CHAPTER VI.

MARRIAGE BELLS.

That green and sequestered domain which Mr. Schöninger had looked at across the water-lilies and peopled with his fancies, which, indeed, he had visited, and was perfectly familiar with, was not so far out of the world as it appeared. It was in a great triangle made by three railroads, and there was a station-house a mile back from the pond by which the tenants of the cottage held easy communication with the two cities near. Still, the place was not very accessible from without; for this mile of country road had been made by simply driving over pasture and field, and through alder-woods, till a track was visible, and then continuing to drive in the same track. After coming through the alder-swamp, the road became two yellow-brown lines across the greensward, and ended in a grove that completely hid the barn built in it. Between these two yellow-brown lines, at regular distances, were yellow-brown spots, showing where the horse had stepped. Dobbin appeared to always step precisely in his own tracks.

It was seldom that any one drove over this road except old Mr. Grey, whose horse and wagon were, after their kind, quite as old as himself. Mrs. Macon, zealously collecting useful articles for the new convent, had driven there in her light phaeton, and spent two hours rummaging the attics with Mrs. Grey, and talking over the relics they found; that is, Mrs. Grey explained, and her visitor listened. She had gone away with bundles piled up to her chin.

One afternoon late in August, Mr. Grey harnessed Dobbin to the wagon--"tackled" Dobbin, he would have said--and started for the railroad station. He had almost reached the alders, which seemed to bar the way, when he drew the reins and listened. If it had been Mrs. Grey, instead of her husband, she would have driven straight on, for she was perfectly deaf.

These alders leaned over, and, in summer, completely hid the road, and whatever went through there had to breast a tide of leaves. It had never occurred to Mr. Grey to cut the twigs away, nor, apparently, had it occurred to Dobbin to fret against them. They jogged on uncomplainingly, never in a hurry, and lived and let live. Mr. Grey's philosophy was that every person in the world is appointed to do just so much, and that, as soon as his work is accomplished, he dies. He preferred to do his part in a leisurely manner, and live the longer.

The sound he listened to was a faint noise of wheels and hoofs, in, or beyond, the alders. For two carriages to meet in that place would be a predicament more perplexing than that of the two unwise men and the two wise goats on the narrow bridge we have all read of; because here neither could turn back, nor walk over the other, and if one should be killed, still that would not clear the track. So the driver waited, his mouth slightly open, to hear the better, and the lash of his old-fashioned whip hanging motionless over his shoulder. The old white horse dropped his nose, and went to sleep, and the creaking and rattling wagon looked as if it had made its final stand, and meant to go to pieces where it was.

There was just sound enough to show how still it was. Some wild creature under a rude cage on the lawn snarled lowly to itself, there was the swift rustle of a bird's wings through the air, and the roll of a train of cars lessened to a bee's hum by distance. The pond was glassy, the rails shone hot beyond it; farther still the sultry woods heaved their billows of light and shade; and, farthest of all, over a little scooped-out valley, a single mountain stood on the horizon.

There was, indeed, a carriage among the alders, but by no means such an equipage as that which awaited it. It was like a fairy coach in comparison, with a glitter of varnish and metal, and snowy-white lining that shone like satin, and beautiful horses that pranced from side to side as they felt the soft, brushing leaves and twigs against their dainty coats, and pushing into their very eyes. The mice on the box wore glossy hats, and appeared to be very much disgusted with this trap into which they had fallen. To the birds overhead the whole must have looked like something swimming in a sea of green leaves.

The fairies in the coach were not fully visible from any point, but a clear voice rose presently from the submerged cushions. "There's a sufficient road underneath, John," it said. "Drive where you see the alder-tops lowest. There are no roots, if you keep the way. It is only overleaning branches."

In a few minutes they emerged, and drew up beside the wagon. Its occupant did not make the slightest reply to the bright salutation of the two ladies. It was not his custom to salute any one. He merely waited to see what would be said.

"O Mr. Grey!" says Annette, "if I had a pair of strong shears, I would cut a peep-hole, at least, through that jungle. Did you get my letter?"

He nodded, with a short "Yes," looking with calm scrutiny at the two young women.

"Well?" continued Miss Ferrier.

"Elizabeth is out on the pond," he said; "but the old woman will blow the horn for her. She'll show you the flowers; and you can have 'em all. I can put them aboard of any train you settle on."

There was a moment of silence; for Mr. Grey had condensed the whole business into a few words, and there was really no more to say. Annette had written him to save all his flowers for her wedding, and this was his answer.

"Are you going away?" she asked, rather needlessly.

"I'm going to meet the next up-train," he answered, and began to tug at his reins, and chirrup at Dobbin.

They left him making great efforts to get under way again, and drove noiselessly on.

"What a peculiarly condensed sort of man he is in his speech!" remarked Miss Pembroke.

"Condensed!" exclaimed the other. "His talk reminds me of some one whose head and limbs have been cut off. It takes me by surprise, and leaves me astonished. I always feel as if something ought to be done."

So one carriage creaked into the alders, and the other sparkled up to the house door.

This door stood open, and within it sat an old woman, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes looking out over the water. She had a placid face, and looked refined. A sweet, faint smile greeted her visitors, and her voice was sweet, and was very low, as the voices of some deaf persons are.

"Elizabeth has gone out on the water," she said. "I will call her."

"Don't rise!" exclaimed Annette quickly, preventing her. "I'll get the horn for you. I know where everything is here."

The old lady understood the action, though she had not heard the words, and sank back into her seat again.

"She feels for everybody's pain," she said gratefully, speaking to herself.

Annette tripped lightly across the sunny, silent room, and took down from a nail beside the chimney a large ox-horn suspended there. With simple politeness, the old lady obeyed her visitor's wish, and did not rise even when the horn was placed in her hand. She merely leaned forward, and, placing it to her lips, blew a loud and prolonged blast that sounded far over water and forest.

"That will bring her," she said, and gave back the rustic instrument for Annette to return to its place.

The two then strolled down to the water-side to wait for the lady of the lake. They seated themselves on a mossy rock close to the water, under the shade of the only tree left there. It was an old pine-tree, of which the main part was decayed, but one strong branch made a shade over them, and held firmly all its dark-green fasces in token of a sovereignty it would not abdicate while life remained. Beside the rock, in the warm sunshine, stood a group of Japan lilies.

"I don't like them," Annette said. "They are beautiful in their way, but they look cruel and detestable. They seem to me like a large pink and white woman who poisons people."

"My dear," said Miss Pembroke, as she bent her head over the flowers, "it would be well if you could contrive to shut the battery of those nerves of yours once in a while."

"It might be well if I could be changed into one like you," Annette responded; but immediately corrected herself. "No! And I do not believe that the most unfortunate and discontented person in the world would be willing to change his individuality with another. It is only his circumstances he would change, and be still himself, but at his best. Perhaps that is what will keep us contented in heaven, though we may see others far above us: each will be himself in perfection, with all the good in possession that he is capable of holding, and will see that he cannot be different without being some one else."

"Perhaps," said Honora dreamily.

It may be that she felt unconsciously a little of that superiority which the calm assume over the troubled, though the calm may be of the pool, and the trouble of the ocean, or both a mere question of temperament. She leaned over the lily, and examined the red clots on its petals; how they rose higher, and strained upward toward the centre, till by their passionate stress they drew up the milky flower substance into a stem to support them; as though they would reach the slender filaments that towered aloft over their heads. Two or three tiniest red spiders were picnicking on the fragrant white ground among these stems, and did not seem to even suspect the presence of a large black spider, with extravagantly long legs, which walked directly over the flower and them in two or three sextuple strides.

"The petal they stand on must seem to them a soft and snowy-white moss," drawled Miss Pembroke, half asleep with the heat and the silence. "I should think the perfume of it would be too strong for their little noses."

"Perhaps the particles of fragrance are too large for their little noses. Or, perhaps, they have no noses," responded Miss Ferrier, gravely.

A faint, responsive murmur of assent from the other.

Annette tossed twigs into the water, and watched the dimples they made, and which way they floated. "That is a wild fox up under that cage," she said. "It is cruel to keep it there. I shall free it when we go back."

"Perhaps Mr. Grey is going to stuff its skin, and may not like to lose it," Honora answered, having finished her examination of the lily. "I have heard that he is quite a naturalist, and has specimens of every animal, and insect, and plant about."

Annette tossed a pebble this time with energy. "I hate naturalists," she remarked. "I always fancy that they have bugs in their pockets."

"Bugs in their pockets! That would be uncomfortable," was the placid comment.

"For the bugs, yes!" said Annette; then, after a moment, added, "Whenever it is a question of tormenting what Lord Erskine called the 'mute creation,' I am always for the plaintiff. Who is to be profited by knowing about bugs and beetles? It is a contemptible science, and, I repeat, a cruel one. I never can like a woman or a man whom I have once seen sticking pins through beetles, and butterflies, and bats; and I would as lief have a human skull for an ornament in a room as a stuffed skin of anything. I shall set that fox free this instant. I observed it as I came past, and it looked like a person going crazy. Its eyes were like fire and there was froth round its teeth."

Miss Pembroke looked up in alarm, for Annette had risen. "Do be careful!" she said. "His bite would kill you. Don't you remember that Duke of Richmond who was bitten by a fox, in Canada, and died of hydrophobia a day to two afterwards? He was playing with it, and it snapped at his hand."

"I'm not going to play with it, but to free it," said Annette, and walked rapidly across the green. "I've found one fault in Honora," she muttered. "She is sweet and good to a certain length, but her sympathies are circumscribed."

The cage of strong withes was securely fastened to the ground with wooden pins, and the door was tied with a slender chain. The fox was furthermore secured by a rope which held one of his legs. He faced about and glared at his liberator, while, from the outside, she cut the rope with her pocket-knife. His eyes were like balls of fire, but he did not snap at her. He did not trust her, but he had perhaps a doubt that she meant him well.

The leg free, Annette slipped the knob of the chain, and opened the door.

"In honor of the Creator of men and beasts, and S. Francis of Assisi, go free now and for ever," she said.

The creature stood motionless one instant, then, with the rush and speed of an arrow, it shot through the opening, flew across the green, and leaped into the water, that hissed as though a red-hot coal had been dropped into it. Annette ran, laughing and full of excitement, back to the rock, and watched the swimmer. Only his nose and long tail showing, he made fiercely for the shore, his whole being concentrated in the one longing for freedom.

"If he should run into a cage on the other side, I believe his heart would burst with the disappointment," Annette said, standing up to watch him. "Bravo! There he is, my dear brother, the fox."

He leaped up the farther shore and over the track, and rushed headlong into the broad, free woods.

"Won't he have a story to tell!" said Annette, seating herself; "that is, if he ever stops running. You may depend on it, Honora, I shall be a great heroine among the foxes; and as years go by, and the story is passed down from generation to generation, I shall undergo a change in the picture. My hair will grow to be golden, with stars in it, and my eyes will be radiant, and they will put wings on me, and I shall be an angel. That's the way the myths and marvels were made. But how they will get over my sawing off the rope with a dull pen-knife is more than I can tell."

"The spirit will be true, dear, if not the letter," Honora answered, smiling. "What signifies a little inaccuracy in the material part? That will be turned to dust before the story reaches the winged period."

Miss Ferrier had something on her mind which she shrank a little from speaking of, but presently mentioned in that careless manner we assume when we care more than we like to own:

"I've been wondering lately whether it would be silly in me to have my genealogy looked up. It seems a little top-heavy to have one's family tree all leaves and no roots, though mine is not so in reality. My father and mother were both very poor and ignorant when I was born; but my great-grandfather was a French gentleman. He became poor in some way, and had no idea how to do anything for himself. I dare say he was very weak, but he was immensely genteel. He and his sons lived in a tumble-down old stone house somewhere near Quebec, and ate oatmeal porridge out of painted china bowls, with heavy spoons that had a crest on them. There they moaned away their existence in a state of resigned surprise at their circumstances, and of expectation that the riches that had taken to themselves wings would fly back again. There was one desperate one in the family, and he was my grandfather. He grew tired of shabby gentility, and set out to work. The others cast him off; and I suppose he wasn't very energetic, or very lucky, for he went down. He married a wife from the working class, and they had no end of children, who all died sooner or later, except my father. My grandfather died, too--was glad to get himself out of sight of the sun; and my poor father--God be merciful to him!--stumbled on through life in the same dazed way. All he inherited was the dull astonishment of that old Frenchman who could never be made to realize that riches would not some day come back as they had gone. Of course"--Annette shrugged her shoulders, and laughed slightly--"it would be necessary to drop some of the later details. That is the way people do. Build a bridge over the chasm into the shining part. Miss Pembroke, what do you think of my unearthing my great-grandfather, and setting him up in my parlors for people to admire? Wouldn't it be more interesting than a stuffed fox? I am of his ancestry"--her laughter died out in a flash of pride. "If they had any fire worthy their blood, I have it. Some spark was held in abeyance, and I have caught it. I would like to go back and search out my kindred. Well! do you think me vulgar?"

Honora looked at her earnestly. "No, Annette; but you are condescending too much. You are coming nearer to vulgarity than I ever knew you to before. Lineage is something, is much, and those who can look back on a noble and stainless ancestry are fortunate, if they are worthy of it. I do not wonder that they are pleased to remember their forefathers. But character is more, and does not need ancestry. It is sufficient to itself. What, after all, is the real advantage of belonging to a high family? It is that one is supposed to inherit from it high qualities. If one has the qualities without the family, it is far higher. It is the kind of character that founds great families--that natural, newly-given loftiness. I should be sorry if you allowed yourself to take a step in this matter, Annette."

"You can easily say all that," Annette replied, half pleased and half bitter. "You have a past that you can look to with pride."

"With pride!" echoed the other. "I do not understand you. If you mean Mrs. Carpenter, I certainly like to think of her; but her qualities were entirely personal. I have nothing to be ashamed of in my family, and I am thankful for that; but, also, I am not aware that there is anything to be proud of. It is a merely negative feeling."

"But," Annette said, "your people have always been well off, and some were very rich, and they were educated."

"And you think me capable of pluming myself on that--of being proud of an ancestry of prosperous traders and merchants who were passably educated!"

Honora flushed, and drew herself up involuntarily, with an awakening of that invincible personal haughtiness which is more soaring than any mere royalty of blood.

"I never give it a thought, except in a negative way. They merely did what decent people with ordinary sense and capacity are obliged to do. No, Annette, don't fancy that I can walk on such small stilts. If it were an old historical name, now, one that painters had illustrated and poets sung, that would be fine. If there had been great warriors and mighty rulers, there would be a chance for pride to come in. Or, better, if it were some hero or benefactor to the race, whom I could look back to; or if it were a poet. I always fancy some grace surrounds the children of a poet. They may not sing, they may be personally commonplace; but, like the broken vase,

"'The scent of the roses will hang round them still.'"

"I think you must be descended from a poet," Annette said, smiling.

"And so, child," concluded Honora, laying her hand on her companion's arm, "don't condescend to go into the past for some reason why you should be respected; find it in yourself. I think it right to tell you now what might otherwise sound like flattery. I, and many better judges than I, think you uncommon and admirable. You have made little mistakes--as who has not?--but they were never mean ones. Don't be led into pettiness now."

Annette blushed.

"What set me talking of ancestry?" she exclaimed. "It's a dusty subject, not fit for this fresh, clear place. It belongs to the town. How quiet and lovely it is here! I would like to come often. In the city, I can't hear myself think."

They sat a while without saying anything, and looked over the water. A shower was travelling across the distant mountain, trailing in a dim silver mist from sky to earth. It sailed nearer, so that drops from the edge of it dimpled the pond not far away.

A boat came toward them, propelled by a pair of strong arms. Elizabeth had heard her grandmother's summons, and was coming home. Her little boat was piled full of boughs of the wild cherry. Strings of its fruit, like strung garnets, glowed through the green leaves. With this was a tangled mass of clematis. She had hung a long spray of the vine over her head and neck, and its silvery-green blossoms glistened in the loose rings of her short, black hair, which it pushed over her forehead, and almost into the laughing eyes beneath. Through this vine, and the blouse that covered but did not hide them, the working of her supple shoulders could be seen. Her smooth, oval face was deeply flushed with health, exercise, and warmth.

She was perfectly business-like in her manner, and attended strictly to what she was doing. Even in passing before the young ladies, and looking directly in their faces, though her lips parted in a smile, she made no other sign of recognition. She brought her boat round in a smooth circle, not without pride, apparently, in displaying her skill, pushed it into a tiny cove, where the long, trailing grass brushed both sides, sprang lightly ashore, and tied it to the mooring-ring.

Then she made her half-embarrassed salutation, and stood wiping away the perspiration that lay in large drops on her forehead, and in little beads around her mouth.

If these three young women had been changed into flowers, the rower would have been a peony, Honora a lily, and Annette--but there is no flower complex and generous enough to be her representative. Be her symbol, rather, the familiar one of the orb just rounding into shape out of chaos. She was less well balanced than Honora, merely because there was so much more to balance. Her freak of searching out an ancestry would never have been acted on, even if her friend had approved it. It was one of those thoughts which need only to be put into words in order to be dismissed. Annette had rid herself of a good many foolish notions in this way, and had been growing wiser than her critics by the very acts which they took as proofs of her weakness.

Miss Pembroke had discovered this, for she looked lovingly. Others were astonished to find themselves awed to-day where they had mocked but yesterday, and professed that they knew Annette Ferrier only to be puzzled by her.

It sometimes happens to people that illusory thoughts and feelings, which, pent in the mind, have an appearance of reality, and even of force, perish in expressing themselves, as the cloud breaks in thunder.

There was another difference between these two: Annette had one of those souls that are born nailed to their cross.

It is usual with hasty and superficial judges, people who, as Liszt says, "desire to promulgate laws in spheres to which nature has denied them entrance," to show what they fancy is a good-natured contempt for these discontented beings who cannot accommodate themselves to life as it is. They mention them with an indulgent smile, and seem to take pleasure in wounding still further these sensitive souls, not aware how clearly they display their own presumptuous selfishness. The ease with which they content themselves with inferior aims and pleasures, they dignify by the name of philosophy and good sense; and they presume to censure those who, tormented by a vision of perfection, and feeling within themselves the premature stirring of powers that can be employed only in a higher state of existence, seem so imperfect only because to be perfect they must be superhumanly great. There are two ways in which this divine discontent may be silenced: the soul may degrade itself, and treat its ideals as visionary; or it may find rest in God. But no ordinary piety suffices; only a saintly holiness, flowing in and around the troubled soul like a sunny and peaceful sea, can lift and bear it smoothly on to that land where nothing sacred is mocked at, and the smiles are awakened by no sight of another's pain.

Annette Ferrier had made this much progress, that she had learned to rely on no one for a sympathy that would satisfy her, and had owned to herself that her heart required other and nobler aims and motives than those which had occupied her. She was half aware, or would have been, if the thought had not been rejected as treasonable, that if she were not already engaged to Lawrence Gerald, nothing would induce her to accept him as her future husband. But she had accepted him, and there was no longer room to doubt or to choose, or even to think of doubting or choosing. It lacked but a week to their wedding-day, and she was making her last preparations. What was worth doing at all was worth doing well, she thought, and resolved to make the occasion a festival one.

The three walked up the green together, Elizabeth between the two young ladies. Miss Pembroke stepped quite independently, her hands folded lightly together; Annette held by the end of the clematis wreath that still hung over the young girl's shoulders, and looked at her with a caressing smile.

"Did you buy the little writing-case we were speaking of when I was here last?" she asked.

"Well, not exactly," was the hesitating answer.

"Not exactly! That means that you have engaged it, or got one that does not suit, and must be exchanged."

Miss Ferrier had dropped the wreath, and was engaged in gathering up the cloud of pale blue muslin that flowed around and behind her, and did not observe the smile on the girl's face.

"No," said Elizabeth, gathering courage from her visitor's kindness. "You see, when I sat down and looked at the half-eagle you gave me, I thought it seemed a pity to go right off and spend it for a writing-case. I could have that, if I wanted to, so I didn't feel quite so anxious about it; and there were other things I wanted just as much. It would be nice to have a little clock in my room, and five dollars would buy one. So since I could have that, too, I felt easier about not having it. Then, I would like a larger looking-glass. Well, I kind of thought I had it, since I could buy it if I would. And I could get any one of the half a dozen other things I wanted, making about ten in all. But when I knew that I could have either whenever I chose, I didn't feel in a hurry to get anything; and I was so sure of each one that it seemed to me as if I had them all. So I just kept the five dollars; and while I keep it, it is as good as fifty to me. When I spend it, it will be only five dollars, and I shall want nine things dreadfully, and be sorry I hadn't bought one of them instead of what I did get."

Annette dropped her gathered-up skirts from her hands to throw her arms around the young rustic's neck, and kiss her astonished face.

"You dear little soul!" she cried, in an ecstasy, "how quickly you have found it out!"

Elizabeth blushed immensely, for she was not used to being kissed. "Found out what?" she asked.

"Why, that nothing in the world is very desirable except what you can't get."

"Oh!" The girl tossed her head back, and laughed ringingly. "I found that out as long ago as I used to cry for mince-pie to eat, and then cry with stomach-ache after I had eaten it. Grandfather used to tell me then that if there is anything in the world that we want so much we cry to get it, it will be sure to make us cry still more after we have it. I never forgot that. Grandfather knows a great deal about everything," she concluded, with an air of conviction.

"Did you ever see a creature learn so easily?" Annette said to Honora. "She begins life with all the wisdom of experience."

Honora sighed as she answered, "She reminds me of something dear Mother Chevreuse said the last time she came to see me: 'Nothing is worth working for but bread and heaven.'"

They had reached Mr. Grey's floral treasure-house by this time, and the flowers absorbed their attention.

"Bushels of asters!" exclaimed Annette, pausing outside the door, and glancing along the garden-beds. "And they are almost as handsome as roses. Those will do for the balconies and out-of-the-way places. And, Elizabeth, I want you to cherish every pansy as if it were a jewel. I don't care about the piebald ones, but the pure purple or pure gold are quite the thing. And now, Honora, step in here, and own that you never before saw fuchsias. You remember Edgar Poe's hill of tulips sloping to the water, like a cataract of gems flowing down from the sky? That Poetical creature! Well, here's a Niagara of lady's ear-drops."

When at length they had started, and were driving down to their alder-bath again, Honora leaned out of the carriage, and looked back.

"What a lovely place this would be to spend a honeymoon in!" she said softly, as if to herself.

"Which, yours or mine?" asked Annette.

Honora blushed. "I was thinking of honeymoons in the abstract," she replied.

Elizabeth stood on the lawn, and looked after the carriage as long as it was in sight; and when it was no longer in sight, she still gazed at the green wall that had closed up behind it. Perhaps she was thinking what a fine thing it must be to drive in a pretty carriage, and have gauzy dresses trailing away behind one like clouds; or may be she was recollecting what they had said to her, and how that delicate, airy lady had kissed her on the cheek, and laughed with tears in her eyes.

While she gazed, deeply occupied with whatever dream or thought she was entertaining, the alders parted again, and a man appeared, hesitating whether to come forward, yet looking at her as if he wished to speak. Elizabeth did not much like his looks, but she advanced a step to see what he wanted. No harm had ever come to her there, and she had no thought of fear. Besides, she would have considered herself perfectly well able to put this person to flight; for his slim, little figure and mean face were by no means calculated to inspire either fear or respect.

Encouraged by her advance, the man came forward to meet her.

"My grandfather will soon be home, if you want him," she said directly, holding aloof.

The stranger did not want to see him; he merely wished to ask some questions about the place which she could answer.

They were very trivial questions, but she answered them, keeping her eyes fixed intently on him. He wanted to know what they raised there; if it was very cold in winter; if it was very hot in summer; if they had many visitors there; if she was much acquainted in Crichton; if she had a piano; if she could play; if she knew any good music-teacher. And perhaps she had seen Mr. Schöninger?

No, she had not seen him.

"Oh! perhaps you have met him without knowing," the man said with animation, in spite of an assumed carelessness. "Seems to me I saw him come here this summer. Don't you remember a man whose buggy broke down beyond there, and he came here for a rope?"

The girl's eyes brightened. "Oh! is that a music-teacher?" she asked. "His voice sounds like it, or like what a music-teacher's ought to be. Yes, I remember him. He got on to the wrong road driving up to Crichton, turned off here instead of going straight on, and something broke. I gave him a rope, and he went away."

"Let me see; there was somebody else here at the same time, wasn't there?" he asked, with an air of trying to recollect. "Wasn't there a woman here getting things for the new convent?"

The disagreeable eagerness in her questioner's eyes chilled the girl; but there seemed no reason why she should not answer so insignificant a question. She did so reluctantly. "Yes, Mrs. Macon was here."

"And her carriage was standing at the door?" he added, nodding.

"Seems to me you're very much interested in our visitors," said Elizabeth abruptly, drawing herself up a little.

The man laughed. "Why, yes, in these two. But I won't ask you much more. Only tell me one thing. Did you see this Mr. Schöninger come up to the door, and go away from it?"

"I saw him come up, I didn't see him go away," she said.

The truth was that Miss Elizabeth had admired this stranger exceedingly, but had not wished him to suspect it. So instead of frankly looking after him as he went out, she had turned away, with an air of immense indifference, then rushed to the window to look when she thought him at a safe distance.

"Then you didn't see him when he passed by the phaeton that stood at the step?" pursued the questioner.

She shook her head, and pursed her lip out impatiently.

"He had a shawl over his arm when he came. Did you notice whether he had it when you saw him going away?" was the next question.

"I don't know anything about it," she said shortly; but recollected even in speaking that she had said to herself as she watched the strange gentleman going, "How does he hold his shawl so that I can't see it?"

"Now, one more question, and I have done," the stranger said. His weak, shuffling manner had quite disappeared, and he was keen and business-like. "Was there anybody else about the house who saw this man?"

"Yes; grandfather was in the garden; but he didn't come near him."

"What part of the garden? In sight of the door?"

"I won't tell you another word!" she exclaimed, turning away. "And I think you'd better go."

When she glanced back again, the man had disappeared. She felt uneasy and regretful. Something was going on which she did not understand, and it seemed to her that she had done harm in answering those questions.

