Chapter VIII. Faith And Science Of Progress.

Seraphin usually took an early ride with Carl. The banker was overjoyed at the wager, about the winning of which he now felt absolute certainty. He expressed himself confident that before long he would have the pleasure of going over the road on the back of the best racer in the country. “The noble animals,” said he, “shall not be brought by the railway; it might injure them. I shall send my groom for them to Chateau Hallberg. He can ride the distance in two days.”

Seraphin could not help smiling at his friend’s solicitude for the horses.

“Do not sell the bear’s skin before killing the bear,” answered he. “I may not lose the horses, but may, on the contrary, acquire a pleasant claim to twenty thousand florins.”

“That is beyond all possibility,” returned the banker. “Hans Shund is now chief‐magistrate, has been nominated to the legislature, and in a few days will be elected. Mr. Hans will appear as a shining light to‐morrow, when he is to state his political creed in a speech to his constituents. Of course, you and I shall go to hear him. Next will follow his election, then my groom will hasten to Chateau Hallberg to fetch the horses. Are you sorry you made the bet?”

“Not at all! I should regret very much to lose my span of bays. Still, the bet will be of incalculable benefit to me. I will have learned concerning men and manners what otherwise I could never have dreamed of. In any event, the experience gained will be of vast service to me during life.”

“I am exceedingly glad to know it, my dear fellow,” assured Greifmann. “Your acquaintance with the present has been very superficial. You have learned a great deal in a few days, and it is gratifying to hear you acknowledge the fact.”

The banker had not, however, caught Gerlach’s meaning.

But for the wager, Seraphin would not have become acquainted with Louise’s intellectual standpoint. He would probably have married her for the sake of her beauty, would have discovered his mistake when it could not be corrected, and would have found himself condemned to spend his life with a woman whose principles and character could only annoy and give him pain. As it was, he was tormented by the fear that his father might not coincide in his opinion of the young lady. What if the old gentleman considered her hostility to religion as a mere fashionable mania unsupported by inner conviction, a girlish whim changeable like the wind, which with little effort might be made to veer round to the point of the most unimpeachable orthodoxy? He had not uttered a word condemning Louise’s infatuation about Renan. On taking leave he had parted with her in a friendly, almost hearty, manner, proof sufficient that the young lady’s doubtful utterances at tea had not deceived him.

Upon reaching home, Gerlach sat in his room with his eyes thoughtfully fixed upon a luminous square cast by the sun upon the floor. Quite naturally his thoughts ran upon the marriage, and to the prospect of having to maintain his liberty by a hard contest with his inflexible parent. He was unshaken in his resolution not to accede to the projected alliance, and, when a will morally severe conceives resolutions of this sort, they usually stand the hardest tests. So absorbing were his reflections that he did not hear John announcing a visitor. He nodded mechanically in reply to the words that seemed to come out of the distance, and the servant disappeared.

Soon after a country girl appeared in the entrance of the room. In both hands she was carrying a small basket made of peeled willows, quite new. A snow‐white napkin was spread over the basket. The girl’s dress was neat, her figure was slender and graceful. Her hair, which was wound about the head in heavy plaits, was golden and encircled her forehead as with a _nimbus_. Her features were delicate and beautiful, and she looked upon the young gentleman with a pair of deep‐blue eyes. Thus stood she for an instant in the door of the apartment. There was a smile about her mouth and a faint flush upon her cheeks.

“Good‐morning, Mr. Seraphin!” said a sweet voice.

The youth started at this salutation and looked at the stranger with surprise. She was just then standing on the sunlit square, her hair gleamed like purest gold, and a flood of light streamed upon her youthful form. He did not return the greeting. He looked at her as if frightened, rose slowly, and bowed in silence.

“My father sends some early grapes which he begs you to have the goodness to accept.”

She drew nearer, and he received the basket from her hands.

“I am very thankful!” said he. And, raising the napkin, the delicious fruit smiled in his face. “These are a rarity at this season. To whom am I indebted for this friendly attention?”

“The obligation is all on our side, Mr. Seraphin,” she replied trustfully to the generous benefactor of her family. “Father is sorry that he cannot offer you something better.”

“Ah! you are Holt’s daughter?”

“Yes, Mr. Seraphin.”

“Your name is Johanna, is it not?”

“Mechtild, Mr. Seraphin.”

“Will you be so good as to sit down?” And he pointed her to a sofa.

Mechtild, however, drew a chair and seated herself.

He had noted her deportment, and could not but marvel at the graceful action, the confiding simplicity, and well‐bred self‐possession of the extraordinary country girl. As she sat opposite to him, she looked so pure, so trusting and sincere, that his astonishment went on increasing. He acknowledged to himself never to have beheld eyes whose expression came so directly from the heart—a heart whose interior must be equally as sunny and pure.

“How are your good parents?”

“They are very well, Mr. Seraphin. Father has gone to work with renewed confidence. The sad—ah! the terrible period is past. You cannot imagine, Mr. Seraphin, how many tears you have dried, how much misery you have relieved!”

The recollection of the ruin that had been hanging over her home affected her painfully; her eyes glistened, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. But she instantly repressed the emotion, and exhibited a beautiful smile on her face. Seraphin’s quick eye had observed both the momentary feeling, and that she had resolutely checked it in order not to annoy him by touching sorrowful chords. This trait of delicacy also excited the admiration of the gentleman.

“Your father is not in want of employment?” he inquired with interest.

“No, sir! Father is much sought on account of his knowledge of farming. Persons who have ground, but no team of their own, employ him to put in crops for them.”

“No doubt the good man has to toil hard?”

“That is true, sir; but father seems to like working, and we children strive to help him as much as we can.”

“And do you like working?”

“I do, indeed, Mr. Seraphin. Life would be worthless if one did not labor. Man’s life on earth is so ordered as to show him that he must labor. Doing nothing is abominable, and idleness is the parent of many vices.”

Another cause of astonishment for the millionaire. She did not converse like an uneducated girl from the country. Her accurate, almost choice use of words indicated some culture, and her concise observations revealed both mind and reflection. He felt a strong desire to fathom the mystery—to cast a glance into Mechtild’s past history.

“Have you always lived at home, or have you ever been away at school?”

She must have detected something ludicrous in the question, for suddenly a degree of archness might be observed in her amiable smile.

“You mean, whether I have received a city education? No, sir! Father used to speak highly of the clearness of my mind, and thought I might even be made a teacher. But he had not the means to give me the necessary amount of schooling. Until I was fourteen years old, I went to school to the nuns here in town. I used to come in of mornings and go back in the evening. I studied hard, and father and mother always had the satisfaction of seeing me rewarded with a prize at the examinations. I am very fond of books, and make good use of the convent library. On Sundays, after vespers, I wait till the door of the book‐room is opened. I still spend my leisure time in reading, and on Sundays and holidays I know no greater pleasure than to read nice instructive books. At my work I think over what I have read, and I continue practising composition according to the directions of the good ladies of the convent.”

“And were you always head at school?”

“Yes,” she admitted, with a blush.

“You have profited immensely by your opportunities,” he said approvingly. “And the desire for learning has not yet left you?”

“This inordinate craving still continues to torment me,” she acknowledged frankly.

“Inordinate—why inordinate?”

“Because, my station and calling do not require a high degree of culture. But it is so nice to know, and it is so nice to have refined intercourse with each others. For seven years I admired the elegant manners of the convent ladies, and I learned many a lesson from them.”

“How old are you now?”

“Seventeen, Mr. Seraphin.”

“What a pity you did not enter some higher educational institution!” said he.

A pause followed. He looked with reverence upon the artless girl whom God had so richly endowed, both in body and mind. Mechtild rose.

“Please accept, also, my most heartfelt thanks for your generous aid,” she said, with emotion. “All my life long I shall remember you before God, Mr. Seraphin. The Almighty will surely repay you what alas! we cannot.”

She made a courtesy, and he accompanied her through all the apartments as far as the front door. Here the girl, turning, bowed to him once more and went away.

Returning to his room, Seraphin stood and contemplated the grapes. Strongly did the delicious fruit tempt him, but he touched not one. He then pulled out a drawer, and hid the gifts as though it were a costly treasure. For the rest of the day, Mechtild’s bright form hovered near him, and the sweet charm of her eyes, so full of soul, continually worked on his imagination. When he again went into Louise’s company, the grace and innocence of the country girl gained ground in his esteem. Compared with Mechtild’s charming naturalness, Louise’s manner appeared affected, spoiled; through evil influences. The difference in the expression of their eyes struck him especially. In Louise’s eyes there burned a fierce glow at times, which roused passion and stirred the senses. Mechtild’s neither glowed nor flashed; but from their limpid depths beamed goodness so genuine and serenity so unclouded, that Seraphin could compare them to nothing but two heralds of peace and innocence. Louise’s eyes, thought he, flash like two meteors of the night; Mechtild’s beam like two mild suns in a cloudless sky of spring. As often as he entered the room where the grapes lay concealed, he would unlock the drawer, examine the fragrant fruit, and handle the basket which had been carried by her hands. He could not himself help smiling at this childish action, and yet both great delicacy and deep earnestness are manifested in honoring objects that have been touched by pure hands, and in revering places hallowed by the presence of the good.

Next morning the banker asked his guest to accompany him to the church of S. Peter, where Hans Shund was to address a large gathering.

“In a church?” Gerlach exclaimed, with amazement.

“Don’t get frightened, my good fellow. The church is no longer in the service of religion. It has been _secularized_ by the state, and is customarily used as a hall for dancing. There will be quite a crowd, for several able speakers are to discuss the question of common schools. The church has been chosen for the meeting on account of the crowd.”

The millionaires drove to the desecrated church. A tumultuous mass swarmed about the portal. “Let us permit them to push us; we shall get in most easily by letting them do so,” said the banker merrily. Two officious progressionists, recognizing the banker, opened a passage for them through the throng. They reached the interior of the church, which was now an empty space, stripped of every ornament proper to a house of God. In the sanctuary could yet be seen, as if in mournful abandonment, a large quadrangular slab, that had been the altar, and attached to one of the side walls was an exquisite Gothic pulpit, which on occasions like the present was used for a rostrum. Everywhere else reigned silence and desolation.

The nave was filled by a motley mass. The chieftains of progress, some elegantly dressed, others exhibiting frivolous miens and huge beards, crowded upon the elevation of the chancel. All the candidates for the legislature were present, not for the purpose of proving their qualifications for the office—progress never troubled itself about those—but to air their views on the subject of education. There were speakers on hand of acknowledged ability in the discussion of the doctrines of progress, who were to lay the result of their investigations before the people.

Seraphin also noted some anxious faces in the crowd. They were citizens, whose sons were alarmed at the thought of yielding up the training of their children into the hands of infidelity. And near the pulpit stood two priests, irreverently crowded against the wall, targets for the scornful pleasantries of the wits of the mob. Leader Schwefel was voted into the chair by acclamation. He thanked the assembly in a short speech for the honor conferred, and then announced that Mr. Till, member of the former assembly, would address the meeting. Amid murmurs of expectation a short, fat gentleman climbed into the pulpit. First a red face with a copper‐ tipped nose bobbed above the ledge of the pulpit, next came a pair of broad shoulders, upon which a huge head rested without the intermediary of a neck, two puffy hands were laid upon the desk, and the commencement of a well‐rounded paunch could just be detected by the eye. Mr. Till, taking two handfuls of his shaggy beard, drew them slowly through his fingers, looked composedly upon the audience, and breathed hotly through mouth and nostrils.

“Gentlemen,” he began, with a voice that struggled out from a mass of flesh and fat, “I am not given to many words, you know. What need is there of many words and long speeches? We know what we want, and what we want we will have in spite of the machinations of Jesuits and the whinings of an ultramontane horde. You all know how I acquitted myself at the last legislature, and if you will again favor me with your suffrages, I will endeavor once more to give satisfaction. You know my record, and I shall remain staunch to the last.”

Cries of “Good!” from various directions.

“Gentlemen! if you know my record, you must also be aware that I am passionately fond of the chase. I even follow this amusement in the legislative hall. Our country abounds in a sort of black game, and for me it is rare sport to pursue this, species of game in the assembly.”

A wild tumult of applause burst forth. Jeers and coarse witticisms were bandied about on every side of the two clergymen, who looked meekly upon these orgies of progress.

“Gentlemen!” Till continued, “the _blacks_ are a dangerous kind of wild beast. They have heretofore been ranging in a preserve, feeding on the fat of the land. That is an abuse that challenges the wrath of heaven. It must be done away with. The beasts of prey that in the dark ages dwelt in castles have long since been exterminated, and their rocky lairs have been reduced to ruins. Well, now, let us keep up the chase in both houses of the legislature until the last of these _black_ beasts is destroyed. Should you entrust to me again your interests, I shall return to the seat of government to aid with renewed energy in ridding the land of these creatures that are enemies both of education and liberty.”

Amid prolonged applause the fat man descended. The chieftains shook him warmly by the hand, assuring him that the cause absolutely demanded his being reelected.

Gerlach was aghast at Till’s speech. He hardly knew which deserved most scorn, the vulgarity of the speaker or the abjectness of those who had applauded him. Their wild enthusiasm was still surging through the building, when Hans Shund mounted the pulpit. The chairman rang for order; the tumult ceased. In mute suspense the multitude awaited the great speech of the notorious usurer, thief, and debauchee. And indeed, progress might well entertain great expectations, for Hans Shund had read a pile of progressionist pamphlets, had extracted the strong passages, and out of them had concocted a right racy speech. His speech might with propriety have been designated the Gospel of Progress, for Hans Shund had made capital of whatever freethinkers had lucubrated in behalf of so‐called enlightenment, and in opposition to Christianity. The very appearance of the speaker gave great promise. His were not coarse features and goggle eyes like Till’s; his piercing feline eyes looked intellectual. His face was rather pale, the result, no doubt, of unusual application, and he had skilfully dyed his sandy hair. His position as mayor of the city seemed also to entitle him to special attention, and these several claims were enhanced by a white necktie, white vest, and black cloth swallow‐tail coat.

“Gentlemen,” began the mayor with solemnity, “my honorable predecessor in this place has told you with admirable sagacity that the kernel of every political question is of a religious character. Indeed, religion is linked with every important question of the day, it is the _ratio ultima_ of the intellectual movement of our times. Men of thought and of learning are all agreed as to the condition to which our social life should be and must be brought. The friends of the people are actively and earnestly at work trying to further a healthy development of our social and political status. Nor have their efforts been utterly fruitless. Progress has made great conquests; yet, gentlemen, these conquests are far from being complete. What is it that is most hostile to liberalism in morals, to enlightenment, and to humanity? It is the antiquated faith of departed days. Have we not heard the language of the Holy Father in the Syllabus? But the Holy Father at Rome, gentlemen, is no father of ours—happily he is the father only of stupid and credulous men.”

“Bravo! Well said!” resounded from the audience. Flaschen nudged Spitzkopf, who sat next to him. “Shund is no mean speaker. Even that fellow Voelk, of Bavaria, cannot compete with Shund.”

“Gentlemen, our good sense teaches us to smile with pity at the infallible declarations of yon Holy Father. We are firmly convinced that papal decrees can no more stop the onward march of civilization than they can arrest the heavenly bodies in their journeys about the sun. ’Tis true, an œcumenical council is lowering like a black storm‐cloud. But let the council meet; let it declare the Syllabus an article of faith; it will never succeed in destroying the treasures of independent thought which creative intellects have been hoarding up for centuries among every people. Since men of culture have ceased to yield unquestioning submission, like dumb sheep, to the church, they have begun to discover that nowhere are so many falsehoods uttered as in pulpits.”

Tremendous applause, clapping, and swinging of hats, followed this eloquent period. A distinguished gentleman, laying his hand upon Till’s shoulder, asked: “What calibre of ammunition do you use in hunting _black_ game?”

“Conical balls of two centimetres,” replied Till, with no great wit.

“Yon fellow in the pulpit fires shells of a hundredweight, I should say. And if in the legislative assembly his shells all explode, not a man of them will be left alive.”

Till thought this witticism so good that he set up a loud roar of laughter, that could be heard above the general uproar.

Stimulated by these marks of appreciation, Shund waxed still more eloquent. “Gentlemen,” cried he, “no body of men is more savagely opposed to science and culture than a conventicle of so‐called servants of God. Were you to repeat the multiplication table several times over, there would be as much prayer and sense in it as in what is designated the Apostles’ Creed.”

More cheering and boundless enthusiasm. “Gentlemen!” exclaimed the speaker, with thundering emphasis and a hideous expression of hatred on his face, “the significance of religious dogmas is simply a sort of homœopathic concoction to which every succeeding age contributes some drops of fanaticism. Subjected to the microscope of science, the whole basis of the Christian church evaporates into thin mist. We must shield our children against religious fables. Away with dogmas and saws from the Bible; away with the Trinity; the divinity and humanity of Jesus, and other such stuff! Away with apothegms such as this: _Christ is my life, my death, and my gain_. Such things are opposed to nature. Children’s minds are thereby warped to untruthfulness and hypocrisy. In this manner the child is deprived of the power of thinking; loses all interest in intellectual pursuits, and ceases to feel the need of further culture. The times are favorable for a reformation. Our imperial and royal rulers have at length realized that minds must be set free. For this end it was as unavoidable for them to break with the church and priesthood as it is necessary for us. If we cherish our fatherland and the people, we must take the initiative. We are not striving to effect a revolution; we want intellectual development, profounder knowledge, and healthier morality.

“Shall peace be seen beneath our skies, The spirit’s freedom first must rise,”

concluded the orator poetically, and he came down amidst a very hurricane of applause.

There followed a lull. In the audience, heads protruded and necks were stretched that their possessors might obtain a glimpse of the great Shund. In the chancel, the chiefs and leaders crowded around him, smiling, bowing, and shaking his hand in admiration.

“You have won the laurels,” smirked a fellow from amidst a wilderness of beard.

“Your election to the Assembly is a certainty,” declared another.

“You carry deadly weapons against Christ,” said a professor.

Mr. Hans smiled, and nodded so often that he was seized with a pain in the muscles of the face and neck. At length, the chairman’s bell came to the rescue.

“The Rev. Mr. Morgenroth will now address the meeting.”

The clergyman mounted the rostrum, but scarcely had he appeared there, when the crowd became possessed by a legion of hissing demons.

“Gentlemen,” began the fearless priest, “the duty of my calling as well as personal conviction demands that I should enter a solemn protest against the sundering of school and church.”

Further the priest was not allowed to proceed. Loud howling, hissing, and whistling drowned his voice. The president called for order.

“In the name of good‐breeding, I beg this most honorable assembly to hear the speaker out in patience,” cried Mr. Schwefel.

The mob relaxed into unwilling silence like a growling beast.

“Not all the citizens of this town are infected with infidelity,” the reverend gentleman went on to say. “Many honorable gentlemen believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and in his church. These citizens wish their children to receive a religious education; it would, therefore, be unmitigated terrorism, tyrannical constraint of conscience, to force Christian parents to bring up their children in the spirit of unbelief.”

This palpable truth progress could not bear to listen to. A mad yell was set up. Clenched fists were shaken at the clergyman, and fierce threats thundered from all sides of the church. “Down with the priest!” “Down with the accursed black‐coat!” “Down with the dog of a Jesuit!” and similar exclamations, resounded from all sides. The chairman rang his bell in vain. The mob grew still more furious and noisy. The clergyman was compelled to come down.

“Such is the liberty, the education, the tolerance, the humanity of progress,” said he sadly to his colleague.

To Be Continued.

Christian Art Of The Catacombs.

By An Anglican.

“I do love those ancient ruins: We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some reverend history.”—_Webster_ (1620).

“Quamlibet ancipites texant hinc inde recessus, Arcta sub umbrosis atria porticibus; Attamen excisi subter cava viscera montis Crebra terebrato fornice lux penetrat; Sic datur absentis per subterranea solis Cernere fulgorem luminibusque frui.”

—_Prudentius, Peristephanon_, Hymn iv.

The Catacombs of Rome were the birthplace of Christian art as well as the sepulchre of the children of the early church. It is only within a few years that the modern traveller has been induced, through the careful study which the Catacombs have received, to visit these subterranean homes of the persecuted Christian, so filled with the symbolism of his faith. From 1567, the year in which Father Bosio began his investigations in the Catacombs, till the present century, some minds of kindred interest in these burial‐places of the martyrs have been fascinated with their Christian archæology, and from time to time have appeared works upon subjects connected with the Catacombs. F. Bosio spent thirty years in making explorations, and left for posthumous publication his _Roma __ Sotterranea_, which F. Severano issued from the press in Rome in 1632. Seventy years later came _Inscriptionum antiquarum explicatio_ by the learned Fabretti, and eighteen years later still, F. Boldetti, who had devoted the greater part of his life to the examination of the monuments, inscriptions, and paintings of the Catacombs, embodied the results of his patience and industry in the great work _Osservazioni sopra i Cimiterii dei Santi Martiri, etc., di Roma_. Then came Bottari’s wonderful studies on the Christian art of the Catacombs entitled _Sculture e pitture sagre, estratte dai Cimiteri di Roma_. Following in the paths opened by these zealous Italian students, M. D’Agincourt, M. Raoul Rochette, Abbé Gaume, and the eminent artist M. Perret, have contributed to the archæological literature of France several important works on the Roman Catacombs.

To the pontificate of Pius IX. belongs the honor of producing the two greatest antiquarian scholars of our age. The one, the Cavaliere Canina, has treated with remarkable acuteness and judgment of the Appian Way from the Capenian Gate to Bovillæ;(150) the other, the Cavaliere de Rossi, of the Catacombs,(151) and it is of the latter that we propose to speak. It is impossible, in the brief space that is allotted to us, to do more than select one of the interesting subjects with which his works on the Catacombs abound, and as an Anglican student of the Catholic Church, its doctrines, its discipline, and its literature, there is none which so enkindles our enthusiasm as the Christian art of the early ages, and the symbolism with which it is clothed. We approach these pictures in the dark crypts and amid the countless tombs of the first martyrs of the faith with no little reverence. We lay aside our shoes, for the ground consecrated to the early dead is sacred, and the earnest wish of our heart is to put away the prejudice of ecclesiastical education and association. With this view before us, we make the noble words of Montesquieu our own: “Ceux qui nous avertissent sont les compagnons de nos travaux. Si le critique et l’auteur cherchent la vérité, ils out le même intérêt; car la vérité est le bien de tous les hommes: ils seront des confédérés, et non pas des ennemis.”(152)

From the early ages of the church till the close of the Vth century, the Christians of Rome were driven by the sword of persecution to seek a hiding‐place wherein to exercise the holy mysteries of their religion, and to inter the remains of their dead. The vast subterranean caverns, now known as Catacombs, but more anciently called _Areæ_, _Cryptæ_, and _Cœmeteria_, afforded a shelter for the living and sepulture for the faithful departed. These Catacombs doubtless had their origin in the sand‐ pits, or _arenariæ_, _arenifodinæ_, which the pagans had excavated to procure materials for building purposes.(153) Suetonius(154) describes how Phaon exhorted Nero to enter one of these caverns made by excavations of sand, and Cicero alludes to the _arenariæ_, outside of the Porta Esquilina.(155) In the admirable essay by Michele Stefano de Rossi, entitled _Analisi Geologica ed Architettonica_, and annexed to the work of his brother, it is stated that the Catacombs, with perhaps the exception of two that are Jewish, are the work of the early Christians.(156)

By singular perseverance and careful discrimination in the study of documents running far back into the centuries, the Cavaliere de Rossi transferred the situation of the Catacombs of S. Callistus from the church of S. Sebastian, where they had erroneously been located, to a place a half mile nearer Rome, between the Via Appia and the Via Ardeatina; on the left of the road was the cemetery of S. Prætextatus, and on the right that of S. Callistus. The discovery of these hallowed crypts and sarcophagi of the early saints and popes, is of inestimable value in elucidating intricate questions of doctrine and practice, of history and tradition, which have vexed the theological world for centuries. We can scarcely resist the temptation to follow M. de Rossi through these dim cathedrals of our Christian ancestors, and reproduce a part, at least, of his masterly elucidation of their general topography, together with the history of heroic suffering and Christlike courage which the sites and names of those dark ages of danger suggest. But we must forbear, and proceed to the pictures and emblems in order to draw from them some lessons of that early fortitude, which the child of the church of the first centuries learned, as he knelt by the tomb of his companion in the faith, and looked up to the ceilings of crypts and semicircular compartments to catch by the glimmering light of smoking lamps the lineaments of some design of the religion which he professed.

The paintings of the Catacombs represent the cardinal truths of Christianity, and their types are taken from both the Old and New Testament Scriptures, as also, in rare instances, from heathen mythology. The picture, perhaps most common to the eye of the worshipper at those shrines of the martyred dead, was the representation of the Saviour in that character which exhibits the tenderest attributes of his sacred humanity, and appeals to the sympathetic element in man. Christ as the Good Shepherd conveys in its fulness of meaning what perhaps no other type of our Lord does. It is variously represented, and under different forms may refer to the foreshadowing of the Messiah’s coming in the Old Testament and its fulfilment in the New. King David had been a shepherd, and understood the needs and labors of the shepherd life, and it may be that in the days of his pastoral innocence, when the lion and the bear were the destroyers of his flock, he wrote that psalm whose tone is one of quiet and trustfulness: “The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”(157) Thus, in the days of persecution, the Christian of the Catacombs might read the sacred legend of our Lord under the figure of a shepherd—bearing the sheep upon his shoulders. The Good Shepherd was pictured again as bearing a goat, and in the Catacombs of S. Callistus he stands between a goat and a sheep; the former occupies the more honorable place, the right hand, and the latter the left. Often the Good Shepherd leans on his pastoral crook, and bears in his hand a pipe. All these typical allusions refer to his character as exhibited in the Gospels. They teach the merciful watchfulness of our Lord, and the readiness with which he takes back into his fold, the church, yea, to the more honorable place by his side, the wayward and the erring. “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.”(158) Protestant critics have not been wanting in an attempt to trace the symbolism of this figure of the Good Shepherd to a heathen origin, and adduce as an argument in behalf of their theory that its prototype is in the Tombs of the Nasones. Even in questions of Christian archæology is exhibited the same polemical spirit which animated the accomplished English scholar, Conyers Middleton, who lent all the resources of his vast learning in classical history to prove the resemblance and identity of pagan and Catholic rites. But a more learned and reverent critic in the field of antiquities is the incomparable Marangoni, whose splendid work, _Cose Gentilesche trasportate ad Uso delle Chiese_, sets at rest for ever many problems which Mr. Poynder, a shallow pretender to scholarship, revived in the _Alliance of Popery and Heathenism_.

While the ancient heathen lived in the atmosphere of a religion which incited to cheerfulness and pleasure in the present life, it portrayed but faintly any idea of immortality. The world around him was peopled with unseen spirits. They inhabited woods and streams, and he was ever watchful to interpret the slightest signs or omens which might yield him some token to enlighten the spiritual darkness of his soul. The mythological system of the pagan was a vital reality. It accompanied him not only to the solemn festival in the temple, but on the march, in the camp, and in the market‐place. It was with him in hours of joy and of sorrow; but it penetrated not beyond the boundaries of this world. It offered no _cross_ here, and knew nothing of the _crown_ hereafter. There were no bright pictures of the rewards of eternity. This life was the narrow limit of his hope and his labor. Hades or the grave was dreaded because of its sunlessness. Iphigenia entreats her father for life in an impassioned appeal, which sums up the heathen’s belief:

“To view the light of life, To mortals most sweet; in death there is Nor light nor joys; and crazed is he who seeks To die; for life, though full of ills, has more Of good than death.”

Occasionally the ancient philosophers and poets give intimation of a belief in immortality, but not in resurrection, as Cicero in that eloquent longing for the day when he shall meet his illustrious friend Cato.(159) But, as we have said, of the great doctrine of the resurrection, which solved the dark enigmas of humanity, they were ignorant. The hold which classical mythology had upon the human mind was relaxed before this august mystery of the Catholic faith. Pagan temples were deserted, and the sacrificial fires on their altars extinguished.

“The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty, That had her haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat’ry depths; all these have vanished. They live no longer in the faith of reason!”(160)

It is not remarkable, therefore, that delineations of the doctrine of the resurrection should not have been unusual in the church of the Catacombs. Two such representations, one from the Old Testament, and the other from the New, will exhibit the forms under which it was presented. Jonas as a type of the resurrection of our Lord has its authority from S. Matthew.(161) “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Four scenes from the history of Jonas are found in the chapels and on the tombs of the Catacombs, sometimes represented singly, sometimes all compressed under one type. The first is the prophet being thrown into the deep, the second as swallowed by the great fish which “the Lord had prepared,” the third as “vomited out upon dry land,” the fourth as lying under the shadow of a gourd. As we have seen, according to the Gospel of S. Matthew, the swallowing of Jonas by the whale, and being cast forth in safety after three days, was typical of the burial and the resurrection of our Lord himself; and may not the pictures of the fourth series denote not only the sufferings of the individual Christian, and the care which his risen Master bestows upon him, but also the vicissitudes of the Church Catholic in every age of the world? “Sometimes she gains, sometimes she loses; and more often she is at once gaining and losing in different parts of her history.... Scarcely are we singing Te Deums, when we have to turn to our Misereres; scarcely are we in peace, when we are in persecution; scarcely have we gained a triumph, when we are visited by a scandal. Nay, we make progress by means of reverses; our griefs are our consolations; we lose Stephen to gain Paul, and Matthias replaced the traitor Judas.”(162) When the eye of the early Christian rested upon this fourth representation from the prophet’s life, it caught another and a more subtle signification, which is read perhaps oftener in the night of affliction and persecution than in the day of joy and prosperity. Our century, Catholic and Protestant alike, needs to study its outlines as much as the first century and the worshippers in the Catacombs. “Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left?”(163) Here is a beautiful symbolism of the tender mercy of our God for all who are in error and in sin. It opposes the spiritual Pharisaism of our day, and exacts meekness and charity from all men. It is the destroyer of malevolence and anger and strife.(164)

Another picture, taken from the New Testament, and of frequent representation, is the “man sick of the palsy.” It is generally regarded by Protestant writers as belonging to that series of symbolical illustrations which embody the doctrine of the resurrection; and, to give greater force to their interpretation of the painting, they place much stress upon the words of the sacred text: “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” So far as we have examined copies of this picture, we are inclined to believe that it is connected with these which refer to the resurrection, except in one remarkable instance, in which it clearly symbolizes the sacrament of penance as it is taught in the Roman communion. In the Catacombs of S. Hermes is a representation of a Christian kneeling before another, which seems from its close proximity to the series of pictures of the Paralytic to point more directly to that other passage of the Gospel narrative: “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” If our Lord delegated “such power unto men”—and the only logical and intelligent interpretation of the words of S. John(165) conveys this doctrine or it conveys nothing—here is a clear illustration of the power of the priesthood, which admits of no evasive contradiction, of no complicated and artificial hypothesis for the sake of escaping the recognition of the belief of the early Christians in the doctrine of sacerdotal absolution.

