CHAPTER V.

Angélique was having a field day of it, and there was nothing she liked better. It was an event when Sir Simon dropped in at The Lilies toward supper-time, and announced his intention of staying to take pot-luck; but this evening’s entertainment was a very different affair from these friendly droppings-in, and Angélique was proportionately flurried. Like most people who have a strong will and a good temper, she was easy to live with; her temper was indeed usually so well controlled that few suspected her of having one. But on occasions like the present they were apt to find out their mistake; it was not safe to come in her way when she had more than one extra dish on hand. Franceline knew this; and after such interference in the way of whipping the eggs and dusting the glass and china as Angélique would tolerate, she took herself off to the woods for the remainder of the afternoon. There was a cleared space where the timber had been cut down in spring, and here she settled herself on the stem of a felled tree, and opened her book. It can hardly have been a very interesting one; for, after turning over a few pages, she began to look about her, and to listen to the contralto recitative of a wood-pigeon with as much attention as if that familiar _dilettante_ performance had been some striking novelty. It was not long, however, before sounds of a very different sort broke on her ear. Some one was crying passionately, filling the wood with shrieks and sobs. Franceline started to her feet and listened; she could distinguish the shrill treble of a child’s voice, and, hurrying on in the direction from whence it proceeded, she soon came upon a little girl, the daughter of a poor woman of the neighborhood, called Widow Bing. The child was lying in a heap on the ground, her basketful of school-books and lunch spilt on the grass beside her, while her little body and soul seemed literally torn to pieces by sobs.

“Why, Bessy, what’s the matter?” cried Franceline. “Have you hurt yourself?”

“No-o-o-o!” gasped Bessy, without lifting her head.

“Have you broken something?”

“No-o-o-o!”

“Has anything happened to mammy?”

“No-o-o, but something’s a-goin to.” And the child raised her head for a louder scream, and let it drop again with a thud on the ground.

“What’s going to happen to her? Tell me, there’s a good child,” coaxed Franceline, crouching down beside the little, prostrate figure, and trying to make it look up. “If it hasn’t happened, perhaps it will never happen. I might prevent it, or somebody else might.”

A dim ray of consolation apparently dawned out of this hypothesis on Bessy’s mind; she lifted her head, and, after suppressing her sobs, exclaimed: “Mammy’s a-goin’ to be damned, she is!”

“Good gracious, child, what a dreadful thing for you to say!” exclaimed Franceline, too much shocked by the announcement to catch the comical side of it at once. “Who put such a naughty thing into your head?”

“It’s Farmer Griggs as said it. He says as how he knows mammy’s a-goin’ to be damned!” And the sound of her own words was so dreadful that it sent Bessy into a fresh paroxysm, and she shrieked louder than before.

“He’s a wicked man, and you mustn’t mind him,” said Franceline; “he knows nothing about it!”

“Ye-e-es he does!” insisted Bessy. “He-e-s not wicked; … he prea-a-a-ches every Sunday at the cha-a-a-pel, he does.”

“Then he preaches very wicked sermons, I’m sure,” said Franceline, who saw an argument on the wrong side for Farmer Griggs’ sanctity in this evidence. “You must leave off crying and not mind him.”

But Bessy was not to be comforted by this negative suggestion. She went on crying passionately, until Franceline, finding that neither scolding nor coaxing had the desired effect, threatened to tell Miss Bulpit, and have her left out from the next tea and cake feast; whereupon Bessy brightened up with extraordinary alacrity, gathered up her books and her dry bread and apple, and proceeded to trot along by the side of Franceline, who soothed her still further by the promise of a piece of bread and jam from Angélique, if she gave up crying altogether and told her all about mammy and Farmer Griggs. An occasional sob showed every now and then that the waters had not quite subsided; but Bessy did her best, and before they reached The Lilies she had given in somewhat disjointed sentences the following history of the prophecy and what led to it. The widow Bing--who, for motives independent of all theological views, had recently joined the Methodist Connection, of which Farmer Griggs was a burning and shining light--had been laid up for the last month with the rheumatism, and consequently unable to attend the meeting; but last Sunday, being a good deal better, though still unequal to toiling up-hill to the chapel, which was nearly half an hour’s walk from her cottage, she had compromised matters by going to church, which was within ten minutes’ walk of her. This scandal spread quickly through the Connection, and was not long coming to Farmer Griggs’ ears, who straightway declared that the widow Bing had thrown in her lot with the transgressors, and was henceforth a castaway whose name should be blotted out. This fearful doom impending over her mother had just been made known to Bessy by Farmer Griggs’ boy, who met her tripping along with her basket on her arm, and singing to herself as she went. The sight of the child’s gayety under such appalling circumstances was not a thing to be tolerated; so he conveyed to Bessy in very comprehensible vernacular the soothing intelligence that her mother was “a bad ’un as was gone over to the parson, as means the devil, and how as folk as was too lazy to come to chapel ’ud find it ’arder a-goin’ down to the bottomless pit, where there was devils and snakes and all manner o’ dreadful things a-blazin’ and a-burnin’ like anythink!”

All this Franceline contrived to elicit from Bessy by the time they reached The Lilies, where they found Miss Merrywig sitting outside the kitchen-window in high confabulation with Angélique, busy inside at her work. The day was intensely hot, and the sun was still high enough to make shade a necessity of existence for everybody except cats and bees; but there sat Miss Merrywig under the scorching glare, with a large chinchilla muff in her lap.

“A muff!” cried Franceline, standing aghast before the old lady. “Dear Miss Merrywig, you don’t mean to say you want it on such a day as this! Why, it suffocates one to look at it.”

“Yes, my dear, just so. As you say, it suffocates one to look at it,” assented Miss Merrywig, “and I assure you I didn’t find it at _all_ comfortable carrying it to-day; but I _only_ bought it yesterday, and I wanted to let Angélique see it and hear her opinion on it, you see. I went in to Newford yesterday, and they were selling off at Whilton’s, the furrier’s, and this muff struck me as _such_ a bargain that I thought I could _not_ do better than take it. Now, what _do_ you think I gave for it? Don’t _you_ say anything, Angélique; I want to hear what mademoiselle will say herself. Now, just look well at it. Remember how hot the weather is; as you say, the sight of fur suffocates one, and that makes _such_ a difference. My dear mother used to say--and she _was_ a judge of fur, you know; she made a voyage to Sweden with my father in poor dear old Sir Hans Neville’s yacht, and that gave her such a knowledge of furs--you know Sweden _is_ a great place for all sorts of furs--well, she used to say, ‘If you want the value of your money in fur, buy it in the summer.’ I only just mention that to show you. But you can see for yourself whether I got the full value in this one. You see it is lined with satin--and such splendid satin! As thick as a board, and _so_ glossy! And it’s silk all through. I just ripped a bit here at the edge to see if it was a cotton back; but it’s all pure silk. The young man of the shop was so _extremely_ polite, and _so_ anxious I should understand that it _was_ a bargain, he called my attention to the quality of the satin--which was _really_ very kind of him; for of course that didn’t matter to _him_. But they are wonderfully civil at Whilton’s. I remember buying some swan’s-down to trim a dress when I was a girl and I was bridesmaid to Lady Arabella Wywillyn--they lived at the Grange then--and it _was_, I must say, a most excellent piece of swan’s-down, and cleaned like new. I asked the young man if he remembered it--I meant, of course, the marriage. Dear me, what a sensation it did make! But he did not, which was of course natural, as it was long before he was born; but I thought he might have heard the old people of the place speak of it. Well, now that you’ve examined it, tell me, what _do_ you think I gave for it?”

Franceline was hovering on the brink of a guess, when Angélique, who had returned to her saucepans, suddenly reappeared at the window, and, spying Bessy’s red face staring with all its eyes at the chinchilla muff--which looked uncommonly like a live thing that might bite if the fancy took it, and was best considered from a respectful distance--called out: “What’s that child doing there?” Franceline, thankful for the timely rescue, began to pour out volubly in French the story of Farmer Griggs and the widow Bing.

“It’s a shame these sort of people _should_ be allowed to terrify the poor people,” said Miss Merrywig when she had taken it all in. “I _wonder_ the vicar does not do something. He _ought_ to take steps to stop it; there’s no saying what _may_ be the end of it. But dear Mr. Langrove is _so_ kind and so _very_ much afraid of annoying anybody!”

While Miss Merrywig was delivering this opinion Angélique was making good the bread-and-jam promise for Bessy, who stood watching the operation with distended eyes through the open window, and saw with satisfaction that the grenadier was laying on the jam very thick.

“Now, you’re not going to cry any more, and you’re going to be a good girl?” said Franceline before she let Bessy seize the tempting slice that Angélique held out to her.

Bessy promised unhesitatingly.

“Stop a minute,” said Franceline, as the child stretched up on tiptoe to clutch the prize. “You must not repeat to poor, sick mammy what that naughty boy said to you. Do you promise?” But the proximity of bread and jam was not potent enough to hurry Bessy into committing herself to this rash promise. What between the sudden vision of “devils and snakes a-blazin’ and a-burnin’” which the demand conjured up again, and what between the dread of seeing the bread and jam snatched away by the grenadier, who stood there, brown and terrible, waiting a signal from Franceline, her feelings were too much for her; there was a preparatory sigh and a sob, and down streamed the tears again.

“I’d better go home with her, and tell the poor woman myself,” said Franceline, appealing to Miss Merrywig.

“Yes, you come ’ome and tell mammy!” sobbed the child, who seemed to have some vague belief in Franceline’s power to avert the threatened doom.

“I dare say that will be the safest way, and I’m sure it’s the kindest,” said Miss Merrywig; “but it _will_ be a dreadfully hot walk for you on the road, my dear, with _no_ shelter but your sunshade. I had better go _with_ you. I don’t mind the heat; you see I’m _used_ to it.” Franceline could not exactly see how this fact of Miss Merrywig’s company would lessen the heat to her; but it was meant in kindness, so she assented. The meadowlands went flowering down to the river, richly planted with fine old trees, and only separated from the garden and its adjoining fields by an invisible iron rail, so that the little cottage looked as if it were in the centre of a great private park. A short cut through the fields took you out on the road in a few minutes, and the trio had not gone far when they saw Mr. Langrove walking at a brisk pace on before them, his umbrella tilted to one side to screen him from the sun, that was striking him obliquely on the right ear. Franceline clapped her hands and called out, and they soon came up to him.

“What are you doing down here, may I ask? Having your face burned, eh?” said the vicar familiarly.

Franceline burst out with her story at once. The vicar made a short, impatient gesture, and they all walked on together, Bessy holding fast by Franceline’s gown with one hand, while the other was doing duty with the bread and jam.

“Really, my _dear_ Mr. Langrove,” broke in Miss Merrywig, “you _ought_ to take steps; excuse me for saying so, but you _really_ ought. It’s quite dreadful to think of the man’s frightening the poor people in this way. You really _should_ put a stop to it.”

“My good lady,” replied the vicar, “if you can tell me how it’s to be done, there’s nothing will give me greater pleasure.”

“Well, of course you know best; but it seems to me something ought to be done. The poor people are all falling into dissent as fast as they can; it’s quite melancholy to think of it--it _really_ is. You’ll excuse me for saying so--for it must be _very_ painful to your feelings, and I never _do_ interfere with what doesn’t concern me; though of course what concerns you, as our pastor, and the Church of England, _does_ concern us, all of us--but I really think you _are_ too forbearing. You ought to enforce your authority a _little_ more strictly.”