"I wish I had gone into the house when I saw the prying creature," she said to herself; "or I wish I had held my tongue. He's got what he came for, I can see that."

He had got what he came for, or very nearly.

"Shall I waylay the old man, and question him?" he thought; and concluded not to. "If he knows anything, he will tell it at the proper time."

The green boughs brushed him with their tender leaves, as if they would have brushed away some cobwebs from his sight, and opened his eyes to the peace and charity of the woods; but he was too much absorbed in one ignoble pursuit to be accessible to gentler influences. What he sought was not to uphold the law; what he felt was not that charity to the many which sometimes makes severity to the few a necessity. His object was money, and charity lay dead in his heart with a coin over each eye.

That evening Miss Ferrier and Lawrence Gerald talked over their matrimonial affairs quite freely, and in the most business-like manner in the world. They discussed the ceremony, the guests, the breakfast, and the toilette, and Annette displayed her lace dress.

"It is frightfully costly," she owned; "but I had a purpose in making it so. I shall never wear it but once, and some day or other it will go to trim a priest's surplice. You see, I ordered the pattern to that end, as nearly as I could get it, and not have it made for me. There was no time for that. The ferns are neutral; but the wheat is perfect, you see, and that vine is quite like a grape-vine. I shall wear a _tulle_ veil."

She threw the cloud of misty lace over her head.

"Why, Annette, it makes you look lovely!" Lawrence exclaimed.

"I am glad you think so," she responded dryly, and took it off again.

Lawrence was seated on a tabouret in Annette's own sitting-room, which no one else was allowed to enter during these last days of her maiden life. It had been newly furnished after her own improved taste, and the luxury and elegance of everything pleased him. He was still more pleased to see her so well in harmony with it. He was beginning to find her interesting, especially as he found her indifferent and a little commanding toward him.

"And now, Lawrence," she said, folding carefully the beautiful Alençon flounce, "you have some little preparation to make. You know you must be reconciled to the church."

"I have nothing against the church," he said coolly.

"The church has something against you, and it is a serious matter," she urged, refusing to smile. "You haven't been to confession for--how many years? Not a few, certainly. No priest will marry us till you go."

"I suppose a minister wouldn't do?" remarked the young man, with the greatest hardihood, seeming mildly doubtful about the question.

"Now, Lawrence, don't talk nonsense," Annette begged. "When one is going to be married, one feels a little sober."

"That's a fact!" he assented, with rather ungallant emphasis.

She colored faintly. Her gentle earnestness might have touched one less careless. "It is beginning a new life," she said; "and if it were not well begun, I'm afraid we should not be happy."

The young man straightened himself up, and gave his moustache an energetic twist with both hands--a way he had when impatient.

"Well, anything but a lecture, Ninon," he exclaimed. "I'll think the matter over, and see if I can rake up any transgressions. I dare say there are plenty."

"You will speak to F. Chevreuse about it?" she asked eagerly.

He nodded.

"And now sing me something," he said. "I haven't heard you sing for an age. Is there anything new?"

She seated herself at the exquisite little piano, well pleased to be asked. Here was one way in which she could delight him, for he grew more and more fond of her singing. Annette's was a graceful figure at the piano, and she had the gift of looking pretty while singing. Her delicate and expressive face reflected every light and shade in the songs she sang, and the music flowed from her lips with as little effort as a song from a bird.

"Here is 'The Sea's Answer,'" she said.

Lawrence settled himself into a high-backed chair. "Well, let us hear what the sea answered. Only it might be more intelligible if one first knew what the question was, and who the questioner, and why he didn't ask somebody else. There! go on."

Annette sang:

"O Sea!" she said, "I trust you; The land has slipped away; Myself and all my fortunes I give to you to-day. Break off the foamy cable That holds me to the shore; For my path is to the eastward, I can return no more. But ever while it stretches-- That pale and shining thread-- It pulls upon my heart-strings Till I wish that I were dead."

Then the sea it sent its ripples As fast as they could run. And they caught the bubbles of the wake, And broke them one by one; And they tossed the froth in bunches Away to left and right, Till of all that foamy cable But a fragment lay in sight. And on the circling waters No clue was left to trace Where the land beyond invisibly Held its abiding-place.

"But, oh! "she cried, "it follows-- That ghostly, wavering line-- Like the floating of a garment Drenched in the chilly brine. It clings unto the rudder Like a drowning, snowy hand; And while it clings, my exiled heart Strains backward to the land." Then the sea rolled in its billows. It rolled them to and fro; And the floating robe sank out of sight, And the drowning hand let go.

"O Sea!" she said, "I trust you! Now tell me, true and bold, If the new life I am seeking Will be brighter than the old. I am stifling for an orbit Of a wider-sweeping ring; And there's laughter in me somewhere, And I have songs to sing. But life has held me like a vise That never, never slips; And when my songs pressed upward, It smote me on the lips.

"And, Sea," she sighed, "I'm weary Of failure and of strife; And I fain would rest for ever, If this is all of life. Thy billows rock like mothers' arms Where babes are hushed to rest; And the sleepers thou dost take in charge Are safe within thy breast. Then, if the way be weary, I have not strength to go; And thy rocking bosom, Ocean, Is the tenderest I know."

Then the sea rose high, and shook her, As she called upon its name, Till the life within her wavered, And went out like a flame. And stranger voices read the Word, And sang the parting hymn, As they dropped her o'er the ship's side Into the waters dim. And the rocking ocean drew her down Its silent ones among, With all her laughters prisoned, And all her songs unsung.

There was silence for a little while when the song ended; then Lawrence exclaimed, with irritation, "What sets people out to write such things? The whole world wants to be cheered and amused, and yet some writers seem to take delight in making everything as gloomy as they are. Why can't people keep their blues to themselves?"

The singer shrugged her shoulders. "You mistake, I think. I always fancy that melancholy writing proves a gay writer. Don't you know that school compositions are nearly always didactic and doleful? When I was fifteen years old, and as gay as a lark, I used to write jeremiads at school, and make myself and all the girls cry. I enjoyed it. When a subject is too sore, you don't touch it, and silence proves more than speech."

Lawrence kept the promise he had made, though he put its fulfilment off as long as possible. The morning before his wedding-day he was at early Mass, and, when Mass was over, went into F. Chevreuse's confessional. It would seem that he had not succeeded in "raking up" many transgressions, for ten minutes sufficed for the first confession he had made in fifteen years. But when he came out, his face was very pale, and he lingered in the church long after every one else had left. Glancing in from the sacristy, after his thanksgiving, F. Chevreuse saw him prostrate before the altar, with his lips pressed to the dusty step where many an humble communicant had knelt, and heard him repeat lowly, "_Enter not into judgment with thy servant; for no one living shall be justified in thy sight_."

The priest looked at him a moment with fatherly love and satisfaction, then softly withdrew.

The spiritual affairs of her future husband attended to, toilet, decoration, ceremony, reception, all planned and arranged by one brain and one pair of hands, Annette had still to school and persuade her mother to a proper behavior. She, the daughter, had conquered Crichton. They no longer laughed at nor criticised her, and were in a fair way to go to the opposite extreme, and regard her as an authority on all subjects. For the Crichtonians had the merit of believing that good can come out of Nazareth, and could become enthusiastic over what they conceived to be an original genius victoriously asserting its independence of a low origin and of discouraging circumstances.

But the mother was, and ever would be to them, a subject of quenchless mirth. Her sayings and doings, and the mortification she inflicted on her daughter, were an endless source of amusement to them.

"Now, do keep quiet this once, mamma," Annette begged pathetically. "You know I shall not be able to hover about and set people to rights when they quiz you. You will have to take care of yourself. Don't trust anybody, and don't quarrel with anybody."

For once the mother was disposed to yield entire obedience. She had begun to assume that mournful face which, according to Thackeray, all women seem to think appropriate at a wedding; and there was far more danger of her being inarticulate and sobbing than of her showing either pugilism or loquacity.

"I'm sure I sha'n't feel much like saying anything to anybody when I see my only daughter getting married before my eyes," she said reproachfully.

"Suppose you saw your only daughter growing into an old maid before your eyes, mamma," said Annette, laughing, and patting her mother on the shoulder. "Would you like that any better?"

"Well," Mrs. Ferrier sighed, "I suppose you may as well be married, now you've had the fuss of getting ready. All I care about is your happiness, though you may not believe it. I'm no scholar, and I know people laugh at me; but that doesn't prevent my having feelings. You deserve to be happy, Annette, for you have been a good child to me, and you were never ashamed of me, though you have tried hard to make me like other folks. I couldn't be anything but what I am; and when I have tried, I've only made a greater fool of myself than I was before. But for all that, I'm sorry I've been such a burden to you, and I'm grateful to you for standing by me."

This was Mrs. Ferrier's first confession of any sense of her own shortcomings, or of her daughter's trials on her account, and it touched Annette to the heart.

The outside world, that she had striven to please and win, faded away and grew distant. Here was one whom she could depend on, the only one on earth whom she could always be sure of. Whatever she might be, her mother could not be estranged from her, and could not have an interest entirely detached from hers.

"Don't talk of being grateful to me, mamma," she said tremulously. "I believe, after all, you were nearer right than I was; and I have far more reason to be ashamed of myself than of you. I have been straining every nerve to please people who care nothing for me, and to reach ends that were nothing when reached. It isn't worth the trouble. Still, it is easier to go on than to turn back, and we may as well take a little pains to keep what we have taken much pains to get. I'm sorry I undertook this miserable business of a show-wedding. It disgusts me. A quiet marriage would have been far better. But since it is undertaken, I want it to be a success of its kind."

"Oh! as to that," Mrs. Ferrier said, "I like the wedding. I don't like to see people get married behind the door, as if they were ashamed of themselves. You don't marry every day, and it may as well be something uncommon."

They were conversing more gently and confidentially than they had for a long time; and the mother appeared to greater advantage than ever before, more dignified, more quiet. Annette pushed a footstool to the sofa, and, sitting on it, leaned on her mother's lap.

"Still, I do not like a showy marriage," she said. "It may do for two young things who have parents and friends on both sides to take all the care, while they dream away the time, and have nothing to do or think of but imagine a beautiful future. For serious, thoughtful people, I think the less parade and staring and hurly-burly there is, the better. But then, that quiet way throws the two very much alone together, and obliges them to talk the matter over; and Lawrence and I would find it a bore. We are neither of us very sentimental."

She spoke gently enough, but there was a faint touch of bitterness in her voice that the mother's ear detected.

"I don't know why he shouldn't like to talk the matter over with you," she began, kindling to anger; but Annette stopped her.

"Now, mamma, there must be an end put to all this," she said firmly. "And since there is no other way, let me tell you the true story of my engagement. You seem to think that Lawrence was very anxious to get me, and that he has made a good bargain, and ought to be grateful. Well, perhaps a part of the last is true; but the first is not. I've got to humiliate myself to tell you; but you will never cease to reproach him unless I do." A burning blush suffused her face, and she shrank as if with a physical pain. "Lawrence knew perfectly well that I liked him before he ever paid the slightest attention to me; and when he began to follow me ever so little, I encouraged him in a manner that must have been almost coaxing. He knew that I was to be had for the asking. Of course, I wasn't aware of this, mamma. Girls do such things, like simpletons, and think nobody understands them; and perhaps they do not understand themselves. I am sure that Lawrence was certain of me before I had the least idea what my own feelings were. I knew I liked him, but I never thought how. I was too romantic to come down to realities. Of course, he had a contempt for me--he couldn't help it--though I didn't deserve it; for while he thought, I suppose, that I was trying to win him for my husband, I was only worshipping him as superior and beyond all other men. If girls could only know how plainly they show their feelings, or rather, if they would only restrain and deny their feelings a little, they would save themselves much contempt that they deserve, and much that they do not deserve. So you see, mamma, Lawrence might at any time, if you reproach him, turn and say that I was the one who sought him, and say what is half true, too. I didn't mean to, but I did it for all that. Now, of course, it is different, and he really wants to marry me. He is more anxious than I am, indeed. But the less said about the whole matter the better. When I think of it, I could throw myself into the fire."

"Well, well, dear, don't think about it, then," the mother urged soothingly, startled by the passion in Annette's face. "It doesn't make much difference who begins, so long as both are willing. And now, don't torment yourself any more, child. You're always breaking your heart because you have done something that isn't quite up to your own notions. And I tell you, Annette, I wouldn't exchange you for twenty Honora Pembrokes."

Annette leaned on her mother's bosom, and resigned herself with a feeling of sweet rest and comfort to be petted and caressed, without criticising either grammar or logic. How mean and harsh all such criticisms seemed to her when brought to check and chill a loving heart!

"Mamma," she whispered, after a while, "I almost wish that we were back in the little cabin again. I can just faintly remember your rocking me to sleep there, and it seems to me that I was happier then than ever since."

"Yes," Mrs. Ferrier sighed, "we were happier then than we are now; but we shouldn't be happy to go back to it. I should feel as if I were crawling head-foremost into a hole in the ground. We didn't know how happy we were then, and we don't know how happy we are now, I suppose. So let's make the best of it all."

The wedding proved to be, as the bride had desired, a success of its kind. The day was perfect, no mishap occurred, and everybody whom the family had not invited themselves as spectators. Policemen were needed to keep the way clear to the church door when the bridal party arrived, and the heavens seemed to rain flowers on them wherever they went.

Seeing Mr. Gerald bend his handsome head, and whisper smilingly to the bride, as they entered the church, sentimental folks fancied that he was making some very lover-like speech suitable to the occasion. But this is what he said: "Annette, we draw better than the giraffe. Why hadn't we thought to charge ten cents a head?"

Her eyes had been fixed on the lighted altar, just visible, and she did not look at him as she replied, "Lawrence, we are in the presence of God, and this is a sacrament. Make an act of contrition, or you will commit a sacrilege."

And then the music of the organ caught them up, and the rest was like a dream.

"How touching it is to see a young girl give herself away with such perfect confidence," remarked Mr. Sales, who was much impressed by the splendor of the bride.

"Give herself away!" growled Dr. Porson in return. "She is throwing herself away."

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES.

The story of the erection of the Cathedral of Chartres is an epic from beginning to end. Before it arose in the amplitude and majesty which the great epoch of Christian art knew how to bestow upon its works, nothing less was required than the greatest courage, the most indomitable perseverance, and a determination of will which no difficulties or reverses could turn from its purpose. The building of this cathedral was a struggle against fire and sword, against barbarians and the elements--a long conflict, which in the end left piety and devotion victorious.

No sooner was the era of persecution closed by the conversion of Constantine, A.D. 312, than a church was raised over the Druidic grotto, and thronged incessantly by the multitudes of pilgrims who came to venerate the sacred image. The wood covering the hill, no longer possessing, as formerly, any sacred character, was cut down, in order that the town might extend itself in that direction; and houses began forthwith to cluster round the foot of the temple, as if seeking the immediate protection of Mary.

Of this earliest structure it is impossible to give any description, as no account of it remains. It was in all probability a basilica resembling others of the period, built with much less splendor than solidity, and existed through several centuries until the year 850. Charles the Bald was then on the throne, and Frothold was Bishop of Chartres, being the forty-second prelate of that see. The times were very troubled. Charlemagne had years before gone to his glorious repose, leaving to his degenerate successors a sceptre too heavy for their feeble arms to wield--a vast empire without cohesion, and which, lacking the firm hand of a sagacious ruler, was already torn with dissensions. The incursions of the Northmen, invariably accompanied by fire and carnage, were continual upon the hapless kingdom of the Franks. Hasting, the Danish chieftain, laid siege to Chartres, which was at this epoch surrounded with strong and solid walls, and held out courageously, well knowing its fate should it fall into the hands of the barbarians. After spending some time in ineffectual endeavors to effect a breach, the wily Northman had recourse to craft, causing the bishop to be informed that he was ready, with all his followers, to accept the Christian faith, and humbly requesting admittance into the city. Scarcely had he entered, when he threw aside the mask; the bishop and most of the inhabitants were massacred, the church destroyed, and the city given up to the flames. This exploit was no sooner performed than rewarded as it deserved. Before the savage invaders had time to hasten back, laden with plunder, to their vessels, the Franks of the surrounding country fell upon them and slew them without quarter.

Soon the church and the city arose again from their ashes. The new sanctuary was but an humble erection. The people gave to God the best they could, but they were impoverished, and in that age of iron the arts had sunk to the lowest condition; moreover, another century had not elapsed before a similar disaster seemed about to befall the building.

In those barbarous ages, the sacking and burning of towns and the slaughter of their inhabitants were events always possible, often impending. In the year 911, Chartres was besieged by the fierce Norman chieftain, Rollo, at the head of a formidable army provided with powerful engines of war. The Dukes of France and Burgundy, with the Count of Poitiers, hastening to the succor of the city, gave battle outside its walls; but they were hard pressed, and to the anxious watchers on the ramparts seemed likely to be overborne by the foe. The bishop, Ganthelm or Gancelin, was not only a warrior in time of need, but was also full of devotion to Mary. In the heat of the combat, he put himself at the head of the Chartrians, taking with him the reliquary containing the greatest treasure of his church--the sacred tunic of Our Lady--and fell upon the invaders. This vigorous sortie was so successful that the Northmen were utterly defeated and with so great a slaughter that, according to the account of the monk Paul, the river was choked with their corpses.

The holy tunic just mentioned had been given to Charlemagne by the Emperor Nicephorus and the Empress Irene, who previously kept it at Constantinople, whither it had been brought from Ephesus in the year 460, in the reign of the Emperor Leo. Charlemagne, who meditated an Empire of the West, of which the capital should be Aix-la-Chapelle, had at first placed the relic in that city. His successors, being unable to carry out his designs, nevertheless recognized the importance of preserving so great a treasure to France, and Charles the Bald, removing it from Aix, presented it to the church of Chartres. The history of this double translation may be seen portrayed in the great window of the chapel of S. John Baptist; the archives of the cathedral and the _Poem of the Miracles_ agreeing with these representations in their account of the facts, with regard to which the poet Maître Nicolas Gilles, writes:

"Lors prinrent la sainte chemise A la Mère Dex qui fut prise Jadis dans Constantinople. Precieux don en fit et noble A Chartres un grand Roi de France; Charles le Chauve ot nom d'enfance. Cil roy à Chartres le donna."[79]

But the effects of protection from on high are not such as to permit a people and its rulers to do evil with impunity. Some time afterwards, Thibault _le Tricheur_--_i.e._ the "sharper" or "cheat"--_ce chevalier fel et enginous_--"this dangerous and deep-skilled knight," as he is called in the chronicles of the time, who by some unknown means obtained possession of the county of Chartres, made an expedition against the town of Evreux, which he took by stratagem, and, going on from thence as far as Rouen, so utterly devastated the country that, in all the land through which he had passed, "there was not heard so much as the bark of a dog." During his absence, the Normans and Danes together laid siege to Chartres, which they took by assault, and again burnt the town, together with the church. Thibault, returning to find his son slain and his town in ruins, went mad with anger and grief.

Towards the close of the IXth century was a period of great calamities and sinister predictions. There was a general spirit of discouragement and gloom. Men said that the end of the world was approaching, for the year one thousand was close at hand. They built no more churches; for to what purpose would it be? Still, Our Lady must not surely be left without her sanctuary at Chartres, nor could the people themselves dispense with it; they set to work, therefore, and the destroyed building was speedily replaced by a new one; yet, as they had no hope of its long continuance, wood had a larger place in its construction than stone. A few years later, however, when the unchecked course of time had belied the prophecies of popular credulity, it seemed as if Heaven itself willed to teach the Chartrians that God and their blessed Patroness must be more worthily honored; for in the year 1020, under the episcopate of Fulbert, on the Feast of the Assumption according to some, on Christmas Day according to others, the church was struck by lightning, and wholly consumed.

Bp. Fulbert was a holy man, and also a man of intelligence and courage. He felt that God had given him a mission. Amid the smoking ruins of his episcopal church, he laid the foundations of a noble structure which should be fitted to brave the injuries of time, and not be liable, like the former ones, to the danger of conflagration. In order to carry out his design, Fulbert needed treasure. He at once devoted all his own fortune to the work, and then appealed to his clergy, who imposed on themselves great sacrifices to satisfy their generosity; the people of his diocese also aiding eagerly with their contributions. Not satisfied with all this, he addressed himself to the princes and nobles of France, and especially to King Robert, who has been called the father of religious architecture, and who could not fail to take a lively interest in the erection of a sanctuary to Our Lady of France. The princes of the whole Christian world were in like manner invited to assist in the undertaking, and the King of Denmark in particular signalized himself by his munificence.

Gifts arriving from all parts, Fulbert was enabled to commence the works, as he had desired, on very large proportions, and to push them forward with so much activity that in less than two years the crypt was finished--this crypt which is probably the largest and finest in the world, and which is still admired as a marvel of the architecture of the XIth century. This sanctuary of _Notre Dame de Dessoubs-terre_, or "Our Lady of Underground," more worthy than any which had preceded it of the Druidic Virgin, was then opened to receive, through long centuries, successive generations of the faithful. Nevertheless, this was but the root of the majestic tree which was to rise and expand above this favored spot. Fulbert devoted the remaining years of his life to the work, so that when he died, in 1029, it had made great progress; and, being continued with equal energy by Thierry, his successor, was considered sufficiently advanced to be consecrated in 1037, although still requiring much for its completion.

After the death of Thierry came a period of marked relaxation in activity. Several bishops in succession made no progress in the erection. S. Yves, one of the most illustrious prelates who ever filled the episcopal throne of Chartres, confined himself principally to the interior adornment of the cathedral. Munificent gifts from Maude, Queen of England, enabled him to replace the ancient and already dilapidated roof by one of lead. A new impetus being given to the undertaking, in 1115 were laid the foundation of the two spires, so remarkable and so well known to the world. In 1145, the works were in full activity, and it was wonderful, observes Haymond, Abbot of S. Pierre sur Dive, to see with what ardor, perseverance, and piety the people set to work to bring about the completion of their church. "What a marvellous spectacle!" he writes. "There one sees powerful men, proud of their birth and of their wealth, accustomed to a life of ease and pleasure, harnessing themselves to the shafts of a cart, and dragging along stones, lime, wood, and all the materials necessary for the construction of the sacred edifice. Sometimes it befalls that as many as a thousand persons, men and women, are harnessed to the same wagon, so heavy is the load; and yet so great a silence prevails that there is not heard the faintest murmur."

It was chiefly during the summer season that these labors were carried on. At night, tapers were lighted and set on the wagons, while the workers watched around the church, singing hymns and canticles. Thus it was at Chartres that the custom, afterwards so prevalent, began of the laborers assembling together to pass the night as well as the day near the building in course of erection.

The old spire being at last completed, and the new one reaching to the height of the roofs, in 1194 another fire broke out, the cause of which was unknown. It had seemed as if a strange fatality pursued the pious undertaking, were not every event providentially permitted or arranged. The faithful of those days so understood this fresh catastrophe, acknowledging that it was the chastisement of Heaven for those sins from which, in spite of their zeal, the toilers in this work had not always kept themselves free. It is easy to comprehend that, notwithstanding all precautions, these large and prolonged assemblages could not have been without great dangers. Some considered the disaster as a manifestation of the divine will that the work was not carried on to a sufficient degree of perfection; while others again regarded it as an effect of the jealous hatred of the arch-enemy, and, according to the historian Mezeray, declared that demons, under the form of ravens, had been seen flying over the cathedral, with red-hot embers in their beaks, which they let fall upon the sacred edifice. This time the destruction was immense. Nothing was saved but the crypt and the two spires, with the connecting masonry forming the western portal. The latter, not having as yet been joined to the main building, were unharmed by the flames.

Historians of the XVIth century and later do not mention this fire, and suppose the edifice which at present exists to be almost entirely the work commenced by Bp. Fulbert--an error only to be accounted for by the most complete ignorance of the laws of ecclesiastical architecture. Contemporary writers, as, for instance, William le Breton and Rigord, monk of S. Denis, as well as Robert of Auxerre, who adds that a portion of the town was also consumed, are unanimous as to the date and principal particulars of the disaster.

Melchior, the legate of Pope Celestine III., was at Chartres at the time of its occurrence, and it was he who revived and sustained the spirit of the people, overwhelmed as they were at first by their calamity. Assembling them around the ruins of their church, he did his utmost to console and cheer them, winning from them the promise to raise a cathedral which should not have its equal in the world, and which should be built entirely of stone, so as to render its destruction by fire impossible.

The impulse was easily given. At the conclusion of the legate's stirring address, the bishop, Regnault de Mouçon, and all the canons of the cathedral, gave up their revenues for the space of three years towards the expenses of the building, as may be seen in the _Poème des Miracles_ of Jehan le Marchant; Philip Augustus adding his offerings to those of the clergy with a royal liberality. The towns-people, also, considering that their misfortune was not so great by far as it might have been, seeing that the reliquary containing the sacred tunic of Our Lady was saved, thanks to the devotion of certain courageous men, who bore it from the burning church into a place of safety, felt bound to show their gratitude by depriving themselves of part of their possessions in favor of the work.

A powerful and irresistible current of devotion seemed in those days to carry along with it the hearts of men; and the enthusiasm of the Crusades having been chilled by reverses, the religious sentiment of the people found its outlet in another channel--raising sanctuaries of which the magnificence should be a marvel to succeeding ages.

Moreover, it must not be forgotten that, in those ages of faith and fervor, the fabulous sums which would be required in our days for similar erections were not necessary, even taking into account all proportions with regard to the respective value of money. The time had not then arrived for none but master-masons, working for ready money only, and of that a free supply; they who had nothing but their strength and good-will cheerfully gave the alms of their toil, thus sharing equally with the rich and great in forwarding the enterprise. Everywhere architects arose, ready to translate into stone the religious thoughts and aspirations of the time, which was not a period of popular enthusiasm only, but that in which Christian art was rapidly expanding into its most remarkable development, and replacing the heavy and massive edifices of the Romano-Byzantine style by those possessing a boldness, freedom, and splendid gracefulness hitherto unknown.

