ill. I have been weak and foolish, but I will control myself better next

time.”

“I have just left Mr. Carlisle’s room,” replied the doctor. “I will not deceive you. He is, as you say, very ill; but I hope we may save him yet. You must call up all your courage, for you will be much needed to‐night.”

He knew by the effect that he had touched the right chord, so he continued: “And now, Miss Howard, I am going to ask of you the favor to send one of your servants to my house, to notify my wife that I shall not return to‐night. I will not leave you until the crisis is passed—successfully, I hope,” he added with a smile.

Assunta went at once to give the desired order, relieved and grateful that they would have the support of the physician’s presence and skill; and yet the very fact of his remaining discouraged the hope he had tried to inspire. When she had gone, he turned to address a few comforting words to Mrs. Grey, when, suddenly recollecting himself, he said:

“By the way, Mrs. Grey, I forgot to tell you that I met Mr. Sinclair down‐ stairs, and he begged me to inquire if you had received a message from him. Can I be of service in taking him your reply?”

“O poor man! I quite forgot him,” exclaimed the easily diverted Clara, as she stooped to pick up the neglected flowers. “Thank you for your kind offer, but I had better run down myself, and apologize for my apparent rudeness.” And, hastily wiping her eyes, she threw a shawl over her shoulders and a becoming white _rigolette_ about her head, and with a graceful bow of apology she left the room.

“Extraordinary woman!” thought the doctor. “One would suppose that a dying brother would be an excuse, even to that puppy Sinclair. I wish he had had to wait longer—it wouldn’t have hurt him a bit—he has never had half enough of it to do. And what the devil is he coming here for now, anyhow?” he added to his former charitable reflections, as he went to join Assunta in her faithful vigil beside the unconscious and apparently dying man.

Mr. Sinclair met Mrs. Grey at the foot of the stairs with an assumption of interest and anxiety which successfully concealed his inward impatience. But truly it would have been difficult to resist that appealing face, with its traces of recent tears and the flush caused by excited feeling.

As a general thing, with all due deference to poetic opinion, “love is (_not_) loveliest when embalmed in tears.” But Mrs. Grey was an exception to many rules. Her emotion was usually of the April‐shower sort, gentle, refreshing, even beautifying. Very little she knew of the storm of suffering which desolates the heart, and whose ravages leave a lasting impression upon the features. Such emotions also sometimes, but rarely, leave a beauty behind them; but it is a beauty not of this world, the beauty of holiness; not of Mrs. Grey’s kind, for it never would have touched Mr. Sinclair as hers did now.

“My dear Mrs. Grey,” he said, taking her hand in both his, “how grieved I am to see you showing so plainly the results of care and watching! Privileged as he must be who is the recipient of such angelic ministrations, I must yet protest—as a friend, I trust I have a right to do so—against such over‐exertion on your part. You will be ill yourself; and then who or what will console me?”

Mr. Sinclair knew this was a fiction. He knew well enough that Mrs. Grey had never looked fresher or prettier in her life. But the _rôle_ he had assigned to himself was the dangerously tender one of sympathy; and where a sufficient occasion for displaying his part was not supplied, he must needs invent one.

Clara was not altogether deceived, for, as she put her lace‐bordered handkerchief to her eyes, from which the tears began again to flow, she replied:

“You are mistaken, Mr. Sinclair. I am quite well, and not at all fatigued; while dear Assunta is thin and pale, and thoroughly worn out with all she has done. I can never be grateful enough to her.”

Had the lady raised her eyes, she might have been astonished at the expression of contempt which curled Mr. Sinclair’s somewhat hard mouth, as he rejoined:

“Yes; I quite understand Miss Howard’s _motive_ in her devotion to her guardian, and it is not strange that she should be pale. How do you suppose I should look and feel if the dearest friend I have in the world were at this moment lying in her brother’s place?”

Mrs. Grey might have received a new light about the young girl had she not been rendered obtuse to the first part of this speech by the very pointed allusion to herself afterwards, that was accompanied by a searching look, which she would not see, for she still kept her handkerchief before her eyes. Mr. Sinclair placed her disengaged hand upon his arm, and gently drew her towards the garden. Had she been able to look down into the heart of the man who walked so protectingly beside her, she would doubtless have been surprised to find a disappointment lurking in the place where she had begun to feel her image was enshrined. She would have seen that Assunta’s face had occupied a niche in the inner sanctuary of the heart of this man of the world, before which he would have been content to bow; that pique at her entire indifference to his pretensions, and the reserve behind which she always retreated in his presence, had led him to transfer his attentions to the older lady and the smaller fortune; and that his jealous observation had brought to his notice, what was apparent to no one else, the relations between Assunta and her guardian.

All this would not have been very flattering to Mrs. Grey, so it was perhaps as well that the gift of clairvoyance was not hers; though it is a sad thought for men and angels how few hearts there are that would bear to have thrown on them the clear light of unveiled truth. The day is to come when the secrets of all hearts are to be revealed. But Mr. Sinclair, even if he knew this startling fact, would not have considered it worth while to anticipate that dread hour by revealing to the lovely lady at his side any of those uncomfortable circumstances which would inevitably stand in the way of the consummation of his present wish. So he bravely undertook the noble enterprise of deceiving a trusting heart into believing in a love which did not exist, but which it was not so very difficult to imagine just at that moment, with the little hand resting confidingly on his arm, and the tearful eyes raised to meet his.

In a broken voice, Mrs. Grey said: “Mr. Sinclair, I came down myself to thank you for the beautiful flowers you sent me, and to excuse myself from driving with you this afternoon. Poor Severn is worse, they think. Oh! if he should not recover, what will become of me?” And as she spoke, she burst into renewed weeping, and threw herself upon a seat beneath a group of orange‐trees, whose perfume stole upon the senses with a subtle yet bewildering influence. Mr. Sinclair sat down beside her, saying gently:

“I hope, dear Mrs. Grey, it is not so serious as that. I am confident that you have been needlessly alarmed.”

The world will, no doubt, pardon him—seeing that Mammon was his chosen master—if the thought was not altogether unpleasing that, should Mr. Carlisle die now, before Assunta could have a claim upon him, it would make an almost princely addition to the dowry of his sister. Nor on this account were his words less tender as he added:

“But, even so, do you not know of one heart waiting, longing to devote itself to you, and only with difficulty restrained from placing itself at your feet by the iron fetters of propriety? Tell me, Clara, may I break these odious chains, and say what is in my heart?”

“Mr. Sinclair, you must not speak such words to me now, and my poor brother so ill. Indeed, I cannot stay to hear you. Thank you very much for your kind sympathy, but I must leave you now.”

“Without one word of hope? Do I deserve this?” And truly the pathos he put into his voice was calculated to melt a heart of stone; and Clara’s was much more impressible. She paused beside him, and, allowing him still to retain in his the hand he had taken, continued:

“I think you take an unfair advantage of my lonely position. I cannot give you a favorable answer this afternoon, for I am so bewildered. I begin to think that I ought not to have come down at all; but I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated the bouquet.”

“I hope you read its meaning,” said Mr. Sinclair, rising. “And do you not see a happy omen in your present position, under a bower of orange blossoms? It needs but little imagination to lower them until they encircle the head of the most lovely of brides. Will you accept this as a pledge of that bright future which I have dared to picture to myself?” And as he spoke he put up his hand to break off a cluster of the white blossoms and dark‐green leaves, when Giovanni appeared at the gate.

“Signora,” he said, “will you please to come up‐stairs? The Signorina is very anxious to see you.”

“I am coming,” she replied. “Pardon me, Mr. Sinclair, and forget what has been said.” And she walked towards the house.

“Do you refuse the pledge?” he asked, placing the flowers in her hand, after raising them to his lips.

“Really,” answered Clara, almost petulantly, “I am so perplexed, I do not know what to say. Yes, I will take the flowers, if that will please you.” Saying which, she began to ascend the stairs.

“And I take hope with me,” said Mr. Sinclair, in a tender tone. But as he turned to go he mentally cursed Giovanni for the interruption; “for,” thought he, “in one minute more I would have had her promise, and who knows but now that brother of hers may recover and interfere?”

Assunta met Mrs. Grey just outside the door of Mr. Carlisle’s room, and drew her into the library, where she sat down beside her on the sofa, and, putting her arm affectionately about her, began to speak to her with a calmness which, under the circumstances, could only come from the presence of God.

“I thought, dear Clara, that I had better ask you to come here, while I talk to you a little about your brother, and what the doctor says. We must both of us try to prepare.” Here her voice broke, and Mrs. Grey interrupted her with,

“Tell me, Assunta, quickly, is he worse?”

“I fear so, dear,” replied Assunta; “but we must help each other to keep up what courage and hope we may. It is a common sorrow, Clara, for he has been more than a brother to me.”

“But, Assunta, I do not understand. You are so calm, and yet you say such dreadful things. Does the doctor think he will die?” And once again she shuddered at that word, to her so fearful and so incomprehensible.

“I dare not deceive you, dear—I dare not deceive myself. The crisis has come, and he seems to be sinking fast. O Clara, pray for him!”

“I cannot pray; I do not know how. I have never prayed in my life. But let me go to him—my poor, dear Severn!” And Mrs. Grey was rushing from the room, when Assunta begged her to wait one moment, while she besought her to be calm. Life hung upon a thread, which the least agitation might snap in a moment. She could not give up that one last hope. Mrs. Grey of course promised; but the instant she approached the bed, and saw the change that a few hours had made, she shrieked aloud; and Assunta, in answer to the doctor’s look of despair, summoned her maid, and she was carried to her own room in violent hysterics, the orange blossoms still in her hand. Truly they seemed an omen of death rather than of a bridal. The doctor followed to administer an opiate, and then Assunta and himself again took up their watch by Mr. Carlisle. Hour after hour passed.

Everything that skill could suggest was done. Once only Assunta left the room for a moment to inquire for Mrs. Grey, and, finding that she was sleeping under the influence of the anodyne, she instantly returned. She dared not trust herself to think how different was this death from that other she remembered. She could not have borne to entertain for one moment the thought that this soul was going forth without prayer, without sacrament, to meet its God. She did everything the doctor wished, quietly and calmly. The hours did not seem long, for she had almost lost her sense of time, so near the confines of eternity. She did not even _feel_ now—she only _waited_.

It was nearly twelve when the doctor said in a low voice:

“We can do nothing more now; we must leave the rest to nature.”

“And to God,” whispered Assunta, as she sank on her knees beside the bed; and, taking in both hers her guardian’s thin, out‐stretched hand, she bowed her head, and from the very depths of her soul went up a prayer for his life—if it might be—followed by a fervent but agonized act of resignation to the sweet will of God.

She was so absorbed that she did not notice a sudden brightening of the doctor’s face as he bent over his patient. But in a moment more she felt a motion, and the slightest possible pressure of her hand. She raised her head, and her eyes met those of her guardian, while a faint smile—one of his own peculiar, winning smiles—told her that he was conscious of her presence. At last, rousing himself a little more, he said:

“_Petite_, no matter where I am, it is so sweet to have you here.” And, with an expression of entire content, he closed his eyes again, and fell into a refreshing sleep.

“Thank God!” murmured Assunta, and her head dropped upon her folded hands.

The doctor came to her, and whispered the joyful words, “He will live!” but, receiving no answer, he tried to lift the young girl from her knees, and found that she had fainted. Poor child! like Mary, the Blessed Mother of Sorrows, she had _stood_ beneath her cross until it was lightened of its burden, She had nerved herself to bear her sorrow; she had not counted on the strength which would be needed for the reaction of joy.

“Better so,” said the doctor, as he placed her upon the couch, “She would never have taken rest in any other way.”

To Be Continued.

A Discussion With An Infidel.

XI. Primeval Generation.

_Reader._ I should like to hear, doctor, how “primeval generation” can afford you an argument against the Mosaic history of creation, and against the necessity of a Creator.

_Büchner._ “There was a time when the earth—a fiery globe—was not merely incapable of producing living beings, but was hostile to the existence of vegetable and animal organisms” (p. 63).

_Reader._ Granted.

_Büchner._ “As soon as the temperature permitted it, organic life developed itself” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ Not too much haste, doctor. The assertion that “life developed itself” presupposes that life already existed somewhere, though undeveloped. How do you account for this assumption?

_Büchner._ “It is certain, says Burmeister, that the appearance of animal bodies upon the surface of the earth is a function which results with mathematical certainty from existing relations of forces” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ It is impossible to believe Burmeister on his word. You know that he is a short‐sighted philosopher. A man who says that “the earth and the world are eternal,” that “eternity belongs to the essence of matter,” and that matter nevertheless “is not unchangeable,” forfeits all claim to be trusted in speculative questions. I, therefore, cannot yield to his simple assertion; and if what he says is true, as you believe, I think that you are ready to assign some reason for it, which will convince me also.

_Büchner._ Nothing is easier, sir. For “there is exhibited (in the terrestrial strata) a constant relation of the external conditions of the surface of the earth to the existence of organic beings, and a necessary dependence of the latter on the condition of the earth” (p. 64). “It was only with the present existing differences of climate that the endless variety of organic forms appeared which we now behold.... Of man the highest organic being of creation, not a trace was found in the primary strata; only in the uppermost, the so‐called alluvial layer, in which human life could exist, he appears on the stage—the climax of gradual development” (p. 65).

_Reader._ How does this show that “organic life developed itself” and was a mere result of the development of the earth? It seems to me that your answer has no bearing on the question, and that it is, on your lips, even illogical. For you say somewhere: “It is certain that no permanent transmutation of one species of animals into another has as yet been observed; nor any of the higher organisms was produced by the union of inorganic substances and forces without a previously existing germ produced by homogeneous parents” (p. 68). This being _certain_, as you own, I ask: If every organism is produced by parents, whence did the parents come? Could they have arisen from the merely accidental concurrence of external circumstances and conditions, or were they created by an external power? In your theory, they must have arisen from external circumstances, and therefore they had no parents; whilst you affirm that without homogeneous parents they could not naturally be produced. Moreover, if the first parents arose from a concurrence of external conditions, why does not the same happen today?

_Büchner._ “This question has ever occupied philosophers and naturalists, and has given rise to a variety of conflicting opinions. Before entering upon this question, we must limit the axiom _Omne vivum ex ovo_ to that extent that, though applicable to the infinite majority of organisms, it does not appear to be universally valid” (p. 69).

_Reader._ Then you evidently contradict yourself.

_Büchner._ “At any rate, the question of spontaneous generations is not yet settled” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ Do you mean that living organisms can be produced without previously existing homogeneous parents, or germs, merely by the concurrence of inorganic elements and natural forces?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir; and “although modern investigations tend to show that this kind of generation, to which formerly was ascribed an extended sphere of action, does not exactly possess a scientific basis, it is still not improbable that it exists even now in the production of minute and imperfect organisms” (p. 70).

_Reader._ You are cutting your own throat, doctor. For you own that your theory has no scientific basis; and what you say about the non‐ improbability of some spontaneous generations has no weight whatever with a philosophical mind.

_Büchner._ Indeed “the question of the first origin of all highly organized plants and animals appears at first sight incapable of solution without the assumption of a higher power, which has created the first organisms, and endowed them with the faculty of propagation” (p. 71).

_Reader._ “At first sight,” you say. Very well. I accept this confession, which, on your lips, has a peculiarly suggestive meaning.

_Büchner._ “Believing naturalists point to this fact with satisfaction. They remind us, at the same time, of the wonderful structure of the organic world, and recognize in it the prevalence of an immediate and personal creative power, which, full of design, has produced this world. ‘The origin of organic beings,’ says B. Cotta, ‘is, like that of the earth, an insoluble problem, leaving us only the appeal to an unfathomable power of a Creator’ ” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ Cotta is more affirmative than you. He recognizes that the problem is incapable of solution without a Creator, and does not add “at first sight.” What do you reply?

_Büchner._ “We might answer these believers, that the germs of all living beings had from eternity existed in universal space, or in the chaotic vapors from which the earth was formed; and these germs, deposited upon the earth, have there and then become developed, according to external necessary conditions. The facts of these successive organic generations would thus be sufficiently explained; and such an explanation is at least less odd and far‐fetched than the assumption of a creative power, which amused itself in producing, in every particular period, genera of plants and animals, as preliminary studies for the creation of man—a thought quite unworthy of the conception of a perfect Creator” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ I am afraid, doctor, that all this nonsense proceeds from cold‐ hearted maliciousness more than from ignorance. For how can you be ignorant that, if there be anything odd and far‐fetched in any theory of cosmogony, it is not the recognition of a creative power, but the assumption of eternal germs wandering about from eternity amid chaotic vapors? Your preference for this last assumption is an insult to reason, which has no parallel but the act of passionate folly by which the Jews preferred Barabbas to Christ. The Creator, as you well know, had no need of “preliminary studies”: yet he might have “amused himself,” if he so wished,(22) in making different genera of plants and animals, just as noblemen and princes amuse themselves, without disgracing their rank, in planting gardens, and petting dogs, horses, and birds. But this is not the question. You pretend that the germs of all living beings had from eternity existed in universal space. This you cannot prove either philosophically or scientifically; and we have already established in a preceding discussion that nothing changeable can have existed from eternity.

_Büchner._ “But we stand in need of no such arguments” (p. 72).

_Reader._ Why, then, do you bring them forward?

_Büchner._ “The facts of science prove with considerable certainty that the organic beings which people the earth owe their origin and propagation solely to the conjoined action of natural forces and materials, and that the gradual change and development of the surface of the earth is the sole, or at least the chief, cause of the gradual increase of the living world” (p. 72).

_Reader._ This is another of your vain assertions. For you confess that “it is impossible at present to demonstrate with scientific exactness” the gradual development of organic beings from mere material forces; and you had previously affirmed that “there _must_ have existed individuals of the same species, to produce others of the same kind” (p. 68). Where are, then, to be found the facts of science which “prove with considerable certainty” the contrary of what you acknowledge to be the fact? Is your method of reasoning a mere oscillation between contradictories?

_Büchner._ “We may hope that future investigations will throw more light on the subject” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ Very well. But, if this is the case, surely no “fact of science” proves, as yet, the spontaneous evolution of life from inorganic matter. And you may be certain that the future investigations of science will not give the lie to the investigations of the past.

_Büchner._ “Our present knowledge is, however, sufficient to render it highly probable, nay, perhaps morally certain, that a spontaneous generation exists, and that higher forms have gradually and slowly become developed from previously existing lower forms, always determined by the state of the earth, but without the immediate influence of a higher power” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ All this I have already answered; and I am rather tired, doctor, of repeating the same remarks over and over again. Why should you make these empty assertions, if you had real arguments to produce? And, if you have no arguments, what is the use of saying and gainsaying at random, as you do, the same things? Why do you assert that “the immediate influence of a higher power” has nothing to do with the origin of life, when you know that your assertion must remain unproved and can easily be refuted? If “our present knowledge renders it highly probable, nay, perhaps, morally certain, that a spontaneous generation exists,” why did you say the contrary just a few lines before? It is inconceivable that a thinking man should be satisfied with such a suicidal process of arguing.

_Büchner._ “The law of a gradual development of primeval times is impressed upon the present living organic world” (p. 75). “All animal forms are originally so much alike, that it is often impossible to distinguish the embryo of a sheep from that of a man, whose future genius may perhaps revolutionize the world” (p. 76).

_Reader._ What does it matter if it is impossible for us to distinguish the embryo of a sheep from that of a man? Is it necessary to see with our eyes what distinguishes the one from the other in order to know that they are different? If we are reasonable, we must be satisfied that their different development proves very conclusively their different constitution.

But let this pass. Your line of argument requires you to show that the first eggs and the first seeds are spontaneous products of blind inorganic forces, without any immediate interference or influence of a higher power. While this is not proved, nothing that you may say can help you out of your false position. You may well allege with Vogt “the general law prevalent through the whole animal world, that the resemblance of a common plan of structure which connects various animals is more striking the nearer they are to their origin, and that these resemblances become fainter in proportion to the progress of their development and their subjection to the elements from which they draw their nourishment” (p. 76). We know this; but what of it? The question is not about the development of life from a germ, but about the development of a germ from inorganic forces; and this is what you try constantly to forget. You say: “The younger the earth was, the more definite and powerful must the influence of external conditions have been; and it is by no means impossible to imagine that the _same_ germs might, by very different external circumstances, have conduced to very heterogeneous developments” (p. 77). Were this as true as it is false, it would not advance your cause by one step; for you here assume the germs as already existing.

_Büchner._ “The comparatively greater force of nature in former periods is manifested in the singular forms of antediluvian animals as well as in their enormous size” (p. 78).

_Reader._ Were those animals the product of merely inorganic forces?

_Büchner._ So it is believed.

_Reader._ On what ground?

_Büchner._ “If the contemplation of surrounding nature strikes us so much by its grandeur that we cannot divest ourselves of the idea of a direct creative cause, the origin of this feeling is owing to the fact that we contemplate as a whole the united effects of natural forces through a period of millions of years; and, thinking only of the present, and not of the past, cannot imagine that nature has produced all this out of itself. The law of analogies; the formation of prototypes; the necessary dependence upon external circumstances which organic bodies exhibit in their origin and form; the gradual development of higher organic forms from lower organisms; the circumstance that the origin of organic beings was not a momentary process, but continued through all geological periods; that each period is characterized by creatures peculiar to it, of which some individuals only are continued in the next period—all these relations rest upon incontrovertible facts, and are perfectly irreconcilable with the idea of a personal almighty creative power, which could not have adopted such a slow and gradual labor, and have rendered itself dependent upon the natural phases of the development of the earth” (pp. 84, 85).

_Reader._ If this is your ground for asserting the origin of organic beings from the mere forces of matter, all I can say is that you should learn a little philosophy before you venture again to write a book for the public. Were you a philosopher, you would know that, independently of “the united effects of natural forces through a period of millions of years,” every grain of dust that floats in the air affords us a sufficient proof of the existence of “a personal almighty creative power”; your “law of analogies” would suggest to you the thought of a primitive source of life; “the formation of prototypes” would compel you to ask, Who formed them? and how could they be formed without an archetypal idea, which matter could not possess? You would see that nothing can be gained by asserting, as you do, that “the gradual development of the higher organic forms from lower organisms rests upon incontrovertible facts,” while you cannot cite a single one in support of your assertion. You would take care not to attribute to the Creator an imaginary waste of time in “the slow and gradual labor” of peopling the earth with organic beings, nor entertain the absurd notion that he would have rendered himself “dependent upon the natural phases of the development of the earth,” merely because his action harmonized with the order of things he had created. Lastly, you would have kept in view that the fact of which you were bound to give an explanation was not the development of new organisms from existing organisms, but the origin of the first organisms themselves from inorganic matter. Why did you leave aside this last point, than which no other had a greater need of demonstration?

_Büchner._ I may not be a philosopher; but certain it is that “science has never obtained a greater victory over those who assume an extramundane or supernatural principle to explain the problem of existence, than by means of geology and petrifaction. Never has the human mind more decisively saved the rights of nature. Nature knows neither a supernatural beginning nor a supernatural continuance” (p. 88).

_Reader._ How stupid indeed! Your Masonic science cannot stand on its legs, and you boast of victories! Do you not see, doctor, the absurdity of your pretension? When did science attack religion, and was not defeated? I speak of your infidel science, mind you; for true science has no need of attacking religion. Your science tries “to explain the problem of existence by means of geology and petrifaction” without a supernatural principle. But is the origin of existence a problem? and can it be solved by geology and petrifaction? Historical facts are no problems. You may blot out history, it is true, as you might also put out the light, and remain in the dark to your full satisfaction. Thus everything might become a problem. But can you call this a scientific process? Why do you not appeal to geology and petrifaction to explain, say, the origin of Rome, and thus obtain “a great victory” over history? Yet it would be less absurd to believe that Rome is a work of nature than to believe that life originated in dead inorganic matter. The origin of life and of all other things is a primitive fact, which lies outside the province of geology altogether. Philosophy alone can account for it; and philosophy proclaims that your infidel theory of primeval generation is a shameless imposture.

_Büchner._ This is a severe remark, sir.

_Reader._ I will take it back when you shall have proved that the first organic germs originated in inorganic matter without supernatural intervention.

XII. Design In Nature.

_Reader._ Everything in nature speaks of God; but you, doctor, seem quite insensible to the eloquence of creation.

_Büchner._ I deny the eloquence of creation. Indeed, “design in nature has ever been, and is still, one of the chief arguments in favor of the theory which ascribes the origin and preservation of the world to a ruling and organizing creative power. Every flower which unfolds its blossoms, every gust of wind which agitates the air, every star which shines by night, every wound which heals, every sound, everything in nature, affords to the believing teleologist an opportunity for admiring the unfathomable wisdom of that higher power. Modern science has pretty much emancipated itself from such empty notions, and abandons these innocent studies to such as delight in contemplating nature rather with the eyes of the feeling than with those of the intellect” (p. 89).

_Reader._ This is no reason why you should blind yourself to the evidence of the facts. Every one knows that Masonic science hates teleology. No wonder at that. This science emancipates itself, not from empty notions, as you say, but from the very laws of reasoning. Free thought would cease to be free, if it did not emancipate itself from logic. Yet, since free‐ thinkers “abandon to us the innocent study” of teleology, would it not be prudent in them to avoid talking on what they are unwilling to study? How can they know that we contemplate nature “rather with the eyes of the feeling than with those of the intellect”? Do they suppose that order and design are objects of the feeling rather than of the intellect?

_Büchner._ I will tell you what our conviction is. “The combination of natural materials and forces must, in giving rise to the variety of existing forms, have at the same time become mutually limited and determined, and must have produced corresponding contrivances, which, superficially considered, appear to have been caused by an external power.” Our reflecting reason is the sole cause of this apparent design, which is nothing but the necessary consequence of the combination of natural materials and forces. Thus, as Kant says, “our intellect admires a wonder which it has created itself” (p. 90).

_Reader._ Beware of blunders, doctor! You have just said that our notion of design in nature was caused by our feeling, not by our intellect; but you now say that the sole cause of that notion is our reflecting reason, and maintain, on Kant’s authority, that the same notion is a creation of our intellect. Can contradiction be more evident?

Again, if our reflecting reason is the sole cause of our perception of design in nature, surely we are right in admitting that there is design in nature, and you are wrong in denying it. For, if the design were only _apparent_, as you pretend, imagination might be fascinated by it, but “reflecting reason” would never cause us to perceive it. On the other hand, if you distrust “reflecting reason,” what else will you trust in its stead?

Moreover, how did you not observe that Kant’s proposition, “Our intellect admires a wonder which it has created itself,” contains a false supposition? The intellect cannot create to itself any notion of design; it can only perceive it in the things themselves: and it would never affirm the existence of design in nature, unless it perceived its objective reality. Hence our intellect admires a wonder which it perceives, not a wonder which it creates.

Furthermore, you wish us to believe that what we term design “is nothing but a necessary consequence of some combinations.” But why did you omit that all such combinations presuppose definite conditions, and that these conditions originally depend on the will of the Creator? Your book on _Force and Matter_ is nothing but a necessary consequence of a combination of types, ink, and paper. Does it follow that the book is not the work of a designing doctor? You see how defective your reasoning is. You have nearly succeeded in proving the contrary of what you intended.

_Büchner._ But “how can we speak of design, knowing the objects only in one form and shape, and having no idea how they would appear to us in any other? What natural contrivance is there which might not be imagined to be rendered more perfect in design? We admire natural objects without considering what an infinite variety of other contrivances and forms has slumbered, and is still dormant, in the lap of nature. It depends on an accident whether or not they will enter into existence” (p. 90).

_Reader._ I apprehend, doctor, that your notion of design is neither clear nor correct. The “form and shape” of the objects is not what _we_ call design. Design, in nature, is _the ordination of all things to an end_. It is therefore the natural aptitude of things to a definite end, and not their form or shape, that reveals the existence of design in nature. It is not even the absolute perfection of a thing that reveals design: it is only its relative perfection, that is, its proportion to the end for which it is created. Hence we have the right to admire natural objects for their adaptation to certain ends, without considering the infinite variety of other contrivances slumbering in the lap of nature. For, if the existing contrivances are proportionate to their ends, there is design, whatever we may say of the possibility of other contrivances, and even of other words.

_Büchner._ “Numbers of arrangements in nature, apparently full of design, are nothing but the result of the influence of external natural conditions” (p. 90).

_Reader._ Yes; but these natural conditions are themselves the result of design, since they are all controlled by a superior mind.

_Büchner._ “Animals inhabiting the north have a thicker fur than those of the south; and likewise the hair and feathers of animals become thicker in winter and fall out in summer. Is it not more natural to consider these phenomena as the effect of changes in the temperature, than to imagine a heavenly tailor who takes care of the summer and winter wardrobes of the various animals? The stag was not endowed with long legs to enable him to run fast, but he runs fast because his legs are long” (p. 91).

_Reader._ These remarks are puerile, doctor, and I might dispense with answering them; yet I observe that, as cold does not foster vegetation, it is not in the north, but in the south, that the fur of animals should grow thicker. At any rate, the “heavenly tailor,” who clothes the lilies of the field, does not forget the wardrobe of animals, whether in the north or in the south, in summer or in winter; for his is the world, and from his hand the needs of every creature are supplied. As to the stag, you are likewise mistaken. “He runs fast because his legs are long”; but how does it follow from this that he was not endowed with long legs to enable him to run fast? Does the one exclude the other? Would you say that your works are known because they have been published, and therefore they have not been published to make them known? Your blunder is evident.

_Büchner._ “Things are just as they are, and we should not have found them less full of design had they been different” (p. 91).

_Reader._ This, if true, would prove that our “reflecting reason” cannot exclude design from creation. If things had been different, the design would have been different. Even conflicting arrangements may be full of design; even the destruction of the best works of nature may be full of design: for the Author of nature is at liberty to do with it as he pleases. If, for instance, all the new‐born babies were hereafter to be males, we could not escape the consequence that the Author of nature designed to put an end to human generation. Whatever may be the order of things, we cannot deny design without insulting the wisdom of our Maker and Lord.

This consideration suffices to answer all your queries and objections. “Nature,” you say, “has produced a number of beings and contrivances in which no design can be detected” (p. 94). What of that? Can you deny that men act with some design, only because you cannot detect it? There are beings, you add, “which are frequently more apt to disturb than to promote the natural order of things” (_ibid._) This merely shows that the natural order of things is changeable—a truth which you had the courage to deny when speaking of miracles.

“The existence of dangerous animals has ever been a thorn in the side of theologians, and the most comical arguments have been used to justify their existence” (_ibid._) This is not true. No theologian has ever denied that dangerous animals fulfil some design in nature. And as to “comical arguments,” I think, doctor, that it is in your pages that we can best find them. “We know, on the other hand, that very innocent, or even useful, animals have become extinct, without nature taking any means to preserve their existence” (p. 95). This proves nothing at all. If God’s design could be fulfilled with their extinction, why should they have been preserved? “For what purpose are the hosts of diseases and of physical evils in general? Why that mass of cruelties and horrors which nature daily and hourly practises on her creatures? Could a being acting from goodness and benevolence endow the cat, the spider, and man with a nature capable of these horrors and cruelties?” (p. 96). This is the dark side of the picture; and yet there is design in all this. If I wished to make a “comical argument,” I might say that “the hosts of diseases” are, after all, very profitable to the M.D., who cannot live without them. But the true answer is, that the present order of things, as even the pagan philosophers recognized, is designed as a period of probation preparatory to a better life. We now live on a field of battle, amid trials calculated to stir up our energies and to mend or improve our character. We sow in tears, that we may reap in joy. Such is the design of a Being “acting from goodness and benevolence.” You do not understand this; but such is the truth. As to cats and spiders, you must bear in mind that they are not worse than the wolf, the tiger, or other animals providing for their own subsistence by the destruction of other living beings. If this be “cruelty,” how can you countenance it yourself by allowing the appearance at your table of killed animals?

Your other remarks are scarcely worthy of being quoted, as they prove nothing but your impertinence and presumption. You seem to put to God the dilemma: “Either let Büchner know all the secrets of your providence, or he will rebel against you, and even deny your existence.” You ask, Why this and why that? And because your weak brain fails to suggest the answer, you immediately conclude that things happen to be what they are, without a superior mind controlling their course. This is nice logic indeed! “Why should the vertebral column of man terminate in an appendage perfectly useless to him?” “Why should certain animals possess the organs of both sexes?” “Why are certain other animals so prolific that in a few years they might fill the seas and cover the earth, and find no more space or materials for their offspring?” “Why does nature produce monsters?” These questions may or may not be answered; but our ignorance is not the measure of things, and the existence of design in nature remains an unquestionable fact. Is not the very structure of our own bodies a masterpiece of design? A physician, like you, cannot plead ignorance on the subject.

_Büchner._ Yet nature cannot have a design in producing monstrosities. “I saw in a veterinary cabinet a goat fully developed in every part, but born without a head. Can we imagine anything more absurd than the development of an animal the existence of which is impossible from the beginning? Prof. Lotze of Göttingen surpasses himself in the following remarks on monstrosities: ‘If the fœtus is without a brain, it would be but judicious, in a force having a free choice, to suspend its action, as this deficiency cannot be compensated. But, inasmuch as the formative forces continue their action, that such a miserable and purposeless creature may exist for a time, appears to us strikingly to prove that the final result always depends upon the disposition of purely mechanical definite forces, which, once set in motion, proceed straight on, according to the law of inertia, until they meet with an obstruction.’ This is plain language” (p. 99). Again, monstrosities “may be produced artificially by injuries done to the fœtus or to the ovum. Nature has no means of remedying such an injury. The impulse once given is, on the contrary, followed in a false direction, and in due time a monstrosity is produced. The purely mechanical process, in such cases, can be easily recognized. Can the idea of a conscious power acting with design be reconciled with such a result? And is it possible that the hand of the Creator should thus be bound by the arbitrary act of man?” (pp. 101, 102).

_Reader._ That nature “cannot have a design in producing monstrosities” is a groundless assertion, as nature tends always to produce perfect beings, though sometimes its work is marred by obstacles which it has no power to remove. You saw “a goat fully developed in every part, but born without a head.” Here the design is evident. Nature wished to produce a perfect goat as usual, but failed. “If the fœtus is without a brain, it would be judicious, in a force having a free choice, to suspend its action.” This is another groundless assertion; for, if by _force_ you mean the forces of matter, they have no free choice, and cannot suspend their action; and if by _force_ you mean God, you presume too much, as you do not know his design. A fœtus without a brain, like a goat without a head, proclaims the imperfection of natural causes; and this very imperfection proclaims their contingency and the existence of a Creator. Thus, a fœtus without a brain may be the work of design; for God’s design is not to raise nature above all deficiencies, but to show his infinite perfection in the works of an imperfect nature. That “the hand of the Creator should be bound by the arbitrary act of men” is a third groundless assertion. Man may injure the fœtus, and God can restore it to a healthy condition; but nothing obliges him to do so. If he did it, it would be a miracle; and miracles are not in the order of nature. It follows that, when monstrosities are produced, they are not merely the result of mechanical forces, but also of God’s action, without which no causation is possible.

But you ask, “Can the idea of a conscious power acting with design be reconciled with such a result?” I answer that it can be reconciled very well. In fact, those effects which proceed directly from God alone, must indeed be perfect according to their own kind, inasmuch as God’s working is never exposed to failure; but those effects which do not proceed directly from God alone, but are produced by creatures with God’s assistance, may be imperfect, ugly, and monstrous. You may have a beautiful hand; but, if you write with a bad pen, your writing will not be beautiful. You may be a great pianist; but, if your instrument is out of tune, your music will be detestable. Whenever two causes, of which the one is instrumental to the other, concur to the production of the same effect, the imperfection of the instrumental cause naturally entails the imperfection of the effect. God’s action is perfect; but the action of his instruments may be imperfect; and it is owing to such an imperfection that the result may be a monstrosity.

But, to complete this explanation, it is necessary to add that, in the production of their natural effects, creatures are more than instrumental. The primary cause, God, and the secondary causes, creatures, are both _principal_ causes of natural effects; though the latter are subordinate to the influence of the former. Both God and the creature are total causes; that is, the effect entirely depends on the secondary, as it entirely depends on the primary cause, though in a different manner; for the influx of the primary cause is general, while that of the secondary cause is particular. Hence these two causes bear to the effect produced by them the same relation as two premises bear to their conclusion. God’s influence is to the effect produced what a general principle or a major proposition is to the conclusion; whilst the creature’s influence is to the same effect what a minor proposition or the application of the general principle is to the conclusion. Take, for instance, the general truth, “Virtue is a rational good,” as a major proposition. This general truth may be applied in different manners, and lead to different conclusions, good or bad, according as the application is right or wrong. If you subsume, “Temperance is a virtue,” you will immediately obtain the good conclusion that “Temperance is a rational good.” But, if you subsume, “Pride is a virtue,” you will reach the monstrous conclusion that “Pride is a rational good.” Now, this conclusion, however monstrous, could not be drawn without the general principle; and yet its monstrosity does not arise from the general principle, but only from its wrong application. Thus the general principle remains good and true in spite of the bad and false conclusion. And in the same manner the influence of the first cause on natural effects remains good and perfect, though the effects themselves, owing to the influence of the secondary causes, are imperfect and monstrous.

You now understand, I hope, how the exceptional production of monstrosities can be reconciled with the idea of a conscious power acting with design.

XIII. Brain And Soul.

_Reader._ And now, doctor, please tell me what is your doctrine on the human soul.

_Büchner._ The human soul is “a product of matter” (p. 132)—“a product of the development of the brain” (p. 197).

_Reader._ Indeed?

_Büchner._ “The brain is the seat and organ of thought; its size, shape, and structure are in exact proportion to the magnitude and power of its intellectual functions” (p. 107).

_Reader._ What do you mean by _thought_?

_Büchner._ Need I explain a term so universally known?

_Reader._ The term is known, but it is used more or less properly by different persons. Our minds may deal with either sensible or intellectual objects. When we have seen a mountain, we may think of it, because we have received from it an impression in our senses which leaves a vestige of itself in our organism, and enables us to represent to ourselves the object we have perceived. In this case our _thought_ is an exercise of our imagination. When, on the contrary, we think of some abstract notion or relation which does not strike our senses, and of which no image has been pictured in our organic potencies, then our _thought_ is an exercise of intellectual power. In both cases our brain has something to do with the thought. For in the first case our thought is an act of the sensitive faculty, which reaches its object as it is pictured, or otherwise impressed, in our organic potencies, of which the headquarters are in the brain. In the second case our thought is an act of the intellectual faculty, which detects the intelligible relations existing between the objects already perceived, or between notions deduced from previous perceptions; and this act, inasmuch as it implies the consideration of objects furnished to the mind by sensible apprehension, cannot but be accompanied by some act of the imaginative power making use of the images pictured in the organic potencies. Now, doctor, when you say that “the brain is the seat and organ of thought,” do you mean that both the intellectual and the imaginative thought reside in the brain and are worked out by the brain?

_Büchner._ Of course. For “comparative anatomy shows that through all classes of animals, up to man, the intellectual energy is in proportion to the size and material quality of the brain” (p. 107).

_Reader._ You are quite mistaken. The brain is an organ of the imagination, not of the intellect. And even as an organ of imagination it is incompetent to think or imagine, as it is only the instrument of a higher power—that is, of a soul. To say that the brain is the organ of intellectual thought is to assume that intellectual relations are pictured on the brain; which is evidently absurd, since intellectual relations cannot be pictured on material organs. Every impression made on our brain is a definite impression, corresponding to the definite objects from which it proceeds. If our intellectual thought were a function of the brain, we could not think, except of those same definite objects from which we have received our definite impressions. How do you, then, reconcile this evident inference with the fact that we conceive intellectually innumerable things from which we have never received a physical impression? We think of justice, of humanity, of truth, of causality, etc., though none of these abstractions has the power to picture itself on our brain. It is therefore impossible to admit that the intellectual thought is a function of the brain. With regard to the working of the imagination, I concede that the brain plays the part of an instrument; but how can you explain such a working without a higher principle? If our soul is nothing but “a product of matter,” since matter is inert, our soul must be inert, and since matter has only mechanical powers, our soul must be limited to mechanical action, that is, to the production of local movement. Now, can you conceive imagination as a merely mechanical power, or thought as the production of local movement?

_Büchner._ Yes. “Thought,” says Moleschott, “is a motion of matter” (p. 135).

_Reader._ It is perfectly useless, doctor, to make assertions which cannot be proved. Moleschott is no authority; he is a juggler like yourself, and works for the furtherance of the same Masonic aims. Let him say what he likes. We cannot but laugh at a thinker who can mistake his thought for local motion.

_Büchner._ You, however, cannot deny that, while we are thinking, our brain is doing work. But how can it do work without motion?

_Reader._ I do not deny that, while we are thinking, our brain is doing work. I merely deny that the movements of the brain are thoughts. As long as we live, soul and body work together, and we cannot think without some organic movements accompanying the operation. This every one admits. But you suppress the thinking principle, and retain only the organic movements. How is this possible? If thought consists merely of organic movements of the brain, how does the motion begin? The brain cannot give to itself a new mode of being. To account for its movements you must point out a distinct moving power, either intrinsic or extrinsic, either a sensible object or the thinking principle itself. When the motion is received from a sensible object, the movements of the brain determine the immediate perception of the object; and when the motion results from the operation of the thinking principle, the movements of the brain determine the phantasm corresponding to the object of the actual thought. Thus immediate perception, and thought, or recollection, are both rationally explained; whilst, if the thinking subject were the brain itself, how could we recollect our past ideas? When the movement caused by an object has been superseded by the movement caused by a different object, how can it spontaneously revive? Matter is inert; and nothing but a power distinct from it can account for the spontaneous awakening of long‐forgotten thoughts.

_Büchner._ Matter is inert, but is endowed with forces, and wherever there are many particles of matter they can communicate movement to one another. Hence, “in the same manner as the steam‐engine produces motion, so does the organic complication of force‐endowed materials produce in the animal body a sum of effects so interwoven as to become a unit; and is then by us called spirit, soul, thought” (p. 136).

_Reader._ Pshaw! Are _spirit_, _soul_, and _thought_ synonymous? Do thoughts think? When you perceive that two and two make four, is this thought the thinking principle? And if the soul is “a sum of _mechanical_ effects so interwoven as to become a unit,” how can you avoid the consequence that the soul consists of nothing but local movement? But if the soul is local movement, it has no causality, and cannot be the principle of life; for local movement is only a change of place, and has nothing to do with perception, judgment, reasoning, or any other operation of the thinking principle. Can local movement say, _I am_? _I will?_ _I doubt?_ Can local movement recollect the past, take in the present, foresee the possible and the future? Can local movement deliberate, love, hate, say _yes_ or _no_? To these and such like questions science, reason, and experience give an unequivocal answer, which the president of a medical association should have carefully meditated before venturing to write on the subject.

_Büchner._ Yet “the mental capacity of man is enlarged in proportion to the material growth of his brain, and is diminished according to the diminution of its substance in old age” (p. 110). “It is a fact known to everybody, that the intelligence diminishes with increasing age, and that old people become childish.... The soul of the child becomes developed in the same degree as the material organization of its brain becomes more perfect” (p. 111). “Pathology furnishes us with an abundance of striking facts, and teaches us that no part of the brain exercising the function of thought can be materially injured without producing a corresponding mental disturbance” (p. 119). “The law that brain and soul are necessarily connected, and that the material expansion, shape, and quality of the former stands in exact proportion to the intensity of the mental functions, is strict and irrefutable, and the mind, again, exercises an essential influence on the growth and development of its organ, so that it increases in size and power just in the same manner as any muscle is strengthened by exercise” (p. 122). “The whole science of man is a continuous proof in favor of the connection of brain and mind; and all the verbiage of philosophical psychologists in regard to the separate existence of the soul, and its independence of its material organ, is without the least value in opposition to the power of facts. We can find no exaggeration in what Friedreich, a well‐known writer on psychology, says on this point: ‘The exhibition of power cannot be imagined without a material substratum. The vital power of man can only manifest its activity by means of its material organs. In proportion as the organs are manifold, so will be the phenomena of vital power, and they will vary according to the varied construction of the material substratum. Hence, mental function is a peculiar manifestation of vital power, determined by the peculiar construction of cerebral matter. The same power which digests by means of the stomach, thinks by means of the brain’ ” (pp. 124, 125).

_Reader._ Your manner of reasoning, doctor, is not calculated to bring conviction, as every one of your arguments contains a fallacy. Your first argument is: The brain is the measure of the thinking power; and therefore the thinking power, or the soul, is a result of organic development. The second is: Brain and mind are necessarily connected; and therefore the soul cannot have a separate existence. The third is: The vital power of man can only manifest its activity by means of its material organs; and therefore the soul needs to be supported by a material substratum. Such substantially is the drift of your argumentation. Now, I maintain that the three arguments are merely three sophisms.

First, the brain is not the measure of the thinking power. The mental capacity of man, and the thinking power of the soul, are not exactly the same thing. The first implies both soul and body, the second regards the soul alone; the first presents to us the musician with his instrument, the second exhibits only the musician himself. The brain is the organ, the soul is the organist. You cannot reasonably pretend that the musical talent, genius, and skill of an organist increase and decrease with the number and quality of the pipes which happen to be in the organ. All you can say is that the musical talent of the organist will have a better chance of a favorable show with a rich rather than with a poor instrument. The organ, therefore, is not the measure of the ability of the organist, and the brain is not the measure of the thinking power. Hence from the fact that the mental capacity of man is enlarged, as you say, in proportion to the material growth of his brain, we have no right to conclude that the thinking principle, the soul, grows with the brain; the right conclusion is that the soul, being in possession of a better instrument, finds itself in better conditions for the exercise of its intrinsic power. The organ is improved and the music is better; but the organist is the same.

Secondly, brain and mind are at present necessarily connected. Does it follow that therefore the soul cannot have a separate existence? By no means. If this conclusion were logical, you might on the same ground affirm also that the body cannot have a separate existence; for the body is as necessarily connected with the soul as the soul is with the body. The reason why your conclusion cannot hold is that the connection of body and soul is necessary only inasmuch as both are indispensable for the constitution of the human nature. But the human nature is not immortal; the soul must quit the body when the organism becomes unfit for the operations of animal life; and therefore the connection of the soul with the body is not absolutely, but only hypothetically, necessary. The soul has its own existence distinct from the existence of the body, for the soul is a substance no less than the body; and therefore it is no less competent to have a separate existence. You deny, I know, that the soul is a substance distinct from the body; but what is the weight of such a denial? What you speculatively deny in your book, you practically admit in the secret of your conscience whenever you say _I am_. It is not the body that says _I_; it is the soul: and it is not an accident that perceives self; it is a substance.

Thirdly, the vital power of man, as you say, can manifest its activity only by means of its material organs. This is true; for, so long as the soul is in the body, it must work together with it, according to the axiom, “Every agent acts according as it is in act.” But does the work of the vital power in the material organs warrant your conclusion that the soul needs to be supported by a material substratum? Quite the contrary. For, what needs a material substratum is an accident, and no accident is active; and therefore the vital power, whose activity is manifested in the material organs, is no accident, and therefore needs no material substratum, and, while existing in the material organs, exists no less in itself. Had you considered that the soul, which manifests its activity by means of its material organs, exercises the same activity within itself also, you would have easily discovered that the soul has a being independent of its material organs, and that these organs are the organs of sensibility, not of intelligence.

But I am not going to make a dissertation on the soul, as my object is only to show the inconclusiveness of your reasoning. Your chapter on “Brain and Soul,” with its twenty‐eight pages of medical and physiological erudition, offers no proof of your assumption beyond the three sophisms I have refuted. All the rest consists of facts which have not the least bearing on the question. “The whole science of man,” as you say, “is a continuous proof in favor of the connection of brain and mind.” This is what your facts demonstrate; but your object was to show that “the soul is a product of the development of the brain”; and this your facts do not demonstrate, as is evident from your need of resorting to fallacies to make them lie to truth. It is on the strength of such fallacies that you make bold to despise your opponents, forgetting all your shortcomings, and committing a new blunder in the very act of assailing the spiritualistic philosophers. According to you, “the whole science of man is a continuous proof in favor of the connection of brain and mind; and all the verbiage of philosophical psychologists in regard to the separate existence of the soul and its independence of its material organ is without the least value in opposition to the power of facts.” You should be ashamed, doctor, of this style of reasoning.

_Büchner._ Why, if you please?

_Reader._ Because, first, the connection of brain and mind, as proved by “the whole science of man,” does not authorize you to deny the separate existence of the soul and its substantial independence of the material organs. Secondly, because to call “verbiage” those reasonings which all the great men of all times have, after careful scrutiny, considered as unanswerable, to which they gave their fullest assent, and against which you are incapable of advancing a single argument which has not already been answered by philosophers, is on your part an implicit confession of philosophical ignorance. Thirdly, because it is extremely mean to proclaim your own victory, while you have carefully avoided the combat. You have, in fact, prudently dissembled all the reasons by which the substantiality and spirituality of the human soul are usually proved in psychology; and, to give yourself the appearance of a champion, you have set up a few ridiculous sophisms—as, “the material simplicity of the organs of thought” (p. 125)—to figure as philosophical objections, which they have never been, and never will be; thus reminding us of the great Don Quixote fighting against the wind‐mill. Fourthly, because, while boasting of the support which some physiological facts seem to lend to your materialistic theory, you have entirely ignored all those other facts of the intellectual life which were calculated to expose your sophistry and overthrow your conclusions. This is dishonest, doctor; for you cannot plead ignorance in excuse.

_Büchner._ We proceed from opposite principles, sir; hence we must disagree in our conclusions. It is a law “that mind and brain necessarily determine each other, and that they stand to each other in inseparable causal relations” (p. 139).

_Reader._ This goes against you; for, if the mind determines the brain, the mind must be a special substance.

_Büchner._ “As there is no bile without liver, no urine without kidneys, so is there no thought with out a brain. Mental activity is a function of the cerebral substance. This truth is simple, clear, easily supported by facts, and indisputable” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ Oh! oh! have you forgotten my previous answer? So long as matter remains inert, it is vain to pretend that matter is the thinking principle.

_Büchner._ “Matter is not dead, unquickened, and lifeless, but, on the contrary, full of the most stirring life” (p. xcix.)

_Reader._ A great discovery!—if true.

_Büchner._ “Not an atom of it is without motion, but in constant uninterrupted movement and activity. Nor is matter _gross_, as simple philosophers often call it, but, on the contrary, so infinitely fine and complicated in its composition as to surpass all our conceptions. Nor is it _worthless_ or vile, but rather the most precious thing we know of; it is not _without feeling_, but is full of the most acute sensibility in the creatures it brings forth; nor, lastly, is it _devoid of spirit_ or _thought_, but, on the contrary, develops in the organs destined thereto by the peculiar kind and delicacy of their composition the highest mental potencies known to us. What we call life, sensibility, organization, and thought, are only the peculiar and higher tendencies and activities of matter, acquired in the course of many millions of years by well‐known natural processes, and which in certain organisms or combinations result in the self‐consciousness of matter. Wherefore matter is not unconscious, as is often proclaimed” (pp. xcix., c.)

_Reader._ Enough! enough of such nonsense. Do not ruin what little reputation you still enjoy as a scientific man. What will the world say when it discovers that you know nothing about the inertia of matter, which is the basis of physics and mechanics? or when it hears that you confound movement with activity, and activity with life? Every one knows that life implies movement, because the more perfect implies the less perfect; but who ever heard that mechanical movement implies life? Is a stone living because it falls to the ground? Again, how would any one who is not an idiot consider the matter on which we tread “the most precious thing we know of”? Would you sell your honor for a cup of coffee and a pound of sugar? That matter is _not without feeling_, _not without spirit_, and _not without thought_, is a demonstrated blunder, of which I need not repeat the refutation. But who can hear without merriment that sensibility, organization, and thought are “tendencies” of matter? and that they have been acquired by matter “in the course of many millions of years”? and that this acquisition was brought about “by _well‐known_ natural processes”? I repeat, doctor, that such trash will ruin your reputation. Buffoons and charlatans may be allowed to indulge in any amount of absurdities; but a doctor has not the same privilege. Hence it is not safe for you to speak of _well‐known_ processes, by which matter becomes “conscious” of itself, when the whole scientific world knows nothing of such processes, and may challenge you to substantiate your foolish assertion.

I will tell you what is really _well known_. It is what a celebrated writer teaches about the immateriality of the soul. “There is nothing,” he says, “in this lower world that can account for the origin of our souls; for there is nothing in our souls which admits of mixture or composition, nothing which arises from the earth or is made of it, nothing which partakes of the nature of air, or water, or fire. For nothing is to be found in these natural things which has the power of remembering, of understanding, or of thinking—nothing which can hold the past, forecast the future, or embrace the present. The power of doing this is divine, and its possession by man can never be accounted for, unless we admit that it is derived from God himself. Accordingly, the soul is a distinct nature, and has nothing common with the material things with which we are acquainted.”(23) What do you think of this passage?

_Büchner._ It smacks of ultramontanism.

_Reader._ Just so! Bravo! Marcus Tullius Cicero an ultramontane!!

To Be Continued.

A Legend Of Alsace.

From The French Of M. Le Vicomte De Bussierre.

“I do love these ancient ruins. We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some reverend history.”

—_Webster’s Duchess of Malfy._

I.

Six leagues from Strasbourg a high mountain, pyramidal in form, rises abruptly over the chain of the Vosges. On its summit are some antique churches and chapels and an old convent. The fertile country at its foot is peopled by a great number of smiling villages and several small towns. Its sides are covered with fine forests, in the midst of which may be seen the ruined walls of old monasteries, the crenellated and picturesque towers of several mediæval castles, and the _débris_ of an ancient wall of pagan times. This mountain, called in ancient times Altitona or Hohenbourg, was once the principal bulwark of Alsace. In the VIIth century it received the name of Mount St. Odile, and became a celebrated resort for pilgrims.

A shady pathway, and not of difficult ascent, leads to the top of Mount St. Odile, which commands a view as remarkable for extent as for interest and variety. The whole of Alsace, and a large part of the Grand Duchy of Baden, are spread out at the feet of the spectator; bounded on one side by the jagged chain of the Black Forest, whose blue outlines are seen on the horizon, and on the other by the Vosges, which are rounder and more pleasing to the eye. A dense forest of pines covers the Vosges, and on all sides, even on the highest crests, may be seen the ruins of old feudal castles which hundreds of years ago played their _rôle_ in the history of the province. The Rhine passes through the middle of this magnificent valley. On each shore are forests, vineyards, meadows, and admirably cultivated fields. A line of dazzling brightness marks the sinuous course of the river, which, sometimes dividing, forms a great number of verdant isles.

The dense population of the country around gives an idea of its richness and fertility. Orchards surround the villages; rustic churches, covered with deep‐hued tiles, rise up from the smiling groves; more imposing belfries mark the towns, and the magnificent spire of Strasbourg points out, through the transparent vapor, the old capital of the province. The whole plain is furrowed by fine roads in every direction, which, bordered by walnut‐trees, form an immense net‐work of verdure. Towards the north the valley of the Rhine is lost in the vapory distance; on the south the Vosges blend with the Jura mountains; and in perfectly clear weather the glaciers of Switzerland may be seen at sunset, like gilded clouds on the horizon.

This landscape is superb at all times, but is particularly beautiful on a Sunday morning in spring‐time. A fresh verdure then covers the earth, and the fruit‐trees, all in bloom, give the whole of Alsace a _parure de fête_. The far‐off sound of the bells ringing in every direction to call the people to prayer, and the varied sounds of the plain brought up by the wind, mingle with the mysterious voices of nature, penetrating the soul with a subduing and profound sentiment, and filling it with ineffable peace.

Such is the aspect of the region where took place most of the facts I am about to relate. But, before speaking of the development of the monastic orders in Alsace, and of the convent of Hohenbourg and its illustrious foundress in particular, I will briefly relate the details that have been preserved respecting the introduction of Christianity into the province of which we are speaking.

Tradition attributes the origin of the Alsacian churches to the immediate successors of the apostles; but others date the Mission of S. Materne (and his companions Euchaire and Valère) among the Triboci and the Nemetes, and that of S. Clement among the Mediomatrici, only from the end of the IIId century or the beginning of the IVth. They were the real apostles of the valley of the Rhine. Some think they were called the disciples of S. Peter merely to show that they were sent by his successors, and that their teachings were in conformity with those of the head of the church.(24)

However this may be, there is no doubt that S. Materne founded the first Christian churches of Alsace upon the ruins of old pagan temples in the forests of Novient and in the towns of Helvetia and Argentorat.

Shortly after the conversion of Constantine, the Holy See sent Amandus and Jesse, the first as bishop of Argentoratum (Strasbourg) and the other of Augusta Nemetum (Speyer), of which city Constantius Chlorus is considered the restorer or founder.

Among the eighty‐four bishops assembled at the Council of Cologne in the year 346, the names of Jesse of the Nemetes and Amandus of Argentoratum are found. S. Amandus, the first known pastor of Strasbourg, is at the head of a long line of bishops who have given an example of true holiness, and who have a claim on the admiration and gratitude of posterity. But almost immediately after the death of Constantine the Great the spread of the Christian religion in Alsace was arrested, partly owing to the rulers, and partly to the bloody wars of which the Rhine valley was the theatre, especially the invasion of Atilla, who either massacred the bishops or carried them off with their flocks. This caused a vacancy in the See of Strasbourg for many years. It passed under the spiritual jurisdiction of Metz till 510, when the see was re‐established.

The great victory of Clovis over the Germans, and his baptism, gave rise to a new epoch in the history of Alsace and in the spread of Christianity. Argentoratum, which had been devastated by the barbarians, was restored by Clovis and resumed its importance. The kings of the Franks built a palace there which they often occupied.

Clovis re‐established the episcopal see at the beginning of the VIth century, and laid the foundations of the cathedral in 510. From his time the Christian religion spread more rapidly in the province, and was soon professed by the whole country.

II.

Alsace shared in the development of monastic orders throughout Western Europe. In the VIIth and VIIIth centuries a great number of convents and pious retreats were erected in that province. The epoch of the early martyrs was past, but other martyrs succeeded them, separating themselves joyfully from the world and imposing on themselves the greatest privations. That was the time of wonderful legends and acts of personal renunciation. The life of S. Odile is a complete picture of that epoch. In relating it I shall endeavor to preserve the _naïve_ and pious simplicity of the chronicles from which it is derived, and which are the faithful expression of the spirit of the times, and of the character and manners of the people.

Erchinald, son of Ega, and major‐domo of the king, was, say the old historians, one of the noblest as well as most powerful lords of the time of Dagobert I. Leudet, or Leutrich, son of Erchinald, married Hultrude, a princess of the royal race of Burgundy. Their son, Adalric, was the father of S. Odile and the progenitor of some of the most illustrious houses of Europe. Adalric married Berswinde, the niece, through her mother, of S. Léger, Bishop of Autun, who suffered martyrdom in 685. Bilibilde, Berswinde’s sister, or, as some say, her aunt, ascended the throne of Ostrasia by her marriage with Childeric II. The king, united to Adalric by the tie of friendship as well as of relationship, invested him with the duchy of Alsace at the death of Duke Boniface. Adalric established his residence at Oberehnheim, a town at the foot of Mount Altitona.

Few men have been depicted in such various colors as Adalric. Many ancient writers represent him as a ferocious, cruel, and overbearing lord. Other chroniclers, on the contrary, proclaim him as generous as he was just and humane. The opinion of F. Hugo Peltre appears to be the most correct, and it is confirmed by the different traits of the prince which have come to our knowledge. He says Adalric was a man upright and sincere, but tenacious in his designs. He showed himself to be a sincere Christian, and in spite of his rank sought no pretext for dispensation from the duties which his religion imposed upon him, but he had not entirely laid aside the barbarous manners of his time.

Berswinde, whose rank equalled that of her husband, is represented by all the authors of the life of S. Odile as one of the most accomplished women of her day. They say her heart was filled with charity and the fear of God. The deference accorded to her rank did not affect her piety or fill her with pride. She was a perfect model of Christian humility. She made use of her wealth to do good. Prosperity inspired her with tender gratitude towards Him who is the source of every blessing. Every day she was in the habit of retiring for several hours to the most secluded part of the palace, for the purpose of prayer and meditation.

Adalric and Berswinde both longed for a more retired residence, where they could pass a part of the year away from the bustle of the town and the fatigue of business. The duke ordered his followers to explore the neighboring forests to find a suitable spot for a castle and a church. They soon informed him that the summit of Mt. Altitona, which rose above Oberehnheim, was covered with the _débris_ of ancient buildings which could be made use of in the construction of a vast and magnificent residence. Adalric wished to ascertain by personal observation the correctness of this report, and, after an hour and a half’s march, he reached the place mentioned. It was a great esplanade, in a wild but imposing situation, surrounded by very high walls of enormous stones rudely put together, evidently by the most ancient inhabitants of the province. Gigantic pines and old oaks had grown up with wonderful luxuriance among these old ruins. But the buildings that covered the esplanade had by no means fallen entirely to ruin, as his followers had reported. They were partly ruined, to be sure, but a château and an elegant rotunda, both of the Roman style, still remained entire.(25)

The duke, charmed with the beauty of the place, immediately knelt down and thanked God aloud for having directed him to this spot. Then returning at once to Oberehnheim he despatched that very same day a large number of workmen to the mountain of Hohenbourg to commence the work.

Adalric, changing his original intention of building a large church, had the antique rotunda magnificently repaired. It was then consecrated by S. Léger, Bishop of Autun, and dedicated to the holy Patrons of Alsace. A new chapel erected in honor of the Apostles Peter and Paul, the holy protectors of Oberehnheim, was likewise consecrated by the holy bishop and endowed by Adalric. The walls of enclosure were likewise repaired, as well as the old château, in which the duke and duchess habitually passed the summer months.

III.

Though the wealth and power of Adalric had increased from year to year till he was invested with the hereditary fief of the vast duchy of Alsace, yet one blessing was denied him. He had no heir to whom he could transmit his wealth and title, and this profoundly afflicted him. Berswinde, too, sympathized in his disappointment, for it is especially natural for the great and powerful to wish to perpetuate their name and race. They both did all that devotion and confidence in God inspire holy souls to do. They had recourse to fasts, pilgrimages, and generous alms. Often prostrate together at the foot of the altar they shed floods of tears, and besought the Lord to hear their ardent prayer. At length, after some years of married life (in the year 657, or, as some say, 661), Berswinde gave birth—not to the prince so ardently longed for and whose advent was anticipated with the joy and prayers of the whole province—but to a little blind girl....

Adalric’s happiness gave place to a profound despair, and the paternal love he had felt in advance for his child was changed into violent hatred. He broke forth into bitter plaints. “God is angry with us,” said he, “and wishes to punish us for some grave transgression; for he has overwhelmed us with an opprobrium without precedent among those of my race, and which would forever tarnish the glory of my house, should the birth of this child be known.”

Berswinde replied: “Beware, my lord, of abandoning yourself to anger and despair. Remember that when the disciples of our Saviour questioned him respecting the man who was blind from his birth, he said to them: ‘Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.’ Let us not murmur, then, against the decrees of the Almighty. Until now he hath loaded us with benefits. Let us bless his holy name in affliction as well as in joy.”

This mild and wise reply gave Adalric no consolation. The unfortunate duchess only succeeded in calming his excitement by consenting to keep the birth of her daughter a secret, to have her reared away from home, and never to mention her before her husband.

The duke thought he was satisfying the law of nature by permitting the child to live, and, acting according to the requirements of his rank and his honor, in condemning her to vegetate in obscurity and poverty. He had it proclaimed, at the sound of the trumpet, in the town of Oberehnheim that the duchess had given birth to a still‐born child.

But Berswinde, remembering that one of her former attendants, upon whose attachment she could rely, was married and now living in the borough of Scherwiller, sent for her secretly. She came at once, and, finding her mistress profoundly afflicted and shedding bitter tears, pledged herself to bring up the child. Berswinde’s courage revived at this, and, kissing the babe, she placed it herself in the arms of her faithful follower, commending it to her “dear Saviour the Lord Jesus, and to the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

The nurse carried the child away, but in spite of Adalric’s care to conceal from his subjects the birth of the princess—in spite of the oblivion in which its second mother sought to bury its existence, it was almost impossible to prevent such a secret from transpiring in time. Five or six months had hardly elapsed when it was reported throughout the country that there was a blind child of unknown origin at Scherwiller, which evidently belonged to people of high rank, judging from the care it received. Some one recalled that the woman who took care of this mysterious child was formerly in Berswinde’s service, and noticed that its age coincided with the time of the duchess’ illness. The nurse lent an attentive ear to this gossip, and did not fail to report it to Berswinde. The latter, fearing the report might reach Adalric’s ears, ordered her old attendant to leave her home at once, and repair to the Convent of Baume in Franche Comté, a few leagues from Besançon, where the child would be readily received and brought up. Berswinde had two motives for preferring this monastery to all other places of safety: she hoped its distance would ensure the child’s safety, and the abbess was the sister of the duchess’ mother.

The Abbey of Baume was not then under any particular rule;(26) but prayer, reading, the chanting of the Psalms, the observance of the evangelical counsels, the mortification of the senses, and manual labor, continually occupied the humble recluses who lived there.

The young exile arrived safely at this peaceful asylum. She lived there tranquilly, far from the tumult of the world, and received an education fitted for developing the treasures of grace with which her soul was enriched. Her destiny was evident almost from her cradle. The names consecrated by religion were the first to strike her ears and for her tongue to utter, and her first language was that of prayer. Her pious aunt, and all who surrounded her, only spoke to her of holy things, to which she lent a surprising attention, as if interiorly enlightened respecting divine truths. Her mind was precocious and clear, and her memory extraordinary. She understood the duties of a Christian better at the age of four or five than many grown‐up persons.

It was thus, away from the world, that the daughter of Adalric became from childhood the model of piety, drawing pure instructions, as from an inexhaustible source, from the noble superior of Baume.

IV.

While these things were taking place in Franche Comté, Deodatus, Bishop of Nevers, and son of S. Hunna, arrived in Alsace to preach the Gospel and join the hermits who officiated at Novient (Ebersheim‐Münster), the most ancient church of the province, and founded by S. Materne. The preaching of Deodatus drew an immense audience, among whom Adalric and Berswinde were the most assiduous. The duke, desirous of giving a public testimony of the benefit he had derived from the holy bishop’s sermons, resolved to build at Novient a convent and church in honor of SS. Peter and Paul, and endow them with ample revenues.

He begged Deodatus to superintend the construction of the new buildings. The work was commenced at once. Adalric refused nothing necessary for its completion, and Deodatus, wishing the church to be very solid, used in its construction the _débris_ of an old pagan temple in a neighboring forest, which he razed to the ground. S. Materne had long before overthrown the idols.(27)

When the church was finished, Deodatus and Adalric convoked, not only the Alsacian clergy, but a great number beyond the Vosges, that the pomp of the ceremony of consecration might equal the grandeur of the solemnity. The duke and duchess came from Hohenbourg with a great retinue. The duchess brought rich ornaments for the altar, and sacerdotal vestments which she had partly wrought with her own hands. After the consecration the duke gave S. Deodatus a sealed document conferring a great number of farms on the new cloister, for the support of the Benedictine monks who were to inhabit it and vow themselves to the worship of the Almighty.(28)

These events happened about the year 666. The franchises of Ebersheim‐ Münster were afterwards confirmed by Charlemagne.(29)

But let us return to the blind girl of the Convent of Baume, who was destined by heaven to be the greatest glory of her race. Cut off from the world by her infirmity and by her position, her life was one long prayer—one long act of adoration. Nevertheless she was twelve or thirteen years old before she was baptized, as all the most reliable chroniclers declare.

It was then, as now, the custom to baptize children shortly after their birth, and it is not to be supposed that Berswinde would neglect the precepts of the church, or be more solicitous for the temporal welfare of her child than for her eternal salvation. It is probable that the ceremony, being private in consequence of Adalric’s anger, consisted only in the application of water, or that there was some grave omission rendering the baptism null. However this may be, it was in the designs of Providence, as one of the old chroniclers says, that things should happen thus in order that a miracle might mark the solemn admission of the young princess into the Christian fold.

In those days, adds our historian, there lived in Bavaria a holy bishop named Erhard, on whom rested the divine blessing. This prelate had a vision in which he was commanded to go at once to the Convent of Baume. A voice said to him: “Thou wilt find a young servant of the Lord, whom thou shalt baptize and give the name of Odile. At the moment of baptism her eyes, which hitherto have been closed, shall open to the light.”

S. Erhard did not delay obeying this order, but, instead of taking the most direct route to Franche Comté, he passed over the steep mountains of Alsace and Lorraine, that he might see his brother Hidulphe, of high repute in the Christian world, who had voluntarily resigned the dignity of Archbishop of Treves to retire into the wilderness and found the Abbey of Moyenmoutier, where he might end his days in solitude and prayer. Erhard wished his brother to accompany him in his mission. An ancient tradition relates that, when the two brothers met, they flew into each other’s arms, and during their long embrace their souls held an intimate and mysterious communion which made words unnecessary. Hidulphe immediately prepared to follow Erhard, that he might witness the miracle about to be wrought by his means.

When the two holy pilgrims arrived at Baume, they asked to see the blind girl, and, on beholding her, they both exclaimed, as if animated by one spirit: “O Lord Jesus! who art the true light that enlightenest every man who cometh into the world, let thy mercy be diffused, like a beneficent dew, upon this thy young handmaiden, and grant sight to the eyes of her body, as well as light to her soul!”

Proceeding then to examine the catechumen, they found her thoroughly instructed in all the dogmas of the Christian religion, and were edified by the intelligence and piety manifested in her replies.

The ceremony of baptism took place a few days after. All the inmates of the abbey assembled in the church, and S. Hidulphe presented the young girl at the font. Erhard, having said the prescribed prayers, proceeded to anoint her eyes with the holy chrism, saying: “Henceforth let the eyes of thy body, as well as those of thy soul, be enlightened, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.” The nuns, kneeling around the church, awaited in profound silence and prayer the operation of the miracle, and their expectation was not vain; for, the moment Erhard ceased speaking, the child’s eyelids unclosed, her large blue eyes opened to the light, and her first look, which displayed the purity of her soul, was directed heavenward, as if to thank the Almighty for the favor he had accorded her.

All the witnesses praised God aloud. Erhard gave the princess the name of Odile, as he had been commanded. Then, turning towards the assembly, he recalled to their minds that there is no instance recorded until the time of Christ of the opening of the eyes of one born blind. “The miracle you have just witnessed,” added he, “is likewise the work of our beneficent Saviour. Beware of imitating the Jews, whose hearts closed more and more, though they saw the wonderful deeds Christ wrought before them, that they might be converted. God has permitted you to behold the wonderful event that has just happened, in order that your spiritual eyes may also be opened, and you may be the better disposed to serve the Divine Master, who protects his servants in so extraordinary a manner, and permits hardened sinners to be cast forth into eternal darkness!” Then, having blessed a veil, the prelate placed it on Odile’s head, giving her at the same time a golden _cassette_ containing precious relics, and predicting that Heaven reserved still greater favors for her if she carefully preserved the treasures of grace she had already received.

Hidulphe and Erhard left Baume as soon as their mission was accomplished; but before their departure they recommended the abbess and her companions to watch the unfolding of the rare flower which grew in their peaceful cloister. Then, giving a last benediction to Odile, Erhard said to her: “O my dear daughter! may we hereafter, through the mercy of Almighty God, be reunited in the kingdom of heaven, and taste the joys to which we are all called!”

V.

The two brothers, having learned the secret of Odile’s birth, decided to inform Adalric of her miraculous cure, hoping to awaken in his heart the feeling of paternal love. The retreat in which Hidulphe lived being only a few hours’ distance from Hohenbourg, he was entrusted with the commission to the Duke of Alsace, and Erhard returned directly to his diocese, where the miraculous cure of Odile soon became known, and contributed greatly to the propagation of the faith.

Meanwhile, Hidulphe repaired to Oberehnheim, and, as he possessed in the highest degree the power of influencing men’s hearts, and his words generally made a profound impression on high and low, he flattered himself that, in informing the duke of what had just happened at Baume, his feelings towards the young exile would be immediately changed.

But the affection of Adalric was fastened on other objects. Notwithstanding the gravity of his fault, the blessing of Heaven continued to rest on his house. After sending away the poor blind child in anger and disdain, the duchess had borne him in succession four sons and a daughter named Roswinde, who by their sanctity became the ornaments of the church and of their country. From them sprang most of the royal families of Europe.

The duke refused to send for Odile. Perhaps, without owning it to himself, he experienced a certain fear of one so miraculously healed, and whom he had so unjustly banished. Nevertheless, he was not entirely insensible to the news, and, wishing to testify his gratitude to Hidulphe, he gave him the lands of Feldkirch for his abbey of Moyenmoutier.

Odile, then, continued after her baptism to live in the Convent of Baume. Her devotion, her indifference to the things of this world, and her profound recollection inspired a sentiment of respect among the virgins with whom she lived. With a grave and elevated mind, fervent piety, and an active charity, she possessed uncommon beauty,(30) and a child‐like simplicity marked with all the grace of her age. Not one of the recluses of the monastery subjected herself to greater austerities than Odile. Her fervor was particularly manifest during the solemn days in which the church celebrates the great mystery of the Redemption.

Her countenance and her tears testified to the love with which her heart was filled. It was evident that, at her first essay, her pure young soul had soared heavenward with the swiftness of a dove on the wing.

But she was to experience the trials of life. The nurse, for whom she had an affection truly filial, and who had sundered her family ties to be near Odile, fell dangerously ill at Baume. Her sufferings lasted several months. Doubtless God ordained it to be so, say the ancient chronicles, that she might satisfy in this world the eternal justice, and that Odile’s gratitude, generosity, and charity might be displayed. With the sanction of the superior, she only left the bedside of the guardian of her infancy to attend service at the chapel. She was at once servant, nurse, and, above all, comforter. She inspired her patient with courage, so that she humbly offered up her sufferings to our Lord, and awaited with joy and hope the hour of her departure. When the hour of deliverance appointed by Providence came, having received the last sacraments, she died peacefully in the arms of Odile, who closed her eyes and buried her.

VI.

In spite of her cruel exile, Odile had for a long time felt an ardent desire to behold her parents, at least once, and this feeling became stronger after the death of her nurse, the only tie that recalled her native land. She did not dream of being restored to her rank, or of exchanging her peaceful life for the bustle of her father’s court. She only wished to testify her love for her parents, and to be loved by them.

She had been told that Count Hugo was the most noble of Adalric’s four sons. He was universally considered the handsomest and most accomplished prince of his time. His illustrious birth was his least recommendation: he was prudent and generous, and animated by that lofty courage and goodness of heart so becoming to youth. Odile wrote to him, entrusting the letter, carefully wrapped in a piece of scarlet stuff, to a pilgrim. Hugo, charmed with the letter and, unlike most of the nobility of that time, knowing how to write, henceforth kept up a frequent correspondence with her. Odile often gave him serious advice, which he received with tender gratitude. Finding him well disposed, she decided to open her heart to him. Hugo joyfully hastened to intercede for his sister, begging his father to banish no longer a daughter whose virtues would reflect so much honor on his house. But the duke, with his inflexible pride, assumed a severe expression, and, in spite of his partiality for Hugo, told him he had particular motives, for which he was accountable to no one, for requiring Odile to remain at Baume. He also forbade his son ever making a like request. The young man was profoundly afflicted. Impelled by his ardent love for his sister, and believing her sweet presence would justify him in his father’s eyes, he immediately despatched horses and everything necessary for such a journey, telling his sister to set off immediately. Full of confidence in Hugo, and sure that her father had consented to her return, she left Baume. It was a sad and painful leave‐taking, but she consoled her aunt and the nuns by promising to return and end her days among them. But Heaven otherwise decreed.

Odile had hardly left the monastery when she began to reproach herself for too strong a desire to return to her family, and for the eagerness with which she looked forward to a taste of earthly happiness. She remembered that he to whom she wished to consecrate her life is a jealous God, who wishes his servants, instead of clinging to human creatures, to consider them as instruments of perfection. She shed many and bitter tears, but, according to her custom, she had recourse to prayer, which assuaged the trouble of her conscience and restored a sweet serenity and trust to her soul.

Protected by holy angels, she arrived safely at the foot of the mountain on which rose the new castle of Hohenbourg. Adalric was conversing with his sons when he perceived a company of armed men accompanying a vehicle that was slowly ascending the acclivity. He inquired who the strangers were. “It is my sister Odile,” replied Hugo joyfully. “And who dared bring her here without my orders?” cried the duke in an angry tone. The youth saw the truth must be acknowledged, and, bending his knee before his father, he said: “It was I, my lord. Impelled by my ardent love for her, I wrote her she could come. I am guilty through excessive affection. Punish me alone, if you will not forgive, for she is innocent.”

Hugo, relying too much on his father’s partiality, thought he should escape with only a few sharp words; but Adalric, inflamed with rage, raised the staff he held in his hand, and inflicted such a blow on his son that he fell senseless at his feet. Ashamed and sorry for his rashness, the duke raised him, and ordered that his bruises should be cared for.

Adalric’s anger had passed away when Odile arrived at the top of the mountain. Kneeling, she lifted towards him the eyes once closed to the light. The duke, recalling the miracle wrought in her behalf, felt, for the first time, an impulse of affection, and, raising her in a kind manner, he bade his sons to welcome her affectionately. At that instant Berswinde and her daughter Roswinde came running out. The duchess kissed, with many tears, Odile’s eyes, acknowledging that God had suffered her child to be born blind that he might at a later day manifest his power by repeating the miracle of the gospel. Our saint was then conducted to the chapel. There, humbly prostrate, she thanked God for protecting her in her journey and reuniting her to her family.

VII.

Although Adalric’s aversion to Odile was lessened, and he showed her some kindness at her arrival, he was far from feeling the same love for her as for the rest of his children. He assigned her a retired part of the castle, and gave her as a companion a holy maiden from Great Britain who was vowed to the service of God. He never admitted her to his presence, and only allowed her the portion of a servant for her subsistence. Our saint, overlooking this unjust treatment, led at Hohenbourg a life as simple and retired as at the Convent of Baume, often finding means, by really depriving herself of the necessaries of life, of aiding the needy. It was not long before her father awoke to better feelings. Crossing a court of the castle, one day, he met Odile carrying a covered dish. Laying aside his usual coldness, he said mildly: “Where are you going, my child?” “My lord,” replied she, “I am going to cook a little oat‐meal for some poor sick people.” These words, timidly uttered, touched the duke. He looked tenderly at his daughter, whose love and sweetness were unchanged by his treatment, and exclaimed, with tears in his eyes: “Be not afflicted, my dearest child, at having hitherto led a life of privation. It shall not be so hereafter.”

In fact, from that moment the relations of Odile and her father were changed. He began to treat her with marked favor, as if to pay the long arrear of paternal love; but she, who was not cast down by misfortune, showed herself unelated by prosperity. Disdaining the pleasures now at her command, she continued to devote her whole life to God. Her days and nights were passed in prayer and good works. Her example produced such an effect that it was imitated by the rest of the family. Her sister Roswinde renounced the pleasures of the world to bear the cross of our Lord. The manners of her father and brothers were softened, and they endeavored to practise the Christian virtues. Even the servants of the castle began to live devoutly. She gained all hearts. She was such a friend to the poor and unfortunate that Hohenbourg soon became their refuge. “Our dear saint,” for such is the name the old historians of Alsace give her, was not satisfied with bestowing on them kind words. She gave them all the money and clothing she possessed. She often endured hunger and refused food that she might aid the sick still more. Every day she descended the steep mountain‐path to seek those who were unable to reach the castle, and encourage them with her pious counsels. Her zeal in their behalf was unbounded. She performed the most revolting offices with her own hands. The unhappy regarded her not only as a benefactress, but as a friend to whom they could open their hearts and consciences. The duke and duchess soon became so fond of her that if any one wished a special favor they begged it through her. Adalric’s repentance for his past injustice exceeded the anger he felt at her birth. He once thought his conduct justifiable, now he acknowledged it was inexcusable, thus showing himself superior to most men of his station, who are unwilling to allow they are ever wrong. He actually commended Hugo for his disobedience, and tried to atone by particular favors for his cruel treatment at the time of Odile’s arrival.

But this serenity could not last forever. Our saint, who had endured her father’s coldness so heroically, now began to grow weary of a life of grandeur. She was depressed by the flattery of which she was the object. Duties that were purely worldly absorbed part of the time she wished to consecrate to God. In a word, she often sighed after the retirement of Baume and the life she led there. She finally asked her father’s permission to return to her aunt and end her days in penitential works. “I am misunderstood here,” said she; “I am treated with a respect of which I am not worthy. You do not know what I really am, and, if I remain here any longer, I may even forget it myself.”

But the duke opposed her departure, telling her that by practising the Christian virtues at court she could do more good than by leaving the world for the austerities of Baume. Prayers and tears were of no avail; Adalric’s resolution was not to be shaken. Odile, despairing of her return, wrote a touching farewell letter to her old companions. Their sorrow was tempered by remembering that she was under the special protection of God, who doubtless wished to make use of her in extending elsewhere the glory of his holy name. Full of veneration for her memory, they put carefully away among the precious objects in their church a violet‐colored veil, embroidered with gold and silk of different colors by the daughter of the Duke of Alsace when she lived among them, an exile from the house of her father.

To Be Concluded Next Month.

Fac‐Similes Of Irish National Manuscripts.

Few of our readers are probably aware that the English government, for the last ten years, has been making fac‐similes of the most important national MSS., for publication and sale, by the process of photo‐zincography. The _Domesday Book_ was the first work taken in hand. This wonderful record, without a peer in the world, is a general survey of the land of England, ordered by William the Conqueror in the year of our Lord 1085. It is the undisputed testimony of the relations existing at that period between the landlords and their tenants; and it describes the state of society which existed in England under the Anglo‐Saxon kings up to the conquest of the kingdom by the Duke of Normandy. So successfully was the printing of the fac‐similes of the _Domesday Book_ accomplished, and so acceptable to historical students of every degree was its publication, that, in the spring of 1864, the Lords of H. M. Treasury unanimously endorsed the proposal by the late Master of the Rolls (Lord Romilly) that the same process of photo‐zincography should be applied to the reproduction and perpetuation of some of the “National Records.” Three volumes of English manuscripts and three volumes of Scottish manuscripts have been followed by the preparation for three volumes of Irish national MSS., which will rank (says Mr. William Basevi Sanders, the Assistant Keeper of Her Majesty’s Records, in his _Annual Report_, printed in the year 1873, on the fac‐similes photo‐zincographed at the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton) among the first of the many valuable publications which Sir Henry James (the military engineer officer in charge) has been the means of laying before the public.

Let us look over Mr. Sanders’s description of the Irish MSS. He has gathered his information from the best sources, having consulted and freely used O’Donovan’s edition of the _Annals of the Four Masters_, the accessible works of Dr. Petrie, Dr. Todd, Dr. Reeves, and Prof. Westwood, and more particularly from the elaborate investigations of Prof. O’Curry, published in his _Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History_.

The first of these MSS., both in point of age and on account of the remarkable history that attaches to it, is the volume known as _Domhnach Airgid_, or _Silver Shrine_. This is a volume of the Gospels—perhaps the oldest in the world—of the Vth century, and traditionally believed to have been the private book of devotion of S. Patrick himself, and to have been given by him to S. Mac Carthainn when he placed him over the See of Clogher. The legend in which this curious story is narrated appears in the _Tripartite Life of S. Patrick_, and O’Curry in his lectures gives the following literal translation of it:

“S. Patrick, having gone into the territory of Ui Cremthainn, founded many churches there. As he was on his way from the North, and coming to the place now called Clochar, he was carried over a stream by his strong man, Bishop Mac Carthainn, who, while bearing the saint, groaned aloud, exclaiming ‘Uch! uch!’

“ ‘Upon my good word,’ said the saint, ‘it was not usual with you to speak that word.’

“ ‘I am now old and infirm,’ said Bishop Mac Carthainn, ‘and all my early companions on the mission you have set down in their respective churches, while I am still on my travels.’

“ ‘Found you a church, then,’ said the saint, ‘that shall not be too near for us for familiarity, nor too far from us for intercourse.’

“And the saint then left Bishop Mac Carthainn at Clochar, and bestowed on him the Domhnach Airgid, which had been given to him from heaven when he was on the sea coming from Erinn.”

The shrine which held this relic is composed of three distinct covers, of different dates—of wood, of copper plated with silver, and the most modern of silver plated with gold, richly ornamented with figures of the Saviour, the Blessed Virgin, and saints, and with representations of animals, and traceries, among which is a mounted figure, sword in hand, and displaying with minute accuracy all the dress and accoutrements of an Irish noble of the XIVth century.

The MS. itself is in such a state from age and damp as to make inspection of its contents impossible, the leaves being all stuck together, and the whole of about the consistency and appearance of a piece of brick. The portions of which facsimiles will be given present a good example of the better parts of it. It was originally the property of the monastery of Clones, and was procured in the county Monaghan by Mr. George Smith, from whom it was purchased for £300 (say $1,500) by Lord Rossmore, who presented it to the Royal Irish Academy, where it remains at present.

The next MS. is as curious—the _Cathach_, or _Book of Battles_—a copy of the Psalms, supposed to have been written by S. Columba. It consists of fifty‐eight leaves of vellum, and appears to be perfect from the xxxist to the cvith Psalm, all prior to which are gone, and is enclosed in a handsome shrine. Why it was called the _Book of Battles_ is told by O’Curry, from the _Life of S. Columba_, by Magnus O’Dohmnaill. S. Columba, when on a visit to S. Finnen of Drom Finn, being very anxious to have a copy of S. Finnen’s Book of the Psalms, made one surreptitiously by borrowing the book, and copying it in the church after every one else had left. S. Finnen had notice of this underhand proceeding of his brother saint from one of his pupils, and accordingly, as soon as the copy was finished, demanded possession of it. S. Columba refusing to comply with this demand, the matter was referred to Diarmaid Mac Ferghusa Cerrbheaill, King of Erinn, who pronounced against him in a judgment which to this day remains a proverb in Ireland—_Le gach bóin a boinin_ (“To every cow its calf”), and so, by analogy, “to every book its copy.” This adverse judgment, closely followed by the accidental death of the son of Diarmaid’s chief steward while engaged in a game of hurling with the son of the King of Connaught—at that time a hostage at Tara—who was torn from S. Columba’s arms, into which he had thrown himself for sanctuary, and put to death, so enraged the saint that he stirred up his relatives in Tirconnel and Tyrone to revenge the insult, and a bloody battle was fought in Connaught, which ended in the rout of the king’s army: and this was how the book obtained its name.

For thirteen hundred years the book was preserved as an heirloom by the O’Donnells, having been handed down by S. Columba himself, who belonged to that clan. It is now preserved in the Royal Irish Academy. Four pages have been selected for copying, containing severally the first twelve verses of Psalm lxxx., the last three of lxxxix., and the first seven of xc., the whole of xciv., and the first eleven of xcv. The condition in which these pages remain is wonderful, and reflects great honor upon the family who have for so many ages and through so many national troubles and disturbances preserved this relic with sacred care.

The next is the _Book of Durrow_, or _Gospels of S. Columba_, a volume containing 248 leaves of vellum, written in columns by the hand of S. Columba himself, as asserted in the following inscription on the fly‐leaf: “Liber autem hic scriptus est a manu ipsius B. Columbkille per spatium 12 dierum anno 500”; and again, “Rogo beatitudinem tuam, sancte presbiter Patrici, ut quicunque, hunc libellum manu tenuerit, meminerit Columbæ scriptoris, qui hoc scripsi ipsemet evangelium per xii. dierum spatium gratiâ Domini nostri.” This last inscription is quoted by Dr. Petrie as conclusive evidence of the date of the volume, which is considered by Dr. Reeves to be either as old as S. Columba’s day, or nearly so (a somewhat curious hypothesis if the volume were written by S. Columba).

Until its presentation to Trinity College by Dr. Jones, Bishop of Meath, this book was kept at Durrow, in King’s County, the monastery and church of which were founded by S. Columba about the year 550, where the tradition of its having belonged to their patron saint was preserved and believed in by the monks. It was originally enclosed in a silver‐mounted _cuhmdach_, or shrine, made for it by order of Flann, King of Ireland, who reigned from 879 to 916, which was lost, as Mr. Westwood conjectures, in 1007, when the volume was stolen.

The portions selected for copying are pages 12b, 14a 118a, and 173a. The first contains the prayer of the writer above quoted, under which is also written, “Ora pro me, frater mi; Dominus tecum sit”; the second is the first page of S. Matthew’s Gospel, the third the first page of S. Luke’s Gospel, and the fourth the concluding page of the same Gospel, at the bottom of which is written, “+ Miserere Domine Naemani + filii Neth +” names which O’Curry states had not been identified at the time of his lectures, though the surname seems to be very like that of the scribe after whom another of the MSS. contained in this volume is called—_Mac Nathi_.

The next MS. in order is the famous _Book of Kells_, a copy of the Gospels, also traditionally ascribed to S. Columba—a tradition doubted by some, but which Dr. Todd saw no reason to mistrust, as the book is undoubtedly a MS. of that age. About the same time as that when the _Book of Durrow_ was sacrilegiously deprived of its shrine, the _Book of Kells_ was also stolen out of the church from which it takes its name. The circumstance is thus narrated in the _Four Masters_: “The age of Christ 1006.... The great Gospel of Colum Cille was stolen at night from the Western _Erdomh_ [sacristy] of the great church of Ceandrrus. This was the principal relic of the Western World on account of its singular cover, and it was found after twenty nights and two months, its gold having been stolen off it, and a sod over it.”

It continued in the possession of the Church of Kells till the time of Archbishop Usher, after whose death it was granted with the rest of that prelate’s library, in which it was then found, by King Charles II., to the university of Dublin, and has been preserved in the library of Trinity College ever since.

Of the pages chosen for copying, 6b, 7a, and 27a are entries concerning lands, believed to be the only existing specimens, of pre‐Anglo and Norman date, of deeds written in the Irish language. They are written in a rude, rough hand, that looks unsightly in contrast with the character of the contents of the volume proper. 34a is the beginning of S. Matthew’s Gospel, and is entirely filled with the initial of “Liber generationis.” 123a, 124a, and 126b contain S. Matthew’s story of the crucifixion, 124a being all taken up by the words, “Tunc crucifixerant Christum et duos latrones,” written in a very singular fashion, and enclosed in a framework profusely decorated. 200b contains a portion of the genealogy in the third chapter of S. John, and 19b displays a collection of fantastic symbols, with a very handsome capital Z, and the first two syllables of Zacharias embellished with spirited figures of a dog pursuing a wolf.

It is impossible to exaggerate the elaborate ornamentation of this remarkable volume, or the quaintness of the grotesque subjects introduced into it. The gigantic initial letter, which is given as an example in this volume, is filled in with an almost incredible interlacing of extravagant impossibilities: Serpentine figures with human heads; intertwined sketches of men spotted like leopards in attitude of earnest conversation; rats sitting on the backs of cats, who are holding other rats by the tails, the rats being engaged in eating a cake; human figures with impossible combinations of their own and other creature’s limbs; strange shapes of birds and fishes, geometrical designs and intricate arabesque traceries, all woven together in the wildest dreamlike way, and having an effect that charms the eye, and fills the mind with amazement at the fancy that designed and the hand that executed them.

The next is another copy of the Gospels, known as the _Book of Dimma Mac Nathi_, made, it is said, at the express desire of S. Cronan of Roscrea, who died in the beginning of the VIIth century. The drawings in this book are very rude, and the writing of some parts of it difficult to read, though the scribe Dimma is supposed to have belonged to a family of saints, one of whom, at any rate, was greatly distinguished as a penman. It was purchased from Sir William Betham, its original place of deposit having been the Abbey of Roscrea, and is now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.

Four pages have been chosen for copying. The first contains portions of chapters 27 and 28 of S. Matthew’s Gospel, and has this note at the foot: “Finit. Oroit do Dimma rodscrib pro Deo et benedictione” (“A prayer for Dimma, who has written for God, and a benediction”). Between the 49th and 50th verses of the 27th chapter there is this other verse, the substance of which only appears in the Gospel of S. John: “Alius vero, acceptâ lanceâ pupugit latus ejus et exivit aqua et sanguis.” Here, however, the piercing is made to take place before the death. The second is the illuminated page preceding S. John. In it is depicted a bird, probably intended for that saint’s symbol, an eagle, carrying a book in its talons, surrounded by a border of arabesque design. The last two pages contain the first thirty‐eight verses of the 1st chapter of S. John, the first written along the full breadth of the page and with a handsome initial “In,” the second written in columns.

The next MS. is another copy of the Gospels, known as the _Book of Moling_, and supposed to have been written about the year 690 by S. Moling, Bishop of Ferns. It was presented to Trinity College, Dublin, by a member of the family of Kavanagh, by whom it had been preserved for many generations in its metal _cumhdach_, or covering.

Four pages have been selected. The first is a figure of one of the Evangelists, with a book in his left hand, and a pen, which he is dipping into an ink‐horn, in his right. The second contains the 18th chapter of S. Matthew, from the 8th verse to the 27th; the third, from the 27th verse to the 16th verse of the 19th chapter of S. Matthew; and the fourth, the concluding verses of the last chapter of S. John.

_The Book of Armagh_ has also been selected. This volume, a transcript of one still older, supposed to have been the holograph of S. Patrick, was ascribed by Sir W. Betham to Bishop Aedh of Stetty, whose death is recorded in the _Four Masters_ in 698; and O’Curry conceived it to be as old as 724, but Mr. Graves seems to have proved that it was written by the scribe Ferdomnach in 807. It is a small quarto volume, consisting of 221 leaves of vellum, and containing an extract from the _Tripartite Life of S. Patrick_, annotations on that saint’s life by Tirechan and others, his confession or epistle to the Irish, the Epistle of S. Jerome to Pope Damasus, the ten Eusebian canons, an explanation of Hebrew names used in the Gospels, with various prefaces and arguments, the four Gospels and remaining books of the New Testament, the life of S. Martin of Tours by Sulpicius, with two epistles by Sulpicius and Severus, and concludes with a prayer. It belonged to the Church of Armagh, being, as Prof. Westwood relates, held in such veneration that the family of Mac Mayre held lands from the See of Armagh by the tenure of its safe keeping; and in 1846 it was presented to Trinity College, Dublin, by the Rev. Francis Brownlow, into whose family it had passed in the XVIIth century.

Six pages have been selected, the first three of which contain the extract from the _Tripartite Life of S. Patrick_. On the first column of page 18b is the following account of a miracle performed by S. Patrick: “Sechnall went afterwards to rebuke Patrick on account of a chariot he had. Then Patrick sent the chariot to Sechnall without a charioteer in it, but it was an angel that directed it. Sechnall sent it, when it had stopped three nights there with him, to Manchan, and it remained three nights with him. He sent it to Fiacc. Fiacc rejected it. After that where they went to was round the church three times, when the angel said, ‘It is to you they have been given from Patrick when he came to know your disease.’ ” The miracle as here related is, as O’Curry very truly observes, not quite intelligible, but the key to it is to be found in the _Tripartite Life_, from which it had probably been taken. The story there is that once, when Sechnall was at Armagh, he remarked that two chariot horses which he saw there would be a fitting gift to Bishop Fiacc. Patrick was not at home at the time, but as soon as he returned and heard this he had the horses harnessed to a chariot, and sent them off, without a coach‐man, to Fiacc at Stetty, where they arrived safely. The reason of S. Patrick making him this present was to enable him to go to his cave on the hill of Drom Coblai, where he used to repair on Shrove Saturday with five loaves, and remain till Easter Saturday; and because “chafers had gnawed his legs so that death was near him.”

Then come _The Gospels of Maelbride Mac Durnan_, Archbishop of Armagh from 885 to 927, a small and beautifully‐written copy of the Gospels, made apparently by the same scribe, Ferdomnach, who wrote the _Book of Armagh_, and at about the same period. The initial page of each Gospel is very gracefully illuminated, and to each is prefixed a page bearing the figure of its writer, surrounded by a border of delicate tracery. The pages selected are the first four, comprising the “Liber generationis” and the inscription in capitals, the face of folio 5 being the beginning of S. Matthew’s narrative; the dorse of folio 65, which contains his account of the scourging and mocking, and at the foot this note by the scribe: _Mór assársa for Coimdid nime agus talman_ (“Great this violence upon the God of heaven and earth”); the dorse of folio 69, containing the following letter, written in Saxon, is probably the earliest known contemporary copy of a petition for restitution of temporalities to an English bishop:

“Wulfstan, Archbishop, greets Cnut his Lord and Aelfgyfe the Queen humbly, and I make known to you two, liege, that we have done as the certificate came to us from you with regard to the Bishop Aethelnoth, that we have now consecrated him. Now pray I for God’s love, and in the name of all God’s saints, that ye will have respect to God and to the holy order. That he may be admitted to the possessions that others before him were: namely, Dunstan the good and many another: that he may be likewise admitted to rights and honors. In which case it shall be for both of you meritorious before God, and eke honorable before the world.”

At the end of S. Matthew’s Gospel there is, in addition to Archbishop Wulfstan’s (of York) letter, this memorandum in Latin: “Cnud, King of the Angles, has given to Christ’s Church an arm of S. Bartholomew the Apostle, with the great pall and the golden crown of his head; and the port of Sandwich and all issues of the water of the same from either side of the river; so that a ship floating in the stream when the water shall be high, at the distance of the cast of a very small hatchet from the shore, the droits of the ship are to be received by the servants of Christ’s Church. And no man whatsoever has custom in the same port except the monks of Christ’s Church. Theirs also is the ferry over the port, and the boats and toll of boats and of all ships which come to Sandwich from Peperness as far as Northmouth. If, however, anything be found on the high sea, being brought to Sandwich, Christ’s Church shall take half, and the remaining part shall rest with the finders.”

The volume is preserved in the library of Lambeth Palace, but it is a singular fact that it finds no place either in the catalogue of that library published in 1812, or in the catalogue of the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where Archbishop Parker’s collection of MSS. is preserved.

To Be Concluded Next Month.

Congress Of The Catholic Germans At Mayence.

On the 16th and 17th days of June the Second Congress of the Catholic Germans assembled at Mayence. This congress must be distinguished from the regular annual congress of all the Catholic societies of Germany. The constitution of the latter was formed during the stormy times of 1848. It treats only upon religious questions, and excludes on principle the discussion of politics during its deliberations; whereas the Congress of Catholic Germans, which held its first session two years ago, has for its object, according to its statutes, the defence of the liberty and the rights of the Catholic Church, and the maintenance of Christian principles in all the spheres of public life by all moral and lawful means, especially by the use of constitutionally‐recognized and guaranteed civil rights; and it therefore desires to be considered a political organization. It is already in operation throughout Germany, in Prussia particularly. Its sessions are held in Mayence—in that city which, owing to its advantageous position in Middle Germany, opposite the confluence of the river Mayence with the Rhine, was chosen by the Romans as a boundary, and by S. Boniface as the central point for the Christianization of the Teutons. It is true that “Golden Mayence,” the special and true daughter of the Roman Church (_Aurea Moguntia sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ specialis vera filia_), as the inscription reads upon the old city seal, has, since the beginning of this century, fallen greatly from its former splendor. In it once resided an archbishop, who was the legate of the apostolic chair for Germany, and metropolitan over twenty‐four bishoprics, which extended from Brandenburg to Chur in Switzerland, and from Metz to Prague and Olmütz, and which comprised the largest part of the old German empire; so that next to the Pope he was called the greatest prince of the church (_Post Papam secundus_, says Marianus Scotus (+ 1086) in his _Chron. Aet. VI._, ad a. 750), and in his temporal position as elector and hereditary chancellor of the empire ranked next to the emperor, and was called the Prince of princes (Moguntius post imperatorem princeps est principum—_Vita Arnoldi_). Mayence is now only a provincial city belonging to little Hessia, and the boundaries of its bishopric are inconsiderable. Nevertheless, in the present combat for the liberty of the church, it occupies, and has for years occupied, an important place by reason of a succession of great men, Bishop Von Ketteler at the head, and it cannot be doubted that the city will in future be of great importance to the Catholic interests of Germany.

The _centrum_ of the Catholic party in Mayence is the Casino zum Frankfurter‐hof (Casino of the court of Frankfort), whose spacious and imposing hall has not its equal in the city. In former times this hall was used when a blow was to be struck at the interest of the Catholic Church; but things are changed, and the Frankfurter‐hof is now the stronghold in which the defenders of the Catholic Church meet together. Not until the use of this hall was acquired, owing to the determined efforts of Falk III., the people’s champion, so well known throughout all Germany, did the Catholic party in Mayence begin to feel its own importance. For the past twenty years its members have appeared regularly at every election upon the battle‐field, to be as regularly defeated; but they were finally successful in securing Canon Dr. Moufang as their deputy at the last election for the _Reichstag_.

In the above‐named hall the Congress of Catholic Germans held its late sessions. It was appropriately decorated for the occasion. In a prominent place, surrounded by beautiful flowers, was seen the bust of our Holy Father, Pius IX. Above, in golden letters, were written the words, “For God and Fatherland,” and over this the sign of redemption with the inscription, “In this sign thou shalt conquer.” Upon the pillars of the hall were placed the coats‐of‐arms of the different bishoprics of Germany. The crape hanging over those of the Archbishops of Cologne and Posen and Gnesen, and that of the Bishop of Treves, was emblematic of the grief which fills the heart of every Catholic when he remembers the three venerable prelates who, forcibly removed from their episcopal sees, now testify in prison to the divinity of Christianity and the inalienable right of the church to that liberty in matters of faith and religion left her by her Founder. The evening before the opening of the Congress many members of the society met from all parts of Germany to greet one another. Even the United States was represented in the person of the learned F. Hecker. A superficial glance was enough to convince any one that the nobility in particular desired by their presence to show their love and affection for our persecuted mother, the church. For years the majority of the Catholic nobles of Westphalia and the Rhine have been animated with a deep religious feeling. The best names among the aristocracy are generally found at the head of the numerous appeals in behalf of religion; and in their own homes (a fact which is of great importance) these nobles do not strive to emulate by outward splendor those “capitalists” whose lives are spent in acquiring riches, but they rather seek to uphold the honor of their names by the simplicity of their mode of life, in their daily actions, by educating their children as Catholics should, and instilling into them principles of honesty, morality, and every Christian virtue. It makes a lasting impression upon whomsoever is admitted to familiar intercourse with any of these noble families to see all the members of the household devoutly assembled in the private chapel of the mansion, for the adornment of whose altars no expense has been spared, there to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; and in the evening to behold the father of the family, by ringing a bell, again summons them into the chapel for evening prayer and examen of conscience, at which the chaplain, but oftener the head of the house, be he old or young, performs the duty of reading the prayers. Fathers and mothers should imitate the example of these noblemen, and when priests, on account of their faith, are imprisoned or exiled, they themselves should take the place of the priests in their own homes. Then will the zeal of priests grow stronger and Catholic faith take deeper root. Would to God that we could see the same state of things in many castles in Middle Germany, in Silesia, Bavaria, and in Brisgau (Baden), as is now seen in Westphalia and on the Rhine!

But let us return, after this digression, to our Congress in the Frankfurter‐hof. Its president, Baron von Loë, representative in the _Reichstag_, who last year with manly courage defended the organization against intrigues of all kinds, was received with universal applause when he ascended the rostrum and opened Congress with the salutation, “Praise be to Jesus Christ!” In a few but convincing words he explained why, despite the serious aspect of the times, they had met in “Golden Mayence,” where liberty of speech is yet permitted. (A short time ago a meeting at Treves was dissolved because Herr Majunke, a representative in the _Reichstag_, had said in the course of his remarks that Bismarck was only mortal, and while lying upon his sick‐bed suffered as much as any beggar who lies ill in his hut. Another meeting was broken up by the Prussian police because the speaker had announced his intention of discoursing upon one particular theme. Who knows what terrible things the police understood by the word “theme”?) Then followed a long succession of congratulations which the guests, coming from all parts of Germany, had personally to offer. As space does not permit us to give a lengthened sketch of all these speeches, we must content ourselves with simply giving the title of the address and the name of the speaker.

Dr. Evels of Bonn spoke concerning the latest cultivated plant, which grows only in Germany, and there sporadically, notwithstanding the most careful attention from high quarters—that is, Old Catholicism. With this exception, no dangers threaten the Catholic Church in Germany. Count Bassenheim was the bearer of greetings from the Bishop of Basel, who asked the prayers of the members for the persecuted friends of religion in Switzerland. Baron Stillfried of Vienna assured the Congress that the Catholics of Austria were united, and expected the salvation of Austria only from intimate union with the church. Dr. Lingens of Aix‐la‐Chapelle invited all present to attend the exposition of relics in the venerable electoral city of the old German emperors, which exposition takes place this year, and not again until 1881. Baron von Frankenstein of Bavaria spoke on the state of affairs in his country, declaring his belief that they would soon change for the better. Count Kageneck of Freiburg in Baden looked confidently forward to a happy future, relying upon the just rights of the Catholics and upon the powerful protection of God. Count Bissingen of Würtemberg (Swabia) asserted that the fable of the Catholics hating the empire finds no believers among the honest people of Swabia. Herr Baudri of Cologne, the brother of the coadjutor‐bishop, an old, faithful warrior, proclaimed in words of burning eloquence the earnestness with which the enemies of the Catholic Church publicly declare that the destruction of the church is the order of the day, and he denounced the corruption of public opinion by the state, and the manner in which it subsidized the press by means of the funds stolen from the church. He thanked divine Providence for giving Germany such a united episcopate, and the present affliction of the church only demonstrated the fact that not only in Germany, but through the whole world, Catholics form only one family. While our enemies, he continued, raise on high the torch of discord, which has so frequently brought our fatherland to the verge of ruin, our Congress should use every effort to build a new great and united Germany upon the foundations of a Christianity similar to that upon which old Germany became great and powerful. Herr Stroebel of Charlottenburg made the next speech, and he was followed by the Rev. F. Altheimer, Curate of Amorbach in Odenwald, Hellwich of Deidesheim in Palatine, Herr Wiese, merchant of Werden, Baron von Schorlemer of Overhagen, Herr Busch, contractor of Neuss, and finally by the junior editor of the _Germania_, Herr Cremer of Berlin.

While the hall reverberated to the hearty cheers of the members, letters and telegrams were constantly arriving from the interior and from foreign countries, thus making perfect the picture of Catholic unity presented by this assembly. Despatches from Austria were especially numerous, showing thereby that in that country also the Catholics are keeping watch in the struggle that has begun. The old imperial city of Vienna gladdened our hearts with two telegrams. In the one the Prince von Fürstenberg salutes us in the name of the Catholic societies of Vienna; in the other the president of the Catholic people’s associations of Lower Austria sends his best wishes that “the heroic battle which Germany’s bishops, priests, and laymen wage with such sublime courage may find its end in a speedy victory for the holy cause of the church,” and adds the assurance: “We Catholics of Austria are firmly determined, confiding in God’s protection, to offer the same resistance if the same attacks are made upon the church.” Six telegrams from “green Styria” reached us, four of which were sent by the Catholics of Grätz, and two by the Catholic societies of Marburg and Wildon. “They desire to oppress you and us,” telegraphed Senator Karlon of Grätz, “but we will yet be the victors; for Christ lives, Christ reigns, Christ commands, and Christ will triumph.” To these were added a telegram from the Catholic Society of Klagenfurth in Carinthia, and two others from ever‐faithful Tyrol, from the society in Botzen, which numbers more than 3,000 members, and from the society of Innsbrück. The president of the last society, Julius von Riccabona, sent us the following characteristic Tyrolese wish: “As the snow melts on the high mountain beneath the rays of the sun, so also may the intrigues against our holy church disappear before the power of truth.” Charles Count of Schoenbrunn and George Prince of Lobkowitz expressed in telegrams their respect, sympathy, and good wishes, while from far‐distant Hungary the Catholic Political Society of Presburg sent assurances of their love and affection. From Munich, Bavaria, came telegrams, from the diocesan clergy of Eichstaedt, from the Centrum member Lang of Kelheim, and from the society of Catholic men in Wasserburg on the Inn. From Noerdlingen the society of Catholic men in Riesa, numbering over 1,400 members, writes among other things: “We feel in our hearts the afflictions which the Catholics of Prussia endure; we pray for the bishops, priests, and laity who are imprisoned on account of their religious convictions; we approve of the conduct and praise the fidelity of our Catholic brethren; yes, we are edified by their unity in faith and by their firmness, and we congratulate them on their perseverance and courage, which, because it comes from God, will conquer the world.... We shall never consent to give to Cæsar the things that belong to God; if it should be demanded of us, we shall obey God rather than man, and imitate the example of the Prussian Catholics.” From the south came greetings from the society of men in Constance and from the president of the Helvetian Pius Society, Count M. Scherer‐Bouard of Lucerne, and finally from Hunfeld, Viersen, München‐Gladbach, Bochum, Luedinghausen, Kluesedoerpen, Prussia, two from the city of Hanover, one from the northern missionaries of New Münster in Holstein, and the last from remote Dantzic. Among other despatches, there is worthy of special mention the telegram of Prince Salvati, in the name of the Congress of the Catholic Societies of Italy, which met at Venice, and the following from London: “The Catholic Union of Great Britain extends to you a brother’s hand to encourage you in the struggle with the evil spirit, and at the same time it deplores the death of your champion, Malinckrodt. (Signed) Duke of Norfolk, President of the Catholic Union of Great Britain.”

The greatest interest was shown when the mammoth address from the United States was exhibited. It contained upon a roll of paper one thousand feet long 30,000 signatures of Catholic men whose own or whose fathers’ cradle had rested upon German soil. (A few days after this address was again exposed in the great hall, and the endless roll of paper was drawn from the table of the president up to the glass cupola, and from there letting it fall down again upon the president’s table, it was taken up for the second time to the chandelier, and from thence to the roof.) The fearless expressions contained in this document, which, thanks to “our freedom of speech,” could not be dwelt upon at length, and the grandeur of this manifestation, showed the imprint of the youthful and vigorous mind of men who glory in being citizens of the greatest republic in the world—the United States. Not long ago we finished a great war in a great manner. It was then the pride of Germans to be German. Since then, however, the little banners of religious narrow‐mindedness have been everywhere unfurled, and the so‐called liberal party has sacrificed not only its principles, but the most important articles of the Prussian constitution—the idea of a great Germany and peace and liberty. With the exception of a huge military power, everything has dwindled away. The men who won renown in 1870 and 1871 are no longer heard of. The men of the _Centrum_ are our real consolation, for by their prudent and fearless defence of truth, liberty, and justice they have obtained great merit and are entitled to enduring praise.

To place their labors under the protection of God, the Catholic Congress of Germany assembled early on the morning of June 16 in the venerable Cathedral of Mayence, where they assisted at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and received holy communion from the hands of the Rt. Rev. Bishop Herr von Ketteler.

The devotion of these men, gathered from all parts of Germany, was greatly increased by the music, which was executed in a most masterly manner by the cathedral choir, who gave selections from the following composers: Vechi, Aichinger, Orlando Lasso, Palestrina, Croce, Vittoria, and Piadana.

In the session which was held with closed doors the president first spoke of the sadness which filled the hearts of all the Catholics of Germany on account of the untimely death of Herman von Malinckrodt, deputy to the _Reichstag_. The memory of this wonderful man, like a mourning accord, seemed to permeate all the transactions, whether in writing or in words, and made itself felt even in the banquet‐hall. We shall not, however, dwell any longer upon this theme, as we intend to give a short sketch of the life of this faithful champion of the church.

Of the business transacted in the private session we shall make brief mention. That which, as a general rule, is _last_ thought of in all great Catholic undertakings, was in this instance the _first_ to receive attention—we mean the finances. In this regard, however, the Congress is deserving of no reproach, as it attached too little instead of too much importance to money—a prince seemingly so insignificant, but yet one who rules the world. The Catholic Congress, organized as it is throughout Germany, stands in need of certain pecuniary means, which want will be felt in future even more than now. For this reason every member is obliged to give six _Silbergroschen_ (about fifteen cents). It must, however, be understood that the collection of this money is not made without some difficulty, since the organization is only in its infancy, and the number of members constantly increasing.

We learn from the report of Herr Racke, High Treasurer of Darmstadt, owing to whose self‐sacrificing labors the finances of our Union are in a very prosperous condition, that the collections of last year amounted to 17,883 thalers, 14,000 of which were put out on interest, including 7,000 loaned to different Catholic newspapers. Another question came up regarding the existence of the Union. According to the law of Prussia in reference to societies, a political society cannot act as a union or central society, nor form branches depending upon the union; on the other hand, however, it is lawful for one society to exist over all Germany, and it can have its affairs conducted by authorized agents. Our union was from the very beginning most anxious to correspond with this law. Notwithstanding this, however, the Prussian authorities have pretended to discover the existence of local branches, in consequence of which many of them have been suppressed. The reason for this proceeding, which called into question the existence of the Union itself, was Section 10 of the statutes, which has reference to meetings held in different parts of the empire. To avoid further vexations, this paragraph was stricken out, and at the same time it was expressly said that Mayence was to be the headquarters of the Union, and that there the annual general meetings were to take place.

Herr Racke, merchant of Mayence, and secretary of the Union, who had taken upon his youthful and strong shoulders the principal burden of the pecuniary affairs of the Union, then introduced a series of propositions, for the examination of which three committees were appointed, viz., one upon the social question of the day, another upon science, and a third on the influence of the press; and finally he submitted certain rules of proceeding.

The short address to the bishops assembled in Fulda, which was received with enthusiasm, and which was now read, deserves a place in this periodical. It is as follows:

“RIGHT REV. BISHOPS.

“In a momentous time like the present the Catholics of Germany assembled at Mayence respectfully desire to show their gratitude and admiration for the right reverend bishops of the fatherland, who have defended the rights and liberties of our Holy Catholic Church with such calm and fearless dignity; but, alas! our words of sympathy cannot reach several of the prelates, except through prison doors. In proportion as the distress of the church increases, the more do we feel ourselves bound in conscience to declare before Germany and the whole world that no power upon earth shall separate us from our dear bishops, appointed by Almighty God, and that no power of man can force us to recognize other pastors than those who are in communion with the Holy See, and who are recognized as true pastors by the successor of Peter, the chief pastor of the church.

“Our dearly‐beloved bishops have become shining examples of apostolic courage as our leaders in these days of combat; and as true children of the church we will follow them, and leave the consequences to Almighty God.

“The hand of God rests heavily upon us, and the end of our sufferings is concealed from the eyes of man. But we also know that this trial will be of benefit to us; we thank God that he deigns to allow us to combat and to suffer for his holy cause and for the liberty of his church.

“ ‘Through the cross to the light’ were the words spoken in the last _Reichstag_ by that heroic warrior for whom all Catholic Germans pray, and who died in the defence of truth and right. It shall be our device also: ‘Through the cross to the light!’

“With these sentiments we ask your episcopal blessing, and with the most profound veneration we subscribe our selves

“The most obedient servants and sons of our revered German bishops.”

At one o’clock a banquet was held in the same great hall, at which 300 members of the Union were present, among whom was the Rt. Rev. Bishop Ketteler of Mayence. It was he who proposed the first toast to the Holy Father, which was received with enthusiasm, as it was the twenty‐eighth anniversary of his appointment to the chair of Peter. The speaker reviewed the long series of years of combat between light and darkness, and in the increasing enthusiasm and affection of the Catholic people for Pius IX., the representative of unity, appointed by Almighty God, he saw an increase of the unity which the church, like an impregnable fortress in the midst of combats, exhibits, while the world threatens to split asunder. Baron von Frankenstein proposed, as the second toast, the Grand Duke of Hessia and all the German princes belonging to the Union, and made a few remarks appropriate to the occasion.

The president, Baron von Loë, proposed the health of the leaders given us by Almighty God, the Rt. Rev. Bishops of Germany, under whose guidance we some years ago saved the thrones from the whirl of revolution, and under whose direction we now hope to conquer the revolution which is preached by the government. Among the other toasts given, we will only mention that of the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Mayence, who paid a high tribute of praise to the men of the _Centrum_ who had in Berlin defended with such courage and skill the cause of truth, justice, and liberty. After the banquet the different committees of the Union entered upon the discussion of the proposed resolutions, while the presiding officers of the Congress consulted upon the drawing up of these resolutions.

The same resolutions formed also the theme for the speakers in the public evening sessions, to which such a great number of persons were attracted that the hall of the Frankfurter‐hof, large as it is, was not sufficient to contain all.

The first speaker, Baron von Wendt of Westphalia, passed in review the public events that had transpired in Europe for the last year, and he demonstrated in a convincing manner that hostility to the church had everywhere appeared simultaneously, and was therefore the result of preconcerted action. The explanation of this fact the speaker found in the activity of modern liberalism, which had determined upon the complete denial of Christianity, and which boldly avows that by adhering to the principles of what its advocates are pleased to call humanity all those inestimable blessings would be obtained which the Saviour has left us in his sublime teachings upon the obligations and morality of a Christian life. Like the work of redemption, so also would the church become superfluous, and the state, to which liberalism gives the preference over everything else, would then enter upon its inheritance, and, as in the days of the pagan Cæsars, assert its ascendency even over the spirit.

Herr Cremer, the editor of a Berlin journal, next proceeded to point out the imperfections to be found in the constitution of the German Empire, which gave security only to material interests and military power, while there was not an article which had reference to the moral problem of state life and the fundamental rights of civil liberty. In the course of his speech he with much humor and sarcasm drew attention to the fatal avowal of Bismarck in regard to his own policy. When the question was proposed in the _Reichstag_ as to whether Catholics had forfeited their rights to citizenship and were dangerous to the state, the prince answered in the affirmative. This “yes,” remarked the speaker, “was the most absolute condemnation of his own policy which could have ever been pronounced by any one; for no state was ever so powerful that it could dispense even for a time with the co‐operation of one‐third of its inhabitants. This policy must be changed, for nine millions of Catholics could not be forced to emigrate or be declared outlaws like helots. This policy was in every respect to be rejected as rotten and false, even if it did rest upon the shoulders of this modern Atlas.” The vigor and readiness of expression displayed by the youthful speaker caused him to be warmly applauded.

The V. Rev. Dr. Monfang, deputy to the _Reichstag_, delivered an admirable speech upon the present state of society. The great change, he argued, took place in the beginning of our century, and he attributed it to the following causes: First, the French Revolution, which overturned the laws of commerce and labor without regulating them anew; second, the wonderful use to which machinery can be put, particularly by the application of steam‐power, which, in union with the development of capital, directed industry into entirely new channels; third, the exemption from taxation brought about by the increase and facility of the means of commerce, which keeps a certain class of labor in constant demand, and in a measure takes it from the business men and the farmers; and, fourth, most especially to that pseudo‐liberalism whose national economy regulates the relations between employers and employed, between rich and poor, not in accordance with true Christian principles, but according to the dictates of egotism. The social question, the orator declared, resolves itself into this: that a man, to be really happy, needs but three things—that is, a competency, a respectable position in society, and inward peace of soul. After applying this true remark to the condition of the working‐men, the speaker finally passed to the solution of the social question, and said that as this problem affects all the relations of human life, a general co‐operation was necessary for its explication. The laborer himself must co‐operate as well as the family, the parish, the state, the church. Without religion, without prudent legislation for the protection of labor, without Christian marriages among the laborers, without public spirit and united effort, it is not possible to avert the evils which every day threaten the laboring class more and more.

Herr Racke, the indefatigable secretary of the Union, spoke upon the difficult subject of passive resistance to laws which are in direct opposition to conscience. He adduced particularly from the best authors upon state rights the evidence that the state has no right to demand from its citizens absolute obedience to all its laws and regulations. Laws which are in opposition to conscience, morality, and religion, be they ever so formally enacted, are not laws in the sight of God, but are in defiance of those of all law‐givers, of the only absolute Lord who is above all states, all rulers, and all men, and from whose authority alone even the state laws derive their power and obligation. The animated speech of Herr Racke was also loudly applauded.

At the request of the president the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Mayence gave the episcopal blessing, whereupon the public session was adjourned. The second day also began with prayer, a High Mass of Requiem being sung for all the members of the Union who had died during the last year. Then in a private session followed the discussion and approval of resolutions. The resolutions proposed by the officers of the Congress, and received by all with acclamation, surpassed in importance all others which had yet passed. We give them, therefore, a prominent place; they are a sign that the Catholics of Germany have not lost their courage as yet, and they deserve to be published verbatim. They are as follows:

The Second Congress of the Catholic Germans declares:

I. _Regarding the State of Christian Society._

1. The violent persecution which the Catholic Church in some parts of Europe and South America now suffers, verifies the expression of the Holy Father that anti‐Christianity—that is, modern civilization—is incompatible with Catholicity.

2. The certain result of a systematically‐arranged combat against the church of Christ, as well as against Christianity itself and the essential foundations of society, will be the dissolution of social and political order, endless war, and the destruction of the nation’s rights.

3. The re‐establishment of permanent and national order is only to be looked for when political independence is again restored to the Holy See, and when all those rights are recognized which belong to the head of the Catholic Church by virtue of divine dispensation and historical development.

II. _Regarding the State of Germany._

1. The constitution of the German Empire, for the reason that it guarantees neither protection to personal liberty, nor to the independence of states, nor to the different ranks of society and incorporations, cannot establish the true welfare of the German people.

2. The influence of the so‐called national party, which abjures the essential rights of the German people and of the representation of the people, will be the ruin of the German Empire.

3. The exception laws, by which the German Empire, founded as it is by a common sacrifice, has deprived one‐third of the citizens of their essential rights, thereby destroying the peace and the power of Germany.

4. The unlimited development of military power is incompatible with natural rights, civil liberty, and the spiritual as well as the material welfare of the German people.

5. The unchristianizing of public instruction now in progress, the control by the state of the entire school system, founded as it is upon compulsion, and at the same time the suppression of the educational rights of the church and of the family, is a source of spiritual and moral ruin.

6. The venal press, working in the interests of political servility and of property‐holders, continually misrepresents public opinion, and is the principal cause of the social evils that threaten Germany.

7. The foreign policy of the German Empire, especially in its relations to the Holy See, is not in harmony with the principles and interests of the Catholic population of Germany, and is not capable of securing the preservation of the peace of Europe.

III. _Regarding the State of the Working‐Classes._

1. Like all other states of Europe, Germany is threatened by the discontent existing among the working‐classes.

2. The principal reasons for this discontentment are: Decrease of the retail business; overtaxing the agricultural classes; miserable condition of the operatives in manufactories; and the endless development of money speculation.

3. The real origin of these misfortunes is the enervation of Christian faith and morality in the higher as well as in the lower ranks of society, caused by modern rationalism and liberalism, whereby it has happened also that a great portion of the working‐ classes have allowed themselves to be deceived by the illusions of irreligious and revolutionary leaders.

4. The means of healing these social evils and reconciling all classes of society consist in the passing of laws prohibiting the exhausting of the bodily and financial strength of the people; in claiming that protection from the state to which all classes are entitled; in the continued effort to remove the particular defects of the present commercial laws by means of legislation; in establishing the rights of the working‐classes in accordance with Christian principles and the demands of general equity; in founding different industrial auxiliary houses, either through the union of the working‐classes and others, or through the friends of the working‐classes; in restricting the amount of labor to be performed by females and children; in the careful cultivation of the moral and religious life in the families of the working‐ classes, especially by having Sunday kept holy, and by applying Christian principles to the sphere of business life; in the free development of Christian charity to alleviate inevitable want.

IV. _Regarding the Rights of the Church._

1. The Catholic Church is, according to divine ordination, an independent society, which has the right to exist publicly in all lands as the one and universal church of Jesus Christ, and to protect which every Christian government should feel itself bound.

2. The ecclesiastico‐political system which the parties opposed to the church are endeavoring to carry out stands in irreconcilable and open contradiction to the constitution of the Catholic Church, founded by Almighty God, sanctified through all centuries, recognized by the state, and guaranteed by the law of nations.

3. The power of the office of teacher, priest, and pastor, given by the Pope to the bishops, cannot be suspended or limited by any law of the state.

4. Church and state are ordained by Almighty God to harmonious co‐ operation. Their separation is to be lamented. If the hostility with which the modern state treats the church should make such a separation necessary, it will be more to the disadvantage of the state than to the church.

V. _Regarding Liberty of Conscience._

1. No state power has the right to impose obligations upon its subjects which are in opposition to the commandments of God, the decrees of Jesus Christ, and the precepts of the church.

2. The apostolic courage with which the Catholic bishops, not fearing temporal loss, not even imprisonment and exile, defend the rights of God and of his holy church, as also the inalienable rights of Catholic conscience, and the priestly fidelity and firmness with which the Catholic clergy, not led astray by illusions and threats, remain true to the episcopate and the church, deserve the admiration and respect of all Catholics and of every right thinking man.

3. The measures used against the bishops and priests of the Catholic Church do not succeed in their object; they grieve most deeply the Catholic people, but they cannot be persuaded to exchange a church founded by Almighty God for one founded by the state. In vain are all the experiments used to separate Catholics from their rightful superior.

4. The Catholics of Germany recognize always the legitimately‐ elected Bishop of Rome, the Pope, as the head of their religion and church. In him they revere the infallible teacher of faith, the high‐priest and the supreme watchman of Christianity. No power can separate the Catholics of Germany from the chair of S. Peter.

5. The only prelates of the German bishoprics are those bishops who are legitimately appointed by the Pope according to canon law. Catholics obey and reverence these bishops, be they in prison or in exile.

6. The Catholics of Germany recognize as pastors only those who are appointed by the Pope and legitimate bishops. With unshaken determination they repel every attempt to induce them to revolt against Catholic authority.

VI. _Regarding the Mission of the Catholic Union in Germany_.

1. The Catholic Union of Germany complains of the severity with which the state officers of the German Empire, particularly in Prussia, oppose their rightful endeavors to labor for the true welfare of the fatherland.

2. The Catholic Union of Germany shall with undaunted courage defend their natural rights, the rights of the church and of the German nation, against revolutionary and bureaucratic force.

3. The Union invites all Catholics to join the authorized organization, and in the confidence of assistance from God, which the Union implores for itself through the most Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, they surely expect the speedy triumph of a just cause.

The other resolutions had reference to the adoption of a short prayer to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, under whose protection the Union is placed; then the appointing of a committee charged with the erection of a monument to the memory of Herman von Malinckrodt; with the foundation of a fund for exiled clergymen; to send an address to the oppressed Catholics of Switzerland; with the making out of a list of the priests who have been punished in defending the rights of the church; with the establishment of an intelligence office for young Catholic merchants; with the recommendation of the _Christian Blaetter_, published in Aix‐la‐Chapelle; and finally with the recommending of various institutions for the removal of social evils. All of these motions were not adopted, others were laid upon the table, in order to concentrate the strength of the young Union upon the momentous question to the Catholic Germans as to the best means of ending the conflict now in progress against the church. No one will deny the wisdom and prudence of this proceeding.

In the afternoon a pilgrimage to Mount Roch was determined upon; it is four German, or about twenty‐four American, miles from Mayence, and is one of the most charming places on the Rhine. The congress could not have closed its labors in a more appropriate manner. Soon after twelve o’clock the steamer _Loreley_, which was hardly large enough to accommodate the vast crowd of pilgrims, commenced to move its engines. Inspired by the pious sentiments which filled their hearts, the pilgrims made the air resound with songs which charmed the ear, while the beautiful views, as seen from the deck of the steamer, of the country lying between the Taunus Mountains and the Rhine, captivated the eye. This little spot has justly been called the garden of Germany. The whole shore is lined with villages, rich in monumental reminiscences of past ages, handsome residences and ancient abbeys, modern and mediæval castles. But the greatest pride of the Rhineland are the luscious grapes which ripen upon these sunny hills. Who has not heard of the Marcobrunner, the Steinberger, the Johannisberger, the Ruedesheimer, and many other species of Rhine wine? The vine‐dresser of the Rhineland is firmly convinced that in the whole world there is no wine which in delicacy is equal to his. But let us proceed. The good Catholic inhabitants of these vine‐clad shores saluted our steamer by discharging cannons. The Prussian authorities had prohibited in some places such signs of joy and sympathy to be shown “the enemies of the state” who were passengers on the _Loreley_. The banner of the Chapel of S. Roch, which is built upon a high mountain, had from a long distance been seen waving, and we could also descry the great crowd which had already taken possession of the top of the mountain. When we approached the city of Bingen, situated at the foot of the mountain, nearly the whole population awaited us on the banks of the river. A special deputation saluted the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Mayence, who had come to address the pilgrims. The immense crowd, praying and singing, then marched through the city, which was ornamented with flags, and soon all the streets and paths leading to the mountain were filled with men, so that it was very difficult for the marshals to form a regular line of procession in order to reach the top of the mountain. From this eminence only was it possible to obtain a good view of the multitude, which was greater, perhaps, than Mount Roch had ever before carried on its back. It was a splendid spectacle, and the effect was greatly enhanced by the beauty of the surroundings—the majestic river, whose course the eye could follow for miles, the green islands that now and then appeared in the channel of the river, the blooming vineyards, and the ever‐fertile valleys.

As the chapel could contain only a small portion of the assemblage, the Rt. Rev. Bishop made his address while standing under the blue canopy of heaven. We will only give a few extracts from his admirable discourse. In his introduction he said: “We are here to‐day assembled upon this mountain from all parts of Germany. Without knowing each other, we yet feel that we are all united by the common bond of faith, a miniature picture of the Catholic Church. We stand upon a venerable spot. Here lived S. Hildegardis, that great prophetess of the middle ages, whom S. Bernard visited to examine her prophecies. Long before her advent S. Rupert and his saintly mother Bertha, whose relics are exposed for veneration in this chapel, dwelt here. At our feet flows the river Rhine, in whose waters the most beautiful cathedrals of Germany are reflected, and upon whose shores, from the earliest ages, faithful and honest Catholics have lived. There (pointing to Niederlingen, with its palace of Carlovingian date) stood the cradle of Charles the Great, the founder of the old German power and glory; there that great emperor spent his youth, who never unsheathed his sword except for the protection of truth, and never lent it to an unrighteous cause.”

In the course of his speech he made mention of a fact which he had observed when provost of Berlin and delegate for the few Catholic congregations in Brandenburg and Pomerania. “In the last century King Frederick II. had determined to drain the marshes along the river Oder, and had for this end summoned laborers from the Rhine and from the Palatinate. Those from the last‐named place began their long journey after they had received assurances that ample provision had been made for their religious wants, and that lands would be given them for cultivation. These promises, however, were not fulfilled. When the work was finished, the poor people were distributed among the different Protestant cities in Pomerania, in order to force the inhabitants, as it were, to cede to them some territory. Some of them received as their portion the sandy plains near Pasewalk. Here wooden sheds were erected, the best of which was reserved for a chapel. Without a priest, these good people met together every Sunday for divine service, sang their hymns as if for High Mass, and an altar‐boy rang the bell at certain parts, just as it was done in their former homes. Fifty years passed in this way without their ever having seen a priest, and in the course of these fifty years _not one_ Catholic became an apostate. This congregation was afterwards visited once a year by a priest, and this state of things continued for another fifty years; but during this whole time not a Catholic left his faith—a proof that our Lord and Saviour, when the priests are expelled, has other means to keep his own in the true fold. When in our own times institutions are destroyed, priests are exiled, and bishops are cast into prison, we have more reason than ever before to impress deeply upon our hearts the words of Christ: Confidite in me; ego vinci mundum—‘Have confidence; I have overcome the world’ (S. John xvi. 33). If all else perishes, at least one divine institution remains which the state cannot destroy—we mean the _Christian family_. In proportion as the other representatives of God are prevented from fulfilling their duty, Christian fathers and mothers must, following the example of S. Bertha, fill their vacancies. What obstacles did not this saintly woman overcome! Her husband, who ruled over all this part of Germany, was a heathen, and was killed in a battle with the Christians; but notwithstanding this, she has given in her son a saint to the church.”

Turning then to the subject of the schools, the Rt. Rev. Bishop reminded them of a resolution passed about ten years ago by the Grand Lodge of Belgium, which commanded the sister lodges to give their written opinions as to the question in what manner they could best exercise a decided influence over the public schools. They all agreed on this point: that the schools should be separated from the church, and that it was not sufficient to keep the children in school until they were fourteen years of age, but that compulsory education should be continued up to their eighteenth year, in order to thoroughly uproot from the minds of the children the prejudices which they had received from their families and from the church. To this the objection was raised that such a law would be in direct opposition to the rights of parents; but in the reply, which was afterwards published, it was expressly maintained that, if the state had the right to cut off the heads of men, it could also set them right again. In view of the present aspect of affairs in respect to the school question, it is very easy to draw parallels.

At the conclusion of his address the Rt. Rev. speaker again returned to the text of his discourse: “ ‘Have confidence in Jesus.’ Place not your hope in princes, who cannot help you. The Holy Ghost has said it; they also must die. Make no calculations, therefore, as from what earthly source or from what earthly prince the salvation of the church may be expected. Confide in me, says Christ. Fear not the power of falsehood, for I have overcome the world. Be watchful and firm. While the world is worshipping Mammon it is our duty to imitate the example of those Catholics who have never bowed their knees before Baal, and who were found worthy to make any sacrifice for their convictions. Be courageous and of good cheer! At this time the church needs men of determination. Let every one, then, do his duty, and God will strengthen us and lead us to victory.”

These significant words, the truly apostolic appearance of the Bishop of Mayence, the place, and the feeling exhibited by the vast audience, all contributed to leave a deep impression upon their hearts. After some short devotions in the chapel of grace, the pilgrims returned in a seemingly endless procession, with song and prayer, through the beautiful vineyards to Bingen. We were told that those in the rear of the procession were yet upon the top of the mountain when the first had entered already the parochial church of Bingen, where the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was given by the Rt. Rev. Bishop, which ended the festive celebration of the Second Congress of the Catholic German Union.

The Congress has given testimony that the Catholic people of Germany in these our days will not be misled or permit violence to be offered to them; it gave testimony also to the truth which Malinckrodt had expressed one month before in the _Reichstag_, and eight days before his death, when he said: “If they imagine that we will bow ourselves before their Protestant ideas, which they clothe in the garment of the state, they are greatly mistaken. They can trample us under foot, but we reserve to ourselves the liberty not to become unfaithful to our convictions.”

The Union has many and powerful enemies; but an old German proverb says: “Many enemies, many honors.” May Almighty God continue to protect it as before! Then it will show by its success that, true to its motto, it has worked for truth, justice, and liberty, and that it has excelled all other organizations in patriotism.

Switzerland In 1873. Lucerne.

It sounds like a platitude when any one nowadays ventures to lament returning to the prose from the poetry of travel, so universal is this feeling, and so constantly is it expressed; yet it is impossible to avoid noticing it when recalling a railway journey that followed abruptly on weeks of Alpine rambles. My friend and I had been gradually gathering discontent, it is true, from the causes I have already stated, and yesterday, at Berne, had felt that a complete change was necessary; but further than this we had not stopped to reflect. No sooner, however, had we started in the train than the scream of the engine‐whistle, the jerking of the carriages at the stations, the rush of passengers and hoarse cries of the fruit‐sellers, grated discordantly on our nerves, and a sudden pining for the grand mountains, with their quiet, simple life and its elevating tone, took possession of us. Had we carried out our intention of going to Lyons, it would speedily have grown into a real Swiss _mal du pays_. Heartily, therefore, did we thank Mrs. C—— for having appeared so opportunely, and acted the part of a good angel in saving us from a species of suicide; for we felt that our spirits would have completely evaporated long before we could have reached Notre Dame de Fourvières or any other such congenial haven.

“Well, yes,” she answered; “the flat plains of France would assuredly have proved too harsh a contrast. Now you will still have mountains, besides so many other matters that must deeply interest you.”

These reflections having restored us to good‐humor, we fully enjoyed the approach to Lucerne, as the train wound round the wooded hills alongside the green Reuss, rushing on in full‐grown vigor from the lake, and past the mediæval walls and towers that still guard the sturdy old town. The sun was setting as we entered the station, just as happened a few nights previously when we drove into Interlachen; but in other respects everything was different. Here, the train was rapidly emptied of its hundreds of Northerners, still brimful of their city ways, or ill at ease in some faultless Alpine costume fresh from a London shop; while there, though one could detect many season‐loungers, effort at display was not thought of, especially amongst tourists, for dress and such externals had long since lost their importance in the wear and tear of real mountaineering. And what a noise and bustle and clatter steam, and everything belonging to it, entails! Enough to drive one wild, after many weeks of leisurely excursion habits—the tinkling bells of the steamboats waiting at the pier to carry off impatient tourists to fifty different destinations, the crowd of omnibuses, the jostling of porters, and, to complete the trouble, the announcement that no rooms could be had at the Schweizerhof or Lucernerhof, or various other _hofs_; although we had telegraphed from Berne, and expected to find all ready. If we would try, it was said, at the Beau Rivage—the hotel furthest off—there was just a chance. Worn out by the noise and fuss, we two begged to walk, the remainder of our party offering to drive on in a carriage without delay, in order to secure any vacant places there might be before the omnibus and its load of new‐comers should reach the hotel.

No arrangement could have been happier; for as we crossed the handsome new bridge, on issuing from the station, the scene at once restored our shattered nerves. The sun had just sunk behind the wood‐clad hills, dotted all over with pretty villas and _pensions_, that rise to the northwest above the town, and whose sharp, dark outline every instant became blacker against the clear sky above, which, on its part, was rapidly changing from one tint to another, each more delicate than the preceding one. Below, the river moved like a mass of molten gold, whilst the covered bridge close by and the old tower at the corner wore a dark, warm brown hue, all the richer from the reflection of the waters beneath. Turning round towards the lake, on whose margin we stood, the magnificent panorama of snow‐ tipped mountains which encircle its upper end transfixed us with admiration. Every peak, every line, was visible in the clear atmosphere, from Mount Pilatus, bathed in a flood of purple, right in front, to the most distant of the long line rising beyond. In a few minutes the colors in the west grew faint and fainter, but a fresh after‐glow lit up the mountain‐crests opposite, fading gradually into the tenderest pink, until one by one they sank into the approaching night. How wonderfully beautiful it was! Impossible to be surpassed! And for an instant we felt half tempted to become unfaithful to the glorious Jungfrau and lovely Interlachen. But the abiding impression of all such scenes in this favored land is, without doubt, one of marvel at the varieties of God’s creation, and nowhere does one more cordially echo that inspired voice which of old cried: “Let every spirit praise the Lord!”

Lost in admiration at this effect of color on water, wood, and mountain, we grew deaf to the clatter of the passing crowd across the bridge, when suddenly the sound of bells aroused our attention. It seemed as if every church‐bell in the place had been set a‐ringing; and so it really was! We listened; but, unaccustomed as we had now so long been to the beautiful practice, some minutes elapsed before we recognized the true mark of a Catholic country—the Ave Maria or Angelus bell! A learned divine has written lately that it would simplify matters very much if the world were classed in two divisions only—namely, those who say the Angelus, and those who do not; or, in other words, those who, believing in the Incarnation and Redemption, boldly and lovingly profess it before God and men, and those Christians whose faith in the mystery is so feeble or their piety so lukewarm that it gives them no happiness to acknowledge it, and who are therefore worse than the heathens, who know not of it. No happier welcome could have been given to us, who had been suffering from a spiritual famine for the last few weeks. Calmed by the sweet sounds, which were even softened by the gurgling waters at our feet, we followed our guide along the quay, unmindful of its white dust, fussy tourists, and the general unæsthetic aspect of its many monster hotels, our eyes fixed, as we proceeded, on the _Hofkirche_, or principal church, which towers above it at one end.

It was late when we emerged after dinner from the glare of lights and hot, crowded _table‐d’hôte_ rooms of the Beau Rivage on to the balcony of the hotel, and the same moon which had entranced us so recently when shining on the Jungfrau was beginning to climb up the heavens, right behind Mount Pilatus. The stern mountain stood opposite to us on the other shore, his rugged form showing dark and unfriendly against the silvered background, but a tremulous path of light came dancing towards us straight across the placid waters. Tiny boats, that were hitherto indistinguishable in the surrounding gloom, shot in numbers, freighted with mysterious figures, across the luminous, quivering pathway; the green and red lights of steamers were seen advancing gradually from out the distant darkness of the lake, like wicked monsters rising from the deep to devour the elves and nymphs gambolling peacefully in our midst, while close to us, round the near curve of the bay, the town, still busy with life and movement, shone in a perfect blaze of illumination, the lamps along its quay glittering like stars reflected in the still waters underneath. Poet or painter never imagined in their highest flights of fancy a more fairy‐ like, suggestive scene, and again we felt and acknowledged the truth that no art or science of man can approach God’s own handiwork in its exquisite variety and beauty.

It was impossible to sit indoors on such an evening, so we wandered down to the walk beside the water’s edge, an impulse evidently shared by all the inhabitants; for, as we passed on, it seemed as though every one, including tradesmen with their wives and families, had come forth to refresh mind and body after their busy day’s work. The promenade was alive with people, either sitting or quietly sauntering up and down in apparently happy groups, but without noise or boisterous sound, in perfect harmony with the beautiful surroundings.

“This scenery surely must have a powerful effect on the inhabitants,” I remarked to Mrs. C——, as we too at length sat down on a bench in front of the hotel. “I can’t conceive living constantly within view of all this beauty without having one’s mind raised to a higher tone by its influence.”

“No doubt,” she replied; “and now you can understand the full meaning of Swiss _Heimweh_, or _mal du pays_; how, when these people once begin to pine for their mountains, it becomes a true malady. It does not follow, however, that scenery, as a matter of course, produces admiration or appreciation of its charms. You know the world‐old observation of this lack in ancient Greek poetry. Nor have the modern Greeks any more feeling for natural beauty than their ancestors; in fact, they positively dislike the country. The Turks are different; but, generally speaking, southerners never give it a thought. It seems to be more a matter of race than of locality, and the Swiss, especially in these cantons, being Teutonic, have the true German love of nature, which makes them so worthy of living in this favored land! That accounts, too, for their love of the supernatural, to which their lively faith has always given a religious form. The very name of this Mt. Pilatus and its story show this tendency at once.”

“What is the story?” I inquired. “I remember reading about it, but have quite forgotten. At this moment one might fancy anything—dragons, concealed in caverns, swooping down on forlorn maidens, knights rescuing Hildegardes and Kunigundes, or any other thing you like, on an evening of this sort.”

“Oh! no,” she answered: “the homely, burgher lives of the Swiss rarely led them to the romantic, but their simple piety, as I have said, clothed their tales with a religious coloring. This, for instance, is where they believe that Pilate committed suicide; that, having been banished to Gaul by the Emperor Tiberius for failure in the administration of his province when governor, he could no longer bear living in public, and his uneasy conscience drove him from one wild district to another until he stopped here; but even then he continued miserable, and finally threw himself into the small lake near the summit yonder, over which his spirit still hovers. He is the author of all the storms hereabouts. He cannot bear strangers, but, especially if they disturb him maliciously by throwing stones into this lake, he avenges himself by thunder and lightning and a general confusion of the elements. They were so persuaded of this in the middle ages that the Lucerners actually made a statute forbidding any one to explore the mountains, and there are records of several persons being severely punished for venturing up in defiance of the order. He regulates the weather even now; for you can always tell by Pilatus what kind of day it is likely to be. Have you never heard the lines?

“ ‘Wenn Pilatus trägt sein Hut Darum wird das Wetter gut. Trägt er aber seinen Degen Darum wird’s wohl sicher regnen.’(31)

“The _Hut_, or Hood, is a little cloud which settles on the summit only, but the sword is a long streak across the centre of the mountain, which bodes rain and all manner of bad weather. There are ominous stories, besides, of dragons and winged serpents, which were formerly seen to fly from Pilatus to the Rigi at night, leaving fiery tracks behind them, and tormenting the shepherds and their flocks.”

“Well! if ever there were an excuse for pantheism and belief in a spirit‐ world animating nature, it certainly would be in Switzerland! Everywhere I go the mountains, cloudy sunsets, the whole moving face of nature, speak a language ever varying in one sense, but uniform in leading one’s thoughts upwards.”

“Yes; and even in bad weather you would not tire of it! Pilatus is never so grand as when the storm‐clouds gather round his brow and roll down pitilessly on this very spot.”

“I should very much like to know whether the people keep up their piety now, and how they are likely to act in the coming religious storm,” I remarked.

“I have just had an interesting conversation on that very point with an old Lucerner,” said Mr. C——, who now rejoined us, and who, we noticed, had stopped to speak to some acquaintance on the promenade when we first started. “That was old H——, whom we met at Kissingen three years ago,” he continued, addressing his wife. “He has retired from his appointment, and returned to this his native town. He was rejoiced to see me, and offered his services; and, thinking he might be useful as a guide, I have begged him to call at our hotel in the morning. He gave me a most interesting account of matters here. They are all staunch Catholics, he says, except a few, who are lukewarm and seduced by the rationalism and liberalism of Olten and Berne. From these alone do they fear dissension. But they are not numerous. However, they tried last winter to get one of the churches given up to them. Fortunately, the town council is orthodox and firm, and Herr H—— is certain that Lucerne will be true to her name, and continue a _light_ to her neighbors.”

“What a happy play on the word!” I remarked—“a genuine _jeu de mot_. She certainly merits the title in a material sense already, with that girdle of brilliant lamps shining like jewels along the quay.”

“It is not a _jeu de mot_ of my invention,” answered Mr. C——. “The name is said to take its origin from the fact itself. Some of the Swiss towns, such as Chur and Geneva, date from the Roman times of Switzerland; but there are no traces of Roman buildings or settlements here. It is said, however, that even then there was a lantern or kind of light‐house at this spot for the boats on the lake, which was dignified by the Latin name of _Lucerna_, or _light_; and this, amidst the vicissitudes of centuries, has clung to it, and, as you say, is as suitable as ever. The town itself, like so many others, is the offspring of a monastery somewhere about the same time as St. Gall and Einsiedeln. But those old walls, with the quaint towers which still encircle it, are only from the XIIIth or XIVth century. The barbarians, you may remember, overran the continent several times in the IXth, Xth, and XIth centuries, pillaging and burning on all sides; but it was noticed that the walled towns escaped, for they did not understand the art of besieging them. One of the German emperors, therefore, issued orders that all the towns should erect fortifications, and that, in times of war, the rural population should take refuge within them. Basel was one of the first that was enclosed in Switzerland, being on the frontier. Then St. Gall, which had sprung up round the great monastery, and was also near the frontier; Zurich and Lucerne followed later. Lucerne has kept up the old Swiss character better than almost any other town, from its position near these forest cantons, which have more or less imbued it with their spirit. The forest cantons,” he continued, as if in answer to my inquiring look, “are those which border this lake, and give it the name of the ‘Lake of the Four Cantons!’ They are Schwytz, Uri, Unterwalden; and now Lucerne makes the fourth—the cradle of Switzerland and the noblest portion of its people. Lucerne has hitherto been a sort of outpost for them—their point of connection with the political world beyond; and so far it has always held stoutly by its old friends. I remember the religious civil war and the _Sonderbund_, between 1842 and 1848, and Lucerne was the head and front of all that movement. Those old towns, amongst their various tales, could tell many even of that period; for within their walls, as well as in some of the churches, 1,800 prisoners were confined after the first victorious resistance Lucerne offered the Protestant Volunteers. Amongst the number was a certain Dr. Steiger, said to be the leader of the Protestants. He lay in one of the towers, condemned to banishment and imprisonment by the tribunals of Lucerne, when one night he escaped, aided by three countrymen who were devoted to him, and finally fled to America. I well recollect what a sensation it made, especially when, a few days afterwards the great champion of the Catholics—a peasant—was found murdered in his cottage! Then these Catholics made a defensive league amongst themselves to resist the interference of the Protestant cantons in their religious affairs, and which they therefore called the _Sonderbund_. On this the opposite faction took their stand, asserting that its principle was contrary to the spirit of the Confederacy. It was a good watchword in any case wherewith to rouse their partisans, and they succeeded in this so completely that the Diet soon voted that the league ought to be put down by force. A large army was at once collected, and, surrounding these Catholic cantons as with a cordon, they very soon crushed them. How well I remember it all! Whether the experience is recollected here it is hard to say; but Herr H—— muttered something about their all being determined to stand up manfully for their faith, even if it should ultimately be necessary to fight for it.”

“Fighting for one’s faith is sublime, and stirs one’s deepest feelings,” I replied, “and that the spirit which induces it still exists, despite our prosaic, material age, we have seen by the Papal Zouaves, and also, united with love of country, in the Bretons, Vendêans, and others during the French and Prussian war. But it is impossible to combine the idea of fighting of any kind with this poetic scene, and I would rather go to sleep to‐night dreaming of nymphs and sprites than of war and prisons, or even of Pilate himself or any other gloomy visions in this fairyland. I fear I am ungrateful for all your information, in feeling almost sorry that we touched on these topics,” I said, laughing, as we reluctantly turned homewards late that evening.

I had spoken wisely. Most difficult it is to pacify one’s mind after such a conversation, and, between reflections on the past and speculations on the future of these Swiss Catholics, the night was far advanced before my eyes closed in sleep. Suddenly I was awakened by a full‐toned church‐bell booming across the waters. It might again be the Angelus; but looking at my watch, it was only a quarter before five o’clock, and moreover it was still dark. Then it must be some convent‐bell summoning the community to Matins and Prime. It was an uncharitable proceeding on their part, thought I, to waken up a whole town; and the peal kept on for the entire quarter of an hour. At half‐past five came another similar bell; and then, soon after, a chorus of full tones, like that which had greeted our arrival on the previous evening, rang out the Angelus from every church‐tower in the place, followed at six and half‐past six by others in our immediate vicinity. It was quite impossible to sleep; yet, tired though we were, the joyful sensation of awakening in a Catholic land reconciled us to the penalty it thus imposed. Up and out we should at once go in search of the Masses which these bells indicated. But there be no such hurry, said the hotel servants; for there would be eight o’clock Mass in the Hofkirche close by. Then we discovered that, so far from the quarter to five bell belonging to any convent, it was in truth rung in order to rouse the towns‐people to Mass at the S. Peterskirche—the first each day of the series which ended at eight o’clock at the Hofkirche. And then we recollected how the same custom prevails in Germany, according to the early habits of all German races; how hopeless it seems ever to be up and out before the inhabitants of a small German town; and how, in the Rhenish provinces for instance, the five o’clock Mass in summer, and the six o’clock in winter, are the most fully attended, even in the severe seasons of frost and snow.

We felt, therefore, like sluggards as we ascended the paved hill and mounted the steps leading up to the Hofkirche. It was a bright morning, and pleasant, good‐humored faces met us, as we paused to notice the exterior, so plain and unadorned compared to the beautiful Cathedral of Berne. But this seemed all the more suitable to the simple life of Lucerne, with which the fact of the church standing, as it does, in the midst of its cemetery, is in perfect harmony. A curious piece of mediæval sculpture, representing the Garden of Olives, is let into the wall of one of the towers, and we were examining it when to our surprise sounds of music from the inside reached us. But a greater surprise awaited us when, on entering the church, we found it perfectly full. A most devout congregation occupied every seat in the nave. On one side knelt the men, on the opposite the women. Whilst High Mass for the dead was being sung at an altar outside the choir‐screen, in front of which was placed the bier, Low Masses were going on at side altars near, and another at the high altar behind. Everywhere earnestness and devotion were perceptible; and a more striking contrast to our previous day’s experience in the Cathedral of Berne, where daily services were unknown, it would be utterly impossible to imagine. Yet what must such a morning have been there in the olden days; for even now external advantages are in its favor. The Lucerne church has far fewer claims to architectural beauty, and its general ornamentation is in the bad taste of the last century. But these faults were at the moment imperceptible to us, who had eyes only for the life and spirit pervading the crowd of worshippers that filled it. It is a fine church, however, in its own way, and quite in keeping with the character of the inhabitants. The choir is imposing, and the metal‐work of its screen excellent. There are old stained‐glass windows too; and a wood carving of the Death of Our Lady over a side altar would be perfect, were it not for the amount of gilding and gaudy coloring with which it has been loaded.

But the benches are the most characteristic point in the building. At one period they must all have been appropriated, though they are now free; for each division still retains a shield, on which is painted a coat‐of‐arms and the name of a citizen, or of his wife or widow, with the date of the year, going back in some cases to the beginning of the last century. When High Mass was over, the women in going out passed round by the bier, on which they sprinkled holy‐water, followed by the men, who seriously and piously performed the same act of fraternal charity. Thence we followed them to the small mortuary chapel outside, but so filled was it by a weeping group that we turned back and sauntered round the covered gallery, or cloister, which borders this beautiful _Gottesacker_, or “God’s acre,” as the Germans so truly call their cemeteries. Sauntering it certainly was; for it was difficult to move quickly, so many were the inscriptions, so well tended the hundreds of pretty graves. Marks of affection and remembrance were visible at every step in fresh wreaths and baskets of beautiful flowers, arranged with a taste and art that told what loving hearts must have guided the skilful hands that made them. Some good oil‐ paintings and handsome monuments also adorn this gallery; but the most attractive part of the whole burial‐ground is its eastern end. This is appropriated to diminutive graves and crosses, hung with white bows of ribbon and white flowers. We knew that in the Catholic Church there is a special service for infants—one of pure joy without a word of grief; but never before had we seen any particular spot set apart for these baptized little angels. Later, we found that it is a custom universal in the burial‐grounds of these Catholic cantons; but none that we afterwards saw ever struck us so much as this one of Lucerne.

The whole place, too, was full of stone stoups, provided with water and branches of blessed box, wherewith to sprinkle the graves. Foot‐passengers have a right of way from an upper road through this churchyard, and we saw many stop, as they passed, to perform this work of charity over a tomb, with a pious aspiration for the repose of the souls. “Have pity on me, my friends,” is a prayer well responded to in this touching _Gottesacker_, where the dead still dwell in the hearts of the living, truly under the shadow and protecting influence of the church and of the cross. The doctrines of the Catholic faith in the communion of saints and intercession for the holy souls in purgatory are here so practically carried out, that they must get intertwined with the tenderest feelings of each Lucerner, and developed in their best sense from childhood upwards, becoming their comfort and mainstay from the cradle to the grave.

And then in what a beautiful position this old church stands—at the head of the town, guarding its flock, and a beacon to the weary‐minded! From our guide‐book we learned that originally it had formed part of a Benedictine convent, and is dedicated to S. Leodegarius, or S. Leger. The very name of this saint takes us back to the furthest antiquity, to the earliest days of Christianity in these parts; for he was the great Bishop of Autun in the VIIth century whose sanctity and courage shone conspicuously during sixty years in the stormy times of the Clovis and Clotaire kings and of their _maires du palais_, until he was at last cruelly put to death by order of Ebroin, one of the most wicked of that tribe, and who governed in the name of the Frankish king, Theodoric. It tells, too, of those days when the present Switzerland, having been included in Charlemagne’s empire, was still fluttering between his successors in Burgundy and those in Germany; and how far the fame of saints and martyrs spread and made their mark on countries which, in those days of slow communication, were distant from their own. The convent itself must have been an old foundation, for the church was formed into a collegiate chapter in 1456, and the two existing towers belong to that period. The remainder, destroyed by fire in 1633, was rebuilt soon after in the unarchitectural style of that century. Probably we owe the cloisters round the cemetery and the massive parochial house near, also to the monastic period. Quite worthy, in any case, of Benedictine refinement was the view obtained from the open arches on one side of the cloisters. But alas for modern innovations! My friends remembered this as one of the most lovely points of view in Switzerland some fifteen years ago; but now the roof of that huge caravansary, the International Hotel, rises just high enough close in front to shut out, from all but two openings, everything save the sight of its own ungainliness. From these two, however, it is possible to judge what the world has lost, looking out over the lake and surrounding mountains; and we lingered long, drinking in the charms of this matchless landscape, which again presented itself under an aspect quite different from that of the preceding evening.

On returning to the hotel we found Mr. and Mrs. C—— deep in conversation with Herr H——, who had come according to appointment. He was a shrivelled‐ up, active, little old man of about seventy, formerly professor in a gymnasium in the north of Germany, but the aim of whose life had been to save a certain sum, in order to return and end his days in his own beloved Switzerland. This he had accomplished within the last two years. The C——s had taken a great fancy to the old man when they made his acquaintance at Kissingen, and he was now burning to be of some use to them. And a great help he proved in planning the next week’s excursions, so as to make them finish off at Einsiedeln on the 14th, the chief feast of that monastery. The day was perfectly lovely, and the atmosphere so clear that he pleaded hard to take us up to the Linden Avenue, a terrace walk, twenty‐five minutes off, and commanding a magnificent panorama. But we should see the mountains during the rest of our travels, we argued in reply, and our minds were so full of Wordsworth and Longfellow, and, through them, of the covered bridges of Lucerne, that we could hear of nothing else. Our party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. C——, their two daughters, and a good‐humored, boyish son of eighteen, besides my friend and myself; so at last a compromise was effected by dividing our forces. One daughter went with Mr. and Mrs. C—— to the Linden walk, while our new Swiss acquaintance politely offered to conduct our division over his native place.

Our first visit, as a matter of course, was to “the Lion,” the pride and glory of modern Lucerne! Turning off from the fussy, bustling quay, leaving excitement and noise behind, we wandered through quiet, winding streets that led to the former Zurich road, until, in a leafy recess containing a large basin filled by trickling water, on which the sun played through the foliage of the overhanging beech‐trees, this grand king of animals lay right before us, hewn out of the perpendicular face of the living rock. Overhead is carved the inscription, _Helvetiorum fidei ac virtuti_.(32) This monument, erected in memory of the Swiss guards who fell whilst defending Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette at Versailles, and on the 2d and 3d of September, 1792, was designed by the great Thorwaldsen, and executed by a Zurich sculptor, the expenses being defrayed by subscriptions from all parts of Switzerland. The lion is dying, the spear still in his side, a bundle of spears under him, but one paw still firmly clasping the Bourbon shield. It is colossal; the whole attitude full of strength, firmness, and sorrow—a sorrow inspiring such sympathy that the longer one looks the more human it appears. Yet it is not that hopelessly sad expression of his grand Chæronean prototype, which once having had the good‐fortune to see on the spot, I never can forget. But then what different events they commemorate! The Greek, the defeat of an over‐glorious nation, crushed to despair; this of Lucerne, the loss, but also the noble heroism, of a few of Switzerland’s sons only, who, if they could be so faithful in the cause of strangers, what might not be expected from them and their brethren in defence of their own hearths and homes! And as we stood transfixed to the spot, unwilling to stir, it was pleasant to hear from Herr H—— that foreign service of this sort has now ceased. At least no body of Swiss serve abroad together, except as the Pope’s guards, whose picturesque Michael‐Angelesque costumes must be remembered by every one that visited Rome in its palmy days. Formerly, not only did they serve as mercenaries in various countries, but there were regular treaties in force between the Swiss government and foreign sovereigns, authorizing the latter to recruit throughout the cantons. These, however, have been swept away, and this “Lion” is now the only link with those times. Close by is a chapel where, according to pious custom, Mass is now and then said for the departed heroes, and the altar cloth of which has been worked by the Duchesse d’Angoulême, one of Marie Antoinette’s two children, protected and saved by those very soldiers.

We had not prepared ourselves for this beautiful, poetic work of art, and hence it was perhaps doubly difficult to leave it; but time pressed, and Herr H—— led the way back to the brilliant quay. He was eloquent on its palatial hotels, and proud that in this particular Lucerne is so far ahead of all other Swiss towns, except perhaps Geneva. But still, he said, this did not compensate him for olden days. How different it had been in his boyhood, in the years prior to 1820, when the present Schweizerhof Quay did not exist! A long, covered wooden bridge, 1,300 feet in length, ran, in its stead, from the middle of the town, near the Swan Hotel, right across here to the foot of the Hofkirche. And then, to our intense regret, we discovered that this was the chief bridge mentioned by Wordsworth in his continental tour. He first speaks of the Hafellbrücke, still existing, and then goes on to say:

“Like portraiture, from loftier source, endears That work of kindred frame, which spans the lake Just at the point of issue, when it fears The form and motion of a stream to take; When it begins to stir, _yet_ voiceless as a snake.

“Volumes of sound, from the cathedral rolled, This long‐roofed vista penetrate; but see, One after one, its tablets, that unfold The whole design of Scripture history; From the first tasting of the fatal tree, Till the bright star appeared in eastern skies, Announcing One was born mankind to free; His acts, his wrongs, his final sacrifice; Lessons for every heart, a Bible for all eyes.

“_our_ pride misleads, our timid likings kill. Long may these homely works devised of old, These simple efforts of Helvetian skill, Aid, with congenial influence, to uphold The state, the country’s destiny to mould; Turning, for them who pass, the common dust Of servile opportunity to gold; Filling the soul with sentiments august— The beautiful, the brave, the holy, and the just.”

Then in a note he goes on to relate that the pictures on the “cathedral bridge amounted to 240, all from Scripture history; subjects from the Old Testament faced the passenger going to the cathedral, and those from the New as he returns.” What would he have said could he have foreseen such a speedy annihilation of his aspirations for their long maintenance, and especially when replaced by all that drives away remembrance of that “history” and tends to keep men’s thoughts fastened to earth instead of raised to heaven!

When our first disappointment was over, we learned from Herr H—— that this quay, now so venerable‐looking from its shady chestnuts, has been won from the lake, like the Thames embankment, within the last forty years. It has one advantage, namely: that the whole tourist‐life which brings such gain to Lucerne has been added on to it, without in any way interfering with the ordinary life of its inhabitants. Happily, it would be impossible to change the old part without sweeping it entirely away—a summary proceeding that no one would think of. The original town lies on a strip of land between the lake and encircling hills, and is composed of solidly‐built old houses in narrow streets, that are thoroughly sheltered, but without any view, and consequently unfit for tourist requirements. Air and landscape—the two essentials for the wealth‐bringing strangers—were fortunately found available in the large space gained from the lake, while the neighboring hills seemed as if especially created for the countless _pensions_ that now cover them in every direction. “Travellers,” said Herr H——, “—travellers are the great desire of Lucerne. They supply the place of trade and manufactures, which we do not possess, except in a small way in the Krienz valley yonder. Both here and throughout all these forest cantons, the whole energies of the population are of late years directed to this object. You will find them building hotels in all directions as you travel through that district,” pointing to the upper end of the lake, which we were lingering to admire from the promenade. “It sometimes seems like over‐building, but the larger the houses, the more quickly they seem to fill. The crowds that swarm here from June to October, from every quarter of the globe, are quite marvellous. Since the French war, especially, the Germans come in shoals. It is becoming like another invasion of the northerners! I suppose we dare not call them Huns and Vandals,” he continued, laughing. “But I confess I fear their influence in the long run, for they are chiefly the population of the manufacturing and commercial towns of Prussia and the North, and even when they are not decidedly infidel, they are not overburdened with religion, and are perfectly indifferent to its observances. I was stopping up at the Kaltbad for a month this summer, and only a few out of 420 guests ever thought about Sundays. ‘Who does, when at a watering‐place?’ said some. There was no Protestant service, it is true, except the English, but still there might have been some difference made between it and other days; but, except amongst the Catholics, one could notice none, unless that the dinner was sometimes rather better than on week‐days. And even the foreign Catholics were often very lukewarm. It is a very bad example, to say the least, for the natives. Fortunately, however, the strangers mix with them very little, and they fall back into their customary life when these crowds go home about the end of September. Then all is changed. The country hotels shut up, and even here they dismiss their large staff of servants, and only keep a small portion of each house open. But they are looking forward to a great increase of winter business in Lucerne later, when the St. Gothard tunnel, which is now begun, shall be finished; though, of course, it will be nothing compared to the summer influx.”