“Authority!” echoed the vicar with a mild, ironical laugh. “What authority have I to enforce? Show me that first!”

“Dear _me_! But an ordained minister of the church, the church of the realm--surely, _that_ gives you authority?”

“Just as much as you and other members of the church choose to accredit me with, and no more,” said Mr. Langrove, with as much bitterness in the emphasis as he was capable of. “If Griggs thinks fit to set himself up as a preacher, and every man, woman, and child in my parish choose to desert me and go over to him, I can no more prevent them than I can prevent their buying their sugar at market instead of getting it from the grocers.”

“And who is Monsieur Greegs?” inquired Franceline, who was backward in gossip, and knew few of the local notabilities except by sight.

“Monsieur Griggs is a very respectable farmer, a shrewd judge of cattle, who knows a great deal about the relative merits of short-horns and the Devonshire breed, and all about pigs and poultry,” said the vicar with mild sarcasm.

“And he is a minister too!”

“After a fashion. He elected himself to the office, and it would seem he has plenty of followers. He started services on week-days when he found that I had commenced having them on Fridays, and drew away the very portion of the congregation they were specially intended for; and he preaches on Sundays. You have a sample of his style here,” nodding at Bessy, who was licking her fingers with great gusto, having finished her last mouthful.

“Is it not dreadful!” exclaimed Miss Merrywig. “And the people _are_ so infatuated; they actually tell me that they understand this man better than their clergymen, that he speaks plainer to them, and understands better what they want, and that sort of thing. They don’t care about doctrine, you see, or controversy; they like to be talked to in a kind of conversational way by one of their own class who speaks bad grammar like themselves. They tell you to your face that they don’t understand the clergyman--I assure you they do; that his sermons are too learned, and only fit for gentle folk. You see they _are_ so ignorant, the poor people! It’s very melancholy to think of.”

“They like better to be told they’ll go to hell and be damned, if they go to their own church; they ought not to be allowed to go to hear such things. I’ll speak to widow Bing, and make her promise me she’ll never go there again,” said Franceline peremptorily.

“No, no, my dear child; you mustn’t do anything of the kind,” said the vicar quickly. “No one has a right to meddle with the people in these things; if she likes to go to the dissenters, no one can prevent her.”

“But if she was fond of going into the gin-shop and getting tipsy, you’d have a right to meddle and to prevent her, would you not?” inquired Franceline.

“That’s a different thing,” said the vicar, who in his own mind thought the parallel was not so very wide of the mark.

“I can’t see it,” protested Franceline with an expressive shrug. “If you have a right to prevent their bodies from getting tipsy, and killing themselves or somebody else perhaps, why not their souls?”

The vicar laughed a complacent little laugh at this cogent reasoning of his young friend. “Unfortunately,” he said, “we have no authority for interfering with people in the management of their souls in this country. Such a proceeding would be quite unconstitutional; the state only legislates for the salvation of their bodies.”

“Dear me, just _so_!” ejaculated Miss Merrywig. “I remember my dear mother telling me that a very clever man--I’m not sure if he _wasn’t_ a member of Parliament, but anyhow he made speeches _in_ public--and he said--I really think it _was_ an electioneering speech just at the time the Catholic Emancipation bill was being passed--that in this _free_ country every man had a right to go to the devil his _own_ way. How exceedingly shocking! To think of people’s going to the devil at all! But that’s just it. They prefer to go their _own_ way, and, as you say, the law can’t prevent them. It’s entirely a question of personal influence, you see.”

“Then perhaps Sir Simon could do something,” suggested Franceline; “he’s master here, and he makes everybody do what he likes. Why don’t you speak to him, monsieur?”

“He might do something, perhaps, if anybody could; but, unfortunately, he does not see it,” observed the vicar.

“I’ll speak to him. I’ll make him see it,” said Franceline, who flew with a woman’s natural instinct to arbitrary legislation as the readiest mode of redressing wrongs, and had, moreover, a strong faith in her own power of making Sir Simon “see it.”

“But is this not rather--of course you know best, only it _does_ strike me that it is a case for the bishop’s interference _rather_ than the squire’s,” said Miss Merrywig. She was a remnant of the old times when a bishop could hold his own; that was before ritualism came into vogue.

“Yes,” cried Franceline, with sudden exultation, “of course it’s the bishop who must do it. You ought to write to him, monsieur!”

Mr. Langrove smiled. “The bishop has no more power to interfere with the proceedings of my parishioners than you have.”

“Then what has he power to do? What are bishops good for?” demanded the obtuse young Papist.

But Mr. Langrove, being a loyal “churchman,” was not going to enter on such slippery, debatable ground as this. He was happily saved from the disagreeable process of beating about the bush for an answer by the fact of their being close by widow Bing’s door, from which there issued distinctly a twofold sound as of somebody crying and somebody else exhorting. Bessy no sooner caught it than she swelled the chorus of lamentation by breaking forth into a loud cry. If there was any weeping to be done, Bessy was not the one to be behindhand. And now she was resolved to do her very best; for perhaps the prophecy was already coming true, and mammy was beginning to be a prey to the snakes and devils.

“Stay here and keep that child quiet,” said the vicar hastily. “I hear Miss Bulpit’s voice. I had better go in alone.”

“He is greatly to be pitied, poor Mr. Langrove! I think,” said Franceline, as she turned back with Miss Merrywig. “I think you all ought to write to the bishop for him.”

“Oh! that _would_ be a scandal! Besides, you heard him say the bishop could not help him,” said the old lady.

“What a blessed thing it is to be a Catholic!” exclaimed Franceline, laughing. “_We_ have no farmers’ boys or anybody else meddling with our priests; but then we have the Pope, who settles everything, and everybody submits. You ought to invite the Pope to come over and deliver you from all your troubles!”

* * * * *

The table was spread on the grass-plot in front of the cottage. Franceline had made it pretty with ferns and flowers, and then sat down under the porch, in her white muslin dress and pink sash, to converse with her doves while waiting for Sir Simon and his two friends. Her doves were great company to her; she had been so used to talking to them ever since she was a child, complaining to them of her small griefs and telling them of her little joys, that she came to fancy they understood her, and took their plaintive coo or their little crystal laughter as an intelligible and sympathetic response. One of the soft-breasted, opal-winged little messengers is upon her finger now, clutching the soft white perch sharply enough with its coral claws, and answering her caresses with that low, inarticulate sighing that sounds like the yearning of an imprisoned spirit. Franceline took some seed out of a box on the window-sill beside her, and began to feed it out of her hand, watching the little, pearly head bobbing on her palm with a smile of tenderest approval. At the sound of footsteps crunching the gravel at the back of the cottage she rose, still feeding her dove, to go and meet the gentlemen. But there was only one.

“I fear I am before my time,” said Mr. de Winton, “but I expected to find the others here before me.” (O Clide, Clide! what prevarication is this?) “They went out about half an hour ago, and told me to meet them in the Beech walk, where we were to come on together. Have I come too soon?”

“Oh! not at all,” said the young girl graciously; “my father will come out in a moment, and I am not very busy, as you see!”

“You are fond of animals, I perceive.”

“Animals! Oh! don’t call my sweet little doves animals,” retorted Franceline indignantly. “That’s worse than papa. When they coo too much and disturb him, and I take their part, he always says: ‘Oh! I’m fond of the birds, but they are noisy little things’! The idea of speaking of them as ‘the birds’! It hurts my feelings very much.”

“Then pray instruct me, so that I may not have the misfortune to do so too!” entreated Clide. “Tell me by what name I must call them.”

“Oh! you may laugh. I am used to being laughed at about my doves; I don’t mind it,” said Franceline with a pretty toss of her small, haughty head.

“I am not laughing at you; I should be very sorry to call anything you loved by a name that hurt you,” protested the young man with a warmth that made Franceline look up from her dove at him; the fervor of the glance that met her did not cause her to avert her eyes, and brought no glow over her face. Three of the doves came flying down from the medlar-tree, scattering the starry-white blossoms in their flight. After making a few circles in the air, one perched on Franceline’s shoulder, and two alighted on her head. Clide thought it was the prettiest picture he had ever seen; and as he watched the soft little creatures nestling into the copper-colored hair, he wondered if this choice of a nest did not betray a little cunning, mingled with their native simplicity. But Franceline could not see the performance from this picturesque point of view. The two on her head were fighting, each trying to push the other off. She put up her hand to chase them away, but the claws of one got entangled in her hair, and the more it struggled, the more difficult it became to escape. Clide could not but come to her assistance; he disengaged the tenacious rose-leaves very deftly from the glossy meshes, and set the prisoner free.

“Naughty little bird!” said Franceline, shaking back her flushed face, and smoothing the slightly-dishevelled braids; and then, without a word of thanks to her deliverer, or otherwise alluding to the misconduct of her pets, she walked on towards the summer-house, and broke out into observations about the beauties of the neighborhood, asking her companion what he had seen and how he liked the country round Dullerton. She spoke English as fluently as a native, with only a slight foreign accentuation of the vowels that was too piquant to be a blemish; but every now and then a literal translation reminded you unmistakably that the speaker was a foreigner.

Clide thought the accent and the Gallicisms quite charming; he was, however, a little startled when the young lady, in pointing out the various places of the surrounding parts, and telling him who owned them, informed him very gravely that the pretty Mrs. Lawrence, who lived in that Elizabethan house with a clock-tower rising behind the wood, was thirty years younger than her rich husband, and had married him for his “propriety,” as she was very poor and had none of her own.

Franceline noticed the undisguised astonishment caused by this announcement, and, blushing up with a little vexation, exclaimed: “I mean for his property! You know in French _propriété_ means property.” But after this she insisted on talking French. Clide protested he liked English much better, and vowed that she spoke it in perfection; but it was no use.

“English is too serious for conversation, and too stiff,” said Franceline, revenging herself for her blunder on the innocent medium of it, as we are all apt to do. “It is only fit for sermons and speeches. In French you can talk for an hour without saying anything, and it doesn’t matter. French is like a light, airy little carriage that only wants a touch to send it spinning along, and, once going, it will go on for ever; but English is a stagecoach, stately and top-heavy, and won’t go without passengers to steady it and horses to draw it. Foolish thoughts always sound so much more foolish in English than in French. People who are not serious and wise should always talk French.”

“Ah! merci, now I see why you insist on my talking it,” said Clide, laughing.

“It would have been a rash judgment; I could not tell whether you were wise or not.”

“I dare say you are right, though it never occurred to me before,” he remarked deprecatingly. “Our robust Anglo-Saxon is rather a clumsy vehicle for conversation compared with yours.”

“I did not call it clumsy; I said stately,” corrected Franceline.