Where was found the marvellous genius capable of conceiving and executing the plan of the Cathedral of Chartres?--this man who, careless of human fame, and careful only to work for God, has left no record of his name, and is called by Jehan le Marchant simply _li mestre de l'œuvre_.

The "master of the work" for three years wrought with incredible ardor. The idea had sprung from his mind complete, and he longed to see it realized in its colossal harmony. It is only in the crypt, in the old spire, and in the western portal, spared by the fire of 1194, that the ancient style is to be recognized; everywhere else the art of the XIIIth century triumphs, and we behold the poem of stone as it was hewn out in the first purity of its beauty.

At the end of three years resources failed, and the work could not go on. "Then," says the poet Jehan, with all the simplicity of a mediæval chronicler--"then the Holy Virgin prayed her divine Son to work fresh miracles in her Cathedral of Chartres, in order that the increase of alms and offerings might be such as to secure its completion:"

"La haute Dame glorieuse Qui voloit avoir merveilleuse Iglise, et haute, et longue, et lée, Si que sa per ne fust trovée, Son douz Fils pria doucement Que miracles apertement En son Eglise à Chartres feist, Que tout le peuple le veist, Si que de toutes parts venissent Gens qui offerendes tous feissent, Que achevée fust siglise, Qui estoit à faire emprise."[80]

Miracles, which in this place had at all times been numerous and remarkable, and which we might cite by thousands, are said to have now greatly multiplied. Those which at that period excited the enthusiasm and gratitude of the people to the highest degree were the cures of a terrible malady very common in the middle ages, and known by the name of the "burning sickness." The unfortunate persons who were attacked by it, besides being consumed by fever, suffered internally as if from torture by fire, while outwardly their bodies were covered with frightful ulcers, of which the pain was intolerable. The victims of this malady came from all parts for relief and healing to Our Lady of Chartres. According to Jehan le Marchant and other contemporary writers, the disease never failed to disappear, either during or immediately after the _novena_ which it was customary for each sufferer to make in the church.

This increase of favors revived the ardor of the faithful. Gifts and thank-offerings were made in great abundance, and the building of the church went on, with what vigor may be gathered from the fact that, in little more than twenty years afterwards, the cathedral was built and covered with what William le Breton calls its _merveilleuse et miraculeuse_ roof of stone. It is in the year 1220 that he writes: "Entirely rebuilt anew in hewn stone, and completed by a vaulted roof like the shell of a tortoise, the cathedral has no more to fear from fire before the day of judgment."

The new tower received a spire like that of the old, excepting that it was constructed of wood and lead, and destined to perish in the very partial fire of 1506, to be replaced by the beautiful and delicately sculptured steeple of the XVIth century, still so greatly admired. The porches were finished,[81] as well as the sculptures, in their finest details, and the windows put in. On the 17th of October, in the year 1260, the edifice was complete, and on this occasion the Bishop of Chartres, Pierre de Maincy, seventy-fifth successor of S. Aventine, solemnly consecrated his cathedral, in presence of the king, S. Louis.

Description, however picturesque, is utterly inadequate to convey a worthy image or idea of a Gothic cathedral in all the mysterious fulness, richness, and variety of its details. Chartres must be seen, must have received many quiet hours of contemplation, before its magnificences will have shown to what heights Christian art was raised by Christian devotion in those early centuries of enthusiasm and of faith.

And yet we cannot leave the reader at the threshold without inviting him to glance with us rapidly, and therefore most imperfectly, within.

How grand is the perspective which opens upon the view, when, looking from the "Royal Gate" towards the sanctuary, the eye takes in this triple nave, with its forest of pillars, amongst which fall, in rich and softened splendor, warm rays of light and color from the higher windows! All the dimensions are on a scale of grandeur. In its elevation, the cathedral is divided into three parts, the idea of the Blessed Trinity ruling this arrangement. The arcades, springing from the ground, form the first line, under the triforium, which forms the second, while above this rises the third height, containing the clerestory windows, which are lofty, double lancets, each surmounted by a rose. The lower walls are pierced by simple lancets of very large size. To the right and left of the nave are aisles without side chapels; but in the double aisle which is carried round the choir are seven apsidal chapels, of which the centre one, dedicated to Our Lady, is the most important. The pillars of the nave are massive in their proportions, to bear the weight of the lofty superstructure. There are sixteen circular or octagon pillars round the choir, with well-sculptured capitals; and in the centre of the transept rise four colossal pillars, around which cluster a number of smaller ones, which are carried up to the spring of the roof. The latter was the most beautiful in the world, and was called _the Forest_, being constructed of fine chestnut-wood, which time colors with a sort of golden hue, and which attracts neither dust nor spiders. The roof of St. Stephen's Hall at Westminster gives a good idea of what this must have been, with its exquisite fan tracery and graceful pendants, until, on the fourth of June, 1836, the whole was destroyed by fire. The iron roof by which it has been replaced, though excellent in its kind, is far from approaching the worth and beauty of the ancient _Forêt_.

The church is paved throughout with large slabs of stone, not one of which is a _grave_-stone, as would be the case in almost every other cathedral, under the pavement of which are buried numbers of ecclesiastics and other persons; but this is virgin earth, wherein no sepulture has ever taken place. We give the reason in the words of Sebastian Rouillard: "The said church has this pre-eminence as being the couch or resting-place of the Blessed Virgin, and in token thereof has been even until this day preserved pure, clean, and entire, without having ever been dug or opened for any burial."

The choir is the largest in France, and one of the most splendid in existence, notwithstanding the unfortunate zeal of the chapter in the year 1703 to alter and disfigure its mediæval beauties according to their own ideas, which appear to have been warped to the lowest degeneracy of "Renaissance." Happily, however, the prodigious expense to which they put themselves resulted in but a partial realization of their plan, in which ancient carving and mural frescos were swept away to give place to gilding and stucco, marble and new paint, to say nothing of kicking cherubs and arabesques gone mad. It was at this time that the groups representing the annunciation of Our Lady and Our Saviour's baptism were placed at the entrance of the choir, which, even if they were the work of a more skilful hand, instead of being that of a very mediocre artist, would yet be out of harmony with the church; and the same may be said of the group, in Carrara marble, of the Assumption, which rises behind the high altar, and which is the work of the celebrated Bridan, who finished it in 1773.

When, two centuries before, the choir was still without enclosure, the XVIth century provided for it one of the rarest specimens of late Gothic art ever seen. Jehan de Beauce, who had been charged with the building of the new spire, was chosen to make the designs and direct the work; and though he died whilst it was still unfinished, his plan was carefully carried to its completion. In this marvel of conscientious labor there are forty groups, each containing numerous figures, nearly the size of nature, representing the Legend of Mary and the principal events in the life of Our Lord. Around these groups cluster pillars and arches, turrets, crocketed spires, everything that can help to give them, as it were, a framing and background as full and elaborate as possible, while all sorts of odd and Lilliputian creatures are playing in and out of the pediments, or clinging to the columns in the most capricious and fantastic manner. Besides these forty principal subjects, the enclosure is further enriched with thirty-five medallions, the first of which represents the siege of Chartres by Rollo, followed by subjects from the Holy Scriptures, and then, strange to say, by others taken from heathen mythology! The pagan spirit of the Renaissance was already daring to invade the sanctuaries of the Catholic faith.

Before proceeding to mention other architectural details, two of the especial treasures of the cathedral require some further notice. Besides the Druidic Virgin, of which we have already given the history, and whose chapel has, since the Revolution, been carefully restored, as well as the twelve other subterranean chapels of this marvellous crypt, there is in the upper church another statue, almost equally venerated, which dates from the first years of the XVIth century, and is called "Our Lady of the Pillar," from the columnar pedestal on which it rests. This figure is enthroned, and adorned with gold and painting of good execution, as far as may be seen under the abundant vestments of lace, silk, and gold with which the loving piety of pilgrims, greater in devotion than good taste, delights to load this statue, of which the dark but beautiful face has an expression of great sweetness and benignity, as well as that of the divine Child, whose right hand is raised in benediction, while his left rests upon the globe of the world.

It was to this venerable image of _Notre Dame du Pilier_ that the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius IX., granted the signal favor of a solemn coronation, which took place on the last day of the month of May, 1855, in the presence of seven prelates and a concourse of clergy and people so immense that the church could not contain the multitudes. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception had just been promulgated, and a special jubilee in honor of Our Lady of Chartres had been granted by the Holy Father, and the whole city was in a state of indescribable joy.

With regard to the vestment of Our Blessed Lady, to which allusion has so frequently been made, and which appears to be of indisputable authenticity, we will give the remainder of its history up to the present time. When this was presented to the cathedral by Charles the Bald, it was enclosed in a chest of cedar-wood covered with gold. The veneration with which the precious relic was regarded did not allow of the chest being opened without necessity, and its form was naturally supposed to be that of a tunic or undergarment. Numbers were made after the imaginary pattern, and, after being laid upon the reliquary, were greatly valued as pledges of Our Lady's protection, especially by those about to become mothers. As to one detail, however, everybody was mistaken, the vestment not being by any means of the form supposed. This was for the first time discovered in 1712, when, by order of the bishop, Mgr. de Merinville, the coffer, which was falling to pieces from extreme age, was opened with the most extraordinary care and precautions. A kind of gauze, embroidered with silk and gold, enveloped the sacred relic, which proved to be a veil of great length, woven of linen and silk. It was then, in presence of Mgr. de Merinville and other witnesses, enclosed in a chest of silver, and placed again in the ancient reliquary, which had been strengthened and repaired. This, being most richly ornamented with precious stones, was, in December, 1793, carried off by the men of the Revolution, who took the relic to Paris, and submitted it to be examined by the members of the Institute, without giving them any information respecting it, and anticipating from their verdict a triumphant proof of its being nothing more than a cheat and deception of "the priests." It was with less satisfaction, therefore, than surprise that they were informed by the learned members that, "although they found it impossible to give the exact age of the fabric, it was evidently of very great antiquity, and the material was identical with that of the long, folding veils anciently _worn by women in the East_." Owing merely to this character of remote antiquity, it was allowed a place among the curiosities of a museum. When the Reign of Terror was over, certain pious persons obtained possession of it, but had the want of judgment to divide it, giving larger or smaller portions to different churches and individuals. In 1820, Mgr. de Lubersac succeeded in collecting several of these portions, and, after having had them carefully authenticated, he placed them in a reliquary of coral, which has since, by Mgr. Clausel de Montals, been replaced by one of greater richness, so arranged as to allow the precious relic to be visible.

We must, before taking leave of the cathedral, bestow at least a passing glance upon its glorious windows. Here and there one has been broken by revolutionary or other anti-religionists, one or two others have had a deep-toned color clumsily replaced by one of brighter hue by certain of the aforesaid XVIIIth century canons, who required more light to read their office; but, on the whole, they are in admirable preservation. We can linger but to read some few of the characters of this vast book of light, which is justly called by the Council of Arras "The Bible of the laity"; for months would be insufficient to decipher its glowing pages.

There are one hundred and thirty-five large windows, three immense roses, thirty-five roses of a middle size, and twelve small ones. These are almost all of the date of the XIIIth century, and are the gifts of kings, nobles, ecclesiastics, burgesses, and workmen of every trade, as may be seen in each window, which usually contains a kneeling figure of the donor. The great roses are marvellous in their splendor. That of the north transept, which, from being the gift of S. Louis, is called the Rose of France, represents the glorification of the Blessed Virgin, who occupies the centre, bearing in her arms her divine Son. The five great windows beneath the rose make the complement of the subject. In the centre is S. Anne, with Our Lady as an infant. On the right and left stand Melchisedech and Aaron, types of our Lord's priesthood; David and Solomon, the types of his royalty.

The southern rose was given by the Count of Dreux, and has for its subject the glorification of our Lord, which is also that of the sculpture over the western entrance. In the centre window of the five below is the infant Saviour in the arms of his Mother, while to the right and left are the four greater prophets, bearing on their shoulders the four Evangelists, to symbolize the support which the New Law receives from the Old. The western rose represents the Last Judgment. The three splendid windows beneath it are more ancient than the rest, and are said by those who are learned in stained glass to date from the XIIth century at the latest. One of these is the far-famed "Jesse Window," in which the tree of Jesse bears among the verdure of its branches the royal ancestors of Our Lord; the second represents scenes from his life, and the third those of his passion and death; while above appears the resplendent figure of Mary, known by the name of _Notre Dame de la Belle Verriere_, and justly celebrated for its admirable beauty. In the seven great windows of the apse, Mary is still the centre. In those of the choir occur amongst others the figures of S. Louis, S. Ferdinand of Castile, Amaury IV., Count of Montfort, and Simon de Montfort, his brother. The lower windows are filled with scenes from the Holy Bible and the _Golden Legend_, and contain a great number of figures of small size, while the higher ones are principally occupied by grand and separate figures of prophets, apostles, and saints.

Standing in the middle of the transept, one sees the extremities darkened by the great masses of the porches, but above them shine the great roses, whose rainbow hues play upon the entrance of the choir; the aisles and chapels are softened by that sort of half-luminous obscurity in which we find ourselves on entering the church; but the shadows flee more and more before the light, which, ever increasing, streams down in torrents as we approach the centre of the cross, making the sanctuary resplendent with emerald and ruby rays. And this marvellous picture has ever-changing aspects, beauties ever new, according to the hour of the day, the brightness of the sun, and the season of the year. Reader, when _in propriâ personâ_ you make your pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Chartres, you will feel how poor and how inadequate has our description been, and, with the Presence that is ever there, will own that it is heaven in all but the locality.

We will conclude our sketch with a few historical notices of interest, without which it would be incomplete.

Although we have lived to see occasionally something approaching to a renewal of the ancient throngs of pilgrims, and notably so on the last 27th-30th of May, when a multitude of more than sixty thousand persons, including twelve prelates, besides six hundred other ecclesiastics, two generals, one hundred and fifty officers, and one hundred and forty members of the National Assembly, went from Paris and various parts of France on a pilgrimage to Chartres, still this does not recall the continuous concourse of former days, when it often happened that the town was not large enough to contain the crowds of strangers, so that on the eve of certain festivals it was necessary to allow great numbers of them to remain all night for shelter in the church itself. The parvis of the cathedral, which slopes downwards from the choir to the western door, rendered easy the cleansing process which followed in the early morning, when floods of water were thrown upon the pavement.

This eager devotion of the common people has in it something more touching even than the innumerable visits of the rich and great to this chosen shrine. In the course of the XIIth century, Chartres numbered among its pilgrims no less than three popes and five kings of France; Philip Augustus being accompanied by his queen, Isabella of Hainault, who came to ask Our Lady's intercession that she might have a son. Whereupon, says William le Breton, even whilst the queen was making her prayer, the candles upon the high altar suddenly lighted of themselves, as if in token that her request was granted, and which accordingly came to pass.

Before the completion of the church, it had been visited by two princesses greater for their sanctity than for their rank--namely, Blanche of Castile, the mother of S. Louis, and the gentle and pious Isabelle, her sister. They were followed not long afterwards by the holy monarch himself, who, on his first visit, was accompanied by Henry III., of England, and on his second, in 1260, was present at the consecration. Philip the Fair, who attributed his success at the battle of Mons en Puelle entirely to the protection of Mary, came thither to do her homage by offering the armor he had worn in the combat; and in like manner Philip of Valois, after the victory of Cassel, gave to the church of Chartres his charger and his arms. And when the times darkened over France, and her king, John the Good, was the prisoner of Edward III., the latter refused to listen to the entreaties of the Dauphin and the Papal legate that he would grant peace on reasonable terms, although "the Father of Christendom had again and again with his own hand written letters to the English king, calling on him to 'forbear from the slaughter of souls redeemed by the Blood of Christ'"; success had made him relentless, and, leading on his victorious army, he laid siege to Chartres. We learn from Froissart, among other chroniclers, how Our Lady signalized her power, not only in saving the city, but in leading, humble and submissive, the lion of England to her feet: "For there befell to the King of England and all his men a great miracle: a storm and thunder so great and horrible came down from heaven on the English host that it seemed as if the end of the world were come; for there fell down stones so great that they killed men and horses, and so that even the boldest trembled."[82] ... "Thereupon the King of England, leaping down from his saddle, and stretching out his arms towards the church of Our Lady at Chartres, devoutly vowed and promised to her that he would no longer refuse to grant peace upon any terms consistent with his honor." When, therefore, he entered the city, it was not as a warrior, but as a pilgrim; for he repaired at once to the cathedral, in company with the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Lancaster, and many other English knights, and shortly afterwards signed the Peace of Bretigny.

Charles V., having revived the glory of the French arms, was not unmindful of his gratitude to Our Lady of Chartres, to whom on two occasions he made a pilgrimage barefoot, prostrating himself before the sacred image; "considering," as he declares in his letters-patent, "the splendid, great, and notable miracles which our Lord God works day by day in the said church," and praying for the peace and prosperity of his kingdom.

One other fact connected with the kings of France ought not to be omitted--namely, the sacring of Henri IV., which, instead of taking place at Rheims, according to, we believe, invariable precedent, was, by his own special desire, solemnized in the church of Our Lady of France at Chartres, when he made, as it were, a second abjuration by thus publicly declaring himself to be henceforth a devoted client of the Blessed Virgin. "Thus," observes the Abbé Hamon, _Curé_ of S. Sulpice, "Protestantism, which had flattered itself with the hope of mounting on the throne of France, was broken at the feet of Our Lady of Chartres, where also paganism had expired before it in the defeat and subsequent conversion of Rollo."

Were we to attempt to name the saints who have gone as pilgrims to Chartres, from S. Anselm and S. Thomas à Becket to S. Francis de Sales, S. Vincent de Paul, M. Olier, and the Blessed B. Labré, the enumeration would be endless; and though it would require, not pages, but volumes, to recount the favors obtained by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin for her city, we cannot refrain from selecting a few well-authenticated historical facts in addition to those already mentioned.

In the year 1137, Louis le Gros, having great cause of displeasure against Thibault, Count of Chartres, resolved to chastise him in a signal manner, and advanced against his city, with the resolution to raze it to the ground. The inhabitants were in the utmost terror and distress, knowing their helplessness before the power of the irritated monarch. The bishop, Geoffrey de Lieues, causing the reliquary containing Our Lady's tunic to be taken from the church, carried it in procession with his clergy and people outside the gates, and advanced to the royal tent. At this sight, the anger of the king subsided. He fell on his knees before the sacred relic, which he then devoutly followed, entering alone into the city, not to destroy it, but to grant it special privileges.

More than four centuries later, in 1568, Chartres was besieged by the Huguenots under Condé. They opened a heavy fire against the Porte Drouaire, above which gate the Chartrians placed an image of the Blessed Virgin. This greatly excited their fury, and their utmost endeavors were used to shoot it down. But the sacred image remained untouched, though every stone near it was shattered. The rampart was nevertheless so far weakened as to be unable longer to stand against the powerful artillery. A large breach was opened, towards which the besiegers crowded, that they might carry fire and desolation into the city. But while the defenders believed that all was lost, the whole of the population not in arms was praying in the cathedral. In the very moment of their success, the enemy lost courage; the trumpets sounded a retreat, and the Huguenot army left the city, never to return. It was in memory of this signal deliverance that a chapel was raised between the Porte Drouaire and the river Eure, dedicated to "Our Lady of the Breach," and which, after being destroyed in 1789, was in 1844 rebuilt.

Whenever Chartres has been threatened with pestilence or famine it has been customary for the bishop and dean of the chapter to bear the holy tunic in procession from the cathedral to the Abbey of Josaphat, in the midst of an immense concourse of the faithful, kneeling in the dust, with heads uncovered. Even in our own time there has been a recurrence of these expiatory solemnities. The cholera, which in 1832 made so many victims in Paris, appeared also in Chartres, and deaths multiplied in the city. But no sooner had the inhabitants, with all the religious pomp and devotion of ancient days, borne the venerated relic through the streets, imploring her succor who had for ages proved her right to the title of _Tutela Carnutum_, than the plague was stayed. All the sick were cured, and two more deaths only occurred--the deaths of two persons who had publicly insulted the procession on its way. A gold medal was struck on this occasion, having the following inscription; "Voted to Our Lady of Chartres, by the inhabitants of the city, in gratitude for the cessation of the cholera immediately after the solemn procession celebrated to obtain her powerful intercession, on Sunday, the 26th of August, 1832."

FOOTNOTES:

[79] "Then they took the holy garment, which had belonged to the Mother of God, formerly in Constantinople; and a great king of France made of it a precious and noble gift to Chartres--Charles the Bald, so called from his name of infancy. This king presented it to Chartres."

[80] "The high and glorious Lady, who willed to have the church all marvellous, and high, and long, and large, so that its equal nowhere might be found, prayed sweetly to her gracious Son that manifest miracles might be wrought in her church at Chartres for all the people to behold, so that from all parts there might come persons who should make offerings wherewith the church might be finished as it was undertaken to be done."

[81] Except certain parts of the side portals, some of the statues of which are of the XIVth century, the three gables, the chapel of S. Piat, that of Vendôme, and the enclosure of the choir.

[82] _Les Grandes Chroniques_, tom. iv. ch. 46.

IN THY LIGHT SHALL WE SEE LIGHT.[83]

The moon, behind her pilot star, Came up in orbèd gold: And slowly near'd a fleecy bar O'er-floating lone and cold.

I look'd again, and saw an isle Of amber on the blue: So changed the cloudlet by the smile That softly lit it through.

Another look: the isle was gone-- As though dissolv'd away. And could it be, so warmly shone That chaste and tender ray?

I said: "O star, the faith art thou That brought my life its Queen-- In her sweet light no longer now The vapor it has been.

"Shine on, my Queen: and so possess My being to its core, That self may show from less to less-- Thy love from more to more."

A touch of the oars, and on we slid-- My cedar boat and I. The dreaming water faintly chid Our rudeness with a sigh.

LAKE GEORGE, September, 1873.

FOOTNOTES:

[83] PS. XXXV.

THE SEE OF S. FRANCIS OF SALES.

The "arrowy Rhone" and Lake Leman have become in modern literature the counterparts of the classic Anio and Nemi of antiquity. Peculiar memories cluster about their shores; they have been the intellectual battle-field of systems, even while poets and dreamers were seeking to make a Lethe of their enchanted waters; and perhaps on no other northern spot in Europe has God lavished such beauties of color, of atmosphere, of outline, and of luxuriant vegetation. Geneva rivals the south in its growth of orange, oleander, and ilex, in its lake of sapphire hue, its sunsets of intense variety of color, and its profusion of white villas, homes of summer luxuriance, and temples of delightful idleness. The clearness of the mountain air, the irregular outlines of the smaller hills, the view of the Alps beyond--above all, that of Mont Blanc--the quantity of hardy Alpine flowers, the dusky, mediæval beauty of the town, and the unmistakable energy of its sturdy-looking inhabitants, denote the northern character of Geneva. The old Cathedral of S. Peter, where Calvin's chair is now the greatest curiosity and almost the greatest ornament (so bare is the church), and the new Cathedral of Notre Dame, a building hardly large enough for the now numerous Catholic congregation of Geneva, speak of the change that has come over the town in the last four hundred years. The religious phases that have come and gone in this small and seemingly insignificant spot form an epitome of the religious history of Europe. The age of faith, the age of fanaticism, the age of indifferentism, have reigned successively in Geneva. In the XIIIth century, as in many an earlier one, High Mass was sung at S. Peter's, and monks or canons sat in the stalls which yet remain in the choir; in the XVIth, Calvin and Beza sat in plain black gown, teaching justification by faith alone, and burning Michael Servetus for tenets that disturbed the new "personal infallibility" of the Reformers; in the XIXth, Socinianism is the creed of the "national" church, and Catholics, Evangelicals, and Anglicans have each handsome and roomy buildings, crowded on Sundays, and adorned with every outward sign of freedom of worship. Catholics form half the population of the canton, and nearly half that of the city itself. There are few conversions, however, so that this proportion does not sensibly increase. Many of the suburbs are entirely Catholic. The diocese extends to many Savoyard parishes, which are, of course, altogether Catholic. Until the recent outbreak against perfect liberty of conscience, when that liberty was to be applied to the old church, the position of Catholics, clergy and laity, was comparatively satisfactory; the bishop (of whom we shall speak later) was universally beloved by his people, respected by his liberal opponents, feared by his illiberal enemies; the moderate party in politics, consisting of the class corresponding to an aristocracy, and all of them men of polite bearing and strong religious (Evangelical) convictions, were always on the side of Catholics in upholding their privileges as citizens of the state, voters, and freeholders; the two churches, S. Germain on "the hill," and Notre Dame on the plain (among the new hotels and villas), besides other chapels on the Savoy side of the lake, and the new suburb of Plainpalais, were always crowded, and there were many schools for rich and poor under religious teachers. The Sisters of Charity had a house, to which tradition pointed as the house of Calvin; and many English visitors knocked at their door, to beg to be allowed a peep into the courtyard, where they would pluck a blade of grass as a memento or _relic_. These have now been suppressed; the clergy, who were originally salaried by the state, have been thrown on their own resources; the bishop has been sent beyond the frontier. He is said to have remarked to the Holy Father, _à propos_ of this measure: "Your Holiness sent me to Calvin; Calvin sent me to Voltaire (the bishop's retreat is Ferney); but I have great hopes of outliving them both."

Still, we would fain insist upon the great difference between this mark of intolerance and the old rules of the Calvinistic theocracy. The _Conseil d'Etat_ does _not_ represent Calvin and his personal fanaticism; it speaks a language of its own, and one which Calvin himself would be horrified to listen to--the language of state supremacy defying God. If Calvin were alive, he would no doubt feel a hearty satisfaction in burning Mgr. Mermillod; but he would have as great a relish for the burning of Prince Bismarck. Calvinism was at least sincere in its fanaticism; the Bismarckian animus is not even that of a fanatic, but of a _cynic_. So it is not the spirit of the pale, nervous reformer of the XVIth century that is responsible for the recent outrage against freedom of conscience at Geneva; but a spirit more potent, more ambitious, more grasping, and, above all, more farseeing--the spirit of open infidelity boasting of its material power of repression.

