Part IV.

She Sang.

I.

It came: it reached me from afar: I kissed the seal, the cords unwove; Came wafted from the fields of war On all the odorous airs of love.

Close hid I sang; close hid I sighed In places where no echoes were, Where dashed the streams through gorges wide, And sprays leaned back on moistened air.

I sang a song, half sighs, yet proud, And smothered by those downward rills, A music proud, and yet not loud, As when her babe a mother stills.

II.

Behold! for thee, and for thy love I fain would make my spirit fair: For this I strive; for this I strove: My toil, though late, shall blossom bear.

Before thy face the plant shall rise, In thy fair presence bloom and flower: O love me! Thou art great and wise:— Heart‐greatness is the woman’s dower.

Thou mad’st me as a warrior young That yearns to flesh a maiden sword, That burns for battle with the strong, That pants to crush some rebel horde.

Rebels I count all things in me That bear no impress of my King! “Fair is a great king’s jealousy; His worth he knoweth”; thus I sing.

III.

I stood upon a rock what time The moon rushed up above the plain: The crags were white like frosty rime; Her beams upon me fell like rain.

It was her harvest month of might: The vales and villages were glad; I cried—my palms against the light— Like one with sudden pinions clad,

“Whom seek’st thou, O thou rising moon That broad’nest like a warrior’s shield? Whom seest thou? Thou shalt see him soon, My Warrior ’mid the tented field!

“He reaches now some gorge’s mouth; Upon his helmet thou shalt shine;— Seest thou, O moon, from north to south, Another loved one like to mine?”

IV.

No merchant from the isles of spice Who stands in hushed hareem or hall Who parts his goods, and names the price, Was I, O friend! I gave thee all.

When from me I had all things cast Except thy gifts, that hour I found A gift I, too, might give at last— The being thou had’st made and crowned!

I am not nothing since thy vow Enriched my heart. _That_ wealth is mine: “Nothing” I call myself, that thou May’st hear, O love! and call me thine.

V.

High on the hills I sat at dawn Where cedar caverns, branching, breathe Their darkness o’er the dewy lawn, While slowly bloomed in heaven a wreath

Of eastern lilies. Soon the sun Ascended o’er the far sea‐tide Smiting to glory billows dun And clouds and trees; and loud I cried,

“Thou too shalt rise, _my_ sun—thou too— O’er darkling hearts in power shalt rise, And flame on souls, and flash on dew Of tears that dim expectant eyes.”

And every wind from vale and glen Sang loud, “He, too, shall rise and shine! A warrior he, a chief of men, A prince with might; and he is thine.”

VI.

Men praised my words. Thy spirit dwells Within me, strangely linked with mine: At times my mind’s remotest cells Brighten with thoughts less mine than thine.

A gleam of thee on me they cast: They wear thy look; they catch thy tone: A kingdom in my breast thou hast:— The words they praised were not mine own.

VII.

A chance was that—our meeting first? At morn I read a quaint old book That told of maiden palace‐nursed Who met a prince beside a brook.

“Beside _our_ brook the lilies blow,” I mused, “green‐girt, and silver‐tipped”; And, dreaming of their bells of snow, At eve adown the rocks I tripped.

Sudden I saw thee!—saw thee take Toward me thy path! I turned, and fled: So swiftly pushed I through the brake My girdle dropped:—still on I sped.

Had I but guessed that past the dates That hour the stranger youth made way, I ne’er had left my maiden mates Beside that brook, alone, to stray.

VIII.

Surely my thoughts, ere yet we met, Even then were loyal to their lord; The tides of all my being set Towards thee with blind yet just accord.

When first I kenned, through showers aslant The snowy Lebanonian line, When first I heard the night‐bird’s chant, Even then my beating heart was thine.

When minstrels sang the sacred strife, And thus I wept, “The land made free By warrior’s sword is as a wife Whose head is on her husband’s knee,”

Then, too, I nursed this hope sublime: My breast unconscious turned to thee: Let no one say there lived a time When thou wert nothing unto me!

IX.

How often, dimmed by grateful tears, I see that convent near the snow Wherein I lived those seven sweet years, And seven times saw the lilies blow;

There sent to couch on pavements cold, Fearless to suffer and to dare, And reverence learn from nuns dark‐stoled Who live in penance and in prayer.

There, too, of love they sang—there, too— Ah! not this love of maid and youth! To that first love oh! keep me true, Thou Who art Love at once and Truth!

Have I not heard of hearts that nursed This human love, yet wronged their troth? That first, great love they outraged first:— Falsehood to that was death to both!

X.

Now glorious grows my Warrior’s name: The very babes his praises spread: But late released, this morn they came Around me, clamouring, “Give us bread!”

His light was on them! Freed by him, A land redeemed I saw them tread! I gazed on them with eyes tear‐dim: I blessed them, and I gave them bread.

“What man is this?” our ancients sought: “This chief we know not can we trust?” Thou gav’st them back, unbribed, unbought, Their towers far off, their state august.

Thou gav’st to warriors proved of yore Victory, by carnage undisgraced; To matrons hearts unpierced by war; To maids their nuptials high and chaste.

To others, these:—but what to me? I speak it not: I know it well: The fawn whose head is on my knee As well as I that gift might tell!

The Veil Withdrawn.

Translated, By Permission, From The French Of Madame Craven, Author Of “A Sister’s Story,” “Fleurange,” Etc.

X.

Livia was the first to return to herself and put an end to my singular and ill‐timed reverie.

“I hope, however, you do not imagine my resolution is to be attributed to the _jettatura_,” she said.

These words immediately recalled me to a sense of all that had taken place the previous hour. I reflected an instant, and then replied:

“No; I know too well what you yourself would think of a vocation that had such an origin.”

“And yet I cannot deny,” she said, “that it has had a certain influence on my destiny; for, thanks to the _jettatura_, I have had a heavy, mysterious cross to bear. It is not to get rid of this cross I wish to leave the world, but to embrace it more closely and experience more fully the blessings it has revealed to me.”

“That is above my comprehension, Livia. I no longer understand you.”

“You know very well, however, do you not, that love is the chief element of happiness?” said she slowly.

“Yes, I believe that. Happiness consists chiefly in loving and being loved, I imagine. Everything else is merely accessory.”

“And you know what is accessory loses all importance when the whole heart and soul are absorbed in some adored and adorable being?”

“Yes; ... but the difficulty is to love thus though I say this hesitatingly, lest it seem ungrateful to Lorenzo.”

“You are right, Ginevra. It is very difficult, and even impossible, in this world, as you will some day realize more fully than you do now.”

We were both silent for a few moments.

“And my father,” I at last resumed—“what will my poor father say to this separation?”

“What would he say, I beg to know, if a noble, wealthy man—in fact, a great lord like Lorenzo—should ask my hand on condition of carrying me away, like you, beyond the mountains and the sea? Do you think he would refuse? Well, neither will he refuse Him who demands my heart and life. For, after all, is not he alone great—the only Lord?... But of course my father will decide the matter. It will be when and as he wishes.”

This conversation gave me a glimpse of a world into which the hour had not yet come for me to penetrate, and I was diverted from the thoughts it awakened in my soul by the excitement and agitation that followed. But every word of this last conversation remained fixed in my memory; whereas the incidents and impressions of the following day only seem like a dream—yes, like a dream when I recall the confusion of that last day, the preparations both for my wedding and my journey (for I was to leave my father’s house and my native land nearly at the same time), Ottavia’s feverish excitement, and the quiet activity of Livia, who thought of everything, and arranged everything calmly and in order. Then there was a succession of calls from our young friends and relatives, who, according to the custom in our country, could not be present at the wedding, and therefore came to take leave of me on the eve, and admire at their leisure the rich presents of the bridegroom, especially the jewels, which were unusually splendid. Among these young girls I particularly remember my two cousins, Mariuccia and Teresina, who, as well as their mother, Donna Clelia, experienced many conflicting emotions on the occasion of their young cousin’s brilliant marriage. But interest and curiosity finally overcame the grain of ill‐humor which my aunt especially could not help feeling at seeing me attain a rank and position which her most ambitious flights could not hope for her daughters to obtain. Donna Clelia was my father’s sister, but she did not resemble him in the least. She was married to a wealthy man of an obscure family, and, as she was remarkable for nothing but her ability as a manager and her kind heart, she had passed her life in a different sphere from that my father had attained by his talents and celebrity. This sometimes caused a temporary feeling of spite, but she was in the main an excellent woman and a good mother.

At length the great day came and nearly passed away; for it was not till night came on—that is, about nine o’clock in the evening—that the ceremony took place. The large _salon_ was illuminated with all the lights in the crystal chandelier, and at the farther end of the room an altar had been placed, adorned with lights and flowers. Before it stood good old Don Placido, awaiting those he was to unite. His long, white beard and Capuchin habit formed a singular contrast to the elegant toilets around him and the total lack of any religious aspect—as was proper at a wedding in the midst of a brilliant assembly like this, and in a place better fitted for worldly gayety than the celebration of a holy rite.

Don Fabrizio soon appeared, leading the pale, trembling bride clothed in white, and wearing on her forehead a coronet of diamonds whose _fleurons_ indicated her new rank. Every eye was fastened on her, as she knelt beside the bride‐groom at the feet of the venerable old priest who had baptized her, and was now waiting to bless her marriage. I only remember that the very moment when Don Placido was joining our hands Livia’s words occurred to my mind: “You are going to pronounce the most fearful vow there is in the world,” and my voice failed me. Lorenzo, on the contrary, spoke unhesitatingly and with perfect distinctness. Don Placido then addressed us a few words that affected me to tears, for he spoke of her who was not here to accompany her child to the altar; and this sorrowful recollection, alluded to in language so touching, made me forget everything else, and for a few moments entirely absorbed me. I cannot recollect anything more till, leaning on Lorenzo’s arm, I descended the grand staircase, in order to go to the palace he owned at a short distance, and where he had lately resided. The night was glorious, the air soft and balmy, and I took a seat in the open carriage with nothing around me but my lace veil. My bridal dress was becoming, notwithstanding my paleness, and the diamonds I was covered with sparkled in the light of the torches borne by the attendants. A murmur of admiration ran through the crowd at my appearance; and when Lorenzo took a seat at my side, the air resounded with cheers and enthusiastic exclamations. We at last set off amid cries of “_Evviva i sposi!_” “_Evviva il duca!_” “_Evviva la duchessa!_”(137) ... We set off, but not alone. According to our custom, we were preceded, accompanied, and followed by a crowd of relatives and friends who thronged the house which I now entered for the first time. I was obliged to receive them all, listen to them, reply, and, above all, do the honors of a place more familiar to every one there than to myself!

This old palace had been very magnificent once, but it was now in the dilapidated condition into which all buildings for a long time uninhabited generally fall. On this occasion the walls were covered with rich hangings, and on every side there was a profusion of lights and flowers. It was brilliantly illuminated without, and through the open windows of the _salon_ came the sound of ravishing music in the garden. For this evening, at least, they had succeeded in giving to this ancient habitation not only a sumptuous and cheerful aspect, but one really fairy‐like.

It will not seem surprising that, agitated and excited as I had been, the brilliancy of such a _soirée_ was repugnant to my feelings. It may not even seem astonishing that, in spite of all that was apparently combined to intoxicate me with joy and pride, a scene so brilliant, so little in accordance with the solemn emotions of the day, should have produced an entirely opposite effect on me. The transition had been too sudden and abrupt. This was the first time but once I had ever been in the gay world, and the recollections associated with that occasion were the most terrible of my life, as well as the most deeply graven on my memory. It is not strange, therefore, that I felt a painful depression of spirits, as well as a fearful embarrassment and an irresistible desire to escape from them all—even from Lorenzo himself, whose radiant look seemed so unable to comprehend my feelings that I could not turn to him for the sympathy that had heretofore inspired me with so much confidence in him. I looked around in vain for a glimpse of my compassionate sister; but she had been made no exception to the custom forbidding young girls to be present at nuptial festivals. My father, after escorting me to the door of my new home, had returned, not being able to overcome his repugnance to mingle in the world. Mario that evening was cold and sarcastic. I felt, therefore, alone and frightened, and quite overcome by emotion and fatigue. In addition to this, I had a severe headache from the weight of the coronet I wore, and, feeling nearly ready to faint, I went to one of the balconies, when, perceiving some steps leading to a vast _loggia_, I hastily descended, and almost ran to seat myself on a stone bench at the end of the terrace which overlooked a part of the garden more retired and obscure than the rest. There I felt I could breathe freely. Away from the crowd and the dazzling lights, the sound of the music faintly heard at a distance, and looking up with delight through the foliage at the tranquil heavens brilliant with stars, I took off the rich diadem that burdened my head, and felt relieved as the evening wind blew back my hair and cooled my brow. I leaned my head against my clasped hands, and did what had hitherto seemed impossible—I collected my thoughts a moment: I reflected and prayed.

I was married. My past life was at an end. A new and untried life had begun. What had it in reserve for me? What lay in the future, seemingly so brilliant, but in reality so dark? I could not tell, and at this moment I felt a vague terror rather than joyful anticipations. For the second time that evening Livia’s voice seemed to resound in my ears, and this time to echo the words my mother had written. I seemed to make them some promise I hardly comprehended myself, and I murmured the words: “Rather die!...”

Lorenzo’s voice recalled me to myself. His eyes, which had never lost sight of me, immediately perceived my absence, and he was now at my side. He was alarmed at first at the sight of my tears, my disordered hair, and the coronet lying on the stone bench beside me, but was reassured when I looked up with an appealing expression, and understood me without giving me the trouble to speak.

“Poor Ginevra!” he softly said in a caressing tone of protection which he so well knew how to assume. “Yes, you are right. This display is foolish, this crowd is odious, and has been too much for your strength. And how absurd,” he continued, “to hide this golden hair, and burden so young and fair a brow with heavy jewels! You did not need them, my Ginevra. You were certainly charming with the coronet on, but much more so as you are.... Ah! do not shake your head. You must allow me to say what I please now. You no longer have the right to impose silence on me, and I am no longer bound to obey you....”

So saying, he led me slowly back to the house, but, instead of returning to the rooms still crowded with company, he took me another way leading to a _boudoir_ of a circular form, which was ornamented with particular care. The gilding, the mirrors, and the paintings did not seem to have suffered from the effects of time like the rest of the house. Nothing was wanting that could give this little room a comfortable and sumptuous aspect. The soft light of a lamp suspended from the ceiling was diffused throughout the room, and perfect silence reigned.

“This is your room, Ginevra,” said Lorenzo, carelessly throwing on one of the tables the circlet of diamonds he held in his hands. “Here you can quietly repose undisturbed by the crowd. There is absolutely nothing to disturb you here; the music itself can scarcely be heard. I will leave you, my Ginevra, to explain your absence and endure till the end of the evening the fearful task it pleases them to impose on us, but from which, at least, they must allow me to deliver you.”

XI.

The following day, as the breeze declined, I was standing beside Lorenzo on the deck of the ship that was bearing us away. I had left behind me all I had hitherto known and loved, and my eyes were yet tearful from my last farewells. I stood looking at the receding shores of Sicily, and the magnificent amphitheatre of Messina rising up before us, which presents so imposing an appearance when seen from the sea. We soon passed between the two famous whirlpools which often afford a comparison for those among us _voyageurs_ over the sea of life who escape one only to fall into the other—a comparison figuratively very apt, though in reality it is quite doubtful if in our day any navigator ever falls either into Scylla or Charybdis.

When nothing more was to be seen, and night came on with its serene and starry heavens, revealing only the outline like a silvery vapor which marked the coast of Italy, I consented at last to leave the place where I had been standing motionless, and took a seat under an awning Lorenzo had had put up for me on deck. During the hour of calm repose I enjoyed there—my first and almost only hour of perfect happiness!—I was inspired with renewed hope and confidence while listening to the penetrating accents of the husband whose idol I was, as he depicted the future in language whose magic charm seemed to open a whole life of pleasure before me. After a few days’ rest at Naples, we were to take a delightful journey through Italy and France. We should behold all the places and objects I had so often seen in imagination, and whose names were so familiar to my memory. The interest I was capable of feeling in every subject, the curiosity so natural to the young, and the undeveloped sense of the beautiful which Lorenzo knew so well how to draw out and gratify, the taste for art with which he was gifted—all these chords, as yet nearly untried, seemed to vibrate within me as I listened to him. I was like a docile instrument from which a skilful hand knows how to draw forth sounds hitherto unsuspected. As in certain compositions of the great masters, the same musical idea is persistently reproduced in the most varied modulations, so on all subjects and on all occasions he found means to lead my heart back to the certain conviction of being loved—loved as much as in my most ambitious dreams I had ever imagined it would be sweet to be loved. At that moment the vow so “fearful” seemed easy to keep; and if Livia’s words had occurred to me then, they would doubtless have excited a smile!...

One false note, however, or at least a doubtful one, disturbed for an instant the harmony that seemed to reign between us.

Every one who has crossed, on a beautiful summer night, the sea that washes those enchanted shores, has doubtless experienced the undefinable impression of mingled delight and peace, enthusiasm and dreaminess, that sometimes comes over one while watching the stars becoming more intense in their brilliancy, and the luminous sea like a widespread mirror reflecting the immensity of the heavens. We grew silent, and after a time I rose and went to the side of the ship to contemplate more fully the beauty of the night, and there, with uplifted face and clasped hands, one of those inarticulate prayers rose from my heart in which the happiness of the present moment is confounded with admiration for the wonders of the divine creation, and the soul truly feels itself greater than the entire universe, because it alone has the power to render thanks to Him who not only created it but the whole world.

Lorenzo had followed me, and taken a seat on the bench that ran along the side of the ship, where, with his head leaning on one hand, and his back to the sea, he sat intently gazing at me. Filled with devout thoughts, I took his hand, and, pressing it in mine, I said: “O my dear husband! let us offer up one short prayer together—a prayer of thanksgiving to God....” His only reply was to seize both of my hands, and kiss them one after the other, and then to laugh gently, as one would at the prattling of a child!... A sudden sensation of pain darted through my heart like an arrow; and if it had not been so dark, he might have seen how pale I at once turned. But he did not notice or suspect my emotion, though his eyes were fastened on my face. “_Beatrice in suso, ed io in lei guardava_,”(138) he said in his most caressing tone. Then he continued: “Your eyes are my heaven, Ginevra. I need not raise them any higher.”

The sentiment to which I had appealed was one so utterly unknown to him that he unconsciously destroyed the emotion I felt.

“Ah! Lorenzo,” I exclaimed in my anguish, “Dante had a different meaning, or Beatrice would not have allowed him to use such language.” Then I stopped, obeying for the first time the instinctive feeling, so painful but right, that checks every word on a woman’s lips which, as has been so well expressed, would be profaned if not understood.

But this was rather instinctive than the result of thought with me. And though the ray of truth that time was to reveal more fully was vivid, it was only transient, ... and my momentary disappointment left no permanent impression at the time, though I did not forget it, and the recollection came back at a later day.

Coming from Sicily, the sight of the Bay of Naples does not, of course, inspire the same degree of wonder and admiration felt by those who come from the north; but it was with a feeling of delight my eyes wandered around, after passing Capri, and beheld at the right the wonderful chain of mountains at whose foot lies the charming shore of Sorrento; at the left Posilippo and all the pleasant villas that crown its height; in front the marked outline of Vesuvius standing out against the majestic Apennines in the distance; and, finally, Naples, smiling and lovely, seated on the inner shore of its beautiful bay! Whatever may be said as to the possibility of finding anywhere else in the world a prospect as magnificent as this, and even if it is true that there is one, it would be impossible to remember it when the view I have just described is presented to the eye for the first time.

While we were thus rapidly crossing the bay, and I was gazing on every side with delight, Lorenzo pointed out the Villa Reale, beyond which stood the house we were to live in, surrounded by a large garden—a charming habitation which combined all the attractions of the country and all the advantages of the city, and which, when I entered it for the first time, seemed like a beautiful frame to the sunny picture of my future life.

On this occasion we only remained a fortnight at Naples; but this was sufficient to make me appreciate my new home, and the prospect of returning to it an additional pleasure in the journey before us. It is, in fact, only pleasant to travel around the world when we can see in imagination a place awaiting us where some day we are to find rest and deposit the treasures we have accumulated.... Happily for me, I was then far from foreseeing those I should have to bring back when I returned to this spot!...

The day after our arrival Lorenzo took me for the first time into his studio, where I was filled with astonishment at the exquisite perfection of the productions I found there. I had often heard him called a great artist, and I now realized it was no idle flattery. But I involuntarily turned my eyes away from many of them, and stood gazing with admiration at a statue which was incontestably the finest in the gallery. It represented a young girl whose flowing drapery was marvellous in execution and grace. Her face, though perfectly beautiful, had an expression of grief and terror. A lamp stood at her feet, but the light had gone out.

Lorenzo’s pride as an artist had never been gratified with a more lively or more _naïve_ admiration than mine.

“O Ginevra _mia_!” he exclaimed, “if I have hitherto been considered an artist, what shall I be when I have you for my model and my judge?”

He then told me that this beautiful statue represented a vestal, but it lacked a pendant which he had never been able to execute.

“But now,” he added, “I am sure of succeeding. I have long sought a model for my second vestal, and at last I have found one.”

He put my hair back with one hand, and, examining me attentively with a thoughtful air, continued, as if talking to himself: “Yes, ... these faultless features, the noble, dignified air of the head, the profound expression of the eyes, and the gravity of the mouth, constitute the very type I want. I could not find a better combination of all I need for my noble, mysterious vestal—the vigilant, faithful guardian of the sacred fire. I will begin it to‐morrow.”

“Not here, will you?” said I, glancing uneasily at a Bacchante as unlike as possible to the statue I had been admiring, and which I could hardly believe came from the same hand. Lorenzo looked at me with astonishment, and hardly seemed to comprehend me. He only regarded such things from an artistic point of view—perhaps a valid excuse, but it was the second time within two days his uncommon penetration had been at fault. He was really skilful at reading a passing thought that had not been expressed, and in penetrating somewhat below the surface, but he was incapable of looking deeply into a soul, or of following it when it rose to certain heights. When I clearly made known my wishes, however, he immediately assented to them, and took me into an adjoining room that was smaller.

“Just as you please,” he said. “You shall come here to sit to me, and I promise you, Ginevra, that there shall be nothing in this studio except what you are willing to look at.”

XII.

During my first stay at Naples we made no visits, and our doors were closed against every one. It was our honeymoon. Lorenzo chose to pass it entirely alone with me, and I was far from wishing it otherwise. Every one respected our solitude. Nevertheless, as soon as my arrival was known, Lorenzo’s friends and acquaintances, with the proverbial courtesy of Neapolitan society, sent me their cards as a sign of welcome. We looked them over together in the evening, and I thus learned the names of the acquaintances I should soon have to make. Lorenzo sometimes laughingly made comments on them which were more or less flattering and diffuse. One evening, however, he excited a feeling of surprise and uneasiness. I had, as usual, taken up the cards that had been left that day, when I saw him change color at the sight of one, which he snatched hastily from my hand, and tore into a thousand pieces. The extreme suddenness of the act checked the question I was on the point of asking. I remained silent, but the name I had read on the card was graven ineffaceably on my memory in consequence of the occurrence. I shall never forget it. Lorenzo quickly recovered himself at seeing my surprise, and told me it was the card of a foreign lady who had left Naples, and whose call I never need trouble myself to return. Then taking up the next card, he read aloud:

“Stella d’Oria, Contessa di San Giulio.” “Ah! as for her,” he exclaimed, “you will like her, I know, and I am willing you should become friends. I used to consider her a little too perfect to suit me, but I am of a different opinion when it is a question of my wife....”

The new statue was begun without any delay. I sat to him two or three hours every day, and in the evening we took long walks on the heights of Camaldoli, where we were most sure of not meeting any one. He enjoyed my admiration for the wonderful aspect of nature around us, and took pleasure in giving me a fresh surprise every day. And he was not yet tired of entertaining me with the varied events of his past life, and of witnessing the interest his conversation invariably excited in one who possessed an intelligent but unstored mind. Complete harmony seemed to reign between us, and yet more than once during the brief duration of these happy days it was suddenly disturbed by some discordant note which caused the vague uneasiness I have already spoken of that seemed like one of those momentary shooting pains that are the premonitions of some fixed, incurable disease. In both cases they are experienced a long time before the cause is understood, and the disease is often far advanced before the tendency of these symptoms is clear and unmistakable.

The terrible chastisement that followed the gratification of my vanity on that one occasion had inspired me, as I have said, with a kind of repugnance, if not terror, to have my face praised. This repugnance on the part of a young girl who had reason to be proud of her beauty was an originality which had perhaps given me additional attraction in Lorenzo’s eyes. Now I was his wife, I could not, of course, expect him to obey me and keep up the same reserve in our intercourse. And yet how many times, especially during those long sittings in the studio, I longed to impose silence on him!... How many times I felt a blush mount to my forehead when, after arranging my drapery and attitude, unbraiding and putting my long hair to suit his own fancy, and making me change my position a dozen times, he would fall into an ecstasy against which my whole soul revolted! Was this the passion full of mingled tenderness and respect that I should have been as proud to inspire as to experience? Was this really being loved as I had longed to be? I sometimes asked myself if his admiration for the hands, arms, face, and whole form of a statue was of a different nature. I did not yet go so far as to wonder if some other woman, merely endowed with greater beauty than I, could not easily rob me of a love that had so frail a foundation....

Fortunately, we left Naples when the fortnight was at an end, though the statue was not half finished. Our long _tête‐à‐tête_ had not proved to be all I had anticipated. I hoped more from the journey, and this hope was not disappointed. Lorenzo was capable of being the best and most intelligent of guides everywhere, and such he was during our rapid journey through Italy, where we only remained long enough in each city to admire the monuments and museums, though we did not follow the beaten track of ordinary tourists. Lorenzo thought himself versed in everything relating to art and history, and yet he did not seem to realize that the church had also had its _rôle_ in the history of his country. Therefore one side of Italian history escaped him entirely, and I do not know if, even at Rome, it had ever occurred to him there had been any change whatever of religion between the building of the Temple of Vesta and the time when the dome of Michael Angelo was raised in the air. Both are worthy of admiration in a different degree, and he regarded them with the same eye. But I did not then perceive all he left unexpressed. My thoughts and attention were absorbed by all there was around me to see. I was astonished to find myself in a world so fruitful in sources of interest that perhaps there is no one man on earth able to investigate them all equally. One alone, independent of the rest, might really suffice for the study of a whole life‐time.

At length we arrived at Paris. Lorenzo, of course, had frequently made long visits there, and had a host of friends and acquaintances there as well as everywhere else. A few days after our arrival, I attended a large ball for the first time since my marriage, and the second in my life. I heard my name murmured on every side. I was surrounded with homage and overwhelmed with compliments. I was afterwards informed I had been the object of universal admiration; that nothing was talked of but the beauty of the Duchessa di Valenzano and her diamonds; and that a journal accustomed to give an account of the gayeties of the season had devoted a long paragraph to the description of my dress and person.

All this was reported to us by a young cousin of Lorenzo’s whose name, in reality, was Landolfo Landini, though his friends usually called him Lando Landi. He had lived in Paris several years, and considered himself almost a Frenchman. He had acquired the stamp of those people who have no aim in life—as easily imitated as they are unworthy of being so—and had wasted the natural cleverness and good‐nature which redeemed some of his faults. He prided himself particularly on using the language of polite society, and was under the illusion that he completely disguised his nationality. When he fell in with a fellow‐countryman, however, he allowed his natural disposition to reassert itself, and indulged in a flow of language that might have been amusing to some, but to me was frivolous and tiresome, and, after listening to the account of my grand success the previous evening with a coolness that seemed to astonish him, I fell into a reverie that had more than one cause. Why had Lorenzo watched me so attentively all the evening before? It was the first time we had appeared in society together, and he was anxious I should create a sensation. He himself had carefully selected the dress I was to wear, and I was pleased with the admiration with which he regarded me. On this point I had no hesitation: I was anxious to please _him_, but not to _please_; and as to the gay world into which he now introduced me, I entered it with the pleasure and curiosity of a child, and the lively interest inspired by everything that is new; but I had become strangely insensible to the pleasure of being admired, or even the gratification that springs from vanity.

In alluding once more to this fact, I will add that it was the effect of an exceptional grace; for at no remote period of my youth had my mother detected the germ of this poisonous plant which was to shed so baleful an influence over the simplicity and uprightness of my nature.

This plant had been swept away in a single tempestuous night, and a divine hand had plucked out almost its last root. Was this peculiar grace (the forerunner of a much greater one I was to receive at a later day) granted me in answer to the prayer of my dying mother? Or was it to the sincere repentance that had so overwhelmed my soul? These things are among the mysteries of divine mercy beyond one’s power to fathom. But it is certain I was thus preserved from one of the greatest dangers that await most ladies in the fashionable world. I was very far from being invulnerable on all points, as the future showed only too plainly; but I was on this.

Nevertheless, I had not been put to so decided a proof before. Never had I seen or imagined so brilliant a scene. I was delighted and charmed, and unhesitatingly gave myself up to the enjoyment of the evening; but the incense lavished on me added nothing to my pleasure. It only produced a certain timidity that lessened my ease and greatly diminished my enjoyment. I sincerely think if I had been less beautiful or more simply dressed—in a word, less admired—I should have been happier and much more at my ease.

In my embarrassment I was glad to find Lorenzo always near me, and the more so because I had no idea it was not absolutely the custom. But I noticed with some surprise that he observed every movement I made with a strange attention, and listened to every word I uttered when addressed. Perhaps others did not perceive this, but I understood his quick, observant glance and the expressive features he knew so well how to control, and I knew also the art with which he could seem occupied with what was going on at one end of a room, while his whole attention was absorbed in what was said at the other. In short, I felt he had not lost sight of me a single instant the whole evening, and that not one of my words had escaped him. I wondered if his affection for me was the sole cause of this constantly‐marked solicitude. This was the primary cause of my uneasiness. Another arose from the conversation that was actually going on in my presence, which I listened to with pain, and as a passive witness; for I could take no part in it.

How could Lorenzo take any pleasure in the trivial details, the unmeaning gossip, and the doubtful jests of Landolfo Landini?... How could he question him, reply to what he said, and encourage him to continue? And yet Lorenzo was a very different person from his cousin. He was very far from leading an aimless life. He had undertaken long, dangerous journeys that had entailed great exertion and incredible fatigue, in order to increase his extensive and varied knowledge. He was capable of continued application. Talents like his could only be acquired by profound study of a hundred different subjects, as well as by long, serious, persevering practice in the art in which he had become such a proficient. One can hardly conceive of frivolity in an artist, and yet this anomaly exists. I have since remarked it in others, as I observed it now in Lorenzo—a proof, doubtless, that to soar above the every‐day world, and keep at such heights, talent and genius, no more than the soul, should be separated from God!

The morning at length passed away, and about four o’clock we ordered the _calèche_ for a long drive. The first hour was devoted to making numerous purchases. Lando Landi escorted us. Perfect familiarity with the shops of Paris was one of his specialties. Above all, he knew where to find those curiosities that are almost objects of art, and which have the gift, so precious to those who sell them, of inducing people who make the first purchase to continue indefinitely; for each new object of that class acquires additional value in the eyes of a connoisseur, and in such matters, more than any other, _l’appétit vient en mangeant_.(139)

We remained more than an hour in the first shop we stopped at. Lorenzo was in his element. He was a genuine connoisseur in everything. He examined bronzes, porcelains, furniture of every epoch, carved wood from all countries, and old tapestry, with a sure and experienced eye, and the merchant, seeing whom he had to deal with, brought out of his secret recesses treasures hidden from the vulgar, and multiplied temptations Lorenzo seemed very little inclined to resist. As for me, I took a seat beside the counter, and looked with indifference at the various objects that were spread out before me, but of which I was quite unable to perceive the value, which was somewhat conventional. I was a little astonished at the number and value of Lorenzo’s purchases, but, on the whole, the business did not interest me much, and I felt glad when it was at an end.

“Bravo! Lorenzo,” said Lando as soon as we re‐entered the carriage. “You don’t do things half way. That is the way I like to see other people spend their money. It consoles me for not having any myself to throw out of the window.”

“I have got to entirely refurnish my palace in Sicily,” said Lorenzo, “as well as to decorate my house in Naples, which is quite unworthy of her who is to live in it.”

“You are jesting, Lorenzo,” said I. “You know very well I think nothing is lacking.”

“That is the consequence of your extreme youth, my dear cousin,” said Lando. “Wait a while, and you will find out how much becomes indispensable to one who has lived in Paris.”

“At all events,” said Lorenzo, “now or never is the time for me to gratify my fancy. I am just going to housekeeping. I have barely spent a third of my present fortune, and am perfectly confident as to that I shall have; for everybody knows that a cause undertaken by Fabrizio dei Monti is a cause gained.”

At that instant a beautiful lady in a conspicuous dress passed us in an elegant _calèche_, and the conversation suddenly took a different turn. Lorenzo silently questioned his cousin with a look, and Lando began to give him in a low tone some information which an instinctive repugnance prevented me from listening to....

I began (perhaps unjustly) to conceive a strong dislike to this Cousin Landolfo, and I imagine he would have been very much astonished had he guessed with what eye I now looked at his face, generally considered so handsome. It was of a type often admired out of Italy, because somewhat different from that foreigners are accustomed to, who have no idea to what a degree it is common in that country. A dark complexion, rather handsome eyes, fine teeth, and curly black hair, formed in my eyes a most unpleasing combination, and, without knowing a word they were saying, I felt positively certain he had never in his life uttered a syllable I should think worth listening to.

At length we left the boulevards, drove through the Champs Elysées, and at last found ourselves in the shade of the Bois de Boulogne. While my two companions were conversing together in a low tone, I abandoned myself to the pleasure of being in a cool place where I could breathe more freely; for, unaccustomed to going out during the middle of the day in summer, the heat had seemed overpowering. Apart from this, there was nothing here to strike a person accustomed to the loveliest scenery in the world. Unused as I was to Parisian life, the charm of which often produces an impression that effaces all others, the things I saw had no other prestige in my eyes than what they were in themselves. Viewed in this light, the museums, churches, and palaces seemed less grand and magnificent than those we had seen before, and the promenades less picturesque and less varied. I missed particularly the lovely vistas which everywhere in Italy form the background of the picture, and attract the eye, and elevate the mind to something higher than the mere treasures of history and art that have accumulated in all old Italian cities.

And yet it cannot be denied that Paris has the power of making itself preferred to any other place in the world. It speaks a different language to every individual, and is comprehended by all. It is filled with treasures of every kind, and has wherewithal to gratify every taste indiscriminately, from that which is evil in its vilest form to an excess of goodness amounting to sublimity; from the most refined extravagance of fashion to the extreme renunciation of charity; and from pleasure in its most dangerous aspect to piety in its most perfect manifestations. It flatters vanity and vice more than would be dared anywhere else, and yet it prides itself on being able to produce examples of goodness, devotedness, and humility that are almost unparalleled. In a word, every one, for a different reason, feels more at home there than anywhere else in the world. He who once learns to love Paris finds it difficult to like any other city as well; and he who has lived there finds it hard to resign himself to live in any other place. It is the one city on earth that has been able to vie with Rome in the honor of being the home of all nations....

To Be Continued.

The Rock Of Rest.

S. MATTHEW xvi. 18.

Tossed on many a wave of doctrine, Restless, weary, ill at ease With beliefs that quiet others, But as vague to me as these; I have done with idly chasing Phantom lights, that rise and fall; Drift no more with drifting doctrines— Grown indifferent to them all!

Shall I long regret the visions Of a rest so inly wooed? Shall I long go on deploring Creeds, that but opinions proved? Quenched be every weak emotion! Bring my future weal or woe, Weal nor woe shall blight or bless me— Faith, nor creed, shall move me now!

Murmuring thus, there came a whisper From the Friend who knew me best: “Seek the rock on which I builded: On that rock alone is rest.” Suddenly, with light supernal, Faith, the higher reason, came, And my foot touched base eternal— Benedictions on his name!

R. S. W.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM.

Anglican Orders. II.

The Validity Of The Edwardine Rite.

Before entering upon the theology of the question, we must meet an initial objection of Anglicans to our attempting to criticise the Edwardine rite. They insist that the question has been settled long ago, and in their favor, by no less an authority than the Holy See and its legate, Cardinal Pole. The cardinal, they say, in accordance with instructions from Rome, admitted all the schismatical bishops and clergy, who were not irreconcilables, in the orders they had received in schism, whether according to the Pontifical or according to the Edwardine rite. Great stress has been laid upon this by Anglican controversialists from Bramhall down to Mr. Haddan; and certainly, if it be a true statement of the case, the value of the objection can scarcely be overrated. Its truth must be decided by an appeal to the Papal briefs and to the official acts of the legate.

The bull of March 8, 1553‐4, granting full legatine faculties to Pole, authorizes him to deal with two classes of the bishops and clergy—viz., of the clergy, those who have not received orders at all, and those who have received them ill; that is to say, orders null and orders irregular (ordines quos nunquam, aut male susceperunt). The bishops, in like manner, who have received cathedral churches from Henry or Edward are divided into those on whom “the gift of consecration has been heretofore conferred,” and “those on whom it is not yet conferred” (munere consecrationis eis hactenus impenso vel si illud eis nondum impensum exstiterit). The cases in which the ordination or consecration had been validly though irregularly conferred are also described as “received from heretical or schismatical bishops, or in other respects unduly” (quod iis ab episcopis hæreticis et schismaticis aut alias minus rite et non servatâ formâ ecclesiæ consuetâ impensum fuit). By these last words power is given “to consider cases in which the ancient form of the sacrament had not been observed, and, if the form used was sufficient for validity, to admit it as such, and to admit a person ordained in such a manner to exercise the orders so received.”

Canon Estcourt shows that the “minus rite” cannot be intended to _designate_, as Mr. Haddan and others have maintained, the Edwardine orders. He appeals to the dispensations granted to no less than eight bishops, all ordained according to the Pontifical in Henry VIII.’s time, wherein their orders are referred to as received “ab episcopis hæreticis et schismaticis aut alias _minus rite_.”

In the faculties granted by Pole to his bishops for the absolution and rehabilitation of priests, he carefully explains their limitation to cases in which “the form and intention of the church have been preserved.” Thus it is clear “that though the cardinal had power to recognize ordinations in which some departure had been made from the accustomed form, yet that, on examination, he found no other form in use which could be admitted by the church as valid.” In the same faculties he permits the ordination, if they are otherwise fit, of those whose orders are “null.” He describes them as persons holding benefices without being ordained.

In 1554, Bonner, Bishop of Bath and Wells, gave a commission to his vicar‐ general “to deal with married laics who, in pretence and under color of priestly orders, had rashly and unlawfully mingled themselves in ecclesiastical rights, and had obtained _de facto_ parochial churches with cure of souls and ecclesiastical dignities, against the sacred sanctions of the canons and ecclesiastical rights, and to deprive and remove them from the said churches and dignities.” It is impossible to conjecture who else these unordained beneficiaries can be, if they are not the Edwardine clergy.

Anglicans, on the other hand, have made a great deal of a certain testimonial letter granted by Bonner to Scory, which speaks of the latter’s sin and repentance, and of his subsequent rehabilitation by Bonner, and restoration to the public exercise of the ecclesiastical ministry within the diocese of London. As Scory is spoken of as “our confrère, lately Bishop of Chichester,” it is urged that the ministry to the exercise of which he was restored must have been that of a bishop. Canon Estcourt, after pointing out certain grounds for suspecting the authenticity of this letter, remarks that Bonner’s faculties only extended to the case of priests, “so that Scory must have acknowledged the nullity of his consecration, in order to enable Bonner to deal with him at all”; and, after all, “the letter does no more than enable him to celebrate Mass in churches within the diocese of London”—in fact, to exercise that office, and that office only, which he had received “servatâ formâ et intentione ecclesiæ.” So much for the Holy See’s approval of the Edwardine orders.

Anglicans have tried to make out a charge of inconsistency against the Holy See, on the ground that it did not recognize the episcopate of Ridley, Latimer, and Ferrer—who were all three supposed to have been consecrated according to the Roman Pontifical—but degraded them from the priesthood and inferior orders only. Canon Estcourt admits that Ferrer was treated merely as a priest, but he shows that his consecration had been a medley rite, in which the order of the Pontifical was not followed. As to Latimer, he remarks that there is no pretence for saying that he was not degraded from the episcopate; and that, with regard to Ridley, the great weight of authority makes for his having been degraded from the episcopate. Cardinal Pole, in his commission, ordered that both Ridley and Latimer should be degraded “from their promotion and dignity of bishops, priests, and all other ecclesiastical orders.” The Bishop of Lincoln, in his exhortation to Ridley, says: “You were made a bishop according to our laws.” Heylin says that they were both degraded from the episcopate. The only authority for the contrary opinion is Foxe, who makes the acting commissioner Brookes, Bishop of Gloucester, conclude an address to Ridley thus: “We take you for no bishop, and therefore we will the sooner have done with you.” Foxe then proceeds to describe the actual ceremony as a degradation from the priesthood. Canon Estcourt’s reviewer in the _Dublin Review_ of July, 1873, maintains that Foxe was right. The reviewer thinks that Ridley and Latimer were not degraded from the episcopate, because the _status episcopalis_ was not recognized in those who, though _validly_ consecrated, had not received the Papal confirmation. Upon this we remark, 1st, that the ceremonies of degradation came into use when it was a very common opinion in the church that degradation destroyed the _potestas ordinis_. 2. That the form of degradation, in so many words, expresses the taking away the _potestas ordinis_—“amovemus a te,” “tollemus tibi,” “potestatem offerendi,” “potestatem consecrandi”—and this in contradistinction to another form of perpetual suspension—“ab executione potestatis.” The ceremony aims at effecting the destruction of orders, so far as this is possible. It may be called a “destruction of orders,” in the same sense that mortal sin is called the crucifixion of Christ anew. Indeed, in one place, the clause, “quantum in nobis est,” is introduced. 3. Degradation does not depend upon previous confirmation; for Innocent II. (1139) thus deals with those who had been consecrated bishops by the antipope Peter Leo, who therefore assuredly had never been confirmed or acknowledged in any way by the pope. After exclaiming, “Quoscunque exaltaverat degradamus,” etc., etc., “he violently wrested their pastoral staffs from their hands, and ignominiously tore from their shoulders the pontifical palls in which their high dignity resides. Their rings, too, which express their espousals with the church, showing them no mercy, he drew off.”(140) If the Bishop of Gloucester really acted as Foxe describes, he did so on his own responsibility, and in the teeth of ecclesiastical precedent.