“And what becomes of the poor servants?” I asked. “Are they turned adrift on the world?”

“Oh! dear, no. They are engaged for the hotels at Nice and Mentone, and all along the Riviera, in bodies of a hundred at a time. If you happen to go south in November, you will doubtless fall in with many a Kellner or a house‐maid you met up here in the summer. That is the form the Swiss foreign service has taken in our days of steam and easy communication. And very much they distinguish themselves. Both men and women are considered more honest and active than those of any other nation, and consequently are at a premium. That wonderful race of ‘Kellners’—a race apart—which goes by the generic name of German waiter, is largely composed of the Swiss element. Strangely enough, however, every waitress you meet, even in these districts, is certain to come from the canton of Berne. The women there have a _spécialité_ in that line. The peasants of the Catholic cantons keep to the housemaid department, as a rule, and our Lucerne maidens become ladies’ maids or governesses in English families. And very well they turn out, too. Both in this town and in the rural cantons they are a solidly good, pious population. Very conservative also; in fact, most conservative, in spite of our staunch republicanism, and most united at the same time.”

It suddenly occurred to us to ask whose funeral we had seen that morning. “No doubt of some distinguished citizen?”

“No,” replied Herr H——, “not particularly distinguished; only an old and highly‐respected tradesman. Oh! no; that is an every‐day occurrence. All the neighbors consider it a duty to attend the High Mass and to pray for each other. I was there, amongst others, just before I went to the Beau Rivage Hotel; for, although I have spent so many years away from Lucerne, I knew this man from my earliest childhood, and he has been working all his life for every one you saw there this morning, so that the least we might do was to go and pray for the repose of his soul, poor fellow! They will do the same for each one of us in turn. Here is a column of advertisements, composed of nothing but ‘Thanks’ from relatives,” he said, drawing a Lucerne daily paper from out of his pocket, and amongst the number we read the following touching one:

“The widow and children of —— return their heartfelt thanks to all the kind friends who spontaneously attended the High Mass for, and the funeral of, their lamented husband and father on ——. They are not only grateful for this mark of respect, but they wish to assure these good neighbors that the loving sympathy and the kind manner in which it was offered by each, have done more to soften their grief than they can now express.”

“We are a small community,” continued Herr H——,“ only 14,500 inhabitants—simple folk, working our way on through life without any rich manufacturers or overgrown proprietors, as at Zurich, Berne, and Geneva, so there cannot be much rivalry or pretension. You will not find private villas or large châteaus round this lake—nothing, for instance, even like those handsome ones on the Lake of Thun; but we all hold together, and I only hope the young generation will continue to walk in the footsteps of their fathers.”

To Be Concluded Next Month.

Roger The Rich.(33)

A Ballad.

Dedicated, Without Permission, To Victor Emanuel.

God prospereth King Stephen! His sway is o’er the land. The Empress Maud hath bowed her head; Her knights are slain, her armies fled, Herself beneath his hand! God prospereth King Stephen! The land is all his own. From north to south, from east to west, The whole wide kingdom is at rest— Firm sits he on his throne. God prospereth King Stephen! Yet he hath cast his eye On the rich lands of Sherbourn, spread O’er many a hill and kie‐cropt mead, And many a bosky lea. King Stephen sware a grimly oath— God wis he kept it true: “Since Roger Niger (bishop then) Hath led against us armèd men, Roger shall dearly rue!” Roger hath lands and riches too, Marks forty thousand told; And well I wot the monarch’s vow Hath less to do with justice now Than with the bishop’s gold. Roger hath to Devizes ta’en His wealth with all his speed; Stout men‐at‐arms, and billmen true, And bowmen armed with sturdy yew, Attend him in his need. Now he hath stored his fortelace well With beeves and sheep and grain. He standeth on his topmost tower; And sayeth in the pride of power, The king shall knock in vain! What, O my knights! the monarch cries, Shall he thus brave our wrath? Shake forth our banner to the blast, And gather round us, liegemen fast; We’ll sweep him from our path! The king, with mighty following, Hath sat before the tower; But massy walls and valiant hearts Have nobly played their several parts— The bishop mocks his power! And loudly sware King Stephen then A fearful oath to hear: “Build me a gallows‐tree before The haughty prelate’s guarded door; This yet shall cost him dear.” Now they have built the gallows‐tree, And raised it in the air— Its height is forty feet and three, A laidly thing it is to see— And led his nephew there. Roger the bishop stands and sees Young Roger led to die— The nephew he had reared with care, His only sister’s son and heir: A tear steals from his eye. Now he hath turned him to his knights; His words are sad and low: “God wot I am an old man now; He layeth sorrow on my brow, He willeth I should go. My nephew hath his course to run, And mine is near its close. I straight will render up my lands, My gold shall pass from out mine hands— I’ll yield me to my foe! But as God lives he prospereth not King Stephen’s arms again; His latest triumph he hath won. Henceforth his is a setting sun; His efforts shall be vain! God prospereth not King Stephen now— The Empress Maud hath fled; Fitz‐Empress Henry snatcheth now The golden circlet from the brow, The glory from his head. God prospereth not King Stephen’s arms— Anjou is in the field, And Winchester and Gloucester band To wrest the sceptre from his hand, And vanquished he must yield. God prospereth not King Stephen’s cause— Henry is named his heir; Still may he sit upon the throne Weakness forbids him call his own, In sorrow and despair. God prospereth not his family— Eustace, his only son, Pines from that moment, droops his head, And, withering like a flower, is dead, And his last prop is gone. God prospereth not King Stephen’s health— His heart is stricken sore; Sleep shunneth now his eyes by night; His days are stricken with a blight; He smileth now no more. And still ’tis said God prospereth not The holder of those lands, And Sarum’s heirs ne’er live to claim The heritage of land and name— It slippeth from their hands; For one, ’tis said, hath fallen by chance; Another falls in strife; A father’s hand unwitting smote Another scion through the throat; Law claims another’s life. God prospereth not that family— Two hundred years have sped, And still the bishop’s curse clings fast, As fell and fatal to the last As when those words were said. Then the Third Edward rendered back Unto the church its own, And the broad lands to Robert gave (Thou’lt see it figured on his grave); And now the curse is gone!

The Poem Of Izdubar.

M. FRANÇOIS LENORMANT, in continuing the publication of his _Essay on the Propagation of the Phœnician Alphabet in the Ancient World_, and in editing a _Selection of Cuneiform Texts_, has just issued two volumes of important and interesting studies on _Primitive Civilizations_.(34)

The steps of this learned writer in the almost unknown regions which he explores so fearlessly, and usually with so much success, are not always perfectly sure; but, with a good faith so natural to him that it does not seem to cost him even an effort, he knows how to retrace his path and correct whatever may require rectification.

_Les Premières Civilisations_, several portions of which have been published in various collections, reappears developed and raised to the present level attained by scientific discovery. The work opens by a notice of prehistoric archæology and fossil man, the monuments of the neolithic period, and the invention of the use of metals and its introduction into the West. Studies on Egypt follow, including the _Poem of Pentaour_ and the _Romance of the Two Brothers_. The second volume, with the exception of the “Legend of Cadmus, and the Phœnician Establishments in Greece,” is entirely devoted to Chaldæa, presenting us with a Chaldæan Vêda, or collection of liturgical and devotional hymns in honor of the principal gods worshipped on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates; the biography of a Babylonian prince of the VIIIth century before our era, Merodach Baladan, with whose name the Bible has already made us acquainted;(35) and, lastly, the Babylonian epic poem of Izdubar. It is this last work of which the range is the most general and the value the greatest in connection with the comparative history of the Semitic races, their national genius, and their religious ideas. It touches, amongst other things, upon three points which it is important to put particularly in relief, on account of the manner in which the inferences resulting from them strengthen the ground of Christian apologists—namely, the myths of one of the most important branches of the race of Sem (or, to speak accurately, the race that was equally descended from Sem and Cham), the Assyrio‐Chaldæan belief in the immortality of the soul, and the origin of the signs of the Zodiac. There is also a fourth point—that of the tradition of the Deluge.

It has been repeatedly maintained by the sceptic, M. Renan, and is in fact one of his favorite ideas, that the Semites were radically incapable of producing an epic poem. He refuses everything to this race—imagination, the power of invention, the knowledge of the experimental method, philosophy, and science. One thing alone he accords to them—the monotheistic instinct. Now, the cuneiform tablets demonstrate that the sciences, especially those of astronomy and mathematics, held a very considerable place in the intellectual pursuits of the Babylonians and Assyrians. The poem of Erech, published by Mr. G. Smith, is sufficient of itself alone, by means of the fragments which are known to us, to reduce to nothing all the assertions in his history of the Semitic languages, in which M. Renan affirms that “the imagination of the Semitic races has never gone beyond the narrow circle traced around it by the exclusive idea of the divine greatness. God and man, in presence of each other, in the bosom of the desert—behold the summary, or, as it is termed in the present day, the formula, of all their poetry.”(36) Assuredly one never found one’s self less in the desert in presence of God alone and of man alone than in the Semitic poems of Chaldæa.

The veritable name of the hero on the banks of the Euphrates, sung by Homer, has remained unknown to this day. It is constantly found written in ideographic characters, which, pronounced phonetically, give the three syllables Iz‐du‐bar; but we know that they were pronounced in quite a different manner by the Assyrio‐Chaldæans. We are equally certain, from the testimony of other cuneiform inscriptions, that this Izdubar was one of the gods of Chaldæa. Nevertheless, he figures here as a simple hero, and, according to M. Lenormant, is probably Nemrod, “the mighty hunter,” as he is called in the Book of Genesis, alluding to a popular saying, of which the remembrance is still preserved in Assyria, as well as in Palestine, and also in the Egyptian tradition. The historical inscriptions of Assurbanipal name Resen, one of the cities of Assyria, “the town of the hunter.”(37)

The Izdubar of the Babylonian inscription, like the Nemrod of the Bible, reigns over four cities,(38) three of which, named in Genesis, are certainly identical with those mentioned on the tablet, and which therefore furnish an argument in favor of the supposition. But however that may be, Izdubar, whose name signifies “God of fire,” “God of the body or mass of fire,” is without doubt the ancient Arcadian God of fire whose worship had so great an importance in the primitive epochs; and this idea throws much light on the Babylonian poem, to which it, in some sort, furnishes the key. This poem is divided into twelve _cantos_, if we may so call them, each forming a distinct episode and inscribed in a separate tablet. Sir Henry Rawlinson has proved that each canto relates to one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, and to one of the twelve months of the year. The god of fire is thus represented as being one with the sun, and the entire epic consists of a poetical history of the annual revolution of that luminary, and its accomplishment in the course of twelve months, around which revolution various incidental episodes have been grouped, amongst others the narrative of the Deluge. The _dénouement_ of the poem is the cure of Izdubar, who, at the instigation of the man saved from the Deluge, plunges into the sea, from whence he issues delivered from a sort of leprosy which had threatened his life. M. Gubernatis remarks that this is identical with the Vedic myth of Indra, and also the Hellenic one of Tithonus. Leprosy is invariably the malady of kingly heroes, and signifies old age, which, according to popular belief, could only be cured either by the waters of youth or by the blood of a child. The old solar hero, the dying sun, sprang forth with renewed youth in the morning, after traversing the sea of night—a symbol which would naturally possess an additional force to the nations who beheld the departing sun‐god sink beneath the Western sea. The Chaldæan epic presents us, therefore, with the same mythological groundwork as the other polytheistic religions with regard to the worship of fire and of the sun—a groundwork presenting a point of contact among the Semitic, Aryan, and Egyptian races which it is necessary to bear in mind in tracing the comparative histories of the descendants of the sons of Noe.

The details of the Babylonian poem exhibit a mythology as multitudinous as that of India or of Greece; the adventures also of Izdubar for the most part closely resemble those of the classic heroes. He is a great conqueror, who wins immortality by his splendid exploits and his mighty labors, some of which remind one of those of Hercules. We see him successively capture the winged ox, and put an end to the ravages of a sea monster to which is given the name of Boul—two exploits almost identical with those of Perseus. As in Egypt the sun, under the name of Osiris, is the husband of Isis, the personification of the productive power, and sometimes the moon, so in Chaldæa the sun, Izdubar, espouses Istar, the moon, who is also the Assyrian Venus, and daughter of the god Sin. Istar is, however, at this period, already a widow, having lost her first spouse, whose name signifies “Son of Life.”

In the poem of Erech a great number of other deities appear, together with Istar. Besides her father, Sin, who is god of the months, we have firstly Anou, the Oannes of the Greeks, and the first personage of the supreme triad; then the second member of this triad, Bel, the demiurge; and lastly the third, Ao, Nesroch,(39) or Nouah. Around these great divinities are grouped Adar, the god of the planet Saturn; Samas, god of the sun; Nabo,(40) god of the planet Mercury, and his companion, Sarou; Bin, god of the atmosphere and tempest; Nergal, of the planet Mars; besides a vast army of Annunaki, or secondary genii; of Guzalu, or destroying spirits, and others of inferior race and power. These deities did not agree among themselves any better than did the gods of the Greek Olympus. Their heaven appears to have been anything but an abode of peace or love; and in heaven or hell they quarrelled alike. Istar seems especially to have distinguished herself by her unaccommodating disposition.

It is believed that the account of the journey of Istar into hell (for the story of such a journey in the _Odyssey_ and the _Æneid_ had also its precursor in Chaldæa) formed one of the episodes of the poem of Izdubar, although the tablet containing it has not yet been discovered; but we possess it on another fragment, and one which is of great value, as it furnishes an incontestable proof of the belief of the Assyrio‐Chaldæans in the immortality of the soul. The abode of the dead is called the “immutable land,”(41) and corresponds to the Hades of the ancient Greek poets. It is divided into seven circles, after the model of the celestial spheres, and is depicted as follows by the Chaldæan poet: “Towards the unchangeable land; the region [from whence none return]; Istar, the daughter of Sin, her ear—has turned: the daughter of Sin [has turned] her ear,—towards the dwelling of the dead, the throne of the god Ir ...,—towards the abode into which he has entered, and whence he has not come forth,—towards the way of his own descent, by which none return:—towards the dwelling whereinto he has entered, the prison,—the place where [the dead] have naught but dust wherewith [to appease] their hunger; and mud for nourishment:—from whence the light is not seen, and in darkness they dwell where shades (ghosts), like birds, fill the vaulted space,—where, above the uprights and lintel of the portal the earth is upheaped.”(42) Allusion is also made several times to this “unchangeable land” in other poems in the collection of Assurbanipal, as well as to spirits who wander back to earth, and dead who return to torment the living. In a note on the religious belief of the Assyrians Mr. Fox Talbot publishes two prayers composed to ask for eternal life to be granted to the king. The meaning of the first is not perfectly clear, but of the second, which is very explicit, we give the most important passage: “After the gift of the present days, in the festivals of the land of the silver sky, in the shining courts, in the abode of benedictions, in the light of the fields of felicity, may he live an eternal life, sacred in the presence of the gods of Assyria.”(43) Also, in a hymn to the god Marduk, are traces of a belief in the resurrection of the dead. This deity is repeatedly called “the merciful, who restores the dead to life.”

Thus, then, the Semites believed in the immortality of the soul; but monotheism was far from being a privilege of their race, by which it would be possible to explain the origin of the Judaic religion without providential intervention and regulation; and thus we see the Chaldæan poets combat along the whole line the assertions of M. Renan respecting their belief and genius alike. Never did facts with more pitiless emphasis give the lie to the learned; and it seems as if the historian of the Semetic languages had had a secret presentiment of humiliations which would result to him from a more generally extended study of Assyriology, when at its outset, about fifteen years ago, he attacked it with a determination which has not been forgotten.(44)

Another historical fact which may be gathered from the Babylonian epic is the mythological signification of the signs of the zodiac. The cuneiform inscriptions have already shown us that not only was Asia the cradle of the human race, but that it was also the primitive nursery of civilization. It can no longer be doubted that it was from thence, instead of, as has been supposed, from Egypt, that Greece herself received indirectly her first lessons in the arts, as it was also from thence that she received her metals. It is equally in Chaldæa that we find the origin of astronomy and of the zodiacal signs; the nomenclature of the latter, as it remains at the present day, differing in no essential point from that established by the Babylonian astronomers, although its value and signification have hitherto been very obscure. This obscurity has been dissipated by _The Poem of Izdubar_, which shows that the ancient Assyrian mythology bestowed on the signs their figures and their names. The myths relating to each of the months formed the subjects of the twelve episodes of the poem. Thus, for instance, the second narrated the capture of the winged bull; and the second month is designated as “the month of the propitious bull,” and has Taurus for its sign. Again, the sixth song related the marriage of Istar with Izdubar, and began with the goddess’ message to the hero: the sixth month is called “the month of the message of Istar,” and has for its sign the archeress, of which we have made Virgo, the virgin, who, according to the attestation of the prism of Assurbanipal, was the goddess Istar herself. The eleventh tablet is consecrated to the god Bin, “the inundator—he who pours abroad the rain,” and the sign of that month is the shedder of water, or the vase pouring it forth. Thus crumbles away the whole chronological scaffolding raised by the school of Dupuis, according to whom the zodiacal signs were only to be explained as having direct relation to agricultural labors, and the phases of the seasons to be regarded in reference to the productions of the earth—an interpretation which made it necessary to withdraw the origin of man to an enormously distant period of the past, in order to reach a time in which, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the presence of the sun in the sign Taurus should coincide with the season of ploughing. All these calculations were equally fanciful with those founded on the famous zodiac of Denderah, and it is now ascertained beyond all reasonable doubt that the zodiacal signs have a religious or rather mythological, and not an agricultural, origin.

—The above is in great part translated from an article by M. Gregoire in the _Revue des Questions Historiques_, for April, 1874.

New Publications.

LIFE OF ANNE CATHARINE EMMERICH. By Helen Ram. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Many of our readers must have read that part of the record of Catharine Emmerich’s visions by Clement Brentano which has been translated into English. Those who have been pleased and edified by them will be delighted with this life of the holy and highly favored ecstatic virgin. It is a charming and wonderful life, especially that portion which relates the history of Anne Catharine’s miraculous infancy and childhood. The volume makes one of F. Coleridge’s series, which we have frequently had occasion to praise. We have been surprised to see in the pages of a book issued under the supervision of so accurate and careful an editor a number of inaccuracies in style and typographical errors.

BRIC‐A‐BRAC SERIES—NO. 2: ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHIES OF THACKERAY AND DICKENS. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.

These recollections and anecdotes of the two favorite English writers of fiction are very readable, and those which relate to Thackeray especially interesting.

THE YOUNG CATHOLIC’S ILLUSTRATED SCHOOL SERIES, comprising: The Young Catholic’s Illustrated Primer, Speller, First Reader, Second Reader, Third Reader, and Fourth Reader. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren St. 1874.

Every effort which is likely, in any way, to help on the great work of Catholic education, has of course our entire sympathy. Humanly speaking, the destiny of the church in the United States is to be determined by the education which we give to our children, and the almost universal recognition of this truth by the Catholics of America is, we are persuaded, the most certain evidence that we have really made progress. It is only within a comparatively recent time that we have come to fully realize the inevitable and fatal results of allowing our children to frequent the public schools, and to thoroughly understand that the common‐ school system of education, based, as it is, upon the implied assumption of the untruth of positive religion, logically and in fact leads to infidelity or to what is scarcely less an evil—religious indifference. The church without the school‐house is incomplete, and can at best do but half work; and we consequently find that almost all of our bishops are now beginning to demand that every parish shall have its parochial school.

We have been at some pains to examine the returns made by the different diocesan authorities to the publishers of the _Catholic Almanac_, and we find that last year there were in the whole country about three hundred and eighty thousand children attending our Catholic schools. This is probably less than half the number of Catholic children of school age in the United States; still, we are already doing enough to show that Catholic primary education must be recognized as one of the institutions of the country, and that those who have control of it should set to work without delay to give it a thorough organization. It is well to teach our people that the public schools are dangerous to the faith and morals of their children; it is far better to render them useless by bringing our own up to the standard of excellence which the more abundant means and opportunities of the state have enabled it to give to its educational establishments. There are, we know, many parochial schools which are in every respect equal to those of the state; but under the present system everything is left to the zeal and energy of the pastor. What we want is a system which will cause every parochial school to come up to the requirements of a prescribed standard of excellence. In a word, the necessity of the times demands the organization of Catholic education.

Each diocese should have its school boards and its official examiners and visitors. Annual diocesan school reports should be published, accompanied by remarks on the defects observed in the practical management of the schools and in the methods of teaching.

Out of these diocesan school boards and school reports in due time a national Catholic school system would grow into vigorous life. More of this another time; at present we are glad to take note of the greater desire for excellence in our elementary schools, shown by the demand for improved class‐books.

As our system of education is distinctively Catholic, it of course requires Catholic text‐books—books composed with a special view to the principles which underlie the Catholic theory of pedagogy.

This truth has been recognized by the bishops of the United States, who, both in the First and Second Plenary Councils of Baltimore, made this one of the subjects of their thought.

That The Catholic Publication Society, which has done so much to elevate the tone of our literature, has felt authorized to begin the issue of a complete series of such works, is undoubtedly an indication of the general feeling among Catholics of the want of improved class‐books, especially for our elementary schools, which are by far the most important, since they more directly concern the welfare of the masses of our people.

Whilst we are grateful for what has been done in this matter, we cannot shut our eyes to the many defects of most of the text‐books now in use. We have before us the Young Catholic’s Illustrated Primer, Speller, First, Second, Third, and Fourth Readers; and we have read and examined them with conscientious care, and we have at the same time compared them with similar publications of other houses, and we therefore feel competent to speak of their merits, if not with authority, at least with knowledge. That they should be superior to any other books of the kind is only what we had the right both to expect and to demand, and that they are has already been generally recognized by the Catholic press of the country.

In the choice and arrangement of the matter we discern admirable good sense and tact; in the illustrations, which are very numerous and nearly all original, being explanatory of the text, excellent taste; whilst in the mechanical execution we perceive the skilful workmanship that usually characterizes the books of The Catholic Publication Society.

The series is graded in strict accordance with scientific principles of education, and combines all that is important in the word and phonic methods of teaching, without, however, excluding the _a, b, c_ drill. Books must always remain the indispensable instruments for imparting instruction in school, and hence it is of the greatest moment that the pupil should from the very start be attracted to them. Most children enter school eager to learn; the craving for knowledge is a divine instinct implanted in their hearts by the Author of their being, which they have already in a thousand ways sought to satisfy by their fruitless efforts to penetrate the mystery of beauty with which Nature surrounds them. When they enter school this intellectual activity should be stimulated, not repressed. The books first placed in their hands should be simple, offering many attractions and few difficulties, presenting to their minds under new forms the objects with which observation has already rendered them familiar, and which they now first learn to associate with printed words. These truths have been felt and acted upon by the compilers of the “Young Catholic’s Series,” which, in simplicity, in correct gradation, in beauty and attractiveness, far surpasses anything of the kind that has yet been offered to the Catholic English‐speaking public.

Another truth which can never be lost sight of in Catholic education is that religion should be the vital element of the whole process of instruction.

“Give me a lesson in geography,” said Mr. Arnold, “and I will make it _religious_.” This is what Catholics desire: that the light of religion should burnish as with fine gold all human knowledge. Indeed, in primary education religion is almost the only subject of real thought, the only power able to touch the heart, to raise the mind, and to evoke from brutish apathy the elements of humanity, and more especially the reason. As religion is the widest and deepest of all the elements of civilization, it ought to be the substratum and groundwork of all popular education.

“Popular education,” says Guizot, “to be truly good and socially useful, must be fundamentally religious.”

In the compilation of text‐books this is precisely the point which demands the greatest amount of good sense and the most consummate tact. Religion must run through the whole fabric like a thread of gold. It must form the atmosphere in which the pupil breathes; it must give coloring to everything, and everything must in one way or another be made to prove and explain its dogmas, and yet there must be no cant, no attempt at preaching, no dull moralizing, and above all no stupidity.

To accomplish all this, our readers will readily believe, is not an easy task, and yet we have no hesitation in saying that if they will take the trouble to examine thoroughly the “Young Catholic’s Series,” they will agree with us in the opinion that it can stand the test of even this standard of excellence.

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We learn that the Holy Father has sent a letter of commendation to the writer of “Italian Confiscation Laws” in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for Oct., 1873, and ordered a translation of the article.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XX., NO. 116.—NOVEMBER, 1874.

Church Chant _Versus_ Church Music.

An interesting colloquy took place in our mind as we finished the perusal of the paper entitled “Church Music” which appeared in the August and September numbers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. We transcribe it as faithfully as our memory serves us.

SCENE—_The cloister of a Benedictine monastery. Time, Anno Domini 1000. A number of monks rehearsing for a festival._

GREGORIUS, _the choir‐master dictating from an open Gradual_. “Listen, my brothers all. To‐morrow is the festival of S. Polycarp the martyr and the name‐day of our good father, the abbot. On such a joyous festival we must not fail to make his heart right glad with our chanting. Let us begin the Introit. (_Sings._) ‘Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum celebrantes.’ ”

(_All the monks repeating in chorus_) “Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem—”

(_They are interrupted by a loud knocking at the floor leading from the cloister. Brother Gregorius, on opening it, is confronted by an aged stranger with a long, white, flowing beard, bearing in his hand a roll of printed music, on which the words __“__Boston,__”__ __“__Ditson__”__ and the date __“__1874__”__ can be discerned._)

GREGORIUS. “Salve, frater.”

AGED STRANGER. “Prof. Hubanus, at your service; and having come from a great distance, and happily being born at a much later date, I guess you will find my services on this eve of your joyous festival of some value, for I am well acquainted with all the best Masses published. By the way, is one of the brethren lately departed this life?”

GREGORIUS (_with astonishment_). “No, God be praised! Brother Augustine yonder did leave the infirmary vacant this morning, thanks to Our Blessed Lady, that no voice might be wanting in the choir on the morrow; but wherefore the question, good domne Hubanus?”

HUBANUS. “Because I heard you but just now rehearsing such a sorrowful, in fact, so lugubrious, a _morceau_—an Offertory piece, I presume, for a Requiem Mass—that I supposed you were getting up the music for some such occasion.”

(_The monks regard the aged stranger with no little surprise, mingled with curiosity._)

GREGORIUS. “We must have made indeed sad work of it in our rehearsing. Worthy Hubanus, it was the _Gaudeamus_ you heard.”

HUBANUS. “The _Gaudeamus_, eh? (_Aside._ I don’t remember seeing that in Ditson’s catalogue. I wonder what it is. _To Gregorius._) Would you mind repeating it once more?”

GREGORIUS. “With pleasure. Sing, my brothers.” (_They sing the whole Introit._)

HUBANUS. “Ah! fine; quite solemn! A Gregorian chant, I perceive. A very plaintive movement. The _finale_ has an exceedingly mournful effect. In D minor, is it not? Still, for a Requiem Offertory I think Rossini’s _Pro Peccatis_, or Gounod’s _Ave Maria_, or ‘Angels ever Bright and Fair,’ for a change, would please the congregation better.”

ALL THE MONKS. “Plaintive! Our _Gaudeamus_ mournful! Calls an Introit an Offertory _piece_! Like a Requiem Offertory indeed! An _Ave Maria_ for that too! What does he mean by D minor? (_Blessing themselves._) Ab omni malo, libera nos, Domine!”

HUBANUS. “Oh! beg pardon. That is an Introit, is it? Indeed! But, as I said, I have the honor to be born at a much later date than yourselves, and we don’t bother ourselves with singing those things in my day and country. We bring out the finest music, however, in our choir of the Church of S. Botolph, in the United States, that you can hear. I’m the organist and director.”

GREGORIUS. “Not sing the Introit! Why, good domne Hubanus, our grand and joyous festival on the morrow would be robbed of one of its chief features if we failed to sing the _Gaudeamus_—I mean _the Gaudeamus_ that you have just heard.”

HUBANUS. “ ‘De gustibus non est disputandum.’ Hem! excuse my indulging in the classics; those old Latin fellows say a good deal in a few words, you know. But you don’t seriously mean to say that such monotonous stuff—excuse my plain speaking on your plain singing—is fit for a joyous festival? As my friend, Dr. ——, says in his late paper on ‘Church Music,’ ‘to hear Gregorian chant for a long time, and nothing else, becomes extremely monotonous, and burdens the ear with a dull weight of sound not always tolerable.’ He says, moreover, that ‘this is admitted by all who in seminaries and monasteries have been most accustomed to hear it.’ ”

GREGORIUS. “Your learned friend did not seek _our_ judgment, I assure you, and I am at a loss to know who could have made so silly an admission to him.”

HUBANUS. “But do you not ‘resort to every device,’ as he says again, ‘to escape its monotony on festival days, by harmonies on the chant which are out of all keeping with it,’ and so forth?”

GREGORIUS. “_We_ do not, I trust. What little harmony we sing is in strict keeping with the mode of the chant; and as to escaping anything, we know the rubrics, domne Hubanus, and respect them, and, what is more, we observe them.”

HUBANUS. “On that score I have the advantage of you; for it doesn’t require much knowledge of what you call rubrics to bring out a Mass and grand Vespers with us. However, this question of plain chant is settled long ago. It ought to have been settled long before you were born. For, as Dr. —— continues in his paper, ‘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.’ Ah! Brother Gregorius, you should have been born later.”

GREGORIUS. “Then we monks, and the generations of the faithful throughout the world, have for the past thousand years been shut out from the feelings of Christian joy and triumph, have we? Verily, either we or you can have known very little of one or of the other, as the observation of your learned doctor may happen to be true or not. Did the church put a lie into the mouths of her cantors when she bade them sing, ‘Repleatur os meum laude tua, alleluia; ut possim cantare, alleluia; gaudebunt labia mea, dum cantavero tibi, alleluia, alleluia’?”(45)

HUBANUS. “You are a trifle sarcastic, Brother Gregorius; but I willingly pardon it, for I’m a plain‐spoken man myself, and call a spade a spade. Besides, you know, you can always fall back on the ‘De gustibus’—a quotation I often find very convenient; but I warrant me your _prima donna_ doesn’t find much satisfaction in exhibiting her fine soprano on your dull chant, which you must confess, with Dr. ——, ‘is of limited, very limited, range,’ and in my opinion as poor in expression as a kettle‐ drum.”

GREGORIUS. “I crave your pardon, worthy sir. You are a stranger and quite aged—”

HUBANUS (_interrupting_). “Eighteen hundred and seventy‐four.”

GREGORIUS (_continuing_)—“as the length and whiteness of your beard proclaim, while we have only the experience of one thousand years, the lessons of the church, and the _taste_ as well as the examples of the saints to profit by; but we must confess that of a _prima donna_ we have never yet heard.”

ALL THE MONKS (_very decidedly_). “Never!”

HUBANUS. “Never heard of a _prima donna_! Why, when _were_ you born? I mean, of course, the chief lady soprano who sings in the choir.”

(_Here all the monks burst out laughing._)

GREGORIUS (_having got his breath_). “Come, come, my ancient stranger, that explains all. We knew you must be ‘chaffing’ us, from the very first, with your ‘mournful _Gaudeamus_’ and your never singing Introits or obeying the rubrics and the rest. Ha! ha! Truly, a ‘chief lady in the choir’—_prima donna_, I think you named such a mythical personage—was only needed to cap the climax of your excellent joke.”

HUBANUS. “Joke! I’m not joking at all. _We_ have ladies in our choir—(_aside_) and it’s no joke to manage them either—(_to Gregorius_) and pay them good salaries, as you must; for without that, you know, you never _can_ have good music.”

(_Here the laughing of the monks suddenly subsided, followed by loud and angry whispers, of which the __ word __“__heretic__”__ was unmistakably heard. Brother Gregorius interposed._) “Judge not too hastily, good brothers. True, no church which oweth obedience to our Holy Father; the Pope, and which hath a right therefore to call itself Catholic, did ever yet permit women to sing in church choirs; but what she might have done in this matter in the country from which this aged stranger comes—be it ever so contrary to all the rubrics and traditions known unto us—we will the better learn from his own lips. Women, then, good domne Hubanus, do sing in the choir in the Catholic churches of your strange land, standing, perchance, beside the men‐singers?”

HUBANUS. “Where else would they stand? You see we put the sopranos and tenors on one side, and the altos and basses on the other.”

GREGORIUS (_scratching his shaven crown in great perplexity_). “We have yet to learn many wonderful things! Canst tell me, worthy Hubanus, how comes it? Does your learned friend, Dr. ——, speak of this matter in his celebrated ‘paper’? Doubtless he mentions some decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites which hath allowed this—this (_another scratch_) unheard‐of novelty?”

HUBANUS. “I cannot remember that he made any allusion to it. In fact, I fancy that he would rather _not_, and I am glad he didn’t. But where’s the use of making a fuss over it? Haven’t women got voices as well as men, and what did the Lord give them voices for, if he did not intend them for use?”

GREGORIUS. “In the choir?”

HUBANUS. “In the choir, or out of the choir, what’s the difference?”

GREGORIUS. “Do the rubrics allow it?”

HUBANUS. “_Ma foi!_ I do not know. (_Aside._) I hope they do, if old fogies like you are going to stir up _that_ question. (_To Gregorius._) No lady‐singers! If that were to happen, my occupation, as well as theirs, would be like Othello’s—gone. For hark you, Brother Gregorius, although I know but little of your old‐fashioned, barbarous chant—can’t read a note of it, to tell the truth—if women‐singers are banished from the choir, music goes with them. The music I like requires the female voice. I wouldn’t waste my time with a parcel of boys and on such music as they can sing.”

GREGORIUS. “What music is this of which you speak so often? Hath the church adopted a new style of melody which is not chant?”

HUBANUS. “No, not adopted precisely, but there is a new music—everybody knows it—written by Mozart, Haydn, Mercadante, Peters, and several others, which organists and choirs make use of in our day. Some prefer one, some another, according to taste. ‘De gustibus,’ you know.”

GREGORIUS. “Yet tell me—for here the strangeness of your news almost surpasses belief—how _dare_ the organists and choirs make use of _any_ melody in accompanying the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and absolving the Divine Office which has not been adopted, or at least distinctly sanctioned, by holy church, to whom it appertains to dispose the ordering even of the most minute rubric in these important matters concerning the due praise of God and the sure edification of the people?”

HUBANUS. “All I can say is, we do it. It is tolerated in some places, and my friend in his paper quotes some ‘Instructions’ which the cardinal vicar in Rome issued to his own clergy to prove the toleration; but, to my thinking, they sound very much like the careful mother’s permission to her boy who asked leave to learn to swim—‘Certainly, my child, but don’t you never go near the water, leastways any water that is over your ankles.’ ”

GREGORIUS. “I think I understand, for I have heard our good father, the abbot, say that ‘he who would be well carried must not drive with too stiff a rein’; and my holy novice‐master, Father Ambrose—to whose soul may God grant rest!—did oft chide my hasty judgment upon my fellow‐novices, saying in his sweet way, and after the manner of his wise speech, ‘Thou wouldst _re_form monks, good Brother Gregorius, before they are formed. All they need is a little _instruction_.’ At present every one is well pleased with your music?”

HUBANUS. “Oh! that is quite another question. Dr. —— himself does not seem to think so, for he says in his paper: ‘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 a good deal of attention.’ ”

ALL THE MONKS. “Ab omni malo, libera nos, Domine!”

GREGORIUS. “His account of your _music_—which you seem, nevertheless, to prize so much more highly than our dear holy _chant_, which hath the undoubted sanction of the church—gives pretty plain evidence that the church hath not adopted it in any wise. It rather suggests the thought that she would gladly be rid of it altogether, abstaining, however, like Father Ambrose, from reforming musicians before they are formed, and resolving, as he did often pleasantly say, to my comfort, ‘Thou shalt see, Brother Gregorius, that I shall _make no change in our holy Rule_.’ ”

HUBANUS. “One would think you were born later, after all; for it would appear that our Holy Father, Pius the Ninth—pity you haven’t lived to know him, Brother Gregorius, for he is the dearest pope that has ruled the church since the days of S. Peter—is in the van among the leaders of the ‘Gregorian movement,’ since a little while ago he made a decree that the Gregorian chant should be taught in all the ecclesiastical schools of the states of the church, _to the exclusion of every other kind of music_—‘Cantus Gregorianus, omni alio rejecto, tradetur.’ You see he wishes to get the Roman priests educated up to it—Rome rules the world—and the thing is done. ‘Othello’s occupation is gone!’ But how in the world we shall ever get up a Christmas or an Easter Mass that is fit to listen to when that day comes is more than I can tell.”

GREGORIUS. “Despair not, good Hubanus. Remain with us past the morrow, and thou shalt hear a holy Mass and solemn Vespers which will warm the cockles of thy heart, chanted in strains of melody that belie neither the sentences of joyful praise which are uttered nor the exultation which doth lift the hearts of the brethren to heaven, and fill the festival hours with a divine gladness. (_To the monks._) Brothers, let us rehearse the _Gloria in Excelsis_.”

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As the curtains of our memory dropped upon the scene we have just been present at, our eyes caught sight again of the sentence quoted by Prof. Hubanus: “In consequence of the failure of modern composers to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion”—which _failure_ is so utter that, in the judgment of the same writer, he “thinks 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.”

But what of the figured musical compositions of those musicians who may in our time be honored with the title of “ancient,” such as Palestrina and his imitators? The music of this style forms, we are told, the staple of what is commonly heard in S. Peter’s. The writer of the article we allude to evidently believes any attempt to make such music popular would be no less a failure. The intricacy of the style, the exceeding difficulties attendant upon its artistic execution, and its restricted vocal character, are “fatal” objections.

We fully agree with him. In our former articles on this subject (THE CATHOLIC WORLD, December, 1869, and February and March, 1870) we not only pronounced modern figured music to be in practice a failure as _church_ music, but intended also to be understood as asserting that the cause of this failure lay chiefly in the melodious form of such music—the necessary result of a tonality essentially sensuous, which renders it, despite every effort of the artist, intrinsically unsuitable for the expression of the “prayer of the church.” That there is _prayerful_ music we do not deny, but it will never obtain any more positive sanction from the church than she gives to the hundred and one sentimental “prayers” and turgid “litanies” which fill the pages of our “largest books of devotion” _ad nauseam_, and are equally supposed by the uneducated Catholic and the ignorant Protestant to be the masterpieces of Catholic musical and liturgical art.

We did not think it necessary, writing as we did for a special class of readers, to explain the distinguishing characteristics of the church’s “prayer,” being, as our learned friend says, fourfold—latreutic, impetratory, propitiatory, and eucharistic. To us the church was not wanting in wisdom in the adoption alone of plain chant to express her divine prayer, whether it happen to be latreutic, impetratory, propitiatory, or eucharistic. She never made any distinction that we know of. But our learned friend, while he cannot help but admit that for the purposes of adoration, propitiation, and supplication it is not only all that could be desired, but is also better than any other melody, denies, with an _ipse dixit_, its capability of expressing praise and thanksgiving. Argument does not seem to be worth seeking. “Plain chant,” he says, “is confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings of Christian joy and triumph.” And again: “It certainly must borrow from figured music the triumphant strains of praise and thanksgiving.”

Neither one nor the other. We confess to nothing of the kind. And although, by the rule of argumentation, we are not called upon to prove a negative, we refer to the response good Brother Gregorius has already made, and would furthermore ask if the _Te Deum_, the _Exultet_, the _Preface_ for Easter Sunday, the _Alleluia_ of Holy Saturday, or the _Lauda Sion_, are confessedly unequal to the task assigned them?

As far as the question has any practical importance, we feel that not another word need be said. Plain chant is in lawful possession, and cannot be ousted by personal caprice or taste, nor by gratuitous assumptions of its inability to answer the end proposed by the wise authority of the church; still less by a proposed substitution of a system which, after three centuries of vain efforts to supplant the rightful possessor, is declared, even by its own friends, to be “a failure,” and the majority of its painfully‐produced works fit only to be consigned to the flames.

We have, however, a question of more merit to discuss. If modern music has failed to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion, it will be not a little interesting to examine into the true cause of this failure. It will be found to lie in its melodic form (not in the use of harmony), which came into being with the introduction of the chord of the diminished seventh and the substitution of the instrumental, factitious scales called major and minor for the four natural vocal, authentic scales and their four correlative plagal scales. Like seeks like, and as this chord of the seventh was an inspiration of sentimental, languishing, passional feeling, the new music sought its language in poetry, and chiefly in lyric poetry, in which every sort of human passion finds smooth expression; and as this latter is divided into regular feet, with recurring emphasis and cadence, music soon found itself set to time. Its melody became measured. Pegasus found himself in harness. To express the sublime, the heroic, was only possible now by knocking down the bars, putting it all _ad libitum_, and calling the phrase _recitative_; and as the passage from the sublime to the ridiculous is proverbially short, the composition of many of these recitatives, in their leaping intervals and startling contrasts, vividly remind one of Pegasus let loose to scamper and roll unbridled in the open fields.

The invention and perfection of musical instruments are coincident with the rise and progress of the system of melody known as “modern music,” the organ and piano holding the mastery. To these are due, in great measure, the universal cultivation of the modern tonality, and the consequent loss of appreciation of the tonality of the ecclesiastical modes. It is heard in the lullaby at the cradle’s side, whistled by boys in the streets, sung by children in popular melodies and hymns at school, confirmed by all the concerts given by orchestras in halls, theatres, and public meetings; every young lady strums it forth from her piano, every organist modulates it in church, while all bells, from thousands upon thousands of churches, jangle it forth from one end of Christendom to the other. That the church has been able to withstand the pressure of all this, and still dares to command her priests to chant “per omnia sæcula sæculorum” to her own ancient mode, is, even in that simple and significant sentence, a proof of her divine strength to resist the most alluring seductions and powerful onslaughts of the world, and a note of calm defiance to its “fashion which passeth away.”

We are now prepared to enter into a critical examination of the essential character of music as distinguished from plain chant. In the first place, we find, as we have already noted, that it is measured in its melody—that is, it is written, as it is said, in _time_; and, as a consequence of its lyrical movement, it became equally subjected to certain laws of versification and of phraseology corresponding to the stanza. When musicians began to write for the language of the church, and to set the sublime prose of her _Gloria in Excelsis_, _Credo_, etc., to its form of melody, this supposed necessity of making musical stanzas compelled the application of what is known in music as the theme, on which certain fanciful variations were built, shorter or longer, as the musician deemed necessary to complete his “work,” altogether forming a sort of Procrustean bed, on which the sacred words of the Liturgy were either dismembered or stretched by repetition in order to make them fit the melody. To make the “work” fit the words was not to be thought of; whence we judge it well for the peace of Mr. Richardson that Mozart and Haydn have departed this life. We remember, when a boy, long before we had made more than a child’s acquaintance with the modern “Masses,” squeezing the _Kyrie Eleison_ after this fashion on the framework of one of De Beriot’s celebrated airs for violin and piano, and gave ourselves as much credit for the originality of the “adaptation” as we are willing to give to the man who first of all (to the misfortune of true church chant) tried to compose a musical theme for the same words of prayer. We refer our readers to the late paper on “Church Music” in the August and September numbers of this magazine, and to the translation of the _Gloria in Excelsis_ of Mozart’s Twelfth Mass, as given in one of our former articles, as proofs of the perfectly outrageous extent to which this “adaptation” has already been carried.

Now, we affirm, as a principle, that the expression of the “Prayer of sacrifice and of praise,” as we may term the Holy Mass and the recitation of the Divine Office, should be consonant with, and conformed to, the manner in which the church directs the celebration of the acts of the same. The celebrant and his ministers, the acolytes and the chorus, do not march, halt, turn about, or otherwise conduct themselves like soldiers or like puppets on wires, neither do they hop and glide and go through set figures like dancers. Melody in measure is therefore wholly unsuited to the character and spirit of the acts of the performers.

In connection with the acts of Catholic worship, melody in measure is therefore incongruous, unmeaning, and absurd. For, to put the question plainly, if neither celebrant, ministers, chorus, nor people are to march—to do which, even in her sacred processions, would be shocking and profane—why sing a march? If they are not to waltz, why sing one? If the church does not want to

“Make the soul dance a jig to heaven,”

then, in the name of common sense, why shall Master Haydn be permitted to offer the church singers a musical jig? The truth of the matter is that such measured movements, added to the gymnastic feats of melody which characterize the phrasing of the greater number of modern “Masses,” are ignorantly supposed to faithfully express that Christian joy and triumph which plain chant is quite as ignorantly supposed to be unable to inspire.

Let any one examine the church’s chant, and especially its movement, and he will not fail to be struck with its remarkable consonance with, and the sense of exact propriety of, its accompaniment to the movements and demeanor of the sacred ministers and of all who are appointed to assist them in carrying out the sacred functions of divine worship. How majestic and dignified, how modest and devout, are its measures! A sort of continuous procession of sound, resembling now the deep murmurings of the waves of the ocean, now the gentle breathings of the wind, now the prolonged echoes of distant thunder, now the soft whispering of the woods in summer! Always grave and decorous in its phrasing. Never indulging in trivial antics or in meretricious languishing and voluptuous undulations. Time and arithmetical measures do not straiten and confine its heavenly inspirations, for the thoughts of the soul, and chiefly the thoughts of prayer, do not move like clockwork. One does not adore five minutes, propitiate two minutes, supplicate half a minute, and give thanks ten seconds; and to do either in 2/4 3/4 or 6/8 time would be the height of the ridiculous. A friend tells us that the only time he ever had to do either at High Mass was during the performance of that part of the score called “_point d’orgue_.” Is it any wonder that music for the church is a failure, and that plain chant still holds its own?

_Secondly._ The melody of modern music is essentially mechanical. Formed as it has been upon improved instrumentation, it is neither more nor less than a musical performance. The melody is therefore the chief thing; the words and their expression are only secondary. From which, as a necessary result—if the music be worth listening to—the most accomplished vocalists that the pecuniary resources of the church can procure are called in to render the selections. Hence, also, the introduction of women into the choir, contrary to the laws and traditions of the church, the banishment of the chorus from the sanctuary, and the erection of the detestable Protestant singing‐gallery over the doorway of the church. This latter flagrant innovation on the proper rubrical disposition of the choir has been lately specially condemned in the “Instructions” of the cardinal vicar at Rome. No one surely will have the hardihood to call modern music an “ecclesiastical song,” as it should be called or it has no place in the church. It is the song of professional singers, distinctly a mechanical performance, and open, without the possibility of reform, to the most shocking abuses. What organist cannot recall instances in which the male and female singers carried on and perfected their courtship in the choir, and where in the same holy (?) place eating and drinking were indulged in during the sermon, and the daily newspapers read? The drinking of water or the chewing of tobacco—well, we would like to see the priest who has been able to banish either from his singing‐gallery. These and other numerous irregularities we think ourselves fully justified in adducing as argument in this connection, simply _because they exist_, are _common_, _notorious_, and are a tolerated incumbrance with the mechanism; and, if effectually banished, would leave the said mechanism subject to no little friction and the production of tones of complaint which, whether they proceed from unoiled hinges or choirs, are not agreeable, considered as music.

Compare, again, the character and movement of those upon whom the ceremonies devolve. They are not at all mechanical, but strictly personal. In the first place, the actors are of a restricted class. They must be either men or boys. Women and girls are not permitted to celebrate or serve in any capacity at the sacred functions. The services of a graceful and intelligent acolyte are exceedingly pleasant and edifying to behold, but the stupidest and most awkward, blundering and unkempt boy would be preferable, and must be preferred, before any number of the brightest, most beautiful and quick‐witted girls, because he alone possesses the one personal qualification requisite for that office—he is of the male sex. Intelligence, beauty, and graceful manners are not employed by the church for their own sake.

Again, the celebrant must be a priest, the deacon must have received deacon’s orders, and all others who, although laymen, may, as acolytes and choristers, aid the consecrated personages in their duties, are invested with a quasi‐ecclesiastical character while in office. No one should ever dream of engaging the services of Jews, Protestants, or infidels, or even of Catholics whose lives were notoriously bad, or who scandalously neglected receiving the sacraments, as our “gallery‐choirs” are constituted in many a church in this country.

In the event of the priest not been able to sing, through any infirmity, no layman of the congregation could take his place, although he were the finest singer in the world, the very prince of _cæremoniarii_, and a greater saint than S. Peter himself.

From which considerations it will readily be seen how unsuited music is for the use of such persons acting in such a capacity.

Practically, music is the song of women. We shall show further on that it is essentially effeminate. There is music which men and boys can perform, it is true, but it is not the genuine article. The want of the female voice for the soprano is always felt; and in some countries where women are not yet admitted as church singers, and “church music” is highly prized, this want is supplied by _castrati_. It is not the song of ecclesiastics. That the use of it is _tolerated_, we know; that the singing of women and _castrati_ in church is also tolerated, we know; but the “Instructions” (we guarantee that nineteen out of twenty would agree with us in saying that “Restrictions” would be their better title) of the cardinal vicar on “church music,” referred to by the writer of the late articles on that subject in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, remind us of the probable “instructions” that would be given if the abuse of female acolytes were to creep in to any great extent. We would find, without doubt, prohibitions against the wearing of the hair in curls, or _frisée_, or _à la_ Pompadour, short sleeves, low necks, and crinoline. They would be instructed also, without doubt, to wear a plain black cassock and linen surplice, be shod like men, and let not their courtesies savor of the _débût_ of actresses upon the stage of a theatre. If these instructions would be faithfully observed _ex animo_, and boys were not extinct as a sex in the congregation, we do not think they would very long have any practical application.

Contrast now the character of plain chant with music as a suitable song for the duly‐qualified church singers, from the priest down to the humblest cantor. That it is the only song fit for the consecrated priest needs no argument. Thank God, there is no “toleration” of “priests’ music,” “sacerdotal solos,” “Prefaces,” and “Pater Nosters,” _à la_ Mozart, Haydn, Cherubini, or Peters! It is distinguished especially by that gravity of movement, that _modestie ecclesiastique_, in its intonation, which becomes the sacerdotal character. Any other melody from the mouth of a priest at the altar would scandalize not only the least ones of the brethren of Christ, but the greatest also; and however terrible the “woe” our Lord would pronounce upon those who might scandalize the latter, we are not left in ignorance of what is reserved for those who fall under his judgment for scandalizing the former. Any one who has had the good fortune of assisting at a Mass chanted by a properly vested chorus, in strict Gregorian melody, with organ accompaniment, if you will—that is, nothing more than an accompaniment, as the cardinal vicar desires—will assuredly bear testimony that it was not a musical performance—that is, a melodious concert performed for its own sake in any degree—but a religious performance, a chant of priests and the “likes of them,” suggesting nothing of this world’s vanities or luxury, and as unlike modern music and its mechanism as the melodious whisperings of an æolian harp are unlike a hand‐organ with monkey _obbligato_.

What is, to say the least, astonishing, if not lamentable, is to see so many priests devoted with ardor to the study of music, and so many more sanctioning and furthering its inroads upon the domain which it behooves them to cultivate, whilst remaining wholly ignorant of the chant, and unable to intone the _Gloria in Excelsis_ or to sing a Collect or Gospel without blundering at every inflection. We see no impropriety in pressing these facts home upon those who are bound by the laws of their profession to interest themselves in the claims which Gregorian chant makes upon them, in order that they may decently perform the sacred functions committed to their care—how sacred one single reflection will show. For what is the song of the priest? It is not a private performance of his own, but rather an inspired expression of the mind of the church, herself the divine voice of God. When she prays and sings, she prays a divine prayer, and sings a divine song. God prays and sings within the walls of the church, the New Jerusalem, which has come down like a bride out of heaven upon the earth. True, it is the priest who prays and sings; but let him not forget that there is a Voice of supplication which ascends to the throne of the Almighty and Eternal Majesty that is not his, and a song which sounds sweetly in the ears of the Divine Mercy, and celebrates the praises of the Most High, whose melody is not the inspiration of his soul.

The Divine, Incarnate Victim of Calvary is the Suppliant, and the Son of David and of Mary is the Singer. And we are told—do our senses not deceive us?—that his song is become extremely monotonous, and burdens the ear with a weight of sound not always tolerable! No, we will not allow in excuse that this sneer of disdain and expression of contempt is only for the chorus, and is not meant for the consecrated priest. There is a divine unity and faultless harmony in the “prayer” of Jesus Christ as the church utters it. It is the seamless garment which clothes his mystic body; who shall dare to rend it?

What master‐mind conceived and executed the magnificent and inimitable spectacle which that prayer presents in a solemn Mass and Vespers to the minds and hearts of devout worshippers? What cunning artificer devised the harmony of a composition so complete? Who breathed into all those prayers and anthems, hymns and psalms, Epistles and Gospels from Holy Writ, that spirit of devotion and piety, and informed them with those lessons of the purest morality and professions of the universal faith of Christendom? What more than angelic Artist knew how to dye the martyr’s chasuble in blood, and transfer the spotless purity of the lily to the stole of the confessor and the virgin; to weave the robes of penance with the violet’s mournful hue, and paint the verdure of the grass upon the ferial vesture? Who is that heavenly Musician whose soul gave birth to that sweet, intellectual, majestic melody espoused so happily to those chosen words of devout contemplation, of lofty praise, of innocent joy, of dolorous compassion, and of sanctified sorrow? We must look to other sources than mere human science or artistic skill for a solution of these questions. The mind and hand of a _divine_ Artist must be in that work whose unity and harmony the hand of man will not sooner or later disfigure, mutilate, reject, or destroy. That artist is the Holy Ghost, who is the Lord and Life‐giver of the church, in whom the mystic life of Jesus Christ is perpetuated by the like ineffable overshadowing which wrought his conception in the womb of the Immaculate Virgin—that Spirit of wisdom, from whom come all those inspirations of genius whose matchless productions and marvellous power are the wonder of the world, the envy of the flesh, and the hate of the devil.

But, no; we must believe that the divine Artist has failed, “confessedly” failed, in this one of his masterpieces. Its noblest, highest purpose found no adequate expression. Jesus Christ has been unable to manifest the joy and triumph of his Sacred Heart, the sublimest purpose of his eucharistic life, and his song is fit only to be chanted as a wail over the dead or as groans of penance in sackcloth and ashes!

Do you believe it? We don’t.

To Be Concluded Next Month.

A Vision.

A vision of our Mary, heavenly Queen, Appeared to me in silence of the night. Around her flowed a stream of golden light In which she stood with sweet, celestial mien And beauty but before by angels seen. With rapture I beheld the blessèd sight, That beamed upon me ravishingly bright; And while entranced, methought her eyes serene Did rest upon me, and a holy spell My being thrilled with ecstasy unknown; But darkness soon upon my senses fell, Though not before the bliss and joy were shown That those enjoy who with her ever dwell In life eternal round the holy throne.

On The Wing. A Southern Flight. VII. Concluded.

“I wish you and Mary would go down to the Vernons, Jane,” said Frank, coming into our room one morning about three weeks after my engagement with Don Emidio. “I did not see Ida; but Elizabeth tells me she is not well, and I believe it all arises from the annoyances to which they have been exposed through the conduct of the Casinelli. It has grown into a complete persecution, for people never forgive those they have injured.”

“What are they doing now to vex Ida?” asked Mary.

“I do not understand all the _pros_ and _cons_ of the matter; but I found Elizabeth rather anxious about Ida, and she could not leave her to walk with me, as she had promised last night.”

That, of course, was a very serious affair, and one which demanded immediate rectification, at least in Frank’s opinion—as any similar event would have done in the estimation of the other gentleman who so often formed one of our small circle; for I had long since found out that I was not to be allowed the privilege of a headache, or any other excuse for solitude, without a rigorous investigation of the merits of the case being set on foot by Don Emidio.

Of course Mary and I lost no time in going to Villa Casinelli. We took the path that had been cleared through the vineyard, on purpose to save Mary the fatigue of the longer way by the road. The _vigneroli_ had taken great pains to make this little approach for the “padre’s friends,” as we were always called; and they had thrown a plank with a fragile hand‐rail across the little, rocky stream where they washed the clothes, and which stream formed the boundary between the property of the Casinelli and that of their neighbors. For a short walk it was nevertheless rather a fatiguing one; for it was up and down all the way, and included one or two short flights of stone steps.

In the early spring the yellow oxalis had covered the ground like a carpet embroidered in gold and green. Now the beans had taken the place of the gayer blossoms, and filled the air with their sweet perfume.

The donkey that took the cart full of clean linen twice a week to Naples had his _al fresco_ stable beneath the shade of a venerable fig‐tree close by—a blessing promised to his betters in Biblical times, and one which I am sure he too merited in his degree, and I have no doubt considered the fig‐tree as his own. Being noisy and loquacious, like all other two or four legged creatures in Naples, he always greeted us with a loud bray when we passed by.

I do not believe any donkey was ever so fond of expressing his opinions as that particular animal. I had for some time tried to discover whether his utterances predicted rain, according to the general belief that asses bray when it is going to be wet. But not a cloud could be seen, and no rain fell for weeks; and certainly this particular ass was by no means barometrical in his utterances.

I sometimes had my fears that, as formerly it had been Paolino’s duty to feed the poor beast, and that now the lad was in our service, perhaps the fodder was sometimes forgotten by his young master’s younger sisters, and that the loud, inharmonious greeting he gave us was meant as a perpetual protest against the injustice of which we were indirectly the cause.

We found Ida suffering from nervous reaction occasioned by the effort to appear cheerful and composed under the various annoyances, and by the feeling that a good work had been put an end to by the malice of designing people. In addition to which, her mother was exposed to a variety of irritating insults which it was hard for her daughters to bear in patience. Mrs. Vernon was exceedingly fond of flowers, and thoroughly understood the cultivation of a garden. She had taken great pains with the very small enclosure which was allotted to their apartment, and from it the altar and their own rooms had been supplied in abundance. But now, no matter how early in the morning she visited her garden, the Casinelli’s gardener had always the advantage of her, and had picked not only the best flowers, but even the strawberries, which she had been watching with the kind intention of giving them to us. He plainly told her one day, when he met her as he came out of her garden with a basketful of her flowers on his arm, that he had gathered them by his mistress’ special desire. These things were trifles in themselves; but they were a severe trial when they came to be repeated day by day, in one form or another of petty insult and daring impertinence, and generally directed either against Padre Cataldo, who could not revenge his own cause, or against an aged lady in the enjoyment of her few pleasures, or, lastly, in attacking the moral character of the servants, and trying to spread about unfounded accusations. Ida’s strong sense of justice, which amounted to a passion, and which made it intolerable to her to see the weak “put upon,” had worked her up into a state of nerves injurious to her health. Mary and I spent the day with the Vernons, trying to divert their thoughts, and preaching that patience which we were far from feeling ourselves.

About the time that these troublesome events were occurring we made an excursion to the Carthusian church and monastery of San Martino, which stands on the same summit as the Castle of St. Elmo, a little in front of it, and facing the bay. It commands a glorious view of the city and all the surrounding country; and the delight of visiting so beautiful a place tempered my indignation at the robbery of the government in depriving the monks of their home. Few things of the kind can be more beautiful than the church, where formerly no woman entered. The walls, floor, and roof are entirely composed of marbles of many colors. The altar‐rails, or rather the low screen which cuts off the sanctuary—for rails there are none—is sculptured _à jour_ in white marble, and looks like some exquisite lace‐ work. The choir behind the altar has also a marble screen of the same wonderful open work. There are pictures by Spagnoletto of Moses and Elias and the prophets. Nothing could be more appropriate to the austere life of a Carthusian monk than that the chapel of his monastery should be decorated by such an artist as Spagnoletto. Nor is the choice of subjects less appropriate. Strength and depth of coloring; the expression of masculine force in all the forms; bold outlines, deep shadows, and strong lights, seem all in harmony with the condition of mind likely to be eliminated by a life of silence and real, though not apparent, solitude; for the monks, though many, dwelt alone in separate cells. It was a life which called to mind the stern grandeur of Old Testament prophecies and the ascetic life of the Old Testament prophets; while the richness of the decoration; the elaborate carving—not in a friable material, such as wood, but in enduring marble; the extraordinarily lavish use of precious stones; the minuteness of detail, combined with the unity of plan, are just the characteristics that we should expect to grow out of the leisure of perpetual silence, and the digging deep down into the mines of thought consequent on all but unbroken solitude. It was impossible not to be struck with the whole as the outward growth of the peculiar inner life of the remarkable order to which it had once belonged; and one marvels to find that the extraordinary degree and nature of the beauty it possesses had not addressed itself to the common sense of even a godless government as a plea for its continued existence in the hands of those for whom it had been reared. It should also be remembered that connected with this life of leisurely meditation there were great opportunities for deep and continued study; for the Carthusians are a learned order.

I may perhaps be fanciful in thus tracing the character of the edifice to the tendencies of the order, for it must be owned that the present building dates no further back than the middle of the XVIIth century, and that S. Bruno, the founder of the order, probably never foresaw so magnificent an abode for his silent disciples. But those who have observed how, unless thwarted by unfavorable circumstances, every religious order in the church stamps its character upon all that pertains to it, will feel that there must have existed a synthesis between the inhabitants of San Martino and the place itself, and that the white‐robed Carthusians were in the very home which was specially appropriate to them, and in all ways suited their devotional and intellectual tendencies. And in proof of the above reflections it is well to remark that the beautiful pavement of the church was designed by a Carthusian. We had of course been acquainted with many of the valuable paintings in the monastery, so far as engravings could make us so, and thus we hailed the Deposition from the Cross, by Spagnoletto, which is in the sacristy, as an old friend, also the Baptism of our Lord, by Carlo Maratta, and many of Vaccaro’s and Cesari’s paintings. The sacristy and the chapter‐house are equally full of valuable pictures. It is impossible to exaggerate what must ever be the refining and elevating influence of such treasures of art, and such harmony and beauty, combined with a religious vocation of the highest order, heightened by the practice of silence and fostered by solitude.

The cloister breathes the very spirit of peace. The white‐marble Doric columns gleam in the sunshine, and cut the tessellated pavement with the black shadows of their shafts, carrying them up the white wall with the arches of intense light between. I can imagine the monks learning to know the exact hour of the day by the fall of those shadows without needing to consult the old clock, also with a glaring white face, which is just below the little belfry with its two bells, one large, one small, that the deep‐ toned toll of one or the sharp, quick tinkle of the other might denote the various offices and duties to which they summoned the inmates. The cloister court is laid out with formal box‐hedges enclosing little plots of garden ground, and one garden more precious than the others, _Gottesacker_,(46) where are sown the mortal remains of the departed brethren, awaiting in the midst of their survivors and successors the day‐ dawn of immortality. There is an iron cross in the centre on a twisted white‐marble pilaster. And the oblong square of this interesting cemetery is surrounded by a white‐marble balustrade, with skulls carved at intervals. In the centre of the court is a marble well of singularly graceful proportions. Around it is a pavement of bricks symmetrically arranged, but now with the blades of grass and tiny weeds intruding their innocent familiarity where they have no right. Statues of saints, vases and balls alternating, run along the entablature of the cloister. We longed for a vision of the old, white‐robed inhabitants of this white marble dwelling; and for once I felt not the lack of color, but, on the contrary, perceived a harmony in the white and subdued gray tints, relieved only by the blue sky and green grass. But when we looked out from the _loggia_ on the wide view beneath us, it was not color that was wanting. There lay Naples, with its motley buildings, backed by purple Vesuvius, and the rose‐colored cliffs of Sorrento beyond. Nature had used all the pigments of her pallet when she painted that lovely scene.

We paid another visit to a suppressed monastery—that of the Camaldoli—before leaving Naples. There is nothing very remarkable in the building itself or in the chapel. But the view is at once one of the most beautiful and the most singular I have ever beheld. We had above an hour’s ride on donkey‐back to get there; the carriage taking us no further than the picturesque village of Antignano. The lane up which we wound amid young chestnut‐trees, the remains of what was once a magnificent forest, was at that time in all the verdant beauty of early spring. It was a glorious day, and I ought to have enjoyed the ride. But, in the first place, I have a feeling amounting to animosity against a donkey the moment I have the misfortune to find myself on his back. I rather like him than otherwise when cropping thistles by the roadside or in a huckster’s cart. I appreciate his patient nature and long‐enduring powers when they are unconnected with myself. But from the moment I find myself condemned to be carried by him—that I feel his horrid little jogging pace under me, and his utterly insensible mouth within the influence, or I should rather say _not_ within the influence, of my reins—a feeling of antipathy to the beast seizes me, and is rendered all the more painful to me that his resignation and the long history of his habitual ill‐usage fill me with an emotion of compassion painfully at variance with my intense dislike of him in the character of a steed.

I do not think I ever suffered more in this way than during our ride to the Camaldoli. I was escorted by a half‐drunken donkey‐boy, of the most brutal disposition towards the unfortunate animal, whom I at once hated and pitied. I was furious at the way he behaved to my donkey; while he, not supposing I knew enough Italian to understand his abominable _patois_, kept turning all my complaints and reproaches into ridicule to the other donkey men or boys accompanying him. I would gladly have taken the stick out of his hands with which he belabored my poor donkey. Indeed, at last I succeeded in doing so; but nothing short of having Emidio with me to apply the stick to the boy instead of the other animal would have sufficed to soothe my irritation. Unfortunately, my future protector, who I felt certain would punch any head I might wish submitted to that process, had been called away to Rome on business.

The lane was very narrow, and, even had it been as wide as Piccadilly or Broad Street, no doubt our donkeys would equally have considered themselves bound to go in single file. Consequently we were not always within reach of each other for any mutual assistance; and Frank, whom I longed to call to my aid, was altogether absorbed in taking care of Mrs. Vernon, to whom this donkey‐climbing of a steep mountain‐path amounted to a perilous adventure.

Not many days after, we heard that two or three foreign gentlemen, making the same ascent as ourselves, had been attacked and robbed by these most obnoxious donkey‐men. I am afraid the observance of law and the moral condition generally of little, out‐of‐the‐way villages like Antignano, in the vicinity of Naples, is as bad as it well can be at the present time.

When we reached the summit, on which stands the monastery, we went at once to the ridge of the hill to see the view; and I have seldom been more struck by anything of the kind. Naples lay before us, about fifteen hundred feet below; but what was so unexpected was the aspect of Mount Vesuvius, right in front of us, and that of the Monte Somma and a series of other mountainous heights of volcanic origin; and far away to the Apennines, with the wide plains and cities lying in the bright sunshine, Caserta, Capua, and all the Campania Felix. On the spot where we stood a line straight from the eye would have hit about one‐third of the height of Mount Vesuvius. To the right we could see all the range of mountains to Salerno and Amalfi. On the other side were Pozzuoli, Nisita, Ischia, and Baiæ. I will not multiply names, nor will I heap up epithets in the attempt to describe what words cannot tell. In short, I forgot all I had said in favor of the position formerly occupied by the Carthusians at San Martino in my enthusiasm for the superior view once enjoyed by the Camaldoli; and had the question been open to me, I believe my vocation to the latter order would have been decided on the spot.

My donkey‐boy had sobered down by the time I had again to trust myself and my steed to his tender mercies, and nothing occurred to mar the enjoyment of our long but interesting excursion. It must, however, have been a far more beautiful place before the present government of Italy, by permitting the wholesale destruction of the magnificent trees which formerly clothed the mountain’s sides, had done so much to impair the climate as well as to destroy the beauty of the country. It is a fact in natural history that trees emit warmth in winter as they produce coolness in summer; and consequently that in a latitude like that of Italy they are specially beneficial, as tending to equalize the temperature. It is notorious that the climate of Italy has become hotter in the summer, while it is colder in the winter than was the case formerly. The country has also been subject to terrible ravages from mountain torrents, the downward course of which was formerly intercepted by the grand old trees of immense forests. Their impetuosity was broken and their waters partially absorbed. Now they tear down the barren sides of the mountains unchecked, and devastate the plains below, to the ruin of the crops and consequent impoverishment of the country. It is the short‐sighted custom of the government to let whole tracts of mountainous forest‐lands, leaving the lessee the liberty of cutting down as it may seem good to him; and generally he is a greedy man, in a hurry to make a fortune before the present _régime_ shall have come to an end, as it must do some day.

I must not leave my readers to suppose that all our excursions and daily drives were on the grandly æsthetic plan of those I have described. We were not always mythological, classical, or even early‐Christian in our researches, our walks or drives. We went shopping about the streets of Naples in a thoroughly womanly fashion, and condescended to red and pink coral, amber and tortoise‐shell ornaments, with a full appreciation of their prettiness. The bracelets, earrings, and brooches made out of lava never appeared to me otherwise than as remains of barbarism. Much of the coral‐work, though very ingenious, is also in bad taste. But a string of pink coral beads is always a beautiful ornament, and also always an expensive one. Amber abounds, not of course as a native product, but imported from the East. The tortoise‐shell is very delicately carved, and inlaid with gold, and some of it is extremely pretty. There is also a great deal of alabaster‐work in figures and vases, white and colored. Neither Mary nor I could bear it, though we did our best to try and be tempted by a shop in the Toledo(47) which was filled with it. It is always connected in my mind with shell ornaments and wool mats. They are things that generally seem to go together, and equally impress me with their uselessness and ugliness. I must include in my list of horrors the lava and even the terracotta figures of _lazzaroni_ and Neapolitan peasants. Mary was rather disappointed at not finding shops of old furniture and _rococo_. She had collected a variety of pretty and even valuable objects when she was here many years ago; but now she was told by the Neapolitans that the English and Americans had bought up all there was to be had of that nature. No doubt, however, we might still have found treasures had we known where to look for them. But the days are over when bargains could be picked up in Continental towns. All those things have now a real marketable value, and no vendors are ignorant of what that value is. Of course there are occasional exceptions.

We went once to a flower‐show held in the Villa Reale, the beautiful public promenade which runs by the sea‐shore and the Chiaia. I believe it was the first of the kind which had been attempted, and as such was worthy of all praise. But, apart from that consideration, it was inferior to most of the numerous flower‐shows held in the rural districts of England. We often drove up and down the Chiaia, which is the name of the fashionable street of Naples, and along which there is a tan road for the sake of horsemen, who ride backwards and forwards at a furious rate. It is neither very long nor very broad; but the gentlemen who frequent it are evidently greatly impressed with their manly bearing and distinguished horsemanship. For my own part, I prefer a Neapolitan on the driving‐box to one in the saddle. They are excellent coachmen and but indifferent horsemen, as all men must be who are deficient in phlegm and in external calm. The horse is a dignified animal, and demands corresponding dignity in his rider. We used often to stop at the _caffe_ in the Via Reale, and refresh ourselves with “granite”—that is, a glass of snow sweetened, and with the juice of fresh lemons squeezed into it.

As a rule, I cannot say that the shops in Naples are particularly good, and certainly they are very dear. The same may be said of provisions. And as the taxes are every year on the increase, this misfortune is not likely to be remedied. I frequently used to walk through the generally narrow and always crowded streets of Naples accompanied by Frank, and as often Emidio, who had arranged some point of meeting with my brother, would come down from the heights of Capo di Monte, where his lovely villa stood, and join us in our saunter through the busy city. I have seen him stop where a piece of rope was hung near a tobacconist’s shop‐door, or at the corner of the street, and light his cigar from the smouldering end which had been set fire to for that purpose. I have never seen a burning rope in the streets in England or in France for the accommodation of smokers.

We visited most of the churches, but they were as nothing to me after the churches in Rome. The flower‐boys soon got to know us as we walked and drove about, and the most lovely roses and bunches of orange‐blossoms would be pressed upon us for a few pence. The boys would sometimes cling to the carriage‐door with one hand, while the horses were going fast, imploring us to buy the bouquets they held in the other, till I used to think they must fall and be run over. But they are so lithe and supple, and they seemed to bound about so much as if they were made of india‐ rubber, that at last I got hardened, and would stand to my bargain half‐ way down a street without any apprehension for the safety of my dark‐eyed, jabbering flower‐boys. They generally addressed us in a jargon of Italian, French, and English, and as generally sold their flowers for half the price first named.

I greatly enjoyed the freedom and absence of restraint in these our rambles; for, having my brother with me, I was not afraid of gratifying my curiosity about the manners and customs of the humbler classes. I frequently stood by the fountains in the streets, where the women washed the linen, and entered into conversation with them; or I would buy _fritture_ of various kinds (which is, in fact, fried batter, sometimes sweet, sometimes savory). I did not find it always to my taste, because it was made with rancid olive‐oil quite as often as with fat. But the piles of light‐brown fritters lying on the little tables in the open streets, or being tossed about, smoking hot, in iron pans, had a very inviting appearance. Then I would get Frank to let me have a glass of lemonade from the pretty little booths that are so numerous for the sale of that delightful beverage, with festoons of fresh lemons hanging from the gayly‐ painted poles. I delighted all the more in my freedom that I knew, when I should be Emidio’s wife, and drive about Naples as the Contessa Gandolfi, I could no longer expect to enjoy these privileges. I said so one day to Emidio, when I was taking my second glass of lemonade in a peculiarly dingy and out‐of‐the‐way street in Naples. He laughed at the assertion, though he did not for a moment attempt to deny it; and meanwhile he enjoyed as much as I did the absence of all form and ceremony, which as foreigners we could allow ourselves. It was then that jestingly he asked me whether it should be put in my marriage‐settlements that he was to take me, at least once, to the Festa di Monte Vergine. I could not understand what he could possibly mean, until he explained that so much is thought of this feast by the Neapolitan peasantry that if a girl has a good _dot_, it is generally inserted in the marriage‐deeds that her husband is bound to give her this gratification. The feast takes place on Whit‐Monday, and Emidio assured me that my marriage‐portion was enough to entitle me to more than one excursion to the sanctuary of the Madonna, if such was my desire. It is held at Monte Vergine, near Avellino; and as we had not been able to attend it during our stay at Posilippo, I declared that I should expect to be taken some day, though I declined to puzzle our family lawyer by the introduction of so strange an article in my marriage‐settlements.

We had reserved Pompeii for the close of our stay at Naples, because from thence we meant to go on to Sorrento. We entered Pompeii by the “Sea Gate,” having left our travelling‐bags and shawls at the little hotel Diomède—such a grand name for such a mean, vulgar little place! How full of flies it was! How bad was the food! How miserable the accommodations, with advertisements of Bass’ pale ale adorning the walls! Nothing, however, of the kind could diminish the interest with which we were about to enter the dead city of the dead. Mary remembered having come to this same little public‐house five‐and‐twenty years before. It has been added to since then. At that time it afforded very little refreshment for either man or beast. She had taken some tea with her, and they accommodated her with hot water. Milk was not to be had, so she floated a slice of lemon in the tea‐cup, after the Russian fashion. And all the time a handsome youth, indifferently clad, and with the red Phrygian cap covering his crisp black curls, sang a native song to the accompaniment of a small guitar, and danced the while. The cotton‐plants were ready to give up their bursting pods of snow‐white fluff in the fields around, and the heat was extreme. The scene had been much less invaded in those days by ordinary sight‐ seers; but also, it must be owned, there was less to see, as many of the most important excavations have been made since that date. As the heat was very great, and as, even without seeing anything like all that is worth seeing, we could not possibly devote less than two or three hours to walking in those shadeless streets, it was decided Mary and I should be carried by the guides in open sedan‐chairs. The guides are appointed by government, and are thoroughly well informed on the subject, and are able to answer most questions.

We first visited the Forum. It is, even in its utter ruin, very imposing, for it stands on rising ground, and all the principal streets lead to it. Several Doric columns, arches or gateways, and the pedestals which formerly supported statues, remain. The Temple of Venus is close to the Forum; the entrance steps are intact, and the altar stands in front of them. Words fail me to express the intense melancholy of the scene, as we wandered from Temple to Baths, and from house to house, down the narrow streets—for all the streets are narrow—whose flag‐stones are dented by the wheels of the chariots, and have a raised path for foot‐passengers, so high that there are stones placed at intervals to enable one to step across the road, with a space left for the wheels of the chariot to pass between. This was to keep the passengers from having to step into the water which in rainy weather must have poured down these gutterless streets. From the houses being now all reduced to the ground floor, with the exception of a few in which the stairs leading to the first story and some portions of the wall remain, it cannot be said that any of the streets produce at all an imposing effect. Perhaps the absence of this, except in the ruins of the temples and public buildings, rather adds to the pathetic sadness of the scene, by bringing all the more vividly before us the fact of the utter and sudden destruction which swept away a vast city of crowded human beings, leading the daily life of all of us, in a few short hours! We saw the casts of several dead bodies that had been found—one, of a man making his escape with a sack of money; another, of a matron with her young daughter. What masses of hair, what round and slender limbs, what beautiful teeth! It is ghastly, and yet fascinating; for it seems to bridge over so wide a gulf of time, and by one touch of nature makes us akin to the ancient dead. I felt this specially as we went down the “Street of Abundance,” as it was named—mere dwelling‐houses and shops on either side; a long, ordinary street, where men came and went in their round of every‐day life, buying and selling and paying visits. The green lizards ran over the whitened walls and the small, brown‐red bricks. The sun poured down his relentless rays from a perfectly cloudless sky. Except ourselves and the guides, no footsteps were heard, no sound broke the death‐like silence. And at the far end of the “Street of Abundance,” just beyond the limits of the doomed city, a solitary pine‐tree, looking like a black spot in the white shimmer of the mid‐day heat, alone indicated a world of nature and of life and growth beyond. Here is an oil‐ shop, full of the beautifully‐shaped, huge jars in which the oil was kept. There, on that slab of marble, are the stains of wine. You see the oven, with what once was soft white bread—the real bread; and you feel that it might have happened a few years ago, and that somewhere or other, perhaps even at Naples, it might happen again to‐morrow. And two thoughts rush in upon us, one full of yearning pity, and one of awful inquiry—they were our brethren, and where are they now?

The first eruption of Mount Vesuvius occurred in the reign of the Emperor Titus, A.D. 79. Pompeii, Herculaneum, and even Naples itself, had suffered before them from earthquakes, and a portion of the two first‐named towns had been laid low. But nothing had ever happened to prepare the inhabitants for the terrible calamity which was about to befall them, when, in their villa at Misenum, the younger Pliny’s mother called the attention of Pliny the elder to the cloud, in the form of a pine‐tree, which she saw rising up into the heavens. When she did so, she did not even know that it was from Vesuvius that the cloud ascended. Pliny the elder invited his nephew, then only eighteen, to accompany him in his galley to Retinæ, a town on the coast, whither he intended to go, with the idea that the people might be in distress. But so little was any one prepared for what was really about to occur that young Pliny did not even lay aside his volume of _Livy_ which he was reading; while his uncle took his tablets in his hand, that he might note down the curious phenomena he was about to investigate, and left the house to go on board. It was with great difficulty and at immense risk that he effected a landing and made his way to Stabiæ, near Pompeii, where dwelt his friend Pomponianus. In attempting to escape from thence in the night, he was suffocated by the noxious vapors that accompanied the eruption. It would seem that young Pliny continued his study for some hours, never realizing what an awful tragedy was going on beyond the Bay of Naples. There had been shocks of earthquake for some days previous, but these were not unusual occurrences, and therefore excited but little alarm, until they became so violent as to threaten utter destruction through the night. He seems to have been seriously frightened about the same time as his mother; for each had risen with the intention of calling the other. By this time the air was black with falling ashes, and the morning light could scarcely penetrate the gloom. Pliny would not leave his mother, while she, being aged and very heavy, feared she should not be able to follow him, and implored him to go away without her, which he would not do. They escaped together into the country, in danger of being trodden down by the crowds of flying people, and of being smothered by the falling ashes. The day was spent in agony and terror, and all but total darkness. But that night they were able to return to Misenum, though not to enjoy much repose, as the shocks of earthquake still continued. Then the young Pliny learnt that his uncle, whom he had, happily for himself, declined to accompany, had perished. This eruption did not resemble the more recent ones, inasmuch as no lava poured from the mountain, but burning stones of enormous size, and ashes, together with volumes of steam, which poured down in torrents of water, filled with ashes, upon the earth beneath. The shape of the mountain was altered entirely by this eruption, as it has been in a much less degree by that which occurred in April, 1872, and which our friends, the Vernons, had witnessed. The Neapolitans firmly believe that their city will ultimately perish as Pompeii has perished; and probably science is still unable to prognosticate whether the awful mountain has or has not too far exhausted its volcanic powers to produce a second destruction as terrible as that which Pliny has described with such accurate detail, and yet in so calm and unimpassioned a style.

Sensational writing is a discovery of modern times. We exhaust our subject in describing it diffusely and minutely. But nevertheless the scene Pliny’s letters call up before our imagination—the young lad poring over his book in company with his devoted mother, and the brave and learned elder Pliny calmly setting sail, tablets in hand, to study the scene, and to assist those in danger, and then perishing in the attempt—is as replete with pathos and human feeling as language can make it. It is full of a language not put into words.

On the afternoon of the day we visited Pompeii we drove to Sorrento, and took up our abode at a quiet little _pension_ recently established, and literally hidden amongst orange‐groves. There was a small chapel close by. Our rooms were bright and clean, and the greater part of the time we had the house entirely to ourselves.

Let no one presume he knows the beauty of Italy who has not visited Sorrento. Can anything be more lovely than the approach to Vico, Meta, and Sant’ Angelo, and the aspect of these little towns nestling amid gardens, with their feet in the blue ripples of that tideless sea?

The Sorrentines are a different race from the Neapolitans, and no love is lost between them. They are a more reserved and more dignified people. They make less noise, and are not so excitable. The land they live on is not volcanic, the vegetation is more luxuriant, and the people are more pastoral in their habits. The air is softer and less exciting than at Naples. Mary and I felt as if we had drifted into the land “where it is always afternoon,” and a lotos‐eating calm and serenity seemed to come over us—a pleasant change after the nervous tension which Naples produces, and which is singularly inimical to sleep.

Every description of food is better at Sorrento than it is at Naples. Sorrento beef is excellent, and Sorrento pigs have a world‐wide reputation for making good pork, though they are ugly animals to look at, having large, flabby, white bodies on tall, thin, greyhound legs, and very large, pink ears. Naples seems never at any time to have been well famed for producing good food.

Nearly all Cicero’s letters to Papirius Pætus contain allusions to eating and drinking, and in one he says: “It is a better thing, let me tell you, to be sick with good eating at Rome, than for want of victuals at Naples.”

When he was thinking of buying Sylla’s house at Naples, he asks Pætus to take some workmen to survey it for him, saying: “If the walls and roof are in good repair, I shall perfectly well approve of the rest.” “If I can procure a house at Naples, it is my purpose to live so abstemiously that what our late sumptuary law allows for one day’s expense shall suffice me ten.” This last sentence, when coupled with that quoted from the other letter, looks rather like making a virtue of necessity. The marvel is that the Naples market is not more abundantly provided with Sorrento produce. The fruit is very good; and we all agreed we had never known the real merit of cherries until we had eaten them at Sorrento, and even better still at Capri. In our own land, in France, and even in cherry‐loving Germany, I had always considered them as a very poor fruit, unless cooked or preserved. But I entertained a very different opinion of them when I had feasted on them in the South of Italy. They are as different as the fresh oranges, picked from the tree, are from those that have been plucked while green, and have ripened in a box during a long voyage.

I never cared for cherries in England. I used to believe in oranges as I found them in the fruiterers’ shops. But now they appear to me a snare and a delusion when eaten in the north.

When we arrived at Sorrento, the Empress of Russia and her daughter, the grand duchess, were still there. We met them driving just as we entered the town, and of course looked eagerly at her who was so soon to become our own Duchess of Edinburgh, and were charmed with her amiable and youthful expression, and with the pretty smile with which she returned our bow. They were to leave Sorrento in a very few days. The yacht was already moored close to the cliffs, awaiting them. The empress shed tears, as the people crowded round to see her embark and wished her farewell in their own graceful way and soft language. She said she had grown to love Sorrento and its inhabitants more than she could express, and that she should always hope some day to return amongst them.

The house in which Tasso was born is now converted into a hotel, much to the detriment of all poetic sentiment.

Nothing can be more lovely than the neighborhood of Sorrento, though a great deal is unapproachable, except on horseback, donkeys, or mules; and much more is equally so for all but very vigorous pedestrians. We went more than once to the small, picturesque town of Massa, at the extreme point of the Peninsula. We visited Il Deserto, the name given to a Franciscan monastery situated on the top of a somewhat barren hill, and which commands a magnificent view. We found only a few lay brothers at home, and about half a dozen orphan boys, who were there by way of learning the art of agriculture. The land around the monastery was mostly barren, and to the left was covered with brushwood. No agriculture was there, at any rate. There was a large garden enclosed within walls; and as the small agricultural were in it, I hoped to see some evidence of their labors. I am bound, however, to speak the truth, much as it tells against the expectations of Sorrento with regard to the future tillers of the soil, as also, which is worse, against the efficiency of the Franciscan instructors in this particular case. The garden was quite full of weeds. I scarcely saw a vegetable or plant of any kind likely to prove edible to anybody except our donkeys; but for them there was hope, as thistles abounded. The juvenile agriculturists were by no means usefully engaged, but were listlessly roving about, doing nothing in particular. They looked bored; and I could not wonder at it. Certainly, the orphans learned no agriculture, and I doubt if either the fathers or lay brothers can teach it. It is to be hoped that at least they learn something else.

One bright morning we resolved on a trip to Capri. We chartered a boat, a man, and two boys, the party consisting of Ida and Elizabeth Vernon, Mary, and me. The wind was not altogether in our favor, and our three sailors had hard work to row us. Nothing can well be more beautiful than the line of coast, with picturesque ruins, deep sea‐caves, varied rocks, and green slopes down to the water’s edge. We had resolved to spend one night at Capri, and intended visiting the Blue Grotto the next day. But the wind was blowing fresh, and it seemed but too probable that, if we did not accomplish our visit at once, we might miss it altogether. Our boatmen made no objection to this addition to our original bargain, and we soon found ourselves rowing up to an entrance into the rock that did not present a different appearance to many other such small, slit‐like fissures and holes, some of which had been pointed out to us as the sirens’ caves. We found two boats moored to the rock; one was empty, and in the other was a lad.

We were given to understand that only two of us at a time could enter the mysterious cave, and that our boat was a great deal too large to pass through that low, dark hole in the rock which the restless blue sea was lapping incessantly with a rapidity of motion that seemed to be momentarily on the increase. We were moreover told that _il vecchio_(48) was inside—a piece of information which, conveying no express ideas to my mind, awoke a vague apprehension that perhaps I might have touched on the abode of the Old Man of the Sea—a prospect not altogether desirable. There was a great question who was to enter the little boat and first encounter the passage and the old man. Ida and Elizabeth refused to be separated, and Mary, with an exclamation—something about being responsible to their mother for their safety—saw them embark with a pang. In an instant, obedient to the sailor lad’s injunctions, they both disappeared, lying flat down at the bottom of the boat. The sailor gave one vigorous stroke of his oar, ducked down himself, and the boat was sucked into the awful cavern between the heaving sea and the low arch. Mary and I sat silent. Of course we knew there was no danger. It was what everybody did, and there could be nothing to apprehend; nevertheless, I am free to acknowledge that those twenty minutes, during which we were as much shut out from all sight and sound of them as if they were gone to the bottom, while the treacherous waves slapped and lapped the rock like some hungry live thing, and in so doing almost closed the orifice through which the boat had disappeared, were not by any means minutes of absolute serenity to our nerves. Presently, however, the prow of the little boat reappeared, and in a second up jumped Ida and Elizabeth like Jack in the box.

“Well!” we both exclaimed.

“Oh! it is beautiful. Make haste!”

“And the old man?” said I dubiously.

“Oh! yes, he is there,” was the only reply, and no more satisfactory than my previous information.

Of course Mary and I, on getting into the boat, made ourselves as flat as we could at the bottom of it; and suddenly a heaving of the sea shot us into the grotto. Instantly I forgot the old man and everything else in the marvellous beauty of the scene around me. The sides of the cave, one or two large shelving rocks, and the roof were perfectly blue. The very air seemed blue. The water itself was ultramarine. I dipped in my hand, and instantly it shone and flashed like brilliant silver. We approached one of the large rocks where there is a landing‐place. On it I beheld some strange, dark object. Suddenly the object leaped into the blue water, and was transfigured before my eyes into a huge silver frog, swimming about in all directions with a white head above the water. It was my much‐dreaded old man; and certainly the result, in point of color and brilliancy, of the disporting of this venerable individual in the blue water, which converted him into sparkling silver, was very remarkable. But it is not often given, to female eyes at least, to behold a mortal swimming close to her, and to notice the peculiarly frog‐like and ungraceful action which swimming necessitates, and which is heightened by the apparent foreshortening of the limbs from the refraction of the light in the water. It suddenly flashed upon me: was it thus that Hero saw Leander?—minus the silver of course. Poor Hero! The silver frog croaked an indescribable _patois_, calling our attention vociferously to his own extraordinary brilliancy. At length we entreated him to spare his aged limbs any more aquatic gymnastics, and to return to his rock; which he did, resuming his garments in some niche of a darker blue than the rest.

Meanwhile, our lad had rowed the boat close up to the other large rock on the opposite side of the grotto, telling us that he would gather some coral for us. It was getting dark, and, as we sat alone in the boat, we could neither see nor hear him. A deep‐violet hue began to spread over the grotto and the water. Evening was drawing near, and I began to conjure our sole protector to leave his coral reefs and return to the boat. Then we ducked down once more, and, with the edge of the boat absolutely grating against the mouth of the cave, we emerged into the open sea and the fair white light of heaven.

It happened once upon a time that some one, perhaps an ordinary traveller, perhaps another professional and belated old man, went into the blue grotto alone, and stayed too long. The wind blew hard, and the sea rose. For three days no boat could pass through the closed mouth of the cave. Happily, his friends succeeded in floating in a loaf of bread, which he devoured on his solitary blue rock. I have often wished to know the history of those three days. Did the sirens come and sing to him? Did no mermaid bear him company, or was he left a prey to “the blue devils”?

We had a stiff breeze as we steered our course to the Marina Piccola, one of the only two landing‐places of the Island of Capri. We determined, as we were to be there for so short a time, to sleep at the small inn close by, called the “Little Tiberius,” and which we found comfortable, though very unassuming and not quite finished. We dined in the _loggia_, shaded by a vine, and they brought us cherries the size of plums that melted like a ripe peach, and beautiful oranges, gathered with the green leaves around them.

The only way to get about on the little Island of Capri is on donkeys or on foot. We chose the former, and directed our course to where stood the Palace of Tiberius. The village of Anacapri is very picturesque, with its narrow streets, sometimes raised a step or two, dark, wide doorways, and domed roofs. We went to the top of the precipitous rock called “Il salto di Tiberio,”(49) which falls sheer and smooth down to the sea, without a break save a few tufts of wild flowers, and over which Tiberius is said to have flung his victims, whose bodies then floated away to the coast of Baiæ. When Augustus was dying, he said of his successor, “I pity the Romans. They are about to be ground between slow jaws.” Never was the cruelty of a coward better expressed than by these words.

I suppose the only history that will ever be correctly written will be that which will date from the day of judgment—that day which alone will clear up the falsehoods, misapprehensions, and delusions with which all history abounds, and will leave probably only the devil as black as he is painted, while it will also prove that many of our angels are fallen ones. It is always difficult, perhaps impossible, to arrive at the secret motives of a man who is a coward, is reserved, has a certain superficial refinement of taste and intellect, and is cursed with absolute power. Tiberius appreciated the extraordinary beauty of his favorite Capri; and yet he dwelt there only to commit the most hideous crimes in secret, while discoursing on the subtleties of grammar and the beauty of art, and writing elegies and love songs. He seemed to have no human affection save for the low‐born Sejanus, whom nevertheless years afterwards he accused to the Roman Senate in a pitiful, whining letter, and who was torn to pieces in consequence. He always hated those who in any way belonged to him, whether by a natural tie or by that of a supposed intimacy. He hated Rome; but even the terror and dread he had of it, giving way to the longing to know how far his bloody orders were being carried out, he approached the gates. That day his pet serpent, the friend of his bosom, was killed and eaten by a million of midges.

“Multitudes are dangerous,” remarked the sententious emperor, and back he went to the top of his solitary rock at Capri.

The same type of man returns from time to time upon the face of the earth to show us the deep hell within itself of which, alas! the human heart is capable. Robespierre was a man of affable manners, who loved flowers and kept canaries. He had delicate white hands and a simper for ever on his thin lips. In early life he wrote a pamphlet against capital punishment. When his turn came to die on the guillotine, he showed no fraction of the courage of the youngest and weakest of his many victims. He too was soft and cruel. There are many such, but happily the outward circumstances are wanting which would develop them into the monsters to which, as a race, they belong.

We spent only a few hours at Salerno, just time enough to visit the tomb of the great Hildebrand, S. Gregory VII., the little man with a great soul, the spiritual Alexander of the church, who, as he said himself, “without being allowed the liberty of speech or deliberation, had been violently carried away and placed on the pontifical throne”; and through volumes of intimate and interesting letters relates his sorrows, his anxieties, and his efforts to the friend of his soul, Cardinal Didier, the Abbot of Monte‐Casino. In the crypt we visited the altar and relics of S. Matthew. The same evening we drove along the coast to Amalfi. It was growing dark before we got there, and I think, though no one said a word about it till we were safe in the Hotel of the Capuchins, we were not altogether without some apprehension that the towering rocks, the dark caves, the mountain heights, and the thick woodlands which filled us with admiration, did not also suggest an unpleasant suspicion of possible banditti. But here I stop. If Amalfi is not seen, it may be painted; but it cannot be described in any words I know of which will tell its beauty. The world has many jewels from nature’s casket, but few more lovely and in more gorgeous setting than the little mediæval town of Amalfi.

I am writing these pages in an English village. I see a low line of pale, misty hills to my left. A venerable church tower peeps from amid large elms and red brick cottage chimneys. In front of my trim garden is a green meadow. The white butterflies are coursing each other in the noontide warmth, and the village children have crowned themselves with tall paper caps, and are holding some jubilee of their own, the mysteries of which are undiscernable to older minds. The clematis which climbs my porch breathes soft, perfumed sighs at my open window. It is pretty, simple, homely. But between this and the dreamlike beauty of Amalfi there lies far more than the distance of many hundreds of miles. There lie the yearning of the soul for the best of God’s beautiful creation—for the warmth of the sun, that natural god of life and gladness—the thirst of the artist’s eye for color, and the poet’s love of the language of song; there lie the Catholic’s hunger for the land of faith and the longing for the regions of old memories and heroic sanctities.

Yes, I love my own pale land, with her brief, scarce summer smiles, her windy autumns, and her long, fireside, wintry evenings. But while I write it and feel it, there comes up before my mind the rose‐tints and blue and silver sparkle, the golden rocks and emerald verdure, of the land with the “fatal gift of beauty,” and I feel my heart sink as I recall Amalfi.

A few more days, and we had looked our last on Southern Italy. There were other reasons besides the thirst for sunshine and beauty why our leaving Naples should prove so sad. There was the close friendship with the Vernons and Padre Cataldo; and as regarded four hearts, there was something more, I suppose, than friendship.

On leaving Amalfi we only slept one night at Naples (for Posilippo we saw no more), and that was a dream‐tost, tearful night. We would not suffer any of our friends to accompany us to the station. Public farewells would be unbearable.

The last thing I remember, as I drove through the hot, bright streets teeming with life, was two young girls with naked feet gayly dancing the tarantella on the burning pavement. Lightly, trippingly, daintily they danced—these two supple‐limbed daughters of the sunny south. How joyous, how free from care, from afterthought or forethought, did they seem! A few figs (they were just ripe) in summer, a few chestnuts and some yellow bread of Indian corn, are all they need for food; and one scant frock, that hides neither arms nor ankles, is all that decency demands. The sun does the rest, pouring rich color into their veins, bright sparkles into their eyes. And so at mid‐day shall they dance, on flags which would scorch my northern skin, singing the while to their own steps, unchallenged by police, unreproached by man, and know no harm, while we go back to our mists and showers amidst our “advanced civilization.”

While writing this my eyes rest upon these lines: “Many take root in this soil, and find themselves unable to leave it again. A species of contemplative epicurism takes possession of them—a life freed from all vain desires and sterile agitation; an ideal existence which is shocked by no inconvenient reality. Others return to their hyperborean country, bringing with them a luminous remembrance to light up the gray twilight of their frozen sky for evermore; others still have quaffed the enchantress’ charmed potion, and can no longer resist the gentle desires which draw them periodically back to her.”

May I also be numbered with those who return to the southern shores of beautiful Italy!

The Three Edens.

Bloom’d the first Eden not with man alone, But woman, equal woman, at his side. And seemly was it when, together tried, They fell together—for the two were one. On Calvary stood the Mother by the Son: New Eve with Second Adam crucified; And as through Eve in Adam we had died, Through Mary was our loss in Christ undone. Then how should not the Paradise regained Behold its Eve beside her Adam throned; Both risen, both ascended—unprofaned Each virginal body, by the grave disowned? Else had our foe his conquest half maintained, The primal ruin been but half atoned.

LAKE GEORGE, FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION, 1874.

A Discussion With An Infidel.

XIV. The Seat Of The Soul.

_Büchner._ You will admit, I presume, that “the brain is not merely the organ of thought and of all the higher mental faculties, but also the sole and exclusive _seat of the soul_. Every thought is produced in the brain, every kind of feeling and sensation, exertion of the will, and voluntary motion, proceeds from it” (p. 141).

_Reader._ Not exactly “from it,” but from the soul, as I have already established; though certainly the brain is instrumental in all vital operations. As to the brain being “the sole and exclusive” seat of the soul I think that physiologists do not agree, and that philosophers have something to object.

_Büchner._ It is now a recognized truth. “It took a long time before it was recognized, and it is even to this day difficult for those who are not physicians to convince themselves of its correctness” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ It must be difficult indeed; for although we have reason to believe that the brain is, so to say, the central telegraphic office where every intelligence from the other parts of the body is received, yet it is but natural to suppose that there cannot be a central office if there are no other offices destined to correspond with it. On the other hand, philosophers teach that _the soul is the form of the body_; which implies that there are other parts of our body, besides the brain, where the soul must be present.

_Büchner._ “These philosophers are a singular people. They talk of the creation of the world as if they had been present on the occasion; they define the Absolute as if they had sat at its table for years; they babble about the nothing and the something, the ego and non‐ego, the _per se_ and _in se_, universals and particulars, perishability and absolute existence, the unknown _x_, etc., etc., with a confidence as if a celestial codex had given them exact information about all these ideas and things, and they plaster up the simplest notions with such a confused mass of high‐sounding and learned but incomprehensible words and phrases as to turn the head of a rational man. But, in spite of all this, upon their metaphysical eminence they are not unfrequently so far off from any positive knowledge that they commit the most amusing blunders, especially in those cases in which philosophy and science meet, and when the latter threatens to destroy the results of metaphysical speculation. Thus almost all philosophical psychologists have struggled with rare energy against the theory of the seat of the soul in the brain, and continue in their opposition without taking the least notice of the progress of experimental science” (pp. 142, 143).

_Reader._ I am surprised, doctor, at your declamation against philosophers. You have no right to denounce them either in general or in particular. I admit that rationalistic philosophers richly deserve all the contempt you can heap upon them, but it is not fair in you to attack them; for they are better than you. To lay your own faults on the shoulders of your opponents is an old trick. The burglar calls his victim a thief; designing Freemasons always prate about Jesuitical machinations; and writers whose philosophical baggage is as light as their pretensions are high inveigh against those by whom they dread to be exposed, refuted, and supplanted. Such is the case with you. While pretending to describe others, you have made the portrait of yourself. It is certainly difficult to find another man in the world who babbles with as much confidence as you do about, or rather against, creation, the Absolute, and the unknown x, etc., etc. Yet your opponents are not infallible, nor do they pretend to be; but if they “commit the most amusing blunders,” it is not owing to their “metaphysical eminence,” as you suppose, but rather to their metaphysical incapacity. Science, you say, sometimes “threatens to destroy the results of metaphysical speculation”; but you should have added that metaphysical speculation oftentimes saves science from shipwreck; for empiricism without philosophy is a ship without a rudder.

You denounce your adversaries as men who do not take “the least notice of the progress of experimental science.” This is a calumny. In fact, you yourself inform us that one of your adversaries is philosopher Fischer, a man who not only took notice of the progress of experimental science, but greatly contributed to such a progress by his own intelligent and indefatigable labors. You cannot therefore pretend that such a man lacked “positive knowledge.” Now, he says: “That the soul is immanent in the whole nervous system is proved, as it feels, perceives, and acts in every part thereof. I do not feel pain in a central part of the brain, but in a particular spot and place.”

_Büchner._ “And yet what Fischer denies is undoubtedly the fact. The nerves themselves do not perceive; they merely call forth sensations by conducting the impressions received to the brain. We do not feel pain in the place injured, but in the brain. If a nerve of sensation be divided in its course to the brain, all the parts which are supplied by it lose their sensibility, for no other reason than that the conducting of the impression to the brain is no longer possible. Every man who has no knowledge of physiological processes believes the feeling of hunger to be in the stomach. This is not so; the brain alone makes us conscious of the feeling. If the nerve uniting brain and stomach be divided, hunger is at an end, nor does it return. Neither does anger arise in the liver, or courage in the chest, but in the brain only” (pp. 143, 144). “Habit and external appearance have led to the false notion that we feel in places subjected to external irritation. Physiology calls this relation ‘the law of eccentric phenomena.’ According to it, we falsely attribute the feeling perceived in the brain to the place where the impression is made.... Persons who have lost their arms or legs by amputation often feel during their whole lives, in atmospheric changes, pains in limbs which they no longer possess. If all his limbs were removed, man would still feel them. From these facts it can scarcely be doubted that there must exist in the brain a topography by means of which the various sensations of the different parts of the body arise. Every part of the body which can be separately perceived must have a corresponding spot in the brain which in some degree represents it in the forum of consciousness” (pp. 144, 145).

_Reader._ This answer, doctor, is not altogether satisfactory. “The nerves,” of course, “do not perceive.” This I willingly admit; but neither does the brain perceive; for it is the soul that perceives. The nerves “merely call forth sensations by conducting the impressions received to the brain.” This cannot be denied; but it does not prove the non‐existence of the soul in the nervous system. Suppose that a pin or a thorn presses the finger; before the impression can be transmitted from the finger to the brain, its reception in the finger must give rise to a change of relation between the soul and the finger itself; which would be impossible, if the soul were not in the finger. For, if the soul is not in the finger, the impression made by the thorn will consist of a merely mechanical movement; and when this movement is communicated to the brain, what sensation can be called forth? A sensation of pain? No; for mere mechanical movement cannot produce a sense of pain, unless it is felt to disagree with the living organism. Now, the pricking is not felt to disagree with the brain, but with the finger. It is therefore in the finger and not in the brain that we feel the pain; which shows that the soul really is in the finger, and in every other part of the body in which we may experience any sensation.

Your reason for pretending that “we do not feel pain in the place injured, but in the brain,” is quite unsatisfactory. It is true that if a nerve of sensation be divided in its course to the brain, all the parts which are supplied by it lose their sensibility; but what of that? Those parts lose their sensibility because they lose their sensitiveness; that is, because the cutting of the nerve, by impairing the body, causes the soul to abandon the organic parts supplied by that nerve. You argue that, if the soul is not present in a given part of the body, when the nerve has been injured, the soul was not present in that same part before the nerve was injured. This inference is evidently wrong. The soul informs the organism, and any part of it, as long as the organs are suitably disposed for the vital operations, and abandons the organism, or any part of it, as soon as the organs have become unfit for the vital operations. Hence, as you cannot infer the non‐existence of the soul in the brain of a living man from the non‐existence of the same in the brain of a corpse, so you cannot infer its non‐existence in a part of the body before the cutting of the nerve from its non‐existence in the same part after the nerve has been cut.

The feeling of hunger, you say, is not in the stomach, because “if the nerve uniting brain and stomach be divided, hunger is at an end.” Is not this very curious? Men need none of your theories to know where they feel hungry; and they not only _believe_, as you say, but also _experience_, that their feeling of hunger is in the stomach. How can this be reconciled with your theory? You try to discredit the common belief by observing that we “have no knowledge of physiological processes.” This, however, is not true; for although we may not possess your _speculative_ knowledge of those processes, yet we have an _experimental_ knowledge of them, which beats all your speculations. The simplest common sense teaches that a theory contradicted by facts is worth nothing. Now, the fact is that we experience the sensation of hunger in the stomach, and not in the brain; and therefore no physiological theory that contradicts such a fact can be of any value.

You pretend that “habit and external appearance have led to the false notion that we feel in places subjected to external irritation.” This assertion cannot be justified. Habits are acquired by repeated acts; and to assume that habit leads us to a false notion is to assume that we are cheated by our actual sensations; which is inadmissible. As to “external appearances,” it is evident that they have nothing to do with the question, as sensations are not external appearances, but internal realities. Hence when we say that “we feel in places subjected to external irritation,” we express a real fact of which we have experimental evidence, and in regard to which no habit or external appearance can make us err.

The fact that “persons who have lost their arms or legs by amputation often feel during their whole life, in atmospheric changes, pains in limbs which they no longer possess,” does not tend to prove that the brain is the exclusive seat of the soul. Hence I dismiss it altogether. With regard to your conclusion that “every part of the body which can be separately perceived must have a corresponding spot in the brain which in some degree represents it in the forum of consciousness,” I have not the least objection against it; I merely add that no part of the body in which the soul is not actually present can be represented in the forum of consciousness. For if the soul is not in the finger when the thorn pricks it, the soul cannot say, _I feel the pain_; it could only say, _I know that a material organ, with which I have nothing to do, is being injured_. The soul would, in fact, but receive a telegram announcing what happens in some distant quarter. If a telegram comes to you from Siberia, announcing twenty degrees of cold, do you feel the sensation of cold?

_Büchner._ Yet “the theory that the brain is the seat of the soul is so incontrovertible that it has long been adopted in the rules of law in regard to monstrosities. A monstrosity with one body and two heads counts for _two_ persons; one with two bodies and one head, only for one person. Monstrosities without brain, so‐called acephali, possess no personality” (pp. 147, 148).

_Reader._ This is true; and therefore the soul certainly informs the brain. But it does not follow that other parts of the body are not informed. Hence your remark has no bearing on the question; and it remains true that the soul, as the form of the body, is directly connected with every part of the organism in which vital acts are performed.

XV. Spiritism.

_Reader._ May I ask, doctor, what you think of spiritism?

_Büchner._ I think it to be a fraud.

_Reader._ Of course, when a man denies the existence of spiritual substances, he cannot but deny their manifestation. Yet the phenomena of spiritism are so well known that we can scarcely be of your opinion.

_Büchner._ “Some of these phenomena, _clairvoyance_ especially, have been laid hold of to prove the existence of supernatural and supersensual phenomena. They were considered as the link of connection between the spiritual and the material world; and it was surmised that these phenomena opened a gate through which man might pass, and succeed in obtaining some immediate clue regarding transcendental existence, personal continuance, and the laws of the spirit. All these things are now, by science and an investigation of the facts, considered as idle fancies which human nature is so much inclined to indulge in to satisfy its longing after what appears miraculous and supersensual” (p. 149).

_Reader._ I apprehend, doctor, that science has no means of showing that “all these things are idle fancies.” Materialism, of course, assumes, though it cannot show, that spirits do not exist; but materialism is no science at all; and if the “investigation of the facts” has been conducted by materialists, we may well be sure that their verdict was not unbiassed. On the other hand, men of science, who are not materialists, a great number of physicians, philosophers, and theologians, are convinced that the phenomena of spiritism are neither inventions nor delusions. And, though human nature feels a certain propensity to believe what is wonderful, we cannot assume that learned and prudent men yield to this propensity without good reasons.

_Büchner._ “This propensity has given rise to the most curious errors of the human mind. Though it sometimes appears that the progress of science arrests its development in some place, it suddenly breaks forth with greater force at some other place where it was less expected. The events of the last few years afford a striking example. What the belief in sorcery, witchcraft, demoniac possession, vampirism, etc., was in former centuries, reappears now under the agreeable forms of table‐moving, spirit‐rapping, psychography, somnambulism, etc.” (p. 150).

_Reader._ You are right. Spiritism is only a new form of old superstitions and diabolic manifestations. But you are mistaken, if you believe that science can show such manifestations to have been fables. Your scientific argument against spiritual manifestations is, you must own it, inconsistent with your scientific process. Your process requires a basis of facts; for it is from facts that science draws its generalizations. You should, therefore, first ascertain that sorcery, witchcraft, etc., never existed in the world, and that not one of the thousand facts narrated in profane, sacred, or ecclesiastical history has ever happened; and then you might conclude that all mankind have been very stupid to believe such absurdities. But you follow quite a different course. You argue _à priori_, and say: Spiritual manifestations are an impossibility; therefore all the pretended facts of spiritism are impositions. This manner of arguing is not scientific; for evidently it is not based on facts, and the assumption that spiritual manifestations are impossible cannot be granted; for it cannot be proved. Hence not only the ignorant classes, but also educated persons, as you complain, believe in spiritual manifestations, in spite of your pretended science; for, when they see the facts, they will only smile at your denial of their possibility.

_Büchner._ But the facts themselves are incredible. “Magnetic sleep, induced either by continued passes on the body, or spontaneously without external means, as in idiosomnambulism, is stated to be frequently attended by an intellectual ecstasy, which in certain privileged persons, chiefly females, rises to what is called _clairvoyance_. In this state those persons are said to exhibit mental faculties not natural to them, to speak fluently foreign languages, and to discuss things perfectly unknown to them in the waking state.... The person perceives things beyond the sphere of his senses, he reads sealed letters, guesses the thoughts of other persons, reveals the past, etc. Finally, such individuals sometimes give us information about the arrangements in heaven and hell, our state after death, and so forth; but we cannot help mentioning that these revelations are ever in remarkable harmony with the religious views of the church, or of the priest under whose influence the patient may be for the time” (p. 151).

_Reader._ Poor Doctor Büchner! You are most unlucky in your allusion to the church. Spiritism is not a priestly invention, nor is it practised under the influence of the priest. The whole world knows that the practice of spiritism is utterly forbidden by the church; and you cannot be ignorant that your insinuation of the contrary is a slander. Perhaps your Masonic conscience allows you to tell lies; but is it wise to do so when the lie is so patent that no one can believe it?

_Büchner._ “There can be no doubt that all pretended cases of clairvoyance rest upon fraud or illusion. Clairvoyance—that is, a perception of external objects without the use of the senses—is an impossibility. It is a law of nature which cannot be gainsaid that we require our eyes to see, our ears to hear, and that these senses are limited in their action by space. No one can read an opaque sealed letter, extend his vision to America, see with closed eyes what passes around him, look into the future, or guess the thoughts of others. These truths rest upon natural laws which are irrefutable, and admit, like other natural laws, of no exception. All that we know we know by the medium of our senses. There exist no supersensual and supernatural things and capacities, and they never can exist, as the eternal conformity of the laws of nature would thereby be suspended. As little as a stone can ever fall in any other direction than towards the centre of the earth, so little can a man see without using his eyes” (p. 152).

_Reader._ Your reasoning is not sound, doctor. The stone can fall in any direction, if it receives an impetus in that direction; it is only when it is left to itself that it must fall directly towards the centre of the earth. So also a man, when left to himself and his natural powers, cannot see without using his eyes; but if acted on by a preternatural agency, he may be made acquainted with what his eyes cannot see. Your mention of natural laws is uncalled for. You will certainly not pretend that the natural laws, which hold in regard to this visible world, can be assumed to rule the world of the spirits. Moreover, when you say that “there exist no supersensual and supernatural things,” because “the eternal conformity of the laws of nature would thereby be suspended,” you merely make a gratuitous assertion. For as you can raise a weight without suspending the law of gravitation, so can other agents do other things conflicting with the uniform execution of natural laws without the natural laws becoming suspended. Thus your assertion that “there exist no supersensual and supernatural things” is wholly gratuitous, and therefore cannot be the basis of a sound argument against the facts of spiritism. “There is no fighting against facts; it is like kicking against the pricks,” as you say in one of your prefaces (p. xviii.)

_Büchner._ “Ghosts and spirits have hitherto only been seen by children, or ignorant and superstitious individuals” (p. 152).

_Reader._ Did not Saul see the ghost of Samuel?

_Büchner._ “All that has been narrated of the visits of departed spirits is sheer nonsense; never has a dead man returned to this world. There are neither table‐spirits nor any other spirits” (p. 153).

_Reader._ How can you account for such a singular assertion?

_Büchner._ “The naturalist entertains, from observation and experience, no doubt as to these truths; a constant intercourse with nature and its laws has convinced him that they admit of no exception” (p. 153).

_Reader._ This is not true. Naturalists, with their observation and experience of natural things, do not and cannot reject facts of a higher order, though they have not observed them. Their non‐observation is no argument, especially when we have other witnesses of the facts, and when we know that the naturalists of your school are pledged to materialism, and therefore shut their eyes to the facts which oppose their theory. The majority of educated persons admit the facts; not indeed _all_ the facts narrated, but many of them which no critical rule allows us to reject.

_Büchner._ Where are those facts? “The scientific impossibility of clairvoyance has been confirmed by an examination of the facts by sober and unprejudiced observers, and were proved to be deceptions and illusions” (p. 153).

_Reader._ Of course there are juggleries and impositions; but what of that? Would you maintain that there can be no doctors because there are quacks? I appeal to your logic.

_Büchner._ “The faculty of medicine of Paris many years ago took the trouble of submitting a number of such cases to a scientific examination; they were all proved to be deceptions, nor could a single case be established of a perception without the use of the senses. In 1837 the same academy offered a prize of 3,000 francs to any one who could read through a board. No one gained the prize” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ You forget, doctor, that in 1837 spiritism was as yet most imperfectly known. It was only about ten years later that it developed throughout America and Europe. Let the medical faculty of Paris again offer a prize to any one who can read through a board; and no one doubts there would be no lack of competitors. When we see that physicians and others, owing to their own experience of spiritual manifestations, were compelled to repudiate their previous materialistic opinions; when we know that infidels by the same manifestations were brought to believe the immortality of the soul; when the learned and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, the layman and the churchman, the diplomatist, the philosopher, and the theologian, bear witness to the reality of the spiritual phenomena, and are ready to bring forward innumerable facts in support of their affirmation, we do not care what the faculty of medicine of Paris may have pronounced many years ago. You say that the faculty “submitted a number of such cases to a scientific examination,” and that “they were all proved to be deceptions”; but you would be very much embarrassed to say in what that “scientific examination” consisted. On the other hand, the proofs of the deception have never appeared; and the simple truth is that the spiritual phenomena were _à priori_ rejected, as clashing with the materialistic theory of the faculty. You pretend that “whenever the proper means were employed to prevent deception, clairvoyance was at an end” (p. 153). Such an assertion proves that you are completely ignorant of what is going on in the world, or that you are determined obstinately to ignore whatever could compel you to acknowledge the existence of spiritual substances.

_Büchner._ “I have had the opportunity of examining a clairvoyant, of whom remarkable things were told, under circumstances when a deception on the part of the magnetizer was out of the question. The lady failed in all her indications; they were either absolutely false or so expressed that nothing could be made of them. She, moreover, made the most ridiculous excuses for her shortcomings. As she failed in her clairvoyance, she preferred to fall into a state of heavenly ecstasy, in which she discoursed with her _ange_ or tutelar genius, and recited religious verses. In reciting a poem of this kind she once stopped short, and recommenced the verse to assist her memory. She manifested, withal, in this ecstasy, no superior mental capacities; her language was common, and her manner awkward. I left with the conviction that the lady was an impostor who deceived her patron. Still, several gentlemen present were by no means convinced of the deception practised on them” (p. 154).

_Reader._ If these gentlemen could by no means be convinced of the deception, must we not presume that there was no deception, and that your peculiar construction of the case was brought about by a strong desire of not being disturbed in your fixed idea that there is nothing but matter? If “the lady failed in all her indications,” if “she made the most ridiculous excuses for her shortcomings,” if “she manifested no superior capacities,” it should have been evident to those “several gentlemen” that she was a fraud. Their inability to be convinced of the deception would therefore show that the lady did not fail in all her indications, but manifested superior capacities. Be this as it may, the truth and reality of spiritual manifestations cannot be disproved by particular attempts at imposition. Spiritualists admit that many impositions have been practised under the name of spiritual manifestations, but they aver that in most instances cheats could not have been palmed off, even if designed; and that in other cases there could be no possible motive for deception, as the investigations were carried on in private families where the mediums were their own sons and daughters.(50) Spirit‐rapping is a fact. Table‐ turning is a fact. Clairvoyance is a fact. Thousands of all conditions, sects, and nations have witnessed, watched, and examined all such facts with a degree of attention, suspicion, and incredulity proportionate to their novelty, strangeness, and unnaturalness. What has been the result? A verdict acknowledging the reality of the facts and the impossibility of accounting for them without intelligent preternatural agencies. This verdict disposes of your materialism. To deny the facts in order to save materialism is so much time lost. Facts speak for themselves.

XVI. Innate Ideas

_Reader._ And now I should like to know, doctor, why you thought proper to fill twenty‐seven pages of your _Force and Matter_ with a discussion about innate ideas.

_Büchner._ For two reasons, sir. First, because “the question whether there be innate ideas is a very old one, and, in our opinion, one of the most important in relation to the contemplation of nature. It decides to some extent whether man, considered as the product of a higher world, has received a form of existence as something foreign and external to his essence, with the tendency to shake off this earthly covering, and to return to his spiritual home; or whether, both in his spiritual and bodily capacity, man stands to the earth which has produced him in a necessary, inseparable connection, and whether he has received his essential nature from this world; so that he cannot be torn from the earth, like the plant which cannot exist without its maternal soil. The question is, at the same time, one which does not dissolve itself in a philosophical mist, but which, so to speak, has flesh and blood, and, resting upon empirical facts, can be discussed and decided without high‐sounding phrases” (p. 157). The second reason is, that “if it be correct that there are no innate intuitions, then must the assertion of those be incorrect who assume that the idea of a God, or the conception of a supreme personal being, who created, who governs and preserves the world, is innate in the human mind, and therefore incontrovertible by any mode of reasoning” (p. 184).

_Reader._ Do you mean, that, by refuting the theory of innate ideas, you will cut the ground from under the feet of the theist and the spiritualist?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir. Such is the drift of my argumentation.

_Reader._ Then your labor is all in vain. For you must know that we do not base our demonstration of the substantiality and immortality of the soul on the doctrine of innate ideas, nor do we assume that the notion of a God is an “innate intuition.” Had you been even superficially acquainted with the works of our scholastic philosophers, you would have known that innate ideas are totally foreign to their psychological and theological doctrines. You would have known that the axiom, _Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu_—that is, “There is nothing in our intellect which has not entered by the gate of the senses”—is not a discovery of your Moleschott, to whom you attribute it, but is an old dictum familiar to all the schoolmen of past centuries, and approved by the most orthodox philosophers of our own time. Now, these philosophers, while denying that we have any innate idea, admit at the same time that our soul is a special substance and is immortal, and show that the human intellect can easily form a concept of God as a supreme cause, and ascertain his existence without need of innate intuitions. This might convince you that your chapter on innate ideas has no bearing on the questions concerning the nature of the soul and the notion of a God. Your assumption that if man has innate ideas, he will have a tendency “to shake off this earthly covering, and to return to his spiritual home,” is incorrect. For the human body has no spiritual home, as is evident; and the human soul, as having no previous existence in a separate state, has no home but in the body, and the presence of innate ideas would not create in it a tendency to shake off its earthly covering. On the other hand, your other assumption, that, if man has no innate ideas, he is “a production of the earth alone, and cannot be torn from the earth, with which he is inseparably connected both in his spiritual and bodily capacity,” is even more incorrect. For the absence of innate ideas does not mean, and does not entail, the absence of an intellectual principle; and such a principle, as evidently immaterial, is not a production of the earth, and has no need of earthly things to continue its existence.

_Büchner._ How can a soul exist without ideas? And, if all ideas come through our senses, how can a soul exist without being united to the organs? “Daily experience teaches us that man begins his intellectual life only with the gradual development of his senses, and in proportion as he enters into a definite relation to the external world; and that the development of his intellect keeps pace with that of his organs of sense and his organ of thought, and also with the number and importance of the impressions received. ‘Every unprejudiced observer,’ says Virchow, ‘has arrived at the conviction that thought is only gradually developed in man.’ The new‐born child thinks as little, and has as little a soul, as the unborn child; it is, in our view, living in the body, but intellectually dead.... The embryo neither thinks nor feels, and is not conscious of its existence. Man recollects nothing of this state, nor of the first period of his existence in which the senses were dormant; and this perfect unconsciousness proves his spiritual non‐existence at that period. The reason can only be that, during the fœtal state, there are no impressions whatever received from without, and so weak and imperfect are they in the first few weeks that the intellect cannot be said to exist” (p. 159).

_Reader._ It is plain that the new‐born child cannot form an idea of exterior objects without the use of his senses. But is it true that the new‐born child is not conscious of its own existence? Certainly not; for, without a previous knowledge of its own existence, it would never be able to attribute to itself the feelings awakened in it by exterior objects. The mind cannot say, _I feel_, if it is not already acquainted with the _I_. Nor does it matter that “man recollects nothing of the first period of his existence.” Recollection is impossible so long as the brain has not acquired a certain consistency; and therefore whatever happens with us in the first period of our existence leaves no durable trace in our organs, and is entirely forgotten. Hence your assertions “that the senses of the new‐born child are dormant, and that its perfect unconsciousness proves its spiritual non‐existence,” are both false. The child feels its being, its senses are quite ready to receive impressions, and its soul is quite alive to such impressions.

You say that “the development of the intellect keeps pace with that of the organs of sense.” What do you mean by development of the intellect? If you simply mean that the intellect is furnished with materials of thought in proportion as sensible objects are perceived, and that, by being so furnished, it can easily perform a number of intellectual operations, I admit your assertion; but if you mean that the soul itself is _substantially_ developed in proportion as the organs are growing more perfect, then your assertion is both groundless and absurd. Now, it is evident, by your manner of reasoning, that this second meaning is the one you adopt. And therefore it is evident that your conclusion is wrong. “The impressions,” you say, “are so weak and imperfect that the intellect cannot be said to exist.” This is simply ludicrous. Would you allow us to say that at night the impressions of light are so weak and imperfect that the eye cannot be said to exist? Or that the impressions made on a piece of paper by a bad pencil are so weak and imperfect that the paper cannot be said to exist? It is obvious that the impressions do not cause the existence of their subject; and, therefore, if the intellect “cannot be said to exist” before the impressions, the time will never come when it can be said to exist.

And now, suppose that a newborn child dies without having acquired through its senses any knowledge of the exterior world. What shall we say of its soul? Will such a soul be entirely destitute of ideas, and unable to think? By no means. Such a soul, after its short permanence in the body, where it _felt_ its own being, will henceforward _understand_ its own being as actually present in its own individuality; it will perceive its own essence as well as its existence; it will be able to abstract from _self_, and to behold essence, existence, and being, _secundum se_—that is, according to their objective intelligibility; and, finally, it will be able to commune with other spiritual beings with the same facility with which, while in the body, it could communicate with the exterior world by means of its organic potencies. I know that you do not believe this; but your unbelief will not change things. The soul, when out of the body, is competent to perform intellectual operations about intellectual objects as freely and as perfectly as it performs the sensitive operations in its present condition. If you consult the works of our philosophers and theologians, you will find the proofs of my proposition. As to your opposite assumption, since you have no means of establishing it, we are free to dismiss it without further discussion.

_Büchner._ If the soul is a separate substance, how and when is it introduced into the body? “The scientific and logical impossibility of determining the time (of its introduction) proves the absurdity of the whole theory, which assumes that a higher power breathes the soul into the nostrils of the fœtus” (p. 160).

_Reader._ You are grossly mistaken, doctor. The impossibility of determining the time of the animation of the fœtus proves nothing but our ignorance. Do you deny that Paris was built by the Gauls on the plea that you do not know the date of its foundation? Again, since the animation of the fœtus is not an operation of the mind, how can you speak of _logical_ impossibility? Evidently, you write at random, and know not what you say. As to the question itself, one thing is clear, viz., the child cannot be born alive, unless its body has been animated in the womb.

_Büchner._ “Moses and the Egyptians entertained a decided opinion that the child was not animated while in the womb” (p. 161).

_Reader._ False. Moses describes in the Book of Genesis the fighting of Jacob and Esau while in the womb of their mother. Could he assume that they would fight before being animated?

_Büchner._ “In some countries they know nothing of an animated fœtus” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ False. Every mother will give you the lie.

_Büchner._ “The destruction of the fœtus and infanticide are, according to Williams, common occurrences in Madagascar. It is also common in China and the Society Islands” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ This shows the immorality of those nations, not their ignorance of the fœtal life. But why should you appeal to the presumed ignorance of barbarians against the verdict of civilized nations? Are you an apostle of barbarity and brutality? Do you wish your reader to persuade himself that the destruction of the fœtus is no crime?

_Büchner._ “The Roman lawyers did not look upon the fœtus as an individual being, but as a part of the mother. The destruction of the fœtus was therefore permitted to the women of Rome, and we find that Plato and Aristotle had already adopted the same view” (p. 160).

_Reader._ Do not calumniate Aristotle. This great philosopher and naturalist is decidedly not of your opinion. He teaches that the fœtus is animated in the womb. And, pray, are the legal fictions of the Roman lawyers of any weight against the facts averred by modern medicine? Do you again appeal to ignorance against science?

_Büchner._ Physicians have not yet decided the question. “Even at birth, when the child is separated from the mother, it is impossible to assume that a ready‐made soul, lying in wait, should suddenly rush in and take possession of its new habitation. The soul, on the contrary, is only gradually developed in proportion to the relations which, by the awakening senses, are now established between the individual and the external world” (p. 161).

_Reader._ No, sir. If this last assertion were true, it would follow that every child would be lifeless at its birth; for without a soul no animal life can be conceived. What is “gradually developed” is not the substance of the soul, but the exercise of its faculties. This is a point already settled. As to your other assertion, that the question has not yet been decided by the physicians, I need only say that, although there are different opinions regarding the time of the animation of the embryo, yet no physician (unless he is a materialist) denies that the embryo is animated long before its nativity. Hence your notion of a ready‐made soul lying in wait, and suddenly rushing in when the child is born, is only a dream of your fancy or an unworthy attempt at ridiculing the proceedings of nature.

What you add about the development of the child’s mind by means of the senses, education, and example does not prove the _subjective_, but only the _objective_, growth of the mind, as you yourself seem to concede (p. 162). And as the objective growth means an accidental acquisition of knowledge without any substantial change of the soul, hence nothing that you may say in refutation of innate ideas can have the least weight or afford the least ground against the doctrine of the immortality and substantiality of the soul.

XVII. The Idea Of A God.

_Reader._ From the non‐existence of innate ideas you infer, doctor, that “the idea of a God, or the conception of a supreme personal being, who created, who governs and preserves the world, is not innate in the human mind, and therefore is not incontrovertible” (p. 184). On the other hand, you say with Luther that “God is a blank sheet, upon which nothing is found but what you have yourself written” (_ibid._) Do you mean that our notion of God is merely subjective—that is, a creation of our fancy without any objective foundation?

_Büchner._ Yes, sir. “We can have neither any knowledge nor any conception of the _absolute_—of that which transcends the surrounding sensual world. However much metaphysicians may vainly attempt to define the absolute, however much religion may endeavor to excite faith in the absolute by the assumption of a revelation, nothing can conceal the defect of the definition. All our knowledge is relative, and results from the comparison of surrounding sensible objects. We could have no notion of darkness without light, no conception of high without low, of heat without coldness, etc.; absolute ideas we have none. We are not able to form any conception of ‘everlasting’ or ‘infinite,’ as our understanding, limited by time and space, finds an impassable barrier for that conception. From being in the sensual world accustomed to find a cause for every effect, we have falsely concluded that there exists a primary cause of all things, although such a cause is perfectly inaccessible to our ideas, and is contradicted by scientific experience” (p. 179).

_Reader._ How do you show that we have neither any knowledge nor any conception of the absolute? or that our understanding is limited by time and space? or that, from being accustomed to find a cause for every effect, we have _falsely_ concluded that there exists a primary cause of all things? or that its existence is contradicted by scientific experience? Of course you cannot expect that a rational man will swallow such paradoxes on your puny authority.

_Büchner._ We know neither absolute truth, nor absolute good, nor absolute beauty. This I have shown by proving that all our notions of truth, of good, and of beauty are the fruit of experience, observation, and comparison, and that such notions vary according to the character of the nations in which they are to be found. It is only after this demonstration that I concluded “that we can have neither any knowledge nor any conception of the absolute.”

_Reader._ Yes; this is the only point which you have tried to establish, and you have failed, as I am ready to show. But that our understanding is limited by time and space you merely assert. That we falsely conclude that there is a primary cause you boldly assume. That God’s existence is contradicted by scientific experience you impudently affirm, well knowing that it is a lie.

And now, with regard to the knowledge of the absolute, you are much mistaken if you believe that we know no absolute truth, no absolute good, and no absolute beauty. We know absolute being; and therefore we know absolute truth, absolute good, and absolute beauty.

_Büchner._ We know of no absolute being, sir.

_Reader._ Be modest, doctor; for you know of how many blunders you stand already convicted. Absolute being is not necessarily “that which transcends the surrounding sensual world.” The sun, the moon, the planets have their absolute being, and yet do not transcend matter. Now, can we not form a notion of the absolute being of these bodies? You say that “all our knowledge is relative, and results from the comparison of surrounding sensible objects”; but you should reflect that all relative knowledge implies the knowledge of the absolute terms from the comparison of which the relation is to be detected. Hence you cannot admit the knowledge of the relative without assuming the knowledge of the absolute. Accordingly, it is false that “all our knowledge is relative,” at least in the sense of your argumentation. Nor is it true that all our knowledge “results from the comparison of surrounding sensible objects.” There is a kind of knowledge which results from the comparison of intellectual principles, as the knowledge of the logical rules; and there is also a knowledge which results, not from the comparison, but from the intellectual analysis, of things, as the knowledge of the constituent principles of being. If I ask you what is _distance_, you will soon point out any two sensible objects, by the comparison of which distance may become known; but if I ask you what is _syllogism_, or what is _judgment_, or what is _philosophy_, I defy you to point out any “surrounding sensible objects,” by the comparison of which such notions may be understood.

I need not discuss your assertion that “we could have no notion of darkness without light, no conception of high without low, of heat without coldness, etc.” I may concede the assertion as irrelevant for, whenever we designate things by relative terms, it is clear that each relative carries within itself the connotation of its correlative. But it does not follow that all our knowledge is relative. How can we know, for instance, the relation of brotherhood intervening between James and John, if we know neither the one nor the other? Can we conceive the _brother_ without the _man_? Or is it necessary, when we know the man, that in such a man we should see his peculiar relation to another man?

You pretend that we are not able to form any conception of “ever‐lasting” or “infinite”; and, to prove this, you affirm that “our understanding, being limited by time and space, finds an impassable barrier for that conception.” Very well; but what did you mean when you contended that matter is “eternal” and “infinite”? Had you then any conception of “eternal” and “infinite”? If you had not such conceptions, you made a fool of yourself by using terms which you did not understand; while, if you had such conceptions, then it is false that we are not able to form them. In the same manner, have you any conception of the “absolute”? If you have it, then it is ridiculous to pretend that we cannot conceive the absolute; while, if you have it not, you know not about what you are speaking. Alas! poor doctor. What can you answer? It is the common fate of the enemies of truth to be inconsistent with themselves, and to demolish with one hand what they build with the other.

But is it true that our intellect “is limited by time and space”? No, it is not true. Imagination is indeed limited by time and space, as all our philosophers concede; but intellect understands things independently of either space or time. This is evident. For in what space do we place the universals? To what time do we confine mathematical truths? _Two and two are known to make four_ in all places and in all times—that is, without restriction or limit in space and time; and the same is true of all intellectual principles. Hence it is obvious that our understanding transcends both space and time, and can reach the infinite and the eternal. It is through abstraction, of course, and not by comprehension or by intuition, that we form such notions; for our intellect, though not limited by time and space, is limited in its own entity, and therefore it cannot conceive the unlimited, except by the help of the abstractive process—that is, by removing the limits by which the objective reality of the finite is circumscribed. That we can do this I need not prove _to you;_ for you admit that space is infinite, and pretend that matter itself is infinite, as I have just remarked; and consequently you cannot deny that we have the notion of infinity.

What shall I say of your next assertion, that, from being accustomed to find a cause for every effect, “we have _falsely_ concluded that there exists a primary cause of all things”? Do you think that the principle of causality has no other ground than experience? or that, when we do not “find” the cause of a certain effect, we are to conclude that the effect has had no cause? I hope you will not deny that the notions of cause and effect are so essentially connected that there is no need of experiment to compel the admission of a cause for every effect. Hence we are certain, not only that all the effects for which we have found a cause proceed from a cause, but also that all the effects for which we cannot find a cause likewise proceed from a cause. This amounts to saying that the principle of causality is analytical, not empirical, as you seem to hold. Now, if all effects must have a cause, on what ground do you assert that “we have _falsely_ concluded that there exists a primary cause of all things”? Our conclusion cannot be false, unless it be false that the world has been created; for if it was created, we must admit a Creator—that is, a primary cause. But the fact of creation is, even philosophically, undeniable, since the contingent nature of the world is manifestly established by its liability to continuous change. And therefore it is manifestly established that our admission of a primary cause is not a false conclusion. I might say more on this point; but what need is there of refuting assertions which have not even a shadow of plausibility? The primary cause, you say, “is perfectly inaccessible to our ideas.” I answer that, if the word “idea” means “concept,” your statement is perfectly wrong. You add that the existence of a primary cause “is contradicted by scientific experience.” I answer by challenging you to bring forward a single fact of experimental science which supports your blasphemous assertion.

You must agree, doctor, that a man who in a few phrases commits so many unconceivable blunders has no right to censure the metaphysicians or to attack revelation. It is rash, therefore, on your part, to declare that “however much metaphysicians may vainly attempt to define the absolute, however much religion may endeavor to excite faith in the absolute by the assumption of a revelation, nothing can conceal the defect of the definition.” Of what definition do you speak? Your own definition of the absolute, as “that which transcends the surrounding sensual world,” is certainly most deficient; but religion and metaphysics are not to be made responsible for it. Why did you not, before censuring the metaphysicians and the theologians, ascertain their definitions? We call _absolute_ a being whose existence does not depend on the existence of another being; and in this sense God alone is absolute. He is _the absolute_ antonomastically. And we call _absolute_ analogically any being also whose existence does not depend on any created being, although it depends on the creative and conservative action of God; and in this sense every created substance is absolute. And we call _absolute_ logically whatever is conceived through its own intrinsic constituents without reference to any other distinct entity; and in this sense we speak of absolute movement, absolute weight, absolute volume, etc. Without enumerating other less important meanings of the term, I simply observe that the absolute may be defined as that which is independent of extraneous conditions; and that the greater its independence, the more absolute and the more perfect is the being. Have you anything to say against this definition?

We must, then, conclude that all your argumentation is nothing but a shocking display of false assertions, and, I may add, of “intellectual jugglery.”

_Büchner._ I will accept your conclusion, if you can show that our conception of a God is not a childish delusion of our fancy. “An exact knowledge and unprejudiced observation of individuals and nations in an uncivilized state prove the contrary to be the fact. Only a prejudiced mind can, in the worship of animals practised by ancient and existing nations, find something analogous to a real belief in a God. It by no means corresponds to the idea of a God when we see man worshipping such animals as he from experience knows may injure or be useful to him.... A stone, a tree, a river, an alligator, a parcel of rags, a snake, form the idols of the negro of Guinea. Such a worship does not express the idea of an almighty being, governing the world and ruling nature and man, but merely a blind fear of natural forces, which frighten uncivilized man, or appear supernatural, as he is not able to trace the natural connection of things.... A god in the shape of an animal is no God, but a caricature” (pp. 184, 185).

_Reader._ True. But individuals and nations existing “in an uncivilized state” are scarcely to be appealed to for a decision of the question. The notion of worship implies the notion of a supreme being; but rude and brutal men, thinking of nothing but of the development of their animal nature and the pursuit of degrading pleasure, though they know that there is some superior being, are not the men we ought to consult about the nature and attributes of divinity. It seems, doctor, as if you had a great predilection for uncivilized and barbarous nations. You have already tried to countenance abortion and fœticide, on the ground that barbarians admitted the horrible practice; and now you would have us believe that our conception of a God is a childish delusion, on the ground that barbarians worship the snake, the alligator, or any other caricature of a god. This will not do.

_Büchner._ But civilized men are not much in advance of barbarians with regard to the notion of divinity. “No one has better expounded the purely human origin of the idea of God than Ludwig Feuerbach. He calls all conceptions of God and divinity _anthropomorphisms_—_i.e._, products of human fancies and perceptions, formed after the model of human individuality. Feuerbach finds this anthropomorphism in the feeling of dependence inherent in the human nature. ‘An extraneous and superhuman God,’ says Feuerbach, ‘is nothing but an extraneous and supernatural self, a subjective being placed, by transgressing its limits, above the objective nature of man.’ The history of all religions is indeed a continuous argument for this assertion; and how could it be otherwise? Without any knowledge or any notion of the absolute, without any immediate revelation, the existence of which is indeed asserted by all, but not proved by any religious sect, all ideas of God, no matter of what religion, can only be human; and as man knows in animated nature no being intellectually superior to himself, it follows that his conception of a supreme being can only be abstracted from his own self, and must represent a _self‐idealization_” (p. 190). Hence it is plain that our idea of a God is a mere delusion.

_Reader._ It is by no means plain, doctor. Feuerbach’s authority, you know, is worth very little. Your German philosophers, as you own, “have pretty much lost their authority, and are now but little attended to” (p. 158). On the other hand, “nothing,” says Herschel, “is so improbable but a German will find a theory for it” (p. 155). Therefore let Feuerbach alone.

As for the reasons which you adduce in support of the assumption, we need not go into deep reasonings to lay open their true value. Is “the history of all religions a continuous argument for Feuerbach’s assertion”? No. For the history of the Mosaic and of the Christian religion is a continuous refutation of such a slander. Are men “without any knowledge or any notion of the absolute”? No. This I have already shown to be entirely false. Men, however, are “without any immediate revelation.” This is true, but it has nothing to do with the question; first, because philosophy and reason are competent without supernatural revelation to ascertain the existence of a primary cause infinitely superior to all the natural beings; secondly, because, although we have no _immediate_ revelations, we have the old revelation transmitted to us by written and oral tradition, and by the teaching of the living church. That this revelation “is asserted by all, but not proved by any religious sect,” is one of those lies which it is quite unnecessary to refute, as there are whole libraries of Scriptural treatises, in which the truth of revelation is superabundantly vindicated. I would therefore conclude, without any further discussion, that it is to yourself, and not to your opponents, that you should apply that low criticism with which you close the twenty‐sixth chapter of your work. For it is you that “delight in hashing up cold meat with new phrases, and dishing them up as the last invention of the _materialistic_ kitchen” (p. 194).

To sum up: Do you admit that man is a finite being?

_Büchner._ Of course.

_Reader._ Do you admit that man had a beginning? That man is ignorant, weak, wicked, and subject to death?

_Büchner._ Who can doubt that?

_Reader._ Then man by _self‐idealization_ cannot form an anthropomorphic notion of a supreme being without involving limitation, ignorance, impotence, malice, an origin, and an end of existence. Such, and no other, would be the result of self‐idealization. Now, our notion of God is that of a being eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, holy, immense. Is this anthropomorphism?

To Be Continued.

Destiny.

From The French Of Louis Veuillot.

It is the lot of mortals here below That they shall ever crawl from bad to worse, Approaching step by step the dismal tomb— Instance an aching tooth, with no relief Save by its loss. Cure comes by sacrifice.

All victories are seeds of further strife— Of strife that never ends but in the grave, In which he only conquers who succumbs: And this is destiny.

Ye dreamers of love‐dreams, of glory, wealth, Who, growing old, are scouted by the world, And then swept on into forgetfulness! All disappears—laurels, affection, gold! Blame not your faults that so things come to pass, For this is destiny.

The Veil Withdrawn.

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

XXII.

The following day was as gloomy as might have been expected from the evening before. Never had I suffered such inexpressible anguish and distress.

It is useless to say that I went to church alone, as on the preceding Sunday, but I was not as calm and recollected as I was then. I was now in a state of irrepressible dissatisfaction with everything and everybody, myself not excepted, and yet I was very far from being in that humble disposition of mind which subdues all murmuring, extinguishes resentment, and throws a calm, serene light on the way one should walk in. I regretted my hastiness of the evening before, because I realized that a different course would have been more likely to further my wishes. In short, I felt I ought to have managed more skilfully, but it never occurred to me I might have been more patient. I found it difficult, above all, to calm the excessive irritation caused by the recollection of Lorenzo’s manner throughout our interview. I compared it with his appearance on the day when he spoke to me for the first time concerning her.

What tenderness he then manifested! What confidence! What respect even! Even while uttering her name—alas! with emotion—how manifest it was that, while desirous of repairing his wrongs towards her, he felt incapable of any towards me! Not a week had elapsed since that time, and yesterday how cold, how hard! What implacable and freezing irony! What an incredible change in his looks and words! Was it really Lorenzo who spoke to me in such a way? Was it really he who gave me so indifferent and almost disdainful a look?... No, he was no longer the same. A previous fascination had recovered its power, and the fatal charm over which I had so recently triumphed had regained its empire over a heart which I was, alas! too feeble to retain, because I had no sentiments more profound and elevated than those of nature to aid me!

As I have already said, I did not try to fathom Faustina’s motives. I ought, however, to say a few words concerning her, if only through charity for him whom she had followed, like an angel of darkness, to disturb his legitimate happiness!

That she had long loved him I do not doubt—loved him with the unbridled passion that sways all such hearts as hers. She thought he would return to her. She believed she was preparing for herself a whole life of happiness by two years of apparent virtue. Mistaken, wounded, and desperate, she had at first yielded to an impetuous desire of perhaps merely seeing him once more; perhaps, also, to avenge herself by destroying the happiness that had defeated her dearest hopes.

She had calculated on the extent of her influence, and had calculated rightly. But in order to exert it, I was necessary to her design, and she played with consummate art the scene of our first encounter. She wished to take a near view of the enemy she hoped to vanquish; she must sound the heart she wished to smite. Alas! all that was worthy of esteem in that heart was not perceived by him, and it was natural to underrate a treasure not appreciated by its owner. What could I do, then? What advantage had I over her, if, in Lorenzo’s eyes, I was not protected by a sacred, insurmountable barrier which he respected himself? What was my love in comparison with her passion? What was my intelligence in comparison with that which she possessed? My beauty beside the irresistible charm that had even fascinated me? Finally, my youth itself in comparison with all the advantages her unscrupulous vanity gave her over me? In fact, I think it seemed so easy at the first glance to vanquish me that she was almost disarmed herself. But I also believe she soon discovered something more in me than all she found so easy to eclipse. She saw I might in time succeed in acquiring an ascendency over Lorenzo that no human influence could destroy. She saw I might kindle a flame in his soul it would be impossible to extinguish—a flame very different from that which either of us could be the object of. She saw I might lead him into a world where she could no longer be my rival, and that I wished to do so. She discerned the ardent though confused desire that was in my heart. In a word, she had on her side an intuition equal to that which I had on mine. She perceived the good there was in me, as I had fathomed the evil there was in her, and she knew she must overpower my good influence, which would render him invulnerable whom she wished to captivate. She made use of all the weapons she possessed to conquer me, or rather, alas! to conquer him—weapons always deadly against hearts without defence. The very esteem she had heretofore won became a snare to him when her pride, her passion, changed their calculations—an additional snare, a danger that, combined with others, would be fatal!...

If I speak of her now in this way, it is not to gratify a resentment long since extinguished. Neither is it to palliate Lorenzo’s offences against me and against God. It is solely to explain their secret cause, and to repeat once more that human love, even the most tender, is a frail foundation of that happiness in which God has no part; and honor likewise, even the highest and most unimpeachable, is a feeble guarantee of a fidelity of which God is not the bond, the witness, and the judge!...

I saw Lorenzo barely for a moment in the morning. I clearly perceived he wished to make me forget what had passed between us the evening before, but I did not see the least shade of regret. It was evident, on the contrary, that he thought himself magnanimous in overlooking my reproaches, and felt no concern at having merited them. In short, we seemed to have changed _rôles_. As for me, I suffered so much on account of the outburst I had indulged in that it would have been easy to call forth acknowledgments that would have atoned for it. They only waited for the least word of affection, but not one did he utter. Lando came for him before two o’clock, and they went away together, leaving me with a sad, heavy heart. I was not to see him again till my return from the Hôtel de Kergy. Where would he pass the time meanwhile?... Would it really be in Lando’s company? And was the business they had to settle really such as to render it impossible for him to spend this last evening with me?... Would it not have been a thousand times better to have remained silent, and, as this was really our last day, and we were to leave on the next, would it not have been wiser in me to have spent it wholly with him, ... even if that included her?... Had I not committed an irreparable folly in yielding to this explosion of unmistakable anger? This was indubitable, but it was too late to remedy it. The die was cast. Lorenzo was gone! I passed the afternoon, like that of the Sunday before, at church, but was pursued by a thousand distractions which I had not now the strength to resist. On the contrary, I took pleasure in dwelling on them, and my mind wandered without any effort on my part to prevent it. I neglected, on the very day of my life when I had the most need of light, courage, and assistance, to have recourse to the only Source whence they are to be obtained, and I returned home without having uttered a prayer.

Two hours later I was at the Hôtel de Kergy, and in the same room where just a week before I had felt such lively emotion and conceived such delightful hopes! But, ah! what a contrast between my feelings on that occasion and those of to‐day! I seemed to have lived as many years since as there had been days!...

Mme. de Kergy advanced to meet me as I entered, and I saw she noticed the change in my face the moment she looked at me. I did not know how to feign what I did not feel, and she had had too much experience not to perceive I had undergone some pain or chagrin since the evening before. She asked me no questions, however, but, on the contrary, began to speak of something foreign to myself; and this did me good. I soon felt my painful emotions diminish by degrees, and a change once more in the atmosphere around me, as when one passes from one clime to another.

The guests were but few in number, and all friends of the family. Diana, prettier than ever, and so lively as to excite my envy, was delighted to see me, but did not observe the cloud on my brow; and if she had, she would have been incapable of fathoming the cause. She hastened to point out the various guests who had arrived.

“They are all friends,” said she; “for mother said you were coming to get a little respite from society.”

Mme. de Kergy presented them to me one by one, and among the persons introduced were several of celebrity, whom I regarded with all the interest a first meeting adds to renown. But I saw nothing of Diana’s brother among those present, and was beginning to wonder if I should never see him again, when, just as dinner was ready, he made his appearance. He bowed to me at a distance, appearing to have forgotten it was his place to escort me to the table. A sign from his mother seemed to bring him to himself, and he offered me his arm with some confusion, though without any awkwardness. But after taking a seat beside me, he remained for some moments without speaking, and then addressed his conversation to others instead of me. I saw he was for some reason embarrassed, and I was confused myself; for such things are contagious. He soon recovered his accustomed ease, however, and when he finally addressed me it was with a simplicity that set me, on my part, entirely at ease. His conversation surprised and pleased me, and I felt I conversed better with him than any one else. There was nothing trifling in what he said, and, above all, he refrained from everything like a compliment, direct or indirect, and even from every subject that might lead either to me or himself. Women generally like nothing so much as a style of conversation that shows the effect they produce, so it was not astonishing it had been employed with me as well as with others. But this language had always embarrassed and displeased me, and I now felt proportionately pleased with the unusual way in which I was addressed—a way that seemed to raise me in my own estimation. And yet he did not try to absorb my attention, but gave others an opportunity of taking part in the conversation.

It soon became general, and I stopped to listen. I had then the pleasure—a new one for me—of witnessing a kind of game in which thoughts and opinions fly from one to another, wit mingles with gravity, and the intellect is brightened by contact with the brilliancy of others. Gilbert was not the only one in this circle who knew how to interest without fatiguing, and excite, not by ridicule, but by a better kind of wit, the hearty, cordial laugh that wounds neither the absent nor the present!

What struck me especially was the interest and almost deference with which a man of well‐known eloquence, whose opinions had weight with every one, endeavored to draw forth the opinions of others. It might have been said he listened even better than he talked.

Thus during the whole time we were at table, and the evening that followed, I realized the true meaning of the word _conversation_ in a country where it originated, in the social world where it was coined, and in the language which is, of all mediums, the most delicate, the most perfect, and the most universal.

In spite of myself, I felt my sadness gradually vanish, and my laugh more than once mingled freely in the merriment of others. I saw that Mme. de Kergy observed this with pleasure, and a benevolent smile increased the habitual sweetness of her expression. She was a woman whose unvarying serenity was the result of great suffering, and who now sought nothing in this world but the happiness of others; to whose pains she was as fully alive as she was full of profound compassion.

She wore mourning, not only for her husband, but a number of children, of whom Gilbert and Diana were the sole survivors. But far from centring her affection on them, she seemed to have given to all who were young the love she had cherished for those who were gone, and the vacant places they had left in her maternal heart. I could not help regarding her with astonishment, for I belonged to a country where it is more common to die of grief than to learn how to live under its burden. I returned Mme. de Kergy’s smile, and for an hour felt gay and almost happy. But by degrees the burden, removed for an instant, fell back on my heart. The reality of my troubles, and the thought of bidding farewell to this delightful circle of friends, filled me with a melancholy it was impossible to repress. The regret that weighed on my heart was for a moment as profound as that we feel for our country when we fear never to behold it again.

I remained seated in an arm‐chair near the fire‐place, and fell into a revery which was favored by Diana, who was at the piano. She was at that moment playing with consummate skill an air of Chopin’s which seemed to give expression to my very thoughts....

I awoke from my long revery, and felt a blush mount to my very forehead when, raising my eyes, I found Gilbert’s fixed on mine.... And mine were veiled with tears! I hastily brushed them away, stammering with confusion that Chopin’s music always affected my nerves, and then, leaving my seat, I approached the piano, where Diana continued to play one air after another.... Gilbert remained with a pensive manner in the place where I left him, looking at me from a distance, and trying, perhaps, to conjecture the cause of my emotion.

But the approaching separation was sufficient to account for this. I was that very evening to bid a long farewell to these new friends, whom perhaps I should never meet again in this world! And when the hour came, and Mme. de Kergy clasped me for the last time in her arms, I made no effort to restrain my tears. Diana wept also, and, throwing her arms around my neck, said:

“Oh! do not forget me. I love you so much!”

Her mother added with a tearful voice:

“May God watch over you wherever you go, my dear Ginevra! I shall follow you in spirit with as much interest as if I had known you always!...”

Gilbert offered me his arm, and conducted me to the carriage without uttering a word; but as I was on the point of entering it he said:

“Those you leave behind are greatly to be pitied, madame.”

“And I am much more so,” I replied, my tears continuing to flow without restraint.

He remained silent an instant, and then said:

“As for me, madame, I may hope to see you again, for I shall go to Naples, ... _if I dare_.”

“And why should you not dare? You know well we shall expect you and welcome you as a friend.”

He made no reply, but after helping me into the carriage, and I had given him my hand, as I bade him adieu, he answered in a low tone: “_Au revoir!_”

XXIII.

Our journey through France and across the Alps did not in the least diminish the impressions of my last days in Paris. But everything was mingled in my recollections like the joy and regret I felt at my departure—joy and regret, both of which I had reason to feel, though I did not try to fathom their cause. I was only conscious that in more than one way the repose and happiness of our life were threatened, and it was necessary we should take flight. It seemed as if we could not go fast enough or far enough. The very rapidity with which we travelled by railway was delightfully soothing, for it seconded my wishes. The sudden change of scenery and climate, and the different aspect of the towns as soon as we crossed the mountains, also gave me pleasure, because all this greatly added in my imagination to the distance we had so rapidly come.

Lorenzo also, though doubtless for a different reason, seemed more at ease after we left Paris, and gradually resumed his usual manner towards me. He never mentioned Faustina’s name, and I had only ventured to speak timidly of her once. As we were on the point of leaving, I proposed writing her a farewell note, but he prevented me by hastily stammering something to this effect: that my absence the evening before was a sufficient explanation for not seeing her again, and it was useless to take the trouble of any further farewell.

This new attitude surprised me. He had changed his mind, then, since the day he urged me so strongly to be her friend!... It is true I had myself expressed a vehement desire—too vehement, perhaps!—to break off this friendship. But he did not try in the least to profit by my present good‐ will to renew it. It was evident he no longer desired it himself. His only wish seemed to be to make me forget the scene that had occurred, as well as the cause that led to it. Why was this? If I had really been in the wrong, would he have forgiven me so readily? If, instead of this, his conscience forced him to excuse me, did not the affection he now manifested prove his desire to repair wrongs he could not avow, and which perhaps I did not suspect?

These thoughts involuntarily crossed my mind and heart with painful rapidity. I loved Lorenzo, or rather, I felt the need of loving him, above all things. But if he himself loved me no longer, if he had become treacherous, unfaithful, and untrue to his word, could I continue to love him? Was this possible?... What would become of me in this case? Merciful heavens!... I asked myself these questions with a terror that could not have been greater had I been asking myself what would become of my eyes should they be deprived of light. And this comparison is just, for there could be no darker night than that which would have surrounded me had the ardent, predominant feeling of my heart been left without any object. I might suitably have taken for my motto: _Aimer ou mourir_—either love or die—words often uttered in a jesting, romantic, or trifling way, but which were to me full of profound, mysterious meaning. But this meaning was hidden from me, and the day was still far distant when its signification would be made manifest!

After crossing the Alps and the Apennines, and passing through Florence and Rome, we at length proceeded towards Naples by the delightful route that formerly crossed the Pontine Marshes, Terracina, and Mola di Gaëta. Every one who returns to Italy the first time after leaving it experiences a feeling of intoxication and joy a thousand times more lively than when one goes there for the first time. The eyes wander around in search of objects which once gave them pleasure and it had been a sacrifice to leave. I yielded to this enjoyment without attempting to resist it. Sadness, moreover, did not belong to my age, and, though intensely capable of it, it was by no means natural to me. During the first weeks after my return to Naples my mind was diverted from all my troubles and anxiety by novelties that everything contributed to render efficacious and powerful.

In the first place, I was glad to find myself once more in my delightful home, which, by the order of Lorenzo, had undergone a multitude of improvements during my absence, and was now additionally embellished with the contents of the boxes we had brought from Paris. It was Lorenzo’s taste, and not mine, which had dictated the choice of these numberless objects, the chief value of which in my eyes was derived from the estimation he attached to them himself.

The anxiety that clouded his face seemed to have disappeared. He appeared as delighted as I to find himself at home, and was quite disposed to resume his favorite occupation in his studio. Consequently, the clouds soon began to disperse from my soul; the sun once more began to brighten my life.

Lorenzo soon insisted, with an earnestness equal to that he had before shown to have me all to himself, that my door should now be constantly open. My drawing‐room was filled with people of the best society and highest rank in Naples, and, thanks to their cordiality and natural turn for sudden intimacies (a characteristic, charming trait in that delightful region), instead of feeling at all embarrassed among so many new acquaintances, I felt as if surrounded by friends I had always known and loved.

Above all, I at last saw Livia once more, and though through a double grate, which prevented me from embracing her, it afforded me an unalloyed happiness which left no regrets.

The monastery she entered was situated at one extremity of Naples, which could only be reached by traversing an endless number of narrow, gloomy, winding streets, in which it seemed impossible to move a step without knocking down the people on foot, overthrowing their shops, and even kitchens, established in the open air; and, if in a carriage, crushing the children playing, running about, or sleeping in the sun.

The first time a person ventures into such streets he is terrified at every step, and wonders he is allowed there. He feels guilty and like apologizing to every one he meets. But he soon sees he has done no harm; that everybody, young and old, mothers and children, the passers‐by, the coachmen, and even the horses themselves, are endowed with a dexterity, good‐humor, and at the same time an energy that make their way through everything. In a word, they all have such quickness of sight, hearing, and motion that not a day passes in which miracles of skill are not effected in these narrow streets, which not only prevent accidents from happening, but even from being feared, and you are at last unwilling to admit there is any crowd in Naples so compact, any street so narrow, or any descent so perilous, as to make it necessary to leave the vehicle you are in, or which the coachman who drives, and the horses he manages, cannot pass without danger.

At the end of some such way as I have described it was necessary, in addition to all this, in order to reach the monastery I am speaking of, to stop at the foot of an acclivity the horses could not ascend, not on account of its steepness, which would have been no obstacle, but because every now and then there were steps to facilitate the ascent of pedestrians, but which rendered it impassable for equipages of any kind whatever. It had therefore to be ascended on foot, and, when once at the top, there was still a flight of fifteen or twenty steps to climb before reaching the broad terrace or platform before the gate through which strangers were admitted to the convent.

If this ascent was difficult, it must be confessed one felt repaid for the trouble of making it by the view from the terrace. Here the visitor wandered along the narrow, gloomy streets through the old, historic city, as well as its more elegant quarters, towards that side of the bay where Vesuvius was to be seen in its most striking aspect, and from the summit of the volcano followed its descent to the vast, smiling plain, more charming even in that direction than that to the sea by Ottagno, Stabia, and Castellamare. On every side the eye reposed on the verdant orange‐ trees growing in numberless gardens. Such was the outer world that encircled my sister’s cloistered home. Such was the view from every window on this side of the convent. On the other there was a more quiet prospect, perhaps even better suited to contemplation—that of the cloister, with its broad arcades of fine architecture, which surrounded an enclosure planted with lemon‐trees, in the centre of which stood a massive antique fountain of marble. The pines of Capo di Monte stood out against the clear sky, further off were the heights of Sant’ Elmo, and along the horizon stretched the majestic line of mountains which form the background of the picture.

When able to tear my eyes from this magnificent prospect, lit up by all the fires of the setting sun, I suddenly found myself in the somewhat gloomy vestibule of the monastery, whence I was conducted to a large parlor divided by a grate, behind which fell a long, black curtain. Here I was left alone, with the assurance I should soon see my sister. I felt an emotion I had not anticipated, and for the first time it seemed as if the most horrible separation had taken place between us. The admiration I had just experienced, and my joy at the prospect of seeing her again, both vanished. My heart swelled with painful emotion, and it was with more terror than devotion I looked up at a large crucifix—the only ornament on the bare wall in front of the _grille_. As to the grate itself, it filled me with horror, and I did not dare look at it.

All at once I heard the sound of a light step, the curtain was drawn quickly aside, and a beloved voice softly uttered my name: “Gina!” Turning around, I saw Livia, my sister, standing before me! The shock I received could not have been greater if, supposing her dead, I had seen her descend from the skies and appear thus suddenly before me. She wore the white veil of a novice, and her habit, as well as the band across her forehead and the _guimpe_ around her neck, was of the same color. Her face was radiant. The dazzling rays of the setting sun suddenly poured in through the door of the cloister, left open behind her, and she seemed to be wholly enveloped in light. I gazed at her speechless with affection, surprise, and I know not what other indefinable emotion.... I was almost afraid to address her; but she did not appear to observe it. The words that rapidly fell from her lips were animated, natural, and affectionate as ever—more affectionate even. And there was the same tone of anxious solicitude. But she was calmer, more serene, and even more gentle, and, though at times she had the same tone of decision, there was no trace of the sadness and austerity she sometimes manifested, in spite of herself, in former times when an invisible cross darkened everything around her. The band that concealed her hair revealed more clearly the extreme beauty of her eyes, and while I stood gazing at her as if I had never studied her features before, I felt she spoke truly in saying “the grates of the convent should neither hide her face nor her heart from me.” Never had the one, I thought, so faithfully reflected the other.

As to her, she by no means perceived the effect she had produced. She was anxious to hear all I had been doing while absent, and asked me one question after another with the same familiarity with which we used to converse when side by side. Glad to be able to open my heart in this way, I forgot, when I began, all I had to say if I would conceal nothing from her. But my account soon became confused, and I suddenly stopped.

“Gina mia!” said she, “you do not tell me everything. Why is this? Is it because you think I no longer take any interest in your worldly affairs?”

“It is not that alone, Livia, but it is really very difficult to speak of Paris and the senseless life I led there before this grate and while looking at you as you are now.”

“I shall always take as much pleasure in listening to you,” said she, “as you do in talking to me. I admit, when our good aunt, Donna Clelia, comes to see me with her daughters, I often assume a severe air, and tell them what I think of the world; ... but I must confess my aunt does not get angry with me, for she depends on my vocation to procure husbands for Mariuccia and Teresina, who are worthy of them, because, as she says, a person who consecrates herself to God brings good‐luck to all the family. She no longer regards me as a _jettatrice_, I assure you!”

She laughed as she said this, and I could not help exclaiming with surprise and envy:

“Livia, how happy you are to be so cheerful!”

Her face resumed its usual expression of sweet gravity, as she replied:

“I am cheerful, Gina, because I am happy. But you were formerly livelier than I. Why are you no longer so, my dear sister? Cheerfulness is for those whose souls are at peace.”

“O Livia!” I cried, not able to avoid a sincere reply to so direct a question, “my heart is heavy with sorrow, I assure you, and the cheerfulness you speak of is frequently wanting.”

She started with surprise at these words, and questioned me with an angelic look.

I did not delay my reply. I felt the need of opening my heart, and resumed the account I had broken off. I described without any circumlocution the life of pleasure to which I had given myself up, at first through curiosity and inclination, and in the end with weariness and disgust. I spoke of the day at Paris when fervor, devotion, and good impulses awoke in my soul, my meeting Mme. de Kergy, and all I had seen and felt in the places I had visited in her company.

Finally, I endeavored, with a trembling voice, to explain all my hopes and wishes with respect to Lorenzo, and the nature of the projects and ambition I had for him. With a heart still affected at the remembrance I depicted the new happiness—the new and higher life I had dreamed of for him as well as myself!

Livia listened with joy to this part of my story, and her face brightened while I was speaking. But, without explaining the cause of my disappointment, I ended by telling her how complete it was, and this awoke so many bitter remembrances at once that I was suffocated with emotion, and for some moments I was unable to continue....

A cloud passed over her brow, and she suffered me to weep some moments in silence.

“Your wishes were good and holy, Ginevra,” said she at length, “and God will bless them sooner or later.”

I paid no heed to her words. A torrent of bitterness, jealousy, and grief inundated my heart, and, feeling at liberty to say what concerned no one but myself, I gave vent to thoughts I had often dwelt on in silence, but now uttered aloud with vehemence and without any restriction.

Livia listened without interrupting me, and seemed affected at my impetuosity. Standing motionless on the other side of the _grille_, her hands crossed under her long, white scapular, and her downcast, thoughtful eyes fastened on the ground, she seemed for a time to be listening rather to the interior voice of my soul than to the words I uttered. At length she slowly raised her eyes, and said with an accent difficult to describe:

“You say your heart feels the need of some object of affection—that not to love would be death? You need, too, the assurance that the one you love is wholly worthy of your affection?... Really,” continued she, smiling, “one would say you wish Lorenzo to be perfect, which of course he is not, even if as faultless as man is capable of being.”

She stopped, and the smile that played on her lips became almost celestial. One would have said a ray of sunlight beamed across her face. She continued:

“I understand you, Ginevra; I understand you perfectly, perhaps even better than you do yourself, but I am not capable of solving the enigma that perplexes you—of drawing aside the veil that now obscures the light.... Oh! if I could!” said she, clasping her hands and raising her eyes to heaven with fervor.“ To solve all your doubts—to give you the light necessary to comprehend this mystery clearly—would require a miracle beyond the power of any human being. God alone can effect this. May he complete his work! May you merit it!”

