while returning from their hunting‐ grounds, placed in a neat box of bark, and reverently carried to their mission. The flotilla of canoes, as it passed along in funeral solemnity, was joined by a party of the Iroquois, and, as they approached Mackinaw, many other canoes, including those of the two missionaries of the place, united in the imposing convoy, and the deep, reverential chant, _De Profundis_, arose heavenward from the bosom of the lake until the body reached the shore. It was carried in procession with cross, burning tapers, and fragrant incense to the church, where every possible preparation had been made for so interesting and affecting a ceremony; and, after the Requiem service, the precious relics were deposited in a vault prepared for them in the middle of the church, “where he reposes,” says the pious chronicler, “as the guardian angel of our Ottawa missions.” “Ever after,” says Bancroft, “the forest rangers, if in danger on Lake Michigan, would invoke his name. The people of the West will build his monument.”

The following notice of the character of F. Marquette is from the gifted pen of Mr. Shea:

“Such was the edifying and holy death of the illustrious explorer of the Mississippi, on Saturday, the 18th of May, 1675. He was of a cheerful, joyous disposition, playful even in his manner, and universally beloved. His letters show him to us as a man of education, close observation, sound sense, strict integrity, a freedom from exaggeration, and yet a vein of humor which here and there breaks out in spite of all his self‐command.

“But all these qualities are little compared to his zeal as a missionary, to his sanctity as a man. His holiness drew on him in life the veneration of all around him, and the lapse of years has not even now destroyed it in the descendants of those who knew him. In one of his sanctity we naturally find an all‐absorbing devotion to the Mother of the Saviour, with its constant attendants, an angelical love of purity, and a close union of the heart with God. It is, indeed, characteristic with him. The privilege which the Church honors under the title of the Immaculate Conception was the constant object of his thoughts; from his early youth he daily recited the little offices of the Immaculate Conception and fasted every Saturday in her honor. As a missionary, a variety of devotions directed to the same end still show his devotions, and to her he turned in all his trials. When he discovered the great river, when he founded his new mission, he gave it the name of the Conception, and no letter, it is said, ever came from his hand that did not contain the words, ’Blessed Virgin Immaculate’; and the smile that lighted up his dying face induced his poor companions to believe that she had appeared before the eyes of her devoted client.

“Like S. Francis Xavier, whom he especially chose as the model of his missionary career, he labored nine years for the moral and social improvement of nations sunk in paganism and vice, and, as he was alternately with tribes of varied tongues, found it was necessary to acquire knowledge of many American languages: six he certainly spoke with ease; many more he is known to have understood less perfectly. His death, however, was, as he had always desired, more like that of the apostle of the Indies; there is, indeed, a striking resemblance between their last moments; and the wretched cabin, the desert shore, the few destitute companions, the lonely grave, all harmonize in Michigan and Sancian.”

Prayer Of Custance, The Persecuted Queen Of Alla Of Northumberland.

Mother, quod she, and maiden bright, Mary! Soth is that through womanne’s eggement Mankind was lorn, and damned aye to die, For which thy Child was on a cross yrent: Thy blissful eyen saw all his torment; Then is there no comparison between Thy woe and any woe man may sustain. Thou saw’st thy Child yslain before thine eyen, And yet now liveth my little child parfay, Now, lady bright! to whom all woful crien, Thou glory of womanhood, thou faire May, Thou haven of refute, bright star of the day! Rue on my child, that of thy gentleness Ruest on every rueful in distress.

—_Chaucer._

Acoma.

“Mr. S——, would you like to visit Acoma?” asked the commandant.

“Most assuredly,” I replied; “I came out here to see all I could see. But what or who is Acoma?”(227)

“A town built on the top of a rock rising from a level plain to a height of over two hundred feet is Acoma—the home of the Acoma Indians, a tribe of the great Pueblo family. I am ordered thither to have a talk with the principal men, and induce them to give up some Navajo children—captives—they are said to have taken in a recent skirmish.”

I had been enjoying the hospitality of the commandant for some days at old Fort Wingate, near the Ojo del Gallo, in the northwestern part of New Mexico. Acoma lies about fifty miles to the southeast of the fort, by a very rough trail across the mountains. It was somewhat further by the regular trail.

As we started, the sun was creeping over the brow of lofty San Mateo. The party consisted of the commandant, Don Juan Brown, a Castilianized American, who speaks Spanish like a native, and went with us as volunteer interpreter; Messrs. Jim Durden and Joe Smithers, gentlemen loafers; a sergeant and twenty cavalry as escort in case of unexpected and undesired rencounters with hostile Apaches or Navajoes; last, the writer, a denizen of the city of Gotham, general tourist, grand scribe and chronicler.

We all rode on horseback, except Don Juan Brown, who, being a trifle over 225 lbs., divided his weight between a pair of good horses attached to a light buggy. The order of march was: two cavalrymen five hundred yards in advance; the commandant, with Jim and Joe and the writer; the main body of the escort; Don Juan Brown with his buggy, and a rear guard of two cavalrymen five hundred yards behind.

A brisk trot of three miles brought us to the Puertocito, or Little Door, which leads from the Valley of the Gallo into the Mal Païs, a petrified sea of lava, which lies between the Puertocito and the mountains. The lava stream seems to have been suddenly turned to stone by a wave of some enchanter’s wand while it was a raging, seething torrent.

We halted and dismounted, tightened girths, etc. Jim and Joe, unused to the equitating mood, and evidently disliking particularly the trotting tense, had fallen back to the rear guard, and looked somewhat shaken. The relief of a walk of some miles was in store for them, as the trail through the Mal Païs admitted only of that gait and of single file.

The Puertocito is formed by two rocks about twenty feet high. We wound our way through tortuous passages, through lava spires, at a slow walk. We could not see more than a few yards ahead. It was a dreary pathway. The knowledge that it was a haunt for Indians bound on robbery or revenge gave imagination an opportunity to put her darkest colors on the natural gloom. An hour’s slow walking brings us to the Bajada, or Descent, where our path is up and down the steep sides of a lava rock thirty feet high. We dismount and lead our horses carefully down. Half a dozen men holding on to the buggy behind make sufficient drag to let it down in safety, though with some wrenching of the wheels in the channelled surface of the rock.

Thence our way lies on the eastern skirt of the lava, which runs along with the stream known as the San José through a deep and winding gorge named Los Rémanzos. I have seen some wild scenery in my time, but never before nor since so savage a piece of landscape as Los Rémanzos. The mountains rise perpendicularly on either hand—their barren sides dotted with huge boulders which seem ready to fall instantly on the traveller beneath. You wonder why they do not fall. The winding cañon shuts out all view beyond twenty yards in advance. A trail barely wide enough for one vehicle to pass creeps between the San José and the mountains on one side; and from the stream to the mountains on the other the lava piles up its grim and threatening forms.

We halted at the picket to wait for the escort, the buggy, and Jim and Joe, beguiling the time by a comforting draught of hot coffee from a military quart cup which the commander of the picket hospitably offered us. The laggards soon arrived. Jim and Joe took advantage of the pause before starting again to enter a solemn protest against trotting:

“For heaven’s sake, commandant!” said they with one voice and in a tone that showed acute feeling, “either walk or lope; we cannot endure that confounded trot. We shall be as raw as uncooked beefsteaks.”

A bright thought struck them both simultaneously, and, without any further ceremony, they rushed to the buggy, leaving their horses to take care of themselves or be taken care of by some good‐natured dragoon.

Another mile brought us to the crossing of the San José. Here was a check to our proceedings: the crossing was not fordable. The stream, usually about two feet wide and three inches deep at the crossing, had in consequence of recent heavy rains and the melting of snows filled its steep bed and overflowed its banks for fifty yards on either side. A powerful eddy made it impossible for a horse to strike ground on the other side. A dragoon dashed in and tried it, but it was with great difficulty we saved him and his horse from being carried down the swollen stream, and got them safe on our side again.

“That settles it, gentlemen,” said the commandant; “we shall have to cross the mountains—a rough trail, but we have no choice.”

It was now proposed to leave the buggy behind, but Joe would not hear of it. The commandant was too polite to insist, as he ought to have done.

Crossing a narrow but steep cut, however, the buggy went over, spilling Don Juan and Jim over the mountain‐side. The buggy stood on its top—wheels in the air. The horses—good and gentle animals—came to a full stop and stood perfectly quiet. Otherwise, there would have been as little left of the buggy as of Dr. Holmes’ one‐horse shay, the last time the deacon rode in it. Neither the Don nor Jim was hurt, though the latter was somewhat frightened. Don Juan took the matter with the coolness of an old hand. The buggy was uninjured; it had merely met with a reverse. It was soon put upon its legs—or, rather, its wheels—again. Its progress was so aggravatingly slow when even our fastest possible gait was a walk, that, dividing the escort, we went on, leaving it to proceed at its leisure.

It was about nightfall when we reached the edge of a precipitous descent where all marks of a trail disappeared. The descent was probably two hundred feet in perpendicular height, and alarmingly steep.

“The buggy can never go down there,” was the general remark.

“Confound the buggy, we shall have to sleep out in the cold all night with nothing but a saddle‐blanket, on account of it,” also translates a very general sentiment.

“We cannot desert them, however,” said the commandant; “as the buggy has come with us we must stand by it. We shall wait here until it comes up.”

We had a long and weary wait for that anathematized buggy. At length, as the shades of night were falling, the long‐looked‐for buggy was seen, its top bumping up and down like a buffalo with a broken foreleg. The don walked on one side of the vehicle holding the reins; Joe walked on the other side as gloomily as a chief mourner. The remainder of the escort with dismal visages followed behind.

A glance over the steep brink did not give any radiance to their gloomy countenances. Don Juan expressed his regrets that we should have been detained by the slow and difficult progress of the buggy. Joe said nothing, but evidently felt ashamed of himself.

We were still twenty miles from Acoma. Within about five miles, the commandant said there was a little Indian hut—a sort of outpost of the Pueblo—the owner of which, old Salvador, was one of the notables of the Pueblo. The commandant had notified Salvador by courier some days before of our intended visit. He had proposed to meet us at the ranchito and guide us over the remainder of the mountain trail. Here we could pass the night under cover at least, though we should be pretty closely packed.

Joe had resumed the saddle after the steep descent had been accomplished. He and Jim now led the party, and, as the rest of us stayed with Don Juan and the buggy, they got considerably in advance. Thus they had reached the ranchito some twenty minutes before we did. We found them knocking at the door and calling loudly and indignantly on the inmates to open.

“We have been knocking and shouting here for half an hour, and the confounded old Indian has not taken the slightest notice of us. I believe he would let us freeze.”

“Salvador does not know you,” said the commandant. “He is too wise an Indian to open his doors to strangers in this country after nightfall. Salvador is reputed wealthy, and it behooves him to be careful what nocturnal visitors he receives. I think I can get Salvador to open. Is Señor Don Salvador within?” asked the commandant, in Spanish.

“Is it the Señor Comandante who is without?” asked Don Salvador, in the same language, with the usual Pueblo peculiarities of pronunciation—the use of _l_ for _r_, etc.

Being satisfied on this point, Salvador opened the door to receive us.

Salvador was a stout, middle‐sized, gray‐headed Indian of the Pueblo type. The presence of the commandant being a voucher for the rest, Salvador now proceeded to shake hands with the whole party—in the order of rank, as he understood it—taking first the commandant, next the bugler, then the sergeant and the men of the escort, and then the civilians, Don Brown and the writer, and lastly Jim and Joe; conscientiously repeating in each individual case, “_Como le va!_” and “_Bueno!_” Indians believe in uniforms and brass buttons. They don’t understand official dignity without outward and visible signs.

The ranchito was a little structure of _tierrones_, or sods, roofed with poles laid across from wall to wall, and covered with brush and earth. There were no windows. The door was the only aperture, I think. I am not quite sure whether there was a hole in the roof to let out a little of the smoke; there may have been. The edifice was about large enough for a fair‐ sized poultry‐house. It was perched on the steep mountainside, the earth being cut away on the upper side to give an approach to a level foundation. There was a small shed for animals, the fodder for whose use being piled on top of it. There was the usual corn‐crib. Our best horses were honored with the hospitality of the shed, Salvador’s pony and burros being turned out to make room for them. The other animals were tied to logs in front of the ranchito, and a guard placed over them.

