CHAPTER XIV.

THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE. CONCLUSION.

The morning they started for Monte Cassino the Signora had a Mass said for her intention, and the intention was that she might be enabled to decide speedily on her state of life, and to decide so clearly and wisely as never again to have a doubt about it. Never had she been nearer to accepting Mr. Vane, and never had she been more tremblingly afraid of doing so. The suspense and trouble were becoming intolerable. She felt that it must be settled within these three days.

But no sooner was the journey begun than all else was lost sight of. It was impossible to pass with a preoccupied mind amid all that beauty; impossible not to feel one’s individual life dwindle in view of the life of centuries there made visible. The Campagna slipped past like an old monotonous song that has been sung over one’s cradle, and heard in quiet intervals all up the years, till every note has grown to be something more than a simple sound, and is rather a long series of octaves caught along the heart-strings. Then

“The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,”

pressing near the track, and looking over each other’s heads at the train as it went, as if wondering what new Jason was ploughing with fiery-snorting monsters down through the green fields of the south. Dim, gray cities stood petrified on their heights, without a sign of life; and the torrent-beds on their sides were like silvery paths up which the souls of all the dead had climbed, and so faded off into space. What fancies went up those converging paths, and spread their wings in the shining clouds that moored themselves on crest after crest! Or, fair as any fancy, what brooks and torrents came rushing down in the rainy October and petulant April, catching the sunshine as they ran, and bringing flowers and harvests and fountains for the thirsty plains. On they went through the smiling, luxuriant paradise waving with solid green and bloom in the valleys. Dark forests hung suspended in gorges, cities lifted themselves between the mountains to look, here and there a castle sat on its rock like a king on his throne. They could no more have pointed out the rapidly-succeeding beauties to each other than they could have indicated the swift flashes of a tempest.

At length, and before they had begun to think they were tired, the cars stopped at the station of San Germano, and here a very tall old man, bent into the shape of a new moon, recognized them as the party he was on the watch for, and informed them that the donkeys were waiting for them outside, and that they were expected to dine at Monte Cassino.

They recollected that they were a little tired and a little hungry, and, very opportunely, a pretty young _contadina_ presented herself with a basket of bread, fruit, boiled eggs, and wine. So they seated themselves in the waiting-room, a circle of admiring _contadini_ standing about and watching every mouthful they ate, as a dog watches.

“Are we expected to take more than we want and give them what remains?” Isabel asked.

The Signora glanced over the company, and demanded to know which men had charge of the donkeys.

Five stout young fellows stood forward, and a sixth made haste to explain that four of them would attend to the party, and a fifth would carry their baggage up on another donkey.

“And have you anything to do with us?” she inquired politely of this informant.

“I belong to the hotel of San Germano,” he replied, and then went on to explain the situation still further.

“Oh! thanks; but don’t trouble yourself,” the Signora interrupted quite coolly. “You need not wait for us. Five men are quite enough to do all we want done.”

He withdrew a little, but did not go away. There was not the slightest sign of resentment or mortification. He was actuated by a simple and unadulterated desire for money, and meant to stay by till the last minute, in the hope that he might snatch at the chance of some small service which would give him a claim.

“Now, girls,” the Signora said, “don’t you give a penny to any one, unless I tell you. Here are twenty people on the watch for money. Don’t let any one do the smallest thing for you, except these five men. We will give them some bread and wine. That is all they will want. The Italian poor live on bread. What does that old man want of us?” she inquired of one of the donkey-men.

The old man, who had been constantly hovering near, came forward at once. He was the letter-carrier for the monastery.

“Oh! I did not know but you had something to do with the donkeys,” she remarked.

He came a step nearer. “I do not go up till evening,” he said with an insinuating smile.

“Go whenever you like,” she answered obligingly. “If you should bring us up any letters, however, we will give you a _soldo_ for each one.”

He glanced longingly at the bread and wine, but she rose without taking any further notice of him.

“How much is your wine a bottle?” she asked of the pretty young vendor.

“Fifteen _soldi_, Signora,” was the innocent reply.

“Nonsense! I will give you five.”

Exclamations, deprecation, grieved reproach on the part of the young woman. The wine was too good for that, she protested. It was the best dry wine of the country, and sincere, as the Signora could see.

The Signora was not so new as they had supposed. She had bought better wine in larger bottles, in Genzano, close to Rome, for seven cents a bottle, and this was high at six. It was not, however, worth while to multiply words about it, and they made a compromise by paying seven _soldi_ a bottle, with which the young woman seemed to be perfectly well satisfied.

Then they went out and mounted their donkeys, followed by the reproachful eyes and extended hands of fourteen men and children, and closely attended by the young hotel servant, who attached himself to Bianca. Marion, having visited Monte Cassino thoroughly not long before, had not accompanied them, being a little delicate, too, about joining himself to a party without an invitation from the monastery, though he would certainly have been included had his connection with the family been known.

Bianca dropped her pocket-handkerchief, and the young volunteer esquire rushed to pick it up and present it to her with a gallant touch of the cap and a smile that displayed a fine set of teeth. She accepted it with blushing thanks.

“My dear, he counts on half a _lira_ for that,” the Signora remarked. “Don’t get any romantic ideas into your head. He would be as gallant as that to a witch, if he thought she would pay him. You must really put on a more severe expression. You have precisely the look at this moment of some young princess of fairyland who goes about giving bags of gold to everybody. If you keep on that sweet face, you will be as surrounded by beggars as a lump of sugar with flies.”

“You are a terribly forbidding and obdurate woman,” Mr. Vane said, looking into the Signora’s laughing face.

“I am sometimes,” she protested. “I pity one beggar, or two beggars, or sometimes three beggars; but when I see a score of healthy cormorants surround poor travellers, and ready for any pretence or any servility to get money out of them, I lose patience. I’ve been victimized too much in days that are gone to be very long-suffering now. Besides, I work for my money and have a feeling of indignation when I see a strong, healthy person stretch out a hand that has done me no service. Aren’t these donkeys little darlings? I do think they are the most useful, faithful creatures in the world.”

“If I could only know just where the backbone of mine is situated,” Isabel said pathetically; for her saddle had been constantly slipping either backward or forward ever since she mounted. “It really seems to me that I could ride a rail more securely. There I go! Oh!”

The hotel-servant rushed enthusiastically to catch the back of her saddle, and lift the rider from her nearly horizontal position, and help her off while they tightened the girths.

“It’s a sort of knack which you will soon learn,” the Signora said consolingly. “The poor little animals are as thin as a rail, but the saddles are like a chair. Just let yourself go, humor the motion of the donkey, and in a little while you will sit like—like Bianca there. Look at that child! All she wants is an infant in her arms!”

They had passed the narrow and stony loops of the path out of the town, and reached the mountain-side, and, as the Signora spoke, Bianca, leading the procession, went round a turn before them and came back higher up. She sat in the saddle as easily as if in a chair, upright, her hands folded in her lap, and her fair face uplifted as she gazed at the great pile of the monastery on the peak above them.

She needed, indeed, but an infant in her arms to be a ready picture of the Holy Mother and Child in the Flight into Egypt. She had taken off her hat and laid a large veil over her head. A blue mantle hung over her shoulders and came close to her white neck. The beast she rode, the saddle, the rocky path—all were perfect. She passed under a cypress-tree that pressed her eyes down with its black shadow, and, in that downward glance, caught their looks directed to her. She smiled, clasped her hands, and glanced around in mute rapture.

To and fro, to and fro they wound up the height, every turn unwinding and enlarging the scene below. The low hills of the plain disappeared, leaving only a vast level laid out in an exquisite mosaic of varied greens, with houses here and there, single or in clusters, forests that had dwindled to groves, and groves that looked like bouquets. The shining turns of a river lay amid that verdure, like a silver chain dropped and half-hidden in the grass. All round the mountains circled close and jealous, guarding this little paradise. Now they were skirted with trees; now they rose in harsh masses of stone that looked as if not even a blade of grass could find a foothold. A picturesque castle stood on a spur sent off from the mountain they were ascending.

Above them the vast square of the monastery, with its many windows and balconies, grew every moment nearer. After an hour’s ride trees shut them into an avenue, and they found themselves close under the grand walls of the building. They alighted at the lofty open archway and saw before them a long, ascending passage that looked strong enough to support even that pile on its solid arches. The first half was dim, and part way up, at the right, was a shrine in the wall, with its floating flame burning before some saintly face only half-visible behind the wire screen. The upper half was lighted by arched windows at the left, showing a double wall there, with some sort of room or passage between, arched openings in the inner wall answering to the windows. At the upper end of this avenue of stone shut the great black valves of a double iron door, studded thickly with nails, pierced with a little cluster of holes to peep through at one side, and showing the outline of a smaller door in the right valve.

The massive walls and doors, the long, sloping ascent, the light and shade, the one little golden flame, were like nothing of the nineteenth century. The action and business of such a place were not the action and business peculiar and suitable to our times. Ecclesiastical processions might go up there; the scarlet fire of a cardinal’s robe in the midst of a group of attendants would well befit that dim and echoing passage; a cavalcade of knights and ladies, with horn and hound and nodding plumes; a company of soldiers with shield and helmet—these were the figures to animate such a scene. Or, most perfect picture of all, one might imagine there that sublime company, the very thought of which brings tears to the eyes—that long procession of ecclesiastics and people, with their banners and crucifixes and candles, chanting funeral hymns as they ascended, bearing up to the mountain-top for burial the twin saint of the glorious founder and father of the monastery—Santa Scholastica. It is but yesterday, it seems, that the brother and sister parted, having their last conference together under a little roof down the mountain-side, while the tempest stormed about them. It is but this morning that St. Benedict has sent his monks down to bring the holy relics up and lay them in his own tomb under the grand altar, where soon he will join her. So the colossal saints of all time know how to recognize the grandeur of a true woman. These men are so near the most sublime and regal of creatures—the awful, immaculate Virgin—and the very type of penitents—the thrice-purified Magdalen—that the shining veil of the one and the sacred tears of the other flow about their sisters, and woman is honored in whatever work her Creator calls her to do. It was in the times, still illuminated by the twilight of the scarcely-departed presence of the Morning Star and the Son, that St. Gregory the Great ordered his mother’s portrait painted with the mitre of a doctor on her head, and one hand raised in benediction, while with the other she taught her son from the sacred Book on her knees—the queenly St. Sylvia! It was in such days that St. Chrysostom proclaimed that women may participate, as well as men, in combats for the cause of God and the church; that St. Melania, the younger, disputed so eloquently with the Nestorians that she converted many and frightened the rest, showing herself so powerful that Pelagius, who drew away priests and bishops, strove, but in vain, to convert her into an assistant; the same Melania who converted the persecutor, Volusianus, whom all the eloquence of St. Augustine could not convert. It was in such days that saintly women inspired the Fathers of the church to write, and that St. Gregory conceived his Treatise on the Soul and on Resurrection while sitting at his dying sister’s bedside and listening to her discourse on death, as she consoled him for the death of St. Basil.

And not only such thoughts and recollections, dear to women, flowed in as they went up the path that St. Scholastica had passed before them, but other recollections, dear to scholars and precious to the church and to civilization. Here was one of the citadels of learning in times when barbarous invasions overran the land and threatened to extinguish every spark of intellectual and spiritual wealth that the race of man had accumulated. Here the monks, with a zeal kindled to passion, hoarded and preserved the remains of their devastated treasures, and spent unwearied days and nights in multiplying copies of writings that must not die. Here, with the devotion of the bridegroom who brings the most precious gems he can procure to deck his bride, or of parents who shower upon their only child every gift in their power to bestow, genius the most exquisite consecrated itself to the work of adorning the page of the text of praise and prayer with such marvellous miniature beauty of form and color as only the fairy pencil of Nature can rival.

Wrapt and exalted in such recollections, the Signora moved as one in a dream, forgetting her companions entirely. It was only when the great iron doors swung open before her, and she saw a tall gentleman in a black robe hurrying forward, with his hand extended in cordial welcome to Mr. Vane, that she came back to the nineteenth century, and made an effort to salute in a sufficiently-composed manner the prior of Monte Cassino, Father Boniface.

But it was a very beautiful nineteenth century that she recalled herself to. They were within the monastery buildings, which completely surrounded them in a massive square, broken in the middle at the left by a long portico of white travertine supporting a superb terrace called the _Loggia del Paradiso_, and at the right, in the centre, also, by the grand stairs that go up to the higher level of the mountain peak, around which the monastery is built. This _loggia_ and the grand stairs are at the opposite sides of a court with a picturesque well in the centre, and colossal statues of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. The paved court is between two others, which are turned into gardens, the three separated by double colonnades and surrounded by porticos. At the head of the stairs, which are the whole width of the court, another portico opens into the upper court—that of the church—and has a door at either side leading back to the _Loggia del Paradiso_. The church court, also surrounded by porticos and adorned with statues, is closed on one side by the church. This is built on the very mountain-top, the confession being hewn out of the solid rock.

This plan they caught at first, though but in a glance; for, after welcoming them all, the prior conducted them through two or three dimly-lighted rooms, all of stone, unfurnished and unadorned, into a bright parlor, where a balcony window gave them a view of all the beautiful valley with its surrounding mountains. In a few minutes dinner was announced as prepared in the next chamber, and here they found a table laid out with the freshest of linen, old silver as white almost as the cloth, and a well-cooked and well-served dinner.

Weakening their wine before drinking it, they all observed the quality of the water, limpid and light as some third element half-water and half-air, and the prior explained to them that the monastery used rain-water filtered.

“We have a great cistern, ninety feet square, hollowed out in the mountain under the central court. The well you saw there is in the centre of it. The water is thoroughly filtered. Moreover, the conduits that admit it to the cistern are closed during the four hot months, so that only cold water enters.”

This prior, the “urbane librarian” of Longfellow’s recollections of Monte Cassino, was not only a kind and generous host and an intelligent _cicerone_, but a most agreeable and interesting man. He had a noble figure and a handsome, bright face, and combined in his character qualities which might have been thought to be inharmonious; for he was at the same time an enthusiastic monk, proud of his venerable order, and devoted heart and soul to his monastery, and a man quite up to the times in all that the times have of praise-worthy.

After dinner he led them up to see the church, pointing out the statues as they went. Here were the father and mother of St. Benedict, and with them popes, royal dukes, kings, and emperors. Before entering they paused to look at the great door of bronze, cast in Constantinople, in which is written in silver letters the list of the possessions of the abbey at the time the door was made, in 1066. At this time, more than eight hundred years later, nothing was left of these riches.

Entering the church, they stood astonished. If it had been built of simple marble, moderately varied and ornamented, there would still have been enough to praise warmly in the beautiful form and proportions of the three naves, the grand altar by Michael Angelo, the raised tribune, and the beautiful paintings of the dome, roof, and eight chapels. But these were only the frame-work of a mosaic the most splendid covering every part of the edifice to the dimmest corner or the smallest nook behind a column. And this mosaic is not that comparatively simpler kind, made of small bits, but each flower and figure is cut from a single piece of marble or precious stone, and so perfectly fitted into the groundwork that the point of a pin could not be introduced between them. It was hard at first to believe that the whole was not exquisitely painted in every possible color and shade, and it needed a touch or a near sight of that fine, inimitable gloss of marble to convince one of the incalculable riches of the whole. The very floor was superb enough for the walls of a splendid church; the very steps of the tribune were set with mosaics.

The Signora took pencil and paper, and attempted to make a memorandum of only one chapel, to enumerate its alabaster columns, its flowers of mother-of-pearl, amethyst, agate, and lapis-lazuli, its infinitely-varied marbles and precious stones and its infinitely varied designs, and, after ten minutes’ rapid work, gave up the task. A week would have been necessary for that one chapel; and there were seven more, besides the altar, the confession, and the tribune.

“You like carved wood?” the prior asked, with a smile of anticipated triumph, as they went up the tribune steps.

“Who does not?” the Signora exclaimed. “Carved wood and lace are two of my passions. I have never stolen any lace, and I hope I never shall. Wood-carving is fortunately usually in too heavy pieces to suggest the possibility of being carried away in one’s pocket.”

“We must, however, first visit St. Benedict and Santa Scholastica,” said their guide, too charitable, as well as too enthusiastic for beautiful things, to be shocked at this little escapade.

Thirteen silver lamps burned before the screen at the back of the grand altar, and under that screen reposed the bodies of the twin saints. Above them, written in golden letters, was the inscription:

“Benedictum et Scholasticam Uno in terris partu editos, Una in Deum pietate cœlo Redetos, Unis Hic Excipit Tumulus, Mortalis depositi pro Aeternitate custos.”

Rising from their knees, they turned and faced the choir—a double row of stalls forming three sides of a large square open to the altar. Looked at from a little distance, these stalls had the appearance of having been closely overgrown at some past time with the finest of vines, which had turned black and petrified there, preserving perfectly every little leaf and tendril, and still covering entirely the plain wood beneath. Looking longer, one saw little figures and faces, and birds and animals. Going nearer scarcely dispelled the illusion, so finely was every particle carved—the vines and leaves in some places quite separated from the ground, so that one slipped the finger-tip behind them. Every stall was different, every one provoked a new exclamation of admiring wonder.

Then they went into the sacristy, a long hall with the sides completely lined with presses of dark wood with gilded metal ornaments. These presses also were carved finely, each department, in front of which a priest would vest himself for Mass, having a bas-relief of a subject suggesting some particular virtue, as that of the Pharisee and the publican in the Temple, suggesting humility.

Back of the sacristy was the relic-chamber, where, in addition to the more sacred treasures, the ladies admired especially two little antique caskets, one of smalt, bright as a jewel, the other of carved ivory of the most delicious tint of creamy white—that tint so soft that it seems as if the material itself must yield like down to the touch. They gave one glance at a crosier by Benvenuto Cellini, on the inner curve of which stood a tiny group, then tore themselves away. The afternoon was waning, and there was left them but a day and a half more, with

“Such rooms to explore, Such alcoves to importune.”

The air of this place was an ideal atmosphere; one breathed it like a fine wine that exhilarates delicately, but does not inebriate. It was soft but not warm, fresh but not chilly, and as pure as pure can be. The fresh, rosy faces of the troop of young students they met going out showed how this mountain air agreed with them.

“What a place to send boys to!” Mr. Vane exclaimed. “It is a little world in itself, where they can have every amusement and companionship, as well as instruction; and one has but to look at them to see that they are as happy as they are healthy.”

The boys were coming in from their afternoon walk down the mountain-side, and all glowing with just-subsiding fun. Each one, passing the prior, caught at his hand to kiss it; but as he would not permit himself to receive such an homage, they resorted to the amusing substitute of kissing their own hands after they had touched his.

“What beautiful recollections of their school-days those boys will carry with them through their lives!” Mr. Vane remarked, as they went out over the colonnade to the _Loggia del Paradiso_. “In no way, it seems to me, except by being educated here, unless one spend one’s life here, could one become perfectly familiar with the riches, visible and invisible, of the place; and such a familiarity would be of itself an education, especially for the impressible minds of the young.”

The front of the _Paradiso_ fills the gap in the middle of one side of the monastery—that part opposite the church—and is on a level with the church, or the second story of the monastery. It is probably the same width as the church. Leaning on the parapet there, one looks off on a view which may well give the place its name—the beautiful plain and the beautiful circling mountains, with the still, blue splendor of the southern sky gazing down upon them as if enamored of their beauty. There was no need of imagination in such a place. Simple, literal eyes were enough to flood the soul with beauty.

Familiar as he was with the scene, the prior was sympathetic enough to say but little; and even Isabel, whose impressions, being more superficial, ran a good deal into words, hushed herself out of respect for the others.

“Until we reach Rome again,” the Signora remarked to her friends as they went down the stairs to the great court, “I should like to be excused from all social intercourse, except the mere being with you bodily. I don’t want to speak or be spoken to, except to learn of this place. We have no right to talk; we are ghosts. We have come here in a dream or a vision. Father Boniface talks, of course, because he is a part of the place.”

They laughed and agreed.

“But I hope,” the prior said, “that you are not too ghostly to taste the water they are just drawing up now. See how it sparkles!”

Two columns support a cross-piece over this beautiful well, and from the centre drops an iron chain with a copper bucket at each end. When one goes down the other comes up, dripping full of airy water.

They all drank silently—each, probably, to some friend, absent or present. Bianca blushed as she drank, and her pretty mouth seemed to kiss the water. Then, standing on the upper step of the well, they leaned over the stone curb and looked down to where, far below, the surface of the water shone like a huge black diamond set in a gray border.

Tired out with travel and with pleasure, the ladies were not sorry when the prior proposed that they should go down to the house where they were to sleep.

This house is the only building on the mountain except the monastery, and is under the control of the monastery. It was built merely to accommodate lady relatives of the students who might wish to see their sons, or brothers, or nephews without the fatigue of coming up and going down the mountain the same day, and without suffering the embarrassment of spending the whole day in a house inhabited and served only by men. Now and then some benefactress or a friend of the superiors of the monastery has the privilege of stopping there. The house is small and plain, and kept by a _contadine_ and his wife. The ladies stopping there have their coffee in the house, but they dine always in a private dining-room at the monastery, from whence, also, their supper is sent down to them in the evening—supper being after Ave Maria, when the gates are closed.

Mr. Vane stayed with the prior, and the three ladies followed their guide. Their way led them a five minutes’ walk back as they had come up, then turned through an open gate in the stone wall at the right, where they found their lodgings. A _contadina_ with dark cloth draperies pinned smoothly about her, and a huge white edifice of starched linen on her head, overshadowing a pair of bright eyes, met them at the gate and welcomed them with a pleasant voice, but in a tongue where the soft Roman consonants seemed to have each and every one turned itself into the hardest kind of a Z.

The windows looked out on a long terrace with a parapet, and outside the parapet the mountain dropped steeply to the plain.

A stair, which belonged entirely to the strangers’ house, led up to the second floor, and here they found three pleasant bed-chambers awaiting them. An hour later, as they sat at their windows looking out into the twilight, they saw their _donna_, Catarina, come into the terrace with a huge basket on her arm. Her head-dress and sleeves shone white in the light of the rising moon, and there was a soft richness where the scarlet stripe ran round her petticoat, and where the rainbow colors of the apron-like upper mantle bound her without a fold. Her solid step sounded on the stair the next minute, there was the spurt of a match in the outer room of the suite, and, looking through the open doors, they saw the woman, more like a picture than any picture they recollected to have seen, standing with a curious brass lamp in her hand, carefully lighting its wick, the basket she had brought sitting on the floor at her feet.

She came into the Signora’s room with that red light all over her from the lamp she carried in her hand, smiled so as to show two rows of snowy-white teeth, and, with a “_Buona sera_,” announced that their supper had come and would be on the table in a few minutes.

The three went out into the dining-room to witness the preparations and listen to the woman’s pleasant voice as she half-talked, half-sang an account of her life and adventures there, her manner of speech being that so common among the lower classes of Italy, especially at the south—almost a sort of chant, inexpressibly soft and touching. The peculiarity of this manner of speaking consists more, perhaps, in the ending of the sentences than in their progress; for they never come down to the definite tone that ends a period, but stop on some swinging note a little higher up, it may be only half a tone above. It is the voice of weeping, which never has a positive tone, as if the whole gamut were washed over and blurred by tears.

Talking so, the woman brought out from her basket a linen cloth for the table, next a pair of cruets with vinegar and oil, next a decanter of white-wine, next an omelette made with herbs, after that a salad that looked like sliced cucumbers, but was something else. Bread followed, then the necessary dishes.

“I’m ashamed to confess that I am hungry,” Isabel said. “It is a miserable coming down, but we won’t say anything about it.”

“My dear,” responded the Signora, “you are very ungrateful to say so. Let us be just. Our bodies have brought our souls up to this beautiful place, and carried them about from point to point of it, and kept as quiet as possible about their own affairs. Now, if they are hungry, let us feed them. Poor bodies! they have the worst of it. They are extremely useful, and we sublime creatures are always turning up our noses at them; they suffer, and we protest that we want to get rid of them, when, in nine cases out of ten, we have wantonly caused their suffering. Can a body take care of itself, or even know how it should be done? No; the soul has to do it, and ought to do it in gratitude for house-rent, or body-rent. Then, at last, the poor things have got to corrupt, and be devoured by worms, and go to dust. Fortunately, these sufferings will not be felt. It is also a satisfaction to know that this arrogant spirit, which is for ever crowing over its poor companion, will have to suffer consciously for it all and pay the uttermost farthing. You will please to recollect, Miss Isabel Vane, that if ever you should have the happiness of going to heaven, your body will go there too. Sometimes,” she said, holding her hand up before the light, which shone through and made a ruby of it,—“sometimes I think that my poor flesh has a glimmering, a presentiment of the possibility of being one day glorified.”

“Most worshipful body,” said Isabel to herself with great respect, “would you like a piece of that omelette—a large piece, a half of it, say, leaving the other half to those two? Yes? Well, you shall have it.” And she proceeded with all possible dignity to help herself to a hundred and eighty degrees of the circle of herbs and eggs before her.

The _donna_, who, of course, had not understood a word, looked with astonishment at this shocking piece of voracity; and when Bianca, in protection of her client, clasped her arms around the wine, and the Signora, with an air of determination, took possession of the salad, the poor creature evidently thought that she was waiting on a company of maniacs.

“Do let’s laugh,” said the Signora, and at once set the example. “We are frightening the poor soul to death.”

Their supper and their nonsense finished, the three took possession of their rooms.

A full moonlight was filling all the valley, or plain, which looked like the bottom of an emerald chalice full of golden wine. A pure and sacred silence reigned over all—the silence of peace and lofty contemplation. Had it been some such silence that suggested to Charlemagne, when, almost eleven hundred years before, he came to venerate the relics of St. Benedict, the beautiful thought of bestowing on the abbot, with all the other singular privileges he gave him, that of being the sole mediator between the emperor and the rebellious barons—the only person by whose means they could make their peace? It was doubtless by virtue of this ancient title that the prior had written “Pax” at the head of his letter to Mr. Vane.

Yes, Charlemagne came up here ages ago, and popes, and princes, and kings came, and the Saracens swarmed up with fire and sword, and the Lombards and the Normans; and the Crusaders came to pray at the shrine before going to the East. They had seen on the pilasters of the church the different crosses in precious mosaic of the orders of knights which had been formed under the Benedictine rule, among them the familiar names of Calatrava, Alcantara, St. Stephen, St. James of the Sword, and Templars. Ignatius of Loyola came up and stayed fifty days.

“But, _signora mia_,” said the lady who was going over all this part, as she gazed out into the night, “since you are not going to stay here fifty days, you will be so good as to shut your mind and your eyes and go to sleep.”

The next morning they went to see the monastery proper, for which they had a special permission from the Pope, and spent hours in the library, archives, printing and lithograph rooms. It would be vain to tell what old books—worth their weight in gold, printed on creamy vellum in characters that modern type has never excelled, if it has equalled—what drawers filled with scrolls, what autographs, what illuminations, they saw. It were vain to fancy with what feelings one sees for the first time the writing of Charlemagne, of Hildebrand, of Gregory the Great, of Frederick II., of Countess Matilda. Then there was the long, long dormitory of the boys, with a row of snowy beds at either side, and the immense arched window at the end framing a superb outside picture, with Monte Cairo in the centre, and long, long corridors that dwindled people seen from opposite ends, with cracks made by earthquakes in their walls, and solid groined arches that only an earthquake could shake down. Then the nooks, courts, and passages, which they came upon without guessing in the least in what part of the building they were; the round window in the wall—_occhio_, or eye, they call it—through which they looked as through a lens, and saw the three courts and the colonnades. Finally, coming down a stair with a wall at either side and a door at the foot, they were told: “When you have crossed that threshold you cannot return. The cloister ends there.”

“What!” exclaimed Isabel, “if I should run out a minute, couldn’t I come back on to the stairs again for another minute?”

The prior shook his head. “It would be excommunication. That seems unreasonable; but listen: This is a cloister which women can enter only by special permission of the Pope. That permission is not lightly granted, and is for but once. Your running back a minute would do no harm in itself, but would do harm to the principle. If you can return in one minute, you could come back in five, or ten, or half an hour, or an hour, or a day, and so on; and so one visit might be made to cover an indefinite time. The only way, you see, is to be strictly literal in excluding from a second entrance.”

That afternoon they were presented to the Abbot—“Abbot of Abbots” he was called in the palmy days of Monte Cassino—and received, not only his benediction, but each a little souvenir of the place: a tiny photograph of the tomb of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, with a wreath of flowers pressed round it that had been on the tomb, and at the back his own name written, with the date, and under it “Ora pro me.”

They stood in the church speaking with him a few minutes, then went out to the _Paradiso_.

A storm was coming up from the east, and round the angle of the building they could just see that the mountains in that direction were obliterated and mists fast filling the plain. Standing up against these mists, as if to impede their progress, was the lower end of a rainbow, set straight and solid on the green like a jewelled column. The cloud advanced and pushed the column before them.

“It is like the pillar of light leading the Israelites,” Isabel said.

The cloud unrolled itself above, and down through the rainbow ran a crinkling line of white fire.

“How plainly lightning asserts its own force!” Mr. Vane remarked. “Seeing it for the first time, without knowing what it was, one would know at once that it is an irresistible power. What an experience it would be to stand just near enough to a passing flash to perhaps hear it hiss through the air, to be between it and its thunder, and yet not so near nor so in its track as to be smitten!”

Little by little the sun was vanquished, and the rainbow grew dim, faltered, blushed along the line of the advancing shadows, and disappeared. There was an odd murmur growing up, fine and pervading—the sound of rain in the plain below. All the tiny noises of each falling drop joined in a multitude, countless nothings making themselves heard in pauses of the thunder. It was to solid sound as fine carving is to plain wood, as embroidery is to a fine web—a continued succession of millions of infinitesimal watery strokes separated by millions of infinitesimal silences.

The others went into the house at the first drop that splashed on the _Paradiso_, but the Signora went back to the portico and seated herself under its shelter. Behind her the court of the church looked weird and strange. The pillars of the porticos appeared to move as the lightnings came and went, the statues and busts behind them seemed to lean forward and retreat, and the one window in the church front looked blue, as if there were light inside it.

She took herself out of the draught, and went to lean on the wall between the doors. In front of her the grand stairs went down to the central court, and the gardens shone green and wet through the colonnades at either side. On a level with her, across the space, stretched the _Paradiso_, and under the portico that supported it a large, arched door led from the court out on to a beautiful _loggia_. Two or three monks, who had been standing in this _loggia_ watching the storm, were driven in by the rain, and in a minute the whole place seemed to be deserted. The rain and the lightning had it to themselves and were washing and purifying all “so as by fire.”

This one visible witness felt her soul expand as she gazed. If only she also might be purified and enlightened in that time and place! If the littlenesses of life might be washed away from her, and only the realities remain!

“Come, Holy Spirit!” she said, and blessed herself.

Then, content and confident, without saying another word, she waited with her two inarticulate but eloquent companions—Art, consecrated to God, and Nature, informed by God—and felt above and about the illuminating Presence. For faith is the rod that calls the divine Lightning down, whether it came as a dove, or a tongue of fire, or a pointing finger, or a whispering voice.

The landscape of the plain, seen through the arched door under the _Paradiso_, was dim and gray with rain, or glittering and red with lightning; the mountain-tops above it, and the sky, were a changing tumult of shadows veined with threads of fire, and rolled hither and thither in visible thunders. The white pavement of the court below changed every instant into jaspers, the beautiful columns and curb and steps of the well became jewels, and one of the copper buckets that stood on the brink was like a vessel of red gold brimming over with red wine.

St. Benedict with his crosier, and St. Scholastica with her dove, stood immovable but living, and their calmness in that tumult was like a song of triumph. Did he sing with Moses?—“_Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thy inheritance, in thy most firm habitation which thou hast made, O Lord; thy sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established._” And did she reply, like Miriam with her timbrel?—“_Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously magnified, the horse and his rider he hath thrown into the sea._” Such silence in a tumult seems ever a singing.

When the Signora went down, slipping from colonnade to colonnade, dry-shod, the storm was spent. From the little balcony of the parlor, where she found her companions, she saw a grand arch of rainbow trembling out over the east, as if astonished at its own glory, trembling as it grew, but as strong and bold as light.

Flocks of birds were swinging by in a great circle, screaming impudently as they passed the balcony, as if to say, “Catch us, if you can!” There was a little parallelogram of garden under the window, with a rough pole frame-work supporting a dripping vine, and, below the dropping fields, a crest of land and rock, curling over like a pointed wave, rose boldly in the foreground; then, the plain.

Mr. Vane came to stand beside her, looking at her keenly one instant, then averting his eyes.

“Well,” he said, “what has the storm been saying to you up there?”

“It has washed the drift-wood out of my path, and made it as clear and white as one of those torrent-beds up the mountain-side,” she answered. “I think I ought to work a little harder for the future. Life is short, and I have, perhaps, sometimes played with my talents. They were given me for serious use. When you shall have left me alone, instead of sitting weakly down and thinking that it is rather lonely, I shall begin to carve a new book out of the next year. Do you know that year to come looks to me as the block of marble looked to Michael Angelo when he said, 'I will make an angel of it.’ I am not a Michael Angelo,” she added, smiling; “but I am something, and, firmly and intelligently set to work, I may do what need not be despised. My mind is clear.”

He was answered.

If a shade passed over his face, it was slight. If his lips were compressed a moment, she did not look to see. He stood and watched the rainbow grow and fade, and, as its colors went out, so faded out of his life a sweet hope. But he reflected: “Denials make strong. And the light that made the rainbow is not dead.”

“Yes, life is short,” he said presently, and half-turned away. “God bless you!” he added and hastily left her.

The next morning they made their last visit to the monastery, and the prior, after showing them the tower of St. Benedict and the fine collection of pictures there, had some of the choir-books brought into the parlor for them to see. There are fifty-seven in all of these great volumes, bound in leather, with metal corners and knobs. These are all in manuscript, beautiful black scores and lettering on white parchment. Every capital letter is painted, every one different and every one beautiful, and occasionally the page has a border, and in some cases a picture in the corner, so exquisitely beautiful that one could never tire of examining it—such leaves and flowers, and birds and figures and arabesques, fine as the finest pencil and most delicate imagination could make them, and so executed that one had to touch them to be sure they are not in relief. One long, silver leaf slightly curled over to show a golden lining; Bianca stretched her finger to touch, and drew it back immediately, fearing to break.

Not a tint was faded of them all, though they had been in constant use three hundred years. They are not used every day now, however.

One page was especially rich—the first page of the Christmas service. The whole ground of this inside the border is a deep velvety crimson, the score and text being of gold. On the border imagination had exhausted itself, and in the left upper corner is a picture of the Nativity, delicate and pure, with its cool, pale mountains of Syria, and the heavenly faces of the Mother and Child.

“You should see that at the Midnight Mass of Christmas,” the prior said, “with the light of all the candles shining on it as it lies open on the desk. It is splendid then. I copied that picture in the corner of the page to send the Pope on his great anniversary,” he added, “and it took me a year.”

For the prior was an artist as well, and not only made exquisite copies from these old manuscripts, but played the organ, and had the evening before done the honors of their grand instrument for his visitors, displaying its orchestra stops.

The hours slipped away, and regretfully at length they took leave of this beautiful and sacred place, and the kind host who had made it so pleasant for them. The donkeys stood ready at the gate, and they mounted and went down into the world again. In the valley, before going to the station, they stopped a minute and gazed back with a mute farewell to Monte Cassino. The Signora thought, but did not say aloud: “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh help.”

The road they took through the plain to the station ran along the river-side. This river—the Rapido—narrowed to a swift, yellow sluice that one could toss a penny across, to be caught by the beggar at the other side, did not look very imposing to American eyes, accustomed to the grand crystalline floods of the New World; but every drop of it moved to the tune of a memory, and farther on it meets the Carnello, and the two, the ancient Vinius and Liri, join to make the Garigliano, the river made famous by Bayard.

Then back to Rome, through crowding mountains at first. But, by dark, the mountains began to draw back, the level widened, they passed the city wall by the stars, and rolled into the _Città vecchia_.

“Now we must begin to look respectfully at the guide-book,” Mr. Vane said the next morning. “We have been sipping the foam of the wine as it came. We must drain the cup, if we can.”

There was nothing more to be said. Their story was finished, and the remaining few weeks were but a study of what all travellers study in Rome.

“I am laying up riches for my life,” Mr. Vane said to the Signora. “I have learned of you to work, and I hope that the last of my life will be more useful than the first has been. These memories that I am preparing now will be the only recreation of my future and my only dream.”

He did not trouble her with sadness or importunities, but took his life up with manly cheerfulness, and she honored him for it and liked him better than ever. But never for an instant did she waver in her decision. Her mind, once cleared, was cleared for ever. She would not have married him, nor any other man, to have possessed the world.

One bright October day they left her. There was sadness and tears, but no heart-break for any one. Marion’s tender sympathy threw a rainbow on Bianca’s gentle sorrow, and Isabel clung to her father’s arm and dropped her head on his shoulder, soothing and soothed.

“I shall never leave you, papa,” she whispered.

Did she suspect what he had missed?

The Signora watched the train roll away, then went back to her silent house, wiping her eyes as she entered.

“What a pity it is that you will have to be alone now!” said Annunciata.

“Alone!” the Signora’s eyes flashed out through the tears. “I am not alone. I never was alone in my life!”

She smiled as she shut herself into her room. “Alone? How little they know!”

What, indeed, did they, who cannot live a day without their gossip, without trying to fill their emptiness with the husks which make up by far the greater part of the world’s talk, of the life of one whose mind was as a fountain for ever overflowing, who had eyes in her finger-tips, and who listened with every pore of her body? What knew the readers of daily newspapers of the hoarded treasures of literature, ever ready with eloquent voices? What knew the Christians of one communion in the year, and one Mass when there was obligation, of long, delicious hours in churches when there was no function to stare at, nor music to talk through? The world has no such society as the cultivated mind can fill its house with; and there are no receptions so splendid as those given by the imagination. Bores never come, tattlers and enemies never are admitted, late hours never weary, and the wine never inebriates. And, better yet, those who are invited are always present and ready to stay. How the possessors of such a society laugh at the “societies” of the outer world, and how truly they can exclaim, “Alone? I never was alone in my life!”

DOUBTS OF A CONTEMPORARY ON THE DESTINY OF MAN.

The New York _Sun_ gave us (March 25, 1877) a short but thoughtful and substantial review of a little work lately published by Rev. Dr. Nisbet, of Rock Island, Ill., on _The Resurrection of the Body_. The reviewer very justly affirms that the author’s conclusions are anti-Scriptural, and that his method of interpretation lays the way open to a general disregard of dogmatic truth; for if the Bible, as the doctor contends, does not really teach what the whole world has hitherto believed it to teach concerning the resurrection of the flesh, it is plain that we can never be sure that we understand the doctrine of the Bible, even when it seems perfectly clear; and, if this be so, we can have no definite knowledge of revealed truth. The critic makes some very pertinent remarks on the baneful effects that such works as the one he criticises are apt to produce; and, although he does not point out explicitly the root of the evil, yet he gives us a clue to it by averring that any interpretation of Scripture which conflicts with the universal and traditional interpretation received in the church is calculated to shake the very foundations of faith, and exposes every dogma to the attacks and sneers of unbelievers. This is to say that the Protestant principle of freely interpreting the Bible without regard to ecclesiastical tradition leads to infidelity—a truth which is painfully confirmed by daily experience, and which accounts for the sympathy of all the anti-Christian sects with Protestantism; but which the writer in the _Sun_—an excellent Protestant, we presume—could not very consistently insist upon. Yet the whole tone of his article shows his sincerity. He is evidently an intelligent scholar; and though he finds himself somewhat entangled in the solution of some important questions, yet he does not imitate the folly of such flippant scribblers as blaspheme what they do not understand, but he shows forbearance and circumspection, a wholesome reverence for religion, and an ardent love of truth, and expresses an earnest desire to be taught how the resurrection of the flesh and the immortality of the soul can be successfully established and vindicated against the allegations of modern sceptics.

As we anticipate that Protestant divines will probably not take the trouble to investigate the objections of the infidel school with which they too often sympathize and of which they are the unconscious props and promoters, we will consider the honest appeal of the writer as addressed to Catholic thinkers; and we intend to do briefly what we can, from our doctrinal point of view, to solve his difficulties and to set at rest his doubts. The more so because, as he remarks, whoever can furnish a way out of such difficulties will confer, by so doing, an immense benefit upon a whole world of anxious but sincere doubters on the subject of immortality.

“It cannot be denied,” says he, “that while the Christians generally believe in some kind of continuance of human existence after death, there is a great diversity of opinions among them in regard to its nature and characteristics. The men of the primitive church were not perplexed about the matter, as they were not about many others which are actively debated among us.”

This introductory remark is exceedingly important. The primitive church “was not perplexed” about the matter. Why? Apparently because the faithful were in the habit of accepting the Gospel with humility and simplicity as it was given to them by the apostles and by their successors; because the Protestant method of interpreting Scripture according to every one’s individual bias was not thought to be consistent with the profession of Christianity; because the teachers of the faith did not contradict one another, as our modern Protestant preachers and writers are wont to do to the scandal and ruin of their bewildered flocks. When we see that our Lord’s words, “This is my body,” can be construed by Protestant divines as meaning “This is _not_ my body,” we may form an idea of what must be the result of the Protestant system of Scriptural interpretation. No one can be surprised that such a system creates perplexity, fosters debate, and ends in discord and ultimately in unbelief. But if there is “a great diversity of opinions” among Protestants, such is not the case with us Catholics. We members of the universal church are not perplexed about such matters. We still believe with perfect unanimity as the primitive Christians believed; our teachers teach all the same Gospel—the Gospel of Jesus Christ as transmitted to us by legitimate channels, not the contradictory gospels and the doctrinal crotchets of free-thinking divines. That is what makes the difference.

The critic whose words suggested to us these passing remarks will not fail to see that it is mainly to the rebellious spirit and presumption of the Protestant reformers that the present age owes its theological perplexities and the loss of religious unity. Would it not be better, therefore, to give up at last the gospels of men, and return to the Gospel of the primitive Christians?

“They believed,” as our critic points out, “that at the last day the bodies of the dead would be raised to life, and that the faithful would once more, in flesh and blood, inhabit their former abodes. The most ancient versions of the Apostles’ Creed teach explicitly the resurrection of the flesh, and the earliest Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, writing only a hundred years after the death of Christ, defends the doctrine by asking whether it be any more difficult for God to create a body anew from its dust than for him to create it the first time in its mother’s womb. And Mr. Nisbet concedes that all the succeeding Fathers of the church maintain the same view. Tertullian declares: 'The flesh shall rise again wholly in every man, in its own identity, in its absolute integrity.’ Irenæus agrees with him, and so do Jerome and Augustine.”

It would appear that these authorities, to which many more of the same kind might be added, should leave no doubt in the mind of a Christian about the legitimate interpretation of the dogma of resurrection. For, when an article of faith is clearly expressed in the Gospel and has been uniformly understood in all ages by the doctors of the universal church, it is difficult to see how a man who makes profession of Christianity can think himself authorized to twist it according to his individual bias. Yet this is what Dr. Nisbet has had the courage to do.

“It is remarkable,” says the reviewer, “with what confidence Dr. Nisbet overrides this primitive interpretation of Scripture and declares it to be incorrect. He allows no weight whatever to the obvious fact that men living so much nearer than he does to the days when the New Testament was written, and with whom its very language was still in colloquial use, would be more likely than he to perceive its true meaning. He lays great stress upon the famous passage in Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. xv. 35-53), which, he thinks, asserts the resurrection-body not to be of flesh and blood. But he fails to perceive that all that Paul is contending for is a finer and more glorious form of flesh and blood. Paul’s language is: 'The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed’ (v. 52). This he further explains in writing to the Thessalonians: 'We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord’ (1 Thess. iv. 15-17). It was the expectation of the apostolic church that the Lord would come again in their time, agreeably to his prediction in Matthew xxiv.: 'This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled’; and in John v.: 'The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.’ They know that the Lord had raised Lazarus and many others in their own flesh and blood, and had himself, after his resurrection, offered his body to the touch of Thomas; and they would have had to do violence to their own reasoning faculties had they conceived of any different fulfilment of his promises. When, therefore, Dr. Nisbet denounces, as he does, Mr. Talmage’s picture of the final resurrection, with its general scramble of souls for their old bodies, the flying of scattered limbs through the air, and their reconstruction in their pristine integrity, he discredits what has been for eighteen centuries the accepted faith of the Christian Church.”

One would scarcely expect that the writer, after so judicious a criticism, should hesitate to condemn Dr. Nisbet’s view; and yet he seems afraid of passing too severe a judgment on it, as he immediately adds: “Not that this proves him to be in the wrong, but only that, if he is in the right, no dogma, however venerable, is safe from attack.”

