PART VI.

THE HERMIT.

I.

In his cell at midnight sleeping, Lay the hermit of Helléan; When upon his door three blows fell, With a little pause between.

“Open to me, holy hermit, Open unto me thy door; Here a place of refuge seeking, Let me lie upon thy floor.

“Icy cold the wind is blowing From the bitter Frankish land; From the sea it blows, ice-laden: Bid me not without to stand.

“‘Tis the hour when flocks are folded, Cattle herded in the stall: E’en wild beasts and savage creatures Cease to wander, sheltered all.”

“Who comes thus at midnight, seeking Entrance at my lonely door?” “One to Brittany, his country, Known full well in dangers sore; In her day of anguish, _Lez-Breiz, Armor’s Help_, the name I bore.”

“Nay, my door I will not open; A seditious one are you, Who against the Lord’s anointed Oft have earned a rebel’s due.”

“I seditious? Heaven is witness None am I of rebel crew. Whoso dares to call me traitor, He the slander well shall rue. Cursèd be the Frankish people, Cursed their king, and traitors, too!

“Yes; the Franks are coward traitors! Else the victory were mine.” “Man, beware! nor friend nor foeman Curse thou: ‘tis no right of thine.

“And the king, the Lord’s anointed, Least of all be curst by thee.” “Say you so? Nay rather, soothly, Satan’s own anointed he: Brittany by Heaven’s anointed Devastated ne’er would be.

“But the silver of the demon Goes the ancient Pol to shoe;[157] Yet unshod is Pol, and ever Silver is he fain to sue.

“Come, then, venerable hermit, Open unto me thy door. But a stone whereon to rest me, This I ask, and ask no more.”

“Nay, I cannot bid thee enter, Lest the Franks should work me woe.”[158] “Open! or the door itself I Down upon thy floor will throw.”

Hearing this, the ancient hermit Sprang from off his lowly bed, Lit in haste a torch of resin, And forthwith to open sped.

Opens, but recoils with horror, Back recoils with horror dread: Lez-Breiz’ spectre slowly enters, Bearing in both hands his head.

Of his eyes the hollow sockets Gleam with fierce and fiery light, Wildly rolling; pale, the hermit Trembles at the fearful sight.

“Silence! then, old Christian, fear not, Since ‘tis highest Heaven’s decree That the Franks should take my head off For a time: so let it be.

“Me have they _de_capitated. But to thee, behold, ‘tis given Forthwith to _re_capitate me: Wilt thou do the will of Heaven?”

“If, in sooth, high Heaven permits me To recapitate my lord, With good will I do so, proving By my very deed my word; For right well have you defended Bretons by your knightly sword.

“Thus I place upon your shoulders Once again your severed head: Be, my son, _re_capitated, In the Name all spirits dread.”

By the power of holy water Freely sprinkled him upon, Back to very manhood changing Lez-Breiz stood—the spectre gone.

When the spectre thus had vanished, Changed to veritable man: “With me now you must hard penance Do,” the hermit sage began.

“You a leaden cloak fast soldered Round your neck must henceforth wear, Wear for seven years, and daily Other penance must you bear.

“Daily, at the hour of noontide, Fasting, you must wend your way. Up to yonder mountain summit: There a little stream doth play. From that little mountain streamlet, Water you must bear away.”

“Holy hermit, only say What your will, and I obey.”

When the seven years were ended, Bared his heels were to the bone, Where the leaden cloak had worn them; Long and grey his hair had grown.

Grey his beard flowed o’er his girdle; Any who his form had seen Had a hoary oak-tree thought him, Which for sev’n years dead had been. None who Lez-Breiz met had known him, Altered thus in face and mien.

One there was alone who knew him Through the wood a lady bright, Through the greenwood swiftly passing, Clad in garb of purest white, Stayed her steps and wept, beholding Lez-Breiz in so piteous plight.

“Is it thou, my dear son Lez-Breiz? Lez-Breiz, is it thou indeed? Come, my child, that I may free thee From thy burden sore, with speed.

“Let me with my golden scissors Sever this thy heavy chain. I thy mother, Anue of Armor, Come to end thy lengthened pain.”

II.

A month and seven years had flown, When Lez-Breiz’ faithful squire Throughout the land his master sought, With love that cannot tire.

And as he rode by Helléan’s wood, He to himself did sigh: “Though I have slain his murderer, yet My dear lord lost have I.”

Then to him from the forest came A wild and plaintive neigh, Whereat his horse, with answering cry, Snuffing the wind, his head thrown high, Sped, with a bound, away.

Away they sped the greenwood through, Until they reached the spot Where the black steed of Lez-Breiz stood, But them he heeded not.

The charger stood the fountain by, He neither drank nor fed; But with his hoofs he tore the ground, With sad and downcast head; Then raised it, neighing dismally, He wept, so some men said.

“Tell me, O venerable sire, Who to the fountain come, Who is it that beneath this mound Sleeps in his narrow home?”

“Lez-Breiz it is who lies at rest, Here in this lonely spot. Famed will he be through Brittany Till Brittany is not. He with a shout shall wake one early day,[159] And chase the hated Frankish hosts away.”

Of the two warriors mentioned in the poem, the first is unknown except under the opprobrious epithet of “Lorgnez,” or “the leper.” The “Moor of the King” appears to have been one of those whom Louis took captive, after having conquered the city of Barcelona, and retained in his service. With regard to the avenging of his master’s death by the esquire, tradition relates that, at the moment when a Frankish warrior named Cosl struck off the Breton’s head, the esquire of Morvan pierced his back with a mortal wound. According to Ermold Nigel, a Frankish monk who accompanied the army of Louis, the head of Morvan was carried to the monk Witchar, who, when he had washed away the blood and combed the hair, recognized the features to be those of Lez-Breiz. He also relates that the body was carried away by the Franks, and that Louis le Débonnaire thought proper himself to arrange the ceremonies for its sepulture, doubtless with the intent to guard his tomb from the rebellious piety of the Bretons. The popular belief declared, as it has done with regard to other heroes, and in other lands, that from his unknown grave he should one day awake, and restore to his country the independence of which his death had deprived her. Seven years after the death of Morvan and the consequent subjugation of Brittany, Guiomarc’h, another viscount of Leon, of the race of Lez-Breiz, in 818 again roused his country to arms, and, after a vigorous struggle, succeeded in throwing off the foreign domination so hateful to his countrymen.

Nomenöe, one of the most astute as well as determined of the Breton kings, after deceiving Charles le Chauve for some time by a feigned submission, suddenly threw off the mask, drove the Franks beyond the Oust and Vilaine, seized the cities of Nantes and Rennes—which have ever since formed a part of Brittany—and delivered his countrymen from the tribute which they had been compelled to pay to the French king. M. Augustin Thierry considers the following description of the event which occasioned the deliverance of Brittany to be “a poem of remarkable beauty, full of allusions to manners of a remote epoch, ... and a vividly symbolical picture of the prolonged inaction and the sudden awakening of the patriot prince when he judged the right moment to have come.”

The fierce exultation of the poet when the head of the Intendant is swept off to complete the lacking weight, recalls the words of Lez-Breiz not many years before: “Can I but see this Frankish king, he shall have what he asks. I will pay tribute with my sword!”

“Si fortuna daret possim quo cernere regem, Proque tributali hæc ferrea dona dedissem.”[160]

THE TRIBUTE OF NOMENÖE.

(DROUK-KINNIG NEUMENOIOU), A.D. 841.

Cut is the gold-herb.[161] Lo, the misty rain Forthwith in steam-like clouds drives o’er the plain.

Argad! To war!

I.

Spake the great chief: “From the heights of the mountains of Arez, Mildew and mist for the space of three weeks have passed o’er us, Mildew and mist from the land that lies over the mountains:

“Still from the land of the Franks, more and more, thickly driving, So that in no wise my eyes can behold him returning, Karo, my son, for whose coming from thence I am watching.”

“Tell me, good merchant, who travellest all the land over, Hast thou no tidings to tell me of him, my son Karo?” “May be so, Father of Arez, but where and what does he?”

“He, wise of head, strong of heart, with the chariots departed, Drawn by three horses abreast, into Rennes with the tribute, Bearing among them the toll in full weight of the Bretons.”

“Chief, if your son bore the tribute, in vain you expect him: Each hundred pounds’ weight of silver was found to be lacking, Lacking by three when they weighed it: whereon the Intendant

“Cried out, ‘O vassal, thy head shall make up the scant measure!’ Straight, with his sword swept his head off, and then, by the long hair Taking it up, he has thrown it down into the balance.”

Hearing these tidings, the aged chief fell, nigh to swooning, Heavily fell on the rock, with his long white hair hiding, Hiding his face, groaning, “Karo, my son! my son Karo!”

II.

The aged chief is journeying with all his kith and kin, Till he to Nomenöe’s castle strong the way doth win. “Say, porter at the castle gate, your lord, is he at home?” “Or be it so, or be it not, to him may no harm come!”

E’en as he spake, his lord came riding through the portal strong, Returning from the chase, his fierce hounds scouring swift along; His bow he carried in his hand, and o’er his shoulder slung A wild boar of the forest, huge, all dead and bleeding, hung.

“Good-day to you, brave mountaineers, and father, first to thee. What tidings bring you, or what is it you would ask of me?” “We come to learn if Justice lives—if God in heaven there be: We come to learn if still there is a chief in Brittany.”

“Sure, I believe that God in heaven ever dwells on high; And, so far as I can be, chief of Brittany am I.” “Who _will_ be, _can_; and he who can will drive the Franks away, Will chase the Franks, defend the land, vengeance on vengeance pay.

“My son and me he will avenge: the living and the dead: Karo, my child, from whom the Franks have stricken off his head. The excommunicated Franks, who pity know nor truth, Have slain him in the early flower and beauty of his youth.

“His head, so fair with golden hair, they threw to make the weight, They threw it in the balance, and have left me desolate.” Then thick and fast the tears fell from the father’s aged eyes, And glittered down his long and silvery beard in piteous wise; They sparkled like the morning dew upon the aspen white, When earliest sunbeams wake them into gems of quiv’ring light.

When Nomenöe that beheld, a fearful oath he swore: “By this boar’s head, and by the dart wherewith I pierced the boar, I swear my country to avenge ere many hours be o’er: Nor will I wash away the blood from thee, my crimsoned hand, Till I have washed the bleeding wounds of thee, my injured land.”

III.

The thing which Nomenöe did no chief hath done before: With sacks to fill with pebble-stones he went down to the shore: Pebbles and flints for tribute to the bald-head Frankish king: No chief but only Nomenöe e’er hath done this thing.

He shod his horse with silver shoes, turned backwards every one, And he himself to pay the tribute forth to Rennes is gone, Prince that he is: no chief but he did ever this before, And never chief will do the like again for evermore.

“Ho, warden! open wide your gates! wide open let them be, That I may enter into Rennes as it beseemeth me. Hither come I, Lord Nomenöe, bringing store of gold: My chariots all are filled therewith as full as they can hold.”

“Descend, O chief! my lord, descend, and enter in, I pray; Enter the castle, and command your chariots here to stay, And in the hands of your esquires your white steed leave below, While you ascend to supper; but you first would wash, I trow: Hark! even now to horn the water[162] do the cornets blow.”

“All in good time, my lord, I wash: be first the tribute weighed.” The first sack brought they, well tied up, the weight in full it made. The second sack was eke the same, and then the third they threw Into the scales. Oh! oh! there lacks the weight that here is due!

When the Intendant that beheld, quick stretched he forth his hands All eagerly upon the sack, to loose the knotted bands. “Hold! Sir Intendant, I will cut the fastening with my sword.” And swift it from the scabbard leapt ere he had said the word.

Upon the crouching Frank it fell, it fell with might and main, Clean from his shoulders swept his head, and cut the balance chain. Then rolled the head the scales into, and weighed the balance down. “Stop the assassin—stop!” they cried all wildly through the town.

He flies! he flies! The torches bring; haste! follow him with speed! “Ha! bring your links to light my way—the night is dark indeed. The night is dark, the road is ice: ‘twill spoil your gilded shoes Of leather blue so fair bedecked, and ye your toil shall lose; For ne’er again your scales of gold shall you, for evermore, Use to weigh flints from Brittany and pebbles from her shore.”

KOCHE, KING OF PITT.

KOCHE, the subject of this memoir, was born on the remote island of Chatham, in the Southern Pacific Ocean. Forced by a cruel servitude to fly from his native island, he passed many years in absolute solitude on the little uninhabited island of Pitt, lying some miles distant from Chatham. Here he reigned undisputed master of the land and all it contained: whence the title of “King of Pitt” among those who knew him. His account of his native island and its inhabitants, together with his own adventures, show him to have been a man of an undaunted spirit, which no adverse fortune could bend, much less break; and had he been known to Carlyle, would have been placed by him among his heroes for worship and imitation; but, unluckily, Carlyle never heard of him.

It is well, in order to understand the life and adventures of Koche, “King of Pitt,” to relate the history of the country and people from which he sprang, before going into the details of his career.

Ware-kauri, one of the South Sea islands, called by the English, Chatham, lies several hundred miles to the eastward of New Zealand. Its history up to the year 1791 rests upon tradition, as prior to that date its inhabitants had not acquired, among their many accomplishments, the art of letters. Koche himself, from whose mouth this narrative has been taken, says that his people were from the earliest period inclined to peaceful pursuits, and subsisted chiefly upon fish and seal; that they enjoyed a democracy, and conducted their simple affairs by a council of notable men. He did not hesitate, however, to acknowledge that when at long intervals, covering a generation, a high and prolonged west wind drove a canoe-load of New Zealanders upon their shores, they forthwith and without ceremony slew them. But he justified this departure from their ordinary habits on the ground of public policy; as, had they received them in charity, and pursued the peaceful tenor of their way, their involuntary visitors would have ended by slaying and, moreover, devouring them; the first party of this sort who landed on the island having made it distinctly understood that men and women were their favorite articles of diet. But among themselves, the taking of life, he said, was unknown; and why should it not be, since they were not fond of men, as some people were, and never suffered for want of food; and on the sea-shore they found plenty of seal and birds, and, in the marshes and lakes of the interior, fish and fowl in abundance? No! the race of the Tuïti, his forefathers, were no man-eaters; they had become “missionaries,” or Christian, in the days of his father, and remained so ever since, such of them as had not been devoured or driven to death by the hated Zealander—at whose name his black eye flashed fire—who had made a slave-pen and shambles of his once happy island.

Their tradition goes back to a first pair, man and woman, who appeared on the Isle of Rangi-haute, a score of miles to the southeast, called by the English, Pitt. It is a solitary volcanic mountain, lifting its truncated summit above the waters of the South Sea, whose waves have beaten in vain for untold centuries upon its rock-bound base. How the first pair came is unknown; whether brought by the Spirit from above, or created on the mountain, none could tell; the time was remote, and tradition was confused in going back to the origin of the human race, to the beginning of the world; the memory of man did not run beyond the apparition on Rangi-haute.

But the history of the couple and of their children is handed down in the following legend: They lived upon the top of the mountain, from whence they caught and worshipped the first ray of the morning sun, and bowed in adoration to that luminary as he sank beneath the western wave. The ground was held sacred; and their descendants in after-days consecrated like spots, devoted alone to prayer and propitiation, on which no article of dress even could be placed, and from the desecration of one of which arose the destruction of the race.

Trees clothed the slopes of the mountain, and everywhere among them, planted by the beneficent hand of the Creator, rose the karaka (bread-fruit) laden with golden fruit—the sole food of man, and source of perpetual youth and health. In after-days, it turned acrid, and fatal to life, until the pitying Creator taught his children, by immersion in boiling water and a running stream, to restore it in a measure to its pristine state.

One day, a youth wandered down to the sea-shore among the birds that lined the rocks, and, seating himself near where an eagle was perched pluming his wing, they fell into conversation. The eagle complained that they could no longer soar into the high air, by reason of a spell cast over his tribe he believed by the Tuïti; his progenitors, he said, had sailed over the mountain at will, and preyed upon the living mako-mako, or honey-eater and the tuïs, or mocking-bird; while he could fly only in the heavy air along the beach, and was compelled to consort with sea-fowl, who held him in contempt; and to feed on garbage. The youth answered that the blood of the honey-eater and the mocking-bird had cried to the Creator, and brought down upon the eagle his banishment. The Tuïti warred neither with the Maker nor his children; they fed on fruit, and shed no blood: the eagle had banished himself. The king of birds, avoiding the issue, replied that in the great island to the northwest, which his friend had doubtless seen from the mountain, the woods were filled with beautiful birds, and fruit of every color, hanging over the dark, transparent waters of many lakes, while here—what a poor place! One solitary mountain, no lakes, and no fruit, save the karaka, which, sweet as it was, was bitter compared with the fruit which grew in the west. There was no man upon it to rule the great island. It called aloud for a master—a son of Tuïti—to go over. The youth listened to the tempter, and ambition elated his soul; he arose from the rock, and asked to be shown the path that led over the water. The eagle, looking at him askance, promised him wings to fly over, provided he would first render an easy service by taking him to the top of the mountain. On hearing this, the youth cast himself upon his face on the sand, trembling; where he lay for hours torn by the conflict between the good spirit of obedience, and the evil one of ambition, as they warred within him for the mastery. As the sun sank, his guardian angel fled discomfited, and he rose to his feet with a shudder, and, taking the eagle on his wrist, ascended the mountain, and in the dark cast him loose in the forbidden field. All night long the flutter and death-cry of birds smote upon his ear, and, when morning dawned, the song of the mako was mute, and the tuïs had ceased to mock.