It required some stooping to enter Salvador’s residence. This was very hard on the stout Don, who had not seen his own knee for a number of years, but he accomplished it as if he had been in the daily habit of touching his toes without bending his knees. But a further trial still awaited him. The hut was divided into two rooms. The passage between the two rooms was a blighted door, cut short in its youth to the proportions of a small fireplace. We had to come down to all‐fours to get into the inner chamber. When the commandant, the staunch Don, and the writer had entered, the place seemed full. But Salvador, on hospitable thoughts intent, insisted on Jim and Joe entering. Then Salvador wriggled in. The room was replete.

After a meagre supper and a quiet smoke, we arranged the details of the morrow’s trip. With our saddles for pillows, and our saddle‐blankets and overcoats for beds and bed‐covering, we lay down to sleep. Brown, with Jim and Joe, in the inner room; the commandant, the old Pueblo, and myself in the outer. Jim and Joe lay perpendicularly to Brown, and Salvador described a horizontal to the commandant and myself. I slept well, considering, though I was waked two or three times by a roaring noise, which seemed to me to be that of the house falling, as I was endeavoring to force myself through the passage between the two apartments, in which, more than once during the night, I dreamt that I was stuck fast. On waking, I discovered that the sound proceeded from the resounding Aztec nose of our host, Salvador.

We were roused before day by the old Indian. Dressing took no time, as we had not undressed the night before—a great saving of time, labor, and discomfort. Breakfast was to be got ready, however. Salvador made the fire. The commandant detailed himself and myself as cooks for the morning. At supper‐time, Don Juan, assisted by Jim and Joe, would officiate culinarily. Slices from a haunch of bacon we had brought with us, cooked on the end of a stick, with “hard tack” and coffee, made in a camp kettle, furnished a delicious breakfast. What is there in the odor of unctuous bacon that makes it so pleasant to the nostrils when one is camping out or “roughing it”? There are people who cannot abide the smell of bacon within the confines of civilization. But put them on the Plains, or in the field, and a daily dose of the appetizing grease is necessary to “settle their stomachs.” I have known men who, in long trips in the wilds, forsook chickens and returned to first principles and bacon.

We made an early start. The buggy was left behind. Don Juan saddled one of his horses. He borrowed from the old Indian a saddle, so angular and so full of sharp points that it must have been hard even for an Indian’s seat. But Brown, though heavy, was a good horseman, and he bore the infliction like a hero.

Salvador was our guide. When we were all mounted, and ready to start, we looked around for him. After some hunting we saw him above us, mounted, and seemingly emerging from the roof of the ranchito. He went straight up the side of the mountain, beckoning to us to come on, and shouting “_Caballeros! por aquí!_”(228)

An Indian does not understand flank movements. He does not go around obstacles. He goes straight over them on the direct line of his objective. We followed our guide, dismounting, however, leading our horses, and zigzagging up the steep ascent like Christians and white men.

Our course was over mountain and across ravine on a bee‐line of ascent or descent for Acoma. There was some growling by Jim and Joe, but as our general gait was a slow walk, and they made much of their progress on foot, they did not grumble much.

I noticed moccasin tracks in several places where the ground was soft. The distance between the foot‐prints was very great. It astonished me. I rode to the commandant’s side, and called his attention to the wonderful tracks. He pointed them out to Salvador, who said they were the tracks of a _muchacho_ he had sent to the Pueblo last night with the news of our arrival at the ranchito. What a stepper that _muchacho_ must have been! His average bound must have been at least ten feet.

“How long will it take him to go to the Pueblo, Salvador?” asked the commandant.

“Oh! not long,” replied Salvador, “long as a good horse.”

_Experientia docet._ Before I saw those tracks I used to set down the accounts I read in my Grecian history of wonderful time made by messengers to Athens and other classic centres as antique yarns. I now believe in the fastest Grecian time reported. Thus, the torch of faith is often lit by the merest straying spark—a lesson to us not to limit our belief to what is within the scope of our knowledge. We know so little.

Jim and Joe had begun to growl over the continual ups and downs of the journey when we saw Salvador, who was some three or four hundred yards ahead, dismount at the foot of what seemed to be the steepest ascent yet.

“This must be a stiff one,” said the commandant. “I see Salvador has dismounted. It takes a pretty steep ascent to make an Indian or a Mexican dismount. They hold to the saddle until the animal begins to bend backward.”

It was a steep and toilsome ascent, winding in and out through huge boulders just wide enough apart to let a horse squeeze through. It was not always easy to convince the horses that there was room enough for them to pass. They would refuse to be convinced, and obstinately draw back, to the discomfort and danger of those leading them, and more so of those following.

At last we reached the top of the ascent. The descent on the other side was a worthy pendant to it. We halted on the crest to enjoy the landscape before us. From the base of the height a level plain spread away for miles, unbroken save by a cluster of lofty perpendicular white rocks, each rising independently from the level plain. On the top of the highest of these rocks stood a little town, the smoke from its chimneys mingling with the clouds. This was Acoma.

We descended slowly and carefully. A brisk trot of about two miles brought us to two lofty natural columns, through which the trail passed. They seemed the pillars of a gigantic portal—a resemblance which had struck the Indians, for they named it El Puerto: The Gate. We had now reached the base of the inhabited rock. An excavation near the base was pointed out to us by Salvador as the trace of an attempt to mine the position by the Spanish invaders! I think the story rather a doubtful one.

I judged the rock to be about two hundred and fifty feet in height. The path up the rocky side to the village was steep and narrow. No wheeled vehicle has ever entered the Pueblo. The primitive _carreta_, with its clumsy wheels of solid disks cut from the trunk of some gigantic cotton‐ wood, stopped short at the base—going thus far and no further. Provisions and other necessaries are packed up on the backs of surefooted donkeys. Water for drinking purposes is carried up on the heads of the Indians in large earthen vessels named _tinajas_; for other uses rain‐water is carefully gathered in natural tanks or hollows in the summit of the rock. There is a bypath or short‐cut up to the Pueblo which the Acomas generally use when unburdened or in a hurry. A glance showed us that it was only practicable for Acoma Indians. This short‐cut is in the most nearly perpendicular of any of the rocky sides. It consists of holes in the smooth and vertical side of the rock, in which the Indians place their hands and feet, and climb up after the fashion of sailors clambering up rigging, and with no less rapidity.

We returned to the common highway, which now seemed by comparison a flowery path of dalliance. It was slow and tiresome work, however. After a rest or two, to breathe our animals and ourselves, we finally reached the comparatively level space, some acres in area, on the summit of the rock.

Here we were met by Francisco, our guide’s son, the governor, matadores, alguazils, and other functionaries of the Pueblo. This is as good a place as any other to say that the governor and all other officials are elected annually. They were dressed in the usual Pueblo fashion. Their heads were uncovered. They were draped in large blankets, which gave them a very dignified appearance.

We received a most cordial reception. The commandant had been a good friend to the Acomas—had protected them in their little trading operations, and helped them in the long, hard winters when their granaries were empty. The entire male population was assembled in the Plaza or central square. The squaws and children were at their front doors, that is to say, on the roofs, for the entrance to a Pueblo’s dwelling is from above.

A fire for the dragoons to cook their rations by was made in the centre of the Plaza. The horses were picketed around. A contribution of corn and firewood was levied by the governor for the use of the escort. The Indians came in cheerful, laughing groups, bearing their _costals_ of corn or their bundles of wood. The escort being provided for, we went to the house of Francisco, the most comfortable house in the Pueblo; for Francisco was the wealthiest member of the little community. The governor’s dwelling was a poor one, and himself a poor man who was unable to entertain us as comfortably as Francisco could. He accompanied us thither.

Francisco’s dwelling, like most of the others in the Pueblo, was a two‐ storied adobe building, whitewashed inside and out. The mode of access was a ladder placed against the outer wall of the lower story. Having reached the top of this, you walk across the roof and enter the house by a door on the second story, the façade of which is somewhat retired from the front line of the first.

Here we found some rosy, apple‐faced squaws, engaged in culinary and other domestic operations. One was kneeling grinding corn with the primitive _matata_. They smiled with all their countenances on us; and a half‐dozen of the whitest sets of teeth, that dentist or dentifrice never touched, gleamed a bright welcome to us. They wore the usual dark woollen robe, made of two pieces, about five feet long and three broad, sewed together at one of the narrow ends, but with an aperture for the head to pass through. The robe is then gathered round the waist and tied with a string. Their nut‐brown arms were bare, and encircled at the wrist by from one to a dozen brass rings; their feet were bare. The thick swathing of buckskin, with which they wrap their lower limbs when journeying, and which gives them the appearance of being terribly swollen, were laid aside, much to the furthering of a graceful effect.

We were invited to descend to the sitting‐room, situated beneath, through a very narrow trap‐door. Don Juan walked fearlessly toward the aperture. We begged him to pause before he rushed into a place whence he could never hope to return. The Indians understood the joke, and enjoyed it hugely.

So the Don entered the aperture, and by judicious squeezing actually succeeded in passing. His coat‐tails got through about the same time as his head. The others, being of the lean and hungry‐looking kind, had no difficulty in descending.

From the room into which we had descended ventilation was completely excluded. Light was only admitted through one or two small panes of glass in apertures like port‐holes in the walls.

We took seats on sheep‐skins spread in a circle around the floor. The commandant made known his business in passable Spanish; the governor replied, through Francisco, as interpreter. The worthy Don intervened, from time to time, between the high contracting parties, when there was a lack of language or danger of misunderstanding. The business was completed satisfactorily and in short order.

While the floor was being set for dinner—tables not being in vogue here—we endeavored to obtain the Acoma’s idea of the antiquity of the Pueblo. Francisco, though he had learned to read and write, had not got beyond the Indian idea of time, space, or number. There is no medium between “many” and “few”—very far, _muy lejos_; and near, _cerca_.

“How many years old is the Pueblo?”

“_Muchos años._—Many years.”

“About how many?”

“Who knows, señor?” with a shrug. “A great many.”

“Who is the oldest man in the Pueblo?”

“The cacique.”

The cacique, we were informed, is the official historian of the Pueblo. His records consist only in oral traditions, which he teaches to a youth selected for the purpose, who is to succeed him in his office when he dies.

“Is the cacique very old?”

“Si, señor! Very old.”

It is useless to ask an Indian how old he or any other Indian is, as he never knows. So we did not ask how old the cacique was.

“Was the cacique he succeeded very old?”

“Yes, sir; very old.”

“Was the Pueblo in existence as long as he can remember?”

“Yes, sir; and as long as the cacique before him and the cacique before him could remember. But we shall have the cacique here shortly, and then after dinner we’ll have a good big talk about the many years ago.”

Francisco, the governor, and his father now engaged in an earnest conversation in their Indian tongue, the result of which was that Francisco unlocked a vast trunk, of antique form and solidity, and took therefrom a pile of manuscript, which he handed us with great solemnity. The Indians looked upon this venerable pile with great reverence. It was probably the first time it had been touched by “outsiders.” We owed the permission to examine it to the many kind acts the commandant had performed for the Acomas.

The first portion of the manuscript examined was a Missal. The Office of the Mass was copied in Latin in a fair plain hand, the work of some Spanish missionary. The ink had turned yellow, but the text was clear and legible throughout. Nothing in the MS. Missal indicated the date of its writing. A further examination of the venerable pages furnished us some information. Besides the Missal, they comprised a register in Spanish of births, marriages, and deaths. The earliest written record of the Pueblo which we found is the record of a baptism, 1725.

Having gleaned what knowledge we could from the precious manuscripts, they were carefully and reverently put away in the ponderous chest, and secured by a padlock nearly as large as a travelling satchel.

Dinner was now served. It was very good. It consisted of a chicken stew, good white bread, and very passable tea. The stew was made so intensely hot, however, by _chile colorado_,(229) that I did not enjoy it as much as I might have done had it been less fiery. I never could relish _chile_ either _colorado_ or _verde_. But on this occasion, I determined to eat it if it burned me to a shell to show my appreciation of Acoma hospitality!