The bell rang, and we hastily took leave of each other. It was dusk when I left her. She assured me I could make her a similar visit every week, and this prospect made me happy. I was happy to have seen her—happy to feel she could still descend to my level from the holier region she inhabited, and that there was nothing to hinder me from enjoying in the future the sweet intercourse of the past.

But however fully I opened my heart to Livia, I should have considered it profaning the purity of the air I breathed in her presence to utter the name of Faustina Reali. And, without knowing why, neither did I mention the name of Gilbert de Kergy.

XXIV.

Naples at that time was styled by some one “a small capital and a large city,” and this designation was correct. The society, though on a small scale, was of the very highest grade, consisting of an aristocracy exempt from the least haughtiness, and retaining all the habits and manners of bygone times. However frivolous this society might be in appearance, its defects were somewhat redeemed by an originality and lack of affectation which wholly excluded the vexatious and insupportable _ennui_ produced by frivolity and pretension when, as often happens, they are found together. With a few exceptions, devoid of great talents or very profound acquirements, it had wit in abundance, as well as a singular aptitude for seizing and comprehending everything. If to all this we add the most cordial reception and the readiest, warmest welcome, it will at once be seen that those who were admitted to this circle could not help carrying away an ineffaceable remembrance of it.

But the special, characteristic trait which distinguished Naples from every other city, large or small, was, strange to say, and yet true, the utter absence of all gossip, slander, or ridicule. The women unanimously defended one another, and no man, under the penalty of being considered ill‐bred, ever ventured to speak ill of one of their number, unless perhaps by one of those slight movements of the features which constitute, in that country, a language apart—very eloquent, it is true, and perfectly understood by every one, but which never produces the same effect as actual words. It was generally said, and almost always with truth, whenever there was any new gossip in circulation, which sometimes happened, that “no doubt some stranger had a finger in it”! To complete this picture, we will add that there was a circle of ladies in Neapolitan society who fully equalled in beauty and grace the generation before them, which was celebrated in this respect throughout Italy.

It may be affirmed, therefore, without fear of denial on the part of any contemporary, that the general result of all this was to produce a kind of _beau‐ideal_ of gay society.

Among these ladies was one I particularly remarked, and who speedily became my friend. Lorenzo had predicted this the day (afterwards so fatally memorable to me) when for the first time the name of the Contessa Stella di San Giulio met my eyes. To tell the truth, this remembrance at first took away all desire to make her acquaintance. It seemed to me (yielding no doubt to a local superstition) that the day on which I first heard the name of Faustina could bring me no luck. But this prejudice was soon overcome. It was sufficient to see her to feel at once attracted towards her. At first sight, however, there was something imposing in her features and manner, but this impression immediately changed. As soon as she began to converse, her eyes, the pleasing outline of her face, and her whole person, were lit up by an enchanting smile on her half‐open lips—a smile that the pencil of Leonardo da Vinci alone could depict. It is among the women who served as models to this great, incomparable master that a likeness to Stella must be sought. It is by studying the faces of which he has left us the inimitable type we recognize, notwithstanding their smiling expression, a certain firmness and energy which exclude all idea of weakness, nonchalance, or indolence. Stella’s physiognomy, too, expressed courage and patience, and they were predominant traits in her character. She was, however, vivacious, versatile, and so lively as to seem at times to take too light a view of everything; but, when better known, no one could help admiring the rare faculty with which heaven enabled her to bear cheerfully the heavy trials of life, and feeling that her gayety was courage in its most attractive aspect.

Married at eighteen, she had seen this union, with which convenience had more to do than inclination, dissolved at the end of two years: her husband died soon after the birth of her only child. From that time family circumstances obliged her to live with an uncle, who was the guardian of her child, and had, in this capacity, the right to meddle with everything relating to both mother and daughter—a right which his wife, a woman of difficult and imperious temper, likewise arrogated in a manner that would have exhausted the patience of any one else; but Stella’s never failed her. Feeling it important for the future interests of her little Angiolina to accept the condition imposed by her widowhood, she submitted to it courageously without asking if there was any merit in so doing. Her liveliness, which had been so long subdued, returned beneath the smiles of her child, and, as often happens to those who are young, nature gained the ascendency and triumphed over all there was to depress her. Angiolina was now five years old, and was growing up without perceiving the gloomy atmosphere that surrounded the nest of affection and joy in which her mother sheltered her, and the latter found her child so sweet a resource that she no longer seemed to feel anything was wanting in her lot.

This intimacy added much to the happiness of a life which began to please me far beyond my expectations. The gay world, with which I thought myself so completely disgusted, took a new and more subtle aspect in my eyes than that I had so soon become weary of. But in yielding to this charm it seemed to me I was pleasing Lorenzo and seconding his desire to make our house one of the most brilliant in Naples. Nevertheless, he resumed his labors, and passed whole hours in his studio, where he seemed wholly absorbed, as formerly, in his art. I found him there more than anywhere else, as he was before our fatal journey. He had begun again with renewed ardor on his Vestal, which was now nearly completed, and was considered the most perfect work that ever issued from his hands. He attributed the honor of his success to his model, and, though formerly more annoyed than flattered by suffrages of this kind, I now welcomed the compliment as a presage of days like those of former times.

The first time I entered the studio after my return I sought with jealous anxiety some trace of the remembrance that haunted me, and seemed to find it on every hand. In a Sappho whose passionate, tragical expression alone had struck me before, and the Bacchante which seemed at once beautiful and repulsive, I imagined I could trace the features, alas! too perfect not to be graven in the imagination of a sculptor in spite of himself.... I saw them, above all, in a Proserpine, hidden by accident, or on purpose, in an obscure corner of the studio, which struck me as a sudden apparition of her fatal beauty. Finally, I saw them also in the other Vestal, to which the one I sat for was the pendant. It was then only I remembered with pleasure he said when he first began it that _no one before me_ had realized the ideal he was trying to embody.

Haunted by these recollections, I began to find my sittings in the studio painful and annoying, but I did not manifest my feelings. I had acquired some control over them, and felt it was not for my interest to revive, by a fresh display of jealousy, a remembrance that seemed to be dormant, or again excite a displeasure that appeared to be extinguished. Besides, the likeness that haunted me so persistently became in time more vague and uncertain, and seemed likely to disappear entirely. The current of gayety and pleasure that now surrounded me absorbed me more and more. The very light of the sun at Naples is a feast for the heart as well as the eyes. It is a region that has no sympathy with gloom, or even the serious side of life, and it must be confessed that the social ideal I have spoken of is not the most salutary and elevated in the world. It must also be acknowledged that if it is not absolutely true that this charming region is the classic land of the _far niente_, as it has been called (for the number of people everywhere who do nothing make me think all skies and all climes favorable to them), it is nevertheless indubitable that every one feels a mingled excitement and languor at Naples which oblige him to struggle continually against the double temptation to enjoy at all hours the beauty of the earth and sky, and afterwards to give himself up unresistingly to the repose he feels the need of. When weary of this struggle, when nothing stimulates his courage to continue it, he is soon intoxicated and overpowered by the very pleasure of living. One day follows another without thinking to ask how they have been spent. The interest taken in serious things grows less, the strength necessary for such things diminishes, all effort is burdensome; and as this joyous, futile life does not seem in any way wrong or dangerous, he no longer tries to resist it, but suffers the subtle poison which circulates in the air to infuse inactivity into the mind, indifference and effeminacy in the heart, and even to the depths of the soul itself.

Such were the influences to which I gave myself up, but not without some excuse, perhaps. At my age this reaction of gayety and love of pleasure was natural. After the experience I had passed through, I felt the need of something to divert me—the need of forgetting. How, then, could I possibly resist all there was around me to amuse and enable me to forget? Of course I had not forgotten Mme. de Kergy, or Diana, or the eloquence of Gilbert, but I had nearly lost all the pure, noble, and soul‐stirring sentiments my acquaintance with them had awakened; and if any unacknowledged danger lurked therein, it had so ephemeral an influence on me that all trace was effaced, as a deadly odor passes away that we only inhaled for a moment.

As for my charming Stella, she no more thought of giving me advice than of setting me an example. She shared with me her happiest hours in the day, but I could not follow her in the courageous course of her hidden daily life. I did not see her during the hours when, with a brow as serene, a face as tranquil, as that with which she welcomed me at a later hour, she immolated her tastes and wishes, and by the perpetual sacrifice of herself earned the means of rendering her daughter as happy as she pleased. I saw her, on the contrary, during my daily drive with her and Angiolina—one of the greatest pleasures of the day for us all. To see them together, the mother as merry as the child, one would have supposed the one as happy, as fully exempt from all care, as the other!... We often took long drives in this way, sometimes beyond the extreme point of Posilippo, sometimes to Portici, or even to Capo di Monte. There we would leave our carriage and forget ourselves in long conversations while Angiolina was running about, coming every now and then to throw herself into her mother’s arms or mine. I loved her passionately, and it often seemed to me, as I embraced her, that I felt for her something of that love which is the strongest on earth, and makes us endure the privation of all other affection. Angiolina was, it is true, one of those children better fitted than most to touch the maternal fibre that is hidden in every womanly heart. She had accents, looks, and moods of silence which seemed to indicate a soul attentive to voices that are not of this world, and sometimes, at the sight of her expressive childish face, one could not help wondering if she did not already hear those of heaven.

Lorenzo from time to time made a journey to the North of Italy, in order to see to his property. His absence, always short, and invariably explained, caused me neither pain nor offence. He seemed happy to see me again at his return, and appeared to enjoy much more than I, even, the gay life we both led. He devoted his mornings to work, but spent his evenings with me, either in society or at the theatre of San Carlo, where, according to the Italian custom in those days, we went much less to enjoy the play, or even the music, than to meet our friends. As for gaming, I had reason to believe he had entirely renounced it, for he never touched a card in my presence. The twofold danger, therefore, which had threatened my peace, seemed wholly averted, and I once more resumed my way with confidence and security, as a bird, beaten by the tempest, expands its wings at the return of the sun, and sings, as it flies heavenward, as if clouds and darkness were never to return!

But in the midst of this new dawn of happiness I was gliding almost imperceptibly but rapidly down, and suffering my days to pass in constantly‐increasing indolence. It is true my good Ottavia, who had been with me since Livia’s entrance at the convent, reminded me of the days and hours assigned for the practices of devotion she had taught me in my childhood, which, though not piety itself, serve to keep it alive. Without her I should probably have forgotten them all. I thought of nothing but how to be happy, and I was so because I seemed to have recovered absolute empire over Lorenzo’s heart.... My lofty aspirations for him had vanished like some fanciful dream no longer remembered. The charm of his mental qualities and his personal attractions gave him a kind of supremacy in the circle where he occupied the foremost rank, and had every desirable pretext for gratifying his taste for display; while, on the other hand, the aureola of genius that surrounded him prevented his life from appearing, and even from being, wholly vain.

It was vain, however, as every one’s life is that has no light from above. I was not yet wholly incapable of feeling this, but I was becoming more and more incapable of suffering from it.

It is not in this way the vigor of the soul is maintained or renewed. Livia alone had not lost her beneficent influence over me. A word from her had the same effect as the strong, correct tone of the diapason, which gives the ear warning when the notes begin to flatten. Every descent, however gradual, is difficult to climb again, and I did not at all perceive the ground I had lost till I found myself face to face with new trials and new dangers.

XXV.

Several months passed, however, without any change in my happy, untroubled life. Lando’s arrival, and shortly after that of Mario, were the chief incidents. Mario’s visits were short and rare, for he seldom left my father. He loved home, now he was alone there, better than he used to do; and my father, relieved of a heavy responsibility by the marriage of one daughter and the vocation of the other, enjoyed more than ever the company of a son who gave him no anxiety and prevented him from finding his solitude irksome. He only lived now in the recollections of the past and for his profession, and Mario fulfilled with cheerful devotedness the additional obligations our departure had imposed on him. He came from time to time to see his two sisters, and had not entirely lost the habit of favoring me with advice and remonstrances. Nevertheless, as my present position obliged me to make a certain display he was not sorry to have a part in, and as, on the whole, he did not find my house disagreeable, it was not as difficult as it once was to win his approbation, particularly as, notwithstanding the frivolous life I led, I was still (perhaps a strange thing) wholly devoid of coquetry and vanity, which, almost as much as my affection for Lorenzo, served as a safeguard in the world, and not only shielded me from its real dangers, but from all criticism. This point acknowledged, Mario, who did not consider himself dispensed by my marriage from watching over my reputation, was as kind to me now as he would have been implacable had it been otherwise. As I, on my side, by no means feared his oversight, and he brought news of my father and recalled the memories of the past, which I continued to cherish in my present life, I welcomed him with affection, and his visits always afforded me pleasure.

As to Lando, he had been forced to tear himself away from Paris, and devote to economy an entire year which he had come very reluctantly to spend in the bosom of his family. He at once observed with astonishment that I was happier at Naples than at Paris. As for him, he declared life in a small city was an impossibility, and he should pass the time of his exile in absolute exclusion. But he contented himself with carrying this Parisian nostalgia from one drawing‐room to another, exhaling his complaints sometimes in Italian (continually _grasseyant_), sometimes in French sprinkled with the most recent _argot_, only comprehensible to the initiated. But as, in spite of all this, his natural good‐humor was never at fault, everything else was overlooked, and he was welcomed everywhere; so existence gradually became endurable, and he resigned himself to it so completely that by the time the Carnival approached he was so thoroughly renaturalized that no one was more forward than he in preparing and organizing all the amusements with which it terminates at Naples—vehicles, costumes, _confetti_, and flowers for the Toledo;(51) suppers, dominos, and disguises for the Festini di San Carlo,(52) without reckoning the great fancy ball at the Accademia;(53) and, to crown all, private theatricals with a view to Lent. With all this, he had ample means of escaping all danger of dying of _ennui_ before Easter!...

I must acknowledge, however, that he found me as much disposed to aid him as any one. I was in one of those fits of exuberant gayety which at Naples, and even at Rome, sometimes seize even the most reasonable and sensible people during the follies of the Carnival. But it must be confessed these follies had not in Italy the gross, vulgar, and repulsive aspect which public gayety sometimes assumes at Paris on similar occasions. One would suppose everybody at Paris more or less wicked at Carnival time; whereas at Rome and Naples everybody seems to be more or less childlike. Is this more in appearance than reality? Must we believe the amount of evil the same everywhere during these days devoted to pleasure? I cannot say. At Rome, we know, no less than at Paris and Naples, while people on the Corso are pelting each other with _confetti_ and lighting the _moccoletti_, the churches are also illuminated, and a numerous crowd, prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altars, pray in order to expiate the follies of the merry crowd. But it seems to me no one who has made the comparison would hesitate to acknowledge a great difference in the gayety of these places, as well as the different amusements it inspires.

Stella was in as gay a mood as I. Angiolina (whose right it was) could not have prepared more enthusiastically than we to throw _confetti_ at every one we met, or pelt the vehicles in which most of the gentlemen of the place, arrayed in various disguises, drive up and down the Toledo. These vehicles are stormed with missiles from every balcony they pass, and they reply by handfuls of _confetti_ and flowers thrown to the highest stories, either by means of cornets, or by instruments expressly for this purpose, or by climbing the staging made on the carriages to bring the combatants nearer together.

Lorenzo, Lando, and even Mario were enrolled among the number to man a wonderful gondola of the XVth century, all clad in the costume of that period, and Lorenzo, by his taste and uncommon acquirements of all kinds, contributed to render this masquerade almost interesting from an artistic and historic point of view, and he was as zealous about it as any one.

We were in the very midst of these preparations when one morning he told me with an air of vexation he had just received a letter from his agent which would oblige him to be absent several days. But he was only to go to Bologna this time, and would be back without fail the eve of _Jeudi‐ Gras_,(54) the day fixed for the last exhibition of the gondola. But his departure afflicted me the more because he had not been absent for a long time, and I was no longer used to it. I did not, therefore, conceal my annoyance. But as his seemed to be equally great, I finally saw him depart, not without regret, but without the least shade of my former distrust.

The Carnival was late that year, and the coming of spring was already perceptible in the air. I had passed two hours with Stella in the park of Capo di Monte, while Angiolina was filling her basket with the violets that grew among the grass. Our enjoyment was increased by the freshness of the season and the enchanting sky of Naples. When the circumstances of a person’s life are not absolutely at variance with the beauty of nature, he feels a transport here not experienced in any other place. That day I was happier and merrier than usual, and yet, as we were about to leave the park, I all at once felt that vague kind of sadness which always throws its cloud over excessive joy.

“One moment longer, Stella,” said I, “it is so lovely here. I never saw the sea and sky so blue before! I cannot bear to go home.”

“Remain as long as you please, Ginevra. I am never tired, you know, of the beautiful prospect before us! Nature is to me a mother, a friend, and a support. She has so often enabled me to endure life.”

“Poor Stella!” said I with a slight remorse, for I felt I was too often unmindful of the difference in our lots.

But she continued with her charming smile:

“You see, Ginevra, they say I have _le sang joyeux!_ which means, I suppose, that I have a happy disposition. When all other means fail of gratifying my natural turn, I can do it by looking around me. The very radiance of the heavens suffices to fill me with torrents of joy.”

At that moment Angiolina ran up with a little bunch of violets she had tied together, and gave them to her mother. Stella took the child up in her arms.

“Look, Ginevra. See how blue my Angiolina’s eyes are. Their color is a thousand times lovelier than that of the sky or sea, is it not? Come, let us not talk of my troubles,” continued she, as her daughter threw her arms around her neck, and leaned her cheek against hers. “This treasure is sufficient; I ask no other.”

“Yes, Stella, you are right. To enjoy such a happiness I would give all I possess.”

“God will doubtless grant you this happiness some day,” replied she, smiling.

Our merriment, interrupted for a moment, now resumed its course. It was time to go home, and we returned without delay to the carriage, which awaited us at the gate of the park.

It was Tuesday, the day but one before _Jeudi‐Gras_; consequently I expected Lorenzo the following day. All the preparations for the masquerade were completed, and in passing by the door of my aunt, Donna Clelia, who lived on the Toledo, I proposed to Stella we should call to make sure she had attended to her part; for it was from her balcony the first great contest with _confetti_ was to take place the next day but one.

Donna Clelia, as I have remarked, felt a slight degree of ill‐humor at the time of my marriage. But she speedily concluded to regard the event with a favorable eye. It would doubtless have been more agreeable to be able to say: “The duke, my son‐in‐law”; but if she could not have this satisfaction, it was something to be able to say: “My niece, the duchess,” and my aunt did not deny herself this pleasure.

Besides, she anticipated another advantage of more importance—of obtaining an entrance by my means to high life, which hitherto she had only seen at an immeasurable distance; and she was still more anxious to introduce her daughters than to enter herself. From the day of my marriage, therefore, she resolved to establish herself at Naples, and this resolution had already had the most happy results. Teresina and Mariuccia were large girls, rather devoid of style, but not of beauty. Thanks to our relationship, they were invited almost everywhere, and the dream of their mother was almost realized. As I had indubitably contributed to this, and they had the good grace to acknowledge it, I was on the best terms with them as well as with Donna Clelia. The latter, it will be readily imagined, had enthusiastically acceded to my request to allow the cream of the _beau monde_ to occupy her balconies on _Jeudi‐Gras_, and we found her now in the full tide of the preparations she considered necessary for so great an event.

My aunt had apartments of good size on the first floor of one of the large palaces on the Strada di Toledo. They were dark and gloomy in the morning, like all in that locality, but in the evening, when her drawing‐rooms were lit up, they produced a very good effect. As to Donna Clelia herself, when her voluminous person was encased in a suit of black velvet, and her locks, boldly turned back, had the addition of a false _chignon_, a plume of red feathers, and superb diamonds, she sustained very creditably, as I can testify, the part of a dignified matron, and it was easy to see she had been in her day handsomer than either of her daughters. But when she received us on this occasion, enveloped in an enormous wrapper, which indicated that, in spite of the advanced hour, she had not even begun her toilet, and with her hair reduced to its simplest expression, she presented quite a different aspect. She was, however, by no means disconcerted when we made our appearance, but met us, on the contrary, with open arms; for she was very glad of an opportunity of explaining all the arrangements she was at that instant occupied in superintending, which likewise accounted for the _négligé_ in which we surprised her. She took us all through the drawing‐rooms, pointing out in the penumbra the places, here and there, where she intended to place a profusion of flowers. Here a large table would stand, loaded with everything that would aid us in repairing our strength during the contest; and there were genuine tubs for the _confetti_, where we should find an inexhaustible supply of ammunition. My aunt was rich. She spared nothing for her own amusement or to amuse others, and never had she found a better occasion for spending her money. She had already given two successful _soirées_, at which her large drawing‐rooms were filled, but this crowd did not include everybody, and those who were absent were precisely those she was most anxious to have, and the very ones who, on _Jeudi‐Gras_, were to give her the pleasure of making use of her rooms. She did not dream of fathoming their motives; it was enough to have their presence.

At last, after examining and approving everything, as disorder reigned in the drawing‐room, my aunt took us to her chamber. She gave Stella and myself two arm‐chairs that were there, placed on the floor a supply of biscuits, candied chestnuts, and mandarines for Angiolina’s benefit, and seated herself on the foot of her bedstead, taking for a seat the bare wood; the mattress, pillows, and coverings being rolled up during the day, according to the Neapolitan custom, like an enormous bale of goods, at the other end of the bedstead. Arming herself with an immense fan, which she vigorously waved to and fro, she set herself to work to entertain us. First, she replied to my questions:

“You ask where the _ragazze_(55) are.... I didn’t tell you, then, they are gone on a trip to Sorrento with the _baronessa_?”

“No, Zia Clelia, you did not tell me. When will they return?”

“Oh! in a short time. I expect them before night. It was such fine weather yesterday! They did not like to refuse to accompany the baroness, but it would not please them to lose two days of the Carnival, and the baroness wouldn’t, for anything in the world, miss her part at San Carlo. Teresina is to go there with her this evening.”

The baroness in question was a friend of my aunt’s whom she particularly liked to boast of before me. If she was indebted to me for some of the acquaintances she was so proud of, she lost no opportunity of reminding me that for this one she was solely indebted to herself.

“Ah! Ginevra mia!...” continued she, “you have a fine house, to be sure—I can certainly say nothing to the contrary; but if you could only see that of the baroness!... Such furniture! Such mirrors! Such gilding!... And then what a view!...”

Here my aunt kissed the ends of her five fingers, and then opened her whole hand wide, expressing by this pantomime a degree of admiration for which words did not suffice....

“How?” said Stella with an air of surprise. “I thought her house was near here, and that there was no view at all. It seems to me she can see nothing from her windows.”

“No view!” cried Donna Clelia. “No view from the baroness’ house!... See nothing from her windows!... What a strange mistake, Contessa Stella! You are in the greatest error. You can see everything from her windows—_everything_! Not a carriage, not a donkey, not a horse, not a man or woman on foot or horseback or in a carriage, can pass by without being seen; and as all the drawing‐rooms are _al primo piano_, you can see them as plainly as I see you, and distinguish the color of their cravats and the shape of the ladies’ cloaks.”

“Ah! yes, yes, Zia Clelia, you are right. It is Stella who is wrong. The baroness has an admirable view, and quite suited to her tastes.”

“And then,” continued Donna Clelia, waving her fan more deliberately to give greater emphasis to her words, “a situation unparalleled in the whole city of Naples!... A church on one side, and the new theatre on the other! And so near at the right and left that—imagine it!—there is a little gallery, which she has the key of, on one side, leading to the church; and on the other a passage, of which she also has the key, which leads straight to her box in the theatre! I ask if you can imagine anything more convenient?... But, apropos, Ginevra, have you seen Livia lately?”

“Yes, I see her every week.”

“Ah! _par exemple_,” said Donna Clelia, folding her hands, “there is a saint for you! But I have stopped going to see her since the Carnival began, because every time I go I feel I ought to become better, and the very next day off I go to confession.... It has precisely the same effect on the _ragazze_; so they have begged me not to take them to the convent again before Ash‐Wednesday.”

Stella, less accustomed than I to my aunt’s style of conversation, burst into laughter, and I did the same, though I thought she expressed very well in her way the effects of her visits at the convent. At that minute the doors opened with a bang, and Teresina and Mariuccia made their appearance, loaded with flowers. At the sight of us there were exclamations of joy:

“O Ginevra!... Contessa!... _E la bambina! Che piacere!_... How delightful to find you here!”

A general embrace all around. Then details of all kinds—a stream of words almost incomprehensible.

“_Che tempo! Che bellezza! Che paradiso!_ They had been amused _quanto mai_! And on the way back, moreover, they had met Don Landolfo, and Don Landolfo had invited Teresina to dance a cotillon with him at the ball to‐ morrow.... And Don Landolfo said Mariuccia’s toilet at the ball last Saturday was _un amore_!”

It should be observed here that everything Lando said was taken very seriously in this household. His opinion was law in everything relating to dress, and he himself did not disdain giving these girls advice which cultivated notions of good taste, from which they were too often tempted to deviate.

We were on the point of leaving when Mariuccia exclaimed:

“Oh! apropos, Ginevrina, Teresina thought she saw Duke Lorenzo at Sorrento at a distance.”

“Lorenzo?... At Sorrento? No, you are mistaken, Teresina. He went to Bologna a week ago, and will not be back till to‐morrow.”

“You hear?” said Mariuccia to her sister. “I told you you were mistaken—that it was not he.”

“It is strange,” said Teresina. “At all events, it was some one who resembled him very much. It is true, I barely saw him a second.”

“And where was it?” I asked with a slight tremor of the heart.

“At the window of a small villa away from the road at the end of a _masseria_(56) we happened to pass on the way.”

She was mistaken, it was evident; but when Lorenzo returned that evening, a day sooner than I expected, I felt a slight misgiving at seeing him. He perceived it, and smilingly asked if I was sorry because he had hastened his return. I was tempted to tell him what troubled me, but was ashamed of the new suspicion such an explanation would have revealed, and I reproached myself for it as an injustice to him. I checked myself, therefore, and forced myself to forget, or at least to pay no attention to, the gossip of my cousins.

To Be Continued.

Fac‐Similes Of Irish National Manuscripts. Concluded.

The _Liber Hymnorum_ is the next selected. It is believed to be more than one thousand years old, and one of the most remarkable of the sacred tracts among the MSS. in Trinity College, Dublin. It is a collection of hymns on S. Patrick and other Irish saints, which has been published by the Irish Archæological and Celtic Society, under the superintendence of Dr. Todd. The three pages selected contain the hymn written by S. Fiach of Stetty, between the years 538 and 558, in honor of S. Patrick. The hymn is furnished with an interlinear gloss.

The tenth of these MSS. is _The Saltair of S. Ricemarch_, Bishop of St. David’s between the years 1085 and 1096, a small copy of the Psalter containing also a copy of the Roman Martyrology.

Of the four pages of this volume which have been selected for copying, two are a portion of the Martyrology and two of the Psalter. The first of these last contains the first two verses of the 101st Psalm, surrounded by an elaborate border formed by the intertwinings of four serpentine monsters. The initial D of Domine is also expressed by a coiled snake, with its head in an attitude to strike; the object of its attack being a creature which it is impossible to designate, but which bears some resemblance to the hippocampus, or sea‐horse. The second page of the Psalter contains the 115th, 116th, and 117th Psalms, in which the same serpentine form is woven into shapes to represent the initial letters. The version of the Psalms given in this volume differs from that used in England in Bishop Ricemarch’s time. It is written in Latin in Gaelic characters. The volume belongs to Trinity College, Dublin.

Next in order appears the _Leabhar na h‐Uidhré_, or _Book of the Dark Gray Cow_, a fragment of one hundred and thirty‐eight folio pages, which is thought to be a copy made about the year 1100 of a more ancient MS. of the same name written in S. Ciaran’s time. It derived its name from the following curious legend, taken from the _Book of Leinster_, and the ancient tale called _Im thecht na trom daimhé_, or _Adventures of the Great Company_, told in the _Book of Lismore_. About the year 598, soon after the election of Senchan Torpeist to the post of chief filé (professor of philosophy and literature) in Erinn, he paid a visit to Guairè, the Hospitable, King of Connaught, accompanied by such a tremendous retinue, including a hundred and fifty professors, a hundred and fifty students, a hundred and fifty hounds, a hundred and fifty male attendants, and a hundred and fifty female relatives, that even King Guairè’s hospitality was grievously taxed; for he not only had to provide a separate meal and separate bed for each, but to minister to their daily craving for things that were extraordinary, wonderful, rare, and difficult of procurement. The mansion which contained the learned association was a special source of annoyance to King Guairè, and at last the “longing desires” for unattainable things of Muireann, daughter of Cun Culli and wife of Dallan, the foster‐mother of the literati, became so unendurable that Guairè, tired of life, proposed to pay a visit to Fulachtach Mac Owen, a person whom he thought especially likely to rid him of that burden, as he had killed his father, his six sons, and his three brothers. Happily for him, however, he falls in with his brother Marbhan, “the prime prophet of heaven and earth,” who had adopted the position of royal swineherd in order that he might the more advantageously indulge his passion for religion and devotion among the woods and desert places; and Marbhan eventually revenges the trouble and ingratitude shown to his brother by imposing upon Senchan and the great Bardic Association the task of recovering the lost tale of the _Táin Bó Chuailgné_, or _Great Cattle Spoil of Cuailgne_. After a vain search for it in Scotland, Senchan returned home and invited the following distinguished saints, S. Colum Cille, S. Caillin of Fiodhnacha, S. Ciaran, S. Brendan of Birra, and S. Brendan the son of Finnlogha, to meet him at the grave of the great Ulster chief, Feargus Mac Roigh—who had led the Connaught men against the Ulster men during the spoil, of which also he appears to have been the historian—to try by prayer and fasting to induce his spirit to relate the tale. After they had fasted three days and three nights, the apparition of Feargus rose before them, clad in a green cloak with a collared, gold‐ ribbed shirt and bronze sandals, and carrying a golden hilted sword, and recited the whole from beginning to end. And S. Ciaran then and there wrote it down on the hide of his pet cow, which he had had made for the purpose into a book, which has ever since borne this name.

The volume contains matter of a very miscellaneous character: A fragment of Genesis; a fragment of Nennius’ _History of the Britons_, done into Gaelic by Gilla Caomhain, who died before 1072; an _amhra_ or elegy on S. Colum Cille, written by Dallan Forgail, the poet, in 592; fragments of the historic tale of the _Mesca Uladh_, or _Inebriety of the Ulstermen_; fragments of the cattle‐spoils _Táin Bo Dartadha_ and _Táin Bo Flidais_; the navigation of Madduin about the Atlantic for three years and seven months; imperfect copies of the _Táin Bó Chuailgné_, the destruction of the _Bruighean da Dearga_, or _Court of Da Dearga_, and murder of King Conairé Mór; a history of the great pagan cemeteries of Erinn and of the various old books from which this and other pieces were compiled; poems by Flann of Monasterboice and others; together with various other pieces of history and historic romance chiefly referring to the ante‐Christian period, and especially that of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Three pages, containing curious prayers and the legend of _The Withering of Cuchulain and the Birds of Emer_, extracted from the _Leabhar buidh Slaine_, or _Yellow Book of Slane_, one of the ancient lost books of Ireland from which the _Leabhar na h‐Uidhré_ was compiled, have been selected.

The _Book of Leinster_, a folio of over four hundred pages, appears as the next. It was compiled in the first half of the XIIth century by Finn Mac Gorman, Bishop of Kildare, by order of Aedh Mac Crimhthainn, the tutor of Dermot, King of Leinster. Among other pieces of internal evidence pointing to this conclusion are the following entries, the first in the original hand, the second by one strange but ancient, translated and quoted by O’Curry:

“Benedictions and health from Finn, the Bishop of Kildare, to Aedh Mac Crimhtain, the tutor of the chief King of Leth Mogha Nuadut (or of Leinster and Munster), successor of Colaim Mic Crumtaind of, and chief historian of, Leinster, in wisdom, intelligence, and the cultivation of books, knowledge, and learning. And I write the conclusion of this little tale for thee, O acute Aedh! thou possessor of the sparkling intellect. May it be long before we are without thee! It is my desire that thou shouldst always be with us. Let Mac Loran’s book of poems be given to me, that I may understand the sense of the poems that are in it; and farewell in Christ.

“O Mary! it is a great deed that has been done in Erinn this day, the Kalends of August—Diarmait Mac Donnchadda Mic Murchada, King of Leinster and of the Danes (of Dublin), to have been banished over the sea eastwards by the men of Erinn! Uch, uch, O Lord! what shall I do?”

The more important of the vast number of subjects treated of in this MS. are mentioned as being: The usual book of invasions; ancient poems; a plan and explanation of the banqueting‐hall of Tara; a copy of _The Battle of Ross na Righ_ in the beginning of the Christian era; a copy of the _Mesca Uladh_, and one of the origin of the Borromean Tribute, and the battle that ensued; a fragment of the battle of Ceannabrat, with the defeat of Mac Con by Oilioll Olium, his flight into, and return from, Scotland with Scottish and British adventurers, his landing in Galway Bay, and the defeat of Art, monarch of Erinn, and slaughter of Olium’s seven sons at the battle of Magh Mucruimhé; a fragment of _Cormac’s Glossary_; another of the wars between the Danes and Irish; a copy of the _Dinnsenchus_; genealogies of Milesian families; and an ample list of the early saints of Erinn, with their pedigrees and affinities, and with copious references to the situation of their churches. The volume belongs to Trinity College, Dublin.

Three pages have been selected. The first contains a copy of the poem on the Teach Miodhchuarta of Tara—a poem so ancient that of its date and author no record remains—and of the ground‐plan of the banqueting‐hall by which the poem was illustrated, published by Dr. Petrie in his _History and Antiquities of Tara Hill_. The ground‐plan, which in this copy is nearly square, is divided into five compartments lengthwise, the centre and broadest of which contains the door, a rudely‐drawn figure of a _daul_ or waiter turning a gigantic spit, furnished with a joint of meat, before a fire, the lamps, and a huge double‐handed vase or amphora for the cup‐ bearer to distribute. This great spit, called _Bir Nechin_, or the spit of Nechin, the chief smith of Tara, which in the drawing is half the length of the hall, appears to have been so mechanically contrived as to be able to be coiled up after use; and the instrument is thus described in another MS. belonging to Trinity College, Dublin, quoted by Dr. Petrie: “A stick at each end of it, and its axle was wood, and its wheel was wood, and its body was iron; and there were twice nine wheels on its axle, that it might turn the faster; and there were thirty spits out of it, and thirty hooks and thirty spindles, and it was as rapid as the rapidity of a stream in turning; and thrice nine spits and thrice nine cavities (or pots) and one spit for roasting, and one wing used to set it in motion.”

In the two compartments on either side are enumerated in order of precedence the various officers and retainers of the king’s household, together with their tables and the particular portions of meat served out to each, forming a very curious and instructive illustration of the social condition and habits of the early Irish. The description of the rations that were considered specially adapted to the several ranks of consumers is very amusing. For the distinguished men of literature, “the soft, clean, smooth entrails,” and a steak cut from the choicest part of the animal, were set aside; the poet had a “good smooth” piece of the leg; the historian, “a crooked bone,” probably a rib; the artificers, “a pig’s shoulder”; the Druids and _aire dessa_, a “fair foot.” These last are said to decline to drink; not so the trumpeters and cooks, who are to be allowed “cheering mead in abundance, not of a flatulent kind.” The doorkeeper, “the noisy, humorous fool and the fierce, active kerne” had the chine; while to the satirists and the _braigitore_, a class of buffoons whose peculiar function was to amuse the company after a fashion which will not only not bear description, but almost defies belief—licensed and paid _Aethons_ of the court—“the fat of the shoulder was divided to them pleasantly.”

The selection is continued by the _Leabhar Breac_, or _Speckled Book_, probably named from the color of its cover, or, as it was formerly called, _Leabhar Mór Duna Doighré_, the _Great Book of Dun Doighré_, a place on the Galway side of the Shannon not far from Athlone. It is a compilation from various ancient books belonging chiefly to churches and monasteries in Conaught, Munster, and Leinster, beautifully written on vellum, as is supposed about the close of the XIVth century, by one of the Mac Ogans, a literary family of great repute belonging to Dun Doighré.

Its contents are of an extremely miscellaneous character, and they are all, with the exception of a copy of _The Life of Alexander the Great_ from the VIIth century, MS. of S. Berchan of Clonsost, of a religious nature, comprising Biblical narratives, homilies, hymns; pedigrees of saints, litanies and liturgies, monastic rules, the _Martyrology_ of Aengus Céulé Dé, or the Culdee, the ancient rules of discipline of the order of the Culdees, etc., etc. When the Abbé Mac Geoghegan wrote his _History of Ancient Erinn_ in Paris, in the year 1758, this volume, his principal MS. of reference, was in Paris. It is now in the Royal Irish Academy.

Three pages have been selected for fac‐similes, giving a description of the nature and arrangement of the _Féliré_, or _Festology_ of Aengus the Culdee, and the date and object of its composition, which was made between the years 793 and 817, when Aedh Oirdnidhe was monarch of Erinn.

Then comes the _Leabhar Buidhe Lecain_, or _Yellow Book of Lecain_, a large quarto volume of about five hundred pages, which was written by Donnoch and Gilla Isa Mac Firbis in the year 1390, with the exception of a few tracts of a somewhat later date. O’Curry, in his ninth lecture, supposes it to have been originally a collection of ancient historical pieces, civil and ecclesiastical, in prose and verse. In its present imperfect state it contains a number of family and political poems; some monastic rules; a description of Tara and its banqueting‐hall; a translation of part of the Book of Genesis; the Feast of Dun‐na‐n Gedh and the battle of Magh Rath; an account of the reign of Muirchertach Mac Erca, and his death at the palace of Cleitech in the year 527; copies of cattle‐ spoils, of the Bruighean Da Dearga, and death of the king; the tale of Maelduin’s three years’ wanderings in the Atlantic; tracts concerning the banishment of an ancient tribe from East Meath, and their discovery in the Northern Ocean by some Irish ecclesiastics; accounts of battles in the years 594, 634, and 718, and many other curious and valuable pieces and tracts. It is preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.

Two pages have been selected. The first contains the plan of the Teach Miodchuarta of ancient Tara, with a portion of the prose preface to the poem, which the plan is intended to illustrate. This ground‐plan differs somewhat in the shape of the hall and the arrangement of the tables from that given in the _Book of Leinster_, an earlier copy of a different original. It is also very much superior to it, both as regards the drawing and writing. The _daul_ and his spit are unrepresented here, but there is the door, the common hall, the swinging lamp and candles, the great double‐handed vase, called the _dabhach_ or vat, and three places marked out for the fires. The arrangement of the hall appears to have been this: Each of the two outside compartments contained twelve seats, and each seat three sitters; the two _airidins_ or divisions on either side of the centre of the hall held each eight seats and sixteen sitters. There were eight distributors, cup‐bearers, and herdsmen at the upper end of the hall, and two sat in each of the two seats on either side of the door, being the two door‐keepers and two of the royal fools. The daily allowance for dinner was two cows, two salted hogs, and two pigs. The quantity of liquor consumed is not specified, but the poem states that there were one hundred drinkings in the vat, and that the vat was supplied with fifty grooved golden horns and fifty pewter vessels. The order of precedence seems to have ranged from the top of the external division to the left on entering the hall; then to the top of the external division to the right; then the two internal divisions beginning with the left; then the _iarthar_ or back part of the hall, the upper end opposite the door; and last the seats on either side of the door itself. There is no seat marked for the king, but it is stated in the poem that a fourth part of the hall was at his back and three‐fourths before him, and he is supposed to have sat about a quarter of the way down the centre of the hall with his face toward the door, which would place him between two of the great fires, with the artisans on his right and the braziers and fools on his left hand. It is probable, however, from no mention being made of the king’s seat, and no provision being made for him in the appropriation of the daily allowance of food, which is specified in as many rations as there are persons mentioned in the plan, that this is not the plan of the royal banqueting‐hall, but of a portion of it only—the common dining‐hall for the officers and retainers of the palace; the monarch himself and his princes and nobles, none of whom are even alluded to in the plan, dining in another and superior apartment.

The second page contains a portion of the sorrowful tale of the loves of fair Deirdré and Naoisi, the son of Uisneach, one of the class of Irish legends called _Aithidhé_, or elopements. An outline of this story, in the commencement of which the reader will recognize that of one of his early nursery favorites, “Little Snow White,” is given by Keating in his _General History of Ireland_.

_The Book of Lecain Mac Firbisigh_, a folio of more than six hundred pages, was compiled in the year 1418 by Gilla Isa Môr Mac Firbis, Adam O’Cuirnin, and Morogh Riabhac O’Cuindlis. Its contents are nearly the same as those of _The Book of Ballymote_, to some of which it furnishes valuable additions, among the most important of which is a tract on the families and subdivisions of the territory of Tir Fiachrach in the present county of Sligo. The volume is preserved in the Royal Irish Academy.

Four pages have been selected, being a portion of a copy of the _Leabhar na g‐Ceart_, or _Book of Rights_, a metrical work attributed in the work itself to S. Benean or Benignus, S. Patrick’s earliest convert, and his successor in the Archbishopric of Armagh in the middle of the Vth century. These four pages, which are written in columnar form, contain the concluding ten verses of the stipends due to the chieftainries of Connacht from the supreme King of Cruachain; the metrical accounts, with their preceding prose abstracts, of the privileges of the King of Aileach; the payment and stipends of the same king to his chieftainries and tribes for refection and escort; the privileges of the King of the Oirghialla with the stipends due to him from the King of Erinn, and by him to his chieftainries; the rights, wages, stipends, refections, and tributes of the King of Eamhain and Uladh; and almost all the prose abstract of the rights of the King of Tara.

_The Book of Ballymote_, a large folio volume of five hundred and two pages of vellum, was written, as stated on the dorse of folio 62, at Ballymote, in the house of Tomaltach oig Mac Donogh, Lord of Corann, during the reign of Torlogh oig, the son of Hugh O’Conor, King of Connaught. It appears to be the work of different hands, but the principal scribes employed in writing it were Solomon O’Droma and Manus O’Duigenann, and it was written at the end of the XIVth century.

It contains an imperfect copy of the _Leabhar Gabhala_, or _Book of Invasions_, a series of ancient chronological, historical, and genealogical pieces in prose and verse; the pedigrees of Irish saints, and the histories and pedigrees of all the great families of the Milesian race, with their collateral branches, so that, as O’Curry remarks, there is scarcely any one whose name begins with “O’” or “Mac” who could not find out all about his origin and family in this book; then follow stories and adventures, lists of famous Irish names, a Gaelic translation of Nennius’ _History of the Britons_, an ancient grammar and prosody, and various other tracts.

Six pages have been selected. The first four contain the dissertation on the Ogham characters, and the last two the genealogy of the Hy Nialls, showing their descent from Eremon, one of the sons of Milesius. The volume belongs to the Irish Academy.

The last in Mr. Sanders’ list of the great volumes of Irish History is the _Book of M’Carthy Riabhac_, a compilation of the XIVth century—in language of a much earlier date—now also known as the _Book of Lismore_, to which a very curious story attaches. It was first discovered in the year 1814, enclosed in a wooden box together with a fine old crosier, built into the masonry of a closed‐up doorway which was reopened during some repairs that were being made in the old Castle of Lismore. Of course the account of its discovery soon got abroad and became a matter of great interest, especially to the antiquarian class of scholars. Among these there happened to be then living in Shandon Street, Cork, one Mr. Dennis O’Flinn, a professed Irish scholar. O’Curry says that he was a “professed but a very indifferent” one; but at any rate his reputation was sufficiently well grounded to induce Colonel Curry, the Duke of Devonshire’s agent, to send him the MS. According to O’Flinn’s own account, the book remained in his hands for one year, during which time it was copied by Michael O’Longan, of Carrignavan, near Cork; after which O’Flinn bound it in boards, and returned it to Colonel Curry. From that time it remained locked up and unexamined until 1839, when the duke lent it to the Royal Irish Academy to be copied by O’Curry, and O’Curry’s practised eye and acumen soon discovered that much harm had come to the volume during its sojourn in Shandon Street. The book had been mutilated, and, what was worse, mutilated in so cunning a way that what remained was rendered valueless by the abstraction, no doubt with the view of enhancing the value of the stolen portions as soon as it should become safe to pretend a discovery of them. Every search was made, especially by O’Curry, about Cork, to see if any of the missing pages could be found; but it was not till seven or eight years afterwards that a communication was made that a large portion of the original MS. was actually in the possession of some person in Cork, but who the person was, or how he became possessed of it, the informant could not tell. This clue seems to have failed; but soon afterwards the late Sir William Betham’s collection of MSS. passed into the library of the Royal Irish Academy by sale, and among these were copies of the lost portions, and all made, as the scribe himself states at the end of one of them, by himself, Michael O’Longan, at the house of Dennis Ban O’Flinn, in Cork, in 1816, from the _Book of Lismore_. The missing portions of the MS. were at length traced, and the £50 asked for them was offered by the Royal Irish Academy; but the negotiation ultimately broke down, and they were purchased by Mr. Hewitt, of Summerhill, near Cork. Since that time, however, they have been restored, and the whole volume excellently repaired and handsomely bound by the Duke of Devonshire, who has most liberally allowed it to remain in Mr. Sanders’ possession for the purpose of copying. Whether O’Flinn actually mutilated the volume or not, there can be no doubt that pages and pages of it have been ruined and will eventually be rendered illegible by the most reckless use of that pernicious chemical agent, infusion of galls. Besides this, Mr. O’Flinn has written his name in several places of the book, among others all over the colored initial letter of one of the tracts, which he has entirely spoiled by filling in the open spaces with the letters of his name and the date of the outrage. But perhaps the most characteristic act performed by him is the interpolation of an eulogistic ode upon himself in Gaelic, of which the following is a literal translation:

“Upon the dressing of this book by D. O’F., he said (or sang) as follows:

“’O old chart! forget not, wheresoever you are taken, To relate that you met with the Doctor of Books; That helped you, out of compassion, from severe bondage, After finding you in forlorn state without a tatter about you, as it should be. Under the disparagement of the ignorant who liked not to know you, Till you met by chance with learned good‐nature from the person(57) Who put healing herbs with zeal to thy old wounds, And liberally put bloom on you at your old age, And baptized you the _Book of Lismore_. Forget not this friend that esteemed your figure, Distinguishing you, (though) of unseemly appearance, in humble words. I doubt not that truly you will declare to them there That you met with your fond friend ere you went to dust.”

The book contains ancient lives of Irish saints, written in very pure Gaelic; the conquests of Charlemagne, translated from Archbishop Turpin’s celebrated romance of the VIIIth century; the conversion of the Pantheon into a Christian church; the stories of David, son of Jesse, the two children, Samhain, the three sons of Cleirac; the _Imtheacht na trom daimhé_; the story of S. Peter’s daughter Petronilla and the discovery of the Sibylline Oracle; an account of S. Gregory the Great; the Empress Justina’s heresy; modifications of minor ceremonies of the Mass; accounts of the successors of Charlemagne, and of the correspondence between Lanfranc and the clergy of Rome; extracts from Marco Polo’s _Travels_; accounts of Irish battles and sieges; and a dialogue between S. Patrick, Caoilté, Mac Ronain, and Oisin (Ossian), the son of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, in which many hills, rivers, caverns, etc., in Ireland, are described, and the etymology of their names recorded. This last is preluded by an account of the departure of Oisin and Caoilté on a hunting expedition, during which their gillie sees and is much troubled by a very strange spectacle. As this tale furnishes a good example of the contents of these ancient books, we subjoin a translation of the commencement of it.(58)

“On a certain time it happened that Oisin and Cailte were in Dun Clithar (the sheltered or shady Dun) at Slieve Crott. It was the time that Patrick came to Ireland. It is there dwelt a remnant of the Fenians, namely, Oisin and Cailte and three times nine persons in their company. They followed this custom: about nine persons went out hunting daily. On a certain day it chanced that Cailte Mac Ronain set out with eight persons (big men) and a boy (gilla), the ninth. The way they went was northward to the twelve mountains of Eibhlinné and to the head of the ancient Moy Breogan. On their returning from the chase at the cheerless close of the day they came from the north to Corroda Cnamhchoill. Then was Fear Gair Cailte’s gilla loaded with the choice parts of the chase in charge, because he had no care beyond that of Cailte himself, from whom he took wages. The gilla comes to the stream, and takes Cailte’s cup from his back and drinks a drink of the stream. Whilst the gilla was thus drinking the eight great men went their way southward, mistaking the road, and the gilla following afterwards. Then was heard the noise of the large host, and the gilla proceeds to observe the multitude; bushes and a bank between them. He saw in the fore front of the crowd a strange band; it seemed to him one hundred and fifty were in this band. They appeared thus: robes of pure white linen upon them, a head chief with them, and bent standards in their hands; shields, broad‐streaked with gold and silver, bright shining on their breasts; their faces pale, pitiably feminine, and having masculine voices, and every man of them humming a march. The gilla followed his people, and did not overtake them till he came to the hunting‐booth, and he came possessed, as he thinks, with the news of the strange troop he had seen, and casts his burden on the ground, goes round it, places his elbows under, and groans very loudly. It was then that Cailte Mac Ronain said: ‘Well, gilla, is it the weight of your burden affects you?’ ‘Not so,’ replied the gilla; ‘when is large the burden, so great is the wages you give to me. This does not affect me; but that wonderful multitude I saw at the hut of Cnamhchoill. The first band that I saw of that strange crowd filled me with the pestilent, heavy complaint of the news of this band.’ ‘Give its description,’ said Cailte. ‘There seemed to me an advanced guard of one hundred and fifty‐six men, pure white robes upon them, a head leader to them, bent standards in their hands, broad shields on their breasts, having feminine faces and masculine voices, and every single man of them humming a march.’ Wonder seized the old Fenian on hearing this. ‘These are they,’ said Oisin—‘the Tailginn (holy race), foretold by our Druids and Fionn to us, and what can be done with them? Unless they be slain, they shall ascend over us altogether.’ ‘Uch!’ said Oisin, ‘who amongst us can molest them? For we are the last of the Fenii, and not with ourselves is the power in Erinn, nor the greatness, nor pleasure but in the chase, and as ancient exiles asserting the right,’ said he; and they remained so till came the next morning, and there was nothing on their minds that night but these (things). Cailte rose early the fore front of the day, being the oldest of them, and came out on the assembly‐mound. The sun cleared the fog from the plains, and Cailte said: ...”

The procession thus described as having been seen by the gillie was probably one of ecclesiastics, with S. Patrick himself at their head, on the saint’s first arrival in Ireland.

The foregoing sketches of certain of the MSS., extracts from which are intended to appear in the series of fac‐similes, may serve to convey an idea of how rich Ireland is in such national records, what an immense mass of historical and romantic literature her libraries contain, and how great is their antiquity. Besides the evidence afforded by these books, both as to the ancient social, political, and ecclesiastical history of Ireland, and its topography, the books themselves are found to be full of illustrations of the customs, mode of life, manners, and costume of her early Celtic inhabitants; often conveyed through the medium of charming legends and fairy tales.

Annals Of The Moss‐Troopers.

Outlawry was never carried to a greater degree of systematic organization, or practised on a larger and more dignified scale, than during the centuries of Border warfare between the English and Scottish chieftains. The only parallel to this warfare was furnished by the raids of the Free Companions in mediæval Italy; but the mercenary element in the organization of those formidable bodies of professional marauders destroys the interest which we might otherwise have felt in their daring feats of arms. The warfare of the Border was essentially a national outburst; the “moss‐troopers,” although trained soldiers, were also householders and patriarchs. Their stake in the country they alternately plundered and defended was a substantial one. The field of their prowess was never far from home. Each retainer, insignificant as he might be, humble as his position in the troop might be, had yet a personal interest in the raid; and revenge, as well as plunder, was the avowed object of an expedition. There was never any changing of allegiance from one side to the other; the tie of blood and clanship welded the whole troop into one family. The Border, or debatable land between the rival kingdoms of England and Scotland, bristled with strongholds, all of historical name and fame: Newark and Branxholm (which Sir Walter Scott in his _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ has euphonized into Branksome), held by the all‐powerful Scotts of Buccleugh; Crichtoun Castle, the successive property of the Crichtouns, the Bothwells, and the Buccleughs, and, while in the hands of its original owners, the haughty defier of King James III. of Scotland; Gifford or Yester (it bears either name indifferently), famous for its Hobgoblin Hall, or, as the people call it, “Bo‐Hall,” a large cavern formed by magical art; Tantallon Hold, the retreat of the Douglas, in which the family held out manfully against James V. until its chief, the Earl of Angus, was recalled from exile. Of this expedition it is related that the king marched in person upon the castle, and, to reduce it, borrowed from the neighboring Castle of Dunbar two great cannons whose names were “Thrawn‐mouthed Meg and her Marrow”; also two great _bolcards_, and two _moyan_, two double falcons and two quarter‐falcons, for the safe guiding and redelivery of which “three lords were laid in pawn at Dunbar.” Notwithstanding all this mighty preparation, the king was forced to raise the siege. The ruin of Tantallon was reserved for the Covenanters, and now there remains nothing of it save a few walls standing on a high rock overlooking the German Ocean and the neighboring town of Berwick‐upon‐ Tweed. Ford Castle, the patrimony of the Herons, had a better fate, and stands in altered and modernized guise, the centre of civilizing and peaceful influences, the residence of a model Lady of the Manor, overlooking, not the wild ocean, but a pretty village, faultlessly neat, and a Gothic school filled with frescos of Bible subjects, executed by the Lady Bountiful, the benefactress of the neighborhood. Yet Ford Castle had a stormy, stirring past, and stands not far from the historic field of Flodden, where tradition says that, but for the tardiness of the king’s movements—an effect due to the siren charms of Lady Ford—James IV. might have been victorious. In the castle is still shown the room where the king slept the night before the battle, and only five or six miles away lies the fatal field, on which, _Marmion_ in hand the curious traveller may still make out each knoll, the Bridge of Twisel, by which the English under Surrey crossed the Till, the hillock commanding the rear of the English right wing, which was defeated, and in conflict with whom Scott’s imaginary hero, Marmion, is supposed to have fallen.

Very curious are the accounts of the various fights and forays given by the chroniclers of the middle ages, especially in their utter unconsciousness of anything unusual or derogatory in this almost internecine warfare. Their simplicity in itself presents the key to the situation. In reading their graphic, matter‐of‐fact descriptions, one needs to transport one’s self into a totally different atmosphere. We must read these racy accounts in the same spirit in which they were written, if we would understand aright the age in which our forefathers lived. We are not called upon to sit in judgment over the irrevocable past, but to study it as a fact not to be overlooked, and a useful storehouse of warning or example. The possession of the king’s person was sometimes the origin of terrible clan‐feuds among the warlike Scottish imitators of the Frankish “Maires du Palais.” Thus, on one occasion, in 1526, the chronicler Pitscottie informs us that James V., then a minor, had fallen under the self‐assumed guardianship of the Earl of Angus, backed by his own clan of Douglas and his allies, the Lairds of Hume, Cessfoord, and Fernyhirst, the chiefs of the clan of Kerr.(59) “The Earl of Angus and the rest of the Douglases ruled all which they liked, and no man durst say the contrary.” The king, who wished to get out of their hands, sent a secret letter to Scott of Buccleugh, warden of the West Marches of Scotland, praying him to gather his kin and friends, meet the Douglas at Melrose, and deliver him (James) from his vassal’s power. The loyal Scot gathered about six hundred spears, and came to the tryst. When the Douglases and Kerrs saw whom they had to deal with, they said to the king, “Sir, yonder is Buccleugh, and thieves of Annandale with him, to unbeset your grace from the gate (_i.e._, interrupt your passage). I vow to God they shall either fight or flee, and ye shall tarry here on this know (knoll), and I shall pass and put yon thieves off the ground, and rid the gate unto your grace, or else die for it.” Scant courtesy in speech used those Border heroes towards one another! So an escort tarried to guard the king, and the rest of the clans went forward to the field of Darnelinver now Darnick, near Melrose. The place of conflict is still called Skinner’s Field, a corruption of Skirmish Field. The chronicler tells us that Buccleugh “joyned and countered cruelly both the said parties ... with uncertain victory. But at the last the Lord Hume, hearing word of that matter, how it stood, returned again to the king in all possible haste, with him the Lairds of Cessfoord and Fernyhirst, to the number of fourscore spears, and set freshly on the lap and wing of the Laird of Buccleugh’s field, and shortly bare them backward to the ground, which caused the Laird of Buccleugh and the rest of his friends to go back and flee, whom they followed and chased; and especially the Lairds of Cessfoord and Fernyhirst followed furiouslie, till at the foot of a path the Laird of Cessfoord was slain by the stroke of a spear by one Elliott, who was then servant to the Laird of Buccleugh. But when the Laird of Cessfoord was slain, the chase ceased.” The Borders were infested for many long years afterwards by marauders of both sides, who kept up a deadly hereditary feud between the names of Scott and Kerr, and finally, after having been imprisoned and had his estates forfeited nine years later for levying war against the Kerrs, the bold Buccleugh was slain by his foes in the streets of Edinburgh in 1552, twenty‐six years after the disastrous fight in which he had failed to rescue his sovereign. It was seventy years before this Border feud was finally quelled.

On the English side of the Marches the same dare‐devilry existed, the same speed in gathering large bodies of men was used, the same quickness in warning and rousing the neighborhood. Equal enthusiasm was displayed whether the case were one of “lynch law” or of political intrigue, as in the fight at Darnelinver. Sir Robert Carey, in his _Memoirs_, describes his duties as deputy warden for his brother‐in‐law, Lord Scroop. The castle was near Carlisle. “We had a stirring time of it,” he says, “and few days passed over my head but I was on horseback, either to prevent mischief or take malefactors, and to bring the Border in better quiet than it had been in times past.” Hearing that two Scotchmen had killed a churchman in Scotland, and were dwelling five miles from Carlisle on the English side of the Border, under the protection of the Graemes, Carey took about twenty‐five horsemen with him, and invested the Graeme’s house and tower. As they did so, a boy rode from the house at full speed, and one of his retainers, better versed in Border warfare than the chief, told him that in half an hour that boy would be in Scotland to let the people know of the danger of their countrymen and the small number of those who had come from Carlisle to arrest them. “Hereupon,” says our author, “we took advice what was best to be done. We sent notice presently to all parts to raise the country, and to come to us with all the speed they could; and withal we sent to Carlisle to raise the townsmen, for without foot we could do no good against the tower. There we stayed some hours, expecting more company, and within a short time after the country came in on all sides, so that we were quickly between three and four hundred horse; and after some longer stay, the foot of Carlisle came to us, to the number of three or four hundred men, whom we presently set to work to get to the top of the tower, and to uncover the roof, and then some twenty of them to fall down together, and by that means to win the tower. The Scots, seeing their present danger, offered to parley, and yielded themselves to my mercy.” But the victorious Carlisleans had reckoned without their host. From the hills and defiles around came pouring wild‐looking mountaineers on rough, wiry ponies, farm‐horses, etc., to the number of four hundred. The prisoners ceased their pleading, and looked eagerly towards their deliverers. Meanwhile, the men of “merry Carlisle”(60) gave their perplexed chief more trouble than his enemies, who “stood at gaze” a quarter of a mile from him; for, says he, “all our Borderers came crying with full mouths, ‘Sir, give us leave to set upon them; for these are they that have killed our fathers, our brothers and uncles, and our cousins, and they are coming, thinking to surprise you with weak grass nags, such as they could get on a sudden; and God hath put them into your hands, that we may take revenge of them for much blood that they have spilt of ours.’ ” The warden was a conscientious man, and had come here to execute justice against two malefactors, not to encourage indiscriminate private revenge; but even with his rank and vested authority he did not dare sternly to forbid a faction fight. He only told them that, had he not been there, they might have done as best pleased them; but that, since he was present, he should feel that all the blood spilt that day would be upon his own head, and for his sake he entreated them to forbear. “They were ill‐satisfied,” he adds, “but durst not disobey.” So he sent word to the Scots to disperse, which they did, probably because they were unprepared to fight such a large and well‐disciplined force, having expected to find but a handful of men. The necessity for delicate handling of this armed mob of English Borderers points sufficiently to the curious standard of personal justice which prevailed in those wild times. And yet, strange to say, while a Border “ride” (_alias_ foray) was a thing of such ordinary occurrence that a saying is recorded of a mother to her son which soon became proverbial: “_Ride, Rowley, hough’s i’ the pot_”—that is, the last piece of beef is in the pot, and it is high time to go and fetch more—still it would sometimes happen, as it did to James V. of Scotland, that when an invasion of England was in contemplation, and the royal lances gathered at the place where the king’s lieges were to meet him, only one baron would declare himself willing to go wherever the sovereign might lead. This faithful knight was another of the loyal race of Scott—John Scott of Thirlestane, to whom James, in memory of his fidelity, granted the privilege set forth in the following curious and rare charter:

“... Ffor the quhilk (which) cause, it is our will, and we do straitlie command and charg our lion herauld, ... to give and to graunt to the said John Scott ane border of ffleure de lises about his coatte of armes, sic as is on our royal banner, and alsua ane bundle of lances above his helmet, with thir words, Readdy ay, Readdy, that he and all his after‐ cummers may bruik (carry?) the samine as a pledge and taiken of our guid will and kyndnes for his true worthiness.”

The list of the damages done in some of these Border rides sounds strange in modern ears. Each country was a match for the other, though the strong castles of Wark, Norham, and Berwick in English hands were thorns in the side of the Scottish Borderers. Rowland Foster of Wark, on the 16th of May, 1570, harried the barony of Blythe in Lauderdale, the property of Sir Richard Maitland, a blind knight of seventy‐four years of age. None of that country “lippened” (expected) such a thing, as it was in time of peace; and despite what may have been said—and truly—as to their lawlessness, the Borderers had a code by which to regulate their actions. The old man wrote a poetical account of the harrying, calling the poem the _Blind Baron’s Comfort_, and in the introduction he enumerates his losses: five thousand sheep, two hundred nolt, thirty horses and mares, and the whole furniture of his house, worth £8 6s. 8d., and everything else that was portable. The sum represents some forty dollars.

In these narratives one feels it impossible to be very sorry for either party, each was so thoroughly unable to take care of itself! Those who to‐ day seem down‐trodden victims of lawlessness will figure again a year hence as “stark moss‐troopers [moss for marsh] and arrant thieves; both to England and Scotland outlawed, yet sometimes connived at because they gave intelligence forth to Scotland, and would raise four hundred horse at any time upon a raid of the English into Scotland.” This was said of the Graemes, Earls of Monteith, but was applicable, _mutatis mutandis_, to most of the Borderers on both sides. An old Northumbrian ballad, that survived in the North of England till within a hundred years, and was commonly sung at merry‐makings till the roof rang again, gives forcible and rather coarse details as to the personal results of these forays. It celebrates the ride of the Thirlwalls and Ridleys in the reign of Henry VIII. against the Featherstons of Featherston Castle, a few miles south of the Tyne. Here is one of the rude stanzas:

“I canno’ tell a’, I canno’ tell a’, Some gat a skelp (blow), and some gat a claw; But they gard the Featherstons haud their jaw, Nicol and ‘Alick and a’. Some gat a hurt, and some gat nane; Some had harness, and some gat sta’en (stolen or plundered).”

In later days Sir Walter Scott wove the annals of the Border into more tuneful rhyme, and sang of the exploits of his bold countrymen with an enthusiasm worthy of his moss‐trooping ancestors. These old ballads, and the recollections of ancient dames in whose youthful days the exploits celebrated in these ballads were not yet quite obsolete, furnished him with much of his romantic materials. _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, a collection of many such traditions, is a storehouse of information upon these subjects. We find descriptions of the caves and morasses which were the usual refuge of the marauders; the banks of the Teviot, the Ale, the Jed, the Esk, were full of these caverns, but even these hiding‐places were not always safe. Patten’s _Account of Somerset’s Expedition into Scotland_ tells how “George Ferres, a gentleman of my Lord Protector, happened on a cave” the entrance to which showed signs of the interior being tenanted. “He wente doune to trie, and was readilie receyved with a hakebut or two,” and when he found the foe determined to hold out, “he wente to my lorde’s grace, and, upon utterance of the thinge, _gat license to deale with them as he coulde_”—which significantly simple statement meant that he was perfectly at liberty to do as he eventually did, i.e., smother them by stopping up the three _ventes_ of the cave with burning faggots of damp wood.

The next case is one of national jealousy and instant reprisals. The English Earl of Northumberland gives a graphic account of the double raid in a letter to King Henry VIII. He says that some Scottish barons had threatened to come and give him “light to put on his clothes at midnight,” and moreover that Marke Carr (one of the same clan whose prowess was exercised against Buccleugh) said that, “seying they had a governor on the Marches of Scotland as well as they had in England, he shulde kepe your highness’ instructions, gyffyn unto your garyson, for making of any _day‐ forey_; for he and his friends _wolde burne enough on the nyght_....” Then follows a detailed account of the inroad of thirty horsemen on the hamlet of Whitell, which they did not burn, because “there was no fyre to get there, and they forgat to brynge any withe theyme!” But they killed a woman, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and departed. The reprisals, however, were far worse. The Earl of Murray, who had winked at all this, was chosen by the English as a scape‐goat, and a hundred of the best horsemen of Glendaill “dyd mar the Earl of Murreis provisions at Coldingham, for they did not only burn the said town of Coldingham, with all the corne thereunto belonging, but also burned twa townes nye adjoining thereunto, called Branerdergest and the Black Hill and took xxiii. persons, lx. horse, with cc. head of cataill, which nowe, as I am informed, hathe not only been a staye of the said Erle of Murreis not coming to the Bordure as yet, but alsoo that none inlande will adventure theyrself uppon the Marches.... And also I have devysed that within this iii. nyghts, _Godde willing_, Kelsey, in like case, shall be brent with all the corn in the said town, and then they shall have noo place to lye any garyson nygh unto the Borders.”

The physical strength and rude cunning required for this daring life of perpetual warfare are well described in the stanza of _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ referring to one of the Border heroes of the clan of Buccleugh:

“A stark, moss‐trooping Scott was he As e’er couch’d Border lance by knee; Through Solway sands, through Tarras moss, Blindfold he knew the paths to cross; By wily turns, by desperate bounds, Had baffled Percy’s best bloodhounds; In Eske or Liddel fords were none, But he would ride them one by one; Alike to him was time or tide, December’s snow or July’s pride; Alike to him was tide or time, Moonless midnight or matin prime; Steady of heart and stout of hand As ever drove prey from Cumberland; Five times outlaw’d had he been By England’s king and Scotland’s queen.”

We have already alluded to the origin of the name of the Border riders. Fuller, in his _Worthies of England_, says they are called moss‐troopers “because dwelling in the mosses (marshes or morasses), and riding in troops together; they dwell in the bounds or meeting of the two kingdoms, but obey the laws of neither. They come to church as seldom as the 29th of February comes in the calendar.” Their customs and laws are even more interesting than the details of their forays. Loyalty to each other was their first principle, and on occasions when money could purchase the freedom of one of their number they invariably cast in their lots, and made up a large common purse. They were scrupulous in keeping their word of honor when passed to a traveller, and Fuller likens their dogged fidelity in these cases to that of a “Turkish janizary”; but otherwise, woe to him that fell into their hands! Their own _self_‐imposed laws they observed for the most part faithfully, and a breach of them was punished far more summarily than modern crimes in modern courts of law. Several species of offences peculiar to the Border constituted what was called March‐treason. Among others was the crime of riding or causing to ride against the opposite country (or clan) during the time of truce. Such was the offence committed by Rowland Foster in his raid on the “Blind Baron,” though in his case the criminal was probably too powerful to be punished. In one of the many truces signed in the olden time is one of 1334 between the Percys and the Douglases, in which it is accorded: “Gif ony stellis (steals) anthir on the ta part or on the tothyr, that he shall be hanget or beofdit (beheaded); and gif ony company stellis any gudes within the trieux (truce) beforesayd, are of that company shall be hanget or beofdit, and the remanant sail restore the gudys stolen in the dubble.”(61) In doubtful cases the innocence of Border criminals was often referred to their own oath. The same work that quotes the above agreement also gives us the form of excusing bills by Border oaths: “You shall swear by the heaven above you, hell beneath you, by your part of paradise, by all that God made in six days and seven nights, and by God himself, you are whart out sackless of art, part, way, witting, ridd kenning, having, or recetting of any of the goods and cattels named in the bill. So help you God.” It seems almost as if the Borderers had consulted the catechism as to the nine ways of being accessory to another’s sin, so minute is the nomenclature of treasonable possibilities.

Trial by single combat was also a favorite mode of clearing one’s self from a criminal charge. This was common in feudal times and throughout the XVIth century; but time stood still in the Borders, as far as civilizing changes were concerned, and even in the XVIIth century a ceremonious indenture was signed between two champions of name and position, binding them to fight to prove the truth or falsity of a charge of high treason made by one against the other.

The most ancient known collection of regulations for the Border sets forth that in 1468, on the 18th day of December, Earl William Douglas assembled the whole lords, freeholders, and eldest Borderers, that best knowledge had, at the College of Linclouden, “where he had them bodily sworn, the Holy Gospel touched, that they justlie and trulie after their cunning should decrete ... the statutes, ordinances, and uses of the marche.” The earl further on is said to have thought these “right speedful and profitable to the Borders.”

During the truces it was not unusual to have merry‐makings and fairs, to which, however, both Scotch and English came fully armed. Foot‐ball was from time immemorial a favorite Border game, but the national rivalry was such that the play often ended in bloodshed. Still, there was no personal ill‐feeling, and a rough sort of good‐fellowship was kept up, which was strengthened by intermarriages, and was not supposed to debar either party from the right of prosecuting private vengeance, even to death. When, however, this revenge had been taken, it would have been against Border etiquette to retain any further ill‐will. Patten, in his _Account of Somerset’s Expedition into Scotland_, remarks on the disorderly conduct of the English Borderers who followed the Lord Protector. He describes the camp as full of “troublous and dangerous noyses all the nyghte longe, ... more like the outrage of a dissolute huntynge than the quiet of a well‐ ordered armye.” The Borderers, like masterless hounds, howling, whooping, whistling, crying out “A Berwick, a Berwick! a Fenwick, a Fenwick! a Bulmer, a Bulmer!” paraded the camp, creating confusion wherever they went, and disturbing the more sober southern troops; they used their own slogan or battle‐cry out of pure mischief and recklessness, and totally disregarded all camp discipline. Yet in this land of defiles, caverns, and marshes their aid was too precious to be dispensed with, and remonstrance was practically useless.

The pursuit of Border marauders was often followed by the injured party and his friends with bloodhounds and bugle‐horn, and was called the _hot‐ trod_. If his dog could trace the scent, he was entitled to follow the invaders into the opposite kingdom, which practice often led to further bloodshed. A sure way of stopping the dog was to spill blood on the track; and a legend of Wallace’s adventurous life relates a terrible instance of this. An Irishman in Wallace’s train was slain by the Scottish fugitive, and when the English came up with their hounds their pursuit was baffled. But poetical justice required some counterbalancing doom, and accordingly the legend tells us that, when Wallace took refuge in the lonely tower of Gask, and fancied himself safe, he was speedily disturbed by the blast of a horn. It was midnight. He sent out attendants, cautiously to reconnoitre, but they could see nothing. When he was left alone again, the summons was repeated, and, sword in hand, he went down to face the unknown. At the gate of the tower stood the headless spectre of Fawdoim, the murdered man. Wallace, in unearthly terror, fled up into the tower, tore open a window, and leaped down fifteen feet to the ground to continue his flight as best he could. Looking back to Gask, he saw the tower on fire, and the form of his victim, dilated to an immense size, standing on the battlements, holding in his hand a blazing rafter.

The system of signals by beacon‐fires was common on the Borders. Smugglers and their friends have now become the only remaining heirs to this practice, which was once that in use by the noblest warriors of Gaelic race in either island. The origin of this custom was perfectly lawful; indeed, the Scottish Parliament, in 1445, directed that one bale or beacon‐fagot should be warning of the approach of the English in any manner; two bales, that they are coming indeed; four bales blazing beside each other, that the enemy are in great force. A Scotch historian tells us that in later times these beacons consisted of a long and strong tree set up, with a long iron pole across the head of it, and an iron brander fixed on a stalk in the middle of it for holding a tar‐barrel.

It was a custom on the Border, and indeed in the Highlands also, for those passing through a great chieftain’s domains to repair to the castle in acknowledgment of the chief’s authority, explain the purpose of their journey, and receive the hospitality due to their rank. To neglect this was held discourtesy in the great and insolence in the inferior traveller; indeed, so strictly was this etiquette insisted upon by some feudal lords that Lord Oliphaunt is said to have planted guns at his Castle of Newtyle in Angus, so as to command the high‐road, and compel all passengers to perform this act of homage. Sir Walter Scott, in his _Provincial Antiquities_, has hunted up a curious instance of the non fulfilment of this custom. The Lord of Crichtoun Castle, on the Tyne, heard that Scott of Buccleugh was to pass his dwelling on his return from court. A splendid banquet was prepared for the expected guest, who nevertheless rode past the castle, neglecting to pay his duty‐visit. Crichtoun was terribly incensed, and pursued the discourteous traveller with a body of horse, made him prisoner, and confined him for the night in the castle dungeon. He and his retainers, meanwhile, feasted on the good cheer that had been provided, and doubtless made many valiant boasts against the imprisoned lord. But with morning cometh prudence. A desperate feud with a powerful clan was not desirable, and such would infallibly have been the result of so rough a proceeding. Indeed, it would have justified the Buccleugh in biting his glove or his thumb—a gesture indicative on the Border of a resolution of mortal revenge for a serious insult. So, to put matters right, Crichtoun not only delivered his prisoner and set him in the place of honor at his board the following day, but himself retired into his own dungeon, where he remained as many hours as his guest had done. This satisfaction was accepted and the feud averted.

The Borderers had a rough, practical kind of symbolism in vogue among them; and, though they were not afraid of calling a spade a spade, yet loved a significant allegory. It is told of one of the marauding chiefs, whose castle was a very robber’s den, that his mode of intimating to his retainers that the larder was bare, and that they must ride for a supply of provisions, was the appearance on the table of a pair of clean spurs in a covered dish. Like many brigand chiefs, this Scott of Harden had a wife of surpassing beauty, famed in song as the “Flower of Yarrow.” Some very beautiful pastoral songs are attributed to a young captive, said to have been carried as an infant to this eagle’s nest, built on the brink of a dark and precipitous dell. He himself tells the story of how “beauteous Mary, Yarrow’s fairest flower, rescued him from the rough troopers who brought him into the courtyard of the castle.”

“Her ear, all anxious, caught the wailing sound: With trembling haste, the youthful matron flew, And from the hurried heaps an infant drew.

Of milder mood the gentle captive grew, Nor loved the scenes that scared his infant view,

He lived o’er Yarrow’s Flower to shed the tear, To strew the holly‐leaves o’er Harden’s bier.

He, nameless as the race from which he sprung, Saved other names, and left his own unsung.”

Work and pleasure were sometimes mingled in those royal expeditions called a chase, which had so little to distinguish them from regular Border forays. Law and no law were so curiously tangled together that each bore nearly the same outward features as the other—features especially romantic, which both have now equally lost. Ettrick Forest, now a mountainous range of sheep‐walks, was anciently a royal pleasure‐ground. The hunting was an affair of national importance, and in 1528 James V. of Scotland “made proclamation to all lords, barons, gentlemen, landward‐men, and freeholders to pass with the king where he pleased, to danton _the thieves_ of Teviotdale, Annandale, and Liddesdale (we have heard this expression before in another mouth), and other parts of that country, and also warned all gentlemen that had good dogs to bring them, that he might hunt in the said country as he pleased.”

A very interesting account is given by one Taylor, a poet, of the mode in which these huntings were conducted in the Highlands. This, however, is a sketch of a later day than that in which the moss‐troopers were at their best, but many of the characteristics of the scene suggest the earlier and hardly yet forgotten time of the true Borderers. He begins by enumerating the many “truly noble and right honorable lords” who were present, and gives a detailed description of the dress which they wore in common with the peasantry, “as if Lycurgus had been there and made laws of equality.” The dress is the Highland costume of to‐day—a dress that has never changed since at least the beginning of this century. The English poet evidently finds it very primitive, and takes no notice of the difference of color or of mixing of color that distinguishes the various tartans. He says: “As for their attire, any man of what degree so‐ever who comes amongst them must not disdain to wear it; for if they do, then they will disdain to hunt or willingly to bring in their dogs; but if men be kind to them and be in their habit, then they are conquered with kindness, and the sport will be plentiful.” The gathering is of some fourteen or fifteen hundred or more men—a little city or camp. Small cottages built on purpose to lodge in, and called _lonquhards_, are here for the chiefs, the kitchens whereof are always on the side of a bank. A formidable list of provisions follows; there are “many kettles and pots boiling, and many spits turning and winding, with great variety of cheer, as venison baked, sodden, rost, and stewed beef, mutton, goats, kids, hares, fresh salmon, pigeons, hens, capons, chickens, partridges, muir‐coots (water‐fowl), heath‐cocks, capercailzies and ptarmigans, good ale, sacke, white and claret (red) tent, or allegant, with the most potent _aqua‐vitæ_. All these, and more than these, we had continually in superfluous abundance, caught by falconers, fowlers, fishers, and brought by my lord’s tenants and purveyors to victual our camp, which consisteth of fourteen or fifteen hundred men and horses. The manner of the hunting is this: Five or six hundred men do rise early in the morning, and they do disperse themselves divers ways, and seven, eight, or ten miles compass; they do bring or chase in the deer, in many herds (two, three, or four hundred in a herd), to such or such a place as the noblemen shall appoint them; then, when day is come, the lords and gentlemen of their companies do ride or go to the said places, sometimes wading up to the middles through burns (streams) and rivers, and then they, being come to the place, do lie down upon the ground till those foresaid scouts, which are called the _tinkhell_, do bring down the deer. But as the proverb says of a bad cook, so these _tinkhell_ men do lick their own fingers; for, besides their bows and arrows, which they carry with them, we can hear now and then a harquebuss or a musket go off, which they do seldom discharge in vain. Then after we had stayed there three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer appear on the hills round about us (their heads making a show like a wood), which, being followed close by the _tinkhell_, are chased down into the valley where we lay; then all the valley, on each side, being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are all let loose, as occasion serves, upon the herd of deer, that with dogs, guns, arrows, durks, and daggers, in the space of two hours, fourscore fat deer were slain, which after are disposed of, some one way and some another, twenty and thirty miles, and more than enough left for us, to make merry withal at our rendezvous.”

Doubtless the scene must have been very picturesque before the _battue_ began; but as sport what could be more unsatisfactory? For once modern customs seem to excel ancient ones, and the Scotch deer‐stalker of to‐day, in his arduous, solitary walk over the moors and through the forests, is a much more enviable personage than the high and mighty huntsman of King James’ train. The best sport recorded in this curious narrative was the result of the unauthorized shots heard in the distance, when the _tinkhell_ men could not resist the temptation of “licking their own fingers.”

It was the result of all these centuries of wild life and romantic lawlessness that made Scotland so safe a retreat for the unfortunate Prince Charlie after the last stand had been so loyally and unsuccessfully made at Culloden in 1745. Personal fidelity to a beloved chieftain, and an habitual disregard of all laws of the “Southron” that clashed with their own immemorial customs, made of the Scottish people the most perfect partisans in the world. Even at this day, when they are famed for their thriftiness, their amenableness to law, their eminently peaceful qualities, a strong undercurrent of romance lies at the bottom of their surface tranquillity. The organization of clanship has disappeared, but the feeling that put life into that system is itself living yet. The humblest Scotsman is a born genealogist, and privately considers the blood of the laird under whose protection or in whose service he lives as immeasurably _bluer_ than that of the German royal family that sits in the high places of England; and a characteristic instance of the clinging affection with which the national nomenclature of rank is still looked upon by the Scottish peasantry was afforded not many years ago, when the tenants of Lord Breadalbane were required to conform to modern usage, and address their master as “my lord.” “What!” they exclaimed, “call the Breadalbane _my lord_, like any paltry Southron chiel (fellow)?” They thought—and rightly, as it seems to us—that the old appellation, “_the_ Breadalbane,” as if he were sovereign on his own lands, and the only one of the name who needed no title to distinguish him from others of his kin, was the only fitting one for their chief. The English title of marquis was nothing to that.

The superstitions of the Border, those of early times and those whose traces remain even to this day, are another interesting phase in the annals of the moss‐troopers, but they would occupy more space than we have now at command. We will close this sketch by quoting an old saying that shows that some at least of the Border chieftains, doubtless through the influence of their wives, had not relinquished all reverent belief in the things of the world to come. They may not always have acted up to what they believed; and indeed so wise a maxim as the following, if carried out in practice to its furthest limit, would have caused the pious Borderer to retire altogether from his adventurous “profession,” unless, indeed, the obscure sentence in the second line of the couplet, “Keep well the rod,” could have been twisted into an injunction to him to become an embodiment of poetical justice in the eyes of less discriminating moss‐troopers. The inscription is found over an arched door at Branxholm or Branksome Castle, and is in old black‐letter type:

In varld. is. nocht. nature. hes. vrought. yat. sal. lest. ay.

Tharefore. serve. God. keip. veil. ye. rod. thy. fame. sal. nocht. dekay. (62)

Assunta Howard. IV. Convalescence.

“I have almost made up my mind to go back to bed again, and play possum. Truly, I find but little encouragement in my tremendous efforts to get well, in the marked neglect which I am suffering from the feminine portion of my family. Clara is making herself ridiculous by returning to the days of her first folly, against which I protest to unheeding ears, and of which I wash my hands. Come here, Assunta; leave that everlasting writing of yours, and enliven the ‘winter of my discontent’ by the ‘glorious summer’ of your presence, of mind as well as of body.”

Mr. Carlisle certainly looked very unlike the neglected personage he described himself to be. He was sitting in a luxurious chair near the open window; and he had but to raise his eyes to feast them upon the ever‐ changing, never‐tiring beauties of the Alban hills, while the soft spring air was laden with the fragrance of many gardens. Beside him were books, flowers, and cigars—everything, in short, which could charm away the tediousness of a prolonged convalescence. And it must be said, to his credit, that he bore the monotony very well _for a man_—which, it is to be feared, is after all damning his patience with very faint praise.

Assunta raised her eyes from her letter, and, smiling, said:

“Ingratitude, thy name is Severn Carlisle! I wish Clara were here to give you the benefit of one of her very womanly disquisitions on man. You would be so effectually silenced that I should have a hope of finishing my letter in time for the steamer.”

“Never mind the letter,” said Mr. Carlisle. “Come here, child; I am pining to have you near me.”

Assunta laughed, as she replied:

“Would it not do just as well if I should give you the opera‐glass, and let you amuse yourself by making believe bring me to you?”

“Pshaw! Assunta, I want you. Put away your writing. You know very well that it is two days before the steamer leaves, and you will have plenty of time.” And Mr. Carlisle drew a chair beside his own.

Assunta did know all about it; but, now that the invalid was so much better, she was trying to withdraw a little from any special attentions. She felt that, under the circumstances, it would not be right to make herself necessary to his comfort; she did not realize how necessary he thought her to his very life. However, though she would skirmish with and contradict him, she had never yet been able sufficiently to forget how near he had been to death to actually oppose him. Besides, she had not thought him looking quite as strong this morning; so she put the unfinished letter back in the desk, and, taking her work‐basket, sat down beside her guardian, and tried to divert him from herself by pointing out the wonderful loveliness of the view. His face did have a weary expression, which his quondam nurse did not fail to perceive. She at once poured out a glass of wine, and, handing it to him, said:

“Tell me the truth, my friend; you do not feel very well to‐day?”

“I do not feel quite as strong as Samson,” he replied; “but you forget, Dalila, how you and the barber have shorn off the few locks the fever left me. Of course my strength went too.”

“Well, fortunately,” said Assunta, “there are no gates of Gaza which require immediate removal, and no Philistines to be overcome.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said Mr. Carlisle, putting down the wine‐ glass. “There are some things harder to overcome than Philistines, and some citadels so strong as to bid defiance to Samson, even in the full glory of his wavy curls. What chance is there, then, for him now, cruel Dalila?”

Assunta wilfully misunderstood him, and, taking her work from her pretty basket, she answered, laughing:

“Well, one thing is very certain: your illness has not left you in the least subdued. Clara and I must begin a course of discipline, or by the time your brown curls have attained their usual length you will have become a regular tyrant.”

“Give me your work, _petite_,” said Mr. Carlisle, gently disengaging it from her hand. “I want this morning all to myself. And please do not mention Clara again. I cannot hear her name without thinking of that miserable Sinclair business. It is well for him that I am as I am, until I have had time to cool. I am not very patient, and I have an irresistible longing to give him a horse‐whipping. It is a singular psychological fact that Clara has been gifted with every womanly attraction but common sense. But I believe that even you Catholics allow to benighted heretics the plea of invincible ignorance as an escape from condemnation; so we must not be too severe in our judgment of my foolish sister.”

“Hardly a parallel case,” said Assunta, smiling.

“I grant it,” replied her guardian; “for in my illustration the acceptance of the plea, so you hold, renders happiness possible to the heretic, to whom a ‘little knowledge’ would have been so ‘dangerous a thing’ as to lose him even a chance among the elect; whereas Clara’s invincible ignorance of the world, of human nature, and in particular of the nature of George Sinclair, serves only to explain her folly, but does not prevent the inevitable evil consequences of such a marriage. But enough of the subject. Will you not read to me a little while? Get Mrs. Browning, and let us have ‘Lady Geraldine,’ if you will so far compassionate a man as to make him forget that he is at sword’s points with himself and all the world, the exception being his fair consoler. Thank you, _petite_,” he continued, as Assunta brought the book. “There is plenty of trash and an incomprehensible expression or two in the poem; but, as a whole, I like it, and the end, the vision, would redeem it, were it ten times as bad. Well, I too have had a vision! Do you know, Assunta, that the only thing I can recall of those weeks of illness is your dear form flitting in and out of the darkness? But—may I dare say it?—the vision had in it a certain tenderness I do not find in the reality. I could almost believe in your doctrine of guardian angels, having myself experienced what their ministry might be.”

“I am afraid,” interrupted Assunta, “that your doctrine would hardly stand, if it has no other basis than such very human evidence. Shall I begin?”

“No, wait a minute longer,” said Mr. Carlisle. “ ‘Lady Geraldine’ will keep. I wish to put a question to your sense of justice. When I was sick, and almost unconscious, and entirely unappreciative, there was a person—so the doctor tells me—who lavished attentions upon me, counted nothing too great a sacrifice to be wasted upon me. But now that I am myself again, and longing to prove myself the most grateful of men, on the principle that ‘gratitude is a lively sense of favors _to come_,’ that person suddenly retires into the solitude of her own original indifference (to misquote somewhat grandiloquently), and leaves me wondering on what hidden rock my bark struck when I thought the sea all smooth and shining, shivering my reanimated hopes to atoms. But,” he added, turning abruptly towards her, and taking in his the hand which rested on the table beside him, “you saved my life. Bless you, child, and remember that the life you have saved is yours, now and always.”

The color had rushed painfully into Assunta’s face, but her guardian instantly released her hand, and she answered quietly:

“It really troubles me, Mr. Carlisle, that you should attach so much importance to a mere service of duty and common humanity. I did no more than any friend so situated would have had a right to claim at my hands. Your thanks have far outweighed your indebtedness.”

“Duty again!” exclaimed Mr. Carlisle bitterly. “I wish you had let me die. I want no _duty_ service from you; and you shall be gratified, for I do _not_ thank you for my life on those conditions. You spare no opportunity to let me understand that I am no more to you than all the rest of the world. Be it so.” And he impatiently snatched the _Galignani_ from the table, and settled himself as if to read.

Assunta’s temper was always roused by the unjust remarks her guardian sometimes made, and she would probably have answered with a spirit which would have belied the angel had she not happened to glance at the paper, and seen that it was upside down; and then at Mr. Carlisle’s pale and troubled features, to which even the crimson facings of his rich dressing‐ gown hardly lent the faintest glow. The same sentiment of common humanity which had prompted those days of care and nights of watching now checked the reproach she would have uttered. She turned over the leaves of Mrs. Browning, until her eye lighted upon that exquisite valediction, “God be with thee, my beloved.” This she read through to herself; and then, laying the book upon the table, she said with the tone and manner of a subdued child:

“May I finish my letter, please?”

Mr. Carlisle scarcely raised his eyes, as he replied:

“Certainly, Assunta. I have no wish to detain you.”

It was with a very womanly dignity that Assunta left her seat; but, instead of returning to her writing‐desk, she went to the piano. For nearly an hour she played, now passages from different sonatas, and then selections from the grander music of the church. Without seeming to notice, she saw that the paper at last fell from her guardian’s hand; and understanding, as she did, every change in his expressive face, she knew from the smoothing of the brow and the restful look of the eyes that peace was restored by the charm she wrought. When she was sure that the evil spirit had been quite exorcised by the power of music, she rose from the piano, and rang the bell. When Giovanni appeared, she said:

“I think that Mrs. Grey will not return until quite late, as she has gone to Tivoli; so you may serve dinner here for me as well as for Mr. Carlisle. If any one calls, I do not receive this afternoon.”

“Very well, signorina,” replied Giovanni. “I will bring in the small table from the library.” And he left the room.

“It will be much pleasanter than for each of us to dine separately in solitary state,” said Assunta, going towards her guardian, and speaking as if there had been no cloud between them; “though I know that dining in the drawing‐room must, of necessity, be exceptional.”

“It was a very bright thought of yours,” answered Mr. Carlisle, “and a very appetizing one to me, I can assure you. Will you read ‘Lady Geraldine’ now? There will be just time before dinner.”

Without a word Assunta took the book, and began to read. She had nothing of the dramatic in her style, but her voice was sweet, her enunciation very clear and distinct, and she showed a thorough apprehension of the author’s meaning; so her reading always gave pleasure, and Mr. Carlisle had come to depend upon it daily. The vision to which he had referred was robbed, perhaps fortunately, of some of its sentiment, by Giovanni’s table preparations; and his presence prevented all but very general comment.

When they were once more by themselves—Giovanni having left them to linger over the fruit and wine—Mr. Carlisle said:

“By the way, Assunta, you have not told me yet what your friend Miss Percival had to say for herself in her last letter. You know I am always interested in her; though I fear it is an interest which partakes largely of the nature of jealousy.”

“Well,” replied Assunta, “she tells me that she is going to be married.”

“Sensible girl! What more?”

“She regrets very much that her brother, whom she dearly loves, will not return from his year’s exile in time for the ceremony.”

“So much the better,” exclaimed Mr. Carlisle with unusual energy. “I hope he may lose himself in the deserts of Arabia, or wander off to further India, and there remain.”

Assunta laughed. “Truly, my guardian is most charitable! I should not be surprised if he did, one of these days, follow in the footsteps of S. Francis Xavier. But what has he done to merit sentence of banishment from you?”

“You know I am a student of human nature,” rejoined her guardian, “and I have always observed that where a young girl has a brother and a friend, she cannot conceive of any other destiny for the two objects of her affection than to make of them one united object in the holy bonds of matrimony; and, in order to bring about the desired consummation, she devotes herself to intrigue in a manner and with a zeal truly feminine. Mary Percival has a brother and a friend; ergo, may her brother be—induced to become an Oriental; that is all.”

“In this case,” replied the young girl with a merry laugh, “your observations are quite at fault. I am truly grieved to be compelled to spoil such a pretty romance. But, seriously, Mary has a far higher choice for her brother than her most unworthy friend. She has but one desire and prayer for him, and that is that he may enter the holy priesthood. I believe she will not be disappointed. Did you ever see Mr. Percival?”

“No, I have never had the pleasure,” replied Mr. Carlisle.

“I wish you might know him,” said Assunta enthusiastically. “I am sure you would like him. He is not what would generally be considered handsome, but I think his face beautiful, it is so very spiritual. It is the beauty of a remarkable soul, which literally shines in his eyes. He has taken the highest honors at college, and, if his health is only re‐established, I think his sister’s very laudable ambition will be more than gratified.”

“He certainly has a most ardent admirer. I did not know you could be so enthusiastic about any member of the _genus homo_,” said Mr. Carlisle. Assunta was not to be daunted by the perceptible sneer, and she at once added:

“I can hardly be said to admire him, but rather the power of grace in him. I have so great a reverence for Augustine Percival that I could not imagine it possible for any human affection to turn him from what I firmly believe to be his great vocation. So my guardian may see him return to the West with equanimity, and may perhaps even be induced to look with favor upon another part of the letter.”

“And what is that?” asked Mr. Carlisle.

“Mary invites me very urgently to pass next winter with her in Baltimore. Her husband‐elect is a naval officer, and his leave of absence expires in October. She wishes me as a substitute, you understand.”

“Is it your wish to go, my child?” said her guardian, looking at her earnestly.

“I never like to make any definite plan so long beforehand; but it seemed to me a very suitable arrangement. You remember,” added Assunta, “that Clara will probably be married before then.”

“I do not wish Clara to be mentioned; she has nothing to do with it,” said Mr. Carlisle imperiously; and then he added more gently, “May I ask, _petite_, what answer you have given her?”

“None, as yet; you remember you interrupted my letter. But I think I will tell her that my guardian is such an ogre that I dare not reply to her invitation until after August. Will that do?”

“Tell her what you will,” said Mr. Carlisle; “only, for heaven’s sake, say no more to me upon the subject. I am not Augustine Percival, and consequently not elevated above the power of human feeling.”

Poor Assunta! she too was not above human feeling, and sometimes it was very hard for her to keep her heart from being rebellious; but she had learned to put God before every earthly consideration, and to find her strength in his presence. But it required constant watchfulness and untiring patience to conquer herself. Therefore she could not but feel great compassion for her friend, who must bear his disappointment with no help outside of his own strong nature. She rose from the table, and moved it a little to one side, in order that she might arrange the cushions for her guardian, who looked unusually weary to‐night.

“Are you angry with me, Mr. Carlisle?” said she softly, as he sank back in his chair.

“Angry, _petite_?” he repeated, looking steadily in her face. “Yes, I am angry, but not with you, or with anything you have said to‐night, but rather with that accursed barrier. Go, child, ring for Giovanni, or I shall say what you will not like to hear.” As she turned away, he caught her hand, saying:

“One moment. I have been very rude, and yet I would die for you! There, I will not say another word. Please ring for Giovanni, since I am compelled to be so ungallant as to request the favor of you; and then let us talk a little about the Sienna plans. I must try and put myself into a good‐humor before Clara comes; for she will have something to say about her handsome Sinclair, and then I would not give much for my temper.”

The table having been removed, and the wood which had been laid ready in the fire‐place kindled into a blaze—for the evenings were still cool enough to admit of its cheery influence—the two, whose lives seemed so united, and yet were, in reality, so far apart, drew towards the fire. The heavy curtains, which had been put aside to admit the warm, genial air and sunshine of mid‐day, were now closely drawn, in order to shut out the chilling dampness of evening. A hanging lamp cast a soft, mellow light through its porcelain shade upon an exquisite basket of roses and carnations adorning the centre of the table, which was covered elsewhere with books, arranged with studied negligence, and numberless little suggestions of refinement and feminine occupation. Everything seemed favorable to a most harmonious conversation, except that inevitable something which, like a malicious sprite, awakens us from our dreams just when they are brightest; breaks the spell of our illusions at the moment when we are clinging to them most persistently; ruthlessly crosses, with its fatal track, our promised pleasures; and unfeelingly interrupts us in some hour of complete rest and satisfaction. Ah! we may fret in our impatience, and wonder at the fatality which seems to pursue us. It is no mischief‐loving Puck, no evil‐minded genie, but a good angel, who thus thwarts us. This is no time to dream and cherish illusions which can but deceive. It is no time for repose. To detach ourselves from all these things which would make this world a satisfaction to us is the labor we must all perform, more or less generously and heroically, if we would one day enjoy the reality of the one dream that never fades—the vision of the Apocalypse; the one repose that never palls—the rest that remaineth for the people of God. Welcome, then, those misnamed “juggling fiends” that “keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope.” Welcome the many disappointments, trifling in themselves, the daily crossings of our will and pleasure, which seem so petty; they perform a great mission if they succeed in loosening ever so little the cords which bind down to earth the souls that were meant for heaven. Thrice welcome whatever helps to turn the sweetness of this world to bitterness!

Poor Mrs. Grey! it had never occurred to her that she had a mission, still less such an one as we have now assigned to her. For it was her voice which caused Mr. Carlisle to sigh so profoundly that Assunta could not but smile, in spite of the regretful feeling in her own heart. It was better—and she knew it—that the softening influence of the hour should be thus rudely interrupted; but nature will not be crushed without an occasional protest. The expression of annoyance still lingered on Mr. Carlisle’s face when Clara entered the room, exclaiming:

“Come, _caro mio_, they have had the livelong day to themselves, and must have talked out by this time, even if they had the whole encyclopædia in their brains.” And as Mr. Sinclair followed with an apologetic bow, she continued:

“This ridiculous man has conscientious objections to interrupting your _tête‐à‐tête_. I am sure, Severn, if Assunta is not tired to death of you by this time, she ought to be, particularly if you have been as solemn all day as you look now. I would much rather spend the whole day in church—and that is the most gloomy thing I can think of—than be condemned to the company of a man in a mood. Make a note of that, George.

“I think, Clara,” said her brother, somewhat coldly, “that Mr. Sinclair was judging others by himself, and in doing so he judged kindly in my regard and gallantly in yours; but this is not always the true criterion. Mr. Sinclair, I beg you will be seated, and excuse me if I do not rise. I am still obliged to claim the invalid’s cloak of charity. No doubt a cup of tea will be acceptable after your long drive; and it will soon be served.”

The eyes of the two men met. They had measured each other before now, and understood each other well; and each knew that he was most cordially disliked by the other. Their ceremonious politeness was all the more marked on that account. Assunta’s tact came to the rescue, and made a diversion. As she assisted Mrs. Grey in removing her shawl and hat, she said:

“And how have you enjoyed the day, Clara? You must be very tired!”

“Oh! I am nearly dead with fatigue,” replied the lady, looking very bright and very much alive for a moribund; “but we have had a delicious time. You should have seen George trying to support his dignity on a donkey which he could easily have assisted in walking, as his feet touched the ground on both sides; and which started with a spasmodic jerk every two or three minutes when the donkey boy brought down a small club on its back. I laughed so much at Mr. Sinclair’s gravity and the ludicrous figure he cut that I narrowly escaped falling off my own donkey down a precipice.”

“ ‘Now, what a thing it is to be an ass,’ ” quoted Mr. Carlisle. “My lovely sister visits a spot whose present beauty is hardly surpassed by the richness of its classic associations; where romance lurks, scarcely hidden, in the memory of Zenobia; where the olives that cover the hillsides have a primeval look; and, like a very Titania under the love‐ spell, she wakes from her dream of the past, and, behold! her vision is—a donkey!—no, I beg pardon—_two_ donkeys; one that nearly lost its burden; and the other that its burden nearly lost!”

“How foolish you are, Severn!” said Clara, pouting very becomingly, while the others laughed heartily. “Besides, you need not expect me to get up any sentiment about Zenobia. The mistake of her life was that she did not die at the proper time, instead of retiring to a country town—of all places in the world—living a comfortable life, and dying a commonplace death in her bed, for all I know. It was just stupid in her!”

Her brother smiled. “I think you are right, Clara. Zenobia should never have survived her chains and the Roman triumph, if she had wished to leave a perfect picture of herself to posterity. However, I doubt if we have the right to exact the sacrifice of her merely to gratify our ideas of romantic propriety. By living she only proved herself less heroine, more woman. But, Clara, what _did_ you see?—besides the donkeys, I mean.”

Mr. Carlisle felt so keenly the antagonism of Mr. Sinclair’s presence, that he must either leave the room or find some vent; and therefore his sister was compelled to be safety‐valve, and submit to his teasing mood. Perhaps she was not altogether an innocent victim, since she it was who had somewhat wilfully introduced the discordant element into the family.

“We saw ruins and waterfalls, of course,” she replied to the last question—a little petulance in her tone, which soon, however, disappeared. “But the most enjoyable thing of the whole day was the dinner. I usually cannot see any pleasure in eating out of doors, but today we were obliged to do so, for the hotel was not at all inviting; and then it is the proper thing to do to have the table spread in the portico of the Temple of Vesta. Gagiati had put up a delicious dinner at Mr. Sinclair’s order, so we were not dependent upon country fries and macaroni. Just as we were sitting down Lady Gertrude came up with her mother and lover, and we joined forces. I assure you we were not silent. I never enjoyed a meal more in my life.”

“O Tivoli! ancient Tibur, how art thou fallen! Donkeys and dinner!” exclaimed Mr. Carlisle. “Well, fair Titania, did you supply your gentle animal with the honey‐bag of the ‘red‐hipped humble‐bee,’ or was his appetite more plebeian, so that ‘a peck of provender’ was more acceptable?”

“Assunta, do you allow your patient to talk so much?” said Mrs. Grey, her amiability still proof against attack. “If he excites his imagination in this way, he can hardly hope to sleep without a powerful anodyne.”

“My patient, as you call him,” replied Assunta, smiling, “is not quite so submissive, I find, as when obedience was a necessity, and not a virtue. Still, if he would allow me a very humble suggestion, I would remind him that he has not been quite as well to‐day, and that it is some time past his usual hour for retiring.”

There was no irritation in Mr. Carlisle’s face as he looked at Assunta with one of his rare smiles. The very tones of her voice seemed to give him a feeling of rest. “A very broad hint on the part of my tyrant,” he replied, “which I will be wise enough to take, in its present form, lest it should become more emphatic. Good‐night, Mr. Sinclair. I feel that there is the less need of an apology for excusing myself, as I leave you in good hands Clara, when Giovanni has served the tea, please send him to me.”

In leaving the room Mr. Carlisle dropped his cigar‐case, which Assunta perceived, and hastened with it to the library, where she knew she should find him awaiting Giovanni.

“_Petite_,” he exclaimed, as she entered, “kill that man for me, and make me everlastingly your debtor.”

“I am sure,” she answered, laughing, “you have had it all your own way to‐ night. I began to think he must have taken a vow of silence.”

“Still waters!” said her guardian. “He can afford to be silent; he is biding his time.”

“Are you not the least bit unjust and uncharitable?” asked Assunta. “But never mind, you shall not have a lecture to‐night, for you look very weary. Promise me that you will take the medicine I send you.”

“I will take it, if you bring it yourself.”

“But I cannot do that. I have your enemy to entertain, you know.”

“And much joy do I wish you,” said Mr. Carlisle. “I intend to study up affinities and repulsions psychologically; and then I shall perhaps be able to understand why one person, without any assignable cause, should act as a perpetual blister—genuine Spanish flies—and another, a certain dear little friend of mine for instance, should be ever a soothing balm.”

“Cold cream!” suggested Assunta, “since you will use such pharmaceutical comparisons. And now, if I have shocked your sense of refinement sufficiently, I must say good‐night.”

“Good‐night, dear child,” returned her guardian cordially, but his next thought was a bitter one, and an almost prophetic feeling of loneliness came over him, as he watched the smoke curling up from his cigar.

As soon as the incubus of Mr. Carlisle’s presence was removed, Mr. Sinclair threw off the silence which was so unnatural to him, and became at once the attentive, gallant man of the world. Even Assunta, had she met him then for the first time, would not have received that impression of insincerity which had repelled her formerly. She could hardly wonder to‐ night that Clara Grey, who never looked below the surface, or cared, so long as peace reigned on the outside, what elements of disturbance might be working in the depths, should have suffered her heart to confide itself to the keeping of one apparently so devoted. She had never before imagined that they were so well suited to each other; and as Mr. Sinclair, after an hour, arose to take his leave, she was surprised into most unusual cordiality, as she bade him good‐night. But, unfortunately for the impression he had been at such pains to produce, the glamour of fascination disappeared with his retreating footsteps; so that even while Mr. Sinclair was congratulating himself upon his success, Assunta found herself wondering at the almost painful revulsion of feeling which followed his departure.

Mrs. Grey’s bright face indicated no such change. She was perfectly satisfied with her lover, and no less so with herself. She checked a movement of Assunta’s to retire by saying:

“Do you mind waiting a little longer, dear? I want so much to have a quiet chat. Come, let us draw our chairs up to the fire, the blaze is so cheering.”

“You do not look as if you needed any help from outside influences,” said Assunta, and there was a shade of sadness in her tone. “But I am all ready for a talk.”

A cloud—a light summer one—overspread Mrs. Grey’s clear sky and shadowed her face, as she said, after a pause: “Assunta, why does Severn dislike George so much?”

Assunta was too truthful to deny the fact, so she simply said:

“We cannot always control our feelings, Clara; but, as a general thing, I do not find Mr. Carlisle unreasonable.”

“He certainly is very unreasonable in this case,” returned Mrs. Grey quickly, “and I am sorry it is so, for I love Severn very much. Still, I shall not allow an unfounded prejudice to stand in the way of my happiness. Assunta, I have promised Mr. Sinclair that I will marry him in September, when we shall be in Paris, on our way to America.”

“I supposed,” said Assunta, “that it would come soon, and I hope, dear Clara, that you will be very, _very_ happy.” Doubt was in her mind, but she had not the heart to let it appear in her manner.

“And,” Mrs. Grey continued, “I want you to understand, dear, that with us you will always have a home at your disposal, where you will be welcomed as a sister. George wished me to tell you that this is his desire as well as mine.”

“You are both too kind,” replied Assunta, touched by this thoughtfulness of her at a time when selfishness is regarded as a special privilege. “My arrangements can easily be made afterwards; but I do very much appreciate your kindness.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Grey, “you belong to us; and the difficulty will probably be that we shall not be able to keep such an attractive bit of property.”

“You are setting me the example,” said Assunta, laughing.

“Ah! yes,” returned Mrs. Grey; “but then, there is only one George Sinclair, you know, as a temptation.”

Assunta fancied she could hear Mr. Carlisle exclaim, “God be praised!” to that natural expression of womanly pride, and she herself wondered if it would be possible for her to fall under such a delusion.

But Mrs. Grey had not yet reached the point of the conversation; what had been said was only preliminary. The truth was, she dreaded her brother’s reception of the news, and she wished to avoid being present at the first outbreak.

“You have so much influence with Severn,” she said at last, “I wish you would tell him about it, and try to make him feel differently towards George. I am sure you can. We are going to the Villa Doria to‐morrow, and this will give you an opportunity. I hope the storm will be over before we return,” she added, laughing; “at any rate, the lightning will not strike you.”

It was like Mrs. Grey to make this request—so like her that Assunta did not think it either strange or selfish. She promised to break the news, which she knew would be unwelcome. But she could not conscientiously promise to use an influence in overcoming a prejudice she entirely shared. An affectionate good‐night was exchanged, and then Assunta retired to her room. It was not often that she indulged herself in a revery—in those waking dreams which are so unprofitable, and from which one is usually aroused with the spiritual tone lowered, and the heart discontented and dissatisfied. But this had been a trying day; and now, as she reviewed it, and came at last to its close, she found herself envying her friend the joy which seemed so complete, and wondering why her lot should be so different. Happiness had come to Mrs. Grey as to a natural resting‐place; while she, to whom a bright vision of it had been presented, must thrust it from her as if it were a curse and not a blessing. And here she paused, and better thoughts came to replace the unworthy ones. This lot which she was envying—was it not all of the earth, earthy? Would she change, if she could? Had she not in her blessed faith a treasure which she would not give for all the human happiness this world has power to bestow? And here was the key to the difference at which she had for the moment wondered. Much, very much, had been given to her; was it strange that much should be required? Had she, then, made her sacrifice only to play the Indian giver towards her God, and wish back the offering he had accepted at her hands? No, she would not be so ungenerous. In the light of faith the brightness which had illuminated the life of her friend grew dim and faded, while the shadow of what had seemed so heavy a cross resting upon her own no longer darkened her soul. And soon, kneeling before her crucifix, she could fervently thank the dear Lord that he had granted her the privilege of suffering something for his love; and she prayed for strength to take up her cross _daily_, and bear it with courage and generosity.

To Be Continued.

Inscription For The Bell “Gabriel,” At S. Mary’s Of The Lake, Lake George.

Gabrielem olim Dominam ad Mariam Evæ mutatum cecinisse nomen, Gabriel tandem cecini sacratas Primus ad oras.

Switzerland In 1873. Lucerne. Concluded.

At this point we reached the first of the existing covered bridges. What a transition! Like going back suddenly from the levelling monotony of steam and the feverish present‐day life to the individuality and repose of the middle ages! “It dates,” said Herr H——, “from the year 1300—just seven years before William Tell and the Rüti, eight before the battle of Morgarten, and eighty‐six before our great Sempach victory!”

“William Tell! What nonsense! Who believes now in William Tell?” muttered the young school‐boy C—— to his sister; but the old man fortunately did not hear him, and, his eyes beaming with affection for the old relic, he went on: “Some modern improvers”—laying contemptuous emphasis on these words—“talk of ‘clearing it away.’ But you see what a pleasant, cool walk it still is for foot‐passengers, with the green Reuss swirling beneath, and the lovely view from its open sides. I tell them that it would not only be an act of vandalism, but, as there are so few antiquities to show in Lucerne, it would be like ‘killing the goose with the golden eggs.’ ” And so it would! It is in no one’s way, and is, with the other bridge, the only remnant of antiquity worth looking at. On opening our _Wordsworth_ we found that this is the one first mentioned by him after leaving Sarnen:

“From this appropriate court renowned Lucerne Calls me to pace her honored bridge, that cheers The patriot’s heart with pictures rude and stern— An uncouth chronicle of glorious years.”

And we found it still as he describes it. The triangle of the rafters of each arch is painted, and though as works of art they are of little value, still they are clever and quaint representations of the scenes, certain to make an impression on young minds in particular, and easily discernible to an observant passer‐by. Going from the right bank of the river, reminders of events in Swiss and local history meet the eye, and, returning from the other side, the deeds of the two patron saints of the town, S. Leodegarius and S. Maurice. Both lives were most striking, and equally belonged to the earliest ages of the Christian era. S. Maurice especially is a favorite Swiss patron. He was the commander of the Theban Christian Legion in the time of the Emperor Diocletian, which is said to have consisted of sixty‐ six hundred men. This legion had been raised in the Thebaïs or Upper Egypt amongst the Christians there, and, officered by Christians, was marching with the rest of the Roman army against Gaul, under the command of Maximian, when the latter ordered the army to offer sacrifices for the success of the expedition. All encamped at the place called Octodurus, represented nowadays by the modest Martigny in the Valais; but the Theban legion, refusing to join in the pagan worship, retired to the spot where now stands S. Maurice, and day by day they were killed by orders of Maximian, until none remained. The Monastery of S. Maurice, built on the spot of their martyrdom, is one of the oldest in the world, said to have been first erected in A.D. 250, although the present edifice only dates from 1489. Switzerland and Savoy formerly disputed the honor of keeping the relics, but at last settled the matter by a small portion being handed over to Piedmont, the abbey retaining the principal treasures. It is therefore to this day one of the favorite places of pilgrimage in Switzerland. A special connection seems to have occurred with Lucerne, for two hundred bodies of S. Maurice’s companions are said to have been found at the village of Schoz, about two leagues distant, where there was an old chapel renowned for its privileges and indulgences. And this seems in no way unlikely, for we read in Butler’s _Lives of the Saints_ and elsewhere that several smaller corps of soldiers belonging to the legion were scattered here and there in Switzerland, and were put to death for the same reason. Most interesting it is, in any case, to trace on this bridge the union of two such heroic, manly saints in the affections and sympathies of the Lucerne citizens from olden times.

The bridge is five hundred feet long, and makes two sharp bends to suit the current of the river, flowing swiftly and vigorously from the lake close by through the old‐fashioned posts on towards old Father Rhine, which it joins between Schaffhausen and Basel. This irregularity adds to the picturesque effect, and at one of these corners stands a tower, mentioned in some old documents of the year 1367. Possibly it may have existed as part of the fortifications even before the bridge itself. It is called the Water Tower, and has four stories of one room each, which formerly served as treasury, prison, and record‐office; but at present it is used only for the latter purpose, and contains the archives of the city. What tales it might tell had we moderns the time to spare for listening!

But we moved on along the left bank of the river, and turned into the church, still called the “Jesuits’ Church.” It is large and unmistakably in their well‐known style. Here Herr H—— explained how the order had been introduced into Lucerne in 1574 by S. Charles Borromeo, who was such an ally of these cantons. In less than four years they had founded a college and increased rapidly. Within one hundred more they erected this church, and the large buildings adjoining for their college, now used as government offices—the post and telegraph departments. Everything went on satisfactorily for a second hundred years, until the suppression of the order by Clement XIV., in 1773, when it was also abolished in Lucerne. But the towns‐people held their memory in grateful remembrance, and one of the first acts of the _Sonderbund_ in 1845 was to call back seven Jesuit fathers. When the Protestant cantons, however, finally succeeded in crushing this League, they at once passed a law forbidding any Jesuit to remain on Swiss territory; so again the order had to leave Lucerne, and also Schwytz, where they also had a large house.

“And now,” continued Herr H——, “the liberals are clamoring for another revision of our constitution—a constitution which needs no revising, except in their sense of doing away with all faith, and meddling in our religious affairs. But the people now will not bear that,” he added grimly. “They will resist calmly at first, but I know many who will rather fight than submit tamely to have their religion or their pastors interfered with.”

It was sad to hear these forebodings in such an apparently peaceful atmosphere, and gladly we turned to watch the water‐hens, which abound in this corner of the river. Herr H—— knew them all, for they are public property, like the bears at Berne, and protected by statutes as far back as 1678. Nothing could be more graceful, gliding up and down the stream in numbers, nor prettier than the friendly terms they are on with all the inhabitants. The origin of the custom and cause of the protection, however, seems lost in obscurity; at least he could tell us nothing but the mere fact itself. A narrow footway runs along this side between the houses and the river, up and down steps, and following the windings of the rapid stream, while the massive, unadorned senate‐house is seen opposite, and all the dwellings on that bank rise straight above the water. A true mediæval picture it is—high and low gables intermixed; quaint old balconies filled with flowers above; comely housewives busy washing the household linen in the fresh waters below; merry young faces peeping through upper windows or leaning out over the red‐cushioned sills to gossip with a laughing neighbor—a locality made for a Walter Scott, and another world of thought and association from the butterfly existence that now borders the lake at only a few yards’ distance.

And by this ancient pathway we soon came to the second bridge, at the furthest end of the town—the “Spreuner” or Mill Bridge, or, more truly, the “Dance of Death” Bridge, celebrated by Longfellow in his _Golden Legend_.

We took out the poem, and read that passage on the spot, and most perfectly it answers his beautiful description. Prince Henry’s words were uttered by us where he begins:

“God’s blessings on the architects who build The bridges o’er swift rivers and abysses Before impassable to human feet, No less than on the builders of cathedrals, Whose massive walls are bridges thrown across The dark and terrible abyss of death. Well has the name of pontifex been given Unto the church’s head, as the chief builder And architect of the invisible bridge That leads from earth to heaven.”

This one is shorter than the Hafellbrücke, being only three hundred feet in length, and making a sharp bend in the centre, and was built a century later—in 1408—but somehow it is not venerable‐looking, and its grim paintings give it a more sombre character. Elsie was quite right in exclaiming: “How dark it grows!” It required many minutes to get accustomed to the darkness after the brilliant light we had left, and she must have been thankful when Prince Henry proceeded with his explanation, saying that it was

“ ‘The Dance of Death;’ All that go to and fro must look upon it, Mindful of what they shall be, while beneath Among the wooden piles, the turbulent river Rushes, impetuous as the river of life, With dimpling eddies, ever green and bright, Save where the shadow of this bridge falls on it.”

By his aid we too followed the renowned pictures copied from those at Basel. There we saw:

“The grim musician, who Leads all men through the mazes of that dance, To different sounds in different measures moving.”

The

“Young man singing to a nun, Who kneels at her devotions, but in kneeling Turns round to look at him; and Death, meanwhile Is putting out the candles on the altar.”

Here he

“Has stolen the jester’s cap and bells. And dances with the queen.”

There,

“The heart of the new‐wedded wife, Coming from church with her beloved lord, He startles with the rattle of his drum.”

And under it is written,

“Nothing but death shall separate thee and me!”

In another division is seen

“Death playing on a dulcimer. Behind him A poor old woman with a rosary Follows the sound, and seems to wish her feet Were swifter to o’ertake him.”

Underneath the inscription reads,

“Better is death than life.”

And in this strain the paintings continue, until, what between the objects and the general gloom, the effect becomes most melancholy, and we heartily sympathized in Prince Henry’s cry—his _cri du cœur_:

“Let us go forward, and no longer stay In this great picture‐gallery of Death!”

It led us straight into the heart of the old town, and with the poet we exclaimed:

“I breathe again more Freely! Ah! how pleasant To come once more into the light of day Out of that shadow of death!”

The streets were narrow, clean, and well paved, however, and everything looked so bright and cheerful—perhaps doubly so after that gloomy bridge—that our spirits at once revived. The shops were small, and all on a homely, simple scale. But there were no signs of poverty or neglect in any direction, and a general air of contentment was perceptible on all sides.

The schools were just breaking up for their mid‐day hour’s rest as we passed on, and the crowds of boys and girls flocking homewards made a bright contrast to the gloomy bridge. Troops of neatly‐dressed little maidens were especially pleasant to look at, with their books slung in diminutive knapsacks across their shoulders. A happy‐faced, merry‐looking juvenile population they all were.

Some fine religious prints in a small shop‐window next attracted our attention, and, going in, we found it to be the principal bookseller’s of Lucerne. Numberless pamphlets on all the leading topics of the day lay on the counter, of which one caught my eye from its peculiarly local title: _Festreden an der Schlachtfeier_, or _Speeches at the Festival_, held on the anniversary of the battle of Sempach, on the 8th of July, 1873.

“What is this?” I asked.

“The celebration of our glorious victory over the Austrians!—the Marathon of Swiss history, as its hero, Arnold von Winkelried, may be called our Leonidas,” replied Herr H——. “It took place in 1386. You passed near the site yesterday, for the railway runs beside the Lake of Sempach, if you remember.”

“Oh! this, then, is a celebration, I suppose, in the style of the twelve hundredth commemoration of Ely Cathedral which they are going to hold in England next month. We might as well celebrate Agincourt or Crécy. But this cannot be called a ‘centenary’ or any name of that kind, as it will not be five hundred years since the battle until 1886!”

“No, it is nothing of the kind,” he replied, “but is an anniversary religiously kept every year. The town council of Lucerne, and the mayor at their head, with all the authorities and a vast multitude of people, go to the battle‐field every 8th of July. We go there for two purposes: first, to pray for the dead who lie buried there, and then in order to keep the memory of the heroism of that day and of those who gained us our freedom fresh in our own minds, and to transmit it to our children, as it has been transmitted to us by our fathers. Allow me to present you with this pamphlet. It contains the sermon preached on the last occasion by Herr Pfarrer Haas of Hitzkirch, and the speech made at the Winkelried monument by Herr Regierungrath Gehrig, and they have been printed by order of our government here. You will find them interesting, and also these,” giving me another bundle, “and they will show you that, next to love of our holy faith, ‘love of fatherland’ and of ‘liberty’ are deep‐seated in the heart of every man belonging to these Catholic cantons.”

“Do tell us about the festival!” we cried. “Is it a pretty sight?”

“You have no idea how pretty,” he answered—“pretty even if only as a sight; for so many priests come that they have to erect altars in the open air, and Masses are going on and congregations praying round them in all directions over the ground the whole morning. This sermon,” he continued, opening the pamphlet, and reading from it as he spoke, “opens poetically by allusions to ’the green fields, the singing of the birds, and the peaceful landscape, which alone form the decorations to the quiet prayer of the priests—the ‘Stilles Priestergebet—which had been going on uninterruptedly from the first rosy dawn of morning up to that hour’; while the speech equally begins by a reference to the ‘lovely lake of the forest cantons, whence came the men who achieved the victory, and whose descendants are as patriotic now as in those far‐off days.’ You will seldom hear a sermon, by the way, in these parts, without allusion to the magnificence of our nation, and to the great deeds of our forefathers. Old and young, clergy and laity, we are always exhorting each other to imitate them. And is it not right? We feel the deep truth of the principle I have lately seen so beautifully expressed by a Catholic writer that I learned it by heart at the time. ‘Nations,’ he says, ‘live by traditions, more even than individuals. By them the past extends its influence over the present, illumines it with the reflection of its glory, and animates it with its spirit. Traditions bind together the successive periods in a nation’s existence, and preserve amongst its children the unity produced by a long community of dangers and struggles, of triumphs and reverses.’ Revolutionists alone wish to break with the past, which, in this country at least, is in direct opposition to their godless theories, and at variance with all their passions. And long may it continue so! The last passage of Herr Gehrig’s speech, by which he winds up, is very fine on that point,” he said, again reading: “ ‘The Swiss, says an old proverb of the XVIth century, have a noble land, good laws, and a wise Confederacy—a Confederacy that is firm and strong, because it is not dictated by passion. Comrades! let us keep this legacy of our fathers sacred. The fatherland before all! God protect the fatherland!’ ”

As he spoke these words we came to the senate‐house square, in sight of the glaring frescos of this same battle of Sempach, and the list of all other Swiss victories, with which its tower has been recently covered.

“It is not by badly‐painted representations such as these,” he continued, smiling, “that we try to keep up the old spirit, but by that true eloquence which touches the heart and convinces the reason. These two addresses were most soul‐stirring—the sermon and speech equally fine—and made the greatest impression. The speech is a short summary of our history and of Arnold von Winkelried, opening, as I said, by allusion to that ‘pearl of creation,’ that lake of the forest cantons, which is bordered by the _Urschweiz_.”

“What does that mean?” asked Caroline C——. “I so often have noticed the word without understanding it.”

“It simply means, ‘The original Switzerland.’ The particle _ur_ means in German something very ancient, or the origin or root of anything. It is the proudest title of these forest cantons, and therefore you will constantly find it used, varied now and then as the _Urcantone_. They are truly the cradle, not only of Switzerland, but of our freedom, and so far preserve the same spirit of independence and of courage up to this hour.”

“And the sermon—what was that like?” asked young C——, whose interest, notwithstanding his scepticism about William Tell, was now thoroughly roused.

“The sermon was most suitable to the times,” replied Herr H——. “The subject was concord or harmony; and its aim, to show how we ought to copy those virtues of our ancestors which caused true harmony. It was divided, as you may see here, into four points; First, _Fidelity_, when the preacher drew a beautiful picture of Swiss fidelity from the earliest ages—a fertile theme. Next, _Justice_—Christian justice, for he averred that real justice never existed in the pagan world, and he again goes back to the XIVth century to show how the men of that age acted, so that the historian Zschokke calls it ‘the golden age’ of Switzerland! And he fortifies his assertions by quotations from old annals. Here is one from the celebrated oath of the Rüti, in 1307: ‘Every man must protect the innocent and oppressed people in his valley, and preserve to them their old rights and freedom. On the other hand, we do not wish to deprive the Counts of Habsburg of the smallest portion of their property, of their rights, or of their vassals. Their governors, followers, servants, and hirelings shall not lose a drop of blood.’ Then, again, how the same men in 1332 gave an order to the judges ‘not to favor any one in a partisan spirit, but to deal justice according to their oaths.’ Again, in 1334, they answer a proposition made to them by the emperor by proudly telling him that ‘there are laws which even princes should not transgress.’ Of their own government they require ‘that the citizens shall receive security for honor, life, and property; that the magistrates shall listen to the complaints of the poor, and not answer them sharply; that they shall not pronounce judgment imperiously, nor, above all, condemn capriciously.’ This was in 1335. He continues then to prove how scrupulously they forbid feuds and lawless plundering; and the high respect our ancestors showed for churches and ecclesiastical institutions is supported by a quotation from a league that was sworn to at Zurich immediately after this very battle of Sempach, called, in consequence, the Sempacher Brief, where this remarkable passage occurs: ‘As the Almighty has chosen the churches for his dwelling, so it is our wish that none of us shall dare to break into, plunder, or destroy any convent or chapel whatsoever.’ This took place in 1393, and Herr Pfarrer Haas ends this part by an appeal to the present generation: ‘Do you wish to imitate your ancestors? Then give weight in the council‐chamber, in the tribunals, in the framing of laws, in their execution and administration, to that Christian justice which gives and leaves to each man that which by right belongs to him. By that means you will preserve harmony in the land—the foundation‐stone of national prosperity, and the strength of the Confederacy. States grow old and pass away, but Christianity has eternal youth and freshness. When a nation reposes on the rock of Christian justice, she never suffers from the changes of childhood, youth, manhood, or old age, but flourishes for ever in perpetual freshness and vigor.’ ”

“That is very fine!” all exclaimed. “But it is the more striking when one finds it was only spoken the other day. It sounds so like an old middle‐ age sermon addressed to men of the ‘ages of faith.’ ”

“You are right,” returned Herr H——; “but I assure you the tone is the ordinary one of sermons in these districts, and elicited no astonishment, though a great deal of sympathy. It will tire you, however, to hear more, so we had better go on!” We had been lingering on the promenade while listening to him, under the shady chestnuts facing the lake; but now all unanimously begged he would continue, merely moving to a bench nearer our hotel.

“Well, as you wish it, I shall obey!” he said, making us a bow, with a smile of pleasure at our increasing interest in his country. “The next division of the sermon, on virtue and morality, was ably argued, as you will perceive whenever you read this pamphlet; especially in reference to the modern doctrines on these subjects now propounded in other parts of Switzerland.” (We thought here of our recent experience at the book‐stall at Berne!) “And the preacher complimented the inhabitants of the rural cantons on the Christian faith and simple, virtuous manners they still retain, ending by quotations from our Lord’s words in the New Testament, and saying that ‘enlightenment is not unbelief, but the true and proper use of belief.’’ The fourth and last essential to harmony he shows to be that interior peace which can be produced by the Christian faith alone. No one can be a good citizen who does not conquer the passions of his own nature, and obtain that inner tranquillity of mind which is the growth of true religion. Amongst other proofs of his argument he quotes from Blessed Nicholas von der Flüe. I presume you know who he was?”

Each of us in turn was obliged to answer “No,” although the name was not unfamiliar to some. But the more we heard, the greater did our humiliation gradually become at finding how slightly we were acquainted with this Swiss life; and every one rejoiced when Herr H—— replied:

“Blessed Nicholas was a hermit, but as great a patriot as he was a saint.” However, you will hear enough about him when you visit Stanz and Sarnen. His words carried immense weight in his day, and he is still very much revered, and is perpetually quoted. He lived in the XVth century, and our Herr Pfarrer Haas here gives a long extract from one of his letters to the Mayor of Berne in those years. After this he goes on to say: “Such was the faith of your forefathers! The prayers which the combatants said on this very spot amidst the scoffs of their enemies; the Sacred Host which the priest carried at Lauffen; the anniversaries they founded; the Holy Sacrifice they ordered should be offered on those days of commemoration; the crosses they erected over the graves of all who fell in the combat, prove where their souls sought and obtained rest and peace.” “Fidelity, justice, virtue, and faith form the groundwork of the union and harmony of a people. Let each one of us, in his circle, and amongst those whom he can influence, strengthen these pillars of the edifice, and in this manner we can best help to secure the happiness and solidity of our dearly‐loved Swiss fatherland.” Then he winds up by a beautiful peroration, thus: “We stand here on graves. Simple stone crosses rise above these tombs, where for the last four hundred and eighty‐seven years the heroes of Sempach, friends and enemies, repose after their hard day’s work. Sleep in peace, ye dead! I envy ye your rest! There may be fighting and storm o’erhead, but what matters that to the sleepers? Your eyes are closed! Ye do not watch the troubles and sorrows of mankind, the cares and burdens of life, the battle of the spirits, the play of passions. Once, too, your hearts beat high in the decisive hour. Each Swiss and Austrian believed that he defended the right. On both sides stood great men and great heroes. Death, brave hearts, has united you in peace; and over your graves, for nearly five hundred years, has stood the cross in token of conciliation—the symbol of peace, the badge of the confederates; indicating that Switzerland will still stand firm in harmony when the hotly‐contested opinions surging in her midst at this day shall long since have sunk into dust and ashes.

“ ‘Our faith is firm in fatherland; Although brave sons may die, Swiss soil will still yield faithful band To wield the cross on high: The white, unsullied cross for aye O’er Switzerland shall fly.’ ”

“Magnificent!” all again exclaimed, “in language and sentiment! How we should like to have heard it!”

“There was a great crowd this year,” continued Herr H——, “though numbers never fail on any occasion. But a musical festival had taken place in Lucerne the day before, so for that reason there were more than usual. The majority now go by rail, but in my youth the procession of carriages was much more imposing. And Lucerne then was a Vorort, or capital of the Confederacy alternately with Zurich and Berne—a system long since done away with; so that when the year came for its turn, all the deputies and the diplomatic representatives were invited, and came too—all except an old Austrian, whom nothing could move. I well remember hearing that his colleagues used to laugh at him for keeping up the feeling after so many hundred years; but it was so strong that he never could hear William Tell’s name mentioned without calling him an ‘assassin’; and you may imagine how the others amused themselves by always bringing up the subject. The feeling against the Austrians is very strong, too, amongst the Swiss.”

“I never understand it,” remarked Caroline C——. “I have always been taught to look on Rudolph von Habsburg as a perfect character; and yet the moment one comes to this country, one hears nothing but abuse of the Habsburgs. Do explain it.”

“I should have to give you a lecture on Swiss history, dear young lady, I fear, before you could understand it; and there is no time for that now.”

“Oh! do tell us something. There is still half an hour before the _table‐ d’hôte_, and it is so pleasant sitting here. We should all like to have a clearer view of the reason of this dislike. I am always much puzzled, too, in Schiller’s _William Tell_, at the conspirators always wanting to be under the empire alone, and not through the Habsburgs; and it is so troublesome to wade through a history when travelling,” she replied.

“But I should go back to the very beginning for that purpose,” he answered. “However, if you insist, I shall give you a few leading facts that you can find amplified whenever you feel inclined to read a Swiss history right through. May I presume, then, that you know,” he continued, laughing, “that the first inhabitants of Switzerland are supposed to have been offshoots of Northern tribes—men driven from their homes by famine? There were a few settlers before these, said to be refugees from Italy, but only in a wild corner of the mountains, hence called Rhœtia; and they were so few and so isolated that they are not worth mentioning. The stream of inhabitants poured down by the Lake of Constance. Some say that the same names are found to this day in Sweden as in the valleys of these cantons. In any case, the tradition is that two brothers, Switer and Swin, arrived with their families and followers, and settled at the upper end of this lake, and from them the territory they occupied was called Schwytz. It is quite certain that this was the first part occupied; therefore the title it claims of ‘Urschweiz,’ or ‘original Switzerland,’ is most appropriate. They spread all round this lake and through these forest cantons, on from one valley to another, to the foot of the great snowy Alp region, but not further. Other races came later, and settled at Geneva and elsewhere, and, coming into collision with Rome, then mistress of the world, were finally made part of the Roman Empire. Then came the inroad of other barbarians on the downfall of Rome, and everything was in utter confusion until the light of Christianity shone over the land. It was introduced here, as in Germany, by missionaries who came from all parts, and a bishopric even was founded at Chur in the earliest Frankish times. Convents, too, rose on all sides. You will find remains of them in the most remote valleys and out‐of‐the‐way corners of the country. S. Sigebert, for instance, came from France, and built Disentis in the wilds of Rhœtia, now the Grisons. S. Columba and S. Maughold preached along the Reuss and the Aar, and the great S. Gall evangelized the wild district round the Lake of Constance, girt by forests filled with all manner of wild beasts. The celebrated convent of his name was built on the site of his hermitage, and gave rise to the town of St. Gall. Einsiedeln, too, the famous monastery which you are going to visit, dates also from that period, over the cell of the hermit Meinrad, and so on in every direction. Even Zurich and our own Lucerne owe their origin to convents. As in so many other countries, so here likewise the monks spread civilization, opened schools, and taught the people agriculture. Then came another period of confusion after Charlemagne’s reign, which ended by the greater portion of Switzerland falling to the share of his successors in the German Empire. There were numberless dukes and counts all over the land who already held large possessions, but had been vassals of the Dukes of Swabia. Now, however, they set him at defiance, and would obey no one but the emperor. Many of the monasteries, too, had acquired considerable property by this time, and their abbots were often powerful lords. They followed the example of the counts and dukes, and also assumed independence. But, on the other hand, the towns equally rose in importance, and often set the nobles and abbots at naught. These then, in order not to lose their influence, strove to increase the number of their vassals by making clearances in their forests, promoting the establishment of villages, and granting privileges to their inhabitants, in all which you will find the origin of the extraordinary number of rural communes for which Switzerland has always been so noted. The nobles, who had no occupation but war, were engaged in constant feuds amongst themselves or with the towns of which they were most jealous, and, leading lawless lives, wasted their inheritance little by little. The Crusades also contributed to diminish them, for all the knights in the country flocked thither. In the course of time their numbers dwindled considerably by these means, or by the sale of their property and feudal rights to the towns and even to the villages. At the period we are talking of, however, they were amongst the heroes of the land, and often fought bravely and made themselves respected.

“In one district, however, there were neither nobles, nor castles, nor towns, nor monasteries, nor any inhabitants, except the descendants of the first settlers. That was in the wild region of Rhœtia, and in what now constitutes these forest cantons, or Vierwaldstätter, as they are called in German. The latter all sprang from one common stock, and for a long time had only one head and one church. This was in the Muotta Valley, and thither came the entire population of Schwytz, Unterwalden, and Uri. At last, when they increased and multiplied, they divided into these three districts, built their own churches, and elected their own _Landamman_, or chief magistrate, and their own council. No one claimed sovereignty over this mountain district but the emperor. To him the people never objected; on the contrary, they were rather glad to enjoy his powerful protection, and willingly accepted, nay, often chose, the imperial judges to act as arbitrators in cases of their own internal disputes. Now, these judges were called governors, or Vogts, and, in order to distinguish them from inferior governors, were entitled _Reichsvögte_, or governors of the empire. It is well to bear this in mind, for on this point turned the whole dispute with the Habsburgs, and it was the cause of the conspiracy of the Rüti and of our subsequent freedom. It must also be remembered that the object of every community in the country at that period was to free itself from the yoke of the local laws, whether nobles or abbots, and to place themselves directly under the empire. And in this almost every town succeeded by slow degrees. The advantages were very great. First of all, they were not liable to the constant petty exactions of near neighbors, and the imperial government was so far away that they were allowed to administer their own property and to choose their own authorities, being only asked in exchange to pay some light taxes to the imperial treasury, and to accept a _Reichsvögt_, or governor. His office was merely to uphold the emperor’s rights, and to act as judge in matters of life and death—a condition never refused; for it was held that, being a stranger, he would be more impartial than one of their community.

“Amongst the nobles who had gradually grown powerful at this time were the Counts of Habsburg, who lived in the Aargau, and, instead of diminishing, had been daily extending, their possessions and influence. Suddenly and unexpectedly Count Rudolph was chosen Emperor of Germany. There were great disputes between the German princes on the death of the late emperor, and the story runs that they elected him simply on the assurance of the Elector of Cologne, who declared that Rudolph von Habsburg was upright and wise, beloved by God and man.

“This, as you know, proved true, and you were perfectly right in believing him to have been a ‘perfect character.’ Moreover, he never forgot his old fellow‐countrymen, and showered favors on them as long as he lived. Many places were made direct fiefs of the empire by him, amongst others our town of Lucerne, but more especially these forest cantons; and he raised the Bishop of Lausanne and the Abbot of Einsiedeln to the rank of princes of the empire. As a natural result, the whole country grew devoted to him, and came forward with gifts of money and assistance of every kind whenever he required it.

“But with his successor, his son Albrecht, comes the reverse of the medal. It was soon seen that he thought of nothing but increasing his own family possessions, and had no respect for the privileges of the towns or rural populations. Foreseeing evil times, therefore, Uri, Schwytz, and Unterwalden met together, and made a defensive league, binding themselves by oath to stand by each other and to defend themselves against all enemies. Hence the origin of their name, ‘Eidgenossen,’ which in German means ‘oath‐participators.’ The Bishop of Constance and Duke of Savoy made a separate agreement, and so did various others. At last the princes of Germany also became so discontented with Albrecht that they elected a Prince Adolf of Nassau in his stead. The whole country was soon divided into two parties, one for and the other against Albrecht of Austria, as he had then become. Down he marched with a large army, devastated the territory of the Bishop of Constance, and Adolf of Nassau lost life and crown in a desperate battle. The confederates had taken no part against Albrecht openly as yet, and sent ambassadors to beg he would respect their ancient rights, as his father of glorious memory had always done. But he only answered ‘that he would soon change their condition.’ Meantime, the majority of the nobles joined his side; but the towns resisted him, and Berne gained such a great victory that he got alarmed and made peace with Zurich, confirming all its privileges. He then sent word to the Waldstätter cantons that he wished to treat them as the beloved children of his own family, and that they had better at once place themselves under Austrian protection. But the sturdy, free‐hearted mountaineers replied that they preferred the old rights they had inherited from their fathers, and desired to continue direct vassals of the empire. Albrecht was not prepared to enforce their submission, so he resorted to the expedient of sending them _Reichsvögte_ who were wicked and cruel men, that were ordered, besides, to oppress and torment them in such a manner that they should at last desire in preference to place themselves under Austro‐ Habsburg protection. Chief of these was the now far‐famed Gessler, and also Landerberg, whose castle at Sarnen was the first destroyed later. Not only were they cruel, but they insisted on living in the country, although all previous _Reichsvögte_, or governors, had only come there occasionally, and had allowed the people to govern themselves. Unable to bear it, the celebrated ‘three,’ Stauffacher, Fürst, and Melchthal, whom you now know through Schiller, if from no other source, met together. Stauffacher came from Schwytz, Walther Fürst from Uri, and Arnold von Melchthal represented Unterwalden, and they chose for their meeting the central spot of the meadow, called the Rüti, which you will pass when sailing up the lake. Each brought ten others with them, and in their name and that of all their fellow‐countrymen they took that oath which was quoted in the sermon as I read it just now. This union of the three cantons was the foundation of the Swiss Confederation. Lucerne joined it in 1332, and then it became the League of the Four Forest Cantons, all surrounding this lake. Some say that Tell was one of the ten from his canton, but others deny this. It does not much matter, for one fact is certain: that the whole country was discontented, and Gessler grew alarmed without knowing of the conspiracy, which alarm was the cause of his conduct towards Tell.”

“Oh! William Tell is all a myth,” exclaimed young C——, who never could conceal his sentiments on this point. “No one believes in him nowadays.”

“My dear young gentleman,” answered Herr H—— quietly, “it is easy for modern critics to say this. They may laugh and sneer as they like. Nothing is more easy than to argue against anything. I remember often hearing that Archbishop Whately—your own archbishop—was so convinced of this that he once undertook to write a pamphlet in this style, disproving the existence of the First Napoleon, and succeeded triumphantly. But _I_ hold with Buckle—your own Buckle too!” he said, laughing—“who declares that he relies more on the strength of local traditions and on native bards than on anything else. The great argument against William Tell, I know perfectly well, is that the same story is to be found in Saxo‐Grammaticus, and also in Sanscrit; but that does not disturb me, for there is no reason why the same sort of thing may not have happened in many a place. These mountaineers certainly had no means of studying either the one or the other in what _you_, no doubt, will call the ’dark ages’! Just have patience until you see the Tell chapels and hear a little more on the subject, and I hope you will change your mind. One thing is certain, namely, that Tell was not the _cause_ of the conspiracy, and that his treatment did not make the confederates depart from their original plan, which was to rise on the New Year’s night of 1308. In _my_ humble opinion, Schiller has done poor William Tell no good, for between him and the opera the story has been so much popularized that this alone has raised all the doubts about it. People fancy it was Schiller’s creation more or less, altogether forgetting that the chapels and the veneration for Tell have existed on the spot these hundreds of years. It is fortunate Arnold von Winkelried has not been treated in the same way, or we should doubt his existence too.”

“You have not told us anything about Sempach yet,” broke in Caroline C——, anxious to stop the discussion, which seemed likely to vex the old gentleman, especially as she well knew her brother’s school‐boy disposition for argument.

“Morgarten and much more occurred before that, mademoiselle,” answered Herr H——, “all tending to increase the national hatred of Austria. As a natural consequence of the Rüti and its uprising, Albrecht became enraged against the forest cantons, and marched at once to Switzerland with a large force. But a most unexpected, startling event happened. He had a nephew, Duke John of Swabia, who was his ward, but from whom he continued to withhold his patrimony on one pretext or another. The young man at length grew furious, and, as they were crossing this very same river Reuss at Windisch, Duke John stabbed his uncle, whilst a noble, a conspirator of John’s, struck him on the head. There were a few others present, but in a panic they all fled, and left the Emperor of Germany to die in the arms of a poor woman who happened to be passing.

“The deed was so fearful that even Albrecht’s worst enemies were horrified, and it is said that the murderers wandered over the world, and ultimately died as outcasts. Zurich shut its gates against them, and the forest cantons refused them all shelter. But Albrecht’s family not only pursued them, but behaved inhumanly. His widow and two children, Duke Leopold and Agnes, Queen of Hungary, came at once to Switzerland, and seized innocent and guilty right and left, destroying without scruple the castle of any noble whom they suspected in the slightest degree, and executing all without mercy. Agnes in particular was cruel beyond measure. One story related of her by Swiss historians is that, after having witnessed the execution of sixty‐three innocent knights, and whilst their blood was flowing at her feet, she exclaimed: ‘Now I am bathing in May‐ dew!’ Whether literally true or not, it shows what she must have been to have given cause for such a tale. In fact, the stories of her merciless character are too numerous and terrible to repeat now. At last she and her mother, the widow, built a magnificent convent on the site of the murder, which you may have heard of as _Königsfelder_, or the King’s Field. There she subsequently retired to ‘end her days in piety’; but the people detested her, and Zschokke says that once when she was passing through the convent, and bowed to one of the monks, he turned round and boldly addressed her thus: ‘Woman! it is a bad way to serve God, first to shed innocent blood, and then to found convents from the spoils of the victims.’ She died there, and we have a piece of silk in the arsenal in Lucerne which formed part of her funeral apparel.”

“Oh! how horrible,” exclaimed Caroline C——. “But I would give anything to see it! How could we manage it?”

“Very easily,” replied Herr H——. “If you only have time, we might go there after dinner. It is close to the Spreuner Brücke, and I can get you in. There are many trophies also from Sempach, and other victories besides.”

“Do tell us about Sempach,” I interposed. “It is getting late, and I fear the dinner‐bell will soon ring.”

“First came the battle of Morgarten, of which you will see the site from the top of the Rigi. Albrecht’s son Leopold followed up his father’s grudge against the forest cantons, and gave them battle there in 1308, when he was signally defeated. It was a glorious victory by a handful of peasants. But you will read about it on your journey. Sempach is our Lucerne property. It did not take place for sixty‐nine years after Morgarten, but in the interval there had been constant fighting with the house of Austria, which still kept its possessions in Switzerland, and also with the nobles, who hated the towns‐people, and clung to the Habsburgs more or less. It was about this time that a castle belonging to the latter, on this lake, just round the projecting corner to our left, was destroyed by the people. It was called here Habsburg, and has lately been restored by a foreigner. On all sides the worst feelings were kept alive, and it only required a spark to set all in a blaze. This eventually happened by some angry Lucerners levelling to the ground the castle of a knight who had imposed undue taxes upon them. He, on his side, appealed to the Habsburg of the day, who, by a curious coincidence, was also a Duke Leopold, son of the Leopold who was defeated at Morgarten. Full of anger, he gathered all his forces, and marched in hot haste against Lucerne. But on the heights near the Lake of Sempach he encountered the confederates. They had come from Lucerne, with contingents, though in small force, from all the forest cantons. It was hilly ground, most unfitted for cavalry; but Leopold would not wait for his infantry, and, making his heavily‐armed knights dismount, he ordered them to rush with their pointed lances in close ranks on the enemy. It was like a wall of iron, and at first the confederates could make no impression upon it. They fell in numbers, and were just beginning to despair when a voice cried out, ‘I will open a path to freedom! Faithful, dearly‐loved confederates, take care of my wife and child!’ and a man, rushing forward, seized as many lances as he could clasp, buried them in his own body, and fell dead. This was Arnold von Winkelried, an inhabitant of Stanz, about whom little else is known. Over his corpse his comrades pressed forward through the opening he had thus made, and they never again yielded the dear‐bought advantage. The struggle became fearful on both sides; prodigies of valor were performed, and it is said that three standard‐bearers were killed before the flag of Austria could be captured. Eventually the knights turned in order to retreat; but their heavy armor impeded them, and their men, sure of victory, had led their horses far away. So they were cut down by hundreds. Duke Leopold was killed by a man from Schwytz; but they all fought bravely, and defended their banners with such tenacity that one was found torn into small shreds, in order that the enemy might not get it, while its pole was firmly clenched between the teeth of the dead man who had been carrying it. That was the glorious battle of Sempach, which finally crushed the power of the Habsburgs in Switzerland, and after which our liberty was firmly established. Is it any wonder, then, that we celebrate it so religiously, or that the antipathy to Austria was so deeply rooted in the nation? The whole aim of the Habsburgs after Rudolph’s reign, and of the nobles who were their vassals, was to crush our privileges and freedom. In consequence, they were so hated that no one could even venture to wear a peacock’s feather, merely because it was the favorite ornament of the Austrian dukes. In fact, peacocks were forbidden in Switzerland; and a story is told, to show how far the feeling went, of a man having broken his wine‐glass at a public tavern, merely because he fancied that he saw the colors of a peacock’s tail in the play of the sun’s rays on the glass.”

As Herr H—— pronounced these words the first dinner‐bell rang, and we all rose, thanking him cordially for his most interesting lecture. Caroline C—— in particular was most grateful, declaring that she never could understand anything of Swiss history before, but now had the clearest view of its general bearings.

After dinner all except myself and Mrs. C—— started off at once for the arsenal to see the “relics,” as they now called them; but we two adjourned to the Hofkirche at four o’clock to listen to the organ, played there daily for strangers, as at Berne and Freyburg. The Lucerne instrument is not so well known as those two, but it is equally fine, if not finer. It was admirably played, too, and we sat entranced by its tones, especially by its heavenly Vox Angelica, fully sympathizing with Wordsworth when standing on the old Hofbridge that came up to the church hill in his day, and writing:

“Volumes of sound, from the cathedral rolled, This long‐roofed vista penetrate.”

We had arranged to sleep that night at Vitznau, at the foot of the Rigi, in order to ascend by the first train next morning, and for this purpose were to leave in a six o’clock steamer. It seemed difficult to tear ourselves so quickly away from Lucerne, and the hurry was considerable. The remainder of our party, however, returned just in time, full of all they had seen—“Agnes’ shroud,” a dreadful title for a piece of heavy silk used at her funeral, striped yellow and black, the Habsburg colors; Duke Leopold’s coat‐of‐mail, in which he was killed at Sempach, and a dozen others; a heap of lances taken there; numbers of trophies from Grandson and Morat, the battles with Charles the Bold; but, what interested them most, the great standard of Habsburg, of yellow silk with a red lion on it, taken at Sempach, and another, a white flag, covered, they said, with blood, also captured there. Young C—— was most struck besides with a very old vase decorated with the meeting at the Rüti.

It was a lovely evening, but, though the sail promised to be delightful, we left Lucerne and its worthy citizen with regret, thanking him cordially, over and over again, for the interest he had given us in his country, and at last persuaded him to come and meet us in a day or two, and act as our cicerone in part of the forest cantons, which by his means already assumed a place in our affections.

A Legend Of Alsace. Concluded.

From The French Of M. Le Vicomte De Bussierre.

VIII.

Odile, who had returned to Hohenbourg without her father’s consent, was now forced to remain against her own will. Her reputation so spread throughout the province that people of the highest rank went to see her, and several aspired to her hand. Among these suitors was a young German duke whose station, wealth, and personal qualities gave him an advantage over his rivals. Adalric and Berswinde joyfully gave their consent, and the marriage settlements were agreed upon. The arrangement was then made known to Odile, who declared firmly but respectfully that she had chosen Christ for her spouse, and could not renounce her choice. But this projected marriage flattered the pride and ambition of her father, and, after vainly endeavoring to persuade her to consent to it, he sought to obtain by force what mildness had not been able to effect. Odile, seeing that her liberty of action was to be infringed upon, felt that flight was her only resource. Commending herself to God and Our Blessed Lady, she clothed herself early one morning in the rags of a beggar, and left the castle unobserved, descending the mountain by an obscure and almost impassable ravine. It was in the year 679. Her first intention was to take refuge in the Abbey of Baume, but, considering that would be the first place to seek for her, she resolved to conceal herself from all mankind, and lead henceforth a difficult and solitary life for the love of her Redeemer. She therefore directed her steps toward the Rhine, and, meeting a fisherman, she gave him a small piece of money to take her across the river.

Odile had been accustomed to seclude herself several hours a day for prayer and meditation, so her non‐appearance excited no surprise. She was supposed to be at her devotions, and was already several miles from home, when the report of her disappearance spread consternation throughout the manor. The duke, distressed by her flight, assembled all his followers, ordered his four sons to pursue her in four different directions, and directed his servants to scour the surrounding country. Berswinde alone did not share the general grief. She would indeed have been pleased by the marriage of her daughter and the German duke, but Odile’s motives for declining the alliance, the remembrance of the miracle wrought at her baptism, and the manifest protection of heaven she was so evidently under, made her mother sure that the support of the Most High would not in this case be wanting.

Adalric himself set off with several esquires, and unwittingly took the same route as his daughter. He soon came to the Rhine, where he heard that a young beggar‐girl, whose rags could not conceal her noble air and extreme beauty, had crossed the river and gone towards Fribourg. The duke, sure it was his daughter, likewise crossed over, and came so close upon her steps that it seemed impossible for her to escape. But the princess, says the old chronicle of Fribourg containing these details, coming in sight of the city near a place called Muszbach, was so overcome with fatigue that she was obliged to sit down and take breath. She had hardly thanked God for his protection thus far when she perceived, at some distance, a company of horsemen swiftly approaching. Then recognizing her father and his followers, she raised her eyes to heaven, whence alone she could expect succor, and prayed fervently: “O my Saviour!” cried she, “spotless protector of virgins! I am lost unless thou shieldest me from their eyes, and coverest me with the shadow of thy wings!” And our Lord, says the legend, heard this earnest prayer: the rock on which she was seated opened to shelter her from her eager pursuers, and had hardly closed upon her when Adalric came up. As soon as he had passed by Odile came out, and, that posterity might not lose the remembrance of this miracle, a limpid stream of healing waters flowed henceforth from the rock. This fountain became eventually the resort of pilgrims, and the saint herself had a chapel built over it in commemoration of her deliverance.

The duke, unsuccessful in his search, returned to Hohenbourg. Unable to resign himself to the loss of his daughter, he fell into a state of sadness and discouragement. Weeks, nay, months, passed, but no news of the fugitive. Adalric finally proclaimed throughout his duchy, at the sound of the trumpet that he would henceforth leave his daughter free to pursue her own course of life, if she would only return to her family.

Having no longer any excuse for remaining away from her family, where she might be called to labor for God, Odile left her retreat at Brisgau, and returned home.(63)

IX.

Adalric’s promises were sincere. He was eager to aid Odile as much as he could in the realization of her most cherished hopes. “For it was in the decrees of divine Providence,” says an old Latin chronicle, “that this light should be placed in a candlestick, that it might give light to all who were in the house; and God had inspired Odile with the resolution to found a community of noble virgins who would live in retirement and observe the evangelical counsels.”

The saint opened her heart to her father, representing to him that Alsace had already convents for men, but no retreat for women who wished to renounce the world, and that such a refuge would be useful and at the same time pleasing to God. Adalric listened favorably to his daughter, and, whether the proposition pleased him or he did not wish to oppose her inclinations, he gave her in due form, in the year 680, the Castle of Hohenbourg with its vast dependencies and immense revenues, that she might convert what had till then been the principal bulwark of Alsace into an inviolable asylum for noble ladies of piety who wished to consecrate themselves to God.

Odile then assembled a number of workmen, and had all the buildings removed that would be of no use to a religious community. This done, they proceeded to construct the convent. It took them ten years. Adalric generously defrayed all the expenses, and even directed the architects, enjoining on them to neglect nothing that could contribute to the solidity and beauty of the edifice.

As soon as it was known that Odile intended forming a community of women, a crowd of young ladies of rank came to Hohenbourg, renouncing their families and earthly possessions for the love of Christ. They besought her to receive them as her companions, and to direct them in the way of salvation. There were one hundred and thirty of them before the convent was finished. Among them were Attale,(64) Eugénie, and Gundeline, the daughters of Odile’s brother Adalbert,(65) and her own sister Roswinde.(66) All these renounced the joys of the world without regret, hoping to obtain eternal life. They united themselves to God by silence, recollection, and prayer. Manual labor and the chanting of the Psalms varied their occupations. Like the first Christians, they seemed to have only one heart and one soul. Their only study seemed to be to equal their superior in humility, sweetness, piety, and self‐renunciation. They lived on barley bread and vegetables cooked in water. They took wine only on festivals, and passed their nights in vigils and prayer, permitting themselves only some hours of sleep when exhausted nature absolutely required it. Then they slept only on a bear’s skin with a stone for a pillow. In a word, they only allowed the body what was necessary for the preservation of life.

Adalric had a profound respect for Odile, as one under the special protection of the Divinity. The system of her community, the devotion and the rigid and holy lives of those who composed it, and above all their inexhaustible charity, led him to lavish his wealth on their monastery. Not satisfied with giving them his palace and its domains, and establishing a foundation in perpetuity for one hundred and thirty young ladies of noble birth, he likewise gave fourteen benefices for the priests who served the convent chapels.

Odile, in her ardent charity, wished there should be free access to her abbey, not only for all the members of her family and persons of high rank who came often to discourse with her on the things of God, but also for the poor, the unhappy, and the sick. The steepness of the mountain in some places made its ascent impossible for the aged. Our saint had an easy pathway constructed, paved with broad flag‐stones. Thenceforth the unfortunate of all grades of society flocked to the abbey—the poor to obtain assistance, the infirm for remedies, and sinners for salutary advice. All who were unhappy or unfortunate, whoever they might be, were the objects of Odile’s tender affection. “The Gospel,” she constantly repeated to her companions, “is a law of love,” and she exhorted them, in imitation of Him who gave his life for us, to be charitable to their fellow‐creatures. Odile’s charity was boundless. Not satisfied with distributing alms, she cheered all with sweet words, carried them nourishment and remedies with her own hands, and dressed the most frightful wounds. “There came one day,” says a writer of that time, “a man covered with a horrid leprosy to the gates of Hohenbourg for alms, uttering most lamentable cries. He was so revolting, and he diffused so infectious an odor, that none of the servants would approach him. One of them, however, informed the saint of his condition. She at once prepared some suitable food, and hastened to serve the leper. In spite of her tenderness towards the unfortunate and her habitual control over her senses, her first movement was one of horror at the sight of so disgusting a being. Ashamed of her weakness, and resolved to conquer it, she folded the leper affectionately in her arms, and burst into tears. Then she broke the food she brought into small pieces, and fed him. At the same time she raised her eyes to heaven, and, with a voice trembling with emotion, exclaimed: ‘O Lord! deign to restore him to health or give him the courage necessary to support such an affliction!’ Her humble prayer was immediately heard. The leprosy disappeared, and the repulsive odor gave place to one of sweetness, so that those who avoided him a short time before were now eager to approach, to touch him, and to wonder.”

Odile gave bread, wine, and meat to all the poor who came to the abbey; she was unwilling any should go away hungry. On feast days a great crowd of beggars would besiege the gates, and on one occasion, all the food of the community, and even the wine, being given them, the Sister who had charge of the wine‐cellar sought Odile in church to tell her there was none left for dinner. The abbess replied with a gentle smile: “He who fed five thousand persons with five loaves and two fishes will provide for us, if it be his will. Forget not, my daughter, that he has promised to those that seek first the kingdom of heaven all other things shall be given. Go where duty calls you.” The Sister went away, and at the hour of repast, going to the wine‐cellar, found a supply of excellent wine.

X.

The two chapels already built by the duke were too small for celebrating the divine service with suitable pomp. There was hardly room enough in them for the sisterhood. The crowds from the neighboring villages were often obliged to kneel outside. A larger church was indispensable. Adalric provided the materials, and it was completed by the year 690. Two square towers of pyramidal form rose beside the grand entrance. The abbess had it consecrated to the Blessed Virgin, her chosen patroness and her model. One of the side chapels she styled the Oratory of the Mother of God. There she loved to take refuge in her mental troubles, in tribulation, and in seasons of spiritual dryness. A second chapel she called Holy Rood Chapel. In commemoration of her baptism she wished also to erect a small church in honor of S. John the Baptist. Undecided about the location, she went out of the monastery one night about midnight, and, kneeling on a great rock, she remained a long time buried in profound meditation. Suddenly, says the old legend, she was surrounded by a dazzling light, and before her stood the radiant form of the precursor of our Lord in a garment of camel’s hair, such as he wore in the desert. He seemed to indicate the spot where the chapel should be erected. The next day it was commenced, and was finished in the autumn of 696. The night before it was to be consecrated S. Odile spent in prayer therein. The prince of the apostles himself, with a choir of angels, descended and performed the ceremony.

“The air of paradise did fan the house, And angels officed all.”

This miraculous chapel was sometimes called the _Sacrarium_, because the abbess deposited in it the _cassette_ of relics Bishop Erhard gave her on her baptismal day. It was afterwards more commonly called the Chapel of S. Odile, because she was buried there herself. Besides these, she built the Chapel of Tears and the Hanging Chapel, so called because it stood on a steep precipice looking down into a deep chasm. All these chapels were so many stations where the abbess and her companions betook themselves to meditate in silence and solitude.

Adalric and Berswinde, weary of power and grandeur, retired to the Convent of Hohenbourg with their daughter. Advanced in age, they now thought only of preparing themselves for death by prayer and good works. The duke, naturally violent and hard, had sometimes in his moments of passion forgotten his duty. There were many faults for him to expiate before God, and many scandals to repair before men. While he was practising all the virtues of a holy penitent, he was attacked with a serious malady. Odile felt that his last hour was at hand, and hardly left his bedside, wishing, not only to give him the care his illness required, but to console, encourage, and prepare him for a holy death. Contemporary testimony expressly declares: “_Consolante eum et roborante beata Odilia_.” She received his last breath and closed his eyes on the 20th of February. The year is variously stated. It was between 690 and 700.

A witness of her father’s sorrow for his sins, and of his resignation in his last moments, Odile hoped the mercy of God would be extended to him. She imposed on herself the severest mortifications, and shed floods of tears for the solace of his soul in the chapel, called from this circumstance the Chapel of Tears. On the fifth day she had an inward assurance of his salvation.

There are numberless traditions in Alsace respecting S. Odile. They have been handed down from one generation to another in the villages grouped around the foot of Mount Hohenbourg. One of these legends changes the tears of the saint into a limpid stream, where the blind, or those who have any disease of the eyes, go for a remedy. Another says her tears perforated a rock. A third makes her and all her community behold her father convoyed heavenward by a choir of angels led by S. Peter in sacerdotal robes. The more we examine S. Odile’s life, the more numerous become these brilliant legends, and the more fully do we find her life marked by acts of beneficence and by miracles.

Berswinde survived her husband only nine days. She died suddenly while praying in the Chapel of S. John.

The descendants of the duke and duchess assembled at Hohenbourg to deplore their double loss. A magnificent funeral service was performed. All the people of Alsace flocked to the convent to weep over their death. One would have thought they had lost dear parents, say the chronicles. The duke’s sons gave abundant alms on this occasion. The remains of the deceased were placed in the Chapel of the Virgin, according to their request, and thither came pilgrims to pray by their tomb till they were removed.

Adalric, notwithstanding his generosity to the church, left immense domains to his children. His oldest son, Etton, or Etichon, became Duke of Brisgau and Count of Argovie. He was the progenitor of the houses of Egisheim and Lorraine. The second son, Adelbert, had the duchies of Alsace, Swabia, and Sundgau. From him sprang the houses of Habsburg and Zähringen. Hugo, the third son, died before his father, but left three sons. The oldest, Remigius, was Abbot of S. Gregory in the Val de Münster, and finally Bishop of Strasbourg. He was a great friend of Charlemagne’s, and built the celebrated nunnery of Eschau,(67) where two of his nieces were successively abbesses.

After the death of her parents, Odile kept up most intimate relations with the rest of her family. She saw them frequently, and labored for their sanctification. Following her counsels, they founded a great number of convents and churches, which, in that barbarous age, became the refuge of science, literature, and the arts, and for centuries contributed powerfully to the prosperity of Alsace.

XI.

Hitherto the inmates of Hohenbourg had been subjected to no written rule. Our dear saint was their living guide. But notwithstanding the ardor of their piety, she thought it proper to adopt some definite rule to obviate the inconstancy of the human heart, and to restrain an excess of fervor. Assembling all her spiritual children, she gave them, after invoking the Holy Spirit, a fixed rule, probably drawn from that of S. Augustine.

The steepness of Hohenbourg made it so difficult of ascent for the aged and infirm, the very ones whom Odile desired the most to aid, that she resolved to build at its foot, on the south side, a spacious hospice with a chapel, under the invocation of S. Nicholas.

Berswinde, who was still living, gave up a part of her revenues for the benefit of the poor who were received there. S. Odile daily descended this mountain, too steep and rough for others, to visit the hospice. She used to visit each inmate, and give him alms and advice with all the tenderness Christianity alone can inspire. Her children shared in her labors. They loved the freshness and solitude of the spot where the hospice stood, and there was an abundance of water there, which was lacking on the summit. The number of the infirm that resorted hither became so large as to require, night and day, the constant attendance of the Sisters, and they begged the abbess to build another monastery near S. Nicholas, and dependent on that of Hohenbourg. Odile consented.

One day, while she was occupied in overseeing the workmen, an aged man brought three branches of a linden‐tree, begging her to plant them. He predicted that the faithful would come to sit beneath their shade. Odile did as he requested, planting the first in the name of the Father, the second in the name of the Son, and the third in the name of the Holy Ghost. In fact, successive generations have sought repose beneath them, according to the old man’s prediction. Odile gave this new monastery the name of Niedermünster (Lower Minster). She established there one‐half of the community of Hohenbourg, retaining herself the direction of both houses. She placed in the new house those who were most zealous in nursing the sick, and had the greatest aptitude for it.

Many foreign ladies, drawn to Alsace by Odile’s reputation for sanctity, were among their number. They lived at Niedermünster in obedience to the rule of Hohenbourg, and led lives of austerity. These two cloisters, says Father Hugo Peltre, might be compared to two trees, apparently separated, but really drawing nourishment from the same root.

Odile, though advancing in years and broken down by her excessive austerities, daily descended the mountain. Neither frost nor rain nor fierce winds prevented her from visiting the hospice, which was her place of delight, for there she found a vast field for her charity. She was in the habit of saying: “Jesus Christ has given us the poor to supply his place. In caring for them we serve the Saviour in their person.” The whole of Alsace blessed her name, seeing her constantly occupied in solacing suffering humanity, in guiding her spiritual children in the paths of holiness, and in instructing the people in the sublime truths of the Gospel.