As resurrection is the portal of the church triumphant, so is baptism to the church militant. The former is but the complement and fulfilment of the latter. “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death.”(166) The blessedness of the final consummation of the faithful departed was pictured in the symbols of the resurrection, and, as baptism is the foreshadowing of that glorious change which shall come over our vile bodies, it became a common subject of Christian art in the Catacombs. Its types are somewhat complex, and often susceptible of a twofold explanation. From the four scenes in the life of Moses, which are constantly repeated in the different Catacombs, we select _that_ which prefigures Christian baptism—the miraculous supply of water in Kadesh. Art critics who have bestowed any attention upon the sacred pictures of the early ages place the representation of this miracle of Moses in the Catacombs of S. Agnes among the finest specimens of primitive delineation. Moses is pictured as bearing a rod, the emblem of power, with which “he smote the rock twice, and the water came out abundantly.” It is worthy of remark in passing that on vases found in the Catacombs, and on the sarcophagi as early, perhaps, as the IVth century, this same scene is depicted, and the rod, instead of being in the hand of Moses, is in that of S. Peter, and, in a few instances, the two are represented together, but the person who smites with the rod has inscribed over his head the name of S. Peter. Catholic writers on subterranean symbolism draw from it an artistic argument, which, coupled with the historical, seems an unanswerable statement of the question of the primacy of S. Peter. _Quando Christus ad unum loquitur, unitas commendatur; et Petro primitus, quia in Apostolis Petrus est primus._(167) S. Peter bears the same relation to the Christian church that Moses did to the Israelitish. The one received from God the decalogue, which was to govern the actions of the Jews; the other, the keys, which were to open the kingdom of heaven. _Nam et si adhuc clausum putas cœlum, memento claves ejus hic Dominum Petro, et per eum Ecclesiæ reliquisse._(168) Another type of baptism taken from the Old Testament, and capable of two expositions, is Noah in the ark. Here again, on the authority of an apostle, the church in the early ages read the history of Noah by the light of the new revelation made through the institutions founded by Christ. S. Peter, speaking of the small number saved by water at the deluge, adds: “The like figure whereunto, even baptism, doth now also save us,... by the resurrection of Jesus Christ,”(169) The ark is generally represented by a small box in which Noah sits or stands, receiving from the dove the olive branch of peace. Some writers on Christian archæology find in it a secondary meaning, regarding it as typical of the church, and the danger of those who are without the ark of safety.

Among favorite Old Testament subjects familiar to art students of the Catacombs are—Daniel in the lions’ den, and the three children of Israel in the fiery furnace at Babylon. Both are types of persecution, and of final deliverance through the miraculous interposition of God. In the cemetery of S. Priscilla, each of these pictures is to be seen, varying but slightly in the details of the portraiture. The three children appear clothed, and standing on the furnace. In a compartment beneath, the figure of a man is represented as feeding the fire with fresh fuel. Daniel, in the same cemetery, stands with outstretched arms between lions. The attitude in both these scenes from Jewish history appears to exhibit the ancient posture of the suppliant when in the act of prayer. A late writer on the Roman catacombs, the Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D., formerly of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, spent much time, in company with the Cavaliere de Rossi and M. Perret, the French artist, in collecting materials for his small work on the burial‐places of the early Christians in Rome. He is so trustworthy a guide in everything that appertains to their archæology, that we gladly accept the explanation which he suggests of the position of Daniel and the three children of Israel. Speaking of the ancient attitude of Christian prayer—the hands extended in the form of a cross—he says:(170) “This form, which, as we learn from the Fathers, was universal among the early Christians, is still retained in some measure by the priests of the present day in the celebration of Mass, by Capuchins and others in serving Mass, and by numbers among the poor everywhere; it is worth noticing that S. Gregory Nazianzen expressly speaks of Daniel overcoming the wild beasts by stretching out his hands, meaning, of course by the power of prayer; but the explanation might almost seem to show that S. Gregory himself was familiar with this usual way of representing him.”

The publication of the Cavaliere de Rossi, which has so greatly alarmed the Protestant controversialist, is _Immagine Scelte della B. Vergine Maria, tratte dalle Catacombe Romane_. It is most beautifully illustrated with chromo‐lithographic engravings, and reflects great honor on the present state of art in Rome. The purpose of the work is to exhibit the veneration with which the Christians of the Catacombs esteem the Mother of our Lord. At a period of time in the history of the church, almost apostolic, that purest of human feelings, maternal love, subdued the soul of the artist, and kindled his imagination to trace with the brush or carve with the chisel the Blessed Virgin and her Divine Son.

The Virgin Mother,

“Who so above All mothers shone, The Mother of The Blessed One,”

is depicted by the artist with a tender and devout affection. The scenes are taken from the sacred narrative of the Evangelists, and an examination of them, simply from an æsthetical point of view, will more than repay the connoisseur of art. But to the conscientious archæologist and the sober inquirer, they occupy a grave relation. They throw additional light on the writings of S. Justin, S. Irenæus, S. Cyril, S. Jerome, and Tertullian, in regard to that dogma which, of all others, has perplexed the minds of earnest men outside the Roman communion. The honor paid to the Blessed Virgin is to‐day the especial “crux” of Dr. Pusey,(171) as it is, perhaps, of many not so learned as he, but as thoroughly dispassionate in the temper of their souls toward the attainment of divine truth. The poet of _The Christian Year_ reached a lofty strain in behalf of a long‐forgotten doctrine in the Anglican Church when he gave in his verses for the Annunciation:

“Ave Maria! blessed Maid! Lily of Eden’s fragrant shade, Who can express the love That nurtured thee so pure and sweet, Making thy heart a shelter meet For Jesus’ holy dove?

“Ave Maria! Mother blest! To whom, caressing and caress’d, Clings the Eternal Child; Favor’d beyond Archangel’s dream, When first on thee with tenderest gleam Thy new‐born Saviour smil’d.”(172)

But Keble caught from an excursion to Ben Nevis, as his biographer conjectures, the hints of that beautiful poem, “Mother out of Sight,” which was intended for the _Lyra Innocentium_, but through the influence of two friends, Dyson and Sir John Coleridge, was withheld by the author, and only saw the light as one of his posthumous pieces. It has a clearer doctrinal ring than the stanzas for the Feast of the Annunciation, which foreshadow something of the intercessory power of the Mother of God. It merits the high praise which Keble’s ever‐faithful friend and, for years, his gifted ally bestows upon him. We more than regret that space forbids us giving the entire poem. It loses much of its beauty and continuity by fragmentary quotation, yet, from the fourteen stanzas, we are only able to reproduce four:

“Yearly since then with bitterer cry Man hath assailed the throne on high, And sin and hate more fiercely striven To mar the league ’twixt earth and heaven. But the dread tie that pardoning hour, Made fast in Mary’s awful bower, Hath mightier prov’d to bind than we to break; None may that work undo, that Flesh unmake.

“Thenceforth, whom thousand worlds adore, He calls thee Mother evermore; Angel nor saint his face may see Apart from what he took of thee; How may we choose but name thy name, Echoing below their high acclaim In holy creeds? since earthly song and prayer Must keep faint time to the dread Anthems there.

“Therefore, as kneeling day by day, We to our Father duteous pray, So unforbidden we may speak An Ave to Christ’s Mother meek (As children with ‘good morrow’ come To elders, in some happy home), Inviting so the saintly host above With our unworthiness to pray in love.

“To pray with us, and gently bear Our falterings in the pure, bright air. But strive we pure and bright to be In spirit. Else how vain of thee Our earnest dreamings, awful Bride! Feel we the sword that pierced thy side; Thy spotless lily‐flower, so clear of hue, Shrinks from the breath impure, the tongue untrue.”(173)

Another poet, once an Anglican, then a Catholic priest, and now passed into the land where the mists of controversy are cleared away, attained a higher plane of truth in regard to the Mother of our Lord:

“But scornful men have boldly said Thy love was leading me from God; And yet in this I did but tread The very path my Saviour trod.

“They know but little of thy worth Who speak these heartless words to me; For what did Jesus love on earth One‐half so tenderly as thee?

“Get me the grace to love thee more; Jesus will give, if thou wilt plead; And, Mother, when life’s cares are o’er, Oh! I shall love thee then indeed.

“Jesus, when his three hours were run, Bequeathed thee from the cross to me; And oh! how can I love thy Son, Sweet Mother, if I love not thee?”

We return to these pictures of the Catacombs, and we will content ourselves with an allusion only, preferring that the reader who is interested in them should examine them through his own, rather than through another’s eyes. From a lunette in an _arcosolio_ in the cemetery of S. Agnes is a picture which of late years has been frequently copied. It represents the Blessed Virgin with uplifted hands, seemingly in the act of intercession, with the Infant Jesus in her lap. In the cemetery of Domitilla is a picture of the Mother and Son, and four Magi offering their oblations. It may be well to remark that the Gospel history of the Adoration of the Wise Men from the East does not limit their number. We have somewhere seen it suggested that the restriction to three had its rise from the offerings presented—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Another scene of the Adoration of the Magi is given with some difference of detail. The Virgin Mother is seated holding the Divine Son in her lap, above her head appears the star which guided the wise men to where the Infant lay. To the left is a somewhat youthful person, supposed to be S. Joseph. He holds in his hand a book, which the Cavaliere de Rossi very wisely and ingeniously interprets to be the writings of the evangelical prophet Isaiah, whose prophecies concerning the Messiah had now their fulfilment in the Infant Jesus.

Such are some of the many beautiful pictures which Roman art, through the indefatigable industry of de Rossi, has given us of the Blessed Virgin as represented in early ages. To other than jaundiced eyes, calmly and candidly studying them, they reveal the light in which they were so often viewed by the suffering children of the church amid the persecutions which attended the conflict between paganism and Christianity. In teaching us to honor the Mother of our Lord—Θεότοκος—they impress us with more distinct and more tangible thoughts of the incarnation of her Son.(174) With his usual discrimination and mastery of style, Dr. John Henry Newman has well said: “The Virgin and Child is _not_ a mere modern idea; on the contrary, it is represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is aware, in the paintings of the Catacombs. Mary is there drawn with the Divine Infant in her lap, she with hands extended in prayer, he with his hand in the attitude of blessing. No representation can more forcibly convey the doctrine of the high dignity of the Mother, and, I will add, of her power over her Son. Why should the memory of his time of subjection be so dear to Christians and so carefully preserved? The only question to be determined is the precise date of these remarkable monuments of the first age of Christianity. That they belong to the centuries of what Anglicans call the ‘undivided church’ is certain, but lately investigations have been pursued which place some of them at an earlier date than any one anticipated as possible.”(175)

One other topic remains to be considered before we pass on to some general reflections which early Christian art suggests. It was not uncommon for the artist in the first ages of the church to take subjects of heathen mythology, and invest them by his art with a Christian symbolism. The genius of Michael Angelo, so truly Catholic in taste and devout in expression, transplanted pagan forms from the broken temples of the elder civilization to the Christian churches of the new. He retouched them under the aureate light shed upon them by the reverent imagination of the Fathers. On the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are painted by this master‐hand the Sibyls, who in early times were regarded as the unconscious prophets of divine truth, uttering in their blindness crude intimations of the glory of him who was to be the fulfilment and completion of all shadows and of all types.(176) In the Catacombs may be seen a representation of Orpheus playing upon his lyre, and subduing by his melodious strains the ferocity of man and beast, and drawing even from inanimate creation by the power of music the subjects of his sway. Rocks and trees yielded to his lyric sweetness, the region of Plato opened to the sound of his “golden shell,” the wheel of Ixion ceased its revolutions, and Tityus forgot for the nonce the vulture that preyed on his vitals. The Thracian bard was the representative of the civilizer of savage men.

“Silvestres homines sacer interpresque Deorum Cædibus et victu fœdo deterruit Orpheus; Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres, rabidosque leones.”(177)

The symbolism of the picture seems to be this, that as Orpheus drew the whole creation to him by the music of his lyre, and called from the realms of Hades his beloved Eurydice to the regions of light, so Christ by his compassion commanded the love of all men, as well by his divine power the hidden forces of nature. Hades, or the grave, opened to him on that first Easter morning, as it will open to us on the last.

“Prisoner of Hope thou art—look up and sing In hope of promised spring. As in the pit his father’s darling lay Beside the desert way, And knew not how, but knew his God would save Even from that living grave; So, buried with our Lord, we’ll close our eyes To the decaying world, till angels bid us rise.”(178)

The late Dean of S. Paul’s, Dr. Milman, remarks, with an air of triumph, in his _Ecclesiastical History_,(179) that “the Catacombs of Rome, faithful to their general character, offer no instance of a crucifixion.” For the absence of the crucifix in the Catacombs, we as a Protestant can conceive of two causes, either of which would to our mind be sufficient to account for it. First, in the early ages it was highly important for the growth of the church, especially in the Roman Empire, to guard against the introduction of any symbol which would suggest pain or repugnance to Jewish converts; secondly, it was essential to clothe truth under a type which would not inspire mockery on the part of pagans, and so assist in keeping alive the persecuting spirit of the times. This in a measure no doubt led the early artists to use the heathen symbol of Orpheus as typical of Christ. A beautiful passage in the work of D’Agincourt affords still another general cause: “Entirely occupied with the celestial recompense which awaited them after the trials of their troubled life, and often of so dreadful a death, the Christians saw in death, and even in execution, only a way by which they arrived at this everlasting happiness; and, so far from associating with this image that of the tortures or privations which opened heaven before them, they took pleasure in enlivening it with smiling colors, or presenting it under agreeable symbols, adorning it with flowers and vine‐leaves; for it is thus that the asylum of death appears to us in the Christian Catacombs. There is no sign of mourning, no token of resentment, no expression of vengeance; all breathes softness, benevolence, charity.”(180)

Many emblems denoting the cardinal virtues are sculptured on the walls of the chapels and on the tombs of the Catacombs. Flowers, garlands, and grapes intertwine each other and embellish these ancient crypts. The laurel speaks of victory, the olive of peace and reconciliation, and the palm of final triumph. The lyre is significant of the æsthetical element of religion, and the anchor of hope for the heavenly port. The dove represents the Holy Spirit, the lamb the adorable Saviour—the Agnus Dei—the stag the thirsting of the soul for the paradise of God, and the peacock the belief in immortality. Among these general symbols so familiar to the saints of old, none is more prominent than the fish. Its history is ingenious, and, therefore, we will tarry for a moment ere we conclude. It naturally calls to mind the solemn parting of our Lord with the apostles by the Sea of Tiberias, when their nets were filled with fish, and Jesus “taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise.” In the church of the Catacombs this tender scene from the Evangelic record is always associated with the Holy Eucharist. As ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Greek word for a fish, contains the initial letters of the name and title of Christ—Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Σωπὴρ—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour—the figure was constantly used as a symbol of the divinity of Christ. In his _Iconographie Chrêtienne_, M. Didron assumes that this emblem on the sarcophagi of the Catacombs is simply indicative of the fact that the person buried beneath was by trade a fisherman. Certainly the numberless instances proving the falsity of this position render the opinion utterly worthless.

We must take leave of the Cavaliere de Rossi and the Christian art of the Roman Catacombs. Feeble as may be the execution of these pictures, crude in conception, and often colorless through the lapse of time, yet they speak of the ardor of the early Christian artists, and of the devotion and doctrine of the children of that church which is the mother of us all. In parting with the Cavaliere de Rossi, we say with all sincerity, that we have found nothing in his volumes unworthy of the reverential regard of honest and candid minds. Passages there are, which the timidity of Anglican churchmen would regard as dealing too freely with the symbolism of the Catacombs. Without accepting his conclusions in detail, we gratefully acknowledge that the Cavaliere de Rossi has shown English writers in what spirit all the grave questions of theology connected with subterranean art should be treated. His has been a great subject, and he has written with humility and ripeness of learning and clearness of apprehension, which well become the Christian scholar and the sacred theme. In closing his masterly work, we seem again bidding adieu to Rome, the reflection of whose classic greatness and Christian glory mellows hill and plain, pagan ruin and Catholic shrine.

“Gran Latinà Città di cui quanto il sol aureo gira Ne altera più, nè più onorata mira.”

And because of the house of the Lord our God, we utter from the depths of our heart the wish of the Psalmist of old: “_Fiat pax in virtute tua: et abundantia in turribus tuis. Propter fratres meos, et proximos meos, loquebar pacem de te_.”

Beating The Air.

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” says Owen Glendower, the great magician.

“So can I,” replies the sturdy, incredulous Hotspur. “But will they come?”

We are living in a sterner age than that in which Hotspur is supposed to have put this poser to the Welshman. Great declamations and fine promises will not do for any length of time, at least. We are hard, and prosy, and practical. We must have facts, and figures, and something clear before we are asked to choose a policy, or a system, or take a stand on a platform. Love of country, homes and altars, and all the old watchwords, serve no longer; they come down to a vulgar question of taxes, of custom‐house duties, of imports and exports, of pauperism, and the increase of crime. This hard, practical spirit has been carried with all the keenness of, if not an intellectual, at least a very intelligent age, into the sanctuary of religion, and men and women are no longer content to follow a sect or a creed because they happened to be born in it, or because their friends belong to it, or because as Giles has it, “Payrson says so, and Payrson’s daughter be married to Squoire.” They will have the why and wherefore: why they must take this creed and reject that; why they must take a part and not the whole; why it is necessary to be bothered with any form of belief at all, when, as they say, and many of them truthfully, they can get on well enough without it, and live happily, and play their part, and die out of the world without having committed any special faults against society, leaving behind them children whose rule in life shall be the truth and honor which they have bequeathed them as a last legacy. They have saved themselves infinite trouble by not mingling in the clashing of the sects, where each one claims to be _the_ one, the only one, the church of Christ. One would imagine that Christ came only to set the world on fire and all good people by the ears; that, in fact, it would be better had he not come at all if this is to be the result, this wrangling and jangling and eternal jargon about what one must do to be saved, as though good people, who do no earthly harm must join one or other of these conflicting parties, who can never agree among themselves, and use the name of the God of peace as a firebrand to stir up dissension and the worst of strife. Influenced by thoughts such as these, we find so many of the most intelligent people, what we might call Nothingarians, believing in nothing but the law of the land, that is, of expediency—a class that is growing wider every day in proportion as the sects are loosening and parting asunder; which embraces the ablest writers on the ablest secular journals; which sees only one religious body in the world endowed with a consistency, and a uniqueness, and years, and a glorious history, and a strange unity that will not be broken; a church which takes to‐day, as it has always taken, the bold stand before the world—we are the one church founded by Jesus Christ, in this church and in this church alone is salvation, not because we say it, but because he has said it: a stand in their eyes outrageous, so utterly opposed, as it is, to the dictates of human reason, with its doctrines of infallibility and what not; yet, after all, logical and strangely consistent throughout; so bold, so logical, so strangely consistent and united, that if there were a church at all it would be this, for all else is uncertainty. And as the _Nation_ said the other day in an article on the Old Catholics, written evidently by one of the class we have been describing: “The great strength of the Church of Rome lies now in the fact that he who quits her knows not whither he is going, and can find no man to tell him.” Schism and heresy and persecution have tried her in turn, and exhausted their efforts in vain; she stands today as she stood on the morning of the Christian era, full and fair in the light of God, not a dint in the rock, not a loosening in the edifice, though the ages have washed over her, and washed all other landmarks away; and the dove that leaves the ark finds no resting‐place over the barren waters; and the olive branch of peace is not yet found to tell us that the waters have subsided, and the earth is again as God made it.

Religious unity has been the dream of earnest seekers ever since Jesus Christ gave the final mandate to the apostle to go forth and convert the world; and it would seem that the dream is as far from fulfilment to‐day as it ever was; that it is likely to be so till the end of time. The Catholic Church is denounced as the great stumbling‐block in the way of the much‐desired unity. The sects say to her each in turn: You will not come to us; you will not join us. We are ready to make some sacrifices, but you will not budge an inch. You are false; you are absurd; you are mysterious; you are superstitious; you are everything that is bad—but only give up infallibility, says one, and we are with you; surrender the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, says another, and we will join you; only let your priests marry, says a third; give up the sacraments, says a fourth. To these, and all and many more, the church replies now as always: “_Non possumus_.” We cannot; God gave the laws to his church. They are his laws; they are irrevocable; more fixed than those of nature; it is not for us to change them. There again, say her adversaries: the old cry. You will not change; you will not concede; you are perverse and implacable. How can we ever have unity? They forget that they ask the church to dismember herself; to destroy her own identity; to break up, and come down to their level. Suppose she were to do so, what would the result be? She would be lost and absorbed in the sea of sectarianism. The one object to which all eyes look, whether faithfully or maliciously, as at least fixed and united to‐day as to‐morrow, as yesterday, would be blotted out of the sight of man. Even humanly speaking, much would be lost; nothing would be gained; and union would be farther off than ever.

The best example of the truth of this is given in the history of the last great departure from the Catholic Church—the Protestant Reformation. Though this movement never reached to the proportions of Arianism, yet it was a movement that captivated nations, and was eminently adapted to favor the revolutionary spirit then breaking out among men, to throw off all constraint of whatever nature, and stand upon the false notion of unbridled liberty of thought and action. The new doctrine of private interpretation spread rapidly, because it pandered to the age. Nations broke away from the church; a new faith, a new creed, grander, larger, fuller, purer than the old, was to be built up. And what was the result? What is the result? A multiplication of sect upon sect; a fresh departure; a new interpretation of the Gospel of God day after day; a breaking out into the wildest and most erratic courses of belief and conduct, oftentimes so utterly subversive to all government that it was obliged to be forcibly repressed by the law of the lands which at first favored it for its own purposes. This tower of faith that men would build from earth to heaven, like the old tower of pride, ended in nothing—crumbled away and caused a Babel—a confusion of beliefs. Such is the inevitable end of all religions that men make for themselves; vain efforts; uncertainty; good perverted or rendered useless; disagreement and religious anarchy.

No wonder that men cry out for something fixed. No wonder that so many turn infidel. Protestantism has proved an utter failure as a guidance and a religion to men. So much so that, if one asked for a definition of the Protestant _religion_ today, it could not be given him; and the only right answer would be not a faith or a system, but the opposition of non‐ Catholic Christians to the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps the most striking proof of this is exemplified in the late meeting at Cologne. There were assembled delegates from several rival sects and churches, in the endeavor to bring order out of chaos, to plant a new church and a new faith which all men might accept. If the Protestant bishops who attended there were satisfied that their religion or form of religion was true and all‐sufficient, why not stay at home? Why did they go at all? While Döllinger and the rest, satisfied of the failure of Protestantism, cling fast to the torn shred of the Roman Catholic faith, and proclaim loudly and absurdly that they are Catholic still, it is a deep and bitter lesson to Protestants of the hopelessness of their efforts to create a unity such as they see alone in the Catholic Church.

In the midst of this general and growing dissatisfaction, a pamphlet has been put into our hands which promises to settle the vexed question once for all. It is written by a Baptist minister, the Rev. James W. Wilmarth, pastor at Pemberton, N. J. Who he is, beyond the fact stated on the cover, we do not know. His pamphlet has no claim to our attention beyond the thousand‐and‐one such thrust upon our notice day after day. But as it is somewhat pretentious, and has received the sanction of no less distinguished a body than the West New Jersey Baptist Association, which body, by vote, requested its publication (the substance of it having been delivered in the “doctrinal sermon” preached September 13, 1871), it may be taken to represent the orthodox Baptist doctrine, and may, therefore, be glanced at just to see what that doctrine is, or is supposed to be, for we have no doubt many Baptists would disagree with it. The author takes a bold line, “The True Idea of the Church: Baptist _vs._ Catholic,” for he recognizes(181) no logical middle position between Baptist and Catholic ground, and, therefore, salvation lies in one of the two bodies, as it cannot lie in both. What Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and the rest may think of this high‐handed mode of dealing with their several pretensions to truth, we may imagine. But they can scarcely complain, as all in turn adopt precisely the same line of argument: the haven of salvation resting not between Presbyterian and Baptist or Methodist and Episcopalian, but between each of these sects and Rome. They slide by each other, and confront us. The only similar example we can call to mind at present of such union out of disunion, is that of the fallen spirits.

It is unnecessary to observe that, in a contest of this nature between an individual Baptist minister and the whole Catholic Church, the church, notwithstanding her rather formidable array of theologians and philosophers, gets decidedly the worst of the battle. And, though the author, as he tells us in his preface, “has endeavored to ‘speak the truth in love,’ ” perhaps it was only natural to find, particularly towards the end, his temper proving a little too much for his “love,” so that we must not be astonished, though “in no partisan spirit has he discussed his theme,” at meeting little phrases scattered here and there of a decidedly unlovable nature. Thus, the Holy Father is mentioned as “the bigoted Pope of Rome” who “sits cursing modern civilization and freedom, and sighing for the return of the dark ages and the inquisition”; the whole Catholic system “a diabolical imposture,” italicized; “Catholics appeal chiefly to sentiment,” “undervalue the importance of Scriptures,” “may be good Catholics, and yet profane, immoral, untruthful, and regardless of the will of God, and that millions notoriously are so.” If this be our author’s mode of asking for his views “the candid consideration of every reader of whatever religious persuasion,” we should strongly recommend him for the future to alter his tone; if it be “speaking the truth in love,” we wonder what his notions of speaking the truth in wrath would be. Catholic writers are habitually accused of intolerance in tone and controversy: we humbly submit that, when we have to encounter—as we are compelled to do every day—adversaries of this stamp, we may be reasonably pardoned for not using studious phrases with men on whom politeness is thrown away.

A year has now flown by since this “discourse was prepared and delivered under a profound conviction of the importance and timeliness of the vital truths therein set forth, and it is now given to the public with the same conviction.” As to its timeliness, we have nothing to object, it was probably meant for Baptists rather than Catholics, and with an eye to the dissensions that seem racking and threatening to rend that body at present. In fact, from its whole tone and the round rating he gives members of his community who “would give up their vantage‐ground by concealment or compromise of truth,” and his insisting on their “maintaining their Baptist attitude” (whatever that may be precisely he fails to explain), the pamphlet sounds very much like a warning‐note—like the weak cry of “No surrender!” when surrender follows immediately, like Mr. Winkle’s “all right” when Mr. Winkle felt satisfied that it was all wrong. With regard to its “importance,” notwithstanding the writer’s “conviction” on the point, we may be permitted to entertain some slight doubt. Authors are sometimes apt to overrate the importance of their productions. At all events, after a year of trial, we have heard of no very wonderful result following the launching of this pamphlet on the troubled waters of controversy. Catholics are Catholics still. The church stands precisely at its first starting‐point of some nineteen centuries ago, while the Baptists stand at theirs—a point involved still in a region of mist, and apparently rapidly dissolving into it. So that, with regard to this closing of the controversy generally, we are compelled to arrive at the painful conclusion that it has either been very greatly undervalued by the public at large, or is absolutely good for nothing.

The author proposed to himself to place the only two ideas of the church, Baptist and Catholic, which he acknowledges, in such juxtaposition, in so clear a light, that all who read must be compelled to adopt either the one or the other. In other words, be purposed ending forever all the controversies that have ever raged between church and church, in a pamphlet of forty‐two pages. And his mode of setting about it is at least original.

“I do not propose to discuss this question of ‘true church’ after the common method. I shall not raise questions of apostolic or of historic succession, of ‘legality’ or ‘validity’ or ‘regularity.’ I propose to go deeper than that into the heart of the subject.”

Now, with all due respect to the reverend author, these little items, which he finds it so convenient to throw overboard in such an arbitrary fashion, constitute, for his readers at least, the heart of the subject. He tells us that “all the Christian ages with one consent acknowledge the church to be a divine society”—human‐divine, Catholics would say—“governed by divine law, established by Jesus Christ.”

Here we have, then, according to the author’s own words, a society, established by a person, at a certain date, which has come down from that person to to‐day. Men say that it has altered from its original. Two societies claim to be the original, the Baptist and the Catholic. It lies in one or the other, not between. We want to find out which it is. In this inquiry, history is nothing, legality is nothing, succession is nothing, validity is nothing. That is not the true method of going to work to find out what this society is; whether it has ever been broken, whether it contains and carries out what Christ its founder gave it, whether its members practise to‐day what they practised at the beginning—all that is nothing. The question is “the idea which underlies it all. What then is the true idea of the church? This is the great question.”

If the author proposed to argue in this style, he should have stated at starting his definition of the true idea of the church. He should have defined the term in order to explain clearly what he was seeking. But he does nothing of the kind. In fact, he soon loses the very word “idea,” and substitutes for it in one place “view,” in another “theories.” So that after all it comes down in plain English to what is your opinion on the subject, or what is your notion about it, despite his trite “challenges of the Catholic idea of the church at the bar of reason,” and so forth.

In fact, there is just that show of shallow learning sprinkled throughout the whole pamphlet which a preacher endowed with more words than weight generally uses to a thick‐headed congregation, who take his words for wisdom from the very fact that they cannot understand them. There are the divisions and subdivisions: the 1, 2, 3, in large and small figures, and occasionally in Roman characters; the appeals to this, that, and the other; the citing of “well‐known facts” and “notorious things” without substantiating them by any references, as in p. 17. “Witness the Baptist originators of the British and Foreign Bible Society; Carey, Judson, and their successors” in support of the view that with Baptists originated the desire for the revision of the Bible. Again, speaking of Catholic doctrine: “If men leave the church, they part from grace and are lost.” _Apropos_ of which telling fact he informs us in the next sentence that “the history of Augustinianism is an instructive illustration. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, was, in many respects, what would now be termed a high Calvinist. His fervid eloquence and mental power made a deep impression upon the theology of the Catholic (not then _Roman_ Catholic) Church of the Latin world.” And that is all he says about him. As far as any evidence he furnishes to support it goes, he might just as well have substituted the name of S. Thomas Aquinas for S. Augustine, or Pius IX., or, as far as the majority of his readers know to the contrary, Tippoo Sahib. And in the very opening of the pamphlet the same shallowness is strikingly exemplified. He chooses the text, Acts ii. 47, “And the Lord added to the church daily those who are saved,” which, as he observes, reads in the version of King James, “Such as should be saved.” This text—his own rendering—“is one of those passages in which an incidental statement, as by a flash of lightning, reveals a whole body of doctrine.” In what it involves we find the true idea of the church, that is, the Baptist doctrine that we are regenerated in Christ by his death, and that baptism is, as it were, only a symbol, a sort of mark, by which we are known as belonging to the church, but not necessary for salvation, inasmuch as we are _saved_ before we receive it. He alleges, with reference to the Greek version, that “should be saved” is wrong and “are saved” is right. And there the matter rests. Now, while on this very important point, whereon indeed rests his theory, he might as well have been a little more exact and explicit. A Greek reference is such a vague thing to build on. We agree with him that “should be saved” is a wrong rendering; as “are saved” happens also to be. The verse runs: Ο δε κυριος προσετιθει τους σωζομενους καθ᾽ ημεραν τη Εκκλησια. The present participle σωζομενους means being saved; but a present participle following a verb in the imperfect or aorist tense must be rendered imperfect, and therefore the passage should run, “And the Lord added daily to the church such as _were being_ saved,” that is, such as were in the act or state of coming into the church through the merit of the death of Christ and the movements of his divine grace; a fact which throws altogether another light on the author’s fixed starting point. These things we mention to show how little trust can be placed on men who talk so loudly and pretentiously in this loose style. It shows also how very weak and treacherous is this absolute dependence on the private interpretation of the word of the Bible, whereon the Baptists stake their doctrine and salvation; and how insufficient the absolute creed which hangs for life or death on the possibly dubious rendering of a passage in a dead language.

But let us examine this doctrine, which all, whether Catholic or Anglican, Methodist or Jew, are bound to accept if they would be saved. We Catholics are asked to surrender for it the faith which we have held through the centuries of the Christian era, in defence of which we have poured out our blood so lavishly, tracing the martyr stream down through the long vista of ages, from the death on the cross to the stoning of Stephen, to the massacre of the nuns in China but yesterday. We are told to‐day that all our history, our sacraments, our doctrine, the faith on which we are built, our succession of pontiffs, the sacred orders of our priests, the church itself, which we define as the union of all the faithful under one head, which head is Jesus Christ, whose successor is the pope, are one and all “a diabolical imposture,” and that if we hope for salvation we must surrender them for the true doctrine as explained by this author.

“The Baptist holds that men receive salvation directly from Christ, and by virtue of an independent transaction with him; that a believer’s salvation is secured by a personal union with Christ; and that he is divinely commanded, after being thus saved, to unite with the church for the sake of personal profit and of usefulness; and that the church so constituted is to be governed by the law of Christ. He makes doctrine and conversion come first. Out of doctrine and out of conversion proceeds the church. And the saved man, already saved, comes into the church for training, for work,” etc.