The cacique—an old, white‐haired, blear‐eyed Indian, at least ninety—came in toward the close of the meal, accompanied by the youth whom he was instructing in the historical and legendary lore of the Pueblo. He evinced no inclination to be communicative, but showed a determination to make a rousing meal—something to which he was evidently not accustomed. After dinner he devoted himself to smoking our cigars; but not a word could we get out of him about the history of Acoma. Joe said that as a story‐teller he considered the cacique a decided failure.

The governor signified that he was now ready to show us the church. So thither we proceeded.

The church is, of course, of adobe. It was unused at the time we visited it. No priest had been attached to the Pueblo for some years. But it was not suffered to fall into decay. On one side of the altar was a painting of the Virgin and Child; on the other, one of S. Joseph. On the ceiling above the altar were large paintings of the sun and moon. Here we got another chronological glimmer—the last we found. It was an inscription which stated that the church had been renovated in 1802. The Indians told us it was done by some artist‐priest who came from far away—probably Spain or Italy. There are a pair of bells in the belfry. The Acoma tradition is that these bells were a gift to the Pueblo from a Queen of Spain. Of course they do not know the date of their reception. They say, however, that it was some time before the renovation of the church.

We next went to the southern edge of the rock to look at the “short cut” from above. This was not easy or pleasant pedestrianism. The rock here ceased to be level, throwing up sharp craggy points. The Indians stepped from point to point, erect and graceful and without difficulty. The pale faces were compelled by a due discretion to abandon erect attitudes, and proceed bending down, and using hands as well as feet. A look down the rocky side was sufficient. The commandant shook his head, and said in Spanish:

“That is no way for a white man to come up”—a remark which the Indians seemed to consider remarkably humorous. They laughed and “how‐how”‐ed vehemently.

As we returned, we remarked that on one side of the rock it was bevelled down from the summit about forty or fifty feet, and then resumed its general steep and vertical character. Some houses were situated near the superior edge of this bend. A thrill ran through me from head to foot as I saw a child roll from the front of one of the houses down the incline.

“He will be dashed to atoms!” I cried in horror.

The Indians looked in the direction to which I frantically pointed, and then united in a good‐humored laugh.

Soon another urchin, and another, and another followed the first, who picked himself up just at the deadly brink, and mounted the incline, to roll down again and again, as we used to on a hillside in snow with our sleds, in our younger days. This was play for the infantine Acomas. They were “keeping the pot a‐bilin’.”

The Indians told us that no fatal accident had ever happened to any Acoma either while rolling down the dread incline “in pretty, pleasant play,” or climbing the steep path the mere sight of which had made us dizzy. Tradition records that only one Indian ever “went over the side.” He was saved by a projecting stump catching him by the breech‐clout and holding him suspended until he was rescued—unhurt.

Our next visit was the _Estufa_. Here the sacred fire was burning. The _Estufa_ was an underground apartment. We descended through a trap‐door, which also served as a chimney, and down a smoke‐begrimed ladder. The chamber was some thirty feet in length and perhaps fifteen in width. We were informed that it was the general place of meeting—the public hall—the club‐room of the Pueblo. It was pretty hot and not very sweet down there. We found four Indians seated around the fire, each with a loom in front of him, weaving a blanket. Their only covering was the breech‐clout. The Indians told us, through Don Juan, that these men watched the fire, which was always kept burning—waiting for the coming of Montezuma. They were relieved by four others at stated times. We shook hands with the naked watchers, and “how‐how”‐ed with them in the usual way.

“Do you think Montezuma will come?” asked Joe, through Don Juan, of one of the vigilants.

The worthy, shrugging his naked shoulders, looked up sidewise at Joseph, and replied:

“_Quizas? Quien sabe?_—May be! Who knows?”

Joe withdrew. We all followed him. We had now seen all the lions of the Pueblo of Acoma. “Boots and saddles” and “to horse” were sounded, and with many hand‐shakes, some embraces, and general “how‐hows,” we bade adieu to the hospitable Acomas and their rocky home, and began our return march.

New Publications.

THE LIFE OF DEMETRIUS AUGUSTIN GALLITZIN, PRINCE AND PRIEST. By Sarah M. Brownson. With an Introduction by O. A. Brownson, LL.D. New York: Pustet. 1872.

Women of talent and cultivation make admirable biographers. In religious biography we know of nothing more charming than the lives written by Mère Chauguy. In recent English literature, the Lives of Mother Margaret Mary O’Halloran, by a lady whose name is unknown to us, and of S. Jane Frances de Chantal, by Miss Emily Bowles, are among the most perfect specimens of this very agreeable species of writing which we have met with in any language. This new and carefully prepared biography of a priest who was illustrious both by birth and Christian virtue, by a lady already known as the author of several works of fiction, well deserves to be classed with the best of its kind in English Catholic literature. It is a work of thorough, patient, and conscientious labor, and for the first time adequately presents the history and character of Prince Gallitzin in their true light. Certainly, we never knew before how truly heroic and admirable a man was this Russian prince who came to pass his life as a missionary in the forests which crowned in his day the summit of the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania. The charm of a biography is found in a certain fulness and sprightliness of style and manner, a picturesqueness and ideality of ornament and coloring, a warmth and glow of sentiment, which give life and reality to the narrative. Miss Brownson still possesses the juvenile _élan_ which naturally finds its expression in the style we have indicated, and has also attained that sobriety and maturity of judgment which give it the rightly subdued tone and finish. In several matters of considerable delicacy which she has been obliged to handle, we think she has shown tact and discretion, while at the same time using enough of the freedom of a historian to bring out the truth of facts and events which needed to be told in order to make a veritable record and picture of the life of her subject. The prince is fortunate in his biographer. Would it were the lot of every great man in the church to find a similar one! Miss Brownson’s book seems to us the best religious biography which has been written by anyone of our American Catholic authors. We would like to see more works of this sort from feminine writers, to whom we are already so much indebted for works both of the graver and the lighter kind, and particularly from Miss Brownson, who has fully proved her ability in the volume before us.

BIBLIOGRAPHIA CATHOLICA AMERICANA. A list of works written by Catholic authors and published in the United States. By Rev. Joseph M. Finotti. Part I., 1784 to 1820 inclusive. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872. 8vo. pp. 319.

It was said of Bartlett’s _Dictionary of Americanisms_ that it was the first dictionary that a man could read through with pleasure. The same in the way of bibliography may be said of this; for, if any of our readers supposes that the title tells the truth, he is mistaken. It is not a mere _list_, as the author modestly calls it. Some twelve years ago, Mr. Shea published in one of our Catholic papers a list of titles of “The First Catholic Books printed in this County,” coming down to the same date and including the same period as our author, and giving sixty‐eight titles. This meagre beginning of American Catholic bibliography has in F. Finotti’s hands grown to nearly five hundred titles, including some few imprints later than 1820.

It is not merely a collection of titles of Catholic works, but of all works by Catholic authors printed in the country, with notes of the highest interest to Catholics who care at all for what was done by our fathers in the faith in this republic. Biographical notices, notices of celebrated books, accounts of controversies of the time, anecdotes illustrative of Catholic life in the earlier days, notes of Catholic printers and journalists, all find their place in these notes, in which the abundant knowledge of our earlier men and times, and things acquired by the patient and loving research of years, fairly bubble out spontaneously. It is not a history indeed, but to the historian will be invaluable as an authority and a guide.

On some points this work is absolutely exhaustive. The collection of pamphlets and works growing out of the Hogan affair in Philadelphia, considering their perishable nature, is perfectly wonderful, and his library alone can enable any one to go thoroughly into the history of that unhappy matter which was destructive to so many souls.

Of the writings and publications of the celebrated Mathew Carey, we have also here by far the most accurate and comprehensive account ever drawn up, comprising nearly twenty‐five pages.

Many will be amazed to see how many sterling Catholic books were issued early in the century, and thus be able to judge of the zeal and true religious feeling of the little body of Catholics who so generously sustained the publishers, as well as of the public spirit of a man like Bernard Dornin—in our mind, as in F. Finotti’s, the type of what a Catholic publisher should be. Of him as of many other Catholics our author gives biographical notices that we should look for in vain in all the cyclopædias and biographical dictionaries. Book notices often end with the assertion that the book should be in every family; we hardly suppose the publishers ready to supply every Catholic family in the country with a copy, for the edition is small, and must be taken up at once. It is by no means merely a book for the Dryasdust collector or antiquarian. It must find its place in the libraries of many of our gentlemen who love their religion and love books, as well as in our college libraries. We trust that it will impel all to endeavor to have some of the early printed Catholic books, as matters of laudable pride. If they can even find some that have escaped the Argus eyes of the reverend collector and his associate book‐hunters, they will, we trust, be good enough Christians to bear with equanimity even that severe trial to a bibliographer.

This _Bibliography_ commends itself to those interested in the bibliography of the country or the history of printing in the United States.

In the _Historical Magazine_ some months since there was a Bibliography of works on Unitarianism, but it was silent as to Father Kohlmann’s work, and to a sermon by a Catholic clergyman of Pittsburg. So, too, Sabin’s _Bibliopolist_ recently gave a list of books printed in Brooklyn, but was silent as to a _Catholic Doctrine_ printed there in 1817, as well as of Coate’s very curious _Reply_ to Rev. F. Richards’ supposed reasons for becoming a Catholic.

There is one strange point about American bibliography, and that is that the laborers in it have been almost exclusively from Europe. Ludewig gave the _Bibliography of Indian Languages_ and that of Local History; O’Callaghan, that of American Bibles; Harisse, that of the earliest American; Rich was a pioneer in the same field; and now Finotti gives us the Catholic element. Where are our native bibliographers?

LE LIBERALISME. LECONS DONNEES A L’UNIVERSITE LAVAL. Par l’Abbé Benjamin Paquet, Docteur en Theologie, et Professeur à la Faculté de Theologie. Quebec: De l’Imprimerie du _Canadien_. Brochure, pp. 100. 1872.

Lower Canada, considered both in respect to the condition of the Catholic Church therein, and to the political well‐being of its people, is an eminently fortunate region, despite the rigor of its climate. It is especially pre‐eminent in respect to the Catholic education given to young men of the leisured classes, and others who go through the intermediate and higher courses. Laval University is truly a splendid institution among many others which make Quebec an _unique_ city in Northern America. These remarks are suggested by the pamphlet before us, which is a specimen of the sound and opportune instruction given at the Laval University. The Lectures contained in it give an exposition which is both learned and clear of that most important portion of the Syllabus which relates to the errors of modern liberalism condemned in the Pontifical Acts of Pius IX. When will the Catholics of the United States enjoy privileges similar to those which are the portion of the Catholics of Lower Canada? The Abbé Paquet’s Lectures were delivered as a part of his course on the law of nature and of nations, and were attended not only by his pupils, but by a numerous and select audience, several of whom requested their publication. We have already sufficiently expressed our approbation of their doctrine and style, and they have been favorably noticed in Europe. We are confident that a considerable number of our readers will hasten to procure them, and receive great profit from their perusal.

CARDINAL WISEMAN’S WORKS. New Edition, first 3 vols. New York: P. O’Shea.

This is a reissue of a new London edition which we most cordially commend. The first two volumes, containing the _Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion_, have already been noticed in these pages. The third volume contains the splendid treatise on the Holy Eucharist. Cardinal Wiseman was a great writer, a great prelate, and a remarkably devout and holy man. His works are among our choicest treasures, and as such ought to be everywhere circulated and continually perused by those who wish to imbue their minds with the purest doctrine and the most valuable knowledge.

THE LIFE OF S. AUGUSTINE, BISHOP, CONFESSOR, AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH. By P. E. Moriarty, D.D. Ex‐Assistant General O.S.A. Philadelphia: Cunningham. 1873.

This is a popular biography, though proceeding from the pen of a learned man, and showing marks of erudition. The sketch is a complete one, and shows great power of generalization and condensation in the writer, with vigor and impetus of style. It is not, however, minute in respect to the saint’s public life, or his great work as a philosopher and doctor of the church. This could not be expected in a work of moderate size adapted for popular reading. There is, however, a brief summary of the saint’s writings, with a synopsis, and an account of the Augustinian Order, all of which are of interest and value to the general reader.

PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS; OR, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL TRUTHS REFLECTED IN THE UNIVERSE. By F. X. Weninger, D.D., S.J. New York: P. O’Shea. 1873.

A handsomely printed volume, with a very ornamental title‐page quite appropriate to the nature of the book. The views of truth presented in this book are expressed in aphorisms. Good taste, poetic sensibility, spiritual wisdom, and the purest Christian feeling are their chief characteristics. We are disposed to think this the best of F. Weninger’s works. There are many persons who take great delight in aphorisms of this kind, and we think all such readers will like this book. It is good also as a help to meditation, and a treasury of short spiritual readings for those who have not time for long ones; and will be useful to those who like to stop occasionally in more laborious occupations of the mind, and gather a little spiritual nosegay.

MEMOIRS OF MADAME DESBORDES‐VALMORE. By the late C. A. Sainte‐ Beuve. With a Selection from her Poems. Translated by Harriet W. Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1873.

Madame Valmore was one of those poets of the affections who

“Learn in suffering what they teach in song.”

No one can look for a moment at her portrait as depicted in this touching book without feeling that the thorn is continually pressing against her gentle breast. Her poetry and her letters are the very outcry of impassioned love and grief. “I am like the Indian that sings at the stake,” she says. One of her volumes is entitled _Tears_, every line of which is a pensive sigh. Her poems are full of “the charm of that melancholy which M. de Segur calls _the luxury of grief_.” M. Michelet says: “She alone among us had the _gift of tears_—that gift which smites the rock and assuages the thirst of the soul!” M. Sainte‐Beuve calls her “the _Mater Dolorosa_ of poetry,” but that title, consecrated to a higher, diviner type of sorrow, is one that most of us would shrink from applying to ordinary mortals.

It would almost seem as if the highest, purest notes—“half ecstasy, half pain”—only spring from the soul overshadowed by sorrow, as the eyes of some birds are darkened when they are taught to sing. Mme. Valmore herself, in allusion to a brother poet, wonders “if actual misery were requisite for the production of notes that so haunt one’s memory.”

The tombs among which she used to play as a child in the old churchyard at Douai seem to have cast their funereal shadows over her whole life—shadows that lend to her sad muse so attractive a charm. One of her poems thus begins:

“Do not write. I am sad and would my life were o’er. A summer without thee?—Oh! night of starless gloom!— I fold the idle arms that cannot clasp thee more— To knock at my heart’s door, were like knocking at a tomb. Do not write.”

Mme. Valmore’s nature was eminently feminine. Her heart was her guide. She was a being of impulse and sympathy. But her instincts were so delicate and true that they were to her what reason and philosophy are to colder natures. Her imagination was thoroughly Catholic. It is only Catholicity that develops souls of such tender grace and beauty, and she was brought up under its influences. A cheerful piety, Catholic in tone, seems to have pervaded her life, and consoled and sustained her in its many dark hours. She loved to pray in the deserted aisle of some shadowy church full of mystery and peace. “She had her Christ—the Christ of the poor and forsaken, the prisoner and the slave, the Christ of the Magdalen and the good Samaritan, a Christ of the future of whom she herself has sung in one of her sweetest strains:

‘He whose pierced hands have broken so many chains,’ ”

—a line that appeals to all who have sinned and been forgiven!

In her last years she thus writes: “I see at an immense distance the Christ who shall come again. His breath is moving over the crowd. He opens his arms wide, but there are no more nails—no more for ever!”

Her devotion to Mary is constantly peeping out in her letters. After visiting a church at Brussels, she writes thus to her daughter: “To‐day we saw the black Virgin with the Child Jesus also black like his mother. These Madonnas wring my heart with a thousand reminiscences. They are nothing in the way of art, but they are so associated with my earliest and sweetest faiths that I positively adore those stiff pink‐lined veils and wreaths of perennial flowers made of cambric so stout that all the winds of heaven could never cause a leaf to flutter.”

She writes her brother: “Lift up your hat when you pass the Church of Notre Dame, and lay upon its threshold the first spring flowers you find.”

One of the most touching features of her life is her devotedness to this brother, an old soldier and pensioner in the hospital at Douai, whom she aided out of her own scanty purse, and still more by the moral support she was continually giving him in the most delicate manner; trying to ennoble his unfortunate past so as to give him dignity in his own eyes—a thing so often forgotten in our intercourse with those who are in danger of losing their self‐respect.

Mme. Valmore’s charity and sympathies were not confined to her own kindred. They responded to every appeal. The condemned criminal and prisoners of every degree excited the compassion of her heart. At a time of great distress at Lyons, she says she is “ashamed to have food and fire and two garments when so many poor creatures have none.” And yet she seems not to have had too many of the comforts of life herself. One Christmas eve she speaks of kneeling on her humble hearth—“a hearth where there is not much fire save that of her own loving, anxious heart—” to pray.

It is sad to see a woman with such a refined, poetical nature, and a heart sensitive to the last degree, condemned to a fate so chilling and unkind. But she never lost courage. Living in narrow lodgings, and on limited means, she contrived to give a certain artistic air to everything around her, and received her visitors with polished ease and self‐possession, hiding her griefs under the grace of her manner and the vivacity of her conversation. Her courage and fortitude were admirable under adverse circumstances and such afflictions as the loss of her daughters. No book not strictly religious could teach a more forcible lesson of patient, cheerful endurance—how “to suffer and be strong.” The work is elegantly translated, and is a welcome addition to the lives of celebrated French ladies already issued by the same publishers.

THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By James Anthony Froude, M.A. In 2 vols. Vol. I. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1873.

We have here the first volume of a new and very elaborate work by the adventurous historian of England, and chivalrous champion of Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth. It might perhaps have been hoped that enough had been said of Mr. Froude in these columns, and that our readers had done with him. His reputation as a faithful historian had been sorely damaged, and indeed irretrievably ruined, by several indignant critics in England, in Scotland, and in Ireland, as well as in the United States (by the short, sharp and decisive onslaught of Mr. Meline); so that it has been an actual surprise to the literary world to find him once more tempting Providence in a new book, heralded and advertised by a course of lectures in New York. But this is the nature of the man: he must surprise and startle, or he dies; he must provoke the most wondering and angry contradiction and comment, and gratify the small feminine spite that possesses him, provided he can sting and wound like a hornet. For him, to scold is to live.

The present volume, although entitled _The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century_, is in fact occupied, for more than two hundred pages, with an account of the dealings of his country with Ireland during the XVIIth century, and presents his views of Irish history at the notable periods of the insurrection—or alleged “massacre”—in 1641, as well as the short reign of James II. The narrative ends at the time of the small French invasion under Thurot, shortly after the middle of the XVIIIth century; leaving Still to be treated the whole era of the Volunteering, the Insurrection of ’98, and the Union, so‐called. Indeed, if the author carry forward his subject into the present century, as he has carried it backward into the one before the last, he will have the great famines to deal with, and the multitudinous emigration; so that we may expect a vast picture, covering the whole canvas, portraying from the strictly English point of view that ghastly history in its full perspective. The Froude theory is, on the whole, quite simple; nothing can be more easily understood. It is, in few words, that the English nation having been “forced by situation and circumstances” to take charge of Ireland and its people, when it suited the English to change their religion, or to come back to it, or to change it again, they were bound in duty to compel the Irish to change along with them each time, by means of pains and penalties, from heavy fines to transportation and death on the gallows; also that the English having a strong wish to possess themselves of all the lands of Ireland, everything was lawful and right to effect that object. The reader will remark, with surprise (and the more surprise, the better for Froude), that in his lectures lately delivered in New York, which were a kind of abstract of the work then in press, he did not venture _to say_ before an intelligent audience of freemen some of the things which he has dared to print in the book then just ready to burst upon the world. For example, he did not say, even before the “Christian young men,” such words as these which are found in the book (p. 609):

“The consent of man was not asked when he was born into the world: his consent will not be asked when his time comes to die. _As little_ has his consent to do with the laws which, while he lives, he is bound to obey.”

This sentiment he perhaps thought it unnecessary to enunciate here; because, in fact, he intended it solely for the Irish, not by any means for the Americans, although it reads like a universal maxim for the human race. Again, he did not think it necessary to say in so plain words what he has laid down clearly enough in this passage (p. 213):

“No government need _keep terms_ with such a creed [meaning the Catholic Church] when there is power to abolish it. To call the repression of opinions which had issued so many times in blood and revolt _by the name of religions persecution_ is mere abuse of words.”

ELEVATIONS POÉTIQUES ET RELIGIEUSES. Par Marie Jenna. Deuxième Edit. 2 vols. Paris: Adrien le Clerc et Cie. 1872.

As the eye lingers upon a beautiful landscape, spring clad and fair in the clear light of the new‐risen sun; as the ear loiters unwilling to lose the last echoed link of some simple melting melody; as the hand tarries loth to quit the gentle grasp that speaks unspoken sympathy, so have we—reluctant to lose such fair pictures, such moving lays, such deep and tender feeling—lingered and loitered and tarried with Marie Jenna, “the Poet of the Vosges.” Gifted with the nice perception of a true poet, Marie Jenna clothes the simplest ideas in language of such rare delicacy, so fresh, tender, vivid, and withal so musical, that mind, heart, eye, and ear, all are at once engaged. A bird, a butterfly, a flower, gains new interest in her hands; she flings a grace around it, she vests it with a dignity it never had before; she makes it live again. Take, for instance, the opening stanzas of “Le Papillon”:

“Pourquoi t’approcher en silence Et menacer mon vol joyeux? Par quelle involontaire offense Ai‐je pu déplaire à tes yeux?

“Je suis la vivante étincelle Qui monte et descend tour à tour; La fleur à qui Dieu donne une aile, Un souffle, un regard, un amour.

“Je suis le frère de la rose; Elle me cache aux importuns, Puis sur son cœur je me repose Et je m’enivre de parfums.

“Ma vie est tout heureuse et pure, Pourquoi désires‐tu ma mort? Oh! dis‐moi, roi de la nature, Serais‐tu jaloux de mon sort?

“Va, je sais bien que tu t’inclines Souvent pour essuyer des pleurs, Que tes yeux comptent les épines Où je ne vois rien que des fleurs.

“Je sais que parfois ton visage Se trouble et s’assombrit soudain, Lorsqu’en vain je cherche un nuage Au fond de l’horizon serein.

“Mais Celui dont la main divine A daigné nous former tous deux, Pour moi parfuma la colline, Et de loin te montra les cieux.

“Il me fit deux ailes de flamme, A moi, feu follet du printemps; Pour toi, son fils, il fit une âme Plus grande que le firmament.

“Ecoute ma voix qui t’implore, Loin de moi détourne tes pas... Laisse moi vivre un jour encore, O toi qui ne finiras pas!

“Mon bonheur à moi, c’est la vie, La liberté sous le ciel bleu, Le ruisseau, l’amour sans envie: Le tien ... c’est le secret de Dieu.”

What can be fresher or more charming than this naïve, earnest appeal for life and liberty? And again, in “Pour un Oiseau,” beginning with:

“Il est à toi, c’est vrai ... Frère, veux tu qu’il meure? Sa beauté, sa chanson, tout est là ... dans ta main; Et l’arbuste où sa voix gazouillait tout à l’heure Au bosquet, si tu veux, sera muet demain.

“Tu le tiens: sa faiblesse à ta force le livre; Mais aussi ta pitié peut le laisser aller; Ne le fais pas mourir! il est si bon de vivre Lorsque l’été commence et qu’on peut s’envoler,”

we find the same delicacy of thought, the same rippling, flowing language; and what joyousness and how cheery it sounds: _il est si bon de vivre_.

But Marie Jenna strikes deeper chords, awakes more solemn strains, than these; and through them all, the graver as the lighter, binding them in one harmonious whole, there sings out the same clear note of firm, enlightened faith that never wavers; it penetrates each thing she handles, giving that breadth and largeness to her field of view that it alone can give. In some beautiful stanzas, “Beati qui lugeant,” she draws near to one bowed down with sorrow, and fearlessly, yet oh! how tenderly touching the wound because she knows its cure, she speaks:

“Va, ton sein cache en vain le glaive qui le blesse: J’ai compris ton silence et j’ai prié pour toi. Laisse aller ta fierté comme un poids qui t’oppresse, Et pleure devant moi.