Perhaps the most important and interesting portion of Canon Estcourt’s book is that in which he discusses the theological value of the Edwardine form. It is not merely of controversial importance, but is really calculated to throw light upon the theology of orders, which, as a Catholic contemporary well observes, is still in course of formation.

Canon Estcourt, following Benedict XIV., _De Syn. Dioc._, lib. viii. cap. 10, maintains, as the more probable opinion, 1, that, in the case of the priesthood, the second imposition of hands, with the prayer for the infusion “of the virtue of the sacerdotal grace,” is all that is really necessary for validity; although, in practice, we of the West must ordain again _sub conditione_, if the tradition of the instruments has been omitted. 2. That in the case of priests, the third imposition of hands, with the words, “Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins thou dost remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose sins thou retainest, they are retained,” is not essential, and, if omitted, is to be supplied without repeating the rest. 3. That as to the episcopate, the “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” with the imposition of hands, is all that is essential; and, finally, he allows, in deference to the Holy Office (_vide infra_), that the form—_i.e._, the prayer immediately accompanying the imposition of hands—need not express the specific character or work of the order conferred, as, for instance, the Holy Sacrifice in the ordination of a priest.

Consistently with these principles, Canon Estcourt admits that, _so far as words go_, “Receive the Holy Ghost” is a sufficient form both for the episcopate and the priesthood. As regards the episcopate, this has been long a common opinion. As regards the priesthood, the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition, in 1704, decided that certain Abyssinians had been validly ordained priests by imposition of hands and the words, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.” From this it follows that the Anglican forms for ordaining priests and bishops are, _so far as words go_, sufficient. They are as follows, from 1549 to 1662, for the priesthood: “Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained; and be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God and of his holy sacraments, in the name of the Father, etc.” For the episcopate: “Take the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is in thee by imposition of hands; for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and soberness.” In 1662, certain changes were introduced by the High Church party. In the form for the priesthood, after the words “Holy Ghost” was added, “for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.” For the form of the episcopate was substituted, “Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a bishop in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands, in the name of the Father, etc.”

Of course the value of Anglican orders “secundum formam” must depend upon the value of the form as it originally stood. The subsequent alterations are important as marking, 1st, the dissatisfaction of the High Church party with the forms upon which their orders depended; 2d, the low theological standard which satisfied them, after all.

So far as the material words of the Edwardine forms go, they are sufficient—_i.e._, they are words capable of being used in a sense in which they would be sufficient—but the words are ambiguous. The form of ordination, although it need not express, must signify or mean, the essential idea of the order. Where it does not carry its meaning on the face of it, we must look for it in the rite and liturgy of which it forms a part. This is not an appeal to the mere subjective intention of the minister, but to the objective meaning of the words. Upon this principle we must, in order to get at the value of the Anglican forms, discover, 1st, by an examination of the various admittedly valid rites of ordination, what such words should mean; 2d, by an examination of the Anglican rite, what these words, in the position which they occupy in that rite, do or do not mean.

Canon Estcourt examines the numerous rites which the Roman Church acknowledges to be valid, whether fallen out of use, and only to be found in the pages of ancient sacramentaries, or still living and operative, in East or West, among Catholics or among those who have separated from Catholic unity. He finds three qualities in which they all unite: 1st, a recognition of the divine vocation or election of the ordained; 2d, a recognition of the “virtus sacramentalis” of orders, as something quite distinct from and beyond the grace which is also given to the ordained to acquit himself worthily in the duties of his calling; 3d, a constant recognition of, and appeal to, the main scope and duty of orders—the offering of the Holy Sacrifice.

Canon Estcourt next proceeds to examine the Anglican liturgy and ordinal with special reference to these three points: 1. The divine election. 2. The sacramental virtue. 3. The Holy Sacrifice. And he finds that both the liturgy and the ordinal are the result of a deliberate manipulation of the ancient Catholic ritual previously in use, in order to the exclusion of these three points, which contain the essential idea of holy orders.

Ordination in the Anglical ritual no longer appeals to a divine election, of which it is the expression and the fulfilment. It is merely the public expression of the approval of the authorities of church and state. For the “virtus sacramentalis” it has substituted a mere _grâce d’état_. From this it only naturally follows that episcopal ordination cannot be of indispensable necessity, or more than a matter of regulation and propriety which, in an emergency, may be abrogated. This is the express teaching of many of the early Anglican reformers. Even when engaged in defending their episcopal succession, they are careful to say that they do not regard it as indispensable. Hooker, who is in many respects so much more orthodox than his predecessors and contemporaries, allows “that there may be sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination to be made without a bishop.”

Canon Estcourt prints considerable portions of the Anglican ordinal and liturgy in parallel columns, with the corresponding text of the Sarum and Exeter pontificals and missals. We see with what an unerring sacrilegious instinct everything bearing upon the Holy Sacrifice, and even upon the Real Presence, is either cut out or perverted.

As regards the Second Book of 1552, it is clear that it was the work of sacramentarians who disbelieved in the Real Presence in any sense, and was undertaken for the express purpose of purging the ritual of what previous handling had still allowed it to retain of the impress of that Presence. Mr. Cardwell, in his comparison of the “Two Books of Edward VI.,” pref. xxvii., admits that Cox and Taylor, who were probably the working members of the commission, appear to have looked upon the oblation of the Eucharist as consisting merely of “prayer, thanksgiving, and the remembrance of our Saviour’s passion.” Of Cranmer, the most influential member of the commission, we are told that “about a year after the publication of King Edward’s First Book, Archbishop Cranmer abandoned his belief in the Real Presence—a change which seems to have been very acceptable to the young king and his favorites.”(141) In the revision of 1662, an apparent attempt was made to attain to the expression of a higher doctrine, both as regards orders and the Holy Eucharist; but even if the expressions introduced were in themselves adequate, as Canon Estcourt fairly shows they were not, of what avail could have been so tardy a restoration? But if we examine these restorations and emendations, we can hardly avoid coming to the conclusion that they were not really dictated by any conception of, or aspiration after, a higher doctrine, but were the genuine fruits of a conservative reaction fired by controversial pique. The First Book substituted for the Catholic faith a hazy Lutheranism; the Second Book for this again a hazy sacramentarianism; and the revision of 1662, a hazy compound of the two, with the addition of a Catholic phrase or so in order to support claims to a wider sweep of church authority. Thus the revisers of 1662 introduced the words “priest” and “bishop” into the ordination form, whilst doing absolutely nothing toward restoring the idea of sacrifice to the liturgy.

But, it may be urged, there is one portion of the Anglican form for making priests which expresses the Catholic doctrine of priestly virtue—the power of forgiving sins. Unfortunately for Anglicans, whatever force may lie in this expression—and all precedents are against its being regarded as a sufficient form—is neutralized by the Lutheran new form of absolution which had been introduced in addition to the two Catholic forms. At best, one is left in doubt whether the mighty words have not shrivelled into a Lutheran sense, in which sins are not forgiven, but the forgiveness of sin is merely declared.

It is impossible to do justice in a review to the exhaustive completeness of Canon Estcourt’s treatment of this portion of his subject. His conspectus of the Catholic missals and the different editions of the _Book of Common Prayer_ in parallel columns enables us, as it were, to detect the pulsations of each several heresy, and to appreciate its share in what may be called the passion of the Catholic liturgy in England. A quotation from each of his parallels may serve as examples of, 1st, the action of the Lutheran First Book upon the missal; 2d, the Zuinglian Second Book upon the First Book; 3d, the compromise of 1662.

The Sarum Missal.

We thy servants, and likewise thy holy people, do offer to thy excellent Majesty, of thy gifts and bounties, a pure victim, a holy victim, the holy bread of eternal life, and the chalice of everlasting salvation.

The Book Of Common Prayer, 1549.

We, thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here before thy divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, the memorial which thy Son hath willed us to make.

1549.

He hath left us in those holy mysteries, as a public pledge of his love, and a continual remembrance of the same, his own blessed body and precious blood for us to feed upon spiritually, to our great and endless comfort.

1552, Untouched In 1662.

He hath instituted and ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of his love, and for a continual remembrance of his death, to our great and endless comfort.

The Sarum Missal.

“The body of our Lord Jesus Christ [1549: which was given for thee] preserve thy body and thy soul unto everlasting life.”

1552.

“Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart with thanksgiving.”

(This form was substituted for that of 1549, in 1552, and was appended to it in 1662.)

Canon Estcourt’s argument against the validity of Anglican orders is no argument from lack of sufficient intention on the part of Anglicans. Neither do we think that such an argument could be maintained, in accordance with the commonly‐accepted principles of theology. If it is a sufficient intention for valid baptism to intend to administer the form of Christian initiation, it is sufficient, in the case of orders, to intend to administer the form of Christian ordination, although the ceremony in either case may be regarded as merely an external form without any intrinsic value. It is only as a witness to the sense of the form that the intention of Anglicans is brought into court; and it is not the intention with which they ordain at which we demur, but the intention with which they have altered the ordination service and liturgy—_i.e._, the form of ordination and its context. Had these alterations been merely the result of an antiquarian leaning towards a more primitive though less perfect utterance of the same truth, or of a puritanic craving after simplicity, the irreverence would have been of the extremest kind, but still there would have been no grounds for disputing the orthodox sense, and so the validity of the form. But, on the contrary, the very object of the alterations, as Canon Estcourt has shown, was the elimination of the orthodox doctrines of priesthood and sacrifice, and therefore of the significance upon which the validity of the form depends.

The doubts which should beset the minds of honest Anglicans on the subject of their orders, if they have the least scruple as to the orthodoxy of their position, are simply overwhelming. If they turn to the early church, they find that there are at least as many precedents and authorities for regarding as null the ordinations of heretics and schismatics as for accepting them. Morinus’ opinion is that such ordinations are invalid, except where the church has thought fit to dispense with the impediment; and Morinus is a genuine student of antiquity, and no mere controversialist. True it is Anglicans may appeal to what is undeniably the more common doctrine in the Roman Church—viz., that such ordinations are valid—but then she unflinchingly condemns Anglicans, whereas she has never condemned Morinus. It is nothing to the purpose to say that the practice of the church prevents her using Morinus’ opinion against Anglicans—which is begging the question against Morinus; the point is, Can Anglicans escape using it against themselves? Again, when they direct their attention to the special facts of their own history, their view is to the last degree discouraging. Their latest antagonist, Canon Estcourt, has notoriously given up to them every point to which they could make the remotest claim, and has broken and thrown away every weapon to which the least exception could be taken; and yet it has come to this: that their only title to orders is a succession probably broken by the non‐ consecration of Barlow, and an ambiguous form which, when read in the light of their mutilated ordinal and liturgy, is unlike any that has been accepted as even probably adequate either by East or West.

Even if Anglicans could find their identical form, as far as words go, in approved ordinals, they could not argue from this the sufficiency of their own form. Mutilation and involution, although they contract within the same span, can never be identical. You might as well pretend that there is no difference between a stamen from which you have plucked the leaves and an undeveloped bud.

It is true that originally different portions of the church were allowed, in regard to orders, to give expression to the same truth in various forms with various degrees of explicitness; but this can afford no precedent to an individual church for mutilating a common form in order to deny a common truth.

The Abyssinian Decision.

We cannot conclude our review without noticing an important criticism made upon our author in the shape of a letter to the _Month_, November‐ December, 1873, by the Rev. F. Jones, S.J. F. Jones, whilst expressing his thorough concurrence with Canon Estcourt in every other particular, thinks that he has attached an undue force to the decision of the holy office upon Abyssinian orders.

Canon Estcourt has understood the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition, in their decree in 1704, to have ruled that the form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” understood in the sense of the Abyssinian liturgical books, is valid for the priesthood, although, in the particular case, no further expression is given to this sense, at least no expression within the limits of the form strictly so called—_i.e._, the verbal formula synchronous with the matter. The decree which he so understands is as follows:

Question: “The ordainer passed hurriedly along a line of deacons, laying his hands upon the head of each, and saying, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum’; are they validly ordained _in tal modo e forma_, and admissible to the exercise of their orders?” Answer: “The ordination of a priest with the imposition of hands and utterance of the form as in the question is undoubtedly valid.”

F. Jones, whilst allowing that Canon Estcourt’s interpretation is the natural one according to ordinary canons of criticism, insists that the decree, “when interpreted in the light of certain rules which arise out of what is called the _stylus curiæ_,” asserts, indeed, the sufficiency of the imposition of hands as matter, when used with the form, but does not define the sufficiency of the particular form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.”

The rules in question are as follows: 1. The meaning of the answer depends upon the meaning of the _dubium_. 2. Nothing but what is directly stated is decided. 3. “If there is anything in the wording of a decision which appears inconsistent with the teaching of an approved body of theologians—such teaching as amounts to a true theological probability—the decision is to be interpreted so as to leave such teaching intact, unless the decision should itself show that it intended to condemn that teaching, and to take away that probability.” 4. Such decisions are formed on the presumption that every point except the one in question is correct, on the maxim, “Standum est pro valore actûs.” 5. When the validity of an ordination is the subject‐matter of a decision, it must be assumed that the decision has been made after an inspection of the ordinal. 6. “It is hardly safe to allege the authority of a decision (I speak merely of a curial decision), particularly when the details of the case are but imperfectly known to us, without having ascertained the sense in which, after its promulgation, it was understood by those who were most competent to measure its importance.” We shall examine these rules when we come to consider the worth of F. Jones’ application of them to the case in hand. But first it will be well to see what effect the elimination of the Abyssinian decision would have upon Canon Estcourt’s controversial position.

Pp. 158‐163. Canon Estcourt considers various objections made by Catholic controversialists to the Anglican form of the priesthood. He is considering the question of the form in its strict sense—viz., that portion of the ordination formulary which is synchronous with the matter, whether this last consist in the tradition of the instruments or in the imposition of hands. One objection urged by Lequien, amongst others, is grounded upon the very common doctrine that the form of priestly ordination must express the principal effect of the sacrament of order by making mention of the priesthood in relation to the sacrifice, which is its principal object. Now, if, as F. Jones suggests was the case, the unmutilated Coptic rite was in use in Abyssinia up to 1704, and the examples given by Ludolf and Monsignor Beb are merely imperfect copies; and if no decision as to the form was given in 1704, then, so far as anything has been shown to the contrary, Lequien’s objection holds good that no approved form for the priesthood fails to make an appeal to the Holy Sacrifice.

And now as regards F. Jones’ rules for interpreting the “stylus curiæ,” and their application to the Abyssinian decision. We have no criticism to make upon Rules 1 and 2. They are sufficiently obvious even to a non‐ expert. Rule 3 cannot, we think, be admitted without qualification. It is no doubt an important principle that the presumption is in favor of an interpretation which leaves intact a probable opinion, supposing that this is not the formal subject of the decision; but we must not do violence to the natural sense of words, and it is quite possible that such a decision might completely evacuate the probability of an opinion of which it took no direct cognizance whatever. The Council of Florence did not directly intend to condemn the opinion requiring as absolutely necessary the tradition of the instruments, yet effectively it has done so. As to Rule 4, “Standum est pro valore actûs,” its application to the case before us must depend upon whether the course indicated is equivalent to the introduction of a new “actus.” To ask, as the dubium does, concerning the validity of “tal modo e forma,” implies that this is given in its integrity. In the Abyssinian case, it was a question whether certain persons were to be allowed to say Mass and perform other priestly functions, and the Sacred Congregation allowed them. As to Rule 5, no doubt an inspection of the ordinals is to be presumed; but here the very contention of the questioner is that the ordinal had not been followed. Moreover, there was ample evidence, in the sacred books quoted by Ludolf and Monsignor Beb, accessible to the Sacred Congregation, and which, according to F. Jones’ principle, we may assume it had before it, that in Abyssinian hands the Coptic ritual had been seriously tampered with. The translation from the Abyssinian, as given by the above‐named writers, is certainly not an imperfect version of the Coptic, but a deliberate compilation from the Coptic form and that of the apostolic constitutions, which would hardly have been made except for ritual purposes.

If we may accept the earliest and most precise evidence as to actual practice in Abyssinia—that of the missionary Francis Alvarez (1520), the one prayer used by the Abuna, with the imposition of hands, is not the form “Respice,” but, in the Coptic tongue, the prayer “Divina gratia quæ infirma sanat.”(142) But these words, as Canon Estcourt points out, p. 181, “in the _Coptic_ and Jacobite rites, are said by the archdeacon or one of the assisting bishops. In the Nestorian and ancient Greek, they are said by the bishop without imposing his hands; and only in the modern Greek, the Maronite, and the Armenian are they united with the imposition of hands.” This looks as if the Abyssinian ritual was a complete medley.

This view is borne out by F. Godigno, S.J. (_De Abyssin. Rebus_, p. 224), who tells us that the Jesuit Patriarch of Abyssinia, Oviedo, as long as he lived in Æthiopia, always doubted very much, and with good reason, if the Abyssinian priests had been duly and lawfully ordained, inasmuch as the forms of consecration used by the Abuna _were so uncertain that they seemed to have been corrupted_. On which account, in those matters which belong to orders, and which require in the minister a real character, he never could persuade himself to use their offices, lest haply the sacraments should be rendered void.

F. Jones thinks that Assemani would certainly have noticed these corruptions, had they existed, in his _Controversia Coptica_, composed for the information of Propaganda in 1731. But Assemani was not called upon to consider the corruptions of Abyssinia; for, as he tells us in his preface, the occasion of his writing was the conversion of two Egyptian monks of the Alexandrian Church, of whose reordination there was question.

As to Rule 6, obviously nothing can be more important than the estimate of a decision expressed by contemporary theologians; but it is very easy to misinterpret their silence. In his defence of the Coptic rite, urges F. Jones, Assemani ought to have quoted the authorization of a form which _à fortiori_ authorized the Coptic. We reply that Assemani had no lack of far more obvious and splendid instances of the recognition of the Coptic rite; that he had no need of such indirect support. The examination of the Abyssinian monk Tecla Maria, in 1594, sufficiently shows that it was impossible to judge of Abyssinian ordinations by the Coptic rite. Assemani himself acknowledges, p. 227, that either Tecla Maria’s memory failed him, or his ordainers must have been “poco pratici del rito Coptico o l’avessero in qualche parte alterato.” F. Godigno (l. c.) says that the reason of Tecla Maria’s reordination was the corruption of the rite. On the other hand, it is clearly a great exaggeration to say that the missionaries made nothing of Abyssinian orders, and that the motive of reordination was the non‐tradition of the instruments. Of John Bermudes, the first of the Jesuit patriarchs, Ludolf (pars. ii. p. 473) tells us that he (Bermudes) has recorded in so many words, that he received all the sacred orders, including the episcopate, with right of succession to the patriarchate, from the Abuna Mark, under condition that the pope would confirm it, and that the pope confirmed and ratified all Mark’s acts. Again, the Portuguese De Francia, one of the negotiators for the Jesuits, tells the Abyssinian king that he had been taught that, if he is in danger of death, and cannot get a Catholic priest, he must ask the Abyssinians for communion.(143)

Certainly, this Abyssinian decision has not as yet made much mark in theology. Canon Estcourt is able to mention one work in which it occurs—a certain edition of the theology of Antoine, a Jesuit, and Prefect of Propaganda under Benedict XIV. But then there is a vast technical difference, anyhow, between a decision taking the shape of a practical rule of procedure and a speculative definition. For more than a century after the Council of Florence, its recognition of Greek orders had no perceptible influence upon the language of theologians concerning the matter of the priesthood. It takes time to translate from the language of action into that of speculation; but who can deny that in any fair controversy such action must be discounted.

It remains to be determined whether, everything considered, the decision of the Sacred Office admits of F. Jones’ interpretation; whether the dubium can be understood, as he suggests (p. 456), to turn exclusively upon these two points: the non‐tradition of the instruments and the deviation from the Coptic rite which prescribes that the bishop’s hands should be imposed upon each _ordinandus_ during the whole of the form Respice, instead of during the one phrase, “Repleeum Spiritu Sancto,” which F. Jones thinks the missionaries paraphrased by “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.” Now, we must say that it is hardly probable that in 1704 the missionaries should be seriously exercised about the non‐tradition of the instruments. Neither is it likely that they should have proposed, in the same breath, the two difficulties suggested by F. Jones; for why should deviation from a rite, the substantial validity of which they doubted, be a difficulty? They ask about the validity of a form and a manner of imposing hands, which they describe “talmo do e forma.” There may have been other prayers used in the service from the Coptic ordinal and liturgy, but the dubium excludes them from “tal forma.”

F. Jones’ notion that the “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum” is a mistranslation of the Coptic “Reple eum Spiritu Sancto”—which is not found in the Abyssinian version—is, we think, quite untenable. No distinction was more thoroughly appreciated on both sides than that between an imperative and a precatory form. The Patriarch of the Maronites, in 1572, informs the pope: “In our Pontifical, the orders are conferred without a form by way of prayer.”(144) In 1860, the missionaries inform the Sacred Congregation “that the Monophysites believe the essence of ordination consists in the expiration (_insuflazione_) the ordainer makes in the act of saying, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum.’ ”(145) Amongst the various deviations from the Coptic rite which Assemani notes in the evidence of Tecla Maria, the Abyssinian says of his ordainer, “Insufflavit in faciem meam.” This “insufflatio” almost implies an imperative form, and so far isolates the words from any precatory formularies that may precede and follow them. Most probably this form was obtained from the missionaries with whom the Abyssinians had been so long in intercourse.

Doubtless the Sacred Congregation did not sanction the form “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum” taken by itself simply, but specificated in the sense of the Abyssinian liturgy; but this is exactly Canon Estcourt’s contention against Anglicans.

In spite of F. Jones’ shrewd and interesting observations, we are of opinion that Canon Estcourt’s appreciation of the Abyssinian decision is the true one. At any rate, his interpretation is sufficiently probable to make it most important to show that, even so understood, it cannot sanction Anglican orders.

Postscriptum

Since the above was written, the discussion has been continued in the _Month_ by an answer from Canon Estcourt in January, and an elaborate rejoinder by F. Jones in February. Something of what we have written has been anticipated; but, on the whole, we have thought it better to leave our article as it stands, and content ourselves with appending such further remarks as may seem called for.

F. Jones, in his second letter, insists that Canon Estcourt has mistaken what the missionaries proposed as a solitary deviation from a well‐known and approved rite for the whole form used on the occasion. He proceeds to support his position by italicizing the concluding words of the answer of the Holy Office allowing the missionaries to admit the person so ordained “to the exercise of his orders _according to the rite, approved and expurgated, in which he was ordained_.” “The Holy Office, then,” he argues, “did not suppose that the Abyssinians were ordained with only the words, ‘Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,’ but presumed that some rite, and that an _approved_ rite, had been followed.”

Now, it is quite certain that the schismatical Abuna did not make use of a rite expurgated and approved by the Holy See; therefore the word “rite” must refer to the sacerdotal rite to the exercise of which the person in question was ordained, which rite he might use in its expurgated and approved form; but whether the bare words, Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, were used, or the fuller Abyssinian or Coptic forms, the priest would have been ordained in that rite with a view to the exercise of which he had been ordained.

As to the question whether the Æthiopic liturgy, as distinct from the Coptic, was approved, we cannot admit that a conclusion in the negative can be drawn from the passage F. Jones quotes from the encyclical of Benedict XIV. The pope lays down that the Oriental churches in communion with Rome consist of four rites—Greek, Armenian, Syrian, and Coptic; but he is clearly only giving general heads. The Æthiopic, if approved, might well have been included under the Coptic. The Melchite and Chaldaic liturgies are approved; but in this enumeration they are not distinguished from the Syrian and the Greek, of which they are respectively slight variations. Further on in this encyclical, the pope says that “Greeks, Maronites, Armenians, Copts, and Melchites had been given churches in Rome, in order that they may perform their sacred offices each according to his rite.” We know that the Abyssinians also had a church in Rome, where we may assume that they were allowed the same privilege. The fact that an expurgated edition of the Æthiopic liturgy was brought out in Rome in 1549 goes some way to show that the liturgy was approved.(146) This was the first of the Oriental liturgies published in Rome, and may be found in various editions of the _Bibliotheca Patrum_ (Paris, 1624, tom. vi.), together with the Æthiopic rite of baptism and confirmation. This rite of confirmation affords a curious example of the unprincipled variations of Æthiopic ritual. It is almost the same as the Coptic rite published by Assemani, to which F. Jones refers, but it carefully eliminates the direct form, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” wherever it occurs in the Coptic.

We are inclined to believe that the Abuna sometimes ordained in the Coptic, sometimes in the Abyssinian, tongue; but we must confess that the only direct testimony we have met with on this point is in favor of the Coptic. Still, whatever was the language used, there is ample evidence to show that the Abyssinians were in the habit of materially diverging from the Coptic ordinal. To the testimonies of Oviedo and Alvarez, already quoted, we may add that of F. Soller. Referring to F. Bernat’s correspondence, he says that that father discusses “the different rite of ordination and other points of difference between the Copts and Abyssinians.”(147)

We submit that the Holy Office had no grounds for assuming the use of the Coptic, or, indeed, of any specific ritual in the case brought before them.

On The Wing. A Southern Flight. V.

“Les Dieux étaient alors si voisins de la terre Qu’ils y venaient souvent avec ou sans mystère.”(148)

“There is no sense of desolation greater than that produced by the sight of a dismantled palace and a deserted garden.” These were the words with which Don Emidio broke a long and somewhat sad silence which had fallen on our little party the day we went to Portici.

It is a long drive of four miles on the rough pavement of huge slabs common to Naples and its environs. We passed over the bridge where S. Januarius had gone forth with cross and banners, incense and choristers, to meet the torrents of burning lava from Mount Vesuvius, and arrest the destruction of the city by prayer. It made me shudder to think how very near that destruction we had then been. For, of course, if the lava had once gone so far, there was no natural reason why it should not do so again, and even pass on further still. That bridge is now hardly outside the town. Indeed, town succeeds town, and the whole way from Naples to Portici is one long street, chiefly consisting of villas and handsome palaces, now sadly neglected, but probably still containing many treasures, and all with more or less of garden ground attached.

Portici is a royal palace; but for years none of the royal family have resided there, and it is used chiefly for public offices. It is sad to see these magnificent buildings left nearly empty; and we can only wonder at the extraordinary wealth of the past when we reflect that Portici is one only of many other beautiful royal residences which are no longer kept up. Even Caserta, which is said to be the largest palace in Europe, is all but deserted. Don Emidio was telling us an anecdote in connection with it. Just before the revolution of 1860 the palace had been put in order, partially refurnished, and redecorated, for the reception of Francis II. and his bride, the ex‐King and Queen of Naples.

Amongst other valuable ornaments, in one room the walls had hangings attached with massive gold _fleurs‐de‐lis_. When the revolution broke out, a Neapolitan duke, one of the very few of the really noble families who turned traitor to their king, was appointed to adapt and readjust the palace for the usurper. The whole matter was put into his hands, in perfect confidence, no doubt, that he would see it properly carried out. For some time the palace was closed to the public. When again it was opened on certain days, and those who had known it before saw it again, they observed that all the gold _fleurs‐de‐lis_ had disappeared. Of course the fact provoked enquiry; but no account of them was ever rendered, and all researches proved fruitless. No one doubted but that they had been “annexed” by the liberal aristocrat, but, equally, no one dared call him to task. For as annexation on a large scale was the order of the day, it did not answer to look too closely into minor examples of the same. Nevertheless, the story got whispered abroad, and his reputation, in consequence, was far less golden than the missing _fleurs‐de‐lis_.

One day the duke was standing at a window in his own palace overlooking the courtyard, when a poor artisan, who had already sent in his bill more than once, came to request payment. The duke, who thought, or pretended to think, the charges in the bill were exorbitant, began to upbraid and scold the man from the window. At the same moment the wife of one of the men‐ servants of the establishment was crossing the yard. The duke called to her, exclaiming, “It is a downright theft. But these artisans are all thieves, are they not, Donna Rafaele?”

“Your excellency is a better judge of that than I am,” was the reply, “since the greater ought to know the lesser.”

“I wonder how the duke took it?” said I.

Don Emidio gave me a knowing look, and shook his right hand under his left elbow. We all laughed; but no description can convey the inimitable drollery of Neapolitan pantomime. It is a thousand times more eloquent than words. What expression, such as “to make yourself scarce,” or “to skedaddle,” could convey what is indicated by that wagging of the straightened hand under the elbow? You _see_ the thief escaping. It is the same in everything else. There is a gesture for all the emotions and most of the casualties of daily life. No beggar tells you he is hungry; but standing silently before you, with a perfectly immovable expression, he opens his mouth, and points downwards with his finger. A woman and half a dozen children gathering round you, and all doing the same thing, produces an effect so curiously divided between the ludicrous and the pathetic that it is far harder to refuse an alms than if the request were made in downright words. It is the same with the coachmen of the hired public carriages. You are driving rapidly along, and your coachman passes another whom he knows. In less than a second he has conveyed to his friend full information of where he comes from, where he is going, and how soon he will be back, probably concluding with the amount of the fare for which he has agreed to do the distance; and all without a word being uttered.

The Neapolitans carry the same extraordinary pantomimic power into all scenes and all places, including the pulpit, or, more likely, the platform, from which the priest delivers his Lenten or Month of Mary discourses. He walks to and fro in the heat of his argument, he sits down, and starts up again, he weeps, and he even laughs. It is often very striking; and it is so natural, it belongs so essentially to the genius of the people, that it is never ridiculous, nor does it seem out of place. Of course sometimes it is done less well and gracefully than at others; but it is too thoroughly in unison with the language and habits of the people ever to appear incongruous.

We were sitting on the low wall of the outer steps leading to the tower entrance of a building at the end of the Portici pleasure‐grounds when this conversation occurred. The tower belongs, I believe, to an observatory, and all around are the stables, the barracks, and the appurtenances of the palace, now empty and silent. The grass grew high and thick in the courtyard. The deep‐red blossoms of the wild sorrel, with the sunlight shining through them, looked like drops of blood among the grass. The ox‐eyed daisies boldly faced the blue, glaring sky. The low, long building used for stables was in front of us. Then a dark, dense wood of ilex and cork‐trees, like a strong, black line. And beyond that no middle distance was visible, but stark and sudden rose the seamed and barren sides of Mount Vesuvius. No beneficent and tender white cloud broke the intense, monotonous blue of all the wide heavens. The sky, the grim mountain, the black wood, and the deserted stables—that was all; bathed in sunshine, sparkling with intense light, silent with brooding heat, and unspeakably desolate with a broad, unmodulated, horrific beauty like the face of the sphinx.

Suddenly there came over me a dim, weird feeling of the ancient pagan world. There was an inner perception and consciousness that in some undefined way it was homogeneous to the scene around me and to unredeemed man. It was cruel in its beauty; as poetic, but not picturesque, beauty so often is.

I started up, and exclaimed, “Let us get back. The old gods are about this place, and I cannot stay.”

Time has not effaced the impression, and I can recall the inner vision at any moment. Frank declared we should come again, and have a picnic there with the Vernons. But I protested I would not be of the party. “By the bye, Jane,” said Frank, “why did Elizabeth not come?”

“Because little Franceschiella was buried this morning, and neither Ida nor Elizabeth would leave the poor mother; while Helen remained to keep Mrs. Vernon company.”

Franceschiella was a lovely child of six years who had died of a fever the day before. She was the only child, and that fact, added to her quite extraordinary beauty, had made the trial doubly hard to bear for her adoring parents. For, indeed, it was little less than adoration that Franceschiella received, not only in her own home, but from all her neighbors. We were very much struck in this instance by the poetic nature of the Italians. The father was a _vignaiuolo_, the mother did a little needle‐work, or took in washing; but no nobleman’s child was ever more carefully bathed and dressed and nourished than this one darling, and that partly in consequence of her angelic beauty and her infantine charm. The little creature ran every risk of being entirely spoilt by the amount of petting and flattery that she received on all sides. On Sundays and holidays they always dressed her in white with a red coral necklace; and the mother or the cousins would weave a wreath of flowers to crown her beautiful, golden hair, that fell below her waist. She had deep violet eyes with black lashes, and a milk‐white skin. She was very forward for her age, and singularly intelligent. But she was surely never meant to live long in this rough world. She came to it like a stranger, and she remained a stranger all the time of her brief sojourn—as though some princess from the distant lands of poetry and romance had come for a brief visit to dwell with common mortals. There was an inexpressible refinement in all the little creature’s ways which would have become a real cross to her and the occasion of endless trials had she lived long enough to find the harsh side of life ruffling her angel wings. It was in mercy the child was taken away before the period of white frocks and fresh flowers had come to an end. Life could have brought to her nothing but temptation and anguish. But of course in proportion to her exceptional nature was the despair of the poor parents in seeing her fading before their eyes. As little Franceschiella had been unaccustomed to restraint or coercion of any kind, it was exceedingly difficult, during her short illness, to induce her to take the necessary remedies. And nothing could be more touchingly beautiful than the arguments used by the distracted parents to persuade her to swallow the nauseous draughts. As usual, there was a crucifix near the bed, and an image of the Mater Dolorosa—the devotion of the Neapolitans being very specially to the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin. They would beg the poor little darling to take her medicine in honor of Our Lord’s thirst on the cross, or of Our Lady’s anguish when His dead form was laid in her arms. And these were not unmeaning or merely mystical phrases, to which the child could attach but little sense. They were as household words to her; familiar to her childish thoughts from the moment she could lisp, and woven into her life as the mysteries of the faith only are in lands altogether Catholic. But nothing was to avail to keep the pretty human flower from fading fast. And before a week had past little Franceschiella had taken flight ere any of the ugliness of mortal life had tarnished her sweet loveliness. They crowned her with roses, and laid her, dressed in white, in the little wooden coffin filled with flowers. Then they flung handfuls of colored sugar‐plums over her, and placed a white camellia between her still red lips, saying, as they did so, “She breathes flowers.” And so they carried her, in the open bier, the uncovered, lovely face turned towards the heavens, and thus laid their darling in the dark grave, but in the full hope of a bright resurrection.

The mother’s anguish was extreme. The Neapolitan women are an excitable and highly nervous race; which arises, no doubt, in great measure from the climate, as every stranger knows who finds the effect produced on his nerves by this intoxicating atmosphere, which I have heard compared to drinking champagne. As in the case of the peasantry much self‐control has not been inculcated, the result is the frequency of terrible nervous attacks producing convulsions—what we should probably designate as very aggravated hysteria. After Franceschiella’s death the mother became subject to these attacks, and seemed incapable of receiving any consolation till heaven granted her the hope of again becoming a mother. On the day we went to Portici the Vernons had hardly left her. And it was very charming to see the Christian sense of equality on their side, and the deference and gratitude shown them by their peasant neighbors on the other.

But why did Frank so particularly ask why Elizabeth had not come, instead of asking equally about Ida and Helen?

“You have, then, seen Medusa in the woods of Portici, Miss Jane?” said Don Emidio suddenly to me, as we were driving home in absolute silence.

I looked up out of my brown study to find his eyes fixed upon me. “Do you mean that I am changed to stone?”

“You are as silent as one.”

I laughed, and said, “At least, thank heaven, I am not _malheureuse comme les pièrres_,(149) as the French say, though I may be as silent as they. I did not, however, see anything in those dark ilex groves. I only suddenly felt the awfulness of nature when you look at her in all her inexorable beauty, with the rhythm of her apparently changeless laws and her sublime disdain of man. She breathes and blossoms, she burns and thunders, she weeps and smiles, utterly independent of us all. She knows no weakness; no decay touches her but such as she can repair. She embraces death, that she may produce life. She is ever fertile, ever lavish of herself and of her gifts. But she never _cares_. Her mountains are granite even to the feet of her Creator, as he climbs the heights of Calvary. Her noontide heavens are brass to the cravings of man’s heart in his midday toil. She will not pause in the twenty‐four hours of her inevitable day, though sundown should bring death to one and despair to many again and again. She treads her ever‐victorious march over ruined nations, buried cities, and broken hearts. Oh! I could hate her—cruel power, terrible Pythoness; mocking me with sunshine, scaring me with storms; ever rejoicing in her strength, ever regardless of me. I cannot explain why these thoughts came to me, as across the dark wood I traced the violet scars on awful Vesuvius, and heard the low whispers of the wind in the long grass at our feet. Suddenly faith seemed to die out of me. I forgot what I believe; and back came trooping the pagan gods and the pagan world, with the strong feeling that pantheism is the inevitable religion of the natural man, and that were I not, thank God, a Christian and a Catholic, some form of it would grow into my mind, as the impress left by the face of nature. For a moment a dark cloud overshadowed me while I looked into the depths of the old pagan belief; and it became so real to me that I shuddered. It has left me silent; that’s all.”

“That’s all!” repeated Don Emidio with a sly smile, and imitating my voice in a way that I half thought was rather impertinent. “Allow me to tell you that I think that is a great deal. I do not imagine there are many young ladies who come out for a day’s pleasuring to the gardens of Portici or elsewhere, and indulge in such profound reflections as you do.”

I looked round, and saw that Frank and Mary were listening.

Frank said: “I believe Jane is quite right; and she has so well described the effect which the aspects of nature produce on the mind of man that I am convinced her words embody and express the riddle of the sphinx. The laws of nature, taken without the doctrine of the Incarnation, which alone is the keystone to the whole creation, form the enigma which is put before us to understand and answer; failing which, we perish.”

“But all paganism was a falsified adumbration of the Incarnation; the gods for ever assuming a human form, and the men becoming gods,” said Mary. “It had that germ of truth in it which every system must have to be built at all, no matter in what monstrous form. But it required revelation to tell us that the ‘Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst men.’ And that alone explains nature. She is the herald, the servant, or rather the slave, of Him by whom and for whom all things were created. She speeds on her way in the full vigor of those laws which were impressed upon her as she first sprang from the hand of her Creator. She does not stop to share our griefs or our joys, for she has a higher mission. But she has ceased to be terrible to us, for faith has unveiled her face, and her harmonious forces no longer scare us by their inexorable relentlessness. Her one mission is to sing of God, and repeat to Time the refrain of Eternity.”

“Why, then, do we sometimes pine for her sympathy?” said I.

“Ah! Miss Jane,” exclaimed Don Emidio, “that is because we are for ever looking for sympathy in the wrong place and from the wrong people.”

“Not always,” I replied. What made me say so? And why did Don Emidio change color and look at me so fixedly? I was still wondering when we reached home.

Mary and I were, as usual in the evening, sitting in the _loggia_. But Frank was not with us, and I missed his genial talk and the odor of his cigar.

“What has become of Frank this evening, Mary?”

“He has gone down to see the Vernons, and said he should persuade them to come to us.”

“I hope he will succeed, for I do not like his spending his evenings away from us. This is not the first nor the fourth time he has gone to Casinelli as soon as he got up from dinner.”

“Ah! well, Jane, we must not be selfish. He has his life to live, as you have yours; and I must expect one day to lose you both.”

I felt my heart stop, and then beat violently. What did Mary mean? And why did some veil seem suddenly to fall from my eyes? It was some moments before 1 spoke; and then I tried to say in my ordinary voice: “You have some presentiment about Frank, Mary. What is it?”

“I have presentiments about both of you. But I do not want to force your confidence.”

In a moment I was kneeling by her side. “Dearest Mary, do you suppose I have any secrets from you? I tell you everything. If I do not tell you more, it is because I know no more.” It was a sudden impulse, dim but overwhelming, which made me add those strange words. Mary looked at me intently. “Has it never struck you that Frank has a reason for going so often to the Villa Casinelli, as Emidio has a reason for coming so often here?”

Our eyes met for one moment. Then I hid my face in my hands, and burst into tears.

“O Mary! what bitter‐sweet things are you saying? I do not want to lose Frank, and I do not want to leave you, or to tread in other paths than those I have known since my childhood. Are you sure it is so? Why have I not known it till now? And even now I doubt.”

“That is because you were not in the least looking out for it, and were absorbed in other thoughts, preventing that retrospection which would have shown you that Emidio’s manner towards you has been intensifying with every day of our stay here. And now what answer will you give when the time comes?”

“Do not ask me yet, dear Mary. I must have leisure to reflect. At this moment my heart is more full of Frank and Elizabeth than of anything else.”

“Ah! my dear, he could not have made a wiser choice; she is a girl after my own heart, so true, so tender, so good, and so utterly unselfish.”

“I only hope she will not spoil Frank.”

“I am not afraid of that, for she has a high sense of duty for herself and for all who approach her.”

“And what is to become of Ida and of you, Mary?”

“I cannot think,” said Mary with a sweet, sad smile. “But I suppose we shall both of us be happy in the happiness of those who are so dear to us. It is worse for me than for her. She loses a sister. I lose a brother and sister both.”

“You don’t know that, Mary. Nobody has proposed to me, and, if somebody did, I am not certain what answer I should give.”

“But I am,” rejoined Mary.

I clapped my hand over her mouth, exclaiming, “Don’t say it, Mary dear. Let me be free and feel free. I am frightened at the thought of promising myself to any one, even where I may feel I could love.”

“Be free, dear sister, until the moment has come when you are sure it is God’s will you should enter on another phase of woman’s destiny.”

“And may I never do so, except to accomplish his will!” I replied; and with one long kiss on dear Mary’s brow I turned away, for we heard approaching footsteps.

Frank and Elizabeth entered first. Ida and Padre Cataldo followed. I looked to see if there were a fifth figure behind, and was rather relieved to find Don Emidio was not there. I needed time to collect my thoughts before I saw him again. Perhaps, after all, Mary was mistaken, and attached more importance to this matter than was necessary. At any rate, I was in no hurry to see Don Emidio again.

Frank seemed in high spirits, and Elizabeth looked serenely, calmly happy. Her soft manner and her slow, graceful movements had long ago won for her the nickname of Pussy; particularly as her velvet ways were not unmixed with a playful slyness; so that from time to time she came out with some remark far more acute and incisive that at first you would have given her credit for. It was a relief to me when I heard Frank say that he had been particularly anxious to induce Padre Cataldo to join us, because he had promised to give us the account of an unfortunate man whose execution he had attended some years ago in the course of his priestly ministrations. Ida was looking as thoughtful as Mary; and I saw her eyes constantly wandering to where Frank and Elizabeth were sitting together. We were all too preoccupied to talk, but were very glad to listen to a long story.