The conception that a man who professes Christianity may not be in the wrong while he throws discredit on the most venerable dogmas of Christianity is a monstrosity not only in a religious but also in a logical point of view. Unless the expressions of our critic can be construed as a figure of speech conveying under a mild and civil form the merited censure, every Christian reader will say that the critic himself is in the wrong. A pagan, or a man absolutely ignorant of the divine origin and glorious history of Christianity, might hesitate about the right or wrong of tampering with our revealed dogmas, for he would have to learn first how the fact of divine revelation has been ascertained; but a man who has read the New Testament, who lives in a Christian atmosphere, who knows the life, the miracles, the death, and the resurrection of Christ, and who consequently cannot conceal from himself the great fact of revelation—such a man, we say, astonishes us when he assumes that a Christian doctor may not be in the wrong, though he deal with revealed truth in such a loose manner as to expose every dogma, however venerable, to the attacks of our modern pagans. But let us proceed. To show how suicidal is Dr. Nisbet’s method of interpretation the reviewer says:

“In fact, men more daring and less respectful than Dr. Nisbet have employed his method of reasoning against the resurrection of what he calls the grave-flesh to controvert the idea of any resurrection at all. He assumes as unquestioned the proposition that human beings must in some way survive the death of the body, and is only solicitous to determine what that way is. But just as he shows the irrationality of expecting that the cast-off flesh and blood which served the soul for a tabernacle during life shall be taken up again, so do sceptics undertake to show the irrationality of expecting any kind of future existence whatever.”

The reviewer is perfectly right. If the teachers of Christianity are to be free to twist the word of God as they please, why shall their followers and other men be denied the same privilege? And what can be the ultimate result of such a reckless meddling with truth but universal unbelief? Faith must rest on unquestionable authority; when this latter is shaken, faith is replaced by doubt, opinion, perplexity, despondency, and all the vagaries of a weak, distracted reason. The present growth of unbelief is therefore nothing but the logical development of the Protestant method of free interpretation, which has engendered a thousand conflicting opinions and thwarted all honest efforts of its followers in the search after truth. The Catholic Church alone has a remedy for this plague of religious scepticism, for she alone has the power to teach with authority, as she alone has faithfully preserved in its primitive entirety the sacred deposit of revealed truths.

And now the reviewer comes to the most important part of his article, which consists of the objections urged by the modern unbelievers against both resurrection and immortality. He says:

“Let us briefly state some of the various reasons which they adduce, in the hope that Dr. Nisbet, or some other writer of ability, may be led to meet and overthrow these reasons, and to furnish the world at last with a solid and impregnable philosophical demonstration of the doctrine of immortality.”

It was after reading this passage that we resolved to write the present article. Not that we consider ourselves “a man of ability”; but we are in possession of truth, and are confident that we can vindicate it successfully, though we may lack the ability of our opponents. Let us proceed, therefore, without further observations, to the reviewer’s arguments.

“In the first place,” he says, “those who deny that there is any immortality of the individual human soul say it is contrary to all the analogies of nature to suppose that the death of the body does not end its individual being. Throughout creation, whenever any organization is destroyed, it is destroyed for ever. A new organization may arise similar to the old one, but it is not that one. A crystal crushed into powder ceases to be a crystal. Its particles may be dissolved and be crystallized anew; but they will form another and not the same crystal. Every vegetable runs its career from the seed to the mature plant, and, when resolved into its elements, perishes as a plant. If those elements be made to constitute a new plant, that plant begins its round as a new plant, and not as the old one. In like manner, when animals die and their bodies decay, they never reappear as the same animals. They may furnish materials for new forms of mineral, vegetable, and animal organisms, but these organisms are essentially new, and not the old ones under the new forms. And, in the same way, these sceptics contend, so far as our observation goes, human beings die once and finally, other men are born and succeed them, but they are other men and not the men who have died. Whether their dissolution took place yesterday or thousands of years ago, it is alike, so far as our ordinary experience goes, complete and irreparable.”

To answer this argument it suffices to point out that the resurrection of the flesh and the immortality of the soul are two distinct truths, of which the first is known to us by divine revelation only, the second by revelation and by reason. To say that “throughout creation whenever any organization is destroyed it is destroyed for ever,” is to say that we find nothing in the order of nature that authorizes us to infer the resurrection of our bodies. This, of course, is true; but what of it? No one pretends that the future resurrection will be brought about by natural causes acting in their natural manner and obeying natural laws. Resurrection will be the work of the Omnipotent. We believe it, not because it agrees with the analogies of nature, but because God himself, infallible truth, has informed us that he will raise us from death against all the analogies of nature. We concede, then, that whenever an organization is destroyed, it is, in the natural course of things, destroyed for ever; and consequently we concede that the course of nature affords no proof of our resurrection. But the course of nature is not the standard by which we have to judge of things supernatural. The analogies of nature did not prevent the resurrection of Lazarus, of the son of the widow, and of others of which we read in the Gospel and in other Scriptural books; nor did Christ respect the analogies of nature when he rose glorious from the tomb, as he had promised. Hence the argument from the analogies of nature has no strength whatever against the dogma of the resurrection.

Has it at least any weight against the immortality of the soul? On the contrary, it proves that the soul is naturally immortal. For, though nature can destroy the organic form, it has no power to destroy the substances of which the organism consists. The organic compound is destroyed, but all the components remain. If, then, no substance is ever destroyed by nature, how can we fail to see that the human soul, which is a substance, cannot naturally perish when the organism of the body is destroyed? We may be told that the sceptic does not concede that our soul is a substance; he rather believes that what we call _the soul_ is a mere result of organic movements which must cease altogether when the organs are destroyed. But we answer that, if the sceptic honestly desires to be enlightened on this subject, he must not rely on the assertions of ignorant or perverse scientists who profess to know nothing but matter and force; he must read and meditate what has been written on the subject by competent men. If he has sufficient ability to understand their philosophical reasonings, he will come to the conclusion that the substantiality of the human soul is a demonstrated truth; if, on the contrary, he has too little stock of philosophy to be able to follow such reasonings, then he has no right to be a sceptic, and it becomes his duty humbly to recognize his incompetency, and to accept without demonstration what more cultivated minds consider a demonstrated truth. This last remark is very important. Scepticism and unbelief are the offspring of pride. Men pretend to see the _why_ and the _how_ of everything; but they often forget that they are born in ignorance, and that, as their knowledge of material things is the fruit of long and varied experience so, the knowledge of supersensible things is the fruit of long and methodic study. He who has not studied astronomy, may say very honestly that he does not know how to determine the mass of the sun or the distance of the moon; but he cannot honestly deny what astronomy teaches on the subject. To do this, to declare himself sceptic, would be accounted folly. How, then, can those be justified who, without having applied to philosophical studies, refuse to accept the soundest conclusions of philosophy about the nature of the soul? If they are at all anxious to know how to prove the substantiality of the soul, let them apply to philosophy; and they will learn that matter, owing to its inertia, cannot think, and that the organic movements cannot be the thinking principle.

The writer in the _Sun_ answers the preceding objection in the following manner:

“In answer to this it is usually alleged that, though the body of a man dies and decays, his soul survives, and either, as Dr. Nisbet maintains, continues its existence in a purer or more ethereal world, or, as the Christian Church believes, retaining its potentiality of life, will clothe itself again, at some future time, with a bodily form and enter upon a new career.”

Let the writer take notice that, according to the doctrine of the Christian Church, the soul, when separated from the body, retains not a mere “potentiality of life,” but actual life and the exercise thereof. The life of the soul does not depend on the organism of the body; its spiritual operation has no need of organs; for reason and will are not organic faculties, though in the present life they are associated with the sensitive faculties which work through the organs. The potentiality of life, in the language of philosophy, means the capability of receiving life; and it is the organism, not the soul, that has such a potentiality.

The writer continues:

“This idea of the distinction between soul and body is as old as the history of the world. The ancient Greeks illustrated it by the example of the butterfly emerging from the hard chrysalis and winging its flight through the air. Like the butterfly, the soul of man, they said, when it casts off its material envelope, soars aloft in the enjoyment of a purer atmosphere. The symbol, and the argument drawn from it, have been adopted by moderns, and they represent the common opinion on the subject. The assertion is that the soul exists within the body as a separate entity, and that when the body dies the soul is merely set free.”

We wonder if any “argument” has ever been drawn from the example of the butterfly to prove that the soul survives the collapse of the body. Similitudes are simple illustrations of things, and they serve to help the imagination, not to convince the intellect. Yet the author seems to believe that the common opinion which holds the soul to be a substance distinct from the body owes its demonstration partially to an “argument” drawn from the butterfly; and he undertakes to show that such an “argument” has no weight. He says:

“But those who maintain this view fail to note that the butterfly, like the worm, is visible to the eye and subject to the laws of matter; and, moreover, that the butterfly, when it has fulfilled its function in the economy of creation, perishes and is never seen or heard of more. If the soul is enveloped in the body as the butterfly is in the worm, it should appear to sight when its covering is removed. This notoriously does not happen, and therefore the argument is unsatisfactory.”

Of course the “argument” would be unsatisfactory; and therefore it is that philosophers do not use it. But the critic should not condemn the similitude as wrong on the ground that “the butterfly is visible to the eye and subject to the laws of matter,” whilst such is not the case with the soul. Similitudes are used for illustrating something different from them; hence they cannot agree in all points with the things illustrated. When the visible is used as a symbol of the invisible, it is by no means pretended that we can see the one as we see the other, or that there is in the one every property of the other. A genius may be compared to an eagle; but the eagle has feathers, a beak, and a tail, which the genius has not. So the butterfly is visible to the eye, subject to the laws of matter, and perishable; and in all this it differs vastly from the human soul. But it is not on these points that the comparison is based. Hence it is idle to argue from these points against the use of the comparison.

The writer concludes the preceding in these words:

“The argument from analogy, therefore, does but little towards supporting a belief in the future existence of the soul either separately or in connection with a restored body.”

We admit that the analogies of nature, as alleged by the writer, do very little indeed towards proving a future resurrection; but we have seen that the same analogies afford an irresistible proof of the natural immortality of the human soul: _No power in nature can deprive a substance of its being; the human soul is a substance; therefore no natural power can deprive it of its being._ We have, then, in this argument, a first demonstration of the natural immortality of the soul. But let us follow the reviewer. He mentions four proofs adduced by philosophers and divines in favor of the immortality of the soul—namely, the reasonableness of immortality, the promises of Scripture, the legendary stories of apparitions, and, in our time, the phenomena of what is called spiritualism.

“Without in any way admitting the sceptic’s proposition,” he says, “we must yet recognize the striking fact that in the construction of the argument from reasonableness, or the _à priori_ demonstration of the survival of the soul, our philosophers have not, so far, got one step beyond the point arrived at by the old Greeks two thousand years ago. No one has written more convincingly on the subject than Plato in his _Phædo_, nor is there any more thorough and exhaustive presentment of it extant than the one given by that diligent student of Greek literature, Cicero, in his _Tusculan Disputations_. Plato begins by appealing to the general belief of men in their immortality, which is like appealing to the general belief in fairies and witches as a proof of their existence. He then argues, from the soul’s readiness in acquiring knowledge, that it must have learned the same things in a previous state of existence; and hence, as it existed before the body, it will exist after the body ceases to be, which nowadays is not worth refuting. Next he says that the soul, being uncompounded and invisible, is indissoluble, and therefore immortal; but this is begging the question. Finally, he argues that the soul is in itself life and the opposite of death, and therefore cannot die; which is another _petitio principii_. In a similar manner Cicero enumerates in favor of the soul’s immortality the wide-spread conviction that it is immortal; the thirst for fame which inspires heroic deeds, and which would be absurd if death were the end of all existence; the volatile nature of the soul, which preserves it from destruction; and its superior powers over those of the body.”

We beg to remark that this passage is full of gratuitous assertions. What the writer calls “a striking fact” is not a fact. Our philosophers, as he himself proceeds to show, have added much to the reasonings of the old Greek philosophers. How can it be true, then, that they have gone “not one step beyond the point arrived at two thousand years ago”? And if this were true, how could the writer disclaim any intention of admitting “the sceptic’s proposition,” considering that the old proofs of immortality are, in his opinion, quite unsatisfactory?

A second gratuitous and unwise assertion is that to appeal to the general belief in immortality is “like appealing to the general belief in fairies and witches as a proof of their existence.” To say nothing of witches (for we need not enter into this controversy), it is not true that belief in fairies is, or has been, general, except perhaps among nursery children. But let this pass. There is a difference between belief and belief. The belief of men in the immortality of the soul does not originate in nursery tales, but in natural reason; nor is it a belief extorted by imposition, but a conclusion of which thinking men find sufficient evidence in their own nature. It is because the nature is common that the belief in immortality is common. To question it is to ignore the _sensus naturæ communis_, and to forfeit all claim to a fair philosophical reputation.

A third assertion, equally gratuitous and manifestly false, is that we cannot, without begging the question, infer the soul’s immortality from its simplicity. It is not easy to understand how the writer could fall into such a tangible error. The simplicity of the soul and its spirituality are demonstrated independently of the question of immortality. This being the case, it is plain that no begging of the question is possible in arguing from the known spiritual simplicity of the soul to its immortality. The writer might probably object that to assume the simplicity and spirituality of the soul is to assume its immortality. This is to say that to assume the premises is to assume the conclusion. But, if the premises are only assumed after demonstration, the conclusion which they involve will be based on demonstration and will be demonstrated. And this is the case with the soul’s immortality. If the simplicity and spirituality of the soul were assumed without proof, the argument would be worthless; but, since both are established by independent considerations, the conclusion is unquestionably valid.

The fourth gratuitous assertion consists in denouncing as a _petitio principii_ the argument which says that the soul cannot die, “because it is life in itself.” The words “the soul is life in itself” mean that the life of the soul is not, like that of the body, borrowed from a distinct vital principle, but constitutes the very being of the soul and is involved in its essence. Hence, if the substance of the soul cannot be blotted out of existence by natural agencies, the soul is naturally immortal; for its very existence is life. And, since it is known and admitted that natural agencies are wholly incompetent to cause any created substance to vanish out of existence, the consequence is that the soul, as Plato very justly remarks, cannot naturally lose its life.

To complete the demonstration, however, something more is needed. For, although the preceding arguments show that the soul cannot be destroyed by natural agencies, they do not prove that the Author of nature, who has created it, will keep it in existence after its separation from the body. In other terms, it is necessary to show that the soul is no less extrinsically than intrinsically immortal. This the Greek philosophers, owing to their pagan notion of Divinity, have been unable to do; but it has been done by Christian philosophers, as our writer himself recognizes. He says:

“One argument, indeed, is employed by Christians which the heathens do not seem to have thought of—namely, the necessity of a future existence to compensate men for their sufferings, and to punish them for their misdeeds, in this world, and thus vindicate God’s mercy and justice. Virtuous human beings, it is said, are more or less unhappy in this life, while the wicked are happy; and therefore we must suppose that so just and benevolent a being as God will reward the one class and punish the other in a life to come.”

To this argument nothing can be objected. God cannot be more partial to the wicked than to the good. Such a course would evidently conflict with his sanctity, which necessarily loves all that is right, and necessarily hates all that is wrong. Hence the prosperity of the wicked and the trials of the good, though permitted by God for our present probation, are not final, but must be reversed when the time of probation is over—that is, at the end of the present life. A final triumph of virtue and a final punishment of vice are therefore as certain to come after this life as it is certain that God cannot forfeit his sanctity. Nevertheless, the writer in the _Sun_ thinks that he can get rid of the argument by remarking that, if it proved anything, it would prove top much.

“As if God’s goodness,” he says, “does not much more require him to reward the virtuous here, if it requires him to reward them at all, and as if an uncertain future punishment, in a problematical state of existence, would offset a present sin.”

But this reply is extremely futile; for how can it be proved that God’s goodness requires him to reward the virtuous here? The assertion is quite arbitrary, not to say absurd; for if God’s goodness does not actually reward the virtuous here, it is evident that God’s goodness does not require that they should have their reward here. Then the writer seems to question the very necessity of reward and punishment; but he gives no reason for his doubt, as in fact no reason could be found for assuming that the moral law can be either observed without profit or violated with impunity. If there be no retribution, right and wrong are empty names, virtue becomes vice, and vice virtue. If no happiness is to be expected after death, he is most reasonable and virtuous who strives to satisfy all his passions, and he is most vicious and unreasonable who renounces his present gratification for the sake of morality. The sceptic, therefore, who denies a future life is constrained logically to admit that all virtue is foolishness, and all wisdom consists in self-indulgence and pleasure. The evident absurdity of this conclusion shows the falsity of the opinion from which it proceeds.

The writer imagines also that the future punishment is “uncertain,” and that after death there is only a “problematical” state of existence. To this we need not make a new answer, as we have seen that a future retribution is absolutely certain and not at all problematic.

“It may still further be said,” adds our writer, “that when we turn to the Scriptures, we do not find them by any means so clear and positive in regard to the survival of the soul as people generally suppose. The five books of Moses are absolutely destitute of all allusion to the subject. The Jews were told by the great lawgiver nothing whatever concerning a life beyond the grave. They were promised rewards in this world if they behaved well, and threatened with punishments in this world if they behaved ill. Their whole subsequent history illustrates this fundamental principle. When they rebelled against Jehovah and worshipped other gods, they were smitten with war, pestilence, famine, and captivity. When they were obedient to him, they were blessed with peace and plenty, and victory was granted them over their foes. In the prophetical writings, full as they are of rebukes and warnings, there is no more explicit teaching of a future life than in the Pentateuch; and, down to the advent of Christ, the sect of Sadducees, who prided themselves of their adherence to the faith of their fathers, stoutly denied it.”

Let us make a few remarks on this argument. First, were we to concede that Moses is absolutely silent about a future life, it would make no difference as to the question of the soul’s immortality. For if we argue with Christians, Moses’ silence is abundantly compensated for by other inspired writers; and if we argue with unbelievers, we know that Moses with them is no authority whether he speaks or remains silent.

Secondly, it is not true that “the five books of Moses are absolutely destitute of all allusion to the subject.” We are not going to write a dissertation on this Biblical question; it will suffice to point out a few passages which would have no meaning apart from a belief in a future life. We read in Genesis (xv. 1) that the Lord said to Abraham: “I am thy protector, and thy reward exceedingly great.” Can these words have any other meaning than “protector in the troubles of thy present life, and reward exceedingly great after the end of the struggle”? Again we read that Jacob at the approach of his death, while blessing his children, exclaimed: “I will look for thy salvation, O Lord” (_ib._ xlix. 18)—that is, “though I shall soon die, yet my soul will not cease to rejoice in the earnest expectation of the Redeemer who is to come”—_Salutare tuum expectabo, Domine._ And the same patriarch, when mourning for his son (Joseph), “would not receive comfort, but said: I will go down to my son into hell, mourning” (_ib._ xxxvii. 35). He therefore believed that his soul would survive its separation from the body. It is not true, then, that the books of Moses are absolutely destitute of all allusion to a future life. Nor is it lawful to argue that, because the great lawgiver promised rewards and threatened punishments of a temporal order, the eternal rewards and the eternal punishments must have been unknown to the children of Israel; for we must reflect that Moses’ menaces and promises were made to the nation or the political body, not to individual persons, and that the political body was not destined to last for ever; whence it follows that all the promises and all the menaces addressed to the nation ought to refer exclusively to the temporal order.

Thirdly, it is not true that the prophetical writings do not teach a future life. We read in Daniel (xii. 2) that “many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some unto life everlasting, and others unto reproach.” These words are decisive. Death is but a sleep; we shall awake to a new life, and this future life will last for ever. “On the last day,” says Job, “I shall rise out of the earth, and I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God” (c. xix.) David says: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations that forget God. For the poor man shall not be forgotten to the end: the patience of the poor shall not perish for ever” (Psalm ix.) “Thy dead men,” says Isaias, “shall live, my slain shall rise again: awake, and give praise, ye that dwell in the dust” (c. xxvi.) Ezechiel (c. xviii.) intimates to the wicked that they shall die, while the just shall live; where _living_ and _dying_ cannot refer to the course of natural events, but must be interpreted as meaning salvation and damnation. David says again: “But God will redeem my soul from the hand of hell, when he shall receive me” (Psalm xlviii.) These passages, to which many others might be added, suffice to show that our writer is not more accurate in speaking of the prophetical writings than he is in speaking of the Pentateuch.

Fourthly, he does not seem to know that the Sadducees, notwithstanding their “priding themselves of their adherence to the faith of their fathers,” were nothing but a heretical sect; they denied the resurrection of the flesh, just as modern Protestants deny transubstantiation; and it is as absurd to appeal to the Sadducees for the right understanding of the Jewish faith as it would be to appeal to our modern heretics for the interpretation of the Catholic doctrine.

The writer adds:

“The historical books, indeed, show that in later days the doctrine gained admission into some Jewish minds, having most probably been communicated to them from their Assyrian, Persian, and Babylonian captors; but the form it took on was that of the resurrection of the flesh, which, Dr. Nisbet says, was erroneously adopted by the Christian Church. If, therefore, the Old Testament be silent on the topic, and the New Testament, as interpreted by contemporary critics, teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept, what is there in the Bible to require a belief in any resurrection whatever?”

We have shown that the immortality of the soul was known to the Jews from the time of the patriarchs. The Assyrians, the Persians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians were also acquainted with the same truth, but they seem to have been altogether ignorant of a future resurrection, and many of them thought that their souls were destined to transmigrate from one body to another. These errors may have been communicated to some Jews by their captors; as we know that the Sadducees denied the resurrection, and most of the Pharisees believed in metempsychosis, according to Josephus (_Antiquit._ l. xviii. c. 2). But if the captivity of the Jews may have been the source of these errors, it has certainly not been the origin of the belief in immortality and resurrection, which pre-existed among the Jews long before their captivity.

As to the argument which the author draws from Dr. Nisbet’s view of resurrection, we need hardly say that, if it may have some weight against Dr. Nisbet, it can have none against the Christian doctrine. The New Testament, “as interpreted by contemporary critics”—that is, by Dr. Nisbet—“teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept.” What then? Then, concludes the writer, “there is nothing in the Bible to require a belief in any resurrection whatever.” We are at a loss to understand the logical connection of the consequence with the antecedent. Can we not suppose that there is something in the Bible which requires a belief in the resurrection of the flesh, and that Dr. Nisbet, whose infallibility is far from being demonstrated, has failed to understand it? When a man is bold enough to say that the Christian Church has “erroneously adopted” a doctrine which has been preached by the apostles and believed in without interruption for eighteen centuries by the Christian world, there is little doubt that such a man is himself in error, and that his assertions cannot be made the ground of any argumentation. On the other hand, if Dr. Nisbet “contends for a resurrection in a form composed of finer substances than flesh and blood,” he may indeed err theologically, but we fail to see how he thereby “teaches a doctrine which reason cannot accept.” In fact, reason is incompetent to decide what mode of resurrection should be accepted and what rejected; it being evident that in a question of this sort the province of reason is to submit to revelation, and to accept the doctrine universally received by the members of the church. If therefore the Old or the New Testament, or both, as interpreted by the Fathers of the church, teach a doctrine against which reason has nothing whatever to object, it is the duty of every wise and reasonable man to accept the doctrine without the least regard to the vagaries of “contemporary _Protestant_ critics.” Now, this is the case with the doctrine of immortality and resurrection.

But our writer has more to say:

“Moreover, it is urged, if the survival of the soul is a fact at all, it is a fact to-day as much as it ever was, and, like other facts, susceptible of proof. There are departed souls enough now, if there ever were any, to make it easy to demonstrate their existence. If it be true, as so many multitudes believe, that when the body dies the soul of the man, the woman, or the child who inhabited it survives as a real man, woman, or child, with all that is requisite to personal identity, why, ask the doubters, does it not in some way manifest itself? From every home on this planet there go up daily and hourly passionate demands for the return of loved ones whom death has snatched away. Were they still in the flesh, no obstacle would prevent their hurrying to join the objects of their affection; and the sceptic finds it inconceivable that if, as is said, they hover about us in spirit form, they should not make their presence felt in some undeniable way.”

It is perfectly true that the survival of the soul is, like other facts, susceptible of proof. Yet not all facts are proved by the same kind of proofs. There are, even in the natural sciences, facts which must be proved by reasoning, owing to the impossibility of ascertaining them directly by the experimental method. We must not expect, therefore, that souls, which are spiritual and invisible, should, after departing from their bodies, give sensible signs of their survival in a different state. Nor do we need any such sensible proof of their survival; for we have proofs of a higher order, by which we show that the human soul cannot die. We therefore establish not only the fact of its survival, but also the necessity of the fact. On the other hand, if a soul were to appear before us, we might suspect the objective reality of the apparition; at best we might simply conclude that such a soul has been kept in existence; but we would have no ground for concluding that all other human souls are likewise kept in existence, and that they must remain in existence for ever. In fact, could not that soul be annihilated some time after its apparition? Or could we logically maintain that the survival of one soul suffices to prove the survival of all other souls? It is therefore impossible to prove the immortality of all human souls by means of individual apparitions; to establish it a general principle is indispensable, and this principle is drawn from the very essence of the soul and from the sanctity and justice of its Creator.

But “why does not the soul in some way manifest itself”? This question is very easily answered. The departed souls are either in heaven, or in hell, or in purgatory. If in hell or in purgatory, they are there like prisoners, and cannot freely roam about. If, on the contrary, they are in heaven, they have none other than spiritual relations with this world, except by special dispensation of divine Providence. And again, why should departed souls manifest themselves in a sensible manner? To convince us that the Scriptural doctrine of immortality is true? As if our faith in the word of God were based on the testimony of our senses, not on the authority and truthfulness of God himself. “Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed,” said our Lord to his sceptical disciple: “blessed are they that have not seen and have believed.” Miracles, in the present order of Providence, are not the rule, but the exception: hence the sensible manifestation of departed souls, as being above the requirements of nature, is not to be made the test of their survival.

“Were they still in the flesh,” we are told, “no obstacle would prevent their hurrying to join the objects of their affection.” Certainly; for if they were still in the flesh they would belong to this world; but, since they are no more in the flesh, they now belong to the world of spirits, which is invisible to our eyes of flesh, and from which they cannot communicate with us in sensible forms without a special command or permission of God. It is not true that they “hover about us in spirit form”; this is a pagan conception. Nor is it true that the soul survives “as a real man, woman, or child.” Souls have no sex, and man cannot be without a body; hence no departed soul is either man, woman, or child: it is a soul simply, and its “personal identity” consists in its being the same soul which was in the body.

To the question, “Why do not souls manifest themselves in a sensible way?” a second answer can be given by replying that many souls have thus manifested themselves. This answer, good and legitimate as it is, is ridiculed by sceptical critics, who, while constantly appealing to facts, are invariably determined to spurn all facts contrary to their theories. Our writer says:

“Equally inconclusive is the little we have of positive testimony on the subject. It is true that in all ages there have been some who have asserted the power of actually seeing and speaking with departed souls, and the whole tribe of spirit-mediums pretend to it now. As to what has happened in bygone times it is, of course, impossible now to base any conclusion upon it. The circumstances cannot be inquired into, and, moreover, one single witness coming before us and submitting his testimony to our scrutiny is worth more than a thousand who are out of our reach. The question is: Does anybody at this day really have intercourse with the spirits of the dead? The spirit-rappers and their followers say Yes, but the great incredulous world, after hearing all they have to present in confirmation of their assertions, still says No. There is so much fraud and nonsense connected with the business that the scientific mind rejects it contemptuously. The very phenomena themselves are clouded with a suspicion of jugglery and deceit, while there is a wide divergence of opinion as to their interpretation, even granting them to be honestly produced.”

We agree with the author that spiritists have no intercourse with the spirits of the dead, and we add that no mortal has the power to call back to this world a departed soul. This, we think, is certain both by authority and philosophy. Hence, if any spirits are really made to appear and to answer questions—which we know to be a fact, though not so frequent as simpletons are apt to believe—those spirits are not the souls of the departed, but the lying spirits of hell, who volunteer to play nonsensical tricks for the amusement and the perversion of their foolish consultors. But that departed souls have now and then appeared to men in visible form is a fact established on indisputable historical evidence. Do we not read in the Bible that the ghost of Samuel appeared to Saul, rebuked his recklessness, and intimated to him the impending defeat of his army and his own death? Nor can it be objected that the ghost was a devil, for devils do not know the future actions of men; nor can it be said that the apparition was a delusion, for the ghost was seen by the witch before it was seen by Saul; and the whole narrative of the sacred writer is so worded as to exclude the possibility of explaining away the fact by such a loose interpretation. It will be said, however, that “the scientific mind” rejects all such facts with absolute contempt. To which we may reply that “the scientific mind” has no right whatever to reject historical facts. Science is based on facts; its duty is to account for them by a sufficient reason, not to deny them when they transcend our comprehension. We know that there is a class of modern scientists who contend that everything must be explained by the properties of matter, and that no exception can be admitted in favor of supernatural facts. But we do not see how this mental disposition can be called “scientific.” If physicists refuse to acknowledge all the facts which transcend the limits of their sphere, why could not the musician reject all the phenomena which transcend his musical knowledge, or the chemist ridicule all the astronomical calculations? It is evident that every science must dwell within its proper limits, and therefore no weight can be attached to the opinions of mere physicists when they presume to decide questions entirely extraneous to their profession. Thus the facts remain, and all attempts at discrediting them must be accounted idle and unscientific talk. Lazarus, dead and buried, at the voice of Christ revived. The fact was public and recognized by Christ’s enemies. “The scientific mind” will not deny it. But then, we ask, how could the soul of Lazarus retake possession of his body, if it had ceased to exist? and what else was the rising of the body from its tomb than a sensible manifestation of the soul returned to its primitive office? We read in the Gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in ecclesiastical history of many dead recalled to life either by Christ or by his disciples and followers. In all such facts souls have manifested themselves. We might mention a great number of genuine apparitions well known to all readers of the lives of saints; but as we have neither time nor intention to enter into a critical discussion of the evidence by which they are supported, we shall content ourselves with citing the glorious apparitions of Lourdes, of La Salette, and of Marpingen, which, as all the world knows, are unquestionable facts, accompanied and followed by a continuous series of public miracles, to which “the scientific mind” of modern thinkers has found nothing to object, though it has been formally and repeatedly challenged to disprove them by its pretended superior knowledge. Our Catholic readers know most of the facts to which we allude; but it is probable that the writer to whom we reply is not acquainted with them, and we would suggest to him to read M. Lasserre’s book on the apparition of Lourdes, where he will find, we trust, sufficient evidence concerning the reality and nature of the facts just mentioned. But we repeat that a Christian and a philosopher has no need of sensible manifestations to believe in the immortality of the human soul. Reason and the Gospel afford such a strong evidence of this truth that all further evidence may seem superfluous. When unbelievers ask for apparitions or sensible manifestations, we may answer them as Abraham answered the rich man: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if one rise again from the dead” (Luke xvi. 31).

Our writer sums up his arguments as follows:

“The fact, then, seems to be—and we would earnestly press it upon the attention of religious thinkers of every kind, and especially upon theologians and clergymen, whose peculiar duty it is to deal with such subjects—the fact seems to be that analogy, reason, revelation, and human testimony alike fail to establish the doctrine that man can exist as a man without a material body. Books such as that of Dr. Nisbet rather add to than remove the philosophical difficulties of the subject so long as they leave the main question untouched. Moreover, in explaining away the popular interpretation of the Scriptures in regard to it, they tend to produce very much the same results as have been produced by the efforts to reconcile Genesis with geology. The conclusion that the Bible does not teach science correctly has been followed by the conclusion that it does not teach science at all; and so, if we agree with Dr. Nisbet that what it says about the resurrection is not to be taken literally, we shall be in great danger of rejecting its testimony altogether.”

This is to say that the Scriptures, in the Protestant system of free interpretation, lose all authority, inasmuch as the word of man is thereby substituted for the word of God. Thus far we agree with the writer. But that religious thinkers, theologians, and clergymen should undertake a new demonstration of the soul’s immortality and of the resurrection of the flesh, we consider unnecessary. Theologians and clergymen have done their duty on this point with such completeness as to make all sceptics inexcusable. All that is wanted is that the sceptics themselves undertake to study the works of such theologians and philosophers as have answered the objections of the materialists of the last century. Scepticism is ignorance. There is no remedy for it but study—the study of that special branch of knowledge on which the solution of any given question depends.

Our writer imagines that some “efforts” have been made “to reconcile Genesis with geology.” This, however, is not the case. The truth is that a class of scientists have made some “efforts” to turn geology against Genesis, and that those efforts have been unsuccessful. A science which denies to-day what it considered yesterday as demonstrated, and which is apt to deny to-morrow what it teaches to-day, needs none of our “efforts” to be reconciled with Genesis. When the facts of geology shall be well known, and when the theories built on those facts shall be logically correct, then we shall have no need of “reconciling” geology with Genesis; for geology will teach us nothing in opposition to the revealed origin of things.

As to the conclusion “that the Bible does not teach science correctly,” or “that it teaches no science at all,” we will only remark that the Biblical record of creation is a history of _facts_, not a treatise of science. Hence the proposition that the Bible does not teach science correctly has no meaning, whilst the proposition that the Bible teaches no science at all is perfectly true, although the facts themselves which it relates must be looked upon as the groundwork of geological science.

But our writer seems to take a different view of the subject. He says:

“Many believers in Christianity deny that the world was made in six days, although the Bible says it was made in six days; deny that a flood ever covered the tops of the mountains, that there ever were witches and magicians, and that Joshua made the sun and the moon stand still, although the Bible asserts all these things; why may they not likewise safely deny as unscientific the dogma of a future existence of all individual human beings? This is the dilemma into which speculations like those of Dr. Nisbet bring us; and if he and his school can furnish a way out of it, they will confer an immense benefit upon the whole world of anxious but sincere doubters upon this great subject.”

Such is the end of the article we have been examining. We would tell the writer that if there are believers in Christianity who deny anything revealed by God in the Bible, such believers are not consistent with themselves; for why should they believe in Christianity if they disbelieve the Bible? If the word of God in the Old Testament does not command their assent, why should the same word of God in the New Testament cause them to believe? It is clear that, if they believed on God’s authority, they could not reject anything based on that authority. A belief of this sort is not divine faith, but human opinion; it is not submission to God’s authority, but a denial of God’s authority in all things which man chooses to disbelieve; and consequently such a belief is not that faith “without which it is impossible to please God.” It is, however, the faith of many advanced Protestants; and thus we are not surprised that the writer considers such an irrational form of belief as consistent with the mutilated form of “Christianity” with which he is familiar. But we Catholics—we heirs of the apostolic doctrine transmitted to us in an uninterrupted manner by the universal church—we believe everything that has been revealed either in the Old or in the New Testament. We do not question the fact that there have been witches and magicians, nor do we see any reason for questioning it; we believe in like manner what the Bible says about the Flood, the six days of creation, Joshua’s great miracle, and everything else; by which we mean that those facts which we read in the Bible, whether we have a true appreciation of them or not, are all true, and that the difficulties we may find in their explanation arise from our ignorance, which the modern progress of science has done very little to dispel. Thus, while we are free to choose among the various explanations of Biblical facts, we all agree in believing the facts themselves. But, if this is true of those passages of Scripture whose meaning is obscure, and whose interpretation has not been settled by the authority of the church or by the _consensus_ of the doctors, it is not true of those other passages whose meaning is obvious and unmistakable, or whose interpretation has been sanctioned by the unanimous decision of the universal church. Hence, while we may freely discuss the six days of creation and the astronomical result of Joshua’s dealings with the sun, we have no reasonable ground for discussing or doubting “the dogma of a future existence of all individual human souls.” To say that this dogma is “unscientific” is to assume what neither has been nor can be proved; unless, indeed, we call “unscientific” every truth which ranges above the compass of experimental science; in which case even logic itself would be utterly unscientific.

Whether Dr. Nisbet or his school can furnish a way out of the difficulties complained of by our writer we do not know. It is probable, however, that neither Dr. Nisbet nor any other doctor of the same school can successfully combat the invading spirit of infidelity so long as they do not give up their Protestant method of reasoning and their Protestant profession. Protestantism is itself one kind of infidelity; it cannot contribute in any way towards the restoration of sound philosophical or theological ideas; it can only sow doubt, discord, and inconsistency, thus paving the way for religious scepticism and its concomitant evils. The history of Protestantism is sufficient evidence of the fact. It is vain, therefore, to hope that Dr. Nisbet or his school will “confer any benefit upon the whole world of anxious but sincere doubters” by establishing either the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the flesh on impregnable proofs. Let, then, all anxious but sincere doubters turn to Catholic doctors and Catholic books; let them hear the church—the old, calumniated church, the column of truth, the heir of the apostles, of the prophets, of the patriarchs, and the spouse of Christ. She will teach them how to reconcile reason with faith and religion with science, so as to believe rationally and consistently whatever God has revealed, while preserving the fullest liberty of judgment in regard to all other things. Yet we must warn these “anxious but sincere doubters” that no benefit will accrue to them, if they approach our divines or read our books with that spirit of contention which is so common among all the Protestant sects. If they are “anxious” to know the truth, they must not rely exclusively on the strength of their reasoning powers, but must be ready to yield to authority in all things connected with Christian faith. If they are “sincere,” humility must be a part of their sincerity.

To conclude: We have met and answered the reasons alleged by the writer in the _Sun_ against the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the flesh; and although we have scarcely developed the reflections suggested by those reasons, yet we confidently believe that our brief remarks will be found sufficient to set at rest the arguments of the sceptic. As to the doctrine of immortality in particular, of which the same writer desired “a solid and impregnable philosophical demonstration,” we have shown that the human soul neither can be destroyed by any created cause nor will be destroyed by God; accordingly, the human soul is intrinsically and extrinsically immortal. Our proofs have been few, but simple and intelligible; and we trust that the writer who gave us occasion to speak of this subject, if he chances to read these pages, will soon acquire the conviction that the doctrine of immortality was really in no need of a new philosophical demonstration.

SANNAZZARO.

One Sunday morning, while at Naples, we went to hear our Mass of obligation in the church of the Servites, erected by the poet Sannazzaro in honor of the divine Maternity of Mary, and called after his famous poem, _De Partu Virginis_. It stands on the Mergellina, that _pezzo di cielo caduto in terra_, as the Neapolitans say—“a fragment of heaven to earth vouchsafed”—and certainly the most beautiful shore on which the sun shines. It was this shore that inspired the ardent Stazio. Not far off is the tomb of Virgil, and the place where Pollio lived, and the grove where Silius Italicus conceived the idea of his _Punica_. Here, too, Sannazzaro had a charming villa which tempted the very Muses to descend from the mountain to dwell on the sandy shore, as Ariosto says:

“Alle Camene Lasciar fa i monti e abitar le arene.”

Here he wrote most of his poems and gathered around him all the wit and talent of Naples on those _Dies geniales_, which were as famous at that time as the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ of Christopher North at Edinburgh in our younger days, though not quite so convivial, perhaps. This villa had about it a certain perfume of antiquity of which we know nothing in these times, and which we affect to despise. It was the natural atmosphere of this Virgilian region, and it had an inspiration of its own which must be taken into account in reading the works of Sannazzaro. He has celebrated his villa in an ode worthy of Horace. He did not, however, notwithstanding his classical tastes, dedicate his household altar to Apollo, or even to Venus—he was too genuine a Christian for that—but to the tutelar care of San Nazzaro, whom he reckoned among his ancestors. When nearly done with life, he built a church on the spot, in memory of that divine Birth which he had so sweetly sung, and attached thereto a convent of Servite monks, to whom he gave the income of eight thousand florins for the solemn celebration of Christmas and certain expiatory services for himself, his ancestors, and King Frederick III. of Naples. Here he also set up an altar to San Nazzaro, and ordered his own tomb to be built.

We had repeatedly passed the Church del Parto without being able to find it, so embedded is it among houses on the side of the cliff. And the entrance is from a side terrace, to which you ascend by a flight of steps, as to the court of a private dwelling. This terrace commands a view that surpasses all the most vivid imagination could conceive. The Castel del Ovo advances directly before you into the incomparable bay, the waters of which, generally blue as the heavens, were at this early hour all crimson and gold and amethyst, with great floods of silver coming in from the sea. Behind them were islands, such as we see in dreams, rising out of the magic waves: Capri, with its marvellous grottos, clouded with the memory of Tiberius; Procida, with its fort on the volcanic rocks; and Ischia, where the beautiful Vittoria Colonna, beloved of Michael Angelo, retired to mourn her husband’s loss, and beneath which the giant Typhœus, transfixed by a thunderbolt from Jupiter, lies imprisoned, at long intervals groaning with pain, and sending forth in his rage fearful eruptions of burning lava. On the inner curve of the bay sits Naples like a queen, with her palaces, her citadels, her white villas gleaming like jewels—her glance all flame, and her heart all fire. Beyond rises Mount Vesuvius, with its cone of perfect symmetry, full of mystery and terror, its summit now flecked with patches of snow, looking like great white flowers that bloom

“Around the crater’s burning lips, Sweetening the very edge of doom.”

A light vapor, rather than smoke, issued from the top, no longer dark and foreboding like the evil genius whose vase was unsealed, but of soft, dove-like hues, as if some pacific herald. At its foot sleep fair villages among peaceful olive-trees, wreathed with vines, and lulled into forgetfulness by the gentle waves that caress the shore. Harmonious tints blend earth and sky and sea, but they are constantly varying with the rolling hours. There is nothing monotonous here, except the languid air which wearily plays among the odorous trees without the force to agitate their branches. Nature is here a genuine siren, half-earth, half-sea, whose magic voice wooes many a wanderer still to forget his native shore. We feel its charm as we survey the matchless landscape. An electric fire comes over the soul—admiration, wonder, emotions no words can express. Poetry is in the golden air, the bright waves, the enchanting shores, the intense hues that color everything—yes, even in the awful scars and lava streams that furnished the ancients with their ideas of Tartarus, and made Virgil place his descent thereto near the _tenebrosa palus_—the gloomy lake of Avernus, formed from the overflowing of the Acheron—

“Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep.”

The church bell awoke us from this delightful vision, and we entered the open door. It is a small building whose walls within are tinged a delicate sea-green, and have white mouldings, as if to harmonize with the foam-crested waves of the bay without. The windows are mere lunettes, high up in the arches, and below are five or six deep recesses with altars and paintings. The white marble basin at the entrance, for holy-water, looks like a flower on its tall, slender stem. On it is graven a shield like a chess-board—perhaps the arms of some noble of this _farniente_ land to whom life was a mere game. We were at once struck by a singular crucifix on a kind of a tripod, under a canopy like a penthouse. Near by stood the _Addolorata_—the Madonna of Many Sorrows—in black like a nun, with wimple and veil, a stole embroidered with gold, and a wheel of gilt arrows piercing the silver heart on her breast. One poor dim lamp was burning before her. Opposite was a more cheerful altar with the Virgin _del Parto_, the titular of the church, gaily dressed after the Italian taste, and surrounded with lights and flowers. These two Madonnas seemed to personify Bethlehem and Calvary—the Alpha and Omega of the Christian mysteries—and between them we knelt to hear Mass.

The church was nearly full of people in bright holiday attire, quite absorbed in their devotions, and, though mostly of the lower classes, so-called, they all responded in Latin to the litany at the close of the service. Near by us, in the pavement, was a tomb-stone with the bas-relief of a boy with a book under his head, another in his hand, and one at his feet. This was a promising youth named Fabrizio Manlio, who so loved the Mergellina that, when ill, he wished to be brought here to die, and here be buried, as his touching epitaph relates. But that was three hundred years ago, and the father who here records the tears he shed long since rejoined his son, and now there is not a smile the less at sunny Naples. Why lay aught too much to heart?

In a recess at the right is a noted painting, generally known at Naples as the _Diavolo di Mergellina_. This is no new fiend, but the old outcast from heaven vanquished by St. Michael, the great captain of the heavenly host, a picture by Leonardo da Pistoja, a Tuscan painter of the Da Vinci school. The archangel, “severe in youthful beauty,” is girded with a vest of heavenly azure, and from his shoulders spring broad wings of many hues—green, yellow, and purple—with rays like long arrows of gold. His right hand seemingly disdains to use its sword—“Satan’s dire dread”—but holds it behind him, while with the left he thrusts his long spear through the demon’s neck and nails him to the ground. His face is perfectly passionless, as if not even so terrible a combat could ruffle the serenity of his angelic nature. The _Diavolo_ is one of those strange demons that entice souls down to the gulf of perdition, common in the middle ages, with two faces, not Janus-wise, but with the second face on the bowels, of most startling character. The fiend before us has the beautiful face and bust of a woman, said to be the genuine portrait of a lady who became passionately enamored of Diomedes Carafa, Bishop of Ariano, who lies buried at the foot of the altar beneath, with the triumphant inscription: _Et fecit victoriam, halleluja!_ which may be applied both to the bishop and the archangel. The round arms of this fair demon are drawn up under her head. Her long, golden locks

“In masses bright Fall like floating rays of light”

around her shoulders and half-veil her bosom. Her youthful face is deadly pale, but not contracted, and her eyes are cold and vigilant. The lower face, on the contrary, is old and convulsed, as if crying with pain. The hair is grizzled and witch-like. The legs are like two scaly serpents, twisted and writhing, and the bat-like wings shade off to a lurid brown and yellow. The contrast in these two faces is very striking and has a deep moral. It is a common proverb at Naples to compare too tempting a project, or too seducing a beauty, to the Diavolo di Mergellina.

The high altar of the church is of inlaid marble. At the sides are niches containing statues of SS. Jacobo and Nazzaro, the patrons of the founder. On what is called the arch of triumph over the head of the nave is an old painting of the Annunciation, the Virgin in one spandrel with the dove on her hand, and the angel in the other with the lily stem. Along the connecting arch is the distich from Sannazzaro:

“Virginitas Partus discordes tempore longo, Virginia in gremio fœdera pacis habent.”[82]

Footnote 82:

Virginity and Maternity, long at variance, have made peace in the womb of the Virgin.

In a neighboring recess is an Adoration of the Magi, which contends with that of the Castello Nuovo as being the one given Sannazzaro by Frederick of Aragon, painted by Van Eyck, and said by Vasari to be the first oil-painting ever brought to Italy.

We searched a long time in vain for the tomb of Sannazzaro. Chapels, flagstones, and mural inscriptions, all underwent a severe scrutiny; and, supposing it must have been destroyed in some political convulsion, when even death itself is not respected, we were on the point of leaving the church when it occurred to us to go behind the high altar. We found there a door which we made bold to enter, remembering how often we had been repaid for exploring sacristies and odd nooks. There was the tomb directly before us, in the smallest of choirs in which ever monk lost his voice “with singing of anthems.” It is the most quiet, secluded spot in the world—dim, frescoed, and crowded with a dozen stalls, on which cherubs’ heads are carved. It is more like a little chantry than a choir, and nothing ever breaks the silence but the voice of holy psalmody. The poet’s tomb is of white marble, chiefly sculptured by Fra Giovanni da Montorsoli. It is surmounted by his bust crowned with laurel. The face is somewhat haggard, but the features are noble. He wears a cap like that we see in pictures of Dante. Beside him are two _putti_, one with a book and the other bearing a helmet, in allusion to the different ways in which Sannazzaro distinguished himself. The sarcophagus beneath rests on an entablature, below which, in delicate relief, are Neptune and his trident—doubtless in allusion to the _Piscatoriæ_—and Pan with his reeds, accompanied by fauns and satyrs, with jovial faces and shaggy sides, as if to sing the praises of the author of the _Arcadia_. Along the base of the monument is an inscription by Bembo, which shows he believed Virgil to have been buried at Naples:

“Da sacro cineri flores: hic ille Maroni Syncerus musa proximus ut tumulo.”[83]

Footnote 83:

Strew this sacred tomb with flowers. Here, near Virgil, lies Syncerus, his brother in the Muses.

At the sides are fine statues of Apollo and Minerva by Santa-croce.

Iacopo Sannazzaro, the inspired poet of the Virgin, was born at Naples in 1458. He sprang from an illustrious family of Spanish origin that had fallen from its former grandeur, but was left not without considerable means. His mother, on becoming a widow, withdrew into the country in order to bring him up in retirement, uncontaminated by the world; but he soon displayed such uncommon abilities that she was persuaded to return to Naples and there watch over his education. It is said he showed a talent for poetry at eight years of age; but it must be remembered he belonged to a land where poesy is like the flowers that spring up spontaneously from the soil at every season. Of course his education was chiefly classical; for he belonged to an age when Greek and Latin literature was regarded as the standard of excellence, and the very mysteries of religion were sung in the measure of Homer and Virgil. When of sufficient age he chose as his master Giovanni Pontano, called “the Trojan Horse” on account of the great number of illustrious poets, orators, and warriors that sprang from his school. Pontano was then director of the celebrated Accademia Napolitana, in which he figured as grammarian, philosopher, historian, orator, and poet. He was the literary autocrat of Naples,

“Whose smile was transport, and whose frown was fate.”

He was regarded as the favorite of Apollo and the Aonides, and from his lips was said to flow a river of gold:

“Quel bel tesoro D’Apollo e delle Aonide sorelle, Che con la lingua sparge un fiume d’oro.”

His astronomical discoveries were announced in Latin verse. It is said he was the first in modern times to revive the idea of Democritus that the Milky Way is composed of myriads of stars.

Sannazzaro succeeded his master at the Academy of Naples, which at that time held its meetings at Pontano’s residence, near which was the Cappella Pontaniana—a gem of art, erected by Pontano in honor of the Virgin and the two St. Johns. Here were set up the wise maxims of the founder, graven on stone, which we translate from the original Latin:

“It is noble but difficult to restrain one’s self in opulence.

“He who never forgets injuries forgets that he is man.

“Whatever thy fortune, be mindful of Fortune herself.

“Integrity promotes confidence, and confidence friendship.

“He who decides too hastily on doubtful occasions repents too late, though he repent quickly.

“It is in vain the law cannot reach him whose conscience absolves him not.

“The sky is not always serene, nor does prudence always ensure safety.

“In every condition of life the chief thing is to know thyself.

“It belongs to the upright to despise the injuries of the wicked, whose praises even are a disgrace.

“Let us bear the penalty of our faults rather than the state should expiate them to its injury.

“Content not thyself with being upright, but find others who resemble thee to serve thy country.

“It is by boldness and conquest a kingdom is enlarged, and not by those counsels that seem to the timid full of wisdom and prudence.”

Such were the maxims instilled into Sannazzaro’s youthful mind. They have a flavor of antiquity. The Academy of Naples still exists, but holds its meetings in the cell of St. Thomas Aquinas at San Domenico’s, where royalty itself used to attend the lectures of the Angelic Doctor. In the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples—where Tasso found shelter—there is a striking group of figures in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, gathered in sorrowful attitudes around the dead Christ—all life-size likenesses of celebrities in the time of the artist, Modanin of Modena. Sannazzaro is represented as Joseph of Arimathea; Pontano as Nicodemus; Alfonso II. as St. John, with his son Ferdinand beside him.

Sannazzaro has celebrated a young Neapolitan girl in classical measure, under the Greek names of Amarante, Phyllis, and Charmosyne, which signify joy, love, and the immortal; but he veiled his passion, if it was one, under mythological allusions. He took as his device an urn of black pebbles, among which was a single white one with the motto, _Æquabit nigras candida sola dies_, as if in time he hoped to please his lady. But she died young, and he bewailed her in suitable elegies. In spite of this somewhat fantastic attachment—perhaps only a poetic fancy—it is sure Sannazzaro was all his life rather a votary of Diana than of Venus, as became one destined to sing the praises of the Purissima.

Admitted to familiarity with Frederick of Aragon, son of King Ferdinand of Naples, Sannazzaro was appointed director of the royal festivities, and in this capacity composed dramas in the language of the _lazzaroni_ for the amusement of the court. These soon became as popular in the streets as in the palace, and were the germs of the modern Italian comedy, which finds its broadest expression in Pulcinella’s farces at San Carlino. One of these plays is spoken of with particular admiration, composed in 1492 to celebrate the conquest of Granada, and acted at the Castello Capuano in presence of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.

Sannazzaro became so attached to his royal patron that he accompanied him in an expedition against the Turks, where he acquired the reputation of a courageous soldier. And when the prince was deprived of the throne to which he had succeeded, and retired to France, the poet, more faithful in misfortune than Pontano to Frederick I., generously sold two paternal estates to provide for his sovereign’s wants, and accompanied him into exile. It was in the following lines he bade adieu to Naples, which to leave is a kind of death:

“Parthenope, mihi culta; vale, blandissima siren, Atque horti valeant, Hesperidesque tuæ; Mergellina, vale, nostri momor; et mea flentis Serta cape, heu domini numera avara tui; Maternæ salvete umbræ, salvete paternæ.”[84]

Footnote 84:

Farewell, adored Parthenope; sweet siren, farewell! Farewell, enchanted gardens of the Hesperides! Farewell, Mergellina, be mindful of me; accept these tears of regret from the master who has naught else to offer thee! Farewell, shade of my mother; my father’s shade, farewell!

Sannazzaro remained with Frederick III. till his death at Tours, and then returned to Naples, where he devoted himself wholly to literature. The _Arcadia_, which he finished in France, was published in 1504. This is a romance of mingled prose and verse after the manner of Boccaccio’s _Ameto_. It caused a great sensation in Italy, and is still regarded as one of the happiest inspirations of the Italian muse. His pleasant villa on the Mergellina had been respected during his exile, and here he established himself at his return. It became a rendezvous for all the literary men of the city. On Thursdays in particular, when the scholars and barristers had a holiday, all that was brilliant at Naples assembled here for a frugal repast, at which poems and epigrams were recited. Sannazzaro was very popular, and to be his friend was regarded as a _brevet_ of immortality.

“Dipinto io sia nell’opre eterne e belle Del mio bel Sannazzaro, vero Sincero, Ch’allora io giugnero fino alle stelle,”[85]

Footnote 85:

Let me be depicted in the immortal works of my glorious Sannazzaro, so worthy of the name of Sincerus, and I shall be exalted to the very stars.

wrote Cariteo. Sannazzaro, it should be remarked, had, after the fashion of the time, taken the more classical name of Actius Syncerus, to which allusion is made on his tomb.

But the greatest festival of the year on the Mergellina was the birthday of Virgil, for whom Sannazzaro had a kind of passion. He celebrated this anniversary—perhaps in imitation of Silius Italicus, who offered an annual sacrifice to the manes of the bard of Mantua—by a banquet, to which he invited his most intimate friends, such as “Alessandro, the jurisconsult, whose works, so long popular, furnish curious details respecting the public and private life of the Romans; Cariteo, who sang in his heterodox style the human soul formed by the Creator, from which nothing is concealed in heaven before it assumes its earthly veil, but which, coming below, as if fallen from some star into a human body, no longer retains any memory of the past; Andrea Acquaviva, who dismounted from his war-horse to take the lyre and drink from the fount of Hippocrene; Girolamo Carbone, who preferred the Tuscan language to the Latin, then so popular, and whose rhythm is a kind of music to the ear; and, finally, Pontano, the master of Sannazzaro, the restorer of the Neapolitan academy founded by Panormita.”[86] These repasts were served by Hiempsal, a young African slave whom Sannazzaro had freed and taught to sing the elegies of Tibullus to an air he himself had composed. It was after one of these Virgilian feasts the poet went to hear Egidio, an Augustinian monk, preach. He was as celebrated for his eloquence as his learning, and was a favorite of two popes, one of whom (Leo X.) afterwards made him cardinal. Egidio, in declaiming with his usual animation against the vices of the time, made a happy citation from Virgil, which delighted his hearer and led to a friendship between them. It was this or some other sermon of his that suggested to Sannazzaro the idea of his great poem, _De Partu Virginis_, to which he devoted twenty years of his life—a poem of which Mr. Hallam says “it would be difficult to find its equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification.” Pope Leo. X., who appreciated genius in whatever way it found expression, whether by pen, chisel, or pencil, sent the poet a brief in 1521 to encourage him in singing the mysteries of the Christian faith, and to express his satisfaction that, at a time when the voice of a monk was troubling the peace of the church, the Catholic faith should find a defender among the laity—another David, as it were, to smite the new Goliath and appease with his lyre another Saul; and he declared the poem an honor to religion and to his pontificate. Clement VII. also wrote him a brief, accepting the dedication, which alone, he said, was enough to immortalize the pontiff thus honored.

Footnote 86:

Audin.

The _De Partu Virginis_ is the most remarkable poem of the Renaissance, and its publication was an event in the literary world. It was everywhere eulogized, and the author was styled the Christian Virgil. Egidio of Viterbo, after reading it, thus wrote to the author: “When I received your divine poem, I eagerly hastened to make myself familiar with its contents. God alone, whose inspiration suggested so wonderful a creation, can reward you suitably—not by admitting you to the Elysian Fields, the fabulous abode of Linus and Orpheus, but to a blessed eternity.” This poem still merits attention, if for no other reason, at least because of its effect on religious art in the sixteenth century—an influence which has been compared to Dante’s. Mrs. Jameson says she can trace it in all the contemporary productions of Italian art of all schools from Milan to Naples. She regards this influence, however, as perverse. But let us take a brief glance at a poem which has excited so much admiration and criticism down to the present day.

The _De Partu Virginis_ is an epic poem, in which the birth of Christ is sung with the harmonious flow, the variety of imagery, and the elevated tone of Virgil. But, strange to say, none of the sacred characters introduced are called by their real names—perhaps because unknown to the Latin muse. Even the names of Jesus and Mary are expressed by Virgilian paraphrases. The former is called _Divus Puer_ and _Numen sanctum_; the latter _Alma parens_, _Dia_, and _Regina_. St. Joseph is the _Senior Custos_; St. Elizabeth the _Matrona defessa ævo_; and the Supreme Being is styled the _Regnator_, _Genitor superum_, etc. The author calls upon the inhabitants of heaven (_cœlicolæ_) to reveal to his limited vision the profound secrets of the mystery he is about to sing, and invokes the sacred Aonides as the natural protectresses of virginal purity. “Dear delight of poets,” says he, “ye sacred Muses who have never refused me your favor, allow me once more to take a long draught at your clear fount. Ye who derive your glorious origin from heaven, and have so singular a regard for what is pure, aid me in singing of heavenly themes and celebrating the glory of a Virgin. Drive away the darkness of my mind and show me the way by which to rise to the highest summit of your celestial mount. These lofty mysteries were not unknown to you. You must have beheld the sacred grotto of the Nativity. You must have heard the sweet music of the angels that surrounded it. And it is hardly credible you did not admire the splendor of the star that led from the extremity of the Orient three powerful princes to render homage to the new-born Child.

“I have not herein the less need of thy aid, thou constant Hope of men and gods, at once Maid and Mother! If I have taken delight every year in adorning the walls of thy temple with festoons and garlands of flowers; if, on this delicious cliff of the Mergellina, that seems from its proud height to disdain the waves of the sea and promise safety to the boatmen who hail it from afar, I have hewn out for thee altars of eternal duration; if, following the footsteps of my ancestors, I have taken pleasure in singing thy praises and celebrating thy honor with the immense crowds of devout people who, with lively joy, hallow the for ever memorable day of thy happy deliverance, guide my steps in these unfrequented paths, give me the courage to accomplish what I have undertaken, and abandon me not in a task at once so glorious and so difficult.”

The poet goes on to relate how the _Regnator Superum_, seeing the human race in danger of falling into Tartarus, a prey to the fury of Tysiphone, wishes, as all this evil has been brought about by woman, that by woman it should be repaired. He therefore despatches one of his ministering spirits to announce to the purest of virgins the sublime destiny that awaits her. The messenger finds her plunged in meditation with the prophetic page of the Sibyl open before her, and, saluting her with reverence, he makes known the advent of the _Numen sanctum_ who would deliver mankind from the horrors of the Styx. Fame everywhere publishes the tidings of this mysterious event. Hell itself is told of it. The Eumenides tremble. Alecto, Cerberus, and all the monsters of paganism shudder with fear. The souls of the Fathers—those genuine heroes, as Sannazzaro, after St. Jerome, calls them—rejoice. David himself repeats his prophetic Psalms, and sings the life of Christ, his Passion, Death, and Descent into Limbo.

But it is the great Governor of the universe himself who reveals to the inhabitants of heaven his designs of mercy towards mankind. And when the time of the Nativity comes, he summons Joy (_Lætitia_) to his presence, whose privilege it is to appease the anger of the Thunderer and diffuse serenity over his face:

“Hæc magni motusque animosque Tonantis Temperat et vultum discussâ nube serenat,”

and sends her to announce the glad tidings of the divine Birth. Putting wings to her feet, she leaves heaven, guarded by the Hours, and proceeds to earth, where she reveals the great event to the shepherds. Two of them, Lycidas and Egon, recite a part of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, applying it to the new-born Child. The birth of Christ is related with delicacy and poetic grace. There is a sublime energy worthy of Dante in the lines that speak of the Incarnation, and the astonishment of nature in view of the prodigy. Angels in the air celebrate it by sports and combats in the style of Homer’s heroes, with the instruments of the Passion for arms. Other angels, like Demodocus, sing the creation, renovation of nature, the seasons, etc. The Jordan, leaning on its urn, is moved to its depths, and relates to the Naiads gathered about him the wonderful event on its shores. An angel comes to bathe the Child in its waters. A dove hovers above. The water-nymphs bend around in veneration. The Jordan, amazed, stays its current with respect, and recalls the prophecy of old Proteus, that the time would come for it to be visited by One who would raise the glory of the Jordan above the Ganges, the Nile, or the Tiber. After which the river, wrapped in its mantle, wonderfully wrought by the Naiads, returns majestically to its bed.

This is too brief an outline of the splendid crown Sannazzaro has woven for the Blessed Virgin, set with so many antique gems. Many have been shocked by the mingling of paganism and Christianity in this poem, but to us it is as if the waters of the Permessus had been turned into the Jordan. All these pagan deities and profane allusions that sprinkle its pages seem to sing the triumph of Christianity. They are in harmony, too, with the Virgilian region in which the poem was written, as well as with the spirit of the age. There was such a passion for antiquity and for Greek and Latin authors in the sixteenth century that even religion and art put on a classic air. Nor was Leo X., to whom it has been made a subject of reproach, the only dignitary of the church that has felt this fascination. St. Jerome himself was called by the accusing spirit, _Non Christianus, sed Ciceronianus_, and he used to fast before reading the works of the great orator, so much did he fear their ascendency.

Virgil was especially dear to the middle ages on account of the tenderness and melancholy of his noble nature and his strange presentiment of the future. We all remember the famous passage: “The last age of the Cumæan song now approaches; the great series of ages begins again; now returns the Virgin (Astrea), now return the Saturnian kingdoms; now a new progeny is sent from high heaven. Be propitious, chaste Lucina, to the boy at his birth, through whom the iron age will first cease, and the golden age dawn on the world.”

The learned at that time regarded Virgil as a prophet; and the people, as a magician. It was common to have recourse to his writings, as well as Homer’s and other authors, to obtain prognostics. But this was not exclusively a mediæval superstition. It was in use before the Christian era, and has not in these days wholly disappeared. The author of Margaret Fuller’s life says: “She tried the _sortes biblicæ_, and her hits were memorable. I think each new book which interested her she was disposed to put to this test and know if it had somewhat personal to say to her.” The church has condemned this practice, even by a similar use of the Holy Scriptures.

Dante shared in the general passion for Virgil. He makes him his guide—“My guide and master, thou”—through the lower realms; not in Paradise, whence he is excluded,

“For no sin except for lack of faith.”

Petrarch, too, loved Virgil and planted a laurel—“the meed of poets sage”—at his tomb, but it was long since done to death by the cruel hands of tourists.

A touching sequence was long sung in the church of Mantua, in which St. Paul is represented visiting the tomb of Virgil at Naples, and weeping because he had come too late for him.

In the time of Sannazzaro, Plato was also in great repute. Every one remembers the festival instituted in his honor by Lorenzo de’ Medici at his villa on the side of Fiesole, in which Ficino, Politian, and all that was brilliant in the intellectual world of Florence took part. The bust of the divine Plato, presented by Jerome Roscio of Pistoja, was set up at the end of a shady avenue and crowned with laurel, and, after a grand repast, they all gathered around it and sang cantos in his honor. Ficino even pretended to find in Plato’s writings the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, Eucharist, etc. He used to address his audience as “My brethren in Plato,” and he makes Christ, in his descent into Limbo, snatch Plato from the jaws of hell to place him among the blessed in Paradise. This reminds us of the great Erasmus, who says: “There are many in the society of the saints who are not in the calendar. I am every instant tempted to exclaim: _Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis_, and to recommend myself to the Blessed Flaccus and Maro.”

Another of these academies that sought to revive the antique spirit was that of Pomponio Leto at Rome, which has brought so many unmerited reproaches on Pope Paul II. because it was for a time suppressed by him for carrying its passion for antiquity to a pernicious degree. One historian after another has declared him an enemy of the sciences on the principle of their tending to heresy! Hallam, Roscoe, and Henri Martin all echo the calumnies of Platina against this pope. M. de l’Epinois has proved the falseness of this accusation. As if a pope, as he says, who was all his life an amateur of ancient manuscripts, a numismatist of the first class, and an able judge of painting and sculpture, who took pleasure in doing himself the honors of his collections, and provided liberally for the education of poor children that showed an aptitude for study, was an enemy of science! Francesco Filelfo did not think so when he thus wrote to Leonardo Dati: “What do not I and all learned men owe to the great and immortal wisdom of Paul II.?”

As for the Academy of Pomponio Leto, there was a general conviction that it was pagan and licentious in its tendency, if not in actual practice. Canensius, in his life of Paul II., says explicitly: “The pope dissolved a society of young men of corrupt morals, who affirmed that our orthodox faith was not so much founded on the genuine basis of facts as on the jugglery of the saints, and maintained that it was permissible for every one to indulge in whatever pleasure he liked.” And the Chevalier de Rossi, in the _Roma Sotteranea_, quotes the following passage from a letter of Battista de Judicibus, Bishop of Ventimiglia, written to Platina a short time after the affair in question: “Some call you more pagan than Christian, and affirm that you follow pagan morals rather than ours. Others circulate the report that Hercules is your deity. Another says it is Mercury, a third that it is Jupiter, a fourth that it is Apollo, Venus, or Diana. They say you are in the habit of calling these gods and goddesses to witness, especially when in the company of those who give themselves up to like superstitions—people whom you associate more willingly with than others.” M. de Rossi has also found several inscriptions which prove that a secret hierarchy was established by this society, of which it is reasonable to suppose Pope Paul II. was as aware as of their other anti-Christian practices. Additional suspicion was excited by their secret meetings from the report at this very time that a conspiracy was formed against the life of the Sovereign Pontiff—the more readily credited because only nine years previously the streets of Rome had been deluged with blood by an insurrection. However, the pope, so far from being the _farouche_ and sanguinary ruler M. Martin styles him, let off the academicians with a short confinement, and in 1475 Pomponio and his companions were once more quietly pursuing their studies, having profited by so beneficial a lesson. The academy became more flourishing than ever, and counted among its members a great number of bishops and prelates of the church.[87] Pope Leo X. himself, before his elevation to the papacy, was in the habit of attending its reunions. Archæology, poetry, and music all had a part in them, as well as other sciences, and all these Leo X. sincerely loved. “I have always loved letters,” wrote he to Henry VIII. “This love, innate in me, age has only served to increase; for I have observed that those who cultivate them are heartily attached to the dogmas of the faith, and are the ornaments of the church.” Notwithstanding this love of literature, especially ancient, Leo X. himself realized that too excessive an application to such pursuits might be prejudicial to the spiritual life. Though at Florence he participated in the general admiration for Plato, after his elevation to the Papacy he recommended to the pupils of the Roman College to give themselves up to serious studies, and renounce Platonic philosophy and pagan poetry as tending to injure the soul. So also St. Odo, Abbot of Cluny, was so fond of Virgil that it finally became injurious to his spiritual interests, and, falling asleep one day while reading one of his Eclogues, he saw in a dream a beautiful antique vase full of serpents. He understood the allusion and gave up profane reading.

Footnote 87:

See essay of M. de l’Epinois.

Sannazzaro’s poem, therefore, is only an expression of the tastes of his age. It may also be considered in harmony with those of the primitive church, which adorned the very walls of the Catacombs with pagan symbols, and blazoned them in the mosaics of their churches. There we find Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur, beside David slaying Goliath. The Jordan is represented as a river-god leaning on an antique urn, his head crowned with aquatic plants and his beard dripping with moisture; Cupids flutter among the vines around the form of the Good Shepherd; and Orpheus is made the emblem of our Saviour.

The _De Partu Virginis_ is like one of those beautiful Madonnas so often met with in Italy, not seated in a humble chair at Nazareth, but robed like a queen, occupying a throne covered with mythological subjects and antique devices—an emblem of the church enthroned on the ruins of paganism.

A BIRTH-DAY SONG. TWENTY-ONE.

Bright summer sun, to-day Mount with thy glancing spears, a cohort proud, O’er cliff and peak, and chase each threatening cloud, Each gathering mist, away.

Fair, fragrant summer flowers, Lily and heliotrope and spicy fern, Exhale your sweets from leaf and petaled urn Through all the golden hours.

Thou deep-voiced western wind, The stately arches of the forest fill, Till oak and elm to thy _andante_ thrill As mind replies to mind.

Take up the song and sing, O summer birds! until the joyous strains Ring through the hills, chant in the blooming plains, Gurgle in brook and spring.

And thou, O river deep! Send from the shore thy message calm and plain, As, bearing ship and shallop to the main, Thy mighty currents sweep.

Sing, while the golden gate Swings open, and reveals the thronging hopes, Wingèd and crowned, that crowd the flowery slopes Of Manhood’s first estate.

Yet soft and low! The door Is closing, as ye sing, on Childhood’s meads; The garrulous trump of Youth’s heroic deeds Is hushed for evermore;

And shining shapes, that blaze Like loadstars, with occasion wait to lure The dazzled soul o’er crag and fell and moor From Wisdom’s peaceful ways.

Tell him, O sunshine bright! How clouds of lust and mists of evil thought By Chastity’s white beams are brought to naught Through Virtue’s silent might.

Tell him, ye blossoms sweet, How Charity divine her perfume rare Exhales alike in pure or noxious air, With holy love replete.

O brook and bird and spring! Babble your simple sermon; say, Behold Contentment, better far than gems or gold, Or crown of sceptred king.

Tell him, thou deep-voiced wind, How a brave, earnest spirit may awake Responsive thought, till distant cycles take Their orbits from his mind;

And thou, O river wide! Tell how a steady purpose gathers strength From singleness of aim, until at length On its resistless tide

It bears both great and small With equal, silent, comprehensive love To that great sea whose calm no storm can move, God’s grace o’er-arching all.

So may his spirit clear, Untroubled by the scoff, the sneer, the sting Of clashing creeds, find heaven a real thing, And walk with seraphs here.

Thou great Triune! thy sign Is on his forehead. May he, manful, fight Under thy banner, till upon his sight Fair Paradise shall shine;

Till, crown and palm-branch won, He shall before thee stand without a fear, Wearing the bright and morning star, and hear The Master say, _Well done_.

JANE’S VOCATION.

“O amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum pervenire.”—ST. AUGUSTINE.

She sat upon an enormous sea-washed cliff of granite, in a flood of golden light from the stooping western sun behind her. Beneath her the sea-waves rippled lightly against the cliff. Far out before her the broad expanse of sea extended till it met the sky. But on neither sea nor sky were the girl’s eyes fastened. She was looking steadily across the narrow gulf that separated the high promontory where her home was from the fishing town on the mainland. Behind her was a farm-house with its prosaic surroundings, and a few huts for drying fish were close at hand. Not far beyond these the stage-road ran, and coming over the brow of the promontory was the lumbering stage.

She did not hear the wheels as they went rumbling by, and did not know how closely she was scanned. Next the driver a youth was sitting, whose face bespoke the artistic temperament as plainly as did the portfolio and hastily-traced sketch upon his knee. Like a flash he caught the loveliness of the picture—its glorious framework of nature’s beauties, its central point of that girlish figure in its graceful _pose_: the upraised head, the hands clasped round the knee as she sat bending slightly forward, the sense conveyed of absorbed, pathetic yearning for something more and higher than the farm life of her home.

“Who lives there?” asked the young man of the driver; and the driver made answer, glancing for very pleasure at the boyish, handsome face, stamped, in spite of its vanity, with the impress of a singularly clean and happy heart:

“Nobody much, mister: old Jake Escott and Marm Escott and Jane. That’s Jane sitting there. She’s their niece, and the best o’ the lot.”

“Jane!” repeated the youth to himself; but to the driver he said: “Do they take boarders there?”

The man chuckled, as if the very idea was absurd.

“Much as they can do to board themselves, _I_ guess. Shiftless set. 'Tan’t so much lack of money, though, as of go-aheadativeness. ’Twould be too much trouble.”

“Think I’d be a trouble?”

The man laughed again. “Don’t know 'bout that. You’re as clever a chap and as taking a chap to talk with as I’ve seen this many a day. You’re a real true, good-hearted gentleman, you be, sir; but you’re city-bred for all that. Reckon you’d want white napkins every meal, and all sorts of finified stuff. Marm Escott couldn’t give you such. 'Cause why? She’s no idea what they are.”

“I’ll try it,” the traveller said, shutting his portfolio decisively and speaking like one who always had his way. “Can’t you stop at the turn—there’s a good fellow—and let me and my traps down?”

“Well, well! You never meant to come here; that’s certain. Where ye bound?”

“Nowhere.” Then, seeing the driver’s puzzled look, “Anywhere,” the youth added merrily. “I’m come to do what I please, and stop where I please, and stay as long as I please. This is the loveliest place I have seen yet, and I must sketch it. Why, surely you have carried passengers before who had no settled destination, but liked to stop where it suited them.”

“Ye—es,” was the doubtful response. “Yes, mister. But never one quite like you. You’re a wide-awake chap and a merry, but you look as dainty as any city lady I ever met.”

The words were evidently taken as a compliment, in whatever way they might have been meant. The youth slung his knapsack over his shoulder, concealing the long name which had puzzled the driver for the whole journey—Van Stuyvesant Van Doorm—leaped lightly down from the coach almost before it stopped, doffed his cap courteously, and with a gay farewell was on his way along a narrow path to the house.

A woman, remarkable for nothing except her curiously total lack of anything noticeable, opened the door, but into that dull face an actual sunny gleam of pleasure came as soon as she saw the blithe young face before her. The descendant of all the Vans doffed his cap courteously again, with an answering gleam in his very brilliant eyes. He had been used all his life to know that people admired him, but it is to be acknowledged that this oft-repeated fact had never lost its charm.

“Is this Mrs. Escott?” he asked.

“I be,” was the succinct reply.

No faintest shadow of a smile betrayed her hearer’s amusement. He knew himself master already of the field. “If you please, Mrs. Escott,” he said audaciously, in his most captivating tone and with his most pleading, obstinate look, “I’m come to board with you.”

Mrs. Escott stared as one taken by storm and unable to collect her scattered forces. “But—but,” she stammered, “we never take boarders, we don’t.”

“This exception will prove the rule, then,” quoth Van. “Oh! for shame, Mrs. Escott. You never would have the heart to turn me away from such a view as this. I want to sketch it, and I will give you a sketch of it, and pay you the highest board into the bargain.”

“But we an’t got nothing fit to board ye on.”

“Ah? No eggs, then, I suppose,” suggested Van mildly, pointing at the hens cackling in the yard. “No milk, either,” he added as the lowing of a cow sounded near by. “No berries to be had for love or money, eh? And of course there are no fish to be found in the sea.”

The woman actually laughed. “I’ll speak to Jake,” she said, then disappeared, and Van seated himself on the doorstep and waited her return without fear of disappointment.

“Jane and I can pick berries,” he said to himself; and then he trilled forth gaily, in a voice that was the envy and admiration of city circles:

“In the days when we went gipsying, Long time ago.”

The melody pleased him; it chimed in well with the birds’ blithe song in the trees and the faint dash of the waves along the shore. He began the song and went through it all as blithely and carelessly as they.

“That’s handsome, now,” an uncouth voice behind him said when he stopped at last with a sense of buoyant delight in his own power. “That’s handsome, stranger. Sing like that, and you’re welcome here, and no mistake.”

This was “Jake,” then, shuffling, untidy, uncouth as his voice. A misgiving arose in Van’s mind. Would the house, the table, his room, be like Jake and Marm Escott? But he need stay no longer than he chose—no longer than one night; and it was now nearly six o’clock in the afternoon. So, all necessary arrangements being concluded, Jake trundled a dilapidated wheel-barrow, in some vague, slipshod fashion, to the road to “fetch the stranger’s traps,” and Mrs. Escott, going to the gate, called loudly, “Jane! Jane! I want ye, child.”

Van, waiting in the parlor for her coming, looked attentively about him. There was almost nothing in the room to show that any one ever came there who cared a whit more for beauty than Jacob Escott himself did. Rag mats of discordant hues covered squares and ovals and rectangular parallelograms of the pine floor; the walls were decorated with coarse prints of General Washington and of the prize ox of twenty years ago; on the table was a big family Bible and a Farmer’s Almanac illuminating the sombre cover with its sickly yellow, and on this was a half-knitted blue yarn stocking.

There was a cheap piano in one corner, but it looked as though it was never opened. The windows were not uncurtained, but, of all other things there, they set Van’s teeth on edge with their execrable attempts at some sort of a painted landscape; he seized the tassels vindictively, and pulled the curtains out of sight, thus letting in the superb view beyond.

Some one, he discovered then, had had taste enough to put flowers in the room. A great handful of daisies and clovers and delicate grasses stood on the sill of the window that looked out to where the narrow gulf separated the promontory from the mainland.

“Jane’s work,” said Van to himself; and as he thought it, he heard a slow, calm step coming through the entry, and Jane herself stood in the doorway.

Involuntarily he bent his head with such a reverence as he had never paid to woman before. He was the cynosure at home among all ladies, but none yet had won from him the reverent greeting of an utter self-forgetful absorption in another’s presence. The girl who stood there was not beautiful, though there was nothing in her features to displease the artist’s eye; indeed, the absence of mere material beauty made more marked the impression conveyed in movement and feature and face. Of all colors in the world—and Van was passionately fond of color—he loved best the gold that is sometimes seen in the western sky near where the sun is setting: a clear, fair hue that does not dazzle but rests the eyes that gaze upon it. Van thought of that color when he saw Jane’s face with its look of unclouded peace.

She lifted her eyes and glanced at him, at first with a tranquil, unmoved expression, as though it was quite indifferent to her who it was that she was meeting; then she gave a quicker, keener glance that thrilled Van with an uneasy sense that she was reading him through and through. What was it that she read? he wondered.

He tried to talk with her as she moved about the room, engaged in the very ordinary task of setting the supper-table. Her language showed some culture and refinement. He hazarded the question, “Are there good schools about here?”

“I do not know,” she said meditatively. “There is the district school.”

“Why does she not say, 'I went there’?” thought Van. “That would tell me something about herself.”

But more and more he found, as his talk went on, that Jane ignored herself. It did not appear to enter her mind that she was anybody to be thought of or talked about. He had at first to make conversation at the supper-table—the farm, the fisheries, the crops—but presently Jacob Escott made bold to ask: “What may be your occupation, sir?”

And, nothing loath, Van launched upon one of his pet topics—art and artists. Even the plain farmer and his wife enjoyed it. How could they resist the fascination of the merry stories, the musical voice, the face that spoke as clearly as the words? But Jane hardly listened, and suddenly a thought struck Van: “This is mere surface-talk after all. Can it be that this farmer’s girl cares for anything deeper, or is it only that she has not depth enough to care?”

They rose from the table, and Van followed Jane to the door. She did not see or heed him. The tide was at the full; wave upon wave came heaving gently onward toward the land as a child, tired out with play, comes home to its mother’s arms to rest; through the twilight the dark, restless mass of water and its ceaseless murmuring alike woke a sense of mystery and awe; above, in the darkening skies, a pale half-moon was shining and a few great throbbing stars. And in the dim light Van saw Jane’s face, and it seemed to him as beautiful and as full of mystery as sea and sky. Such a look of hunger marked it! He thought of Niobe, and of Cassandra, and of Mariana in the moated grange, but she differed in some inexplicable fashion from them all, and then he heard her say below her breath: “My God! My God! My God!”

Over and over again—not what Van had ever fancied a prayer could be, and yet to his ear more full of intense personal pleading than any prayer he had ever heard. Faith, hope, love, expectation, keen desire, and suffering were all summed up in two words; and though he knew nothing of her trouble, yet when the aunt’s call for her came from the room within, Van started as if he had been struck. He could not bear to have her harried back into the dull life of her home.

“Just mend this, Janey, will you?” Mrs. Escott said, exhibiting a coarse blue shirt. “Your uncle wants it for to-morrow.”

The girl’s face was tranquil and happy again by some sudden transformation. She took the rough work—it was not clean work, either; it had evidently been worn once or twice, Van saw with mingled disgust and pity—and, sitting down contentedly in the dingy room, she began her mending. She puzzled Van greatly, she interested him intensely. As he talked to her uncle he watched with his artistically-trained eye each expression of her face. It varied now and then, though the strange, yearning look did not return to it. The peace was there, and an exquisite happiness.

“She is like a dove,” thought Van. “She is like an innocent baby. Oh! if one could take her away from this.”

But one clue to her character he was certain that he had found. He rose up before she finished her work, and he flung open the old piano and sat down before it. It was not so unfit for use as he had feared it would be, and he knew how to glide skilfully over the worst notes. And then he began to try Jane. First he sang ballads, “Robin Adair,” “John Anderson my jo, John,” “Oh! wert thou in the cauld blast.”

“That’s fine, Phœbe,” said Jacob, and Phœbe said “Yes” with an unwonted enthusiasm. But Jane worked steadily on, and if she heard or cared Van could not tell, though he fancied the sweet, dove-like look deepened upon her face.

“The brightest jewel in my crown Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.”

The last tender notes of the song lingered under Van’s fingers, as a knock was heard at the kitchen door, and Jacob went to answer it, followed soon by Phœbe, who evidently recognized the voice of the new-comer. There was a scraping of chairs on the kitchen floor—the plain indication that somebody had come to stay awhile. Van leaned his head forward against the music-rack, and once again before his eyes was the scene he had witnessed in the twilight one hour before. Could the same person who sat quietly at her rough work now be she whom he had seen and heard then in that passion of prayer? And while he mused there rang through his brain echoes that always thrilled his music-loving, art-loving nature with an especial power, and that seemed now like fit mates for the darkly-heaving sea, the star-lit sky, the girl’s yearning face; and from the old ivory keys, that grew strangely full of power and sweetness beneath his magical touch, rang out Chopin’s grand funeral march.

The work dropped from Jane’s hands. He could not watch her face, for she turned it straight toward that eastern flower-decked window that looked out to gulf and sea; but he saw her fingers lock tightly into one another and her form become rigidly still. When he ended she rose quietly and went away, and he did not see her again that night.

But long that night he studied her, while an unwonted shame of himself and a keen admiration for her grew steadily in him, and what he inferred of her then was confirmed each day more and more.

“She does not know one-half the things that I know,” he said, “but she has it in her to care for the highest art and beauty. And she is so noble by nature that she _couldn’t_ spend her thoughts on a thousand trifling things that I waste mine upon. Such a glorious creature imprisoned here! I’ll do my best for her.”

Never used to early rising, he came down stairs the next day to find his breakfast waiting for him and the morning of the family half over.

“Yes, we be early risers,” said Mrs. Escott. “Leastways, Jake and Jane be. I’m a poor hand at it myself. Why, Jane here, she’s across the gulf and home again afore six every day.”

“Across the gulf! Before six!” exclaimed Van.

“Certain sure, Mr. Van. These Catholics are queer creatures. Jane’s a Catholic, you know.”

Habitual courtesy quelled the words of surprise and of pain that rose to Van’s lips—surprise at finding a Catholic in this notedly Protestant fishing settlement, pain at hearing Jane’s deepest feelings thus lightly exposed to view. But Jane showed not the slightest shade of annoyance.

Now he thought he understood her better. One of the many marvellous spells of Catholicism had been woven about her—some vision of beauty had thus come into her hitherto blank life; he would strive the more now to teach her of what he blandly deemed the freer, nobler lights of art and science, but never should word or look from him throw scorn or jest or trifling speech of any kind on that which was dear to her.

Love at first sight—Van had always maintained that he believed in it; he was always falling in love with any pretty face that struck his fancy, and then just as easily falling out of love with an unwounded heart. But here love and pity and real reverence all awoke together and made of him their willing slave. “I’ll go with her to Mass to-morrow,” he said, and on the morrow he stood in the early sunrise on the beach.

So early was it that Jane herself was not yet there. He watched her coming towards her boat, her eyes cast down, and that hungry, longing look stamped plainly on her.

“May I go too?” he said, the gay, trifling manner gone, and that peculiarly distinct imprint of a clean heart shining in his eyes. Lifting her own sweet eyes, once again he felt that she read him through; then, saying nothing, she bowed assent and stepped into the boat. And still without a word she let him take the oars from her, and, drawing her rosary from her pocket, she began to tell her beads. Van thought she never would stop, and she did not till they reached the town. Still silent, she led the way from the shore through some dull, shell-paved paths to a small chapel, and, entering, forgot Van altogether and went with eager footsteps up the aisle. Van stationed himself where he could see her; she sank on her knees before the altar, and crossed herself, and lifted up her face. The lips were parted in a smile of ecstasy, the eyes were shining bright as though they saw unearthly loveliness.

What Van saw was this: a square, low-studded, dingy room, poor prints of religious subjects, mean tallow dips for candles, tawdry gilding and hangings, artificial tawdry flowers, a plain, small altar, a few squalid worshippers; presently an aged priest, who said Mass in a cracked and feeble voice.

“What spell is over her?” thought Van, marvelling. “Oh! if I could once take her out of it all, home to wealth and beauty and tenderness, and to our churches. No need to tell her that Catholics have beautiful ones somewhere.”

But on their way back to the farm she did not speak, and he could not venture to break the intense calm in which she was wrapped. Every evening he read or sang and played, or talked his best, in the parlor where the household gathered, but she never again was there alone with him, and in the daytime she was always busy just when he wanted her society most. Often he was conscious that what he said or read or did failed to make any impression at all upon her; often while he tried to interest her he found her gazing toward that eastern window, and knew that she did not heed him. He longed to say: “I cannot see what you find in that dull church to give your eyes and thoughts to,” but he could not say it.

Sometimes when he read, far oftener when he played grand music—often, too, when they watched the sky and sea and listened to the waves, the noble nature woke responsive to his call. But it stung him to the quick to feel his general powerlessness to move her except when he roused his best and highest powers; it stung him to see how little she cared for the comforts and luxuries and prettinesses, for knowledge even and the art, that were part of his daily existence, and which he deemed necessary to him; it stung him to find that the meanest occupation never made her discontented, but glad and bright instead; while what he considered suited to her condition or her needs was as nothing to her, and the yearning which he could not fathom seldom came into her face when at her daily labor, but often when he told himself she ought to be content and glad with him.

She talked very little to him; she never seemed to care whether he came or went, and he—all his thoughts became engrossed in her.

One afternoon, near the close of a sultry day, as the first mutterings of thunder and the first far-off flashes of lightning shone and sounded from the dark depths of low-lying clouds above the sea—when the winds were rising, and the poplars showed their leaves’ white faces, and the white-crested waves broke in ominously upon the shore; when Jane’s sensitive nature was awake and quivering in sympathy with the gathering storm—Jacob Escott came hurrying his cattle home to shelter, bringing with him a letter which the stage-driver had flung down to him as he raced his horses by to town. “For you, Mr. Van,” he said.

Van opened it carelessly, read it carefully, then came straight to where Jane stood, watching with keen delight the seething sea and storm-tossed sky.

“Jane,” he said, “listen to me. They have sent for me to go home at once. My father is very ill. Jane, I love you. Will you be my wife?”

She turned with great displeasure in her eyes. “You jest, sir,” she said. “Such jesting pains me much. Even my uncle understands that now.”

“I am not jesting,” he cried vehemently. “I speak the truth. I love you. None but you can ever be my wife. Give me your promise, Jane. I love you so.”

At first her look of rebuke waxed sterner; then for a moment her eyes met the pleading bright eyes fastened on her with the look peculiar to them, that bespoke a singularly clean heart. She smiled as one smiles at a child.

“It is impossible,” she said.

Tumultuously he hurried on: “No, no, not impossible. If I will promise to read, to study, to be a Catholic if I can—will you think of it then? Will you try me?”

“It is impossible,” she repeated. “You pain me.” And then, with an effort, as though she spoke of things too sacred for the common ear, “By the grace of God,” she said slowly, “when he makes the way plain before me, I am to be a nun.”

“No, no!” Van cried again. “No, no! Think—listen. Think it all over again. You do not understand. Your life has been cramped here in this poor, mean place. That is why you want to be a nun. Come away with me to a life that suits a soul like yours. I have seen your craving for higher things.”

The sudden, jagged lightning cleft the skies. By its glare he saw her face distinctly, and a noble scorn was on it, and a righteous indignation.

“Come away with you—from _God_!” she said, and in the pause that followed Van felt himself more mean than the dust from whence he came.

“Forgive me,” she said gently. “I forget. It is you who do not understand. I do not mind that this house is poor and mean; my Lord was born in a stable, and he died upon a cross. And if I suffer here and crave for higher things, it is a suffering which even the cloister can never cure—far less, then, you—for I crave to see the face of God! To love my God, to cease from sin, to come to my God and be for ever one with him in his high heaven—I hunger for it by night and by day.”

“And if this life suits you so well, and you must suffer anyhow,” Van said curiously, “why not stay here always? or why not come with me?”

“Mr. Van,” Jane answered, “to be a nun is my vocation. God himself calls me. I must do his will. Forgive me again, but I cannot talk any more to you about it. If you did not seem so young to me—so like a little innocent child, in spite of all your knowledge—I could not have said so much.” And the next minute she was gone, leaving Van abashed and utterly ignorant of the high meed of true praise which she had bestowed upon him.

He went home to watch for two long days and nights beside a couch of foolish delirium and lingering death; to see a mind of uncommon intellect and far-famed, exquisite taste reduced to folly; to see the eyes stare vacantly at picture and statue and familiar face alike; and then to follow the lifeless body to the grave, and hide it there, clay to its kindred clay. The young heir of enormous wealth and princely possessions paced alone in his father’s halls that night, and found no pleasure in the beauty that once had satisfied him. Even the memory of Jane’s face was a burden to him.

“She would have to die too,” Van muttered. “And, after all, one could as soon love a St. Catherine borne by angels as love her. I do not believe I ever did. And yet if I did not, I never really loved any woman.”

Wherein he spoke the truth.

Yet one look of hers haunted him—that look of settled, tranquil peace, like the undazzling gold of the western sky; and while it shone before him the steady, tranquil voice echoed through his memory, “To be a nun is my vocation. God himself calls me. I must do his will.”

“I wonder,” queried Van wistfully—“I wonder what my vocation is. I’m sure it has never made any difference to me. I have sketched, and played, and read, just as I fancied.”

And, with that great grace vouchsafed him, of which he was so ignorant, he said like a child: “O God! what shall I do?”

The answer did not come at once. He fretted and puzzled; by and by he began to wonder whether Jane’s religion had anything to do with her choice. Besides, if it was worth a man’s while to think of changing his religion because he fancied himself in love with a creature that some time must die, had he not reason to think seriously about it anyhow? What did she mean when she said she craved to see God’s face? What caused that woman of so few words to speak with such power when she spoke of that?

Van read and thought, but it was not the books that enlightened him. He went one evening where he seldom went by day, when curious eyes could watch him—to his father’s grave. It was a warm evening late in September. As he passed the rectory adjoining the church, which his father, and his father’s father, and all the Van Doorms of the region had religiously attended, gay voices and snatches of music caught his ear, and he looked up involuntarily.

It was a pretty sight. The gas had just been lighted, the curtains were still up. Lonely, sorrowful Van, forgetful of his wonted courtesy, stood still where he was and took in the whole picture with an added heartache.

In the pleasant parlor, not luxurious, but a _home-room_, the mother sat with her baby on her knee. Van remembered her when she came a bride to the parish, and he was only a child of five years old. It was one of his earliest memories—that being taken to church with the promise of seeing the new young minister’s new young wife, if he would be very good. That was twenty years ago, and there were lines of gray in Mrs. Charles’ hair, but her face wore the same kindly smile that had marked it then in the freshness of her nineteen years, and at the piano a girl of nineteen might have been taken for the bride brought back again in her youthful bloom. She was playing some familiar melody; five or six brothers and sisters clustered about her, sang blithely with her; a toddling child at the mother’s knee beat time with its chubby fingers on the younger baby’s chubby hand. Presently an inner door opened, and the pastor entered. There was a cry of “Father! father!” a general rush to meet him, frantic, merry embraces from the children, while the mother smiled contented, and the father stood tender and strong in the midst of his happy flock.

The picture lasted for a brief space only; with a pretty gesture of horror the eldest daughter sprang toward the window and drew down the shades, lest somebody should see, and Van stood alone outside in the gathering night.

He plodded on dreamily to the church-yard, and sat down near the new grave among many, many older graves where the men and women of his race lay buried.

“Wife and child,” said Van, with a long, hard, envious sigh, “father and mother, and happy home. And I—”

“Wife and child—father and mother.” The words repeated themselves in that curious, echo-like fashion which words have when they come to the mind as a part of a familiar saying, whose whole cannot be at once recalled, and which for a time we vainly strive to place.

“Wife and child—father and mother.” Ah! something else comes: “Houses and lands.” What is it? What is Van striving to get?

“Houses and lands.”

He has it.

“No man who hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands for my sake and for the Gospel, who shall not receive an hundred times as much, now in this time: and in the world to come life everlasting.”

He does not see with his bodily eyes at all now, but the eyes of his soul are wide awake, and they see clear and true.

In which church—Catholic or Protestant—were the men who, not by tens or by hundreds, but by thousands upon thousands, and through centuries upon centuries, had carried out to the very letter the words of Christ, the Bible words? Which, except through some exceptions that only served to prove the rule, had by loud-voiced declamation, and an action that spoke more loudly still, set at naught the teaching of the Master—set at naught the example of Him who left all for them?

Van seemed to hear it once again—the missionary letters read from the pulpit and published in Protestant magazines; the pleadings for clothes for the missionary’s wife and children; the appeals for money, or a missionary must leave his important field because his family could not be supported there; the vaunted heroism of missionaries who endured to see their children suffer rather than desert their post. Where were the men whose heroism was such that they had no home, no family, no earthly tie, but stood ready like the angels—true messengers—to go or to stay, undeterred by any human consideration, where God and his church asked or needed them?

And so it came to pass that Van understood the mystery of Jane’s vocation; comprehended that men and women, young and old, rich and poor, ignorant and lettered, heard, as the wedded Peter and the unwedded John heard once the voice of Christ call to them, and literally, like them, left all and followed him. It came to pass also that he understood Jane’s suffering; knew that that call of God and the accompanying love of God were a hundred-fold more in this life than the earthly joys renounced, and yet that the promise of the everlasting life spoke of such ineffable bliss that the longing awakened for it could only be appeased in heaven.

Van found his vocation too. He threw himself, heart and soul, into true Christian art. His pictures were seldom seen on the walls of rich men’s houses, but churches and convents owned them free of price. That part of his work, however, was the smallest part. Money and time and strength were lavished nobly with and in aid of those who are successfully laboring in our day to show, by research in catacombs and ruined sacred buildings and among old missals and breviaries and parchments, that the Catholic Church of to-day is the church of the early Christians and martyrs.

In Italy he met and married some one very different from Jane—a very lovely and good and noble woman—and Jane to him became more and more a St. Catherine borne by angels, and more and more he wondered that he ever had presumed to think of offering her an earthly love.

“Had I been a Catholic then, I never could have done it,” he told his wife. “God had called her for himself, and set his seal upon her.”

And the happy wife said humbly: “Hers was the higher calling, dear.”

So when, one day, their only daughter came to them—a strong, high-spirited, brilliant girl, the sunshine of their home—and told them that God’s call had come to her to leave her home for Christ’s poverty, and all human love for his love alone, she found no weak resistance.

“Thank God,” they said, “for the honor he has done us! For him we gladly bid thee forget thine own people and thy father’s house.”

But of Jane they never heard, except that, when God’s time came, she left the farm beside the sea. What need to know more of her, who was where she longed to be—one of the great number who lose all to find All, and, having Him whom their soul loveth, need nothing more?

COUNT FREDERICK LEOPOLD STOLBERG[88]

Footnote 88:

Frederick Leopold, Count Stolberg, since his return to the Catholic Church, 1800-1819. From hitherto unpublished family documents. By John Janssen. Freiburg in Breisgau: Herder & Co.

Count Stolberg, a well-known statesman and writer, a minister of the Duke of Oldenburg, the friend of Goethe, Schlegel, Klopstock, Lavater, Stein, John and Adam Müller, La Motte Fouqué, Körner, and others as distinguished, the correspondent of most of the German historians, philosophers, and _savants_ of his day, became a Catholic, after seven years’ anxious seeking for truth, on the 1st of June, 1800, at Münster, in Westphalia, in the fifty-first year of his age. He immediately retired from public life, although circumstances afterwards brought him before Germany as a representative man; and his writings spread through all classes of his countrymen as a worthy and dignified exposition of a religion at that time much reviled, misunderstood, and in some cases persecuted. His example in home-life was as powerful in a smaller circle as his writings were in a wider one; and his relations with his wife and children (he had eighteen children by his two marriages) were such as to make it true of him that he was a model for all Christian heads of families. His own tastes were simple and domestic; he was fond of the country, and was a childlike companion even to his youngest children, while to all, as they grew up, he was a wise friend and teacher. All his children, except Mariagnes, his eldest daughter by his first marriage, became Catholics with him; those born after his conversion were of course brought up in the church. His second wife, Sophie, Countess von Redern, had shared his doubts and his experiences during those seven years of eager search after religious certainty, and became a Catholic also; but while he remained in intimate and sympathetic relations with his brothers and sisters, he never influenced any of them far enough to make them follow his footsteps. His brother Christian and his wife Luise were his most constant and intimate correspondents; with the former religion seemed to make no difference, as his admiration for, and sympathy with, Stolberg was proof against anything—indeed, Stolberg often called him his “other self”; and the latter, to judge by her letters, was a woman of more than common understanding, a student of science, an observer of the times, whose mind was open to receive any new impression that had the semblance of truth or real progress in it; an investigating and impartial searcher, better versed than most women in classic learning, and eager for knowledge in any shape. To give up constant intercourse with his own family and remove to a Catholic city was the hardest sacrifice Stolberg had to make on leaving the Lutheran communion; but he considered the change imperative for the proper education of his children. In a letter to Luise announcing this resolve he says: “There is no dilemma, but, even if there were, you will agree with me that a tender conscience, in a doubtful case, must always choose against its wishes—I mean its natural wishes, which are always suspicious to upright morals, let alone to Christianity.” To his friend Princess Gallitzin, the mother of the zealous missionary in America, Demetrius Gallitzin, he says: “It is an unspeakable joy to me that my brother and sister-in-law remain bound to me in the fullest and most unreserved love, and that not even the shadow of a misunderstanding has come between them and me, however painful to them is the separation from me, from Sophie, and from the children.”

He took a house in Münster and made it his home for thirteen years, living there through the winter and spending his summers at a country-house a few miles out of the city, at Lütjenbeck. His children’s studies were his first care. Greek being his favorite study, he made each of his sons a good Greek scholar, and kept up his own studies by a repeated round of all the great authors, read successively with each of his many boys. Ernest and Andrew, the sons of his first marriage, were his first pupils, and his own teaching was supplemented in languages and history by a French _emigré_, the Abbé Pierrard, and in philosophy by some professors resident in Münster. Stolberg did not neglect the physical education of his boys, and would no more dispense with the daily walk, ride, or swim than he would with the studies. His sons were good shots, too, and in the summer he and they spent most of their time in the open air. Their mother writes of them that they are “truthful, generous, and good-hearted,” and “that their tender respect for their great father increases day by day.” She was herself a patient and judicious teacher, and fully recognized how much harm is done to children, and the “quiet workings of God’s influence disturbed in them, by the expectation of hurried development and individuality.” Stolberg was already beginning his literary work in the interests of religion and education, and in 1801 was translating St. Augustine’s _De Vera Religione_. The early Fathers were his favorite spiritual reading; also the Greek Testament and the Hebrew version of the Old Testament. He wisely resolved to lead a retired life, and not enter into what is called society; but he gathered round him a circle of real friends, in intercourse with whom he spent many hours, especially in the evenings. Among these were Princess Gallitzin, to whom we owe the suggestion that produced Stolberg’s great work, _The History of the Religion of Jesus Christ_; Prince Fürstenberg, an old man of very exemplary life; Kellermann, his friend and pupil, and the tutor of his younger sons for sixteen years—a priest who was the model of his order; some of the cathedral chapter, learned and enlightened men; and many young people, friends of his children, among whom the latter afterwards found wives and husbands, in all cases happily acceptable to their parents. Whoever has read the real-life idyl of _A Sister’s Story_ will see some likeness between the home of the La Ferronays and Stolberg’s happy home. Indeed, his friends were part of his family, and admission to his intimacy became the ambition of all such in Münster as had minds beyond the common run, and aspirations beyond those of fashion, politics, and frivolity. Stolberg’s dislike to the loss of time involved in ordinary visits and the inanities of society is thus described by himself in 1810:

“I am growing more unfit from year to year for large gatherings. Intercourse with friends, like the leaves of the Sibylline books, is more precious the less time it occupies and the less often it recurs. To hear social chatter for more than an hour affects me so that I feel much like a dead donkey.... How true are Lavater’s words: 'Even the circle of good souls seldom gives me a new impulse, and a thousand trivial pleasures rob me of true enjoyment. Only solitude can shadow and cool my spirit, thirsty and weary from the company even of loved ones; only solitude can give what no friend can offer—a new consciousness and new life, and a feeling that God loves me.’”

This country life which was such a relief and yearly joy to the whole family is charmingly described in Stolberg’s letters. His garden, his hay-field, his children’s play; his walks in the beech, oak, and maple woods; the squirrels in the trees, the favorite kid of his little girls, the nightingales, the blossoming fruit-trees that suggested to him the saying that the “apple-tree did not eat of the apple”; the grottos, rocks, valleys, castles, torrents of the neighborhood of Stolberg; the old family house which he had not seen for twenty-eight years, and upon which he prided himself as a possession that had been in the family for a thousand years; the beauties of the Erzgebirg, and the Bohemian hills that lean against it; the Scotch or Norwegian-like scenery, wild and grand, of these mountains with their narrow, fruitful valleys and green meadows, fringed with dark pine woods—are all described with that heartiness and enthusiasm which real lovers of the country know, but which, as Stolberg says, so many others pretend to, while in reality they see in nature nothing but a cold show, a theatre decoration. “They look complacently as into a peep-show at the sunrise and the heavens, but their heart does not swell within them nor their eyes grow dim.” He was as fond of childish games, especially of blowing soap-bubbles, as he was of beautiful scenery, and counted it a sign of soul-health when he was in the frame of mind to enjoy such games. And now that we have before us the picture of the man in his domestic life, who in his public, political, literary, and social life was of so much importance and had so wide an influence, we will keep mostly to his own letters, which give full vent to his opinions on the important events of the time, and show him forth as emphatically of the old school, a model Christian, a thorough gentleman, but a man of his own generation; impatient of novelty, a great admirer of the English constitution, but a scornful contemner of the mushroom constitutions of the Continent; a hot _Légitimiste_, but a patriotic German; an uncompromising and somewhat irrational foe of Napoleon, over and above his mere national antagonism against the great and successful warrior—for instance, he believed that “Napoleon’s greatness was kneaded out of the abjectness of Europe,” forgetting that a man’s greatness may lie precisely in the art of taking advantage of a weakness inherent in an adversary, and seizing the right moment to overwhelm small minds with his stronger one; a firm believer in the necessity of his own order, but an “aristocrat” with lofty and beautiful theories of what aristocracy consists in; in a word, a great Christian and a thorough man.

Besides his Greek and Hebrew studies, he was fond of English history and literature, and knew French and Italian well; Milton and Young were his favorite English poets, though he often quotes Shakspere too, and one of his works, second only to the _History of Religion_, was the _Life of Alfred_—a man whom he looked upon as a heroic model, and whose example he wished to dwell upon as a guide to his sons through life. He also translated the whole of Ossian. His letters relating to his home-life, his losses and those of his relations, the death of his sons and son-in-law, and of many dear friends, full as they are of Christian manliness and resignation, and of moral axioms that might be taken as mottoes, we will pass by, as they have less of individuality than his letters containing opinions on religion, politics, and literature, as well as expositions of theories of his own, all strongly and conscientiously held. He firmly contradicted a current misconception in his time—and, indeed, a not unfrequent one now—of the intolerance of the Catholic Church.

“Only for those who confess Catholic truth,” he writes, “and yet consciously keep aloof from the Catholic communion, is there no hope of salvation. Of others who err in all good faith, my church teaches me to believe that they are her members, though unknowingly. God allows many honest Protestants to remain in error, and to fancy that the Catholic Church, that truly merciful mother, is intolerant against those outside her pale. It is not the true spirit of that church to persecute, curse, or burn the erring. Infallible in her doctrine, as were also the teachers who sat in Moses’ seat, she still cannot preserve all her members free from imperfections in their acts—not even the pope, nor, in the old dispensation, the high-priest.”

In another letter he says:

“Far be it from me, as it is from every Catholic who knows the spirit of his church, to doubt that among Protestants also there are and have been holy souls—holy in the sense in which all true children of God are holy; ... but my church teaches me to look upon these as unconscious members of the true, though to them unknown, church.”

“Overberg, of whose rarely beautiful catechism thirty thousand copies have been sold, especially for schools and children, expresses himself very pleasingly on this subject. No well-instructed Catholic has any objection to make to this, but even no half-taught Catholic can, on the other hand, mistake other altars for that altar of sacrifice which Malachi prophesied of, and will hold all other altars only for such as they really are.... Among unlearned Protestants (and, as I said before, among a few learned ones) there are very many whom the spirit of Protestantism as such has not touched, who have never been disturbed, because they have found in Holy Scripture a full rest and contentment, and lean with heartfelt love on Jesus Christ, doing for love of him all they do, in fullest confidence, and what flesh and blood would never teach them to do. Plants that bear such fruit as this I can only hold to come from roots watered by the Heavenly Father himself. You believe [he is addressing Sulzer, of Constance] that the number of such souls is small; and such a belief grieves me, for I think that it drives many away and discourages them. And, indeed, such hard suppositions as you make and insist upon having categorically answered lead to embittering results. I speak from experience. For seven years did I seek for truth with an upright heart, after God first put it into my heart to seek. After seven years’ search was I led, through circumstances that God overruled, to know and confess the truth. Others have sought longer and more anxiously, and have not found what I did, but they serve God in the simplicity of their hearts better than I do, and will assuredly find the truth in the kingdom of light and truth....”

“You see,” he says to his brother, “that I am not intolerant. But I hope to God that I shall never be tolerant in the _newest sense_ of the word—that is, indifferent, lukewarm, fit to be spat out of the mouth of Jesus Christ.”... “Do not let,” he says to his son Caius at Göttingen University, “yourself be led away from the rock-founded church by the many good and worthy Protestants you meet. Among all in error are many who are individually children of God, but they have no church, no sacrifice, no priesthood, no Eucharist. The helter-skelter union of both Protestant bodies (the Lutheran and the Calvinist) must give serious scandal to the earnest souls in both, and will, I hope, lead many into our church.”

Of the difference between feeling and truth he says:

“Certain sensations may be real to one person and unreal to another. Not so with facts and doctrine. It is the peculiar character of the true religion that as it must be the same in all ages, so must every man be equally able to understand and embrace it.... I could not believe in a true religion which it would not be possible for every human being to believe in.... He leads some through rough paths, others through smooth ones; some towards truth, some through error. The way of error, _as such_, is not His way, although he is always ready to unfold the truth, to be beforehand with, and to meet half way, the upright soul who in all simplicity holds an erring belief.”

Indeed, in Stolberg’s experience, the difference between lukewarm and conscientious Protestants was fully shown; for the former reviled him for his change of religion, while the latter approved of his following what he looked upon as truth. Other misconceptions of Catholic doctrine he also combated, and greatly enlightened many of his friends on the Catholic belief in the justifying merits of Christ. Holy Scripture was a source from which he considered spiritual light to come, but, as he observed, “the learned have not yet been able to see that the healthy eye, like the concave mirror, gathers into one point all the scattered rays, while _they_ split and split until the last particle of light is lost in shadow.” Elsewhere he says:

“He who is careless of Holy Writ is careless of the life of the soul, and he is happy if he becomes conscious, were it only now and then, of the fact that the world, whether with its pleasures or its wisdom, offers him nothing but what is poisonous to the immortal spirit.”

His advice to his son Ernest, who left home in 1803 to join the Austrian army, is full of the true Christian spirit. He recommends him to practise every virtue that would make a man perfect, and goes into many details which, of course, we cannot follow here, but this sentence is almost a compendium of the whole:

“A true Christian cannot find true freedom nor true unsolicitude but in the possession of a good conscience. Where the conscience is tender and watchful it watches alike over every act; and the more we pay attention to it, so much the more does it become, notwithstanding the violence it at first does to nature, a principle of our life which puts us in harmony with ourselves, and therefore makes us truly free.”

Elsewhere he says, speaking to another youth, a friend of his sons:

“Lassitude and a want of courage increase the strength of the enemy; and discontent concerning the post to which God has appointed us is unseemly in any brave man, much more in a foremost fighter. Not the wish that 'everything were otherwise,’ but the resolve always to act well and bravely—or, as Holy Writ says, 'to walk before God and be perfect’—can make men of us. That wish unnerves us; this resolve strengthens us and gives us a might which remains with the weapons of the fighter even on the other side of the grave. He who has done and suffered much does not dream of soiling his crown with tears, while he who has as yet found no opportunity of doing or suffering has still less a right to weep.”

The melancholy which the French have aptly called “_la maladie du siècle_”[89] was abhorrent to Stolberg—that unmanliness and cowardice of mind which became fashionable through the writings of atheists, and which in many phases has spread itself into our present literature as well as our practice. He also writes concerning the same thing:

Footnote 89:

The disease of the age.

“Every human being has his own history to work out, and that this should be thoroughly done does not depend upon the amount of talent he has, but upon the will which few bring to it unconditionally and in a cheerful spirit.”

Stolberg was of a healthier school and generation; he did not see the beauty and sentiment and romance of passion running riot, misunderstood natures, morbid hearts, vain strivings, and all the paraphernalia of a moral sick-bed. For instance, the baneful and unreal excitements of the theatre were very dangerous in his eyes, and the evil custom which even good and well-meaning people fell into of countenancing private theatricals, and letting even their young children take part in them, was a great sorrow to him. One of the evils he deprecated was the rousing of a false sympathy with imaginary woes, which ended by undermining true sympathy with our neighbor’s actual troubles; another, the vanity which play-acting fostered in young people, and the excitement which rendered them unfit for serious study and work. It also destroys the simplicity of the soul and that modesty which is the chief adornment of young souls, especially of a girl’s soul.

“Young girls,” he says, “when they have once overcome their shyness, long after the same excitement, and are always wishing to be playing a part. The truthfulness of their nature is soon lost; seeming overcomes being, every acted feeling destroys real feeling; the heart becomes cold for reality, and is only to be aroused by supposed passion.”

Public theatricals he looked upon as equally dangerous, and even wrote against them, praising Geneva for having, until it became French, refused to allow the erection of a theatre within the limits of its territory. “The special charm of the stage,” he says, “lies in its flattery of our lusts, our vanity, and our laziness.” We have often heard fine theories advanced as to the mission and morality of the drama, but as long as practice belies these theories it is impossible to look upon them otherwise than as a well-meaning Utopia. Stolberg saw the real harm done, and not the imaginary good which some high-minded and exceptional artists would fain do.

The atheistical and deist philosophy of the eighteenth century and early part of the nineteenth were naturally repugnant to such an upright mind as Stolberg. He hated the wilful groping in the dark after a truth which the “philosophers” might have found in the Gospels, had they had the fairness to admit these on an equality, at least, with other so-called “proofs.” He called Steffen and Schleiermacher at Halle the “new Gnostics,” and compared their systems to the vain effort of the fabled Danaides to pour the ocean through a sieve.

“The name of Gnostics sounds ominous,” he says, “and brings to mind the Gnostics of the first centuries, with many of whose beliefs, indeed, the wisdom of our newest sages astonishingly coincides. Under their treatment even realities dissolve themselves in shadow, while they give to shadows the form and appearance of realities.”

Jacobi was at that time a very prominent leader of philosophy in Germany, and Stolberg mentions him many times in his correspondence with various persons, evidently as a representative man. At one time this teacher, the friend of Goethe, a sort of Medici among his disciples near Düsseldorf, where he had a beautiful house, and still more beautiful garden—now the property of the town and the appropriate scene of artists’ banquets and popular _fêtes_—confessed himself, in the midst of his philosophy, “a very beggar” in the true learning of the Spirit. Stolberg often alluded to this, and, when the master’s pride had long distanced the frame of mind in which this acknowledgment had been made, wrote of him: “Poor Jacobi! he was richer indeed when he called himself poor as 'a beggar.’” In 1812 he writes:

“I have just read Jacobi’s last pamphlet. The one before the last _On a Wise Saying of Lichtenberg_, seems to me in the highest degree satisfactory. That on _The Recension_ (Jacobi cannot help putting odd and often trivial titles to his works) has also excellent points, but the whole seems to me loose, and a windy toying with views which he borrows from Christianity, the whole system of which, however, he, as far as in him, the puny mortal, lies, seeks to weaken and annihilate. While he praises the god-like Plato, he seems to forget that this philosopher, or rather Socrates in his platonic _Phædrus_, evidently longs, as a hart after the fountains of waters, for a god-given revelation whose very possibility itself Jacobi, on the contrary, strives to reason away.”

Schelling’s answer to Jacobi, however, equally displeased Stolberg, and he accuses him of making Jacobi appear, “through certain wiles of speech, now an atheist, now a fanatical dreamer,” and of taking credit to himself for

“Having been the first clearly to prove the existence of God. His God has been from all eternity the greatest Force, which contained within itself, _in potentia_, but not _in actu_, that goodness and wisdom which it developed in later ages. He falls thus into Count Schmettau’s error, of a god who has raised himself from a lower state to the highest, which theory one might compare with the career of a field-marshal who has risen by degrees from the ranks.... Evidently Schelling is a man of much mind, but of overweening vanity. He speaks of Christianity with respect, and probably believes in the divine mission of Christ, whose system, however, it was reserved for him—Schelling—fully to explain. He sent this paper of his to Perthes (Stolberg’s publisher), and told him he wished me to read it, and that I should then have quite another idea of what his philosophy was, and discover that he did not hold the views I attributed to him.”

At another time he writes:

“The deplorable frivolity of these times is one of their worst signs. I find it the saddest of all. Would that one could hope,

“When the hurly-burly’s done, When the night is past and gone,”

that things would come right again. But moral nights are not as physical ones. The latter bring us dreams which the dawn of day dispels. The moral nights are full of the feverish dreams of mankind, and they have no certain limit as to time. They go _crescendo_ from error to folly, until the awakening at the end of a completed, comet-like course of misery.”

We have mentioned Stolberg’s warm love of his country. Prince Francis Fürstenberg said of him during the time of the humbling of Germany under the yoke of Napoleon: “I know, and have known in my long life, many of the noblest men in the nation, but I saw none surpass Stolberg in genuine love for the Fatherland. His German and imperial heart is pure as gold and shines like a diamond.” The epithet imperial sounds odd to our ears; it is an allusion to his belief that the Empire of Germany, such as it existed just before the Congress of Vienna, was the proper representative and bulwark of the nation. He blamed the Emperor Francis very strongly for laying down his time-honored dignity later on, and contenting himself with a local title which severed his interests materially from those of Germany at large. He also saw in this withdrawal of imperial authority and protection over non-Austrian countries a danger to the Catholic faith, and a possible interference of Protestant powers in the communications between Catholic German states and the Holy See. But concerning the ever-vexed question of the Rhine frontier his patriotism was quick and hot; he wished that in the new partition at the Congress Alsace and Lorraine should be given back to Germany, and lamented the injudicious behavior by which some of the German troops had spoilt the evidently favorable state of mind of the Alsatians during part of the disturbances on the frontier.

“Eighteen months ago,” he writes in 1815, “the Alsatians were very well disposed, came to meet our troops with flags and received them with ringing of joy-bells; then came the Bavarians, the Badeners, and so on, and behaved so as to make them hate us. We all talk of our wish to reunite our once torn-away brethren with Germany, but we have angered them instead and are burning their towns and villages. My hair stands on end and I could weep tears of blood at the thought.”

Early in the century, a few weeks after his conversion, Stolberg wrote thus to Princess Gallitzin:

“True patriotism embraces the highest good of the people in all things: the blessings of faith, those of law, of freedom, and of morals. It can never follow the path of forcible overthrows and of revolution, nor covenant with an outside enemy, nor lend itself to the service of injustice, even when a seeming and momentary advantage is to be gained by such service. What a disgrace for us Germans is the Franco-mania that reigns among us—the cap-in-hand alliance with the Corsican adventurer, who is spreading horror and desolation among us and knows no right but that of the sword. What undermines all our strength, and will sink us even lower and lower, is not only the jealousy and spirit of aggrandizement current among the German states against the empire and the emperor, the fawning on the French with the hope of getting their help to win new slices of territory, but far more the weakened character of the whole people, and their want of moral energy and good feeling—the result of the unbelieving philosophy and immoral literature that have unnerved the nation.”

Just as impartially he condemned in after-years, when German patriotism had spread with a sudden rush from the field into literature, the “coarse Teutonism” which rejected every refinement of foreign origin, maligned every foreign custom, and made patriotism ridiculous by enjoining upon it to be no less than rabid. He then defended all that was reasonable and applicable to German life, all the praise-worthy customs, books, and improvements that fashion had turned suddenly against. He had earned a good right to be independent; for four of his sons fought in the different German armies that overwhelmed Napoleon after the retreat from Moscow, and one, his son Christian, a brave boy of eighteen, died at the battle of Ligny. His two sons-in-law also, fathers of large families of young children, were in the national army, and the greatest enthusiasm was felt by all the members of the family, old and young, for the cause which Stolberg called “ours, God’s, Europe’s, mankind’s, and the right’s.”

In 1815 he wrote: “True German feeling it is to welcome all that is noble and good, out of all ages and nations, as our own. Every one now, with narrow minds, is Nibelungen-mad, barbaric-mad”; and concerning his _Life of Alfred_ he says:

“Alfred belongs to us, and therefore do I wish to hold him up to the veneration and imitation, and for the teaching, of my children. But not only do Alfred and his people belong to us; we should also make our own all that is great and noble in the life of all nations, yet without losing thereby our own individuality.”

In 1805 the decree freeing the serfs in the Duchy of Holstein went into effect, and Stolberg congratulates his brother Christian on this happy event; naturally, the greater event of the abolition of negro slavery in the British West Indies was a great joy to him, and he rejoiced the more that the _Illuminati_, his special aversion, lost thereby their best weapon against England, and that the French Declaration of the Rights of Man could be unfavorably compared with the English constitution, on account of a contradictory law, at that time still in force, forbidding the liberation of the negroes in French colonies to be even mentioned before the legislature. The alliances, dictated by fear or by interest, of German sovereigns with Napoleon were a subject of great grief and indignation to him, and he looked upon England with almost exaggerated admiration because she withstood the conqueror. He said “Pitt would save England against Europe’s will,” and his confidence in the general policy of the English statesman was unbounded. He had, too, a kind of historical admiration, if we may so call it, for the English form of government, which alone he thought proper for freedom, but which he did not believe fit for the wants of every nation, indiscriminately, on the Continent. It strikes us, however, that the fact of the English constitution, in its then state, being nearly a hundred and fifty years old had somewhat blinded his mind to the facts—according to his theory, rather suspicious, to say the least—of the change of dynasty in 1688; for the Stuarts in England were surely as legitimate sovereigns, from his point of view, as the Bourbons in France, whose least advances, in the person of Louis XVIII., towards the modern spirit so incensed and disgusted Stolberg; and when he said that “England alone stood in the breach” against Napoleon, he forgot that she considered it her interest to withstand him, and that a deeply-rooted prejudice egged on the nation against him. If he had seen anything of the unreasoning panic which the threatened invasion caused among the English, he would have been less ready to jest at the falling through of the scheme, which he called “an expedition to gather mussels along the British shores.” It has often been so, we think, among Continental statesmen and thinkers: they look upon England with exceptionally favorable eyes and weigh her doings in special balances, forgetting the lawless and riotous disturbances that she experienced earlier than other countries, after which she settled into the solid, steady, conservative, law-abiding, slow-to-be-moved nation which she had been for over a hundred years when the French Revolution suddenly broke out. Stolberg, much as he praised England, almost refused to see any good in the chaos of new ideas that were seething pell-mell together; he saw nothing but the evident godlessness, selfishness, pride, and cruelty which marked that era; and, indeed, he, the man of another age, the lover of a lofty ideal which we shall mention presently—the man who said that “all politics hinged on the Fourth Commandment”—could hardly be expected to allow that out of such confusion God could glean anything worthy of being offered to himself.

Stolberg often called Germany the “heart of Europe,” and wrote an ode with that title; but he would not allow with the innovators that the “philosophy” of the age was the true source of the influence his country should have on the Continent. Allied to this false idea of many Germans was the affected custom, in the early part of the century, of using the French language instead of the mother-tongue, even in the nearest domestic intercourse—a fault which the Russians also fell into, but which at present they have seen the folly of and have nearly successfully remedied. Stolberg heartily hated and despised this foreign intrusion into German home-life.

“Even in my younger days,” he says with scorn, “I can remember hearing of a gifted German girl being reproached by German women with being 'affected’ enough to write 'German’ letters.... Germans now write to each other, brother to brother, husband to wife, in French.... Is that not to estrange one’s self from one’s nearest and dearest? nay, even from one’s self?”

His relations and correspondence with well-known people of his day furnish us with his opinions on many of the writers, _savants_, statesmen, and philosophers, the reigning and rising public men. Of the historian Johann Müller he says:

“No one ever seized the true spirit of history so early in life as he did.... His life is very interesting; it is true he showed a good deal of vanity, but also so much cheerful good-humor that one does not feel inclined to be hard upon him for the former. His plan of study, as he arranged it for himself, and the scrupulous way in which he followed it out, seem to me truly noteworthy.... What a comprehensive spirit, what feeling and sympathy for the true, the good, and the beautiful! How early, too, he broke loose from the unwisdom of the philosophy of the times, and how deep a religious spirit remained firm in him in the midst of many disturbances, since he so clearly understood the history of the world by the light of that Providence whose finger he was always tracing in it! He once said very beautifully that Christ was the key to the world s history.”

In 1807 he gives the following opinion of Alexander von Humboldt:

“I know Humboldt personally. He has much understanding, much liveliness, much industry. But is he not inclined to be too much enslaved by the German _à priori_ tendency and by a love of the scientific form? Is he strong enough not to let himself be carried away by the method of modern criticism, which tends to violent disruption from all that has gone before, instead of tracing out the great analogies on the path of simple observation? Is he _quite_ free from a delicate and imperceptible charlatanism? Years may have matured him, but such maturing seldom takes place when the quick strides of science make it difficult for wisdom to keep up with her.”

Of Frederick Schlegel’s poetry, and that of others in the _Dichtergarten_ (or “Poet’s Garden,” a collection of fugitive songs by various poets), he writes:

“The rarer and the more beautiful is the noble, religious spirit that breathes through the _Poet’s Garden_, the more do I wish that its authors might put forth all their strength. And so it would be, if it were not for a particular theory which lies at the bottom of the poetry—a theory whose foundation I do not know, but whose evident peculiarity strikes the eye, bewilders the reader, forces the Muse, and in its purposed negligence of language goes so far as even to disfigure it. The Muse craves freedom above all things, if she is to express what comes from the innermost of our heart or our mind. Every trace of art lames poetry, and theory often misleads, because it is born of human philosophy, while poetry is something divine. Therefore poets always succeed best in rhythm where the inspiration is great and noble, and the quickly-passing images, thoughts, sensations only group themselves well and naturally when they are conjured up by an infallible, all-subduing inspiration, without the poet knowing how it happens.”

Of Niebuhr’s Roman history he writes, in 1812—not, perhaps, in the sense that most of the readers of that work will endorse:

“I marvel at the deep learning, and often at the penetration, of our friend; but who will read him? What a bulwark of tedious researches, the result of which is often nothing more than a learned outwork! It is strange that, with this fault of historical pedantry, he could not avoid the contrary one of reasoning _à priori_, so common to the German professors. There is much understanding in the book, and in a few places one is pleasantly surprised at its spirit; but this spirit is neither _a joyful nor a certain one_. He fails in simplicity. From this springs his heavy style, despite his choice use of words. He is too forward in making hypotheses and foregone conclusions; for instance, his open partisanship with the plebeians leads him to make false and hasty judgments. His pragmatical tendency makes him unjust even to Livy, and he has no appreciation of the noble amiability of Plutarch. Yet, with all these faults, he must ever remain a valuable historian—not a star of the first magnitude, but still too good to be a mere _famulus_,[90] to gather material for great historians. Among other things, he lacks the art of managing his style so as to appear to be led by it and yet to make it convey exactly what the writer pleases. But concerning his principles, some of which, however, I do not endorse, his conscience always appears as it is, noble and tender, while his love of truth follows him even on his hobby—hypothesis.”

Footnote 90:

Servant; meaning here a second-rate chronicler.

It may be interesting to give the opinion of some of the same men on Stolberg himself as a historian and writer. The _History of Religion_, which was his great work, and which he mainly attributed to the suggestion, encouragement, and interest of Princess Gallitzin, became a topic of discussion and interest all through Germany. Many were brought by it to the Catholic Church, and of these most wrote to him first, asking advice and making confidences, before they read further or asked instructions from a priest. It was a source of deep thankfulness to him that he had thus been the means of making others share in the same blessings and peace which he had won through the grace and leading of God. But his _History_ was no controversial work; it was very comprehensive, and embraced the whole subject of true religion from the beginning of the world, tracing the connection between Judaism and Christianity; the fulfilment of the prophecies in Christ; the spirit of aloofness from the world, first symbolized in the national exclusiveness of the Hebrews, and then proved in the persecutions under the Roman emperors in the struggle between Christianity and heathendom; and, lastly, the gradual, onward sway which the truth at last won over error, and which, speaking in a certain sense, culminated in the conversion of Constantine. Here Stolberg ended his history, feeling that his life would not be spared much longer, and that he had done his work, so far as he felt called upon by God to witness to the truth that was in him. The unhappy struggles, rents, and abuses of later church history he left untouched; surely there were counterparts to them in earlier days, but no such embittering could come from a relation of the old heresies and divisions as would have sprung from even the most impartial discussion of recent and more local ones. Schlegel took the greatest interest in this work, and of the least important part he spoke thus admiringly:

“I am especially delighted at the strength and simple beauty of your style; whoso compares it with what is called nowadays the art of representing things will easily discover where is to be found the true source of even this beauty.”

Again, of the second part of the history (it was divided into fifteen parts) he says:

“I found myself much steadied and strengthened by the whole, and particularly enlightened by the exposition on the Hebrew belief in the immortality of the soul and on the Mosaic code. May you in the future of your work, as often as opportunity allows, return to and dwell upon the immortality of the soul. It seems to me the path by which mankind at present can best be led towards truth, better than by any other teaching regarding the Godhead.”

He then says that pantheism and a vague sentimentality had perverted everything distinctly Christian into an empty shadow-form, but that few were so absolutely dead to all higher feeling as not to distinguish between the “real personal immortality, and the mere metaphysical image of it, without a hereafter, and without a continuance of the memory.”

“Bring vividly before them the true personal immortality, and you will often find those whom you had thought most spiritually dead and careless to be palpably roused. To me the doctrine of the Trinity is the central point of Christianity, and therefore the foundation and source of all my convictions, views, and aspirations.... The unfolding and representation of this secret of love (the Trinity) I have found to permeate every doctrine, principle, and even custom or rubric of the Catholic Church; although even in her pale many good individuals are less impressed with the divine spirit of the whole than with some one or other literal regulation.”

Johann von Müller wrote thus of Stolberg’s work:

“It is not a lukewarm, sham impartial church history, in which one is uncertain what relation it bears to Jesus of Nazareth, but the work of a man who knows what he believes, and would fain move all men to believe as he does. Not a church history critically weighing the Messiahship of Jesus from the Old Testament against his Godhead from the New, but the work of a man who sees everywhere and at all times Him who was and is, and is to come, and to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth. Lastly, it is not a worldly representation of the deceits and time-serving devices through which Christianity crept into the world, and is still able to maintain herself, the humble handmaid of statecraft, in these our enlightened times, but the confession and outpouring of soul of a man to whom the whole world is nothing in comparison with the Saviour of the world. Of the latter he speaks so that whoever loves him must love this book, and he who knows nothing of him will learn from this book what Christians possess in him. Therefore, reader, if thou art a reed, driven before the learned wind of our modern writings, look to this rock, and see if it has not a foundation in the needs of mankind and the love of the Godhead; and thou who knowest not Christianity, come and see _what it is_, as thy forefathers felt it, as it is yet, mighty in every childlike heart; and thou who believest, come hear, and enjoy, and rejoice thy heart with the word of life.”

Claudius spoke of the book being read by thousands, and of its “undoubted influence in strengthening the Christian faith among the German people.” A person in comparatively private life, Major Bülow, a stanch Bible man, said that Stolberg’s _History of Religion_ had been a “welcome surprise to him, although the style was not always clear to his understanding, and he was only fearful lest the author should not live long enough to finish it.”

Joseph de Maistre spoke thus of the work in his _Recueil de Lettres_, p. 23:

“New researches and discoveries, and the progress of the art of tracing all up to the first sources, may correct or supplement much in his history, may bring a new light to bear on many of his opinions—for the work, in spite of its foundation on, and buttressing by, much study of a high order, is not meant to be an exhaustive scientific work; but I doubt if any, in our century at least, will surpass the author of this history in pure love of God and mankind, love to Christ and his church, and in pure and truly creative spirit. How striking also are his observations on the circumstances of our time, his opinion on the persecution of the church by the spirit of this world, on false teachers, on the marriage tie, and the sanctity of oaths, and many like things!”

Stolberg was rejoiced by these commendations, but more encouraged than rejoiced. Mere vanity was far from him; he thanked God that he had been able to supply “what these oft-repeated praises of good and single-minded men proved to him to have been really a want.”

The ideal which we have alluded to, and which was a great characteristic of Stolberg’s mind, was that of the mission and duties of an aristocracy. He believed that, in the abstract, the existence and allowed influence of such a class was an instinct inborn in man, and that it was only when the aristocracy was false to its own principles that the people could grow antagonistic to it. His theories on the subject were beautiful, noble, poetic, but in his time there had been so much evil practice that such theories were nearly swamped under it. It was natural to his character, however, to lean more on the theory than the practice, and to consider the latter an excrescence and abuse which might be done away with, and the ideal thereby reinstated in its first dignity. At first sight his theory seems simply a feudal, mediæval, romantic one, the dream of a man proud of his own order, and nursed in prejudices such as no change in political relations _de facto_ could uproot but if we look closer into it, it becomes a very different and far more worthy thing—namely, a belief in the essence of chivalry, a standard of conduct such as King Arthur’s, a translation into altered forms and circumstances of the Gospel rules of charity, courtesy, and patience. Here are some of his own sayings on the subject, on which he reasoned in a way so far removed from either fanaticism or vanity that we place his explanations here as something wholly special to himself, and quite different from the ordinary rhapsodies about the necessity of various grades of classes:

“The ideal of the aristocracy[91] is not weakened through the unworthiness of many who are of noble birth. On the contrary, the just scorn which follows these men redounds to the honor of their class, of which one cannot become unworthy without being despised by all. Nature gives the aristocracy neither more understanding nor more physical strength than she does to other classes; it takes its worth wholly from an ideal, but not a mistaken ideal. This, like all that is great in mankind, is founded upon the sacrifice of all that is lower for the sake of attaining the highest.

Footnote 91:

_Adel_, nobility, from _edel_, noble, our Saxon _Ethel_ and _Atheling_. The word is here translated by aristocracy rather than nobility—the former being a word of wider signification, and embracing the class of untitled gentlemen (which of course Stolberg included), as well as that of strictly so-called noblemen.

“The aristocracy must give up every mercantile and lower traffic. Three things were entrusted to its keeping—agriculture, of which kings have not been ashamed, statesmanship, and the defence of the Fatherland.

“As an ennobled countryman the aristocrat can pursue the most necessary, the oldest, and the most innocent work with better results than the peasant, because he has more means, more insight, and can better afford the danger of an occasional failure. His experience and example teach and encourage the common countryman, whom it is the beautiful and holy duty of the nobleman to enlighten and to protect, and whose well-being, morals, and temporal and eternal good it is his duty to further by every means in his power. This business is one which, if he wishes to be respected as a nobleman, he has no right to evade or neglect; except temporarily, if he is chosen as a representative of his province—a business to which he has also a special call as a citizen of the state. He must and ought, however, to take part in the government, even if he be not chosen by his province; and either as a magistrate or only as a land-owner he can take a prominent part in it. The defence of his country devolves upon no one so strongly as upon the nobleman. This is a worthy and beautiful duty of knighthood. It is well for that state where the aristocracy, as such, is called to the defence of the Fatherland as leaders of their own country people, whose patrons they are in times of peace, whose heads, judges, mediators, example, and benefactors they should be at all times. The old, fair relations have been rent by false representations, but they are not effaced.... The aristocracy has an inner worth, no matter how unworthy are many of its members. Neither royal nor priestly anointing can preserve from moral corruption! Of how much less avail are mere human, outward means to preserve the spiritual existence! Indeed, they often soil it. Let every one who is of knightly standing strive to prove by his actions that the ideal of knighthood lives in him, in noble simplicity, in courteous behavior, in quick willingness to give blood and lands for the Fatherland. His example will not remain without fruit. He will be far from looking upon certain virtues as virtues of his condition, and neglecting to practise others or superciliously leave them to other classes. If we hold fast to our knightly calling, the essence of knighthood will remain to us. The shell of the thing renews itself from time to time.... Whatever is worthy of respect in knighthood has come from self-sacrifice.... In order to keep pace with the century, the nobleman must be the equal of the citizen in knowledge, whenever the two meet in the same field. If he neglects this, he will see the burgher reigning as a cabinet minister and himself reduced to the _honor_ of waiting in the king’s ante-chamber by virtue of his birth. And even in war, the knight’s proper field, how can the nobleman boast of his superiority to one who knows more than he does of the science of war? If the knight covets intellectual superiority, he must not seek it in emulation so much as in brave and silent self-sacrifice. The life of his fathers must teach his heart this lesson: _Be worthy of thy fathers, whether the world acknowledge thy worth or no.[92]_ A thirst after approbation does not behove a knight, but steady reliance on his strength and his intentions.... The present hatred of the aristocracy is a fever which will soon be spent.... It remains for us, each in his own circle, to maintain a lofty ideal and to spread it abroad—that is, a true spirit of religion and that spirit of brave self-denial, of earnest courage, and discreet worth which should mark the aristocracy—and at the same time to encourage among ourselves a desire not to be behindhand in such knowledge and in such strivings as elevate the heart, adorn the mind, and make us fitter for the callings that specially beseem us.”

Footnote 92:

The italics are ours.

It will be readily understood from the foregoing quotations that Stolberg had not much sympathy with a scheme which some German noblemen had started—that of a new knight-union or society. He deprecated the publicity such a step would necessarily bring upon them, and saw in it only a hollow, childish plan of defiance, a foolish revival of old customs as powerless in practice as a return to the weapons of the ancient knights, a protest against firearms and the altered arts of warfare. His enthusiasm was always dignified and reasonable; it had no touch of sentimentality and “playing at” things. To the last his character remained the same. Forgiving and temperate as regarded any wrong done personally to him, he could not brook the distortion of truth, and was in the act of replying to a libellous pamphlet of Voss, of Heidelberg, destined to spread among the public distrust of Stolberg’s sincerity in his conversion, when his last sickness overtook him. He had just finished the _Life of St. Vincent of Paul_, which he had written instead of the autobiography that his friends strongly urged him to write. He had objected that he felt no call from God to do so, and that, unless one wrote with the view of God’s call, vanity and self were too apt to become the leading motive in the work. He commended St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ because they were evidently inspired by love of God’s honor only, and a monument of thankfulness to the One who called such a sinner to repentance. In St. Vincent he saw a man of modern times whom one could hold up as a model not too exalted and extraordinary, yet thoroughly humble, perfect, and holy, to men of his and future generations.

Stolberg died December 5, 1819, at the age of seventy, at Sondermühlen, a country-house for which he had, four years before, exchanged his favorite Lütjenbeck, when French domination was in the ascendant and he had become an object of suspicion to the French spies in Münster.

What his death was to his family can be easily imagined; it was hardly less to a large circle of friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who knew him only by name and by his works, but whose reliance on his advice, example, and opinion had long been their best and surest standard of duty.

FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES. _A free translation._ BY AUBREY DE VERE.

[_The Chorus of Trojan Women lament their Captivity._]

STROPHE I.

Breeze of the ocean, fresh and free! Whither, O whither wilt thou bear The Exile, and her great despair? Thou speed’st, and I must speed with thee! Say, must some Dorian haven be The home of Troy’s unhappy daughters? O unbelovèd home!—or where The father of most lovely waters, Apidanus, goes winding by The fruitful meads of Thessaly?

ANTISTROPHE I.

Or 'mid those isles of old renown, Haply bright Delos’ sea-born glades, Where deathless palms and laurels spread Above their own Latona’s head Green boughs (commemoration holy Of that twin-birth that lit their gloom):— There must I weep a captive’s doom? There sing, with gladsome native maids, Extorted song and melancholy To Dian’s silver bow and crown?

STROPHE II.

Perchance, a slave in Athens pining, On tap’stried walls these hands must trace Minerva’s awful steeds and car Still radiant from the Ten Years’ war; Or blazon there the Titan race Beneath the Thunderer’s wrath oppressed, And every godlike head declining Upon the thunder-blasted breast.

ANTISTROPHE II.

Alas my people, and alas My fathers, and my country’s shore! And thou, O Troy—’tis Fate’s decree— Farewell! I see thy face no more! Alas for thee, alas for me! Above thy head the plough shall pass:— Worse fate is mine, o’er ocean’s wave, The conqueror’s plaything, and his slave.

THE TRUE IRISH REVOLUTION.

The Irish people, albeit much given to intermittent spasms of insurrection, are at present as peaceable, and apparently as contented, as the contending passions of local politicians and the intrigues of imperial statesmen will allow them to be. The constabulary, in their rifle-green and burnished accoutrements, continue to be the envy and terror of the unsophisticated peasant; the queen’s writ runs unobstructed in the remotest parts of the island; “the castle still stands, though the senate’s no more”; and, save the sharp crack of a rifle at Dolly-mount or the more death-dealing fowling-piece of the sportsman, no warlike sound disturbs the quiet slumbers of the weary sentinel or the superserviceable stipendiary magistrate.

And yet a revolution has been in progress in Ireland and in Irish affairs elsewhere for the last three-quarters of a century as beneficent in its effects and as tangible in its benefits as if blood had flowed in torrents and the pure atmosphere from shore to centre of the land had been polluted by fumes of villainous saltpetre. We mean that within the memory of men now living a radical though gradual change has taken place in the manners, habits, and tastes of the Irish people, but more particularly in their literature, which after all is the best evidence of a nation’s ability to think correctly and express accurately what their minds are capable of conceiving.

Looking back to the condition of Ireland at the beginning of the century—her domestic legislature annihilated and seven-eighths of her people unrepresented in the imperial Parliament—beyond broken relics and dim memories of a glorious past, it can be said truthfully that she had no literature whatever, or rather no literature save what was alien and hostile in tone and spirit. There were no native authors except those who had earned pelf and unenviable notoriety by decrying Ireland’s nationality, maligning her faith, and holding up to the contempt and ridicule of the world the faults and foibles of her unlettered peasantry. But, even had there been men of a different character, they could not have found either encouragement or patronage; for the mass of the population, thanks to the Penal Laws, could not read English, and one-half at least could not even speak it.

The consequence, therefore, was that every young Irishman who felt the spirit of literary ambition stir within him, as soon as he had attained manhood, hastened to pack up his scanty wardrobe and turn his face toward London—then as now the great intellectual focus of the United Kingdom. The pioneers of this movement were generally men little fitted to represent their country. They were merely adventurers, without principle or honor, facile and versatile, and in some instances even educated, but, from previous training and association, just such tools as Grubb Street publishers loved to handle and the lowest class of Britons delighted to patronize. They were the originators of the “Denis Bulgruddery” and “Paddiana” school of so-called comic literature, and were useless if they did not caricature in the grossest manner, on the stage and in the newspapers and periodicals, their Catholic fellow-countrymen. With them a priest was an ignorant and low-bred tyrant; the peasant his abject, superstitious slave. This worthless class, while it did much to destroy the moral effect produced by men of a preceding generation, like Goldsmith, Coleman, O’Keefe, Sheridan, Burke, Barry, and other distinguished Irishmen, did more to instil into the popular mind of England that utter misconception of Irish character and insensate hostility to the Catholic religion of which we find at the present day such marked traces even among fairly intelligent men.

Those mercenaries were followed by others of a higher order of intellect and of greater pretensions, of whom Crofton Croker and Sheridan Knowles may be considered to have been the representatives. The drama, poetry, and prose fiction of every description employed their attention alternately, and in each they proved true to the baser instincts of their nature and the traditions of the faction whence they had sprung. They were stanch no-popery men of the Orange stripe, and, having a Protestant, English audience to gratify, they were consistently and virulently anti-Catholic and anti-Irish. When they wished to delineate their co-patriots, whether before the foot-lights or in the pages of cheap novels, they invariably divided them into two classes: the high-spirited, accomplished Protestant gentleman, and the low, grovelling, ignorant papist. Thus for many years did they thrive on bigotry and fatten upon treason to the land that was unfortunate enough to have given them birth. It was only natural that England should have viewed with complacency the caricatures of a faith she had so long and so strenuously proscribed, and a people whom she had robbed of the last vestige of independence; but it is humiliating to reflect that the works of such libellers were up to a recent period popular in Ireland, and that their comedies and farces “have kept the stage” even to our own day.

There were yet other candidates for fame, who, tired of the provincialism of Irish towns, or impatient of the restraints which their peculiar calling in life had placed upon them, sought an English market for their intellectual wares—spoiled children of genius, men like Maginn and Mahony, of much learning and fascinating accomplishments, fitted to have conferred lasting honor on their country, but who, lacking the true spirit of national dignity and personal respect, easily fell a prey to one or other of the contending English parties, and sank to the level of those who disgrace the noble profession of letters by making it subservient to the base purposes of political factions. This class contributed much of what is still to be found brilliant and entertaining in English literature, but little that reflects credit on their character as Irishmen.

Following or contemporaneous with them came another and a different school of Irish writers, such as Lever, Lover, Maxwell, and even Carleton; for, though the latter in many of his later works showed a just appreciation of the vast improvement taking place in public taste, his earlier and more popular productions, apart from their occasional touches of true pathos and flashes of genuine wit, were devoted mostly to caricature and exaggeration. Charles Lever, who has written so many books, and who is yet the most read of all the Irish novelists of this century, has been called the best recruiting sergeant the British government ever employed; while Lover may be styled a gifted and versatile buffoon in all save his lyrics. The first’s highest conception of an Irish gentleman was one who broke his arm over a Galway fence, was commissioned in the British army, blundered into all sorts of scrapes and out of them, hated Napoleon, worshipped “Sir Arthur,” charged wildly at Ciudad Rodrigo or Waterloo, and finally—married an heiress. His best Irish peasant does not rise above the grade of Mickey Free or Darby the Blast, while he seemed utterly unconscious of the existence of a very important social element in all agricultural countries—the farming or middle class, always remarkable for their sturdy common sense and practical views of life. It was from this portion of his countrymen and from the hardy mechanics of the towns that Scott drew his best and most enduring portraits of Scotch manliness, shrewdness, and humor.

Lover, though tender and natural in verse, was singularly unfortunate in his choice of subjects and altogether false in his attempts to develop them. He also ignored the “middle classes,” and substituted for gentlemen sentimental non-entities, and for the free-spoken, light-hearted, and withal poetical plebeian, blundering boobies full of chicane and deception. We can scarcely believe that the man who wrote _Treasure Trove_ and _Handy Andy_ could have conceived such pathetic songs as “The Angels’ Whisper” and “The Fairy Boy.”

Still, the works of these authors, though exhibiting many glaring defects, were a great improvement on those of their predecessors, and consequently they have not yet been consigned to the oblivion which has enshrouded the productions of the bigots of the previous era.

But the revolution in Irish literature had commenced long before their advent, and the credit of initiating it belongs to one who was not only universally admired and applauded during his life, but whose fame continues to augment as time rolls along, and the memory of his extraordinary efforts in behalf of his faith and country becomes brighter and more enduring. That man was Thomas Moore, the son of humble Catholic parents, who, on account of his religious belief, was refused a fellowship in the only university of which his native country could then boast. Naturally disgusted at such ostracism, Moore, at the age of twenty-three, went to London, and entered upon that brilliant career in poetry and prose which has indelibly stamped his name on the history of the literature of the nineteenth century. Never was the force of genius better exemplified than in the life of Moore. A plebeian, a Catholic, and an Irishman in the strongest sense of those terms; without condescending to apologize for, or attempting to palliate, the facts of his station and belief; with scarcely a friend or acquaintance in the great metropolis, and no recognition in the world of letters, the poet rose amid an aristocratic, Protestant, and anti-Irish community to a position equal to the most gifted of Scotland’s and England’s men of genius, and in his _Melodies_ far surpassed any lyrics that have been written in our language since or before his time. In 1808 the first part of that unequalled collection of songs appeared, and each successive instalment but added to the popularity of the preceding. From the first they became fashionable, and consequently popular. They were sung in the drawing-rooms of princes and in the cottage parlors of the shop-keeper and tradesman. Persons of every rank in life who knew little of Ireland, and that little not to her credit, listened entranced to “Remember the Glories of Brian the Brave” or “Oh! blame not the Bard,” and began to think that a country that could produce such airs and so sweet a poet could not after all be considered very barbarous. It was but a poor concession, yet under the circumstances a most valuable one. It was the first blow struck against the solid wall of prejudice with which English society had surrounded itself.

Next to Moore we place John Banim, the principal author of the _Tales of the O’Hara Family_. Banim, like Moore, sprang from the ranks of the humbler classes and sought in London a field for his rare genius which was denied him at home. Though a dramatist of no mean order, his reputation rests principally on his novels, many of which, like the _Boyne Water_, _Crohoore of the Bill-Hook_, _The Priest-Hunter_, and _The Fetches_, are works of real power, interspersed here and there with pleasantry and humor, but always moral, dignified, and true to nature. The sale of Banim’s tales and shorter stories from their intrinsic merit, and perhaps somewhat on account of their novelty, was very extensive in England, and helped to increase the good feeling towards the Irish people which the lyre of Moore had first called into being.

In Gerald Griffin, afterward the humble Christian Brother, Banim found not only a friend but a powerful auxiliary. Griffin, of all the writers of fiction in the English language, was the purest and most actively moral. If we search all his works—and they fill nine or ten volumes—we will not find an expression or an innuendo to offend the most sensitive. The writings of the great English novelists of this century, like those of Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, cannot be said to be positively immoral, though the author of the justly-celebrated _Waverley Novels_ often exhibited marked prejudice, and sometimes downright bigotry; while his later rivals, when not satirical or trifling, can at best claim but a negative morality for their teachings and tendencies. But the genius of Griffin sprang from a pure Catholic heart filled with love for all his kind, and consequently he wrote with a sense of religious responsibility, and in a spirit of justice and rectitude rarely to be found so thoroughly developed in a writer of fiction in our days. His works have had a great influence on the popular mind of both countries. But, though he first wrote in England, his sole and absorbing object was to benefit his countrymen. When satisfied that the germ of his laurels had begun to fructify in a foreign soil, he returned to his home, where, amid domestic pleasures, and in daily communion with the characters he so admirably portrayed and the scenes of natural beauty he so loved to describe, he composed his more important and finished works.

Meanwhile, another and not less important impetus had been given to the rapid change taking place in popular sentiment regarding Irish character and literature, and this was in Ireland itself. The letters of “J. K. L.”—the learned Dr. Doyle—on Catholic Emancipation and the Tithe Question, and those of the present venerable Archbishop of Tuam on similar topics, had thrilled the Irish heart and evoked in it a feeling of national dignity and self-reliance that had long lain dormant; and even the great O’Connell, amid all his professional and political labors, found time to contribute his aid to the new movement. But it was not till after 1840 that the various rivulets combined and assumed the proportions of a mighty flood, which, bursting through the barriers of ignorance and prejudice, overspread the entire land. Then began to appear the theologians and ecclesiastical historians of Maynooth and the antiquarian writers of old Trinity; the fiery ballads of the _Nation_ and the graceful and learned essays of the _Dublin Review_ and _University Magazine_. Archæological and Celtic societies were formed, the hitherto neglected _Transactions_ of the Royal Irish Academy were brought into public notice, and the musty tomes that were crumbling to dust and decay on the shelves of Trinity College library, after their sleep of centuries, were explored, collated, and vivified. The names of Murray, O’Reilly, Petrie, Todd, O’Donovan, O’Curry, Graves, Wilde, Meehan, McCarthy, Mangan, and a host of other lesser lights, became familiar to the intellectual world by their profound, subtle, or brilliant contributions to the literature of the age. One thing alone was wanting to complete this grand national revival: a Catholic university—and even that soon came, not as a subordinate worker in the common cause, but as the leader of the movement.

Yet, though general education and popular instruction, in their own sphere, kept pace with the mental awakening in the higher departments of learning, strange to say, the stage, generally considered the first to yield to popular impulse, was the slowest and last to acknowledge the improved spirit of the times, and even to this day clings to many of the antiquated and bigoted so-called Irish dramas and comedies with insensate tenacity. Theatrical managers still persist in presenting for the amusement of patrons, a large portion of whom are Irish, the farces and low interludes which fifty years ago were written to gratify the anti-Irish and anti-Catholic feelings of the lowest class of London society. A partially successful effort has been made recently to redeem this gross and fatal error; better, or rather less bad, Irish dramas have of late made their appearance, and let us hope the reformation, once set on foot, will be carried out. There is no reason why we should not have Irish dramas as good as Irish poems, tales, and other works of fiction. If people will go to theatres, they ought not be compelled to become interested spectators of outrages on faith and morals, and patrons and supporters of those who commit the outrages.

Still, casting our memory back over the history of Irish intellectual life for more than half a century, it would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that since the _Renaissance_ epoch no country has given such evidence, in so short a time, of mental fertility and activity as that island which was once almost as famous throughout Europe for her learning as for the piety of her children. Ireland has at last a literature which is not only rich in ideas and information, but which is both national and Catholic. Her history, once so obscure and misunderstood, can now be studied with as much ease and satisfaction as any in Christendom; her antiquities, formerly the spoil of the ignorant or the jest of the sceptic, have been collected, arranged, and scientifically explained in a hundred ways; while the lives and actions of her great and holy men, from the earliest ages, have received full, critical, and impartial justice. And as yet we have only seen the beginning! If that be so fair and full of promise, what may not be hoped for from the intellectual future of a keen yet imaginative, brilliant yet conscientious, witty yet harmless in their wit, passionate in the wider sense, yet profoundly religious, people?

THE BRIDES OF CHRIST.

IV. ST. CATHERINE.

“Whom I shall wed,” said Alexandria’s princess, “rare Of beauty must be, past imagining; So great I shall not think I have made him king; More rich, sweet-hearted more, than summer air!” In dreams she came where courts such state declare Of Mother and Son enthroned, that worshipping She knelt, though royal: the Child placed a ring Upon her finger, and she woke—’twas there!

So Catherine became Christ’s. Again she kneels: With rose and lily, in white and purple clothed, No shining host now hails the heaven-betrothed, But God’s bolt shatters the sharp torture-wheels. Then Night and angels her pall-bearers are— The Bridegroom waits on Sinai lone and far.

V. ST. MARGARET.

Of all the virgins pure that bear the palm, There is not any one more meek and mild Than sweet maid Margaret. Tending while a child The flocks, she drew near, in the mountain’s calm, To the Good Shepherd, like a trustful lamb; She felt that God with man was reconciled; She saw diurnal victory undefiled Of light o’er darkness hoist the oriflamme.

Of Morning. So flashed she, in dungeon drear, The Cross uplifted, till the Dragon foul Crouched at her feet, in fear of that white soul. O Pearl of Antioch, so soft and clear! O Daisy, with the chaste dew on thy lips! Thou touchest Christ with stainless finger-tips.

VI. ST. BARBARA.

Dioscorus of Heliopolis Shut his wise daughter in a lofty tower, Jealous of lovers; therein, for her bower, She caused three windows to be made, in this Her father disobeying, but said: “It is Through three clear windows that the Almighty Power, The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, shower Light on the soul—with light immortal bliss!”

Scourged, by the gold hair dragged, slain by thy sire— A turbaned heathen!—soft as rosy May, Yet resolute, and avenged by instant fire, Christian Bellona! sweet-browed Barbara! With the Red Mantle of thy fortitude, Thy Tower and Cannon, be my soul endued!

MARSHAL MacMAHON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONISTS.

The inconveniences resulting from the present system of transmitting political intelligence from Europe to this country for the use of our daily journals are serious. An event of importance occurs to-day in London, Paris, Constantinople, or Rome; the same afternoon we read what purports to be an account of the event in our evening journals, and the next morning we are furnished with a few more details, accompanied often by a leading article hurriedly written and based, as a rule, upon no other information than that contained in the despatches. In twenty-four hours afterwards the event is almost forgotten; and by the time that the letters of correspondents on the spot, or the journals of the locality, can reach us, the incident has become an old story and the interest excited by it in the first place has faded away. This manner of dealing with matters of great importance would be lamentable, even if the information contained in the cable despatches were always correct, full, and uncolored by prejudice; but too often the despatches are models of what they should _not_ be—that is, they are incorrect in matters of fact; marked by omissions of the truth and by suggestions of falsehood; and disfigured, in the majority of cases when the events reported have, or are supposed to have, some relation to the interests of the Papal See, by an ingenious perversion of the real and natural meaning of the incidents which they purport to describe. A heavy responsibility rests upon the conductors of our daily journals in this matter—a responsibility to which we should be glad to see them more sensitive than they now appear to be. They know well enough how it happens that the bulk of their cable despatches from the Continent of Europe is continually affected by an evident animus against the Holy See whenever there is an opportunity to display this feeling; they know well enough why it is that, whenever possible, a coloring hostile to the church, and calculated to excite Protestant or non-Catholic prejudice against her, is given to events.

The greater part of the European despatches of the New York journals is transmitted from London, being made up there chiefly from the despatches of the Reuter Agency, supplemented by the special despatches received by the leading London journals. The Reuter News Agency, which has its ramifications throughout all Europe, and is conducted with admirable skill and good management as a business enterprise, is in the hands of Jews; its agents have peculiar relations with the governments which stand in need of their services, and a system of mutual benefit is kept up between them; in return for the monopoly of official news and other similar favors on the part of the governments, the agents of the Reuter company transmit only such intelligence as is agreeable to the governments, and with such coloring as the governments wish. The relations existing between the Italian government and the Reuter Agency are understood to be especially intimate; and certain it is that from no capital in the world has more false and distorted news been sent forth than that which all the world has received from Rome since the Italian occupation of that city. As for the Continental despatches taken from the London journals and sent to New York, it should be remembered that not one of the London daily papers is in the Catholic interest, and that those whose despatches are most frequently sent to us—namely, the _Times_, the _Daily News_, and the _Pall Mall Gazette_—are inspired by a very lively hatred and fear of the church. We believe that the conductors of our own daily journals are for the most part actuated by honest motives. Their heads are sometimes deplorably at fault, but their hearts are generally right; and, with rare exceptions, they are free from the guilt of wilfully misrepresenting facts and designedly deceiving their readers. But too frequently they do permit themselves to be deceived or misled, in the manner we have explained, with respect to the true meaning and co-relation of political events on the continent of Europe.

The facts mentioned are, or should be, perfectly well known in the editorial rooms of all our journals; and it is certainly to be desired that our editors should cease to take their opinions at second-hand, and should begin to exercise their own good and honest judgment upon events as they occur abroad. If they were in the habit of doing this, and if they were furnished with cable information of a correct and uncolored character, they would not, we are certain, have fallen into the error of regarding the recent change of government in France as a wicked, base, and unprovoked conspiracy to destroy the republican institutions of that country, but would have recognized in Marshal MacMahon’s action the wise, absolutely necessary, and not too rapid determination of that ruler to save the republic, if possible, while it is still worth saving, and at all events to save France and society generally throughout Europe from the convulsion, anarchy, and destruction into which the revolutionists were so rapidly and surely dragging them. It is by no means certain that Marshal MacMahon will now succeed in the task before him; he may have waited too long. Nor are we concerned to prove that the motives of the Marshal-President in his dismissal of M. Jules Simon, and in his selection of his present advisers, were unmixed; but we are anxious to show to our readers that his action was necessary, and that the good wishes of Americans who reverence law and order, who detest red-republicanism and communism, who cherish religious liberty, and who dread and abhor tyranny, whether exercised in the name of many or of one, should be on his side. “I am conscious,” said Marshal MacMahon nine days after the dismissal of M. Simon—“I am conscious of having fulfilled a great duty. I have remained, and shall remain, absolutely within the bounds of legality. It is because I am the guardian of the constitution that I acted as I have acted. To attribute to me an intention of assailing the constitution is a misconstruction of my character. The country will soon comprehend that my sole aim is the salvation of France and of the government which she has given herself.”

We believe that these are sincere and honest words; and we shall have no difficulty at least in showing that Marshal MacMahon could not have acted otherwise than he did, unless he had been prepared to surrender the virtual government of the republic into the hands of men who are leagued together to destroy the rights of property; to degrade marriage; to enslave, if not wholly to overturn, the church; to cut her off from her connection with her earthly head; to reduce her prelates, if they were permitted to exist at all, to the condition of servants of the civil power; to exile her contemplative and teaching orders; to take from her the right of educating her children; and to drag France, ere long, into an alliance with the revolutionary associations in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Russia, which dream of establishing on the ruins of religion and of society a new confederation from which God shall be banished, and over which Satan shall rule supreme. Comparatively few of the constituents of the Gambetta party in the French Assembly are aware of the designs of the leaders of this faction; but enough light has within the past few weeks been thrown upon their machinations fully to justify the President in making a firm stand against their further progress.

M. Jules Simon refused to aid the President in executing this determination; and M. Simon was removed to give place to a minister who would co-operate with his chief. So powerful had the Gambetta faction become in the Assembly that the whole of the cabinet followed M. Simon in his enforced retirement from office, and the President was for the moment left alone. The men whom he called to his aid, however, and who, indeed, had encouraged him to dismiss M. Simon, were prompt in taking up the fallen reins of office, and the government, without a day’s delay, began its work of preserving France from her worst foes. The task before them is a most arduous one, and it has been begun none too soon. Let us show how it became necessary that it should be undertaken at all.

The French Assembly was re-convened at Versailles on the 1st of May after the usual Easter recess. During the vacation events had occurred which made it probable that the long-threatened rupture between the Gambetta faction, or Extreme Left of the Chamber, and the conservative elements in the executive department of the government, could not be delayed much longer. The administration had indeed gone to the very furthest point of concession in endeavoring to satisfy the demands of the Left. The consent of Marshal MacMahon had been given to these concessions, but it was known that this assent had been extorted from him with difficulty, and that he was personally of the opinion that the more was given to the Gambettists the more would they ask, and that the true and safe course was that of steady and uncompromising resistance to their unconstitutional and revolutionary demands. The Left, by skilful management of the press in its interest; by the manipulations of the local public functionaries who had from time to time been appointed at its request, or whom it had been able to purchase; by adroit misrepresentations and exaggerations of the policy of the conservative members of the Assembly; and by the not infrequent maladroit utterances and acts of certain of the imperialist and monarchical members, had contrived to make an imposing show of their strength in the country as well as in the Assembly. It is no doubt true that, all other things being equal, a large majority of the French people would prefer a republic to any other form of government. But the republic which would satisfy them is not at all the republic which would satisfy M. Gambetta and his friends. The republic which the majority of the French people desire is a republic in which property would be safe; in which law and order would reign; in which God would be respected; and in which the church would be free. The republic of Gambetta would possess none of these characteristics; but Gambetta and his lieutenants had been allowed to assume the attitude of the especial friends and defenders of republican institutions, and many of their members in the Assembly owed their election to the votes of good Catholics and sober citizens. They now felt themselves strong enough to advance further, and to wrest from the administration a still greater share of power.

Marshal MacMahon was himself irremovable for three years longer, only four years of his Septennate having expired. But it might be possible, in the opinion of the Gambettists, to force him to accept a cabinet which should be dictated by themselves, and which would hand over to them the virtual control of the government. One of the members of the then cabinet, they believed, would be useful to them, and their plans involved his retention. What was the nature of the communications which are said to have taken place in secret between MM. Gambetta and Simon cannot at present be known. Nor can we unveil the mysteries of the correspondence which has been kept up during the last few years between the controlling members of the French Extreme Left and the revolutionary leaders in England and throughout the Continent of Europe. The operations of the secret societies are seldom brought to light until after their work has been accomplished—and not always even then. The once famous “International Society of Working-men” has ceased to exist for all practical purposes; but it, at the best, was only an engine invented and put in motion by men who still are laboring in the secrecy of Masonic lodge-rooms and in the caucus-chambers of hidden political organizations to accomplish the destruction of Christian society and Christian government. It cannot be doubted that a certain solidarity unites the socialists of France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Portugal, and that they have the means of acting together. The Gambetta faction in France by no means stood alone in their recent attempt to gain the upper hand in the administration of the republic; they had the active sympathy and the moral support of their _confrères_ throughout Europe.

Now, the great bulwark of the conservative republic in France is the Roman Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic faith, the Roman Catholic people. So long as the church is free and undisturbed in France—free to pursue her work of educating her children, preserving morality, and saving souls—the French people, of whom all but a small fraction belong to her, will remain tranquil and happy, and they would make short work of men who proposed to set up in France a communistic and atheistic republic. They are quite well contented with the republic as it at present exists, and are hopeful of its future; under it the church for the first time has been allowed full right of teaching; and the avidity with which Catholics availed themselves of the privileges conferred by the new university law sufficiently attests at once their intelligence and their zeal. Still, the Catholics in France, like the Catholics throughout the rest of the world, have a sorrow and a grievance; and French Catholics, like all other Catholics, claim the right to express this sorrow and to do what is in their power to redress this grievance. The earthly head of their church is a prisoner in his own city; he has been despoiled of his patrimony and plundered of his crown; his jailers threaten from time to time to deprive him of the little that is left to him; there is positive danger that the freedom of the election of his successor will be assailed, and that the church throughout the world may be subjected, through the malice of her foes at Rome, to the gravest perils. The French Catholics conceive that it is their right and their duty to protest unceasingly against this state of things, and to inspire their government to speak in their name—and, if occasion arises, to act in their name—for the purpose of protecting the Holy Father from further insults and oppression, and of seeking to bring about the peaceable restoration of his independence. In all this they are strictly within the limits of their constitutional rights as citizens of the French Republic.

Let us bring the matter home to ourselves. Suppose that a petition should be drawn up praying President Hayes to instruct our minister at Rome to represent to the government of Italy that nine millions of American Roman Catholics felt themselves deeply aggrieved and injured by certain acts of the Italian government towards the Pope, and that they considered these acts all the more unjustifiable because they were one and all in open and undisguised violation of the promises made by the Italian government to the whole Catholic world; suppose that this petition should be signed by every Catholic man and woman in the United States and sent to the President; would it be said, then, that we were exceeding our rights as citizens, and that we should be punished for our temerity? The President might do as he pleased with the petition; he might act upon it or cast it aside—that would be for him to decide; but could we, as citizens, be blamed and punished for exercising the right of petition in order to make known our feelings upon a matter which touches us so closely? Yet this is all that the French Catholics have done; and it is because of the solidarity of interests and of purpose, of hope and of fear, which exists between the revolutionists and socialists of Italy and of the other Continental nations that the Gambettists in France were spurred up to make this perfectly legitimate action of the French Catholics the pretext for a new and desperate assault upon the liberties of the church in France—an assault under cover of which, and aided by what seems to us very much like treachery on the part of M. Jules Simon, they hoped to compel Marshal MacMahon to capitulate to them.

The allocution of the Pope issued on the 12th of last March had moved to the very depths the hearts of Catholics in France, as it had moved the hearts of the Catholics of every other land. They felt that it was impossible for them to remain silent after hearing that most pathetic and powerful appeal; they wished that their reply should be as emphatic as possible, and that it should consist of acts as well as of words. They resolved to draw up addresses to the Holy Father; to organize pilgrimages to convey these addresses, with their gifts, to Rome; and to devise means whereby they could express to their own government their anxious wish that it would use its influence with the government of Italy in behalf of the restoration of the independence and freedom of the Pope. Each of these projects was entered into with commendable zeal; and early in April the Bishop of Nevers addressed a letter to Marshal MacMahon, asking him, in the name of his flock, to use the influence of France at the court of King Victor Emanuel and at other courts for the protection of the Pope and for the restoration of his rights. The marshal’s cabinet at this moment were greatly under the influence of M. Jules Simon, the President of the Council; they were imbued with the idea that it would not be safe for them to exasperate the Gambetta faction; and they persuaded the marshal to approve a letter addressed by the Minister of Public Worship to the bishop, in which entire disapproval of his appeal was expressed, with the remark that “the marshal, as a sincere friend of religion, saw with pain the clergy intervening in internal, and still more in foreign, politics.” The Gambettists were encouraged by this mark of weakness on the part of the government, and prepared to push their advantage. But the Catholics did not choose to take their views of duty from the dictates of a Council whereof M. Simon was the chief; and they continued to organize their pilgrimages and to draw up and circulate their addresses to the Pope. On the 19th of April the Bishop of Nevers, not at all disconcerted by the rebuke which he had received from the Cabinet, addressed a letter to the Mayor of the Nièvre, in which he explained to that official what, in his opinion, was the duty of all good Catholics occupying influential positions.

“The Pope being no longer free in Rome,” wrote the bishop to the mayor, “the result is that we ourselves are no longer free in our consciences, and we consequently should use all our influence to obtain a change in such an abnormal state of things, and the restoration to the sovereign of our souls of the independence which he absolutely requires in order to guide us. We must first instil these views in the minds of the population whose interests are confided to us. We must then concert together to cause similar convictions to prevail in the various councils of the country.”

On the 20th, at a cabinet council, the general petitions of the Catholics addressed to the government were taken into consideration, and it was proposed that, in order to silence the complaints of the Gambettists, who were declaiming violently that the circulation and presentation of such memorials would embroil France in a difficulty with Italy, the bishops should be ordered to forbid the further exposure of these petitions in their churches for signature. But the marshal on this occasion displayed a little more firmness and the matter was passed over without action. A few days before this an event had occurred in Italy that served to increase the distrust with which Marshal MacMahon already regarded the secret intentions of the leaders of the Left. In Benevento, near Letino, and again near Rome, the government had arrested a number of socialists who, it appears, were engaged in a conspiracy for the establishment of a Red Republic. The papers found on the persons of the arrested men were of the usual inflammatory character, and set forth, among other things, that “man ought not to be subjected to any tyranny, human or divine; that the principle of private property is the climax of infamy, because it creates inequality between men; that the union between men and women ought to be free; and that the state is the denial of the most sacred principles.” The chief leader of the band, who was arrested with about fifty of his adherents, was a young Milanese named Caffiero, a man of wealth and position; and an examination of his papers disclosed the fact that his association was only one of a large number of others spread throughout Europe, and that the names of some of the leading radical republicans of France appeared upon a list which was believed to enumerate the advisers and real leaders of the conspirators. On the 28th of April, however, the cabinet again induced the marshal to make another effort to conciliate the Gambettists, who had redoubled their agitation against the Catholic movement, which had by this time become very general throughout the whole country. On that day the Minister of the Interior issued a circular to all prefects, directing them to discourage the signature of the Catholic protests and petitions by not allowing them to be publicly circulated within their respective jurisdictions. The circular—to which Marshal MacMahon assented after much pressure—instructed the prefects to regard these petitions and protests as “an unjustifiable and illegal interference in the legislative and domestic affairs of a friendly foreign state,” and to do all in their power to suppress them. Gambetta himself could scarcely have said more; but the marshal was quite correct in his opinion that Gambetta would still ask for more. Meanwhile, the _mot d’ordre_ to the Gambettists had gone forth to strike terror into the hearts of their opponents by public manifestations. The students of the Sorbonne were instigated into making violent assaults upon the Catholic universities; on the 1st of May five hundred students assembled in front of the Catholic university in the Rue de Vaugirard, where they insulted the Catholic students and professors by indecent harangues and by singing blasphemous parodies of a hymn to the Sacred Heart; dispersed by the police, they separated only to assemble again before the Jesuit school in the Rue de Shomond, where the same disorderly and disgraceful scenes were repeated until the police arrived and arrested the ringleaders of the mob. In all the cities where the Gambettists were sufficiently numerous manifestations against the church and her liberties were organized; and in some cases the zeal of the disciples so far outran the directions of the leaders that it was with difficulty the latter prevented the former from outrages which would have alarmed and disgusted the whole country.

Affairs were in this condition when the Chambers reassembled on the 1st of May. The Left lost no time in bringing forward their guns and forcing the fighting. M. Leblond was put up by them in the Chamber of Deputies to give notice of a question addressed to the government “as to the measures which it proposed to take to repress Ultramontane intrigues.” M. Jules Simon, hastening to comply with the demands of the men with whom, as it now appears, he was secretly in accord, at once replied that the debate on the proposed question could take place on the next day. The Catholic members of the Chamber seem to have already distrusted the sincerity of M. Simon. One of them—the eloquent and fearless Count de Mun—announced that he and those who acted with him insisted upon a clear understanding of the position of the government.

“We shall insist upon knowing,” said he, “whether the government accept the responsibility for the campaign that is being waged by means of impure calumnies against the Catholics of France. The patriotism of French Catholics cannot be called in question; it is above suspicion. In what we are doing—in what we wish to do—we are claiming but our rights. We demand, however, that the government, to which we give our support, should free itself from the responsibility for the attacks made upon us, which render our position intolerable.”

M. Simon seems to have perceived that matters were growing serious, and that he could not much longer continue to pretend to serve two masters; but he resolved to struggle still to maintain his position. On the following day, after M. Leblond had put his question and supported it by a harangue in which he urged that the government should at once proceed to repress by the most stringent means “the Ultramontane intrigues,” M. Simon addressed the Chamber in a speech highly disingenuous and full of double meanings. It was virtually an appeal to the Gambetta faction to permit him to remain in power in order that he might do their work; while at the same time it was an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the Catholics by hypocritical professions of respect for religion and its rights. The government had been blamed, he said, for permitting Catholic newspapers to assail Italy; but the government could not prevent this; the law would punish the writers, if what they wrote was punishable under the law. On the other hand, the government would not tolerate any attack upon the Catholic religion—“which it sincerely respected”—and would protect the rights and liberties of Catholics. In fact, the church in France enjoyed to-day more freedom than at any previous time. But it was necessary to limit this freedom. For instance, the government “tolerates” the existence of Catholic societies so long as they are used only for the purposes set forth in their statutes, but it had interdicted the Catholic committees which were employed in political undertakings and which had “formidable ramifications.” Having gone thus far, M. Simon thought he might as well go a little further, and he proceeded to make a statement which was a direct insult to the intelligence of the whole Catholic world. “The Catholic petitions and the demonstration made by the Bishop of Nevers,” said he, “_were based upon a fiction—namely, that the Pope is a prisoner in the Vatican_”; “the law of guarantees has taken every care of the spiritual independence of the Holy Father”! And he then went on to condemn the petitions as “an interference in the internal affairs of a neighboring country,” and to remind the Chamber that the government had done all in its power to suppress these lawful manifestations of Catholic feeling. The government, he added, would continue to protect the clergy as long as they confined themselves to their spiritual duties, but would in the future punish them severely “if they encroached upon the civil power”—that is, if they continued to exercise their freedom and to discharge their duty by protesting against the acts of the Sardinian robbers, and by seeking to enlighten the public mind and conscience as to the real condition of the head of the universal church.

This speech of the President of the Council was a virtual surrender to the Extreme Left; but M. Gambetta was determined to force a more formal and complete capitulation. On the following day, May 4, he resumed the debate in a speech which he had carefully prepared, and which he delivered with great eloquence and animation. Its spirit is expressed in the sentence which was received with the loudest applause by the Extreme Left: “It is time that lay society should drive back the church to that subordinate rank which belongs to her in the state.” M. Gambetta, our readers will perceive, is very far in advance of M. Cavour. The Italian statesman dreamed of “a free church in a free state”; the French revolutionist demands an enslaved church in an atheistic and communistic state. Listen to him:

“The church has set citizens by the ears, alarmed France, and troubled Europe. It is always thus: the monarchy was often compelled to resist the encroachments of the church, but the republic must do more, for now the state is assaulted on all sides in the name of religion and her very existence is threatened. The Catholic leaders—ex-ministers, senators, and members of this Chamber—have exalted the Pope as the supreme ruler of France and of the world; when the Pope has issued an order they exclaim: 'Rome has spoken and must be obeyed.’ The Pope on the 12th of March commanded that an agitation in his favor should be everywhere set on foot; immediately we behold deputations of Catholic royalists calling upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs, convocations being held, and petitions circulated in spite of the feeble pretences of the government to suppress them. It will not do to say that the church in France must have the liberty which she enjoys elsewhere; she shall not have it, for the reason, among others, that here the church is bound to the state, and the state is responsible for the language and the acts of the bishops. No longer must it be permitted that the Pope may address himself directly to France, without having first obtained the sanction of the civil power, and without first submitting to it his bulls, briefs, and allocutions. No longer must the bishops be allowed to address themselves to mayors and prefects, conveying to the civil functionaries of the republic orders received from Rome. It is useless to say that only a few of the bishops have done these things; for these bishops represent the whole hierarchy, the church is unanimous, and its submission to Rome is complete. There is no such thing as resistance or opposition in the church; the old Gallican liberties have been swept away by the Syllabus and by the Vatican Council. The Pope must not be permitted again to usurp the rights of the state, as he has recently done in appointing one of his bishops chancellor of a French university and giving him the right of conferring degrees. I cannot understand how it happened that the papal instrument making this appointment was ever permitted to enter France! We must no longer endure these things; we must drive back the church to the place where she belongs. We need not fear that the people will not be on our side; if there is one thing more than another that is repugnant to France, it is the yoke of clericalism; and it cannot be too strongly said that clericalism is the enemy of the country.”

To this bitter harangue M. Jules Simon had no reply; he contented himself with declaring that he and the cabinet were not subject to the dictation of any power behind the throne, and that perfect harmony existed between the marshal and himself. He hastened to add that he would accept, in the name of the government, the order of the day proposed by M. Leblond, which was in these words:

“The Chamber of Deputies, considering that the recrudescence of Ultramontane manifestations constitutes a danger to the domestic and foreign peace of the country, calls upon the government to make use of the lawful means which it has at its disposal.”

This was adopted by a vote of 361 against 121; thus M. Gambetta won his victory, and, so far as M. Simon could pledge it, the government was pledged to carry out the demands of the foes of the church. This was on the 4th of May. Marshal MacMahon, it appears, hesitated as to his future course; but it appears also that he was conscious he had been betrayed into an intolerable position. He seems to have determined, from that moment, to dismiss M. Simon, and to appeal to the country to sustain him in his refusal to comply with the unconstitutional and tyrannical demands of the revolutionists; but, with what may seem to some an unwise timidity, he resolved to wait for some other act on the part of M. Simon which might be made the immediate ground for his dismissal.

He had not long to wait. During the next few days the sittings of the Chamber were characterized by great excitement and tumult. M. Simon was made the target of continual attacks; he was accused of having formerly belonged to the International Society, and of having been morally in league with the Communists who assassinated the Archbishop of Paris. He defended himself with vehemence, but his affiliation with the Gambetta faction became daily more apparent. He promised to draw up and send to the bishops a stringent circular, warning them that they would be held to a strict responsibility for all their future acts. The Committee of the Budget, on the 12th of May, reported in favor of according the sum annually paid for the support of the church, $10,626,199; but it accompanied this recommendation with the remark that it was now the duty of the government to revive and enforce a number of obsolete and almost forgotten laws which had been enacted, from time to time, by various governments which had desired to enslave the church. If these obsolete enactments should now be enforced, no French bishop could visit Rome without the consent of the government; no subscriptions for the Pope could be raised in France; no papal brief or bull could enter France, and no council or diocesan synod could assemble, without the consent of the government; and the ecclesiastical seminaries would be compelled to teach that the civil government is supreme in all things. M. Simon, it was understood, was about to enforce these unjust and virtually abrogated restrictions, and the Gambettists were in high feather. But their exultation was soon to be changed into disappointment and rage.

The Chamber of Deputies had before it a bill modifying the organization of municipalities, and another measure for the repeal of the law on the restrictions of the press which had been passed two years ago to secure social order. The cabinet had consulted upon these measures and had agreed upon the line which the ministers should take in opposing them. To this agreement M. Simon was a consenting party; it was well understood between him and the marshal that when these measures came up for decision M. Simon should explain that the government could not consent to them. But the new masters of M. Simon held him to the engagement he had made with them; and when these measures were brought forward M. Simon found it convenient to be absent from the Chamber, and the government was again betrayed. The patience of Marshal MacMahon was now exhausted; he was perhaps glad that M. Simon had so soon furnished him with a sufficient reason for his dismissal. Early on the morning of May 16 the marshal, having, it is said, passed a sleepless night, addressed the following note to M. Simon, and sent it to him without consulting with any of the other members of the government:

“I have read in the _Journal Officiel_ the report of last night’s proceedings in the Chamber of Deputies. I observed with surprise that neither you nor the Keeper of the Seals put forward from the tribune the reasons which might have prevented the repeal of a press law, passed less than two years ago on the motion of M. Dufaure, and which you yourself quite recently wished to see applied in the courts of law. And yet it had been decided in several meetings of the cabinet, and indeed in the council held yesterday morning, that you and the Keeper of the Seals should undertake to oppose the motion for the repeal of the law.... In view of such an attitude on the part of the chief of the cabinet, the question naturally arises whether he retains sufficient influence to assert his views successfully, An explanation on this point is indispensable; for I myself, although not, like you, answerable to Parliament, have a responsibility towards France which to-day more than ever must engross my attention.”

M. Simon, upon receiving this note, saw that between his two stools he had fallen to the ground; but he made one more effort to again deceive the marshal. He repaired to the Elysée with a letter of resignation in his pocket; but before presenting it he asked the marshal if it were not possible that they should continue to act together. “No,” was the reply. “I have gone as far as I can possibly go in the wake of you and your allies; I shall go no further.” M. Simon then presented his letter of resignation, which was composed mainly of rather lame excuses for his absence from the Chamber on the two occasions complained of by the marshal. Immediately afterwards the other members of the cabinet resigned, in order to leave the marshal full liberty of action; and by the time the Gambettists had eaten their breakfasts they learned that they had overshot the mark, and that, instead of forcing Marshal MacMahon to accept their revolutionary programme, they had driven him to dismiss from his councils the man on whom they most relied, and in all probability to surround himself with men whom they could neither frighten nor purchase.

The excitement among all the members of the Assembly was great as the news spread; and a meeting of the Gambettists was called for the same evening, at which a line of action was laid down. One of the first things to be done, it was agreed, was to use the machinery at their disposal “in order properly to inspire foreign public opinion,” so that it might react upon France; and during the night “the republican leaders sent to foreign journals instructions to insert opinions upon the crisis” which would have the effect of alarming the marshal by holding up before him the threat of the displeasure of Germany and Italy. The London journals were especially inspired in this sense; and it was thus that our own journals, re-echoing this echo of the Gambetta caucus, gave their readers the idea that Marshal MacMahon had dismissed his cabinet in order to destroy the republic and to engage at once in a war against Italy for the restoration of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. The session of the Chamber of Deputies on the 17th was excited; and M. Gambetta once more demonstrated the foolishness of those who, deceived by his affected moderation and calmness during the last two years, had believed that this _fou furieux_ had become a decent and practical statesman. He moved the resolution which had been adopted at the caucus the preceding night, and supported it in a speech full of fire and venom. The resolution, which the Chamber accepted by a vote of 355 against 154, simply declared that “the confidence of the majority can only be enjoyed by a cabinet which is free in its action and resolved to govern in accordance with republican principles, which can alone secure order and prosperity at home and abroad”—words with which no one can find fault. But M. Gambetta, giving full vent to his rage at finding himself foiled at the very moment when he was dreaming of victory, declared that the dismissal of M. Simon had been brought about by the intrigues of “a secret influence with which no ministry could cope.”

“It is not true,” he cried, “that the President of the republic bears a responsibility over and above that of the ministry. We must recall him to an exact observance of the constitution, and deliver him from perfidious counsels. The country wishes to be rid of the nightmare of those men of reaction who show their livid faces at all moments of uncertainty. If the Chambers are dissolved we have no fear of the result, but the country may see in it a prelude to war. Criminals are those who would provoke it.”

No one thinks of provoking war save M. Gambetta and his friends, and they are the only criminals. Marshal MacMahon was not at all dismayed by this loud talk; on the same evening the new cabinet was announced. The Duke Decazes and General Berthaut, Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of War in the former cabinet, retained their portfolios; the Duke de Broglie was made President of the Council and Minister of Justice; M. de Fourtou, Minister of the Interior; M. Caillaux, Minister of Finance; M. Paris, Minister of Public Works; M. de Meaux, Minister of Agriculture; and M. Brunet, Minister of Public Instruction. The cabinet is a homogeneous and a respectable one; as long as it remains in office the country may be certain, at least, that order will be maintained and that the plots of the Reds will be frustrated. During the morning of the 18th the Gambettists were very busy in preparing to give battle to the new cabinet. But they found themselves again disconcerted by the firmness of the President, who, exercising his constitutional right, sent a message to both houses, adjourning their session until the 16th of June. In this message Marshal MacMahon explains that he has scrupulously conformed to the constitution. He appointed the cabinets of M. Dufaure and of M. Simon with the object of placing himself in accord with the majority in the Chamber; but neither of these cabinets were able to unite in the Chamber a majority capable of causing constitutional and proper ideas to prevail.

“I could not,” the marshal went on to say, “take a further step on the same path without making an appeal to the republican fraction which desires a radical modification of all our institutions. My conscience and my patriotism do not permit me to associate myself even distantly with the triumph of these ideas, which can only engender disorder and the humiliation of France; and so long as I hold power I shall use it within legal limits to prevent that consummation, for it would be the ruin of the country. But I am convinced the country thinks as I do. It was not the triumph of these theories which the country desired at the last elections, when all the candidates availed themselves of my name. If it were to be again interrogated it would repudiate such a confusion of ideas. I am firmly resolved to respect and maintain the existing institutions of the country. Until 1880 I can propose no modification, and contemplate nothing of the kind. In order to allow the excitement to calm down, I invite you to suspend your sittings for one month. You will then be able to discuss the Budget. In the meantime we will watch over the maintenance of public peace. We will suffer nothing at home tending to compromise it; and it will be maintained abroad, I am confident, notwithstanding the agitations which disturb a portion of Europe, thanks to our good relations with all the powers and our policy of neutrality and abstention. On this point all parties are agreed, and the new cabinet holds the same views as the old. If any imprudence in the language of the press compromises the concord which we all desire, I shall repress it by legal means. To prevent this I appeal to that patriotism which is wanting in no class in France.”

Violent were the scenes in both Chambers when this message was read, but they were cut short by the firmness of the new ministers. M. Gambetta attempted to speak; his voice was drowned by shouts of “Down with the Dictator!” In the Senate M. Simon essayed to deliver an oration, but the Duke de Broglie announced that no one could speak, as the President had adjourned the session. The houses separated in confusion, and the Gambettists occupied themselves during the next few days in issuing inflammatory appeals to the country. The new government began without delay the task of strengthening itself by the removal of disaffected prefects, sub-prefects, and other department officials, and this work has been carried out with the same thoroughness that is displayed in our own country after a radical administrative change.

All this is the prelude to an appeal to the country in the shape of a general election for a new Assembly. The people will be summoned to decide, not whether they wish a republic or a monarchy, but whether the republic shall be entrusted to the extreme radical party or to those who can and will save France from the ruin into which Gambetta and his crew would engulf it. The decision will be waited for with anxiety, but without fear on our part. The French people, we believe, are sound at heart, and have no wish to resign themselves into the hands of men who fear not God nor regard man save as a convenient tool for their own ends. Meanwhile, however, the utmost circumspection should be exercised by the new government. Prince Bismarck is enraged when he sees France strengthening herself; he is delighted when he beholds her weakening herself by internal dissensions. Thus growls of displeasure at the check given to the Gambetta party have already been heard from Berlin, and the German press has been instructed to represent that the new French administration intends “to restore the Papacy through the humiliation of Germany.” The Italian government, troubled with a bad conscience, indulges in similar anticipations; and the first duty of the Duke Decazes has been to reassure these cabinets and to point out that the French government wishes simply to devote itself to the domestic interests and safety of France. We believe that this is the plain truth. If Marshal MacMahon and his present advisers are sustained, France will be saved from domestic ruin, and her salvation will go far towards checking the revolution in other countries.

The time will come, no doubt, when France will again assert herself in European affairs, but with a wisdom gathered from her terrible reverses and humiliation. For those reverses she had no one but herself to blame. They were the bitter fruit of an overweening pride, and of the desertion of those eternal principles of justice and right, and of the faith that embodies them, close adherence to which alone makes nations truly great. France is coming back to her faith, and with her faith will return her greatness, her nationality, her life. Before, however, she can make her voice heard in Europe she must speak in clear, calm, and not discordant tones. She must be united in herself, one nation, one people, with one heart and one soul. It is this that Germany dreads of all things, and consequently the threats and intrigues of Germany and Italy will be exerted to the utmost in aid of Gambetta and his faction, who, indeed, have much strength of their own. While we are far from thinking that the contest will be an easy one, we have little doubt as to the final issue. The republic of order in France is the Catholic republic. The French nation is Catholic. All the real glories of France are indissolubly linked with the Catholic name. Her greatest disasters are as fatally linked with the party of which Gambetta is to-day the ostensible leader. It is time for Catholic France to gather herself together and arise in a strength that she never before had the opportunity of possessing. The way is open. She stands now quite untrammelled from alliances with any dynasty or name. Her fate lies in her own hands, and the honest soldier who has guarded so well her truest interests will not betray the trust placed in him by his countrymen.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LIFE OF THE VEN. CLEMENT MARY HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. By the Author of the Life of Catharine McAuley, etc. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.

Father Hofbauer was a second St. Alphonsus in the Congregation of the Redemptorist fathers, and the founder of the institute as existing outside of Italy. He will probably be canonized; and it would not be a matter of surprise if the veneration for his memory in Austria and the neighboring countries, in case this solemn recognition is accorded to his sanctity by the Holy See, should equal that for St. Vincent de Paul in France. He was a plain, simple man, of humble origin, moderate parts and learning, but truly angelic purity and miraculous sanctity. The influence he obtained and the good he accomplished are simply wonderful. The history of his life is graphically portrayed by the religious lady who has written his biography. We could wish that every priest and every ecclesiastical student in the United States might read it. The scandal and mischief wrought by perverse men of brilliant intellectual gifts, like Gioberti and Döllinger, by apostate princes, faithless prelates, and unworthy or careless priests, are best repaired by such worthy successors of the apostles as the Venerable Father Hofbauer. The study of their characters and actions is better than the most thorough course of polemics, as an antidote to every kind of pseudo-Catholic liberalism.

THE LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. By Arthur George Knight, of the Society of Jesus. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.

Christopher Columbus is, and always will remain, one of the greatest figures in history and one of the grandest of Catholic heroes. He may be said to have passed through all human experience. He was born in poverty and schooled in poverty. His days were cast in one of those eventful periods in the world’s history when “the old order changeth, yielding to the new.” With ideas in his mind just beyond his time, and convinced himself of their truth and power, he had to struggle hopelessly for years under the most adverse circumstances before he could imbue other minds with the ideas that possessed him. He could only think and talk and plan. He was powerless to act, for lack of means. He had the satisfaction of being regarded as a dreamer by the enlightened men of his time. At last his ideas prevailed, and resulted in the discovery of a new world.

Then came his hour of triumph—a triumph unparalleled in history; and after it, more bitter than his early struggles upwards, ingratitude, contempt, chains, and misery. There is nothing more romantic than this story, nothing fraught with more solemn lessons. Through all, through triumph as through adversity, through poverty as through greatness, stands out the true Catholic, who cherished his faith above all things, who in all things looked first to the greater glory of God, and who from first to last lived the life of a practical Catholic. Indeed he was truly a holy man, and strong efforts are now being made for his canonization.

It seems strange that this great Catholic figure should have fallen so completely into Protestant hands. There are admirable histories of him in English, works that have won deserved fame for their authors, but they are all written by Protestants, who, however well disposed they may be, must in the nature of things make mistakes when treating of Catholic subjects. Grave mistakes have been made, not by Protestants alone, but by Catholics also, in the story of Columbus’ life. It is with a view to rectify these mistakes, and to present to the Catholic reader the true story of a most important, edifying, and interesting life that Father Knight has written the present volume. He has done his work thoroughly well, and we have no doubt that the book will become a favorite with all classes of Catholic readers.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF DISTINGUISHED MARYLANDERS. By Esmeralda Boyle, author of _Thistledown_, _Felice_, etc. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1877.

This little volume is replete with interest. It recalls in graceful language the memory of men who have honored by their upright lives and heroic actions the gallant State that gave them birth. It is no small boast for Maryland that no State in the Union has produced more men distinguished for their ability, patriotism, and, above all, a high-toned chivalry which could never stoop to aught having the flavor of dishonor about it. These were the men who first won for our country the recognition of European scholars and statesmen. Their lofty principles, their graceful accomplishments, their scholarly attainments, and their dauntless courage drew on them the eyes of the world, and earned for their mother State the proud reputation she now enjoys. From the time that Lord Baltimore landed on her shores to the present day no public man has disgraced the fair record or blurred a page of the history of Maryland. And, indeed, the beginning of her civilized days was an eminently fit prelude to her whole subsequent career. From out of the first colony established on the banks of the Chesapeake flowed the doctrines of religious toleration and equal religious rights to all men irrespective of clime and color, at a moment when witch-burning fires lighted up the settlements of Massachusetts. The Indians of those times for once felt that Christianity and civilization were blessings and not a cloak to avarice and tyranny. “From the records left to us,” says Miss Boyle, “it is evident that these teachers endeavored by all mild and lawful means to elevate the hearts of the Indians to a knowledge of the true God. The Indian of the present day, dwelling on the border-lands of civilization, deems the white man a traitor to his word, an enemy to the Indian race, and a breaker of compacts, whose perfidy must be retaliated upon the innocent by fire and _tomahawks_. This is rather a sad commentary upon the savage or the Christian of our times. Which is it?”

Miss Boyle appropriately begins her series of biographical sketches with a notice of that truly grand historic figure, Daniel Dulany, the Nestor of the Maryland bar. The unflinching advocate of probity and truth, and a strong friend of freedom, he distinguished himself fitly for the first time by counselling opposition to the famous Stamp Act. His eloquence and fearlessness greatly helped the cause of the Revolution; for although he opposed immediate separation from England, his burning words kindled the fires of opposition to British rule. The name _parce detortum_ is the same as Delany and indicates the Irish stock whence he sprang.

The paper on Charles Carroll of Carrollton is extremely interesting. It presents a very life-like picture of that great patriot, statesman, and devout Catholic. We behold the courtly and polished gentleman, tinged with the airs and manners of an education acquired in the gay capital of France. And though fashionable Paris was at that time the hotbed of infidelity, and Voltaire ruled supreme, young Carroll never became so imbued with the madness of the hour as to abandon the strong Catholic principles and spirit pious parents and teachers had early implanted in his heart. His name will ever remain an honor to his native State, and his virtues and loftiness of character an incentive to her children to cling to the highest standard of a true gentleman’s life.

It is evident that Miss Boyle had abundant materials at hand, for she is constrained at times to sacrifice method to condensation; and this, perhaps, is the worst that can be said of her interesting volume. The sketch of the Most Reverend John Carroll, first Archbishop of Baltimore, is illustrative of this defect. The writer labored under an _embarras de richesses_, and passes too brusquely from one incident to another.

It is not generally known, nor does Miss Boyle make mention of the fact, which has been already announced in this magazine, that at the time when John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was supplicating George III. to send more troops to America for the purpose of suppressing the unholy rebellion against his majesty’s benign sway, Father John Carroll, the Jesuit priest, was on a mission to Canada, seeking the non-intervention of that colony in the efforts of the States to free themselves from the yoke of British tyranny. And yet it is almost a Methodist article of faith that the Jesuits have ever been the enemies of the republic, and the sons of John Wesley its warmest friends.

William Pinkney, one of Maryland’s most gifted sons, whose eloquence ranks him with Pitt, Fox, and Burke, receives a most fitting tribute from the pen of Miss Boyle. The history of this wonderful man should be known and closely studied by the young men of our time; for few lives exhibit a more perfect pattern of true manliness. His struggles against early poverty and the numerous difficulties attending the efforts to acquire knowledge in those times gave earnest of his future success in life. The late venerable Chief-Justice Taney spoke of him in these words: “I have heard almost all the great advocates of the United States, both of the past and present generation, but I have seen none equal to Pinkney.” Rufus King, having once listened to him exclaimed in a burst of enthusiasm “that the speech of Pinkney had enlarged his admiration of the capacity of the human mind.” Of such men is Maryland justly proud, and Miss Boyle has performed a timely and praiseworthy task in having brought us face to face with the heroes of a past generation, whose memory their native State should ever delight to honor.

SIDONIE. (Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné.) From the French of Alphonse Daudet. Boston: Estes & Lauriat. 1877.

We understand that this story has had an enormous circulation in France. This circulation we are inclined to attribute rather to the author’s name than to any special excellence in the book itself. Alphonse Daudet is one of the pet French novelists of the day, and it takes much to destroy a well-earned reputation. _Sidonie_ is a repulsive story, told with great skill, and embellished throughout by those thousand and one delicate artistic touches, lights and shades, of which French writers alone seem to possess the secret. M. Daudet is actuated by the very laudable design of punishing vice, and showing in a very strong and real light the awful, the tragic misery it brings upon the vicious and the good alike. All very well. Novelists, however, who take up this kind of theme—and many are very fond of it—have an unpleasant and untrue habit of making their good people fools or simpletons. It seems to us that, as a rule, good people, particularly good women, are remarkably keen in detecting falsehood and scenting rascality. In _Sidonie_ it is all the other way. One detestable little wretch of a woman, who has not half an ounce of good in her whole system, sets all the good people by the ears, destroys the peace of happy families, ruins a great business-house, causes the suicide of several excellent and very charming characters, and ends by retiring to that kingdom from which she should never have been called—Bohemia.

It seems to us a pity that an author of such real power and skill in delineation of character and plot as M. Daudet should waste himself on the unutterably mean. We are not of the opinion that this world is given over to the dominion of the devil and his servants. It is not heaven to any of us; yet as between the good and the bad, all things considered, we believe that the good have the best of the battle even in this life. Of course novel-readers must have their villain, male or female; and the female villain must, of course, be very, very bad. Their viciousness, however, could be shown sufficiently, and the lesson it entails inculcated, without making them the pivots on which the world turns. It is the noble, not the ignoble, who really move the world; and until the race of the noble is exhausted, novelists may as well draw their heroes and heroines from that class. At least we object to their being for ever depicted as fools.

The translation of _Sidonie_ is admirable. It is from the graceful and cultivated pen of Mrs. Mary Neale Sherwood.

LEGENDS OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. Gathered from the History of the Church and the Lives of the Saints. By Emily Mary Shapcote. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

This is in every sense a most beautiful and attractive volume. The author has collected a large number of legends connected with the Blessed Sacrament. These are abundantly and very handsomely illustrated, and the letter-press itself is admirable. There is much more, however, than legends in the volume. The devotion of the church to the Blessed Sacrament is traced down to the very days of the apostles, verified by ample quotations, and illustrated by pictures taken from the Catacombs and the earlier monuments of Christian art. This is indeed an excellent and most valuable feature of the work. The whole is in keeping. The devotion is brought up to our own days, and its wonderful growth and development brought out in a clear and most interesting manner. The author has done her work skilfully, gracefully, and reverently. The admirable preface shows how much she is inspired by real love for and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. The last picture in the volume is a large and admirably-executed portrait of our Holy Father Pope Pius IX.

THE DISCIPLINE OF DRINK: An Historical Inquiry into the principles and practice of the Catholic Church regarding the use, abuse, and disuse of alcoholic liquors, especially in England, Ireland, and Scotland, from the sixth to the sixteenth century. By the Rev. T. E. Bridgett, of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. With an introductory letter to the author by His Eminence Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster. London: Burns & Oates. 1877.

The best notice we can give of this valuable work will be to make a few extracts from Cardinal Manning’s letter. His Eminence says it is “the first attempt to collect the counsels and judgments of Catholic pastors and writers on the use of wine and on the sin of drunkenness.” He believes the book will be “of signal use in clearing away a multitude of prejudices, and perhaps some more reasonable censures, which have impeded the efforts we are making to check the spread of intoxication.” These “more reasonable censures” have been called forth by the words and acts of associations not in the unity of the Catholic Church, and particularly by Catholics having joined such societies and adopted their “wild talk, worthy of the Manichees.” Father Bridgett’s book, then, “will show how broadly the Catholic Church has always taught the lawfulness of using all things that God has made, in all their manifold combinations, so long as we use them in conformity to the law of God. Drunkenness is not the sin of drink, but of the drunkard.” On the other hand, “in every utterance of the church, and in every page of Holy Scripture, wine is surrounded with warnings,” says his Eminence, and adds that our author has “done well to point out that a new and more formidable agent of intoxication even than wine has in the last three centuries confirmed its grasp, chiefly upon the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon races.” So that “no exact precedents can be found in the past action of the church as to the way of dealing with an evil new in its kind, and so far more formidable both in its spread and in its intensity”; while at the same time “the principles of the church are always the same, and, in bringing forth things new and old, forms may vary, but the mind and action are immutable.” The cardinal then proceeds to give his own views of what should be done. He is in favor of “a widely-extended organization,” and advocates total abstinence as the only hope for multitudes, and a specially meritorious act of self-denial in those who do not need it themselves, but embrace it for the sake of others. But—and to this we would call particular attention—the “widely-extended organization” should comprise, in his opinion, those who are not total abstainers. He expresses satisfaction at Father Bridgett having quoted in the appendix some words of his own. We quote them, too, because we most heartily agree with them: “Now, my dear friends, listen! I will go to my grave without tasting intoxicating liquors; but I repeat distinctly that any man who should say that the use of wine or any other like thing is sinful when it does not lead to drunkenness, that man is a heretic condemned by the Catholic Church. With that man I will never work. Now, I desire to promote total abstinence in every way that I can. I will encourage all societies of total abstainers. But the moment I see men not charitable attempting to trample down those who do not belong to the total abstainers, from that moment I will not work with those men. I would have _two kinds of pledge_: one for the mortified who never taste drink, and the other for the temperate who never abuse it. If I can make these two classes work together, I will work in the midst of them. If I cannot get them to work together, I will work with both of them separately.”

Father Bridgett has given in his appendix “a summary of the principal Catholic organizations which have lately been set on foot in these countries” (England, Ireland, and Scotland). Some of these organizations include _partial_ abstinence in their rules. Another society is mentioned as existing in some parts of Germany, and approved by His Holiness Pius IX. and enriched with indulgences. The members of this last promise total abstinence from _distilled_ liquors, and _sobriety_ in the use of _fermented_ drinks.

We hope this labor of love from the pen of Father Bridgett will have the circulation it deserves.

SPIRIT INVOCATIONS; or, Prayers and Praises publicly offered at the _Banner of Light_ circle-room free meetings by more than one hundred different spirits, of various nationalities and religions, through the vocal organs of the late Mrs. J. H. Conant. Compiled by Allen Putnam, A.M., author of _Bible Marvel-Workers_, _Natty: a Spirit_, etc. Boston: Colby & Rich. 1876.

_Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat_ would be an appropriate motto for this hodge-podge of nonsense and lunacy. Imagine a sane man being called on to believe that he is listening to prayers offered by the spirits of Tom Paine and Cardinal Cheverus through the same set of “vocal organs”! It is evident that the “prayers” were all ground from one mill, as there is the utmost sameness pervading them. Tom Paine condescending to come down from the pedestal of his celestial greatness, and praying with unctuous fervor to the God he blasphemed on earth, is a spectacle highly refreshing; but more astonishing still is it to find him surpass Father de Smet and Cardinal Cheverus in the ecstatic intensity of a mystical devotion. “We pray not for more blessings,” exclaims the pious Thomas; “we only pray that we may appreciate those already received; and when we lift up our souls in prayer, asking that thy kingdom may come on the earth, we do but ask that thy children in mortal may know themselves and their relations to thee.”

It is evident that the author of the _Age of Reason_ has materially changed his “spirit” since he exuviated his mortal coil, or perhaps he has deftly substituted that of Mr. Putnam, A.M., for his own. This, we rather suspect, is the case. Theodore Parker, too, has been to camp-meeting up above; for a great change has come over the “spirit” of the frigid founder of New England transcendentalism. He prays with a _vim_ that no leader of a revival at Sea Cliff or Sing Sing could ever hope to emulate, and appears shamefully unlike the Rev. O. B. Frothingham’s ideal of a hero. Some of the prayers are quite touching, and sound as if they had been pilfered from Catholic books of devotion.

KNOWN TOO LATE. By the author of _Tyborne_, _Irish Homes and Irish Hearts_, etc., etc. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1877.

This little volume bears the impress of patient and painstaking care. The author is the happy possessor of a pure and pleasant style, and yet throws off nothing carelessly, as too many with facile pens are disposed to do. The narrative is done in subdued colors, and nowhere is good taste shocked by the utterance of extravagant or whimsical sentiments.

The plot of the story unfolds itself quite naturally, and, though the _dénoûment_ is a hard one to bring about, it is done so ingeniously as not to appear at all violent. We can conscientiously say of this little book that it is a shade in advance of Catholic stories generally and is well deserving a perusal.

THE PARADISE OF THE CHRISTIAN SOUL. By James Merlo Herstius, of the Church of the B. Virgin Mary in Pasculo Pastoris, at Cologne. A new and complete translation. By lawful authority. London: Burns & Oates. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)

A most complete manual of prayer for ordinary use. One cannot tire of it. The present edition is illustrated; but the illustrations might easily have been improved.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXV., No. 149.—AUGUST, 1877.

THE POLITICAL CRISIS IN FRANCE AND ITS BEARINGS.

I.—QUESTION STATED.

The attention of the world at large is at present fastened on two important movements—the war between Russia and Turkey and the recent political changes in France. Both of these have the same origin, but the aspect of each is different. No one will dispute that both are fraught with most momentous interests, that their development will be watched with great concern, and that it is not impossible that their final issue may change the religious features no less than the territorial limits of Europe.

Our purpose in this article is to confine the attention of our readers to the affairs of France; not with the design of narrating the successive events which brought about the present crisis,[93] but with a view to the principles involved in the struggle and their bearing on the great interests of Europe, actual and prospective.

Footnote 93:

See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877: “Marshal MacMahon and the French Revolutionists.”

What agitates France at this moment is not an “ultramontane” and “clerical intrigue” to restore “the temporal princedom of the Pope,” or an “anti-republican” plot of legitimists to place Henry V. on the throne of his ancestors, as our daily newspapers of all political parties and the weekly Protestant journals of every sect would have the public believe. The real political leaders in France today are representative of none of these parties, nor are they champions of their distinctive principles or advocates of their cherished measures. They have other fish to fry. Some of the newspaper writers and correspondents would persuade their readers that the change of front in France by the government is owing to the influence exerted by Madame MacMahon over the President of the Republic, her husband. Drowning men catch at straws, and men who lack common sense clutch at any flimsy pretext to bolster up a foolish project.

The day of the supremacy of such influence in great state affairs is gone by; and, even were it not, the character of the men engaged in this weighty piece of political strategy is not made of stuff that would incline them to be led by the nose by a woman, whatever may be her reputation for piety or her supposed or declared inclinations for legitimacy. We venture the opinion that the most estimable Christian wife of the Marshal-President of the Republic of France is not wasting her time in fruitless political intrigues, but employs it better in telling her beads, in taking care of her children, and in works of charity to her neighbor. All these are random shots.

The raising of such false issues, however, serves the purpose of their inventors in throwing the public attention off the true scent, and thereby prolonging the opportunity for them to invent new schemes against public order and society under the restored leadership of the octogenarian, M. Thiers. This was their manœuvre in 1871, and “Prince Bismarck regretted the fall of M. Thiers, because he would have infallibly thrown France into the arms of M. Gambetta and anarchy.”[94] They also afford them additional chances of escape from the due and certain punishment which is impending over them.

Footnote 94:

See Count von Arnim’s pamphlet, _Pro Nihilo_.

These pretexts show also the craft of those who make them and the simplicity of their dupes. For they are well aware that there is a large class of persons, especially in Protestant communities, whose prepossessions are stronger than their attachment to Christianity, and there are no absurdities too great for them to swallow, provided only you bait them with the cry of “Popery!” “Vaticanism!” “Clericalism!” As for those who are caught by the cry of “anti-republicanism,” they appear not to understand that a king without the popular instincts of a people in his favor is a mere cipher, and that the age is past and never again to return, at least in Europe, when, as an Eastern despot, the king dare say: “_L’Etat, c’est moi_.”

The transformation that has taken place in the nations of Europe, the expansion of their narrow lines of policy into broader political principles, has been so rapid and powerful that its force in our day has passed beyond all possible human control. These principles have become profound convictions, and for not heeding them the people of France dethroned Charles X. and Louis Philippe; and were Henry V. placed to-day upon the throne of France with the intention of attempting to restore the ancient _régime_, it would be as vain, even though he should have Marshal MacMahon and the army at his command to back him, as an effort to stem and throw back the mighty torrents that pour their waters over the precipice of Niagara.

The tendency of modern society to a political equality, without distinction of the privileges of birth or rank, has its root in the spirit of Christianity. The Catholic Church, in this sense, is the most democratic institution that has ever existed upon this earth. There is no barrier in the path for its humblest member to become its chief in power and dignity. It is not seldom, too, that those who have risen from the lowest walk in life have been elected to this high position. The spirit of an age, rightly interpreted, is the breath of the Almighty stirring within men’s souls, which finds its utterance in their voices, even in spite of themselves. Nowhere has the Catholic Church been given such fair play, though this is yet imperfect, as in the democratic republic of the United States. This fact has been recognized by the supreme pastor of the faithful, Pius IX., and again and again he has called the attention of the world to it.

France has the opportunity under the presidency of Marshal MacMahon, if she only knew how to profit by it, of forming a political government adapted to the genius and character of her people and in harmony with her present wants and future greatness; to govern herself, if she wishes it, independently of an emperor or a hereditary monarch; and this task will be accomplished, unless hindered by that enemy of all rational liberty—a destructive radicalism. If the young Napoleon, or the Count of Paris, or Henry V. ascends the throne of France, it will be due to the Thierses, the Simons, and the Gambettas and their abettors.

II.—TWO MOVEMENTS IN THE WORLD.

There have been from the beginning only two fundamental movements in this world, and these are becoming in Europe more and more distinct, powerful, and antagonistic. The one has its source in the Catholic Church, which is the concrete form of the direct action of God on society in view of man’s true destination. The other consists in rebellion against this divine action, and finds on earth its headquarters and expression in heresies, in despotisms, and, more particularly in recent days, in organized secret societies.

III.—FIRST MOVEMENT.

The order and stability of modern society and civilization are based upon the truths which find their root and support in the doctrines unswervingly taught and uncompromisingly upheld by the Catholic Church. Among these great truths are the divinity of Christ and the divine establishment and perpetuity of his church upon earth; the unquestionable responsibility of both kings and peoples to the law of God; the indissolubility of the marriage tie and the sacredness of the family; the reign of the law of justice between man and man, and, when violated, the strict obligation of restitution; the sacredness of oaths and the equality of all men, without distinction of rank, color, or race, before God. By the undeviating application of these and other great first truths of divine revelation and of human reason, at the cost of the lives of millions of her children; by withstanding the fierce attacks of the barbarians of the northern forests of Europe; by her contest with Mahomet and his followers; and by her resistance to the errors and vices of her inconsistent and disobedient children, the Catholic Church formed the conscience of modern society, founded the nations of Europe, united them in a universal commonwealth called Christendom, in view and as the means of establishing the reign of God in men’s souls and upon earth, as preliminary to the kingdom of heaven hereafter, issuing finally into the Christian cosmos.

Such has been the work of the first movement.

IV.—SECOND MOVEMENT.

All heresies, all despotisms, all secret societies have this postulate in common: that the overthrow of the Catholic Church is a _sine qua non_ to their attaining ultimate success. Hence there is an instinctive and unanimous sympathy among their adherents whenever there is an attack aimed against the Catholic Church—an unmistakable sign of their common origin and an unquestionable proof of their parentage. Peoples of countries distinguished for their profession of universal toleration and championship of the right of every individual to the enjoyment of his own religious convictions will applaud to the skies the violation of these principles, provided the persecuted be only Catholics! Every right guaranteed by constitutional law, every principle of divine and human justice, may be trampled under foot—yea, with sympathy and applause—provided those who do so are animated with hatred for the Catholic Church! Witness the public sympathy, both in England and the United States, with the war of imprisonments, fines, and banishments waged against Catholics, with murderous intent against their church, by the “iron and blood” chancellor of the Hohenzollern Empire; witness the confiscations and sacrilegious spoliations by the crew of infidels of Italy, led by a Mancini, against the church; witness the banishment of all the Catholic priests without exception from its district, in violation of the federal constitution, by the canton of Berne, and the robbery of the churches built by the sacrifices of loyal Catholics, which are given over to the use of a rebellious and insignificant faction by the authorities of the Swiss so-called republic; witness, to come nearer home, the assassination, by the agents of secret societies, of the President of Equador, and, within a few weeks, the poisoning of the Archbishop of Quito at the altar! There are none to raise a voice, not to say a cry of horror or indignation, among these sticklers for liberty and justice, in condemnation of this wholesale tyranny, these cruel persecutions, and this secret and deadly violence. This is well known by the atheists, who aim at the ruin of all Christian institutions: that to delude a large class in these so-called liberty-loving countries, and gain their sympathy, material aid, and the use and support of their press, all that is required to make them run like an enraged bull at a red rag is to shout lustily, “Ultramontanism!” “Vaticanism!” “Popery!”

Herein lies also the interpretation of the assertion of the governments actuated by an anti-Christian spirit and under the influence of members of secret societies, to whom they are bound to trim, that the present attitude of France is dangerous to the peace of Europe. That is, the secret designs of radicalism are detected, and their plots are in danger of being checkmated. “Let the galled jades wince.” At the same time it gives the explanation of the motives of Marshal MacMahon, which is nothing else than to head off the efforts of these anti-Christian conspirators, and prevent France from falling into their hands and the civilized world from witnessing the repetition of the atrocities of the Commune of the _petroleuse_ notoriety of 1871. A large portion of the people, and with them the press, of England and the United States, is duped by cunning and designing men; and probably, if all were known, a portion of Bismarck’s Reptile Fund has found its way to their shores and done some service.

The present crisis in France is fraught with her deliverance as well as that of Europe from the most desperate and wide-spread organized conspiracy that has ever existed in the world. They fail to interpret rightly public events and to discern the signs of the times who take it to mean anything less than the saving of Christianity and modern civilization in Europe.

“Let order die!

* * * * *

Let one spirit of the first-born Cain Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set On bloody courses, the rude scene may end And darkness be the burier of the dead.”

Such is their aim, and it is also their undisguised and outspoken word; for these men “know not how to blush.”[95]

Footnote 95:

If any of our readers wish authentic information on this point, they will find it abundantly in a book entitled _Les Libéraux Peints par Eux-Mêmes_. Par G. Lebrocquez. Paris: Victor Palmé, 1876.

And these are the chief characteristics of the second movement.

V.—THE LINES OF BATTLE.

The explosion of the first mine laid by secret societies has been heard in the outbreak of the war between Russia and Turkey, if we are to credit Disraeli, than whom no man is in a position to be better informed of the decisions gone forth from their secret revolutionary headquarters. Unless thwarted by a counter movement, prompted by the instincts of self-preservation on the part of all the Christian and conservative elements of European society, we may expect to hear, as in 1848, the successive explosions of revolution in Paris, Vienna, Rome, Madrid, and Berlin; and being more skilfully planned, and more extensively spread, and more powerful, a revolutionary upheaving of the populations in St. Petersburg and London as well as in the lesser centres of Europe, is not improbable.

Men who read in consequences their causes will not fail to see the significance of the position taken by the President of the Republic of France; for, whatever may be his reputation as a politician, his military sagacity and strategical genius are unquestioned. President MacMahon’s change of cabinet is the first declared, earnest, and decided step taken to avert from France and all Europe this great and threatening catastrophe. For Jules Simon surreptitiously attempted to insert the edge of the radical wedge, whose butt end is made up of socialism, communism, and anarchy, into the Republic of France, which M. Gambetta, his aspiring and designated successor, would have energetically and logically driven home and riven her asunder, to the delight of her enemies and to the advantage of her foes. Let us hope that the President of France has taken time by the forelock.

The die is cast; there can no longer be any neutrality or secondary motives to divide one’s allegiance between these two distinctly-drawn camps. He is a traitor to Christ and a renegade Christian who stands aloof or hesitates which side to take when a battle is fairly drawn between Christianity and atheism. Every Christian, whatever may be his peculiar tenets, will make common cause when the primary truths of divine revelation and the first principles of morality are at stake. All political party designations will be sunk into oblivion by men who intelligently and disinterestedly love their country and their race, when both society and civilization are endangered.

The present crisis in France is a call to both religion and patriotism, in their best and widest sense, to unite in a common defence of their truest and highest interests.

There is no alternative, and he who does not see this battle imminent in Europe is like an officer on board of a ship, lulled in a dream of false peace or disputing about the rigging of his vessel when the enemy is fastening a torpedo to its bow that will in a few seconds blow them all into atoms and send their vessel to the bottom of the ocean.

The conservative elements, if not from higher motives, will be forced to unite from the instinct of self-preservation to save their property from the _petroleurs_ and their necks from the guillotine.

VI.—THE ISSUE OF THE BATTLE.

This movement in its weak beginnings in France, regarding only impending dangers to the state, will not exhaust itself until it has restored the Catholic Church to her normal position in Europe. This final result is no more intended by the leaders of the movement than it was the design of the Allied Powers to restore the Papacy at the downfall of the first Napoleon. It is a divine law that man acts, but God directs.

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.”

There is, then, this increasing purpose running through the history of God’s dealings with the human race: to bring into clearer light the divine character of his church, his spouse, rendering it less and less possible for men to recognize his existence and not be Christians, and, being Christians, not to be Catholics. This is the key of universal history.

There is not an “ultramontane,” a “clerical,” or a “papist,” in the sense in which these words are used by those hostile to the actual movement in France; and if its final outcome be favorable to the Catholic Church, it is because this is the nature of things.

VII.—ERRORS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY.

Europe for the past century has been in the state of transition to a new epoch—a renewal of Catholicity. This statement is in flat contradiction with the assertions of some modern thinkers who claim the title of philosophers. They would have us believe that religious motives—or, as they term it, “theological motives,” which is the same thing; for theology is nothing else than the scientific statement of religion—are exhausted. This is equivalent to saying that human nature is exhausted; for religion is what lies deepest in human nature, and consequently all other motives will be exhausted before those of religion.

Religion is the very essence of man’s nature; for it springs from the intellectual sense of his entire dependence for existence on an absolute cause. Religion is, in its last analysis, reason’s recognition of God and man’s fulfilment of his relations to God. Religion and reason are, therefore, correlative.

Men who pretend that religious motives have ceased to have a strong hold upon human nature labor under a complete hallucination. First they fancy that those faculties through which God acts on the soul, and which bring the soul in contact with God, have by some strange freak suddenly become defunct. That religious motives to an almost incredible extent have become extinct in some men’s souls we, with pain and pity, admit; that this is the case with the bulk of mankind is an egregious mistake. There has seldom been an age when religious questions occupied so large a share of intellectual attention as our own; and religious motives still influence the bulk of mankind in their conduct.

It is too true, however, that a class of men have fatally succeeded, by a false education and an erroneous philosophy, in paralyzing the action of the noblest faculties of the soul; but this disease is confined to a small class. Deluded men! they would have the rest of mankind to esteem their descent as a privilege and count their defect an honor.

The second form in which the symptoms of this malady manifest themselves is the eschewing of the first principles of sound logic. As “God is a provisionary idea,” or “man’s intuition of himself projected into space,” or “the creation of a wish”—so runs their premise; and the religious faculties of the soul having become extinct, they jump to the most absurd of all conclusions: “God is extinct,” “the soul’s immortality is a fable,” and “religion is a worn-out superstition”! The inspired Psalmist wrote in his day that none but “the fool said in his heart, There is no God.” Were he now to come upon earth, he would be surprised to see the fools of his time dressed in the garb of philosophers and proclaiming from the house-tops as the highest wisdom, “God is extinct!” These delirious minds are like the ostrich, which, when on the point of being captured, blinds its eyes by thrusting its head under the sand, and foolishly fancies, because of its incapacity to see, it has destroyed its pursuers and escaped all danger.

“Le nid n’a pas créé l’oiseau.”

“I tell thee, friend, a speculating churl Is like a beast some evil spirit chases Along a barren heath in one perpetual whirl, While round about lie fair, green pasturing places.”

The eternal God is, and in him is all that lives, moves, and exists, and his providence directs all things to the end for which he called them into existence.

The world is not out of joint, nor is the responsibility of setting it right placed upon the unsteady and feeble shoulders of inventors of absurd religions, the cogitators of false philosophies, or the dreamers of sterile Utopias.

God is not ousted from his creation as easily as these ambitious philosophers, who are so ready to occupy his place in the universe, would have the world believe.

VIII.—MISTAKE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHERS.

The mistake of a class of speculative thinkers consists in regarding the state of transition of society from one epoch to another—in interpreting a phase of religion—as the change and vanishing of the indestructible elements of all religion.

A certain class of truths suits one age, awakens the greatest enthusiasm and profoundest devotion, and in another epoch falls dead almost upon the ears of men and hardly calls forth an audible response. Epochs differ from epochs in their aspirations and instincts, like those of individuals; and this is a law of the providential education and growth of the human race. One race of men differs from another in its capacity to seize hold of, appreciate, and give the proper expression to certain truths, and in turn is brought to the front ranks in the providential march of humanity. And this is the intention of the Author of the human family. Men of the same race differ also greatly from each other; for in the wide universe there are no two things in all respects precisely alike, and in this is seen displayed God’s creative power.

These separate epochs, this variety of races, and these differences among men afford to Christianity the opportunities and means of giving expression to the great truths contained in all religions of which she is the adequate representation. For Christianity is the synthesis of all the scattered truths of every form of religion which has existed from the beginning of the world, and the Catholic Church is its complete organic, living form. Christianity is the abstract expression of the Catholic Church, which, in the successive centuries of her existence, has come in contact with every race of men, and has known how to Christianize and retain them in her fold in harmony with their natural instincts. She has met humanity in every stage of its development, from the intellectual and refined Greek to the man-eating savage, and, by working on the foundations of nature, she has captivated them to the easy yoke of Christ. The Catholic Church alone has known how to supply the defects of human nature and correct its vices while giving free play to its instincts and retaining the charm of its native originality—not by a superior human sagacity or a preternatural craft, as sophists would make the world believe, but because in her dwells that divine Spirit which breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and made him a living, rational, immortal soul, and in whom he lives, moves, and has his being.

God is not extinct nor are religious motives effete. The mistake of these theorizers consists in supposing that the present is the finality of Christianity, whereas the hand of God is opening the way by purifying his church, by directing the movements of nations and the issues of the world, in order that she may shape the coming future beyond all past experience in her progressive approach to the perfect realization of her divine Ideal.

“An age comes on, which came three times of old, When the enfeebled nations shall stand still To be by Christian science shaped at will.”

IX.—NEW UNITED CHRISTENDOM.

Are the intelligent Christians of our day sufficiently aware of the serious character and the extent of the dangers which are now impending? Do they appreciate the import of the questions which engage and agitate the active intellect of their contemporaries? Are they sensible of the weight of their responsibilities, and ready to lift their minds and hearts to the grandeur of the mission of the age in which their lot is cast?

He who can see things as they are throughout the world where the Christian faith has spread, and appreciate them rightly, cannot help seeing that a fresh unfolding of the great design of Christianity in all its simplicity, vastness, and splendor, and a stricter application of its principles in the several spheres of life, alone are adequate to meet all the genuine aspirations and satisfy the honest demands of this age.

The attack is against the primary truths of reason no less than the essential truths of divine revelation, and the defence, to be adequate and victorious, must at least be equal to the attack. Thus the law of reaction is forcing upon the leading Christian minds a reaffirmation of natural and revealed truths with a completeness and a force which the world has not up to this time witnessed. There can be no compromise with the false principles of atheists in religion, revolutionists in the state, and anarchists in society. Their errors must be refuted and their movements counteracted. The positive side of truth must be brought out and clothed in all its beauty. The true picture must be presented and contrasted with the false, so as to captivate the intelligence and enlist the enthusiasm of the active minds of the youth of the age. This is the great work that, in the economy of God, is mainly left to the initiative of individual minds of the members of his church. It is the work of Catholic genius illuminated by the light and the interior inspirations of the working of the Holy Spirit. The Church, in every critical or important epoch in her history, has always given birth to providential men; these are her Gregories, Augustines, Benedicts, Bernards, Francises, Neris, Ignatiuses, Vincents of Paul.

As in the past, so in the present, a new phase of the church will be presented to the world—one that will reveal more clearly and completely her divine character. “It is the divine action of the Holy Spirit in and through the church which gives to her organization the reason for its existence. And it is the fuller explanation of the divine side of the church, and its relations with the human side, giving always to the former its due accentuation, that will contribute to the increase of the interior life of the faithful, and aid powerfully to remove the blindness of those—whose number is much larger than is commonly supposed—who only see the church on her human side.”[96]

Footnote 96:

_An Exposition of the Church, in view of recent Difficulties and Controversies and the present Need of the Age._ London: Pickering. 1875. THE CATHOLIC WORLD, April, 1875, p. 128.

The reintegration into general principles of the scattered truths contained in the religious, social, and political sects and parties of our day would reveal to all upright souls their own ideal more clearly and completely, and at the same time present to them the practical measures and force necessary to its realization. By this process sects and parties and antagonisms would become as far as possible extinct—not by way of antagonism, but by the power of assimilation and attraction. Just as the lesser magnet is drawn to the greater by cords of attraction identical with its own, only more intense, more powerful, and all-embracing, so the fragmentary truths contained in error, when reintegrated in their general principles, will be drawn to them and their division disappear. Christianity once more will be perfect in one, and, uniting its forces for the conversion of the world, will direct humanity as one man to its divine destination.

X.—THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.

Is not such a consummation the answer to the devout aspiration of all sincere Christian souls? Is it not also the promise of Christianity, and was it not the object of the most earnest prayer of its Founder when upon earth? The Son of God did not pray in vain.

Underneath all the errors and evils found among men of all times is the prime desire for the knowledge of the truth and the native hunger for the good. Now, the absolute truth which contains all truth, and the absolute good which contains the supreme good, is God. God is therefore the ideal of the rational soul, the term of all its seeking, and the end of all its wishes. The perfect union of the soul with God is bliss.

Again, Christianity does not confine itself to the reign of God in the soul; it seeks to establish the reign of God upon earth. “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” was the petition of Christ to his heavenly Father. His life was not confined to contemplation and preaching; he “went about doing good.”

Genuine contemplation and action are inseparable. He who sees truth loves truth, and he who loves truth seeks to spread the knowledge and the practice of truth. Divine love is infinitely active, and, when it has entered the human heart and has set it on fire, it pushes man to all outward perfection and visible justice. No men have labored so zealously and so efficiently for their fellow-men, for the establishment of God’s kingdom upon earth, as the saints of God.

The love of God and the love of man are one. God promises his reward not to the ignorant, or to the indolent, or to the indifferent, but to those who visit the prisoner, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, to the doing of good works as the evidence of the true faith.

The Catholic Church teaches to men their true relations to God and to their fellow-men, and by the practical application of the principles which govern these relations are removed the errors and vices which hinder the establishment of the reign of God in men’s souls and everywhere upon earth. The history of civilization since the moment of the church’s institution on the day of Pentecost is nothing else than a record of the several steps of progress of society, under the guidance of the Catholic Church, in reaching this goal. Whatever elements the nineteenth century possesses superior to Judaism, paganism, barbarism, and Islamism are due to the uninterrupted action of Christ upon the world through the Catholic Church. Modern civilization may be defined as the result of nineteen centuries of action of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the Catholic Church in establishing the reign of God in men’s souls and the kingdom of heaven upon earth. “God is now taking the dross out of the crucible, so as to render his people free from all alloy, and once more to clothe the church for which our Lord delivered himself up with beauty resplendent with glory. And when God shall have accomplished this, he will remove the rod of his justice from the church, and, that his divine name may no longer be blasphemed, he will give her victory, a victory far more brilliant than her sufferings have been terrible. May this triumph not be delayed!”[97]

Footnote 97:

Letter of Pope Pius IX. to Mgr. Lachat, April 27, 1876.

XI.—THE CATHOLIC IDEA OF HEAVEN.

The Catholic Church teaches that the road to a blessed hereafter is by striving to establish the kingdom of heaven upon earth; it is after a life spent in practical good works that the soul merits to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” But then do all the soul’s interests cease the moment it has left this world and entered upon its future life? Is it true that the only thought of a true Christian is to get well out of this world and all that belongs to it, and give it no further concern? Is this the Catholic idea?

Not at all. The Catholic idea is that as our transformation in God is perfected, so do all the faculties of the soul increase. The soul knows more, loves more, and does more infinitely in the blessed land than when upon this earth. The lives of most of us while here are only a little better than a sleep. The soul’s vision of the divine Essence, and its participation in the divine Nature, render it, like the angels, “God’s coadjutor” in the realization of his ideal in the vast universe. So far from the knowledge of this globe, and the affection towards its inhabitants or interests in its concerns, being lessened or lost by the citizens of heaven, the knowledge acquired and the affections formed during their life upon earth are essentially retained, and are enlarged and intensified; and on this truth is based the Catholic doctrine of the communion and invocation of saints. Hence to this knowledge and affection and constant interest taken by the souls in heaven in the welfare of this world, and of those from whom they are corporally but not really separated, and to their power to aid them, is owing the adoption of angels and saints as patrons by Catholic nations, cities, villages, towns, and by every individual Catholic. He who is ignorant of the Catholic doctrine of the communion of saints, and who is not within the Catholic fold, can have no conception of the intimate and intense, uninterrupted spiritual intercourse between the soul of a truly devout Catholic and the angelical and saintly inhabitants of heaven. The church militant and the church triumphant are substantially one, form one communion, and their action is inseparable. The Catholic idea, then, is this: that the power of the soul, on entering into heaven, to aid man upon earth in the realization of his true destiny is redoubled; and that this power is most efficaciously employed in our favor by the souls of the eternally blessed. The retrospective action of the inhabitants of the other world on the welfare of this world greatly accelerates its progress, and, compared with their direct action while upon earth, it is immeasurably greater and free from all alloy.

XII.—FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF MODERN INFIDELS.

The Catholic Church places no gulf between God and humanity, or divorce between heaven and earth, or antagonism between revelation and reason, or religion and science; and she repudiates the doctrine which emphasizes faith at the expense of good works. Hence the accusation of modern infidels against Christianity, as confining itself exclusively to man’s happiness hereafter—“a post-mortem happiness”—while ignoring his actual, present good—“ante-mortem happiness”—may have some show of reason as against Protestant sects, especially of the Calvinistic sect; but it is altogether false, and must be set down to defective knowledge, when made against the Catholic Church.

It is through the faithful reception of the divine action of the Catholic Church by individuals and society that the highest good possible for man here and hereafter can be surely attained; and this needs only clearly to be seen to restore to her true and visible fold all the descendants of the members separated from the Catholic Church by the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, who are in good faith.

And it is the bringing out into a clearer light the divine side of the church, and to the front those truths which eliminate the errors rife in our day and their stricter application to present evils, that, by the instinct of the Holy Spirit, now preoccupies the active intelligent mind of Catholics throughout the world, especially in countries where the dangers are most imminent, such as France, Germany, and Italy.

XIII.—PROMISES, FALSE AND TRUE.

There are two controlling forces, explain their origin as we may, visible in the conflicting movements of human affairs in this world. The one places man in possession of the Supreme Good, and makes him a co-worker with his Creator in the realization of the ideal for which God called this great universe into existence. The other is instigated by the enemy of God and the human race, seeking by false promises to lead man astray.

“You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” was Satan’s promise to our first parents. This promise contained what was desirable for man; God had implanted in the human soul the aspiration for its fulfilment. But what the enemy promised he had not the power to perform, and the road that he pointed out as leading to the fulfilment of the promise led in a wrong direction.

The right answer of our first parents to Satan would have been: “We know that God has made our souls in his own image and likeness, and that we shall be made participators of his divine Nature, and thereby deified; and as our Creator has endowed us with the gift of intelligence, we shall also gain the knowledge of good and evil—for this is its proper object. And we know also with certitude that we shall gain these great rewards by following the paths which God has pointed out to us.” Had they thus spoken, they would have, in the strength of their innocence and conscious rectitude, added: “Begone, tempter! Thou art a liar; for what thou dost promise it is not thine to give; and instead of wishing our elevation, thou seekest to accomplish our fall and utter ruin!”

As in the beginning, so now, Satan seizes hold of the noblest aspirations of the soul, and, by deceiving men under the guise of a real good, leads them quite astray. For what underlies the promises of Protestantism and its innumerable sects; and rationalism, so-called, and its different phases; and the secularists, positivists, scientists, atheists, radicals, materialists, spiritists, revolutionists, evolutionists, socialists, pessimists, free-religionists, communists, internationalists, optimists, theists, nihilists, _kulturkämpfer_, agnostics, intuitionists, transcendentalists, and other sects and parties too numerous to mention—for their name is legion, and their confusion of tongues is as great as that of Babel—what underlies their promises is in one aspect true and in a sense desirable. The right answer to all their fine promises is this: “You affirm undoubted truths and you hold out a desirable good; but the way that you point out for realizing the one and attaining the other is subversive of all truth and the supreme good, and it will not reach even what you aim at, but end in entire disappointment and anarchy. Put together the fragmentary truths affirmed by each of your different religious sects, and you will find them all contained in Catholicity. Make a list of all the honest demands for ameliorations and reforms in man’s social, industrial, and political condition—it will not be a short one—and you will discover that they have their truth in the spirit, and are justified by the teachings and the practice, of the Catholic Church.” O sincere seeker after truth! did you but know it, the path lies open before you to a perennial fountain of truth, where you can slake to the full that thirst which has so long tormented your soul. O sincere lover of your fellow-men! there is a living body which you may see and co-operate with, whose divine action is realizing a heavenly vision for the whole human race, brighter and more beautiful than the ideal which so often haunts your lonely dreams!

The divine ideal is a God-given aspiration to your soul, but the way to realize it is not by building up a tower of Babel.

XIV.—CONCLUSION.

The evolution of Catholicity which is now coming slowly to the light will gather up all the rich treasures of the past, march in response to every honest demand of the interests of the actual present, and guide the genuine aspirations of the race in the sure way to the more perfect future of its hopes.

This sublime mission is not the self-imposed work of any man or party of men, but the divinely-imposed task of religion, of the present, visible, living body of Christ, the church of God. None other has the power to renew the world, unite together in one band the whole human race, and direct its energies to enterprises worthy of man’s great destiny. Marshal MacMahon, Duke de Broglie, or any one else, legitimists, imperialists, Orleanists, republicans, anti-republicans, these men and these parties in France may contribute more or less as instruments to the initiation of the new order of things in Europe, but that is all. They will betray the cause of God and the interests of humanity, if they should attempt to turn it to any individual account or to any partisan triumph, whether called religious or political. The enemies of the church may place hindrances in her way, but they cannot stop her in reaching her goal. God alone rules and reigns.

God has spoken his “thus far shalt thou go, and no further” to his enemies and to all the persecutors of the church of Christ. When God arises, his enemies will flee and be scattered. Their strength, compared with that of his children, is as the strength of a rope of sand. Their power is gained by secrecy, and their influence by threats and deeds of violence; for their real numbers constitute but a small fraction of the French, German, Italian, and Spanish or any other people. The present struggle will render this fact evident to all the world.

Strange destiny that of France, to be the leader of Europe both for good and for evil! France was the first nation converted to Christianity in western Europe, and the first to proclaim herself, as a nation, infidel. France will be the first to recover from her errors and give the initial blow that will end in the overthrow of the enemies of modern civilization and Christianity.

The Marshal-President of the Republic of France, the brave soldier, the man without fear or reproach, is not the man to betray his high trusts through any personal ambition, or to any party, legitimist, Orleanist, imperialist, Gambettist, or whatever may be the name which it bears on its banner.

The mission of the President of France is to keep ambitious men and partisans at bay, and afford the best elements and the truest interests of all France a fair expression and the opportunity of forming a stable and suitable political government. The Catholic Church has been made to suffer too much and too long from crowned emperors, royal dynasties, and political factions in France and elsewhere to identify her great cause with theirs.

France, under the providence of God, is slowly being taught to stand on her own feet, to assert her true manhood, and to practise self-government. The political virtues the French people have practised, and the self-control they have displayed, since the formation of the republic, have discomfited their enemies, increased the admiration of their friends, and won the applause of the civilized world. France never was so really great as she is at this moment.

The purity of the motives of the President of the Republic, the disinterested love of his country, and his undaunted valor have never been impeached, nor has his escutcheon ever borne the slightest stain. His sagacity and prudence have never been at fault. That he has a will Jules Simon has learned to his cost. Patrick MacMahon, the marshal of the armies of France and the first President of her Republic, possesses evidently all the distinguishing qualities of the first commander-in-chief of the American army and the first President of the Republic of the United States—George Washington. The French people can safely trust for one term, and not unlikely for a second, their liberties, their interests, and their honor to the keeping of such a man.

France will find in her president a providential man, and his name will go down to posterity with the title of our own great patriot, the noblest of all titles—“MacMahon, the Father of his Country.”

The turning point of a new era for Europe and of the renewal of Catholicity is entrusted by divine Providence to the hands of the eldest daughter of his church—France! In the answer of France to the present issue lies the secret of the weal or the woe of the future of Europe.

PHIL REDMOND OF BALLYMACREEDY.

“Whisht!” exclaimed the blind hostler attached to the Derralossory Arms. “There’s a car rowlin’ along the Bray Road, an’, from the sperrit that’s in the baste, it’s Luke Finnigan that’s dhrivin’ him. Ay, faix,” he added with a self-satisfied chuckle, “an’ that’s Luke Finnigan’s note. I’d know it from this t’ Arklow.”

A wild whoop and a sound of wheels in the direction indicated announced the approaching vehicle, and, ere the sightless hostler could grope his way from the snug corner in which he had been ensconced by the roaring kitchen fire—it was the middle of July—an outside car dashed up to the principal door of the hotel, stopped with a jerk as if on the edge of a precipice, and the driver, throwing the reins upon the neck of the panting horse, cried out as he gaily entered the hostelry:

“Now, thin, Misther Murphy, be nimble wud the liquor. There’s a rale gintleman goin’ for to stand, an’ I’m as dhry as a cuckoo.”

Upon the vehicle sat a young man whose exquisitely-fitting frock-coat, faultless linen, diamond studs, soft hat, and square-toed boots bespoke the American. He was fair, with soft and expressive eyes, and wore a _Henri Quatre_ beard which admirably became his long and pensive face.

“Yer welkim to the County Wicklow, sir,” cried the hostler, who had approached the car and was engaged in giving a drink to the jaded animal. “It’s an illigant place for rocks an’ rivers an’ threes an’ scenery. Sorra a forriner that cums into it but is loath for to lave it. It takes a hoult av thim.”

“It is a very, _very_ beautiful place,” exclaimed the new-comer enthusiastically, as he sprang to _terra firma_. “So green, so fresh, so—but you cannot enjoy it, my poor fellow!” suddenly perceiving the sightless orbs which were turned toward him.

“It’s many a day sence I seen it, sir,” responded the man, with a weary moan in his utterance—“many an’ many a day.”

“Thrue for him,” added the driver, emerging from the hotel and swabbing his mouth with the back of a bronzed and blistered hand, while bright beads twinkled like fallen stars in his merry eyes. “He’s dark sence he was a gossoon! An’ it’s a sight for to see him along wud the horses in the stable; he’ll go into stalls, an’ the bastes kickin’ thim to smithereens, but sorra a word they’ll say to him, though they’d be afther knockin’ sawdust out av any other tin min. He thravels the roads day an’ night. To be sure it’s all wan to him in regard to his bein’ dark, but he’ll work his way down to Lake Dan below—ay, an’ to the Sivin Churches, begor.”

“God is good to me, sir,” said the hostler; “an’ whin it plazed him for to take me eyesight, he gev me sight in me ears an’ hands.”

“Here, my poor fellow.” And the stranger placed a coin in the other’s horny palm.

“A five-shilling bit! Och, thin, may the saints light ye to glory, an’ may ye never die till they sind for ye! It’s lonely they’ll be till ye go to thim.”

By this time the car was surrounded by a motley group of tatterdemalions of all ages, sizes, and sexes, in every stage of decrepitude and every variety of raggedness.

“Throw a few coppers to an ould widdy, an’ the Lord reward ye!” exclaimed one.

“Ye’ll never miss a fourpenny bit,” added another.

“A sixpince to an orfin will take a bag o’ coals from undher ye in purgathory,” chimed in a third.

“Give us the price av an ounce av tay,” droned a fourth.

“More power to the stars an’ sthripes! Three cheers for Ameriky, boys!” roared a leathern-lunged dwarf, throwing a rabbit-skin cap into the air. This appeal was responded to with an enthusiasm that brought the fire into the stranger’s eye. Turning round upon the steps of the hotel—along, thatched, whitewashed, two-storied building—he made a sign as if desirous of addressing the assemblage.

“Be jabers! he’s going for to spake.”

“I riz him wud the stars an’ sthripes,” joyously chuckled the dwarf.

“Faix, it’s more nor a speech we want,” wheezed a little old fellow on crutches.

“The Home-Rulers has stuffed us like turkeys.”

“Ordher! Ordher in the coort!” yelled the dwarf. “Be aisy, Billy McKeon. Lave off scroogin’ me, Mary Nayle, an’ let the cripples in front.”

A few additional _facetiæ_, and the silence became complete.

The new-comer had removed his hat, and his massive white forehead stood out from beneath his soft brown, curly hair.

“I thank you for the cheer which you have given for the country of my birth.” (“That’s half a crown to me, anyhow,” muttered the dwarf.) “I hope that cheer was an honest one. It was not my intention to bestow ten cents among you, as I do not encourage mendicants; and once a beggar, always a beggar.”

This was received with very audible manifestations of dissatisfaction.

“Musha, but ye’ve come far enough for to tell us that,” growled the old man with the crutches.

“I _have_ come a long way to tell it to you,” retorted the stranger, “and I’ll tell you more. It is positively sickening to travel through this beautiful country, on account of _you_ and the like of you. From Cork to Killarney, from Killarney to Dublin, from Dublin to—”

“Boys, let’s make up a subscription for him,” interrupted a little fellow whose rags depended for support upon a straw rope—technically termed a “suggawn”—fastened around his waist.

“Th’ hostler 'll hed it wud five shillin’s,” observed a bystander with a droll, malicious grin.

“Begorra, we’ll tell the landlord for to put it in the bill.”

“Are ye goin’ for to give us anything?” demanded the dwarf. This query was backed up by a unanimous murmur of approval.

“I am.”

“Well, that’s raysonible, anyhow.”

“I’m going to give you some sound, wholesome advice,” said the stranger.

A yell of anger, disappointment, dissent, and derision followed this announcement. Crutches were brandished, sticks flourished, fists shaken, and general denunciations upon this “nagurly” conduct were indulged in, in terms as pungent as they were personal.

“You won’t hear me?” he resumed during a lull in the storm.

“Sorra a hear.”

“Well, good-afternoon.” And making them a low bow, he turned into the house, whither execrations loud, prolonged, and deep rapidly followed him.

The accommodations at the “Derralossory Arms”—for so the hostelry was named—were somewhat pretentious. Opening a door with the word “coffee-room” imprinted thereon in brazen letters, the new-comer found himself in a long, low-ceilinged apartment. A cracked mirror, the surface of which was scratched from frame to frame, like an ice rink, by amorous owners of diamond rings, stood over the mantel-piece, and above it a smoke-dried card containing the announcement of the meets of the Wicklow Harriers of the preceding season. Upon a mahogany sideboard shone a brave array of glassware interspersed with pickle-jars and some mysterious specimens of the ceramic art. Facing the sideboard was a huge antiquated sofa whose springs revealed themselves like the ribs of a half-starved horse, and opposite the sofa an ancient but uncompromisingly upright pianoforte. But not upon the mirror, sideboard, sofa, or piano did the eyes of the stranger continue to rest. The window had been lowered, and a young girl was leaning her arms upon the sash, gazing out upon the tatterdemalion crowd beneath. Her figure was _petite_, but of that faultless outline which no amount of drapery can conceal. A long plait of lustrous brown hair hung down her back. She was attired in black, and a huge Puritan cambric collar and cuffs adorned her wrists and neck.

“If her face is as her figure, she must be enchanting,” thought the new-comer.

“He should have given them _something_,” she murmured half aloud. “Poor creatures! hoping and fearing is weary, weary work.” And she slowly faced him.

He gazed at features as regular as the classic model, and whose paleness almost imparted to them the calm, impassive beauty of marble. She flushed and was about to withdraw when he blurted forth:

“I—I beg your pardon, but I overheard what you said. I am not so mean as you think.” And striding to the window and attracting the attention of the mob, who received him with a yell of derisive defiance, he flung a handful of silver among them.

A scarlet flush mantled over her face and throat. “I was but speaking to myself, thinking aloud—and—but nevertheless on the part of those poor miserable people, I beg to thank you, sir. _I_ am sorely to blame, and your generosity only rivets the fetters that bind them to beggary.” And with a low courtesy, old-fashioned but witching grace itself, she swept from the apartment, leaving the stranger lost in admiration.

“What is that young lady’s name who was here just now?” he asked.

“Her name is Miss O’Byrne—wan av th’ ould anshint O’Byrnes that fought hard agin’ the Danes an’ Crummle—bad cess to thim, body an’ bones!” replied the waiter.

“Does she live near this place?”

“Beyant four mile, over be the side o’ Lake Dan. It’s an illigant place, wid no ind av ruins, an’ a darlin’ ghost that walks whinever sorra is comin’ to the race; an’ be me song, they’ve supped lashins av it.”

“Is Mr. O’Byrne wealthy?”

“Well, now”—here the waiter scratched a very shock head—“he’s not rowlin’ in goold, but he’s warm and”—brightening up—“as proud as a paycock. But there, I’m forgettin’ me message to ye.”

“To _me_? exclaimed the stranger with a start, half hoping it might be from Miss O’Byrne.

“Yes, sir. There’s two gintlemin cum here in regard o’ the fishin’, though sorra a haporth they ketch; an’ they cum regular wud rods an’ hooks an’ nets, an’ all soarts av cumbusticles. Wan av them is an attorney, a gay man, an’ th’ other houlds a situation in the Four Coorts beyant in Dublin, an’ he’s as nice a mannered man as there’s in the four walls o’ Wicklow this blessed minit.”

“But the message?” interrupted the stranger.

“That’s it. Yer to dine wud thim—no less. Misther Minchin tould me to prisint his respects an’ to hope ye’d favor him wud yer company; an’ don’t be hesitatin’, mind ye”—here the waiter winked an indescribable wink, such as an augur might have indulged in consequent upon a successful omen; “there’s lovely chickens, an’ the elegantest bacon, wud a filly av cabbage, an’ a dancing leg o’ lamb.”

“But I don’t know these gentlemen, and—”

“Permit me to introduce myself, sir,” exclaimed a small, elderly man with a merry eye, a bulbous nose, a very stiff, old-fashioned stock, and a stiffer rim of shirt-collar which kept his head as erect as though he was hung up by the chin, entering and bowing very courteously. “Minchin—Dominick Minchin. Hearing from this shock-headed retainer that you were a stranger, and having experienced on more occasions than one, especially during piscatorial excursions, the thrice-accursed loneliness of an inn, I beg, sir, that you will favor us by coming where glory waits you and—a bit of dinner.”

This was uttered with a quaint cheeriness that bore everything before it.

“Really, sir, I am quite impressed by your consideration, and accept your invitation most gratefully. My name is Philip Redmond.” And he handed the other his card.

“Redmond is not an American name, sir?”

“No, sir; my father was Irish.”

“Anything to the Redmonds of Ballymacreedy?”

“I am Redmond of Ballymacreedy.”

Mr. Minchin seized him warmly by both hands and shook them repeatedly. “By Jupiter, sir! this is positively glorious—sublime, sir! I knew your father well; and when he thought fit to part with his property—”

“His property parted from _him_, Mr. Minchin. It is gone, and I am now here to try and repurchase it at any cost. However, we’ll talk of that by and by. I _feel_ that dinner is not very far off, and that you are only half as anxious about it as I am.”

Mr. O’Hara, Mr. Minchin’s companion, was a tall, handsome, florid-faced man of about five-and-thirty, with a profusion of sandy hair which stood out from his head like quills upon the fretful porcupine, and a smile like sunlight. In five minutes Redmond was as much at home with the two anglers as if he had known them all his life, and had planned two excursions with them.

“I’m afraid you’ll have some trouble about getting back this property,” observed O’Hara. “It’s now in the possession of a man who doesn’t want money, and who would call you out if you proposed to purchase it.”

“Every man has his price, has he not, Mr. O’Hara?” asked Redmond.

“True; but there are exceptional circumstances connected with this case which hedge it round with an impenetrable _chevaux de frise_.”

“Of what nature?”

“Family pride, which will never consent to confiscate the old acres.”

“But the lands of Kilnagadd and Derralossory belonged to our family.”

“That may be, Mr. Redmond, but they were part and parcel of other territory before the Redmonds came north of Vinegar Hill. I know all about them, as I rented a fishing lodge from one of the tenants, and, being anxious to purchase it, inquired into the title.”

“I made my dying father a solemn promise that I would get back the old place. Money is no object, Mr. O’Hara. My father operated both in real estate and in gold, and died wealthy, so that a few thousands will not balk me.”

“You can try it,” was the rejoinder, accompanied by a shake of the head.

It was late when they separated, Minchin warbling “The young May moon,” and insisting upon shaking hands with the “young boss,” as he designated him, over and over again.

The summer’s morning was bright and balmy, and Redmond, after a yeoman’s breakfast—consisting of trout fried with bacon, fresh eggs, and tea in which the cream was pre-eminent—started out into the glorious sunlight which was irradiating hill and dale, mountain and valley. The forget-me-nots told their tale to the crystal pools, the graceful ferns languidly embraced the lichen-covered stones, an occasional cur basking in the heat and glow opened a lazy eye as Phil passed along the road, and compromised a bark with a prolonged yawn. The hawthorns threw their shadows across the path, and the “blossoming furze unprofitably gay” sent forth that fresh, quaint, and delicious perfume that tells us with speechless eloquence that we are out in the bright green country and away from the heat and turmoil and loathsomeness of the over-crowded human hive. Having promised to join his newly-found friends at Lough Dan, Phil took the steep and romantic road that leads to the lake direct from the village of Roundwood. Far away to the left in the summer haze lay the picturesque village of Annamoe, and farther still the sweet, sad valley of Glendalough, guarded by the giant Lug na Culliagh, while the deep-tinted groves of Castle Kevin lent a delicious contrast to the purple heights of the heather-covered Derrybawn; on his right the grim gray crags of Luggelaw, and, as he gained the crest of the hill, the blue waters of Lough Dan lay mirrored beneath him, reflecting the giant shadows of Carrig-na-Leena. The exquisite loveliness of the scene fell upon the young American like a dream or a perfume. It was refreshing, yet almost intoxicating. He thought of the color glories of the Hudson in the fall, of the blood-reds and orange-yellows and wine hues of the autumn foliage, and they seared his mental vision when he came to contemplate the soft, cloudy green, the odor-laden atmosphere, pure yet filmy as a bridal veil, and the delicious completeness of the _coup d’œil_, so satisfying, so soothing, and so enravishing. Somehow or other he associated all this perfection with the fair young girl whose pale face and mantling blush still haunted his imagination like a sweet strain of music. These scenes were a suitable setting for her beauty. She would comprehend them, she would commune with nature in this wild, secluded spot, so lonely and yet so lovely. As his ideas glided in this rosy channel, his revery was suddenly disturbed by the sound of wheels, and close upon him came a basket-phaeton attached to a very diminutive pony. His heart gave one violent bound—the object of his immediate and gushing thoughts was the occupant of the vehicle. Would she pass without noticing him? There had been no introduction. He could expect no recognition, and yet—

Chance fills up many a gap in life, solves many riddles, and hastens many _dénoûments_.

The pony, evidently a wilful, over-petted, hand-fed little brute, took it into its stubborn head that a rest at this particular spot in the road would admirably suit his inclinations; and as he feared no whip, and, save a gentle chuck upon the reins and a solemn admonishment from his fair mistress, his whim could be indulged in with comparative impunity, he proceeded forthwith to carry his idea into execution, and stopped with a jerk right opposite where Philip Redmond stood.

“Do go on, Doaty!” exclaimed Miss O’Byrne, shaking the reins. “Do go on, there’s a pet. You shall have a lump of sugar when we get to stable.”

Doaty shook his head and stolidly gazed at the lake beneath him.

“Permit me to try and persuade him,” said Phil, stepping forward and lifting his hat, which, by the way, doubled up in his hand, clumsily concealing his face and utterly destroying his bow.

“Oh! thanks; I seem destined to give you trouble, sir.”

This was a delicate recognition.

“I have to thank you for making me the most popular man in Roundwood,” retorted Redmond. “I feel like the lord lieutenant. I held quite a _levée_ this morning.”

“And your courtiers, instead of looking for place, were seeking for pence.”

“A distinction without much difference.”

“Except in the viceroy,” she laughed.

Doaty was as good as gold—at least so thought one of the party—and manifested no intention of budging an inch.

“What a tiresome pony!” exclaimed Miss O’Byrne. “I shall have to beat him.”

“Let me try and get him along.” And Phil, taking hold of the shaggy mane, lugged the unwilling Doaty along in the direction of the lake.

“This is really too bad, sir,” remonstrated Miss O’Byrne. “I cannot tax you in this way.”

“It is no tax, I assure you. I have nothing on earth to do but to revel in the especial sunshine of this moment.”

This was said with ever so slight an emphasis; nevertheless it bore a scarlet blossom in the rich blush which came whispering all over the young girl’s charming pallor.

“You—you are a stranger here?”

“I am, and yet I ought not to be.”

“This savors of a riddle.”

“Very easily solved. My fore-fathers hunted these hills and fished that lake. My father was reckless, extravagant, and new men came into possession of the old acres. My father emigrated, and made a great deal of money in New York, and—”

“I have been in New York,” interposed the young lady.

Here was a bridge for thought-travel. Here was a market for the disposal of mutual mental wares.

“Did you like it?” he asked.

“Like it!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “Who could dislike it? It is the most charming city, perhaps excepting Paris, that I have ever lived in. And how are Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and the ash-boxes?” she added with a ringing laugh.

Doaty made another stop, and no earthly inducement would stir him until he so willed it himself. His fair mistress relinquished the idea and the reins, and, stepping from the vehicle, clambered, with the assistance of Redmond, to a moss-grown bank, from which she pointed out some objects of special interest in the scenery.

“That is Billy Doyle’s cottage at Shinnagh, down far in the valley by the edge of the lake. See the amber thatch glowing in the sunlight, and the red flag. That flag shows that poor Mr. Fenler is on the lake fishing.”

“Who is poor Mr. Fenler?” asked Phil.

“He is a man who was a great merchant in Dublin, but who lost all his property, and his wife and all his children. He saved as much from the wreck as enabled him to purchase one-half of that cottage—the slated half—and to support himself. He came here seven years ago, having made a vow _never_ to leave the valley again.”

“And has he kept it?”

“Religiously. He goes nowhere, and spends his whole time in fishing. Do you see that golden strand at the head of the lake?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there is a legend about that which you should hear. Any old crone in the valley will do it ample justice.”

“I should prefer to hear it from a fairy on the hill,” said Redmond gallantly.

“_Pas des compliments_, although yours was nearly French.”

“You beat me at my own weapons,” laughed Redmond. “But whose palatial residence is that right over in the cleft between those two hills?”

The fire lighted up in the young girl’s eye, the delicate nostril expanded, the rich, ripe lips quivered, as she proudly replied: “That is my home.”

_Her_ home—the nest in which she had been nurtured. What a precious flower in that gloomy valley! What a world of love and joy and beauty in that lone and sequestered spot!

“I envy you,” murmured Phil. “The tranquil loveliness of your home is—” he was going to send the words from his heart to his lips, but luckily they encountered Prudence upon the road, and altered themselves to suit that cold, passionless, interfering busybody—“is—just as it ought to be. _You_ have made no vow to leave this valley?” he added.

“No, but I have often thought it.”

“Such a determination would be a calamity, Miss O’Byrne.”

“How do you know my name?” she quickly demanded.

“I asked the waiter after you had left.”

“Now for an exchange,” she laughed. “Let us trade. What is _your_ name?”

“Philip Redmond, son of Redmond of Ballymacreedy.”

“Why, that is Ballymacreedy,” exclaimed the young girl, pointing to a fir-covered mountain, upon the side of which, as though perched on a shelf, stood a gaunt, uncompromising-looking, square-built mansion, all roof and windows.

Phil Redmond’s feelings, as he gazed on the home which he had never known save by hearsay, were of a very varied and conflicting nature. He had pictured it a feudal stronghold towering over an extensive lake such as America boasts of—a diminutive ocean—a battlemented castle, with keep and moat and drawbridge, ivy-grown in the interests of the picturesque, and plate-glassed in the interests of modern sunlight.

“Good heaven!” he exclaimed involuntarily, “how unlike what I conceived it to be. What a cruel disappointment!”

So rudely were his ideas shattered, and so bitterly the pride of baronial halls mortified, that the poor fellow’s heart felt quite crushed. Whether Miss O’Byrne saw this or whether Doaty saw it is not the question here; but _certes_, that admirable little brute gave a loud neigh as a trumpet-call to Redmond’s scattered senses, and evinced for the first moment during the preceding half-hour a desire to proceed upon his homeward journey.

“Papa does not visit, Mr. Redmond,” said Miss O’Byrne as she grasped the reins upon resuming her seat in the basket upon wheels, “but I shall ask him to call upon you, when I may hope for something like a formal introduction. How half an hour flies upon the wings of _sans cérémonie_!” And with a delicious inclination of the head, half-saucy, half-dignified, and wholly _piquante_, she disappeared at a turn of the road leading into the valley.

“Heigh-ho!” sighed Philip Redmond of Ballymacreedy.

While all this—shall we say nonsense?—was going on upon the hill, Mr. Minchin and his _fidus Achates_, O’Hara, were busily occupied upon the lake; and although not a single rise greeted their longing vision, like true sportsmen they lived in hope.

“That’s a very good style of man,” observed O’Hara.

“Redmond?”

“Yes.”

“The son of an Irish king, sir. By Jupiter! a fine fellow. A noble fellow!” exclaimed Minchin, whacking the lake with his line in emphasis.

“He’ll go back to New York without as much of his father’s property as would sod a lark.”

“You are still of opinion that the O’Byrne will not sell?”

“He’d burn the land first,” was the sententious rejoinder.

“Well, sir, the next best thing that Redmond can do is to purchase Glenasluagh. It adjoins Ballymacreedy, and he will enjoy the right of fishing the Clohogue—an enjoyment fit for the gods. Yes, by George! fit for the gods.”

“I never thought of that. Are you sure it’s for sale?”

“A scoundrelly attorney, one of those pitiful miscreants with whom it is my bane to be officially associated, knowing that I loved the gentle sport, endeavored to curry favor with me by mentioning this. I listened to the scoundrel and made inquiries elsewhere—in fact, I own I felt my way towards the Clohogue myself, but the figure was too high, sir.”

“We must put Redmond on to it at once.”

“There’s our man crossing the bridge. George! how I envy him his sensations upon beholding this cherished spot, 'where all save the spirit of man is divine.’” And Minchin glowed again in the summer light.

Redmond instinctively paused upon the quaint old lichen-covered bridge, in the worn interstices of which dainty little ferns of emerald green toyed with the pale blue loveliness of the forget-me-not, and gazed across the sheening waters of the tranquil lake. All was sleeping in sunlight, even the deep, clear shadows of the purple-covered mountains, while the melodious hum of glowing insect-life lent its peculiar charm to the peaceful surroundings.

The boat, by direction of Mr. Minchin, was turned for the bridge, and a few lazy strokes from the oar of the ragged urchin who acted as waterman brought it bump against a projecting bowlder which served as a landing-place.

“The top of the morning to you, Mr. Redmond!” cried Minchin. “You are just in the nick of time. Nature abhors a vacuum, and we were about to pass the rosy. This, sir, is a very dry country.” And the cheerful old biped laughed until the crags of Shinnagh re-echoed his jovial hilarity. At this moment a cart attached to a donkey appeared upon the bridge, and two formidable-looking hampers jostled each other for supremacy.

“Jump in, Mr. Redmond. We shall take our pick on that lovely little neck of land just under the stronghold of the O’Byrnes yonder.”

“Have you room for two friends of mine?” asked Phil.

“Any friend of yours is my friend, sir,” exclaimed Minchin with the pompous mannerism of the old school.

“Then lend a hand,” to the boat-boy, “to get these hampers on board.”

“What does all this mean?” asked Minchin as the baskets were safely stowed away.

“A liberty I have taken,” said Philip. “I want you and Mr. O’Hara to lunch with me to-day, as I dined with you yesterday.”

“O’Hara,” exclaimed Minchin, “what _shall_ we do with this dog? Pitch him into the lake, hampers and all?”

“I should say not,” laughed the other.

“'My foot is on my native heath,’” cried Redmond; and, taking an oar, a pull of twenty minutes keel-grated them upon a silvery strand beneath the shady foliage of a gigantic horse-chestnut tree.

“A lobster-salad, George!” cried Minchin, unloading the basket. “A chicken-pie, Jupiter! A magmain of salmon! Why, hang it, man! this never was raised at the Derralossory Arms.”

“How was it done?” asked O’Hara.

“I sent a man into Dublin for it.”

“Ah!” with a long-drawn breath of admiration. “You Americans do things in the right way.”

“By the nine gods! champagne,” ejaculated Minchin as he extracted the golden-necked bottles from their wicker cradles. “Heidsieck extra dry. I am extra dry too. _Per Bacco_, Redmond! you _are_ the son of an Irish king.”

Where is the mortal who does not enjoy a picnic?—that picnic where the food is laid upon the grass, and with the green leaves or the sky for a canopy; where fingers do service for forks, and the wild flowers for napkins; where the food is ambrosia and the drink nectar. _Ay de mí_, we have changed all that, and now we must have silver and cutlery and napery, and servants to wait upon us, and hot dishes _ad nauseam_. We must don our best and encase our sweltering hands in delicate-hued gloves, and icy etiquette now reigns where nature’s happy freedom heretofore presided.

They were busily engaged with the chicken-bones, and Redmond, as host, was uncorking the second bottle of champagne, when Minchin exclaimed: “Jupiter Olympus! here’s the O’Byrne and his daughter.”

Now, to be caught, under ordinary circumstances, in a stooping posture, wrestling with an infrangible wire, almost black in the face, and with the drumstick of a chicken stuck saltier-wise in your mouth, your hat anywhere, and your hair in the wildest and most elfin disorder, is embarrassing enough in all conscience; but, in the condition of feeling under which our romantic hero labored, to be thus detected was simply horrible. As Redmond beheld the tall and stately form of a man of about fifty, with a pair of fierce black eyes beneath still fiercer brows, advancing towards him, and by his side, gliding with that graceful undulation which is almost exclusively confined to the women of Spain, the young girl for whom the portals of his heart had been cast wide open, his desire to sink beneath the daisies was about the only sensation left to him.

“We have invaded the land of the O’Byrnes,” said Minchin, rising and bowing to the _châtelaine_.

“You seem tolerably well armed,” observed the O’Byrne, casting a comical glance at the champagne bottles.

“Permit me the honor of crossing swords,” cried Minchin.

At this moment Miss O’Byrne interposed by exclaiming: “That gentleman is Mr. Redmond of Ballymacreedy.”

The O’Byrne took a short, sharp survey of Philip from beneath his shaggy brows, and, advancing with outstretched hand:

“Mr. Redmond, I am glad to meet one of the old stock. You resemble your father very strongly.”

“You knew my father, sir?” asked Redmond eagerly.

“Yes.” The monosyllable spoke for itself. It shut down on the subject like an iron door.

“The old stock are thinning out, like my brown hairs,” laughed Minchin.

“_Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto_,” was the rejoinder.

“_Per Bacco!_ you must taste the Falernian. I am Dominick—”

“Minchin,” interposed the O’Byrne, “the best angler in Wicklow. We disciples of the rod and reel scarcely need a formal introduction.”

Somehow or other, while the O’Byrne and Dominick Minchin were bandying quaint and courtly compliments, Philip managed to pull himself together and to engage in conversation with the daughter of the house.

“You perceive, Mr. Redmond, how fate is against our being introduced—so dead against as to compel me to make you and my father acquainted as if you and I were old friends.”

“I _do_ feel as if I had known you for ever so long, and that a void—”

“Do look at the trout jumping. What perfect circles they make in the still water!”

She had interrupted with a woman’s tact. Redmond was unversed in the subtle distinctions which form the rungs of the ladder of love. Most of the girls whom he met in society were as so many agreeable nothings—exquisitely-attired statuettes, whose ideas were bounded by silk, satin, feathers, and lace. With them he had nothing in common save the weather and ice-cream; and being imbued with a feeling of aversive contempt for the whole sex, the revelation of light and love which now burst upon him revolutionized his whole being and begat an enthusiasm that forgot impossibilities. A child of nature sounds very well in poesy, but the article attired in broadcloth is very rapidly put down as a bore, if not a nuisance.

“I drink with you on one condition,” said the O’Byrne to Minchin, who presented a bottle at his head.

“Condition me no conditions, chieftain!”

“I shall; and the condition is this: that you, with Mr. Redmond and Mr. O’Hara”—to whom he had been introduced by Minchin—“will help me to punish a cooper of claret after a seven o’clock dinner.” O’Hara excused himself on the plea of being compelled to reach Dublin by the night mail from Rathdrum. Minchin called a number of the Olympian deities to witness that so superb an offer should not be lightly considered, and Redmond thought of his dress and hesitated to say yes, when his whole soul was in that solitary word.

“I want to have a gossip about New York, and surely you will not refuse me that boon?” urged Miss O’Byrne, and this decided the question.

“Are you of the true faith, Mr. Redmond?” she asked, as some hours later, in acting as _cicerone_ through the old castle, she took him to the private chapel.

“I should be a recreant Redmond if I were not,” was his proud reply.

Coolgreny, the stronghold of the Clan O’Byrne, was as picturesque as a round tower, an ivied keep, a battlemented outer wall, a dry moat, a veritable carpet of bright flowers, solemn old yew-trees whose branches had supplied many a sturdy bow wherewithal to resist the incursions of the O’Tooles, and a rookery, could make it. As he crossed the drawbridge and gazed at the oaken door with its rusty iron rivets, at the massive archway telling an imperishable tale, at the inner quadrangle, its gray stone lighted up by blood-red geraniums and deeply, darkly, desperately blue forget-me-nots, and from thence to the high-bred-looking girl by his side, Philip Redmond felt the old blood in his veins as the old, old story began to whisper itself to his heart.

They passed into the old banqueting-hall, rich in oaken tracery and wainscoted up to the ebon-colored ceiling. Portraits of doughty warriors in the grim panoply of battle-axe and shield, suits of Milan steel, and buff jerkins of the later periods adorned the walls—formidable O’Brinns who stood in many a gap, and fought the rocky defiles of Auchavana inch by inch; who displayed their prowess on many a tented field; who followed the fortunes of the luckless house of Stuart even after the unhappy disaster at the Boyne; and who, nobly fighting, fell against the hated usurpation of the Orange William. Here, too, were soft, silken-bearded representatives of the house who attached themselves to the Irish Brigade and covered themselves with glory at Lannes and Fontenoy.

“Now for the ladies, monsieur!” exclaimed Miss O’Byrne. “I see that you are lost in admiration of my male ancestors. Prepare now to be enchanted by the beauty of their wives and daughters.”

“I need no preparation,” said Phil with a low bow. “I see all their perfections concentrated in their charming descendant.”

“Admirably done!” cried the young lady, with heightened color; “but 'bide a wee.’ Look at that little dame. There is fire for you. She was Countess of Ovoca in her own right—a Geraldine. She defended this castle against two attacks of Cromwell’s crop-eared curs, and when it was intimated to her that the defence jeopardized her husband’s life, she _naïvely_ replied: 'I could replace my husband, but I could not replace Coolgreny.’ 'Wasn’t that complimentary to that ill-looking fellow opposite leaning upon his sword? I _do_ believe that he steps out of that frame occasionally for the purpose of upbraiding her, poor dear!”

Redmond laughed heartily as he replied that he thought the cavalier was likely to get the worst of it.

“Here is a Lely—my great, great, great, ever-so-great grandmamma. Isn’t she lovely? Look at her cool blue pastoral drapery, her bright brown hair, her matchless eye, and her ivory complexion.”

“I am looking at her,” said Redmond, gazing earnestly at Miss O’Byrne, “and she is lovely.”

It was as if the portrait had been painted for herself.

“Mr. Redmond, you are incorrigible. I absolutely refuse to act as _cicerone_. Tyrconnel was madly in love with her.”

“Of course he was; and if he wasn’t he ought to have been,” laughed Philip. “Pray who is that sparkling brunette, with the color glowing beneath her swarthy skin, and with the head and hair of Cleopatra?”

“That is Mistress Lettice O’Byrne, who received King James in this very hall, as, blood-stained and travel-sore, he honored our poor house by resting here after the disaster of the Boyne. He heard Mass in our little chapel before he started at daybreak.”

They wandered from portrait to portrait, she chatting gaily, brilliantly, until they came directly opposite that of a very young man attired in a gorgeous hussar uniform.

“This is a picture of today,” said Redmond. “Who is he?”

A bright diamond-drop welled into her eyes as she replied:

“It is my only brother. He took service with our kinsman, Field-Marshal Nugent, in Austria, and fell at Magenta. God be merciful to him!”

“Amen!” And the response was a prayer, so fervently and reverentially was it uttered.

“Let us go to the chapel and say an _Ave Maria_ for the repose of his soul.” And, leading through a long, dark passage, and thrusting aside a scarlet velvet curtain which hung over the entrance, she ushered Redmond into the church. Pure Gothic, the oaken traceries of its pulpit and chancel rails were worthy of the hand of Verbruggen, while the altar, of white marble, was decorated with constellations of the rarest hot-house flowers and plants.

As they emerged from the chapel the hideous clamor of a gong announced that dinner would be served in a quarter of an hour, and Redmond was ushered by his host to an apartment to prepare as best he might for the all-important ceremony. For after all “the dine” is a very serious piece of business, and it is only such foolish young fellows as Redmond—who spoiled his appetite at luncheon—or such delicately-nurtured young ladies as Miss Eileen O’Byrne, who can afford to turn up their noses at the mention of the word, and wish with a sigh that the noble institution yclept eating had never been invented.

When Redmond descended to the drawing-room he was formally presented to the Rev. Father O’Doherty, the parish priest “of as wild a district as lies between this and New York,” gaily added his reverence. “I am proud to meet you, sir; and let me tell you that the Redmonds of Ballymacreedy have left a name behind them respected, loved, and honored. Have you come to stop with us?”

“Not—that is, I’m—I’m so enchanted with all that I have seen of Ireland, and with _all_ whom I have met here”—he sought the eye of his hostess (it should be mentioned that her mother had died in giving birth to Eileen)—“that if I do not return to it, it will not be my own fault.”

This was doing pretty well—much better than he could have hoped. It was very _prononcé_, but Phil liked to be understood. He was straight in everything, and was perfectly prepared to step into the O’Byrne’s library and explain himself right away. But he was not to get the chance. Father O’Doherty took the _châtelaine_ into dinner and presided at the foot of the table. The dinner was not _à la Russe_, and, although served with extreme elegance, the guests were allowed the privilege of seeing what they were about to partake of, and to make a judicious selection according to palate. The wine was, as Minchin subsequently remarked, “of the rarest and choicest vintage.” To hear _her_ speak, to listen to the music of her laugh, to gaze upon her when her looks were turned in another direction, was rapture to poor Philip, who drank his wine, eating nothing, being wholly and solely absorbed in the radiance of her presence. It was rack and torture to him when she arose to leave the room, and, as he opened the door to permit her egress, the words, “Do not remain too long over your wine,” rang into his senses like a peal of sweet bells.

“Push the claret, Mr. Redmond,” exclaimed his host; “you may get richer but you won’t get softer wine across the Atlantic.”

“_Per Bacco!_ this is bottled velvet,” said Minchin, smacking his lips—“the odor of the violet, and the gentle tartness of the raspberry. By the nine gods! a bottle of this makes a man look for his wings to fly, sir—to fly like a bird.”

After some considerable time, during which Minchin and the O’Byrne had indulged in a very serious potation of the Château Lafitte, “Are you here on a pleasure trip, Mr. Redmond?” asked Father O’Doherty.

“Well, my good fortune has made it one of pleasure, but I came originally on business. I came to endeavor to rescue some of my poor father’s property,” replied downright Phil.

“What do you mean by _rescue_, Mr. Redmond?” asked the O’Byrne, flushing darkly red.

“I mean, to purchase it from the man who now holds it.”

“Oh!” And his host tossed off a bumper of the wine. “Do you refer to Ballymacreedy?”

“I do, and to the lands of Kilnagadd and Derralossory.”

The beetling brows of the Irish chieftain met in a black scowl.

“And suppose this man who holds these lands were unwilling to sell?”

“Oh! every man has his price,” said the unconscious Philip.

The O’Byrne rose, and, stretching himself to his full height, haughtily exclaimed:

“When I sell one rood of Ballymacreedy, Kilnagadd, and Derralossory, may I be shattered into fragments like that wine-glass,” casting, as he spoke, the crystal goblet upon the oaken floor, where it shivered into ten thousand pieces.

Had a thunderbolt fallen upon the _épergne_, and, splitting roof and ceiling, descended into their midst, the luckless hero of this narrative could scarcely have been less scared and astonished. The admonitory winkings of Minchin, the ankle-rubs of the good priest, had been lost upon him. He had rushed upon his fate and had impaled himself. Fool that he was, never to have conjectured that the haughty possessor of the land of his ancestors was the fiery, fierce old chieftain who now sat scowling at the ceiling and quaffing goblet after goblet of the rich red wine! Everything pointed to the fact—the conversation of the previous evening, the exclamation of Eileen upon the hill overlooking Lough Dan, the references of Father O’Doherty. He was a senseless idiot, and had planted the thorn of offence where he would have sown the bright seed of friendship. Could he apologize? How? Could he explain? He must.

“The fact is—” he commenced, when his host pulled him up:

“A word of advice to you, Mr. Redmond. When you enter a man’s house do not turn appraiser and play the amateur auctioneer.”

“But-” burst in Phil.

“Pardon me. If you consider that because you have scraped a few greenbacks together—Heaven knows how; _I_ don’t want to inquire—that you can come over here to dictate insulting terms to a man with reference to his own goods and chattels, upon his own hearth, let me tell you, sir, that—”

“Hear _me_,” exclaimed Father O’Doherty. “I am certain that our young friend had no intention of giving annoyance when he made those observations.”

“On the honor of a man,” roared Redmond, who was in a white heat of mortification, “I meant no offence, and furthermore—”

“Let us drop the subject, sir, and go to the drawing-room for coffee,” said the O’Byrne, rising.

“But I will _not_ drop the subject until I explain myself.”

“Mr. Redmond, do not press my endurance in my own house.” And the haughty host motioned to the door.

“Not a word,” whispered Father O’Doherty. “You can make it all right by and by, and if _you_ fail _I_ will succeed.”

Still, Philip was not satisfied. He was the outraged party. He demanded redress for a cruel wrong. Was he to remain in the pillory and be pelted with the mistrust and dislike of the man whom of all others he was most desirous of conciliating. What would _she_ think of him when her father came to tell her his version of the affair? Would _he_ not suffer and stand convicted, however innocent he might be? It was maddening, and Redmond, following his host, brusquely demanded a few minutes’ conversation.

“'Forbid it, Heaven, the hermit cried!’” exclaimed Minchin, playfully seizing our hero by the shoulders and twisting him teetotum-fashion, while the priest engaged the attention of the O’Byrne in another direction.

“Are you mad, Redmond?” said Minchin in a low tone. “On this subject he has a craze. Why, in the name of Jupiter Olympus, did you introduce it?”

“Am I to lie under the imputation of being a peddler, an auctioneer, a blackguard?” asked the other excitedly.

“The thing will be as dead as Queen Anne in five minutes, if you will only let it cross the Styx.”

“But I did not know that Mr. O’Byrne was the present proprietor of Ballymacreedy.”

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

“I would not be listened to.”

“It’s easily explained.”

When Redmond entered the drawing-room the host was speaking to his daughter, and that it was about him he had little doubt from the expression of surprise, pain, and anger which flitted across her face.

Determined not to be baffled in his purpose this time, he strode across the apartment, and, confronting the O’Byrne, said:

“If you will kindly permit me a word of explanation—”

“_Do_ take a cup of coffee, Mr. Redmond,” interrupted Miss O’Byrne; “and—and you will excuse me if I—I wish you good-night.” And courtesying very low, she turned from him and swept out of the room.

A choking sensation seized our hero. A something in his throat—anger, mortification, bitter mortification—clutched him and held him fast.

“I’ll be hanged if I’ll stop here any longer!” he said; and so earnest was his rage that, without waiting to bid his host farewell or to hint his intention to Minchin, he strode out into the quadrangle, through the arched entrance, across the drawbridge, and onwards he knew not in what direction, reckless, hopeless, and hatless.

Why had he met her? His path had been calm and peace. Why had she treated him in this way? What had he done to _her_? _He_ knew how her father would vamp up his version of the story. Was ever innocent man so deeply wronged? He would leave Ireland next day, and place the broad Atlantic between him and this—ay, this lovely, bewitching girl. Why was she so captivating? Where did the charm lie?

Thoughts all-conflicting, all-contradictory surged through his brain as he marched onward. The summer dew failed to soothe his fevered mind; the soft night-wind sighing across the Shaughnamore mountain did not cool his burning brow. The gray dawn of glorious day still found him plodding onwards, and the sun was high above the horizon when he entered the picturesque little village of Enniskerry. He had left Coolgreny fifteen Irish miles behind him across the mountains.

When he had succeeded in arousing the inmates of the Powerscourt Arms, he demanded writing materials and a messenger.

“Is it pin an’ ink at this time o’ day, sir?” demanded the sleepy handmaiden.

“Yes; here’s half a crown for you. Open your eyes and hurry up.”

He wrote the following note to the O’Byrne, and despatched it by a ragged gossoon, who started on his errand, up the hill that leads by the Dargle, like a mountain deer. He also forwarded an order for his luggage to the landlord of the Derralossory Arms.

SIR: As you would permit me no explanation last night, I _insist_ upon making it now. I did not know that you were the possessor of the lands of my forefathers until you yourself announced it. In thanking you for your hospitality I cannot refrain from saying that I wish I had never enjoyed it, as it has been a source of intense pleasure and likewise of bitter pain.

I am, sir,

Your obedient servant,

PHILIP REDMOND.

The messenger returned in a few hours with his luggage.

“Did you deliver my letter at Coolgreny?”

“I gev it to wan av the boys, sir.”

“Did you see any of the—family?”

“None o’ them, barrin’ Miss Eileen’s pony that does be dhruv be her in a sthraw shay, yer honner.”

Happy pony! thought Redmond, as he gazed into the past and beheld Doaty coming to a standstill despite the musical remonstrances of his mistress.

“They axed me if your honner’s name was Ridmond, an’ I sed I didn’t know; an’ I was axed if ye cum wudout a hat, an’ I sed yis. 'That’s him,’ sez Luke Byrne, the boy. 'A low-sized man,’ sez he. 'No,’ sez I, 'he’s a cupple o’ yards high anyhow’; an’ Luke tould me they wor draggin’ the lake beyant at Shinnagh for ye, an’ that Miss Eileen was roarin’ an’ bawlin’ the whole mornin’.”

A thrill went through every fibre in Redmond’s body as this last announcement fell upon his ear; and although the idea was coarsely expressed, that the tender girl might be sorrowing for him caused an unutterable sensation of joy. She could not believe him capable of insulting _her_ father beneath the same roof which shut the stars from her; and yet—pshaw! he would shake the whole thing off as a disagreeable yet delightful dream.

His immediate resolve was to proceed to Dublin, and from thence to Queenstown and back to his native shores; but second thoughts, always so sober, so full of judicious counsel, whispered that the long, lonely days and nights upon the Atlantic would but serve to increase his fever, and that his best chance lay in the distracting influence of European travel. Seven o’clock that evening found him on board the mail steamer for Holyhead; and as he gazed at the soft outlines of the Wicklow hills receding from his wistful glance, and thought of _her_ in that secluded, peaceful valley, he would willingly have parted with a moiety of his existence to be once again in the sunlight of her presence.

* * * * *

While our hero was on the road to Enniskerry Father O’Doherty found an opportunity for comparing notes with Minchin, and, fully convinced of the truthfulness of the young American’s statement, proceeded at once to disabuse the diseased mind of the O’Byrne. This he ultimately succeeded in doing, but not without a deal of powerful and full-flavored argument. “I do believe, Father, I took too much wine. Where is Mr. Redmond, until I make the _amende honorable_?”

“Strolling about the grounds, I believe.”

“Let us go in search of him.”

“You can go, O’Byrne; I want to have a chat with my fair young child,” said the clergyman, who had witnessed Eileen’s stately courtesy and exit.

Minchin and O’Byrne strolled out into the summer night, making sure of finding Redmond on the terrace overlooking the moat.

“We have bail for his appearance,” said Minchin, “as his hat is decorating the antlers of a lordly stag in the entrance hall.”

The two gentlemen smoked their cigars as they leisurely went in quest of the missing one, and from terrace they proceeded to garden, from garden to pleasaunce, and from pleasaunce to gate-house, but no trace of him could be found. “He is in the stables,” suggested the O’Byrne; and they returned to the enormous quadrangle in which the houses were quartered, but none of the helpers had seen him, and the stables were all locked for the night.

“He is a romantic, hot-headed young dog, and is just taking a cooler. He will turn up by and by, I warrant me; or mayhap he has hied him to my lady’s bower.” And Minchin laughed at the conceit.

“Where is Redmond?” asked Father O’Doherty, as they regained the drawing-room.

“We were going to ask you,” said the O’Byrne. “Where is Eileen?”

“The poor child has a bad headache and has gone to lie down.”

“Come along, Mr. Minchin, and we’ll take our _cruiskeen lawn_. In the meantime I shall send some of the men to scour the wood in pursuit of this invisible guest. I needn’t ask you to join us, father?”

“No, sir; a little wine at dinner is my _quantum_.”

As the night rolled over considerable uneasiness was felt about Philip’s non-appearance; but Minchin’s theory, that he had, in his agitation, returned to the Derralossory Arms _minus_ his hat, was gladly accepted, and the O’Byrne insisted upon driving with Minchin into Roundwood in order to set matters right.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the worthy proprietor of the hostelry had nothing of Redmond’s but a small nickel-mounted valise, which he described as set in solid silver.

This increased the anxiety, and as a portion of the lands of Coolgreny abutted upon the lake in sheer precipices of two and three hundred feet, fears began to be entertained that poor Philip in his ignorance of the country might have taken this unfortunate path. There was nothing for it but to await the advent of daylight, and then to scour the country, and, if necessary, to drag the lake at this particular place.

The morning brought no Redmond, and as traces of recent footsteps were very distinct in the neighborhood of the precipice, and the heather rudely torn away at the edge of the cliff, as though by a despairing clutch, the idea that he had fallen into the lake grew into a certainty. A grapnel was got ready, and the melancholy process of dragging rapidly commenced.

The relief which Redmond’s letter brought produced immediate reaction. Father O’Doherty at once started with his car to Enniskerry, with a very courteous note from the O’Byrne and a message from Eileen, but arrived about an hour after our hero had quitted the village. Later on, when the good priest had returned with this intelligence, the O’Byrne telegraphed to the Shelborne Hotel, Dublin, on chance, writing also to that address. Philip was on board the steamer when the telegram arrived, and in London when the missive reached Ireland’s capital. Had he received either, he would have flown back to Coolgreny; but it was not to be.

* * * * *

It was Sunday forenoon, and a great human wave surged out of the Madeleine Church, Paris. Instinctively one pauses beneath that noble portico and gazes across the Place de la Concorde, taking in the glittering Boulevard and the whole brilliancy of the _coup d’œil_. Philip Redmond had been amongst the worshippers, and was now on his way to the Hôtel du Louvre, so different in every respect to the white-washed, thatch-covered hostelry in the heart of the County Wicklow, and at the door of which he was introduced to the reader. He had indulged in a lazy tour, commencing with the quaint old cities of Belgium, whence he proceeded to Cologne and up the Rhine to Mayence, and after a wandering of two months found himself in the gay and fascinating capital of the world. Philip’s wound had been healed; his heart ceased to throb at the recollection of the “tender light of a day that was dead”; and if the image of Eileen O’Byrne did come back to him, he felt inclined to place himself in the pillory of his own thoughts and pelt himself with ridicule. It was a delightful thing to be heart-whole. He had played with fire and had passed through the red-hot furnace, badly burnt, no doubt, but cured at once and for ever. He used to amuse himself by imagining what the effect of his letter upon the haughty chieftain might be, and would not _her_ vanity be ruffled by the utter absence of the mention of her name? He had done his _devoir_ in stating that the day was one of intense enjoyment; this _she_ could easily translate by the aid of her own dictionary. Heigh-ho! it was a pity the dream did not last a little longer, he thought, as he prepared to descend the steps of the church upon that lovely August forenoon. As he descended, his foot became entangled in the skirt of a young girl right in front of him. He turned to apologize—his heart gave one fearful bound and his brain reeled till he became dizzy. He felt himself grow pale and cold, but, lifting his hat with a cold salutation, he passed down and onwards. It was Eileen O’Byrne!

When he reached the hotel—and he felt as if treading on air—he repaired to his apartment and flung himself into a chair in a whirl of conflicting emotion. The old wound which he had imagined healed had broken out afresh beneath the sad, reproachful glance of those lovely gray Irish eyes. There was but one chance left, and that was to fly. To be in the same city, country, hemisphere with her would be torture. He felt as if some great sea should divide them, and then that the joyous serenity of the last few weeks would be restored to him. He had very little packing to do, as he had not unpacked, and he at once proceeded to the _bureau_ to settle his bill. As he was passing along a corridor in order to reach the _vestiaire_, he became almost rooted to the ground. A turn in the passage brought him face to face with her whom he was doing his uttermost to avoid. She was deadly pale, and she passed him with a scarcely perceptible inclination of the head, cold, glacial, haughty. There was a cry of anguish in Phil Redmond’s heart, and, acting upon an unconquerable impulse, he turned after her and almost fiercely demanded: “What _have_ I done to deserve this?”

The same bright rush of crimson which flashed across her face like a rosy sunset when first he met her covered her now as she panted forth:

“_You_ seemed to wish it so.”

“_I!_” And Phil Redmond blurted out something with reference to explanation and unfair treatment in his usual _brusque_ way.

* * * * *

It was chill October, and a huge log burned in the cavernous fire-place in the banquet-hall at Coolgreny. The claret was upon the ebon-colored oak table, and round it sat no less a party than that which was assembled upon the memorable night when Phil Redmond so innocently brought the wrath of his host upon his devoted head.

“To think,” said Minchin in a state of ecstatic glow, “that we should meet here under such remarkable circumstances. Ye gods!”

“Yes,” said the O’Byrne, rising, “I wanted the same party exactly, and I have been fortunate. You all heard me swear that I would never sell a rood of Ballymacreedy, Kilnagadd, or Derralossory; but”—with a smile—“that oath does not prevent my giving them away, and, please God, when you, Father O’Doherty, unite my honest young friend Philip Redmond to my only child, he shall be restored to the lands of his fathers through his wife.”

THE BEGINNING OF THE POPE’S TEMPORAL PRINCIPALITY.

The Vicar of Jesus Christ is by virtue of his office, and by divine right, of necessity in his own person a sovereign. He is exempt from all subjection to any temporal power, and perfectly free in respect to his own person and the full exercise of his spiritual supremacy, to which kings are as much subject as other baptized persons, and nations as individuals. The right of acquiring property and domain, in a manner which does not violate any other human right, is inherent in this personal sovereignty, and carries with it all the rights of eminent domain, so that whatever is acquired in this way becomes inalienable except by a voluntary cession. The possession of actual sovereign dominion over a sufficient territory is evidently the logical and natural complement of this personal sovereignty, yet is not acquired except by some legal, human act, similar to that which subjects any given domain in particular to any other given individual or corporation. The possession of spiritual sovereignty united with the temporal dignity and power of a civil monarch is, manifestly, the most dangerous and liable to abuse of all the attributions which any individual ruler or dynasty of supreme rulers can be supposed to have received as a stable and permanent right. The danger is increased in proportion to the magnitude and duration of the spiritual empire and the political monarchy united with it. We are obliged, therefore, to believe that Jesus Christ, as the Sovereign Lord of the world, when he founded such an institution, provided efficaciously for the protection of Christian society against this danger and liability to abuse. This he could not do without exercising a special and supernatural providence over his earthly vicariate, the Papacy. Yet, according to the analogy of all other departments of the divine government, this special providence ought to be reduced to a minimum and made as little miraculous as possible, by a wise ordering of natural and secondary causes in reference to the desired effect. In point of fact, we see, from the history of the Papacy, that God has permitted it to exhibit as much of the weakness and imperfection of all human things as was consistent with the fulfilment of the end of its institution. His supernatural overruling of the natural course of events has been limited to this result. And the preservation of the Holy See from perversion by human passions into a merely earthly power, an empire of this world, has been accomplished in great part by the difficulties and struggles which have always environed the possession of the greatest of human dignities and powers—the papal sovereignty.

From Nero to Constantine the Popes were obliged to struggle with the heathen emperors in order to conquer their liberty at the cost of martyrdom. From Sylvester to Gregory the Great they were obliged to struggle with civil and ecclesiastical princes for the recognition and maintenance of their spiritual supremacy. The temporal and civil domain necessary for the stable possession and exercise of the personal, sovereign independence of the Pope as Supreme Pastor of the church was not given until its necessity became manifest. It came in the natural course of events, without violence or miracle. Its tenure was precarious and constantly disputed, and has so remained until the present day. Our present purpose is to sketch the history of the struggles by which the first Popes who were kings of Rome secured the dominion of the patrimony of St. Peter as an inalienable right recognized by the international law of Christendom.

The temporal domain of the Popes began with the natural and gradual acquisition of landed property, which in those times carried with it princely authority over the tenants and inhabitants of estates. Not only the Popes but the principal bishops in Italy and other countries became in this way dukes and counts. The sovereign rights of the emperors lapsed through a long-continued neglect to fulfil the essential duties of sovereignty, and there was no other royal power in Italy which succeeded to them in a legitimate manner. The ruling power devolved naturally upon the local princes. The Roman people turned toward the Pope as their immediate bishop; just as the people of Ravenna, Milan, Treves, Cologne, and many other cities did to their own bishop, because he was the chief of their aristocracy, and also the protector of the people, and was the only one who was both willing and able to take the place vacated by their former rulers. The Western Roman Empire ceased to exist when the Heruli under Odoacer took and sacked Rome, making themselves masters of Italy. Odoacer was in turn conquered and killed by the Ostrogoth Theodoric, who was nominally the lieutenant of the Greek emperor, but in reality conquered Italy for himself. When the empire revived under the able administration of Justinian, the kingdom of the Ostrogoths was subdued and overthrown by the great general Belisarius. A new invasion of Lombards, or Long-beards, from Germany put an end once more to the imperial dominion in Italy, with the exception of a certain part called the exarchate, which had its capital at Ravenna. The authority of the Lombard kings was very limited and precarious, and under their sway the duchies and marquisates and independent municipalities of Italy assumed that character of autonomy which made Italy ever after incapable of anything except a federative unity. The Lombards were at first Arians, but the conversion of their beautiful and accomplished queen, Theodolinda, by St. Gregory the Great was the beginning of a general reconciliation of the whole people to the Catholic Church, and of the complete extinction of the Arian heresy in Italy. The Popes never acknowledged the sovereignty of the Lombard kings over the city and duchy of Rome. The Greek exarch at Ravenna, as the representative of the emperor, was recognized as having lawful jurisdiction, and a magistrate delegated by him, called a duke, resided in Rome. The actual authority of these representatives of the ancient imperial power and of their master at Constantinople became, however, continually more and more a restricted and almost nominal formality, until it was altogether extinguished by the fall of the Greek exarchate. A few passages from the Italian historian Cantù will show in a clear and brief manner how the temporal sovereignty of the Popes in Rome resulted naturally and necessarily out of the new order of things which issued from the universal disorder and confusion that prevailed:

“At the time of the descent of the Lombards upon Italy the country lacked a head possessing general authority, and the Roman people, as well that portion of them who had been subjugated as those who were still free, had no other eminent personage to whom they could look except the Pope. He possessed immense domains in Sicily, Calabria, Apulia, the Campagna, the Sabine territory, Dalmatia, Illyria, Sardinia, in the Cottian Alps, and even in the Gauls. These domains being cultivated by farmers, he exercised over them a legal jurisdiction, appointed officers and gave orders; and, besides, his revenue enabled him to distribute succors in times of dearth, to furnish asylum to refugees, and to pay troops. After the conquest had interrupted the communications between Rome and the exarch of Ravenna, the Pope remained the _de facto_ head of the city where he resided; he corresponded directly with the Byzantine court; made war and peace with the Lombard kings; and, moreover, by putting himself in an attitude of resistance to their conquests, _he became the representative of the national party_. The chair of St. Peter awaited only a pontiff who should feel all the importance and display all the dignity of his high position. Such a man was Gregory the Great” (580-603).

“Italy, at this time, had no more stability in its civil institutions than France. The Lombards had occupied a large part of it in the first burst of invasion; but the partition which they made among several dukes, though it served to consolidate their possession, prevented them from completing their conquest. As the king was elected from among these different nobles, without any hereditary right, there was a revolution at every vacancy; moreover, the dukes obtained continually more considerable privileges by favoring one or another among the competitors—so much so that those of Benevento and Spoleto acquired complete independence. The only thing they all desired was to remain in tranquil enjoyment of absolute authority in their particular domains, or to make war for their own personal aggrandizement in power and wealth, and not in obedience to the king’s command; so that the king could with difficulty induce them to follow him in any military enterprise against the Greeks for the purpose of expelling these from Italy, or against the Franks, who molested them unremittingly, either for the sake of pillage or at the instigation of the Eastern emperors.... The Greek exarch’s administration extended over the Romagna, the marshy valleys of Ferrara and Comacchio, over five maritime towns from Rimini to Ancona, and five other towns between the shore of the Adriatic and the Apennine slope, over Rome, Venice, and almost all the cities on the sea-coast. Some cities, for instance Venice, made themselves independent, while others were constantly menaced and often invaded by the Lombards. When these latter were involved in foreign or civil wars, the exarchs would avail themselves of the chance to repossess the places they had lost, but were always speedily driven back into narrow limits, without ever enjoying peace, and subject to the necessity of making every year short truces, for which they frequently had to pay a tribute of three hundred livres in gold. When the means failed for paying tribute and the wages of the soldiers, they ran down to Rome and plundered the treasury of the church, or pillaged the sanctuary of St. Michael at Monte Gargano, which was an object of great veneration to the Lombards....

“Another power remained in Italy, as yet imperceptibly growing up, but destined to be developed during the course of the century and to cast lasting roots amid the ruins of the others. The Popes had always shown themselves hostile to the Lombard domination and desirous of preserving the invaded provinces to the empire. Gregory the Great had employed for this effect his authority, his eloquence, his treasure, and his skill in the arts of diplomacy; his successors followed his example, and whenever they were menaced by the Lombards they implored without delay the aid of Constantinople. Preserving toward the emperor the submission which they had constantly exhibited while Rome was the capital of the world, they asked his confirmation of their election, paid him a fixed tribute, and kept at his court an apocrisiarius, who treated with him respecting their affairs; but their dependence on distant sovereigns and feeble exarchs, upon whom the people looked with an evil eye, kept on continually diminishing. Thus the authority of the Popes, who were at the head of the municipal institutions which had been preserved in the city, rendered that of the Duke of Rome almost a nullity, and approached to a species of sovereignty.”[98]

Footnote 98:

Cesar Cantù’s _Univ. Hist._, French translation, vol. vii. p. 418, vol. viii. p. 214.

Alboin, the first Lombard king, was murdered soon after his conquest by his own wife, in revenge for the death of her father, Cunimond, chief of the Gepidæ. He was succeeded by Clefis, who was assassinated after reigning eighteen months. The Lombard dukes were disposed to do without a king, and elected no successor to Clefis, until the necessity of uniting in war against their enemies compelled them to elect Autharis, the son of Clefis, the prince whose wife was the celebrated Queen Theodolinda. Autharis died one year after his marriage, and Theodolinda was requested by the dukes to choose a new spouse and king from among their number. The choice fell upon Agilulph, Duke of Turin. His son and successor, Adoloald, was deposed and Ariovald, Duke of Turin, elected in his place, to whom succeeded Rotharis, Duke of Turin, the second husband of Gundeberga, widow of Ariovald, and who was followed by his son Rodoald, the last of the descendants of Theodolinda. The nobles and people were so much attached to the memory of this pious queen that they sought for a new king in her family, although it was not Lombard, and elected her nephew, Aribert of Asti, of the Agilolphingian tribe settled in Bavaria. At his death the kingdom was divided between his two sons, from whom it was wrested by Grimoald, Duke of Benevento. His son Garibald was dispossessed by Perthurit, one of the sons of Aribert. Cunibert, Luitpert, Ragimpert, and Aribert II. completed the list of the Agilolphingian kings. Ansprand, a partisan of Luitpert, who had been dethroned by his rival Ragimpert and imprisoned by Aribert, conquered Aribert, and after a short reign of three months was succeeded by his son Luitprand, who reigned thirty-two years (712 to 744) and was the greatest of the Lombard kings.

With the reign of Luitprand begins the epoch of the decisive events which resulted in the final severance of all the bonds of political dependence which united Rome with the Greek Empire, in the establishment of the formal and legal monarchy of the Popes, and the overthrow of the Lombard dominion in Italy by Charlemagne.

Luitprand was a sovereign in the strict sense of the word, through his ability and energy of character even more than by the recognized title to the royal dignity which was vested in his person. He undertook and carried out a thorough reformation in the political administration of his kingdom, re-established order, extirpated the germs of disunion and civil war, secured the obedience of his subordinate dukes, and preserved a good intelligence with the Popes and the church. His ultimate aim was the union of all Italy in one kingdom under his own laws, including all the remaining Greek possessions and the city and principality of Rome. The first great step toward the fulfilment of this design must obviously be the conquest of the Greek exarchate. In this undertaking he had the sympathy of the Roman aristocracy and people, though not that of the Popes. The remnant of the old Roman nation existed at this time almost entirely in the ancient capital and its adjacent territory. The Roman Empire really perished from no other cause than the general extinction of the Roman race. As the barbarians swarmed into Italy the best part of the old Italians took refuge in Rome, where the old spirit, the old manners and institutions—so to speak, the Roman essence—was concentrated and preserved to effect a new and peaceful conquest of the world. This Roman nation desired to have its own autonomy and to be subject neither to the Roumanians of the east nor the barbarians of the west. They had no thought of accepting Lombard sovereignty over themselves, yet they were eager to see the Greek domination in Italy terminated, and therefore desired Luitprand’s success in the enterprise of overthrowing the exarchate. For Rome they desired independence. The Popes, however, would not take any measures for making Rome a sovereign state, until divine Providence directed the course of events to this end as a natural and necessary result, without any positive act on their part renouncing civil allegiance to the empire.

The course of events actually favored most opportunely and remarkably the designs of Luitprand and the wishes of the Roman people. The unutterable folly of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian drove him to an attack on the religion of the Romans and the sacred person of the pontiff. He ordered the exarch Paul to enforce submission to the heresy of the Iconoclasts by military power. Pope Gregory II. excommunicated Leo and exhorted all the Catholic princes and people of Italy to stand firm in defence of the faith and discipline of the church. They obeyed his voice so readily and with so much zeal that the absolute and final extinction of the Greek dominion in Italy was only averted by the mediation of the Pope himself. As Luitprand and the Lombards, profiting by the general uprising against the imperial authority, became stronger and advanced toward a more entire subjugation of Italy, they became more dangerous to the independence of the Holy See than were the feeble dukes and exarchs who represented the distant emperor. The king even allied himself with the exarch for the subjugation of the proud republic which disdained to be subject to either Greek or Lombard, and besieged the city of Rome. Pope Gregory II. went to Luitprand’s camp, and the majesty of his presence, together with the force of the arguments which he addressed to the noble and Catholic mind of the king, produced such an effect upon him that he cast himself at the feet of the pontiff, imploring his benediction and promising peace. In company with the Pope, Luitprand went to St. Peter’s Church, where he laid upon the tomb of the apostle his royal mantle, bracelets, coat of mail, dagger, gilded sword, golden crown, and silver cross as a gift to St. Peter and the church. Nevertheless, he renewed his attempt to make himself master of Rome ten years later during the pontificate of Gregory III., and continued during the pontificate of Zacharias his occasional irruptions into the exarchate of Ravenna and the duchy of Rome, although in every instance he yielded to the voice of his conscience and of the Vicar of Christ, desisting from his purpose as often as he renewed it, and making restitution of the towns which he had conquered. His successor, Rachis, undertook anew the enterprise of subjugating the exarchate, but was so much affected by the remonstrances of the Pope that he abdicated his dignity and withdrew with his wife and children into a monastery. His brother and successor, Astolpho, actually achieved the conquest of the exarchate,[99] and put an end to the Greek dominion in that part of Italy. Henceforth the Byzantine emperors had no authority in Italy except in Calabria and Sicily. Astolpho next turned his attention toward Rome and made a formal demand of allegiance on the senate and people, supported by a large army. The city was strongly fortified, and all its people were determined to make a stubborn defence of their independence. Astolpho would not lend his ear to any negotiation, help was demanded in vain from the Greek emperor, and in these sore straits Pope Stephen III. betook himself for aid and succor to Pepin, the King of the Franks.

Footnote 99:

The term exarchate is here used in its restricted sense.

Gregory III. had once before invoked the help of Charles Martel without any result. Since that time the Frankish nobles had referred to Pope Zacharias the question of their right to set aside the effete dynasty of the Merovingians and to substitute in its place the family of Charles Martel. The Pope had answered that the royal title ought to be given to the one who actually possessed and exercised the royal authority and functions. The new Carlovingian dynasty was thus formally established in France with the sanction and benediction of the Pope. And the time was now come for these powerful kings, Pepin and Charlemagne, to step forward as the eldest sons of the church, to secure the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, and to inaugurate that close relationship which has ever since existed between the kingdom of France and the Holy See.

Pope Stephen, although old and in extremely feeble health, went to France, where he was received with a spontaneous and splendid ovation by all ranks of the people, from the highest to the lowest. The Pope performed the solemn ceremony of the anointing of the king, the queen, and the royal princes, and conferred upon Pepin the dignity of patrician of Rome. A solemn assembly of the magnates of the kingdom was held at Quiercey, at which the king and nobles bound themselves to place the Pope in possession of the sovereign dominion of Rome and the exarchate. Pepin first attempted peaceful negotiations with Astolpho, and, these being absolutely refused, crossed the Alps with an army, and compelled him to make a treaty of peace with the Pope, by which he renounced all claim upon the Roman principality and the exarchate. Astolpho, however, disavowed and violated his engagements as soon as Pepin had withdrawn his army. Again (755) Pepin crossed the Alps and suddenly appeared with an overwhelming force before Pavia. Severer conditions of peace were this time imposed upon Astolpho—a mulct of one-third of his treasure, a yearly tribute of 12,000 gold _solidi_, and hostages for the fulfilment of his promises. French and Lombard commissaries were appointed to visit the whole territory assigned to the Pope and receive the keys of all the cities. Pepin made a solemn and festal entry into Rome amidst universal jubilation, and laid a formal document of investiture of the pontifical domain, together with the keys of the towns, upon the tomb of St. Peter.

Astolpho died suddenly from an injury received by a fall from his horse, very soon after these events (756). Rachis came out of his cloister with the design of regaining the crown which he had resigned. The majority of the princes favored the election of Didier, Duke of Brescia, who secured the influence of the Pope and of the envoys of Pepin in his favor by a solemn promise under oath to execute the treaty made by Astolpho and to cede some additional territory to the Holy See. He was accordingly elected King of Lombardy, but failed to fulfil his engagements and passed the seventeen years of his reign in perpetual efforts to secure an undivided sovereignty over all Italy. At last, taking advantage of the death of Pepin and of Pope Stephen III., and of cabals and factions among the Romans in reference to a new election, he made an open and violent effort to seize the dominion of Rome and the entire principality. He was deterred from actually consummating his intention by an armed entry into the city, where there was no force which could have prevented it, simply by the threat of excommunication, and withdrew to Pavia. The end of the Lombard kingdom was now near at hand. Pope Adrian, the Italian people, Charlemagne, and all except a few adherents of Didier were in accord on this subject. Charles crossed the Alps with a large army, evading the troops which guarded the passes by means of a secret defile, and easily took possession of the whole territory, Pavia only excepted, which held out for a year under Didier and his gallant son, Adelchis. Pavia at length surrendered, the Lombard kingdom was abolished, Didier was confined in a French monastery, where he became a monk in earnest for the rest of his life, the donation of Pepin to the Holy See was confirmed, and Charles returned home to prosecute that brilliant career which made him before the end of the century the monarch of almost the whole of Europe.

The temporal kingdom of the Pope was now established in a definite and stable manner, with the universal recognition of Catholic Christendom. Nevertheless, as a civil institution it was still exposed to the inward and outward vicissitudes and dangers to which all states are liable from the very nature of things. It was necessary that some great political power, distinct from the papal sovereignty, should hold over the See of St. Peter the ægis of protection. The providence of God, therefore, soon raised up that power which was consecrated by the name of

“THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.”

During the last year of the eighth century Adrian’s successor, Pope Leo III., was obliged to implore the aid of Charlemagne to repress the turbulence of Roman factions. Leo was received by Charlemagne at Paderborn, in the midst of a brilliant assemblage of nobles and a vast army, with all possible veneration and honor, and returned to Rome escorted by princes and prelates and a guard of honor, to await the promised visit of the king. In December, 799, Charlemagne came to Rome, a great council was assembled, and all the measures which were necessary for restoring and confirming order in the pontifical state were adopted. The Christmas festivities were celebrated with the greatest possible pomp and splendor, and while Charlemagne was kneeling before the tomb of the apostles Leo suddenly and unexpectedly approached him and placed on his head a golden diadem. The people burst forth into the acclamation: “Life and victory to Charles, the great and pacific Roman emperor!” In the bull which Leo published on the same day he says: _Quem Carolum auctore Deo, in defensionem et provectum sanctæ universalis ecclesiæ Augustum hodie sacravimus_.

In a former article[100] we have sketched an outline of the destinies and vicissitudes of Rome during the period of the decline of the Carlovingian dynasty and the rise of the German Empire. We have, therefore, now presented in a general view the history of the rise and consolidation of the temporal sovereignty of the Popes between the two great eras of St. Gregory I. and St. Gregory VII. From that time forward the political history of the Papacy relates chiefly to the rise and subsequent decline of the temporal power of the Pope over all Christendom, until at last, in the disruption of political unity among European states, the Holy See is once more subject to the same struggle for independence in its immediate patrimony which preceded the period of its mediæval power. The confederate union of the European nations under the moral presidency of the pope and the political primacy of the emperor was gradually transformed, by the waning of the imperial power which became restricted to Germany and at last subsided into a mere royal dominion over Austria, and the diminution of the spiritual power of the Holy See by the schism in Christendom, into a weaker sort of alliance, held together by common interests and mutual treaties. So long as this continued the Pope retained his place among the other sovereigns as one of the Italian princes, with a personal pre-eminence and a moral influence derived from his spiritual supremacy over the Catholic nations, and over the Catholic population in those nations which were not Catholic. Sound policy and the necessity of preserving an equilibrium in Europe caused the powerful monarchs of the great states to protect the independence of the Pope against one another, and to restore it when it was invaded. The disruption of the last bonds of European alliance in our own day has left the Holy See and the church once more a prey to secular tyranny exercised by a new German emperor, and a new Lombard king, without protection or defence from any political power. As Rome and Christendom went up together, so they have gone down together. And if a regeneration or restoration in the actual present or the future is destined for Europe and the rest of the world, it must be accomplished in both together; for they are inseparable parts of one whole. The history of the past is therefore a guide for judging the present and forecasting the future. The question of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope in the Roman state is essential and pre-eminent in the discussion of the principles of a reconstitution of the family of civilized and Christian nations. The complete independence and liberty of the Pope as supreme head of the church, and of the church itself, are intrinsically the most important of all rights and interests; and with these the temporal sovereignty of the Pope is necessarily connected so intimately that it becomes indirectly and extrinsically of equal importance, being, in fact, practically identified with them. We have, therefore, in our preceding historical sketches prepared the way for showing how this sovereignty of the Pope over Rome and the whole territory which he claims as subject to his crown is an indubitable and inalienable right, which must be restored and secured to him as the indispensable condition of religious and political order and well-being.

Footnote 100:

“The Iron Age of Christendom,” THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1877.

We shall not attempt to reconcile this proposition with the doctrine of a divine or natural right of sovereignty inhering in the multitude of every nation or a majority of them. At the present time this doctrine is not maintained by sensible and moderate advocates of a constitutional form of government and of popular franchises. The sovereignty may lawfully reside in the multitude politically organized, as it does in our republic, but it is not by virtue of divine or natural right coalescing from the separate, individual rights of the units who make up the mass. The right of Mr. Tilden to the Presidential chair was not asserted on the ground that he received a majority of the popular vote, which he did receive without question, but on the ground that he received a majority of the votes of the electors who were really competent to vote for the appointment of a President, according to the Constitution. We might make a plausible argument to show that the Roman people have always consented to the papal sovereignty, except during intervals of political madness, and actually at the present time would re-establish it, if they were free to do so. But the right of the Pope cannot be maintained on a theory, which would reduce it to a popular concession revocable at any time by the will of his subjects. Some good Catholics may hold the doctrine of popular sovereignty as above defined, but they do so inconsistently; for, although it is not directly contrary to the Catholic faith, it is incompatible with the principles and practice of the Holy See and the church, and the doctrine of every authority respected by sound and loyal Catholics who are instructed in the science of political ethics. In certain circumstances the will of the people suffices, alone or in concurrence with other causes, to convey or transfer lawful dominion. We have shown how, in the case of the papal sovereignty, the Roman people did, voluntarily, withdraw or refuse allegiance to all other princes and eagerly give it to the Pope. We have shown, also, how other causes concurred in establishing his right as a fact, and placing him in actual possession of the sovereignty, without prejudice to any other really existing legitimate right. The Pope possessed all the rights belonging to his position as the chief land-owner and prince among the Roman princes. He possessed the right, as head of the church, to have no temporal prince placed over him who could control or hinder the exercise of his spiritual supremacy. Moreover, he possessed a great many imperfect rights or claims upon the allegiance of the Roman people arising from the services he had rendered to the state in preserving, defending, and succoring it in circumstances when it was near extinction, from his superior ability to govern the state, and the fitness of things making it expedient, and even necessary, for the public good that sovereignty should be vested in his person. The action of Pepin was that of one who defended the Roman people in the right of their independence against tyrants and aggressors, and defended the general right of his own and other nations to the independence and tranquillity of the Roman Church as the centre of Christendom. The action of Charlemagne was similar, and his overthrow of the Lombard kingdom was justifiable by the right of conquest, the consent of the greater part of the people of Italy, and the necessity of providing for the welfare not only of Italy but of all Europe. His final act of settlement in the beginning of the year 800 had still greater force and legitimacy as the act of the king of Europe, in which all the great estates of his realm concurred, the whole people of Western Christendom applauding, and the Eastern empire tacitly consenting. The possession of a temporal principality by the Pope became thus a fact, which was so connected with natural and divine rights of various kinds that it became a perpetual and inviolable right. This is the only way in which sovereign rights can become vested in any kind of lawful possessor or political person. There is no such thing as a right to civil sovereignty immediately delegated by God or springing out of the constitution of nature directly. Scarcely any one can be found, even among legitimists, who maintains any such origin for sovereign rights. There is a natural and divine right to good government inherent in the social and political order. There is a divine right, having a natural basis, in the Catholic Church to good government, which is specifically secured by the divine appointment of the form of government, as a hierarchy subordinated to a supreme head. This right takes precedence of all others. As those rights which are more particular cede to the more general, all rights whatever must give way to the universal right of all Christians and all mankind, that the Vicar of Christ shall be left free and independent in the possession and exercise of his spiritual supremacy, and that all men shall have liberty of obeying him as the vicegerent of God on earth. The Roman people have a right to good government, the Italian people have a right to national well-being, all Europe has a right to the advantage of a due political equilibrium and alliance among nations. All these advantages were secured by the establishment of the sovereignty of the Pope in Rome. It grew up and became strengthened, and sustained itself for ages, as an essential part of the political constitution of Europe. Whatever pretence to right, legitimacy, stability, or sanction of any kind can be made by any European institution, the same is applicable to the temporal principality of the Pope. But, beyond all this, it is necessary to the spiritual independence of the Holy See, and therefore protected by the sanction of a higher right and a higher law. It has been given to God and accepted by his vicegerent, and has thus become sacred, inviolable, irrevocable. It is like a cathedral, an altar, the sepulchre of a saint. It is the property of the universal church, of Christendom, and of God. As such it is under the protection of ecclesiastical, international, and divine law; it is within the domain of right and of morality, and therefore appertains to the Catholic religion; is included in the order which is subject to the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. In this order he is the supreme judge and lawgiver, infallible in defining and declaring the law, sovereign in the judgments and decrees by which he applies it to particular questions and concrete matters. The Pope is therefore the supreme judge, the Catholic episcopate being associated with him in the same tribunal, by whom alone the right and the necessity of the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See can be determined. The consent of the Catholic people adds moral weight to this determination, and the political action of states gives it the necessary physical force for its execution. But there is no appeal from the judgment of the Pope himself on his own rights as sovereign in the Roman principality, either to bishops, sovereigns, or people. His own judgment has settled the right of the Roman question, and it is the duty of all Catholics to adhere to that judgment. The Pope will not cede his sovereignty, and the Catholic people will not consent to its cession or to its violent occupation by any usurper.

The history of the destinies of Rome in the past shows that the recent calamities of the Holy See do not warrant the expectation that its temporal sovereignty has passed away to return no more. It has proved itself to be indestructible amid all the vicissitudes of Europe. When Rome is shaken and disturbed, the civilized world is thrown into commotion. As we are writing, the Russian army is crossing the Pruth, and it cannot be doubted that we have reached one of the most momentous epochs of history. When our readers are perusing what has been written, another fold of the scroll of time will have been unrolled, perhaps thickly written over with records of great events. We have read this morning the significant utterance of Von Moltke on the necessity of arming more German troops for the defence of the empire. Some may take Châteaubriand’s gloomy view of things and think that Europe is hastening on a funeral march to the tomb. If this be so, then there is no refuge for the Pope but the catacombs. If atheism, despotism, revolution, and anarchy are going to hold a wild revel amid the ruins and monuments of a Christendom which was but is no more, then Rome will be involved in the common ruin. But “when Rome falls, the world.” However, we do not feel obliged, as yet, to despair of Europe, Christianity, or civilization. If there is a resurging movement after a temporary convulsion, Rome will be the centre of it, and the successor of Pius IX. will reap the advantage of his long watch by the tomb of St. Peter. We believe in the triumph of the Catholic Church over infidelity, heresy, schism, revolution, and despotism; over Judaism, Mohammedanism, and heathenism. The restoration of the Pope’s temporal kingdom is necessary to this triumph, and therefore we believe it will be restored. We hope for a pacification of Europe after the war which has now begun is terminated. Civilized mankind is tired of war, and the almost bankruptcy which is universally produced by the enormous military establishments of the nations of Europe, it would seem, must enforce at length disarmament and bring about a period of amicable alliance and devotion to the arts of peace, the study of the welfare of the people as the end of government, the moral sway of principles which are not only patriotic but Christian and Catholic. In such a state of things the moral influence of the Holy See would naturally rise to a higher point than it attained even under the mediæval system.

As for Rome and Italy, their temporal prosperity, so far from being sacrificed, would be promoted, by the re-establishment of the pontifical state and the overthrow of the visionary fabric of Cavour and Mazzini. We certainly desire to see all just national aspirations of the Italians satisfied. We are glad that Austrian domination in Italy has ceased. But all history seems to show that a confederate unity of distinct states is the only order suited to Italy, and that a monarchical unification is foreign and hostile to the genius and conditions of the Italian people. But, whatever may be done by the Italians and the European princes who will be left masters of the situation and arbiters of national interests after the conflict now impending, in respect to the rest of Italy, the domain of the Pope must be restored to him in its integrity and placed under the protection of the law of nations. This is the indispensable condition of the restoration of Europe from the condition of decadence into which it has fallen, and no doubt the providence of God will force upon the rulers of the world the recognition of this truth in due time and by the course of events wholly beyond their foresight or control.

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