“Il est, je le sais bien, des jours où la souffrance Trouve en sa solitude une âpre volupté; Et le monde léger voit passer en silence Sa pâle majesté.

“Et la main d’un ami s’arrètant incertaine, N’ose écarter les plis de son voile de deuil. Il est des maux si grands, que la parole humaine Expire sur le seuil.

“Mais deux jours sont passés; il est temps que je vienne; Oh! laisse un front d’ami penché sur ta douleur! Ne te détourne pas: Mets ta main dans la mienne, Ton âme sur mon cœur.

“Si je ne t’apportais qu’une amitié fidèle, Mes pas avec respect s’éloigneraient d’ici. J’attendrais que la tienne enfin se souvint d’elle, Mais j’ai souffert aussi...

“Je ne te dirai point cette vaine parole Que la douleur accueille en son muet dédain. Non, ce que j’ai pour toi, c’est un mot qui console, C’est un secret divin.”

Already we seem to see awaked attention, a gleam of hope flit across the stern, wan face that marks such helpless, hopeless misery; now softening the hard, cold look that bid defiance to all sorrow, repelled all sympathy; now changing it to one of anxious longing and of mute entreaty for the proffered gift, _le mot qui console_. And see, or is it fancy only, or are there really tears now falling, “gemlike, the last drops of the exhausted storm”? Space forbids us to give it in its fulness, this _secret divin_, to curtail it would spoil it: so we send the reader to the original, and would ask him only if in the last stanza he does not hear two voices singing:

“Heureux les affligés! dit la Vérité même. Heureux, c’est vrai, mon Dieu! quand vous avez parlé. Nous voulons bien souffrir si le bonheur suprême, Est d’être consolé.”

Then look at this exquisite little picture, “L’Enfant Ressuscité.” Rarely have we met with one more pathetic. It is very delicately painted, with shades so subtile that, in the simplicity of the whole, we are apt to overlook them. And here also we have a glimpse of that reverential love for childhood that is by no means the least characteristic trait of Marie Jenna:

“Elle avait tant gémi, sa mère, et tant pleuré! Tant pressé sur son sein le front décoloré, Que dans le corps glacé l’âme était revenue, Et qu’en bénissant Dieu, palpitante, éperdue, Comme un trésor qu’on cache elle avait emporté Dans ses deux bras tremblants l’enfant ressuscité! Trois mois s’étaient passés depuis.....mais, chose étrange! On eut dit que le ciel avait fait un échange. L’enfant penchait son front comme un bouton flétri, Et depuis ces trois mois, jamais il n’avait ri. Il préférait aux jeux l’ombre silencieuse; Sa mère en l’embrassant n’osait pas être heureuse....

“Des volets entr’ouverts s’élancent des chansons; Dans les clochers frémit la voix des carillons. Ecoute, mon Louis, ces chants, ces joyeux rires.... Vois; c’est le jour de l’an; dis ce que tu désires. Chaque enfant pour étrenne a des jouets nouveaux. En veux‐tu de pareils? en veux‐tu de plus beaux? Veux‐tu ce bélier gris qu’on traîne et qui va paître Au printemps dans les prés l’herbe qui vient naître? Mais regarde plutôt; des pinceaux, des couleurs, Qui d’un papier tout blanc font un bouquet de fleurs. Oh! vois donc ce ballon de laine tricolore Qui s’élève et retombe et se relève encore! Tu n’aimes pas courir..... Que puis‐je te donner? Dis.....ta mère à présent ne sait plus deviner. Veux‐tu ce sabre d’or qui déjà ferait croire Que mon petit Louis médite une victoire? Aimes‐tu ce chalet d’un long toit recouvert? Mais non....qu’en ferais‐tu? Veux‐tu ce livre ouvert, Où près de chaque histoire on regarde une image, Ou l’on rit, où l’on pleure, où l’on devient plus sage? Ah! voici des oiseaux! tu les aimerais mieux! Les oiseaux sont vivants; tu les ferais heureux! Si tu voulais des lisandes roses fleuries, J’en saurais bien trouver, Louis, pour que tu ries. Réponds; je t’aime tant! n’oses‐tu me parler? Tu pleurais ce matin; je veux te consoler. Dis‐moi ce doux secret pendant que je l’embrasse. Que veux‐tu, mon Louis? Et l’enfant, à voix basse: Des ailes pour m’envoler!”

No one can fail to be struck with the sudden stillness that follows the mother’s anxious striving to drive away the cloud that would hang over her little one; with the awe and fear, too, that fill her heart; with the mystery in the whispered answer of the strange mysterious child given back from death in answer to her passionate prayer. It sets us thinking of that other mother whose grief so touched the Master’s heart that he spoke the word, “and he that was dead sat up and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.” Did that young man go home so grave, with never a smile to light his face, so strangely altered, that, after the first burst of gladness, his mother, clasping him to her bosom, dared not rejoice?

Of the more serious pieces, perhaps not one equals in force “La plus grande Douleur.” It is the old tale, always new though so oft repeated: the old tale that startles, shocks, and brings sharp pain as for the first time it comes home to each one, telling that that strong bond which binds friends closer, draws classes nearer, makes nations firmer, has snapped and riven two hearts asunder; that the newly‐awakened intellect first meeting early faith has turned aside, has chosen a road far other than that on which till now both friends had travelled hand in hand; that that “little superficial knowledge of philosophy that inclines man’s mind to atheism” has come between them like an icy barrier, chilling the old friendship and making everything so dark and strange which before was warmth and light between them; and with effect so drear, so piercing, too, and sharp, that the unchanged heart feels any pain than that would be light to bear:

“Oui mon Dieu! nous pouvons, sans que l’âme succombe, Laisser notre bonheur à ce passé qui tombe; Nous pouvons au matin former un rêve pur, Tout d’amour et de paix, tout de flamme et d’azur, Puis livrer les débris de sa beauté ravie A ce vent du désert, qui laisse notre vie Sans fleur et sans épi comme un champ moissonné; Meliner notre front pâle et découronné, Et devenir semblable à cette pauvre plante Qui n’est pas morte encore, et qui n’est plus vivante, Nous pouvons voir gisant sur un lit de douleur, Celui qui nous restait, l’ami consolateur, Compter chaque moment de son heure dernière, Poser nos doigts tremblants sur sa froide paupière, Et baiser son visage, et nous dire; Il est mort! Nous le pouvons, mon Dieu! Parfois le cœur est fort.

“Mais aimer une autre âme, et la trouver si belle Qu’on frémit de bonheur en se penchant vers elle, Puis un jour contempler d’un regard impuissant Sur sa beauté céleste une ombre qui descend; De cette âme où passaient les souffles de la grâce, Sentir parfois monter quelque chose qui glace, Douter, prier tous bas, pleurer d’anxiété, Craindre, espérer..... Longtemps marcher à son côté Sans oser voir au fond.... Puis un jour où l’on ose, Reculer de partout où le regard se pose, Où fut le feu sacré toucher de froids débris, Murmurer en tremblant un langage incompris Où Dieu passa, chercher sa lumineuse trace, Et n’y trouver plus rien ... rien! pas même un soupir, Pas un cri douloureux vers l’aube qui s’efface, C’est trop souffrir!”

The two volumes before us contain many poems, both short and long, of such great freshness and beauty, so full of original turns and delicate touches, that it is difficult to choose from amongst them. However, we have said enough to give a fair notion of Marie Jenna’s style, and quite enough to show that it is her own, with its own peculiar charm. And so our task is done. If it be said that, having uttered only praise and found no fault, we have but half fulfilled the critic’s task, we answer that we never meant the tone of criticism. All know that man’s most perfect work is not without its blemish; but in our first walk through so fair a garden, meeting new beauties on every side, it would have been ungracious in us to have sought defects: that task we leave to others. Ours has been to welcome, and to tell of fresh flowers of much loveliness offered to us from across the sea, with the certainty that no one can read her “Elévations Poétiques” without feeling that he is indebted for some real enjoyment to the charming “Poet of the Vosges.”

THE TWO YSONDES, AND OTHER VERSES. By Edward Ellis. London: Pickering. 1872.

It takes but a short while to read this thin volume; nor will any one with a taste for true poetry find the perusal a task. The author undoubtedly possesses “the vision and the faculty divine,” and belongs to the subjective school of which Tennyson is king—a school peculiarly capable of teaching a subjective age. The more the pity, then, say we, that Mr. Ellis should have made his chief poem, “The Two Ysondes,” hang on the idea that love is fate. His “Two Ysondes” are the two “Isolts” of Tennyson; but Tennyson does not attempt to excuse the passion of Mark’s wife for Tristrem. Our author makes it originate in Tristrem and Ysonde having “drunk,” “by an evil chance,” a philtre which had been placed “in Tristrem’s charge” as “a wedding‐gift for Ysonde and King Mark” (p. 7). Now, it may be said that this does away with the guilty aspect of the romance, and throws over the whole a veil of faëry. Yes; but we insist that it is, therefore, the more mischievous, as teaching the doctrine of fatality.

Neither is this the only, or even the most, objectionable feature of the poem; for, together with descriptions of emotions and caresses which would be chaste if the theme were lawful love, all idea of sin is kept away, and especially as regards its eternal consequences. There is not a word about remorse during life, or of repentance at death. But Tristrem dies in despair of beholding the object of his passion; and Ysonde, in turn, expires on the breast of her dead lover, declaring that she will “go with him _beyond the bars of fate_.”

Now, we should not have troubled ourselves to make these strictures but that Mr. Ellis shows powers for the misuse of which he will be very responsible. Moreover, as is clear from some of his shorter lyrics, particularly “At a Shrine,” his mind has a religious bent, with (of course) Catholic sympathies.

With regard to his verse, it is less Tennysonic than his thought. Better if, while originating metres (with which we have no quarrel whatever), he modelled both his lines and his diction on the peerless accuracy of England’s laureate.

Books And Pamphlets Received.

From KELLY, PIET & CO., Baltimore: The Money God. By M. A. Quinton.

From LYNCH, COLE & MEEHAN, New York: English Misrule in Ireland: A Course of Lectures. By V. Rev. T. N. Burke, O.P. 12mo. pp. 299.

From J. A. MCGEE, New York: “Thumping English Lies”: Froude’s Slanders on Ireland and Irishmen. With Preface and Notes by Col. J. E. McGee, and Wendell Phillips’ Views of the Situation. 12mo. pp. 224.—Half Hours with Irish Authors: Selections from Griffin, Lover, Carleton, and Lever. 12mo. pp. 330.

From A. D. F. RANDOLPH, New York: Christ at the Door. By Susan H. Ward. 12mo, pp. 232.

From J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Philadelphia: Expiation. By Mrs. Julia C. R. Dorr.

From J. R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston: The Romance of the Harem. By Mrs. A. H. Leonowens. 12mo. pp. viii.‐277.

From ROBERTS BROS., Boston: What Katy Did. By Susan Coolidge.—Thorvaldsen: His Life and Works. By Eugene Plon. 12mo. pp. xvi.‐320.—The World Priest. By Leopold Schefer. 12mo. pp. xv.‐371.

From THE AUTHOR: Sermon at the Month’s Mind of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Preached at the Church of the American College (Rome). By the V. Rev. Dr. Chatard, Rector. Paper, 8vo. pp. 30.

From E. H. BUTLER & CO., Philadelphia: The Etymological Reader. By Epes Sargent and Amasa May.

From S. D. KIERNAN, Clerk, Department of Public Instruction: Report of the Board of Public Instruction of the City and County of New York, for the year ending Dec. 31, 1871; with Addenda to May, 1872.—Manual of the Department of Public Instruction, 1871‐2. 18mo, pp. 262.

From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: Sermons by the Rev. H. R. Hawes, M.A. 12mo, pp. xiv. 347.

From AMERICAN BAPTIST SOCIETY, Philadelphia: The Baptist Short Method, with Inquirers and Opponents. By Rev. C. T. Hiscox, D.D. 18mo, pp. 216.

From HURD & HOUGHTON, New York: The City of God and the Church Makers. By R. Abbey. 12mo, pp. xx. 315.