Now, this passage is the author’s exposition of the true idea of a church, and on this everything else hangs. We may be obtuse, but we confess the exposition is somewhat misty to us; at all events, it does not captivate our intellect so completely as we would wish in a matter all‐ important—eternal salvation. We are told here that salvation is a personal matter between the individual and Christ; that there is no person or nothing intermediate. In plain English, that a man’s own conscience is his rule and guidance; that it instructs and satisfies him on all points of doctrine and conduct as a Christian. Now, it is Catholic doctrine that salvation is an entirely personal affair between the individual soul and Jesus Christ. The individual is not saved or condemned on the merits or demerits of the society, the church of which he is a member: in exactly the same way that a prisoner at the bar is held answerable to the law of the land for his wrong actions, and judged on them, and it avails him nothing to speak of the respectability of his relations, or of their evil behavior which may have partly led him into crime; such evidence may constitute to an extent extenuating circumstances, but a man is condemned finally on his own act. If the prisoner, on the verdict being given against him, pleads: But you condemn me; you do not take into consideration my relations; you tell me that all that has nothing to do with it; that I knew myself what was right and what was wrong; that, in fact, I was the best and only judge in the matter; well, I acknowledge it, I am the only judge, and if I am the only judge, and I make a mistake, you cannot punish me, there is nothing between you and my conscience. The court would respond: There is the law written plain for all men to read. The government made the law, you are judged by that. And this is precisely the Catholic doctrine of salvation. Though it be a final question between the individual soul and Jesus Christ, the law of Christ comes between them, as the law of Moses came between God and his people, and that law being made for the whole world, for the universal society of human beings, rests in the hands of the government duly constituted and appointed from that society by Jesus Christ himself, who no longer abides among us visibly, and is only known to us by faith.

Well, then, faith is enough; faith saves us, say the Baptists. If this be true, then, are the devils saved since they must have a far more vivid faith—belief in God—than the generality of human beings? If faith is enough to save a man, why not stop there? Why be baptized? Why join a church at all? “For the sake of personal profit” (a phrase apt to be misunderstood), “and of usefulness,” replies our author. After all, this idea of the church reduces itself to that of Mr. Beecher, which the author stigmatizes—a church of “expediency.” Later, on page 22, in “challenging the Catholic idea of a church at the bar of reason,” he says: “Now, in the case before us, what is the effect? Salvation.” Well, here we have it; the effect; the thing that the whole world is looking for—salvation. Why, that is everything; that is all we want, no matter how it comes. You are saved before entering the church. Then, what more is necessary? There is no need to go beyond that. Stay outside; live and let live; our safety is attained; let people wrangle as they may, there is no further fear. There is no need of a _church_ at all, of communion, and the rest, if we are saved before entering it. That is all God asks of us, to save ourselves. It is already accomplished by regeneration and faith in him. There we stop, happy and contented, without any more quarrelling with our neighbors.

Then comes the further and final question: After all, who is Christ? How do we know him? Where do we find him? When and how does he speak to us? Of course, to “regenerate persons,” it is unnecessary to put these questions: But our author proposed going deeper into the matter than the common method, and, if the world is to become Baptist, it must know why. The regenerate enjoy “a personal union” with him, says the Baptist, and know when he speaks; when the Spirit impels them. This will never do for human nature. We must have something stronger than assertion, however strong. Christians can believe and understand S. Paul, when he tells them that he was caught up into paradise, and heard secret words which it is not granted to men to utter. The great apostle excuses himself for bringing this to the knowledge of the faithful, and only mentions it as a single act in his life, and one that affected his salvation in no wise. If the Baptists hold that they are continually in the third heavens, well and good. That at least has the merit of a clear, defined ground to stand on; but they will scarcely win many converts. Who is Christ, then, with whom you have this personal union? He is the founder of the Baptist Church, our author would respond; of what is known as Christianity? That is to say, of the system or systems of religion held by all people of the present day who call themselves Christians, but among whom the Baptists only hold the true church. Then we will work backwards to the foundation of your society and the others, and see which reaches to Jesus Christ. Oh! no, says our author; that is one of the common methods; they are poor. “Read the New Testament. You will find the Baptist doctrine of salvation, and the resulting Baptist idea of the church, taught or implied on every page,(182) and you will not find a trace of the Catholic doctrine of salvation, or of the Catholic idea of the church. If you doubt, search for yourselves the Scriptures, like the noble Bereans, and see whether these things are so.”

In support of this loose, sweeping assertion, this author contorts his text into a puny quibble, which any well‐instructed child might see through at once. He says: “We do not read the priests or the apostles added sinners to the church in order to save them,” but we do read: “The _Lord_ added to the church daily those who are saved.” _Ergo_, “salvation was dealt with as a personal matter.”

If the Baptist Church rests on no better foundation than this, and if its teachers can only support its truth and doctrine on distorted meanings and texts of this description, we fear it will not hold together much longer, and we feel half inclined to apply to it a few of the “truths spoken in love” of which our author is so lavish in dealing with the Catholics. This very use of the word “Lord” is eminently Catholic. When we speak of a conversion, of a mercy gained, or a favor bestowed from heaven, though all these things happen through the hands and sometimes ministry of individuals, we always say, “The Lord did it; God Almighty wrought it; No man converted me, but the grace of God; No medicine saved my sick child, but the favor of God which accompanied its workings,” as the child answers to the first question of the catechism, Who made you? God. But for all this God works through human instruments. His priests are an ordination of his own for the government of his church, and by a worthy probation and preparation receive certain graces of God necessary for their state involved in the reception of what the church calls the sacrament of Holy Orders: a certain form to be gone through which Christ ordained for the reception of the special powers and graces conferred on that particular office, as in human governments a judge receives his insignia, a minister his portfolio, a doctor his diploma, in order to prevent everybody taking the administration of the law into his own hands, or every quack practising as he pleases. And so with the other sacraments.

But apart from appeals to texts, which we are almost weary of producing in favor of Catholic doctrine, and of the church who watched over and preserved those texts from destruction, the mutilation of which was wrought, as our author himself complains, not by us, but by the Protestants in the version of King James, and because we know that version to be mutilated, we appeal against its use in the schools which our children frequent: let us look at the broad Christian system, how it would stand as built up by this writer.

People who believe in Christ at all, and indeed all who acknowledge, as they must, Christianity to be a fact, a vast social system, existing under our eyes, looking back, see a time when it did not exist. A man came into the world at the point of time in its history which we fix upon as the beginning of the Christian era. At that time religion, speaking largely, consisted of the Hebrew and the pagan. The Hebrews were the chosen of God, and preserved the only true system which corresponds to the rational idea of the foundation and aim of humanity. This it kept to itself and did not seek to spread. Christ came, the man‐God, and founded a new order, enlarging upon the old, which was to embrace in its bosom the universe, and lead all nations back and up to God. The change contemplated was the vastest that could possibly be conceived, the union of the discordant elements of human nature in a system entirely above the capabilities of that nature. Men were to be chaste, to be humble, to love poverty, to speak no evil, to obey, to mortify themselves always, to pray always, to acknowledge the nothingness of their nature. This man, Jesus Christ, came, and, before he had converted people enough to form a single city even, was crucified, rose from his grave, and ascended into heaven, leaving twelve poor ignorant, timid men, and a few others to spread this new doctrine, this new and all‐absorbing social system, throughout the world and through all time. What did he leave to guide them in this tremendous work; a system, an order perfect in all its details, and capable of spreading with the contemplated growth of the church? or did he leave each to follow his own will and do what he could, by means of what is called personal union with himself, a being who no longer was present, visibly and palpably, before the eyes of men? As he chose men to do his work, to build up Christianity, he let them accomplish it after a human fashion, assisted by the saving fact that he would allow them never to err in the doctrines which he bade them preach: and to this end he gave them an order which was to be handed down forever: the apostleship. That was his government, and at this government was a head, Peter. And Peter, like all other human governors, at his departure handed his authority down to the next chosen to fill his place, the promise of the abiding Spirit passing to all, or the system must have broken down; and so to‐day Catholics recognize in infallibility nothing more than the apostles recognized in the decisions of Peter at Antioch. And so this author is correct in saying that the church with Catholics comes first, and not the Bible; for the church embraces the Bible, which is only the written document of the laws and ordinances of God to man, the letter of the law resting in the hands of the government which has charge of it, but that government itself subject to the law. The government existed among the Hebrews before the law was ever written. This system which we have endeavored faintly to sketch here is denied by the Baptist. He says: Christianity comes this wise: Christ came, died, and thus regenerated us. All who believed in him were saved. “The apostles preached the Gospel. Men were pierced to the heart and asked what they must do.” They must be immersed, not as a necessity, for they were saved by the fact of believing; but this act of immersion gave them the entry to the church of Christ. Then the New Testament was written, not by Christ, though inspired by him, and left in the hands of everybody to interpret the law as he pleased.

Now, we ask, can this system commend itself to the human reason as rounded and complete enough to fulfil the Christian idea of a church, which should receive and embrace the whole world in one union of religious harmony? A book thrown into the world—for so it must look to human eyes who knew nothing of its divinity—which each one was to take up and interpret as he pleased; a book subject to more or less of change in transmission from language to language, and in the absolute loss of the living tongue in which it was originally written, and the verdict of its genuineness, the verdict for or against the teachings of a living God, resting upon the dictum of a grammarian.

If Christianity hangs on this, for we have not misrepresented the writer—then we refuse to be Christian at all; for such a system does not and cannot, as he alleges, “sustain the test of sound reason, of stern experience, and of infallible Scripture, which ordeal the Baptist idea of the church endures.”

We need trouble ourselves with this writer no further. There is a great deal more in the pamphlet that might be touched on as showing the either absolute or wilful ignorance under which writers of this stamp labor when speaking of Catholics. He speaks of the Catholic doctrine with regard to sacraments in this loose way: “They are useful to infants and the dying. Men come to them for grace apart from the state of their own hearts.” Now, Catholics will perceive the utter absurdity of such a statement at once. The sacrament of baptism is necessary to infants, who of course are unconscious recipients of it, as they are unconscious of the sin in which they are born. This stain which they inherit, but do not incur by any act of their own, is washed away by the sacrament ordained by Christ, which admits them into the society of the church at the same time that their birth admits them to human society, its privileges as well as its trials. Extreme unction is administered to the dying person, even though he be unconscious, and is the most touching token of the love of the universal Mother for her children, who at the last moment will, although the dying man cannot ask it, administer the sacrament which God has ordained for that occasion, because she _knows_ that his heart desires such aid at its passage from the world. But all sacraments given to adults give grace only in proportion as the recipient receives them worthily.

“If the priest refuses to come, then the sufferer, infant or adult, must die unbaptized and unsaved.”

If this gentleman had only taken the trouble to consult a Catholic catechism, he would have been spared the trouble of putting this further absurdity into print. He would have found little children taught at school that “in a case of necessity, when a priest cannot be had, any one may baptize,” and the instructions for administering the sacrament; and furthermore, that, if a person were placed in such a position that even this means could not reach him, the very desire is sufficient, as sometimes happens in the case of sudden conversions and martyrdoms.

As for Catholicity necessitating a ritual, all religions must more or less. Do men object to the old law because of its glorious ritual? Is not the very Baptist‐act of immersion a ritual, and their singing in common? So much so that, for neglect of this observance, Baptists cut off the whole Christian body from community with them. Which is harder to believe—the Catholic doctrine which teaches that we must obey the church which we believe to be the only church of Christ, and in support of which teaching we bring forward some very substantial proofs, or this? You may interpret God’s Word as you please; that alone is sufficient; but you are not in communion with his church unless you are immersed; a fact which it is very difficult to twist out of the Scriptures.

Again, he shows his weakness in saying that “Francis Xavier, working on the Catholic idea, baptized millions of Asiatics, and believed that in so doing he had saved their souls. But the heathen remained heathen still. There is no evidence, so far as I am aware, that under his labors one solitary soul was transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.” Not one, but millions, so that Sir James Stephens, a Protestant lecturer on history in a Protestant university, calls him a saint, not only of the Catholic Church, but of the world. Colleges were founded by him, and thousands of Christians suffered martyrdom for the faith. But “Judson” is the apostle after our author’s heart. Judson “lived to see thousands of civilized and christianized disciples in that dark Burman land; and the work still goes on, self‐sustained by the power of a true hidden life.” This latter is a very saving clause; so truly hidden is the work that our author can point to no fruit resulting from it. And as for those “thousands of civilized and christianized disciples,” we took the trouble to look for them, and we regret to say, for our author’s veracity, found them all “wanting.” Judson did not succeed in converting one either in Burmah or anywhere else; and his own sufferings seem to have been reduced to the martyrdom of marrying successively three wives.

If then, as our author says, “Logically there is no middle position between the high rock ground of Baptist truth and the low marsh ground of Catholic error; all things follow their tendencies, and it is easier to go down an inclined plane than to go up,” we fear that, for all he can do to prevent them, people will follow their natural tendencies. As a last word, we would strongly recommend him, before undertaking to set a church in its true colors before the eyes of men, to consider a little whether he knows anything of the subject he is writing about, and not stultify himself by an ignorance which looks like malice, though he calls it truth spoken in love.

A Retrospect.

And it fell out, says the chronicle, that Childebert, hunting one day in the forest of Compiègne in company with his wife Ultragade, was suddenly accosted by S. Marcoul, a holy man who stood in great repute of sanctity even during his lifetime; he seized the king’s bridle, and boldly petitioned alms for his poor and his church of Nanteuil, which was in a state of shameful unrepair. While he was yet speaking, a hare, pursued by the hounds, flew to the spot and took refuge under his mantle. S. Marcoul, letting go the bridle to place his hand protectingly on the trembling refugee, the king’s horse broke away, seeing which his piqueur rushed forward, and in tone of arrogance exclaimed:

“Miserable cleric! how durst thou interrupt the king’s chase? Give back that hare, or I will strike thee for thine insolence!”

The saint, humbly unfolding his cloak, set free the hare; it bounded away, and the dogs dashed after it. But lo! they had not made three strides, when they were struck motionless, rooted to the ground as if turned to stone. The piqueur, infuriated, flew after the hare, but he had not taken many strides, when he fell fearfully wounded by a large stone that had been hurled at him, no one saw whence, and laid his head open. The huntsmen, seized with terror, fell upon their knees, and implored the holy man to forgive them and intercede for the life of their companion. S. Marcoul forgave them, and then, going towards the prostrate body of the piqueur, he touched it and prayed over it, and presently the stricken man rose up healed. Childebert, being quickly informed of the two miracles, hastened after the man of God and knelt for his blessing, and took him home that night to the shelter of the castle, and dismissed him the following day loaded with presents for his church and rich alms for his poor. So stands the legend.

A witty Frenchman once said to a sceptic who sneered at the story of Mucius Scævola: “My friend, I would not put my hand in the fire that Mucius Scævola ever put his in it, but I should be desolated not to believe it.” How much wiser was that Frenchman than the dull criticism of our XIXth century, that goes about with a broomstick sweeping away all the lovely fabrics that less prosaic ages have raised to mark their passage on the road of history—a vicious old fairy, demolishing with her Haussmann wand the storied, moss‐grown monuments of the past, giving us naught in their stead but ugly, rectangular blocks built with those stubborn bricks called facts, statistics, and such like! Why try to prove to us that François I.’s heroic _Tout est perdu fors l’honneur!_ was only the poetized essence of a rigmarole letter written not even from the field of Pavia, but from Pissighittone? Why insist that Philip Augustus never said to his barons, gathered with him round the altar, before the battle of Bouvines, “If there be one among you who feels that he is worthier than I to wear the crown of France, let him stand forth and take it”? True, Guillaume le Breton, who wrote the history of the campaign and never left Philip throughout, makes no mention of it, but what of that? The story is far too beautiful not to be true. Let us turn a deaf ear, then, to this old hag called Criticism, or deal with her and her bricks and mortar as the Senate of Berne did with a man who wrote a book to prove that William Tell never shot the apple, and, in fact, that it was doubtful whether he and the apple were not both a myth. The Senate burnt the book by the hand of the hangman publicly in the market‐place. We will deal in like manner with any profane mortal who questions the authenticity of the legend of S. Marcoul’s hare, which furnishes the first mention we find in history of the château of Compiègne.

The forest was its chief attraction to the kings of old Gaul, as it has been in later days to their successors. Clotaire I. met with an accident while hunting there in 561, and died of it; he was interred at Soissons, whither his fourteen sons accompanied him, bearing torches and singing psalms all the way. Fredegonda made the merry hunting‐lodge the scene of atrocities never surpassed even by her, fertile as she was in inventive cruelties. Her infant son fell ill of a fever at Compiègne and died, while the son of the prefect, Mumondle, who was taken ill with the same illness at the same time, recovered. The courtiers, thinking to allay the despair of the terrible mother by giving it an outlet in revenge, whispered to her certain stories that were current in the village about a witch who had sacrificed the royal infant to secure the potency of her charms in favor of the life of the other. Fredegonda caught at the bait like a tiger at the taste of blood. She scoured the country for decrepit old women, and, afraid of missing the right one, caused the entire lot to be seized and put to death before her eyes. The details of the tortures inflicted on them by the ruthless mother are too terrible to be described.

Clotaire II. lived many years at Compiègne, much beloved for his gentle and benevolent disposition, but nothing particular marks that period. King Dagobert made it likewise his principal residence, and enriched the surrounding country with many fine churches and noble monasteries. The most celebrated of these was the Abbey of S. Ouen’s Cross. The king was out hunting, one hot summer’s day in the year of grace 631, and emerging from the forest to the open road, he suddenly saw before him a gigantic cross of snow. Marvelling much at the unseasonable apparition, he sent for S. Ouen, who dwelt in the wood hard by, and bade him interpret its meaning to him. The saint replied that he saw in the sign a command to the king to build a church on the site of the miraculous cross. No sooner had he said this, than the cross began to melt, and presently vanished like a shadow. Dagobert at once set about obeying the mandate uttered in the peaceful symbol, and raised on the road from Compiègne to Verberie the stately pile called the Abbaye de la Croix de S. Ouen.

Many other foundations followed, but no event of note took place at Compiègne till Louis le Debonnaire appeared on the scene in 757—unless, indeed, we may record as such the arrival there of the first organ ever seen in France. It was sent as a present to Pepin by the Emperor Constantine, and the first time it was played a woman is said to have swooned, and awoke only to die. Louis le Debonnaire lived chiefly at Verberie, the magnificent palace of Charlemagne, a right royal abode, befitting the greatest monarch of France. Bronze, and marble, and precious stones, and stained glass, and all costly and beautiful materials were lavished with oriental prodigality on this wonderful Verberie, whose colossal towers and frowning battlements and elaborately wrought gates and gables were the marvel of the age and the theme of many a troubadour’s song. But what monument built by the hand of man can withstand the ravages of man’s ruthless passions? The palace of the Gallic Cæsar was not proof against the successive wars and sieges that battered its massive walls, till not even a vestige of the wonderful pile remains to mark where it stood.

The sons of Louis le Debonnaire, Louis, Pepin, and Lothair, rebelled against their father; Lothair got possession of his person, stripped him of all the ornaments of royalty, clothed him in sackcloth, and in this unseemly plight exhibited the old king to the insults and mockeries of the people. After this he compelled him to lay his sword upon the altar, and sign his abdication in favor of the unnatural son, who presided in cold‐ blooded triumph at the impious ceremony. As soon as this was done he sent his father, bound hand and foot, to Compiègne, where he was kept a close prisoner. Lothair’s brothers, however, hearing of this, were moved to indignation, and, stimulated perhaps not a little by jealousy of the successful rival who had started with them, but secured all the winnings for himself, they set out for Compiègne, stormed the fortress, and set free the king. But the unhappy father was not to enjoy long the freedom he owed to these filial deliverers. Louis again rose up in arms against him, and the king was forced to take the field once more in defence of his crown; he fell fighting against his three sons on the frontiers of the Rhine, and expired with words of mercy and forgiveness on his lips.

In 866, Charles the Bald held a splendid court at Compiègne to receive the ambassadors whom he had sent on a mission to Mahomet at Cordova, and who returned laden with costly presents from the Turkish prince to their master. Charles did a great deal to improve Compiègne; the old château of Clovis, which was no better than a hunting‐lodge grown into a fortress, he threw down and rebuilt, not on its old site, in the centre of the town, but on the banks of the Oise. Louis III. and Charles the Simple spent the greater part of their respective reigns at Compiègne, and added to the number of its institutions—primitive enough some of them—for the instruction of the people. “Good King Robert” comes next in the progress of royal tenants (1017): his name was long a household word among the people to whom his goodness and liberality had endeared him. One day at a banquet, where he was dispensing food to a multitude of poor and rich, a robber stole unobserved close up to him, and, under pretence of doing homage to the king, clung to his knees, and began diligently cutting away the gold fringe of his cloak. Robert let him go on till he was about halfway round, and then, stooping down, he whispered discreetly: “Go, now, my friend, and leave the rest for some other poor fellow.” Like many another wise and good man, Robert was harassed by his wife; she was a hard and haughty woman, who, while professing great love for him, made his home wretched to him by her quarrels and her domineering temper. The people knew it, and hated Constance; but, like the king, they bore it rather than quarrel with the shrew. “Let us have peace, though it cost a little high!” the henpecked husband was for ever repeating; and his people seemed to have been of one mind with him, for Constance ruled both him and them with her rod of nettles to the end, and had her own way in everything.

Philip II.’s occupation of Compiègne, which in those days of simple faith, when religious fervor ran high, had a significance that can hardly be appreciated in our own chill twilight days, so slow to see beyond the material world, so reluctant to recognize the supernatural as an aim or a motive power in the great movements that enlist men’s energies and direct them, changing the face of nations. This was the translation of the holy winding‐sheet from the casket of carved ivory—in which it had been given to Charlemagne, along with many other relics of the same date,(183) by Constantine II. and the King of Persia, as a reward for his services in expelling the Saracens from the Holy Land—into a reliquary of pure gold, inlaid with jewels. The holy shroud, when it was taken by Charles the Bald to the Abbey of S. Corneille at Compiègne, is thus described in the _procès‐verbal_ of the translation, given at full length in the _Grandes Chroniques_: “It was a cloth so ancient that one could with difficulty discern the original quality of the stuff, being two yards (_aunes_) in length and a little more than one yard in width.... The liquors and aromatic ointments used in the embalmment had rendered it thicker than ordinary linen, and prevent one from discerning the color of the stuff, esteemed by the greater number of the spectators to be of pure flax, woven after the manner of the cloth of Damascus.” There are old pictures still extant, representing Charles amidst a vast concourse of prelates and nobles, accompanying the relic with prayer and solemn ceremonial.

In 1093, Matilda of England, on rising from an illness which had been considered mortal, sent as a thank‐offering for her recovery a costly shrine of gold and precious stones to Philip II., with a request that the holy shroud might be placed in it. Philip, in a charter drawn up and signed by himself, thus testifies to the gift and the translation: “It has pleased us to place in a shrine (_chasse_) of gold, enriched with precious stones, and given to this church by the Queen of England, the relics of our Saviour; we have beheld this cloth (_linge_), in which the body of our Lord reposed, and which we call shroud (_suaire_), according to the holy evangelist, and which has been withdrawn from the ivory vase.” We cannot realize, we say, how an event like this would stir the hearts of men in those days. Peter the Hermit was preaching the first crusade; his burning eloquence, like a lever, uplifting the arm of Christendom, and compelling every man who could draw a sword to shoulder the cross and go forth to fight and die for the deliverance of the tomb, where for three days their Lord had lain wrapped in this winding‐sheet. The union of mystical devotion and enthusiastic service which characterized the crusaders was fed by every circumstance that tended to embody to their senses those mysteries which had their birth in that remote eastern land towards which they were hastening, and the transfer of this sacred memento of the Passion from its simple ivory casket to a sumptuous one of gold and gems, the offering of a powerful sovereign, occurring at such a moment, was calculated to arouse a more than ordinary interest. They hailed the honors so apportioned paid to the holy shroud as a symbol and a promise; their faith, already quickened by the renunciation of all that made life dear, home, kindred, nay, life itself, for the deliverance of the Sepulchre, was stimulated to more heroic sacrifice; their hope was intensified to prophecy, by what appeared like a typical coincidence, a manifestation of divine approval that must ensure beyond all doubt the success of their enterprise. We should not be astonished, then, at the paramount importance assigned by the historians of that time to this event, but recognize therein the sign of our own condemnation, and of a spirit that is no longer of our day, but belongs, like those glorious relics, to a bright and glowing past.(184)

Philip’s son, Louis le Gros, like his father, lived principally at Compiègne; while he was away carrying on the second crusade, his incomparable minister, Suger, took up his abode there, and, dividing his time between prayer and the business of the state, governed wisely during the king’s absence.

When another crusading hero, Philip Augustus, offered his hand and his crown to the fair Agnes de Méranie, destined to expiate in tears and exile the ill‐fated love of the king and her own short‐lived happiness, it was at Compiègne that he presented her to the court and the people; it was here that amidst pomp and popular rejoicing the marriage was celebrated.

But the most curious episode in the whole range of the annals of Compiègne is perhaps that of a claimant whose story opens at this date. Baldwin IX., Count of Flanders and Hainaut, usually called Baldwin of Constantinople, before starting for the Holy Land came to Compiègne to swear fealty to the King of France, who invested him with knighthood on the same day that Agnes, like a softly shining star of peace and love, rose upon the troubled horizon of the kingdom. At Constantinople Baldwin was proclaimed emperor, and solemnly crowned by the pope’s legate at S. Sophia (1204). He immediately sent off his crown of gold to his beloved young wife, Marie de Champagne, desiring her to hasten to rejoin him, and share his new‐found honors. The countess obeyed the command and set sail for Constantinople, but, overcome by the unexpected news of her husband’s election to the throne, she died upon the journey. Baldwin’s grief was inconsolable; he laid her to rest in S. Sophia, the scene of his recent honors, and swore upon her tomb never to marry again, but to devote himself henceforth to the sole business of war: he kept his vow, and began that series of brilliant feats which culminated in his triumphant entry to Adrianople. Such was the fame of his prowess that powerful chiefs trembled at his very name: Joanice, the formidable king of the Bulgarians, sent a message to “the great French warrior,” humbly praying for his friendship. But the warrior mistrusted these overtures, and haughtily repulsed them. Whereupon Joanice, full of wrath, vowed vengeance, and in due time kept his vow. He raised an army, made war on Baldwin, whom he took prisoner after a fearful slaughter of his army at the battle of Adrianople. When the news of the disaster reached Flanders, Henri of Hainaut, brother of Baldwin, was at once proclaimed regent; he continued the war against Joanice, but without success, nor could he by bribes, concessions, or threats obtain the emperor’s release; Joanice would not even vouchsafe to reply to any of his overtures on the subject. All else failing, the pope interfered, and besought the conqueror not to sully his triumph by revenge, worthy only of a savage, but to treat magnanimously, or at least according to the rules of civilized warfare, for the ransom of his captive. To this appeal Joanice condescended to reply that, alas! it was no longer in his power, or any man’s, to comply with the desires of his holiness. The answer was taken for an announcement of Baldwin’s death, and universally accepted as such. Stories soon began to eke out concerning the horrible tortures practised on the unfortunate prince by his cruel captor; some accredited eye‐witness declared that he had been barbarously mutilated, his hands and arms cut off, and in this state thrown to the wild beasts, his skull being afterwards made into a drinking‐cup for the brutal Joanice, who had stood by gloating over the spectacle of his victim’s agony. Years went by and nothing transpired to throw the least doubt on the fact of Baldwin’s death, though the accounts as to the manner of it were somewhat conflicting. Henri of Hainaut was proclaimed sovereign of Flanders; after reigning ten years he died, and was succeeded by Jeanne, eldest daughter of Baldwin. She was not long in possession of the throne when the report was bruited about that her father was alive; he had been seen by some pilgrims journeying through Servia, who having lost their way in the forest of Glaucon came upon the grotto of a hermit, and were taken in and restored by him and sheltered for the night. This hermit, they recognized as their former prince, Baldwin; he was much altered by suffering, and his long white beard and uncouth garb were calculated to disguise him from any eyes but such as had known him well, but the pilgrims recognized him at once; they, however, discreetly forebore announcing the fact till they brought other witnesses to corroborate their own assurance. They returned soon with several trustworthy persons who had known Baldwin too well to mistake his identity after any lapse of years, and these declared unhesitatingly that the hermit was no other than the hero of Adrianople.

Baldwin, finding his secret discovered, fled to a distant and more inaccessible part of the forest; he was tracked thither, and again fled; but the pursuers finally got possession of him, and dragged him by main force into the neighboring town; the people flocked eagerly to see him, and with one voice they proclaimed him their long‐lost Baldwin, welcoming him with joyful acclamations as a father returned from the dead. Whether this popular welcome merely emboldened the real Baldwin to confess his identity and, as a necessary consequence, claim his rights, or whether it suggested to the false one the idea of simulating the person whom he resembled and was taken for, it is impossible to say, but at any rate from this period we no longer see him dragged, but marching forth, of his own free‐will, from town to town, and surrounded by all the paraphernalia of an injured claimant. His march was not, however, one of unbroken triumph; the town of Flanders refused to believe in him, and indignantly scouted himself and his followers as a band of impostors. The daughters of the dead man, Jeanne and Marguerite, refused to believe in him, and denounced him as a malefactor whose aim was to stir up disorder in the state for his own ambitious purposes. But Jeanne’s government was odious to the people; to escape from her harsh and cruel rule they would have willingly adopted any claimant who came with a fair show of right to enlist their credulity. Jeanne knew this, and at once took strong measures to put down the movement. It proved more difficult than she anticipated. Before many months the country was in a blaze, divided into two camps, one of believers, the other disbelievers, but both ready to devour each other to prove and disprove their special theories. A witness whose testimony went hard against the claimant was that of the old bailiff of Quesnoy; he had known Baldwin from a child, and mourned over him like a father, and, when he now appeared at the castle gates and demanded admittance, the old man refused to open to him, and vowed solemnly that he was not his master, but a base impostor. The conduct of this stubborn sceptic drew forth a pathetic appeal from the claimant. “I find,” he says, “more cruel enemies in my own house than in the land of strangers. Flanders, my mother, dost thou repulse thy son whom Greece and Macedonia received with open arms! I escaped from Adrianople through the carelessness of my guards; I fell into the hands of barbarians, who dragged me to the distant plains of Asia; there, like a vile slave, I, who had wielded the sceptre, was condemned to dig the earth; I dug until some German merchants, to whom I confided my story, ransomed me, and sent me back to my country, and lo! I arrive and show myself, and you repulse me! My daughter Jeanne refuses to own me in order not to resign her rank and subside into the subject of a court!” Unmoved by this touching denunciation, Jeanne persisted in disowning him, but, failing to prove her case, she referred it to Louis VII. of France. Louis, much interested in the extraordinary story, willingly undertook the arbitration. The claimant, on his side, testified great satisfaction on hearing that his fate was placed in the hands of a wise and powerful monarch, who was sure to prove a just and discerning judge; he set out in high spirits to Compiègne, where the king was then residing. Attired in the violet robes of a hermit, and bearing a white wand in his hand, he entered the august assembly with a countenance full of unblushing assurance, saluted the King of France with an air of proud equality, and noticed the barons and knights by a courtly inclination of the head. Louis, who had carefully studied the case, conducted the examination himself; he put many subtle and perplexing questions to the supposed Baldwin concerning events which had passed in his youth, and which it was thought impossible he could have learned from any one he had seen since his return, and the claimant answered accurately with an assurance that carried conviction with it. The examination lasted several hours, and, the closer it pressed him, the more triumphantly it established his identity. The witnesses who boasted of being able to confound the imposture in the twinkling of an eye were themselves confounded; they withdrew covered with confusion, and vowing inwardly that “this man was sold to the devil,” as only the father of lies could have told him so many hidden things, and borne him to success through such a quagmire of difficulties. There was, indeed, much conflicting evidence forthcoming. Henri, his brother, was dead, but the Dukes of Brabant and Limbourg, cousins and contemporaries of Baldwin’s, swore that the claimant was the real man; on the other hand, sixteen knights of unimpeachable honor swore to having seen the real man dead on the field of Adrianople. The king, after hearing with great patience, and weighing most impartially what was said on both sides, declared in favor of the claimant. The excitement was indescribable when he rose to pronounce the verdict; but at this point the Bishop of Beauvais stepped from his seat, and, holding up his right hand, adjured Louis to suspend for one moment the final words while he put a few short questions to the hermit. The king consented; a deathlike silence fell upon the assembly, and the bishop, going close up to the hermit, who was seated on a chair in the centre of the great hall, addressed him thus in a loud voice:

“Answer me three questions: 1st, In what place did you render homage to King Philip Augustus? 2d, By whom were you invested with the order of knighthood? 3d, Where did you marry Marie de Champagne?”

