CHAPTER XIII.

“OUR LADY OF SNOW.”

“To-morrow comes the flower of the festivals,” the Signora said on the morning of the 4th of August. “It is our beautiful basilica’s birthday, and the loveliest of birthdays, too—just a sweet little poem.”

“Let us give ourselves up to it entirely,” Isabel proposed, “and see if we cannot imagine ourselves back in the middle of the fourth century. I really do not like to look at all these things as an outsider.”

“We must, then, shut the world out for two days,” the Signora replied. “I would like it, if you are agreed. I have found, indeed, that it is impossible to enter into the spirit of these beautiful beliefs of the old time while one is having much social intercourse with people about, even goodish people. It reminds me of seed scattered on good but shallow ground, which the fowls come and pick up. You think, you meditate, you pray, you begin to find yourself impressed; glimmers of light steal in, and your soul is on the point of being enriched; when in comes some friend, who means no harm, who has, perhaps, a faith like a dry branch with one green leaf at the end, and immediately all is discord. If you utter what is in your mind, it is like pearls before swine; if you listen in silence, and with sufficient attention to enable you to answer intelligently, it is more than likely that the religious impression you have received will be much weakened, if not entirely effaced. One understands, in such a case, the profound wisdom of the philosophy of silence, which even the pagans knew, and recollects the admonition of our Lord: “Let your speech be yea, yea; no, no.”

“Still, I should think,” Bianca observed dreamily, “that one might be so settled in that way of feeling and thinking as to influence others, instead of being influenced by them.”

“Very true, you dear little visionary!” replied the Signora, pinching the pretty ear so near her, from which hung a pink coral fuchsia. “If one were a great saint, and never touched earthly things except with conspicuous recollection; or a great egotist, constantly impressing on everybody that one is a very exceptional being and cannot possibly be approached in the ordinary manner; or some one, like a clergyman or a nun, who by their very profession impress those who approach them with the consciousness of different and loftier interests. But we common mortals are overrun by the many. You have seen the breakwater of a bridge, have you not, built of stone, and thrusting a sharp point up the stream to part the waters, that they may not rush against the broad side of the piers and sweep them away? Well, for one person to keep a firm stand against the influence of many, it is necessary to put forward, and keep forward, a very hard angle of the character. However, I will not preach any more about it, my dear friends. I will simply say that till the day after to-morrow we are in retreat. We will go up now to the church, and refresh our minds in relation to the legend, and look at some of the treasures there, if you like. Then we can read the whole over here at our leisure. I have a kind friend there—my patron with St. Nicholas—who has a superb illustrated description of the church, which he has offered me any time I may wish for it. I will ask for it to-day. By this means we shall be ready to assist intelligently to-morrow at the _festa_ of Our Lady of Snow. And, by the way, what a charmingly fresh thought for the season is that of snow! I call for the yeas and nays.”

An unanimous yea was the reply, and they prepared themselves immediately to go to the church.

They had, of course, seen already all its more evident beauties; but such a temple can be studied for years without exhausting its attractions, and there were several of its more celebrated gems which they had quite passed over. After having heard Mass, then, they went first into the Sistine Chapel to see the Tamar. This beautiful figure is painted in one of the pendentives of the cupola—a space shaped like an inverted pear. She sits with her twin boys standing on the seat at either side of her, their lovely heads filling the rounded-out space. The most exquisite charm of the figure is the transparent veil which floats about the head and shoulders, and through which her face, with its large, drooping eyelids, is perfectly visible.

From there they visited the grand _loggia_ to look once more at the mosaic story of the miraculous snow. This grand mosaic, made in the fourteenth century by the order of two Colonna cardinals, was once on the open façade of the church; but Benedict XIV., in the eighteenth century, building the new façade, enclosed them in the grand _loggia_ from which the popes gave benediction, and of which they form the lower side. In the centre of the upper half of the picture the Saviour sits enthroned, the right hand giving benediction, the left holding a book open at the words, “I am the light of the world.” At either hand above an angel swings a censer, at either side below an angel adores. Four figures—the Blessed Virgin and saints—stand at right and left, the symbols of the four evangelists over their heads. The lower half, separated by the large, round window that lights the eastern end of the church, has, on the left, two pictures—one the sleeping Pope Liberius, the other the sleeping Giovanni—over both of whom hovers the same vision of the Madonna directing them to build her a church where the snow shall fall the next day. On the right side is Giovanni telling his dream to the pope in one picture, and beside it the pope, in grand procession, coming to the hill-top where, from above, the Saviour and Virgin send down the snow. So quaint, so full of faith, so exquisite in meaning, this visible story is one of the most eloquent sermons ever preached.

Opposite the mosaic picture, and seen through the graceful arches of the portico, was that living picture of St. John Lateran looking down the long street, the blue mountains melting far away, the nearer palm-tree, and the piazza with its beautiful column and statue.

“I have a little special treat for you this morning,” the Signora said as they went down into the church again. “It has no special connection with the Madonna delle Neve, but it will not disturb your visions of her. Here, however,” pointing to an altar near the sacristy door, “is the story again, and here is buried that Giovanni Patrizio who was found buried under, or in front of, the grand altar.”

It was the chapel of Santa Maria delle Neve, with a painting over the altar where the Virgin appears to Giovanni and his wife, and points them to a snow-capped hill.

Then they went into the sacristy, where one of the canons joined them, and had some precious vestments brought out for them to see; among them a cope of stuff such as one does not find any more, thick, rich, and dim, and threaded with gold, with the short fringe of mingled crimson and gold so thick as to round up almost like a cord—the cope given and worn by St. Pius V. Almost more precious, if one could choose, was the chasuble given and worn by St. Charles Borromeo—long, and with a slight, graceful point in the back. It had been proposed, the sacristan told them, to have this made a model for chasubles now on account of its graceful form, but no change had yet been made.

“This is worn on the _festa_ of San Carlo, though it is crimson,” he added, “because it was his. Sometimes strangers exclaim, when they see it, that San Carlo was not a martyr.”

They touched reverently the sacred relics, and kissed the fastenings that those saintly hands had touched; then, with a more human admiration, examined a marvellous flounce of lace given the church three hundred years ago by the Prince Colonna of that time—a web of such fineness that the spiders might have woven the thread, and of such beauty of design that only an artist could have imagined it.

Before leaving the church they paused in front of the closed _cancella_ of the Borghese Chapel to look at the bas-relief over the altar, wherein Our Lady of Snow again repeats her story. All was still in the church. Choir and High Mass were over, and only here and there lingered some _custode_, or assistant, putting the finishing touches to the preparations for the _festa_ which would begin with first Vespers that afternoon. The pavements shone newly polished, the candlesticks were like gold, the gilt bronze angels that hold the great painted candles stood on the marble rail of the confession, the draperies were all up. In the chapel itself the benches of the choir were prepared, the altar glittering with its most precious ornaments, the two great hanging lamps at either side swinging faintly, as if impatient for the music to begin. All was peaceful; and a tender shade and coolness in the air veiled the glittering richness of the place.

“I cannot tell you how mysterious that picture seems to me,” Bianca whispered, pointing to the square veiled case bordered with jewels, and supported by gilt angels in the middle space over the altar. “The two veils that are to be removed in order to see it, and then the depth at which it is set, and the mere dark outline that is all one can see inside the golden border—it all impresses me with a sense of mystery and awfulness. I wonder what the face really looks like, and if any one has seen it.”

“Why, you have seen my engraving of it, my dear,” the Signora said; “and I presume that is a faithful copy, taken when the features were more distinguishable. That has a noble, serious look which impresses me. And no wonder you look with awe at this. If it were not painted by St. Luke even, it is embalmed by memories not less sacred. Twelve hundred years ago St. Gregory the Great carried this very picture in procession through the city, in a time of terrible pestilence, and set it on the altar of St. Peter’s. It was on the open façade of this church till Paul V. built this chapel to contain it. Ampère says that angels have been heard chanting litanies about it. It is held by all here in the most tender veneration. I have never heard any one describe it, and do not know who has seen it near. I have heard somewhere that only the chapter of the basilica and the Borghese family have the privilege of going up to it. _Madonna mia_, what a privilege it would be!” she sighed, looking up at the closed jasper gates.

They stayed a little longer, then started to go home; but as they were going out a boy came to tell the Signora that Monsignore M—— begged to speak with her. The others went on, but she turned back, well content; for a call from Monsignore M—— always meant something pleasant. This prelate was no less distinguished for position than for his virtues; and, finding the Signora a stranger and somewhat lonely when she first came to Rome, he had done her many kindnesses—was, in fact, her Santa Claus.

“Do you guess what little devotion I want you to make on the eve of our _festa_?” he asked, meeting her with the confident smile of one who knows he is going to confer a great pleasure.

“I know it is something delightful, _Monsignore mio_,” she replied, “but I cannot say just what.”

“Well, I want you to visit the antique Madonna,” he said.

She looked at him, uncomprehending.

He pointed to the veiled shrine in the Borghese Chapel, near which they stood. “Don Francesco will be here in a moment with a candle,” he said. “I prepared all, because I knew you would want to go. I could not invite a party, you know; but you belong to the church and have a special devotion to our Madonna.”

The Signora could not reply. Such a swift fulfilment of her wish moved her too deeply for words. She kissed the hand of her kind friend, and looked across the church to the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament with the almost spoken thought: “I am going to see your Mother.” To visit that sacred shrine was to her as near to seeing the Mother of God face to face as one could come on earth, without a miracle.

Presently appeared the custodian, bearing a lighted candle and a bunch of keys; he opened a small door beside the chapel. They ascended a narrow, winding stair, without any light except the one they carried, and passed a long, arched corridor where the walls almost touched their elbows at either side, and the vault just cleared their heads above. This corridor was between the side wall of the chapel and the wall of the adjoining sacristy. Another door opened, and they entered a cross corridor leading to one of the balconies of the chapel—one of those beautiful gilded balconies the Signora had so many times wished to get into. She stepped into this now, and looked down through the chapel, out into the church, and across to the Sistine Chapel, the columns, pictures, and gilded arches of the basilica set like a picture in the great arched entrance of the Borghese.

Going on then, Don Francesco opened a strong, locked door, that showed another door immediately within, closing the same wall. These led into another of those narrow white corridors running between the walls of the chapel behind the altar. Turning then into a third short corridor leading toward the chapel, they faced still another door, over which were painted the arms and tiara of Pope Paul V., who built the chapel.

This door unlocked, they found themselves in a little chamber directly behind the grand altar, with the miraculous picture, set in a box cased in metal, right before them. It stands a little back from the screens that cover it in the chapel, and there is space enough at either side for a person to slip in in front and see the picture face to face. Two iron hooks that barred the passage were taken down, and the Signora went in and found herself in front of this most venerable image.

The picture is painted on panel, and, though dim, is still distinct on so near a view, the rich, soft colors coming out as one gazes—a long, oval face full of serious majesty, with large eyes, and a mantle dropping over the forehead. But this mantle is now almost hid; for the head of the Mother, and of the Babe that looks up into her face, and the outline of their shoulders, are closely filled in with gold and gems. But for this nothing but a dark square would be distinguishable from the chapel. The outline is so clearly made, however, as to give a perfect idea, when looked at from below, of a crowned woman with a crowned child in her arms.

If, in the presence of the picture, one can think of jewels, these are worth looking at. They are the gems of a cardinal and of a pope—stones of immense value set in pure gold. Besides rubies and amethysts, in the centre of the Virgin’s crown is a large emerald surrounded by diamonds, and from the jewelled chain at her neck hangs a cross made entirely of large sapphires.

The Signora took the candle in her hand and held it before those faces, and the clergymen with her knelt, one at either side of her.

After a little while they rose, the Signora kissed the floor before the picture, and the case that held it, and they turned away. On leaving she observed that this little chamber behind the altar was quite covered with frescoes. Then came the low corridors again, and the narrow stairs; one more peep from the gilded balcony, and at length she stepped out into the church again, bewildered and enchanted.

“I will tell them nothing about it,” was her conclusion as she went home. “They might feel hurt at being left out. It shall be a little secret of my own.”

They went to first Vespers and to the High Mass next morning, but the finest part was the Vespers of the day, to which they went early, and were so fortunate as to have chairs in the chapel near the altar. The chapter came in in procession from the basilica, singing as they came, and the place was soon crowded.

Nothing was wanting to make the scene perfect; the magnificent chapel, the beautiful dress of the canons, who all wore purple silk soutanes, with rich lace on those picturesque little _cotte_ of theirs, and the music—each was in harmony with all the rest. Then, as the music went up, down through the cupola, glowing with the colors of Cavaliere d’Arpino, and faintly veiling the frescoes of Guido Reni, came the soft and loitering snow of blossoms, flowery flake by flake. They were lost one instant against the white band of Carrara marble—cornice, capitals, figures, and flowers—under the arches, then green of verd-antique, and red of jasper, or the colored mantle of one of Guido’s saints threw them into relief again. Little by little the mosaic of the pavement grew dim under that exquisite snow-fall, which seemed, as it came down, to toss on the music in mid-air.

The light up in the cupola grew red with sunset, and the chapel below began to show softest shades and pale gold lights from the candles, and the pageant slowly dissolved like a bouquet that parts into flowers, each flower showing more beautiful separated than when massed together.

Going out into the basilica, where it seemed almost evening, so strongly contrasted were the lights and shades, the Signora silently pointed out to her friends the long, red-gold bar of sunshine that came in at a window of the tribune and lay the whole length of the nave, looking so solid one felt like stepping over or stooping to go under it, as if it were an obstacle. It was her very idea of the bars of the tabernacle which the Jews bore with them.

“If only the church should be lifted and borne to Paradise now, when it is all bathed in flowers and full of incense and music!”

They lingered yet, unwilling to go. Monsignore M—— came out of the sacristy and brought them all some of the blessed blossom-snow. People were gathering it up from the floor of the chapel, and, it having fallen also in the tribune, little boys were slyly vaulting over the railings, snatching it up unseen by the _custodi_, and scampering out again. The lights went out, the _cancelle_ were closed, and finally our friends were forced to go home.

They stood a moment outside the church door before descending the steps, the two girls expressing their delight with feminine enthusiasm. Mr. Vane had but one word: “There is a certain Protestant hymn that used to make me feel, when I was a boy, very loath to go to heaven,” he said. “But, remembering it now by the light of this _festa_, I think heaven couldn’t be better described than as a place——

“'Where congregations ne’er break up, And Sabbaths have no end.’”

A few days later they made their little visit to Genzano, stopping one day in Albano on the way. It was the feast of the Holy Saviour, in which again an antique and venerated picture had a prominent part. They reached the town just in time to see the procession go from the Duomo bearing the picture up to the little church of Santissimo Salvatore on the hill.

“What are those military bands playing for?” Mr. Vane asked, as they sat in the loggia of their apartment, after having rested a half-hour.

“They are playing for the Lord,” said the Signora.

He stared a little, but, finding her perfectly serious, said after a moment: “Well, I don’t know why they shouldn’t; only I am not used, you know, to hearing fifes and drums on any but military and civil occasions.”

“This is a military occasion,” the Signora replied gravely. “It celebrates Him who is the God of battles and the Lord of hosts. It is a civil occasion, too, in honor of the King of kings, the Lawgiver of the universe, the Prince of peace.”

“You are right!” he said emphatically; “and I need not ask now why they are firing cannon.”

They went out just at sunset and took their places on the steps of the little church to which the procession was to come, catching glimpses of it in the distance as it appeared in some turn of the ascending way.

The slope of the street just in front of them had been swept, and two men were sprinkling it in a very primitive fashion. One trundled along a cart with a little barrel of water on it, and the other dipped in a small wooden bucket and scattered the water from side to side. He did it very dexterously, however, showing practice. Nearer the steps the street was paved with a mosaic of flowers, and all the houses by which the procession was to pass were decorated in some way, with flowers, pictures, and lamps to light later, some already lighted and showing faintly through the gloaming. All the windows and little balconies and elevated door-steps near the church were filled with women and children, every face turned toward the winding street up which a cross was glittering and a sound of music coming. A banner came in sight after the cross, and then a crucifix with its canopy, and then banner after banner, and crucifix after crucifix, showing in air over the wall that wound with the street. At one turn were visible the tops of the tallest heads; then, a little farther on, the whole heads of men, and the flowing locks of the boys of the choirs; and, lastly, they came into full sight near by, the inferior persons marching in lines at each side of the street, leaving hollow spaces where there was no banner or crucifix to be carried, the clergy walking in the centre. As the picture of the Holy Redeemer came along, borne on the shoulders of four men, all the crowd about sank on their knees. The picture was carried up the steps and placed on a table set there to receive it, and there were prayers and hymns before dropping the curtain over it and taking it into the church.

The sun went down and one large star burned in the west. It was easy to imagine an angel hand and wings above, and golden chains dropping down to a lamp of which that star was the flame. All the lamps, many-colored as the rainbow, were lighted in the windows, throwing their light, as the twilight deepened, in a strong splash, here and there, on a leaning face intent and praying, on a mantle of vines, on a bit of carving, a rough stone balcony, or a stair climbing up into the dark. One little arched window, with a vine over it, held a single beautiful face of a young woman, and a single lamp that shone on her black hair and eyes and perfect features, motionless there in prayer, till she looked like a cameo cut in pink carnelian.

The prayers ended, and some one drew the curtain before the lovely face of the picture. As he did so a chorus of exclamations burst from the kneeling crowd, and several women burst into tears.

“What do they say?” Mr. Vane asked in surprise. “What is the matter?”

“They say, '_Grazie, Santissimo Salvatore!_'—Thanks, most holy Saviour,” she replied.

He smiled faintly and repeated after them, “_Grazie, Santissimo Salvatore!_” and it seemed that his eyes glistened in the candle-light.

“I am glad it touches you,” the Signora said as they went to their lodgings. “Some, even Catholics, think it superstitious; but it is no more so than it is a superstition for us to kiss and weep over the pictures of our friends.”

The next morning they went up to early Mass in the pretty Capuchin church, at the head of its long avenue of overarching trees, loitering slowly home again when the Mass was over.

“Now,” said the Signora suddenly, spying a man with a large basket—“now I will show you what figs are. You have not known before.”

She beckoned the man and asked how many he would sell for a _soldo_. He replied, “Twelve.”

“You may give me eight dozen,” she said. “Each of you dear people are to have two dozen and to carry them yourselves. Out with your handkerchiefs! That is the fashion. Don’t be scrupulous.”

“They don’t look as if I should wish to eat two dozen,” Bianca remarked doubtfully. “They look to me like little bits of green apples.”

“Please to defer your judgment,” remarked her friend; “and what you do not wish to eat I will take.”

When they had reached home and were seated at the breakfast-table, the Signora took one of the little figs, with some ceremony and much anticipated triumph, and, lacking a fruit-knife, peeled its green skin off with the handle of a tea-spoon. All their eyes were watching the process; and when it was ended, and she pushed out the little teaspoonful of delicious fruit for Mr. Vane to have the first, the others were convinced by only seeing. It was a rich, deep red, of the consistency of solid old preserved strawberries, but with the fig flavor.

After breakfast was over they went out to visit the gardens of the Cesarini palace, for which they had a permit. These are laid out and kept by a Swiss gardener, and are a wilderness of flowers and trees and fountains on the level and down the hill-side. After wandering about the upper part for a while they descended a slowly-winding path, bordered by hydrangeas in full flower, that stood shoulder-high and dropped their great balls of amethyst bloom toward the earth, and came out into a little terrace where the trees and shrubs left an open front. A long bench at the back, and a richly-carved antique capital of a column near the wild-vine parapet, gave them seats, and before them was the whole verdant amphitheatre, with Lake Nemi at the bottom, and the town of Nemi half up the opposite bank, like a little white flower painted half way up the inside of a green cup. And down from the flower, like its white stem, dropped a white stream, cascade after cascade, to the lake, its motion petrified in the distance.

Tall white cloud-shapes marched round the hill-tops and looked over—shining shapes that seemed to hold Olympian deities within their folds, “impenetrable to every ray but that of fancy.” The amphitheatre sloped steeply in a green cone rich with orchards and vineyards, and pressed in a waving line around the water. Opposite the little terrace in which they sat, as in a box at the opera, the shore made a green heart in the water, and from behind one curve of it a boat, tiny in the distance as a black swan, slipped out and moved across the view. The lake lay like an emerald half-fused, its shaded greens touched in places with a soft purple bloom or a silvery lustre, and catching now and then a melting image of some cloud-cap higher than the rest. There was a sound of mellow thunder from some direction—Jupiter Tonans driving through those driving clouds.

They sat there silently drinking in the beauty of the scene, speaking only a word or two now and then, waiting till it should be noon and they should hear the Angelus from Nemi. When it came, a dream of a sound, touching with the outermost wave of its song the party of strangers across the lake, they stood up and said the prayers together. Then, bidding adieu to Nemi and its lake and the beautiful garden, they went slowly away.

That afternoon they went back to Albano, and the next evening returned to Rome. They had only one other excursion to make—that to Monte Cassino. Certain affairs were calling Mr. Vane to America, either for a longer or shorter stay, to go with only his daughters, or to have a nearer companion yet, and the end of their visit was approaching. It would soon be September, and in October they must start. Besides, it was found that, subject to her father’s approval, Bianca had promised to marry early in the spring, and some preparations must be made for the wedding.

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.

TO POPE PIUS IX. A JUBILEE OFFERING, JUNE 3, 1877.

I.

To-day the scattered peoples of the earth— Haply the monarchs may not all forget— Pay unto thee, great Pope, their willing debt Of love sincere—blest debt of heavenly birth! We kneel afar, a people of to-day, Whose life but doubles in its hundred years Thy long episcopate of many tears; But none the less we love, nor ceaseless pray That He who leadeth Joseph like a sheep May bless thee with fair length of glorious days, May give thee yet triumphant voice to raise When men, with happy tears, shall vigil keep Of that great feast when Christian Rome no more In chains shall stand a world’s awed gaze before.

II.

Eudoxia’s church—where Michael Angelo Hath Moses wrought in terrible array— With faith’s most loving rites keeps holiday In holy thought of those long years ago When, 'neath its roof, the throng devout drew near To see thee made a shepherd of the sheep, Thy crook receive, that thou shouldst bravely keep, Thy flock e’er leading by the waters clear. “St. Peter of the Chains”—prophetic name! Beneath this title was thy charge begun; As Peter’s self thy hands his chains have won, With these, his years. When shall God’s angel claim Thy liberty, the prison gates fling wide? Christ in his vicar no more crucified!

III.

O happy senses of the Virgin Blessed Standing the cross of Calvary beneath— So winning martyrdom without its death— Queen of all martyrs evermore confessed! O happy Pontiff! wear’st thou not to-day Beneath the triple crown one wrought of thorn? So crowned for love thou hast unfailing borne To thy pure spouse the faithless would betray? Art thou not martyr, too, by that deep woe Thou sharest with our Queen Immaculate? About thee rise the cries of blinded hate, Thou seest afresh the wounds of Jesus flow; His cross thy palm, his words sublime thine too— “Father, forgive; they know not what they do.”

IV.

As said Lacordaire, of the rosary, That love must ever its own speech repeat That, ever murmured, groweth e’er more sweet, So, seeking long some gift to bring to thee On this high day that keeps thy years of gold— Some thought that shall heart’s dearest service prove— Find I but one e’er-echoing word of love That doth all else I seek most fair enfold. Too great thy deeds for my poor verse to tell That need the Tuscan’s speech of Paradise; Even to think them, tears are in my eyes And sorrow stifles the _Te Deum’s_ swell— Tears for so dear a feast seem gift unkind, But love in every falling bead is shrined.

V.

As, when our Lord doth rest in solemn state On altar for his worship set apart, And from the fulness of each faithful heart The fairest flowers to him are consecrate— Pure lilies, that with fragrant breath pour forth The speechless worship human love must give; Red roses, in whose flush love seems to live— As, 'mid this wealth, some gift of little worth, Some penance-hued, frail-blooming violet, Is brought by humble soul with love as great As lies within the lilies’ lordlier state— Each cancelling so little of love’s debt— So I, my father, 'mid thy lilies place My rue, thy blessing shall make herb-of-grace.

THE PRESENT STATE OF JUDAISM IN AMERICA.

Judaism, in its purity, is not a false religion. It was revealed and established by God, and nothing which comes from him can be untrue. Judaism, as it now exists here and in Europe and Asia, is, on the one hand, overladen and almost smothered by the inventions and additions of men, until the original deposit of the truth is with difficulty discerned; on the other hand, it is refined and explained away until it has become little better than a system of worldly morals. To-day, in Europe, Jews, and the descendants of Jews who have lost their ancestral faith without becoming Christians, are powerful in the cabinets of kings, in parliaments, in the money exchanges, and in the world of journalism. In America, while they have as yet, perhaps with a single exception, taken no leading part in the political affairs of the country, they have become a power in finance, and are beginning in a quiet way to influence, and to some extent to control, journalism. The ability of the race is unquestionable, and their virtues, as a race, are many. They are prudent and thrifty; they are charitable to each other, and their charities are not always confined to their own people; they are seldom guilty of crime, although when a Jew does become a criminal his offences are apt to leave little to be desired in the matter of completeness, audacity, and cruelty; they are excellent parents, and the domestic virtues among them are cultivated to a high degree; their women are for the most part chaste; their men are seldom cruel creditors, even when their defaulting debtors are Gentiles. They have their faults and objectionable peculiarities; among certain classes of them these imperfections are especially noticeable; but, as we shall show, the rising generation of Jews in America will probably become tolerably well Americanized, and will, to some extent at least, cease to be an unpleasantly peculiar people.

To Catholics the study of the changes which have taken place and are now occurring among the Jews should be invested with peculiar interest. We cannot forget that the Holy Scriptures of the Jews are a portion of our Holy Scriptures; that Our Blessed Lady was a Jewess, and that our Divine Lord willed to be born a Jew according to the flesh; that he made himself subject to the ceremonies and rites of the Jewish law, which was then the divine law, and consequently his own law; that the first drops of his precious blood were shed in the Jewish rite of circumcision; that his chosen apostles, and among them the first pope, were all Jews; that the Catholic Church at its first organization was wholly composed of Jews; and that the first Christian martyr was a Jew.

When Jesus Christ had finished his work on earth and had ascended into heaven, the Jewish law was fulfilled but not destroyed; it remained in full force and effect, subject only to such modifications as God himself, speaking through the infallible mouth of the church which he had established, should ordain in matters of ritual, sacrifice, and outward observances. The code of laws given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, and engraved by the divine hand upon tables of stone, is as binding to-day upon all of us as it was binding upon the Jews on the day when Moses came down from the mount bearing the sacred tablets in his hands. The devout Jew who to-day, with reverently covered head and contrite heart, stands in his synagogue and listens to the reading of the law, hears the same words that Jesus of Nazareth read when, as was his custom, “he went into the synagogue and stood up for to read.” True, hearing, he does not hear the full meaning of the divine words; seeing, he does not see how they have been fulfilled; his understanding has not been opened to know that the Messias for whom he still yearns was the Jesus whom his ancestors crucified on Calvary, and that, on the altar of the church which, perhaps, stands next door to his synagogue, this same Jesus, risen, glorified, and descended again from heaven, stands ready to receive and bless him.

But the Jew, ignorant of this and still clinging fast to the faith of his fathers, has an infinite advantage over all the other non-Catholics in the world. His religion, as we have said, was revealed by God, and therefore is not false in its essence, however much it may be overlaid and hidden by the innumerable superstitions and additions with which successive generations of rabbis and doctors have encumbered it. It is not a revolt against the Catholic faith nor a contradiction of it; for not only did it exist before the Catholic Church was established, but it was revealed by God, and he cannot contradict himself. The Jew errs only because he cannot or will not see that the Catholic Church is the lineal heir and rightful possessor of the church of which Adam was the first, and Caiphas the last, high-priest; and as for his sin in this hardness of heart and blindness of eye, God will judge him. Outside of this, and outside of the human additions which have been made to his creed, he believes what God spake unto Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, and his religion is entitled to respect because it is of divine origin. But the origin of all the other non-Catholic religions in the world is human or diabolical. They are revolts against the authority and teaching of the church which Jesus Christ established in the world; to the earthly and visible head of which he gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven; to the words of which he enjoined all men to render obedience; on which he has bestowed the inestimable grace of perfect unity; and which the Holy Spirit keeps ever in the truth. The Jew can say with truth, “God founded my church”; but the Protestant can only say, “Martin Luther, or King Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, or John Knox, or John Wesley, or Alexander Campbell, or Jo Smith, or the devil founded _my_ church.”