From BURNS, OATES & CO., London (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society): The Life of Monseigneur Berneux, Bishop of Capse. Vicar‐Apostolic of Corea. By M. l’Abbé Pichon. Translated from the French, with a Preface by Lady Herbert.

From JOHN HODGES, London: (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society): The Lives of the Saints. By Rev. S. Baring‐ Gould, M.A. March.

From J. R. OSGOOD & CO., Boston: His Level Best, and Other Stories. By Edward E. Hale.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 96.—MARCH, 1873.

The Relation Of The Rights Of Conscience To The Authority Of The State Under The Laws Of Our Republic.

(A LECTURE BEFORE A CATHOLIC SOCIETY OF S. PATRICK’S CHURCH, NEW HAVEN, CONN., OCT. 20, 1872.)

REVEREND GENTLEMEN AND MY FRIENDS: Before I speak particularly of the relation of the rights of conscience to the laws existing in our republic, I consider it necessary to make a few preliminary remarks and to lay down a few principles regarding the nature of law and government in general, and the relation which they hold to religion. I shall best illustrate the difficulties which envelop this subject, and also give a clue to the way by which it may be extricated, by making a supposition.

Let us suppose that a large number of men come together for the purpose of founding a new state with all its institutions of civil society and government. Some of these are Christians, among whom are Quakers; others are Mohammedans, Hindoos, Thugs, idolaters practising human sacrifices, and communists. It is necessary that they should agree and concur with each other in regard to the rights which respect life, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness in general and particular, and the means of protecting all these rights, otherwise no society or government is possible. But this cannot be done by any general consent among these different parties. The Christian holds the sacredness of life and property, and the force of the law of monogamy. The Mohammedan rejects this last, and maintains the right to a plurality of wives. The Hindoo regards it as a sacred right and duty of a widow to offer herself on the funeral pile of her husband, that her spirit may rejoin his spirit in another world. The Thug considers it a most holy and meritorious act to murder as many persons as possible in honor of the cruel goddess whom he worships; while the idolater looks on the sacrifice of children or captives as the means of placating his offended deities and procuring success in war. The Quaker will not allow of any bloodshed whatever, either for avenging crime or repelling aggression. And the communist would abolish all rights of property, reconstruct society on a wholly different plan from that which has heretofore existed, and banish all religion as noxious to the well‐being of man.

It is evident, therefore, that society cannot be constituted without religion, and that society constituted with religion, and on the basis of religious ideas, requires some agreement in these religious ideas, and the incorporation of some fixed and definite religious principles into its very structure and conformation.

If we consult history, we shall find that no state or perfect society has ever been established on the atheistic principle. Every one that has ever existed has had a religious basis, and all political and social constitutions have proceeded from religious ideas and been founded upon them. The civilization of Christendom in general has received its specific form from the influence of the Christian religion moulding and modifying in the Eastern world its previous and ancient laws, and in the West to a great extent creating a new order out of a pre‐existing state of imperfect civilization or semi‐barbarism. To this Christendom we belong, and the laws of our republic are a product of this Christian civilization. This cannot be denied, considered as a mere historical fact respecting our origin; for we are the offspring of Christian Europe, and in the beginning distinctly professed to be a Christian people. But it may be said that we have changed, have undergone a political regeneration as a nation, and in the process of transformation have thrown out all religion from our organic constitution as a republic. By our organic constitution and the laws of our republic I intend not merely the federal constitution and laws which bind together the United States, but also the laws and constitutions of the states, the _tout ensemble_ of our common and statute laws of every kind, which form the regulating code of our whole society as one political people. And in regard to this organic law, I affirm that we do not form an exception among human societies to the universal rule I have above laid down, that the state in political society is based on religious ideas.

In support of this proposition, I cite the opinion of a most competent and impartial judge, Prof. Leo, of Halle, and borrow from him a definition of that which constitutes our state religion. This great historian, in the introductory portion of his _Universal History_, where he is discussing the universal principles which underlie all political constitutions, analyzes in a masterly way the elements of our own system of government; and he points out that which is the religious element, namely, the rule or law of morals, derived from the common law of Christendom, or a certain standard of moral obligation, conformity to which is enforced by the state with all its coercive power. All churches or voluntary associations which include this moral code or religion of the state within their own specific religious law possess complete equality and liberty before the civil law. With their doctrines, rites, regulations, and practices the state does not interfere, and gives them protection from any infringement upon their rights on the part of any private members of the community. But let them, on pretext of doctrine, of ecclesiastical law, of liberty of conscience, or even of any divine revelation, violate by any overt acts the rule of moral obligation recognized by the state, they come into direct collision with her authority, and must suffer the consequences. So far, therefore, as concerns that portion of Christian law, namely, the moral precepts of the Christian religion, which are incorporated into our civil law, all churches are in vital union with the state. Even Jews, because they hold, with Christians, the decalogue; and societies based on purely natural religion, because they hold the law of nature, are in the same vital union, so far, with the state. And beyond this, within the limits which this law sanctions or permits, all these churches or societies are in union with the state, as lawful, voluntary associations over which her protection is extended. But let a Mohammedan community be formed among citizens or resident foreigners, and attempt the introduction of polygamy, our laws require the civil magistrate to interfere and suppress by force this exercise of the privileges granted by their prophet. Let a community of Hindoos, Thugs, or idolaters establish itself within our bounds, and commence any of the murderous practices of those false religions, and the gibbet or the sword would be called on to execute vengeance upon them. We have in our borders the sect of Mormons, whose doctrines and practices are contrary to our fundamental laws and subversive of them. Obviously, we cannot, consistently with our safety, our well‐being, or our essential principles of political and social order, tolerate the enormities of Mormonism, much less permit the formation of a Mormon state. The right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, must be exercised in conformity to certain laws, which are to the state as her axioms or first principles, and are held as inviolable. And the exercise of this right, in this due and legitimate manner, must not be hindered by force and violence under any pretext. Therefore no pretence of conscience or religion can avail to cover any violation of law by an individual or a society, or any such infringement on the rights of others as has been just alluded to. All this presupposes that the state recognizes and bases its laws upon certain fixed ideas concerning the rights which God has really granted to men, and the obligations which he has imposed upon them. But this has also been distinctly and expressly declared by a body of men, representing the whole political people of the nascent republic which was afterwards developed into the United States of North America. The declaration was made in the very act which constituted the United Colonies free and independent states, and which was published to the world on the fourth day of July, 1776. In the first sentence of this Declaration of Independence, the Congress affirms that the people of the United States have judged it necessary “to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which THE LAWS OF NATURE AND OF NATURE’S GOD entitle them.” This august body then proceeds to lay down the foundation and basis of the entire argument of the document, as follows: “We hold these truths to be self‐evident, that all men are _created equal_; that they are _endowed by their Creator_ with certain inalienable _rights_; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men.” It then proceeds to argue that those governments which fail to fulfil this end, and pursue a contrary end by invading and destroying these rights, forfeit their powers; and makes an application of this principle to the _casus belli_ between the colonies and the British crown.

In this most momentous crisis, amid the very birth‐pangs of our infant republic, the people of the United States solemnly declared that the origin of all right, all law, all political organization, all government, and specifically of those which constitute the United States a separate political people, is to be found in the _lex æterna_, the law of God; that is to say, it is in religion. For what is religion? According to Cicero’s definition, it is a bond which binds men to God and to each other. This is the very meaning of the word, which comes from _ligare_, to bind, whence we have the terms ligament, ligature, and obligation. Human right is, therefore, something conferred by God. The right to govern must come from God, for we are created equal, and therefore without any natural right of one over another to give him law. The rights of the governed come from God, and are therefore inviolable; but liberty is the unhindered possession and exercise of the rights conferred by God, under the protection of lawful government; and liberty of conscience is freedom to obey the law of the Creator, and to enjoy the blessings which he has imparted to the creature by that law. These rights and liberties belong to each individual man as a grant from the Creator, which he can maintain in the face of any government, be it that of a monarch, of an aristocracy, or of a majority of the people. If a monarch, or one who executes by delegated power the sovereignty of a majority, invades the right of an individual, he violates a law. This law can be no other than that of the Sovereign Lord of the universe. There is, therefore, a higher law than human law, a higher sovereignty than human sovereignty, to which both governments and the governed are subject and amenable, and which are acknowledged as supreme by this American Republic of which we are citizens. And as another proof of this recognition, I may cite the law of oaths, or the solemn appeal to Almighty God as the Supreme Judge, by which a religious sanction is given to judicial testimony and the engagements of public officers.

There is, therefore, in our republic a religion of the state, but one embodied in civil and political society only, which leaves to citizens perfect freedom to organize churches and act out what they profess to be the dictates of their individual consciences, provided they do not violate the laws which constitute the religion of the state.

Under this law, the Catholic Church possesses in essential matters theoretical liberty and equality of rights with the various religious bodies existing in the country, with some trivial exceptions to be found in the laws of some of the states. To a great extent, this theoretical liberty is also a practical liberty, really possessed and enjoyed, and only occasionally invaded. This is a remark which is quite specially verified in the instance of your own state of Connecticut.

This has not always been the case either here or in other portions of our country. Catholics have not always enjoyed freedom of conscience and liberty of religion. If we go back to the early history of the colonies which became afterwards the United States, we shall find that their founders did not intend to grant that liberty which now exists. In some of these colonies, the Church of England, in others the Church of the Puritans, and in those of Spain and France, which were admitted at a later period, the Catholic Church was the established religion of the state. In all the English colonies the Catholic religion was proscribed and persecuted. The Puritan fathers of New England intended to establish a theocracy. There was a strict union of church and state under their old colonial governments. Only professed members and communicants of the church could vote, and the legislatures regulated the affairs of parishes, and decided doctrinal questions. Our ancestors therefore had a Christian ideal of the state before their minds which they attempted to make an actual reality, and which they dreamed should become the kingdom of Christ our Lord upon the earth which the prophets and apostles foretold. The attempt failed from causes which lay within the bosom of the community itself, and not because of any external force; and the same community which had by tacit agreement or positive statutes enacted the original law combining a specific form of religion with the state, repealed the same by its own free will. In the Puritan state, the first change came about by the multiplication of baptized persons who never became communicants. The number of citizens who were thus deprived of the highest rights of citizenship was felt to be a grave anomaly and inconvenience in a democratic state, and caused the adoption of the half‐way covenant. By this arrangement, those baptized persons who publicly acknowledged their baptism were considered as quasi‐members of the church, entitled to all political rights. When, in the course of time, the number of unbaptized persons increased, and other sects of Protestantism began to flourish, new changes were brought about by which in the end the connection between the state and the Puritan Church was dissolved. Similar causes produced similar effects in other parts of the country, and, so far as the federal union was concerned, there was obviously from the first an utter impossibility of making any specific form of Christianity the religion of the entire republic. Thus, by the very law which the necessity of the case imposed upon the separate states and the entire federal republic, that liberty of religion became established under which the Catholic Church could come in upon a footing of perfect equality with the other religious denominations. Catholics have not come into New England and Connecticut either to demand religious liberty as a right or to beg toleration as a favor. We have not obtained our rights or privileges by any agitation or revolution stirred up by ourselves in our own interest. The work was done before there was a number of Catholics worth estimating either in Connecticut or New England. It was done by the old manor‐born citizens for their own advantage and the welfare of the state.

So also, in regard to the political privileges conceded to foreign‐born immigrants. These are, in their nature, distinct and separate from the rights of conscience conceded to Catholics. Yet they have an actual connection, arising from the fact that so very large a proportion of our Catholic citizens are of foreign birth, and so large a proportion of our adopted citizens are of the Catholic religion; and therefore, in the public mind, these two matters are very much blended together, and even confused with each other. It is, therefore, quite fitting that I should speak of the two things in relation with each other. And I remark on this point that the privileges possessed by the Catholics of this state who are of foreign birth, by which they are made equal to the native‐born citizens in regard to both religious and political rights, have not been extorted by themselves, but freely conceded for the good of the state and of all citizens generally. The original inhabitants had the power to exclude the Catholic religion from all toleration. They had the power and the right to exclude all foreigners from the privileges of native‐born citizens, or to make the conditions of being naturalized more stringent than they now are. They took another course, having in view their own good and the well‐being of the state, and Catholics as well as foreigners have profited by it. Catholics have profited by the religious liberty conceded to citizens, which is something essentially distinct from the privileges conceded to residents of foreign origin. And in point of fact, although the extent and prosperity of the church in Connecticut have proceeded principally and in very great measure from the immigration of Irish Catholics into the state, yet its rights, and liberty, and equality do not depend on anything necessarily and essentially but the religious liberty granted to citizens, and which is the birthright of Catholics as well as Protestants who are born on the soil of the republic.