There is a legend that Odile, bent down by the weight of years, was one day ascending the mountain alone when she saw lying in the path an old man dying of thirst and apparently breathing his last. Our saint tried to raise him, but, too feeble to do so, she had recourse to the divine assistance. After a fervent prayer, remembering what Moses did, she smote a rock close by with her staff. A stream burst forth immediately, which restored the old pilgrim to life. This fount is still venerated and frequented. The water is considered miraculous.

XII.

Odile was ripe for heaven. Whether the state of her health announced it, or God gave her a secret presentiment of her approaching end, on the 13th of December (S. Lucius’ Day) she called together her companions in the Chapel of S. John the Baptist, which had become her oratory, and, after begging them not to be afflicted at what she had to say, she sweetly announced to them that she was near the end of her earthly pilgrimage, and her soul, ready to quit its prison of clay, would soon enjoy the liberty God has promised his children. Then the holy abbess exhorted them to remain faithful to the Lord, not to allow their fervor to relax, to resist with all their strength the temptations of the adversary, and to submit their wills to that of the Almighty.

While she was speaking to them her three nieces, Attale, Eugénie, and Gundeline, shed floods of tears. Our dear saint, seeing their profound grief, turned towards them and said: “Weep not, beloved children. Your tears cannot prolong my existence here below. Go rather, all of you, to the Chapel of Our Blessed Lady, pray together, recite the Psalms, and beg for me the grace of a happy death.” As soon as all the community had gone out to obey her wishes, the saint fell into an ecstasy, in which she had a foretaste of heavenly joys. Her companions, returning from the chapel and finding her insensible, began to express their sorrow that she had departed without receiving Holy Communion. The saint, aroused by their sobs and groans, opened her eyes and said: “Why have you returned so soon, my dear children, to disturb my repose? I was in the presence of the Blessed S. Lucius, and inexpressibly happy; for, as the apostle says, the eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive it.” She then expressed an ardent desire to receive the most Sacred Body and Precious Blood of our Lord. All at once, says the old legend, a flood of dazzling light pervaded the chapel. The saint fell on her knees, all the Sisters imitating her example. A celestial ministrant, radiant with glory, appeared at the altar. He approached the dying abbess, placed in her hands a wonderful chalice, and then reascended to heaven.(68) She communicated therefrom, murmured a last farewell to her children, joined her hands, and then the eyes, once opened by a miracle, closed for ever to the light.

According to her wishes, her body, extenuated with fasts and other austerities, was laid on a bear’s skin, and exposed for eight days in the Chapel of S. John the Baptist, on the Gospel side, and with the feet turned towards the altar. During this time a sweet odor spread throughout the abbey. Her children felt that, instead of weeping for her who had fought the good fight, and never been wanting in her fidelity to God, they should rather rejoice that she was called to receive the crown of righteousness, and they to imitate her example and seek through her intercession for as happy an end.

Thus died, on the 13th of December, 7—,(69) Odile, eldest daughter of Adalric, Duke of Alsace, abbess of the convents of Hohenbourg and Niedermünster. Her mortal remains were covered with mastic, which, at first soft, became hard; then placed in a tomb of stone, which is still to be seen.

The inmates of the two monasteries celebrated her obsequies with all the solemnity due to their abbess and foundress, and with the recollection due to her sanctity. All the people of Alsace flocked to Hohenbourg to look once more on the face of her to whom the unfortunate and the afflicted never appealed in vain. Her inexhaustible charity, her zeal for Christian perfection, her austere and penitential life, and her good works without number, had during her life rendered her the object of public veneration. As soon as she was dead a particular honor was paid her, first at Hohenbourg, then throughout the whole province, which to this day invokes her as its patroness. This honor has been sanctioned by the church. Her venerated sepulchre is in our day the most frequented place of pilgrimage in Alsace.

XIII.

Odile had acquired a taste for letters at the Abbey of Baume. She had a thorough knowledge of the Latin language, the Holy Scriptures, and ecclesiastical history. Her last will and testament, which has been preserved, proves that she was as enlightened as holy.(70) The monasteries she founded did not degenerate in this respect. They were the asylums of learning. In the XIIth century, says Grandidier, while a large part of Europe was plunged in ignorance and barbarism, the love of literature and the sciences was to be found among some women of Alsace. Hohenbourg was inhabited by canonesses equally learned and regular. Three abbesses were especially distinguished for their taste for poetry and literature in general. The first, Ricklende or Kilinde, reformed the monastery in 1141. Some of her Latin verses, and the fragments of other works in that language, have been preserved. Herrade de Landsberg, who succeeded her in 1167, became still more celebrated. Grandidier, speaking of her, says: “The polite arts, painting, music, and poetry, charmed the leisure of this illustrious abbess.” A collection of poetry in Latin, composed for the instruction of her community, under the title of _Hortus Deliciarum_,(71) is still preserved. Gerlinde, her sister or cousin, succeeded her, and equalled her in taste and knowledge.

The first abbesses after S. Odile were her two nieces, S. Eugénie and S. Gundeline. They divided the authority. The first was Abbess of Hohenbourg, the second of Niedermünster. The revenues, which had hitherto been in common, were divided by Odile before her death. Only Oberehnheim remained undivided, that there might be a common tie between them.

Regularity of monastic life and observances was maintained till the XIth century. The church was accidentally destroyed in 1045, but was rebuilt and consecrated to the Blessed Virgin by Bruno, Count of Dagsbourg, Bishop of Toul, and Landgrave of Alsace, a descendant of Odile’s brother Etton. A few years after it was again destroyed by the Hungarian invaders, and again Bruno, who had become the Sovereign Pontiff in 1049 under the name of Leo IX., had it rebuilt. This pope, called to Germany by the interests of the church, went himself to Hohenbourg to consecrate the edifice and reassemble the dispersed sisterhood. He did not leave this place, so dear to his heart, till he had re‐established the monastic discipline.

About a hundred years after this the community of Hohenbourg greatly relaxed its fervor, the number of its subjects diminished, their revenues decreased, and the buildings were decaying. The monastery would perhaps have been abandoned had not Frederick Barbarossa, in his quality of Duke of Alsace, interfered to save so celebrated a house from falling. He sent to reform it Ricklende or Kilinde, whom he took from the Convent of Bergen in the Diocese of Eichstadt, and to whom he gave the title and rights of Princess of the Holy Empire, and also bestowed on her large sums of money for the reparation of the monastery. Ricklende, whom we have already mentioned, joined great zeal and piety to an enlarged mind and much information. Sustained by the authority of the emperor, she re‐established discipline in less than two years, as her successor, Herrade de Landsberg, formally testifies. The religious habit worn in this house was white, _albens quasi lilium_, says the _Hortus Deliciarum_. The bull of Pope Lucius III. says they followed the rule of S. Augustine. Ricklende had under her thirty‐three choir Sisters. In Herrade’s time there were forty‐ seven and thirteen lay Sisters. It was in the time of Herrade that the Emperor Henry VI., disregarding his oath, had Sibylla, the widow of Tancred, and Constance, her daughter, arrested and conducted to Hohenbourg to take the veil.

In 1354 the Emperor Charles IV. visited S. Odile’s tomb, Agnes de Slauffenberg being the abbess. He had the saint’s body exhumed, and Jean de Lichtenberg, Bishop of Strasbourg, detached a part of the arm to be deposited in the Cathedral of Prague. But, at the request of the sisterhood, Charles IV. drew up an act which forbade any one, under the severest penalties, from ever opening the tomb again. The bishop pronounced the sentence of excommunication on whomsoever should violate this decree of the sovereign.(72)

The Abbey of Hohenbourg, or of S. Odile, as it was also called, was destined to terrible disasters. It was sacked in the XIVth and XVth centuries by the _grandes Compagnies_ by the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. It was still more unfortunate in the XVIth century. Niedermünster was burned in 1542, and Hohenbourg on the 24th of March, 1546. The canonesses and prebends then dispersed, and Jean de Manderscheidt, Bishop of Strasbourg, fearing the Lutherans would seize the property belonging to the two abbeys, obtained permission from the Holy See to annex it to the episcopal domains by paying the canonesses an annual pension. The monastery, rebuilt in 1607 by Cardinal Charles de Lorraine and the Archduke Leopold, Bishops of Strasbourg, was burned anew in 1622 by the Lutheran army of the Count de Mansfeldt. The church was repaired in 1630, but again devastated by the Brandenburg soldiers in 1633. They removed the lead from the windows and organs for ball. Subsequent wars were also disastrous for Hohenbourg, and on the 7th of May, 1681, the whole convent was again burned. Only the Chapel of Tears and that of the Angels remained standing.

The Premonstratensians of the ancient observance established themselves at Hohenbourg in 1663, converting it into a priory. They began to rebuild it in 1684. Two of the monks, Father Hugues Peltre and Father Denys Albrecht, carefully collected all the ancient accounts of S. Odile, and wrote biographies of the saint, which we have freely made use of in this account.

Niedermünster, which was given to the Grand Chapter of Strasbourg in 1558, is now only a heap of ruins. Rosine de Stein, who died in 1534, was the last abbess.

The French Revolution had also its effect on Hohenbourg. A few days after the decree of the National Assembly on the 13th of February, 1790, suppressing the monastic vows, the Convent of S. Odile was vacated. Nevertheless, pilgrimages to the shrine of the holy Patroness of Alsace continued to be frequent.

Nearly all that could nourish or excite the piety of the pilgrim had disappeared from the antique cloister of Altitona, but Odile’s tomb still remained and sufficed to attract a great number from all the surrounding countries.

XIV.

On the 7th of July, 1841, at nine o’clock in the morning, the remains of S. Odile were taken out of the tomb where they had reposed so many centuries, and exposed to public veneration on the altar of the chapel which bears her name. On the eve of this festival Mount Hohenbourg presented an animated spectacle. People from Alsace, Lorraine, and around Metz arrived in crowds. In ascending the mountain they dispersed to gather foliage and wild flowers to deck the old Church of S. Odile with. Large vases were placed on the altars and the _boiserie_ around the church to receive these floral offerings of successive groups. A fir‐tree from a neighboring forest stood beside each column of the nave. Garlands of box and of oak‐leaves hung from tree to tree and covered the trunks. S. Odile’s tomb and altar were richly decorated and her statue crowned with flowers. The _châsse_ of the saint was placed on an elevation elegantly draped. Thousands of pilgrims roamed around the precincts in the evening, visiting successively the various sanctuaries.

The Chapel of Calvary particularly attracted them. It contained Adalric’s remains, and among others a large painting in which were displayed the genealogies of the houses of Alsace, Lorraine, France, and Austria, all of which drew their origin from Adalric and Berswinde, and, finally, an antique bedstead which tradition declared once belonged to King Dagobert.

At three o’clock in the morning of July 7th the bells announced to the impatient pilgrims that the doors of the church were open and the first Mass about to commence. The edifice was immediately crammed; even the sanctuary was invaded. The neighboring chapels, the large court of the monastery, and the green in front, were soon filled; but order reigned everywhere in the multitude of all ages, sexes, and ranks. Every face expressed faith and the most fervent devotion. Eighty priests from Alsace, Lorraine, the Grand Duchy of Baden, and even from Holland, enhanced by their presence the brilliancy of this festival, at once religious and national. Masses succeeded each other till afternoon. The venerable Curate of Oberehnheim (the place of S. Odile’s birth), who was the bishop’s delegate, gave the signal for the ceremony at nine o’clock A.M. The remains of S. Odile were borne in procession by six priests. Censers waved and the sound of the bells mingled joyfully with the music and the ancient hymns of the church. The crowd opened for the procession to pass. Every face lights up, hands are clasped, and tears flow from all eyes. The president of the festival, more than eighty years of age, pronounced the panegyric of the saint. Then followed a grand Mass, during which, and for two hours after, a constant file of pilgrims approached to venerate a relic of the saint. The ceremonies closed with Benediction.

The _châsse_ was exposed during the whole Octave. From that time the concourse of pilgrims has continued. There were fifteen hundred the following Sunday. Hundreds of Communions are daily made at Hohenbourg, and perhaps the number of pilgrims has never been greater than of late.

Glorious Patroness of Alsace, whose great heart, while on earth, was so full of pity for the unfortunate, pray for thy unhappy country, now devastated and full of woe!

Wind And Tide.

I stood by the broad, deep river, The tide flowed firm to its mouth; I saw the sweet wind quiver, As it rose in the golden south. On the river’s bosom it fluttered, And kissed and caressed all day, And joys of the south it muttered: But the tide kept its northern way. Tender and chaste was its suing, Till the face of the river‐bride Rippled and gleamed in the wooing: But northward flowed the tide.

And so, thought I, God’s graces Woo our souls the livelong day, Which brighten and smile in their faces: Sin bears us another way.

Matter. IV.

To complete our investigation about the essential properties of matter, one great question remains to be answered, viz.: _Is the matter of which bodies are made up intrinsically extended so as to fill a portion of space, or does it ultimately consist of unextended points?_ We call this a great question, not indeed because of any great difficulty to be encountered in its solution, but because it has a great importance in metaphysics, and because it has been at all times much ventilated by great philosophers.

That bodies do not fill with their matter the dimensions of their volume is conceded by all, as porosity is a general property of bodies. That the molecules, or chemical atoms, of which the mass of a body is composed, do not touch one another with their matter, but are separated by appreciable intervals of space, is also admitted by our best scientists, though many of them are of opinion that those intervals are filled with a subtle medium, by which calorific and luminous vibrations are supposed to be propagated. But with regard to the molecules themselves, the question, whether their constitution is continuous or discrete, has not yet been settled. Some teach, with the old physicists, that bodies are ultimately made up of particles materially continuous, filling with their mass the whole space occupied by their volume. These last particles they call _atoms_, because their mass is not susceptible of physical division, although their volume is infinitely divisible in a mathematical sense. Others, on the contrary, deny the material continuity of matter, and hold with Boscovich that, as all bodies are composed of discrete molecules, so are all molecules composed of discrete elements wholly destitute of material extension, occupying distinct mathematical points in space, and bound by mutual action in mechanical systems differently constituted, according to the different nature of the substances to which they belong.

Which of these two opinions is right? Although scientists more generally incline to the second, metaphysicians are still in favor of the first. Yet we do not hesitate to say, though it may appear presumptuous on our part, that it is not difficult to decide the question. Let the reader follow our reasoning upon the subject, and we confidently predict that he will soon be satisfied of the truth of our assertion.

_Groundless assumption of continuous matter._—As the true metaphysics of matter must be grounded on real facts, we may first inquire what facts, if any, can be adduced in favor of the intrinsic extension and material continuity of molecules. Is there any sensible fact which directly or indirectly proves such a continuity?

We must answer in the negative. For sensible facts are perceived by us in consequence of the impressions which objects make on our senses; if, therefore, such impressions are not calculated to reveal anything concerning the question of material continuity, no sensible fact can be adduced as a proof of the continuity of matter. Now, the impressions made on our senses cannot reveal anything about our question. For we know that bodies contain not only millions of pores, which are invisible to the naked eye, but also millions of movable and separate particles, which are so minute that no microscope can make them visible, and which, though so extremely minute, are composed of millions of other particles still more minute, which have independent movements, and therefore possess an independent existence. There are many species of animalcules (_infusoria_) so small that millions together would not equal the bulk of a grain of sand, and thousands might swim at once through the eye of a needle. These almost infinitesimal animals are as well adapted to life as the largest beasts, and their movements display all the phenomena of life, sense, and instinct. They have nerves and muscles, organs of digestion and of propagation, liquids and solids of different kinds, etc. It is impossible to form a conception of the minute dimensions of these organic structures; and yet each separate organ of every animalcule is a compound of several organic substances, each in its turn comprising numberless atoms of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. It is plain from this and other examples that the actual magnitude of the ultimate molecules of any body is something completely beyond the reach of our senses to perceive or of our intellect to comprehend.(73) We must therefore concede that no impression received by our senses is calculated to make us perceive anything like a molecule or to give us a clue to its constitution. To say that molecules are so many pieces of continuous matter is therefore to assert what no sensible fact can ever reveal.

Moreover, we know of no sensible phenomenon which has any necessary connection with the continuity of matter. Physicists and chemists, in their scientific explanation of phenomena, have no need of assuming the existence of continuous matter, and acknowledge that there are no facts from which the theory of simple and unextended elements can be refuted. And the reason of this is clear; for the phenomena can be made the ground of experimental proofs only so far as they are perceived by our senses; and since our perception of them is confined within the narrow limits above described, it is impossible to draw from sensible phenomena any distinct conclusion regarding the constitution of molecules. Hence it is plain that no sensible fact exists which directly or indirectly proves the continuity of matter.

Secondly, we may ask, Can the intrinsic extension and continuity of matter be proved from the essence of material substance?

The answer must again be negative. For nothing can in any manner be involved in, or result from, the essence of material substance, unless it be required either by the matter, or by the substantial form, or by the relation and proportion which must exist between the form and the matter. But neither the matter, nor the substantial form, nor their mutual relation requires material continuity or material extension. Therefore the essence of material substance cannot supply us with any valid argument in favor of the extension and continuity of matter.

In this syllogism the major proposition needs no proof, as it is evident that material substance, like all other created things, essentially consists of act and potency; and it is known that its act is called the substantial form, while its potency is called _the_ matter.(74) It is therefore manifest that, if anything has a necessary connection with the essence of material substance, it must be of such a nature as to be needed either by the matter or by the substantial form, or by both together.

The minor proposition can be demonstrated as follows: In the first place, continuous quantity is not needed by the matter, whether actuated or actuable. For, as actuable, the matter is a “mere potency” (_pura potentia_) which has yet to receive its “first actuality” (_primum esse_), as philosophers agree; and accordingly it has no actual quantity or continuous extension, nor is it potential with respect to it, as its potency regards only existence (_primum esse_), and evidently existence is not dimensive quantity. Hence the schoolmen unanimously maintain with Aristotle that the first matter has “no quiddity, no quality, and no quantity” (_nec quid, nec quale, nec quantum_)—a truth which we hope fully to explain in some future article. As actuated, the matter is nothing else than a substantial term susceptible of local motion; for we know from physics that material substance receives no other determination than to local movement, and for this reason, as we remarked in another place, it has been defined _Ens mobile_, or a movable thing. Now, a term, to be susceptible of local motion, needs no dimensions, as is evident. And therefore the matter, whether actuated or not, has nothing in its nature which requires continuous extension.

In the second place, material continuity is not required by the nature of the substantial form. This form may, in fact, be considered either as a principle of being or as a principle of operation. As a principle of being, it gives the first existence to its matter; and it is plain that to give the first existence is not to give bulk. Our adversaries teach that what gives bulk to the bodies is quantity; and yet, surely, they will not pretend that quantity is the substantial form. On the other hand, it is evident that _to be_ and _to have bulk_ are not the same thing; and since the substantial form merely causes the matter _to be_, it would be absurd to infer that it must also cause it _to be extended_. As a principle of operation, the form needs matter only as a centre from which its exertions are directed. Now, the direction of the exertion, as well as that of the movement, must be taken from a point to a point, not from a bulk to a bulk; and therefore the form, as a principle of operation, needs only one point of matter. Thus it is clear that no material extension is required to suit the wants of the substantial form.

In the third place, material extension is not required to make the matter proportionate to its substantial form. We shall see later that no form which requires a determinate quantity of mass can be a substantial form in the strict sense of the expression; at present it will suffice to keep in mind that the substantial form must give the first being to its matter, and that the matter is therefore perfectly proportioned to its substantial form by merely being in potency to receive its first being. Now, such a potency implies no extension; for if it did, the accident would precede the substance. Besides, the matter before its first actuation is _a nonentity_, and, as such, is incapable of any positive disposition, as we shall more fully explain in the sequel. But a determinate bulk would be a positive disposition. Hence the matter which receives its first actuation is proportionate to its form independently of material extension. We can therefore safely conclude that the essence of material substance supplies no proof whatever of the continuity of matter.

Thirdly, we ask, Can the continuity of matter be proved from mechanics?

Here also our answer must be negative. For the theorems of mechanics are each and all demonstrated quite independently of the question of material continuity. The old writers of mechanical works (or rather the old metaphysicians, from whom these writers borrowed their notion of matter) admitted the continuity of matter on two grounds: first, because they thought that _nature abhorred a vacuum_; and, secondly, because they rejected the _actio in distans_ as impossible. But we have already shown that no action of matter upon matter is possible, except on the condition that the matter of the agent be distant from the matter of the patient; which implies that all the material particles, to act on their immediate neighbors, must be separately ubicated, with intervening vacuum. And thus the only reasons by which the ancients could plausibly support the continuity of matter have lost all weight in the light of modern mechanics.

Fourthly: Can the continuity of matter be inferred from geometrical considerations?

We reply that it cannot. For geometric quantity is not a quantity of _matter_, but a quantity of _volume_—that is, the quantity of space mensurable within certain limits. Hence it is evident that the continuity of the geometric quantity has nothing to do with the continuity of matter, and is not dependent on it, but wholly depends on the possibility of a continuous movement within the limits of the geometric space. In fact, we have in geometry three dimensions—length, breadth, and depth, which are simple lines. Now, a line is not conceived as made up of material points touching and continuing one another, but as the track of a point moving between certain limits; so that the continuity of the geometric dimensions is not grounded on any extension or continuation of material particles, but on the possibility of continuous movement, on which the continuity of time also depends. We must therefore remain satisfied that no geometrical consideration can lend the least support to the hypothesis of material continuity.

We have thus exhausted all the sources from which any _à priori_ or _à posteriori_ argument in favor of material continuity might have been drawn, if any had been possible; and the result of our investigation authorizes the conclusion that the hypothesis of continuous matter is both scientifically and philosophically gratuitous.

_False reasonings in behalf of continuous matter._—But some philosophers, who are afraid that the denial of material continuity may subvert all the scholastic doctrines (to which they most laudably, but perhaps too exclusively, adhere in questions of natural science), contend that the existence of continuous matter can be established by good philosophical reasons. It is therefore our duty, before we proceed further, to acquaint our reader with such reasons, and with our answers to them.

The first reason is the following: Geometry is a real, not a chimerical, science; and therefore it has to deal with real bodies—not indeed inasmuch as they are substances, but inasmuch as they have a quantity which can be considered in the abstract. Hence we must admit that the geometric quantity is a quantity of matter considered in the abstract; and accordingly, if the geometric quantity is continuous and infinitely divisible, as no one doubts, the quantity of matter in the bodies must also be continuous and infinitely divisible.

We reply that bodies have two very different kinds of quantity—the quantity of the mass and the quantity of the volume—and that geometry deals indeed with the latter, but has nothing to do with the former. Hence the geometric quantity is a quantity of volume or bulk, not a quantity of matter; and therefore to argue that, because the geometric quantity is continuous and infinitely divisible, the same must be true of the quantity of matter, is to make an inexcusable confusion of matter with space. The argument might have some value, if the quantity of the volume could be measured by the quantity of the mass; but no one who has studied the first elements of physics can be ignorant that such is not the case. Equal masses are found under unequal volumes, and unequal masses under equal volumes. Volumes preserve the same geometric nature and the same geometric quantity, be they filled with matter or not. A cubic inch of platinum and a cubic inch of water contain different amounts of matter, since the former weighs twenty‐one times as much as the latter; and yet they are geometrically equal. Geometry is not concerned with the density of bodies; and therefore geometrical quantities are altogether independent of the quantity of matter, and cannot be altered except by altering the relative position of the extreme terms between which their three dimensions are measured. These dimensions are not made up of matter, but are mere relations in space, with or without interjacent matter, representing, as we have already observed, the quantity of continuous movement which is possible between the correlated terms; and their continuity depends on the continuity of space, not of matter.

The author from whom we have taken this objection pretends also that the geometric quantity possesses no other attributes than those which belong to all quantity, and are essential to it; whence he concludes that whatever is predicated of geometric quantity must also be predicated of the quantity of matter. But the assumption is evidently false; for it is not of the essence of all quantity to be continuous as the geometric quantity, it being manifest that discrete quantity is a true quantity, although it has no continuity. The general notion of quantity extends to everything which admits of _more_ or _less_; hence there is intensive quantity, extensive quantity, and numeric quantity. The first is measured by arbitrary degrees of intensity; the second is measured by arbitrary intervals of space and time; the third is measured by natural units—that is, by individual realities as they exist in nature. It is therefore absurd to pretend that whatever can be predicated of geometric quantity must be predicated of all kinds of quantity.

The second reason adduced in behalf of material continuity is as follows: To deny the continuity of matter is to destroy all real extension. For how can real extension arise from simple unextended points arranged in a certain manner, and acting upon one another? The notions of simplicity, order, and activity transcend the attributions of matter, and are applicable to all spiritual beings. If, then, extension could arise from simple unextended elements by their arrangement and actions, why could not angels, by meeting in a sufficient number and acting on one another, give rise to extension, and form, say, a watermelon?

This argument has no weight whatever; but, as it appeared not many years ago in a Catholic periodical of great reputation, we have thought it best to give it a place among other arguments of the same sort. Our answer is that to deny the continuity of matter is not to deny real extension, but only to maintain that _no real extension is made up of continuous matter_. And we are by no means embarrassed to explain “how _real_ extension can arise from simple unextended points.” The thing is very plain. Two points, _A_ and _B_, being given in space, the interval of space between them is a _real_ interval, _really_ determined by the _real_ points _A_ and _B_, and _really_ determining the extension of the _real_ movement possible between the same points. Such an interval is therefore a _real_ extension. This is the way in which real extension arises from unextended points.

Nor can it be objected that nothing extended can be made up of unextended points. This is true, of course, but has nothing to do with the question. For we do not pretend that extension is _made up_ by composition of points—which would be a very gross error—but we say that extension _results_ from the simple position of real points in space, and that it results not _in_ them, but _between_ them. It is the mass of the body that is _made up_ of its components; and thus the sum _A_ + _B_ represents a mass, not an extension. The geometric dimensions, on the contrary, consist entirely of relations between distinct points intercepting mensurable space. The distinct points are _the terms_ of the relation, while the extent of the space mensurable between them by continuous movement is _the formal reason_ of their relativity. And since this continuous movement may extend more or less, according as the terms are variously situated, hence the resulting relation has the nature of continuous quantity. This suffices to show that to deny the continuity of matter is _not_ to destroy all real extension.

And now, what shall we say of those angels freely uniting to form a watermelon? It is hardly necessary to say that this bright idea is only a dream. There is no volume without dimensions, no dimension without distance, and no distance without terms distinctly ubicated in space and marking out the point where the distance begins, and the point where it ends. Now, nothing marks out a point in space but matter. Angels, as destitute of matter, mark no points in space, and accordingly cannot terminate distances nor give rise to dimensions. Had they matter, they would, like the simple elements, possess a formal ubication in space, and determine dimensions; but, owing to their spiritual nature, they transcend all local determinations, and have no formal ubication except in the intellectual sphere of their spiritual operation. It is therefore owing to their spirituality, and not to their simplicity, that they cannot form themselves into a volume. Lastly, we must not forget that the “angelic” watermelon should have not only volume, but mass also. Such a mass would, of course, be made up without matter. How a mass can be conceived without matter is a profound secret, which the author of the argument very prudently avoided to reveal. But let us come to another objection.

A third reason adduced in favor of continuous matter is that we cannot, without employing a vicious circle, account for the extension of bodies by the notion either of space, distance, or movement. For these notions already presuppose extension, and cannot be formed without a previous knowledge of what extension is. To think of space is, in fact, to think of extension. So also distance cannot be conceived except by imagining something extended, which lies, or can lie, between the distant terms. Hence, to avoid the vicious circle, it is necessary to trace the origin of our notion of extension to the matter we see in the bodies. And therefore our very notion of extension is a sufficient proof of the existence of continuous matter.

We reply that this reason is even less plausible than the preceding one. To form the abstract notion of extension, we must first directly perceive some extension in the concrete, in the same manner as we must perceive concrete humanity in individual men before we conceive humanity in the abstract. But in all sensible movements we directly perceive extension through space and time. Therefore from sensible movements, _without a previous knowledge of extension_, we can form the notion of extension in general. Is there any one who can find in this a vicious circle?

This answer might suffice. But we will further remark that the argument may be retorted against its author. For if we cannot conceive movement as extending in space without a _previous_ knowledge of extension, how can we conceive matter as extending in space without a _previous_ knowledge of extension? And how can we conceive matter as continuous without a _previous_ knowledge of continuity, or time as enduring without a _previous_ knowledge of duration? To these questions the author of the argument can give no satisfactory answer without solving his own objection. Space, distance, and movement, says he, involve extension; and _therefore_ they cannot be known “without a previous knowledge of what extension is.” It is evident that this conclusion is illogical; for if space, distance, and movement imply extension, we cannot perceive space, distance, and movement without directly perceiving extension; and, since the direct perception of a thing does not require a _previous_ knowledge of it, the logical conclusion should have been that, to perceive space, distance, and movement, no previous knowledge of extension is needed.

On the other hand, while our senses perceive the extension of continuous movement in space, they are not competent to perceive material continuity in natural bodies. Hence it is from movement, and not from matter, that our notion of continuous extension is derived. In fact, to form a conception of the dimensions of a body, we survey it by a continuous movement of our eyes from one end of it to the other. In this movement the eye glides over innumerable pores, by which the material particles of the body are separated. If our conception of the geometric extension of the body depended on the continuity of its matter, these pores, as not consisting of continuous matter, should all be thrown away in the measurement of the body. Why, then, do we consider them as contributing with their own dimensions to form the total dimensions of the body? Merely because the geometric dimensions are estimated by movement, and not by matter.

Nor is it in the least strange that we should know extension from movement, and not from matter. For no one can perceive extension between two terms, unless he measures by continuous movement the space intercepted between them. The local relation between two terms cannot, in fact, be perceived otherwise than by referring the one term to the other through space; hence no one ever perceives a distance between two given terms otherwise than by drawing, at least mentally, a line from the one to the other—that is, otherwise than by measuring by some movement the extent of the movement which can take place between the two given terms. And this is what the very word _extension_ conveys. For this word is composed of the preposition _ex_, which connotes the term from which the movement begins, and of the verb _tendere_, which is a verb of motion. And thus everything shows that it is from motion, and not from continuous matter, that our first notion of extension proceeds.

A sharp opponent, however, might still object that before we can perceive any movement we need to perceive something movable—that is, visible matter. But no matter is visible unless it be extended. Therefore extension must be perceived in matter itself before we can perceive it in local movement.

But we answer, first, that although nothing can be perceived by our senses unless it be extended, nevertheless we can see extended things without perceiving their extension. Thus we see many stars as mere points in space, and yet we can perceive their movement from the east to the west. Hence, although matter is not visible unless it be extended, it does not follow that extension must be first perceived in matter itself.

Secondly, we answer that when we perceive the movable matter as extended, we do not judge of its extension by its movement, but by the movement which we ourselves have to make in going from one of its extremities to the other. This is the only way of perceiving extension in space. For how could we conceive anything as extended, if we could not see that it has parts outside of parts? And how could we pronounce that anything has parts outside of parts, if we did not see that between one part and another there is a possibility of local movement? On the other hand, as soon as we perceive the possibility of local movement between distinct parts, we have sufficient evidence of geometric extension. And thus we have no need of continuous matter in order to perceive the volume of bodies.

Before we dismiss this subject, we must add that the advocates of continuous matter, while fighting against us, shield themselves with two other arguments. If matter is not continuous, they say, bodies will consist of mere mathematical points acting at a distance; but _actio in distans_ is the extreme of absurdity, and therefore bodies cannot consist of mathematical points. They also allege that _nature abhors a vacuum_, and therefore all space must be filled up with matter; which would be impossible, were not matter continuous. That nature abhors a vacuum was once considered a physical axiom; but, since science has destroyed the physical grounds on which the pretended axiom rested, metaphysics has in its turn been appealed to, that the time‐honored dictum may not be consigned to complete oblivion. It has therefore been pretended that space without matter is a mere delusion, and consequently that to make extension dependent on empty intervals of space imagined to intervene between material points is to give a chimerical solution of the question of material extension.

The first of these two arguments we have fully answered in our last article, and we shall not again detain our readers with it. Let us notice, however, that when the elements of matter are called “mathematical” points, the sense is not that they are not physical, but only that those physical points are mathematically, or rigorously, unextended.

The second argument assumes that space void of matter is nothing. As we cannot enter here into a detailed examination of the nature of absolute space, we shall content ourselves with the following answer: 1st. All real relations require a real foundation. Real distances are real relations. Therefore real distances have a real foundation. But their foundation is nothing else than absolute space; and therefore absolute space is a reality. 2d. If empty space is nothing, then bodies were created in nothing, occupy nothing, and all spaces actually occupied are nothing. To say, as so many have said, that empty space is nothing, and that space occupied by matter is a reality, is to say that _the absolute is nothing until it becomes relative_—a proposition which is the main support of German pantheism, and which every man of sense must reject. 3d. Of two different recipients, the greater has a greater capacity independently of the matter which it may contain; for, whether it be filled with the rarest gas or with the densest metal, its capacity does not vary. It is therefore manifest that its capacity is not determined by the matter it contains, but only by the space intercepted between its limits. In the same manner the smaller recipient has less capacity, irrespective of the matter it may contain, and only in consequence of the space intercepted. If, therefore, space, prescinding from the matter occupying it, is nothing, the greater capacity will be a greater nothing, and the less capacity a less nothing. But greater and less imply quantity, and quantity is something. Therefore nothing will be something.

We hope we shall hereafter have a better opportunity of developing these and other considerations on space; but the little we have said is sufficient, we believe, to show that the assumption of the unreality of space unoccupied by matter is a philosophical absurdity.

We conclude that the existence of continuous matter cannot be proved, and that those philosophers who still admit it cannot account for it by anything like a good argument. They can only shelter themselves behind the prejudices of their infancy, which they have been unable to discard, or behind the venerable authority of the ancients, who, though deserving our admiration in other respects, were led astray by the same popular prejudices, owing to their limited knowledge of natural science. We may be allowed to add that if the ancient philosophers are not to be blamed for admitting continuous matter, the same cannot be said of those among our contemporaries who, in the present state of science, are still satisfied with their authority on the subject.

_Mysterious attributes of continuous matter._—Now, let us suppose that bodies, or their molecules, are made up of continuous matter, just as our opponents maintain; and let us see what must necessarily follow from such a gratuitous assumption. In the first place, it follows that _a piece of continuous matter cannot be actuated by a single substantial act_. This is easily proved.

For a single act gives a single actual being; which is inconsistent with the nature of continuous matter. Matter, to be continuous, must actually contain distinct parts, united indeed, but having distinct ubications in space. Now, with a single substantial act there cannot be distinct actual parts; for all actual distinction, according to the axiom of the schools, implies distinct acts: _Actus est qui distinguit._ Therefore continuous matter cannot be actuated by a single substantial act.

Again, a piece of continuous matter has dimensions, of which the beginning and the end must be quite distinct, the existence of the one not being the existence of the other. But it is impossible for two things which have a distinct existence to be under the same substantial act; for there cannot be two existences without two formal principles. Hence, if there were any continuous matter, the beginning and the end of its dimensions should be actuated by distinct acts; and the same would be true of any two distinct points throughout the same dimensions. Nor does it matter that the dimensions are supposed to be formed of one unbroken piece; for, before we conceive distinct parts, or terms, as forming the continuation of one another, we must admit the substance of such parts, as their continuation presupposes their being. Hence, however intimately the parts may be united, they always remain substantially distinct; which implies that each one of them must have its own substantial act.

Moreover, continuous extension is divisible. If, then, there is anywhere a piece of continuous matter, it may be divided into two, by God at least. But as division is not a magical operation, and does not give the first existence to the things which are divided, it is plain that the parts which after the division exist separately must have had their own distinct existence before the division; and, evidently, they could not have a distinct existence without being actuated by distinct substantial acts. What we say of these two parts applies to whatever other parts are obtainable by continuing the division. Whence it is manifest that continuous matter needs as many substantial acts as it has divisible parts.

The advocates of continuous matter try to decline this consequence by pretending that matter, so long as it is undivided, is _one_ matter and needs only one form; but this form, according to them, is divisible; hence when the matter is divided, each part of the matter retains its own portion of the substantial form, and thus the same form which gives existence to the whole gives existence to the separate parts. This is, however, a mere subterfuge; for the undivided matter is indeed one accidentally, inasmuch as it has no _division_ of parts; but it is not one substantially, because it has _distinction_ of parts. This distinction exists before the division is made, and we have already seen that no actual distinction is possible without distinct acts. And again, the hypothesis that substantial forms are divisible, is a ridiculous fiction, to say the least. For nothing is divisible which has no multiplicity of parts and consequently a multiplicity of acts. How, then, can a substantial act, which is a single act, be conceived as divisible?

They also argue that as the soul, which is a simple form, actuates the whole matter of the body, so can the material form actuate continuous matter. This comparison may have some weight with those who confound the _essential_ with the _substantial_ forms, and believe that the soul gives the first being to the matter of the body. But the truth is that the substance of the soul is the _essential_ form of the living organism, and not the _substantial_ form giving the first being to matter. The organism and its matter must have their being in nature before being animated by the soul; each part of matter in the body has therefore its own distinct material form and its own distinct existence. The soul is a principle of life, and gives nothing but life.(75) Hence the aforesaid comparison is faulty, and leads to no conclusion.

In the second place it follows that _no continuous matter can be styled a single substance_.

For within the dimensions of continuous matter there must be as many distinct substantial acts as there are material points distinct from one another; it being clear that distinct points cannot have the same substantial actuation, and accordingly require distinct substantial acts and constitute distinct substances. Against this some will object that a mere point of matter is incapable of supporting the substantial form. But we have already shown that the substantial form is not _supported_ by its matter, as the objection assumes, but only terminated to it, the matter being the substantial term, not the subject, of the substantial form.(76) On the other hand, it is manifest that a form naturally destined to act in a sphere, by actuating a single point of matter, actuates just as much matter as its nature requires. For it is from a single point, not from many, that the action must be directed. Hence nothing more than a point of matter is required to terminate the substantial form and to constitute a perfect substance. Additional proofs of this truth will be found in our next article, where we shall rigorously demonstrate the impossibility of continuous matter. Meanwhile, nothing withstands our conclusion that there must be as many distinct substances in continuous matter as there are distinct points within its dimensions.

In the third place, it follows that _this multitude of distinct substances is not merely potential, but actual_.

This conclusion is very clear. For every multitude of actual parts is an actual multitude, or, as they say, a multitude in act. But in continuous matter all the parts are actual, although they are not actually separated. Therefore the multitude of such parts is an actual multitude.

The upholders of continuous matter do not admit that this multitude is actual; they contend that it is only potential. For were they to concede that it is actual, they would be compelled to admit either that it is actually finite, or that it is actually infinite. Now, they cannot say that it is actually finite, because this would be against the well‐known nature of continuum, which admits of an endless division, and therefore contains a multitude of parts which has no end. On the other hand, they cannot say that it is actually infinite; because, even admitting the absolute possibility of a multitude actually infinite, it would still be absurd to assert that such is the case with a piece of matter having finite dimensions. Indeed, Leibnitz and Descartes did not hesitate to teach this latter absurdity; but they could not make it fashionable, and were soon abandoned even by their own disciples. Thus the difficulty remained; and philosophers, being unable to solve it, tried to decline it by denying that there can be in the continuum an _actual_ multitude of parts. This was, in fact, the view of the old advocates of continuous matter, who uniformly admitted that the parts of an unbroken continuum are merely _potential_, and form a potential multitude. For, they say, the _actual_ multitude results from actual division, and therefore has no existence in the undivided continuum.

This last view would be very good, if the continuum in question were _successive_—as is the case with movement and time, which are always _in fieri_, and exist only by infinitesimals in an infinitesimal present, or if the continuum in question were _virtual_, as is the case with any mensurable interval of space; for evidently in these continuums no _actual_ multitude is to be found. But the case is quite different with continuous matter. For he who asserts the existence of continuous matter asserts the existence of a thing having parts _formally_ distinct and _simultaneous_. He therefore affirms the actual existence of a formal multitude of distinct parts, or, in other terms, an actual multitude. To deny the actual multitude of the parts, on the plea that there is no actual division, is to take refuge in a miserable sophism, which consists in denying the substantial distinction of the parts on the ground that they are not divided, and in ignoring their actual being solely because they have not a certain special mode of being.

As to the axiom that “Number results from division,” two things are to be noticed. The first is that the term “division” here means _mensuration_, not separation. Thus we divide the day into twenty‐four hours, without discontinuing time for all that; and in like manner we divide the length of a journey into miles without discontinuing space. This shows that the numbers obtained by the division of the continuum are only artificially or virtually discrete, and that the continuum remains unbroken. The second is that a number is not merely a multitude, but a multitude measured by a certain unit, as S. Thomas aptly defines it: _Numerus est multitudo mensurata per unum_. Hence, if the unit of measure is arbitrary (as is the case with all continuous quantities), the same quantity can be expressed by different numbers, according as a different unit is employed in measuring it. But so long as the unit is not determined, the quantity cannot be expressed by any definite number. And if the unit employed be less than any given finite quantity, the thing which is measured will contain a multitude of such units greater than any given number. All such units exist in the thing measured prior to its mensuration; and as such units are actual and distinct, there can be no doubt that they constitute an actual multitude.

Some modern advocates of continuous matter have imagined another means of evading the difficulty. Tongiorgi admits extended atoms of continuous matter, but denies that their parts are _actually_ distinct. As, however, he confesses that extension requires parts outside of parts (_Cosmol._, n. 143), we may ask him: Are not such parts _actually_ distinct? Distinction is a negation of identity; and surely parts existing actually outside of one another are not actually identical. They are therefore actually distinct. Now, to use the very words of the author, “where there are distinct parts there is a plurality of units, that is, a multitude, although the parts which are distinct be united in a common term, as is the case with the parts of continuum”;(77) and therefore it is manifest that the continuous atom involves actual multitude.

Liberatore does not entirely deny the actual distinction of the parts in continuous matter, but maintains that the distinction is _incomplete_, and accordingly cannot give rise to an actual multitude. The parts of a continuum, says he, are united in a common term; hence they are incompletely distinct, and make no number, but are all one. They are outside of one another, yet in such a manner as to be also inside of one another. They do not subsist in themselves, but in the whole. The whole displays many parts, but it is one, and its parts are so indeterminate that they cannot be measured except by an arbitrary measure.(78)

This view scarcely deserves to be discussed, as the author himself owns that it makes continuous matter seem somewhat contradictory—_Contradictoriis quodammodo notis subditur_—though he attributes this kind of contradiction to the opposition which exists between the matter and the form—an explanation which we do not admit for reasons which we shall give in our next article. But as to the assertion that the parts of a continuum, on account of their having a common term, are only _incompletely_ distinct, we can show at once that the author is much mistaken. Incomplete distinction is a distinction which does not completely exclude identity. Hence where there is incomplete distinction there is also incomplete identity. Now, not a shadow of identity is to be found between any two parts of continuum. Therefore any two parts of continuum are completely distinct. Thus each of the twenty‐four hours into which we divide the day is completely distinct from every other, although the one is united with the other in a common term; for it is evident that the common term, having no extension, is no part of extension, and therefore cannot originate identity between any two parts of extension. To say that there is some identity, and therefore an incomplete distinction, between two extensions, because they have a common term which has no extension, is to pretend that the unextended has some identity with the extended; and this pretension is absurd. We conclude that, in spite of all the efforts of our opponents, it is manifest that continuous matter would be an _actual_ multitude of distinct, though not separated, substances.

Lastly, it follows that _actual continuous matter would be an actual infinite multitude of substances_.

This conclusion is fully warranted by the infinite divisibility of the continuum. But here again the advocates of material continuity contend that this divisibility is potential, and can never be reduced to act; whence they infer that the multitude of the parts is not actual, but potential. We, however, repeat that if the division is potential, the divisible matter is certainly actual; and therefore the potency of an infinite division presupposes an infinite multitude of distinct terms actually existing in the divisible matter. And as we have already shown that each distinct term must have a distinct substantial act, we must conclude that the least piece of continuous matter would consist of an infinite actual multitude of substances—a consequence whose monstrosity needs no demonstration.

Hence we are not surprised to see that Goudin, one of the great champions of the old physics, considers continuous matter as “a philosophic mystery, about which reason teaches more than it can understand, and objects more than it can answer.”(79) He tries, however, to explain the mystery in some manner, by adding that “when the continuum is said to be infinitely divisible, this must be understood mathematically, not physically—that is, by considering the quantity as it is in itself, not as it is the property of a corporeal form. For in the process of the division we might finally reach a part so small that, if smaller, it would be insufficient to bear any natural form. Nevertheless, mathematically speaking, in that smallest physical part there would still be two halves, and in these halves other halves, and so on without end.”(80)

This explanation is taken from S. Thomas (I _Phys._, lect. I.), and shows philosophical thought; but, far from solving the difficulty, it rather proves that it is insoluble. For if, mathematically speaking, in the smallest bit of continuous matter there are still halves, and halves of halves, clearly there are in it distinct parts of matter, and therefore distinct forms actuating each of them distinctly, as the being of each part is not the being of any other part. It is therefore false that nothing smaller is sufficient to bear any natural form. And hence the difficulty is not solved. On the other hand, the necessity of resorting to purely mathematical (geometric) quantity clearly shows that it is _the space_ inclosed in the volume of the body (of which alone geometry treats), and not _the matter_ (of which geometry has nothing to say), that is infinitely divisible; and this amounts to a confession that continuous matter has no existence.

While making these remarks, we willingly acknowledge that S. Thomas and all the ancients who considered air, water, fire, and earth as the first elements of all things, were perfectly consistent in teaching that natural forms require a definite amount of matter. For by “natural forms” they meant those forms from which the specific properties of sensible things emanate. Now, all things that are sensible are materially compounded in a greater or less degree, and possess properties which cannot be ascribed to a single material point. So far, then, these ancient philosophers were right. But they should have considered that the required amount of matter ought to consist of distinct parts, having their own distinct being, and therefore their own distinct substantial acts. This would have led them to the conclusion that the natural form of air, water, etc., was not a form giving the first being to the material parts, but a form of natural composition giving the first being to the compound nature. But let us stop here for the present. We have shown that continuous matter cannot be proved to exist, and is, at best, a “philosophic mystery.” In our next article we shall go a step further, and prove that material continuity is a metaphysical impossibility.

To Be Continued.

New Publications.

ALZOG’S UNIVERSAL CHURCH HISTORY. Pabisch and Byrne. Vol I. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This manual for ecclesiastical students is confessedly the best extant. Dr. Pabisch, the chief translator and editor, is well known for his vast erudition, and his associate, the Rev. Mr. Byrne, has paid careful attention to the style of rendering the German into English. The publishers have made the exterior of the work worthy of its contents. We need not say any more to recommend a work which speaks for itself and has received the sanction of names the highest in ecclesiastical rank and theological repute in this country.

HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND. By James Walsh. Glasgow: Hugh Margey. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is a valuable work, because it is the only one of its kind, and, even were there others, it would stand on its own merits and still be valuable.

Scotland being so closely united in its history and destinies, and having so much in common with the sister countries, the history of the Scottish Church must necessarily have a close affinity and throw much light upon the ecclesiastical annals of England and Ireland; so that the interest and importance of this work is greatly heightened by the fact that it supplies an integral part of the history of Christianity in the British Isles. Hitherto that history was not complete. It may be said to be completed now. If those among our separated brethren who pretend to seek so diligently after truth in the teachings and practices of the early church will deign to glance at these pages, they will find that Scotland too was evangelized by the popes, and that its first Christians professed, not a mutilated Christianity, but the whole cycle of Catholic doctrine. They will learn, moreover, that the so‐called Reformation in Scotland was entirely a political job, and that there, as elsewhere, the Protestantism in which they pride themselves was tinkered up by a herd of fanatics and foisted upon the people by a rapacious, profligate, unprincipled nobility. Never was there a more truthful page of history written than this. The author, though he modestly claims for himself nothing more than the title of compiler, has many of the qualifications of an historian; his research has been long and laborious, and he notices only the most authentic documents and records of the past. In no instance do we discover any attempt to color or gloss over any of his statements, and he is never betrayed into exaggerating the virtues or concealing the faults of his countrymen.

MANUAL OF MYTHOLOGY: GREEK AND ROMAN, NORSE AND OLD GERMAN, HINDOO AND EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY. By Alexander S. Murray, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum. Second Edition. Rewritten and considerably enlarged. With forty‐five plates. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 654 Broadway. 1874.

As a manual of mythology this seems to be as concise, complete, and accurate as such a book can be made. As a specimen of art it is remarkable. The author is apparently one of our modern, cultivated pagans, very much at home among the heathen religions he describes. The very brief exposition of his own theological opinions contained in his introduction ignores the true and primitive religion revealed from heaven altogether, and propounds the utterly unhistorical, pernicious, and false notion that monotheism is a development from polytheism produced by intellectual progress. The author does not, however, put forth anti‐Christian views in an offensive or obtrusive manner, and indeed all he says is included in a few sentences. We cannot, certainly, recommend the study of pagan mythology to young pupils, or consider the present volume as suitable for indiscriminate perusal. Those who are fit for such studies, and for whom they are necessary or proper, will find it a very satisfactory compendium of information and a work of truly classical taste and elegance.

CURTIUS’ HISTORY OF GREECE. Vol. V. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.

This volume completes the work of Dr. Curtius. We have already given it the high commendation which it deserves in our notices of previous volumes. It is one of the first‐class historical works of German scholarship, and this is the highest praise that can be given to any work in those departments in which German scholars excel, so far as learning and ability are concerned.

A THEORY OF FINE ART. By Joseph Torrey, late Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in the University of Vermont. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.

Looking through this treatise of Prof. Torrey, whose intellectual head, stamped in gold on the cover, leads the reader to expect a thoughtful work on the most attractive subject of æsthetics, our impression is decidedly favorable. The University of Vermont used to be considered as quite remarkable for an elevated, philosophical tone. Such seems to be the character of this condensed summary of the retired professor’s lectures on art, evidently the result of much study and observation, and given to the reader in that pleasing style which best suits such a very pleasant branch of knowledge.

PROTESTANT JOURNALISM. By the author of _My Clerical Friends_. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

It is enough to name the author of this collection of short, lively essays—Dr. Marshall. It is the cream of the London _Tablet’s_ articles, during the author’s active connection with that journal, on the most living and interesting topics of the day in regard to the warfare between the Catholic Church and her enemies. We recommend it to universal reading and circulation in the warmest possible manner, and with the most sincere desire that the author may long be spared to continue his admirable and useful career as a champion of religion and truth.

CHARTERIS; A Romance. By Mary M. Meline. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1874.

This romance does not belie its name in its contents. Its plot and incidents are romantic and tragic in the highest degree. Bordering, at least, on the improbable, as they are, they are nevertheless managed with a very considerable degree of skill and power by the author, who has improved very much on her last story, _In Six Months_. The characters are drawn with free and bold strokes, and have dramatic individuality. The plot excites even a painful interest all through, and there is no mawkish sentimentalism anywhere. Some scenes are remarkably well drawn. There are no lectures on religion or morals, but the purity of a true Catholic woman’s faith and morality shines through the whole story. We may congratulate the fair author on her success.

KATHERINE EARLE. By Miss Adeline Trafton. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1874.

An interesting story, beautifully illustrated and neatly bound.

SUMMER TALKS ABOUT LOURDES. By Cecilia Mary Caddell. London: Burns & Oates. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

In this little book the authoress relates some of the wonderful miracles of Lourdes. Its style is simple and chaste, and, we should say, particularly suited for children.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XX., NO. 117.—DECEMBER, 1874.

The Persecution Of The Church In The German Empire.

The Catholics are suffering today, in the very heart of Europe, a persecution which, if less bloody, is not less cruel or unjust, than that which afflicted the Christian Church in the beginning of the IVth century, under the reign of the brutal old emperor, Diocletian. The prisons of Germany are filled with confessors of the faith, who, in the midst of every indignity and outrage, bear themselves with a constancy and heroism not unworthy of the early martyrs. And it is strange, too, that this struggle should be only a renewal of the old conflict between Christ and Cæsar, between the Son of Man and the prince of this world. In fact, anti‐ Christian Europe is using every exertion to re‐create society on the model of Grecian and Roman paganism. This tendency is manifest in all the various realms of thought and action.

We perceive it—and we speak now more particularly of Germany—in literature, in science, in the manner of dealing with all the great problems which concern man in his relations with both the visible and the unseen world; and it looms up before us, in palpable form and gigantic proportions, in the whole attitude of the state toward the church. There has never lived on this earth a more thorough pagan than Goethe, the great idol of German literature, to whom the very sign of the cross was so hateful that in his notorious Venetian Epigram he put it side by side with garlic and vermin. The thought of self‐sacrifice and self‐denial was so odious to his lustful and all‐indulgent nature that he turned from its great emblem with uncontrollable disgust, and openly proclaimed himself a “decidirter Nichtchrist.” “Das Ewig Weibliche”—sensualism and sexualism—were the gods of his heart, in whose praise alone he attuned his lyre. And Schiller, in his _Gods of Greece_, complained sorrowingly that all the fair world of gods and goddesses should have vanished, that one (the God of the Christian) might be enriched; and with tender longing he prayed that “nature’s sweet morn” might again return.

Both the religion and the philosophy of paganism were based upon the deification of nature, and were consequently pantheistic. Now, this pagan pantheism recrudescent is the one permanent type amid the endless variations of modern German sophistry. It underlies the theorizing of Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel, as well as that of Feuerbach, Büchner, and Strauss. They all assume the non‐existence of a personal God, and transfer his attributes to nature, which is, in their eyes, the mother of all, the sole existence, and the supreme good. This pantheism, which confuses all things in extricable chaos, spirit with matter, thought with sensation, the infinite with the finite, destroying the very elements of reason, and taking from language its essential meaning, has infected all non‐Catholic thought in Germany. When we descend from the misty heights of speculation, we find pantheistic paganism in the idolatry of science and culture, which have taken the place of dogma and morality. It is held to be an axiom that man is simply a product of nature, who knows herself in him as she feels herself in the animal.

The formulas in which the thought is clothed are of minor importance. In the ultimate analysis we find in all the conflicting schools of German infidelity this sentiment, however widely its expression may vary: that nature is supreme, and there is no God beside. The cosmos, instead of a personal God, is the ultimate fact beyond which science professes to be unable to proceed; and therefore the duality of ends, aims, and results which underlies the Christian conception of the universe must necessarily disappear. There is no longer God and the world, spirit and matter, good and evil, heaven and hell; there is not even man and the brute. There is only the cosmos, which is one; and from this it necessarily follows that the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal power is unreal and should cease to be recognized.

Now, here we have discovered the very germ from which the whole Prussian persecution has sprung. In the last analysis it rests upon the assumption that the spiritual power has no right to exist, since the truths upon which it was supposed to be based—as God, the soul, and a future life—are proven to be myths. Hence the state is the only autonomy, and to claim authority not derived from it is treason. Thus the struggle now going on in Prussia is for life or death. It rages around the very central citadel of the soul and of all religion. The Catholics of Germany are to‐day contending for what the Christians of the first centuries died—the right to live. To understand this better it will be well to consider for a moment the attributes of the state in pagan Greece and Rome.

Hellenic religion, in its distinctive forms, had its origin in the deification of nature and of man as her crowning work, and both were identified with the state. Hence religion was hero‐worship; the good man was the good citizen, the saint was the successful warrior who struck terror into the enemies of his country, and thus the religious feeling was confounded with the patriotic spirit. To be a true citizen of the state, it was necessary to profess the national religion; and to be loyal to the state was to be true to its protecting gods. The highest act of religion was to beat back the invader or to die gloriously on the battle‐field. Indeed, in paganism we find no idea of a non‐national religion. The pagan state, whether imperial, monarchical, or republican, was essentially tyrannical, wholly incompatible with freedom as understood in Christian society. To be free was to be, soul and body, the slave of the state. Plato gives to his ideal Republic unlimited power to control the will of the individual, to direct all his thoughts and actions, to model and shape his whole life. He merges the family and its privileges into the state and its rights, gives the government absolute authority in the education of its subjects, and even places the propagation of the race under state supervision.

The pagan state was also essentially military, recognizing no rights except those which it had not the power to violate. Now, the preaching of Christ was in direct contradiction to this whole theory of government. He declared that God and the soul have rights as well as Cæsar, and proclaimed the higher law which affirms that man has a destiny superior to that of being a citizen of any state, however glorious; which imposes upon him duties that transcend the sphere of all human authority. Thus religion became the supreme law of life, and the recognition of the indefeasible rights of conscience gave to man citizenship in a kingdom not of this world. It, in consequence, became his duty as well as his privilege to obey first the laws of this supernatural kingdom, and to insist upon this divine obligation, even though the whole world should oppose him.

This teaching of Christ at once lifted religion above the control of the state, and, cutting loose the bonds of servitude which had made it national and narrow, declared it catholic, of the whole earth and for all men. He sent his apostles, not to the Jew, or the Greek, or the Gentile, but to all the nations, and in his church he recognized no distinction of race or social condition—the slave was like the freeman, the beggar like the king.

This doctrine, the most beneficent and humanitarian that the world has ever heard, brought forth from the oblivion of ages the all‐forgotten truth of the brotherhood of the race, and raised man to a level on which paganism was not able even to contemplate him; proclaiming that man, for being simply man, irrespective of race, nationality, or condition, is worthy of honor and reverence. Now, it was precisely this catholic and non‐national character of the religion of Christ which brought it into conflict with the pagan state. The Christians, it was held, could not be loyal citizens of the empire, because they did not profess the religion of the empire, and refused to sacrifice to the divinity of Cæsar. They were traitors, because in those things which concerned faith they were resolved not to recognize on the part of the state any right to interfere; and therefore were they cast into prison, thrown to the wild beasts in the Amphitheatre, and devoured under the approving eyes of the worshippers of the emperor’s divinity. This history is repeating itself in Prussia to‐ day.

Many causes have, within the present century, helped to strengthen the national feeling in Germany. The terrible outrages and humiliations inflicted upon her by the pitiless soldiers of the first Napoleon made it evident that the common safety required that the bonds of brotherhood among the peoples of the different German states should be drawn tighter. The development of a national literature also helped to foster a longing for national unity. In the XVIIth, and even down to nearly the end of the XVIIIth, century, French influence, extending from the courts of princes to the closets of the learned, gave tone to both literature and politics.

Leibnitz wrote in French or Latin, and Frederick the Great strove to forget his own tongue, that he might learn to speak French with idiomatic purity—an accomplishment which he never acquired.

As there was no German literature, the national feeling lacked one of its most powerful stimulants. But in the latter half of the XVIIIth century, and during the first half of the XIXth, a literature rich, profound, thoroughly German, the creation of some of the highest names in the world of letters, came into existence, and was both a cause and an effect of the national awakening. Goethe especially did much, by the absolute ascendency which he acquired in the literature of his country, to unify and harmonize the national mind.

Still, a thousand interests and jealousies, local and dynastic, old prescriptive rights, and a constitutional slowness and sluggishness in the Germanic temperament, stood in the way of a united fatherland, and had to be got rid of or overcome by force before the dream of the nationalists could become a reality.

Prussia, founded by rapine, built up and strengthened by war and conquest, has always been a heartless, self‐seeking state. The youngest of the great European states, and for a long time one of the most inconsiderable, she has gradually grown to be the first military power of the world. Already, in the time of Frederick the Great, she was the formidable rival of Austria in the contest for the hegemony of the other German states. This struggle ended, in 1866, in the utter defeat of Austria on the field of Sadowa. Hanover, Saxony, Hesse‐Cassel, and other minor principalities were at once absorbed by Prussia, who, besides greatly increasing her strength, thus became the champion of German unity. But German unity was a menace to France, who could not possibly maintain her preponderance in European affairs in the presence of a united Germany. Hence the irrepressible conflict between France and Prussia, which ended in the catastrophe of Sedan.

The King of Prussia became the Emperor of Germany, and German national pride and enthusiasm reached a degree bordering on frenzy.

By a remarkable coincidence the Franco‐Prussian war broke out at the very moment when the dogma of Papal infallibility was defined, and immediately after the capitulation of Sedan, Victor Emanuel took possession of Rome. The Pope was without temporal power—a prisoner indeed. The feeling against the newly‐defined dogma was especially strong in Germany, where the systematic warfare carried on by the _Janus_ party against the Vatican Council had warped the public mind. France, the eldest daughter of the church, was lying, bleeding and crushed, at the feet of the conqueror. The time seemed to have arrived when the bond which united the Catholics of Germany with the Pope, and through him with the church universal, might easily be broken.

The defection of Döllinger and other rationalistic professors, as well as the attitude of many of the German bishops in the council, and the views which they had expressed with regard to the probable results of a definition of the infallibility of the Pope, tended to confirm those who controlled the policy of the new empire in the opinion that there would be no great difficulty in forming the Catholics of Germany into a kind of national religious body wholly subject to the state, even in matters of faith. If we add to this the fact that the infidels of our day have a kind of superstition which leads them to think that all religious faith has grown weak, and that those who believe are for the most part hypocritical, insincere, and by no means anxious to suffer for conscience’s sake, we shall be able to understand how Bismarck, who is utterly indifferent to all religion, and who believes in nothing except the omnipotence of the state, should have persuaded himself to destroy the religious freedom which had come to be considered the common property of Christendom. Already, in the month of August immediately following the close of the war with France, we find the Northern German press, which obsequiously obeys his orders, beginning to throw out hints that Rome had always been the enemy of Germany; that her claims were incompatible with the rights of the state and hurtful to the national development; and that, in presence of the newly‐defined dogma of Papal infallibility, the necessity of resisting her ever‐increasing encroachments upon the domain of the civil authority had become imperative. The watchword given by the official press was everywhere re‐echoed by the organs of both infidel and Protestant opinion, and it at once became evident that the German Empire intended to make war on the Catholic Church.

There was yet another end to be subserved by the persecution of the church. Bismarck made no secret of his fears of a democratic movement in Germany after the excitement of the French campaign had died away, and he hoped to avert this danger by inflaming the religious prejudices of the infidel and Protestant population.

On the 8th of July, 1871, the Catholic department in the Ministry of Public Worship was abolished, and the government openly lent its influence to the Old Catholic movement.

According to the Prussian constitution, religious instruction in the gymnasia is obligatory; but where a portion or all of the students were Catholics, the state recognized that their religious instructors should not be appointed until they had received the approbation of the bishop. Dr. Wollmann, who had for a long time held the office of teacher of religion in the Catholic gymnasium of Braunsberg, apostatized after the Vatican Council, and was, in consequence, suspended from the exercise of the priestly office by his bishop, who declared that, since Wollmann had left the church, he could no longer be considered a suitable religious instructor of Catholic youth. Von Mühler, the Minister of Public Worship, refused to remove Wollmann; and since religious instruction is compulsory, the pupils who could not in conscience attend his classes were forced to leave the school.

This act of Von Mühler was in open violation of the Prussian constitution, which expressly recognized in the Catholic Church the right of directing the religious instruction of its members.

To require that Catholics should send their children to the lessons of an excommunicated priest was to trample upon the most sacred rights of conscience. By declaring, as in this case, that those who rejected the dogma of infallibility were true Catholics, the German government plainly showed that it intended to assume the competency of deciding in all matters of faith, and consequently to wholly ignore the existence of any religious authority distinct from that of the state.

Bismarck’s next move was not less arbitrary or tyrannical. He proposed to the Federal Council and Reichstag a law against what was termed the abuse of the pulpit, by which the office of preaching should be placed under the supervision of the police.

This law, which was passed by a feeble majority, was simply a renewal of the attempt to suppress Christianity made by the Jewish Council in Jerusalem when the apostles first began to preach in the name of Jesus, without asking permission of the rulers of the people: “But that it may be no further spread among the people, let us threaten them, that they speak no more in this name to any man. And calling them, they charged them not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus” (Acts iv. 17, 18).

The injustice of this law was very well shown by the Saxon member of the Federal Council, who pointed out the fact that, whilst liberty of speech was denied to Catholic priests, socialists and infidels were permitted every day to attack the very foundations of all government and civilization.

This, however, is but the necessary consequence of the theory of the _state‐God_. To preach in the name of any other God is treason; whereas atheism is the correlative of the omnipotence of the government. That the present tendency in Germany is to put the nation in the place of God is expressly recognized by the _Allgemeine Evang. Luth. Kirchenzeitung_, which is the organ of orthodox Lutheranism. These are its words: “For the dogmatic teaching of Christianity they hope to substitute the national element. The national idea will form the germ of the new religion of the empire. We have already seen the emblems which foreshadow the manner in which this new worship is to be organized. Instead of the Christian festivals, they will celebrate the national memories, and will call to the churches the masses to whom the road is no longer known. Have we not seen, on the anniversary of Sedan, the _eidolon_ of the emperor placed upon the altar, whilst the pulpit was surrounded with the busts of the heroes of the war?

“During eight days they wove crowns of oak‐leaves and the church was filled; whilst out of ten thousand parishioners, scarcely a dozen can be got together to listen to the word of God. Such is the religion of the future church of the empire. Little more is needed to revive the ancient worship of the Roman emperors; and if the history of Germany is to be reduced to this duel between the church of the emperor and that of the Pope, we must see on which side the Lutherans will stand.”

The next attack on the church was made under cover of an enactment on the inspection of public schools. A project of law was presented to the House of Deputies, excluding all priests from the inspection of schools, and at the same time obliging them to undertake this office whenever asked to do so by the state authorities. This latter clause was, however, so openly unjust that it was rejected by the House. But the law, even as it stands, is a virtual denial that Catholic schools have any right to exist at all, and is an evidence that the German Empire intends to destroy Christian faith by establishing an atheistic system of popular education.

And now war was declared against the Jesuits. The Congress of the Old Catholics, which met at Munich in September, 1871, had passed violent resolutions against the order; and later the Old Catholic Committee at Cologne presented a petition against the Jesuits to the imperial Parliament.

The debate was opened in the month of May, 1872. A project of law, restricting the liberties of religious orders, and especially directed against the Society of Jesus, was brought before the Federal Council and accepted by a large majority. When it came before the imperial Parliament, amendments were added rendering it still more harsh and tyrannical. The order was to be shut out from the empire, its houses to be closed, foreign Jesuits were to be expelled, and the German members of the society were to be confined to certain districts; and the execution of these measures was to be entrusted to the Federal Council.

On the 4th of July the law received the approval of the emperor, and on the 5th it was promulgated.

Thus in the most arbitrary manner, without any legal proceedings, hundreds of German citizens, against whom there was not the slightest proof of guilt, were deprived of all rights and expelled from their country. Besides, the measure was based upon the most ignorant misconception of the real condition of the church, and was therefore necessarily ineffective. The religious orders and the secular priesthood do not represent opposite tendencies in the church; their aims are identical, and, in our day at least, the secular priests are as zealous, as active, and as efficient as the members of the religious orders.

What end, then, was to be gained by expelling the Jesuits, whilst devoted and faithful priests were left to minister to the Catholic people, whose faith had been roused by this scandalous persecution of men whom they knew to be guilty of no crime except that of loving Jesus Christ and his church? The blow struck at the Jesuits was, in truth, aimed at the church, and this the bishops, priests, and entire Catholic people of Germany at once recognized. They saw now, since even the possibility of doubting was no longer left to them, that the German Empire had declared open war against the church; and Bismarck, seeing that his half‐way measures had deceived no one, resolved to adopt a policy of open violence. With this view a new minister of Public Worship was appointed in the person of Dr. Falk, who drew up the plan of the famous Four Church Laws to which he has given his name, and which was adopted on the 11th of May, 1873.

In virtue of these laws—which it is unnecessary to transcribe in full—the state arrogates the right of appointing to all ecclesiastical offices, since the government claims authority to approve or annul all nominations made by the bishops; and the President of the Province (_Oberpraesident_) is bound to interdict the exercise of any religious function to ecclesiastics appointed without his consent. The bishop who makes an appointment to the cure of souls without the consent of the civil authority is fined from two hundred to one thousand thalers; and the priest who, appointed in this way, exercises spiritual functions, is visited with a proportionate fine. This is an attempt to change the very nature of the church; it is a denial of its right to exist at all.

The third of these laws creates the “Royal Court of Justice for Ecclesiastical Affairs,” which claims and possesses by act of Parliament the right to reform all disciplinary decisions made by the bishops in relation to the ecclesiastics under their jurisdiction. This same court has by law the right to depose any ecclesiastic whose conduct the government may see fit to consider _incompatible with public order_.

The Pope is interdicted from the exercise of disciplinary power within the territory of the Prussian monarchy.

The state takes control of the education of the young men destined to the priesthood. It requires them to pass the _arbiturienten‐examen_ in a German gymnasium, and then to devote three years to the study of theology in a German university, during which time they are not to be permitted to live in an episcopal seminary; and thereafter they are to pass a public examination before the state officials. All educational establishments for the clergy, especially all kinds of seminaries, are placed under the superintendence of the government, and those which refuse to submit to this supervision are to be closed. The education of priests, the fitness of candidates for holy orders, appointments to the cure of souls, the infliction of ecclesiastical censures, the soundness of the faith of the clergy, are, in the new German Empire, matters to be regulated by the police.

This is not a struggle between Catholicity and Protestantism; it is a battle between the Atheist State and the Kingdom of God. The Protestant Church in Germany does not alarm Bismarck, because it is feeble and has no independent organization, since its ministers are appointed and ruled by the emperor, and it is also well understood that very few of them have any faith in positive religion.

But the orthodox Protestants of Germany thoroughly understand that the attempt to crush the Catholic Church is meant to be a fatal blow at the vital principle of all religion. This is recognized by the _Allgemeine Evang. Luth. Kirchenzeitung_ in the article from which we have already quoted. “It is a common remark,” says this organ of orthodox Lutheranism, “that the blows struck at the Church of Rome will tell with redoubled force against the evangelical church. But what is meant to injure, only helps the Roman Church. There she stands, more compact than ever, and the world is amazed at beholding her strength. Once the word of the Monk of Wittenberg made her tremble, but to‐day the blows of power make her stronger. Let us beware of illusion; it is certain that in the Protestant North of Germany there has grown up a public opinion on the Church of Rome which provokes the respect even of the liberals. We have enough to do, they say, to fight the socialists; it is time to leave the Catholic bishops in peace.”

To Be Concluded Next Month.

The Veil Withdrawn.

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

XXVI.

Among the amusements of the Carnival, there was one in which I was not in the least tempted to take part—that of the _bal masqué_, or, as it was called, the Festino di San Carlo. I ought to remark here, however, that it was with respect to this amusement, above all, Naples differed from Paris. There was no resemblance between the _bals masqués_ at San Carlo and those given at the opera in Paris. No virtuous or even prudent woman, I imagine, would think of venturing to attend the latter; whereas at San Carlo it was not only common to find married women of rank, but even young ladies under their mothers’ protection as at any other ball. They wore their masks awhile, amusing themselves, if they had the turn, with mystifying their friends; then, at a certain hour, several rooms having been formed by uniting a number of boxes, and illuminated, they all laid aside their masks, and the various coteries, in groups of ten, fifteen, or twenty persons, took supper together. I certainly do not pretend to deny (my story itself would forbid it) that the opportunity of profiting by this disguise, in order to pass the evening in a less inoffensive manner, was not made use of by more than one of the company. It could not be otherwise, perhaps, in a place where this kind of folly reigns, even in a mitigated form. I only wish to describe its general character at that time.

I had not, however, the least inclination to attend. The very thought of wearing a mask was repugnant to me, and to see anybody else with one on caused me a kind of fear. Besides, I never could understand what pleasure was to be found in a mystery of this kind, which always seemed childish and trivial, if not culpable and dangerous. I had neither the faculty of disguising my voice nor of making use of the jargon that constitutes the spirit of a _bal masqué_. I therefore flatly refused to join a party of twenty persons who were to attend the _Festino_ on _Jeudi‐Gras_, and, after participating for awhile in the amusements of the ball‐room, were to take supper together.

Stella had neither my repugnance nor my incapacity. She knew how to play the part of another with grace and skill, and had been urged, as well as I, to join this merry party; but she denied herself the pleasure in order to attend a family supper with her aged relatives and their friends, and we decided with mutual accord that our amusement for the day should be confined to that which awaited us on my aunt’s balcony on the Toledo.

The hour came at last, and found us under arms—that is to say, our faces protected by a kind of visor of wire netting, and all of us, except my aunt, dressed in such a way as not to fear the clouds of flour we were to face, as well as the missiles which, under the name of _confetti_, were fearful to encounter, and had nothing sweet about them but the name. Some carried their precaution so far as to prepare a _costume de bataille_ expressly for the occasion. Of this number were Teresina and Mariuccia, who, at Lando’s suggestion, had provided themselves with dresses of white cotton ornamented with bows of rose‐colored ribbon, which enabled them to encounter the showers of missiles, and were so becoming that they looked like two of Watteau’s shepherdesses. But my aunt disdained this mixture of elegance and economy. She did not give a thought to what was to take place in the street; her whole mind was absorbed in what was to occur in her drawing‐room. Regardless of danger, she put on a dress of yellow silk of the brightest shade, and set off her _chignon_ and false braids with a cap adorned with poppies and corn‐flowers, above which was fastened a bow of red ribbon, which streamed like a flag from the summit of a tower. This display was intended to do honor to the visitors who merely came for their own convenience. For the most part, they only entered her house with an eye to her balcony: but in order to obtain access to it, they were obliged to pass through the drawing‐room, where Donna Clelia herself was stationed to arrest the passers‐by and exact a tribute of politeness no one could refuse, and which, brought to such close terms, every one liberally paid. Never had she, therefore, in a single day reaped a like harvest of new and distinguished acquaintances; never had she received at once so great a number of desirable invitations, for could they do otherwise than requite hospitality with hospitality? My aunt thus had at the beginning of the day one hour of happiness without alloy!

At length the battle began in earnest. To those who have taken part in such combats it is useless to describe the enthusiasm and madness which every one ends by manifesting; to those who have not had the experience it is equally useless to try to give an idea of it. It must be acknowledged, however, that the first volley of _confetti_ is by no means very amusing to the recipient, and he is tempted to withdraw ill‐humoredly from what seems at first mere rough, childish sport. Then he endeavors to defend himself by retaliating. By degrees the ardor of combat is awakened; he yields to it, he grows furious, and for hours sometimes he persists in returning volley for volley, unmindful of fatigue, and regardless of the blows he receives. One thing is hurled after another—hard _confetti_, fragile eggs, flour, sugar‐plums, flowers, and immense bouquets.... If the ammunition fails, he throws out of the window whatever comes to hand. He would rather throw himself out than give up the contest!

This sport had been going on for an hour, and we were still in full glee, when the Venetian gondola made its appearance in the street. It was welcomed with shouts and cries of applause from the crowd. In fact, nothing so splendid of this kind had ever been seen before. It came slowly along, stopping under every balcony. When it arrived before ours, it remained a long time, and a furious combat took place. Notwithstanding the visor that concealed Lorenzo’s face, I easily recognized him by his slender, stately form. Lando and Mario looked very well also, but Lorenzo surpassed them all by the grace and ease with which he wore his costume, as well as the skill with which he threw his bouquets to the precise spot he aimed at. He soon recognized me likewise, and threw me a bunch of roses!...

Alas! those withered roses. I preserved them a long time in memory of a day that was to end in so strange a manner!...

After the gondola had gone entirely out of sight, I concluded to leave the balcony, in order to take some rest while awaiting the return of the brilliant masquerade. This would not be till nightfall, when the gondola was to be illuminated throughout. I had therefore nearly an hour before me in which to repair my strength. But when I entered the drawing‐room, I was frightened at the sight which met my eyes. My poor aunt’s brilliant toilet had undergone the most disastrous consequences possible to imagine, and I found her so covered with flour and blood that I scarcely recognized her!

In this kind of war, as in all others, nothing is more dangerous than to attract the attention of the enemy. A hat, a ribbon, any dress whatever the least remarkable in its color, instantly becomes the object of universal aim. It seems Donna Clelia, after welcoming her company in the drawing‐room, was tempted to go and see in her turn what was taking place on the battle‐field; but no sooner had she stepped her foot on the balcony, no sooner were her poppies visible, and her red ribbons began to wave in the air, than from every balcony, every window, in the neighborhood, there fell on her head such a hail‐storm of missiles of all kinds that, in a second, not only had her flowers, ribbons, and _chignon_ disappeared under a thick layer of flour, but, having neglected to provide herself with a visor, she had been struck in the very middle of the face by some of the _confetti_ I have spoken of, which are merely hard balls of plaster in the centre. No one perceived this in the ardor of the combat, no one left the _mélée_ to go to her assistance, and she was still in the arm‐chair where she had thrown herself, stunned by the violence of the attack!...

I sprang towards her, and hastened to bathe her face with cold water. I then saw it was only her nose (a somewhat prominent feature in her face) that had suffered a slight contusion, though sufficient to inundate her laces and yellow dress with blood, so that the damage they sustained, as well as her head‐dress, was irreparable!...

But in the midst of all this my aunt remained cool and courageous. Like a general wounded on the day of victory, she smiled at the result of her rashness, and, while I was ministering to her wants, she exclaimed:

“It is nothing; no matter! Thanks, Ginevrina mia! _Che bel divertimento!_ I never passed such a day in my life!... Do you know, the Duchessa di L—— has invited me to play _la pignata_(81) at her house a week from Sunday. And then the gentleman with H.R.H., the Count of Syracuse, has promised to get me an invitation to one of the amateur comedies. And the gondola—what do you say to that? Didn’t your husband look handsome enough for you?... How _simpatico_ that Lorenzo is!... Ah! _figlia mia_, the Madonna has done well for you!... I hope she will think of us some day!...”

My aunt rambled on in this way while I was trying to repair her disordered attire, after dressing her wounds. This took some time; but I still hesitated about leaving her, though she begged me to return to the balcony and not trouble myself any more about her. I obeyed her at last; but this interruption had put an end to my enthusiastic gayety, and, when I returned to my place, I no longer felt any disposition to resume the sport I found so amusing only a short time before. Besides, it was growing dusk and the combat was slackening, though the noise and confusion in the street increased as the time approached for the return of the gondola. While I was thus standing motionless in the obscurity of one corner of the balcony where we were assembled, I suddenly heard some words from the adjoining balcony of the next house that attracted my attention:

“Valenzano must be fabulously rich, but he is going to ruin at full speed, the dear duke.”

“In the first place, he is really very wealthy,” was the reply; “and when he gains his lawsuit in Sicily, he will be the richest man in this part of Italy. I do not consider his entertaining company, however distinguished it may be, or giving his pretty wife a new set of ornaments now and then, or throwing away a few hundred dollars as he has done to‐day, as an extravagance that will ruin a man of his means.”

“No, of course not, if that were all.”

“What else is there?... He used to play high, but they say he never touches a card now.”

The other speaker burst into a loud laugh, and, after a moment’s silence, resumed in a lower tone:

“He no longer plays in company, but I assure you _Qui a bu boira_ and _Qui a joué jouera_. I should be satisfied with an income equal to what he spends in one evening at _lansquenet_ or _baccara_ since he stopped playing whist and _écarté_ in the drawing‐rooms to which he accompanies the duchess.”

Their voices grew still lower, and the few words I heard were so indistinct that I only caught the following:

“But as there is no doubt as to the result of the lawsuit in Sicily, there is no danger of a catastrophe.”

At that moment the uproar in the street became deafening. Shouts and wild applause announced the approach of the gondola, and redoubled in proportion to its nearness. It really presented a fairy‐like appearance. It was lit up with a thousand lamps of all colors, and from time to time brilliant rockets were sent up, casting a momentary gleam over the crowd, and then vanishing, leaving everything in obscurity except the dazzling gondola, which proceeded slowly along without stopping this time beneath the balconies. No _confetti_ or flowers were thrown; the combat was over. It was now merely a magnificent picturesque spectacle. I saw Lorenzo again, and more distinctly than before, for he had taken off his visor; but he could not see me in the obscurity of our balcony. He was standing in a group on the deck of the gondola as it went by. They were all dressed in Venetian costumes, which produced an extremely picturesque effect. It was like a living representation of one of Paul Veronese’s paintings. I could not take my eyes off so brilliant and extraordinary a spectacle, and the gondola had gone some distance when I suddenly saw Lorenzo (it was really he; I should have known him, even if his face had not at that moment been turned towards the bright light) rapidly ascend the light staging at one end of the gondola, holding in his hand a small bunch of jasmine tied with a white ribbon, which, when he arrived at the top, he threw towards a window in which gleamed a little light. ... It reached its destination. The window immediately closed, the light disappeared, and Lorenzo descended and was lost in the crowd that thronged the gondola. All this took place so quickly that I could hardly account for the attention with which I watched this little evolution and the degree of vexation it caused me. Lorenzo, in the course of the day, had thrown more than a hundred bouquets of the same kind. Why was I more curious to know the destination of this one than I had been of the rest? But fatigue and the deafening noise rendered me incapable of reflecting any length of time on what I had just witnessed and what I had heard on the balcony. There was almost immediately a general confusion, for the return of the gondola was the signal for dispersing. I remained till the last to ascertain the condition of my aunt after her accident, and did not leave her till she had promised to go to bed and let the baroness, who willingly accepted the charge, accompany her daughters to the _Festino_ at midnight.

Having returned home, I likewise returned to my room, where I threw myself on a sofa, exhausted with fatigue. Lorenzo returned at a later hour. He came up to my room, spoke affectionately, advised me to take some repose, and inquired if I had absolutely decided not to go to San Carlo. I replied that, even if I had intended going, I should be obliged to give it up now. He did not insist, and my eyes were already beginning to close when he embraced me, as he was going away, and said: “Till to‐morrow, Ginevra; for the _Festino_ will not be over till daylight, you know.”

XXVII.

I slept as the young do when suffering from unusual fatigue—that is to say, with a sleep so profound that, when I awoke, I had no idea of the lateness of the hour or where I was, and I felt as completely rested as if I had slept the entire night. The sound of carriage‐wheels on the gravel of the avenue facing my room had roused me from my slumbers, and I now heard steps and the sound of voices in a subdued tone in the chamber adjoining mine. My door soon opened, and Ottavia entered, moving cautiously, as if she supposed me asleep. But as soon as I spoke, I heard a silvery laugh behind her, and, to my great surprise, Stella made her appearance. She had on a black domino with the hood thrown back, and in her hand she held two masks and another domino like her own.

“You see I was right, Ottavia,” she exclaimed. “I was sure we should find her awake, and, what is still better, she is dressed! That is fortunate! Now, Ginevra, you must absolutely consent to indulge in the pleasure of spending an hour with me at San Carlo—only an hour! Here, look at the clock; it is half‐past twelve. I promise to bring you back before two to continue the fine nap I have disturbed.”

I rubbed my eyes and looked at her, without comprehending a thing she proposed.

“Come, come, Ginevra!” she continued, “wake up, I tell you, and listen to what I say. In the first place, you must know we have had no supper or company at our house to‐night. My uncle had an attack of the gout and went to bed at nine o’clock, and I played cards with my aunt till midnight. But just as we were both going to our rooms, she all at once remembered—perhaps touched by my good‐humor—how much she used to enjoy going to the _Festini_, and told me, of her own accord, it was not too late to go, if I knew of any friend to accompany me. It occurred to me at once, Ginevra, it would be very amusing for you to go and quiz _il Signor Duca_ a little. He is absolutely sure you are in bed fast asleep. You can tell him a thousand things nobody knows but yourselves, which will set him wild with amazement and curiosity. You can acknowledge everything to‐ morrow, and he will be the first to declare it an excellent joke. As for me, I am not sorry to have an opportunity of telling your august brother a few truths in return for certain remarks about my exuberant gayety and levity not quite to my liking. . . . Come, come, Ginevra, we must not lose any time. Consent, and I will tell you the rest on the way.”

It is useless to enumerate the additional arguments she used. The result was, she not only triumphed over my repugnance, but she succeeded in exciting a lively desire to meet Lorenzo in disguise. It seemed to me I could say many things I should not dare breathe a word of to his face, and I could thus relieve my mind of the two or three incidents that had troubled it within twenty‐four hours.

Stella saw I was ready to yield.

“Quick! quick! Ottavia, help me to put on her domino, and above all, put back her hair so it cannot be seen. The least curl peeping out of her hood would be sufficient to betray her. Now, let us see; as we shall have to separate on entering the hall, we must wear something not too conspicuous which will enable us to find each other in the crowd of black dominos. Let me hunt for something.”

She looked around, and soon discovered a large basket, in which remained a number of small bouquets tied with ribbons of all colors, prepared for the contests that morning.

“The very thing,” said she. And while Ottavia was executing her orders and concealing my hair, Stella selected two small bunches of flowers, one tied with red, and the other with white, ribbon.

“Nothing could be better,” said she. “The flowers are alike; the ribbons alone different. Look! see where I have put my badge. Here is yours. Put it in the same place, on the left side near the shoulder.”

But when I saw that the little bouquet she gave me was of _jasmine tied with a white ribbon_, the emotion I felt was extreme. I did not manifest it, however, for I knew if I told Stella the reason, she would burst into laughter, and ask if I was going to worry myself about all the bouquets my husband had thrown by the dozen that day upon all the balconies on the Toledo, and if I intended to bring him to an account for them. I therefore made no comment on this singular coincidence; but while I was fastening the bouquet on, as Stella had directed, I suddenly recollected, I know not why, it was by giving Lorenzo a sprig of jasmine I pledged myself to be his for life!

Having completed my preparations, with the exception of my mask, which I carried in my hand to put on at the last moment, I drew up my hood and followed Stella, escorted to the foot of the staircase by my good old Ottavia, who, though accustomed to the follies of the Carnival, shook her head as she saw me depart, and looked at me with a more anxious expression than usual. Was she thinking of the evening when she saw me set out for my first ball—of fearful memory? Did she recall my mother’s anxiety? And did she remember to beg her to watch over her child and pray for her, as she did then? . . .

As we approached San Carlo, I was again seized with fear, and regretted having yielded to Stella’s entreaties.

“What will become of us alone in the crowd with no one to protect us?” said I.

“Our masks are a sufficient protection, especially to‐night. There will be so large a number of ladies of rank at the _Festino_ that no one will venture to say a word to us that surpasses the bounds of pleasantry. There would be too much danger of addressing some one who would resent it. As to our masks, you need not be anxious. The rules of the _bals masqués_ absolutely forbid any one’s touching them, and these rules are respected even by those who do not respect any other. But, apropos of masks, it is time to put yours on.”

I still hesitated. But at last, as I was on the point of descending from the carriage, I decided to fasten my mask on, and I tremblingly followed Stella, or rather, she took my arm and drew me along.

My first feeling, on finding myself in such a crowd, was one of inexpressible terror. I was seized with an invincible embarrassment and a sensation of suffocation so painful that it was with all the difficulty in the world I kept myself from tearing off the mask that seemed to hinder me from breathing. But Stella laughingly encouraged me in a whisper, and by degrees I became accustomed to the deafening sound of the music, the exclamations and resonant voices on every side, as well as the sight of the dominos and masks of all colors in circulation around us. She led me on some distance, cautioning me in a low tone to make no reply, and making none herself, to the observations here and there addressed the two “fair masks” who were gliding through the crowd. At length we came to a pillar, against which we leaned, and she whispered:

“Let this place be our rendezvous. You will certainly see Lorenzo pass by in a few moments. As for me, I do not see your brother anywhere, but yonder is Landolfo. I will amuse myself by talking nonsense with him. Do not be afraid, and, above all, do not lose your badge, or I shall be unable to find you. I will be careful of mine also. If I arrive here first, I will wait for you. You must do the same.”

She disappeared as she uttered these words, and I stood still for some minutes, looking around with uneasiness and terror caused by the impossibility of persuading myself I was not seen and recognized by everybody. But after three or four gentlemen of my acquaintance passed by with a mere glance of indifference, I began to take courage, and finally became sufficiently cool to consider what I should do and the means of attaining my object.

I began by looking around on all sides, but for some time it was in vain. I could not see Lorenzo anywhere, and had decided to leave my post in order to search for him in some other part of the hall, when all at once I saw him some distance off, coming in my direction. He was walking slowly along, looking around with a certain attention, as if he was also in search of some one. We were separated by the crowd, and it was not easy to reach him. I advanced a few steps, however, and at that instant, but only for an instant, there was an opening in the crowd which enabled him, in his turn, to see me. I saw a flash of joy on his face. He recognized me, it was evident; by what means I did not ask. I no longer remembered my intention of mystifying him. I sprang towards him, and he towards me. I passed my arm through his, still too much excited by my previous fears and my joy at finding him to utter a word....

A moment passed—a single moment, brief and terrible,... for he spoke—yes, at once, and with vehemence, with passion!... But ... it was not to me!... No, it was to her he expected to meet. I heard his lips murmur the detested name that had not met my ear since I left Paris!...

I was so astounded that I gave him time to say what I ought not to have heard, what I did not wish to hear!... Then ... I know not what impulse I yielded to, for I lost the power of reflection—I abruptly withdrew my arm from his, and fell back with so quick and violent a movement that the crowd opened a moment to make way for me, and then closed, completely separating me from him.... I tore off the flowers and ribbon I wore, and threw them on the ground. I could not now be distinguished from the other black dominos around me. But I was no longer afraid. I cared for nothing now but to get away—to fly as fast as possible from so horrible a place. I hurried along in such a wild, rapid way that every one looked at me with surprise, and stood aside for me to pass. I thus succeeded in leaving the hall and reaching the passage, where I was obliged to stop to take breath. The passers‐by addressed me, but I heard nothing but the words that still resounded in my ears. I was conscious of nothing but a fearful anguish and the rapid beating of my heart.

While standing there, all at once ... O merciful heavens!... I saw a lady pass only a few steps off.... She was of my height, and, like me, wore a black domino with a sprig of jasmine tied with a white ribbon, similar to the one I had just torn off, and doubtless the same my eyes had followed a few hours before! I recognized her at once, and imagined I saw through her mask the sinister gleam of two large blue eyes! She traversed the passage and entered the hall, where she disappeared. I trembled fearfully from head to foot, my sight grew dim, my strength began to fail me. I felt as if I should die on the spot if I did not take off the mask that was suffocating me, and yet I was still conscious I ought to keep it on at all hazards. I threw around a glance of despair, hoping to see Stella, and forgetting she would not be able to recognize me, even if she thought of looking for me so far from the spot where she left me. What torture! Great God!... My strength was gone, my voice failed me, I felt my knees give way, when, O unlooked‐for happiness! I saw Mario pass by. The stifled cry I uttered died away on my lips before it could reach his ear, but he saw the effort I made, he felt my hand on his arm, and stopped. He began to address me in the customary way on such occasions, but I made no reply. I had recovered strength enough, however, to draw him towards the door, and he unresistingly followed my lead; but, as we were going out, he stopped me with an air of surprise, and said:

“I am ready to follow you wherever you wish, fair mask, but do you know yourself where you wish to go?”

I was only able to incline my head as a sign of affirmation, and he suffered me to lead him into the street. As soon as we were out of doors, I tore off my mask, and found strength enough to say:

“It is I, Mario. Help me to get away from this detestable place!”

“Ginevra!” exclaimed he, drawing me along several steps to look at my face by the light of the torches not far off. He seemed frightened at my looks. My face was convulsed and lividly pale.

“Good heavens, sister!” said he gravely, “what has happened? How is it you are alone in this place at such an hour? Where is Lorenzo? Shall I go for him?”

“No, no! Oh! no,” I exclaimed with anguish. “For pity’s sake, Mario, be silent. Help me to get away, I say. That is all I ask. Do this, and ask me no questions.”

His face darkened He silently took hold of my arm, and led me to the place where he had left his carriage. I entered it, and was on the point of going away without another word when I bethought myself of Stella. I hesitated, however, to expose her to his sarcastic comments, and perhaps to the suspicions I saw were already excited in my brother’s distrustful mind, and said in a supplicating tone:

“One favor more, Mario, which I am sure you will no more refuse your sister than any other lady. I did not come here alone.”

At these words his face assumed an expression which I answered with a smile of disdain.

“Do you suppose, Mario, if I did not come here with Lorenzo, I would accept the escort of any other gentleman?” I stopped a moment, at once irritated and impatient, but finally continued:

“The fact is, Mario, if you must know it, it was he, it was Lorenzo himself, I came to see. I wished to play a joke on him and mystify him a little, by way of amusing myself.”

I think my smile must have been frightful as I said this, for my brother looked anxiously at me, though he seemed satisfied with my explanation.

“But I have been punished,” I continued, “terribly punished.... I failed in my object,... and thought I should die in the crowd.”

I could say no more. The tears I could not repress choked me. Mario at once softened.

“I understand, sister—the noise, heat, and so forth were overpowering. Those who go to a _bal masqué_ for the first time often experience this, but another time it will not happen.”

“God preserve me from ever going to another!” said I in a low tone. “But I was about to say, Mario, that the person, the lady, who came with me is probably looking for me by this time. Search for her. Her domino is like mine, and you will know her by a sprig of jasmine tied with a red ribbon.”

“I saw such a domino not long ago on Lando’s arm.”

“It was she. Find her, and tell her not to be anxious; that I was ill, and could not wait for her. That is all. Thanks, Mario. One word more, however. As I did not succeed with regard to Lorenzo, I do not wish him to know anything about it.”

He made a sign that he understood me, and closed the door of the carriage, which soon took me home. Ottavia, who alone sat up for me, was alarmed at seeing me return in such a condition. I repeated the account I had given Mario, and had no difficulty in convincing her I was ill. The change in my face was sufficient to prove it; but what was this paleness, great God! in comparison with the change that had come over my life within the hour that had scarcely elapsed?

XXVIII.

This time the thunderbolt had really fallen on my head! Many times had I heard it rumbling afar off, and once I thought myself fatally injured; but after a few stormy days, calmness was restored, the blue sky became visible, and the sun once more diffused the light and warmth of renewed confidence and happiness. The desire of being happy seconded my effort to become so. And, as I have remarked, the liveliness, buoyancy, and love of pleasure natural to the young, as well as the beauty of Naples and the influence of its climate, all tended to surround me with an atmosphere at once enervating and intoxicating. But now, in an instant, without any warning, all my hopes were crushed, annihilated, for ever at an end!

“Should Lorenzo become treacherous, unfaithful, and untrue to his word, could I continue to love him? What would become of me in such a case?” Such were the questions I once asked myself, and they were the sincere cry of my heart.

Now all this was realized. A person more treacherous, more deceitful, more untrue than he it seemed impossible to find. Everything now became clear. The words I heard, so plainly interpreted by the instinct they awakened and that had already warned me so strangely, enabled me to comprehend everything. Whether there was any good reason or not for his frequent absence, it was evident he had always met her. It was therefore from these interviews he had derived the cheerfulness and good‐humor that apparently made him enjoy so much the comfort and splendor he afterwards came to participate in with me. Once—who can tell for what reason?—he had delayed going. It was then, probably, she came herself to meet him, not foreseeing, or he either, it would be before my very eyes!...

Even at the present time it would perhaps agitate me and disturb the tranquillity of my soul, should I dwell too long on the thoughts which then overwhelmed me, and from which I derived the conviction that I no longer loved Lorenzo. But I suffered from the deadly chill his treachery had struck to my heart. I would rather have experienced the torment of jealousy than the chill of indifference. To suffer from that would still have been life. To suffer as I did was like being paralyzed, petrified, dead.

Women more generous, more courageous, and more devoted than I, had, I was aware, won back such inconstant hearts, and found happiness once more in the sweetest of victories; but their example occurred to me without producing any impression. I was not in a condition to be influenced by it. My aimless life had resulted in the almost complete prostration of my strength of volition. In this condition I could neither suffer with courage, nor act with wisdom, nor resist temptation with any energy of will....

O my God! it is with my face prostrate in the dust I desire to write the pages that are to follow. It is not without hesitation I continue my account. But the remembrance of thy mercy prevails over everything, and effaces the very recollection of the faults and follies that serve to make it manifest! Like our divine poet wandering in the mazes of that gloomy forest which is the image of life, I, in my turn, attempt

“To discourse of what there good befell; All else will I relate discovered there.”(82)

Mario, Stella, and Ottavia were the sole confidants of my secret, and they kept it faithfully. Lorenzo had the less reason for suspecting I had been to the ball when, returning home at six o’clock in the morning, he learned I had had a violent attack of fever in the night, and was not able to rise. There was no deception in this. It was not a mere pretext for keeping my chamber, but the too natural consequence of the terrible excitement of the night I had passed.

Lorenzo came several times to know how I was, and manifested more apparent affection than usual; and yet once or twice, though perhaps my imagination deceived me, I thought I saw something like embarrassment or uneasiness in his face. I was, however, too ill all the morning to observe him closely or make any reply to what he said.

Towards evening I felt better, and, though still weak, I got up. Lorenzo came to see if anything serious was likely to result from my indisposition, and, being reassured on this point, he went out as usual, leaving me alone with Stella, who had spent part of the day at my bedside, though I had not been able to talk with her any more than with him. Her face was as grave that day as it was usually smiling. Stella’s cheerfulness resulted from her complete lack of egotism. She regarded the happiness of others as a treasure from which she took all she needed for herself; and was happy, therefore, through sympathy. It was, so to speak, a reflected happiness. Admirable disposition! Incapable of exacting anything in view of her own lot, or of envying that of others, she was a delightful friend in times of prosperity, and, at the same time, a devoted adherent in misfortune, and the sweet, compassionate confidant of others’ sorrows. My disappearance the evening before, the condition in which she found me in the morning, the incoherent words I uttered, prepared her for something serious, and she knew beforehand I, of all people in the world, would not hesitate to tell her the truth. In fact, as soon as we were left alone in a small sitting‐room next my chamber, I gave her for the first time a full account of all that had taken place at Paris, as well as the night before. She listened without interrupting me, and, after I ended, remained silent for some time.

“This is indeed a good lesson for me,” said she at length. “I am cured for life, I hope, of a folly like that I committed last night.”

“What folly do you allude to?”

“Why, that of coming here and persuading you to go to a place where you learned what you might for ever have remained ignorant of.”

“And continue to be taken in, deceived, and blinded, to live in an atmosphere of deception, hypocrisy, and lies, to love what no longer merits affection? No, Stella, no; do not regret that, thanks to you, it is no longer the case. Were I to suffer even a thousand times more, were I to die of anguish, as I thought I should on the spot when I saw that woman pass by, I should be glad the veil had been torn from my eyes. I can no longer be happy, it is true. My happiness is ruined beyond repair, but I love truth better than happiness.”

“And do you think,” said Stella after a fresh pause, “that you can never forgive Lorenzo?”

“He must, at least, desire it, as you will acknowledge, and this is precisely what will never happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know Lorenzo. If I utter a reproach, it is he who thinks he has something to forgive. He really obeys no law but the impulse that happens to predominate. It is not in his nature, doubtless, to show me openly any ill treatment, but he would break my heart without any scruple in order to gratify his inclinations. I have no doubt he thinks he has acted with great delicacy, because he has taken pains to conceal the base course he has pursued; and when he finds out I have discovered it, it is he who will think he has a right to be angry. That will be the result. What room is there for forgiveness in such a tissue of falseness?”

“What can I say to you? It will be no consolation to hear there are many women who have husbands like him. It is sad to feel there is nothing in the world so rare as happiness. Nevertheless, it is true, and, for my part, it has often consoled me for having had so little in my life. And had I been happy in the beginning, who could tell what the future had in reserve for me?”

“And you have never thought of marrying again? You can content yourself with a life devoid of happiness, as well as of suffering?”

She smiled.

“My life is not so exempt from suffering as you may suppose. Neither is it devoid of happiness while I have my Angiolina. As for marrying again, I have never happened to meet a person who inspired me with the least desire of that kind, and I imagine I never shall.”

“It is certain, however, if you wish to marry, you would only have the trouble of choosing.”

“Perhaps among men not one of whom pleases me. Who knows how it would be if I took it into my head to fancy some one? But let us leave my affairs and return to you. Tell me, are you sure Lorenzo has not discovered you were at the ball?”

“Yes, I am certain he has not. If he had any suspicion, he would not conceal it from me. Besides, he found me too ill at his return to conceive such an idea. And yet...”

“Well, go on.”

“Well, I noticed something that seemed to indicate he is not so sure as he was yesterday of my utter ignorance of all he has thought proper to hide from me.”

“I agree with you, Ginevra. And shall I tell you what I think?”

“Tell me.”

“That he supposes me to be the mask he addressed by mistake, and does me the honor of supposing I have denounced him.”

“What an idea!... Why should he suppose it was you?”

“Oh! by that aberration of mind common to gentlemen who frequent masked balls and persist in thinking they are right every time they are mistaken.”

“But once more: Why should he suppose you were at the ball? Your secret has been as well kept as mine, I imagine.”

“Not quite. In the first place, I spoke to several persons. And when Mario came to deliver your message, I could not repress an exclamation of surprise, which betrayed me, not only to your brother, but to Lando, on whose arm I was then leaning. I do not know whether it was he or not who spread the report, but it has certainly been whispered around that I attended the _Festino_. Lorenzo has taken the idea I have mentioned into his head, and of course supposes what I know has been communicated to you, or will be. This is what I have been wishing to say to you.”

My faithful Ottavia now made her appearance to warn me it was time to retire. Stella left me, and, after her departure, I began to reflect on her conjecture and consider what reply I should make, should Lorenzo question me on the subject. I was far from suspecting the means he would adopt to anticipate the scene he foresaw.

I was alone the following morning when I saw him enter, calm, smiling, and self‐possessed, as if there was no actual or possible cloud between us. He spoke of my health, and, satisfied that I was really better, proceeded to more indifferent subjects, and then suddenly, with an assurance the recollection of which still astonishes me, he said:

“Apropos, Ginevra, the Marchesa di Villanera has been in Naples several days.”

I turned pale.

“Oh! do not be alarmed,” said he. “I have not the slightest intention of asking you to receive her. I remember too well the sentiments you expressed on this point at Paris. No, I wish instead to let you know I am going to escort her to Milan myself, and shall remain there till after the Carnavalone.”(83)

My heart gave a violent bound. I could not utter a word, but the surprise that rendered me dumb enabled me to be calm, and, when I finally recovered my voice, I said:

“You are at liberty to go where you please, Lorenzo. It is a liberty, moreover, you have always had, and have already made use of, and I cannot conceive why _this time_ (I emphasized these words) you feel obliged to tell me the precise object of your journey.”

“Because I wish to be frank with you this time, and I should have been so before had I not remembered your reproaches, and wished to spare you the occasion of renewing them. Besides, I no longer have it in my power to prevent your jealousy, or forbid the conjectures you think proper to indulge in.”

“Lorenzo!” I said almost in a scream, and I was on the point of giving utterance to all that filled my heart to overflowing when, with the stern, imperious accent he knew how to assume, though without rudeness or the least violence, he stopped me.

“Not another word, Ginevra; not one, I beg, out of love for yourself. Do not destroy your future happiness in a moment of anger! There are some things I _will not_ listen to, and which, for your own interest as well as mine, I forbid your saying!”

I had no chance to reply, for he took my hand before I could prevent it, and said:

“_Au revoir_, Ginevra. I hope, at my return, to find you as calm and reasonable as I desire.”

He kissed my hand and left the room.

The state in which he left me cannot be described. I need not say how incapable I was of reflection, of effort, or any struggle whatever against the feelings it was natural I should have. I felt outraged as it seemed to me no woman had ever been. My mind lost its clearness, my judgment was impaired, and for some hours I was wild.

After Lorenzo’s departure, it seemed impossible to remain alone. I could not endure inaction and repose for an instant. I ordered my carriage for a drive—not, as usual, with Stella and in a direction where I should find solitude, but, on the contrary, where I was most sure of meeting a crowd. I smilingly returned the numerous salutations I received, and, instead of appearing troubled or downcast, I looked around with eager interest, as if hoping to find some means of escaping from myself and leaving my troubles forever behind me.

I returned home as late as possible, and found Stella awaiting me. She had been disappointed at my not calling for her, and had come to ascertain the reason. Finding I had gone out, she was surprised I had forgotten her, but was still more so when I told her I should go to the ball at the French ambassador’s that evening. I seldom went anywhere alone, and it was only the day before I had told her decidedly I should never attend another ball. Her eyes were fastened on me with a look of sympathy, as she said:

“Poor Ginevra!”

I begged her in a hasty, irritated manner not to waste any pity on me, and then added:

“To‐morrow, if you like, we will talk about it; but not to‐day, I beg. Let us give our whole thoughts to the ball. You will go, I hope.”

“Yes, if you have really decided to go.”

“That is right. Good‐by till this evening, then.”

Thus dismissed, she left me, and I summoned my waiting‐maid to do what I had never required before. I ordered everything I was to wear to be spread out before me. I examined my diamonds and pearls, and gave the most minute directions about the way I intended to wear them. I then began my toilet, though long before the time, and was as long about it as possible. So many women, thought I, seem to take infinite pleasure in creating a sensation when they enter a ball‐room, receiving compliments and homage on all sides, why should I not try this means of diversion as well as other people? I am beautiful, there is no doubt; very beautiful, they say. Why should I not endeavor to excite admiration? Why not become vain and coquettish in my turn?

In a word, the hour had arrived spoken of in the first part of this story, as the reader will recollect—the hour when, for the first and only time after my mother’s death and the tragical end of Flavio Aldini, the lively vanity of girlhood, roused by irritation, jealousy, and grief, broke through the restraint which an ineffaceable remembrance and the grace of God had imposed upon it, and for once I saw what I should doubtless have been without the divine, mysterious influence that warred within me against myself. I had corresponded to this grace, it is true, by my sincere, determined will, but my volition had now become feeble and uncertain, and I set out for the ball after thus carefully preparing in advance the draught of vanity I wished to become intoxicated with.

I had the satisfaction I desired in all its plenitude. I was handsome, stylish, and elegantly dressed; and yet all this is not the chief cause of a lady’s success in society. Let those who think so be persuaded of their error. People accord to these gifts a certain respectful admiration, but such a success as I obtained that evening—brilliant, demonstrative, and universal—does not depend on the beauty a person is endowed with, but on the wish to please she manifests, and this is why the victory is sometimes so strangely awarded!... I was changed in no respect, except in the disposition with which I attended the ball, and yet I did not seem to be the same person. I was surrounded as I had never been before. I excited a kind of enthusiasm. I received compliments that evening I had never listened to before. And when, contrary to my usual custom, I announced my intention to dance, everybody contended for my hand. But, as the evening advanced, I grew weary of it all, and began to feel my factitious, feverish gayety subside. When I rose to waltz for the last time, it was with an effort, and, after my partner led me back to my seat, my smile vanished, and a cold sense of my wretchedness came over me with unpitying grasp. “All is useless,” a secret, sorrowful voice seemed to say; “you must awaken to the reality of your sufferings....”

At that moment I heard beside me a familiar, half‐forgotten voice—calm, sonorous, and sweet, but now somewhat sarcastic:

“I cannot aspire to the honor of dancing with the Duchessa di Valenzano, but I hope she will not refuse to recognize me.”

I eagerly turned around, and there beside me I saw the person who uttered these words was Gilbert de Kergy.

XXIX.

During the week following the ball a most unexpected change took place in my feelings—a change that at once afforded me so much comfort that I did not hesitate to think and say that heaven had, in the hour of my greatest need, sent me a friend.

It must be acknowledged, however, the hour when Gilbert de Kergy so suddenly made his appearance was not exactly that in which I should have expected an extraordinary intervention of divine Providence in my behalf. I ought even to say that the first feeling I experienced at seeing him again was one of extreme confusion at exhibiting myself under so different an aspect from that he had seen me in before, and, in fact, so different from that which was usually mine. This confusion, added to my fatigue and the painful reaction and disgust which inevitably follow such intoxication as I had voluntarily indulged in, sent me home in a totally different frame of mind from that I was in when I left. Two hours before, I beheld myself in the mirror with great complacency; but when I now saw myself in this same glass resplendent with jewels and flowers, I turned away with displeasure, and do not think I should have felt the least regret had I at that moment been told I wore this brilliant array for the last time.

I hastily took off my diamonds and pearls, and changed my dress; and when at length I found myself alone, face to face with the thoughts I had vainly tried to escape from, for the first time since my interview with Lorenzo a flood of tears came to my relief. The nature of the distraction I had sought now appeared in all its vanity, and the shame I felt was increased by the remembrance of Gilbert’s smile and the sarcastic accent of his words. It was not in this way he had addressed me at Paris. This was not the grave, respectful manner, so different from that of any other person, which had so touched and flattered me then. The contrast made me blush, and I longed to meet him again, that I might efface as completely as possible the impression now left on his mind.

I longed also to inquire about his mother and Diana. In short, a thousand recollections, as foreign as possible to everything that surrounded me now, came to my mind and diverted it more effectually than any amusement could have done from the cause of my present troubles. I slept more calmly than I should have supposed after so exciting a day, and the following morning when I awoke, though my first thoughts were of all I had suffered the day before, I could not forget the pleasant event that had also occurred to lighten my burden.

Gilbert had asked at what o’clock he could see me, and, at the appointed hour, I was ready to receive him. I anticipated his arrival with pleasure, and felt no embarrassment, except that which resulted from the recollection of the previous evening. He came punctually, and, after an observant look and a few minutes’ conversation, he became the same he once was; which reconciled me a little to myself. We talked about Paris, the Hôtel de Kergy, and a thousand other things, and his conversation, as formerly, absorbed my attention, diverted my mind from my troubles, and awoke an interest in a multitude of things unconnected with him or myself.

As he was on the point of leaving, he smiled, as he said with something of the sarcastic tone of the evening before:

“I suppose, madame, I cannot flatter myself with the hope of finding you at home, at least as long as the Carnival lasts.”

“Allow me to undeceive you,” I hastened to reply with a blush. “Whatever you may have thought last evening, I am not fond of dancing. I very seldom go to a ball of my own accord, and am sure I shall not attend another this year. This _soirée_ was every way an exceptional one, as far as I was concerned.”

“Really! I hope you will not think me too bold if I acknowledge that what you say affords me pleasure.”

He said this in so frank and natural a way that I was restored to my ease, and laughingly replied:

“You prefer my former manner? Well, Monsieur de Kergy, I acknowledge you are right, and let me assure you it was my true one.”

As he was going away, I expressed the hope of seeing him again, and from that time not a day passed in which I did not meet him. When I had no engagement elsewhere, I usually spent my evenings at home, where I invariably received a certain number of friends who were in the habit of meeting in my drawing‐room. These _soirées_ were not interrupted when Lorenzo was absent from home, but the number of those who composed the little circle was more restricted. Stella, of course, never failed to come, and the other _habitués_ consisted of friends and some of the foreigners who lived in Naples, or were there temporarily, and preferred a quiet circle to gayer society.

On the first story, to the right and left, were two long, lateral terraces, united by a third which extended all along the front of the house. These terraces surmounted a Greek portico, whose colonnades surrounded a small square court, like those of Pompeii, into which looked all the windows of the ground floor. All that part of the house, with the exception of Lorenzo’s studio, was reserved for large parties, while the first story was used for ordinary reunions. We therefore generally assembled in an upper drawing‐room, which opened on one of the lateral terraces; and from the day I allude to Gilbert regularly formed a part of the little coterie which met there every evening. His influence was speedily felt, and the atmosphere once more changed around me as at Paris, and this change seemed even more beneficial than before. Every one felt Gilbert’s influence more or less. He possessed the enviable faculty of elevating the minds of others above their usual level, and of communicating to them the interest he felt in whatever he was conversing about. Not that he tried to introduce subjects he had made a special study of, or to advance theories or opinions that first excited wonder and afterwards wearied the minds of those on whom he wished to impose them. On the contrary, he seemed to take an interest in everything except what was low, repulsive, and absolutely trivial. But subjects of this kind were rather not thought of than avoided intentionally in these conversations, which were lively, natural, unrestrained, and agreeable, and at the same time different from those I took a part in anywhere else.

It soon became evident that this addition to our daily reunions added singularly to their charm. Never had the annual influx of foreigners been so favorable to us. Stella, I observed, sometimes looked pensive while listening to him, and one day she remarked to me she had never seen any one like M. de Kergy. As for me, I felt the beneficial influence of his society, and welcomed it without analyzing the enjoyment that had come so opportunely to divert me from my present trials and renew the influences of the past, which seemed the best in my life.

The lively indignation that filled my heart every time I thought of Lorenzo’s absence and its cause continued to be felt. I bitterly compared the world of perfidy and deceit he had forced me to know, with that to which Gilbert belonged. I thought of the hopes I once had, and how irreparably they had been deceived, and these reflections were my only danger at the time I am speaking of.

The Carnival was now over, but it excited no surprise that Lorenzo wished to prolong it by remaining at Milan during the Carnavalone. No one even seemed to think it extraordinary he had gone there with a beautiful woman who was returning without any escort. Naples, as I have said, was not a place where evil reports were readily credited. People were not much in the habit of discussing the deeds and actions of others. Rather than give themselves up to conjectures common elsewhere, they would make a sign, by putting the hand to the chin, to signify a thing was nothing to them or concerned them but little. But this charitable indifference did not exactly spring from love of their neighbor, and sometimes went so far, it must be confessed, as to be scandalized at nothing.

I soon perceived, therefore, that though the true cause of Lorenzo’s absence was known to almost everybody, and though his course inspired a universal sympathy and compassion for me which wounded my pride, it by no means excited against him the indignation that at least would have somewhat avenged me.

Mario alone appeared grave and anxious, but Lando, who was not slow in discovering the real state of the case, confined himself to some characteristic remarks which would have appeared insulting had I not learned never to take anything he said seriously, or attach any importance to it. One evening, however, finding himself by chance near me in the drawing‐room, he said in his incorrigible way:

“If I were in your place, I would punish that dear Lorenzo in the way he deserves. Unfortunately, you are not the woman for that, I know. And, after all, you need not take the trouble, for I can assure you the fair Milanese herself will be sure to avenge you.”

I did not utter a word in reply to this language, which wounded all the pride and self‐respect in my nature, and, at the same time, excited a torrent of bitterness and contempt for Lorenzo. I thought at that moment of the fearful vow Livia once spoke of, and asked myself if he, this perjured partner of my life, did not make this vow as well as I. By what law, then, was I bound to it, when he had chosen to be free?

I abruptly turned away from Lando as he said this, and left the drawing‐ room, where we happened to be alone.

The fineness of the weather and some indications of activity in Mt. Vesuvius had drawn all the company that evening out on the terrace. I went out as if intending to join them, but I did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, I sought a place apart, where I could enjoy in peace the serene brilliancy of the heavens, and took a seat overlooking the garden and commanding a view of the Villa Reale, the bay, and the long line of mountains beyond It was one of those incomparable evenings in spring‐time when all you see or hear, and the very air you breathe, at once softens, enchants, and predisposes the heart to melancholy. I had thrown over my white dress a large veil of black lace, which I drew up over my head; and, thus protected from the scarcely perceptible dampness of the night, I gave myself up without restriction to my feelings of admiration, as well as the sadness, indignation, and bitterness that filled my heart. Afar off on the sombre azure of the cloudless heavens streamed a reddish flame whose brilliancy formed a strong contrast with the trembling, silvery light the growing moon cast over the waters of the sea. It was one of those awakenings of Vesuvius, the fearful but magnificent spectacle of which is always regarded at Naples with a pleasure that greatly surpasses the anxiety it would be natural to feel at the probable consequences of a new eruption.

All my guests were at that moment at the end of the terrace, where they could have a full view of the flaming crater. But I was by no means disposed to follow their example. I remained in the seat I had taken, my face uplifted and my eyes gazing into the blue, mysterious depths, which seemed to direct my thoughts to something far beyond the visible, starry heavens. I know not how long I had been in this attitude when I perceived Gilbert, who had been on the other side of the terrace, now standing before me.

“May I have a seat here, madame,” said he, “or do you prefer continuing your reverie alone?”

“Oh! no; remain. It is better for me to talk than to dream.”

“And yet, to judge from your looks while thus absorbed, your dreams must have been delightful I longed to participate in them.”

“I know not whether they were delightful or otherwise, but they were commonplace and true. Alas! I was thinking that the heavens are as beautiful as the earth is sad.”

“Sad?... Yes, without doubt, but likewise very beautiful at times, something like the sky above our heads, so glorious to‐night, but which does not always look as it does now.”

“But the clouds pass away, and the sky again appears in its unchangeable beauty; whereas....”

“Whereas, a single day is sometimes sufficient to render our lives totally different from what they were before. Yes, you are right,” said he.

He was silent for an instant, and then resumed with a smile:

“But these gloomy thoughts do not always prevail. It was very far from the case the evening I first saw you in Naples.”

“Oh! never speak again of that evening, Monsieur de Kergy, I conjure you,” I exclaimed with a warmth I could not repress. “Have I not already told you that I was wretched, infatuated, desperate?...”

I stopped short, confused at what had escaped me. I saw his expression of surprise, and noticed again the look of sympathy and emotion he had shown at Paris, as I wept while listening to Diana’s music—a look that silently asked me the cause of my tears. Alas! the day I last visited the Hôtel de Kergy was that on which the sadness that now wholly surrounded me first cast its shadow over my path. But I did not wish to betray what I felt now, any more than I did then, and I instantly regretted the words I had just uttered. I think Gilbert perceived it.

“I assure you,” said he after a moment, as if I had never spoken, “notwithstanding the brilliancy of your attire, you were far less imposing in my eyes than you are at this moment; and yet I am going to show a boldness I certainly should not have thought of manifesting that evening, to which I shall never allude again.”

“What do you mean?”

“You seemed that night to belong to a world whose manners and language I was ignorant of, and where I felt more out of place and uninitiated than a savage. I could not have said such a word then. I hardly dared look at you afar off; whereas—but you will think me presumptuous.”

“No, say what you were going to.”

“Well, then, you seem now, on the contrary, as you did at Paris, a member of the world I live in—an inhabitant, a queen if you like, or a sister, perhaps, whose language I speak, as you can mine. That is why ...”

He hesitated an instant, and then continued with an accent of truth and simplicity that prevented his manner from appearing singular: “That is why I venture—and it is showing myself very bold—yes, venture, madame, to consider myself worthy of being your friend, and, should you deign to accord me this title, I think I can safely promise never to show myself unworthy of it.”

What reply I made I hardly know, but what I am only too sure of is that these words were welcome to a heart at once crushed and embittered as mine then was. The void occasioned by Lorenzo’s treachery caused a suffering like that of intense hunger. My dignity, even more than my conscience, forbade my alleviating this hunger by giving vent to my grievances; nor was I tempted to do so. But was there any reason why I should refuse myself the solace of such a friendship as Gilbert now offered me? Had I any other duty now, with regard to Lorenzo, than to show a respect he had not manifested to the tie that united us? Could not Gilbert, as he had just offered, be truly my brother in heart and soul? Was he not different, as Stella acknowledged, from any one I had ever met? And was I not myself in a position without parallel?

I pass over the remainder of my reflections in silence, merely remarking here that if all the women who believe themselves to be in an exceptional position could be counted, they would be astonished, I imagine, to find their number so great, and would perhaps have to renounce some of the privileges they lay claim to by virtue of the singularity of their destiny.

To Be Continued.

Church Chant _Versus_ Church Music.

Concluded.

“Ah! but it is sad to think,” objects a friend at our elbow, “that your rigid principles deprive the church of the use of the _best_ music. _I_ think she ought to have the very best of all that this world can offer.”

We have already given our friend his answer, from one point of view, in a former article. We will endeavor to give a fair interpretation of the answer which the church herself would make:

“It is not the best music, as such, that I want for my divine offices, any more than I wish my priests to decorate the walls of my churches with the _chefs‐d’œuvre_ of painting and sculpture simply because they are masterpieces of art. I certainly want, and rejoice to possess, _the best that is suitable_ in art, whether of melody, painting, or sculpture, and even of scientific discovery or invention; but my canons of suitability would be a besom of destruction to gas‐lighted altar‐candles and sanctuary lamps, fixed or portable opera‐glasses for the use of distantly‐placed worshippers, the manufactured mimic rain, hail, and thunder storms at the beck of organ pedals, the statues of the Apollo Belvidere or the Greek Slave, valuable paintings of first‐class yachts, fast horses, or prize cattle, even if they came from the pencil of a Landseer or a Rosa Bonheur; and if I cared for melody of any style for its own sake, my child, I would strongly advise my American clergy to engage the services of Theodore Thomas or Patrick J. Gilmore, whose orchestral performances are truly delicious, and the best for their purpose that can be procured in my beloved dominions of the western hemisphere. _But the purpose of these delightful concerts is not a part of my programme._ The disciples of the Grand Lama, I am told, turn off their rosaries and other prayers by means of a crank, as music is often made by mechanical organs; but my prayers and melodies are not made in this fashion. Have your _best_ music, as you define it, sung and performed where it suits the best; go and hear it, and God bless you; but please do not let me hear of your inventing and using a small patent steam‐whistle to replace the acolyte’s altar‐bell, nor a large one either in lieu of the church‐bell, for that would smack a little too much of the cotton‐mill or the iron‐foundry; and I do not think I _would_ tolerate that.”

We must confess to having our patience severely tried when the question of “suitability” comes under discussion, and we burn to cry out, Where is the honest musician who is not so engrossed with, and mastered by, his art as to become, like it, deprived of ideas, or at least of the power of expressing them in one single logical affirmation, and who has a principle which he will fairly state and reason from instead of taking us into the pathless dreamland of sentiment, or enticing us for ever off the track on to side switches of individual tastes and special pleas that lead nowhere? Discussing the relative suitability of music and plain chant for the use of the Liturgy of the church is, in our experience, only equalled by the purgatory of suffering one’s reason endures when talking “controversy” with a Protestant. Has art no first principles? Is there no relation between art and the nature and purpose of the object to be expressed or illustrated by it? Do you _dare_ define “suitability” to be the harmony of the subject with _your_ present mood, with the fashion of the hour, or with the demands of ignorance and prejudice, or presume to close all discussion with your “_Sic volo, sic jubeo; stet pro ratione voluntas_”?

But this is a digression. Let us return to our argument.

_Thirdly._ If we were to say that, contrasted one with the other, the expression of plain chant is unimpassioned, and that of modern music is impassioned—in other words, that the former has not much, if any, capacity for expressing human passions, and that the latter has not only a great capacity for expressing them, but also for exciting them, we think we are affirming what every one who knows anything of the philosophy of music, as well as every one who has been subjected to the influence of both, will readily acknowledge to be true. There is martial music for soldiers, to excite them to combat, or cheer them in victory, or stir their enthusiasm on the triumphant return from battle. There is music for the dancers, and distinct kinds of dance music which invite and sustain those who may wish to waltz or polka, thread the figures of the quadrille, or indulge in the lascivious mazes of other such‐like enjoyments not worthy of our mention or consideration outside of our duty as confessor or preacher. There is funny music to make us laugh, and there are funereal dirges to keep us in fit mood as we march after a coffin. There is music which we know will rouse the wrath of our enemy, and there is amorous music which awakes the passion of love, pure and impure.

We have already signalized the cause which gave to music its sensuous character. Lest it may be supposed that we are endeavoring to create a theory without sufficient warrant, we quote from one who holds an undisputed post of honor in the musical world:

“Very well! that which musical doctrine had condemned, that which ages had proscribed, a man one day dared to do. Guided by his instinct, he had more confidence in what it counselled him than in what the rules commanded, and in spite of the cries of horror which arose from a whole nation of musicians, he had the courage to bring into relation the fourth note of the gamut, the fifth, and the seventh (the tritone). By this one act he created the natural dissonances of harmony, a new tonality, the kind of music called _chromatic_, and, as a consequence, modulation. What a world of things produced by one single harmonic aggregation! The author of this wonderful discovery is Monteverde.(84) He gives himself the credit, in the preface of one of his works, for the invention of the modulated, animated, and expressive style of melody. In fact, the impassioned accent (_l’accent passionné_) does not exist, and cannot exist, except in the leading note (_la note sensible_), and this cannot itself be produced, except by its relation with the fourth and fifth degrees of the gamut—in other words that any note placed in the harmonic relation of augmented fourth with another note produces the sensation of a new tone, without the necessity of hearing the tonic or making a cadence, and that by this faculty of the augmented fourth to create immediately a leading note, modulation—that is to say, the necessary succession of different tones—is rendered easy. Admirable coincidence of two fruitful ideas! The musical drama is born; but the drama lives on emotions, and the tonality of plain chant, grave, severe, and calm, could not furnish it with impassioned accents; for the harmony of its tonality does not contain the elements of transition. Hence genius found inspiration in the demand, and all that could give life to the music of the drama was brought into existence at one blow.”(85)

We cannot refrain from adding the reflections of another eminent musician—M. Jos. d’Ortigue:

“Is it not evident that a new order of ideas, a new social element, and a novel spirit, were introduced in music by the fact alone of the creation of a tonality, and that dissonance, modulation, transition, the leading or _sensible note_, the _impassioned accent_ (mark the words), were but the material clothing, the means, the outward expression, thanks to which this new principle—namely, the _moi humain_—which had already, so to speak, broken through the upper strata of thought, made for itself a vent by means of the art of music? For just as the ancient tonality, by the fact of its constitution, inspired the sentiment of repose—that is to say, gave birth to the ideas of permanence, of immutability, of the infinite, which comport with the expression of divine things—so also disturbance, agitation, the febrile and tumultuous expression of the passions, which are the essential characteristics of all earthly things, are inherent in the modern tonality precisely in virtue of its constitution, which depends upon _dissonance_ and _transition_.”(86)

Those wise old Spartans who made it a capital crime to add a new cord to the lyre, lest the people should be rendered effeminate, would certainly despair of finding a man living in our XIXth century who was fit to be called a man, if they were told that the chord of the minor seventh was in such common use that hardly one melody can be found where its effeminate dissonance is not made to appear and to be felt.(87) We pray to be understood when we call the tonality of “impassioned accent” effeminate. A few words from M. Victor de Laprade will convey our meaning: “I dare to class music, and even women themselves, in the order of femininity—that is to say, in that class in which sentiment rules ideas, in which the heart is more manifestly active than reason. It is bold, I acknowledge. We are no longer living in the age of the Book of Wisdom, of the sacred lawgivers, of the prophets, of the philosophers, nor simply of Molière; we are of the age of Saint‐Simon, of Fourier, of Auguste Comte, and we have changed all that. We have put the heart on the right side. I am obstinate enough to feel it beating on the left.”

In his famous Instructions (we beg our readers to recall our proposed amendment of their title) the cardinal vicar feels the necessity of protesting against this emotional tendency of music. “We forbid,” he says, “too lively or exciting movements,” and dreads lest some composers may be led to express “the unbridled liveliness of the dance.” He would not “deprive the music of that grace and coloring which art and _good taste_ suggest,” but thinks it necessary to add that “an effeminate softness is to be avoided.”

Without question, the best music, allied to words, as music, is in the compositions for the opera. Those eminent composers who have written for the opera and for the church have indisputably produced works of a higher order of musical merit for the former than they have for the latter.(88) And is not operatic music the most intensely impassioned of all melody, and is it not, alas! becoming a vehicle for the expression of the most debased and lascivious passions of the human heart? Give to modern music language and a stage, free it from all the restraints of Catholic morality, and who does not see, after the experience of an operatic season in one of our great cities, that it would soon become the most powerful and dangerous of all the forces which are now threatening to enervate and demoralize our modern society? We must not be surprised, therefore, nor should we much regret, that “modern composers have failed in their works to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion.”

Let us see what spirit marks the ceremonies of the church when considered as opportunities for exhibiting, or as exciting causes of awakening, the passions. It is not possible to find one such occasion. All gesture which might suggest aught but the most perfect calm and repose of the soul in the actors is absolutely out of place. It is very difficult in sudden, unlooked‐for instances of disturbance for the priest not to show in his countenance or by his manner symptoms of alarm, disgust, or annoyance; but he ought not to do so, and would not fail to scandalize the people, unless such disturbance happened to be extraordinary. To betray by look, gesture, or intonation of voice the slightest emotion of sensual passion, however innocent in itself, would disgust and horrify all observers. Neither do the rubrics permit him or his assistants to excite any passion in the hearts of others; for the ceremonial directs their most simple movements, the position of the body, the _tenue_ of the eyes, the hands, and the feet. That “ecclesiastical modesty” which forms so constant a theme of instruction to candidates for the sacred ministry here finds its perfect realization, and is exacted in the highest degree.

The sacred offices are essentially unlike opera, and the church has the good sense to dread the introduction of anything in connection with her divine ceremonies that might be suggestive of it. We now understand why the cardinal vicar throughout the Instructions vehemently proscribes, and over and over again warns composers not to write, operatic or theatrical music, or anything like it, either in its _melodies_ or its character, nor borrow from it, nor imitate it in the use of ariettas, duets, trios, recítative, _finales_, or _cabaletta_. Truly, “the best music” is pretty well ruled out by his eminence. By his cautious discrimination, and prudent lopping off, and general toning down he has pretty closely clipped the wings of the steed of Helicon, and, after all, it must be acknowledged, has made of him rather a sorry and unreliable nag, not worth half the old horse who all his lifetime has never given out, or baulked, or behaved in any unseemly manner.

We trust that a distinct disavowal of any intent on our part to treat with flippancy and disrespect the oft‐quoted Instructions of his eminence is not needed, for nothing could be further from our thought; but that our readers will perceive that the point of our lance is directed against the endeavor to impose a restrictive and prohibitory circular‐letter of the cardinal vicar as a brief in favor of modern music with apostolic sanction. We complain, also, that the words of Benedict XIV. have been quoted by the same writers in such a way as to leave the impression on the mind of the general reader that the learned pope treated modern music as _un fait accompli_, and rather preferred it if composed according to certain demands which he makes of musicians. Wherefore we quote again his words, by which we get at his real sentiments: “The Gregorian chant is that song which excites the minds of the faithful to piety and devotion; it is that music, therefore, which, if sung in our churches with care and decorum, is most willingly heard by devout persons, and is justly preferred to that which is called figured or harmonized music. The titillation of figured music is held very cheaply by men of religious mind in comparison with the sweetness of the church chant, and hence it is that the people flock to the churches of the monks, who, _taking piety for their guide_ in singing the praises of God, after the counsel of the prince of psalmists, skilfully sing to their Lord as Lord, and serve God as God with the utmost reverence.”

The learned Suarez has also been cited in favor of modern church music—rather a strange fact, as the great theologian was dead and buried before the system of modern music was invented! S. Alphonsus—no mean theologian, nor a rigorist either—says: “The devil usually gets more by it than God does.”

This attempt to argue a positive approval from prohibitory enactments reminds us of “a little story.”

“I had the honor this morning,” boasted a vain soldier, “of holding a conversation with his majesty the king.”

“_You_ converse with his majesty?” exclaimed his companion. “And what did you say to him?”

“Oh! _I_ said nothing. His majesty alone conversed.”

“And pray, what did _he_ say to _you_?”

“He said: ‘Fellow, stand out of the way!’ ”

Who has ever thought of denying that the old plain chant suits exactly the ceremonies of the church? There were never any “Instructions” promulgated, that we know of, to curb its worldly, operatic, sensual, or effeminate tendencies, simply because by its essential melodic form it does not lend itself to any such aberrations. By its short intervals, its grave and unmeasured movement, and its intellectual character,(89) it is freed from all sensuousness. You can neither march to it, dance to it, nor make love with it. But you can appropriately accompany any of the ceremonies of the church with it, and pray with it; that is—to forestall the special plea of a theological “distinction”—you can _adore_ with it, _propitiate_ the divine justice with it, _supplicate_ with it, _praise_ and _thank_ God with it; and doing all this, we respectfully ask, what more do you want, and, if you do want more, what right have you to ask it?

In the interests of art, do you say? Pshaw! You know well that the church can offer but a very confined field for the cultivation of music _as an art_, and, compared with music inspired by other wants and tastes, the music written for her use is not worth mentioning. It is only fit to be consigned to the flames, as our friend observes. Besides, the church is not an Academy of Arts and Sciences. Try again.

If being content with what the church prescribes, refusing to admit what she has not distinctly commanded, and contending stoutly for the fitness of that melody for the expression of her divine prayer, and as an accompaniment to her sublime offices, and which she has never declared to be unsuitable, be to “censure the whole church, and even the Pope himself,” as it is insinuated we do, then we offer ourselves at once for safe conduct to a lunatic asylum, for assuredly we have lost our senses.

_Fourthly._ We hear much of the _coloring_ in the phraseology of modern music. That it is essentially rhetorical is plain enough. It is pretty much all made up of figures of speech, musically expressed. It is especially antithetical, full of striking contrasts, and highly metaphorical. We used to hear frequently in our own church, when we had a “mixed” choir and a gallery, a _finale_ of the Gloria in Excelsis which the unlearned in musical gymnastics were accustomed to say sounded like the men scampering after the women, and the women scampering after the men, and neither coming out ahead of the other. This rhetorical character of music, this dealing in figures of musical speech, which we dare affirm is not free in many an instance from the faults of tautology, bombast, and mixed metaphor, lucidly explains the reason why the frequent repetition of _morceaux de musique_, whether anthems, motets, “grand Masses,” or “musical Vespers,” by any celebrated composer whomsoever, soon grows tiresome. The same rhetorical phrases and identical figures of speech in the discourses of a preacher Sunday after Sunday would set all the people yawning, and, if the sacredness of the place and of the speaker were not a hindrance to such emotional display, laughing and hissing as well.

The metaphorical character of music is the result of its theme, which may be, as we have already said, either pastoral, martial, amorous, saltatory, funereal, or even prayerful, etc.; but it is not really pastoral, for there are no green fields to pipe in or any hay‐making going on. It is _like_ pastoral music, and would be only tolerable, even in a concert‐ room, on the strength of the maxim, “Art for art’s sake”—a principle we contend to be unphilosophical at best, and absolutely intolerable when applied to sacred ceremonies, and not sanctioned by a single instance in the rubrics. So, also, there are no military evolutions, no love‐making or dancing, going on, for which reason the music is not _really_ martial, amorous, or saltatory, but only _like_ such music. But there may be a funeral, and there certainly is prayer going on; and what objection can there be to funereal and prayerful music? We have never heard any funereal _music_ that was fit to accompany a Requiem Mass. We have heard musical howling, wailing, sobbing, groans and sighs of despair, and even the spiteful cursing and gnashing of teeth of the damned, as in the _confutatis maledictis_ of Cherubini’s _Requiem_; but let that pass for the present. Prayer_ful_ music there is of incomparable sweetness and ravishing harmony, but _prayer_ music—_i.e._, music which _is_ prayer—is quite another thing. Music does not lose its metaphorical character because its theme is prayerful. There is the greatest difference in the world between first‐class paste and real diamond, or between vermeil and pure gold, although it is possible that neither you nor we could distinguish them without the application of a scientific test. The paste may have a perfect diamond_ful_ glitter, if you will; but that this glitter is the expression of the substance of real diamond needs no argument to disprove.

Let us again apply our test. The official acts of the celebrant and his assistants at the altar are not figurative, but real. The priest acts _as_ a priest, and not _like_ a priest. The chorus rise, kneel, bow, prostrate, as a chorus should, and not as a chorus might. All their acts are real, finding their _ratio_ in themselves, and not in something else of which they are now a good and admirable, or now a poor and far‐fetched, figure. Melody for such performances should be a faithful and _true_ expression of these realities. That is to say, when you hear the melody, you should hear the prayer which is the form of the _corpus rubricarum_, as the soul is the form of the human body. Subjected to this test, the paste is easily distinguished.

Now, will the diamond, as we choose to typify the church chant, be as readily known by the like test? There is nothing corresponding or similar to figures of speech in the chant, neither is it based upon metaphorical themes. It has properly no theme, but only modes, with their special intonations, mediations, and cadences. Considered in its melodic form, it is a rhythmic combination of unities, the purest artistic expression of communion with the Infinite Unity—with God. Sung in or out of the celebration of the divine offices, if it be not simple rehearsal, it is prayer, and nothing else but prayer. It rejoices in the “perennial freshness” of the Holy Mass and Divine Office, because, like these, it is not metaphorical, but real; and hence we deduce at once the explanation of its lasting character. Its melodies do not wear out or become tiresome. It would never occur to a child of the church, although he were the most accomplished musician the world ever knew, if his age surpassed that of Mathusala, and he had heard High Mass every day of his life, that the Preface or the Pater Noster (and wherefore any other chant?) was a worn‐ out or tiresome melody. There is a truth for the lovers of church _music_ to digest.

The essential reason—to go to the very bottom of the matter—of the lasting character of the chant, lies in the form of its phraseology, which is purely didactic, consisting of simple and therefore sublime affirmations; this simplicity of its phraseology being often reduced to the utterance of pure substantives, as if the soul were in rapture, meditating upon God and his attributes, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Being of beings, the Eternal, the Omnipotent, the Everlasting, the All in all, the All wise, the All fair, and the All good.

There is an instance of this sublime simplicity of language in Holy Scripture which is an apt example to illustrate our meaning. It is the twelfth verse of the viith chapter of the Apocalypse: “Amen. Benedictio, et claritas, et sapientia, et gratiarum actio, honor, et virtus, et fortitudo Deo nostro in sæcula sæculorum, amen”—Amen. Benediction, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honor and power, and strength to our God, for ever and ever, amen.

The test being applied, we think we may affirm and certify the diamond.

_Fifthly._ From what we have already said, and to judge from the extraordinary pretensions of its capacity for expression put forth in these later days, modern music is essentially dramatic, mimetic, or imitative. That it is especially suitable as the melody to accompany and aid the expression of dramatic representation there is no question. There appears also to be hardly any limit of its capacity, as musicians affirm, for word‐painting and scene‐painting. If the musical critics are not deceived, we think that, with the full score of some genius who may be even now about to graduate in the school of “the music of the future,” a Thomas or a Gilmore might dispense with the actors on the stage altogether, and with the services of the scene‐painter as well. What is thought of this power of word‐painting, when employed to illustrate the sacred text of the church’s offices, we quote from the _Dublin Review_, Oct., 1868:

“What is called word‐painting in music is, of course, very effective, but, as a rule, it cannot be carried so far in sacred as in secular music without detriment to the dignity of the subject. Indeed, even where it is not otherwise objectionable, it sometimes becomes tiresome from its conventionality. The run down the notes of the scale at the _descendit de cœlis_, and such like effects, do not bear much repetition. Indeed, the attempt at minute expression has often led to odd blunders, such as in the passages _resurrectionem mortuorum_, where the music for the first word is usually made to have a joyful effect, the latter a lugubrious one (and that, too, sometimes drawn out into musical passages cut off from the previous word, as if it were a fresh sentence), the composer forgetting that the phrase only comprehends one idea—that of the resurrection. So with the passage _remissionem peccatorum, exaltavit humiles_, and others that might be named.”

We have already mentioned a notable instance of this word‐painting—the _confutatis maledictis_ from the _Dies Iræ_ of Cherubini. The vividly descriptive and intensely dramatic power of that passage is well known; and if it were further heightened by a mechanically‐darkened church, with a flash or two of stage‐lightning and the rumbling of sheet‐iron thunder, we are sure the effect would be quite as much as we could bear, whether as celebrant or as near relatives of the departed. Overpowered with the emotions of horror and fear which we are sure we would experience in thus having hell opened to us, we would be thinking a great deal more of the devil than of the God of mercy and compassion when the cry of fright broke from our lips, “Libera me, Domine, de morte æterna!” Certainly, deprived even of any stage effects, we have never listened to it without a shudder. And now comes the pertinent question, Is dramatic, theatrical effect what the church desires to obtain from her melody, or, at least, is she willing that there should be anything of this kind at all employed to illustrate her liturgy? We refer to the Instructions of his eminence the cardinal vicar. He is “polarized,” as we say in America, on that subject. We also quote from the late articles on church music in this magazine:

“ ‘Humana nefas miscere divinis’ finds its application here. To carry the minds of worshippers in the church back to the theatre by the music is a crime, for it is a desecration.”

Musicians themselves are not wholly devoid of the sense of propriety. Mme. de Sévigné relates that _Baptiste_—the celebrated Lulli—hearing at Mass one day an air which he had composed for the theatre, cried out: “Lord, Lord, I crave your pardon. I did not write it for _you_!”

We wonder if the correspondent of the _Herald_ was aware of the satire contained in the following late announcement: “Signor Verdi protests indignantly against his _Requiem_ being played in a circus at Ferrara.”

Yet let us see if our comparison with the ceremonies of the liturgy and the character of the actors holds good as before.

There is no scenery, nor should there be any for any occasion. No, good reader, not even for the Repository of Holy Thursday. Those puppet‐show “tombs,” with pasteboard soldiers sleeping and watching before pasteboard rocks, are not prescribed by the rubrics, or even tolerated, and are therefore entirely out of order and unmeaning. The Holy Mass is a continuation of the crucifixion and sacrificial death of our Lord on Mount Calvary; but there is no dramatic representation of that event, for the reason, among others that we have alleged before, that it is not a representation, but a reality. We could readily understand its propriety if the Episcopalians or other sects of Protestants were to have a stage erected with scenery of the “upper room,” and a supper‐table with living actors or wax‐figure ones, _à la_ Mme. Tussaud or Mrs. Jarley, in order to vividly represent to their people the celebration of the Last Supper, because their “celebrations,” high, low, broad, or evangelical, expect to have nothing more at best than a representative sacrifice or commemorative supper; but the Catholic Mass is a perfect and real sacrifice in itself, and mimics nothing.

Apart from the Mass, we have a remarkable example in our own day of a sacred drama, the Passion Play of Ober‐Ammergau, which is not a real but an imitative crucifixion, mechanical in the highest degree, passional, figurative, and dramatic. Music for that, _à la bonne heure_!

Let us again bring the chant into comparison. When we say that it is pre‐ eminently the chant of priests, each one of whom is “alter Christus,”(90) the chorus song of psalmists, we at once proclaim it as pre‐eminently fitted for the expression of the liturgy, and therefore to be wanting in dramatic or word‐painting capacity. There have been a few insignificant attempts made by late composers to express, after a musical fashion, the _descendit de cœlis_ with square notes on a four‐lined staff, in the hope, probably, that it would be mistaken for plain chant; but the guise is too thin!

Here is a fitting opportunity to explain our former intimation that horrifying, tearful, and groaning melody is not suitable even for a requiem. How often have we not heard it said, “Oh! Gregorian chant is admirable for occasions of sorrow; just the thing for a Dead Mass”; or again, “I think the chant is so lugubrious and solemn; every inflexion seems to be in the minor key,” to which we reply:

In the first place, they who suppose plain chant to be in the minor key are simply in ignorance of its tonality. These we advise to study enough of the chant of their church to avoid making ridiculous objections to it. The others evidently suppose, 1st, that the church intends to excite emotions of sadness at a requiem, and to perform, especially with the services of the choir, the office of a paid mute; and if the friends and relatives are moved to weep bitterly and for a long time, every one will say, “How impressive, how touching!” meaning, “How saddening! How depressing to the spirits!” 2d. That the Gregorian chant Requiem is most admirably suited to this purpose, being a melody of _such_ a sorrowful character and of _so_ lugubrious a tone.

On which we remark that they are most egregiously mistaken in both suppositions. The object which the church has in view at a requiem is not to make people weep and wail, but to console, comfort, and soothe the bleeding hearts of the bereaved mourners; to pray herself, and to excite them to pray earnestly, for the soul of the departed. Nothing could be further from her thought than to horrify them with visions of the grave and imaginations of the torments of the damned. No, it is rest, eternal rest, the rapture of the soul’s enjoyment of the everlasting light of glory in heaven, that forms the burden of her funereal refrain,

“Requiem æternam dona ei Domine, Et lux perpetua luceat ei! Requiescat in pace!”

Those who love to indulge in the luxury of woe, and who fancy that plentiful tears and a thoroughly broken‐hearted manner are the proper accompaniments to a mourning dress, highly approve of the anti‐rubrical exhibition of painted or embroidered skulls and cross‐bones, heightened in effect by a diapering of gigantic tears, which the artist in funereal trappings has intruded upon the altar or about the catafalque. The Requiem Masses of Mozart and Cherubini would certainly admit of these imitative skeletons and mechanical grief; but not so the Gregorian Requiem.

Hark! what are those strange words which break the silence as the coffin is borne into the church? “Subvenite sancti Dei, occurrite Angeli Domini, suscipientes animam ejus, offerentes eam in conspectu Altissimi. Suscipiat te Christus qui vocavit te, et in sinu Abrahæ angeli deducant te.”(91)

And now the Introit begins, which gives the keynote, so to speak, to the whole Mass:

“Requiem æternam dona eis Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis.”(92)

What a world of comfort in those words! How soothing and hopeful; and chanted to such a smooth, sweet melody, like oil poured out upon the troubled waters, calming the agitated and fretted spirits of the mourners, and gently turning all hearts away from the thoughts of the irreparable loss they have sustained, and shutting out the memory of the scenes of anguish and horror that marked the hours of the agony and death, solicits them to pray for the soul of the beloved departed, and to cast all their sorrow at the feet of God.

Doubtless you presume the chant is very sorrowful; and, like all Gregorian chant, this is, of course, “in the minor key.” Not at all, however inexplicable it may appear to you. Read over again what we have just written above, and now learn one more astonishing fact. The chant for this Introit is written in the sixth mode, the only one of all the Gregorian modes whose scale is identical with the scale of the modern major key!

There is not an invitation to weep in the whole Requiem, neither in the words nor in the melody. It is true the church takes care to improve the occasion by preaching her sermon on the Judgment in the chant of the _Dies Iræ_; but she soon returns to her keynote of comforting prayer, and at the _Communio_ (which, of course, is not sung at all at our concert requiems) she essays even a bright and cheerful melody in the triumphant eighth mode, to the old refrain,

“Lux æterna luceat eis,”

and, addressing the sweet mercy of God, inspires hope and submission to the divine will by the reminder that he is ever kind and good—“quia pius es.”

Oh! what is this? It is the sympathizing pressure of the hand of the old, old friend who has always been true in sunshine and storm, in our sins and our miseries; it is her sheltering arm that folds our drooping head upon her gentle breast, and her cheery voice that has so often gladdened us in days gone by, soothing our broken heart with the only words that have power with us now—“God is good,” “It is his holy will.”

When we were aforetime groping in the darkness of heretical error, and denied all privilege of stretching out our hands in prayer to help our beloved dead through the mysterious way that death had opened to them, and sternly forbidden to hope for a deeper look into the future than the yawning chasm of corruption opened to our gaze in the earth, we felt—alas! how keenly—the appropriateness of the only burial service we knew of then, whose doleful burden—“ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and “We commit this body to the _ground_”—expressed well the faith that was of the earth, earthy. But now our voice is lifted up in praise, and our heart‐strings tuned to strains of festive joy, when God has spared our innocent loved ones the dangers and sorrows of life, chanting their translation to the skies in robes of white, and in words of joy that erst were sung by angels proclaiming “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men”; and at the borders of the tomb which hides from our sight the forms of those who for many a year have grown with our growth, and knit our very existence unto theirs, the earth with its darkening clouds is made to disappear, and heaven itself is revealed as the herald who precedes the soul to the gates of everlasting light, chants in our hearing its melodious welcome to the home of rest and glory.

“In paradisum deducant te angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.”(93)

The Catholic Church calm in the face of death, and triumphant at the edge of the grave! Why does not the sight convert every Protestant and unbeliever before the setting of the sun? This is our answer: Because you have brought upon the true Israel the calamity which Mardochai the just prayed God to avert when “the mouths of them that sing unto God are shut,” and by your music have bedimmed one of the most sublime manifestations of the church, and by the banishment of her chant have silenced her voice in that supreme, faith‐inspiring hour!

_Music_ at a funeral! We would as soon think of getting an Episcopalian parson to read his gloomy burial service, or of hiring a Methodist preacher to declaim by the hour, for the purpose of exhibiting his own vanity and ministering to ours.

The reason why the much‐lauded musical Masses, whether of requiem or for other occasions, have failed to meet the requirements of Catholic devotion, is because their composers have sought by word‐painting to illustrate the words, as separately defined in a dictionary, instead of grasping the chief and leading ideas to which the church strives to give expression; pretty much as if a painter, intending to paint a man, should most carefully sketch apart every separate bone, muscle, nerve, artery, and organ in the body. The result obtained would be a series of most excellently delineated anatomical drawings, no doubt, but no bodily form of a man, and no expression of what makes the body a living body, which is the soul.

Hence we deduce a most important conclusion. The _form_ of modern music is not prayer, but recreation, the delectation of the imaginative faculty. It aims at producing the impressions which material things excite by their contact with the senses. It seeks to imitate motion in direction or velocity, light and darkness, cold and heat, serenity or disturbance in nature. The piano alone is supposed to make us hear the booming of cannon, the galloping and neighing of horses (the _tritone Si, Fa_, which in the palmy days of Gregorian chant was called _diabolus in musica_, and which is the _essential_ chord in the tonality of modern music, will be found to give the exact notes of an ass’ braying), the dying moans of the wounded in battle, the rising and setting of the sun, and a host of other equally curious things. “I shouldn’t wonder,” exclaims a witty writer, “if one day I might see upon a piece of sheet music, ‘_Demonstration of the square of the hypothenuse_,’ or ‘_The theory of free trade_!’ ” Will not some composer produce a “work” which will give the impressions produced on the souls of the people at Mass and Vespers? It might be found convenient for home use on rainy Sundays!

This suggestion quite tickles our fancy. It has the smack of originality about it, and we feel like playing with it, as a cat plays with a mouse. Who does not see at once that it opens a vast field for development of music as an art, and _precisely in the order in which musicians are now striving to give it expression_? Yes, the glory of the invention is ours.

“PATENT MUSICAL IMPRESSIONS, adapted to every want in church and state.”

“Save your fuel! _Summer Impressions_, warranted for the coldest climate.”

“Watering‐places superseded! Refreshing _Winter Impressions_, deliciously cool, flavored with hops, serenades, moonlight excursions, sea‐views, Adirondack trips, etc., according to taste.”

“_Sermon Impressions_, a great variety. Parties ordering will please state their religious views or the particular branch of the Episcopalian or other denomination to which they belong.” _N.B._—Agents and composers wanted.

If our readers think this to be nonsensical trifling, let them read a few of those lucubrations styled “musical criticisms.”

Musical _coloring_ has only been equalled in its fantastic conceptions by the so‐called _ocular harmony_ and _visual melody_ imagined by the French Jesuit, Father Castel, who lived about the beginning of the last century. Starting with a fancied principle that colors are reducible to a harmonic scale corresponding to the scale of musical sounds, he had manufactured what he called his _universal ribbon_, on which were graduated all colors and their most minute shades. Of this ribbon he made a little book, which he ingeniously attached to a harpsichord in such a manner that certain leaves would open at the touch of the different keys, thus presenting to the sight a particular shade of color at the same time that the hearing perceived the musical note. It is said that he spent large sums of money on this hobby. He wished also to have silks and other stuffs woven after this principle and “_dans ce goût_” of which the sacerdotal vestments ought to be made, so that every feast and season would be not only distinguished by those parti‐colored robes, but also, according to his principle of the harmonic proportions of color, that by a scientific arrangement of the colors derived from his graduated ribbon one might, and, as he contended, _should_, note upon the vestments melodies, and even harmony, so that a chasuble would _sing_ the Gloria in Excelsis or a cope the Antiphons at Vespers! We do not find, however, in his works, any proposal to _sing_, in colors, either at Mass or Vespers, thunder and lightning, landscapes and sunrises, jigs and waltzes, serenades of love‐ sick swains, the shrieks and gnashing of teeth of devils and lost souls, as our modern musicians have done with their musical coloring.

_Sixthly._ One of the chief complaints justly made against church music is its liability to the abuse of bringing certain singers of remarkable talent into an undue and often indecent prominence, and thus ministering rather to personal vanity, to petty jealousies and envies, and to the critical delectation of the audience (?), than to the praise and glory of God. That music can be written so as to preclude such an offensive result we are not prepared to deny; but that there is any reasonable hope that it ever will be we do not believe. The principle upon which choice is made of it in preference to chant, and which has extorted the restricted and evidently unwilling toleration of it, forbids us to entertain such a hope. We fancy that such a chastened style of music, composed so as to meet this requirement, would soon be voted as “confessedly unequal to the task of evoking and expressing the feelings of Christian joy and triumph,” and, with plain chant under the same ban, this world would become indeed a vale of tears and

“... plain of groans, Whose arid wastes resound with moans Of weepers over dead men’s bones.”

The style inherent in music certainly calls for more or less of personal display, and consequently for some sign of appreciation from the listeners, if it be nothing more than that entranced silence which is often the most flattering applause, especially in church.

A little incident has just occurred in connection with our own church choir—we hardly need say that no women sing in it, or that chant is its accepted melody—which illustrates better than long argument the spirit that Gregorian chant inspires in the hearts of the singers. One of their number, a little chorister, lies sick in a hospital. The members of the chorus have made an offering of all the merit they gain in the sight of God, on account of their singing, for his recovery. We imagine the look of puzzled surprise if such an “act” were proposed to the singers of a musical chorus in one of our ordinary gallery‐choirs.

We would furthermore ask whether music for the church could be, or is at all likely to be, composed so as not to betray the hand of the composer and elicit applause for him? Ought the people, or priest either, to suffer the distraction of remarking interiorly, “We have Mgr. Newsham’s Mass to‐ day, but it is not so pleasing as Mr. Richardson’s revised Mozart that we had last Sunday. I do hope the organist will soon give us one of those Mechlin prize Masses; but we cannot have that, I suppose, until we get a better tenor, for ours is rather a poor voice, etc., etc., etc.”?

We say that all such reflections are out of order, and are a valid argument against the use of musical compositions.

What of personal display in church ceremonies? It is not only in bad taste, but irrational, stupid, and contemptible, if it be not grievously scandalous, as it might very easily become. Does any one ever dream of applause to be either given or acknowledged? Why does not the church offer prizes for the composition of “Masses” which will vie with each other in their literary style, their devotional phraseology, and other characteristics, so that the people may have the enjoyment of hearing a Mass, now of the celebrated Dr. Brown, now of Dean Jones, and now of Canon Robinson, instead of being obliged to listen week after week to the same old, tiresome Masses of the Feasts of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the saints, the productions of the same “barbarous” age which formed the chant, and whose composers are not known to one in a million? Do not the exigencies of modern progress, and the aspirations to see themselves in print of more literati than she can find room for in her contracted temple of fame, demand that the church shall take this matter into serious consideration? We advise the American daily press to press this matter into the notice of the hierarchy at once, or at the reassembling of the Vatican Council at furthest.

As to plain chant, it corresponds exactly with this anonymous character of the present liturgy of the church, as every one can see—immortal works, that immortalize only the common faith which produced them—and then _that_ will be got rid of, which is all we need or care to say on this point. _Verbum sap._

_Seventhly_ (and lastly, for the present). Modern music is essentially national and secular. It is the product of a natural and sensual civilization (a question we have not the space to fully discuss here), and advances in a degree corresponding to the cultivation of the arts for their own sake by this or that nation, besides receiving a marked impress from the national habits and tastes.

Art for art’s sake! What else could we expect from a civilization which has ignored the supernatural and placed scientific investigation above the revelations of God, whose painters have abandoned the ideal for servile copying of nature, and whose highest type of beauty for the sculptor’s chisel is a naked Venus?

The secular character of music—by which we mean its variability with succeeding centuries or still shorter periods of time—is also unquestionable. It is of this age or of that; now “all the rage,” and now “old‐fashioned” and “out of date.” Modern musical airs enjoy a very short‐ lived popularity. Fashion is the autocrat, almost the divinity, of modern civilization. It is the logical expression of cultivated sensualism, and the art of music has basely given itself up to its tyrannical rule and whimsical lusts. Church music has been forced to bend its neck and go under the same yoke, and we do not believe it has the power to shake it off. Talk of making the style of music “alla Palestrina” popular now! We have been offered Chevalier Pustet’s costly _Musica Divina_ for a song; and Herr Franz may call the attention of church musicians to the works of Durante until he is hoarse. We tell you that such music is “out of fashion”; and fashion’s ban in the kingdoms of this world is as blasting as the ban of the church’s excommunication in the kingdom of Christ.

There must be nothing national or secular, nothing suggestive of the petty partisanship and strifes of the world, about the melody which expresses the universal and everlasting liturgy of the church. Kenelm Digby, whose judgment is of worth, says: “Sooth, no tongue can be adequate to give an idea of the impression produced by the plain song of the choir. It is full of poetry, full of history, full of sanctity. While the Gregorian chant rises, you seem to _hear the whole Catholic Church behind you responding_.”

Music may do for religions that are national or fashionable. Hymns in the German style may do for German Protestants; hymns and anthems in the English style may do for English Protestants; and American music (if there be such) may answer for all the requirements of devotion among the fifty odd sects that are struggling for existence amongst us—and we advise them, if they wish to make their churches “pay,” to keep their music well up to the fashion—but the Catholic Church, who knows no present, past, or future in her eternal faith, whose liturgy has never been subjected to the genius of national language, whose motto, “Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus,” has defied the attacks of fashion, as her rock‐founded edifice defies the gates of hell, she must have, and, thank God, she has a melody no nation or age shall call “its own,” whose purity no _soí‐disant_ “civilization” shall ever be able to defile, which her faithful children shall always recognize as the voice of their true mother, and know it well from the voice of a foreign step‐dame or of a hireling housekeeper—a voice which, through the mysterious link of divine generation, will ever speak to the child of the Father, who is his through the church, and whose Paternal compassion is sure to be moved by the tones of that song which the Mother taught him to sing.

Assunta Howard. V. Sienna.

It was on a beautiful evening in June, just when spring was merging into summer, that Mr. Carlisle’s family arrived in Sienna, and found a truly delightful home awaiting them, thanks to Giovanni’s energy and thoughtful skill. The soft but somewhat enervating air of Rome had failed to restore Mr. Carlisle’s strength; and the physician imperatively ordered that panacea which seems, in the opinion of the faculty, to be the last resource when other prescriptions have failed—complete change. An almost unaccountable attraction had drawn their thoughts towards Sienna, and Giovanni had been despatched to Tuscany with _carte blanche_ as to preparations. He had proved himself entirely worthy of confidence; and the praises bestowed upon him by all the family, as they inspected the result of his efforts, were not unmerited. He had succeeded in engaging, for the season, a pleasant, airy villa about a mile beyond the Florentine gate of that quaint, proud city, and no expense had been spared to render it comfortable and home‐like. A small grove in front of the house and a flower garden on one side promised many a pleasant hour during those days when shade and beauty afford relief and divert the mind from the power of the midsummer sun. The _loggia_ in the rear of the house, where Mr. Carlisle, his sister, and ward were now standing, commanded a most extensive and beautiful view. Directly beneath them the land sloped down into a graceful valley covered with vineyards. Beyond was a long stretch of _campagna_; and in the far distance, like a giant sentinel, rose Radicofani, on the summit of which still lingered the glory of a sunset whose gorgeousness had already departed. There is much in first impressions—more, perhaps, than we are willing to acknowledge—and it may well be doubted whether any after‐sunshine would have secured for Sienna the favor it now enjoyed had Radicofani appeared for the first time before the little group assembled on the balcony, rising weird‐like from out a veil of mist and cloud.

Mrs. Grey actually sighed, as, instantly spanning with a loving, womanly thought the distance which separated her from the lover she had regretfully left in Leghorn, she turned to her companions, saying: “Oh! I wish George were here. I think Sienna is lovely. There! I have seen the new moon over my left shoulder, and now I am sure he will not come this month.”

Mrs. Grey was evidently very much in love. Mr. Sinclair’s presence and absence formed the light and shade of her life’s picture; and a picture it was whose colors were too glaring, its contrasts too striking, and it lacked deep feeling in its tone. After a pause she continued:

“But then I have always noticed that George does not like views.” And removing her pretty travelling‐hat, she went away to superintend Amalie’s unpacking.

“He certainly did not like _my_ views,” said Mr. Carlisle in a low voice to Assunta, “when I expressed them to him rather freely the other day. But neither did I like his; so we were quits there.”

But the attention of the traveller was soon entirely engrossed in securing the rest needful after so fatiguing a journey; and it was some days before Mr. Carlisle was sufficiently strong to explore the city, whose walls and towers could be seen, in all their mediæval picturesqueness, from the _loggia_.

At last, however, the change recommended began to tell upon the invalid, and each day added its portion of renewed strength, until Mr. Carlisle threatened every possible and impossible herculean labor, by way of proving that he was, as he said, “ready for anything.”

The ladies had insisted upon postponing any sight‐seeing until all could enjoy it together, though Clara protested that complete stagnation was evidently her fate. One could not find much excitement in a grove and a mountain after the first hour of novelty. Still, as long as the mail brought her a daily letter from Mr. Sinclair, and took in return the dainty, perfumed envelope containing so many pretty, loving nothings, she did not appear to be hopelessly inconsolable.

Assunta had, without scruple, made one exception to the generous resolution of waiting. But it was because she knew that the expedition she wished particularly to make alone would afford no pleasure to the others, while their presence might be the occasion of much pain to herself. Of course the interest Sienna had for her was its association with S. Catherine; and she longed to see the spot consecrated by the heroic sanctity of one whose humility was as profound as her influence on the world was powerful. She took the opportunity on Sunday, after she and Marie had assisted at Mass in a little suburban church, to visit the house of the dyer whose honor and privilege it was to be the father of a woman the life and character of whom might well be studied by the women of to‐ day. S. Catherine possessed all that the most ambitious of her sex in the present day could desire—an immense public influence. How did she gain it? Only by seeking to lose herself in the obscurity of an ignoble origin; in labors and privations for the sake of a love whose consuming fire many waters of tribulation could not quench; and in that truly hidden life in which God delights to work his wonders. The only right she claimed was that of loving, and consequently of suffering, more than others. The only insignia of rank she coveted was a crown of thorns, and it was granted to her by her Eternal Lover, who could refuse her nothing. Her power was in God’s exaltation of the humble, in his use of the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. Well might those hands, which were privileged to bear in them the marks of the Lord Jesus—the sacred stigmata—be made instrumental in leading back to Rome its exiled pontiff‐king. Self‐ annihilation was the secret of the influence of those glorious women of the ages of faith who have since been placed upon the altars of the church. O restless, self‐seeking women of to‐day! striving for a power which will curse and not bless you, where is the sweet perfume of your humility? Where are the fruits of mortification? Where the aureola of sanctity? Where are those grand works for God, offspring of a faith that believes all and a love that dares all? For these are the virtues in a S. Catherine or a S. Teresa which all can imitate. Or, if these standards are too high for modern souls, where are the homely qualities of those women commended by S. Paul, who adorn themselves with modesty, learn in silence, are faithful in all things, having a care of the house? Thank God, the hand of the Lord is not shortened, and holy mother church cherishes many a hidden gem of sanctity which will one day adorn the bride at the coming of her divine Spouse! Yet these are but the exceptions, unknown in the midst of the vast, ever‐moving multitude seeking the open arena of life, and desiring a part in its contests, animated by hopes as false as they are human, placing that almost insuperable barrier of pride between their souls and the Sacred Heart of our divine Lord. S. James has given us this simple rule of a holy life: “To visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation, and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world”—in two words, charity and purity. May the ever Blessed Mother of God and her glorious servant S. Catherine intercede for the women of the church, that they may never covet those empty baubles for which the women of the world are now spending their lives!