Of the political attitude of Geneva we need not speak, further than to say that its acknowledged neutrality, and the intellectual culture of its inhabitants, have given it a new life, and made of the focus of the only "Reformation" that had any sincerity or inherent strength in it a new focus of peaceful and dignified repose. From the _champ clos_ of Calvinism, it has become the arena of the world, especially of diplomacy, and the city of refuge of all exiles, royalist, Mazzinist, and social. Among the latter came one who has contributed to Geneva's glory--Byron, the gifted prodigal, who is among poets as the "morning star" once was among angels. We meant, however, to speak rather of one of Geneva's citizens than of the historic city itself; though such are the manifold charms of the place that only to name it is a temptation to plunge at once into a thousand speculations as to its past and a thousand theories as to its future.

Mgr. Mermillod, the successor of S. Francis of Sales, is a native of Caronge, a suburb of Geneva, and was born of a Catholic family, poor in the world's goods, and obscure in its estimation. He has a vivacity rather French than Genevese, but with a solid foundation of that more serious character which distinguishes his countrymen. As an orator, he is hardly second to the Bishop of Orléans, Mgr. Dupanloup; as a lecturer to pious women on the duties of womanhood, he is superior to most ecclesiastics. In the guidance of souls, the enlightened discrimination between what is in itself wrong, and what harmless if done in a proper spirit, he seems to have inherited the special gift of S. Francis of Sales in directing women of good family, living at court or otherwise, in the world. His singular prudence and the graciousness of his manner are essential helps to him in the prominent position he holds towards modern governments, and the daily contact which confronts him with modern sentiment. He is the weapon expressly fashioned for the last new phase into which the eternal struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil has entered. Like S. Francis, he wraps his strength in gentleness, and carries out the _suaviter in modo, fortiter in re_. In conversation, of which he is fond--for his is not the monastic ideal of holiness--he is sprightly, witty, and accurate. His power of crystallizing ideas into a _mot_ is quite French, and the childlike joyousness of his demeanor is no less so. The word ascetic seems to imply the very antipodes of his nature; and yet his private apartment, which we were once privileged to see, is almost like a cell. Here is a description of it, gathered from the impressions of two worthy visitors: "I felt," says one, "in this little _buco_ (hole) as if I were in the cell of a saint, and examined everything with veneration. That little _prie-Dieu_, so simple in its build, which daily witnesses the prayers and sighs of the pastor, anxious for his flock and the souls entrusted to him by God; of the Christian humbling himself and praying for his own needs.... Perhaps some day this little room will be visited as S. Charles Borromeo's is now at Milan. I am favored in that I know it already. Two purple stocks and the tasselled hat alone recalled the _bishop_, while the framed table of a 'Seminarist's Duties,' taken in connection with the simplicity, nay, poverty, of the room, might make one think it the habitation of a young cleric."

And another account adds: "What a memory to have seen this room, so narrow, so humble, so evidently the home of a saint! We shall always be able to fix the picture of the bishop in our memory, night or day, praying or working, at all times; ... and that beautiful print of Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, and that tiny _prie-Dieu_!"

The bishop's library, his ordinary working-room, was also a very simple retreat, and often fireless in the coldest days of winter. The house stood next door to the cathedral, and the rest of the clergy, four or five in all, lived there in community. Among them was the old vicar, the second priest to whose charge the reconstituted parish of Geneva had been entrusted before being raised to the dignity of a bishopric. It was very touching to watch this old man lovingly deferring to the young bishop, who was formerly but a curate under him, and rejoicing as a father in the elevation of one of whose fitness for the episcopal office he, above all, had reason to be certain.

"No man securely commands but he who has learned well to obey."[84] Another of the clergy was a very remarkable man, the type of a character found nowhere in these days save under the cowl of the monk, and even among religious probably nowhere save in the Benedictine Order. He was the bishop's private secretary, and his right hand in the business of the diocese. He belonged to the Reformed Benedictines of Solesmes, and was a friend and spiritual subject of Dom Guéranger, author of the invaluable _Liturgical Year_, the beautiful _History of S. Cecilia_, and other works. It was only by a special dispensation that he was allowed to hold his present position and live outside his cloister; but having, in early life, been the schoolmate of the bishop, and being eminently fitted to wield ecclesiastical sway, this privilege (which was none to him, however) had been obtained by Mgr. Mermillod. He was called rather by the title of his religious profession, _le père_, than by his name in the world--a name since become known as that of the author of a learned and voluminous _Life of S. Dunstan_. He was, as it were, a stranded pilgrim in this age of compromise--a stern, heroic soul cast in the giant mould of the XIIIth century; rather a Bernard of Clairvaux than a Francis of Sales; in learning a descendant of Duns Scotus, and a disciple of Aristotle; an ascetic, a scholastic, a rigid disciplinarian, an unerring director. In person tall, dignified, spare of form, with keen, eagle glance, clear-cut, largely-moulded features; in dress simple to rusticity, and a fit model for an old monkish carving at the foot of a pulpit or on the boss of an arch.

They completed each other, these two saintly characters, the bishop and the monk, bound together in a mystic marriage for the production of spiritual children for God and the church; and the contrast between them seemed, as it were, typical of that other union of distant ages, one with another, for the furtherance of a principle ever the same, whether its accidental exponent be Peter the fisherman, Hildebrand the Reformer, Bernard the monk, Francis of Sales, the gentle bishop, or Pius IX., the yet more gentle and more persecuted Pope.

Our stay at Geneva covered three-fourths of a year, so that we grew familiar with the beauties of the neighborhood in its different aspects of summer, autumn, and winter. It would be difficult to chronicle every detail of these beauties of earth, sky, and water, which, as the seasons brought them severally into prominence, seemed to form a series of cabinet pictures for memory to dwell upon ever after. There is nothing like a long stay in one place to make one feel its loveliness; the transient wayfarer among the most enchanting scenes sees not a quarter as much natural beauty as the constant dweller in a less favored spot. In the wild rush, named with unconscious satire a _tour_, the traveller sees a kaleidoscopic mixture of incongruous, discordant beauties, and of each in detail he sees but one phase, sometimes an abnormal one, sometimes an obscured one, and not seldom he sees but the vacant place where this beauty should be. His opinions are hastily formed, and, strange phenomenon! the more hastily the more ineradicably, and they are often erroneous, or at least one-sided. A man looking for the moon during the week when the moon is new, and concluding, therefore, that no moon exists or is visible at any time, would not be a rasher tale-teller than he who asserted that because he passed twenty-four hours in Venice during a fog, therefore the sun never shone in the Adriatic city; or that since in a week's scamper through the environs of Naples he never came across a beautiful woman, therefore the type of the Grecian goddess was extinct among the women of Parthenope. Sweeping statements are as invariably wrong as they are temptingly easy to make; it is needless to say how intellectually absurd they are. Give your experience _as_ your experience, and you will have contributed something to the sum total of acquisition on any given subject; but do not give it as the only, absolute, indisputable, and final result of research. All knowledge is but partial; it is subject to all kinds of qualifications. Few men can speak with authority of more than a grain of it at a time, and it is equally unwise and undignified to put yourself in the position of the Pharisee whom the lord of the feast directed to give place to a guest of worthier and seemlier station. But this is a digression. We began by saying that long residence in one place is the true way to see, learn, and probe its beauties; as well as its resources. Until your heart _grows to_ a place, you do not _know_ it, and no place unassociated with family or patriotic connections can teach your heart to _grow to_ it without long residence. Perhaps there are exceptions, corresponding to "love at first sight," but even this in human relations is only an exception. We remember one place, seen for one day only, for which this sadder feeling of kinship and yearning grew up in our heart--it was Heidelberg; but intimate knowledge in ordinary cases is the only channel to a great and appreciative love.

Geneva won its way to our love thus, and, more than any one spot we visited--not excepting even Rome--came to represent to the memory the happiest, most peaceful, and most fruitful period of our lives. We shall be forgiven if we draw a sketch of the surroundings which are associated with our knowledge of the Bishop of Geneva. In all our reminiscences his figure is the central one, and the group of persons who formed our circle of friendship seems naturally to revolve around his person. Our summer life was spent in a shy little villa, invisible from the high-road, and embowered in groves of pine, chestnut, and oak; our winter days were passed, perforce, at the uncongenial but perfectly appointed Hôtel de la Paix. The party consisted of our own family only, with one or two accidental additions from England for a week at a time. The house was slightly built and cottage-like, with a flight of steps on each side, the front stoop being festooned with a jessamine-vine, and the wide, grand drive, flanked by a bed of flaming balsam-flowers, sweeping up to the door under the shade of two or three massive horse-chestnuts. No room in the house was carpeted, and only the drawing-room had a _parquet_ floor. The bed-rooms were miracles of simplicity and cleanliness--milk-white boards, white-washed walls, no curtains to bed or window, and an absence of any furniture, save a narrow bed, a washstand, a dimity-covered table, and one cane chair, making them seem so many dormitory sections partitioned off. We made the "best" room a little more picturesque, as that of a loved invalid never fails to be, by the help of crimson velvet coverlets, blue silk and knitted wool in cushions, a portable easy-chair, muslin bed-curtains, and a display of cut-glass bottles with gold stoppers--in short, the contents of an English dressing-case on the pretty, white-robed table. Books, also, and any pretty thing that struck our fancy in the treasure-houses of the town, accumulated here, and made of it the choicest room in the house. We had a severer trysting-place on the ground-floor, where reading was carried on systematically, illuminating and ecclesiastical embroidery filled up many an hour, and our journals (from which we have already quoted) were compiled. But there was a rarer treasure yet--a chapel. A tiny room, darkened _all' Italiana_, with red curtains, and containing a portable altar suitably draped, recalled the oratories of Roman _palazzi_; and here was often seen the tall figure of _le père_ and a little chorister from Notre Dame, as we had Mass said there generally twice a week. It was a sanctification to the house, and we felt it an incitement in our "labor of love" of reading and manual work. Another gathering-spot was the wall on the garden side, forming the parapet between the terrace and the lower level of meadow-land. There was a whole colony of spiders nestled in the miniature grove of jessamine that hid the wall; and, as we sat with our books on the steps leading from the terrace, we assisted, as it were, at a perpetual natural history lecture _in actu_. The webs were generally very perfect, and, as the autumn came on, the early dews transformed them into a jewelled network, shining rainbow-wise, with the loveliest prismatic hues. Sometimes, when they were broken, they seemed like a cordage of diamonds--the tangled ruins of some fairy wreck clinging to the mast, represented by a green twig. But there was in the grounds another more sylvan and lonely retreat still--our own especial haunt. It was a damp valley, below the level of the high-road, carpeted with periwinkles and decaying leaves, and shut out from human observation by a grove of oaks and chestnuts. A peculiar darkness always brooded over it, and one might have forgotten the existence of noontide had he spent twenty-four hours in its gloom. A little brook ran along the bottom, its waters carrying miniature freight-barks in the shape of half-opened horse-chestnuts or curled and browned oak-leaves. If anything so small could bear so lofty a likeness, we should say that this sombre valley was akin to a Druidical grove.

Our outdoor pleasures were few, as the world understands them; they mostly consisted of long drives into the interior, where we would often pass dignified, melancholy-looking iron portals, let into a wall festooned profusely with the Virginia creeper, and giving a glimpse of some deserted, parklike expanse of meadow. Other less pretentious entrances showed a wilderness of roses, flowering shrubs, and vines, but always in contrast with the luxuriant Virginia creeper, which nowhere else in Europe grows in such perfection. A variety of shades absolutely Western greets the eye and delights the imagination; the hues of the Indian summer seem concentrated in this one plant, and, from its rich glow, an artist can easily guess what a forest of indefinitely multiplied trees, painted in the colors of this creeper, would look like. Two of our visitors were welcome additions to our party and sympathetic sharers in our pleasures--one, a lady well known for her energetic and active charity, whose presence in any place pointed invariably to some hidden work of mercy to be performed there, and whose mission just then was to comfort a lonely and despairing widow under peculiarly trying aggravations of her sorrow; the other an artist whose name in his public capacity has already appeared more than once in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, and whose character of childlike simplicity and reverent earnestness has endeared him to us in private life as a friend and a model.

People staying at Geneva--at least, English people--always make a point of going through the arduous expedition to Chamouni and the Mer de Glace. We do not mean to disparage the spirit which inevitably urges on our countrymen and countrywomen to put their necks in jeopardy on the slightest provocation; but, turning the adventurous instinct of our Anglo-Saxon blood to a better purpose, we chose rather to make two or three expeditions to sites hallowed by the presence of the Apostle of Geneva--S. Francis of Sales. Mont Blanc could not, from any point of view, appear more majestically beautiful than it does from the shores of Lake Leman; and we preferred to gaze upon the monarch with the eye of an artist rather than that of a gymnast. We here lean upon the authority of Ruskin, whom we are glad to appeal to in an instance where his naturally reverential mind makes him a safe and unbiassed guide. Our first pilgrimage was to the Castle _des Allinges_, on the Savoy side of the lake, a ruin now, but where, in former days, the saint often said Mass in a chapel, which is the only part of the castle still untouched. There is no lack of visitors to this shrine during the summer, and each party is generally accompanied by a priest. We were happy in persuading _le père_ to be our companion, and started overnight for the village of Thonon. The lake was unruffled, and the sun shining tropically, as the little steam boat carried us over the waters. Thonon is a Catholic village, with an ugly church, adorned by carved and gilded cherubs and other unsightly excrescences ambitiously striving to be Michael Angelos and Donatellos. Frogs never can let oxen alone, especially in art. We slept at the inn, a picturesque and proportionately dirty hostelry, very little changed, we should say, from what it was in the days of S. Francis. It stands on a high terrace above the lake, the top of which terrace forms a drilling-ground; for Thonon has fortifications and the ghost of a garrison. The road from the boat-landing winds up through stunted vines to a dilapidated gateway, and is often dotted by the curious one-horse vehicle of the country, called _char-à-banc_--_i.e._ a sort of diminutive brougham turned sideways, and hardly capable of holding two persons--a kind of side-saddle locomotion rather curious to any one accustomed to sit with his face to the horses. The view over the lake by sunrise the next morning was dreamlike in its beauty--each rounded peak veiled in mist, and the motionless waters lying at their base as a floor of azure crystal. As we went further up into the mountains, the sun's rays flashed on hill after hill, throwing a softened radiance over each, and shooting darts of gold across the clear blue of the lake. We met carts laden with wheat-sheaves, and men and boys going to their day's work; passed farms and dairies before coming to the heathery waste that separates the lonely hill-top of _les Allinges_ from the cultivated lands below; jolted over the stony path, called, in mockery, a _road_; and, having seen in a short two hours' drive as many beauties as we could conveniently remember, arrived at the Chapel of S. Francis. It has been changed since his time, but the altar is said to be the one at which he celebrated Mass. The chapel is a white-washed room like a rough school-room, fitted up with painted benches and cheap prints; but the feeling that draws so many Christian hearts to this refuge of the missionary Bishop of Geneva hallows the bare walls and open poverty of the chapel, and a spirit seems to rise from the altar recess to rebuke any worldly sense of disparagement or even disappointment. The manner in which _le père_ said Mass was enough to make one feel the solemnity of the occasion and the gratitude that ought to possess one after having had the privilege, doubtless not to be repeated in a lifetime, of praying on this consecrated spot. We all received holy communion during Mass. An old man is stationed at _les Allinges_ as _custos_, sacristan, and Mass-server; and his little garden, in full view of the lake, makes a pretty domestic picture grafted on to the mediæval one of the "ruined castle ivy-draped."

S. Francis, so says tradition, often wandered day and night over this mountain on his apostolic missions, and, being once overtaken by darkness, found no better resting-place than the fork of a chestnut-tree. Wrapped in his cloak, he there went to sleep, lulled by the howling of the wolves, which abounded in that neighborhood. Many similar stories are told in Savoy of his missionary adventures; one of them recording that one day he presented himself, with two or three companions, at one of the gates of Geneva. The guard, not knowing him, asked who he was, before he would allow him to pass; the saint calmly and smilingly replied, "I am _l'évêque du lieu_" (the bishop of the place). The guard, concluding he was some foreign visitor, and that _Dulieu_ was the name of his diocese or manor, nonchalantly opened the gate, and let him in. When the magistracy discovered _who_ had thus got entrance into the city of Calvin, there was a terrible outcry; the too innocent guard was summoned and threatened with death for his gross neglect of his duty, and a hasty search was begun for the hated Papist bishop. S. Francis had by that time quietly finished his business and left the hostile walls of Geneva. This is not unlike the incident related by Cardinal Wiseman in _Fabiola_, where a Christian substitutes for the watchword _Numen Imperatorum_, without repeating which he could not pass out to his secret worship in the catacombs, the words similar in sound, though widely different in meaning, _Nomen Imperatorum_, and succeeds in cheating the guard, who was a Pannonian, and whose knowledge of Latin was but elementary. It was probably during one of these stolen visits that S. Francis administered the sacraments to a poor Catholic servant-girl in the cellar of the _Hôtel de l'Ecu d'or_--an old inn still standing at Geneva, and where the identical apartment is now shown.

From Thonon we took the boat to Lausanne, on the opposite side of the lake, visited the Castle of Chillon, and returned to Geneva, after another night spent at the Vevay end of Lake Leman; where the mountains, purple and rounded; the vegetation, southern in its quality and luxuriance; the winding road by the shore--all contribute to remind you of the Bay of Naples and the Sorrento road along the Mediterranean.

Lausanne itself, its cathedral, monuments, fortifications, and general quaintness of architecture and beauty of position, was the goal of another expedition, in which our English friend, Mr. B----, accompanied us, and became our commentator and artistic guide.

There were many other places we also visited; one of us was indefatigable, and followed the bishop to Thonex, where he solemnly deposited a _corpo santo_; to Collonge, where he blessed a new cemetery with all the pomp of ritual, made easy by this village being situated on Savoyard ground; and to Caronge, where he distributed the prizes at a girl's school, and gave an excellent and appropriate lecture on the education of women in this century.

But the most beautiful ceremony of all was the consecration of the new parish church of Bellegarde, the French frontier post and custom-house. This village is a mere handful of white-washed cottages dropped among the spurs of the Jura range. The mountains, though not high, have all the beauty of the Alps; their varied outline, their abrupt gorges, and their swift torrents being yet more beautiful because embowered in a vegetation of softer aspect than the monumental pineries which close-clothe the Alps. Within half a mile of Bellegarde is a curious natural phenomenon--_la perte du Rhône_. The river, here scarcely more than a mountain brook, after struggling through a barren, sandy bed, strewn with boulders of a porous white stone worn by the action of the water into strange shapes of vases, cauldrons, and urns, suddenly plunges under an arched entrance in a wall of rocks, and disappears. Its subterranean course is some miles long, and it re-emerges, on a lower level, a placid, shallow stream. Around the mouth of this unknown cavern the scenery is very striking; deep clefts of rock, with fringes of Alpine flowers, alternate with thick growths of oak and chestnut; and from every peaklet of the mountains some charming pastoral scene comes into view. The new church was a plain white building, of no architectural pretensions, but strong and impervious to the weather. The internal decorations were simple in the extreme; no frog emulation here, as in ambitious Thonon. For once we saw French peasants _au naturel_; they really seemed the fervent, hospitable, unsophisticated people one longs to see. The Jura protects Bellegarde from Geneva; there is no large town near on the French side, and there is neither hotel, nor mineral springs, nor iron mines, nor natural resources of any kind to attract the acquisitive mind of the XIXth century. So God still reigns undisturbedly in this narrow kingdom--narrow, indeed, if measured by the numerical strength of its inhabitants, but noble and precious if measured by the worth of each immortal soul which it holds. The people were collected outside the church, as the full ceremonies of consecration were going to be performed, and many of these take place before the people can canonically be admitted into the interior. A priest stood on the natural pulpit of a low stone wall, describing to the faithful the symbolic meaning of each ceremony, as the bishop and his assistants passed round and round the walls, chanting psalms and anointing the building, or, entering the portals, inscribed the Greek and Latin alphabets in the form of a cross on the floor of the church, made seven crosses on the different internal walls, and recited psalms and litanies before each. The men stood in the burning sun, bare-headed and motionless, often kneeling in the dust, and singing hymns in French corresponding to the meaning of the Latin prayers; a line of _Gardes Nationales_, in uniforms rather the worse for wear, and many wearing the Crimean medal, stood opposite the entrance, while an excruciating brass band played with a will a mixture of national and religious airs. When at last the congregation all poured into the church, High Mass was sung, the brass band doing duty in a scarcely less subdued tone than before, but being as much of an improvement upon the theatrical and sensuous exhibitions nicknamed _sacred_ music in many grander churches, as a rough but pious print is--religiously speaking--an improvement on a lascivious Rubens. The sermon (we forget whether preached by the bishop or not) was a touching exhortation to the people to remain knit in heart and soul to this church, the emblem at once of their hopes in the future and their spiritual struggles in the present. In the afternoon, the bishop sang solemn Vespers, and towards dusk we all returned to Geneva, happy in having witnessed a ceremony so seldom seen in its beautiful entirety. Mgr. Mermillod was throughout the summer our frequent guest at the villa, and as we purposed staying through the winter as well, he promised to accompany us to Annecy, in Savoy, to visit S. Francis of Sales' tomb and other places hallowed by his memory, on his own feast (29th of January). We started on the eve in two or three close carriages, with postilions. The road lay over a low pass of the Savoy Alps; the cold was intense--such as we have never felt in any other temperate climate in Europe, and which nothing but the unexpectedly rigorous winters of the Northern States have surpassed in our American experience. The road was lined with trees, and valleys here and there opened a vista which in summer must have been gorgeous. It was scarcely less lovely now. Each slender twig was sharply defined, and covered with a clinging garment of frost; the white mist wreathed itself round the mountain-tops, falling down the river-sides like shadowy waterfalls, and, mingling with the white sky overhead, formed, as it were, a vast dome of snow. No noise disturbed the silence save the creaking wheels of our vehicles, and as far as eye could reach there was no sign of life but our own presence. We might have been in cloud-land, or below the surface of the ocean, among hedges of gigantic white coral! After two hours of this elf-like journey, we came to a ravine over which was thrown an iron suspension bridge, and here the intensely earthly resumed its dominion and made itself clearly felt in the prosaic necessity of paying toll and listening to profane language, rendered yet more uncouth by the Savoyard _patois_.

Annecy is a little, old-fashioned town, with a cathedral in not much better taste than the church of Thonon. The place wears a deserted look, and, the cold being terrible, yet fewer of the inhabitants cared to be seen loitering in the public squares. We adjourned first to the inn (we fear modern pilgrims are less fervent than of old), but could get no fire. Grates are unknown, and a miserable stove, badly managed and half filled, is the starveling and inefficient substitute. The old inn was a characteristic place. We went through the kitchen, the general meeting and _table-d'hôte_ room, to our upper chambers. The staircase was wide enough for a palace, of beautiful carved oak, as was all the wood-work in the house. The next morning the bishop said Mass for us at the shrine of S. Francis. The building of greatest interest after this is the Convent of the Visitation, a rambling house with a large kitchen-garden, which we crossed to reach it. We were shown, through a double grating (the Visitation nuns are enclosed), the various relics which form the spiritual wealth of the convent. They have the original manuscript of S. Francis' _Treatise on the Love of God_ written by his own hand, the pen with which he wrote it, and a shirt embroidered for him by S. Jeanne Françoise de Chantal. In the lower part of the house, corresponding to the position of a cellar, is a little chapel partly hewn in the rock, which serves as the foundation, where S. Francis gave the veil to S. Jane and one companion, or rather, blessed the first semi-religious costume which the founders of the order wore. This consisted of a black gown and cape, and a large, close, white cap in one piece covering the neck and shoulders as well as the head. This house then belonged to S. Jane in her own right. In the chapel to the right of the altar is a picture of her in this dress, and on the other side a description of the simple ceremony. Later on, when the order was constituted, the dress became thoroughly monastic, as it has remained ever since. The cell of S. Jane is exactly as she left it; not made into a regular chapel, but, on days connected with her memory or that of S. Francis, Mass is said there at a temporary altar. Her cloak is kept in a press in the room, and one of us was privileged in having it thrown over her shoulders for a few minutes by the superioress. The order is not at all austere, but there is an immense deal of moral sacrifice imposed by the spirit of the rule. S. Francis designed it rather as a discipline of the mind than of the body; and since saints have differed about this point, we are not at a sufficient elevation to pronounce upon it. Individually, however, we prefer the spirit of the older and more ascetic orders, as involving a more complete oblation of the whole being to God; but--to every age its own institutions, and, we might add, its own saints.

Mgr. Mermillod is surely one of those saints of our day. Indefatigable in preaching (once the distinctive duty of a bishop), his own flock sometimes complain, not without reason, that he is always away, preaching a retreat here, a mission there--Lent in Paris, Advent at Lyons, etc.; but in the winter of 1866, he fortunately preached five _conférences_ at S. Germain, at Geneva itself. The church was in the old, hilly part of the town, but neither that nor the difficulty of approach--the frost made steep roads impassable that winter, and even the cabs went on runners--seemed to diminish the ardor of the people. All denominations were represented at these evening lectures, and the subject was invariably one accessible to the understanding and commanding the interest of all. One, on the regeneration of fallen man, was peculiarly fine; but the arguments were perhaps inferior to the language in which they were clothed. It wound up with a forcible peroration on that "brutal and atheistical democracy which, in its most hideous exponent (the French Revolution of 1793), prostrated itself before a courtesan, and knelt before a scaffold. When the worship of God perished, the worship of shame was the substitute; and when the blood of God ceased to flow upon the altar, the blood of man began to flow on the guillotine." The orator's enthusiasm in speaking sometimes carried him beyond his argument, and he even lost the thread of his similes in the ardor of his utterance. His watch invariably stopped before he had been twenty minutes in the pulpit, and this _entraînement_ was all the more vivid from being quite spontaneous, as he never wrote his sermons, but preached extempore from a few scattered notes. How much study he must have gone through at a previous time to make him so polished, as well as so forcible, an orator, we can only conjecture.