Clide began to fear he was making himself disagreeable; that she was taking a dislike to him. Happily, before he committed himself further, M. de la Bourbonais came out and joined them. He was soon followed by Sir Simon and the admiral, and the little party sat down to Angélique’s _chefs-d’œuvre_ under the shade of the medlar-tree, with the doves sounding their bugle in the adjoining copse. The sun was setting, and sent a stream of orange and rose colored light into the garden and over the group at the table; a breeze came up from the river, fluttering the strawberry leaves and Franceline’s hair, and blowing the heavy scent of new-mown hay into her face. It happened--of course by chance, unless that far-sighted old Angélique had a hand in it--that Clide was seated next to her; and as the leg of the long table made a space between her and Sir Simon, it was natural that the two young people should be thrown on their own resources for conversation, while their elders at the other end talked incessantly of old times and people that neither Clide nor Franceline cared about. It was the first time in her life that she found herself the object of direct homage and attention from a young yet mature man, and the experience was decidedly pleasant. Clide was determined to efface the bad impression that he imagined he had made, and to win Franceline’s good graces or die in the effort. It was not a very difficult task, and the zest with which he set about it proved that it was not a disagreeable one. He bent all the energies of his mind to the sole end of interesting and entertaining her, and soon the undisguised pleasure that shone in the listener’s face showed that he was succeeding. With that instinct which quickens the perception of young gentlemen in Clide de Winton’s present state of mind, he was not long in hitting upon the subjects that most excited her curiosity. She had never been beyond the woods of Dullerton since she was of an age to observe things, and it was like a flight in a balloon over all these far-off countries to be carried there in imagination by the vivid descriptions of one who had seen them all. Clide began to wonder at himself as he went on; he had never suspected himself of such brilliant conversational powers as he was now displaying. He was surprised to see how much the dreamy, dark eyes had read about the various countries he spoke of, and what an enlightened interest she took in the natural history of each. She wanted to know a great deal about the splendid tropical birds that have no voices, and about the albatross and other marvellous inhabitants of the skies in far-away lands; and Clide lent himself with the utmost condescension to her catechising. But when he came to talking of Rome and the Catacombs, the eyes kindled with a different sort of interest.

“And you saw the very spot where S. Cecilia was buried, and S. Agatha, and S. Agnes, who was only thirteen when she was martyred? Oh! how I envy you. I would walk all the way barefooted from this to see those sacred places. And the Colosseum, where the wild beasts tore the martyrs to pieces!” She clasped her hands and looked at him with the look of awe and wonder that we might bestow on some one who had seen a vision. “And the tombs of the apostles, and the prison where S. Peter was when the angel came and set him free?”

“Yes, I saw them all; it was a great privilege,” said Clide, conscious of realizing for the first time how great.

“Indeed it was!” murmured Franceline, as if speaking to herself; then suddenly looking up at him, “Did it not make you long to be a martyr?”

Clide hesitated. The temptation to answer “yes” was very strong. The dark, appealing eyes were fixed on him with an expression that it was dreadful to disappoint; but he was too honest and too proud to steal her approval under false colors.

“No, I am afraid I did not. I saw it all too much from the historical point of view. The triumphs of the Christian heroes were mixed up in my memory with too many classical associations; and even if it had not been so, I confess that the phase of martyrdom recalled by the Colosseum and the Catacombs is not the one to stir my slow heroic pulses. There is too much of the ghastly physical strife on the one hand, and of wanton cruelty on the other; the contemplation rather shocks and harrows than stimulates me. I did once feel something like what you describe, but it was not in Rome.”

“Where was it?” inquired Franceline eagerly.

“It was in Africa, amongst a tribe of savages. I remember feeling it would be a grand use of a man’s life to devote it to rescuing them from their deplorable state of mental darkness and physical degradation; and that if one died in the struggle, like Francis Xavier, an outcast on the sea-shore, forsaken by every visible helpmate, it would be as noble a death as a man could wish to die.”

“I wonder you did not follow the impulse,” said Franceline. “You might have converted thousands of those poor savages, and been a second S. Francis Xavier. It must have been a great struggle not to try it.”

Clide did not laugh, but went on gravely dipping his strawberries into sugar for a moment, and then said:

“No, I can’t pretend even to the negative glory of a struggle. I am ashamed to say the desire was a mere transient caprice. I got the length of spending ten days learning the language, and by that time the dirt and stupidity and cruelty of the neophytes had done for my apostolic vocation; the debased condition of the poor creatures was brought home to me so fearfully that I gave it up in disgust. I dare say it was very cowardly, very selfish; but, looking back on it, I can’t help feeling that the savages had no great loss. It takes more than an impulse of emotional pity to make a hero of the Francis Xavier type; one can’t be an apostle by mere willing and wishing.”

“Yes, but one can,” denied Franceline; “that is just the one kind of hero that it only wants will to be. One cannot be a warrior or a poet, or that kind of thing, because that requires genius; but one may be a martyr or an apostle simply by willing. Love is the only genius that one wants; it was love that turned the twelve fishermen into apostles and heroes, you know.”

“Just so; but I didn’t love the savages.”

“Perhaps you would if you had tried.”

“Do you think it is possible to love any one by trying?”

“Well, I don’t know; if they were very unhappy and wanted my love very much, I think I might.”

Clide stole a quick glance at her; but Franceline was peeling a pear, and evidently an undue portion of her thoughts were concentrated on that operation and a care not to let the juice run on her fingers. “Then you think it was very wicked of me not to have loved those savages?” he began again.

“I don’t say it was wicked. If they were so very dirty and cruel, it must have been hard enough; but you might have found another tribe that would have been more lovable, and that wanted quite as much to be civilized and converted--nice, simple savages, like wild flowers or dumb animals, that would have been docile and grateful, perhaps revengeful too; but then when they were Christians they would have conquered that--”

Clide laughed outright.

“I don’t think your vocation for converting the savages is so very much superior to mine,” he said; “it certainly would not have lived through my three days’ novitiate.”

Franceline looked at him, and laughed too--that clear, ringing laugh of hers, that was so contagious; they both felt very young together.

“And what was your next vocation?” she asked, perfectly unconscious of any indiscretion. “What are you going to do now?”

“This morning my mind was made up to go abroad again in a few days, and recommence my old life of busy idleness; but your father has upset all my plans.”

“My father!”

“Yes. It ought not to surprise you much; it is not likely to be the first time that M. de la Bourbonais has proved the good genius of another. He was kind enough to let me talk to him of myself, and to give my folly the benefit of his wisdom; he made me feel that I was leading a very selfish, good-for-nothing sort of life, and showed me how wrong it was; in fact, he did for me what I wanted to do for the savages. He taught me what my duty was, and I promised him I would try to do it.”

“Ah! then perhaps you are going to be a hero after all,” said Franceline, a gleam of enthusiasm sparkling in her face again.

“I fear not; at least, it will be a very prosaic, humdrum sort of heroism. I am going to stay at home, and try to be useful to a few people in a quiet way on my own property.”

“Oh! I am so glad. Then we shall see you again. You’ll be sure to come and see Sir Simon sometimes, will you not?”

“Yes, I will come in any case to see M. de la Bourbonais,” said Clide. “His advice will be invaluable to me; and he was so kind as to promise that he would always be glad to give it to me.”

The sweet dimples broke out with a blush of pleasure and pride in Franceline’s face; it was a delight to her to hear any one speak so of her father, and Clide had seen so many wise and clever people in his travels that his admiration and respect implied a great deal. If the young man had been a Talleyrand bent on attaining some diplomatic end, he could not have displayed greater cunning and tact.

“It’s a great come down from the grand African scheme, you see,” he observed, laughing; “but under such good guidance there is no saying what I may not achieve. I may turn out a hero in the end.”

“If you do your duty perfectly, of course you will,” replied Franceline confidently. “Papa says the real heroes are those that do their duty best and get no praise for it.”

“Oh! but I should like a little praise; you would not grudge me a little now and then if I deserved it?” And the look that accompanied the question would have most fully explained the praise he coveted, if Franceline had not been as unlearned in that species of language as one of her doves.

“Bless me! how beautiful that child is!” said the admiral in a _sotto voce_. “Just look at her color; did you ever see anything to come up to it? It reminds me of that tinted Hebe that we went to see together in Florence; you remember, Harness?”

The excitement of talking had brought an exquisite pink glow into Franceline’s cheeks, and made her eyes sparkle with unwonted brilliancy. Her father listened to the flattering outburst of the old sailor with a bright smile of satisfaction, not venturing to look at Franceline, lest he should betray his acquiescence too palpably.

“And she’s the very picture of health too!” remarked the admiral.

At this Raymond turned and looked at her.

“How like her mother she is!” said Sir Simon, appealing to him; but he had no sooner uttered the words than he wished himself silent. The smile died immediately out of M. de la Bourbonais’ face, and a sharp spasm of pain passed over it like a shadow. Sir Simon guessed at once what caused it: the bright and delicate color, that the admiral had aptly compared to the transparency of tinted marble, reminded him of Armengarde when death had cast its terrible beauty over her.

“Like her in beauty and in many other things,” resumed the baronet in a careless, abstracted tone. “But, happily, Franceline does not know what delicacy means; she has never known a day’s illness in her life, I believe.”

But this reassuring remark did not bring back the smile into the father’s face; he fixed his eyes on Franceline with an uneasy glance, as if looking for something that he dreaded to see there.

“She must find this place dull, pretty little pet,” observed the admiral, who saw nothing to check his admiring comments.

“It never occurred to me before, but I dare say she does,” assented the baronet; “and she’s old enough now to want a little amusement. We ought to have thought of that already, Raymond; but we’re a selfish lot, the best of us. We forget that we were young ourselves once upon a time. I’ll tell you what it is, De Winton, we’ll carry the child off one of these days to London, and show her the sights and take her to the opera. You’d like that, Franceline, would you not?” And shifting his chair to the other side of the table, he set himself down by her side in an affectionate attitude.

The project was discussed with great animation, Franceline being evidently delighted with it.

“My step-mother was to be in town next week,” said Clide, “and I’m sure she would be very happy to give her services as chaperon, if you have not any more privileged person in view.”

“That’s not a bad idea. I had not thought of that. I’m glad you mentioned it. I’ll write to her this very night,” said Sir Simon. “Meantime, it strikes me that it would be a very good thing if you learned to ride, Miss Franceline; it’s a disgrace to us all to think of your having entered your eighteenth year without being taught this accomplishment. We must set about repairing your neglected education at once. How about a pony, Clide? Which of the nags would suit best, do you think?”

“I should say Rosebud would be about the nicest you could find for a lady; she’s as gentle as a lamb, and as smooth-footed as a cat.”

“Rosebud!” echoed M. de La Bourbonais. “Mon cher…”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” said Sir Simon, completely ignoring the interruption. “Rosebud is a gem of a lady’s horse. We’ll have a few private lessons in the park first, and let her canter over the turf before we show off in public.”

“Mon cher Simon,” broke in Raymond again, “it cannot be thought of. Franceline would not like it; she does not care, I assure you.…”

“O petit papa!” cried Franceline with a little, entreating gesture.

“Ah! is it so indeed? But, my child, consider…”

“Consider, Monsieur le Philosophe, that you don’t understand the matter at all; you just leave it to us to settle, and attend to what De Winton is saying to you.”

This last was a difficult injunction, inasmuch as the admiral was saying nothing. “Come along with me out of the reach of busybodies, Franceline,” he continued, and, drawing her arm within his own, they walked off to the summer-house, where Clide, without being invited, followed them. There was a long and most interesting conference, which terminated in Franceline’s standing on tiptoe to be kissed by her old friend, and declaring that it was very naughty of him to spoil her so.