The people assembled in alarm. A child to whom its mother had given fruit fell dead; they gathered about its body in terror. The eagle hovered over them, and uttered his war-cry. The conscience-striken youth confessed. The day was passed in penitence and sorrow about the body of the child in the lap of its wailing mother. Hunger assailed them; they burned the remains on a funeral-pyre built of the fragrant kalamu, and, descending the mountain, fed upon the root of the fern, and drank from the living spring.

The youth wandered by the shore, alone, stung with remorse, and, meeting the eagle, was taught by him to construct the korari, the model of all canoes, made in the likeness of a sledge, with a wicker-work of tough creepers, having a false bottom filled with buoyant kelp. He put to sea with his family, and landed on Ware-kauri, which he found, as the eagle had said, uninhabited by man, a continent in size compared to Rangi-haute; with undulating, fertile plains to the south, and lofty mountains in the north, sparkling with lakes of dark transparent water, and vocal with the song and bright with the plumage of birds. Filled with new joy, he sent back tidings to his kinsmen, and was followed by successive emigrations, until Rangi-haute was deserted save by a timid few who feared the sea. Thus came about the settlement of Ware-kauri: and to this extent is the tradition of the people.

From this time on they had lived in single families, or in companies of two or three, moving from place to place as food became less plentiful, or as fancy or a love of change dictated; being careful, in pitching their new and fragile habitations, not to crowd upon established groups. In the sealing season, the families of the interior came down to the coast, and laid in from the rocks and reefs a supply of meat and skins; and when fishing on the shore became dull, or the birds wild with much hunting, the people of the sea bundled up their effects, and moved to the interior lakes, chiefly to the great Tewanga, filled with fish, and covered with wild fowl.

They dressed in cloaks of sealskin. Their only weapon of offence or defence was a club, seldom used except in killing a seal. Tattooing was unknown. No ornaments were in use. The teeth of deceased relatives were burned with their bodies, not worn about the neck and wrist, as in New Zealand, where they commit the absurdity of placing the departed in a sitting posture in wooden boxes, after abstracting their teeth to deck the survivors, in the name of religion. The Tuïti burned their dead to avoid the fearful idea of prolonged decay. Man springs from the earth as the flower springs: they return him to his mother, as the fall fires, sweeping over the plain, return the flower; she drinks in with the rain the ashes of her children, man and flower, and sends them forth again after a season of repose to reign over and to beautify the land. The songs of the women were plaintive and sweet, rivalling those of the honey-eater, the mako-mako, who sang of love, and of the tuïs, or mocking-bird, that mimicked from every tree and bush, and filled the island with its false but beautiful notes.

Thus had lived the race in peace and plenty for centuries beyond their simple means of computation, and thus were living, fearing no evil from without, save the landing of a stray storm-driven canoe from Zealand, when, towards the end of the last century, the sloop-of-war _Discovery_ and its armed tender _Chatham_, commanded by Vancouver, made a voyage of discovery around the world, by command of his majesty. The _Chatham_, Captain William Henry Broughton, separated in a storm from her consort, discovered the island on Nov. 29, 1791, and took possession of it with the customary ceremonies, in the name of his majesty, as first discoverer.

Broughton, as he approached the coast, saw a continued white sandbeach interspersed with cliffs of reddish clay, and mixed with black rocks. The country appeared very pleasant, with clearings here and there, and smoke arising above the trees. With his glass he perceived some people hauling up a canoe, and proceeded to the shore in a cutter. The natives, seated on the beach, invited the party to land, and approached and saluted them by meeting noses; and with great noise entered into an animated but unintelligible conversation by signs, gestures, and speech. They were a cheerful race, the conversation of the English frequently exciting them to bursts of laughter. The young wore feathers in their hair, and a few among them a necklace of mother-of-pearl. All were cleanly and neatly dressed. The woods, which grew in a luxuriant manner, afforded delightful shade, free of low limbs and underbrush, and in many places were formed into arbors by bending and interlacing the branches when young. The soil was rich, and the forests and beach alive with birds of various species, which appeared as though never molested.

The surprise of the islanders, their exclamations, and admiration on beholding the strangers, could hardly be imagined. They pointed to the sun and then to Broughton, and inquired if he came from thence. In answer he gave them a dead bird, pointed out the cause of its death, fired his gun, and advanced upon them. All fled to the wood excepting one man, who stood his ground and offered battle. War was proclaimed. The hero was reinforced, and the sailors fell back to the beach, followed by fourteen men, armed with spears or driftwood picked up as they advanced. “When abreast of the boat,” says Broughton, “they became clamorous, talked loud to each other, and surrounded us. A young man strutted towards me in a menacing attitude, distorted his person, turned up his eyes, and made hideous faces and fierce gestures. As the boat came in, they began the attack. We fired. Johnson’s musket was knocked from his hand by a club. Our men were forced into the water, when the boat’s crew opened upon them and they fled, save one who fell on the beach with a ball through his breast. As we pushed off, a man came out of the woods, sat down by the deceased, and in a dismal howl uttered his lamentation.” He explains that in making the boast which brought on hostilities he merely wished to show the natives the superior effect of his firearms. This may be so, or it may be that in the laborious process of confirming his majesty’s title to the island, and in order to make assurance doubly sure, he had emptied more bottles to his majesty’s health than was good for him, and had fired to astonish the natives. Be this as it may, it was deeply to be regretted that the answer to a question indicating such deep respect should have been a warlike demonstration. But the Saxon knows but one way to colonize, and that leads the aborigines “into the blind cave of eternal night.”

The father of Koche told him that as the ship was leaving the shore the atmosphere became dark, sultry, and gloomy, and thunder and lightning descended the mountain and pursued the retreating strangers into the sea. Meantime, the dead man lay on the white beach with a bullet through his heart. Civilization had paid the Tuïti its first visit.

A council was held, and the fact that the slain was not carried off was considered proof that “the children of the sun” were not cannibals, and by some doubts were expressed as to their intent in landing. It was concluded, in the event of their return, to meet them with an emblem of peace. Accordingly, when in after years a sealer entered the bay of Waitangi and its boat touched the sands, the natives laid down their spears and clubs, a man advanced and placed one end of a grass plant in the hands of the captain, and, holding on to the other, made him a speech of welcome, threw over him his own cloak, and thus established a firm and lasting peace; and from thenceforward the fishermen who frequented the coast found them hospitable, cheerful friends, and willing assistants in their labor, and “love between them flourished like the palm.”

On the quarter-deck of an American vessel traversing the Pacific Ocean, and chiefly at night, Koche related the sorrows of his race, the private and public wrongs that had reduced the Tuïti to a handful of slaves. Of his own mistreatment he made little account, relating his personal oppression in a spirit of fun and bravado, relieved occasionally by a flash of hate. In calm weather his broken narrative ran tersely, and was marked by humor and a lack of strong feeling; but when the storm-spirit arose, and washed the lower deck and enveloped the upper in spray, his voice grew hoarse, his eye flashed, and his white teeth from time to time came together with a clash that made the blood tingle.

He said that one summer, about eighteen years before, a vessel in search of seal anchored in the small oval bay of Pohaute, overlooked by the Maunga Wakai Pai, a volcanic pyramid, the loftiest on the island, at the base of which he lived. With his family and friends, he went down to greet the new-comers, when, to the surprise of every one, there landed among the white men a New Zealand chief armed to the teeth. His hair, carefully combed and oiled, was tied up on the crown of his head, and surrounded by a fillet of white feathers, and from his ears protruded bunches of soft down. Evidently a man of power, accustomed to command, he inspired a mysterious dread, and would have been slain but for the protection he was under. The future darkened as he walked the beach, questioning the people on their politics and religion, manners and customs; and it was long remembered that he highly commended the veneration they entertained for sacred places, and walked off musing when in answer to his inquiry one was pointed out. It was Mate-oro, chief of the Nga-te Motunga, who had lately been defeated in battle by the Waï Kato, and driven with his tribe from the valley of the Komimi to the coast of New Zealand, from whence he had embarked for Ware-kauri, and appeared among the simple inhabitants as Satan in Paradise—the forerunner of troops of fiends.

A red bluff beetled over the bay—a conglomerate of particles of colored clay, cemented by a carbonate of lime, embedded with dark shining nodules of iron, and traversed by dikes of basaltic lava. Its summit was sacred. One morning before sunrise, a native ascended to offer his devotions, and was horror-struck on beholding in the holy field an iron pot. He sped down to communicate the startling intelligence, and returned with a party of thirteen to verify the reported sacrilege. Koche, who was of the number, threw off his cloak, tore up a fragment of rock, and dashed the profane utensil to pieces. A party of sailors, with a couple of bull-dogs, guided by Mate-oro, pursued and overtook them. He shot dead one who turned and attempted an explanation; the remaining twelve were bound and hung by the feet from a tree, head downward, until nearly dead. The chief returned to New Zealand, assembled his people, represented the island as fertile and full of unarmed slaves, and recommended its subjugation. The brig _Lord Rodney_, taking her pay in pigs, potatoes, and flax (and flame, later on!), in two trips landed the tribe, numbering eight hundred, on the fated isle. The natives offered no resistance to their fierce invaders armed with firelocks, and were duly parcelled out among their conquerors, and condemned to hard labor for life. No idea of moderation in the amount exacted was entertained. In a short time, they furnished thirty vessels annually with supplies. But the race began rapidly to run out, with bent backs and paralytic limbs. Skulls on the beach, pierced by musket balls or battered by clubs, told a tale to visitors their tyrants could not deny. Valuable as was their labor, in drunken orgies they were slain for food.

Once cheerful, full of mirth and laughter, they became morose and taciturn. Koche, with many others, persistently refused to work; some died under, others yielded to, the lash; and he, who had been dragged by a rope to the field, and beaten in vain, and would neither yield nor give up the ghost, was taken by the chief to his house to break in. He continued moody, and maintained his independence so far as to execute only such commissions as pleased him, frequently courting death by mutely and stubbornly refusing to obey orders. Mate-oro seemed to respect his attitude to some extent, and employed him to supply his table with sea-fish, giving him a canoe furnished with nets and lines for the purpose. The struggle between them now ceased, for this occupation gave Koche solitude and freedom when afloat, and opportunity to muse over the condition of himself and people. He soon came to the conclusion that it was useless to attempt an insurrection, the population being unarmed, dispirited, and under an iron subjugation. But for his single self, he was resolved on resistance to the last, and, as his boat tossed on the wave, he brooded over many schemes for the destruction of his would-be master. A personal conflict was most in accordance with his disposition, and many a time he was tempted, unarmed as he was, to close in a death-struggle, out of which, doubtless, he would have come victorious, if uninterrupted; for though but little above the middle height, he was broad and deep-chested, with sinews of iron, and capable of immense exertion; and, above all, was animated by a spirit that would have revelled in the fight. But followed as the chief was, fair play was not to be looked for, and he reluctantly abandoned his favored purpose. His thoughts often wandered to the cradle of his race, now uninhabited, to which he had made a visit with his father in youth, where he felt assured he would find a harbor of refuge, if Mate-oro could be first despatched. Whilst in the midst of such reflections one afternoon, he drew up from the ocean a fish seldom taken—the mo-eeka, pleasant to the taste, but a virulent poison, a small portion of which when eaten producing a deathly sickness, and a full meal, death. His massive face beamed with satisfaction, and his dark eye glistened as he unhooked and dropped it into the boat, contrary to the custom, which was to kill and throw it back into the sea. On landing, he placed his dangerous prize in a small salt-water pool near the beach, into which, as he caught them, he placed others, until a large mess was collected. This he brought home one night when the wind blew from the northwest, and persuaded the cook to serve up for the morning meal. Directing her to throw the offal to the wood-hogs, he disappeared, and soon after midnight reached the east coast, seized a canoe, and put to sea. The cook, who had her more immediate grudge to gratify, regaled the favorite dogs with the heads and entrails; and this deviation from orders frustrated the amiable purpose of her co-conspirator. The howls of his four-footed companions in the night, followed by their death in the morning, told the suspicious Indian a tale of poison, which a visit to the kitchen confirmed. A portion of the breakfast thrown to a stray dog promptly finished him.

Koche was sought for high and low, the island ransacked in vain; no trace of him was found, and the conclusion was arrived at that he had thrown himself into the sea. The chief had taken up a hatchet to kill his cook, but she sullenly asserted she had never seen a mo-eeka before, and was believed and spared, partly because the fish was rare and seldom brought to land when taken, and partly because her good cooking tickled his palate.

Prior to this attempt to treat him to the mo-eeka, Mate-oro had swept the Isle of Rangi-haute of its inhabitants. The number of captives had proved much smaller than had been anticipated, amounting in all to ten families, and barely repaid the trouble and risk of the voyage.

When Koche, on the day following the episode of the poison-fish—the last, as he flattered himself, of Mate-oro—ascended the mountain of Pitt, and stood upon a throne—

“He was monarch of all he surveyed, His rights there were none to dispute: From the centre all round to the sea, He was lord of the fowl and the brute.”

His first care was to make a royal progress over his dominion, in which he fully expected to reign to the termination of his life. He felt no fear of invasion, having traversed Ware-kauri, and effected his embarkation unseen. No motive existed sufficiently strong to induce one, in the face of the difficulties of a return trip against the wind, unless it might be revenge on the part of Mate-oro, who was dead, and had ceased to trouble him. Of domestic foes he had none. The Norway rat, a deserter from a seal-ship, was the only quadruped on the island; and the seal and sea-lion, the only amphibious animals that had ever frequented the coast, had long since been extirpated, and the sealers came there no more. All looked favorable for a quiet reign.

Near an old seal camp, he found growing some wild wheat, which he cultivated after a manner, and which, with wild celery, water-cresses, fern-root, and karaka, left him nothing to desire in the way of vegetable food. On the shore, he found crabs and lobsters, and the echini (sea-eggs) in the hollows of the rock; and at times, to supplement his feast, the sea threw up her orange-colored pear. The blue petrel had their habitations in the woods, in the ground under the roots of trees, and in crevices of rocks, and were speared at night as they flew about in numbers with a noise like the croaking of frogs. They passed the day at sea-fishing, and not one was to be seen until dark put a stop to their pursuit, when they returned to land, and fluttered and croaked for hours before retiring to rest. But the subject that gave its sovereign least trouble was the dark-brown water-hen, of the size of a barnyard fowl, which inhabited the skirts of the woods, and fed on the beach. It was unable to fly, and made no attempt to escape when approached, but stood its ground, and bowed, like a pious Turk, to its fate.

At the base of the mountain, near a strong spring, he formed a summer-house—an arbor of the trees and shrubs of aromatic myrtle—and, besides supplying his wants, did little else but wander over the isle during the summer season; but, when winter came, he retired to a cave in the mountain, from which he expelled the bats, and devoted his leisure to making the utensils of the chase, toilet, and kitchen. He manufactured baskets, nets, and lines of twisted fibre, fish-hooks of mother-of-pearl, knives of sharp quartz, razors of shell, and mats for bedding and cloaks.

He covered his fish alive in red-hot ashes, and, when cooked, peeled off the skin, and ate the flesh from the ribs. He cooked his meat in an oven, of which he had one at each residence, and several at points on the shore. It consisted of a hole in the ground lined with stone, in which he built a fire, and placed pebbles and stones. His game, after the ordinary cleaning, was scrubbed with sand on the outside, and well washed inside and out. Hot pebbles were placed in the belly and shaken in under the breast, and green aromatic leaves stuffed in upon them. The oven was then cleared of fire and pebbles, and lined with green leaves, and the game placed in the bottom. The fat was washed, and placed with hot pebbles in a vessel of bark, and beside it the blood, tied in a leaf, and propped with hot stones. Then came a layer of such vegetables as were in season or at hand, and the whole was spread over with leaves, on which the remaining hot stones were placed, covered in turn with leaves, and filled in with sod and earth. After an interval according to the size of the mess, it was taken out, spread upon a cloth of the glossy leaves of the karaka, and eaten hot.

No king fared better, and no one that ever reigned passed his days in equal quietude and peace. No opposing politicians were there to vex his soul with diverse counsels, and make the worse appear to him the better reason; no blood of fellow-men weighed down his spirit; no friends clamored for reward, or silent enemies shrank from punishment.