The claimant stammered, grew pale, and, after a vain attempt to fence with the questions, broke down. Extraordinary as it may seem, he had never given a thought to these prominent events in the life of Baldwin of Constantinople, or foreseen that he would be questioned concerning them. The enthusiastic sympathy of the court was changed in an instant to rage and scorn. Sentence of death was pronounced on the hermit of Glaucon on a charge of high treason, conspiring, fraud, perjury, and the long list of iniquities that make up the sum of a claimant’s budget. But having thus far acquitted himself of his office, the king handed over the criminal to Jeanne to be dealt with as she thought fit. In those rough and ready days there were no back‐stairs for a plucky claimant to escape by, no counsel to save him with a nonsuit, or such like modern convenience; the make‐ believe Baldwin was without more ado hung up between two dogs on the market‐place of Flanders. Some chroniclers throw uncomfortable doubts on the justice of the execution; a few maintain that this was the true man, and anathematize Jeanne as a parricide who sacrificed her own father to the love of power. Père Cahour, who is certainly a conscientious writer, speaks of her, on the other hand, as a just and upright woman, utterly incapable of so diabolical a crime, and stoutly vindicates the evidence of the sixteen knights, though how he adapts it to the belief in Baldwin’s capture by Joanice, which appears to have been general after the battle of Adrianople, it is difficult to see. The _Chronique de Meyer_, again, denounces Jeanne as an execrable monster, and declares that the man who was hanged was the real Baldwin. Clearly claimants have been always a troublesome race to deal with; even hanging does not seem to make an end of them, for their claims outlive them, and leave to historians a legacy of doubt and discord that is exceedingly difficult to settle.

The passage of S. Louis at Compiègne is marked by an event characteristic of him and of his time. He had ransomed from the Venetians at at an enormous price the crown of thorns of our Saviour. To do it public honor he carried it bare‐headed and bare‐footed from the wood of Vincennes to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and thence to the Sainte Chapelle, that gemlike little shrine which had been raised expressly to receive the priceless relic, and whose beauty is invested with a fresh interest since it escaped the fire of the Communists; the Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice were burning so close to it that the flames might have licked its walls, yet not even one of its wonderful stained‐glass windows was injured.

Other monuments S. Louis left behind him, not built of stone or precious metals, but which have nevertheless endured and come down to us unimpaired by the lapse of ages, while houses and castles of stony granite have crumbled away, leaving no record on the hearts of men. Compiègne in the days of the saintly king was the refuge of God’s poor, of the sick and the sorrowing; S. Louis gave up to them all the rooms he could spare from his household, and devoted to tending and serving them with his own hands what time he could steal from the affairs of state.

To Be Continued.

The Russian Clergy.

We have heard nothing new of late about the project of certain zealous Anglicans and members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States to establish communion between their churches and the schismatic Oriental Christians in the empire of Russia. It seemed fitting enough at first glance that the special variety of Christianity introduced by Henry VIII. should agree with the methods of ecclesiastical discipline prescribed by an equally autocratic sovereign at the opposite extremity of Europe; and there were, of course, abundant reasons why the Anglicans and their American descendants should covet a recognition from a branch of the church which, whatever its corruptions and irregularities, can at least make good its connection with the parent stem. Our readers have not forgotten, however, how coldly the overtures of these ambitious Protestants were received. The Russian clergy ridiculed the hierarchical pretensions of their English and American friends. They denied their apostolical succession. They questioned their right to call themselves churchmen at all; and, in short, looked upon them as no better than heretics, and not very consistent heretics either. The movement for union was a foolish one, begun in utter misconception of the radical differences between the two parties, and sure from the first to end in discomfiture and irritation.

Indeed, it was even more foolish than most of us still suppose. Not only was it impossible for the Russian Church to make the concessions required of it, but there is no reason to believe that the Episcopalians would have been very well satisfied with their new brethren had the alliance been effected. The Russian Church is an organization which stands far apart from every other in the world, presenting some monstrous features which even Protestantism cannot parallel. The Jesuit Father Gagarin has published a very curious work on the condition and prospects of the Russian clergy,(185) which would perhaps have modified the zeal of the English and American petitioners for union and recognition if they could have read it before making their recent overtures. We see here the rottenness and uselessness into which a national church falls when it is cut off from the centre of Christian unity and the source of Christian life.

The Russian priests are divided into two classes, the white and the black clergy, or seculars and monks. The great difference between them is, the white clergy are married, and the black are celibates. Whatever learning there is in the ecclesiastical order is found among the monks. The bishops are always chosen from the monastic class; and the two classes hate each other with remarkable heartiness. The marriage of priests is an old custom in the East, which antedates the organization of the Russian schism. It prevails in some of the united Oriental churches to this day. But in Russia it exists in a peculiarly aggravated form. Peter I. and his successors, by a multitude of despotic ukases, succeeded in erecting the white clergy into a strict caste, making the clerical profession practically hereditary, and marriage a necessary condition of the secular clerical state. The candidate for orders has his choice between matrimony and the monastery; one of the two he must embrace before he can be ordained.

The rule seems to have originated in an attempt to improve the education of the white clergy. The deplorable ignorance of the order led the government to establish ecclesiastical schools. But the schools remained deserted. The clergy were then _ordered_ to send their children to them, and sometimes the pupils were arrested by the police and taken to school in chains. The Czar Alexander I. ordered, in 1808 and 1814, that all clerks’ children between six and eight years of age should be at the disposal of the ecclesiastical schools; and, that there might be no lack of children, the candidate for the priesthood was compelled to take a wife before he could take orders. Once in the seminary, the scholar has no prospect before him except an ecclesiastical life. He cannot embrace any other career without special permission, which is almost invariably refused. At the same time, the seminaries are closed against all except the sons of the clergy. The son of a nobleman, a merchant, a citizen, a peasant, who wanted to enter, would meet with insurmountable obstacles, unless he chose to become a monk.

Thus the paternal government of the czar secures first an unfailing supply of pastors for the Russian Church, which otherwise might be insufficiently served; and, secondly, a career for the children of the clergy, free from the competition of outside candidates. And, indeed, the priests might very well say: Since you compel us to marry, you are bound, at least, to furnish a support for our offspring. But the system does not stop here. What shall be done with the priests’ daughters? In the degraded condition of the Russian Church, where the white clergy or popes are popularly ranked lower in the social scale than petty shopkeepers or noblemen’s servants, these young women could not expect to find husbands except among the peasantry, and they might not readily find them there. The obvious course is to make them marry in their own order. The seminarian, therefore, by a further regulation of the paternal government, is not only obliged to marry, whether he will or no, but he must marry a priest’s daughter, and some bishops are so careful of the welfare of their subjects that they will not suffer a clerk to marry out of his own diocese. Special schools are established for these daughters of the church; and we could imagine a curious course of instruction at such institutions, if the Russian ecclesiastical schools really attempted to fit their pupils for the life before them; but, as we shall see further on, they do nothing of the kind.

Sometimes it happens that a priest has built a house on land belonging to the church. He dies, leaving a son or a daughter. His successor in the parish has a right to the use of the land, but what shall be done with the house? The law solves this difficulty by providing that the living shall either be saved for the son (who may be a babe in arms), or given to any young Levite who will marry the daughter. Thus the clerical caste is made in every way as compact and comfortable as possible, and, for a man of mean extraction, moderate ambition, and small learning, becomes a tolerable, if not a brilliant career.

The clergy of a fully supplied parish consists of a priest, a deacon, and two clerics, who perform the duties of lector, sacristan, beadle, bell‐ ringer, etc. The deacon has little to do, except to share on Sunday in the recitation of the liturgy, which, being inordinately long, is sometimes divided into sections and read or chanted by several persons concurrently, each going at the top of his speed. The clerks of the lower ranks, however, may pursue a trade, but they are all enrolled in the same caste, out of which they must not marry. The number of parish priests in Russia is about 36,000; of deacons, 12,444; of inferior clerics, 63,421. One‐half the revenue of the parish belongs to the priest, one‐quarter to the deacon, and one‐eighth to each of the two clerics. The prizes of the profession are the chaplaincies to schools, colleges, prisons, hospitals, in the army, in the navy, about the court, etc., most of which are liberally paid. The parochial clergy are supported by: 1. Property belonging to the parish, chiefly in the towns, yielding about $500,000 per annum; 2. A government allowance of $3,000,000 per annum; 3. About $20,000,000 per annum contributed by parishioners; 4. Perpetual foundations, with obligation to pray for the departed, invested in government funds at four per cent., say $1,075,000. The average income of a priest is thus about $341. In addition to this, however, each parish has a glebe, of which the usufruct belongs to the clergy. The minimum extent of this church domain is about eighty acres, and it is divided after the same rule as the revenues, namely, one‐half to the priest, one‐quarter to the deacon, and the remainder to the inferior clerks. When there is no deacon, the priest’s share is, of course, proportionately larger. In many parishes, the glebe is much more extensive than eighty acres. In Central Russia, it amounts sometimes to 250, 500, even 2,500 acres; and, in those fertile provinces known as the Black Lands, the share of the priest alone is sometimes as much as 150 acres. At St. Petersburg, the church provides the parish priest a comfortable and elegant home. “The furniture is from the first shops in Petersburg. Rich carpets cover the floors of the drawing‐room, study, and chamber; the windows display fine hangings; the walls, valuable pictures. Footmen in livery are not rarely seen in the anteroom. The dinners given by these curés are highly appreciated by the most delicate epicures. Occasionally their salons are open for a soirée or a ball; ordinarily it is on the occasion of a wedding, or the birthday of the curé, or on the patron saint’s day. The apartments are then magnificently lighted up; the toilettes of the ladies dazzling; the dancing is to the music of an orchestra of from seven to ten musicians. At supper the table is spread with delicacies, and champagne flows in streams. A Petersburg curé, recently deceased, loved to relate that at his daughter’s nuptials champagne was drunk to the value of 300 roubles (£48).”

Considering the education and social standing of a Russian priest, this is not bad. In the rural districts there is much less clerical luxury; there is even a great deal of poverty and hardship. But we must not forget that the rustic clergy is but a little higher in culture than the rudest of the peasantry, and a life which would seem intolerable to an American laborer is elysium to a Russian hind. Most, even of country priests, have comfortable houses, well furnished with mahogany and walnut; and, though they do not eat meat every day that the church allows it, they have their balls and dancing parties, at which their daughters dance with the young men from the neighboring theological seminaries. The wives and daughters of the reverend gentlemen, to be sure, have to labor sometimes in the fields; but “they are dressed by the milliner of the place; you will always see them attired with elegance; they do not discard crinoline, and never go out without a parasol”—except, of course, when they are going to hoe corn and dig potatoes.

The voluntary contributions of the parishioners are collected, or enforced, in a variety of ways, and paid in a variety of forms. Towards the feast of S. Peter each house gives from three to five eggs and a little milk. After the harvest, each house gives a certain quantity of wheat. When a child is born, the priest is called in to say a few prayers over the mother, and give a name to the baby; the fee for this is a loaf and from 4 to 8 cents. Baptism brings from 8 to 24 cents more. For a second visitation and prayers at the end of six weeks there is a fee of a dozen eggs. At betrothals the priest gets a loaf, some brandy, and sometimes a goose or a sucking‐pig. For a marriage he is paid from $1 60 to $3 20; for a burial, from 80 cents to $1 60; for a Mass for the dead, from 28 to 64 cents; for prayers for the dead, which are often repeated, 4 or 8 cents each time; for prayers read at the cemetery on certain days every year, some rice, a cake, or some pastry. The peasants often have a Te Deum chanted either on birthday or name‐day, or to obtain some special favor; the fee for that is from 8 to 16 cents. The penitent always pays something when he receives absolution; but as confession is not frequent in the Russian Church, the income from this source must be small. In the towns the fee is often as high as $1, $2, $4, and even more. Among the peasantry it sometimes does not exceed a kopec (one cent); but if the penitent wishes to receive communion, he must renew his offering several times. At Easter, Christmas, the Epiphany, the beginning and end of Lent, and on the patron saint’s day, which sometimes occurs two or three times a year, it is customary to have prayers chanted in every house in the parish, for which the charge varies in the rural districts from 4 cents to 60 cents each visit, according to the importance of the occasion. In the large cities the fees are much more considerable. Father Gagarin cites the case of a parishioner in St. Petersburg to whom the clergy presented themselves in this manner twenty‐seven times in a single year, and at each call he had to give them something. This, however, was an exception. Generally the visits are only fifteen a year. “Sometimes it happens,” continues our author, “that the peasant cannot or will not give what the priest asks. Hence arise angry disputes. One priest—so runs the story—unable to overcome the obstinacy of a peasant refusing to pay for the prayers read in his house, declared that he would reverse them. He had just before chanted, ‘_Benedictus Deus noster_’; he now intoned, ‘NON _Benedictus_, NON _Deus_, NON _noster_’ thus intercalating a _non_ before each word. The affrighted peasant, the chronicle says, instantly complied. Often enough, too, in spite of all the prohibitions of the synod, the wives and children of the priests, deacons, and clerks accompany their husbands and fathers, and stretch out _their_ hands also. The worst of all this is that the Russian peasant, while long disputing merely about a few centimes, will think himself insulted unless the priest accept a glass of brandy. And when the circuit of all the houses in the village has to be made, though he stay only a few minutes in each, this last gift is not without its inconveniences.” It must be an edifying round certainly. But then the reverend gentleman has a wife to help him home.

The black clergy is not in a much better condition than the white. All the monasteries are supposed to be under the rule of S. Basil; but they are not united in congregations, each establishment being independent of all the rest. Most of them do not observe the great religious rule of poverty and community of goods, but each monk has own purse, and the superiors are often wealthy. One hundred years ago, the number of convents, not reckoning those in Little and White Russia, was 954. The ukase of Catharine II., which confiscated the property of the clergy, suppressed all but 400. Since then the number has increased.

The great increase in the number of monks between 1836 and 1838 is accounted for by the forcible incorporation of the United Greeks. This was not formally effected until 1839, but the United Greeks were reckoned as part of the Russian Church in 1838, and many of their monks were transferred from their own to the non‐united monasteries earlier than that. It will be seen, however, that the increase thus obtained was not permanent.

The curious discrepancy between the number of monks and the number of nuns has an equally curious explanation. Women are forbidden, by a decree of Peter the Great, to take the vows under forty years of age. Hence the convents are crowded with postulants who must wait sometimes twenty years before they can take the veil. Some persevere, some return to the world, and many continue to live in the convent without becoming professed. If we reckon the whole population of the convents—monks, nuns, novices, and aspirants—we shall find the number of the two sexes more nearly agree.

It is interesting to see from which classes of society these monks and nuns are drawn. F. Gagarin distinguishes five classes: I. The clergy, including priests, deacons, and clerks, with their wives and children; II. The nobility, embracing not only the titled nobility, but government functionaries and members of the learned professions; III. The urban population, comprising merchants, artisans, citizens, etc.; IV. The rural population, consisting of peasants of all conditions; V. The military. The monks are recruited from these five classes in the following ratio:

Clergy: 54.3 per cent. Urban population: 22.3 " Rural population: 16.3 " Military: 3.4 " Nobility: 3 "

The immense preponderance of the clerical element is owing primarily, of course, to the regulation of caste, which virtually compels the children of the clergy to follow the profession of their fathers. For the ambitious, the monastery alone offers an alluring prospect, since it is from the black clergy that the bishops are taken. The religious calling, therefore, in Russia is not so much a vocation as a career. If there were really an unselfish devout tendency towards the monastic life among the children of the clergy, we should expect to find it stronger with the daughters than with the sons. But the case is far otherwise. There are no bishoprics for the women; their career is to marry priests, go with them from house to house collecting alms, and help them home when they have taken too much brandy. Hence we find the following ratio among the population of the nunneries:

Urban population: 38.8 per cent. Rural population: 31 " Clergy: 13 " Nobility: 12 " Military: 4 "

The number of recruits supplied to monasteries by the clerical profession averages 140 a year. These comprise a curious variety of persons. First, there are priests or deacons who have committed grave crimes; they are sentenced to the convent, as lay convicts are sentenced to the galleys. Next there are seminarists who have failed in their studies; if they quit the ranks of the clergy altogether, they are forced into the army; if they remain among the white clergy, they have no prospect of becoming anything better than sacristans or beadles; by entering a convent they will at least live more comfortably and may aspire to become deacons or priests. Then there are deacons and priests who have lost their wives; they cannot marry again; the Russian government hesitates to entrust a parish to a wifeless priest; the wife indeed, as we have just seen, has some very important functions to perform in the administration of parochial rites; so the unfortunate widower is not only advised but sometimes compelled to go to a convent. Again, there are seminarists who after completing their studies act as professors for some time before they are ordained. Suppose such a man has been married and his wife dies. He cannot be ordained if he marry again. He cannot be ordained a secular priest without a wife. He must either go to the convent or seek some career outside the clerical profession, and that, as we have seen, it is almost impossible to find. Ambition draws many to the monastery. A student of any one of the four great academies of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kasan, and Kieff, who embraces the monastic life during his academical course, is morally certain on quitting the academy of being named inspector or prefect of studies in a seminary; at the end of a few years he becomes rector; and if he do not impede his own advancement he can hardly fail to be a bishop after a while. Still there is difficulty in obtaining from the academies a sufficient number of educated monks, and according to F. Gagarin some extraordinary devices are resorted to in order to supply the demand. When persuasion has failed, the student whom the convent wishes to capture is invited to pass the evening with one of the monks. Brandy is produced and it is not difficult to make the young man drunk. While he is insensible the ceremony of taking the habit and receiving the tonsure is performed on him, and he is then put to bed. When he awakes, he finds by his side, instead of the lay garments he wore the night before, a monastic gown. All resistance is useless. He is told that what is done cannot be undone, and after a while he submits angrily to his fate. This at any rate was the method of impressment into the religious state adopted fifty years ago. Now, says our author, it is unnecessary, inasmuch as a shorter way has been found of reaching the same result. The students of the academies (these are students of theology, be it remembered—equivalent to our seminarians) are in the habit of frequenting public‐houses and getting drunk. They are carried home on hand‐barrows, and this proceeding is known as the “Translation of the Relics.” When a young man has been fixed upon as a desirable recruit for the monastery, the superior has only to watch until he is brought home on a barrow; the next morning, while his head and his stomach are rebuking him, he is informed that he has been expelled for his disgraceful conduct; but, if he will give a proof of his sincere repentance by making a written request to be received as a monk, he may be forgiven.

There is no novitiate in the Russian convents. The neophyte makes his vows at once—provided he has reached the age prescribed by the law—and instances are not wanting of monks who have even attained the episcopate without ever having lived in a convent. According to the Russian law, academy pupils may make the religious profession at 25; other men at 30. It often happens that a youth has finished his studies before reaching 25; in that case, instead of applying for a dispensation, he makes a false statement of his age. Others who fail at their books wait for their thirtieth year, and are placed meanwhile each one under the care of some monk, who is supposed to form him for the monastic state. But he receives no religious training. He does not learn to pray, to meditate, to examine his conscience. He waits upon his master; he joins in the long service in the church; and the rest of the time he spends in amusement within or without the convent. His pleasures are not always of the most edifying character, and his excursions are not confined to the day.

What sort of monks can be formed by such training? The asceticism prescribed by S. Basil is rarely observed. Meat is forbidden, but it is a common dish on the convent tables. Drunkenness is so prevalent that it hardly causes surprise. “After that,” says our author, “one can imagine what becomes of the vow of chastity.” There is, as we have already said, no pretence of observing holy poverty. Every monk has a certain share of the convent revenues, proportioned to his rank, and this share is sometimes large. The average income of the black clergy is not easily ascertained. There are two sorts of convents—those which receive aid from the state, as compensation for confiscated estates, and those which depend entirely upon private resources. Those of the first kind are divided into monasteries of the first, second, and third classes, receiving from the government respectively 2,000, 1,600, and 670 roubles a year ($1,680, $1,344, $563). There are 278 of these convents, receiving 259,200 roubles, or about $217,728 from this source. In former years, each convent was entitled to the compulsory services of a certain number of peasants. Since the emancipation of the serfs the government has commuted this privilege by paying an annual sum of 307,850 silver roubles, or $258,594. Endowments with an obligation to pray for the departed yield in addition $2,150,400 to white and black clergy together. Let us suppose that the monks get one‐ half; that would be $1,075,200 per annum. Then the convents possess large properties in arable lands, woodlands, meadows, fisheries, mills, etc. One convent is mentioned which has derived an income of $10,000 merely from the resin collected in its forests. The greater part of the revenues, however, are derived from the voluntary contributions of the people. These seem to be enormous. Russians prefer to be buried within the precincts of the monasteries, and the monks not only ask an exorbitant price for the grave, but make the deceased a permanent source of profit by charging for prayers over his remains. Images famous for miracles, churches enriched with the relics of saints, have multitudes of visitors who never come empty‐handed. How much can be made from this concourse of the faithful may be imagined when it is remembered that a single laura, that of S. Sergius at Moscow, is visited every year by a million pilgrims. Begging brothers traverse all Russia, gathering alms. A very pretty trade is driven in wax tapers. The various arts resorted to by the white clergy to collect money are well known to the monks also. The Laura of S. Sergius is said to have a revenue all told of at least 2,000,000 roubles ($1,680,000), and a single chapel in Moscow yields to the convent to which it is attached an annual income of about $80,000. These princely revenues are not devoted to learning, education, charity, religion. A large part is misappropriated by the persons appointed to gather them. A third is the property of the superiors. The rest is divided among the monks. The annual income of the superior of one of the great lauras is from $33,600 to $50,400; of the superior of a monastery of the first class, from $8,400 to $25,200; second class, $4,200 to $8,400; third class, $840 to $4,200. All this is for their personal use; the monastery gives them lodging, food, and fuel, and they have to buy nothing but their clothing.

The seminaries, governed by the state, teach successfully neither piety nor learning. The tendency of the courses of instruction is to become secular rather than ecclesiastical. A proposal has recently been made that each bishop shall choose for his diocesan seminary a learned and pious priest to hear the confessions of the pupils, and excite them to devout practices; but it is objected that no secular priest can be found who is fit to discharge such important functions, while those monks who are fit are already employed in more important duties; besides, if one could discover among the white clergy the right sort of man, so much virtue would come very expensive, and the bishops could not or would not pay the salary he would be in a condition to demand. The seminarians are required to confess twice a year, namely, during the first week of Lent and during Holy Week. In reality, most of them omit the second confession; they go home to their families at Holy Week, and rarely approach the sacraments, though they always bring back a certificate from the parish priest that they have done so. A new regulation prescribes two additional confessions and communions, namely, at Christmas and the Assumption, and attempts another reform by ordaining that seminarians shall say their prayers morning and evening, and grace before and after meat.

The bishops are appointed by the czar, and transferred, promoted, degraded, imprisoned, knouted, or put to death at the imperial pleasure. Until very recently, no bishop could leave his diocese without the permission of the synod, so that consultations among the episcopacy were, of course, impossible. Now, however, a bishop may absent himself for eight days, on giving notice to the synod. It is the synod at St. Petersburg that exercises, under the czar, the whole ecclesiastical authority of the empire. The bishop has no power, and nothing to do but to sign reports. All the business of his diocese is really transacted by a lay secretary, appointed not by the bishop, but by the synod. Under the secretary is a chancery of six or seven chief clerks, with assistant clerks and writers. This office superintends all the affairs of the clergy, and transacts no business without drink‐money. It is the most venal and rapacious of all Russian bureaus, and such a mine of wealth to the officials that recently, when the chancery of a certain town was abolished on account of the destruction of its buildings by fire, the employees petitioned to be allowed to restore them at their own expense. The secretary is the one all‐powerful person of the diocese. From 12,000 to 15,000 files of documents are referred to the chancery every year for decision, and it is he who passes upon them, asking nothing of the bishop except his signature. He is almost invariably corrupt, and as he possesses, through his relations with the synod, the power to ruin the bishop if he chooses, there is no one to interfere with him.

The synod consists of the metropolitan of St. Petersburg and a number of other bishops chosen by the czar and changed every now and then, and of two or three secular priests, one of whom is the czar’s chaplain, and another the chief chaplain of the army and navy. But in reality, the whole power of the synod is held by an imperial procurator, who sits in the assembly, watches all its proceedings, stops deliberations whenever he sees fit, is the intermediary between the church and the state, and formulates decisions for the signature of the synod. Most of these decisions are signed without reading, and sometimes they are made to express the direct contrary of the sense of the assembly. The procurator, in a word, is to the synod what the secretary is to the bishop—the representative of the civil power ruling the enslaved and submissive church. The czar speaks through the procurator, the procurator speaks through the lay secretaries of the bishop, and so the church is governed practically without troubling the clergy at all.

The “Old Catholics” of Germany, and the new and improved Catholics who are (perhaps) going to be made under the patent of Father Hyacinthe and wife, are understood to be looking eagerly for connections in various parts of the world. Let them by all means go to Russia. They will see there how much liberty a church gains when it cuts itself off from its obedience to the See of Peter, and what kind of a clergy is constructed when men try to improve upon the models of Almighty God.

The Cross Through Love, And Love Through The Cross.

Maheleth Cristalar was the daughter of a Spanish Jew. Her father had once been very wealthy, and indeed until the age of sixteen she had lived in princely splendor. The beauties of her Spanish home were very dear to her; she had many friends, and as much time as she chose to spend in study.

But one day, her mother, a stately, handsome matron, came into her little sitting‐room, looking pale and worn.

“Maheleth, my child,” she began, in faltering tones, “we have had some bad news this morning. I am afraid we are in danger of being totally ruined.”

The young girl looked up; she was very beautiful, and the spiritual expression on her face intensified and heightened her beauty in a singular degree.

“Ruined, dear mother? Is my father very unhappy about it?”

“He is more angry than unhappy; it has happened through the dishonesty of persons he trusted.”

“Shall we have to leave home?” asked Maheleth.

“I fear we shall; it is a heavy trial.”

“It will be for our good in the end, mother darling. I am so sorry for you and my father, because you have always been used to riches.”

“So have you, my poor child.”

“But not for so long a time; and it is easier to root up a sapling than a full‐grown tree.”

“Ah! you hardly know what may be before you, Maheleth; your sisters are mere children; we have but few relations; with fortune, so also friends will forsake us; the shock will be very sudden, and we shall have to bear it alone.”

“You forget our God,” said the girl gently.

A shade of impatience passed over the elder woman’s face.

“We do not hope for miracles now, child,” she answered; “your father has worked hard for his wealth, but God will not treat him as he treated Job.”

“Depend upon it, if he does not, mother mine, it is because he knows what is best for us. You would not have us lose our hopes of the hereafter for the sake of more or less comfort in the earthly present?”

“My child, you should have been a boy; such sayings would tell well in a sermon, but in practical business matters they are but cold comfort.”

“Oh! they _are_ comfort sufficient, believe me; besides, they do not debar us from prudent measures and precautions in a temporal point of view.”

“Well, child, you are a visionary, I always knew that; it remains to be seen if you can be a stoic.”

“What need of that, dear mother? Stoicism is not obedience nor resignation.”

Here a light step was heard, and the half‐open door was pushed quickly back. A little girl, about nine years old, ran in with flushed face, and, holding in her hands a velvet casket, cried out in gleeful voice:

“O mother! sister! see! I got leave to bring this in myself. It has just come from the jeweller’s, just as my father ordered it!”

And she opened the casket, displaying a wonderful _parure_ of opals and diamonds, exquisitely and artistically wrought. Señora Cristalar turned away impatiently, saying to the child:

“Thamar, I am engaged; don’t come fooling here about these jewels; put them down, and go into the next room.”

The child, hurt and astonished, looked blankly at her sister. Maheleth reached out her hand for the casket, and half rose from her seat.

“I will come to you presently, little sister, if you wait in there; never mind the pretty gems just now.”

And so saying, she kissed the little eyes that were ready to overflow with childish tears, and, setting the jewels on a table out of sight of her mother, resumed her seat.

“There are the first‐fruits of our circumstances,” said the mother bitterly. “The man expects to be paid for those to‐day, and I shall have to tell him to take them back!”

“Come! if there were nothing worse than that! Now, mother, we will both go to my father, and pray together, and then consult among ourselves.”

Maheleth’s father was very fond and very proud of his eldest daughter, and this indeed was his best trait. Shrewd and clever in worldly affairs, yet strictly honest in his dealings, he was not devoid of that hardness that too often accompanies mercantile success, and as often turns to weakness when that success disappears.

One thing seemed to sustain him, but it was only a hollow prop after all—his pride of race. For generations his family had been well known and honored: he could trace his ancestry back in an unbroken line of descent from one of the exiles from devastated Jerusalem. Rabbis and learned men had borne his name, and though in later times no opening save that of trade and banking had been available to those of his race, yet his blood yielded it in nothing to that of the proverbially haughty nobles of Spain. It mattered little that by some he was shunned as of an inferior extraction or lower social status; his own wealth, his wife’s beauty, his lavish hospitality, his daughter’s charms, were strong enough, he knew, to break the barriers of prejudice, at least as far as appearances went. As to marriages, he did not covet for his children the alliance of a poor foreigner, and poor most of the proud families were whom he daily entertained at his splendid house—poor in brains, poor in beauty, poor in energy and strong will.

And yet, though he almost despised his neighbors, this shock was very galling to him. _They_ now would turn from him, would forget his open‐ handedness, and remember only his race and creed; would pity him perhaps, but with the pity that is almost contempt. And this seemed to paralyze him, for all his fiercely expressed consciousness of superiority to his friends.

Maheleth tried to persuade him to take the trial calmly; for even in a temporal aspect calmness would sooner show him how to retrieve his fortunes.

“For,” she said, “you know that, with your abilities, you can, if you will, gain enough for my little sisters’ dowry by the time they will be grown up; and that is the first thing to be considered, and after that we shall even have enough to live in comfort.”

“And what is to become of you, Maheleth?” asked her father fondly.

“Oh! you and I will be co‐workers. I will look after those two until you can marry them well, and so we will both have a definite object in life. We can keep my mother in some degree of comfort from the very beginning, if we only look things in the face.”

The opals and diamonds had to be returned to the jeweller’s; the pleasant home was broken up, and what with the sale of his property, and various other legal arrangements, Ephraim Cristaler was able to pay all his creditors, with a few trifling exceptions, for which he bound himself by solemn promise to provide shortly.

Then the banker and merchant disappeared, and the nine days’ wonder was forgotten by his former circle of acquaintances.