“Frank tells us, reverend father,” began Mary, “that some twenty years ago you attended the execution of a poor criminal. It would interest us very much if you would give us the particulars. In what part of Italy did it occur?”

“It took place in the Basilicata,” replied the father, “and the whole province was filled with consternation; for the culprit did not belong to the lower ranks of life, but was a gentleman by birth, education, and position. He was the proprietor of a château and a considerable patrimony near one of the towns of the province, and his crime was the murder of his own brother. For many generations the family had had an undesirable reputation for deeds of violence and sudden acts of rage or revenge. It was not the first time that the history of the family chronicled some bloody act; though it was the first time, at least in modern days, that any member of this unfortunate house had suffered the utmost penalty of the law. I am unable to tell you what gave rise to the violent feeling of hatred which the elder brother entertained for the younger. There had been many quarrels and disputes between them from their boyhood upwards. Frank told me the other day you had been talking about the extraordinary power the Italian, and especially the native of Southern Italy, has of following out one design through all obstacles and difficulties, silently and secretly, for years. If they possess this tenacity of character in the search for wealth, I am afraid they have it equally in questions of revenge. And for some reason or other this had been the sentiment of Conte Falcone for his brother, Don Carlo. One day Don Carlo was found stabbed through the heart, and suspicion immediately fell on Conte Falcone. He was arrested, but the trial was a long one, and some months were passed in collecting evidence. At length he was convicted, and from the moment of his condemnation made no attempt to deny his guilt. At that time the prison at Potenza, where he was to await his execution, was under the direction of a Jesuit father, whose efforts were ceaseless for the good of the unfortunate criminals under his charge.

“Naturally, Conte Falcone was a special object of care and anxiety, from the enormity of his crime, and from the fact that his position and circumstances are generally in themselves a guarantee against offences of so deep a dye.

“No efforts were wanting on the part of the Jesuit priest. He was with his prisoner day and night, endeavoring to bring him to a true repentance of his sin against God and against humanity. And he succeeded. He found the count from the first overwhelmed with remorse, and his object was to prevent this remorse degenerating into despair, and thus excluding the light of faith. Happily, Conte Falcone, grievously as he had offended against the laws of God, had never given place to rationalistic or scoffing doubts. It needed but to transform the awful bitterness of human remorse into the tenderness of perfect contrition; and this great work in the culprit’s soul was happily accomplished in time to give him courage to bear the dreadful intelligence that all efforts made at the Court of Appeal to get the sentence commuted had entirely failed. This was an unusual and remarkable fact, for capital punishment is very rarely carried out in Italy; many would tell you not sufficiently for the protection of society. Probably in this case the judges were urged to unusual severity by the position of the criminal, lest it should appear that, being a nobleman, he was less severely dealt with than a common man might have been. Moreover, it was not forgotten that this was the third time one of his unfortunate family had taken the life of a relation, and it was thought necessary an example should be made. The priest accordingly announced to him that his fate was sealed, and that the next morning he must proceed on the terrible journey which was to be his last.

“In the kingdom of Naples, as well as in some other parts of Italy, it is the law that the execution of a criminal should take place on or near the spot where the deed was done.”

“What a terrible law of retribution!” exclaimed Mary.

“Yes, and one strictly in conformity with many passages of the Holy Scriptures, and with the Biblical spirit generally.”

“Has it not been supposed, father,” asked Frank, “that possibly after death the souls in purgatory, as also the lost, suffer for their errors there where they were guilty of them?”

“It is a common opinion, and it goes far towards explaining the accounts of strange noises and spectral forms in places where it is known there has been a murder. The very sound of the fatal blow is repeated through the hours of the night, as though the disembodied spirit were condemned for ever to re‐enact the semblance of that crime which has grown into one idea, one all‐absorbing memory of the past. The soul becomes, as it were, the personification and essence of its fatal crime.”

“What a fearful verification of the worm that dieth not!” said Mary.

“But surely,” I exclaimed, “we may have softer and happier feelings about the souls in purgatory?”

“Of course we may,” replied the father, almost smiling at my look of horror and anxiety. “If they frequent the scenes of their past, it is not to inspire us with fear; for of that dreadful passion they are now themselves no longer capable, the blessed security of their future annihilating all touch of apprehension. If they reappear to the living, it is either to remedy some evil or to solicit our prayers. I never could understand the terror people have of what they call ghosts.”

“It would be strange indeed,” said Mary, “not to wish to see again those we have loved and lost, even their disembodied souls.”

“And yet it is not lawful to desire it with ardor or to entreat for it; because it is outside the bounds of God’s usual dealings with his creatures to permit the dead to revisit the living, or rather to reappear to them; for I believe they revisit us constantly, and probably mostly dwell amongst us, unseen and, alas! generally forgotten.”

“Oh! no, not forgotten, dear father,” said Mary, the tears filling her eyes.

“Not forgotten by such as you, _figlia mia_.(150) But we have entered on a subject which might keep us discussing till midnight. I go back to my poor penitent.”

“Was he your penitent from the first, father? Were you the director of the prison?”

“You have robbed me of my disguise, _cara figlia_.(151) I meant to have told you a story, but not to talk of myself. However, it does not matter, and I will lay aside all disguise. The journey the unhappy count had to make to his native place was perhaps the most terrible part of his punishment. But I had the satisfaction of seeing him receive the announcement with the greatest resignation, once more offering it as an atonement for his crime. As he was a man of considerable refinement and education, his resignation arose from no lack of power to appreciate the dreadful contrast between his present position on returning to his home and that which he had once filled. It would be impossible to put into words what he felt on arriving to meet an ignominious death at the place where he had been the great man and the most influential person. Early in the morning of the dreadful day on which we began our long journey he was led out of the prison, and mounted on an ass—such being the law in that part of Italy. The slow paces of the beast added considerably to the torture of the count’s feelings, it being impossible to hasten a progress every hour of which seemed an age. He had made his general confession to me before that fatal morning, and constantly on the road he would turn to me for a word of consolation and encouragement, or to renew his frequent acts of contrition. I need hardly say I never left his side for a moment. Poor fellow! what an agony the whole journey was to him, and, from sympathy, hardly less so to me; for he was bound hand and foot, and the animal was led by one of the guards, the others following and surrounding him on horseback. You know enough of us Italians to be aware that, physically and morally, we are more sensitively constituted than any other European nation. Our feelings are extraordinarily keen, and our imaginative powers excessive; and these two qualities combine to give us a most intense love of life. All the incidents of our journey, which occupied the entire day, must have been, and indeed I can bear testimony that they were, the perfection of anguish to the count, such as seldom can fall to the lot of any man, taking his whole life together. The sun poured its scorching rays on his uncovered head; he, being bound, could not in any way help himself; and several times he turned so faint that the guards had to fetch water to revive him. I obtained permission at last for his poor head to be covered—all the more so as I apprehended a sun‐stroke. I held the cup for him to drink from, and sometimes supported him for a few seconds in my arms to relieve him as well as I could from the restraint of his painful position. It was nightfall when our awful and melancholy procession reached the prison of the count’s native town. His own château was not far distant! I had written to have a chapel prepared in the prison; and in that chapel, kneeling at the foot of the altar, he whom I had come to love as the very child of my soul spent the entire night. Naturally, his first thought on arriving was for his wife and his two little children. And he entreated to be allowed to see them once more. I was not then aware of what was the custom on such melancholy occasions, and I applied for permission to send for the countess and her children. But I found that they had been removed from their home by the order of the magistrates, and were already at a considerable distance. This had been done from motives of humanity, that the poor wife might not be almost within hearing of the dreadful event which was to take place on the morrow, or his children grow up with a full knowledge of their father’s fate. It was almost more than I myself could bear when I had to return to him in the prison, and tell him of the ill‐success of my request. It was the last drop of extreme bitterness. It was the vinegar and the gall; the absolute isolation from all that he had loved, the utter desolation of his human affections. A spasm of agony passed over his face; but the only words he spoke were, ‘The will of God be done.’ ”

“In the morning he again made his confession with the ardent contrition and fervor of a saint. He heard a Mass as preparation for his last communion. He received the Blessed Sacrament at the second Mass, and assisted at a third in thanksgiving.

“The dreadful moment was now at hand. The horrid black limbs of the fatal guillotine stood stark and rigid against the bright morning sky in the great public square of the town.

“Every church in the place was thronged with worshippers, praying and offering their communions for the salvation of the poor soul so soon to be wrenched from sweet life, and sent to its everlasting doom. The public square was also filled with spectators—a silent, awe‐struck throng, while occasionally a prayer would seem to quiver on the air from the suppressed voice of a hundred people.

“At length the count appeared, supported by the guards; for by that time he was in a very exhausted state. His last act was to press my hand in silence. It was the signal for me to give him the last absolution. I had just turned aside, hardly conscious myself from excess of feeling, when the fatal knife fell. A cry of horror ran through the crowd; and then immediately they dispersed, many of them repeating aloud the _De profundis_, as they retired to their homes.

“I always remember poor Falcone in my daily Mass; though I cannot say I think he is in any further need of prayers, but is, I hope, long since in a position to benefit me by his.”

“What is your opinion, father,” asked Mary, “of public executions?”

“In the present state of feeling in Italy they are beneficial rather than otherwise. I attended the execution of two soldiers a few years ago at Terracina. The whole town was crowding to the church the evening before, and at an early hour on the day itself, to pray for the poor men. It was like the general communion at the close of a mission; and those who actually witnessed the execution seemed to do so with no other object than to assist the poor criminals by their prayers. Many of the women were on their knees in the public place. And I do not believe but that such a fervor of devotion had a beneficial effect upon all. It is, or at least it was, the same thing in Rome. But where, as in London and Paris, that idea of intercessory prayer has died out with the faith of which it forms a part, and the vilest rabble collects from a brutal curiosity to see a man hung or guillotined, then I am convinced that public executions are demoralizing, and tend to increase the crimes they are meant to repress.”

“All I know is,” said Frank, suddenly starting up, “if a fellow could only have the good‐luck to be hung in the presence of a large Italian crowd, I think he would have a better chance of going straight to heaven than by any other death. I think I should like to go in for that sort of thing myself.”

“O Frank! what do you mean?”

“Why, this is what I mean: If you have a long illness, you get weak in mind and in the power of volition, as well as weak in body. I know, if I have only a headache, how difficult it is to say my prayers. Fancy, then, what it must be through a long, painful illness. Whereas, if you are going to be hung, you have all your faculties about you; you are in no doubt of when you are going to die; the time is fixed to the minute. You have made your last confession; and I can imagine being able then to make such an act of perfect contrition, with all the forces of one’s mind and soul, that would land one safe past the realms of purgatory. I often feel as if it would be my only chance, and not a bad one, either.”

Padre Cataldo looked amused. Elizabeth did not appear quite to like it, and I overheard her say to him: “I think you might manage to end an honorable life in a more honorable way, and secure heaven all the same.” I thought I heard something in reply about “with your help and your example”; but I did not listen, as I wanted to induce Padre Cataldo to tell us about his wonderful escape during the revolution of 1860. I said something to him about it; but he turned it off, and Mary whispered to me that he never liked to talk about it, but that Don Emidio knew all about it, and we could ask him to tell us the next time we met. Padre Cataldo now took leave, Frank accompanying him back, and promising to return for the Vernons later.

As soon as they had left, Ida told us that all their troubles and anxieties in reference to the Casinelli and the chapel bell had been renewed. There had been an interregnum of comparative peace, and we had entertained the hope that all was likely to go on quietly. But it turned out that one of the sisters some days previously had called on Mrs. Vernon and her daughters to explain that the bell ringing for Mass was such a cause of annoyance to the other lodgers that she really must request that it should be entirely given up. Of course Mrs. Vernon refused. The chapel had been conceded to them; Mass was said there daily by the express permission of the cardinal archbishop, and was of the greatest benefit to the neighborhood; and she and her daughters absolutely declined to sanction such an insult to religion. Signorina Casinelli proposed that the bell should be hung somewhere in the garden at a considerable distance. But this also was refused. It was not rung at an early hour. It was not a large bell, and it was absurd to have the chapel in one place, and the chapel bell an eighth of a mile away, to say nothing of the trouble of sending some one to ring it. Signorina Casinelli left the house in high dudgeon; and the next day she waylaid Padre Cataldo, as he was returning through the garden from visiting the sick. She flew into a violent rage the moment she saw him, and told him that, rather than offend their other tenants, they would, the house being their property, shut up the chapel entirely.

Unfortunately, no written agreement respecting the use of the chapel existed between the Vernons and the Casinelli; and it had never entered any one’s head that they could be guilty of such a transaction. The threat was, however, only too well carried out. That same evening the bell was cut down and carried away. The Vernons learnt from the _vignaiuoli_ in their neighborhood that the Casinelli had had some difficulty in finding any workmen who would undertake the job. They had first sent for a mason in their own employ; but he had absolutely refused to have anything to do with a work which he considered as sacrilegious; and turning to the _padrona_, the eldest sister, he exclaimed, “Judas also sold his Master for money, but I will have nothing to do with conduct which resembles his. You may manage your own affairs in your own way.”

The following Saturday they completed their evil work by literally doing as they threatened. A message was sent to the Vernons to warn them that they had better take out of the chapel anything therein which belonged to them without loss of time, as that night it was to be locked and the keys withdrawn.

It was a sad office indeed for the Vernons to have to strip the little chapel of all its ornaments, the work of their hands and their hearts. They did it in silence, and in silence they bore the heavy trial; for had they allowed themselves any expressions which would have served as a cry for the peasantry around, it would have been difficult to restrain the grief and indignation of these poor people at finding themselves deprived of their Mass and of the instructions of a priest whom they all loved as a father. Ida’s delicate health made it very difficult for her to walk to any church up the high hill at the foot of which Casinelli is situated. Padre Cataldo had to go elsewhere to say his Mass, to the great inconvenience of himself and others. But that was as nothing compared to the grief of seeing all his little flock dispersed.

Signore Casinelli informed his tenant, in the presence of several persons, that henceforth he might consider himself master of the situation. And so he has remained. But the Casinelli have never since been able to command the slightest respect from the _vignaiuoli_ and peasantry of the neighborhood. They have lost all prestige. And long before these pages see the light the Vernons will have left Casinelli to establish themselves in one of the many villas whose doors were open to them from that moment. All in the neighborhood wanted to let their apartments to them and Padre Cataldo; and if anything could console them for all they had had to sacrifice, it might be the amount of sympathy and respect which met them on all sides and from all classes; while the incident, far from diminishing Padre Cataldo’s field of usefulness, seemed to have opened out fresh spheres for him to work in, and to have extended his influence far and wide.

The garden in which our villa of R—— R—— stood led by steps and winding paths to a tiny bay and to a long series of rocks and large natural caves. There was more than one bath, fed by the fresh sea‐water, in whose limpid depths we not unfrequently saw brilliant sea‐anemones, and even small fish which sometimes forced their way through to the openings left in an artificial dike to supply the bath with water. Here and there a wooden bridge was thrown over some part where the water broke the communication from one cave to another. The views from the wide, arched openings of the caves were very lovely; Naples and the bay on one side, and the flower‐ clad, precipitous rocks of the coast of Posilippo on the other. At night the fishermen’s boats which had been moored in these caves, and in others like them, came gliding out with a lighted torch at the prow. And all through the night many of them might be seen, with the black figures of two or three fishermen dimly distinguished from time to time; though more generally all that can be seen is the dark, shadowy form of the boat and the flaring torch, intended to attract the unwary fish into the net.

I should have liked the caves better had they not been disfigured by the stuffed, gaunt forms of a hippopotamus and some alligators and similar monsters, which were placed in all sorts of unexpected places, and seemed to meet you round the corner with gaping jaws. These caves had formed part of a public place of resort some years ago, but were now deserted and forgotten, with all the monsters rapidly falling into dusty decay.

We had been for some time at the villa before my curiosity had ever led me to explore this strange place. When I did so, it was in company with Don Emidio. But as I protested that I did not like crocodiles and hippopotami, he suggested that we should climb the rock outside the cave to the pretty little pink and green kiosk which crowned it, and which commanded a lovely view from where it stood embedded in aloes and cacti, opuntias and zoccas, besides many varieties of climbing plants. Nothing could be prettier than the winding paths, protected on one side by a rustic fence, while every cranny in the rock on the other side bore some tuft of blossom or afforded roothold for the wild tresses of some flowering creeper.

Mary and Frank had remained in the lower garden, while we wandered into every nook and corner, and finally sat down to rest inside the kiosk, which, with windows all round, presented to us a wide and lovely scene.

It was here I consented to become Don Emidio’s wife.

That effected, no matter how or in what words—for those things seldom read wisely—I suggested that we should rejoin Mary and Frank. Don Emidio took the latter by the arm, and walked with him a little way apart. I remained silent, sitting at Mary’s feet. When Don Emidio joined us, it was without Frank. I asked where he was. “Gone down to Casinelli,” was the reply. I knew why. He was determined to have his fate also decided that same day, that same hour. I had no doubts for him. I knew that Elizabeth would consent; and I felt partly glad, and partly saddened at the thought that our life, hitherto so united and bound up in each other, was about to divide and separate, each following his or her own destiny, and weaving a new web of life’s joys and sorrows. Don Emidio left us soon. But long after, I saw him leaning over the parapet of the road, waiting for Frank to return from Casinelli, that he might learn whether his wishes also were to be crowned with success. I could see the meeting from my window, as the tall figures of the two friends stood dark against the deep blue of an Italian starlight night. I could have no doubt of the nature of the intelligence conveyed by Frank to his friend; for, to my horror, Don Emidio threw his arms around him and kissed him, as Italians do. Poor Frank! thought I, how will he put up with such an un‐English proceeding? No doubt it had happened to Frank before; for he did not, so far as I could judge at that distance, start with astonishment. But it set me thinking about my future husband’s foreign ways. And the next morning, when Frank and I had talked over the more serious questions in our affairs, I found myself drifting into that part of the matter. “I wonder, Frank, if I shall ever get quite reconciled to his Italian customs, so as either not to notice, or to prefer them?”

“It is to be hoped so, since he will be your husband. But what do you mean in particular?”

“Why, you know he will call me Miss Jane; any one else would say Miss Hamilton.”

“That is an evil which is already at an end. No doubt for the future he will call you simply Jane, and speak of you a short time hence as la Contessa Gandolfi.”

“Then I wish he would not embrace you, Frank.” Frank laughed aloud.

“He would be hurt if I repulsed him. They all do it. He will soon see that in England it is not the custom, and then he will give it up—at least while there.”

“Another thing is, I do not like his wearing a large ring—though I own it is a handsome one—on his forefinger. We think that vulgar in England.”

“And it does not happen to be vulgar here; that is all about it, my dear Jane. I am afraid I cannot help you in that matter. But possibly in time you will succeed in bringing him round to your views; though I doubt your ever being able to break him of occasionally transferring that ring from his finger to his thumb whenever he is particularly anxious to remember something. When you see his palazzo in Rome, you will find that he possesses a beautiful portrait, by Vandyke, of an ancestor on his mother’s side. That very ring is on the forefinger of the portrait. Emidio is the living image of that picture. And you can hardly blame a man for carrying out a likeness he has such reason to be proud of.”

“There is one other thing, Frank, which strikes me as odd. If he is sitting in the arm‐chair when Mary or I come into the room (and you know we are not rich in arm‐chairs here), he never gives either of us that chair, but fetches us another, and goes back to the arm‐chair himself.”

“Jane, you are a little fool. Do you not know that in Italy, at least in the south, it is the height of ill‐breeding to offer any one the chair you have just occupied yourself? A cool seat is always a desideratum in this climate, even though it may be a less luxurious one.”

“Shall I ever, do you think, be able to take back to England with me a husband with such a name as Emidio? What a pity he was not christened Paul, or Stephen, or even Anthony! But Emidio!” By this time we were both laughing—Frank at me, I at myself.

“You need never call him Emidio in public. We call him so because, when we have been travelling about Italy alone together, we found it convenient to drop his title. But you know he is il Conte Gandolfi. His mother was the only child of a noble Roman family, and consequently a great heiress. She married a Neapolitan Conte Gandolfi; and that is how it happens that with a Neapolitan name his chief residence is in Rome, in the palazzo that belonged to his mother. His father was not a man of very considerable fortune, and his only property here is his villa at Capo di Monte, where he spends the summer. A nobler heart and a finer nature I never saw. There is the simplicity of a child, the honor of a true‐born gentleman, the delicacy of a woman, the courage of a hero, and the piety of a saint.”

The tears stood in my eyes; and taking dear Frank’s hand in mine, I said, “Thank you, dear old fellow, for saying that. And, thank God, you too have drawn a prize!”

A Discussion With An Infidel.

IV. Immortality Of Matter.

_Reader._ And now, doctor, what other argument do you allege against creation?

_Büchner._ The immortality of matter, and the immortality of force.

_Reader._ The immortality of matter?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir. “Matter is immortal, indestructible. There is not an atom in the universe which can be lost. We cannot, even in thought, remove or add an atom without admitting that the world would thereby be disturbed, and the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter interfered with. It is the great merit of modern chemistry to have proved in the most convincing manner that the uninterrupted changes of matter which we daily witness, the origin and decay of organic and inorganic forms and tissues, do not arise, as was hitherto believed, from new materials, but that this change consists in nothing else but the constant and continuous metamorphosis of the same elementary principles, the quantity and quality of which ever are, and ever remain, the same” (p. 9). “The atoms are in themselves unchangeable and indestructible; to‐day in this, tomorrow in another form, they present by the variety of their combinations the innumerable forms in which matter appears to our senses. The number of atoms in any element remains, on the whole, the same; not a single particle is formed anew; nor can it, when formed, disappear from existence” (p. 11).

_Reader._ Do you say in the same breath that no particle of matter can be formed anew, and that, _when formed_, it cannot disappear? When is it formed, if it cannot be formed at all?

_Büchner._ The phrase may be incorrect, but the idea is sound, and the argument conclusive.

_Reader._ Poor doctor! the idea is as inconsistent as the phrase is incorrect; and the argument is not worthy of the name. Let us admit that matter, elements, and atoms have been observed to remain always and everywhere the same. Does it follow that matter, elements, and atoms are indestructible? By no means; it only follows that, be they destructible or not, they have not been actually destroyed. You say that by the destruction or addition of an atom “the world would be disturbed.” Let it be disturbed; what then?

_Büchner._ Then the laws of gravitation and the equilibrium of matter would be interfered with; which cannot be admitted. The laws of nature are unchangeable. What has been constantly true for the past must be true for ever.

_Reader._ You are utterly mistaken, doctor. The world may be disturbed by the creation or the annihilation of matter without the laws of nature being interfered with. I admit that the laws of nature are unchangeable; they have been true for the past, and they will be true for ever. But what is the object of these laws? Nothing but the mode of production of the phenomena of the material world. Hence you have a law of gravitation, a law of propagation of sound, a law of impact, a law of reflection and of refraction, and generally laws of motion, but you have no law of _existence_ and no law of _substance_. Whence it is clear that all your laws of nature would remain exactly the same whether any new portion of matter were brought into being or any portion of existing matter annihilated. Suppose that your own body were annihilated; would any law of nature be upset? Would the sun cease to illuminate the earth? Would the earth cease to revolve round its axis or to attract bodies? Would the ocean cease rolling its waves to the shore? Would fire cease to burn? In one word, would any law of statics or of dynamics cease to be true?

Nor can you decline this supposition by saying that annihilation itself would be against the laws of nature. For all your laws of nature, as I have just remarked, regard the movements, and not the substance, of the material world. Your laws suppose the existence of matter in the same manner as civil laws suppose the existence of civil society; and as these latter are not modified by an increase or a decrease in the number of the individuals subject to them, so neither would the former be modified by any increase or decrease in the number of material elements. There would be, of course, a change in the phenomena themselves, because the execution of the laws would be carried on suitably to the new condition of the case; but the laws would remain the same. Consequently any amount of matter could be annihilated without the least change in the laws of nature. Let the moon be annihilated; the ebb and flow of the ocean will be altered, but the laws of motion will remain the same; for the ebbing and flowing of the waters will still be proportional to the action of the disturbing causes. Let a stone be annihilated in the act of its falling to the ground; the law of attraction will remain unaltered, as it will still be true that every falling body must acquire, under gravitation, a uniformly increasing velocity. Hence the unchangeableness of natural laws cannot be alleged as a proof of the indestructibility of matter; and your argument is worthless. The utmost you can be allowed to assume is that matter, whether destructible or not, has hitherto continued to exist, and no particle of it has ever been annihilated.

This last assertion, however, is admitted by natural philosophers, not because there is any scientific proof of it, but simply because science has no grounds for denying it. Science has no means of ascertaining, for instance, whether any remote star has been annihilated, or any new star created, in the last thousand years; and if the common belief is that no new matter has been created, and no portion of matter annihilated, we owe it, not to science, but to the teaching of the Bible, which represents the work of creation as long ago completed, and the conservation of all created substances as the effect of design. But you, who laugh at revelation, and pretend to substantiate all your assertions by facts, have no right to assume that no matter has ever been annihilated. Hence not only are you unable to show that matter is indestructible, but you cannot even maintain that no particle of matter has ever been destroyed.

But I will no longer insist on this point. I admit that no atom of matter can ever be lost to the world _by natural processes_. My reason is that the natural actions of bodies, whether physical or chemical, tend merely to the production, modification, or neutralization of movement, and that no amount of change in the movement of an atom can cause the atom to vanish. This is not, however, a discovery of modern chemistry, as you seem to believe. The scholastic philosophers had not the fortune to know modern chemistry; yet they never believed that new compounds were made of new materials, though you recklessly assert that “it was hitherto believed”; but they always uniformly taught that matter was ingenerable and incorruptible. There was therefore scarcely any need of modern chemistry to teach us that no portion of matter can be lost by natural processes. Yet this is not the real question. What we want to know is whether an atom, or any number of atoms, has a necessary existence and cannot be annihilated by God. This is your assumption; and this is what you are unable to show. Your argument is, in fact, nothing but a vicious circle. You say: “There is no God; and therefore matter cannot be annihilated”; and at the same time you say: “Matter cannot be annihilated; and therefore there is no God.” This is, in reality, the covert drift of your argumentation, when from the assumed indestructibility of matter you conclude, first, that matter could not have been created, and, further, that the existence of a Creator is a gratuitous hypothesis. On the other hand, you cannot make good your assertion that matter is indestructible without first denying the existence of a Creator. Such is your nice logic in what you probably consider to be one of your best arguments.

And let me here make a passing remark on the word “immortality,” which you have chosen to designate the pretended indestructibility of matter. Immortality is not simply “existence without end,” but “life without end.” Hence living beings alone can be immortal. Do you assume, then, that a grain of dust or an atom of matter is a living being? If you say _yes_, where are the facts that will lend a support to such an unscientific doctrine? If you say _no_, then the immortality of your matter is nothing indeed but a new form of what you would style “philosophical charlatanism.”

To conclude: the indestructibility of matter is a ridiculous invention of ignorant empiricists, who know neither what matter is nor what is philosophical reasoning. They make, indeed, a great deal of noise with their scientific publications; but their ephemeral celebrity is due to an organized system of mutual laudation and to Masonic support, as you know. Let only twenty years pass, and you may be sure that our children will laugh at your celebrities: and if your _Force and Matter_ is to reach them, they will laugh at you too. Common sense cannot slumber for ever; and when it awakes, then will all your infidel scribes be pronounced designing knaves.

_Büchner._ I thought you would never end, sir; but, long as your answer has been, it has failed to convince me. The force of my argument lies in this: that what can have an end must have had a beginning. If, therefore, matter is not indestructible, it must have had a beginning.

_Reader._ Certainly.

_Büchner._ But a beginning of matter is inconceivable. For how could matter come into existence?

_Reader._ By creation out of nothing.

_Büchner._ This is what I deny. For out of nothing nothing can arise. This is an axiom. Hence “never can an atom arise anew or disappear; it can only change its combinations.... Matter must have existed from eternity, and must last for ever” (p. 12).

_Reader._ I am not in the least surprised to hear that my long talk did not convince you. It is always difficult to convince a man against his will. My object, however, was not to give you a positive demonstration of the fact of creation, but only to show that the reasons which you were parading against creation amount to nothing. Of this I hope I have not failed to convince you. But now you come forward with a new argument, which indeed is very old, consisting in a pretended axiom, that out of nothing nothing can arise. Suppose, doctor, that I deny your axiom. How would you show that I deny a truth?

_Büchner._ “How can any one deny the axiom that out of nothing nothing can arise?” (p. 12).

_Reader._ You must know, doctor, that what you assume to be an old axiom is only an old error. In fact, why do you say that out of nothing nothing can arise? Simply because natural energies can do nothing without pre‐ existing materials. Hence your argument amounts to this. “Natural energies never make anything out of nothing; therefore out of nothing nothing can be made.” That this conclusion is a great blunder I need not prove, I presume, as logic teaches that no conclusion can be more general than its premises. Where is, then, the ground of your pretended axiom?

Nor can you reply that the natural energies are the only energies known to us, and that, if these cannot make anything out of nothing, the axiom is unexceptionably true. This would be to assume what you are bound to prove, to wit, that there is no power above the natural forces; and to assume this is what logicians call _Petitio principii_. On the other hand, you cannot maintain that such natural forces are the only ones we know; for you cannot limit the range of human knowledge within the narrow sphere of mere empiricism without denying human reason.

_Büchner._ We have no notion of supersensible forces.

_Reader._ You talk without reflection, doctor. If you have no such a notion, what is it, then, that compels you to admit any demonstrated truth? Is it attraction, heat, electricity, or any of your physical or chemical forces? No; it is the force of demonstration, it is the force of truth. This is no vain theory; I appeal to your own experience. Your intellect is obliged to yield to the force of evidence and demonstration just as inevitably as the pendulum is obliged to yield to the force of gravitation. And since a real effect requires a real cause, hence whatever thus really compels your intellect to yield must have a real power, and that evidently supersensible.

But reverting to your pretended axiom, I have yet to remark that, strictly speaking, it does not even hold in the case of natural causes; in other terms, I say that nothing is ever produced by natural causes except out of nothing. Of course no tailor ever made a coat without cloth, and no carpenter ever built a ship without pre‐existing materials. This I admit; but if you closely examine the point, you will see that to make a coat or a ship is not _to produce_ it, and that the action of the tailor and the carpenter wholly consists in modifying and arranging the materials so as to give them a form. It is, therefore, this _form_ alone that is produced. Now, clearly, this form, before its production, was nothing; for it had no existence. And therefore the work of the tailor or the carpenter is a production of something out of nothing.(152) And thus either you must deny that anything is ever produced, or you must give up your axiom that nothing can be produced out of nothing.

_Büchner._ I cannot give up my axiom without inconsistency. I will rather deny that anything is ever really produced. In fact, “Those are children, or persons with a narrow sphere of vision, says Empedocles, who imagine that anything arises that has not existed before, or that anything can entirely die and perish” (p. 15).

_Reader._ These are empty words.

_Büchner._ On the other hand, “the immortality of matter is now a fact scientifically established, and can no longer be denied” (p. 13).

_Reader._ Indeed?

_Büchner._ Yes; “Its actual proof is given by our scales and retorts” (p. 13).

_Reader._ I thought I had already shown that your scales and retorts are incapable of giving such a proof.

_Büchner._ “Sebastian Frank, a German who lived in 1528, says: Matter was in the beginning in God, and is on that account eternal and infinite. The earth and everything created may pass away, but we cannot say that that will perish out of which matter is created. The substance remains for ever” (p. 14).

_Reader._ Do you endorse these words?

_Büchner._ Certainly.

_Reader._ Then you catch yourself in your own trap. For if matter is created, as your German writer says, surely there is a Creator.

_Büchner._ But if matter was in the beginning in God, and was eternal, it is plain that matter could not be created.

_Reader._ Perfectly true. And therefore, since matter, according to your German authority, has been created, surely matter was not in the beginning in God. But, after all, can you endorse Frank’s words without admitting a God? And can you admit a God and a Creator while fighting against creation and the existence of God? Be honest, doctor, and confess that bad indeed must a cause be which cannot be maintained but by clumsy sophistry and shameful contradiction.

V. Immortality Of Force.

_Reader._ In your theory, doctor, force is immortal. This I cannot understand. Would you tell me how you come to such a conclusion?

_Büchner._ “Indestructible, imperishable, and immortal as matter is also its immanent force. Intimately united to matter, force revolves in the same never‐ending cycle, and emerges from any form in the same quantity as it entered. If it be an undoubted fact that matter can neither be produced nor destroyed, but merely transformed, then it must also be assumed as an established principle that there is not a single case in which force can be produced out of, or pass into, nothing; or, in other words, can be born or annihilated. In all cases where force is manifested it may be reduced to its sources; that is to say, it can be ascertained from what other forces a definite amount of force has been obtained, either directly or by conversion. This convertibility is not arbitrary, but takes place according to definite equivalents, so that not the smallest quantity of force can be lost” (p. 16).

_Reader._ How do you account for this theory?

_Büchner._ “Logic and our daily experience teach us that no natural motion or change, consequently no manifestation of force, can take place without producing an endless chain of successive motions and changes, as every effect becomes immediately the cause of succeeding effects. There is no repose of any kind in nature; its whole existence is a constant cycle, in which every motion, the consequence of a preceding motion, becomes immediately the cause of an equivalent succeeding one; so that there is nowhere a gap, nowhere either loss or gain. No motion in nature proceeds from or passes into nothing; and as in the material world every individual form can only realize its existence by drawing its materials from the immense storehouse of matter, so does every motion originate from the equally immense storehouse of forces, to which sooner or later the borrowed quantity of force is again returned. The motion may become latent—_i.e._, apparently concealed; but nevertheless it is not lost, having merely been converted into equivalent states, from which it will escape again in some shape. During this process force has changed its mode; for force may, though essentially the same, assume in the universe a variety of modes. The various forms may, as already stated, be converted into others without loss, so that the sum‐total of existing forces can neither be increased nor diminished, the forms only changing” (pp. 17, 18).

_Reader._ What do you mean by “forms of forces”?

_Büchner._ Physics, as I stated to you on another occasion, “makes us acquainted with eight different forces—gravitation, mechanical force, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, affinity, cohesion, which, inseparably united to matter, form and give shape to the world. These forces are, with few exceptions, mutually convertible, so that nothing is lost in the process of conversion” (p. 18).

_Reader._ “With few exceptions”? I fear that any exception will prove fatal to your theory. But go on, doctor; I wish to hear more about your conversion of forces.

_Büchner._ “We may cite a few instances of transformation or convertibility of forces. Heat and light are produced by combustion. Heat again is converted into mechanical power in steam, and mechanical force can again by friction be reconverted into heat, and, as in the electro‐ magnetical machine, into heat, electricity, magnetism, and light. One of the most frequent conversions of force is that of heat into mechanical force, and _vice versa_” (pp. 18, 19).

_Reader._ What conclusion do you draw from these and similar facts?

_Büchner._ I draw the conclusion that in speaking of forces “the word _lost_ is an incorrect expression; for in all these and similar cases there is not a minim of power lost as regards the universe, but merely as regards the immediate object. The expended force has in reality only assumed different forms, the sum‐total of which is equivalent to the original force. Innumerable examples may be adduced to establish this law, which is expressed in the axiom that _force can neither be created nor destroyed_—an axiom from which results the immortality of force, and the impossibility of its having a beginning or an end. The consequence of this recently‐discovered natural truth is the same as that deduced from the immortality of matter, and both form and manifest from eternity the sum of phenomena which we term _world_. The cycle of matter sides, as a necessary correlate, with the cycle of force, and teaches that nothing is generated anew, that nothing disappears, and that the secret of nature lies in an eternal and immanent cycle, in which cause and effect are connected without beginning or end. That only can be immortal which has existed from eternity; and what is immortal cannot have been created” (pp. 21, 22).

_Reader._ I have heard with great attention all you have said, doctor, and I am sorry to see that you are as wrong as ever. Your argument is altogether ludicrous.

_Büchner._ It is, however, a mere statement of known facts.

_Reader._ I question this very much. But even if the alleged facts were unquestionable, and could not receive any other interpretation than that which you give of them, your conclusion about the “immortality of force” would still be groundless. In fact, the forces of which you speak are all material, and have their existence in matter alone. It is therefore vain and preposterous to argue about the immortality of such forces when you have already failed to show the immortality of matter itself. You boast that your argument is a mere statement of facts; and so do all modern sciolists, more or less awkwardly, when pushed to the wall. But what are the facts? Is heat a form of force? Is it a form convertible into another form? I perceive from your style that you never studied this subject; you only repeat like a parrot what other parrots have learned to say, without the least notion of the true state of things. Tell me, what is a form of force? What is force itself?

_Büchner._ It is not my duty to define force. I accept the definition of the physicists.

_Reader._ This is exactly what I expected to hear. Yet when a man undertakes to philosophize on anything, he ought to know very distinctly what that thing is. Do you make any difference between “forces” and “powers”?

_Büchner._ No, sir, as is evident from my terminology.

_Reader._ Do you discriminate between “force” and “quantity of action”?

_Büchner._ No, sir.

_Reader._ Do you identify “force” with “quantity of movement”?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir.

_Reader._ Then it is evident that you confound force, power, quantity of action, and quantity of movement.

_Büchner._ All these terms are substantially identical in science.

_Reader._ True, the lowest school of physicists considers them as substantially identical, and in this manner they succeed in persuading themselves and many others that the quantity of living force existing in the world is always invariably the same. But, after all, those physicists speak very incorrectly, and are not to be followed in their blundering terminology. A quantity of movement is not an action, but the result of action; and a quantity of action is not a power, but the exertion of power. In fact, the same power acts with different intensity in different conditions; and equal actions produce different movements in bodies actually subject to different dynamical determinations. Hence it is impossible to admit that powers, actions, and movements are synonymous.

And now, which of these three notions do you choose to identify with force? If you say that force is “a quantity of movement,” then it will be false that no force is ever lost; for any quantity of movement can be lost _without compensation_. Thus a stone thrown up vertically loses its quantity of movement without compensation.(153) If you say that force is “a quantity of action,” it will again be false that no force is ever lost; for all successive actions successively pass away, and continually change their direction and their intensity, according as the distances and positions of the bodies acted on are altered. Lastly, if you say that force is “power,” then it is false that forces are transformed or convertible; for the power of each element of matter remains unalterably the same, as you yourself acknowledge, throughout all the vicissitudes of time. “A particle of iron,” you say with Dubois‐Reymond, “is and remains the same, whether it crosses the horizon in the meteoric stone, rushes along in the wheel of the steam‐engine, or circulates in the blood through the temples of the poet.”

_Büchner._ Would you, then, repudiate science?

_Reader._ By no means. I love and respect true science. I only repudiate that false and presumptuous dogmatism which prompts a class of physicists to draw general conclusions from particular, and often questionable, premises.

_Büchner._ Do you, then, condemn the method of induction?

_Reader._ Not at all. I condemn the abuse of that method. What right have modern scientists of extending the principle of the “conservation of force” beyond the boundaries marked by observation and experiment? All they have a right to say is that _in the impact of bodies an equal quantity of movement __ is lost by one body and acquired by another_. This is the fact. But does it follow that therefore the movement lost by the one body passes _identically_ into the other? This is what they imagine; and this is what cannot be proved, because it is absurd. Movement is an affection of matter, and has no independent existence, as you well know. It cannot, therefore, pass identically from body to body any more than a movement of anger can pass identically from man to man. And yet it is on this absurd notion of _nomadic_ movement that the whole theory of the conservation of force, as now held by your advanced thinkers, has been raised. They say: “The quantity of movement which is lost by one of the bodies, and that which is acquired by the other, are perfectly equal; therefore a quantity of movement passes identically from one body to another.” In other terms they say: “There is equality; therefore there is identity.” Is this legitimate induction? Good logic would lead us to argue in the following manner: The actions of the two struggling bodies, being equal and opposite, must produce equal and opposite quantities of movement; hence the quantity of movement which is _destroyed_ in the impinging body must equal the quantity of movement _produced_ in the body impinged upon. Such is the only logical view of the subject; it agrees both with reason and with fact, and it strikes your theory at the root. For what is destroyed is no more; and what is produced had no existence before its production.

We might allow you to talk of the “conservation” and “conversion” of forces, were you reasonable enough to consider such expressions as mere conventional technicalities suited to explain the relations of effects to effects rather than of effects to causes. But you construe the technical phrases into real and absolute principles, and try to explain causation by substituting the effect for the cause; which is as ridiculous an abuse of the word “force” as if a carpenter pretended that his iron square is the square spoken of in the treatises of geometry. But this is not all. What right have you to apply such a theory, whether right or wrong, to gravitation?

_Büchner._ “The pendulum of every clock shows the conversion of gravitation into motion” (p. 21).

_Reader._ Indeed? What do you mean by gravitation? The attractive power of the earth, or its action, or the weight of the pendulum? Surely the attractive power of the earth is not converted into movement; for it remains in the earth, and it continues its work. Neither is the weight of the pendulum converted into movement; for the pendulum does not cease, while moving, to have weight, nor does it weigh more when, at rest; and at the end of its oscillation is not found to have expended or consumed any portion of its weight. You are therefore obliged to say that it is the action of the earth that is converted into movement. But such an expression can have no meaning; because the action is the production of an act, and it is the act itself, not its production, that constitutes the formal principle of the movement. On the other hand, a production which becomes the thing produced is such an absurdity that not even a lunatic could dream of it. Thus it is quite evident that in no imaginable sense can gravitation be considered as _converted_ into movement. It produces movement, but is not converted into it. You see, doctor, that your so boasted theory has no foundation either in reason or in fact.

_Büchner._ But we cannot deny that mechanical movement is convertible into heat, that heat may become light, and that all other such forces can be transformed.