In ordinary social intercourse, his charm was chiefly sweetness and sprightliness, with a certain happy diction which is a special gift, seldom found except among Frenchmen or those to whom French has become a second mother-tongue. Our long winter evenings at the Hôtel de la Paix (the cold having driven us from the villa) were often enlivened by his genial presence; other friends, too, came sometimes, and one, a Russian and an acute thinker, M. S----, was one of the most welcome. He was blind, but his infirmity only seemed to enhance his powers of conversation, and made his company more agreeable than it might otherwise have been. One night, the bishop was speaking of Lamennais and his more hidden life. There were soul-struggles and temptations assaulting him even in his chosen retreat of La Chênaie, in the midst of his triumph, when the Christian youth of France clustered round him, and sat at his feet as his humble disciples. He sometimes fancied himself irretrievably destined to eternal loss, and experienced paroxysms of terrible agony. The Abbé Gerbet, his confessor, once surprised him in one of these fits of despair, and did his best to strengthen and comfort him; but the demon was not to be laid so easily. The bishop, telling us this, added: "The three greatest geniuses of France in this age have fallen, the one through pride, the others through vanity--Lamennais, Victor Hugo, and Lamartine." The conversation having rested upon these two failings, some one quoted the saying that "The greater part of mankind is incapable of rising to the level of pride." A Russian lady who was present then said: "Indeed, one ought to have a great deal of pride to save one's self from petty vanity."

Thereupon M. S---- quickly remarked: "Oh! therefore, we should burn down a city to prevent fires." Our Russian friend was very sharp at repartee. Another evening, when he brought with him a young German, the conversation fell upon Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg, Prince Albert's brother. He had lately had an immense forest awarded to him as damages for some losses sustained during the Austro-Prussian war of the previous summer; so S----said:

"There are people who make arrows out of any wood, but he has contrived to make wood out of any arrow." This is a French rendering of "'Tis an ill wind that blows no one good"; but the connection in this case between an arrow, a weapon typical of the war, and the wood, or forest gained in compensation, is better expressed by the French form.[85] Later on, some one remarked that in that war the telegraph had been _Prussianized_ throughout Germany; and when the young German, S---- 's friend, was trying to give us an idea of Duke Ernest's ticklish position, S---- interrupted:

"Yes, yes; I know what you mean; in short, he played the part ... of the telegraph!"

Mgr. Mermillod had a winning way of turning everything into a moral, and at the same time giving balm to a rebuke and strength to a counsel. For instance, one day, as he visited a sick penitent of his, whose mental energy was for ever soaring beyond her physical capabilities, he said:

"You will do more good on your sick-bed than you could in the best of health in the London _salons_. Remember that Our Blessed Lord lay but three hours stretched upon the cross, and thereby converted the world; while, during his three years' ministry, he scarcely converted a handful of Jews."

On New Year's Eve, 1866-7, gave us a few little books of devotion as a souvenir, and then, making the sign of the cross on each of our foreheads, said:

"Here are crosses to disperse the crosses of 1866 and frighten away those of 1867."

Another time, on one of his penitents going to him with a load of doubt, uneasiness, almost despair, he gave her the wisest and gentlest counsels, after which he said sympathizingly, comprehending the whole in a dozen words:

"I understand, my child; you go from one extreme to another--from sadness to laughter, from melancholy to irony."

Once when some one in his presence expressed a wish that all priests were like him, he answered humbly: "My dear child, every priest is in some sort an incarnation of the Spirit of God."[86]

It is sad to think of Geneva without the presence of its pastor, so admirably fitted as he is to carry on the work of S. Francis and execute the designs of God in this important see. The faith is most vigorous just where the attack is hottest, and it is on the missionary bishoprics, flung thus into the warring bosoms of non-Catholic nations, that, humanly speaking, the future--and let us say the triumph--of the church very much depends.

With such internal bulwarks as the Benedictine secretary of Mgr. Mermillod represents, and such external champions as the eloquent, energetic, and enlightened bishop himself, it is not too much to say that not even the faintest heart has reason to dread the fall of the rock-built citadel of Peter.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] _Following of Christ_, b. 1. c. xx. v. 2.

[85] The original proverb sounds less ponderously: "Il en est qui font flèche de tout bois, mai lui, il a fait bois de toute flèche."

[86] The Catholic reader will not misunderstand the still more forcible original: "Tous les prêtres c'est une petite incarnation du bon Dieu."

CATHOLIC LITERATURE IN ENGLAND SINCE THE REFORMATION.

It is not surprising that Catholic literature was at a low ebb for many years after Henry VIII., of evil memory. Deprived of the means of knowledge in their own country under Edward VI., Elizabeth, and James I., Catholics were compelled to seek education abroad in colleges where they forgot their mother-tongue and the writers of their native land. As to their brethren who remained at home, it was dangerous for them even to possess books, and they seldom had time or opportunity to make themselves acquainted with their contents. A prayer-book, black with use and carefully secreted, was all the library of those who were liable at any moment to be ferreted out of vaults and wainscots, and hanged, drawn, and quartered for believing in the Papal supremacy. The Puritan movement in the time of Charles I. and the Commonwealth was highly unfavorable to literature in general; and the Catholics who joined the royal standard were more anxious to wield the sword than the pen. But the fewer the authors who broke the long literary silence of the Catholic body in England, the more their names deserve to be cherished. We will endeavor, therefore, to make a _catena auctorum_, and to offer a few comments on each link in the chain. Though all of them were Catholics at some period or other of their lives, they were not all persistent in their faith nor exemplary in their practice. It will be understood that they are cited in their literary capacity, and not as saints, martyrs, and confessors in a calendar.

Robert Southwell, however, must head the list, as he was both author and martyr. He published many volumes in prose and verse, though his life was closed prematurely in his thirty-fifth year. Educated at Douay, he labored in England eight years during Elizabeth's reign. He was a member of the Society of Jesus, and he touched the hearts of his suffering brethren by his tender and plaintive verse. _S. Peter's Complaint, with Other Poems_, appeared in 1593, and _Mœoniæ, or Certaine Excellent Poems and Spirituall Hymnes_, in 1595, the year in which he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, under a false charge of being engaged in a political movement. His real offence was that of the Bishop of Ermeland and the Jesuits of Germany in the present day--his allegiance in spiritual matters to the authority of the Holy See. Robert Southwell's memory is still cherished in England, and it is not long since selections from his poems were read to a crowded audience in Hanover Square Rooms, London, by the Rev. F. Christie, S.J. They do not rise high in poetic merit, but they are full of noble, just, and devout sentiments. "Time Goes by Turns" is found in most collections of British poetry. The following are the last stanzas of his "Conscience":

"No change of fortune's calms Can cast my comforts down; When fortune smiles, I smile to think How quickly she will frown.

"And when in froward mood She moves an angry foe, Small gain I find to let her come, Less loss to let her go."

Religious writings--sermons, meditations, and even works of controversy--had more importance, in a literary point of view, in Queen Elizabeth's reign than they have now. At that time, people read little; books were few and dear. Books of piety cultivated the mind, though used chiefly to edify the heart. They exercised many persons in the art of reading, who, but for that branch of literature, would have read nothing at all. They kept up a habit which was good on secular grounds, apart from the higher spiritual consideration. Looked upon in this light, the tracts and letters of such holy men as Campion, Persons, and Allen (afterwards cardinal) had a twofold value. Edmund Campion was an accomplished scholar. He received his education at S. John's, Oxford, and being courteous and refined, as well as clever, he was universally beloved. After leaving college, he went to Ireland, and wrote a history of that country, which was highly esteemed. Having been reconciled to the church, he repaired to the new college at Douay, that he might there study theology; and after following the usual course, he was admitted into the Society of Jesus, and sent to England to comfort and strengthen his brethren who were contending for the faith. His friendship for Persons, his publication of a work written by that father, entitled _Reasons for not Going to Church_ (that is, to the parish Protestant church), and the seizure of a private press, which a Catholic gentleman had given to the friends, that they might work off edifying books and tracts, led to his apprehension. He was dragged through the streets of London, with a paper fixed on his hat, stigmatizing him as "Campion, the seditious Jesuit" (July, 1581), and being tried for treason, of which he was quite guiltless, he was barbarously executed, after suffering the most horrible tortures. The life of Cardinal Allen, if carefully written, would be an important addition to English Catholic literature, and involve numerous particulars of thrilling interest respecting the political and domestic history of the times. His writings lie in the border-land between theology and politics. His _Apology or Defence of the Jesuits and Seminarists_ was a reply, written in 1582, to the proclamations of the government which denounced the Catholic priests as traitors. Persons engaged in the same controversy, dwelling chiefly on the dogmatic and practical side of the question. All honor to these heroes of the cross, whom literature as well as religion claims as her own!

In placing "Rare Ben Jonson" among Catholic authors, it is not meant to claim him altogether as one of the church's children. In early youth, he bore arms and served a campaign in the Low Countries. His troop being disbanded, he took to the stage; but a hot temper often led him into brawls, and in one of these he had the misfortune to kill a brother actor. Being in prison, he contracted an intimacy with a fellow-prisoner, a Catholic priest, which ended in his conversion. During twelve years he remained a Catholic, and then returned to the Established Church. It was the only pathway to worldly success, and he became a favorite with James I., as Shakespeare had been with Queen Elizabeth. We name them together, for, indeed, they were rivals; yet what a difference between the texture and the productions of their brains! Ben Jonson was made poet-laureate, and wrote comedies and masques without number. Here and there we find in his works noble sentiments worthily expressed, as in that classical drama, _Catiline's Conspiracy_. We find also rhythmical sweetness, as in the song, "To Celia,"

"Drink to me only with thine eyes,"

and in the "Hymn to the Moon,"

"Queen and huntress, chaste and fair."

Now and then he touches a more sacred chord, and such as might suit a Catholic lyre, as in the following hymn:

"Hear me, O God! A broken heart Is my best part. Use still thy rod, That I may prove Therein thy love.

"If thou hadst not Been stern to me, But left me free, I had forgot Myself and thee;

"For sin's so sweet, As minds ill bent Rarely repent, Until they meet Their punishment."

The way had been prepared for Ben Jonson's success as a dramatist--not to speak now of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, and Marlowe--by the miracle plays or mysteries of the middle ages, similar to those which are acted at the present time among the Indians in Mexico, and the famous Ammergau, or Passion Play, in Bavaria. In these plays, _The Fall of Man_, _The Death of Abel_, _The Flood_, _Lazarus_, _Pilate's Wife's Dream_, _St. Catharine's Wheel_, and the like, were brought on the stage with the approbation of the clergy, in order that they might bring home the mysteries of the faith to people's heart and imagination, and supply in some measure the place of books. The miracle plays had been succeeded in time by moral plays, which, from the early part of Henry VI.'s long reign, had represented apologues, not histories, by means of allegorical characters. Vices and Virtues, however, did not stand their ground long at the theatre. They gradually changed into beings less vague and shadowy, who, while they represented vices or virtues in the concrete, had, in addition, the charm of resembling real life.

Richard Crashaw's fame as a poet rests mainly on one line, and that in Latin; nor was the rest of his poetry of sufficient force and merit to enable him always to retain the credit of that single line. It has over and over again been attributed to Dryden and other hands. Yet it is positively his, and a poem in itself. It is to be found in a volume of Latin poems published by Crashaw in the year in which he graduated at Cambridge (1635). The line is a pentameter--on the miracle at Cana of Galilee--and consists of two dactyls, a spondee, and two anapests. It is often quoted inaccurately, but we give it exactly:

_Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit._ "The modest water saw its God, and blushed."

The author's mind was devotional from his earliest years. He had always been hearing about religion; for his father preached at the Temple, and took part largely in the controversies of the day. There was one favorable feature in the religious polemics of that period--both sides professed belief in God and in the Christian religion; now our warfare is with atheists, deists, pantheists, positivists, with whom we have scarcely any common ground. After his election as a Fellow of Peterhouse in 1637--about the time that Hampden, Pym, and Cromwell himself were embarking for New England, and were forcibly detained from sailing--he became noted in the university as a preacher, and passed so much of his time in devotion that the author of the preface to his poems says: "He lodged under Tertullian's roof of angels. There he made his nest more gladly than David's swallow near the house of God. There, like a primitive saint, he offered more prayers in the night than others usually offer in the day. There he penned these poems: _Steps for Happy Souls to climb to Heaven by_."

In 1644, sorrow came to his calm nest; and as he would not sign the covenant, he was driven from the university he loved and from surroundings increasingly dear. Accomplished in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish, skilled in drawing, music, and engraving, he was still more noted for his talent in the higher art of poetry. He belonged to what is called the fantastic school of Cowley, which is full of conceits. But "conceits" are often original and beautiful ideas quaintly expressed. The poetry of conceits was a reflex of the times, and is, with all its faults, far preferable to classic platitudes in flowing verse.

The overthrow of the Church of England by the Commonwealth was to Crashaw a cause of poignant regret. He could no longer bear to look on the towers and spires of venerable churches given over into the hands of bawling, nasal Puritans. He quitted England, and, crossing the Channel, found that, in France, he was a member of no church at all. His own communion was extinct, and he was a stranger to the Catholic Church, before whose altars he now stood as an alien. But he had taken up his residence in France, and it was not long before he decided on embracing the faith which that land prized as its most precious heritage. After the decisive battle of the Civil War had been fought at Naseby, the poet Cowley, who was an ardent royalist, visited Paris, and found Crashaw in great distress. He represented his case to Henrietta Maria, the exiled queen of England, and presented him to her. He received kindness from her majesty, and letters of recommendation to her friends in Italy. Having made his way to Rome, he became secretary to one of the cardinals, and was subsequently appointed canon of the church of Our Lady at Loretto. Here he resided during the remainder of his days, and died "a poet and a saint" (as Cowley calls him) in 1650, the year after the execution of Charles I.

Two years after his death, a volume of his posthumous poems was published; and his memory was honored by Cowley in what Thomas Arnold calls "one of the most loving and beautiful elegies ever written." His _Steps to the Temple: Sacred Poems, and other Delights of the Muses_, which appeared in 1646, had reached a second edition before his decease, and a third was published in 1670. In 1785, his entire poems were published in London, and included a translation of part of the _Sospetto di Herode_ of Marini. His style resembled that of Herbert, and a few lines breathing a Catholic spirit shall be quoted from his works. It is called _A Hymn to the Nativity_:

"Gloomy night embraced the place Where the noble Infant lay: The babe looked up, and showed his face-- In spite of darkness, it was day.

"We saw thee in thy balmy nest, Bright dawn of our eternal day. We saw thine eyes break from the east, And chase the trembling shades away. We saw thee, and we blessed the sight: _We saw thee by thine own sweet light_.

"She sings thy tears asleep, _and dips Her kisses in thy weeping eye; She spreads the red leaves of thy lips_ That in their buds yet blushing lie. Yet when young April's husband-showers Shall bless the faithful Maia's bed, We'll bring the first-born of her flowers To kiss thy feet and crown thy head: To thee, dread Lamb! whose love must keep The shepherds while they feed their sheep."

Sir William Davenant was another poet-convert to the Catholic Church, and his conversion took place nearly at the same time as Crashaw's. Like that poet, also, he was in the favor of Queen Henrietta Maria during her exile in France. His life was full of adventure. As a child, he was acquainted with Shakespeare, who frequented the Crown Inn in the Corn Market, Oxford, kept by his father. That father rose to be mayor, and William entered at Lincoln College. Leaving Oxford without a degree, he became page to the Duchess of Richmond, and subsequently was attached to the household of the poet, Lord Brooke. Exhibiting a decided talent for dramatic composition, he was employed to write masques for the court of Charles I. These light plays, of which Milton's _Comus_ is the best specimen ever produced, were highly popular, and served for private theatricals in the mansions and castles of lords and princes. William Davenant had fame enough to be celebrated in his time, and to be made poet-laureate when Ben Jonson died; but his writings had not body of thought, original conception, or sweetness of expression enough to preserve them long from oblivion. His ballad, "My Lodging is on the Cold Ground," seems to have had more of the principle of life in it than anything else he wrote. During the Civil War, like many other authors, he flung aside his books, and girded on the sword. He was then known as General Davenant, and he negotiated in the king's name with his majesty's friends in Paris. Twice captured, and having twice escaped to France, he nevertheless returned, took part in the siege of Gloucester, and was knighted by the king for his services on that critical occasion. In 1646, we find him in France, in the service of the exiled Queen of England, attending Mass, and conforming to the discipline of the Catholic Church. Living in the Louvre with Lord Jermyn, he had once more leisure to cultivate his taste for poetry. There he began writing his longest poem, and a very tedious production it is.

But his versatile mind was now occupied by a new scheme. He promoted an emigration of colonists from France to Virginia, and, having embarked for the distant settlement, the ship in which he was sailing fell into the hands of one of Cromwell's cruisers. He was captured and taken to Cowes Castle, and is said to have escaped trial for his life through the kind intercession of his brother poet, Milton. It was not till after two years of imprisonment that he regained his liberty; and when at last he did so, all his efforts were directed to a revival of dramatic performances, which the austere Puritans had entirely suppressed. He succeeded at last in establishing a theatre, and, gaining support by degrees, he ultimately restored the regular drama. With the return of Charles II. his difficulties ended. King and people alike heaped their favors on him. He died at his house, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1668, and was buried with distinction in Westminster Abbey. He was very handsome, of ready wit and a singularly fertile mind; but it is to be supposed that his attachment to the Catholic religion was not by any means a prominent feature in his character and career.

Like several of those already mentioned, John Dryden is but an imperfect link in the chain of English Catholic authors since the Reformation. It was not till a late period of his life that he entered the true church, but he lived long enough to impress on his works a decidedly Catholic stamp. Indeed, _The Hind and the Panther_, published in 1687, some months after his conversion, was looked upon as a defence of Catholicism. The hind represented the Roman Church, and the panther the Church of England. It was a singular circumstance, to which, so far as we have observed, attention has never been drawn, that three poets-laureate in succession, Ben Jonson, Sir William Davenant, and Dryden, were converts to Catholicity. The life of the last of these poets was too long and too eventful to allow of our recalling even the chief occurrences by which it was marked. Suffice it to say that before he was twenty-eight years old he had passed from Westminster School to Trinity College, Cambridge, and had acted as secretary to his kinsman, Sir Gilbert Pickering, who stood high in the Protector's favor, and went by the name of "Noll's Lord Chamberlain." On the death of Cromwell, Dryden wrote an elegy upon him, which was also a eulogy; and soon after the Restoration, he commenced writing for the stage coarse comedies and stilted tragedies. Married to a daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, he was appointed poet-laureate, with £200 a year. This was in 1670, the tenth year of the reign of his licentious majesty, Charles II.

When that sovereign expired (having been reconciled on his death-bed to the Catholic Church), Dryden eulogized him as he had eulogized Cromwell, and in the same poem turned with alacrity to the praises of James II. Nor was it long before he embraced the religion of the Duke of York. The motives which induced him to take this step have often been made the subject of debate. The authority of Lord Macaulay is constantly adduced in support of Dryden's venality and insincere conversion. But in opposition to this, it must be remembered that Dr. Johnson and Sir Walter Scott arrived at a different conclusion. The latter biographer of Dryden contends that the poet's writings contain internal evidence of his convictions having been in complete accordance with the step he took, and that many external circumstances contributed to make it easy for him to act in the way he thought right. Duty and interest are not always at variance; and if Dryden gained by the change in the first instance, when James II. was on the throne, he lost eventually many temporal advantages. Having refused to take the oaths of allegiance or forsake his religion, he was dismissed, under William III., from his offices of poet-laureate and historiographer; he had the mortification of seeing Shadwell, the dramatist, whom he had often ridiculed, promoted to wear his laurel; and for the rest of his life, he was more or less harassed by the ills of poverty. He educated his children in the faith which he had embraced, and they showed the strongest signs of heartfelt attachment to the person of the Sovereign Pontiff and the church of which he is the head. One of them entered a religious order, another was usher of the palace to Pope Clement XI. In writing to them both in September, 1697, Dryden said: "I flatter not myself with any manner of hopes, but do my duty and suffer for God's sake, being assured beforehand never to be rewarded, even though the times should alter.... Remember me to poor Harry, whose prayers I earnestly desire.... I never can repent of my constancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the justice of the cause for which I suffer." This is not the language of one who had sold himself for a pension of £100 a year. Dryden did not, like Chillingworth, return after a time to the Established Church. He died in the religion of his choice, and many of his poems, particularly the paraphrase of the _Veni Creator_, and the two odes on St. Cecilia's Day, breathe alike the devotion and the well-ordered ideas of a Catholic. There is much force in the closing line of this stanza:

"Refine and clear our earthly parts, But, oh! inflame and fire our hearts! Our frailties help, our vice control; Submit the senses to the soul; And when rebellious they are grown, Then lay thy hand, _and hold them down_."

When Dryden, in _The Hind and the Panther_, describes the different Protestant sects, he very naturally gives the preference to the Church of England, and speaks of her with a becoming tenderness, she having been the church in which he was nurtured:

"The panther, sure the noblest next the hind, And fairest creature of the spotted kind, Oh! could her inborn stains be washed away, She were too good to be a beast of prey! How can I praise or blame, and not offend, Or how divide the frailty from the friend? Her faults and virtues lie so mixed that she Not wholly stands condemned, nor wholly free. Then like her injured lion (James II.) let me speak, He cannot bend her, and he would not break. If, as our dreaming Platonists report, There could be spirits of a middle sort. Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell, Who just dropped half-way down, nor lower fell; So poised, so gently she descends from high, It seems a soft demission from the sky."

Dryden's successor on the throne of letters in England was Alexander Pope, who was also a Catholic, though not a convert. His father, a linen merchant of Lombard Street, London, was a Catholic before him, and had been led to embrace the faith by a residence in Lisbon. His were the days of penal laws and various disabilities, among which was exclusion from the public schools and universities. Alexander's education, therefore, was private, and not of a first-rate kind. He may almost be called a self-taught man. He had seen Dryden when a boy, and he knew Wycherley, the dramatist, who is here mentioned because he was in the number of those who adopted the Catholic profession under the auspices of James II. Wycherley was, as Arnold calls him, "a somewhat battered and worn-out relic of the gay reign of Charles II." Macaulay has little respect for him, for the very reason that he could interest us--because he became a Catholic. He styles him "the most licentious and hard-hearted writer of a singularly licentious and hard-hearted school." But the gentle Charles Lamb was more indulgent to his memory and his works. "I do not know," he says, in the _Essays of Elia_, "how it is with others, but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of Congreve's--nay, why should I not add even of Wycherley's?--comedies. I am the gayer, at least, for it; and I could never connect those sports of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to imitation in real life. They are a world of themselves almost as much as fairyland."

We will not pause to discuss the soundness of this criticism; we have to do with Pope, and chiefly with his religious character. No one can read his "Dying Christian's Hymn," beginning,

"Vital spark of heavenly flame,"

without being convinced that the author was capable of the deepest religious feeling. The times were not favorable to a Catholic poet, nor is it in Pope's writings that we must look for the strongest evidence of his faith. The "Letter of Eloisa to Abelard," indeed, could hardly have been written by a Protestant; but it says nothing of his personal religion. We find, however, by his correspondence with Racine and others, that though infidelity and gallantry were the fashion of his day, he was known among his friends as a _Papist_, and that he speaks of himself as such unreservedly. The words of Dr. Johnson on this subject are as follows: "The religion in which he lived and died was that of the Church of Rome.... He professes himself a sincere adherent.... It does not appear that his principles were ever corrupted, or that he ever lost his belief of revelation.... After the priest had given him the last sacraments, he died in the evening of the 30th day of May, 1744."

It is pleasing to reflect that this illustrious poet, so distinguished by his deep thought, his affluent imagery, his pathos, his scathing satire and matchless versification, recoiled in his solitude and sickness from the false philosophy of his friends, and closed his weary and painful existence at the foot of the cross; that he departed hence, not only with laurels on his brow, but with the Viaticum on his lips and the church's blessing on his drooping head. But it was not at the awful hour of death merely that he began to prize the religion which England proscribed. There is a little anecdote related of him which shows that he had a distinct and warm feeling on the subject long before he came face to face with the last enemy. He and Mrs. Blount had been invited on one occasion to stay with Mr. Allen, at Prior Park, near Bath, on a visit. Pope left the house for a short time to go to Bristol; and while he was absent, it happened that Mrs. Blount, who was a Catholic as well as himself, wished to attend Mass in the chapel in Bath, and requested the use of Mr. Allen's chariot for that purpose. But her host, at that time being mayor of the city, had a decided objection to his carriage being seen at the doors of such a place, and begged to be excused lending it. Mrs. Blount felt deeply offended at this time-serving, and, when Pope returned, told him her feelings on the subject. The poet was so incensed at this offence offered to his religion and his friend that he, and Mrs. Martha Blount too, abruptly quitted the house.

There is, happily, no need of our contending for the places which Dryden and Pope should occupy among literary celebrities. Their attachment to Catholicism at a time when it was especially distasteful to the English people--during the reigns, we mean, of William the Third and Queen Anne--did not detract from the popularity of their writings even while they lived. The striking genius of Dryden as a translator, his racy language and manly style, have been fully appreciated by posterity; and if we put Pope above him in the rank of poets, it is because we discover in the latter more profound philosophy and rhythmical sweetness. He enjoyed, too, an advantage over his distinguished predecessor in that he was not a convert, but had from childhood been imbued with the doctrines of the ancient faith. The Catholic system, even more than he knew, lent force and color to his imagination, restrained his philosophic speculations within orthodox bounds, and imparted a certain majesty and consistency to his verse, even when it was concerned with purely secular topics. It had done the like for Dante, Chaucer, Calderon, and Corneille before him, and it has done the like since for Thomas Moore, as we shall endeavor to show in a future number.

TO BE CONTINUED.

CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATIONS.

The saying is becoming almost trite that the Catholic Church has done wonders in this country. Its rapid rise, growth, and spread are little short of miraculous. Half a century ago, the church was scarcely known here, save in a misty way, as something very remote and powerless. To-day it stands up as a factor to be counted in American polity. It points to its five or six millions of believers. It points to its cathedrals, its magnificent churches, its splendid educational establishments, its parochial schools, its illustrious hierarchy, its active and zealous priesthood, its religious orders and societies of men and women, its lay associations for various pious purposes, its newspapers, and its multiplying writers. It has seized upon the very genius of this new people. It lags not behind, but keeps apace with their enterprise; and scarcely are the piles driven in for the building of a new city or town than the cross is seen above the growing settlement.