Assunta, simple child of the faith, thought nothing of all this, as she passed reverently over the threshold of the house, whose rooms, retaining still something of their original appearance, are now converted into chapels. The sacristan, perceiving in the young girl an earnestness of piety to which he was not accustomed in most of the strangers who visited this holy spot, showed to her, without solicitation, the crucifix before which S. Catherine was kneeling when she received the stigmata. With kind attention the good man placed a _prie‐dieu_ before the precious object of veneration and, then retiring, gave Assunta an opportunity to satisfy her devotion. Making a place for Marie beside her, she was soon absorbed in prayer. Here, where the very atmosphere was filled with a spirit of love and sacrifice, where the crucifix before her spoke so eloquently of the closeness of the union between the faithful soul and its suffering Lord, how easy it seemed to make aspirations and resolutions which would of necessity lose something of their heat when exposed to the chilling air of the world’s indifference! How far off now was Mr. Carlisle’s affection, of whose influence she never ceased to feel something; how near the divine love of the Sacred Heart, that one sole object of S. Catherine’s desire and adoration! It had been the last request of Father Du Pont, when he gave Assunta his good‐by and blessing, that, while in Sienna, she would often visit this holy house. He judged rightly that the evident presence of the supernatural would help to counteract the spirit of worldliness which surrounded her in her daily life. She herself already felt that it was good for her to be there; and though, when she returned home, the sensible fervor of the moment died away, the effects remained in reanimated strength. “Courage, my child, and perseverance; God is with you,” were the last words she had heard from the good priest’s lips; and they kept singing on in her soul a sweet, low harmony, like the music of seashells, soothing her in many an anxious hour.

When once Mr. Carlisle was able to go out without danger of fatigue, Mrs. Grey could no longer complain of stagnation. The cathedral, the academy, and the numberless places of interest within the city walls, the drives, the walks through the shady lanes near the villa, twilight strolls through the vineyards, and excursions into the surrounding country, filled up the time through all those pleasant weeks. Before they could realize it Assunta’s birthday, her day of freedom, was at hand. A week before the eventful occasion Mr. Sinclair had arrived in Sienna, making Mrs. Grey superlatively happy. The joy he imparted to the others must be expressed in something less than the positive degree.

The sun rose brightly on the 15th of August. Nature responded to the joyous Benedicite, and “all the works of the Lord” seemed to “magnify him for ever” for the great things he had done in giving to heaven a Queen, to earth an Advocate. Nor was man silent. The grave city of Sienna put off its wonted dignity, and, by the unfurling of its gay flags, the spreading of tapestries, and the ringing of bells, testified its share in the common rejoicing of Christendom. It was the Feast of the Assumption, and Assunta Howard’s twenty‐first birthday. Was it strange that the young girl should have arisen with a heavy heart but little in sympathy with the glad sights and sounds that greeted her in these first waking moments? Surely, to those who understand the workings of the human heart it was most natural. On this day ended the relations between herself and her guardian. However hard the tie which bound her had made her duty towards him, it was harder still to nature to sever the bond. She was free now to go where she would; and it would soon be right for her to separate from him who was no longer her guardian, and was not satisfied to be only her friend. She had not realized before how much happiness she had experienced in the relationship which existed no longer; how she had rested content in the very face of danger, because the peril had in it so much more of pleasure than of pain. How sweet had been the intercourse which duty had sanctioned, and which duty must now interrupt! The feeling was all wrong, and she knew it, and she would not fail to struggle against it. Her will was resolute, but it was evident that she was not to conquer in life’s battle by throwing aside her arms and withdrawing from the contest. The bearing of the cross must be daily, and not only day after day, but year after year. Only to‐day she seemed to feel its weight more, and she sank a little beneath it. Was it her guardian angel that whispered courage to her soul, or was it the Blessed Mother, to whose loving protection she had been specially confided, who reminded her that our dear Lord fell three times beneath the overwhelming burden of his cross, and bade her be comforted? Yes, it was the feast of that dear Mother, and no mere human feeling should prevent her joining in the church’s exultation and corresponding to her salutation in the Introit: “Gaudeamus omnes in Domino.”

Assunta had ordered the carriage to be in readiness to take her to San Domenico for early Mass, and Marie’s knock at the door informed her that it was waiting. She had before visited the church, but only in the way of sight‐seeing. She had then been struck with its many points of interest; she had no idea until this morning how devotional it was. After Mass, at which she had received, in the Holy Communion, strength and peace, she remained a long time before the chapel containing those most beautiful frescos, by Razzi, of incidents in the life of the great saint of Sienna. The finest of all, S. Catherine in Ecstasy, is a treasure both of art and devotion. Apparently fainting, supported by two of her nuns, the countenance of the saint has that indescribable expression of peace which we see in those whose conversation is in heaven. But, more than this, the evident absence of all sensation indicates that the soul is rapt into an ineffable union with its divine Lord, and has passed, for the moment, beyond the confines of earth. Seemingly dead, and yet alive, the frail body, with its beautiful, calm face, rests upon its knees in the arms of the two Sisters, who, with all the tranquillity of the cloister, yet form a contrast to her who is so wholly dead to the world.

Assunta gazed upon the picture until it seemed to impart rest to her own soul; and yet the impression was very different from that she always received in looking at the other S. Catherine whom angels are bearing to her sepulture. Marie at last interrupted her, and, reminding her that she was the important personage at the villa on that day, suggested that she should return to breakfast. And Assunta determined that no cloud should disturb the serenity of the occasion, which all intended should be joyous.

Mr. Carlisle met her at the door on her return, and assisted her to alight. Then he took her hand in both his, and his eyes spoke volumes, as he said:

“Let me look at you, child, and see how you bear your honors. You are more of a heroine than I thought; for even at this distance we have heard the bells and have seen the flags. What an important little body you are! No one thought it worth while to ring me into my majority.”

“It is because you did not come into the world under the same auspices,” replied Assunta.

“Auspice Maria—that is the secret, then.” And Mr. Carlisle lowered his voice as he added: “Consider me a Mariolater from this time, my devotion deriving an ever‐increasing fervor from the doctrine of the Assumption. Well, you are free, and I suppose I am expected to congratulate you. How do you enjoy the sensation of liberty?”

“I do not think that I am yet enough accustomed to the use of my wings to feel the difference between what I was yesterday and what I am to‐day. But in one point I am unchanged. I have an excellent appetite for my breakfast.”

Assunta was determined to ward off all approach to sentiment.

“And here is Clara, wondering, no doubt, if I have been left behind in Sienna.”

Mrs. Grey came out into the garden, looking very lovely in her white morning dress, and followed by Mr. Sinclair.

“Severn, you are the most selfish man I ever saw,” exclaimed the impetuous little lady. “Do you flatter yourself that you have the monopoly of Assunta, and that no one else is privileged to wish her _cento di questi giorni_, as Giovanni says?—though I am sure I should not like to live a hundred years. My beauty would be gone by that time.” And she looked archly at her lover standing beside her.

“I fancy that even relentless time would ‘write no wrinkles on thine antique brow,’ reluctant to spoil anything so fair,” said Mr. Sinclair in his most gallant tone; then extending his hand to Assunta, he continued:

“Miss Howard, allow me to congratulate you, and to wish that your life may be as cloudless as is this wonderful sky. The day is like yourself—exquisitely beautiful.”

The color mounted into Assunta’s cheeks, but it was with displeasure at such uncalled‐for flattery. Mr. Carlisle turned away, and walked into the house; while his sister, with that amiability which often atoned for her want of tact, exclaimed:

“Bravo! George, you have said quite enough for us both; so I will only ditto your speech, and add to it my birthday kiss. Now, dear, let us go to breakfast. Severn is already impatient.”

The table had been placed in a large hall running the whole length of the house; and as the three were about to enter, Assunta paused on the threshold, in astonishment and delight at the magical transformation. The walls were literally garlanded with flowers, and fresh greens were festooned from the ceiling, while in the centre of the breakfast‐table was a basket of the rarest exotics. Not only Sienna, but Florence, had been commissioned to furnish its choicest flowers for the occasion. Assunta’s eyes filled with tears, and for a moment she could not speak. Mr. Carlisle, perceiving her emotion, offered her his arm, and led her towards a side‐table, saying:

“And here are our trifling birthday gifts, which you must not despise because they fall so far short of expressing all that we feel for you.”

There was a beautifully‐framed proof engraving of Titian’s masterpiece, the Assumption, from Mr. Carlisle. Clara had chosen as her gift a set of pearls, “because they looked so like the darling,” she said. Mr. Sinclair’s offering was a bouquet of rare and exquisite flowers. He had all the penetration of an experienced man of the world, and understood well that Miss Howard would prefer not to accept from him anything less perishable. Assunta put her hand in Clara’s, as she said:

“I never can thank you, it is all so beautiful.” And then she paused, until Clara exclaimed:

“Why, Assunta love, what a solemn birthday face! To be sure, the flight of time is a serious thing. I begin to feel it myself, and shall very soon dispense with birthdays altogether—such disagreeable reminders as they are.”

“What is it, _petite_?” asked Mr. Carlisle. “You know that to‐day you have only to command us, and we will prove your most obedient subjects.”

“Oh! it was nothing of any consequence; only a thought that you would consider very foolish crossed my mind. I am sure my solemnity was quite unintentional.”

“Well, a penny for that thought, twice told.”

Assunta, perceiving that Mr. Sinclair was out of hearing, explained:

“All this for my poor worthless self and nothing for Her whom God has delighted to honor. I think I was feeling a little jealous for my dear Mother. I did not want my feast to be better than hers.”

“Is that all?” said Mr. Carlisle. “To hear is to obey.” And without another word he quickly removed from the table everything but the picture, and, taking flowers and candles from the mantel‐piece, he improvised a really artistic shrine. Giovanni, who was serving breakfast, lighted the candles, and surveyed the effect with satisfaction.

“Thank you,” said Assunta, and she would not even remember that the love was wanting which would give value to the offering. “I shall hardly dare think a wish to‐day, the consequence is so magical.”

“And now, Severn,” said his sister, “if you have finished your popery, you had better call Assunta’s attention to my ever‐increasing appetite. Giovanni, too, will not like to have his efforts to honor the occasion slighted by a want of appreciation.”

Mr. Carlisle offered the young girl his arm, and led her to the table, saying:

“This is my first attempt at Mariolatry. Quite a success, is it not?”

“If it were only an outward sign of inward grace,” said Clara, laughing, “exterior piety would be quite becoming to you, Severn. You really have an artistic taste. But you are too absent‐minded to‐day! Can you not see that we are starving?”

Assunta was so accustomed to hear sacred things spoken of lightly, and often irreverently, that she had learned to make a little solitude in her heart, into which she could retire from the strife, or even the thoughtlessness, of tongues, and many a short act of reparation was there performed for those who were unconscious of offence.

“I wonder,” said Mrs. Grey, as after breakfast the party were standing on the _loggia_—“I wonder if Giovanni has succeeded in finding a good balcony for the races to‐morrow. I would not miss seeing them for the world. I dote on horses.”

“I very much doubt,” replied her brother, “if the horses will excite the least admiration, judging from the specimens Sienna has thus far produced. But the races will be interesting, because they are entirely unique. I believe that Giovanni has been very successful in securing a balcony, and he intends to have it surpass all others in decoration; so I hope that the ladies will do their part, not to disgrace his efforts. He will expect the jewels to be set in a manner worthy of the casket which contains them.”

“Never fear, Severn! Do you think a lady ever failed to look her best on such an occasion? An open balcony and a crowd—surely, she needs no other occasion for vanity.”

George Sinclair removed his cigar to remark carelessly:

“And so the admiration of _one_ is, after all, insufficient to satisfy you?”

“No, it is not, you dear, lazy, old fellow, and you know it. It is only because I like your taste to be appreciated that I want others to admire me. I do not think there is a more delicious sensation than to feel that you are pretty to begin with, and then dressed so as to show every point to the best advantage, and to know that every eye is fixed upon you. One can be so innocently unconscious of it all the time.”

“Clara, I am ashamed of you,” exclaimed her brother. “You are a perfect mirror of your sex; only, unfortunately, it is the weaknesses that you reflect to the life, and none of the virtues.”

“Hush, impertinence!” replied Clara, laughing merrily. “One cannot always be a well awfully deep and reflecting only the stars. Come, George, what will be most becoming to me for to‐morrow?”

If it had been a few months after marriage, instead of before, this devoted lover would probably have replied, “A fool’s cap and bells, for all I care!” As it was, he concealed his inward irritation, and no one would have doubted his sincerity as he said: “You cannot fail to be charming in anything; and I will not choose or suggest, because I would like to enjoy the pleasure of a surprise.”

Mr. Sinclair was sometimes fascinated by Clara’s piquancy and brightness; but she did not suit all moods, and to‐day Assunta’s quiet dignity and the antagonism that Mr. Carlisle always excited more or less, produced an interior disturbance of which a wife would surely have received the full benefit. It is strange that an entirely worldly man will often, from a selfish motive, show a power of self‐control which Christians find it difficult to practise, even for the love of God. Alas! that the devil should receive many a sacrifice, many an offering of suffering and heroism, which, the intention being changed, would produce a saint.

Mrs. Grey had not penetration enough to see below the surface, and she was entirely satisfied with her lover, whom she considered the best and handsomest man in the world, not even excepting her brother. She could rush fearlessly against a mood which would have kept a more appreciative nature at a distance; and here, perhaps, she had an advantage.

She was now about to answer Mr. Sinclair’s very gratifying speech when an interruption came in the shape of Giovanni with a note for herself, which she read hastily, and then said: “Severn, it is from Lady Gertrude. They were passing through Sienna, and have remained over a day expressly to see your humble servant. They wish me to dine with them this evening, accompanied by my _preux chevalier_—her own expression, George. But I do not know about leaving Assunta alone on her birthday, even for Lady Gertrude.”

“Oh! I hope you will not disappoint your friends on my account,” said Assunta. “I have already had my celebration this morning, and it is quite proper that I should devote this evening to reflections upon my coming responsibilities.”

“Besides,” said Mr. Carlisle, “I beg to inform you that Assunta will not be left alone. I flatter myself that I count for one, at least; and I will endeavor to act as your substitute, Clara, in most effectually preventing those contemplated reflections. Responsibility and golden hair are an association of ideas quite incongruous, in my opinion.”

“I see,” said Clara, “that the balance is in Lady Gertrude’s favor. What do you say, _caro_?”

“If you mean me,” said George Sinclair in a slightly unamiable tone, “I am always at your service.”

“You bear!” replied the irrepressible Clara, “I will not allow you to go if you are cross. Well, Giovanni, come to my room in ten minutes for the answer; and remember to order the carriage for half‐past five.”

“Truly,” said Mr. Carlisle, turning to Assunta after his sister had left the _loggia_, “I think I never saw so sunshiny a person as Clara. It is always high noon with her.”

While Assunta assented cordially, Mr. Sinclair said to himself:

“Too much sunshine makes an unpleasant glare, and noon is always the most disagreeable part of the day. I confess to liking a little of the shadow of repose.”

He was careful, however, to keep his thoughts to himself. If the lover could feel imperfections so keenly, it argued but poorly for the blindness of love on the part of the husband. And yet this blindness, false and unworthy as it is, seems to be the only chance of peace for worldly husbands and wives, the only protection against the evil tendencies of uncontrolled human nature. All Clara’s sunshine might fail to make even a silver lining to the cloud rising in the distant future.

The sun shone brightly enough, however, when Mrs. Grey and Mr. Sinclair took their seats in the barouche to drive into Sienna; and the lady, who so much delighted in the delicious sensation of undisguised admiration, must have been more than satisfied this afternoon. Many eyes followed the handsome pair, as they passed rapidly towards the hotel. Clara knew that she was looking uncommonly well, and she was very proud of her companion’s distinguished air and manner; so, altogether, she enjoyed quite a little triumph.

Assunta and Mr. Carlisle dined alone; and, as they rose from the table just at sunset, Mr. Carlisle proposed a walk down into the vineyards.

“It will soil that pretty white dress of yours, I know; but the air is so refreshing, and I want you to occupy for a while the new rustic seat I have had placed near the brook, in that lovely spot we discovered the other day. Take a shawl with you, _petite_, for it will be cooler as soon as the sun sets.”

They strolled along slowly down through the narrow paths which separated the vines heavy with the fast‐ripening fruit, pausing now and then, as some new beauty in the distant view or in their immediate surroundings excited their attention. At last, at the bottom of the valley, close beside a brook, and beneath a clump of trees, they came upon one of those fairy spots where nature seems to have arranged herself expressly to attract an artist’s eye.

“Giovanni is truly invaluable,” said Mr. Carlisle. “I had only to give him a suggestion, and see how well he has carried out my ideas. This is the very luxury of comfort.” And seating himself, he lighted a cigar, advised Assunta to put on her shawl, and was evidently prepared for a pleasant hour.

As they sat there, almost in silence, the Angelus sounded from a distant convent tower; and, as if in answer to its summons, Assunta began to sing in a sweet, low voice Schubert’s Ave Maria. Mr. Carlisle did not say a word until it was finished; then he begged for just one more, and, knowing how much he liked the simple Scotch songs, she sang “Robin Adair.”

“Assunta, your voice grows sweeter every day. It is perfect rest to me to hear you sing.” Then, after a pause, he threw away his cigar, and turned towards her a very earnest face.

“_Petite_, listen to me patiently a moment. I am a very proud man, as you know, and one who is not apt to sue, even where he greatly desires. It seems”—and the peculiar smile broke over his face—“that you have exercised some magic power, and with a touch of your finger have thrown down the barrier of pride against which an army might beat in vain. My child, you know what I am going to say, because I have not changed since that moonlight night in the Colosseum, except, indeed, that the feeling I then expressed has strengthened and deepened every day. I made you a promise that night. I confess that it has been poorly enough redeemed; still, you must judge me by my self‐conquests rather than by my failures. But to‐day releases me: and having ceased to be your guardian, I cannot give you up. I need not repeat to you what I have already said. You know that you are dearer to me than the life you have saved. I only ask, as before, the right to devote that life to you. May I?”

“I had hoped, Mr. Carlisle, that you would consider my former answer as final,” said Assunta; but, though her words were cold, her voice trembled. “I, too, am unchanged since that night you speak of. I am compelled to be so.”

“Assunta, you are such a child; do you, then, think it nothing to have won the love of a man who has reached middle life and has never loved before?”

“Mr. Carlisle,” said the young girl sadly, “if I thought it nothing, I should not feel the pain it costs me to repeat to you, that it cannot be. I am so unworthy of your love; you must not think I do not value it. Your friendship has been more to me than I dare tell you, lest you should misunderstand me.”

“Your heart pleads for me, child.”

“Then I must not listen to it; for the voice of God in my soul pleads more loudly.”

“Assunta,” said Mr. Carlisle, “I think you did not understand me before—you do not understand me now. Do you suppose I should interfere in your religion? No more than I have ever done. You do not know me, child.”

“I think I know you better than you know yourself, presumptuous as this sounds,” said Assunta, forcing a smile. “I am sure that, were I to marry you, you would not be satisfied to hold a place in my heart second even to God. But,” she added, as the old expression of bitterness crossed her guardian’s face, “all this is useless. Let me put a question to you, and answer me candidly. Suppose I had made a promise to you, who love me—made it, we will grant, out of love for you—and afterwards, yielding to my own weakness, I should break that promise. Would you feel that I had done rightly—that I was to be trusted?”

“Certainly not, child. You ask strange questions.”

“Well, I have, out of love for our dear Lord, made him a promise which I believed his love required of me. He is a jealous Lover, Mr. Carlisle. I dare to say this reverently. Suppose, for the sake of a human affection—for your sake—I should fail to keep my promise; would you not have reason to doubt my fidelity to you, when I could be unfaithful to my God?”

“My child, I do not comprehend such reasoning. You either do not, cannot love me, or else you have suffered religious fanaticism to get the better of your judgment. I hoped that the plea of love would be sufficient to win my cause; but it is not all. Look your future fairly in the face, Assunta. What are you going to do? You are young; I need not add, beautiful. Surely, you understand that without me you are unprotected. Have you any plans, or have you already become so independent that you prefer not to make me your confidant? My pride is gone indeed when I put my suit in another form. I ask only your hand. Let me have the right to protect you in the world you know so little. I will wait to win your heart.”

“Mr. Carlisle,” interrupted Assunta with more emotion than he had ever seen in her before, “you are cruel in your persistence. You wilfully misunderstand me. It seems to give you pleasure to make this trial as hard for me as possible. I have told you before that I can never marry you; let that be enough.” And bursting into tears, she rose hastily from her seat.

Her guardian was so taken by surprise that for an instant he sat motionless; then he followed the excited girl, and joined her before she had proceeded far along the vineyard path.

“Take my arm, _petite_,” he said gently, and they walked some distance in silence. At last Assunta said with regained composure:

“Mr. Carlisle, you asked me about my plans, and you have a right to know. I have thought much of the future, as you may believe. My desire is to return to Baltimore with Clara after her marriage, and pass the winter with Mary Percival. Further than this I need not look.”

There was no immediate answer. After a pause Mr. Carlisle said:

“You are your own mistress now. I shall of course place no obstacle in the way of your carrying out any wish or design which will conduce to your welfare. As for myself, the time may come when I shall cease to regret that I am in no wise necessary to your happiness. Meanwhile, it shall be as you say. Good heavens! to think that a mere girl should have the power to move me so,” he went on, as if speaking to himself.

And apparently his thoughts were so full of Assunta that he forgot her actual presence, for they reached the house in silence, and then Mr. Carlisle proceeded at once to his own room; and so ended the birthday.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

The Sienna races are a thoroughly unique spectacle—almost childish, like many features of the Roman Carnival, to the over‐cultivated and consequently over‐fastidious taste of this age. They take one back to the days when men were more simple, when hearts did not grow old and faith was strong. These childlike traits produced a race of men who were but “children of a larger growth,” and, like children, amused with even a small amount of pomp and show, heroes as they were. And a strange contrast were the races of that 16th of August to the usual occupations of the Siennese. Mr. Carlisle’s carriage passed beneath innumerable flags and between gayly‐tapestried windows, as it drove to the amphitheatre‐shaped piazza, the centre of which was already filled, while every seat placed against the houses which bounded the square was occupied. The bright colors worn by the peasant women, with their large Tuscan hats and the more subdued dress of the men, produced an effect at once very peculiar and very picturesque. A little cheer from the bystanders greeted Mr. Carlisle’s party, as they appeared upon the balcony; for no other decorations in all that vast piazza were so fine as those in which Giovanni had shown so much skill, and surely no other ladies were as beautiful. There was no appearance of heartache or disappointment on any of the four faces which now looked out upon the crowd. We all, sooner or later, learn to wear a mask before the world, and the interior life of each one of us is often a sealed book to our nearest friends.

“Clara,” said Assunta, as they seated themselves after their survey, “you seem to know more about the races than the rest of us. Please to enlighten my ignorance.”

“I heard about them at the hotel last night,” replied Mrs. Grey; “so you will find me very learned. Sienna is divided into seventeen wards; but only ten take part in the race, and these are decided by lot. The victor receives a prize and a sort of diminutive triumph, while the losers may think themselves lucky if they only get a scolding from their respective wards. The oracle has spoken, and further than this she is not informed.”

“The rest we shall now see for ourselves,” said Mr. Sinclair, “for I hear the music which I suppose accompanies the procession.” And, as he spoke, the band entered the piazza from a side street. Then followed, in turn, the representatives of the different wards, each representation consisting of two flags—the colors of the ward—a number of pages, the race‐horse led by an esquire, and the man who was afterwards to ride the racer, on horseback as a knight. The flag‐bearers, as well as all in each division, wore exactly the colors of the flag of the ward, in costumes of the olden time; and, as these flags were of entirely different combinations of colors, and most of them very brilliant, the procession would have been very effective without its peculiar charm. The flag‐bearers were men of grace and skill, and from the moment of entering the square the flags were in continual motion—waved above their heads, flung into the air, passed under their arms and legs, and all without once touching the ground. It was a very poetical combination of color and motion, and Mrs. Grey impulsively clapped her hands with delight—a performance which her dignified lover evidently looked upon as childish. After this part of the procession came a large chariot drawn by four horses, with postilions, and bearing the ten different flags tastefully arranged. This was the model of the old Siennese battle‐car, which bore the standard, and was in consequence the scene of the thickest of the fight. Upon it, in time of battle, stood a priest, invoking by his prayers protection and success. There also was the trumpeter, in readiness to give signals. A truly mediæval picture was this chariot, with associations which carried one back hundreds of years into the past. A band of music closed the procession, which, after passing around the piazza, entered the court‐yard of the Palazzo Pubblico. Here the knights exchanged their helmets and plumes for jockey‐caps, and mounted their racers. As they emerged from beneath the archway, and proceeded slowly towards the starting‐place, across which a rope was drawn, Mr. Carlisle exclaimed, with a laugh in which there was more sarcasm than merriment:

“Are you a judge of horses, Clara? If so, you, who yesterday announced your jockey proclivities, must be greatly disappointed; for truly a set of sorrier‐looking steeds I never beheld. The prize ought to be given to the one that comes in last; for, where all are so slow, there would really be no little exercise of skill in moving more slowly than a coach‐horse going up‐hill, and yet moving at all.”

“I think, Severn,” replied his sister, “that your temper was not improved by the fever. It is very disagreeable in you to inform me that the horses are not Arabian chargers, for I never should have been the wiser.”

“Most men are disagreeable,” he retorted.

“George, you hear that, and do not resent it?” said Mrs. Grey indignantly.

“I leave that for you to do when you can, from experience of the contrary, deny the charge. But the horses are starting on their three times round.” And Mr. Sinclair leaned over the balcony with an air of interest.

“Why do the men carry those short sticks in their hands?” asked Assunta.

“I believe,” said Mr. Sinclair—for Mr. Carlisle became strangely inattentive—“that the riders are allowed by rule to do all the damage they can with the sticks, which are short, so as to limit somewhat their power; for their aim is to knock each other off the horses.”

“The barbarians!” exclaimed Clara. “Oh! look, see how many are falling back on the third round. It rests with the two now. I bet on the sorrel.”

“And he has won, Clara,” said Assunta.

The whole piazza was now in motion. Shouts greeted the victor, and the defeated retired into obscurity.

“The modern Olympics are finished,” said Mr. Carlisle. “Shall we go?”

As they drove towards home in the red glow of the setting sun, Mr. Carlisle said abruptly:

“Clara, when did you tell me that you and Sinclair intend to make each other miserable?”

“I will not answer such a question, Severn. You are a perfect dog in the manger. You will not marry yourself or let any one else.”

“If you wish to know,” said Mr. Sinclair, “when your sister intends to make me the happiest of men, she has permitted me to hope that the end of September will be the term of my most impatient waiting.”

“Then,” continued Mr. Carlisle in the same abrupt tone, “we had better be on our way to Paris. We might start day after to‐morrow, I think.”

Mrs. Grey gave a little scream.

“Severn, you must be out of your mind. I thought you wished never to leave Sienna.”

“I am weary to death of it; but that is not all. I have business matters to arrange, and the preparation of your _trousseau_ will no doubt occupy weeks.”

“But it will be so warm in Paris,” persisted Mrs. Grey.

“Do people whose hearts are filled with love and their minds with coming matrimony think of weather, then? I thought such sublunary interests were left to those whose hearts were still unthawed. However, there are fans and ices enough in Paris to cool you off. I will write to‐night to engage rooms.” And then Mr. Carlisle relapsed into silence and abstraction.

Assunta understood well enough the cause of this change in the plans; but she was powerless to act, and could only submit. It, indeed, made little difference to her.

“George,” said Clara to her lover, as they were strolling down the avenue in the moonlight, “can you imagine what is the matter with Severn? I never saw him in such a mood.”

“Disappointed in love, I should judge from appearances,” he replied indifferently.

“Nonsense! He does not know the meaning of the word,” was the not very intelligent reply of the lady.

To Be Continued.

Swinburne And De Vere.

The dramas _Bothwell_(94) and _Alexander the Great_,(95) which have so recently come into the world side by side to challenge the attention of that portion of it that speaks, or is supposed to speak, the language of Shakespeare, offer all the contrasts that might be expected from their subjects, as well as from the known thought, tone, and tendency of their respective authors. One writer has taken for his chief character a great Christian woman whose story, look at it as we may, is at least of the saddest that was ever told; the other has chosen for his subject the wonder of pagan history, the exemplar of pagan greatness, whose short career is the condensation of all earthly glory and triumph.

It will be at once manifest that to a modern writer, as far as the materials for the construction of an historical drama go, the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, is beyond measure richer than that of Alexander. Her story is religiously and politically one of the day. She is still on trial, no longer before the narrow circles of York and Fotheringay, but before Christendom. The question of her innocence or guilt, and the consequent justice or injustice of her sentence, is debated as fiercely to‐day as when alone she faced the sleuth‐hounds of Elizabeth in defence of her honor and her life.

The final judgment of Christendom may be said already to be a foregone conclusion in her favor, so fast is the long‐withheld evidence of her innocence accumulating. But her life‐blood stains a nation and a religion, or what called itself such, and the verdict that declares her “not guilty” lays a terrible and indelible blot on them. Hence every nook and cranny of history is searched, every historical cobweb disentangled, with an eagerness and minuteness so thorough and complete that the reader is better acquainted often with the history of Mary Stuart than with that of the century in which he lives.

For a dramatist a most important point is thus at once secured. His audience is interested in advance; and there is no further care for him than to make a judicious use of the wealth of material at his disposal.

And surely to one with a soul in his body never did a more fitting subject for a tragedy offer itself than Mary, Queen of Scots. The only difficulty would seem to be a right selection from a great abundance. The scenes and characters, the very speeches often, are ready made. Time, place, circumstance, are ripe with interest. The march of events is terribly rapid. The scene is ever shifting, and with it the fortunes of the queen. All the passions are there at strife. Plot and counterplot, tragedy within tragedy, love and hate, jealousy and wrath, hope and fear, the basest betrayal and the loftiest devotion, surge and make war around this one woman, and are borne along with her in a frenzied whirl to the terrible end, when the curtain drops silently on that last dread scene that stands, as it will for ever stand, in startling relief, far out from the dim background of history.

The name of Alexander the Great calls up no such interest as this. His life would seem the least likely of subjects for a modern dramatist. Great captains, such as the first Napoleon, may look to him as at once their model and their envy; but happily such great men are few and far between. Alexander might indeed have formed an admirable theme for one of the lesser lights of the English Augustan era to celebrate in those sonorous heroics whose drowsy hum might serve at need as an admirable soporific. But he and those who lived and moved about him are out of our world; and whether he conquered ten empires or fifty, whether he defeated Darius or Darius him, whether he sighed for more or fewer worlds to conquer, is now all one to us. The sands of the desert have buried or wiped out his empire ages ago; the sands of time have settled down on his memory and half obliterated it; and the mighty Alexander serves to‐day for little more than to point a moral.

On the other hand, every scene and incident in which Mary, Queen of Scots, figured is intense with dramatic force. She entered on her reign at what might be called the dawn of modern history—a lurid dawn presaging the storm that was to come and is not yet over. The Reformation was convulsing Europe. It had just entered Scotland before her, and the raven that croaked its fatal entrance was John Knox. In the person of this girl were centred the hopes of the Catholic party for Scotland and England. Mingled with the strife of creeds around her was the conflict of the great Scottish families, whose miserable contentions rent and wrecked the kingdom. Any chieftain who chose and thought himself strong enough drew the sword when and for what purpose pleased him. More than half of them—those of any note, at least—were in Elizabeth’s pay. Treason constituted much of the political life of those days, while under and over and among the fierce strife of political parties rang and resounded the clangor and wrangle of the delirious sects that had just apostatized from Rome. Such was the period when the helm of the most distracted state in distracted Christendom was set in the hand of a gentle girl, who stood there alone to guide it over unknown seas. All the tempest gathered together its fury and broke over her head. This is the figure chosen by the author of _Bothwell_ for the centre of his tragedy. It was a time and a scene and a tragedy worthy the philosophic mind of a Shakespeare and the terrible power of an Æschylus. Mr. Swinburne’s work scarcely gives evidence of the combination of these qualities.

A subject of this kind, when attempted at all, suggests painful reflections if failure, emphatic failure, is the result. A goose essaying an eagle’s flight would scarcely present a more absurd figure. Mr. Swinburne has fallen immeasurably below the level of a subject whose level is greatness. Not because he has chosen to paint Mary, Queen of Scots, as a fiend, is this judgment passed on his work. Milton has proved that Satan can be converted by genius into the most powerful dramatic villain that ever trod the stage. Lady Macbeth may thrill us with horror, but she never causes us to yawn. The author of _Bothwell_ was at liberty, by the license allowed to poets, to make his heroine wicked enough even to satisfy his fastidious taste, and still have given us a drama that of its own force and brilliancy and coherence would have extorted the admiration of the unfortunate queen’s most ardent defenders. But even her heartiest haters could not resist the tendency to nod over the cumbrous wickedness, the very heavy villany, of _Bothwell_, which is simply a dilution of Froude with a tincture of Swinburne, well watered and administered in the largest possible doses, or, in plain English, a few scenes of the history of the period stitched loosely together and set to measured lines of blank verse.

Five hundred and thirty‐two pages, with thirty lines to the page, in five acts and sixty scenes, make a tragedy indeed. Such is _Bothwell_. Yet, notwithstanding its alarming proportions, it only extends from the death of Rizzio to the battle of Langside, thus omitting the scene that of all others is the most thrilling and effective—Mary’s execution. This may have been done with a purpose; for even malevolence falters there. Such an end, preceded by her long captivity, so patiently borne, were she even as wicked as Mr. Swinburne would make her, might almost expiate any crime, as it sanctifies her innocence.

The entire first act, entitled “David Rizzio,” is absorbed by the murder of the character after which it is named. As far as its necessary connection with the drama goes, it might have been entirely and very profitably omitted. It serves, indeed, to introduce many of the characters, but to no special purpose that might not have been accomplished in any of the other acts. The author forgets that he is not writing history, but a drama. We do not want the minutiæ, everything that everybody said at any time, in any place, and under any circumstances while Mary, Queen of Scots, was living, which Mr. Swinburne seems to think he was bound to give us, and in blank verse too, in _Bothwell_. We want the situations, the great facts. What led up to them may be told or hinted at in a few lines. Mr. Swinburne does not seem to have realized this, and, as a consequence, his drama is crowded with scenes, incidents, and personages that not only hinder, but are utterly irrelevant to, the main action of the piece, if indeed the piece can be truly said to possess any main action. Thus it takes the entire first act, consisting of five scenes and _eighty‐nine_ pages, to kill Rizzio. At last he is happily despatched, to the relief, it must be said, of the reader, who, already wearied, finds the second act entirely devoted to a similar sanguinary operation, performed on Darnley this time. With a nice sense, notwithstanding his pronounced communistic sympathies, of what is due even to second‐hand royalty of the Darnley order, Mr. Swinburne, regardless of the liberal allowance of space allotted to the stabbing of Rizzio, feels it incumbent on him to devote one hundred and forty‐seven pages and twenty‐one scenes to the blowing up of Mary’s husband. Thus, although two hundred and forty pages in all are given over mainly to the killing of these two characters, the tragedy can be scarcely said to have begun, there being still three dreary acts to face.

The question naturally suggests itself here, What in the name of common sense, if not of tragedy, has Mr. Swinburne been doing with his space? Perhaps we have reason to congratulate ourselves after all that he did not pursue his unhappy victim into England, and insist upon murdering her also; for it is impossible, in the contemplation of such an event, to form even a wild conception of when and where Mr. Swinburne’s tragedy was likely to terminate. The truth is, he is no dramatist at all; he is a writer of speeches, good, bad, or indifferent, as may be, but no more. Livy or Sallust have almost as just a title to be styled dramatists as Mr. Swinburne; Homer far more so. Speeches form perhaps the least, certainly the easiest, portion of a drama; and the speeches in _Bothwell_ are more or less ready made. Mr. Swinburne cannot grasp a situation; he can only write _about_ it. He cannot picture it to us in a few telling lines. He cannot hint a future; he must foretell it in full, or wait until it comes. He cannot content himself with leaving well alone. The Earl of Leicester’s historic “nod” that meant so much is of course a very amusing caricature; but the point of a caricature lies in the kernel of truth which it covers. Perhaps the most necessary of dramatic faculties is the capability of saying much in a little; and that faculty Mr. Swinburne does not possess in the slightest degree. If anything, his special tendency lies in an opposite direction; he says remarkably little in a very great deal. Instead of mastering his material, he has become hopelessly embarrassed by it, and, like the miser in the story, perishes from want in the midst of the treasures piled up around him. His characters, instead of being moved at his will, move him at theirs. When one, no matter of how great or how little importance, opens his or her mouth, not even Mr. Swinburne himself can say when it will close. Speeches pages in length are thrown into anybody’s mouth on the slightest provocation, and all pitched more or less in the same key. If Mary curses—for Mr. Swinburne is more liberal than discreet in his distribution of strong language—she is not content with one good, round, blasphemous oath once in a while, but must indulge in half a dozen or so offhand. If Knox argues or preaches, he does so at as great length almost as when in the flesh. One of his speeches fills thirteen pages without a break. If the inevitable “first, second, and third citizen” enter—who, for the manner of their speeches or the matter of them, might with equal propriety be dubbed “first citizen” or “fifty‐ second citizen,” or anything else—they talk and talk and talk until they talk themselves off, as they would beyond all doubt talk an audience out of their seats. Almost two‐thirds of the play is to the reader simply wearisome jabber, whose sense, like Gratiano’s “infinite deal of nothing,” is as “two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff.”

The drama is so interminable that we can only call attention to the chief character, which is not Bothwell, as the title would seem to imply, but Mary, whose alleged amours with Bothwell form the groundwork of the piece. As this article does not pretend to enter into an historical investigation, this is not the place to advance reasons for disagreeing with Mr. Swinburne’s estimate of Mary. One or two words, however, may be permitted.

The story that forms the foundation of this play has been torn to shreds by writers of every shade of opinion. Its truth, based mainly on the “casket letters,” was never accepted even at the English court. Elizabeth herself was compelled to acquit her cousin of all such scandalous charges. Yet on this Mr. Swinburne, with the chivalry of a poet and the honesty of a man who must have read history, builds his nauseous drama. Again, Mary was, by all concession, a lady. High and royal spirit she had indeed, of which in some notable instances she gave ample proof; but she has never been accused of indulging in language unworthy the royal woman she was, or savoring in any sense of coarseness. She was also a consistent and practical Catholic, who knew her religion and how to hold it, even against that fierce Calvinistic wolf, John Knox, to whom it were a happiness had his insulted sovereign only meted out the measure he persistently advocated for all Catholics. But she was too gentle‐natured to adopt means of enforcing silence and obedience more congenial to the spirit of her English cousin, who had a very summary manner of dealing with theological difficulties. This much being premised, let us now look at the Mary of Mr. Swinburne.

Here we have her in the very first scene of the first act. Rizzio is pleading with her the recall of Murray:

QUEEN. “What name is his who shall so strengthen me?”

RIZZIO. “Your father gave him half a brother’s name.”

QUEEN. “I have no brother; a bloodless traitor he is,

Who was my father’s bastard‐born. By heaven! I had rather have his head loose at my foot Than his tongue’s counsel rounded in mine ear.”

This is only her fourth speech in the play. It does not seem to have impressed Rizzio sufficiently; for, turning a page, we find her still railing at the subject of her wrath in this vigorous style:

... “By my hand, Too little and light to hold up his dead head, It was my hope to dip it in his life Made me ride iron‐mailed and soldieress.”

With occasional spurts of this nature the queen enlivens her somewhat tedious colloquy of thirteen pages with Rizzio concerning Murray. She is candid enough to say in one place of her half‐brother, whom the Mary of history really believed in too long and too blindly for her own happiness:

“I am gay of heart, light as a spring south wind, To feed my soul with his foretasted death....”

And again:

“Oh! I feel dancing motions in my feet And laughter moving merrily at my lips, Only to think him dead, or hearsed, or hanged—That were the better. I could dance down his life. Sing my steps through, treading on his dead neck, For love of his dead body and cast‐out soul.”

Verily, a real Highland fling! And lest there should be any possible doubt as to the meaning of “cast‐out soul,” this gentle lady pursues it to its place, and gloats over its eternal torments in this Christian fashion:

“He shall talk of me to the worm of hell, Prate in death’s ear and with a speechless tongue Of my dead doings in days gone out....”

It is surely punishment enough to be condemned to carry on a conversation of any kind with the worm of hell and in the ear of death; but to compel even a cast‐out soul to perform this unpleasant duty “with a _speechless_ tongue” is punishment that passes ordinary comprehension. Doubtless, however, matters are or will be altered for Mr. Swinburne’s special convenience in the lower regions. Abandoning the wretched Murray to his destiny, we look for other revelations of Mary’s character, although something of her mettle may be gathered from the passages already given, which have been taken almost at random from the first twenty‐eight pages of the five hundred and thirty‐two. They are by no means the liveliest specimens to be found.

It would display a lamentable lack of knowledge of nature supposed to be human to imagine for a moment that the woman—if the expression is allowable—revealed in these passages is likely to be at all squeamish or foolishly coy about the profession of what Mr. Swinburne would probably call her love for Bothwell. The insignificant facts that her own husband, Darnley, and Bothwell’s wife, Jane Gordon, were still living, would naturally weigh lightly as feathers in the balance against her desire. Most of the scenes between the queen and Bothwell might be shortly described as “linked foulness long drawn out.” Were they even word for word true, it would still be a wonder and a shame to honest manhood that they could be dwelt upon and gloated over by any writer at all. Horace boasted of belonging to the “Epicurean herd.” Were he living now, he would, we honestly believe, feel conscientious scruples at admitting Mr. Swinburne into the company. Only such passages are quoted here as are presentable and necessary to endorse our judgment of this drama.

Without even an attempt at disguise, Mary and Bothwell discuss the best means of getting rid of Darnley. As a wife, expecting soon to be a mother, and as a Christian woman, it is only natural that she should urge on the not unwilling Bothwell in this style:

“_Would I were God!_ Time should be quicker to lend help and hand To men that wait on him. . . . Were I a man, I had been by this a free man.”

In the course of the second act she falls sick, as she believes, to death. She makes her dying confession to the Bishop of Ross, who, it is to be presumed, knew his religion. That being the case, it was somewhat rash in Mr. Swinburne to put into his mouth a gross error. He assures the dying queen that

“The man that keeps faith sealed upon his soul Shall through the blood‐shedding of Christ be clean. And in this time of cursing and flawed faith Have you kept faith unflawed. Have no fear, therefore, but your sins of life

Shall fall from off you as a vesture changed. And leave your soul for whiteness as a child’s.”

Of course there is a sense in which this may be taken as correct. The man that really keeps his “faith sealed upon his soul” and “unflawed,” acts up to his faith and lives its life. But this is not what Mr. Swinburne means. In several passages he is at pains to show that it is not. His meaning simply is that because Mary held to the profession of the Catholic faith the bishop assured her that her sins would be remitted. That faith alone was sufficient for salvation was the heresy of Luther. We do not know whether those useful little compendiums of Christian doctrine commonly known as catechisms were much in vogue at the time. Had they been, Mary would have found in hers the following question and answer, which would have shamed the Bishop of Ross: “Will faith alone save us?” “No; it will not without good works.”

It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Swinburne, and not the bishop, is the real father confessor to his own penitent, and a very indulgent one he makes. The queen says:

“I would have absolution ere I die, But of what sins I have not strength to say Nor hardly to remember.”

After all that has gone before, that reads remarkably like a wilful lie, as Mr. Swinburne’s bishop might have hinted, particularly as she has memory enough left to enumerate her virtues, which conclude with this:

“I have held mine own faith fast, and with my lips Have borne him [God] witness if my heart were whole.”

Whereupon the worthy bishop takes occasion to repeat his blunder. Glossing beautifully over her sins in a graceful sentence or two, the queen proceeds to “remit all faults against her done,” and ends in this edifying strain:

“I will not take death’s hand With any soil of hate or wrath or wrong About me, but, being friends with this past world, Pass from it in the general peace of love.”

Just at this happy moment, by what would doubtless be considered “a stroke of genius,” Murray is made to enter and announce the arrival of Darnley, the unfortunate individual whose crime it is to persist in being Mary’s lawful husband when she is in love with one who, by her own command, was somebody else’s lawful husband. As may be supposed from what we know of her already, the contrite queen greets the announcement as contrite queens in similar situations are wont to do, thus:

“By heaven! I had rather death had leave than he. What comes he for? To vex me quick or dead With his lewd eyes and sodden, sidelong face, That I may die with loathing of him? By God, as God shall look upon my soul, I will not see him.”

After this there is clearly nothing left for the bishop to do but administer the last sacraments and bid the Christian soul depart in peace. Luckily, however, at this critical juncture, and by another “stroke of genius,” the well‐known tramp of Bothwell’s heel falls on the ear of the dying queen, who immediately feels better, and bids her attendants “bring him in.”

One more passage, and we have done with Mr. Swinburne’s Mary. Darnley is not yet murdered; Bothwell is not yet divorced from Jane Gordon; he who became James I. of England is about to be born; the queen has in the preceding scene made the “confession” noticed above; the time, therefore, was ripe for her to make the following declaration to Bothwell:

“I purge me now and perfect my desire, Which is to be no more your lover—no, But even yourself, yea, more than body and soul, One and not twain, one utter life, one fire, One will, one doom, one deed, one spirit, _one God:_ _For we twain grown and molten each in each,_ _Surely shall be as God is, and no man_.”

Were there such a thing as love in _delirium tremens_, surely this would be an instance; only that Mary is perfectly cool and collected in making so plain and definite a statement. And Bothwell is just the kind of man to understand and appreciate the pleasant prospect held out for them both. He responds cheerily, hopefully, and prayerfully withal:

“God speed us, then, till we grow up to God!”

The reader has probably seen enough of Mr. Swinburne’s Mary Stuart. It will be clear to any impartial mind that beheading was far too easy a fate for such a character.

In one thing at least has the author succeeded. He set out to paint a monster, and a monster indeed he has painted in Mary. The question for the reader to determine is whether his very full‐armed Minerva be an emanation from the brain of this modern Jove or one who was a real, living woman. A woman ravenous for blood, lost to all shame, hating even her unborn offspring, blasphemous as Satan, cruel and pitiless as hell, brawling as a drunkard, full of oaths and coarse expressions as a trooper—if this be a true picture of Mary, Queen of Scots, of the woman who in her day drew, as she still continues to draw, the hearts of all true men and honest women to her side, then has the author done his work well and literature a service. But if she be the opposite of all this—a woman cruelly murdered and systematically wronged, at mention of whose name the heart of that chivalry which is never dead, and will never die while Christian manhood lives, leaps up—one is at a loss to father the writer’s monster on any other than himself. Viewed in this light, it can only be looked upon as the product of an imagination diseased, an intellect debauched, and a mind distorted—the work of a man whose moral nature has gone astray, and to whom consequently all that is true, pure, womanly, manly, godly, has lost its significance and value.

From the Christian heroine to the pagan hero we turn with a feeling of relief. The very title of Mr. de Vere’s drama challenges criticism. To write about Alexander the Great is one thing; to make Alexander speak for himself is another. The world, fashionable as it is to abuse its taste, is discriminating in the conferring of titles that are universal. Local magnates of greater or less magnitude are common enough; but men whom all civilized nations in all ages have agreed to crown with _greatness_ are very few and very far between. From the number of these the son of Philip of Macedon probably stands out pre‐eminent In his brief career he accomplished more than any human conqueror ever accomplished, and he succeeded in leaving more after him. So complete and marvellous was his success, and so gigantic his projects, while his means were proportionately limited, that, beyond all possibility of doubt, the man, young as he was, must have been a marvellous genius. Being so, he must not only have done great deeds, but thought great thoughts. He must have been fitted in every way to be a leader of men. This, perhaps the most marvellous character in human history, is the one of all others whom Mr. de Vere, with a courage which, if not justified by the result, can only be looked upon as either rashness or folly, has undertaken to set living and real before us, speaking the speech, thinking the thoughts, scheming the schemes, dreaming the dreams of Alexander. Greatness thus becomes one of the necessary standards by which we must judge Mr. de Vere’s work. If his chief character is not great in thought and word, as we know him to have been in deed, he is not Alexander, and this work can only be regarded as a more pretentious failure than the other. If he is great in thought and speech, where are the elements of his greatness to be found? In the brain of the author, in the conception of the poet—nowhere else. For in this case the speeches are not, as they were in the other, ready made and to hand. The record of Alexander’s deeds we have; but Alexander we must imagine for ourselves. What manner of man, then, is this that Mr. de Vere has given us? is the first and most natural question to be asked.

Friend and foe alike are busy about him. At the opening of the play Parmenio, the testy but honest‐hearted veteran of Philip, before Alexander has yet made his appearance, in words where the admiration of the soldier and the irritability and jealousy of old age are admirably blended, says:

“A realm his father owed me, And knew it well. The son is reverent too, But with a difference, sir. In Philip’s time My voice was Delphic on the battle‐field. This young man taps the springs of my experience, As though with water to allay his wine Of keener inspirations. ‘Speak thy thought, Parmenio!’ Ere my words are half‐way out He nods approval or he smiles dissent. Still, there is like him none! I marvell’d oft To see him breast that tempest from the north, Drowning revolt in the Danubian wave. The foe in sight, instant he knew their numbers; If distant, guess’d their whereabout—how lay The intermediate tract—if fordable The streams—the vales accessible to horse: ’Twas like the craft of beasts remote from man.”

Antisthenes, the rhetorician, describes the man of action as a rhetorician might:

“This king is valued past his worth: He nothing says that’s sage, like Ptolemy, Or keen‐edged, like Craterus. This I grant him: _Sagacity supreme in observation_; He sees with eye inspired. Seeing with him Is Act and Thought, not sense.”

Arsinoë, the daughter of Darius, thinks that “he neither loves nor hates.” He is royal‐faced, “albeit too eager‐eyed.” And Hephestion, the strong friend on whom alone of all men Alexander leans, tells her of him:

“He loves not many, and himself the least: _His purposes to him are wife and child_.”

“Free him from that conceit,” says Parmenio later on, “that he’s a god,”

“The man of men were he: None like him we have had since Marathon.”

PHILOTAS. “I grant his greatness were his god‐ship sane, But note his brow: ’tis Thought’s least earthly temple Then mark, beneath, that round, not human eye, Still glowing like a panther’s! In his body No passion dwells; _but all his mind is passion,_ _Wild, intellectual appetite, and instinct_ _That works without a law_.”

PARMENIO. “But half you know him. There is a zigzag lightning in his brain That flies in random flashes, yet not errs. Chances his victories seem; but link those chances, And under them a science you shall find, Though unauthentic, contraband, illicit, Yes, contumelious oft to laws of war. Fortune, that as a mistress smiles on others, Serves him as duty‐bound; her blood is he, Born in the purple of her royalties.”

And so they go on describing him, each in his own way; for, with felicitous art, the presence of Alexander is made to permeate the drama, yet so unobtrusively and unconsciously to all seeming that the mind of the reader, though held fast on the chief character throughout, never wearies of him. The extracts given, culled from here and there, point all in one direction. They are consistent, however they may vary in expression, about the man they describe. He is not like other men; he towers above them; he stands alone. But even this only tells us what men say of him. It may mean no more than any young‐lady novelist’s description of her hero, whose biting sarcasm and brilliant wit are gifts that it was thought were buried with Sheridan. All which we are willing to concede, only that by some untoward accident the brilliant wit and biting sarcasm never appear on the surface. How does Alexander speak for himself?

In literature, as in life, very much depends on the impression a man makes on his introduction. Alexander’s introduction is happy and suggestive. He meets us first at Troy when setting out on his expedition. Around him rise the temples of the memorable dead who died in the Ten Years’ War. He is in search of the fane of Achilles, his ancestor, as he claims. Aphrodite and Helen have no attractions for him, upon whose mind “the wise Stagirite” had impressed the high code of pagan morals, that the passions were “a yoke which Action’s strenuous sons should scorn to bear.” He stands on ground where heroes fought and strove for ten long years together, and the question comes at once to his earnest mind,

“That ten years’ war, what fruit thereof remains? What empire lives, its witness and its crown? What shall we say? That those were common men Made large by mists of Time? Or shall we rather Conclude them real, and our age a fraud?”

His friend Hephestion is reminded by the fanes around, not of the greatness, but of the littleness, of man and of the common ashes to which we come at last. In what, had he the ear to hear it, had been for his leader a solemn warning, he cries out:

“Alas! how small an urn Suffices for the earth‐o’erstriding dust Which one time shook the world!”

But Alexander cannot contemplate the end of men and things in this calm fashion. To him, as to Achilles, death is “malign and intercepting.” It bears no thought of peace or rest. He describes it as “that frustrate, stagnant, ineffectual bourn where substance melts to shadow.” Far away in “the dimness of the dolorous realm” he sees, though sad, “the unvanquishable youth” of Achilles surviving and lamenting—

“Despite the embalm’d, purpureal airs and gleam Immeasurable of amaranthine meads, The keen, reviving, strenuous airs of earth, And blasts from battle‐fields”—

that is the very breath of his nostrils—earth, life, action, with a purpose in it, and the keen intoxication of occasional “blasts from battle‐fields.”

But he is not a mere genius errant, a Don Quixote of conquerors, wasting himself on windmills and flocks of sheep. He has a clear, resolute purpose before his mind, to which he shapes all things. It is to make the world one empire, which Grecian intellect should rule. The Governor of Sardis, when the Granicus is won, he bids:

“Tell those realms Betwixt the Euxine and Pamphylian Seas, That Grecian galaxy of Lesser Asia, That Argive choir in eastern exile sad, That Doric garland on base Persia’s brow, We came not here to crush them, but exalt; This hand shall lift them to their first estate, And lodge them mid the skyey heights of Greece.”

Such is his plan; and whatever crosses him must break before or bend to that. Kings, empires, mighty cities, religion, customs and traditions, commerce, all must yield before his indomitable will. Nothing is sacred to Alexander, save what is sacred to Alexander’s plan. All things were fashioned to his purpose, and existed only to be made subservient to him. He gazes from the sea‐shore on Tyre of the ships, with its wealth, its energies, its possibilities, and the little it has done with them, and bursts forth:

“Wings without body! such—no more—is commerce Which rests not upon empire! Commerce, ruling, Disperses man’s chief energies, _but, ruled_ _By spirit heroic_, increase yields of thoughts That give to greatness wider basis. Tyre! How soon thy golden feathers forth shall fly Upon the storm of War!”

Lacking the “spirit heroic,” Tyre’s opportunities and life have hitherto been thrown away, as were thrown away the letters that Phœnicia gave, useless to the inventors. He goes on:

“Men stumble thus on glories not for them, The rightful appanage of the capable. The empire I shall found shall tread the earth, Yet over it go flying. From its vans The twin‐born beams of Grecian Song and Science Shall send perpetual dawn.”

Mr. de Vere’s verse is tempting to quote; but we must hasten on. Some idea of his Alexander may be gathered from the passages given; but, as we said, he permeates the book, and we must leave it to the reader himself to trace the slow growth and development of this singularly‐rounded yet most difficult conception. We do not believe that the author in this instance has fallen below the level of his subject, high and remote as that level was. A strong, resolute, far‐seeing character, possessed with the very passion of empire, speaks to us in every line of _Alexander_. Many of his sayings have almost the wisdom and the brevity of proverbs. “Time takes still the conqueror’s side,” he tells Hephestion; and when that great‐ souled character puts the deep and solemn question, “_Is there forgiveness for conquerors?_”—his answer is:

“Aye; but for half‐conquerors, none.”

Here is his policy told in a line:

“Strong hand makes empire; hand that heals retains it.”

When, in a light moment, he asks his generals, were gods their slaves, what fortunes would they choose, and all cry out, “A kingdom!” he says aside:

“Note this, Hephestion: Imagination is economist, And vastest ends move less the appetite Than small things near and easier of access.”

Here is a truth for conquerors to ponder. In the height of his conquest he is convinced that

“The vanquish’d must connive, or victory’s self Its own grave digs in the end.”

All the littleness of greatness, all those surroundings that to small minds stamp, if they do not constitute, greatness, are for him emptiness.

“To breathe applauses is to breathe that air By breath of men defiled: I stand, and stood, On the mountain‐tops, breathing the breath of gods.”

There is another aspect to his character at which we must glance. We have called attention at the beginning to his jealous hatred of death. Life and death are to him constant enigmas, to which he sees no solution. The only, or at least the great, obstacle that he sees in the way of accomplishing his dream and passion of empire is death. No human foe he fears; but the fates. Time, he passionately says, is no friend of his. He has to build his empire in few years. He is running a constant race with time, and something seems to whisper to him ever that his years are few. In this, too, lies an humbling fact. He, like others, is human and subject to death. This inward struggle and rebellion against his humanity is constantly going on. The thought, What am I? What do I? Who am I? Whence come I? Where go I?—all these things for ever trouble him. He would be a god; but he finds his loftiest aspirations bounded by a wall of flesh, and beyond that—a blank.

With keen dramatic instinct and happy thought the author gives him the opportunity of answering for himself these questionings. He visits the temple at Jerusalem, and converses with the high‐priest. The truth is unfolded to him, and the true God made known. He hesitates, and finally rejects the truth. It clashes with his purpose.

“O’er all the earth my empire shall be just, Godlike my rule,”

he promises the high‐priest; whose answer is the solemn rebuke:

“Young man, beware! God’s prophet Awards thee Persia’s crown, but not the world’s: He who wears that should be the Prince of Peace. Thy portion lies in bounds. Limit and Term Govern the world.”

This revelation tells on his character throughout the rest of the play. He has no longer that blind confidence in himself, though his mind like a vise holds to its resolution of founding the empire he was warned he could not found. His iron will and indomitable energy overcome all obstacles; but time is creeping on, and he feels it. To unite Persian and Greek together, in order to win the Persian, he must be proclaimed a god; and a god he is proclaimed. But the emptiness and mockery of the title are shown with intense force in the workings of the king’s mind up to this madness. He strives to argue himself up to godhead only by arguing godhead down to him:

“A race of gods hath fallen: Then Zeus in turn may fall. I find for gods No thrones secure; _to man’s advance no limit_; No certain truth amid contending rites; No base for faith.”

He remembers the warning about limit and term, only to say scornfully,

“That’s for others: To grasp a world for me is feasible; To keep a half‐world, not.”

He turns further and further away from faith of any kind; his creed resembles that of more modern conquerors:

“The man that empire founds Must measure all things by the needs of empire.”

And the final outcome of his thoughts is this:

“This only know we— We walk upon a world not knowable, Save in those things which knowledge least deserve, Yet capable, not less, of task heroic. My trust is in my work: on that I fling me, Trampling all questionings down.”

And yet the next moment he cries out:

“I sometimes think That I am less a person than a power. Some engine in the right hand of the gods, Some fateful wheel that, round in darkness rolling, Knows this—its work, but not that work’s far scope. Hephestion, what is life? My life, since boyhood, Hath been an agony of means to ends; An ultimate end I find not. For that cause, On‐reeling in the oppression of a void, At times I welcome what I once scarce brook’d— _The opprobrium of blank sleep_.”

There are many scenes of strong dramatic power in this drama—the death of Darius, the quarrel with Parmenio, the rebellion of the Greeks, the last scene with Philotas, and others; but the power and intensity deepen at the close, when death at last creeps into the veins of the conqueror. He has lost Hephestion earlier in the drama, and this loss rends his heart. There is much truth in his singular, almost selfish love for his great‐souled friend, who stood to Alexander as a wife would stand to another man. But he to whom “his purposes were wife and child” could not lean on a woman. It must be a man, strong, brave, keen‐eyed as himself, but calmer, larger hearted, humbler, greater souled. Such was Hephestion, and his strong yet sweet character is not only admirably drawn, but affords an excellent foil throughout to the eager, impetuous, fiery nature and fiery words of the king.

Omens thicken around him, and the end comes at Babylon. The fever that burns at his heart seizes on his body while sailing on the Lake of Pallacopas. As the royal barge passes, a strain rises up from the waters:

“We sate beside the Babylonian river: Within the conqueror’s bound, weeping we sate: We hung our harps upon the trees that quiver Above the rushing waters desolate.

“If I forget thee, Salem, in thy sadness, May this right hand forget the harper’s art! If I forget thee, Salem, in my gladness, My tongue dry up and wither, like my heart!”

It is a relic of the Babylonian captivity. The song forces from Alexander the sad confession, significant to all conquerors:

“The ages pass, like winds; The old wrong remains, rooted like tombs, and moves not: All may be done through Time; yet Time does naught. Let kings look well to that.”

The end is on him. Though “maimed, and tamed, and shamed,” he is resolute still, but impotent, and the empire lacks completion, he confesses, while

“The years, the months, The hours, like ravening wolves that hunt a stag, Come up upon my haunches.”

Fighting time to the last, he succumbs; but he will not even die as other men. In his half‐delirium he tells Ptolemy:

“I have a secret—one for thee alone: ’Twas not the mists from that morass disastrous Nor death of him that died, nor adverse gods, Nor the Fates themselves; ’twas something mightier yet, And secreter in the great night, that slew me.”

And thus, surrounded by his warriors and his generals, with success within his grasp, but that grasp nerveless, his last moments troubled with awful visions and ill dreams, resentful to the last against what slew him, in doubt and in fear, in youth and glory and empire, in the fatality of success, staring with strained eyes into the dread void beyond that no ray of faith illumines, he whose nod was life or death to nations, Alexander, _the god_, passes away and dies—of a little slow fever that has entered and claimed for its own the clay of which he was made.

Mr. de Vere has written at once a magnificent poem and a powerful drama. We have devoted our attention in both instances to the chief characters, and thus many scenes and personages in _Alexander the Great_ on which in reading we have dwelt with much pleasure and admiration must pass unnoticed. The author, if we may say so, has surprised us by the strength and finish of this work. The action of the piece is rapid; the characters, small and great, rounded and full; the scenes most varied and dramatically set. The clew to the play we take to be that old whisper which first allured our parents from their allegiance, and tempts forever the race of man: _Ye shall be as gods_. The whisper runs through the piece from the first line to the last, and lends to it a purpose and a plan of its own. The dramatist has taken the man who in human history came the nearest to exemplifying its truth to prove its utter and miserable falsehood, and to read with a new force the old and eternal command that alone can order the life of man wisely and well: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

When he died, Alexander was nearly thirty‐three. With him really, though remnants lingered after him, his scheme and his empire passed away; and when to‐day we look for what is left of the world’s conqueror, of Alexander the god, we must search in musty tomes and grope in desert sands. Nothing is left of him, save some words and histories; and even were they lost also, and his very memory blotted out with them, the world to‐day would in reality be little or none the loser.

Some centuries later there died Another at the age of thirty‐three. He came into life silently; he went out of life ignominiously. He led no army; he had no following of any note; he was the son of a carpenter, and born of a despised race. He was born, he lived, he died, in poverty, sorrow, and suffering, a social outcast even from his own people. The last three years of his life he spent in preaching in and about Jerusalem. His doctrines were strange and startling. They were utterly subversive of all human glory and greatness. Like Alexander, he proclaimed himself divine, and claimed to be the Son of God. Like Alexander, he too died, but a death of ignominy. Before his name had spread far beyond Jerusalem, men rose up, Jew and Gentile, king and priest, church and state, together hanged him on a tree, nailed him there, tortured and slew him, and when he was dead sealed up the tomb in which he was buried. And there, humanly speaking, was an end to him and his.

To the world what had he left? A memory—nothing more. Men said that he had wrought wonders, that virtues flowed out of him, that his hands rained mercies, that the blind saw, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the very dead rose again. Idle rumors! like that other of his bursting the tomb and rising again, walking in the flesh and ascending into the heaven from which he said he had come. And this was “the Expected of the nations,” “the Prince of Peace,” who was to accomplish what the high‐ priest warned Alexander was not for him, with all his power, to accomplish—to unite all the nations under one yoke. A likely prospect with the material he had left!

He left behind him no empire, no record, not a line of writing. He left a few words, a few maxims, a few rules of life, a few prayers, a few promises, a few men who timidly believed in him, a few commands. The world, its belief and non‐belief alike, its customs, maxims, tendencies, he condemned as wrong. He commanded it to remodel itself according to the few rules he had left—rules singularly comprehensive, simple, and clear: to believe in him, to obey him as the son of God and God, to believe and obey those, and those only, whom he sent forth in his name, armed with the powers he gave them, fighting with the weapon of the cross. And what is the result? Who is the conqueror of the world now? Jesus Christ, in whose name every knee shall bow, or Alexander the Great? Here is a mystery surely that men should ponder. What shall explain the victory over the world, over sin, and over death, of Him whom they nailed to the tree nineteen centuries ago? Nothing but the words of Peter—“Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.” Thou art he that was to come, and we look for no other. “And he was clothed with a garment sprinkled with blood: and his name is called _The Word of God_. And he hath on his garment and on his thigh written King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Requies Mea.

Keep me, sweet love! Thy keeping is my rest. Not safer feels the eaglet from beneath The wings that roof the inaccessible nest, Than I when thou art with me, dearest, best, Whose love my life is, yea, my very breath! Thy Son to Egypt fled to prove our faith. Not Herod’s men had snatched him from thy breast, Or changed his thronèd slumber into death. How wonderful thy keeping, mighty Queen! So close, so tender; and as if thine eyes Had only me to watch, thine arm to screen; And this inconstant heart were such a prize! And thou the while, in beatific skies, Art reigning imperturbably serene!

Ontologism And Psychologism.

Our readers sometimes complain that the philosophical articles of THE CATHOLIC WORLD are too hard to be understood. Yet some of these very readers make a great effort to read these articles, and ask questions about metaphysical subjects—among others, about the very topic of the present article—showing a great desire to gain some knowledge about them. We are going to try to make this article intelligible to these readers, even to those who are yet quite young persons, in whose laudable efforts to improve their minds and acquire knowledge we are greatly interested.

We shall begin, therefore, by explaining some terms which need to be well understood before they can be used in a satisfactory manner, and especially the two which make up the title of this article. Ontology is the name given to one branch of metaphysics, which is also called general metaphysics, in distinction from the two other principal branches of that science—to wit, logic and special metaphysics. It is derived from two Greek words—that is, the first two syllables from a word which means being, and the last two from one which means reasoning. It is therefore a reasoning about being, or the scientific exposition of the object of the idea of real being, of metaphysical truth, good and evil, beauty, substance, accident, quantity, causality, the finite and the infinite, the contingent and the necessary, etc. Psychology is also a Greek derivative signifying a scientific exposition of the rational soul of man, its powers and operations, which is a sub‐division of special metaphysics. Therefore every philosopher must be an ontologist and a psychologist, in the proper sense of those terms. Yet, there is a difference between ontology and ontologism, psychology and psychologism. Ontologism and psychologism are names denoting opposite philosophical systems which diverge in opposite directions from the scholastic philosophy, or that philosophy commonly taught in the Catholic schools after the method and principles of the Angelic Doctor, S. Thomas Aquinas. Of the authority which this philosophy possesses in the church we cannot now treat at length. We will, however, cite here the latest utterance of the Sovereign Pontiff which has come to our knowledge, as a sample of a great number of similar official expressions of approbation from the Holy See. In a letter to Dr. Travaligni, founder of the Philosophico‐Medical Society of S. Thomas Aquinas, dated July 23, 1874, Pius IX. says: “With still greater pleasure we perceive that, faithful to your purpose, you have determined to admit only such members to your society as hold and will defend the doctrines propounded by the sacred councils and this Holy See, and in particular the principles of the Angelic Doctor concerning the union of the intellective soul with the human body, and concerning substantial form and primary matter (_materia prima_).” We shall take for granted at present that in all its essential parts, as well as in those specified in the above quotation, the philosophy of S. Thomas has the highest sanction and authority in the church which any system of philosophy can have, and that it is the only true and sound philosophy. The system of ontologism differs from it by proposing a totally different ontology, which is made the basis of an essentially different philosophy. The advocates of that system call themselves ontologists, as claiming to be the only philosophers who understand rightly real being and the relation of intelligence to it as the object of its intuition and knowledge. They are also called by that name by their antagonists for the sake of convenience and courtesy, as those who believe in God, but not in revelation, are called theists, although neither party has an exclusive right to the appellation given to it by usage. Psychologism is a system which makes the basis and starting‐ point of philosophy to lie exclusively in the individual soul and its modifications, like Des Cartes, whose first principle is, “I think, therefore I am.” The opponents of the scholastic philosophy who pretend to be ontologists give it the nickname of psychologism, because they either misunderstand or misinterpret its ontological and psychological doctrine. The scholastic philosophy is also frequently called Aristotelian, because S. Thomas derived a great part of his metaphysics from the great philosopher of Greece; and Peripatetic, which was the name given to the school of Aristotle, because the teachers and pupils used to walk up and down during their lectures and discussions. Those who diverge from the philosophy of S. Thomas in the same direction with the ontologists are also frequently called Platonists, because they follow, or are supposed to follow, Plato, in regard to certain opinions differing from those maintained by Aristotle.

The philosophical disputes which have been lately carried on with so much vehemence about questions of ontology are by no means of recent origin. They have been waged both within and without the limits of the Catholic Church. Des Cartes, the great modern master of psychologism, always professed to be a loyal son of the church, and had many disciples among Catholics. Malebranche, the author of modern ontologism, was a devout priest of the French Oratory; and Cardinal Gerdil, who began as an earnest advocate of the same doctrine, but gradually approached toward the scholastic philosophy in his maturer years, was really the second man to the Pope for a long time in authority and influence, as well as a most illustrious model of virtue and learning. More recently, the principal advocates of ontologism have been very devoted Catholics. The Louvain professors, Hugonin, Branchereau; for anything we know to the contrary, Fabre, and many others, have been most zealous and devoted Catholics. Only Gioberti, who was, however, the prince among them all, and one of the most gifted men of the century, among the well‐known leaders of that school, was a disloyal Catholic. We have heard on very good authority that Gioberti continued to receive the sacraments up to the time of his death, and was buried with Catholic rites. Nevertheless, as a number of priests were still in the external communion of the church at the time Gioberti was living in Paris, who were really heretics and have since apostatized, this fact alone does not count for much as a proof that he died in the Catholic faith. All his works were long before on the Index; he was at least suspended, if not _ipso facto_ excommunicated, as a contumacious rebel against the Pope. Dr. Brownson calls him “that Italian priest of marvellous genius, and, we were about to write, Satanic power.” And again he says: “Gioberti died, we believe, excommunicated, and his last book, published before his death, contains a scurrilous attack on Pius IX., and bears not a trace of the Catholic believer, far less of the Catholic priest.”(96) For a long time the Church did not directly interfere with the philosophical discussions which went on among her children in regard to ontology. Neither Des Cartes(97) nor Malebranche was condemned, nor were any specific propositions in the works of Gioberti censured. The Holy See has never been in the habit of using its supreme magisterial authority in deciding scientific controversies considered merely as scientific. Science is left to itself, to make its own way and fight its own battles, unless the interests of the faith become involved with those of science. When these interests demand the interference of the supreme authority, it utters its disciplinary edicts or its doctrinal decisions, as in its wisdom it deems opportune and necessary. For a considerable period of time philosophy was left in the enjoyment of the largest liberty, so long as the doctrines of the church were respected and maintained. But when professed Catholics, especially in Germany, began to frame systems of philosophy manifestly dangerous to sound theology and subversive of it, the Holy See began to exercise a more special vigilance over the teaching of philosophy in Catholic schools. Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. have condemned a number of works, of systems, or of distinct propositions in which philosophical errors were contained, because these were directly or indirectly subversive of the Catholic faith. Among other errors condemned, ontologism holds a prominent position. After various means more mild and indirect of correcting the evils which the teaching of this system threatened to produce had failed, the Holy See pronounced (Sept. 18, 1861) its condemnation of seven propositions embracing the fundamental tenets common to the so‐called ontologists, and some particular tenets advanced by individual professors or writers of the same school. The professors of the Catholic University of Louvain were required to make a formal act of submission to this decision of Rome, which they did in the most exemplary manner.

The Abbé Hugonin, when nominated to an episcopal see in France, was also required to make a formal renunciation of ontologism, which he had taught in his writings, as a condition of receiving the confirmation of the pope, and complied without hesitation. The Abbé Branchereau, a distinguished French Sulpitian and professor of philosophy, voluntarily submitted a statement of the doctrine contained in his _Prelections_ to the examination and judgment of the Holy See, and, when the judgment condemning his system was made known to him, promptly submitted and suppressed his work. In fact, there has been everywhere a most ready and edifying submission given to the judgment of Rome on a system which was rapidly spreading and gaining ground, and toward which a great number of the finest minds among Catholic scholars felt the strongest attraction. The reason of this may be found in the fact that those who had embraced this system or were inclined toward it were generally good Catholics, holding sound theological principles, and imbued with the love of truth and the love of the church, loyal to conscience, and well grounded in Christian humility and obedience. Consequently, ontologism, as a system, prevailing among Catholics and in Catholic schools, is dead, and rapidly passing into oblivion—a great gain for science, as well as for religion, since it removes a great obstacle in the way of the revival of the genuine and sound philosophy which alone contains the real and solid wisdom of the Grecian sages, the fathers of the church, and the gigantic masters of the mediæval schools, combined, harmonized, and reduced to method.

It is time now to explain in what the essence of ontologism consists. In the words of M. Fabre, a professor at the Sorbonne, “Ontologism is a system in which, after having proved the objective reality of general ideas, we establish that these ideas are not forms or modifications of our soul; that they are not anything created; that they are necessary, unchangeable, eternal, absolute objects; that they are concentrated in the being to which this name belongs in its simple signification (_l’être simplement dit_), and that this infinite Being is the first idea apprehended by our mind, the first intelligible, the light in which we see all the eternal, universal, and absolute truths. Ontologists say, then, that these eternal truths cannot have any reality outside of the eternal essence, whence they conclude that they do not subsist except as united to the divine substance, and consequently that it can only be in this substance that we see them.”(98)

We will now give the first two, the fourth, and the fifth of the propositions condemned at Rome, and which, with the other three, were taken from the prelections of a professor in a French seminary, never published, but extensively circulated in lithograph or MSS., and which, the reader will see, express the identical doctrine summarized so concisely and ably by M. Fabre:

I. The immediate cognition of God, at least habitual, is essential to the human intellect, so that without this it cannot know anything, since it is the intellectual light itself.

II. That being which we intellectively perceive in all things, and without which we perceive nothing intellectively (_quod in omnibus et sine quo nihil intelligimus_), is the divine being.

IV. The congenital knowledge of God as simply being (_ens simpliciter_) involves every other cognition in an eminent manner, so that by it we have implicit knowledge of every being, under whatever respect it is knowable.

V. All other ideas are only modifications of the idea in which God is intellectively perceived (_intelligitur_) as simply being (_ens simpliciter_).

Similar propositions to these are found in the fifteen submitted by M. Branchereau to the judgment of the Holy See, viz.:

1. In the act of thought two things are to be essentially distinguished—the subject thinking and the object thought.

2. Again, the object thought is distinguished into two things—that which is being simply, and that which is being in a certain respect.

3. By that which is being simply we understand real being, concrete and infinitely perfect; ... in a word, that which is being simply is God.

12. From the first instant of existence the mind enjoys ideal perception, not indeed reflexively, but directly.

13. Among the intelligible truths, which we apprehend ideally, God occupies the first place, the intellective perception of whom, although essentially distinct from the intuition of the beatified, is terminated, not at a representative image, but at God himself.

The reader will now, we trust, understand without difficulty what is the fundamental idea of ontologism—namely, that God is the _immediate object_ of the intellect, the ideal object which faces it from its creation, is present to it as its light and its luminous, intelligible term of vision, in which all ideal, necessary, self‐evident, eternal ideas, verities, realities, are concentrated, beheld, made luminous; lighting up all objects whatsoever which exist and are perceived by sense and intellect, so that the things that are made are clearly seen by the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and Godhead; as Malebranche expressed it, “in Deo,” and Gioberti, “in Deo et per Deum”—in God, and by or through him, as clouds in a luminiferous ether. For an explanation of the scholastic doctrine of the origin of universal ideas we refer the reader to a former article on Dr. Stöckl’s Philosophy. In brief, it is the reverse of the one just delineated, viz., the universal and transcendental ideas are derived by abstraction from created things, and the knowledge of God is obtained by a discursive act of reasoning, by which we ascend from the knowledge of creatures to the knowledge of the Creator, whose invisible essence and attributes are understood by the things that are made. That is, God is known by a mediate and not an immediate apprehension, resulting in an intellectual judgment that he is. The mind terminates at a representative and inadequate image of God, and not at God himself or that which is God, real, concrete, necessary, infinite being, which is the remote and reflected object of the intellect.

We are now prepared to answer the question, What is the harm and danger of ontologism on account of which it has been condemned? It has not been condemned as heretical, for it does not formally, directly, and explicitly contradict any doctrine of faith. The Holy See has simply decided that it cannot be safely taught—that is, that it cannot be taught with a safe conscience, without danger to the faith, and consequently without grievous sin. It must therefore contain in it an error which cannot be extensively held and taught in Catholic schools without a serious danger of indirectly subverting Catholic faith and doctrine, especially in the minds of the young and inconsiderate. While this danger was only remote or not yet apparent, the error might be tolerated, and left to be opposed and refuted by argument. Moreover, it might be held and advocated in good faith and without sin by intelligent and pious men, who are liable to error when left to their own reasonings about abstruse matters in theology and philosophy. But when the danger was apparent and proximate, it was necessary to appeal to the supreme authority of the Roman Church, that the whole matter might be thoroughly examined and adjudicated; and, the judgment being once rendered, the cause is finished for all good Catholics. Thenceforth all that remains to be done is to study the import of the decision, and to search into the reasons by which the condemned errors may be proved false by philosophical and theological arguments, and the opposite truths brought out into a clearer light for the advancement of sound and solid science and the protection of the faith.

That part of Catholic doctrine which was endangered and indirectly subverted by ontologism is the one which relates to the distinction between nature and grace, the rational knowledge of God attainable by man in this life, and the immediate intuition of God enjoyed by the blessed in heaven. Ontologism destroys the real distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders, between the abstractive vision of God by reason and faith, and the intuitive vision of God without any medium, and face to face. It is true that ontologists have never taught that man has, or can have, a clear vision of the divine essence, like that of the blessed, by his unaided natural powers. This is a heresy condemned by the General Council of Vienne. Moreover, it would be too absurd for any sane person to maintain that such a vision is congenital and possessed by all men from the first instant of creation. Nor would any one who maintains that the idea of God is impressed on the soul at its creation be so extravagant as to assert that the clear and distinct conception of God which can be obtained by reason and faith is present to the minds of all men from their birth. Ontologists are careful to state that there is a difference between the immediate cognition of God in this life and that of the life to come. And all who maintain any kind of ideal cognition which is congenital or innate, understand by this something which exists unconsciously in the soul until its powers are developed. The object is there, facing the intellect, but the intellect has its eyes closed, and cannot perceive it. When it perceives it, it is first obscurely, then clearly, then more or less distinctly. Its congenital cognition is an unconscious, undeveloped act. But all the principles of conscious, developed cognition are in that act, and are only evolved by the operation of the senses and the intellectual faculties. The error condemned is the assertion that this cognition has God in his intelligibility as real and necessary being as its _immediate_ object. And though it is not formally a heresy, since it does not assert that the immediate cognition of God is identical with the beatific vision, or deny the necessity of the light of glory to make the soul capable of the beatific vision, it is erroneous, inasmuch as it removes that which really makes the essential difference of the vision of the blessed, as distinct from the natural cognition of any created intelligence. This difference is defined by Benedict XIV., in the Const. _Benedictus Deus_, to be that the blessed see God “without the mediation of anything created which presents itself as the object seen”—_nulla mediante creaturâ in ratione objecti visi se habente_. Every other cognition of God must therefore have some created object of intellectual vision as an intermediary between the intellect and God—that is, must be mediate and not immediate cognition. An immediate cognition, however obscure and imperfect, must therefore be essentially the same with the clear, beatific intuition of the essence of God, and capable of being expanded, extended, developed, increased, made more penetrating or powerful, without being essentially changed, until it equals or surpasses the intuition of the highest angel in heaven. The light of faith or the light of glory can be therefore only aids to the improvement of the human intellect in its own natural capacity and activity—as if one should see the stars more plainly by a telescope, and afterwards receive a more perfect body with a visual organ superior to any telescope that was ever made.

A more elaborate similitude will make the difference of immediate and mediate cognition of God more plain. Let us suppose a barbarian lying asleep on the shore of his lonely island in the Pacific, while a large ship, the first which has ever approached it, has just come within the most distant range of vision. There is an object, then on his horizon, which he has the power to see, but does not perceive until he awakes. He perceives it at first as a very small and dimly‐seen object—as _something_, he knows not what. It may be a cloud, a bird, a wave sparkling in the sun, a canoe. It is a large man‐of‐war which is the real object perceived, but he does not know that it is a ship, or know its contents, or even know what a ship is. This is an obscure perception. By‐ and‐by he can see that it is not a cloud, or bird, or canoe, but a large, moving structure, whose principal parts are visible to him. This is a clear perception. When it has anchored, he has been taken on board, has seen its crew and armament, its cabins and hold, and has learned what is its purpose and the utility of its principal parts, he has a distinct conception. After he has learned the language of the sailors, and has been instructed to a greater or less extent, he acquires a more adequate and perfect knowledge, like that which the sailors themselves possess; he joins the crew, and becomes an expert seaman, and finds himself to have become much superior in knowledge and happiness to what he was before the ship came to his island.

Let us also suppose that a bottle is washed ashore at another island, and picked up by a native. When he opens it, he finds in it a drawing representing a large ship, and a paper containing particular information about the ship and its crew. This bottle had been thrown overboard after the ship had sprung a leak in mid‐ocean, and was about to founder. After the bottle has been found by the native, Europeans arrive at the island, by whom the papers are examined, and their contents explained to the native, who learns also from the explanation of the drawing to understand what the ship is, its use, construction, parts, etc. He thus gains substantially the same knowledge of that ship and its crew with that which the other native gained about the other ship, though in a different way, without ever seeing the ship itself, but only an image of it. One has immediate, the other mediate cognition. One sees the object in itself, the other sees it in something else. In the first case the native saw something which was a ship, but while it was distant it was not visible as a ship, only as an object. Afterwards it was visible in its outward shape and appearance as a ship, in clear, unmistakable contrast with every different object, but not distinctly understood or closely inspected, or made the principal object of the occupation, the attachment, the enjoyment, of the native—in a word, the home and centre of his chief earthly good. When he first saw something in the distance, he really saw the ship, and in that vision was virtually contained all that he afterwards discovered in respect to it; whereas, the other native never saw the other ship, and never could see it by means of drawings or verbal descriptions, although he could learn that it was a ship, and what ship it was, where it sailed from, who sailed it, and when and where it foundered.

The above comparison is not perfect, since every comparison must limp at least a little; but we think it is sufficient as an illustration of the process by which the human intellect attains to the knowledge of God and the beatific vision of God, according to ontologism as differing from the doctrine of sound Catholic theology. According to ontologism, God presents himself to the intellect, when he creates it, as its immediate Object, objective Idea, or intelligible Term. So soon as it is capable of apprehending eternal verities, it apprehends that which is God, although not yet knowing explicitly that what it apprehends is God—that is, the one, living, most perfect Being who is the creator and sovereign lord of all things. By another step it acquires a clear conception of God, and makes the judgment that God is, and that he is eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent. This judgment is an evolution from that cognition which existed at the beginning as a habit into an explicit act, as the explicit act of faith is deduced from the habit of faith given to the infant by baptism. That God is, is known by what he is—that is, by his essence, which is seen in the eternal verities or divine ideas as they are in reality, not distinguishable from the divine substance. Faith gives an obscure perception of the interior mysteries of the divine substance which are beyond the ken of the intellect unaided by revelation, or, in other words, are superintelligible verities; and the light of glory increases the power of intellectual vision so that it sees clearly and distinctly the interior essence of God, which completes the beatification of the soul.

In this place we may cite the third of the seven condemned propositions, which expresses the afore‐mentioned theory, as taken in connection with the fifth. This third proposition is: “Universals, objectively considered, _a parte rei_, are not really distinguishable from God”; and the fifth: “All other ideas are only modifications of the idea in which God is intellectively perceived as simply being—_tamquam ens simpliciter intelligitur_.” Universals are general ideas, each one of which is capable of being predicated of a multitude of subjects. The logical universals are five—genus, species, differentia, attribute, accident. The ten categories of Aristotle include all the supreme genera, though some maintain that a better division may be made. The transcendental ideas are those which transcend all generic classification, because they may be predicated of every genus and all its inferiors. They are the ideas of being, unity, the good, the true, the beautiful. They belong, therefore, to the universals, although predicated in analogous and not identical senses of the diverse genera and their inferior subjects. Take the supreme genus substance, as an instance, and follow it down to man—substance, corporeal substance, organized substance, animal, rational animal, _i.e._, man. His proximate genus is animal, his differentia rationality, which constitute the species man. The concrete reality of the universals, substance, etc., terminating in the species which is rational animal is found only in individual men. The direct universals, genus, species, differentia, exist, _a parte rei_, in each individual of the human species. Each man is a substance, corporeal, organized, animal, rational, and these universals can be predicated of him as their subject. The transcendental predicates, also, are connected with individual men as their subject. Individual men have being, unity, verity, goodness, beauty. But these may be predicated in senses which are only analogous to each other of the composite essence, of its distinct parts, soul and body, of the attributes or essential qualities of man, and of the accidents of individual men. For instance, the human essence is essentially good; the soul and body are good each in its own order; rationality is good; learning, valor, amiability, moral virtue, sanctity, are good; but there is analogy only, not identity, in these various kinds of good. The same is true of being. It is absurd, therefore, to speak, as Plato does, of a universal good, true, beautiful, or to speak of any universal idea, such as being, or a modification of being, as having any objective reality as a universal, except as a concept of the mind with a foundation in that which is or may be an actually existing thing. They are metaphysical essences, with their generic, specific, qualifying, and transcendental predicates. All the categories or supreme genera together make up what is called the nature of things, considered metaphysically; considered in their physical being in the sum of all concrete existences, they make up universal nature. The metaphysical essences are necessary, immutable, eternal, and potentially infinite. They are the eternal verities, the necessary truths, which copy the divine ideas upon nature or the universe, where God has impressed them, and are abstracted from the works of the Creator by the intellect of man. They are distinguishable from God, therefore they are not in the essence of God, or the divine ideas subsisting in the divine substance, and are not there seen by the intellect. This was long ago proved by philosophers and theologians. It is now declared by authority that it is unsafe thus to identify them with God, and thereby make him the immediate object of the intellect. The reason why it is unsafe is that it destroys the differentia which makes our rational cognition of God specifically distinct from the intuitive cognition of the blessed. There are also other dangers to faith and sound theology involved in the doctrines or tendencies of ontologism, which we have not space to notice.

Neither the absurdity nor the heterodoxy of ontologism is avoided by the system of Gioberti. The objection of Giobertians to pure ontologism, that it furnishes no dialectic principle uniting natural theology with other branches of special metaphysics and with ontology, is, indeed, well taken. But this only shows that pure ontologism is absurd and incoherent. It does not remove the absurdity of that which is common to pure ontologism and the ontologism of Gioberti. Neither does it remove its heterodoxy. Saying that we have immediate cognition of something which is not God does not make it more orthodox to say that we have immediate cognition of God. Moreover, Gioberti’s doctrine, as taught by himself, and understood by his European disciples and admirers, as well as by his acutest and most orthodox opponents, is far more heterodox than that of any other ontologist who is also a Catholic. Evidence has been furnished which has never been rebutted that Gioberti was a pantheist even before he published his _Introduction to Philosophy_. In a letter to Mazzini, written before that date, but only afterwards published from a motive of pique against him, he says explicitly that he is a pantheist after the manner of Giordano Bruno, though a Christian pantheist. What does this mean, unless it means that he had conceived a plan of combining pantheistic philosophy with the Catholic dogmas, as a part of his grand scheme of reconciling paganism with Christianity, and the European revolution with the Papacy? On this supposition he must either have acted the part of a deliberate liar and hypocrite—a baseness of which we believe him to have been incapable—or he must have intended, and in a subtile manner insinuated pantheism in the guise of his famous ideal formula, _Ens creat existentias_. In this case whatever may bear a pantheistic interpretation or seem to point to a pantheistic conclusion must be pantheistically interpreted, so far as the sense of the author is concerned. It is not strange, however, that many have understood him in a sense not directly heretical, or even, perhaps, quite compatible with Catholic faith. For his works are filled with passages which, taken in a Catholic sense, are gems of the purest and most precious sort. If the formula _Being creates existences_ be taken in the orthodox sense, as equivalent to _God creates the world_, it is obviously a directly contrary proposition to any one expressing pantheism. To make it bear a pantheistic sense, definitions of being, create, and existences must be sub‐introduced which vitiate its orthodox meaning. But, leaving aside this question, we have already proved that a Catholic must hold that the human intellect cannot have an immediate cognition of the first extreme of the formula, viz., that real and necessary Being which is God. Without this he cannot have an immediate cognition of the creative act, as the act of God, or of created things in their ideas, considered as the divine ideas themselves in the divine mind, and really identical with the divine essence. It is certain that the Holy See did not intend to condemn pantheism in the decree respecting the seven propositions, for it would never have affixed such a mild censure if it had so intended. Ontologism, whether couched in Gioberti’s formula or not, is condemned in that sense which is not pantheistic, and under every formula which includes an affirmation of the immediate cognition of God by the human intellect, as defined by M. Fabre in the passage quoted at the beginning of this article.

Before concluding we are obliged reluctantly to add a few words about a personal controversy with Dr. Brownson, with whom we always regret to have a difference respecting any matter which belongs to Catholic doctrine. We desire to explain, therefore, that we made no statement to the effect that the ontologism condemned by the Holy See had ever been formally and explicitly taught in philosophical articles, whether written by himself or any one else, in this magazine. Moreover, in the passage where his name is mentioned there is no direct statement that “_his own_ ontologism” falls under ecclesiastical censure. The utmost implied or asserted is that some educated men might think that some of his statements are “unsound,” philosophically or theologically, and demand a certain benignity of interpretation in order to escape the censure which a professed theologian would justly incur if he made such statements in a book written for school‐boys or young pupils. Dr. Brownson’s own defence of his doctrine, as based on his definition of intuition: “Intuition is the act of the object, not of the subject,” was cited as the precise distinction between his own doctrine and the one condemned, upon which the question of the theological soundness of his peculiar ontologism turns. We called it “a newly‐invented distinction between ideal intuition and perception or cognition,” and qualified the definition above quoted as an “assumption,” which we think is quite correct. It is new in Catholic philosophy, and has not been proved. We think, therefore, that the phraseology of Dr. Brownson makes his doctrine liable to an interpretation, even by educated men, which makes it similar to that of the condemned ontologism. That it is sound and safe we are not prepared to say. Neither do we say positively that it is not. If it is, we think Dr. Brownson can place it in a clearer light than he has yet done, and we shall heartily rejoice to see him distinctly enunciate and vindicate his fundamental doctrine, whether it does or does not accord with that which is held by the disciples of S. Thomas. Of his loyal intention to conform his doctrine to the decisions of the supreme authority in the church there can be no doubt. That he has so far succeeded in doing so, at least by an exact and explicit expression of it, we cannot help doubting. We cannot see that the distinction between ideal intuition and cognition, so far as we apprehend it, suffices.

We understand him to define ideal intuition as an act of God presenting himself to the intellect as its object, and to call the act of the intellect apprehending this ideal object empirical intuition. We understand him also to identify the immediate object on which the active intellect exercises its discursive operations with real, necessary being—_i.e._ God—although it does not make the judgment that eternal verities are real being, and that real being is God, immediately, but by means of reflection and reasoning. Now, we cannot see any essential difference between this doctrine and that of M. Branchereau and other ontologists. We do not think it possible to escape the ecclesiastical censure on the doctrine of the immediate cognition of God, unless something is placed, _ratione objecti visi_, between God and the intellect, making the cognition mediate. Moreover, we consider that the term cognition in the Roman decree covers intuition and simple apprehension, even in their confused state, as well as distinct conceptions and judgments. Dr. Brownson’s peculiar terminology and informal method of arguing make it, however, more difficult to understand his real doctrine and compare it with that of standard authors than if it were expressed in the usual style and method.

Dr. Brownson has also further charged the author of _Problems of the Age_ with having actually taught in the opening chapters of that essay, as first published in this magazine, the very ontologism condemned in the seven propositions. That there are ambiguous expressions and passages which taken apart from the whole tenor of the argument are liable to such an interpretation, we do not deny. But in reality, it was the doctrine of Gerdil which was intended, and expressed with sufficient distinctness for a careful and critical reader. This doctrine is expressed by the illustrious cardinal in these words: “God, who contains eminently the ideas of all things, impresses their intellectual similitudes in us by his action, which constitute the immediate object of our perceptions.” Upon which Liberatore remarks: “In these words Gerdil did not modify the ontologism which he professed in his youth, but retracted it. And indeed, how can even the shadow of ontologism be said to remain, when the immediate object of our perceptions is no longer said to be God, or ideas existing in God, but only their similitudes, which are impressed by the divine action upon our minds.”(99) A few quotations from the _Problems of the Age_ will prove the truth of our assertion that it proposed a theory similar to the theory of Gerdil.

“It is evident that we have no direct intellectual vision or beholding of God. The soul is separated from him by an infinite and impassable abyss.”(100) “God affirms himself originally to the reason by the creative act, which is first _apprehended by the reason_(101)_through the medium of the sensible_.... Thus we know God by creation, and creation comes into the most immediate contact with us on its sensible side.”(102) “The knowledge of God is limited to that which he expresses by the similitude of himself exhibited in the creation.”(103) “It is of the essence of a created spirit that its active intuition or intellective vision is limited to finite objects as its immediate terminus, commensurate to its finite, visual power. _It sees God only mediately_, as his being and attributes are reflected and imaged in finite things, and therefore its highest contemplation of God is _merely abstractive_.”(104)

More passages might be quoted, but these may suffice. The form of expression is frequently Giobertian, especially in the early chapters. But the author understood Gioberti in an orthodox sense. In our opinion Dr. Brownson, as well as ourselves, failed to a very great extent to understand his artfully‐expressed meaning. We used language similar to that of ontologism, but the sense in which we asserted the intuition of God was that of an infused idea of necessary and eternal truths; having their foundation and _eminent_, but not _entitative_ existence in God, as Father Kleutgen teaches; by virtue of which the mind can rise by discursive reasoning through the creation to an explicit conception of _what_ God is, and make the judgment _that_ he is. All that introductory part of his work which treats of ontology was, however, suppressed by the author when the _Problems of the Age_ was published in book‐form, precisely on account of the tincture of ideas and phraselogy, which too nearly resembled those of ontologists, and were too obscure and ambiguous.

We do not suppose that the ideology of those Catholic philosophers whom we may call Platonisers, for want of a more specific term, has been condemned; or the Peripatetic ideology enjoined as the only one which can safely be taught in the schools; by any positive precept of the Holy See. Nevertheless, we think the former ideology, in all its various shapes, has received a back‐handed blow, by the condemnation of ontologism, which must prove fatal to it. We see no logical alternative for those who reject psychologism, except between ontologism and the ideology of S. Thomas. The objective term of intellective conceptions must be, if it has real existence, either in God, in created things outside the mind, or in the mind itself. If it is the latter, a vague idealism which carries philosophy into an abstract world, separated by a chasm from the real, seems unavoidable. There is no real, concrete being, except in God and that which God has created. Unless the universals are mere conceptions or ideas, and unless ideas are, not that _by which_ the intellect perceives, but that _which_ it perceives—and this is psychologism—they must have their entitative existence in the essence of God, and be indistinguishable from it; or they must have it in created objects. The former cannot be safely held and taught. Therefore we must take the latter side of the alternative, or fall into psychologism. There is no solid rational basis, except that of scholastic philosophy, on which we can stand. The master in this school is the Angelic Doctor. Our interpretation, or that of any greater disciple of S. Thomas, has no authority, except that which is intrinsic to the evidence it furnishes that it is really his doctrine. The evidence is clear enough, however, to any competent person who examines it, that we have stated his doctrine correctly, and that all the criticisms upon the ideology we vindicate fall upon S. Thomas, and not upon us. Any one who will read the great works of Kleutgen and Liberatore can see this proved in the amplest manner from the writings of S. Thomas and in his own distinct statements. And any person of ordinary common sense will conclude that a man of the acute intelligence, conscientiousness, and patient application which characterize Father Liberatore, in a lifelong study of the clearest and most lucid author who ever wrote, cannot have failed to understand his philosophical system. Liberatore avowedly confines himself to an exposition of the philosophy of S. Thomas pure and simple. And in his great work, _Della Conoscenza Intellettuale_, he has given the most ample and lucid exposition of that particular part of it, with a solid refutation of the other principal theories. Kleutgen is more original, and not less erudite, though perhaps not equal to Liberatore in the thorough mastery of the writings of the Angelic Doctor; and he has given a most extensive and complete exposition of scholastic philosophy, accompanied by an exhaustive appreciation of modern systems, in his _Philosophie der Vorzeit_. It is very well for those who can do so to study S. Thomas for themselves, though even they cannot neglect his commentators. But it is idle to recommend this study to the generality of students in philosophy and theology, as a substitute for the study of the minor approved authors. Dogmatic and moral theology and philosophy are real sciences, as they are taught in the Catholic schools, and they can be and must be learned from text‐books and the oral instruction of professors. The presumption is in favor of the books and teachers approved by ecclesiastical authority, that they teach sound doctrine. There cannot be anything more injurious to the interests of ecclesiastical or secular education than to depreciate and undermine their legitimate authority, and thus awaken distrust in the minds of those who must receive their instruction from them, or else undertake the task of instructing themselves. Such an undertaking usually results in a failure which may have disastrous consequences. The greater number follow self‐ chosen and dangerous guides. The few of superior intelligence and activity of mind; who throw off respect for all authority except that which they recognize as absolutely infallible, or submit to through the worship which they pay to genius and to ideas which have captivated their intellect and imagination; are apt to indulge the futile and dangerous dream of remodelling philosophy and theology. Such have been the leaders of dissension, of heresy, and of apostasy. De Lamennais, St. Cyran, Gioberti, and Döllinger are examples. They began to deviate by breaking away from the common and present sense of the great body of authors in actual use and living teachers of theology. Every one knows where they ended. Similar tendencies and proclivities can be effectually suppressed only by a sound theology and a sound philosophy, together with that spirit called the _piety of faith_, which goes much beyond a mere submission to absolute and categorical decrees in regard to faith and morals. In conclusion, we venture very earnestly to advise all converts who have finished a liberal education before entering the church, not to study theology without also going through a careful course of philosophy, beginning with text‐books such as those of Father Hill and Liberatore.

Reminiscences Of A Tile‐Field.

Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen in a grand old group of Gothic towers that was called the Louvre. Nowadays we should call their house a palace, but in those good old times kings built houses to fight in as well as to live in, and their abodes had to do duty at once as palace, fortress, and prison. At the time we speak of this mass of straggling roofs and gables resembled a citadel mounting guard over Paris from the western side, as the Bastile did from the east; but when Francis I. came on the scene, he denounced the barbaric‐looking stronghold as a place too like a dungeon for a king to live in, though it did well enough for a hunting‐lodge. It was too venerable to be thrown down, and too stern in its original character to bend to any architectural modifications, so he decided to leave it as it was, and build a palace after his own fancy by the side it. He began, accordingly, the florid Italian edifice which now forms the western side of the old Louvre. He did not live to see the work completed; but it was continued by his son, who died soon after it was finished, and left his widow, Catherine de Médicis, in enjoyment of it. But the wily queen, looking to the future, saw that her son would one of these days be reigning in the Louvre, and that it might not suit her to remain his guest; so she set about building a palace for herself, where in due time she might plot and scheme, distil poisons, and light civil wars unmolested by the king’s presence or the prying eyes of his court. West of the Louvre, and in the then open country, was a tile‐field, which, from the fact of _tuiles_ being manufactured there, was called _Les Tuileries_. The Médicean sorceress touched the tiles with her wand, and up rose under that magic stroke the stately palace which was to be the centre of so many high and wonderful destinies, and which continued to bear through all changes and vicissitudes its first homely title of Les Tuileries. One life could not suffice for the completion of such a monument, however, and Catherine left it to her three king sons, successively to finish. But already in her own time the tile‐field was baptized in blood. From one of its Gothic windows the mother pulled the trigger in the trembling hand of the son which gave the signal for the massacre of S. Bartholomew. Thus in its very cradle did the Tuileries sign itself Haceldama, a field where blood should flow, where princes should sell and be sold, where a king should wrestle with the powers of darkness, and be dragged forth in ignominy to death. The two palaces, hitherto distinct and separate, were united by Charles IX., who erected the long gallery by the river’s side. It was not entirely finished when he died, leaving his brothers to make it ready for Henry IV., who is represented as traversing the gallery, leaning on De Guise, the day before Ravaillac’s dagger cut short the Béarnais’ career.

The idea of turning it into a museum was first suggested by Louis XVI., who reverted to the plan frequently, but was compelled by financial difficulties to leave the glory of its execution to Bonaparte. Those who have seen the beautiful old palace recently, before its partial destruction, would hardly recognize it as the same which fifteen years ago was choked up to its very windows by the rubbish of the encroaching town; the space now cleared away between the two palaces, the Louvre proper and the Tuileries, was filled with mean houses, for the most part shops. Even the façade of the Tuileries was cumbered and disfigured by a variety of shabby buildings, barracks, stables, and domestic offices, these latter being necessary for the convenience of its inmates—since royalty must dine—the original plan of the palace having made no provision for those vulgar essentials for the carrying on of daily life. It was an unsafe abode for royalty when safety needed to be thought of and the hearts of the people had ceased to be the king’s best stronghold; but when the Médicis reared the noble, picturesque old pile, they were troubled with no such considerations. The ghosts of constitutionalism and _sans‐culottism_ were slumbering quietly unsuspected in the womb of the future, and no provision was made for slaying or defying them. For nearly a century the Tuileries had been uninhabited, when, on the wrathful day of the 6th of October, the mob surged from Paris to Versailles, and dragged Louis Seize and Marie Antoinette from their beds, and installed them within its empty, neglected walls.

“Buildings, like builders, have their destiny.” Ever since the memorable morning when insurrection reared its hydra‐head under the windows of the Queen of France, and battered in the chamber door with clubs and tricolor‐ bedizened pikes, and sent her flying in terrified _déshabillé_ through secret corridors and trap‐tapestries into the king’s room for safety; ever since “rascality looked in the king’s face, and did not die,” but seized royalty by the beard, and led it, amidst hootings of triumph, to lodge where the people willed, the grand château of Versailles has stood vacant of kings and queens, its polished floors reflecting the dead monarchs on the walls, a great hush filling its broad galleries, grass growing in its courts, the silence of the past brooding everywhere. Noisy demagogues may scream and howl in the theatre where the Grand Monarch applauded the verses of Corneille and Racine, and their nimble heels may tread down some of the grass between the paving‐stones of the Cour du Roi, but they are but jackdaws chattering in the deserted temple. Versailles has lived its day, and outlived its generation.

Neglected and uncomfortable as the Tuileries was, the royal family had no choice but to go there. The Louvre was partly dilapidated and quite unfurnished, while the sister palace, though so long uninhabited, was still furnished, and needed comparatively little to make it, even in this sudden emergency, a suitable domestic residence. The discomforts of the first few days were great, but the royal captives were absorbed in graver cares, and bestowed no idle regrets on such small matters as personal accommodation. Louis was satisfied with his truckle‐bed, hurriedly provided by the nation in the tapestried room. “Where will your majesty please to sleep?” inquired an obsequious municipal, entering the presence; and majesty, with head bowed over his knees, answers, without deigning to look around and choose, “I am well enough here; let each lodge as he may.” So the truckle‐bed is got ready. Strange days followed this strange beginning. Paris for a week was drunk with joy. The mob had got the king in their possession. Loyal subjects looked on, not knowing whether to weep or to rejoice. The Orleanist faction chuckled boldly over the degradation of the crown, and over the fact that the persons of the king and, above all, of the queen were safe in a gilded prison.

The queen was far too wise and keen‐eyed to be deceived by the pale glimmer of popularity which, during the early days of their abode in Paris, shone upon them. Louis took pleasure in the scanty _vivats_ that greeted him when he sauntered out for a walk on the terrace—his only place of exercise now—and within doors amused himself with carpentry and lock‐ making. The Dauphin played at soldiering, dressed in military uniform, and gave the word of command to his men, a regiment of warriors from five to eight years old. Marie Antoinette had her library brought from Versailles, and sought refuge from thought in reading. Mme. Elizabeth, meanwhile, watches the signs of the coming storm, prays, loves, and hopes.

The Assembly had followed the king to Paris, and installed itself in the Salle de Manège, formerly the riding‐school of the Tuileries, and situated within sight of the palace on the north terrace. This proximity, whether accidental or designed, was a source of danger and humiliation to the king. The members could see the royal prison‐house from the windows of the Manège, and the prospect served to point many an insolent period in the tribune. Mirabeau used it with fine effect. “I see,” he cried, “the window whence a king of France, under the influence of execrable advisers, fired the shot which gave the signal of the massacre of S. Bartholomew!”

But the Assembly did not content itself with pointing the arrows of its rhetoric at the doomed Louis; it sought to give him more practical proofs of disrespect. The riding‐school being situated on the Terrace des Feuillants, the members declared that this terrace belonged to them, and not to the king; it was therefore thrown open as a public thoroughfare, the palace being thus exposed to the coming and going of the populace, who availed themselves of the opportunity of flaunting their disloyalty under the very windows of the sovereign. There was no longer any barrier on the north side, and, the external posts being all sentinelled by National Guards, the royal family had no control over either the courts or the gardens. This scandalous violation of his privacy roused even Louis to utter a mild protest to the Assembly, but it was met by one of the Girondists retorting that “the people lodged Louis in the Tuileries, but it nowise followed that they gave up to him the exclusive use of the gardens.” The unhappy king had no resource henceforth but in dignified patience, fed by the hope of escaping to the freedom and seclusion of St. Cloud at Easter. We know how, just as he had entered his carriage to start for that suburban castle, it was surrounded by the mob, and he himself only rescued from personal violence by Lafayette and his troop, who were, however, unable to effect his release. Louis re‐entered the Tuileries crushed and humbled, but inwardly resolved on some desperate attempt to escape from the insupportable bondage of his position. The abortive attempt to leave the Tuileries, even for his usual summer residence, roused a bitter feeling of suspicion against him, and more especially against the queen, which was soon manifested by the increasing insolence of the mob. They dared no longer show themselves in public, and even their afternoon walk on the terrace by the river’s side became impossible. They tried to avoid the humiliation and annoyance it provoked by rising at daybreak, and taking an hour’s exercise in the early dawn; but this soon became known, and had also to be abandoned. At last the queen complained that she “could not even open her windows on these hot summer evenings without being subjected to the grossest invectives and threats.”

When things came to this point, the king was forced to lend an ear to the proposals which had up to this time met with a dogged and somewhat contemptuous refusal. There was but one way of remedying the miseries of their position, and that was by flight. It was no longer a question of flying from humiliation, but from absolute and imminent danger. The most sanguine or the most obtuse observer could not but see that things were hastening to a fearful crisis, which, terminate how it may, must work ruin to the royal family.

Many schemes were arranged, but for one reason or another they fell through. Finally, it was settled that the sovereign should escape with his wife and children and sister to Montmédy. This was the utmost that could be wrung from Louis, even in this extremity. No arguments could induce him to consent to leave France, or even to cross the frontier with the purpose of re‐entering France the next day, though by so doing he would have shortened the journey and lessened its dangers. If even then he had consented to fly speedily, separately, instead of losing the precious days and weeks in preparations that only awoke suspicion and proved hindrances instead of helps! But in the race of destiny, who wins? Not he who flies, but he who waits. Louis waited too long, or not long enough; fled too late, if he should have fled at all.

The story of the flight to Varennes has been written by historians of all shades and camps, but it is generally tainted with such vehement partisanship that the simple, underlying facts become obscured, almost obliterated, by hysterical reproaches of this one and that; whereas the cause of the failure of that memorable expedition is to be sought rather in the attitude of the entire population, the atmosphere of the times, or, let us say at once, the mysterious leadings of the First Great Cause which overrules human events, even while it leaves the human instruments free to decide the issue. It is easy for one historian(105) to lay the blame on Marie Antoinette, who “could not travel without new clothes,” showing us how “Dame Campan whisks assiduous to this mantua‐maker and to that; and there is clipping of frocks and gowns, upper clothes and under, great and small—such clipping and sewing as might be dispensed with. Moreover, majesty cannot go a step anywhere without her _nécessaire_, dear _nécessaire_, of inlaid ivory and rosewood, cunningly devised, which holds perfumes, toilet implements, infinite small, queenlike furniture necessary to terrestrial life.” Poor Marie Antoinette! her grand, queenlike soul was lifted far above such silly “terrestrial life” by this time, and it is not likely that, when such tremendous stakes were impending, her care dwelt with new clothes or perfume bottles—so misleading does prejudice make the clearest mind, the most intentionally sincere witness. The plain truth is that the difficulty of the new clothes existed, but from a very different motive from that suggested by Mr. Carlyle. It was necessary that the queen and the royal children should be disguised, and for this purpose new clothes were essential, and it required all the ingenuity of Mme. De Tourzel, and Mme. Campan, and every one connected with the affair to get them made so as to fit the royal fugitives, and then conveyed into the palace without exciting the keen lynx‐eyes that were fixed on every incomer and outgoer passing through the queen’s apartments. As to the _nécessaire_ over which the Scotch philosopher breaks the vials of his scorn so loftily, it was wanted. Some box was wanted to hold the money, jewels, and certain indispensable papers that were to be taken on the journey, and the queen suggested that her dressing‐case should be used, adding at the same time that she was loath to leave it behind her, as it was almost the first present she had received from her husband—no great subject for philosophical sneers, as far as we can see. Nor did either _nécessaire_ or new clothes—though the obtaining and smuggling in of the latter caused much delay—give rise to any of the accidents which worked the failure of the scheme.

Then there was the new berlin to be provided—a lamentable mistake, but not one that deserves Mr. Carlyle’s withering sarcasms any more than the _nécessaire_. “Miserable new berlin!” he cries. “Why could not royalty go in an old berlin similar to that of other men? Flying for life, one does not stickle about one’s vehicle.” It was not for the newness or dignity of the vehicle that the queen stickled, but for its capability of carrying “all her treasures with her.” She positively refused to fly at all, unless it could be so contrived that she was not separated for an hour of the way from her husband, her children, and her beloved sister‐in‐law, the Princess Elizabeth. She insisted, moreover, that the few faithful friends who were to share her flight should be with them also, and not exposed to solitary risks in a separate conveyance. This was characteristic enough of the queen’s loyal heart towards those she loved, but it was unlike her practical sense and intelligence. M. de Fersen, who was taken into confidence from the first, declared that no travelling‐coach was to be found large enough to answer these requirements, and that one must be built on purpose. It so happened that the previous year he had ordered a berlin, of just such form and dimensions as was now wanted, for a friend of his in Russia; he therefore went to the coach‐maker, and desired him with all possible speed to build another on the same model for a certain Baronne de Korff, a cousin of his, who was about to return to St. Petersburg with her family and suite. The berlin was built, and, to baffle suspicion more effectually, was driven through some of the most public streets in Paris, in order to try it. The result was most satisfactory, and M. de Fersen talked aloud to his friends of the perfect coach he had ordered and partly designed for his cousin, Mme. de Korff.

The journey was fixed for the 19th of June. Everything was ready, every precaution had been taken, every possible obstacle anticipated. The Marquis de Bouillé, almost the only general whose devotion the king could trust to the death, was in command of the army of the Meuse, and Montmédy, a small but well‐fortified town, was situated in the midst of it. Here the royal family were sure of a safe and loyal asylum. The minor military arrangements were entrusted to M. de Goguelat, an officer of engineers, who was on Bouillé’s staff, and personally devoted to the king and queen. The Duc de Choiseul, under De Goguelat’s orders, was to furnish local detachments from his regiment of Royal Dragoons along the road, and to precede the royal departure by a few hours, so as to ensure all being in order at the various stations. M. de Goguelat made two experimental journeys to Montmédy himself, to ascertain the exact hour of arrival at each place. Unluckily, he forgot to calculate the difference between a light post‐chaise and a heavily‐built, heavily‐laden “new berlin.” Relays of horses were provided at each stage, and a detachment of cavalry from De Bouillé’s army was to be there also, and, after a short interval, to follow the new berlin, picking up each detachment successively, and thus swelling the force at every stage. The utmost secrecy was observed with all except the leaders of the expedition; the pretext alleged to the troops for all this marching being that a treasure was on its way to the north for payment of the army. All was waiting, when, at the last moment, owing to some difficulty about getting Mme. de Tourzel into the berlin, the king sent a counter‐order for the departure, saying it must take place, not on the 19th, but on the 20th. It was a woful delay. But at last, on the night of the 20th, behold the travellers under way. Mme. Royale’s _Mémoires_ give us the most authentic account of the mode of starting: “At half‐past ten, on the 20th of June, 1791, my brother was wakened up by my mother. Mme. de Tourzel brought him down to my mother’s apartment, where I also came. There we found one of the _gardes‐du‐corps_, M. de Malden, who was to assist our departure. My mother came in and out several times to see us. They dressed my brother as a little girl. He looked beautiful, but he was so sleepy that he could not stand, and did not know what we were all about. I asked him what he thought we were going to do. He answered: ‘I suppose to act a play, since we have all got these odd dresses.’ At half‐past ten we were ready. My mother herself conducted us to the carriage in the middle of the court, which was exposing herself to great risk.”

The _rôles_ were distributed as follows: Mme. de Tourzel, governess of the children of France, was Baronne de Korff; Mme. Royale and the Dauphin, her daughters. The queen was their governess, Mme. Rocher. The Princess Elizabeth was _dame‐de‐compagnie_, under the name of Rosalie. The king was Durand, the _valet‐de‐chambre_. The officers of the disbanded _gardes‐du‐ corps_ went as couriers and servants. This was a grievous mistake amidst so many others. These gentlemen were totally inexperienced in their assumed characters, and, by their personal appearance and ignorance of the duties they undertook, proved a fatal addition to the party. The preparations were altogether too cumbrous and elaborate, but it is difficult to accuse any special portion of them as superfluous in a time when the public spirit was strained to such a pitch of suspicion and hatred; though prudence might have hinted that this heavy paraphernalia was far more calculated to awake the jealous mistrust of the people than to baffle or allay it.

All being now ready, the fugitives furtively left the Tuileries, and proceeded to enter the hackney‐coach that stood in wait for them outside the palace. “Mme. de Tourzel, my brother, and I got into the coach first,” says Mme. Royale. “M. de Fersen was coachman. To deceive any one who might follow us we drove about several streets. At last we returned to the Petit Carrousel, which is close to the Tuileries. My brother was fast asleep in the bottom of the carriage.”

And now another traveller steals softly out of the palace, her face shrouded by a gypsy‐hat. As she steps on the pavement a carriage, escorted by torch‐bearers, dashes past. An unaccountable impulse moves her to touch the wheel with the end of her parasol. The occupant of the carriage is Lafayette, on his way to the king’s _couchée_. He is late, having been delayed by urgent matters. They tell him the king has already retired for the night. Meantime the lady in the gypsy‐hat, leaning on M. de Malden, one of the amateur couriers, loses her way in the dark street, and keeps the occupants and driver of the hackney‐coach half an hour waiting in an agony of suspense. At last, after crossing and recrossing the river, they make their way to the coach, and start. Another presently follows them. So they jog on through the dark night to the spot where the new berlin is waiting; but, lo! they arrive, and no berlin is there. The king himself alights, and prowls about in search of it. M. de Fersen at last finds it, overturns the hackney‐coach into a ditch, mounts the berlin, and drives on to Bondy. There the travellers find a relay waiting in a wood. The chivalrous Swede stands bareheaded in the dewy dawn‐light, and bows his loyal farewell to the king and Marie Antoinette. They press hands in silent thanks, and the chevalier goes his way—to Stockholm, where that same day, nineteen years hence, he will meet a more brutal end than that which awaits the royal pair he has befriended—beaten to death with sticks by a savage mob, who, on the impulse of the moment, accuse him of having been accessory to the death of Prince Charles Augustus. But now he breathes with a glad sense of victory and security, and stands with bright, moistened eye watching the huge berlin lurching on its way, the only thing that broke the stillness of the wood, sleeping yet under the fading stars.

All went smoothly as far as Châlons‐sur‐Marne, about a hundred miles beyond Bondy, and here the programme as arranged by the queen and De Fersen ceased, to be taken up by the Duc de Choiseul and M. de Bouillé’s detachments. The berlin rumbled on through Châlons at four in the afternoon, and reached the next stage, Pont de Somme‐Velle at six, where M. de Goguelat’s escort was to meet it. But no escort was to be seen. M. de Choiseul had been there at the appointed time, but owing to the slow pace of the berlin and the time lost in the early stages—one accident to a wheel causing two hours’ delay—they were four hours behind time, and M. de Choiseul, taking for granted something had occurred to change the plan altogether, drew off his dragoons, without leaving even a _vedette_ to say where he was going. Everywhere these unlucky troops turned out a hindrance and a danger. The soldiers accepted without _arrière pensée_ the plausible story of their being on duty to protect the transport of pay for the army of the Meuse; but the municipal authorities looked on them with suspicion, and, long before the idea of the real cause of their presence got wind, the soldiers were eyed askance in the towns they passed through. At this very place, Somme‐Velle, one detachment caused a panic. It so fell out, by one of those disastrous coincidences which pursued the berlin on its adventurous way, that some few days before there had been an affray amongst the peasants of a neighboring estate, they having refused to pay certain rates, in consequence of which the tax‐gatherers had threatened to enforce payment by bringing down the troops. When therefore the population beheld De Choiseul and his cavalry they fancied they had been summoned for the above purpose, and a spirit of angry defiance was roused against them. The municipality sent the _gendarmerie_ to parley with the troops and compel them to withdraw; but they failed in this overture, and words began to run dangerously high on all sides. Meanwhile De Choiseul was straining eyes and ears for the approach of the berlin, in mortal dread of seeing it arrive in the midst of the popular excitement. When, however, four hours passed, and there was no sign of it, he said to an officer, loud enough to be heard by those near, “I will draw off my men; the treasure I expected must have already passed.”

The accounts of this particular hitch in the itinerary of the flight are so conflicting—some envenomed by bitter reproach, others equally hot with recrimination from the accused—that it is difficult to see who really was in fault. The time lost in the first instance appears to be the main cause of all the mishaps. Goguelat is blamed for not having taken better measures for ensuring the relays being found at once at every stage; but he throws the blame on De Choiseul, under whose orders he was, and who was at any rate guilty of strange thoughtlessness in drawing off from the point of rendezvous without leaving word where he could be found.

Little time, however, was lost at Somme‐Velle when the berlin at last arrived there. It changed horses at once, and away to Sainte‐Ménéhould, which it reached at half‐past seven. But here the incapacity of the _soi‐ disant_ couriers caused fresh delay and danger. M. de Valory, one of them, not knowing where the post‐house was, went about inquiring for it, exciting curiosity and some suspicion by his manner and uncourier‐like appearance. He was still looking for it when a special escort of troops rode up—a circumstance which was very unfortunate, as the angry feeling excited in the neighboring village by De Choiseul’s huzzars the day before had not yet subsided. The captain of the detachment, the Marquis d’Andoins, sees the berlin, and tries to telegraph by glances to Goguelat which way lies the post‐house; but Goguelat cannot read the signals, and goes up to him and asks in words, keeping up the sham of his yellow livery by touching his hat respectfully to the aristocrat officer. The king, impatient and nervous, puts his head out of the carriage‐window, and calls to Valory for explanations; the marquis advances and tenders them respectfully, but with seeming indifference, as to ordinary travellers asking information on their way. Unlucky Louis! Imprudent M. d’Andoins! Patriots’ eyes are sharp, and there are hundreds of them fixed on your two faces now. These sharp eyes are suggesting some vague memory, a likeness to some forgotten and yet dimly‐remembered features. Whose can they be? And the lady with the gypsy‐hat who bends forward to thank the gracious gentleman, bowing in silence, but with a grace of majesty unmistakable, a something in her air and carriage that startles even these heavy‐souled provincials into wondering “who can she be?” The lady falls back in an instant, and is hidden from further gaze; but that fat _valet‐de‐chambre_ keeps his head protruded for several minutes. The post‐house is found at last, and the horses are coming. The postmaster and his son are busy at their service. The son has lately been to Paris, and has seen that head somewhere. He whispers suspicion to his father, old Drouet, one of Condé’s dragoons in by‐gone days, and the two come closer, and steal a long, sharp, look. Yes, it is the same as the head on the coins and the assignats; there is no mistaking it. What is Drouet to do? He is a staunch patriot; is he to connive at the king’s treachery to the nation, and let him fly to the foreigner unimpeded? Never was the ready wit of patriotism more severely tested. No need now to wonder at all this marching and countermarching, this flying of pickets to and fro, this moving of troops along the road to the frontier. Treasure to be transported! Ay, truly, a greater treasure than gold or silver. But what was to be done? How was it to be stopped? There were the soldiers and chivalrous aristocrat officers, ready to cut all the patriot postmasters in France to pieces, and then be cut to pieces themselves, rather than let a hair of one of those royal heads be touched. A word, and the village would be in a blaze; but only so long as it would take those glittering swords to quench the flame in patriot blood. Drouet is a prudent man. He holds his tongue until the new berlin is fairly on its way, with the village gaping after it, the military escort lounging about yet a little longer in careless indifference. M. de Damas was in command of the troops. Presently, after the appointed interval, he orders them to move on in the wake of the berlin. But short as the time was, it had sufficed to stir up the town to terrified and resolute opposition. The people had flocked into the streets in angry excitement, and would not suffer the cavalry to advance. M. de Damas at first took a high tone of command, but it was of no use; his weapon broke in his hand. The troops turned round on him and joined the mob, and after a desperate struggle he was obliged to escape for his life, unconscious, even at this crisis, of the danger that threatened his master. Drouet, meanwhile, was flying after his prey to Clermont, the next stage to St. Ménéhould, and which by a fatal chance he never reached; if he had, the final catastrophe would, in human probability, have been averted. On the road there he met his own postilions coming back, and they informed him that the berlin had not gone on to Verdon—the next stage beyond Clermont; that they had overheard the courier on the seat say to the fresh postilions, “A Varennes!” Drouet, who knew every stone of the roads, saw at once what a chance this gave him. He turned off the main road, and started by a short cut across the country to Varennes. Varennes was a small town, a village rather, where there was no post‐house, but where M. de Bouillé had a relay waiting for the travellers, who, having arrived before Drouet, and without any suspicion that he was pursuing them, might have congratulated themselves on being at last safe over the Rubicon. Yet it was here that danger was to overtake and overwhelm them. In this secluded little dell, near midnight, when every one was asleep, hushed by the lullaby of the river hurrying on its way beneath the silent stars, no prying eyes to peer at them, no patriots to take offence or fright, with fresh horses waiting in the quiet wood, and young De Bouillé, the general’s loyal son, to superintend the relays, with a guard of sixty staunch huzzars lodged in an old convent of the upper town, at hand in case of now seemingly impossible accident—it was here that the thunderbolt fell, and, as the king expressed it, “the earth opened to swallow him.” Valory, the clumsy courier in the gaudy gold livery, has been blamed for it all; but let us remember at least that a man who has ridden one hundred and fifty miles without breathing‐space in twenty‐three hours is entitled to mercy if, at the end of the ride, his mind wanders and his thoughts become confused. It was past eleven when he reached Varennes, and went looking about for the relays, where he had been told he should find them, at the entrance of the faubourg; but no relays were to be seen. He pushed on through the faubourg to the town, which had gone to bed, and could find no sign of the missing horses. After wandering about for nearly an hour, he hears a sound of rumbling of wheels coming along the Paris road. Can it be the berlin? And where, oh! where are the fresh horses? He hurries back in the direction of the sound, and finds the fugitives at the entrance of the suburb, looking about for the relays. There was nothing for it but to wake up the village and make enquiries. The king and queen themselves got out, and went, with the couriers, knocking at doors, and calling to the inhabitants to know if they had seen horses waiting in the neighborhood. Drouet, meantime, was not asleep; he was up with his game now, and flashed past the berlin, like a man riding, not for life, but against life for death, just as the king alighted. He shouted something as he passed, but Louis did not hear it. It was an order to the postilions not to stir from the spot. The relays all this time were ready waiting not at the entrance of the suburb on the Paris side, as had been specified to the king in M. de Goguelat’s programme, but at the entrance of the faubourg _beyond_ the town—a safer and to all appearances more advantageous position, as the change of horses would be sure to attract less notice out of the town than within it. The grievous mistake on De Goguelat’s part was in not having told the courier the exact place where the relays were to be found. But where were the officers commanding the sixty huzzars all this time? Fast asleep, it is said, though it is almost impossible to believe it. Certain it is that they and their huzzars, as well as the detachment of dragoons which, under command of M. Rohrig, was told off to keep watch over “the treasure,” kept out of the way while all this commotion was going on, and never appeared until the entire village was on foot, lights gleaming in every window, and the streets filled with the inhabitants, lately snoring in their beds. Drouet had managed his mission with a coolness and cleverness worthy of a nobler cause. He made no row, but went quietly to the houses of some half‐dozen good patriots, told them what was abroad, and directed them how to act. Their first move was to hurry off to the bridge, and throw up a loose barricade which would prevent the berlin passing; they then flew to the other end of the town, and overturned some carts that happened to be close by, and thus barricaded the exit by the road. They were but “eight patriots of good‐will,” Drouet proudly asserts, in these momentous preliminaries, so sagaciously and quickly executed.

The mob were by this time thoroughly roused. They surrounded the carriage, and forced the travellers to alight. Mme. Royale thus describes the scene: “After a great deal of trouble the postilions were persuaded that the horses were waiting at the castle (at the other side of the town and river), and they proceeded that way, but slowly. When we got into the village, we heard alarming shouts of Stop! stop! The postilions were seized, and in a moment the carriage was surrounded by a great crowd, some with arms and some with lights. They asked who we were; we answered, ‘Mme. de Korff and her family.’ They thrust lights into the carriage, close to my father’s face, and insisted upon our alighting. We answered that we would not; that we were common travellers, and had a right to go on. They repeated their orders to alight on pain of being put to death, and at that moment all their guns were levelled. We then alighted, and, in crossing the street, six mounted dragoons passed us, but unfortunately they had no officer with them; if there had been, six resolute men would have intimidated them all, and might have saved the king. There were sixty close at hand, but the two officers who commanded them were asleep; and when at last the noise of the riot awoke them, they coolly rode away to tell the Marquis de Bouillé that the king had been stopped, and all was over; while M. Rohrig, who commanded the treasure escort, rode off likewise, leaving his men under a disaffected non‐commissioned officer.” M. de Raigecourt, in his account of this eventful “Night of Spurs,” tells us how he and his brother officer, De Bouillé, “at half‐past eleven returned to their bed‐rooms,” after strolling about the town, in hopes of seeing the travellers arrive. “We extinguished our lights,” he says, “but opened our windows and kept a profound silence. About twelve we heard many persons passing and repassing, but without tumult; some even stopped under our windows, but we could not distinguish what they were saying.” They remained quietly in their rooms, “wondering what was the matter,” until about half‐past twelve, when they were enlightened by signals which even their unsuspicious minds could not mistake. The tocsin was rung, the drum beat to arms, the tumult became very great. _Terror_ seemed to prevail. I believe that at that moment ten, or even fewer, determined men would have routed that scared populace. A general cry informed us that the king was in Varennes, betrayed and a prisoner. Instead of now, at least, hastening to call out their men (who, we said, were lodged above the town in an old abbey), the two officers “took for granted that the huzzars had laid down their arms, as otherwise they would have come to the rescue and liberated the king,” and so they simply rode away to report the lamentable issue to De Bouillé. It was about a quarter to one when they left Varennes.

At this juncture M. de Damas, who had escaped with a few faithful men from the fray at Clermont, reached Varennes—not with the idea of succoring the travellers, but of rejoining them. He believed that the uproar which so suddenly exploded at Clermont had been merely against the troops, and that the royal fugitives were now in security, past all further dangers or hindrances. His consternation was therefore great when, on approaching the village of Varennes, he beheld a barricade across the high‐road, held by a band of peasants, who made an attempt to stop him. M. de Damas, however, leaped the barricade, and dashed past them into the town. But the chivalrous soldier was no war‐god descending on fire‐wings to save the royal prisoners. He saw the huzzars walking about the streets, and in answer to his question, “What were they doing?” they replied, “Nothing; we have no orders.” Those who should have given the orders had fled. M. de Choiseul was there with his drawn sword at the head of forty men; and there was a detachment just arrived from another direction under M. Deslons. There was therefore, even at this point of the disaster, no lack of armed force to clear the way, if there had been but one vigorous will to use it. But everybody seemed too bewildered to act. No one had the courage or the presence of mind to take the initiative. As to Louis himself, he was like one paralyzed; not with personal cowardice—that odious charge his subsequent conduct amply disproved—but with a sort of dazed, mental stupor. When Deslons went the length of asking him for orders, he replied, “I am a prisoner, and have no orders to give!” Deslons might have taken the hint, and acted without orders; but the two officers present were his superiors, and he lacked the genius or the desperation to seize the opportunity at the cost of a breach of military discipline. Even the queen’s imperial spirit seems to have abandoned her in this critical extremity, and she sat passive and dumb in Sausse the grocer’s bed‐room, clasping her children to her heart, and taking with silent, humble thanks the sympathy of Mme. Sausse, who forgets the queen in her pity for the mother, and stands over the group weeping womanly, unavailing tears. Tears even of “warlike men” cannot help now, for the soldiers have fraternized with the mob, as their wont is in France; and even if Louis could be electrified by the shock of despair to arise and assert himself, remembering that he is a king, it is too late.

The journey so wisely planned, so deeply thought over, dreaded, and at last attempted, had come to an end, and stopped at the first stage along the road whose goal was the scaffold. The return to Paris resembled the capture of a runaway malefactor. Every species of insult was poured out on the unhappy victims of the popular fury. The brave men who stood by them in their hour of humiliation, MM. de Choiseul, de Damas, and de Goguelat, were disarmed and sent to prison; the three _gardes‐du‐corps_, who faithfully but clumsily played their part as servants to the last, were bound with ropes on the front seat of the berlin, and hooted at in their glaring yellow liveries by the mob; the National Guard of Varennes claimed the glory of escorting the fugitives back to the capital, and the National Guard of all the towns the berlin had passed through on its ill‐starred journey fell in with the _cortége_ one after another, swelling it to ten thousand strong as it advanced. As these men were on foot, the journey homewards lasted four days. When the king arrived at Sainte‐Ménéhould, M. de Dampierre came out to salute him, and paid for the loyal act by being massacred on the spot. A little further on the prisoners were met by Barnave, Petion, and Latour‐Maubourg, members of the Assembly sent by Lafayette to conduct them back to Paris. Barnave and Petion entered the berlin, Mme. de Tourzel leaving to make room for them, and following in another carriage. From this strange meeting grew the quasi‐friendship of Barnave and the queen, which led to his honorable though futile efforts to save her and all of them. At first the proud Austrian lady sat in sullen silence, turned to stone, deaf to Petion’s coarse sneers, as he sat opposite in ill‐suppressed jocularity of triumph; but Barnave’s interference to save a priest from being butchered, like loyal Dampierre, for saluting the king, moved her to speech, and soon to confidence in the young representative of the nation. Barnave was surprised beyond measure to discover in Marie Antoinette’s conversation such clear and strong intelligence, and so thorough a comprehension of the existing state of things. He was captivated by her grace, as well as impressed by the serenity and courage that stamped her whole demeanor throughout that terrible journey; while his prejudices received nearly an equal blow in the person of the king. There was no approaching Louis XVI. without being convinced of his single‐minded honesty and good sense.

In this sorry guise did the new berlin re‐enter Paris. It had departed on Monday night, and behold it returning on Saturday towards sundown, a huge, jolting, captured whale whom no miracle will compel to disgorge its prey. In order to prolong the people’s jubilee and the king’s shame, it was brought a league out of its direct way, so as to make an entry down the Champs Elysées, and bear its occupants back to their gilded prison with due pomp and emphasis by the front gate of the Tuileries gardens. So with serried ranks of bayonets pointed at it on every side, it reappears in Paris, and jogs on to deposit its burden on the old Médicean tile‐field, an ignominious procession, royalty degraded and fettered, a spectacle of joy to the king‐hating citizens. The royal family enter the Tuileries, now a prison in the most cruel and literal sense. The queen and Mme. Elizabeth are henceforth watched, even in their chambers—so watched that, as it is recorded, the queen being one night unable to sleep, the National Guard on duty at her open door offered to come in and converse with her majesty awhile, conversation being sometimes conducive to sleep.

Even at this distance, when we read the history of the flight to Varennes, it has the exciting effect of a fresh tale. We hold our breath, and fancy that still at the last some deliverer will arrive just as all is lost; some accident will prevent Drouet from reaching the scene in time; the fugitives will clear the bridge, and the mob be prevented by the soldiers from pursuing them. Never, even in the history of those most unfortunate of princes, the Stuarts, was there a series of mishaps, blunders, and accidents such as make up the chapter of the flight to Varennes. It is idle to conjecture what would have happened if it had ended differently. If, when the berlin was first surrounded and the travellers ordered to alight, Louis had proudly defied the insolent command, and bade the soldiers fire, how quickly the “pale paralysis” of baffled rage would have seized Drouet and his eight patriots of good‐will; how the froth of ruffianism they had evoked would have melted away before that imperial word, and slunk out of sight, while the monarch fared on his way along the high‐road, the troops sweeping back all possible pursuers, and landing the destinies of France safe beyond the reach of regicidal hands! All this was so much more likely to be than that which was! The reason why it was not is so mysterious! Enough that it was not; that the bloody deed of January the 20th was to consummate the outrages and sufferings of the Night of Spurs; and that the fate of France was not shaped to a different issue, as we, in our short‐sighted philosophy, fancy might so easily have been done.

The Ingenious Device.

“Doth no man condemn thee? And she answered, No man, Lord.”

“Woman! thou’rt over‐confident and sure To answer thus the Infinitely Pure! How knowest thou that He does not condemn, And will not cast at thee th’ avenging stone?” “The pure are merciful. His stratagem Has left me to be judged by such alone.”

The Rigi.

The Golden Lion of Weggis can scarcely be said to resemble its now famed namesake of Granpère. It shows neither coach‐house, stable, farmyard, nor bustling village life around it, and yet there is the one point of a certain homeliness in common which suggests that it too may have seen many a simple romance acted out beneath its roof, and have had its share in many a life’s heart‐story. It is difficult to imagine sentiment of any kind in connection with the monster hotels, or rather caravansaries, of modern Switzerland. But this is a true inn, in the olden acceptation of the word; modest and sedate enough to feel elated at the arrival of new guests, who are welcomed by the landlord himself, and instinctively made to understand that he will personally see to their comfort and proper attendance. At first sight it appears to be overshadowed by a new and larger neighbor; but the Golden Lion does not care, for he enjoys the advantage of mature age and well‐established fame, and justly prides himself on his old customers, whose constancy is a good tribute to his honesty and civility. Some who knew him in the quieter times of Rigi history still come and spend two or three days here when going to, or returning from, the mountain, and it was one of these faithful friends who had recommended us to choose it in preference to the larger establishment of more modern date. Truly, no spot seems more suitable for a romance. Situated on the lake, surrounded by the most lovely views of land and water, removed from the rush and bustle which somewhat jar on the sentimental traveller at Vitznau, and even at Gersau, still with the pleasant splash of the steamers as they halt alongside the shady pier, only making just sufficient noise to remind him that, though not of the world, he can still be in it whenever, or fly whithersoever, his fancy may impel him. Yes; every steamer, backwards and forwards, stops at Weggis, though generally merely to drop a stray traveller—a man with alpenstock and knapsack, or two ladies with their waterproofs neatly strapped across their shoulders, thereby betraying their recent arrival from “fatherland beyond the Rhine.” And every one walks leisurely and with consequent dignity on shore, as though life and plenty of time to enjoy it in were still at their command. No feverish train is in the background; indeed, it cannot be even seen on the mountain sky‐line from Weggis, so that strangers may pause and dine at ease up‐stairs in the clean, airy _table‐ d’hôte_ room of the Golden Lion, sip their coffee on its wide balcony facing the Uri‐Rothstock and Rigi‐Nasen, or lunch _à la carte_ in the leafy arbor of the garden, which is more trim and inviting than its counterpart at Granpère.

It was overpoweringly hot when we landed from the _Helvetia_, the sun bearing down with that full force which so often follows a heavy shower; and the leafy arbor in question irresistibly attracted us by its deep shade and cool, refreshing shelter. Here we resolved to dine, in order to strengthen the “inner being” and let the noonday hours of heat glide by before attempting the ascent to Kaltbad, which promised to be a matter of two and a half hours at the least. The landlord was loud in praise of his horses and men—“well known before that Vitznau railway existed,” he said in a tone rather contemptuous of such an upstart. “The price of each only six francs to Kaltbad, fixed according to the tariff.” And here an ejaculation in praise of this tariff system, penetrating even to the heart of the mountain, may perhaps be allowed to us. None but those who have benefited by it can understand the advantage of being able thus to calculate beforehand the expense of every excursion, nor the unspeakable comfort it brings when, on reaching the hotel at night, tired and sleepy, you know that the guide cannot cheat you, and he feels you cannot cheat him. No one thing contributes more to ensure peace or conduces to happy wanderings. Nor does any man more surely “deserve well of his country” than that Swiss, whoever he may have been, who first proposed this arrangement; and after him we must be grateful to those authorities who have so well carried it out. The dinner was the next matter for consultation between Mr. C—— and mine host, which ultimately ended in the latter promising to do his best, and to have it ready in three‐quarters of an hour or thereabouts.

Besides the arbor, the Golden Lion boasts of a tea‐house and a swimming or bath house projecting into the lake, and also many a well‐placed seat inviting to a most enjoyable _dolce far niente_ close by the pellucid waters, without sound to disturb poetic musings; bright coloring and full foliage forming a framework to the exquisite landscape which extends beyond. Nothing could be more romantic, rural, or tranquillizing to soul and body; but before long, prompted by my “natural female curiosity,” as Mr. C—— ungallantly styled it, I proposed a saunter through the village. “There is nothing whatever to see,” he retorted. Still, with much good‐ nature, he immediately offered to accompany his wife and me in our rambles. It certainly was true in the ordinary sense of the term. There was nothing very remarkable to behold; still, the Swiss villages are always pleasant to look at, especially in these forest cantons, and of this class Weggis is an excellent specimen. It has probably seen its palmiest days, and is at present thrust aside by the hitherto despised sister, Vitznau, now in the spring‐tide of her charms, who seems to toss her head at her elderly and _passée_ rival with the conceit of young life and energy. Yet there no signs of decay. Far from it. It has a steady, old‐fashioned _commune_ life of its own, quite independent of the tourist element, which only comes in—very opportunely, no doubt—to help it on its way. As at Gersau and many of these places, the population is much smaller than appearances warrant, owing chiefly to the substantial size of the houses and the straggling, independent manner in which they are placed. Sometimes a dwelling stands endwise or sidewise to the road, just as the whim of the ancestral great‐great‐grand‐father who built it centuries ago dictated. The walls are now mantled with vines, bright blue eyes peep through casements embosomed in leaves, gardens of glowing sun‐flowers and fig‐trees laden with fruit surround the cottages, while here and there a noble Spanish chestnut throws its deep shade on all around. The street‐ road was almost deserted as we passed along, on account of the strong sun; but many buxom, pleasant‐faced matrons sat working at their doors, while chubby children played beneath the trees hard by. Though innocent of manufactories, and far more rural in its general aspect and atmosphere than Gersau, the whole place breathes of prosperity and comfort. It gives the impression, too, of greater space; for it is not shut in on all sides, and the open slopes extend much further back before they reach the precipitous mountain‐side.

And in accordance with this character is the church, which stands on a slight eminence at the end of the village. The cemetery too, though large and thoroughly well cared for, is more simple, and has none of those pretty monuments that lend such poetry and beauty to the Camenzind‐Küttel resting‐place. But, if not, it possesses a very handsome stone crucifix in one angle—evidently a recent erection, and of which Weggis may well be proud—with the following inscriptions on the base: “Praise be to Jesus Christ in all eternity”; on the front facing the entrance: “See, is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow?” and “In the cross is salvation and benediction” on either side; whilst on the back, close to the Mortuary Chapel, the words run thus: “Gentle Jesus, grant eternal rest to all departed souls.” The children’s quarter, too, was remarkable for its fresh flowers and superabundance of white ribbon; but not until quite near did we notice a poor disconsolate mother decorating the grave of her child—her little _engel_, or angel, as they are so often styled on the tiny headstones or crosses. _She_ did not mind the sun, nor our presence either, but went on with her work, while large tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. And this part is in a striking spot, right under the northern angle of the Rigi, the straight rocks of which rise perpendicularly from a green slope of pasture‐land behind the village church, covered with large boulders and _débris_ that seem to corroborate all the stories of land‐ slips and stone‐rolling so common in this region. Standing here, it was easy to understand the most noted of these events—the mud‐slide of 1795, which threatened Weggis with destruction. Thirty‐one houses and eighty acres of land were buried beneath the creeping mass. It occurred, like the fall of the Rossberg, after a peculiarly rainy season. Though the story says that the slide was preceded by ominous symptoms, the earth so much resembles rich garden‐mould, and looks so loose and friable, that, recollecting yesterday’s rain, it made me quite nervous to look at it. Had I stayed gazing upwards much longer, I felt that I would certainly have fancied it was beginning to move downwards. “What an idea!” exclaimed Mr. C——, laughing—“the effect of nerves and sun combined! The church‐door is open, and the sanctuary lamp burning; so it would be much wiser and better for you to enter in!” Saying which, he preceded me into the sacred building.

Large, clean, and simple, as a rural church should be, it had three distinguishing points: first, an altar dedicated to S. Justus, one of the patron saints of Weggis, who was an archbishop of Lyons in the first centuries of its Christianity, thus affording, as in the case of S. Leodegar, another proof of the early ecclesiastical connection between Switzerland and the Frank Empire. Next, a large processional banner placed near the altar, and composed simply of the national standard—the beautiful white cross on the red ground—whose position in this spot it puzzled us to explain. Lastly, the model of a boat suspended from the ceiling, with two sailors rowing, whilst a bishop in full canonicals stood erect in the stern, in the act of giving them his benediction. It looked like an _ex‐ voto_, but our communicative landlord later informed us that it was the emblem of the Guild of S. Nicholas, “patron of all who navigate upon the lake.” Every Weggis man who has anything to do with the water belongs to the confraternity. Before steamers existed they numbered many hundreds, and, though of late the village occupations have been turned into other channels, the numbers are still numerous enough; for boats and smaller craft are even now much used on the lake. The confraternity is still full of life and vigor. The Feast of S. Nicholas is religiously kept in the village. The members of the Guild often assemble, but on that day they go in a body to church, accompanied by their wives and families, to offer thanks for the past and implore protection for the coming year.

Who shall describe our charming little dinner in the deep‐shaded arbor, with the glowing sun‐color lighting up the mountains, seen through its leaf‐framed openings? Such a clean _Kellnerinn_ waited upon us, and the _Gastherr_ himself all smiles and conversation! The beautiful trout too, “fresh from the Muotta‐Thal, just brought by the steamer from Brunnen.” The Muotta valley!

“But what’s in a name?” said Mrs. C——.

“A great deal more than we acknowledge,” I answered.

This one struck again the chord of Schwytz and the “Urschweiz” in our minds, but perhaps much more that of Soovorof and the hard fighting on the surrounding crags of the Muotta between his Russians and the French. Mr. C—— knew the locality, and waxed eloquent on the subject, until interrupted by an army of—wasps! attracted by some delicious cream with which our landlord wound up the dinner. It became a regular battle, and a doubtful one at first, waged in self‐defence. “Never had there been such a year for wasps,” said our host, slaying a couple so dexterously with his napkin that it betrayed considerable practice in the art. “But it had altogether been a prosperous season”—two more knocked down by Mrs. C——. “So no one had a right to complain”—three or four more timidly but effectually killed by Mrs. C—— and myself. “The villagers had made a great deal of money by their fruit and flowers carried up the mountain by their children,” he continued; until at last, counting our victims by tens and twenties during this running dialogue, we were left in peaceful possession of the scene, and ready to hear wonderful reports of Weggis prosperity. The Golden Lion evidently would have been pleased to keep us longer, but the horses were waiting and the afternoon advancing; so, despite the attractions—minus the wasps—we were obliged to depart.

Our path led at first up behind the hotel, through lanes, and meadows enamelled with wild flowers, and dotted here and there with picturesque cottages under magnificent chestnuts and walnut‐trees. The whole of this portion is on the site of the former land‐slip, now the richest and most highly‐cultivated district of the mountain. On every side the views were enchanting; Mount Pilatus standing forth in all his grandeur just opposite, displaying folds and tracts of pasture‐ground we had not attributed to his rugged form. Lost in admiration, we rode on in comparative silence, until we halted, to refresh the men and horses, at a _café_ under a splendid tree, and soon after reached a chapel sheltered by a rock, called in our hand‐book the Heiligenkreuz, or Church of the Holy Cross. “The beginning of the Stations to Kaltbad,” said my guide, a dark‐ eyed, refined‐looking man, who had spoken but little hitherto. “Stations to the _Wallfahrtort_, or place of pilgrimage at Kaltbad,” he repeated, noticing my perplexed countenance. “Kaltbad is a _Gnadenort_, or ‘place of grace,’ to us, madam,” he continued, “although you perhaps only know it as a _Curort_.” And such was the sober truth. I had never heard it spoken of as anything but a huge hotel with salubrious air. So now I entered into conversation with my guide, and found that he constantly made the Stations, in common with all the Weggis population, up this rugged ascent, until they reach the church at Kaltbad. “Would I not go to see the church?” he asked. “It was indeed a _Gnadenort_. But the feast of the year I could not see, for it takes place in the middle of May, just before the flocks are sent up to the summer pastures. Then there is a procession up the mountain, with the banner we had noticed in the parish church—the white cross on the red ground.”

So here was the explanation of its place of honor inside the sanctuary—one more reason why the Weggis folks should hold it dear and we strangers regard it with reverence. Nay more: should we not love and cherish a flag which not only symbolizes, but is practically used by, a modern free people in connection with their highest and noblest feelings? “In this procession, headed by the priest,” my informant continued, “we, the people, make the Stations with hymns and prayers as we go up, and, after first visiting the Kaltbad church, all ends by the priest blessing the pastures on all sides before the cattle are permitted to be brought up to them for the summer season.” The higher we ascended, the steeper became the road under a straight face of rock, and we could readily fancy how picturesque, even from an artist’s point of view, such a procession must be, headed by the red flag, winding its way up this rugged mountain‐road; but, combined with the spirit and faith which animate it, it is impossible to conceive anything more beautiful.

This peasant was a native of Weggis, and soon grew communicative. “Oh! yes, he had often been to Einsiedeln; every one in that country had many, many times made the pilgrimage there.” And in fervent language he described the place to me. He had also been to Tell’s Chapel often, but not yet to Tell’s Platform. That was the great object of his ambition, what he most wished to accomplish, with a visit to Sachslen to see “Bruder Klaus,” as so many of his neighbors had done; but another year should not pass without his carrying out his intentions. Amidst conversation of this kind we climbed up the straight wall of rock, which seemed to have no issue, until suddenly we reached a curious group called the Felsenthor, composed of large fragments fallen from above exactly in the semblance of a “rocky gate,” as the name implies, and whence the view is magnificent.

The afternoon was lovely. At each turn one snowy peak after another had been coming into view. The air, though warm, was fresher and brisker than at Weggis, while the vegetation had sensibly changed from the luxuriant chestnuts to the pines and fir‐trees of the Alpine heights. Nothing could be more poetic and tranquil than our half‐hour’s repose at this beautiful point, noticing the approach of sunset‐tints on the mountain‐wall just opposite which overhangs Vitznau; watching the pretty steamers looking like dragon‐flies hovering over the lake two thousand feet below; and then reflecting on the faith and piety of our humble attendants, which shed a vivifying atmosphere over the whole scene. Our minds were still full of these thoughts as we set forth again for our last ascent to Kaltbad, about three‐quarters of an hour distant, through a pretty dell of fallen rocks and fresh verdure. We had quite forgotten the existence of the railway or its feverish life, when all at once a turn in the road gave a rude shock to our peaceful meditations. There were the trains laboring up a barren, steep hill beside us—one that would be too steep for any horse without three or four zigzag turns and windings. Three separate trains were coming up at certain distances in succession, the engines puffing and snorting, panting and laboring, in the effort to push the one carriage before each, as though the struggle were too much for their fast‐failing strength. It made one tremble to watch them, and it seemed impossible to comprehend how the passengers looked so quiet and unconcerned. How Mrs. C—— and I congratulated ourselves on having kept old‐fashioned ways and despised “progress,” at least for once in our travels! And when I also thought of the varied charms of our ride, and all that I had seen of the population and their ways, I felt that no one who rushes through a country at high‐ pressure railway speed can ever hope to understand its people half as well as those who come into closer contact with them.

Before we had time to recover from the impressions of the railway, Kaltbad itself appeared in sight, high above our heads, like a green‐jalousied monster of some German watering‐place lifted bodily up from the depths below. Anything more unpoetic than its first view is not to be found; though it must at once be admitted that first impressions are not to be trusted in this particular case. It was a cruel shock, however, to our visions of pious pilgrimages and processions; a return to the prose of life we had never contemplated at four thousand four hundred and thirty‐ nine feet above the level of the sea.

Our young friends were anxiously awaiting us on the long terrace in front of the hotel with such sensational accounts of their railway journey as might well have obliterated all remembrance of the _Wallfahrtort_, or “place of pilgrimage,” but for the parting reminder of my guide, that “the church was behind the house, and he hoped I would be sure to see it.” But the C——s’ only thought now was of the sunset about to take place, and they hurried us off, without a moment’s delay, to a beautiful spot, called the Käuzli, ten minutes’ distance from the hotel. Certainly no view could be more glorious! Before us spread half the northern portion of Switzerland—Mount Pilatus right opposite, Lucerne at our feet, Sempach, the great lake, just beyond, bathed in a flood of crimson, as though in harmony with its memories, and bringing back to our minds at one glance Arnold von Winkelried and all the grand history related to us so recently by Herr H——. The seven great peaks of the Oberland, including the Wetterhorn, Monk, and Eiger, towered above the clouds to our right, while the summits on the south, half facing the sunset, were lit up by the same kaleidoscopic coloring that we had witnessed on the first evening of our arrival at Lucerne. Spell‐bound by this fairy‐like scene, we lingered here till nearly dark, and it seemingly became too late to seek out the little church. But young C—— had discovered it that afternoon, and led me by an intricate back pathway to its very door. Even at that late hour it was open, the lamp burning before the altar, and many figures could be distinguished devoutly praying in the twilight. These, as I afterwards learned, were servants of the hotel—the laundresses, bath‐women, and porters, who came to pay their visit to the Blessed Sacrament before retiring to rest after their busy day’s work. Mass was celebrated every morning at half‐past seven o’clock, they said. My own devotions over, I was again led back to the hotel, where the brilliantly‐lighted rooms and crowd of fashionably‐dressed ladies—although the material comforts are by no means to be despised—were still in harsh discord with our ideas of mountain life.

Next morning, as if we had been in the plain, the church‐bell tolled at the stated hour, and found us ready to sally forth in answer to its call. In the hotel all was bustle and clatter; but what wonder? Three hundred guests and upwards have, on an average, to be provided for daily during the season. In the middle of July four hundred and twenty were at one time under this roof, but, happily for us, the numbers had now sensibly decreased. No church, however, was visible, and it was only on inquiry that I found a pathway in the rear of the house leading behind two rocks—a true _Felsenthor_, or “rocky gate,” they made—hiding away their little treasure. Once past them, there stood the church, with the sun shining on its roof, small and simple, but perfect in all its proportions, nestling amongst the encircling crags and overhanging trees, from amidst which, opposite the door, trickled a stream of the clearest water. Mass had just commenced at the centre altar, over which stood a statue of the Blessed Virgin and Child, surrounded by a garland of flowers, and two bouquets were laid, evidently as a pious offering, on the two side altars, which were also adorned by excellent paintings. A handsome silver lamp hung in the sanctuary, and there was a confessional, besides benches capable of accommodating a couple of hundred people, all neatly painted and very clean. To‐day the congregation was small, for the servants could not be spared, we were told, at that hour from their work, and there were few Catholic visitors in the house; but we noticed that the clerk rang the church‐bell at the Gospel and the Elevation, so that the shepherds and others scattered about on the mountain might join their intention with the priest at the altar. Nothing could exceed the quiet of the spot. It might have been miles away from the noisy world hard by, no sound audible but the trickling of the stream outside, heard through the open door, and enhancing the deep tranquillity of the scene. A most perfect haven of rest it made for weary souls or pious pilgrims, and a worthy aim, with the constant presence of the Blessed Sacrament, for any procession toiling up the precipitous mountain‐side. When Mass was over, we lingered awhile, and, looking round, a large, illuminated tablet caught our attention. What was our delight to find it gave the whole history of the place in the following words:

“KALTBAD ON THE RIGI.

“Amongst the venerated spots which the goodness of God seems to have especially chosen for the distribution of rich spiritual and temporal gifts, Kaltbad on the Rigi has for centuries enjoyed a well‐founded reputation. The natural operation of the remarkably cold water has in itself given life and health to thousands. But far more effect has been produced by trustful prayers, joined with the contrite and devout reception of the holy sacraments, and aided by the powerful intercession of the pure Virgin‐Mother of God and of other saints. Remarkable and often perfectly miraculous cures of countless Christians, in the most different circumstances of body and soul, have here taken place, which have partly been recorded in writing, and partly live on in grateful remembrance.

“In former times this place was called the ‘Schwesterborn,’ or ‘Spring of the Sisters’; for the legend relates that in the reign of the Emperor Albert of Austria—in the beginning of the XIVth century—three pious sisters retired to this wilderness in order to escape from powerful governors, or _Vogts_, and here led holy and saintly lives. The first miraculous cure on record is that of a devout _Landsassen_ of Weggis, named Balthasar Tolen, in the year 1540. From year to year the reputation of this spring increased. In the year 1585, on the 20th of May, the first small chapel was consecrated in honor of God, of the holy Archangel Michael and the other angels, and of the holy shepherd Wendelin, by Balthasar, Bishop of Ascalon. It proved, however, insufficient for the number of Alpine inhabitants and pilgrims. Even after those belonging to the canton Schwytz built themselves a chapel, a hundred years later, at Mary in the Snow, or ‘Maria zum Schnee,’ the want of a larger church was still felt. The present one, with three altars, the middle one of which possesses the image of the ever Blessed Mother of God, and the two side ones the pictures of the holy martyr S. Lawrence and the father of the church, S. Jerome, was built in the year 1779, and considerably renovated in the year 1861, when the two new side altars and their paintings by Theodore von Deschwanden were added.

“On the 20th of July, 1782, His Holiness Pius VI. granted a plenary indulgence to all the faithful, on any day whatsoever, on the condition that after approaching the holy sacraments of Confession and Communion, with contrite and worthy dispositions, they here devoutly pray for the union of all Christian princes, the extirpation of heresy, and the increase of the Holy Catholic Church—an indulgence which can be applied to the souls in purgatory.

“In order to afford the opportunity of assisting at divine service on Sundays and holidays to the shepherds as well as to the pilgrims, and also of approaching the holy sacraments, a special priest is here appointed during the whole summer season.”

So here again, even here, the Austrians and imperial _Vogts_ were at the root of all things—in this instance, however, and unconsciously, the source of good to many poor sufferers; for numberless _ex‐votos_ filling the end of the little church eloquently told that it had proved to them a true “place of grace,” as my guide of yesterday had so beautifully called it. And the little stream outside was the real “Kaltbad,” whose wonder‐ working effects had first given the place its name. Quaint and rude were all the paintings, but full of life and feeling, mostly from the neighborhood—from Weggis, Vitznau, and Gersau. Yes, there was a man in a boat in danger on the lake, just as we had seen from the Gersau hotel two evenings ago; but this one is praying fervently with clasped hands, and we longed to know if those who were saved the other day had done likewise.

Then here is a family of boys and girls kneeling in rows, the father and mother behind, all with their pink, and blue, and green rosaries twined round their hands, in the selfsame manner that the Gersau children had theirs during Mass! Above, a child of two years old, kneeling beside its mother, has a rosary hanging on its arm; quaint little things in caps like those of their elders, or infants tied on pillows with quantities of red bows. Red was so much the prevailing color that it seemed as if it must have some reference to their beloved national flag. And then there were small waxen hearts, and ears, and a wooden hand with a fearful gash, the offering, no doubt, of a grateful wood‐cutter. Some of these are upwards of a hundred or a hundred and fifty years old, with inscriptions in the native dialect, full of pathos and local color. But most striking of all is a large painting of the very wall of rock up which we had climbed from Weggis yesterday, bearing the following simple‐worded inscription:

“Be it known to all, that by the breaking up of the dangerous Rigirocks on the Weggis mountain some of the inhabitants were threatened with the complete destruction of all their possessions. In this extremity and distress they turned to heaven, and, with firm confidence in the gracious Mother of all the angels, they here sought and found help; for instantly the loosening of the rocks ceased, and all became quiet again. Therefore, as a perpetual memorial of praise and thanksgiving to God and the Mother of Mercy, they have consecrated and hung up this tablet, _anno_ 1753.”

This was clearly forty‐two years before the fatal mud‐slide which destroyed so much, and it would be most interesting to know whether the later victims turned hitherward for succor; but of this no record exists in the church. In the above painting the Blessed Mother, holding the divine Infant in her arms, is represented standing in the centre of the rock‐wall, with S. Michael on one side and S. Lawrence on the other, just as if they had been visible. Had we only beheld this tablet before, with what different eyes should we have looked at this face of rock yesterday from the cemetery below, as also during our ascent! And what proof such a picture and inscription give of the strong faith of the Weggis population in the unseen world under whose blessed protection they live in peace and confidence! Whilst we tarried, peasant after peasant came in. One, an old woman, took out her rosary, and told her beads leisurely; another, younger and busier, laid down her basket, prayed for a few minutes with recollection, and then went on to her work; but what most struck us was a little girl of about twelve, who also had her basket, full of fruit and flowers, and had been there before we arrived for Mass. She waited until we left, and then evidently thought that we had finally departed. Unexpectedly, however, I returned to look at the tablet again, and I beheld the little maiden in the act of dropping some money into the poor box, blushing modestly when her eyes caught mine. I asked, and found that she was a Weggis child—one of the number that climb the mountain like antelopes up to this hotel daily to sell their “fresh figs,” “peaches,” and “flowers”—for they offer them in good English—the majority of whom first pay their visit to the Blessed Sacrament in this church, and leave some little offering for themselves or their parents. She was a blue‐eyed, intelligent girl—one who had made her first communion two years previously, and approached the Holy Sacrament _manchmal_—many times, she said, during the course of the year.

As time went on, experience taught us that the children of the Rigi are one of its most distinctive characteristics. Intelligent, bright‐ countenanced, and yet modest, they are the most attractive race of juveniles to be met with in Switzerland, and, as yet, are unspoiled by contact with the stranger crowd. They form the most remarkable contrast to those of the Bernese Oberland, where the grandeur of Grindelwald and other spots is so much marred by the swarms of sickly beggar‐children that there flock round one from all quarters. Here, on the contrary, they are brimful of health and intelligence, and never once during all our wanderings in the forest cantons did a beggar, old or young, ever cross our path. So much for the popular fallacy, or rather calumny, which says that prosperity, comfort, and thrift are alone to be found in the Protestant cantons, and that beggary, want, and uncleanliness mark the entrance into the Catholic districts. Like many such sayings, it does not bear investigation; but when even the most just‐minded start on their travels with prejudiced minds, it is astonishing how readily they accept the opinions of men whose want of observation they despise at home. Above all, should the question be anything concerning Catholicity, their wilful blindness surpasses all belief. Some exceptions to this rule there certainly are, increasing, too, each year, like the celebrated Dr. Arnold, for instance, who frankly admitted that he had found nothing in Switzerland to justify such a verdict being passed on its Catholic population, and was generous enough to acknowledge this.

Nor are the children who cover the Rigi, selling fruit and flowers, idlers in any way. The law requires their attendance at school up to the age of eight all the year round, but from eight to twelve only during the winter months. This arrangement has been made in order that they may accompany their parents to the upland _châlets_, or, as often happens, mind the cattle alone on the higher pastures. A most interesting class they are, and one must ardently pray that nothing may ever change or modernize them, according to the present ideas of so‐called “civilization”!

For several days we took up our abode at Kaltbad, and never had cause for one moment’s regret. The hotel is in itself a marvel of material comfort and luxury at such an altitude; the air brisk, invigorating, and yet balmy, and the views simply lovely. Who can forget the terrace facing the Uri‐Rothstock, Tittlis, and many another peak and pass, and overhanging Vitznau, whence we could even distinguish my favorite red standard floating over its hotel, as the steamers came and went to Lucerne or Fluelen, and the light smoke of the engines told that the trains were creeping up towards us? Sometimes, it is true, the lake and all below were hidden by the clouds that settled in thick masses over the water or floated beneath us in light, vapory forms, while the heights and summits opposite shone, like Kaltbad, in brilliant sunlight; making us more fully realize the great elevation we were inhabiting in such tranquillity.

Then, the mornings spent in the “Wilderness,” which is represented _nowadays_ by fir‐trees, descendants of those the three sisters knew, but at present embedded in velvety turf on the hillside, with seats and tables carefully placed at the best points of view! And the dear little church to turn into at all times and hours, with the lamp ever burning, and never quite empty! The afternoons we devoted to longer excursions, ascents and descents in all directions. That to the _Kulm_, or Summit, was made by rail, despite its terrors and perils. The young people insisted on our making the experiment, but they could not succeed in persuading us elders to return, except on foot! The Kaltbad world seems to go through the ordeal unconcernedly; but nervous and uncomfortable work it must always be, no matter how custom may familiarize them with it. One spot especially is most alarming, where the precipice seems to go straight down from the railroad to the plain many thousand feet below. As a matter of course, the sunset at the _Kulm_ is the great _event_ on the Rigi—one, however, which altogether depends upon the weather. We were most fortunate in catching a clear atmosphere, and consequently distinct horizon. Then, sleeping at the large hotel at the top, we included the famed sunrise in the same excursion. Oh! for the pen of poet to describe either of these sights properly. They are among those grand scenes which nature holds so completely in her own keeping that no rush of commonplace humanity can ever lower or vulgarize them. Crowds from all countries were present, yet we saw nothing save the glorious panorama before us—the sun sinking grandly behind the Jura Mountains in the west, or rising majestically from behind the Sentis far away in Appenzell, after having first heralded his approach by coloring with the light touch of “rosy‐fingered morn” the Finster‐Aarhorn, Wetterhorn, Monk, and Jungfrau, as they stand in gradual succession, facing the east, in the Bernese Oberland.