* * * * *

“Show him in,” said the vicar, laying down his pen, and a stout, rosy-cheeked, fair-haired young man in corduroys and top-boots was ushered into the study.

“Well Griggs, I’m glad to see you. Sit down,” said Mr. Langrove in the bland, familiar tone of kindness that put simple folk at ease with him directly. “You’ve come to consult me on a matter of importance, eh?”

“Of importance,” echoed the farmer, twirling his round hat between his knees and contemplating his boots--“of great importance, sir.”

“Well, let me hear what it is. If I can help you in any way, you may count upon me,” replied the vicar encouragingly, drawing his chair a little nearer.

“Thank you, I don’t want help,” he said with a significant emphasis. “I know where to look for it when I do,” turning up his eyes sanctimoniously to heaven.

“Certainly, that help is ever at hand for us. But what is your business with me?”

“You’ll not take it amiss if I speak frankly, sir. We can none of us do more than bear testimony to the truth, according to our lights,” explained the farmer; and, Mr. Langrove having by a grave nod acceded to this proposition, he resumed: “You contradicted yourself in the pulpit last Sunday. It’s been repeated to me that you found fault with my teaching concerning faith and works; and so, for sake of them as look to me for guidance, I came up to hear what views you held on that head, as the gospel of the day said: ‘And every man shall be judged according to his works.’ Now, sir, it appears to me the end of the sermon was a flat contradiction of the beginning.”

“Can you name the contradictory passages?” demanded the vicar, after an imperceptible start.

“Well, I can’t say as I can,” admitted the farmer; “but I’d know them if I heard them.”

Mr. Langrove rose, and took down a large manuscript volume from a shelf directly over his head. Opening it at random, his eye fell upon the text: “Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” He lingered on it for a second, then turned over the leaves, and, having found the place he wanted, he read aloud the first and last few pages of the preceding Sunday’s sermon.

“Where do you see the contradiction?” he inquired, looking up and laying his hand on the page.

“Well, as you read it now, I can’t say it sounds much amiss,” replied Mr. Griggs, lifting his feet and bringing them down again with a dubious thud. “I expect the fault was in the way of saying it. You don’t speak plain enough; if you spoke plainer, folks would most likely understand you better. Many as have joined the Connection say as it was that as drove them to us. They couldn’t understand you; they often came away puzzled.”

A transient flush rose and died out in the vicar’s face, and his lips trembled a little. But Farmer Griggs did not notice this; he was looking at his boots, and pondering on the wisdom of his own words. Mr. Langrove had been pretty well trained to forbearance of late years, and, though he was too humble-minded and too honest to pretend to be indifferent to the humiliating interference he had to suffer, he was surprised to find how keenly he smarted under the present one, and mortified to feel how alive the old man was in him, in spite of the many blows he had dealt him. He never, since he was a school-boy, was conscious of such a strong desire to kick a fellow-creature; and this rising movement was no sooner strangled by an imperious effort of self-control than it rose up instantaneously in the milder form of an impulse to open the door and show his visitor out. Before this second rebellion of the old man was put down, Farmer Griggs, mistaking the vicar’s momentary silence for a tacit acknowledgment of his shortcomings, observed:

“It’s a solemn thing to break the word; and the plainer and simpler one speaks the better it is for those that hear it, though it mayn’t be such a credit for them that speak it. There’s them that say you think more about making a fine sermon than doing good to souls--which is no better than spiritual pride. You can’t shut folks’ mouths, no more than you can stop the river from running; they will say what they think.”

“Yes, and that is why we are commanded to think no evil,” rejoined the vicar. “We are too ready to judge of other people’s motives, when in all conscience we are hard set enough to judge our own. If we go to church to pick holes in the sermon, as you say, we had better stay away. The preacher may be a very poor one, but, trust me, while he does his best, those who listen in the right spirit will learn no harm from him; those who have not that spirit would do well to ask for it, and meantime to study the chapter of S. James on the use of the tongue.”

The vicar rose, as if to intimate that the audience was at an end.

“Well, there may be something in that,” remarked the farmer, rising slowly; “but, for my own part, I never had much opinion of James. Paul is the man; if it hadn’t been for Paul, it’s my belief the whole concern would have been a failure.[92] Good-morning, sir.” And without waiting to see the effect of this startling announcement of his private views, Farmer Griggs bowed himself out.

“And these are the men who take the word out of our mouths! Did he come of his own accord, or was he set on to it by Miss Bulpit?” was the vicar’s reflection, as he stood watching the farmer’s retreating figure from the window. “It is more than I can bear; some steps must be taken. It’s high time for Harness to interfere; it’s too bad of him if he refuses.”

Mr. Langrove took up his hat, and went straight to the Court.

“Depend upon it,” said Sir Simon when the clergymen had related the recent interview--“depend upon it, Griggs is too shy a chap to have done it on his own hook; take my word for it, there is a woman at the bottom of it.”

“That is just what makes it so serious. Griggs is a poor, ignorant, conceited fellow that one can’t feel very angry with; one is more inclined to laugh at him and pity him. But it is altogether unpardonable in such a person as Miss Bulpit; it’s her being at the bottom of it that makes the case hard on me.”

Sir Simon agreed that it was.

“Then what do you advise me to do? What steps are you prepared to take?” asked Mr. Langrove.

“My advice is that we leave her alone,” replied Sir Simon. “We’re none of us a match for womankind. She circumvented me about that bit of ground for the Methodist chapel. She’s too many guns for both of us together, Langrove; if you get into a quarrel with the old lady, she’ll raise the parish against you with port wine and flannel shirts, and you’ll go to the wall. After all, why need you worry about it! Let her have her say. They love to hear themselves talk, women do; you can’t change them, and you wouldn’t if you could. Come, now, Langrove, you know you wouldn’t. Halloo! here’s something to look at!” And he started from his semi-recumbent attitude in the luxurious arm-chair, and went to the open window. It was a charming sight that met them. Two riders, a lady and a gentleman, were cantering over the sward on two magnificent horses, a bay and a black.

“Is that Franceline?” exclaimed Mr. Langrove, forgetting, in his surprise and admiration, the annoyance of having his grievance pooh-poohed so unconcernedly.

“Yes. How capitally the little thing holds herself! She only had three lessons, and she sits in her saddle as if it were a chair. Let’s come out and have a look at them!”

They stepped on the terrace. But Clide and Franceline were lost to view for a few minutes in the avenue; presently they emerged from the trees and came cantering up the lawn, Franceline’s laugh sounding as merry as a hunting-horn through the park.

“Bravo! Capital! We’ll make a first-rate horse-woman of her by-and-by. She’ll cut out every girl in the county one of these days. And pray who gave you leave to assume the duties of riding-master without consulting me, sir?”

This was to Clide, who had sprung off his horse to set something right in his pupil’s saddle and adjust the folds of her habit, which had nothing amiss that any one else could see.

“They told me you were engaged, so I did not like to disturb you,” he explained.

“I should very much like to know who told you so,” said Sir Simon, with offensive incredulity.

“My respected uncle is the offender, if offence there be; but now that you are disengaged, perhaps you would like to take a canter with us. I’ll go round and order your horse?”

“No, you sha’n’t. I don’t choose to be taken up second-hand in that fashion; you’ll be good enough to walk off to The Lilies, and tell the count I have something very particular to say to him, and I’ll take it as a favor if he’ll come up at once.”

Clide turned his horse’s head in the direction indicated.

“No, no; you’ll get down and walk there,” said Sir Simon. “If he sees you on horseback, he may suspect something, and that would spoil the fun.” The young man alighted, and gave his bridle to be held.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t hold it in the saddle,” said the baronet after a moment; “and we will take a turn while we’re waiting.” He vaulted into Clide’s vacant seat with the agility of a younger man.

“Well, a pleasant ride to you both!” said Mr. Langrove, moving away. “You do your master credit, Franceline, whoever he is; and the exercise has given you a fine color too,” he added, nodding kindly to her.

“Oh! it’s enchanting!” cried the young Amazon passionately. “I feel as if I had wings; and Rosebud is so gentle!”

“Look here, Langrove,” called out Sir Simon, backing his powerful black horse, and stooping towards the vicar, “don’t you go worrying yourself about this business; it’s not worth it. They are a parcel of humbugs, the whole lot of them. I know Griggs well--a hot-headed, canting lout that would be much better occupied attending to his pigs. It would never do for a man like you to come into collision with him. Let those that like his fire and brimstone go and take it; you’ve a good riddance of them. And as to the old lady, keep never minding. You’ll do no good by crossing her; she’s a harmless old party as long as you let her have her own way, but if you rouse her there will be the devil to pay.”

M. de la Bourbonais had been kept out of the secret of the riding lessons. He had heard nothing more of the scheme since that evening at supper, and, with Angélique in the plot, it required no great diplomacy to manage the trying on of the riding habit, that had been made by the first lady’s dressmaker in London, brought down for the purpose; so that the intended surprise was as complete as Sir Simon and his accomplices could have wished.

“Comment donc!”[93] he exclaimed, breaking out into French, as usual when he was excited. “What is this? What do I see? My Clair de lune[94] turned into an Amazon!” And he stood at the end of the lawn and beheld Franceline careering on her beautiful, thoroughbred pony. “Ah! Simon, Simon, this is too bad. This is terrible!” he protested, as the baronet rode up; but the smile of inexpressible pleasure that shone in his face took all the reproach out of the words.

“Look at her!” cried Sir Simon triumphantly; “did you ever see any one take to it so quickly? Just see how she sits in her saddle. Stand out of the way a bit, till we have another gallop. Now, Franceline, who’ll be back first?”

And away they flew, Sir Simon reining in his more powerful steed, so as to let Rosebud come in a neck ahead of him.

“Simon, Simon, you are incorrigible! I don’t know what to say to you,” said Raymond, settling and unsettling the spectacles under his bushy eyebrows.

“Compliment me; that’s all you need say for the present,” said Sir Simon. “See what a color I’ve brought into her cheeks!”

“O petit père! it is so delightful,” exclaimed Franceline, caressing the hand her father had laid on Rosebud’s neck. “I never enjoyed anything so much. And I’m not the least fatigued; you know you were afraid it would fatigue me? And is not Rosebud a beauty? And look at my whip.” And she turned the elegant gold-headed handle for his inspection.

“Mounted in gold, and with your cipher in turquoise! Ah! you are nicely spoiled! Simon, Simon!” What more could he say at such a moment? It would have been odious to show anything but gratitude and pleasure, even if he felt it. This, then, was the end of the earnest midnight conference, and the distinct promise that Rosebud and Nero should be sold! The animal that would have paid half a lawful and urgent debt was to be kept for Franceline, and he must sanction the folly; to say nothing of the rigging out of that young lady in a complete riding suit of the most expensive fashion. Well, well, it was no use protesting now, and it was impossible to deny that the exquisitely-fitting habit and the dark beaver hat set off her figure and hair in singular perfection. The bright, healthy glow of her cheeks, too pleaded irresistibly in extenuation of Sir Simon’s extravagance.

“Shall we ride down to The Lilies? I should like Angélique to see me. She would be so pleased,” said Franceline, appealing to Sir Simon.

“You think she would? Silly old woman! very likely; but I want to have a talk with your father, so Clide must go and take care of you.” And the baronet slipped off his horse, which Mr. de Winton, with exemplary docility, at once mounted. The two young people set off at a canter, Franceline turning round to kiss her hand to her father, as they plunged into the trees and were lost to sight.

It would be useless to attempt to describe the effect of the apparition on Angélique: how she threw up her hands, and then flattened them between her knees, calling all the saints in Paradise to witness if any one had ever seen the like; and how nothing would satisfy her but that they should gallop up and down the field in front for her edification; and the astonishment of a flock of sheep which the performance sent scampering and bleating in wild dismay backwards and forwards along with them; and how, when Franceline’s hair came undone in the galloping, and fell in a golden shower down her back, the old woman declared it was the very image of S. Michael on horseback, whom she had seen trampling down the dragon in an Assyrian church. When it was all over, and Franceline had gone upstairs to change her dress, Clide tied the horses to a tree, and completed his conquest of the old lady by asking her to show him that wonderful casket he had heard so much about. She produced it from its hiding-place in M. de la Bourbonais’ room, and, reverently unwrapping it, proceeded to tell the story of how the papers had been rescued, and how they had been burned, watching her listener’s face with keen eyes all the while, to see if any shadow of scepticism was to be detected in it; but Clide was all attention and faith. “There are people who think it clever to laugh at the family for believing in such a story,” she observed; “but, as I say, when a thing has come down from father to son for nigh four thousand years, it’s hard not to believe in it; and to my mind it’s easier to believe it than to think anybody could have had the wit to invent it.” And Clide having agreed that no mere human imagination could ever indeed have reached so lofty a flight, Angélique called his attention to the ornamentation of the casket. “Monsieur can see how unlike anything in our times it is,” pointing to the antediluvian vipers crawling and writhing in the rusty iron; “and all that is typical--the snakes and the birds and the crooked signs--everything is typical, as Monsieur le Comte will tell you.”

“And what is it supposed to typify?” asked Clide, anxious to seem interested.

“Ah! I know nothing about that, monsieur!” replied Angélique with a shrug; and lest other questions of an equally indiscreet and unreasonable nature should follow, she covered up the casket and carried it off.

TO BE CONTINUED.

“CHIEFLY AMONG WOMEN.”

BY AN AMERICAN WOMAN.

Mr. Gladstone, in his _Political Expostulation_, makes use of the following expression in regard to the growth of the Catholic Church in England: “The conquests have been chiefly, as might have been expected, among women.” That the ex-premier intended this as a statement of fact rather than a sneer is very probable; for he evidently endeavors to employ the language of good manners in his controversies, unlike his predecessors in polemics during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. The debate between him and his distinguished antagonists in the English hierarchy bears, happily, little resemblance to that between John Milton and Salmasius concerning the royal rights of Charles I. But that, nevertheless, there is a sneer in the quoted expression is scarcely to be denied; and that this sneer had a lodgment in Mr. Gladstone’s mind, and escaped thence by a sort of mental wink, if not by his will, is beyond doubt. The pamphlet bears all the internal as well as external marks of haste; it is only a piece of clever “journalism”--written for a day, overturned in a day. “Mr. Gladstone lighted a fire on Saturday night which was put out on Monday morning,” said the London _Tablet_. But the sneer, whether wilful or not, stands, and cannot be erased or ignored; and it is worth more than a passing consideration. It is an indirect and ungraceful way of saying that the Catholic Church brings conviction more readily to weaker than to stronger intellects; and that because the “conquests” are “chiefly among women,” the progress of the church among the people is not substantial, general, or permanent. We presume that this is a reasonable construction of the expression.

Whether the first of these propositions be true or not is not pertinent to the practical question contained in the second. We will only remark, in passing it over, that there stands against its verity a formidable list of giant male intellects for which Protestantism and infidelity have failed to furnish a corresponding offset. Students of science and literature and lovers of art will not need to be reminded of the names. That Catholic doctrine is intellectual in the purest and best sense there are the records of nineteen centuries of civilization and letters to offer in evidence. But what Mr. Gladstone invites us to discuss is the power of women in propagating religion. In arriving at a correct estimate we must review, with what minuteness the limits of an article will permit, the part that women have had in the establishment of religion, the intensity, the earnestness, the zeal, the persistence--for these enter largely into the idea of propagation--with which women have accepted and followed the teaching of the church, and the ability they have exhibited and the success they have achieved in the impression of their convictions upon others. We must take into account the relative natural zealousness of the sexes; for zeal, next to grace, has most to do with the making of “conquests.” We must remember the almost invincible weapon which nature has placed in the hands of the weaker sex for approaching and controlling men; the beautiful weapon--affection--which mother, wife, sister, daughter, wield, and for which very few men know of any foil, or against which they would raise one if they did. If we admit, to conciliate Mr. Gladstone, that religion is an affair of the heart as well as of the head, he will be gracious enough in return, we apprehend, to concede that women must be potential agents in its propagation.

Surely, it is only thoughtlessness which enables well-read men to assign to women an insignificant place in the establishment of religion, or their reading must have been too much on their own side of the line. Even the pagans were wiser. They recognized the potency of women with an intelligence born of nothing less correct than instinct. Their mythological Titans were equally divided as to sex. A woman was their model of the austerest of virtues--perpetual celibacy. A woman was their goddess of wisdom, and, as opposed to man, the patroness of just and humane warfare. A woman presided over their grain and harvests. Every Grecian city maintained sacred fire on an altar dedicated to Vesta, the protectress of the dearest form of human happiness--the domestic. It was from Hebe the gods accepted their nectar. The nine tutelary deities of the æsthetic--the Muses--were women. So were the Fates--who held the distaff, and spun the thread of life, and cut the thread--

“Clotho and Lachesis, whose boundless sway, With Atropos, both men and gods obey.”

Splendor, Joy, and Pleasure were the Graces. It was a woman who first set the example of parental devotion--Rhea concealing from their would-be destroyers the birth of Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto. It was a woman who first set the example of conjugal fidelity--Alcestis offering to die for Admetus. It was from a woman’s name, Alcyone, we have our “halcyon days”--Alcyone, who, overcome by grief for her husband, lost at sea, threw herself into the waves, and the gods, to reward their mutual love, transformed them into kingfishers; and when they built their nests, the sea is said to have been peaceful in order not to disturb their joys. It was a woman who dared to defy a king in order to perform funeral rites over the remains of her brother. It was a woman, Ariadne, who, to save her lover, Theseus, furnished him the clew out of the Cretan labyrinth, although she abolished thereby the tribute her father was wont to extort from the Athenians. In all that was good, beautiful, and tender, the pagans held women pre-eminent; and whether we agree with the earliest Greeks, who believed their mythology fact; or with the philosophers of the time of Euripides, who identified the legends with physical nature; or prefer to accept the still later theory that the deities and heroes were originally human, and the marvellous myths terrestrial occurrences idealized, the eminence of the position accorded to women is equally significant. Woman was supremely influential, especially in all that related to the heart. She had her place beside the priest. She was the most trusted oracle. She watched the altar-fires. She was worshipped in the temples, and homage was paid to her divinity in martial triumphs and the public games. Whatever was tender and beneficent in the mythical dispensation was associated with her sex. She was the goddess of every kind of love. Excess, luxury, brute-power, were typified by men alone. The pagans knew that love was the most potent influence to which man was subject; and love with them was but another name for woman. “It is in the heart,” says Lamartine, “that God has placed the genius of women, because the works of this genius are all works of love.” Plautus, the pagan satirist, offered his weight in gold for a man who could reason against woman’s influence. Emerson, a very good pagan in his way, appreciates the subtlety, the directness, and the impervious character of such an influence in the making of conquests. “We say love is blind,” he writes, “and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage around his eyes--blind, because he does not see what he does not like; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in the universe is Love, for finding what he seeks, and only that.”

Woman holds a very prominent place in the religious history of the Jews. Two books of the Old Testament were written in her exaltation--the Book of Ruth and the Book of Esther--while in the others she is found constantly at the side of man, exercising in religious affairs a recognized power. Patriarchs acknowledge her influence; she is addressed by the prophets. It was Anna who departed not from the Temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. It was to a mother’s prayers that Samuel was granted. Sarah is honored by mention in the New Testament as a model spouse, and the church has enshrined her name and her virtues in the universal marriage service. Miriam directed the triumphant processions and inspired the hosannas of the women of Israel, and was their instructress and guide. As it was then, as now, the custom of the Israelites to separate the men from the women in public worship, Miriam was looked up to as the appointed prophetess of her time. Micah, the prophet, speaking in the name of God, says to the Jews: “I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and I sent before thee Moses and Aaron and Miriam.” That she had been appointed by the Lord, conjointly with her brothers, to rescue her people from servitude, appears from her own words in Numbers: “Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by us?” It is needless to allude to the esteem in which Naomi and Ruth were held. The widow of Sarepta fed the prophet Elijah when she had reason to believe that in so doing she would expose her son and herself to death by famine. The Second Epistle of S. John was written to a woman. The reverence and affection with which the writers in the New Testament speak of the Blessed Virgin Mary are too familiar for more than allusion. The women who followed Our Lord were singularly heroic, and the influence which they exerted upon their associates and upon all who came in contact with them must have been correspondingly strong. Woman never insulted, denied, or betrayed Christ:

“Not she with trait’rous kiss her Saviour stung, Not she denied him with unholy tongue; She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave-- Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave.”

S. Paul himself commends the women who labored with him in spreading the Gospel. It was Lois and Eunice who taught the Scriptures to Timothy. It was in response to the appeals of women that many of the greatest miracles were wrought; Elijah and Elisha both raised the dead to life at the request of women; and Lazarus was restored by Our Lord in pity for his sisters. It was to a woman our Lord spoke the blessed words, “Thy sins be forgiven thee; go in peace.” It was a woman whose faith led her to touch the hem of his garment, confident that thereby she would be made whole. It was a woman whom he singled out as the object of his divine love on the Sabbath day, in spite of the malicious remonstrances of the Jews. Almost his last words on the cross had a woman for their subject. It was women who followed him with most unflagging devotion; and it was women whom he first greeted after his resurrection.

We come now to women in the church militant. The question is no longer, What have women been in religion? but, What have they done? Does the record which they have made for themselves in the propagation of Christianity justify the sneer of the ex-premier? The implication in Mr. Gladstone’s quoted sentence is that, because the church in England has found her conquests thus far “chiefly among women,” the Catholic faith is not making such progress in that country as should create apprehension. He thus raises the issue of woman’s potentiality in religion.

We venture to suggest that there is no department of human endeavor in which she is so powerful.

Woman’s power in the present and the future, as a working disciple of Our Lord, is reasonably deducible from her past. We may not argue that to-morrow she shall be able to bring others to the knowledge and service of God, if, throughout the long yesterday of the church, she was indifferent or imbecile. She has little promise if she has not already shown large fulfilment. We may not look to her zeal at the domestic hearth and in cultivated society for fruits worthy an apostle, if, in the crimson ages of Christianity, her sex made no sacrifices, achieved no glory. We may doubt the strength of her intellect, as applied to the science of religion, if the past furnishes no testimony thereof; and we may accept, with some indulgence towards its author, the ex-premier’s sneer upon her efficiency in the active toil of the church, if, in the past, she has not been alert and successful in its various forms of organized intelligence, humanity, and benevolence.

What, then, are the facts? Did women, in the early days, submit to torture and death, side by side with men, rather than deny their faith in Christ? Was their faith, too, sealed with their blood? Did women share the labor and the danger of teaching the truths of religion? Did they, when such study was extremely difficult, and required more intellect because it enjoyed fewer aids than now, devote themselves to the investigation and elaboration of sacred subjects? Have they contributed anything to the learning and literature of the church? Have they gone into uncivilized countries as missionaries? Have they furnished conspicuous examples of fidelity to God under circumstances seductive or appalling? Have they founded schools, established and maintained houses for the sick, the poor, the aged, the orphan, the stranger? Have they crossed the thresholds of their homes, never to re-enter, but to follow whithersoever the Lord beckoned? Has their zeal led them into the smoke and rush of battle, into the dens of pestilence, into squalor and the haunts of crime? Have they proved by evidence which will not be disputed that, to win others to their faith, they have given up everything--they can give up everything--that their faith is dearer to them than all else on earth?

Then, surely, a faith which has made its progress even “chiefly among women” has made a progress as solid as if it were chiefly among men, for no greater things can man do than these.

It is neither possible nor desirable, in an article of narrow limits, to enumerate the women who have taken even a prominent part in the establishment of Christianity through the various agencies which the church has employed. The notice of each class must be brief, and we shall not formally group them; the testimony will be valid enough, even in a cursory presentation. What have women done to prove their ability to propagate the faith?

Beginning in the days of the apostles, we find the blood of women flowing as freely as that of men in vindication of the Christian creed. If men joyfully hastened to the amphitheatre, so did they. If men meekly accepted torture and ignominy, so did they. If men defied the ingenuity of cruelty and smiled in their agony, so did they. If men resigned human ambition, surrendered possessions, and abandoned luxury, so did they. The annals of the martyrs show, with what degree of accuracy it is difficult now to determine, that if either sex is entitled to higher distinction for the abandonment of everything that human nature holds dear, in order to follow Christ even to ignominious death, the pre-eminence is in favor of the weaker sex. It is impossible to read a chapter of martyrology from the inauguration of persecution until its close without finding therein the names of noble and gentle women illuminated by their own blood.

Contemporaneous with S. Paul is Thecla, who was held in so great veneration in the early ages of Christianity “that it was considered the greatest praise that could be given to a woman to compare her with S. Thecla.” She was skilled in profane and sacred science and philosophy, and excelled in the various branches of polite literature. She is declared one of the brightest ornaments of the apostolic age; and one of the fathers “commends her eloquence and the ease, strength, sweetness, and modesty of her discourse.” She was distinguished for “the vehemence of her love for Christ,” which she displayed on many occasions with the courage of a martyr and “with a strength of body equal to the vigor of her mind.” She was converted by S. Paul about the year 45. Resolving to dedicate her virginity and life to God, she broke an engagement of marriage, and, in despite of the remonstrances of her parents and the entreaties of her betrothed, who was a pagan nobleman, devoted herself to the work of the Gospel. At length authority placed its cruel hand upon her. She was exposed naked in the amphitheatre; but her fortitude survived the shock undaunted. The lions forgot their ferocity and licked her feet; and S. Ambrose, S. Chrysostom, S. Methodius, S. Gregory Nazianzen, and other fathers confirm the truth of the statement that she emerged from the arena without harm. She was exposed to many similar dangers, but triumphantly survived them. She accompanied S. Paul in many of his journeys, and died in retirement at Isaura. The great cathedral of Milan was built in her honor.

Visitors to Rome are taken to the Church of S. Prisca, built on the original site of her house--the house in which S. Peter lodged. Prisca was a noble Roman lady who, on account of her profession of Christianity, was exposed in the amphitheatre at the age of thirteen. The lions refusing to devour her, she was beheaded in prison. In the IIId century we behold S. Agatha displaying a fortitude before her judge which has never been surpassed by man, and suffering without resistance torture of exquisite cruelty--the tearing open of her bosom by iron shears. In the same century Apollonia, daughter of a magistrate in Alexandria, was baptized by a disciple of S. Anthony, and there appeared an angel, who threw over her a garment of dazzling white, saying, “Go now to Alexandria and preach the faith of Christ.” Many were converted by her eloquence; for her refusal to worship the gods she was bound to a column, and her beautiful teeth were pulled out one by one by a pair of pincers, as an appropriate atonement for her crime. Then a fire was kindled, and she was flung into it. Apollonia preaching to the people of Alexandria forms the subject of a famous picture by a favorite pupil of Michael Angelo--Granacci--in the Munich gallery. In the beginning of the IVth century a Roman maiden, whose name is popularly known as Agnes, gave up her life for her faith. “Her tender sex,” says a Protestant writer, “her almost childish years, her beauty, innocence, and heroic defence of her chastity, the high antiquity of the veneration paid to her, have all combined to invest the person and character of S. Agnes with a charm, an interest, a reality, to which the most sceptical are not wholly insensible.” The son of the Prefect of Rome became enamored of her comeliness, and asked her parents to give her to him as his wife. Agnes repelled his advances and declined his gifts. Then the prefect ordered her to enter the service of Vesta, and she refused the command with disdain. Chains and threats failed to intimidate her; resort was had to a form of torture so atrocious that her woman’s heart, but for a miracle of grace, must have quailed in the pangs of anticipation. She was exposed nude in a place of infamy, and her head fell “in meek shame” upon her bosom. She prayed, and “immediately her hair, which was already long and abundant, became like a veil, covering her whole person from head to foot; and those who looked upon her were seized with awe and fear as of something sacred, and dared not lift their eyes.” When fire refused to consume her body, the executioner mounted the obstinate fagots, and ended her torments by the sword. She is the favorite saint of the Roman women; two churches in the Eternal City bear her name; there is no saint whose effigy is older than hers; and Domenichino, Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoretto have perpetuated her glory. In the previous year, at Syracuse, Lucia, a noble damsel, refused a pagan husband of high lineage and great riches, preferring to consecrate herself to a divine Spouse. Her discarded suitor betrayed her to the persecutors, from whose hands she escaped by dying in prison of her wounds. Euphemia, who is venerated in the East by the surname of _Great_, and to whom four churches are erected in Constantinople, died a frightful death in Chalcedon, four years after Lucia had perished in Syracuse. So general was the homage paid her heroism that Leo the Isaurian ordered that her churches be profaned and her relics be cast into the sea. Devotion found means for evading the mandate, and the sacred remains were preserved. In the same year Catherine, a niece of Constantine the Great, was martyred at Alexandria. From her childhood it was manifest that she had been rightly named--from καθαρός, pure, undefiled. Her graces of mind and person were the wonder and admiration of the people. Her father was King of Egypt, and she his heir. When she ascended the throne, she devoted herself to the study of philosophy. Plato was her favorite author. It is declared that her scholarship was so profound, so varied, and so exact that she confounded a company of the ablest heathen philosophers. The Emperor Maximin, failing to induce her to apostatize, had constructed four wheels, armed with blades, and revolving in opposite directions. Between these she was bound; but God miraculously preserved her. Then she was driven from Alexandria, scourged, and beheaded. St. Catherine has been honored for many centuries as the patroness of learning and eloquence. In art S. Jerome’s name and hers are frequently associated together, as the two patrons of scholastic theology. She carries a book in her hands, like S. Thomas Aquinas and S. Bonaventure, to symbolize her learning, and her statue is to be found in the old universities and schools. She was especially honored in the University of Padua, the _Alma Mater_ of Christopher Columbus. In England alone there were upwards of fifty churches dedicated in her name. The painters have loved to treat her as the Christian Urania, the goddess of science and philosophy. She afforded delightful opportunities of genius to Raphael, Guido, Titian, Correggio, Albert Dürer. In the same century and about the same year Barbara, the daughter of a nobleman in Heliopolis, was decapitated by her enraged father on discovering her profession of the Christian faith; Margaret, who refused to become the wife of a pagan governor, was beheaded at Antioch; Dorothea was slain in Cappadocia.

Sometimes the women of these early days walked to martyrdom with father, husband, brother, or friend; as Domnina and Theonilla; Lucia with Gemmianus, under Diocletian; Daria with Chrysanthus, Cecilia with Valerian, Tiburtius, and Maximus; Flora and Mary in Cordova; Dorothea and her troop of followers; Theodora with Didymus; Victoria and Fortunatus; Bibiana, a young Roman lady, with her father, mother, and sister, whom she inspired and sustained.

Shall we prolong the calendar to show that woman’s courage did not expire with the fervor of apostolic times? There were Thrasilla and Emiliana, aunts of Gregory the Great. There was the English abbess, Ebba, who, with her entire household, perished in the flames of their convent; the noble Helen of Sweden, who was murdered by her relatives in the XIth century.

Did women seek the solitude of the wilderness and the perils of the forest to serve God as hermits and solitaries? They began the practice of the ascetic life in the apostolic days; they had formed communities as early as the IId century; many lived in couples, as the anchorets Marava and Cyra in the first century; some imitated the example of Mary of Egypt, who spent twenty-seven years in isolation. There were the Irish hermit, Maxentia in France; and Modneva, in the IXth century, also Irish, who dwelt for seven years alone in the Island of Trent. S. Bridget of Ireland had her first cell in the trunk of an oak-tree.

When we undertake to answer what sacrifices women have made for religion, it is difficult to frame an adequate reply with sufficient brevity. From the day that S. Catherine gave up the throne of Egypt until this hour, women have been sacrificing for the Catholic faith--everything. If the objects of their attachment are fewer than those of men, their domestic love is of more exquisite sensibility, and its rupture is in many cases, not the result of an instant’s strong resolve, but the slow martyrdom of a lifetime. Nearly all the early heroines of Christianity were women of high social position, of rich and luxurious homes, and many were noted for their beauty, their culture, or their address. Some were on the eve of happy betrothals; yet Eucratis spurns a lover, and Rufina and Secunda depart from apostate husbands. It was to the courage and self-sacrifice of their respective wives that the martyrs Hadrian and Valerian are indebted for their palms. In the IVth century we see the Empress Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, when fourscore years of age, proceeding from Constantinople to Palestine for the purpose of adorning churches and worshipping our Lord in the regions consecrated by his presence. It was she who discovered the true cross of Christ. In the VIIth century Queen Cuthburge of England resigned royal pleasures, founded a convent, and lived and died in it. In the VIIth century Hereswith, Queen of the East-Angles, withdrew from royalty, and became an inmate of the convent in Chelles, France. Queen Bathilde, of France, followed her thither as soon as her son, Clotaire III., had reached his majority, “and obeyed her superior as if she were the last Sister in the house.” The abbess herself, who was also of an illustrious family, was “the most humble and most fervent,” and “showed by her conduct that no one commands well or with safety who has not first learned and is not always ready to obey well.” Radegunde, another queen of France, also passed from a court to a cloister. In the IXth century Alice, Empress of Germany, presented, in two regencies, the extraordinary power of religion in producing a wise and efficient administration of political affairs. She was virtually a recluse living and acting in the splendor of a throne. Is it necessary to more than allude to S. Elizabeth of Hungary, or to her niece, Queen Elizabeth of Portugal, who, after a glorious career, to which we shall allude in another connection, joined the Order of Poor Clares? In the East, Pulcheria, the empress, granddaughter of Theodosius the Great, withdrew from a _régime_ in which she was the controlling spirit, and did not return from her austerities until urgently requested to do so by Pope S. Leo. At her death she bequeathed all her goods and private estates to the poor. Queen Maud of England walked daily to church barefoot, wearing a garment of sackcloth, and washed and kissed the feet of the poor. It was a queen, Jane of France, who became the foundress of the Nuns of the Annunciation.

When we consider the part that woman has had in the formation of the various religious orders, the temerity of the ex-premier in belittling her influence assumes still greater proportions. The undeniable fact that Protestantism has never been able permanently to maintain a single community of women, either for contemplation or benevolence, proves that the Catholic Church alone is the sphere in which woman’s religious zeal finds its fullest and most complete expression; that it is the Catholic faith alone which thoroughly arouses and solidly supports the enthusiasm of her nature, and embodies her ardor into a useful and enduring form. The achievements of women in the religious orders demonstrate that it is impossible to exaggerate this enthusiasm or to overestimate the subtle influence which she exerts in society, Catholic and non-Catholic. Human nature, in whatever creed, bows in involuntary homage to the woman who has left her home, and father and mother, brother, sister, and friends, to follow Jesus Christ and him crucified. This instinct is as old as man. The pagan Greek, the brutal Roman, punished with almost incredible severity offences against their oracles and vestals. History furnishes no instance of a nation possessing a religion however ridiculous, a worship however coarse and senseless, which did not award exceptional deference to the virgins consecrated to the service of its gods. Christianity, which emancipated woman from the domestic slavery in which usage had placed and law confirmed her; which made her man’s peer by its indissoluble marriage tie; and which compelled courts and judges to modify barbarous statutes affecting her civil rights as well as her conjugal relations, has been rewarded by eighteen hundred years of unflagging zeal and unshrinking heroism. If woman had done nothing in the household for the church; if she had been indifferent as a wife and incompetent as a mother; if in the world the sex were merely frivolous, pretty things, such as Diderot would describe with “the pen dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly”; if they had never done anything for religion except what they have done out of the world--in the shade, as it were--Christianity would still have been the gainer, civilization would owe them a vast balance, and the sneer of the ex-premier would be found to describe only his own bitterness.

There has been no salic law in the Catholic Church. Her crowns cover women’s heads as well as men’s; women themselves have vindicated their right to spiritual royalty.

The activity of women for the spread of the Gospel began, as we have seen, in the days of the apostles, when the preaching of Thecla, the exhortations of many women converts, and the courageous utterances of those being led to martyrdom, won multitudes to Christ. The monastic life of woman is as old as that of man. Indeed, our word _nun_, derived from the Greek νὀννα, passed into the latter language from the Egyptian, in which it was synonymous with _fair_, _beautiful_. As rapidly as Christianity moved over the world women joyfully accepted its precepts and hastened to its propagation. Lamartine says that “nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature--compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.” These two gifts find their freest exercise in conventual life, whether strictly contemplative, as the monastic life in the East was in the beginning, or contemplative and benevolent, as it became in the West. It was, therefore, only natural that women of all degrees should listen to the voice of God summoning them to this state. It was not natural, however, to sever the domestic ties which nature herself had made and religion had blessed. It was no easier in the days of Ebba and Bega than in those of Angela Merici, or S. Teresa, or Catherine McAuley, for the daughter to bid a final farewell to her home and its endearments for an existence of self-immolation, of prayer, of obedience, of humility, and often of hunger and cold, sickness, danger, and want. That women in large numbers have nevertheless chosen this which the world calls the worse life and the apostle the better, from the time of the apostles to the present day, shows that it is in religion they reach the zenith of their capabilities; for they have made no such sacrifices, they have achieved no such successes, in art, in science, nor in literature. They have entered the service of the church through the convent gate, in despite of difficulties which would often have debarred men even from the entertainment of the design. Their toil in the convents has been wholly in the service of mankind. The history of the conventual life of women is not divisible from that of civilization, and in rapidly sketching it we shall discover chapters on the progress of religion, the organization of benevolence, the preservation of learning, and the spread of education. The assistance which women have rendered to the last two has not been properly appreciated.

The catalogue of eminent foundresses is too long to be considered in detail. Every country, every century, has its list of noble virgins, of wealthy widows, or of mothers whose maternal duty was done, building houses for established orders, or, under the authority of the church, founding additional communities, always with a specific design; for the church takes no step without an intelligent purpose. Among these women have been many who were remarkable in more qualities than piety, in other conditions than social distinction; and it is a fact which will scarcely bear debate that it has been inside the convents, or, if outside, under the direction and inspiration of religion, that the mind of woman has enjoyed freest scope and produced palpable and permanent results. It is true that there have been great women in profane history, ancient and modern--a Cleopatra and Semiramis, a Catherine in Russia, an Elizabeth in England; in literature a De Staël, a “George Sand,” and a “George Eliot”; in histrionic art, in poetry, and in court circles, many women have equalled and outshone men; and in science they have significantly contributed to medicine and mathematics. But the annals of women in religion reveal the heroic characteristics of the sex developed far beyond the limit reached in the world.

We have just mentioned S. Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal. What woman has surpassed her in perseverance--that most difficult of feminine virtues? What man has surpassed the utterness of her love for God--that sublimest of virtues in either sex? At eight years of age she began to fast on appointed days; she undertook, of her own accord, to practise great mortifications; she would sing no songs but hymns and psalms; “and from her childhood she said every day the whole office of the Breviary, in which no priest could be more exact.” Her time was regularly divided, after her marriage to the King of Portugal, between her domestic duties and works of piety. She visited and nursed the sick, and dressed their most loathsome sores. “She founded,” says Butler, “in different parts of the kingdom, many pious establishments, particularly an hospital near her own palace at Coïmbra, a house for penitent women who had been seduced into evil courses,” thus anticipating the future Sisters of the Good Shepherd. She built an “hospital for foundlings, or those children who, for want of due provision, are exposed to the danger of perishing in poverty or of the neglect or cruelty of unnatural parents.” She won her ruffianly husband, by patience and sweetness, to a Christian life, and induced him to found, with royal munificence, the University of Coïmbra. She averted wars, and reconciled her husband and son when their armies were marching against each other. She made peace between Ferdinand IV. and the claimant of his crown, and between James II. of Aragon and Frederick IV. of Castile. What woman of profane history furnishes so illustrious and so substantial a record as this? Religion alone supplied its motive and maintained its progress.

The foundress of the Poor Clares, S. Clare of Assisium, was the daughter of a knight, and had to suffer contumely and opprobrium for entering the religious state instead of accepting proffered marriage. Her sister and mother were led by her virtues to follow her example, and they founded houses of the Poor Clares in all the principal cities of Italy and Germany. They wore no covering on their feet, slept on the ground, practised perpetual abstinence, and never spoke except when compelled by necessity or charity. S. Clare’s great fortune she gave to the poor, without reserving a farthing for herself. What but religion could suggest, sustain, and crown so martyr-like a life as this? The Little Sisters of the Poor are now nearest the model which S. Clare became; and the Little Sister of the Poor is greater in the sight of Almighty God and in the honest reverence of the human heart than a De Staël or a “Sand”!

We merely allude to S. Jane Frances de Chantal, the foundress of the Order of the Visitation, whom our American widow, Mother Seton, foundress of our Sisters of Charity, so strangely resembled in certain properties of character and circumstances of life. The conspicuous virtue of these two women was the same--humility. Space forbids more than allusion to other noted foundresses--Angela Merici, mother of the Ursulines; Catherine McAuley, of the Sisters of Mercy; Mme. Barat, foundress of the Order of the Sacred Heart, whose beatification is in progress; Nano Nagle, of the Sisters of the Presentation; and those holy, brave, and zealous women who are to-day leading their respective communities in every part of the world, whom to name, even in illustration of an argument, would be to offend. They are exercising within convent walls the sacrifices which made martyrs. They are sending pioneers of religion to the frontiers of civilization; equipping hospitals, asylums, and schools wherever and whenever called; carrying out faithfully on our continent the example set them by the foundresses of American charitable institutions; for our first hospital in New France was managed by three nuns from Dieppe, the youngest but twenty-two years of age; and in 1639 a widow of Alenson and a nun from Dieppe, with two Sisters from Tours, established an Ursuline Academy for girls at Quebec. Bancroft says: “As the youthful heroines stepped on the shore at Quebec they stooped to kiss the earth, which they adopted as their mother, and were ready, in case of need, to tinge with their blood. The governor, with the little garrison, received them at the water’s edge; Hurons and Algonquins, joining in the shouts, filled the air with yells of joy; and the motley group escorted the new-comers to the church, where, amidst a general thanksgiving, the _Te Deum_ was chanted. Is it wonderful that the natives were touched by a benevolence which their poverty and squalid misery could not appall? Their education was also attempted; and the venerable ash-tree still lives beneath which Mary of the Incarnation, so famed for chastened piety, genius, and good judgment, toiled, though in vain, for the culture of Huron children.” Could anything but religion enable delicately-reared women to turn a last look upon the sunny slopes of France, where remained everything that their hearts cherished, and set out in 1639, in a slow ship, over an almost unknown ocean, with certain expectation never to return, and equally certain that in the new land they would encounter an almost perpetual winter and incur all the perils of the instincts of savages? What stately woman’s figure rises in profane history to the height of Mary of the Incarnation?

The part that woman has had in the building up and the spread of education has not, so far as we are aware, been adequately written. Perhaps it never will be; for the materials of at least fifteen centuries are, for the most part, carefully buried in convent archives, and their modest keepers shun publicity. The lack of popular knowledge in this portion of the history of education has induced the erroneous supposition that woman has done little or nothing for the intelligence of the race; that, until recently, the sex received slight instruction and possessed only superficial and effeminate acquirements; and that the free facilities which women are reaching after indicate an entirely new, an unwritten, chapter in the culture of the sex.

Each of these suppositions is unwarranted by facts. Women have shared in the establishment of educational institutions from the earliest period of which we have authentic record. Their resources have founded schools, their talents have conducted them. Whenever, from the days of S. Catherine to those of Nano Nagle, special efforts have been made to teach the people, women have furnished their full share of energy and brains. The opportunities which, even in periods of exceptional darkness or disturbance, were afforded for the higher education of women, were far in advance of the standard which prejudice or ignorance has associated with women in the past; and the increasing demand which we have on every side for a more substantial and scholarly training for the sex does not look forward to that which they have never had, but backward to what they have lost or abandoned.

Again we find Mr. Gladstone’s sneer answered; for religion--the Catholic religion--has been the sole inspiration of the part that woman has had in popular education. The magnitude of that part we will only outline; but enough will be shown of woman as a foundress, a teacher, and a scholar to indicate the rank to which she is entitled as an educator, and the motive which enabled her to attain it.

There were very few convents for women which were not also schools and academies for their sex. Many Christian women, even in the days of the Fathers, were not only skilled in sacred science, but in profane literature, and these, naturally and inevitably, taught the younger members of their own households, and, when they entered the service of the church, became teachers of the children of the people. In the IVth century Hypatia, invited by the magistrates of Alexandria to teach philosophy, led many of her pupils to Christianity, although she herself did not have the grace to embrace it; but her learning induced many women to profound and elegant study. We have spoken of S. Catherine, who confuted the pagan philosophers of that city of schools, and whose condition was the delight of her contemporaries. The mothers and sisters in those early days were not only willing but able to teach the science of Christianity and letters. S. Paul himself alludes to the instruction he received from his mother, Lois, and his grandmother, Eunice. It was S. Macrina who taught S. Basil and S. Gregory of Nyssa. It was Theodora who instructed Cosmas and Damian. “Even as early as the IId century,” says a distinguished scholar, “the zeal of religious women for letters excited the bile and provoked the satire of the enemies of Christianity.” S. Fulgentius was educated by his mother. So solicitous was she about the purity of his Greek accent “that she made him learn by heart the poems of Homer and Menander before he studied his Latin rudiments.” It was S. Paula who moved S. Jerome to some of his greatest literary labors; and the latter assures us that the gentle S. Eustochium wrote and spoke Hebrew without Latin adulteration. S. Chrysostom dedicated seventeen letters to S. Olympias; and S. Marcella, on account of her rare acquirements, was known as “the glory of the Roman ladies.” S. Melania and S. Cæsaria were noted for their accomplishments.

Montalembert declares that literary pursuits were cultivated in the VIIth and VIIIth centuries in the convents in England, “with no less care and perseverance” than in the monasteries, “and perhaps with still greater enthusiasm.” The nuns were accustomed “to study holy books, the fathers of the church, and even classical works.” S. Gertrude translated the Scriptures into Greek. It was a woman who introduced the study of Greek into the famous monastery of S. Gall. The erudite author of _Christian Schools and Scholars_ says that “the Anglo-Saxon nuns very early vied with the monks in their application to letters.” There is preserved a treatise on virginity by Adhelm, in the VIIth century, which contains an illumination representing him as teaching a group of nuns. S. Boniface directed the studies of many convents of women.

Hildelitha, the first English _religieuse_, had received her education at the convent of Chelles, in France, “and brought into the cloisters of Barking all the learning of that famous school.” This institution, about five leagues from Paris, was founded by S. Clotilda, and one of its abbesses in the IXth century was Gisella, a pupil of Alcuin and sister of Charlemagne. It was in a convent school, that of Roncerai, near Angers, that Heloise received her education in classics and philosophy; and Hallam, who finds little to remark concerning convent schools--because, we presume, their archives were not sought by him--says that the “epistles of Abelard and Eloisa, especially those of the latter, are, as far as I know, the first book that gives any pleasure in reading for six hundred years, since the _Consolation_ of Boethius.” The learning of S. Hilda was so highly esteemed that “more than once the holy abbess assisted at the deliberation of the bishops assembled in council or in synod, who wished to take the advice of her whom they considered so especially enlightened by the Holy Spirit.” Queen Editha, wife of Edward the Confessor, taught grammar and logic.

The scholarly women of the time were not all in England. Richtrude, daughter of Charlemagne, had a Greek professor. The historian from whom we have already quoted says, in _Christian Schools and Scholars_, that the examples of learning in the cloisters of nuns were not “confined to those communities which had caught their tone from the little knot of literary women educated by S. Boniface. “It was the natural and _universal development of the religious life_.”

Guizot ranks “among the gems of literature” the account of the death of S. Cæsaria, written by one of her sisters. Radegunde, queen of Clothaire I., read the Greek and Latin fathers familiarly. S. Adelaide, Abbess of Geldern, in the Xth century, had received a learned education, and imparted her attainments to the young of her sex. Hrotsvitha, a nun of Gandersheim, in the Xth century, wrote Latin poems and stanzas, which prove, says Spalding, “that in the institutions of learning at that day classical literature was extensively and successfully cultivated by women as well as by men.” In the XIIth century the Abbess Hervada wrote an encyclopedia, “containing,” remarks Mgr. Dupanloup, “all the science known in her day.”

Nor were women content to study and teach in their native countries. When S. Boniface needed teachers in Germany to complete the conversion and civilization of the country, he endeavored to enlist the enthusiasm of the English women of learning and piety; and Chunehilt and her daughter Berathgilt were the first to listen to his appeal. They are called by the historian _valde eruditæ in liberali scientia_. The Abbess Lioba, distinguished for her scholarship and her executive ability, also accepted the invitation of Boniface, and thirty nuns, of whom she was the head, reached Antwerp after a stormy passage, and were received at Mentz by the archbishop, who conducted them to the convent at Bischofsheim, which he had erected for Lioba. S. Boniface declared that he loved Lioba on account of her solid learning--_eruditionis sapientia_. Walburga, a subordinate of Lioba, went into Thuringia, and became abbess of the Convent of Heidesheim, where she and her nuns cultivated letters as diligently as in their English home. The church herself watched over these efforts of women to elevate their sex; for the Council of Cloveshoe, held in 747, exhorts abbesses diligently to provide for the education of those under their charge. In so great admiration and affection did S. Boniface hold Lioba that he requested that her remains might be buried in Fulda, so that they might together await the resurrection. Lioba survived the saint twenty-four years, during which she erected many convents and received signal assistance from Charlemagne.

The convent schools maintained by these disciples of S. Boniface were not the only ones in which women obtained more culture than is accorded to them in our own boastful time. At Gandersheim the course of study included Latin and Greek, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the liberal arts. One of the abbesses of this convent was the author of a treatise on logic “much esteemed among the learned of her own time.” It would be easy enough to continue this record; to carry on the chain of woman’s assistance--always under the guidance of religion--in the educational development of Europe. It is not easy to avoid dwelling on the aid she rendered in the foundation of colleges; of the standing which she attained in the universities, where, both as student and professor, she won with renown and wore with modesty the highest degrees and honors.

The catalogue of that metropolis of learning, the University of Bologna, a papal institution, contains the names of many women who appeared to enviable advantage in its departments of canon law, medicine, mathematics, art, and literature. The period which produced Vittoria Colonna, who received, her education in a convent, discovers Properzia de’ Rossi teaching sculpture in Bologna; the painter Sister Plautilla, a Dominican; Marietta Tintoretto, daughter of the “Thunder of Art,” herself a celebrated portrait-painter, whose work possessed many of the best qualities of her father’s; Elizabeth Sirani, who painted and taught in Bologna; and Elena Cornaro admitted as a doctor at Milan. We find a woman architect, Plautilla Brizio, working in Rome in the XVIIth century, building a palace and the Chapel of S. Benedict. In the papal universities, as late as the XVIIIth century, women took degrees in jurisprudence and philosophy; among them, Victoria Delfini, Christina Roccati, and Laura Bassi, in the University of Bologna, and Maria Amoretti in that of Pavia. In 1758 Anna Mazzolina was professor of anatomy in Bologna, and Maria Agnesi was appointed by the pope professor of mathematics in the University of Bologna. Novella d’Andrea taught canon law in Bologna for ten years. A woman was the successor of Cardinal Mezzofanti as professor of Greek. Statues are erected to the memory of two women who taught botany in the universities of Bologna and Genoa. It is well to mention these facts as a sufficient reply to the flippant charge, too frequently made, that the Catholic Church is “opposed” to the higher education of women.

The relation of women in religion to the education and refinement of the present day can be lightly passed over. In the convent schools in every part of the world young women receive the best education now available for their sex. The demands of society have affected the curriculum. It is not as abstract or classical or thorough as in the time of Lioba and Hrotsvitha, but it is the best; and it will return to the classical standard as quickly as women themselves make the demand. In a word, the orders of teaching women in the Catholic Church are, we repeat, a sufficient answer to Mr. Gladstone’s sneer at the status of women in religion. It was out of these that arose Catherine of Sienna--orator, scholar, diplomate, saint. Of these was S. Teresa, whom Mgr. Dupanloup characterizes as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, prose writers in the Spanish literature. Of these have been hundreds, thousands, of women, who, moved by the Spirit of God to his service, have found within convent-walls opportunities for culture which society denies, and who, in the carrying out of his divine will, have made more sacrifices, attained higher degrees of perfection, and lived lives of sweeter perfume and nobler usefulness, than the mind of Mr. Gladstone appears to be able to conceive. A religion which makes conquests enough among women, since it can inspire, control, and direct them thus, is the religion which must conquer the world.

Finally, Mr. Gladstone forgot the subtle power of mother and wife, and the marriage laws of the Catholic Church. The mother’s influence for good or evil, but especially for good, to which she most inclines, is second to none that moves the heart of man. Whether it be Cornelia, pointing to the Gracchi as her jewels; or Monica, pursuing and persuading S. Augustine; Felicitas, exhorting her seven sons to martyrdom; or the mothers of S. Chrysostom, S. Basil, and S. Anselm, converting their children to firmness in holiness; or whether it be the untutored mother of the savage, or the unfortunate head of a household setting an unwomanly example, the mother’s voice, issuing from the quivering lips or coming back silently from the tomb, is heard when all other sounds of menace, of appeal, of reproach, or of tenderness fail to reach the ear. Every mother makes her sex venerable to her son. The mother’s love is above all logic; it destroys syllogisms, refutes all argument. It cannot be reasoned against; and when the salvation of the child is the motive, there is no power given to man to withstand its seduction. “It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over the wastes of worldly fortune sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity.” Christ himself upon the cross was not unmindful of his mother; yet he was God! Says the greater Napoleon, “The destiny of the child is always the work of the mother.” To the end of time she will be, as she has ever been,

“The holiest thing alive.”

The faith of the mothers, if they believe in it, must become the faith of the sons and the daughters. That the Catholic mother believes, even Mr. Gladstone will hesitate to deny. In no faith but the Catholic have mothers accompanied their sons to martyrdom. In no faith but the Catholic is the mother taught to believe, while still a child at her mother’s breast, that she will be held responsible for the eternal welfare of her children; that they must be saved with her, or she must perish with them. For this salvation she will toil and pray and weep; for this she will spend days of weariness and nights without sleep; for this religion will keep her heart brave, and her lips eloquent, and her hand gentle and strong. For this she will work as neither man nor woman works for aught else; and for this she will lay down her life, but not until the sublime purpose is accomplished! That done, she is ready to die. For

“Hath she not then, for pains and fears, The day of woe, the watchful night, For all her sorrow, all her tears, An over-payment of delight?”

If the mothers of England become Catholic, England becomes Catholic. The law is of nature. Love must win, if talent partly fails; for even in heaven the seraphim, which signifies love, is nearer God than the cherubim, which signifies knowledge.

ON A CHARGE MADE AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF A VOLUME OF POETRY

(WRITTEN NEAR WINDERMERE.)

Beautiful Land! They said, “He loves thee not!” But in a church-yard ’mid thy meadows lie The bones of no disloyal ancestry. To whom in me disloyal were the thought Which wronged thee. For my youth thy Shakspeare wrought; For me thy minsters raised their towers on high; Thou gav’st me friends whose memory cannot die:-- I love thee, and for that cause left unsought Thy praise. Thy ruined cloisters, forests green, Thy moors where still the branching wild deer roves, Dear haunts of mine by sun and moon have been From Cumbrian peaks to Devon’s laughing coves. They love thee less, be sure, who ne’er had heart To take, for truth’s sake, ’gainst thyself thy part.

AUBREY DE VERE.

STRAY LEAVES FROM A PASSING LIFE.