_Reader._ I repeat, and, on the strength of the reasons which I have brought forward, I maintain that the term “conversion of forces” may be admitted as a conventional phrase, but not as exhibiting a philosophical notion. A real conversion of mechanical movement into heat would require that a movement of translation should be transformed into a movement of vibration by being distributed among the molecules of the body which is heated. This I have already shown to be impossible. Things follow a different course. When the hammer falls upon the anvil, its action (and not its movement) shakes the first range of molecules which it encounters. These molecules are thus constrained to approach the following set of molecules lying immediately under them, and to trouble their relative equilibrium. These latter, in their turn, trouble the equilibrium of the following set, and so on till all the molecules of the anvil partake in the movement, each molecule undergoing alternate _compression_ and _dilatation_, the first through the violent action of its neighbors, and the second by the reaction due to its immanent powers. The consequence of all this is that a rapid succession of vibratory movements is originated in each molecule; and thus, as soon as the movement of translation of the falling hammer is extinguished, the movement of vibration is awakened in the molecules of both the anvil and the hammer. Now, what is this but a case of impact? For just as the hammer impinges on the surface of the anvil does each molecule of the anvil impinge on its neighbor; and therefore what you call a transformation of mechanical into vibratory movement is not a real transformation of the one into the other, but the extinction of the one and the production of the other. Thus heat is generated by percussion; and in a similar manner it would be generated by friction and by other mechanical processes. Whenever heat is produced, molecules are set into vibrations of a certain intensity, and their relative equilibrium disturbed. Evidently, such a disturbance of the molecular equilibrium is due to interaction of molecules—that is, to molecular impact. Now, I have already shown, and you have understood it, I hope, that, in the case of impact, the movement never passes identically from this matter to that, but is produced in the one at the same rate as it is extinguished in the other.

I might say a great deal more on this subject, but here I stop, as I almost regret having said so much. Your theory of the conservation of force does not bear out your “immortality of force,” and is so destitute of proof that it does not deserve the honor of a longer refutation.(154)

VI. Infinity Of Matter.

_Reader._ How do you account, doctor, for your assertion that “matter is infinite”?

_Büchner._ In a very simple manner: “Whether we investigate the extension of matter in its magnitude or minuteness, we never come to an end or to an ultimate form of it. When the invention of the microscope disclosed unknown worlds, and exhibited to the eye of the investigator the infinite minuteness of organic elements, the hope was raised that we might discover the ultimate organic atom, perhaps the mode of its origin. This hope vanished with the improvement of our instruments. The microscope showed that in the hundredth part of a drop of water there existed a world of animalcules, of the most delicate and definite forms, which move and digest like other animals, and are endowed with organs, the structure of which we have little conception of” (p. 23). “We term the most minute particle of matter, which we imagine to be no longer capable of division, an _atom_, and consider matter to be composed of such atoms, acquiring from them its qualities, and existing by their reciprocal attraction and repulsion. But the word _atom_ is merely an expression for a necessary conception, required for certain purposes. We have no real notion of the thing we term _atom_; we know nothing of its size, form, composition, etc. No one has seen it. The speculative philosophers deny its existence, as they do not admit that a thing can exist which is no longer divisible. Thus neither observation nor thought leads us, in regard to the minuteness of matter, to a point where we can stop; nor have we any hope that we shall ever reach that point” (p. 24, 25).

_Reader._ That point has been reached, doctor. The theory of primitive, unextended elements is well known and advocated by good scientists and thoughtful philosophers. But let this pass, as I long for your demonstration of the infinity of matter.

_Büchner._ “Like the microscope in respect to the minuteness, so does the telescope conduct us to the universe at large. Astronomers boldly thought to penetrate into the inmost recesses of the world; but the more their instruments were improved, the more worlds expanded before their astonished eyes. The telescope resolved the whitish nebulæ in the sky into myriads of stars, worlds, solar and planetary systems; and the earth with its inhabitants, hitherto imagined to be the crown and centre of existence, was degraded from its imaginary height to be a mere atom moving in universal space. The distances of the celestial bodies are so immense that our intellect wonders at the contemplation of them, and becomes confused. Light, moving with a velocity of millions of miles in a minute, required no less than two thousand years to reach the earth from the galaxy! And the large telescope of Lord Rosse has disclosed stars so distant from us that their light must have travelled thirty millions of years before it reached the earth. But a simple observation must convince us that these stars are not at the limit of space. All bodies obey the law of gravitation, and attract each other. In assuming, now, a limitation, the attraction must tend towards an imagined centre of gravity, and the consequence would be the conglomeration of all matter in one celestial body. However great the distances may be, such an union must happen; but as it does not happen, although the world exists from eternity, there can be no attraction towards a common centre. And this gravitation towards a centre can only be prevented by there being, beyond the bodies visible to us, others still further which attract from without—and so forth _ad infinitum_. Every imagined limitation would render the existence of the world impossible” (pp. 25, 26).

_Reader._ Is this the whole of your argument?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir.

_Reader._ I should like to know how could the large telescope of Lord Rosse disclose stars so distant from us that their light must have travelled thirty millions of years before it reached the earth? Do you not know that in thirty millions of years light travels two million millions of times over the distance from the earth to the sun? And do you hope the world will believe that, thanks to Lord Rosse’s telescope, it has been possible to determine the parallax of a star two million millions of times more distant from us than we are from the sun? The world indeed is ignorant and credulous; but when the lie is too impudent, it is apt to cry you down as a charlatan. You are most imprudent, doctor. You had no need of Lord Rosse’s telescope for your argumentation; and your mention of the distant stars disclosed by it was therefore an inexcusable blunder. But the argument itself has no foundation. You imagine that, if the world were not infinitely expanded in all directions, all matter, by universal gravitation, would have conglomerated into one celestial body. But tell me, Does the moon gravitate towards the earth?

_Büchner._ Of course it does.

_Reader._ How do you account, then, for the fact that the moon has not fallen, nor is likely to fall, on the earth? Is it because the moon is attracted by some matter lying outside its orbit?

_Büchner._ It is on account of centrifugal force accompanying its curvilinear motion.

_Reader._ I am delighted to see that you can explain the fact without appealing to the infinity of matter. Let us go on. As the moon gravitates towards the earth, so do all satellites towards their planets, and all planets towards the sun. And yet none of the satellites have fallen into their planets, and none of the planets into the sun. Is this owing to the matter which lies outside of the planetary and solar system? I presume, doctor, that the enormous distance of fixed stars from us will not encourage you to believe that their attraction on any planet can cope with its gravitation towards the sun. On the other hand, this gravitation is not neutralized by the action of any exterior matter; for all planets actually obey the solar attraction, as their orbital movement conclusively shows. This same orbital movement implies also a centrifugal tendency; and this tendency sufficiently prevents the falling of the planets on the sun. This is unquestionable doctrine.

_Büchner._ I admit the doctrine.

_Reader._ Accordingly it is evident there is no need of infinite matter to prevent the celestial bodies from clustering into one central body. Centrifugal forces, in fact, are sufficient, even by your own admission, to remove all danger of such a catastrophe; and centrifugal forces are to be found wherever there is curvilinear movement around a centre of attraction, that is, throughout all the world, according to astronomical induction. Consequently your argument in favor of the infinity of matter is a mere delusion.

_Büchner._ “If we can find no limit to minuteness, and are still less able to reach it in respect to magnitude, we must declare matter to be infinite in either direction, and incapable of limitation in time or space. If the laws of thought demonstrate an infinite divisibility of matter, and if it be further impossible to imagine a limited space or a nothing, it must be admitted that there is here a remarkable concordance of logical laws with the results of our scientific investigations” (p. 27).

_Reader._ Your great scientific investigations give no result that favors the infinity of matter. This we have just seen. Logical laws give no better results. It is idle, doctor, to assume that there is any law of thought which demonstrates the infinite divisibility of matter; and it is as capricious to assert the impossibility of imagining that the space occupied by matter is limited. You say that outside that space there would be nothing, and therefore there would be no space except that occupied by matter; whence you conclude that space would be limited. Do not fear, doctor, for the fate of space. Outside the space which is occupied by matter there is yet infinite space unoccupied by matter. Space is not made up of matter. Move the matter; you will not move space. Remove all matter; space will not disappear. Of course you cannot understand this, because whoever blots God out of the world extinguishes the source of his intellectual light, and is therefore doomed to grope for ever in the dark. But we Christian philosophers, who admit a God infinite and immense, have no great difficulty to understand how there can be space not occupied by matter. Wherever God is, there is space which can be occupied by matter; for wherever God is, there he can create any amount of matter; and wherever matter can be placed, there is space; for space is nothing but the possibility of locating matter.

It is not my intention to dilate on this topic, nor is it necessary. To answer your difficulty I need only say that space, though void of matter, is always full of God’s substance, to whose immensity alone we must resort, if we desire to account at all for the existence of infinite space.

VII. Dignity Of Matter.

_Reader._ I scarcely expected, doctor, that you would devote a chapter of your book to such a trifling and unscientific subject as the dignity of matter. Is not matter, as such, the lowest of all known substances? What is the dignity of matter?

_Büchner._ You belong to the old school, sir. I will tell you what is the modern view of matter: “To despise matter and our own body because it is material, to consider nature and the world as dust which we must endeavor to shake off, nay, to torment our own body, can only arise from a confusion of notions, the result of ignorance and fanaticism” (p. 28).

_Reader._ You begin with a false assumption, doctor. We of the old school do not despise the body “because it is material.” God created matter; and whatever proceeds from God is very good. We, however, consider the body as of a lower nature than our rational soul, and try to put a check to its unruly appetites—a thing which you, being a physician, will surely approve and commend as conducive to the preservation of health, not to say of morality.

_Büchner._ “Matter is not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit; the one cannot exist without the other; and matter is the vehicle of all mental power, of all human and earthly greatness” (p. 28).

_Reader._ This is, doctor, the most abject and degrading materialism.

_Büchner._ I am not afraid of this word, sir. “We frequently hear those persons contemptuously called _materialists_ who do not share the fashionable contempt for matter, but endeavor to fathom by its means the powers and laws of existence; who have discerned that spirit could not have built the world out of itself, and that it is impossible to arrive at a just conception of the world without an exact knowledge of matter and its laws. In this sense the name of materialist can nowadays be only a title of honor. It is to materialists that we owe the conquest over matter and a knowledge of its laws, so that, almost released from the chains of gravitation, we fly with the swiftness of the wind across the plain, and are enabled to communicate, with the celerity of thought, with the most distant parts of the globe. Malevolence is silenced by such facts; and the times are past in which a world produced by a deceitful fancy was considered of more value than the reality” (p. 29).

_Reader._ You commit blunders upon blunders, doctor. We do not call materialists those who do not share “the fashionable contempt for matter,” but those who deny the existence of a spiritual soul, or teach that matter is not inferior to, but the peer of, spirit, and that the one cannot exist without the other, just as you teach. And therefore your definition of materialism is your first blunder. Again, contempt for matter is not, and never has been, “fashionable”; second blunder. That materialists endeavor “to fathom the powers and laws of existence” is a third blunder; for they are not even capable of fathoming their own ignorance, as our present discussion shows very clearly. A further blunder is to speak of “the powers and laws of existence,” as if there were any law of existence. A fifth blunder is to give credit to the materialists for having discerned “that spirit could not have built the world _out of itself_.” This was discerned long ago by Christian philosophers; whereas your materialists have even failed to discern that spirit could create the world _out of nothing_. A sixth blunder is contained in your assertion that “it is to materialists that we owe the conquest over matter and a knowledge of its laws.” Indeed, you might as well say that we owe light to darkness, and wisdom to dolts. Go and study, O great doctor and president of the medical association of Hessen‐Darmstadt! and then tell us whether Newton, Volta, Galileo, Galvani, Biot, Ampère, Cuvier, Faraday, Liebig, and scores of other great scientists were materialists. To such men we owe modern science; but what does science owe to your materialists? What law did they discover? What conquests have they achieved? It is absurd for them to complain of “malevolence” when they are treated with the contempt they deserve. They are, in fact, mere plunderers and traitors of science.

But I wonder, doctor, whether your love of materialism is much calculated to show the _dignity_ of matter. You have not adduced as yet any reason why we should think of matter very highly. You have said, indeed, that matter is “the peer of spirit”; but this is mere twaddle, as you admit of no other spirit than what would be a result of material combination. I want something better—something like a good argument—before I can appreciate the dignity of matter.

_Büchner._ “Pretended worshippers of God have in the middle ages carried their contempt for matter so far as to nail their own bodies, the noble works of nature, to the pillory” (p. 29).

_Reader._ What do you mean?

_Büchner._ “Some have tormented, others crucified themselves ...” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ Who crucified himself? When? Where? Can any one nail himself to a cross any more than he can raise himself by his belt?

_Büchner._ “Crowds of flagellants travelled through the country, exhibiting their lacerated backs. Strength and health were undermined in the most refined manner, in order to render to the spirit—considered as independent of the body—its superiority over the sinful flesh” (p. 29).

_Reader._ The flagellants were a set of fanatics; but their excesses do not prove the dignity of matter. After all, had they been materialists, they would surely have done something worse than to scourge themselves. They may have undermined their strength and their health, as you remark; but how much greater is the number of materialists who shorten their lives by shameful disorders, since they have lost all hope of a future and better life? Do you pretend that what is done by your adepts for the sake of worldly or sensual pleasure cannot be done by Christians for the sake of eternal salvation? We believe in eternal salvation, and we know what we believe. Strength and health are goods of a lower order than morality, and no true man would hesitate to endanger them for a superior good. But on what authority do you assume that in the middle ages strength and health were undermined “in the most refined manner”?

_Büchner._ “Feuerbach relates that S. Bernard had, by his exaggerated asceticism, lost his sense of taste, so that he took grease for butter, oil for water” (p. 30).

_Reader._ You know that Feuerbach is no authority; and yet I should like to know, how can a man lose his sense of taste _by asceticism_? Does asceticism affect the tongue or the palate? S. Bernard lived sixty‐three years, in spite of continuous intellectual and corporal work, so that you can scarcely say that his manner of undermining his strength and health was “most refined.” As to grease and butter, I have the honor to inform you that S. Bernard seldom tasted either, as they were excluded from the Cistercian table. What do you say to that?

_Büchner._ “Rostan reports that in many cloisters the superiors were in the habit of frequently bleeding their monks, in order to repress their passions” (p. 30).

_Reader._ Bosh.

_Büchner._ “He further states that injured nature avenged itself, and that rebellion, the use of poison and the dagger against superiors, were by no means rare in these living tombs” (p. 30).

_Reader._ And you believe such lies? Of course there is no reason why they should not be circulated among the ignorant and superstitious. They are fond of believing such things, and they are served according to their taste. The supply always meets the demand. Oh! how truly right was S. Paul when he said that _those who turn a deaf ear to truth are doomed to swallow fables_! Those who do not believe the Catholic Church, the highest authority on earth, by just judgment stupidly believe the lies of a Rostan and of a hundred other charlatans of modern times. But let us not forget the real point at issue. Your object was to show the dignity of matter. Where are your proofs? Do you think that the dignity of matter can be established by defamation? Every intelligent reader will infer, on the contrary, that it is from lack of reasons that you are obliged to disgrace your work with libel and slander.

_Büchner._ I am not a forger, after all. I have cited my authorities. But the dignity of matter appears from the fact that it is to matter that we owe science. “Have those who start from God and not from matter ever given us any clue as to the quality of matter and its laws, after which they say the world is governed? Could they tell us whether the sun moves or is at rest? whether the earth is a globe or a plain? what was God’s design? No! That would be an impossibility. To start from God in the investigation of nature is a phrase without meaning. The unfortunate tendency to proceed in the investigation of nature from theoretical premises, and to construe the world and natural truths by way of speculation, is long abandoned; and it is by pursuing an opposite course of scientific investigation that the great advance of our knowledge of nature in recent times must be ascribed” (pp. 31, 32).

_Reader._ It is evident that all our knowledge begins in sensible representations, and therefore depends on matter. But how can you infer from this the dignity of matter? When you ascend a ladder, the first step is always the lowest; which shows the contrary of what you wish to prove. Matter is the lowest of all objects of knowledge, while the highest is God. From matter we start, and in God we must end. This every one admits; you, however, assume that some philosophers “start from God, and not from matter.” Who are they? Are they, forsooth, those who teach that matter has been created by God? Then you are unjust to them, and falsify the history of science, by giving us to understand that they could not tell us whether the sun moves or is at rest, and whether the earth is a globe or a plain. It was not the atheist or the materialist that taught us astronomy and geography. The materialist can only tell us, as you do, that “all natural and mental forces are inherent in matter” (p. 32), which is no science at all; and that “in matter alone forces can manifest themselves,” or that “matter is the origin of all that exists” (_ibid._), which is the reverse of science. _This_ they can prate; but as for the great laws of nature, they had to learn them from us—I mean from men who did not preach the dignity of matter with the foolish and ignoble purpose of dethroning God. You condemn those who “construe the world and natural truths by way of speculation.” This I have already answered; but I may remind you that by condemning speculation you condemn yourself. Experimental knowledge is very good; but it is by speculation alone that our knowledge acquires its scientific character. Hence your view of science without speculation is as absurd as your assumption of matter without spirit and without God. This may suit materialists, for they stop supinely at the lowest step of the ladder; but intellectual men have a mind to ascend the ladder to the very top. What is the use of knowing matter, if you know nothing else? Matter is the alphabet of science; to study matter, and to ignore the methods of rising from matter to spirit, and from the world to God, is to study the alphabet alone during all your life, and to die an abecedarian. This is what you crave; this is what you adorn with the venerable name of science; whereas we believers not only study the alphabet, but also read the great book of the universe, and know that the book has an Author, whose thoughts it reveals. You have vainly labored to establish the dignity of matter. Had you known how to read the book of nature, you would have discovered that matter has no natural dignity but that of being the lowest work _of Him whose works are all perfect_.

To Be Continued.

Who Will Remember?

Like as a pebble on the salt sea‐sands That some wave washes to an unknown shore, So shall we quietly be swept away From out the millions to be seen no more.

Who will remember, who will say “dear friend”? Who will walk sadly seeking yet a trace Of well‐known footsteps, of caressing hands, Of some remembrance of a lost, dead face?

Ask not too much of human hearts that wait; Fresh buds will blossom for their eyes at last, And flowers dead, however sweet they were, Are, like the whole of earth’s dead treasures, past.

Church Music.(155)

I.

From the earliest times music has had a place in the public worship of all peoples—among the pagans, among the Jews, among Christians. Its use in this connection has been dictated by God himself in the act of constituting the human mind; it has, moreover, received his express sanction, as we learn from the ordinances of the Jewish people. In the new law it has even been consecrated by his own divine example, since we read that our Lord and his apostles sang hymns together. His birth was heralded to the world by the song of his angels, and heaven is represented to the Christian as a place where we shall sing for ever the praises of God.

Church music, therefore, dates from the origin of Christianity, and has constituted ever since an integral, though not an essential, part of public worship among Christians.

The church has her simple offices and her solemn offices, and she has made the use of music one of the chief marks by which they are distinguished.

Church music grew with the growth of the church. As Christians increased and prospered, music was more and more cultivated, and was more largely introduced into their solemn exercises of worship.

The extent to which sacred music was cultivated in the early church cannot be easily determined; we have no reason to think it was very great.

When Europe emerged from that sad state of confusion which came over it with the invasion of the northern barbarians, and music was revived as a science and an art, it was, like the other branches of learning, at first confined mostly to the clergy, and its productions were for a long time almost exclusively of a sacred character.

The church being an indestructible institution, her traditions are handed down by one generation of her children to another. It was thus that in a dark day of confusion and destruction she preserved for us the treasures of ancient learning and the arts; and the world to‐day owes to her not only the modern developments of poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture, but also the beautiful and varied combinations of modern music.

At first, as we have just said, there was no music but that which was dedicated to holy purposes, except such rude melodies as nature in all ages teaches the most uncultivated.

The musical drama did not exist; and music does not seem to have made any essential part of the pageants or spectacles destined for the public entertainment.

It was from the church that music was introduced into the chamber, the hall, and the street, and in the beginning secular music imitated and borrowed the forms of that which was sacred.

The music used in the sacred offices at first and during many centuries was the plain chant. How much of this chant was taken from pagan or Jewish sources cannot be determined, for authorities differ widely; but in any case it was so modified and improved by the fathers of the Eastern Church, and afterwards in the West by SS. Ambrose and Gregory, when they adapted it to the purposes of Christian worship, that it is now frequently called the _ecclesiastical chant_, though it is oftener called _Gregorian_, from the pope just mentioned.

In the beginning it was what its name indicates—_plain_ and simple. It was sung in unison, and its melodies did not exceed the compass of the most ordinary voices.

But unison was found monotonous, as also the uniformity of time or measure generally observed in plain chant. The first departure from the old and severe forms was made when, about the middle of the IXth century, they introduced a sort of rude harmony constructed on the chant.

But this did not satisfy the craving for change, and the love of novelty, once indulged, led the way to many excesses.

Baini gives us an example of the abuses that then became prevalent. “They would write, for example, a Mass,” he says, “taking as a subject the melody of the Gregorian _Ave Maria_. Three parts in the harmony would sing portions of the _Kyrie_, _Gloria_, and _Credo_ at the same time, while a fourth would take up at intervals the entire _Ave Maria_.”

Not merely were the sacred words of the composition itself “shaken together in most admired confusion,” but, as we have just said, the words of other sacred pieces were foisted among them, so that they no longer expressed any one idea. Worse far, the gaps were even sometimes filled up “with snatches of old songs,” the ballads of the day, and those not always of the most unexceptionable character.

Attempts were also made to vary the stately measure of the chant.

Indeed, all sorts of devices were introduced in the search for novelty, and so great had become the abuse about the period of the Council of Trent that a celebrated cardinal declared that some of the church music of his day was so unfit to be offered to God that nothing but invincible ignorance could excuse from mortal sin those who offered it.

At this juncture arose the illustrious Palestrina.

Born in an age of the most vitiated taste, and himself not quite exempt from its unfavorable influences at the opening of his professional career, his exalted and discriminating genius was guided to disentangle the sweet spirit of song from the mazes in which it was well‐nigh lost, and to rescue his art from the merited reproaches which it was receiving on every side. He was encouraged and assisted in his task by two saints, S. Charles Borromeo and S. Philip Neri. When his celebrated _Missa Papæ Marcelli_ was first heard in 1565, it at once banished from the churches all the profane novelties that had preceded it, and became the model for church compositions during the next hundred years, when with Carissimi began the change to what is modern.

When Pius IV., the reigning pontiff, heard it, he declared it satisfied all the requirements of sacred music; in fact, so charmed was he by its exquisite strains that he compared it to the melodies that the Apostle S. John had heard in the heavenly Jerusalem, saying that another John (Palestrina’s Christian name was John) had given us in the earthly Jerusalem a foretaste of the music in heaven.

From that day to this the use of Palestrina’s music has been retained in the Pope’s own choir, to the exclusion of all other except the simple plain chant, with which it is made to alternate. Even when the Pope officiates or presides at any celebration outside his own chapel, his choir accompanies him and sings the same music.

It is this music, _alla Palestrina_, that travellers go to Rome to hear, especially during Holy Week. One generation has thus followed another to Rome for three hundred years; and the harmonies of Palestrina, though ever ancient, are, like the beauty of divine truth, found to be ever new.

Though Palestrina has retained his hold on the Papal choir at Rome, music far different in character from his has been introduced into the other choirs, even of Rome.

The perfection of the organ and of other instruments used to accompany the voices of singers, and the consequent discovery of other and more scientific complications in the art of harmony, especially since the introduction of the natural discord, the development of melody, joined with much greater skill in execution and the incessant thirst for novelty, have led to the introduction into nearly all the churches of compositions in which the voices and instruments are heard together in every variety of combination.

Add to this that about two centuries ago the opera took its rise, and the dramatic style, followed in it and developed by it, made its influence felt in the church.

For kings and princes then began the practice of selecting the same musician to preside over the performances of their theatres and of their chapels; nay, the whole staff of the theatre was brought into the chapel on Sundays, as is done to‐day in Dresden. Nothing better and nothing different was required for the chapel, except the substitution of other words and a toning down of the measures of the drama, and thus the chapel became merely a sort of sacred concert‐room.

But the _maîtres de chapelle_ at these courts were the first musicians of their day, and their success in operatic music, sounded over all Europe, caused their sacred compositions to be looked on with undiscriminating favor by the public. And as the weakness of human nature is such that inferiors naturally imitate their superiors, and sometimes even copy their faults, it became the fashion to sing in churches the sacred music used in court‐chapels, especially as this was more easily obtained, being printed at the expense of the courts.

Besides this, the modern composers of opera seem to have the ambition of composing also for the church. But they generally forget how very different the church and the theatre are, and they seldom care to follow a different method in the church from that which gains them applause in the theatre; and the public are frequently as forgetful in this matter as the composers.

It must be added that the directors of choirs seem to have a fatal habit of following, even in church, if they are allowed, the _prevailing __ style_ set by the latest and most popular writers for the stage.

When the model so successfully set by Palestrina was first departed from, and instrumental music used in conjunction with vocal, there may have been a certain gain, as the chant became more melodious and less monotonous without losing its depth and solemnity. Gradually, however, the grave style of the older musicians disappeared, and the music of the church has become, at least in some places, almost as light and as airy as that of the theatre.

This music sometimes seems written in derision or contempt of the sacred words; as, 1, when a prayer of supplication, such as the _Kyrie eleison_ and _Dona nobis pacem_, is set to numbers as lively as those of a jig (frequently the case with Haydn). 2. When the words are omitted, even though they be of importance; as the words of the Creed, _qui ex Patre Filioque procedit_ (nearly always omitted, even in the longest Masses of Haydn). 3. When they are interminably repeated or senselessly inverted. In Mozart’s Twelfth Mass we have: _Crucifixus, et homo factus est_.

What shall we say of the operatic solos, duos, trios, etc., instrumental interludes, sincopations, etc., which, to any one who reflects, are in direct contradiction to all our notions of what is reverent and appropriate to the church?

II.

From what has been said in the preceding pages, there are three general forms of church music: the plain chant, the music termed _alla Palestrina_, and modern figured music.

(a.) Plain chant is the old and original song of the church, of which the forms, like those of a dead language, are fixed and immutable. Long, long ago the secret of plain chant _composition_ was lost, and it is probable that we have lost in great measure also the secret of its proper _execution_.

“The leading idea which is represented by plain chant,” says Canon Oakeley,(156) “and in no degree by any other style of music, except that which consists in bare recitative, is that in certain cases music best discharges her office by retreating, as it were, in despair before certain divine words, and contenting herself with merely providing a vehicle for their utterance, so simple as not by any studied beauty of its own to detract from their intrinsic majesty and power. This, I think, will be admitted to be the leading idea of plain chant, though I am far from denying that accidentally this idea produces some of the most attractive charms of the divine art in its results.... In many of these accidental instances plain chant not only excels other music, but absolutely sets it at defiance in its own particular line.” Hence a celebrated musician is reported to have said that he preferred the plain chant of the Preface and the _Pater Noster_ to all he himself had ever written.

In the beginning this chant was not even harmonized. It was plain and unadorned, as its name implies—_cantus planus_.

(b.) The music of Palestrina is the last and triumphant result of the efforts that were made in his time and before it to vary, to modify, and to adorn the plain chant, which all had found too simple and too monotonous.

Pope John XXII., elected in 1316, complains of the novelties introduced into the execution of plain chant in his day. These innovations he condemns as unbecoming and undevotional, especially the attempts to vary the measure; but he immediately adds: “We do not intend by this to prohibit that occasionally, especially on festival days, either at the solemn Masses or the other divine offices, some harmonious combinations (_consonantiæ quæ melodiam sapiunt_), viz., harmonies of the octave, the fifth, the fourth, and such like, on the simple ecclesiastical chant, be sung; in such manner, however, that the integrity of the chant remain untouched, and nothing of this grave and stately music (_musica bene morata_) be changed, especially since _these harmonies delight the ear, excite devotion, and prevent the spirit of those who sing to God from drooping_” (_torpere non sinunt_). (Extr. Comm., lib. iii., cap. 1, _Docta Sanctorum_.) This Constitution is the earliest utterance of the popes concerning church music—at least since innovations were attempted—that we possess. The abuses of which Pope John XXII. complained continued to exist, and even to increase, till the time of the Council of Trent, when Palestrina produced that style of music which is known by his name, and which, though built upon the plain chant, is as unlike it as Grecian is unlike Italian architecture. It is equally unlike modern music. It differs from plain chant, being an unbroken series of artistically‐constructed harmonies, in which unison is unknown. It differs from modern music by the absolute disuse of instruments of any kind (even the organ), by the exclusion of all passages for _soli_, and by being written in plain chant tonality. “With the grave Gregorian melody, learnedly elaborated in rigorous counterpoint, and reduced to greater clearness and elegance without any instrumental aid,” says Picchianti, “Palestrina knew how to awaken among his hearers mysterious, grand, deep, vague sensations that seemed caused by the objects of an unknown world, or by superior powers in the human imagination.”(157)

(c.) Modern music differs essentially from all that went before it, and this difference is attributable to two principal causes: 1. The improvement in the manufacture and the use of instruments, and their introduction into the church; and, 2, The influence of theatrical music on that of the church, before alluded to. Modern music could not be in ancient times, for the want of modern instruments. As the perfection of the art of vaulting gave us that advance on the simple lines and heavy masses of Grecian architecture which we have in Gothic and Italian architecture, so the modern developments in orchestration have changed the whole character of music in the church and out of it.

The influence of operatic music on that of the church is seen in the attempt of modern composers of church music to make it dramatic. Church music, as Palestrina and the other great masters of the old Roman school had conceived it, had been treated as an emanation of pure sentiment, stripped of all human passion—as something ideal. The modern composers, on the contrary, pretend by their music to express dramatically the sense of the text. They say that, to be dramatic, it is not necessary to be theatrical, and they point to certain compositions of Cherubini, Beethoven, Hummel, and even Haydn, in which they say the contrary is practically demonstrated.(158)

It must, however, be confessed that modern composers, by trying to be dramatic, have more frequently fallen into the great fault of being theatrical than they have avoided it.

The use of instrumentation and of dramatic expression has given them immense scope, but their success bears no proportion to their talents, their opportunities, their numbers, and the immense quantity of their compositions.

Like the Athenians of old (Acts xvii.) spoken of by S. Paul, they incessantly crave something new, and, in their search for novelty, more often give us what is novel and strange than what is beautiful and appropriate, so that their compositions hardly ever continue to be used for a long time; they are soon thrown aside and forgotten; and, indeed, we think it no exaggeration to say that, if all their compositions, except a very few, were burned, or should otherwise perish, the church would suffer no loss.

In consequence of the failure of modern composers to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion, though their music has been introduced into our churches and given every chance of trial, complaints against it are heard on every side. We grumble about it in our conversations; we write against its excesses in the public journals; bishops complain of it in pastoral letters; provincial councils are forced to issue decrees about it; the Sovereign Pontiffs themselves not unfrequently raise their voices, sometimes in warning, sometimes in threats—in a word, the evil seems to have attracted general attention, as a similar evil did in the time of John XXII. and at the period of the Council of Trent, and a remedy is called for.

I. On account of the unsatisfactory character of most modern compositions, some have proposed that we should go back plainly and simply to the original or plain song. This was proposed in two able articles in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Dec., 1869, and Feb., 1870, and the Paulists of New York have actually made the experiment.

The reasons in favor of the resumption of plain chant and the exclusion of all other music may be stated thus:

1. It is the original song of the church; it is of venerable antiquity; it was originated under ecclesiastical influences, and has been sanctified by having been always associated with what is best and holiest in the history of the church.

2. It is so dissimilar from the music of the world that it is recognized at once and by everybody as ecclesiastical, and can never be confounded with secular music.

3. It possesses, when well sung, an air of stateliness and solemnity which is never reached by all the refinements and artifices of modern music. If it is less dramatic than figured music, it is also more expressive, because in it the words of the ritual speak for themselves naturally and without affectation, and therefore most eloquently; whereas in figured music the words are made so subservient to the musical numbers, are so senselessly repeated and so jumbled together, that their meaning is disguised rather than conveyed, and they cannot speak intelligibly to the mind, especially of the uneducated. Now, S. Paul says that psalmody should speak to the understanding; and Benedict XIV., speaking of S. Augustine, who used to be moved to tears by the Ambrosian chants he heard at Milan, says: “The music moved him indeed, but still more so the words he heard. But he would weep now also for grief; for although he heard the singing, he could not distinguish the words.”

No one will dare to say that to the ninety‐nine one‐hundredths of every congregation the Requiem of Mozart, with all its beauty of melody and its wealth of harmony, would be as expressive and as provocative of the feelings proper to the funeral service as the old and ever‐charming plain chant Requiem.

4. Plain chant is the best safeguard against vainglorious display and its host of attendant evils, because it allows no scope for personal exhibition, and does not give undue prominence to individuals.

5. It is the only chant used in many places, and is found sufficient for the purposes of worship.

6. It alone has had the express authorization of the church.

This is a fair exposition of the arguments in favor of plain chant.

We admit the full force of the arguments derived from the venerable antiquity of plain chant, its Christian origin, its long and exclusive connection with the rites of religion, its dissimilarity with the music of the world, its simplicity, its impressiveness, and its incompatibility with individual display; but it must be remembered against it that it requires for its execution, especially here, where the knowledge of it and the taste for it are to be acquired, conditions not easily fulfilled; that its range is very limited; and that, however grand the impression it sometimes creates, its resources are soon exhausted; whence to those who for a long time hear it and nothing else it becomes extremely monotonous, and burdens the ear with a dull weight of sound not always tolerable. This will be admitted by all who in seminaries and monasteries have been most accustomed to hear it.

In those countries where plain chant is exclusively used every sort of device is resorted to on festival days to escape its monotony, _e.g._, by harmonies on the chant which are out of all keeping with it, as also by interludes on the _grand orgue_, by which one‐half of the words of the text are absolutely omitted, and the recollections of the world are frequently as vividly brought to mind as by any modern vocal compositions.

No one will deny the appropriateness and impressiveness of plain chant on certain solemn occasions, especially those of sorrow, but it is confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings of Christian joy and triumph. If the plain chant Requiem is superior to Mozart’s, the Masses of Haydn are far more suitable to the joys of Easter‐ day than anything we can find in plain chant.

The writer in THE CATHOLIC WORLD before alluded to tells us that plain chant prays. Give me, he says, the chant that prays. But prayer is fourfold, like the Sacrifice of the Mass; viz., it is latreutic—that is, the homage of adoration; it is propitiatory, inasmuch as it tries to appease God’s anger; it is impetratory—that is, it asks and supplicates for what we need; but it is also eucharistic—that is, it gives God praise and thanksgiving. Now, if plain chant expresses better our feelings of adoration and supplication, it certainly must borrow from figured music the triumphant strains of praise and thanksgiving.

However, if the argument from authority for plain chant held good, notwithstanding all we have said, we should instantly waive further discussion. But the force of this argument we absolutely deny.

Dr. Burney has created the impression that the Council of Trent was at one time on the point of banishing figured music from the church. This was not the case. Benedict XIV. (l. xi., c. 7, _De Syn. Diœc._), following Cardinal Pallavicini, the historian of the council, says: “It was proposed by some bishops, zealous for ecclesiastical discipline, that musical chant should altogether be banished from the churches, and the plain chant alone retained; [but] as others observed that this novelty [_sic_] would give rise to innumerable complaints and immense trouble, it was finally resolved, not that musical chants should be prohibited, but that they should be reformed, according to certain rules, to the requirements of piety and gravity.” And, in fact, the Council of Trent merely decreed that Ordinaries should banish from their churches that music in which, either by the organ or by the chant, “anything lascivious or impure is introduced, in order that the house of God may seem to be and may be a house of prayer” (Sess. xxii., _Decr. de obs. et ev. in cel. Missæ._) The other decree (Sess. xxiv., cap. 12, _De Ref._) adds nothing to this.

The teaching of the theologians is much more lenient than that of many of our modern dogmatists.

The great theologian, Suarez (_De Orat. Voc._, lib. iii., c. 8), arguing against Navarre, a rigorist of his day, says: “It is a sufficient argument that this use (of organic or figured music) is retained throughout the church, and that in the very church of Rome itself, and in the chapel of the Sovereign Pontiff, the divine offices are sung after this manner.” He then proceeds to comment as strongly as any one on the danger of excesses and abuses; only he does not seem to feel, either with the objectors of his day or with some writers of the present time, that figured music is intrinsically mischievous, any more than that it is ecclesiastically irregular.

A later and better authority, Benedict XIV., speaking as a theologian in his work _De Synodo Diœc._, loco cit., and as Pope, in his Constitution _Annuus_; 19th Feb., 1749, addressed to the bishops of the Pontifical States, says that it would be an extreme measure to banish figured music from the church, and that he considers it sufficient to banish such music as is theatrical (_modi theatrales_).

Much has been made of the plea that plain chant is the only chant that has ever been expressly authorized.

Now, it must be remembered, 1, that when plain chant originated, music was not used outside of the church, and that in the dark ages churchmen were the only ones who knew music, and that the church was necessarily its guardian; and, 2, that for three hundred years the church has treated her _authorized_ version with strange _incuria_; for of this chant there is now no version _commanded_ (though the differences of versions are very remarkable indeed), and till within a year or two there was no version to which any special _authorization_ or even _recommendation_ was given by the popes. Even the version now being prepared under the supervision of the Roman Congregation of Rites is merely recommended.

We must be excused for this long argument about plain chant, but we have been forced into it by the exaggerations of the advocates of this chant, who are, like some of the advocates of Gothic architecture, extremists, and in their zeal fear not to censure the whole church, and even the Pope himself.

They indeed censure the church; for the use of figured music has penetrated everywhere with episcopal sanction and Papal toleration, and, say what we may, it must be admitted that all the theories advanced for the exclusive use of plain chant have invariably fallen to the ground under the hand of practice.

We deny, then, the obligation of confining ourselves to plain chant, if we except that which is in the _Missal_ and the _Pontifical_, and which contains what is sung by the priest or bishop at the altar.

But while we deny the obligation of using the plain chant exclusively, we would retain a large portion of it, 1, because there are parts of it so appropriate to special services that we can invent nothing better; such as the Requiem, the Lamentations, the _Veni Creator_, and many hymns, and the incomparable psalm tones, as charming to‐day as when heard by S. Augustine, who says of them: “As the voices flowed into my ears, truth was instilled into my heart, and the affections of piety overflowed in tears of joy.” 2. Because, like our vestments and other appendages of our ceremonial, it carries us back to the never‐to‐be‐forgotten past. 3. Because by being used alternately (as in the Papal choir) with music of a different and more modern character, it contributes most powerfully, by the effect of contrast, to the dignity and grandeur of church celebrations.

To Be Concluded Next Month.

Comparison Of Waves With Flowers.

Certainly, no more am I gladdened by the emulous reflections which the earth and sea, with dark shades and distant projections, form; when alike in charms and powers the sparkling foam competes with snow‐white flowers, for the garden, envious of the curling waves of ocean, loves to imitate their motion, and the amorous zephyr gives back the perfumes which it drinks in by blowing over the shining waters, and makes the waving leaves an ocean of bright flowers; when the sea, sad to view the natural beauties of the garden, while it tries to adorn its own realm, destroys its majestic mien, and, subject to second laws, blends with sweet effect fields of blue with waves of green; colored now like heaven’s blue dome, now plumed with various hues, the garden seems a sea of flowers, and the sea a garden of bright foam.—_Calderon._

A Glimpse of the Green Isle. III—Concluded.

I return to some incidents in our journey to and arrival at Dublin. Goold’s Cross is the nearest station to the Rock of Cashel, from which it is distant about five miles. We alight here. We go to visit one who is kin and more than kind. His lares are enshrined at Mora House. An Irish conveyance, called a covered car, takes us thither pretty comfortably. There are three kinds of cars for the transportation of travellers in Ireland, not including the “low‐backed car” which is, or was, designed for the movement of farm produce, and, according to Sam Lover, of rustics on ante‐nuptial expeditions intent. Apropos, I did not see a specimen of the “low‐backed car” from Queenstown to Kingstown. That time‐honored and poetical vehicle seems to have given place to a modern box‐cart, in the East and South at least. The three varieties of car above mentioned belong to the genus known as jaunting‐cars. First, there is the “outside car,” on which the passengers are seated facing outward and back to back. The space between the backs of the sitters is railed off into a place for baggage—or, _Anglicé_, luggage—called the “well.” It is one of the wells in which truth is not always to be found. At the front end of “the well” is a raised seat for the driver. The “outside car” furnishes seats for from two to three persons on each side. When the seats are not full, the driver usually sits on a side “to balance the cyar.” The “inside car” is the converse of the “outside.” In the former the sitters face each other; their legs are in a space between the wheels, instead of outside them, as on the latter. It is entered by a small door at the back. The driver occupies a raised seat in front. The “covered car” is an “inside” with a high, square covering of black oil‐cloth. It is used in rainy weather. It has some disadvantages. You can see only through the curtain at the back. There are no openings at the sides, and the small glazed apertures in front are placed too high to admit even of an occasional glimpse of the face of Nature. You can only see the dame from behind. Both the “inside” and the “covered car” have a tendency to tilt backwards. You are eternally slipping down the seat toward the door. A sudden start may drop you out like a too well‐warmed plate from the hand of a greedy guest. I came near dropping out once or twice in a ride of a few miles. In one of these conveyances it is wise to take a double hitch around infant America.

A hearty welcome meets us at Mora House. It is situated in the heart of a most lovely country. The house is embowered in trees and shrubbery. The walls, offices, and outhouses are covered with ivy. Along the front of the house is a conservatory. Around it are parterres with evergreens and early flowers, and borders of dark‐green box. Broad pastures, spreading their green slopes into the distance, are relieved here and there by clumps of tall oaks. Cattle and sheep dot the landscape, giving it life without taking from its beautiful repose. In the background the Rock of Cashel, with its ruins and lofty round tower, rears its grim silhouette against the evening sky. The frame of the picture is completed by the mountains of misty blue in the far distance. Among them towers the peak from which, according to tradition, his sable majesty—in a very hungry moment doubtless—is said to have taken a “Devil’s Bit.” Over all this is spread a sky half blue, half cloud, with the softest of clare‐obscures. What a feeling of peace steals over my soul as I look upon this sweet landscape! What a lovely spot for that retirement, “friend to life’s decline,”

“To husband out life’s taper at the close, And keep the lamp from wasting by repose”!

Alas! there is no such gentle decline for us, poor nomads of the New World! We must work with tongue, or pen, or sword, or pencil by the failing light of the lamp until the last of its flickering rays dies into darkness for ever.

After luncheon our gentle cousin takes us to look at his horses and his dogs. One is a Mount St. Bernard, a colossal brute and a prime favorite. Then we visit his kitchen garden, and his cows, and his bee‐hives, and, in short, everything that is his. Next we examine the paintings and the photographs; among the former a life‐size oil‐painting, by O’Keefe, of an uncle, a university man, a brilliant scholar, who sat in more than one professor’s chair.