He knew neither hunger, thirst, nor cold, nor fear, nor jealousy, and approached as near as it lay in fallen man to the estate of our renowned ancestor in the garden before the presentation of Eve. He was content, wanting no Eve, or Cain, or Abel. And for ten solitary years his wish was gratified: he was unapproached, and reigned unchallenged.

In 1839, the captain of a vessel from Sidney offered to buy of Mate-oro a portion of the island of Ware-kauri that lay about the bay of Waitangi, then owned and possessed by a branch of the tribe commanded by Nga-te-Toma. The terms were agreed upon, payment to be made on delivery. But the Nga-te-Toma could not be prevailed upon to deliver their possessions of black loam on demand, the more especially as Mate-oro was to handle the purchase-money. War was declared, and the contumacious Te-Toma were driven in the following spring into their stronghold near the beach, and regularly invested.

At this juncture, the bark _Cuba_, having on board one Dieffenbach, a naturalist, dropped anchor in the bay, entered into negotiations with both parties, and, moved by the spirit of Christian charity, ended by taking off the Te-Toma at night in boats to their ship—first the women and children, followed by the naked warriors, stained with ochre, armed, feathered, and equipped. The last to leave set fire to the huts and abandoned property. The flames gave the alarm to their opponents, who rushed through the fort to the beach, where they arrived just too late, and presented, illuminated by the burning village in the background, a vivid picture of baffled rage, going through the war-dance with fearful yells and contortions. But they danced in vain, though the exercise may have afforded them a melancholy gratification. The _Cuba_ forthwith put to sea, and landed her human freight on the northeastern shore among friends; but not until she had taken from them deeds in fee of all their possessions in the west. Then, judging wisely that Mate-oro would be found in no mood at that moment to discuss their lately acquired title, she put to sea and bore down on Rangi-haute, being the first vessel to cross the channel since Koche passed over in his canoe ten years before.

Dieffenbach landed with a party, and in botanizing the isle was led to the bower by a small spiral column of white smoke that arose from the oven. No inhabitant was to be seen. The summer-house was ransacked of nets, pearl-hooks, knives, and baskets; the oven opened, and a spread of roast duck, hen, and karaka highly relished. The dark, transparent water of the spring reflected the faces of the robbers, as they bent over to drink, with a distinctness of outline unattainable by the white water of other lands; but when Koche returned to his habitation, which he did when the ship was well at sea, the reflection had vanished from his mirror, the dinner from his oven, and the furniture from his bower. As from a rock he watched the receding bark, freighted with his peace of mind, he hoped and prayed she would pass Ware-kauri without touching; but she ran in nevertheless, communicated with her friends, and related the visit to the isle. The news that Rangi-haute was inhabited soon reached Mate-oro, who read the riddle at once, and soon after went over in person in pursuit of his quondam slave.

The party landed before noon, and, separating, closed in upon the bower from different directions to find it empty. They soon, however, struck a fresh trail, which led them down the coast to a small inlet, in which it disappeared. Finding it did not issue on the opposite side, they ascended either bank, watching closely for signs, until the bed of the stream dwindled to a rivulet and entered a thicket; when the trail was taken up and followed with difficulty through bushes and underwood, matted with vines, until it failed totally. Circuits were made, and much time wasted in fruitless search, but the thread was lost, when the leader suddenly ordered the party back on the trail to the mouth of the inlet, which they crossed, and moved down the beach looking for footprints in the sand. Late in the afternoon they arrived opposite a coral rock that stood out a mile in the sea. The water was smooth, and a man swam out to reconnoitre. They watched him until he disappeared behind the rock, which presented a bluff to the shore, and waited patiently to hear from him, but an hour had elapsed and he made no sign. The general opinion was that he had been devoured by a shark. Mate-oro thought otherwise. He sent back a couple of men with orders to bring down the boat at daybreak, set a watch on the beach, built a fire, and went into camp.

A favorable breeze springing up, the boat came in early, took aboard the party, and rowed out. In a deep fissure in the rock, from which he was unable to extricate himself, they found the Indian who had swum out the evening before. He told them that when he turned, and was about to land, he was seized by the foot and drawn under the water, and, being tired and out of breath, almost instantly lost consciousness.

When he recovered he found himself in utter darkness, and thought he had passed into the spirit-land and was imbedded in a mountain for punishment. After a time he had looked up and seen the stars, but could make nothing of his condition. He had seen or heard no one, but as well as he could recollect, the grasp on his ankle felt like the hand of a man. Several pieces of fresh broken coral were found, but no footprints.

The party hastened ashore, and, leaving a man with the boat, moved down the beach, and an hour later struck the trail coming out of the water, and pursued it up a frightful chasm in the mountain, apparently without an outlet. But as they neared the head they discovered the point at which the trail began the ascent, and abandoning their dogs, the men, after much difficulty and danger, gained the summit; when, to their inexpressible astonishment, the trail led them directly back to their camp on the beach—on reaching which they found their boatman lying on the sand bound hand and foot with a running vine, gagged, and stunned by a blow on the head, and the boat gone.

The rage of Mate-oro was excessive, and expended itself upon the ill-starred boatman, whom he ordered to be tossed into the surf—a step he speedily regretted and attempted to rectify; but when dragged out to be cross-questioned, the body could return no answer; its shade had quitted it, and was paddling a phantom canoe over the Stygian river to the shadowy fishing-grounds.

The pursuers, full of wrath, set to work and built a korari, in which, when the wind became favorable, they made their way home, calling down maledictions upon the head of the rebellious runaway. During their stay they scoured the island for Koche, and kept a lookout for their lost boat, but saw nothing of either.

To the eastward of the southern point of Rangi-haute, and five miles distant, lies the islet of Ranga-tira, consisting of a single mount of moderate elevation, from two to three miles across at the base, behind which Koche took shelter in his captured boat. The same favoring breeze that brought down his enemies in the morning, enabled him in a short run to double the “tira,” and land upon her little beach of forty yards, quite out of sight and reach.

Had the fugitive been content to take up his permanent habitation here, all might doubtless have gone well; but the islet was too small to offer a place of concealment, and he feared an unsuccessful search on the larger island would be followed by one on the smaller, in which event escape would be impossible. For this and other reasons, in which the question of food entered, but a cat-like attachment to his old haunts ruled, he returned in the night after an absence of a month, and, reconnoitring, found the coast clear. He had resumed his old habits, adding to them a bright lookout to the northwest, when one morning at daybreak, some months later, he discovered three canoes close in to shore. He instantly struck into a deep ravine, and hoped by doubling to gain time to reach and launch his boat. But he had hardly got fairly off before his trail was taken up, and after a hot chase, in ascending a dark defile, the dogs brought him to bay, and, turning, he took up a rock and dashed out the brains of the foremost, and was in deadly conflict with the pack, bleeding and faint, when a Zealander came up with a club and felled him to the ground. When he recovered his senses they were dragging him down the mountain by a rope tied about the waist, torn with stones and briers, and bathed in blood; but even then, until they reached the white beach, soon stained red, he caught at every root, and projecting stone, and bush, and log, and held on with such tenacity that they were compelled to beat his hands to force them to relax. He lay on the sand bound hand and foot all night, with parched mouth and throat, so bitten by the black sand-fly that by noon on the following day he was swollen out of the semblance of man.

When taken back to Ware-kauri he was confined and watched closely, taunted with the title of “King of Pitt Island,” fed and watered, but not bodily ill-used. When sufficiently recovered and ordered to work, he stood mute under two days’ lashing, seeking death; but his master, who felt his honor enlisted in the contest, had resolved to break, not kill him; and no provocation could wring from him the death-stroke. Perceiving this on the third morning, Koche set to work when ordered, and from thence performed the labor of two men; apparently completely subjugated. From the fight with the dogs in the defile he had not uttered a word; now he became cheerful and talkative.

In the fourth year of his renewed captivity, all watch upon him having been removed, he was one evening among the slaves, employed in paddling out canoe-loads of provisions to a whale-ship that was lifting her anchor to sail. He boarded, and hid away in the hold unnoticed; and the ship was clearing the harbor, when Mate-oro came out and instituted search. He was found and dragged on deck, but broke from his captors and sprang overboard. The ship’s boat gave chase, overhauled him, and, as Mate-oro rose up in the bow to lay hands on him, he dived, and, coming up behind, unshipped their rudder, and in the gathering dark reached the headland and disappeared. He made his way by forest paths to the eastern coast, where, finding an abandoned and broken canoe, he stuffed her with kelp, and put to sea; by daylight he had sunk her below the eastern horizon, and at nightfall ran her on the beach of Rangi-haute.

Koche was himself again. He breathed anew the air of freedom, and his soul exulted. Taught in his little school of adversity, he knew that vigilance would be the price of his liberty, and determined to exercise it, and carried out his resolution as well, perhaps, as any man since the sun first shed on Eden his delightful beams—that sun which shone upon him in his frail canoe that day for the last time for two dark years; and on which, of his own free will, he never would have looked again.

After picking up what food he could find upon the beach, and breaking up and burying his canoe in a sand dune, he crossed the mountain, and, plunging into an obscure thicket, almost impenetrable, crawled into a crevice surrounded by jagged fragments of volcanic rock. The spot was almost absolutely inaccessible, and the danger of approach would have appalled a spirit less dauntless than his—not bent on liberty or death. He had breasted his way to it in the glare of day when perambulating his dominion; he now entered it with speed and safety a fugitive at midnight.

In his retreat, he made and used no instrument whatever—no spear, or snare, or knife, or line, or net. He never once approached the shore, or left the circle of his crags and dense surrounding thicket. At dusk he peered from his sepulchre, and watched the birds take up their roosts upon the overtopping trees and bushes, and climbed up and caught them in the night, and ate them raw. Hunger at first assailed him; but his eye, becoming adjusted to the dark, marked down his prey with unerring certainty, and he was soon able to drive and keep the wolf from his den; and a water-drip in the rock quenched his thirst. At dawn he sank into the earth, leaving behind no trace, no print of foot, no trail; and when the sun uprose,

“The mists were curl’d Back from a solitary world.”

The annals of his dark reign are soon told. Sleeping one day down in the impenetrable darkness, he was startled by the deep bay of a bloodhound; and his prophetic soul told him that the day of his second dethronement had dawned, and his night of freedom passed. Mate-oro had searched the isle in vain, and given up the hunt, when Gobiah, a New Zealand son of Belial, brought over a slave-hunter whose deep hate penetrated the impenetrable, and ran the fugitive to earth.

Expectation in Ware-kauri was on tiptoe during the absence of the hunting-party; and on its return with the captive king a curious crowd assembled on the beach to greet them. As the boat came through the surf with Mate-oro on the prow and Koche bound at his feet, a shout went up in honor of the chief, followed by derisive howling for the “King of Pitt.” The march across the island was triumphal. Crowds flocked to gaze upon the principal figures. The New Zealanders praised their persevering chief, and called upon the “king” to burst his bonds. The Tuïti, apart, with sullen and downcast looks, felt their faint hearts beat quick as they caught a glance of their indomitable countryman, stimulated by the sunlight, erect and proud, by whom the taunts of the malignant masters were passing as the idle wind.

Gobiah and the hound shared the honors of the day, and all went merry as a marriage-bell.

The capture, with its varying and contradictory details, was the sensation of the period, and would have filled the columns of a newspaper, had one existed, for a month. It subsided in due course, and Koche, after another futile attempt to get himself despatched, went to work as before with vigor and good cheer. His sovereign character was now universally recognized, and he was invariably addressed by his title in full. He accepted it in good humor, tinged with a little pride. The Zealanders looked upon him with secret respect, while by his own people he was regarded as one who, had their lot been less hopeless, would have proved the leader and saviour of the nation.

Two years elapsed, when an American vessel, ready for sea, was boarded by Mate-oro, and a demand made for the fugitive king. The ship was searched from deck to keel, but no trace of him found. Unwilling to anger the fierce chief, who still declared he was aboard, she lay over a day, and the search was renewed with like effect. In the afternoon she stood out to sea, and at nightfall her hull was down, and the island had disappeared, all save one volcanic peak that rose like a pyramid above the waves. Then Koche came out from the fore-chains, in which he had in some mysterious manner buried himself, and caught a last glance of his native mountain as it sank for ever from his view.

NECESSITY _VERSUS_ ART.

WE live in very busy days, and our lives hurry on to their end after a very unceremonious fashion. Courtesy is out of date, and the world scrambles on chiefly according to the principle embodied in the words, “Every one for himself, and God for all.” This is the age of individualism on the one hand, of levelling on the other. The system of aggregate life, of Christian brotherhood, and helpful fellowship is broken, and each one lives his little span to himself, jealously cherishing a phantom of independence which, when appealed to for protection, has a tendency to shelter itself under the broader ægis of state supremacy. We live fast, and our lives wear us out. We pass through all the emotions, all the experiences, of life in fewer years than our forefathers took to study their classics or prepare themselves for a profession. Young men who have reached the _nil admirari_ stage before they are twenty, and young women who, before they are out of their teens, have gone through the various religious phases, and made up their minds that infidelity is the only rational system to adopt, are unfortunately on the increase among us. After pleasure, after controversy, what remains? Nothing but business. The mind of our day is essentially practical. A certain social necessity exists of living as well as your neighbors do, and of not “going down in the world.” Certain artificial habits are formed almost unconsciously in early youth; certain fictitious indispensabilities grow up silently by your side, and, to keep up appearances, a certain amount of money is wanted. In a new country where there is no privileged class, no landed aristocracy, no law of primogeniture, each individual, to keep his head above water, imagines he must take some means to increase his income as years go on. This means that the whole community should devote itself to commerce. But how does this “necessity” affect the abstract principles of right and wrong, of moral beauty, of intellectual development? In this race for life, where is all that makes life beautiful? This utilitarian spirit looks upon all that from its own point of view, as an auctioneer, not as an artist. The question is, “Will it pay?” or “How much will it bring?” not “Is it civilizing, is it beautifying, is it ennobling?”

Beauty is nothing to modern critics; it is no longer judged by an abstract standard, but by the use which can be made of it. It is utterly debased from its original estate; for, from being the consolation of the many, it has become the luxury of the few. Rich men think it right and proper that they should be surrounded by ornamental objects, not because they appreciate their worth, but because it shows off the wealth whose surplus they could afford to waste on such expensive baubles. Costliness in ornamentation is the fashion of our day, as simplicity and studied ruggedness were the fashion in the days of Cromwell; and, cost what it may, the fashion must be followed. Do these men care for their treasures? See what they would do with them if it ever became the fashion again to sit on wooden chairs, and eschew looking-glasses. They are valued, as in a shop, by the price they cost; and old or new, elaborate or plain, it is all the same. The number of figures on a Dresden vase is nothing: the number of dollars the vase cost is everything. Some people would think nothing of a gem of workmanship if it was got “at a bargain” or picked up on an old stall; some would not be satisfied if the velvet they wore had been purchased at half price, so that they could not boast it had cost twenty-five dollars a yard! We will hope that such people are exceptions; still, they exist. This is the exaggeration of the spirit of the age, and prevails chiefly among those whom the latter half of the age has just landed among the inhabitants of the modern El Dorado; but, in a more or less rampant state, this spirit shows its cloven foot everywhere on this vast continent.

But this is not the worst. If the appreciation of true art is wanting in the patron, the time to perfect æsthetic productions is wanting to the artist. Nowadays everything must be done at once; people cannot wait; their houses must be run up in six weeks; for their churches they will not wait longer than a year. Ornaments of all kinds must be forthcoming immediately, and, indeed, if any vegetable model could be found, which, like the acanthus leaf of Greek sculpture, might be identified with the idea of our modern “art,” who shall say that the mushroom is not a most fitting type? Must we suppose it to be the result of our wonderfully rapid progress in art that we should constantly change our ideals, and demand quite a different standard of beauty this month from that we asked for last June? No doubt we are so much more enlightened now that we could not wear the same colors we wore last spring, and really thought quite pretty then, or that we could not sit upon a sofa of the same shape as we found perfectly charming last year! Of course, since our standards of taste vary so quickly, it could hardly be expected that very minute care should be bestowed on our ornamental surroundings. In old days, when men worked for future ages, the leg of a chair was as delicately carved as a cathedral buttress; when houses were built for twenty coming generations to live in, the sculpture of a mantelpiece was wrought with as much care as a monumental effigy. But _nous avons changé tout cela_. Our houses are only intended to stand till they are pulled down to make room for a railway depot, or till some advantageous offer is accepted to turn them into a suite of _modiste’s_ or confectioner’s show-rooms. Our furniture is meant to remain under our eyes only until we see a set five times as gorgeous and ten times as expensive, when the things we once thought so perfect will be sent as antiquated rubbish to some auction-room, or ignominously hidden in the nursery or garret. And in the meanwhile, where is art, nay, where is even comfort? Shall we not very soon have overshot the mark, and find our lives becoming little short of a pilgrimage from hotel to hotel? An English lady, whose husband owned estates in all parts of England, Scotland, and Wales, and who had at least six country-houses, each claiming the advantages of family residence during a short part of the year, once said to a friend less plentifully encumbered: “My dear, I envy you. I have half a dozen houses in the country, and a large town-house; and, among them all, I have not got a _home_!”