One day, a young Englishman, travelling or rather sauntering about Europe in a way unlike the usual useless rush of tourists from one point to another of Murray’s _Guide‐Book_, arrived at Frankfort and settled there—for how long, he, least of all, could have told.

At the hotel, nothing was known of him but his name, Henry Holcombe, and that he had come with a black portmanteau containing a number of books. He went slowly to see the sights, one by one, as if he had plenty of leisure and wanted to enjoy it; and, when he _did_ go, he never measured the length and breadth of saloons, the height of towers, the number of statues in the cathedral‐niches; nor did he ever disgrace his name by carving it side by side with the ambitious Joneses or the heaven‐soaring Smiths on the pinnacle of a temple, or the bark supports of a summer‐house; when he went out with a book in his hand, it was neither the obtrusive _Murray_ nor the ostentatious _Byron_; and, in fact, he departed altogether from the standard of the regulation British tourist.

He was walking one day down the _Juden‐Strasse_, the picturesqueness of whose mediæval‐looking houses had a special attraction for him, when it came on to rain very suddenly, and the sky seemed to threaten a storm in good earnest; the street was soon deserted, and the narrow roadway became a miniature stream. Presently he heard a step behind him, and a slight figure, half‐hidden by a large umbrella, pressed quickly past him. It was a woman, and, he thought, a very young one, but more than that he could not tell, because she was veiled and muffled, and held the dripping umbrella very close down upon her head. She had not gone a dozen paces beyond him before she dropped something white like a roll of music, and stooped slowly to pick it up. The cloak and long skirt she was holding fast to keep them from the mud embarrassed her, and the young Englishman had time to spring forward and restore the white roll of paper to her hand before she had grasped it.

“Oh! thank you, _mein Herr_!” said a low, rich voice, in very soft German. And, as Henry took off his hat in silence, the girl made a pretty sweeping inclination, and left him, walking as quickly as before.

But he had seen more this time, and he knew she was beautiful, and had a dainty, graceful hand. Curious and interested, he watched the dark‐clad figure down the street, quickened his own steps as it hastened on, slackened them as it paused to clear a crossing without splashing the long and rather inconvenient garments. He saw it stop at last, and ring a bell at an old forlorn‐looking door, where he might have expected to see the face of a gnome appear, as guardian of unsuspected treasures within.

He was dreadfully romantic, this young Englishman, but in a subdued, quiet way that seldom showed itself in words, and was specially repelled by the _gushing_ style too much followed just then by some of his fair countrywomen.

The door was opened and shut, and, except through his notice of the number over it, 25, his relation with the beautiful stranger was cut off.

He thought of it day after day, got a directory, and found out that in the house No. 25 there lived three families of the names of Zimmermann, Krummacher, and Löwenberg. The occupations of the heads of the families were given thus: “money‐lender,” “banking‐clerk,” and “lace‐merchant,” respectively; no clue whatsoever, of course; and, unless in a regular and received manner, Mr. Holcombe could not think of entering the house. Still, the face he had seen veiled under the prosaic tent of a wet umbrella kept between him and his thoughts, and would not be driven away. Then, too, what business was it of his to go and throw himself in the way of a girl who most likely was a Jewess? Yet, reason as he might, the mysterious face _would_ visit him, and it seemed to him as the face of an angel. Very often he passed the house, and once or twice even made a pretence of sketching it; but he never saw the figure again. Once a young face looked out over the flowers in the window of the ground‐floor room, a merry face full of health and mischief—not _his_ dream. The blinds were always drawn on the first floor, even when the windows were open, and he began to fancy _she_ must be hidden behind those discreet shrouders of privacy. A friend of his met him at his hotel one day when he came home from the _Juden‐Strasse_, and surprised him by telling him he was going home in a fortnight to get married.

“I’ve been half over the world, my dear fellow,” he said, “and enjoyed myself immensely. And I’ve got such a pile of things going home to my _fiancée_, for our house. She _will_ be delighted, she is so fond of queer, foreign things, not like what other people have, you know. I’ll show you some, but most are gone in packing cases through agents from the different parts of the world I’ve been in.”

And the two young men went upstairs to examine the bridal gifts.

“Look here,” said Ellice to his quieter friend, “it was a pasha’s wife sent me these,” dragging out a handful of Eastern jewelry, golden fillets, and embroidered jackets and slippers. “A cousin of mine is the wife of the consul at Smyrna, and she got them for me, for of course I was not allowed to go near the Eastern lady! And look here, these are carved shells, and mother‐of‐pearl crucifixes from Jerusalem, and boxes made from Olivet trees and cedars of Lebanon; you should value those.”

“I hope your future wife will,” gravely said young Holcombe; “the wood of the olives of Gethsemani is almost a relic in itself.”

“Oh! Miss Kenneth will appreciate them just as much as you do, Holcombe, she is very reverential. See, here is some alabaster, Naples coral, and Byzantine manuscripts, and marble ornaments from the Parthenon. Ah! here is the filigree silver of Genoa; that is one of my last purchases, except these pictures on china from Geneva; see the frames, too, they are Swiss.”

Then he turned out a huge tiger‐skin, and said: “All my Indian things except this were sent from Bombay, and a year ago I sent home all kinds of jolly things from North America—furs and skins, antlers, and other curiosities. By the bye, I have some old _point_ from Venice, but some people had been there before me and cleaned the shop out pretty nearly, so I shall have to get some more. Belgium is a good place, isn’t it?”

Holcombe looked thoughtful; his truant mind was at No. 25 again, and he did not answer. His friend went on:

“I’ll just ask the landlady, she’ll be likely to know if there is any place here, just for a souvenir of Frankfort.”

“Yes,” said Holcombe, “I suppose she knows.” And, as he spoke, the phantom face was directly in his mind’s eye, and he could not drive the vision away.

“And now, old fellow, suppose you show me the lions here,” said Ellice; “you have been here longer than I have.”

So they walked out, and of course in due time came to the high, irregular houses bordering the curious _Juden‐Strasse_. It was Friday evening, and the street was full of people hurrying to one spot; the air was balmy, and told of summer; the scene was very striking. The stream of people disappeared under the archway of a splendid Moorish‐looking building, with Hebrew characters carved above the portal. It was the new synagogue. The two friends followed the men; the women were lost to view in the stair‐ cases leading to the galleries. A gorgeous lattice‐work defended these galleries, and the assemblage in the main part of the temple were men with their hats on and light veils or shawls across their shoulders.

The service began; low, plaintive chants resounded through the building; sometimes the congregation joined. It was very solemn, and Henry Holcombe seemed fascinated. Some one passed him a book and found the place for him. And now came the prayer for the mourners, the mourner’s _Kaddisch_, as he saw it printed before his eyes. There was a stir among the people, and he could hear the women’s clothes rustling in the gallery. Those who had recently lost friends and relations stood up during the intercession, and then another prayer was offered up in German. Holcombe thought the sound of the old Hebrew was like the passing of water through a narrow rocky channel; it was soothing and flowing, sad and majestic, and he wondered if the girl he had seen once thought and felt about it as he did.

When the crowd dispersed, he tried to linger at the entrance, watching the women as they passed out. His friend was hardly so patient, and reminded him of the _table d’hôte_ they had most likely already missed.

“I am afraid,” he said, “your people would scarcely approve your admiration of the pretty Jewesses.”

Holcombe blushed and moved away, and, just as he came out on the sidewalk, a girl in black passed him slowly, with an anxious, absent look.

“By jove! that _is_ a pretty face!” exclaimed Ellice; but the other said nothing. For the second time, he had seen the face he was always dreaming of, “She looks like an angel,” he thought, “and yet she is not even a Christian.”

“I never saw a German Jewess like that,” his friend went on to say. “She looks like a Spaniard.”

The next day, Ellice had got an address written down, and said to Holcombe:

“If you care to go with me, we will go and look after this lace‐merchant this morning.”

Holcombe’s heart gave a great throb as he asked carelessly to see the address: “Jacob Zimmermann, 25 _Juden‐Strasse_.”

“I don’t know much about laces,” he answered, “but I will go with pleasure.”

“It feels like going on an adventure, like something you read of in a book,” said Ellice, “this penetrating into the privacy of those tumble‐ down dens of the _Juden‐Strasse_.”

“Well,” returned Holcombe quietly, “it does give one the idea.”

They rang at the door No. 25, and the merry, mischievous face he had seen once at the window greeted Henry as he entered. They inquired for Herr Zimmermann.

“Oh!” said the girl, laughing and looking astonished, “he is up on the third floor. Shall I show you the way? But he is ill, and, as he lives all alone, he has got into very queer ways.”

They went up, guided by the laughing girl, who rattled on as she preceded them.

“Gentlemen like you most often inquire for _us_, for my father, I mean, and no one ever comes to see old Zimmermann except some wrinkled old ladies, and heaven knows how they find him out; and as to Herr Löwenberg, he is a stranger and has no friends.”

The two young men then knew that she was the money‐lender’s daughter, and Holcombe thought his dream companion must bear the name of Löwenberg.

“But is not Zimmermann a rich old merchant, and is he not well‐known in the town?” asked Ellice. “My landlady named him at once when I asked for laces.”

“Oh! yes; _rich_ he is; so rich he won’t sell generally; but then an Englishman is another thing! He lives like a rat in a hole, and starves himself.”

By this time, they had reached the door of the miser’s room; a low, subdued voice was heard within reading.

Their knock was answered by a noise of light footsteps, and the door was drawn ajar by some one inside.

“Rachel, what is it? You know Herr Zimmermann is ill.”

Holcombe knew that voice _must_ belong to the girl he had never forgotten. Just then the light from the door fell upon the men in the darkened, narrow passage, and the slight figure drew back a little.

“They are English gentlemen,” said Rachel. “They want to buy.”

“_To‐day_, Rachel? It is the Sabbath.”

Rachel shrugged her shoulders, and Ellice stepped forward.

“I beg your pardon. I forgot that. But since we are here, perhaps you will let us _see_ the laces, and we can come back and choose on Monday.”

The girl looked uneasily back into the room, and then said, in a very low voice:

“No; please do not ask to come in to‐day; he is hardly conscious, and he might forget it was the Sabbath in his excitement.”

“Very well,” said Ellice politely, and Holcombe whispered to him: “Come away; don’t you understand?”

The door was closed gently, and Henry said:

“She was afraid he could not resist the temptation of a good offer, if it were made to him, and she wanted to prevent his doing anything wrong.”

“How stupid I am!” said Ellice. “Of course that’s it. But, I say, is she not pretty?”

“Beautiful!” answered Holcombe very quietly.

“Is that Fraulein Zimmermann?” asked Ellice of Rachel.

“No; Fraulein Löwenberg,” said the girl. “She is very kind to the old man. Her own father is ill and can’t work, and she is very good to him. She reads to old Zimmermann, and looks after him, too, when he is ill. She has two little sisters also.”

“And how do they live?” asked Ellice.

“_She_ keeps them, I think. The father used to be clerk in Hauptmann’s bank; but he has been laid up six months now, and the mother died two months after they came here.”

“Are they Germans?” said Ellice, really interested.

“Their name is, but I fancy they are foreigners. Maheleth speaks like a foreigner.”

“Maheleth! A curious name.”

“Yes, an unusual one; so is her sister’s—Thamar.”

They were at the street‐door now, and Ellice bade the girl good‐morning, saying they would come again on Monday.

“What a curious chance!” he went on. “It is the same girl we saw coming out of the synagogue last night. Did you notice?”

“Yes,” said Holcombe.

“You don’t seem very much interested, anyhow.”

“My dear fellow, I never could get up an ecstasy!”

“Still waters run deep, Holcombe. I suspect that is the case with you, you sly fellow.”

Monday came, and the two friends were again at No. 25. Rachel admitted them as before, and showed them into the old lace‐merchant’s den. He was alone, and looked very eager; but his wasted, wrinkled hands and dried‐up face spoke his miserly character, and froze the sympathy he so little cared to receive. He laid out his precious wares with trembling fingers, and it was curious to see these cobweb treasures drawn from common drawers and boxes, and heaped on a rickety deal table near the stove that was just lighted, because he was still so ill. Everything about the room looked cold and hungry; the floor was bare; the paint on the walls dirty and discolored; and an untidy assortment of tin pans and cheap crockery littered the neighborhood of the stove. The window looked into a back‐ yard, and what panes were not broken were obscured by dirt. In strange contrast to all this was a bouquet of fresh flowers on a chair.

While Ellice and the old man were bargaining, Holcombe fastened his eye on the flowers, conjecturing well whose present they were.

The old Jew asked enormous prices for his laces, and gave marvellous accounts of the difficulties he had sustained in procuring them as an excuse for his exorbitant demands. So the time seemed long to Henry, who knew little or nothing about such things, when suddenly Rachel appeared at the door with a basin of soup. “Fraulein Löwenberg sent you this,” she said to the old man, and then to the strangers: “You must excuse us; he is too weak to do without this at the accustomed time, and the fraulein is gone out.”

“Gone out!” querulously said the miser. “Gone out without coming to see me!”

“She knew you were engaged,” retorted Rachel. “You will see her again to‐ night.” She spoke as to a spoiled child.

“Well, well, business must be first, and she has business as well as I have.” And he went on with his flourishing declamations over his lovely laces.

Holcombe understood why she had omitted her morning’s visit to her old _protégé_, and, indeed, it would have been unlike his ideal of her had she acted otherwise.

“Have you nearly done, Ellice?” he said, coming up to the table.

“Yes; all right. See, I have chosen the nicest things I could find, as far as I know; but the fellow asks such confounded prices.”

“Well, you had only that to expect,” was the smiling answer, and then the young man turned to the lace‐merchant.

“Have you been ill long?”

“Only a month, and I should be dead if it were not for Maheleth. I cannot do without her.”

“But she is poor herself; she cannot bring you what you want, can she?”

“No, she cannot; she is poor, and her father is poor, and so am I. I sell nothing now; I have no customers.”

Holcombe smiled slightly, but he went on:

“Are you fond of flowers?”

“Yes, but I cannot afford them.”

“Then it would be cruel of me to ask a violet hearts‐ease of you; but, if you would give me that, I will send you more flowers, and bring you something you will like to‐morrow.”

“Yes, you may take one; but, if you want flowers, Maheleth can give you some; she has some growing in her room.”

“No, this one is enough. Good‐by, and I will try and see you again.”

As they left the house, Ellice said to his friend:

“Well, Holcombe, you _are_ green! You don’t mean to say you believe he is poor?”

“No, I don’t believe it; but he will be none the worse off for a few flowers and some good food, if he won’t get them for himself.”

“I suppose you remember that there is another invalid in the house, and the same person nurses both?”

“I know what you mean, Ellice, and I wish you wouldn’t joke; it is not fair.”

“Very well, old fellow; but, if you were anybody but yourself, I should say ‘take care.’ You always were the steadiest old chap going.”

A day or two afterwards, Holcombe was left alone again; he had sent things to Zimmermann as he had promised; but as yet he had not revisited the _Juden‐Strasse_. On Friday, there was a special service at the Catholic cathedral, at eight o’clock, and the young man, hardly knowing why, determined to go.

The church was only partially lighted, except the chancel, which was dazzling. The music was good, the congregation devout, and the German sermon as interesting as could be expected. The whole effect was very beautiful, and seemed to Henry a peace‐giving and heart‐soothing one. A rush of voices came breaking in upon his reverie at the _Tantum Ergo_, and the surging sound was like a mighty utterance of his own feelings. As the priest raised the Host, he bowed his head low, and prayed for peace and guidance; and when he lifted it again the first object his eye fixed on was a slight, dark‐robed figure, standing aside in the aisle, drooping her head against one of the columns. He knew the figure well; but, with a strange thrill, he asked himself why was she here? For the music? For the beauty of the sight? For love of a creed she was half ashamed to embrace? Or from the curiosity of a chance passer‐by?

He watched her as she moved behind the shadow of the pillar, and waited till she was enticed from her hiding‐place by the quick desertion of the once crowded church. Now the light from a lamp streamed down on her; the face was anxious and troubled, as if weary with thought.

“Friday, too!” he said to himself. “And she has come here on the very Sabbath. Perhaps she has been to her own service first. But what can it mean, if she only were what this would point to?”

To Be Continued.

Odd Stories. IV. The White Shah.

If thou wouldst hear a choice history of princes, go into the garden of the shah’s pleasure‐house, and hearken to what the humming‐birds tell thee in sleep. How else could thy servant have learned the memory of Shah Mizfiz, the forgotten? Was it not he who built the palace of a hundred towers in the valley of groves? Beautiful beyond compare was that valley’s lake which presented itself like a mirror before the pavilion of the shah; and magnificent as a house in the sky were the hundred delicate towers that rose one above the other, amid gardens and fountains, and half lost in groves of venerable height and shade. High hills whose sides were covered with woods and flowers, and watered with streams and fountains, shut out the valley from the world save where it was entered through a great gate crowned with towers; and a long colonnade of loftiest trees pranked with beds of tulips, hyacinths, and roses, and intertwined with flowering vines that here and there made curious arbors. From the windows, or from the balconies, or from the pavilions of his palace, the shah could see the lords and ladies who, dressed in gold‐broidered silks of all colors, shook their plumes as they rode up to his gate, or, listening to the song of minstrels, sailed upon the bosom of the lake.

Naught now could the shah do but dream. Surrounded by hills that fenced him from mankind, by waters that mirrored the skies or leaped into the sunlight, by flowers whose odors inspired the sense, by trees which everywhere made repose for him, and by towers, the intricacies and ingenuities of which rendered his palace ever new to him, he forgot all common things. The cares of state he left to his ministers at the gate of the valley; while in one or other of the innumerable courts of his palace, or among its unknown and invisible gardens, he retired from the intrusion of mortals. “I went to seek the rose‐king,” said or sang a poet of the court; “so I stripped a great rose of all its leaves, one by one, and in its heart of hearts I found the Shah Mizfiz.” Now, having captured the tenth of a number of white elephants, the like of which was never seen, except in the woods and by the lake of the imperial valley, where they roamed in romantic innocence and tameness, the Shah Mizfiz betook himself to his dreams as others do to their books.

At times, seated high on his favorite white elephant, the old shah rode in state through his grounds. Thence it came to pass that, seeing his beard like almond‐blossoms, and the milky color of his throne‐bearer, they who visited the gardens of the lake remembered him as the White Shah. Leaning on the cushions of his vine‐encircled pavilion, his silken beard and silvery locks floating in the breath of the zephyr, how often have the minstrels passed by beneath him over the mirror of the lake, singing under their gorgeous sails or to the time‐beat of their oars those songs which, with a tinkling and rippling melody, lingered in his ear. Less was it known how looked and fared the shah when he retired to the inmost bowers of the interior gardens of the hundred towers. But what wonder if in one of those fine day‐dreams so celebrated by the poet Bulghasel the flower‐ fairies themselves did him veritable honor, and, circling gardens of roses, tulips, and lilies, danced at his feet and round about him, an illusion of humor and beauty?

Ah! the deep‐eyed, far‐gazing White Shah! What dreams he dreamed of green ages in the youth of the world, of far‐off golden centuries to come, of ships navigating the air of sunset, of adventures in the stars, and of nights with the great moon‐shah! They were not to be told or counted; the number and wonder of them would have tasked a hundred scribes, and put as many dreamers to sleep. Howbeit, the shah’s visions persuaded him to become an oracle for all his empire. Statesmen consulted his dreams, and poets made themes of them, and doubtless the humane spirit of his visions found its way into the laws. Thanks to them, the people had abundant feast‐days, and, if a mine of precious stones were discovered, or the caravans were richer than usual, or the lords were moved to more than wonted bounty, or new fountains were built on the dry roads, or new temples set up here and there, the shah’s dreams were praised. When he had completed the thousandth of a line of dreams, the smallest of which would have made a paradise on earth again, he dreamed that his people were prosperous like none other under the sun; for his prime minister had artfully omitted to report that his eastern provinces were suffering the horrors of a famine, and those of the west were threatened by war. But on neither of these facts did the White Shah lay the blame for that final eclipse which ruined his dreams. In a fatal hour, having too long slept among the poppies, and drunk too much wine and coffee, he dreamt that the demon Sakreh had caught him up in a storm on the desert of Lop, out of which he let him drop into the Lake of Limbo, whence, fishing him up by the hair of his head, he banged him against the Caucasus and set him down to cool on the Himalaya, ere, taking him to the topmost height of the palace of the hundred towers, he allowed him to fall through the many‐ colored glasses of the dome of delights. His displeasure with the effects of this dream was heightened and consummated when the poet Bulghasel, in a moment of malediction, trod on his particular corn. From that moment, peace forsook the couch of the White Shah, and dreams of glory visited not his slumbers.

Henceforward what had been dreamland to the too happy shah became the saddest reality. In a white age he had lost his visions as old men lose their teeth. He wandered about the valley—no longer seated high on the pride of his white elephant, but crownless and on foot—murmuring from hour to hour: “I have lost my dream—I have lost my dream.” One day, leaving palace and throne, he passed out of his gate liked one crazed, to seek, as he said, his dream. Far away among the Parsees the poet Bulghasel found him after many pilgrimages: “And O my white‐haired sire,” cried the affectionate poet, “hast thou found the object of thy search?” “Yea, son,” rejoiced the White Shah, “I have found that which I never lost, but would that I had possessed; for then my dream was a fiction, and now truth is a sufficient dream for me. If the new shah would sleep well, let him have this dream.”

Signs Of The Times.

In Europe, of late, meetings have been the order of the day. There have been meetings of emperors and Internationalists; of “Old Catholics” and Catholics; of church congresses and congresses to disestablish the church; of “Home‐Rulers” and Dilkites. The voluntary expatriation of the Alsace‐ Lorraine population has followed close on the heels of the violent expulsion of the Jesuits, both influenced by the same motive power; trades‐unions have called together a society of German professors, who, by dint of powerful speeches of an explosive nature, succeeded finally in showing, in a very conclusive manner, that they knew little or nothing of what they were talking about. Gambetta has found his voice again; Russia has mildly but decidedly objected to its inflammable utterances, and in the midst of all the hubbub the eyes of the world have been attracted to the strange spectacle in these days of a nation, by a sudden and spontaneous movement, turning its steps to an humble shrine of the Blessed Virgin.

As for the meeting of the emperors, we were _not_ present at the council, and had no secret emissary concealed in the cup‐board. What was effected, or what was intended to be effected, is an utter mystery to us. We very much doubt if anything were effected at all; that is, anything real, lasting, and permanent. The composing elements were in themselves as incapable of mingling as oil and water. If people looked to permanent peace or peace for any length of time from it, we fear they will be sadly mistaken in view of what we have since seen. The effective forces of Austria are fixed at 800,000 men. The government, actuated doubtless by peaceful motives; finds it necessary to keep on hand a peace effective of 250,000; and, that this force may be in fighting order at any moment, the recruits must be kept for three years under colors. To supply this contingency, 30,000 more men are required, which draws a sum of $1,850,000 out of the national chest, a chest neither very deep nor very safe. The measure was objected to, whereupon Count Andrássy spurred them up by informing the astonished members that, notwithstanding the imperial exhibition of brotherly love at Berlin, the speeches, manœuvrings, fireworks, and the rest, he would not venture to answer for the continuance of peace even to the end of the present year. As an echo of the truth of this, Prussia has just given an order for 3,000,000 rifles of a new pattern, on the strength, doubtless, of the discharge of the French debt. Russia is increasing her already vast army steadily and surely, while France hopes by her new scheme of raising forces to show at the end of five years an active army of 715,000, and a territorial force of 720,000 men. So much for the effects of the imperial conference as regards peace.

The _Internationale_, true to the discordant elements of which it was composed, adjourned without effecting anything or coming to any conclusion. This was only to be expected; but we should not judge from this that it is dead, as has been too hastily done by many journals. Its life is disorder, and, if it can catch the trades‐unions, its influence would be paramount.

As for the meeting of the “Old Catholics”—we presume they call themselves “Old” Catholics as the Greeks called the furies _Eumenides_—it will soon have passed out of memory. We rejoice that it did occur, in order to show the “movement” in its true light. Luther himself had not half the chance which Döllinger and the rest enjoyed. The strongest of governments at their back, the whole anti‐Catholic world looking with eager eyes on this mountain in travail—_parturiet_; and not even the _ridiculus mus_ is born in recompense for all this labor, storm, fuss, and anxiety. We forget; there issued a long string of resolutions, which one or two newspapers published, the generality very sensibly finding them of too great length and of too little importance to burden their leaders with them. The whole affair was utterly ridiculous even to the _ménu_, which, as became a solid dinner, composed for the most part of German professors with a few Episcopal waifs and strays from England and America, was in Latin, and commenced thus:

Symposium. _Gustatio_: Pisciculi oleo perfusi et salmones fumo siccati ad cibi appetentiam excitandam. Mensa prima, etc.

And this is the way in which the “Old Catholics” meet to found or reform a church! The effect of it all is shown in the comments of the secular press. The cleverest journals in England and America, those who expected much from it, generally express themselves to the effect that, though far from saying that the meeting was without significance, it did not succeed in erecting a platform whereon a body could stand. The fact is this: We are far from denying to the majority of the men there assembled abundance of intellect and that sort of talent that can make a fine speech or perhaps compose a readable book, but the world, if it must be changed, wants something more solid than this.

Prince Bismarck’s measures are what Strafford would call “thorough”; and he is carrying out this “thorough” policy with far greater effect than the vacillating Stuart. The latter lost his head for too much heart; the German chancellor is not likely to imitate him in that. The Jesuits had small respite. We presume they are all out of Germany by this time. How much the country at large will gain in peace, solidity, and security by their expulsion it is impossible for us to say. Oddly enough, in Prince Bismarck’s stronghold, Prussia itself, we find that the new order is not destined to run quite smoothly. The diet is dissolved because the Upper House refused to pass the country reform bill in the face of the emperor and an official intimation from the minister of the interior that if the measure were defeated the government would dissolve the diet and convoke a new one. Whether the members of the Upper House will continue the fight, and come into direct collision with the power which they so helped to make supreme, we do not know yet, but we expect not.

Meanwhile, the Jesuits have not gone out of their fatherland alone. The sympathy of the whole Catholic world has gone out with them, and its expression is gaining volume daily. Addresses of condolence and protestations against the legal violence which expelled them are rising up day after day from the hearth‐stones of the land they have quitted, as well as from lands and multitudes to whom they as individuals are utterly unknown. Perhaps the most noticeable of the many which are continually appearing in their own land is that of the society of German Catholics recently assembled at Cologne, which passed a series of resolutions protesting strongly:

1. Against the assertion that the Catholic population is indifferent to the interests of fatherland, and hostile to the empire. 2. Against the laic laws which would control the affairs of the churches. 3. Against the state direction of the schools. 4. Against the expulsion of the Jesuits. 5. Against the encroachment of the state on the jurisdiction of the bishops. 6. Against the suppression of the temporal power of the Pope.

Such is the Catholic voice all the world over. If rulers can respect this voice, they will have no more faithful, earnest, or devoted children than the children of the Catholic Church. If they cannot respect it, they have only to expect an unfailing legal opposition until they are compelled to respect it, as Ireland, speaking in O’Connell, compelled England to do; as Germany, by lawful agitation and peaceful though unceasing and determined protest, will compel Prince Bismarck to do, until we see again restored to the country which they love and which loves them the sons who, by peaceful counsel and wise guidance, and religious instruction, will bring more glory, solid prosperity, enlightenment, and peace to the nation than a cycle of Bismarcks.

The Bishop of Ermeland still survives the terrible threats of the chancellor which have been gathering over his head in deepening thunder this long while for excommunicating heretic priests; the bolt has not yet fallen. Perhaps Jove finds himself a little puzzled how to fulminate it to a nicety. To show the justice of the Bismarck government, and how equally it deals with all classes, the Consistory of Magdeburg has quite recently decreed the excommunication of all Protestants who by mixed marriages shall educate their children as Catholics; the decree has been carried into execution at Lippspring; the case brought before the civil courts, and of course the pastor, one Schneider, who wrought the excommunication publicly and openly in the church, was supported by the just weight of the law. Now, excommunication is excommunication whether you call it Catholic or Protestant. Why, then, threaten with impeachment? Why stop the salary which the government for the country bestows in the one case, and let the other go entirely free? And yet this is all according to law!

Another anomaly according to law is displayed in the seizing of the schools by the government. We have not space here to go into the whole question, instructive though it would be, as showing the determination of this government to uproot the Catholic faith by every means in its power. But we will mention one instance. A ministerial circular accompanied the notice of the new arrangements, informing the teachers that it was desirable that their scholars should belong to no religious confraternities—of the Rosary, Blessed Virgin, and such like—and that if they persisted in belonging to them they should be dismissed. We find it necessary to endorse this statement by informing our readers that it is plain, unvarnished fact. Civil marriage is now in full sway; that is to say, it is no longer a sacrament according to law. What wonder that the German bishops assembled at Fulda gave utterance to their solemn protest, an extract of which we cull? It reads as though it had been penned in the days of Diocletian, or Julian the Apostate, or Henry VIII. But in these days, when mere human society has come to know its power, and dream that it possesses freedom, the protest jars on our ears as something out of tune, out of time, out of date altogether:

“We demand, as a right which no one can dispute to us, that the bishops, the parish priests of the cathedral churches, and the directors of souls, be only appointed in accordance with the laws of the church and the agreement existing between the church and state.

“In accordance with these laws and agreements, the Catholic people and ourselves cannot consider as legal a director of souls or a teacher of religion one who has not been so named by his bishop; and we, the Catholic people and ourselves, cannot consider as legally recognized a bishop who has not been named by the Pope.

“We claim equally for ourselves and for all Catholics the right of professing throughout Germany our holy Catholic faith in all its integrity, at all times and in all freedom, and to rest upon the principle that we are in no wise constrained to suffer within the bosom of our religious community those who do not profess the Catholic faith, and who do not submit entirely to the authority of the church.

“We consider as a violation of our church and of the rights which are guaranteed to it every attack made against the liberty of religious orders. We regard and vindicate, also, as an essential and inalienable right of the Catholic Church, the full and entire liberty which it possesses of elevating its servants in accordance with ecclesiastical laws, and we demand not only that the church exercise over the Catholic schools (primary, secondary, and higher) the influence which alone can guarantee to the Catholic people that its children shall receive in the schools a Catholic education and instruction, but we claim also for the church the freedom to found and direct in an independent manner, certain private establishments ordained for the teaching of the sciences in accordance with Catholic principles. In fine, we maintain and defend the sacred character of Christian marriage as that of a sacrament of the Catholic Church, as well as the right which the divine will has given to the church in connection with this sacrament.”

The signatures of the bishops are affixed to this document, which is addressed to all the German governments, and produced a commotion and irritation among all the national liberal journals which were unexampled. We have given this extract here in order to bring home to the minds of our readers how hard the church is driven in Germany. When the bishops and the laity combined feel themselves called upon to protest in this style, the government which for no reason whatever can give rise to such a protest—signed by the saintly chiefs of a body of 14,000,000, and endorsed in meeting after meeting by those 14,000,000 and the countless numbers of their co‐religionists outside of Germany scattered through the broad world—must be one which does not govern, but tyrannizes.

The same “thorough” policy prevailed in Alsace and Lorraine. On the very day, October 1, when the option of declaring for France or Germany arrived, all the men who remained in the countries named were enrolled in the Prussian service from that date. This, beyond what Mr. Disraeli would call a “sentimental grievance,” drove them from the country, as it must have been intended to do. Service under the power that annexed them, which they but yesterday fought against, and a service the most rigorous and exacting that exists, as it must be in order to retain its supremacy, was something that seems to have been ingeniously invented in order to drive the people out. The provinces are more than decimated; the Prussian army, if increased at all, is increased in the event of a renewed war by untrustworthy men, and a new drop of gall is thrown into the already overbitter cup which France is compelled to swallow. And yet the _Provinzial Correspondenz_ (official) of Berlin, in view of October 1, said: “The government has not hesitated an instant in calling without delay on the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine to serve in the German army, as the best and surest means to evoke and develop speedily among the population newly reunited to Germany the sentiment of an intimate community with the German people.”