Thus we occupied the time until dinner was announced. Then we sat down to one of those long‐drawn‐out, old‐fashioned dinners which commence at six in the evening and end any time before midnight. Gentle cousin, having heard the Lady from Idaho express a desire to see an Irish turf‐fire, had one made in the dining‐room; and a bright, pleasant, cheerful, cleanly fire it is. We persuaded the ladies to honor in the breach, for this once, the absurd British custom of withdrawing from the table after the dessert. What a pleasant evening we spent!

Next morning we found rain still falling. It softened the atmosphere without obscuring it. The Rock of Cashel loomed up grimly but distinctly in the distance.

There is now little that is regal about “Cashel of the Kings.” It has its ruins, but nothing else. The approaches to the ruins show more of poverty and discomfort than I remember to have seen in any other town in Ireland. There is a majesty about the ruins. The rock on which they stand is about three hundred feet high. There is a lofty round tower in a good state of preservation. The frescos in one of the halls, said to have been the council‐chamber, are in a state of wonderful freshness. The floors of some of the apartments in the second story seem as perfect as ever they could have been. The carved stone‐work over the porch of one of the entrances—to Cormac’s Chapel, I think—is the admiration of connoisseurs. Every foot of this ground awakens a historical remembrance. I see the rude rulers of ancient Ireland assembled in their regal state. The second Henry and Edward Bruce pass before my mind’s eye. I see that fierce and unscrupulous nobleman, the eighth of the Geraldine earls of Kildare, and think of his astonishing ideas of right and wrong. When Mormon Harry took him to task for burning the Cathedral of Cashel, he pleaded as his excuse that when he fired the church he thought the bishop was in it! What a pleasant neighbor Lord Gerald must have been!

We have a delightful drive to the little old town of Thurles. The green of the fields and the hedges is enhanced by the contrast of thousands of soft, yellow primroses. How purely fresh those primroses look! Here bunches of violets peer forth bashfully, their modest little faces freshly washed by the gently‐dropping rain!

Thurles is a station on the Great Southern and Western Railway. There we take rail for Dublin. It is an old town with a quaint old ivy‐mantled tower which dates from the XIIIth century. The tower stands by a bridge, and watches over an infant stream that becomes a broad river before it reaches the sea. It is a relic of the time when Thurles was a walled town. Thurles is the seat of the Catholic Archbishop of Cashel. There are two convents, the Presentation and the Ursuline. The Sisters of the former institution devote themselves to the education of the poor. The Ursuline Sisters have an academy for young ladies of the wealthier and more aristocratic classes. The Presentation school gets a share of the Government educational fund, and is subject to the supervision of the Government inspectors. The mode of teaching in the Presentation school is very similar to that of the public schools in New York. The children sang in chorus remarkably well. There is also a collegiate institution for the education of candidates for the priesthood. We visited both convents, and were kindly and hospitably received.

Among the objects most worthy of a visit is the cathedral, which in taste and magnificence of decoration promises to surpass all modern ecclesiastical buildings in Ireland. It has rich marbles from Italy, fine specimens of native marble, _lapis lazuli_ and _verd‐antique_, in stones that are worth their weight in gold. Some of the work on the altars is exquisite. The cathedral will be a superb memorial of the piety and taste of the present archbishop, Dr. Leahy. We had the pleasure of visiting, and being visited by, that distinguished ecclesiastic and most refined and courteous gentleman. Very kindly and hospitably did he entreat us.

About four or five miles from Thurles are the ruins of Holy Cross Abbey. Our ride thither was through a delightful country in all the humid beauty of an Irish spring. The ruins are not extensive. They have been so often and so minutely described that a detailed description is not necessary here. Besides, I am not writing a guide‐book. I must mention, however, a stone balustrade which is quite artistic in its effect. The principal window is a splendid piece of work. It is in excellent preservation. There are a number of tombs of considerable age in the abbey. Near the principal window is one to which a singular legend is attached. It was related to us by the guardian of the place, an old woman of eighty, but hale and hearty, chatty and cheerful—such a pleasant female Old Mortality as the immortal Sir Walter would have loved to study and depict. I have often wondered at the cheerfulness with which the old among the Irish poor bear the burden of lengthened existence. The tomb is of stone, and in its upper surface is a hollow. The old woman told us that it was worn by a rain‐drop which for many years fell unceasingly from the roof until the constant dropping wore into the stone the hollow that we saw. The drop began to fall on the commission of some crime, or some offence against the church—she did not recollect which—by “one of the family”—“perhaps some trouble with the priest of the parish.” It continued to fall, drip, drip, drip, rain or shine, year in and year out, until the crime was atoned for, or the offence pardoned, or the family sold out and left the country. Then the drop ceased to fall, and has never fallen since.

“Do you think the story is really true?” asked the Lady from Idaho of the old custodian.

“Do I think its thrue, ma’am?” said the old woman, giving her territorial ladyship a diplomatic look. “Shure, it isn’t for the likes o’ me to be denyin’ the likes of that. And shure, ma’am, can’t you see the hole for yourself?”

“Of course. There is no better proof than that.”

“And don’t you see, ma’am, that it’s rainin’ now at the very minnit that I’m talkin’ to ye?”

“There certainly can be no doubt about that,” replied the Lady from Idaho, glancing upwards at the umbrella which Cousin George held over her head.

“And don’t you see, ma’am, that niver a dhrop falls on the tomb where the hole is, now?” added the old woman triumphantly.

“I do indeed,” replied Mme. Idaho. “That last argument is conclusive. Even if it were not, I am of easy faith in such matters.”

“And wisely so,” chimed in Cousin George. “Doubting Thomas makes a miserable traveller. He loses the pleasures of travel in the search for proofs that he is not enjoying himself without proper warrant. If he finds evidence for us that our pleasures of association are not justified by fact, that we have no right to be pleased by legends he can disprove, we tell him he is a fool for his pains. We do not want his facts. We are determined to believe in our favorite legends, in spite of him and all the Gradgrinds in the world.”

The old woman looked at Cousin George with rather a puzzled air. She had listened most attentively, leaning her old head forward, and with withered forefinger pushing back her mob‐cap from her time‐dulled ear; but Cousin George’s harangue was evidently Greek to her. She instinctively divined, nevertheless, that George was talking on her side of the question; for she said, nodding her head approvingly the while:

“Faith, and shure it’s mighty right ye are, yer honor!”

A gratuity, calculated according to the American standard, resulted in a series of blessings and a succession of antique “dips,” known as “courtesies” by the Irish peasant women of a past generation.

We took the cars again at Thurles on our way Dublin‐ward.

There is an air of comfort and solidity about the few farm‐houses we notice on our route, but they were indeed few. The proportion of land under tillage was comparatively very small. The country seemed generally to be in pasturage. Large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were to be seen. The small proprietors and farmers had disappeared. We saw a couple of women working in the fields. This annoyed the Lady from Idaho very much. She said that no matter how beautiful the landscape might be, that blot destroyed all her enjoyment of it. Our travelling companion, Viator, bade her season her admiration for a while until she reached the interior of Germany, where she would see many a team of wayward sisters harnessed to the plough and driven by a beery lord of the creation. Mme. Idaho said she did not want to go where such sights could be seen.

We pass Kildare, with its world‐famed “Curragh,” an extensive flat, on which a few thousand British troops were encamped at the time. At every station we find a policeman or two casting argus eyes over things in general. Physically, the policemen—the “Royal Irish Constabulary”—are among the finest specimens of the _genus homo_ I have seen. They are tall, generally over six feet, and magnificently moulded. Their uniform, though somewhat sombre, is in good taste: a dark, green tunic and trousers, with a small, visorless forage‐cap ornamented in front with a harp in scarlet.

Clondalkin, which is within a few miles of Dublin, possesses a round tower in excellent preservation. It is about eighty feet high. The entrance is about twelve feet from the ground. It has four openings or windows some ten feet below the roof.

We are in Dublin, at King’s Bridge terminus, so called from being near the bridge erected over the Liffey to commemorate the visit to Dublin of the fourth of the royal personages so unflatteringly designated by the author of _Childe Harold_. A charming Irish landscape greets the eye as you approach the city; on the left the prettiest portion of the Liffey and the Phœnix Park; on the right a gently‐undulating expanse of green fields bordered by old trees and dotted with ancient churches and picturesque cottages, bounded in the distance by the soft outline of the Wicklow Hills.

One of our party expected to meet a brother whom he had not seen since they were both boys nearly a quarter of a century ago. Arrived at the terminus, and once more restored to liberty by the unlocking of the carriage‐doors, he looked around anxiously for the individual he expected to find waiting for him. He could pick out no one in the crowd whom he could claim as a brother.

“I do not think there is any one here,” said Mr. Hibernicus with an air of disappointment, after vainly peering into the faces of a dozen gentlemen, who seemed rather surprised by his close scrutiny.

“What kind of a brother do you expect, Mr. Hibernicus?” asked the Lady from Idaho.

“I assure you, my dear madam,” replied Mr. Hibernicus, “I have not the remotest idea what Jack looks like now. He was quite a boy when we parted, and I have not seen even a photograph of him since. I hoped that instinct would reveal to me, as to honest Jack Falstaff, the ‘true prince.’ ”

We stood irresolute for a moment, when a gentleman with a long beard _à l’Américaine_ approached our group. Raising his hat, and acknowledging the presence of ladies by a bow, he said to Mr. Hibernicus, who was still endeavoring to bring his instinct into play:

“May I ask, sir, if you are looking for anybody?”

“I am looking for my brother, sir,” replied Mr. Hibernicus. “Permit me to inquire if you expect any one?”

“I expect my brother,” returned the gentleman.

“Are you Jack?”

“I am Jack.”

“How are you, Jack?”

And the brothers, after a vigorous hand‐shake and some inquiries after “So‐and‐so,” took things as coolly as if they had only been parted a quarter of an hour instead of a quarter of a century.

Decidedly, people born to the English tongue have a horror of anything approaching to demonstrative sensibility. They have nothing dramatic about them. What a _scène_ two Frenchmen or two Italians would have made out of such a meeting after many roving years! During the days when a generous and romantic credulity gave me undeserved credit for burning the midnight oil over Homer and Horace, I had a French student‐friend named l’Orient—an _ami intime_ of six months’ standing. L’Orient made a six weeks’ trip to England, and I was at the station to receive the great traveller when he returned.

“_Te revoilà toi! Comment vas‐tu?_” said I, putting forth my hand for a friendly shake. But l’Orient was not to be put off with anything so commonplace as the usual English pump‐handle reception.

“_Enfin, je te revois!_” he exclaimed, throwing his arms around me, “_ce cher ami! Ce brave Jeem! Ce vieux de la vieille!_” And putting a hand behind each of my ears, thus rendering escape impossible, he kissed me vigorously on both cheeks. Then we walked toward our hotel, l’Orient holding my hand in his. We met Jules; and l’Orient left me, and threw himself on Jules: “Ce cher Jules! Ce brave Jules!” etc., etc., and performed a double osculation on Jules. Next we met Victor, and then Benoit and several others, each of whom was accosted by l’Orient and embraced in the same effusive manner. Our two brothers meet after a separation of half a century with a simple “How are you, Jack?” and a hand‐shake. What demonstration would be lively enough for my old friend l’Orient under such circumstances? Yet l’Orient did not feel a tithe of what Jack and his brother felt. I often think it would be better for us if we were more demonstrative. We should perhaps be better satisfied with ourselves, and perhaps others would be better satisfied with us also.

I had directed my telegram from Queenstown to a wrong number, but the telegraph people took the trouble to find the person to whom it was addressed. I have had occasion frequently to use the postal telegraph. I have found its management admirable. The post‐office department is also excellently well conducted. If there is any possibility of delivery, a letter is sure to be delivered. One of my friends writes a hand so hard to decipher that I can generally achieve most success in unravelling its mysteries by turning his missives upside down and studying his hieroglyphics in an inverted position. He wrote to me at Dublin, and addressed me at a street unknown to the Dublin directory. In New York this would have been the last of the letter. The Dublin post‐officials referred the letter from one postal district to the other until the person to whose care it was addressed was found, and it was forwarded to Paris, where I happened to be at the time.

Dublin occupies both sides of the Liffey. The river runs through the city from east to west. The streets along its banks are subdivided into “quays.” The banks are faced with granite, of which the parapets are also constructed. The river is spanned by nine handsome bridges, seven of stone and two of iron. The river streets extend about three miles on either side. Each block, as we would say in New York, has a different name. Thus there is Usher’s Quay, Merchants’ Quay, Wellington Quay, etc., on the north side, extending from the Phœnix Park gate to the North Wall Lighthouse. On the south side are Arran Quay, King’s Inn Quay, where the Four Courts are situated, Upper Ormond Quay and Lower, Eden Quay, Custom‐ House Quay, etc. The entire street reaches from King’s Bridge to the end of the South Wall at Dublin Bar Lighthouse. The Liffey may be considered as the diameter of a circle in which Dublin is contained; the circular roads which run around it describe the circumference. West of Carlisle Bridge, which is the head of navigation, the Liffey is a dull and uninviting stream, especially at low water. It is not more than eighty yards wide. The mouths of the sewers which empty into it are some feet above low‐water mark. Their contributions to its by no means pellucid flood are not agreeable to contemplate either from an æsthetic or from a sanitary point of view. I should suppose the quays to be unhealthy places for residence. One must have the suicidal mania very strong indeed who would throw himself into the Liffey between King’s and Carlisle Bridges. Beyond King’s Bridge you get into the country, where the stream is not defiled by the filth of the city.

Sackville Street is the principal street of Dublin. It is about twice as wide as Broadway, but is not longer than from Canal Street to Houston Street. Its shortness takes away from its impressiveness. At the foot of Sackville Street stands Nelson’s Pillar, a Doric column about a hundred and twenty feet high, with a figure of the great admiral leaning against a capstan on the summit. A fine view can be had on a _clear_ day (which is not always to be had) from the top of the monument, to which you may ascend by a spiral staircase in the interior on payment of a small fee. The steps at the base of the column are generally occupied by squatting idlers of all ages. On a fine day—_i.e._, when it does not rain—every inch of sitting space is occupied. Belated “squatters” may be seen waiting for hours until place is made by the retirement of some of the sitting members. Then a general rush is made for the vacant place. Here the politics of the nation and of the universe are discussed by the unwashed politicians of the Irish capital. I endeavored to ascertain how these squatters manage to live; but I was told that it is one of those mysteries which no one can penetrate.

The General Post‐Office and the Rotunda are near the monument. The Post‐ Office is a fine structure of stone with a portico of Ionic pillars five feet in diameter. Its pediment is surmounted by three statues: Ireland at the apex, Fidelity on the left, and Mercury on the right. In certain post‐ offices that we wot of Mercury would indeed be the right statue in the right place, and might be considered to have a double significance—as a celestial messenger and a patron of thieving post‐office clerks.

Certain tourists have claimed for Sackville Street the proud pre‐eminence of being “the finest thoroughfare in Europe.” I do not think the claim well founded. I do not consider it equal to some of the new boulevards in Paris, or even to some of those in Brussels. It is certainly grand and imposing as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Sackville Street, however, presents a lively scene on a fine afternoon. Beautiful women, well‐dressed gentlemen, rich toilets, and magnificent equipages may then be seen; the toilets superior to anything to be seen out of Paris, the equipages not to be equalled out of London. Nothing that I have seen on the Continent of Europe can compare with the “turn‐outs” and “cattle” driven in Dublin. The most beautiful equipage I have noticed, and at the same time the chastest in its elegant simplicity, was that of Earl Spencer, the present viceroy; four dark bays—blood‐horses—with postillions and outriders in a dark livery almost black, with white buckskin breeches and top‐boots. Not a brass button or strip of tawdry gold lace to be seen. Compared with this equipage, the state carriages at Buckingham Palace and those at Versailles looked like circus wagons.

Carlisle Bridge, the _embouchure_ of Sackville Street, being considerably narrower than the street, is generally the scene of something like a “Broadway jam.” On a busy day it reminds one of the Fulton Street crossing—even to the policeman.

The _élite_ of Dublin, however, will be found in Grafton Street about four P.M. This street, though narrow—narrower even than Broadway—is the brightest, cheeriest street in Dublin. It is laid with asphaltum, and is delightfully free from mud or noise. It is the fashionable shopping‐ street. Equipages in the very perfection of good taste may be seen in long lines at both sides of the street in front of the principal shops, while ranks of magnificent “Yellowplushes,” in rich liveries and powdered heads, wait, with the grand imperturbability of flunky dignity, to open the carriage‐door for madame or “my lady.”

I have already said that the Irish in Ireland are becoming a serious people. I did not meet a single specimen of the Irish joker, indispensable to the tourist in Ireland a quarter of a century ago. If he ever existed as they represented him, the railways have killed him. Now there is no time for display of wit, so called. I think the extinction of the genus “joker” is something to be grateful for. I did not see any evidence of suffering among the laboring classes or any more raggedness than in England, France, or Germany. Artisans are becoming scarce, and can command good wages. It is hard to get agricultural laborers; they can almost set their own terms. Those who may be obtained cannot be kept very long; they work merely to save enough to join their relatives and friends in the Land of the Free.

The traditional costume of the stage Irishman is as rarely seen in Ireland as the short‐waisted, long‐tailed coat, and striped trousers of the stage Yankee in the United States. I saw but one pair of “knee‐breeches” between Cork and Kingstown.

I did not encounter a single shillelah.

Grapes And Thorns. Chapter XIV—Uprooting Thorns.

By The Author Of “The House Of Yorke.”

“You are happy, then!” F. Chevreuse said to Mr. Schöninger the next evening when they were talking together.

His companion repeated the word with a doubting inflection. “I have always associated the idea of happiness with excitement,” he said; “and I am too calm for that. I should say that I am deeply satisfied.”

Mr. Schöninger had been rehearsing in the church the music for the next day, and F. Chevreuse had sat in the sanctuary listening, marking with what will and effect the leader accomplished his work. He showed small regard, indeed, for the vanity or the personal dignity of the singers he was training, but the success was admirable. If the men and women around him had been organ‐pipes or keys, he could scarcely have treated them with less ceremony. When the rehearsal was over, he dismissed them without a word, except the command to be promptly in their places the next morning. Knowing the touchiness of singers in general, and the peculiar touchiness of some of his own choir, the priest fully expected to see some manifestation of resentment among them; but they seemed merely surprised and a little awe‐struck, and, after a momentary hesitation, withdrew in silence, leaving the organist alone in the loft, with the soft gloaming painting the air about him, as he closed the instrument with tender care, and drew the curtain about it.

While waiting for him to come down, the priest perceived for the first time a lady dressed in deep mourning, who knelt near the door, and who quietly followed the singers from the church. Miss Pembroke had the habit of visiting the Blessed Sacrament at this hour; and she was, moreover, making a Novena, which she had begun the night before, with a special intention. In that Novena her dear Sisters at the convent had joined, only Sister Cecilia knowing what the intention was.

Mr. Schöninger went into the house with F. Chevreuse, and stood with him at an open window looking out in that exquisite hour when day and night meet in mid‐air, the sunset not yet relinquishing all its rose and gold, the night drawing only her tenderest film of purple across the sky, and crushing back her trembling stars like glimmering tears crushed between dark‐fringed eyelids.

The two men looked out, both unconsciously pleased because the evening was beautiful and spring in its freshness, and consciously thinking of other things.

“They are all taking their places again,” Mr. Schöninger said, after looking upward a moment in silence. “My patriarchs and prophets! I hated to see them discrowned, and growing dim, and fading away into myths. Now they burn out again with a greater splendor than ever. The church of the fulfilment has never shown such men as my prophetic church. The glory of the later ritual is theirs. When the church which sees would express her emotion, she borrows the song of the men who foresaw. They were a grand race. I would like to build a church, and dedicate it to King David, and have a stone statue of him playing on his harp over against the altar.”

F. Chevreuse smiled, but said nothing. He was watching with intense interest the development of this new Christian, who took his religion as he might have taken a crown. Mr. Schöninger had an odd way of performing what in any one else would have been acts of humility with a proud unconsciousness, or an unconscious pride that was a little puzzling. Of what is commonly called piety he showed not a sign; yet he did without hesitation or apparent effort what ordinary piety shrinks from. One might say that he possessed a sublime common sense, which, perceiving the relative importance of God and man, worshipped God as a matter of course, taking no thought whether man were pleased or not. Certainly, had any religious persecution threatened him, he would have taken it as a piece of astonishing impertinence.

F. Chevreuse had only just checked in himself an intention to compliment the convert on what he took to be the bravery of his profession of faith the evening before, finding that Mr. Schöninger had been as disregardful of the crowd who had listened to him as if they had been wooden posts; and he refrained also from referring to the cool “Oh! come to think of it, I do not eat meat to‐day,” with which he had that day, at the hotel table, sent his plate away in the face of a score of staring people, who, however, did not venture to smile.

If any one had exhorted him not to be ashamed of God, he would probably have asked simply, Do you think I am a fool?

Their conversation approached this topic after a while.

“One thing that has always astonished me is the mean spirit so many Christians have,” Mr. Schöninger said. “Their religion seems to degrade rather than ennoble their character. They make such grand, heroic talk because they overcome some contemptible temptation which a pagan should be ashamed to yield to, and seem to regard themselves as constant proofs of special divine interposition because they are not habitual liars, thieves, and robbers. They delight, apparently, in calling themselves miserable and worthless, which is a shame to them and a contradiction of God. If they had been so worthless, the Almighty would not have taken so great pains to be reconciled to them.”

“You are regarding the dignity of man, not that of God,” remarked the priest quietly. Then, seeing that his companion did not understand his meaning, added: “These expressions of humility and abasement come with sincerity only from those souls which, gazing heavenward, have seen so much of the glory of God that they shrink to nothingness in comparison. It is by looking at him that they grow small in their own eyes, and their little faults, if you would call them so, become so mountainous in appearance. There is, indeed, an immense dignity in man, but he loses in contemplating it; for there is sure to grow up in his soul as immense a pride and egotism. We are quite safe when we leave our honors to the guardianship of the God who gave them, and occupy our minds in caring for his honor, which was once so fatally lost sight of that all mankind were smitten with a curse. We are a fallen race. Adam and Eve could once walk with heads erect in the face of heaven, but no human being since.”

Seeing his pupil frown, F. Chevreuse added more lightly: “But I do not think it worth while to make the devil of too much consequence. Our Lord said, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.’ Now, most people would be afraid to have the devil behind them. They would be continually peeping over their shoulder to see what he was about. His great strength is in our misconception of him. I don’t suppose any man ever yielded to him and consented to offend God but he was astonished afterward to see how easily he might have conquered, and how small was the bribe for which he had sacrificed so much.”

“The devil, too,” said Mr. Schöninger with an odd little smile. “Must I accept him?”

“No; you must reject him,” retorted the priest.

And then came question after question. How did the church explain this? What was the meaning of that? F. Chevreuse found his philosophy and theology somewhat tested by this searching questioner, who, without doubting, wished that all things should be made plain to him.

“I always had a tender feeling for Christ,” he said, “and sometimes a slight questioning if he might not be the Messias; but only last night were the needed links supplied which made my fragmentary acquiescences a single conviction. But though satisfied with Christ, I am not satisfied with religion as I see it. There are too many trumpery glozes and comments and complications. I like common sense in religion, and without it religion has no dignity in my eyes. Nothing, not even his humility and love, was more conspicuous in the character of Jesus Christ than his common sense and consistency. How honest he was! I say it with all reverence and adoration. How free he was from evasion and policy, and that prudence which is founded on an infinite number of small lies! He always detected a fallacy, and exposed it; and he was constantly appealing to the reason and good sense of his followers. When he propounded a mystery, it was not a mystery because it was involved and obscure, but because it was so great that we could not see all the parts of it. His mysteries hang like suns in space. How little there is in common between his transparent nobleness and the petty tricks of, I must say, the majority of Christians, their weights and measures for the offences they may dare against him, and those which are over the permitted guilt, their excuses, their compromises! Why, sir, there never was a time when I did not think, there never will be a time when I shall not believe, that the greatest foes to the Christian church are Christians themselves.”

“You are quite right,” F. Chevreuse answered with an air of sorrow and mortification. “There is a vast difference between Christ and Christians. He is God, and we are men. And it is the thought of this difference which makes us walk with that downcast face which so offended you a few minutes ago. Do not come to too many decisions at once. Wait, and learn by experience. Here in your reach now is all the splendor of faith, a free gift for you to work out your life by. Your privileges are peculiar. You have had no sacrament to misuse; and when you are baptized, you will stand as new and sinless a man as Adam was at his creation. In that instant, if your intention is pure, you will possess heaven in your soul. It does not often fall to the lot of a man to be sure of such happiness. Let us see how you will use the privilege. Show us, if you will, the ideal Christian, and we will be glad to see and imitate him. But beware of pride!”

“My dear friend!” exclaimed Mr. Schöninger, “I did not mean to be presuming nor to wound you. I am sure you do not wish me to say it, but to me you, at least, are perfect.”

F. Chevreuse laughed slightly. “Only wait and see,” he said. “And now a score or two of penitents are waiting to confess, and F. O’Donovan is wondering if I am going to let him stay in the confessional till midnight. I must leave you. Why do you not go up and see Mrs. Ferrier? She has been anxiously inquiring for you to‐day, and complaining a little. Go and make the good soul happy. Miss Pembroke will be glad to see you too, I am sure. She has gone to live with Mrs. Ferrier. They do not receive company; but send your name in, and you will be welcome.”

“I had forgotten them both!” Mr. Schöninger said with some compunction. “I will go at once.”

F. Chevreuse soon found that he had been mistaken in two of his assertions; F. O’Donovan was not in the confessional, and Miss Pembroke was not at that moment in Mrs. Ferrier’s house. Both had gone to the convent, one called there, the other hastening to follow when she knew his errand.

Little Anita was dying, killed by her first vision of the wickedness and agony of the world. She had heard of sin as one living far inland hears of the ocean, which he has never seen; and now the bitter waves of that wide, salt sea she believed so far away and alien had rolled in about her. It touched her feet and her garments, and left its poisonous rime there; it caught and strangled before her eyes those she had trusted and been near to; it tossed its sacrilegious foam on to the very altar of God. Her soul trembled within her, and she turned her face away from life, and hid it in the bosom of her Lord.

“O my God! my God!” she prayed. “Forgive me! but I cannot live.”

There was no physical malady; but the heart, which, like a busy shuttle, tosses to and fro its rosy threads, weaving soul and body together, faltered, and let slip link after link. The invisible folded wings detached themselves, trembling; the spiritual hands left the bodily hands cold, and stretched out into eternity, trembling, always trembling; the whole soul, still full of the fear and agony of the world, shrank outward.

The Sisters knelt about her, cruelly grieved. Was this delicate saint to be torn away from them thus, leaving them no consolation but the memory of her blameless life? Was she to go down to the grave without a sign of victory? Were they to keep for ever this last vision of her, prostrate in the shadow of that low portal?

And even while they prayed, just giving up hope, as the slight form grew cold and rigid, all at once it shone out like a marble statue on which a sudden sunbeam falls. The eyes flashed wide open, the shining soul stood tiptoe in them an instant, then parted softly.

It is not for us to follow, even in fancy, the flight of that innocent soul, nor to witness the tears of mingled sorrow and joy which the Sisters shed over their young companion, nor to listen to the prayers they said, nor the sacred communings they held together.

Our business is with earth, with Honora Pembroke, driving homeward soberly through the still evening.

“Drive slowly,” she said to the footman—not John now. “There is no haste.” And she added to herself: “I want a chance to think.”

There was, indeed, little chance to think in her new home; for good Mrs. Ferrier, who did her thinking with her tongue, could not conceive any need for solitude, and was constantly breaking in upon the few moments of retirement her young friend allowed herself to ask if she had “got through,” if she were ill, if she would please to come down, or if she objected to company. And then would come the recapitulation of her trials, her fears for her daughter, and lamentations without end. That Miss Pembroke herself might be sad and troubled, and stand in need of cheering and sympathy, did not seem to enter her mind.

So thus early in their intercourse the young woman was fain to seize every excuse for a moment of solitude. Whether she would have taken advantage of this had she known that a visitor awaited her return is doubtful.

The drive was not interminable, however, and it was still early in the evening when she reached the house and entered. She stopped at sound of a voice in the drawing‐room. It was Mrs. Ferrier who spoke, but her words were quite sufficient to tell whom she spoke to.

“I shall never, never get over your having been treated so—never!”

“Madam,” said Mr. Schöninger with a decision which scarcely covered his displeasure, “I request as a favor that you will never again mention this subject to me. I am sorry for your trouble in the matter, and grateful for the kindness you have shown me; but you must see that it is something of which I do not wish to be reminded.”

Miss Pembroke’s impulse was to go immediately up‐stairs. A kind of terror seized her at the thought of meeting him. What if he should know that she was making a Novena, and what it was for!

She stopped one moment, irresolute, then went into the bright drawing‐room where the two sat. Mrs. Ferrier uttered a little exclamation, not having heard her come; but Mr. Schöninger had heard the carriage, the door, even the step that paused at sound of their voices, and half divined that he had come near not seeing Miss Pembroke that night.

She gave him her hand with dignified and earnest friendliness. “I cannot tell you how happy you made us all last night,” she said. “You are welcome.”

He found something haughty in her mode of address, like that of a queen speaking to a subject, and looked at her intently to discern its meaning, if possible.

Alarmed at his searching expression, she turned abruptly away from him with unmistakable haughtiness this time. But no sooner had she done so than, smitten by a swift recollection of the folly and injustice of the act, she returned with a glance and gesture so full of mute, impulsive penitence that it more than atoned; it explained.

The proud surprise in his face melted to a quiet smile. He resumed his seat by Mrs. Ferrier, and began to talk with her, taking no further notice of Honora for a few minutes. But when he saw her sitting silent and pale, her momentary trouble forgotten in the recollection of the solemn scenes which she had witnessed in the last few days, he spoke to her.

“I hope you will take some interest in my choir,” he said; “for I wish to improve it very much. The material is bad, the greater part of it. Those persons seem to have been selected who had loud, blatant voices and a firm belief that they were excellent singers. They make noise enough, and are not afraid; but they are vulgar singers. I want a choir of boys in addition to them. You must know some good voices among the children.”

She brightened. It was a pleasant surprise to hear something in common life spoken of, and to have one who knew all assume that all was not lost.

“I know a good many such voices,” she said; “and I should be glad to help you. Could not I make the selection, and teach them the first lessons? It would be small work for you.”

“If you would be so good,” he replied, quite as if he had expected the offer.

And so, without more words, Miss Pembroke was installed as Mr. Schöninger’s musical assistant. It was a timely employment and interest in her changed life, and exerted a softening influence on his. He gradually relinquished the designs he had meditated, and looked on his sufferings in a more impartial light. Whatever prejudice had existed, he could not doubt, when he examined the subject calmly, that he had been condemned on a reasonable array of circumstantial evidence, and that, without prejudice, any other man would have been condemned on the same evidence. Besides, even had there been a chance of success in the attempt, he could not have received as much in legal reparation as was voluntarily given him by the public. The city was, in a manner, at his feet. The highest officials, both in private and in their public capacity, tendered to him their respect, their regrets, and offers of any assistance he might need. People felt that they could not do too much for him. It was quite true, as Mrs. Ferrier said to him: “Now is the time for you to break the law, if you want to. You could do anything, and no one would find fault with you for it.”

For the real criminal, who shall say how it happened that he was not brought to justice? There was certainly an immense activity in searching where he was not. The law put on its most piercing spectacles, then shut its eyes and looked in every direction. The spectacles saw nothing. If they were on the point of having a glimpse, they were instantly turned in another direction. We have all seen such justice when wealth and influence are on the side of the culprit. Letters came from Annette to her mother with only the smallest circumlocution, and answers were sent to them with the most transparent diplomacy in the world.

“When my poor Gerald heard of his mother’s death,” Annette wrote, “I thought for a while that he would die. He lay for hours almost insensible, and only revived from one swoon to fall into another. But he soon recovered from the first shock, and is, I think, glad to know that her sufferings were so short. But he says nothing, and I do not talk to him. I wait to see what God will do with his soul. He is like a frail building that has been overthrown so thoroughly that not one stone remains upon another, and is being built up again in a different shape. I can perceive a strength in the new foundations of his life which I had not believed him capable of. Indeed, he is not humanly capable of them. But this is the city of miracles, and ours is a miraculous faith. As I have told you, he says nothing. His life is almost an absolute silence, and, I might say, blindness to earthly things. I never see him looking at any beautiful or sublime object except the crucifix. Even I seem to be only a voice to him. He begins lately to show a disposition to be active, which is to me a sign that his mind is becoming settled.”

Annette did not think it best to describe the nature of the activity that her husband was showing, well knowing that it would have made Mrs. Ferrier believe herself to be, in addition to her other afflictions, the mother‐ in‐law of a maniac. For the work he did, here and there, wherever it could be quietly done without attracting attention, was menial. She had seen him help the poor man unload his cart of stones, or take the spade from his hands to labor in his stead, and he was constantly performing menial labors in the house. All this was done, not with any appearance of being an eccentric gentleman, but as one of the poor. For day by day his dress had been growing rude and his whole aspect changed. The sun had burnt his fair skin and faded his unshorn beard, and, by means best known to himself, his delicate hands had become dark and rough. Looking at the firm, silent lips and downcast eyes, Annette could scarcely doubt that the man she had called her husband was gradually and purposely effacing all the beauty and daintiness of which he had been so proud. He never went out with her, and if by chance they were likely to encounter in the street, he avoided the meeting. No one, except the people of the house where they lived, suspected that there was any acquaintance or connection between this dainty _signora_ and this man, who grew every day less and less to be distinguished from the common laborer.

But in humbling himself Lawrence Gerald had not been unmindful of the one earthly duty remaining to him. “Are you willing to give me up entirely, Annette?” he asked her one day.

She answered with a brief affirmative. “Follow wherever God leads you,” she said; “and do not stop an instant to think of me.”

He was used to depending on her, and to being sure that she meant what she said, and could perform her promises. Yet he wished to make certain. “You have to go out alone, and have no protection but that of servants,” he said.

“I do not need any other protection; I am quite safe here,” she replied.

“You cannot marry again,” he went on.

“I have no wish to!”

Perhaps there could not have been a stronger proof of the purification which Annette Gerald’s character had undergone than the fact that this reply was made without a tinge of bitterness or regret. She spoke with gentle sincerity—that was all. As an absorbing affection had made her consent to be taken without love, so now a pity and charity yet more engrossing enabled her to find herself discarded without anger.

“Follow God, and think no more of me,” she said. “I remain here. Go when and where you will.”

It was the first time they had spoken together for several days, and was more by accident, apparently, than of their seeking. Passing through the room where Annette was, Lawrence had seen her trying to open a window that resisted her slight hands, and had opened it for her. Then the sweet clangor of the Ave Maria breaking out from all the towers at once, they had paused side by side a moment.

Perhaps he had wished to speak, and seized this opportunity.

At her answer he looked at her earnestly, for the first time in months, it seemed to her, and with a look she could not endure without emotion, so far‐away and mournful, yet so searching, was it. It was a gaze like that of one dying, who sees the impassable gulf widening between his eyes and what they rest upon. How many, many glances she had encountered of his!—laughing, critical, impatient, in the old days that now seemed centuries past; superficially kind, penitent, disregardful, careless, but never from the depths of his soul till now. Now she knew at last that his soul had depths, and that, as she stood before him, he was aware of her, and saw her as she was.

“Annette,” he said, almost in a whisper, “words cannot tell my sense of the wrong and insult which I have heaped upon you—on you more than all the rest put together.”

“Do not speak of that,” she said, trying still to be calm.

“Of all the women I have hurt or destroyed, you are the noblest,” he went on, seeming not to have heard her.

She drew her breath in quickly, and stood mute, looking down, and some strong band that had been holding her down—how long she knew not, perhaps for years, perhaps for her whole life—loosened, and she felt herself growing upright. She was like the graceful silver birch that has been bowed over by the snow, flake after flake, till its head touches the ground, when the warm sun begins to melt its burden, and it lifts a little, and feels itself elastic.

In days when Honora Pembroke was his ideal, “noble” was the word he applied to her, and Annette Ferrier always felt herself grow small when she heard him utter it.

“Of all women I have ever known, you are the noblest and most lovely,” he said slowly. “I was blind. Too late I have learned that. And if I had a wish left, it would be that God would reunite us in heaven.”

The snows had melted, and she stood upright at last.

There was a confused whispering in her brain. Since she was loved and honored, why need they part? She could comfort him, be at his side always, and help him to win back peace, if not happiness. They would perform works of charity together, and in humbling herself she would raise him.

She lifted her eyes, and opened her lips to speak some such word, but checked herself on seeing him turn away. His face was no longer calm and sad, but full of anguish. All the enticements of human life had assailed his soul, and were fighting against its one stern tenant, remorse. Silently, and with a feeling of unacknowledged disappointment, she awaited the result, scarcely doubting that he would yield. When had he not yielded? was the bitter question that rose in spite of her, only to be thrust down again under many excuses, as she called to mind his sufferings and his isolation.

He stood near the window, with his face turned to the light, and she watched the struggle without daring to move or to speak. What silent clash of warring passion held him thus rigid she could only guess; what voices sweet and pitiful were pleading, and what voices stern and terrible replying, who can say? It did not need that angels of darkness should be there; the human heart was enough. In that swift review when the soul, anticipating a privilege of eternity, can compress a lifetime into a moment, what visions of all that life might give could have presented themselves!—dusky eves and sunlighted mornings, when the singing of birds, mingled with the prattle of children, and quiet and elegant leisure, and smiling friends, made earthly existence seem like an Elysian dream; ever‐ present affection, with its excuses for every fault, its recognition, prompt and inspiring, of every virtue, its cheering word for the hour of sadness, its loving check, its sympathy, its silent tenderness; the freedom of earth which wealth can give, every portal opening as if by magic, existence a perpetual feast. They crowded upon him mercilessly, and tossed to and fro his grief and remorse as the sea tosses its dead, that are now but faint white outlines, half lost in froth, now cold faces starting clearly out of the thin, green wave.

How many times that soul was lost and won in those few minutes none but the invisible witnesses of the scene could tell.

He moved at length, and Annette stepped nearer with sudden alarm, as she saw him put his hand into his bosom slowly, as if with dread to draw forth what was there. The hand closed on what it sought, and with bitter shrinking, as if it were his heart he was thus uprooting, brought it to light. It was no knife, nor pistol, nor vial of poison, as she had feared, but a folded paper. She had seen it in his hands before, and wondered what he kept with such care.

He opened it and read; and she, leaning nearer, read also, without stopping to consider her right.

This was the breviary Lawrence Gerald carried in his bosom, written largely and clearly, and signed with his name in full:

“I am a gambler, a housebreaker, a thief, a sacrilegious liar, a murderer, and a matricide.”

“O my love! stand firm! stand firm!” the wife tried to say; but the words died in a whisper on her lips, as her heart fainted with pain and delight.

He did stand firm without having heard her admonition. She saw the unsteady lips close again, the gazing eyes droop, the whole face and form compose itself. That brief reminder, written to be a visible witness when the voice of conscience should fail, was more potent than poison or blade or bullet.

“I wish to take a room by myself in another part of the city,” he said. “Are you willing?”

“Certainly!” she replied. “But I would like to know where it is. Not,” she added quickly, “that I would intrude or trouble you in any way. But you cannot expect me to lose all interest in you, and I shall feel better to know where you are, and to go once to see your room and the people you are with.”

“I will let you know as soon as I find a place,” he said. “Of course I wish to support myself, to be removed from all society, except those persons whom I must see, and to wait my time in penance. You understand it all, Annette. I no longer exist in the ordinary life of men. I am either in purgatory or in hell—I do not yet feel sure which.”

He was going away, but turned at a little distance, and looked at her once again. “My dear,” he said faintly, “good‐by!”

She could not utter a word, could only clasp her hands over her face, and so lose his last glance. For as he spoke that farewell, and as she heard his retreating step, the door of her sealed and frozen heart burst open, and her dead love, stirring uneasily in its grave during these last days, rose up stronger than ever before, and resumed the throne it was never again to abdicate. There, at last, was a man worth loving!

The next evening she received his new address; and he added: “I shall be out to‐morrow, and the _padrona_ will admit you, if you wish to come.”

Of course she went; but, what had not been to her a matter of course, the place pleased her. The house was in an old and crowded part of the city, where the streets swarmed with poor people; but the room was at the very top, in an odd corner quite removed from noise and communication with any other apartment, and had an eastern and a northern window that looked off over palace roofs and through towers and domes to the beautiful mountains. Close to its southern wall pressed a church tower, and on a level with its windows rose the sculptured façade, wreathed with angels. Once there, one might easily forget the steep, dark stair, the squalid street below, and even the bare walls and floor of the room itself.

Annette had not allowed herself to bring any article of comfort, still less of adornment, though her heart had ached with longing to do so. But she placed a beautiful crucifix on the one poor table, and left a volume of lives of saints beside it. A bunch of roses hung at her belt, and her fingers lingered on them in doubt for a moment. But she checked that impulse also. How much might roses breathe of woman’s presence there and all the graces and sweetnesses of life! But before leaving, she hung over an arm of the crucifix a single small bud, where the petals showed like a drop of blood oozing through the green.

As she was placing this last souvenir, her tears dropping over flowers and cross, there was a sound as though a hurricane should draw in its breath before blowing, the floor of the room trembled, then there came a tremendous and reverberating stroke. The great bell in the tower was striking the hour of noon, and the chamber shook as a bird’s nest shakes when a storm sweeps over the tree in which it is built. For the moment everything in the universe was obliterated but sound. She breathed its tremulous waves, she was enveloped and borne up by its strong tide; the very sunshine and the blue of the sky were like bright, resounding tones. Then the stroke ceased; and, circling round and round in fainting rings, the music of the bells went out to join the music of the spheres, perhaps to creep with a golden ripple up the shores of heaven.

The woman who had opened the door wondered much to see the pale _signora_ come down with a face flushed with weeping; but a liberal gift disposed her to think the best of everything.

“You must be very good to him, and not allow any one to intrude,” Annette said to her. “I shall come to the church here below every morning at seven o’clock; and if he should be ill, or any accident should happen to him, I wish you to come there and tell me. But you must not talk to him. Speak to him only when he asks you to.”