Protestants have recognized this fact. They are daily bearing witness to its truth. It is but recently that the press, secular and religious, was alive with a discussion on "The Decline of Protestantism," here, in this very land. And the two foes that Protestantism had most to dread were, as all agreed, the one from without--Catholicity; the other from within--infidelity. It was expected the Evangelical Council would take into consideration the same subject: the best means to be adopted in order to beat off those two terrible foes--Catholicity and infidelity.

All this is well. It is well that the foes of the church should themselves testify to the irrepressible spread of the truth; that they should cut the dividing lines so clearly between Catholicity and infidelity--their Scylla and Charybdis, either of which is destruction to them. It is well that the men who within living memory despised the church should now come forward and testify that that church has conquered them. That they themselves should thus bear witness to the spread of Catholicity and the corresponding decline of Protestantism is flattering enough, if mere human feeling were allowed to enter into a question which involves man's eternal salvation; but it is well, also, that Catholics lay not too flattering unction to their souls.

They may occasionally point with pardonable pride to their swelling numbers and all that has been indicated above; but at the same time, it would be a fatal mistake to imagine that everything has now been done for the church of God; that it has nothing to do but run on smoothly in the eternal grooves fixed for it, sweeping triumphantly through the country, and bearing away all in its track. A young and a new Catholic generation is coming into possession. It does not know, and can scarcely appreciate, at what terrible cost, after what long and painful struggles, cathedral after cathedral, church after church, college after college, school-house after school-house, were built. It finds them there and is content, as an heir finds the woods and the fields won inch by inch by the toil and the sweat of his father. If the young generation would not squander its inheritance, would not see it dissipated before its eyes, and slip away out of its nerveless grasp, it must be up and doing while the morning of life is on it; tilling, trenching, delving, casting out the weeds, watching for the enemy that would sow tares among the wheat, that it may leave a larger, a richer, and a brighter inheritance to its own children when it is gathered to the soil of its fathers--the good soil consecrated by their bones.

Yes, a goodly inheritance has fallen upon the young Catholic generation of America to-day; and a goodlier yet is in store, to be won by their own endeavor. Never in this world's history was there a fairer field to fight the battle of God in than in this great country; and never yet, take them all in all, were there fairer foes and less favor to contend against. But let it be borne well in mind, the battle is a severe one; all the severer, perhaps, because the field is so open and Catholics are so free. Here in America there is nothing of the glory of martyrdom to sustain us--a glory that turns defeat into victory, and by one death wins a thousand lives. Ours is not the clash of arms and of battle, but of intellect. We have to reason our way along. The cry of "the decline of Protestantism" is a cry well grounded. The churches are losing their children. A reaction against Puritanism has set in as decided and as disastrous in its results as that which set in in England on the accession of Charles II. The children throw off even the gloomy cloak of religion to which their fathers clung long after the many deformities and defects it concealed had shone through the threadbare garment. The thought of young America to-day is, "Let the doctors wrangle about their creeds. All we know or care to know is that we have life, and let us enjoy it while we may."

And thus the battle of the age is coming to be fought out among and by the young--young America Catholic and young America non-Catholic. True, our ranks are swelling daily, and nowadays principally by native growth. The birth-rate, if classified as Catholic or non-Catholic, is so strikingly in favor of the former as to attract the universal attention of the medical faculty. Converts, too, crowd in upon us; but, numerous as they are, they are only driblets compared to the vast ocean that roars outside. Five or six millions is a mighty number; but there are thirty millions or more left. Were it not remembered that God, although the God of battles, is not always on the side of the big battalions, our hearts might sicken at the mustering of the forces--our six millions surrounded, absorbed, as it were, by that mighty army five times greater, stretching away dim in its immensity, yet meeting us at every turn, and, directly or indirectly, contesting stubbornly every inch of ground.

It is true that they are broken whilst we are one. They fight under a thousand different banners; and even while presenting a united front against us, they are rending each other in the rear. The deserters from our side are few--practically none--and such as do go become objects of infamy even to those who make a show of welcoming them. But besides the two directly opposing forces, Catholics, and Protestants of some professed creed, there is a neutral ground, vaster than either, and equally opposed to both--infidelity; and thither is young America drifting.

And truly it looks a fair region for a young man to enter. There is no constraint upon him beyond the pleasant burden, light to bear, of fashionable etiquette. A dress-coat and a banker's account will pass him anywhere. The man under the dress-coat does not matter much; and the inquiry as to how the banking account came into his hands is not scrupulously close. He will meet there the lights of modern science and literature--men who can trace the motions of the world, and find no Mover; who have sifted the ashes of nature, to find only matter; who have analyzed the body of man, to find no soul in him; to whom life is simply life, and death, death. There is the abode of wit, and scoffing, and irreligion, and bold speculation, and the unshackled play of the undisciplined intellect, and under it all the power to do as you please, because you may believe as you please, provided you sin not against the laws of etiquette.

Now, the work of the church is to break up that neutral ground, which, indeed, is the most formidable of the day. It must keep its own young men from being drawn thither, and win those that are there into its bosom. But although in very truth the yoke of Christ is sweet and his burden light, it takes a long time to impress that fact upon youth in the heyday of life. And with all the power of the prayer of the faithful, with the voice of the preacher, and the attractions of the ceremonies of the church, there is no merely human agency to win youth like youth itself; no sermon so powerful as the unspoken sermon preached by a Christian young man, set in the midst of a world that practically knows not Christianity. And this is one great point of the present article.

Our young men and young women who mix daily in the army occupying that neutral territory of infidelity are, or may be made, our best missionaries. There the voice of the preacher never or rarely penetrates. His voice is as "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." But though the preacher's words may not reach there, the effect of his words may be visible in the conduct of those whom his words do reach--the Catholic youth who live and move in the daily world.

Hitherto this point has been, perhaps necessarily, much neglected. Catholics have not half utilized their forces. They have not made use enough of the young. Indeed, the work of reclaiming them at all has been a severe one, and is still far from even the full means of accomplishment; for it may here be noted how Protestants cling to the godless school system, though many of their best thinkers and leading organs acknowledge that a system of education founded on no faith at all must naturally produce scholars of no faith at all. But it is time for Catholics to see that if they would not only keep their own--hold fast to the inheritance that their fathers bequeathed them--but also win more, something more definite must be done to hold together the young, and unite them in one common cause. If you want missionaries, you must educate them. If you wish the young to be Catholic, not on the Sunday only, but always, you must take the proper means to that end.

Our meaning is this: Catholicity must not be confined to the churches only. Half an hour's Mass weekly is undoubtedly a great deal when rightly heard; but it is, after all, only a portion of the spiritual food necessary to carry a man safely through the week. The poison of the atmosphere of utter worldliness that our young people breathe can only be counteracted by an antagonistic Catholic atmosphere; and this can only be created by having Catholic centres of attraction under church auspices, where Catholics may meet occasionally to converse, to read, to hear a lecture, or to amuse themselves in a healthful manner.

It is not long since, at the "commencement season," we were listening to the young orators of the graduating classes of our various educational establishments. Kind eyes looked on as they poured forth their eloquent ten minutes of benison on the heads of the comrades they were leaving behind them. It was pleasant to hear the words of wisdom, of eloquence, and the soundest morality fall from their lips. But the listeners, the admiring parents or friends, felt, nevertheless, that their boys were speaking comparatively from "the safe side of the hedge," and that it remained to be seen how far the good thoughts to which they gave utterance on leaving the college would guide them and rule them in the real battle of life that was only then about to begin.

What has become of the thousands of young men who have gone out and continue to go out, year after year, from our colleges? For the most part, they are lost to the eyes of those who trained their boyhood. They may continue to hold fast by the principles they imbibed at school, or they may not. In our large cities and towns, there are always more or less of our Catholic college graduates, most of whom are unknown to each other, or rarely meet. How different would it be had they places in which to assemble! Something has been done to meet this very striking want. Very many churches have attached to them this or that young men's association, devoted generally to literary pursuits; but for the most part, these excellent associations have not effected much; not because they have not the right spirit and energy, but purely from lack of organization, from not knowing exactly what to do or what not to do, from not being united with fellow-associations, and generally from lack of funds.

In New York, for instance, where Catholics boast of half a million of their creed; where they have so many magnificent churches, some of them with very wealthy congregations; with so many wealthy Catholic residents, professional men, and large business firms; with half a dozen weekly newspapers or more--where are the young men? Where is our Catholic hall, club, reading-room, library? Nowhere. Nevertheless, there are, in one shape or form, numbers of associations of Catholic youth scattered through the city, and greater numbers of Catholic youth still who do not and will not join them, because they do not find in them attraction enough.

Now, this is a thing worthy of being investigated closely, and remedied speedily. We Catholics ought to be ashamed of ourselves to see what the Protestants have done in the organization known as the Young Men's Christian Association, with its splendid reading and meeting-rooms, gymnasium, and lecture-hall, where the ablest lecturers of the world hold forth and draw the crowds of the city to hear them. Nor does this association stop here. It has multiplied itself, not only throughout the city, but throughout the country. Branch houses are covering the whole land; and, whatever may be its present or its future, it is certainly admirable in conception and organization. Its honor and reputation rest in its own hands.

There is only one association to which the Catholics of New York, speaking generally, can point as having achieved something; as not purely local, but general, in its character; as, in fact, a success, though it is still struggling almost in its infancy. This is the Xavier Alumni Sodality and its correlative, the Xavier Union. That admirable association, the Catholic Union, is designedly omitted from the present article, which deals only with the young men.

The Xavier Alumni Sodality was established in New York on December 8, 1863. It was intended originally, as its name implies, for graduates and ex-students of the College of S. Francis Xavier. It began with about half a dozen members. It gradually and very wisely widened its scope so as to take in the alumni of any Catholic college who might choose to join, as also merchants in business and professional men. Its objects may best be set forth by quoting from the printed "Constitution":

"I. The encouragement of virtue, Christian piety, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin among educated Catholic gentlemen, the perpetuation of friendships formed by them during their college life, and the promotion of Catholic interests.

"II. The means to obtain this end shall be principally the daily practice of certain devotions, the frequent and worthy reception of the sacraments, and religious and social meetings at stated intervals."

In the following sections of the "By-laws" we find:

"SEC. 14. On the Sunday following December 8, and on a Sunday during Easter-time, there shall be a general communion, at which all members shall be expected to assist. The first general communion shall be preceded by a Triduum, or three days' spiritual retreat.

"SEC. 17. In case any member of the Sodality falls sick, the Rev. Father Director and the President (who is elected of and by the members) shall appoint one or more members to visit him.

"SEC. 20. There shall be a Requiem Mass for the repose of the soul of a deceased member as soon after his death as convenient. The members of the Sodality are expected to assist at this Mass.

"SEC. 22. There shall be a standing committee called the 'Committee on Employment,' and consisting of the President and six members of the Sodality, appointed by him at the January meeting. [The members meet on the first Sunday of every month.] Its duties shall be to assist young men to procure mercantile or professional employment."

There are quite a number of special indulgences attached to the Sodality, whose genuine worth and practical tendencies may be faintly imagined from this short statement. Its effects, and the success attained by it, may best be judged from the fact that the half a dozen members of ten years ago have swollen to the number of over four hundred, notwithstanding losses by death and by members leaving the city. This number is being increased at every meeting; whilst out of the Sodality has sprung the Xavier Union, which, though established only two years ago, already numbers two hundred members.

To quote the "Preamble" of its printed "Constitution and By-laws"--

"The Xavier Union was organized in March, 1871, by a number of gentlemen, members of the Xavier Alumni Sodality--a Society established in 1863, and having for its object the encouragement of virtue and Christian piety among the educated Catholic young men of this city [New York], and the promotion of Catholic interests by their united efforts.

"From this body, in order to unite its members more intimately, better to carry out its objects, and to effect other desirable ends not strictly within the scope of a purely religious body, the Xavier Union has been formed.

"This Union has in view both the mental and moral improvement of its members.

"By a regular and proper representation of Catholic questions, by association with men of mature years and study, and by their frequent meetings with each other, it hopes to keep alive among its members a spirit of true Catholicity, and to encourage by example all Catholic young men in fidelity to the teachings and practices of their religion.

"It further proposes to promote the study of good books, and to foster a taste for the sciences and arts; but it intends more especially to exert itself in awakening and keeping alive an interest in Catholic history and literature.

"While pursuing these ends, it has in view the furnishing its members with every desirable means for their proper recreation, both of mind and body. Thus it hopes, by guarding youth against the temptations of youth itself, and withdrawing it from the no less insidious than dangerous associations of a city, to encourage our educated young men to a proper use of both mind and body, and to make them ambitious to be and do good, that they may exert that influence on society which is to them indeed a duty.

"In furtherance of these objects, the Union shall, through its management, provide--

"I. A library.

"II. A reading-room having all desirable reviews and journals.

"III. Literary and musical entertainments."

The best comment on these objects and the desirability of them is to point to the success which has already attended this movement.

The Union, which is recruited exclusively from the Xavier Alumni Sodality, rents for its use a building containing a reading-room, reception-rooms, billiard-room, and a handsome library of six thousand volumes. It is found already that the accommodations are far too small, and a proposal is on foot to erect a building adequate to the growing wants of the society, and containing a large hall for the giving of lectures and for other purposes. The want of this was found last year, when, for a series of lectures given under the auspices of the Xavier Union, it was found necessary to hire one of the public halls. Of course, the question is mainly one of funds.

However, here is something practical, tangible, which can point to results, and which challenges the attention of all Catholics, particularly of our Catholic young men. The Xavier Alumni Sodality and the Xavier Union have so far done everything for themselves under the guidance of their able director. Their work, as may be imagined, has been very up-hill, for the entrance fees are not large; nevertheless, with the profit of lectures, they have constituted their only source of revenue. In the face of all difficulties, however, there they stand, an active and ever-increasing organization of educated young Catholic laymen, with their rooms for reading and amusement, and their library. They form already the nucleus of a great Catholic centre, which, with a little tact, a little generosity on the part of those who can afford to be generous, and who could not be generous for a better purpose, a steady perseverance in the way they have entered upon, may rival any club in the city, may be a rallying-point for the Catholic laity, and may furnish a constant supply of amusement, information, and recreation of mind and body for Catholics of all ages, but particularly the young.

Special attention has been devoted to these two organizations, because they are, beyond doubt, the most prominent associations of Catholic young men in New York. Indeed, at the present writing, we know of none equal to them in the United States. This is not at all said by way of flattery to the societies mentioned; rather by way of reproach to those who have neglected to form similar societies. Educated young Catholics are plentiful in most of our large cities; and wherever a number of educated young Catholics exist, there such societies as the Xavier Alumni Sodality and the Xavier Union ought to exist, with their rooms for association, meeting, reading, and amusement. Much the same programme, and much the same organization, and much the same aims and tendencies, would answer for all. A new and wonderful impetus would thus be imparted to Catholic thought, Catholic work, and, above all, to Catholic literature and education. An _esprit du corps_ would be engendered among our Catholic youth that is sadly wanting at present, and that would inevitably tell upon society. Any large Catholic project might be almost instantaneously taken up and discussed throughout the country; and, above all, Catholic young men would find places where healthy amusement was blended with instruction and blessed by a religious spirit.[87]

Neither need such organizations be restricted, as it were, to any special class. The Sodality of the Blessed Virgin, of which the Xavier Alumni Sodality is a branch, may be made to embrace all classes. It was founded in the Roman College of the Society of Jesus, on December 8, 1563, exactly three hundred years prior to the foundation of this promising offshoot in New York. The society has an eventful history. It began in the Jesuit Colleges, and was restricted to the students. It speedily spread thence throughout the world, embracing all ranks from the crowned head to the peasant. One branch took up one good work, another devoted itself to some other. It entered the world, society, the army, everywhere. Popes belonged to it, kings, astute statesmen, great generals, as well as the rank and file, and the humblest craftsmen. Many a saint's name glitters on its scroll. S. Aloysius Gonzaga, S. Stanislaus Kotska, S. Charles Borromeo, S. Francis of Sales, Blessed Berchmans, and many another consecrated in Catholic history, were all members of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So great was the good it wrought that popes have bestowed upon it many rights and privileges. It has had the glory of persecution. Infidel governments suppressed it from time to time, in France particularly, fearing lest it should lead men back to God; for if there is one thing more than another that the devil fears, it is seeing the young go from him wholesale.

Now, this matter is worthy the attention of all Catholics. Enough graduates go out yearly from our colleges, and enough intelligent and zealous Catholic young men are scattered through our great cities and towns, to take this matter up earnestly, and establish Catholic societies of this kind for practical, pious, and sanitary purposes. They might embrace in a short time all the Catholic youth of America. As has been seen, the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary is very elastic in its constitution, though one in its organization and aims; and it may be made to embrace all classes and states of life. It has history, stability, saintly members, and good works innumerable to recommend it. It has been specially blessed and favored by many popes, and it has for its head the Blessed Mother of God, whilst those who enroll themselves in it do so as children of Mary.

Coming back to the opposing forces here at home--Catholicity, Protestantism, and infidelity--we see nothing more powerful to withstand the assault of the latter particularly than Catholic societies of this nature. The social atmosphere to-day is full of insidious poison. The young unconsciously breathe it from their infancy up. The edifice of faith in God was never more persistently assaulted by the united forces of the powers of this world. No persecution of the Roman emperors, unless, perhaps, that of Julian the Apostate, ever threatened the religion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with a tithe of the bitterness and hatred that frown upon it now. Men nowadays do not so much seek out the chiefs of the church, the pontiffs, and the bishops as the little children and the young of all ages. In some cases, as in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Brazil, they add open and violent persecution to its secret and more fatal forms. The great cry of the age--a good and earnest cry--is for education. Educate the masses! Educate all at any cost! That cry is good in itself, and is as old as the church of Christ, and no older. But to it is joined another cry: The church is out of date. It cannot educate. It has failed. It will keep the people ignorant and superstitious. That is just the right state for the priests. We know that of old. The priests in pagan times were just the same. They kept the people blind for their own sakes. But the newspapers have broken all that up. Men who read their daily _Herald_ or their daily _Times_ know a little too much for that nowadays. So out with the priests and their church altogether. We want the children to know how to read, and write, and cipher, and be intelligent. If they want religion, they may find it where they can. But religion is quite a secondary consideration nowadays. It used to be the first thing. That was the great mistake. We must now make it the last.

That is pretty much how the lights of the age--the scientific apostles--talk. Their opinions are re-echoed in the pages of journals which, compared to Christian or Catholic, are as a thousand, nay, ten thousand, to one; so that they are ever before the public eye in one form or other. Consequently, religion is not only thrown out of the school, but, to a great extent, out of the world altogether; nay, if the accounts our Protestant friends give of themselves be true, out of the pulpit also, when preachers preach "a theology without the _Theos_, and a Christianity without Christ." It is perhaps only natural, then, to find public morality at a sad discount; private morality, on a large scale, a thing ugly to inquire into, and commercial morality broken down before commercial gambling. It is not strange to find the loosest ideas on the marriage tie prevail, and a corresponding disregard of the sanctity of the household and the mutual obligations of husband and wife, of father and child, spreading wider and further every day. It is no wonder to find public amusements, as a rule, unfit to be witnessed by the eye of a decent man or woman. It is not surprising to see well-dressed crowds listening eagerly to brilliant lecturers, who in mellifluous accents and the chastest English, and in evening costume, pleasantly and quietly, and in the best possible taste, laugh away the idea of God and Christianity; and it is no surprise to find the children of those well-dressed crowds growing up and moving about the world, with no sense of Christian morality at all, and at best, to use an ordinary expression, a human sense of what is "square."

Right in the face of this scornful infidelity or shaky faith, it is noble to see the Catholic world, especially the young Catholic world, rising up everywhere to proclaim openly, boldly, and with no hesitation in the tone, its whole-souled faith in the Roman Catholic Church, its tenets, its doctrines, and its practices. Allusion, as will be understood, is made chiefly to the pilgrimages in Europe, and more particularly to the contingent furnished by Protestant England. A pilgrimage, composed of Catholic young men, visited, the other day, the shrine of S. Thomas of Canterbury; another soon after crossed over to France, to visit the shrine of the Sacred Heart at Paray-le-Monial; and doubtless others will follow. We see it advocated in the Catholic press that our young men here do likewise. They would do well; but whether their desire take living form or not, certain it is that in this country they are just as eager to give evidence of their Catholic faith as in any other. And just here, in this proposal to make an American pilgrimage to some of the Catholic shrines in Europe, step in the want and necessity of such Catholic organizations, distinct enough individually, but linked together more or less, and springing from a common centre, to aid effectually in making such a proposal feasible.

Coming back to ourselves, the rising Catholic generation may congratulate itself that it has fallen upon good times. It would be well for it to remember that these good times are the result of the labors of their fathers; and that as they were won by incessant conflict, so they must be retained. The present generation has not so many odds to contend against. That fact is perhaps as much a danger as a benefit. The Catholic generation that is passing away had to suffer more or less a social ostracism. The barriers between class and class are dwindling down; and to-day, on the whole, a Catholic does not find his religion mark him off from his fellow-citizens as a man to be left out in the cold.

That is no doubt very satisfactory. At the same time, however painful may be this kind of social ostracism, certain it is that the class who come under its ban are more apt to be circumspect in their conduct than classes removed from it. To-day the spirit of liberality is abroad; but liberality often means liberalism, which is a very different thing. The order of the day is that it does not matter what you are, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, or pagan, provided you only act as everybody else acts. This sudden effusion of brotherly love among all castes and creeds is no doubt very gratifying, and a vast improvement on old-fogy barriers; but, at the same time, it involves often a sacrifice of principle. It is a rank and unhealthy growth, springing from the neutral ground of infidelity, or that unpronounced infidelity known as indifferentism.

Catholics cannot enter the world as non-Catholics. Their religion must be more than a Sunday religion. It cannot be left outside on entering their office, nor in the hall on entering society. It must accompany them everywhere, not aggressively, indeed, so as to be outwardly offensive to the neighbor who does not believe in it, because he does not know it, or because he may not see its effects visible in those who profess to believe in it; its principles must guide them in the transaction of their business, in the amusements or recreation they take, as well as in the confessional or at the altar. Without this, it is no religion. Without this unaggressive, but none the less real, atmosphere of piety, surrounding and emanating from Catholics in the world as well as in the church, the heaviness of the present social atmosphere can never be lifted. It requires a constant current to and fro, and this can only be obtained by the creating of a Catholic influence right in the heart of the world.

This is for our young men to do by their societies and associations; by knowing each other, meeting together, consulting, and creating a tone that will tell sooner or later upon society. Many a fine young fellow is lost for pure lack of a good companion. Many a one spends his evenings in places and amid society that, if not actually sinful, are undoubtedly demoralizing in tendency, because he has no other society or place of amusement to enter. It is too hard upon the young to tell them that they must not follow the way of the world, if no better mode of recreation is provided for them. The blood of youth is coursing through its veins, and the heat will find vent, if not in good, then in evil. It is the place of all true Christians to help and provide that good, by aiding in the work of building up societies, halls, reading-rooms, and libraries for our young people. The blessing will come back upon their own heads in their children, in their children's children, and in the building up of a sound, moral, Christian tone among the young in these days, when it is considered more manly to deny than to inquire; to sneer at all religion than to kneel down and adore the God that made us to his own image. With our young men linked together thus, working together throughout the whole country, showing by deeds, and words, and open profession that they are Catholics, those who to-day, in 1873, wonder at the marvellous growth of the church within the last half-century, if God spares them another half-century, may find their country, if not Catholic, covered, at least, and blest from end to end, with Catholic homes of learning, piety, and charity; whilst the church may respond to the foolish taunt that is flung at her, that her religion is a foreign religion, and her children nursed in foreign ideas, by pointing silently to what her children are--by contrasting her Christian sons with the product and growth of an education with God left out.

FOOTNOTES:

[87] Besides the two Associations particularly mentioned in this article, there are numbers of others scattered throughout the country. In Brooklyn there is attached to almost every parish church a Young Men's Catholic Association. The writer restricts his mention of names necessarily to the two societies which stand forth most prominently in New York, and which give greatest promise of a bright future. If they can be improved upon by others already existing or to come, they would probably be the first to adapt themselves to the improvement. But as matters stand at present, their constitution and organization might be very safely recommended, at least, to embryo associations.

ENGLISH SKETCHES.

AN HOUR IN A JAIL.

There is nothing in the exterior of the building to indicate its real character, nor is it in any way calculated to strike terror into the mind of the beholder whose imagination, fed by early prejudices, connects the idea of a jail with gloomy precincts, drawbridges, and armed sentinels pacing before frowning gates. The jail of Reading, the chief town of the royal county of Berks, presents the very antithesis of all this. This is a gay edifice of variegated red brick and white stone, in the style called carpenter's Gothic--a rather appropriate name for the jocular mongrel performance it designates, and which is one of the most surprising hallucinations of the modern architect's mind. The building stands close by the Forbury gardens and at the back of the Catholic church. The delusion as to the character of the place is not dispelled on entering; the uninitiated stranger might, on passing the great door, still fancy himself in some free dwelling, where no abnormal impediments prevented his exit; but crossing the court, he ascends by a flight of steps to a second gate of ominous appearance, and before whose glittering steel bars the spell of liberty dissolves. Within this second gate there is another, equally formidable, which opens into a broad gallery lighted from the roof and crossed by light bridges at intervals, to which you ascend by a steep, ladder-like iron staircase. The second story is occupied by the women prisoners, the lower one by the men.