It would be easy to show, in respect to our country at large, that the first beginnings of the Catholic Church have an intertwined radical grasp with the first fibres of national life in our own soil; and that there is a truly glorious Catholic chapter in the history of the United States. We can find something of this even in the history of this state. The first Mass celebrated in Connecticut was said in an open field within the bounds of Wethersfield, by the chaplain of the French troops who came here to aid our fathers in fighting the battle for independence. The first Catholic sermon in English was preached by the Rev. Dr. Matignon, of Boston, in the Centre Congregational Church of Hartford, at the invitation of the Rev. Dr. Strong, the pastor of the church. The first Catholic church was formed at Hartford in 1827, by Mr. Taylor, a respectable citizen of that town, who was a convert, and who organized the few Irish, French, and German Catholic residents in the place into a congregation, which assembled on Sunday for worship. In 1830, Bishop Fenwick, of Boston, a native of Maryland, purchased and blessed a small frame church, over which he placed F. Fitton, a native of Boston, who was the pastor of the entire state, and who is still actively engaged in the duties of the priesthood at Boston. During the first five years of his ministry at Hartford, F. Fitton received eighty adult converts, who, with their families, made a considerable portion of his little flock, since, in 1835, there were only 730 Catholics in the whole state. The first bishop of the diocese of Hartford was a native of New England. The present distinguished prelate who rules the church in Connecticut is a native of Pennsylvania; and of the 150,000 Catholics under his jurisdiction nearly one‐half must be natives of the state or of the United States. We have, then, some 67,000 native‐born Catholics in this state, most of whom are native‐born Yankees.(230) If you wish to see a fair sample of these, you have only to visit St. Patrick’s Church at nine o’clock of a Sunday morning, where you will see the church filled with them, and to go into the school‐house behind the church any day in the week, where you will find 1,100 of these young Catholic Yankees busily conning their lessons, and learning to love God and their native Columbia. All these have their liberty of conscience and their other rights as citizens secured to them by their birthright, and therefore, on this ground alone, the Catholic Church is equal to the Protestant churches before the law.

And as regards foreign‐born citizens, the state having conceded to them equal rights to those of native‐born citizens, their conscience or religion is included among these rights. The original concession was a privilege, but, having been once conceded, it has become a right. And it was conceded, as I have said, for the good of the state which conceded it, and in view of a compensation or equivalent which the party of the grantor expected to receive. You did not intrude yourselves upon the soil of the state, or come uninvited to beg food and shelter. You were invited, and that not from motives of pure philanthropy. Doubtless many had a kind and philanthropic feeling in the matter, but the prime and urgent motive was that you were needed and wanted for your labor. You were told that your services were wanted for the upbuilding of the material prosperity of the state, and, as an inducement to come, you were offered citizenship, and with that, freedom to bring your religion with you and enjoy it. This was a favor to you without question; but not a purely gratuitous one. It was something advanced to you, but for which you were expected to make a future compensation. And you have well purchased your rights, not only by what you have done in the peaceful arts of industry, but by fighting for your adopted country and shedding your blood for its integrity and the consolidation of its power. You have fought for the state, and for the United States, and, therefore, the compact has been sealed and made inviolable by your blood.

Now, what is the point I have been coming to and have at length reached? It is this: that you possess the full freedom and equality of your Catholic religion, not by toleration, but as an absolute right, inhering in your character as citizens whether by birth or adoption. Catholics are legally domiciled here by virtue of our laws, which recognize, maintain, and protect their religious rights as standing on an equal footing with those of Congregationalists or Episcopalians. No doubt, we should cherish a kind feeling toward those who have granted these most precious and valuable rights, and respect their similar rights. But we must not permit ourselves to be placed in any position of inferiority to other classes of citizens. We must insist upon the full recognition of our equality in the state, and maintain with a manly bearing all our rights of conscience to their fullest extent, claiming and demanding from our fellow‐citizens a complete respect and observance of these rights, and from the state that protection in their exercise which it is bound to give.

The Declaration of Independence avows as an article of the national creed that the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has been conferred by the Creator, and is inalienable, and that government is instituted for the purpose of securing to us the possession and exercise of this right. The right to liberty includes freedom to keep the commandments of God, to observe his law, to make use of all the means which he has granted to us for obtaining grace, acquiring virtue, and fulfilling the end of our creation. The right to happiness includes the undisturbed enjoyment of all the privileges of our religion, which alone can make us truly happy in this world, and enable us to obtain eternal happiness. The right to liberty and happiness gives freedom, to those who choose to do so, to devote themselves to the sacred duties of the altar and the cloister. It gives freedom to practise all the rites and ceremonies of religious worship, to dedicate our wealth to the service of God and our fellow‐men, to constitute and regulate our churches according to our own canonical law, to establish and hold possession of colleges, seminaries, convents, and charitable institutions, to educate our children, to profess and practise the Catholic religion wholly and entirely. It is the end of government to secure these rights, so that, if it fails to do so by extending an efficacious protection to their free and peaceable exercise, it is negligent of its duty; and if it impairs or violates them by unjust and tyrannical legislation, it commits a positive act of wrong and usurpation. The government, the sovereign power in the state from which the government holds its authority, are amenable to the eternal law, as well as the individual citizen; and they may violate it by neglecting to secure and protect, or by infringing upon, the rights of conscience conferred by the Creator. Wherefore it is necessary to keep a watchful guard over these rights, to proclaim and defend them loudly when they are assailed or in danger of being impaired, and by all lawful means to hinder any attempt to interfere with their exercise by unjust legislation or a tyrannical exercise of authority by the governing power and its official agents. It is a universal and constant tendency of the sovereign power in the state to usurp unjust authority and to invade the rights of its subjects. The liberty of the individual man and of the class which is governed is always in danger, and, therefore, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. This is true where the people retains its sovereignty, as well as where the sovereignty has been entrusted to a monarch or an aristocracy. It is a great mistake to suppose that a popular form of government and republican institutions are a perfect and adequate guarantee of liberty in general or of liberty of conscience in particular. The political majority or ascendant party can tyrannize over the minority or weaker party and over private citizens. Magistrates elected by a popular vote can misuse their power to oppress those whom they ought to protect. Legislatures chosen by the people can pass the most unjust and despotic laws. The Athenian democracy banished Aristides the Just, and poisoned Socrates, the wisest man of pagan antiquity, the father and founder of philosophy. In our own day we have seen the most perfidious violation of guaranteed rights, and the most tyrannical oppression of the religious freedom of Catholics, perpetrated by the Swiss Republic. Catholics are always liable to oppression where they are the weaker party, and have never any sufficient guarantee for the acquisition and preservation of their full religious liberty, except in their own numbers and strength, made available by their own energetic activity in their own cause. According to the principles and spirit of our laws and political institutions, the Catholic Church possesses in the United States a greater degree of the liberty which belongs to her by divine right than in most other countries. And in practice this liberty has been to a great extent secured to her by the justice of the people at large, and the fidelity of those to whom the administration of law has been entrusted. We may say of Connecticut especially that, considering the old and deeply rooted prejudice of her native inhabitants against the Catholic religion, it is remarkable with what comity they have received and made place for the new and mercurial race who have come in to replenish their staid old towns and quiet villages with fresh life, and with what composure they have beheld the multiplication of the crosses which gleam in the sunlight, on their hilltops and in their valleys, over the churches and convents of that which to them was a new and strange religion. Nevertheless, we cannot and ought not to be content with anything short of that full and complete liberty and equality which of right belong to us, and which do not in the least degree prejudice the same rights in those who profess a different religion. There are some things in regard to which it is our duty as well as our right to demand a greater measure of justice than that which has hitherto been yielded, and to exert ourselves to prevent a still further diminution of our rights as Catholic citizens.

One of these is the right of those unfortunate persons who are inmates of prisons, houses of reformation, and similar institutions to enjoy all the privileges and fulfil all the duties of their religion, if they are members of the Catholic Church. Closely connected with this is the right of the Catholic clergy to have access to all the members of their flock, and to exercise the functions of their sacred ministry wherever their duty calls them, unhindered, and, if necessary, fully protected by the law and all official persons.

Another is the complete and untrammelled freedom of Catholic education in all its departments. The state has no right either to prescribe and enforce religious instruction beyond those first principles of morality and civic obligation which are the foundations of our political order, or to interfere with the religious instruction which the Catholic conscience demands for those who are in a state of pupilage. Far less has it the right to prescribe an irreligious and atheistical system of instruction. I cannot enlarge upon this most important topic in this place. I will here simply recall what I have said of the possibility and danger of usurpation over the rights of conscience even in popular governments, and point out a direction from which we ourselves are threatened by this very danger. I refer to a project entertained by some persons in high positions of establishing under the authority of the federal government a national and compulsory system of education, thus depriving not only Catholics, but Protestants and Jews also, of their essential right as citizens to give their children a religious education. I do not attribute this policy to the party of the administration as a party, but it is most undoubtedly the policy of a considerable and very active section of what is called the Republican party, and is part and parcel of a scheme for modifying most essentially the relations between the federal and the state governments, for extending the authority of the governing power and restricting the private liberty of citizens. The men who are possessed by these ideas are in sympathy with that party in Europe self‐styled the progressive party. The idea which they have of liberty is their own freedom to drive the people on the path which they themselves have surveyed and marked out as the straight road to happiness and well‐being, and this compulsory march they dignify by the name of Progress. In this country, they are avowedly not content with existing institutions and laws, but are restless to try their improving hand upon them. They desire to secure uniformity according to their own ideal standard, by consolidation, concentration, unification of the legislative and executive powers in the federal government, and the reduction of the states into the condition of subordinate, dependent provinces in a republican empire. Education by the state and for the state, and in accordance with so‐called progressive ideas, is an essential part of this Prussianizing plan—an education wholly secular, from which instruction in positive, revealed dogmas and a positive religious discipline are wholly excluded, on the plea that all these are sectarian; and one, of course, which is really anti‐Christian and godless—an education like that of the University of Paris, which made a whole army of infidels among the lettered class in France. It is on this ground of education that the tyrannical and infidel power of the state is waging a battle with the point of the lance against the church and the Catholic religion in Europe. In England, also, as I know from those who have heard it from the lips of the leaders of this party, it is the fixed purpose of these leaders to work for the establishment of this infidel system by the coercive power of the state. The necessary sequel of all this is the _commune_; and, if such a system should prevail here, we have in prospect the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, the destruction of those institutions of learning which will not conform to the ideal of the state, the overthrow of the most essential rights of conscience, and finally the proscription of religion, followed by the war of the masses upon the rights of property and upon the order of civil society itself.

We want none of these improvements of Boston _doctrinaires_, and no meddling of political charlatans with our constitution. Our private rights we hold from the Creator, and not from any social compact or grant of government. State rights, the strongest safeguard we have against usurpations upon our liberty, we hold from the fundamental law which first constituted us a political people—the law of unity in multiplicity, which is our strength, and the geometrical principle, of our harmonious and symmetrical structure. There was a time when our centralizing principle was in danger; when, so to speak, the centrifugal force threatened to become too strong, and to make a rupture of our system. Now it is the opposite danger we have to fear—the increase of the centripetal force. As we were in danger of flying away from our sun and becoming separated, wandering political orbs, so we are now in danger of running into our sun, and thus losing our proper orbits, becoming absorbed into the central mass, and thereby suffering the extinction of the life of liberty in the individuals who form our population. Therefore, as the exorbitant demands of state rights have been repressed, it should now be our study to prevent the encroachment of federal power upon the just domain of these state rights, of state power over municipal freedom, and of all these powers upon the personal and private liberty of the citizen. It is for the interest of all to do this, but my special purpose has been to show why Catholics in particular are bound to do it, in order to preserve that liberty which God has given to them, and their rights of conscience, among which this right of education is one of the most precious and the most imperilled.