That evening she wrote to her mother: “Lawrence has left me, and is in the arms of God. That is all I can say, except that I trust he has won a perfect forgiveness.

“I am sorry, dear mamma, if you are lonely, but I cannot return to America. I do not wish for society anywhere. Here in Rome is my place, with my religion and the poor to occupy my time. Try to be happy, and to think of me as peaceful and contented. And, mamma, if there should be any good, honest man whom you would like to marry, I shall be glad of it. Goodness is the chief thing.”

Mrs. Ferrier wept profusely over this letter, not doubting that Lawrence was dead.

“The poor fellow!” she said. “After all, he wasn’t so bad as he might have been.”

And then, bethinking herself, she wiped away her tears, and calmed her grief as much as possible; for it would not do to render herself unpresentable. It was necessary to go at once with the news to F. Chevreuse.

The way that Mrs. Ferrier took to the priest’s house was a roundabout one; it led in an opposite direction, and stopped before a new dry‐goods store of the most glittering sort. There was, in fact, no shop in Crichton so fine or so much frequented as this. People went there at first from curiosity, and were disposed to make themselves very merry regarding it; but there seemed to be nothing to laugh at, unless it might be certain erroneous notions in their own minds. Everything was well ordered and business‐like, the clerks attentive and respectful, and the proprietor perfectly dignified and watchful. Indeed, a slight excess of dignity and watchfulness had at first marked his conduct, and made his customers wary of giving offence.

We have already intimated that Mrs. Ferrier had a new footman.

This functionary, a slim and sentimental young man, let down the step for his mistress; but before she had made her majestic descent, the proprietor of the shop stood in the door, bowing to his wealthy customer. She beckoned him out, and motioned the footman away out of hearing.

“Poor Lawrence is dead, John!” she said plaintively, a smile tempering her grief. “And it’s best so, of course. I’ve just got a letter from Annette. And, John—”

The lady paused, and looked down, and laughed a little.

“Well, what is it?” asked the new merchant with an appearance of curiosity.

“She’s willing.”

John’s face expressed two contrary emotions at this announcement—one of pleasure, the other a dogged sort of resentment that Annette’s willingness should have been considered of consequence.

“It is pleasanter to have everybody pleased,” the lady said soothingly. “Of course, though, it doesn’t make one bit of difference with me so far as what I shall do; for you know, John, I’d stand by you through thick and thin. Now I must go to F. Chevreuse.”

“There isn’t a more respectable‐looking merchant in the city of Crichton,” said Mrs. Ferrier emphatically to herself, as she drove away.

“Beg y’r pardon, mum?” said the slim footman, leaning over.

“I wasn’t talking to you!” exclaimed his mistress indignantly.

It was, indeed, observed by everybody that Mrs. Ferrier was very high with this unfortunate man, who was humility personified, and only too assiduous in his obedience. She had assumed a trifle more of state with all her servants; but the footman was scarcely allowed to breathe freely.

“I shouldn’t wonder, now, if he might think he could marry Annette,” she muttered to herself, as they drove on.

Poor fellow! his ambition did not soar beyond Betty, and she was treating him with cruelty. However, with a story‐teller’s prescience, we are fully aware that his trials are only the little waves which are sending him nearer and nearer to his haven, and that before the year is over the day will be named. Already in our mind’s eye we see the fair Betty in her bridal robes, with her magnificent and patronizing mistress fastening on the veil, and giving her a kind and resounding kiss at the same time. We even hear the small whisper with which she silences her bridegroom’s last jealous misgiving when he comments on the salute given her by the master of the house:

“What! you think that I could ever have had a fancy for him—a man who drops his h’s?”

The withering contempt of this remark was decisive.

But we are anticipating.

Mrs. Ferrier found the priest at home, and gave him the letter to read. He read it attentively, but came to a different conclusion from hers. He did not tell her so, though, for it was evident that Annette wished them to think that her husband was dead. Her former letters had prepared him to suspect a state of things very near the truth.

After a long conversation, in which F. Chevreuse perceived that his visitor was lingering and hesitating in an unusual manner, Mrs. Ferrier at last called his attention to the concluding sentences of the letter.

He read it a second time, glanced up through his spectacles at his visitor, read it again, and gave the letter back, quite uncomprehending. He was, doubtless, the only person in Crichton who could have been unconscious of her meaning.

“You may think me foolish, father, at my time of life, to be thinking of marrying again,” she said deprecatingly. “But you have no idea how lonely I am. Honora will soon have a house of her own, anybody can see that; Annette won’t come back, and Louis won’t live here, after what has happened. I have nothing to do but wander from room to room of my great house, and think how awfully lonesome I am, and almost wish that I had a little cabin that I could fill. I don’t feel as if I were in a house, but as if I were out somewhere. Many a time I’ve gone and sat in my chamber‐ closet, just to feel my elbows hit something.”

She paused, and F. Chevreuse said, “Yes!” as sympathizingly as he could, wondering greatly what was to come.

“John is a decent man, and my equal in everything but money,” she went on.

“Oh! it’s John!” F. Chevreuse exclaimed, light breaking in.

Mrs. Ferrier dropped her eyes and smiled.

“I don’t see any harm in it, if you have got your mind made up,” the priest said, recovering from his first astonishment. “I suppose it would be of no use for me to try to break off the arrangement, even if I wanted to.”

“Well, John is pretty set,” the lady admitted modestly.

“I dare say,” was the smiling rejoinder. “When is it to be?”

“In a month, if you please. He is started in business now, and is doing well, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be a great merchant as well as any other man. He’s capable of it, if anybody is,” she said, becoming a little defiant.

“Certainly!” replied F. Chevreuse with perfect gravity. “There is not a law in the commonwealth which will prevent his being as great a merchant as he pleases. The world of trade is open to John, and I wish him all success in it. Do you put your property into his hands?”

Instantly the beautiful modesty of the bride‐elect gave place to the business‐like acuteness of the woman who knew perfectly well the value of money.

“No, father, we keep our accounts separate,” she said. “He had half enough to start in business with, and I lent him the other half. The income of the whole is to go toward our housekeeping, but he will have nothing to do with the rest of my property.”

F. Chevreuse nodded. “I see that you haven’t lost your head. You have managed your own affairs so well thus far, you may as well continue to do the same, for your children’s sake.”

A month later there was a quiet marriage at the priest’s house; and the only notice the Crichtonians had of it was when John appeared again in Mrs. Ferrier’s carriage, this time by her side, instead of in the dicky.

Everybody smiled except Honora Pembroke. She alone, perfectly polite, and refraining from all interference, felt haughtily indignant at the marriage. It was in vain that F. Chevreuse tried to reason away her prejudices.

“I do not object because he was poor,” she said. “Riches are less a distinction than a difference. But he has been a servant, and that is irreparable.”

The priest began to hum a tune:

“Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira! Les aristocrats à la lanterne.”

Somewhat to his surprise, she blushed slightly, but did not smile.

“You may think me foolish, or even guilty of sinful pride,” she said with a certain stiffness; “but this is a feeling of which I cannot rid myself. I do not like to sit at table with a person who has once brought me my soup, nor on the same seat in the carriage with one who used to let down the step for me. Of course I recognize and submit to the situation; but I shall go to my own house again immediately.”

“Well!” said the priest, “it takes a good while to get acquainted with people. Here have I known you these ten years and more, have seen you simple, unpretending, humble, apparently, good to the poor, and going freely among them. I thought I knew you thoroughly; yet all at once I come upon the rock in that smooth stream. Have I ever caught a little gray shadow of it before, I wonder? Well, well! I won’t undertake to blast it out of the way at once. I am sorry, though, that you do not like John.”

“I like him in liveries,” said Miss Pembroke with dignity.

“I tell you,” persisted the priest, “they are going to be a very happy couple.”

“I haven’t a doubt of it,” she replied. “But that is no excuse.”

He laughed, and let her go. The haughty recoil of pride in the fibre was not to be reasoned away.

It was a clear afternoon in mid‐autumn; and when Miss Pembroke stepped from the priest’s door, she paused a minute on the sidewalk, and hesitated which way to go. She did not wish to return home, and she did not think of any other place where she would rather go.

And then, without looking, she was aware of a tall gentleman, who came down the street, and, still without looking, knew that he had crossed to her side of the street, and was approaching her. And then, with a perverseness which was scarcely natural to her, she turned quite coolly in the opposite direction, and walked from him, perhaps lest he might think that she wished for his company. Not but she and Mr. Schöninger were on the most friendly, and even cordial, terms—it was, indeed, taken for granted in Crichton that they were the best of friends—but—in short, she walked away from him. Perhaps she found his full and prosperous life a little discordant with her saddened one. She almost fancied sometimes that he had an air of triumphant pride, and that he was being spoiled by the adulation paid him on all sides.

She had been wishing lately that she could go to Annette; and, now that Gerald was dead, if the ambiguous letter they had received really meant that, perhaps Annette would like to have her. Miss Pembroke felt strangely lonely in her native town, where she knew everybody, and where she had not, certainly, to complain of any lack of attention. But she would be lonely for ever rather than Mr. Schöninger should think that she waited on F. Chevreuse’s step for him. He must have been at the end of the street when she came out, and—surely he would never dare to think that she saw him, and had been giving him time to overtake her!

Mr. Schöninger was meantime walking leisurely behind her quickening steps, intending to overtake her presently, but wishing first to watch her a little, and to think of some things. One was that he did not approve of her wearing black any longer. She was beautiful in anything, but too sad in this; and, besides, it interfered with certain plans of his. He made a slight reckoning, as nearly correct as the masculine mind could make it on such a subject. She might put on gray, or black and white, immediately. That would enable her to wear a rich purple in the winter. He liked to see her in purple. Some day, when she should be older, she must have a trailing robe of purple velvet with diamonds. Well, in the spring, then, she could change her deeper color for one of those delicate lavenders or lilacs that women know how to look pretty in; and then the way would be quite open for white, and rose, and blue, and all the fresh, gay colors a bride might wish to wear.

“We should be married by the first of May, at latest,” thought the gentleman very decidedly.

Miss Pembroke was quite right in fancying that there was something triumphant in Mr. Schöninger’s air; but she did not believe, and it was not true, her pettish charge that he was being spoiled by adulation. All was going well with him. Hosts of friends surrounded him—friends as sincere as any one can claim; he did not believe they would stand any great test, but, also, he did not believe that they were hypocrites. In his profession he was winning gold and reputation; and, what no one but himself knew as yet, the fortune for which he had vainly struggled so long was approaching him of itself. Two of those who had stood between it and him had died, and there remained now but a feeble old man. With his death all other claims would die. And not least in his cause of congratulation was his conviction that this fair woman, who walked before him with the black drapery fluttering back from her light foot, the braid of hair just showing its glossy bronze beneath the mourning veil, and, as she turned the corner of a street, the curve of her smooth cheek glowing like a peach, was his own.

What made her cheek so red now?

“Honora!” he said, quickening his pace.

She stopped with a start.

“Mr. Schöninger!”

“I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed, recollecting that he had never called her by her Christian name before. “I was thinking, and I forgot.”

She walked soberly by his side without asking what the subject of his thoughts had been. His exclamation may have revealed to her something of their nature; but she was far from suspecting that she was engaged, still less that her marriage‐day was fixed. She had, indeed, no reason to suppose that Mr. Schöninger had any intention of renewing the suit that she had once rejected.

“You are willing to take a walk?” he asked, and, when she nodded assent, added:

“Let us go up the Cocheco. Last night’s frost has added the finishing touch to the trees, and everybody is admiring them.”

A beautiful road, almost as wild as a country lane, led between the river‐ bank and the flowery cliffs beside it, and here at evening all the youths and maidens, and many of their elders in whom age had not chilled the love of nature, used to walk soberly in the soundless path, or climb the cliffs, or sit on the mossy rocks, or venture out on the rocks that studded the stream. Not a pleasant evening but found people strolling through this romantic avenue.

“Nowhere but in New England does nature dazzle, I think,” Mr. Schöninger said. “See this maple‐leaf! It is a fine scarlet, and as glossy as a gem, even when examined closely. And the elm‐leaf is as fine a gold. Everywhere else the autumn foliage is dingy when looked at so closely. The sky, too. Look at those long lines of fire that are beginning to stretch overhead, and at the gathering crimsons! In half an hour the heavens will be as brilliant as the earth. In Italy the colors are soft, like the colors in an old painting; they have great depth and richness, but they lack the fresh brilliancy of the skies in the New World. You must go to Italy soon, Honora.”

This time the name was used without an apology.

“I have been thinking of it,” she replied quietly, and began to feel as a stranded seaweed may when, after having lain awhile painfully on the dry sand, it finds the bright sea slipping under it, and lifting it from its hard resting‐place. Without a word of explanation she found herself claimed and cared for.

“I wish to go there again as a Catholic,” he continued, “and see with the eyes of faith what I saw before with the eyes of an artist. I shall always admire most the Catholicism of America, or what the Catholicism of America is going to be. It is more intelligent, noble, and reverent. It isn’t a sort of devotion that expresses itself in tawdry paper flowers. Indeed, I believe that America is destined to show the world a Catholicism morally more grand than any it has yet seen—a worship of the heart and the intellect, where children shall be delighted, and yet common sense find nothing to regret. Still, Rome is the sacred city of the martyrs, the popes, and the temples. I think we should go there in two years at latest.”

He had spoken earnestly, and had absolutely forgotten how much remained unsaid, so sure was he of her.

Honora’s glance of astonishment and incredulity reminded him. He bent a little nearer, smiling, and said softly: “But we shall be married long before that time, dear, shall we not?”

“It is the first I have heard of it,” Miss Pembroke managed to say with a certain degree of composure, after a moment.

“You surely are not vexed!” he said quickly, beginning to fear that he had assumed too much. “I asked you once in the proper, lover‐like fashion, and you refused me, not because you were indifferent to me—you never said that—but because you would not marry and would not love one who denied your Saviour. That obstacle no longer exists. You did not imagine that I had become indifferent to you? That is out of the question. Have I made a mistake?”

“No; it is I who have made a mistake,” she answered frankly. “I was afraid that you had given me up.” She hesitated a little, then, since he still listened, added: “I am very glad that you have not.”

“Thank you!” he said.

They walked slowly up the road between the foaming river and the glowing cliffs, praising the skies and the trees as they went, finding everything beautiful, finding each the other more beautiful than all else. And when the evening began to fade a little, they turned their steps, and went down again with the river, filled with that deep and quiet happiness which leaves nothing to wish for and nothing to tell.

The very next morning a little note was sped from Miss Pembroke to Sister Cecilia with the following mysterious announcement:

“My _Novena_ has succeeded perfectly! I will come very soon and tell you all about it.”

Since the matter is settled, we may as well own at once that when Mr. Schöninger first announced himself a Catholic, Honora had said to her friend and confidant at the convent, “If I do not marry him, I shall never marry any one”; and that the result of this confession was a _Novena_, in which the young woman had asked that she might find favor in his sight.

“I told him about the _Novena_,” Miss Pembroke said when she made her explanatory visit to the convent. “And I told him that you and all the Sisters joined with me; and he bade me thank you for his part, and say that he hoped you would never be sorry for having done so.”

But Honora did not tell how astonished and touched her lover had been at this confession of what seemed to her the most simple thing in the world.

“I never thought of asking God for you,” he said; “and yet there is nothing in the world so well worth praying for. I am a very ignorant Catholic, Honora, in all except doctrine. You will have much to teach me. But, then,” he added, smiling, “we have all our lives for that.”

“The only blot on my happiness,” Honora said to her friends, “is the thought of Annette. A letter came from her last night which seems to shut us all out from giving her either society or comfort. She evidently does not wish to see any one she has ever known. She says that her time and thoughts are entirely occupied.”

Annette Gerald was fully occupied. She was like one who stands at the head of a long flight of winding stairs, watching another descend, and, beginning to lose sight of the object of her attention, begins to follow slowly, intent, at the same time, not to be too near or too far away.

It was necessary that she should keep Lawrence Gerald in sight without attracting attention either to him or to herself. As a rich lady, driving in her own carriage, she could not do this. She therefore gave up her carriage, and moved to an humbler apartment, where she lived with one servant. Still, the dainty elegance of the widow’s attire she had assumed, fastidious in her choice, not consciously, but from habit, pointed her out as of a different class from the people she went most among. To remedy this, it was necessary only to be passive; and in a few months Roman dust and mud and brambles had reduced her to a dinginess almost Roman, and she could go unremarked, could see Lawrence about his work, digging in the excavations, carrying stone and mortar for the masons, doing any rough labor that offered. She could see him in the church, where he spent an hour every morning; she knew that every Sunday he entered the same confessional, and, as she could well guess, told the same tale to the priest, who, when his penitent left him, leaned forward and looked after him with a sad and earnest gaze. More than once, late in the evening, she had looked up from the street where her close carriage stood waiting, and seen, out on the corner of the open roof, to which no one but he had access, his form drawn clearly against the transparent purple of the sky, and, after waiting as long as prudence would allow, had gone away to her lonely apartment, leaving him there in company of the marble angels that clustered about the church front, and the blessed bells, and whatever invisible spirits God should will and his own soul invoke. Never did she see a light in that lofty window; and, after a while, it occurred to her to ask the reason of the _padrona_, who often came to the church in the hope of receiving money from the lady.

“He never will have a candle,” the woman said. “I think he is very poor. And he never drinks wine or eats meat. And, _signora_, he is growing very pale.”

That night Annette Gerald extinguished the candles in her own apartment, and never lighted them again. She could weep and pray without light. The next day she dismissed her one servant, and thenceforward waited on herself. No ease or elegance must her life know while his was passed in such poverty. He ate the dry, sour bread of the poor; she ate it too. He discarded every luxury of the table; she also became an ascetic. If she put wine or fruit to her lips, tears choked her, and she set them aside. As he went down, so she followed him, unseen, weeping pitifully, watching constantly, loving utterly.

Without suspecting it, both became after a while objects of interest to those about them. No dinginess or apparent poverty could hide their refinement; and the extraordinary piety of both invested them with a certain sacredness in the eyes of these people, who had walked and talked with saints. The rude workmen ceased, not only to jest with, but to jest in the presence of this man who never smiled, or spoke without necessity, whose pale face was for ever downcast, and who, in the midst of Italian indelicacy, carried himself with the refinement of an angel. In the long noon rest of the hot summer days they withdrew from the place where he threw himself down, faint with fatigue and the heat, and left him to that solitude he unmistakably desired. Only little children ventured near the “penitent,” as he began to be called, and smiled wistfully in his face, and kissed the hand that now and then gave them a _soldo_.

Once, as he lay asleep on the grass, in the shadow of a ruined arch, an artist, who was just returning home from a morning’s sketching in the Campagna, paused to look at him. The other workmen lounged about at a distance, some asleep, some eating their noon luncheon of dry bread, others smoking and talking. This one seemed laid there apart for a picture. Thrown carelessly on his back, with his hand under the cheek turned a little aside, and the hat dropped off, his form and face were fully seen. It was not the form and face of a plebeian. The elegant shape was not disguised by its faded garments; the beauty of the face, delicately flushed with heat, and beaded with perspiration, was even enhanced by the unshorn and untended beard and the confused mass of clustering hair; and the expression of calm melancholy, which was not obliterated even by the unconsciousness of sleep, did not belong to a common nature.

The artist drew softly nearer, and opened his portfolio, too much engaged to give more than a passing glance to a woman who stood by the arch. With a rapid pencil he sketched his subject, trying to catch that hovering sadness and the weary bend of the head.

Drawing back presently to see if he could add anything to his sketch, he perceived that the woman who had been standing by the arch was at his side, watching his progress.

“Don’t let the shadow run off so,” she said, looking at the sketch, not at him. “Show how the sunshine comes, close to his feet, so that he has only a step to take to reach it. And do you see how those yellow flowers lean against his hair in the form of a crown? Put them in too; and the group of workmen yonder, and a corner of the excavation, with that beautiful pedestal half uncovered. As you have it, it is only a pretty poem without meaning; give the whole, and it will be a tragical story.”

The artist looked intently at the lady while she spoke. Surely she must be the sister of the sleeper! Their two faces would do to stamp on a coin, the man’s profile showing beyond the woman’s.

“Finish the sketch quickly before he wakes,” she said. “I will pay you whatever you want for it. Some day I will have you paint it. Don’t forget the red poppies at his feet. And can you see, can you show, that there is a blister on his hand?”

Wondering much at this strange sort of poor people whom he found himself among, the artist obeyed.

“But I want to keep the sketch,” he said. “I will make a copy for you, if you will come to my studio for it.”

“Certainly not!” she exclaimed, and for the first time looked at him with a clear and haughty gaze. “You have no right to keep it, for you took it without permission. It would be dishonorable and intrusive of you to show that to any person. We are not _contadini_!”

The artist rose and bowed.

“Madam, allow me to present my sketch to you,” he said with equal pride.

“Some day you will know, and then you will no longer be offended,” she said calmly, and took the sketch from his hand just as the sleeper stirred and began to awake. “And now, I beg you never to notice him again, or mention him to any one till I come to you for the picture.”

And so three years passed away, and there came an Easter morning such as Easters used to be in the days when the pope was King of Rome, and there was one city in the world where the business was religion.

Who can forget the scene, having once beheld it—the sky built up of sapphires, glitter on glitter of such blue as the queen of heaven might make her mantle of; the full, warm gold of the sunshine looking the sad ruins in the face till they smile, and revealing its hidden rainbows now and then, as the foamy columns of fountains sway in the light breeze, and catch it unawares; the birds, with long, pointed wings, that cut the air, and seem inebriated with the delight of flying. Then the crowd in the piazza of S. Peter’s, the millennial mingling of rich and poor, royal and plebeian, making in all a scene to be witnessed nowhere else.

“How familiar, yet how new!” said a lady who stepped from her carriage at the barrier. “It is all I could wish! I am glad, Max, that we did not come sooner to Rome. I would rather my first sight of it should be a festal one.”

This lady was richly dressed, and the black lace of her large Spanish veil was drawn back from a face like a fresh lily.

She was instantly addressed as _principessa_ by all the beggars about.

“I am sorry I cannot give you the title, Honora,” her husband said, and smilingly dropped a coin into each outstretched hand. “So nothing disappoints you? I thought it would be so. Now, we must not linger outside.”

“Let us go slowly up; and please do not speak to me,” Mrs. Schöninger said. “No, I do not want your arm now. I must enter S. Peter’s the first time praying.”

They went slowly up the ascent, Honora with her hands clasped, and her eyes dilating as they entered the grand vestibule. Then Mr. Schöninger lifted the heavy curtain, and she crossed the threshold.

At that first step into S. Peter’s a Catholic feels as though he had touched the beating heart of mother church.

The crowd pressed in; but still another crowd remained outside, keeping their places for the papal benediction, and listening for the silvery burst of trumpets inside which should tell that the risen God stood on the central altar of Christendom.

Among this crowd was a group, for which they made way, as it crossed the piazza and approached the steps. Yet it was only two poor laborers who supported a sick man between them.

The thin and transparent face of this invalid, bathed now in the perspiration of weakness, showed that he was worn by consumption or by a long and exhausting fever. He was so weak, indeed, that his two assistants supported him in their arms; and when they reached the stone posts at the foot of the steps, he knelt there, and leaned against one of them, almost insensible.

A lady, following closely behind, wet her handkerchief in cologne‐water, and handed it over his shoulder to one of the men, but did not herself speak to them. He revived a little at that, and, still leaning against the central post, remained fixed in prayer.

A whisper began to creep among the poor people about. Some of them had seen this man, and knew what they conceived to be his story, and they told it in intervals of listening to the strains of heavenly music faintly heard now and then from the church.

“He is a penitent,” one whispered, “and has been doing penance here as a laborer, though he is so rich—so rich! Some say that he killed his own mother; but who knows? The beautiful _signore_! Look at his face! She must have provoked him; and perhaps she was a very wicked woman. Ah! I could tell stories of mothers. They are not all like the blessed Madonna.—There are the trumpets! Alleluia! alleluia! Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord!—And so this poor _signore_ has been living a hard life, and is about to die; and he has come at last to get the Holy Father’s blessing. He would not ask for it before. But, indeed, he might, for he is as holy as the blessed Labré, though he sleeps in a bed and works for his living, instead of begging it. The pale _signora_ who stands behind him is his sister. She has been in Rome all these years, watching over him, without his knowing it. See! she stands out of his sight now. He worked up to a week ago, and then he fell one day in a faint. She was near by, and called a carriage to take him home. And since then she has had a room in the same house, but told the _padrona_ not to let him know. She is rich, for all her poor clothes. She puts something into every hand that is held out to her. See the way she looks at him!—Ah! there they come.”

Mass was over, and the crowd in the church came pouring out. It was with difficulty that Lawrence Gerald’s protectors could keep his place in that pressure. But that he had revived, they could not have done so. With the first intimation that the moment for which he had so long waited was at hand, he had roused himself, and exerted his whole strength. Upright on his knees, with his arms clinging to the post against which he leaned, he fixed his eager eyes upon the balcony where the Pope would in a short time appear. He saw nothing else, not even two familiar forms and faces directly in front of him, which he could scarcely have seen even then with indifference.

“My God!” exclaimed Honora Schöninger, and clung to her husband’s arm. “Look, Max! It is Lawrence, and he is dying!”

Mr. Schöninger drew his wife aside. “It is no time to recognize him now,” he said. “And there is Annette behind him. Poor fellow! poor fellow!”

Annette pressed close to her husband, ready to catch him if he should fall. She knew that he had had an exhausting day. He had risen at early dawn to hear Mass and receive communion, though not really able to leave his bed, and had afterwards spent his remaining strength in the first careful toilet he had made for years. After having so long heaped every indignity on his own body, to‐day he had seemed desirous of treating it with respect as the temple of God. He still wore the dress of the laborer, but his face was shorn of its ill‐tended beard, his hair brushed once more into silken waves, and his linen snowy white. And more exhausting than these efforts had been the excitement of mind under which he labored, and his fear lest in some way he should miss the benediction he so longed for.

“I want to be placed directly in front of the balcony,” he had said, “where I can see the Pope’s face. I shall recognize his face at once. Who knows but he may look at me? If he should, then I shall think that at last God looks at me.”

The crowd hushed itself, as the golden cross came in sight, and after it the crowned and mitred heads, all in white save one. And that one, under its glittering tiara, wore a crown of snowy hair dearer to Catholic hearts than gold or jewels. On this central face the eyes of the sick man fixed themselves with a wide and imploring gaze, and his hands stretched themselves out, as if to beg that he might not be forgotten.

“Do not fear!” Annette whispered in his ear. “The Holy Father knows all your story, and pities you; and there is one standing beside him who will remind him that you are here. He will know just where you are.”

To the waiting and trembling penitent this was like a whisper from his good angel. He associated no other thought with the voice.

The silence deepened till nothing could be heard but the swift wings of a bird flying over the piazza, and the soft “zitti! zitti!” of the fountains, and the heart that each one in that vast crowd felt beat in his bosom.

Surely that mild and blessed face was turned his way! the penitent thought. Surely, surely, the Holy Father had looked at him, searching the crowd one instant with his eyes, and finding him!

Then a single voice was heard—the only voice in the universe, it seemed.

“May the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, in whose power and authority we confide, intercede for us with the Lord.”

“Amen!” chanted the choir, as though the world had found voice.

Again the single voice:

“Through the prayers and merits of blessed Mary ever Virgin, of blessed Michael the archangel, of blessed John the Baptist, of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, may the omnipotent God have mercy upon you, may all your sins be remitted, and Jesus Christ lead you to eternal life.”

“Amen!”

“Indulgence, absolution, and remission of all your sins, space for true and faithful repentance, hearts ever contrite, and amendment of life, may the omnipotent and merciful God afford you.”

“Amen!”

“And may the blessing of the omnipotent God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, descend upon you, and remain with you for ever.”

“Amen!”

Every stain was washed away! Full and strong the blessing flowed, a divine river from the throne of God himself! On its tide were borne away, not only guilt, but the memory of guilt; not only fear, but the remembrance that fear had been. Supported in the arms of his wife and attendants, and of the old friends of whose presence he was unconscious, Lawrence Gerald lay back with his eyes half closed, and a smile of such peace and ecstasy on his face as could only come from God. His soul was gliding sweetly away on the echoes of that last amen.

The military bands began to play, the guns boomed from Sant’ Angelo, the bells of S. Peter’s rang out with a joyful clash on the air, and all Rome broke into music over the resurrection.

And there was joy before the angels of God over one sinful soul redeemed.

The End.

Madame Du Deffand.

“Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not of love,” the poet tells us. And women too have died, and worms have eaten them, but not of _ennui_, although Mme. du Deffand for nearly fourscore years woke the echoes of Versailles and Paris with the pitiful lament: “I am bored! I am bored! I am dying of _ennui_!” If she eventually did die of it—which we stoutly deny—a malady that took eighty years to kill its victim can hardly be called a very cruel one. The vivacious, gossipping, wearied old lady contrived to extract a very reasonable amount of amusement, even of excitement, out of the existence whose wearisomeness she was for ever denouncing; and it is only fair to add that she contributed a very goodly share of amusement to other people. This renowned heroine and victim of _ennui_, Marie de Vichy‐Chamroud, was born into this wearisome world in the year of grace 1697, of a noble family of the province of Burgundy. The De Vichy‐Chamrouds were richer in parchments than in lands; so it fell out that Marie, young, lovely, accomplished, and teeming with wit, was condemned to marry an old man, and, what was still more terrible, a wearisome old man, who had not a single taste in common with her. Immediately on leaving the convent where she received what in those days was considered a liberal education, the beautiful young lady was presented to her future lord. If she bored herself as a young girl, free and happy, and with life before her, what must she have done as the wife of a querulous, stingy old man? All the revenge that was in her power Marie took. She bored her husband as much as he bored her, until at last, in sheer desperation, he agreed to give her an annuity, and let her go her way without him. As Marquise du Deffand, free and comparatively wealthy, the young wife began a new era. She opened a _salon_ which soon became the centre of the wit and fashion of Paris. All that was eminent in war, arts, sciences, literature, and folly came there, and tried to chase away her eternal _ennui_. Amongst her many admirers, the President Hénault occupies the most conspicuous place, both from the dignity of his own character and the enduring nature of their mutual attachment. Hénault was one of the most remarkable men of his time. He was educated by the Oratorians, and had early the inestimable advantage of enjoying the advice, and almost the intimacy, of Massillon. He counted the scarcely lesser privilege of early personal acquaintance with the great poet Racine. As soon as he had completed his studies, young Hénault was introduced at court, where he at once made a favorable impression. “This is not to be wondered at,” says a chronicler of the times; “for, in truth, he was a youth of gracious parts, gay, witty, amiable, a good musician, and gifted with the art of making light and graceful verses.” While the Duchesse de Maine held her brilliant court, Hénault was a constant presence there, and one of its principal ornaments. He was so universally beloved that it was popularly said of him: “There is a man who has more friends than he can count, and not a single enemy.” And this lucky man was the devoted admirer of Mme. du Deffand for over fifty years.

He attained considerable fame as an author, and not the least remarkable feature in his works is that their authorship was vehemently contested, not only during Hénault’s life, but for many years after his death. Most of his books were first published anonymously—a circumstance which, in their early career, may have explained the doubts concerning their origin. But the _Abrégé Chronologique_, which Hénault regarded as his best, appeared with the author’s name at the outset, and this, strange to say, was the one which the world refused longest to believe was his, and persevered in long attributing to the Abbé Boudot. A copy of the book was found, in the _abbé’s_ own writing, amongst his papers when he died, and this is the only piece of evidence on which Hénault’s detractors built their obstinate denial that he was the author of the _Abrégé_. Admitting that this fact looked suspicious, the book itself from first to last bears the stamp of Hénault’s composition in the most unmistakable manner; the choice of the subject, its style and treatment, all point emphatically to him as the author, while there is abundant explanation of the accidental presence of the compromising copy amongst Boudot’s papers. Hénault was in the habit of employing him to copy out his compositions. Voltaire, in one of his letters to the president, recommends the _abbé_ as a very clever copyist, and also as a useful person to make researches for him at the Royal Library; and Grimm also recommends him for the same purpose, informing Hénault that Boudot had employment at the library, and was in charge of the literary and historical department. A man who held this subaltern post, and was treated as a mere scribe by such authorities, and who never pleaded guilty to writing even a pamphlet in his life, is, to say the least, a very unlikely person to be the author of such a work as Hénault’s _Abrégé_. Mme. du Deffand and Grimm, who both liked to sharpen their wits pretty freely at the president’s expense, never for an instant doubted the reality of his authorship, or suspected that any one had had a share in his books.

Unlike so many of his distinguished literary contemporaries, Hénault was a practical Christian. “His piety,” says the Marquis de Agesson, “was as free from fanaticism or bitterness as his books were from pedantry.”

Mme. du Deffand, who spared her friend on no other points, spared him on this. She never laughed at his religion. On that score alone he was safe from her irony and sarcasm. She even openly commended him for challenging Voltaire’s impious vituperation of the faith; and in her own correspondence with the infidel philosopher she speaks almost with enthusiasm of the clear intellect, the pointed wit, and irresistible goodness of his antagonist. When he was past eighty, Hénault wrote privately to Voltaire, imploring him, in the most touching terms, to retract some of his diabolical satires on religion; and this letter, which, unhappily, we know remained without effect, was found amongst Voltaire’s papers after his death. He, on his side, strove to win over Hénault to the “enlightened school,” and with artful flattery and subtlest sophistry urged him to change certain historical passages in the _Abrégé Chronologique_ which strongly vindicated the influence of Christianity. But the Christian writer withstood these blandishments. In a literary point Voltaire contributed in no small degree to the reputation of Hénault, whose style he praised with creditable candor. It is strange to see the lively and bored old _marquise_ holding steadily the friendship of these widely dissimilar men. Diderot, D’Alembert, and Montesquieu were also _habitués_ of her brilliant _salon_. But none of them could do more than give her momentary deliverance from her life‐long enemy—_ennui_. She went on boring herself, in spite of the perpetual cross‐fire of _esprit_ that the brightest wits of the age kept up around her, and she bored her friends almost to exasperation by the unceasing repetition of the complaint: _Que je m’ennuie! Que je m’ennuie!_

At the age of fifty‐four a terrible misfortune befell the _marquise_. She grew blind. It was soon after this that she became acquainted with Mlle. de l’Espinasse. The sprightliness and the energy of this young girl were an immense consolation to Mme. du Deffand, and cheered her for a time in that “eternal night,” as she pathetically described it, in which she now dwelt. But they did not agree for long. After living happily together for some few years, they quarrelled and separated. It is impossible to say whose fault it was. Each had violent partisans, who accused the other, but proved nothing. Mme. du Deffand was undoubtedly difficult to live with, as all people are who draw exclusively on those around them for amusement; but she was old and she was blind, and it is beyond doubt she was a kind benefactress to her young companion, and that, at the moment of separation, she wrote a most touching letter to her, asking forgiveness for all she had done inadvertently to pain her, and urging the young girl to remember how cruelly she was afflicted both by blindness and by _ennui_. To this Mlle. de l’Espinasse returned a curt and ungracious answer. Nor did she imitate the kindliness of speech of her quondam employer, who always spoke of her ever after their quarrel with the utmost good‐nature and forbearance.

Just as her home was resounding to these domestic discords, Mme. du Deffand made the acquaintance of Horace Walpole. They were spontaneously pleased with each other. Mme. du Deffand would have probably been still more so, if she could have foreseen how triumphantly this new friendship was destined to rescue her memory from oblivion. We know more of her and her _salon_ through the voluminous correspondence that passed between her and that prince of gossips and most brilliant of scribblers than through any other source; although she comes in, it is true, for more ridicule at his hands than eulogy. He constantly reproaches her for making him the laughing‐stock of Paris and London by her absurd affection, and coarsely tells her he does not want to be the hero of a novel where the heroine is a blind octogenarian.

This correspondence was published at the beginning of the century, and was hailed as a valuable addition to the French literature of that period. On reading it, one feels transported into the society of the fascinating women and accomplished men whom it so cleverly depicts. Mme. du Deffand passes in review the authors and actors of her time with a graphic power of delineation rarely equalled. Unsparing in her criticism, she is in some instances no doubt too severe, and occasionally even unjust; it is nevertheless acknowledged that in her literary judgments she is rarely at fault; they are marked throughout by discrimination, taste, and delicacy.

Horace Walpole made Mme. du Deffand’s acquaintance when she had become quite blind; on his being presented to her, she drew her hand over his face, in order to ascertain whether he was plain or handsome, and what his age was. Her touch had acquired such sensitive delicacy in course of time that it enabled her to calculate people’s ages and looks with the greatest accuracy. In quite the latter years of her life Mme. du Deffand, who had never been avowedly an unbeliever, although practically so, turned her thoughts to religion, and sought in the teaching of the faith those consolations to her _ennui_ that wit and philosophy had failed to secure her. She announces this change of sentiment, with her usual frankness, in one of her letters to Walpole. Her biographers throw but little light on the subject. La Harpe alludes to her having had many interviews with the celebrated Jesuit, F. Lenfant—an episode which is dismissed by Mme. du Deffand herself with the remark that “the Père Lenfant was very clever, and that she was much pleased with him.”

The Père Lenfant who is thus incidentally introduced to us in the memoirs of the lively French woman was one of the countless noble and touching victims of the Revolution—that raging torrent that drowned so many gentle voices in its roar. He was gifted with an eloquence that drew around him all the lovers of rhetoric and the most able men of his day. The poet Young heard him, and was so struck by his power and pathos that he entreated a Protestant clergyman of his acquaintance to go and hear him; the latter did so, and embraced the faith. Once, on coming out from a sermon of the Père Lenfant’s, preached at S. Sulpice during Lent, Diderot exclaimed to D’Alembert, who had been drinking in every word from beginning to end, with his eyes riveted on the preacher: “It would be hard to hear that man often without becoming a Christian.”

When the order of the Jesuits was disbanded in France, the Père Lenfant was thrown upon the world. He was then forty‐seven years of age. The decree which despoiled him of his religious garb could not rob him of its spirit. He continued his good works and his apostolate with fervor and wisdom. Several crowned heads tried to win him to their courts, but in vain. The son of S. Ignatius held steadily aloof from the tempting snare. He preached indefatigably at all times and places, at Lunéville, Vienne, Versailles, wherever he was called; and everywhere the great and the learned flocked round his pulpit. His contemporaries describe the effects of his eloquence as electrical. He captivated his hearers, not so much by the magnificence of his language, as by the pathos of his voice and the force of his own faith. Père Lenfant preached the Lent of 1791 before the court; but on refusing to take the oath of the clergy to the civil constitution, he was obliged to withdraw. Shortly afterwards he was taken prisoner and condemned to death. On being brought before his judges, the people cried out that his life might be spared, and, yielding to the cries, his jailers let him go; before, however, he had got free from the crowd, a woman called out: “There goes the king’s confessor!” At these words the thirst for blood, that had seemed for a moment satiated or suspended, rose up anew. The mob set upon him like tigers. The Père Lenfant uttered only words of love and forgiveness, and, raising his hands to heaven, exclaimed: “My God, I thank thee for allowing me to offer my life for thee, as thou hast offered thine for me!” And with this gracious sentence on his lips the Jesuit father fell and expired under the blows of the murderers.

This little sketch of the Marquise du Deffand would be incomplete without a passing mention of the author of the _Esprit des Lois_, who was one of the most distinguished of her numerous friends.

Her letters to Montesquieu have been preserved; they are, however, much less interesting than those to Walpole, and consequently much less known. Mme. du Deffand could be a staunch friend, though she was often a trying one; she proved herself such to Montesquieu. Amongst other good offices, she cleared him from the charge of avarice which was laid at his door so generally. History revoked the verdict, it is true, but only when the subject of it was gone beyond the reach of earthly rehabilitation. Montesquieu’s exceeding modesty and desire to have his benefits known only to the recipients was the real, and perhaps the only, cause of his reputed avarice. One example of his delicate generosity we cannot refrain from giving.

He was in the habit of visiting Marseilles to see his sister, Mme. d’Héricourt, who resided there. During one of these visits he happened one evening to be lounging on the quay; the weather was sultry, and it occurred to Montesquieu that he would take a boat, and have a row on the sea. His attention was drawn to a young man who was looking out for a customer. He hailed him, and got in. As soon as they were out a little at sea, Montesquieu perceived that his boatman was a novice at the work, and rowed with difficulty. He questioned him, and learned that he was, in truth, a jeweller by trade, and a boatman only on Sundays and holidays, in order to gain a trifle towards helping his mother and sisters, who were working to procure 4,000 crowns to ransom his father, who was a prisoner at Tetuan. Montesquieu was deeply touched by the story. He made a resolution on the spot, but said nothing. Before landing, however, he got from the boatman his father’s name and the name of his master. On parting, he handed him his purse, and walked away rapidly; great was the delight of the young man, on opening it, to find that it contained sixteen golden _louis_.

Six weeks after this the captive suddenly appeared in the midst of his wife and children. He saw, by the astonishment mingled with their joy, that it was not to them he owed his liberation; but the surprise and gratitude of all were increased on his telling them that not only was his ransom paid, but likewise his voyage home and his clothing; and, over and above this, a sum of fifty _louis d’or_ had been handed to him on starting. The young boatman no sooner heard this fairy tale than he bethought him of the generous stranger who had presented him the purse and expressed such sympathy on hearing of his sorrow. He determined to seek him. For two years he did so, but in vain. The name of the benefactor to whom he and his owed such a sweet and magnificent debt of gratitude remained an impenetrable mystery. At last one day, while walking in the streets of Paris, he suddenly encountered Montesquieu face to face; the young man fell upon his knees, kissed the hand of his benefactor, and entreated him to come with him to the home he had blessed, and witness the joy that he had brought back to a desolate family. But Montesquieu feigned ignorance and surprise, declared he knew nothing of what the young man was talking about, and at last, wrenching his hand away abruptly, he disappeared in the crowd, nor did his pursuer succeed in finding him again.

This action would never have been discovered had not Montesquieu’s executor found among his papers a memorandum in his own handwriting, stating that he had sent 7,500 francs to Mr. Main, an English banker at Cadiz; on the latter being applied to for information, he replied that he had given that sum, by the order of M. de Montesquieu, for the ransom of a man named Robert, a Marseillais, detained as a slave at Tetuan. Inquiries were set on foot, and the Robert family told the rest.

This touching incident was made the foundation of many dramatic pieces. If it did no more than clear a noble character from the unworthy charge of heartlessness and avarice, the world would have been the better for its discovery.

Cain, What Hast Thou Done With Thy Brother?

By Ernest Hello.

From The Revue Du Monde Catholique.

By way of preface, I will relate a true story given by F. Agathon, a priest of the Monastery of Ruba, and preserved in the _Lives of the Fathers of the Desert_.

F. Agathon says: “One day I descended into the valley of Ruba to find the holy solitary, F. Pémeu, as I wished to consult him on a subject that weighed heavily upon my mind. We conversed until late in the evening, and then he sent me into a cavern to pass the rest of the night. Now, as it was winter, and the cold extreme, I was nearly frozen. The next morning, when the old man came in to see me, he asked: ‘How have you passed the night, my son?’

“ ‘Father,’ I answered, ‘I must say, in truth, I passed a terrible night, on account of the extraordinary severity of the cold.’

“ ‘And I did not feel it at all,’ he replied.

“These words filled me with astonishment, as he was nearly naked, and I said: ‘I beg of you, father, to tell me how that could have happened.’

“ ‘For the reason,’ he answered, ‘that a lion came and lay down beside me, and kept me warm. But nevertheless, my dear son, I can assure you that I shall be devoured by wild beasts.’

“ ‘Why do you say so?’ I asked.

“ ‘Because,’ he replied, ‘when I was a shepherd in our country (we were both from Galatia), I would have saved the life of a traveller, if I had accompanied him; but I did not show him that charity, and he was devoured by the dogs. Therefore I shall most certainly meet with a similar death.’

“And it really happened as he said. For three years afterwards he was torn to pieces by wild beasts.”

I.

Dear Marie, cease to think of me; all is ended; I am lost. I do not tell you what will become of me; I know nothing myself. I only know that yesterday I received the fatal blow, from which I cannot recover.

I had just finished the last picture, of which I have so often spoke to you—The First Glance. It is the portrait of a young man, who awakens and looks around him, as though he saw everything for the first time.

Some of my friends thought the picture splendid, but added that it would not sell well, as my name was unknown to the public.

After innumerable attempts, all equally unfortunate, I showed it yesterday to a very rich amateur—Baron de Brienne. He examined the picture, thought it remarkable, and then asked if I had often exhibited my pictures.

On my replying in the negative, his expression changed.

“I thought,” said he, “I did not know your name. You must make yourself known. This picture has great merit, and this sketch also,” he added, throwing a rapid glance at my other picture just commenced—you know it, Marie—Cain after his Crime—“but, in fact, you are not known,” he concluded.

“But, sir,” I replied, “I am endeavoring to make myself known.”

“Well,” continued the baron, “you have talent, that I acknowledge; but I doubt if it is the kind of talent that will be appreciated by the public. If I bought your picture, I would be asked where I found it. As it stands there, it has a certain value; but if you were dead, it would be worth a hundred times as much, and perhaps would soon find purchasers, possibly myself among the first. You see I can’t change the world. So it is with men; they will pay the most ridiculous price for objects of art whose worth is guaranteed by a signature, but will not bother themselves to talk up unknown talent. I,” he added with a happy smile, “recently gave a hundred thousand francs for a picture which I do not place above yours; but it was a Murillo! I am a modest man, and always side with the majority. The majority is always right, and, for my part, I am not vain enough to think I know more than the entire human race. Make yourself known; everything is in that. Make yourself known; put your pictures in the exhibition; receive medals and decorations. But, above all, die; your pictures then will be worth so much gold. You see you are talking to a practical man, who don’t believe in neglected genius. _Au revoir_, monsieur. You really have talent; more even than that, I do not hesitate to say you have genius. _Au revoir_.”

This, Marie, was my last adventure. All the others were similar. I will spare you any further details. I have told you in a few words what in reality was a long agony. But despair is brief; it has not the courage to dwell on separate facts; it sums up the causes, and only shows the effects.

Now, my dear Marie, you know what happened yesterday. The day before there came another gentleman, who had not the time to examine my picture as it deserved. This he explained to me for two hours without looking at the picture. He really had no time; for example, every morning he visits his stables from ten to twelve, and in the afternoon rows on the lake from four to six.

As for Baron de Brienne, when he left, he assured me he held my talent in the highest estimation; that he would like to have a gallery of pictures all painted by me, as it would probably one day be very valuable; later, my pictures would sell splendidly, and he could make money by the operation.

If there is ever to be a later day for me, I shall find him, when I will no longer need him, and he will be the first to show me honor.

Adieu, Marie. I was so sanguine, so buoyed up with hope, it needed all this time—all this precious time, of which these gentlemen had so little to waste—to bring me where I am now.

I think the baron saw despair in my face, for he used a singular expression on leaving which I had not provoked by any remark.

“My dear sir, do not look so dismal and wretched. I am not the Don Quixote of budding genius. Make yourself known, make yourself known, and you will find me! But if your courage fails, you will commit blunders and spoil your talent, for which I will not be responsible; like Pilate, I wash my hands of you!”

I listened to them going down the stairs.

“No, no,” said he to his wife; “you see for my portrait I must have a master, a signature.”

“Perhaps,” replied the baroness—“perhaps we have done wrong to discourage the young man.”

“Discourage? What are you talking about? I told him he had great talent. Do you wish to know what I think?” he added, as he stood for an instant before her. “What ruins art in the present day is that it is gorged with gold, and that too few men of genius die in the hospital—that is the reason!”

Adieu, Marie.

Something else was said, which Paul did not hear.

The baroness paused, as she was about to enter the carriage.

“Well, what is the matter with you?” said her husband.

“I am not very well,” she replied.

“So much more reason for getting in the carriage. What ails you?”

“The face of that young man haunts me. Who knows what despair may drive him to? Who knows how terrible may be his hidden suffering? Let us go back. I feel as though we had just committed a crime. Let us go back. Thirty years ago I read a story which I had long forgotten, but that now returns vaguely to my memory as a warning. I no longer remember the whole, but the impression comes back vague and terrible after thirty years. Ah! let us go back.”

The baron stopped, and laughed immensely.

“Ha! ha! Are you crazy? Haven’t I the _right_ to choose the pictures I wish to buy? Is there a law which compels me to buy pictures from this gentleman? I speak to you very seriously, my dear; such fancies as these will make you crazy. There is a great deal of insanity in our present day. Let us take care, let us take care!”

II.

Marie, after reading her brother’s letter, was half frantic with terror, as she knew him thoroughly, and understood his bitter despair. She lost no time, but left in the first train. Arrived in Paris, she ran to the little house in the Quartier Latin where Paul lived. She was too excited to take a carriage. The rapid walk seemed to soothe her. In the cars she longed for quicker movement; in the street she wished for wings; at the door she would rather have been at the other end of the world. She dared not go up. She stopped, suffocated with the beating of her heart. If it was already too late—the thought nearly paralyzed her with horror. If she were a minute too late!

Finally, when on the stairs, she wept. Then she dared ring.

“I have wept,” she thought; “he is saved.” Taught by a long and singular experience, the young girl knew that tears were for her the mysterious and certain sign that her prayer was granted. She rang. A servant‐girl, without speaking, led her to a bed, and uttered a single word—“Dead”—and then added: “The funeral will take place in two hours. He threw himself into the Seine from the bridge of Austerlitz.”

“He is not dead,” said Marie.

“The registration of the death has been made,” said the woman.

Without replying, Marie looked fixedly at him, and said to herself:

“He is not dead. I have wept; he is not dead. Paul!” she called. Silence. “Paul!” Silence.

She seized a mirror, and held it to her brother’s lips. At the moment she took it in her hand she burst into tears. “You will see that he is saved!” she said.

The woman thought her crazy. Marie still held the mirror before Paul’s lips. Dead silence; her own poor heart nearly stopped—the mirror was tarnished!

III.

Seven years afterwards M. le Baron de Brienne was conversing in a numerous and choice circle. It was at a grand dinner. The women were crowned with flowers and sparkling with jewels. The conversation turned upon a great crime which had recently been committed, the details of which filled two columns of every paper. Suddenly the Baron de Brienne became singularly agitated, and then, in a voice which he endeavored to keep calm, but whose trembling was still further shown by the effort to subdue it, said:

“It appears that the police have not yet discovered any trace of the assassin.”

“I don’t know,” replied a guest.

“I believe not,” said another.

“Excuse me,” replied a third person; “according to the latest accounts, the police, if not positively sure, had at least great hopes.”

The Baron de Brienne was as white as his napkin. He tried to overcome and conceal his excitement, and attempted to eat; but the effort was too great. He swooned, and fell heavily to the ground.

Every one rose and crowded around him. Water was thrown in his face, salts were held for him to inhale. The hostess neglected none of the ceremonies usual in such cases. Fortunately, there was a physician among the guests. Every attention was lavished upon M. le Baron. His carriage was called, and he was taken home.

The next day he was better; at the end of three days he was well. He made them bring any quantity of papers, and read them to him. Mme. la Baronne, who was the reader, suddenly paused, and said:

“Here is more of the horrid crime of which we were all talking when you were taken ill.”

“Well?” said the baron in a singular tone.

“Well,” continued the baroness, “the murderer has been arrested. But what a strange interest you take in the affair!”

“I?” replied the baron. “Oh! not at all; I can very truly say that. Why do you think otherwise?”

“Because you are so strangely excited whenever the subject is mentioned.”

“What do you mean, talking about my excitement?” he replied. “Can you possibly imagine, like those stupid people at dinner the other evening, that this affair interests me in the slightest degree? They were all there looking at me, looking at me ... with eyes ... with eyes.... Are you, too, going to stare at me now with those eyes ... with those eyes....”

Mme. la Baronne rose, and wrote two lines: “_Dear doctor, come instantly._”

“Carry that to the telegraph office,” she said to the servant.

“She did not count the words,” muttered the man in astonishment, as he withdrew. “It must be something very serious.”

IV.

Three months had elapsed, and the baron had resumed his ordinary life, when one evening, in a _salon_ in the faubourg Saint‐Honoré, a gentleman remarked, in the course of conversation, that it was astonishing the number of crimes one daily heard of. And he related the last murder that the daily paper had brought under his eyes.

Said the baron: “Why do you make such an assertion? Never were crimes so rare as to‐day; manners and customs are so much softened, we can almost say there are no longer any criminals. None can be found in the higher class of society; and when we speak of the aristocracy, it means the entire nation. Indeed, to speak the truth, I believe very little in the wonderful crimes with which the daily journals fill their columns when there is a dearth of political news.”

“You are very incredulous, M. le Baron,” replied the Comte de Sartigny. “Probably it is from kindness to the editors that the police seek the criminals, and the courts judge them.”

“You say,” answered the baron, “that the police seek the criminals. It is false, M. le Comte. In the first place, only one is guilty, and the police are not hunting him up; he is already found, and he has no accomplice. He has been found, I tell you, he has been found; and the man has no accomplice. Perhaps I don’t know it. Ha! ha!”

While the baron, pale as death, spoke these words, with terror imprinted on his face, the count looked steadily at him, and said:

“You say that I have spoken falsely, M. le Baron? Will you repeat that remark? I think those were your words, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

“I only say one thing,” replied the baron, “which is, that the criminal has been found and arrested.”

“But a moment ago you denied the reality of the crime.”

“I only say one thing, M. le Comte: that there is no doubt about the name of the assassin.”

The master of the house took the count by the arm, and led him to the recess of a window....

“Ah! very well, very well; I did not know it,” said the count, as he left the room.

While they were conversing together, the baron made several vain efforts to rise. He experienced the supreme anguish of a man who, while still in the possession of his faculties, feels they are leaving him—of a man who has not fainted, but who is about to faint, and who feels on his brow the first drops of cold sweat.

The baroness made her excuses for leaving so early, and, when alone with her husband, asked anxiously:

“What can be the matter with you?”

“And you too, you too,” he replied, pushing her from him, as he raised his blood‐shot eyes.

V.

“We must,” said the doctor, “enter into his mania, so as to endeavor to discover the cause. We must make him talk without questioning him. Do you know, madame, in the life of M. le Baron, of any fact that may have left a disagreeable remembrance?”

“Doctor, do you mean a guilty remembrance?”

“No, madame; something terrifying.”

The baroness thought a long while.

“No,” said she, “not one. Our life has always passed most tranquilly. You know how people of the world live; well, so we live, and have always lived. My husband is a quiet man, who has never had a quarrel in his life with any one, and has never done an injury that I know of.”

“You have never seen in the baron any anxiety of conscience?”

“Any anxiety of conscience? He? Why should he have any? He has never in his life done anything to reproach himself with.”

“The baron,” replied the doctor, “has the reputation of being benevolent and kind‐hearted. I don’t think he is naturally very imaginative; do you, madame?”

“Not at all, doctor. I think he is just the contrary. I can even say he has very little faith.”

“But when and where did you first perceive the commencement of this mania?”

“It was one day when nothing strange had happened. Some one had been speaking of a young sculptor, who now is very famous. A friend told us that he owed his success to a rich banker, who had discovered his talents by some happy accident, and had aided him with his fortune and influence. When our guests had left, and we were alone, I thought he would kill himself; as now, without the slightest reason.”

“In his daily life does he show any eccentricity of which I am yet ignorant?”

“Not precisely eccentricity,” said Mme. de Brienne. “His tastes have changed very much, but that cannot be called eccentricity. He formerly spent quite a fortune in purchasing pictures, of which he has a very fine collection, that he admired extravagantly; now he never looks at them. But he has always been rather fickle.”

“Does he talk in his sleep?”

“No; but one morning (now that you make me think of it) he awoke terribly frightened at a dream. ‘Ah! what a dream I have had,’ he said to me. His face looked worn and haggard, and, as I begged him to relate it, he turned away his eyes, and refused peremptorily. I insisted, but he kept silent, and I have never been able to make him relate it.”

The doctor reflected.

“Perhaps that is the whole secret,” said he. “But if we were to ask him about it now, probably to‐morrow we would be obliged to confine him.”

“Confine him?” cried the baroness. “Do you think him so seriously affected?”

“Very seriously, madame, and more so as he is perfectly sane in relation to other affairs. His mania is confined to one point, and is what we call hallucination. My duty compels me to tell you, madame, that it is a case where science up to the present time has been very unsuccessful.”

“But, doctor, never was there a man less crazy. As for the pictures, which was the only passion I ever knew him to have, he prided himself on never having done a foolish thing; he only bought pictures of known value, with the signatures of the artists fully guaranteed. I, for instance, who am speaking to you, would have sometimes acted more unwisely than he. I remember once he even refused....”

“Nevertheless,” interrupted the doctor, “the case is very serious.”

The baron was alone in his room. His wife listened attentively at the door, and watched him through the key‐hole. He raised the curtains, shook the cushions on the sofa, searched around, and, when convinced that he was alone, spoke in a low voice; but his wife caught his words.

“No one suspects me. No one, not even she; and yet everything should warn them, everything.... The circumstances that accompanied the act are reproduced every instant. For example, the clouds in the sky have nearly always the same form as at that moment.... The clouds do it purposely; they have assumed since that day certain positions always the same. What do they resemble? What I do not wish to say, but I know well since my dream. Oh! that dream.... I am cold, frozen. Why is it no one ever speaks to me of that dream; that no one in this house remembers it? And yet they were all there ... in the dream.... My wife was there, and the other one also,” he added, lowering his voice.

And after a silence, occasionally broken by unintelligible words, and joined to a strange pantomime, he continued:

“It was frightful. How that man struggled for his life!”

And speaking always lower and lower, the baron gasped out:

“He clung to me, and, when I pushed him into the water, an expression passed over his face such as was never seen but then in this world. It was near the bridge of Austerlitz. How he glared at me as he disappeared the last time! How is it that in the street the passers‐by do not say on seeing me, ‘There is the man, there he is—the man who had the dream’? But was it a dream or reality? Men often pass me quickly in the street. Who knows but that they know or see something?”

The baron walked around the room, greatly excited, and then, pausing, he sighed, and said in a mournful tone:

“How do other men act—those who are not followed? They can take a step without hearing behind them another step that goes quicker or slower, according as they walk. Then there are men who do not hear steps behind them as they walk. Yet I always seek the noisiest places; but no noise ever deadens the sound of that step, so faint but so invincible. The noise of carriages, the roar of cannon—I have tried everything.... If possible I would live amidst thunder; but the lightning might fall near me, and cover me with ruins; still should I hear that faint, almost imperceptible noise, a foot that just touches the ground. I am cold! How cold it is! Fire no longer warms me! How lightly that foot touches the ground. It does not press heavily like ours. No, decidedly not; it was no dream—it was reality. That foot never is tired; but when I stop, it stops. It has a certain manner of stopping that makes me always feel that it is there, and that it will resume its walk when I do mine. Sometimes I would rather hear it, and I walk to make it walk; when it is silent, its menace is to me more terrible than the sound of the step.... If it would only change place!... But, no; always at an equal distance from me. Ah! how cruel. If I could but see some one, I think the most horrible spectacle would be less terrifying than this dreary void. To hear and not see!”

Here the baron rapidly jumped backwards, and put out his hand as though to grasp something in the air, then exclaimed:

“Gone! He has escaped—escaped, as ever!”

VI.

The course of the baron’s ordinary life flowed on as smoothly as ever. Nothing was changed, and those who were not much with him perceived no difference; to them he was the same as heretofore.

The following summer he wished to go to the sea‐shore.

They left for Brittany. They spoke of the pleasant walks and drives, and the baron, in an absent manner, asked on which part of the coast was the most sand. He would not hear of the cliffs; he wanted sand—only sand. Gâvre was recommended by a gentleman who was seated near them at the _table d’hôte_.

The baron instantly decided upon going to Gâvre.

“At what hour shall we leave?” asked the baroness.

The _we_ evidently displeased the baron. He wished to go alone. He gave a thousand pretexts to prevent his wife accompanying him. As she would not admit them, he said, contrary to his usual custom, “I will” ... “I wish to go alone,” said he. “Am I in prison? Do you take me for a criminal?”

The baron left Port Louis in the steamboat. His wife followed him, without being seen, on another boat, and watched his movements through a spy‐ glass, as he paced up and down the shore at Gâvre.

First, according to his usual custom, he assured himself that he was alone. Then he would take several steps, and return quickly, seeing nothing; he searched in the sand, and, finding his own footsteps, he sought a little further on the trace of the _other_ one. All in vain. Disappointed, he went to another spot, and recommenced his weary walk, always seeing his own footprints, never the _other_. He had hoped in the sand; the sand had proved false, as everything else.

VII.

Meanwhile, the doctor was in Paris, and one evening in a _salon_ in the faubourg Saint Germain. The conversation was on madness; and the doctor, who was a celebrated _alieniste_, was asked many questions as to the causes of insanity.

“The causes of insanity,” said he, “are so profound and mysterious that to know them one must make the tour of the invisible world.”

“I have known,” said one gentleman, “insane persons who thought themselves guilty of crimes which they had never committed—innocent men, intelligent and good, incapable of harming a bird, and who thought themselves assassins.”

Among the guests that evening was a famous artist, M. Paul Bayard, whose most admired works, The First Glance, and Cain after his Crime, ranked with the _chefs‐d’œuvre_ of the greatest masters of the day.

Said M. Bayard: “I have not studied, like you, doctor, from life. I don’t know any insane persons, and what I am going to tell you is not founded on fact. But this is what I think about this strange remorse felt by innocent people: who knows if they may not have committed _spiritually_ the crime of which they think themselves guilty _materially_? In this hypothesis they have completely forgotten the real and spiritual crime, which they committed really and spiritually; they did not even know or feel it at the instant they committed it. But this crime real, spiritual, and forgotten is transformed, by virtue of madness, into a material crime, of which they are innocent, but of which they believe themselves guilty. Perhaps a man has betrayed his friend; instead of accusing himself of this treason, he accuses himself of another fault which resembles that one, as the body resembles the soul. I repeat, I cannot cite an example. It is purely hypothetical; but something which I cannot define makes me think it possible, nay, even probable. The guilty person deceived his conscience; conscience in turn deceives him. To make a child understand, we give examples of sensible things. Perhaps justice thus acts with these men, and, finding them insensible in the sphere of the mind, transports their crime into the sphere of the body.

“Perhaps it is a real crime, but too subtle to be understood by them, that descends to their level, and pursues them under the appearance of an external and sensible crime, the only one which they can understand. There are whimsical scruples which resemble madness, as exaggeration resembles falsehood. Who knows if these scruples are not the wanderings, or, if you prefer it, the transpositions of remorse? I say _remorse_. I do not say repentance, for repentance enlightens, and remorse blinds. Between repentance and remorse there is an abyss: the first gives peace, the second destroys it. Perhaps conscience, not being able to make itself felt by the guilty person on its own ground, speaks to him, by way of revenge, in language as coarse as himself, on his own domain. Through a terrible justice, it makes him reproach himself with what appears unjust on the surface, but which is a thousand times just at the bottom. Conscience, which spoke in vain at the moment of the crime, now arms itself against the criminal as a phantom. We are men here to‐night, as we appear to each other; but who knows if we are not for some one somewhere, at this moment, phantoms?”

The doctor rose, and, taking the artist’s hand, said: “I do not know how much truth there may be in your theory. I only know one thing: that you are a man of genius, and, if I had doubted it before, I am now convinced of it. I will reflect on your words; they open to me a new horizon.”

“I have always been pursued by the thought,” said the artist, “that there is a moment when a man understands for the first time what he has seen since his infancy. It is the day when the eyes of the mind open. It is this I have attempted to show in my picture—The First Glance. But as the horizon is constantly enlarging, I endeavor to throw upon everything, each time, a look which I may call The First Glance. In the other composition, Cain after his Crime, I wished to show in Cain, not the melodramatic assassin, but a vulgar, common man. The _stigmata_ of anger, of which he received the visible mark, opens to him the eyes of the soul. He throws upon his crime a first glance. There are spiritual Cains whose arms are innocent. Perhaps there may be some among the insane, of whom we have spoken; and in that case there is more truth in their madness than in their previous security. Their insanity only deceives them about the nature of the crime; their security deceived them about the crime itself.”

The doctor was thoughtful. He took the artist aside, and in a low tone said: “Shall we leave together?” And they left.

After their departure the conversation turned on what had just been said.

“Were you always a materialist?” asked one person of his neighbor.

“It is scarcely fair or generous to choose this moment for such a question,” was the reply.

“As for me,” said a young lady, “I don’t like to hear M. Bayard talk. He is a great artist—that I admit; but when he commences in that style, he worries me!”

“Would it be indiscreet, madame, to ask you why?” timidly inquired a young man with a badly‐tied cravat.

“Because I am afraid he is right in his opinions. I wish to pass gaily through life; and if we believe what he says, life would be such a serious affair, we should have to think. Really, to hear him, we can imagine ourselves surrounded with mysteries.”

VIII.

“I wish to see and study your picture of Cain. I was going to say your portrait of Cain,” said the doctor to the painter; “for it seems to me that you must have known him personally, from the manner in which you have spoken to me of him.”

“Perhaps I have known him,” said Paul. “At any rate, come!” And they entered the studio.

Arrived before the picture, the doctor started back in surprise.

The portrait of Cain was that of the baron, horrible in the resemblance.

There was on that face the coldness of the criminal and the horror of the cursed. The coldness did not impair the horror, nor the horror the coldness; and from the mouth of Cain the spectator might expect to hear the words that S. Bridget heard from the mouth of Satan when he said to God:

“O Judge! I am coldness itself.”

Indifference and despair were in those eyes, on those lips, and on that brow. But the despair was not heartrending, for repentance was wanting, and this despair even appeared expiatory, like justice eating its bread.

The doctor remained a long while motionless. The horizon opened before his eyes. His science sought new depths. He did not precisely reflect, but he remembered, and, perhaps for the first time in his life, passed an hour in profound contemplation.

“So you know him?” said he at last to Paul.

“Whom do you mean?”

“Why, my patient!”

“I don’t know any of your patients.”

Professional discretion arrested the name before it passed the doctor’s lips.

“But, really,” said he, “this head is a portrait. You could not have drawn it by chance.”

“Neither one nor the other,” replied Paul. “No one sat for me, and I did not draw it by chance. It appears to me, when I work, certain faces are offered to me without forcing themselves upon me. I perceive them interiorly; for my eyes are closed and I see nothing. Perceive is not the proper word, for the sense of sight is not needed. If I perceive them, it is with an unknown sense which is not that of sight, and in a peculiar condition, in comparison with which wakefulness is profound sleep. I think these perceptions correspond with some reality, either distant or future, whose photographic likeness at that moment passes before the eyes of the mind.

“This faculty, which may be called natural inspiration, has never abandoned me. The aptitude to surmise what I do not know is the highest form of the activity of my mind, and not only do I surmise what I do not know, but very often I do it, I realize it, without intention and without knowledge. It is as though I were an actor in a drama of which I was ignorant. I recite a part in a play that I do not know, and whose title and plot are equally unknown.

“Yet I feel myself free, and the profound sentiment of my liberty bursts forth, above all, in the remembrance of my faults. I wished to die, but death did not want me. I have sometimes asked myself if, having wished to lose my life, I might not lose inspiration, which would be for me a subtle and cruel manner of death. It has seemed to me that the question has been agitated somewhere, and that inspiration, which has compassion on the weak, came back to me gratuitously. If I had been criminal from malice, it would have abandoned me, perhaps, or have become in me the auxiliary of a future crime. It might have refused to help me, or have assisted me in doing wrong.”

IX.

Shortly after this interview the baron returned to Paris, apparently calmer than usual.

“He is much better,” said Mme. la Baronne. “The doctor alarmed me terribly; but I knew very well in reality there was no danger. My husband is a cold man, and I have nothing to fear for his reason.”

The following night the baron waited until the house was quiet, and then went on tiptoe, as though afraid of being surprised or disturbed. Once safely in his picture gallery, he cut each of the pictures with a penknife, and then one by one burst them open by placing his knee against the canvas; and, that accomplished, left the house toward morning. The porter saw him pass, but did not recognize him.

“Who is that old man,” said he to his wife, “who passed the night in the house?”

The baron’s hair, black the night before, was white as snow.

They waited for him at breakfast, they waited for him at dinner; he did not return. In searching his papers his wife found a note containing these words:

“This time I will not escape; the police are on my track.”

Said madame: “I always feared some misfortune would happen to me.”

The next day the baron’s body was found in the Seine under the bridge of Austerlitz.

“I am much distressed, but not astonished,” said the doctor to madame. “I always thought his madness absolutely incurable.”

“Ah! doctor, he destroyed all the pictures. I have not even his portrait.”

“You shall have it, madame,” said the doctor.

Eight days afterwards the doctor kept his promise. He brought the baroness a photograph.

Madame de Brienne was profoundly agitated, and nearly fainted.

“Oh! what a resemblance,” she gasped, “what a resemblance! Doctor, how was it done? This is not natural. It is not his portrait, it is himself. He is going to speak. I am afraid!”

There was horror in the astonishment of the poor woman. She threw upon her husband and herself a first glance.

“But tell me, doctor, where did you find it?”

“Allow me to keep the secret, madame.”

In reality, the thing was very simple: they had only photographed the picture of the great artist—Cain after his Crime.

The Legend Of Vallambrosa.

An ancient myth like ivied vesture clings About fair Vallambrosa’s cloistered walls, Telling that ’neath the roof sweet charity Has spread her soft, warm draperies within What time eight circling centuries have traced, In memories gray and green, her blessedness.

Of the fair, nestling valley here to sing, With sweet‐strung choice of cadenced synonymes, Could better music hold the ear, to note Its silver‐dropping streams and shadowy dells Than that wherewith Italia christened it, Calling it _Aqua‐Bella_, or the _Val‐Ambrosa_, liquid‐toned and clear? No ripple, Methinks, of happier tones or tenderer hues Could voice its lapsing falls and verdant vales Than lives within such naming! Hither came Long years agone—long years before the years That gave the legend birth—a prayerful priest, Bearing the cross where untamed beast and bird, Alone frequenting, poured in wildest notes The praise for life which lowest life uplifts! And here, as ever, man’s triumphant voice Leaped up above the brute’s, beseeching heaven To consecrate with holy dews, and bless, The heights which, cycles later, cradling held The hermitage of one so famed; and grew, As seed luxuriant in rich soil _will_ grow, Because all teeming life must needs expand, These walls of generous hospice that outstretch Their sheltering arms to weary travellers.

If it be true, as we have often heard, That lukewarm sinners make but lukewarm saints, Perhaps the converse proof we hold in hand; For, mark! once lived in Florence, of the proud Gualberto house, one heir to all its pride, Giovanni named—_he_ this same sinner‐saint.

Quickened by summers of some eighteen years, And flushed by southern suns to fervid warmth Of life impetuous, his youthful form Bore stamp already of the venturous will Of a gay, dashing cavalier outgiven To heedless coursings in the round of sense. And yet there dwelt adeep within his breast A living well of tenderness that flowed In gentle care for Hubert, his beloved And only brother. Hubert (a twelvemonth Scarce younger) stood between his tempted soul And much that might have swayed it past recall Over the margin of sin’s dread abyss. ’Twas not that Hubert was a chastened saint, But love within the brother’s ardent soul Invested him with raiment pure and white— Love holding from assoil the fabric fine Itself had wove, and still will choose to weave So long as life is life, or love is love. Thus, when unto Giovanni came a dawn That kindled to a conscious glow of health His own quick pulse, yet, warming, failed to melt The frozen current in pale Hubert’s veins, Because those veins had felt the frigid touch Of steel in duelling combat, there arose Within his anguished heart a stern demand Against the murderer of life for life— An unrelenting thirst of blood, to quell The ghostly phantoms of his fevered brain, And satisfy with feast of sweet revenge His brother’s manes. On one Good‐Friday morn, Followed by armed retainers, and slow bent Unto San Miniato to attend High Mass, in faithfulness to Hubert’s soul, He met unwittingly within a pass That leads to the Basilica this man, Of all men hated most. Close, face to face, Spell‐bound they stood a moment’s span; then flashed From out Giovanni’s sheath his gleaming sword, And by its glittering sign with one will rose From every trusty scabbard near at hand Sharp kindred swords that gleamed defiant fire Into the bright’ning day, and in _his_ face Who stood unarmed, alone. The unsheathed sword Of pitiless Giovanni had well‐nigh Its rueful deed of deadly wrath made sure When he, the helpless foe confronted thus By certain death, saw in death’s pallid light The spectre of his sin as it must seem To disembodied spirits, and he fell Prone, horror‐stricken, at the avenger’s feet. There, graving on the ground with level arms The crucial sign, he prayed for pardoning grace, And grace of lengthened days for penitence, And all in name of Him whose agony Upon the cross he thus in dust recalled!

The sword is stayed, and in the tremulous pause Great waves of varying passions meet And battle in Giovanni’s breast. Through all A voice, as of faint music o’er the din Of tumult, whispers: “_Who loveth brother more_ _Than me, or any loved one more than me,_ _Is all unworthy of me._” Quick, with ever Conquering motions of the Spirit’s power, As winds of peace the passionate waters calm, His sword is dropped, and, offering helpful hands, He cries: “Thou who hast slain my brother be As Christ doth will—a brother unto me.”

O’erwhelmed with gratitude, and filled with deep Contrition for his sin, the uplifted foe Lets fall his head upon Giovanni’s neck, And there with loosened torrent of remorse He pours the unguent of his tears, as once Another penitent poured costly balm Upon the Holiest One, growing therefrom Through mercy’s twofold grace to peace and joy.

While yet the day was young, the legend tells How both these humbled, contrite cavaliers Offered their thanks for comfort at the shrine Whither their steps together now were led; And how, while kneeling at the crucifix, Broke from the Saviour’s parted lips a smile Upon Giovanni, while the sacred head In gracious token bowed. O crowning joy! Too much to halo one poor human brow, And not the radiance divine extend To others all unconscious, even as once Himself had been of its illumining might! Henceforth no other smile was aught to him If for a passing moment it could hide The memory of that glory from his eyes.

Henceforth the impulse of his life was one Deep, passionate desire to shadow forth, In the best shadowy way a mortal can, The glowing flame of beatific fire _That_ hallowed smile had kindled in his soul. And thence so perfect was his Godward walk That scarce five summers of devoted life Were added to his eighteen worldly years Before San Miniato’s brotherhood Decreed him to its abbacy. But, no! Nor stole nor triple crown had charm for one Too wholly Christ’s to care for stole or crown, Save for that lustrous crown of ransomed souls His earnest life might win to shine as stars. For _this_ to Vallambrosa’s lonely height In rapt and silent vigil he withdrew; But even as sweetness bursts the seedling’s cell, So holiness from him exhaled in light That drew, to seek his counsel, devotees Led faithfully by his unswerving faith To live with him a life of prayer and praise. Or, if they came not cowled as lowly monks, Still hither fared the noble of the land, Even kings whose purple paled beside his gray, And royal ladies and most knightly knights, To pour their wealth of treasure at the feet Of one all saintly. Thus the order grew Of world‐famed Vallambrosa, where to‐day The weary find repose and welcoming cheer, And benison of heavenly graciousness. And thus of one soul’s overflow of light The Saviour’s smile is seen in saving love To stream adown the ever‐widening years That close and closer bring us to the day Of promised joy, when all our utmost need Shall in that glorious smile be satisfied.

Odd Stories. VIII. Snifkin.

There certainly was a time when dogs were more respected than now. Such a period in particular must have been the reign of Gigag, when the Odomites, who had once kicked, maimed, and starved their poor curs in a manner inhuman, now fed and fondled them with an affection that was almost canine. This revolution in sentiment was entirely due to what may be called a genius of instinct possessed by one extraordinary dog. His owner, who was none other than the goblin Gigag, had, in one of those journeys which he sometimes took through his underground thoroughfare, named his four‐footed companion, with a fond conceit, Snifkin; and when they emerged into the atmosphere of the king’s grounds, the latter was allowed the chief place at supper among the royal dogs. Some of this many‐colored pack were wont to bark, as others were to bite. Some were renowned for scent and vigilance, and others for speed and courage; still others for motley skins, lapping lips, great ears, and yelling, yelping, and howling. But the dog Snifkin united their best qualities with a sagacity that was almost diplomatic. He never barked till he was prepared to bite, and he sometimes bit without barking. He had a scent and sight which are only acquired by dogs who have seen a great deal of human nature. So various and cabalistic seemed the marks and colors upon him, that the vulgar ascribed them to the science of Gigag rather than to natural revelation. To crown all, the dog Snifkin showed his ivory teeth at times, sneezing, snorting, and laughing in a way next to human for its friendliness.

From a number of the faculties described arose two incidents which increased the fame and worth of all dogs, and which no man can sufficiently admire. A miser, in whom the sagacious Snifkin recognized a former oppressor of his kind, came to plead his cause at court, alleging his ownership of four hundred and ninety‐five thriving estates, and prosecuting his poor nephew for about as many cents. At a contrast so preposterous the knowing dog could not contain himself, and sniffed, snorted, and showed his teeth to such a degree that even his royal master, at whose side he sat during the hearing of the plea, was forced to join in the general guffaw which greeted the miser.

Another incident related chiefly to one of four malcontent noblemen, who, with bows and smiles, came to the royal presence. With no more ado the dog Snifkin jumped at his throat, bringing him to the foot of the king, when a concealed bodkin fell out of his bosom, and a number of poisons, which Gigag recognized as badly prepared, were strewn upon the floor. Without a word the king understood why it was that his dumb counsellor had not taken soup that day. While irons were being placed on the limbs of the malcontents, a collar made of the finest cloth of gold, adorned with precious stones, was put upon the neck of the loyal dog. By sovereign order it was decreed that, taking with him all the dogs in the kennels of the palace, the crown crier should go out and cry to all the people the patriotism of Snifkin, and the fidelity of dogs generally.

But it would require a million miracles to convince those whose unreason has placed them nearest to the brutes, that dogs and other animals, human and inhuman, exist for the trying and proving of the souls of men. As Snifkin was one day seated in the high easy‐chair of the barber who clipped and shaved for the king’s dogs, a commotion in the street provoked him to bark loudly, hazarding thereby the loss of his nose at the hands of the barber. Arrived in the street, what was his surprise to see fifty of the royal hounds yelping in the most distressful manner over the loss of his tail by the chief hound, who had provoked by impudent barking a slashing cut from the sword of a cavalier, who, it came to be known, was a conspirator against the life of King Gigag. Not being able to contend with swordsmen, Snifkin quickly seized upon the largest and finest specimen of the breed of curs who barked against the king’s hounds, and made short work of him.

This act, loyal though it was, became the signal for that factious state of feeling among the Odomites which eventuated in the famous war of tails. Most of the best dogs belonging to the houses which barked against the king having had their tails cut off, it grew to be a fashion with the malcontents of the realm to reject everything with a tail to it, even were it a shirt, or an entailed estate not already owned and occupied by one of their number, or a story which was not to be continued. In fact, it became a question whether they would give ear to any tale whatever, and hence it was truly said of the malcontent faction that their ears were longer than their tails. Of course the scientific king lost no time in improving the situation; indeed, of putting an end to it. He trained a pack of dogs, under the teaching of Snifkin, to scent out treason, and, when that was done, he managed to give the hydrophobia to a large number of rebellious curs, who afterwards bit their masters. The dog Snifkin barked against this measure in vain.

A war now broke out, assisted by the prince of a neighboring country, who had conceived a great hatred of the goblin Gigag. It was the habit of the royal dogs to discover supplies to their masters, and guard their camp at night, and, besides, to indicate in what direction were the princely headquarters and trains of the enemy, which they knew by the smell of many viands.

The same, perhaps, would have been the practice of those dogs without tails who barked for the malcontents and their ally, were it not that the poor fare they received compelled their flight to the better provisions of the enemy. Nevertheless, it would have gone hard with King Gigag if his rival’s device of drawing off the dogs by a concentration of savory meats in an ambushed ravine had succeeded; for the king, had it not been for the sagacity of Snifkin, would certainly have gone to the dogs. Despairing now of being able to foil their antagonists, the allies heard with growing dismay the general bark and howl in the king’s camp at night ere his warriors slept upon their arms. Only a low growl here and there, or perhaps the voice of some lonely hound who had strayed out of camp to bay the moon, broke the silence of the sleep of war.

While thus the silent avalanche was prepared that was to overwhelm the allies in the carnage of civil strife, a most unforeseen accident occurred. King Gigag was on his rounds through the camp when a dog taken with hydrophobia bit him in the leg. Returning mad to his headquarters, he saw the dog Snifkin laughing and wagging his tail, and, frenzied by the sight, he drew his sword, and at once cut off the whole of that pleasant appendage. Immediately the dog Snifkin became the most beautiful young prince you ever saw. Seizing an enchanted blade that hung up in the tent of the goblin, he defended himself with fury, and by an artful stroke put the unlucky Gigag out of his pains. When it became known throughout both camps that King Gigag had cut off the tail of the dog Snifkin, a reconciliation grew apace between those dogs who had tails and those dogs who had none; and, indeed, the royal hounds especially were anxious to have their tails cut off, so that they might turn at once into princes; but, unfortunately, this result never happened, two of these dogs at least having been curtailed, to their great shame and mortification, without so much as becoming scullions, or anything but unlucky dogs. It was then seen by the Odomites that the dog Snifkin was none other than their long‐lost Prince Gudood, who would have been devoured by the giant Googloom, had not the goblins got hold of him and changed him into a dog; in which character he served the excellent goblin Gigag, who, however, was not made aware of his identity by the evil goblins from whom he had escaped. By means of a birthmark on his right arm the allied lords were speedily brought to understand that this, indeed, was the long‐lost prince who had been affianced to the daughter of the neighboring king. And now with one heart and soul they hastened the marriage of the prince and princess, who ever afterwards lived happily in the joy and glory and union of both kingdoms. In the magnificent bridal procession nothing was more astonishing than the thousand trained dogs of all kinds, large and small, who marched in order, clad sometimes in variegated suits, and wearing rich collars. First came the royal hounds and mastiffs; second, a fine breed of mountaineer dogs as large as wolves; third, two or three hundred pointers, spotted all colors; fourth, as many setters, their backs streaked with colors like gold and snow; fifth, a battalion of mixed red, white, and blue dogs; sixth, a body of sky‐terriers, followed by the finest array of black‐and‐tan dogs that was ever known; sixth, a large number of dogs who looked like nothing so much as walking hearth‐rugs; seventh, a noble lot of shaggy water‐dogs as large as men; then a great many shepherd‐dogs, spaniels, poodles, pups; after these a battalion of dogs shaved to look like lions; and finally a rear‐guard of bull‐dogs with their tails cut off, walking as steadily as firemen on parade. A loud and harmonious barking at intervals interrupted the sound of the wedding bells, and five hundred terrier dogs at least stood up on their hind legs when the marriage ceremony was performed.

Thus the reign of humanity and utility succeeded to the reign of science and pelf. Only dogs were allowed to do the fighting, and they were treated so well that they did nothing worse than bark. The following conversation was one time overhead among them in a street near the king’s palace:

_Royal Mastiff._—Bowoghowow! Bowgh!

_Hound without tail._—Boowoogh! Boohoo! Wowoo!

_Terrier dog._—Gr‐r‐r‐r‐row, r‐row!

_Bull‐dog._—Hr‐r‐r‐um‐g‐r‐r‐u‐m. Bowowgh!

From these syllables it was conjectured by the knowing that the new King Gudood had no enemies, and that peace abode in the land.

New Publications.

DE L’AUTORITE; OU, LA PHILOSOPHIE DU PERSONNALISME. LETTRE AU REV. PERE J. F. HECKER, SUIVIE D’UN APPENDICE SUR LA SOUVERAINETE DU PEUPLE. PAR DWIGHT H. OLMSTEAD. Traduction approuvée par l’auteur. Genève: Japonnier et Steuder. 1874.

This pamphlet, the English original of which we have not seen, has been sent to us from Geneva, by the author, we presume. The Rev. F. I. T. (not J. F.) Hecker has been abroad, travelling for the restoration of his impaired health, for more than a year, and cannot, therefore, give his personal attention to Mr. Olmstead’s very courteous _Letter_, at least for the present, and in the columns of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Moreover, the author is mistaken in attributing a certain article in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, with which he chiefly employs his pen in the _Letter_, to F. Hecker. The article in question is one of the numerous contributions with which Dr. Brownson enriched and adorned our pages during the interval of the suspension of his own _Review_. In our opinion, Mr. Olmstead has not dealt a very heavy blow upon the head‐piece of his veteran antagonist. In fact, we do not see that he has attempted any serious answer to arguments which he would find it no easy task to refute. Mr. Olmstead deals more in objections and assertions than in arguments, and his assertions are so general and vague that one would need to write a treatise on general and special metaphysics to refute them. They merely amount to this: that Mr. Olmstead agrees with Kant and J. Stuart Mill. F. Hecker’s works were written for persons who either believe in some sense in Christianity, or at least in God and in human reason and intelligence. It is not necessary to prove the premises admitted by the persons with whom you argue. If they are Protestants, you assume the truth of Christianity. Your only effort is then to prove that Catholicity is the genuine Christianity. If they are rationalistic theists, you prove that the truth of Christianity, and specifically the authority of the church as one of its essential doctrines and laws, is demonstrable from principles of reason and natural theology. When it is a question of arguing with an atheist or sceptic, these topics must be postponed, and the discussion turned upon the first principles of metaphysics. Even here something in common must be admitted as a starting‐ point for argument. If a man denies everything or doubts everything, the only thing which can possibly be done is to watch him closely until he asserts something, and then you can do no more than show to a bystander his absurdity. If we understand Mr. Olmstead correctly, he admits the reality of all that is contained within self‐consciousness, and considers all else, by the mere fact of its being exterior to consciousness, as an unknown quantity in respect to its reality. He merely holds this, however, as an opinion, and admits that the contrary is very probable. If he is in earnest—and it is fair to presume that he is—in searching for philosophical truth, the only way in which a Catholic philosopher could argue with him to any purpose would be by presenting a theory of the origin of ideas and knowledge, which would give him something objective as a primitive element in his very first act of intellectual self‐ consciousness. This is rather too serious a task to be performed in a hurry. Whatever we have to say on these great fundamental topics of philosophy has been already partly said in the elaborate articles which have appeared in our columns, and will be said hereafter in articles of a similar nature. We refer the author of the _Letter_ and others in a similar position to THE CATHOLIC WORLD, _passim_, to get what modicum of light we are able to furnish them. If they wish for more light, they must go to the great works of great authors, and study them carefully. As for the great number of very excellent persons who do not trouble their heads with philosophy, and who complain that our philosophical articles are too dry and abstruse, we must beg them to content themselves with the lighter portions of the magazine, and allow us to give a reasonable amount of space to the few readers who have some taste and capacity for real science.

HOLY PLACES: THEIR SANCTITY AND AUTHENTICITY. By F. Philpin de Rivières, of the London Oratory. London: Washbourne. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

F. De Rivières gives play both to reason and imagination in an instructive and agreeable manner in treating of the attractive topic of holy places. The book contains some interesting information about the recent explorations in Jerusalem.

THE MONTH OF MARY OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES. By Henri Lasserre. Translated from the French (23d edition) by Mrs. Crosier. London: Burns and Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Henri Lasserre’s beautiful work—of which a translation, which the best judges have pronounced to be of the very highest literary merit as well as the most literal accuracy, appeared in this magazine—is abridged and divided into thirty‐one chapters for each day of the month of May, in this neat and pretty volume.

The Blessed Virgin pressed very hard on the head of the old serpent when she appeared at the rocks of Massabielle. The sympathizers with this “revolutionnaire malheureux,” as Renan calls him, in his warfare on the Queen of Heaven, frequently show their perplexity and vexation at the overwhelming proof of the miracles she has wrought, by an attempt at scornful ridicule, which is always unaccompanied by any argument, or any attempt at meeting the challenge so often addressed to them to rebut the evidence M. Lasserre has furnished. Louis Veuillot, probably the wittiest man now on the earth, once said of a certain Frenchman that he was a clever writer, but _fort piqué contre le Saint Esprit_. Dr. Coxe, who has formerly shown himself to be a clever poet, to say the least, in his recent pamphlet against Bishop Ryan, which is not at all clever, but only cunning, has exhibited a great pique against Our Lady of Lourdes. In this we see a fulfilment of the ancient prophecy, “I will place enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed.” The vulgar and unmeaning jibes of the infidel and the heretic, as well as the pious writings and devout pilgrimages of the faithful, alike serve to make the wonderful event of Lourdes more and more widely known all over the world, to the greater glory of God, and his Blessed Mother.

A FULL CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION (preceded by a short history of religion), from the creation of the world to the present time. With Questions for Examination. Translated from the German of the Rev. Joseph Deharbe, S.J., by the Rev. John Fander. Fourth Edition. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is the most celebrated catechism of the century, has been most extensively approved and brought into use, and will be of great service to those who are employed in teaching young people the Christian doctrine, as well as for the instruction of converts.

THE COMMONITORY OF S. VINCENT OF LERINS. London: Washbourne. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

There is no treatise of such small size as the _Commonitory_ among Christian writings, so far as we know, which has been so universal in fame and influence, and has made its author so illustrious, as this one.

The neat little _libretto_, containing the translation, with some accompanying testimonies of eminent Protestant divines to the excellence of the work, is edited by the Rev. John Lynch, of Ballymena, Diocese of Down and Connor, Ireland. In the preface he mentions the fact that S. Vincent and S. Patrick were fellow‐students. The treatise can be easily read and understood by any intelligent person, and yet contains an amount of instruction and information on Catholic doctrine equal to that which is ordinarily spread through volumes.

MONASTICON HIBERNICUM. With Engravings in Gold and Colors, Maps and Views. By Mervyn Archdall, A.M. Edited by the Right Rev. Dr. Moran. Vol. I., 4to. Dublin: W. B. Kelly. 1873.

This well‐known historical work is now republished in the most splendid style. It is a history of religious houses and orders in Ireland, extensive, learned, and full of romantic and religious interest. The first volume contains two fine views of the exterior and interior of S. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, one of the ancient episcopal palace, and several engravings, in gold, of different religious orders. The work is, of course, a costly one, and is only published by subscription. Every wealthy Irishman in the United States ought to subscribe for a work which is an honor to his country and the Catholic religion. The first edition is, however, limited to one thousand copies, and we presume that persons desiring to procure a copy will find it necessary to send on their names immediately.

CHERUBINI: MEMORIALS ILLUSTRATIVE OF HIS LIFE. By Edward Bellasis, Barrister‐at‐Law. London: Burns & Oates. (With a portrait.)

This is an elaborate biography of the great musical composer, edited and published with the greatest care in an attractive style of typography. It cannot fail to interest very much those who have a taste for musical literature.

LA SAINTE ECRITURE ET LA REGLE DE FOI. Par l’Abbé Bégin, de l’Université Laval. Québec: Coté et Cie. 1874.

With admirable precision and clearness the Abbé Bégin develops and defends in this volume the Catholic doctrine of the rule of faith in accordance with the soundest and most orthodox theology. We cannot sufficiently recommend his treatise to clergymen and other students of sacred science. There are some mistakes in the spelling of English names, as is very usual in French books. For example, we have Richard Buxter instead of Baxter. Whoever wishes to preach, lecture, or write for the press on the topics treated in this volume will find it even more available for use than the treatises contained in our dogmatic text‐books.

SKETCHES OF ILLUSTRIOUS SOLDIERS. By James Grant Wilson. New York. George P. Putnam’s Sons. 1874.

This work has a promising look, the author’s name reminding us that the military profession was for some time his own, and that he is a diligent student of the literature of his subject.

Military biography has a strange charm for most readers; indeed, it is doubtful whether fiction has an equal fascination at certain periods of our lives. Few of us have attained middle age without having had our cheeks frequently glow and our patriotism grow warm at the narration of deeds of prowess performed by our favorite heroes. Unfortunately, however, the production of this species of literature has fallen to a great extent into the hands of literary adventurers‐writers who looked only to making the most of a profitable enterprise. Hence the periodical eruption of lives of great captains, distinguished, indeed, as men count greatness, but whose most valid claim to eminence consisted in their ability to destroy whatever opposed the realization of the objects of their ambition, and the permanent maintenance of unjustly‐won crowns. To this cause we may partly attribute the fact that people have well‐nigh lost sight of the loftiest form of heroism—that which prompts a man to stake everything on the defence of a principle; to brave all dangers and sustain all privations, so that conscience be kept pure and the Christian character preserved unsullied.

The work under notice belongs to a different category. It is written, for the most part, in a calm, judicial spirit, the author evidently intending to avoid partisanship, and exhibiting a painstaking fidelity to the data before him. Occasionally, however, he betrays the hero‐worshipper in the case of individuals who appear anything but admirable to us. On such common ground as the sketch of Washington we are glad to express our agreement with the author. We also like his estimate of anecdotes as illustrations of character.

UNIVERSAL PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY OF BIOGRAPHY AND MYTHOLOGY. By J. Thomas, A.M., M.D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1874.

A COMPLETE PRONOUNCING GAZETTEER. Edited by J. Thomas and T. Baldwin, assisted by several other gentlemen. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. (Sold at 25 Bond St., New York)

Next to a dictionary of the language we rank dictionaries of persons and places, as works of reference for those engaged in writing, and, indeed, for all intelligent readers as well. We hear of so many men of eminence, or of localities so nearly alike in orthography, that we never feel entirely at ease without reference to a good authority; so that, for the mere purpose of identification, books like these are worth all they cost. The period and country at and in which a given subject lived, his occupation, his contemporaries, and for what he was distinguished; the county, state, or kingdom in which a certain city or town lies, serve all ordinary uses. Should we desire more, we can at our leisure resort to the encyclopædias or individual biographies for fuller information. Of course these works would be more acceptable if written from our point of view; but that we cannot expect for a long time to come. Meanwhile, being reasonably impartial, as we have found them to be so far as we have examined, we accept them as the best attainable. Lest the fact that they are each in one volume should convey an inadequate idea of their extent, we may state that the _Biographical Dictionary_ has 2,345 closely‐printed royal octavo pages, and the _Gazetteer_ xviii.‐2,182 pages of the same size and compactness. We know of no works of the kind so convenient and full in all matters for which they are ordinarily consulted.

A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By Joseph E. Worcester, LL.D. Boston: Brewer & Tileston. 1874.

As it would be quite superfluous to advise any one to get a dictionary at the present time, we content ourselves with asking our readers to get _the best_—Worcester’s Unabridged. We have warmed towards this author, among other reasons, because he is less of an iconoclast than some of his fellow‐lexicographers. It has grieved us not a little to see our favorite words maltreated as if they had no personality about which to be sensitive, or pedigree whereof to be proud. We can scarcely recognize them in the new dress, or rather mask, in which they are often presented. Were we a boy again, not a hair of our head would rise at a spect_er_, and we should have an additional reason for refusing allegiance to a sovereign who held only a scept_er_—though the sun should still refuse to set on her dominions.

In saying this we would by no means disparage a standard in spelling. When some new Ursa Major shall arise who will not only give us an uniform, harmonious system of orthography, but such substantial reasons in favor of it as will satisfy the learned and confound all opponents, we may yield to the general verdict. But we are not at all on the lookout for such a contingency while our language is in the process of formation, and expect to possess our Worcester Unabridged in peace for many long years to come. The work has lxviii.‐1,786 pages quarto, and is quite as full, we believe, as any other extant in the various tables, grammatical and other information having a bearing on the main purpose of the volume.

The same publishers also issue Worcester’s _Comprehensive Dictionary_, Worcester’s _Primary Dictionary_, and _A Pocket Dictionary_, compiled from the quarto and school dictionaries of J. E. Worcester, by Loomis J. Campbell; for those who desire inexpensive and portable manuals.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XIX., NO. 114.—SEPTEMBER, 1874.

Matter.

II.

The activity displayed by matter in the production of natural phenomena is twofold, viz., attractive and repulsive; and the question has been raised whether these two kinds of activity can reside in one and the same subject, or, owing to their opposite nature, require separate subjects. With regard to molecules, it is quite certain, though some have thought otherwise, that in all ponderable bodies each molecule is in possession of both powers; but with regard to the primitive elements which enter into the constitution of a molecule, the question needs a special treatment, as no direct evidence is supplied by experimental science for an affirmative more than for a negative solution, and different views have been advanced which it is important to examine in the light of philosophical principles, that we may ascertain which of them has the best claim to adoption both in philosophy and in molecular mechanics.

Attractive and repulsive powers.

Since it is well known that all the phenomena of the material order, whether physical or chemical, ultimately depend on attractions and repulsions, we are compelled to admit the existence in nature of attractive and repulsive powers. Neither attractive powers alone nor repulsive powers alone would afford us a rational explanation of natural facts. If the primitive elements of matter were all repulsive, and nothing but repulsive, then neither the cohesion of material particles nor the gravitation of bodies would be possible; no solid and no liquid would exist; and all matter from the very beginning of its existence would have vanished in a state of extreme attenuation through the immensity of space. If, on the contrary, the primitive elements of matter were all attractive, and nothing but attractive, no expansive power would be found in nature; for the expansion of bodies evidently depends on a repulsion prevailing between their molecules. All solid and liquid bodies likewise proclaim the existence of repulsive powers by the resistance they oppose to compression. This resistance shows that their molecules are endowed with powers whose exertion impedes their mutual approach as soon as they have reached a certain limit of distance. It is plain that the power which impedes the approach under pressure must be a repulsive one. Thus both attractive and repulsive powers exist in nature.

But do they exist together in the same primitive element of matter? Boscovich answers in the affirmative; but his answer is not supported by any cogent reason. Having found no other means of accounting for the impenetrability of bodies, he assumed that every element of matter is so constituted as to be attractive at all great distances, according to the law of universal attraction, but that each element, at molecular distances, becomes repulsive in order to resist pressure, and again attractive in order to exercise chemical affinity, and then repulsive again, these alternations going on a certain number of times, till at last repulsivity alone prevails, which indefinitely increases when the distance of two elements indefinitely diminishes.

Yet this theory is by no means needed to account either for the impenetrability of bodies or for any other phenomenon; as what Boscovich ascribes to elements may be, and is in fact, a property of molecules—that is, of a compound system of elements. On the other hand, the theory is unnaturally complex, and the alternation of the attractive and repulsive exertions looks as unscientific as the epicycles of the old astronomers and other hypotheses once admitted as plausible, and now superseded by a fuller knowledge of natural laws. To a mind which examines the question of attractive and repulsive powers in the light of philosophy, it must be evident that each primitive element of matter cannot possess them both. _If an element is attractive at any distance, it must be attractive at all distances, whether enormously great or indefinitely small; likewise, if an element is repulsive at any distance, it must be repulsive at all distances._

This proposition can be proved as follows: Opposite actions cannot originate from one and the same simple principle when such a principle has no control over itself, but acts by inherent necessity. But in each primitive element of matter there is but one simple principle of activity, which has no control over itself, as it acts by inherent necessity. And therefore no primitive element can be both attractive and repulsive, but is either attractive at all distances or at all distances repulsive.

In this syllogism the major is evident. An active principle which, like the human soul, can, by immanent operations, assume at pleasure different attitudes towards the term of its action, and which masters the conditions and controls the intensity of its exertions, may perhaps be considered competent to originate actions of opposite kinds.(159) But a being which is destitute of immanent operations, and acts by an inherent necessity of its nature, has no power to modify itself or to alter its intrinsic determination; and its action is so ruled by its intrinsic determination that there is no chance of its being either transmuted into its opposite, or even partially suspended. Now, in a primitive being the principle of activity is nothing else than the simple act which formally determines its nature; and it is plain that wherever there is one simple formal act, there can be only one formal determination to act. And consequently a simple principle of activity which has no immanent operations cannot be the source of two opposite kinds of actions. Bodies and their molecules, on account of their physical composition, contain as many distinct principles of activity as they contain physical components or elements; hence we can easily account for their capability of originating opposite actions by admitting that among those elements some are attractive and others repulsive. But in a primitive element it is impossible to admit of two opposite active principles; for a primitive element is a being entitatively one, having only one essential act, and consequently only one active principle and one intrinsic determination to act. It would therefore be absurd to expect from such an element actions of such an opposite nature as are attraction and repulsion. For evidently, to enable the element to display two opposite powers, two opposite determinations would be necessary. Hence, if the intrinsic determination enables the primitive element to attract, such an element will always attract, and never repel; and if, on the contrary, the intrinsic determination enables the primitive element to repel, such an element will always repel, and never attract. In other terms, the attractive and the repulsive power cannot coexist in the same primitive element.

This conclusion, which affords the only possible basis for the speculations of molecular mechanics, is one of those which mere scientists cannot reach through their empirical and inductive method; but its truth is not less certain for that; it is rather all the more certain, as it is not founded on accidental facts, but on the unchangeable nature of things and the transcendental relation of the principles involved in the constitution of real beings.

Our proposition may be confirmed by reflecting that the change of attraction into repulsion, according to Boscovich, would depend on the diminution of the distance between the agent and the patient. Now, this view is inadmissible. For a change of distance, though necessarily accompanied by a change in the intensity of the action, cannot exercise any influence on the specific nature of the action. The _intensity_ of the action is an accidental thing, and can change without in the least interfering with the nature of the agent; and for this reason it can, and must, depend on distance as a condition implied in the exercise of the active power. But the _nature_ of the action always follows the nature of the substance from which it proceeds. Now, a change of distance does not change the nature of the substance. And accordingly the nature of the action must remain the same, even though the distance be indefinitely diminished.

Moreover, if there were any distance at which the action of a primitive element could change from attractive to repulsive, evidently the element, at such a distance, would be unable to exercise either attraction or repulsion, as Boscovich concedes; and therefore, at such a distance, the material element would have no activity. We may, then, ask: Whence does the attractive power emanate which is to have uncontrolled sway at all greater distances? Does it emanate from any point of space outside the element? Then it would not be the active power of the element, as it would have nothing to do with it. On the other hand, it is obvious that if it emanates from the element, it does not end at a distance from it. For, since the active power is really identical with the formal principle from which the primitive element receives its nature, it is as necessary for the elementary power to reach the very centre of the element as it is for the form to be intrinsically terminated to its matter. Whence it follows that the elementary power of attraction, which prevails at all great distances, must emanate from the very centre of the element. But if so, why shall it not prevail up to that very centre? Is it, forsooth, because in the neighborhood of the centre an opposite principle prevails? Were this the case, the same primitive being would have two formal acts, and it would be _two beings_ and _two natures_; which is an evident contradiction. As long, therefore, as we adhere to the fundamental doctrine that a primitive being cannot have more than one simple principle of activity, we must admit that a primitive element, if attractive at any distance, is attractive at all molecular distances, and, if repulsive at molecular distances, is repulsive at all distances.

Against the existence of attractive and repulsive powers in distinct primitive elements some objections now and then have been made. It has been said, first, that what we call repulsion is only a result of certain vortical movements of the ether all around the molecules of ponderable bodies. This objection is based on a false supposition. We have already shown that the arbitrary theory of the vortices fails altogether to explain the great phenomenon of universal attraction; and we may easily show that it fails as completely in regard to molecular repulsion. In fact, the centrifugal forces which are developed by vortical movements, and which in this theory are assumed as the cause of the phenomena of molecular resistances, are not active powers. They are components of the vortical movements, and nothing more; that is to say, they do not _efficiently_ produce movements, but are the _formal_ principles of movements already produced. To ascribe to them the molecular resistances and the impenetrability of bodies is, therefore, to admit the effect without the cause.

Secondly, some authors object that the resistance called into play by pressure is not a real action, and requires no efficient repulsive powers. They consider it, according to the vulgar prejudice, as a merely _passive_ resistance; for they imagine that a body, when pressed or impinged on, resists the progress of the obtruding body _by its own inert matter_, which with its materiality obstructs the way onward. This old explanation is still popular with the great mass of the uninstructed, but is scientifically and philosophically worthless. For whatever causes a real change really acts; now, a body resisting the advance of another body causes a real change in the rate of its movement; therefore a body resisting the advance of another body really acts. Its resistance is therefore _active_, and not passive; that is, it consists in an exertion of repulsive power, and not in a material obstruction of the path.

Hence what physicists call “force of inertia” is not a passive resistance proceeding from the inertia of matter, but an active exertion of the molecular powers, and has been so called only because, all other things being equal, its intensity is proportional to the mass of the inert body.(160) Evidently, inertia itself cannot resist or check the advance of an impinging body. Nothing but a positive action can do it; for nothing but a positive action can communicate to the advancing body that impetus in the opposite direction which alone is competent to neutralize the impetus of the advance. Physicists know this very well, though many of them, owing to the difficulty of analyzing and expressing certain things with philosophical accuracy, do not always use, in this particular, a very correct language—a thing which, after all, must not surprise us, as one can be well read in physics without necessarily being a profound philosopher.

The third objection is aimed at our argument against Boscovich’s theory, in which we have said that attraction and repulsion are actions of opposite kinds. Boscovich, on the contrary, maintains that attraction and repulsion differ only as the greater from the less, and therefore cannot be considered as actions of a different kind. He says: “Both actions are of the same kind; for the one, as compared with the other, is negative; and negative things do not differ in kind from positive ones. That the one, as compared with the other, is negative, is evident from this: that they differ only in direction. That the negative and the positive belong to the same kind is evident from the principle, _More and less do not differ in kind_. In fact, from the positive, by a continued subtraction or diminution, we obtain first some smaller positive quantities, then zero, and lastly, if we still go on in our subtraction, negative quantities.”(161)

This argument, notwithstanding its speciousness, is not difficult to upset. It is not true, in the first place, that attraction and repulsion differ only in direction; on the contrary, they differ in everything except in direction. Two points _A_ and _B_ being given, there is only one direction from _A_ to *B*, whether _A_ be attractive or repulsive. If _A_ is attractive, its attraction is directed from _A_ to _B_; and if _A_ is repulsive, its repulsion is no less directed from _A_ to _B_. This is quite evident, as the action must in all cases proceed from the agent to the patient. It is evident, therefore, that the two actions must have the same direction. The movements of _B_ will indeed have opposite directions, according as _B_ is attracted or repelled; but this does not show that the actions themselves have opposite directions; it shows, on the contrary, that those actions, though directed in the same manner from _A_ to _B_, are of a different nature, and proceed from opposite principles. And this conclusion may be confirmed by remarking that the direction is always from a point to a point, or from matter to matter; and consequently it is not the active power or the action, but only the position of the material centres, that can determine any direction. Accordingly, so long as such a position is not inverted, it is impossible to conceive two opposite directions from _A_ to _B_. It is therefore evidently false that attraction and repulsion differ in direction.

It is not true, in the second place, that attraction and repulsion differ only as the positive differs from the negative, or the greater from the less. In the mathematical expression of mechanical relations, if we consider a movement as positive, the movement which points to an opposite direction must, of course, be affected by the negative sign. The same we must do with regard to forces and actions; for we estimate the actions by the movements which they produce, and we express them only in terms of movement—that is, by their effects. But this does not mean that there is either any movement or any action _absolutely_ negative; for a negative movement would be no movement, and a negative action no action. It is in a relative and conventional sense only that movements are considered as positive or negative; and, moreover, either of the two opposite movements can be assumed as positive or as negative, at will; which shows very clearly that the negative and the positive do not differ in this case as the greater differs from the less, as Boscovich assumes; for either of the two can, at pleasure, be taken as positive, whereas it would be absurd to pretend that either of the two can, at pleasure, be pronounced to be the greater. Thus, when a stone is thrown up vertically, and abandoned to itself, if its ascent is taken as positive, its descent will be considered as negative. Now, according to Boscovich’s reasoning, we should infer that _the ascent is greater than the descent_, though they are evidently equal. And in the same manner, if the ascent is taken as negative (which nothing forbids), the descent must be taken as positive; whence, according to Boscovich, we ought to infer also that _the descent is greater than the ascent_. Any argument which leads to such glaring contradictions must be radically false. And therefore it is false that attraction and repulsion differ from one another as the greater from the less.

It might be urged, as a fourth objection, that if an attractive and a repulsive power differ in kind, then a repulsive element and an attractive element will be two kinds of material substance; which is inadmissible. For we cannot admit two kinds of primitive material beings essentially different, as the essence of matter must be the same in all the elements.

To this we answer that although there are two kinds of elements, there are not two kinds of matter. In other terms, an attractive element differs from a repulsive one as to the principle of action, but not as to the matter itself. In fact, the essence of a material being _as such_ requires nothing more than a form giving existence to matter; hence, wherever there is a form giving existence to matter, there also is the essence of matter. Now, matter is as much and as completely actuated by a form or act which is a principle of attraction as by a form or act which is a principle of repulsion. For the actuation of the matter by its form is not _efficient_, but _formal_; and its result is not _to approach_ by attraction or _to recede_ by repulsion, but _to be_ simply and absolutely; so that neither attractivity nor repulsivity has any bearing on the essential constitution of a material element as such—that is, inasmuch as it is material. Accordingly, two elements of opposite natures differ in kind as agents, but not as _material_ beings; and thus the essence of matter _as such_ remains one and the same in all the elements. Matter, as we have already shown, is the centre of a sphere of activity; and it is evident that, by this activity of an attractive or of a repulsive nature, the centre remains a centre, and the sphere a sphere, without the least alteration. Gold and ivory differ in kind; but a sphere of ivory and a sphere of gold do not differ in kind _as spheres_, and their centres do not differ in kind _as centres_. In a like manner the sphere of activity of an attractive element does not differ from the sphere of activity of a repulsive element, nor the centre of the one from the centre of the other. And therefore two elements, however different in their nature as agents, do not cease to be of the same kind as material. Their form is different, but informs equally, and their matter is exactly the same.

We have stated that Boscovich was led to admit two opposite powers in the same element, because he thought this to be the only means of accounting for the impenetrability of bodies. We observe that, although the impenetrability of bodies peremptorily proves the existence of repulsive powers, it by no means proves that the repulsive power coexists with the attractive _in the same primitive element_. Hence Boscovich’s inference is not legitimate. Molecules, as we have already remarked, may possess both powers, as their composition involves a great number of elements, which can be of different natures. And this suffices to explain the impenetrability of bodies, and all other properties dependent on molecular actions, without need of arbitrary hypotheses.

A last objection against the doctrine we have established might be drawn from the difficulty of reconciling the existence of repulsive elements with universal attraction; for if we admit that repulsion can be exercised at astronomical distances, it will be difficult to see how the celestial bodies can attract one another in the direct ratio of their masses, as the law of attraction requires.

The answer is obvious. If all matter were repulsive, universal repulsion would be the consequence. But if bodies are made up partly of attractive and partly of repulsive elements, then will either universal repulsion or universal attraction prevail, according as the number and power of the repulsive elements is greater or smaller than that of the attractive ones. Hence, from the fact that in the solar system and elsewhere attraction prevails, it follows, indeed, that the attractive powers are the stronger, but it does not follow that they are the whole stuff of which bodies are compounded.

As to the law of attraction _in the direct ratio of the masses_, a distinction is to be made. The law is certainly true if by masses we mean the masses _acted on_; not so, however, if for the masses acted on we substitute the masses of the attracting bodies. The fact of universal attraction shows that two planets, all other things being equal, must be attracted by the sun in the direct ratio of their masses. This is an established truth. But to say that, all other things being equal, the sun and the earth would attract the moon in the direct ratio of their _absolute_ masses, is to assume what no fact whatever gives us the right to assert. Physicists very commonly admit this second assumption, and consider it a part of the law of attraction; but they would be not a little embarrassed were they required to undertake its demonstration. They take for granted that all the particles of matter are equally and uniformly attractive. Now, this assumption has never been established by facts; it simply arises from an unlawful generalization—that is, from the extension of the law of kinetic forces to dynamical actions. The momenta of two bodies animated by equal velocities are proportional to the masses of the same bodies; but nothing justifies the inference that therefore the attractive powers must be proportional to the masses. Indeed, it is scarcely possible to believe that equal masses of lead, iron, and zinc possess equal powers. Their properties are, in fact, so different that we cannot assume their constitution to be the result of an assemblage of equal powers. Hence we maintain that, unless two bodies have the same molecular constitution, their attractions cannot be proportional to their masses.(162)

Universal attraction being also proportional to the inverse squares of the distances, as we are going to show, we may add that the existence of repulsive elements in the sun and in the planets by no means interferes with this law. In fact, the total action of one celestial body on another, on account of the great distance at which the law of universal attraction is applied, equals the algebraic sum of all the actions by which one body makes an impression upon the other. Hence, if all the elements of which the body consists, whether they be attractive or repulsive, act proportionally to the inverse square of the distance, it is evident that the resultant of all such actions will also be proportional to the inverse square of the distance, whenever the form of the body is spherical, or nearly so, as is the case with the celestial bodies. And thus it is plain that no valid objection can be drawn from universal attraction against the existence of repulsive elements.

Law of elementary actions.

We have now to establish the general law of elementary attraction and repulsion. We hold that _the actions of every primitive element are always inversely proportional to the squares of the distances, no matter whether such distances be great or small, astronomical or molecular_.

This proposition can be briefly proved in the following manner: Astronomy teaches us that the Newtonian law, according to which the actions are inversely proportional to the squares of the distances, is true for all the celestial bodies. Now, the total action of one celestial body upon another is a resultant of elementary actions, and arises from the algebraic sum of them all. Hence it follows that every element of matter, when acting from certain distances, obeys the Newtonian law; for it is evident, from the theory of the composition of forces, that the sum of the elementary actions cannot follow the Newtonian law unless these actions themselves follow it. But if the law is true in the case of astronomical distances, it must be true also in the case of microscopical and molecular distances. For as a primitive element cannot have two laws of action, so neither can it follow at molecular distances any other law than that which it follows at all other distances.

That a primitive element cannot have two different laws of action will be manifest by considering that the law which an element obeys in its actions results from the intrinsic determination of its nature—that is, from its formal constitution—inasmuch as the principle of action is, in every primitive substance, the formal principle of its very being: _Principium essendi est principium operandi_. Now, a primitive element has but one formal principle of being; for it is entitatively one, and therefore it has but one formal determination to act, which, as resulting from its essential constitution, is unchangeable and inviolable. But it is evident that from _one_ formal determination to act only _one_ law of action can possibly result. Two laws would be two formal results, and would require two formal principles giving two different determinations. Accordingly, since each primitive element has but one formal principle, it cannot have two laws of action. And therefore the Newtonian law, which primitive elements follow at astronomical distances, must prevail also at all other distances.

Let the reader observe that this conclusion regards the action of primitive _elements_, not the action of _molecules_. That molecular actions at molecular distances are not inversely proportional to the square of the distance is a known fact. Molecular cohesion, for instance, is immensely greater than it could possibly be by the Newtonian law; so also molecular repulsion. This is what prevented physicists from recognizing the applicability of the Newtonian law at molecular distances. As long as the primitive elements were confounded, under the name of atoms, with the molecules of the so‐called primitive bodies, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc., it was impossible to recognize in the molecular actions any trace of the Newtonian law; hence came the division of attraction into _universal_ and _molecular_, the first following a known law, the second following some other law or laws which physicists could never discover. Their embarrassment was a necessary consequence of an incomplete analysis of the material compound. The molecule of a given substance, though often called an atom, is a system of primitive elements; and elements acting according to the Newtonian law can give rise to molecular systems which, at very small distances, will act according to any other law that may be indicated by molecular phenomena. This other law depends entirely on the number, kind, strength, and geometrical arrangement of the primitive elements which enter into the constitution of the molecule; and since molecules of different primitive substances are very differently constituted, every kind of molecule must have its own peculiar law of acting at molecular distances—a fact on which the scientific explanation of the different physical and chemical properties of different substances entirely depends. Hence it is clear that all the attempts at finding a general law of molecular attraction were, from the very nature of the case, destined to fail. The only general law of action which all matter obeys is the Newtonian law; and what was once considered to form an exception to it is now acknowledged to be the result of its application to a complex system of attractive and repulsive elements.

From the fact that the actions of all elements are proportional to the inverse squares of the distances, it follows that the sphere of activity of material elements extends beyond any assignable limit. The intensity of the action cannot, in fact, become = 0 unless the distance becomes infinite. The objections to which this corollary of the Newtonian law may give rise will be answered in our next article, where all the difficulties concerning the _actio in distans_ will be solved.

Mode of action.

A last question remains here to be examined respecting the action of primitive material elements—viz., whether such an action needs a medium through which it may be transmitted and communicated to distant bodies, or whether, on the contrary, it is exerted upon them directly without dependence on any material medium.

In answering this question we must be careful not to confound action with movement. Movement, though not properly transmitted, is propagated, as we shall explain; and this cannot take place where there is no movable matter. Those who are wont to identify movement with force, and force with action, as is unfortunately the fashion even in scientific treatises, will no doubt imagine that actions must be transmitted or propagated through a material medium, just as sound through air, or as light through luminiferous ether. But action is not movement; and therefore the question how elementary actions—that is, how attractions or repulsions—reach distant bodies has to be resolved on its own merit, as one altogether distinct from the question about the propagation of movement. This premised, we are going to show that _the elementary actions are independent of all material medium of communication_.

In the first place, there is no reason why we should assume that the elementary action (attraction or repulsion) depends on a medium of communication, except inasmuch as we may apprehend that the action itself, or the active power whence it proceeds, is in need of being transmitted to some matter located at a certain distance. But neither the elementary power nor the elementary action can be transmitted to the distant matter. And therefore neither the power nor the action can be dependent on a medium of communication.

In this syllogism the major is evident; and the minor can be proved in two manners: First, because the power and the action are, of their own nature, intransmissible. Secondly, because, prescinding from their intransmissibility, no medium can be assigned which would be capable of transmitting them. And as to the first, we know that nothing can be transmitted to a distant place except by local movement; but neither the active power nor the elementary action is capable of receiving local movement; for there is no other subject capable of local movement than matter alone, on account of its passive potentiality. Hence neither power nor action can be transmitted. And in the second place, even were they transmissible, what medium could be found for their transmission? If any such medium could be found, it would consist of some matter like ether or air, this being the view of those who admit the necessity of such a medium. On the other hand, a material substance is not a suitable medium for transmitting action or power. For whenever an active power is exerted upon matter, the result of the exertion is nothing but a determination to a change of place; as it is well known that matter cannot receive any other determination. And therefore it is not the power that is received in the matter acted on, but only the act produced by its exertion, which act is otherwise called a momentum either statical or dynamical. Strictly speaking, not even the action itself is received in the matter, although we are wont to tolerate such an expression; for the action properly so called is the production of an act, and the matter receives, indeed, the act produced, but not its production. And thus the action, properly speaking, is _terminated_ to the matter, and not _received_ in it. Hence we see that neither the power of the agent nor its exertion is received in the matter acted on; it is merely the produced accidental act, or, in other terms, the momentum, that is received. But evidently matter cannot transmit what it does not receive. And therefore matter cannot be a medium for transmitting either power or action. Whether it can transmit movement we shall examine at the end of the present question.

This argument would suffice to show that elementary actions are quite independent of a material medium. Yet as the prejudice against which we are fighting is ancient, popular, and deeply rooted, we think it will not be superfluous to confirm our proof by a few other considerations.

Those who maintain the transmission of forces admit a material medium, in which, by successive contact of particles with particles, the transmission of the force to a distant body is supposed to be carried on. By the word “force” they understand action as well as movement. Now, let us ask them whether the particles of their material medium come into mathematical contact or not. If they do not come into mathematical contact, then the action is not transmitted by the medium from one particle to another, for there will be a vacuum between them; and vacuum is not a material medium. If, on the contrary, the particles come into mathematical contact with their own matter, then, as we have already shown in our past article, they cannot by such a contact communicate any movement to each other; and since the transmission in question should be carried on by successive communications of movement, it is plain that no such transmission will be possible. And accordingly the theory of the transmission of actions through a medium must be rejected.

Moreover, elementary actions are either attractive or repulsive, and neither of them can be conceived without intensity and direction. Now, no direction is possible unless there be two points distinctly ubicated in space. And therefore the action, no matter whether attractive or repulsive, cannot reach any material point which is not distant from the matter of the agent. But if so, the action is independent of a medium of communication; for the material medium, if it were needed, should lie between the agent and the patient in such a manner as to link them together, and fill by its material continuity the gap by which they are separated; and if this were the case, the medium could not be set in motion, as its contact with the agent would exclude distance, and consequently the possibility of any direction from the agent to the medium itself.

Some will say that this argument proves nothing, as the direction of the action can be sufficiently accounted for by the direction of the impulse. But this conclusion is evidently wrong. For what impulse can they imagine to proceed from the sun to the moon? Uncultivated minds are easily deluded by unlawful generalizations. They apply to all actions what they imagine to agree with some special phenomenon; and because they see that in the case of impact there is an impulse in a certain direction, they hastily conclude that the direction of every action depends on the direction of some impulse. We may remark that, even in the case of impact, it is not safe to conclude that the direction of the movement will follow the direction of the impulse, unless the impulse be central, and the body impinged upon homogeneous. But leaving aside the theory of impact, which has nothing to do with the present question, what impulse can explain the continuous resistance of a body to statical forces? What impulse can account for the expansive tendency of gases, and for their continuous pressure against the recipients in which they are contained? What impulse, above all, can account for universal attraction?

We have mentioned this objection, not because it needed any scientific or philosophical discussion, but simply because it is one of those notions to which the prejudices of our infancy give easy admittance into our minds when we allow ourselves to be guided, as is often the case, by our senses and imagination, in matters pertaining in great part to the intellectual order. Our mistakes in the appreciation of the character and conditions of natural facts most ordinarily originate in the unwarranted assumption that, since the facts are sensible, our knowledge of them must wholly depend on our senses; whilst the truth is that our senses perceive the movements, but not the actions which cause them, and therefore do not see the entirety of the natural facts, but that portion only which is most superficial. “A fundamental fact, like an elementary principle, never fails us,” says M. Faraday, speaking of natural philosophy; “its evidence is always true; but, on the other hand, we frequently have to ask, What is the fact? often fail in distinguishing it—often fail in the very statement of it—and mostly overpass or come short of its true recognition. If we are subject to mistake in the interpretation of our mere sense impressions, we are much more liable to error when we proceed to deduce from these impressions (as supplied to us by our ordinary experience) the relation of cause and effect; and the accuracy of our judgment, consequently, is more endangered.”(163)

And now, let no one imagine that we have any intention of denying the existence of a material medium between the celestial bodies. We only deny that there is a medium _for transmitting actions_. Again, we do not deny that when the earth, for instance, acts upon the moon, the elements of matter lying between the earth and the moon exert their activity on one another. But we maintain that their actions are _their own_, and proceed from their own intrinsic and permanent power, and not from any extrinsic agent, and that such actions are not travelling from element to element till they reach the moon. Neither do we deny that the elements located between the earth and the moon are also acted on, for it is clear that gravity must tend to alter their position in space; but we hold that the whole possible effect of gravity on all such elements is movement, and that movement is a mere change of place, and not a transmission of the action by which it is produced. How the movements themselves are communicated from element to element we shall explain presently.

Meanwhile, from the fact that the elementary actions are independent of all material medium of communication, we infer that bodies, in attracting and in repelling, act with equal promptitude, and without loss of time, whether the distance of the body acted on be great or small. Time, in fact, follows movement; for without movement there is no succession. Now, the action of a body does not reach the distant body through movement—that is, through successive transmission; on the contrary, each element is, of its own nature, determined to act _directly_ and _immediately_ on every other element existing in the indefinite sphere of its activity. Hence a body will indeed act with a greater intensity at a less distance, but will not act sooner than at a greater distance. There have been scientists who surmised that the solar attraction may perhaps need time for reaching the earth and the planets, and therefore that the attraction may reach Mercury in a shorter time than Jupiter or Neptune. From what precedes it is manifest that the surmise is wholly without foundation. Light needs time for its propagation, because it consists in a kind of movement; but attraction, as we have just remarked, is not movement, and therefore is not dependent on time.

Propagation of movements.

We have shown that there is no material medium for the transmission of forces, if the word “forces” is taken to mean “actions”; but if the word is intended to express “movements,” then the material medium is quite indispensable. We read very frequently in scientific books that actions are transmitted; but as this is not true of the actions themselves, we must suppose that the phrase is intended to express only the fact of a progressive development of the effects resulting from those actions. In the same way, when we read that actions are conveyed through a material medium, we interpret this expression as meaning that a material medium is strictly required for the progressive development of the series of effects due to such actions. We will explain the fact by an example.

If, a mass of air being at rest, a string is stretched in order to elicit sound, the vibrations of the string will be communicated to the neighboring molecules of air by the action (not by the movement) of the string itself; these first molecules, being thrust out of their position of equilibrium, will, by their action (that is, by the exertion of a power residing in each of their component elements, not of a power coming from the string, nor by their movement, nor by transmitted action), put in movement a following set of molecules, and so on indefinitely; so that, in the whole series of molecular vibrations, each preceding molecule causes the motion of the following one, and causes it by the exertion of its own powers, not of any power transmitted. It is evident that the string cannot give activity to the molecules of air. These molecules, whether the string vibrates or not, have already their own activity and their own mutual action; only their actions balance each other as long as the mass of air is at rest. But when the string begins to vibrate, the equilibrium being broken near it, those molecules of air which first cease to be in equilibrium begin to act on the following molecules with a different intensity, according to the change of the molecular distance. Thus the movement by which the distance is altered is not the cause, but the condition, of the phenomenon.

What we say of air and sound applies to any other medium, as ether with its vibrations, whether luminous or calorific. The molecules of ether have their own powers, and exert them continually, whether there exists a flame determining a series of vibrations or not; but with the flame the first molecules of ether which are displaced from their position of equilibrium will acquire a new local relation with regard to the following, and their actions will be of a new intensity, sufficient to cause the displacement of the next set of molecules, and so on. The flame, then, causes the displacement of the first set of molecules; the first set displaced causes the displacement of the second; the second displaced causes the displacement of the third, etc.; each set producing its own effect by its own inherent powers, not by the exertion of any power communicated to them by the flame, and their displacement being not a cause, but only a condition, on which the intensity of the exertion depends.

Hence it appears that in phenomena of this description it is not the action, and much less the power, that is transmitted, but only the movement, or the formal perturbation of the equilibrium; and even the movement is not properly _transmitted_, but only _propagated_; because the movement of each following molecule is not the identical movement of each preceding one, but is a movement really produced in the very impact of the one on the other, as our reader must have easily gathered from our preceding discussion. And therefore one movement succeeds another indefinitely, the one being a condition for the existence of the other; which constitutes propagation, not properly transmission.

To Be Continued.

Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” V.

An Eastern Romance Narrated In Songs.

By Aubrey De Vere.