This constant change of fashion necessitates flimsiness of material and carelessness of detail. But this is not all: it kills the artist spirit. The old workmen had a chance of becoming artists because they had plenty of time to exercise and sharpen their faculties; they became used to certain sorts of work, and could perfect their ingenuity in one particular line; and they had plenty of room for originality. Now, on the contrary, it is more likely that the artist will degenerate into a mere workman. He is hurried in his designs; he is often dictated to by ignorant patrons, who, not having the divine _afflatus_ themselves, have not even the wit to trust to those who have; he is called upon for six times the amount of invention that any man’s brains can possibly furnish within a given time; and, to crown all, he is limited as to price—which simply means as to materials, size, detail, and ornamentation. He is in danger of becoming either a drudge or a renegade, very often both. His art gets to be a mere bread-winning business, a dry round of machine work, a careless fulfilling of an unpleasant contract; and, under such adverse influences, no wonder the creator-spirit leaves him, and he becomes simply a mechanic.

Art was once a power in the world: now it is rather an appendage to a power of a different sort. Even while it was patronized by popes and sovereigns, it was held as little less than sovereign itself; it dictated terms, and claimed a full meed of independence in the choice of its expressions within the limitations of orthodox symbolism. Now, on the contrary, it is only tolerated so long as it conforms to the fashion of the hour, so long as it ministers to the belittled taste of to-day. Its votaries are no longer the honored guests of princes, the equals of sovereigns, the arbiters of character. Of old, a painter could immortalize a man by placing him in a certain part of his picture, or he could ruin him by giving him a place on the opposite side. Dante did the same thing in his unrivalled poem, and the sting went home. But now what would the result be? The painter would lose his custom, like a tradesman who sold damaged goods! Truly a dignified position for the successors of Michael Angelo!

To be popular—and popularity just now is apt to be confounded with greatness—art must truckle to the vitiated taste of a mob of ignoramuses; architecture must give up noble proportions for the sake of speed and cheapness; painting must give up historical memories and religious inspirations for the sake of quick sales and gaudy coloring; music and poetry must adapt themselves to the maudlin taste of the age, and pretty, shallow ballads and idyls must take the place of symphonies, anthems, and epic poems. So with oratory—it must be graceful and piquant; that it should be logical and forcible is immaterial. So with sculpture—we must have Rogers’ groups, sewing-girls (why not have a sewing-machine and operator in marble?), shoe-blacks, anything that is domestic and prosaic, provided we have nothing heroic that will strain our powers of admiration, or excite high aspirations after the ideal.

As to minor articles which of old were real objects of art, how do we stand? Our jewelry, for instance—in what stage of decay is it? Would Benvenuto Cellini think our clumsy plate worthy of his attention, or our massive barbaric bracelets _artistic_ productions? On the other hand, the lighter work is flimsy and insecure, equally unworthy of a chiseller’s notice, except he toss it into the furnace, and reduce the materials into an usable shape. Again the money test comes in: the mere value of a precious stone is all, in modern times; the delicacy of the setting, the thought of the designer, the time of the worker, are perfectly immaterial.

Then our glass: it has no individuality whatsoever. We remember noticing the strange contrast which happened to be most vividly exhibited in a certain street in London, where two shops side by side showed a glittering array of their respective specialty, English and Venetian glass. The former, all blown by machinery, showed the most perfect symmetry of design, each glass of a set the exact counterpart of the other, the designs not varied to the extent of more than half a dozen patterns, and the very prettiest things—baskets, for instance, or horns of glass—pairfully, like three or four dozen similar ones, allotted to their particular corner in the shop. The Venetian glass, on the contrary, was a study for a painter. Every conceivable variety of color, shape, and design, a luxuriance of detail, a fertility of invention perfectly incredible, a picturesque individuality which will not allow even pairs to do more than bear a general likeness to each other—such are a few of the characteristics of this beautiful display of ornaments. We took up a fruit-dish of opaque glass, and asked if there were any more of that sort, none but that one being visible in the shop. It was a marvellous conglomeration of colors, veined like marble, vivid shades dying off into browns and dusky yellows, etc. No; there were no more of them. “How was this produced?” we asked. “I cannot tell,” said the polite Venetian who kept watch over these treasures; “this is a mere chance; the glass sometimes runs into these designs, but we might try for years, and never be able to reproduce this.” The other articles, some useful, some ornamental, and all moulded by the hand, attested the most delicate and fantastic skill; the fancy of the workman had been allowed to run riot within certain general limits; no line was the exact counterpart of the other—in a word, the work was artistic, not mechanical. The contrast was evidently unfavorable to the faultlessly mathematical proportions of the English glass, which, however, in its own line, and freed from comparison with higher products, is very beautiful.

Machinery has spoilt many minor arts; even the choir-stalls and the screens of our day are often “turned” instead of carved, and in the place of wrought-iron we have cast-iron in our grates and railings. Even the domain of music has been invaded, and we have barrel-organs, orchestrions, and musical boxes. Some new mechanism in a Geneva box will command thousands of dollars, and for a musical canary with jewelled eyes, caged in a tiny gilded cage, people will give any sum; but who thinks twice of some unknown Beethoven or struggling Mendelssohn whose sonatas and anthems might rival those of the masters of old?

All that we have said is merely an introduction to an explanation of the main subject of which we wish to treat, _i.e._ the effect of this modern spirit on artists themselves. There are personal ramifications consequent on this low estimate of art which amount just to this: intellectual murder. The artist starts in life full of young enthusiasm—and we include here all scholars and men who, in different professions, reverence the principle more than they care for the use of their craft—he feels that there is an intellectual world beyond and above the world of business and fashion, and he strives to spread the love of this ideal among commoner mortals. He finds them unresponsive, though he feels himself a teacher sent to enlighten them. Still they remain callous; they look on and laugh, and he starves. His art is all he has whereby to live; for the spirit that recruits the ranks of art is a vagrant and fitful one, and does not qualify men for steady habits of lucrative drudgery. The truth now stares him in the face: he must either pocket his principles or lie down and die of hunger. If he is unusually persevering, and has that genius which does not alight more than three or four times in a century on any child of Adam, he may end by winning a place at last in public opinion, by commanding what prices he likes, and by drowning, in the precarious tide of success, the remembrance of the days when he fell below his own standard, and had to drudge for bread. More often he will never succeed at all; he will give up the unequal struggle, and be too glad if, by bartering his independence, he can feed his wife and children.

We need hardly stop to say how baleful marriage too often is in the case of artists; every one must see that. Unless in the rare instances when a man meets a woman heroic enough to help him on in the difficult paths of genius, nothing is more fatally clogging than marriage. It is idle to speak of the joys and comforts which it brings. These are ephemeral in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred where an artist of even average talent is concerned, while the responsibilities and vexations of marriage grow heavier every day. An artist’s joy in his wife can only be of two kinds: it results either from her physical beauty or from her intellectual sympathy. The former any sane man will weary of, even if he be rich enough to surround it with all those adjuncts without which the beauty itself will soon disappear; the latter implies that ideal union which we have reason to deplore as being too rare to be even taken into practical consideration. We are speaking emphatically of poor artists, and every one knows the peculiarly trying circumstances of poverty in any shape, more especially poverty endured by a refined nature. The domestic vexations of a poor artist’s married life are something incalculable, and are almost enough to destroy the patience of a saint. He may be poet, painter, or musician, it little matters what; but it is simply impossible that the daily, hourly shocks to his sensibilities should not leave a woeful impression on his spirit. Is it encouraging to be interrupted in the middle of a fine stanza by shrieks from the kitchen, and frantic appeals to come and rescue the urchin who has pulled the wash-tub over himself? Is it inspiring to be interrupted in a fugue by the sound of a servant’s shrill answer to the scolding of her incensed mistress? The contemplation of an empty larder, and the calculation of how to fill it again at the lowest figure of expense, is not an elevated occupation, nor is it likely to produce a very spirited picture or soul-stirring poem. Except in very rare cases, a rising artist should put off marriage till his fame is in all men’s mouths. A drag is a different thing from a companion, and to most such even a few years’ solitude ending in a mature choice ought to be far preferable to an uncongenial yoke which, long before success has softened it, has become only a necessary evil.

But even to the unmarried artist or scholar, life holds out terrible temptations. Many mistake popularity for greatness, sensationalism for genius. If the higher walks of art do not “pay,” let us forsake them, and pick up gold in the byways! The trace of the clay will not stick to the precious metal, and, if it has come from the pocket of ignorance to pay the price of vulgarity, still it is “hard cash,” and will be none the less welcome at the exchange! It will buy houses and land, it will buy broadcloth and velvet, it will buy champagne suppers and opera tickets. The artist sees that he must be a slave—a slave either to his own necessities or to the bad taste of his patrons. The former means silent worship at the shrine of true art, an early death, an unknown grave, and an obscure name; the latter means unblushing indifference to principle, a long and merry life, and a name on the lips of thousands. Human nature is weak, and, out of twenty men who once had the possibilities of genius, nineteen will crush its development to earn their daily bread. No wonder that we have so few artists nowadays; no wonder that men who might have been so are only caterers for public amusement and “turners-out” of so many landscapes or interiors a year. What are the subjects most in vogue just now, not to speak of nudities and immoralities? Everything that is trivial, pretty, if you will, but commonplace—children picking flowers, drawing-room scenes, a farm kitchen, a group of cattle, a nosegay lying beside a flagon of wine, a few vegetables sliced open, a woman mending a shirt, etc.! Truly most noble subjects whereon to expend the time, care, and ingenuity of a man of genius—a man, at least, who might once have aspired to genius! But these things sell—everything trivial, childish, and _mesquin_ does in our day—and the artist must live! When necessity and art come into collision, art must go to the wall! In music, ballads are the order of the day—pretty little nothings set to pretty little tunes; strains that are often no better than a cross between a popular song and a revival hymn! In poetry, the case is no better; in the drama, it is worse. The very patronage which lifts a man into notice kills his genius and insults his manhood. A drawing-room pet is the highest title an artist can claim in these days, and, to gain that pitiful renown, he must throw overboard all respect for principle, all love of art. He must even make himself uncomfortable, forego innocent habits, burden himself with stupid formalities, in order to reach that favor which he feels in his inmost soul will only degrade him when he has won it. Many a man sells his soul to the devil in these days, just as in former times, but with this difference: that, in the old legends, the devil always gave a generous equivalent, whereas now he puts one off with very shabby gifts.

There is a quaint old tale of this sort current at Bruges, concerning an unhappy organist of very mediocre talents but immense ambition. He was dying with envy because the organist of the cathedral drew crowds to hear his marvellous playing, while he himself could barely draw out a few meagre harmonies. At last, in despair, he made a compact with the devil, bartering his soul for a long lease of years, during which he should be enabled to eclipse the best musicians in Europe. Suddenly it began to be noised about that there had been some strange charm at work; the obscure artist had blossomed into a prodigy, and the cathedral was deserted. Years went on, and all the musical talent of the mediæval world made pilgrimages to Bruges to hear the wonderful musician whose fingers could evoke such matchless harmonies, and cause the most hardened sinners to melt into tears. But one day, the poor man got frightened, and, with much contrition and many prayers, besought a priest to get him back his contract. The priest succeeded, and the devil was compelled to release his victim. The organist went as usual to his instrument. The church was full; foreigners were there and many of the notabilities of the town; but the musician’s power had fled. The result was a disgraceful failure, and the strangers left the church, declaring that a trick had been put upon them. The unhappy man, distracted and overwhelmed with shame, could not bear the ridicule of his altered position, and, in a moment of desperation, called again upon his former ally. The devil forbore to reproach him, and gladly gave him back the fatal talent. Things went on as before; it was said that a sudden indisposition had been the only cause of that memorable break-down, and crowds again flocked to hear the inspired organist. His end is darkly hinted to have been terrible.

Well in this case—supposing it to have been true—the power over the organ was a tangible and valuable gift; but nowadays artists and their patrons rather remind us of the story of Esau selling his birthright for a _mess of pottage_! Rich men should feel themselves honored by contact with artists, not _vice versa_. It is no more an honor for an artist to please a millionaire than it is for the church to receive again a truant and gifted son. The abstract laws of art and intellect are above the superficial and shifting necessities of the world, and, if there is to be any intercourse between the votaries of the former and the slaves of the latter, it should be the part of the lower natures to do homage first to the higher. A great king once said to his courtiers, when one of them importuned him to bestow a title upon him: “Assuredly I can make you a duke, monsieur, but God alone can make you a gentleman.” God alone can make an artist; God alone can mould a spirit as refined, a soul as complex, an organization as sensitive, as art requires in its devotees; and it follows that whosoever wilfully debases this spirit destroys God’s own handiwork. The world at large and its absurd maxims are much to blame, but the imprudence or carelessness of artists is none the less deplorable. No one should without reason arrogate to himself this position; it is a species of priesthood, and, except a man or woman be impelled to an æsthetic career by an irresistible impulse, it is not a safe or happy path to tread. None can live in that atmosphere unless God has really fitted them for it, and to them, if they carry their lamps unquenched to the end, it must needs be a path of trial. As a pure speculation, it is the worst career a practical man can embrace. It dooms the artist to a solitary life—solitary in fact if he wishes to succeed; solitary in spirit if he hastily burdens himself with a badly chosen companion.

We were going to say that the ideal state of art would be that all artists should be born rich; but, though that would have its advantages, it would perhaps take away from the dignity of art. Meyerbeer was born of a wealthy family, and Titian lived like a prince, but those are exceptions. Besides, Titian won his riches by his art, though his is a bad example to refer to, by the way, since he truckled very much to the prevalent taste of his gorgeous era. All artists who have touched the noblest chords of human nature have lived and died poor, and all artists in the future who care to emulate these giants of the past will have to resign themselves to a like poverty. Money, in these days—and perhaps, if we had lived in other days, we should have found it much the same then—means a compromise with principle. Those who are born with it can alone enjoy it unmolested, and, say what you will, they will always know how to enjoy it best. No one is so discriminating a patron of art and so considerate a friend of artists as the hereditary land-owner whose ancestors for generations were born to wealth and its duties; no one loves beauty so disinterestedly as one to whom the beautiful has never in any shape been a source of profit.

An aristocracy of birth and education is better fitted than one of wealth to appreciate the aristocracy of intellect; both are, in the purest sense of the word, a “privileged class,” and both ought to be actuated by the proud old motto: _Noblesse oblige_. Money can never be the test of the unseen; genius cannot be purchased, and art has no price. The heaviest equivalent ever paid for any work of art is but a drop in the ocean compared to the thing gained; for it is not the material you pay for—the canvas, the marble, or the painting; it is not even the artist’s time, though that is most precious; but it is the very soul of the man, the breath of his life, the essence of his being. What can ever be sufficient compensation for that? You can buy the expression of his thought, but his thought itself remains with him, so that his work is more his own than it is yours even after you have purchased it. His creations are his children, and belong to him by that inalienable right of paternity which no human law of sale and barter could possibly supersede.

After this, what are we to think of art? Simply that it is the most divine gift, in the natural order, vouchsafed to man, and entitles the artist to a place more exalted than that of any favorite of fortune, be he prince, noble, or merchant. When will the common world of rich men understand that? When will artists themselves ensure that it be not forgotten? That it is not merely a means of living, a bread-winning drudgery? It is a reflection of God, a ray of his creative power, a solace given to earth, a humanizing influence left among the barbarians of all times (for we are all barbarians in the long run, and saints and artists are the only civilized beings worth notice!) Let us, then, bow down our heads, and accept the dictation of art, rather than presume to impose our trivial conventionalities on one of God’s chosen messengers.

MADAME JEANNETTE’S PAPERS.

FROM THE FRENCH OF ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN.

WHEN I was a boy, I used to go every day after school to watch Jean-Pierre Coustel, the turner, at his work. He lived at the other end of the village. He was an old man, partly bald, with a queue hanging down his back, and his feet encased in old worn-out shoes. He used to love to talk of his campaigns on the Rhine and on the Loire in La Vendée. Then he would look at you and smile to himself. His little wife, Mme. Jeannette, sat spinning in the corner behind him; she had large black eyes, and her hair was so white that it looked like flax. I can see her now. She would sit there listening, and she would stop spinning whenever Jean-Pierre spoke of Nantes; it was there they were married in ‘93. Yes; I can see all these things as if it were yesterday: the two small windows overgrown with ivy; the three bee-hives on a board above the old worm-eaten door, the bees fluttering in the sunshine over the roof of the hovel; Jean-Pierre Coustel with his bent back turning bobbins or rods for chairs; the shavings winding themselves into the shape of corkscrews.... I can see it all!