This smacks of excess of credibility. If Bismarck wanted really to annex the provinces in heart and soul, he adopted the very surest means of emptying them in the speediest manner, and letting in the Germans, who now, sick of war and of the rumors of war, wish to emigrate in such formidable numbers. Probably the chancellor proposes using the deserted provinces as a safety‐valve for these recreant spirits. One of the most significant signs of the instability of the new empire is the desire of so many earnest workers to leave it just when it has been established in all its glory and power. But glory and power do not last long in the eyes of men who look to a peaceful life and to which side, in a popular phrase, their bread is buttered. Instead of peace, they find the service more rigorous than ever; the money which was won by the blood of their kin and countrymen going to the pockets of the generals, to carry out emperors’ fêtes, and purchase millions of rifles of a new pattern. Evidently _the_ business of the German Empire wears a very martial look. But the artisan and clerk have fought well, and find no returns. Your German is of a logical bent, so he determines on going elsewhere, where he may live at peace, and let Bismarck look after his own empire.

In France, we have had and are having the pilgrimages to Lourdes. Not alone to Lourdes, and not alone in France, but in Belgium and Germany also there have been numerous pilgrimages to various shrines. Of course the wits of the secular journals, with a few honorable exceptions, have had a fine time of it, and have twisted the stories of the miracles of Lourdes and La Salette into every possible shape in which they might squeeze a laugh out of it. They are at great pains to show what we were long ago convinced of—that they do not know what faith means.

Mgr. Mermillod, after a residence of seven years in full enjoyment and exercise of his ecclesiastical functions, has suddenly come to be non‐ recognized by the Swiss government, or, more properly, by the Grand Council of Geneva, and his pension stopped. The Grand Council of Geneva had already expelled the Sisters of Charity and the Christian Brothers. It essays the rôle of Bismarck, and where it purposes stopping we do not yet see. But as the population of Geneva is composed of 47,000 Catholics against 43,000 Protestants, we may presume that the Grand Council of Geneva will very speedily be brought to its senses. Its miserable pension of 10,000 francs was raised to 23,000 in two days by a voluntary contribution set on foot by M. Veuillot of the _Univers_. The Grand Council has incurred the contempt of all rational minds, while Mgr. Mermillod is supported in his action by all his fellow‐bishops, by his Holiness, and by the Catholic world. It may be as well to remember that the Protestant party in the Swiss cantons voted, but were happily outvoted, for union with Prussia. It is not difficult to see whence the persecution of Mgr. Mermillod starts.

Gentlemen who have visited the Alhambra in London, or any one almost of the Parisian theatres, or Niblo’s in New York, are not apt to be squeamish on the score of the decent and moral in theatrical representations. Things must therefore be at a very bad pass when we find the correspondents of the London _Times_ and the other English newspapers, in common with those of our own and the Parisian press, uniting in condemning in the most unsparing terms the pieces which are now in vogue on the boards of the Roman theatres. Cardinal Patrizi addressed an official letter to Minister Lanza on the subject. That gentleman, who is extremely active in suppressing a Catholic paper which dares to caricature his majesty’s government, sends back an answer which, divested of its diplomatic wool, is cowardly, stupid, and insulting. We have been astonished to find “religious” newspapers in this city gleeful over these representations which the good sense, if nothing more, of the secular correspondents of all journals in all countries condemns as odious, detestable, and utterly unfit to be presented in any civilized, or for that matter uncivilized, community. These journals which are religious see in them “a new means of evangelizing Italy.” Another feature in “united Italy” is the utter insecurity of life and property in Rome, Naples, and Ravenna principally, though, in fact, through the length and breadth of the land. Victor Emanuel has held the country long enough now to give some account of his stewardship. The government of the Pope and of the Bourbons, we were told, favored brigandage and every other atrocity; yet the correspondents of the London _Times_, the London _Spectator_, and by this time most of the other anti‐Catholic journals, are furnishing articles which must rather astonish the upholders of the blessings which were to flow from “Italy united.” They picture scenes of rapine and blood before which the graphic Arkansas letters of the _Herald_ pale, while the doers of these deeds, the thieves and murderers, are “well known to the police,” in fact, on excellent terms with them, and walk about in the open day with any man’s life in their hands who dares frown on them. The government is simply afraid of them, afraid to use the only remedy now in its hands by proclaiming martial law, a proceeding which the English journals strongly advise. If such a state of things continues much longer, we fear the inevitable verdict must come to Victor Emanuel, “Now thou shalt be steward no longer.” Of his ill‐ gotten power, indeed, it may be said, “blood hath bought blood, and blows have answered blows.” People are apt to be logical; if a government robs and kills and calls it law, why should not they do the same? Italy will continue in a state of chronic anarchy until religion is restored to it; then order will follow as it is following in France to‐day.

In England, though Parliament has not been sitting, questions of moment have been rife. Mr. Miall has again raised the war‐cry against the Established Church, ably seconded by Mr. Jacob Bright. The _Times_ and _Saturday Review_ and other journals affect to laugh at Mr. Miall, as they and such as they laughed at the Reform Bill, the Act of Catholic Emancipation, and the disestablishment of the Irish Church. We believe Mr. Miall’s measure to be the logical sequence of the last of these measures, a fact which Mr. Disraeli in opposing it foretold. It is an anomaly—a church supported by a majority which does not believe in it. Mr. Miall’s measure is only a growth of time; in fact, it only requires the conversion of such organs as the _Times_ and _Saturday Review_ to bring it to pass to‐day.

As a corollary to Mr. Miall’s movement comes the annual Church Congress held this year at Leeds under the presidency of the Bishop of Ripon. This annual congress is a curious thing; it is a meeting of everybody, high and low, church and lay, to compare notes and see how the church is getting on—a very useful proceeding, no doubt, if there were only something faintly approaching unanimity among its members. As it happened, unanimity was the one thing wanting, and certain stages of the proceedings were as warm as those of the “Old Catholics” at Cologne. In fact, the account of the whole proceedings reads like an extract from _The Comedy of Convocation_.

New Publications.

THE HISTORY OF THE SACRED PASSION. From the Spanish of Father Luis de la Palma, of the Society of Jesus. The Translation revised and edited by Henry James Coleridge, of the same Society. London: Burns & Oates. 1872. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is the third volume of the Quarterly Series which the Jesuit Fathers are bringing out in London. The series is beautifully got up, and we wish it every success.

The present work on the Passion has a prologue by the author, in which he sets forth the end he has had in view. The prologue is followed by a brief treatise on the method of meditation on the Passion, together with four sections suggestive of aids to the memory, the understanding, the will, and the colloquy. The whole is prefaced by the editor, from whose remarks we transcribe the following: “That he (the author) was a man of sound and deep theological learning is sufficiently proved by the work which is now presented to the English reader.... Everything he has written is of the most sterling value, and has always been very highly esteemed, especially by those who have labored in illustrating and explaining the _Spiritual Exercises of S. Ignatius_.... He tells us (in the prologue) that the book is designed both for simple reading and also for the purpose of furnishing matter to those who are in the habit of practising meditation and of preparing their meditation for themselves. Those who use the book for the first‐named purpose will hardly discover that it is intended also to serve the other; while those who practise meditation, and refer to these pages for matter pregnant with such considerations and suggestive of copious affections and practical resolutions, will not find it easy to exhaust the stores which are here so unostentatiously collected. It may be worth while to point out that the design of the author, that his book should thus serve the purpose of a storehouse for meditation on the Passion, accounts for the only kind of amplification which he has allowed himself. This is the paraphrastic commentary which he generally substitutes for or subjoins to the words of our blessed Lord in the various scenes of the Passion. The meaning of these sacred words is often very fully and lovingly brought out, although the narrative form in which the whole work is cast might less naturally suggest this method of treatment, so valuable to those who desire to feed on the sayings of our blessed Saviour in all their rich fertility and meaning.”

The editor expresses a fear “that the translation will be found to be, at least in parts, rugged and unpolished”; but says he has “tried, on the other hand, to make it as faithful as possible; and to that object has been well content to sacrifice smoothness of style, though the original deserves the most careful rendering in matter and in form.” “Palma belongs,” he adds, “to what I believe is the best age of Spanish religious literature—the age of Louis of Grenada, John of Avila, Louis of Leon, S. Teresa; S. John of the Cross, Louis da Ponte, and other famous writers. In point of style he is, perhaps, not equal to them; but he shares with many of these writers the characteristic of masculine common sense, theological culture alike exquisite and solid, and the tenderest and simplest piety. Happily, these are qualities which do not easily evaporate in a translation.”

He then goes on to say that he has “thought it better not to attempt in any way to edit Father Palma as to points on which he would perhaps write differently were he living in the present century.” We quite agree with his decision; and shall here close our notice of the book, since, after what we have borrowed from the preface, any comments of our own would be superfluous.

ALL‐HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY, AND OTHER STORIES. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1872.

This book, containing three tales, _All‐Hallow Eve_, _Unconvicted_, and _Jenifer’s Prayer_, while it will doubtless afford much amusement to many readers during the long winter evenings, will, we trust, have other and more decided effects. By contrast, it shows that fiction of the very highest order may be successfully written without the extraneous aid of bad taste and more than doubtful morality, and by example it will encourage our aspiring writers who, now overawed by the shadow of departed genius, are unwilling or afraid to risk their reputations in endeavoring to rival the efforts of those who formerly delighted and instructed us by their compositions. When the Star of the North, Scott, set, it was feared that this species of literature had suffered an irreparable loss; but soon a host of writers sprang up in England, Ireland, and, we may say, America, who not only compensated for the loss, but more than repaid us for the decadence of the historico‐romantic school. When those in turn disappeared, it was confidently predicted that the present generation, barren of imagination and powers of observation and description, could not produce anything equal to what adorned the pages of men like Griffin, Dickens, and Hawthorne. Daily experience teaches us that this was a fallacy. New buds of promise are constantly springing up around us which need but the encouraging voice of the press and the smiles of a discriminating public patronage to warm into full‐blown vigor and loveliness.

The three tales before us are an earnest of this. The story entitled _All‐ Hallow Eve_, the first in this collection, as it is, we think, the first in merit, is a tale of singular beauty, power and truthfulness. In construction artistic without the appearance of art, in verisimilitude it is all that would be required by the most orthodox French dramatist. The characters are few and clearly defined, the plot simple, the scene scarcely changes, the time from beginning to end is short, and the _dénoûment_, though tragic, offends neither our sensibilities nor our sense of justice. Ned Cavana and Michael Murdock are two aged well‐to‐do Ulster farmers whose lands lie contiguous. The former has a daughter Winifred or Winny, and the latter a son Thomas; and the natural desire of the fond parents is to form a matrimonial alliance between their children, and thus unite the families and the farms. Tom Murdock is handsome, attractive, cunning, mercenary, and unscrupulous, while Winny, who is limned with more than a painter’s art, adds to her natural graces a noble heart and keen perception. Edmond Lennon, a young peasant rich in everything but money, falls in love with her, and, besides encountering the secret or open hostility of the Murdocks, he finds an almost insurmountable barrier in the caste pride of the father of his lady‐love. Aided, however, by the gentle and astute Winny, he partially succeeds in overcoming this difficulty, when the machinations of his rival are employed against him, and the result is—but we will not destroy the pleasure of our fair and necessarily curious readers by unfolding the catastrophe. The contrasts of character of the two old men, each in his way aiming at the best, and also between the suitors, are excellently drawn; the interludes, such as the All‐Hallow Eve festival and the “hurling” match, are accurate and lifelike, and the bits of pathos which here and there dot the course of the story are so touching in their very simplicity that we venture to say many an eye unused to the melting mood will be none the less moistened on their perusal. The style adopted by the author is easy and familiar, a little too much so, we imagine, to suit the tastes of the more exacting reader; and herein lies the only defect, if it can be called one, that we can perceive in this story.

_Unconvicted; or, Old Thorneley’s Heirs_, is a tale of an altogether different character, illustrating what may be called a more advanced state of civilization. The scene is laid in London, and the principal personages occupy a high social position. It is a story of suffering and affection, of deep, dark, and unruly passion, and undying love and friendship. It would be vain to attempt to epitomize the plot, which is woven so closely and so dexterously that our interest in the actors is kept constantly on the _qui vive_, and it is only at the very last chapter that we are relieved from all anxiety on their account. The tale opens with the death of old Gilbert Thorneley, it is supposed by poison, and the discovery of his murderer forms the principal theme of the entire narrative. This involves a great deal of legal discussion and analysis, and, for the first time in the history of fiction, as far as our knowledge goes, we have a clear and accurate description of the niceties, quibbles, and profundity of English law. Though more curious and instructive than amusing, this does not, however detract from the interest of the novel as such, but rather acts as an offset to the numerous scenes of connubial and filial affection with which it is replete. The moral is of course unexceptionable and easily drawn.

_Jennifer’s Prayer_, a shorter but no less meritorious story of English life, completes the volume, which, appearing at this season when good books become more a necessity than a luxury in the household, will no doubt be warmly welcomed by those who, from taste or inclination, prefer the attractions of the novel to the more serious study of science and history.

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ALMANAC FOR THE UNITED STATES, FOR THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1873, calculated for different parallels of latitude, and adapted for use throughout the country. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

There are something over five million Catholics in the United States, representing over five hundred thousand families. This little Catholic Family Almanac, then, should have a circulation of five hundred thousand. If it has not, the fault is not with the Publication Society, but in the Catholics themselves neglecting to diffuse it each in his own circle. A few years ago such a little annual would have been regarded as an impossibility. Beautiful in typography, with woodcut illustrations which in design and execution rival those of any work issued in the country, it is something that a Catholic can view with pride, and can never blush to open before any one. This is merely taking it at its mechanical value. Its scope is to give the yearly calendar of the church with what is locally interesting to us as Catholics in America, or associated with the trials and triumphs of the church in that Old World to which by some degrees more or less we must all trace our origin.

In this year’s little volume, we find portraits of various ages, with original sketches, telling us of great prelates among ourselves, Archbishop Spalding and Bishop McGill, representative men who knew the necessity of diffusing information among our people; bishops of the last generation like Milner, whose works are familiar to all, yet whose counterfeit presentment few have ever met; or Bishop Doyle, J.K.L., whom Ireland can never forget; or like De Haro, who extended his kindness to American Catholics in their early struggles; or like the illustrious Hughes, whose large mind gave us a national life and position. The Venerable Gregory Lopez will be new to many, great as was his fame in Mexico. Crespel represents the French pioneer clergy at the frontiers in colonial times—a man who saw rough life by sea and land in his missionary career. Father Mathew needs no comment. The likeness is speaking and fine. What part Catholics bore in the days of the Revolution we see in the sketch of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, illustrated with a portrait and a view of the old mansion. With his cousin, a priest, he was laboring to make our cause continental before the Declaration of Independence was debated in Congress.

Mrs. Seton, as the lady of wealth and influence in New York society, while Washington as President resided there, shows the wonderful hand of Providence. Who that saw that young wife then could have said that she would be the foundress of a Catholic sisterhood, and not be deemed insane? Mother Julia, foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame, whom some people may have heard of, and whose schools in this country alone contain sixty thousand pupils.

Next comes the Venerable de la Salle, founder of the Christian Brothers, whose pupils in our land, one might say, “no man can number for multitude.” The portrait and sketch of this servant of God will be read in thousands of American families which owe the Christian training of their boys to his devoted community of Brothers; and, happily in the same work, we have a portrait and sketch of the brilliant Gerald Griffin, who closed his days as a Christian Brother.

The view of old S. Mary’s, the cradle of Maryland, the Catholic settlement founded by the Ark and Dove, is alone worth all the _Almanac_ costs. And this is but a portion of its contents. We have a stirring incident of the early missions, the Rock of Cashel, the Church of Icolmkill, the Cathedrals of Sienna and Chartres.

Every Catholic of means should feel it a bounden duty to order a number of copies of this _Almanac_, and distribute them among the families less likely to hear of its merits. In this way much is yet to be done in the diffusion of popular Catholic literature. Our laity have to feel that there is an apostolate incumbent upon them. _Fas est et ab hoste doceri._

TRADITION. Principally with reference to Mythology and the Law of Nations. By Lord Arundell of Wardour. London: Burns, Oates & Co. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is a work in which the chronologies, mythologies, and fragmentary traditions of many nations are gathered together and made to do service in the cause of Revelation.

The opponents of revealed truth not unfrequently assume this department of knowledge to be their exclusive possession—they have been foremost in working this mine, all it contains is theirs, and must be made to sustain their theories. Lord Arundell’s book shows how utterly groundless is this assumption. Here we have facts and figures, arguments and inferences, taken from their own writings, which go to establish the truthfulness of the sacred Scriptures from the very standpoint whence it has been sought to convict them of falsehood. The first chapter in Genesis is a key to every cosmogony. The rudest code of barbaric laws bears some impress of the Almighty Finger of Sinai. Traditions, however distant and vague, point in one general direction. These facts have long since been established. Lord Arundell proves them anew, and brings forth much new matter in his proofs. Indeed, while in many books we often have occasion to note the absence of data and ideas, this, we may say, is crowded with both.

We doubt not that this book will forward greatly the interests of truth, and thus the zeal and devotion of its noble author will be fully requited.

GOD AND MAN. Conferences delivered at Notre Dame in Paris. By the Rev. Père Lacordaire, of the Order of Friar‐Preachers. Translated from the French by a Tertiary of the same Order. London: Rivingtons. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

The translator has already given us two volumes of the great Dominican’s Conferences, and promises more in the same readable form. Persons as yet unacquainted with Lacordaire will find his papers kindle their enthusiasm beyond, perhaps, those of any other author—that is, if they can at all appreciate the originality of his argument, together with his giant grasp of thought and diction. And especially do we commend these conferences to earnest thinkers outside the church, with whom the supernatural is the question of questions.

Indebted as we are to the translator, he must not think us hypercritical if we complain of bad punctuation, a comma being sometimes found where a colon or even a full stop ought to be; or if we take leave to remind him that, to render French idiomatically, it will not do to preserve the sudden changes of tense which are forcible in that language, as in Latin, but sound very strangely in English.

THE HYMNARY, WITH TUNES: A Collection of Music for Sunday‐Schools. By S. Lasar. New York and Chicago: Biglow & Main.

We could recommend this hymn‐book to Catholic schools, and, on account of its intrinsic worth, would have been glad to do so, if the compiler had excluded the few hymns, of no special merit in themselves or in the tunes adapted to them, which are anti‐Catholic in doctrine. Poison is dangerous, and we cannot offer it even in the smallest quantities to our children.

THE ISSUES OF AMERICAN POLITICS. By Orrin Skinner, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1873.

Attracted by the title of this book, the fact of its dedication to a distinguished citizen of New York, and by its comprehensive table of contents, we took it up and read it from cover to cover. In all candor, we must say a more confused, ungrammatical, and shallower book it has seldom fallen to our lot to peruse; and why any respectable publishing house should have been induced to bring it out in such good style, or in any form at all, passes our comprehension. To grapple with the great issues of our American politics, to state each leading question clearly and fairly, and to draw deductions therefrom that will stand the test of justice and reason is a task requiring infinitely more experience, judicial ability, and knowledge of our language than the author displays or evidently ever will possess. Judging from this production, Mr. Skinner has not the faintest conception of the principles upon which rests the framework of our government. Though a lawyer, he is sadly ignorant of law as a science; and, though ambitious of authorship, he seems unable to write a paragraph intelligibly. For instance, take the following, snatched at random:

“The deduction from this criticism constitutes, of course, an advocacy of intelligent suffrage. The plea is here urged that an unrestricted suffrage is its own incentive to the education of those who exercise it. The assertion betrays an unpardonable ignorance of one of the most prominent characteristics of human nature. Frail humanity is so constituted that, when it has presented to it two ways of effecting its purposes, one with effort and the other without, it invariably chooses the latter. Equality as a fundamental element of republican institutions is also urged, Let such a sciolist read his conviction in the quotations from Burke already cited.”

It were, however, useless to further attempt to criticise this most pretentious and least readable of books, and the best wish we can afford the author, and one that we have no doubt will be gratified, is that it will be read by few and soon forgotten.

A MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATURE: A Text‐Book for Schools and Colleges. By John S. Hart, LL.D. Philadelphia: Eldridge & Bro. 1873.

Mr. Hart has gathered considerable fresh material on American literature in this volume. There is still much which he has omitted. With the same industry and care which he has already bestowed on this manual, he may render it complete. There is a personality in some of his remarks which is uncalled for. In spite of these defects, this is the best work of the kind with which we are acquainted.

THE MARBLE PROPHECY, AND OTHER POEMS. By J. G. Holland. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

When our holy church, with its venerated head, its divine sacraments and sacred ceremonies, is chosen by a writer of merit as the object upon which he feels himself moved to pour forth his scathing abuse or stinging ridicule, we bear his ponderous strokes or parry his keen thrusts as best we may, confessing to the pardonable weakness of feeling complimented at being called to the lists by an adversary of some strength of arm or sharpness of weapon; but, when one from the common crowd of chance‐ assembled knights, like our quondam _Timothy Titcomb_, presumes unchallenged to invite the attention of that respectable audience—the American public—to _his_ little tilt against the giant of centuries, and, in his overeagerness to take a share in the fray, disports himself upon such a sorry steed as the “Marble Prophecy,” laden with “other poems” as a makeweight, we at once look about us to see if we have not a serviceable cane at hand for the use of the same discriminating public, _et voila!_

ROUNDABOUT RAMBLES IN LANDS OF FACT AND FANCY. By Frank R. Stockton. 1 vol. small 4to. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

This is an instructive work, compiled with much judgment and good taste from various authors, and is beautifully illustrated, making it a very desirable holiday present for the young folk.

NIAGARA: Its History and Geology, Incidents and Poetry. With illustrations. By George W. Holley. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1872.

This is something more than a mere _Murray_, or guide‐book, at the same time that it serves as a valuable reference to the intelligent tourist. Besides some historical and topographical descriptions, for which he draws on the works of Shea, Parkman, Marshall, the Relations of the Early Jesuit Missionaries, and State Documents, in addition to his own observations, he indulges in some geological speculations which will attract the attention of scientific readers. The whole is interspersed with anecdotes, incidents, and poetical scraps which will serve to relieve the tedium of travel, and hotel life.

A HIDDEN LIFE, AND OTHER POEMS. By George Macdonald, LL.D., Author of “Within and Without,” “Wilfred Cumbermede,” etc. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1872.

There is true poetry in this volume. The author possesses, in our judgment, powers of a high order. His mind, too, is of a deeply religious cast; and we wonder how he can remain a Protestant after his struggles with doubt on the one hand, as shown in the poem of “The Disciple,” and his attractions to Catholicity on the other, as evinced especially in his poem on “The Gospel Woman,” and most in the opening one, “The Mother Mary.” But then he has a laudatory sonnet “To Garibaldi.”

The “Catholic Publication Society” has in press, and will publish simultaneously with its appearance in England, from advance sheets furnished by the author, a new work, entitled, _My Clerical Friends_, by the author of _The Comedy of Convocation_. This will be the only authorized edition published in this country.

Books and Pamphlets Received.

From KREUZER BROTHERS, Baltimore: The Catholic Priest. By Michael Müller, C.SS.R. 18mo, pp. 163.—The “Our Father.” By the same. 18mo, pp. 221.

From J. A. MCGEE, New York: Sister Mary Francis’ (the Nun of Kenmare) Advice to Irish Girls in America. 12mo, pp. 201.

From BURNS, OATES & CO., London: Reflections and Prayers for Holy Communion. From the French. With a preface by Archbishop Manning. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) 18mo, pp. xii., 498.

From R. WASHBURNE, London: A Dogmatic Catechism. From the Italian of Frassinetti. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) 18mo, pp. xix., 244.

From JAMES DUFFY, Dublin: Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects. By Henry Edward Manning, D.D. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.) pp. viii., 456.

From GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, New York: The Moral of Accidents, and other Discourses. By the late Thomas T. Lynch. 12mo, pp. xviii., 415.

From T. & T. CLARK, Edinburgh, and SCRIBNER, WELFORD & ARMSTRONG, New York: Biblical Commentary on the Books of the Kings. By C. F. Keil. 8vo, pp. viii., 523—Sermons from 1828 to 1860. By the late Wm. Cunningham, D.D. 8vo, pp. xxxvi, 416.—The Old Catholic Church. By W. D. Killen, D.D. 8vo, pp. xx., 411.—Biblical Commentary on the Book of Psalms. By F. Deleutzsch, D.D. Vol. III. 8vo, pp. 420.

From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: Fly Leaves by C. S. C. 12mo, pp. vi., 233.

From the AUTHOR: Key to the Massoretic Notes, Titles, and Index generally found in the margin of the Hebrew Bible. Translated from the Latin of A. Hahn. With many additions and corrections. By Alex. Merowitz, A.M., Professor of the Hebrew language and literature in the University of New York. New York: J. Wiley & Son. 8vo, paper, pp. 22.

From ELDREDGE & BROTHER, Philadelphia: A French Verb Book. By E. Lagarde, A.M. 12mo, pp. 130.

From P. O’SHEA, New York: Month of the Holy Rosary. By Rev. P. M. Chery, O.P. 18mo, pp. iv., 200—The Scapular of Mount Carmel. By Rev. P. Tissot, S.J. 24mo, pp. 105.

From the AUTHOR: The Irish Republic. A Historical Memoir of Ireland and her Oppressors. By P. Cudmore, Counsellor‐at‐Law. St. Paul: Pioneer Printing Company, 1871.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XVI., NO. 94.—JANUARY, 1873.

A Son Of The Crusaders.

... “On his breast a bloodie crosse he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore, And dead, as living, ever him ador’d: Upon his shield the like was also scor’d. For soveraine hope which in his helpe he had, Right faithful true he was in deede and word.”—SPENSER.

One day in the month of November, 1833, a stranger descended from the lumbering _Schnellpost_ at the little town of Marburg (Electoral Hesse), on the pleasant banks of the Lahn. Looking around him, he discovered but a single object of interest—the old cathedral of the place, a noble Gothic edifice, which, although stripped and cold in its modern dedication to the Lutheran service, still preserved the salient features of its inalienable beauty and majesty of form.

The traveller, a young man of twenty‐three, a Catholic, and an enthusiast in his intelligent and cultivated admiration of the grand architecture of his church, recognized in the building a monument celebrated at once for its pure and perfect beauty, and the first in Germany in which the pointed arch prevailed over the round in the great renovation of art in the XIIIth century.

Contrary to Lutheran observance, the church happened on that day to be open, in compliance with a traditional custom, for the cathedral bore the name of S. Elizabeth, and this was S. Elizabeth’s Day. The stranger entered. There was no religious service. There were no worshippers, and children were at play among the old tombs. He wandered through the vast and desolate aisles, which not even the devastation and neglect of centuries had robbed of their marvellous elegance. Naked altars from which no ministering hand now wiped the dust, pillars, defaced statues, nearly obliterated paintings, broken and defaced wood carvings, successively struck his eye and attracted his attention. All these remains of Christian art, even in their ruin telling the story of their origin in days of fresh and fervent faith, appeared also to picture in a certain sequence the events of some devout life. Here was the statue of a young woman in the dress of a widow; further on, in painting, a frightened girl showing to a crowned warrior her robe filled with roses; yet further, these two, the young woman and the warrior, tearing themselves in anguish from a parting embrace. Again, the lady is seen stretched on her bed of death amidst weeping attendants, and, later, an emperor lays his crown on her freshly exhumed coffin.

It was explained to the traveller that these pictured incidents were events in the life of S. Elizabeth, queen of that country, who, that very day six hundred years ago, had died in Marburg and lay buried in the church. A silver shrine, richly sculptured, was shown to him. It had once enclosed the relics of the saint, but one of her descendants, turned Protestant, had torn them from it, and scattered them to the winds. The stone steps approaching the shrine were deeply hollowed by the countless pilgrims who, more than three centuries agone, had come here to kneel in prayer. “Alas!” thought the stranger, “the faith which left its impress on the cold stone has left none upon human hearts!”

He desired to know more of the saintly patroness of Marburg’s cathedral, and leaving the church sought out a bookseller, and asked for a life of S. Elizabeth. The man stared at him, bethought himself a moment, and then went up into a garret, from which he presently emerged with a dust‐covered pamphlet. “Here it is,” he said, “the only copy I have: no one ever asked for it before.”

The traveller resumed his journey, reading his pamphlet to beguile the tedium of his way. Although written by a Protestant in a cold, unsympathizing, matter‐of‐fact way, the essential charm of its mere record of youthful self‐devotion laid a powerful spell upon him. His artistic enthusiasm, his heart, his piety, were all touched and aroused. Just emerging in sorrow from one of the most trying ordeals of the battle of life, with repelled longings and disappointed hopes, his pent‐up youthful energies were now seeking some outlet for escape, some fresh field of action. Uncertain what this field, this outlet, might be, he had vowed that, with the choice before him of several different objects to pursue, he would decide for that which was the most Catholic. He had found it. “To S. Elizabeth he would,” in his own words, “sacrifice his fatigue and his hopes.” He would write her life, and strive to place on record its touching story—at once a tender love‐legend, a page of mediæval romance, and the hallowed tradition of a saintly career. At the first stopping‐ place he left the diligence, and, taking a return carriage, went immediately back to Marburg.

This traveller, this young stranger, was Charles, Count de Montalembert, peer of France. His sudden impulse, his enthusiastic vow, were not as words written in water. To what would at this day seem to many an inconsiderate, quixotic rashness, succeeded the deliberate realization of an undertaking full of labor and difficulty. He ransacked libraries, sought out chronicles, legends, and popular traditions, read old books and long‐forgotten manuscripts, and travelled far and wide throughout Germany, wherever a locality offered the attraction of the slightest association with the name of S. Elizabeth. The charm and fascination of his theme grew upon him with every additional fact he learned regarding her. Beginning at the famous old castle of Wartburg, where Elizabeth came a child, the daughter of a race of kings, from distant Hungary, he made a veritable pilgrimage, taking for his route the itinerary of his heroine’s life—to Kreuzburg; to Reinhartsbrünn, where, a young wife and mother of twenty, she parted in anguish from her husband, a crusader setting out for Palestine; to Bamberg, where she was driven by persecution; to Andechs, to Erfurth, and finally to Marburg, “whither,” as he says, “he returned to pray by her desecrated tomb, and to gather with pain and difficulty some remembrance of her from the mouths of a people who have renounced with the faith of their fathers the regard due to their benefactress.”

Bow down your heads, O generation of stockbrokers and speculators in provisions and railway shares, to the memory of this Montalembert, who, in the flower of his youthful manhood, for years went up and down the world with an idea in his head and heart!

But this book, this life of S. Elizabeth. you object, was, after all, a mere pious legend of dubious trustworthiness? On the contrary, it was a work of the highest value, even judged by the severest canons of historical criticism. Its introduction alone is sufficient to make the work classic. Sainte‐Beuve, high academic and critical authority, calls it majestic,(186) and reviewers of all nations have contributed their verdicts of approval.

This was Montalembert’s first literary production—a success, as it deserved to be, worthy forerunner of his yet greater work, _The Monks of the West_, and the first‐fruit of a splendid literary and oratorical career, whose main inspiration was always drawn from the sources of Catholic truth and Catholic faith.

Montalembert died in March, 1870, leaving a name and a reputation which for all time to come will remain one of the proudest illustrations of France.