Judaism, however, although divine in its origin, ceased to possess the divine sanction from the moment when our Lord had completed his work on earth and ascended into heaven, and the Holy Ghost descended to preside over the organization of the church from which he has never since departed. The Jewish religion, thus deprived for ever of the divine sanction, was at once deprived of its divine authority and became a merely human organization, subject, like all other human things, to corruption, change, decay, and disintegration. These processes have been going on within it for eighteen hundred years, and they have now reached a most advanced stage.

Prior to the crucifixion and ascension of our Lord the essential unity in faith of the Jewish people had been preserved. The lawyers, the doctors, and the Pharisees had added much to the law of Moses in the way of laying heavy burdens on the people; they took tithes of annise and cummin; they made broad the edges of their phylacteries, and they were famous for making long extempore prayers, in which latter respect they resembled too closely some of our esteemed Protestant brethren. But the essential and divinely-given articles of the Jewish faith remained unimpaired, and in these essentials the unity of the people was complete. The process of change and disintegration commenced immediately after the establishment of the Christian Church and what may be called the formal transfer to her of the guiding and enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit. But for many centuries this process was slow and its progress excited little or no attention. The Jews, until a very recent period in their history, were a persecuted people; and persecution tends to make men cling closer to that which is the cause of the persecution. There were times in the history of the Jews when their only city of refuge was Rome; when the popes, alone of all the sovereigns of the earth, stretched forth over them a protecting arm and permitted them to dwell in peace and security. Within the last century, or less, all this has been changed: nowhere in all Europe now, save in Bulgaria and one or two other provinces, are the Jews persecuted; they have obtained equal political and social rights; they are cabinet ministers, premiers, members of parliament, eminent journalists, and autocratic bankers. With this prosperity have come the marked evidences of that disintegration in matters of faith to which allusion has been made. And here in America, where the Jews have been always free, these changes have now become more signal and wide-spread than in any other country.

To show how this has come about, it will be necessary, in the first place, to explain briefly the nature of the additions which have been made by the Jewish doctors to the divine law; the effect of these human edicts and precepts upon the minds of those Jews who retain their faith; and their contrary effect, upon other minds, in promoting and disseminating the spirit of infidelity which is now so widely prevalent among the Hebrews. The strictly “orthodox” Jew to-day is more burdened than were ever any of his ancestors by practically endless rules, observances, rites, and ceremonies, while his “reformed” or “ultra-reformed” brother has not only shaken himself free from all, or nearly all, of these human inventions, but has emancipated himself also from the letter and spirit of the law of Moses and from the bonds of the faith.

The books of the Jewish law as they now exist are the Old Testament, as we call it; the “Mishna,” or Second Law; and the “Gemara,” or supplement to the “Mishna.” These two latter books, taken together, form the “Talmud.” But the “Mishna” is the explanation of the Old Testament; the “Gemara” is the explanation of the “Mishna”; and there remains behind or above all these the mystical and mysterious “Cabala,” which contains within itself the sum and essence of all human wisdom, and of such portions of divine wisdom as men are permitted to know. The “Cabala,” properly speaking, is not a book, and has never been wholly committed to writing. The “Cabala”—and the meaning of the word is the “tradition”—is a divine, sublime, secret, and infinite science, treating of the creation of the universe, of the esoteric meaning and significance of the Mosaic laws, and of the secrets of God. No trace of its origin is to be found. Moses, David, Solomon, and the prophets are said to have been masters of it. It was taught to successive generations, but with the utmost secrecy and only to a select few, who were deemed worthy to receive this priceless knowledge. Those portions of it which are written are brief, obscure, and full of abbreviations and initials, to be understood only by the initiated. They resemble the manuals of Freemasonry—pregnant with meaning to the members of the craft, but unintelligible to all who have not the key of the cipher. He who is a perfect master of the “Cabala” is so wise and potent that he not only can work wonders, but may exercise almost creative powers. Nay, even an imperfect and surreptitiously-obtained knowledge of its mysteries enables one to perform miracles. He who can place certain letters in a certain way, and pronounce them in a certain manner, may suspend the operation of the laws of nature and command the angels of God to do his will. The Cabalists, however, claim that seldom, if ever, has their divine science been used by unworthy men or prostituted to selfish purposes. The penalty for such a sin is eternal death; it is written in one of their books that “he who abuses the crown perisheth,” and this is understood to refer to those who possess themselves of this knowledge and then use it for selfish purposes. The true Cabalists study their science not for gain, but for the sake of obtaining profound knowledge. They apply their rules to the letters and words of the Mosaic law, and ascertain thereby its hidden significance, drawing from every word or sentence an esoteric meaning, often full of sublime intelligence, and as often pregnant only with absurdity.

Emanuel Swedenborg seems to have been an unfledged Cabalist; it is probable that he became in some manner acquainted with a few of the outward formulas of the Cabala, and that he based on these his wearisome treatises upon the secret meaning of the Scriptures. Certain it is that nothing which Swedenborg imagined is not to be found in the Cabala. Fortunately, a knowledge of the Cabala is not necessary for salvation; on the contrary, knowledge of it is a special perfection which every one is not able to attain, and for the want of which no one is to be blamed.

The “Mishna” contains the oral or traditional laws transmitted from Moses, through a line of which the personality of every member is known, to the Rabbi Jochanan, who lived at Jerusalem at the time of the destruction of the second Temple. It was compiled by Rabbi Jehuda Hanasi in the latter half of the second century. The “Gemara,” or supplement to the “Mishna,” is a wonderful book, containing thirty-six treatises upon history, biography, astronomy, medicine, and ethics, interspersed with legends, aphorisms, parables, sermons, and rules of practical wisdom. The oral or traditional laws in the “Mishna” are claimed to be of divine authority; and the passages in both these books which seem to be absurd in the letter have a secret meaning understood best, if not exclusively, by the Cabalists. The morality taught in these writings is not to be despised. For example, it is laid down that men should not use flattery or deceit in business affairs; they should not be boisterous in their mirth nor permit themselves to sink into abject melancholy, but should be reasonably and gratefully cheerful; they should be neither greedy of gain, nor slothful in business, nor over-righteous in fasting and penance; all that they do they should do for the glory of God; they should love every Israelite as themselves, and they should be kind and charitable to the stranger; they must abstain from inward and silent hate, and if aggrieved by a neighbor they should make it known to him, affectionately asking him to redress the wrong; they should be especially solicitous to comfort, aid, and protect the widow and the orphan, not merely if these be poor, but because they have suffered and their hearts are laden with grief. There are three mortal sins—idolatry, fornication, and bloodshed; but calumny is equal to all three. Every one who professes the true faith must believe that there is a Being whose existence is inherent, absolute, and unconditional within himself; who has no cause or origin, and like whom there is no other; who is the first producer of all things; in whom all creatures find the support of their existence, while he derives no support from them; and that “this Being is by men called God—blessed be he!” There are six fundamental principles of the faith—the creation of all things by God out of nothing; the pre-eminence of Moses as a prophet and lawgiver—a pre-eminence so great that there never has been and never can be another equal to him; the unalterableness of the law which he gave; the dogma that the proper observance of any one of the commandments of the law will lead to perfection; the resurrection of the dead; and the coming of the Messias. But upon this excellent foundation has been built up that structure of ceremony, ritual, observance, and false and narrow philosophy which has become unbearable to so many of the Jews in this country and in Europe, and from the yoke of which too many have escaped by throwing aside all faith, while others have contented themselves with taking refuge in the half-way houses of “reform.”

It is difficult to estimate with accuracy the number of Jews in the United States. But the census of 1870 affords us some valuable data upon which a calculation may be based. In 1850 there were 36 Jewish synagogues in the United States, with sittings for 18,371 persons, and having a value of $418,600. In 1860 there were 77 synagogues, with sittings for 34,412 persons and a value of $1,135,300. In 1870 no less than 189 Jewish “organizations” were reported; there were 152 synagogues, seating 73,265 persons and valued at $5,155,234. Now in the city of New York there are 26 synagogues, and the Jewish population of the metropolis is not less than 75,000. This would give an average of some three thousand souls to each synagogue; and if we took this average as a basis of calculation, we should have a Jewish population in the whole of the United States amounting to 456,000 souls. But we have reason to believe that this is much less than the actual number. We have received from two high authorities estimates of the Jewish population in the republic; both are avowedly only estimates, but they have been made with care. One of them places the number of Jews in the United States at “one in thirty of the whole population,” which would give a total of 1,600,000 souls; the other reports the number to be “almost exactly 1,000,000 souls.”

According to the census of 1870, there were no Jewish synagogues or other Hebrew organizations in Arizona, Dakota, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington Territory, or Wyoming. But, in point of fact, there are many Jews in all, or nearly all, these States and Territories. The following table will show the number of Jewish organizations in the United States, the number of their synagogues, with their sittings and their value, according to the census of 1870:

Organizations. Synagogues. Sittings. Value. Alabama 2 2 1,650 $30,000 Arkansas 1 1 300 6,500 California 7 7 3,600 314,600 Colorado 1 — — — Connecticut 5 3 1,850 105,000 Dist. of Columbia 2 1 800 18,000 Georgia 6 5 1,400 52,700 Illinois 10 9 3,950 271,500 Indiana 5 4 1,900 113,000 Iowa 5 1 150 1,900 Kansas 2 1 300 1,500 Kentucky 3 3 1,500 134,000 Louisiana 5 5 2,200 75,000 Maine 23 23 7,315 36,400 Maryland 5 4 2,750 650,000 Massachusetts 5 2 1,500 33,000 Michigan 5 3 1,300 51,000 Missouri 4 4 2,100 217,100 New Jersey 1 1 300 8,000 New York 47 33 21,400 1,831,950 North Carolina 1 1 200 500 Ohio 7 7 4,000 360,584 Pennsylvania 15 14 7,750 681,000 Rhode Island 1 — — — South Carolina 3 3 900 91,200 Tennessee 4 4 1,100 21,000 Texas 1 1 400 6,000 Vermont 8 7 1,890 35,300 West Virginia 1 — — — Wisconsin 4 3 750 8,500

Totals 189 152 73,265 $5,155,234

A careful examination of this table discloses some remarkable contrasts which are not without their significance. While the synagogues in North Carolina, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, and some other States are small and cheap structures, costing only from $500 to $2,800 or $3,000 each, those in Georgia have cost, or are valued at, an average of $10,500; in Alabama and Maine, $15,000; in Illinois, $30,000; in Connecticut, $35,000; in California, $45,000; in Pennsylvania, $49,000; in Ohio, $51,500; in Missouri, $54,000; in New York, $60,000; and in Maryland, $162,000. These instances exemplify to some extent the comparative wealth and religious zeal of the children of Israel in the different States named, and many of our readers, we suppose, will learn with surprise that there are far more Jews in Maine than in all the other New England States put together; and that the Jews of Maryland are apparently very much more wealthy and zealous than their co-religionists in any other part of the republic. But we must now trace the history of the settlement and progress of the Jews in this country, and set forth the outer as well as inner causes which have tended to work changes in them: to Americanize them to a great extent; to remove or soften the prejudices formerly cherished against them; and to weaken, modify, or destroy, in a degree which cannot yet be accurately determined, their own religious faith.

Jewish emigration to this country began at a very early period in its history, but only within the last thirty years has this emigration assumed perceptible dimensions. The Jews who came to the United States prior to 1848 were for the most part members of a low class; they were chiefly of Polish, Russian, Portuguese, or Spanish birth; they were either poor or pretended to be poor; they were peddlers, dealers in old clothes, pawnbrokers, money-changers in a small way, and petty merchants. From all social intercourse with the rest of the community they were cut off; they did not seek that which probably would have been denied them had they asked for it; the traditional prejudice against the Jews which exists so generally among the Gentiles was not diminished by the appearance, the actions, and the general reputation of these children of Israel. They were supposed to be exclusively devoted to trade and to money-making, and to be quite devoid of any scruples as to the means by which they might get the better of the person to whom they sold or of whom they bought. A Hebrew writer of some note many years ago remarked that the Jews, as a race of people, were more widely and generally known and less generally appreciated than any other class upon the earth; that the peculiarities which have marked them as objects of dislike were by no means original in their character, but were the fruits of centuries of oppression and degradation; and that they needed only a few years of existence in a free country, where equal rights would be accorded to them, and where they might in peace and security manifest the virtues which were in them, in order to win for themselves not only the toleration but the active esteem and respect of their fellow-citizens. The truth of this remark has been amply substantiated by what has occurred in England, France, Germany, and other portions of Europe; while in this country the Jews have succeeded in Americanizing themselves to a very great extent, and in obliterating in a marked degree the peculiarities which formerly served to point them out as a wholly separate and foreign people. That this process has been accompanied by the partial loss of their religious faith is unquestionably true, but it is not clear whether they have become Americanized because they have to this extent lost their faith, or whether they have lost their faith because they have become Americanized.

The Jews in America at the present moment are divided into five classes—the “Radical Orthodox,” the “Orthodox,” the “Conservative Reformed,” the “Reformed,” and the “Radical Reformed.” There is a wide gulf between the first and the last of these classes; but the shades of difference between a Radical Orthodox Jew and an Orthodox Jew, or between a Conservative Reformed Jew and a Reformed Jew, are somewhat difficult to define. The Radical Orthodox Jews are few in number, and are said by their co-religionists to be daily growing less. They are chiefly of Polish, Austrian, or Hungarian birth; they for the most part are in humble and obscure walks of life; they form no associations with Gentiles; they accept as the rule of their life the Mosaic law interpreted by the “Talmud” and the “Cabala”; they do not welcome Gentiles, or even Jews of later views, to their synagogues. We believe there is but one synagogue in New York belonging to this school of Jews, and in which one may witness Jewish worship as it was performed a thousand years ago. The children of the Radical Orthodox Jews—especially the male children—do not adhere closely to the faith and ritual of their fathers; and some of the fathers themselves, as they become rich in this world’s goods, manifest a disposition to affiliate themselves with one or other of the less rigorous sects. Some of them are content to join the ranks of the Orthodox Jews, who hold most firmly to all matters of dogma, and to all the essential rules of life laid down by the law of Moses, but who at the same time dispense themselves from the strict observance of a certain number of the more onerous observances and regulations enjoined by the rabbinical writers.

The line of demarcation between the Orthodox Jews and the Conservative Reformed Jews is vague and undetermined; but the Reformed Jews are very much advanced. They hold themselves bound no longer to obey the ceremonial and dietary laws laid down by Moses and his successors, and their faith in the predictions of the prophets has almost wholly faded away. The higher class of the Hebrew community for the most part belong to the Reformed sect; but these congregations are also largely composed of the well-to-do middle-class Jews. Nearly all of the Jews of American birth are found in the ranks of this sect or in the one of which we have yet to speak; and very many of the German and English Jews resident here are also members of the Reformed synagogues. They openly avow their desire and ambition to become thoroughly Americanized, and to cease in all respects to be regarded as an alien and foreign people. They still retain their belief in God, but this belief is in too many cases vague and ill-defined. The expectation of the coming of the Messias in any literal sense has, with rare exceptions, ceased to be entertained among them. They will not confess that the prophecies of his coming were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and their philosophy has led them to the conclusion that these prophecies do not now remain to be fulfilled, save in a metaphorical sense. The Messias is indeed to come—but not as an individual. Humanity as a race, elevated, happy, prosperous, blessed with long life, health, and earthly comfort, is the Messias; the prophets saw him and were glad, but it was reserved for the children of this generation to discover what was the hidden and real meaning of their predictions concerning him.

A learned Jewish scholar has thus expressed this phase of Jewish thought: “The majority of intelligent Israelites have long since abandoned the wish of building up an independent national existence of their own. The achievement of higher conditions of human life they are disposed to regard as the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy, and the furthering of this end, in intimate union with their fellow-men, as the highest dictate of their religion.” These are weighty words; and there is abundant reason to believe that they truthfully represent the dominant tone of thought among the American Jews. The latest sect among them—the Radical Reformed Jews—go to the root of the matter and have the full courage of their opinions. They have the goodness to admit that there is, or may be, a God, but they deny that he has ever revealed himself to man save by the law of nature, and that God is himself nature. In other words, these Jews have become Pantheists. Benedict de Spinoza was excommunicated and denounced by the forefathers of those who now revere and extol him. The most eloquent and gifted, if not the most learned, of the Jewish rabbis in America has become the leader of this sect, and has left the magnificent synagogue which was built for him, only to draw after him into new paths a large proportion of his former congregation. They are extremely wise in their own conceit; they prate of the necessity of doubting all things; they deride the rites and practices of external religion; they say they worship God, but inasmuch as God, as they insist, is only nature, and nature is part of themselves, in worshipping God they worship themselves. We are told that many of those Jews who still maintain their connection with the Conservative Reformed or Reformed congregations are by conviction in full sympathy with the Radical Reformers. The laity are far in advance of the rabbis of each sect. The rabbis are for the most part men of foreign birth and foreign education; there are, we believe, not a dozen rabbis of American birth in the whole Union. The almost universal tendency of thought and practice among the younger Jews is in the direction of that phase of infidelity of which we have spoken; and the elder members of the race take little care to counteract in any effectual manner this apostasy. The education of Jewish children in this country is left pretty much to take care of itself. There are few, if any, Jewish schools, and none at all of a high character. The Jewish children for the most part attend the public schools, where they either are taught no religion at all or listen to such vague and disjointed utterances concerning the truths of Christianity as the caprice or the prejudices of the teacher may lead him to pronounce. In some instances the children of well-to-do Hebrews among us are sent to receive their education in Unitarian academies; in others the sons of wealthy American Jews are educated in the German universities, from whence they return full-blown infidels. Intermarriages between Jews and nominal Christians are not rare; and the children of these unions are, as a rule, educated in the religion of the mother—if she happens to possess any.

We have said that the Jewish laity is in advance of the rabbis in the matter of what is called “reform,” but which is too generally nothing but destruction. The position of the rabbis is a peculiar one. They are not priests, for they no longer offer sacrifice. They are not even the sons of priests; the hereditary character of their office has long since been lost; they are rabbis, or, in other phrase, teachers, not by hereditary descent nor by divine selection or consecration, but merely by their own choice and the good-will of their neighbors or friends. The last high-priest of the Jewish Church who had any divine sanction for the title which he bore was Caiphas, and his office was taken away from him, in the sight of God and in truth, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost descended to dwell until the end of time with the Christian Church. Since that day there have been no priests of God upon the earth, save the priests of the Catholic Church; and consequently since that day there have been no true Jewish priests. The altars of the Jews have crumbled away; their sacrifices have ceased; the sons of the tribes of Aaron and Levi have abandoned even the pretence of belonging to a priestly order. In the place of the priests have come the rabbis, who are mere ministers or teachers. They are to the Jews what the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Protestant ministers are to the respective Protestant sects. They are a little less than some of the Protestant ministers claim to be; for some of these do set up in an uncertain way a vague and altogether fallacious pretence to the possession of “orders” and to having been empowered to perform priestly functions. The rabbis make no such pretence, and their position, such as it is, is confessedly invested with only purely human sanction. They are teachers, but do not claim that they have a divine authority to teach. They are subject to the will and caprice of the congregation to which they are attached; they are like school-teachers, whose tenure of office depends upon the pleasure of the school commissioners. Some of them have sought to put themselves at the head of the reform movement, and have succeeded, but only on the condition that they should keep pace with the advance of the laity. The younger German rabbis have been most prominent in this respect. They have effected an organization among themselves, as well here as in Germany, and have managed to act together with something approaching to unanimity. Destitute, however, of any rule of faith and practice higher than their own will and whim, and having no central or supreme authority to which they can appeal, they lack the essential bond of unity, and some of them are constantly wandering off in one direction or the other. They began their work of reform by modernizing the ritual of the synagogue, and eliminating from it, little by little, those portions of it which, directly or indirectly, assert the dogmas that are inconveniently opposed to the new ideas whereof they are enamored. Among the regular prayers of the synagogue, for instance, were supplications for the bringing back of the chosen people to the land of their fathers, the restoration of the throne of David, and the coming of the Messias. The new philosophy, as we have shown, teaches that the Messias is not to come in any literal sense; that inasmuch as modern progress is best subserved by democratic or republican institutions, the establishment of a monarchy of any kind is not to be desired or prayed for; and that the return of the Jews as a nation to Palestine is not to be wished, even if it were feasible.

It became advisable, therefore, to reconcile theory with practice, and to cease pretending to pray for that which was either impossible or undesirable. If it were absurd to believe any longer that the Messias was to come as a personal king and redeemer, to lead back his people to the Promised Land, and to elevate them as the rulers and princes of the earth, then it was something worse than absurd to continue the repetition of the prayers imploring the hastening of his coming. If the Books of the Law and of the Prophets are not the veritable word of God; if they contain merely ingenious and beautiful myths, symbolical poetry, and a code of moral and dietary rules which, in some respects at least, are no longer either necessary or advisable to be obeyed, it is dishonest to pretend to regard these writings with devout reverence, and to insist upon any one governing himself by them. By this course of reasoning the German rabbis, often pushed further than they cared to go by the laity who were behind them, sapped the foundations of faith among the common people of the Jews, and prepared them for the downward path which so many of them are now treading.

Having thus reviewed the present state of Judaism in America, we may ask ourselves what is likely to be the future of what was once the church of God, but has now fallen to the level of a mere sect. It is clear that the Jews, here as in the Old World, and more rapidly here than in the Old World, are losing the faith of their fathers. Judaism, divine in its origin, but no longer invested with the divine sanction nor inspired or guided by the Holy Ghost, is undergoing the same process of disintegration and decay which the Protestant sects are suffering. Judaism, now wholly human, like Protestantism, is leading its adherents to infidelity. Every day, as Protestants see this, the devout and pious among them turn to the one church which Jesus Christ established in the world, and in her bosom find refuge, peace, and salvation. The number of conversions from Protestantism to the holy Roman Catholic Church, here and in Great Britain, is continually on the increase. But nothing is more rare than the conversion of a Jew. They are rapidly parting with their own faith, but very seldom do they embrace any form of Christianity in its stead. In a few years the great majority of Jews in the United States will probably have ceased to be Jews, save only in name. But how many of them will become Catholics? All roads lead to Rome; but very few Jews have made that journey. A Jew who becomes a Catholic is a most excellent Catholic; he seems to desire, by the fervor of his faith and the burning zeal of his charity, to make some reparation for the sins of his people. Jews should be the best Catholics in the world; and God has told us, through the mouths of Jewish prophets, that the time will come when they will be all that they should be. The word of God is sure and cannot fail. He has told us that the day is coming when the Jews shall ask him, “What are those wounds in the midst of thy hands?” and when he shall reply, “With these was I wounded in the house of them that I love.” In that day he “will pour out upon the house of David the spirit of grace and the spirit of prayers; and they shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only son, and shall grieve over him as the manner is to grieve for the death of the first-born.” In that glorious day God has promised that he will destroy the names of idols out of the earth, so that they shall be remembered no more; and that he will take away the false prophets and the unclean spirit out of the earth. He will bring back the captivity of Juda and the captivity of Jerusalem, and “will build them as from the beginning”; he will cleanse them from all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned against him and despised him; and he will so crown them with blessings that all the world shall be amazed thereby. “It shall be to me a name, and a joy, and a praise, and a gladness before all the nations of the earth that shall hear of all the good things which I will do to them.” “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will perform the good word that I have spoken to the house of Israel and to the house of Juda.” When the Jews become Catholic Christians, Jerusalem shall “be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name,” and the Jews shall become “a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of God.” Then they shall no more be called forsaken, and their land shall be no more called desolate; “but thou shalt be called 'my pleasure in her,’ and thy land inhabited.” Then shall the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass be celebrated by Jewish hands in the Holy City where Jesus Christ first offered up the ever-living Sacrifice, and then shall the Jews eat the heavenly Bread and drink the sacred Blood which have so long been given to us Gentiles and rejected by them. “The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by the arm of his strength: Surely I will no longer give thy corn to be meat for thy enemies, and the sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine for which thou hast labored; for they that gather it shall eat it, and they that have brought it together shall drink it in my holy courts.” Wonderful are these words; full are they of a meaning at once mystical and clear. The Jews, in God’s own time, will become Catholic Christians, and, united with the whole body of the faithful on earth, they shall eat the divine Bread which is the life of the world. The abandonment of their traditional faith will continue to lead them more and more to the abandonment of all their distinctive national peculiarities and practices, and they will become merged in the great body of the children of men. Then such of them as God may choose will have given to them the grace of faith, and as individuals, and not as a nation, will they become Catholic Christians. We know that in the vision of St. John the Apostle he saw one hundred and forty-four thousand of the children of Israel, of every tribe twelve thousand, who had come out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. We are certain, then, that before the end of the world at least this number of Jews will have been converted. It may be that the number represents only those who belonged to the church while it was yet mainly composed of Jews. If so, let us hope that those of the once chosen people who yet remain may be found, or at least many of them, in that great multitude which no man can number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, which St. John also saw, standing before the throne and in the sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands, crying with a loud voice “Salvation to our God who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb.”

LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER. FROM THE FRENCH. CONCLUSION.

JULY 30.

This morning I was in a sort of mortal sadness. I opened the “Book of those who suffer” at these words: “You have willed, O my God! to separate me from her to whom I have so often said that I should wish to die the same day as she. This desire has not been granted, and thou hast condemned me to survive.

“_She_ is at rest; and never have I more fully realized than in this my exceeding grief the meaning of that beautiful Christian word, _quies_—rest.”

I said this with all my heart, and I have comprehended.... O Kate! I loved you too much for this world. Bless me from on high, and visit me with Picciola. It seems to me that the divine Goodness must permit that.

AUGUST 2.

“The present war is the natural and necessary consequence of the great apostasy of the sixteenth century and the principles of the Revolution!” O my God! if this might be a holy war! But I fear; for France is so guilty! Prayers are being offered in all the dioceses; the emperor has put himself at the head of the army. May God save us! We needed a St. Louis, if we were to deserve victory. Do you remember, Kate, how much we admired these words of Bossuet? “War is often a salutary bath, in which nations bathe and are regenerated.” Oh! how you must pray, all our kind friends in heaven.

AUGUST 4.

Amélie has bidden us adieu; she is a charming creature. Her mother will not accompany her. She fears her own weakness; and she is a veritable Spartan.

On the 2d of August took place a first engagement at Saarbrück; our troops were victorious. May this success augur well! They say that there is a terrible effervescence in minds. Our Bretonnes are praying that their sons may soon return.

Arrival of our Parisians! Alix and Margaret have all the grace of the twins; my godson is magnificent. I like to feel that we are together in these troubled times. How I pity mothers!

AUGUST 7.

Terror, anguish, defeat—these are the synonyms of this date. Two days ago we were beaten at Wissembourg; yesterday at Forbach. We are waiting for news. Our reverses are a chastisement; the French government is withdrawing its troops from Rome. Is it, then, to secure success that France abandons the Pope? Oh! it is not France which acts thus; she is too profoundly Catholic for that; but she will be none the less certain to undergo the penalty for this cowardice. Kate, pray for France! The Prussians are upon our soil, and civil war is also feared.

AUGUST 13.

Horrible details are received of the battle of Reichshoffen. Marshal MacMahon behaved with admirable heroism. He would not quit the field of battle after witnessing this odious butchery—40,000 against 150,000! Lord, O Lord! have pity. There must have been some treason there. The cuirassiers and chasseurs of MacMahon sacrificed themselves to facilitate the retreat. The newspapers make one weep. Kate, what is said in heaven?

My Guy is charmingly beautiful; and when he is twenty years old an enemy’s cannon-ball will have the right to carry him off!

AUGUST 21.

Dear Kate, I bless God for having placed you in the peace of eternity before these murderous struggles, in which your heart would so often have been wounded! Ah! it seems to me that it is a great favor to be taken from this earth before the calamities which are impending.

A subscription has been set on foot, in order that all France shall offer a sword of honor to MacMahon. Marshal Lebœuf, General-in-Chief, is replaced by Marshal Bazaine; the army is falling back on Chalons. There were brilliant affairs on the 14th, 15th, and 16th. But what agitation in the country! The republicans consider the moment favorably for their triumph, and René declares that the Prussians of France are still more to be dreaded than the Prussians of Germany. Montaigne said: “There are triumphant defeats which equal the finest victories.” Our troops are sublime. Fresh levies are being made, companies of _francs-tireurs_ are organized; will France be saved? Catholic La Vendée is rising _en masse_.

AUGUST 24.

The Prussians are at Saint-Dizier. It is said that in the partial engagements the losses are considerable on both sides. The enemy is bombarding Strasbourg. Read heart-rending details. _Povera Francia!_ They say that two sons of Count Bismarck are dead; it is the justice of God passing by! Oh! when we think of so many families who are suffering from the disasters of invasion, who see their homes invaded and their days in peril, how ardent are our prayers!

That which I dreaded is come upon us. René and his brothers are going! O my God! guard them from danger. I love France too well to hinder René from defending her. The fear of afflicting me held him back. God aid us and have at the English! as our Breton ancestors used to say. The English of to-day are the Prussians.

They leave us, five brothers, all valiant and strong, courageous as lions. Ah! if they should not return. I believe in presentiments, and something tells me that all hope of happiness is at an end for me. “Give all to God,” a saintly priest wrote to me. _Fiat!_ Take all, my God, but leave me thy love!

Do you remember, Kate, my mother’s stories of the heroism of our grandfather? Do you remember that Georgina whose name I received, who said to her brother, “Go and fight without thinking of me. God and his angels will guard me; think of your country!”

Could I be less courageous than she? Pray for me, holy soul in heaven! What shall I do without him?

AUGUST 26.

Levies are being raised _en masse_. Men will not be wanting, but soldiers cannot be made at a moment’s notice, especially in our days. It is said that Bazaine is blockaded in Metz with 70,000 men, and that he has before him 200,000 Prussians. MacMahon is going to his relief with an equal number of heroes. The French have burnt the camp at Chalons. What will be the issue of this frightful struggle? The ministry which has caused all our misfortunes has resigned; a clear understanding is most important, and time passes away in useless discussions. General Trochu, a Breton, is Governor of Paris.

To-day we shall be left alone....

AUGUST 29.

It is over. René has taken with him all my heart, and I feel a strange sense of suffering. My mother has been sublime. O these adieux, these last embraces! Who would have said that we should come to this?

Protect them, ye holy angels! Bring them back to us soon with the return of peace! There are wounded everywhere; my mother has asked for ten, to whom we shall attend ourselves. It is terrible to see these mutilations. O war! how I hate it.

The army of Prince Frederick Charles is marching upon Paris; there are no official tidings of our soldiers. Phalsbourg, Toul, Metz, Strasbourg are all undergoing the horrors of bombardment. Where shall we go? Prayer alone will save us. There is much patriotic eagerness in the populations; the loan of 750,000,000 has been covered with astonishing rapidity. What will become of the capital? What chastisement will visit it for having erected a statue to Voltaire?

A visit—the Comtesse de G—— and her two daughters, friends of Lucy. What a difference between the two sisters! The younger calm, gentle, and placid, like a beautiful lake, seraphic and tender; the elder ardent and enthusiastic to exaggeration, impassioned for the cause of good, peace, and right, but like a volcano.

Kate, tell me that you pray for us, and that God will have pity upon his people!

AUGUST 31.

A letter from René! Alas! his presence was so sweet to me. Gertrude and I do not quit the chapel, except for the wounded. Mary and Ellen, Marguerite and Alix, multiply their prayers. Arthur has made his mother give him a Zouave’s uniform; thus equipped, he drills the children at the school. You should hear him say how he wants to join his father and fight with him. Our savage enemies commit revolting atrocities. How truly are they the sons of the Teutons!

Berthe’s family is in Switzerland.

SEPTEMBER 4.

Lord, save us; we perish!

The public journals speak in an ambiguous manner of triumphs with respect to which a terrible silence had been observed in official quarters; a great battle was imminent.... The day is come, and its events are brought to light. _Povera Francia!_ The emperor and 40,000 French prisoners, MacMahon grievously wounded, and a capitulation—it is horrible! My God! hast thou abandoned France? The public consternation cannot be described. It was said yesterday that, owing to a crypt whose existence was generally unknown, the women and children had been able to quit Strasbourg, so valiantly defended by General Uhrich. The enemy aims his murderous projectiles especially at the cathedral—that unequalled marvel in stone. Horrible! horrible! It seems as if hell had vomited innumerable legions of monsters upon France. There were 550,000 in this last three days’ battle. How will all this end? “Arise, O Lord! and deliver thy people, for the time to show mercy is come!”[52]

Footnote 52:

Ps. ci.

SEPTEMBER 6.

The republic is proclaimed. Paris is in a state of delirium. Did not Joseph de Maistre say: “The French Revolution has been satanic; if the counter-revolution is not divine, it will be a nullity”? Read the _Univers_ yesterday—so Christian, so right-thinking. Louis Veuillot calls Prussia the _Sin of Europe_. Will the republic save us? The enemy is at Soissons. We see now the result of twenty years of despotism.... “MacMahon is dead!” said a workman on the boulevards with a journal in his hand. At these words arose a general cry: “Honor to MacMahon!” This report is contradicted, and Mme. la Maréchale set out yesterday to join her husband. O this wound! What Frenchman would not give his life to heal it? No army left! Bazaine is still blockaded in Metz, bombarded by the Prussians. MacMahon had done wonders, but was unable to effect his junction with Bazaine. He was thrown back by the enemy upon Sedan, and a bridge not having been destroyed, notwithstanding his orders, he was surrounded by a network of the enemy; grievously wounded, he placed the command in the hands of General Wimpffen, who capitulated. MacMahon would never have done this—never! Without a miracle, France is lost. It seems as if one were suffering a bad dream in reading that, owing to our woods, the enemy slaughter us without mercy, whilst our blows fall on emptiness, and that on the fatal day which annihilated our army our artillery was for a quarter of an hour playing upon a regiment of French cuirassiers.... The _Angelus_ is ringing. O Angelic Salutation! with what anguish Christian hearts yesterday repeated you, on this beginning of a new era of which no one can tell the form or the duration.

SEPTEMBER 7.

A line from Adrien to reassure us all. Alas! who does not tremble at this hour? Kate, protect us! Some members of the Left have, themselves alone, made the republic and seized the reins of government. Can the enemies of God regenerate a people? “The Keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.” Napoleon I. (Louis Veuillot, the valiant heart, tells us) used to say that the general who dared speak of capitulation ought to be shot; what, then, would be the deserts of him who surrenders? Poor France, humiliated, vanquished, deprived of her noblest children!

SEPTEMBER 8.

On this festival of your nativity, O Our Lady of Victories! succor us. No courier from Paris, which must be invested. The _Garde Nationale_ is being organized; the scheme is to oppose the whole of France to these Vandals of the nineteenth century—barbarous hordes who seem to be impelled by some irresistible force into the heart of our unhappy country. How French I feel myself in these days of sorrow! Dear Kate, is it true, as we believe, that all our saints of France, headed by St. Remi, Charlemagne, St. Louis, and Joan of Arc, are prostrate at the feet of the Eternal to obtain the pardon which would save us?

SEPTEMBER 11.

In the frightful catastrophe of Sedan our soldiers were in want of munitions and had not eaten for four days.

I send daily a long bulletin of news to my devoted Margaret. Has not Marcella also something to fear? Poor Italy! Poor France! We can but have either a shameful peace or a pitiless war.... Laon is threatened with the fate of Strasbourg. Alas! these poor cities, besieged and heroic. “Country of my brethren and of my friends, may the words of God for thee be words of peace: 'May peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy towers!’ O my God! save thy servants who put their trust in thee!”[53]

Footnote 53:

Ps. cxxi.

Every man under arms, every woman at prayer! This decree makes me bless the republic. And René—where is he?

SEPTEMBER 13.

Laon must have ceased to exist; the commander has had the citadel blown up. They say that Garibaldi, the insulter of Pius IX. and the king of vagabonds and bandits, is coming to succor France; is not this the depth of humiliation? “How long, O Lord! wilt thou delay to succor us? O God! be thou our judge, and defend our cause against this pitiless nation; deliver us from these men, who are full of injustice and deceit!”

The enemy is six leagues from Paris. M. Thiers has set out for Vienna, St. Petersburg, and London. The United States have offered their mediation. We are assured that the foreign powers desire peace, but what proofs do they give? Russia is preparing formidable armaments, doubtless finding the present moment opportune for taking possession of Constantinople. The excommunicated king is adding to his crimes in annexing to his own the last remaining States of the church.

We are told that the republican world boasts greatly of the circular of Jules Favre and the letter of Victor Hugo.

I do not know from whence there comes to us a copy of a revelation announcing that from the 20th to the 29th all will be over, and that France will be delivered by a stranger. O feast of St. Michael the Archangel! be to us a day of salvation. But, Lord, does France deserve it? Ah! she is no longer the eldest daughter of the church, since she consents to the odious spoliation of Italy, and since every sort of hatred is let loose against religion. Do they not say that at Lyons the Visitandines have been driven from their convent? We deserve every misfortune and disgrace. Louis Veuillot, calm in the midst of so many storms, gave yesterday a beautiful article, in which he predicted the near approach of the triumph of the church; and today, the splendid history of Judas Machabeus. Save us, O Lord! we who are thy people. “God gives to his church the flotsam of every wreck, as he gives her, sooner or later, the laurel of every triumph.”

It is said that Paris will be destroyed. “Unless the Lord keep the city, he that keepeth it watcheth in vain!”[54] Hope! hope! Prayer will save us!

Footnote 54:

Ps. cxxvi.

I knew yesterday that Réne was alive. O Kate! pray for us.

SEPTEMBER 17.

O surprise! O joy!—if I dared to say so.... Margaret here! Kind, dear, and perfect friend! she could not remain away from us during these troubles. Lord William and Emmanuel have come with her. What an exquisite proof of affection! How we have wept together! O dear Kate, dear flower transplanted to heaven! your native soil, how much we have spoken of you. How René will be touched at hearing of this arrival! My mother and sisters give a festive welcome to my _belle Anglaise_, who is English only in name, being as Catholic, as Irish, and as French as we are.

Communications are interrupted, or are on the point of being so. The line of Orleans is cut. The Paris _Journal_ is here, however, with frightful accounts of the barbarity of the Prussians. Save us, my God; have pity on those who are fighting _pro aris et focis_!

Margaret has brought me a bit of the soil of Ireland, and some flowers gathered from our mother’s grave.

SEPTEMBER 19.

What is happening to-day, twenty-four years after the Apparition of La Salette? We are melting away in prayers. My mother has obtained from the bishop the most liberal permissions for benedictions. Our good _curé_ is dying ... of old age and grief. The love of their country is a robust plant among the Bretons.

Dear Kate, we speak of you with Margaret. I told her that I continue to write to you; she was touched at hearing it. How kind it is of her to have quitted her home to share our anguish and our dangers! The province will be invaded—that is certain. No news of René; but who does not feel courageous at this time? Ah! assuredly, in face of the extent of our disasters, selfish anxieties disappear, and the soul grows, in her prodigious faculty of suffering, to compassionate all the present miseries, all the crushing misfortunes, all the deaths. How long, O Lord! will thy hand be heavy upon us? O mysterious depths of the designs of God! O militant church! O venerated Pontiff, the purest glory of our age! O Rome, invaded like France! I have just read an admirable pastoral letter of Mgr. Freppel, the illustrious successor of Mgr. Angebault in the see of Angers. He sees a reason for hope in this community of sorrows between the mother and the _eldest daughter_. O Pontiff!—is not this title become a bitter derision? The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church, and we are surely not far distant from her signal triumph; but how many tears, it may be, and how many martyrdoms, before that hour! Italy, France, Ireland—the three countries of my heart, lands that are mingled in one in my enthusiasm and love, daughters of God, and the privileged ones of his heart—you cannot perish; God will fight for you, and we shall bless him for ever!

Kate, beloved sister, tell me that you hear me, that your soul touches mine. Be René’s guardian angel!

SEPTEMBER 21.

Our life is strange. Beneath all it has a wonderful serenity, a confidence in God which defies everything; on the surface it is a sort of fever, passing from the wildest hope to the most complete discouragement. Gertrude has appointed us her _aides-de-camp_—Margaret and myself. There is much to do around us. Our Bretonnes have need to be consoled, and there are sick and dying. The good _abbé_ multiplies himself with admirable self-forgetfulness; our pastor is dying, happy to be called away at the present crisis.

I have a letter from René—a kind, long, sweet letter, from which I cannot take away my eyes. He only speaks to me vaguely of the war, so as not to increase my alarm. Every ring of the bell makes us start; the gallop of a horse makes us run to the windows. My mother never quits her psalter and rosary; Mistress Annah faithfully keeps her company when we are not there; Mary and Ellen, with the other dear young ones in the house, are our sunshine. The courageous Margaret talks politics with Lucy, the _abbé_, and the doctor, organizes plans of defence, creates fortresses, and finally expels the enemy. Lord William was just now reading to us in the Paris _Journal_ of the 18th details of deep interest relating to the affair of Sedan—“the Waterloo of the Second Empire, and the greatest disaster of modern times.”

SEPTEMBER 25.

Jules Favre has made an appeal to William and Bismarck. France is very low. The result has been the affirmation of the exorbitant demands of the conquerors. The struggle is to be pushed to extremities. Regiments are to be formed of National Guards. Here none are left but old men. No official news. It is said that the enemy has been repulsed at Versailles, that Nantes is burnt, that headquarters are at Meaux; they said yesterday at Rheims: “O Clovis! why are you not there with your Franks?” The Prussians are burning Rouen. When, then, will the terrible work of these executioners of Heaven be ended? William wants Alsace and Lorraine, Metz, Strasbourg, Toul, Verdun, and Mont Valérien. Ah! we also, we shall say with the Bishop of Orleans that which was said by Louisa of Prussia—a magnanimous soul, to whom the life of her four sons was less dear than the honor of her country; a believing and valiant woman, who beheld so violent and devastating a storm pass over her kingdom that Prussia was on the point of being erased from the map of nations: “I believe in God; I do not believe in force. Justice alone is stable. God prunes the spoiled tree. We shall see better times, if only each day find us better and more prepared.” The son has not inherited the sentiments of the mother. It is said that it was Prince Albert who commanded the burning of Bazeilles; this fearful barbarity would suffice for his reprobation in the memory of men. “The Hebrew people saw Deborah and Judith arise in the day of its affliction; Gaul, St. Geneviève; and France of the middle ages, Joan of Arc.”[55] Who shall save modern France? Whose arm shall God raise up to avenge her? “But now thou hast cast us off, and put us to shame: and thou, O God! wilt not go out with our armies.... Arise, O Lord! Why sleepest thou?”[56]

Footnote 55:

Gabourd.

Footnote 56:

Ps. xliii.

Rome is invaded by the republican troops; they leave the Pope the castle of Sant’ Angelo and the Leonine city, with _magnificent_ assurances of security. O the time of deliverance, the hour of salvation!—soon, doubtless, soon. The church cannot perish. Gentle Pontiff, Pius IX., Vicar of Christ and his representative, like him crucified in heart, given gall to drink, overwhelmed with insults, your powerless children join their supplications to your own, and God will arise, mighty and terrible, to confound your enemies—you who have loved justice and hated iniquity!

Letter from René, hastily written in a cottage. Our Blessed Lady protect his devotion! “Our help is in the name of the Lord!” O church of Jesus Christ! how happy are thy children in the midst of their distress. What ineffable consolations in thy sacred prayers! I live in the Psalms, I nourish my soul with them; every feeling of the heart is there so marvellously expressed, and in incomparable language.

SEPTEMBER 27.

Louis Veuillot, the intrepid defender of the Catholic faith, a few weeks ago wrote as follows: “God will have pity on us. Justice will not exceed mercy. We shall not be scourged beyond the needs of our future well-being; we shall find in the cup of chastisement a healthful beverage. The love of their country raises hearts above vulgar vexations. They are willing to be ruined; they are willing to die. But these abject and senseless things mingled with our tragedies, these intoxicating songs when the earth is being watered with generous blood, these statesmen who ask for prayers and authorize blasphemy, these blasphemies beneath the falling thunderbolt, these assassins of the pavement and these orators in the tribune—all this revelation of the stupid crowd which will not be saved—it is these things which keep souls under the millstone, which suffocate and grind them down.” How well this great mind describes the deepest sufferings of all that is still Christian in this nation of crusaders and martyrs! The admirable demonstrations of the Bretons and Vendéans console one for the irreligion of the greater number. Why has not all Europe risen to defend in the Pope the cause of outraged sovereignty? The sacrilege of Victor Emanuel has met with no resistance.

“Be to us, Lord, a place of defence against the enemy!” We are on a volcano—the volcano of popular passions; if the hand of God does not arrest them, what will become of us? Confidence! confidence! “Infidel France is abased and humiliated, and is not yet willing to repent; eucharistic France will pray, will arise, and increase in greatness!”[57]

Footnote 57:

Louis Veuillot.

O beloved soul gone hence before _me_, and who art _myself!_ offer to God our prayers.

OCTOBER 2.

Toul has surrendered, after a splendid resistance worthy of a better fate. The 29th—the looked-for 29th, the feast of the glorious Protector of France—has brought us another sorrow more: the capitulation of Strasbourg! O dear and beautiful cathedral, which I loved so well! “There is nothing left but ruins,” writes one of Berthe’s cousins. Why does the Lord delay to help us? Will not our other fortresses be also forced to give themselves up into the enemy’s hands? What will become of France? William is at Versailles; he lay down, booted and spurred, in the bed of the great king who so imperiously dictated laws to all Europe. Who will redeem us from all our humiliations?

Margaret and Lord William have apprehensions which will only too soon, alas! be verified. La Vendée is rising at the call of Cathelineau and of Stofflet—two illustrious names. Ah! who will merit for us that we shall be saved, when the public papers lavish outrage and abuse against everything that is holiest in the world—against the church of God, his priests, his pontiff, the glorious Pius IX.? Who shall restrain thine arm, O Lord! when scarcely a voice is raised to recall to conquered France that thou art the Salvation of the nations?

OCTOBER 7.

The gentle Bishop of Geneva used to say: “Alas! we shall soon be in eternity, and then shall we see of how small account were the affairs of this world, and how little it mattered whether they were accomplished or not.” Adrien sends us long details. My soul is in anguish. O Kate! pray for us. I went yesterday with Margaret to the cemetery; we stayed there long. A splendid moonlight illumined the golden crosses surmounting the marble columns beneath which our doves repose. A feeling of profound peace took possession of my soul in the midst of this striking contrast—the calm and tranquillity of this field of death with the tumult and agitation of actual life in our poor France.

OCTOBER 8.

The journals give accounts, only too faithful in their details, of the battle of Sedan, the catastrophe of Laon and of Strasbourg. It is horrible—this destruction, these savage attacks! Of how many valiant defenders are we not deprived, while the enemy’s forces are going to strengthen the army now besieging Paris! William is at St. Germain; he desires to be present at the bombardment of the brilliant capital which gave him so splendid a reception three years ago. To the shame of humanity, Europe remains unmoved in presence of our misfortunes. America sends an insignificant number of volunteers. O divine Justice! wilt thou not avenge us? Who shall tell the story of this sanguinary epic? Who shall recount this unheard-of intermingling of shameful cowardice and prodigies of courage, of base treason and sublime devotion, of reverses and successes equally impossible? Who shall tell posterity that the most loyal and generous of nations, the people which has been eager in its succors to every misfortune, has found no defender in the day of its calamities? And who shall make known to France that her success is a consequence of her repentance, that there is something greater than victory, more decisive and more powerful than the most formidable engines of war—the protection of Him who holds in his hands the destinies of nations? _Deus, Deus, quid reliquisti nos?_

OCTOBER 10.

Two melancholy, dark, and rainy days, such as always depress my soul. Garibaldi has arrived at Marseilles with a thousand volunteers—doubtless the scum of Italy. Mgr. de Saint-Brieuc summons all Bretons to the defence of their country. “No, France will not die! This cry from the heart of forty millions will pierce heaven and awaken all the echoes of the earth!” Paris has provisions for two months; but after? Surely all France will rise, and, as soon as she feels herself strong enough, she will meet these barbarians, to whom all has been successful hitherto! What bloodshed! What ruins! What opprobrium! Will not God raise up some hero from this soil which has given so much to the world? Anna Maria Taigi predicted that the Council would last eighteen months, that Pius IX. would die towards its close, and the gentle and venerated Pontiff would see the dawn of a new time. Does not this mean that soon the trials of the Papacy will cease? “The church cannot perish; but God has not made to nations the same promises of immortality.”

O Kate and Mad, my two idols! I think of you. To-morrow we go to Auray, all together; the _abbé_ will say Mass for us there, if we can arrive before noon.

OCTOBER 14.

I have prayed much, thought much, suffered much, hoped much, loved much, during these four days!

A prediction, said to be from Blois, assures us of definitive success. Alas! we were in need of saints; this republic of lawyers makes me afraid. My mother quoted to us yesterday an old prophecy from the works of Hugues de Saint-Cher, Cardinal-Dominican of the thirteenth century: “There will be four sorts of persecutions in the church of God: the first, tyrants against the martyrs; the second, heretics against the doctors; the third, lawyers against simple people; and, lastly, Antichrist against all.” We are in the third. There is no _unity_; there is impotence, and therefore nothing succeeds.

A terrible rumor which will only too soon be confirmed—Orleans is invaded. M. de Bismarck’s plan is to ruin France in detail, in order that it may for a long time be impossible to her to avenge herself. But vengeance belongs to God, and he will take it! The journals gave us so much hope! What a spectacle—two nations slaughtering each other, and a land which God created so fair covered with blood and ruins! Send us, O Lord! legions of angels; fight for the cause of civilization and right; save France, and may there no longer be amongst us a single soul which does not by its worship glorify thee!

The news from Metz is reassuring in that direction—Metz, which has been our ruin! The inhabitants are admirable in their patriotism, and engage to defend the city if Bazaine and the one hundred thousand men can make themselves an opening. Without a miracle, however, can the aspect of events undergo a change? Bitche continues to resist. O my France! must thou, like Ireland, also be crucified?

_Evening._—An enigmatic despatch, in _negro language_, announces that the army of the Loire has been compelled to retire before superior forces, and that St. Quentin has repulsed fifteen thousand of the enemy. Garibaldi declares that fifteen thousand Italians will march at the first signal. The six thousand Pontifical Zouaves will form a splendid regiment, under the leadership of a hero, M. de Charette. Oh! how these words rend my soul: _Garibaldi, Pontifical Zouaves_. What an assemblage! May God pardon France! How will all this end? Phalsbourg holds out, and other towns; but to see the enemy always in imposing numbers, to know that everywhere they make crushing requisitions, that each day brings fresh mourning, is a deadly sorrow! What part of our soil will remain unpolluted by the passage of these emissaries of death?

Orleans is in the enemy’s power—Orleans, the key and the heart of France—Orleans, the Queen of the Loire, the faithful city, the town saved from Attila by St. Aignan, from the English by Joan of Arc! A great battle is imminent.

Our venerated pastor suffers no more. This morning, at three o’clock, one of our farmers, who, with Mistress Annah, was sitting up with him, came to let us know that he was sinking, and we reached him in time to receive his last blessing. O Kate! draw us also. The words of the divine Office for to-day are admirably suitable to our distress: “I am the Salvation of my people, saith the Lord; in whatsoever affliction they shall be, I will hear them when they shall call upon me, and I will be their God for ever.” “If I am in trouble, thou, O Lord! shalt preserve my life; thou shalt stretch forth thy hand against the fury of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me!”

OCTOBER 20.

O my God! if it were declared that these avenging hordes are to carry fire and sword through the whole of France, if our sanctuaries and our relics protected us not, still would we hope in thee, whose love is greater than our misdeeds, and we would bless thee for ever.

No news from Rheims.

OCTOBER 22.

Twenty thousand Prussians have invaded Chartres, the city of Mary, famous for its pilgrimage and for its splendid memories. Will they not defile its cathedral? Horror! The churches of Nancy are changed into stables. O my God! so many profanations, and still always triumph.

OCTOBER 26.

Read the circular of M. Jules Favre to the French diplomatic agents. O statesman! your eyes, then, are not opened, and you perceive not that, chastised for our crimes, we cannot be saved but by the help of God.

They write to us from Orleans: it is lamentable! Poor, dear city! who shall restore it to us? O misguided France! what firm and Christian hand shall take thy helm and steer thee into port? At the beginning of this century, and up to the close of its first half, what noble characters, what ardent Catholics defended the cause of liberty! And now, alas! how this oracle of the Holy Scriptures makes me fear: “A kingdom is given over from one people to another, because of its injustice, violence, and crimes.”

Kate, what is said in heaven? O dearest sister, my other mother! protect René and pray for France.

OCTOBER 30.

Bazaine has surrendered; 120,000 troops, 20,000 wounded, cannon, flags, and Metz, the strongest of our citadels, the heroic city—all is Prussian! It is, then, finished. It seemed as if all French hearts had there their hope—not the last, which can be only God. The circular of Gambetta begins by a _sursum corda_: “Lift up your hearts! lift up your souls!” It is well, but _whither_? You say not, “Up to God,” nor do you pronounce that saving name.

Ah! France has deserved this shame of being again vanquished, of seeing all her citadels fall one after another, until the day when, repentant and humbled, she will implore the divine aid. Schélestadt has also capitulated.... Gertrude is ill and keeps her room. The blade has worn out the scabbard, the body has been broken down by the soul. O my God! wilt thou take from me also this elder sister—this admirable saint, my model and consolation? “Weep for France, dear sister,” she said, “not for me. I have given all to God; I do not fear. I offer for my country my last sorrow—that of not seeing Adrien once more....”

This unexpected blow crushes me. Pray for us, Kate!

NOVEMBER 1.

“Heaven is opening. O Jesus! have pity upon France.” And thus she died.... It is, then, true! Henceforth I must seek her in heaven with you, dear Kate, and all our dear ones who have taken wing from hence.

What an example she leaves us! Not a complaint: she owned to me that she had long been suffering. What austerity of life! What renunciation of her own tastes! What love of poverty! “She was too near heaven to remain below,” my mother says. Margaret is very unwell, because of so many emotions. O this life and this death; these adieux, this generosity of heart, these last lines traced for Adrien, for her brothers! A few minutes before her departure she said to me: “_You will come soon._”

I scarcely know where I am; my soul is in a chaos of sorrows, but the love of God prevails over all. I am writing this by her funeral couch. Three days ago she went out with us. She fatigued herself too unsparingly; she never shrank from trouble. Kate, welcome her and bless your sister! Gain strength for me, and, if I must die without once more seeing René, obtain that I may know how to say, _Fiat!_

Mourning in the family, mourning for the country—for everything, mourning!

NOVEMBER 7.

I feel ill.... Anxiety is killing me. O Kate! O Gertrude! remember us on high. The day before her death Gertrude said: “Prayers, prayers! Oh! the _Lætatus_ of the angels must be so beautiful.... I hear it!...” Mary and Ellen at her request sang her an Irish melody on the love of one’s country. “Georgina, to pray, to suffer—this is everything!”

What words! And how well I understood her at that moment, when all was passing away from this valiant and strong soul who had fought the good fight! Poor Adrien!

Troops have been levied _en masse_, from twenty to forty years of age. The Lamentations of Jeremias apply to us in our calamities! Who shall number the widows and the orphans? May God protect us! The sadnesses of the present life complete my detachment from this world by discovering to me its nothingness. The details respecting Metz throw me into stupefaction. My mother has heroically borne the great trial; she herself closed the eyes, so bright, so beautiful, of her eldest daughter. She insists that Lord William shall take Margaret away, because the enemy is certain to come upon us also. “Well, then,” says my friend, “we will defend you!”

NOVEMBER 10.

The _Univers_ is here, edited at Nantes. Yesterday it contained a magnificent page, vibrating with Catholic faith, addressed by Louis Veuillot to General Trochu. The illustrious convert of Rome has, then, quitted the country of his heart and is present at the agony of that Paris whose corruptions he has so energetically denounced. I have been glad (if one may use the word) to find, in this believing journal, an expression of the indignation of my soul against those who have dared to give to that gouty fetich, Garibaldi, the rank of a French general at the moment when Piedmont was consummating its sacrilegious attacks against Pius IX. There is fighting at Orleans. O Joan of Arc!

Kate dearest, we all suffer. What has become of all our hopes? No, they are not destroyed; they had heaven for their object.

NOVEMBER 13.

I dare not make a complete narrative of our disasters, and I know not how to speak of anything else. “Revolutionary France is no longer the France of Christ. She has kept the name, but repudiated the heart. O France, France! nation of so many centuries, of such men, and of so much glory, crouched beneath the boot of Flourens, before the sword of the Prussian.” These are the words of Louis Veuillot. Paris is wrought upon by rioters, the dregs of the Revolution. Bismarck is said to have uttered the pride-inflated words that “there is nothing but Prussia in the world: there is no more Europe!”

“Let us,” cries Louis Veuillot—“let us examine the inexorable logic which rolls us in the mire, and see by what hands it has been possible to lay prostrate a nation which is proud of having no more thought of God! O mockery! O derision! And this is France!”

We know nothing of the absent.... Uncertainty—the cross of crosses!

NOVEMBER 16.

Orleans is delivered. Cathelineau, the morning of his solemn entry, went with his Vendéans to hear a Mass of thanksgiving. _In hoc Signo vinces._ Marseilles and Lyons, the Queen of the Mediterranean and the city of Notre Dame de Fourvières, are agitated by violent intestine struggles. _Pazienza! Speranza!_ Oh! what need has my soul of these two sources of strength to bear up beneath this hour of unutterable anguish! René and Adrien are wounded! “Remember, my daughter, the sacrifice is short and the crown eternal,” my poor mother says to me, wounded to the heart like myself. Where are they? The date is torn off the letter, which has been brought us by an unfortunate soldier with an amputated limb, who has faced a thousand dangers to come and die in his own part of the country. I wish to go—but whither? Kate, inspire me!

NOVEMBER 22.

My anxiety has brought on fever.... Yesterday was a great day in the religious history of France. Mgr. de la Tour d’Auvergne convoked the whole church of France to a solemn act of faith. At one and the same hour, in all the sanctuaries of this nation, bent beneath the strokes of the divine Justice, Mass was said to obtain pardon. O Lord! if only so many prayers and tears might obtain peace. “All for God and our country!” cried Cathelineau, before that altar[58] where joys so pure were granted me. “Let official France make her act of penitence!” says the Univers. Alas! it does not appear that this thought occurs to her. O these dates, these memories, my whole life in my remembrance! I examined myself this morning and had to acknowledge my own weakness. My God! wilt thou require of me this sacrifice? I would desire to submit, but my heart!... Dear and sweet friend, chosen for me by the best-beloved and most devoted of sisters, return, return! O fatal war! I comprehend the words of Rousseau: “The man who has lived longest is not he who can reckon up the greatest number of years, but he who has felt most what is life.”

Footnote 58:

In the cathedral of Orleans.

There are presentiments.... My soul is crushed. Ah! these hours, these days which are passing by—what are they for France?

The Duke of Aosta, son of Victor Emanuel, is named King of Spain by the Cortes. Into what hands is Europe yet to fall? The diadem of Charles V. and of St. Ferdinand in the family of the excommunicated King of Italy; these two countries of noble memories thus fallen, and France defended by Garibaldi; the insulter of sanctity, the blasphemer of Jesus Christ, made a French general! O blindness, O impiety of a government which pretends to be a regenerator! And this, too, in the age in which we live, in the century of Pius IX. and of the Immaculate Conception!... Deluges of rain for weeks past. Our unfortunate youth of France decimated by misery and cold!

Wrote to Marcella and Lizzy—two lovely, beloved, and poetic souls.[59]

Footnote 59:

A few hours after tracing these lines Georgina learnt of the death of René. Of the five brothers, two had given their lives for France. Adrien and Gertrude rejoined each other in heaven.

NOVEMBER 26.

The Lord gave him to me; the Lord hath taken him away! Thou hast willed it, my God; thou hast taken back this life which was so dear to me. I adore thy will!

NOVEMBER 29.

Is this _dying life_ deserving of a single regret? And yet I weep! My God! thou pardonest these tears—thou who didst weep over us. Oh! if I had at least had his last look.

It is a week ago this evening since I knew of my misfortune. O my God! that unusual stir, those sinister noises, and the entrance of Raoul, Edouard, and Paul. Dead—both dead! I would see that dear face once again, to try and restore its warmth by my kisses!

DECEMBER 1.

Kate, I can write no more.... A _widow_! Can you comprehend this word and the desolation which freezes my heart? All my soul was devoted to him, placed in him. _Miserere mei, Deus!_ Friend so dear, so loving, so heroic, so kind, obtain for me that I may follow you to the home where separation is no more. O you who stood on Calvary, Our Blessed Lady! pray for us. Have pity upon my distress!

He is dead! The heart which loved me has ceased to beat! And if only France were saved, and my mourning might win her salvation!

And still I must live, move about, spend myself in attendance on the sick, when I feel as if the heavy stone which hides him from me were weighing down my soul. O the destruction wrought by death! Thus one single year has taken all from me!

Prayed for two hours yesterday by this newly-closed tomb. O Lord! I spoke to him, I understood him, I comprehended that thou requirest holy victims to disarm thy justice.

O France! which I loved so much.

DECEMBER 25.

Margaret leaves us suddenly. Her father-in-law is dying. God be praised for having left her with us during these days of trouble!

I am still weak in the inferior part of my soul, feeling every hour an increase of bitterness and depression. “You will come soon!” This farewell of Gertrude’s resounds continually in my ears. Nevertheless, if the pain of a long life should be in store for me, if her words were symbolic only, if I must grow old, I pray the Author of all good to permit that the unending mourning of my heart may overflow in tenderness towards all who suffer, that I may wipe away or comfort tears—I, who henceforth can only live in tears.

Christmas, feast of gladness, of the birth of Jesus, and of love; the anniversary of Edith’s death!

JANUARY 1, 1871.

Spent this day in the church and cemetery. O René! how I hear you still. I seek you now in heaven. Pray for France, and also for me, who cannot accustom myself to widowhood.

O ye almost infinite delights enjoyed in the intimacy of that noble heart! can I think upon you and not die?

Dear René, dear Kate, it is before God that I weep; it is on these pages concealed from all that I write my regrets. Does God permit this, or is it cowardice?

JANUARY 4.

Edouard has this morning put René’s pocket-book into my hands. My name is on every page. Observed these words, which I have read a hundred times over: “If I die, comfort her, ye good angels who guided me to her!”... Oh! it is more than I can bear—emotion and regrets so deep.

JANUARY 6.

_He is at rest._ Eternal felicity of rest in God, thou art become his inheritance. I loved him so much, and, alas! I could not secure his happiness! Just now I opened my book of _Hours_ at this Psalm: “_Cantate Domino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit._” I seemed to obtain a glance into heaven, and this friend, so ardently and faithfully loved, was smiling upon me.... Rapid flashes of light, after which the darkness thickens and the loneliness grows more oppressive!

JANUARY 13.

May God console the mothers, the widows, and the orphans!

If I had time to think of self in this chaos of nameless events, I should feel myself unfortunate beyond all expression. O Lord! the happiness of loving thee, of possessing thee in heaven, is well worth some years of Calvary; and although mine appears to me at times so difficult to climb, thou knowest that it is no more for myself that I weep, but that the sufferings of René’s country alone fill my heart. My poor France, so glorious whilst she still served thee, wilt thou efface her for ever from the book of nations, or wilt thou restore her power? _Fiat voluntas tua!_ Turn us to thee, O Christ! who didst die to save the world, and, for the sake of so many hearts that turn to thee, shorten our woes!

JANUARY 18.

Heard for the first time the complete account of _his death_.... My brothers are on the point of setting out again; they are of a race in which self-devotion is hereditary.

O René! how proud I am of you—dead on the field of honor, after receiving your God that morning; and dying in defence of France! Ah! I would fain be a Sister of Charity, to have a right to receive the last sigh of our courageous defenders.

Often had you said to me: “It seems to me that I should have strength to love God even to suffering martyrdom!” And the hour came when it would have been permitted you to remain quietly at home; but your country was in mourning, and you went forth, a soldier for right, a soldier of God! Ah! then I felt indeed something which broke within me....

Do you, on high, remember her who loved you better than herself? Do you call to mind those delightful days when heavenly love shed a ray from on high upon our love? Do you remember our conversations, in which the thought of eternity was always present? Ah! we both knew well that our happiness was not of this world.

Yesterday I dressed the wounds of an unhappy victim of this war, which posterity will call inexplicable. What a horrible wound! The man was a Vendéan and a Catholic. He saw tears in my eyes, and thanked me with a hearty and naïve simplicity. He regrets his wife, whom he wants to see. Poor woman!—or rather, happy woman; for she will see him!

JANUARY 25.

A letter from Karl, addressed to René. O my God!

The enemy is approaching; France is agonizing. René, Kate, Mad, pray for us!

FEBRUARY 2.

_Miserere nostri, Domine!_

I return to these pages on a day of cruel disappointment. Paris has capitulated! The Prussians occupy the forts; the army has been made prisoners of war. There is an armistice of twenty-two days. There were elections on the 8th for a constituency. How many sorrowful events have taken place!—the bombardment of Paris, the defeat of Chanzy at Mans, the civil discords.... One must despair, were it not that God overrules all, and that if he punishes he is ready to pardon. The question is whether France is to be or not to be!

Edouard writes. He hopes that the Prussians will not advance so far as to the sea. Margaret and Marcella—what do they think at this time, at this Gethsemani of France?

“O my God! I am as thou wert, falling prostrate from weakness, when another had to carry thy cross!”[60]

Footnote 60:

The Abbé Perreyve.

Si vous pouviez comprendre et le peu qu’est la vie, Et de quelle douceur cette morte est suivie![61]

Footnote 61:

“Could you but know how small a thing is life, and also by what sweetness death is followed!”

FEBRUARY 12.

Prayer and charity fill up our time. Alas! there is still room for regrets. Everything revives them; to-day it is a passage from Montaigne: “We were seeking one another, and our names were intermingled before we had made acquaintance. It was a festival when I saw him for the first time; we found each other all at once so bound together, so united, so well-known, so obliged, that nothing was so dear to each of us as the other. And when I ask myself whence comes this joy, this ease, this repose that I feel when I see him, it is because it is _he_ and because it is _I_; this is all I can say.”

O René! it was thus that we loved, and thus our love will be eternal.

FEBRUARY 18.

The fatherland of our soul is God! Trial is not sent only as an expiation to purify us, but also to detach us from earth and raise us near to God. “_Jubilate Domino, omnis terra; servite Domino in lætitia!_” O my soul! do thou serve the Lord with gladness. Lift the veil; behind your troubles and sorrows God is there, who counts them all, and whose love will change them into an unknown weight of glory! _Beati qui lugent!_ Heaven! heaven!

I was thinking this evening of the motto of Valentine of Milan: _Plus ne m’est rien, Rien ne m’est plus[62]_. Is this sufficiently Christian? From this world’s point of view, from the frivolities of life and of all that charms the senses, oh! nothing is anything to me. But one’s country, the church, the poor, one’s family!

Footnote 62:

More is naught to me; naught is aught to me more.

O Jesus, who seest my tears! remember that thou hast said: “All that you shall ask the Father in my name, he will give you.” May thy adorable will be done! He who believes, hopes, and loves—has he the right to complain? Can the soul whom thou dost protect call herself abandoned? Will the heart that is rich in thy love feel despoiled and desolate? Draw me to loftier heights, O Christ, my King!

FEBRUARY 21.

Belfort has capitulated! _Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem._ Must we say with Dante: _Lasciate ogni speranza_? How empty and desolate earth appears to me! My God, show thyself; let thy power shine forth in our behalf! I will hope in thee against all hope. “Every soul is the vicar of Jesus Christ, to labor, by the sacrifice of himself, at the redemption of humanity. In the plan of this great work each one has a place marked out from eternity, which he is free to accept or to refuse.” René, Kate, Gertrude, you all understood this! O my God! have pity upon France. I offer myself as a holocaust to thee. I accept every sacrifice; I give myself up; take with me all who have in like manner devoted themselves: let not France undergo the fate of Ireland; let her not be crushed by Protestantism, but leave her her faith and love.

MARCH 1.

Peace is declared, but at what a price!—five milliards, Alsace, and Metz; the occupation of Champagne until the payment of the indemnity, the entry into Paris of thirty thousand men on this very day. O the Alsatians! To think that henceforth they belong to the Vandals who have ruined their territory, made a desert everywhere, brought mourning into every home—what infinite grief! No! the Prussian will not be their master; the heart of Alsace is too French; the yoke of the enemy may weigh down bodies but not souls. We have here a friend of Berthe’s, a young wife and mother, who ever since this morning has been in the chapel, weeping in despair. Poor Alsace! Terrible alternative—the mother-country sacrificing her more unfortunate sons to purchase the others!... Where is Joan of Arc? Where are even the women of Carthage! Lord, save us!

MADAME DE T—— TO LADY MARGARET.

MARCH 20, 1871.

God be with us!

Dear Lady Margaret, our so dear, beautiful, and perfect Georgina has departed from us for ever!

I cannot leave to any one else the sorrow of acquainting you with this fresh bereavement.... Shall I have strength for it? I feel as if my heart were enclosed in the tomb where my children rest.

A pernicious fever has carried from us this most lovable creature, who has been amongst us like an apparition from heaven. She is now reunited to him whom she so loved and mourned, and she who had “_unlearnt happiness_” is happy now! This thought is necessary to sustain those who remain. You know what she was to me—the most loving, devoted, and piously amiable of daughters; you know what she was to all—an adviser, a comforter, and a light. And all this in a few hours has vanished from us. Who shall console us for the loss of this angelic child, the very sight of whom was a consolation?

Dear friend, she thought of you; she murmured your name in her last prayer. God, the church, France, Ireland, and all those who loved her, by turns were on her lips; the voluntary victim of charity, she accepted death with gladness. You who were her sister, kind Lady Margaret, would that you had been with us at that time which was at once both sweet and cruel! Ah! tears are not permitted to me; the place of angels is in heaven.

Do not think of returning to us until peace is definitely established. Alas! only a few days since we were forming a project to go and take you by surprise. Henceforth I quit Brittany no more—my _Campo Santo_, as my beloved daughter called it.

Oh! how she must pray for our sorrows on high.

On the morning of the last day she twice repeated to me these beautiful words of the Père Lacordaire: “However hard may be the separations of this world, there always remains to us Him who is its author, who has given and who removes us, who never fails, in whom we shall all be one day reunited by the faith and charity which he has given us.”

And a few minutes before breathing the last sigh she said: “Mother, I asked that I might die for France; it was a sacrifice, because of leaving you. Now all regret has disappeared from my heart; I am going to see Mad, Gertrude, Kate, René—and God!”

May she call me soon also!

Dear and kind friend, I would comfort you, but I am powerless. Let us love and pray.

My remembrances to Lord William; kisses to Emmanuel, the treasure whom she so much loved, and to yourself, the expression of the maternal affection of my desolate heart.

COMTESSE DE T——.

* * * * *

Madame de T—— survived this last affliction only a few months, and the _Campo Santo_ received yet another tomb. May these delineations of love so pure and Christian, and of resignation so sublime, benefit at least some souls! This is the editor’s sole aim.

The premature end of Lady Margaret has unfortunately only too soon facilitated the sorrowful task of the friend who has been desirous of revealing to loving hearts the private life of her dear Georgina, this poetic flower of Ireland, transplanted to the soil of this our France, which became the second country of her heart, and which she loved even to death.

PROSE AND POETRY OF ANCIENT MUSIC.

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils: The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.

_—Merchant of Venice._

Music, in its most general sense, is the art of producing melodious sounds, and, from its power over the passions, it is called the sentimental art. In the mythology of Greece it was cultivated chiefly by the Muses, from whom the term _music_ is derived; but, although dear to all of them, it was presided over by Euterpe, who is always represented with a flute in her hand. The great divinity of song and instrumental music, however, was Apollo, who is mentioned in the _Iliad_ as delighting the immortal gods with the sweetness of his notes; for he was the inventor of the lyre and leader of the Pierian nine, whence he is called sometimes _Citharœdus_ and sometimes _Musagetes_, in both which characters very fine statues of him have come down to us from antiquity. The worship of the Muses began early in Greece, and the favorite resort of these divinities of intellectual pleasure was the flowery border of the rills that murmured down the sides of Mount Parnassus, while their chaste grove and sacred fountain of Castalia was on that part of the Parnassan range called Helicon. Here their statues were seen and described by Pausanias, and afterwards removed by Constantine to his new capital on the Bosporus.

Pagan authors ascribed the origin of music to fanciful occurrences, or, at best, to chance and natural operations. Thus, according to some, it was a gift to man of this one or that of their national divinities; but, according to others, the babble of running waters, the warbling notes of birds, mountains that echoed, winds that sighed through the forest trees and

Fill the shade with a religious awe,—

in a word, the general song of nature inspired Apollo and the Muses, who were no more than shepherds of Arcadia, to please the world with music; for

The birds instructed man, And taught him songs before his art began; And while soft evening gales blew o’er the plains, And shook the sounding reeds, they taught the swains; And thus the pipe was framed and tuneful reed.

—_Lucretius._

But Christian writers believe that Adam, the first man, being endowed by the Creator with every sort of knowledge, excelled in music as well as in the other arts and sciences. With his fall this knowledge was weakened, while in his descendants many things were lost and all things became obscured. That music has in some way a heavenly origin all are agreed—even the Hindoos, who say that its effects are produced in us by recalling to memory the airs of Paradise, which we heard in our state of pre-existence; even the Greeks, whose fables are founded on the corruption of primeval traditions, and whose invocation to music is:

O art divine! exalted blessing! Each celestial charm expressing! Kindest gift the gods bestow! Sweetest good that mortals know!

But the writer in the English or, perhaps, in any other language who has most poetically stated the case of music, and given us a Christian view of it, is Newman, in the last of his Oxford University sermons. “Can it be,” he asks, “that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends, in itself? It is not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere; they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes from our Home; they are the voice of angels, or the _Magnificat_ of saints, or the living laws of divine Governance, or the divine Attributes; something are they besides themselves which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter, though mortal man—and he, perhaps, not otherwise distinguished above his fellows—has the gift of eliciting them.”

The ancients urged in favor of music three principal benefits to mankind: its effects in softening the manners of men, thereby promoting civilization and raising a people out of the barbarous and savage state; its effects in exciting or repressing the passions; and its effects as a medicinal power to cure diseases. Thus Polybius ascribes to the cultivation of this art the refinement of the inhabitants of Arcadia, and to the absence of such a discipline the roughness which characterized the citizens of Cynæthæ; thus Homer places a musician near the person of Clytemnestra as a guard upon her chastity, and, until he was away, Ægistus, who then wronged her, had no power over her affections. The subduing influence of music was again tried with success many ages after by the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay, who used to play upon guitars and flutes to attract the melody-loving Indians from their forest haunts towards the village communities which they had established on the banks of the Parana.[63] Lycurgus regulated the music of Sparta, and his laws were set to measure by the celebrated musician Terpander; while Plato not only attributed an instructive virtue to music, but maintained that a people’s music could not be interfered with without altering their form of government. This civilizing influence of music is beautifully illustrated by the old legend of the Greeks, that when the workmen toiled on the walls of Thebes, Amphion played so sweetly on a lyre borrowed from Mercury that the stones did move of themselves. This, of course, is an allegory, to signify that by his musical talents, poetical numbers, and the wisdom of his counsel Amphion prevailed with a rude people to submit to law, live in society, and raise a defence against their neighbors.

Footnote 63:

After religion there is certainly no greater means of civilization than commerce; and commerce in the middle ages began with fairs, at which merchants employed the seductions of minstrelsy and music to draw numbers together, and thus be able to display and sell their goods.

Since two things greatly contribute to the effects of music, its powers of imitation and of association, the ancients gave it a large measure of influence over the passions. Thus Plutarch relates that Terpander appeased a violent sedition among the Lacedæmonians by the aid of his lyre, and that Empedocles prevented a murder by the soothing sound of his flute; and the painter Theon, having brought one of his works, which represented a soldier attacking an enemy, to be exhibited on the public square, would allow the veil to be withdrawn only after his attendant musicians had wrought up with military airs the crowds that gathered before it. Hence Plato wrote that a warlike air inspires courage, because it imitates the sounds and accents of a brave man, and that a calm air produces tranquillity in the soul on the same principle; or, as Burke says, “The passions may be considerably operated upon, without presenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to that purpose, of which we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged and powerful effects of instrumental music”; for it counterfeits by sound some quality or state of the mind. Thus, rage is loud, anger harsh, but love and pity are gentle; consequently, loud and clangorous music stirs up the stronger passions, while a smooth measure imitates the gentler emotions of the mind. The wonderful influence of martial music on the ardor of soldiers in battle has been remarked by many writers on military affairs, and opera-goers must confess the bad tendency of sensuous music. Shakspere knew it well when he wrote of the fellow

Who capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

The effects of music on the heads and hearts of men were so strongly perceived by Plato that he banished from his model republic the Lydian and Ionian modes, because they excited the lower instincts, but retained the severe Doric and Phrygian measures on account of their manliness and decency; and some of our best English poets have recorded their testimony to these same effects. We subjoin a few examples, taken almost at random:

And ever against eating cares. Lap me in soft Lydian airs.

—_Milton._

Music alone with sudden charms can bind The wand’ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.

—_Congreve._

Chiron with pleasing harp Achilles tamed, And his rough manners with soft music framed.

—_King._

Timotheus to his breathing flute and sounding lyre Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

—_Dryden._

Now wild with fierce desire, My breast is all on fire! In soften’d raptures now I die! Can empty sound such joys impart? Can music thus transport the heart With melting ecstasy?

—_Cunningham._

Music! the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heav’n we have below. Music can noble hints impart, Engender fury, kindle love, With unsuspected eloquence can move, And manage all the man with secret art.

—_Addison._

When Music, heavenly maid, was young, While yet in early Greece she sung, The Passions oft, to hear her spell, Thronged around her magic cell,

Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, Possessed beyond the Muse’s painting: By turns they felt the glowing mind Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined.

—_Collins._

Music the fiercest grief can charm, And Fate’s severest rage disarm; Music can soften pain to ease, And make despair and madness please; Our joys below it can improve, And antedate the bliss above.

—_Pope._

Association of ideas, which has so large a share in the operations of the human mind, often contributes much to the effects of music; for, as Shakspere says:

How many things by season seasoned are To their right praise, and true perfection!

Thus, music that has been heard in an agreeable place or that was played by some one near and dear to us, or music that is connected with the trials and triumphs of our native land, will awaken sentiments of love or melancholy, or sympathy or ardor, on the principle of associated ideas. This is feelingly expressed in the 136th Psalm in the persons of the captive Hebrews, in whom the sound of music which they had listened to in happy days would have awakened too keen an anguish.[64] In more modern times we have had public illustrations of the same principle in those simple melodies called _ranz des vaches_, which are such favorites with the mountaineers of Switzerland, and are played upon a long trumpet or Alpine horn. The sound of these tunes, and the rude words set to them, which are expressive of scenes of pastoral life—the shingled cottage, the dashing waterfall, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of herds, and the tinkling cow-bells—sometimes recalled so vividly to the native in a foreign clime the memories of his own land as to produce a disease called _nostalgia_, that often showed itself among the Swiss soldiers in the Neapolitan service;[65] for

Footnote 64:

This plaintive Psalm was turned into most musical English verse by Donne, who makes it touchingly suggestive; and later, and better still, by Aubrey de Vere in his beautiful drama, _Alexander the Great_.

Footnote 65:

A person who was present has feelingly described the deep effect produced on some of our poor wounded soldiers who had been brought to a church in Fredericksburg on their way North, after one of the battles in the Wilderness, when some person sat down at the organ and played “Home, sweet Home.”

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds; And as the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave; Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touched within us, and the heart replies.

—_Cowper._

The belief of the ancients that music was auxiliary to medicine is attested by a great number of writers. Chiron the Centaur, who educated Achilles, was careful to unite instructions in the healing art to those which he gave on music. Plutarch tells us that Thales of Crete delivered the Spartans from a plague by the aid of his lyre; Athenæus quotes Theophrastus as authority that the Thebans cured epilepsy by the notes of a flute; Aulus Gellius says that music will rid a man of the gout; Xenocrates employed music in the cure of maniacs; while the judicious Galen gravely speaks of playing the flute over the suffering parts of the body; and the idea that music is the sovereign and only remedy for the bite of the tarantula still lingers in Southern Italy. The Tyrrhenes always hired a flute-player to perform while they flogged their slaves, to give them some relief under the lash; and there was usually an arch-musician on board of the triremes—in which the rowers’ strength and endurance were more severely taxed than in smaller vessels—not only to mark the time or cadence for each stroke of the oar, but principally to cheer the men by the sweetness of the melody; whence Quintilian takes occasion to remark that music is a gift of nature, to make us the more patiently to support labor and fatigue.[66]

Footnote 66:

Blessed Peter Claver, Apostle of the Negroes, used to contrive that the sufferers in the hospitals at Cartagena, in South America, should be solaced with music; and for centuries it has been a custom at Santo Spirito, in Rome, to have the magnificent organ which is set up in the main ward play three times a week for the patients.

Among the nations of antiquity Egypt was long thought to be the mother of ancient civilization; and the Egyptians were well acquainted with music, for representations of musical instruments have been discovered on some of their oldest monuments, such as obelisks and tombs. But they never popularized music, because they thought that it had the effect of making youth effeminate; yet Strabo says that their children were instructed in one, and only one, special kind of music, of which the government approved. Like every other profession, that of musician was hereditary. Egyptian music was originally grave and in solemn accord with the stiffness of the kindred arts, which were hampered by strict hieratic rules, and almost exclusively devoted to the service of religion. When the country fell under the sway of the Greeks, music became of a gayer and less moral sort, being as much or more employed at banquets and on other profane occasions as in the temples and beside the bier. The Ptolemies encouraged Greek music, and the musical contests introduced into Egypt by this race of splendid princes were all of Hellenic origin. Athenæus relates that at a grand Bacchic entertainment given by Ptolemy Philadelphus over six hundred musicians formed the orchestra. Musical talent was hereditary in the Ptolemaic dynasty, and the father of Cleopatra was surnamed _Auletes_, or the flute-player, from his excessive attachment to this instrument.

We have little knowledge of music as a science among the Hebrews, but there is abundant proof of its practice. They had music on their festival days, whether domestic, civil, or religious, and professional musicians were attached to the royal court; but the art was systematically studied in the schools of the prophets, and received its highest application in the Temple, where it entered largely into divine worship.

The music of the Greeks has engaged the attention of many learned men, but is so difficult a subject that no one understands it; and it is as easy to imagine how the Pyramids were raised as to conceive what Greek music was like.

Music enters largely into the mythology of Greece, and strange legends—some of which are pure myths, others the exaggeration of facts—have been made up about it. The Muses were extremely jealous of their musical talents, and whoever ventured to compete with them was punished. Thus the impudent Sirens or sea-nymphs lost their wings, and the lovely daughters of King Pierus were changed into birds.[67] Two of Apollo’s contests are famous for their mournful ending. One was with Marsyas, a ranger of the woods, who, having found the flute which Minerva threw away because it distorted her handsome features, rashly challenged the divine Apollo to a contest between this instrument and the lyre, the condition of which was that the victor might do what he wished with the vanquished. The Muses decided in favor of their leader, and the miserable mortal was tied to a tree and flayed alive. A statue of Marsyas, bound and suffering, was generally placed by the Greeks, and afterwards by the Romans also, in the vestibule of their halls of justice, as a warning not to go into litigation hastily, and, above all, not to dispute with the gods—_i.e._, bring religion into court.[68]

Footnote 67:

The adventure of Ulysses and the melodious Sirens was a subject early seized upon by Christian art within the Discipline of the Secret to convey an idea of the cross (Ulysses attached to the mast of his vessel), the church (under the figure of a ship), and the seductions of the world (of the flesh particularly) in this voyage of life. See De Rossi's _Bulletin of Christian Archæology for 1863_, page 35, in which a curious monument bearing on this strange _rapprochement_ is described.

Footnote 68:

One of these old statues having come to light in good condition while the palace of Monte Citorio, designed by Pope Innocent XII. for the seat of the higher tribunals of law at Rome, was being built, it was appropriately placed on the landing at the head of the great stairway. The Italian Deputies have doubtless removed it, as too significant of _divine vengeance_.

Another triumph of Apollo was over Pan, a _dilettante_ of music and inventor of the reed-pipes, which he called _syrinx_ after the beautiful Arcadian nymph whose adventure with her tuneful lover is well known from Ovid. Midas, King of Phrygia, was chosen umpire, and, deciding in favor of Pan, was disgraced by having his ears changed into those of a donkey. Poor Midas contrived for a time to conceal his mishap by wearing day and night a cap of a peculiar form;[69] but as no man is long a hero to his valet, his body-servant, while trimming his hair one day, pushed up the bonnet a little and discovered the deformity. The secret so embarrassed him that, fearing he might unwittingly divulge it, he dug a hole in the ground beside a meandering brook and whispered therein: “Midas has ass’s ears!” He then filled it up and thought himself secure against himself; but, alas! on the very spot a tell-tale reed grew up, which, as the breezes rocked it to and fro, murmured the fatal secret, “Midas has ass’s ears.” While this fable may signify one of the ways by which the ancients believed nature to have drawn man’s attention to instrumental music—for travellers tell us that in some parts of the world there are plants called vocal or singing reeds, which emit a sweet strain when moved by the wind—it may also be a myth to insinuate that music is a sort of language; and as such, says Metastasio, it has the advantage over poetry which a universal language would have over a particular one, for music can touch all hearts in every age and country, but poetry speaks only to the people of its own age and country. One of the Greek stories of sublimest significance, and which mysteriously enters into early Christian art under the discipline of the secret, is the Orphic legend. Orpheus, presented by Apollo with a lyre and instructed in its use by the Muses, was able to tame with his sweet notes the wild beasts that gathered around him, and to enchant even the trees and rocks of Olympus, which started from their places and followed the sounds that charmed them:

Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage But music for the time doth change his nature,

Footnote 69:

We find in this story the origin of the _Phrygian cap_ which came to be a symbol of slavery and degradation among the Romans, by whom the Phrygians were considered a stupid people—whose rulers even had asinine qualities; and it never quite lost this character, but was used in France up to the time of the Revolution by galley-prisoners, and it is well known that an irruption of escaped convicts into Paris during the Reign of Terror, carrying one of their caps at the end of a pole and singing the _Marseillaise_, gave rise to the absurd custom of the liberty-pole and cap now so common.

as Shakspere remarks. That some animals are amenable to the influence of harmony is certain—hence the success of the Hindoos with their deadly cobras; and some recent botanists are of opinion that the growth of flowers, and especially roses, is stimulated by music. But whatever slight foundation of fact there may be in the wonders of the _historical_ Orpheus, it fades into obscurity beside the noble conception of the _mythical_ Orpheus, whose history seems based on a traditional knowledge of the happy state of man in Paradise when all things of earth were subject to him:

Till disproportioned Sin Jarred against Nature’s clime, and with harsh din Broke the fair music that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed In perfect diapason, whilst they stood In first obedience, and their state of good.

—_Milton._

Music is mentioned with a degree of rapture in more than fifty places of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The Lacedæmonians had a flute blazoned on their standards, and the military airs composed by Tyrtæus continued to be played in the Spartan army until the end of the republic.

The Pythagoreans and Platonists not only supposed the soul of man to be a substance very like a disembodied musical instrument of some sort, but believed the universe itself and all its parts to be formed on the principles of harmony; hence their not altogether imaginary music of the spheres which enters into their systems of philosophy:

Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: _There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins_: Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

—_Merchant of Venice._

And this idea of a close connection between music and the heavenly bodies was still lingering in the minds of some philosophers as late as the eleventh century of our era, when Psellus the younger, treating of music and astronomy, describes the former as symmetry and proportion itself, which reminds one of Hegel’s profound and intelligible definition that “music is architecture in time”! Pythagoras especially is said to have regarded music as something celestial and profound, and to have had such an opinion of its powers over the human affections that he ordered his disciples to be waked every morning, and lulled to sleep at night, by the dulcet notes of the lyre or the flute.[70]

Footnote 70:

Dr. Burney, _History of Music_, vol. i. p. 436, has a note which bears too quaintly on this part of the subject not to be reproduced. He says: “Master Thomas Mace, author of a most delectable book called _Musick’s Monument_, would have been an excellent Pythagorean, for he maintains that the mystery of the Trinity is perspicuously made plain by the connection of the three harmonical concords 1, 3, 5; that music and divinity are nearly allied; and that the contemplation of concord and discord, of the nature of the octave and unison, will so strengthen a man’s faith 'that he shall never after degenerate into that _gross subbeastiacal sin_ of Atheism.’”

The love and cultivation of music formed so much a part of the discipline of the illustrious men who sprang from the school of Pythagoras that almost every one of them left behind him a treatise on the subject. Plato, in the seventh book of his work on laws, says that children in a well-ordered commonwealth should be instructed for three years in music, which reminds us of the commendable efforts made of late years in Great Britain and the United States to make music a necessary part of popular education, in which connection the late Cardinal Wiseman wrote an interesting letter to the Catholic Poor-School Committee of London in 1849 about “the importance of introducing music more effectually into our system of education.”

In the third book of Plato’s _Republic_ music is treated of at considerable length with reference to education; “for whatever is concerned with the art of music ought somehow to terminate with the love of the beautiful.” But to seize the full meaning of this passage we must remember that, in the doctrine of the Academy, _the Good, the True, and the Beautiful_ are reciprocal terms, and consequently that music should elevate to the contemplation of the great Godhead—Goodness itself, Truth itself, Beauty itself.

Eloquence was thought by the ancients to be so intimately connected with music that the orators of Greece and Rome had a flute-player standing at a proper distance behind them while they spoke, who kept up an undertone of musical sound, now swelling as the speaker rose with his theme, now gently falling when, as in panegyrics on the dead or in pleadings for mercy, he sought the chords of sorrow or sympathy in the human heart. Musical contests of flutes, trumpets, and other instruments were among the attractions at the public games of Greece; and the profession of music was so highly honored, and often so remunerative, that many musicians lived in splendor. There was Dorion the flute-player, who lived like a Sybarite and was a frequent guest at the table of King Philip of Macedon; there was Ismenias of Thebes, who was sent on an embassy to Persia, and (like the late Duke of Brunswick) had a passion for collecting jewels which his enormous wealth enabled him to gratify to the utmost. He once reproved a smart agent for not having paid as much for a pearl as it was worth, saying that it belittled him in the jeweller’s eyes not to have given, and the gem in his own eyes not to have cost, its full value, and sent him back with the surplus money. The flute which he bought at Corinth for three talents (about $4,000) must have been encrusted with precious stones. Amœbeus, the harper, received an Attic talent (about $1,000) for every appearance on the stage. But although proficients in music were highly honored and rewarded, the mere makers of musical instruments enjoyed no greater esteem than did other artisans, and we know that the comic poets of the time often ridiculed the celebrated orator Isocrates because his father had been able to give him a liberal education with money made by manufacturing flutes. Not only men but women also publicly exhibited their musical accomplishments; they belonged, however, mostly, if not exclusively, to the class of _Hetairai_. Such was the famous Lamia, whose skill as a flute-player, hardly less than her personal charms, won the heart of King Demetrius.

Passing over to Italy, we can only mention the Sabines and Etruscans, who early cultivated music, and from whom the Romans derived their knowledge of the art; the former giving them their profane, and the latter their sacred, music. At a later period the genius of Greece banished her ruder rivals and monopolized the art in Rome. It was a general custom among people of rank, towards the end of the republic and under the empire, to keep a private band of musicians; but in the earlier days of Rome music, being almost exclusively devoted to religion, either in the temples or at burial rites, was under government control; hence it was forbidden in the Twelve Tables to have more than ten flute-players at funerals, and the _Salii_, who were priests of Mars, were obliged, in their annual procession through the city, to accompany their stately tread by a sort of music made by striking their rods of gold on the metal shields which they carried in the hand. The most important body of musicians at Rome, and the recognized officials of the art, were the _tibicines_, or pipers, who formed a college, and on one occasion brought the religious affairs of the city to a stand-still by seceding in a body, after some real or fancied grievance, to the neighboring town of _Tibur_ (Tivoli).

The “ambubajarum collegia” of Horace, and the Syrian musicians satirized by Juvenal, were held in contempt by the Romans as not delighting the soul with exalted harmony, so much as exciting the instincts to sensual gratification.

THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU.

“We shall be happy to see you at Rathdangan Castle, sir,” said Sir Geoffry Didcote. “If—aw—you come down on Saturday and—aw—stop till Monday, we shall—aw—be pleased”; stroking his finely-shaven chin at each “aw.”

I accepted with a gratified alacrity. We had won the rubber trick by trick, and, although the honors were against us, I had somehow or other managed to establish a long suit commencing with the king, and had ended by lugging in all the poor relations, including a miserable deuce of diamonds, for which I contrived to secure as good a berth as that held by any member of its illustrious family. Flushed with victory, Sir Geoffry’s hospitality spread forth its arms and enfolded me within its embrace. This _was_ a chance for a briefless barrister during the long vacation. Briefless! Why, I could not even command a nod from an attorney, much less that magic roll of paper whose cabalistic inscriptions are so readily deciphered by—the pocket. The Hall of the Four Courts was a most delightful club-room, where all the news of the day was freely discussed, from Mr. Justice Keogh’s latest witticism to the new street-ballad by Doctor Huttle; from Baron Dowse’s joke to Sergeant Armstrong’s wig. And as for Circuit, it was nothing more or less than a charming country excursion, where the wit and wine of the bar mess amply compensated for any little _ennui_ the hours occupied in doing nothing during the day might have reasonably engendered. In vain I strutted across “The Hall” with a bagful of old French novels, endeavoring to appear as though absorbed in some pending case in which my dormant talent would be strained to the utmost limits of its capacity; in vain I caused myself to be called forth from the library as often as it pleased the porter to summon me for the sum of five shillings, with which I had retained his eminent services; in vain I buttonholed country friends. But why continue? The word “briefless” speaks for itself; and were it not for sundry remittances from a maiden aunt, my sole surviving relative, I should, _bon gré mal gré_, have been compelled to take the queen’s shilling or to seek employment from the Corporation of Dublin in the capacity of a street scavenger.

As yet I had made but little way in society. I could not talk Wagner or fall foul of Tennyson. I had not brass enough for a ballad or talent for a _scena_. Too nervous for anecdote, my modesty muffled me even in conversation. I was not a man’s man, nor yet a _cavaliere servante_. I did not hunt, fish, or shoot. In a word, I was somewhat of a dreary drug in Vanity Fair.

Why Sergeant Frizwig asked me to dinner I cannot determine; and why Sir Geoffry Didcote, after that excellent repast, took it into his head to invite me to Rathdangan Castle is a mystery unto this present hour.

The vulgar question of ways and means stared me in the face and almost out of countenance as I walked homewards. Rathdangan was distant from Dublin at least thirty-five miles, thirty of which could be traversed by rail. The cost of a conveyance from the station might or might not be a “crusher”; and then the tips to the retainers! Luckily, my aunt had forwarded a remittance of five pounds upon that very morning, sixty shillings of which still remained firm and true; and as she invariably impressed upon me, in addition to the necessity of obtaining briefs, the advisability of mixing in the best society _only_, I naturally calculated on a “tenner” upon receipt of the intelligence of my arrival at the Castle, inscribed upon the Didcote paper. My wardrobe was the next consideration, and this was of the scantiest description. The evening suit might pass muster in candlelight, but once turn a jet of gas upon it, and the whole fabric tumbled to pieces. The grease of countless dinners, the patches beneath the arms, the seams artfully blackened with ink, the frayed linings, would jointly and severally step into the witness-box and turn evidence against me. My shirts were singularly blue, and worn away from constant friction with the horny palms of the washerwoman, whilst the collars resembled those “sierras,” or saw-edged mountains, which the observant traveller recognizes upon entering the dominions of his most Catholic Majesty Alfonso the Twelfth of Spain. My walking-suit was presentable enough, consisting as it did of Thomastown frieze, and my boots, although machine-made, possessed the redeeming influence of novelty.

“I’ll risk it,” thought I. “The investment is a safe one, and the return will amply repay the outlay.” A new and unforeseen difficulty presented itself. The battered portmanteau which usually bore my “fixins,” whilst quite good enough for “the boots” of provincial hotels, was utterly unfit to be handled by the genteel retainers at Rathdangan Castle; and as nothing bespeaks a certain _ton_ more than smart-looking luggage, I found myself under the necessity of investing in a new valise.

“There’s wan fit for Roosia, or Pinsylvania—no less,” exclaimed the proprietor of a description of open-air bazaar situated behind the Bank of Ireland, with whom I was in treaty for the desired article. “Its locks is as sthrong as Newgate, an’ ye might dhrop it from Nelson’s pillar an’ ye wudn’t shake a nail in it.”

This was a large black box strongly resembling a coffin, both in size and shape.

“Mebbe it’s a hair thrunk yer looking for? Here’s wan. There’s brass nails for ye! There’s hair! Begorra, there’s many a man in Merrion Square that hasn’t half as much.”

Informing him that I had no intention of emigrating just at that particular moment, and that I required a small, solid leather portmanteau, Mr. Flynn proved himself equal to the emergency.

“That’s solid enough, anyhow. Shure, ye’d think it was Roman cimint—sorra a less,” he cried, as he administered several resounding whacks to the article in question.

“What are you asking for this?” I demanded.

“What am I axin’ for it?” Here he fixed me with his eye, as the Ancient Mariner fixed the wedding-guest. “It’s worth thirty shillin’s.”

“Say twenty,” said I.

“I couldn’t if ye wor to make me a lord-mayor.”

“I cannot give more.”

“Well, here now: we’ll shplit the differ—say twinty-five.” And he spat upon what he elegantly termed “the heel of his fist.”

“Twenty,” said I.

“Begorra, yer a hard man! I suppose ye must have it.”

My preparations being now completed, five o’clock on the Saturday evening found me on the platform of the Amiens Street terminus.

“Hillo, Dawkins!” exclaimed Mr. Dudley Fribscombe, a brother barrister, whose father (in the bacon trade) allowed him five hundred a year. “Going as special, eh? A hundred guineas—you’re coining, by Jove!”

“No,” I replied with assumed _nonchalance_, “just running down to Rathdangan Castle to spend a few days with the Didcotes.” I never felt better pleased in my life. This fellow was always sneering at the poverty of his briefless brothers, and as his people happened to reside near Rathdangan, but were of course _un_visited, my red-hot shot told with withering effect.

“Oh! indeed,” he muttered. “What an awful swell! Going second?”

“First,” was my sententious reply.

“Let us travel together.”

“All right.”

Now, my intention was to have taken a second-class ticket, but the tone of Fribscombe altered my mind. What a crisis in my destiny as I walked to the booking office! What a pivot in my fate!

Had I travelled second—but I will not anticipate.

“The smoking-carriage is full. Let’s get in here; _I_'ll tip the guard to let nobody else pass,” said Fribscombe, carrying his idea into execution.

We ensconced ourselves snugly in the pet corners, and made a great display of luggage all over the compartment. My companion offered me a cigar, but I preferred my ebon meerschaum, bought of Hans Larsen himself at Lillehammer, and which I had colored with possibly as much delicate assiduity as Mr. Millais, R.A., bestows upon his delightful masterpieces.

We were about to “scratch,” as the last bell had rung, when the door was suddenly unlocked, thrown open, and a bundle of rugs bristling with umbrella-handles, a portmanteau, and a lady attired in the newest and presumably most correct thing in widow’s weeds were flung violently into the compartment. The whistle sounded, the door was banged to, and the train glided out of the station ere we could make any move in the direction of a change of seats.

“What an infernal sell!” muttered Fribscombe.

“Too bad!” I growled.

“That guard is a 'do.’ Half a crown thrown into the Liffy!”

“Would she stand it, Fribscombe?”

“Not she. If the dear departed smoked, it would remind her too forcibly of him; and if he didn’t smoke, she’d scream and call the guard.”

In the meantime the object of our solicitude had shaken out her draperies and snugly wrapped herself in a wolf-skin rug, the head and glass eyes of which reposed in her lap like the sporran of a Highlander. Her figure appeared to very little advantage in the heavy folds of her ribbed-silk, crape-laden cloak; nevertheless, it betrayed a youthful grace and symmetry. She kept her veil down, and from the posture she assumed—her head pressed back against the cushion—it became pretty evident that, if she were not _en route_ to dreamland, she wished to indulge in a profound meditation.

“This train won’t stop till we get to Skerries,” said Fribscombe. “I think,” he added _sotto voce_, “that she is asleep, and a whiff or two of real Havana will not awaken her.”

“It’s much better to ask her consent, and I’ll do it,” I whispered.

She sat directly opposite to me, facing the engine. I leaned a little forward.

“I beg your pardon, madam; but may I ask if you have any objection to our smoking? If you have the slightest feeling on the subject, I beg to assure you that it will be no deprivation to us to wait until we reach Skerries.”

She raised her veil.

“I have no objection whatever,” she said in a low, sympathetic murmur. “I like the perfume of tobacco.” And, as if smitten by some sorrowful remembrance, she sighed and sank back, but did not lower her veil.

I mumbled some incoherent expression of thanks, scarcely knowing what I said; for my whole soul was focussed in my eyes as I gazed into one of the loveliest faces that I had ever beheld.

“You are not availing yourself of my permission, sir,” she observed, almost laughingly.

“'Pon my conscience! I forgot all about it,” was my reply.

Woman-like she felt the compliment, and woman-like she was grateful for it; she knew it to be genuine.

Somehow or other we drifted into conversation. There are some women who can trot a man’s ideas out for him, walk them gently up and down, canter, and, lastly, gallop them. Any little defects are concealed by the excellent hand which is over him; and were he to come to auction at that particular moment, he would be knocked down to the very highest bidder, be he ever so modest—namely, himself. This young girl—for she could scarcely have passed her teens—possessed this marvellous gift, and, as she deftly passed from subject to subject, I found myself, usually so dull, so reticent, so uninformed, discussing topic after topic—travel, music, the drama, literature, anything, everything—with a feverish facility, and offering decided opinions upon subjects even to approach which would have ordinarily been a matter of no little enterprise, doubt, and difficulty.

So deeply had I become absorbed that when Fribscombe, whose existence I had totally forgotten, suddenly awakening from a cosey slumber, shouted in a very excited tone: “I say, Dawkins, jump out, man! This is your station. We’re moving off,” I could scarcely realize the fact of its proximity, and that two hours had rolled by, compressed into so many minutes.

My first thought was to journey onwards with my fair _vis-à-vis_—I cared not whither; my second, that Fribscombe would laugh me to death at the “Hall.” With a sense of sorrow—I might almost say of agony—in my heart at the idea of parting from her, I seized upon my portmanteau, and just succeeded in alighting without accident as the train moved rapidly away.

I stood upon the platform like a person just aroused from a deep slumber. I was purposeless. The tide had receded, and the bleak barrenness of my shore life confronted me. The fair enchantress whose wand had conjured up a new order of being within me had departed.

“Ye’ll have for to come inside the station, sir. I’m goin’ for to lock the doore,” observed a porter, as he significantly pointed in the direction of the exit.

“Can I get a car over to Rathdangan Castle?”

“Sorra a wan, sir. Billy Heffernan dhrew two gintlemin over there that come be this thrain.”

“Will he return here?”

“Sorra a fear av him. Ketch him lavin’ a house where there’s such lashins as at the Castle! Ow! ow! sez the fox.”

“How am I to get across?” I asked in some trepidation.

“Shure, it’s only a nice little taste av a walk—nothin’ less.”

“How far is it?”

“Well, now, you might _coax_ it into four mile, but, be the powers! it’ll fight hard for five.”

I could not refrain from laughing at this peculiar form of expression, although there was anything but mirth in my present position. To be late for dinner would be a high crime and misdemeanor, and nothing short of _lèse majesté_, even were I to accept the porter’s _ultimatum_ and walk. I could scarcely reach the Castle in anything like time.

“Did they expect you, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Troth, thin, they might have sint a yoke for ye. They always does for the quollity.”

This was not complimentary, but, like many a speech of a similar nature, it contained a great deal of truth in it. Could Sir Geoffry have forgotten all about his invitation? It had been given hurriedly as the whist-table was breaking up. He had had his share of wine, if revoking twice might be taken as an index. Yes, the following morning had erased me from the tablets of his memory. What an ass to come all this way to be instructed by a common fellow in a corduroy suit. Served me right! I ought to have known better.

“What time does the next train go up to Dublin, my man?” I asked.

“What time?” he ejaculated.

“Yes, yes, what time?”

“In forty minits, if she’s not late; but she’s shure to be in time if _I’m_ not here, bad cess to her!”

I sat down in the cheerless waiting-room, disgusted with Sir Geoffry Didcote, disgusted with myself, boiling with anger, and writhing with mortification, till the recollection of my fair travelling companion descended like oil upon the troubled waters of my mind, and the desire to discover who she might be became overwhelming. Fool that I was not to have gained even a solitary clue! She might be travelling to Belfast _en route_ for Scotland, or she might have alighted at the next station. The last thought induced me to question the porter.

“Did you see a handsome lady in weeds in the train that I travelled by?” I asked.

“Is it a widdy woman ye mane?”

“Yes.”

“Young?”

“Yes—very.”

“Purty?”

“Beautiful!” I exclaimed.

Here he winked facetiously. “I seen her. Me an’ her is acquainted.”

“Who is she?” I eagerly asked.

“She’s the widdy av a dacent, sober man be the name av O’Hoolahan, that died av the horrors av dhrink.”

“Poor thing!” I muttered half-aloud.

“Poor? Begorra, it’s him that left her warm an’ snug, wud three av the elegantest childer.”

“Three children!” I interposed, somewhat disconcerted. The name O’Hoolahan was bad enough, but three little O’Hoolahans!

“She left this parcel wud me.”

“When?”

“A few minits ago, whin she got out.”

“Got out? Where!”

“Out av the third class, foreninst the doore there.”

Pshaw! We had been talking of the wrong woman, and somehow I felt intensely pleased to think that my fair _incognita_ was _not_ the relict of the defunct O’Hoolahan and the mother of three little O’Hoolahans.

“Whisht!” suddenly exclaimed my communicative friend. “I hear a horse’s feet. He’s tearin’ along like murther—a rale stepper”; then turning to me: “Yer not forgotten. It’s from Rathdangan. Yer sint for. It’s Highflier, an’ Jim Falvey’s dhrivin’ him.”

These surmises proved to be correct.

“I’ve to beg your pardon, sir, for being late,” said Falvey, touching his hat; “but we cast a shoe at Ballinacor, and I done my best to pull up the lost time. Any luggage, sir?”

“This portmanteau.”

“All right, sir. Will you be pleased to jump in? You’ll only get over at the first dinner bell, if you do that same.”

Having tipped the loquacious porter, I sprang into the tax-cart, and the next minute Highflier was dashing at a hand gallop on the road to Rathdangan.

Mr. Falvey informed me that there was the “hoigth” of company at the Castle; that every room was full; Lord Dundrum and Captain Buckdash had arrived by the morning train, and the Bishop of Ballinahoo and his lady had just entered the avenue as he was leaving it; the partridge were plenty, and a covey might be found within “a few perch” of the west wing; Master James (the Didcote heir) was expected with two of his brother officers of the King’s Dragoon Guards; Miss Patricia’s collar-bone was now as good as new, etc. We then talked horses, and he was still hammering away at the pedigree of Highflier when we reached the entrance gate. This was castellated and partly covered with ivy. A stout old lady unlocked the ponderous portals, and, as she admitted us, dropped a courtesy whilst she uttered the cheery words, “Yer welkim, sir.”

Why do people keep gloomy-looking servants, dismal phantoms who reply to your ring with a sigh, answer your query with a sob, and wait upon you with a groan? Their depression is infectious, and although you may, with a naturally lively constitution, baffle the disease for a time, sooner or later you are laid low by it.

According to a time-honored maxim of the road, we kept a trot for the avenue, and just as we whirled up to the grand entrance the sound of a gong reached us.

“Jump out, sir. You’ve only ten minutes; that’s the second bell. There’s some of them in the drawing-room already,” cried Falvey, as he flung my portmanteau to a solemn-looking domestic, who gazed at me as though he were engaged in a deep mental calculation as to the length of my coffin and the exact quantity of linen necessary for the formation of a shroud. Following this grim apparition across a low-ceiled, wainscoted hall, in which a billiard-table of the present contrasted strangely with oaken furniture of the sixteenth century, and up an old oak staircase decorated with battered corselets, deeply-dented morions, halberds, matchlocks, steel gloves, and broadswords, along a wainscoted passage as dark as Erebus, and up a spiral stone staircase the ascent of which took all the breath out of my body, I was finally deposited in a little stone chamber in one of the towers of the Castle.

“Your keys, please, sir,” demanded my janitor.

“Oh! never mind; thanks; I’ll get out my things myself.” I feared the penetrating gaze of this man. I shuddered as I thought of the frayed linings and the inked seams.

“Very good, sir,” uttered like a parting benediction; and with a bow which plainly said, “We shall never meet at this side of the grave again,” the dread apparition vanished. The old saying, “More haste, less speed,” never exemplified itself more unhappily than in my case. With the thoughts of the last gong ringing through my brain, I vainly endeavored to open my portmanteau. My keys had got mixed up, and, as they were nearly all of a size, I had to travel round the entire ring before I could manage to induce one to enter the keyhole. Then, when I came to turn it, it got blocked and wouldn’t move either backwards or forwards. I withdrew it, whistled it, probed it with my breast-pin, tugged and strained until my backbone ached again, but without effect. What was I to do? Break it open. But how? I possessed no implements. Perceiving a bronze figure poised upon one leg on the chimney-piece, I resolved upon utilizing the outstretched limb of the harlequin, and, having inserted it in the ring of the key, I finally, to my unspeakable delight, succeeded in detaching the bolt.

Throwing open the portmanteau, I plunged my hand into the corner where I had deposited my brushes, but found that they must have shifted during the journey. I tried the other corner, with similar success. I then probed and groped in the lower compartment. Here was a pretty go. I must have forgotten to pack them, although I could have sworn not only to their having been packed, but as to the precise spot in which I had deposited them. Mechanically I drew forth my linen and laid it on the bed, in order to mount my studs.

I was somewhat astonished to find that the breast was most elaborately adorned with floriated needlework.

Some mistake of the laundress. I detest worked shirt-fronts, which are only worn by cads and shoddy lords, so I picked out another. If number one was embroidered, number two was done in fresco, and, in addition to the vast _tumuli_ of birds, beasts, fishes, and flowers, an edging of lace played a prominent part. What could this mean? Surely I put up my own time-honored linen myself, and here were bosom decorations fit for a fop of the year 1815. Hastily turning out the contents of the portmanteau upon the floor, in order to realize my own property, what were my sensations in discovering that this pile of snowy drapery did not contain one single article of male apparel!

The truth flashed across me now in all its appalling reality: Heavens and earth! _I had taken the young widow’s portmanteau for my own._

I do not know what the exact sensation of fainting comes to, but this I do know: that if I did not faint, I went within a pip of it. A cold perspiration burst out all over me, and I felt as if I was on board the Dover and Calais boat and about to call the steward. How could I appear to the assembled company? With what ridicule would I be overwhelmed when the true state of the case came to light! And then what would _she_ think? _She_ would write me down an ass—a donkey unfit to be allowed to wander from a thistle-grove. Her key would open _my_ leathern “conveniency,” and the ghastly condition of my wardrobe would be laid bare, whilst I had profaned the sanctity of—but it was too dreadful to contemplate. How could I meet her? How could I look into that beautiful face again? How was I to recover my wandering wardrobe? My whole stock of clothes, save those I wore, were now in the possession of another, whilst in exchange I had received a commodity of no value to me whatever. On the contrary, my prize was worse than valueless—it was contraband.

Bang-ang-ang-ang-oong-ang! went the gong.

Let it go! What were its sounds to me? If I were starving, I could not descend in my present costume.

“Sir Geoffry Didcote begs me to say, sir, that he waits on you in order to enter the dining-room,” mournfully announced the dismal servitor.

“Please say to Sir Geoffry that I don’t feel quite well—that I will go down by and by.”

“Thank _you_, sir.” This was uttered as if he wished to say: “I am glad that you are dying. _I_ knew how it would be—you couldn’t deceive _me_.”

The man had scarcely time to deliver my message ere Sir Geoffry himself panted and puffed into my apartment.

“My dear sir—aw—I hope—aw—that you are not—aw—ill. It would—aw—grieve me very much”—here he availed himself of my mirror to adjust his spotless white choker—“if—aw—upon your—aw—first visit you—aw—became indisposed.”

Honesty, thought I, is the best policy, and it saves a lot of trouble; so I made a clean breast of it to the pompous baronet.

“How very unfortunate—aw—for the lady! We will dispense—aw—with ceremony under—aw—the peculiar, not to say delicate—aw—circumstances of the case, and Lady Didcote will—aw—receive you in your—aw—present attire. You can telegraph—aw—for reinforcements, which—aw—will arrive on—aw—Monday morning.”

I could not see the force of this. I might easily telegraph for reinforcements, but would they come? Secondly, as my visit was to terminate upon Monday, reinforcements were not necessary, unless they could be brought up at once. I begged to be excused from attending table; but this he would not listen to, and, as he informed me that I was keeping dinner waiting, there was nothing for it but to descend with him.

I have, when a boy, been lugged into the school-room to suffer condign punishment; at a later period I have been forced into the presence of a young lady of whom I was deeply enamored; I have had to march up to the pulpit in Trinity College dining-hall to repeat the long Latin grace amid the muffled gibes of my peers; I have been placed in positions where my bashfulness has been ruthlessly tortured and my retiring modesty tried by fire and water; but never did I experience the pangs of the rack until the full blaze of that drawing-room burst upon my vision. The apartment appeared to swim round, carrying with it the form of a hooked-nosed dowager in a turban, who screwed an eye-glass into the corner of a wicked old eye, to have a good stare at the strange figure her husband had introduced into her _salon_.

A confused murmur of many voices, in which “Who is he?” “What is he?” “Stole a portmanteau,” “Highway robber,” “Police” smote upon my ear, whilst a general craning of necks in my direction announced the curiosity which my appearance had naturally excited.

I am aware that I bowed to something in blue drapery surmounted by a head, that it placed the tips of its fingers on my arm, that I mechanically followed a crowd of people towards an aperture in the wall which proved to be a door, that I plunged downwards upon a chair, and that then I came slowly to my senses. Having gulped down three glasses of sherry in rapid succession, I found myself seated beside a gaunt young lady of about five-and-thirty, so covered with pearl powder that she was only partially visible to the naked eye. On my right hand sat a portly dowager, who viewed with some alarm my inroads upon the sherry, and she appeared so interested in my movements that I fully expected to receive a temperance tract before the evening was half over. There were about twenty at table, all stiff, solemn, and ceremonious.

“So you have been robbed?” snappishly remarked the young lady in blue.

“Oh! dear, no; merely an exchange of portmanteaus.”

“How stupid!”

Now, whether this applied to me or to the fact, I was not in the position to say, so I merely rejoined:

“Very stupid _of_ me and _for_ me.”

“How so?”

“Why, I was the offending party.” And I endeavored to make myself agreeable by narrating the circumstances exactly as they had occurred.

“And do you mean to say that you opened the lady’s trunk, sir?” demanded my companion with great asperity.

“In mistake, madam, I assure you.”

The waspish lady waited until a portion of the ice which she was engaged in despatching had cleared two very shaky-looking teeth bound in gold.

“There are some mistakes, sir, which no _gentleman_ should make.”

This was quite enough for me. To endeavor to make terms with this foe were worse than folly, explanation weakness, and concession cowardice. She gained nothing, however, by her viciousness; whilst I remained upon the field and prepared to bivouac, surrounded by sturdy sentinels in the shape of port, claret, and Madeira.

“The—aw—guard insisted upon his taking the old lady’s—aw—portmanteau.” And Sir Geoffry was proceeding to retail his version of the story when Lord Dundrum gaily exclaimed:

“Oh! by Jove, we’d better put the witness into the box. Let us cross-examine the lawyer.”

“With all my heart,” said I; “the absurdity of the sensation will redeem itself by its novelty.”

My story flowed joyously along, and peal upon peal of laughter greeted me as I described my sensations upon discovering the strange garments.

“So—aw—the widow was—aw—young?”

“About eighteen, Sir Geoffry.”

“And pretty?” added his lordship.

I devoutly kissed my second finger and thumb, and flung them in the direction of the ceiling.

“I’ll lay five to two he never hears of his portmanteau,” lisped Captain Buckdash.

“Shall I be at liberty to hunt it up?” said Lord Dundrum.

“Certainly. Are you on?”

“In tens?” asked his lordship.

“Ponies, if you but limit the period to one week.”

“Done, Buckdash! I’ll book it.” And the peer, producing a pocket-book, entered the bet, the terms of which he read aloud, and which the gallant captain pronounced eminently satisfactory.

“I’m afraid, my lord, that you’ll lose your money,” I observed to Lord Dundrum as we ascended to the drawing-room.

“I’ll give you the same bet, and that I’ll get your portmanteau, without any interference of _yours_, in less than a week—say five days.”

“You know the lady?”

“No.”

“You suspect who she is?”

“I have no more idea of who she is, where she came from, or where she is going to, than the man in the moon. Will you evince your sincerity by betting now?”

“The fact is, my lord, I cannot afford to bet.”

“Quite right,” slapping me on the shoulder. “Never do. It’s a doosid bad, pleasant habit.”

“And might I venture to ask how you purpose proceeding towards winning your money?”

“I’ll tell you. I have just ordered round a trap. I’ll drive to Ballynamuckle Station and telegraph along the whole line. If she’s local or a county swell, we’ll have her name and address to-night. If, on the contrary, she is not known along the line, she will have gone on to Belfast. I’ll set the police to work there, and put advertisements in all the papers on Monday morning. If Tuesday tells me nothing, I’ll put the wires in motion north of Belfast, and on Wednesday we’ll have a touch at Scotland. I feel certain, however, that we’ll find her this side of Newry.” And his lordship retired for the purpose of equipping himself for the road.

This bet was a lucky chance for me. Not that I cared much whether my wardrobe ever turned up again or not, but I longed to discover the identity of my fair acquaintance. I would at least enjoy the satisfaction of learning her name, and gain some knowledge of her surroundings, and then—pshaw! bow over my restored baggage and utter _Vale, Vale, Vale_ to my three-hour dream.

In the billiard-room the menkind were assembled for pool. By a series of ghastly flukes I managed to clear the table and divided every pool. Captain Buckdash muttered something in reference to Dawson Lane, and one young fellow, whose lives were sacrificed to my ruthless cue with startling rapidity, offered to back me against some formidable player in the Guards, laying the odds. For the second time in this eventful day did I feel myself fit for the front rank. Lord Dundrum lounged into the room about eleven o’clock. He indicated by a look that he wished to speak to me, and, under cover of “splitting a bottle,” exclaimed in a low tone:

“It’s all right.”

My heart gave a bound.

“The portmanteau is found.”

“Where?”

“At Nobberstown, the next station but one. She evidently discovered your mistake; for she tumbled it out. It’s coming on.”

“And where is she?”

“Oh! hang me if I know or care. My ponies are safe. _You_ can look her up.”

“Did she leave no message, no directions?” I asked eagerly.

“Don’t know,” said his lordship, as he chalked the top of his cue preparatory to joining in the pool.

Lord Dundrum was correct in saying that _I_ should take up the running now. It was my business to make restitution and to deliver the white elephant left on my hands to its rightful owner. This task should be undertaken at once. I scarcely closed my eyes all night, thinking of the _modus operandi_; and when I came down to breakfast next morning I had resolved upon nothing more definite than a searching cross-examination of the _employés_ at Nobberstown Station.

“I’ll thank you for a check, Buckdash,” said Lord Dundrum, as the gallant warrior entered the breakfast-room.

“For what?” asked the captain.

“For Mr. Dawkins’ portmanteau.”

“Wait till you get it.”

“I have it here.” And as he spoke he lugged my valise from beneath the table, accompanied by a roar of laughter from all assembled.

“A capital joke,” grinned the captain.

“A capital joke, indeed! Hand over the coin.”

Captain Buckdash turned to me.

“Mr. Dawkins, is this your portmanteau?”

“It is indeed,” I replied.

“The one which you left in the railway carriage?”

“Yes.”

“I am quite satisfied, Lord Dundrum. You shall have a check after breakfast; in the meantime will you kindly inform us how you managed to lay hold of it?” And he cracked an egg with a violence that almost crushed in the china cup.

I searched for some note or mark by which to obtain a clue to her identity, but in vain; my leathern “conveniency” was as bald as when I purchased it behind the Bank of Ireland. No message had been forwarded, not a line of instruction. This course appeared singular, inasmuch as it was unlikely that she would make no effort to regain her property; and why lose this most legitimate opportunity? Had she no desire to place herself in communication with _me?_ Ah! there was that in her glance which gave this thought the lie. Heigh-ho! I was in love up to my eyebrows and badly hit. I was obliged to come face to face with myself, to place my hand upon my heart, and to plead guilty. I thought of the elder Mr. Weller, and of his opinion respecting widows, and voted him vulgar. My preconceived ideas upon the subject of relicts underwent a total change, and now a bashful maiden seemed but an insipid nonentity. I longed to quit Rathdangan, and, excusing myself under the plea of an important professional engagement, started for Nobberstown at cockcrow.

This station consisted of simply a “porter and a platform,” one equally intelligent as the other, and of the two the platform was “the better man.”

“Sorra a know I know,” was the invariable reply to almost every query.

“Did the lady alight here?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

“Did she give you no message?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

“No card?”

“Sorra a wan.”

“Who handed you the portmanteau?”

“Sorra a know I know.”

A thought now flashed across my brain: Fribscombe! He was not the man to lose a chance of talking to a pretty woman. He would have told her who I was, and it was through him that she had communicated. How asinine not to have thought of this before!

Chartering a jarvey, I started across the country to the family mansion of the Fribscombes, accompanied by the two portmanteaus.

“I never opened my lips to her. She dried up after you left, and pulled down the shutters.” This gave me a pang of the keenest delight. “I got out at Killoughter, the next station, and she went on.”

On my return to Dublin I caused advertisements to be inserted in several of the leading Irish papers; I also tried the second column of the _Times_ and the _Glasgow Herald_, but, alas! with no effect.

Six months had glided away, during which she made no sign. The portmanteau maintained possession of a corner of my solitary apartment, and the image of its whilome proprietor defiantly held more than one corner of my heart; indeed, I may as well candidly confess that it was strongly entrenched in all four.

The summer assizes were over, and the briefless ones flitted hither and thither for the long vacation: some to Switzerland, with Mont Blanc in the distance—very much in the distance—others the passes of the Tyrol, sunny Spain, byways in Brittany, or the Highlands of Scotland. Connemara found its true believers, and Killarney its pious pilgrims. As for myself, I was perforce compelled to substitute the Dodder for the Rhine, the Dublin mountains for the Alps, and Sackville Street for the Boulevard des Italiens. My aunt had contributed the ten-pound note upon which I had hung in fond anticipation towards the building of Father Donnelly’s new church at Shinanshone, and the letter which conveyed this intelligence concluded with the following: “I don’t see your name figuring in any of the trials, good, bad, or indifferent. It’s all Macdonogh and Armstrong. What are you about, at all at all? At this rate of going you’ll never see a silk gown, let alone the bench. You might as well be on the Hill of Howth as in the Four Courts, if you don’t stir yourself. Let me see you cheek by jowl with Macdonogh and Armstrong during the coming winter, or I’ll know the reason why, and make my financial arrangements accordingly.”

I was seated one lovely morning in autumn gazing gloomily into the street, which was as empty as my own exchequer. Dreamy visions of the golden glory of ripening corn, of blood-red poppies, of fern-shaded dells, of limpid pools and purple-clad mountains mocked my aching heart. I sighed the sigh of impecuniosity, and railed at the inconsistency of a fortune which gave little Bangs, who hadn’t one idea to rub against another, a thousand per annum, a vulgar cad like Hopkins a bagful of briefs, and which left me high and dry in a front garret in Eccles Street, without a red cent to come into collision with a battered sixpence in my somewhat cavernous pockets. Heigh-ho!

An outside car, driven at a frosty pace, smote upon the drowsy stillness of the street, and my gloom was somewhat speedily dispelled by the sight of my friend Tom Whiffler’s honest and beaming face, and his expressive and expansive signals while yet a considerable distance from the house. Tom is always full of money, full of health, and full of the most boisterous and explosive spirits.

“Aha! you old cat on the tiles,” he shouted, “come down from your coign of vantage. I was afraid you were out of town. Somebody said you were on Circuit.” And standing upon the foot-board of the car, he burst forth with—

“Hail to our barrister back from the Circuit! Honor and wealth to the curls of his wig! Long may he live o’er his forehead to jerk it, Long at a witness look burly and big!”

“Come up, for gracious sake!” I cried, as I perceived heads peeping from behind the partly-closed shutters of an opposite house, inhabited by a genteel family, who wished their little world to imagine them in Italy, France, Spain—anywhere but in Dublin—during the dog-days.

In a few seconds Tom bounded into the apartment. “This is a slice of luck to get you, old man. Come, now, pack up your traps, and we’ll have four days in the County Wicklow. I shall have the car in any case, and our hotel bills will be mere bagatelles which we’ll square up at Tib’s Eve. Lend me a couple of shirts and things; you can bring the baggage—a change for two—and I’ll do the rest. We’ve twenty-five minutes to catch the train.”

Five minutes found Tom upon one side of the car, myself upon the other, and, calmly reposing in the well between us, the neat little portmanteau of the fair unknown. I was compelled to make use of it, as Whiffler had no “leathern conveniency,” and my travelling-valise had been lent to one of “ours,” and was possibly at that particular moment strapped upon the murderous mound of luggage which encumbers the groaning roof of the Alpine diligence, or snugly ensconced on the grape-strewn deck of a Rhine or a Moselle steamer. It gave me more than a pang to remove it from its well-known corner. A chord had been touched which set all my memories vibrating, and I handled it with as much care and anxiety as though it were a new-born infant or a rickety case containing rack-rent or nitro-glycerine.

A glorious moonlight found us driving through the Vale of Clara _en route_ to Glendalough—the sad, stricken valley of the Seven Churches. The hills, quietly entranced, lay gazing upwards at the gentle moon, who enfolded them in her pellucid beams as with a soft, sheeny mantle of light. The Avonmore far, far down in the valley musically murmured while she glided onwards to join the Avonbeg, who joyously awaited her coming in the sweet Vale of Avoca. The honest watch-dog’s bark bayed up the valley, and the perfume-laden air in its holy calm was as sweet as an angel’s whisper.

After “a square meal” of rasher and eggs which would have put the most elaborate _chef-d’œuvre_ of the _cuisine_ out of count, we strutted forth from the hostelry in the direction of St. Kevin’s Bed, and heard the oft-repeated legend of poor Kathleen’s fate from the lips of a very ragged but very amusing guide, whose services we were desirous of engaging for the morrow.

“Troth, thin, but it’s me father’s son that’s sorry not to be wud yez; but shure”—and here he lowered his voice—“it’s in regard to me bein’ in a hobble that I’m out in the moonlight.”

“What scrape have you got yourself into?” asked Tom Whiffler. “Whiskey?”

“Musha, thin, it wasn’t a dhrop o’ sperrits that done it _this_ offer.”

“A _colleen_?

“Sorra a fear av all the colleens from this to Wicklow Head.”

“Mistaking another man’s sheep for your own?” laughed Tom.

“If ye wor spaikin’ airnest I’d make ye sorry for them words,” said the man in an angry tone; but brightening up, he added: “Av yez wor guessin’ from this to Candlemas ye’d be out every offer. I got into thrubble be raison av a saint, an’ I’ll tell yez how: A lot av ignoraamusses av English comes here in the summer saison, an’ nothin’s too holy but they’ll make a joke on it; but the divvle will have his own wan av these days. Well, sir, last Monday I was engaged for to divart a cupple of English, as bowld as brass, an’ that vulgar that the very cows turned their tails to thim as we thravelled through the fields—sorra a lie in it. I done me best for to earn an honest shillin’, but, on my word, wan av thim, a stout lump av a man, gev me all soarts av impidince, an’ whin I come for to narrate about St. Kavin he up’s an’ insults the holy saint to me very face.

“'There never was no sich man,’ sez he.

“'There was, sir,’ sez I.

“'It’s all humbug,’ sez he; 'an’ as for Kathleen,’ sez he, 'she was no betther nor—'

'“Ye’d betther stop, sir,’ sez I, intherruptin’ him; 'for St. Kavin was a holy man, an’ never done nothin’ but what was good an’ saintly.’ Well, sir, he up’s an’ calls the blessed saint a bad name, so I hot him betune th’ eyes an’ rowled him on the grass, an’ I planted his comrade beside him. An’ now I’m the worst in the world below at the hotel for bating two blackguards that done nothin’ but insult me an’ me holy religion; an’ that’s why I can’t go wud yez to-morrow.”

It was far into the “wee sma’ hours” when we parted with Myles O’Byrne and gained sanctuary in the double-bedded room which had been told off to us. The pale and gentle Luna was surrendering her charge to the pink and rosy Aurora, and we sought our couches in beautiful budding daylight.

“Where’s your portmanteau, Dawkins?” asked Tom Whiffler. “I want to get at my things.”

To my utter dismay, the portmanteau was not in the apartment. To ring the bell at this unseemly hour was but to alarm the entire hotel; so, slipping off my shoes, I descended to the hall in the hope of discovering it in a heap of luggage which lay piled in graceful profusion near the entrance. My search was vain, and, with secret forebodings of another mischance in connection with this unhappy valise, I returned to the room and retired to bed.

“I seen it in yer hand, sir,” observed the waiter the next morning whom I interrogated about the missing article—“a thick lump of a solid leather portmantle. I can take the buke on it, if necessary, sir. Here’s the boots; mebbe he can tell us something. Jim, did ye see a thick lump av a solid leather portmantle lyin’ about?”

“I did,” replied the boots, who was a man of much _physique_ and very few words.

“Ye did?”

“Yis.”

“Where is it, thin?”

“Where it ought to be.”

“Where’s that?”

“Wud th’ owner.”

“It was not left in my room,” I exclaimed.

“It was left in number five.”

“Shure, number five’s gone,” cried the waiter.

“It’s news yer tellin’ us,” observed the boots with a surly grin.

“An’ is the portmantle tuk be number five?”

“Yis.”

“Phew!” whistled the waiter. “Be the mortial the fat’s in the fire now, anyhow.”

Here was a situation! My misgivings realized. My portmanteau gone, perhaps never to return. How could I face the owner? I never gave up the hope of meeting her and of restoring the property.

“Who slept in number five?” I asked.

“Number five is two faymales.”

“When did they leave?”

“They left for Father Rooney’s first Mass beyant at Annamoe.”

“Where were they going to?”

“To Lake Dan and Luggelaw.”

I proceeded to hold a council of war—consisting of the landlord, the waiter, the boots, two or three stable-boys, and the surplus population of the village—when it was determined to send a boy on a fast-trotting pony in pursuit of the fugitive luggage.

I was two inches on a mild Havana after such a breakfast as the tourist alone can dispose of, when the waiter burst into the summer-house situated over the lake, whither we had repaired to enjoy the “witching weed.”

“The portmantle is safe, sir, an’ number five is here with it an’ wants for to see ye, sir.”

“Well, I do not want to see number five, waiter, so just say—”

“I dar’n’t say nothin’, sir; she slipped a half a crown into the heel of me fist an’ towld me to hurry you up,” burst in the waiter, now in a white perspiration.

“I’ll not stir till I finish this cigar, at all events, and there is a good hour’s pull in it yet.”

“Och! murther, an’ she’s in such a hurry—such a dainty little craythur; an’ it was _so_ dacent of her for to journey back the road with it.”

This last thrust failed to pierce my armor. The waiter was conscientiously working out his half-crown.

“She’s quite convaynient in the coffee-room, sir. I’ll show ye a short cut across the bog.”

I listened and puffed, puffed and listened.

“I must get back, sir. May I tell her ye’ll be over in five minutes, sir?”

“Tell her anything _you_ like, my friend, but out of this till I finish my cigar I’ll not stir.”

Why I acted in this manner I was at a loss to determine. My anxiety for the valise almost amounted to pain; and yet here was the cause for worry removed, and I would not even trouble myself to walk a few hundred yards to the hotel to thank the lady for returning with it, which, as a gentleman, I was bound to do at any cost as to personal discomfort.

“Some frouzy old maid,” suggested Whiffler.

“Probably; or a strong-minded female doing Wicklow on a geological survey,” I added.

When I got back to the hotel, which might have been an hour or so subsequently, I found my portmanteau safely deposited in my room.

“Where is this lady, until I—”

“She’s gone, sir,” interrupted the waiter in a reproachful tone, “but she towld me for to give you this bit av’ a note,” handing me a piece of paper folded cocked-hat fashion.

I opened it.

“I have two regrets,” it said—the geologist’s handwriting was exquisitely feminine—“one, that I was inadvertently the cause of inconvenience; and the other, that I was denied the opportunity of claiming the portmanteau, as I imagine that I recognize in it one which I lost about eight months ago during a railway journey to the north.”

I was literally stunned. I gazed from the letter to the now astonished waiter, and back from his vacant countenance to the three-cornered billet, which, alas! told so much and yet so little. It bore no name, no initial, no monogram, no clue.

“Describe this lady’s appearance!” I shouted, clutching the waiter by his greasy collar, and imparting to him no very delicate shake.

“I never seen her; her veil was foreninst her nose the whole time she was spakin’ to me. The boy that attindid her is gone to the fair at Knockatemple.”

“Who saw her?”

“Barrin’ the masther, dickins a wan; for Mary, the chambermaid, started this mornin’ for Fogarty’s, of Glinmaloure. She an’ the misthress had a few words in regard to—but here’s the masther.”

The burly host presented himself; he had not encountered my enslaver, for the bill had been paid by the other lady.

“The red wan,” interposed the waiter.

“Just so, Mick,” said his master approvingly, and turning to me: “They have gone on to Luggelaw, sir, and intend to sleep at Enniskerry to-night.”

I unbosomed myself to Tom Whiffler, who immediately entered into the affair _con amore_. “We’ll hunt them,” he said; “we must catch them at Latouche’s Cottage. There is no exit from Luggelaw except the one.”

The road from the Seven Churches to Luggelaw is exquisitely picturesque. Behind lies that lake whose gloomy shore skylark never warbles o’er, with Lugnacullagh frowning sternly over its gloomy waters, and the round tower standing like a grim sentinel ready to challenge the approach alike of friend and foe. In front is the little village of Lara, with Castle Kevin perched upon a ledge of rock like an aerie’s nest, and stretching away in the distance the silvern beech-woods of Annamoe, while to the left the purple-crowned crags of Slonaveena seem almost to topple into the placid bosom of Lough Dan. It was a lovely summer day—one of those days that recall past joys, and in which the present is but a voluptuous dream.

At Roundwood we gained intelligence of the objects of our pursuit. The car had passed through about half an hour previously; the ladies had stopped at the hotel while the horse was being baited, and had indulged in that inevitable cup of tea which is at once the dissipation and the solace of the sex. The road to the first gate at Luggelaw is an ascent of three miles, which must of necessity be traversed upon “shanks’ mare,” and it is a blisterer. Not a vestige of tree, and with scarcely as much pasture as will satisfy the cravings of a few stunted sheep, the sun smiles grimly upon the entire roadway and scorches the luckless traveller whom destiny leads to the little lodge perched on the summit of the mountain. We were not spared, and coats, waistcoats, and neckties were cast upon the car, while we retained our pocket-handkerchiefs to mop our glowing faces, which resembled two very full and exceedingly dissipated-looking rosy moons.

Puffing, panting, blowing, mopping, by one supreme effort we gained the table-land which crowns the ascent, and, plunging towards an adjacent thicket of pines, took tremendous headers into the middle of it, where we lay gasping like a pair of stranded fish.

“Blow _me_,” exclaimed Tom Whiffler, “if I’ll ever climb Luggelaw Hill widow-hunting in July again. I wish you and your portmanteau and widow at Timbuctoo!”

A low, musical laugh quite near us; a rustle of female garments—my heart gave one mighty throb; for right in front of us, not two yards distant, with her large, lustrous gray eyes bent searchingly upon me, stood the owner of the peripatetic portmanteau.

To spring to my feet, to apologize for our _déshabille_—the car was as yet half a mile down the hill—to mumble some horrible incoherencies, was the impulse and action of half a minute.

She seemed puzzled to know how to act, but her friend, the “red wan,” cut the Gordian knot of the present embarrassment by a fit of loud, hearty, ringing laughter, which, maelstrom-like, sucked us one after another into it, and whirled us into an ocean of mirth before we knew where we were exactly, or what it was all about. There are some contagious laughs in the world, and she of the ruby locks was the fortunate possessor of one.

Two things establish instantaneous and easy communication with strangers—with women a baby, with men a cigar. Throw in a laugh, and, if the situation be a comical one, the laugh beats infant and tobacco. In this case it proved a talisman, and a very few words found us at our ease while I unfolded my tale.

I was i’ the vein and told my story well.

“Why did you not send it after me?” she asked.

“I had no clue,” I replied.

“I flung my card to the porter at the station.”

“It must have gone down the line; for the only reply I could awake in that self-same porter was, 'Sorra a know I know.’” And I devoutly dwelt upon all the bitter anxiety the hopeless efforts at restoration had cost me, to all of which I found a deeply-interested listener.

Before the sun had set on Luggelaw’s deep-wooded vale I learned much that satisfied me as to the past, and a something—inferentially only—that caused the white wings of Hope to flutter against my heart. Lucy Donaldson had been married to Captain George Middlecomb, of the Sixth Dragoon Guards, if not against her will, at least under the pressure of being talked into it. Captain Middlecomb had died within a year of their marriage of _delirium tremens_.

Need I say that we travelled up to Dublin as a party; that I became a constant visitor at Mrs. Middlecomb’s beautiful residence—Arcachon Villa at Killiney; that—

I suppose I should not divulge it, but, as I have written so far, I may as well finish the chapter. After all, I won’t. Those who have been interested, however, in the portmanteau may be pleased to know that it is now the common property of Lucy and the writer.

THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.

I. ST. DOROTHEA.

The little martyr-maid of Cæsarea— I do not a more lovely legend know. Said young Theophilus, mocking: “Dost thou go To join thy Spouse? If more than fond idea, Send me, I pray thee, pretty Dorothea, Of flowers and fruits that in his garden grow!” The maiden meekly bowed her head; and so She passed to death along the Roman Via.

A blooming boy, with hair like odorous flame, Out-dazed the sword that slew her; the next morn A blooming boy to young Theophilus came, With three fresh roses and three apples: scorn Melted in bliss. By crown and palm! we claim To guess that fragrance, and are less forlorn!

II. ST. CECILIA.

Two visions of divine Cecilia, Born of Italian art, possess my mind. One in the marble, at her tomb enshrined, Reveals her as in catacomb she lay. The budding maiden in her chaste array— Ah! closely let that awful necklace bind Clipt flower to stem!—to that cold sleep declined, Was in warm marriage-bed a bud alway.

Her heart’s dear love starved for a Mystic Spouse; She was not chary of sweet music’s gift I see the listening rapture of her brows: I hear her organ yearn, exult, and lift Humanity to God! The heavens arouse, And storms and seraphs o’er the white keys drift.

III. ST. AGNES.

I was God’s maid, less woman than a child; And yet they threw me in the common stews Naked as I was born, for men to use. The dear Lord saved his vessel, though reviled, From outrage of a look: the Mother smiled— Over my hot shame all my hair shook loose; And, lo! it swept my feet in lengths profuse, A bower of blinding awe to ruffians wild!

My life’s green branch they lopped with cruel sword; But He hath kissed my hurts, and they are well; And, walking in the meads of asphodel, I kiss the scarred feet of my gracious Lord: I lead his lambkins by my lily bell, Where the pomegranates shade the softest sward.

SHAKSPERE, FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW.[71]

Footnote 71:

_Shakspere, from an American Point of View: including an Inquiry as to his Religious Faith and his Knowledge of Law; with the Baconian Theory considered._ By George Wilkes. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. 1877. 8vo, pp. ix. 471.

This elegantly-printed volume, published in England, though by an American author, has for its subject four distinct lines of inquiry; two of these—the validity of a theory which originated in this country a few years ago, that Bacon, Lord Verulam, really wrote the plays known as Shakspere’s; and, secondly, the extent of Shakspere’s legal knowledge—though carried through the work, are subordinate to the other two—the anti-democratic tone of the dramatist and the fact that he was a Catholic. These are the real issues of the book. Mr. Wilkes holds that Shakspere should not exert the influence in this country that he does in England, and he arraigns him at the bar of American public opinion to answer the indictment that he is always a strenuous upholder of royal authority, an advocate of the privileges of the nobility, regarding them as far removed above the _ignobile vulgus_, for whom on all occasions the poet manifests the utmost contempt. That a work teeming with constant lessons of this character is no fit guide for Americans he makes the real argument of his book. The second count is apparently intended to be no less damaging. Shakspere was a Catholic, and as such should exercise no influence on a Protestant community. His influence in England for three hundred years has not apparently won that country back to Catholicity, and the United States are probably as safe. Still, it may serve for a new agitation to get up a cry: “No Shakspere in the public schools!”

That Mr. Wilkes considers it a danger is seen by the fact that he uses toward Catholics every vile nickname drawn from the slums by religious hate to degrade us in the eyes of our fellow-men. Yet surely a Shaksperean scholar should not need reminding that to rob one of his good name is worse than stealing his purse, oft-times as bad as taking his life. Not only this, but he more than once represents the Catholic Church as actuated by a hatred of intense fury against the Jews, as an earnest upholder of the unlawful claims of aristocracy, as an enemy of popular rights, and as an excuser of perjury. While thus under a strong anti-Catholic bias or prejudice—stronger even than he at all conceives—he has attempted to understand Catholic terms and usages, and to enter into that world which to Protestants seems so strange and inconceivable—the world of Catholic thought.

The question as to the religious convictions of Shakspere is not a new one. No Catholic has ever read the great dramatist without feeling that he was strangely lacking in the usual anti-Catholic element, even if he did not impress him as often Catholic in thought.

Catholic writers in English periodicals, such as the _Rambler_ and others, had already claimed Shakspere as a Catholic. All evidence, extrinsic and intrinsic, seems to sustain the position. His family belonged to the gentry on the father’s and mother’s side, and on both sides had adhered to Catholicity after the change of religion in England. The will of his maternal grandfather, Robert Arden, who died in 1556, is distinctly Catholic: “I bequeath my soul to Almighty God, and to our Blessed Lady St. Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven.” Of his father there is still extant a _Testament of the Soul_—not, as Mr. Wilkes supposes, a form drawn up by some chaplain of the family, but that _Testamentum Animæ Christianæ_ which, in Latin and the vernacular, has for centuries been found in Catholic devotional manuals, and the copying of which, as a kind of formal act, has been maintained in many families—certainly was in the family of the present writer down to the nineteenth century. Shakspere’s father, too, was fined for non-attendance at the established church. So far as the families of his parents were concerned, he was evidently Catholic, and must in childhood have been familiar with the thoughts and language of English Catholics. How far in mature age he retained the impressions of youth, or how faithful he may have been to the teachings of his religion, we have no means of judging. The lightness with which moral obligations lay on him, his career as a wild but gifted man, give little ground for supposing him to have practised the religion he may still have professed.

In his dramas Shakspere constantly uses Catholic terms, speaks of Catholic clergy, religious of both sexes, rites and ceremonies with respect, and in many cases turns his ridicule upon the new order of clergy in England. The Shaksperes and Ardens had both held office under the Tudor kings, and the dramatist shows the utmost zeal for royal power as against the Pope. To a Catholic, now, this gives his position at once. His life was not a regular one; and he could scarcely, in those days of persecution, have been a firm, consistent, practical Catholic, although he clung to the faith, never abjured it, and had no liking for any of the new forms. His Bible reading was in the Protestant versions of the day, not in the Rheims and Douay, of which no influence has ever been detected in his plays. That he died a good Catholic needs proof; but Mr. Wilkes’ ideas of the meaning of the term are vague, since he tells us that Henry VIII. died a good Catholic.

The fact that Shakspere makes his characters—most of whom are Catholics in time or country—speak as Catholics is really no proof of his own Catholicity, any more than Longfellow’s almost constant correctness in his use of Catholic terms and familiarity with Catholic thought is proof that he is a Catholic. The fact is, we admit, suspicious; for during centuries Protestant writers seem to have made it a point to display the most intense ignorance of Catholic terms, usages, rites, and ceremonies, and equally a point to insist on talking about what they vaunt their ignorance of. But, going back to Shakspere’s time, we must bear in mind that the new religion had not yet taken any hold on the people at large; that the only religious terms and expressions that conveyed any definite ideas to their minds were those of the old faith sanctioned by the usage of centuries, and that the terms introduced by the various classes of reformers were diverse, new, strange, and, to the people, a mere ridiculous jargon. The coinage of a new religious vocabulary took time and skill. It was no easy task to shape Bible translation so as to avoid old ideas and thoughts. This new jargon rose to be a language when the King James Bible was imposed on the people after the Restoration. Though long vaunted as a well of English undefiled, philologists now admit that it is the language of no period of English history, of no district of English soil; it was a hash made to meet the pressing want, with obsolete words, terms drawn from every county of England, and new-coined expressions, all forced into the service so as to supply the English people with a new vocabulary of religious thought.

To convey religious ideas in Shakspere’s time, the readiest words were those familiar to the people. The dramatist employs them with no regard to the country or time. The pagan Hamlet refers to the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, the Mass, and Office for the Dead; they talk of confession and beads in the _Comedy of Errors_; of indulgences in the _Tempest_, and even in _Troilus and Cressida_; of fasting days in _Pericles_ and _Coriolanus_; and christening is spoken of in _Titus Andronicus_. The anachronisms were apparently not noticed in his time, nor taken into account.

The system had not been adopted of entirely ignoring Catholic terms; there were no others, and Shakspere used what he had. One word seems to be avoided. The Mass is introduced only like Moore’s “neat little Testament, just kept to swear by.” It occurs only in the form of an oath, except in one instance, to which Mr. Wilkes devotes a chapter. Juliet, going to her confessor, asks:

“Are you at leisure, holy father, now, Or shall I come to you at evening Mass?”

Mr. Wilkes goes into a lengthened argument to show that it was the custom at that time in England to celebrate Mass at night. He says: “I have found many illustrations from Catholic reviews and other reliable authorities of the practices of the hedge-priests, as they were called, in times of Catholic persecution, whose business it was to go in the darkness of the evening to the houses of the faithful to celebrate a nocturnal Mass.” We should be much pleased to see any such authorities. He cites only an article in the _Manhattan Monthly_ last year, where a writer speaks of priests in Ireland “who often at dead of night fled to the mountain cave, the wooded glen, and wild rath to celebrate Mass for the faithful”; but travelling by night is one thing, and saying Mass at night is another. Again, there were no priests in England answering to the Irish hedge-priests. The priests in England found shelter in the houses of Catholic gentry; they had not a mass of poor and oppressed faithful among whom they lived. But neither in Ireland nor in England is there a single example that the writer has ever found of a Mass said in what may be called the evening—that is, between sunset and midnight—much less of its being so frequent an occurrence as to make Shakspere refer to evening Mass as an ordinary matter. Dodd’s _History of the Church_, Challoner’s _Missionary Priests_, the works of Father Parsons, Campion, and other Catholic writers of the time, never allude to any single case where such a Mass was said. Nor is there in any liturgical work reference to any such custom ever having obtained in England.

Mr. Wilkes seems to feel that the theory is not very solid. He next refers to the custom in some parts of saying a Low Mass immediately after the Sunday High Mass. “Shakspere may have considered the last or one o’clock Mass an evening Mass.” The play itself makes this untenable. It was late in the afternoon when Juliet went to the friar. When she comes back the nurse says:

“See where she comes from shrift with merry look”—

not half as charmingly as Longfellow describes Evangeline as most beautiful

“When, after confession, Homeward serenely she walks with God’s benediction upon her.”

Then, a few lines lower down, Lady Capulet, in the same scene, says:

“’Tis now near night.”

This fixes the time too clearly to allow that any reference is made to a Mass about mid-day. “Evening Mass” is simply nonsense; but the phrase has charmed later writers, and several poets introduce the expression, just as poets and prose writers have all copied the Protestant Bible misprint, “Strain _at_ a gnat,” instead of “Strain out a gnat.”

But the word Mass here is against all Catholic custom and reason. Juliet wishes to go to confession. She politely asks her confessor whether he is at leisure or whether she shall come again at a later hour. Would any one, under the same circumstances, propose to come to confession to the priest when he was saying Mass? It would be just the time when he could not possibly hear confessions. If he expected to say Mass soon, he would hear her then, and neither he nor she would think of putting it off till he had begun his Mass. Shakspere critics have boggled and blundered over this without seeing this incongruity, which to a Catholic is as patent as the day. What, then, does it mean? Juliet can ask only whether he will hear her then or whether she shall come later. Now, if we consider Shakspere to have written:

“Are you at leisure, holy father, now, Or shall I come to you as evening wanes?”

the whole thing is as natural, consistent, and usual to Catholic ideas as can be. Then there is no such absurdity as evening Mass, or going to confession to a priest who is saying Mass. The dense ignorance of later times on every Catholic matter will easily account for the neglect to correct the palpable error in the actual text.

The fact that, while Shakspere speaks of religion as the monastic state, religious, monks, nuns, convents, monasteries, beads, penance, month’s mind, dirge, requiem, purgatory, indulgences, relics, shrines, the housel (Eucharist), christening or baptism, aneling (anointing), the cross, altar, holy-water, he nowhere in any of his plays speaks of the Mass (except in the oath “By the Mass”), is a strong argument against its use here. Convents and monasteries were abolished; relics and shrines were gone; no dirges or requiems resounded in the old church walls; allusions to them were simply allusions to something deemed past and gone; but there were nearly a thousand Mass-priests in England—men who carried their lives in their hands, over whom the severest edicts of the law were hanging like the sword of Damocles. To talk of the Mass as a service with respect was verging on high treason. Having avoided it everywhere else, he would scarcely introduce it here absurdly—no less absurdly to him than to us.

At that time, though the government was anti-Catholic, the state church was a mere matter of office. There was little zeal in its members—little more than conformity to law. The Puritans were active and zealous in spreading their doctrines; but the people were to a great extent still Catholic, and, with many nobles and gentlemen as leaders, and a greater number of priests than during the next two centuries, formed a power which was finally crushed by the Civil War. With this body Shakspere sympathized. He was not of the stuff to make a martyr. Ben Jonson and Massinger were, we know, Catholics, but not a single act of Shakspere’s is recorded that stamps him as a Catholic. He was not fined as a recusant, had no intercourse with known Catholics, in all arrests under the penal laws there is no allusion to him, even as using his undoubted influence with the great to shield some poor victim. With the mass of the people, at court and not at court, he ridiculed the new Gospellers, as we do Millerites or any other oddities. Against royal supremacy or the religion established by law, the Common Prayer, or the bishops who had been intruded into the old Catholic sees, Shakspere says nothing. His ridicule is never launched at them. His wit is turned, as was that of the court circle, at the Puritan element. The state church was respectable, but lacked earnestness, piety, and zeal: it was simply a state affair. Those whose minds and imaginations tended to effusive piety found themselves repulsed. Gradually they camped apart and formed new organizations. In Shakspere’s time the government and the government church laughed at them, when they should have used them to build up the Church of England. Just so in the following century they repulsed Wesley. Shakspere takes not a Catholic but the court-prelatic side; and there were no prophets on that side to see that James’ son was to die on the block and the Church of England be abolished by these very Puritans. That he had any direct idea of attacking Protestantism as a system, or making his dramas—with their coarse and often impure speech, such as then found favor with Elizabeth and her court—an arm against the Reformation, is absurd, and Mr. Wilkes, in going through play after play to note every praise of convents or religious practices as done with a direct view to elevate the Catholic Church, is extravagant. We have but to remember that Protestantism had then no institutions, no religious rites or practices, nothing absolutely for a poet or dramatist to employ as illustrations. Protestant poets and artists feel the poverty to this day, and in despair turn from cold, set formalism to Catholic themes, where poetry finds so many a subject.

Our American critic has endeavored to follow out Catholic thoughts, but not always successfully. Thus, in _Richard III._ Elizabeth addressing her murdered children:

“If yet your gentle souls fly in the air,”

and Buckingham:

“If that your moody discontented souls Do through the clouds behold this present hour,”

are gravely put down as evidences of Shakspere’s recognition of the doctrine of purgatory, as though every believer in ghosts must be a believer in purgatory. There are some comical remarks about Shakspere’s familiarity with “the intricacies of the Roman Catholic faith,” because in _Henry VI._ we find:

“Although by sight his sin be multiplied,”

when surely the Scriptural injunction to pluck out an eye that leads one to sin might explain it without his getting tangled in intricacies. His knowledge of the marriage service also seems peculiar; the rituals we know are hardly the origin of Shakspere’s marriage form.

Mr. Wilkes is evidently led away by his theory in his forced Catholic interpretation of many passages of the dramatist; and his desire to show that the whole series of dramas was a device of the Catholic Church to attack Protestantism in England induces him to strain much to support his view, and often to jump at unwarranted conclusions, as in making Hartley, in the strange Girachy case, to have been a priest. A man might be hanged as a Catholic priest—as Ury was a century ago within sight of the spot where Mr. Wilkes’ office now stands—and yet not have been even a Catholic. There is no Catholic record of priest or layman suffering in connection with this affair.

Hence, while we admit Mr. Wilkes’ diligence and ability in studying Shakspere, we must regret that his judgment, like that of too many, has been warped by the old anti-Catholic feeling, to the extent of giving the plays a character which neither friend nor foe of Catholicity at the time dreamed of ascribing to them.

In treating the question of Shakspere’s legal knowledge, he is free from bias, and hence easily perceives and often exposes the exaggeration which induces learned men of the law to interpret much that any attendant at courts, whether as witness or juror, might easily acquire as proof of serious legal study. The length to which the legal argument has been pushed has led to similar claims by other professions; but a young man of such Catholic stock as Shakspere undoubtedly was could scarcely have attempted to obtain admission to the bar in those days.

Certainly, as Mr. Wilkes well maintains, the amount of legal knowledge and the use of legal terms manifested in the plays are not of the character that we should expect from one who had held such eminent legal and judicial positions as Lord Bacon. Nor is this, as he shows, the only difficulty. The style of the dramas and that of Bacon’s acknowledged writings are utterly different; the conception of thoughts and their clothing in language are both distinct. The ear attuned to Shakspere finds in Bacon a measure, an adaptation of words, a symmetry of his own, utterly at variance with the dramatist. Wilkes’ euphonic test has great weight; and he well and aptly cites Bacon to show that the chancellor made style a test of disputed authorship. If the Baconian theory is but “a bubble which has never floated among the public with any amount of success,” it has doubtless found some advocates, and Mr. Wilkes has strengthened the arguments against it.

His argument against Shakspere as one who worships a lord and despises the middle and lower classes has but the one fault: that it takes our modern American theories as the test—our theories, and not our practice; for after all personal liberty has, in a certain sense, steadily declined in America during the last century, and many of the rights possessed by individuals in Shakspere’s time, and enjoyed by our ancestors down to the Revolution, have been swept away in the name of liberty, while general and local taxation has reached a point that often amounts practically to confiscation of all revenue, and sometimes of the whole estate. In point of fact, the lower classes among us are more oppressed in person and property by official power, and less able to obtain legal redress, than they were in England in Shakspere’s time. The distinction of rank was then as absolute almost as that of the Hindoo castes, and the contemptuous style of the day in which the aristocratic portion treated their inferiors was caught up too readily by Shakspere. Mr. Wilkes develops this element steadily through the work, and makes it, as we have seen, the basis of one of his heaviest charges against the dramatist. He treats the point skilfully, and the subject affords a fine scope for discussion. For our own part, we think that he carries his theory too far, and that Shakspere may find an advocate who will relieve him from much of the obloquy and secure his claim to respect in America.

Shakspere literature is now a field so vast, and has won contributions from so many able minds and eloquent pens, that it requires some courage to produce a new work on the topic at large; yet Mr. Wilkes has certainly produced a volume that will take a prominent place among the Shaksperiana. It gives utterance to many new views; the whole treatment, being thoroughly American, is fresh and free from much of the conventional bias that is almost inevitable in England; while solid German learning, by its very seriousness and profundity, seems often to miss the point and _finesse_ of the dramatist.

The Catholic part is so prominent that we could not but treat it plainly and frankly, addressing as we do more exclusively a circle of Catholic readers. We do so with no wish to be merely censorious, and with our recognition of the author’s evidently careful study and desire to treat the question fairly.

“He presents the volume,” he avows, “rather as a series of inquiries than as dogmatic doctrine, and strives,” he says, “to support them only by such an amount of controversy as is legitimately due from one who invites the public to a new discussion.”

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ESSAYS AND REVIEWS By Rt. Rev. J. L. Spalding, D.D. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 355. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.

The author of these essays has been recently raised to the dignity of the episcopate and appointed to the newly-created see of Peoria, Ill. His name and fame as an author, preacher, and orator are already widely known in this country. His _Life of Archbishop Spalding_, his illustrious uncle, will remain one of the landmarks of Catholic history and biography in the United States. By this important and valuable work the name of the learned and distinguished author is at present best known outside of the immediate circle with whom friendship and the round of daily life connect him. He has done, however, much more than this. He has used his great gifts incessantly and in whatever way they could prove of service to the cause which every word he utters and every line he writes proclaim he has alone at heart—the growth and strengthening of Christ’s church, the defence of Catholic faith and doctrine, and the spread of Christ’s kingdom on earth. With this view he has even gone down to that lowly, much neglected, yet most important field of editing a series of Catholic school-books—that issued by the Catholic Publication Society.

He has been a constant and most valued contributor to the pages of this magazine, and a selection of his articles—which, had he chosen, might have been much larger—goes to form the present volume of _Essays and Reviews_. As they come before us now in book-form we are glad to have this opportunity of saying publicly what we have always felt, not only in regard to these but also all other contributions from the same pen: that they are of the very best kind of that peculiarly modern, peculiarly favorite, and peculiarly difficult form of literature—the magazine article. Dr. Brownson used to say that there were not half a dozen men in this country who could write a really good review article. Whether that be so or not, we are sure that the veteran reviewer would not have excluded these essays from his category. And what we here state regarding them is only an echo of the general opinion, so far as it reaches us through the medium of the public press and the private verdict of excellent judges. The style is fascinating, glowing, brilliant. There are here and there passages of extreme beauty and eloquence. There is nothing like mere verbiage or redundance. There is _a man_ behind it all—a man of knowledge, of wide yet careful culture, writing in dead earnest, observing the march of events while the history of the past is ever present to him, with power and courage to say what he means in a manner that all will understand. Not one of these articles fell dead. The leading one, “The Catholic Church in the United States, 1776-1876,” excited universal interest and attention not alone in this country but abroad, and a distinguished writer in the _Correspondant_ made it the chief text of an important article on the United States. No history or historical sketch that we have seen gives so complete and profound a view of the history, the trials, and struggles of the Catholic Church in this country within the century as that article. The other essays are of a piece with it. Their very titles speak their timeliness: “The Persecution of the Church in the German Empire,” “Prussia and the Church” (three essays), “German Journalism,” etc. Perhaps the most valuable of all, however, are the three essays on the “Comparative Influence of Catholicism and Protestantism on National Prosperity,” for which M. de Laveleye’s well-known pamphlet furnished a text. They are eminently characteristic of the writer. He faces everything, shirks nothing. He takes up the subjects of “Wealth,” “Education,” and “Morality”—just the very points on which Protestant writers are in the habit of claiming superiority for Protestant over Catholic nations—and how he treats them we leave to the reader’s enjoyment.

We are often asked the kind of article needed for THE CATHOLIC WORLD. We can recommend no better text-book to such applicants than this volume of _Essays and Reviews;_ nor can we recommend anything fresher, better, or more interesting to Catholics generally who are anxious to defend their faith on points where it is often believed to be most assailable.

MAGISTER CHORALIS: a Theoretical and Practical Manual of Gregorian Chant for the use of the clergy, seminarists, organists, choir-masters, choristers, etc. By Rev. Francis Xavier Haberl, cathedral choir-master, Ratisbon. Translated and enlarged (from the fourth German edition) by Rev. N. Donnelly, Cathedral Church of the Immaculate Conception, Dublin. Ratisbon, New York, and Cincinnati: Frederick Pustet.

This excellent and most timely work is one we have long desired to see. Many pastors of churches and their organists have been willing to do something towards the introduction of the holy chant in the divine offices, but the means of instruction have been almost wholly wanting. Very few organists and choir-directors in the United States have made any study whatever of the chant, and the greater number are not able to read even its notation. We have felt and lamented the difficulties in the way of those who, convinced of the claims of Gregorian chant, and wearied and disgusted with the wretched cheap concert performances they have been forced to endure at Holy Mass and Vespers, have longed to rid themselves of the “church music” nuisance and again hear the true song of the church resounding in the sanctuary. Even with ample pecuniary resources it would not have been enough to issue an order to the choir-director to organize a Gregorian choir, or even to sing some portions of the chant from the organ gallery. The work before us solves almost all these difficulties. Of course the organist will need to study the character of the chant in other works, that he may be able to appreciate its tonality and style, and to give it its true accompaniment, without which he would be more likely to produce poor _music_ than good _chant_, or a detestable mixture of both, such as one commonly finds published in various Catholic “choir-books” and books of so-called “Services of the Catholic Church.”

We recommend to Gregorian organists the careful study of the harmonies of John Lambert in his harmonized Gradual and Vesperal, the _Organum Comitans by Dr. Witt, and the Accompagnment d’Orgue pour le Graduel et Antiphonarium de Rheims et Cambrai_, by Messrs. Dietsch and Tessier.

The only faults we have to find with Father Haberl’s work are, first, the rules as given for the Italian pronunciation of Latin, especially for the pronunciation of the word _excelsis_, which is directed to be pronounced egg-shell-sis! and, second, the rule on page 66 directing the elision of the last vowel of a word when followed by another vowel in the next word, in the verses of hymns; and we regret to see this rule carried out in the new Vesperal as published by Mr. Pustet. This rule may do for _reading_ classic poetry, but, if we mistake not, such elision is absolutely forbidden in the _recitation_ of the divine Office, whether read or sung. In all former editions of the Vesperal we have found an extra note provided for the superfluous syllable.

We cannot bring ourselves to sing or say

Sit laus Patr-ac Paraclito,

or

Quænam lingua tib-o Lancea, debitas Grates pro merit-est apta rependere? Christi vivificum namqu-aperis latus Und-Ecclesia nascitur.

How is one to sing _namqu-aperis_? and what are we to think of _clavor-aditus_ for _clavorum aditus_, and _ill-hic_ for _ille, hic_? We would like to be referred to some authority on this subject. That this work has already reached the fourth edition in Ratisbon is a very encouraging sign of the restoration of Gregorian chant among our German brethren. May it find a wide-spread sale in our own country!

GOLDEN SAND: A Collection of little Counsels for the Sanctification and Happiness of Daily Life. Translated from the French. New York: Sadlier & Co. 1877.

We have not seen for a long time a more charming little hand-book of daily piety than the modest volume of which a young lady, who is too modest to put her name on the title-page, has here given us an excellent translation. Miss Ella J. McMahon, to whom we are indebted for the publication of this version of _Paillettes d’Or_, has turned the simple and unaffected original into equally simple and attractive English. First published periodically in the form of tracts, these short chapters of practical counsels were afterwards collected in pocket volumes, and the book now before us, though it could be read through in a morning, contains the series for several years. It is addressed to people in the world, and it embraces rules for the sanctification of all the actions of life, for making home happy and the domestic hearth an altar of blessing and sacrifice. No one can read a few of its pages without feeling. “Here is something that just suits my case; the circumstances described here are just my own; the temptations are mine; the little trials are mine; nothing can be easier than to make the virtues mine, too.” Several chapters of the book, for instance, are devoted to what the author styles “The Angels of the Hearth,” and here is a description of “The Angel of Little Sacrifices”:

“Have you never seen her at work?

“Have you never at least felt her influence?

“In every Christian family and in all pious communities, as the image of his providence in the household, God has placed the angel of little sacrifices, trying to remove all the thorns, to lighten all the burdens, to share all the fatigues.

“She has for her motto these gracious words of an amiable saint: Good makes no noise, and noise effects no good.

“Thus she is like a ray of sunlight, lighting, warming, giving life to all, but inconveniencing no one.

“We feel that she is with us, because we no longer experience those misunderstandings of heretofore, those rancorous thoughts, those deliberate coolnesses which spoil family life; because we no longer hear those sharp, rude words which wound so deeply; because affectionate sentiments mount readily from the heart to the lips, and life is sweeter.

“Who, then, has absorbed that self-love which would not yield; that egotism which mingled with the most sincere friendship; that self-indulgence, in fine, which always sought ease?

“The angel of little sacrifices has received from heaven the mission of those angels of whom the prophet speaks, who removed the stones from the road, lest they should bruise the feet of travellers.

“And that of the angels who, according to the simple legend of the first Christians, scattered rose-leaves 'neath the feet of Jesus and Mary in their flight into Egypt....

“But, like them, she is oftener invisible; she does her work in secret.

“There is a place less commodious than another; she chooses it, saying with a sweet smile, How comfortable I am here!

“There is some work to be done, and she presents herself for it simply with the joyous manner of one who finds her happiness in so doing.

“It is an object of trifling value, of which she deprives herself to give to her who the evening before has manifested a desire to possess one like it.

“How many oversights repaired by this unknown hand!

“How many neglected things put in their places, without our ever seeing how they came there!

“How many little joys procured for another without his ever having mentioned to any one the happiness which they would give him!

“Who has known thus how to do good in secret? Who has known how to divine the secrets of the heart?

“Does a dispute arise? She knows how to settle it by a pleasant word which wounds no one, and falls upon the slight disturbance like a ray of sunlight upon a cloud.

“Should she hear of two hearts estranged, she has always new means of reuniting them without their being able to show her any gratitude, so sweet, simple, and natural is what she does.

“But who will tell the thorns which have torn her hands, the pain her heart has endured, the humiliations her charity has borne?

“And yet she is always smiling.

“Does sacrifice give her joy?

“Have you never seen her at work, the angel of little sacrifices?

“On earth she is called a mother, a friend, a sister, a wife.

“In heaven she is called a saint.”

Here is another example of the familiar and easy spirit, the clearness, the practicality of this admirable little counsellor:

“WHAT IS MY CROSS OF TO-DAY?—It is that person whom Providence has placed near me, and whom I dislike; who humiliates me constantly by her disdainful manner; who wearies me by her slowness in the work which I share with her; who excites my jealousy because she is loved more than I and because she succeeds better than I; who irritates me by her chatter, her frivolity, or even by her attentions to me.

“It is that person who, for some vague reason, I believe to be inimical to me; who, according to my excited imagination, watches me, criticises me, ridicules me.

“She is there, always there.... My efforts to avoid her are of no avail.

“A mysterious power seems to multiply these appearances before me....

“This is my most painful cross; the others are very small compared to this.

“Circumstances change, temptations diminish, positions improve, misfortune becomes endurable by habit, but persons who are disagreeable to us always irritate us more and more.

“HOW I MUST BEAR MY CROSS OF TO-DAY.—By not showing in any way either the weariness, the dislike, or the involuntary repulsion which her presence causes me. By obliging myself to render her some service, it matters little whether she knows it—it is a secret between God and me.

“To say nearly every day something good of her talents, of her virtues, her tact.... Something, certainly, I will find to praise.

“To pray seriously for her soul, and even to go so far as to ask God to love her and leave her with me.

“Dear companion, blessed messenger of God’s mercy, you have unconsciously the mission of sanctifying me, and I will not be ungrateful.

“Angel of a rude and appalling exterior, were it not for thee I would fall into humiliating faults. My nature disdains and repulses thee, but, oh! how my heart loves thee.”

There is an abundance of good advice which will touch directly upon a multitude of the commonest faults of good people—those apparently trivial sins and imperfections which cause so much unhappiness at home, which make family life so hard and bitter, and place so many obstacles in the path of perfection.

The book cannot fail to do good. It will be a favorite companion of the pious soul, an affectionate and never unwelcome monitor to the cold and careless.

LIFE OF THE VENERABLE CLEMENT MARY HOFBAUER, PRIEST OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE MOST HOLY REDEEMER. By a Member of the Order of Mercy, authoress of the _Life of Catharine McAuley_, _Life of St. Alphonsus_, _Glimpses of Pleasant Homes_, etc. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.

We have received advance sheets of this beautiful and most interesting life by the gifted author of the _Life of Catharine McAuley_. Father Hofbauer was one of God’s heroes, and the story of his life will be found full of interest and profit. He is fortunate in his biographer, whose clever pen seems particularly adapted to a style of literary work than which there is none more pleasing and useful. An extended notice will appear later.

THE LADY OF NEVILLE COURT. A Tale of the Times. By the author of _Marion Howard_, etc., etc. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

It is really refreshing to come across a simple, unaffected, yet most interesting story such as this. Its only fault is that happiest of faults—brevity. The characters are few, natural, well contrasted, and well developed; the situations well wrought up, yet by the most natural of means. The pathetic portions are indescribably touching, but constantly and happily relieved by bright dialogue or playfully humorous narrative. Richard O’Meara is a genuine Catholic hero, albeit a modern one; and Maud Neville as sweet and noble a woman as we have ever met with in fiction. The real art of the book lies in its genuine artlessness, and we trust the author may give us many such.

* * * * *

In the July number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will appear the first instalment of a new story, entitled _Alba’s Dream_, by the author of _Are You My Wife?_, _A Salon in Paris before the War_, _Number Thirteen_, _M. Gombard’s Mistake_, etc., etc. The story will be completed in three parts.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXV., No. 148.—JULY, 1877.

THE EUROPEAN EXODUS.

We propose in the following pages to speak of the past history, the present condition, and the future prospects of European emigration to this country. We shall have to present many dry figures and prosaic statistics; but the investigation will lead us to regard the wonderful manner in which the wisdom and the love of God have been manifested in the control which he, as the ruler of all things, has exercised over this European exodus. Even out of those details of its course and progress which have seemed most deplorable, and have caused to many of God’s enlightened servants the greatest anxiety and grief, beneficent and grand results now begin to be discerned which are likely to secure the permanent establishment of the church in this land, and to prepare her for the magnificent task which, as we believe, she is destined to accomplish here—the salvation of the republic and of society from the utter ruin into which the arch-enemy of mankind would otherwise soon engulf them. The foolishness of men is sometimes the wisdom of God; and God, who governs all things sweetly, has chosen to turn the apparent folly of a large portion of the emigrants from Europe to the United States during the last twenty-five years into channels through which inestimable blessings have already flowed, and others, still more glorious, are yet to pass.

The great wave of emigration began to rise in 1840, reached its highest point in 1869-72, and, notwithstanding some fluctuations, continued to bring to our shores a colony every day until 1875. In that year it experienced a sudden and serious check, and has ever since steadily subsided, until now it has not only sunk to low-water mark, but has even seemed to be about to flow the other way. The official reports of the Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New York classify the passengers who arrive at this port from foreign countries as “aliens” and as “citizens or persons who had before landed in the United States”; and the “aliens” are subdivided into steerage and cabin passengers. It is safe to take the “alien steerage passengers” as persons who have come to this country for the first time with the purpose of residing here—in fine, as _bonâ fide_ emigrants. The alien cabin passengers in most cases are tourists or visitors, although among them also are some emigrants. Now, the whole number of alien steerage passengers who arrived at the port of New York during the year 1876 was only 60,308, of whom 17,974 were from Germany, 12,728 from Ireland, 5,429 from England, 1,479 from Scotland, and 428 from Wales. The whole number of steerage emigrants from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland who landed at New York during this year was only 20,064—a much smaller number than arrived in any previous year since 1840. Indeed, in no previous year until 1875, when it was 34,636, had the number failed to be twice as great; in many years it was more than ten times as large. The following table will show the emigration of all classes from the United Kingdom into the United States at all our ports during the last thirty-six years:

1840 40,642 1841 45,017 1842 63,852 1843 28,335 1844 43,660 1845 58,538 1846 82,239 1847 142,154 1848 188,233 1849 219,450 1850 223,078 1851 267,357 1852 244,261 1853 230,885 1854 193,065 1855 103,414 1856 111,837 1857 126,905 1858 50,716 1859 70,303 1860 87,500 1861 42,764 1862 58,706 1863 146,813 1864 147,042 1865 147,258 1866 161,000 1867 159,275 1868 155,532 1869 203,001 1870 196,075 1871 198,843 1872 233,747 1873 233,073 1874 148,161 1875 92,489 1876 [72]54,554

Footnote 72:

Of whom 24,452 landed at New York.

The 54,554 persons who, not being citizens of the United States, arrived in this country from the United Kingdom in 1876, embrace all those who came either for pleasure, or for business, or to remain. But during the same year 54,697 persons of Irish and British origin arrived in the United Kingdom from the United States; so that the emigration from this country to the United Kingdom exceeded the immigration into the United States from the United Kingdom by 143 souls. The English Board of Trade, in publishing these returns, says that “as regards North America, in fact, the records of 1876 are the records of a movement of passengers to and fro, and the so-called emigration is not really emigration.” We digress here, for a moment, to speak of one or two facts disclosed by the emigration returns of the British Board of Trade for 1876, which cast a side light upon a portion of our subject.

The total emigration from the United Kingdom to places out of Europe in 1876 was 138,222 persons; the total immigration into the Kingdom was 91,647 persons, showing an apparent loss of population of 46,575. But after deducting from both sides the persons of other than British birth, the net loss of population to the United Kingdom by emigration is reduced to 38,000 persons—a percentage scarcely worth mention when compared with the annual increase by births. As regards the emigration from that Kingdom to the United States, it is noted not only that it has become very small, but that its character has materially changed. Only 73 agricultural laborers sailed from England for the United States, but no less than 3,191 of this class sailed for Australia; while, on the other hand, “4,535 gentlemen, professional men, merchants, etc., and 10,874 persons of no occupation, have gone to the States, and only 1,106 of the first-named class and 2,753 of the second migrated to Australia.” The returns go on to point out that emigration from Ireland, and of Irishmen living in England and Scotland, has almost entirely ceased. “The total number of persons of Irish origin who emigrated from the United Kingdom in 1876 to places out of Europe was 25,976.” Of these 16,432 came to the United States; some of these were only visitors; but counting them all as emigrants, they would not number as many as arrived here in a single month in former years.

The gradual but steady decrease of Irish emigration to the United States is pointed out in these returns in a forcible and apparently exultant manner. From 1853 to 1860 the annual average of Irish emigration to this country was 71,856; during the ten years following it was 69,084; in 1871 it fell to 65,591; in 1874 it was 48,136; in 1875 it was 31,433; and last year it sank to 16,432.[73] “The Irish people,” says the Board of Trade with evident satisfaction, “do not at present migrate from the United Kingdom in any appreciable numbers, although they may emigrate from one part of the United Kingdom to another.” We cannot call the correctness of this statement into question; it is no doubt quite correct; and it is safe to conclude that, for the present at least, and probably for many years to come, Irish emigration to this country will be limited to very small proportions. Nay, there is some reason to fear that, unless a marked improvement soon occurs in the industrial affairs of our country, we shall be in danger of seeing too many of our Irish and Irish-American citizens leaving us to seek homes in Australia. The year 1877 is scarcely six months old, but it has seen three vessels sail from this port with American, Irish, and German emigrants for Australia. This movement is probably a wholly sporadic one, and too much importance should not be attached to it. But we are not yet in a condition to encourage emigration from this country nor to desire to see it under any circumstances. We wish still to receive many millions of people from the Old World, and, as we shall show, there is a strong probability that we shall obtain them.

Footnote 73:

Of whom 13,314 landed at New York.

Emigration from the Continent of Europe, while showing a decrease, has not diminished in such a marked degree as that from the United Kingdom. The whole number of alien emigrants who arrived at the port of New York during the thirty years ending December 31, 1876, was 5,604,073. Of these 2,920,397 were natives of Great Britain and Ireland; 2,665,774 were natives of the Continent; and the remaining 17,902 came from all the other countries of the earth. The following table will show the exact number of emigrants from each country arriving at the port of New York during the last thirty years:

FROM GREAT BRITAIN.

Ireland 2,001,727 England 732,922 Scotland 157,578 Wales 28,170 2,920,397

FROM AMERICA.

South America 3,066 West Indies 7,897 Nova Scotia 1,611 Canada 1,397 Mexico 1,030 Central America 289 15,290

FROM CONTINENTAL EUROPE.

Germany 2,121,020 France 107,710 Switzerland 81,798 Holland 39,069 Norway 44,772 Sweden 116,655 Italy 42,769 Belgium 10,096 Spain 7,796 Denmark 32,974 Poland 11,291 Sardinia 2,306 Portugal 1,791 Russia 22,124 Sicily 339 Greece 269 Turkey 242 Austria 21,677 Luxembourg 1,076 2,663,774

FROM THE ORIENT.

China 1,057 East Indies 304 Arabia 14 Africa 191 Australia 225 Japan 175 Unknown 646 2,612

5,604,073

We may remark that fourteen of the countries in this list are Roman Catholic countries, and that the emigrants from these number 2,212,963 souls. The proportion of Catholics among the emigrants from the other twenty-one countries would probably be, taking them altogether, not less than one-fourth of the whole number—597,772. This would give a Catholic emigration at the port of New York alone, during these thirty years, of about 2,800,000 souls. But we shall return to this part of our subject later on.

The emigration from Germany at the port of New York during the year 1876 was 21,035 persons, of whom 17,974 were steerage passengers; in 1875 the number was 25,559; during the twenty-eight years from 1847 to 1875 the average number of emigrants arriving from Germany at this port had been 75,000 annually. The severe and sudden check which emigration received in 1875 must be traced, in the case of Germany, almost wholly to the effects of the financial disasters which had occurred in the United States, and which had then begun to be heavily felt. The Germans are a prudent people; they are exceedingly well informed concerning the condition of affairs here, and they were well advised not to come to a new country at a moment when industry and trade were prostrated, when labor was superabundant and poorly paid, and when confidence and enterprise were so paralyzed that capital could find no productive or safe employment. The restrictive measures against emigration instigated and enforced by Prince Bismarck, and the financial distress which prevailed, and which still prevails, in Germany, had also their influence in discouraging and retarding emigration; but the principal cause of its decline in the case of Germany was the one we have mentioned. When that cause shall have ceased to act, as there is reason to believe it soon will do, we can expect with confidence a revival of emigration from Germany and the other Continental countries of Europe. Should the present war in the East become general and involve all Europe, the anxiety of the people to escape its horrors and burdens will increase the desire for emigration, but their facilities for seeking a new home will probably be lessened by the same causes. We must, in all likelihood, wait for the return of prosperity here and of peace in Europe before the great wave of emigration again rises to its former level. There is no reason to doubt that in due time it will again attain its former proportions; but the principal countries from whence we must hereafter look for our emigrants are Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Holland, and perhaps England. The emigration of the future, most probably, will to a large extent be composed of people possessed of some capital, and prepared to begin their new life under far more favorable conditions than those which surrounded the Irish and German emigrants of past years upon their arrival here. The latter, landing here too often with no capital but their muscles, their honest hearts, and strong but often uncultivated intellects, have accomplished the work to which they were ordained. Their successors will find much prepared for them, but they also will have their mission to fulfil.

Let us now endeavor to ascertain with as much accuracy as possible in what manner our foreign-born citizens have disposed of themselves, and what it is that they have done and are doing for us, for themselves, and for God. It appears that, according to the census of 1870, the whole number of foreign-born persons then in the United States was 5,567,229, of whom 62,736 were Chinese, 9,654 were negroes, and 1,136 were Indians. There were also 9,734,845 persons who had been born in this country, but whose parents were all of foreign birth, and 1,157,170 others the father or mother of each of whom had been of foreign birth. These 16,459,244 persons constituted, in 1870, the whole of that portion of our population which could in any way be classed as foreign or as being under the immediate domestic influence of foreigners. There remained 22,099,132 persons, who were not only native-born, but whose parents on both sides were natives. Let us deal, first, with the persons of foreign birth. In 1850 there were but 2,244,602 persons of this class; in 1860 they had increased to 4,138,697, and in 1870 to 5,567,229 souls. The following table will show their nationalities:

Ireland 1,855,827 England 550,688 Scotland 140,809 Wales 74,530 Great Britain[74] 4,117 Germany 1,690,410 France 116,240 Denmark 30,098 Holland 46,801 Hungary 3,649 Italy 17,147 Belgium 12,552 Luxembourg 5,802 Austria 30,506 Bohemia 40,287 Norway 114,243 Poland 14,435 Portugal 4,495 Russia 4,638 Spain 3,701 Sweden 97,327 Switzerland 75,145 Turkey 301 Malta 51 China 63,042 Greece 390 Greenland 3 India 551 Japan 73 Africa 673 Asia 834 Australia 3,111 Pacific Isles 305 Sandwich Isles 539 South America 3,378 West Indies 4,897 Mexico 41,308 Cuba 4,811 Atlantic Isles 4,219 British America 489,344 At sea 2,612 Unknown 2,135

Footnote 74:

What part not stated.

We have omitted from the above table 9,654 negroes and 1,136 Indians, born outside of the United States.

Where now do we find these five and a half millions of foreign-born citizens? The greater part of them—4,193,971—were congregated in ten States, as shown by the following table:

TABLE OF TEN STATES HAVING 200,000 OR MORE OF FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION.

STATES. 1870. 1860. 1850. California 209,831 146,518 21,802 Illinois 515,198 324,643 111,892 Iowa 204,692 106,077 20 969 Massachusetts 353,319 260,106 164,024 Michigan 268,010 149,093 54,703 Missouri 221,267 160,541 76,592 New York 1,138,353 1,001,280 655,929 Ohio 372 493 328,249 218,193 Pennsylvania 545,309 430,505 303,417 Wisconsin 364,499 276,927 110,477

4,193,971 3,183,939 1,737,998

There were fourteen States each of which had an Irish-born population of less than 10,000 souls—to wit, Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Virginia; nineteen States each of which had an Irish-born population of less than 100,000—to wit, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin; while Illinois had 120,000, Massachusetts 216,000, Pennsylvania 235,000, and New York 528,000 Irish-born citizens. Eighteen States had each a German-born population of less than 10,000—namely, Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia. Thirteen States had each a German-born population of less than 100,000—namely, California, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Texas; while Missouri had 113,618, Pennsylvania 160,146, Wisconsin 162,314, Ohio 182,889, Illinois 203,750, and New York 316,882. The following table will show the exact number of persons of Austrian, German, French, and Irish birth residing in each State in 1870:

States. Austrian. French. German. Irish. Alabama 99 587 2,479 3,893 Arkansas 41 236 1,562 1,428 California 1,078 8,063 29,699 54,421 Connecticut 154 820 1,243 70,630 Delaware 8 127 1,141 5,007 Florida 17 126 595 737 Georgia 34 308 2,760 5,093 Illinois 2,099 10,908 203,750 120,162 Indiana 443 6,362 78,056 28,698 Iowa 2,691 3,130 66,160 40,124 Kansas 448 1,274 12,774 10,040 Kentucky 146 2,052 30,318 21,642 Louisiana 433 12,288 18,912 17,068 Maine 10 136 508 15,745 Maryland 266 640 47,045 23 630 Massachusetts 255 1,627 13,070 216,120 Michigan 795 3,120 64,143 42,013 Minnesota 2,647 1,743 41,364 21,746 Mississippi 85 621 2,954 3,359 Missouri 1,493 6,291 113,618 54,983 Nebraska 299 340 10,954 4,999 Nevada 157 414 2,181 5,135 New Hampshire 9 59 436 12,190 New Jersey 686 3,128 53,999 86,784 New York 3,928 22,273 316,882 528,806 North Carolina 13 53 904 677 Ohio 3,699 12,778 182,889 82,674 Oregon 53 308 1,875 1,967 Pennsylvania 1,556 8,682 160,146 235,798 Rhode Island 19 167 1,200 31,534 South Carolina 10 143 2,742 3,262 Tennessee 112 562 4,525 8,048 Texas 1,748 2,226 23,976 4,031 Vermont 2 93 370 14,080 Virginia 56 368 4,050 5,191 West Virginia 59 223 6,231 6,832 Wisconsin 4,486 2,704 162,314 48,479

30,104 116,240 1,690,410 1,855,827

These four nationalities, then, account for 3,692,581 of the foreign-born population in 1870; and the remaining 1,874,648 had their birth in the other thirty-five different countries named in one of our preceding tables. A glance over the table just given will show still more plainly within what limits the great bulk of the Irish and German born population is found; and the reader will remember that we have shown that all but 1,373,258 of the entire foreign-born population were residing in the ten States of California, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In twenty of the States the persons of Irish birth exceeded those of German birth; in the remaining seventeen States the latter outnumbered the former. The excess of persons of Irish birth over those of German birth, however, was only 165,417. This was seven years ago. During these seven years the emigration from Germany has almost equalled that from Ireland, and for the thirty years last past, taken as a whole, the arrivals from Germany have exceeded those from Ireland by 119,293 souls. We shall probably not be far out of the way if we assume that the entire foreign-born population of the United States is at present about seven millions, of whom two and a half millions are of German, and nearly an equal number of Irish, birth. Let us, however, continue to confine ourselves for the present to the official facts in our possession, and proceed to follow up the 5,567,229 persons of foreign birth whom we know were among us in 1870.

One of the remarks most frequently made concerning the foreign-born population of this country is that it has a general disposition to congregate in our large cities, from which have come consequences highly prejudicial both to itself and to the community at large. These two assertions have been made so persistently and in such good faith; they have seemed to be so susceptible of proof and so apparently true; and they have chimed in so well with the sometimes latent and sometimes active prejudice against “foreigners” which is so often found in the breasts of the natives of every country, that they have passed current almost without challenge and have come to be regarded as axioms. Nay, not a few of our foreign-born citizens themselves, and even of the Catholic bishops and clergy, have often accepted these two assertions as true, and have not ceased to deplore the crowding of the foreign population into the large cities, regarding it as an almost unmixed evil, and pointing to it as the source of direful woe. No doubt they have had some reason on their side. A large proportion of the crime and misery of our cities is perpetrated and suffered by foreign-born citizens or by their children in the first generation. Had these citizens not been gathered together in the cities, but scattered at remote distances throughout the country, they might have been criminal and miserable, but their crime and misery would not have been so obtrusive and apparent to every observer. But, leaving this point for a moment to return to it in the light of the facts we are about to adduce, let us see what amount of truth there is in these two assertions. We may remark, in passing, that the truth of the first does not necessarily imply the truth of the second: it may be true that the foreign-born population has congregated to an apparently undue and unwise extent in our cities, but it may not be true that this has been by any means an unmixed evil either to the foreigners themselves or to the native-born.

POPULATION, NATIVE AND FOREIGN, OF THE LARGE CITIES, 1870.

CITIES. Scotch. French. Austrian. Belgian. New York 7,559 8,240 2,737 325 Philadelphia 4,175 2,471 519 116 Brooklyn 4,098 1,892 321 142 St. Louis 1,202 2,788 751 254 Chicago 4,195 1,417 704 392 Baltimore 525 428 215 29 Boston 1,794 615 124 31 Cincinnati 787 2,090 554 46 New Orleans 568 8,806 253 134 San Francisco 1,687 3,543 470 139 Buffalo 996 2,332 135 37 Washington 298 191 26 8 Newark 870 710 261 45 Louisville 298 856 69 31 Cleveland 668 339 2,155 16 Pittsburgh 584 348 117 9 Jersey City 1,175 276 69 43 Detroit 1,637 760 161 233 Milwaukee 423 189 574 79 Albany 427 149 36 17 Providence 575 72 5 1 Rochester 428 475 39 4 Allegheny 570 619 109 6 Richmond 146 144 29 5 New Haven 347 133 54 6 Charleston 115 97 39 4 Indianapolis 258 237 14 5 Troy 462 88 14 7 Syracuse 138 276 47 1 Worcester 187 29 12 1 Lowell 469 28 3 3 Memphis 119 207 14 10 Cambridge 298 100 9 1 Hartford 359 92 20 6 Scranton 366 64 4 — Reading 35 77 36 2 Paterson 879 237 48 21 Kansas City 180 110 44 1 Mobile 166 311 33 11 Toledo 119 206 93 — Portland 172 23 2 1 Columbus 133 238 20 — Wilmington 117 64 — 2 Dayton 90 242 28 2 Lawrence 691 4 9 2 Utica 198 287 25 2 Charlestown 89 29 1 2 Savannah 72 99 5 — Lynn 72 5 1 — Fall River 382 3 4 2

Totals 43,055 42,430 11,218 2,232

CITIES. Native. Irish. German. English. Brit. Amer. New York 523,198 201,999 151,203 24,408 4,372 Philadelphia 490,398 96,698 50,746 22,034 1,453 Brooklyn 251,381 73,985 36,769 18,832 2,779 St. Louis 198,615 32,239 59,040 5,366 1,986 Chicago 154,420 39,988 52,316 10,026 9,528 Baltimore 210,870 15,223 35,276 2,138 292 Boston 162,540 56,900 5,606 5,968 13,548 Cincinnati 136,627 18,624 49,446 3,524 1,175 New Orleans 142,943 14,693 15,224 2,005 384 San Francisco 75,754 25,864 13,602 5,166 2,237 Buffalo 71,477 11,264 22,249 3,558 4,113 Washington 95,442 6,948 4,131 1,231 211 Newark 69,175 12,481 15,873 4,040 296 Louisville 75,085 7,626 14,380 930 311 Cleveland 54,014 9,964 15,855 4,530 2,599 Pittsburgh 58,254 13,119 8,703 2,838 282 Jersey City 50,711 17,665 7,151 4,005 556 Detroit 44,196 6,970 12,647 3,282 7,398 Milwaukee 37,667 3,784 22,599 1,395 792 Albany 47,215 13,276 5,168 1,572 843 Providence 51,727 12,085 592 2,426 1,038 Rochester 41,202 6,078 7,730 2,530 2,619 Allegheny City 37,872 4,034 7,665 1,112 152 Richmond 47,260 1,239 1,621 289 42 New Haven 36,482 9,601 2,423 1,087 336 Charleston 44,064 2,180 1,826 234 32 Indianapolis 37,587 3,321 5,286 697 297 Troy 30,246 10,877 1,174 1,575 1,697 Syracuse 29,061 5,172 5,062 1,345 1,167 Worcester 29,159 8,389 325 893 1,960 Lowell 26,493 9,103 34 1,697 3,034 Memphis 33,446 2,987 1,768 589 225 Cambridge 27,579 7,180 482 1,043 2,518 Hartford 26,363 7,438 1,438 787 396 Scranton 19,205 6,491 3,056 1,444 125 Reading 30,059 547 2,648 305 26 Paterson 20,711 5,124 1,429 3,347 128 Kansas City 24,581 2,869 1,884 709 821 Mobile 27,795 2,000 843 386 55 Toledo 20,485 3,032 5,341 694 984 Portland 24,401 3,900 82 557 2,017 Columbus 23,663 1,845 3,982 504 190 Wilmington 25,689 3,503 684 613 47 Dayton 23,050 1,326 4,962 394 131 Lawrence 16,204 7,457 467 2,456 1,563 Utica 18,955 3,496 2,822 1,352 261 Charlestown 21,399 4,803 216 488 1,119 Savannah 24,564 2,197 787 251 63 Lynn 23,298 3,232 17 330 1,133 Fall River 15,288 5,572 37 4,042 1,324

Totals 3,808,770 826,398 564,967 165,024 80,728

In fifty of the largest cities of the United States there was in 1870 a total native population of 3,808,770 souls; 826,398 persons of Irish birth; 564,967 of German birth; 165,024 of English birth; 80,728 natives of British America; 43,055 natives of Scotland; 42,430 natives of France; 11,218 natives of Austria; and 2,232 natives of Belgium—in all, 1,736,052 persons born in foreign countries.

The foregoing tables give the native population of each of these fifty cities, with the foreign population belonging to each of these eight nationalities.

The persons of foreign birth of other nationalities in the above cities would raise the whole number to about 1,800,000 souls.

It is to be noticed from this table, in the first place, that in these fifty cities, in 1870, the proportion of foreign-born to native inhabitants was almost exactly as 18 is to 38—1,800,000 to 3,808,770—while the proportion of foreign-born to native inhabitants in the entire Union was almost exactly as 5 is to 38—5,567,229 to 38,558,371. It must be confessed that on this showing there was an apparently or a really undue proportion of our foreign-born citizens congregated in the large cities. But it should be remembered that among the native-born population were the 10,892,015 persons who had been born here of parents, on one or both sides, of foreign birth, and who, to this extent, were _quasi_-foreign. If these be taken into account, the proportion of foreign-born and the immediate descendants of foreign-born persons to the rest of the population throughout the country in 1870 would have been as 16 to 38—16,459,239 to 38,558,371. This is really the more correct basis upon which to make the comparison; for without doubt a large proportion of the ten millions of persons born here of foreign parents were the children of the five millions of foreign-born persons; and it is perfectly natural that the parents and the children should be found living in the same localities. After giving to this consideration, however, all the weight to which it is entitled, the fact still remains that an apparently excessive proportion of our foreign-born citizens are to be found in the large cities.

Let us look still closer into the subject. The whole number of persons of Irish birth in the United States in 1870 was 1,855,827, and of these 826,398, or 44.4 per cent., were living in these fifty cities. There were 1,690,410 Germans, and 564,967 of them, or 33.4 per cent., were in the cities; 550,688 English, of whom 165,024, or nearly 30 per cent., were in the cities; 489,344 British Americans, of whom 80,728, or only 16.5 per cent., were in the cities; while 30 per cent. of the Scotch, 36.5 per cent. of the French, 36.7 per cent. of the Austrians, and 17.7 per cent. of the Belgians were in the same category. Our Irish fellow-citizens are the greatest sinners—if any are sinners in this respect—and after them, in a declining ratio, come the Austrians, French, Germans, Scotch, English, Belgians, and British Americans. The Irish, Austrians, French, and Germans are the Roman Catholic emigrants, and in the wisdom of God it has been ordained that they should be the ones most crowded into the cities. How have they performed there the work which he sent them to do?

Our cities are the centres of the intelligence, the culture, and the wealth of our country. They contain to a very large extent the brains of the republic. From them issue influences which sway, if they do not absolutely control, the thoughts and actions of the people. These influences are not, by any means, always altogether wholesome, but they are unquestionably potent. The newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals published in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Milwaukee have a circulation exceeding that of the similar publications of all the rest of the country combined. The serial publications of one firm in New York alone reach into the millions; the aggregate annual circulation of the New York daily and weekly journals is so large that mere figures expressing it convey but a faint idea of its extent. The publisher of a magazine in New York told the writer the other day that if the copies of his publication issued each year were stacked together, the column would be three times as high as Trinity Church steeple.

The social influences of the cities upon the rural districts are also powerful. The cities not only set the fashions in dress, but in political, moral, and religious thought and custom. The sturdy independence of the bucolic mind may yet boast of its existence, but it very often yields to the sway of urban ideas. A lady who had lived all her life in a small village, in which the only Catholic population consisted of a handful of poor Irish people, destitute of a church, and visited only at long intervals by a humble priest who celebrated the divine Mysteries in an attic over a liquor-store, not long ago came to New York, and was taken by her friends into one of our magnificent Catholic churches. The grandeur and beauty of the Mass were for the first time revealed to her; for the first time she obtained an idea of what the Catholic Church was and what it taught. By the grace of God her conversion followed, and, mainly through her exertions and her influence after her return home, her village is now blessed with a church, a resident priest, and a Catholic population composed largely of converts. In very many of our rural localities all over the Union the Catholics are few and poor; in too many of them the idea of a Roman Catholic in the minds of the natives is still associated only with the idea of an ignorant fanatic, who worships images, pays half a dollar to a priest to pardon him for a crime, and believes that the Pope is God. But when the country merchant of such a locality comes to New York to make his purchases, and sees the splendid Catholic churches here, and finds, perhaps, that the great importer with whom he deals, or the wealthy banker, or the renowned lawyer to whom he is introduced, is a Roman Catholic, and not unseldom an Irishman or a German, his eyes are opened and his mind is prepared for the reception of the truth. In a word, the congregation of foreign-born emigrants, the most of whom are Catholics, in our large cities, has had the effect of making the Catholic church in these cities a noticeable and a respectable fact, and of thereby accomplishing one of the preliminaries in the work which it has yet to perform in the republic. The influence of this fact is to be perceived, also, in the changed tone of the secular press with regard to the church. Respectable journalists, with few and decreasing exceptions, have become ashamed to repeat the vulgar and senseless slanders and the worn-out calumnies concerning the church, her ministers, her dogmas, and her sacraments which were so current twenty years ago. In communities consisting in an appreciable and often in a large proportion of intelligent, wealthy, and influential Catholics, the able editors do not venture any longer to amuse their readers with arguments based on the assumption that the church is the foe of knowledge and of education, and that her mission is to degrade, enslave, and pauperize mankind. In cities where the spires of dozens and scores of Catholic churches, tipped with the emblem of our salvation, point towards heaven; where Catholic hospitals, asylums, schools, and academies abound; where many of the most enterprising and wealthy merchants, manufacturers, and bankers are Catholics; where in the front rank of all the professions Catholics are found—in these communities it is no longer a social disgrace or a mark of singularity to be a Catholic, and a convert to the faith is no longer looked upon as a person of weak intellect or a slave to a benumbing and degrading superstition. We shall show, in the subsequent pages of our article, that for all this, to a very great extent, and under what seems to have been the direct guidance of God, we are indebted to the foreign-born population of the country, and that its accomplishment was made possible, humanly speaking, by their congregating themselves in the cities instead of dispersing in small bodies throughout the agricultural regions of the country. But we shall show, also, that, the work of God having thus far been accomplished, the time has now arrived when the future emigration to the United States should be directed towards the rural districts, under conditions which, until now, were practically impossible; and we shall seek to point out in what manner this new colonization may be best directed in order to promote the welfare of the emigrants themselves, the prosperity of our country, and the greater glory of God.

ALBA’S DREAM. BY THE AUTHOR OF “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” “A SALON IN PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” ETC.