This leads us to another point. All religious societies being equal before the law, and entitled to an equal protection, so long as they do not violate those fundamental principles of morality which constitute the religion of the state, Catholic institutions have an equal claim to a share in the distribution of the public money with those which are not Catholic. In this state, large sums have been granted to institutions which are under the control of particular denominations; for instance, to Yale College. The state is bound to be impartial, and whatever it determines to do in support of education or for the nurture and relief of the helpless and destitute, and the reformation of the depraved, it is bound to carry out on this impartial principle. Therefore grants to useful institutions ought never to be opposed or withheld on the ground that the Catholic clergy have the control over them, and that within their walls the Catholic religion is taught and practised. Nor has the state any right to prefer, much less to enforce, what is falsely called a non‐sectarian system of religious and moral instruction. This is one of the most patent fallacies by which the common mind in our time and country is duped and deluded. If there is one only true church, all other so‐called churches are sectarian, or sections cut off from the church. The true church cannot be a sect or have anything sectarian about it. But the state is incompetent to judge or decide that the Catholic Church is a sect in this sense; and, therefore, incapable of determining that the public money which is granted to a Catholic institution is devoted to sectarian purposes. The state is equally incompetent to decide that there is no one true church, and that, therefore, all denominations are sections of the true church, or sects considered in the sense of parts included in a whole. But if it were competent to decide this point in the sense indicated, the only just conclusion would be that all should be impartially treated and protected. The state is also incompetent to decide that a particular party of men, having a system differing from that of any one sect, and professing to retain the common elements of all, is not itself a sect, and that its system is non‐sectarian. It is, in fact, only another sect. Regular association, government, and special rites are not essential to the nature of a sect. There were the sects of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians among the Jews. There are philosophical sects. A sect is a party of men holding certain particular opinions. Those men who profess to hold what they call the essential parts of religion and morality, and to teach the same without any sectarian doctrines, simply mean that they do not hold the tenets of any of the Protestant sects around them, by which they differ from each other. But they belong to the genus Protestant nevertheless, and have their own specific _differentia_. They cannot discriminate the essential from the non‐essential parts of Christianity without a criterion, and the criterion which they adopt and apply makes their specific doctrine, which constitutes them a distinct, if not a separate, sect. They assume that the specific doctrines and laws of the Catholic Church are not essential. But in this they deny a fundamental Catholic doctrine: they place themselves in opposition to Catholics in respect to the essentials of faith and practice, and thus they are, relatively to us, a sect. The state cannot decide this question, and cannot, without injustice, prefer one party to the other. It is, therefore, a violation of Catholic rights to compel Catholics to listen to the teaching which calls itself non‐sectarian, or in any way to adopt and sanction it as a system exclusively entitled to the support and protection of the state.

The truth is that the state has nothing to do directly with religious instruction. Formerly, in this state of Connecticut, it had to do with it, because the Puritan form of Protestantism was the established religion of the state, and made part of the law. But now the state has only to protect the religious corporations and societies which have legal existence in the enjoyment of their vested rights. Grants of money and other legal provisions must be made in view of the utility to society and the state which lies in the nature of the object which any institution aims at accomplishing. Education, the care of the orphaned, the poor, the sick, and other destitute persons, and the instruction of all classes in moral and civic virtues and the fear of that Creator who is acknowledged in our Declaration of Independence as the Author of our natural rights, are useful to the state and society, and even necessary to their continuance and well‐being. Therefore the state may exercise a supervision within certain limits over these things, and grant subsidies for the purpose of sustaining them. But this must be done in such a way that no violence is committed upon the rights or the liberty of conscience guaranteed by law. Religion must be left free, and not interfered with by the state. But non‐ interference is something quite incompatible with exclusion. The state cannot confiscate the property which it has once granted to Yale College because the clergy of one particular denomination control the religious instruction of the college. Nor can it justly refuse to treat Catholic institutions of education with a favor equal to that which it shows to others, because the Bishop of Hartford will have control of their religious teaching.

It is for the interest and well‐being of the state and of all classes of its citizens that the Catholic Church should fully exercise all its rights, and enjoy the most perfect freedom of growth and development. The Catholic Church is fully and unchangeably committed to those essential principles of morality on which our laws are founded. By the very principle of the Catholic religion, those who profess it can never abandon or change these principles, and they thus receive the strongest guarantee of their perpetuity in the number and the moral power of those citizens who profess this religion. By our religion we must hold and profess that human rights are conferred by the Creator, that they are inviolable, and that civil society has been established by Almighty God, with its institutions of government, in order that these rights may be secured. We must profess that peoples and governments are accountable to God for the just administration of the trust committed to them, and responsible to a higher law than mere human laws, the eternal law itself, which is written on the conscience and clearly promulgated by a divine revelation. We must profess the sanctity of life, of marriage, of the rights of property, of oaths, contracts, treaties, and civic obligations, and the duty of allegiance and obedience to the laws and the lawful authorities in the state. All that I have shown to be the religion of the state, which is indeed nothing more than a portion of the universal common law of Christendom, is involved in the religion of Catholics and taught by it with an authority which they acknowledge as unerring and supreme. Here is, therefore, a principle of stability to the state, and to the rights of all classes of citizens, which is involved in the education and popular instruction which is given by the Catholic clergy. Moreover, as the pastors of 150,000 of the inhabitants of the state, and wielding a moral influence over them far superior to that of any other body of clergy, it is for the interest and advantage of their fellow‐citizens that their education, training in their special functions, and other qualifications and advantages for exercising their civilizing power upon such a large and increasing mass of the population, should be elevated to the highest possible grade. Therefore the schools, academies, seminaries, and religious houses in which the clergy are trained are deserving of encouragement as sources of intellectual, moral, and social benefit and improvement to society at large, which accrue to the benefit of the state.

The same is true of institutions of religious women, who are a kind of female clergy in a wider sense of the word, of schools of all kinds, of orphanages and charitable asylums. In the care of the poor and the sick especially, the Catholic Church can do a work which cannot be done so well by any other society, and thus relieve the state of a burden as well as heal a sore on the body politic which is frequently dangerous as well as distressing. Besides these more necessary services to humanity, the Catholic Church contributes to the decoration and embellishment of life, to the refinement of taste, and to the increase of innocent and elevating enjoyment. It ornaments towns and villages with specimens of fine architecture, multiplies statues and paintings, cultivates sacred music, and by its multifarious ceremonies acts most powerfully not only on the souls of men to raise their minds to an unseen world, but, in their human sentiments and manners, to give grace and refinement as well as enjoyment to a life rendered too dull and prosaic by the everlasting drudgery of an industrious and material existence.

All this would not weigh a feather with the severe Puritan ancients who founded this commonwealth. The Catholic religion is a religion of error, they would have said; error is fatal to the soul, and cannot be tolerated in a state where laws are framed according to the laws of God. But times are changed, and both laws and the minds of the descendants of the Puritans are changed with them. Even a great light among the descendants of the Scottish Presbyterians, the Rev. Dr. Hodge, has declared that the Catholic religion teaches the essentials of Christianity, exercises a wholesome moral influence, and cannot be refused the same countenance and aid by the state which is given to the Protestant religion, without the usurpation of an authority to determine what is religious error. Although the _New York Observer_ has raised an outcry against this candid statement of a learned and honest man, and has vehemently denounced the Catholic religion as worse than infidelity, I am persuaded that Yale College will not be satisfied to take a more illiberal position than Princeton, and that the general sense of the Protestant people of Connecticut will accord with that of Dr. Hodge, and reject the contrary extreme of the _Observer_. The religious people of Connecticut cannot fail to see that they have a common cause with us against atheism and progressive radicalism, and that we are a bulwark against a devastating flood which would sweep away their rights with ours if it once broke over the surface of our society. Our rights stand upon a common basis. They depend from a common chain, which is fastened by the same ring. They have nothing to fear from any violation of their liberty or usurpation of their rights on our part, even should we obtain power enough to be able to attempt such an enterprise. We always respect vested rights and established laws, when these are not contrary to the law of God. The order which is now established is the only one that is good for a state in which the inhabitants are divided in religion, and it enables these divided religious communities to live together in political harmony and social peace. We will not disturb this harmony, and we denounce those who attempt to stir up the passions of the people to destroy it as the enemies of the state as well as impious transgressors of the law of God. The rights of conscience and the liberty of religion which we possess under our laws are invaluable and precious to all of us. And there is indeed a common bond between the descendants of the Puritan founders of this commonwealth and the descendants of the persecuted Catholics of Ireland who have settled on this soil, of which perhaps you have not thought sufficiently. It is the bond which has been made by a conflict which the fathers of both these lines of descendants have maintained against a common enemy. That enemy was the despotic tyranny of the successors of Henry VIII. and their ministers. Our ancestors drew the sword against an invasion of rights which, they avowed, had been conferred upon them by their Creator, and the issue of the war was the establishment of this republic, in which the rights of conscience are declared to be sacred. The ancestors of the “exiles of Erin” who have found a new home in this republic fought, both with the sword and with the patient resistance of martyrdom, against the same despotic violence which invaded all their rights both civic and religious. It is fitting, therefore, that their descendants should dwell together in the land rescued by the blood of heroes from tyranny, and that here should flourish the religion rescued from the same tyranny by the blood of martyrs.

I conclude with the eloquent apostrophe of the Bishop of Orleans to the Belgians, which came from his mouth like the electric flash, amid thunders of applause, at the Congress of Malines in 1867, where I had the privilege of being present. “_Vous avez une patrie, sachez la garder!_”—“You have a country, _know how to keep it_!”

When we look abroad and see the dark, threatening clouds overhanging older nations, threatening new tempests to follow those which have lately burst upon them, and then look at home on the peace and liberty we enjoy; our church and religion free, priests, bishops, and the Holy Father from his prison in the Vatican, exercising their lawful jurisdiction without hindrance, we can esteem at their proper worth the blessings we enjoy. We learn how to value order, good government, and civilization founded on religious ideas, as the most precious of all earthly possessions after the faith and the means of eternal salvation. These advantages we possess in the laws and institutions which are summed up in the one word _our country_—our native land, or the land of our refuge and our children’s nativity. Let us all, therefore, prize, cherish, guard, and loyally serve it during life; prepared and resolved, if necessary, to give our blood and our lives in its defence, in emulation of the patriotic bravery of our noble brothers and ancestors from whom we have received this fair inheritance.

The Widow Of Nain.

“The only son of his mother, and she was a widow.”

I.

The dust on their sandals lay heavy and white, Their garments were damp with the tears of the night, Their hot feet aweary, and throbbing with pain, As they entered the gates of the city of Nain.

II.

But lo! on the pathway a sorrowing throng Pressed, mournfully chanting the funeral song, And like a sad monotone, ceaseless and slow, The voice of a woman came laden with woe.

III.

What need, stricken mothers, to tell how she wept? Ye read by the vigils that sorrow hath kept, Ye know, by the travail of anguish and pain, The desolate grief of the widow of Nain.

IV.

As he who was first of the wayfaring men Advanced, the mute burden was lowered, and then As he touched the white grave‐cloths that covered the bier The bearers shrank back, but the mother drew near.

V.

Her snow‐sprinkled tresses had loosened their strands, Great tears fell unchecked on the tightly clasped hands; But hushed the wild sobbing, and stifled her cries, As Jesus of Nazareth lifted his eyes.

VI.

Eyes wet with compassion as slowly they fell— Eyes potent to soften grief’s tremulous swell, As, sweetly and tenderly, “Weep not,” he said, And turned to the passionless face of the dead.

VII.

White, white gleamed his forehead, loose rippled the hair, Bronze‐tinted, o’er temples transparently fair; And a glory stole up from the earth to the skies, As he called to the voiceless one, “Young man, arise!”

VIII.

The hard, rigid outlines grew fervid with breath, The dull eyes unclosed from the midnight of death; Weep, weep, happy mother, and fall at his feet: Life’s pale, blighted promise grown hopeful and sweet.

IX.

The morning had passed, and the midday heats burned: Once more to the pathway the wayfarers turned. The conqueror of kings had been conquered again: There was joy in the house of the widow of Nain.

Fleurange.

By Mrs. Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story.”

Translated From The French, With Permission.