We are fortunate in already having an admirable memoir of his life,(187) written by one of the most distinguished women of England. It cannot but be gratifying to all who cherish the memory of Montalembert that the task should have fallen into the hands of one so eminently capable as Mrs. Oliphant. Personally intimate with his family and on terms of friendship with his wife (_née_ Comtesse de Merode), thoroughly familiar with the language, modern history, and politics of France, and the successful translator of _The Monks of the West_, it would have been difficult to find a writer better fitted, in knowledge and in sympathy, to record the life of Charles de Montalembert. Let us add here that, for reasons which the intelligent reader may easily divine, we are glad that the biography has been written by a Protestant. Although to a Catholic reader it would be more pleasant to read a life in which nothing could be found which is not in perfect harmony with the spirit of faith and loyalty toward the church, yet, for the public generally, the testimony of a fair and candid Protestant in respect to certain very important events in the career of Montalembert will be more free from the suspicion of bias, and therefore of more value in establishing the fact of his essential devotion to the Holy See to the end of his life.

We trust that the ladies of Sorosis and of the various wings and vanguards of the grand army of “The Rights of Women” will not take offence if we endeavor to compliment Mrs. Oliphant by saying that we especially admire the style in which her memoir is written, for a tone and quality which—turn whither we may—we cannot otherwise describe than as “manly.” Making due allowance for the almost inevitable partiality of the biographer for his hero, there is a directness, a solidity, a sound common‐sense view of practical questions, and an absence of mere sentimentality, all eminently to her credit and in admirable keeping with the dignity of her subject. Mrs. Oliphant’s modesty, too, equals her ability. Referring to her translation of _The Monks of the West_, she tells us: “We are sorry to add, to our personal humiliation, that Montalembert was by no means so much satisfied with at least the first part of the translation. He acknowledged that the meaning was faithfully rendered; ‘but,’ he wrote, ‘I cannot admire the constant use of French or Latin words instead of your own vernacular. My Anglo‐Saxon feelings are wounded to the quick by the useless admission of the article _the_ or _a_; and by such words as _chagrin_ instead of _grief_, _malediction_ instead of _curse_, etc.’ The proofs of the translation came back from him laden with corrections in red ink—a circumstance which communicated to them a certain additional sharpness, at least to the troubled imagination of the translator; and the present writer may be perhaps allowed here to avow in her own person that up to this present moment, when she happens to have the smallest French phrase to translate, she pauses with instinctive alarm, hastily substituting _freedom_ for _liberty_ when the word occurs; and will cast about in her mind, with a certain sensation of fright, how to find words for _authority_, _corruption_, _intelligence_, etc., in other than the French form.”

Charles Forbes René de Montalembert was born in London on the 15th of May, 1810. His father was a noble French _emigré_; his mother, the daughter of James Forbes, an Englishman of distinction. The first nine years of his life were spent principally in England under the immediate care and in the personal companionship of his maternal grandfather, and, dating from this period, the English language was always to him a second mother tongue. At the age of fourteen we find him at the college of S. Barbe in Paris. The fact may be discouraging to many young gentlemen of the present day now at school and in sad possession of a class of ideas too generally accepted, to the effect that men become useful and distinguished by reason of the possession of some unaided special gift rather than by study and the laborious acquisition of knowledge—we say the fact may be discouraging to them, but nevertheless it remains a fact that the young Montalembert laid the foundation of his future distinction as a man of letters, an archæologist, a great orator, a great writer, an eminent political leader, and the ornament of the Chamber of Peers, in close, unremitting, laborious application to his studies while at school. After he had completed his college course and entered society, we find him writing to a friend: “It is usual to say that youth is the time for the pleasures of society. I look upon this opinion as a complete paradox. It seems to me, on the contrary, that youth should be given up with ardor to study, or to preparation for a profession. When a young man has paid his tribute to his country; when he can appear in society crowned with the laurels of debate or of the battle‐field, or at least of universal esteem; when he feels entitled to command respect, if not admiration—then is the time to enter society with satisfaction.”

Soon there came for him the period of _illusions perdues_, which, commencing with the entrance into life of every intelligent and ambitious young man, accompanies him with more or less persistence to the edge of the grave. Young Montalembert spent some time in Sweden, at whose court his father was the ambassador of Charles X. On his return to France, he wrote an article upon that country which M. Guizot, the editor of the _Revue Française_, advised him to cut down to half its length. He complied, sent in his abbreviated article, and the editor suppressed the best portion of what remained!

About this time he met Lamartine, became intimate with Victor Hugo, “then the poet of all sweet and virtuous things,” and numbered among his friends Sainte‐Beuve, who then shared Montalembert’s religious enthusiasm and his belief that Europe was to be regenerated by the church. Ireland, too, came in for a full share of his sympathy. He wrote an article on that country which Guizot allowed to go in entire. A friend tells him that his article on Sweden is dull, and that on Ireland commonplace. “Disappointing,” writes the young author in his diary, “but better than if my friend had praised me insincerely.” O’Connell, then in the fulness of his powers and his popularity, greatly attracted him. He would go all the way to Ireland to see him. And he did. Crossing the two channels, and traversing England, he made the journey over the mountains of Kerry on horseback, with a little Irish boy for his guide. He visited O’Connell at Derrynane, prepared and anxious to discuss with him the great subjects which filled his mind. The Liberator received him kindly, and after dinner—looking at the ingenuous face of twenty before him—did what he thought precisely the proper thing to do—ushered him at once into the drawing‐room, where the young count was thrown on the tender mercies of a crowd of pretty and gay young Irish women. _Encore une illusion perdue!_ He had crossed seas and mountains to discuss freedom, the church, English rule and Irish emancipation, with Ireland’s greatest man, who, without listening to a word from him, thrust him into another room amid a bevy of laughing girls!

After Montalembert’s return from Ireland came his intimacy with Lacordaire and Lamennais, and the joint literary enterprise of the three in the establishment of the _Avenir_, whose motto was “God and Liberty.” Its first number was issued Oct. 15, 1830. We will not dwell on its history, so familiar to all Catholics, except to refer to the holy war waged by it and its friends against the monopoly of education by the government. Under the law, every private school, every educational institution not licensed and regulated by the University of Paris, was absolutely forbidden. Utter irreligiousness then pervaded the colleges and schools of France. The generation which passed through those schools bears witness to their evil influences, and confirms Lacordaire’s own record, who says that he left college “with religion destroyed in his soul,” and that he, like almost all the youths of his period, “lost his faith at school.”

Montalembert’s picture of these evil influences was everywhere recognized as truthful. “Is there a single establishment of the university where a Christian child can live in the exercise of faith? Does not a contagious doubt, a cold and tenacious impiety, reign over all these young souls whom she pretends to instruct? Are they not too often either polluted, or petrified, or frozen? Is not the most flagrant, the most monstrous, the most unnatural immorality inscribed in the records of every college, and in the recollections of every child who has passed as much as eight days there?”

To test the law forbidding freedom in education, Lacordaire and Montalembert opened a free school for poor children at Paris in the Rue des Arts. They were indicted for the offence, and tried at the bar of the Chamber of Peers. The audience, as may well be imagined, was made up from the nobility and intelligence of the land. The prisoners defended their cause in person. Lacordaire, who spoke first, referred to the fact that the government had lately impeached the previous ministers by virtue of power in the charter not reduced to a special law. “If they could do it, so could I,” said the brave priest, “with this difference, that they asked blood, while I desired to give a free education to the children of the poor.” He ended by recalling to his judges the example of Socrates “in the first struggle for freedom to preach.” “In that _cause célèbre_ by which Socrates fell,” said Lacordaire, “he was evidently culpable against the gods, and in consequence against the laws of his country. Nevertheless, posterity, both pagan and Christian, has stigmatized his judges and accusers; and of all concerned have absolved only the culprit and the executioner—the culprit, because he had failed to keep the laws of Athens only in obedience to a higher law; and the executioner, because he presented the cup to the victim with tears.”

With this proud and plain warning ringing in their ears, the judges next heard Montalembert. He was just twenty‐one, and by the recent death of his father but a few weeks in his place as a peer of France. Sainte‐Beuve saw that his youth, his ease and grace, the elegant precision of his style and diction, veiled the fact that it was a prisoner—not a peer—who spoke, and his judges were the first to forget it.

“The entire chamber listened with a surprise which was not without pleasure to the young man’s bold self‐justification. From that day M. de Montalembert, though formally condemned, was borne in the very heart of the peerage—he was its Benjamin.” The sentence was a gentle reprimand and a mild fine of a hundred francs.

The _Avenir_, it will be remembered, had incurred no censure from Rome. Nevertheless, it had not prospered, and it was resolved by its founders that they would appeal to the head of the church for his explicit approval. Accordingly, the publication of the paper was suspended, and its last number announced “with pomp,” as Lacordaire says, that “the purpose of its editors was to suspend it until they had gone to Rome to seek sanction and authority for its continuation.” The biographer well remarks that “neither from primitive Ireland nor romantic Poland had such an expedition set forth.” They asked the head of the church “to commit himself, to sanction a new and revolutionary movement, to bless the very banners of revolt, and acknowledge as pioneers of his army the ecclesiastical Ishmaels who had carried fire and flame everywhere during their brief career.” There could, of course, be but one result—failure. The _Avenir_ was condemned. Lacordaire and Montalembert at once submitted to the decision. Poor de Lamennais did not, and unhappily persisted in his sad mistake. In connection with this subject, we cannot here refrain from repeating at length some reflections which, coming as they do from an intelligent Protestant, have a peculiar force and value.

They are from the pen of Montalembert’s biographer, and present so admirable, so eloquent a _résumé_ of the question of apostasy, that we have not the heart to curtail the passage containing them by so much as the omission of a single word:

“Except at the Reformation, when the great overflow of spiritual rebellion was favored by such a combination of circumstances as has never occurred since, no man or group of men have succeeded in rebelling against Rome, and yet continued to keep up a religious character and influence. No man has been able to do it, whatever the excellence of his beginning might be, or the purity of the motives with which he started. Even in the Church of England the career of a man who separates himself from her communion is generally a painful one. He makes a commotion and excitement in the world for a time before he has fully made up his mind; and at the moment of his withdrawal he is sure of remark and notice, at all events, from certain classes. But after that brief moment he sinks flat as the spirits do in the _Inferno_, and the dark wave pours over him, and he is heard of no more. All that sustained and strengthened and gave him a fictitious importance as the member of a great corporation has fallen away from him. He has dropped like a stone into the water—like a foundered ship into the sea. In England, however, after all has been done, there is a sea of dissent to drop into, and though his new surroundings may please him little, yet he will come out of the giddiness of his downfall to take some comfort in them—will accustom himself by degrees to the lower social level, the different spiritual atmosphere. But he who dissents from the Church of Rome has no such refuge. The moment he steps outside her fold he finds himself in outer darkness, through which awful salutations are shrieked to him by the enemies of religion, by those whom he has avoided and condemned all his life, and with whom he can agree only on the one sole article of rebellion. If he ventures to hold up his head at all after what all his friends will call his apostasy, the best that he can hope for is to be courted by heretics, professed enemies of the church which he has been born in, and which probably he loves most dearly still, notwithstanding his disobedience. To quarrel with your home is one thing—to find its domestic laws hard, and its prejudices insupportable; but to plunge into the midst of the enemies of that home, and to hear it assailed with the virulence of ignorance—to join in gibes against your mother, and mockery of her life and motives—is a totally different matter. Yet this is almost all that a contumacious priest has to look forward to. A recent and striking example, to which we need not refer more plainly, will occur to every one who has watched the contemporary history of the Roman Catholic Church. In this case a brilliant and remarkable preacher—a man supposed the other day to be one of the most eminent and promising sons of Rome—after wavering and falling away in some points from ecclesiastical obedience, suddenly appeared in an admiring circle of gentle Anglicanism, surrounded by a fair crowd of worshipping Protestants, ready to extend to him all that broad and universal sympathy which he had no doubt been trained to regard as vilest latitudinarianism, or the readiness of Pilate to make friends with Herod. This prospect must chill the very soul of a man who has received the true priestly training, and who has been educated in that love of his church which is of itself a noble and generous sentiment. The best thing that can happen to him is to fall among heretics; the other alternative, and the only one, so far as events have yet made it apparent, to fall among infidels: and as his education has taught him to make but small distinction between them, and the infidels are nearer at hand, and his own countrymen, what wonder if it is into their hands that the miserable man, torn from all his ancient foundations, ejected from his natural place, heart‐weary with the madness which is wrought by anger against those we love, should fall—what wonder if he should rush to the furthest extremity, hiding what he feels to be his shame, and endeavoring to take some dismal comfort in utter negation of that past from which he has been torn! Whether there are new developments in the future for the new Protesters whom a recent decision has raised up, we cannot tell. But such has been the case in the past. Life is over for the rebellious priest who breaks with his church; his possibility of service in his vocation has come to an end; even the most careless peasant in his parish will turn from him. He is a deserter from his regiment in the face of the enemy, false to his colors, a man no longer of any human use.”

It was during Montalembert’s sojourn in Italy, on his remarkable _Avenir_ pilgrimage, that he became the intimate friend of Albert de la Ferronays, the hero of Mrs. Craven’s beautiful _Récit d’une Sœur_. He appears in the book designated under the name of Montal. From the same period, also, dates his intimacy with Rio, the future historian of Christian art. The young peer’s taste for art, always strong, and his enthusiastic admiration of the glorious remains of mediæval architecture, were both developed and strengthened under the teaching and influence of Rio. In March, 1833, he published an article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in which he energetically denounced the desecration and ruin of the grand old architectural monuments of France. It was addressed in the form of a letter to Victor Hugo, then leader of the Romantic school, who strongly sympathized with him on this subject, and whose _Notre Dame de Paris_ had been reviewed in the _Avenir_ by Montalembert with enthusiastic praise for the grand historical framework of the story. During the autumn of that year, Montalembert went to Germany, and, as we have seen, accidentally stopped at Marburg. Travel, research, and the collection of materials for the life of Elizabeth now engrossed all his time, until, attaining the legal age, twenty‐five, he took his seat in the Chamber of Peers. His first appearance at the bar of this chamber had been in defence of the liberty of teaching, and his first speech was in defence of the liberty of the press. These two discourses prefigured his parliamentary career. He was always the ardent advocate of liberty; rarely heard on the side of the government; and generally the leader of a conscientious and loyal opposition: which, well considered, would have been found the most prudent adviser of the administration in power.

Strongly imbued with English ideas, he fully appreciated the conservative power of an energetic opposition, ever ready to criticise, to question, to challenge, or to expose whatever might seem arbitrary or unconstitutional in the acts of the government. But this idea of an opposition at once loyal and law‐loving, was unfamiliar to his countrymen. To them, as a general thing, opposition meant revolution, and to many the spectacle of a peer of France, a Catholic, and a _proprietaire_, who was at once the friend of the proletaire, the dissenter, the oppressor, and the slave, was a paradox. And yet paradox there was none, for his declaration of principles was always clear and bold. Thus, in striving to cull from the Chamber of Peers a public expression of sympathy for the Poles, he insisted that it was their right and their duty to make an avowal of national sentiments, an expression of national opinion, that it was an obligation imposed by humanity and required by wise policy. “What is it,” he asked, “that has raised the British parliament to so high a degree of popularity and moral influence in Europe? Is it not because for more than a century no grave event has happened in any country without finding an echo there? Is it not because no right has been oppressed, no treaty broken anywhere, without a discussion on both sides of the question before the peers and commons of England, whose assemblies have thus become, in the silence of the world, a sort of tribunal where all the great causes of humanity are pleaded, and where opinion pronounces those formidable judgments which, sooner or later, are always executed?”

And his independence was that of the man as well as of the orator. He was committed to no policy, sought no party ends, but always, and at all cost, maintained the good, the just, the honorable. A lost or desperate cause, if equitable, was always sure of his support. The three oppressed nations of the earth, Poland under Russia, Ireland under England, and Greece under Turkey, were his most cherished clients. The weaker side ever strongly attracted him. “Penetrated by the conviction that just causes are everlasting,” says M. Cochin, “and that every protest against injustice ends by moving heaven and convincing men, he sought out, so to speak, every oppressed cause when at its last breath, to take its burden upon himself, and to become its champion. There is a suffering race, a race lost in distant isles, the race of black slaves, which has been oppressed for centuries. He took its cause in hand, and from the year 1837 labored for its emancipation. There are in all manufacturing places a crowd of hollow‐cheeked children, with pale faces and worn eyes, and the sight of them made a profound impression upon him; he took their cause also in hand. If you run over the mere index of his speeches, you will find all generous efforts contained in it.”

The year 1836 brought two notable events in the life of Montalembert—the publication of his first work, his _Life of S. Elizabeth_, and his marriage to a daughter of the noble house of de Merode in Belgium. Meantime, he continued his attacks on vandalism in art and his parliamentary labors, and was mainly instrumental in the creation of the committee of historical art and the commission on historical monuments, from both of which he was excluded under the Empire, which no more sympathized with his pure conceptions of Christian art than it did with his conception of Christian morals.

Rio has recorded the result of the impression made by Montalembert upon the English poet Rogers, which admirably illustrates the fact that Montalembert’s religion was not a sort of moral “Sunday suit” to be put off and on as occasion might require, and at the same time reveals to us the old poet in an entirely new aspect. The Montalemberts had spent the evening with Rogers, “and after their departure,” Rio relates, “when I found myself alone with Rogers, the expression of his countenance, which up to that moment had been smiling and animated, changed so suddenly that I feared I had offended him by some word of doubtful meaning which I might not altogether have understood. He paced about the room without saying anything, and I did not know whether I might venture to break this incomprehensible silence. At last he broke it himself, and said to me that, if he had the power of putting himself in the place of another, he would choose that of Montalembert, not on account of his youth and his beautiful wife, but because he possessed that immovable and cloudless faith that seemed to himself the most enviable of all gifts.”

Mr. Neale advised Montalembert that he had been elected an honorary member of the Cambridge Camden Society. On receipt of the news of this “unsolicited and unmerited honor,” Montalembert replied in a letter protesting against the usurpation of the title “Catholic” by the Camden Society. Here are some of its trenchant passages:

“The attempt to steal away from us, and appropriate to the use of a fraction of the Church of England, the glorious title of Catholic, is proved to be an usurpation by every monument of the past and present, by the coronation oath of your sovereigns, by all the laws that have _established_ your church. The name itself is spurned with indignation by the greater half at least of those who belong to the Church of England, just as the Church of England itself is rejected with scorn and detestation by the greater half of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. The judgment of the whole indifferent world, the common sense of humanity, agrees with the judgment of the Church of Rome, and with the sense of her 150 millions of children, to dispossess you of this name. The Church of England, who has denied her mother, is rightly without a sister. She has chosen to break the bonds of unity and obedience. Let her therefore stand alone before the judgment‐seat of God and man. Even the debased Russian Church—that church where lay‐ despotism has closed the church’s mouth and turned her into a slave—disdains to recognize the Anglicans as Catholics. Even the Eastern heretics, although so sweetly courted by Puseyite missionaries, sneer at this new and fictitious Catholicism. That the so‐called Anglo‐Catholics, whose very name betrays their usurpation and their contradiction, whose doctrinal articles, whose liturgy, whose whole history, are such as to disconnect them from all mankind except those who are born English and speak English—that they should pretend on the strength of their private judgment alone to be what the rest of mankind deny them to be, will assuredly be ranked among the first follies of the XIXth century.... You may turn aside for three hundred years to come, as you have done for three hundred years past, from the fountain of living waters; but to dig out a small channel of your own, for your own private insular use, wherein the living truth will run apart from its own docile and ever obedient children—_that_ will no more be granted to you than it has been to the Arians, the Nestorians, the Donatists, or any other triumphant heresy. I protest, therefore, against the usurpation of a sacred name by the Camden Society as iniquitous; and I next protest against the object of this society, and all such efforts in the Anglican Church, as absurd.”

We now have before us a period of seven years in the life of Montalembert, the record of which may be said to be the history of the great public questions which then agitated France; so intimately was his entire parliamentary career bound up with their development. The first and most important of these questions was that of education. Then, as now, the examination for the degree of A.B. (_baccalaureat_) was the key to all public occupations.

But at that time, from 1830 to 1848, no one had a right to present himself for this examination unless he had been educated in one of the public _lycées_, or some school licensed by the university, into whose hands the government had placed the monopoly of education. A wealthy parent might educate a boy under his own supervision in the best universities of England or Germany, or by private tutors, yet the youth would not be permitted to present himself for examination, although able to pass it with ease. And the degree resulting from this examination was the essential condition upon which the possibility of a public career was opened to every young Frenchman. Without it he could by no possibility be admitted to any public employment, the bench or the bar. Ability, accomplishments, acquirements, had nothing to do with the question. The young man must pass through a state school, or he was for ever debarred from a public career in his own country. But to pass through a state school, as all Christian parents, both Catholic and Protestant, then well knew in France, was to leave it with the loss of his religious principles. The biographer may well find it “equally incredible that such restrictions should have been borne by any people, and that a government founded upon liberal principles and erected by revolution should have dared to maintain them; but so it was.”

The parliamentary campaign on the educational question opened in 1844. Discussion soon reached a point of warmth. “There is one result given under the auspices of the university,” said Montalembert, “which governs every other, and which is as clear as daylight. It is that children who leave their family with the seed of faith in them, to enter the university, come out of it infidels.” The contradictions and _mouvement_ incited by this statement pushed the orator to more emphatic statement. “I appeal,” he said, “to the testimony of all fathers and mothers. Let us take any ten children out of the schools regulated by the university, at the end of their studies, and find one Christian among them if you can. One in ten! and that would be a prodigy. I address myself not to such or such a religious belief, but to all. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, all who believe humbly and sincerely in the religion which they possess, it is to them I appeal, whom I recognize as my brethren. And all those who have a sincere belief, and practise it, will confirm what I have said of the religious results of the education of the university. Let us hear the testimony of the young and eloquent defender of French Protestantism, the son of our colleague M. Agenor de Gasparin.... ‘Religious education,’ he says, ‘has no existence in the colleges.... I bethink myself with terror what I was when I issued forth from this national education. I recollect what all my companions were. Were we very good citizens? I know not, but certainly we were not Christians; we did not possess even the weakest beginnings of evangelical faith.’ ”

The results of the French compulsory anti‐Christian education may be read in current history. “The men it has brought up are the men who allowed France to be bound for eighteen years in the humiliating bondage of the Second Empire; who have furnished excuses to all the world for calling her the most socially depraved of nations; who have filled her light literature with abominations, and her graver works with blasphemy; and who have finally procured for her national downfall and humiliation.”

Montalembert planted his little band in battle array against the compact and overwhelming forces of the government, under the inspiration and trumpet‐tongued tones of his admirable _fils des croisés_ speech in the Chamber of Peers. Here, with its memorable termination, are a few passages from it. We regret we cannot give it entire. “Allow me to tell you, gentlemen, a generation has arisen among you of men whom you know not. Let them call us Neo‐Catholics, sacristans, ultramontanes, as you will; the name is nothing; the thing exists. We take for our motto that with which the generous Poles in the last century headed their manifesto of resistance to the Empress Catherine: ‘We, who love freedom more than all the world, and the Catholic religion more than freedom,’ ... are we to acknowledge ourselves so degenerated from the condition of our fathers, that we must give up our reason to rationalism, deliver our conscience to the university, our dignity and our freedom into the hands of law‐makers whose hatred for the freedom of the church is equalled only by their profound ignorance of her rights and her doctrines?... You are told to be _implacable_. Be so; do all that you will and can against us. The church will answer you by the mouth of Tertullian and the gentle Fénelon. ‘You have nothing to fear from us; but we do not fear you.’ And I add in the name of Catholic laymen like myself, Catholics of the XIXth century: We will not be helots in the midst of a free people. WE ARE THE SUCCESSORS OF THE MARTYRS, AND WE DO NOT TREMBLE BEFORE THE SUCCESSORS OF JULIAN THE APOSTATE. WE ARE THE SONS OF THE CRUSADERS, AND WE WILL NEVER YIELD TO THE PROGENY OF VOLTAIRE!”

“_Mouvements divers_” might well—according to the reported proceedings of the day—follow this burst of indignant eloquence. The words made the very air of France tingle; they defined at once the two sides with one of those happy strokes which make the fortune of a party, and which are doubly dear to all who speak the language of epigram—the most brilliantly clear, incisive, and distinct of tongues. Henceforward the _fils des croisés_ were a recognized power, but they were only known and heard by and through Montalembert, and, so far as the public struggle was concerned, might be said to exist in him alone. Montalembert fought almost single‐handed. “The attitude of this one man between that phalanx of resolute opponents and the shifty mass of irresolute followers, is as curious and interesting as any political position ever was. He stands before us turning from one to the other, never wearied, never flagging, maintaining an endless brilliant debate, now with one set of objectors, now with another, prompt with his answers to every man’s argument, rapid as lightning in his sweep upon every man’s fallacy: now proclaiming himself the representative of the Catholics in France, and pouring forth his claim for them as warm, as urgent, as vehement as though a million of men were at his back: and now turning upon these very Catholics with keen reproaches, with fiery ridicule, with stinging darts of contempt for their weakness. Thus he fought single‐handed, confronting the entire world. Nothing daunted him, neither failure nor abuse, neither the resentment of his enemies, nor the languor of his friends, ... not always parliamentary in his language, bold enough to say everything, as his adversaries reproached him, yet never making a false accusation or imputing a mean motive. No one hotter in assault, none more tremendous in the onslaught; but he did not know what it was to strike a stealthy or back‐handed blow.”

Time has strange revenges. In April, 1849, came up the important question of the _inamovibilité de la magistrature_—the appointment for life of magistrates. His old enemies were delighted to find that Montalembert declared himself unreservedly in the affirmative, and none more than M. Dupin, the very man who uttered the memorable “_Soyez implacables_.” Again he had the government to contend with, for under the law magistrates were no longer irremovable. Montalembert proposed, as an amendment, that all magistrates in office should be reappointed, and that all new appointments should be made for life. He pointed out the evils of a system which made judgeships tenable only from one revolution to another, and made a noble office the object of a “hunt” for promotion dishonoring to all parties. He spoke of the magistracy as the priesthood (_sacerdoce_) of justice, and added: “Allow me to pause a moment upon the word priesthood, which I have just employed. Of all the weaknesses and follies of the times in which we live, there is none more hateful to me than the conjunction of expressions and images borrowed from religion with the most profane facts and ideas. But I acknowledge that our old and beautiful French language, the immortal and intelligent interpreter of the national good sense, has, by a marvellous instinct, assimilated religion and justice. It has always said: _The temples of the law, the sanctuary of justice, the priesthood of the magistracy_.” The cause was won by his eloquence, and thus the first political success he ever gained was not for himself or his friends, but for his enemies. Truly a fitting triumph for a son of the crusaders.

The peerage now being abolished, Montalembert was returned as deputy to the National Assembly by the Department of Doubs. Here his career was, if possible, yet more brilliant than in the Chamber of Peers. It would require a volume fitly to record them. Soon came the presidency of Louis Bonaparte. Himself the soul of honor, with an eye single to the welfare of France, deceived by solemn assurances which he unfortunately credited, unsuspicious of a depth of treachery which he could not conceive, and alarmed by the horrible spectre of socialism, just arising from its native blood and mire, Montalembert became the dupe and the victim of Louis Napoleon. When power had been fully secured, the new president offered him the position of senator, along with the _dotation_ of 30,000 francs, which was refused without hesitation. A second and a third time the offer was renewed, the last offer being urged by De Morny in person. The only position he held under the government of Louis Napoleon was the nominal one of a member of the Consultative Commission, which he resigned on the publication of the decree for the confiscation of the property of the House of Orleans. He had already begun to suffer from the attacks of the disease to which he finally succumbed; and it was from his sick‐bed that he went to receive at the hands of the French Academy the highest and most dearly prized reward of French talent and genius. Montalembert was elected to the seat in the Academy vacated by the death of M. Droz, and his reception was an event. Being now freed from the absorbing engagements of life, he made several journeys to England, and travelled into Hungary, Poland, and Spain. His work entitled _L’Avenir Politique de l’Angleterre_ was the fruit of his English visits; and was well received both in France and England. In October, 1858, the Paris _Correspondant_ published a remarkable letter from Montalembert, describing a debate in the English Parliament. Its every paragraph was so full of a subtle and powerful contrast between political liberty in England and the absence of it in France that the Imperial government and its adherents were stung to the quick. He speaks of leaving “an atmosphere foul with servile and corrupting miasma (_chargée de miasmes serviles et corrupteurs_) to breathe a purer air and to take a bath of free life in England.” Referring to a former French colony, he says: “In Canada, a noble race of Frenchmen and Catholics, unhappily torn from our country, but remaining French in heart and habits, owes to England the privilege of having retained or acquired, along with perfect religious freedom, all the political and municipal liberties which France herself has repudiated.” A criminal prosecution was immediately begun against the count for this letter. Four separate accusations were brought. Among them were “exciting the people to hate and despise the government of the emperor, and of attempting to disturb the public peace.” The legal penalties were imprisonment from three months to five years, fine from 500 to 6,000 francs, and expulsion from France. According to French custom, the prisoner on trial was interrogated concerning the obnoxious passages, and, when Montalembert answered, it was discovered that the emperor and his government, not the prisoner at the bar, was on trial. With calm gravity he acknowledged each damning implication as an historical fact not to be denied, “enjoying, there can be no doubt,” says his biographer, “to the bottom of his heart, this unlooked‐for chance of adding a double point to every arrow he had launched, and planting his darts deliberately and effectually in the joints of his adversaries’ armor.”

The foundation of Montalembert’s great work, _The Monks of the West_, was laid in his studies for the life of S. Elizabeth, and the remainder of his active life was now devoted to its completion. It is sufficient to refer to it. We need not dwell upon this greatest production of his literary genius. Besides this, two other remarkable productions came from his pen toward the close of his career. These were the long and eloquent addresses, _L’Eglise libre dans l’Etat libre_, delivered before the Congress of Malines, and his _Victoire du Nord aux Etats‐Unis_, which, says his biographer, “is little else than a hymn of triumph in honor of that success which to him was a pure success of right over wrong, of freedom over slavery.”

It is well known that Montalembert was one of those who opposed the proclamation of the dogma of infallibility. On this point, his biographer gives us this interesting information.

One of his visitors said to him, while lying on what proved to be his death‐bed: “If the Infallibility is proclaimed, what will you do?” “I will struggle against it as long as I can,” he said; but when the question was repeated, the sufferer raised himself quickly, with something of his old animation, and turned to his questioner. “What should I do?” he said. “We are always told that the pope is a father. _Eh bien!_—there are many fathers who demand our adherence to things very far from our inclination, and contrary to our ideas. In such a case, the son struggles while he can; he tries hard to persuade his father; discusses and talks the matter over with him; but when all is done, when he sees no possibility of succeeding, but receives a distinct refusal, he submits. I shall do the same.”

“You will submit so far as form goes,” said the visitor. “You will submit externally. But how will you reconcile that submission with your ideas and convictions?”

Still more distinctly and clearly he replied: “I will make no attempt to reconcile them. I will submit my will, as has to be done in respect to all the other questions of faith. I am not a theologian; it is not my part to decide on such matters. And God does not ask me to understand. He asks me to submit my will and intelligence, and I will do so.” “After having made this solemn though abrupt confession of faith,” says the witness whom we have quoted, “he added, with a smile, ‘It is simple enough; there is nothing extraordinary in it.’ ”

The last years of the life of this distinguished man were one long protracted agony of physical suffering. The symptoms of disease that first manifested themselves in 1852 had gone on increasing in severity until in 1869, more than a year before his death, he speaks of himself as _vivens sepulcrum_. “I am fully warranted in saying that the death of M. de Montalembert was part of his glory,” writes M. Cochin, in describing his constancy and resignation. He died on the 13th of March, 1870.

At The Shrine.

I.