And I can also see coming in the evenings Jacques Chatillon, the dealer in wood, with his rule under his arm, and his thick red whiskers; the forest-keeper, Benassis, with his game-bag on his hip and his hunting-cap over his ears; M. Nadasi, the bailiff, walking proudly, with his head up, and spectacles on his nose, his hands in his coat-pockets, as if to say: “I am Nadasi, and I carry the citations to the insolvent”; and then my Uncle Eustache, who was called “brigadier,” because he had served at Chamboran, and many others besides; without counting the wife of the little tailor Rigodin, who used to come after nine o’clock in search of her husband, in order to be invited to drink half a pint of wine—for, besides his trade of a turner, Jean-Pierre Coustel kept a wayside tavern. The branch of fir hung over the low door; and in winter, when it rained, or when the snow covered the window-panes, many liked to sit under the shelter of the old hut, and listen to the crackling of the fire, and the humming sound of Jeannette’s spinning-wheel, and the wind whistling out of doors through the street of the village.

For my part, I did not stir from my corner until Uncle Eustache, shaking out the ashes of his pipe, would say to me: “Come, François, we must be going.... Good-night all!...”

Then he would rise, and we would go out together, sometimes in the mud, sometimes in the snow. We would go to sleep at my grandfather’s house, and he used to sit up and wait for us.

How plainly I can see these far-off things when I think them over!

But what I remember best is the story of the salt marshes which belonged to old Jeannette—the salt marshes she had owned in La Vendée near the sea, and which would have made the fortune of the Coustels if they had claimed their rights sooner.

It appears that, in ‘93, they drowned a great many people at Nantes, chiefly the old aristocracy. They put them into barks tied together; then they pushed the barks into the Loire, and sank them. It was during the Reign of Terror, and the peasants of La Vendée also shot down all the republican soldiers they could take; extermination was the rule on both sides, and no mercy was shown by either party. Only, whenever a republican soldier demanded in marriage one of these noble ladies who were about to be drowned, if the unfortunate girl were willing to follow him, she was immediately released. And this was how Mme. Jeannette had become the wife of Coustel.

She was on one of these barks at the age of sixteen—an age when one has a great dread of death!... She looked around to see if no one would take pity on her, and just then, at the moment the bark was leaving, Jean-Pierre Coustel was passing by with his musket on his shoulders; he saw the young girl, and called out: “Halt ... a moment!... Citoyenne, wilt thou marry me? I will save thy life!”

And Jeannette fell into his arms as if dead; he carried her away; they went to the mayoralty.

Old Jeannette never spoke of these things. In her youth, she had been very happy; she had had domestics, waiting-maids, horses, carriages; then she had become the wife of a soldier, of a poor republican; she had to cook for him, and to mend his clothes; the old ideas of the château, of the respect of the peasants of La Vendée, had passed away. So goes the world! And sometimes even the bailiff Nadasi in his impertinence would mock at the poor old woman, and call out to her: “Noble lady, a pint of wine!... a small glass.” He would also make inquiries about her estates; then she would shut her lips tight, and look at him; a faint color would come into her pale cheek, and it appeared as if she were going to answer him; but afterwards she would bend down her head, and go on spinning in silence.

If Nadasi had not spent money at the tavern, Coustel would have turned him out of doors; but, when one is poor, one is obliged to put up with many affronts, and rascals know this!... They never mock at those who would be likely to pull their ears, as my Uncle Eustache would not have failed to do: they are too prudent for that. How hard it is to put up with creatures like these!... Every one knows there are such beings. But I must go on with my story. We were at the tavern one evening at the end of the autumn of 1830; it was raining in torrents, and about eight o’clock in the evening the keeper Benassis entered, exclaiming: “What weather!... If it continues, the three ponds will overflow.”

He shook out his cap, and took his blouse off his shoulders, to dry it behind the stove. Then he came to seat himself on the end of the bench, saying to Nadasi: “Come, make room, you lazy fellow, and let me sit near the brigadier.”

Nadasi moved back.

Notwithstanding the rain, Benassis appeared to be pleased; he said that that day a large swarm of wild geese had arrived from the north; that they had lighted on the ponds of the Three Sawmills; that he had spied them afar off, and that the shooting on the marshes was about to begin. Benassis laughed and rubbed his hands as he emptied his glass of brandy and water. Every one was listening to him. Uncle Eustache said, if he went to shoot them, he should go in a little skiff; for as to putting on high boots and going into the mire, at the risk of sinking in above his ears, he would not fancy that much. Then every man had his say, and old Jeannette musingly murmured to herself: “I also owned marshes and ponds!”

“Ah!” cried Nadasi, with a mocking air, “listen to that: Dame Jeannette used to own marshes....”

“Certainly,” said she, “I did!...”

“Where were they, noble lady?”

“In La Vendée, on the sea-coast.”

And as Nadasi shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say, The old woman is crazy! Mme. Jeannette ascended the little wooden staircase at the back of the hovel, and then came down again with a basket filled with various articles, needles, thread, bobbins, and yellow parchments, which she deposited on the table. “Here are our papers,” said she: “the ponds, the marshes, and the château are there with the other things!... We laid claim to them in the time of Louis XVIII., but my relations denied our rights, because I had married a republican. We would have gone to law, but we had no money to pay the lawyers. Is it not so, Coustel, is it not true?”

“Yes,” said the turner, without moving.

The persons assembled took no interest in the thing, not any more than they would have done in the packages of paper money of the time of the Republic, which may still be found in old closets.

Nadasi, still mocking, opened one of the parchments, and was raising his head to read it, in order to laugh at Jeannette, when suddenly his countenance become grave; he wiped his spectacles, and turning towards the poor old woman, who had sat down again to her spinning.

“Are these your papers, Mme. Jeannette?” said he.

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you allow me to look at them a little?”

“You can do as you please with them,” said she; “they are of no use to us.”

Then Nadasi, who had turned pale, folded up the parchment with several others, saying: “I will see about that.... It is striking nine o’clock; good-night.”

He went away, and the rest soon followed him.

Eight days after this, Nadasi set out for La Vendée; he had obtained from Coustel and Dame Jeannette his wife their signature to a paper which gave him full power to recover, alienate, and sell all their property, taking upon himself the expenses, with the understanding that he was to be repaid if he obtained the inheritance for them.

Soon after a report was spread in the village that Mme. Jeannette was a noble lady, that she owned a château in La Vendée, and that Coustel would soon receive a large income; but afterwards Nadasi wrote that he had arrived six weeks too late; that the own brother of Mme. Jeannette had shown him papers which made it as clear as the day that he had held possession of the marshes for more than thirty years; and that, whenever one holds the property of another for more than thirty years, it is the same as if one had always had it; so that Jean-Pierre Coustel and his wife, on account of their relations having thus enjoyed their property, had no longer any claim to it.

These poor people, who had thought themselves rich, and whom all the village had gone, according to custom, to congratulate and flatter, when they found they were to have nothing, felt their poverty still more keenly than before, and not long afterwards they died within a short time of each other, like Christians, asking of the Lord pardon for their sins, and confident in the hope of eternal life.

Nadasi sold his post of bailiff, and did not return to the country; doubtless he had found some employment which suited him better than serving citations.

Many years had passed; Louis Philippe had disappeared, then the Republic; the couple Coustel slept on the hillside, and I suppose even their bones had crumbled into dust in the grave. For my part, I had succeeded my grandfather at the post-house, and Uncle Eustache, as he himself had said, had taken his passport, when one morning, during the gay season at Baden and Homburg, there happened to me something quite surprising, and of which I still think frequently. Several post-chaises had passed during the morning, when, towards eleven o’clock, a courier came to inform me that his master, M. le Baron de Rosélière, was approaching. I was at table. I immediately rose to superintend the relay of horses. Just as they were being harnessed, a head was put out of the coach-window—an old wrinkled face, with hollow cheeks, and gold spectacles on the nose—it was the face of Nadasi, but old, faded, worn out; behind him leaned the head of a young girl; I was all astonishment. “What is the name of this village?” inquired the old man, yawning.

“Laneuville, sir.”

He did not recognize me, and drew back. Then I saw an old lady also in the coach. The horses were harnessed: they set off.

What a surprise, and how many ideas passed through my mind! Nadasi was the Baron de Rosélière. May God forgive me if I am wrong! but I still think that he sold the papers of poor Jeannette, and that he assumed a noble name to ward off the questions of the inquisitive. What was there to prevent him? Had he not obtained all the title-deeds, all the papers, all the powers of attorney? And now has he not had the thirty years of possession? Poor old Jeannette!... What misery we meet with in this life!... And God permits it all!...

THE ANGEL AND THE CHILD.

FROM THE FRENCH OF REBOUL.

An angel bent with pensive air Above an infant’s dream, And seemed to view his image there As in a stainless stream.

“O beauteous child!” he said, “I see”— His breath like music’s sigh— “The earth is all unworthy thee: Come with me to the sky.

“Earth has no happiness complete; The soul can never lift Thee to a height where round thy feet No clouds of pain will drift.

“At every feast, unbidden guest, Some fear will still intrude: No day so calm but in its breast The morrow’s storm may brood.

“And shall care leave with passing years Its impress on this brow? And sorrows dim with growing tears These eyes so tranquil now?

“No, no, sweet child! Come, let us mount Above the fields of space; Kind Heaven will cancel the account Of life’s foreshadowed days.

“I pray no selfish grief may view This day with mournful eyes, Or with reproachful words pursue Our way to paradise.

“But let your mother lift her brow To Faith’s serenest light; To one as innocent as thou, Life’s last hour shines most bright.”

A subtle radiance from his wings Upon the child was shed; The angel mounting upward, sings: “Poor mother! thy child is dead.”

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE DOCTRINE OF HELL, VENTILATED IN A DISCUSSION BETWEEN THE REV. C. A. WALWORTH AND WILLIAM HENRY BURR, Esq. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

This is a very small 18mo volume of one hundred and fifty-one pages, containing more solid matter than some large octavos, as any person who knows F. Walworth’s style of writing would naturally expect. It contains a correspondence between himself and the gentleman whose name is given above, who was a classmate of F. Walworth and one of his fellow-members in the Presbyterian church of Union College. This correspondence appeared in the _Investigator_, a notorious infidel newspaper of Boston, and was called forth by an indignant denial sent to that paper by F. Walworth of a false and utterly groundless report that he had refused submission to the decrees of the Council of the Vatican. Mr. Burr, who has renounced the errors of Calvinism, and embraced those of infidelity and spiritism, took occasion from this denial and the explicit avowal of perfect submission to all the doctrines of Catholic faith involved in it, to question his former classmate in regard to the doctrine of eternal punishment, and to inquire of him how far his present belief in that doctrine agrees with his former belief while a Presbyterian. This brought on a controversy, in which Mr. Burr attempts to argue against the Catholic doctrine by ridiculing and denouncing certain descriptions of the torments of hell given by various writers, both Protestant and Catholic, bringing in at the same time a number of discursive and random remarks about many other topics, which are generally both very silly and altogether irrelevant. F. Walworth, on his side, steadily refuses to be drawn from the proper subject of controversy, or to permit his adversary to make him responsible for the private opinions of any person, Protestant or Catholic, and adduces strong, solid, irrefutable arguments from reason in support of the strictly Catholic doctrine taught authoritatively by the Church and obligatory on all her members. The only point which F. Walworth professes to aim at, and toward which his argument is directed with undeviating logic, is this. The doctrine which the church authoritatively teaches and imposes as obligatory on the conscience of her children is not contrary to reason, but in accordance with it, and capable of being proved by rational arguments. In his statement of what that doctrine is, F. Walworth follows Petavius, Perrone, and Archbishop Kenrick with theological accuracy. He says (pref., p. 9), “I have planted myself simply and purely upon the defined doctrine of the Catholic Church, and what that doctrine necessarily involves.” This is evidently to be understood of doctrine as defined, in the more general sense of definitely and precisely taught by the infallible magistracy of the church, by whatever method the church may exercise this magistracy, and not to be restricted to definitions _de fide_ contained in explicit decrees of popes and councils. The logical deductions following necessarily from that which is precisely the article of Catholic faith are included in the obligatory doctrine. And where these deductions have not been expressly drawn out and defined in ecclesiastical decrees, the authority of the concurrent teaching of theologians is acknowledged in explicit terms by F. Walworth: “Where any questions remain undefined, I bow respectfully to the concurrent opinions of [the church’s] leading theologians. Beyond this I will not be bound” (p. 47). He says further: “All the language of Holy Scripture on the subject must be accepted and maintained” (Pref., p. 8), which is in accordance with a monition of the last Council of Baltimore to Catholic writers on this subject. The same council also admonishes Catholic writers not to diminish the punishment of sin in such a way as to destroy its proportion to the sin. And if any one will examine what F. Walworth has written, he will see that in this respect also he has fulfilled the precept of the Fathers of Baltimore to the letter. The statement of the defined doctrine of the church respecting hell made by F. Walworth is precisely that of Petavius: “There is a hell, and it is eternal.” Into the question of the specific physical nature and instrumental causes of the punishments of hell he does not enter very deeply. The only opinion of a Catholic writer which he expressly opposes is that of F. Furniss, that the torments of hell increase in geometrical proportion throughout eternity—an opinion which, so far as we know, is not supported by any grave authority. Opinions which are matters of lawful difference and discussion are left on their own proper ground within the domain of theology. The point to be proved is that reason cannot show any valid objection to the doctrine of the everlasting punishment of the man who finishes his term of moral probation on the earth in the state of mortal sin. Mr. Burr produces no such objection. His admissions even confirm the truth of F. Walworth’s positions. He admits that a state of intellectual and moral degradation is in itself a state of misery. The sinner is in this disordered state when he dies. If he lives for ever in the same state, this everlasting state of existence is hell. But who can bring conclusive evidence that there is any necessary cause which must bring him out of this state in the future life? Such evidence not being forthcoming, reason has not a word to say against the teaching of revelation, that those who fail in their earthly probation have no other, and must abide for ever the consequences of their own acts.

Some persons may object to the publication of a controversy in which infidel arguments are placed within the reach of Catholic readers. In the present instance, we think the cause of infidelity has alone any reason to fear anything from Mr. Burr’s letters. His reasonings are so weak and rambling, and the replies of F. Walworth so plain and conclusive, that it must do good to any reader who has a Christian belief to see what a wretched, disgusting substitute for divine religion is offered to the dupes of infidel sophistry. Infidelity destroys the mind and the manhood of the human being. In the form of materialism, it makes him a beast; in the form of spiritism, a lunatic. We do not say that books of this kind should be expressly placed in the hands of all readers, especially children and those who never read anything or hear anything except what is good; but we say to those who do hear and read the infidel sophistry and blasphemy of the day, and therefore need a refutation of it: Take the two sides represented in this book—“Look on this picture, and then look on that.”

We must add that there are some most beautiful passages in F. Walworth’s letters; that, as a literary work, they are a gem; and that the appendix on the universal belief of mankind in hell, though brief, is remarkably comprehensive and valuable.

THE THRESHOLD OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: A Course of Plain Instructions for those entering her Communion. By Rev. John B. Bagshawe, Missionary Rector of S. Elizabeth’s, Richmond. With a Preface by the Right Rev. Monsignor Capel. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

The first part of this manual contains instruction in the truths of faith; the second part, on sacraments, rites, devotions and similar matters. It is good for candidates for admission into the Catholic Church, for recent converts, and for clergymen, religious ladies, teachers, and others who have converts to instruct.

A WINGED WORD, AND OTHER STORIES. By M. A. T., author of _The House of Yorke_. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

This collection of stories, already published separately in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, ought to be welcome to all readers of taste and discernment. It is just the book for summer reading, the only companion one could bear in the retirement of the woods, and one whose spirit would never jar upon any of nature’s moods. Fancy reading Miss Braddon or Wilkie Collins under the forest canopy or by the river bank! But here is a book which, at every page, will help you to put your own vague thoughts into words, and will almost make you think that you understand the song of the bobolink and the chatter of the squirrel. And yet it is a book full of human interest, made up of human stories, and treating of sorrow and want as well as of joy and peace. If we did not know that the authoress was a New Englander, we should say she was a German, so subtle and so spiritual are her principal characters, so tender and so chaste her infinitely varied language. There is no passion, no stir, no sensation in her plots, and her words do not pour forth like a lava torrent, suggesting dangerous possibilities, and caressing the animal instincts of our lower nature, like too many of the successful and popular authors of our day. Reading her books, one experiences a sense of coolness, and feels as if transported to a white palace, where a crystal fountain plays unceasingly, and the silent silver bells of lilies hang in clusters over the stream. It would fill all the space we have at command to quote any of her beautiful descriptions of scenes in the woods or by the golden sea-shore; she seems to have gone down into the heart of every flower and learnt its secret, to have lured the confidence of every brooklet, and made every tree sing her some woodland poem.

The stories themselves (except the last) are the merest sketches, made to hang beautiful thoughts upon, just as we plant a slender pole for a scarlet vine to creep over. Yet they are each of them very original, such as only “M. A. T.” would or could write.

One passage in “Daybreak” has been criticised in the Philadelphia _Standard_ as containing the Nestorian heresy. It is found on p. 183: “If you are willing, I would like to teach her to bless herself before praying, and to say a little prayer to the Mother of Christ for your safety. I won’t make her say ‘Mother of God.’” A little attention to the context will make it perfectly evident that this criticism is groundless, and that any Catholic might use this language in a similar instance with perfect propriety. Mr. Granger and his little daughter were Protestants. Margaret had no right to teach the child anything which was against the conscience of her father. He was willing that she should address the Blessed Virgin as the Mother of Christ, but not that she should use the term Mother of God. Mother of Christ is a perfectly proper and orthodox title, and is used by the Church in the Litany of Loretto. Therefore, it was right to teach the child to use it, with her father’s permission, and to abstain from teaching her to use the expression Mother of God, which is really its precise equivalent. S. Basil did not even require certain persons who were estranged from the Catholic fold through the Arian heresy, but who wished to be admitted to the communion of the Church, to profess in express terms that the Holy Ghost is God, but was satisfied with a profession of his divinity in equivalent terms. If an equivalent term may sometimes be admitted in the case of Catholics, much more may it be employed in teaching those who are not Catholics. It is one thing to use terms which are heretical, another to use those which are less explicit, but more easily understood by those who do not know the true meaning of the more explicit Catholic terms.

One of the stories in this collection, “What Dr. Marks Died Of,” might have been omitted without any loss to the volume. It may easily be taken as a shot at the medical profession, and if that was the author’s aim, it is one which we cannot approve. If it was not, the story is an arrow in the air.

THE IRISH REFORMATION; or, The Alleged Conversion of the Irish Bishops at the Accession of Queen Elizabeth, etc. By W. Maziere Brady, D.D. Fifth Edition. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1867. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

STATE PAPERS CONCERNING THE IRISH CHURCH IN THE TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. Edited by W. Maziere Brady, D.D. London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer. 1868. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

We have had frequent occasion of late to notice with pleasure and to congratulate our readers and the Catholic community generally on the revival in England of Catholic literature, and particularly of that class of works which has a tendency to illustrate the dark era of persecution and proscription which, commencing under the reign of Henry VIII., may be said to have reached almost down to our own day. In the last generation, Dr. Lingard, by his impartial _History_, cleared away a good deal of the rubbish with which the deformities of the so-called English Reformation were hidden from view; subsequently, Lady Fullerton and other distinguished writers of fiction attempted, and with success, to gain the attention of the public to their admirable portraiture of the sufferings and fortitude of the Catholics of England in the times of Elizabeth and James I.; while the erudite editor of the _Narrative of F. Gerard_ has, by his industry and conscientious labors, placed all future historians under a great debt of gratitude.

The works before us, though treating of a different subject, and written by a Protestant clergyman, have a tendency very similar to that produced by the writings we have mentioned. The first is devoted to a discussion of the question whether the Protestant hierarchy in Ireland can legally and historically claim descent from the ancient church in Ireland; or, in plainer terms, have the Anglican bishops in that country ever been consecrated at all, at any time, or by any competent authority? In tracing up the succession of the defunct “Establishment,” the author gives very succinct and accurate sketches of every incumbent, Catholic and Protestant, of every diocese in Ireland from the middle of the XVIth century and proves by dates, facts, and public documents that the “reformed” prelates have no more right to claim apostolic succession than they have to claim to be the apostles themselves. When we mention that Dr. Brady is a beneficed clergyman, and was formerly chaplain to the lord lieutenant, our readers will have little hesitation in accepting conclusions so damaging to his own church, and which, as he tells us himself, only the cause of truth could have compelled him to publish.

The other book, though not so interesting, is to us on this side of the Atlantic of much greater value, as few of us have an opportunity of consulting the originals. It is a collection of state papers, letters, documents, and petitions “touching the mode in which it was sought to introduce the Reformed religion into Ireland,” and are all authenticated copies taken from the records of the State Paper Office in London. However much Dr. Brady may have done by these publications to damage the cause of Protestantism in Ireland, and to humble the pride of a faction that never has and never can possess the respect or affection of the people upon whom it has so long preyed, he has deserved by his fairness and courage the esteem and thanks of all impartial lovers of historical truth.

—Since the above was in type, we find occasion for congratulating the author upon having arrived at the conclusion to which his investigations naturally led, _i.e._, his reception into the Catholic Church.

A VISIT TO LOUISE LATEAU. By Gerald Molloy, D.D. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1873.

This pretty little gem of a book, which has an engraving of the cottage of the Lateau family as a frontispiece, will charm and edify all those who take an interest in reading about the wonders of divine grace with which our age is specially favored.

DIRECTORIUM SACERDOTALE: A Guide for Priests in their Public and Private Life. By F. Benedict Valuy, S.J. With an Appendix for the use of Seminarists. London: John Philp. 1873.

This manual for ecclesiastics is highly commended by the Abbé Dubois, an eminent director of a seminary in France, and an author of works specially intended for priests, who calls it “the priest’s _Following of Christ_,” and by the Bishop of Shrewsbury, to whom it is dedicated by the translator. A valuable appendix has been added, containing a catalogue of books for a priest’s library and for a mission, _i.e._, parochial and lending library. It is enough to see Mr. Philp’s name as publisher to know that it has been carefully, neatly, and conveniently printed.

A HUNDRED MEDITATIONS ON THE LOVE OF GOD. By Robert Southwell, Priest of the Society of Jesus. Edited, with a Preface, by John Morris, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1873.

There is a delicious quaintness about these meditations. They are colloquies with God and with self, and come from the soul of a poet who “aspired to and attained martyrdom.” A sketch of the saintly author has recently appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD (“Poet and Martyr,” April, 1873), so that it is needless to give one here. But the frontispiece of the volume before us is a portrait of F. Southwell, which is valuable.

ONLY A PIN. Translated from the French of J. T. De Saint-Germaine. By P. S. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.

_Only a Pin_, but an exceedingly valuable one, pointing a moral keenly and sharply; having a head secure and sound, not likely to be turned by any accidental twist; altogether a well-manufactured pin, straight and strong, not weakly bending this way and that to serve illegitimate uses, but made in the best factory and of good metal; a pin belonging to the first and oldest family in Pindom, and sure to make its mark in the literary world.

We often hear the expression “not worth a row of pins,” but a row like this pin would be far from worthless. One would hardly expect to become interested in the events brought about by so small an article as a pin; yet the accomplished author has managed to engage attention most agreeably from the first chapter to the last.

The translation is in the main very natural and easy, but now and then a sentence seems a little careless or obscure.

TALES FROM CHURCH HISTORY: VIVIA PERPETUA; or, The Martyrs of Carthage. By R. De Mericourt. Translated from the Second French Edition. New York: P. O’Shea. 1873.

The heroine of this story is S. Perpetua, the companion of S. Felicitas. The story is well conceived and powerfully written. We have not seen the original, but the translation shows an experienced and competent hand, and has the great merit of reading as if the book had been composed in English. There are, however, a number of inaccuracies in respect to names, some careless sentences, and other blemishes of style, some of which may be due to incorrect proof-reading, as the errors evidently typographical are numerous. For instance, the Pontifex Maximus is called the Pontiff Maximus, and in one place two Christian converts are called “convicts.” Such an admirable story as this is, with its thrilling delineations of Christian heroism and pagan cruelty, ought to pass through more than one edition. If it does, we hope the publisher will have its clerical errors corrected by a competent hand, and the press-work more carefully performed, so as to make the book in all respects _comme il faut_. If this is intended as the first of a series, the project is one worthy of commendation.

Since the foregoing was put in type, we have ascertained that the story as it appeared in French was “imitated from the English,” which, we are informed, means that it was a free translation of an English book. This accounts for certain omissions which appear rather singular in a Catholic tale of this sort. No mention is made of the altar, the sacrifice of the Mass, or holy communion. The explanations of Christian doctrine and the answers to Vivia’s objections are not complete and satisfactory. M. de Mericourt has taken care, however, that nothing contrary to Catholic doctrine should be admitted, and as the events of the story do not require any minute description of Christian doctrine or worship, the omissions noted do not essentially detract from its character as a portraiture of Christian virtue in the midst of the dangers and trials of pagan life.

CARDINAL WISEMAN’S ESSAYS. Vol. III. New York: P. O’Shea. 1873.

This new volume contains the splendid refutation of High-Church and Tractarian theories which appeared at the height of the Oxford movement in the _Dublin Review_. Few persons have ever convinced so many and such able antagonists by an argument as the great cardinal did in this case. If it were possible to obtain the little volume on the last illness and death of the cardinal, printed in England for private circulation, to be published with this collection of his works, the Catholic community would feel itself very much favored. The cardinal was a holy man, as well as a great prelate. We have had the pleasure of reading the beautiful account of his last illness and saintly death in the little volume alluded to, and we cannot help thinking that its publication would be an act of great propriety and utility, unless there is some reason for reserving it for a place in a large and full biography.

—Before going to press, we have noticed among the English announcements that the work above referred to has been published.

THE FISHERMAN’S DAUGHTER; THE AMULET. Tales by Hendrick Conscience. Baltimore: Murphy. 1873.

It is superfluous to praise Conscience’s tales, which are even better than Canon Schmid’s. These two are uncommonly interesting, and published in a very nice and attractive form, which makes them as pretty little volumes for prizes as boy or girl could wish.

MODERN MAGIC. By Schele De Vere. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1873.

This is a crude hodge-podge of facts which the author has picked up here and there, in which he utterly fails to distinguish between the natural, the diabolical, and the divine. He has read some Catholic works, and is to some extent familiar with the lives of the saints; but the little that he knows only serves to place his ignorance in a stronger light. What a pity it is that educated men should be ignorant of what a child can so easily learn! Except for the additional examples which he brings from recent times, Mr. De Vere would have been more usefully employed in translating Görres, from whom he occasionally quotes.

LA PRIMAUTE ET L’INFAILLIBILITÉ DES SOUVERAINES PONTIFES, ETC. Par l’Abbé L. N. Bégin, D.D. Quebec: Huot. 1873.

This is another timely and admirable course of lectures from the Laval University. The topics of the lectures are historical, embracing the chief difficulties presented in the earlier, mediæval, and later history of the Roman pontiffs respecting the supremacy and infallibility of the successors of S. Peter. The controversies on rebaptism, the Philosophumena, the case of Liberius, of Zosimus, of Vigilius, of Honorius, the subject of the false decretals, the career of S. Gregory VII., the conflict of Boniface VIII. with Philip le Bel, the affair of the Templars, the great schism of Avignon, the condemnation of Galileo, the suppression of the Jesuits, and several other topics, are discussed in these able lectures in a critical and erudite manner, in so far as space and the other conditions to which the nature of his discourses subjected the author, have given him the opportunity. The whole is preceded by an essay on the doctrine of the supremacy, and concluded by a short eulogium on Pius IX. The author is a graduate of the Roman College, and imbued with the sound scholarship and orthodox spirit of that institution, the headquarters of sacred science, which may God deliver from the impure horde who are now defiling its precincts by their odious presence! There are a great number of intelligent Catholic laymen seeking with anxiety at the present time for clear, satisfactory information on just these topics which the Laval professor has handled in the lectures now published. It is a pity that they are accessible to those only who read French. If the Quebec publisher would issue an edition in English, we are inclined to think that the sale in England and the United States would reimburse him. The lectures on the Syllabus, noticed in this magazine some months ago, are also worth translating, and the publication of two such courses in the English language would most certainly bring great honor to the Laval University.

* * * * *

TO CONTRIBUTORS.—New contributors are reminded that no attention can be paid to manuscripts unless accompanied by the writers’ real names, and a reference, if they are unknown to the editor.

We also desire it to be understood that short, pithy articles on subjects of present interest will have the preference, and that none should exceed twelve printed pages (of 650 words each), except by special arrangement.

BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.

From BURNS, OATES & CO., London, and The Catholic Publication Society, New York: The Life and Letters of S. Francis Xavier. By H. J. Coleridge, S.J. Vol. II. 12mo, pp. xxi-579.—Homeward. By Rev. F. Rawes, O.S.C.

From J. MURPHY & CO., Baltimore: A Novena in Honor of S. Joseph. From the Italian of F. Patrignani, S.J. 24mo, pp. 104.

From COLLINS & BRO., New York: Teachings of Jesus. 24mo, pp. 44.

From HOLT & WILLIAMS, New York: On the Eve. By I. S. Turgenieff. 18mo, pp. vi.-272.—Count Kostia. By Victor Cherbuliez. 18mo, pp. 307.—Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine. 18mo, pp. xx.-185.—Under the Greenwood Tree. By Thos. Hardy. 18mo, pp. vi.-269.

From ROBERTS BROS., Boston: Memoir of Samuel J. May. 18mo, pp. 297.

From D. & J. SADLIER & CO., New York: The Tithe-Proctor. By W. Carleton. 12mo, pp. xiv.-432.—Ravellings from the Web of Life. By Grandfather Greenway. 12mo, pp. 364.—Germaine Cousin. By Lady Fullerton. 18mo, paper, pp. 30.—Which is Which? By the same. Paper, 18mo, pp. 45.—The Elder Brother. By Mrs. Jas. Sadlier. 18mo, paper, pp. 31.—The Invisible Hand. By Mrs. Jas. Sadlier. 18mo, paper, pp. 36.

From BRIG.-GEN. ALBERT J. MYER, U.S.A.: Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer to the Secretary of War, for 1872. 8vo, pp. 292.

From DAILY JOURNAL PRINTING HOUSE, Syracuse: Addresses, etc., at the Inauguration of Alex. Winchell as Chancellor of the Syracuse University. 8vo, paper, pp. 79.

From THE SOCIETY: Annual Address of Chief-Justice Daly, the President, before the American Geographical Society, Feb. 17 1873. 8vo, paper, pp. 60.

From G. I. & C. KREUZER, Baltimore: Das Leben des HI. Paul vom Kreuze. Aus dem Italienischen von einem Mitgliede der Congregation der Passionisten. 12mo, pp. xvi.-400.

From HERDER, Freiburg: Leben des seligen Petrus Faber, ersten Priesters der Gesellschaft Jesu. Von Rudolf Cornely, S.J. 12mo, paper, pp. 200.

From WEED, PARSONS & CO., Albany: Remarks of Hon. Thos. Raines in Reply to the State Engineer and Commissioners. Paper, 8vo, pp. 28.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVII., No. 101.—AUGUST, 1873.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by Rev. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

JEROME SAVONAROLA.

PART THIRD.

“For neither in our own age nor in those of our fathers and grandfathers has any ecclesiastic been known to be so richly endowed with virtues, on whom so great reliance could be placed, or who enjoyed a greater degree of authority. Even his opponents admit him to have been a man of vast learning in numerous branches.... This was especially the case in respect of the Holy Scriptures, and in the knowledge of which it is a general belief that there had not existed for ages any one at all his equal. He evinced a profound judgment, not only in literature, but in the ordinary affairs of life.... The confidence he inspired was marvellous.”—_Guicciardini, Storia Inedita di Firenze._

“ ... Of such a man one ought never to speak but with reverence.”—_Machiavelli, Discorsi._

CHARLES VIII. crossed the Alps at the head of an army of 22,000 infantry and 24,000 cavalry—admirably armed and appointed for that period. They had thirty-six cannons, of which the wonder was related that they were drawn by horses, the guncarriages having four wheels, two of which could be detached when they went into battery. To these forces were to be joined those of Ludovico the Moor, Duke of Milan, who had specially urged the coming of Charles. To such an army as this, the Italians feared that all the armies of Italy, even if they could be consolidated, could offer no effectual resistance. They were in wretched condition, both as to men and commanders, and the famous _condottieri_ had degenerated into mere consumers of pay and rations.

Under the able diplomacy of Lorenzo, the most friendly relations had been cultivated with France, and Charles VIII. was inclined to treat Tuscany more as an ally than an enemy. But Piero, with characteristic ineptness, manifested a preference for Naples, and alienated the French king. The indignation of the Florentines was intense when they found that Piero’s course was likely to bring an army of invasion within their walls; for the French advance was already marked by the brutal massacres of the people of Rapallo and Fivizzano after the garrisons had surrendered. Having separated his cause from that of the citizens, and without men and means to oppose the French, the frightened Piero set out for the king’s camp to sue for peace. Charles had yet to pass on his way to Florence three strongholds, Sarzanello, Sarzano, and Pietra Santa, any one of which with a small force could hold a powerful army in check. When Piero reached the French lines, Charles had been besieging Sarzanello for three days without success. The invaders were in a barren country, shut in between the mountains and the sea. In point of fact, they were poorly commanded; the French king himself was a model of stupid indolence and neglect, and they might easily have been driven back in confusion. And yet the panic-stricken Piero, without consulting the ambassadors who accompanied him, immediately yielded to all the conditions demanded by Charles, and even more; for he surrendered at once the three formidable fortresses, besides those of Pisa and Leghorn, and agreed, moreover, to a forced loan of 200,000 ducats from Florence. The fortresses thus given up had been gained by long sieges and enormous sums of money, and were the military keys of Tuscany. Naturally enough, the news of their surrender aroused the Florentines to anger, which was intensified by what they heard from the ambassadors of the conduct of Piero. Excitement spread throughout the city. All business was suspended. Groups in the public places soon swelled to crowds. Fierce and angry-looking men were seen bearing weapons but partially concealed. Daggers were brandished that had not seen the light of day since the Pazzi conspiracy. Artisans of all trades, and in particular the _ciómpi_, the strong-armed wool-combers, abandoned their workshops, recalling their former triumphs under Michele di Lando in the days of the republic. But the old friends of popular liberty among the higher classes had, during the past sixty years, all melted away in exile or persecution, and there was every excess and atrocity to be feared from an enraged multitude just freed from servitude, and making no concealment of their threats against those who had become wealthy and powerful by oppressing them. Such crowds as these raged through the streets of Florence, when a sermon from Savonarola was announced at the _Duomo_. A dense mass of people soon filled it, and Savonarola from his place looked down on a human powder-magazine in which the smallest spark in shape of an imprudent word would create explosion and spread dire disaster. If “turbulent, priestly demagogue” there were, this was the moment and this the place to find him.

What said Savonarola?

Not a word of their complaints or their wrongs, past or present; not the slightest allusion to Piero or to the Medici; but, bending over the pulpit with outstretched arms, and looking into the mass of upturned faces with gaze of affection and expression of tenderest sympathy, he poured out words of peace, union, and charity: “Behold, the sword has descended, the scourges have commenced, the prophecies are being fulfilled; behold the Lord, who is leading on those armies. O Florence! the time for music and dancing is at an end: now is the time for pouring out rivers of tears over your sins. Thy crimes, O Florence! thy crimes, O Rome! thy crimes, O Italy! are the cause of these chastisements. Behold, then, give alms, offer up prayers, be a united people. O my people! I have been to thee as a father; I have labored throughout my life to make thee know the truth of faith, and how to lead a good life, and have met with nothing but tribulation, scorn, and opprobrium. I might have had this compensation at least, that I might have seen thee performing some good deeds. My people, have I ever shown any other desire than to see thee in safety, to see thee united? Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But that I have said many times. I have so often cried out to thee, I have so often wept for thee, O Florence! that it might have sufficed thee. I turn, then, to thee, Lord; pardon this people, who desire to be thine.” He then went on enjoining charity and faith with an energy overflowing more with affection than eloquence, and the crowd who entered the _Duomo_ a raging multitude, left it in peaceful procession.

Old Gino Capponi, a man resolute in word and deed, arose in a meeting of the signiory, and said: “The republic must look to itself; _it is high time to get rid of being governed by children_. Let ambassadors be sent to King Charles, and, if they meet Piero, let them not salute him. Let commanding officers and troops be called in, and, while kept out of sight in cloisters and other places, hold themselves in readiness, so that, while nothing is wanting in honorable dealing with the king, we yet stand prepared to resist designs to which we should not submit. And above everything, do not fail to send with the ambassadors the Padre Girolamo Savonarola, to whom the people are so entirely devoted.”

Capponi’s suggestions were all adopted. The embassy was sent, Savonarola following it on foot—his usual mode of travelling. The other ambassadors were coldly received by the king, and immediately returned to Florence with the assurance that his majesty was by no means well disposed towards the republic. Savonarola reached the French camp, and, passing through the soldiery, soon came in presence of the king, seated among his generals. He was courteously received, and, with slight preamble, thus addressed Charles in a loud and commanding tone: “Most Christian king, thou art an instrument in the hand of the Lord, who sends thee to deliver Italy from her afflictions, as for many years I have predicted, and sends thee to reform the church, which lies prostrate in the dust. But if thou be not just and merciful; if thou pay not respect to the city of Florence, to its women, its citizens, its liberty; if thou dost forget the work for which the Lord sends thee, he will then select another to fulfil it, and will let the hand of his wrath fall upon thee, and will punish thee with awful scourges. These things I say to thee in the name of the Lord.”

EXPULSION OF THE MEDICI.

Meantime, serious events had occurred in Florence. The reports of the returning ambassadors had produced still greater excitement. Piero de’ Medici had attempted to regain possession of the government, but had failed, was hooted at, mobbed, driven from the city, and a price set upon his head. _Palle! palle!_[163] once the all-powerful rallying-cry of the Medici in Florence, fell dead on the ears of the people. The Medicean palace was seized, and the houses of Cardinal de’ Medici, and of Guidi and Miniati, confidential agents of the Medici, were sacked. The turbulent mob appeared disposed to proceed to still greater lengths, when Savonarola returned from his mission to the French camp, again preaching charity, union, and peace.

His bold language had profoundly impressed the French king, who resolved to be guided by what the monk had said, and on the 17th of November, 1494, at the head of a portion of his army, some 12,000 men, he made a peaceful entry into the city of Florence. Meanwhile, Capponi, resolved to be prepared for the worst, had laid in good store of munitions of war in buildings where he held reserves of soldiery, in cloisters and courtyards. Materials for barricading the streets were provided, and all were ordered to come forth armed at the first sound of the bell. His precautions were timely.

CHARLES ENTERS FLORENCE.

The reception of the French king was magnificent, and, after the ceremonies, feasts, and illuminations attendant upon it, he was sumptuously installed in the Medicean palace. Here the wife and the mother of Piero de’ Medici contrived to negotiate with him for the restoration of the Medicean rule. Tempting offers were made him: Piero was to be brought back, and the government of Florence was to be shared with the king. The effect of all this was soon visible in the extravagance of the demands made by Charles upon the Florentines. The signiory resisted; the king refused to recede, and gave them his _ultimatum_. On its rejection by the syndics, he said, in a threatening tone: “Then we shall sound our trumpets.” “And we,” instantly replied Capponi, springing to his feet—“and we will ring our bells.”

Charles thought better of it, and the treaty was shortly afterwards signed. It recognized the republic, and gave the king the sum of 120,000 florins in three instalments. The treaty ratified, still the king lingered. Troubles arose. Collisions had taken place between the soldiery and the citizens; robbery and murder were of nightly occurrence; shops were closed, and trade generally suspended. The worst consequences were feared, and Savonarola, fully occupied in preaching peace and warding off dangers, was implored to use his influence with the French king, and persuade him to depart. He immediately presented himself before Charles, who, surrounded by his nobles, graciously received him.

“Most Christian prince,” said the monk, “thy stay causes great damage to this city and to thy enterprise. Thou losest time, forgetting the duty that Providence hath imposed upon thee, to the great injury of thine own spiritual welfare and the world’s glory. Listen, then, to the servant of God. Proceed on thy way without further tarrying. Do not desire to bring ruin on this city, nor provoke the anger of the Lord.” A few days afterwards, the king and his army departed.

THE REPUBLIC.

Great was the joy of the Florentines to be rid of the foreigner and his armed legions. Short as had been his stay, it left profound traces. Pisa, Arezzo, and Montepulciano had risen in rebellion. The enormous sums paid to the French king had drained the resources of the city. The wealthy were impoverished, and misery spread among the poorer classes. Savonarola proposed, first of all, to provide for the wants of these last, and to take up collections for them. If they proved insufficient, to turn into ready money the plate and ornaments of the churches; to reopen the shops without delay; to lighten the taxes, especially to the lower classes; and, finally, to pray to God with fervor.

A _parlamento_, or assemblage of the people, was now held to establish the new government. Without experience or sufficient knowledge on their part, it resulted in the re-establishment of the old magistrates, and the maintenance of the old forms so cunningly devised by the Medici, that, while the people possessed the outward show of an independent government, it was one which from its nature could easily be wielded at the will of one man. These defects soon became apparent, and various propositions for reform were forthwith made at the Palazzo. Differences were represented by two parties, headed respectively by Paolo Antonio Soderini, and Guido Antonio Vespucci. Soderini was of the popular party, and preferred the form of government at Venice as the best model for the Florentines to adopt, stipulating that, instead of limiting the Grand Council, as in Venice, it should be composed of the whole people, and a smaller council called, composed of the _ottimati_, or men of experience. Vespucci argued strongly against the democratic features of Soderini’s proposition. It was evident that he carried with him the majority at the Palazzo, and among them, naturally enough, many recent partisans of the Medici. While the debates grew warmer and longer, many citizens feared the result, and appealed to Savonarola for counsel. He, too, saw the danger even more clearly than they, and resolved to give the counsel asked. The interference of holy and religious people in political affairs was no new thing in Italy. S. Dominic had participated in affairs of state in Lombardy; peace had been effected between the Guelphs and Ghibellines by a cardinal; S. Catherine of Sienna interfered to raise the interdict pronounced on Florence by Gregory XI.; and S. Antonino, the former Archbishop of Florence, had more than once interposed to prevent the passage of unjust laws.

On the third Sunday in Advent (Dec. 12, 1494), in the course of his thirteenth sermon on Aggeus, Savonarola spoke to the people of government, discussed its general nature, the advantages of its several forms, and what was best for them; and concluded this ought to be the groundwork: that no individual shall have any benefit but such as is general, and _the people alone must have the power of choosing the magistrates, and of approving the laws_.

In a subsequent sermon at the _Duomo_, to which he invited all the magistrates and people except women and children, he presented the four following propositions:

First. They should in all things have the fear of God before them, and there should be a reform of manners.

Second. All considerations of private utility should yield to the public good and the cause of popular government.

Third. General amnesty absolving the friends of the late government from all blame, and remitting all penalties, with indulgence to those who were indebted to the state.

Fourth. Establish a general government which should include all citizens who, according to the ancient statutes, formed a part of the state, recommending the form of the Grand Council at Venice as best adapted, modifying it to suit the peculiar character of the Florentine people.

This effectually disposed of the plan of Vespucci, which would otherwise have prevailed at the Palazzo, leaving Florence under a patrician government which might ripen into despotism, or be the ever-frequent provocation of fresh disorders and revolutions.

SAVONAROLA ON GOVERNMENT.

There is nothing more remarkable in Savonarola’s character and career than the familiarity displayed by him with the principles and practical working of government, as manifested by his writings and sermons during the course of the debates and struggles attendant upon the formation of the new republic. On all the proposals or modifications of fundamental laws, the popular party would enter into no discussion, nor take any decisive step, until Savonarola had spoken. And it was remarked that, during the discussions which followed in the Consiglio and other assemblies, the new law itself, or arguments pro or con for a change or abrogation of the old, were presented by those who spoke in the very words in which he had discussed the matter in his sermons. It would indeed be matter of legitimate surprise that a monk whose whole time was, as we have seen, fully occupied with the duties of his station, should possess even slight command of a subject so foreign to his calling, were it not that we are apprised of the sources of Savonarola’s knowledge. They lay in his profound study of S. Thomas Aquinas for the principles, and in his keen personal observation for the practice, of government. To the treatise _De Regimine Principium_ he is largely indebted for his theory of popular government. No modern writer has pointed out the evils of tyrannical government more clearly than S. Thomas Aquinas, and none more clearly than he has shown that government to be the best which tends most to the moral, intellectual, and material interests of the people, and includes the largest number of citizens under its protection. We sincerely regret that our restricted limits will not permit the citation of numerous passages from “the Angelic Doctor” upon this subject, clothed in to-day’s English; they might much more readily be taken for the lucubrations of an advanced political thinker of 1873 than for those of an ecclesiastic of 1273. And we would express the same regret as to the work of Savonarola—his _Treatise on Government_.[164] Throughout the entire range of modern literature, comments on Machiavelli’s _Il Principe_ are so constantly dinned in our ears that one might suppose the Italy of that day to have been in profound ignorance even theoretically of the principles of free government. Savonarola’s treatise is the antidote of Machiavelli’s _Prince_. There are passages in it from which it might be concluded that he not only saw the necessities of actual democratic governments, but also foresaw the dangers of those not yet in existence. Thus: “Not wealth, as we commonly believe, is the cause why an individual attains the headship of a state. Rather the cause lies in this: that an individual attains to overwhelming influence and exclusive consideration in the state by the possession and distribution of public offices and dignities. To deprive individuals of this power is the first stipulation of a popular government, which demands that no law and no tax, no office nor honor, should be conferred or become valid without the consent of the whole people. But in order that the whole people shall not be collected together on every occasion, this right will be vested in a certain number of citizens,” etc. And he concludes with this passage: “As in everything, so likewise in the state spiritual force is the best and worthiest of ruling powers. Hence it is that, even from the beginning, a still imperfect state of government will flourish in complete security, and with time acquire perfection; if it is always universally acknowledged that the end of all Christian states is the improvement of the citizens by the withdrawing of all obscenity and all wickedness, and that the truly Christian life subsists in the fear of God; if, moreover, the law of the Gospel is esteemed as the measure and rule of civil life and of all laws that are made; if, further, all citizens show a true love of their country; if, finally, a general peace shall have been concluded among the citizens, all past injustice of the former government forgiven, and all older hatred forgotten—such unity makes strong within, secure and feared without.”

SAVONAROLA’S CIVIL REFORMS.

The first measures decreed by the new government proved superior intelligence in political matters. The ancient laws of the city were found in such confusion that even judges and officials were not aware of the extent of their duties or their jurisdiction. It was ordered that these laws should be consolidated in one volume, or, as we would say nowadays, codified. Savonarola then insisted on a reform in the system of taxation, which, under the Medici, was not only onerous and clumsy in application, but unjust in its distribution. The so-called _catasto_, or system of assessing taxes on the supposed profits of trade and commerce, was not only exhausting but absolutely destructive of many branches of trade and industry, at once ruining those who pursued them, and drying up the sources of wealth to the state. “Lay the taxes solely on property,” said Savonarola. “Put an end to the continual loans and all arbitrary imposts.” And he recommended a new system—one devised with so much prudence, says Villari, so much wisdom, and on such sound principles, that it has continued to be acted upon ever since. This new law established a tax on property for the first time in Florence, and also for the first time in any part of Italy; it put an end to all loans and arbitrary assessments, and obliged every citizen, without distinction, to pay ten per cent. of the income he derived from permanent property.

A general amnesty for political offences was next decreed, and many penalties assessed were remitted. Among the latter was one of June 8, 1495, which possesses a certain historical interest: “The magnificent signiory and Gonfalonieri, considering that Messer Dante Alighieri, great-grandson of the poet Dante, has not been able to return to this city, from his want of means to pay the taxes imposed by the signiory in the past November and December, and they being of opinion that it is very fitting that some mark of gratitude should be shown, through his descendants, to a poet who is so great an ornament to this city, be it enacted that the said Messer Dante may consider himself free, and hereby is free, from every sentence of outlaw, exile, etc.”

Savonarola next drew public attention to the sore need of a _Monte di Pietà_—an institution to which the poor could resort in pecuniary stress for a temporary loan of money on objects pledged. By reason of the absence of such an establishment, and the popular indignation against the Jews, from whom the needy were obliged to borrow, serious disturbances had broken out under Piero de’ Medici; but the poor were no better off than before, and the necessity of some aid for them was a crying one. It was officially ascertained that there were Jews in Florence who lent money at 32-1/2 per cent., with compound interest, so that a loan of one hundred florins on their terms would in fifty years amount to 49,792,556 florins.

Savonarola urged the subject vehemently from the pulpit, without, however, attacking the Jews. He desired they should be converted, not persecuted. A law was passed (Dec. 28, 1495) establishing a _Monte_. Expenses of the institution were not to exceed 600 florins per annum; interest to be paid by the borrower not to exceed six per cent.; and borrowers were required to take an oath that they would not gamble with the money so lent. Thus, with a fairer administration of justice, a radical reform in taxation, the abrogation of usury, the permanent relief of the poor, the liberty to carry arms, the abolition of the Parlamento, and the establishment of the Consiglio Maggiore, it may be said that the freedom of the Florentine people was obtained without bloodshed or riot in a single year. The American traveller of to-day who visits Florence will remark on the platform in front of the Palazzo Vecchio the admirable statue of Judith slaying Holofernes—the work of the immortal Donatello. It was placed there at this time as a symbol of the triumph of liberty over tyranny. On its pedestal are inscribed these words: _Exemplum sal: pub: cives posuere MCCCCXCV_. (“The citizens placed this symbol of the public safety, in the year 1495”). If the man who was the soul of this great movement had been a great soldier or potentate, his name would have been handed down to posterity as that of a new Lycurgus. But he was a simple white-robed monk, with no other insignia of rank or authority than his persuasive word and the example of his pure life. Neither in the public places nor the meetings of deliberation and discussion was he ever seen, nor had he any system of secret influence or hidden working. Of seeking any personal advantage or emolument no one ever thought of seriously accusing him.