Here, too, were all the scenes of that famous Swiss history which we had been studying within the last few days—the town of Schwytz in the Urschweiz, bright and cheerful on its fresh, green meadows; Lomerz, where Stauffacher commenced the great revolution; the small lake of Egeri, the site of the battle of Morgarten; Kappel, on this side of the Zurich line of hills—the Albis—with its monument to Zwingle, who was killed here in battle against the Schwytzers; Königsfelden, further north, the scene of Albrecht’s murder, and, later, the site of the sanguinary Agnes’ convent; Küssnacht at our feet, with Tell’s Chapel close by, the object of my guide’s pilgrimages, and where the fatal arrow is said to have entered Gessler’s heart; the Lake of Sempach, and Lucerne towards the northwest—every spot, in short, hallowed by some memory sacred to Swiss patriotism or piety.

A circumference of three hundred miles is said to be included in this panorama, dotted here and there with thirteen lakes, distinguishable in clear weather. But it needs a mountaineer’s eye to detect this number, for, though they certainly do exist, as proved by the map, even the youthful sight of George C—— and his sister failed to count more than eleven. The other two had “to be taken on trust,” on the word of the guides, who declared that particular gleams of sunlight rested on distant waters. But it is not the number of lakes or the extent of view which gives such renown to this favorite spot. It is the grand poetry of its nature, the interest of its associations, and that great, indescribable influence which the poet addresses as

“Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon.”

Amongst the pleasantest of many pleasant memories, that of Sunday at Kaltbad stands forth pre‐eminent. The weather was brilliant, and high and low appeared in corresponding costume. It cannot be said that in the hotel proper the day was altogether sanctified or edifying; for, except the Catholics, the English Protestants, and a rare few others, the foreigners show little outward sign of remembering the day. Indeed, one lady ingenuously confessed her surprise that we should be so careful about attending church, considering that _she_ never thought of it whilst “taking the waters,” as she liked to fancy she was doing at Kaltbad. “Who did?” she asked; and certainly it looked as if the majority were of her way of thinking. Not the peasants, however, and let us hope that their example may yet influence the strangers. Alas! alas! how one trembles, lest the reverse may be the result of this inroad of “civilized” multitudes to their midst! But so far no harm seems to have come of the contact. As the hour for Mass drew near, men and women were to be seen coming from various points, and when we reached the church it was so full that a large overflow of the congregation had taken up their position in the little porch outside. It seemed as though the history of the past century would repeat itself over again; that a new church would become necessary, and another new tablet be put up, telling future generations that the present one had “proved insufficient for the number of Alpine inhabitants and pilgrims.” No sight could be prettier, considering the locality, the bright sun, and all these people in their Sunday dress. In the latter particular, however, one peculiarity had a singular effect, namely, that on the Rigi “full dress” for the men seems to consist in the absence of their outer coats, and the Sunday distinction is shown only by the snow‐white linen of their shirt‐sleeves and collars. All had their alpenstocks and their prayer‐books, which they read devoutly during the whole time. Anna and I also remained outside, as there was no room within; but we heard every word distinctly, and could see the altar through the open door and windows. The service began by an oblation of the Mass and the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity in German, in the very manner and words used in so many other countries, but notably in all the churches of Ireland. This was followed by a good sermon, in which the preacher chiefly urged the necessity of “keeping holy the Sabbath day,” of living in peace and concord, but likewise of holding fast to the principles of religion, “like their forefathers of old,” of whose virtues and steadfastness he spoke in glowing language. It was the first sermon we had had an opportunity of listening to in these parts, and it was very curious to hear, even in a small out‐of‐the‐way place of this kind, such allusions thus brought in as a matter of course, and so thoroughly in accordance with Herr H——’s predictions. At its termination we were surprised to see half a dozen of the hotel guests rise and leave; but these, we later learnt, were Lutherans, who, having no chaplain of their own, find no difficulty in coming to the preliminary part of the Catholic service, though they consider it their duty to leave before Mass commences. It was a curious instance of liberalism, and of the little essential antagonism German Protestants entertain towards the Catholic Church. At the end of Mass a prayer was said in German in honor of the Five Sacred Wounds, joined in by all, after which the congregation dispersed, some to the front of the hotel, and others in various directions. On these days alone a few picturesque costumes appear, but they are generally from other parts, as the Rigi boasts of nothing special of this kind. To‐day two women in bright bodices covered by silver buttons and crosses, and with silvered head‐dresses, enlivened the group of women—relations of the clerk coming, they said, to visit this spot from Bürglen, a long distance on the other side of the lake, and beyond Sachslen, the sanctuary of “Bruder Klaus.”

Not wishing to disturb our Anglican friends, who were singing hymns and performing their service in one of the drawing‐rooms of the house, Anna and I sauntered past the “Wilderness,” until we reached the Käuzli. The atmosphere was most clear, and the landscape so enchanting that a rest here seemed a fitting and heavenly portion of our morning worship. Weggis lay below; its church and the children’s corner, where I had stood lately gazing upwards in this direction, were at our feet, and Lucerne, with its girdle of battlemented walls at the upper end of the lake, further north, its houses and boats distinctly visible in the transparent atmosphere. The peasants could be seen here and there returning to their gray‐roofed _châlets_, but, save the tinkling bells of the light‐limbed cattle browsing in our neighborhood, no sound broke the perfect stillness of the scene. All at once the peal of Lucerne Cathedral came booming to us across the waters! It was eleven o’clock, which in those cantons is the Angelus hour, and in a moment the deep‐toned bell of Weggis sent its sound up to our very resting‐place. Then swiftly the echo was caught up by the churches of all the numberless pretty villages that here cover the land, until the whole country seemed to sound as with but one note. A more thrilling instance of faith and practice it were impossible to imagine, and, looking down at such a moment at this fruitful, prosperous district, one felt as if our Lord had already heard its prayers, and in his mercy blessed it.

Our afternoon walk was this day directed to the other Rigi sanctuary, “Maria zum Schnee,” or Mary of the Snow, the same mentioned in the Kaltbad tablet, and which, from Wordsworth’s beautiful poem, has obtained a more world‐wide name than its pretty neighbor; though in the locality itself no difference in celebrity is admitted between the two. The only striking distinction is that whilst Kaltbad has but the one simple appellation, “Mary of the Snow” rejoices in a _pet_ name, by which it is more generally known on the Rigi, where Klösterli, or “the little convent,” is its familiar and every‐day title. It lies deep in a southern fold of the mountain, unseen from Kaltbad, but only a couple of miles distant; so that it is a favorite walk with those visitors whose strength is unequal to the longer excursions. This year the charms of the mountain‐road have been sadly interfered with by the blasting of rocks necessary to the making of the railway branch to the Scheideck, and another line up from Arth to the Staffel, besides the building of an additional hotel, all which modern material improvements make one look forward with trepidation to their future effect on the old inhabitants. In a few years more these heights will be one vast mountain‐city—a new phase of life, which may have its own poetic side, it is true, and bring health and advantage to humanity in general, but which, during two or three months of the year, so completely changes the old character of the beautiful mountain that its friends of twenty and thirty years’ standing say they can no longer recognize its former simplicity. Hence our musings were somewhat melancholy, as we wandered on above the new railway‐line, until, from a bend in the hill, we unexpectedly came in sight of a completely new scene, the curious _Mythen_ rocks rising above Schwytz, in the distance, and Klösterli itself lying peacefully below us, as if sheltered from all harm in a dell beneath the _Kulm!_ It seemed a spot exactly made for snow, and one could almost fancy it buried at times under the soft embrace of some snow‐white drift. Whether the name first came from this circumstance of its position, or from its connection with the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, we had no opportunity of ascertaining; but, whatever the cause, the name and connection seemed most appropriate. Certain it is that the painting which is the chief ornament of S. Maria zum Schnee is a copy of the one at the great basilica, and, moreover, that the church at Klösterli has been, as is fitting, affiliated to the one in Rome. The festival is kept on the same day, the 5th of August, and the Rigi church was consecrated by a Papal Nuncio in 1700, and endowed since then with many privileges by Pope Clement XII., so that the link in interest and connection has never been wanting. Mr. C—— knew all the particulars, and as we descended the steep pathway to Klösterli he recalled to us the beautiful tradition about the foundation of Santa Maria Maggiore. He reminded us how a Roman senator and his wife having been converted to Christianity, the latter had a dream which made her believe they ought to build a church in honor of the Blessed Virgin. Her husband, however, dismissed the idea as a fancy of her brain, until, having had the same dream for three successive nights, his wife on the last occasion understood that she ought to choose the site which should be covered with snow on the following morning. Her husband, still unwilling, accompanied her in the search, when, not far from the house, they found the top of the Esquiline Mount completely covered with a fine crust of snow! This occurred on the 5th of August, and, bringing conviction to the husband’s mind, he at once consented to give up his fortune for the purpose, and built on the spot the Basilica, which now covers the extent of ground marked out by the fall of snow. Another version states that it was the result of a vision which the pope, S. Liberius, and John, the patrician, had on the same night, and which was confirmed the following morning, the 5th of August, by a miraculous fall of snow, which extended over the space the church was to occupy. Certain it is that the fall of snow occurred, on this very spot too, and that the recollection of this wonderful origin is still kept alive in Rome. On the Feast of Santa Maria ad Nives, on the 5th of the hot month of August, a shower of white leaves is made to fall on the congregation attending High Mass at the great Basilica. What affiliation, therefore, could be more fitting for a mountain chapel? With renewed interest we hurried to the spot. The village consists entirely of a few inns, the convent—where live the Capuchin fathers who have care of the church—and of the church itself, much larger than that at Kaltbad, and which forms the centre of the whole place. The old character is maintained up to the present time, these inns being still most homely—very different from the luxurious abodes elsewhere on the mountain—and the convent in reality an hospice for pilgrims, which at once gives the impression of a higher aim than mere pleasure‐seeking. The Capuchin fathers, who glide about with serious mien in their brown habits, add to the solemnity, further increased by the depth of the valley “making sunset,” as the sailors say, to the place long before it happens on the surrounding heights. It has nothing cheerful or peculiarly attractive to the general public, so one might hope that it would escape the contagion of a worldly spirit. This year the gloom has been added to by a dreadful accident connected with the unwelcome railway, and one heard of little else on the spot. A young lady who was sitting with her father outside the Sonne Hotel, writing at one of the small tables, was suddenly struck by a large stone, thrown by the blasting of a rock close by, and died in less than half an hour. She was to have gone away from Klösterli on the previous day with the rest of her family, but had remained a while longer merely to take care of him. His grief, consequently, was overwhelming. It was a melancholy inauguration of the “iron road,” and for the moment made a deep impression on all concerned. But it is much to be dreaded that it will not be a lasting one. The father, to whom we spoke, shook his head gravely, as he pointed to the railway works, expressing his fears that from a place of pilgrimage they would soon convert his dearly‐ loved Klösterli into a simple _Curort_, or, in modern parlance, a _Sanatorium_. He complained of its baneful influence already; for, though the peasants are thoroughly good and pious, the immense influx of tourists gives them little time for devotions during the summer season, especially in the month of August, when the church festival occurs. They, the monks, belong to the large Capuchin convent at Arth, from which two or three have been sent here at the special request of the commune, ever since the foundation, to take care of this church and attend to the wants of the pilgrims. But the numbers of the latter are diminishing from the above causes, and hospitality has this year been chiefly bestowed on invalid priests, who here seek change of air for weeks at a time. The procession similar to that from Weggis, which used to come up from Arth for the 5th of August, making the Stations on the way, did not take place this time. Nor had the people leisure, either, for their old games, which followed the church services as a matter of course. Sad and melancholy, he seemed fearful of this inroad of materialism and the many temptations to which the poorer classes may be exposed. The tranquillity of the spot will doubtless be ruined by the puffing engine and obtrusive railway, and we could not but rejoice doubly that the “haven of rest” at Kaltbad lies safely hidden away behind its rocks out of reach of such disturbance. But so many have been the prayers answered and hearts cured within the last two centuries by the intercession of holy “Mary of the Snow” that it is hard to believe so favored a sanctuary, though this may perhaps be a moment of transition, will be altogether swept away or lose its holy influence on so essentially pious a population. The church is crowded with _ex‐votos_, many of them the same seen by Wordsworth in 1820, when he sang in the following strain of

“Our Lady Of The Snow.

“Meek Virgin Mother, more benign Than fairest star upon the height Of thy own mountain set to keep Lone vigils thro’ the hours of sleep, What eye can look upon thy shrine Untroubled at the sight?

“These crowded offerings, as they hang In sign of misery relieved, Even these, without intent of theirs, Report of comfortless despairs, Of many a deep and cureless pang And confidence deceived.

“To thee, in this aërial cleft. As to a common centre, tend All sufferings that no longer rest On mortal succor, all distrest That pine of human hope bereft, Nor wish for earthly friend.

“And hence, O Virgin Mother mild! Though plenteous flowers around thee blow, Not only from the dreary strife Of winter, but the storms of life, Thee have thy votaries aptly styled Our Lady of the Snow.

“Even for the man who stops not here, But down the irriguous valley hies, Thy very name, O Lady! flings, O’er blooming fields and gushing springs, A holy shadow soft and dear Of chastening sympathies!

“Nor falls that intermingling shade To summer gladsomeness unkind; It chastens only to requite With gleams of fresher, purer light; While o’er the flower‐enamelled glade More sweetly breathes the wind.

“But on!—a tempting downward way, A verdant path, before us lies; Clear shines the glorious sun above; Then give free course to joy and love, Deeming the evil of the day Sufficient for the wise.”

In our walk hither along the brow of the hill we had talked to some pretty, bright‐eyed children running about to call in their father’s cattle, asking their names and other questions; but, returning the same way, all our thoughts and attention were given to the distant sound of avalanches, which the C——s declared came to us across the mountain‐tops from the region of the great Oberland range. Anything more sublime it were difficult to conceive in the fading light and soft hues of the sunset twilight. We had quite forgotten the children, but they had been thinking of us, and, passing on by their _châlet_, little Aloysius (a fair‐haired boy of three years old) was seen skipping down the green slope with a paper in his hand. It was a mysterious proceeding, especially when he came and eagerly presented it to me. But my surprise was greater on reading it to find that it consisted of prayers printed at Einsiedeln: the first teaching how to offer up one’s intention with the Masses that are being said all over the world; another to be said when present during the offertory of the Mass; and a third, when unable to attend in person, for daily recital at home in union with the priest at the altar. The little fellow evidently prized it, as taught by his mother, and it was fortunate that I was able to promise him it should hold a place amongst my treasures, and that I would say the beautiful prayers daily, which I have never failed to do. But he could not altogether know how much happiness his act caused me, chasing away the gloomy fears of the Capuchin father, and giving bright hope that a true spirit of piety will grow up with the rising generation.

Church Song.

“And when they had said an hymn, they went forth to the Mount of Olives.”—S. MARK xiv. 26. “Hymnum cecinit, ut et nos similiter faciamus.”—S. CHRYSOSTOM.

The Disciple.

A world I’d give to hear thee sing That song! Too long Is life until it bring The breaking of the bonds that cling About this deadly flesh. Sweet Lord, refresh My weary, longing soul; And this sad banishment condole With one faint echo of that strain Of melody divine, which must remain Yet murmuring through space Of all creation’s bound; And so controls The harmony that rolls In floods of majesty and grace Throughout thy dwelling‐place, From tuneful lyres Of angel choirs, From ceaseless rapturous songs Of shining saintly throngs, That every sound Heaven hears doth merely seem Made to accompany thy theme. Wondrous Singer, O my Lord and King! Tell me, who taught thee how to sing So sweet a strain?

The Master.

I heard my Mother’s voice one morn, Whilst yet in womb unborn, Chanting the canticle of praise She still in heaven doth raise; And when a boy, oft at her knee, She did the tuneful mystery Unfold to me. Wouldst hear me sing? ’Tis no hard thing. Go, hearken to the singing of my Bride With whom my Presence ever doth abide; Who is a Mother unto thee, Like as the Virgin, full of grace, to me. Her voice, in melody her own, If thou wilt mark its heavenly tone, Hath cunning art To make thy heart Hear mine again.

A Discussion With An Infidel.

XVIII. Personal Continuance.

_Reader_. The next question you treat, doctor, regards the immortality of the human soul, or, as you call it, “personal continuance.” In your opinion the spirit and the body, the soul and the brain, are so intimately and inseparably connected that a soul without a body, as “force without matter,” can never exist. I remember having already answered some of the grounds of this opinion; but as you make “personal continuance” the subject of a special chapter, I presume that it is in this chapter that you have condensed the strength and substance of all your arguments. How do you, then, establish your position?

_Büchner_. “A spirit without a body is as unimaginable as electricity or magnetism without metallic or other substances” (p. 196).

_Reader_. Unimaginable! Of course, a spiritual substance is not the object of imagination. Perhaps you mean that it is unthinkable, inconceivable, or unintelligible; which I deny.

_Büchner_. “Unprejudiced philosophy is compelled to reject the idea of an individual immortality and of a personal continuance after death. With the decay and dissolution of its material substratum, through which alone it has acquired a conscious existence and become a person, and upon which it was dependent, the spirit must cease to exist” (_ibid_.)

_Reader_. Beware of fallacies, doctor. You have not yet proved that the human soul needs a material substratum. Again, you merely assume that it is _through the body_ that the soul has acquired a conscious existence, whilst the fact is that the soul _through itself_ is conscious of its own existence in the body. Moreover, the soul does not become a person through the body it informs, but, on the contrary, confers on the body the privilege of being a part of the person. Lastly, the spirit is not dependent upon the body, except for the sensitive operations; and you cannot assume that the soul depends upon the body for its own being. Hence your conclusion is yet unproved.

_Büchner._ “All the knowledge which this spirit has acquired relates to earthly things; it has become conscious of itself in, with, and by these things; it has become a person by its being opposed against earthly, limited individualities. How can we imagine it to be possible that, torn away from these necessary conditions, this being should continue to exist with self‐consciousness and as the same person? It is not reflection, but obstinacy, not science, but faith, which supports the idea of a personal continuance” (pp. 196, 197).

_Reader._ I am rather amused than embarrassed at your identifying reflection with science and obstinacy with faith, as I know that you are absolutely incapable of accounting for such a nonsensical ranting. It is not true that “all the knowledge acquired by our soul relates to earthly things.” We have already discussed this point, and shown that our knowledge of earthly things is only the alphabet of human knowledge. Nor is it true that our soul “has become conscious of itself by such things.” Consciousness is, even objectively, an immanent act, and the soul cannot be conscious of its own self, except by looking upon itself. No one can say _I perceive_ without a knowledge of the _I_; and therefore the soul knows its own self independently of the perception of other earthly things. But, as there are philosophers who account for self‐consciousness by the primitive accidental sensations experienced by the child, I will suppose with you that our soul becomes conscious of its own existence by means of such sensations. Does it follow from this that the union with the body is “a necessary condition” for the existence of the soul? Such a conclusion would be absurd. For it latently assumes that the soul must lose its consciousness of self by losing the instrument of its first sensation. Now, to assume this is at least as absurd as to assume that by losing any of your senses you lose all the knowledge already acquired through them, or that by going out of Germany you cease to know everything that is German.

But your greatest mistake regards the notion of personality. The spirit, you say, “has become a person by its being opposed against earthly, limited individualities.” What does this mean? First of all, the spirit _does not become_ a person, but is itself the source of human personality. Secondly, to be a person, there is no need of other earthly, limited individualities, against which the spirit should be opposed. Any intelligent being, left to itself, with the free disposal of its own self, is a person. _Persona_, says Boethius, _est rationalis naturæ individua substantia_; and this celebrated definition, adopted by all the metaphysicians of the old school, is far from becoming obsolete. It would seem, then, that you speak of personality without knowing in what it consists. To prove that the soul cannot enjoy personal continuance in a state of separation, you should prove that the soul separated from the body _is not an intelligent being having a free use of its faculties_. Whatever else you may prove, if you do not prove this, will amount to nothing.

_Büchner._ “Physiology,” says Vogt, “decides definitely and categorically against individual immortality, as against any special existence of the soul” (p. 197).

_Reader._ Tell the physiologists to keep to their own business. The question of the immortality of the soul is not one of those which can be solved from the knowledge of our organs and their functions. All the physiologist can do is to show the existence in the organs of a principle which animates them, and which at death ceases to show its presence. What becomes of it the physiologist, as such, has no means of deciding. Hence your Vogt is supremely rash in affirming that “physiology decides definitely and categorically against individual immortality.”

_Büchner._ “Experience and daily observation teach us that the spirit perishes with its material substratum” (_ibid._).

_Reader._ Indeed? Let us hear how experience and daily observation teach what you assert. It is extremely curious that mankind should be ignorant of a fact which falls under daily observation.

_Büchner._ “There never has been, and never will be, a real apparition which could make us believe or assume that the soul of a deceased individual continues to exist; it is dead, never to return” (p. 198).

_Reader._ Allow me to remark, doctor, that you change the question. You had to show that experience and daily observation teach that the spirit perishes with the body. To say that there are no apparitions is not to adduce experience and daily observation, but to argue from non‐experience and non‐observation. Not to see a thing is not an argument against its existence, especially if that thing be not the object of sight; and therefore to infer the non‐existence of souls from their non‐apparition is a logical blunder. But, secondly, is it true that “there never has been, and never will be, a real apparition”?

_Büchner._ “That the soul of a deceased person,” says Burmeister, “does not reappear after death, is not contested by rational people. Spirits and ghosts are only seen by diseased or superstitious individuals” (_ibid._).

_Reader._ I do not say that souls, as a rule, reappear, or that we must believe all the tales of old women about apparitions. Yet it is a fact that Samuel’s ghost appeared to Saul and spoke to him; and it is a fact that the witch of Endor, whom Saul had consulted, was already famous for her power of conjuring up spirits, as it appears from the Bible, where we are informed that there were many other persons in the kingdom of Israel possessing a similar power, whom Saul himself had ordered to be slain. If you happen to meet with Martinus Del Rio’s _Magic Disquisitions_, you will learn that in all centuries there have been apparitions from the spiritual world. Devils have often appeared, saints have appeared, and, to make the reality of the apparitions incontrovertible, have left visible signs of their presence, or done things which no mortal man has power to do. I need not descend to particulars; yet I may remind you of the great recent apparition of Lourdes, and of the numberless miracles by which it was accompanied and followed, in the eyes of all classes of persons, including infidels and Freemasons, who left no means untried to discredit the facts, but they only succeeded in enhancing the value of the evidence on which such facts had been previously admitted. Come, now, and tell us that all the witnesses of such public facts are “diseased or superstitious individuals”!

It is therefore proved, by experience and observation, that there are apparitions, and that the human soul remains in existence after its separation from the body. But, although this proof suffices to convince all reasonable persons, philosophers furnish us with other excellent proofs of the immortality of the soul. Are you able to show that all such proofs are inconclusive?

_Büchner._ “There is something suspicious in the great zeal and the waste arguments with which this question has at all times been defended, which yet, for obvious reasons, has rarely experienced serious scientific attacks. This zeal appears to show that the advocates of this theory are rather anxious about their own conscience, since plain reason and daily experience are but little in favor of an assumption which can only be supported on theoretical grounds. It may also appear singular that at all times those individuals were the most zealous for a personal continuance after death whose souls were scarcely worthy of such a careful preservation” (p. 198).

_Reader._ This is vile language, doctor. Our zeal in defending the immortality of the soul arises from the moral importance of the point at issue; and there is nothing “suspicious” about it. Our “waste of arguments” is not yet certified; whereas your waste of words is already fully demonstrated. The immortality of the soul “has _rarely_ experienced serious scientific attacks,” or rather, it has _never_ experienced them, because real science does not attack truth, and therefore all attacks against the soul’s immortality have been, are, and will always be unscientific in the highest degree. “Plain reason,” without the least need of “daily experience,” convinces every thoughtful man that a truth based on good “theoretical grounds” cannot be rejected as a gratuitous “assumption,” especially when it is also supported by undeniable facts. Your closing utterance deserves no answer. Every sensible man will qualify it as downright insolence. Meanwhile, where are your proofs?

_Büchner._ “Attempts were made to deduce from the immortality of matter the immortality of the soul” (_ibid._).

_Reader._ This is simply ridiculous. Who ever admitted the immortality of matter?

_Büchner._ “There being, it was said, no absolute annihilation, it is neither possible nor imaginable that the human soul, once existing, should be annihilated; which would be opposed to reason” (p. 199).

_Reader._ Natural reason does not show the impossibility of annihilation; and therefore it was impossible for philosophers to argue as you affirm that they did. But, since you think that annihilation is quite impossible, how can you evade the argument?

_Büchner._ “There is no analogy between the indestructibility of matter and that of spirit. Whilst the visible and tangible matter sensually exhibits its indestructibility, the same cannot be asserted of spirit or soul, which is not matter, but merely an ideal product of a particular combination of force‐endowed materials” (_ibid._).

_Reader._ You merely rehash the old blunder already refuted in one of our past conversations. If the soul were nothing but a product of material combinations, it would certainly perish when those combinations are destroyed, and there would be no need of annihilation to make it vanish. But if the soul is an active principle, as you must admit, it cannot be a result of material combinations, and consequently it is a special substance, and cannot perish except by annihilation, just in the same manner as matter also cannot perish but by annihilation. Your ground for denying the analogy between the destructibility of matter and that of the spirit is therefore a false supposition. It is plain that there is not only analogy, but absolute parity, and that, if matter were really indestructible, the indestructibility of the soul would thereby be sufficiently established. But we do not avail ourselves of such argument; for we know that matter is destructible. You say that “the visible and tangible matter sensually exhibits its indestructibility”; but a little reflection would have sufficed to convince you that the possible and the impossible are not objects of sensible perception, but of intellectual intuition. Then you say that the soul is an “_ideal_ product of a particular combination of force‐endowed materials”; which is the veriest nonsense. For, were it true that a particular combination of materials produces the soul, such a product would be _real_, not _ideal_. Thus you have succeeded in condensing no less than three blunders into a few lines. But let this pass. Have you anything to add in connection with this pretended argument?

_Büchner._ “Experience teaches that the personal soul was, in spite of its pretended indestructibility, annihilated; _i.e._, it was non‐existing during an eternity. Were the spirit indestructible, like matter, it must not only, like it, last for ever, but have ever existed. But where was the soul before the body to which it belongs was formed? It was not; it gave not the least sign of an existence; and to assume an existence is an arbitrary hypothesis” (pp. 199, 200).

_Reader._ You grow eloquent, doctor, but without cause. We all admit that the soul did not exist before the body was formed. And, pray, how could the soul be annihilated if it did not exist? Are you doomed to utter nothing but blunders?

_Büchner._ “It is in the very nature of things that all that arises should necessarily perish” (p. 200).

_Reader._ By no means.

_Büchner._ “In the eternal cycle of matter and force nothing is destructible; but this only applies to the whole, while its parts undergo a constant change of birth and decay;” (_ibid._).

_Reader._ Try to be reasonable, dear doctor, and lay aside “the eternal cycle,” which has no existence but in your imagination. You promised to argue from experience and observation. Keep your promise.

_Büchner._ “I will. There is a state which might enable us to produce a direct and empirical argument in favor of the annihilation of the individual soul—the state of sleep. In consequence of corporeal changes, the function of the organ of thought is suspended, and the soul, in a certain sense, annihilated. The spiritual function is gone, and the body exists or vegetates without consciousness in a state similar to that of the animals in which Flourens had removed the hemispheres. On awakening, the soul is exactly in the state it was before sleep. The interval of time had no existence for the soul, which was spiritually dead. This peculiar condition is so striking that sleep and death have been termed brothers” (p. 200).

_Reader._ This “direct and empirical argument” may be turned against you. For sleep is not real death; and the animal, when asleep, continues to be animated. If, therefore, the soul remains in the body, even when the organs are in a condition which excludes the possibility of their concurrence to the work of the soul, does it not follow that the soul enjoys an existence independent of the organs? It is true that, while the organs are in such a condition, the soul cannot utilize them for any special work; but it does not follow that “the soul is, in a certain sense, annihilated,” nor that “the spiritual function is gone.” You yourself admit that, “on awakening, the soul is exactly in the state it was before sleep.” I do not care to examine whether the state of the soul is _exactly_ the same; I rather incline to say that it is much better; but, waiving this, it is still necessary to concede that the soul cannot keep its state without preserving its existence, attributes, and faculties, and a direct consciousness of its own being, which can be recollected after sleep, when it has been accompanied, as in dreams, by a certain degree of reflection.

_Büchner._ I expected, sir, that you would appeal to dreams; for “the phenomena of dreaming have been used as arguments against the supposed annihilation of the soul during sleep, by their proving that the soul is also active in that state. This objection is founded upon error, it being well known that dreaming does not constitute the state properly called sleep, but that it is merely a transition between sleeping and waking” (p. 201).

_Reader._ I have not appealed to dreams. I simply mentioned the fact that in certain dreams, where a certain degree of reflection accompanies the acts of the soul, we have the possibility of remembering that we were conscious of our own being. Take away all dreams; you will not thereby lessen the certainty of our direct consciousness of our own being; you will only suppress an experimental subsidiary proof, of which we are in no special need. Moreover, remark, doctor, that “against the _supposed_ annihilation of the soul during sleep” we are by no means bound to bring arguments. It is necessary only to say _Nego assumptum_, and it will be your duty to prove your supposition. I observe, in the third place, that you cannot consistently maintain that dreaming is a state intermediate between sleeping and waking. For, as you affirm that the soul exists in the latter state, and does not exist in the former, you are constrained to affirm that in the middle state the soul cannot be said to exist, and cannot be said not to exist, but partakes of existence and non‐existence at the same time. Now, though you are so thoroughly accustomed to blundering, I am confident that you cannot but shrink from the idea of a non‐existent existence. And thus your definition of dreaming destroys your supposed annihilation of the soul during sleep.

_Büchner._ “Certain morbid conditions are still more calculated to prove the annihilation of our spirit. There are affections of the brain, _e.g._, concussions, lesions, etc., which so much influence its functions that consciousness is suspended. Such perfectly unconscious states may continue for months together. On recovery, it is found that the patients have no recollection whatever of the period which has passed, but connect their mental life with the period when consciousness ceased. This whole time was for them a deep sleep, sleep or a mental death; they in a sense died, and were born again. Should death take place during that period, it is perfectly immaterial to the individual, who, considered as a spiritual being, was already dead at the moment when consciousness left him. Those who believe in a personal immortality might find it somewhat difficult, or rather impossible, to explain these processes, or to give some clue as to the whereabouts of the soul during these periods” (p. 202).

_Reader._ It is neither impossible nor difficult to ascertain where the soul is during such periods; for it is in the body all the while. Only the actual conditions of its existence in the body preclude, by their abnormity, the exercise of some faculties. The soul is, in such cases, like the organist, who is unable to elicit the wonted sounds from the organ so long as the pipes are not properly supplied with wind. The patients you allude to are not corpses; and although you affirm that “they _in a sense_ died and were born again,” it is evident that they did not die at all, but only lost the proximate power of performing certain operations. The soul and the body, so long as they are together, must work together. Even the purely intellectual operations, in which the body has no part, are always naturally associated with the imaginative operations, in which the body has a considerable part; and when these latter, through the abnormal condition of the brain, are suspended, the former also are suspended, so far at least as there is question of reflex acts. And this fully accounts for the phenomena accompanying certain morbid states, without resorting to your pretended annihilation of the spirit. Accordingly, if you wish to argue against personal continuance, you must draw your objections from some other source.

_Büchner._ “The annihilation of a personal soul has been protested against upon moral grounds. It was, in the first place, asserted that the idea of an eternal annihilation is so revolting to the innermost feeling of man that it must be untrue. Although an appeal to feelings is not a scientific method of proceeding, it must certainly be admitted that the thought of an _eternal life_ is more terrifying than the idea of eternal annihilation. The latter is by no means repugnant to a philosophical thinker. Annihilation, non‐existence, is perfect rest, painlessness, freedom from all tormenting impressions, and therefore not to be feared” (pp. 204, 205).

_Reader._ This way of reasoning, doctor, is most extraordinary. First, you assume that the moral grounds on which our knowledge of the immortality of the soul is based consist of mere feelings. This is false. Secondly, you do not consider that there are rational tendencies which, whether you call them feelings or not, ought to be taken into account in a philosophic discussion, as they are of such a character that their fulfilment cannot be a matter of doubt. Thirdly, you exhibit _eternal life_ as a synonym of _perpetual torments_; for you suppose that the idea of eternal life is terrific, and that, to be free “from all tormenting impressions,” annihilation is necessary. Thus you conceive that after this life there can be nothing but the torments of hell. This is most certainly true with regard to unrepenting Freemasons; they have nothing else to expect, not even annihilation; and it would truly be better for them if they were annihilated or _had never been born_, as we know from the Gospel. But why should you take for granted that there is no heaven? It is plain that your argument in favor of annihilation is nothing but a miserable sophism. Lastly, I wish to remark, though it is of little importance to the question of immortality, that annihilation, or non‐existence, is _not_ perfect rest, as you imagine. For who is it that rests? Can you have the subject after its annihilation, or the rest without the subject? You see, I hope, that your logic here, too, is at fault.

_Büchner._ “Philosophers, perceiving the loose ground upon which they stand in regard to this question, have, in their endeavors to reconcile philosophy and faith, tried to help themselves by very singular expedients” (p. 205).

_Reader._ Loose ground and singular expedients indeed! Who will believe you?

_Büchner._ “The desire of our nature,” says Carrière, “to solve so many problems requires immortality, and the many sorrows of this earth would be such a shocking dissonance in the world if it were not to find its solution in a higher harmony, namely, in the purification and development of personal individuality. This and other considerations render immortality, from our point of view, a subjective certainty—a conviction of the heart” (p. 206).

_Reader._ Do you consider these words as a very singular expedient to reconcile philosophy and faith? What can you object to the thought they express?

_Büchner._ “Every one may, certainly, have _convictions of the heart_, but to mix them up with philosophical questions is unscientific. Either something accords with reason and experience—it is then true; or it does not accord—then it is untrue, and can find no place in philosophical systems” (_ibid._).

_Reader._ I see your trick, doctor. There are two kinds of convictions of the heart. Some of these convictions are accidental, transitory, not universal, and not invincible; others universal, permanent, and unchangeable. The first kind originates in accidental affections of particular persons in particular circumstances; and this kind of convictions should not be mixed up with philosophical questions. But the second kind owes nothing to accidental circumstances, and shows in its universality and invincibility its universal and unconquerable cause, which cannot be other than our rational nature; and this kind of convictions must be taken into account in the philosophical questions concerning our rational soul; for it is from the nature of the effects that we discover the nature of the causes. Now, “the conviction” which Carrière mentions belongs to this second kind; for it is common to all rational beings, and cannot be shaken off even by those who, like you, try to convince themselves of a future annihilation. We therefore can and must take into account such a conviction when we examine philosophically the nature of the soul.

Accordingly, it is absurd, on your part, to pretend that an appeal to such a conviction is “unscientific.” Nothing is more unscientific than to lay aside the effects while one wishes to investigate the causes.

As to your aphorism, “either something accords with reason and experience—it is then true; or it does not accord—then it is untrue,” I do not think that it can help you much. A thoughtless reader may indeed be dazzled by its fine glittering, and candidly believe that you are a most resolute champion and acute investigator of truth; but he who reflects on your reckless disregard of logic, tergiversation, and intellectual perversity will only wonder at your audacity in appealing to a principle which you trample upon in every page of your production. Yes, sir; what accords with reason and experience is true; but how can this be a plea for denying immortality?

_Büchner._ “It may be that it would be very fine if in heaven, as in the last act of a heart‐stirring drama, everything would resolve in a touching harmony or in general joy; but science has nothing to do with what _may be_, but with what _is_, and is accordingly compelled to infer from experience the finiteness of human existence. Indeed, a perfect solution of the enigmas of the universe, as Carrière desires, must be considered as impossible for the human mind. The moment we arrive at this point we are creators and capable of shaping matter according to pleasure. Such a knowledge would be equivalent to dissolution—annihilation—and there exists no being which can possess it. Where there is no striving there can be no life; perfect truth would be a sentence of death for him who has acquired it, and he must perish in apathy and inactivity” (p. 206).

_Reader._ It is of no use, doctor, to heap up assertions of this kind. They are all groundless. When you say that science has nothing to do with what may be, but with what is, you latently assume that between what may be and what is there must be opposition; whereas it is plain that nothing is but what could be. And again, when you mention _science_, what do you mean? Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and the like have certainly nothing to do with the immortality of the soul; but philosophy has something to do with it, and philosophy, the highest of sciences, decides that the human soul not only _may be_, but _must be_, immortal. In the third place, it is ludicrous to affirm that “experience shows the finiteness of human existence”; for our experience is limited to human life upon earth, whereas our discussion refers to after‐life. In the fourth place, you pretend that a full knowledge of truth is impossible to the human mind, for the wonderful reason that we would then be “creators and capable of shaping matter according to pleasure.” In this you commit two blunders; for, first, the knowledge of natural truths does not necessarily entail a physical power of shaping matter according to pleasure; and, secondly, were our souls to acquire such a power, we would not yet be creators, as creation is infinitely above the shaping of matter. You are never at a loss to find false reasons when needed to give plausibility to false assertions. Thus you invent the prodigious nonsense that a perfect knowledge of natural things “would be equivalent to annihilation,” and to support this strange notion you argue that “where there is no striving there can be no life,” as if a human soul, when in full possession of truth, could not find in its contemplation a sufficient exercise of intellectual life. Yet it is clear that striving for a good must end in a peaceful enjoyment of the same good; or else all our striving would be purposeless. On the other hand, if “perfect truth were a sentence of death for him who has acquired it,” would it not follow that the more we know, the less we live? But to conclude. How can you conciliate these two things: “The moment we possess full knowledge we are creators,” and “the moment we possess full knowledge we are annihilated”? or these two things: “We become capable of shaping matter according to pleasure,” and “we perish in apathy and inactivity”? Answer, old fox?

_Büchner._ “It may be that we are surrounded by many riddles” (p. 206). “In doubtful questions we must apply human knowledge, and examine whether we can arrive at any solution by experience, reason, and the aid of natural sciences. . . . Some believe they can give scientific reasons for the doctrine of individual immortality. Thus Mr. Drossbach discovered that every body contains a limited number of _monads_ capable of self‐ consciousness . . .” (p. 208).

_Reader._ There is no need of discussing such absurdities. We know, that monads are not self‐conscious.

_Büchner._ In fact, “Drossbach’s monads are too intangible to concern ourselves about them. We may, however, take this opportunity of alluding to the unconquerable difficulties which must arise from the eternal congregation of innumerable swarms of souls which belonged to men who, in their sojourn upon earth, have acquired so extremely different a degree of development” (_ibid._).

_Reader._ What unconquerable difficulties do you apprehend?

_Büchner._ “Eternal life is said to be a perfectioning, a further development, of earthly life, from which it would follow that every soul should have arrived at a certain degree of culture, which is to be perfected. Let us think, now, of the souls of those who died in earliest childhood, of savage nations, of the lower classes of our populations! Is this defective development or education to be remedied beyond? ‘I am weary of sitting on school‐benches,’ says Danton. And what is to be done with the souls of animals?” (pp. 208, 209).

_Reader._ Indeed, doctor, the ignorance of the unbeliever is astounding! Our children and the lower classes of our populations are not half as ignorant as you are. They would tell you that the light of the beatific vision dispels with equal facility all degrees of darkness which may remain in our souls in consequence of imperfect education, without any need of your “school‐benches” or other imaginary devices. They would tell you also “what is to be done with the souls of animals,” on which you most stupidly confer “the same rights” as are possessed by the human soul. If beasts have the same rights as men, it is a crime to kill them; or, if this is no crime, it must be as lawful to kill and devour men! Are you ready to accept this doctrine?

_Büchner._ “There is no essential and natural distinction between man and animal, and the human and animal soul are fundamentally the same” (p. 209).

_Reader._ Do you understand what you say? What do you mean by “fundamentally”?

_Büchner._ I mean that the animal soul is only distinguished from the human soul “in quantity, not in quality” (_ibid._).

_Reader._ Then you yourself must have the qualities of an ass, and there will be no difference between you and the ass, except in this: that the asinine qualities are greater in you than in the ass. Your efforts to prove that beasts are endowed with intellect, reason, and freedom are very amusing, but lack a foundation. It would be idle to examine minutely your chapter on the souls of brutes; it will suffice to state that your reasoning in that chapter is based on a perpetual confusion of the sensitive with the intellectual faculties. Sense and intellect do not differ in quantity, but in quality. No sensation can be so intensified as to become an intellectual concept or a universal notion. Hence no intellect can arise from any amount of sensibility. Brutes feel; but, although their sensitive operations bear a certain analogy to the higher operations of the intellectual soul, nothing gives you the right to assume that brutes can reason. So long as you do not show that asses understand the rules and the principles of logic, it is useless to speak of the intellect of beasts. Their cognitions and affections are altogether sensitive; reasoning, morality, and freedom transcend their nature as much as your living person transcends your inanimate portrait in the frontispiece of your book.

But reverting to the immortality of the human soul, I wish you to understand that in the course of your argumentation you have never touched the substantial points of the question. You not only have not refuted, but not even mentioned, our philosophical proofs of immortality. You have been prating, not reasoning. To crown your evil work a couple of historical blunders were needed, and you did not hesitate to commit them. The first consists in asserting that “the chief religious sects of the Jews knew nothing of personal continuance,” while it is well known that the chief religious sect of the Jews was that of the Pharisees, who held not only the immortality of the soul, but also the resurrection of the body. The second consists in asserting that “among the enlightened of all nations and times the dogma of the immortality of the soul has had ever but few partisans” (p. 213), while the very reverse is the truth.

_Büchner._ “Mirabeau said on his death‐bed, ‘I shall now enter into nothingness,’ and the celebrated Danton, being interrogated before the revolutionary tribunal as to his residence, said, ‘My residence will soon be in nothingness!’ Frederick the Great, one of the greatest geniuses Germany has produced, candidly confessed his disbelief in the immortality of the soul” (p. 213).

_Reader._ You might as well cite Moleschott, Feuerbach, yourself, and a score or two of modern thinkers, all _enlightened_ by Masonic light, _celebrated_ by Masonic pens and tongues, and _great geniuses_ of revolution. But neither you nor your friends are “among the enlightened of all nations and times.” Before you can aspire to this glory you must study your logic, and, I dare say, the Christian doctrine too.

_Büchner._ If the soul survives the body, “we cannot explain the fear of death, despite all the consolations religion affords” (p. 214).

_Reader._ You cannot; but we can.

_Büchner._ Men would not fear death, “if death were not considered as putting an end to all the pleasures of the world” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ I too, doctor, acknowledge that death puts an end to all the pleasures of this world; but this does not show that our soul will not survive in another world. We fear death for many reasons, and especially because we are sinners, and are afraid of the punishment that a just Judge shall inflict on our wickedness. We would scarcely fear death, if we knew that our soul were to be annihilated. And therefore our fear of death is a proof that the belief in the immortality of the soul is more universal than you imagine.

_Büchner._ “Pomponatius, an Italian philosopher of the XVIth century, says: ‘In assuming the continuance of the individual we must first show how the soul can live without requiring the body as the subject and object of its activity. We are incapable of thought without intuitions; but these depend upon the body and its organs. Thought in itself is eternal and immaterial; but human thought is connected with the senses, and perceptions succeed each other. Our soul is, therefore, mortal, as neither consciousness nor recollection remains’ ” (p. 214). Can you answer this argument?

_Reader._ Very easily. That the soul can live without the body is proved by all psychologists from its spirituality—that is, from its being a substance performing operations in which the body can have no part whatever. Such operations are those which regard objects ranging above the reach of the senses altogether; which, therefore, cannot proceed from an organic faculty, nor from any combination of organic parts. Now, if the soul performs operations in which the organs have no part, it is evident that the soul has an existence independent of the organs, and can live without them. Accordingly, the body is _not_ the “subject and object” of the activity of the soul.

That “we are incapable of thought without intuitions” is true, in the same sense as it is true that we are incapable of digesting without eating. But would you admit that therefore no digestion is possible when you have ceased eating? Or would you maintain that I cannot think to‐day of the object I have seen yesterday? Certainly not. Yet it is evident that I have to‐day no sensible intuition of that object. That thought in itself is “eternal” is a phrase without meaning. Thought is never in itself; it is always in the thinking subject. That “human thought is connected with the senses” in the present life is true, not, however, because of any intrinsic dependence of the intellect on the senses, but only because our present mode of thinking implies both the intellectual and the sensible representation. The consequence, “our soul is therefore mortal,” is evidently false, as well as the reason added, that “neither consciousness nor recollection remains.” Pomponatius was a bad philosopher, but still a philosopher. His objection is vain, but still deserves an answer. His reasoning is sophistical, but there is still some meaning in the sophism itself. Not so with you. After three centuries of _progress_ you have not been able to find a single objection really worth answering, either in a scientific or in a philosophical point of view.

Pomponatius brings in another argument against immortality by saying that virtue is much purer when it is “practised for itself without hope of reward.” You quote these words (p. 214), but without gaining much advantage from them. You might have argued that “as the hope of reward makes virtue less pure, it would be against reason to suppose that God can offer us a reward, the hope of which must thus blast our virtue.” In your next edition of _Force and Matter_ you may develop this new argument, if you wish. Your future adversaries, however, will refute it, as I fancy, with the greatest facility, by observing, first, that the hope of a reward may accompany the practice of virtue without interfering with its purity; for we can love virtue _for itself_ without renouncing the reward of virtue. Do you not expect your fees from your patients as a compensation for your services? And yet I presume that you would take it as an insult if any one pretended that you practise medicine for the love of money. It might be observed, secondly, that as sin deserves punishment, so virtue deserves reward; hence a wise and just Providence, which we must recognize as an attribute of Divinity, cannot leave the virtuous without a reward, nor the sinner without a punishment. And, since it is plain that neither the reward nor the punishment is adequately meted out in this world, it remains that it should be given in the next. I shall not enter into any development of this argument, which is the most intelligible among those usually made use of by philosophers to prove the immortality of the human soul. It suffices for me to have shown the utter falsity of your reasons against this philosophical and theological truth.

XIX. Free‐Will.

_Reader._ Do you admit free‐will?

_Büchner._ “A free‐will,” says Moleschott, “an act of the will which should be independent of the sum of influences which determine man at every moment and set limits to the most powerful, does not exist” (p. 239).

_Reader._ Do you adopt this view?

_Büchner._ Of course. “Man is a product of nature in body and mind. Hence not only what he is, but also what he does, wills, feels, and thinks, depends upon the same natural necessity as the whole structure of the world” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ Then free‐will, according to you, would be a mere dream; political and religious freedom would be delusions; _free_‐thinkers could never exist; and, what may perhaps strike you most of all, _Free_‐masons would be actual impossibilities.

_Büchner._ “The connection of nature is so essential and necessary that free‐will, if it exists, can only have a very limited range” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ What! Do you mean that free‐will can exist, if “what man does, wills, feels, and thinks depends upon the same natural necessity as the whole structure of the world”? Can you reconcile necessity and freedom?

_Büchner._ “Human liberty, of which all boast,” says Spinoza, “consists solely in this, that man is conscious of his will, and unconscious of the causes by which it is determined” (_ibid._)

_Reader._ This answer does not show that liberty and necessity can be reconciled. It would rather show, if it were true, that there is no liberty; for if the human will is determined by any cause distinct from itself, its volition cannot be free. Accordingly, your assertion that “free‐will, _if it exist_, can only have a very limited range,” is inconsistent with your principle of natural, essential, and universal necessity, and should be changed into this: “Free‐will cannot exist, even within the most limited range.” If you admit the principle, you must not be afraid of admitting the consequence; or if you shrink from the consequence, it is your duty to abandon the principle from which it descends.

_Büchner._ “The view I have expressed is no longer theoretical, but sufficiently established by facts, owing to that interesting new science, statistics, which exhibits fixed laws in a mass of phenomena that until now were considered to be arbitrary and accidental. The data for this truth are frequently lost in investigating individual phenomena, but, taken collectively, they exhibit a strict order inexorably ruling man and humanity. It may without exaggeration be stated that at present most physicians and practical psychologists incline to the view in relation to free‐will that human actions are, in the last instance, dependent upon a fixed necessity, so that in every individual case free choice has only an extremely limited, if any, sphere of action” (p. 240).

_Reader._ “Limited, if any”! It is strange that you hesitate to say which of the two you mean to advocate. Why do you not say clearly, either that free‐will has a certain sphere of action, or that it has no existence at all? Instead of explaining your opinion on this point, you try to obscure the question. Individual free‐will is to be ascertained by the statistics of the individual, not by that of the collection.

When a crowd moves towards a determinate spot, individuals are carried on to the same spot, be they willing or unwilling, by the irresistible wave that presses onward. So also when any collection of men, from a nation to a family, lives under the same laws, experiences the same wants, enjoys the same rights, and holds the same practical principles, the general movement of the mass carries in the same direction every individual member of the collection, by creating such conditions all around him as will morally compel his following the general movement. But this is only _moral_ necessity, against which man can rebel in the same manner as he can rebel against the divine or the human law; whereas our question regards the existence or non‐existence of a _physical_ necessity, physically binding the human will, and determining every one of its actions. Hence, even were it true that “a strict order inexorably rules humanity”—that is, the collection of human beings—it would not follow that the individual will is inexorably ruled by a physical necessity.

_Büchner._ “The conduct and actions of every individual are dependent upon the character, manners, and modes of thought of the nation to which he belongs. These, again, are, to a certain extent, the necessary product of external circumstances under which they live and have grown up. Galton says: ‘The difference of the moral and physical character of the various tribes of South Africa depends on the form, the soil, and the vegetation of the parts they inhabit.’ ... ‘It is about two hundred and thirty years,’ says Desor, ‘since the first colonists, in every respect true Englishmen, came to New England. In this short time they have undergone considerable changes. A peculiar American type has been developed, chiefly, it appears, by the influence of the climate. An American is distinguished by his long neck, his spare figure, and by something irritable and feverish in his character.... It has been observed that, during the prevalence of easterly winds, the irritability of the Americans is considerably increased. The rapidity of the American state development, which surprises us, may thus, to a considerable extent, be ascribed to the climate.’ As in America, so have the English given rise to a new type in Australia, especially in New South Wales....” (pp. 241, 242).

_Reader._ Has all this anything to do with the question of free‐will?

_Büchner._ Certainly. “If the nations are thus in the aggregate, in regard to character and history, dependent upon external circumstances, the individual is no less the product of external and internal natural actions, not merely in relation to his physical and moral nature, but in his actions. These actions depend necessarily, in the first instance, upon his intellectual individuality. But what is this intellectual individuality, which determines man, and prescribes to him, in every individual case, his mode of action with such force that there remains for him but a minute space for free choice? What else is it but the necessary product of congenital physical and mental dispositions in connection with education, example, rank, property, sex, nationality, climate, soil, and other circumstances? Man is subject to the same laws as plants and animals” (pp. 242, 243).

_Reader._ I do not see any ground for this conclusion. Our “intellectual individuality” is, I surmise, our individual soul, or our individual intellect. Now, our intellect may speculatively prescribe, in individual cases, some mode of action, but even then it lets our will free to obey the prescription. Moreover, it is not true that our intellect prescribes, in every individual case, a determinate mode of action. How often do we not hesitate, even after long intellectual examination, what line of action we should adopt! How often do we not entertain distressing doubts, and have no means of emerging from our state of perplexity! It is therefore false that our “intellectual individuality” prescribes to us, in every individual case, our mode of action. Hence your other assertion, that the same intellectual individuality urges us “with such a force that there remains for us but a minute space for free choice,” needs no further discussion, as being contrary to constant experience and observation. It is curious that a man who professes, as you do, to argue from nothing but facts, should coolly assume as true what is contradicted by universal experience; but you have already accustomed us to such proceedings. What strikes me is that your blunder cannot here be excused by the plea of ignorance, as you cannot be ignorant of your own mode of action; whence your reader must infer that your direct intention in writing is to cheat him to the best of your power.

As to education, example, rank, climate, soil, and other circumstances, I admit that they are calculated to favor the development of particular mental and physical dispositions; but I deny, first, that such dispositions are the “intellectual individuality,” and, secondly, that the existence of such dispositions is incompatible with the exercise of free‐ will. Of course, we experience a greater attraction towards those things which we are accustomed to look upon as more conducive to our well‐being, and towards those actions of which we may have acquired the habit; but this attraction is an invitation, not a compulsion, and we can freely do or choose the contrary, and are responsible for our choice.

_Büchner._ “Natural dispositions, developed by education, example, etc., are so powerful in human nature that neither deliberation nor religion can effectually neutralize them, and it is constantly observed that man rather follows his inclinations. How frequently does it occur that a man, knowing his intellectual character and the error of his ways, is yet unable to struggle successfully against his inclinations!” (p. 244.)

_Reader._ I do not deny the power of natural or acquired dispositions, and I admit that men usually follow their inclinations; but this is not the question. The question is, “Do men follow their inclinations freely or necessarily?” The assertion that “neither deliberation nor religion can effectually neutralize” such inclinations is ambiguous. If you mean that, in spite of all deliberation, we continue to feel those inclinations, the thing is obviously true, but proves nothing against free‐will; if, on the contrary, you mean that, after deliberation, we cannot act against such inclinations, the assertion is evidently false; for we very often do things most repugnant to our habitual inclinations.

That a man, knowing the error of his ways, “is unable to struggle successfully against his inclinations,” is a wicked and scandalous proposition. As long as he remains in possession of his reason, man is able to struggle successfully, not only against his own inclinations, but also against his predominant passions. The struggle may indeed be hard, for it is a struggle; but its success is in the hands of man. How could criminals be struck by the sword of justice, if, when committing crime, they had been unable to check the temptation? Your doctrine would, if adopted, soon put an end to the existence of civil society, and transform mankind into a herd of brutes. If we cannot successfully struggle against our bad inclinations, then theft, murder, adultery, drunkenness, and all kinds of vice and iniquity are lawful, or at least justifiable, and nothing but tyranny can undertake to suppress them or to inflict punishment for them. Is it necessary to prove that a theory which leads to such results is a libel against humanity?

_Büchner._ “The most dreadful crimes have, independently of the will of the agent, been committed under the influence of abnormal corporeal conditions. It was reserved for modern science closely to examine such cases, and to establish disease as the cause of crimes which formerly were considered as the result of deliberate choice” (p. 245).

_Reader._ Modern science pretends, of course, to have established a great many things. But how can you explain the fact that, when “the most dreadful crimes” are committed by common criminals, science still considers and condemns them as a result of deliberate choice, whilst, if such crimes are committed by members of secret societies, science attributes them to abnormal corporeal conditions? Can we trust a science which so nicely discriminates between the Freemason and the Christian? Yet even your modern science, not to become ridiculous, is obliged, in order to absolve criminals, to put forward a plea of _temporary insanity_, thus acknowledging that a man who enjoys the use of his reason is always responsible, as a free agent, for his actions. Hence, even according to your modern science, our actions, so long as we are not struck with insanity, are the result of our deliberate choice. It is only when you lose your brain that you are “under the influence of those abnormal corporeal conditions” which prevent all deliberate choice.

_Büchner._ Yet man’s freedom “must, in theory and practice, be restricted within the narrowest compass. Man is free, but his hands are bound; he cannot cross the limit placed by nature. For what is called free‐will, says Cotta, is nothing but the result of the strongest motives” (pp. 245, 246).

_Reader._ It is difficult, doctor, to hold a discussion with you. Your views are contradictory, and your argumentation consists of assertions or quotations for which no good reason is, or can be, adduced. If man is free, his hands are _not_ bound; and although he cannot cross the limits of nature by which he is surrounded, he has yet a great latitude for the exercise of freedom within said limits. We are not free to attain the end without using the means, to live on air, to fly to the moon, to add an inch to our stature; but these are limits of physical power, not limits of free volition. Our will is moved by objects through the intellect; and no object which is apprehended as unnecessary to our intellectual nature can necessitate the will. To admit that what is presented to the will as unnecessary can produce necessity, is to admit an effect greater than its cause. Hence the range of free‐will is as wide as creation itself; for no created object can be considered by the intellect as necessary to our rational nature. One object alone may be so considered—that is, God, whose possession alone is sufficient, and therefore necessary, to fill the cravings of our heart. Thus man’s freedom is not to be restricted “within the narrowest compass,” as you pretend, but is to be stretched to the very limits of creation.

But “what is called free‐will,” you say, “is nothing but the result of the strongest motives.” I answer that the stronger the motive is, the intenser is the movement of the will, since the effect must be proportionate to its cause. But the movement of the will is not a reflex act; it is merely an indispensable condition for it, and its existence does not necessarily entail the existence of the rational volition. The first movements of our appetitive faculty are not formally free; for they are not originated by the will, but by the objects. It is only when we reflect upon ourselves and our movements that we become capable of rationally approving or reprobating that towards which or against which we feel moved; and consequently it is only after such a reflection that our will makes its choice. Now, it is impossible that the rational soul, reflecting upon itself and its first movements towards a finite good, should consider its possession as a necessity of its own nature; for all good that is finite is deficient, and if the rational soul considered finite good as necessary to its happiness, it would in fact consider its deficiency also as necessary to its happiness; which cannot be. Hence, whatever the strength of the motives by which we are impelled, no movement excited by finite good interferes with the freedom of the volition.

And now, is it true that our choice always answers to the strongest motives? This question may be understood in two ways, according as the motives are considered objectively or subjectively. The motives which are the strongest objectively may become the weakest subjectively, and _vice versa_. It is with our will moved by different motives as with the lever loaded with different weights. The heavier weight absolutely prevails over the lighter; but if the arms of the lever be suitably determined, the lighter will prevail over the heavier. Thus the lightest motives may prevail over the strongest ones, when our soul adapts itself to them, by shifting, so to say, its own fulcrum, and thus altering the momenta of the opposite forces. The motives which prevail are therefore the strongest in this sense only: that the will has made them such; and, properly speaking, we should not even say that they are the strongest, but only that they are the most enhanced by the will.

These explanations may be new to you, but they are the result of experience and observation. I abstain from developing them further, as it is no part of my duty to vindicate them by positive arguments. No truth is so universally and unavoidably recognized as the existence of free‐will. A man of common sense must be satisfied of this truth by simply reflecting upon his own acts. Criminals may pretend that they have not the power to avoid crime; but doctors should not countenance such a pretension contrary to evidence. To excuse crime on such a miserable plea is to encourage the triumph of villany and the overthrow of human society.

_Büchner._ Indeed, it has been said that “the partisans of this doctrine denied the discernment of crime, and that they desired the acquittal of every criminal, by which the state and society would be thrown into a state of anarchy.... What is true is that the partisans of these modern ideas hold different opinions as regards crime, and would banish that cowardly and irreconcilable hatred which the state and society have hitherto cherished with so much hypocrisy as regards the ‘malefactor’ ” (p. 247).

_Reader._ To denounce the state and society as hypocritical is scarcely a good method of exculpating yourself. Yet your denunciation is false, so far at least as regards Christian states and Christian society; for as regards anti‐Christian societies connected with Freemasonry, and states fallen under their degrading influence and tyranny, I fully admit that they cannot, without hypocrisy, hate malefactors. Those who plunder whole nations, who corrupt public education, who persecute religion, who sow everywhere the seeds of atheism, materialism, and utilitarianism, have no right to hate malefactors. As to those who teach that “neither deliberation nor religion can effectually neutralize the dispositions of man,” and that “man, knowing the error of his ways, is yet unable to struggle successfully against his inclinations,” what right have they to speak of crime or of malefactors? Can there be crime and malefactors without free‐will? You see, doctor, that your materialistic doctrines do away with all morality, and that a society imbued with them cannot be moral. Hence it is bad taste in you to declaim against modern society, as you do (p. 247), on account of vices which are nothing but the result of materialism. “We are astonished,” you say, “that our society is so ticklish as regards certain truths taught by science—a society whose social virtue is nothing but hypocrisy covered by a veil of morality. Just cast a glance at this society, and tell us whether it acts from virtuous, divine, or even moral motives! Is it not, in fact, a _bellum omnium contra omnes_? Does it not resemble a race‐course, where every one does all he can to outrun or even to destroy the other?... Every one does what he believes he can do without incurring punishment. He cheats and abuses others as much as possible, being convinced that they would do the same to him. Any one who acts differently is treated as an idiot. Is it not the most refined egotism which is the spring of this social mechanism? And distinguished authors who best know human society, do they not constantly depict in their narrations the cowardice, disloyalty, and hypocrisy of this European society? A society which permits human beings to die of starvation on the steps of houses filled with victuals; a society whose force is directed to oppress the weak by the strong, has no right to complain that the natural sciences subvert the foundations of its morality.” These last words should be slightly modified; for the truth is that such a society is the victim of your modern theories, which you dignify with the name of _natural sciences_, and which have already subverted the foundations of social morality. The society you describe in this passage is not the old Christian society formed on the doctrine of the Gospel, but the materialistic society formed on modern thought. The moral distemper of modern society is the most irrefragable condemnation of all your doctrines. By its fruits we know the tree.

Conclusion.

We ask the indulgence of our readers for having led them through so many disgusting details of pestilential philosophy. Without such details it was impossible to give a clear idea of the futility and perversity which characterize the teaching of one of the greatest luminaries of modern infidelity. We have shown that Dr. Büchner’s _Force and Matter_, in spite of all its pretensions, is, in a philosophical point of view, a complete failure. We have omitted many of the author’s passages, which we thought too profane to be inserted in these pages, and which, as consisting of vain declamation, arrogance, and assumption, had no need of refutation. As to our mode of dealing with our adversary, we have been pained to hear that some consider it harsh. We beg to say that a man who employs his talents to war against his Creator has no right to expect much regard from any of God’s creatures. Men of this type are frequently treated with too much forbearance, owing to the false idea that every literary character should be treated as a gentleman. Blasphemers are not gentlemen, nor should they be dealt with as gentlemen. They should be made to feel the disgrace which attaches to their moral degradation. Such was the practice in the good old times; and we may justify it by the example of One who did not hesitate, in his infinite wisdom, publicly to rebuke the Scribes and Pharisees in terms not at all complimentary, and certainly much stronger than those which we have used in censuring the author of _Force and Matter_.

The Ice‐Wigwam Of Minnehaha.

The winter of 1855‐56, memorable for its excessive and prolonged cold, while it brought suffering to many a household throughout the land, and is recalled by that fact almost solely, is fixed in my memory by its verification of an old Indian legend of the ice‐wigwam of Minnehaha. Longfellow has made this name familiar to the English‐speaking world, and beyond. A little waterfall, whose silvery voice is for ever singing a love‐song to the mighty Father of Waters, and into whose bosom it hastens to cast itself, bears the name and personates the Indian maiden.

On the right bank of the Mississippi, between the Falls of St. Anthony and the mouth of the Minnesota, is a broad, level prairie, starting from the high bluffs of the Mississippi, and running far out in the direction of sundown. In the month of June this prairie is profusely decked with bright flowers, forming a carpet which the looms of the world will never rival. Stretching far into the west is a tortuous ribbon of rich, dark green, marking the path of a stream which stealthily glides beneath the shadows of the long grass. As it nears the eastern border of the prairie, this stream becomes more bold. Its expanded surface glistens in the noon‐day sun. Here it passes slowly under a rustic bridge, upon an almost seamless bed of rock. Then its motion quickens, as if in haste to reach the ledge which overhangs the broad valley of the Mississippi, when, with one bound, it plunges into its basin sixty feet below. This is Minnehaha, the little hoiden who throws herself upon the outstretched arm of the great Father of Waters with a merry laugh that wins the heart of every comer. Beautiful child of the plain! How many have sought you in your flower‐decked home, and loved you! Hoiden you may be; but coquette, never. Your life is freely given to be absorbed in the life of him you seek.

But Minnehaha is at times the ward of another—an old man whose white locks are so often the sport of the winds, whose very presence makes the limbs of mortals tremble, and their teeth chatter at his approach. Yet he is wondrous kind to his beautiful ward—touchingly kind is the Ice‐King of the North. When the blasts from his realms, freighted with the chill of death, scourge the lands over which they pass, and a silence awe‐inspiring and complete falls on all; when the flowers are being buried beneath the snow, and the mighty river bound with ice, then it is the ice‐king exhausts his powers to build for Minnehaha a palace worthy of her. The summer through (and spring and autumn scarce are known where Minnehaha dwells) the maid has worn about her, as a veil, a cloud of mist and spray. O wondrous architect! Of mist and spray you build a palace even Angelo might not conceive in wildest dreams, were marbles, opals, pearls, all gems and stones and precious metals, cut and fashioned ready to his hand! Thy breath, O ice‐king! fashions mist and spray into grand temples, palaces, more chaste and cold than any stuff Italian quarries yield! Behold the ice‐king build! He breathes upon the mist, and on all sides strong‐based foundations fix about the space he would enclose. The walls on these rise up, as mist and spray are gathered there and set with his chill breath. Height on height they rise, until the arch is sprung; and then the dome is gathered in to meet the solid rock above, and all the outer work is done. Within, the decorations form as do the stalactites within the caves. Then these are covered with the diamond frost, such as December’s shrubs and trees so oft put on to greet the rising sun. And Minnehaha, so the legend says, sings here the winter through. This is the masterpiece of the great ice‐king. Solomon in all his glory possessed no temple to compare with this, nor Queen of Sheba ever saw its counterpart.

A party of four started from St. Paul in the latter part of March, 1856, to visit this wonder of the North. For many years the winters had not been protracted enough to permit the planting of a Maypole upon the ice of Lake Pepin, nor had eye seen the ice‐wigwam of Minnehaha. Marquette, Hennepin, Lesueur, and the early Catholic missionaries had carried with them their love for the month of Mary into that cold region, and settlers and Christian Indians made the opening day of this month one of joyful festivity. To plant a May‐pole upon the ice of Lake Pepin (which is always the last point on the Upper Mississippi where the ice breaks up, as no current helps to cut or break it) was quite an event. The May‐pole, decked with garlands of green and dotted with the many‐colored crocuses that spring up and bloom at the very edge of the melting snow, and long before the drifts and packs have disappeared, if planted on the ice, permitted dancing on its smooth surface, and pleasanter footing than the loose, moistened soil. May‐day can seldom be pleasantly celebrated in that region out‐of‐doors, except upon the ice. Ice on Lake Pepin, then, is to the young folk of that latitude as important an event as a bright, sunny day in latitudes below.

During the month of March, 1856, a bright, warm sun melted the snows to such an extent as to cover the level prairies with several inches of water, confined within banks of melting snow. Wheels were taking the place of runners. Our party drove over the undulating prairie to St. Anthony, crossed the Mississippi by the first suspension bridge which spanned its waters just above the Falls of St. Anthony, and from Minneapolis, on the west bank, moved out into the dead level which extends south and west toward the Minnesota River. A splashing drive of four miles brought us to the bridge above the Falls of Minnehaha, from which we could see on our left a cone of dirty ice, disfigured here and there with sticks and stones and clods of earth; its base far down within an ice‐lined gorge, its top close pressed upon an overhanging ledge. Was _this_ the wonder we had come to see? A wonder, then, we came. But we did not turn back at this unsightly scene. There was a charm about this legend of Minnehaha’s ice‐ wigwam that surely did not have its source in the charmless thing before us. Nor could we believe the imagination of the red man capable of drawing so poetic an inspiration from so prosaic a source. We therefore set to work to discover the hidden things, if such there were. With large stones we broke away the ice about the top of the cone, hoping to peer through the opening by which the water of the stream entered. We failed in this, but let in the western sun through the opening we had made. Then we descended to the bottom of the gorge, over ice and snow, to seek a new point of observation. Here, to the east, lay the broad, snow‐covered valley of the Mississippi; before us, at the west, rose the cone of ice full sixty feet in height, its wrinkled surface all discolored and defaced, inspiring naught of poetry, stifling imagination. Moving northward around the ungainly mass, and part way up the north side of the gorge, we reached a terrace which led behind the cone and underneath the overhanging ledge. We enter from the north (by broad steps of ice, each rising three or four inches above the other) a hall twelve by twenty feet, floored, columned, curtained, arched, and walled with ice. At somewhat regular intervals elliptical columns of ice rose from floor to spring of arch. Between these columns curtains hung, with convolutes and folds and borders, filling all the space—and all of ice. Above us was the ledge of rock overhanging the basin of the fall, behind us the bluff, and under our feet the terrace of earth midway the cone; and all was paved and curtained and ceiled with ice. Before us stood the upper half of the cone, meeting the ledge above.

While giving play to admiration of the architectural beauties of the place, our ears were greeted with a sound muffled or distant, as of falling water. Whence could this come? Could there be life or motion within that frozen mass? In the chill of that drear winter was not the laughing voice of Minnehaha hushed?

The sun was dropping down the western sky, and a shadow lengthened in the gorge below. The broken edges of the ice which overhung the quiet stream gave back the borrowed rays of sunlight more brilliant than they came.

One of the party had, slung to his side, the customary long‐knife of those days. With it in hand he started in search of the creature whose voice lured him on, not, as the siren, to destruction, but to a scene of beauty, brilliance, glory, with which the fabled cave of Stalacta was but as shadow. Between him and the voice he sought a wall of ice imposed. The knife at once was called to play its part. Between two columns this wall was cut away, a window opened, through which we saw the glories of the wigwam. Our eyes were dazzled and our senses mazed. The curtain rent exposed to view the inner surface of a dome high‐arched and perfect in its curves. From base, through all its height, it was hung with myriad stalactites of ice, which seemed to point us to the laughing voice still rippling on the waters far below. These stalactites were covered thick with richest frost‐work; and from ten thousand upon thousand points the glinting light fell off in floods. Near to the centre of the upper dome the waters of the stream pour in in one broad sheet. An instant only is such form preserved. The sheet of water breaks, and countless globes, from raindrops to a sphere the hand would scarcely grasp with ease, come down, and break still more in passing through the air, until within the basin all is mist and spray. These globes at first arrange themselves in systems not unlike the planetariums of the schools, where sun and planets, with their satellites, are shown the youths, to aid such minds as seek to learn the grander works of God in space. These systems, as they fall, are countless; and by common impulse, which means law, the smaller range themselves about a greater central orb. And so they pass through space, to fall upon the bosom of the pool in mist. Is there no emblem here of life and God?

And as we look, behold! the walls and dome are striped and slashed with silver and with gold; then barred; and then again are panelled with this silver sheen and gold. The gold and silver interchange positions, fade, return, as the Northern Lights dissolve or chase each other here and there. The mystery of this party‐colored scene was soon resolved. The ice we broke away with stones had let the sun shine through the opening, and the waters, flowing in, disputed passage with the light. There is an ebb and flow in running water so like to pulse‐beats that it may not seem strange to those who stop to think, that ruder men have worshipped streams as gods. This ebb and flow upon the ledge so changed the depth of water there that the sunlight, as it struggled through these different depths (for ever changing), cast the light in silver or in gold upon the walls and dome.

And now the sun bows down still more, and shines still more within the dome; its rays are kissed by countless water‐drops, and changed by that caress from white to all the colors of the bow or prism. But, strange, no bow is formed; but in its stead a circle of the varied hues is poised within the midst of all this splendor, as though the sun and flood had come to crown the Indian maid, and vie with the ice‐king in doing fullest homage to his ward.

Such is the legend realized. The time, the accidents, and every impediment we overcame seemed but steps so prearranged that we might see complete the efforts of the cold, the light, the water, all combined to create The Beautiful. It was the meeting of extremes in harmony for common end, instead of conflict. Here was a grand display of powers without jealousy. The cold took irresistible possession of the water, mist, and spray, and reared a work that art can scarcely copy. But all was cold and chaste and white. The light possessed itself of the water also, but with a touch so delicate and warm that color mantled the coldest, chastest, whitest ice.

Do you, dear reader, imagine this a fancy sketch? Be undeceived. Three of the “four” still verify its truth. The fourth has fallen upon the outstretched arm of the great Father of mankind. It is in tribute to his memory that I write; for never soul more chaste, or heart more warm, or life more full of love for all the beautiful, made up a man.

A Russian Sister Of Charity.

By The Rev. C. Tondini, Barnabite

On the fifth of August died in Paris Sister Nathalie Narishkin, a Russian by birth, and descended from the same family from which sprang the mother of Peter the Great. Born on the 1/13th of May, 1820, Sister Nathalie Narishkin abjured the Greek Church August the 15th, 1844. This first step had cost her a fearful struggle—that struggle of heart for which Jesus Christ prepared us when he said, “I came to set a man at variance against his father, _and a daughter against her mother_” (S. Matt. x. 35). We mean that endurance which is perhaps the hardest of martyrdoms, at least when God requires it of a soul whose love of him is combated by an unusual tenderness of affection towards the authors of her being. Such was Nathalie Narishkin.

But as any sacrifice we offer to God enables us, by strengthening our will, to make fresh sacrifices for his love, she had not yet attained the age of twenty‐eight when she resolved to follow more closely the footsteps of our Lord, and in March, 1848, she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Charity in Paris. A few years afterwards she was named superioress of the convent in the Rue St. Guillaume, where she died.

Foreigners who visit Catholic countries often imagine themselves acquainted with Catholicity when they have hastily glanced through the streets of our capitals, visited the museums, the public buildings, and theatres, and inspected the Catholics in the churches at some mid‐day or one o’clock Mass on Sundays. Hence it follows that in reality they have nothing to relate concerning the influence of the Catholic faith in the sanctification of souls. What would have been their edification, and perhaps surprise, had they visited that convent of the Rue St. Guillaume, and had the good‐fortune to converse with Sister Nathalie! No one who approached her could help feeling that he was in presence of a soul in continual union with God, and in whom self‐abnegation and the profoundest humility had grown, as it were, into a second nature. With these qualities, which at once struck the beholders, she combined the most refined gentleness of manners and language—a gentleness which, let us remark, was in her the same when soliciting from the Emperor Alexander II., at the Elysée, in 1867, permission to enter Russia for the purpose of nursing the sick attacked with cholera, as when answering the meanest beggar asking at her hands a morsel of bread. “Every one who had to deal with Sister Narishkin departed satisfied”—this is the general testimony of all who ever had occasion to speak with her.

It is needless to add that, with regard to charity—that virtue which is the special vocation of the daughters of S. Vincent de Paul, and the surest token of true Christianity, as pointed out by Christ himself—Sister Nathalie was second to no one; and this was made manifest on the day of her funeral by the multitude of poor who accompanied her remains to the cemetery, and the tears they shed on their way to the grave. What is the pomp of the sepulture of kings and the great ones of the nations when compared to this tribute to the memory of a Catholic Sister?

Father Gagarin, S.J., himself a Russian convert, though scarcely recovered from an illness, and in spite of his age and physical sufferings—which did not permit him to walk without difficulty, and leaning on a stick—would not fail to follow the funeral on foot. The body was deposited in the Cemetery of Mont Parnasse—in that same cemetery where for fifteen years past have reposed the remains of that other Russian convert and Barnabite father, Schouvaloff, who, speaking of those among his countrymen who had become Catholics, said: “Fear not, little flock; we are the first‐fruits of that union which every Christian should desire, and which we know will take place. Fear not; our sufferings and our prayers will find grace before God. _Russia will be Catholic._”

New Publications.

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ALMANAC FOR THE UNITED STATES, FOR THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1875. Calculated for Different Parallels of Latitude, and Adapted for Use throughout the Country. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

This annual is already known in almost every Catholic home in the land. Its cheapness places it within the reach of all, whilst its literary and artistic excellence renders it acceptable even to the most fastidious. The issue for 1875 even surpasses its predecessors in the variety of subjects treated and in the beauty of its illustrations.

Publications of this kind undoubtedly do very much to awaken a truly Catholic interest in the contemporary history of the church, and therefore tend to enlarge the views and widen the sympathies of our people. The life‐current of the universal church is borne through the whole earth, and whatever anywhere concerns her welfare is of importance to Catholics everywhere.

The opening sketch in the _Almanac_ for the year which even now “waiteth at the door” carries us to Rome, in a biographical notice of Cardinal Barnabo, whose name will long be held in grateful remembrance in the United States.

There are also sketches of the lives of the late Archbishop Kenrick, Archbishop Blanc of New Orleans, Bishop Whelan. Bishop McFarland—brief, but sufficiently comprehensive to give one an insight into the character and labors of these apostolic men. Col. Meline and Dr. Huntington, who strove so faithfully and so successfully, as men of letters, to defend and adorn Catholic truth, receive due tribute, and are held up as examples for those of our Catholic young men to whom God has given talent and opportunity of education.

Cardinal Mezzofanti, the greatest of linguists; Cardinal Allen, who was the first president, and we may say founder, of the Douay College, which, during the darkest period of the history of the Catholic Church in England, gave so many noble confessors of the faith to Great Britain; Archbishop Ledochowski, who is to‐day suffering for Christ in the dungeons of Ostrowo, all pass before us in the pages of the _Catholic Almanac_ for 1875.

Then we have sketches of John O’Donovan, the famous Irish antiquarian; of Father Gahan, the great Irish preacher; of Father Clavigero, the historian of Mexico and California, and of Joan of Arc, whose name may yet be inscribed by the church among those of her saints. The miscellaneous matter with which the present issue of the _Catholic Almanac_ is filled has been chosen with admirable tact and with a special view to the wants of our own people.

If the standard of excellence which this publication has now reached be maintained, it cannot fail to command a steadily increasing patronage, and to become in yet wider circles an instrument for good.

NOTES ON THE SECOND PLENARY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE. By Rev. S. Smith, D.D., formerly Professor of Sacred Scripture, Canon Law, and Ecclesiastical History at Seton Hall Seminary. New York: P. O’Shea. 1874.

The author of these _Notes_ makes his observations on a considerable number of very practical questions, some of which are of the greatest moment and of no small difficulty, with great modesty and moderation of language. Evidently, he seeks to promote piety, discipline, and the well‐ being of the church in an orderly manner, and with due respect to authority and established usage. _The Decrees of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore_ is intended as a text‐book of instruction for the clergy and seminarists on what we may call “pastoral theology”—that is, on the whole range of subjects relating to the conduct, preaching, and administration of those who are invested to a lesser or greater degree with the pastoral office. The author makes the Acts of the Council therefore the basis of his _Notes_, or familiar disquisitions on practical topics of canon law, giving also a general exposition of certain fundamental canonical principles and laws, chiefly derived from the standard authors Soglia and Tarquini. Some valuable documents are also contained in the appendix. Such a work as this is evidently one that, if it can be made complete, and also carry with it sufficient intrinsic and extrinsic authority to give its statements and opinions due weight, will be one of great utility. Due respect to the author, who has given us the results of careful and conscientious labor, as well as the great importance of the topics he discusses, demand that we should not attempt to express a judgment upon his work or the opinions contained in it without a minute and detailed examination and discussion of every point, supported by reasons and authorities. We are not prepared to do this at present. We may say, however, that, in our opinion, a work of this kind cannot easily be brought to completion by a first and single effort. It is, in many respects, _tentative_ in its character. As such, we regard it as a promising effort, creditable to its author, and in many ways likely to prove a serviceable manual for the clergy and those who are engaged in teaching canon law in seminaries.

THE MISTRESS OF THE MANSE. By J. G. Holland. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.

We never pardon the reviewer who praises a novel by telling us its plot. Therefore we shall not spoil the pleasure of the reader by revealing the story of this poem. We will only say that the heroine is the wife of a “country parson,” and that their conjugal life is beautifully drawn. A Catholic will not find anything to move his righteous indignation, as he did in the author’s _Marble Prophecy_ though here and there he will come upon something which

“In the light of deeper eyes Is matter for a flying smile.”

For instance, a poet who can write such Tennysonian verse does not blush to place in the same “evangelical” library “Augustine” and “Ansel” (we suppose he means S. Anselm) by the side of

“Great Luther, with his great disputes, And Calvin with his finished scheme.” (!)

After the flood of light which even Protestant research has poured on the characters of Luther and Calvin, how can a poet (of all men) dare to hold them up to admiration?

MARIA MONK’S DAUGHTER. An Autobiography. By Mrs. L. St. John Eckel. New York: Published for the Author by the United States Publishing Co.., 13 University Place. 1874.

The writer of this notice well remembers reading, when a boy of fifteen, the _Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk_, and _Six Months in a Convent_, by Rebecca Reed. With great satisfaction he recalls the fact that his own father, who was a Presbyterian minister of Connecticut, together with a very large number of other most respectable Protestants, condemned and repudiated the calumnies of Maria Monk from the first moment of their publication. The effect of these books and of the exposure so honorably made by Col. Stone on our own young mind, and undoubtedly upon the minds of thousands besides, to open our eyes to the falsehood and dishonesty of the gross misrepresentations of the Catholic religion and its professors which have been rife among Protestants, and are still prevalent among the less enlightened of them, both gentle and simple. Afterwards the task devolved upon us to prepare a set of documents concerning Rebecca Reed and Maria Monk which Bishop England had collected, for publication in the edition of his works issued by his successor in the see of Charleston. While we were correcting the last proofs of the printer at Philadelphia, the _Times_ of that morning furnished us the last item of news respecting the unfortunate Maria Monk, which came to the knowledge of the public before the publication of the volume under notice, viz., that she had died in a cell on Blackwell’s Island. After the lapse of twenty‐five years, we find before us the autobiography of a daughter of Maria Monk, who seeks to expiate her mother’s crime, and to make reparation for the wrong done to the clergy and religious of the Catholic Church by her pretended disclosures made in the fictitious character of an escaped nun. The unhappy young woman herself, though we believe she was the daughter of an English officer at Montreal, seems to have had a very unkind mother, and, for some reason to us unknown, to have been brought up without education, and early turned adrift without any protection. Having fallen into a condition of desperate misery, she resorted to the expedient of inventing her _Awful Disclosures_ in order to get money and escape from present wretchedness. The men—far more malicious and base in their villainy than this poor forlorn girl, so much sinned against and so fearfully punished for her own sins that we pity more than we blame her—who prepared the vile book of _Awful Disclosures_, and published it under the name of HOWE AND BATES, cheated her out of her share of the profits. We are glad to see their infamy once more exposed, and the honor of the Catholic religion avenged. Although the most honorable class of Protestants are exempt from complicity with this and similar gross libels on Catholics and caricatures of all they hold dear and sacred, nevertheless their cause and name are disgraced by the fact that they are so frequently and generally implicated in a mode of warfare on the Catholic Church which is dishonorable. The statements which are continually made current among them respecting Catholics and their religion, and which are so generally believed, do no credit to their intelligence or fairness. We remember hearing the Archbishop of Westminster remark that the most ridiculous fables about the Catholic religion are accepted as truth among the aristocratic residents of the West End of London. The coarse and angry assaults of the English press upon the Marquis of Ripon, on account of his conversion, show, what Dr. Newman has so humorously and graphically described, the extent and obstinacy of vulgar prejudice and hostility in England. There is less here, and it is diminishing; yet there is enough to make Mrs. Eckel’s audacious spring into the arena of combat against it well timed as well as chivalrous.

We do not intend a criticism on her book, but merely, as an act of justice to one who has braved the criticism of the world, to aid herself and her book to meet this criticism fairly, without prejudice from any false impressions which may be taken from its title. We therefore mention the fact, which may not be known to those who have not read the book or any correct account of its contents, that Maria Monk, according to the probable evidence furnished in the book, and which does not seem to have anything opposed to it, was really married to a man who was a gentleman by birth and of respectable connections, although reduced by his youthful follies to a condition which was always precarious and sometimes very destitute. Mrs. Eckel is the offspring of this marriage. After a childhood of hardship, she was adopted into a respectable family related to her father, Mr. St. John, and made the most strenuous efforts to acquire the education and good manners which are suitable for a lady. She married a gentleman of respectable position and of very superior intellectual gifts and culture, Mr. Eckel, who afterwards fell into distressed circumstances, and died in a very tragical manner. Mrs. Eckel separated herself from him some time before this occurred, and very shortly before the birth of her daughter, as it seems to us for very good reasons which exonerate her from all blame for the misery into which her husband fell when he lost the support of her sustaining arm. The remarkable history of her subsequent career in Paris must be sought for in the pages of the autobiography. The circles in which she moved while there were the highest, and many of her intimate friends were persons of not only exalted rank, but of the most exemplary piety, and of universal fame among Catholics. Of her own accord, without either compulsion or advice, she did what she was not bound in conscience to do—abandoned her brilliant position in the world, made known the secret of her origin, and has now thrown open the history of her life to the inspection of the world. That history must plead for itself and for the author before impartial and judicious readers. In our opinion it is substantially true. We believe the author has written it from a good motive, and that she is sincere in her statements. Divested of all the adventitious glitter of the successful woman of the world, she presents herself for precisely what she is in herself, and, as we think, is far more worthy of honor and respect now than ever before, or than the most brilliant marriage in France could have made her.

Everybody who can read this book will do so, as a matter of course, even if they have no other motive than they would have in reading one of Thackeray’s romances. It is a romance in real life, and an instance of the truth of the old adage, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Such fictitious works as _Lothair_ and the _Schönberg‐Cotta Family_ have served as a polemical weapon against the Catholic Church, and we do not see why a romantic but true history, of much greater literary merit than the whole class of that sort of trash, should not answer a good purpose on the other side. If the readers of the book find in it many things open to criticism, and jarring upon a delicate and cultivated Catholic sense of propriety and reverence, they should remember that the author lacks the advantage of long and careful Catholic discipline, is still comparatively young, and a novice in everything that relates to the spiritual and religious life. She does not profess to give the history of her life as a model to be imitated, or to instruct others as one competent to teach on spiritual matters, but to write her confessions for the encouragement of other wayward and wandering souls, and to speak out freely what she thinks as she goes along, with very little regard to censure or fear of it.

There seems a Nemesis in the publication of such a book which should give a salutary lesson to those who dare to throw dirt on the spotless robe of the Catholic Church. We have often thought that this Nemesis is frequently apparent of late in the punishments which have come from divine or human justice on notorious corrupters of public and private morals. Dreadful as are the actual corruptions and the corrupt tendencies in the bosom of our political and social state, we hope this is a sign that God has not abandoned us. It is hardly necessary to say that this is not a book suitable for very young people.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XX., NO. 118.—JANUARY, 1875.

The Persecution Of The Church In The German Empire.

Concluded.

In the spring of 1870, whilst the discussion concerning the opportuneness of defining the infallibility of the Pope was attracting the attention of every one, and when the distant mutterings of the Franco‐Prussian war were not yet audible, the leading organs of the Party of Progress in Berlin sought to weigh the probable results of a definition, by the Vatican Council, of the much‐talked‐of dogma. In case the Pope should be declared infallible, the _Volkszeitung_, of Berlin, affirmed that many would favor the interference of the government to prevent all further intercourse between the bishops of Prussia and the Roman Pontiff, which would result in the creation of a national church wholly independent of Rome.

But this organ of the Party of Progress openly avowed that there was not the slightest probability that the state could, by any means at its command, succeed in separating the Catholic Church in Prussia from communion with the See of Peter; nor was there, it confessed with perfect candor, a single bishop in Germany who would desire such a separation.

And yet, as we have shown in a former article, the task which the German Empire has set itself is precisely the one which is here pronounced impossible; and we propose now to continue the history of the tyrannical enactments and harsh measures by which the worshippers of the God‐State hope to destroy the faith of thirteen millions of Catholics. The project of the Falk laws was brought before the Landtag on the 9th of January, 1873, and on the 30th of the same month the Catholic episcopate of the kingdom of Prussia entered a solemn protest against this iniquitous attempt to violate the most sacred rights of conscience and religion.

In the name of the natural law, of the historical and lawfully‐acquired rights of the church in Germany, of the treaties concluded by the crown of Prussia with the Holy See, and, in fine, in the name of the express recognition of these rights by the Constitution, they protest against the violation of the inalienable right of the Catholic Church to exist in the integrity of its doctrine, its constitution, and its discipline.

It is of the duty and right of each bishop, they declare, to teach the Catholic doctrine and administer the sacraments within his own diocese; it is also of his duty and right to educate, commission, and appoint the priests who are his co‐operators and representatives in the sacred ministry; and it is of his duty and right to exhort and encourage them in the fulfilment of their charge, and, when they obstinately refuse to obey the doctrine and laws of the church, to depose them from office, and to forbid them the exercise of all ecclesiastical functions; all of which rights are violated by the proposed laws. As to the Royal Court for Ecclesiastical Affairs, they affirm that they can never recognize its competency, and that they can see in it only an attempt to reduce the divinely‐constituted church to a non‐Catholic and national institution.

The Memorial concludes with the following noble and solemn words:

“Concord between church and state is the safeguard of the spiritual and the temporal power; the indispensable condition of the welfare of all human society. The bishops, the priests, the Catholic people, are not the enemies of the state; they are not intolerant, unjust, rancorous towards those of a different faith. They ask nothing so much as to live in peace with all men; but they demand that they themselves be permitted to live according to their faith, of the divinity and truth of which they are most thoroughly convinced. They require that the integrity of religion and their church and the liberty of their conscience be left inviolate, and they are resolved to defend their lawful freedom, and even the smallest right of the church, with all energy and without fear.

“From our inmost souls, in the interest of the state as much as of the church, we conjure and implore the authorities to abandon the disastrous policy which they have taken up, and to give back to the Catholic Church, and to the millions of the faithful of that church who are in Prussia and in the Empire, peace, religious liberty, and security in the possession of their rights, and not to impose upon us laws obedience to which is incompatible, for every bishop and for every priest and for all Catholics, with the fulfilment of duty—laws, consequently, which violate conscience, are morally impossible, and which, if carried into execution by force, will bring untold misery upon our faithful Catholic people and our German fatherland.”

The organs of the government declared that the Memorial was an _ultimatum_, “a declaration of war”; that “it was impossible to keep the peace with these bishops; and that they should be reduced as soon as possible to a state in which they could do no harm.” Accordingly, the discussion of the Falk laws was hurried up, and they were adopted in May by a majority of two‐thirds.

In the meantime, the government continued to follow up its harsh measures against the religious orders, going so far as to close the churches of royal patronage in Poland, in order to prevent their consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It even forbade the children of the schools to assist at the devotions of the Sacred Heart. The Catholic casinos were closed; the Congregations of the Blessed Virgin, the Society of the Holy Childhood, and other religious associations were suppressed. The Catholic soldiers of the Prussian army had already been outraged by having their church in Cologne turned over to the Old Catholics.

By the beginning of 1873 nearly all the Jesuits had withdrawn from the territory of the German Empire, and taken refuge in France, England, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Indies, and the United States. Those who still remained were interned, and, deprived of all means of subsistence, placed under the supervision of the police. The government next proceeded to take steps to suppress those religious orders which it considered as _affiliated_ to the Jesuits. A mission which the Redemptorists were giving at Wehlen, near Treves, was broken up by the police. Another mission which they were about to open at Oberjosbach (Nassau) was interdicted; whilst almost at the same time several Redemptorists were decorated “for services rendered to the fatherland during the war.” A community of Lazarists at Kulm was dissolved, and houses of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, of the Sisters of Notre Dame, of the Sisters of Charity, and of the Sisters of S. Charles were closed.

Von Gerlach, the President of the Court of Appeals of Magdeburg, himself a Protestant, has informed us, in a pamphlet which he published about this time, of the effect of these persecutions upon the Catholics of Germany.

“As for the Catholic Church,” he wrote, “persecutions strengthen her. In fact, her moral power is increased under pressure. The Catholic Church is to‐day more zealous, more compact, more united, more confident of herself, more energetic, and better organized, than she was at the commencement of 1871. The Roman Catholics have good reason to be thankful that their church has gained in faith, in the spirit of sacrifice and prayer, in devoutness in worship, and in all Christian virtues.

“It is even evident that the interior force of the religious orders, especially that of the Jesuits, has been proportionately augmented. Around these proscribed men gather all those who love them to protect and help them.”

The courageous conduct of the German bishops in taking a firm and decided stand against the persecutors of the church met with the almost unanimous approval of both priests and people. Dr. Döllinger and his sect were forgotten. If there had ever been any life in the impossible thing, it went out in the first breath of the storm that was breaking over the church. All the cathedral chapters gave in their adhesion to their respective bishops, and their example was followed by the pastors, rectors, and vicars of the eleven Prussian dioceses. They repelled with horror, to use the words of the clergy of Fulda, the attempt to separate the members from the head, and to give to the priesthood tutors in the person of a state official. Even the twenty‐nine deacons of the Seminary of Gnesen entered their protest, recalling in their address to Archbishop Ledochowski the beautiful words of S. Laurence to Pope Sixtus as he was led to martyrdom: _Quo sine filio, pater?_

The Catholic nobility, in their meeting at Münster in January, 1873, openly proclaimed their fidelity to the church and their firm resolve to defend her rights and liberties; and the Catholic people began to organize throughout the Empire.

“The Association of the Catholic Germans,” which now counts its members by hundreds of thousands, was formed, with the motto, _Neither rebel nor apostate_. Its _Wanderversammlungen_ (migratory reunions) spring up everywhere, and become the centre of Catholic life. This association is based upon the constitutional law, its acts are public, the means it employs are lawful, and the end it aims at is distinctly formulated in its statutes.

In this manner the Catholics of Germany prepared themselves, not to commit acts of violence or to transgress the law, but to offer a passive resistance to tyranny and oppression, to uphold liberty of conscience against state omnipotence, and to suffer every evil rather than betray their souls’ faith.

The Imperial government, on the other hand, showed no intention of withdrawing its arbitrary measures, but through its organs openly declared that “the execution of the clerical laws would form a clergy as submissive and tractable as the Prussian army”; whilst Herr Falk proclaimed in the Reichstag “that the government was resolved to make use of every means which the law placed within its power; and if the present laws were not sufficient, others would be framed to ensure their execution.”

The ukase, signed by Bismarck on the 20th of May, 1873, suppressed the convents of the Redemptorists, of the Fathers of the Holy Ghost, of the Lazarists, and of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart; and the members of these orders were commanded to abandon their houses before the end of the following November. The Ladies of the Sacred Heart were accused of desiring to acquire “universal spiritual dominion.”

The bishops were called on to submit for the approval of the government, in accordance with the tenor of the May laws, the plan of studies and the disciplinary rules of their diocesan seminaries; which, of course, they declined to do, whilst foreseeing that their action would bring about the closing of these institutions. Herr Falk, the Minister of Worship, ordered an examination into the revenues of the different parishes, without even asking the co‐operation of the bishops; and the civil authorities were warned of their duty to notify the government of any changes which should be made in the body of the clergy. The police received orders to interfere, at certain points, with Catholic pilgrimages, which, in other instances, were positively interdicted.

The annual allowance of twelve hundred thalers to Mgr. Ledochowski, Archbishop of Posen, was withdrawn, his seminary was closed, and all teachers were forbidden to ask his permission to give religious instruction. In November, 1873, the archbishop’s furniture was seized; even his paintings were carried off. The people, gathering in crowds, shouted after the officials: “Thief! thief!” On the 23d of the same month Mgr. Ledochowski was condemned to pay a fine of five thousand four hundred thalers, or, in default, to an imprisonment of two years, for having made nine appointments to ecclesiastical offices contrary to the laws of May.

Before the end of December, the fines imposed upon the archbishop reached twenty‐one thousand thalers. In January, 1874, he was cited before a delegate judge of the Royal Court for Ecclesiastical Affairs, but refused to appear, since he could not, in conscience, recognize the competency of a civil tribunal to pass sentence on the manner in which he had exercised his pastoral functions. He moreover averred that, in case the threat to drag him into court should be carried out, it was his firm resolve to say nothing.

Several priests of the Diocese of Posen had already been incarcerated for failure to pay the fines of the government, and on the 3d of last February, at five o’clock in the morning, the archbishop was himself arrested and carried off to prison in Ostrowo, a town of about seven thousand inhabitants, chiefly Protestants and Jews.

The bishops of Prussia at once drew up a letter to the clergy and the Catholic people of their dioceses, in which they declared that “the only crime of Archbishop Ledochowski was that of having chosen to suffer everything rather than betray the liberty of the church of God and deny Catholic truth, sealed by the precious blood of the Saviour.”

The canons of the Chapter of Posen were ordered by the government to elect a capitular‐vicar; and as they declined to give their approval to the cruel and unjust imprisonment of their archbishop, a state official was appointed to take charge of the affairs of the diocese.

Both the priests and people of Prussian Poland remain firm, and give noble examples of steadfastness in the faith.

The history of the persecution in one diocese is, with a few unimportant differences, that of all. More than a year ago, the annual allowance of three thousand four hundred and seventy thalers made to the Theological Seminary of Cologne was withdrawn. Archbishop Melchers and his vicar‐ general were cited before a civil tribunal for the excommunication of two apostates. The Lazarists were driven from the preparatory seminaries of Neuss and Münstereifel.

On the 22d of November, 1873, the archbishop was condemned to pay a fine of twenty‐five hundred thalers for five appointments made in violation of the May laws; and almost every week thereafter new fines were imposed, until finally his furniture was seized on the 3d of last February, and in a very short time the venerable prelate was incarcerated, not even his lawyer being allowed to visit him. His prison‐cell was thought to be too comfortable, and he was soon changed to one under the very roof of the jail. A great number of pastors and vicars of his diocese were deprived of their positions, and some of them imprisoned.

On the 20th of November, 1873, the priests of twenty‐eight towns and villages of the Diocese of Treves were interdicted by the government, and the bishop fined thirty‐six hundred thalers. The Theological Seminary was closed, “not to be reopened until the bishop and rector should accept in good faith the laws of May, 1873.” Any seminarians who might be found there on the 12th of January, 1874, were to be forcibly ejected.

The 15th of this same month the professors were forbidden to instruct the students of theology, under penalty of a fine of fifteen thalers or five days’ imprisonment for each offence; and this prohibition is to remain in vigor until the bishop accepts the Falk laws. On the 21st of January, an inventory of the furniture of the episcopal palace was taken. The goods were sold at public auction on the 6th of February; in a few days, Bishop Eberhard was thrown into prison; and before the end of last August sixty of his priests were confessing the faith in the dungeons of Treves and Coblentz.

The old Dominican convent in Treves had been converted into a prison, and it is there that the bishop and some thirty of his priests were incarcerated. The prison discipline is rigid and harsh in the extreme. These confessors of Christ are forced out of their beds at five o’clock in the morning, and from this until they retire at nine in the evening they must either walk to and fro in their cells, or sit upon stools, since chairs are not allowed. If during the day they wish to lie down for a moment, an official at once informs them that this is not permitted; if they lean against the wall, the table, or the bed, they again receive the same warning. A jailer accompanies them whenever necessity forces them to leave their cells. All letters to and from the prison are read by the officials, and, in case the slightest pretext can be found, are destroyed. None save those who have voluntarily given themselves up, and who, after a first imprisonment, have not received an ovation from the people, are allowed to say Mass. The bishop is permitted to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice, but no one is suffered to be present except the server and the indispensable government official.

The food seems scarcely sufficient to sustain life. Three times in the week, each of the prisoners receives a small piece of meat, and this is the only change ever made in the bill of fare which we have just given. What we have called “porridge” is known at Treves under the name of _Schlicht_, and is a kind of flour‐paste. When we reflect that there are in Germany to‐day not less than a thousand priests who are suffering this slow and cruel martyrdom, we shall be able to realize that the present pagan persecution may in all truth be compared to those which, in the first ages of Christianity, gave to the church her legions of martyrs and confessors. It is not necessary that we should enter into a detailed account of the persecution in the other dioceses of Germany. The same scenes are everywhere enacted—fines, citations, seizure of effects, interdicts, and imprisonments, on the part of the government; whilst the Catholics, standing in unshaken fidelity to God and conscience, suffer in patience every outrage that their enemies can inflict, rather than betray the sacred cause of the religion of Christ. The May laws of 1873 did not prove sufficiently harsh or tyrannical to satisfy the Prussian infidels; and they were consequently supplemented by clauses which passed both houses of the Reichstag last May. In virtue of these amendments, the state can decree the sequestration of the goods of an ecclesiastical post not occupied in the manner prescribed by the Falk laws. In this case, these goods are to be administered by a royal commissary.

The Royal Court for Ecclesiastical Affairs receives the power to depose bishops; and, this deposition being once pronounced, they are forbidden to exercise any ecclesiastical functions in their respective dioceses, which by this very fact are placed under interdict. When the bishop is deposed by the Royal Court, the cathedral chapter is summoned to proceed to elect his successor; and in case it fails to comply with this injunction within ten days, all goods belonging to the episcopal see, as well as those of the chapter of the diocese, and of the parishes, are sequestrated and administered by the government.

This miserable legislation gives to the state the entire spiritual power, and ignores alike the rights of God and those of the free Christian conscience. Still, it is only the legitimate and logical expression of the views and aims of the modern heathendom which is organizing throughout Europe for the destruction of the religion of Christ.

The May laws of 1873 required the bishops to convert all the incumbents having charge of churches into permanent and irremovable parish priests; in consequence of which the position of twelve hundred and forty‐one incumbents in the Rhine Province became illegal on the 11th of last May. A general interdict was therefore expected, and even a process to compel the bishop to comply with this clause was looked for; but Herr Falk seems to have been frightened by his own legislation, since already, on the 8th of May, he announced in the Reichstag that only those priests whom “the government considered dangerous” would be notified of the proceedings taken against the bishops, and that no others would be held to come under the operation of the law. In this manner the Prussian Minister of Worship avoided the odium of a general interdict, whilst by a slower process he hopes eventually to bring about this result. The moment the incumbent of a church receives official notification that his bishop has been put under restraint, he is by the very fact forbidden to perform any ecclesiastical function, and his post is considered vacant. The _Landrath_ then declares this _vacancy_, and invites the parishioners to prepare for the election of a successor to their former pastor.

That this election may take place, it suffices that ten men, who are of age and in the full possession of their civil rights, put in an appearance, that the person chosen by them and approved of by the civil authority may be recognized as the lawful incumbent.

The evident aim of this law is to create a schism in every parish in the German Empire, which, by fomenting divisions amongst the Catholics, would greatly aid the government in its efforts to destroy the church. But this is only one of innumerable instances in which the persecutors have been wholly mistaken.

They counted first upon the weakness of the Catholic bishops; confidently expecting that one or the other of them would place himself at the head of the Old Catholics, and thus, whilst causing great scandal in the church, give to that still‐born sect at least a semblance of respectability. But not one of the German prelates wavered. They go to prison, like the apostles, rejoicing that they are found worthy to suffer for Christ, and declare that they are willing to shed their blood for the holy cause. Their enemies are not more ready to inflict than they to bear everything for the love of Jesus. Then, there was no doubt in the minds of the Prussian infidels that large numbers of the clergy would take advantage of the bribes offered by government to apostates to throw off the authority of the bishops, and to constitute themselves into a schismatical body. On the contrary, the persecution has only drawn tighter the bonds which unite the priests with their chief pastors. In all Germany there have not been found more than thirty rationalistic professors and suspended priests who were willing to take sides with Döllinger in his rebellion; and the juridically‐proven immorality of Bishop Reinkens will no doubt give us a true insight into the characters of most of the men who have elected him their ecclesiastical superior.

When the persecutors found that both bishops and priests were immovable in their devotion to the church, they appealed to the Catholic people, and, by the laws of last May, placed it in their power to create a schism, by giving them the right to elect their own pastors, with the promise that government would turn the churches over to them. But this attempt to show that the bishops and priests of Germany have not the sympathy and confidence of the laity has met with signal rebuke.

The elections for the Prussian Landtag in November, 1873, and those for the Reichstag in January last, had not merely a political significance; their bearing upon the present and future welfare of the church in the German Empire is of the greatest importance. Opportunity was given to the Catholic people to make a public confession of faith; to declare, in words which could not be misunderstood, whether or not they were resolved to stand firm in the struggle into which their leaders had been forced.

In the November elections, in spite of every effort of the government, the Catholics increased their representatives in the Landtag from fifty‐two to eighty‐nine; whilst in the Reichstag their members have grown from sixty‐ three to considerably more than one hundred.

The entire Rhenish Province elected Catholics. Cologne, Düsseldorf, Treves, Coblentz, Aix‐la‐Chapelle, Crefeld, Bonn, Neuss, Düren, Essen, Malmedy, Mülheim, all the cities of the Lower Rhine, made their vote an act of faith. Windthorst, the leader of the Catholic party, was elected at Meppen (Hanover) over Falk, the author of the May laws, by a majority of nearly fifteen thousand. The entire vote for Falk was only three hundred and forty‐seven.

The result of the elections undoubtedly startled the government, and possibly shook Bismarck’s confidence in the power of persecution to destroy Catholic faith; but the struggle had grown too fierce to allow him to think of withdrawing.

On the contrary, the firmness of the Catholic people incited the persecutors to still harsher measures; but nothing that they have done or can do will succeed in breaking the combined passive opposition of the clergy and the laity.

In the Vatican Council, the most determined resistance to the definition of the infallibility of the Pope was made by the German bishops, who felt no hesitation in openly declaring with what anxiety they regarded the probable effects of such a definition upon the Catholics of their own country. Divisions, apostasies, schisms, seemed imminent; and it is not easy now to determine what might have been the result had not God’s providence interfered.

In the first place, at the very moment when the definition was made, the terrible conflict between France and Prussia broke forth, and raged so fiercely that the loud earth was struck dumb, and men held their breath till it should be ended. In the meantime, the angry feelings aroused by the discussions in the Vatican Council had, in great measure, been calmed, and it was possible to take a fairer and more dispassionate view of the whole subject.

Then the attempt of the government to destroy the Catholic Church in Germany, by tearing it away from its allegiance to the Pope, and debasing it to a mere function of the state, roused those who might have been disposed to waver, and brought about a universal reawakening of faith. It is the fate of the enemies of God’s people to bless when they mean to curse. In fact, when Catholics begin to suffer, they begin to triumph; and hence even those who hate us have of nothing so great horror as of making martyrs and confessors. They know the history of martyrdom—that in the whole earth and in all ages it means victory.

The church, which sprang from the conflict of the God‐Man with death, like him, in her greatest humiliation shows forth her highest power.

Her march through the world and through the ages is not along pleasant roads and through peaceful prospects, or, if so, only at times and rarely. If she move in pomp amid the acclamations of peoples, her triumphal procession ends in sorrow. The bark of Peter must be storm‐tossed; and when the angry waves would swallow it, the divine voice speaks the magic word, and the quiet deep bears it up on her peaceful bosom.

The road wherein the progress of the church is most secure is the blood‐ stained way of the cross. When she is all bruised, and there is no comeliness left in her; when her eyes are red with weeping, and the world, beholding her agony, mocks and jeers and laughs her to scorn, then is she strongest; for her strength comes from humility, from suffering, from the cross. When she is humbled, God exalts her; when he permits her enemies to entomb her in ignominy, he is near at hand to crown her with the immortal glory of a new life. The word of Christ is: “You shall live in the world in the midst of persecutions; but take heart: I have conquered the world.”

Within the memory of those who are still young, it was the fashion with our enemies to proclaim that the church was decrepit, that she was dying, that of her own weight she would fall to pieces in the new society that was growing up around her: to‐day we hear that she is everywhere waxing too strong, and men appeal against her to tyranny and to brute force.

The most powerful and the most thoroughly organized of the modern nations, the great _Cultur‐Staat_ of the age, has confessed that it is unable to check the growth of the church by legitimate means, and it has therefore had recourse to the most arbitrary legislation and to the harshest measures of compulsion and violence. This, of course, is the most explicit avowal of its own impotence. We find also that the two nations which have manifested the most supercilious indifference to the Catholic Church, as being something which did not and could not concern them, now applaud this Prussian tyranny, in spite of the pretence of the love of freedom and fair play. The sympathy of the English press, and to a great extent of the American press, in this struggle, is with the absolute and liberty‐ destroying government of Prussia. The favorite motto of “civil and religious liberty all the world over” has been wholly lost sight of, and Englishmen and Americans give moral aid to a state which wantonly tramples upon both.

This, too, was a cherished watch‐word: The church is the friend of absolutism, the enemy of freedom.

But to‐day we behold the Catholic Church, single‐handed, fighting again the same battles of liberty which she fought and won in the early centuries of Christianity. Now, as then, she opposes absolutism in the state; denies, as she then denied, that Cæsar can lawfully lay claim to “the things of God”; and protests, in the name of the outraged dignity of human nature, that there is a freedom which transcends the sphere of all earthly authority. Her children, when nothing else remains to be done, utter the divine words: _Non possumus_—we cannot; we must obey God rather than men.

Referring to this struggle, Bismarck has said, in a memorable speech, that “it is the ancient contest for power, which is as old as the human race itself—the contest for power between king and priest.” This is necessarily the view which he takes, since he believes in nothing but force. But the dualism here is not in the combatants alone; it is in the objects for which they contend.

It is indeed the ancient contest between good and evil, between the spirit and the flesh, between the Christ and the rulers of this world, which makes life a warfare and the earth a battle‐field, and which must continue until the end. Never has it been fiercer than in our day, and the battle is yet hardly begun. But very few indeed understand, as yet, the nature of the struggle, or are at all aware of the real principles and interests which are at stake. Few men can see further than an hour or beyond the little circle that bounds their private interests; but each day it is becoming more evident that men must take sides; that not to be for Christ is to be against him.

Twice in the last eighteen hundred years the church has been the ark of the nations: she destroyed paganism; she converted and civilized barbarism. Some historian will tell, in another age, how, when Christian society, grown luxurious and corrupt, without God and without future hope, was sinking back into the flesh‐worship and the death of ancient paganism, she, gathering around her the remnant of her children, and fearlessly facing the storm and the wrath of those who had ceased to know her, kept her own pure and undefiled till the dawn of the brighter day, to become the leaven of the social state that is to be.

Christmas‐Tide.

’Twas the hallowed Christmas even— Christmas of the olden time, Earth in snowy robes lay sleeping, But there came a ringing chime From the forest Deck’d with glittering frozen rime.

Bright the golden stars were gleaming Through the cloudless frosty air, Like the tapers softly beaming Round some holy shrine of pray’r, And the night wind Chants an anthem faint and rare.

Cheer’ly shone the Yule‐log, glowing In an old baronial hall, Ghost‐like shadows rose and faded On the ancient panelled wall: O’er my spirit Mournful fancies seemed to fall.

Happy hearts were gathered round me— Laughing childhood, free from stain; Maidens, in their girlish beauty; Manhood’s gaze, undimm’d by pain; And the aged, Who might never meet again.

Gathered on that Christmas even In the old ancestral home, Breathing words of hope and kindness, ’Neath that lofty arching dome, Ere they parted Through life’s thorny paths to roam.

Two beside the hearthstone lingered— Aged sire, and lady fair; He of life’s long journey weary; But her softly waving hair Graced a forehead Yet unmarked by trace of care.

Spake then out that youthful mother With her babe upon her knee To the grandsire old and hoary, Like a leafless forest tree: “Tell me, father, What thought Christmas brings to thee.”

Silently he gazed upon her, On her brow so pure and white, On her dark eyes, softly beaming With affection’s holy light; But a shadow Lay upon his soul like night.

“Daughter, in life’s joyous morning Christmas comes with merry cheer, Fancy tints a glowing pathway Bright’ning with each coming year: On the picture Falleth not a shade of fear.

“Childhood smileth in its gladness, Archeth Hope her rainbow bright— Ah! he strives to grasp the vision; Fades it from his eager sight: Soon around him Closes Disappointment’s night.

“In the noontide, manhood kneeleth Low before Ambition’s shrine, Praying: ’Goddess, hear thy vot’ry, I no altar seek but thine’: Fame’s wan fingers Withered chaplets for him twine.

“But when fall the length’ning shadows, When life’s even stealeth on, Memory opes her golden casket, Counts her jewels one by one— Earth’s dream fadeth; Her bright smile remains alone.

“One by one my loved departed To the far‐off spirit‐land— One by one they crossed my threshold, Till, the last of that bright band, Sad and weary, By a stranger hearth I stand.

“As the wand’rer homeward speeding Marks the Southern Cross decline, I am looking ever backward To the stars that faintly shine; But one beameth With a radiance all divine.

“Star of Bethlehem! ere the sunlight Of another Christmas blest Rises in the glowing Orient, Light, oh! light me to my rest! I would slumber Calmly in earth’s quiet breast.”

Slowly, slowly crept a Shadow Through that silent, dark’ning room— Softly loosed the cord of silver, Led that soul from Sorrow’s gloom To the valleys Where the flowers immortal bloom.

The Veil Withdrawn.

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

XXX.

The portrait of Gilbert I have drawn is not incorrect. He was as noble as I have represented him, and it is certain that, in speaking to me as he did that day, he was very far from the thought of laying a snare for me, or even for himself. Whether he was absolutely sincere or not I cannot say, but probably as much so as I, at least during the few first days after this conversation. Thanks to the method of reasoning I have given above, and which I thought original, it seemed to me that this frequent intercourse with a man unusually superior to any one I had ever known, and who, very far from addressing me any silly flattery, almost invariably appealed to all that was highest in my nature, and, without alluding to the cause of my troubles, knew how to divert my mind completely from them—it seemed to me, I say, that this intimacy, this sort of imaginary relationship which I had accepted, was not only lawful, but beneficial, and I regarded it even as a just compensation for so many cruel deceptions. In a word, I had lost, through the frivolity of my recent life, that clearness of spiritual vision which is maintained by vigilance alone, and I was a long time without suspecting that this idle frivolity, with all the exuberant gayety that accompanied it, was a thousand times less dangerous than the long conversations, to which the perfect harmony of a kindred mind, and the contact with a soul so noble that it seemed to ennoble mine, lent such a charm, and gave to my life a new interest which I had never experienced before.

There was no apparent, or even real, difference in our interviews from what they were before, and any one might have heard every word he addressed me. And yet I felt that he by no means talked to me as he did to others, and I, on my side, conversed with him as I did with no one else. We were seldom alone together, it is true, but every evening, either in the drawing‐room or on the terrace, he found an opportunity of conversing with me a few moments without witnesses. He did not conceal from me that he regarded these as the most precious moments of the evening; and as to this I scarcely differed from him. Occasionally, something inexpressible in his voice, his looks, and even in his silence, made me tremble, as if I felt the warning of some approaching danger. But as he never deviated a single word from the _rôle_ he had taken, my torpid conscience was not aroused! Lorenzo was still absent, though the time fixed for his return had long gone by; and when I was expecting him the second time, I received a letter announcing a further delay, caused, as he said, by “a circumstance that was unforeseen and independent of his will.”

A flush of anger rose to my face while reading this letter, though I felt and acknowledged that the prolongation of his absence did not cause me the same chagrin it once would. I did not ask why. I took pleasure in recalling with a kind of complacency the aggravating wrongs I had repeatedly endured, and it seemed to me he had less right than ever to deny a heart he had so cruelly wounded any consolation whatever that remained.

The day this second letter arrived we were on the point of starting for Mt. Vesuvius, where, for a week, crowds of people had been going out of curiosity, as is the case at every new eruption. It was nearly night before we set out. My aunt and her two daughters were of the party, besides Gilbert, Mario, and Lando, as well as two foreigners who, from the time of the Carnival, had assiduously haunted the steps of my two cousins. One was a young Baron von Brunnenberg, an excellent dancer and a great lover of music; the other an Englishman, no less young, of fine figure and herculean proportions, whose name was Harry Leslie.

There was a certain embarrassment at our departure among the members of the party, caused by the simultaneous desire of several of them to avoid the _calèche_ in which Donna Clelia had at once installed herself. I observed this hesitation, which was far from flattering to my poor aunt, and hastened to take a seat beside her. The young baron, who escorted her, then concluded to follow my example, and I made a sign to Lando to take the vacant place. He obeyed me less eagerly than usual. Stella, my two cousins, and the young Englishman took possession of the other carriage, which assumed the lead, followed with an envious eye by the baron as well as Lando, who, I remarked, seemed in a less serene frame of mind than usual. Gilbert and Mario came after in a _carozzella_, which formed our rear‐guard.

At first everything went on pleasantly. My aunt was very fond of pleasure excursions, and she regarded this as one, particularly as we were all to take supper together at my house on our return. The conversation did not slacken an instant as far as Resina, where we arrived at nightfall. There we left the main road to take that which led directly to Mt. Vesuvius.

A new crater had this time been formed below the well‐known cone from which the fire and smoke generally issued. It was like a large, gaping wound on the side of the mountain, which sent forth torrents of fire, ashes, and red‐hot stones.

Consequently, instead of being obliged to climb to the summit in order to witness the eruption, we were able to drive so near the stream of lava that we only had to walk a short distance to see the terrible opening, which was approached more or less closely, according to the degree of boldness or curiosity with which each one was endowed.

But the spectacle presented an imposing appearance long before we saw it close at hand, and I was in the height of admiration when I heard a murmur beside me: “O Gesù, Gesù!... O Madonna santa!...” Turning around, I beheld my aunt, pale with fright, kissing the cross of the rosary she held in her hand.

Donna Clelia, as we are perfectly aware, knew how to brave danger when she found an occasion worthy of the trouble. We had a proof of this on the memorable day of the combat on the Toledo. But, as it has perhaps also been perceived, she was rather indifferent to the picturesque. Consequently, there was nothing at this moment to stimulate her courage, and I was alarmed at the condition in which I saw her.

“O Ginevrina mia!...” said she at last in a trembling voice, “_non mi fido!_ No, I have not the courage to go any further.... Madonna!...”

This last appeal was caused by a stream of fire brighter than any of the preceding ones, and accompanied by a loud detonation.

“But merciful Lord! What folly!” she continued. “What caprice! What madness! How can you wish to rush into such a lake of fire while you are still alive!... Oh! no, not yet; no, never! _O mamma mia! misericordia!_...”

Each new stream of fire produced a more lively exclamation of terror. All at once she leaned her head on my shoulder, exclaiming:

“Ginevrina!... I feel I am going to have a _papariello_!”(106)

At this we stopped the carriage. It was evidently dangerous to take her any further. But what should we do?... Must we give up our excursion, and retrace our steps? We were not inclined to do this. Besides, the other carriage was some distance in advance, and could not be recalled. In this dilemma we were rejoined by the _carozzella_. Gilbert and Mario leaped from their carriage to ascertain what had happened to us.

“What is it, Zia Clelia?” said Mario, approaching the carriage, and perceiving my aunt in the attitude I have just mentioned. She raised her head.

“O Mario! _figlio mio!_ It is because I cannot endure this storm of fire. It is the end of the world—the day of judgment!... How it oppresses me!... How it stifles me!... O my God! and the _povere ragazze, dove sono?_... O holy Virgin, lead us all back safe and sound to Naples, and I promise you that for nine days....”

She finished her vow mentally, for Mario at once decided on the only thing that could be done, and devoted himself to the task. He would take her back to Resina in the carriage, and there await our return.

The exchange was soon effected. My aunt did not require any insisting, after we promised to bring her daughters back without allowing them to incur any danger. In the twinkling of an eye she was placed beside Mario in the _carozzella_ with her back to Mt. Vesuvius, while Gilbert took her place beside me, and we pursued our way as fast as possible, in order to make up for the time we had lost.

We soon arrived at the place where we were obliged to leave the carriage. Gilbert aided me in descending, and then gave me his arm, while Lando and the baron went in search of the other members of the party, who only had Mr. Leslie to protect them. They were soon out of sight, and Gilbert remained alone with me.

I will not repeat here what every one has seen or read concerning the eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius. I will merely say to those who have not had the experience, that this extraordinary spectacle, assuredly the most wonderful and at the same time the most terrific in the whole world of nature, causes a singular fascination which induces the spectator to approach continually nearer and nearer the fiery crater. It seems impossible to turn away his eyes. He keeps on, therefore, without looking to the right or left, without seeing where he is walking, stumbling at every step over heaps of lava scarcely cold, regardless of the rough path with its sharp, burning stones, the effect of which is afterwards seen on his garments and shoes, though he does not think of it while exposed to the danger, more apparent, perhaps, than real, but which indubitably exists, however, as is proved by the numerous accidents that occur at every new eruption.

Leaning on Gilbert’s arm, I was too firmly supported to stumble, and was able to ascend to the top of a ridge of lava formed by preceding eruptions; and there, protected by an immense block on the very edge of the flaming abyss, I contemplated the awful, imposing spectacle! Gilbert did not utter a word, and I attributed his silence to the impression which likewise rendered me dumb in the presence of this terrific convulsion of nature. The burning lava, issuing, as I have said, from a crater on the side of the mountain, did not spring up to fall back again on the summit, as usual, but it advanced like a large river of fire over the heaped‐up masses of cold, black lava, giving them the most singular, fantastic forms. It was like a city, not on fire, but of fire! It seemed as if one could see houses, towers, and palaces; and in the midst of these imaginary edifices moved the fiery stream! For lava does not flow. However steep the descent, it stops and goes no further as soon as the crater ceases to emit it. But it had not yet stopped. On the contrary, it pursued its slow, pitiless course, consuming vineyards, swallowing up houses, and burning the trees and bushes in its way.

It was a sight difficult to endure for a long time, and yet I could not turn my eyes away from so mysterious and terrible a spectacle.

“O my God!” I murmured, “this is truly _la città dolente!_ We have before our eyes an exact representation of the last day of the world!...”

Gilbert made no reply. He was overcome by I know not what emotion more powerful than mine, and, looking at his face by the red light of the fire, I was alarmed at the change in his features and their unusual expression.

“Would that that day had arrived for me!” said he at length. “Would that this were really the last day of my life! Yes, I would like to be swallowed up in that flame! I would like to die here on the spot where I am—beside you—worthy of you....”

In spite of the terrific scene before me, in spite of the noise of the explosions and the sullen sound of the lava, the tone in which he spoke was distinctly audible, and made my heart beat with mingled emotion and fear.

“I am afraid you are becoming dizzy, Monsieur de Kergy,” said I in a trembling voice; “take care. Its effect, they say, is to draw one into the abyss.”

“Yes, Donna Ginevra,” replied he in the same strange tone, “you are right. I am dizzy. I am approaching the verge of an abyss, I know. I have rashly exposed myself to the danger. I have presumed too much on my strength.”

The look he fastened on me, as he uttered these words, gave them a meaning I could not mistake. It was no longer Gilbert who spoke—it was not he to whom I had accorded the rights of a safe and faithful friend. The veil with which I had wilfully blinded my eyes suddenly fell off, and the emotion I was seized with, the material flames that surrounded me, and the certain peril into which another step would have plunged me, gave an exact idea of the danger to which I had foolishly exposed my honor and my soul!

I covered my face a moment with my hands, but spoke as soon as I dared.

“Monsieur de Kergy,” said I in a supplicating tone, “cease to look at the fire around us. Lift up your eyes, and see how calm and beautiful the night is above this terrible _inferno_.”

In fact, a bright moonlight was diffused over this terrific scene, and the contrast between the earth and sky could not have been more striking.

Gilbert’s eyes followed mine, and remained for some time fastened on those peaceful starry worlds, which seemed as far remote from the agitation of our hearts as they were above this frightful convulsion of nature. I felt in my soul the need of powerful assistance, and murmured in a low tone: “O my God, have mercy on me!” with a fervor that for a long time I had not felt in my prayers.

After a long silence, Gilbert said to me in a low, agitated tone:

“Will you pardon me, madame? Will you trust in me to take you away from this place?”

“Yes, I trust you. But let us make haste to leave so dangerous a spot. Do you not hear the frightful explosions? Do you not see the red‐hot stones that are flying over our heads?...” And as I spoke a cloud of thick smoke added obscurity to all the other horrors of the place.

“Do not be alarmed,” said Gilbert in a tone once more calm and decided. “We must certainly hurry away, but there is no danger yet, unless from fear. Give me your hand.”

But I hesitated when he endeavored to take it, and made an involuntary movement, as if going to descend without his assistance.

“In the name of heaven,” said he rapidly, trembling with agitation and terror, “do not refuse my assistance in the danger we are in. You cannot do without it. You _must_ give me your hand, madame.”

His agitated voice became almost imperious. I gave him my hand, and even complied when he told me to rest the other firmly against his shoulder.

“Now,” said he, “descend carefully. You need not be afraid. I will support you. In spite of this whirlwind of fire and smoke, I can clearly distinguish my way.”

He made no further observations, as we slowly descended; and as soon as we were in a place of safety, I left him, and leaned against a tree at some distance, trying to get breath. Besides the violent agitation of my heart, the suffocating air that surrounded us gave me a feeling of giddiness and faintness that was almost overpowering.

XXXI.

The stream of fire and smoke that obliged us to leave the place where we were standing had a like effect on all who were in the vicinity of the fiery current. We were therefore soon joined by Teresina and Lando, Mariuccia and the baron. But I felt extremely anxious at seeing nothing of Stella and young Leslie, who had left the others to go further below, in order to get a better view of the lava in its course to the plain. The fear lest some accident had happened to them began to chill the blood in my veins, but I was soon reassured by seeing them at last reappear with blackened faces and torn garments, while Stella was bareheaded, and her hair streaming in disorder.

“Good heavens! what has happened to you?”

“Nothing, nothing,” said Stella, out of breath. “We will tell you everything by‐and‐by.”

Here Mr. Leslie interposed, declaring that the Countess Stella was “the bravest woman he had ever met—a heroine, and an angel of goodness.”

“You are entirely mistaken,” said Stella, drawing up the hood of her cloak. “But I have lost my bonnet, and nearly destroyed my shoes also, I fear. Let us start immediately. We will relate everything afterwards.”

As she was there safe and sound, it was really much better to put off any further particulars till another time, and return to Naples as quickly as possible. We started, therefore, without any delay, only stopping at Resina long enough to take my aunt, who, having devoted the whole time of our absence to a siesta, was completely rested, and had quite recovered from her terror. Mario was less good‐humored; but when, a little after midnight, we all assembled at last around the supper‐table that awaited our return, every one seemed satisfied with the excursion we had made. I alone felt I had brought back a heart more agitated than at our departure.

Stella still refused to answer our questions, pretending to be too hungry to think of giving the account we were all so eager to hear; but Mr. Leslie was only too glad to assume the task, and at once proceeded to satisfy our curiosity.

“We were,” said he, “watching the lava, as it advanced with a dull sound resembling the distant report of grape‐shot, when all at once we heard a succession of heart‐rending groans a few steps off. At our approach we found a man lying on the ground. I endeavored to raise him. Impossible: he had broken his leg. Countess Stella questioned him, and the story he related was a sad one. Like so many of the other poor creatures, he had deferred leaving his house till the last moment. His wife was ill in bed, with a little boy of five or six years old beside her. He kept hoping the lava would stop before it could reach his dwelling—they all hope that! He went out two or three times an hour to see how far it had progressed, and finally saw all hope was vain. The lava kept on its course, regardless of any one. He had barely more than half an hour to save his wife and child, and then carry away what he could. He rushed towards the house; but in the haste with which he endeavored to make up for lost time, he had fallen from one of those black rocks you are so familiar with, on the spot where we found him, unable to rise. It was necessary to hasten; the lava was continually advancing. In less than a quarter of an hour it would reach his hut, and his wife and child were there!... I could not understand what he said,” continued the young Englishman with an expression of benevolence and courage which added to the effect of his narrative, “but while I was gazing at the devouring current that was advancing towards a house I supposed empty, I suddenly saw the countess dart forward without any explanation. I understood it at once, and followed her. Outrunning her, I was the first to arrive at the house, and had already taken the woman and mattress in my arms when the countess joined me. ‘Take the child!’ I cried. He was screaming, the poor thing; for, in taking up his mother, I had, without intending it, thrown him on the floor. He was a boy of about six years of age, and heavy to carry, I assure you. But kindness and courage gave strength. The countess picked him up as if he were a feather, and we hurried out of the house. The heat of the fire was already intolerable, and the earth under our feet heaved at every step. I thought a dozen times we had sacrificed our own lives in trying to save theirs. But no, thank God! we all succeeded—woman, child, and ourselves, with the mattress—in reaching the poor wounded man, whose cries of terror now gave place to those of joy. He had reason—the poor creature!—for we were hardly in safety before we heard a horrid sound, this time like the noise of cannon—it was the shock of the burning lava against the house we had just escaped from. What a sight! Good God!... But since it must have happened, I am not sorry I was there! The fiery stream first passed around the house, then rose, as if to wrap its red flame around it, and finally swept over the roof; and when everything was engulfed, it quietly continued its course. The poor people wept; but, after all, they were thankful to be alive, and kissed the hands of the Countess Stella, calling her an angel sent by the Madonna and a thousand other things of that kind. It was now time to call for assistance, and by the aid of two or three peasants we transported them all into a habitation, where they were received for the night. To‐morrow I shall go and carry them some assistance. And now, Madame la Duchesse, you know how the Countess Stella lost her bonnet, and why we were so late.”

The effect produced by this account cannot be described. Gilbert eagerly raised his head, and I saw his eyes glisten as he listened. As for me, my heart leaped with a kind of transport, while my dear, noble Stella made fruitless efforts to stop the acclamations her courage drew even from those who were the least accessible to enthusiasm.

“What an absurdity!” exclaimed she as soon as she could make herself heard. “Who of you would not have done the same thing? Stop, I beg of you, or rather, listen to me. Let us all join in buying these poor people a cottage to replace the one they have lost.”

This proposition was of course acceded to with ardor and unanimity. My Aunt Clelia instantly plunged into the depths of her pocket, and had already opened her well‐stocked _porte‐monnaie_ when Lando rose and exclaimed:

“Stop, Donna Clelia; put your gold back in your pocket—for the moment. I have an idea. Let us do as they do in Paris.”

“Oh! bravo!” exclaimed my two cousins in a breath.

“Yes,” said Teresina with enthusiasm, “as at Paris, I beg of you. But what? how? say!”

“Listen, all,” said Lando—“listen to my programme. It contains a _rôle_ for us all. First, Donna Ginevra’s is the easiest, but most indispensable. She must lend us one of her drawing‐rooms where a small but select number can assemble. This _réunion_ shall take place to‐morrow, ... no, the day after to‐morrow, when—pay special attention now, Monsieur le Comte de Kergy.”

Gilbert, hearing his name, looked up with surprise, while Lando stopped to say very swiftly in Italian to his neighbor, “You know he is celebrated for his eloquence,” then continued: “And then, the Comte de Kergy, here present, shall, at the opening of the meeting, make a brief discourse, in order to explain the object of the contribution we shall afterwards expect of each one. He will relate the account we have just heard, and add all he pleases about the excursion we have made together and the various incidents that have taken place. We shall depend on his omitting nothing that occurred. _Poi_, Donna Teresina and Donna Mariuccia will sing a duet, accompanied by the Baron von Brunnenberg; and if you wish for a general chorus, here we are, Mario, Leslie, and myself, ready to lend our assistance. _Finalmente_, we come to the most important; the Countess Stella will recite some poetry of her own choice, and you who have heard her know what is in reserve for those who are to hear her for the first time. After that is the moment to present your contributions, and you shall give me the result. _Che ne dite!_”

I could not have declined, even if I had had any serious objections against this proposition, which was unanimously received with even more enthusiasm than the first. Stella, though really endowed with the talent Lando was desirous of profiting by, seemed annoyed. Gilbert’s face darkened, and he resumed the gloomy, preoccupied expression he had for an instant shaken off; but to protest or refuse was as impossible for them as well as me, and before separating, at two o’clock in the morning, the meeting was decided upon and appointed for the next day but one.

When I found myself alone, it was impossible to think of sleep, notwithstanding the advanced hour of the night. My chamber was at one end of the house, and opened on the lateral terrace opposite that of the drawing‐room. I opened my window, and took a seat outside. There, in the imposing silence of that beautiful night, I sought calmness and the power of reflection. The uncommon courage Stella had just given a proof of produced a salutary effect on me. Her example reacted somewhat against a fatal enervation that was gradually diminishing my moral strength. I admired courage, and my soul, however enfeebled it might be, responded at this moment to her noble, generous impulse. With my eyes fastened on the flame that now lit up the whole horizon with its sinister gleam, I thought the sight ought to inspire Stella with a lofty emotion such as follows the accomplishment of an heroic deed; whereas I—it was with a shudder I thought of the contrast it suggested!... I tried to avoid dwelling on what had taken place. I wished to believe it was my imagination alone that disturbed and alarmed me; that nothing was changed; but I could not succeed, and at last I was forced to consider what I should do—what was the course prescribed by the new light to which I could no longer close my eyes? But as soon as this question was clearly placed before me, I experienced the most violent repugnance to solve it.

Gilbert’s sweet, beneficent friendship alone had enabled me to endure the destruction of my happiness. Could I admit the necessity of renouncing it? What had he ever done till to‐day to give me reason to regret my confidence in him? For an instant, it is true, and only for an instant, he had not seemed like himself, and my heart beat, in spite of myself, as I recalled his look and the accent of his voice; but did I not attach too much importance to words which, after all, were vague and incoherent? Should I not take time to reflect? Such were the questions I asked myself, in order to impose silence on my reason and the actual voice of my conscience. I succeeded so far as to defer the reply I was unwilling to listen to, and put off my decision, whatever it might be, till the following day.

It was late when I awoke, for I did not go to sleep till daylight; and I had not yet left my chamber when the following letter was brought me. It was dated the same day at three o’clock in the morning:

“MADAME: A few hours ago I addressed you in a moment of delirium. What I said I know not. But what I do know is that you understood me, and, in order to regain your confidence and make you forget what I uttered, I should be obliged to declare what is false, and this I cannot do. No, I will not be false to myself, were I, by speaking the truth, to forfeit a happiness I ought to have courage enough to deny myself, and which I shall, at least, renounce if you require it.

“I only ask you not to condemn me without a hearing. For once allow me to speak plainly, though it be of myself; which is repugnant to me, as you may have perceived. But it is necessary to do this in order to throw light on the decision you will afterwards have to make.

“I believe I have a high idea of the use a man should make of his life, as well as a profound conviction he will have to render an account of the way he spends it. In a word, I adhere, thank God, to the faith of my mother, and desire to live as much as possible in accordance with this faith, and as it becomes an honest man and a Christian to live.

“To this end, I have given my activity every possible scope—long, fatiguing journeys, hard study, active concurrence in a multitude of enterprises that seemed to have an useful object. I have entered eagerly into everything that could absorb my mind and time, not so much out of disinterested zeal for doing good, as from a calculation that is allowable, I think; for it is founded on a distrust of myself, resulting from an exact knowledge of the shoals on which I might easily be wrecked.

“I dreamed of a happiness, common enough in many countries, but rare in ours—that of knowing, loving, and choosing the one I would make my own; but this is a difficult thing in France, and I had a strong repugnance to any other way of deciding my lot. I persistently refused to consent to any of those so‐called chance encounters one is constantly drawn into by officious friends without number in Paris, who are always ready to take possession of any one who has the misfortune to be considered a _bon parti_.

“In avoiding these encounters I was spared other temptations still more dangerous, and I met with nothing to disturb my peace of mind till the day I saw you the first time, madame. I had no conversation with you on that occasion, but I observed you, I heard your voice, and listened to some of your remarks. I noticed your indifference to the homage that surrounded you, and the evident absence of vanity which your beauty rendered so strange, and I became afraid of you. Yes, I felt I must avoid you, and I did so resolutely. One day, however, you were, without my being aware of it, in the audience I addressed, and Diana afterwards presented me to you. The opinion of every one else immediately became indifferent to me. I only cared to know what you thought of my discourse, and to ascertain if there was any mental sympathy between us. I thought I discovered some in the few words we exchanged, and my resolution to avoid you only became the more fixed. I even resisted my mother’s entreaties to join some of the excursions she made with you. Consequently, I only met you once, as you are aware, madame, and that was at home, where I could not avoid the happiness of being beside you.

“I perceived you were sad that evening, in spite of your charming smile and gayety of manner, which were no less dangerous to me than your tears. I saw it, and was terribly agitated. And when at last the time came to bid you farewell, I could not summon the resolution, but said instead ‘_au revoir_.’

“Nevertheless, I allowed long months to pass. I waited till time had somewhat effaced the vividness of my recent impressions, so I should no longer fear to meet you, and then I made an excuse to stop at Naples a few days on my way to Egypt. The day I arrived here, though I detest balls, I could not avoid attending that given by the French ambassador, and there I saw you once more!

“Shall I acknowledge it? When I saw you in all the splendor of your dazzling beauty, enhanced by your dress, and surrounded by adorers, I felt a momentary relief. I congratulated myself on having braved the danger of seeing you again. It seemed to me at that moment the image I had so cherished in my heart was effaced, and I was no longer in any danger. Alas! the next day you were no longer the same. I found you as you once were, but I had not the courage to fly from you. My stay was to be short, and I yielded to the happiness allotted me, persuading myself the habit of seeing you daily might diminish the effect of your influence.

“At length, madame, in good faith, as I thought, I ventured one day to ask you to regard me as a friend, and promised to be worthy of the favor. I firmly believed I promised you nothing beyond my strength. A single instant was sufficient to reveal to me, even more clearly than to you, the extent of my illusion. You see I make no attempt to conceal anything from you now. I no longer try to deceive you. But in spite of all I have said, I implore you not to bid me depart. In asking this I feel sure of never offending you again. I cannot hope for the return of your confidence. I no longer claim to be regarded as a friend. I even promise to speak to you henceforth but seldom. But I beseech you not to deprive me of the happiness of seeing you! Do not punish me so severely! Do not yet command me to _go_. That word would be an order I should at once obey, or rather a sentence I should submit to without a murmur; but there is no criminal who has not the right to petition for mercy, and that mercy I now implore at your feet.

“_Gilbert._”

XXXII.

My mother, in portraying the lineaments of my youthful soul, once spoke of a precious jewel hidden in its depths. She doubtless referred to the inclination for what is right and the lively horror of evil she discovered there. But does not this jewel exist with more or less purity and brilliancy in the depths of every human soul, requiring only a perverted will to crush it utterly, or a feeble, undecided will to tarnish its lustre and diminish its value? My life, though not very culpable in appearance, was now drawing me in its soft current into that state of sluggishness, inaction, and weakness which is a dissolvent of this supernatural jewel without any equal in the natural world.

Lorenzo, notwithstanding his jealous vigilance during the earlier period of our married life, did not hesitate to take me to all the theatres, and at Paris he placed in my hands some of the most celebrated romances of the day. This somewhat disturbed the equilibrium of my mind, and produced a certain agitation of soul, which is the natural consequence of an unhealthy interest in works to which genius and talent have the cruelty to lend their irresistible power. When we reflect on the value of these divine gifts, the source from which they emanate, and their power of diffusing light and awakening the mental faculties, we cannot help thinking how cruel it is to employ them in kindling everywhere a fire so destructive to the human soul—the only real, irrevocable death.

But, in spite of the inevitable effect spoken of above, the strong disgust and repugnance they speedily produced in my mind prevented their poisonous emanations from affecting me seriously. Now, after being so long exposed to influences doubtless less deleterious than those, but by no means strengthening, a more subtle snare was laid for me.... The letter I held in my hand was not an effusion that should instantly have aroused my conscience, which, though torpid, was not hardened; no, its language was such that I read and reread it, and allowed the sentiments it expressed to penetrate my very heart. And yet, what was the substance of this letter; what was its real signification? However noble and superior to other men Gilbert might appear in my eyes, of what avail was this nobleness, this superiority, this purity of his soul even, when he began to tread the lower path of common mortals with the vain thought that he could maintain a straight course better than others; ... that he could make me so decidedly explicit a declaration, and promise me an inviolable respect, which he immediately deviated from the first time he had the opportunity?...

But this truth did not at that time appear in the light in which I saw it at a later day, and a terrible struggle took place in my heart. Illusion was no longer possible. I could no longer say I had a sure, faithful friend whose attachment was allowable, and yet I could not decide to give it up. I tried to persuade myself, with all those arguments that present themselves as soon as one is ready to listen to them, that this sacrifice was unnecessary. In the bottom of my soul, however, another voice made itself heard, repeating more strongly the warning of the night before—a sweet, divine voice, scarcely audible in the midst of all this agitation, and, when heard, was not listened to!

That was the day I usually went to see Livia, but it was quite late before I remembered it. My first thought was to omit going for once, but as I had always been punctual at these interviews, in spite of every obstacle, and Saturday was the only day I could be received, after some minutes’ hesitation I surmounted the temptation to remain at home.

During the whole period of frivolous gayety that marked the first months of my life at Naples, far from wishing to avoid seeing Livia, I took pleasure, on the contrary, in asking her advice, which I was by no means as afraid of, even in Carnival time, as my Aunt Clelia. I was something like a place besieged and almost surrounded by the enemy, but still not wholly inaccessible to the friendly power disposed to deliver it. As I have said elsewhere, Livia’s voice always took a correct pitch, unmistakable to the ear, and I loved to listen to it, even when mine was too weak to sound the same note with like power and clearness.

But from the day of Lorenzo’s departure, so doubly fatal, instead of the careless gayety I usually went to the convent to acknowledge and correct, I was filled with a sadness and anxiety Livia was not slow to perceive, and, instead of gently shaking her head, as she smiled at my account of the somewhat too gay a life into which I had been led by Lorenzo, she now fastened a grave, anxious look on me, to which I replied by pouring out all the bitterness of my fresh grievances without any restraint. After this explanation, which sufficiently accounted for the change she had remarked, I spoke no more of myself, and never once mentioned Gilbert’s name. I was angry with myself for this reserve. I longed to overcome it, and tell her, as I had often told myself, that in Gilbert heaven had sent me a friend whose influence was delightful, salutary, elevated, pure, and so on. These words came to my lips, but I could not utter them before her.

Once (it was the Saturday before) there was a new change in the expression of my face—a change which reflected, I suppose, the insecure and dangerous happiness to which I had unscrupulously yielded. Seeing me appear with a smiling air and a calm, untroubled face, she at first seemed pleased, but, after observing me for some time, said:

“Has Lorenzo returned?”

“No.”

She looked thoughtful.

“Do you know when he will return?”

“I do not know,” said I bitterly; “and, in fact, I begin never to expect him, and almost not to wish him to return.”

I saw a slight movement of her clasped hands like a shudder. She raised her large eyes, and, looking me in the face, said:

“Take care.”

Her look and words greatly troubled me, and I did not recover from the impression till it was time for Gilbert to arrive in the evening, when his presence made me forget it. I thought of this to‐day, and perhaps the remembrance added to the repugnance I felt to go to the convent. Perhaps it also caused the unusual emotion I experienced when I found myself once more in the parlor—the very parlor that filled me with so much terror the first time I entered it, but which I afterwards forgot, so different were the impressions that followed.

But whatever the joy, the trouble, the agitation, or, as to‐day, the anguish, with which I came, a few minutes sufficed to put me in harmony with the inexpressible tranquillity that reigned around me. The pulsations of my heart diminished, and I experienced the effect a pure, vivifying air produces on one who has just come from a heavy, feverish atmosphere. The bare walls, the wooden seats, the extreme simplicity and austerity on every side, inspired me with a kind of attraction that would have surprised those who daily saw me in my sumptuous home, surrounded by all that wealth and the most refined taste could procure. This attraction, incomprehensible to myself, was like that vague perfume the traveller breathes when approaching some unknown shore which he does not yet perceive....

But on this occasion these things, instead of producing their usually beneficial, soothing effect, caused me a kind of uneasiness akin to remorse, and I soon found the solitude so difficult to endure that I had some idea of profiting by the interval that remained in order to leave the convent under some pretext without seeing my sister. But the strength of mind that, thank heaven, I still possessed prevented me from leaving the place, and I became absorbed in thoughts I dared not fathom, so utterly discordant were they with everything around me, and so different from what they seemed in the light by which I regarded them only an hour before.

At last the door opened, the curtain was drawn aside, and Livia made her appearance.

“You are late, Gina,” said she. “I was afraid I should not see you to‐ day.”

I stammered some excuse, as she gave me a scrutinizing look with her usual expression of extreme sweetness.

“You do not look so happy as you did last Saturday, Ginevra. You are agitated and excited to‐day. Will you not tell me the reason?”

I was tempted to make her a thorough, sincere confession; but the moment I was about to begin I was struck with the impossibility of speaking in that angelic place of what seemed elsewhere only natural, excusable, and almost legitimate.

Seeing I made no reply, she gently said:

“Lorenzo has not yet come home. Of course his absence afflicts you. Be patient and forbearing, I conjure you, Ginevra.”

Her words caused me a kind of irritation, though I was glad to elude her previous question, and I hastily replied:

“Livia, you require too much of me. Some day I may become patient and forbearing, but at present it is impossible.”

“Gina, Gina, do not say so,” said she in the tone in which she used to correct the faults of my childhood.

“O Livia! your poor sister finds life hard, I assure you. How happy you are!...”

“Yes, I am happy,” she softly replied.

“Who would have said it, however,” I continued in an agitated tone, “when Lorenzo came to woo me with so many assurances of affection, so many promises of happiness?... That all this should prove false and illusory!... Oh! when I think of it, I no longer have the strength to....”

“Ginevra!” said Livia, suddenly interrupting me in a tone of authority, “it is useless to talk in that manner. You speak like a child!”

She seldom spoke to me in this way, and I stopped.

“At the time you are speaking of,” she resumed, “do you remember my telling you one day—it was only a short time before your marriage....”

I hastily interrupted her in my turn.

“I have not forgotten our conversation, Livia. That was the day you told me I was going to pronounce _the most fearful vow there is in the world_. But, sister, I was not the only one who made it.”

“No, certainly not. You mean to say that Lorenzo has violated the solemn vow that bound you together.... Yes, Gina, it is horrible, I acknowledge, but listen to me; if you continue to think more of your own wrongs than of God, whom he has offended a thousand times more; if you continue to complain and dwell on your injuries, the result will be, you will soon seek likewise to be released from the fidelity you vowed to him. And then (may God preserve me from ever seeing that day, when I shall be truly separated from you!) your fall will be speedy, rapid, and terrible. You will fall as low, perhaps, as you might now rise high.”

She saw me shudder at these words, and continued with her usual mildness:

“Now, my dearest Gina, may God and his angels watch over you!... It is growing dark. The bell is about to summon me away. I have only time for one word: _Forget your heart_, I implore you. Believe me, God will some day satisfy its cravings, if you cease to listen so weakly to them, longing to have them gratified at all costs. Forget your heart, I say, and think only of your soul!”

The bell rang while she was speaking. She raised her hand, and made the sign of the cross in the air. I bowed my head, and when I raised it again she had disappeared. But she had not spoken in vain. The clouds that obscured my reason began to disperse, my courage began to revive, and the jewel within to regain the brilliancy that had been obscured in the depths of my soul. The course I ought to pursue was set before me with painful distinctness, but I no longer turned my eyes away from it.

I was not happy when I left the convent. I did not even feel calm or consoled; but I had come to a decision.

It was so late when I arrived home that the garden was filled with moonlight. I walked there a long time, absorbed in my reflections, and sincerely endeavoring to strengthen a resolution whose fulfilment I did not yet dare to consider. I trembled as I asked myself if it was necessary to utter the decisive word before another day, or if I could wait till after the _soirée_ organized by Lando, when it would be no longer possible to defer it.

I still hesitated as to this point. Though I had come to a decision, I did not cease to suffer, but I ceased to be weak. I was very far from the summit, but I resolved to attain it, instead of remaining as far below as I now stood. A circumstance, insignificant in itself, now occurred to confirm the change in my mind.

The door of Lorenzo’s studio was open, and, wishing to shorten the way to my chamber, I entered it, and was proceeding towards the other door when I found myself face to face with the vestal of which I was the model. The moon threw so brilliant a light over it as to produce a striking effect. I stopped to look at it, and, while doing so, it seemed as if this statue of myself spoke to me in its own way, and in a language similar to that I had so recently been listening to.

And what was the idea which Lorenzo really intended to express in this vestal—the finest of his productions?

One of those ideas which, under the inspiration of genius, sometimes sprang from his soul, and seemed for an instant to show a sense of the good equal to that he had of the beautiful. This was, alas! only a transitory gleam of light, but it was sufficient to justify the ambitious hopes I once felt for a day—hopes so fatally illusory at the very time they were conceived!

Lorenzo’s idea in choosing the ancient guardians of the sacred fire as his subjects was to represent under these two figures the woman who was true to her highest mission, and the woman who was untrue to it; the latter making use of the holy fire under her charge to kindle a flame that would end in destruction and woe; the other striving to keep this very fire alive, diffusing its clear, brilliant, beneficent light, not only over herself, but over everything around her.

Such was the idea he had not been able to embody, he said, till he had me for his model. All this was doubtless the dream of an artist; but while I stood contemplating what had resulted from it, the effect I experienced was so strange, the thoughts that came to my mind were so vivid, that they could only have been the whisperings of the voice that for an hour had spoken more and more clearly to my heart.

The statue, however idealized it might be by the genius of the sculptor, resembled me sufficiently for me to recognize the likeness. Flooded as it now was by a brilliant, unearthly light, I looked at it with an attention I had never done before. I observed its simple, dignified attitude; the head slightly inclined towards the symbolic flame that rose from the lamp she bore in her hands with so much ease, and yet with care and vigilance; and, finally, the mouth and eyes, in which it seemed to me no artist had ever expressed so clearly the gentleness, firmness, and purity he wished to depict. It was thus Lorenzo imagined the guardian of the divine fire which not only burned on the sacred altar, but kindled and fed the noblest inspirations of genius....

Yes, the conception was a beautiful one, and I felt proud and gratified that he had found me worthy of being the model to realize it!

All at once I was struck with a kind of terror, as it occurred to me, Shall this resemblance be merely external? Are not many things wanting in my nature which this statue seeks to express, and of which its beauty is only the reflection?...

O my God! I thank thee! Everything becomes an instrument in thy hand. It was thou, and not this marble, who didst suggest this thought, and it was through thy grace that, at that moment, quicker than I can express it, and as clearly as the eye beholds a picture placed suddenly before it, I all at once saw if Lorenzo were present, under the roof that was his, and Gilbert were also there—Gilbert, who called himself my friend and not his—there would exist at my fireside, there would be infused into my life, a perpetual lie, unmistakable treachery, and constant danger. I saw and realized that, though he might not apparently have anything to reproach me for, everything within and around me would henceforth continually reproach me. I saw if the sacred lamp did not actually fall from my hands, the purity of its flame would speedily be dimmed, and certainly end by being wholly extinguished....

All this became clearly visible and palpable, and in the presence of this voiceless marble, before the image of this pagan priestess, I renewed the tacit promise I had an hour before made to her who was the living Christian realization of this ancient ideal of a virtue pure and chaste.

XXXIII.

I went up to my chamber, not only startled at the vividness of the impression I had received, but decided as to my course. The words _falsehood_ and _treachery_ that came to my mind produced a powerful effect on me, and would, perhaps, have had the same effect on every woman who happened to be in a similar position, if she had the courage to call things in this way by their right names. It is pleasant and delightful to inspire and to experience those profound emotions sung by poets and exalted by writers of fiction, but it is not noble to be false. No poet has ever said so, no writer of fiction has ventured to insinuate it. Now, it is this falsity, so essential a feature in all these little dramas of the heart (real or fictitious), which ought, it seems to me, to disgust even those who do not act from any higher motive than those of the world. As for me, the mere thought that it would henceforth be impossible to speak of Gilbert’s friendship without falsehood, and, at Lorenzo’s return, that I should not have the same right as before to look him in the face—this thought, I say, was sufficient to inspire me at this moment with so much determination that I thought my irresolution at an end. It seemed as if I should have but little difficulty in accomplishing the task from which I no longer endeavored to escape. But in the evening, when, at a late hour, Gilbert arrived, I was somewhat moved at perceiving my outward calmness and animation made him suppose I acquiesced in his wishes; for, after looking at me an instant, he seemed suddenly relieved from a lively apprehension, and his eyes flashed with joy.

There was considerable company in the drawing‐room that evening, and consequently a good deal of noise. They had a kind of rehearsal of what was to take place the following evening. My cousins were at the piano with the baron and Lando. Leslie, at a distance, was gazing at Stella, who, under the pretext of looking over a volume of Dante, in order to select something to recite, was seated apart, silent and absorbed. There was no one on the terrace, and I proceeded in that direction. I felt that Gilbert’s eyes followed me; but he hesitated about joining me. I likewise felt some hesitation, but, fearing I might again become irresolute, and wishing at once to make it impossible to yield to the danger, I looked up, and motioned for him to follow me. In an instant he was at my side, and, as I remained silent, he said in an agitated tone:

“I hope you have pardoned me, madame.”

I was terribly moved on my part, but it would not do to manifest it.

“Yes,” I replied, “I forgive you; for you have been sincere, and that is worth everything else. But, Monsieur de Kergy, I must be sincere likewise. Let me therefore say to you, leave Naples. You ought to, and it is my wish.”

He was greatly agitated, but did not utter a word. I continued with a calmness that astonished me, though my heart beat with frightful rapidity:

“To‐morrow, I know, every one will depend on hearing you speak, and I also. But do not remain in Naples beyond the following day, if you can possibly help it. And after you are gone; I am sure you will be glad you obeyed me.”

He made no reply.

“Who knows?” continued I gently. “The day will come, perhaps, when we can meet again—when we can be truly friends without deceit, without falseness in the real sense of the word. What is impossible now may not be always.”

While I was speaking he leaned against the wall with folded arms. He listened at first with his head bent down; but he now suddenly raised it, and I saw such a veil of sadness over his eyes and whole face that I had to make a violent effort to maintain my self‐command.

At last he said:

“You are right. It was folly in me to come; it would be greater folly to remain. I will obey you, madame. I cannot complain, and I respect you as much as I....”

He stopped, for I made a deprecatory gesture. What I had to say was said, and I felt our interview ought not to be prolonged. I was about to leave the terrace when he detained me.

“A moment more, madame, I beg—only one, and the last; for who knows if you will grant me another, even to bid you farewell?...”

I stopped.

“Yes,” continued he slowly, “I would like to think, as you say, that I shall be permitted to see you again some day, and sincerely be your friend. Time will pass over my head and yours. You will not always be young and beautiful. Long years will doubtless pass. To enable me to endure the present, I must look forward to the time when I shall be no longer young, and can see you again, and resume without fear the title I ought not to claim, I acknowledge, while there is any danger of profaning it. I await that day.”

It was by no means with indifference I listened to his agitated, trembling voice; but I manifested nothing outwardly, and was even able to smile, as I replied:

“It will not be necessary to wait so long as you suppose, I assure you. Long before my hair grows white, what there is good and true in your friendship will be restored to me. For before that day some one, more beautiful than I (whom it will not be difficult to find), and, moreover, worthy of you, to whom you can give your whole heart, will have effaced the remembrance of the passing fancy I have caused without intending it, but which shall not be prolonged a single instant with my consent.”

I passed by him without looking up or giving him time to reply, and returned to the drawing‐room. There I seated myself on a sofa in an obscure corner of the room, or rather, I fell on it, pale, faint, and exhausted by the effort I had made.

I did not believe a word of what I had just said to Gilbert. My duty was to send him away, and this duty was accomplished! But I by no means desired another should so soon efface my image. I said so to allay his regret and appear indifferent. I was proud of the courage I had manifested. When I compared myself with Lorenzo, I thought myself perfectly heroic, and I was about to have reason to think myself a thousand times more so.

Lando at that moment left the piano, where he had been stationed all the evening beside Teresina. The latter, it may be remarked _en passant_, had profited so well by his hints that her toilet had become irreproachable, and now added singularly to the effect of her beauty. Lando perceived it, and it was evident he also thought of my cousin’s by no means despicable dowry among her other attractions, as a possible means of abridging his exile and returning to Paris before the two years had expired. When, therefore, I saw him coming with a grave air towards the place where I was seated, I thought I was about to receive a communication I had long been prepared for. I did not suspect what he had to say concerned me much more directly than himself.

“Cousin Ginevra,” said he in a low tone, as he took a seat beside me, “I have had news from Milan.”

I started involuntarily. He did not notice it, but continued:

“News which proves I was not mistaken the other day when I told you the beautiful Faustina would take good care to avenge you. Only, I did not think it would be so soon.”

Brought back so suddenly to the most painful reality of my life, I was the more startled and confounded at what he said. Lando’s gossip was usually odious to me; but now, instead of imposing silence on him, I insisted, on the contrary, that he should conceal nothing from me.

“Well, then,” continued he, “it seems the fair Milanese, notwithstanding her _belle passion_ for Lorenzo, had never been able to console herself for being deprived of the duchess’ coronet on which she had depended. So while neglecting nothing to maintain the ascendency she had regained over him, she was not wholly indifferent to the homage of a certain potentate from the Danube who offered to share with her his principality and his millions. She was still hesitating, it seems, between ambition and love, when Lorenzo, who had some suspicion, and was on the alert, unexpectedly came upon his rival. Then there was a violent scene and high words, which ended in a challenge. They were on the point of fighting when the lady prevented the affair from going any further by declaring she would give her hand to the potentate!... So in a short time, I imagine,” continued Lando, rubbing his hands, “Donna Faustina will take her departure for the banks of the Danube. You will be delivered for ever from her, and we shall soon see Lorenzo come home in a terrible humor. But, frankly, it is good enough for him. This punishment is not the hundredth part of what he merits when he has a wife like you!”

“O merciful heaven! what a fate is mine! and what a husband I am obliged to immolate myself to!...”

Such was my first thought on hearing this account, and an hour after, when I went to my chamber, I had not yet overcome the bitterness and agitation it caused me. My temptation became stronger and more formidable than ever, and the desire again sprang up in my heart to retract the sentence I had so recently pronounced. To see him, hear him, sometimes speak to him, and meet his sympathetic glance—was all this really forbidden me? Would this be failing in my duty to the husband who had outraged me so publicly? No, no, it could not be.... No one yet knew Gilbert was to leave Naples. A line, a word, from me, would suffice to prevent his departure. The new life created by his presence would continue as if nothing had happened that ought to terminate it!... I had already seized my pen and written the word ... when suddenly there awoke in my memory the words of Livia: “Think of God, whom he has offended a thousand times more than he has you”; and afterwards these: “If you seek likewise to be released, your fall will be speedy, rapid, and terrible.”

The recollection of these words stopped me and made me shudder. I now perceived what gradations I had passed through within a month. I felt that Livia was right—should I descend from the height I had just attained, it would indeed be to fall lower than I was before, and perhaps to the lowest depths!

My sister in her quiet cell still aided me with her prayers, which doubtless augmented the increasing light in my soul. I tore up the note I had begun to write, and, again preparing myself to struggle and suffer more than ever, I calmly renewed the resolution I had been so near breaking. It seemed to me this slight victory, though it did not lessen my sadness, added to my strength, and made the jewel within gleam with a lustre somewhat brighter than before.

Another General Convention Of The Protestant Episcopal Church.

The late convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church has, we believe, disappointed everybody. With skilful care to avoid anything which might cause a rupture, the various factions of this large and respectable denomination have spoken to each other, and parted. The world is none the wiser, and we hardly think that _they_ are. High‐Churchmen have maintained their ground with smooth dignity; Low‐Churchmen have gained some points, while they have lost others; and Ritualists have hidden themselves in silence. If neither party is suited, there is the consolation that no one is pleased; and from this universal negative we presume the conclusion comes to an universal affirmative that all are pleased. We have long ago foreseen this result, and they who, arguing from the defection of Bishop Cummins, expected to hear something decisive in the way of doctrine, have learned how peace may be maintained by simply abstaining from war. The Episcopal Church has no fixed creed. Its articles of faith contradict its offices. Its various members interpret both, so that from the Babel of conflicting opinions no certain sound can be heard. Thus it has been, and thus it will be to the end. There is only one thing on which Episcopalians unite—namely, hostility to the Catholic Church. With various degrees of ignorance or honesty, they are enemies of the only body which teaches with authority, whose forms they counterfeit by sad travesties or servile imitations.

The action of this convention, as far as it concerns the interior structure of the church, which they profess to have modelled after the American Constitution, has no particular interest for the world. Some improvement may have been made in the canons, of which we can be no judges. Legislation is one of the peculiarities of our day. If it be harmless, it is looked upon as a safe use of force and nerve which, expended in another direction, might have done damage. We proceed to notice a few things which are of importance, and they are the only acts of the convention which, on the reading of the journal, strike us as of any consequence.

We are happy to be able to congratulate our friends on the rejection of the _provincial system_. With them it would have worked very badly, because a province supposes some central government and a unit in authority. When a province separates from its parent state, it becomes independent. If there be no home government, there can be no province, properly so‐called. The committee very _learnedly_ explains the constitution of the primitive church, and concludes that it would not apply to them, and could not without injury be forced upon them.

“Your committee assume that the terms ‘provincial system’ are used in the resolution in their full ecclesiastical and primitive sense. In the early church there were: 1. the parish; 2, the diocese; 3, the province; 4, the patriarchate. The parish had its priest, the diocese its bishop, the province its archbishop, the patriarchate its patriarch. Among these, the dominant and most active power was the province with its archbishop. Speaking generally, we may say that it possessed the powers of this body and of the House of Bishops, and many of the powers of our diocesan councils. The provinces were disconnected and independent, except as, by very slender ties, they were united in the patriarchate. Such a system would dismember this church, and out of this now compact, now united body create five, or seven, or ten separate churches. The ties which may at first unite them will grow weaker and weaker. However similar they may be at the moment of dismemberment, at that moment the process of divergence will begin, and it will go on until the separation will be as great as that now existing between York and Canterbury. Those provinces now communicate with each other only informally.

“Any institution of provinces or provincial synods, with powers subject at all times to revocation by the General Convention, would be useless and illusory. The provinces, if invested with irrevocable powers, and discharged from the constant and necessary authority and supervision of the General Convention, certainly might, and probably would, soon diverge into widely differing practices and opinions, engendering ecclesiastical conflicts, threatening the unity of our church.”

Nothing could be plainer than this argument. In any Protestant organization, the least separation makes an independent church. It could not be otherwise where there is no infallible authority and no divine government to bind all the members to one head. It must be sad to the lovers of primitive purity to know how imperfect the constitution of the early church was. Everything tended to disintegration, and a more perfect system has been found out by the wisdom of modern days. In the mind of the committee, the hand of God had nothing to do with the primitive church; for there is only _one_ author of confusion and disorder. These learned antiquarians never heard of the See of Rome, and do not know that our Lord said to Peter, “Thou art the rock, and on this rock will I build my church.” Viewing them, however, from their own standpoint, we are glad to note their acuteness, and to congratulate them that they have not _divided_ themselves.

It appears also that there was some disposition to consider the American Episcopal Church as a province of the English, and to treat the Archbishop of Canterbury as a kind of patriarch. This disposition was rebuked by the convention. The following are among the remarks made in the House of Deputies which show that the _quasi_ mission of the Bishop of Lichfield was fruitless:

“The right reverend gentleman who has taken so strong an interest in this subject has made a proposition, and the proposition is that we should become one great province, if you please, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as metropolitan of these United States for the nonce, and that in all these conferences the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the great metropolitan or patriarch, is to preside.

“I know that many are wont to call the Church of England the mother church. I hold that she is not. If so, I claim her to be nothing but a very poor stepmother. The church in this country never was perfected till she got her perfection by the consecration of Seabury from the bishops of Scotland; and if we acknowledge a mother other than the mother church of Jerusalem (which I am not prepared to acknowledge), we must acknowledge Scotland, not England.

“I could say a great deal more on this subject—full of it I am; but, under the circumstances, I think I have said enough to satisfy the members of this house that they had better let it alone, and wait till the bishops tell us what they think of it. They are the persons interested. They accepted the first invitation without asking us ‘with your leave’ or ‘by your leave.’ Now, after they have been bluffed, and this church, I would say, insulted as it has been by the Dean of Canterbury, and by the prearrangement of keeping out the very question which these gentlemen, at a large expense of time and money, went to attend to, why not leave them first to express their opinion? My word for it, from what I know of the self‐respect of the members of that house, if you wait for that, you will wait to the end of the term.

“There are several parties to this movement, of different temperaments. One of them is the great apostolic prelate whom we have welcomed twice to this convention—the illustrious prelate, of whom I speak with the most unbounded admiration as a churchman, as a gentleman, as a historian, as a man. In every capacity in which I can know human nature, he deserves honor and affection. I do not enter into the motives of this movement, but I simply say that he is affirmatively moving, in my belief, to gratify what he has largely developed in his great nature—the power of organism. He does wish, I have no doubt, something like an organic union of the two churches of the two great English‐speaking races. That movement, to a certain extent, is creditable and desirable, but to a certain other extent it is extremely dangerous and utterly inadmissible.”

The organic unity of the Anglican with the American Episcopal Church is as far from perfect as the union of provinces would prove if the _primitive_ system, as stated by the learned committee, were adopted. The independence of the two churches is as complete as that of the Presbyterian or Methodist denominations in this country. Neither is bound by the doctrinal decisions of the other. This being the case, we hardly understand the full significance of the ceremony by which an “alms‐basin” was presented by the General Convention to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Bishop of Lichfield, explaining his part in the august rite, says:

“It was my happiness to present that alms‐basin to the Archbishop of Canterbury in concert with one whose loss we all lament, who is now with God in his rest—Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio, who, hand‐in‐ hand with me, each of us holding the alms‐basin by one hand and on bended knee, presented that alms‐basin for the Lord’s table in S. Paul’s Cathedral, on the fourth of July, on that occasion.”

One of the members of the House of Deputies tells us that

“This basin was procured from the Messrs. Kirk, of the city of Baltimore. The price of it was one thousand dollars, and it is said to be the finest piece of work of silver and gold and precious stones combined that has ever been made upon our continent. It was sent through the hands of the Bishop of Lichfield, who presented it on bended knees to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be placed upon the altar of S. Paul’s Cathedral; and in this basin the bishops of the Church of England made their own offerings first. It is understood that the basin is to be preserved by the archbishop and transmitted to his successors, to be used in all future times at the consecration of English bishops and the opening of the Houses of Convocation, and upon all public and great occasions in which the Church of England is interested, and to be preserved as a pledge and token of unity and good‐will between our own church and our mother Church of England.

“I may say here, too, that both Houses of Convocation, by resolution adopted unanimously, went in their scarlet convocation robes from their sittings in the chamber near Westminster Abbey, in solemn procession, to the celebration of the Holy Communion in S. Paul’s Cathedral, especially to do honor to the American Church; and in this procession Bishop McIlvaine and the Lord Bishop of Lichfield carried our basin, and it was presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury in form.”

Why did these prelates _kneel_ to the archbishop on this occasion, unless to do him homage? And what function does an “alms‐basin” discharge in the consecration of bishops and the opening of the Houses of Convocation? We ask in all sincerity, because our knowledge of ecclesiology is imperfect in reference to these points.

While we praise the manly spirit of our American friends in not yielding to the spirit of toadyism before English prelacy, we confess we are somewhat pained at a seeming want of self‐respect in their attempt to deal with the “Holy Orthodox Eastern Church.” This body, though having valid orders, holds all the doctrines condemned by the Thirty‐nine Articles, and has plainly and openly anathematized Protestantism. Why will the Episcopalians consent to be snubbed and slapped in the face for the sake of an intercommunion which is utterly impossible? If _they_ like it, we ought not to repine; yet, for the sake of our manhood, we protest against it. The Rev. Dr. Fulton, of Alabama, said:

“There is a great body of Christian people, constituting one of the three great bodies of the Holy Catholic Church, throughout the world, which to‐day are not in visible communion, although they are in unity of spirit, and hope for a more clearly‐defined bond of peace. Hitherto it has only been possible for these various bodies, or at least two of them—that is to say, the Anglican Church and the Holy Orthodox Eastern Church—to meet each other in courtesy. Now, arrangements have been made through the Archbishop of Canterbury by which the dead of our communion from England or this country can be buried by the Orthodox clergy, and other offices of courtesy and kindness can be performed. The Archbishop of Syra, representing the Holy Orthodox Eastern Church, lately visited the Church of England, and was there received with the greatest honor. Prelates of our own church and clergy of lower degree have likewise been received by the Eastern clergy. There are, in this city, with the approbation of the bishop of the diocese clergy of the Holy Orthodox Eastern communion. It is believed—in fact, it is known—that they are present now in this house; and, as a member of the Russo‐Greek Committee, it was suggested to me that, in the general recognition of the clerical rank and character which these resolutions imply, these brethren should be likewise recognized. It touches not at all the doctrine of their churches; it touches not at all the doctrines of their church; it touches not at all their attitude toward us; it simply recognizes that they are clergy of a church toward which we hope that, in the providence of God, we may be drawn in love, without any sacrifice of our own principles.”

We doubt not that, when gentlemen meet, they treat each other with courtesy. Even Roman Catholic, whom Dr. Fulton would not invite to the convention, are courteous and polite. But this does not mean any compromise in questions of doctrine. If Dr. Potter approves of the presence of Rev. Mr. Bjerring in New York, we are quite sure that the Russian priest never dreams of acknowledging his authority. Is it not very much beneath the dignity of a large and respectable body to take mere politeness for any approach to unity in faith or communion? A letter of the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg was handed round among the deputies as a curiosity and a wonderful sign of Eastern favor to the Protestant Episcopal Church. We are not sure if the following is an exact copy of the letter. If so, it is a gentle rebuke, given as politely as could be done under the circumstances. We extract the letter and the comments thereon from a secular paper generally trustworthy:

“The Convention’s Proposition Spurned By Orthodox Catholics.

“Apropos of the efforts of the Protestant Episcopal Church for a closer union and affiliation with the Orthodox Eastern Church, the following letter, translated from the _Birzheviga Vedomosty_, a Russian journal of a semi‐official ecclesiastical status, will be interesting. It is a reply to the petition of the Protestant Episcopal Church for a more intimate union with the Russo‐Greek Church, and is now for the first time published on this continent:

“ ‘TO THE WELL‐BELOVED IN CHRIST, AND THE RIGHT REVEREND COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

“ ‘Your letter, addressed to his Excellency the Procurator General, Count Tolstoy, having been presented by him to the consideration of the Most Holy Governing Synod of Russia, together with the report and the concurrence of the House of Bishops, approved by the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies, in reference to the establishment upon a true catholic basis of a spiritual fraternity between the American and Orthodox Churches, especially in the Territory of Alaska, was received by the Most Holy Synod of all the Russias with the utmost pleasure, as a new proof of respect shown by the representatives of the Episcopal Church, and of their estimable purpose concerning the union of the churches. The Most Holy Synod, on their part, will make it an object of their constant care that a spirit of Christian tolerance and fraternal love and esteem, in accordance with the precepts and usages of our church, shall continue to pervade all the relations existing between the members of the Orthodox Church and those of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, and particularly in the Territory of Alaska.

“ ‘As to the hypothesis of a reciprocal participation in the solemn performance of the sacrament of the Eucharist, the Eastern Church firmly adheres to the principles and convictions so clearly stated in the messages sent in 1723 by the Orthodox patriarchs of the East in reply to the Anglican bishops. It considers a previous agreement in faith as absolutely indispensable to the practical mutual participation in the sacraments, inasmuch as the first is the only possible ground‐work or basis for the last. In order to attain this most desired end, a thorough study and investigation of the differences in the doctrine of both churches would be absolutely requisite; and to promote this, a great principle of co‐operation will undoubtedly be found in the spirit of peace and charity which animates both churches, the Orthodox as well as the American, and in those prayers for the peace of the whole world and for the union of the holy churches of the Lord which arise to the God of truth and mercy from the Orthodox churches, and which are most certainly shared in by the American churches.

“ ‘Having been authorized by the Most Holy Governing Synod, I assume the duty of presenting their answer to the House of Bishops of the American Episcopal Church, and beg you to accept the assurance of the highest esteem of your brother and co‐servant in Jesus Christ.

ISIDORE,

“ ‘First Presiding Member of the Governing Synod of all the Russias, and Metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg.’

“The only ecclesiastical representative of the Russian Church in this city, the Rev. N. Bjerring, has corroborated the facts set forth in this letter, and furthermore stated to the writer, in answer to inquiries, that the Orthodox Church seeks not exclusive affiliation with the Anglican and American Episcopal Churches, but desires to hold friendly relations with all Christian denominations; and in this spirit of fraternal love he receives in his own house, as personal friends, not only members of his own household of faith, but ministers and members of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics, with all of whom he maintains the most cordial relations. But he declares that there can be no such thing as sacramental union between his church and any other, unless there shall have been first complete agreement in dogmas and an unconditional acceptance on the part of the affiliating churches of the authority and acts of the first seven Œcumenical Councils. This is a _conditio sine quâ non_ from which the Russian Church cannot move a step nor deviate one line from the dogmatic truth handed down to her from the apostolic church; nor can she at the same time permit anything to be added to these dogmas.”

The Eastern churches will never recognize the Episcopalians as anything but a sect of Protestants. They deny the validity of their orders, and condemn their articles of faith as heretical. Not one of their bishops or priests would be recognized as possessing any sacerdotal power, or could ever receive Holy Communion at the hands of the Greeks, whom they are inclined to receive with so much favor.

The following words of one of their leading agents in England are sufficiently decisive, though we fear not plain enough to convince our brethren who are so sensitive about their apostolic succession, which every one denies but themselves:

“No other Protestant church was ever so full of contradictions, so full of variegated heresy, as the English Church was and is, and will be to the end of her existence. With _such an heretical church_ the Orthodox Eastern Church never would allow her bishops to transact.

“If Rome considered all ordinations by Parker and his successors—_i.e._, the whole present English episcopate and clergy—to be invalid, null, and void, and consistently re‐ordained all those converts who wished and were fit for orders, the Eastern Church can but imitate her proceedings, as both follow, in this point, the same principles.

“The Anglo‐Catholics are _most decidedly_ no Catholics, but Protestants, although inclining hopefully towards Catholicism. It is astonishing how the zealous Intercommunionists dive into the depths of orthodox learning, rove in the remotest districts, compile the minutest arguments, while they overlook the _chasm at their feet_. They most ingenuously demand to dispense with ceremony, and to join hands all at once over _the vast deep_ stretching out between them.”(107)

Very little has been done by this convention in the way of doctrinal decisions. The House of Bishops having solemnly declared that in baptismal regeneration, as the term is used in the Prayer‐Book, no _moral change_ is signified, the effort to drop the term altogether was voted down. Thus, in harmony with the customs of this church, a term is retained which has no real significance. Those who object to it can only console themselves by the conviction that it means nothing.

A former convention had quite plainly denied the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, and hence the condemnation of any adoration of the sacrament is quite natural. We are not certain that the Ritualists will see anything to startle them. They would hardly hear any voice, however loud it might be. Yet we think the rest of the world will be satisfied that no adoration can be paid to the _elements_ of the Protestant Episcopal communion, for the reason that they are in their very nature and substance, and that Christ is not in them. An important canon on ritual was passed bearing chiefly on this subject. As it first received the votes of the House of Deputies, it condemned “the use of incense; the placing, carrying, or retaining a crucifix in any part of the place of public worship; the elevation of the elements in the Holy Communion in such manner as to expose them to the view of the people, as objects towards which adoration is to be made; and any act of adoration of or towards the elements, such as bowings, prostrations, or genuflections.” As amended by the House of Bishops, and afterwards passed by both houses, the use of incense and of the crucifix is not forbidden. One deputy explained that the Greek Church is in the habit of using incense, and that the Lutherans retain the crucifix. Perhaps these may be among the reasons for the action of the bishops. We conclude that while the crucifix may be placed in the church, and incense be used at the will of ministers or their people, no act of adoration can be allowed towards the Eucharist. The force of this canon will depend much upon the disposition of the bishop, who can wink at these observances or fail to know anything of them. The law, however, obliges him to examine the matter if any two of his presbyters complain, and, referring the subject to his standing committee, to admonish the offending minister. And if the minister disregard this admonition, he must be tried for a breach of his ordination vow. If this canon means anything at all, it will put a stop to all the practices of the Ritualists by which they endeavor to imitate the beauty of Catholic worship, and their whole ceremonial is at once excluded from any Episcopal church. Let us see if this law will be either respected or obeyed.

The rejection of Rev. Dr. Seymour, elected to the bishopric of Illinois, is a still further condemnation of any Eucharistic adoration. For chiefly for this adoration, which he was supposed to favor, was he refused the vote of the clerical and lay deputies. The majority against him was so great that hardly any one can doubt of the mind of the convention. He had been involved in the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, either directly or indirectly, and this fact alone was sufficient to cause his rejection. It seems to us pretty evident that the Episcopal Church by her highest authority has denied both baptismal regeneration and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Yet this denial will have little effect, because all Episcopalians will think as they please, and no doctrinal decision influences their faith. Creeds are with them written on paper, and have no further value. One would naturally expect the believers in these rather important doctrines to forsake a church which condemns them. But few will do so. They will talk of the primitive days and the hopes of better times, when the “three branches” of the Catholic Church shall come together. Until that time there is no authority for Anglo‐ Catholics. If the Protestant Episcopal communion should by synod deny the existence of God, we believe they would still remain in her, bearing their burden, persecuted by their own church, and with great self‐denial waiting till the truth should revive in the hopeful mother that bore them. This new species of self‐abnegation and of moral martyrdom by one’s own church is the glory of Ritualistic confessorship. They have not learned that the first duty of a true church is to teach, and that the first step in holiness is to mortify self‐will.

On the subject of education, the Protestant Episcopal Church has _nearly_ taken a step forward, and we sincerely regret that the step was only half made. The Committee on Christian Education recommended the organization of “sisterhoods” and “brotherhoods” to supply teachers. They say:

“The great want will not be met until some method of organization be adopted, such as brotherhoods or sisterhoods, whose members make teaching their special work, and who therefore cultivate the teaching faculty, and acquire all the branches of useful learning, in order to do Christ’s work for the young, under the direction and at the call of their bishops and pastors. And while an organized work seems to be the only one likely to meet our necessities, and while the religious motive is the only one powerful enough to draw men and women to such work for the best years of their lives, it should be borne in mind that the truths of the Gospel, and the Catholic faith, as this church hath received the same, have strength and vitality sufficient to furnish motive and method to such associations without exaggerations or additions in doctrine or practice, and without borrowing distinctive dress, nomenclature, or usages from the Church of Rome. In some of the schools or colleges at present belonging to us, such associations might be developed—teaching orders—Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, Sisters of the Holy Childhood—composed of men and women of sound judgment, moral force, thorough education, patient and winning ways, who would ask for no higher work than to train the minds and mould the characters of the young in accordance with the gracious teachings of the church, and with the sanction of, and in loyal submission to, the authority of those who are rulers in the same.”

In accordance with this recommendation, a canon to establish “deaconesses or sisters” was reported to the convention. It, however, failed to pass, and the words of the committee stand before the world on their own merits. Though there are grave difficulties in the establishment of communities where there is no religious rule or any unity in faith, yet we would like to see this imitation of Catholic life tried among our Protestant brethren. It might do good, and gradually lead the earnest and truly self‐ denying soul to the one home of all Christian life and zeal.

It is a disappointment to us, however, that this convention has done nothing in regard to parochial schools. Some years ago the language of the Episcopalian bishops led us to think that they realized the full importance of guarding the young from the dangers of an infidel education. Colleges and academies will very poorly meet this great evil. The children most exposed are those who every day go to our public schools, where no religion can be taught, and where a non‐Christian system of instruction is equivalent to infidelity. The truth of this assertion needs no demonstration, for the facts of every day prove it, and the tide of unbelief is at our very doors.

The report of the Committee on the State of the Church dwells on some generalities, but yet admits a substantial decline during the three years past:

“But there are in these documents some facts that are not cheering or satisfactory. In 1871 there were 448 candidates for holy orders, and in 1874 but 301—decrease in three years, 147. In 1873 it is said there were no ordinations in 17 dioceses, and of the whole number of candidates only 60 or 70 were able to maintain themselves. Thus we have not only the supply of the ministry diminished, but the fact revealed that parents of pecuniary ability, elevated social position, and great culture, seemingly withheld their sons from the Lord’s higher service. We have also had our attention called to the fact that, in many instances, the young novice is admitted to the diaconate and priesthood with such imperfect qualification that we are forced to the conclusion that there is great imperfection in our legislation, or they whose office and duty call them to decide upon the qualifications of candidates are too lenient in their admission of the applicants.”

We do not find any comparative table of communicants, but should be led to conclude that as the ministry diminishes in numbers, the members would decline in the same ratio. Perhaps a little more attention to schools and the training of the young would be advisable. If the Episcopal Church wishes to hold its own in this age and country, it will have to give more attention to the dangers of the public schools.

We do not know precisely what authority belongs to the address of the bishops at the end of the convention. It has not one word in regard to doctrine, and the allusions to any differences of opinion are so very general that no party could be offended. We do not even gather the precise meaning of the writer. We utterly fail to comprehend his idea of “the _liberty_ of Christian faith,” or understand his notion of freedom in obedience. The pastoral was evidently written to offend no one, and in this we think it must have succeeded.

There are some good words on the subject of divorce, but we can hardly tell how far they go. Those “who put away an uncongenial wife or husband,” and marry again, taking advantage of the license of the civil courts, are condemned as adulterers, unless they do so for the cause of fornication. We do not know how to explain this. Is fornication or sin before marriage a reason for divorce? Is adultery after marriage considered sufficient to break the tie of matrimony, so that a new marriage is permitted? If the bishops mean to say this, we would earnestly recommend them to study the sacred scriptures of the New Testament. Their halfway protest against civil divorce is nevertheless something to be thankful for in these days.

Now, having rehearsed all the important points which we have been able to see in the doings of this General Convention, we would ask any person of honest mind who really believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ if there is in the Protestant Episcopal community any trace of the one true church which he established. It is to be found neither in the unity of faith nor in any consciousness of sacerdotal gifts. No conception of the fundamental idea of a church has any place in her councils, and the truth of Christ’s presence in his adorable sacrament, which is the very life of his elect, is the constant object of assault. While they, against all facts and the testimony of all which they pretend to hold as the Catholic Church, assert the validity of their orders, they prove beyond all cavil that the grace of the priesthood is not theirs. For God never left that grace, even in heresy and schism, without the consciousness of its tremendous power. As a mere Protestant body, it may keep its exterior before the world. It has no interior life whatever, no heart and no soul, that we might mark it and distinguish it among the hosts of a divided Christianity. Nevertheless, there is light enough to guide the sincere to the one faith, and the plea of invincible ignorance will be a poor excuse for many in the dread day of account. Let us pray earnestly to God for these souls in the night of error. “What will it profit them to gain the world, and then to lose their souls?”

Assunta Howard. Concluded.

VI. Woman’s Influence.

“And so I have you all to myself once more; no interference from cruel guardians on your side, and none from unreasonable husbands on mine. Joking apart, Assunta darling, I think God has been very good to me to give me such a compensation for Harry’s long absence. Every trial seems to have a blessing in its train, by way of a set‐off. And you are just the very dearest of blessings.” And Mary Lee moved her chair a little nearer to her friend, by way of showing her appreciation. Assunta looked up from her work with a bright smile, as she replied:

“You are not in the least changed from the dear Mary Percival of convent days—and happy days they were, too—while I feel twenty years older than I did the day I bade you good‐by at the garden gate. But now you are mistaken. I am the one blessed, not blessing. For think what it is to me—a waif—to find awaiting me so kind a welcome and so pleasant a temporary home. God only knows what would have become of me without you.”

“Oh!” said Mary, “my only fear was that, with so many claimants for the honor, I should never succeed in carrying off the prize. I am sure, until it was decided, and I saw your trunks safely landed at my door, I looked upon Mrs. Sinclair as my deadly enemy.”

“Clara is very kind—much more so than I deserve,” said Assunta, while an expression of seriousness passed over her face; “but I should not have liked to accept her hospitality now. I think the present arrangement is more for the happiness of all parties.”

And the remembrance of a certain evening on board the steamer, when Mr. Sinclair, a married man, had dared to tell her, his wife’s friend, that she had first possessed his heart, and that his love for her was still unchanged, made her shudder now involuntarily. He must indeed have strangely forgotten himself, when, after that, he added his entreaties to those of his unsuspecting wife that she would look upon their home as hers. Assunta felt as if the word love had indeed been profaned by the lips of George Sinclair. God is love; but she knew that he would not hesitate to take even that most holy name in vain. Why then scruple to profane the attribute? However, all this was a secret, known to herself alone.

“Mrs. Sinclair must have been a lovely bride,” said Mary musingly. “But, Assunta, why did Mr. Carlisle return at once to Europe? I should think he would be tired of travelling by this time, and would like to settle down for a while on his own place. I have heard it is so beautiful.”

“The habit of travelling grows upon one,” replied Assunta. “He only returned to Maryland to attend to certain matters in regard to his sister’s property and mine. It was his intention to spend some time longer in Europe and the East.” Then, to change the subject, she continued: “But, Mary dear, when does your brother enter the seminary?”

“I do not know,” said Mrs. Lee. “I cannot understand Augustine at all. He seems just as good and earnest as ever, and yet something troubles him, I see it plainly. But he is unusually reserved with me; so that I feel a reluctance to question him. I wish you would ask him about the seminary. You can do it quite incidentally; and very likely he would tell you all about it.”

“I certainly will,” said Assunta. “He is your brother; so I almost feel as if he were mine too.”

“I do not think,” continued Mary, “that he is well. I am afraid his trip to the East may have done him more harm than good. He always protests that he is perfectly well, if I ask him; but I am sure he does not look so.”

“I have thought so myself, and I think we must look upon his case as our next duty.” And Assunta arose, as the clock struck eleven.

The opportunity to take the case in hand came much sooner than the fair conspirators had anticipated. The next afternoon, while Mrs. Lee had excused herself for a few hours, in order to pay the expected weekly visit to her mother‐in‐law, Mr. Percival joined Assunta, as she sat alone in the cosey library, finishing a garment for a poor child in whom she was already interested. Assunta noticed more than usual the paleness of the spiritual face she had always so much admired, and the weariness of its expression; but, with true feminine tact, she made no comment; only, as he seated himself beside the table, she looked up with a smile of welcome, as his sister might have done.

“Hard at work, as usual. I hope I do not interrupt you, Miss Howard?” said Mr. Percival, with an answering smile.

“Oh! no indeed. I am delighted to see you this evening. We have not had a good long talk since I came; and yet we have so many topics of mutual interest.”

Mr. Percival took from his pocket a little box, and, opening it, said:

“Miss Howard, I have ventured to bring you a souvenir of my travels, which I beg you will accept from Mary’s brother, and because of the association.”

He placed in her hand a heart‐shaped locket, plain but heavy, in the centre of which glowed a large crimson ruby, and around it were engraved the words, “Cor cordium.” Within, on one side, was a miniature painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; on the other side was set a tiny crucifix, carved from the olive‐wood of Gethsemani by one of the monks of Jerusalem, and which had been laid upon the altar in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre.

“And I prayed for you in that sacred spot most fervently, you may be sure,” said Mr. Percival.

Assunta’s eyes were still fixed upon the beautiful treasure which she held in her hand. Tears were in them, as she raised them at last, saying:

“Words are poor thanks for such a gift as this. You know, Mr. Percival, how much I shall value it. Indeed, I feel most unworthy to possess anything so precious; yet I shall accept it, as you said, from the brother of my dearest friend, who is to me truly a sister in affection.” And pressing her lips to the crystal which protected the crucifix, she carefully replaced the locket in its case.

“And so you did not forget those foolish, fanciful remarks I made by Shelley’s grave. I had not dreamed they would have dwelt in your memory so long; still less did I imagine they would inspire so beautiful a design as this, which is, of course, your own.” Then she added after a little pause: “There is one greater gift even than this that I shall ask of you one of these days. It is one of your first Masses, when, as a priest, you are privileged to offer the Holy Sacrifice.”

“Miss Howard,” exclaimed Mr. Percival, with deep emotion, “that is a subject of which I cannot even think without suffering.”

“Forgive me,” murmured Assunta, surprised beyond measure. “It was indeed unpardonable in me to pain you by speaking of that which is between yourself and God alone. My only excuse is that I thought the matter had long been settled.”

Then followed a silence, so prolonged that Assunta began to wonder what kept that manly head bowed forward upon the table. Was it confusion, was it prayer, or had he perhaps fainted? At last he suddenly looked up, and fixed those fine, earnest eyes of his full upon Assunta’s face; and even in that moment the thought struck her what pure, true eyes they were.

“Miss Howard, you are the last person on earth to whom I ought to speak on this subject, and I know not what impels me to do so now. Pray for me; for my salvation may depend upon it.”

Assunta tried to be calm, as she said gently, while she breathed a silent prayer for guidance:

“You must think of me as almost a sister.”

Mr. Percival went on:

“Even your image, true and beautiful and holy as it is, and pure as an angel’s, should never have been allowed to come between me and the God to whose special service I was inclined. But believe me, Miss Howard, never for one moment have I cherished a hope that you might be to me other than you are; only, when I have striven to rise above all human feeling, and to give myself unreservedly to him who demanded the sacrifice, God help me! you seemed to fill his place in my soul. Forgive me and pity me! I am miserably weak.”

After a moment he continued:

“Ah! Miss Howard, you know what I mean. It is only because of my own weakness that I have found the memory of you an obstacle to my advance towards the perfection to which I aspired.”

“And to which you will still aspire.” And Assunta’s voice was low and sweet, as she for the first time broke silence. “I had not dreamed of this, Mr. Percival, but I hope you will never have occasion to regret the confidence you have reposed, not in the ideal which has for a moment passed as a cloud of temptation between your soul and its high calling, but in one who, though full of faults, may yet offer you her sympathy and her prayers.”

“God bless you!” escaped from Mr. Percival’s lips.

“I am too young and inexperienced,” continued Assunta, “to give you counsel; besides, I am a woman; but, with my woman’s intuition, I think I see how all this has come about.... May I go on?”

“I beg you will; it is the sort of soul‐wound that needs probing.”

Assunta smiled. “I do not think such severe treatment will be required—only an examination, perhaps, preparatory to healing. You met me in Rome—forgive me if I speak too freely of myself—surrounded by that atmosphere of beauty and poetry which steals into the soul, because it breathes from the very centre of Catholic faith and the glory of the church militant. But when you met me, I was with those whose hearts were not open to such influences; and it was very natural that you and I should feel drawn to each other by the attraction of a common faith and hope. Do you think I could have said those foolish words, which it seems you have remembered only too well”—and she glanced at the little case in her hand—“if I had not felt that you could sympathize with my thoughts, however poorly they were expressed? Believe me, it was a certain earnestness of faith in me, which your presence drew out into somewhat too free expression and which remained in your memory as an attraction; and the devil has ingeniously made use of that little opening to insinuate some subtle poison. But his power is at an end, thank God! He has, for me, overreached his mark. The very fact that you could speak of this to me proves that the danger is already passing. O my friend! think what a poor, miserable substitute is even the greatest human happiness for the life to which God calls you. Think of the reward! Heaven is the price! However, it is the Holy Spirit, not I, that should speak to your soul. Will you not give him the opportunity? Will you not, perhaps, go into retreat? Or rather, please do not listen to me, but go to your director, and open your heart to him. I can only give you a few words of sympathy and encouragement. He can speak to you as the voice of God.”

“You do not despise me, then, for having wavered?”

“Do not say that, Mr. Percival,” exclaimed the young girl earnestly. “What saint is there that has not suffered temptation? Despise you? I envy you, rather. Think of the vocation God has given you! If it proves to be the mountain of sacrifice, and you ascend it with the cross upon your shoulders, will you not be all the better priest from your likeness to Him who was at once both priest and victim!”

“Miss Howard, pardon me, but you speak as if the lesson of Calvary were not new to you; as if you, too, knew what it is to suffer—not, as I have done, through your own weakness—God forbid! That I could never think.”

“We each of us must bear some cross,” said Assunta hastily; and then, to give a lighter turn to the conversation, she added: “I am sorry that I should have proved to be yours.”

For the first time Augustine Percival smiled, as he said:

“But if, through you, I win my crown, you will not then regret it?”

“O that crown!” exclaimed Assunta; “let us both keep it ever in sight as an incentive. The way will not then seem so long or so hard. Mr. Percival, will you see your director to‐night?”

“I will go to him now. It is what I have neglected only too long. God bless you, Miss Howard! But dare I now, after all that has passed, ask you to retain my trifling gift, that you may not forget to pray for me?”

“I shall prize it most highly,” said Assunta. “But I shall not need to be reminded to commend you very often to the Sacred Heart of our divine Lord, where you will find strength and consolation. I am sure the least I can do for you is to pray for you, having been the occasion of your suffering.”

“And of something more than that,” said Mr. Percival.

“And I shall still hope for the other greater gift,” said Assunta in pleading tones.

“Miss Howard,” replied Mr. Percival, almost with solemnity, “if I, unworthy as I am, should ever be permitted to offer the Holy Sacrifice, my first Mass shall be for you, God willing. But I dare not yet look forward with hope to such a possibility. Once more, God bless you! Pray for me.” And in a moment more he had left the house.

Assunta attended Mass daily at the cathedral. The next morning, as she was leaving the church, Mr. Percival joined her; but, without saying a word, he placed a note in her hand, and at the corner he turned, and took his way in the opposite direction. In her own room the young girl read these words:

“To‐day I start for Frederick, where I shall make a retreat with the good Jesuit fathers. In solitude and prayer I hope that God may make known to me his will. Pray, that I may have light to see and grace to follow the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. The words you spoke last night are known to the loving Heart of Jesus. He will reward you. I can say no more now. Your brother in Christ,

A. P.”

“Thank God!” exclaimed Assunta.

After breakfast, Mary came to her, as she stood for a moment by the window, and, putting her arm about her affectionately, said:

“Darling, we need not make any more plans to entrap poor Augustine into a confession, for I do believe he is all right. He came here for a few minutes early this morning to say good‐by, as he was going to Frederick. Of course that must mean a retreat; and a retreat is, of course, the first step towards the seminary.”

“I am very, _very_ glad,” said Assunta, smiling. “Women are not always as bright as they think they are, you see.”

Three weeks from that day Augustine Percival sailed for Europe to enter upon his theological course in Rome. And two faithful hearts daily begged for him of Almighty God grace and fortitude with that happy confidence which seems almost a presage of answered prayer.

And five years passed away—long and often weary in the passing, but short and with abundant blessings in the retrospect—five uneventful years, and yet leaving a lasting impress upon the individual soul. Assunta’s home was still with her friend, Mary Lee—an arrangement to which she most gratefully consented, on condition that she might, from her ample income, contribute her share towards the ease and comfort of the family. It thus became a mutual benefit, as well as pleasure; for Capt. Lee’s pay as a naval officer was small and their only dependence. Assunta had won the hearts of all, even down to Mary’s two little ones, who came bringing plenty of love with them, as well as adding much to the care and solicitude of the young mother and her younger friend.

They saw but little of Mrs. Sinclair during those years. She had become a thorough woman of the world—a leader of fashion in her own circle. She had lost much of the simplicity and _naïveté_ of character and manner which had made her charming in the old Roman days. Her laugh had not the genuine ring which her own light heart used to give it. She was still beautiful—very beautiful as queen of the ball‐room. But Mary Lee always insisted that she had the unmistakable look of one who has an interior closet somewhere which might reveal a skeleton; and Assunta thought—but her thoughts she kept to herself—that it was not very difficult to divine what that skeleton might be. She understood her, and pitied her from her heart; and she loved her, too, with the old affection. But their life‐ paths, once seemingly parallel, had now diverged so widely that she felt she could not help her. The consolation Clara sought was very different from anything her brother’s ward could supply.

And that brother, Mr. Carlisle—did Assunta never think of him? Daily, before God, she remembered him; but it was not for her peace to allow him a place in her memory at other times. They were entire strangers now, and she had long since given up the hope of any return to the old friendship. He had dropped out of her life, and God alone could fill the place left vacant by the surrender of this human love. She prayed for him, however, still, but as one might pray for the dead. Her days glided quietly by, each one bearing a record of deeds of love and kindness; while the consciousness of duty fulfilled gave her a peace that it is not in the power of mere human happiness to bestow. The blessings of the poor followed her, and the blessing of God rested upon her soul.

Mary sometimes protested against this “waste of life,” as she called it.

“My darling,” she said one day, as she was rocking her baby to sleep in her arms, “you will be a nun yet.”

“I fear not,” replied Assunta. “I might have wished to enter religion, but it seems that God does not call me to that life.”

“Then, Assunta, why don’t you marry? It would break my heart to lose you, darling; but, truly, it grieves me to have you settle yourself down to our stupid life and ways, and you so young and rich and beautiful. It is contrary to nature and reason.”

“Be patient with me, dear,” said Assunta. “I do not believe that you want to be rid of me. Some time we shall know what it all means. I am sorry to disappoint my friends, but my life is just as I would have it.”

“Well, you are a saint,” said Mary with a sigh; “and as I am the gainer, I am the last one to complain. But I wish you had a dear little bother of your own like my Harry,” And the maternal kiss had in it such a strength of maternal love that the baby‐eyes opened wide again, and refused to shut.

Mary heard occasionally from her brother; and sometimes she heard _of_ him in a way that filled her heart with joy. Austere, yet with wonderful sweetness, full of talent and a hard student, yet with touching humility, Augustine Percival, by a life of mortification and prayer, which his studies never interrupted, was preparing himself to do great things for God. A few words, uttered simply by a true‐hearted Christian woman, had turned the scale for him; and God will receive so much the more glory. There will come a day which will reveal many such works, performed through the perhaps unconsciously‐exercised influence of some noble woman, whose mission is none the less real because it is accomplished silently and out of the world’s sight.

VII. Credo.

Five years had passed away, and their close found Mary Lee welcoming back to her home her long‐absent brother, now a priest. Augustine Percival returned, the same, and yet changed. There was the same tender, earnest nature; but upon that nature grace had built up a superstructure of such strength and virtue that, in most respects, he was a different man—purified by suffering, sanctified by penance, and now consecrated by the sacrament of Holy Orders.

It was a happy circle that gathered around the blazing wood‐fire on that cool October evening—so happy that they were almost subdued, and thought more than they talked. It was towards the end of the evening that Father Percival said quite incidentally:

“Mr. Carlisle returned in the steamer with me. I suppose he will soon pay his respects to the ladies.”

Assunta did not start. Why should she? Had the name of one long since dead been mentioned, it might have caused an emotion of tenderness; but that would have been all. Mr. Carlisle was dead to her, and every memory of him had long been buried. So, though her face became a shade paler, she went on with her work, and her hand did not tremble.

“Is he well?” asked Mary, continuing the conversation, “and is he as fine‐ looking as he used to be?”

“He is just recovering from a very severe illness,” replied her brother. “It has told upon him fearfully, so that you will find him much changed. Still, I hope his native air will restore him to health; and no doubt, Mary, his good looks will follow. He was already much better when I parted from him yesterday.” And then Father Percival questioned Mary about her absent husband and her children, and listened with interest to the young mother’s enthusiastic description of Harry’s brilliancy and the little Assunta’s sweetness.

The next evening, as Father Percival was giving the two ladies an account of his last days in Rome, Mr. Carlisle’s name was announced, and immediately he himself entered the pleasant drawing‐room. He was indeed much altered, for the traces of sickness and suffering were only too visible. There was another change, perceptible to one who had known him well. In his bearing there seemed to be less pride than of old, and more dignity; in his face the expression of bitterness had given place to one more contented, more peaceful. Suffering had evidently done a work in that proud spirit. But as Mr. Carlisle extended his hand to Assunta, who greeted him with the frank simplicity so peculiar to her, the same old smile lighted up his thin, pale face, and he truly seemed her guardian once more. Assunta was for the moment surprised to see the cordiality with which Mr. Carlisle took the hand of the young priest, and held it in both his, as if a brother’s affection were in the pressure, and which was returned as warmly. A comfortable arm‐chair was placed near the fire for the guest; and while he seated himself, as if fatigued, he said:

“Augustine, have you kept my secret?”

“Most faithfully. I did not even betray that I had one, as a woman might have done.” And Father Percival glanced at his sister, who pretended indignation, but said nothing.

“Then,” said Mr. Carlisle, “I must tell my own story. Assunta, come and sit by me.” And he pointed to the vacant chair beside him, while Assunta obeyed at once, the words and manner were so like those of the old days.

“Forgive me,” Mr. Carlisle went on, “if I call you to‐night by the familiar name. I could not say Miss Howard, and tell you what I have to tell. And, Mrs. Lee, if I seem to address myself too exclusively to your friend, I beg you will pardon me, and believe that, if my story interests you, I am more than glad that you should know all. Assunta, put your hand here.” And taking her hand in his, he laid it upon his brow. “In that Roman sickness it has often rested there, and has soothed and healed. Tell me, child, do you feel no difference now?”

Assunta looked at him wonderingly—still more so when she caught sight of a meaning smile on Father Percival’s face.

“Mr. Carlisle, you puzzle me,” she said.

Again that peculiar and beautiful smile, as he continued:

“The sign of the cross has been there; do you understand now, my child? No? Then, in one word, I will explain all. _Credo_—I believe! Not yet? Assunta, you have, I know, prayed for me. Your prayer has been answered. I am a Catholic, and, under God, I owe all to Augustine Percival.”

Assunta could not speak. For a moment she looked in his face with those earnest blue eyes, as if to read there the confirmation of his words, and then she bowed her head upon her hands in silence. Mr. Carlisle was the first to break it.

“And so you are not sorry, _petite_, to welcome so old a sinner into the fold?”

“Sorry!” exclaimed Assunta at last. “Life will not be long enough to thank God for this happiness.”

“You are so little changed, child, after all these years, that I must look at myself to realize how the time has gone. But shall I tell you how all this has come about? Three months ago I was as miserable an unbeliever as ever lived.”

“Please tell us all,” murmured Assunta.

“All the story of these five years would be long and wearisome. Life to me has been simply an endurance of existence, because I dared not end it. I have travelled a great deal. I have _stood_, not _kneeled_, in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, and have wandered as a sight‐seer through the holy places in Jerusalem. I have been in almost every part of Europe. Need I tell you that I have found satisfaction nowhere? And all this time I was drawn, by a sort of fascination, to read much on Catholic subjects; so I sneered and cavilled and argued, and read on.

“At last, about four months since, the same uneasy spirit which has made a very Wandering Jew of me for the last five years possessed me with the idea of returning home, and I started for Paris. I engaged my passage in the next steamer for New York; and, though feeling far from well, left for Havre. I reached the hotel, registered my name, and went to my room for the night. The steamer was to sail the next morning. I knew nothing more for three weeks. Fortunately, I had fallen into good hands, or I should never have been here. They said it was brain‐fever, and my life was despaired of. Assunta, child, you need not look so pale. You see it is I myself who have lived to tell it.”

Father Percival here rose, and, excusing himself on the ground of having his Office to say, left the room. As soon as he was gone Mr. Carlisle exclaimed:

“There is the noblest man that ever lived. No words can tell what he has been to me. It seems that, when I was beginning to give some hope of recovery, Father Percival arrived at the same hotel on his way to America. The landlord happened to mention the fact of the illness of a fellow‐ countryman, and showed the name upon his books. Father Percival at once gave up his passage, and remained to perform an act of charity which can only be rewarded in heaven.”

“You remember, Assunta,” said Mrs. Lee, “Augustine wrote that he was detained a few weeks by the illness of a friend.”

“Yes,” said Assunta; “but how little we dreamed who the friend was!”

“And a most ungrateful friend he was, too, at first,” said Mr. Carlisle. “When he came to see me, and I learned his name, and that he had become a priest, it was nothing but weakness that prevented my driving him from the room. As it was, I swore a little, I believe. However, with the tenderness of a woman he nursed me day and night; and even when I was better, there was still no word about religion, until one day I introduced the subject myself. Even then he said but little. I was too weak to have much pride, or that little would not perhaps have made the impression that it did. My pride has always been the obstacle, and it is not all gone yet, _petite_,” he added, looking at Assunta, who smiled in answer.

“One night, from what cause I do not know, I had a relapse, and death seemed very near. Then Father Percival came to me as priest. I can hear now the solemn tones in which he said: ‘Mr. Carlisle, I will not deceive you. I hope that you will recover, but you may not. Are you willing to die as you are now, unbaptized?’ I answered, ‘No.’ ‘Do you, then,’ he said, ‘believe the Catholic Church to be the infallible teacher of truth, and will you submit to her teaching?’ Here I paused. The question was a difficult one; the word _submit_ was a hard word. But death was very near, and at last, with desperate energy, I said: ‘Yes; baptize me!’ He then knelt beside me, and made for me an act of contrition—for I seemed to be sinking fast—and in a moment more I was baptized, a Catholic. He then left me instantly, and went for the parish priest, who came and administered Extreme Unction to—as they supposed—a dying man. But the sacrament did its work for life, and not for death. From the moment of receiving it the scale turned. Of course much that I have told you I have learned since from Augustine. I was conscious only of the one act—the _submission_.

“And how mean a specimen of a man I have since felt myself to have been—resisting God year after year with all the strength of human pride and that most powerful auxiliary of the devil—pride of intellect; and then, when life was at its last gasp, and everything had slipped from under me but that one foothold—then to say, ‘Life is going; the world has already gone. I have lost everything else; now I, a sinner, will condescend to receive the portion of the saints—God and heaven!’ Do you think, Assunta, that the angels would have had much cause for rejoicing over such an addition to their bright company?”

“That is a genuine drop of your old bitterness, Mr. Carlisle,” replied Assunta, laughing, nevertheless, at his frankness.

“Oh! there is plenty of it left, _petite_. But to go on: when I found that I was to live, I was determined, before leaving for home, to make my profession of faith in the church, as a Christian should who is not ashamed of his colors. Augustine would do nothing official for me after the baptism, but he was ever the kindest friend, and I love him with a real David and Jonathan affection. Oh! child, how often have I thought of you and of how much you would have been amused to see me, Severn Carlisle, meekly receiving instruction in Catholic doctrine and practice from that simple French priest. Truly, I needed some one to identify me to myself. Well, to bring this long story to an end, the day before sailing I made my profession of faith and received Holy Communion in the quiet little parish church. And now I am here, the same proud, self‐sufficient man as of old, I fear, but with a peace of soul that I have never known before.”

“How good God is!” exclaimed Assunta.

“What does your sister say?” asked Mrs. Lee.

“My sister? I do not think she took in the idea. Her thoughts would have to travel miles before they would approach a religious sentiment. Poor Clara! I find her much changed. I spent two or three hours with her this afternoon. She was very gay, even brilliant—too much so, I thought, for real happiness. She did not imagine how transparent her mask was, and I would not destroy her illusion. I did not see Sinclair at all. But,” exclaimed he, looking at his watch, and rising hastily, “it is eleven o’clock. I ordered the carriage for ten, and no doubt it has been waiting a long time. I owe you ladies many apologies for my thoughtlessness and egotism.”

“Mr. Carlisle,” began Assunta, placing her hand in his, as she bade him good‐night; but the words would not come as readily as the tears.

Mrs. Lee had gone to summon her brother, so the two, so long parted, were left alone.

“My child,” said Mr. Carlisle in a low voice, “I know all that you would say, all the sweet sympathy of that tender, unchanged heart. I have much to say to you, Assunta, but not to‐night—not in the presence of others.”

Then turning to Father Percival, who entered the room, “Augustine,” he said, “I am going for a few days to my place in the country for rest, and also that I may see how much it has suffered from my long neglect. Come and see me there. It will do me good, heart and soul.”

“I will try to arrange my plans so as to give myself that pleasure,” replied the priest, as he assisted Mr. Carlisle into the carriage.

What strange contradictions there are in human nature! How little can we account for our varying moods and the motives which influence our actions! And how often we seem to get at cross‐purposes with life, and only see how far we have been wrong when a merciful Providence, overruling all, unknots the tangled thread and straightens the crooked purpose!

Excepting the visit of a few hours paid by Father Percival to his friend, two months passed by, and nothing was heard of Mr. Carlisle. Those two months were to Assunta longer, more wearisome, than the five years that had preceded them. We may talk of hopes that are dead, and may honestly believe them buried deep down in the grave which duty has prepared and time has covered. But hope is the hardest thing in this world to kill; and thank God that it is so! Let but a gleam of sunshine, a breath of the warm upper air, into that sepulchre, and the hopes that have lain buried there for years will revive and come forth with renewed vigor. It is much more difficult to lay them to rest a second time.

Assunta had borne her trial nobly; but, as she sat alone on Christmas Eve, and her thoughts naturally dwelt upon that happy return, and then the unaccountable disappearance of Mr. Carlisle, her courage almost failed her, and her brave heart sank within her, as she thought how dreary the future looked. She had excused herself from joining the others at a little family party, and for an hour she had sat idle before the fire—a most unwonted self‐indulgence for one so conscientious as Assunta Howard.

A ring at the door and a voice in the hall made her start and tremble a little, as she had not done on that first evening of Father Percival’s return. She had scarcely recovered herself when Mr. Carlisle entered the room.

“I have come to account for myself,” were his first words. “I hoped that I should find you alone to‐night.”

“Mrs. Lee has gone to her mother’s,” was the reply.

“Yes, I knew it. Assunta, what have you thought of me? Still more, what will you think of me now? I have suffered much in these two months; perhaps it is ungenerous in me to say this to you. Assunta, never for one moment have I been unfaithful to the love I told you of so many years ago; but I had given up the hope of ever possessing yours. Even when the obstacle you know of had been removed, I thought that I could bear to see you happy, as I believed you were, in a life in which I had no share. I felt that it would not be right even to ask you to marry one so much older than yourself, with broken health and darkened spirits. And your fresh beauty, still so girlish, so all‐unchanged, confirmed my purpose. Ah! child, time, that has silvered my hair, has not dimmed the golden aureola which crowns your dear head. But in the many lonely hours that I have passed since my return, my courage has grown faint. I have longed for your sweet presence in my home, until an answering voice has urged me to come to you. Assunta, once, beneath the shadow of the cross, in the moonlit Colosseum, I offered you my love, and you put God between us. Again I urged my suit, and again you erected the same impassable barrier. To‐night I am so selfish that, even as I have described myself to be, I come to you a third time with a love which years have but strengthened. My darling, God no longer comes between us; can I ever hope to win that true, brave heart?”

With a child‐like simplicity and a true womanliness Assunta put her hand in his, and said:

“Mr. Carlisle, it has long been yours. ‘Unless he can love you _in God_,’ my mother said. I believe that the condition is now fulfilled.”

“And may God bless the love he sanctions!” said Mr. Carlisle solemnly. After a silence—for where hearts understand each other there is no need of many words—Assunta said in her own sweet tones:

“Do you regret now the decision of that night in Rome? Was I a true prophetess?”

“But we have lost so many years,” said Mr. Carlisle.

“Yes, lost for time, but gained for eternity.”

When Mrs. Lee returned, she greeted the guest with surprise, as well as pleasure; but both those emotions were lost in a still greater joy when Mr. Carlisle, drawing Assunta towards him, said:

“Mrs. Lee, this is my Christmas gift—a precious treasure, is it not, to be entrusted to one so undeserving?”

“Indeed it is a precious treasure,” echoed Mary enthusiastically; “but, Mr. Carlisle, there is not a man in the world in whose possession I would like to see it so well as in yours.”

“Bless you, Mrs. Lee, for your kind words! _Petite_, perhaps your taste is not so much in fault after all.”

“And, Mary,” said Assunta archly, “he may yet recover his good looks, you know.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Carlisle, “love and happiness are said to be great beautifiers. I have no objection to trying the experiment.”

One bright morning, soon after Easter, there was a nuptial Mass at the cathedral, celebrated by Father Percival, and after the ceremony and a quiet breakfast, Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle drove in their private carriage to the beautiful country residence which was to be their future home.

Just at sunset, as they entered the long avenue which with many windings led towards the house, Mr. Carlisle said:

“My darling, we are at home. I have waited, like Jacob, almost seven years for my Rachel. I cannot say, as he did, that the days have seemed _few_, though I believe my love has been no less.”

“And suppose,” replied Assunta, with the happy confidence of a loving wife—“suppose your Rachel should turn out a Lia after all?”

“In that case,” said her husband coolly, “I should insist that the description of that much‐injured lady had done her great injustice. And I should consider myself a lucky fellow to have been cheated into the mistake, and be ready to wager my Lia against all the Rachels in the world. And now, my precious wife, welcome home!”

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Ten years later. It is not always a pleasure to look in upon loved friends after a lapse of ten years. Sickness, sorrow, death, or disgrace may each do a mighty work in even fewer years, and, at the best, time itself brings about marked changes. But a glance at Carlisle Hall, on this tenth anniversary of that happy wedding‐day, will only show that same happiness ripened into maturity. In a marriage like that of Severn and Assunta Carlisle, whatever life might bring of joy or sorrow would come to both alike, and nothing could divide them. Even death itself would but _seem_ to part them, for their union was _in God_. In Assunta the added dignity of wife‐hood and motherhood had taken nothing from the charm of earlier years; and, if the beauty of the young girl had faded somewhat, the ever‐ growing grace and purity of soul more than supplied its want, even in her husband’s eyes. And Mr. Carlisle? Noble by nature, and possessing the finest qualities of mind and heart, his soul was now developed to the full stature of its manhood. He was a proud man still, but with a pride which S. Paul might have commended. He was so proud that he was never ashamed to kneel beside the poorest villager in the little church. In his pride he gloried in Jesus Christ, and him crucified. The beautiful church itself had been erected as a thank‐offering, by Mr. Carlisle and his wife, in the factory village two miles from their home; and for some years Father Percival had been parish priest of the Church of the Assumption. And Carlisle Hall resounded with the merry voices of three children at the end of those ten years: Severn, the pride of his mother’s heart; Augustine, Father Percival’s godchild and special favorite, already destined for the priesthood by the wishes of the senior trio; and the baby, her father’s darling, to whom he would give the name of Mary, and no other, “to show,” he said, “how he had progressed in Mariolatry since his first lesson in Sienna.”

Father Percival had been the only guest at this anniversary‐dinner, except, indeed, the children, who must appear on this occasion, at no matter how great a risk of noise and accident. They had now returned to the nursery, but the others still lingered at the table.

“Father Augustine,” said Assunta—for she had learned to follow the little ones in their name for the priest they loved so well—“I received a letter yesterday from dear old Father Joseph. He is just as happy in our marriage to‐day as he was when he first heard of it, and he blesses it, and us, and the children so sweetly and kindly. How much I should like to see him again!”

“I suppose,” said Father Percival, “he looks upon the marriage as a striking illustration of the wonderful ways and goodness of God, as it surely is. S. Ignatius ought to send Father Dupont here, to see for himself the result of his direction, and, I must add, of your generosity and faithfulness, Mrs. Carlisle.”

“I am so sorry, Severn,” said Assunta after a pause in the conversation, “that Clara would not come to us to‐day. I think a glimpse of quiet country life might be a pleasant change for her.”

“I fear,” replied her husband sadly, “that poor Clara has much to suffer yet. It is my opinion that Sinclair has no intention of returning from Europe at all. But who could have made her believe, in those sunshiny days, that she would ever live to be a deserted wife? _Petite_, the subject is a very painful one. I am going to change it for one of which I am never weary. Augustine, it is not the custom, I believe, for a man to toast his wife on such an occasion, but I am going to be an exception to the rule to‐day. Lord Lytton has in that grand work of his, _My Novel_, two types of women—the one who exalts, and the one who consoles. He probably had never seen the combination of the two types in one person. I now propose—and, my darling, you must drink and not blush—‘Assunta Carlisle: blessed be the woman who both exalts and consoles!’ And let me add that a happy man was I—unworthy—when, ten years ago, that woman became my wife.”

Matter. V.

Although continuous matter cannot be proved to exist, yet its existence, as every one knows, is still very commonly believed, even by philosophers, on the ground that it was believed for centuries by all great men, and has never been conclusively refuted. From some hints which we have given in our previous article about the difficulties of this ancient doctrine, the intelligent reader may have already satisfied himself that material continuity is not merely “a philosophical mystery,” as Goudin confesses, but a metaphysical absurdity. As, however, this last conclusion, owing to its paramount importance in metaphysics and in natural philosophy, deserves a more explicit and complete demonstration than we have yet given, we propose to develop in the present article a series of arguments, drawn from different sources, to show _the absolute and intrinsic impossibility of continuous matter_. The prejudices of our infancy may at first resist the demonstration, but it is to be hoped that they will finally yield to reason.

_First argument._—We know, and it is conceded by the advocates of continuous matter, that a _finite_ being cannot involve in its composition an _infinite_ multitude of distinct terms; for evidently the infinite cannot be the constituent of the finite. Now, we have shown in our preceding article that, if there were a piece of continuous matter, it should involve in its continuous constitution an infinite multitude of distinct terms, every one of which should have its own distinct existence independently of the others. Therefore continuous matter cannot exist.

_Second argument._—A primitive substance cannot absolutely be made up of other substances. But if there were any continuous matter, a primitive substance would be made up of other substances. Therefore no continuous matter can exist. The major of this syllogism is quite evident; for a primitive substance, if made up of other substances, would be primitive and non‐primitive at the same time. The minor can be easily proved. For it is plain that continuous matter, if any such existed, would necessarily consist of continuous parts, substantially distinct from one another, and therefore having their own distinct matter and their own distinct substantial act, and ranking as distinct, complete, and separable substances, as we have shown in our last article. Now, assuming that either of these parts is a primitive substance, it is evident that the primitive substance would be made up of other substances; for such a part, being continuous, is itself made up of other parts, which are likewise distinct and complete substances, as we have just remarked. And since a continuum cannot be resolved into any but continuous parts, the conclusion cannot be avoided that the primitive material substance would always be made up of other substances. To elude this argument, the advocates of continuous matter are compelled to deny that there is any _primitive_ material substance mathematically continuous. But, even so, their position is not improved. For if there is no primitive material substance mathematically continuous, the combination of such primitive substances will never give rise to continuous matter, it being obvious that all the elementary constituents of continuum must be continuous, as all philosophers agree. Whence we again conclude that no continuous matter is possible.

_Third argument._—No continuum can be made up of unextended constituents, as we have just observed, and as our opponents not only concede, but also demonstrate most irrefragably in their own treatises. Now, continuous matter, if any such existed, would be made up of unextended constituents—that is, of mere mathematical points. Therefore continuous matter would be a formal contradiction. The minor of our syllogism is proved thus. All the points which can be designated within the dimensions of the continuum are _immediately_ united with one another, and therefore no room is to be found between any two consecutive points; which shows that in the constitution of the continuum we would have nothing but mere points. For let there be a continuous plane and a continuous sphere. The sphere, if perfect, cannot touch the plane, except in a single indivisible point, as is proved in geometry; nevertheless, the sphere may move along the plane, and, always touching the plane in a single point, may measure a linear extension of matter, which, accordingly, would contain nothing but mathematical points immediately following one another. In other terms, the extended matter would be made up of indivisible points; and since all admit that this is impossible, it follows that continuous matter is impossible. Against this argument the objection is made that it proves too much; as it would prove the impossibility of measuring space by continuous movement. But this objection has no good foundation, as we shall show after concluding the series of our arguments.

_Fourth argument._—All the points that can be designated in a material continuum would necessarily touch one another in such a manner as to form a continuous extension; hence their contact would necessarily be _extensive_. But an _extensive_ contact of indivisible points is intrinsically impossible. Therefore material continuity is intrinsically impossible. The major of this syllogism is a mere corollary from the definition of continuum; for, if there be no contact, the continuum will be broken, and if the contact be not extensive—that is, such as to allow each point to extend beyond its neighbor—no continuous extension will result. The minor of our syllogism can be proved as follows:

The contact of a point with a point is the contact of an indivisible with another indivisible; and, since the indivisible has no parts, such a contact cannot be partial, but must needs be total. Accordingly, the second point, by its contact with the first, will be _totally_ in the first; the third, by its contact with the second, will be _totally_ in the second, and consequently in the first; the fourth, by its contact with the third, will be _totally_ in the third, and consequently in the second and in the first, and so on. Therefore all the points which are in mathematical contact will necessarily correspond to the same point in space. Now, to be all in the same point, and to form a continuous extension, are contradictories. And thus it is manifest that material continuity is a mere contradiction.

Some will say that the contact is indeed made in the points, but that the parts, which touch one another in a common point, are quite distinct. But this appeal to the parts of the continuum, though much insisted upon by many ancient philosophers, is of no avail against our argument. For the existence of these parts cannot be assumed, without presupposing the continuity of matter. Such parts are, in fact, assumed to be continuous; and therefore, before we admit their existence, we must inquire whether and how they can have intrinsic extension and continuity. And dividing these parts into other parts, and these again into others without end, of all these parts of parts the same question must be asked—that is, whether and how they can have intrinsic extension and continuity. Hence one of two things will follow: either we shall never find the intrinsic reason of material continuity, or we shall find it only after having exhausted an infinite division—that is, after having reached, if possible, a term incapable of further division, viz., a mathematical point. But in the mathematical point it is impossible to find the intrinsic reason of material continuity, as we have just shown. And therefore the material continuity of the parts has no formal reason of its constitution, or, in other terms, the parts themselves are intrinsically impossible.

Moreover, the very distinction made by our opponents between the points of contact and the parts which touch one another in those points, is altogether irrational. For _a parte rei_—that is, considering the continuum as it is in itself—there is no foundation for the said distinction, it being evident that in a homogeneous continuum no place is to be found where we cannot mark out a point. Hence it is irrational to limit the designability of the points in order to make room for the parts. In other words, the parts themselves cannot be conceived as continuous without supposing that all the neighboring points which can be designated in them form by their contact a continuous extension, which we have proved to be inadmissible. The aforesaid distinction is therefore one of the subterfuges resorted to by the advocates of material continuity, to evade the unanswerable difficulties arising from their sentence; for it is true indeed, as Goudin remarks, that material continuity is “a philosophic mystery, against which reason objects more than it can answer,” though not because in this question “reason proves more than it can understand,” but because continuous matter is shown to be an absolute impossibility.

_Fifth argument._—It is a known metaphysical principle that “nothing can possibly become actual, except by the intervention of an act”—_Impossibile est aliquid fieri in actu nisi per aliquem actum_ (S. Thomas _passim_). But no act can be imagined by which matter would become actually continuous. Therefore no actually continuous matter can possibly exist. The minor of our syllogism is proved thus. Acts are either substantial or accidental; hence if any act could be conceived as giving actual continuity to matter, such an act would be either substantial or accidental—that is, it would give to its matter either its first being or a mere mode of being. Now, neither the substantial nor the accidental act can make matter actually continuous. For, first, no substantial act can give to its matter a being for which the matter has no disposition. But actuable matter has no disposition for actual continuity, for where there are no distinct terms requiring continuation, there is no disposition to actual continuity, as is evident; and it is not less evident that the matter which is to be actuated by a substantial act involves no distinct terms, and does not even connote them, but merely implies the privation of the act giving it its first being, which act is one, not many, and gives one being, not many, and consequently is incapable of constituting a number of actual terms actually distinct, as would be required for actual continuity. To say the contrary would be to deny one of the most fundamental and universal principles of metaphysics, viz., _Actus est qui distinguit_, which means that there cannot be distinct terms where there are no distinct acts.

Moreover, continuity presupposes quantity; hence, if the substantial act gives actual continuity to its matter, it must be conceded that a certain quantity exists potentially in the actuable matter, and is reduced to act by the first actuation of matter. This quantity would therefore rank among the essentials of the substance, and could not possibly be considered as an accident; for the immediate result of the first actuation of a term by its substantial act is not a mere accident, but the very actuality of the essence of which that act and that term are the principles. Whence it follows that so long as quantity remains an accident, it is impossible to make it arise from the substantial act; and, accordingly, no substantial act can make matter actually continuous.

That actual continuity cannot arise from any accidental act is no less evident. For the only accidental act which could be supposed to play a part in the constitution of a material continuum would be some actual composition. But as composition without components is impossible, and the components of continuous matter, before such a composition, are not continuous (since we must now consider continuity as a result of the composition), our continuous matter would be made up of components destitute of continuous extension—that is, of mere mathematical points. But, as this is avowedly impossible, it follows that it is as impossible to admit that matter becomes actually continuous by the reception of an accidental act.

_Sixth argument._—In a philosophico‐mathematical work published in England a few years ago,(108) from which we have already borrowed some plain arguments concerning other questions on matter, the impossibility of continuous matter is proved by the following argument: “A compound which has no first components is a sheer impossibility. Continuous matter, if admitted, would be a compound which has no first components. Therefore continuous matter is a sheer impossibility. In this argument the first proposition is self‐evident; for the components are the material constituents of the compound; and therefore a compound which has no first components is a thing which is constituted without its first constituents, or a pure contradiction. The second proposition also is undeniable. And, first, there can be no doubt that continuous matter would be a _compound_; for continuous matter would be extended, and would have, accordingly, parts distinct from parts; which is the exclusive property of compounds. Now, that this compound would be _without first components_, can be proved as follows: If continuous matter has any first components, these components will either be extended or unextended. If they are supposed to be _extended_, then they are by no means the _first_ components; since it is clear that in this case they have distinct parts, and therefore are themselves made up of other components. If they are supposed to be _unextended_, then they are by no means the _components_ of continuum; since all know and admit that no continuum can be made up of unextended points. And, indeed, unextended points have no parts, and therefore cannot touch one another partially; whence it follows that either they touch each other totally, or they do not touch at all. If they do not touch at all, they do not make a continuum, as is evident. If they touch totally, the one will occupy exactly the same place which is occupied by the other, and no material extension will arise. And for this reason geometrical writers consider that a mathematical line cannot be conceived as made up of points, but only as the track of a single point in motion. We see, then, that a material continuum is a compound, of which the first components cannot be extended, and cannot be unextended. And since it is impossible to think of a third sort of first components which would be neither extended nor unextended, we must needs conclude that continuous matter is a compound which has no first components. And therefore continuous matter is a mere absurdity” (p. 30).

This argument is, in our opinion, altogether unanswerable. Those philosophers, in fact, who still venture to fight in favor of continuous matter, have never been able to solve it. When we urge them to declare whether they hold the first components of continuous matter to be extended or unextended, they constantly ignore and elude the question. They simply answer that the components of material substance are “the matter” and “the form.” But if the matter which lies under the form has no distinct parts, it is evident that the substance cannot be continuous. The composition of matter and form does not, therefore, entail continuity, unless the matter which is under the form has its own material composition of parts; and it is with reference to the composition of these parts of matter, not to the composition of matter and form, that we inquire whether the first components of continuous matter be extended or unextended. To ignore the gist of the argument is, on the part of our opponents, an implicit confession of their inability to cope with it.

_Seventh argument._—Material substance, as consisting of act and potency, like everything else in creation, is both active and passive, its activity and passivity being essentially confined, as we have already explained,(109) to the production and the reception of local movement. Hence, so long as material substance preserves its essential constitution, it is impossible to admit that matter is incapable of receiving movement from natural causes. But continuous matter would be incapable of receiving movement from natural causes. Therefore it is impossible to admit continuous matter. To prove the minor of this syllogism, let there be two little globes of continuous matter, and let them act on one another. Since no finite velocity can be communicated by an immediate contact of matter with matter, as shown in a preceding article, it follows that the velocity must be communicated by virtual contact in accordance with the law of the inverse squared distances. Hence, since some points of the two globes are nearer to one another, and others are farther, different points must acquire different velocities. Now, one and the same piece of matter cannot move onward with different velocities, as is evident; it will therefore be unable to move so long as such different velocities are not reduced to a mean one, which shall be common to the whole mass. Such a reduction of unequal velocities to a mean one would meet with no difficulty, if the globes in question were made up of _free_ and _independent_ points of matter; for in such a case the globes would be compressed, and each point of matter would act and react according to known mechanical laws, and thus soon equalize their respective velocities. But in the case of material continuity the reduction of different velocities to a mean one is by no means possible. For “in a piece of continuous matter,” to quote again from the above‐mentioned work of molecular mechanics, “any point which can be designated is so _invariably_ united with the other points that no impact and no mutual reaction are conceivable; the obvious consequence of which is that no work can be done within the continuous particle in order to equalize the unequal velocities impressed from without. Moreover, in our case the reduction ought to be rigorously instantaneous; which is another impossibility. In fact, if distinct points of a continuous piece of matter were for any short duration of time animated by different velocities, the continuum would evidently undergo immediate and unavoidable resolution; which is against the hypothesis. Since, then, the said reduction cannot be made instantaneously, as we have proved above, nor, indeed, in any other way, and, on the other hand, our continuous particle cannot move onward before the different velocities are reduced to one of mean intensity, it is quite evident that the same continuous particle will never be capable of moving, whatever be the conditions of the impact. And since what is true of one particle on account of its supposed continuity is true also of each of the other particles equally continuous, we must conclude that bodies made up of particles materially continuous are totally incapable of receiving any communication of motion.”(110)

This argument, though seemingly proving only the non‐existence of continuous matter in nature, proves in fact, also, the impossibility of its existence. For, if a substance could be created possessing intrinsic extension and continuity, that substance would essentially differ from the existing matter, and would therefore be anything but matter. Hence not even in this supposition would continuous matter exist.

_Eighth argument._—The inertia of matter, and its property of acting in a sphere, might furnish us with a new argument against material continuity. But we prefer to conclude with a mathematical demonstration drawn from the weight of matter. The weight of a mass of matter depends on the number of material terms to which the action of gravity is applied, and it increases exactly in the same ratio as the number of the elementary terms contained in the mass. This being the case, let us assume that there is somewhere an atom of continuous matter. The action of gravity will find in it an infinite multitude of points of application; for it is of the nature of continuum to supply matter for an endless division. Hence if we call _g_ the action of gravity on the unit of mass in the unit of time, the action of the same gravity on any of those infinite points of application will be

_g_ ρ _dx dy dz_,

ρ being the density of the mass, and _dx_, _dy_, _dz_ the three dimensions of an infinitesimal portion of it.

Now, since we know that gravity in the unit of time imparts a finite velocity to every point of matter in the atom, we must admit that the action exerted on the infinitesimal mass ρ _dx dy dz_ has a finite value; and therefore, since the volume _dx dy dz_ is an infinitesimal of the third degree, the density ρ must be an infinite of the third order. But a continuous mass whose elements have an infinite density has itself an infinite density; hence, if its volume has finite dimensions, the mass itself (which is the product of the volume into the density) is necessarily infinite, and will have _an infinite weight_. Hence the assumption of continuous matter leads to an absurdity. The assumption is therefore to be rejected as evidently false.

We will put an end to the series of our proofs by pointing out the intrinsic and radical reason why matter cannot be continuous. The matter which is under the form is _a potency_ in the same order of reality in which its form is _an act_. Now, the only property of a potency is to be liable to receive some determinations of a certain kind; and the property of a potency whose form is an active principle of local _motion_ must consist in its being liable to receive a determination to local _movement_. Hence, as the matter receives its first being by a form of a spherical character, and becomes the real central point from which the actions of the substance proceed, so also the same matter, when already actuated by its essential form, receives any accidental determination to local movement; and, inasmuch as it is liable to local movement, it is in potency to extend through space—that is, to describe in space a continuous line; and when it actually moves, it actually traces a continuous line—that is, it extends from place to place, continuously indeed, but successively; whence it is manifest that its extension is nothing but _Actus existentis in potentia ut in potentia_ Aristotle would say, viz., an actual passage from one potential state to another. Such is the only extension of which matter is capable. Such an extension is always _in fieri_, never _in facto esse_; always dynamical, never statical; always potential and successive, never formal or simultaneous. We can, therefore, ascribe to matter _potential_ continuity, just as we ascribe to its active principle a _virtual_ continuity; for the passivity of the matter and the activity of the form correspond to one another as properties of one and the same essence; and whatever can be predicated actively or virtually of a substance on account of its form can be predicated passively or potentially of the same substance on account of its matter.

These remarks form a complement to our fifth argument, where we proved that no substantial and no accidental act could make matter _actually_ continuous. For, since matter cannot receive any accidental act, except the determination to local movement, and since this movement, although continuous, is essentially successive, it follows that by such a determination no actual and permanent continuity can arise, but a mere continuation of local changes. Thus matter, according to its potential nature, has only a potential extension; or, in other terms, it is not in itself actually continuous, but is simply ready to extend through space by continuous movement.

The preceding proofs seem quite sufficient, and more than sufficient, to uproot the prejudice in favor of material continuity; we must, however, defend them from the attacks of our opponents, that no reasonable doubt may remain as to the cogency of our demonstration.

_First objection._—The globe and the plane, of which we have spoken in our third argument, though destitute of proportional parts suitable for a statical contact, become proportionate to one another, says Goudin, by the very movement of the one upon the other; and thus our third argument would fall to the ground. For a successive contact partakes of the nature of successive beings. Hence, as time, although having no present, except an indivisible instant, becomes, through its flowing, extended into continuous parts, so also the contact of the globe with the plane, although limited to an indivisible point, can nevertheless, by its flowing, become extended so as to correspond to the extended parts of the plane. For, according to mathematicians, a point, though indivisible when at rest, can by moving describe a divisible line.

To this we answer that a globe and a plane cannot by the movement of the one on the other acquire proportionate parts. For, although it is true that a successive contact partakes of the nature of the successive being which we call movement, it is plain that it does not partake of the nature of matter. In fact, the material plane is not supposed to become continuous through the movement of the globe, but is hypothetically assumed to be continuous before the movement, and even before the existence, of the said globe. The continuous movement is, of course, proportionate to a continuous plane; but it is evident that it cannot originate any proportion between the plane and the globe; because this would be against the essence of both. No part of the plane can be spherical, and no part of the globe can be plane; hence, whatever may be the movement of the one upon the other, they will never touch one another, except in a single point.

That time, although having no present, except an indivisible point, becomes extended by flowing on, is perfectly true; but this proves nothing. For, in the same manner as the act of flowing, by which time flows, has nothing actual but a single indivisible instant, so also the act of flowing, by which the contact of the globe with the plane flows, has no actuality but in an indivisible point of space; and as an indivisible instant by its flowing draws a line of time without ever becoming extended in itself, so also an indivisible point by its flowing draws a line in space without ever becoming extended in itself; and as the instant of time never becomes proportionate to any finite length of time, so also the point of contact never becomes proportionate to any finite line in space.

That a line, therefore, arises from the flowing of a point in the same manner as time from the flowing of an instant, is a plain truth, and there was no need of Goudin’s argumentation to make it acceptable. To defeat our argument, he should have proved that the _actual_ flowing of an instant takes up a length of time. If this could have been proved, it would have been easy to conclude that the flowing contact also extends through a length of space. But the author did not attempt to show that an instant of time flows through finite lengths of time. It is evident, on the contrary, that an instant flows through mere instants immediately following one another. And thus the objection has no weight.

_Second objection._—If a material continuum is impossible, all continuum is impossible, and thus we are constrained to deny the continuity of both space and time. For space and time—as, for instance, a cubic‐foot and an hour—include within their respective limits an infinite multitude of indivisible points, or indivisible instants, just as would continuous matter include within its limits an infinite multitude of material points; for it is clear that space and time cannot be made up of anything but points and instants. Hence, if, in spite of this, we admit continuous space and continuous time, we implicitly avow that our first argument against continuous matter is far from conclusive.

We reply that there is no parity between the continuity of space and time and the continuity of matter; and that the impossibility of the latter does not show the impossibility of the former. The continuity of space and of time is intimately connected with the continuity of local movement. Movement, though _formally_ continuous, or rather owing to its formal continuity, is necessarily successive, so that we can never find one part of the movement coexisting with another part of the same movement; and consequently there is no danger of finding in such a movement any _actual_ multitude, whilst we should necessarily find it in continuous matter. Time also, as being nothing else than the actuality or duration of movement, is entirely successive; and consequently no two parts of time can ever be found together; which again prevents the danger of an _actual_ multitude of coexisting instants. As to space, we observe that its continuity is by no means formal, but only virtual, and that space as such has no parts into which it can be divided, whatever our imagination may suggest to the contrary. We indeed consider space as a continuous extension, but such an extension and continuity is the property of the movement extending through space, not of space itself. Space is a region _through which movement can extend in a continuous manner_; hence the space measured, or mensurable, is styled _continuous_ from the continuity of the movement made, or possible. We likewise consider the parts of the extension of the movement made or possible as so many _parts of the space measured or mensurable_. And thus space is called _continuous_, _extended_, and _divisible into parts_, merely because the movement by which space is, or can be, measured is continuous, extended, and divisible into successive parts; but space, as such, has of itself no _formal_ continuity, no _formal_ extension, and no _formal_ divisibility, since space, as such, is nothing else than the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of divine immensity, as we may have occasion hereafter to show.

Hence neither space, nor time, nor movement is made up by composition of points or of instants; but time and movement owe their continuous extension to the flowing of a single instant and of a single point, whilst space, which is only virtually continuous, owes its denomination of continuous to the possibility of continuous movement through it. But if there were any continuous matter, its formal extension would arise from _actual_, _simultaneous_, and _indivisible_ points constituting a _formal infinite multitude_ within the limits of its extension. Hence there is no parity between continuous matter and continuous space or time; and the impossibility of the former does not prove the impossibility of the latter.

_Third objection._—Accelerated movement is a movement the velocity of which increases by continuous infinitesimal degrees—that is, by indivisible momenta of motion. It is therefore possible for a quantity of movement to arise from the accumulation of indivisibles. Why, then, should not the quantity of matter arise in a like manner from the accumulation of indivisible points? That which causes the acceleration of movement is, in fact, continuous action—that is, a series of real, distinct, and innumerable instantaneous actions, by which the movement is made to increase by distinct infinitesimal degrees; which would show that it is not impossible to make a continuum by means of indivisibles.

We reply, first, that there is no degree of velocity which can be styled indivisible; for however small may be the acceleration of the movement, it may become smaller and smaller without end, as we shall presently explain.

But, waiving this, we reply, secondly, that intensive and extensive quantity are of a very different nature, and, even if it were true that intensive quantity can arise from an accumulation of indivisibles, the same would not be the case with extension. The degrees of intensity never unite by way of composition; for all intensity belongs to some _form_ or act, whilst all composition of parts regards the _material_ constituents of things. Hence movement, though increasing or decreasing, by continuous degrees, is not _composed_ of them; whereas the continuum of matter, if any such existed, should be _composed_ of its indivisible elements. In movement the increased velocity is not a multitude of distinct acts, but a single act, equivalent to all the acts which we may distinguish under the name of degrees of velocity. Hence such degrees are only virtually distinct, and do not constitute a formal multitude; whence it follows that there is no absurdity in the notion of accelerated or retarded movement. But with a material continuum the case is entirely different; for such a continuum would be an extensive, not an intensive, quantity, and would have parts not only mentally or virtually, but entitatively and formally, distinct, and making an actual infinite multitude within the limits of a finite bulk.

As to the continuous action which causes the acceleration of movement, it is not true that it consists of a sum of distinct instantaneous actions. The action may be considered either _in fieri_ or _in facto esse_. The action _in fieri_ is the exertion of the agent, and the action _in facto esse_ is the determination received by the patient. Now, the exertion of the agent is successive; for its continuity is the continuity of time, and is therefore _continuation_ rather than _continuity_. Hence nothing exists of the action _in fieri_, except an instantaneous exertion corresponding to the moment of time which unites the past with the future. All the past exertions have ceased to be _in fieri_, and all the future exertions have still to be made. Accordingly, continuous action is not made up of other actual actions, and, though passing through different degrees of intensity, is not an actual multitude.

On the other hand, if we consider the action _in facto esse_—that is, the determination as received in the patient—we shall find that, although such a determination is the result of a continued exertion, and exhibits its totality under the form of velocity, nevertheless this result consists of intensity, not of continuity, and therefore contains no formal multitude, but is, as we have said, a simple act equivalent to many. Hence accelerated movement is one movement, and not many, and a great velocity is one velocity, and not a formal multitude of lesser velocities. In a word, there is not the least resemblance between continuous acceleration and continuous matter.

Although the preceding answer sufficiently shows the flimsiness of the objection, we may yet observe that actions having an infinitesimal duration are indeed infinitesimal, but are not _true indivisibles_. For the expression of an accelerating action, in dynamics, contains three variable functions—that is, first, the _intensity_ of the action at the unit of distance in the unit of time; secondly, its _duration_; thirdly, the _distance_ from the agent to the patient. Hence, in the case of an action of infinitesimal duration, there still remain two variables, viz., the _intensity_ of the power, and the _distance_ from the patient; and their variation causes a variation of the action in its infinitesimal duration. Thus it is manifest that actions of infinitesimal duration can have a greater or a less intensity, and therefore are not _true indivisibles_ of intensity. If, for instance, two agents by their constant and continuous action produce in the same length of time different effects, it is evident that their actions have different intensities in every infinitesimal instant of time; hence such infinitesimal actions, though bearing no comparison with finite quantities, bear comparison with one another, and form definite geometric ratios.

_Fourth objection._—If the contact of one indivisible with another cannot engender a continuum, we must deny the existence of time and of local motion. For time is engendered by the flowing of an instant towards the instant immediately following, and movement is engendered by the flowing of a point in space towards the point immediately following. If, then, indivisibles cannot, by their contact, give rise to continuous extension, neither time nor local motion will acquire continuous extension.

Our answer to this objection is that time and movement are not engendered by a formal contact of a real instant with the instant following, or of a real point with the point following. Duration is not a sum of indivisible instants formally touching one another, nor is the length of space a sum of indivisible points touching one another. We may have points _in space_, but not points _of space_; and in like manner we have instants _in succession_, not instants _of succession_, though in common language we usually confound the latter with the former. Yet, when we talk of a point of space, our meaning is not that space is made up of points, but simply that a point of matter existing in space marks out its own ubication, thus lending to the space occupied the name of _point_. Hence no movement in space can be conceived to extend by successive contacts of points, or by the flowing of a point towards other points immediately following; for these _points immediately following_ exist only in our imagination. Nor does a flowing point engender a line of space, but only a line of movement; and even this latter is not properly _engendered_, but merely _marked out_ in space; for all possible lines are already virtually contained in space, and therefore they need no engendering, but simply marking out by continuous motion.

The same is to be said of the origin of time. Time is not a formal sum of instants touching one another. The instant just past is no more, hence it cannot touch the instant which is now; and the instant which is to follow is not yet, hence it cannot be touched by the instant which is now. Accordingly, as the movement of a single point marks out a continuous line in absolute space, so also the flowing of a single instant extends a line in absolute duration. For, as S. Thomas teaches, in the whole length of time there is but a single instant _in re_, though this same instant becomes virtually manifold _in ratione prioris et posterioris_ by shifting from “before” to “after.” And in the same manner, in the whole length of a line measured in space by continuous movement, there is but a single point _in re_ actually shifting its ubication from “here” to “there,” and thus becoming virtually manifold in its successive positions. And for this reason both movement and time are always and essentially developing (_in fieri_), and never exist as developed (_in facto esse_); since of the former nothing is actual but a point, and of the latter nothing is actual but an instant.

It is scarcely necessary to repeat that, if there were any continuous matter, its parts would all be actual and simultaneous. Its continuous extension would therefore be properly engendered by the contact of indivisible points, not by the shifting of a point from one end of its dimensions to another. This sufficiently shows that from the continuity of movement and of time nothing can be concluded in favor of continuous matter.

_Fifth objection._—Between two given points in space infinite other points can be placed. Now, what is possible can be conceived to be done; and thus we can conceive an infinite multitude between the two points. Accordingly, an infinite multitude can be contained within limits; and if so, continuous matter is not impossible, and our first argument has no weight.

We answer that, although an infinite multitude of points can be placed between any two given points, yet nothing can be inferred therefrom in favor of continuous matter. For those innumerable points either will touch one another or not. If they do not touch, they will not make a continuum; and if they touch, they will, as we have shown, entirely coincide, instead of forming a continuous extension. It is plain, therefore, that the distance between the two given points cannot be filled _continuously_, even by an infinite multitude of other points. And therefore the objection has no force.

Nor is it true that by the creation of an infinite multitude of points between two given points such a multitude would be an infinity _within limits_. For the two given points are limits, or rather terms, of a local relation, but they are no limits of the multitude, or discrete quantity, which can be placed between them; for, without altering the position of those two points, we can increase without end the number of the intervening points. As volume is not a limit of density, so the distance of two points is not the limit of the multitude that can be condensed between them.

_Sixth objection._—All the arguments above given against the continuity of matter are grounded on a false supposition; for they all take for granted that _a continuum must be made up of parts_—an assumption which can be shown to be false. For, first, in the geometric continuum there are no actual parts; for such a continuum is not made up by composition, but is created, such as it is, all in one piece. Whence it must be inferred that the primitive elements of matter, though exempt, as primitive, from composition of parts, and really simple, may yet possess extension. Secondly, who can deny that God has the power to create a solid body as perfectly continuous as a geometric volume? Such a body, though divisible into any number of parts, would not be a compound; for its parts would be merely possible, not actual; and therefore it would be simple, and yet continuous. Thirdly, those who deny the possibility of continuous matter admit a vacuum existing between simple points of matter. Such a vacuum is a continuous extension intercepted between real terms, and is nothing else than the possibility of real extension. But the real extension, which is possible between real terms, is not, of course, a series of points touching one another, for such a series, as all admit, is impossible. It is, therefore, an extension really continuous, not made up of parts, but only divisible into parts. Hence matter may be continuous and simple at the same time.(111)

This objection tends to establish the possibility of _simple‐extended_ matter. Yet that simplicity and material extension exclude one another is an evident truth; in other terms, material continuity, without composition of parts, is utterly inconceivable. If, therefore, we persist in taking for granted that a material continuum must be made up of actual parts, we do not make a gratuitous supposition.

The three reasons adduced in the objection are far from satisfactory. The first makes an unlawful transition from the geometric extension of volumes to the physical extension of masses. Such a transition, we say, is unlawful; for the geometrical extension is only _virtually_ continuous, and therefore involves no actual multitude of parts; whereas the physical extension of the mass of matter would be _formally_ and _materially_ continuous, thus involving a formal multitude of actual parts perfectly distinct from one another, though united to form one continuous piece. The geometric extension is measured by three linear dimensions, and has no density. Now, a geometric line is nothing else than the trace of the movement of a point; and accordingly its continuity arises from the continuity of the movement itself, which alone is _formally_ continuous; for the space measured by such a movement has no formal continuity of its own, as we have already explained, but is styled “continuous” only inasmuch as it is the region of continuous movement. There is no doubt, therefore, that geometric extension is merely virtual in its continuity; and for this reason it is not made up of parts of its own, but simply corresponds to the parts of the movement by which it can be measured. Material extension, on the contrary, would be densely filled with actual matter, and therefore would be made up of actual parts perfectly distinct, though not separated. To apply, as the objection does, to material extension, what geometry teaches of the extension of volumes, is therefore a mere paralogism. It amounts to saying: _Vacuum is free from composition; therefore the matter also which would fill it is free from composition._

We may add that even geometric extension, if real, involves composition. For, evidently, we cannot conceive a geometric cube without its eight vertices, nor can we pretend that a figure requiring eight distinct points as the terms of its dimensions is free from composition. Now, if an empty geometric volume cannot be simple, what shall we say of a volume full of matter? Wherever there is real extension, there are real dimensions, of which the beginning, and the end, and all the intermediate terms are really distinct from one another. Hence in a material extension there should be as many distinct material terms as there are geometric points within its limits. And if this is _simplicity_, we may well ask what is _composition_?

The second reason adduced in the objection is a mere _petitio principii_. For he who says that God can create “a solid body as perfectly continuous as a geometric volume” assumes that such a continuous body involves no contradiction; he therefore begs the question. On the other hand, to affirm that God can create a solid body as perfectly continuous as a geometric volume, is to affirm that God can create a body of infinite density—that is, an infinite mass within finite dimensions. For the mass of a body of matter is the product of its volume into its density; hence, if its volume be finite, and its density infinite, the mass will be infinite. Now, a body materially continuous implies infinite density; for it excludes porosity, and it supplies matter for an endless division. Hence a continuous mass of matter filling a finite volume would be _an infinite mass contained within limits_. We think we are not presuming too much when we say that God cannot create such a metaphysical monstrosity.

“Such a body,” says the objection, “though divisible into any number of parts, would not be a compound.” This is evidently false; for all that is divisible into parts has parts, and therefore composition. Nor is it true that the parts of a continuous body “would be merely possible, not actual”; for if such parts are not actual, how can the body be actual? No actual continuum can exist without actual parts. The divisibility of continuum is not the possibility of actual parts, but the possibility of their actual separation.

The third reason is based on our admission of a vacuum between material points. Such a vacuum, it is objected, is a continuous (virtual) extension, founding the possibility of some other (formal) extension. This we concede; but when it is argued that this other extension which is possible between the material terms is the extension of continuous matter, we deny the consequence. It is only continuous local movement, not continuous matter, that can formally extend from term to term, as we have proved. When two real points of matter have a distinct ubication in space, the interval between them cannot be estimated otherwise than by the extent of the movement which can be made from one point to the other. We cannot perceive the distance between two terms, except by drawing, at least mentally, a line from the one to the other; and for this reason, as we have remarked elsewhere, the relation of distance is conceived by us as a quantity measured by movement, not by matter, and representing the extension of continuous movement, not of continuous matter. Hence a vacuum intercepted between real points is a _real_, though only _virtual_, extension; and that other _real_ and _formal_ extension, which is possible between the same real points, is the extension of local movement. Our opponent concedes that “the real extension possible between real terms is not a series of points touching one another; for such a series, as all admit, is impossible.” Now, this suffices to show that the real extension possible between such real terms is not the extension of continuous matter; for such an extension, as we have abundantly proved, would be made up of nothing but of a series of points touching one another.

Nothing, perhaps, more evidently shows the unquestionable solidity of the thesis we have undertaken to defend than the necessity felt by our opponents of admitting in matter _an extended simplicity_ and a _simplicity divisible into parts_, as witnessed by this last objection, which we have transcribed from a grave and learned professor of philosophy. _Extended and simple matter_ is such an absurdity as few would admit to be a corollary of their own theories; yet it cannot be escaped by those who consider the _first_ elements of matter as endowed with bulk. For physical simplicity is an essential attribute of all primitive beings; and, if primitive elements are nevertheless supposed to be intrinsically extended, it is plain that their simplicity will be an extended simplicity.

The main reason why some philosophers still cling to material continuity is their fear of _actio in distans_. We have already shown that such a fear, though very common, cannot be justified. We grant that, owing to popular prejudice and an incorrect notion of things, many are apt to dread action at a distance as a dangerous shoal; but when they resort to an “extended and divisible simplicity,” they steer their ship directly against the reefs.

To Be Continued.

Christmas In The Thirteenth Century.

Few are the hearts that do not feel the benign and joyful influence of Christmas. It is the one feast that neither the all‐destroying zeal of the Reformation nor the cold indifferentism of the present age has dared to abolish or desecrate. To how many is it the sole remaining word that reminds them of the sacred name of Christ! There _was_ a time when Christmas was but one of the many holydays that with each succeeding month recalled to Christian hearts some great event in the life of their divine Master; but heresy has swept away one by one those sacked days of repose and prayer. Even in Catholic countries the church has found it necessary to reduce the number of Days of Obligation, so cold have grown both faith and devotion.

Wealth and material prosperity—these are the sole ends for which a heartless world would have us exert all our energies, and it would fain clog with the sordid love of gain all the higher aspirations of the soul.

But we are forgetting that this is Christmas time—a time for innocent pleasure, and not for moralizing; so, leaving the present age, with all its faults, we will ask our readers to transport themselves with us, in imagination, some six centuries back, and witness how was celebrated in those Ages of Faith the holy night of the Nativity of our Lord.

The period selected is about the middle of the XIIIth century. Religion was then in the fullest splendor of its power. It was the light of civilization, the custodian of all learning. Every art had combined to render its outward expression worthy of the great and holy mysteries it taught. Gothic architecture had at this date attained its highest perfection; painting and sculpture were almost exclusively devoted to the decoration of God’s temples; poetry and music were united to render attractive the sublime and rarely‐interrupted Offices of the church. The liturgical works of the period are mines of poetic and musical riches that for the most part lie hidden and uncared for in their musty tomes.

Some will doubtless smile when we speak of the Latin poetry of the middle ages, and certainly those who seek in it the polished and classical verses of a Horace or a Virgil will be disappointed. They will, however, find that, despite their somewhat strange Latinity, these productions of a so‐ called barbarous age contain a depth of feeling, a strength and freshness of expression, quite unknown to the pagan poets, and were as appropriate to those grand old cathedrals under whose roofs they were to resound as were the classic odes and songs to the luxurious banquet‐halls of Rome or the effeminate villas of Naples. In fact, to adequately judge of the poetry contained in the Offices of the mediæval period, we must place ourselves amid the surroundings in which they were performed; we must _not_ view it from the stand‐point of the present age, with its entirely different ideas of both religious life and religious art.

It will be, then, in an old French cathedral that we shall ask our readers to spend this Christmas night; for the office, or rather religious drama, at which we intend to make them assist, is taken from a Roman‐French missal of the XIIIth century.

The night has closed in. Within the city walls the tortuous and narrow streets are nearly deserted; but lights gleam from many a diamond pane, for inside joyous circles are gathered around the glowing logs that brightly sparkle in the ample chimneys. Old stories are repeated by venerable grandfathers to merry grandchildren, who in return sing with silvery voices quaint old carols. Suddenly a well‐known sound fills the air; from the high cathedral towers burst forth the joyous chimes that herald the approach of Christ’s natal hour. The notes that ring out so clearly in the cold December air are those of the familiar Christmas hymn, _Christe Redemptor omnium_.(112) Soon a hurrying throng begin to fill the streets, all wending their way towards the same point, through narrow and winding streets. By gabled house and arched doorway, by mullioned window and jutting tower, they press forward until they reach the central square, where rises, in all its splendor, the old cathedral church.

Beautiful and imposing at all times is a Gothic cathedral, but never more so than when the trembling light of a winter moon throws around it a soft halo, just enough to make its grand proportions visible amid the surrounding gloom, while leaving all the finer details wrapt in sombre mystery. Doubly lofty appear tower and spire, and strangely weird each fantastic gargoyle, as a stray moonbeam falls athwart its uncouth countenance.

Let us follow the crowd, and enter beneath the richly‐sculptured doorway. Dim is the light within, only just sufficient to find your way among the throng that now begins to fill every part of the vast edifice. The numerous assemblage of priests and choristers are singing the Office of Matins, the grand old melodies of S. Gregory resounding beneath the vaulted roof with that wonderful effect that makes them, when sung by choir and congregation, the most truly religious music that exists. As the last solemn notes of the _Te Deum_ die out, a white‐robed chorister‐boy representing an angel advances into the centre of the choir, and in sweet, clear accents chants the words of the angelic message, “Nolite timere: ecce enim evangelizo vobis gaudium magnum, quod erit omni populo, quia natus est vobis hodie Salvator mundi, in civitate David. Et hoc vobis signum: Invenietis infantem pannis involutum, et positum in præsepio”—“Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people: for this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling‐clothes, and laid in a manger.”

Then from the high triforium‐gallery seven pure young voices ring out, as if from heaven, the words sung by the angel‐host on the first Christmas night: “Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis.” These familiar words that herald the pious representation of the holy scenes whose reality centuries ago hallowed this night in the mountains of Judæa, are listened to by the vast congregation with rapt and devout attention. In their simple and earnest faith the assistants feel themselves transported back to the days of Herod and to the village of Bethlehem, as they behold emerging from the western porch, and slowly advancing up the nave, a train of shepherds with staves in their hands, singing, as they proceed in search of their newborn King, the following hymn. Both words and music are full of beauty, and the cadence is well suited to a Christmas carol:

Pax in terris nunciatur, In excelsis gloria.

Terra cœlo fœderatur, Mediante gratia. Mediatur homo Deus Descendit in propria, Ut ascendat homo reus Ad amissa gaudia. Eia! Eia!

Transeamus, videamus Verbum hoc quod factum est Transeamus, ut sciamus Quod annunciatum est.

In Judea puer vagit, Puer salus populi,

Quo bellandum se præsagit Vetus hostis sæculi.

Accedamus, accedamus Ad præsepe Domini,

Et dicamus: Laus fecundæ Virgini.

(Peace on earth is announced, and in heaven glory,

Earth is reconciled through divine grace. The Mediator God‐Man descends amongst his own, that guilty man may ascend to lost joys.

Let us go over, let us see this word that is come to pass.

Let us go over, that we may learn what has been announced.

In Judæa an infant cries

An Infant, the salvation of his people,

By whom the ancient enemy of the world foresees he must be warred upon.

Let us approach, let us approach the cradle of our Lord,

And let us sing: Praise to the fruitful Virgin.)

A crib has been arranged at the extreme end of the choir, containing the figure of the divine Infant and our Blessed Lady. It is surrounded by women, to whom naturally is given the charge of watching over the Virgin Mother and her new‐born Babe. Towards this crib the shepherds wend their way, passing beneath the carved rood‐screen through the open portals of the choir. Two priests advance to meet them, and greet them with the following versicle: “Quem quæritis in præsepio, pastores, dicite?”—“Whom seek ye in this manger, shepherds, tell us?”

They reply: “Salvatorem Christum Dominum infantem pannis involutum secundum sermonem angelicum”—“Christ our Lord and Saviour, an infant wrapped in swaddling‐clothes, according to the word of the angel.”

The women around the crib now draw back the curtains that have, until this moment, kept it concealed from view, and, showing to the shepherds the divine Infant reclining in the manger, sing these words: “Adest hic parvulus cum matre sua de quo dudum vaticinando Isaïas dixerat propheta: Ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium: euntes dicite quod natus est”—“Here is the little Child and his Mother of whom of old Isaias prophesied: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son; go forth and announce that he is born.” The shepherds salute the Virgin and Child, and sing the following charming little carol in honor of the Virgin Mother:

Salve Virgo singularis; Virgo manens, Deum paris, Ante sæcla generatum Corde patris;

Adoremus nunc creatum Carne matris.

Nos, Maria, tua prece A peccati purga fece; Nostri cursum incolatus Sic dispone, Ut det sua frui natus Visione.

(Hail, O Virgin incomparable! remaining a Virgin, thou hast brought forth the Son of God, begotten of his Father before all ages.

Now we adore him, formed of the flesh of his Mother.

O Mary! purify us from all stain of sin; our destined course on earth so dispose, that thy Son may grant us to enjoy his blessed vision.)

After this hymn they fall on their knees and adore the divine Babe; then, turning towards the choir, they with joyful accents exclaim, “Alleluia, Alleluia. Jam vere scimus Christum natum in terris, de quo canite omnes cum prophetis dicentes”—“Now we truly know that Christ is born on earth, let all sing of him with the prophet.” Answering to this invitation, the choir intone the prophetic words of the introit of the midnight Mass: “The Lord has said to me, Thou art my Son; this day I have begotten Thee.”

The priests and assistants advance slowly in procession to the foot of the altar, and the solemn celebration of High Mass commences.

The lessons conveyed by this beautiful and symbolic representation are happily continued when the reality of the divine mysteries has taken its place. The priests who represented the shepherds, quitting the crib where they were the first to do homage to the Child‐God, proceed to occupy the most exalted places in the choir, and to take the leading parts in the chants that accompany that Holy Sacrifice in which the same Child‐God once more descends on earth.

Among the many impressive ceremonies of the Catholic Church, there is none more touching than the celebration of the midnight Mass. Whether it be in a vast cathedral or in a modest village church, it never fails to bring home to the heart, in a wonderful manner, the realization of the two great mysteries of the Incarnation and the Eucharist, awakening in the soul a lively devotion towards them. If such be the effect of the sacred rite on men who have only just quit the bustle and turmoil of life, as they enter the church, what must it have been on minds prepared by so graphic a representation of those very mysteries that the Mass not only commemorates, but actually reproduces in a manner far more perfect, if less perceptible to the outward senses.

How conspicuous, then, was the wisdom of the church in encouraging the performance of these pious dramas—not only as affording an innocent pleasure to the spectators, but as a preparation for the better understanding of the sacred mysteries that were commemorated in each succeeding feast; for on the popular mind how far more powerful than the most eloquent sermon is the effect of any ceremony that appeals directly to the senses!

At the termination of the Mass the officiating priest, turning towards the shepherds, intones the following anthem: “Quam vidistis, pastores? dicite, annunciate nobis in terris quid apparuit”—“Tell us, O shepherds, whom you have seen? Announce to us who has appeared on earth.” To which they reply: “Natum vidimus et choros angelorum collandantes Dominum. Alleluia, alleluia”—“We have seen the Lord, who is born on earth, and the choirs of angels praising him.”

The office of Lauds, which terminates the night‐office, then commences. The shepherds, still occupying the places of honor, but divided in two choirs, sing the poetic paraphrase which on all solemn feasts in those days took the place of the Benedicamus and Deo Gratias. After which they all unite in chanting the following antiphon, which forms a fitting termination to the ceremonies of the night: “Ecce completa sunt omnia quæ dicta sunt per angelum de Virgine Maria”—“Behold, all things are accomplished that were announced by the angel concerning the Virgin Mary.”

Such were the pious festivities that six hundred years ago filled with joy and devotion many a vast congregation in cathedral and church throughout France on Christmas night. We have described them as far as they can be gathered from the Office‐books of the period; but how many beautiful details, handed down by tradition and introduced from time to time, must necessarily have escaped us at this distant period! We venture to hope, however, that we have succeeded in giving our readers at least a slight idea of the deep religious feeling, and at the same time poetic beauty, that characterized these sacred dramas of the middle ages.

The Civilization Of Ancient Ireland.(113)

The greatest difficulty experienced by students of Irish history, whether foreigners or to the manner born, arises out of the crudeness of the mass of fables and myths, contradictions and harsh criticisms, which confuse and disfigure many histories of the country. Unfortunately, native Irish historians and annalists have been wont to indulge much too freely in exaggeration and romance, substituting the airy creations of the poets for authenticated facts, and dogmatically putting forward the most minute details of remote, and therefore necessarily indistinct, actions in a manner to overtax our credulity and weaken our faith even in well‐ established authorities. English writers, on the contrary, from Giraldus Cambrensis downward, have erred on the other side. Always ignorant of the Gaelic tongue, and generally of the customs, laws, and religion of the people whose history they assumed to chronicle, they invariably attempted to conceal their defective knowledge by ignoring the claims of the Irish to a distinctive and high order of civilization, not only before the advent of the Anglo‐Normans, but anterior to the introduction of Christianity. The want of adaptability of the English mind to historical composition, even in relation to domestic matters, may account for much of this unfair method of treating those of a subjugated nation. National and, of late centuries, sectarian animosity has been, however, the leading motive of the British historiographers, with one exception, for falsifying the records of the past, no matter to what country they belong. To have acknowledged that S. Patrick preached the Gospel to a race possessing considerable social refinement and mental culture; that, under Providence, an entire people were converted to Christianity without any material change in their civil polity or disruption of their general domestic relations; and that, even in his lifetime, he had the happiness to see his work completed, and to feel that he would leave behind him a native priesthood, whose piety and learning were for ages afterwards to edify and astonish Europe, was to concede the glory and the wisdom of the church in introducing and perpetuating the faith of her divine Founder at that early period of her existence.

With the Irish historians, who fully admitted this great central fact in the annals of their country, it was different. They knew the language, laws, and habits of their countrymen, but the circumstances by which they were surrounded rendered it impossible for them to consult freely the original records then existing, or to compare and collate them with that scrutiny and care with which documents of such antiquity ought to be regarded. Thus, Dr. Keating wrote his work in the recesses of the Galtee Mountains, while hiding from the “Priest‐hunters” of James I.; and the Abbé McGeoghegan composed his while in Paris, a fugitive from William of Orange’s penal laws, where at best he could only consult second‐hand authorities. As for Moore, though illustrious as a poet, his knowledge of his native country was of the most meagre and inaccurate description, and his ignorance of its language and antiquities, as he subsequently confessed, is apparent in every page of his book.

At the time of the Norman invasion, and for two or three centuries afterwards, the number of Irish MSS. in Ireland, including histories, annals, genealogies, poems, topographical and otherwise, historical tales, and legends, was immense. Many of them, fortunately, are still extant, bearing date from the Xth, XIth, and XIIth centuries; but the greater portion are either destroyed or hidden in inaccessible places. As the civil wars progressed, and the ancient nobility were slaughtered or driven into exile, the cultivation of native literature gradually ceased, and consequently many of the most valuable national records were ruined or lost, so that their titles only remain to us; while others, escaping the general spoliation, became scattered among the libraries of the Continent, or found their way into careless or hostile hands. At the present day several are in the British Museum; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; in Paris and Brussels; St. Gall, in Switzerland; and St. Isidore’s, in Rome. One hundred and forty are yet preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin; while many of the most valuable are the property of the Royal Irish Academy and of private collectors.

The decline of learning in Ireland, like so many of her other calamities, can be dated from the period of the “Reformation,” as its revival may be said to have been contemporary with the uprising of the people, which led to the partial emancipation of the Catholics, less than half a century ago. Then it was that the Irish, breathing something like the air of freedom, began in earnest to gather up the broken threads of their ancient history, and to demonstrate to the world that, though long enslaved and silenced, the spirit of true nationality was as indestructible in their hearts as was the faith for which they had so long and heroically suffered. In 1826 appeared O’Conor’s translation of the first part of the _Annals of the Four Masters_; some years after Dr. Petrie published his masterly work on the _Round Towers_, and in 1851 Dr. O’Donovan issued the entire _Annals_, the great vertebræ of Irish chronology, in seven large volumes, containing more than four thousand pages; the text in Irish characters, the translation and copious, critical notes in English. Late in the next year a commission of Irish scholars was appointed by the government to collect, transcribe, translate, and publish the _Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland_, which, after a great deal of labor and expense, has now been accomplished. The first volume of this most valuable work appeared under the title of _Senchus Mor_, in 1865, the second four years later, and the third, we learn, has recently been issued from the press in Dublin. Meanwhile, the Celtic and the Archæological Societies, separately and combined, for many years past have been publishing several valuable detached works on Ireland, which have attracted much attention in literary circles in Europe, and quickened at home the popular desire for productions of a similar character. In 1867 Dr. Todd’s _Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_, a translation of all the original documents extant bearing on the wars of the Danes and other Norsemen in Ireland during the two centuries preceding the battle of Clontarf, A.D. 1014, was added to the collection of historical records.

But the merit of elevating the study of Irish history to the dignity of a profession belongs to the Catholic University of Ireland; thus constituting a claim on the affections of the Irish people in every clime which will long remain among the foremost of its many distinctions. At its foundation a chair of Irish History and Archæology was established, and the late Eugene O’Curry, of all men then living the most fitted for the position, was selected to fill it. In 1855‐56 Prof. O’Curry delivered before the students a course of twenty‐one lectures, afterwards published at the expense of the University under the title of _Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History_. This work, including a valuable appendix, embraces six hundred and sixty pages, and contains a full and most interesting account of all known documents relating to Irish history. These lectures were followed by a series _On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_, delivered during the years 1857‐62, and recently published in two handsome volumes, with an introduction and explanatory notes by the editor, W. K. Sullivan, in an additional volume of six hundred and forty‐four pages. The value of O’Curry’s last work, as well as of the very profound introduction by Prof. Sullivan, can hardly be over‐ estimated. In them are contained a complete, vivid, and harmonious series of pictures of the laws, religion, territorial and class divisions, literature, art, social habits, weapons, dress, and ornaments of the people of ancient Ireland from the remotest times to the Xth or XIth century. The style of O’Curry in presenting these instructive historical tableaux is clear, concise, and sufficiently varied to attract the attention of the least diligent student; while any of his statements which may appear to savor of an over‐fondness for the things of antiquity, or undue reverence for the past, find an efficient corrective in the critical and exhaustive commentaries of the editor, who, in addition to being a distinguished chemist, is evidently an excellent philologist and ethnologist; as familiar with the genius of the continental languages and antiquities as he is with those of his own country.

With the results of the labor of two such men before him, the student of Irish history, though unacquainted with Gaelic, and beyond the reach of the original documents, has now no excuse for not becoming as familiar with Gaelic historical and archæological lore as with those of the other races of the Old World. He will be rewarded, also, in his studies, by the contemplation of a system of civilization without a parallel in the records of any other nation of which we have a knowledge; equally removed from the elaborate, artificial life of the Greeks and the oligarchical paganism of Rome, as it was from the rude barbarism of the Northmen and the refined sensuality of the East.

Before the commencement of our era the history of the various tribes who are said by tradition to have visited Ireland as colonists or invaders is, of course, obscure, and can be traced only through the legend‐tales of the poets and story‐tellers of more recent but still very remote times. There is no doubt, however, that about the middle of the first Christian century the island was peopled by two distinct and to some extent hostile tribes; one described as a tall, red or golden haired, blue‐eyed, and fair‐ complexioned people; the other dark and small of stature—evidently the subject race. About this time a revolution, or rather a series of revolts, by those known by the name of the _Aithech Tuatha_, or rent‐paying tribes (the _Atticotti_ of continental writers), broke out, and resulted in the temporary success of the servile race and the annihilation of the greater part of the nobility. The aristocracy, however, regained their power after some years of violent and varying struggle, and to prevent the recurrence of such bloody scenes, as well as to disunite their enemies, they redistributed them throughout the island, while at the same time they built a number of duns, or forts within easy supporting distance of each other, the better to consolidate their authority and ensure the protection of their families.

The leader of the restored nobles was Tuathal, “the Legitimate,” who, having been declared King of Ireland, reorganized the government, founded the Irish Pentarchy, established great national and provincial fairs, and enacted the greater part, at least, of the body of laws known as the _Senchas Mor_. He was in fact the first able soldier, as well as law‐ giver, of whom we have any definite and well‐authenticated account in Gaelic history. As the country at that time, and for centuries after, was essentially agricultural, we naturally find that the laws of Tuathal and his successors are mainly devoted to agrarian matters; the divisions, rights, and duties of the various classes of occupants of the soil being set forth with a minuteness and exactness rarely to be found in modern codes. Politically, the island was divided into five subordinate kingdoms, nearly corresponding with the present four provinces, except that the fifth, which was called Meath, embraced not only that county, but Westmeath and a portion of the surrounding territory. Here were situated Tara, the principal palace of the _Ard‐Rig_, or supreme monarch, and the mensal land set apart for his use. Sometimes the _Ard‐Rig_ was also King of Meath, but generally, as in the cases of Con “of the Hundred Battles,” Nial, “of the Nine Hostages,” and Brian, “Boru,” he was the head of some of the great northern or southern septs. In theory the sovereignty was elective, and by the law of Tanistry the king’s successor was designated during his lifetime; but in practice, when the crown did not descend hereditarily, it was most frequently the prize of successful warfare. The same may also be said of the provincial kings. There appears to have been no such thing known in that age as a Salic law for the exclusion of women from a participation in the affairs of government; for we find numerous instances of kingdoms being swayed and armies led into action by the gentler sex, notably the celebrated Meave, the Queen of Connaught, and the darling heroine of Irish fiction.

The provincial kingdoms were divided into _Mor Tuaths_, each of which comprised several _Tuaths_, and these again were sub‐divided into _Bailé Biatachs Caethramhadhs_, or quarters; _Seisreachs_, or ploughlands; and _Bailé‐boes_, or cow‐lands, each of the latter containing about sixty acres. According to a poem of the VIth or VIIth century, there were in Ireland at that epoch 184 Tuaths; 5,520 Bailé Biatachs; 22,080 Quarters; 66,240 Plough‐lands; and 132,480 Ballyboes—equal to about 7,948,000 acres. The lowest rank in the nobility was that of _Flath_, or lord of a _Tuath_; the highest in the commons were the _Bo‐aires_, or farmers who, though they held lands from the _Flath_, were freemen, entitled to all the rights and privileges of witnesses, jurors, bails, and local courts. Next beneath them were the _saer_ and _daer Ceiles_, or free and base tenants. As there were no towns or villages of any importance, the rules of the agrarian laws were applied to all classes, and hence skilled workmen, such as goldsmiths, blacksmiths, dyers, and other mechanics, were, equally with the smaller tenant farmers, called free _Ceiles_, holding by contract from the _Flaths_, and paying in labor or kind a determined equivalent. The base _Ceiles_ were of two kinds—one who held lands by uncertain tenure, or as tenants at will; and the other, who performed personal service as mercenary soldiers or laborers upon the mensal lands of the lord. “Though the free _Ceiles_ were all freemen,” says Sullivan, “and consequently possessed some political rights, it is evident that the extent of those rights differed. In some cases they must have been confined to bearing arms and obtaining a share of the common land. All _Ceiles_, whether free or base, had certain definite rights in the territory, such as the right to have a habitation and the usufruct of the land; but besides these were several other classes, who possessed either very few rights, or occupied so low a position in the social scale as to have been practically in a state of complete servitude; these were the _Bothachs_, _Sencleithes_, and _Fuidirs_.” The _saer_ or free _Bothachs_ were simply occupiers of cabins, and the _daer Bothachs_ were menials; while the _Sencleithes_ included all sorts of poor dependents, generally the descendants of strangers, mercenaries, or prisoners of war. The _Fuidirs_, to whom S. Patrick in his captivity belonged, were absolutely serfs attached to the land, and in some respects the property of the chief. It was only a _Flath_, however, who was entitled to retain those belonging to the three servile classes; and where the condition grew out of mutual compact, it could be ended by either at any time. Prisoners of war, malefactors, and non‐paying debtors, similar to peons, were of course excluded from this privilege. Those various classes and sub‐divisions did not constitute perpetual castes; on the contrary, a member of the lowest order, through lapse of time, undisturbed possession, and the accumulation of property, could ascend, not only to the highest place in the commons, but enter the charmed circle of aristocracy itself.

It must not be supposed, however, that the entire ownership of the soil was vested in the _Mor‐Flaths_, or great chiefs; in fact, they only owned their proper estate and the mensal lands attached to their office, upon which were employed their _Ceiles_ and _Fuidirs_, who tilled the farms and paid rent by supplying their masters’ tables, and by other tributes. In like manner the subordinate _Flaths_ and _Airés_ held their own proper lands in fee, paying their superior a tax, or _Bes‐Tigi_, in acknowledgment of his authority, and exacting labor and service in turn from their _Bothachs_, _Sencleithes_, and base _Fuidirs_. The remainder of the land belonged to the freemen of the _Tuath_ in common, subject only to the dominion of the chief, though on certain conditions the usufruct could be devised or alienated. “In process of time,” says Sullivan, “estates were carved out of this public land, as appanages of offices, as rewards for public services, or by lapsing into prescription. The holders of such estates were the _Aires_, and as such were in an especial manner the _Céiles_ of the _Rig_. The king, with the consent of his council, might, however, grant a portion of it as allodium at once. It is probable that Magh Aié, now the plains of Boyle, in Roscommon, was public land.” Around the duns or fortified residences of the chiefs their retainers and menials built their wattled huts for the sake of convenience and protection, and thus were formed the nuclei of so many towns and villages still marked on the map of Ireland, of the names of which _Dun_ forms a part; just as in later times the early Irish Christians crowded round the churches and monasteries, and, thus forming new communities, took the names of their patrons with the prefix _Kil_, derived from _Cill_, church. Another class of subjects, artisans, farmers, and teachers, were to be found in the neighborhood of the courts of law and permanent places for elections, who, forming corporations or guilds, gradually laid the foundation of boroughs and privileged towns, under the management of _Brugfers_, or magistrates.

There were several degrees of rank among these officials. Some, whose duty was confined to the regulation of copartnerships in farms and the fixing of metes and bounds; others who held courts in their own houses, entertained guests, and presided over the election of the chiefs and their _Tanistes_. This class belong to the _Airé_ rank, and every freeman had the right to vote at the assembly of the _Tuath_, and appear as a witness, juror, or bail in court. The _Brughfer_ of a province held six different courts, and superintended the choice of the provincial king and his successor. On these occasions the voters were all of the _Flath_ rank, and were supposed to represent their clans or _Finés_. This term, though literally meaning a house or family, was in law used in three different senses: first, as applied to all relations by consanguinity to the seventeenth degree, who were entitled to inherit property, as well as being liable for fines and mulcts; secondly, to the lord and his dependents; and, thirdly, to all the inhabitants of a _Tuath_, no matter of what condition. So, also, the word _Cland_, or clan, which, in its restricted meaning, was applied only to the nobles and their immediate families, was in its territorial application interpreted to signify all the people of the same district, who usually assumed the surname of the chief, though no relationship existed between him and them. There is therefore no more reason to suppose that an O’Brien or a Murphy of to‐day is descended from the victor of Clontarf or the traitor of Ferns, than that his ancestors were _Fuidirs_ under either of those kings. In fact, family names were only generally introduced into Ireland in the XIth century.

With few exceptions, the punishment of crime under the ancient laws of the country was by fine, so that jails and penitentiaries were unknown. This fine, or _eric_, was paid by the criminal, or by his _Finé_ or clan, to the party aggrieved or his representative, and upon failure thereof the culprit was reduced to the condition of a _Fuidir_. The servile classes, who had no goods, could not, of course, be fined or further degraded; but their lords were compelled to respond in damages, and in case of injury done to his defenceless tenants the landlord was entitled to compensation. In the _Senchus Mor_, “every nice offence bears its comment,” according to the enormity of the crime and the rank of plaintiff and defendant; so, in one sense at least, every man in Erinn may be said to have had his price. The courts in which those _erics_ were levied seemed to have been organized on a very just plan, and their procedure exhibits marked germs of our present jury system—or trial by a certain number of neighbors and equals.

Minor causes were tried in the courts of the _Tuaths_ or _Aires_, but greater ones were determined at the provincial assemblies, which appear to have exercised both legislative and judicial functions. The absence of cities or stationary places of barter was supplied by the institution of vast provincial fairs, held at stated times and in central localities. The most famous of these were that of _Tailté_ in Meath, _Ailech_ in Derry, and _Carman_ at Wexford. The latter, which took place in August of every third year, was the most extensive, as well as the most ancient; its origin lying far back in the mythical ages, and its discontinuance dating so late as the XIth century. For some strange reason these great national fairs were invariably held in pagan cemeteries, and in ante‐Christian times were always commenced with games and funeral ceremonies, closing with horse‐racing, martial and athletic sports. According to the ancient chronicle, there were three markets at each fair, viz.:

“A market for food and clothes; a market for live‐stock, cows and horses, etc.; a market of foreigners and exiles, selling gold and silver, etc. The professors of every art, both the noble arts and the base arts, and non‐ professionals, were there, selling and exhibiting their compositions and their professional works to kings, and rewards were given for every work of art that was just or lawful to be sold or exhibited or listened to.”

The most important business of the assembly, however, consisted of the making of new laws and the revision of old ones for the province for the three succeeding years; and, as the _Rig_ and his officers were always in attendance, the hearing and decision of serious causes on appeal from the inferior courts. In the presence of the sovereign and his court the greatest order and decorum were enjoined, and whoever was found to disturb the public peace by violence or fraud was summarily condemned to death; the offence being in some sort adjudged treason, and not condonable by _eric_ fine. The time not devoted to law‐making, trials, and traffic was occupied in amusement and various sorts of pastimes; and if the ancient people of Erinn had as much relish for fun and frolic as their descendants, we can well imagine what mirth, sociability and interchange of opinions must have prevailed among such a light‐hearted multitude, whose only opportunity for enjoyment and mutual recognition occurred every third year. An old poem, “which,” says O’Curry, “I believe to have been contemporary with the last celebration of the feast, if not of even a more ancient date,” thus enumerates the different classes of persons who attended on such occasions, and the intellectual wares they brought with them for the delectation of the gathering:

“Trumpets, _Cruits_,(114) wide‐mouthed horns, _Cusigs Timpanists_, without weariness, Poets and petty rhymesters;

“Fenian tales of Find(115)—an untiring entertainment— Destructions, cattle‐preys, courtships, Inscribed tablets and books of trees,(116) Satires and sharp‐edged runes;

“Proverbs, maxims, royal precepts, And the youthful instruction of Fithal; Occult poetry, topographical etymologies, The precepts of Cairpri and of Cormac;

“The Feasts, and the great Feast of Teamar; Fairs, with the fair of Emania, Annals there are verified, Every division into which Erin was divided.”

The Feast of _Teamair_, or Tara, here alluded to as having constituted one of the subjects of the recitations at _Carman_, was also triennial, but of a different nature, and involving much higher occupations than those of the provincial fairs or feasts. It was an assembly of the subordinate kings and the nobles for elective, legislative, and judicial purposes; but, though nominally held every three years, was in reality celebrated as often as a new king was to be crowned, a general public law to be promulgated, or when some extraordinary occasion demanded the presence of the chiefs and _Rigs_ before the supreme monarch. Again, many years are known to have elapsed without an assembly or _Feis_, owing to the existence of internal dissensions or foreign invasions. This assembly is said to have owed its origin to _Tuathal_ the Legitimate, and it is certain that it only ceased to be held when Tara was abandoned as a royal residence in the VIIth century. The court of the _Ard‐Rig_ on such occasions was not only attended by the provincial magnates and, in pagan times, by the chief Druids, but by their followers, poets, doctors, and historians, with their respective household guards. It was a knowledge of this custom, doubtless, that led S. Patrick to select the hill of Tara as the place, and the assembly of the _Feis_ as the fitting occasion, upon which to disclose to the darkened minds of the whole people the splendid truths of Christianity.

The palace and adjoining houses of ancient Tara, judging by the extensive traces of their foundations yet remaining, must have been built on a very large scale; but as they were constructed entirely of wood, the buildings proper have long since disappeared. Still, we have accounts, more or less authentic, that collectively they were able to afford shelter and accommodation to many thousands of visitors, and that the barracks alone allowed quarters for twenty‐four thousand soldiers. Of the style of architecture of the king’s house we have no description, save that it was rectangular, and that its principal room or hall, which was used for deliberations as well as for feasts, was profusely ornamented with carvings in gold, silver, and bronze. Before the introduction of Christianity all buildings were of wood, some square or rectangular, others oval or round. Those of the higher classes were made of solid logs, but the smaller farmers and laborers dwelt in huts made of interlaced wattles or twigs, the interstices closed by mortar made with wet earth and straw. Stone structures were unknown before S. Patrick’s time; for, though lime was used as a wash for the interior and exterior of houses, its employment as a cement dates from the Christian ages. Hence there are no pagan ruins to be found in the country. The Round Towers, now proven beyond doubt to have been church belfries, are the most ancient stone memorials existing. It may be also remembered that the Druids had no such places of worship as temples or covered sanctuaries, and whatever rites they performed must have been celebrated in the open air. Indeed, our knowledge of those mysterious people and of their equally occult religious system is merely of a negative character; for, as O’Curry says:

“We only know that they worshipped idols from such examples as that of the idol gods taken into the Druid’s bed, so as to influence his visions, as described in Cormac’s _Glossary_, and that of the invocation of the idols in the case of the _Teinm Laeghdha_; and we know that in certain ceremonies they made use of the yew‐tree, the quicken or roan‐tree, and of the black‐thorn, as in the instance of the ordeal or test of a woman’s character by means of fire made of these sacred woods. That the people of ancient Erinn were idolaters is certain, for they certainly adored the great idol called _Crom Cruagh_, in the plain called _Magh Slecht_, as I showed on a former occasion. But it is remarkable that we find no mention of any connection between this idol and the Druids, or any other class of priests or special idol‐servers. We have only the record of the people, generally, assembling at times to do honor to the idol creation. As little, unfortunately, do we know of the organization of the order of the Druids, if they were indeed an order. They certainly were not connected as such with the orders of learned men or profession of teachers, such as before explained. The Druids were often, however, engaged in teaching, as has been seen; and it would appear that kings and chiefs, as well as learned men, were also frequently Druids, though how or why I am not in a position to explain with certainty at present.... I have refrained from suggesting any theory of my own on the subject. This negative conclusion, nevertheless, I will venture to draw from the whole: that, notwithstanding the singularly positive assertions of many of our own as well as of English writers upon the subject, there is no ground whatever for believing the Druids to have been the priests of any special positive worship; none whatever for imputing to them human sacrifices; none whatever for believing that the early people of Erinn adored the sun, moon, or stars, nor that they worshipped fire; and still less foundation for the ridiculous inventions of modern times (inventions of pure ignorance), concerning honors paid to brown bulls, red cows, or any other cows, or any of the lower animals.”

Next in rank and social importance, if not the equals or superiors of the Druids, were the _Ollamhs_, or doctors, the _Files_, or poets, and the _Brehons_ or judges. In the earliest ages these three classes were all included under the term _Fileadh_, poets, who not only professed philosophy, such as it then was, but recorded history and chronology in verse, and expounded the laws so preserved, in the various local courts and tribunals. A tendency, however, to mystify and confuse the statutes of Tuathal and his successors, led to the expulsion of the children of song from the forum, while the offices about the sovereign, when grave matters were to be considered, fell to the lot of the philosophers. This latter class had also an especial charge of educational matters, and usually superintended personally the training of the children of the _Rigs_ and chiefs. The _Ard‐Rig_, the provincial kings, and the _Flaths_ had their own philosophers, poets, and judges, with their special duties assigned them. Of the first, besides making and preserving regular records, “they were bound by the same laws,” says O’Curry, “to make themselves perfect masters of that history in all its details, and to teach it to the people by public recitals, as well as to be legal referees upon all subjects in dispute concerning history and the genealogies.” No person could be a _Brehon_ without first becoming an _Ollamh_, and twelve years’ study was required for that honor. But the poets, like their tribe in every land and age, were the nobly honored and the most privileged of any order in the government. They flattered kings and satirized them with impunity, charmed the masses with the melody of their songs and the fertility of their imagination; but, while they were generally on the side of popular liberty in their verses, they were always to be found at the tables of the nobles, where good cheer and rich largesses awaited them. However, as their poems were the only vehicles through which the history, traditions, and even laws of the nation could possibly have been transmitted to us, we owe them too much to blame their amiable weaknesses. Like the teacher, when the _File_ travelled about the country he was accompanied by his pupils, and every hospitality was shown to him and them, partly from love of his calling, and not seldom through dread of his satires. Many instances are recorded in popular tales of the dire effects of the poet’s wrath, of which sickness, loss of property and reputation, were among the least.

In connection with the courts we find two classes of paid advocates, one the _Ebe_, attorney, and the other the _Aighne_, or counsellor. When it is remembered that slander and libel were offences severely punished in the Brehon courts by _eric_ fine, we can admire the grim humor which discriminated against the attorneys, who, as the wise law‐givers of old argued, being professional libellers of other men, had no right to exact a fine when their own characters were assailed.

The custom of fosterage, about which so much unfavorable comment has been made by modern ill‐informed writers, is fully and clearly explained by O’Curry, who classes it as a part of the educational system of the country, and not, as some erroneously suppose, the partial desertion of children by their parents. In Lecture XVII. he asserts:

“We have ample proof that this fosterage was not a mere indiscriminate custom among all classes of the people, nor in any case one merely confined to the bare physical nurture and rearing of the child, which in early infancy was committed to the care of a nurse and her husband; but that the fosterhood was generally that of a whole family or tribe, and that in very many cases it became a bond of friendship and alliance between two or more tribes, and even provinces. In those cases the fosterers were not of the common class, poor people glad to perform their nursing for mere pay, and whose care extended to physical rearing only. On the contrary, it is even a question, and one not easily settled, whether the term nursing, in the modern acceptation of the word, should be applied at all to the old Gaelic fosterage, and whether the term pupilage would not be more appropriate.... The old Gaelic fosterage extended to the training and education, not only of children up to the age of fourteen, but sometimes of youths up to that of seventeen years.”

One of the chief duties of the foster‐father was the military training of the young chieftains. This consisted principally of the management of the horse, either in pairs for the chariot or singly for riding, the use of the casting spear and sling, and the sword exercise. Of strategy the ancient Irish soldiers had no idea, and very little of tactics; so that their battles were hand‐to‐hand combats, and therefore bloody and generally decisive. Their weapons of bronze or iron, many fine specimens of which we examined years ago in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy, still exhibit evidences of high finish and excellent temper. We do not find any mention of cavalry in the accounts handed down to us of the various battles fought in the earlier centuries, and very slight allusions to defensive armor. Ornaments of gold and other precious metals, such as crowns, collars, torque rings, and shield‐bosses, were worn in great profusion and variety, not only by nobles and generals, but by ordinary officers; in fact, so gorgeous are the poets’ descriptions of the decorations of their favorite heroes that we might be inclined to accuse them of gross exaggeration had we not also been shown some magnificent antiques of this description, in a perfect state of preservation, by the gentlemen of the academy during several visits made to that depository of Irish antiquities. Some of these valuable decorations are made of native ore, but by far the greater number were manufactured out of the spoils of war—the plunder wrested from the adjacent islands and the coast of France by the numerous expeditions that were fitted out in Ireland in the three or four centuries preceding S. Patrick’s mission.

The dress of the higher classes was, it seems, equally magnificent, and each rank was distinguished, not only by the peculiar shape of its garments, but by the number of colors allowed to be worn. Thus, servants had one color; farmers, two; officers, three; women, four; chiefs, five; _ollamhs_ and _files_, six; kings and queens, seven; and, according to the ancient records, bishops of the Christian Church were afterwards allowed to use all these combined. Red, brown, and crimson, with their shades and compounds, were the colors generally used; green, yellow, blue, and black sometimes, but not frequently. Prof. Sullivan, in that part of his introduction treating of the various dye‐stuffs used in ancient Ireland, takes occasion to dissipate some popular errors with regard to national colors. He says:

“Garments dyed yellow with saffron are constantly spoken of by modern writers as characteristic of the Irish. There is no evidence, however, that saffron was at all known by the ancient Irish, and _Lenas_ or _Inars_ of a yellow color are only mentioned two or three times in the principal tales. From what has been shown in the _Lectures_ and in this _Introduction_ about the color of the ancient Irish dress, it will be evident that there was no national as distinguished from clan color for the _Lena_; a saffron‐dyed one, if at all used in ancient times, would be peculiar to a single clan.”

The _Lena_ here spoken of was an inner garment which hung down to the knees like a modern kilt, usually made of linen, and sometimes interwoven with threads of gold. In addition to this were worn a shirt, or _Leine_; a cloak (_Brat_); an _Inar_, or jacket; _Triubhas_, or trowsers; a _Bor_, or conical hat; and _Cuarans_, or shoes made of raw‐hide. The costume of the women differed little from that of the men, except that they discarded the _triubhas_, and wore their _lenas_ and _leines_ longer. “They were, however,” says Sullivan, “distinguished from the men by wearing a veil, which covered the head. This veil was the _Caille_, which formed an essential part of the legal contents of a lady’s work‐bag. In a passage from the laws, quoted in the _Lectures_, it is called ‘a veil of one color’; as if variegated ones were sometimes used.... The white linen cloth still worn by nuns represents exactly both the Irish _Caille_ and the German _Hulla_.” In many other respects, besides the matter of dress, women were placed on a footing nearly equal to that of men in those remote times; and if their liberal and respectful treatment may be considered one of the tests of civilization, the old Gaels were in refinement far in advance of any other race in pagan Europe, and indeed of many of our own times. We find women not only taking part in public affairs as rulers and generals, but as Druidesses, judges, poets, and teachers. At Tara and the great provincial fairs a separate portion of the grounds was assigned them, so that they could observe the games and enjoy the amusements without interruption; while in the homes of the _Rigs_ and chiefs the best rooms, and sometimes an entire building, called _Grianan_, or sunny house, was exclusively reserved for their use. Most of the principal places in the country, such as the locations of the great fairs and the sites of royal palaces, were named in their honor, as well as the mountains and rivers and other objects in nature suggestive of symmetry, beauty, and elegance. We also read in the _Senchus Mor_ several very minute and stringent laws protecting their rights of person and property, assigning their dowry before marriage and their separate ownership of property afterwards. They were, in fact, to a great extent pecuniarily independent of their husbands; and though polygamy was tolerated and divorce allowed in pagan times, they were so hedged in by restrictions and conditions that it is more than probable little advantage was taken of the latitude thus afforded both parties.

Being almost exclusively an agricultural people, with very little commerce with the outward world, the food of the ancient Irish was confined to the natural productions of the soil, flesh‐meat, milk, and fish. Wheat, spelt‐ wheat, barley, and oats were produced in abundance, while cattle were so plentiful and so general an article of traffic that in the absence of coin they formed the currency of the country, and in them fines were paid and taxes levied. Butter, milk, and cheese were luxuries, but vegetables, such as leeks, onions, and water‐cresses, were to be found growing in the garden of the lowest _Fuidir_. Beer, likewise, appears to have been the popular drink. Imported wine and native mead, distilled from honey, were considered the aristocratic beverages of the period. That large quantities of the latter were consumed at the triennial feasts there can be no doubt, judging from the tales of the poets; and it was on occasions when it was circling round the board that the _Cruits_ (harps), _Timpans_, or violins, and _Cruiscach_, or pipes, the three principal musical instruments of the Gaels, came into play. The poets, too, were there to sing their songs of love and war, and the historians to recite the traditions of the tribes of Erinn. It is not positively known whether the pagan Irish had a written language or alphabet. O’Curry is disposed to believe they had, while Sullivan is of opinion that letters and writing were introduced with Christianity, and that previous to S. Patrick’s time all teaching in the ancient schools was oral, and the genealogies and histories were committed to memory and transmitted from father to son. They both, however, agree that there was a system of writing known only to the initiated, now called _Ogham_, which was inscribed on prepared wood, and engraved on monuments and tombstones, many of which latter, though still well preserved, are illegible to the best antiquarian scholars. The ancient Gaels, like their descendants, had a special reverence for their dead, and indulged in protracted wakes, as well as extensive funerals. In pagan days their funeral ceremonies were most elaborate, but in Christian times these gave way to the solemn offices of the church. Each person was buried according to his rank while living; the corpse was deposited deep in the ground, and a cairn or mound of earth and stone was erected over the grave to mark the spot. We have no reason to suppose that they had even the faintest notion of a future life or of the immortality of the soul, their mythology limiting the supernatural to celebrated _Tuatha da Danians_, real personages, who had left the surface to inhabit the bowels of the earth, and to fairies, the “good people” of the modern peasantry.

Those, then, were the people, computed to have been about three millions in number in his time, to whom S. Patrick preached the New Law, and whose complete conversion and subsequent undying attachment to Catholicity have puzzled as well as confounded the enemies of the church. Though pagans, they were neither barbarous nor over‐superstitious, and their ready appreciation and acceptance of God’s mysterious and elaborate Word is the best proof that their hearts were pure and their minds active and comprehensive.

Robespierre.

The father of the great revolutionary demagogue was an advocate at Arras, a peaceful citizen, who had nothing about him in character or manners to suggest that he was to be the parent of the monster known to history as the tiger‐man. Nay, so little of ferocity was there about the worthy advocate that, when his wife died, he nearly went melancholy‐mad for grief, and in his despair left his native town, and took to wandering about France, then beyond it to Germany and England, where he finally died. There are, it is true, some ill‐natured local chronicles extant which pretend that it was not so much grief as debt that drove the disconsolate widower into exile; and this harsh and unpoetic version is supported by the fact of his having, by his flight, abandoned to loneliness and utter destitution the three little children, two boys and a girl, whom the wife he so bitterly lamented had left to his paternal care. Maximilien Marie Isidore, the eldest of the three, was born on the 6th of April, 1760. The solitary position and the poverty of the deserted children attracted the compassion of some kind persons of the town, and notably that of the _curé_ of the parish, who sent Maximilien to school, where soon, by dint of hard work and intelligence, the boy shot ahead of all his class fellows, and justified the predictions of friends that he would make a name for himself in whatever trade or calling he embraced. The Bishop of Arras, Mgr. de Conzié, was also interested in the little fellow; his industry and desolate poverty making a claim on the prelate’s paternal notice. He used his influence with the abbot of the famous Abbey of Waast to grant Maximilien one of the abbatial _bourses_ at the College of Louis le Grand, in Paris. The very first steps in life of the future persecutor of priests and religion were thus guided by the hand of the church, his poverty enriched, his orphanhood fathered, by her charity. The Abbé Proyart, then president of Louis le Grand, continued to the poor provincial student the fostering kindness of those worthy ecclesiastics who had placed him under his charge. Maximilien was also at this time largely assisted and most kindly befriended by the Abbé de la Roche, a canon of Notre Dame, who, all through the period of the young man’s studies in Paris, kept watch over him, and showed him the most sincere and delicate affection. When at the age of nineteen, Maximilien left the college, the Abbé de la Roche used his influence to secure the vacant _bourse_ for the younger brother, Augustin Robespierre, and succeeded. Maximilien was called to the bar very soon after leaving Paris, and began at once to excite attention by his talent as a speaker. The first mention we find of his forensic success is in 1783, when he was engaged in a case against the corporation of St. Omer, a small town near Arras, in behalf of a gentleman who had erected a lightning‐conductor on his house, and been prosecuted on account of it, and condemned by the corporation. He appealed to the higher court of Arras. Robespierre pleaded his cause, and won a triumphant reversal of the first verdict. We find a note of this incident in the _Memoires de Bachaumont_: “The cause about the _paratonnerre_ has been before our court three days, and has been pleaded by M. de Robespierre, a young lawyer of extraordinary merit; he has displayed in this affair—which was, in fact, the cause of art and science against prejudice—a degree of eloquence and sagacity that gives the highest idea of his talents. He had a complete triumph; on the 31st day of May the court reversed the sentence, and permitted M. de Boisvale to re‐erect his _paratonnerre_.” Robespierre was just three‐and‐twenty at this date. He is styled _de_ Robespierre by the writer, and had assumed the _particule noble_ at a much earlier date; he is entered at college with it, and at the bar, and was elected to the States‐General as _de_ Robespierre. The pretentious prefix cost him dear, as we shall see; it afforded a poisoned shaft to Camille Desmoulins long after the Regenerator of the people had erased the feudal particle from his signature. But these were sunny days, when he might use it with impunity, and even to some advantage. The young advocate was courted and admired, and made welcome in clubs and drawing‐ rooms; he wrote essays and won prizes from learned societies, thus establishing a literary as well as legal reputation. He even aspired to be a poet, and addressed sonnets to ladies of fashion at Arras, which gained him the smiles of the Ariadnes and Arachnes that he sang to, and caused him to be rallied as a squire of dames. This time of merry dalliance, however, soon came to an end, and graver ambitions began to open out before Robespierre. He was elected member of the States‐General. M. Dumont, the distinguished journalist, gives a lively description of the figure made by the “avocat, de Robespierre,” in one of the earliest sittings of that Assembly: “The clergy, for the purpose of surprising the Tiers Etat into a union of the orders, sent a deputation to invite the Tiers to a conference on the distresses of the poor. The Tiers saw through the design, and, not willing to acknowledge the clergy as a separate body, yet afraid to reject so charitable and popular a proposition, knew not what answer to make, when one of the deputies, after concurring in the description of the miseries of the people, rose and addressed the ecclesiastical deputation: ‘Go tell your colleagues that, if they are so anxious to relieve the people, they should hasten to unite themselves in this hall with the friends of the people. Tell them no longer to retard our proceedings and the public good by contumacious delays, or to try to carry their point by such stratagems as this. Rather let them, as ministers of religion, as worthy servants of their Master, renounce the splendor which surrounds them, the luxury which insults the poor. Dismiss those insolent lackeys who attend you; sell your gaudy equipages, and convert those odious superfluities into food for the poor.’ At this speech, which interpreted so well the passions of the moment, there arose, not applause—that would have appeared like a bravado—but a confused murmur of approbation much more flattering. Every one asked who was the speaker. He was not known, but in a few minutes his name passed from mouth to mouth; it was one which afterwards made all France tremble—it was _Robespierre_!”

One is at a loss which to admire most in this brilliant _sortie_, the skill and power of the speaker in playing on the passions of his hearers, or the dastardly ingratitude which led him to use the eloquence he owed in so large a measure to the clergy for the purpose of stigmatizing his best benefactors. The first time Robespierre’s voice was raised in the tribune it was to vituperate the men to whom he owed his education, almost, it may be said, his existence. The reward of this treachery was not delayed; he electrified his audience, and henceforth became known to fame, though not yet to infamy. It is only just to Robespierre to admit that when he entered on his public life, his character was unstained by any of the vices which it developed later; he was in private life held to be virtuous, and suspected of no vice beyond the honorable one of ambition. Probably he would have lived and died amongst his fellow‐citizens without earning a worse reputation than the rest of them, if this latent ambition had not led him to seek to rise above them, and if his ability had not seconded the aspiration. Even in his demagogic career he kept his reputation for integrity, and gained the surname of the Incorruptible. Incorruptible by money he certainly was, while the instinct of either cowardice or sagacity induced him to disavow all personal ambition. Power was what he thirsted for; wealth and pageant he despised. These principles, aided by his fiery talent as any orator and his shrewd knowledge of the times, soon lifted him above all competitors, and made him a kind of uncrowned monarch long before he became so in reality as dictator of the republic. It is interesting to note the various decrees he passed while reigning in the National Assembly. One of the first was the turning of the Church of S. Geneviève into a Pantheon for the ashes of great men, and the inauguration of the paganized Christian temple by the entombing of Mirabeau’s remains there. Then we see him ardent in endeavoring to carry the abolition of capital punishment—an instance of that strange paradox so common to Frenchmen, who shrink with morbid sentimentality from inflicting death on the vilest malefactor by the hand of justice, while so ready to shed the blood of innocent men without remorse, nay, with exultation, the moment their passions are roused.

The flight of the royal family to Varennes wrought a sudden and decisive change in the state of public affairs. Robespierre was just then at the summit of his reputation as an orator, admired as the most prominent figure in Mme. Roland’s coterie, which numbered all the cleverest men of the new school, though the gifted and ill‐starred centre of the group seems, even in the days of their closest friendship, to have resented Robespierre’s stubborn independence, which contrasted disagreeably with the unqualified adulation of his fellow‐devotees.

The abortive attempt of the unfortunate Louis to fly from a position which had become unbearable had set the match to the train which Robespierre and his Jacobin faction had so long been preparing. The question, hitherto whispered in ambiguous words, was now spoken boldly aloud: What was to be done with the king? Lafayette was for keeping him a prisoner in the Tuileries, he, meanwhile, acting as a sort of military viceroy; the Orleanist faction had another solution to offer; the Jacobins and the Girondists another. There was a stormy sitting at the Assembly. Brissot proposed that the people should like one man rally round the republican flag, and sign a petition for the abolition of the king. There arose in answer to this daring proposition a tempest of applause, terror, anger, and loyal indignation. The Assembly rejected it, and voted for maintaining the king. Robespierre rushed out of the hall, tearing his hair and crying out, “My friends, we are lost! The king is saved!” This was on the 15th of July. A meeting had been already called of the Jacobin Club for the 17th on the Champs de Mars for the purpose of expressing the national will. The club, on hearing the vote of the Assembly, kept up a farce of respect by issuing a counter‐order. But the sovereign people were hampered by no such mock scruples; they, in the person of Brissot, drew up a fresh petition, and invited all classes of their fellow‐citizens to attend at the appointed day on the Champs de Mars, where the altar of fatherland would be erected, and where all patriots could sign the petition towards the freedom of the country. A tragi‐comic incident marked the proceedings at an early hour. Two men were found hid under the “altar,” and detected in the act of boring a hole in it with a gimlet; they were forthwith dragged out and massacred on the spot, though the only evidence of guilt brought against them at the time, or afterwards, was that one of them had a wooden leg, and the other a basket of provisions. The mob were like dry powder that only wanted a spark to make it ignite, destroying and self‐ destructive. The wildest inferences were drawn from the discovery of the two unlucky eaves‐droppers: they were laying a mine to blow up the patriots assembled round the altar of fatherland; the absence of all appliances for this terrible purpose proved nothing; some cried out that they were spies in the king’s pay; others that they were secreted there as dupes to be murdered by Lafayette’s creatures as a pretext for beginning the massacres that followed. We even find Mme. Roland repeating some absurd notions of this kind; but nothing is too monstrous or too preposterous for prejudice to swallow. However, let the motives of the two men have been what they may, their murder was undoubtedly the signal for that onslaught of the troops which completely destroyed Lafayette’s tottering popularity, and compelled him to leave Paris for a command on the frontier. The real odium of the unpremeditated blood‐shedding fell, like every mistake of the time, on the king. On the 5th of February, 1792, Robespierre was named Public Accuser, and from this event dates the explosion of personal rivalry between him and Brissot. He never could forgive the latter having been chosen to draw up that famous petition of the Champs de Mars, and for keeping the ascendency which this fact gave him in the Assembly and in the Jacobin Club. But Robespierre did not long retain the subordinate position of Public Accuser; he hated the bondage of having to attend at fixed hours, and some months after his nomination he resigned and started a newspaper called the _Défenseur_. Blood and terror were henceforth the watchwords of the journalist‐patriot. He effected a sham reconciliation with Brissot and all other enemies, and the Judas kiss of hate and treachery went round.

Roland was named minister at this crisis; a clever and honest man, moderate, and, above all, the husband of Mme. Roland, his nomination was hailed with joy by all. Robespierre alone was furious at seeing the mediocre provincial farmer placed over his head. His jealous vengeance against Mme. Roland dated from this elevation of her husband. The success of his journal consoled him, meanwhile, for the delay of larger triumphs, while it procured him competence and independence, which were all he required. He lodged with a man named Duplay, a carpenter, who had a wife and two daughters. One of the latter became branded in connection with the name of her father’s tenant. Robespierre vindicated his surname of Incorruptible all through the period of his popular power, inasmuch as he was inaccessible to the temptation of money or any of the softer bribes which sometimes beguile hard, ambitious men into acts of mercy or passing tenderness.

In August, 1792, he suspended his labors as a journalist, and henceforth devoted his undivided energies and his whole time to the political events which were thickening around him. The last number of the _Défenseur_ contains an inflammatory appeal which is too significant of the man and the times to be omitted. It was decided that a convention should be elected to choose a new form of national government. The issue depended almost entirely on the character and principles of the members who should compose it. Robespierre determined at any and every cost to be one of the elected. It was his supreme opportunity; if he missed it, his career as a popular leader was broken, and he must sink back into the ranks of obscure mediocrities who had shot up from the mass of agitators like rockets, burning bright and fierce for a moment, and then subsiding in darkness. He had that instinct of genius which enables a man to read the temper of his time, and to this sanguinary temper he passionately addressed himself in the closing number of his paper:

“You must _prepare_ the success of this convention by the regeneration of the spirit of the people. Let us awake—all, all arise, all arm, and the enemies of liberty will hide themselves in darkness. Let the tocsin of Paris be re‐echoed in all the departments. Let the people learn at once to reason and to fight. You are now at war with all your oppressors, and you will have no peace till you have punished them. Far be from you that pusillanimous weakness or that cowardly indulgence which the tyrants so long satiated with the blood of the people now invoke when their own hour is come! Impunity has produced all their crimes and all your sufferings. Let them fall under the sword of the law. Clemency towards them would be real barbarity—an outrage on injured humanity.” This manifesto revealed the true aim and policy of Robespierre, and just gave the touch that was necessary to set the wheel revolving. Danton cried amen to it, and all the faction shouted amen in chorus. “We must dare, and dare again, and dare to the bitter end!” said Danton, and the word acted like a trumpet‐call to the bloodhounds of the revolution. The prisons of Paris were at this moment gorged with aristocrats awaiting their trial. The people shouted, Try them! The tocsin sounded, the prison‐doors were surrounded. Mock courts of justice were set up in the courtyards. Quickly, one by one, the prisoners are called out, questions are rapidly put and answered; the jury decides: “Let the prisoner be enlarged!” The _gendarmes_ seize him; they open the gate and “enlarge” him. He falls forward on a mass of glittering pikes and bayonets, and dies, cut to pieces. Soon the number of the butchered is so great that the amateur executioners have to pause and clear the space by piling up the corpses to one side before they resume their work. Every prison presents the same scene. At La Force a remnant of the Swiss Guard is called out. “They clasp each other spasmodically, gray veterans crying, ‘Mercy, gentlemen, mercy!’ But there is no mercy! They prepare to die like brave men. One of them steps forward. He had on a blue frock‐coat. He was about thirty. His stature was above the common, his look noble and martial. ‘I go first,’ he said, ‘since it must be so. Adieu!’ Then, dashing his hat behind him, ‘Which way?’ cried he to the brigands. ‘Show it me.’ They open the folding gate. He is announced to the multitude. He stands a moment motionless, then plunges forth among the pikes, and dies of a thousand wounds.”(117) The fair and saintly Princesse de Lamballe fell, butchered by the same pikes; her head paraded through the streets, her remains profaned by the most unheard‐of indignities. As it always happens in these storms of human souls, there were tones of a divine harmony to be heard striking through the hideous din. Old M. de Sombreuil is dragged out to die. His daughter, a tender girl in the first blush of maidenhood, rushes out, fearless and bold, clinging to him, and appeals to the tigers about to shed his blood: “O good friends! he is my father! He is no aristocrat! We hate aristocrats; tell me how I can prove it to you?” They fill a bowl full of the hot blood of an aristocrat just slain, and present it to her, saying: “Drink this, and we will believe thee and spare thy father.”

She drinks the loathsome draught, and clasps her father amidst the _Vivats_ of the mob. Alas! it was only a respite that the brave deed had gained for the beloved old man. He died by those same blood‐stained hands before the year was out. At the abbey a picture of rest and calm is to be seen: “Towards _seven_ on Sunday night, we saw two men enter, their hands bloody, and armed with sabres. A turnkey with a torch lighted them; he points to the bed of the unfortunate Swiss, Reding. Reding was dying. One of the men paused; but the other said: _Allons donc!_ (come along!) and lifted the dying man, and carried him on his back out to the street. He was massacred there. We looked at one another in silence; we clasped each other’s hands; we gazed on the pavement of our prison, on which lay the moonlight, checkered with shadows.... At _three in the morning_ we heard them breaking in one of the prison‐doors. We thought they were coming to kill us.... The Abbé Lenfant and the Abbé de Chapt‐Rastignac appeared in the pulpit of the chapel, which was our prison. They had got in by a door from the stairs. They said to us that our end was at hand; that we must compose ourselves and receive their last blessing. An electric movement, not to be described, threw us all on our knees, and we received it. These two white‐haired old men blessing us from their place above, death hovering over our heads—the moment is never to be forgotten.”(118) Half an hour later the two priests were dragged out and massacred, those whom they had strengthened with their last words to meet a like fate listening to their cries.

The massacres began on the 2d and lasted till the 6th, when Robespierre and Danton were elected to that legislative body called the Deputation of Paris, composed of twenty‐four members, the first name on the list being Robespierre, the last Philippe Egalité. It was on this occasion that the future regicide adopted the surname of Egalité, he being compelled to choose some appellation not obnoxious to the people.

The great struggle now began between the Jacobins and the Girondists, or virtually between the leaders of the two factions, the old rivals, Robespierre and Brissot. All the ultra‐republicans, who were represented by the Deputation of Paris, grouped themselves on the top benches of the convention to the left of the president, and were called the Mountain—a name henceforth identified with its prophet, Robespierre. The question still was, What was to be done with the king? The Jacobins were for killing him, the Girondists for putting him aside. The wretched weakness, vacillation, and cowardliness of the Girondists make them objects of contempt, without exciting in us the kind of horrified awe inspired by the monstrous feats of those Titanic fiends, the Jacobins. By what fatality is it in France that the honest‐meaning party is always the cowardly one that dares not assert itself, but bows down, cowed by the cynical audacity of the anarchists? The Girondists might have turned the scales, even at this crisis, if they had had the courage of their consciences; but they were cowards. Their policy was to run with the hare and cry with the hounds, and it met with the fate it deserved. But we must not anticipate. The Mountain, on the other hand, did not lack the courage of its creed; it out‐heroded Herod in its fury against the king and all appertaining to the old order which he represented. Roman history was its Bible, and the examples there recorded were for ever on its lips. All citizens were heroes, Cincinnatuses, Catos, Ciceros, etc.; all sovereigns were Neros and Caligulas. The Girondists turned these fine texts against their rivals by accusing them of plotting to set up a triumvirate, to be composed of Robespierre, Marat, and Danton. This was only three weeks after the orgy of blood which ushered in the reign of Robespierre and of Terror. Danton mounted the tribune, and made an eloquent defence of Robespierre, who never spoke impromptu when he could avoid it. Marat then rose—for the first time in the convention—and was hooted down; but he persisted, and made them listen while he exposed his revolting doctrines of wholesale murder and anarchical rule.

So the days passed, in boisterous invective, idle perorations, and savage threats of one party against another. The Girondists, however, were worsted in the fight, and the strength of the position remained with Robespierre and his more bloody and unscrupulous faction, who had from the starting traced out his plan, and adhered to it without flinching. The king was foredoomed to the scaffold, but some semblance of legality should accompany the decree. So strong was the Jacobin influence at this crisis that those who did not share the murderous design were terrified into seeming to do so, and, while looking with horror at the regicide in preparation, were cowed into silent acquiescence. M. Thiers, in his _History of the Revolution_, says: “Many of the deputies who had come down with the intention of voting for the king were frightened at the fury of the people, and, though much touched by the fate of Louis XVI., they were terrified at the consequences of an acquittal. This fear was greatly increased at the sight of the Assembly and of the scene it presented. That scene, dark and terrible, had shaken the hearts of all, and changed the resolution of Lecointre of Versailles, whose personal bravery cannot be doubted, and who had not ceased to return to the galleries the menacing gestures with which they were intimidating the Assembly. Even he, when it came to the point, hesitated, and dropped from his mouth the terrible and unexpected word, ‘death.’ Vergniaud, who had appeared most deeply touched by the fate of the king, and who had declared that ‘nothing could ever induce him to condemn the unhappy prince’—Vergniaud, at the sight of that tumultuous scene, pronounced the sentence of death.” It must truly have been an appalling spectacle, the like of which the civilized world had never before beheld. Mercier, in his _Sketches of the Revolution_, gives us an animated and glowing picture of the court during the trial: “The famous sitting which decided the fate of Louis lasted seventy‐two hours. One would naturally suppose that the Assembly was a scene of meditation, silence, and a sort of religious terror. Not at all. The end of the hall was transformed into a kind of opera‐box, where ladies in _négligée_ were eating ices and oranges, drinking _liqueurs_, and receiving the compliments and salutations of comers and goers. The _huissiers_ (bailiffs) on the side of the Mountain acted the part of the openers of the opera‐boxes. They were employed every instant in turning the key in the doors of the side galleries, and gallantly escorting the mistresses of the Duke of Orleans, caparisoned with tri‐colored ribbons. Although every mark of applause or disapprobation was forbidden, nevertheless, on the side of the Mountain, the Duchess Dowager,(119) the amazon of the Jacobin bands, made long ‘ha‐a‐has!’ when she heard the word ‘death’ strongly twang in her ears.

“The lofty galleries, destined for the people during the days which preceded this famous trial, were never empty of strangers and people of every class, who there drank wine and brandy as if it had been a tavern. Bets were open at all the neighboring coffee‐houses. Listlessness, impatience, fatigue, were marked on almost every countenance. Each deputy mounted the tribune in his turn, and every one was asking when his turn came. Some deputy came, I know not who, sick, and in his morning‐gown and night‐cap. This phantom caused a great deal of diversion in the Assembly. The countenances of those who went to the tribune, rendered more funereal from the pale gleams of the lights, when in a slow and sepulchral voice they pronounced the word ‘death!’—all these physiognomies which succeeded one another, their tones, their different keys; d’Orleans hissing and groaning when he voted the death of his relative; some calculating if they should have time to dine before they gave their vote; women with pins pricking cards to count the votes; deputies who had fallen asleep and were waked up in order to vote; Manuel, the secretary, sliding away a few votes, in order to save the unhappy king, and on the point of being put to death in the corridors for his infidelity—these sights can never be described as they passed. It is impossible to picture what they were, nor will history be able to reach them.”

Amongst the timid Girondists who dared not vote for acquittal, and shrank from decreeing the king to death, many hit upon a half‐measure, which was that of coupling their vote—for death with conditions that practically negatived it. This cowardly transaction is said to have given rise to some trickery in the counting of the votes, which enabled the scrutineers to make the majority of _one_ voice by which the sentence of death was carried. It was this sham proceeding which prompted Sièyes to say when recording his vote, “Death—without palaver!”

Robespierre’s figure stands out with vivid and terrible brilliancy against the background of this picture. He dismissed the question of the king’s innocence or guilt—that had, he knew right well, nothing whatever to do with the issue—and proceeded to demand his death on the grounds of urgent political expediency. “The death of the king was not a question of law, but of state policy, which, without quibbling about his guilt or innocence, required his death; the life of one man, if ever so innocent, must be sacrificed to preserve the lives of millions.” There was honesty at any rate in this plain speaking, and so it was better than the odious hypocrisy displayed by the other actors in the tragic farce. On Robespierre’s descending from the tribune, his brother Augustin, rose and demanded in the name of the people “that Louis Capet shall be brought to the bar, to declare his original accomplices, to hear sentence of death pronounced on him, and to be forthwith conducted to execution.” Wild confusion covered this extravagant motion, but no notice was taken of it. The 21st of January was near at hand; even the Mountain could afford to wait so long.

On the 10th of March, the Revolutionary Tribunal was decreed. A month later there broke out a violent altercation between Robespierre and some of the Girondists in the Convention; numbers clamored for the “expulsion of the twenty‐two” obstreperous Girondists; they were arraigned before the bar where the king whom they so basely betrayed had lately stood; the trial lasted four days; even that tribunal, used to dispense with all proof of guilt in its victims, could not decide on condemning twenty‐two men at one fell swoop without some shadow of reason, and there was none to be found. But Robespierre was not going to lose his opportunity for a quibble; impatient of the delay, he drew up a decree that “whenever any trial should have lasted three days, the tribunal might declare itself satisfied with the guilt of the prisoners, might stop the defence, close the discussions, and send the accused to death!” This abominable document was read and inscribed on the register of the tribunal the same evening, the Girondists were at once condemned, and sent to the scaffold next morning.

To Be Concluded Next Month.

The Better Christmas.

“’Tis not the feast that changes with the ever‐changing times, But these that lightly vote away the glories of the past— The joys that dream‐like haunt me with the merry matin chimes I loved so in my boyhood, and shall doat on to the last.

“There still is much of laughter, and a measure of old cheer: The ivy wreaths, if scanty, are as verdant as of yore: And still the same kind greeting for the universal ear: But, to me, for all their wishing, ’tis a ‘merry’ feast no more!”

I said: and came an answer from the stars to which I sighed— Those stars that lit the vigil of the favor’d shepherd band. And ’twas as if again the heavens open’d deep and wide, And the carol of the angel‐choir new‐flooded all the land

“Good tidings still we bring to all who still have ears to hear; To all who love His coming—the elect that cannot cease; And louder rings our anthem, to these watchers, year by year, Its earnest of the perfect joy—the everlasting peace.

“Art thou, then, of these watchers, if thou canst not read the sign? The world was at its darkest when the blessed Day‐star(120) shone. Again ’tis blacker to her beam: and thou must needs repine, And sicken, so near sunrise, for the moonlight that is gone!”

English And Scotch Scenes.

The home life of England has ever been a favorite topic with American writers. The first thing that strikes an American travelling through England is the age of everything he sees, the roots by which every existing institution, custom, or pleasure is intimately connected with its real, tangible prototype in the past. He sees, too, how the people live a thoroughly characteristic life—that which consists in identification with everything that is national. No one is so unadaptive as the pure‐bred Briton, and it has truly been said that an Englishman carries his country with him wherever he goes. You never see an Englishman to advantage except at home; but, once enthroned amid his local surroundings, there is a sturdy native dignity in him which none can help admiring. He is no politician in the mercenary, personal, business‐like sense of the word, but he takes a pride in following the course of his country’s progress, in bearing a hand in all reforms, in exercising his right of censure—or, as some foreigners plainly call it, “grumbling”—and especially in watching closely over the well‐being of his own county and neighborhood. By this minute division of labor every county becomes, as it were, a self‐governed little nation, jealous and tenacious of its rights, keenly alive to its interests, intensely vigorous, and occasionally aggressive. Political and social life are closely intermingled, and personal disinterestedness is almost everywhere the rule. The varied traditions of different neighborhoods and the strong individuality shown by the different sections of the country, contribute a picturesque element to modern life, and often make the most inherently prosaic actions take on a mask of romance.

Elections to Parliament afford a multiplicity of such scenes, and form one of the greatest periodical excitements that stir up country towns. The candidate is generally one of the sons of some family well known in the county, or sometimes the chief proprietor of the neighborhood, if he be still under fifty. The county constituencies almost always return a member of this class; the commercial representatives come from the great manufacturing towns, where they have slowly toiled to make their fortunes, and risen, by earnest application to business, from the rank of a vestryman to that of lord mayor. The country town in which the hustings and polling‐booths are erected is as animated as it would have been at a great fair of the middle ages or an extraordinary sale of wool, which in Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire was a great article of trade in the XIVth century. Everything in the shape of bunting, evergreens, allegorical pictures, flaming posters, and unlimited ale has been done by both sides to enhance their popularity with the electors and non‐electors. Indeed, the latter are quite as important as the former, for from their ranks are recruited the bands of music and the array of stalwart supporters, ready to fight, if required, and to shout at the top of their lungs, so as to bewilder the voters and claim or surprise their votes. The canvassing that goes before an English election is neither a pleasant nor a creditable thing to dwell on; when subjected to the analysis of uncompromising morality, it resolves itself into deliberate and organized “humbug”; for it includes every species of flattery under the sun, not to speak of direct bribery. Very funny incidents sometimes occur to break the monotony of the usual routine. For instance, in canvassing a large seaport town, the Liberal candidate bethinks himself of his yacht—a gem in every way—and organizes a large party, to which are invited the voting citizens and their wives and daughters. A splendid luncheon is provided, and each dame and damsel goes home with the conviction that her smiles have won the heart of the candidate, and that he has sworn them by a tacit but flattering contract to further his claims with their all‐powerful husbands and fathers. “_Honi soit qui mal y pense._” The latter are as proud of the expectant M.P.’s notice of the female members of their households as the ladies themselves, and the issue is trembling in the balance, when an announcement goes forth that the Conservative candidate has had his drag and four horses sent down from London, and proposes parading the young ladies and the more fearless married women on the roof of this ultra‐fashionable vehicle. The invitations are of course more limited than those for the yacht, but promises of repeating them, until all the free electors’ families have been included, cheer up the spirits of those not asked the first day. The Liberal pits his yacht against his rival’s drag, and invites the maids and matrons to another sail. Apparently, Neptune does not intend to vote for him, for a slight breeze arises, and the waves roll more than landsmen find pleasant. The cabin fills rapidly, and faces once rosy and saucy, turn pale and shrunken; the return against wind and tide is a wretched journey. The poor candidate, in despair, tries to become nurse and doctor, as well as consoler; but he, too, feels his cheeks blanch, not at the lurching of the vessel, but at the fear of the effect of this accident upon the votes which he was already reckoning up so confidently. As the forlorn party lands, the drag sweeps by, drawn by its four fiery horses, the whip cracking, the smart grooms grinning at the windows (in these carriages, made like a mail‐coach, the servants sit _inside_ and the master drives, while his guests are packed on the outside seats at the top), the women huddling under cloaks and umbrellas, but all giggling with delight at the adventure, neither damped nor dismayed by water that cannot drown them, and wind that cannot make them sea‐sick. The next day those who have recovered from their marine excursion are invited to try the drag, and the Liberal candidate’s chances fall as visibly as the barometer did yesterday. When the great day comes, the drag has done its work, and the Conservative is returned by a triumphant majority.

To return to our country town in its holiday attire. No great arts are resorted to here; the common kind of canvassing will do for these quiet, agricultural people, and the only day that is worth mentioning is that of the election itself. The festive look of the place does not portend any very desperate contest, although there is a free display of the two opposite colors—blue (Conservative) and yellow (Liberal). The rivals come down from their neighboring seats in gay carriages full of the ladies of their families, wearing their respective colors. The horses and postilions wear bunches of blue or yellow ribbon; even the whip has its conspicuous knot of color. Brass bands clash forth a whole host of discords; the hired partisans good‐humoredly shout for one or the other party; an air of great good‐will prevails. The whole thing looks more like the welcoming home of a bride than a serious political gathering. The candidates ascend the hustings, or platform for speeches, and cordially shake hands with one another. They think it fun to be opposed to each other in public, whereas in private they are friends, companions, and neighbors; they have had the same training, the same education, the same associations, the same local interests, and the question that will decide their election will more likely be their reputation as farmers and their popularity as landlords than their political opinions as to the affairs of the nation at large. Talking of bribery and undue influence in elections, there is a law yet in force (though, of course, its effect is merely nominal) which forbids any peer to be present at an election. His presence is, by a legal fiction, supposed to hamper the freedom of the voters, and the law thus provides against the appearance of coercion or intimidation. The candidates for the counties are almost invariably the sons, brothers, or nephews of peers; but, however near the relationship, no member of the House of Lords is allowed to infringe on this rule. A contested election, one in which party spirit runs high and the passions of the people are artfully fanned and excited on both sides, is a scene worth witnessing once; but the excitement is of too rough a sort to make one wish for a second edition of it. A foreigner once said that the two best sights which England had to offer to a stranger were an Oxford “commemoration” and a contested election. The latter seldom takes place in the peaceful neighborhoods of the midland counties, and the only other species of elections, as distinguished from the festive one which we have just sketched, is, as a remnant of old‐time indifferentism, a curiosity in its way. There are no longer what were called “rotten boroughs” and “pocket boroughs,” the former representing what had once been a populous town or large village, now reduced to half a dozen ruinous tenements and an old, disused parish church, but still retaining the right to return one or more members to Parliament; the second being a village still worthy of the name, but from time immemorial voting strictly in accordance with the wishes of the “lord of the manor,” whether peer or commoner. These were also called “close boroughs.” The Reform Bill of 1830 did away with all such transparent abuses, but family influence, exerted in a milder form, still remains an important element in all agricultural counties; and it sometimes happens that for a whole generation, no one will think it worth his while to oppose a candidate whose good working qualities are recognized by friend and foe, and whose personal popularity, joined with his powerful connections, makes his success almost absolutely certain. Such was the case in the election at O——, for which the same member has run unopposed for at least a quarter of a century. The nomination was made by the high sheriff and the magistrates of the county, assembled in the town‐hall. This is a portion of a ruined castle or abbey, the Norman windows of which still assert their identity, though they have been shamefully mutilated and forced to conform to the ugly, shallow openings called windows in our days. The inside showed no signs of beauty. It was a huge barn, with grim‐ looking benches or pews at one end, towering amphitheatre‐wise one above the other. Public business of all kinds was transacted there. The decoration of the hall is somewhat peculiar, consisting of nothing but horse‐shoes. From time immemorial the custom of the county has been that every peer setting foot within the little town should put up a horse‐shoe in this hall, or give an equivalent in money, which is spent by authority of the town council in buying a horse‐shoe in his name. There is some dispute as to when and how the custom originated. The common belief is that Queen Elizabeth, passing through O——, stopped to get one of her horses shod, and, in perpetual memory of her royal visit, gave the town the privilege of exacting the tribute of a horse‐shoe from every peer setting foot within the county. By an anachronism, which at any rate does honor to O——’s public spirit, there are horse‐shoes bearing dates far more remote than the XVIth century, and some one has actually put the Conqueror himself under contribution, and unblushingly labelled a very antique shoe with his mighty name and the eventful date, 1066. During the last three hundred years genuine historical horse‐shoes have abounded; some plain as the real thing, some gold or silvered, some painted with heraldic devices, some immense as children’s hoops, some minute as the shoe of a Shetland pony. Whether the thousand‐year‐old superstition of the connection between luck and a horse‐shoe, and the belief in the power of the latter against witches, has anything to do with the custom, we do not know for certain, but it is not unlikely.