The sunset’s dying radiance falls On chancel‐gloom and sculptured shrine, A splendor wraps the pictured walls, Where painted saints in glory shine! And blent with sweet‐tongued vesper‐bells, Through echoing aisles and arches dim The organ’s solemn music swells, The sweetly chanted evening hymn.

II.

Low at Our Lady’s spotless feet A white‐robed woman kneels in prayer: The _Deus Meus_ murmurs sweet, While _Glorias_ throb on perfumed air; Before the circling altar‐rail She breathes her _Aves_ soft and low— The golden hair beneath her veil Wreathed like a glory on her brow.

III.

The sunset’s purple splendors fade, The dark’ning shades of twilight fall, The moonbeam’s silver touch is laid On sculptur’d saint and pictur’d wall; And while the weeping watcher kneels, And silence weaves her magic spells, The gray dawn thro’ the oriel steals, And morning wakes the matin‐bells.

ADVENT, 1872.

A Christmas Recognition.

We were old‐fashioned people at Aldred, and Christmas was our special holiday. The house was always filled with guests, not such as many of our grander neighbors asked to their houses, but such as cared for good old‐ fashioned cheer and antiquated habits. Not all were relations, for we never asked relations merely on account of their kinship, according to the regulation mixing of a conventional Christmas party, but among our own people were many whose presence at our Christmas gatherings was as certain as the recurrence of the festival itself. Among them was a great‐aunt, a soft, mild old lady, always dressed in widow’s weeds, but with a face as fresh as a girl’s, and hair white as the snowy cap she wore to conceal it. She had not come alone, for her adopted son was with her, the promised husband of her only child, dead years ago. He had left his own home and people, like Ruth, for the lonely, childless woman whom he was to have called mother, and remained her inseparable companion through her beautiful and resigned old age. There were, besides these, a young girl whose aspect was peculiar and attractive, and whose manner had in its mixture of modesty and self‐reliance a piquancy that added to the fascination of her person. She had come with a distant cousin of hers, a widow of a different type from our dear old relative, and whose object in chaperoning Miss Houghton must have been mixed. She was small, blonde, coquettish, and thirty‐two, though no one would have taken her for more than twenty‐five. She looked soft, pliable, irresolute, and tender, and men often found in her a repose which was a soothing contrast to her cousin’s energetic, peculiar, somewhat eccentric ways; only it was the repose yielded by a downy cushion, and people wearied of it after a while. The secret of the apparent partnership between these two opposite natures was perhaps this: the widow had a rich jointure, and was an excellent _parti_, while her cousin was portionless. Miss Houghton was thus doubly a foil to Mrs. Burtleigh.

I shall not speak of the other guests in detail, with the exception of one whom it would be impossible to overlook. He was a man nearer forty than thirty‐five, good‐humored and careless to all appearance, a hard worker in the battle of life, a cosmopolitan philosopher, and one of those handy, useful men who can sew on a button, cook an omelet, and kiss a bride as easily and unconcernedly as they gallop across country or horsewhip a villain. He had been in Mexico, surveying and engineering for an English railroad company, and he had spent some years in the East as the land‐ agent of a progress‐loving pacha. Europe he knew as well as we knew Aldred, while the year he had been absent from us had been filled by new and stirring experiences in Upper Egypt. But I forget; we have yet to speak of many little details of Christmas‐tide which preceded the gathering in of the whole party.

The kitchen department was, of course, conspicuous on this occasion. This included the village poor, who were regularly assembled every day for soup until Christmas eve, when each household received a joint of beef and a fine plum‐pudding. Some of us went round the village in a sleigh, and distributed tea and sugar as supplementary items. It was a traditional Yule‐tide, for the snow lay soft, even, and thick over the roads, as it but seldom does in England; then, the school was visited and solidly provisioned, the children were invited to a monster tea with accompaniment of a magic‐lantern show, after which the prizes were to be distributed, as well as warm clothing for the winter season. Nothing was said of the Christmas‐tree, as that was kept as a surprise.

The decoration of house and chapel was a wonderful and prolonged business, and afforded great amusement. Holly grew in profusion at Aldred, and a cart‐load of the bright‐berried evergreen was brought to the house the day preceding Christmas eve. The people we have made acquaintance with were already with us, and vigorously helped us on with the preparations. Such fun as there was when Miss Houghton insisted upon crowning the marble bust of the Indian grandee, Rammohun Roy, with a holly wreath, and when Mrs. Burtleigh gave a pretty, ladylike little cry as she pricked her fingers with the glossy leaves! The children of the house and those of another house in the neighborhood (orphan children whose gloomy home made them a perpetual source of pity to us) were helping as unhelpfully as ever, but what of that? It was a joyous, animated scene, and, still more, a romantic one; for the traveller, who had claimed a former acquaintance with Miss Houghton, now seemed to become her very shadow—or knight, let us say; it is more appropriate to the spirit of a festival so highly honored in mediæval times. The chapel, a beautiful Gothic building, small but perfect, was decorated with mottoes wrought in leaves, such as “Unto us a Son is born, unto us a Child is given,” and _Gloria in excelsis Deo_, etc., while festoons of evergreens hung from pillar to pillar, and draped the stone‐carved tribune at the western end with a living tapestry. Round the altar were heaped in rows, placed one higher than another, evergreens of every size and kind, mingled with islands of bright camellias, the pride of the renowned hothouses of Aldred. White, red, and streaked, the flowers seemed like stars among dark masses of clouds; and, when we lit a few of the tall candles to see the effect, it was so solemn that we longed for the time to pass quickly, till the midnight Mass should call forth all the beauty of which we had seen but a part.

These decorations had been mainly the work of the traveller (whom, in our traditional familiarity, we called “Cousin Jim”) and of our other friend, the adopted son of our old aunt; but, though their brains had conceived, it was Miss Houghton’s deft fingers that executed the work best. The last touch had just been put to an immense cross of holly which was to be swung from the ceiling, to supply the place of the rood that in old times guarded the choir‐screen. A star of snow‐white camellias was to be poised just above it, and a tall ladder had been put in readiness to facilitate the delicate task. Miss Houghton stood at the foot, one arm leaning on the ladder, the other holding aloft the white star. Her friend was halfway up, bearing the great cross, when he suddenly heard a low voice, swelling gradually, intoning the words of the Christmas hymn:

Adeste fideles, Læti triumphantes; Venite, venite in Bethlehem: Natum videte Regem angelorum: Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus Dominum.

Startled and touched, he began the repeating words of the chorus, pausing with his green cross held high in his arms. The others who, scattered about the chapel, heard his deep tones, answering, took up the chorus, and chanted it slowly to the end, Miss Houghton looking round with tears in her eyes, at this unexpected response to the suppressed and undefinable feelings of her heart. It was an impressive scene, the guests, servants, gardeners, and a few of the choir‐boys, all mingling in the impromptu worship so well befitting the beautiful work they had in hand. At the end of the verse, the traveller hastily gained the top of the ladder, and, having fastened the holly cross in its place, intoned a second verse, in which Miss Houghton immediately joined, and the harmonious blending of their voices had, if possible, a still more beautiful effect than the unaccompanied chant of the first verse. Again the chorus chimed in,

Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus Dominum.

in full, solemn tones, and all sang from their places, their festoons in their hands, so that at the end of the hymn the traveller said thoughtfully to his companion: “_Laborare est orare_ should be our motto henceforth. I wish all our work were as holy as this.”

“And why not?” she answered quickly; “only _will_ it so, and so it shall be. We are our own creators.”

“What a rash saying!” he exclaimed, with a smile; “but I know what you mean. God gives us the tools and the marble; it is ours to carve it _into_ an angel or a fiend.”

At last the chapel decoration was over, and a few of the more venturesome among us went out in the snow for a walk.

Meanwhile, in the corridor (so we called our favorite sitting‐room), the Yule‐logs were crackling cheerfully on the wide hearth, and the fitful tongues of flame shot a red glimmer over the old‐fashioned furniture. One of the chairs was said to have belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, and there was another, a circular arm‐chair, that looked as if it also should have had a history connected with the great and learned. Full‐length portraits of the old possessors of Aldred covered the walls, and on the stained‐glass upper compartments of the deep bay‐window at one end were depicted the arms and quarterings of the family. The Yule‐logs were oak, cut from our own trees, and perforated all over with large holes through which the flames shot up like fire‐sprites.

The Christmas‐tree and magic‐lantern also had to be put in order to save time and trouble, and a stage for tableaux occupied the rapt attention of the amateur mechanician (our great‐aunt’s son) and of “Jim,” the traveller and practised factotum. Miss Houghton was never very far from the scene of these proceedings, and, when she was not quite so near, “Cousin Jim” was not quite so eager. Almost all our guests had brought contributions for the Christmas‐tree, of which our children had the nominal charge, and with these gifts and our own it turned out quite a royal success. Presents of useful garments, flannels, boots, mittens, woollen shirts, petticoats, and comforters, were stowed away beneath the lower branches, while all visible parts were hung with the toys and fruits, lights and ribbons, that so delight children. Gilt walnut‐shells were a prominent decoration, and right at the apex of the tree was fixed a “Christ‐child,” that thoroughly German development, an image of the Infant Saviour, holding a starred globe in one hand and a standard in the other. A _crèche_ had also been prepared in the Lady‐chapel, a lifelike representation of those beautiful Christmas pictures seen to such perfection in the large churches of Italy. Munich figures supplied the place of wax models, however, and were a decided improvement.

Many people from the village had asked leave to come in and look at these peculiar decorations; but, as few of them were Catholics, it had been thought better to wait till the third Mass on Christmas day to open the chapel to the public. Christmas eve was a very busy day, and towards five o’clock began the great task of welcoming the rest of the expected guests. This was done in no modern and languid fashion; the servants, clad in fur caps and frieze greatcoats, stood near the door with resinous torches flaring in the still night air—it was quite dark at that early hour—and the host and hostess welcomed them at the very threshold. The children helped them to take off their wraps, and held mistletoe sprigs over their bended heads as they reached up to kiss them. Indeed, mistletoe was so plentifully strewn about the house that it was impossible to avoid it, but we had so far eschewed the freedom of the past as to consider this custom more honored in the breach than in the observance. The children and the servants, however, made up for our carelessness.

Very little toilet was expected for a seven o’clock dinner (we were not fashionable people), but we found that our well‐meant injunctions had hardly been obeyed. For the sake of the picturesque, so much the better, I thought. One of our friends had actually donned a claret‐colored velvet suit, with slippers to match, embroidered with gold; and, when we looked at each other in silent amusement, the wearer himself smiled round the circle, saying pleasantly:

“Oh! I do not mind being noticed. In fact, I rather like it—this was a lady’s fancy, you see.”

“How, how?” we asked eagerly.

“Well,” answered the Londoner, a regular drawing‐room pet, and a very clever society jester, “I was challenged to a game of billiards by a fair lady, the Duchess of ——. She said to me, ‘And pray _do_ wear something picturesque.’ I bowed and said, ‘Your grace shall be obeyed.’ I happened to have some loose cash about me. I could not wear uniform, because I did not belong even to the most insignificant of volunteer regiments, and I went to my tailor. His genius was equal to the occasion, and this was the result. I played with the duchess, and she won,”—the hero of the velvet coat was an invincible billiard champion.—“As I have the dress by me, I take the liberty of wearing it occasionally in the country. It is too good to be hidden, isn’t it?”

So he rattled on till dinner was announced. It was a merry but frugal meal. The mince‐pies and plum‐pudding crowned with blue flame, the holly‐ wreathed boar’s head of romance, were not there; they were reserved for to‐morrow. So with the “wassail‐bowl,” the fragrant, spirituous beverage of which each one was to partake, his two neighbors standing up on each side of him, according to the old custom intended as a defence against treachery; for once it had happened that a guest whose hands were engaged holding the two‐handled bowl to his lips was stabbed from behind by a lurking enemy, and ever after it became _de rigueur_ that protection should be afforded to the drinker by his neighbor on either side.

The fare to‐night was still Advent fare, but, after dinner, Christmas insisted upon beginning. We were told that the “mummers” from the village were come, and waited for leave to begin their play. They were brought into the hall, and the whole company stood on the steps leading up to the drawing‐rooms. The scenery was not characteristic—a broad oaken staircase, a Chinese gong, the polished oak flooring, the massive hall‐door. The actors themselves, seven or eight in number, dressed in the most fantastic and extemporized costume, now began the performance; and but for the venerable antiquity of the farce, it was absurd and obscure enough to excite laughter rather than interest. The children were wild with delight, and were with difficulty restrained from leaping the “pit” and mingling with the actors on the “stage.” Indeed, for many days after nothing was heard among them but imitations of the “mummers.” There was a grave dialogue about “King George,” then a scuffle ensued, and one man fell down either wounded or in a fit. The doctor is called; the people believe the man dead, the doctor denies this, and says, “I will give him a cordial, mark the effect.” The resuscitated man afterwards has a tooth drawn by the same quack, who then holds up the tooth (a huge, unshapely equine one provided for the occasion), and exclaims: “Why, this is more like a horse’s tooth than a man’s!” I never could make out the full meaning of the “mummers’” play; but, whether it was a corruption of some older and more complete dramatic form, or the crude beginning of an undeveloped one, it certainly was the characteristic feature of our Christmas at Aldred. It took place regularly every year, without the slightest deviation in detail, and always ended in a mournful chorus, “The Old Folks at Home.” After the actors had been heartily cheered, and the host had addressed to them a few kind words of thanks and recognition, they were dismissed to the kitchen, to their much coveted entertainment of unlimited beer. There they enacted their performance once more for the servants, who then fraternized with them on the most amiable terms.

Meanwhile, our party were gradually collecting round the wood‐fire in the corridor. It was a bitter cold night, the snow was falling noiselessly and fast, and the wind howled weirdly through the bare branches of the distant trees. Our old aunt remarked, in her gentle way:

“One almost feels as if those poor owls were human beings crying with cold.”

“We look like a picture, mother,” somewhat irrelevantly answered her son after a slight pause; “the antique dresses of many of us are quite worth an artist’s study.”

Mrs. Burtleigh, whose blonde beauty was coquettishly set off by a slight touch of powder on the hair, and a becoming Marie Antoinette style of _négligé_, here pointedly addressed the traveller.

“Sir Pilgrim,” she said, “did you ever think of home when you had to spend a Christmas in outlandish countries?”

“Sometimes,” answered “Jim” absently, his eyes wandering towards Miss Houghton, who stood resting her head against a carved griffin on the tall mantel‐piece.

She caught his glance, and said half saucily:

“Now, if it was not too commonplace, I should claim a story—Christmas eve is not complete without a story, at least so the books say.”

“If it were required, I know one that is not quite so hackneyed as the grandmothers’ ghosts and wicked ancestors we are often surfeited with at Christmas,” replied her friend quickly. The whole circle drew closer around the fire, and imperiously demanded an explanation.

“But that will be descending to commonplace,” pleaded the traveller.

“Who knows? It may turn out the reverse, when you have done,” heedlessly said Mrs. Burtleigh.

“Well, if you will have it, here it is. Mind, now, I am not going to give you a three‐volume novel, full of padding, but just tell you one incident, plain and unadorned. So do not look forward to anything thrilling or sensational.

“Some years ago, I was in Belgium, hastening home for Christmas, and spent three or four days in Bruges. I will spare you a description of the grand old city, and come to facts. I was just on the point of leaving, and had got to the railway station in order to catch the tidal train for Ostend, when a man suddenly and hurriedly came up to me, an old servant in faded livery, who, without breathing a word, placed a note in my hand, and was immediately lost to sight in the crowd. The waiting‐room was dimly lighted, but I could make out my own name, initials and all, on the envelope. In my confusion, I hurried out of the station, and, stepping into a small _hôtellerie_, I opened the mysterious note. It was very short: ‘Come at once to No. 20 Rue Neuve.’ The signature was in initials only. The handwriting was small and undecided. I could hardly tell if it were a man’s or a woman’s. I knew my way to the Rue Neuve, not a really new street, but one of Bruges’ most interesting old thoroughfares. No gas, a narrow street, great gaunt _portes‐cochères_, and projecting windows on both sides, the pavement uneven, and a young moon just showing her crescent over the crazy‐looking houses—such was the scene. I soon got to No. 20. It was a large, dilapidated house, with every sign about it of decayed grandeur and diminished wealth. Two large doors, heavily barred, occupied the lower part of the wall; above were oriels and dormers whose stone frames were tortured into weird half‐human faces and impossible foliage. No light anywhere, and for bell a long, hanging, ponderous weight of iron. I pulled it, and a sepulchral sound answered the motion. I waited, no one came; I thought I must have mistaken the number. Taking out the letter, however, I made sure I was right. I pulled the bell again a little louder, and heard footsteps slowly echoing on the stone flags of the court within. _Sabots_ evidently; they made a rattle like dead men’s bones, I thought. A little _grille_, or tiny wicket, was opened, and an old dame, shading her candle with one brown hand, peered suspiciously out. Apparently dissatisfied, she closed the opening with a bang, muttering to herself in Flemish. It was cold standing in the street, and, as the portress of this mysterious No. 20 made no sign of opening the door for me, I was very nearly getting angry, and going away in no amiable mood at the unknown who had played me this too practical joke. Suddenly I heard the _grille_ open again, very briskly this time, and a voice said in tolerably good French:

“ ‘Monsieur’s name is—?’

“ ‘Yes,’ I replied rather impatiently.

“ ‘Then will monsieur wait an instant, till I undo the bars?’ A great drawing of chains and bolts on the inside followed her speech, and a little gate, three‐quarters of a man’s height, was opened in the massive and immovable _porte‐cochère_. I stepped quickly in, nearly overturning the old dame’s candlestick. She wore a full short petticoat of bright yet not gaudy blue, and over it a large black circular cloak which covered all but her clumsy sabots. Her cap was a miracle of neatness, and her brown face, wrinkled but cheery, reminded me of S. Elizabeth in Raphael’s pictures. She said glibly and politely:

“ ‘Will monsieur give himself the trouble to wait a moment?’

“She disappeared with her candle, leaving me to peer round the courtyard, where the moon’s feeble rays were playing at hide‐and‐seek behind the many projections. Almost as soon as she had left, she was with me again, bidding me follow her up‐stairs. ‘My master is bed‐ridden,’ she explained. ‘Since he got a wound in the war of independence against Holland, he has not been able to move. Monsieur will take care, I hope, not to excite him; he is nervous and irritable since his illness,’ she added apologetically.

“I confess I was rather disappointed. I had expected that everything would happen as it does in a play—it had looked so like one hitherto. I thought I was going to meet a woman—young, beautiful, in distress, perhaps in want of a champion—but it was only a bed‐ridden old man after all! Well, it might lead to an act of charity, that true chivalry of the soul, higher far than mere personal homage to accidental beauty. I entered a darkened room, scantily and shabbily furnished, and the old woman laid the candlestick on the table. The bed was in a corner near the fire; the uneven _parquet_ floor was covered here and there with faded rugs, and books and papers lay on a desk on the old man’s bed. At first I could hardly distinguish his features, but, as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I saw that he was a martial‐looking man, with eyes so keen that sickness could hardly dull them, and a bearing that indicated the stern will, the clear intellect, and the lofty _bonhomie_ of an old Flemish _gentilhomme_. He looked at me with curious and prolonged interest, then said, in a voice full of bygone courtesy:

“ ‘Will monsieur be seated? I have made no mistake in the name?’

“ ‘No,’ I answered, wondering what the question meant.

“ ‘Then, monsieur, I have important news for you. The daughter of your brother—’

“I was already bewildered, and looked up. He continued, taking my surprise for interest: ‘The daughter of your poor brother is now a great heiress, and I hold her fortune in trust for her—do not interrupt me,’ he said, eagerly preventing me from speaking, ‘it tires me, and I must say all this at once. I do not know if you knew of her being taken from her parents when a child; of course you recollect that, after her mother’s marriage with your brother, there was a great fracas, and poor Marie’s father disinherited her at once. When the child was born—I was her god‐father, by the bye—her parents being in great poverty, I begged of the grandfather to help and forgive them, the more so as your brother was making his poor wife very unhappy. He refused, and, though he generally took my advice (he was an an old college friend of mine), he was obstinate on this point. The child grew, and the parents were on worse terms every year. Marie’s father held out against every inducement; your poor brother—forgive me, monsieur!—fell into bad company, and made his home a perfect hell; his wife was broken‐hearted, but would not hear of a separation, and her only anxiety was for her child. I proposed to her to take the responsibility myself of putting the little one out of reach of this dreadful example of a divided household, and she consented. The father stormed and raved when he found the child was gone, but for once his wife opposed him, and refused to let him know her whereabouts. Every year I interceded with the grandfather, who consented to support the little girl, but would never promise to leave her a competency at his death. One day, suddenly, your poor brother died.’

“I could not help starting; he saw my surprise.

“ ‘Oh!’ he resumed, ‘did you not know how he died? Pardon me, monsieur, I remember now that none of his English kin followed him to the grave, but I had heard your name before.’

“ ‘Monsieur,’ I began, fearing that he might be led on to talk of family secrets such as he might not wish to share with a stranger, ‘you have told me a strange tale; but allow me to undeceive you—’

“ ‘How did you deceive me?’ he asked impatiently, and I, remembering the old dame’s warning not to excite him, was puzzled how to act. In the meanwhile, he went on.

“ ‘_Eh bien!_ The mother then went to England, to the school where her child was, and saw her, but she did not long survive the wear and tear of her wretched life, and the grief her husband’s death caused her—for, poor woman, she loved him, you see.’

“ ‘Just like a woman, God bless her!’ I murmured involuntarily. The old man bent his head in cordial assent, but immediately resumed: ‘Her father blessed her before she died, and promised to care for the little girl. He then drew up this will’—here he laid his hand on a thick packet on the desk—‘and entrusted it me. The child was nine years old then, and that was fifteen years ago. She was to be told nothing till her twenty‐first birthday, and to be brought up in England, unconscious of anything save that she was the child of honest parents. This went on for some years, and then my old friend died. I continued to send regular remittances to the little girl’s temporary guardians; the bulk of the fortune I kept in the house—there in that chest; perhaps it was a foolish fancy, but I did not care to have it in a common bank. The war came and passed over the flower of our land, and you see, monsieur, what it has left of my former self. Well, after a time, five or six years ago, I ceased hearing from my little ward; I was unable to get up and search for her; all that advertisements and correspondence could do I did, and my chief endeavor was to find you. I thought, if anything were likely, this was; she would go to you, her father’s step‐brother, a different man, as I always heard her mother say, from what her own unhappy parent had been.’

“ ‘But,’ I said, ‘allow me to correct a mistake, monsieur; I never had a step‐brother, or a brother either.’

“ ‘What!’ the old man exclaimed nervously—‘what do you mean? Do not joke about such things. Your name is ——. Your hair is fair and wavy, your figure tall and stalwart—that was the portrait of my poor little ward’s uncle, a different man, of different blood, as well as different name, from her father.’

“ ‘Do not tell me any names, monsieur,’ I here insisted, ‘until I have told you who I am.’

“He looked at me, still agitated, his brows knitted, and his lips quivered. I told him my name, birth, country, profession, and assured him that I, an only son, had never heard of any story like his. He seemed thunderstruck, and could hardly take in the idea; but, recollecting himself, said: ‘Pardon me, monsieur, but I have, then, caused you great inconvenience.’

“His politeness now seemed overwhelming; he was in despair; he was _désolé_. What could he do? How could he apologize? I quieted him as best I could by professing the utmost indifference about the delay, and begged him, though I would solicit no further confidence, to consider my lips as sealed, and, if he wished it, my services as entirely at his disposal.

“He smiled curiously, then said: ‘The best apology I can make is to tell you the whole. Your name and initials misled me. Having heard that you were in Bruges, I sent my messenger, who, it seems, only reached you as you were on the point of starting for Ostend. I thought it was my ward’s uncle I had found, and, never having seen him, I could not tell if you were the wrong man. I must continue to try and find him; if I fail—never mind, I want to tell you her name. She is Philippa Duncombe, and, when I saw her last, she was a dark child, quick, peculiar, and resolute. It is so long ago that I could give you no idea of her exterior as she is now. I think she must have suspected her dependence upon a supposed charity, and have left school without the knowledge of any one. Anyhow, I must still try to find your namesake; as for you, monsieur, I cannot thank you enough for your forbearance.’

“I left Bruges the next day, but, as you may suppose, the story of the Baron Van Muyden never ceased to haunt me, and a few months after I was glad and flattered to receive a letter from the old veteran saying that he had now ascertained that my namesake, the child’s half‐uncle, had been dead some years, and that he felt that to none other but myself would he now wish to transfer the task of searching for the lost heiress. Of course I accepted.”

Our friend paused here, and looked thoughtfully at the fire. The Yule‐logs were burning so merrily that a ruin seemed imminent, and while the silence was yet unbroken a sound of distant singing came towards the house. It was the gay company of Christmas carollers, singing their old, old ditties through the frosty night, in commemoration of the Angel‐songs heard by the watching shepherds so many long centuries ago on the hills of Judæa. But the company was too much absorbed in the traveller’s tale to heed the faint echo. Miss Houghton sat with her dark eyes fixed on the speaker, and every vestige of color gone in the intensity of her excitement; Mrs. Burtleigh, tapping the fender with her tiny gray satin slipper, seemed strangely excited, and glanced uneasily at her cousin; the rest of us were clasping our hands in our unrestrainable curiosity, and the provoking narrator actually had the coolness to hold his peace!

At last some one spoke, unable to control his goaded curiosity.

“Well?”

“Well?” repeated the artful “Jim.”

“Did you find her?” was the question that now broke from all lips, in a gamut of increasing impatience.

“I told you a story, as we agreed,” he answered; “but, if I tell you the _dénoûment_, we shall fall into what we wish to avoid—the commonplace.”

“Never mind, go on,” was shouted on all sides. Miss Houghton was silent, but she seemed to hang on his words. He had calculated on this emotion, the wretch, and was making the most of his points!

At last he resumed in a slow, absent way:

“Yes, I accepted the search; I made it; I did all I could think of—but I failed.”

The bomb had burst, but we all felt disappointed. This was _not_ commonplace, not even enough to our minds. “He had cheated us,” we cried.

“I can only tell you the truth; remember this was all real, no got‐up Christmas tale, to end in a wedding, bell‐ringing, and carol‐singing. Hark! do you hear the carollers outside?”

No one spoke, and he went on, still meditatively: “I do not mean to give it up, though.”

Miss Houghton, who, till now, had said nothing, opened a small locket attached to one of her bracelets, and, keeping her eyes fixed on “Cousin Jim,” passed it to him, saying:

“Did you ever see this face before?”

He took it up, and looked puzzled. “No,” he said; “why do you ask?”

We all looked at her as if she had been a young lunatic, her interest in the story being apparently of no very lasting nature. She then unfastened a companion bracelet, the hanging locket of which she opened and handed to her friend again.

“This face you have seen?” she asked confidently.

He started, and a rush of color came over his bronzed cheeks.

“Yes, yes, that is the Baron Van Muyden—younger, but the same. And here is his writing, ‘To Marie Duncombe, her sincere and faithful friend.’ Miss Houghton?”

“Yes,” she answered calmly, as if he had asked her a question.

“Then what I have been looking for for three years I have found tonight?” he said, looking up at her, while we were all stupefied and silent.

“And what I have never dreamt of,” she answered in a low voice, “I have suddenly learned to‐night.”

The carollers were now close under the windows, and the words of a simple chorus came clearly to our hearing—

The snow lay on the ground, The stars shone bright, When Christ our Lord was born On Christmas night.

After a few moments’ silence, our curiosity, like water that has broken through thin ice, flowed into words again. Many questions and a storm of exclamations rang through the room, and the concussion was such that the Yule‐logs crashed in two, and broke into a race across the wide hearth, splinters flying to the side, and sparks flying up the chimney. Then Miss Houghton spoke with the marvellous self‐possession of her nature.

“I knew my own name and my mother’s from the beginning,” she said, “and Monsieur Van Muyden, and the old house, and the Flemish _bonne_ in the Rue Neuve. I remember them all when a child. I used often to sleep there, and the night before I left Bruges I still remember playing with the baron’s old sword. I remember my mother coming to see me at school in England, a convent‐school, where I was very happy, and giving me these bracelets. She told me never to part with them; she said she would not be with me long. They told me of her death some months afterwards. The other portrait is that of my grandfather, given by him to my mother on her _fête_ day, just before her marriage, with a lock of his hair hidden behind. She always wore it. M. Van Muyden’s was done for her when I was born, and was meant to be mine some day, as he was my god‐father. The remittances he spoke of used to come regularly; but, when I grew older, my pride rebelled (just as he guessed, you say), and I hated to be dependent on those who, kind as they were, were not my blood‐relations. I ran away from school, and lived by myself for a long time in poverty, yet not in absolute need, for I worked for my bread, and worked hard. I had a great deal to go through because I dared not refer any one to the school where I had lived. Mrs. Burtleigh was very kind to me; I told her my story, as far as I knew it, and somehow she found out that we were cousins through my father; so she made me take her maiden name, Houghton, instead of the one I had adopted before. She, of course, thought as I did, that the child of the disinherited Marie Duncombe and the unhappy Englishman, my poor father, could be naught but a beggar. She was kindness itself to me, and, though I was too proud to accept all she offered me, I _did_ accept her companionship and her home. Many little industries of my own, pleasant now because no longer imperatively necessary, help me to support myself, as far as pecuniary support can be called such; my _home_ has been a generous gift—the gift I prize most.”

She stopped, and Mrs. Burtleigh looked up in impatient confusion, perhaps conscious that her feelings and motives had been too mixed to warrant such frank, unbounded gratitude. “Jim” said nothing, and Miss Houghton seemed so calm that it was almost difficult to congratulate her. She was asked if she had recognized herself from the first in the story.

“Yes,” she said; “I knew it must be me.”

“You took it coolly,” some one ventured to observe.

“I have seen too much of the _revers de la médaille_ to be much excited about this,” she said; but, if she was outwardly calm, her feelings were certainly aroused, for her strange eyes had a far‐away look, and the color came and went in her cheek.

Our friend seemed almost crestfallen; we thought he would have been elated. Presently she said to him, giving him the bracelets:

“You must take these to Bruges, and I think you had better take me, too.”

He stared silently at her. Just then the bell began to ring for the midnight Mass. What followed Miss Houghton told us herself.

The guests hurried to the chapel, rather glad to get rid of their involuntary embarrassment. Those two remained behind alone. She was the first to speak.

“I think you are sorry you have found me.”

“Yes,” he answered slowly, “sorry to find it is you: Miss Houghton was poor, and Miss Duncombe is an heiress.”

“What matter! If you like, Miss Duncombe will give up the fortune, or, if you want it, she will give it to you.”

He looked offended and puzzled.

“You do not understand me,” she said, half laughing: “Miss Duncombe will let you settle everything for her, and say anything you like to Miss Houghton.”

“You do not mean—” he began excitedly.

“I do,” she answered composedly.

And they were engaged then and there. He wanted to be married before they left England, but she refused, saying their wedding must be in a Flemish cathedral, and their wedding breakfast in a Flemish house. And so it was; and No. 20 Rue Neuve is now their headquarters, while the household of the Belgian heiress is under the control of the old Flemish woman who once shut that door in the face of the heiress’ husband.

M. Van Muyden is happy and contented, and a merrier Christmas day was never spent at Aldred than the day of this unexpected recognition.

Midnight Mass, Christmas‐tree, school‐feast, and all succeeded each other to our perfect satisfaction; the health of the heroine of “Cousin Jim’s” tale was drunk in the “wassail‐bowl” on Christmas night, and, as the happy, excited, and tired Christmas party separated on the day following New Year’s day, every one agreed that it was a pity such things so very seldom happened in real life.

Fleurange.

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

Translated From The French, With Permission.