As few of our readers may have had the opportunity or the curiosity to go through an English jail, perhaps they would like to do so vicariously, as the Shah enjoyed dancing--sitting quietly in his chair, while foolish people fatigued themselves for his entertainment. We were accompanied by a young priest, whose ministry had frequently led him within the steel gates on another errand than curiosity; and, thanks to his friend's (Canon R----) introduction to the governor, we had permission to see every detail of the place. The aspect of the long galleries, with the bright-tiled flooring and white walls glancing in the flood of sunshine flowing from the roof, kept up the first impression of cheerfulness. There was nothing so far to suggest unnecessary rigor or broken spirits, still less cruelty and demoralization. All was airy and exquisitely clean. Warders in official uniforms paced leisurely up and down the corridors and galleries; and though the silence was broken only by their foot-falls and our own voices as we conversed with the warder who acted as our guide, there was no oppressive gloom in the atmosphere. The cells opened on either side of the gallery. They were each lighted by a good-sized window looking on the prison garden and protected by strong iron bars; in one corner was a complete washing apparatus, with a water-pipe over the basin; in another there was a gas-pipe. The furniture consisted of a small table, a stool, and a stretcher-bed, which is rolled up during the day. On a shelf were the prisoner's plate and mug. The Protestants are allowed the use of their Bible and the _Common Prayer-Book_; the Catholics have the Douay edition of the Bible and _The Garden of the Soul_; special good conduct is rewarded by the loan of story-books. Some of the cells were ornamented with prints from the _Graphic_ and the _Illustrated London News_. A man with a good conscience and sound health might live comfortably in one of these cells.

The Reading jail is worked entirely on the isolated system, each prisoner being virtually as much alone amidst two hundred fellow-captives as if he were the only inmate. It is urged against this system that it frequently leads to madness, total solitude being the most cruel form of punishment, and the one against which the human mind is, by its very essence, least calculated to bear up. But the theory applies in its chief force to solitary confinement, where the sound of the human voice and the sight of his fellow-creature's face never intrude upon the tomblike silence of the dungeon; where complete inaction of the body feeds the despondency of the imagination dwelling on the one fixed idea of an interminable perspective of silence and solitude. In the case of short periods of incarceration, the separate system must be regarded as an immense improvement on the old gregarious one. It prevents the spread of vice, and protects the comparatively innocent subject from being utterly corrupted by the hardened sinner. In France, where the gregarious system is in full force, its effect is too plainly visible in the most deplorable results. A youth or a girl goes in a mere novice in iniquity, and, after a short sojourn in the midst of the offscourings of society, comes out utterly depraved. Nowhere is this truth more lamentably apparent than in those cases that come under the head of _prison préventive_, where any suspected person, on the smallest amount of evidence, is thrown into these social sloughs for weeks, nay, months sometimes, and held in hourly contact with thieves, forgers, burglars, and every species of offender. Strong indeed must be the principles, and pure the heart, that come out unshaken and unsullied from such an ordeal.

The men were at work on the day when we arrived at the jail, so we saw the penal system in full operation. The mildest form of hard labor is the oakum-picking. It is performed partly in the open air, partly in the cells, and consists of untwisting old cables, and then tearing them into loose hemp, which is used for caulking the seams of ships.

The next category was the stone-breaking. One side of a yard is walled off into separate compartments, with a railing at each end, and from these the ring of the pick-axe resounds dismally for many hours in the day. One of these cages was occupied by a lunatic, who had attempted the life of his brother. The poor fellow was only there for the day, awaiting an order for removal to some government asylum for the insane. He stood bolt upright, without leaning against the wall, with his hands hanging by his side, and his head bent downwards, the picture of melancholy and sullen despair. We noticed with satisfaction that the warder compassionately avoided passing before the poor creature's railing, and did not even speak within earshot of him.

On re-entering the house, we came into a corridor where the air was filled with a grinding noise of ominous import. On either side of us were cells, where the forced labor in its most severe aspect comes into view. Warders were walking slowly up and down, peeping at intervals into the cells through a narrow little aperture in the doors, where the prisoners were undergoing the sentence of the law. Some were grinding corn, others were turning the crankpump. The former is done by a machine which it takes all the strength of the workman's two arms to keep going. In one of these cells, the door of which was unlocked for us to examine closely, there was a lad of a little over twenty, of middle height, and with a countenance which, but for the sinister leer of the mouth, might have been called mild and almost prepossessing. We were startled to learn that this juvenile criminal had been taken up for highway robbery, with attempt to murder.

The cell opposite his was occupied by a middle-aged, broad-shouldered man, who was turning the crankpump. This is the most severe of all the forms of labor in the jail. To a superficial observer it would seem almost easy labor, so smooth is the movement of the crank as it gyrates under the clenched hands of the prisoner, his body rising and falling in rhythmic movement with the rotation of the crank he is propelling; but the strain upon the spine becomes after a while intolerable. This man was a very hardened criminal, and had just undergone seven days on bread and water in the dark cell, twenty-four lashes of the cat-o'-nine tails having proved unavailing; and he was still unsubdued. His misdemeanor in the prison was swearing at one of the warders, and threatening to break his skull against the wall; even after the fearful infliction of the dark cell, he repeated his threat to "do for him."

Coarse-matting weaving is another prison employment; it is far less laborious than either of the two preceding, yet working the heavy looms must be a great discipline to unpractised arms. One man's face in this category struck us as different from the others; it bore the unmistakable stamp of education; we found that the weaver was properly a man of a better class, and who, with half the ingenuity he had shown in getting into his present condition, might have been a well-to-do member of society.

In the lower basement there are admirably constructed baths, immersion in which is compulsory on the prisoners once a month. The dark cell above referred to is also in these lower regions. Refractory subjects are consigned to it for three, five, or seven days, as the case may be, for insubordination or idleness. It must be a very obdurate spirit indeed, one would imagine, which this awful punishment could leave unbroken. The darkness is like that of the grave, so dense that it is suffocating; and when the warder, to show how utterly every ray of light was excluded from the cell, suddenly went out, and locked the double doors upon us as we stood in the gloom, we all felt a chill of indescribable horror creep over us. The ventilation is, however, perfect, though we could not see how it was contrived.

The kitchen department is as bright and as complete in its appointments as the rest of the building. Great and desirable reforms have of late been effected in the prison fare, which a few years ago was so luxurious as to call loudly for remonstrance from all wise rulers and thoughtful men. The thief and the burglar a little time ago fared far better than the poor working-man struggling to put honest bread into his children's mouths, and infinitely better than the inmate of the workhouse. All this is happily changed, and the hospitality of the jail is now proportioned to the quality of the guests. The bread is coarse and brown, but sweet and wholesome. Each prisoner gets six ounces of it at breakfast, with a pint of gruel; eight at dinner, with a pound of potatoes; and on three days in the week three ounces of bacon; the other four he gets cheese instead; at supper, bread and gruel again. The quantity is less for a short-period man, namely, those who are condemned for a week or a fortnight; the reason being that the constitution could not resist for a lengthened period the low diet, which acts with salutary effect on the spirit for a short time. In answer to our inquiries how far the present system or any system acted as reformatory on criminals, the warder said he believed it very seldom attained that end. A man who once came to jail was pretty sure to come twice. "When a man gets the name of a jail-bird," he said, "it is all over with him; he can never hold up his head again amongst honest folk, and so he goes back to his old ways and haunts." He added that the one chance he had was to go out of the country to a place where he had no past to live down; and for this reason he observed that the Prisoners' Aid Society ought to be upheld by all humane people. It offered the only plank to the shipwrecked that was possible.

Amongst the two hundred prisoners which the jail accommodates, there happens at the present moment not to be a single Catholic. We were surprised to hear this, for we noticed more than once that the men into whose cells we entered cast a wistful look at the young priest who was with us; and when he smiled and nodded to them on turning away, their faces relaxed into a smile too. Mr. S---- told us that this was no uncommon thing; that, as a rule, the prisoners, whatever be their religion, welcome the Catholic priest with a smile, and seem thankful for the chance of speaking to him. The parson, on the contrary, they look on with suspicion, and even with aversion, frequently listening in sullen silence to his questions, and refusing to answer them. This does not betoken any dislike to the Protestant minister personally; it arises from the fact of his having a sort of official character, and being thus associated in their minds with the cruel strength of the law; whereas the priest only comes in the capacity of a helper--one who pities them, and would serve them in body and soul if he could; his errand is purely one of mercy and kindness. Our companion told us that this jail has for him many beautiful memories of grace and repentance. He has gone there frequently in the course of the winter to hear the confessions of penitents who have approached the sacraments in their little cells with sentiments of the most touching humility and sorrow. These prodigals are almost invariably Irish. "Wherever you find a Paddy, you find the faith," observed Canon R----; "and where is the spot on earth where you don't find one?" To illustrate the truth of this remark, he told us a curious anecdote, which was related to him many years ago by the priest to whom it occurred. This priest went on the mission to America, and for some years his labors lay in the wild regions of the far West. The missionary led pretty much the life of the children of the virgin forests that he traversed, and where the footprint of the white man was never seen. He rode for miles and miles through the wilderness, feeding, like the anchorites, on what he could gather by the way, and sleeping in the branches of some thick-foliaged tree, to the stem of which he tied his horse; and at daybreak he was off on his rambles again. One morning, as he was riding through a wood in search of food, he descried a little wreath of smoke curling above the trees. He made for the spot, thinking he had come on a field of labor in the shape of a little colony to be baptized; but, on approaching, he found only a solitary wigwam, at the door of which a wild woman was squatting with a brood of small children about her. The good father was exhausted with hunger, and managed, by signs and a few words of the Indian dialect, to convey this fact to the woman. She rose at once, and placed before him her frugal store. While he was doing justice to it, the lord of the wigwam returned, and great was his amazement to behold the guest whom his lady was hospitably ministering to. The priest was trying to air his small store of words, when his host, who was attired in the scanty costume of his tribe, with a plentiful crop of feathers sprouting from his head-gear, after surveying him silently for a moment, exclaimed, "Your reverence is a Catholic priest, I'll be bound, and an Irishman into the bargain!" His listener nearly capsized with astonishment. But it was neither a vision nor a delusion. The wild Indian was himself an Irishman, who, with two older companions, had come to those remote forests many years before in search of fortune in some form or other; the trio had been captured by the Indians, who put two of them to death, and only spared the youngest on account of his expertness with the bow and arrow and other kindred accomplishments which made him useful to the tribe. He learned in time to speak their language and adopt their mode of life, even to the extent of marrying a wild woman of their race. But the faith of his childhood survived amongst the vicissitudes of this strange career. He welcomed the priest with joy and the reverence of a genuine Irish heart; and before the missionary left his wigwam, he received the wife into the church, married the pair, baptized and instructed the children, and administered the sacraments to the father. Then he sallied forth once more on his life of danger and self-sacrifice, which, though it afforded many consoling and romantic episodes, never furnished such another as this. "Now," exclaimed Canon R---- triumphantly, "just tell me if such an adventure as that could happen to any two men under the sun but a pair of Irishmen!" And no one contradicted him.

But to return to the jail. We visited the church last. It was the saddest spectacle of all, though the building itself was bright and just then full of sunshine. The seats rise in the form of a steep amphitheatre, almost touching the ceiling at the last tier; and they are so contrived that each prisoner is as isolated in his own seat as if he were the only one looking up at the bare pulpit, where no crucifix, nor pitying Madonna, nor kindly angel face looks down upon him, but only the wooden box, where the preacher once a week tells him of the message of mercy, and points to the home where the Father awaits each prodigal son. There, locked up between four narrow boards that rise high above his head, the prisoner assists at the service on Sunday. So rigorously is the separate system maintained that the two men who were employed in washing the stairs and floor of the church were masked, so as not to recognize each other even in passing, while a warden stood by to prevent their exchanging a word together. The men are exercised in batches every morning from six to a quarter past seven in the prison garden--a dreary place to call by that flower-suggestive name. They wear masks, and walk at a distance of four yards from one another, holding a rope with the left hand. Such a system naturally disarms the dangers of agglomeration, and makes mutiny or concerted rebellion impossible. The strength of union is not theirs, and they are as feeble as if, instead of being two hundred against nine, the proportions were reversed. Attempts to escape are almost unknown. The reason of this may be that the inmates are never condemned to a longer term than two years, which would be trebled, both in duration and in severity, if the attempt failed; so, in face of such a risk, it would hardly be worth while to make it. We did not visit the female department, which is conducted on precisely the same principle, the only difference being the greater lenity of the enforced labor. It was painful enough to see strong men brought to just humiliation for their misdeeds; but our hearts failed us to look at women in the same position. On the whole, we left the Reading jail with our minds disabused of many illusions concerning the strong hand of the law. Its application is as humane and merciful as is compatible with the interests of justice and the professed object of legal punishment. There is nothing to demoralize or to harden a culprit whose misfortune it is to undergo a term of durance within its walls. Before, however, such punishment can be really reformatory, the whole community must be reformed on the highest Christian ideal. We must learn not to despise or unduly mistrust the weak brother who has fallen once, but to practically recognize the vital truth implied in the prayer taught us by our Master: "Lead us not into temptation;" remembering that if we have not fallen it is from no merit or strength of our own, but of the gratuitous mercy of God, whose providence has prevented us in temptation, and saved us from our own weakness; and that the measure of our preservation from evil should be the measure of our charity to the fallen. When we have all learned this, we may see our prisons reformatory as well as penitential; we doubt if we ever shall otherwise.

THE LUTE WITH THE BROKEN STRING.

I took the lute I had prized so much In my day of pride, in my day of power, And wiped the dust with a tender touch, And wreathed it gaily with ribbon and flower. And the tears from my heart were falling fast For the bloom that had faded, the fragrance fled, As I thought of the hand that had wreathed it last-- The hand of my darling now cold and dead: And I put it aside with a passionate fling, And something was broken--a heart or a string.

And again I essayed, when the tears had dried And the tumult of sobs in my bosom was still, To touch it once more with the olden pride, That the hearts that yet love me might hear it and thrill: But a soft low note, with its melting power, A tone of deep pathos, had trembled and gone; And my hopes died out in that silent hour, And left me in darkness and sorrow alone. What wonder, beloved, that I cannot sing A song of the heart with a broken string?

What worth is the lute when its music hath fled? What worth is the strain when its alto is lost? What worth is the heart with its tenderness shed, And all its warm feelings laid waste by the frost? But love cannot die. There is comfort in this, That Love is eternal, though passion controls. And what, then, is heaven, with its glory and bliss, But the union of hearts and communion of souls-- When saints shall be minstrels, and angels shall sing, And lutes shall have never a broken string?

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE DIVINE SEQUENCE. By F. M. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1873.

This is a small volume, but one replete with thought. It treats of the relation existing between some of the principal doctrines of the faith, with special reference to the office of our Blessed Lady as mediatrix of grace. The topics treated, though they are the most sublime and mysterious dogmas of faith, are handled with a theological precision and with a depth of contemplative piety which show that the author has drawn her doctrine from the purest sources, and meditated on it profoundly within her own soul; for the author of this admirable treatise is a lady, though we refrain from giving her name out of respect to the modesty which has induced her to hide herself behind the veil of initials. There are some copies of the English edition--which we regret very much not to see reprinted here--for sale at The Catholic Publication House; and we feel sure that if the lovers of the choicest gems of spiritual thought and sentiment knew the value of this one, they would lose no time in securing it.

THE LIFE OF LUISA DE CARVAJAL. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. London: Burns & Oates. 1873. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This book is an addition to the sum total of sound Catholic literature. We almost lose sight of the merit of the translator's style in admiration of the motive that led her to undertake the task. The life of this holy Spanish woman is strange and pathetic. Her lifelong sacrifice of worldly, and, what is more, of national, associations for the sake of an apostleship in England during the dark days of the faith in that country, is indeed a triumph of grace and a heroic model to all after-ages. Luisa de Carvajal was a woman of rare strength of mind, energy, perseverance, and endurance. Her holiness was that of the champion rather than of the novice. Her mind was richly cultivated. Latin was familiar to her; English she acquired after she was thirty years of age--a feat requiring much patience in a Spaniard. Her theological knowledge, patristic lore, and minute acquaintance with the Scriptures were distinguishing traits of her subsequent self-education. Involved in a tedious lawsuit, her accurate memory, excellent understanding, and unflagging presence of mind were no less remarkable than her sweet temper and great patience. Although never setting her will in opposition to that of her spiritual advisers, she invariably conquered their objections, and by her very humility proved her superiority. Her vocation to a life of poverty, without at the same time being called to a conventual life, was a peculiar dispensation; and when we think of the greater ridicule that attended such an unconventional manner of "leaving the world," we see how much greater the sacrifice was than we at the present day can imagine. Her life in England seems a romance of self-devotion, and her English biographer has lovingly dwelt upon its interesting details. One pregnant suggestion is made by the translator, which is, that it would be a specially holy work for a woman to undertake to train in a species of semi-religious community life those young girls whose future destiny is the instruction of youth in the higher classes. This, although applicable chiefly to England, and of less significance on this side of the ocean, is a suggestion that deserves more notice than it is perhaps likely to get, embedded as it is in the crowded narrative of Doña Luisa's life. One thing shines forth out of this exceptional record of a holy and strong woman's days, and it is this--that God somehow or other always removes all obstacles to his _real_ will in his own good time. In her youth, Luisa was foiled, by her natural guardians and really best-intentioned friends, in her desire to adopt the strange life to which God called her--that of a recluse without a cloister--and in a few years these friends were taken away, leaving her her own mistress. Later on, when the seemingly Quixotic wish came over her to leave Spain to minister to the English martyrs under James I., and preach the Catholic faith in London, her long lawsuit, which was urged as a reason for giving up this design, suddenly came to a favorable and

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XVIII., No. 105.--DECEMBER, 1873.[88]

A TALK ON METAPHYSICS.

One of the greatest obstacles to the spread of philosophical education is the false opinion which, through the efforts of a school of low scientists, has gained much ground--viz., that metaphysics, the central and most important part of philosophy, is only a mass of useless abstractions and unintelligible subtleties; a science _à priori_, telling us nothing about facts; a dismal relic of mediæval ignorance and conceit; a thing, therefore, which has no longer a claim to hold a place in the world of science. This is a shameless misrepresentation, and as such it might be treated with the contempt it deserves; but it is so carefully insinuated, and with such an assurance, that it succeeds in making its way onward, and in gaining more and more credit among unreflecting people. We intend, therefore, to give it a challenge. A short exposition of the nature and object of metaphysics will suffice, we hope, to show our young readers the worthlessness of such mischievous allegations.

What is metaphysics? _It is_, answers one of the most eminent metaphysicians, Francis Suarez, _that part of philosophy which treats of real beings as such_. This definition is universally accepted. It is needless to remark that a being is said to be _real_ when it exists in nature; whereas that which has no existence except in our conceptions is called _a being of reason_. But it is well to observe that the expression, _real being_, is used in two different senses. In the first it means a _complete_ natural entity, which has its own separate existence in nature, independently of the existence of any other created thing; as when we say that _Peter_, _John_, and _James_ are real beings. In the second it means some _incomplete_ entity, which has no separate existence of its own, but is the mere appurtenance of some other thing to the existence of which it owes its being; as Peter's _life_, John's _eloquence_, James' _stature_. Of course, every substance, whether material or spiritual, simple or compound, is a complete entity; but every constituent, attribute, property, or quality of complete beings is an incomplete entity, inasmuch as it has no separate existence, but only partakes of the existence of the being to which it belongs.

A real, complete entity is said to be a _physical_ being, because it possesses all that is required to exist separately in the physical order of things. On the contrary, a real, incomplete entity is said to be a _metaphysical being_. Thus, _movement_, _velocity_, _time_, _force_, _attraction_, _repulsion_, _heat_, _cold_, _weight_, _work_, _resistance_, _figure_, _hardness_, _softness_, _solidity_, _liquidity_, etc., are metaphysical beings. Those modern men of science who shudder at the very name of metaphysics would do well to consider for a while this short catalogue of metaphysical entities. They would find that it contains the very things with which they are most familiar. If metaphysical entities are only abstractions--empty and useless abstractions, as they declare--what shall we say of all their scientific books? Are they not all concerned with those dreadful metaphysical entities which we have enumerated? Yet we would scarcely say that they treat of _useless abstractions_. Certainly, when a drop of rain is falling, the _action_ by which it is determined to fall is not an abstraction, the _velocity_ acquired is not an abstraction, and the _fall_ itself is not an abstraction. In like manner, the _rotation_ of the earth, the _hardness_ of a stone, the _sound_ of a trumpet, are not abstractions; and yet all these are entities of the metaphysical order. Therefore, to contend that metaphysics is a science of pure abstractions is nothing but an evident absurdity. The object of metaphysics is no less real than the object of physics itself.

It may, perhaps, be objected that, though the material object of metaphysics is real and concrete in nature, we despoil it of its reality as soon as we, in our metaphysical reasonings, rise from the individual to the universal; for universals, as such, have no existence but in our conception.

The answer is obvious. The _metaphysical_ universals must not be confounded with the _logical_ universals. The logical universal--as genus, difference, etc.--expresses a mere concept of the mind, and is a mere being of reason, or a _second intention_, as it is called; but the metaphysical universal--as figure, force, weight, etc., is not a mere being of reason; for its object is a reality which can be found existing in the physical order. It is true that all such realities exist under individual conditions, and therefore are not _formally_ but only _fundamentally_, universal; for their formal universality consists only in their mode of existing in our mind when we drop all actual thought of their individual determinations. But, surely, they do not cease to be realities because the mind, in thinking of them, pays no attention to their individuation; and, therefore, metaphysical universals, even as universal, retain their objective reality.

We might say more on this subject, were it not that this is hardly the place for discussing the merits of formalism, realism, or nominalism. We can, however, give a second answer, which will dispose of the objection in a very simple manner. The answer is this: Granted that abstractions, _as such_, have no existence but in our intellect. Nevertheless, what we conceive abstractedly exists concretely in the objects of which it is predicated and from which it is abstracted. Humanity in our conception is an abstraction, and yet is to be found in every living man; velocity, likewise, is an abstraction, and yet is to be found in all real movement through space; quantity also, is an abstraction, and yet is to be found in every existing body. Therefore, abstract things do not cease to be real in nature, though they are abstract in our conception. This is an evident truth. If the adversaries of metaphysics are bold enough to deny it, then they at the same time and in the same breath deny all real science, and thus forfeit all claim to the honorable title of _scientific_ men. Statics and dynamics, geometry and calculus, algebra and arithmetic, are abstract sciences. No one will deny that they are most useful; yet they would be of no use whatever if what they consider in the abstract had no concrete correspondent in the real world. Chemistry itself, and all the experimental sciences, inasmuch as they are sciences, are abstract. Atomic weights, inasmuch as they fall under scientific reasoning, are abstractions; genera, species, and varieties in zoölogy and botany are abstract conceptions; crystalline forms in mineralogy are as abstract as any purely geometric relation. Indeed, without abstractions, science is not even conceivable; for all science, as such, proceeds from abstract principles to abstract conclusions. But though the process of scientific reasoning be abstract, _real_ science deals with _real_ objects and real relations. And such is exactly the case with metaphysics, which is the universal science of all reality, and the queen of all the real sciences.

These general remarks suffice, without any further development, to vindicate the reality of the material object of metaphysics. But here the question arises, Are _all_ real beings without exception the object of this science?

Some authors, in past centuries, thought that the only object of metaphysics was to treat of beings _above nature_; and accordingly taught that God and the angels alone were _metaphysical_ beings--that is, beings ranging above nature. On the contrary, man and this visible world--that is, all creatures liable to local motion--they called _natural_ beings, and considered them to be the proper and exclusive object of _physical_ science. This view was grounded, apparently, on the latent assumption that metaphysics meant _above physics_; which, however, is not correct, as μετὰ does not mean _above_, but _after_; and therefore metaphysical is not synonymous with supernatural.[89] On the other hand, God and the angels are undoubtedly _physical_ beings; for they are complete beings, having their complete physical nature and their separate existence. We cannot call them _metaphysical_ beings; for we know of no beings which deserve the name of metaphysical but those incomplete entities which are attained through the intellectual analysis of physical and complete beings.

As to man and all the other natural things, every one will see that though they are, in one respect, the proper object of physics, yet they are also, in another respect, the proper object of metaphysics; and this too, without in the least confounding the two branches of knowledge. The attributions of physics and of metaphysics are, in fact, so distinct that there can be no danger of the one invading the province of the other, even though they deal with the same subject. The office of the physicist is to investigate natural facts, to discuss them, to make a just estimate of them, and to discover the laws presiding over their production. This, and no other, is the object of physics, to accomplish which it is not necessary to know the essence of natural things. Hence, the physicist, after ascertaining the phenomena of nature and their laws, cannot go further in his capacity of physicist. But where he ends his work, just there the metaphysician begins; for his office is to take those facts and laws as a ground for his speculations in order to discover the essential principles involved in the constitution of natural causes, and to account by such principles for all the attributes and properties of things. This is the duty of the metaphysician. Thus natural things, although an object of physics when considered as following certain laws of action or of movement, are nevertheless an object of metaphysics when considered in their being and intimate constitution.

On this point even physicists agree. "Instead of regarding the proper object of physical science as a search after essential causes," says one of the best modern champions of scientific progress, "it ought to be, and must be, a search after facts and relations."[90] Hence, physical science deals with natural facts and their relations exclusively; the search after causes and essential principles constitutes the object of a higher science; and such a science is real philosophy, or metaphysics proper.

I was surprised at finding in Webster's _English Dictionary_ (v. Metaphysics) the following words:

"The natural division of things that exist is into body and mind, things material and immaterial. The former belong to physics, and the latter to the science of metaphysics." From what we have just said, it is clear that this division is not accurate. We must add that it is not consistent with the definition of metaphysics given by the same author only a few lines before. Metaphysics, says he, is "the science of the principles and causes of _all_ things existing." Now, if material things existing do not belong to metaphysics, it evidently follows that either material things existing have no principles and no causes, or that such principles and causes are no object of science. But it is obvious that neither conclusion can be admitted. Furthermore, it is well known that all metaphysicians treat of the constitution of bodies--a fact which conclusively proves that material things are not excluded from the object of metaphysics.

Here, however, we must observe that some modern writers, while conceding this last point, contend that material things _must be mentally freed from their materiality_ before they can be considered as an object of metaphysics. Their reason is, that this science is concerned with real things only inasmuch as they consist of principles known to the intellect alone. Matter, they say, is not an object of the intellect. Therefore, the object of metaphysics must be immaterial--that is, either a thing which has no matter of its own, or at least a thing which is conceived, through mental abstraction, as free from matter.