In this remarkable town‐hall were assembled the electors and magistrates one November morning. All the prominent country “gentlemen” and many farmers and tradesmen were present, besides a few ladies, come to see the proceedings. The member who had been re‐elected every time that an election took place for the previous twenty years was the brother of one of the great land‐owners of the neighborhood, and a Conservative. No one thought of opposing him. His friends and constituents mostly appeared in riding‐boots, some in “pink.”(121) One young magistrate got up and proposed him formally to the electors in a girlish, awkward speech; another seconded him in a still briefer address, and the question was asked: “Has any one any objections to make or any candidate to oppose?” A squeaky voice at the end of the hall propounded a query in this form:

“Would the honorable member vote for universal suffrage and cry down church rates?”

A laugh ran through the crowd, and an impatient movement stirred the knot of magistrates. Year after year some wag of this kind mounted the Radical hobby, and rode it in this unoffending fashion at the steady‐going “churchman” and loyal upholder of the constitution who represented the county in Parliament. The uneasy movement continues, and horses are heard neighing and pawing outside. Men in red coats take out their watches and put on long faces. It is nearly twelve o’clock, and the business of the nation is delaying the “meet.” The hounds are waiting not far off, and candidate, sheriff, magistrates, and electors are all alike anxious to be off. The hall is soon cleared and the election quietly over—a very secondary matter in the consideration of those who have been kept from kennel and field for two long hours. They rush out with all the zest of school‐boys let loose to play, and the hunt that day has twice its ordinary success, or at least its members think so, because the beloved sport has been intermitted, and requires extra enthusiasm as a peace‐ offering at their hands. So with redoubled vigor the search after foxes goes on, and not till long after sundown will the candidate, magistrates, and constituents return to their homes.

Very different are those elections whose surroundings remind us rather of a clan gathering to the standard of their chief than a modern constituency crowding to the polling‐booths. The mere description of these election scenes through Great Britain and Ireland would form an interesting chapter in contemporaneous history. The political differences need not even be alluded to; the contrast of outer circumstances is suggestive enough. In an agricultural neighborhood, such as that round the town of O——, a certain kind of torpidity exists among the prosperous and contented farmers. Not a hundred miles from the palace of the people at Westminster the interest in politics is subordinate to that excited by a cattle‐show or the prospect of a drought; in a word, there is so little local change called for which could be beneficial to the county that the passive but deep‐rooted clinging to old traditions, which is so characteristic of the genuine Englishman, is in this case rather a matter of course than a virtue or a meritorious turning away from temptation.

Life is hard to the masses in a city. Sharp ills require sharp remedies, say the demagogues; and straightway the voters adopt the extremest doctrine they can find, and fancy it a panacea for all ills. An English paper recently defined this kind of voter as the man “who has just learned sufficient to be sure that there can only be one side to a question.” The Irish elections, proverbial for their storminess, are of another nature; appealing to our sympathy by the wild earnestness of the voters, and governed by feelings which, though often misdirected, are yet noble in their origin. Religion and patriotism are the prime movers of the passions of Irish constituents; they often look upon their exercise of the franchise as a protest against tyranny and a confession of faith. And indeed the “tyranny” is no mere political scarecrow to them. It is very tangible; it strikes home to them, for its immediate result may be eviction and starvation. The wild, humorous individuality of the people of the western baronies of Ireland redeems much that is reprehensible from vulgarity in the faction fight—a not infrequent concomitant of the election. There is a rough romance left in these fights, making them the direct counterparts of the sudden encounters between the clans of the various kings of Celtic history; and what is best and most palliative is this: that sordid considerations are almost wholly absent from the voters’ minds. If men must fight, let them do it for anything rather than money; and, to do these electors justice, we will say that there is less bribery in all the Irish country districts put together than in one English manufacturing town. You will say there is intimidation instead; but, even that is better than bribery, for it is less degrading to a human being to barter away his vote, in view of the threats of his landlord to turn his wife and children out of doors, than to sell it for money. But there are other elections to speak of—those in the Highlands of Scotland.

Education is more universal among the humbler classes in Scotland than in either of the sister countries, and by nature the Scotchman is more reflective than the Englishman or Irishman. There is less of collective life in his country; the land is poor and barren, the northern parts are broken up by lochs and treacherous estuaries, and many counties include rocky islands among the billows of the Atlantic. In Inverness‐shire the elector is far removed from all common external influence. He thinks slowly and seriously, working out his own problems, answering his own questions by the aid of his strong native sense. He and many of his fellow‐voters are shepherds or “keepers.” They inhabit an isolated cottage in some remote glen—a cottage that is only approached by some faint sheep‐ track. Australia or the Territories of the United States are hardly less solitary; but, on the other hand, the Scottish Highlands, if solitary, are not barbarous. In newly‐settled countries, where the population is only gradually fusing into a national _people_, there is lawlessness to contend with; the school and the church are yet open to the attack of ruffianly bands, and dependent on a few respectable though equally rough settlers to stop the brigandage of their unruly neighbors. An old country, however sparsely peopled, has the past to guide it; its hermit settlers are the heirs, not the founders, of a state and a history. So it is with ancient Scottish shires, and thus you will find their electors sober, silent, reflective men, conscious of their dignity as clansmen of the old families whose names are in the records of Scotland from the VIIIth and IXth centuries; and perfectly aware of their personal, political value as present electors to the joint Parliament of a great empire. In England there were serfs, but in Scotland (and in Ireland also) there were _clansmen_—not slaves, but sons by adoption; freemen with the right to bear arms; protected, not owned, by the great chiefs of the North. They were used to a certain degree of power and responsibility, and their descendants were not intoxicated by a sudden rise to independence, as were the corresponding classes in England when the franchise was extended to them.

To continue our description of the local surroundings of the Inverness‐ shire voters—men removed from the ordinary circumstances which make most elections pretty much the same dull, time‐worn, vulgarized sight—we quote from a recent article in an English publication: “The nearest neighbors on one side are beyond a great mountain‐range, while for miles upon miles on the other there stretch the unpeopled solitudes of a deer‐forest. The nearest carriage‐road is eight miles off, and that is travelled only three days in the week by a mail‐cart that carries passengers. The church and school are at twice the distance; so the children must trust to the parents for their education, and the father can only occasionally join in the Sunday gossip, in the parish churchyard, that expands the ideas of some of his fellow‐parishioners. His cottage is ten miles from the nearest hovel where they sell whiskey. His work is arduous; he is afoot among his sheep from the early morning until dusk. In the best of times and in the height of summer it is but seldom that a stray copy of the county paper finds its way to the head of the glen. He is thoughtful by nature, as you may see in his face, which has much the same puzzled expression of intelligence that you remark in the venerable rams of his flock. No doubt he thinks much, after a fashion of his own, as he goes ‘daundering’ about after his straggling sheep, or stretches himself to bask in the hot sunshine, while he leaves his collies (sheep‐dogs) to look after his charge.”

This is a very true picture. Of course, in such a situation, it is impossible for the Highland shepherd to follow the questions that affect the fate of ministries. He can know nothing of foreign affairs, probably never heard of the _Alabama_, and would be at sea on the subject of the Franco‐Prussian war. Mr. Gladstone’s financial schemes are not only puzzles but _terra incognita_ to his mind. He knows nothing of the extension of the suffrage in counties, and even local rates are indifferent to him, as the only one that concerns him is the dog tax—_concerns_ him, but does not _affect_ him; for his master pays the tax, and he himself is more or less exempted from extra trouble, according to the number of sheep‐dogs for which that master chooses to pay. His interest in the man who represents him in Parliament is therefore either purely theoretical or, what happens oftener, purely personal. There are country gentlemen everywhere who, though no newspaper may blow the trumpet of their fame, are nevertheless known throughout a wide expanse as good men and true, kind yet just landlords, upright magistrates, and sound economists. Their names are household words; their memory is always associated with some generous deed; they are looked up to and honored in the county. They are generally scions of the old historical families of the land—of those families to which the Scotchman clings with a proud affection, and which have been perpetuated by the very institutions that some coiners of new political creeds find so deleterious to the human race. The shepherd probably turns his mind to some such man of whom nothing but good has ever been recorded, and willingly entrusts to his safe‐keeping the interests of himself, his clan, and his country. Judging from the particular to the general, he concludes that, since this candidate has always been a kind master and a good landlord to his own folks, he is likely to be a conscientious law‐maker and an earnest protector of the nation’s liberties. Questions of detail may fairly be trusted to him; the main thing is that no widow or orphan has ever had any complaint to make of him.

This is the aspect on the voter’s side. Let us see what it is on that of the candidate. There is no question here of bill‐sticking, of distributing cockades, or of having bands of music and hired groups of partisans in your wake. Canvassing means “posting long distances in dog‐carts, seeking relays at widely‐separated inns, where the stable establishments are kept on a peace footing, except during the tourist season. In winter the roads are carried across formidable ferries, where, if you bribe the boatman to imprudence, your business being urgent, you are not unlikely to meet the fate of Lord Ullin’s daughter.” But this is not all; for when you have braved the floods, and arrive famished and half‐frozen at some out‐of‐the‐ way hamlet whence the scattered cottages may be gained, there is yet the ordeal of the interviews before you. The Scottish hermit can hardly be expected to forego or shorten such a rare opportunity of contact with the outside world. He will tax your ingenuity with the shrewdest, perhaps politically inconvenient, questions; and never doing anything in a hurry himself, he will resent his visitor’s seeming to be pressed for time. No hasty and transparent condescensions will do for him. He will not be satisfied, like the comfortable trader of the towns, with the candidate’s kissing his youngest born and promising his eldest son a rocking‐horse. Smiles and hand‐shakings are cheap gifts; but he wants no gifts, only pledges. He wishes to be met as an intelligent being, a man who, if worth winning, must be worth convincing. He expects a straightforward, if short, explanation of your general opinions; and though the sense of his own dignity as a voter is great, he does not forget that political does not entail social equality. Grave and earnest, he will resent flippancy as an insult to his understanding; and a joke that would win over a dozen votes in a small commercial town will very probably lose you _his_ vote, and his good opinion too.

But there are also other constituents to be called upon. The numerous islands on the east coast of Scotland afford a still larger field for the danger and romance of canvassing. The islanders are very sensitive, and feel terribly hurt at the insinuation that their home lies out of the world. If their votes are necessary, is the courtesy to ask for them superfluous? They lead hazardous, daring lives themselves, and do not understand how any man can shrink from the danger that may be incurred in nearing their rocky island. If he does, what is he worth? they will argue; for the natural man readily judges of his fellow‐man’s mental qualities by his physical endurance. Then (we quote again the graphic sketch above referred to), “that island canvass means chartering some crank little screw, beating out into the fogs among the swells and the breakers, taking flying shots at low reefs of inhabited rock, enveloped in mists and unprovided with lighthouses. Landing‐places are almost as scarce as light‐ towers, and you may have to bob about under the ‘lee of the land’ in impatient expectation of establishing communications with it. When you do get to shore, you must be hospitably _fêted_ by the minister and the schoolmaster, the doctor and the principal tacksmen, until what with sea‐ squeamishness and the strong spirits, it becomes simply heroic to preserve the charm of your manners. Moreover, you had better not make your visit at all than cut it uncivilly short. Our friend the shepherd may have made up his mind to support you; but you may rely upon it that he will promise nothing until you have set yourself down for a solemn ‘crack’ with him.” The day of the election itself is a suitable ending to this romantic episode in the life of an ordinary, drudging M.P. When a Highlander sets about a thing, he never gives in before it is accomplished. Honor binds him to redeem a promise, whether made to another or to himself; pride compels him to prove himself superior to circumstances, almost to nature herself; and he doggedly goes on his way, undeterred by any wayside temptation to turn into smoother and pleasanter paths. So the voters “climb over mountains and plod over snow‐fields, wade mountain streams, navigate lochs in crank cobles, and cross raging estuaries in rickety, flat‐bottomed ferry‐boats; so that, should the winds and the weather interfere too seriously with the exercise of the electors’ political rights, the polling of a great Highland constituency may possibly have a gloomily dramatic finale.”(122)

While we are on the subject of Scotland, we may mention the various occasions on which national gatherings draw together thousands of picturesquely‐clad men and women. The games are the most characteristic of these meetings. They take place in various places, mostly during the months of August and September. They are generally held under the patronage and supervision of some great family of the neighborhood. Something of old clan feeling is revived. The men often march in in bodies, preceded by their pipers, and wearing their individual tartan, with distinctive badges. The villages for fifty miles around send their group of representatives and their athletes and champions in the games. Vehicles of primitive build with rough, wiry little ponies bring in their load of farmers and petty freeholders. The country‐houses and shooting‐ boxes fill with guests from England; and in the neighborhood of Balmoral, to which we more particularly allude, there is of course the additional attraction of royal countenance and patronage. The queen and the royal family sometimes become the guests of their subjects on these occasions, and an almost German simplicity reigns for a few days among those to whom etiquette must be so sore a chain. The princes wear the Highland dress, and the queen (that is, before her widowhood) something of tartan in her plain toilet. The national sports, such as throwing the hammer, lifting heavy weights and supporting them on the outstretched hand, etc., require both strength and dexterity, and the champions who contend in these games are generally “professionals.” Sometimes, however, some village athlete ambitiously enters the lists against the trained champions, and occasionally bears off a prize. A competition of pipers is often a feature of the day, and these worthies make a brave appearance in their velvet jackets covered with a breast‐plate of medals, severally won in various contests. The shrill, clarion‐like tones of the bagpipes are not agreeable to the untrained ear, but to the Highlanders, whose national associations are proudly entwined with this wild, primitive music of the hills, they are naturally sweeter than the most sublime strains of the old masters. No one, even though not Highland‐bred, can listen to the pipes, playing a pibroch among the echoes of the mountains, without feeling that the soul of the people is in it; that the spirits of “the Flood and the Fell” which Walter Scott so graphically introduces in his _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ might have used just such tones for their fateful, wailing speech; and no one having more than common ties binding him to Scottish traditions and Scottish homes can think of the wild dirges or stirring war‐calls of the pipes without sympathy and loving regret. Not quite so inspiring, however, is this music when the piper marches round a small dining‐room, and plays the distinctive tune of the host’s clan to the guests assembled over their wine and dessert. The narrow space makes the music harsh and grating, just as a confined room takes from the Tyrolese _jodel_ all its romance, and turns the sounds into the caricature of a loud roulade. The games often last for three days, and a sort of encampment springs up by magic to supply the deficiencies of the crowded inns of the neighborhood. At the end of that time there is a ball given at one of the principal country‐ seats, and a torch‐light dance for the people. The queen and the royal family accompany their host and hostess, and are content with a hasty dinner, served with a delightful relaxation from etiquette; for this is their holiday from political anxieties and social duties, and the more informal this assembly, the better it pleases them. The ball‐room is not very large, and its simple decorations are in keeping with the character of the feast and the style of the lodge or cottage in which it is given. There are flowers in abundance, flags and evergreen garlands, Highland badges and emblems, and stags’ heads with branching antlers—the trophies of the host’s skill in stalking the red deer. Outside the house is a wide space, destined for the torch‐light dance. Great iron holders and pans lifted on rude tripods contain the torches and the resinous fluid which, when set on fire, burns steadily for many hours. To and fro flit the kilted Highlanders, with their jewelled dirks or daggers, and their hairy sporrans decorated with silver plates the size of large coins. The champions of the games are there, the rival pipers, the mountain shepherds, the gillies or game‐keepers, all the household servants and those of the guests; the women wearing tartan ribbons of different clans, and Scotch flowers, blue‐bell, heather or bog‐myrtle, in their caps or bodices. The pipes strike up the music of the sword‐dance; a noted dancer comes forward, and lays two naked swords of ordinary length on the ground, crossing them at right angles. Within the four narrow spaces between the points of this cross he then begins a series of marvellous steps, leaping high in the air, shuffling, crossing his feet, and invariably alighting in the right spot, within a few inches of the swords, always in these four interstices, but never touching nor even grazing the blades. If he were to touch one ever so lightly, and but for an instant, his reputation would be gone. Another succeeds him, and so on, till all the famous dancers have exhibited their skill. No novice appears; they take care never to dance in public till they are perfect in this feat. Scotch reels for the most part take up the rest of the night, and are danced by four people, two men and two women, the former standing back to back, and their partners opposite. Various figures follow each other, the figure eight being the most frequent. This is managed by the four dancers locking arms and giving a swing round, then passing on to the next person; arms are locked again, and another turn given, and so on till the four have changed places, and in doing so have described the figure eight. Of course, in this dance, it is the men who show to most advantage, as they perform a series of regular steps, snapping their fingers meanwhile, and, as soon as they get excited and enter into the spirit of the national dance, uttering a peculiar sort of cry. The women mostly walk and jump through their evolutions. The less characteristic dancing in the ball‐room, but in which reels are also mingled with quadrille and waltz, ceases about two o’clock in the morning, and the musicians are at liberty to join the fun outside. The Highlanders sometimes take possession of the deserted ball‐room, and continue their own revels there till daybreak, when the torches flicker out and the spell is broken. Another national dance is the strathspey, which we never had the good fortune to see performed.

In winter curling is the favorite game; it is played on the ice with heavy round stones, about eight or nine inches in diameter, and three to three and a half inches thick. These stones are neither rolled nor thrown at the line and mark, but propelled, by the strength of wrist of the player, along the surface of the ice, and aimed to displace the stones already set up by the opposite side. Whichever side, at the end of the game, has most stones near the line which serves as a mark, is declared by the umpire to be the winner. Miniature curling‐boards are very common in Scotch country‐ houses, with stones two or three inches in diameter; it is an amusing game on a rainy day, and, though so small, no little skill is required to guide these stones aright.

The same house to which we have taken the reader to be present at the torch‐light dance is a very pretty specimen of Scotch hunting‐lodges. Built at various times, it consists of several cottages, once detached, but now irregularly connected by picturesque galleries, verandas, and staircases. One part has much the appearance of a Swiss _châlet_; another that of a river‐side villa on the Thames, with its glass doors opening on to a lawn, and its rustic porch smothered in climbing roses. Though so straggling, it is a very comfortable house. Nothing is wanting—billiard‐ room, smoking‐room, boudoir, and innumerable pigeonholes for guests—a charming house for persons of sporting tastes; the halls carpeted with deer‐skins, and the walls hung with antlers, bearing each the date of the death of the stag to which they belonged; equally charming to the delicate London beauty wearied with her social triumphs, for here she finds the thousand elegances of a _rococo_ drawing‐room, the luxurious arm‐chairs, the rare china, the velvet screen hung with miniatures, and little gilt brackets, each supporting a tiny cup or a porcelain shepherdess—in a word, every pretty refinement of the latest fashion. The neighborhood is famous for stalking—that is, following the red deer through moor and forest alone, with your rifle and your slight bag containing some biscuits and a pocket‐flask. You may have to trudge over miles and miles of heather, watching every turn of the breeze, lest it betray your whereabouts to your beautiful victim; making immense _détours_ to reach him from some convenient cover; creeping along on all fours, or even flat on the ground; often taking a long, cold bath in the mountain burn (stream), wading through it, or waiting in it, so as not to let him scent your trail. If for no other reason, this sport is superior to any because it demands solitude; though it is hard to discover why one should not be privileged to take a twelve hours’ walk or saunter without the pretext of the rifle slung at one’s back, and also without incurring the charge of eccentricity. A forest in Scotland is treeless; the term is applied to a wide expanse of mountain, covered knee‐deep with heather, and perhaps here and there with a few stunted bushes or clumps of graceful birches. Here the red deer feeds in herds, and you sometimes come across six or seven of these “monarchs of the glen.” The sportsman, however, seldom pursues or kills more than one in a day. A moor is much the same in appearance as a forest, but that term is reserved for those tracts of heather‐land where the grouse and the black‐cock abide. These are often rented to Englishmen, the forests seldom; so that the Southron, if he have a taste for deer‐ stalking, generally depends for his chance of indulging it on the hospitality of some Scottish friend.

This neighborhood is full of romantic glens and hollows where mountain streams gurgle through narrow channels of rock, where tiny waterfalls splash under bridges mossy with old age, and where real forests of pine and birch and rowan, or mountain ash, make a variegated network across the blue horizon. In one little gorge tradition says that a hunted partisan of Charles Edward took refuge after the fatal battle of Culloden, in 1745, and lived there concealed for several weeks. The particular place where he hid was under a projecting ledge or table of rock, overhanging the brown, foaming waters of the mimic torrent, which, though not large in volume, might yet have strength enough to dash you in pieces, if you fell into the narrow bed bristling with sharp, rocky points and irregular boulders, round which the water boils and hisses, as if chafing at its imprisonment. The rocks incline their jagged sides so far forward over the stream as almost to meet in an arch above it, and the chasm can be easily, almost safely, leaped. Indeed, the rift is invisible from the road, which passes within a few yards of it. Its sides are fringed with heather, and are undistinguishable, except when one is standing close upon them.

The North of England, with its mountains and its lakes, its solitary tarns (pools or smaller lakes) and its becks, has a family likeness to Scotch scenery. Its people, too, are akin to the Lowland Scotch in their taciturnity, their hardy, physical nature, and their language; yet to those who know both well the difference is very perceptible. In olden times Lancashire and Yorkshire, lying to the west of the Lake country, were emphatically the land of the church, one vast net‐work of beautiful abbeys with their immense possessions. Even after the Reformation these two counties remained the stronghold of Catholicity, and to this day they contain more Catholics (exclusive of the large modern towns and their population) than any other part of England. The favorite sport of Lancashire is otter‐hunting.

A certain breed of hounds, having very long bodies and short legs, is kept for the purpose; the streams abound in otters, and the hunt is very exciting. The gentlemen wear preternaturally thick boots, covering even the thighs, as they often have to wade in after the otter, whose teeth are so sharp that they can take off a hound’s leg at one bite. These animals dive dexterously under the banks, and generally lead the hunt a pretty chase; but, never having seen this sport ourselves, it is difficult to describe it graphically. The dialect of this part of the country is almost as much a language as Provençal; the people have their own literature, and one of their poets (a humorous one) has been styled, _par excellence_, the “Lancashire Poet.” Lancashire people are desperately clannish, quite despise the southern English, and obstinately adhere to their own customs, as something immeasurably more dignified than the finical fashions of the Southron. The gentlemen all talk the dialect when speaking with their farmers, game‐keepers, or servants, and speak it with genuine gusto too. A Lancashire kitchen is a heart‐warming sight; it is emphatically _the_ room of a farm, an inn, or any middle‐class dwelling. The fire blazes in the depths of a cavernous chimney, with settles on each side, on which two men can sit abreast, while from the low roof hang endless strings of fine onions and dozens of hams and flitches of bacon. At another part of the ceiling is fixed an immense rack, over which hangs the oatmeal cake in large sheets, of which any one is at liberty to break off a piece for his supper unrebuked and without question of repayment. Hospitality is a cardinal virtue here, but it is not that voluble, fussy hospitality which worries its recipient and makes him feel the obligation; you are welcome to go in and sit down, eat and drink, warm and dry yourself at the hearth, and go out again, without being assailed by impertinent questions or bored by long domestic revelations. A Lancashire host respects your mind while he refreshes your body, and silently makes you at home. Those kitchens of the north are the very type of comfort, with their vast corner‐cupboards, their cleanliness—you might literally eat off the brick floors; they are always paved with brick—their long oat‐cake racks and tempting meat, all home‐cured, hung from the ceiling. The temptation may be too great for you some night, if you happen to return to your lodgings, very hungry, at the late hour of twelve—that is dissipation in Lancashire—for you may wander in, and see no harm in hunting in the cupboard for eggs and flour, and in slicing off whatever will conveniently detach itself from a hanging flitch, in order to flavor some appetizing sauce of which you possess the secret. Perhaps the midnight raid ends fatally, and you stumble over the pots and pans, or find the embers hardly hot enough to cook the sauce, or give it up at last in despair, with a ridiculous foreboding of what the landlady will say to‐morrow morning when she contemplates the ragged appearance of the best flitch! Let us hope that you will honestly own your delinquencies, and not affirm that “it must have been the mice, ma’am!” It will be the easier as you happen to know the house well, and its inmates long ago agreed to overlook your little eccentricities with regard to sauces!

Among the principal country festivities which draw large parties to the neighboring houses in many parts of England, are the local cattle‐shows. The breeding of cattle is a topic of almost as universal interest in England as fox‐hunting, especially among country gentlemen. The secret of this apparent interest lies rather in the intense pride with which they naturally regard everything connected with their homes, than in downright personal liking for fat oxen and prize pigs. Not even the farmers who exhibit the cattle can outmatch the ladies of the neighborhood in their solicitude for the honor of the county, and, besides this, the gentlemen themselves sometimes enter the lists, and exhibit some choice specimen, thus giving their households special reasons for pride and anxiety. Most of the houses fill with guests for the occasion, and, despite the lateness of the season (the shows are generally late in the autumn, the one to which we refer taking place in November), the weather is usually propitious. Let us take a peep in at the window of yonder large Tudor house, with its cedars, sentinel‐like, guarding the approaches to the hall‐door, and an old gabled, ivied ruin overlooking the gay mosaic of the _parterre_. There is plenty of water here—ponds where huge old beeches droop over the banks and moor‐fowl _swish_ through the rushes on the margin, and ponds fringed with late roses, and lifting up in their midst islands with rustic arbors and a wilderness of creeping plants. Within the house is the usual amount of family portraits and antique carved furniture, with a more than ordinary display of hot‐house flowers. A little earlier in the season you would find in the drawing‐room two immense marble vases, in each of which blossoms a queenly azalea, snowy or ruddy, as the case may be. On the tables lie islands of moss, relieving and framing three or four star‐shaped, blood‐red cactus‐blooms. Round the high chimney‐piece, where a wood‐fire burns merrily (a luxury in England), is assembled a family party, neither stiff nor yet free, and picturesque, if nothing else; for the girls are dressed in the square‐cut bodices and pale‐hued, brocaded overskirts of a more picturesque age. Perhaps they are discussing art matters or weaving personal romances.... No, for here, as elsewhere, you cannot take the bit in your mouth; it is the only penalty of decorous country life in old England. They are talking of to‐morrow’s agricultural fair, the annual cattle show, which takes place in the country town. There is a large party in the house for it; it is the event of the week. Most country ladies pretend to be, and some are, poultry fanciers; so there is an additional department allotted to the prize poultry. The carriages draw up in a wide field near the tents and sheds, where a view of the race‐course can be had. The men circulate among the cattle; the “judges” sit in a tribune provided for them. It is difficult to get up any enthusiasm about this kind of thing, but the adjuncts are quite as enjoyable as are most outdoor pleasures that you cannot enjoy alone. The last day of the fair closes with a dinner, when the prize beasts and their owners are commented upon and the general political situation discussed. One of the farmers is a born orator; at least he delights in the sound of his own flowery periods. He quotes Shakespeare and Tennyson, and feels sure he has made a hit. As all professions are represented, there is room for all kinds of toasts, and under the veil of sociability the opportunities for speaking home‐truths are not neglected. Around the hall are galleries that serve for spectators, both male and female, and from this point many a ludicrous incident is revealed to you that escapes the “grave and reverend seigniors” below. This is what a spectator once saw: The dinner takes place once a year, and it is impossible to have nothing but trained waiters. Many of the gentlemen on this occasion brought their own servants with them; but even this was not sufficient, and the supplementary waiters were “legion.” The dinner was not as orderly as it might be. There was a great deal of hurrying and skurrying, orders angrily given and awkwardly executed, wine liberally spilt before reaching its destination, etc. Suddenly some one gave an order from the far end of the hall, and an unlucky bumpkin, eager to show his agility, made a dart forward, but came to an abrupt stand‐still in the middle of a lake of soup that spread warm and moist about his feet. In his haste he had stepped into the soup‐tureen, which another waiter, in clumsy hurry, had momentarily deposited in this conspicuous place. The braying of the band, whose conductor was naturally not a little exhilarated by the copious “refreshment” distributed during the day, drowned these “asides”; but we cannot help thinking that the position of a spectator, alive to these incidents behind the scenes, was preferable to that of the unhappy actors and speakers, nailed for four or five hours to the table, and condemned to drink the execrable wine usually furnished on such occasions.

With this we will close this somewhat lengthy sketch of some of the incidents of rural life in the old mother‐country—a subject so dear to Washington Irving, so attractive to Longfellow, and so heart‐stirring to many who, on this side of the Atlantic, have not yet lost in the turmoil of business or the hurry of politics the fond, poetic remembrance of the land of their forefathers. It is a restful picture; the soul grows young again in the contemplation of that healthy, even placid home‐life, diversified by so many local interests, and disturbed by so few dangerous excitements. In such an atmosphere it is no wonder if scholars, poets, and gentlemen develop quietly, as the fruit ripens on the sunny garden wall; nor is it strange to find these men, so accomplished and so learned, filling the unobtrusive and secluded walks of life, as well as the councils of the nation, the cabinet, the bar, and the Parliament. Happy is the nation that attains to a green old age; happy the country that keeps all that is poetic in the past, without relinquishing the practical and the useful in the present. It is a good thing to be able to look back proudly on a long line of doughty forefathers, but better still to be able to look forward as proudly to a goodly line of worthy descendants.

The Future Of The Russian Church.

By The Rev. Cæsarius Tondini, Barnabite.

I.

“How much happier is Russia than are many Catholic countries!”

It is thus that a German author, of the Baltic provinces, a Protestant, and a subject of the czar, broke in upon the concert of complaints on the condition of the Russians to which we had for a long period been habituated. It is true that Augustus Wilhelm Hupel wrote towards the close of the last century; but the state of things which drew from him this cry of admiration continues even at this present time. Let us add that a considerable number of writers, especially Protestants, share the sentiments of Hupel; in fact, a certain government not long ago ranged itself on the side of this author’s opinions, and undertook to procure for its subjects, whether they would or not, the same happiness as that which the Russian people enjoy. This fact is a more than sufficient inducement for us conscientiously to study the cause of this happiness—a study to which the following pages will be devoted.

Happily, the writer of the Baltic provinces expresses himself with remarkable precision. “The monarch,” says Hupel, in speaking of the synod which governs the Russian Church—“the monarch himself selects the members of this ecclesiastical tribunal, and can also summarily dismiss those who do not please him. It follows, therefore, that the members of the synod entirely depend upon the will of the czar. Not only can they do nothing of which he does not approve, but, by virtue of this arrangement, _it is the czar himself who is the real head of the church of his empire_. Of what lofty wisdom, then, is not this institution a proof! How much happier is Russia than are many Catholic countries!”(123) It is evident, therefore, that the object of admiration and envy is the concentration of civil and religious power in the sovereign’s hands; the synod of St. Petersburg being the institution which secures and perpetuates the concentration of this double power.

The czar to whom Russia is indebted for the synod is Peter I., surnamed the Great (1689‐1725), than whom few sovereigns have been the object of more enthusiastic admiration. The things which he undertook and in which he succeeded, for promoting the civilization of Russia, are truly surprising, his laws being, in our opinion, the most splendid monument he has created in his own memory. Frequently, in glancing through the _Complete Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire_,(124) while taking into account the number, the variety, and extent of the subjects embraced by the genius of Peter, the circumstances under which he had to work, and the thankless elements which he contrived to manage, we have experienced sincere admiration; but, side by side with his great qualities, in what ignoble and monstrous vices did he not indulge! If we were to quote certain judgments passed by his contemporaries, it would be easy to understand the disgust with which the _History of Peter the Great_, by Voltaire, fills every sincere and virtuous man. Great qualities do not excuse great vices, especially in the case of Peter, who on many occasions proved by his conduct that he was capable of self‐restraint, had he only chosen to exercise it. This czar, whose leading characteristics were a spirit of determination and an energetic will, can neither be excused for his debauches nor his cruelties. The reforms originated by him naturally bear the impress of the despotic character of their author. In the present day it is openly said, even in Russia, that Peter acted, “as if there were no possible limits to his power, setting himself determinedly to gain his end, without in the least troubling himself about the nature of the means.”(125) We may add that the religious convictions of the czar were, to say the least, an enigma. And this is the man who gave to the Russian Church the organization which she retains to this day.

Unhappily for the people, when a man rises from among them and accomplishes unheard‐of undertakings, the prestige of his name eclipses the light in which justice would regard his actions. If flattery erects to him its altars, and if religious or political passions find it to their interest to exalt him, this man, though in his grave, continues no less to exercise a powerful influence; and all his qualities, even his bad ones, receive a species of consecration. A century and a half have elapsed since the death of Peter the Great, and yet it may be said with truth that he still rules Russia. It is no common thing to find a series of sovereigns, all of whom draw their inspiration from the same idea; and yet all the czars, with the single exception of Peter II., who only reigned three years (1727‐1730), perpetuated, with regard to the Russian Church, the idea of the originator of the synod.

That the czars, however, should have made it their rule to walk in the footsteps of Peter, and that in their ukases they should recall his memory with enthusiastic eulogies, it is easy to conceive; and also that Protestants, especially those of Germany, should never weary in their praises of his religious reforms; these praises being, in the first place, the payment of a debt of gratitude to the czar, and, in the second, an homage rendered to the Protestant side of the reforms themselves. But the most painful part of the matter is that Peter and his successors should have found, in that very church which they were oppressing, not only docile instruments of their will, but also the warmest encouragements to prosecute their work. Theophanes Prokopovitch, Bishop of Pskoff, of whom we will speak further, wrote treatises to prove that “the czars have received from on high the power to govern the church; only it is not permitted that they should officiate in it.”(126) Plato Levchin, Metropolitan of Moscow, while he was still tutor to the Czarowitz Paul, afterwards Paul I., prepared for his use a catechism which has been held in great esteem by Protestants. In the epistle dedicatory he thus addresses his pupil: “I bear in mind a saying of your highness—saying worthy of eternal remembrance. We were one day reading this passage in the Gospel: _Take heed that you say not among yourselves: We have Abraham for our father_ (S. Matt. iii. 9); when, upon my remarking that the Jews vainly gloried in having Abraham for their father, whose faith and works they failed to imitate, your highness deigned to reply: ‘And I also should glory in vain that I descend from the great Peter, did I not intend to imitate his works.’ That these and other similarly excellent dispositions of your highness may increase with your years, behold this is what the church of God, prostrate before the altar, supplicates, and will never cease to supplicate, of the divine mercy, from the profoundest depths of her heart.”(127)

There is nothing surprising in the fact that lessons such as these, explained and developed in the body of the catechism, should have borne their fruit. The pupil of Plato, having become czar, was the first who introduced into official edicts the title of Head of the Church(128) for himself and his successors, and more emphatically than perhaps any one of the others he established as a principle the supremacy of the czar over the church.(129)

We forbear to quote other examples. If it be true that nations never stop short at a theory, the same thing is true also of sovereigns; and, when Nicholas I. acted as every one knows he did act, he was but carrying out the doctrine accepted and _taught_ in the Russian Church. As for the people, it would have been indeed surprising had they not shared in the doctrine of the church, and still more so had they attempted any opposition to it. In fact, as might be supposed, there was no lack of writers who set themselves to make the people appreciate the advantages of every description which they enjoyed under the religious autocracy of the czars.

This state of things could not, however, last indefinitely; and it was the Emperor Nicholas himself who, by some of his measures, contributed to hasten its end. At the commencement of his reign it was desired to exclude the foreign element from teaching, and to substitute for it the national only. Professors were lacking; and, to form these, the government thought it well to send out young men at its own expense to learn in the _German_ universities that which they would subsequently have to teach the Russians. Besides, for many years past Russia has entered into active and frequent relations with the rest of Europe; the regulations which bound Russians, if not to the glebe, at least to the soil of their country, have been relaxed; travelling has been facilitated; travellers have been able with less difficulty to penetrate into the country, and its own inhabitants to go abroad and observe what is passing in the rest of the world.

And what has resulted from all this? Many things; and, first of all, the following: “The future propagators of learning and civilization,” says the Père Gagarin, in a remarkable pamphlet,(130) “were sent to Berlin, where they lost no time in becoming fervent disciples of the Hegelian ideas. It was in vain that serious warnings reached St. Petersburg of the fatal direction these young men were pursuing. For reasons which perhaps some future day may explain the warnings were wholly unheeded; and in a short time the chairs of the principal universities were filled by these dangerous enthusiasts, whose newly‐imported ideas made rapid progress. School‐masters, professors, journalists, the writers who had been formed in the universities, successively became the apostles of the doctrines which they had adopted. Neither censures, nor the watchfulness of the custom‐house, nor the active surveillance of an ubiquitous and anxious police, availed to put a stop to the propagation of revolutionary notions, protected as they were by eccentric formulas, unintelligible to all who were not in the secret of the sect. It was not until 1848 that the eyes of the government began to be opened; but it had no efficacious remedy at hand. It multiplied regulations, of which the object was to hinder the diffusion of modern science and ideas; but was destitute of salutary principles to offer as a substitute for the unhealthy teaching of which it now recognized the dangers. The system of national education, which had so miserably failed, had been based upon ‘orthodoxy,’ autocracy, and nationality, and was now resulting in the triumph of German ideas, in the atheism of Feuerbach, and in radicalism and communism of the most unbridled description.”

That we may not unjustly charge the Emperor Nicholas with being _solely_ responsible for these results, it must also be said that other Russians, who had at any rate travelled at their own expense, and foreigners who had come to settle in Russia, assisted in propagating the same doctrines. If books are not printed without some reasonable hope that they will be read, and if the number of publications in which certain ideas are particularly developed proves the favor with which they are received, it would be only too easy to make a statistical statement of alarming significance, showing the favor with which the most revolutionary doctrines are received by the Russians. Books printed in the Russian language are evidently addressed to Russians only, this language not having hitherto acquired a place in that part of education which is called the study of modern languages; and we can prove the existence of numerous publications in the Russian language, appearing some in London, some in Berlin, some at Leipsic, some at Geneva, and elsewhere also, in which the most communistic doctrines find their apology. Amongst others we may notice the publication at Zurich of a periodical review entitled _V’pered!_ (Forward!), which wars against all belief in the supernatural and against every kind of authority. It matters little that the writings of which we speak themselves penetrate with difficulty into Russia; it is not to be supposed that the fact of having, when abroad, read this review or anything similar closes to Russians the return to their country. The book remains outside; but its teaching enters with them.

Let us now return to the consideration of the Russian Church. The radical ideas of which we have been speaking are plainly incompatible with the religious autocracy of the czars; and nevertheless Russia offers us the spectacle of men imbued with these ideas, and even manifesting them openly without, who suddenly recover their orthodoxy as soon as they recross the frontier of their country.

Under pain of deserving the reproach of cowardly hypocrisy, these Russians cannot support the existing state of things, liberty of conscience being too intimately allied with their principles. The reader will judge whether it is not wholly immoral that men who have ceased to believe in anything should, in order to escape legal consequences, present themselves in the “orthodox” churches for confession and communion!... Now, as far as we are aware, none of the pains and penalties against those who, being born of “orthodox” parents, fail to practise the state religion, or to fulfil their duty of annual confession and communion, have hitherto been abolished; still less are the penalties abolished to which all are liable who propagate doctrines contrary to those of the official church.

But the Russian atheists and rationalists of every shade of opinion are not the only persons who have a supreme interest in requiring, together with liberty of conscience, the abolition of the penalties to which they would be liable if the same rigor were observed towards them as towards those Russians who have become Catholics. For the czars, not satisfied with calling themselves and with being the head of the “orthodox” church, have also arrogated to themselves the right of direction with regard to all the religious sects of the empire.

When Paul I. declared that “the supreme authority, confided to the autocrat by God, extends also over the ecclesiastical state, and that the clergy are bound to obey the czar _as the head chosen by God himself_ in all things, _religious_ as well as civil,”(131) he was not addressing himself to the “orthodox” but to the Catholic subjects of the empire. It is in employing similar language, and by virtue of the same general principle, that the czars have defined the position of Protestants, Armenians, Jews, and Mahometans. However accommodating one may suppose the Russian subjects belonging to these different religions to be, we cannot understand why, at least in heart, they do not protest against the strange pretension that in religious matters they are bound to obey the “orthodox” czars. Neither can we suppose that, if they hold their errors in good faith, and believe themselves in possession of “religious truth,” they do not experience some desire to communicate their treasure to others, and do not suffer in obeying the articles of the penal code which forbid their so doing.(132) What can be, upon this subject, the sentiments of the ten millions of Russians belonging to the various sects formed in the bosom of the Russian Church itself, their name itself indicates; they are called collectively _Raskolniks_—that is to say, _schismatics_. Thus we need not say what must be the thoughts and desires of the Catholic subjects of the czar. There remain only the “orthodox”; but it is they who form the majority of the Russian subjects. It would be too much to expect to find in them the partisans of a more extended liberty of conscience than that which is permitted by the Code. “The dominant religion of the empire,” says the Code, “is the orthodox. Liberty of worship is awarded not only to the members of other Christian confessions, but also to Jews, Mahometans, and pagans.... _The dominant church alone has the right to make proselytes._”(133) We will not stop to consider the motives which induce the “orthodox” Russians to oppose themselves to a more extended liberty of conscience,(134) but will rather proceed to examine whether, apart from what we have here said, it be not urgent, even in the interests of orthodoxy itself, that some changes should be introduced into the present organization of the Russian Church. We may be able to show that, by a singular disposition of Providence, the interests of the orthodox _faith_ are intimately allied to those of the Catholic Church in Russia.

II.

If we are to believe Russian theologians, the Russian Church, with its czar, realizes in a certain measure the ideal of a church sustained by a powerful sovereign, which to many persons is the most desirable state of things possible. We may call to mind the saying of the Count de Maistre on the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire; in fact, the testimony of history leaves us in doubt as to whether this institution has served more to protect or to afflict the Catholic Church. Prosperity or reverses, it is true, alike turn to the advantage of those dear to God; but scarcely will any one take upon himself to maintain that, because reverses are useful to the church, they must be purposely procured for her. And therefore, whatever may be, for a longer or shorter time, the probable advantages of this institution, it is best, if we mistake not, to leave its revival to the providence of God. But if such is the teaching of history with regard to an emperor, guardian of the faith and protector of the Catholic Church, history condemns with a far more powerful eloquence the strange protection with which the czars have overshadowed their communion. In the _Spiritual Regulation_ may be seen the passage in which Peter the Great is designated the “guardian of orthodoxy and of all things relating to good order in the holy church.”(135) The successors of Peter continued to declare themselves invested with the same mission, and this passage of the _Spiritual Regulation_ was also inserted in the Russian Code.(136)

To be the guardian of orthodoxy, and of all which concerns good order in the holy church, is in fact the _first duty_ of a Christian monarch. We will examine briefly the manner in which the czars have acquitted themselves of this duty.

Any reader who, without being repelled by the subject and form of the _Spiritual Regulation_, would impose upon himself the trouble of perusing them, text and notes, to the end, would have no difficulty in understanding with what good reason Protestants can and must look upon Peter as one of themselves. The Protestant tendencies of the _Spiritual Regulation_ are evident. The reader will also observe the precautions, all in favor of the Protestants, there taken for the preaching of the divine Word. The priests, the monks, and the bishops of the Orthodox Church, treated as they were by Peter, were made to appear simply contemptible. In the same way, the favor publicly shown by him to the Protestants of Germany, the importance he accorded to them, and the boundless confidence he placed in their co‐operation with him for the civilization of Russia, and finally the ridicule he cast upon holy things in his infamous orgies—all this can hardly be reconciled with the idea of the fulfilment of his first duty as a Christian prince.

In the notes to the _Spiritual Regulation_ we may also perceive, in more places than one, the manner in which Catherine II. understood and exercised her mission as _Head of the Greek Church_; for thus she entitled herself in writing to Voltaire. No sincerely orthodox Russian could read the correspondence of Catherine with Voltaire without blushing. If Protestants may fairly claim Peter I. as their own, unbelievers have a full right to do the same with regard to Catherine, and glory in it, as in fact they do. In various passages of these letters (which we have perused) she ridicules not only the ceremonies but also the _sacraments_ of her church. If to this we add the favor shown by her to the infidel philosophers of the _Encyclopédie_, the free access which their productions found at St. Petersburg, the atmosphere of impiety with which she surrounded herself, and the state of her own morals, so plainly indicative of an unbelieving soul, our estimate will not appear exaggerated. It would in truth have been miraculous if, under such tutelage, orthodoxy could have retained its hold upon the minds of those who knew how to read, write, and think; and thus the unbelief that prevails among the higher classes in Russia is the heritage of Catherine II. If, on the other hand, she showed herself zealous for the maintenance of faith among the lower orders, it was because she predicted the same results from their unbelief as she did from any desire they might evince for knowledge. “It is not for Russians,” she wrote to the Governor of Moscow, “that I am founding schools; it is for Europe, where we must not lose ground in public opinion. From the day that our peasants shall have a desire for instruction, neither you nor I will remain in our places.”

Under the successors of Catherine II. Russian orthodoxy underwent various phases, according to the degree of orthodoxy professed by the czars and the vicissitudes of their interior and exterior policy. Paul I. was so convinced that he was the real head of the church that he one day proposed to say Mass.(137) On the other hand, it is certain that he contemplated the reunion of the Russian with the Catholic Church.(138) This monarch, however, was incapable of commanding respect, or of helping a return to the faith, either by his intelligence or his moral qualities; and thus incredulity continued its ravages in Russia.

In the life of Alexander I. a period is distinguishable in which the czar had an evident leaning towards Protestantism; and his historians do not fail to remark the influence obtained over him by the Protestant, Mme. de Krudener. If we are not mistaken, those who so actively busied themselves in founding a Bible society in Russia had no intention of favoring orthodoxy.

It was also under the reign of the same czar that appeared the first edition (1823) of the catechism of Mgr. Philaret, destined to take the place of that by Mgr. Plato, then used for religious instruction in the schools. Now, in 1823 Mgr. Philaret was far from being so orthodox in his writings as he subsequently became; and the first edition of his catechism differs materially from the later ones. “The Emperor Alexander,” writes an author well deserving of confidence, “was an orthodox Christian, _not in the sense of his church_, but in that of the rigorous conformity of his belief to the fundamental doctrine of all Christian churches; which is the redemption of mankind by the death of Jesus Christ, by means of faith.”(139) What a stone to cast at a czar, the guardian of orthodoxy! Notwithstanding all this, Alexander, towards the close of his life, must have had continuous relations with Pope Pius VII.; some affirm even that he died a Catholic.(140)

As we have seen, it was at the commencement of the reign of the Emperor Nicholas that, at the expense of the government, the Russian youth were sent for education to the University of Berlin. Then came the formidable revulsion of orthodoxy, which, announced by the revision of the catechism of Mgr. Philaret, manifested itself by the sanguinary “conversions” in Lithuania, in 1839. The tidings were received in Europe by a general cry of indignation; and the remembrance has not yet faded away.(141) By a strange coincidence Nicholas, to whom is due the glory of having completed the gigantic undertaking vainly attempted by all his predecessors, of the codification of all the Russian laws, had desired that in the Code the following article should be inserted: “The dominant church alone possesses the right of leading those who do not belong to her to embrace her faith. This faith, however, is produced by divine grace in the soul, by instruction, by gentleness, and especially by good examples. Therefore is it that the dominant church does not allow herself to make use of any coercive means, how small soever, to convert to orthodoxy those who follow other confessions and other beliefs, and, after the example and the preaching of the apostles, she in no wise threatens those who will not be converted from their belief to hers.” All this is to be found in the Russian Code of 1832, of 1842, and of 1857, and continues to have the force of law _at this present time_!(142) We will say nothing here of the reign of the present emperor, but will merely observe that the powerful reaction which took place almost immediately after the death of Nicholas, and which compelled the government to enter upon the way of reforms, was the inevitable consequence of that emperor’s conduct. It is only just that the historians of Alexander II., in passing judgment upon his hesitations and self‐contradictions in religious affairs, should bear in mind the difficulty of the part bequeathed to him by Nicholas.

But neither the ten millions of _Raskolniks_ which Russia can count at this day, nor yet the numerous unbelievers and rationalists of every shade which she contains, protest as eloquently against the protection afforded by the czars to orthodoxy and the church as the impotence to which the czars have reduced that church itself for exercising any influence over the enlightened classes. All who have written upon Russia agree in acknowledging and deploring the degradation of the orthodox clergy.(143)

Lest we should trust ourselves, with regard to a point so delicate for us, to any exaggerated or inexact accounts, we have been careful to be guided in our statements by writers offering every security, not only for competence and impartiality, but also for their sympathy with the orthodox clergy. The author of _La Tolérance et le schisme Religieux en Russie_, known under the name of Schédo‐Ferroti, appears to us to unite all these qualities in a high degree. “Having,” he writes, “in the capacity of an old engineering officer, traversed Russia in all directions, taking, on foot and with the circumferentor in my hand, journeys of four and five hundred kilometres; and travelling in this way for the space of six months at a time, stopping at every village which I happened to find on my way, I habitually addressed myself to the priest for any information I desired to obtain, and, early taking into consideration the moral and political importance of these men, I set myself to study them with particular attention.... I do not exaggerate in saying that I have made the acquaintance of many more than two hundred Russian priests. I may say that I met with specimens of all the varieties, from the young priest but yesterday arrived in the parish to the old man bowed down beneath a load of moral and physical sufferings; from the priest of the regiment to the ascetic fanatic; from the ex‐professor of the seminary, nominated to the cure of some rich church in the capital, where he parades his rhetoric and complacently displays his erudition, to the humble village priest scarcely able to decipher his Breviary.”(144)

This is enough, as to the competence of M. Schédo‐Ferroti; and with regard to his impartiality on the point we are considering, it appears in every page, as will be proved by our quotations. For the rest, the author is a Protestant, and argues warmly in favor of religious liberty for every worship and for every sect.

With regard to his sympathy for the orthodox clergy, it would be difficult to find a more devoted advocate. “It is,” he writes, “with satisfaction that I can say that I always found better than I had expected, better than I had any right to expect, considering the situation and the social position in which he found himself, the man whom I had set myself to study.”(145)

Let us add, moreover, that M. Schédo‐Ferroti is by no means tender towards the Catholic clergy, over whom, according to him, the orthodox Russian clergy have the advantage in not being “tainted with hypocrisy.”(146) This is an additional reason for our choice of this author.

We will now see what he says respecting the social influence of the Russian “popes,” quoting only a few lines: “Oppressed and disregarded by his superiors, the pope loses three‐fourths of his means of action, for he sees himself cast off by the upper class, tolerated by the middle class, and turned into ridicule by the common people.... Judging from appearances, and noticing that everywhere, even in the receptions given by dignitaries of the church, the pope occupies the _lowest_ place, the masses have contracted the habit of never assigning him any other.”(147)

Such are the Russian clergy who are in contact with the people—the clergy whose office it is to instruct the Russians in orthodoxy, and to maintain them in it. Now, this was not by any means the social position of the clergy when Peter I. instituted the synod. On the contrary, the _Spiritual Regulation_ shows us this czar, alarmed at the excessive influence which the clergy at that time possessed, painting in sombre colors the dangers resulting therefrom to the country, and finding therein his best pretext for establishing the synod. It is the institutions of the czars which have created for the clergy the melancholy situation in which they find themselves at the present day, which have deprived them of all moral influence, and have reduced them to be “cast off by the higher orders, scarcely tolerated by the middle classes, and turned into ridicule by the common people.” That which retains these classes, notwithstanding the contempt in which they hold their popes, in an outward profession of orthodoxy, is the _Penal Code_. Can it be believed that, without the injunctions enforced by this Code, the people would confess to priests whom they so utterly despise?

To resume: There are historical facts still living in the memory of the Russian people which show them their czars making small account, personally, of orthodoxy, at the very time when, by laws of great severity, they compel its observance by the people. They see the higher ranks sceptical or unbelieving, revolutionary ideas in favor with a great number of their fellow‐countrymen; the _Raskolniks_, who in the time of Peter the Great were scarcely sufficient to form themselves into sects, now so powerful by their numbers and their political importance that they have already forced the government and the synod into making some considerable concessions; they see the clergy reduced, thanks to the institutions of Peter, which have been continued and completed by his successors, to mere agents of the police, tools in the hands of power, and forming a caste so despised that rarely is a pope admitted further than the antechamber of any house belonging to a member of the upper classes, and powerless to exercise any influence whatever, even upon the lower orders; this is a true portrait of the Russian Church of to‐day—the Russian Church such as the czars have made it.(148)

And to‐morrow?

This to‐morrow, now drawing near, will still more clearly reveal what the czars have made of orthodoxy and of the church of which they call themselves the guardians. The day must soon come when, by the intrinsic force of things, the regulations of which we have been speaking will disappear from the Russian Code, and when nothing will force the Russians any longer to keep up any relations with a clergy whom they scorn, nor to practise the religion of which they are the teachers and representatives. That will be the day to which Catherine II. looked forward with so much dread—the day when the Russian people will “know how to read and write, and will feel a desire for instruction.” What will happen then in Russia has been shown to us, on a small scale, in what has taken place before our eyes in more than one Catholic country, where the clergy, strong in the support of the laws, lived without anxiety about the future, until political revolutions, coming suddenly to change the relations between church and state, placed them without any preparation face to face with unbelief. We say, however, _on a small scale_, for if the Catholic clergy could not foresee the first outbreak of unbelief, they required but a little space of time in which to moderate or check its progress. Neither in Spain nor Italy can unbelief boast of having greatly diminished the number of Catholics; one might say rather that the new legislation has but served to open an easy way out to those who were such only in name, and has thus delivered the church from them. Information obtained from undoubtedly authentic sources proves that the churches are no less filled by the faithful, and the sacraments no less frequented, than before. This is a state of things, which it will be difficult to find in Russia; and we will mention the reason why.

And in the first place, if it is just to acknowledge that, in some provinces of the countries we have just named, abuses may have crept in among the clergy, still they were neither so serious nor so general as people have been pleased to represent them. Their principal source was to be found in the too great number of ecclesiastics, of whom some had entered holy orders without a true vocation. But, precisely by reason of the large number of priests, there are very many good ones to be found, and enough of these to suffice amply for the needs of the faithful. Their virtues, which contrast with the manner of life habitual to the apostles of irreligion, thus formed a first entrenchment against unbelief.

Will it be the same in Russia?

We are far from wishing to disparage the Russian clergy. Their defects neither destroy nor excuse any which may be met with among Catholic priests; we will even admit that the great majority of the Russian popes lead exemplary lives. But is it known what is the gain to unbelief, in Russia, from even a very small minority of bad popes? In Russia each parish has only just so many priests as are absolutely necessary to carry on the worship; and with scarcely any exceptions, especially in the country, no parish has more than one priest. If, then, this priest lose the faith, unbelief will have free course in his parish. The reader would here perhaps remind us of the monks, who are still numerous in Russia, and ask whether these could not come to the assistance of the secular clergy. Any Russian would smile, were such a question put to him; but we will confine ourselves to remarking, in the first place, that the monks who have received holy orders (_hiero‐moines_) are very rare, and, secondly, that never would any Russian parish desire the intervention of a monk. Stations, retreats, spiritual exercises, general communions, all these expressions do not, so far as we know, possess even any equivalents in the Russian language to this day, unless, indeed, in the Catholic books in that tongue which the government of St. Petersburg has recently caused to be printed, in order, it might seem, that more prayers might ascend to heaven in the Russian language, and fewer in Polish. In any case, the interference of monks in the management of parishes would be a far bolder innovation even than the “correction” of the liturgical books, which gained for Russia the ten millions of sectaries she can reckon at the present day. And this comparison reminds us that on the self‐same day whereon orthodoxy shall lose the support of the Penal Code, the Russian popes will not only have to defend it against unbelief, but also against the various Russian sects, some of which surpass in their diabolical superstitions and abominable mysteries all that has been related of the Gnostics and Manicheans. And, moreover, it must not be forgotten that the Russian popes, however exemplary they may be, and however full of zeal for orthodoxy, are married priests. Thus one quality is wanting to them, of which the prestige is far from being superfluous.

We will not ask how it happens that the Russian clergy, if truly virtuous, are “cast off by the higher classes, barely tolerated by the middle class, and turned into ridicule by the lower orders of the people,” when goodness and virtue rarely, if ever, fail to give their possessor an ascendency, especially over the masses, which is independent of either rank or learning. At the same time, we do not intend to place any reliance on the statements we find in Russian writings on this subject; the falsehoods and exaggerations which are so frequent, even in Catholic countries, with regard to priests, make it a duty to receive with mistrust the accusations of the Russians against their clergy. But, we repeat, the Russian clergy who are in contact with the people are married, and this fact deprives them of a quality which is far from being unnecessary.

Here we may perhaps be reminded of the Protestant ministers, especially the Anglican, “so respectable,” we are assured, “so surrounded with confidence and esteem, and at the same time a married clergy.”

We have made it our rule to avoid all recrimination, and therefore accept on trust all that we are told of the excellence of the Protestant ministers; but we ask, in our turn, how is it possible to establish a parallel between their mission and that of the “orthodox” clergy? Protestantism, of whatever form, recognizes no other judge than individual reason, on many questions touching upon morals, while, on the other hand, the “orthodox” church possesses an authority which decides upon them in the sense least favorable to natural inclinations. It is only some few forms of Protestantism that impose any particular mode of worship; whereas the orthodox communion does not on this point allow freedom of choice to its members. Protestantism has banished expiatory works; the orthodox church requires prolonged fasts and abstinences. Protestantism sends us to God for the humble confession of our sins, but the orthodox church commands that they should be confessed to a priest, in order to obtain, by this painful act of humiliation, the pardon of God. If Protestantism points to Jesus Christ as our model, it nevertheless circumscribes the sphere in which we are allowed to imitate him; while the orthodox church fixes no limit to the imitation of our divine Example. Virginity, poverty, and obedience are for Protestantism that which the cross was to the Gentiles—“foolishness”; but the orthodox church recognizes in them the counsels of perfection bequeathed by Christ himself to those who desire most closely to resemble him.

We will not pursue the parallel further.

To Be Continued.

The Leap For Life.

AN EPISODE IN THE CAREER OF PRES. MACMAHON.

I.

In Algeria, with Bugeaud, Harassed by a crafty foe, Were the French, in eighteen hundred thirty‐one; Swarthy Arabs prowled about Camp and outpost and redoubt Crouching here and crawling there, Lurking, gliding everywhere, Tiger‐hearted, under stars and under sun, Seeking by some stealthy chance Vengeance on the troops of France— Vengeance fierce and fell, to sate Savage rage and savage hate For the deeds of desolation harshly done.

II.

On a rugged plateau, Forty miles from headquarters of Marshal Bugeaud, Lay an outpost, besieged by the merciless foe. Day by day close and closer the Arab lines drew Round the hard‐beset French.

To dash out and flash through, Like a wind‐driven flame, they would dare, though a host Hot from Hades stood there. But abandon the post? Nay, they dare not do that; they were soldiers of France, And dishonor should stain neither sabre nor lance; They could bravely meet death, though like Hydra it came Horror‐headed and dire, but no shadow of shame For a trust left to perish when danger drew nigh Should e’er dim the flag waving free to the sky. But soon came a terror more dread to the soul Than war’s wild thunder‐crash when its battle‐clouds roll, And the heavens are shrouded from light, while a glare, As of hell, breaks in hot, lurid streams on the air! It was Famine, grim‐visaged and gaunt, To the camp most appalling of foes— Slow to strike, slow to kill, but full sure As the swift headsman’s deadliest blows. O’er the ramparts it sullenly strode, Glided darkly by tent and by wall, Spreading awe wheresoever it went, And the gloom of dismay over all; Blighting valor that ne’er in war’s red front had quailed, Blanching cheeks that no tempest of strife e’er had paled.

III.

Then a council was held, and the commandant said Direst peril was near; they must summon swift aid From the Marshal, or all would be lost ere the sun Of to‐morrow went down in the west. Was there one Who, to save the command and the honor of France, Would ride forth with despatches? He ceased, and a glance At the bronzed faces near showed that spirits to dare Any desperate deed under heaven were there. But the first to arise and respond was a youth Whose brow bore nature’s signet of courage and truth, In whose eye valor shone calm and clear as a star When the winds are at rest and the clouds fade afar. Who was he that stood forth with such resolute air? Young Lieutenant MacMahon, bold, free, _débonnaire_, Never knight looked more gallant with shield and with spear, Never war‐nurtured chieftain less conscious of fear. In his mien was the heroic flash of the Gaul, With the fire of the Celt giving grandeur to all; And he said, head erect, face with ardor aglow, “I will ride with despatches to Marshal Bugeaud!”

IV.

It is night, and a stillness profound Folds the camp; Arabs stealthily creep Here and there in the moonlight beyond, With ears eagerly bent for a sound From the garrison, watchful and weak; O’er the tents welcome night‐breezes sweep, Bringing balm unto brow and to cheek Of men scorched by a pitiless sun To a hue almost swarthy and deep As the hue of the foe they would shun.

V.

Stretching dimly afar, Between slopes that are rugged and bare, Half obscure under moonbeam and star, Half revealed in the soft, misty air, Runs a rude, broken way that will lead Gallant rider and sure‐footed steed Westward forth to the camp of Bugeaud, Forty miles over high land and low; But the steed must be trusty and fleet, And the bridle hand steady and keen That shall guide him by rock and ravine, Where each stride of the galloping feet Must span dangers that slumber unseen; And beyond, scarce a league to the west, Yawns a treacherous chasm, dark and deep, Where death lurks like a serpent asleep, And the rider must ride at his best, And his steed take the terrible leap Like a winged creature cleaving the air, Else a grim, ghastly corpse shall be there, With perchance a steed stark on its breast, And the moon shall look down with a stare Where they lie in perpetual rest.

VI.

Now the silence is broken by neigh and by champ And the clatter of hoofs, and away from the camp Rides MacMahon, as gallant, as light, and as free As the bridegroom who goes to his marriage may be. With prance and with gallop and gay caracole His swift steed bounds along, as if spurning control; But the bridle‐hand guides him unerring and true, And each stroke of the hoofs is thew answering thew. Through the moonlight they go, fading slowly from sight, Till both rider and steed sink away in the night. But they go not unheard, and they speed not unseen; Dark eyes furtively watch, flashing fiercely and keen From dim ambush around; then like spectres arise White‐robed figures that follow; the rider descries Them on slope and in hollow, and knows they pursue. But he fears not their craft or the deeds they may do, For his brave steed is eager and strong, and the pace Growing faster and faster each stride of the chase. Now the slopes right and left seem alive with the foe Gliding ghost‐like along, but still stealthy and low, As wild creatures that crouch in a jungle; they think To entrap him when back from the terrible brink Of the chasm he returns, for his steed cannot leap The dread gulf, and the rider will halt when its steep Ragged walls ope before him, with death lying deep In the darkness below; they will seize him, and take From his heart, by fell torture of fagot and stake, Every secret it holds; then his life‐blood may flow, But he never shall ride to the camp of Bugeaud.

VII.

Still unflinching and free through the moonlight he goes, And each pulse with the hot flush of eagerness glows. Now a glance at the path where his gallant steed flies, Now a gleam at the weird, spectral forms that arise On the dim, rugged slopes, then still onward and on, Till he nears the abyss, and its gaping jaws yawn On his sight; but the rider well knows it is there, And his speed is soon cautiously checked to prepare For the desperate leap; he must now put to proof The true mettle beneath, for the slip of a hoof Or a swerve on the brink will dash both into doom, Where the sad stars shall watch o’er a cavernous tomb. Girth and bridle and stirrup are felt, to be sure That no flaw shall bring peril—and all is secure; Then with eyes fixed before, and brow bent to the wind, And one thought of the foe and his comrades behind, And a low, earnest prayer that all heaven must heed, He slacks bridle, plies spur, and gives head to his steed. With a bound it responds, ears set back, nostrils wide, And the rush of a thunder‐bred storm in its stride! Now the brink! now the leap! they are over! Hurrah! Horse and rider are safe, and dash wildly away; Not a slip, not a flinch, swift and sure as the flight Of an eagle in mid‐air they sweep through the night, While the baffled foe glare in bewildered amaze At the fast‐flying prey speeding far from their gaze; And the soft stars grow dim in the dawn’s early glow When MacMahon rides into the camp of Bugeaud.

The Year Of Our Lord 1874.

A general glance at the movements of the past year will scarcely prove encouraging, even to the most devout believer in the glory and the destiny of the golden century drawing so rapidly to its close. Our own nation, which—with steam, electricity, railroads, the newspaper as it stands to‐ day in all its power and pride (_vide_ the current number of the New York _Herald_), and other great material developments of the age—may consider itself at will as either the mightiest product or the _enfant gâté_ of the century, has not too great matter for self‐congratulation. Our national year, that dawned on disaster, has struggled through a painful life only to close in gloom, with perhaps a faint though uncertain glimmer afar off of better times to come. The “Christian” statesmen who have had the country and its management all to themselves these many years past have left behind them a bitter legacy. The great scandals—for even scandals in these days have a greatness of their own—which at length broke up the ranks of the “Christian” statesmen were sufficiently touched upon last year, and are only called to mind here as tending in great measure to explain the year of national distress we have just passed through.

All through the winter months the poverty and misery of the masses in New York and other of our chief cities were unexampled in our history; nor was the revival of business during the spring, summer, and fall seasons of such a nature as to warrant the hope of being able to stave off a similar calamity in the early months of the coming year. The real cause of the distress is known to all—the general stagnation of business in 1873, resulting chiefly from the panic of the previous year, which in turn resulted from the corruption in high places of the national, State, and municipal guardians of the public trusts. Public confidence was shattered; business was at a standstill, the masses consequently idle, while a general reduction in the rate of wages begot strikes among such as were not idle. In this connection it may be well to call to mind what was generally observed at the time: the significant absence of the Irish and Catholic body from the seditious meetings; yet on that body fell the burden of the distress. What the disciples of the “Christian” school of statesmen, who gave cause for the sedition by their corruption and dishonesty, would be pleased to term their “foreign” faith, “foreign” education, obedience to the trained body‐guard, the priesthood, of a “foreign” potentate, the Pope, alone prevented their falling in with the ranks of sedition. Yet the preaching and practice of the “foreign” faith, we are constantly assured, is the greatest danger to the republic.

The trials of the severe season, however, brought out into startling prominence one great fact: the willingness and resources of the public to encounter an unexpected demand of this kind. New York, for instance, was overrun with public charities and associations for the relief of the poor, the unfortunate, the maimed, the halt, the blind, the fatherless children, helpless women, and so forth. In short, there was scarcely a department of human misery which had not its corresponding asylum, aided in most instances by the State, erected often and paid solely by the State, as well as a variety of others set on foot and kept a‐going by private philanthropy or charity. Money from public and private resources had been pouring into these asylums for long years past, without any startling demand being made upon them in return. Now was the time to prove the utility of those institutions, of which we were so justly proud. What was their actual condition? They were for the greater part found practically with exchequers already exhausted, without anything like adequate results being shown. An inquiry as to where all the money had gone succeeded in tracing considerable sums as far as the pockets of the directors, their wives, families, and friends, generally, after which all traces mysteriously disappeared. The good old maxim that “charity begins at home” would seem to have impressed itself as a necessary truth on the minds of the dispensers of our public charities, and it seems to have been carried out severely to the letter. One consolation was afforded the public, however. For some time past its conscience had been offended by the granting of certain sums—small enough indeed, in comparison with the necessities of the cases—out of the public funds to those social offences known as “sectarian” charities—sectarian charities!—and these sums, such as they were, had within the year been very judiciously and properly withdrawn, in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution, as expounded by the men from whose ranks sprang the Christians of the _Crédit Mobilier_ school. It was no small satisfaction to see, in the time of trial, that the public was justified in withdrawing from such institutions the State appropriations, on the ground that they were not distributed as in purely State asylums. How the “sectarian” charities contrasted with the others in the administration and distribution of their funds may be left to the records of the year to tell, as unfolded in the columns of the daily press. Whether a general remodelling of our public institutions, in view of the flagrant mismanagement exhibited last year, be not desirable, is left to the consideration of those most concerned in the matter—the public themselves. As they stand they are an eyesore to honest men, a standing breach of public confidence, and a gross violation of the public contract, to say nothing of what they may be in the eye of a heaven that seems to be getting farther and farther remote from the earth, whereon God once was pleased to walk with the father of mankind.

Our class of statesmen found an easy solution of what Mr. Disraeli esteemed the most difficult problem of politics—the feeding of a people by the government—by an increase of money; and an increase of money is the simplest thing in the world, when money is only so much paper stamped by the government with promise to pay at no very precise date. All that the government had to do in order to ease matters was to draw an unlimited number of I O U’s on itself—itself being practically bankrupt for the time being, but relying on the prospect of something eventually “turning up” to its advantage.

The sad conflicts in Arkansas and Louisiana, the hostility between black and white, come in the same order. In this case, in Louisiana at least, the President and his advisers did not show themselves as well as in the quashing of the bill for inflation of the currency. While the party that had recourse to an absolute revolution in the State and in the face of the nation cannot but be condemned, inasmuch as the approaching elections might have peacefully served their purposes to the same end, much more is the government to be condemned which in the first instance gave its sanction and support to a great and standing wrong. Fortunately, but little blood was spilt; yet one drop in such cases is an indication of the neighborhood of a deluge. All hope for the dispersion of this impending deluge rests now chiefly with the party which was returned to power at the November elections.

If the year leaves us with so much to lament, so many vexed problems to solve, so many rocks ahead in our national course, and with only a half‐ confidence in the crew who are in charge of the ship of state to guide it over the unrevealed dangers of unknown seas, what shall be said of Europe, with its divided nationalities, ambitions, and policies, and only danger as a unit?

The general arming of the nations that began almost half a century ago, but was hurried into feverish activity since the Franco‐German war, may now be said to be completed. Russia within half a dozen years will, if peace so far favors her, have three millions of soldiers in the field; France almost as many; Germany, by the enrolment of the Landsturm, has made itself a nation of soldiers; Austria, Italy, and the rest all follow in due order. All Europe is at this moment armed to the teeth, solely to preserve peace. One is irresistibly reminded of an old verse about a strong man armed keeping his house.

A set of fanatics assembled in London to sympathize with the Prussian government in its “struggle” with its Catholic subjects—that is to say, with the wholesale imprisonment of the Catholic bishops and clergy, the suppression of Catholic religious societies, the fining of Catholic ladies for presenting addresses of condolence to the imprisoned ecclesiastics. The meeting of sympathy called forth a very remarkable letter of gratitude from the German emperor, and occasioned a general jubilee on the part of the German official press. So far, so good. In the meanwhile a French bishop, thinking, probably, that it is hard for a man whose sole crime consists in the fact of his being a Catholic bishop to be imprisoned for that offence, ventures to deliver a mild opinion on the matter in a pastoral to his flock. Straightway comes out a Prussian official paper with an editorial that for solemnity and massiveness might have been written by the Emperor himself, warning, not the French bishop, but all France, that if it cannot restrain itself from that shocking habit it has acquired of using intemperate language against a neighboring and unusually friendly power, Germany, painful as the task may be to its feelings of humanity, will positively be compelled to take its own measures for its own defence. France immediately takes the hint, eats the leek with all becoming meekness, and a circular couched in the language of the Academy is despatched to the bishops generally, the plain English of which would be to hold their tongues on all German matters, unless, of course, they have something pleasant to say. That may be a very easy task for the bishops, but there still remain those _bêtes‐noirs_ of offending governments, the gentlemen of the press; and gentlemen of the press, in France as everywhere else, are unhappily distinguished not so much, perhaps, for having opinions of their own, as for giving vent to those opinions, and setting them down in indelible ink. M. Veuillot, the editor of _L’Univers_, is just one of these unfortunate beings. M. Veuillot has a rather strong way of putting things when it pleases him, and M. Veuillot is hardly the man to take a diplomatic hint. The sad duty becomes incumbent on his government, therefore, to give M. Veuillot and his paper a vacation of a couple of months. The vacation was called suspension. It was duly explained that the German government had had nothing whatever to do with the matter, though, strange to say, the French government had never thought of suspending M. Veuillot for hammering away at itself.

Belgium and Italy were threatened in like manner for allowing their subjects freedom of opinion in so important a matter. Even England was warned, but the warning had small effect.

It was whispered, though the correspondence never came to light, that at one period during the past year some sharply‐worded notes passed between the German government and our own. What the cause of the sharply‐worded notes may have been remains a diplomatic secret. The only thing significant about the matter is that the whisper took shape about a month after the arrest and imprisonment of Archbishop Ledochowski, who had the immortal honor of being the first of the German bishops to surrender the liberty of his person for his faith in this strife. That imprisonment called forth an unanimous condemnation from the American press—not the sectarian press of any creed—that did it honor, and led one to hope that such a thing as principle still existed on the earth, and that genuine homespun American love of liberty was not a meaningless thing.

To the charge of necessary disloyalty to the ecclesiastical laws of Prussia, Catholics will perforce plead guilty—the same Catholics who before the passing of those laws never dreamed of or were accused of disloyalty to the state. Those laws are an insult to the age and to all time. There is not a line of them that does not betray the steel of the executioner, red almost with the blood of his victim. The spirit of Brennus is abroad. The scales of justice show a sadly uneven balance; but the sword of the barbarian tossed in ends all disputes and argument.

Our modern Brennus has struck his blows so rapidly and truly that the world still stares at him in dazed wonder. Success has waited on his footsteps, and men who worship success are not yet sufficiently masters of themselves to measure that success aright. They are afraid to question the actions of a man who seems to strike with the inerrancy of fate. Prince Bismarck had certainly the world on his side; and if the world begins now to fall away from him and recoil, to recover its senses a little, and to question the right and wrong of his actions, he has none but himself to blame.

The signs of the past year tell us that the recoil is beginning to set in. The elections early in the year went against the government. The Catholics gained a large majority on their former number even in Prussia itself. Alsace‐Lorraine returned its members simply to protest against annexation, while the socialists were strengthened also. The government still holds a strong majority, it is true; but the falling away from its standard within four years of its mightiest triumphs was so significant of what was likely to ensue should the government persevere in its policy, that the first thing taken into consideration immediately after the elections was the restricting of the franchise to such voters as it was felt would return a safe and sure majority for the government. Next to this came measures for the restriction of the liberty of the press, which by the efforts of the Catholic party were defeated.

The obvious question will force itself on the mind: Why should a government so strong and mighty, so beloved of the people, as we are always assured, tremble at the popular voice and at the criticism of a newspaper? The answer is easy. The army bill followed. The government required a peace‐effective voted once for all of four hundred and one thousand men. That army was to stand, and, once the bill was passed, parliament was to have no further voice in the matter, whether in regard to payment of the bills or in regulating the number of men. That was to pass completely out of its hands.

For once even the “blustering majority” did not save the government. The terrible danger of the scheme was obvious. The mere presence of so tremendous a standing army was a standing menace not only to the country and its liberties, but to its neighbors. It did not breathe the spirit of peace and rest in the government, and of proper regard for a country already worn and disturbed by three harassing wars occurring in quick succession; while the taking out of the hands of the Houses the control over so large an item of the public funds as was embraced in the bill, was a blow at their privileges to which not even faith in absolutism could blind them. A storm was at once raised. The government staked its existence on the measure. Marshal Moltke rose up in the House, and made a speech in defence of it that will be remembered. He spoke of the alarm caused by Germany to its neighbors. He told them that what they had gained in a few months it would take them fifty years to keep and secure. It was necessary that, though they might not draw the sword, their hand should be for ever on the hilt. He assured them that, after all, wars undertaken and carried through by regular armies were the swiftest and therefore the cheapest. An important consideration that last. As a final argument the veteran told them that “a standing army was a necessity of the times, and he could not but ask the House to devote the figure of four hundred and one thousand rank‐and‐file as a peace‐footing once for all.” A peace‐ footing! But even the marshal’s seductive eloquence could not move them.

Prince Bismarck fell sick and retired to Varzin. The Emperor’s birthday came round, and the generals of his empire came to congratulate him. He assured them that he would dissolve parliament rather than alter the bill. But his imperial majesty forgot that there were more kingdoms than Prussia concerned in his measures now, and that the dissolution that once before served the King of Prussia sufficiently well might, in the disturbed state of affairs, prove a dangerous experiment to the Emperor of Germany. Finally, as is known, somewhat better counsels prevailed, and a compromise was effected, which limited the figure to three hundred and eighty‐five thousand men for seven years. This was a severe check to the government, while it was a lesson to the people to distrust rulers who, in the light of their own schemes, considered the empire as a mere instrument, forgetting wholly that they were for the empire, not the empire for them.

There are many matters in the internal history of Germany during the past year that deserve to be dwelt upon particularly and at length, but a few of which only can be glanced at here. The desire to expand and strengthen itself abroad is natural, and it is strange that the government organs should be so anxious to disavow so praiseworthy an object, provided the motives that urge it are good. It is strange, at the same time, to see how it continues its repressive emigration laws; how anxious so mighty an empire is to keep all its children at home, where they may be serviceable in the Landsturm; and how anxious those children are to get away and come out to us here, leaving behind them and surrendering forever all the glory and the promise of the newly‐founded empire. It is strange, also, to note to what little tricks so great a government can descend in its self‐ imposed conflict with its Catholic subjects; as, for instance, the forged Papal decree respecting the future election of the Sovereign Pontiff that found its way into the columns of the Cologne _Gazette_ at so opportune a moment as the eve of the German elections. Simultaneously with its appearance we were reminded of the significant declaration of Prince Bismarck in the German parliament, June 9, 1873: “If the message is brought to us that a new Pope has been elected, we shall certainly be entitled to investigate whether he has been duly, properly, and legitimately elected”; that is to say, whether the veto of the head of the Holy Roman Empire—who of course is the Emperor William—and of the other powers possessing a veto whom the German government might influence, has been exercised. “Only if we are satisfied on these heads will he be able to claim in Germany the rights belonging to a Roman Pope.”

Out of consideration for Prince Bismarck we pass over those fierce parliamentary storms where his keen opponents, Von Windthorst and Von Mallinkrodt, twitted the Chancellor himself with having been actually guilty of the disloyalty to Prussia and the German soil which he falsely attributed to the Catholics. The prince, amid thunders of applause, charged them with malicious lying; but the charge, though momentarily effective, was not a happy one, as the disclosures of Gen. Della Marmora subsequently showed. Italy was threatened in consequence of Della Marmora’s indiscretion, but the threat proved ineffectual. The general said his say, and the lie was stamped on its author. Prince Bismarck’s popularity was on the wane, if not in Germany itself, certainly in a very large circle outside of Germany where he had hitherto been worshipped as one who with some justice described himself as “the best‐hated man in Europe.” Then, fortunately for himself, as fortunately as a scene in a drama, came the _Deus ex machinâ_ in the pistol of Kullmann to relieve him from his momentary misfortunes. Prince Bismarck was not the man to miss so fine an opportunity of turning to account the insane attempt of the son of a madman on his life, and we were flooded with the time‐honored taunts of means to ends because a man of notoriously bad and violent character, who happened to have been present at some Catholic meetings, committed the wicked and utterly unjustifiable act of firing a pistol at the Chancellor. There are some two hundred million Catholics in the world; there are in Germany fourteen or fifteen, in Prussia alone eight millions, of the same creed. Of all these millions one man, of wicked antecedents and insane descent, is found to commit an act abhorrent to the Catholic conscience all the world over, and at once the universal conscience of that mighty multitude is with a benignant generosity centred in the person of this wretch, who, whether, as many believed, a dupe of the government tools or a dupe of his own disordered intellect, was equally a wretch. Why not turn the argument the other way? Why not wonder at the sublime patience of the people who see the sacred persons of their bishops and priests dragged from the altar‐steps, stripped of their goods, and buried in fortresses, for the crime of violating laws that were made to be violated, without moving a hand to prevent such constant outrages, because the teachings of those disloyal priests and bishops, of that arch‐foe to German nationality, the Pope, never cease to forbid armed resistance to the most oppressive laws that were ever framed? Two or three officials have been sent alone among a vast multitude of Catholics to drag before their very eyes the priest whose Mass they have just attended, from the altar of Christ to a prison—for what possible purpose but to provoke bloodshed and insurrection? Happily, the people were still by the efforts of the clergy restrained from putting themselves at the mercy of a government that knows no mercy; but who shall say how long that patience will endure? And this is the government whose sole aim is the unity and consolidation of Germany and the happiness of every section of its people!

As the Von Arnim case is still pending, it is useless to conjecture what the documents may contain whose possession prompted Prince Bismarck to arrest and confine in a common prison the man who next after himself stood the foremost in the German nation. The arrest to the world at large showed more forcibly than anything that has yet taken place to what lengths the chief of the Prussian government can go; how easily he can trample under foot every tradition of civilization and every feeling of humanity to crush a foe or sweep from his path a possible danger to himself. It is probable that the documents turn chiefly on his foreign policy, and would stamp in indelible characters that policy, which it needs no writing to tell us threatens not only the church, but the peace of Europe, and, through Europe, of the world, perhaps for centuries to come. Such disclosures would in the eyes of outraged Germany and Europe necessitate his deprivation of a power he has so fatally abused.

France struggles on still without a government; that is to say, without a government of which six weeks of existence could be safely predicated. The changes in the ministry have been changes of men rather than of measures. The various parties are still at daggers‐drawn and rather on the increase than otherwise. The Count of Chambord seems for the present to have retired from the contest—a wise and patriotic example, which if all could follow, the country might be allowed breathing time and some fair chance of arriving at a sound judgment as to what was the exact government it wanted—a problem which the French nation has seemed incapable of solving since the first Revolution. The Bonapartists have profited by the withdrawal of the Count, and displayed an earnestness, boldness, and activity which have been crowned with some success, but marked by the disregard of the nation and its submergence in the family name and fame that seem the chief characteristics of “the Napoleonic idea.” The coming of age of the son of the late emperor was marked by a theatrical display and oracular speeches worthy of the Second Empire at its zenith. There have been the usual “scenes” in the French Assembly. The “intervals of ten minutes” and “intervals of a quarter of an hour” have been alarmingly frequent, and after some sittings the air bristled with challenges from warlike deputies, which afforded excellent material for the illustrated journals; but, on the whole, few more dangerous weapons than the peaceful pocket‐handkerchief were drawn, and the pocket‐handkerchief, as all public orators know, is a vast relief in trying moments. M. Thiers has preferred the Apennines to the tribune, and has happily spoken more in Italy than in the Chambers. M. Gambetta, for a man of his calibre, has been singularly well behaved on the whole, and we have not had so many of those journeys to the disaffected districts of which at one time he threatened to be so fond. Sad to say, it is the soldier‐president who has thus far kept the disorderly parties from flying at each other’s throats by the sheer force of the army, on which he silently leans all the while. France is practically in the hands of a military dictator. She is happy in her dictator—that is all. Marshal MacMahon, on succeeding M. Thiers, promised to answer for order, and he has kept his word. More than that, he has, wisely for France, however sad it may be to say so, made the Assembly keep its word and abide by the _septennate_ which it conferred on him. He has used his vast power with a singular discretion, a patriotism unexampled almost in the face of opportunities that would turn the head of many a greater man, and an honest single‐mindedness that has clearly nothing else than the good of the whole country in view. The last symbol of a now ineffectual protection, and indeed for a long time an insincere one, of the Holy Father, has been withdrawn in the _Orénoque_. It is better so. It is better, perhaps, since matters have been pushed so far, that the Holy Father stand absolutely alone, powerless and defenceless, in the eyes of earth and heaven. The power of God alone can now restore to him what is his by right. To‐day among all the European governments there is none so poor as to do him reverence. England has recently withdrawn even its shadow of a diplomatic representative, which possibly marks the beginning of the “little more energy in foreign policy and little less in domestic legislation” that Mr. Disraeli advised while still in opposition.

In all other respects except politics France has every reason to be congratulated. The earnest turning of the people’s heart to God, the desertion of whom called down such terrible punishments, seems in no degree to diminish. The seasons have been propitious, and the vintage of 1874 has been of unexampled excellence and productiveness. The exports of the year were marvellously increased, and God’s blessings would seem to be raining down again on this sorely‐tried land and people. All that is needed is a good and firm government, of which, however, as yet, there seems no immediate prospect. France is as open as ever to surprises; and it is absolutely impossible to forecast its political future.

England has experienced a peaceful revolution similar to our own, and one almost as astonishing in its suddenness, though, as in our case, there were not wanting indications of the change in parties which has taken place, as will be found duly noted by those who care to look at THE CATHOLIC WORLD’S review for 1873. On January 22 Mr. Gladstone issued his memorable “prolix narrative,” announcing, to the surprise of all men, the immediate dissolution of Parliament. The sudden and, under the circumstances, unexampled action of the premier looked remarkably like a desire to take time by the forelock, and by the suddenness of the attack shatter and utterly discomfit the slowly‐gathering forces of the opposition. If such were the real intention, it was miserably miscalculated and singularly ill‐advised. The country was as much outraged as shocked, and showed its appreciation of Mr. Gladstone’s skill at a _coup_ by returning a very handsome Conservative majority, so that Mr. Disraeli, happy man! found himself, to his own surprise, no less than Mr. Gladstone’s, within three weeks of the dissolution, at the head of a strong government and party, with his old rival deep in the shade. The result of the English elections may prove a lesson to popular leaders for the future not to presume too much on their popularity, not to jeopardize a powerful party, and throw an empire into sudden confusion by what looks too much like a freak that it is hoped may win by “a fluke.”

The most significant lesson of the elections, perhaps, was the instantaneous triumph of the Home Rule party in Ireland, while as yet it was to all appearance in its infancy, and almost beneath the rational notice of the English press. It had only provoked derision and calumny. We were constantly told that it had no hold on the heart of the people, that it claimed no men of note, that the nobility and gentry held aloof from it, and so forth.

The “wild adherents” of the “wild folly” have taught even the London _Times_ to respect them; and much reason had they to be pledged to their wild folly, if the words of a man whose opinion is certainly of some value on the subject have any weight: “Ireland at this moment is governed by laws of coercion and stringent severity that do not exist in any other quarter of the globe.” Those words were spoken on the 4th of February, 1874. The speaker was Mr. Disraeli, the present Prime Minister of England. The laws that provoked the observation of so eminent an English statesman still prevail in Ireland. The appeal for amnesty for the unfortunate remnant of the Irish political prisoners has, since those words were spoken, been refused by Mr. Disraeli. And yet the Irish calendars for this year, as for many a year past, were the cleanest in the world and the freest from crime of all kinds. Such is the nation governed at this moment by laws such as Mr. Disraeli has described. The result of such government can scarcely recommend its dispensers to the nation governed, and yet their appeal for control of their own affairs, which the English Parliament confessedly does not understand, and, if it did understand, has, as it acknowledges, too much business on its hands properly to attend to, is a wild folly!

The chief piece of English legislation during the year has been what was embodied in “the bill to put down ritualism”—that is to say, the regulation of divine worship as understood in the church established by act of Parliament. Ritualism, or the “Romanizing tendency,” as it is strangely termed, in the Anglican Church, has been put down, as far as an act of Parliament can put it down. Our ritualists on this side were put down also, for their bishops followed that authority in their church known as the British Parliament, composed respectively of Anglicans, Dissenters, Jews, Quakers, and other sects, with, worst of all, a strong contingent of Roman Catholics. That hydra‐head of the Anglican Church regulated for it to a nicety, pronounced upon its devotions, practices, sacraments, vestments, ornaments, postures of the body, bendings of the knee, elevations of the hands, prostrations, crossings, and so forth, as calmly and in as business‐like a fashion as though it were sitting on an income tax; and the church that we are so solemnly assured by learned men like Bishop Coxe, if it dates not exactly from the Ist, certainly dates from somewhere in the neighborhood of the IVth, century, with a subsequent lamentable gap up to the XVIth, when the Apostle Henry and others of that ilk came to renovate and restore it to its pristine purity, bowed meekly to the infallible decision of the business‐like assembly of Jews, infidels, Quakers, Dissenters, Anglicans, and Roman Catholics. What would S. Peter and S. Paul think of it all?

Something far more serious than this, and of far deeper import to the nation, was the long and persistent strike of the agricultural laborers, which was carried on on a most extensive scale, and with a union that was not thought to exist in the successor of the Saxon hind. Once the ball of disaffection is set rolling, it is very hard to say where it will stop. It is clear that the unions have at last permeated the entire body of the English laboring‐classes. The trades‐unions are too often cousins‐german to the secret societies. The mass of the English agricultural classes, in common with the vast majority of the English laboring‐classes and artisans, have no religion at all. The disaffection with the present order of things in England, though less pronounced than in most modern European nations, has been long gathering, is rapidly spreading, and is beyond all doubt of a nature to excite considerable alarm. Loss of religion, it is needless to say, leaves the minds and hearts of men open to all evil, and it would be beyond stupidity to shut one’s eyes to the very plain fact that the spirit of evil and of general disaffection is particularly active all the world over just at present. Banish religion, banish the guiding hand of God from your objective laws and from the heart and sight of your people, and the people will look on the powers that be, of whatsoever nature, as oppressors, on the rich as despoilers of the poor, on the employers as their tyrants.

A most important movement, and one that we welcome with all our hearts, is the bold step taken at last by the English hierarchy in founding a Catholic university in England. The want has long been felt in that country of a centre of Catholic intellect, culture, and thought, to vie with those seats of learning which the piety of their Catholic forefathers had left as priceless heirlooms to their Catholic children, but which, with all holy places and all holy things, had by the national apostasy become perverted from the purpose of their pious founders, and fallen by a too easy lapse from centres of false faith to centres of no faith at all. In England and Ireland, as with us, the means of providing higher education for students desirous of attaining it have been hitherto necessarily and lamentably deficient. The Catholic University in Ireland and this later one in England give promise that, with proper encouragement from the wealthy and intelligent laity, this long‐felt want will be at length adequately supplied. These are days when the Catholic laity, to whom now all positions, or at least very important ones, are fairly open, are in duty bound to take their stand as becomes loyal children of a mother universally assailed. The laity can penetrate where the clergy have no voice. They are, as S. Peter called them, and as they have so signally proved themselves in Germany, “a kingly priesthood.” But to take a stand similar to that taken by the noble German phalanx, that “thundering legion” in the service of the pagan empire, they must be equal to their adversaries in culture, refinement, and address, all which come more by education than from nature. Many a great mind has retired within a narrow circle for which it was certainly not born, and its efforts rendered half nugatory by lack of that early association and training which a great university, an intellectual focus of the brightest minds in the galaxy of letters, is intended to and does supply. We look, then, with as much hope as expectancy to this step on the part of the English hierarchy, who have saved their children from the allurements of a Satanic culture by supplying them with men of recognized intellectual standing and acknowledged faith in Christ and in his church. Our only hope is that in our own country we soon may rival them.

Some mention will probably be looked for here of the controversy, as it is called, which has sprung up in consequence of a recent pamphlet written by Mr. Gladstone; but there is little need of such mention, inasmuch as Mr. Gladstone seems to have been sufficiently answered by the very men whom his pamphlet was intended chiefly to affect—the Protestants of England. Whether so intended or not, it was beyond all doubt an attempt altogether unworthy the high character of the distinguished author to rouse the rancor of the English Protestants against their Catholic fellow‐subjects. Could we altogether rid ourselves of the respect with which Mr. Gladstone, take him all in all, has hitherto inspired us, as a man whose heart was as large and loyal as his intellect, and that intellect inspired with reverence for God and holy things, his latest exploit could only be described as a vulgar “No Popery” appeal to the worst classes and most degraded passions of English society, delivered in bad taste and worse faith, and, to crown the list of offences, as a political mistake, which has already failed in its object of establishing him, as Earl Russell once was, and as men of the Newdegate and Whalley type would be, as the English “No Popery” champion and leader, while it effectually alienates from him once for all a large and influential body of supporters on whom he has often counted, and on whom there was no reason to believe that a genuine change of front on his part might not have led him to count again. That his pamphlet is all this is true; that Mr. Gladstone intended it to be all this there is too much reason to believe, but of that he himself alone can tell. If the leader of the English Liberal party is pleased to be patted on the back by the men in Germany who patted on the back the orators of Exeter Hall who met to sympathize with the German persecution of Germans whose only crime was their Catholic faith, and whose only stain was and is their readiness to sacrifice life, lands, and liberty in defence of that faith, he is welcome to his ill‐earned applause and doubtful honor.

The space already given to the important topics touched upon leaves little room for comment on others. And indeed the story, as far as the Catholic Church and general politics are concerned, is much the same all the world over. Austria has followed in the wake of Prussia, though its ecclesiastical laws do not seem to have been carried out with the brutal thoroughness of its neighbor. Italy continues in its downward course. The state of its finances is appalling, and yet it plies whip and spur with reckless speed into chaos. Brigandage, in the south chiefly, grows worse and worse. Civil marriage there, as in Prussia, is the law established. A new phase of the secret societies crops out from time to time. It has tried the scheme of popular election of the _curés_ as did Switzerland and Germany, with a like result in all cases—an absurd _fiasco_. It has made great strides in the way of popular education, with the result pictured by the special correspondent of the London _Times_: “The property that is taken from some of the Capuchin convents in Tuscany, and sold at auction, is bought back at the auction by ‘pious benefactors,’ who recall the scattered fraternity to their deserted and desecrated homes, and restore monachism on conditions more favorable than those on which it stood before its suppression. The central government and the municipalities in Italy strain every nerve to supply the people with a free and good education, but their schools have to strive hard to withstand the competition which is raised against them by the Scolopii in Florence, the Barnabites in Milan, and the Ignorantins in Turin.... There are now Waldensian, Methodist, and other evangelical churches and schools in Rome, as in other Italian cities, but their success is not very encouraging, even in the opinion of their candid promoters.” And we may add, for the benefit of the ardent but foolish supporters of the Van Meter and such like schemes, a further extract from the same correspondent: “Attempts to allow the people to elect their parish priests without the permission of, and even in direct opposition to, the bishop of the diocese have been made in some Mantuan rural districts and elsewhere, but hitherto with no extensive or decisive results; and the Gavazzi, Passaglia, Andrea, and others, who would have ventured on a reforming movement within the church itself, have met with no support whatever, either on the part of the government authorities or of public opinion.”

The celebration of the twenty‐eighth anniversary of the elevation of our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., to the chair of Peter, was general throughout Christendom, but desecrated in Rome by the infamous action of the usurping government in clearing the streets of the crowds who were peacefully returning from the _Te Deum_ in S. Peter’s. Violent arrests were made on no pretext whatever, some of the persons arrested being English and American Protestant ladies. On the evening following, and with the connivance of the present Roman authorities, a hideous crowd assembled at midnight to howl cries of hate and blasphemy under the windows of the Sovereign Pontiff. Not religion alone, but common humanity, seems to have been banished from Rome by the entrance of Victor Emanuel. Our constant prayer should be that the great Pontiff, whose conspicuous virtues, and sufferings so patiently borne for Christ’s sake, may be preserved to his children long to witness with his own eyes the end of the blasphemy, violence, and imposture which now beset him on all sides.

Switzerland has almost out Prussiaed Prussia in its assault on the Catholic Church. So much for the freedom of the typical republic! It has changed its constitution into despotism, driving away the Catholic voters from the polls by intimidation and violence. Even Loyson has felt himself compelled to cry out against its excesses, and resigned his curacy at Geneva. The constitution which it has now adopted, it rejected only two years since. It completely subjects religion to the state, and renders it impossible for a Catholic priest to remain in his native country and practise the duties of his office. Civil marriage here again is the order of the day. Marriages, it used to be said, were made in heaven. Their birthplace has been transferred to the office and celestial presence of his eminence the town‐clerk.

In Spain the struggle has assumed a fiercer and more determined character than ever. Castelar, who is already and very deservedly forgotten, was president at the opening of the year. His success in that _rôle_ was what might have been expected, and what has fully justified the opinion held of him throughout in these pages. He was defeated on reading his message to the Cortes in January—a message of despair. General Pavia cleared the Cortes and took possession with his troops. The movement was so well planned that no rising took place. Indeed, it was hard to say for what or for whom a rising should have been made. There was no government; almost all the prominent men had been tried in turn and failed, and the last was the least capable of all. Serrano came to the front again; the whole movement was probably his. Cartagena, which had so long held out against a bombardment by sea and land, was taken soon after, and there remained no foe in the field but Don Carlos, who had profited by the diversion at Cartagena. Bilbao was seriously threatened by the Carlist forces, and would have proved, if taken, an important prize to them. Serrano hastened to its relief with all the available forces of the country, and, aided by Marshal Concha, succeeded in raising the siege without inflicting any material loss on the enemy. Marshal Concha he left to prosecute the campaign, and for the first time since their last rising the Carlists found themselves sore beset. A bullet at Estella, however, ended the checkered career of the most dangerous opponent they had yet encountered, and victory after victory of more or less importance has, with an occasional reverse, continued to crown their arms. More than once have we been assured of their annihilation, only to see them appear with renewed strength, and add another victory to their crown. Through the influence of Germany the European powers with the exception of Russia, have recognized a republic which does not exist, and does not promise to exist, in Spain. At one time Prussia threatened to interfere immediately, and may at any time renew the attempt. The reason for this interference is obvious. A Prussianized Spain would serve as a double‐barrelled gun, covering at once Rome and France. Whereas the success of Don Carlos is the success of a Catholic sovereign and a Bourbon; consequently a friend to France, whatever may be the government in that country. Russia’s refusal to join in its schemes was, however, a little too significant to ignore, and love, which was never at fever‐point between what are now the rival powers in Europe, was not increased by this rebuff. In the meanwhile Spain is suffering terribly in blood, in commerce, in everything that makes the life of a nation, by this prolonged struggle, which it was our hope to see concluded ere this by the victory of the only man who can promise the Spaniards a safe and vigorous government, and who has proved himself possessed of all the qualities of king, general, and, as far as we are able to judge, truly Christian leader—Don Carlos.

In Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, and other of the South American states, the struggle between church and state in Europe has been repeated, even to the seizure of property, the expulsion of priests and nuns, the imprisonment of bishops and priests. One little republic alone, that of Equador, has set a noble example to the world of loyalty to the Catholic faith and to the Apostolic See by devoting a large sum out of the public funds to the aid of the Holy Father. The secret societies have seemingly as strong a hold in South America as in Italy, and the boldness with which they act is manifested by the severity of the sentences passed on the Bishops of Olinda and Para, the Archbishops of Caracas and Venezuela, and the aged Bishop of Merida. Those are still Catholic states, and it is to be hoped that all true Catholics there will exert themselves and use the lawful power that is in their hands to put a stop to the scenes of outrage and brutal violence that are constantly on the increase.

It is time that civilized governments, or those that claim the title, should unite to put a stop to the horrible periodical massacres of Christians in China, of which the details reach us from time to time, particularly during the past year. It is a shame upon all nations that peaceful women should be outraged and brutally cut to pieces, as are the Catholic nuns in that country. The European powers and our own could, if they chose, put a stop to this infamous practice—for practice it is. And our own government might well take the initiative in the matter. We welcome the Chinese into this country. They come in swarms; they find home and labor, and reward for their labor. They live among us, and leave us, unmolested to the last. Their very idolatry is allowed; and yet at almost stated intervals their countrymen rise up and horribly mutilate and murder our dearest and best.

Of actual wars during the year there have been happily few. The defeat of the Ashantees, and the burning of their capital city by the British forces, adds, it is to be presumed, a new lustre to the glories of England. The Dutch retaliated for their defeat of the year previous in Acheen by in turn defeating the Achinese. Russia is securing its footsteps as it advances into Asia. An invasion of Formosa by the Japanese, who are becoming more and more amenable to European customs, ended strangely by a payment of indemnity on the part of China and the departure safe home of the Japanese. The usual chronic revolutions might be recorded of one or more of the South American states, but beyond this there is nothing very sanguinary to record.

An event that will long be memorable, and which excited very general interest outside, was the departure for the first time of a body of pilgrims from this country to Lourdes and Rome, under the guidance of the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Fort Wayne and the Rev. P. F. Dealy, S. J. They were received with special marks of affection by the Holy Father, who declared that in this country he was more Pope than in any other.

An event that excited extraordinary commotion and a general display of a strange splenetic hate on the part of the English press was the quiet conversion to the Catholic faith of the Marquis of Ripon, who, in addition to his hereditary title and established character as an English statesman, added that of Grand Master of the Freemasons in England. Among other conversions was that of the Queen Dowager of Bavaria.

We are not in the position to compare the statistics of the past year’s capital crimes or suicides with those of former years; but whether they be greater or less, they are alarmingly great. Suicide and murder were startlingly frequent during the year; and as far as passing glances at the reports in the newspapers would justify an opinion, they seem in most cases to have resulted from wicked and immoral lives. For a time masked burglary threatened to become the fashionable crime of the year. A speedier sentence and a more honest dispensing of the law than often prevails would more materially, perhaps, than any other means tend to diminish the long annual list of offences against life and property. Education, to be sure, is a great thing, and there will be an opportunity in the coming year of seeing how the new law of compulsory education for all children will work in the State of New York. The question is too large a one to enter into here. As has been shown over and over again, compulsory education with us means practically a compulsory Protestant education; for Protestantism, if not actually taught, is done so at least negatively, for many of the class‐books teem with Protestantism from cover to cover. That, however, is a matter within the power of remedy to a great extent. The compulsory education of Prussia that is so much extolled allowed the Catholic priest and the Protestant minister to teach their respective religions at stated hours, in opposite corners of the schools, even though they had Sunday‐schools as well. But our only safeguard is our own schools for our own children, and it is gratifying to note the zeal with which both clergy and laity have combined during the past year to establish Catholic schools all over the country. That is the first thing to be done. Let us first have our own schools, and then we may fairly see about the management of our own moneys.

Only a few of the distinguished dead who have gone out with the year can be mentioned. The church in the United States has lost five venerable servants and pioneers of faith, in Bishops Melcher of Green Bay, O’Gorman, of Omaha, Whelan of Wheeling, McFarland of Hartford, and Bacon of Portland. The College of Cardinals has lost three of its members: Cardinal Barnabo, the great Prefect of the Propaganda, to whom the church in this country is greatly indebted; Cardinals Falcinelli and Tarquini. The Christian Brothers lost their venerable superior, Brother Philippe, whose funeral was attended by the chief notabilities of Paris, together with a vast crowd of people of all ranks and conditions in life, so much so that as the white flag was the suspicious color just then, and as that flag has the misfortune under its present holder of being connected with religion, the keen‐scented gentry of the press discovered in this last tribute to a man who had spent his life in doing good a Chambordist demonstration. The death of Mgr. de Merode was a great loss to the Holy Father, as well as to a multitude of friends. An interesting comparison might be made between the purposes to which he devoted his vast wealth and those of a man still more wealthy who died within the year—the Baron Mayer de Rothschild. His admiring chronicler in the leading English journal informs us that the baron, who, in addition to his other admirable qualities, was a silent member in the English Parliament, spared no expense to erect in his own palace a museum “adorned with all that is beautiful.” “He applied himself systematically to breeding race‐horses,” in compensation for which exceptional virtue the same glowing chronicler assures us that “when he won, a year ago, the Dudley, the Oaks, and the St. Leger, all the world felt that a piece of good and useful work had been performed.” Well, well! Did not our own Sumner leave life this very year amid general regret, sighing only that his book was not completed? Had that been finished, he would not have cared. And, thinking thus, went out one who is a part of our history, and whose name, though it did not fulfil all its earlier promise, was great among us. Ex‐President Fillmore died almost unnoticed. Certain news of the death of Dr. Livingstone in 1873 arrived during the year. Art has lost Kaulbach, who devoted his undoubted genius to attacking the church, and Foley. One of the men of a century died in Guizot. Merivale and Michelet are lost to history, Shirley Brooks to light literature. Strauss, the infidel, perhaps, has learnt at last the truth of an awkward verse in S. James. Not only Germany, but the Catholic cause all the world over, has sustained a sad and in a sense irreparable loss in the great and chivalrous leader of the Catholic centre in the German parliament, Herr von Mallinkrodt, whom divine Providence was pleased to call away in the height of a career of great usefulness to the church and to society. He was a foe whom Prince Bismarck dreaded and had reason to dread—one of those men whom no weak point escapes, no side issue can divert, no opponent cow. Adam Black and the monstrosity known as the Siamese Twins died during the year.

And now the glance at the outline of the general year and some of its chief incidents is completed. With every succeeding year we look forward with more anxiety than confidence into the future. There are terrible forces, long concealed, nearer the social surface than they ever were before, and they come up now, as a consequence probably, just when the general bond that ought to hold the human family together is at the loosest; when men are ready to burst all bounds and call everything in question; and when the lights of the age can only tell man that he is nothing more than a fortuitous cohesion of irresponsible atoms, begotten of void only to fall back into it. The only bond that can bind the human family together is “the one law, one faith, one baptism,” preached nineteen centuries ago in Judæa by the lips of the Son of God. And it is just that faith that is now being as fiercely assailed as it ever has been within the Christian era. There is not merely an arming of material forces going on silently. There is a clash of faith, of intellect, of moral principles, of all that guides and constitutes the inner and the greater life of man; and of the double collision, the material and the spiritual, that seems to hang over us and make heavy with foreboding the air of all the world. Though supernatural faith may not doubt as to the issue, human weakness cannot but tremble and grow faint at the prospect.

New Publications.

ORIENTAL AND LINGUISTIC STUDIES. Second Series. By W. D. Whitney, Professor of Sanscrit and Comparative Philology in Yale College. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.

Yale College well deserves the name of university in common with its great rival, Harvard. The advance it has made within the last twenty‐five years is something really remarkable, and, to the great honor of its governing body, this advance has kept pace in linguistic studies with the improvement in the departments of mathematics and physics. One of the functions of a university is the production of really learned and solid books for the instruction of readers generally, as well as students in particular branches. The volume before us is a specimen of this class. Whatever we may think of some of Prof. Whitney’s theories and opinions, we must acknowledge the evidence of study, labor, and great care to present the results of learning and thought on important and interesting subjects, which his works exhibit.

The contents of the present volume are somewhat varied and miscellaneous. One of the topics treated of, which deserves special attention, is the spelling and pronunciation of the English language. The variations of spelling are not so numerous and important as are those of pronunciation, but in this latter respect our language is certainly in a state which is most unsatisfactory and vexatious, and becoming every day worse. We are not an advocate of any revolutionary project in regard to phonetic spelling, but we do most earnestly desire a fixed and uniform standard, and still more a rule of uniformity in pronunciation. Mr. Whitney’s researches into this subject are extremely curious, valuable, and often amusing, and he shows a very peculiar and ingenious facility of describing and expressing the various oddities and extravagances of individual or provincial usage. The question at once suggests itself whether there are any practicable means of fixing a standard of spelling and pronunciation. If it were question of a language spoken by one nation only, we can see very easily that an academy might be established which should settle all these matters by authority. An Englishman might assert the right of England to determine all usages in respect to the English language, and the corresponding obligation of all English‐speaking peoples to conform to an authoritative standard furnished by an academy in England. Americans might not be satisfied with this. The further question arises, therefore, whether it be possible that English and American scholars should do something concurrently in this direction.

Mr. Whitney has given in some other papers, with a condensed but clear exposition, historical and philosophical views of India and China which will probably have more interest to the great body of readers than any other portions of his volume. In respect to one very important aspect of these topics, the missionary aspect, he shows impartiality and manifest effort to conform his statements and judgments to historical facts and a real rather than a fanciful standard. There is no attempt to claim for Protestant missions greater success than they have had, and a very fair tribute of praise is given to the celebrated Catholic missionaries who have labored in that arduous field. Yet, like other Protestants, Mr. Whitney shows himself not well informed about the practical results at which Catholic missionaries aim, and which, in so far as that is possible, they accomplish, in making their converts solidly pious and virtuous Christians.

Among the other topics treated of in this volume, the most important are Müller’s _Chips from a German Workshop_, Cox’s _Aryan Mythology_, and the “Lunar Zodiac of India, Arabia, and China.” We have not examined these and previous essays of the learned author, in which the formation of languages and mythologies is treated of, with sufficient attention to be enabled to understand clearly his fundamental theory of the origin and history of religion. We therefore abstain from any attempt at a critical judgment; and, in regard to Mr. Whitney’s own special department of _Sanscrit_, very few critics can safely venture on that ground. Thorough and solid studies in these recondite branches of knowledge must lead to results advantageous to religion as well as to merely human science. We rejoice, therefore, in the noble and in many respects successful efforts of Mr. Whitney and his associates to promote the cause of high education in this country. We trust that their example may be emulated by those who have the principal charge of the higher education of our Catholic youth. The English bishops have already inaugurated the University College of Kensington with a faculty worthy of Oxford or Cambridge. When will the first steps be taken for a similar institution among ourselves?

THE KING’S HIGHWAY; OR, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH THE WAY OF SALVATION, AS REVEALED IN THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. By the Rev. Augustine F. Hewit, of the Congregation of S. Paul. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1874.

This work of Rev. Father Hewit supplies a want we have often felt in instructing converts to the church. There are many sincere persons looking for light, and dissatisfied with the religious sect in which they were born, who have no idea of the church, nor the office it holds in the plan of redemption. The denomination to which they belong has never been of any use to them, and has, in fact, disclaimed all power to guide or help them. It requires often some time to overcome their prejudice against any kind of instrumentality between their souls and God. They believe in the Sacred Scriptures, which they have never deeply studied, but which they hold to be the oracles of divine truth. In their opposition to the Catholic faith they have been fighting against the only thing which can fill up the desire of their hearts, and bring into blessed harmony all they know of God and all they seek from his hands. To such this book will be as a messenger from heaven. It will remove their doubts, and from the inspired writings will prove to them the error of Protestant theories, and show how Christ our Redeemer is only to be found in his church, “which is his body,” which “he filleth all in all.” Written in the clear, graceful, and forcible style which distinguishes all the works of the author, it brings forth an argument which no honest mind can resist. It points out “the King’s highway,” so plainly that “the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot fail to find it.” The first chapters are devoted to a refutation of the false theories of Calvinism and Lutheranism. By the plain language of the Bible they are shown to be opposed to the divine Word, contradictory of each other, and hostile to the very nature and attributes of God. The true doctrine of redemption is then set forth from the Scriptures, with the office of faith and the prerequisites of justification. The whole system of salvation, as the mercy of Jesus Christ has revealed it, arises in its beauty and fulness before the eyes of the sincere, and the Catholic Church opens its door to the weary and heavy‐laden, that they may enter in to praise God and find rest to their souls. We have nowhere seen a more clear and effective demonstration of our divine religion from the Scriptures. We have only to pray that it may have a large circulation among the honest inquirers after truth in this day of darkness and infidelity. Protestants of the old class profess a great reverence for the Bible, which is to them a kind of rule of faith. The diligent reading of this work will convince them that they cannot follow the Scriptures and remain where they are; that Catholics alone can understand and obey the written Word of God. Neither can they abide in the creed of their fathers amid the errors and disorganizing influences of this day. They must go forward and keep the truth they have already received by embracing all to which it leads, or lose what they have in the misery of doubt and unbelief. The day of grace for dogmatic Protestants is well‐nigh gone.

We have only to add the earnest wish that Catholics generally would read this book and profit by the instruction it contains. There are very many among us who might lead others to the truth, if they were better informed as to the grounds of their faith, and the points of controversy which separate the conflicting Christian sects from the church. Idleness and ignorance will be a fearful burden to bear before the Judge of all. The talent hidden in the ground will be demanded with interest, and the unprofitable servant will have to answer for light unimproved and grace unfruitful. The souls we could have saved will rise up against us in the day of our greatest need. “Unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required.”

T. S. P.

THREE ESSAYS ON RELIGION. By John Stuart Mill. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1874.

What John Stuart Mill was, and what his life was, our readers have been already informed in a review of his _Autobiography_. The prince of modern English sophists and sceptics, he was as miserable and hopeless in life and death as the victim of an atheistical education might be expected to be; as miserable as a man outwardly prosperous, enjoying the resources of a cultivated mind, and exempted by the moral force of his character from the consequences of gross crimes, could well become. These three _Essays_ are essays of the unhappy sceptic to reduce his readers to the same miserable condition. Their scope is to overturn, not revealed religion alone, but all theism; to destroy the belief in God; and to substitute the most dreary atheism, fatalism, and nihilism for the glorious, elevating, consoling faith of the Christian, and the imperfect but yet, in itself, ennobling philosophy of the higher class of rationalists. It is a very bad sign for our age, and a worse omen for the future, that men can profess atheism without incurring public odium and disgrace, and that respectable publishers find it for their interest to flood the market with the deadly literature which is worse than that of France during the age of Bayle and Voltaire. A large class of book‐sellers may always be found, not scrupulous or over‐sensitive in their consciences about right and wrong in morals, when money is to be made. We suppose, however, that those of them who expect to make fortunes and transmit them to their children would like to have the good order of society continue. What can such gentlemen be thinking of when they help to lay the train under the foundations of order and social morality? We know of a man who helped to run his own bank, in which he had many thousands of dollars invested, by demanding specie for a hundred‐dollar bill during a panic. Old John Bunyan tells of a certain person living in the town of Mansoul whose name was Mr. Penny wise‐pound‐ foolish. Every one who helps on the spread of atheism, materialism, impiety in any shape, even if he makes money or fame by it, is helping to run his own bank. Moreover, he is helping to train the generation of those who will cut the throats of the whole class he belongs to. We are just now very wisely, though somewhat tardily, bringing the odious Mormon criminals to justice, by a kind of blind Christian instinct which still survives in our public opinion. What is the consistency or use of this, if we are going to look on apathetically and see the next generation all over our country turned into atheists? Practical atheism is worse than the most hideous and revolting form of Mormonism. Why mend a broken spar when mutineers are scuttling the ship from stem to stern? Would it not be well for those conductors of the press who have some principles and some belief in them, for the clergy, and for all who have access in some form to the ear of a portion of the public, to be a little more alive to the danger from the spread of atheism, and a little more active in counteracting it?

Pardon, gentlemen, for disturbing your nap. You are very drowsy, but is it not time for you to wake up?

EAGLE AND DOVE. From the French of Mademoiselle Fleuriot, by Emily Bowles. New York: P. O. Shea. 1874.

This is a story of Breton life and of the events of the siege and the Commune of Paris. It is superior to the common run of stories in artistic merit, its characters and scenes have a peculiar and romantic interest, and its religious and moral tone is up to the highest mark.

THE WORKS OF AURELIUS AUGUSTINE, Etc. Vol. XI. Tractates on the Gospel of S. John, Vol. II.; Vol. XII. Anti‐Pelagian works, Vol. II. Edinburgh: J. & J. Clark. 1874. (New York: Sold by The Catholic Publication Society.)

Two more volumes of the splendid edition of S. Augustine’s works are here presented, and deserve a warm welcome. It is difficult to see how they will serve the cause of the Church of England, but that is the affair of the editors, not ours. Of course they are mighty weapons for High‐ Churchmen against their Low and Broad Church antagonists. But they tell equally against these same High‐Churchmen in favor of the Catholic Church. The treatise against Vincentius Victor, in Vol. XII., is crowded with denunciations of the Donatists, who are the prototypes of Anglicans, except in one respect, viz., that the former had valid orders.

RHYMES AND JINGLES. (Illustrated.) By Mary Mapes Dodge, author of _Hans Brinker_, etc. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1875.

This is a very pretty book for a Christmas present. The rhymes are nice, and such as will please, amuse, sometimes instruct folk of the nursery. The illustrations are numerous and well executed, some are funny, some remarkably beautiful. Any little boy or girl who has not already been surfeited with toys and books may be made happy by such a gift. Merry little people, a merry Christmas to you!

LIBRARY OF THE SACRED HEART. Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co. 1874.

This is something towards supplying a great need among Catholic publications. There are numerous and beautiful series of books issued by the sectarian press, but comparatively few by Catholic publishers. Any one who has had to procure Catholic libraries knows this want. Such series are great aids in supplying Sunday‐school or household libraries. We welcome the above, and trust it will be followed by others of the same kind. Much credit is due to the publishers for their selection and the neat appearance of the volumes. The selection comprises six small and choice spiritual works. _God our Father_ and the _Happiness of Heaven_, by the same author, have been noticed with high praise in our columns. The others also are standard works. We recommend this “Library of the Sacred Heart,” and hope it will be appreciated. It is contained in a neat and tasteful box, appropriately ornamented with pious emblems of the Sacred Heart.

BRIC‐A‐BRAC SERIES—NO. IV.: PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY BARHAM, HARNESS, AND HODDER. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1874.

This is quite up to the mark of the foregoing volumes, and full of very agreeable anecdotes, criticisms, and literary chit‐chat.

ANNOUNCEMENT.—We shall begin, next month the publication of a new serial story, entitled _Are you my Wife?_ by the author of _Paris before the War, Number Thirteen, A Daughter of S. Dominic, Pius VI._, etc., etc.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XX., NO. 119.—FEBRUARY, 1875.

Church Authority And Personal Responsibility:

A Letter Prom Aubrey De Vere To Sara Coleridge On The Catholic Philosophy Of The “Rule Of Faith,” Considered Especially With Reference To The Transcendental System Of S. T. Coleridge.(149)

A letter to me, printed in the _Memoir of Sara Coleridge_, and dated October 19, 1851, contains the following passage: “Viewing the Romish system as you do, my dear friend, I cannot regret that you think, as you do, of the compatibility of my father’s scheme of philosophy therewith, assured, as I feel, that he had done that Papal system too much justice to believe in it as a divine institution” (vol. ii. p. 401). From my youth I had been an ardent student of Coleridge’s philosophy, to the illustration of which his daughter, indifferent to her own literary fame, so faithfully devoted her great powers. That philosophy had largely inspired F. D. Maurice’s remarkable work, _The Kingdom of Christ_; and I believed firmly that it was, at least as compared with the empirical philosophy of the last century, in harmony with Catholic teaching, rightly understood; and that the objections made against that teaching were such as a transcendentalist must regard as proceeding, not from any intuitions or ideas of the “reason,” but from the cavils of that notional understanding called by Coleridge “the faculty judging according to sense.” I have lately found a letter written by me to my lamented friend less than a fortnight after her letter quoted above, and about a fortnight before I made my submission to the Catholic Church. It may interest some of those who have read Sara Coleridge’s letters, and who are enquirers as to the method proper for reaching solid conclusions in the domain of truth not scientific and discovered by man, but religious, and revealed to him.

It was my object to show that the Catholic “rule of faith” does not oppose, but alone adequately vindicates, some great principles with which it has been contrasted, _e.g._, personal action, the dependence of individual souls on divine grace, religious freedom, zeal for truth, the interior character of genuine piety, and the value of “internal evidences.” That “rule” has been stigmatized as a bondage. This is the illusion of those who, regarding the church from without, and under the influence of modern and national traditions, see but a part of her system, and have not compared it with other parts. The Catholic law of belief I endeavored to set forth as the only one consistent with a sound philosophy when treating of things supernatural, and as such beyond the method of induction and experiment, while it is also both primitive and Scriptural. I wished to show that it is the only means by which we can possess the revealed truth with certainty and at once in its fulness and its purity; and to illustrate it as not alone our gate of access to truth “spiritually discerned,” but the nurse and the protectress of our whole spiritual life, with all its redeemed affections; as opposed, not to personal action and responsibility, or to a will free and strong, because loyal, but to an unintelligent pride and to a feeble self‐will, the slave of individual caprice; as the antagonist, not of what is transcendent and supernatural in religion, but of a religious philosophy in which the philosophy exalts itself against the religion, “running after” revelation to “_take somewhat of it_,” but not inheriting its blessing.

Twenty‐three years have passed since my letter was written; and year after year has deepened in me the convictions which it expresses, or rather which it indicates in a fragmentary way, and possibly not with a technical accuracy. In the church I have found an ever‐deepening peace, a freedom ever widening, a genuine and a fruitful method for theological thought, and a truth which brightens more and more into the perfect day. External to her fold, it is but too probable that I should long since have drifted into unbelief, though a reluctant and perhaps unconscious unbelief.

After some preliminary matter, referring to our earlier discussions, the letter continues as follows:

Divine faith is a theological virtue, the gift of God, which raises the spirit to believe and confess, with a knowledge absolutely _certain_, though obscure in kind, the _whole truth which God has revealed to man_. Such is the _description_ which Roman Catholic writers give of a grace which cannot be _defined_. The knowledge of faith is as certain as that of mathematics, but wholly different in kind, including a moral and spiritual power, affecting (if it be _living_ faith) the mind and will at once, as light and heat are united in the sunbeam, and containing, like the sunbeam, many other secret properties also. It far transcends the certainty of any one of our senses, each of which may deceive us. It is also essentially different from that intellectual vision which belongs to the kingdom of glory, not of grace or of nature. Its nearest analogon is human faith, through which we believe that we are the children of our reputed parents, and on which, and not on demonstration, the basis of human life is laid. But it differs essentially also from human faith. It is supernatural, not natural. It is certain, not uncertain. In its application to supernatural objects it is wholly independent of imagination or enthusiasm; and it brings us into _real_ intercourse with objective truth. False religions rest on that which simulates divine faith, and _may_, even among Christians, so fill its place that the difference is not discernible to human eyes—a mixture of human faith with aspiration, imagination, and the other natural faculties. True religion carries with it the special faculty by which it is capable of being realized, and thus makes a revelation which they but seemed to make. But this faculty is not a natural one awakened, but a supernatural one bestowed, its ordinary antecedents being the corresponding moral virtues of humility and purity; and the exercise of _human_ faith and other devout affections, themselves stimulated by a different and inferior kind of grace, bestowed on the whole family even of unregenerate man. Besides the antecedent conditions for receiving, other conditions are necessary for the realization and right application of the divine and illuminating grace. These conditions are not arbitrary, but spring from the necessities of our whole nature, both individual and corporate. They are ordinarily the individual co‐operation of will, mind, and heart, and an attitude of willing submission to God, or the prophet _through_ whom the objects of faith are propounded to us by him. This prophet was the Messiah himself while he walked on earth, and was the Apostolic College from the day of Pentecost. He continues to address us, in a manner equally distinct, through that church in whom, as catholic and yet one, the unity of the Apostolic College (one in union with Peter) still abides. That church is the body of Christ; and we are introduced at once into it and him through baptism. The visible rite corresponds with the invisible grace bestowed through it, just as the church itself is at once the spiritual kingdom of peace, and the visible “mountain of the Lord’s house” elevated to the summit of the mountains, and as man himself, consists of soul and body.

That church, inheriting a belief which it never invented or discovered, confesses Christ, and confesses also that she is Christ’s representative on earth. She challenges individual faith, and proposes to it the one object of dogmatic belief. That one object is the _whole_ Christian faith, as it has hitherto been, or ever may be, authentically _defined_. Whether it be believed _implicitly_, as by the peasant, or _explicitly_, as by the doctor, makes no difference whatever, relatively to _faith_, though it may affect edification, which needs a due proportion between our intellectual and moral gifts. In each case alike (1) the _whole_ faith is held; (2) is held _bonâ fide_, as _revealed by God_; (3) is held wholly by supernatural _faith_; (4) affords thus a basis for the supernatural life of hope and charity. “Fundamentals,” as distinguished from “non‐essentials,” there are none, _i.e._, objectively. All Christian truths are in each other by implication, as Adam’s race was in the first parent. They are yet more transcendently in each other, for each contains all. To receive one by divine faith is to receive all. To deny one, when competently proposed to us by the authority which speaks in God’s name, is to deny all, unless circumstances beyond our will have deceived our mind respecting that authority or its message. The whole objective faith will probably never be recognized, till in the kingdom of glory it flashes upon us in its unity. In the kingdom of grace (_in via_, not _in patria_) it is defined in proportion to the moral and intellectual needs of the church. It is defined, not as a science, but from necessity, and to meet the gainsaying of heresy. The endeavor of the church is to _preserve_ the treasure confided to her. _It_ cannot increase, but the _knowledge_ of it must. Subjectively, the knowledge is progressive as man is progressive; but objectively it is unchanging as God is eternal. The whole, defined and undefined, is essential and one. The whole is needed for the race, that the race may retain Christ, its head. The knowledge of the whole is needed by each according to his circumstances. The entire belief of the entire truth, _implicitly_, is necessary for each individual. Ordinarily, and except in the case of involuntary error, that entire belief of the whole is realized through a submission (_absolute_ but _free_, filial, and necessitated by all our Christian sympathies and spiritual affections, as well as by obedience) to her who is God’s representative, visible, on earth.

The existence of that visible church is wholly irrespective of our needing an expositor of dogmatic faith. Its character is determined (1) by the character of God, whom it images alike in his unity and his plurality; (2) by the character of Christianity, which is communicated to the _race_, and to the individual _in and with_ the body, so that _nothing_ that he holds can be held _singly_, except what is perishable; and (3) by the character of man, who graduates in a certain order, and who, as a mixed being, is taught after a fashion that ever exalts the meek and raises the moral faculties above the intellectual in endless elevation, however high the latter may ascend. But among its other functions, the visible church has that of presenting to the infused habit of faith what otherwise it would seek for in vain, _i.e._, a dogmatic _authority_ which, in act, it can rise to, cleave to, and live by. If Christ reigned visibly on earth, he would need no such representative. If Christ, as the Eternal Reason, _inspired_ each man, as well as enlightening him, he need never have assumed flesh. If the Holy Ghost _inspired_ each man as he did the prophets and apostles (instead of communicating to him the grace of faith, planting him in the church, feeding him with the Lord’s body, quickening his devout affections, etc.), then there would be no need for the church, as a dogmatic authority, nor for the _Holy Scriptures_. If the Bible were a plain book; if the nature of truth were such that it could be divided into fundamental and non‐essential; if one doctrine could be believed, while another, involved in it, is denied, then, perhaps, private judgment might extract from the Bible as much as an individual requires. Again, if supernatural faith were not requisite, but human faith, founded on _evidence_, and generating _opinion_, sufficed, then private judgment, availing itself of all _human_ helps suggested by prudence, could build up on the Bible, on philosophy, on ecclesiastical traditions, and on the public opinion of the day, a certain scheme of thought on sacred subjects, round which the affections would cluster, to which devout associations would cling, which the understanding might formalize, imagination brighten, enthusiasm exult in, prudence recommend. But these are all suppositions, not realities. Private “inspiration” is known to be a fallacy. “Reason” cannot make reasonable men agree; and every one who has any portion in reason knows that what is disputed for ages is disputable, and that what is not truth to all cannot be truth absolute and certain, on the ground of reason, to any one. Uncertain opinion cannot be supernatural faith. Spiritual discernment cannot lead us to the finer appreciation of doctrine while we remain ignorant as to whether it be a particular doctrine or the opposite doctrine that challenges our faith.

But, on the other hand, if an authority speaks in God’s name, it _may_ be really commissioned by him. If so commissioned, it _may_ be believed by us. If believed, all parts of its message are equally certain. This hypothesis obviously _admits_ of an objective faith certain throughout, and only for that reason certain at all. If a revelation were to be _founded on faith, this would afford faith a sphere_. I speak of it now as but an hypothesis. I claim for it that it is _reasonable_.

It is objected that _such_ belief could be but an amiable and useful credulity at best, since it would not be founded on insight and spiritual discernment. It is thus that Hindoos and Mahometans believe; and their belief would be worthless, but that by God’s mercy some fragments of truth and some gleams of reason are mixed up with their systems. The objection wholly overlooks the fact that _ex hypothesi_ the prophet and her message are believed, not with a _human_ faith, but with a _divine_ faith. Faith is inclusively the gift of spiritual discernment, though it is also much more. What faith receives _must_ be spiritually discerned. It can discern in no other way.

But, it is objected, the plain fact is that multitudes do _not_ spiritually discern or appreciate what they thus receive. No doubt. Nothing is more possible than that they should receive with only a human faith what yet is divinely addressed to a divine faith. They have, then, opportunities which they have not yet used. Multitudes of Roman Catholics have doubtless, like multitudes of Protestants, opinion only, not certainty, while the sensation of certainty is in both cases illusory, and proceeds from positiveness of temper or sluggishness of mind.(150) To possess the means of realizing and maintaining faith _compels_ no man to have faith; otherwise, like intuitions irrespective of the will, it would merit nothing and include no probation. Faith and the guide of faith are both offered to the Catholic; but he must co‐operate with grace, as with Providence, to profit by either.

But how, it is asked, can we by such a process have a spiritual discernment of the doctrine by which we are challenged? Are we not in the position, after all, of Hindoos? I answer, Christianity resembles many false religions in this respect: that it comes to us on what claims to be authority, and challenges our submission; but it differs from them in this all‐important respect: that others are false, and it is true. It being true, the human mind, which, so far as it retains the divine image, is in sympathy with truth, has a _moral_ appreciation of its truth, and, when illuminated by faith, has a _spiritual_ discernment of it. No one who, after years of wandering in erroneous paths, comes at last to contemplate the doctrine of the Trinity from a new point of view, and accepts it on what he trusts is a spiritual discernment of it, can doubt that he could equally have discerned its truth years before had he been led by the church to the same point of view, and gifted from above with that light which removes the sensuous film. He could not indeed, on the authority of the church, spiritually receive or hold, with genuine faith, something in itself false and absurd. But then _part of the hypothesis_ is that the church can propound no doctrinal error. Neither could the definition _give_ faith. But then it does not profess to do so; it but _shapes_ and _directs_ faith. As little could the authority of the church give faith. It makes no such profession; it but _challenges_ faith. It is the _inseparable condition_ of faith: God is its _source_. The human mind, co‐ operating with grace, receives faith, and at the same time is confronted with a distinct, palpable object of faith. So touched, it becomes the mirror of truth; and its belief is exclusively a _personal_ and _internal_ act, though performed with the instrumentality, not only of an outward agency, but of a _specific_ external agency, _i.e._, the church. The same Divine Spirit acts at once externally and internally—externally in the church, which it commissions, instructs, and keeps one; internally in the individual mind, which it kindles, illuminates, attracts, and (dissolving the tyranny of self‐love) lifts up into freedom and power. The Holy Spirit, then, is at once the root of faith in the individual, and of unity in the church. This doctrine may be objected to as _ideal_; but surely not as _carnal_. Assuredly it is Scriptural.

But, it is rejoined, “supposing that the divine message may be spiritually discerned _when_ it is devoutly accepted, and thus accepted _as a whole_, when it would otherwise be accepted but in part (and then, perhaps, with but a partial faith), still how are we to know that the authority is divine? If no belief, however sound, is faith, unless it (1st) believes, and (2d) _truly believes_, that it rests on _divine testimony_ and listens to God himself, how is this prophet to be recognized? The world abounds in claimants to infallibility, though the Christian world has but one. The apostles indeed claimed it; but then they wrought miracles, and the miracles proved the authority.” I answer that miracles _proved_ nothing by way of _scientific demonstration_; but that they _witnessed_ to the supernatural character of the teacher and the doctrine. If the divine message could be _proved_ to the reason, it would rest on science, not on faith, and the whole Christian scheme would be reversed, belief becoming a necessary and _natural_ act. Miracles _challenged_ faith, but could only be received by faith, since they might always be referred to imposture or evil spirits, both classes of agency abounding in the time of Simon Magus as now. It is begging the question to assume that miracles do not take place now; but, even conceding thus much, the church has still at least as high credentials as the apostles had. Their miracles constituted but evidence; and evidence which creates opinion can but _challenge_ faith, not extort it. In place of that evidence we have now the “notes of the church”: its apostolicity, its catholicity, its unity, its sanctity, its heroic history, its wonderful promulgation, its martyrs, its doctors, its schoolmen; communities moulded by it; races united by it; sciences and arts first nourished by it; civilization and freedom produced by it, and, amid all the changes of the world, the same great doctrines and sacraments retained by it. We can hardly doubt that the one stupendous _fact_ of the church is as strong an _appeal_ to the faith of a man (and our Lord himself did but _appeal_ to faith) as that made by an apostle at Athens, when, rising up in a mixed multitude of disputatious Greeks, Eastern sorcerers, Roman conjurers, and Jewish refugees, he assured them that he had been sent by the unknown God to preach what to the Greeks was foolishness: that One who was crucified had also worked miracles and risen from the dead, . . . that his kingdom, and not the Roman, was to crown the world; and that all this was the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy, though the Jewish nation disowned that kingdom, and had slain its Head. He spoke of glories to come: the church speaks of triumphs that have been. He suggested an experiment: the church has tried and proved it. He was accused of blasphemy, superstition, atheism, insubordination; so is she. He must have confessed that inspiration was not given to him alone, but to the Apostolic College; and he could have brought no immediate and scientific proof that he and his scattered brethren agreed in the same doctrine, even as to “essentials.” The church’s practical unity of doctrine is a matter of notoriety, and is accounted for by the imputation of tyranny, formalism, etc. It is an understatement to affirm that, _on the Roman Catholic hypothesis_, that church _challenges_ faith with the aid of as strong evidential witness as an apostle possessed. But the _quantum_ of evidence is not the question. The greatest amount of it cannot _give_ faith, the least may _elicit_ it; and at what periods the world requires most evidence we know not. The important fact is that the church which claims for its centre the _apostolic_ see, does challenge faith just as an apostle did, or as the whole apostolic college did; that she is apostolic, not merely by having the succession, but by using the authority, and by acting just as she _must_ act if, as she affirms, the whole college, in union with Peter, _lived on_ in her. She too claims all and gives all. She too says, “Through me you may exercise divine faith when you receive, ‘by _hearing_,’ the message of God; for I am his apostle. What I saw and heard, what I handled and tasted, that, as a sure witness, I report. It was I who cast my nets on the Galilean shore when I was called. I heard that question, ‘But whom say _ye_ that _I_ am?’ I knelt on the Mount of Transfiguration when the suppressed glory broke forth and the law and the prophets were irradiated. I joined in that Last Supper. I stood beside his cross, and received his mother as my mother. I reached forth my hand, and put my fingers into the print of the nails. I received the charge, saw the ascension, felt the Pentecostal tongues, delivered my message, sealed it with my blood, and still stand up, delivering it for ever, and sealing it with my blood and with his.” This is the claim the church makes, and the same was made by the apostle. Both alike are subject to the rejoinder, “High claims do not prove themselves; and the competitors for infallibility are many.” Both alike answer: “If my message be false, you could not _really_ and vitally believe in me, even though you would. If my message be true, you _may_ believe in me, but I cannot compel you to do so.” It is not more wonderful that there should be rival priesthoods than rival creeds. There are many false _because_ there is one true. Authority has commonly been claimed even by spurious religions, because the instinct of the human race, which is reason, perceived that if God vouchsafed a revelation to man, it would be both given and sustained through man, and not merely through a book.

From the above statements thus much at least is clear: (1) that the Protestant controversy with Rome does _not_ respect the _ultimate source of belief_, which, by the admission of both sides, is to be referred to the Holy Spirit alone; but does respect this question, viz., whether, since an external agency is admitted to be in every case _instrumentally_ but _absolutely_ necessary for faith, that aid be not given to us by God, and given in the form of one, specific instrument, not any one that comes to hand—something easily known by outward marks which plainly solicit attention, not a proteus that changes almost as the individual mind changes. The question is whether the something external confessedly essential be the church of God and temple of the Spirit, speaking intelligibly and with authority, in the majesty of its visible unity; or be whatever sect or teacher may represent to plastic minds the public opinion of the place and time.

And (2) it is equally plain that Rome, in denouncing the principle of private judgment (except so far as, in _abnormal_ circumstances, we are reduced to it, or something like it, while testing the claims of authority), is in no degree disparaging _individual intuition_, but simply _stating the conditions, external_ as well as internal, under which it can be effectually and permanently realized. To see with another’s eyes, not one’s own, is an absurd aspiration which could not have made itself good for the greater part of the Christian era, over the greater part of the Christian world. But a man may use his own eyes, though together with them he uses a telescope, and his own ears, though he listens to the voice of a prophet instead of his own voice, or his domineering neighbor’s.

The Roman Catholic doctrine of authority does not assume that we cannot, even without that authority, have _some_ insight into divine things. We can see the moon without a telescope, though not the stars of a nebula. But in theology _partial_ gleams of intelligence are not sufficient for even their own permanence. Implicitly or explicitly, we must hold the whole to hold a part. Truth is a vast globe which we may touch with a finger, but cannot clasp in both hands. It eludes us, and we possess it but by being possessed by it. We must be drawn into the gravitation of its sphere and made one with it. We are thus united with it if in union with the church, to which it is given. We then _see_ it all around us, as we see the world we live in—not by glimpses and through mists, as we see a remote star. This is the Catholic’s faith. Everything confirms everything in his world. “One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another.” “Sea calleth unto sea.” The firmament above his head “declares” the glory of God, and the chambers of the deep his statutes. A Catholic indeed has his varying moods, and his “dry moods,” and his eager questionings on points not revealed; but his _faith_ does not rise and fall with his temperament. The _foundation_, at least, of his spiritual being, is a rock.

Neither does the Roman Catholic doctrine deny that a man _might_ conceivably, though not practically, without the aid of authority, grasp the _whole_ of theology as far as it has been yet defined. But it declares that such knowledge, if thus acquired, would not be the knowledge possessed by faith, but by opinion; that it would rest partly on science, partly on mere human faith, partly on enthusiasm (so far as the _sensitive_ appreciation of it went); and that, not being divine faith, it could not perform the genuine functions of faith. The intellectual region might feast with Dives, while the spiritual starved with Lazarus. This is, in a greater or lesser degree, the case with many, both among those who profess the principle of private judgment and those who profess to obey authority. In the very region of faith opinion may simulate faith, just as presumption may simulate hope and benevolence simulate charity. The most mysterious part of our probation is this: that under all circumstances and in all things nature may mimic grace, and pretence ape virtue. We may seem to ourselves angels, and be nothing; even as Christ himself, and his church no less, _seem_, to the eye of sense, the opposite of what they are, when insight is lacking or the point of view is determined by prejudice or a false tradition.

The Roman Catholic theory does not deny the force of internal evidence. It but says that such evidence, being a matter of moral _feeling_, is to be inwardly appreciated rather than logically set forth, and that it is often most felt when most unconsciously. A parent’s authority is not the less attested by the moral sense of the child and by his affections, though he does not consciously reflect on that part of its evidence; while yet he cannot be ignorant that all the _neighbors_ believe that those who claim to be his parents are such in reality. Catholic teaching does not concede that, as argument, any evidence is _necessary_ for those brought up in the true fold and gifted from childhood with faith, which is itself the evidence of things not seen. It does not believe that any gifts confined to a few can give a higher faith than is open to all “men of good‐will.” But it does believe that for simple and learned alike one external condition is necessary, viz., that the doctrine to be believed should be distinctly _proposed_ by an authority believed (on supernatural faith) to speak in God’s name; so that from first to last faith should be, not a credulity founded on fancy, on fear, or on self‐love, but a “_theological_ virtue” _believing in God, in all that he reveals, __ as revealed by him_, and in nothing else. Evidences are not anything that can compel faith or be a substitute for it; but they have commonly a very important place, notwithstanding, in the divine economy. Their place is _among_ the _motives_ of faith. These _intellectual_ motives are the character of Christ and of the faith; the character of the church and its propagation—in other words, internal and external evidence. The _moral_ motives are such as the spiritual safety of Christian obedience, the peace and joy of believing, the dignity Christianity confers on human nature, etc.

One circumstance which the Protestant theory forgets is that _all_ knowledge of divine things is not necessarily _faith_. Angelic knowledge and that of the triumphant church is vision, not faith, and differs from faith either in essence or in inseparable accidents. The knowledge we have of God through natural theology, however true, is not, therefore, identical with divine faith. Irrespectively of Christianity, a belief in God _precedes_ speculations, and comes to children chiefly by faith in what they hear from their parents. They _could_ not, indeed, believe their parents equally if their own minds were not in _harmony_ with such a belief; but in their case, too, authority is commonly a _condition_ of believing. By faith, says S. Paul, “we know that the worlds were made.” That knowledge comes to us both _through_ testimony and _by_ intuitions. The “heavens declare the glory of God”; but they declare it, not prove it scientifically; and the Psalmist had the patriarchal tradition and Mosaic revelation, as well as his intuitions, and as their interpreter. Natural theology we accept by _human_ faith concurring with natural lights and that lower degree of grace which compasses the whole world. Divine faith, S. Paul tells us, requires an outward organ, too, not for its promulgation only, but for its _certainty_. “He gave some apostles, some pastors, etc.,” “that we be not driven about with every _wind of doctrine_.” Could _this_ effect have been realized if apostle had preached against apostle, and each prophet had said to his neighbor “I, too, am a prophet,” and bear an opposite message? S. Paul says that the hierarchy is ordained not only for edification, but to make faith _certain_. It can only do that in its unity. Had certainty been unnecessary, or had reason been its organ, no hierarchy would have been elevated to constitute the _church representative_.

The Protestant theory (it may be so spoken of with reference to the great main points included in most forms of Protestantism) assumes that the one great characteristic of faith is its being a power of “spiritual discernment” or an intuition of spiritual truth. This is to put a part of the truth in place of the whole. This attribute of faith is asserted by the church also; but her conception of faith is founded on a _larger_ appreciation of the Holy Scriptures and of man’s compound nature.

Faith indeed _becomes_ a spiritual _seeing_; but it _comes_ “by hearing.” Considered even exclusively as intuition, the “spiritual discernment” is wholly different in kind from moral or mathematical intuitions, as those two classes of intuition differ from each other. A spiritual intuition, analogous to that of reason (though more exalted), would be utterly unsuited to our needs while still laboring in our probation and toiling in the “body of this death.” The intuition really vouchsafed to us by supernatural grace ever retains peculiar characteristics originally produced by the mode in which we receive it. Humility, submission, self‐ abnegation, constitute that mode; and these qualities are and remain as essential characteristics of true faith as spiritual discernment is. No otherwise than “as little children” is it possible for us to enter into the kingdom of heaven. We must enter the sheep‐fold by the _door_; we cannot otherwise profit by it; for could we climb its walls, it would cease to be the sheep‐fold to us, since we should not bear in our breasts the heart of the Lamb. _Opinion asserts; faith confesses._ Assertion includes self‐assertion; confession confesses _another_. God only can rightly assert himself. Created beings are relative beings, and the condition of their true greatness is that they forget themselves in God. The very essence of pride, the sin of the fallen angels, whom but a single _voluntary evil thought_ subverted, is self‐assertion on the part of a relative being. In taking self as a practical _ground_ of knowledge, it, in a certain sense, creates its Creator, and involves the principle that God himself may be but an idea. Pride is not only our strongest spiritual temptation, but is almost the natural _instinct_ of reason, working _by itself_, on supernatural themes, and it remains _undetected by reason, just as water cannot be weighed in water_. The higher we soar, the more we need to be reminded of our infirmity; therefore the glorious intuitions of faith are, for our safety, given to us by the way of humility, and continued to us on condition of obedience. Not only faith, as a habit, is humble, but the peculiar species of knowledge which it conveys is such as to preserve that character; for that knowledge is _obscure_, although _certain_. We see, “as through a glass, darkly”; but we see steadily. Imaginative reason gets bright flashes by rubbing its own eyes, but they are transient. Faith, requiring docility as a habit in us, and involving obscurity as a condition of its knowledge, is a _perpetual_ discipline of self‐sacrifice. Christianity is the doctrine of a sacrifice; and through a spiritual act and habit of self‐sacrifice alone can that doctrine be “spiritually discerned.” Christian _knowledge_ is thus the opposite of the rationalistic and of the Gnostic.

This estimate of faith is surely as Scriptural as it is philosophic. Thus only can we reconcile the statements of our Lord and of S. Paul. The most humble and child‐like docility is constantly referred to by our Lord as an essential part of that faith which, on _condition of so beginning_ and of _continuing such_, imparts to us as much spiritual discernment as is an earnest of the Blessed Vision. Such _docility must look like credulity_. Almost all the instances of it which met his highest praise did look like credulity, and would have been credulity had not grace inspired them, Providence directed them, and Truth itself rewarded them. What then? Which part of Christianity is not thus double‐visaged? What part of it is not a scandal to them that “judge by appearances” and do not “judge righteous judgment”? If to all without faith the Master must _seem_ an impostor, why should not the disciples _seem_ enthusiasts? Were they who wished that the shadow of the apostles should fall on them, was she who touched the hem of Christ’s garment, fanatics, because erring nature too can prompt her children to similar acts under an erring religion? Before such a philosophy (if philosophy can rest on such an _assumption_) the Gospel, as well as the church of the _orbis terrarum_, and the whole ancient church, must give way, and pure religion must be a discovery, not of the XVIth, but of the XIXth century. Credulity itself is but a subordinate and ill‐ grounded form of _human_ faith, and is far from suppressing, though it misdirects, the nobler faculties of the _natural_ man. Plato and Bacon had more of it than Epicurus and Hobbes. Docility (its analogon in the spiritual world) is the humbler element in faith. It is absolutely necessary, and is sometimes undistinguishable, in mere _outward_ seeming, from its natural counterpart. Milk is as necessary for babes as meat for the mature. The mature never cease, in the kingdom of heaven, to be, _inclusively_, children; it is their very excellence that they unite the best characteristics of different ages, sexes, and conditions. Yet the children of the kingdom are not fed on mortal, but on immortal, milk; and that milk is meat in a less compact preparation. As an incredulous habit is not a mark of true wisdom, so an indocile habit is incompatible with an authentic faith, which cannot act except in obedience to an authentic authority. To the rationalist the indocile habit, far from being a fault, is a necessity; for his knowledge comes from within _only_, not from above and from within.

Now let us turn to history and fact. Had they no spiritual discernment of Christ who died for him? Yet did not the martyrs and the age of martyrs abound in what to Protestantism seem credulities? The church of the apostles, of the fathers, of the doctors, of the schoolmen, the church that built up Christendom, invariably recognized the principle of ecclesiastical obedience, docility, submission, as a part of faith, not as inconsistent with the intuition of faith—its moral element, as the other is its intellectual. It was the cement that kept the whole fabric together, though not the amphionic power that raised the living stones. Those who branded obedience as superstition were Arius, and Aërius, and Vigilantius, and the Albigensian heretics, not the fathers, the doctors, or the martyrs of the faith. The latter knew that the faith of him who lays hold of Christ, and of her who but touches “the hem of his garment,” are in kind the same. They knew also, that, when _truth confronts us_ and grace is offered, the spirit which is “offended” at little things is not edified by great. And how has it been ever since; how is it now with the mass of the world? How does faith come to _children and to the poor_, and to the busy and to the dull? _What makes the Bible divine to them?_ What suggests the truths which they are to look for in the Bible? Authority, everywhere acting through such representatives of authority as remain in lands which decry it! If docility, obedience, a desire to believe, submission previous to insight, be not, under _Christian conditions_, characteristics of faith, merely because, under pagan conditions, they might be opposed to spiritual knowledge, then have most believers believed in vain; for error cannot be the foundation of truth. Discernment belongs, by universal confession, to faith, and baptism is the “sacrament of illumination”; but no proposition can be more _unreasonable_ than that faith should begin with, or be identical with, an insight which, in a high degree of conscious development, obviously belongs to the few, and to them under very special circumstances.

Let us return to the philosophy of the “rule of faith.”

No one would deny that the will, even more than the mind, is the seat of faith; but the Protestant theory does not efficiently and practically recognize this truth. Submission is in the will; discernment in the mind. The latter belongs to the man chiefly; the former to the child equally, and the _child living on in the Christian man_. The whole Catholic system is based on this fact. From it, for instance, follows, by inevitable consequence, the _true theory_ of charity in reference to dogmatic error—that, namely, of “invincible ignorance.” Protestants, and Protestants who repeat the Athanasian Creed, think this expression but an evasion. But “invincible ignorance” means _involuntary_ ignorance _of the truth_, and is based on the known principle that heresy must be a sin of the will, because faith is a virtue, primarily belonging to the will, when it submits to grace. Now, granting that the internal agency of the Divine Spirit is that which clears the faculty of spiritual discernment and develops faith in the mind, still, assuredly, obedience is trained and faith is rooted in the will by the same Spirit addressing us through its outward organ, the church. “_Obedience_ to the faith” is not a principle only, but a habit. Habits are impressed on us, not by precept only, but by providential circumstance and divine institutions, such as the civil power, parental rule, the weakness of infancy, the hindrances of knowledge, those necessities for social co‐operation which train the sympathies.

Implicit faith in the Bible only might, for such as entertained it with absolute and childlike confidence, give rise to no small degree of moral deference, and does so with many Protestants, though not without a considerable alloy of error and of superstition. But a book, though divine, is a book still. It cannot speak, except with the inquirer for an interpreter. It cannot correct misinterpretations. It will often reveal what is sought, and hide what is not desired, but is needed. It will “find” those who find in it what they _brought_ to it. It is plastic in hot and heedless hands. It may train the mental faculties, but it will not practically exercise a habit of submission. If a country, in place of possessing laws, with magistrates to enforce and judges to expound them, possessed nothing but statutes on parchment, and a vast legal literature for their exposition, statutes and comments being alike commended to the private judgment of individuals, would it be possible that subjects could be trained up with the habit or spirit of political obedience? Every man might be educated till he resembled a village attorney; but loyalty would be extinct. The statute‐book would still assert the principle of obedience, as does the Bible in spiritual things; but the habit could not thus be formed. To bow exclusively to that which addresses us in abstract terms, and to bow when and how our judgment dictates—this alone is not in reality, though it may be in words, a discipline of humility. To obey God, _as represented by man_, is that at which pride revolts. The authority of the church in the household and kingdom of Christ is like that of the father in the family and the monarch in his realm. An authority thus objectively embodied has also a special power of working through the affections; and to train them to be the handmaids of faith is one of the special functions of the church. “My little children of whom I travail again,” says S. Paul to his flock. What living church can be imagined as thus addressing her children? Surely none save that one which claims apostolic authority, and does not shrink from proclaiming that faith includes obedience as well as insight. This is not an idle theory. What men in the Roman Catholic Church have entertained the most filial and affectionate reverence for their mother? Her saints—those who had the most ardent love for their Lord, the deepest insight into his Gospel, and the keenest appreciation of its spiritual freedom—the S. Bernards, Thomas à Kempises, Francis de Saleses. To retain obedience as a principle, and yet cheat it of its object, an authentic and _real_ authority, was the “Arch Mock” of the “Reformation.”

A faith thus confirmed and steadied by authentic authority can alone permanently sustain the ardent and enthusiastic devotion of strong minds. Faith, or what seems faith, if resting exclusively on internal feeling and individual opinion, will vehemently, if but transiently, excite the light and the impulsive; but the graver mind will distrust it, even when visited by the more sanguine mood, from a painful sense that it has no power of discriminating between faith and illusion. It will be sure of its own perceptions and sensations; but it cannot contrive wholly to ignore those of its neighbor when they are opposite. It will remember that there are two causes of uncertainty, the first arising when our own premises admit of alternative conclusions, the second when, the conclusions being obvious, the premises are disputed and cannot be proved. It will remember that mathematical and moral intuitions, “though independent of evidence, are yet backed by a practically universal consent (the result of their being, in a large measure, intuitions independent of the will); and it may be disposed to say that if it happened that most people denied that the three angles of a triangle equalled two right angles, I could not indeed believe that they made three, but I might come to believe that I had wandered into a region in which impressions must always _seem_ certain, but yet in which nothing could be authentically known.” Men cannot exchange their _tastes_; but then they know that tastes are subjective; whereas revealed truth must be objective. Some such misgiving will chill faith commonly in large and steady minds, and thus the whole religious life is struck dead. Enthusiasm will commonly, under such circumstances, belong only to those minds which boil over before they have taken in much heat. A church which makes its censers of paper, not metal, cannot burn incense. A religion which, _in any form_, includes a “peradventure,” has admitted the formula of nature and lost the “amen” of supernatural truth. It is reduced and transposed. Its raptures are but poetry, its dogma but science, its antiquity but pedantry, its forms but formality, its freedom but license, its authority but convention, its zeal but faction, its sobriety but sloth. It cannot admit of enthusiasm, as it cannot generate it in its nobler and more permanent forms, because it can neither balance nor direct it. Such a faith _must_ install reason in the higher place. A church founded on nothing higher _must_ serve, not rule. It will end by worshipping its bondage.

As in theology there is no possibility of separating dogma from dogma, so there is no possibility of separating the religious affections from a reverence for dogmas, if the mind be an inquiring one. What has been called “loyalty to our Lord,” and contrasted with the “dogmatic spirit,” is a sentiment which depends wholly on what we _believe_ concerning him. But to believe him to be God and man involves an immense mass of profound doctrine which may be held _implicitly_ by the many, but which the student must hold _explicitly_, or be in a condition of doubt. These subtle questions involve metaphysical speculations; and had we to settle them for ourselves, we must all of us have mastered philosophy before we had learned the lore of Christian love. But how many points are there of a different sort which yet must be certain, if our faith is to be certain—points which no man could settle for himself, and as to which no authority save one secure from error could give us rest! Such are the questions as to the mode of administering sacraments; what form of baptism is _valid_, and what is _invalid_; the canonicity of the Scriptures, which, if it depend on our individual estimate of historic evidence only, can rise no higher than the level of opinion, and therefore can never afford a basis for divine faith. No reasonable man can suppose that either directly or indirectly he can reach to intuitions on _these_ points. He may say that they are not essential to him personally; but he cannot but suspect that they are essential to the integrity of that whole scheme of theology which, _as a whole_, is essential to him. A leak in the ship is not less dangerous because low down and out of sight; and the strength of a chain is the strength of its weakest link. When the principle of authority ceased to be held, as a revealed doctrine (the _complement_ of that of personal spiritual discernment), the complete circle of faith was broken, and an element of doubt entered in. The process was unperceived because gradual, the _inherited_ faith concealing long the ravages of innovating opinion. Human faith succeeded also to divine, and simulated it. Science, imagination, enthusiasm in its ever‐varying forms, contributed their aid. Protestant churches can hardly now even conceive of an _authority_ acting simply and humbly under divine _faith_. They can only imagine anathemas as proceeding from passion. But S. Paul and the early church, as well as the Roman Catholic, thought differently.

Another principle lost sight of practically on the Protestant theory of religious knowledge is that it is necessary to hold the Christian faith, not only (1st) _in its fulness_, and (2d) _with certainty_, but also (3d) _in its purity_. Now, whatever truths individual intuitions and studies may bring home to us (legitimately or accidentally), it is certain from experience that they will not exclude many errors, which apparently have the same sanction, and are entertained with the same confidence—nay, are so cherished that if but one be spoken against, the whole system of thought is felt to be endangered. But this confusion of truth and error introduces Babel into the heart of Jerusalem, and erects altars to false gods in the temple of the True. The soul espoused to Christ must exclude his rivals, and preserve ever the unrelaxed girdle of purity in spiritual things. Faith is not only the mother, but the _virgin_ mother, of all perfect belief, devotion, and practice. Error, _in the region of faith_, is not only hostile but fatal to truth in its spiritual unity. We are assured that “the letter _kills_,” not merely that it is void; and we know that a little poison may corrupt much food, while a little needful medicine may taste as bitter as poison. Now, that the Bible, by reason of its very excellency, abounds in passages obvious to individual misinterpretation, no candid reader of it or of history will deny. We need, therefore, something which will preserve us from such dangers, as well as from evils of deficiency. Animals are protected from many dangers by the constant presence of overpowering instincts. The soul requires equally the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit. Experience disproves the novel and enthusiastic notion that the Spirit is _thus_ given—viz., as inspiration—to the individual in his isolation. He requires, therefore, the aid of the Spirit, both acting in his soul as vital heat, and also shedding light on him from the church, round whose head the Pentecostal flame ever plays. Within that church which teaches “with authority, and not as the scribes,” a firmament is drawn between matters to be believed _de fide_ and matters of opinion. Errors in theological opinion, recognized as opinion only, are not necessarily more hurtful than errors in science or politics. Let us now glance at the most ordinary form of objection.

So inveterate are traditional habits of thought that we recur to them after their fallaciousness has been ever so clearly pointed out. A wheel of thought moves round in our head, and the old notions recur. What convert, for instance, has not been plagued, while approaching to Catholic convictions, by the reiteration of that thought constantly recurring to his mind, “Is it likely that all England should have been in error for three hundred years?” Though he cannot but feel the weight of the answer, “It is at least more likely than that all Christendom should have been far more deeply steeped in worse errors and corruptions, by their nature affecting individuals as well as the body corporate, for at least twelve hundred years.” It is thus that in the question of the “rule of faith” we recur to the question, “Is it not obvious that the individual mind must lose all freedom and spontaneity, if obliged to measure its movements by an outward authority? Is not such obedience servile, not filial; carnal, not spiritual? Who could move freely, if _obliged_ to walk always with another, though that other were his dearest friend?” Now, far from all this being obvious, it is obviously founded on a misconception of the hypothesis objected to. Why does the soul partake of a higher _freedom_ as it advances in _submission_ to God? How is it that, in the glorified state, perfect freedom exists without the possibility of falling? Because the Spirit that works in the redeemed and regenerate is the Spirit of God himself. Why is it no bondage that our two eyes must, if in a healthy condition, move together? Because the same law acts freely in both. Why is it that a hand that has ceased to obey the brain is called a _powerless_ hand? Because its power proceeds from sympathy with the brain. Now, on the hypothesis of the “visible church,” just such a sympathy, such a law, and such a Spirit _work equally and simultaneously in the individual and in the body_. To the church the Spirit is given indefectibly, to lead her into “all truth,” even to the “end of the world.” The individual may or may not co‐operate with the Spirit; but if he does, he must needs, _ex hypothesi_, co‐operate with the church, and he cannot feel as a bondage what is the law of his life, though the _less spiritual_ part of him may often feel it as a salutary restraint. Rightly to serve is, in things divine, the only possible spiritual, as distinguished from merely natural, freedom. The real question, then, respects, not either the stringency of the law or its character as external law, but its being or not being divine—a rightful authority, not a usurpation.

The place of faith is not determined by controversial or even intellectual needs only. Its functions are innumerable. It is the bond between the race and God. It must affect the whole soul and be the health of every part. It is God’s adamant diffused through every region of our being, as the rock on which the church is built extends, in its solidity, throughout and under the whole fabric. Our individual faith may be weak; but it is the nature of faith itself to be infinitely strong; and our faith must so come to us, and so stand towards us, as to _admit of_ its own infinite increase, as well as of its permanence. It must enlighten the mind, erect the will, warm and chasten the heart, live in every affection, kneel in our humility, endure in our patience. It is an armor that covers us wholly, leaving _no spot_ exposed to the flying shafts of an enemy, to whom one spot is as the whole body. Its shield is a mirror in which humanity beholds the whole of its being, individual and social, imaged after the stature of the renewed man. That image is no idol with brazen breast and feet of earth, but the likeness, everywhere glorious, of Him who took our whole nature, and in it was obedient to “his parents” and his country’s law, as well as to his Father’s will. Faith, in the Protestant acceptation of the word, is unable to discharge for us all these high offices. No Protestant community (and many have been tried) can point to its heroic triumphs, and say, “Behold its fruits.” They have neither converted heathen nations nor retained as much of the faith as they started with on their new career.

The theory of the “Bible _interpreted_ by private judgment” seems, then, to me to have been novel, rash, crude, not sincerely thought out when promulgated—the only position that could affect to justify the revolt from unity, but one not itself justified by the event. _My reason_, to which rationalism ever appeals, would not have antecedently assured me that a book would have formed even part of a revelation. _My reason_ tells me that if the facts of Christianity be divine, its dogmatic truths divine, and the book which records the facts and announces the truths be divine, it is not _unreasonable_ that the interpreter of that book should be divine. Such is the theory which Rome maintains, but which no one will say that Rome did more than _retain_, walking thus in the footsteps of the primitive church, and of the general councils. The patriarchal church had no Bible; the Hebrew church but an incomplete canon, added to from time to time. The Christian canon was not compiled for two centuries after Christ; Providence did not allow of its diffusion by printing for fourteen. The Christian world is still, for the most past, unable to read. _Most_ Protestants have therefore ever been compelled to be guided by an authority which, without pretending to confer the spiritual gifts which Rome confers, is exposed to many of the same objections. All religious communities say practically, “Hear me.” One only says, with the apostle, “Hear the church.” One only delivers a distinct and consistent message. One only unites parental authority with maternal solicitude, fear with love, enthusiasm with steadfastness, permanence of faith with progress of defined knowledge, the doctrines with the ethical habits of the early church, the lore of the Fathers with the propagandism of the early missionaries and the courage of the martyrs. It is the church of Him who was singled from his brethren as were Judah, Shem, Seth, and made to be unity, that in his unity all might be one, in one Lord, one _faith_, and one baptism.

A. DE VERE.

NOVEMBER 2, 1851.

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Our readers will certainly be thankful to us for giving them the pleasure of perusing the foregoing letter, which is a document of great interest and value for several reasons. It is the work of an author whose prose is only inferior to his poetry. It is a record of the process of reasoning by which one of the many illustrious English converts was aided to make the transition from Anglicanism to the Catholic Church, given in his own language at a time when his thoughts and sentiments about the momentous change were fresh in his memory, and remarkably different from any similar production. The value of such a document, considered in the respect just mentioned, depends on its being given precisely as it was written at the time; and we have been, therefore, scrupulously careful not to change or modify a single sentence, or even a word, in the author’s manuscript.

This letter is not, however, merely a psychological and literary curiosity. Though it is the argument, not of a Catholic theologian, but of a man of letters just recently converted to the faith, it is a remarkable presentation of some parts of Catholic doctrine, more particularly of the supernatural certainty of divine faith, and the essential difference of faith from human science or opinion, even when the object of the latter is natural or revealed theology. We think it important, however, to add a short explanation of our own as a safeguard of purely natural certitude. Sound Catholic philosophy establishes the certitude of knowledge received through the senses, the understanding, and the discursive or reasoning operation of the mind upon the concepts apprehended by both those faculties. Physical, metaphysical, and moral demonstration produce, therefore, true science, not mere opinion. The rational proof of the Catholic religion rests on these three, and is sufficient to produce a certain conviction. This is not, however, identical with divine faith. The act of faith is distinct from the merely rational assent of the mind. Yet these two acts may terminate on the same object. One may be convinced, for instance, of the spirituality of the soul, by a metaphysical demonstration, without believing in the divine revelation. If he afterward believes in the revelation, he will have also a divine faith in the spirituality of the soul. One may believe by divine faith that Christ made S. Peter the head of the church, and afterwards acquire an historical certainty of the same truth. We cannot be too careful to maintain the supernatural quality of faith and the superiority of its divine light to the natural light of reason; at the same time, we must be also careful not to weaken or diminish the certainty and the scope of natural knowledge.—ED. C. W.

The Church In F——.

Build up the church! Let its turrets rise, With cross‐crowned summits, to kiss the skies; Hollow its centre, in nave and aisle, From its walls let heaven‐rapt faces smile.

Make its fair altars to glow with light, Where priest and ministering acolyte May kneel, with incense and book and bell, The praises of God and his saints to swell.

Let the deep tones of the organ roll With thunderous music, to stir the soul, While spirits soar, as on wings of fire, ’Mid the holy chants of the surpliced choir.

But when the crowd has passed away, And the lights burn low and the church is gray, And in their solitude aisle and nave Are still and stern as a martyr’s grave,

All is not over of praise and prayer: The mourner, shrinking from crowd and glare, May kneel in the shadow, and veil her eyes Before the Lord of the sacrifice.

The sacred Presence that throws its spell— An ever‐abiding miracle— O’er the empty fane and the silent shrine, Is there at all seasons—_the Host divine._

Are You My Wife? Chapter I.

By The Author Of “A Salon In Paris Before The War,” “Number Thirteen,” “Pius VI.,” Etc.