All he thought and had to say on matters of public weal he announced publicly in the pulpit. To those who complained of undue clerical influence in secular matters, and hinted at the desire of a monk to govern a republic, he replied that in its trouble he held it to be his duty to give advice to the new state, especially when so many in the council feared to proclaim the truth. More he had not done. Seeking to lead men to propriety and justice is not meddling. Such participation in civil affairs is neither unworthy itself of a priest nor without example in history, ancient or modern. He had gone no further than to denounce open abuses, to encourage men to what was good and peaceful, and to preach the Gospel. “I have said to you,” he tells them in one of his sermons, “that I will not mix in government affairs, but only labor therein to preserve complete the general peace. To recommendations of individuals or similar solicitations I never yield. Go with these to the proper officials. I also say here openly, if any of my friends should be recommended to you, deal no otherwise with him than according to justice. Yet once more: I do not meddle with state affairs; I wish only that the people should remain in peace, and receive no injury.”

Perfect, Savonarola’s work certainly was not, for there was in it the germ of an oligarchic power which at a later day worked like a principle of corruption. Savonarola himself would have wished it more complete. It has been sought to throw personal ridicule upon the great Dominican, and to deny him any marked political eminence; but when we gather the opinions of three great Florentines who lived after him, who were not his disciples, and who were eminently qualified to judge the subject-matter in question, moderns and foreigners may properly remain silent. We refer to Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Gianotti. Of Savonarola personally, Machiavelli frequently spoke in terms of sarcasm and irony, although in his writings he refers, to “the learning, the prudence, and the purity of his mind.” He describes him (_Decennale Primo_) as “breathing divine virtue”; and again he says: “Of such a man one ought never to speak but with reverence.” He admits the great importance of the institutions founded by Savonarola, and tells Leo X. there is no other way to bring the state of Florence into order than by the restoration of the Consiglio Maggiore—the council for the establishment of which Savonarola struggled with such pertinacity. Gianotti, a noble patriot twice exiled, who made special study of the subject of government, says: “He who established the Consiglio Grande was a far wiser man than Giano della Bella, because the latter thought of securing the liberties of the people by humbling the great, whereas the object of the other was to secure the liberties of all,” and is elsewhere enthusiastic in his admiration of Savonarola. Guicciardini the pompous historian and diplomat, and Guicciardini composing in the privacy of his study, are two different writers. It is not in his _Storia d’Italia_ that we must look for his real sentiments on certain subjects. The diplomat holds the pen there. But in his _Ricordi_, published long after his death, he says: “Such was the love of the Florentines for the liberty conferred upon them in 1494 that no arts, no soothings, no cunning devices of the Medici, ever sufficed to make them forget it; that there was a time when it might have been easy, when it was a question of depriving the few of their liberty; but, after the Consiglio Grande, it was the deprivation of liberty to all.” Elsewhere he says: “You are under heavy obligations to this friar, who stayed the tumult in good time, and accomplished that which without him could only have been attained through bloodshed and the greatest disorders. You would first have had a government of patricians, and then an unbridled popular government, giving rise to disturbances and shedding of blood, and probably ending in the return of Piero de’Medici. Savonarola alone had the wisdom, from the outset, to arrest the coming storm by liberal measures.” Finally, in his _Storia di Firenze_, he has none but the most enthusiastic terms of praise for the prudence, the practical and political genius, of the friar, and calls him the saviour of his country.

THE SERMONS AGAIN.

The great questions of government which then agitated Florence did not for a moment distract Savonarola’s attention from the duty of preaching practical Christian duties. After the course of sermons on Aggeus, he preached on the Psalms, for the Lenten course of 1495 on Job, resuming the Psalms after Lent. Solid teaching and vehement admonition were never absent, and the sermons of 1494 were quite as strongly marked by those features as those of the first course at the _Duomo_, in one of which he tells his hearers: “How have you renounced the devil and his pomps—you who every day do his works? You do not attend to the laws of Christ, but to the literature of the Gentiles. Behold, the Magi have abandoned paganism, and come to Christ, and you, having abandoned Christ, run to paganism. You have left the manna and the bread of angels, and you have sought to satiate your appetite with the food that is fit for swine. Every day avarice augments, and the vortex of usury is enlarged. Luxury has contaminated everything; pride ascends even to the clouds; blasphemies pierce the ears of Heaven; and scoffing takes place in the very face of God. You (who act thus) are of the devil, who is your father, and you seek to do the will of your father. Behold those who are worse than the Jews; and yet to us belong the sacred Scriptures, which speak against them.... Many are the blind who say our times are more felicitous than the past ages, but I think, if the Holy Scriptures are true, our lives are not only not like those of our fathers of former times, but they are at variance with them.... Cast your eyes on Rome, which is the chief city of the world, and lower your gaze to all her members, and, lo! from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, no health is there.

“We are in the midst of Christians, we converse with Christians, but they are not Christians who are so only in name; far better would it be in the midst of pagans.... For now men have become lovers of themselves; covetous, haughty, proud, profane, disobedient, ungrateful, given to ribaldry, without love, without peace, censorious, incontinent, spiteful, without benignity, treacherous persons, deceivers, puffed-up, lovers of voluptuousness more than that of God, _who have the form of righteousness, but who deny the value of it_.”

More than ever the people hung upon his words. Numbers came from Pisa, Leghorn, and the neighboring cities to hear him; many also from as far as Bologna, to remain in Florence during Lent. Residents of the neighboring villages and hamlets, and mountaineers from the Apennines, filled the roads to Florence on Saturdays and the eves of feast days; and, when the city gates were opened at dawn of day on Sunday morning, crowds were there waiting entrance. Strangers thus coming were received with brotherly charity, and the duties of Christian hospitality were observed. Even in winter, the people of Florence rose from their beds after midnight, in order to reach the _Duomo_ in time to secure a place, and then waited in church, taper in hand, praying, singing hymns, or reciting the office, for hours together. The cathedral could not contain his audience. Seats were put up in an amphitheatre to increase the space. Men and boys swarmed on the pillars and every point where it was possible to obtain a position. Even the piazza was full.

All these remarkable manifestations were not without results. Florence became a changed city. Not only were churches assiduously attended, but alms were freely given. Women laid aside their rich ornaments and expensive jewels, and dressed with simplicity. Light and careless carriage or demeanor was rare. Habits of prayer and spiritual reading in the houses of the Florentines became the rule rather than the exception. The obscene carnival songs of the Medicean period were no longer heard in the streets, but, in their place, lauds or hymns. At the hour of mid-day rest, the artisan or tradesman might be seen reading the Bible or some pamphlet by Savonarola, and young men of noted licentious or frivolous habits became models of good conduct. Fast days were observed with such rigor that, in justice to the butchers, the tax on their calling was lowered. Men and women of disedifying or tepid life became religious—among them men of mature age, distinguished in letters, science, and public affairs. Such young men as the Strozzi, the Salviati, the Gondi, and the Accaiuoli joined the friars of S. Mark and other religious orders. Restitution of ill-gotten gains or property was common. But the most wonderful thing of all, says a historian, was to find bankers and merchants refunding, from scruples of conscience, sums of money, amounting sometimes to thousands of florins, which they had unrighteously acquired.

PROPHESIES HIS OWN DEATH.

Still Savonarola pressed on in his work of conversion as though it had just begun. His followers had prepared themselves for a joyful tone of victory in his sermons by reason of his brilliant civic triumphs, and were ready to rend the air with their alleluias. But he, on the contrary, seemed more serious, more sad, than ever, and, in his first discourse after the events we have just related, opened with an allegory full of sorrowful forebodings, and the prophecy of his own violent death:

“A young man, leaving his father’s house, went to fish in the sea; and the master of the vessel took him, while he was fishing, far into the deep sea, whence he could no longer discern the port; whereupon the youth began to lament aloud. O Florence! that sorrowful youth thus lamenting is before you in this pulpit. I left my father’s house to find the harbor of religion, departing when I was twenty-three years old in pursuit only of liberty and a life of quiet—two things I loved beyond all others. But then I looked upon the waters of this world, and began, by preaching, to gain some courage; and, finding pleasure therein, the Lord led me upon the sea, and has carried me far away into the great deep, where I now am, and can no longer descry the harbor. _Undique sunt angustiæ-_-shoals are on every side. I see before me the threatening tribulations and tempests, the harbor of refuge left behind, the wind carrying me forward into the great deep. On my right, the elect calling upon me for help; on my left, demons and the wicked tormenting and raging. Over, above me, I see everlasting goodness, and hope encourages me thitherward; hell I see beneath me, which, from human frailty, I must dread, and into which, without the help of God, I must inevitably fall. O Lord, Lord! whither hast thou led me? That I might save some souls to thee, I am myself so placed that I can no more return to the quiet I left. Why hast thou created me to live among the contentions and discords of the earth? I once was free, and now I am the slave of every one. I see war and discord coming upon me from every side. But do you, O my friends! you the elect of God, have pity upon me. Give me flowers; for, as is said in the Canticle, _quia amore langueo_—because I languish through love. Flowers are good works, and I wish for nothing more than that you should do that which is acceptable to God, and save your own souls.”

Here his agitation was so great that he was obliged to pause, saying: “Now let me have some rest in this tempest.” Then resuming his discourse:

“But what, what, O Lord! will be the reward in the life to come to be given to those who have come victorious out of such a fight? It will be that which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard—eternal beatitude. And what is to be the reward in the present life? The servant will not be greater than his master, is the answer of our Lord. Thou knowest that, after I had taught, I was crucified, and thus thou wilt suffer martyrdom. O Lord, Lord!” he then exclaimed, with a loud voice that echoed throughout the church, “grant me this martyrdom, and let me die quickly for thy sake, as thou diedst for me. Already I see the axe sharpened. But the Lord says to me: Wait yet awhile, until that be finished which is to come to pass, and then thou shalt show that strength of mind which will be given unto thee.”

HIS VISIONS AND PROPHECIES.

He then resumed the explanation of a psalm at the verse _Laudate Dominum quia bonus_, and declaimed in a burst of ecstatic excitement, which carried his hearers along with him, sobbing and weeping. It was by passages like these, in which the magnetic attraction of the speaker’s features, voice, and gestures predominated, that his hearers were most affected. And this readily explains the fact that, when we read his sermons as reported by those present, it is difficult to invest the words with the tremendous effects they seem to have produced. This state of ecstasy which seized him in the pulpit frequently followed him to his solitary cell, where, for days and nights together, he would remain the sleepless victim of visions, until sleep happily released him. From his youthful days, he had made himself familiar with all that S. Thomas Aquinas says of angels and prophets and of their visions, and, in like manner, with all the dreams and visions of the prophets and patriarchs as related in the Old Testament. All these filled his mind, and at night reproduced themselves with the vividness of original revelations. They increased upon him as he read the Bible and the Fathers more assiduously, and he accepted them as divine inspirations sent through the intervention of angels. It is difficult to believe the extent to which a blind faith and devotion to these visions had taken possession of all his faculties, when we look at the calm, decided, and practical manner in which he disposed of important questions of a merely mundane character, such as administration, finance, and civil government.

Savonarola has left on record the fullest account of the workings and condition of his own mind on the subject of his visions and prophecies, in two works—_Dialogo della Verita Profetica_ (Dialogue on Prophetic Truth), and _Compendium Revelationum_.

WAS SAVONAROLA A PROTESTANT?

In these works, Savonarola reveals himself without reserve on the important subject of the prophecies and visions, and lays bare his inmost heart. This is a part of his biography we would gladly treat at length, for the reason that one of the accusations against him is that of insincerity, bad faith, and deception of the people by abusing their credulity. We must, however, content ourselves with the remark that, although these works may afford some proof of an overheated imagination and an overexcited mind, they certainly afford none whatever of any thought or impulse of their author not perfectly sincere and loyal. His two German Protestant biographers, Rudelbach and Meyer, to their honor be it said, were the first to study these prophetic writings of Savonarola. Their views diverge but slightly, both seeking to show that he was a Protestant—a question now scarcely worth while discussing, notwithstanding the impertinent assertion of the Luther monument at Worms. In this connection, we may here cite the opinion of a late writer on Savonarola, a distinguished English Protestant:[165] “So that the effort made by some of the German biographers, more especially Meyer, who artistically concocts a complete system of Protestant dogmatics from his works, appears to be injudicious; and we must come to the only reasonable conclusion: that, though he (Savonarola) is now claimed both by Catholics and Protestants, he lived and died in that church in which he was reared, and which he would not have destroyed, but purified.”[166]

PARTIES AND FACTIONS.

When we speak of the respect and veneration entertained for Savonarola by the population of Florence, we must not for a moment suppose he was any exception to the rule that the presence of a good man is a reproach to the depraved, or that Florence, like Athens, had not within her walls those who were tired of hearing a man called just. The Medici had still a large body of adherents in the city—men who, whether they preferred or not an oligarchy to a republic, still regretted the offices or emoluments they had lost—were themselves of the aristocracy, or sympathized with it. Then came many of the amnestied, who, themselves pardoned, did not therefore forgive others. Then, too, those who felt themselves thwarted in their license or licentiousness by the changed state of public morality. The dominant party—that of the Frate—went by the name of the _Frateschi_. A smaller party, composed of those who were not personally his adherents, but were in favor of a republic, were called _Bianchi_ (white); another and larger party, made up of partisans of the Medici, most of them amnestied, were called _Bigi_ (grays), and, while outwardly favorable to Savonarola, were his bitter and unrelenting enemies, in constant correspondence with Piero de’ Medici, whose return was the object of all their devices and plots. The partisans of the oligarchy, so active in their endeavors to defeat the new government, and bent on getting the power into their own hands, and establish a pretended republic under aristocratic rule, were naturally opposed to both Savonarola and the Medici. They had contemptuously bestowed the name of _Piagnoni_ (Mourners) on the followers of Savonarola, and, from their known bitter hatred, were themselves called the _Arrabiati_ (rabid or infuriated). Carefully avoiding any opposition to the republic, they sought by every means to cast discredit on Savonarola, to throw ridicule upon his visions and prophecies, to create discontent with his reforms, and to foster a spirit of criticism and dislike against him. The accidental elevation to the office of Gonfaloniere of a man unfit for it—Filippo Corbizzi—was seized by them as an opportunity to attack Savonarola as early as 1495. At their instigation, he called together at the Palazzo a sort of theological council of theologians, abbots, priors, etc., before whom a charge of intermeddling in the affairs of state was laid against Savonarola. The council was opened, and the discussion commenced, when, by the merest accident, Savonarola, in entire ignorance of what was taking place, entered the hall with his friend Fra Domenico, of Pescia. He was instantly assailed with words of abuse and invective, and a Dominican monk of Santa Maria Novella, who had some reputation as a theologian, made a violent speech against him. Others followed the monk, and, when all were through, Savonarola, calmly rising, said: “In me you see verified the saying of our Lord: _Filii matris meæ pugnaverunt contra me._[167] It truly grieves me to see my fiercest adversary wearing the dress of S. Dominic. That very dress ought to remind him that our founder himself was in no small degree occupied with the affairs of this world; and that from our order have gone forth a multitude of religious men and saints to take part in the affairs of state. The Florentine republic cannot have forgotten Cardinal Latino, San Pietro Martine, Santa Caterina of Sienna, nor Sant’ Antonino, all of whom belong to the Order of S. Dominic. A religious man is not to be condemned for occupying himself with the concerns of that world in which God has placed him. I defy any one to point out a single passage in the Bible condemnatory of our showing favor to a free government which is to promote the triumph of morality and religion.” And he thus concluded: “It is easy to see that religion ought not to be treated in profane places, and that theology is not a fit subject for discussion in this place.”

There was no attempt at reply, except from one, who cried out: “Tell us now frankly, Do you aver that your words come from God, or do you not?”

“That which I have said I have said openly; and I have nothing to add,” was Savonarola’s reply.

SONNET

TO THE PILLAR THAT STANDS BESIDE THE HIGH ALTAR AT “S. PAUL’S OUTSIDE THE WALLS,” ROME.[168]

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

A conqueror called thee from the eternal night, And said, “Ascend from thy dark mother’s breast; Sustain my glory on thy sunlike crest, And by mine altar watch—an acolyte.” A poet, wandering from Helvellyn’s height, Beheld thee dead ere born. That Alpine guest Adjured thee, “Where thou liest, forever rest, And freeze those hearts that trust in mortal might.” The years went by; then, clear above that cloud Which blinds the nations, from her Roman throne Thus spake the universal church aloud: “Arise at last, thou long-expectant stone! For God predestined, consummate thy vow: Advance; and where the Apostle stood stand thou!”

MADAME AGNES.

FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES DUBOIS.