But we should remember that, according to the common doctrine, the true and adequate object of metaphysics is _all_ real being as such, whether it be material or immaterial; and that it is, therefore, the duty of the metaphysician to divide substance into material and immaterial, and to give the definition of both; for it belongs to each science to point out and define the parts of its own object. Hence, the metaphysician is bound to explain how things material differ from things immaterial, and has to ascertain what metaphysical predicates are attributable to material substance on account of its very materiality.[91] Now, it is evident that nothing of the kind can ever be done by a philosopher who, through mental abstraction, considers material substance as freed from its matter. For when, by such an abstraction, he has taken away the matter, what else can he look upon as a ground of distinction between material and immaterial beings? We must admit, then, that material things, inasmuch as they are _real_ things, and only in that manner in which they are real (that is, with their own matter), are a proper object of metaphysics.

To the patrons of the opposite view we confidently answer that their argument has no sound foundation; for though it is true that no material thing, owing to the complexity of its simultaneous actions on our senses, distinctly reveals to us its material constitution, yet it is not true that material things cannot be understood by our intellect unless they are mentally stripped of their matter. To understand them thus would be simply to misunderstand them. Matter and form are the essential constituents of material substance, as all metaphysicians admit; it is, therefore, impossible to understand the essence of material substance, unless the intellect reaches the matter as well as the form.[92] Let us add that those very authors who in theory affect to exclude matter from the object of metaphysics find it impossible to do away with it in practice, and, in spite of the theory, devote to matter, as such, a great number of pages in their own metaphysical treatises.

Thus far we have defined the object of metaphysics. We now come to its method, on account of which it is so frequently assailed by the votaries of experimental science. Metaphysics, they say, is a science _à priori_; it is, therefore, altogether incompetent to decide any matters of fact; and, if so, what is the use of metaphysics? To this reasoning, which claims no credit for perspicacity, many answers can be given.

And first let us suppose for a moment that metaphysics is a science altogether _à priori_. Does it follow that it has no claim to our most careful attention? Geometry, algebra, and all pure mathematics are _à priori_ sciences. Are they despised on this account? We see, on the contrary, that for this very reason they are held in greater honor and lauded as the most thorough, the most exact, and the most irrefragable of all sciences. Some will say that the object of mathematics is not to establish natural facts, but only relations; but this is equally true of metaphysics. The metaphysician, when treating of physical subjects, assumes the facts and laws of nature as they are presented to him by the physicist; he has not to establish them anew, but only to account for them by showing the reason of their being. Metaphysics would, therefore, be as good, as excellent, and as interesting as geometry, even if it were an _à priori_ science.

But, secondly, what is the real case? To proceed _à priori_ is to argue from the cause to the effect, and from antecedents to consequents; whereas, to proceed _à posteriori_ is to argue from the effect to the cause, and from consequents to antecedents. Now, it is a fact that in metaphysics we frequently argue from the cause to the effect, as is done in other sciences too; but it is no less a fact that we even more frequently argue from the effect to the cause. The very name of _metaphysics_, which is the bugbear of our opponents, clearly shows that such is the case. Real philosophy, in fact, is called _metaphysics_ for two reasons, the first of which is extrinsic and historical, the second intrinsic and logical. The historical consists in the fact that Aristotle's speculations on those incomplete entities which enter into the constitution of things were handed down to us under the name of metaphysics. The logical is, because the knowledge of such incomplete entities must be gathered from the consideration of natural beings by means of an intellectual analysis, which cannot be made properly without a previous extensive knowledge of the concrete order of things. This latter knowledge, which must be gathered by observation and experiment, constitutes physical science. Hence, the rational knowledge which comes after it, and is based on it, is very properly called _metaphysical_, and that part of philosophy which develops such a knowledge _metaphysics_--that is, after-physics.

Now, all analysis belongs to the _à posteriori_ process; for it proceeds from the compound to its components, and therefore from the effect to the cause. Therefore, metaphysics, inasmuch as it analyzes natural beings and finds out their constituents, is an _à posteriori_ science; and since such an analysis is the very ground of all metaphysical speculations, we must conclude that the whole of metaphysics is based on the _à posteriori_ process, no less than physics itself.

Thirdly, that metaphysics cannot decide any matter-of-fact question is a silly objection; as it is evident that to establish the existence of God, the spirituality of the human soul, the creation of the world, etc., is nothing less than to decide matters of fact. It may be that, in the opinion of the utilitarian, such facts are not very interesting; they are facts, however, as much and as truly as the rotation of the earth, atmospheric pressure, and universal attraction are facts; and they are much more important, too.

We might also maintain that metaphysics is mainly a science of facts; for there are facts of the intellectual as well as of the experimental order. That every effect must have a cause is a fact. That every circle must have a centre is another fact. That a part is less than the whole is a third fact. Intellectual facts are as numerous and as certain as the facts of nature; and it is through them that our experimental knowledge of natural things is raised to the dignity of _scientific_ cognition. For there is no science, whether inductive or deductive, without reasoning, and no reasoning without principles; and every principle is a fact of the intellectual order. Those critics who are wont to slight metaphysics as an _à priori_ science would, therefore, do well to consider that no true demonstration can be made but by _à priori_ principles, and that true demonstration constitutes the perfection of science.

We may here remark that metaphysics is usually divided into _general_ and _special_, and that the _à priori_ character, for which it is assailed, belongs to general metaphysics only. General metaphysics treats of the constituents, attributes, and properties of being in general, and is called ontology. Ontology is considered as a necessary preparation for the study of special metaphysics, which, from the knowledge of being in general, descends to the examination of the different classes and genera of beings in particular. Our men of science, accustomed as they are to the inductive method, do not approve of this form of proceeding. On what ground, they ask, do you impose upon the student notions, definitions, and principles _à priori_, as you do in ontology, affirming in general that which has not yet been examined in particular, and taking for granted what has yet to be established and verified?

The answer is obvious enough. General metaphysics assumes nothing but what is already admitted as evident by all mankind. It is mainly concerned with the notions conveyed by such words as _being_, _cause_, _effect_, _principle_, _essence_, _existence_, _substance_, _accident_, etc. These notions are common, and their methodical explanation is based on common-sense principles--that is, on evident, intellectual facts. Thus far, therefore, no one can say that we invert the natural order of science; for we start from what is known.

Next comes the analysis of the notions just referred to. The object of this analysis is to point out distinctly the different classes of being, the different genera of causes, the variety of principles, reasons, etc., implied in those general notions, to show their ontological relations, and to account for their distinction. This important investigation, as well as the preceding one, is based on common-sense reasonings, but sometimes not without reference to other truths, which are established and vindicated only in special metaphysics, to which they properly belong. Thus, it is the custom to treat in ontology of the intrinsic possibility of things, and its eternity, necessity, and immutability; but it is only in natural theology that such matters find their full and radical explanation. Of course, whenever an assertion is made, of which the proof is totally or partially deferred to a later time, the assent of the student to it is more or less provisional. It is not, however, in metaphysics only that a student must accept certain things on trust; he thus accepts the equivalents in chemistry, the distances of the planets from the sun in astronomy, and the logarithms in trigonometry.

Yet we confess that philosophical writers and teachers sometimes expose themselves to just criticism by treating in general metaphysics certain matters which it would be better to reserve intact for special treatises. It is doubtless necessary, immediately after logic, to treat of the nature of being, and its principles and its properties in general; but it is extremely difficult, and even dangerous, to undertake the settlement of some questions of ontology connected with the physical department of science before these same questions are sufficiently explored by the light, and disentangled by the analysis, of special metaphysics, to which their full investigation really appertains. What is the use of giving, for instance, an unestablished, and perhaps preposterous, notion of corporeal quantity to him who has as yet to learn what is the essential composition of bodies? Is a student prepared to realize the true nature of the quantity of mass, or of the quantity of volume, who has never yet explored either the mysterious attributes of formal continuity or the intimate constitution of material substance? Certainly not. He may, indeed, make an act of faith on the authority of his professor; but philosophy is not faith, and no professor who understands his duty would ever unnecessarily oblige his pupils to admit anything as true on his own sole authority. Questions connected with the physical laws of causation and movement, or with the nature of sensible qualities and properties, should similarly be deferred to a later time; for no one will be able to deal successfully with them, unless he has already acquired a distinct knowledge of many other things, on which both the right understanding and the right solution of these questions essentially depend. Accordingly, such matters, instead of being treated lightly and perfunctorily at the beginning of the course of metaphysics, should be treated with those others to which they are naturally allied, in order that they may be fully examined and competently decided.

From this it will be seen that we do not want a metaphysical science based on _à priori_ grounds. In all times, metaphysics has been a science of facts; and it could not be otherwise, since its object is real, and all that is real is a matter of fact. Experiment and observation have always supplied the materials of its speculations. All its conclusions about the nature of the soul are drawn from the facts of consciousness; all its affirmations concerning the constitution of bodies are founded on the facts and laws of the physical world; and all its theses on God, his existence and his attributes, are likewise deduced from a positive knowledge of contingent things. To suppose that metaphysical knowledge can be obtained otherwise is such an absurdity that nothing but the most stupid ignorance can be made to believe it. And yet this absurdity is what many of our modern scientists fall into when they contend that metaphysics is an _à priori_ science.

It is not difficult, however, to account for such a dislike of metaphysical reasonings. The greatest number of our scientific men have been brought up under the influence either of Protestantism or of its legitimate offspring, indifferentism; and absolute truth, such as is attained by rigorous metaphysical reasoning, is not congenial to their habit of thought. Protestantism is a system made up of half-truths, half-premises, and half-consequences. A Protestant must at the same time believe the authenticity of the Bible, and reject the authority by which alone the Bible can be proved to be authentic; he must conciliate the liberty of his private judgment with the obedience due to the teaching of his church; he must have the courage to believe that true Christian religion is not that which, from the apostolic times down to our own, has formed so many generations of saints, changed the face of the world, confirmed its own divine origin by a perpetual succession of prodigious works, but that which, starting from Luther or some other mischievous innovator, has never and nowhere produced any fruit of high sanctity or witnessed a single miracle. Hence, to a Protestant mind, truth in its entirety must be embarrassing; since the very essence of Protestantism is to cut truth into pieces, to believe and relish a portion of it, and to reserve some other portion unbelieved and unrelished, lest nothing should be left to protest against.

It is clear that minds so disposed in religious matters cannot be much better disposed in other branches of speculative knowledge; and it is but natural that they should despise metaphysics altogether. "To the healthy scientific mind," says a modern writer, "the fine-spun arguments and the wonderful logical achievements of metaphysicians are at once so bewildering and so distasteful that men of science can scarcely be got to listen even to those who undertake to show that the arguments are but cobwebs, the logic but jingle, and the seeming profundity little more than a jumble of incongruous ideas shrouded in a mist of words."[93] Indeed, when men of science are thus satisfied with their ignorance of philosophy, and shut their eyes and their ears, lest the light, or perhaps the jingle, of logic compel them to learn what mere experimentalism cannot teach, we cease to wonder that they countenance such theories as the _Descent of Man_, the eternity of matter, or the meteoric origin of the principle of life.

We do not wish to deny the progress of modern science; we fully acknowledge that experimentalism has led to the discovery of important facts. But this is no reason why our men of science should disregard philosophy.

An increase of positive knowledge regarding facts, far from bringing about the exclusion of philosophical reasoning, extends its range, enlarges its foundation, and makes its employment both easier and surer. Accordingly, while we profess gratitude to the modern scientists for their unceasing labors and untiring efforts towards the development of experimental knowledge, we beg leave to remind them that this knowledge is not the _ne plus ultra_ of natural science. Subordinate sciences account in a certain measure for such things as form their special object; but philosophy, the highest, the deepest, and the most universal of sciences, not only embraces in its general scope all the objects of human knowledge, but accounts for them by their highest principles and causes, and makes them not only known, but understood. To know facts is an excellent thing; yet the human mind craves something higher. We are all born to be philosophers. Indeed, our rational nature teaches us very early the first elements of philosophy, and compels us to philosophize. As soon as we acquire the use of reason, we detect ourselves tracing effects to causes, and conclusions to principles; and from that time we experience a strong tendency to generalize such a process, till it extends to all known objects and to the ultimate reasons of their being.

Yet we should reflect that our rational nature, while thus prompting us to such high investigations, does not lead us freely to the goal, but leaves it to our industry to acquaint ourselves with the proper methods of discovering philosophical truth. Negligence in the study of such methods hinders intellectual advancement, and leaves men exposed to the snares of sophistry. Such a negligence on the part of men who are looked upon as the lights of modern science is one of the great evils of the day. Distaste for philosophical instruction, when confined to the lower classes of society, is of little consequence: even in the middle classes it might be comparatively harmless if men were ready to own their ignorance, and forbore judging of what transcends their intellectual acquirements. But in an age like ours, when every one who has a smattering of light literature or of empirical science thinks himself called upon to decide the most abstruse and formidable questions; when countless books and periodicals of a perfidious character are everywhere spread by the unholy efforts of secret societies; and, when a confiding public allow themselves to be led like sheep by such incompetent authorities, then ignorance, supported by presumption or malice on the one side, and by credulity on the other, cannot but be the source of incalculable evils.

Hence it is that all prudent and experienced men have come to the conclusion that one of the greatest necessities of our times is to popularize the study of sound philosophy. Young America needs to be taught that there is a whole world of important truths ranging above the grasp of the vulgar, uncultivated mind, unknown to the pretentious teachers of a material and spurious civilization, and unattainable by those who are not trained to the best use of their intellectual powers. It needs to realize the fact that modern literature and thought in general is full of deceits. It needs to be instructed how to meet a host of high-sounding assertions, plausible fallacies, and elaborate theories, advanced in support of social, religious, or political error. It needs to be enabled, by a sound, uniform, and strong teaching, gradually to form into a compact body, held together by the noble ties of truth, powerful enough to stem the torrent of infidelity, and always ready to defend right and justice against learned hypocrisy, as well as against ignorant sophistry. Grown-up men cannot be reclaimed; they are too much engrossed with material interests to find leisure for the cultivation of their higher faculties; but we are glad to see that our brilliant and unbiassed youth can be given, and are ready to receive, a more intellectual education. Let us only convince them of the importance of philosophy; let us provide them with good, kind, and learned teachers, and the future will be ours.

FOOTNOTES:

[88] 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.

[89] Fleming, in his _Dictionary of Philosophy_ (v. Metaphysics), says: "In Latin, _metaphysica_ is synonymous with _supernaturalia_; and Shakespeare has used _metaphysical_ as synonymous with _supernatural_:

'... Fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crowned.'

--_Macbeth_, act i., scene 3.

Clemens Alexandrinus (_Strom._ i.) considered _metaphysical_ as equivalent to _supernatural_; and is supported by an anonymous Greek commentator, etc."

That Shakespeare's _metaphysical aid_ means the aid of some mysterious power above nature may be conceded. But that in Latin _metaphysica_ is synonymous with _supernaturalia_ is an assertion which can be easily refuted by a simple reference to any of the great Latin works of metaphysics. Nor is it true that Clemens Alexandrinus considered _metaphysical_ as equivalent to _supernatural_. He only remarks that Aristotle's _Metaphysics_ is that part of philosophy which Plato at one time styled "a contemplation of truly great mysteries," and at other times "dialectics"--that is, "a science which investigates the reasons of the things that are" (τῆς τῶν ὄντων δηλώσεως εὐρητικὴ τίς ἐστιν ἐπιστήμη). Now, the science which investigates the reasons of the things that are extends to _all_ real beings. It is not true, therefore, that Clemens Alexandrinus considered _metaphysical_ as equivalent to _supernatural_. The truth is that he does not even use the word _metaphysics_ as his own, but only says that Aristotle's _Metaphysics_ contains the investigation and contemplation of "mysteries"--that is, of abstruse things. And since Aristotle's _metaphysics_ is not a science of the supernatural, Clemens Alexandrinus, in quoting the word _metaphysics_ in connection with Aristotle, cannot have considered it as equivalent to the science of the supernatural. Lastly, Clemens Alexandrinus explains that the science which Aristotle called _metaphysics_, and Plato _dialectics_, has for its object the consideration of things, and the determination of their powers and attributes, from which it raises itself to their very essence, whence again it ventures to go further, even to God himself, the master of the universe. Επισκοποῦσα τὰ πράγματα, καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις, καὶ τὰς ἐξουσίας δοκιμάζουσα, ὐπεξαναβαίνει περὶ τὴν πάντων κρατίστην οὐσίαν, τολμᾶ τε ἐπέκεινα ἐπὶ τῶν ὄλων Θεὸν (_Strom._, lib. i. c. 28). This shows that metaphysical science, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, extends to the investigation of all natural things. It cannot, therefore, be said that he considered _metaphysical_ as equivalent to _supernatural_, whatever may have been the opinion of the anonymous Greek commentator.

[90] Grove, _Correlation of Physical Forces_.

[91] Suarez, _Metaph. Disput._, i. sect. 2, n. 25.

[92] S. Thomas says: _Intellectus potest intelligere aliquam formam absque individuantibus principiis, non tamen absque materia, a qua dependet ratio illius formæ_ (in 3 _De Anima_, lect. 8).

[93] _Nature_, a Journal of Science, March 13, 1873.

EPIGRAM.

Inconstant thou! There ne'er was any Till now so constant--to so many.

AUBREY DE VERE.

DANTE'S PURGATORIO.

CANTO FOURTH.

This Canto, being somewhat abstruse, was passed over at its due place in the series of these translations. As its omission has been regretted by some students of Dante, it has been thought best to publish it now, although the first portion of it may seem a little difficult to any but a mathematical reader. Perhaps its dryness may be somewhat relieved at the close by the humorous picture of the lazy sinner Belacqua, which is the first slight touch of the comic in this most grave comedy, and here for the first time Dante confesses to a smile.

Whene'er the mind, from any joy or pain In any faculty, to that alone Bends its whole force, its other powers remain Unexercised, it seems (whereby is shown Plain contradiction of th' erroneous view Which holds within us kindled several souls). Hence, when we hear or see a thing whereto The mind is strongly drawn, unheeded rolls The passing hour; the man observes it not: That power is one whereby we hear or see, And that another which absorbs our thought; This being chained, as 'twere--the former free.

A real experience of this truth had I, Listening that soul with wonder at such force, For now the sun full fifty degrees high Had risen without my noticing his course, When came we where the spirits, with one voice all, Cried out to us, "Behold the place ye seek!" A wider opening oft, in hedge or wall, Some farmer, when the grape first browns its cheek, Stops with one forkful of his brambles thrown, Than was the narrow pass whereby my Guide Began to climb, I following on alone, While from our way I saw those wanderers glide.

A man may climb St. Leo, or descend The steeps of Noli, or Bismantua's height Scale to the top, and on his feet depend; _Here_ one should fly! I mean he needs the light Pinions and plumage of a strong desire, Under such leadership as gave me hope And lighted me my way. Advancing higher In through the broken rock, it left no scope On either side, but cramped us close; the ledge O'er which we crept required both feet and hands. When we had toiled up to the utmost edge Of the high bank, where the clear coast expands, "Which way," said I, "my Master, shall we take?" And he to me, "Let not thy foot fall back; Still follow me, and for the mountain make, Until some guide appear who knows the track." Its top sight reached not, and the hillside rose With far more salient angle than the line That from half-quadrant to the centre goes. Most weary was I: "Gentle Father mine," I thus broke silence, "turn and see that if Thou stay not for me, I remain alone." "Struggle, my son, as far as yonder cliff," He said, and pointed upwards to a zone Terracing all the mountain on that side. His word so spurred me that I forced myself And clambered on still close behind my Guide Until my feet were on that girdling shelf.

Here we sat down and turned our faces towards The East, from which point we had made ascent (For looking back on toil some rest affords); And on the low shore first mine eyes I bent, Then raised them sunward, wondering as I gazed How his light smote us from the left. While thus I stared, he marked how I beheld amazed Day's chariot entering 'twixt the North and us. "Were yonder mirror now," the Poet said, "That with his light leads up and down the spheres, In Castor and Pollux, thou wouldst see the red Zodiac revolving closer to the Bears, If it swerved nothing from its ancient course; Which fact to fathom wouldst thou power command, Imagine, with thy mind's collected force, This mount and Zion so on earth to stand That though in adverse hemispheres, the twain One sole horizon have: thence 'tis not hard To see (if clear thine intellect remain) How the Sun's road--which Phaeton, ill-starred, Knew not to keep--must pass that mountain o'er On one, and _this_ hill on the other side." "Certes, my Master,--ne'er saw I before So clear as at this moment," I replied (Where seemed but now my understanding maimed), "How the mid-circle of the heavenly spheres And of their movements--the Equator named In special term of art--which never veers From its old course, 'twixt winter and the Sun, Yet for the reason thou dost now assign, Towards the Septentrion from this point doth run, While to the Jews it bore a South decline. But if it please thee, gladly would I learn How far we have to journey; for so high This hill soars that mine eyes cannot discern The top thereof." He made me this reply: "Such is this mountain that for one below The first ascent is evermore severe, It grows less painful higher as we go. So when to thee it pleasant shall appear That no more toil thy climbing shall attend Than to sail down the way the current flows, Then art thou near unto thy pathway's end; There from thy labor look to find repose. I know that this is true, but say no more." And this word uttered, not far off addressed Me thus a voice: "It may be that before That pass, thou wilt have need to sit and rest." At sound thereof we both looked round, and there Beheld a huge rock, close to our left hand, Whereof till now we had not been aware. Thither we toiled, and in its shade a band Behind it stood with a neglectful air, As men in idleness are wont to stand.

BELACQUA THE SLUGGARD.

And one was seated, hanging down his face Between his knees, which he with languid limb, Looking exhausted, held in his embrace. "O my sweet Seignior!" I exclaimed, "note him! Lazier-looking than had laziness been His sister-born." Turning towards us, at length He gazed, slow lifting o'er his thigh his chin, And drawled, "Go up, then, thou who hast such strength." I knew who _that_ was then; and though the ascent Had made me pant somewhat, I kept my pace, Spite of short breath: close up to him I went, And he droned forth, scarce lifting up his face, "Hast thou found out yet how the Sun this way O'er thy left shoulder doth his chariot guide?" His sloth, and what few words he had to say, Made me smile slightly, and I thus replied: "No more, Belacqua, do I mourn thy fate; But tell me wherefore in this place I see Thee sitting thus? Dost thou for escort wait, Or has thy old slow habit seized on thee?"

And he--"O brother! what boots it to climb? God's Angel sitting at the gate denies Me way to penance until so much time Be past as living I beheld the skies. Outside I must remain here for the crime Of dallying to the last my contrite sighs, Unless I happily some help derive From the pure prayer ascending from a heart That lives in grace: a prayer not thus alive Heaven doth not hear: what aid can such impart?"

Now before me the Poet up the height Began to climb, saying, "Come on, for o'er This hill's meridian hangs the Sun, and Night Sets foot already on Morocco's shore."

NOTE.

The Rev. Edward Everett Hale, in a most interesting paper intended for presentation to the American Antiquarian Society, in Boston, makes this record:

"When Columbus sailed on his fourth voyage, he wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella a letter which contains the following statement with regard to the South Sea, then undiscovered, known to us as the Pacific Ocean:

"'I believe that if I should pass under the equator, in arriving at this higher region of which I speak, I should find there a milder temperature and a diversity in the stars and in the waters. Not that I believe that the highest point is navigable whence these currents flow, nor that we can mount there, because I am convinced that there is the terrestrial paradise, whence no one can enter but by the will of God.'

"This curious passage, of which the language seems so mystical, represents none the less the impression which Columbus had of the physical cosmogony of the undiscovered half of the world. It is curious to observe that the most elaborate account of this cosmogony, and that by which alone it has been handed down to the memory of modern times, is that presented in Dante's _Divina Commedia_, where he represents the mountain of Purgatory, at the antipodes of Jerusalem, crowned by the terrestrial paradise. It is this paradise of which Columbus says, 'No one can enter it but by the will of God.'

"Of Dante's cosmogony a very accurate account is given by Miss Rossetti, in her essay on Dante, recently published, to which she gives the name of 'The Shadow of Dante.' Her statement is in these words:

"'Dante divides our globe into two elemental hemispheres--the Eastern, chiefly of land; the Western, almost wholly of water.'"

It is much easier to praise Mr. Hale's valuable comments than to agree with Miss Rossetti. To us it seems that her confused account lets no light in upon Dante's cosmogony, which was simply that of the age he lived in, poetized after his own fashion. According to the interpretation of THE CATHOLIC WORLD's translation, Dante divides our globe into two hemispheres--_Northern_ and _Southern_. In the story of Ulysses (_Inferno_, Canto xxvi.) he alludes to a Western hemisphere, and, as far as we remember, nowhere else. Mr. Hale says in conclusion of his able paper, "I am not aware that any of the distinguished critics of Dante have called attention to the fact that so late as the year 1503, a navigator so illustrious as Columbus was still conducting his voyages on the supposition that Dante's cosmogony was true in fact."

This, indeed, is quite curious, but ought not to surprise one who reflects that the cosmography of Columbus was not much advanced from the time of Dante. In this very canto the poet shows that he knew about the variation of the ecliptic and the retrogression of the equinoxes. From his age to that of the great navigator, science had hardly taken a forward step. In fact, before 1300, Dante was acquainted not only with the sphericity of the earth, but with the first law of gravitation--the tendency of things to their centre. Few consider how very slow was the growth of science from that which Dante had learned in Florence, and Columbus had studied in Pavia and Sienna, up to the time of Copernicus, at whom, so late as 1625, Lord Bacon had the hardihood to give this fling: "Who would not smile at the astronomers--I mean, not those _carmen_ which drive the earth about, but the few ancient astronomers, which feign the moon to be the swiftest of the planets in motion, etc.?"

The pages of this magazine will not permit us to prolong an inquiry that may hereafter, and which ought to, be made as to the Ptolemean astronomy of the schools in the age of Dante. The one scholar in this country most capable of such investigation is too busy--we mean Professor Peirce, of the U. S. Coast Survey.--TRANSLATOR.

GRAPES AND THORNS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE."